Countering Fear in War: The Strategic Use of Emotion

Abstract

In the course of war, fear and terror are often used as weapons to distort the opponent's decision-making or break the opponent's will. Military and political leaders need to respond to this tactic. They have several options including the appeal to reason or the creation of emotions to counter fear. This article examines these options in two ways. First, it theoretically specifies five alternative strategies. Second, the article examines which of these strategies appears to be most prevalent in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. In the classical Greece of Thucydides, leaders generally chose to employ a combination of hope and reason as counter to fear rather than shame, anger, or spite. As discussed in the conclusion, this finding provides several insights about the strategic use of emotion.

Keywords:

• Thucydides
• emotion
• fear
• strategic action

Notes

1. This example is from the senior author's own childhood growing up in a small town not too far from Strategic Air Command headquarters, a certain Soviet target in a nuclear attack.

2. We are referring to Book 1, 76. In Rex Warner's translation (Penguin 1954), deos is defined as ‘security’ while in Richard Crawley's version deos is defined as ‘fear’. The distinction is not important for the general point here. All quoted passages are from the Richard Crawley translation.

3. Following many socially oriented theorists, emotions can be conceptualized as ‘thought that becomes embodied because of the intensity with which it is laced with personal self-relevancy (Franks and Gecas 1992: 8)’. Claire Armon-Jones points out that while emotion is dependent upon cognition, cognitions do not constitute emotion because the same belief could produce two different emotions (Armon-Jones 1986: 41-42). The relation between emotion and cognition is perhaps the central issue in the study of emotions. Emotions in which emotion precedes and shapes cognition are disscussed in Petersen 2002. See the discussion of ‘Rage’ as an example.

4. Of course, emotions are not the only mechanisms capable of producing these types of distortions. Social psychologists have identified numerous cognitive mechanisms that also prevent optimal types and amounts of information from being collected.

5. Among the extensive body of work on the ways in which emotions affect beliefs, see the essays in Frijda, Manstead, and Bem (2000) for summary articles. Another well-known body of work on this issue can be found in Prospect Theory, associated with various works of Tversky and Kahneman.

6. Also, the complete lack of emotion affects information and belief formation. See the work of Damasio (1995) and others with brain-damaged patients who have lost their capacity for emotion.

7. In some instances, wealth might be able to provide security and therefore cannot be so easily separated from security.

8. On creating emotion in one self as a method of signifying commitment to a position during conflict, see Brams 1997 and Frank 1988.

9. Leaders addressing a military audience might use a different approach than leaders addressing a general population. In ancient Greece, these audiences were more blurred than in contemporary times. In Thucydides’ account, the audience was male citizens of military age.

10. Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1.11.9 (1370b).

11. Leaders could also try to inculcate hatred, an emotion created through cognitions about an actor's nature, rather than actions, being inherently defective and dangerous. The action tendency of hatred is to eliminate that object from existence. This strategy seems much more difficult than one concentrating just on an opponent's actions.

12. See Newhagen 1998. Newhagen found that images producing anger were remembered better than those inducing fear, which in turn were remembered better than those creating disgust.

13. The word for ‘spite’ in Rhetoric is epereasmos, derived from the verb epereazo ‘to threaten, to insult, or to act spitefully’, possibly from epi + areia, ‘menace’, from Ares, the god of war. A related term is (epi)chairekakia, ‘rejoicing in the misfortune of others’ (Nicomachean Ethics 2.6.18 and 2.7.15). Aaron Ben-Ze'ev (2003:116) observes that this emotion is scantily treated by Aristotle.

14. This passage is cited in Elster 1999: 62. Also see Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.2.4 (1378b).

15. ‘Inat’ is actually of Turkish origin, meaning obstinacy.

16. On Spartan policy on Helots, see Thucydides Book IV, 80. Also see Jordan 1990 and De Souza 2002: 26.

17. William Harris (2001: 178–182) speculates that Thucydides may have downplayed the incitement of anger by statesmen in public discourse.

18. Alcibiades’ speech in Athens before the Sicilian expedition is one notable, debatable example. However, in this context Alcibiades was not overwhelmingly concerned with countering fear, the focus here.