Hawks and Doves

Abstract

The conflicting strategic assumptions of hawks and doves, and the different worldviews they exemplify, prevent mutual understanding and preclude effective negotiations between the two camps. Contrasting nuclear strategies rest on different assumptions about the possibility of limited nuclear wars, and these assumptions as well as domestic ideologies stem from the hawks' focus on boundaries and differences, and the doves'focus on connections and similarities. These cognitive differences are both effect and cause of the hawks' concerns about aggression and dominance, and the doves' concerns about death and nurturance. The lack of balance in each side's concerns derives from the lack of a healthy synthesis resolving the tension between differentiation and fusion. Only by mourning both death and aggression and by accepting both separation and connection can we find the emotional basis for a new nuclear strategy.