War: How Conflict Shaped Us

Key Concepts

War is a product of modern organized states

“One of the many paradoxes of war is that humans got good at it when they created organized societies. Indeed the two developments have evolved together. War—organized, purposeful violence between two political units—became more elaborate when we developed organized sedentary societies and it helped to make those societies more organized and powerful.” (p. 7)

“That brings me to a second paradox of war: that growing state power and the emergence of bigger states—what Hobbes called Leviathan—are often the result of war but that in turn can produce peace. The power of the state and its institutions is based on the perceived authority of the rulers, whether that comes from the gods or from the voters, and on the acquiescence of those who are ruled over, but somewhere, crucially, in the mix is war or the threat of the violence that the state can exert both over its own people and against its enemies. The emergence of state-run police forces in much of the Western world and parts of Asia in the nineteenth century gradually put an end to banditry and low-level violence. The power of feudal lords in Europe was broken when monarchs acquired sufficient force to destroy their private armies and level their castles. The emergence of the strong state went hand in hand with its increasing monopoly over the use of force and violence within its borders.” (p. 15)

Wars can start for trivial reasons, and they’re hard to end

“Humans also start wars because of what Hobbes called “trifles”: “a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other sign of undervalue, either direct in their persons or by reflection in their kindred, their friends, their nation, their profession, or their name.” Honor and glory are abstract concepts yet they can matter more than life itself. Alexander the Great, it is said, modeled himself on the great warrior Achilles, who would not suffer insults, and slept with a copy of the Iliad under his pillow.” (p. 38)

“‘Making peace is harder than waging war,’ the wise and cynical French prime minister Georges Clemenceau once said, and that is true of almost all wars. Too often nations start hostilities without thinking ahead to what they hope to achieve and what sort of peace they would like.” (p. 45)

It’s easy to forget the lessons of the past and to lose previously held capabilities

“One generation can forget what an earlier one learned through painful experience in order to counter new technology and has to reinvent counter-technologies and tactics. Mounted warriors armed with spears or bows overwhelmed those on foot when they first appeared, but gradually peoples such as the ancient Greeks learned to deal with them with phalanxes of well-disciplined infantry which, packed several rows deep and bristling with spears, formed lethal obstacles against which horses and riders dashed themselves in vain. Many centuries later European armies had to learn all over again how to use similar formations of foot soldiers and archers against knights in armor. The Romans were masters at building roads, some 55,000 miles of them around the Mediterranean (many of which are still there today). Their successors in Europe and Asia Minor continued to use them even as they slowly crumbled and weeds grew in the cracks, but they lost for centuries the knowledge and ability to build for themselves. Archimedes, the great Greek mathematician, devised a super-catapult which threw 1,800-pound boulders at Roman galleys, but it had no imitators in the following centuries. The Romans also built, and knocked down, fortresses. Europeans had to learn for themselves how to do this in the Middle Ages. After their unhappy experience in Vietnam the American military decided that it would never fight wars of counterinsurgency again. The army dropped the study of guerrilla war and countermeasures from its curriculum and the standard book on the subject went out of print. With Afghanistan and Iraq the Americans had to start all over again.” (p. 63)

War is emotionally complicated for those who participate in it

“One thing that comes out from many of the accounts by those who fought was their fear—of being wounded or killed of course, but also of not meeting the test of war, of giving way to panic and behaving badly. Tim O’Brien, who fought in Vietnam himself, wrote, ‘Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor.’ Even Julian Grenfell felt fear, as he admitted to his mother after his first action in France. He wanted to claim that he had enjoyed it, ‘But it’s bloody. I pretended to myself for a bit that I liked it; but it was no good; it only made one careless and unwatchful and self-absorbed. But when one acknowledged to oneself that it was bloody, one became all right again and cool.’” (p. 156)

“This enjoyment of war is something that makes civilians in peaceful societies uncomfortable. A Canadian general I was once interviewing for an educational radio program spoke about the excitement of war but only after I had turned off my tape recorder. It was, he said, like riding a very fast motorcycle. The knowledge that you could crash and die at any moment added to the thrill. Even more disturbing is the realization that some combatants actually enjoy having the power of life and death over another and take pleasure in killing and destruction. The Australian Ion Llewellyn Idriess, who was a sniper in the First World War, said that he felt “only hot pride that in fair warfare I had taken the life of a strong man.” In the Second World War a British pilot found that he could not sleep after downing two German aircraft: “There was nothing else I could talk about for days after; there was nothing else I could think about for weeks after…it was sweet and very intoxicating.” One of the shocking things about Jünger’s memoir is the way he lays out his feelings without any apology or explanation.” (p. 171)

Quotables

“In English we say dismissively that someone or something is a flash in the pan without realizing that the expression originated with early guns, when the gunpowder meant to ignite the charge flared to no effect. If the British want to be rude they will call something French or Dutch, because those nations were once enemies. Taking French leave means departing rudely and abruptly, while Dutch courage means drinking gin. (And the words “British” and “English” fill the same role for the French and the Dutch.)" (p. XVI)

“There are many such paradoxes about war. We fear war but we are also fascinated by it. We may feel horror at the cruelty of war and its waste, but we can also admire the courage of the soldier and feel the dangerous power of war’s glamour. Some of us even admire it as one of the noblest of human activities. War gives its participants license to kill fellow human beings, yet it also requires great altruism. After all, what can be more selfless than being willing to give up your life for another?” (p. XXII)

“When I was a student in Britain in the 1960s I never understood why all pubs closed for the afternoon. The authorities had introduced those hours in 1915 to ensure that factory workers did not drink too much or miss an afternoon’s work and the British lived with the effects until the late 1980s, when the licensing laws were finally amended. Modern war, when it came, speeded up and extended the degree of government control over society. Factories were requisitioned, raw materials directed to where they were most needed and skilled labor in crucial industries such as mining could not move jobs or enlist without permission. Scientists have long been important in war—think of the work of Archimedes or Leonardo da Vinci—but increasingly governments have harnessed science to war by setting up special research centers, subsidizing industry or offering research grants to universities.” (p. 101)

“It seems to me a funny thing to make rules about war. It is not a game. What is the difference between civilized war and any other kind of war?” —PANCHO VILLA (p. 203)

“John Ruskin, Victorian England’s most influential art critic and a leading intellectual, may have surprised young officer cadets at Woolwich in a lecture on war in 1865 when he told them, ‘No great art ever yet arose on earth but among a nation of soldiers.’ Peace, he argued, brought prosperity and contentment but it also brought the withering away of the arts, because men were not being raised to their highest state, which only war could do: ‘For it is an assured truth that, whenever the faculties of men are at their fullness, they must express themselves by art.’ And so, he concluded, ‘When I tell you that war is the foundation of all the arts, I mean also that it is the foundation of all the high virtues and faculties of men.’” (p. 240)

“And the factors that produce war—greed, fear, ideology—will continue to work among us as they always have. The impacts of climate change such as the struggle for scarce resources and the large-scale movements of peoples, the growing polarization within and among societies, the rise of intolerant nationalist populisms and the willingness of messianic and charismatic leaders to exploit these will provide, as they have in the past, the fuel for conflict.” (p. 266)

“We need to pay attention to war because it is still with us. We need to know about its causes, its impact, how to end it and how to avoid it. And in understanding war we understand something about being human, our ability to organize ourselves, our emotions and our ideas, and our capacity for cruelty as well as for good. We fight because we have needs, because we want to protect what we hold dear or because we can imagine making different worlds. We fight because we can.” (p. 272)