Why we fight - evolution of justification of war

[Rodion Romanovich]

In the beginning, man fought wars over conflicts. Settled farmer people blocked the winter pasture areas of the shepherd people. Farmer and shepherd people expanded and left for the nomads the difficult terrain with almost no water and almost no food, and nomads as a consequence carried out raids occasionaly. (1)

Later, when wars became more common, people fought wars over strategical positions, money and resources, all of which were important to strengthen the own military and use it for defense against attacks from enemies, should they attack because they wanted pastures for their sheep, better farming lands after their own soil had been consumed, as soil often was after a few harvests in those days. (2)

And people of the settled cultures begun to get more and more offspring, because only the settlements who were numerous stood a chance at surviving the wars at the dawn of civilization, and so cultures who were more warlike and gave birth to more children tended to be most effective at surviving in this new world order. (3)

When the offspring of the people of the settled cultures increased, so did the need for land. And wars followed. More pastures and more farming lands were needed. And as wars became more common, so did the need for strategic positions. Soon men fought wars over tools they could use if they would get into a conflict, instead of fighting the actual conflicts. (4)

And cultures who wished to live in peace were assimilated. Their people weren't always killed, but forced to adopt the culture of their conquerors. And so the warlike cultures won, while all of the peoples lost. Because when the warlike cultures replaced the peaceful ones, the more numerous the wars got, and the more often were wars fought solely over strategic positions and tools to use in the case of an actual conflict. (5)

Eventually, fighting for strategic positions proved to not be enough. Soon, man found himself preventing an enemy from getting weapons that could later be used for conquering strategic positions, which would later be used to their advantage in the event of a conflict. Man found himself preventing an enemy from giving birth to a large offspring, in case the enemy would later use the offspring to create weapons, that could later be used for conquering strategic positions, which would later be used to their advantage in the event of a conflict. And the conquerors rejoyced. But not even that was enough for man, in his greed. (6)

Soon man found yet another reason to fight wars and carry out massacres. Man went after neutrals who spoke negatively of his regime, because they might raise the morale and change the opinion of other neutrals, so they would create weapons, with which they could take strategic positions for him, which they would later use to their advantage, in the event of a conflict. (7)

Now the big question is - why will we fight in the future?

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Notes:
1. most early wars in all areas around the time what we call civilization (assuming we use the definition that civilization equals people starting to live in more complex settled societies) evolved in the area.
2. anyone who has read military history should be familiar with conflicts over strategic positions. The earliest known examples ought to be from Pharaonic egypt and similar, and have existed throughout the roman era and up to this day, more or less.
3. the overpopulation could be partly connected to war, but note that I'm not implying there is a causality connection between war and the increase of offspring among humans, which begun around the time of the dawn of civilization.
4. expansion for "lebensraum" is not unique to the nazi philosophy, but has existed throughout history, although lebensraum is probably the first time there is an actual term for the concept. The germanic and slavic migrations at the time of the fall of the roman empire is a good example, however in that case it's probable that it was initially the roman expansions that caused the dense population of the area, not exaggerated offsprings like in other regions. A similar form of war is war fought to gain resources such as gold, oil, fishing territory etc.
5. while people are often assimilated it's usually not the people that is destroyed, but their culture. I'm not referring to an evolution of human beings, but an evolution of cultures. Adopting certain cultures has undoubtedly given benefits to some people by making them more successful in war, but even more important is the fact that certain cultures without benefiting the people can have a superior strength and in some way or another replacing earlier cultures in a region. In this case, there seems like cultures who are more prepared for war are favored, even though it doesn't benefit the people having the culture that this culture often gives birth to war even when there are no actual conflicts.
6. we all know of the concentration camps of the colonial era and afterwards. Even in ancient times similar strategies of trying to destroy a people rather than trying to stop the fighting as a means of ending resistance and eliminating an existing or imagined threat have been recorded.
7. stalin and others killing political opponents. But even that existed already in ancient times, for example during Domitian, according to several chronicles who in this case are generally considered truthful. The new so called war on terror is also gradually turing into something similar to this.

[Duke Malcolm]

To secure a food supply and fertile lands

As the population increases, food supplies shall lower as more land it used for housing and there is not enough food to feed everyone suitably. Nations will take new, fertile lands to provide enough food.

[Fragony]

In the beginning, man fought wars over conflicts.

Thank god we left that all behind us ;)

[Rodion Romanovich]

:grin:

[Ianofsmeg16]

Countries fight each other because the world is one big primary school playground, on the playground, kids fight because it looks cool, but the next day the two fighters are best friends with each other, and the next week they fight again. Politicians pretend to be grown up, but really they are just like 7 year olds

[Strike For The South]

to keep the masses focused lest we find out the truth and realize poloticans and goverment is obsolete:inquisitive:

[R'as al Ghul]

War is and has always been about resources. Aquiring and defending them.
I don't see any development at all. :no:

The future wars will most probably be fought about water supply.

[Reenk Roink]

Because it is our innermost nature to be selfish, disagree, and fight... :2thumbsup:

Many peoples before us liked war, and spoke of it glowingly...

Wonder now if they were right...?

[Fragony]

Many peoples before us liked war, and spoke of it glowingly...

Wonder now if they were right...?

But war was still fun back then, I mean, wouldn't you want to mow down a bunch of peasants carrying a PHAT lance??? Fun for all ages and the gals love it!

//BUAHAHAHA hijacking threads is fun now!

[Duke Malcolm]

Previously, one could attain fame and riches through war, but that seems to have stopped in the Western World. No more dashing hussars, or noble officers...

[Ianofsmeg16]

Malcolm, thats because we've lost interest in war as of late,

C'mon people war is fun! they make games about war, therefor its fun! be interested!

[Duke Malcolm]

Yes, this is a forum about Total War games, after all!
But wars of days gone by have been fought to improve the country, or defend the country. Recent wars (with the exception of the Falklands' War) have been to overthrow foreign governments, with little affect on the home country (Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq)

[Rodion Romanovich]

Because it is our innermost nature to be selfish, disagree, and fight... :2thumbsup:

Many peoples before us liked war, and spoke of it glowingly...

Wonder now if they were right...?

The early 20th century also spoke glowingly of war, and it seems to be coming back occasionally throughout history. Plus much old literature is propaganda to try and glorify dirty wars, we had the same during ww2 and we'll probably see it again.

War is fun in games and art, but what is nice in art is horrible in reality, and what is horrible in reality is crappy as art.

[Rodion Romanovich]

War is and has always been about resources. Aquiring and defending them.
I don't see any development at all. :no:

The future wars will most probably be fought about water supply.

The evolution I'm speaking of is that we see smaller and smaller threats or signs of something that might develop into a threat in the future, as reason for going to war. I agree that the ultimate goal always is to secure the resources, but throughout history we've fighting for that goal through achieving more and more indirect goals. Many times it's indirectly through a chain so long that we're creating more resource problems than we solve by the wars we start. By now it should be absolutely clear to all humans that our overpopulation is going to kill us unless we do something. We have so many individuals of each race/nationality/religion whatever that there's simply no need to give birth to more to have a security against mutations etc. We don't really need to fight each other, because if anyone wins and continues the absurd overreproduction he's going to die anyway, so we all need to change and adapt and while we're adapting we might as well adapt in a way so that there are no conflicts left.

All wars also pick out the strongest of their group to die or at least be kept away from home so they don't reproduce, so war is always hurting the entire people of those who take part in it. It's absolutely clear that the further we've progressed in history, the wars have been started by more and more absurd reasons, and with worse and worse consequences for mankind, including the group that temporarily achieves victory. The survivors are not the brave but the cowardly, who stayed at home and sent out the strong and brave to die. It's scared cowards such as war-mongers who create wars, and for every century we carry out a genocide of all brave so as a whole mankind is becoming more and more cowardly, and sees more and more (often non-existing) threats, and new reasons to start war.

The only thing that wins in these conflicts is civilizations, cultures and society systems (things that can't exist without humans), while mankind is killing itself. And the more killing is done, the more wars that happen, the more fear there is of being attacked by others, and that fear itself is the cause of new wars, wars for strategic positions or other wars that are only indirectly through a very long chain striving towards granting some kind of safety. New wars cause new fear of being attacked, and new fear of being attacked causes new wars, for even more indirect reasons.

[Reenk Roink]

Gah, what a depressing topic, I think I'll go and eat some ice cream now...

[Rodion Romanovich]

I'm sorry for making you depressed, but I just ate some ice cream at it helps ~:)

[Atilius]

Thucydides wrote that men go to war for one of three reasons: fear, honor, and interest.

Interest (or greed) has been mentioned here in several posts.

Thucydides himself cites the Spartans' fear of the rising power of Athens as the cause of the Peloponnesian war.

The British and French entry into WWII is a case of going to war in order to preserve honor. Both had been humiliated by their diplomatic impotence to prevent Hitler's remilitarization of the Rhineland, annexation of Austria, and occupation of Czechoslovakia. They were allied with Poland, but had no hope of successfully defending the Poles and nothing to gain from doing so. The British didn't even have any way to intervene effectively without deploying to France.

This is clearly not an example of going to war over interests, and had fear alone been the cause, they would have done just as well to conclude a Franco-British alliance without actually declaring war.

[Lentonius]

simple answer here- were violent gits us humans

when the simplicity of killing animals was replaced by people living in a community, they got angry at their neighbouring tribes and descided that playing hunt the antelope would be quite fitting to their friends a mile down...

there is still that ape like instinct in us that urges for violence, and every now and then raises its ugly head...:skull:

[Watchman]

In a sense (and a very real one at that) the likes of alliances and international prestige are resources, so it could be argued that, too, is just fighting over resources.

Which is really the whole point. People fight to gain advantages and resources - but what rates as such varies wildly, has always varied and will always vary.

People do not incidentally go to war over things like "anger" or "xenophobia" or whatever unless the inner workings of their own culture allow or require it - for example, a tribal chief may well *have* to go to war against the next tribe to avenge a perceived insult, or lose "face" and prestige and be denounced as a feeble coward by his followers...

[AntiochusIII]

War is fun in games and art, but what is nice in art is horrible in reality, and what is horrible in reality is crappy as art.I beg to digress. :bow:

Thucydides wrote that men go to war for one of three reasons: fear, honor, and interest.On a pragmatic point of view, honor is likely a combination of fear and interests. I want to keep my honor; I fear I will lose my honor...so I kill my foes in the wars.

I guess honor is a sort of commodity to be manipulated, or to satisfy's one's emotions and desires, known vaguely and generalized as greed. :shame:

Gods, I need ice cream.

However, we should make notice that war isn't always abour resources: the ambitions of individuals have caused war where there shouldn't be one before. They used to call those arseholes kings and warlords, today we call them politicians. Tell me, are the young men in All Quiet On the Western Front to be blamed for instigating the First World War?

[Watchman]

"Nobody is driven to war by ignorance, and nobody who thinks he will gain from it is deterred by fear." That's one of the more profound quotes I've seen in the RTW loading screens. WW1 happened because everyone was already raring to go, hadn't a clue what their new shiny toys actually could do, and was quite confident their side would quickly come out on top and get to dictate terms to the losers, just like in the old days. And the stakes they were fighting over were stuff like Great Power prestige and precedence, overseas colonies, disputed border provinces (Alsace-Lothringen comes immediately to mind - that was fought over already in the Thirty Years' War...)...

It just kind of didn't go according to the plan for anyone. The two World Wars, and the colonial revolts after the second, are among the main thing why no First World country wants to fight its peers anymore. Modern industrial war is simply too horrifyingly expensive in all meanings if waged against an opponent of even remotely comparable power, and doubly so with nukes involved. For example I've seen some references to the strategic plans the WP drew up during the Cold War; there was one which called the Polish army to occupy the Baltic coast of West Germany, and if it was in the condition to do so and there was anything left over there worth taking over, proceed with an amphibious assault into Sweden... it was projected that by this point the main WP forces advancing westwards from East Germany would have been completely crippled by appalling casualties.

This is the sort of planning that goes to a modern superpower war. No wonder nobody actually wants to fight one. What's the point if you can only consider yourself the victor by the default condition of being able to stay up atop your heap of smoldering ruins while the other guy fell down from his ?

Which is why those First World powers with the resources and motivation to do so have only been beating on much weaker opponents since then. And even that has every now and then blown in their face...

[Atilius]

On a pragmatic point of view, honor is likely a combination of fear and interests. I want to keep my honor; I fear I will lose my honor...so I kill my foes in the wars.

I guess honor is a sort of commodity to be manipulated, or to satisfy's one's emotions and desires, known vaguely and generalized as greed.

A fair point, but the distinction is important. Honor is self-respect or the regard of others. Honor cannot be a commodity because different people find different things honorable. All countries can preserve self-respect at the same time, and all can perhaps even hold the regard of all others. But only one country can control a harbor, a pass, or a parcel of fertile land.

[bmolsson]

In the future we will not have any wars among humans. We will find a common enemy and start all over. Colonization, industrialism etc etc.
One thing is clear, the individual will be less and less important, which will reflect the possibilities to war. Larger civilizations will not wage war as easy as small ones. Also war against inferior civilizations will not be seen as a war......

[Papewaio]

Somewhere out there in space is a civilisation that has never known war. When we find them we will conquour their pansy arses :skull: and their women will scream and wail :dizzy2: . While their children will be taught why it pays not to only have peasants as your defence force. :laugh4:

[bmolsson]

Somewhere out there in space is a civilisation that has never known war. When we find them we will conquour their pansy arses :skull: and their women will scream and wail :dizzy2: . While their children will be taught why it pays not to only have peasants as your defence force. :laugh4:

Or they are like the Klingons and will kick some serious butt. You will see yourself leaving place for a alien moderator making sure that our bashing is limited to Bush and his human likes, while the new alien supreme rules is treated with outmost respect........ :book:

[Watchman]

I suspect we'll blow ourselves back to the Stone Age first, personally. Too many too big guns, too many idiots, and sooner or later someone runs short of something and tries to take his neighbor's...

[Reenk Roink]

You will see yourself leaving place for a alien moderator making sure that our bashing is limited to Bush and his human likes, while the new alien supreme rules is treated with outmost respect........ :book:

Absolutely not good sir, it has already been determined that the world will be shared between Just A Girl (ShambleS) and myself, with America being a wasteland that neither of us wants...

[Grey_Fox]

Wars have always been about two things, resources and population pressure.

[Watchman]

Population pressure is really just a shortage of resources due to too many consumers, though.

[KukriKhan]

I think we're talking about two different things here:

1) the decision to go to war
2) why we fight

Leaders decide to go to war (i.e. temporarily allow the murder of others) for resolving resource conflicts - OK I can buy that, as a very broad definition.

Why individual humans fight seems more tied to group cohesion
http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/read.php?story_id_key=5182 , and only secondarily for more far-flung political goals.

[Rodion Romanovich]

I think we're talking about two different things here:

1) the decision to go to war
2) why we fight

Leaders decide to go to war (i.e. temporarily allow the murder of others) for resolving resource conflicts - OK I can buy that, as a very broad definition.

Why individual humans fight seems more tied to group cohesion
http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/read.php?story_id_key=5182 , and only secondarily for more far-flung political goals.

Good point, what I meant was the cases when a person who isn't affected by group cohesion makes a decision of fighting, mainly on the political level, but social level conflicts might also apply.

[Watchman]

*shrug* In many now long gone cultures it was the pride and joy of the menfolk to possess arms and fight with them at every opportunity; or as my little brother usually puts it, "stupid macho glory-hounding to persuade the young hotshot to kill and die as needed", even if that's rather simplifying it.

I consider it somewhat futile to worry too much about why specific individuals within groups are willing to kill and die in wars, and how they go about justifying it to themselves should that be necessary for some reason (say, religion). The reasons are as varied as the people, and there's no end to them in any case. The exercise, IMHO, only becomes worthwhile when dealing with fairly large groups of people, from something as minor as the viking raiders or hoplites from one little village all the way up to the entire military-eligible manpower of entire modern nation-states. It's only at that stage when they actually start having truly common motives and not just individual ones, or conversely where the sum of their individual motivations starts building up some sort of cohesive and meaningful picture.

[Rodion Romanovich]

I consider it somewhat futile to worry too much about why specific individuals within groups are willing to kill and die in wars

How so? Most wars are fought because a small number of people in the group/religion/nationality/tribe/ethnicity wants to, and manages to convince others to take part in it. Has it become easier over time to convince people to fight? Have people in general become more willing to fight? Is the lack of excitement and half-peaceful measurements of strength of the type other animals do something that makes us accumulate violent behavior which later is let out as an avalanche of horridness and murder - would we need a "fight club" to become more peaceful? Or is it the other way around - too much violence in our society? Why do we want to fight wars over more and more indirect and less likely threats?

War is, unlike "fight club" and the animal world correspondence to it, something that strikes women and children, innocent along guilty. There's no way to lie down and show your throat in submission to make the other part stop, the other part will still proceed and kill you no matter what, if he thinks of it as necessary or at least a little benefitial.

War kills the best of their generation, leaves the war-mongering leaders at home to feast on the women left behind, who are driven into cheating on their temporarily or forever gone husbands that fight. War saves the war-mongers and scared people, who want even more war. All wars are total wars. There's no honor, when people fight with weapons too lethal for their instincts. Compared to their weapons, men's minds are dwarfed.

And never does the war solve anything. The winner imposes his own will on the subjugated, rather than finding a compromise which makes both happy. The result is revolt, which causes new wars. The revolt overthrows the last conqueror, and the new winner imposes similar unrealistic demands again. Sometimes populations after lengthy series of wars decide to go for a compromise after all, but it takes time and human lives.

The fourth important point is that society is never shaped after pacifistic ideals. Society systems are never constructed in a way to avoid future conflicts. Wars have to take place first, before an area of possible conflict in the very system is discovered. And it seems like the system is causing more and more reasons for conflicts. Over the centuries, we've made ourselves dependent on more and more resources, thus giving us more and more reasons for war. Biologically, we only need food, water and a neither too cold nor too hot place to live. But now we need oil, coal, gold, silver, iron, copper, uranium, bauxite, germanium, tungsten, sodium, zink, argone, natrium, neon, magnesium etc. etc. And we need weaponry, strategic positions, some kind of guarantee of other people/nations/whatever not growing too much in power and military strength in the future, large enough population to be able to use all our weapons (which again increases the need for land and needs for the basic biological resources), and so on.

[Watchman]

Most of that is only currency with modern wars - 20th century and later. The total, ruinous industrial war is a child of that century, not earlier. Earlier times did not have the resource base and organizational chutzpah to manage that sort of utter devastation, or foe that matter the tools for it either.

Heck, by modern standards most of those times were stark barking war mad. But they could afford to be; the wars were much smaller in scale and much less ruinous in expenses, and moreover the main way to better your lot in the world through obtaining various advantages. This actually applies even after proto-capitalism had started churning out previously unimaginable wealth - wars were wtill fought over control of vital trade nodes, raw material resources, control of strategically important territory...

[Rodion Romanovich]

The fifth point is the failure to see what the real fight is about. Too much indirect thinking detracts from the points of actual importance. If you look at all non-biological resource demands, they're indirectly ways of getting to the biological resources, through things such as economical and military competition, among other things. The indirect thinking is what often makes compromises so difficult to find, because people think their aims are things like "subjugate nation x", "destroy people y", "exterminate rebels z", things which have never worked in the end. Their real aims are: "nation x seems somewhat hostile, so we might need be on our toes and ready to react, because they might be competing with us for resource w".

The sixth point is the concept of power, which in civilized societies has turned from skilled leadership to a means of gaining status. Power as it looks in today's society is an unbiological concept. Leadership and sexual rank status established through "fight club" behavior are two separate things in many animal flocks. When the two are merged, excellent leadership is replaced by the one who was strongest fighter. With the invention of weapons, even the weaker could claim the positions of power, because of the increased strength gained through their weapons. The result is however that those who can only barely seize power with weapons can seldom hold it without abuse of their weaponry. The common "keep them down" symphtome, which is probably the worst form of action mankind has ever carried out. The constant harassment of individuals and groups to prevent them from ever getting stronger, from ever having a hope of a future, because of the fear that they may grow in strength and power, and then give their oppressor the revenge he deserves. Often they aren't even intending a revenge, but the oppressor is scared of it because he knows he deserves it, and keeps them down through harassment, until they do start planning a revenge.

The seventh point is the concept of greed, which has been mentioned here repeatedly. Greed is desire for safety, but with the want for security margins having become absurdly large. People might now want to kill someone because he might spread rebellious thoughts to his children which might use those thoughts to write books through which they make money which they could use to give to other rebels which could use that money to buy guns with which they could defend themselves against unprovoked attacks, which would grant them survival, which would grant their children the ability to fight the oppressors and liberate the strategical position the oppressor took from them, which could in the future mean problems for the oppressor in case a large nation would later get the idea of maybe attacking the nation, because without that strategic position it would have greater difficulties defending itself. There seems to be no limits to this concept, and it seems like it's growing in strength, and becoming more and more widespread, throughout history.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Most of that is only currency with modern wars - 20th century and later. The total, ruinous industrial war is a child of that century, not earlier. Earlier times did not have the resource base and organizational chutzpah to manage that sort of utter devastation, or foe that matter the tools for it either.

Actually, the idea of exterminating an entire people as a way of winning a conflict existed already in the ancient period, and was used by Assyrians, Romans, and several others on occasions. It was usually a failure in the long term, but it's older than one might think. Plus gold and silver were among the resources that were added to our list of non-biological resources quite early. The carthaginian and roman interferences in Iberia might have been controlled quite a lot by the desire for the mines. The roman attack on Dacia was also probably to larger extent than what was admitted at the time caused partly by the desire for the dacian gold mines. Strategical positions also became one of the non-biological resources striven for quite early in history. Every expansionist culture that has existed in the Middle east more or less tried to get all of the points Tarsus, Nile Delta, Babylon, or alternatively the Bosphorus, the Nile Delta and Babylon, for example.

So it's not as simple as saying that total war is a new concept caused by industrialism. The only general conclusion that can be drawn is that as long as the basic world society system favors war-mongering to some extent, if only temporarily during a period which will be followed by a period where rebel warfare techniques in some way will be favored, there are wars. And as long as there's fear and unclarity in diplomatic relations, or over rights to different resources, there are wars. As long as there (to the leaders) seems to be a benefit with it, the total war appears.

Among all these hopeless things we can at least notice one comforting thing, and that is that at some points in history we've had situations where wars were less common, and probably not only by luck. There are ways we can form our world to get rid of war. Not in the way where we accumulate conflicts and create an avalanche effect, but in a way where we still keep the wars small when they come, but at the same time keep them rare.

[Watchman]

One fairly reliable way to keep given groups from going to war with each other is for both of them to be so heavily defended it just isn't worth it. That's what's happened to the First World rate military powers since WW2 (that and the theoretized "democratic peace" phenomenom - ie. democracies and comparable systems are very reluctant and unlikely to fight each other - but as the East Block definitely didn't fulfill the criteria...). The fact that juggling the aftermath to your favor even if you won the actual war proved to be increasingly difficult didn't help any.

"Total war", AFAIK, as a concept is normally understood as the sort of fully mobilized conflict where the total resources of an entire society are directed into a monumental struggle against similarly total efforts of the other - and have to be, as else there simply won't be enough. It's a term to my knowledge invented to describe the unprecedently apocalyptically exhaustive World Wars and the total reorganization of entire societies to support the war efforts that went with them.

No earlier conflict comes even close, and mass slaughter of populations isn't really enough to rate any conflict as "total" - that sort of thing was every now and then done as a sort of side effect, or strategic necessity, since God knows when. It is my understanding the SOP of early Bronze Age warfare when taking hostile cities (that you weren't going to add to your own holdings anyway) was to bluntly slaughter most of the inhabitants, carry the rest to slavery, and demolish the whole thing, for example, and major nomad incursion could well reduce large regions to virtually depopulated wastelands even if they didn't go out of their way to devastate the place (as the Mongols did in Khwarimzam for one example).