War: How Conflict Shaped Us
By Margaret MacMillan. Review by Razaq.
Many of us are fortunate to live in countries where war and its immediate impact feel very remote, but war (in one form or another) has been an unwelcome presence for many peoples around the world. World War I and World War II led to unimaginable loss of human life, but lest we think that humanity has moved past conflict to settle our differences using more peaceful means, we are sadly mistaken. According to Margaret MacMillan, since the conclusion of WWII, there have been many civil wars that have led to a further loss of human life estimated anywhere from 25 million to a number much lower, but still horrifyingly high. In addition to this loss of human life, millions of people have become displaced and become refugees. And these conflicts have occurred across the globe — Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, the erstwhile Yugoslavia, Greece, Northern Ireland, Congo, Nigeria, and many other countries. MacMillan looks at war across multiple dimensions, and the book is packed with information associated with each of those dimensions.
On the question of how evolution has conditioned humans to consider the question of war, the author tests the hypotheses put forth by the two European thinkers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes. She offers examples for each side, but as with most things, there are no clear-cut answers, and one theory does not win over the other decisively. There are elements of Rousseau’s vision in many of the modern, liberal, democratic states — promotion of individual freedoms, help and support for developing nations and economies, defense of the defenseless, a desire to improve the world through responsible use of science and technology, and so on. But there are also situations when a nation does not trust another, and allows fear and emotion drive it, and in a validation of Hobbes’ state or anarchy. If the Rousseaunian progress outpaces the Hobbesian setbacks, the world will continue to get better.
The scope of this book is the entire history of war, but Margaret MacMillan keeps it focused, asking basic, but important questions like:
1) How have war and society shaped each other?
2) What are reasons for war?
3) How are wars fought, and how has warfare evolved from ancient days to the present?
4) Who fights these wars?
5) How do civilians fare in wars and what is their role?
6) How do people see, understand and remember wars and conflicts, and how will they drive future conflicts?
Reasons for war have rarely changed through the ages — expansion (driven by greed), fear (sometimes wars are fought preemptively — Poland fought against Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in 1939, when it became clear that they had no other option), ideology (religion and nationalism have played an outsize role in inciting conflict through the ages — the Crusades of years past, rise of the modern ethno-nationalist and fascistic states). MacMillan says that certain conditions must be met for “war” — War involves dozens, hundreds, thousands, even millions rather than one or a few people committing violence on each other. It is a clash between two organized societies which command the adherence of their members and have existed over considerable time, usually in their own territory. As Hedley Bull, the English political theorist, put it, “Violence is not war unless it is carried out in the name of a political unit…” And, he went on, “Equally, violence carried out in the name of a political unit is not war unless it is directed against another political unit.”
As societies evolved, it became clear that the capacity to wage war (as we understand it) could only rest with nations and states. Only nations had the resources to recruit, train, organize, and maintain standing armies. Wars, whether offensive or defensive, have led to much loss of human life and property, but they have also shaped societies. Standing armies wrought many changes in society — centralized control of the state, schools, academies to recruit and train soldiers, ability to mobilize on a large scale, creation of supply chains to ensure flow of equipment and food, and many technological advancements in pursuit of advanced weaponry that have benefited society as well. Strong well-organized states tended to have strong armies, and strong armies tended to reinforce the power and organization of the state.
Warfare has evolved over the years. In the Peloponnesian wars of the early Greeks and Spartans, wars were generally fought during the daylight hours, and phalanxes of soldiers from the warring parties engaged each other in physical combat, until one party broke and was defeated. Infantry was later superseded by warriors on horseback. Then came chariots, cannons, lighter horse-drawn cannons, arquebuses and muskets, guns and rifles, and later ships and aircraft. Though large-scale war still requires armies on the ground, most modern armies have the capacity to wage war from a distance through use of air power, ships that can launch torpedoes and missiles, and more recently drones that can precisely target the enemy (people and infrastructure). War has evolved from hand-to-hand combat on plains and fields to drone strikes conducted by a combination of man and machine potentially thousands of miles apart.
MacMillan also writes in depth about “who” fights wars. The “who” is generally male, and young, at least the ones on the ground, and at the front lines. The army trains these individuals by building on the things they learnt in school and focusing on areas aligned to their function in combat. Uniformity (standardized haircuts and uniforms) is prized, and special rituals and traditions, and mythology are used to create bonds among recruits so that as they drill and train in peacetime, the bonds and cohesiveness remain intact during the stress of battle. And military discipline is instilled using fear. Many portrayals of over-the-top drill sergeants in movies, whipping their recruits into shape, have been based on real-life drill sergeants. Per MacMillan, Frederick the Great is supposed to have said, “A soldier must fear his officer more than the enemy.”
For all the fear and discipline drilled into soldiers, conditions on the battlefield do not always go to plan. Murphy’s law always lurks. MacMillan says: Battle is at once one of the most organized of human activities and one with the greatest likelihood of things going wrong. “No plan,” said von Moltke the Elder, the father of Prussia’s victories in the nineteenth century, “survives first contact with the enemy.” The fog of war is an apt metaphor for the conditions faced by combatants well into the twentieth century. In World War I, enemy combatants on the Western Front fought each other from trenches on either side of No Man’s land. The noise, confusion, fear, and death on the front and deplorable conditions and hardships exacerbated by incompetent leadership related in their own words by soldiers paints a picture of fear, sadness, and futility, interspersed with bouts of action and excitement. World War I was the first conflict where the rank-and-file soldiers were mostly literate, and therefore the world got a chance to know what soldiers felt about war. While armies no longer square off against each other in trenches, war has remained a lethal state-sanctioned violence that can and occasionally does go out of control, leading to unspeakable crimes against humanity.
Over time, women have also become part of armed forces in many parts of the world, especially in Western armies, though their acceptance has been hampered by cultural attitudes and gendered role expectations. The process of integration of women into armed forces has been slow, and this statement neatly encapsulates the feelings of resentment faced by women in armed forces: “Why are you women, a teammate from a US special operations unit asked a female colleague, “trying to destroy the last good thing we [men] have left?”
Civilians are also an essential part of war. Over the years, rules and conventions have been established not only to protect the combatants, but also noncombatants. Despite this, civilians unfortunately pay a price by becoming “collateral damage.” Millions of civilians have died as a direct or indirect result of war and tens of millions have been displaced and forced to become refugees. It was not uncommon in ancient times for victors to put to death all men of military age they captured and enslave women and children. What is unsettling is that even in the twentieth century, atrocities have been committed by all sides (Germany and England engaged in widespread urban warfare in World War II, and when United States joined in, they bombarded Tokyo with incendiary bombs, and then later dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki), and some states like Germany, Soviet Union, Italy, Japan, and Turkey have been responsible for large scale human death and destruction. Women pay an especially heavy price because they became frequent targets of grievous sexual assaults and worse. But in a perverse sense, war also gave an opportunity for many women to step out of their homes and contribute to society, by filling roles left open by the men who had gone to war. This gradually allowed women to become fully enfranchised citizens in many countries around the world, starting in the West.
For as long as war has existed, people have been thinking about creating rules around conduct of war. Rules and conventions might be created to govern the conduct of war, but unfortunately, in all but the most egregious of violations, states cannot be compelled to redress or truly be held to account. A great deal of variability will continue to exist between states as it pertains to following international norms and practices related to war. When Pancho Villa, the revolutionary leader of Mexico was told about the Geneva convention, he reportedly said: “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?” Hard to argue with that!
MacMillan summarizes: “The issues raised are not easy ones and have been debated for centuries and still are. What makes a war just and who has the right to wage it? And what principles, if any, should guide the way wars are fought and ended? When it comes to the conduct of war, the questions continue. When is it permissible to attack civilians? And how and which ones? How should prisoners of war be treated? Or conquered peoples?” These are tough questions, but efforts continue to try and eliminate war, when possible, but that can be a tough sell when there are well-founded reasons to believe that there is one set of rules for the West and another for the rest.
Where to from here? War is full of paradoxes but is inextricably linked with society’s progress. It is incredibly destructive, but it has also contributed to advancement of society. Given the rise in ethnonationalism (even in liberal democratic states), totalitarianism, and religious fundamentalism, it is more important than ever for the world to come together to address issues through dialog, rather than resort to armed conflict. Recent large-scale wars have shown that no one has developed a playbook to deal with what comes after the initial military successes (examples of Iraq and Afghanistan readily come to mind). Trillions of dollars have been spent, but the end game is still murky, the region is still destabilized, and the civilians continue to pay the price for a war not of their making. For all these reasons and more, MacMillan makes the argument that it important for us to study war and study how it has shaped and continues to shape us, so that we can understand the motivations that have potential to create armed conflict, and seek pathways that reduce loss of human life, promote liberty, and reduce destabilization.
