How to End War, for Good

On August 11, 2011 a Navy “Hospitalman,” Riley Gallinger-Long, from Cornelius, Oregon was killed in Afghanistan while participating in a Marine maneuver in support of what the military calls “Operation Enduring Freedom.” He was 19 years old. He loved to fish.

Since the beginning of time wealthy men have sent poor men and boys into war for reasons that are often complex but whose ultimate goal is to enrich the rich at the expense of the poor. People with power send children and the powerless to fight and sometimes die for them. We consider it “progress” that women are now also part of the process.

We have made great progress in many areas of civilization--in science and medicine, in agriculture, in industry, even in the social sciences. And yet we have made absolutely no progress in extinguishing war. We agree that life is sacred and yet every generation sends its innocent youth to be slaughtered--the horrible pain to family and friends of each death multiplied infinitely through the ages.

Just as old as war is the attempt by others to end it. Four hundred years before Jesus, Aristophanes wrote Lysistrada—a play in which he imagined the woman of ancient Greece taking an oath to deny their husbands sexual pleasure until they end the Peloponnesian War. In the 20^th century the First World War was fought to end all wars and the United Nations was created to ensure peace. In Aristophanes’ fantasy the strategy worked. In real life neither war, no matter how terrible, nor peace, no matter how enduring, has succeeded in guaranteeing a permanent end to war.  But there is a way. It is a startling plan but unexpectedly simple and relatively easy to carry out. The only reason not to is that we don't really want to put a final end to war. Ultimately it will cost nothing, even as every human life saved is of infinite value. The plan will fail only for lack of willpower.

Since people (or nations) with power go to war for personal (or national) gain, the key to ending war must include a factor that negates the gain from going to war in the first place. In other words, the cost of going to war must outweigh the cost of winning a war. Here’s how to do it.

We can end all war by levying a peace “tax”—a tax that is so great that no one could afford to pay it and which, because it will ultimately cost no one who pays it any money, will win broad-based international support. The tax would be paid every year both by corporations and by nations. At the end of every year the money would be returned to every corporation and every nation that did not use military force to violate the boundaries of another sovereign nation.

It doesn’t matter how high the “tax” is because it comes back at the end of the year. For corporations (yes,every one) it would be a percentage (say 5%) of the previous year’s gross revenue—in every country in which the corporations earn money. Corporations could not avoid the “tax” by moving an operation abroad or by fancy bookkeeping tricks to hide profit. Agreement to pay the “tax” would be a requirement of incorporation. For nations, the “tax” would be a percentage of all revenue, from both taxes and fees (say 0.1%) collected the previous year. Membership in the UN, with the accompanying peace “tax” obligation, would be required of all nations and enforced with economic sanctions. In 2010 the total revenue collected by the IRS was four and a half trillion dollars. So 0.01% of that would mean a peace “tax” of four and a half billion dollars for the U.S. Maybe that’s not enough. But the reason it would work is that, unlike insurance, where you lose the money if you don’t have a claim, the peace “tax” is returnedat the end of every year if your nation refrains from any (reasonably defined) foreign military hostility. Each nation or corporation would determine if and how much of its peace “tax” it wanted invested, and how—and reap the resulting return a year later.

Charging both nations and corporations this peace “tax” creates a balance of interests that would make it work. Corporations, anxious not to lose their “investment” in peace, would exert the full force of their influence on government not to go to war—an ironic but trenchant reversal of history until now. And governments, anxious not to lose the peace “investment” coming back to them, would resist the special interests (if they still existed) of the military-industrial complex to profit from war.

The IRS is the most efficient revenue accumulating institution in the world. A similar agency could be set up to collect, invest, and return this money every year. It would control an unimaginable amount of capital. But it would return more than it collected. And in the process it would guarantee that no nation or collection of corporate interests engaged in military adventures that send young Rileys into war again. How much is that worth? Nations might even follow a similar model internally to prevent or discourage rebellion and civil war—totally amputating the arms makers’ markets. But one might also ask, Has there ever been a rebellion against a just government? Perhaps rebellions are in a different category than war and require their own solution.

World War I was fought to a stalemate in the first year. But the war dragged on for another four—as children were sent to the front lines with their leaders’ tortured hope that the other side would lose and be made to pay for the carnage. An expensive peace “tax” would ultimately cost nothing, protect national resources from the greedy arms of others and keep them for the benefit of every indigenous population, and end war. Consider the merit of this plan: even Israel and the Palestinian people would both benefit from the creation of a Palestinian state that paid a peace “tax.”

Jonathan H. Gerard is a rabbi and family systems therapist and the grandfather of a six year old boy named Riley.