The Necessity of War

Paper Summary:

The paper looks at biology and the insights of Charles Darwin to argue that war is necessary, that it is a part of life and that no moral argument for or against war will stop it happening in the future. The paper argues that war is an inevitable outcome of evolution, since, in essence, war is a fight over who controls resources. The paper also explains that war is an outgrowth of sexual selection and again looks at biology and its "survival of the fittest" theory for a basis to form an argument that war is simply a natural part of life.

From the Paper:

"Inevitably, males compete for female attention, and often literally lock horns in that fight (consider moose in their fights where they butt and entangle each other with their antlers). Again, biology makes the rules: the fitter the male, the more likely he will be chosen by one or many females to reproduce. This basic impulse can lead to war. It is no coincidence that Helen of Troy was said to have a face that "launched a thousand ships." If males cannot reproduce, their genetic endowment will be lost. Much research in primates has shown that often it is the fittest males who win the reproductive favors from most of the males, while many of the other less fit, aggressive males don't manage to reproduce at all. This is nature's way of ensuring the strength of a given species."

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