The Hindu : Front Page : Nations need to learn war not to fight, says Nobel laureate Prof. Aumann

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Wednesday, Jan 17, 2007
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Nations need to learn war not to fight, says Nobel laureate Prof. Aumann

Staff Reporter

``There needs to be a shift in strategy to bring about world peace''

— Photo: K. Murali Kumar

Prof. Robert J. Aumann.

Bangalore: Why does the ``homo-economicus,'' the rational man, go to war? This question, Robert J. Aumann believes, is central to the resolution of conflict. Prof. Aumann whose contributions to the `game theory' won him the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2005, emphasised on the need to ``study'' war, at a lecture here on Tuesday. The lecture ``War and Peace'' was organised jointly by the Indian Institute of Science, the Indian Institute of Management and IBM India.

``Nations need to learn war in order not to fight,'' said Prof. Aumann. Likening war to a disease such as cancer, he said understanding the nature of the disease was the basis for creating a strategy to ameliorate it. ``We have several institutes around the world to promote peace. We need equally, what we can perhaps call ``war-science'' institutes. Institutes that study why people go to war. Not that they will be in favour of war, just as cancer institutes are not in favour of cancer.''

There needs to be a shift in the strategy to bring about world peace, said Prof. Aumann. ``War has been with us ever since the dawn of civilisation — it is a phenomenon, not a series of isolated incidents that can be resolved case to case. While the efforts to resolve conflicts are laudable, I'd like to suggest that we increase our understanding of war and its defining characteristics — historically, sociologically, psychologically and most important — rationally. As discomfiting as it may be, the perpetrators of war, conflict, terrorism and racial discrimination, act rationally,'' says Prof. Aumann.

He spoke of the need for a mechanism to enforce agreements of cooperation. ``Game theory is not about nice people. We need mechanisms to enforce cooperation, and the Government can be one such agent ... . Then again, we may not need the Government if we can ensure repeated interaction between the players. People are naturally more cooperative in a long-term relationship."

IBM's Best PhD Students Awards were presented to Kannan. S, IIT Madras, Ashraf. S, IISc, Soghan Babu, IIT Bombay, Parag K. Chaudhuri, IIT Delhi, Md. Abdul Hai Zahid, IIT Roorkee, Piyush Kurur, IMSc Chennai, and the Best CAS Students Award given to Rudresh Acharya, IISc and Vinay Kumar IIT Kanpur.

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