War

War!

What is it good for?

Absolutely nothing Ending slavery, stopping Hitler, stimulating the economy, winning freedom from oppressors

The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.-Sun Tzu

War is inevitable. Though it is man-made and fought by humans and the machines they create, war is a natural occurrence. Throughout history war and the warriors who fought them have provided a vital balance in the world. War has kept the balance of power relatively stable throughout history. Whenever a nation has grown too strong, they have fallen, and while some of this may be due to internal pressures, war played a vital factor as well. One just has to look at Persia, Rome, the Arab Caliphates, England, and Nazi Germany, to see that war is a crucial factor in the world balance of power.

There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.-Niccolo Machiavelli

In its time, the Persian Empire was the major power in its region. When they set their sights on Greece, the Greeks had no choice but to fight. The Greeks were one of the last civilized peoples in the way of the Persian advance. If the Greeks fell, the whole of Europe would be open to the Persian advance. The Greeks had no leverage to negotiate with. They had no economic power, so an embargo was out of the question. They could only fight. They inflicted heavy casualties at Thermopylae, and slowed the Persian advance. They lost Athens, but beat the Persian navy in a decisive battle at Salamis. The lack of the naval support forced the emperor Xerxes to retreat back to Persia with most of his army. The Greeks then defeated the remaining Persians at the battles of Plataea and Mycale. This ended the Persian invasions of Greece. Had the Greeks given up, and just been absorbed into the Persian Empire, not only would the Persians have taken all of Europe, but Western Civilization might not have developed along the lines of individualism that it did. Later, Alexander the Great waged one of the greatest military campaigns in history to topple an empire that had gotten too strong ad had threatened the balance of power in the world. His own empire then collapsed due to internal warring after his death, keeping the balance of power stable.

The rapid expansion of Rome began around the third century BC. The Romans defeated the great maritime power of Carthage in the first Punic War. By the last Punic War in 149 BC Rome had destroyed the major power in Africa, and made the Western Mediterranean into a Roman lake, and with the defeat of the Macedonian and Seleucid Empire in the 2^nd century BC, they had obtained dominance over the whole of the Mediterranean. After a brutal civil war between Gaius Marius (the reformer of the Roman Army) and Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Gaius Julius Caesar emerged as the prominent political figure in Rome. Caesar joined with Marcus Crassus and Pompey to form the “First Triumvirate”. Caesar all but completed the Roman conquest of Gaul, and started a few incursions into Britain. When Caesar led his legions across the Rubicon River to take Rome, a Civil War erupted between Caesar and Pompey. Caesar was victorious, though he was later murdered. His murder leads to the Second Triumvirate (Mark Antony, Octavian, and Marcus Lepidus), which later collapsed amid infighting and led to the Roman Empire under Octavian. So far, the Roman military machine had been unstoppable. Sure, they had suffered minor setbacks, but they had chugged on. Then, in 9 CE, the Germanic tribes under the tribal chief Arminius destroyed three Roman Legions using guerilla tactics in the battle of Teutoburg Forest. This marked a turning point in Roman history. The Romans had found an enemy which they couldn’t conquer. This ended Roman expansion into Northern Europe and stopped the Roman Empire at the Rhine. A decisive defeat of the world’s preeminent world power by “barbarians” had checked the expansion of Rome. After the division of the Empire into East and West in 285 AD both Empires still remained regional powers, though not on the level of a united Rome. The Western Roman Empire fell first, succumbing to a combination of internal turmoil and invasion by nomadic peoples from the north. The Eastern Roman Empire however, persisted all the way up to the fifteenth century as the Byzantine Empire, before succumbing to the invading Ottomans. Once again, it can be seen that war struck that vital balance in world history.

Every nation rises and falls to its own self-interest. The most effective way of projecting one’s interest in a forceful way is through war. Treaties can be broken. Leaders lie, in fact, they lie a lot. The Munich Conference, the result of which was thought to be “peace in our time”, actually led to an increase in Hitler’s strength. It showed him as bold and daring, while painting England and France as weak and eager to appease Nazi Germany. In the same way, the multiple compromises on slavery and state’s rights only postponed the American Civil War. In fact, it might have been better if the issue had been resolved earlier. By the time of the Civil War, the tactics of both armies had not evolved to match the new technology. Both armies were still using the tactic of masses musket fire. This tactic, combined with the advances in reload time, accuracy of fire, and ammunition (the minie ball) lead around 600,000 deaths. The peace brokered by the Camp David accords lasted only the life of the leaders. The gains which Israel made in its numerous wars with its neighbors, however, have endured in some form up to when I am typing this period.

The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood.-Otto von Bismarck

War is always the lesser of two evils. However, it is almost always the most effective form of dealing with the other evil. Hitler would not have succumbed to an embargo. King George III would not have given up the colonies just because the colonies asked nicely. While war is evil, the systematic slaughter of over 12 million innocents is worse. Or maybe that’s just me? Usama bin Laden wouldn’t have just laid down and died. We had to go and get him. Our nation war forged from war. The nation which we broke away from also emerged from the flames of conflict. While war may be awful, it is also the necessary catalyst for change in the world which we live in.

War is hell. -William Tecumseh Sherman

It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it.-Robert E. Lee

Most of the alternatives to war are weak and ineffectual. If some nation decided that they wanted to embargo the United States, we would be just fine. The world is too big and there are so many sources to buy from, that any embargo is ineffective. If an embargo is effective, it is because one nation controls so much of the trade with another nation that the nation being embargoed is starved for resources by the embargo. This is just a form of natural selection. It eliminates weak nations from a stage at which they don’t belong. In other words, if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen. Most of the other options which are not war are so close to war that they might as well be. Blockades, no-fly zones, and UN action almost always involve the use of military forces. Even the peaceful embargoes and “official censures” require something to back it up. And what is that something? That something is military power, the threat of intervention, the threat of war. If Equatorial Guinea decided they were going to tell the United States to stop meddling in the Middle East, we would be rolling around on the floor laughing. However, if the United States decided to tell Equatorial Guinea to stop funding partisans fighting in civil wars around Africa, they would most likely do it. Why would they do it? Because we have the force to back it up. We have the means to enforce even our peaceful options.

In order to rid the world of war, we would have to forsake all which makes us human. Our drive to improve and expand our sense of individualism, and our competitive spirit are all human characteristics. All of these are characteristics which have led to our greatest scientific and cultural accomplishments. They are also the characteristics which have led us to war amongst ourselves. War is not what makes us human, but what makes us human leads us to wage war.

Only the dead have seen the end of the war.-George Santayana

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.
Karl Von Clausewitz

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.
Karl Von Clausewitz