Anti-Militarism

The Forever War is a story about a war. The war ends up lasting 1143 years. It is an interstellar war against aliens called Taurans. Haldeman admittedly modeled the war on Vietnam. Haldeman even has Vietnam veterans leading the training and battle in the early phases of the war. It is a war fought for a very long time against a little-understood enemy very far away. At the end of the book we actually find out that the Taurans are communists who have been at peace for thousands of years, which is a nice twist. But humyns are at war with them for over a thousand years before they find this out. And it is a war started without provocation by the UN for economic reasons.

The Forever War takes a very clear anti-militarist line. Especially in the final chapter when the soldiers are learning the truth about how the war started, it is explicit in pointing to the capitalist economic system and capitalist domination of the state as the cause of war. Unfortunately imperialism doesn't really enter much into the picture, which hurts the Vietnam analogy; the war is not about access to labor or natural resources.

The Forever War begins in 1996 when UN ships start attacking Tauran ships without provocation. Some ships loaded with humyn colonists had disappeared and when the UN saw that there were aliens around, they decided to start a war, saying that the Taurans had started it by attacking the humyn ships. This is clearly meant to remind us of the Tonkin Gulf Incident, when the U$ said Vietnam had attacked its warships and used it as a pretext for the war. The UN was looking out for the interests of the war industries, which were facing the spectre of disarmament and peacetime production (and overproduction).

A war over such long distances is possible because of the discovery of wormholes. There are even battles fought in the Magellanic Clouds, which aren't in our galaxy.

The war is fought in a conventional way, over territory. Specifically, humyns and Taurans fight battles over control of various wormholes. This is reminiscent of the "island-hopping" strategy of the U$ in the Pacific Theatre during World War II, except that in World War II the Amerikans knew where Japan was, whereas humyns in the Forever War have no idea where the Tauran's home planet is, or for that matter where any permament Tauran habitation is.

The main character, William Mandella, is a ground soldier, whose job is to fight for control of the planets orbiting the ends of wormholes. Because these ends are black holes and thus exude very little heat, these planets are usually icy and very cold, as in at most 10 degrees above absolute zero. This causes Haldeman to write extremely surreal and creative training and battle scenes. The reader gets a feeling of how precarious it would be just trying to survive in such an environment, much less wage war in it, even with all the high tech gear Haldeman gives his characters.

Time dilation adds to the surrealism. Mandella fights in only two battles in the course of over a thousand years (subjectively, he only experiences about 10 years of time while 1200 years pass on earth). By the time the war is over he has only one acquaintance still alive from the beginning of the war.

Between battles Mandella comes back to earth, and Haldeman uses this to portray social changes over a period of a thousand years. As communists, MIM is happy to find that Haldeman portrays a communist earth by the year 3138. It's not necessarily what we envision; for one thing, the entire population of earth consists of clones of two people. But, we're not so dogmatic that we'd dismiss that notion out of hand. We're not in the same camp as people who complain about everyone dressing the same in socialist China; being different is overrated in petty bourgeois dominated countries like the United $tates. Also, all people on earth in 3138 share the same mind. British communist scientist J.D. Bernal predicted 70 years ago that future humyns would all share the same mind.(1) He saw this situation being consciously developed by electronic means. Haldeman's clones, when asked about their "one mind" say that "you'd have to be a clone to understand." MIM doesn't think humyns will throw science out the window under communism, which is what Haldeman seems to be implying. But it might be that these clones have evolved telepathic abilities and just don't feel like explaining themselves, since they're understandably not entirely forthcoming in responding to other questions posed by representatives of humynkind's past militarism.

Gender

Haldeman's line on gender is mixed. One good thing about Haldeman's treatment of gender is that he is clear about gender being a social construct. The communist world of 3138 is asexual. There are biological males and females, but they don't have sex with each other. Reproduction is entirely of the test tube variety. Midway through the war, Haldeman portrays an earth where homosexuality is encouraged by all institutions and heterosexuality is viewed as a disease. People in this world are repelled at the idea of intercourse with someone of the opposite sex. This situation is said to have been developed by government population control measures encouraging homosexuality. Slowly homosexuality displaced heterosexuality as the norm until the latter practically ceased to exist.

Unfortunately, and this is not too surprising for a novel written in 1975, a small amount of heterosexism is still to be found in The Forever War. Haldeman has his communist clones specifically prescribing heterosexuality as a sexual practice superior to homosexuality and offering to convert the homosexuals. The communists do give a reason for why they like having heterosexuals around (there are a few planets of unrepentant ones, who don't use cloning, but none on earth; they seem to be communists too). They say it is because heterosexuality would keep the gene pool broad in case long-term cloning turns out to cause genetic defects. Now, this makes no sense given the reproductive technology that should be available in 3138. Homosexuals should be able to combine their genes to make children just as easily as heterosexuals. One lifestyle choice is not superior to the other. Why couldn't the homosexuals have been given their own planets like the heterosexuals instead of having to be converted?

Haldeman was ahead of his time in portraying wimmin in combat. He rejects the myth that wimmin are not capable of waging war. In both Forever Peace and The Forever War, the armies doing battle are half wimmin. In The Forever War, Haldeman portrays a military that is completely sexually integrated. Strangely, he also portrays a military in which men and wimmin are obligated by military law to have sex with one another. A "free love" situation is imposed. The wimmin in the story are all very compliant, which leads us to conclude that this is just male fantasy on Haldeman's part; this doesn't play any big role in the plot, and isn't all that realistic given how gender relations work today (remember that the year is 1996 in the story).

Unfortunately, and this is not too surprising for a novel written in 1975, a small amount of heterosexism is still to be found in The Forever War. Haldeman has his communist clones specifically prescribing heterosexuality as a sexual practice superior to homosexuality and offering to convert the homosexuals. The communists do give a reason for why they like having heterosexuals around (there are a few planets of unrepentant ones, who don't use cloning, but none on earth; they seem to be communists too). They say it is because heterosexuality would keep the gene pool broad in case long-term cloning turns out to cause genetic defects. Now, this makes no sense given the reproductive technology that should be available in 3138. Homosexuals should be able to combine their genes to make children just as easily as heterosexuals. One lifestyle choice is not superior to the other. Why couldn't the homosexuals have been given their own planets like the heterosexuals instead of having to be converted?

Haldeman was ahead of his time in portraying wimmin in combat. He rejects the myth that wimmin are not capable of waging war. In both Forever Peace and The Forever War, the armies doing battle are half wimmin. In The Forever War, Haldeman portrays a military that is completely sexually integrated. Strangely, he also portrays a military in which men and wimmin are obligated by military law to have sex with one another. A "free love" situation is imposed. The wimmin in the story are all very compliant, which leads us to conclude that this is just male fantasy on Haldeman's part; this doesn't play any big role in the plot, and isn't all that realistic given how gender relations work today (remember that the year is 1996 in the story).

There is a romantic subtext to the plot, in that Mandella falls in love with a womyn soldier named Marygay, much of the story follows them around, and they end up living happily ever after on a heterosexual communist planet. To some extent Haldeman seems to want to tell a story of "true love," but there's also the implication that Mandella and Marygay only pine away for each other for 800 years because virtually everyone else in the universe is homosexual.

Economics

As in Forever Peace, The Forever War suffers from the glaring omission of an anti-war movement. In both novels the soldiers are drawn almost exclusively from the intellectual elite. Historically, when intellectual elites have been drafted to fight in wars, elite youth and students have rebelled. Not so in The Forever War. Mandella hears of a massive and nearly successful campaign of guerilla warfare led by disaffected veterans of The Forever War, but other than that we aren't told of any anti-war rebellion. Apparently the militarists have been very successful at portraying the Taurans as a major threat to the humyn race, despite the fact that the Taurans had no idea where earth was, the war went on for years before anyone ever actually saw a Tauran and returned to earth to tell about it, and there was no hard evidence that the Taurans had ever attacked humyn spacecraft. There also could be some application of the stick alongside the carrot in suppressing anti-war sentiments, as the entire world seems to be under martial law and a fascist regime.

There is a clear economic motive for humyn support of the war, which is that the earth's economy becomes dependent on war-related industry. Mandella learns that average Amerikans (in 2024 at least) don't support the war all that passionately, but aren't willing to oppose it because they see their livelihood as dependent on it. Maybe the same thing could be said of imperialism today; the labor aristocracy seems to be alive and well in 2024.

Imperialism is also alive and well, but Haldeman is very sketchy about this. Half the world population is unemployed. This unemployment seems to be concentrated among oppressed people in the Third World and in the First World cities. Many Euro-Amerikans have been able to move to communes in the countryside to subsistence farm; occasionally they come under attack from lumpens hoping to take some of their food. The rest of them get jobs assigned by the UN. In 2007 there was a massive worldwide famine to a great extent caused by UN rationing, which systematically discriminated against oppressed people, unleashing a world war called the Ration War. The Ration War started in Ecuador when the Imparciales started assassinating every rich person they could find. From there it spread around the world until the UN managed to suppress it. Overall, two billion people died in the war and famine.

The picture Haldeman paints of near-future earth is pretty gloomy. In 2024, the cities are populated exclusively by lumpens; crime is rampant and life is cheap. The labor aristocrats seem to all be in rural areas or possibly suburbs, though Mandella never visits any suburbs so it's hard to tell. The entire world is under a single UN government. There is no fac=8Fadeof democracy; the whole world is under martial law. We don't know whether this is supposed to be because of rebellion or crime. The UN welfare state supposedly provides jobs to everybody that pay enough for the bare necessities of life, but there is rampant legal discrimination of various forms; this is fascism, not socialism. Half the jobs on earth are connected to war-making industries. Massive military waste production seems to have alleviated the problem of crises of overproduction, making for a relatively stable economic situation.

The two areas in which Forever Peace excels are in its attempt to deal with nanotechnology and its portrayal of and opposition to imperialism. The Forever War was written before the concept of nanotechnology even existed, so dealing with it would have been impossible. In fact, most of the technology in The Forever War is pure fantasy. However, The Forever War has much more to say than Forever Peace about gender and humyn social relations, and takes a more explicitly anti-militarist stance. Unlike Forever Peace, which drifts into pacifist idealism that takes up the whole second half of the book, The Forever War has a strong finish, saving the best parts for last. From a purely artistic standpoint, the dialogue and overall plot development in The Forever War seems more convincing and less contrived than that in Forever Peace, and the depiction in The Forever War of humyn activity in extremely strange environments is a striking creative achievement.

Notes:
1. The World, The Flesh and the Devil: An Enquiry into the Future of the Three Enemies of the Rational Soul, by J.D. Bernal (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1969) Originally published in 1929.
href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0380708213/mimofficialbooks/">Buy This Book