Gordon Chang is no stranger on the concept of war. He’s written a novel on Russo- and Sino-American relations in the past. He has done extensive research on American diplomacy, the Cold War, and the growing importance of international security in today’s society. He teaches multiple classes at Stanford focusing on ethnicity, race, and foreign relations.

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But even he wrestles with the idea of war.

 

He considers it “to be the most horrible activity that humans engage in,” and he matches this weighty claim with a calm, yet stern disposition.

 

Identity

However, brutal it may be, he recognizes its importance. The sacrifices made yield sociocultural benefits, the development of tribes, regions, nations at astronomical costs. As we engage more and more in violence, the more the diffusion of cultures and the building of nation-states occur.

 

Destroy, and in the process, rebuild. But it’s a sad truth nevertheless that our humanities are to some extent contingent on bloodshed. 

 

In that regard, humans are a bit hypocritical. Gordon Chang puts this rather aptly. We condemn killing in times of peace with jail sentences, yet we laud killing in times of war with medals of honor.

 

The Nature of an Enemy

Gordon Chang teaches THINK 60: American Enemies in the spring in which he will focus on the importance on defining an enemy, how we can’t just identify one without rationale. The process “involves deliberation, choice, and assessment of consequences,” which is much easier said than done.

 

The delineation between friend and foe is not so easy to tell and especially not in the heat of the moment. For example, it’s easy for us now to demarcate the “good” and the “bad” powers - as history has defined them - in World War II, but in retrospect, not so much. There is a stark contrast between analyzing history from the comfort of an office or a library and analyzing history while being in a country mired in violence and confronting dangerous international powers.

 

But even then we need to be careful.

 

Enemy seems to be the most extreme distinction, at least to Gordon Chang. At its core and in its most belligerent sense, an enemy “is someone one you have to kill and you feel they’re going to kill you,” which is why doing so is dangerous. Once we make this distinction and publicly acknowledge it, well, we might as well have crossed the Rubicon.  

 

Yet to rally an entire country, it’s necessary. Tragic, but necessary.

 

It is within human nature that we gravitate toward an “us vs. them” dynamic, an ingroup and outgroup. And it is this principle on which we rely when it comes to amassing support within a nation. Although history may objectively find the main candidate for an enemy, being too specific may not be the most pragmatic choice. The hardest part isn’t how to get enough people to fight; it’s giving them a reason to do so.

 

And that fact does not please Gordon Chang.

 

Because if we just haphazardly pick and choose our enemies to fulfill our country’s selfish purposes, then who is the real enemy here?