7 million were permanently disabled, and 15 million were seriously injured.[48]
Why?, from The Disasters of War (Los desastres de la guerra), by Francisco Goya, 1812–15. A collection of depictions of the brutalities of theNapoleonic-Peninsular War.
The remains of dead Crow Indianskilled and scalped by Sioux c. 1874
Les Grandes Misères de la guerredepict the destruction unleashed on civilians during the Thirty Years’ War.
During Napoleon‘s retreat from Moscow, more French military personnel died oftyphus than were killed by the Russians.[49] Of the 450,000 soldiers who crossed the Nemanon 25 June 1812, less than 40,000 returned. More military personnel were killed from 1500–1914 by typhus than from military action.[50] In addition, if it were not for modern medical advances there would be thousands more dead from disease and infection. For instance, during the Seven Years’ War, theRoyal Navy reported that it conscripted 184,899 sailors, of whom 133,708 died of disease or were ‘missing’.[51]
It is estimated that between 1985 and 1994, 378,000 people per year died due to war.[52]
On civilians
See also: Civilian casualties
Most wars have resulted in significant loss of life, along with destruction of infrastructure and resources (which may lead to famine, disease, and death in the civilian population). During the Thirty Years’ War in Europe, the population of the Holy Roman Empire was reduced by 15 to 40 percent.[53][54] Civilians in war zones may also be subject to war atrocities such as genocide, while survivors may suffer the psychological aftereffects of witnessing the destruction of war.
Most estimates of World War II casualtiesindicate that around 60 million people died, 40 million of which were civilians.[55] Deaths in the Soviet Union were around 27 million.[56]Since a high proportion of those killed were young men who had not yet fathered any children, population growth in the postwar Soviet Union was much lower than it otherwise would have been.[57]
On the economy
See also: Military Keynesianism
Once a war has ended, losing nations are sometimes required to pay war reparations to the victorious nations. In certain cases, land is ceded to the victorious nations. For example, the territory of Alsace-Lorraine has been traded between France and Germany on three different occasions.
Typically speaking, war becomes very intertwined with the economy and many wars are partially or entirely based on economic reasons. Some economists believe war can stimulate a country’s economy (high government spending for World War II is often credited with bringing the USA out of the Great Depression by most Keynesianeconomists) but in many cases, such as the wars of Louis XIV, the Franco-Prussian War, and World War I, warfare serves only to damage the economy of the countries involved. For example, Russia’s involvement in World War I took such a toll on the Russian economy that it almost collapsed and greatly contributed to the start of the Russian Revolution of 1917.
World War II
One of the starkest illustrations of the effect of war upon economies is the Second World War. The Great Depression of the 1930s ended as nations increased and improved on their production of war materials to serve and survive the war effort.[58] The financial cost of World War II is estimated at about a trillion U.S. dollars worldwide, making it the most costly war in history in terms of capital as well as lives.[59][60]
By the end of the war, the European economy had collapsed with 70% of the industrial infrastructure destroyed.[61] Property damage in the Soviet Union inflicted by the Axis invasion was estimated at a value of 679 billion rubles. The combined damage consisted of complete or partial destruction of 1,710 cities and towns, 70,000 villages/hamlets, 2,508 church buildings, 31,850 industrial establishments, 40,000 mi (64,374 km) of railroad, 4100 railroad stations, 40,000 hospitals, 84,000 schools, and 43,000 public libraries.[62]
On the arts
War leads to forced migration causing potentially large displacements of population/demography. Among forced migrants there are usually relatively large shares/number of artists, doctors, lawyers, accountants and other types of individuals with great minds and talents, causing so the war effects to be particularly harmful for the country’s creative potential in the long-run.[63]
War is further argued to have a direct impact on artistic output, as it disrupts the production processes and distribution of artworks. Since creativity in the arts is often an expression of intense feeling, and as war affects the frame of mind of an artist, it has a negative effect on an artists’ individual life-cycle output.[64]
It is not uncommon that during Wars, cultural institutions, such as libraries, are seen as “targets in themselves; their elimination was a way to denigrate and demoralize the enemy population.” It is important to know about and understand the impact such destruction can have on a society because “in an era in which competing ideologies fuel internal and international conflict, the destruction of libraries, historical arts and other items of cultural significance is neither random nor irrelevant. This leads to destruction of peace thus affecting various sectors, includingtourism which is a major source of many countries’ income. Preserving the world’s repositories of knowledge is crucial to ensuring that the darkest moments of history do not endlessly repeat themselves.”[65]
Entities deliberately contemplating going to war and entities considering whether to end a war may formulate war aims as an evaluation/propaganda tool. War aims may stand as a proxy for national-military resolve.[66]
Definition
Fried defines war aims as “the desired territorial, economic, military or other benefits expected following successful conclusion of a war”.[67]
Classification
Tangible/intangible aims:
Tangible war aims may involve (for example) the acquisition of territory (as in the German goal of Lebensraum in the first half of the 20th century) or the recognition of economic concessions (as in the Anglo-Dutch Wars).
Intangible war aims – like the accumulation of credibility or reputation[68] – may have more tangible expression (“conquest restores prestige, annexation increases power”).[69]
Explicit/implicit aims:
Positive/negative aims:
“Positive war aims” cover tangible outcomes.
“Negative war aims” forestall or prevent undesired outcomes.[72]
War aims can change in the course of conflict and may eventually morph into “peace conditions”[73] – the minimal conditions under which a state may cease to wage a particular war.
Limiting and stopping
Main article: Anti-war movement
See also: Aestheticization of violence
Execution at Verdun at the time of themutinies of 1917, when parts of the French Army refused to conduct further offensive operations
Religious groups have long formally opposed or sought to limit war as in the Second Vatican Council document Gaudiem et Spes: “Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.”[74]
Anti-war movements have existed for every major war in the 20th century, including, most prominently, World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War. In the 21st century, worldwide anti-war movements occurred ever since the United States invaded Afghanistanand Iraq. In 2001, the U.S. government decided to invade Afghanistan to fight against international terrorism that caused the September 11 attacks. Protests opposing the War in Afghanistan occurred in cities in Europe, Asia, and all over the United States. Organizations like Stop the War Coalition, based in the United Kingdom, work on campaigning against the war. They raise awareness of the war, organize demonstrations, and lobby the governments.[75] Significant worldwideopposition to the Iraq War also exists. Critics oppose the war based on the argument of violation of sovereignty, absence of the UN approval, and perceived illegitimacy.
The Mexican Drug War, with estimated casualties of 40,000 since December 2006, has been recently facing a fundamental opposition.[76] In 2011, the movement for peace and justice has started a popular middle-class movement against the war. It has won the recognition of President Calderon, who started the war, but has not ended it.[77]
Governments also use the method ofdisarmament to stop and prevent the cost of war.
Limiting and stopping
Main article: Anti-war movement
See also: Aestheticization of violence
Execution at Verdun at the time of themutinies of 1917, when parts of the French Army refused to conduct further offensive operations
Religious groups have long formally opposed or sought to limit war as in the Second Vatican Council document Gaudiem et Spes: “Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.”[74]
Anti-war movements have existed for every major war in the 20th century, including, most prominently, World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War. In the 21st century, worldwide anti-war movements occurred ever since the United States invaded Afghanistanand Iraq. In 2001, the U.S. government decided to invade Afghanistan to fight against international terrorism that caused the September 11 attacks. Protests opposing the War in Afghanistan occurred in cities in Europe, Asia, and all over the United States. Organizations like Stop the War Coalition, based in the United Kingdom, work on campaigning against the war. They raise awareness of the war, organize demonstrations, and lobby the governments.[75] Significant worldwideopposition to the Iraq War also exists. Critics oppose the war based on the argument of violation of sovereignty, absence of the UN approval, and perceived illegitimacy.
The Mexican Drug War, with estimated casualties of 40,000 since December 2006, has been recently facing a fundamental opposition.[76] In 2011, the movement for peace and justice has started a popular middle-class movement against the war. It has won the recognition of President Calderon, who started the war, but has not ended it.[77]
Governments also use the method ofdisarmament to stop and prevent the cost of war.
Limiting and stopping
Main article: Anti-war movement
See also: Aestheticization of violence
Execution at Verdun at the time of themutinies of 1917, when parts of the French Army refused to conduct further offensive operations
Religious groups have long formally opposed or sought to limit war as in the Second Vatican Council document Gaudiem et Spes: “Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.”[74]
Anti-war movements have existed for every major war in the 20th century, including, most prominently, World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War. In the 21st century, worldwide anti-war movements occurred ever since the United States invaded Afghanistanand Iraq. In 2001, the U.S. government decided to invade Afghanistan to fight against international terrorism that caused the September 11 attacks. Protests opposing the War in Afghanistan occurred in cities in Europe, Asia, and all over the United States. Organizations like Stop the War Coalition, based in the United Kingdom, work on campaigning against the war. They raise awareness of the war, organize demonstrations, and lobby the governments.[75] Significant worldwideopposition to the Iraq War also exists. Critics oppose the war based on the argument of violation of sovereignty, absence of the UN approval, and perceived illegitimacy.
The Mexican Drug War, with estimated casualties of 40,000 since December 2006, has been recently facing a fundamental opposition.[76] In 2011, the movement for peace and justice has started a popular middle-class movement against the war. It has won the recognition of President Calderon, who started the war, but has not ended it.[77]
Governments also use the method ofdisarmament to stop and prevent the cost of war.
Theories for motivation
The Ottoman campaign for territorial expansion in Europe in 1566, Crimean Tatars as vanguard. The Tatars essentially sought booty, especially slaves.
There is no scholarly agreement on which are the most common motivations for war.[78]Motivations may be different for those ordering the war than for those undertaking the war. For example, in the Third Punic War, Rome’s leaders may have wished to make war with Carthage for the purpose of
For example, in the Third Punic War, Rome’s leaders may have wished to make war with Carthage for the purpose of eliminating a resurgent rival, while the individual soldiers may have been motivated by a wish to make money. Since many people are involved, a war may acquire a life of its own from the confluence of many different motivations. An interpretation of the ancient Jewish commentary (BeReshit Rabbah) on the fight between Cain and Abel in Genesis 4 (Parashot BeReshit XXII:7) states that there are three universal reasons for wars: (A) Economics, (B) Power, and (C) Religion.[79] As the strategic and tactical aspects of warfare are always changing, theories and doctrines relating to warfare are often reformulated before, during, and after every major war. Carl von Clausewitz said, ‘Every age had its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions, and its own peculiar preconceptions.’[80] The one constant factor is war’s employment of organized violence and the resultant destruction of property and/or lives that necessarily follows.
Psychoanalytic psychology
Dutch psychoanalyst Joost Meerloo held that, “War is often…a mass discharge of accumulated internal rage (where)…the inner fears of mankind are discharged in mass destruction.”[81] Thus war can sometimes be a means by which man’s own frustration at his inability to master his own self is expressed and temporarily relieved via his unleashing of destructive behavior uponothers. In this destructive scenario, theseothers are made to serve as the scapegoat of man’s own unspoken and subconscious frustrations and fears.
Other psychoanalysts such as E.F.M. Durban and John Bowlby have argued that human beings are inherently violent.[82] This aggressiveness is fueled by displacementand projection where a person transfers his or her grievances into bias and hatred against other races, religions, nations or ideologies. By this theory, the nation state preserves order in the local society while creating an outlet for aggression through warfare. If war is innate to human nature, as is presupposed and predetermined by many psychological theories, then there is little hope of ever escaping it.
The Italian psychoanalyst Franco Fornari, a follower of Melanie Klein, thought that war was the paranoid or projective “elaboration” of mourning.[83] Fornari thought that war and violence develop out of our “love need”: our wish to preserve and defend the sacred object to which we are attached, namely our early mother and our fusion with her. For the adult, nations are the sacred objects that generate warfare. Fornari focused upon sacrifice as the essence of war: the astonishing willingness of human beings to die for their country, to give over their bodies to their nation.
Despite Fornari’s theory that man’s altruistic desire for self-sacrifice for a noble cause is a contributing factor towards war, in history only a tiny fraction of wars have originated from a desire for war from the general populace.[84] Far more often the general population has been reluctantly drawn into war by its rulers. One psychological theory that looks at the leaders is advanced by Maurice Walsh.[85] He argues that the general populace is more neutral towards war and that wars only occur when leaders with a psychologically abnormal disregard for human life are placed into power. War is caused by leaders that seek war such asNapoleon and Hitler. Such leaders most often come to power in times of crisis when the populace opts for a decisive leader, who then leads the nation to war.
Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. … the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. — Hermann Göring at the Nuremberg trials, April 18, 1946[86]
Evolutionary
See also: Prehistoric warfare
Increasing population and constant warfare among the Maya city-states over resources may have contributed to the eventualcollapse of the Maya civilization by AD 900.
Women and priests retrieve the dead bodies of Swabian soldiers just outside the city gates of Constance after the battle of Schwaderloh.(Luzerner Schilling)
Several theories concern the evolutionary origins of warfare. There are two main schools: One sees organized warfare as emerging only in or after the Mesolithic as a result of complex social organization and greater population density and competitionover resources; the other school sees human warfare as a more ancient practice that derives from common animal tendencies, such as territoriality and sexual competition.[87]
The latter school argues that since warlike behavior patterns are found in many primate species such as chimpanzees,[88] as well as in many ant species,[89] group conflict may be a general feature of animal social behavior. Some proponents of the idea argue that war, while innate, has been intensified greatly by developments of technology and social organization such as weaponry and states.[90]
In The Blank Slate, psychologist and linguistSteven Pinker claims that war-related behaviors may have been naturally selected in the ancestral environment due to the benefits of winning wars, e
Economic
War can be seen as a growth of economic competition in a competitive international system. In this view wars begin as a pursuit of markets for natural resources and for wealth. War has also been linked to economic development by economic historians and development economists studying state-building and fiscal capacity.[95] While this theory has been applied to many conflicts, such counter arguments become less valid as the increasing mobility of capital and information level the distributions of wealth worldwide, or when considering that it is relative, not absolute, wealth differences that may fuel wars. There are those on the extreme right of the political spectrum who provide support, fascists in particular, by asserting a natural right of a strong nation to whatever the weak cannot hold by force.[96][97]Some centrist, capitalist, world leaders, including Presidents of the United States and U.S. Generals, expressed support for an economic view of war.
Marxist
The Marxist theory of war is quasi-economic in that it states that all modern wars are caused by competition for resources and markets between great (imperialist) powers, claiming these wars are a natural result of thefree market and class system. Part of the theory is that war will only disappear once aworld revolution, over-throwing free markets and class systems, has occurred. Marxist philosopher Rosa Luxemburg theorized thatimperialism was the result of capitalist countries needing new markets. Expansion of the means of production is only possible if there is a corresponding growth in consumer demand. Since the workers in a capitalist economy would be unable to fill the demand, producers must expand into non-capitalist markets to find consumers for their goods, hence driving imperialism.[98]
Demographic
Demographic theories can be grouped into two classes, Malthusian theories and youth bulge theories.
Malthusian
U.S. Marine helicopter on patrol in Somalia as part of the Unified Task Force, 1992
Malthusian theories see expanding population and scarce resources as a source of violent conflict.
Pope Urban II in 1095, on the eve of the First Crusade, spoke:
Youth bulge
Median age by country. A youth bulge is evident forAfrica, and to a lesser extent for South and Southeast Asia and Central America.
Youth bulge theory differs significantly from Malthusian theories. Its adherents see a combination of large male youth cohorts – as graphically represented as a “youth bulge” in a population pyramid – with a lack of regular, peaceful employment opportunities as a risk pool for violence.
While Malthusian theories focus on a disparity between a growing population and available natural resources, youth bulge theory focuses on a disparity between non-inheriting, ‘excess’ young males and available social positions within the existing social system of division of labour. Young males who cannot find acceptable positions within the existing system of division of labour and thus become “socially superfluous” are, according to youth bulge theory, prone to become violent in one form or another. This implies that in a situation where a youth bulge is given, a major economic depression with massively increasing unemployment will likely lead to outbreaks of violence (as, for example, evidenced in Europe during the great depression, when fascist organizations mobilized a lot of male youth to march the streets).
Comments