Never-Ending Wars

     War has been part of the human condition for millennia. That’s not an endorsement, just an observation of the historical facts. You’d think, after so many centuries of bloody strife, we’d have learned something about how to avert it. After all, it takes lives, destroys wealth, and leaves giant messes for the survivors to clean up. Plainly, it’s an undesirable pastime, and we really should wean ourselves away from it.

     But we haven’t. We have six thousand years of historical records testifying to the brutality and insanity of war, yet we seem unable to restrain ourselves. Why?

     Quite a lot of bright people have claimed that the development of ever more fearsome weapons of war would awaken us to the danger and convince us, at long last, that this war crap has to end. One name that comes to mind is that of the inventor of dynamite. He believed that his invention would make war unthinkable. You may have heard of him; his name was Alfred B. Nobel.

     Nobel’s hopes were dashed, as we all know. Yet the sort of hope he expressed appeared in the statements of highly astute analysts just after the conclusion of World War II. The A-bomb, those analysts said, would put an end to war. We’d be too terrified of the prospect of a rain of atomic weapons to want to fight anyone. It was a fairly common attitude at that time.

     Weapons and their delivery systems have continued to advance. Moreover, the violence of atomic and nuclear weapons has now been equaled in the biological and chemical realms. War gases and war viruses are all the rage these days. We even hear of microwave weapons designed to cook an enemy army in its tracks. The horror of these things has done nothing to deter us from going to war.

     Why do we persist?

     Because there’s no such person as “we.”

     In some ways, these past few centuries Mankind has devolved from a higher state of consciousness to a lower one. One of those ways pertains to war: who chooses to go to war, and who shall bear the consequences that flow from it.

     In my first novel, I wrote:

     “We have talked,” he said, “about all the strategies known to man for dealing with an armed enemy. We have talked about every aspect of deadly conflict. Every moment of every discussion we’ve had to date has been backlit by the consciousness of objectives and costs: attaining the one and constraining the other. And one of the first things we talked about was the importance of insuring that you don’t overpay for what you seek.”
     She kept silent and listened.
     “What if you can’t, Christine? What if your objective can’t be bought at an acceptable price?”
     She pressed her lips together, then said, “You abandon it.”
     He smirked. “It’s hard even to say it, I know. But reality is sometimes insensitive to a general’s desires. On those occasions, you must learn how to walk away. And that, my dear, is an art form of its own.”
     He straightened up. “Combat occurs within an envelope of conditions. A general doesn’t control all those conditions. If he did, he’d never have to fight. Sometimes, those conditions are so stiff that he’s compelled to fight whether he thinks it wise, or not.”
     “What conditions can do that to you?”
     His mouth quirked. “Yes, what conditions indeed?”
     Oops. Here we go again. “Weather could do it.”
     “How?”
     “By cutting off your lines of retreat in the face of an invasion.”
     “Good. Another.”
     “Economics. Once the economy of your country’s been militarized, it runs at a net loss, so you might be forced to fight from an inferior position because you’re running out of resources.”
     “Excellent. One more.”
     She thought hard. “Superior generalship on the other side?”
     He clucked in disapproval. “Does the opponent ever want you to fight?”
     “No, sorry. Let me think.”
     He waited.
     Conditions. Conditions you can’t control. Conditions that…control you.
     “Politics. The political leadership won’t accept retreat or surrender until you’ve been so badly mangled that it’s obvious even to an idiot.”
     The man Louis Redmond had named the greatest warrior in history began to shudder. It took him some time to quell.
     “It’s the general’s worst nightmare,” he whispered. “Kings used to lead their own armies. They used to lead the cavalry’s charge. For a king to send an army to war and remain behind to warm his throne was simply not done. Those that tried it lost their thrones, and some lost their heads — to their own people. It was a useful check on political and military rashness.
     “It hasn’t been that way for a long time. Today armies go into the field exclusively at the orders of politicians who remain at home. And politicians are bred to believe that reality is entirely plastic to their wills.”

     Yes, kings really did lead their own field armies. It was normally so before the Enlightenment. Even somewhat afterward, the sovereign of a warring nation could be found in the field with his troops. Napoleon Bonaparte was there. So was Louis Napoleon III.

     World War I changed that. From that atrocity forward, they who declare wars have chosen to remain at home while their troops march forth. Yet politicians and their courtiers in the press have continued to speak in collective terms: i.e., “we are at war.” But there is no “we” when the subject is violence and death.

     I snagged the following over at Mike Hendrix’s place:

     As horrifying as it is, that sentiment is largely accurate. Wars are concluded by destroying the enemy’s will to fight on. Some enemies’ wills take a lot of destroying, because “the enemy” – the men who decree that “we are at war” — don’t share in the suffering of their troops and their nations. Indeed, some politicians and some of their favored ones will profit hugely even after their nation loses a war.

     The end of World War II is illustrative. Adolf Hitler was dead as of April 30, 1945. Berlin had fallen to Allied troops as of May 2. Yet the war raged onward for another six days. Even as Emperor Hirohito was recording the message of unconditional surrender on August 11, Tojo-faction troops were fighting to break into the radio station to prevent the broadcast. Yet Japan had experienced the saturation bombing of Tokyo and the loss of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the promise of more A-bombs to come.

     So the sentiment in the graphic above has considerable force. But at whom ought that force to be aimed?

     War is the province of governments: States. Even before the emergence of the modern nation-state, it was rulers – royalty and nobles, not common folk – who chose to go to war. Men who stand in positions of authority over others, no matter how dubious their claims, are the men who decree that “we are at war.”

     So long as there are States, there will be war. So long as there is war, ending a war will require the sort of merciless savagery the graphic above prescribes, for men who pay no personal costs for their decisions cannot be swayed by less. Common folk who abhor war will have no say in the matter, other than the dubious and always hazardous course of revolution. That should require no further analysis.