War, Peace, and Integrative Complexity

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Abstract
UN General Assembly speeches concerning the Middle East conflict made by representatives of Israel, Arab countries (Egypt and Syria), the USA, and the USSR were scored for integrative complexity. Speeches were sampled from twenty years between 1947 and 1976. Complexity of information-processing was significantly reduced in speeches made in months preceding the outbreak of war (1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973), except in the case of the USSR. Israel, which with the United States exhibited the highest levels of complexity during peacetime, showed the greatest reductions prior to war. The low level of complexity characteristic of Israeli and Arab speeches during 1976 may reflect the escalation of the Lebanese civil war or may be a predictor of a major outbreak of hostilities in the near future.