Why There Will Never Be an Interplanetary War

by Sylvia Engdahl

Knowledge of humankind's history is important if we are to avoid mistakes of the past, but it's necessary to put past events into perspective by being aware of how things have changed from era to era--and to realize they will go on changing as we evolve.

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By far the most common theme of science fiction, at least of science fiction directed to the general public, has been interplanetary war or invasion. This isn't surprising, since it provides more scope for exciting stories than less violent themes. It also makes the stakes in a conflict higher than they would be if only individual characters were involved. And it seems a logical extension of human affairs into the future.

But is this really logical? Should we expect that because war has been common throughout human history, it will continue to exist in centuries to come? I don't think so. I believe that the very concept of an interplanetary war is anachronistic, however reasonable it may seem in the light of past experience.

In the first place, humankind progresses. Yes, if a time machine sent people of former centuries into the era of space travel, they might well find an excuse to fight each other. Setting aside the obvious logistical difficulty of launching an attack on a distant planet, they might attempt to conquer it. Conquest was not frowned upon in the past, and many men were eager to participate and thereby gain glory. But today, few if any people consider it glorious to fight in a war. To defend against aggression, when not necessary for personal survival, is seen as a duty--one accepted gladly by some and with extreme reluctance by others. We have outgrown the perception of war as desirable.

But aren't human beings aggressive by nature? Isn't that an innate characteristic of our species? There is no evidence that this is so. We have a built-in drive to overcome obstacles, which is an adaptive trait essential to our survival; but fighting among ourselves is no longer adaptive--on the contrary, it could now lead to extinction. The obstacles are different now, and to overcome them that drive must be channeled into more constructive action. There will always be individual aggressors, but not enough to seize power. Future humans will find challenge enough in preserving--and spreading beyond--our home world.

In the second place, there will be no reason for colonized worlds to come into conflict. Conflicts arise over competition for land or resources. There will be plenty of land on any world fit for colonization, and a viable colony, by definition, will have either sufficient resources to survive or a way to obtain them from moons or asteroids. It would have nothing to gain by attacking another colony even if it had the means to do so. As for far-future colonies with large populations that have established trade, there might be disputes over specific resources--it would not, however, be feasible to go to war over them. To build a fleet of ships capable of that would cost more than any possible return.

Might not one colony, or confederation of colonies, wish to rule another? This analogy with Earth's history is a common fictional scenario, and on the surface it seems plausible; but again, it is based on the notion that people are innately aggressive. An aberrant individual might want to rule, but he could not acquire enough followers, let alone the technology, to pose a threat. Colonists will be too busy developing their own planets to be swayed by a power-seeker's ambition.

There remains the other common scenario, a fight for independence from a mother world. This is the one thing people of the future would be willing to fight for. Yet the time has passed when armed citizens can defeat the kind of force a world such as Earth could employ An uprising, even a politically successful one, is not a war.

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So wars between humans on different planets are just not going to happen. But there is the far more common, and potentially more serious, question of wars with hostile aliens.

I deplore the endless stream of science fiction about warfare with aliens. In addition to movies, there is a thriving genre of science fiction novels about military strategy and exciting space battles, which is to be applauded for the recent trend toward featuring female commanders but which cannot help but instill a view of alien species as evil. Exposure to a few such stories is harmless but many readers are addicted to them, and I don't think we want generations to grow up feeling that the universe is a hostile, frightening place. And if we do meet aliens in the distant future, we certainly don't want the population of Earth to have been conditioned to expect war with them.

Yet perhaps, as some scientists now warn, there really are aliens that would view us with hostility. Is it likely that they will attack Earth or its colonies? I think not, because there would be no point in their doing so.

It is true that we have no basis for expecting extraterrestrials to be friendly. We are not in a position to know anything at all about extraterrestrials; thus we cannot assume that their psychology is like ours--though personally I believe some qualities of thinking beings are universal. One thing we can be sure of, however, is that any aliens that have starships are rational, for if they were not, they could not have developed advanced technology.

It would not be rational for them to invade an inhabited planet. Extrapolation from Earth's past history is not valid; the common argument that Europeans wiped out the native populations of the Americas is in no way grounds for a fear that aliens will pose a danger to us. It's simply not relevant to the issue. Europeans colonized the Americas to gain land. It was an instance of the inevitable conflict that arises when humans are competing for the resources of a single planet. But space is full of resources, and any intelligent species with the ability to travel across interstellar space would have long ago developed the ability to utilize them. There is no reason to compete for them, since exoplanets are far more abundant than species technologically capable of establishing colonies.

Similarly, the argument that non-human species on Earth wiped out others competing for the same ecological niche is not relevant, because the ecological niche of space is large enough for an unlimited number of species. There is no need to compete in order to occupy it. In the very long run there will be competition in the sense that species that successfully colonize that niche will survive and multiply, while those that do not will die out when the resources of their home worlds are exhausted. But there won't be competition of the sort that occurs within the confines of a single world.

It is often suggested that some alien species may simply be warlike, a natural supposition for those who believe that our own species is innately aggressive. In my opinion, both views are invalid because they are inconsistent with the concept of evolutionary advance. Alien species progress, just as humans do. If they have reached a stage more advanced than our present one--as by definition they will have, if they are capable of interstellar travel--then they have advanced in all ways, which means they have outgrown aggressive impulses toward other peoples. They may be indifferent to us; they may not want to make friends; but they won't try to conquer us. After all, even at our present stage of evolution, we would not choose to invade their worlds.

The idea that aliens might invade Earth for its resources goes way back to H. G. Wells' 1897 novel The War of the Worlds, in which Martians come here because the resources of Mars are dwindling. At the time it was written people had become aware that Mars is a dry, barren planet (then believed to be far older than Earth), yet they had observed what they thought were canals, leading to speculation that intelligent inhabitants might be attempting to channel their remaining source of water. "Across the gulf of space," Wells wrote, "minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes." This set the precedent that has formed popular impressions of aliens ever since. The vast difference between this solar system's resources and those of countless systems has not been taken into account.

One modern variation of the theme, taken literally by believers in abduction by UFOs, is that alien visitors want genetic material from humans because their own species is too inbred. This is nonsense--the premise of my trilogy Children of the Star notwithstanding, a species that could build interstellar ships would surely know enough about genetic engineering to produce any variations it desired. Underlying this scenario, perhaps, is an emotional conviction that humans are genetically superior to other races, even those possessing more advanced space technology.

All this supposes that there are alien species somewhere near our evolutionary level who are aware of us. The chances of that may not be large; we may encounter only far younger species that haven't yet developed space flight, or far older ones to whom we seem too primitive to notice. In my opinion the latter cannot happen because I believe what I've said in my novels about truly mature intellligent species not revealing themselves to younger ones. Contrary to the hopes of some SETI enthusiasts, benevolent aliens are not going to teach us how to solve Earth's problems. Stages in a species' maturation cannot be skipped any more than a young child can be instantly turned into an adult. I think that whatever such beings may be observing us, or may observe us in the future, will allow us to evolve naturally and fulfill our own potential without interference.

The premise of my novels is that each separately-evolved thinking species has unique qualities and a unique history, and therefore has something new and revitalizing to bring to a federation of advanced civilizations when it is mature enough to join with them. Premature contact would result in the loss of this unique contribution--young worlds would become no more than copies, probably poor copies, of the older ones. The younger races would be absorbed or they would die out. Even knowing about the existence of a more advanced civilization prior to contact would be harmful, as it would cause them to feel that any effort they might make toward progress was mere duplication and therefore meaningless. And I am convinced that this is true in reality.

Thus the view of aliens expressed in the novels is meant to be taken literally, with one exception: the invaders in Enchantress from the Stars are an anachronism. They are no more realistic than the woodcutters who seek to slay dragons, as for literary reasons both were based on mythology of the past or present. And of course the portrayal of the mature civilization is also mythological in the sense that it is based on current conceptions rather than facts beyond our present comprehension. That some equivalent of the Anthropological Service does exist, I have no doubt. If it did not, young intelligent species could not evolve because they would be influenced by well-meaning older ones, even if no starfaring species are hostile.