Gunnar Heinsohn
There’s this sociologist from Germany, Gunnar Heinsohn, who has an interesting slant on what it takes for a country to be warlike, and how to avert it. According to Heinsohn, bellicosity is a function of the number of unemployed young men in the population and his star exhibit is the island nation known to all Arthur Clarke lovers, Sri Lanka.
Twenty-odd years ago, the average Sri Lankan family had three point something sons; there was a lot of unemployment and the violent war between the government and the rebellious Tamil Tigers had been going on for decades and seemed to be getting worse all the time. Now the average Sri Lankan family has only one son, and the war ended this year.
Heinsohn points to such militant countries as Lebanon, with a declining birthrate, and Iran, now down to an average family size of 1.7, as less likely to get into wars than their historical records and warlike declarations would suggest. Be nice if he were right.
Jim C. says:
I understand China has a surplus of boys. Maybe it wouldn’t be nice if Heinsohn is right.
December 20, 2009, 1:09 amsm says:
I went to the HNN site you marked and I got the impression that this historian thinks the European drop in population is a bad thing and will lead to Europe losing wars to Islam. Doesn’t anyone ever point out to such people that there are 7 billion human beings and looming water and food shortages and that big wars might lead to nuclear warfare?
December 20, 2009, 7:25 amStefan Jones says:
I can easily believe that.
World Peace might mean giving unemployed young men jobs and girlfriends.
December 20, 2009, 6:45 pmE. J. Garcia says:
It appears Mr. Heinsohn has a very good point, though one question still bothers me: with the big emphasis on the “fighting-age” men, would the cigar-chomping bureaucrats and war generals turn to the more second-class women demographic more frequently in more places to fight their future wars? Also, if the following figure could be believed, then the US will be in for a rough ride with the recent troop surge in Afghanistan. Other than that, keep up the good work, Fred!
P.S. I am currently commenting in the rather peaceful shores of Puerto Rico, now reading “Man Plus” in your “Man Plus and Jem” double-feature.
P.P.S. Lastly, here is the URL for the figure I was mentioning in case my link didn’t work:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Birth_rate_figures_for_countries.PNG
December 20, 2009, 8:40 pmGary Gibson says:
There’s another book, by a Canadian psychologist, available freely online that throws some interesting light on this subject as well. Much of the book (’The Authoritarians’ by Dr. Bob Altemeyer) is based around a test called the ‘Right-Wing Authoritarian’ test developed since the Sixties, and based on an earlier test created in response to the growth of fascism in the ’30’s. It’s an absolutely remarkable book, particularly when it touches on the last Bush administration in the US. Sounds like it would fit together nicely with the work you mention here.
The book can be downloaded at http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
December 21, 2009, 12:12 amJeff says:
It’s a chicken-or-egg question. Do the economic conditions that lead to unemployment also lead to war? Or do those desiring war create the economic conditions that provides them with a ready supply of unemployed young men to serve as cannon fodder?
It’s much harder to get your war on in times of properity. The public just won’t stand for it.
December 21, 2009, 11:51 amSebastian Meyer says:
Heinsohn may be right, but here in Europe the \"problem\" of dying nations does not exist for one simple reason:
The net population growth of countries like Germany is negative, meaning the countries propulations should be shrinking as less people are born than die each year. Instead though the population is growing because a lot of people are moving here from countries that have population growth.
Sometimes the populaiton growth is also the reason for the problems in those respective countries, causing \"push factors,\" meaning things get so bad people want to go elsewhere.
So maybe \"Islamic Nations\" will \"win\" is as much as that muslim imigrants will filter into Europe. But that is nothign new, it\’s been going on for centuries.
January 1, 2010, 3:51 pmRobert Deward says:
A couple of observations: Re male births and warlike behavior,
January 16, 2010, 1:46 pmheard of research finding that in periods before the outbreak of
war the proportion of male births increased markedly. And re
warlike behavior, when one reads accounts of wars and invasions
in the ancient world, they were said to have been the normal
and expected means by which resource poor peoples acquired what
they needed or wanted, e.g., ancient Greek cities, the Northmen.