Why Do We Have Wars?

If you are like me, you think of peace as both the ideal and the natural state of humanity. Wars interrupt this peace. They are aberrations that usually occur because “bad” people—aggressive government leaders—try to expand their territory, and other governments respond with force.

Jeremy Black, an emeritus history professor at the University of Exeter, has written a book that undermines this view, at the same time challenging many claims of military historians.

Let me caution that I do not urge most of my readers to go out and buy his book, A Short History of War. Black summarizes as many conflicts as he can fit into a 258-page book, and for those of us unfamiliar with military history it is what journalists call “listy.” What makes the book valuable is that Black helps us think broadly and objectively about war and violence (closely related but not synonymous terms). Yet because most of the book consists of examples, gleaning his message takes some efforts of interpretation.

I’ll try to summarize his major points.

First, war is almost as old as humanity. Preceding war (or even accompanying it) was conflict with animals (think mastodons and saber-toothed tigers). Once animals were safely dealt with, people began to fight one another more vigorously. And those conflicts were often “deliberate, deadly and harsh..” [1]

War stems from an inherent enthusiasm for fighting. “[T]he will to fight is the key element, whatever the scale. . . . Bellicosity in the shape of the will and the readiness to fight leads to war, rather than war arising because misunderstandings produce inaccurate calculations of interest and response.”[2]

Admiration of military heroism sustains this bellicose attitude. Writing about Alexander the Great, whose empire was the largest in ancient history, Black says:

“Alexander became a potent image of heroic rulership, one that was to resonate widely and for a long time, helping to provide a validation for the glory to be gained through war.  Indeed, the totemic character of conflict was to be seen in the determination across all cultures to hold onto the legacy of the past, of its honour and power.” [3]

Napoleon is another icon. His successive triumphs over Austrian, Prussian, Russian, and Turkish forces through 1811 “helped define warfare in the Western tradition,” says Black. Yet Napoleon “was a failure, prefiguring German war-making in the two twentieth-century world wars.” [4] His tactical skills were brilliant and daring but he wasn’t able to think and act strategically.

Military theorists, including renowned figures like Carl von Clausewitz and Antoine-Henri Jomini, perpetuated the image of Napoleon’s success. Even today, military historians tend to emphasize heroes, battles, and big wars.  “[T]he standard approach to the subject, both academic and popular, focuses on great commanders, on major wars and supposedly decisive battles.”[5]

Partly because of the tradition those historians set, military history tends to be Eurocentric, says Black, neglecting many wars outside Europe, especially in Asia and Latin America. And it focuses on inter-state conflicts, not internal wars, even though more conflicts occur within states than between states.  From 1990 to 2007, Black says, 220,000 people died as a result of conflicts between countries, while 3.6 million died due to conflicts within countries. [6] “Mexican cartels as a whole have more armed men than many European armies.” [7]

Another Eurocentric feature is to view the development of military technology teleologically—that is, as inevitable progress toward more technologically sophisticated armaments. This results in what Black calls historians’ “primitivisation” of fighters such as the Huns of the Eurasian steppes, who succeeded while being outside the preferred continuum toward modern technology. [8]

So what does Black see that others do not? He sees war as an element of humans’ tribal makeup that has not faded away. He sees actual conflicts as shaped by multiple factors, as warriors and their leaders face different climates, terrains, cultures (including different religions), and political contexts. Often what is decisive in battles and wars is not heroism but the overall organization of combat, with its relative reliance on, say, cavalry vs. infantry; the availability of resources including food; and, in general, “strategy, logistics, and communication:” Strategy can fail when it is chosen because it confirms “institutional, national and social bias.” [9]

My conclusions from A Short History of War? First, wars will always be with us and some who wage war are not very good at it.

Notes

[1] Jeremy Black, A Short History of War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021), 6.

[2] Black, 5-6.

[3] Black, 34.

[4] Black, 234=5.

[5] Black, 158-9.

[6] Black, 225.

[7] Black,  236 Black does not include footnotes and does not provide information to support these two claims.

[8] Black, 234-5.

[9] Black, 237–238.

The image of a soldier above is by ArmyAmber of Pixabay.