Almost all wars involve at least one side in the conflict, possibly both, being expansionist/aggressive/paranoid and it’s generally easy to pick out at least one “bad guy” from the fighters, possibly both, (although depending on your perspective, you might choose a different one than me.) Are there any examples where , (in your opinion) neither side was at fault, but circumstances conspired to push them to war?
The American Revolutionary War?
The American Civil War.
All of them.
None of them.
History is written by the winners. If a war occurs, somebody is being an asshole.
I guess what I’m saying is- I don’t know.
World War 1 would probably be the closest modern example - the Central Powers were probably more at fault, but the truth is that this was a war that pretty much all the combatants wanted to fight, all the combatants acted poorly in, and most of the combatants had fairly similar ideologies. Of course, these wars have been the norm for most of human history - who were the “good guys” in the periodic border skirmishes between the Roman and Persian Empires?
The Crimean War
The conflict with Israel and Palestine? Just two groups who sincerely believe they were there first.
Interesting. I was going to point to WW1 as a case where there was no good guy, for most of the same reasons.
The War of 1812. The US had legitimate grievances against Britain, but the latter’s policies that caused the grievances were largely part of their strategy to defeat Napoleon. (Of course, a good deal of the US’s interest in the war was expansionism through the conquest of Canada, but there were other causes).
This is actually the first thing that came to my mind. As one of my friends puts it: it’s hard to be sympathetic towards a tax revolt when the colony was taxed less than the homeland. So on one hand you have the traditional “Americans as the good guy” case and on the other you have the “hey, we founded that colony and we’re not treating them that badly” British case.
I don’t want to turn this into a threadshitting, but I, and I suspect many others, can identify a bad guy in that war (see the recent spate over Confederate history month).
My vote goes to the Russo-Japanese war. Just a weird conflict where it was mostly to achieve political ends, and not from any sort of ideological “failing”.
WWI, though…I think we can see a pretty clear “bad guy” in the conduct of the Austrians, and Germany, in later violating the neutrality of Belgium, wasn’t exactly blameless, either.
My first thought was also WWI. Everyone thought a war would be just jolly keen–they all wanted to fight, it was a meat grinder, but they just wouldn’t quit.
I recently read a general history of the world in medieval times (went from ~300-1100 AD). Everyone was fighting for dominance, all the time. If your kingdom wasn’t expanding, it was contracting. AFAICT, it’s been like that for most of history. Imperialism/expansionism is part of human nature.
Yeah. I’d wager that wars with no good guy are pretty common – where both sides are at fault. Wars with no bad guy? Maybe wars started accidentally by misunderstandings?
On WWI I’m going with the “no good guy” position (although I realize that’s awfully simplistic). However, if I’m going to single out anybody that was worse than the others, I’d say the Turks. They pretty much used the war as an excuse to wage a genocidal campaign against the Armenians and, once the war was over, “ethnically cleansed” western Asia Minor of its Greek population. (Of course, to be fair, the Greeks did the same thing to the Turks who were still living in Greece.)
Well, yeah, if you view it by modern standards, then as DCnDC says, “History is written by the winners. If a war occurs, somebody is being an asshole.” At the time, slavery was legal, enough people still were able to justify it morally, and although the facile answer is “the Civil War was about slavery” there was a heck of a lot more to it. One could argue that the southern states peacefully withdrew from the Union, and the aggressive north used their industrial-military might to subdue them. Now who’s the bad guy?
Of course it was mostly the southern states and power that caused the Mexican-American war, which at least contributed to the start of the Civil War. So… I have no problem assigning the label “bad guy” to the South for that, if we can remove the label “bad guy” from the whole United States for having been involved in the thing.
I think the suggestion of the American Civil War may satisfy the OP on the basis that neither side wanted to take the other’s territory, neither was being very paranoid, and neither side was being very aggressive (this last point in particular will probably generate disagreement).
I think tactically the issue was whether slavery would be allowed in territories that weren’t securely in either side’s hands at the time. Practically it was Eli Whitney inventing interchangeable parts and the cotton gin, making the north more committed to manufacturing and the south more committed to agriculture. Nominally, the Confederacy wanted to be left alone, and the Union wanted, well, a union to continue, and the abomination of slavery to end.
I can’t really accept that the war was about much more than slavery. It was about State’s rights, but the big right in question was holding slaves. So, if you believe slavery is an abomination, you’re not an asshole to try to liberate slaves. And if you believe it is right, you’re not an asshole to try to fend off those liberators.
By my own criteria, the Confederacy was the heart of evil, but I think by the specific criteria in the OP, the Civil war wasn’t caused by aggression.
Anybody?
Tell that to the soldiers at Fort Sumter, who were attacked by rebels from South Carolina, starting the first battle of the Civil War.
Probably the soccer war
Declan
Let it be known that I’m entirely against slavery before you read this post.
Right, but the proper way of the Union ending slavery wasn’t through war, it was through legislation. And since there was no provision in the US Constitution disallowing the withdrawal of States, and in fact it was one of the conditions for New York to join that they would be allowed to leave if they so chose at a later date… it can be said that the South did, by nature of the Constitution, withdrawal legally.
That, in turn, means that the North attacked a Sovereign state.
A justified war, morally, yes. But still an aggressive war of conquest, and one that was only legally justified if you view the South as a sovereign nation that the North wanted to conquer, not as an arm of the Union that refused to obey.
Didn’t they all survive the attack? I thought only a horse died.
So yeah, you could have gone and told 'em that. 