Forever Peace

Joe Haldeman

New York: Ace Books, 1997. ISBN: 0-441-00566-7. Pp. 351

I am not a fan of Haldeman's famous Forever War (for which I have gotten enough net flak, so give me a break), but I decided to take the plunge and give him another try with this novel. There were two reason for this. One, a guy whose opinions I respect listed it on his syllabus for a proposed course on war and literature. Two, it is not a sequel to Forever War. Another, mild, reason was that this novel has won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, which usually means the work has met the pretty high standard of the fans.

And, in all truth, this one is much, much better than the famous other novel. In fact, if it weren't for the objectionably naive philosophy expounded on its pages, it would have been a top-notch military science fiction. Unfortunately, its early promise is marred by the childish peace alternative and the somewhat self-serving politically correct take on religion, race, and sex. Add to this the disconcerting narrative that switches between first and third person, and you have something of "could have been great but is middling at best" novel. The writing is dry, making some of the passages really difficult to work one's way through.

The protagonist, Julian, is a black part-time soldier part-time mathematics professor. I highlight his race because on one hand (and with some notable exceptions), there seems to a woeful lack of decent non-white characters in science fiction and fantasy. But on the other hand, the race really makes no difference to the story except in the few parts where Haldeman stresses the interracial relationship Julian has with the white (and senior) Amelia or when he "exposes" the subconscious racism of a prostitute that has great sex with Julian only to reveal her racist hangups. So Julian's race is one of these gratuitous things that creep up in literature only to please the PC crowd.

Leaving that aside, the near future described by Haldeman is fascinating. The economically advanced rich nations, the "haves," are in the midst of the brutal Ngumi War with the third world (Latin America and Africa mostly) of the "have nots." It is a story that may be familiar to anyone with passing knowledge of the recent past: mind-boggling discrepancy in technology favoring the rich, fighting by remote-control in which our soldiers hunker in safe bunkers while being linked to their machines doing the actual dirty work. It's the ultimate virtual reality. Julian is a mechanic of the remote infantry and he navigates a remote "soldierboy" unit through a direct link with it and with the rest of his platoon. The members of the platoon share their consciousness while "jacked in."

The Americans may have the military edge but they cannot seem to achieve peace through war because their opponents are fragmented (so no central group to negotiate with) and are mostly rebels against their "legitimate" governments who ostensibly cooperate with the U.S. The American army is very careful not to inflict collateral damage, at least not more than absolutely necessary. For example, when Atlanta is nuked (never quite made clear whether it was done by the enemies or some nefarious cabal within the U.S. seeking to justify a retaliatory response), the reciprocal nuking of two cities is preceded by a warning to evacuate their populations. Not that any of this makes the war any less brutal.

Haldeman's descriptions of battle are visceral and evocative, even if they don't quite reach the masterful prose of John Steakley. Julian is somewhat conflicted about war: he tends to dismiss some of the propaganda of the enemy or the conspiracy theories implicating his own government but on the other hand, the violence repels him. For the most part, he does his duty and tries not to think too hard about who is right and who is wrong in this interminable war.

Things do haywire when Amelia discovers that the Jupiter Project that she's working on as part of a large research team may, if activated, re-enact the Big Bang. That is, destroy this universe in the process of creating a new one. It just so happens that when her research is unexpectedly suppressed by some unknown entity that Julian accidentally kills a boy during a routine show of force mission. He suddenly realizes that killing affects him much more deeply than he realized and he ends up on a quest to deal with his problem. And it is indeed a problem because he's been drafted and so has no choice but continue until relieved of duty.

This is where the novel goes irretrievably astray. The politically correct view of war is that it is so abominable that no sane rational human being should want to fight one. But since there have obviously been quite a few wars in our history, the preferred explanation is some combination of the following factors: miscommunication (if we could just sit down and talk and understand each other...), evil government/corporation (military-industrial complex, imperialist capitalist societies), or human nature (violence is just part of our genetic inheritance). Haldeman dabbled with the first "explanation" in his previous book, The Forever War, and that approach left something to be desired in a most charitable interpretation. Here, he offers a combination of the latter two.

Although it is never quite explained why the Ngumi War rages on, one possible take is that the rich have developed these wondrous nanoforges: miracle machines that can produce anything almost instantly from its basic components (there's some mysterious source of energy being utilized for the purpose). This technology is being withheld from the havenots although it's not quite clear why: if they could produce anything they wanted, perhaps they would not go on a rampage. At any rate, the implication is that the haves are artificially denying the havenots access to a life that would lift them out of poverty, and it's all done for economic reasons (so they can rent out nanoforges to the hapless third-worlders). Sound familiar? It should, if you have seen any of rants that pass for "world history" in today's university curriculum. A Forever Blame-the-West Game, of which this book is a variant.

It's not that the rebels are peachy: they are not above sacrificing their children to make the Americans look bad, for example. They operate as some sort of crime cartels and don't seem to care much about the same poor they are ostensibly defending. But, as they say, two wrongs do not make a right, and so no matter how bad these guys are, the haves' actions are still morally repugnant. Or should be.

Well, since there's no hope that the economic military/industrial or whatever complex would relent any time soon, the war will not be settled through an American initiative. Since the US does not seem to be able to defeat the rebels, it won't be settled militarily either. And since the rebels clearly benefit from the war, it won't be settled through a rebel initiative. In other words, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. So what does Haldeman propose to terminate the war, once and for all? He turns to the third "explanation" and essentially argues that if men/women could be deprived of their killer instinct, peace will reign forever. Yes, war will disappear when humans find killing physically impossible.

Before dealing with this idea, let's see how Haldeman proposes to implement it (I am identifying him with the characters that do that in the book because he's so obviously a pacifist that it seems safe to do so). Apparently, scientists have discovered that if one stays "jacked in" for too long, he becomes incapable of killing another human being. The process is not like the treatment in A Clockwork Orange where one is forced to watch violence until the very idea of it turns his stomach. Rather, the shared consciousness creates such an empathy for other human beings that harming one becomes equivalent to harming one's own self. Leaving aside the problem that some people seem quite capable for harming themselves in pursuit of their goals (meaning that such a deterrent simply won't work for many), let's assume for a second that it did have this effect.

So the idea is to "jack in" everyone on earth until they are cured and no longer want to kill anyone else (except perhaps in self-defense, but for some not even then). Since this is not a genetic modification, it means that babies would not have this desirable feature built-in. This means that they would have to be inculcated at some point in their lives, and it can't be when they are too young because they must be able to comprehend the existence and experience of another human being for the process to work its magic. Note now that even "humanized" (as they are called in the book) people do not object to some necessary violence (so they allow Julian to kill another man by just walking out of the room, knowing full well what will follow). That is, they can all engage in indirect murder, no problem. (This, incidentally, is a huge problem: is pushing a button to tell a computer to fire a missile into a village going to trigger the no-killing reflect? Apparently not. That is, war by remote control is still a possibility.)

So now we have a lot of people who may not be able to kill anyone personally but who are quite capable of doing something that will result in someone getting killed. There's also plenty of "inhuman" babies who will grow up perfectly capable of killing unless they are humanized. We also have humans who will always end up in conflict with each other over something. So what's to stop one of these humanized ones raise an army of inhuman babies and wrest control of the world from everyone else who can't fight back? The book seems to say that this would be a clear instance of self-defense where even the humanized people can resist. But what if they are not killed but just shoved into concentration camps? Or "just" deprived of liberties and forced to live in a totalitarian society? If one is not prepared to defend his liberty with force, then pretty soon he will be sharing a cell with his comrades and staring at the world through a barbed wire.

This means that there are at least two problems with this idea that humanizing people will end war: even humanized people can fight or if they cannot, they do not have any defenses against those who can. But that's not even the most objectionable part of the story (it's just stupid and not well thought out at all). The process through which this wondrous new world is going to be ushered in is pretty scary. First, everyone (yes, everyone) must be "jacked in." No choice. No opportunity for choice. Either you jack in or else you remain inhuman. Now, jacking in is an invasive procedure that involves cranial drilling and a high risk of death. But even if it did not, even if it were perfectly safe, you still are forced to lose your individuality. You must "share" your consciousness with others. Period. Privacy? Individuality? What quaint concepts. No matter how miraculous this sharing is described in the book, at least when it comes to sex, and regardless of Amelia's jealous attempt to get an implant for herself to "experience" Julian fully, I do not know just how many people would voluntarily lose their self. I know I would not.

So I would have to be coerced. By people who can't use force. Well, Haldeman does offer some half-assed "theory" that involves the government charging for the procedure, thus making it a matter of prestige. Yeah, like that's going to work. In a society already apparently in serious moral disarray because of the corrosive influence of the nanoforges that have ushered in an era of the Universal Welfare State, where everything could be had (well, not alcohol). Getting a hole in one's skull may really be rage for a year or so, but probably not beyond that. Fads pass way too quickly for this to work. So it would have to be coercion. And what happens to me?

I, along with those for whom the procedure has failed, are going to be shipped off to Madagascar. Yeah, I know Haldeman named other islands, but I do mean to evoke the original Nazi plan for the Jews. Segregation, expulsion from polite society, forcible removal of all inhuman brutes whose obsolete identities get in the way of all that is decent and peaceful. I just cannot see how one can propose this with a straight face. And yet, I am not surprised.

The idea that sacrificing millions is acceptable as long as the ultimate abstract ideal is really cool has sustained to most homicidal regimes in our history. Without exception, these have all been secular regimes who have not hesitated to murder their own citizens in astounding numbers in order to build a better future. Let's not even bother with the truly horrifying notion that one can decide just what future everyone in a society should aspire to. Let's just ponder the zealotry that can murder millions under the pretext of improving the lives of others. It is funny that Haldeman utterly misses that sinister aspect of his novel.

In fact, he does more than miss it---he tries to deny it by introducing a fundamentalist religious society, "The Hammer of God," that is bent on mankind's destruction. Haldeman follows a long tradition in science fiction that has turned anti-religiosity into a fetish. It may have started with Robert Heinlein (who followed Mark Twain), but it regularly appears in modern works, like Ben Bova's. I am an atheist, and yet I cannot help but think that these writers protest too much and essentially seem to bark up the wrong tree. They love portraying theocratic regimes as being these brutal governments who repress their citizens to no end and yet they seem to be forgetting that it is secular governments that have done this in our own real history. The Taliban may have forced women to wear burkhas and may have chopped off the heads of people listening to the Pet Shop Boys (that may not have been too bad), but however repugnant this may seem to Western values, it simply does not compare to what Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, and Saddam, to name a few, have inflicted on their populations. Secular governments untempered by the restraints of religion can be vicious to a degree that even the most rabid fundamentalist can only aspire to.

In the end, it does not matter what type of government you have as long as it is accountable to its citizens. Secular, religious, whatever, it simply does not matter. The reason is that most people are quite normal in the Aristotelian sense of the middle class and will not tolerate extremes for long. If the system allows them to force the government to be accountable for its actions, they will succeed in moderating its behavior. In other words, the worst-case scenario is where the citizens are deprived of their voice in the name of some high-sounding ideal, a mirage that they must either work toward or be swept aside by their more enlightened peers. And that's what Haldeman proposes, and that's why this idea is not just stupid but dangerous.

January 31, 2006