Can war ever be eliminated? Should it be?

Great Debates
1

War! Huh! What is it good for? Absolutlely nothing?

How about a list of positive and neagative results of war? Since I’m first out the hatch I get to go with the easy ones.

Positive:

Population control. Too many people too little land or food? Your neighbors have plenty of land and food. True they may be using it, but who are they? Even if you lose you win.

Social/judicial/economic control changes. If your society/laws/economy are weak enough to allow you to be defeated then chances are you will gain something from the conquest. Not 100% the case, but more often than not.

Scientifice advancement. This one is a gimme, from architecture to medecine, alloys to rocketry most of our current level of technological sophistication can write a "thank you" card to some shitty diplomat in history.

Culling. Remember Darwin? Historically those who were violent or too stupid to get out of it were the main bulk of conscripts to go to war. Those who survived did so because they had some quality that counterbalanced their shortcomings and they enjoyed somewhat higher status from being "heroes". Passing along those genes helped improve the people at large. Modern warfare does a lot more to protect the soldier and modern weapons do a lot more to endanger the average citizen. Thus it falls upon the common man and woman to learn how to survive and avoid becoming a historical statistic. Who has a better likelyhood to survive bio warfare on a grand scale? Citizen or soldier? Probably the soldier because of alertness and training and better equipment the soldier will have a better likelyhood to survive than the citizen. A truly smart person either prepares him/herself as a civillian or joins the ranks of the military to get that protection. Dumb people ignore the possibility and never make any choice. Good for them.

Negative:

 Culling. Nope not a flashback. This one makes both lists with a few minor revisions. Bombs don't care if you are a prodigy who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time "I never worried about a bulet with my name on it. I was always afraid of the ones marked "occupant".". Wars kill a lot of people and even if the majority of those who have died in war may have rolled the dice with Darwin and lost there are certainly those who could have really made this world better but happened to catch a bullet intended for someone of lesser value to the specis.

 I/My child/My Father or mother or other loved ones could die. This seems to be the biggest reason we don't like war or at least pretend not to like it. Simple selfish desire not to lose loved ones. To be a bit more topical about it here is a thought: I'm feeling pretty bloodthirsty over the Cole attack. I bet a lot of you are too. If we go to war, someone is damn sure going to pay because of it. Do you think that everyone who dies will actually have been involved or even known about it? How about their kids or their moms? I dunno `bout you, but I'm feeling a bit guilty about my bloodthirst now. Am I alone? War kills people and those it leaves alive are not left unaffected.

I find myself hard pressed to come up with another solid statement against war. Not that this is about numbers, but it would seem that there are a lot of tangible reasons why we as a specis need it wheras the most heartfelt reason against it is pretty intangible and speculative. After all, there were no children in Carthage mourning the loss of their fathers. In fact, no one was left to mourn Carthage at all.

Is that the answer? Effective war being the complete elimination of the enemy? Is that even possible?

I really hate when I wax philosophical like this but I am perplexed by the premise of the question. If we could eliminate war would we be better off for having done so? I’m not talking about getting rid of starvation or greed or injustice at the same time. I’m saying “no more war and damn the consequences.”.

Input?

zen101
D.F.A.

2

I think the chances of eliminating war before you get rid of starvation and greed and injustice are pretty slim, which makes this particular question kind of moot. Well, even in a science fiction utopia there could be greed and injustice on a personal level (unless we’ve evolved beyond being merely human), but I don’t think there could possibly be a “magic bullet”–so to speak–which could eliminate war short of major advances in making civilization more equitable. You might say really, really destructive weapons could do it–I think that argument has been around since the crossbow–but even the A-bomb hasn’t eliminated war entirely, though you could argue it kept the U.S. and U.S.S.R. from going at it full tilt like they might have done in an earlier era. I suppose a really destrutive weapon–artificially guided asteroids, really nasty bioweapons, or a Giant Death Ray Cannon on the Moon, might eliminate war by eliminating us.

3

“Without war there would not be pieces of people.” Or something.

4

War releases political, ethnic, economic, and territorial tensions that inevitably increase in peacetime as the result of diplomacy, compromise, shifting balances of power, and the inertia of institutions. It’s a sociological, society-wide orgasm.

I don’t remember where I heard this idea (not that I agree with it), though the Canadian historian/journalist Gwyn Dwyer mentioned something like this in his series War. Being a little liberal with his definition of a world war by considering any conflict in which all the major powers of the time are involved, he counted a world war as occurring every fifty years for the last three hundred or so, with WW II being the last. After each one, the political/social/economic/territorial boundaries were redrawn, and it took around fifty years for enough reasons for war to culminate in another worldwide banquet.

I remember it fairly specifically because at the end, he said that we’re overdue for the next world war, but it would be preceded by a couple things: a reunified Germany, an economically sound Japan, and the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact (I’m not sure about the last one). This was said in the mid-80s or something like that.

5

What exactly does that mean? Does it mean like america putting asians in concentration camps because we were at war with japan?

Natural selection for war only helps in war. The ones that die in war probably are superior in peacetime.

Technology for war only helps in war. That technology might be applied to other stuff in peacetime but not during war. Remeber the dark ages? Im sure they were caused by rampant peace.

I guess if you consider hatred a good thing that would be a benefit of war.

6

Well, that’s sort of the point–technology gets developed under the pressure of wartime necessity, then later that technology can be applied to peacetime purposes. That’s not to say it’s worth it to fight wars just so suburbanites can drive SUV’s that are distant descendants of Jeeps or whatever, but wars really do put technological development on fast-forward.

Maybe what we need are “virtual” wars, healthy competitions where we get the good stuff (technology) without having to kill lots of people. The Cold War sort of qualified, except it wasn’t always so “cold”; the Space Race is an even better example.

7

I think you’re missing the point, Asmodean. War technology usually has endless spinoffs in peacetime. We’d never have gone to the moon were it not for rocket research done by Germany in World War II. Most trauma medecine came out of battlefield hospitals. Building stealth fighters and such funds development in lots of different technologies like polymers, electronics, etc. And don’t forget the roots of the Internet in the DOD’s plan to have a decentralized communications network. In wartime, a lot of dollars get thrown at research, and there’s a lot less pressure for economic returns; as a consequence, a lot of research gets done with an inevitable amount of results.

As for the “war as social orgasm” school of thinking, the idea is that, during peacetime, there are constantly shifting relations of power between different groups, and those relations often fail to be adequately reflected in the institutions of the day; eventually, social (political, economic, etc.) institutions become hopelessly out of date with reality. Tensions build until war is the result; worldwide tensions build until worldwide war is the result (every fifty years, as Gwyn Dwyer points out). One can make a plausible argument that the last ten years of war in what was Yugoslavia were the result of forcefully suppressing the differences between the various ethnicities; the various ethnic histories that justified each side were mere pretext. Think of the tension in the Middle East today, caused historically by the artificial creation of the state of Israel (right or wrong as that was).

This isn’t war as natural selection, which I think is an indefensible idea. Actually, it suggests that the underlying cause of war is peacetime government and it’s inability to adequately manage the relations of groups.

8

Blah. “Politics by other means”? Far too simple–war is more complex than that. Take a look at this thread for a more detailed discussion. That is “a” underlying cause, but it’s not “the” one.

Addressing the OP:

Your perspective seems to come from a biological view one rather than a social one. If the object of human endeavors is to improve the quality of life of all concerned, it should be obvious that war spreads misery and therefore should be eliminated. The only reason that war brings technological advances is that people are working together to defeat a common enemy rather than arguing amongst each other. If during peace people were to live in true harmony, war’s advantages would pale in comparison to peace’s advantages.

I think the more difficult question really is the first one: can it be eliminated? I honestly must say that I do not know. It would require a fundamental shift in people’s view of the world and their place in it, and I can’t see that happening any time soon. People are far too closed minded and set in their ways; too often they are unwilling to compromise and unable to think for themselves. Without those minimal fundamental changes, I think war is unfortunately inevitable.

(This does not mean that we shouldn’t try to prevent wars, nor does it mean we shouldn’t fight them when necessary. Instead, IMHO, I think war should be a last resort, not a first response to any aggression.)

9

War could be eliminated, but not with the current diversified levels of international education, technology, religion, traditional views and population.

The average lowly citizen is not often eager to go to war until the local government pumps him up against the ‘enemy’ of choice. Squabbles usually start because of someone in power deciding that some else’s views suck, or insulted them, or they want their land, resources, excetra.

Then they encourage or force people under their control to assemble and fight for them.

10

Can glaciers ever be eliminated?

11

Wars, historically, are fought over things like ‘water rights’, or, rather, vital necessities of life, like food growing land, water supplies, the abundance of game and so on. That’s changed to almost anything any particular government decides, from religion to economic gain, to the eradication of debt to simply a grudge against a different society.

Population density along with major business interests contribute heavily to the formula. It has not been unknown the past for major companies to ‘encourage’ an act of war knowing that they will be able to sell goods to both warring factions. (American companies, prior to the US getting attacked, happily sold war materials to Japan, Germany and England in the initial years of WW2. So did many other ‘neutral’ nations.)

In my opinion, War will not decrease until we manage to find a new frontier to disperse cheaply and easily, our massive populations, in such as planetary colonization. It has been proven that the higher the populations crowd, the worse they get along.

Humans probably should live at least an acre apart from each other. Maybe even further.

War, on the opposite hand, is vital for technology. Technology was required by Cave people to bring down food and then each other. The benefits we have from war are virtually uncountable. Consider the state of the Earth population if England, Spain, France and the Middle East had not squabbled with everyone.

Out of their wars came betters ships, better metalsmithy, better fine armoring technology, the use of gunpowder, medical advances, better navigation, better preservation of food, and world exploration. All of that went into peace time technology. Navigation developed better clocks which turned into international date lines, and helped develop mechanical equipment which turned into computers which got us into space and developed better medical techniques and a better life style.

Had a lot of these squabbles not taken place, we might be living like the Amish, but with rudimentary cars, no space craft, no laser surgery, no lap tops, and so on. Radar, developed for war, has given us radar ranges, deep sea exploration equipment, the ability to look through dense clouds on other worlds, and safe navigation for aircraft and ships.

We might not have gotten into space for another 1000 years. Look at the time span from the Egyptians starting to build pyramids to the English developing black powder weapons and ships able to go around the world. It’s enormous in comparison to the technological discoveries rapidly changing of today.

12

“War, on the opposite hand, is vital for technology.”

Some areas of technology derived their rapid improvement from war or preparation for war. Others didn’t. Electric generation and supply, steam engines, railways, and elevators are a bunch of influential technologies that I can think of off the top of my head that didn’t derive their growth and improvement from war.

13

However, space craft, computers, antibiotics, various forms of high explosives and construction techniques, did.

The English put together the very first real computer during WW2! Construction explosives, very powerful and much safer than dynamight, came from war. The first antibiotic, penicillin, came from war. The first treaded vehicle came from war. Nuclear energy came from war. Motor cycles were improved tremendously for used in war. The VW came from war. Silicone plastics came from war developments. Advanced emergency room techniques came from war. Advanced avionic design came from war.

Exploration of under the North Pole, low temperature research, exploration of the Arctic, development of better insulation, and even advanced deep sea techniques came from war.

Assuredly, much technological innovations were created during peace time, but slowly. Compare the advancement time from 200 years ago to currently. People resisted the original automobile for a time, but it led to mass production and alternative fuel research and development. War pushed the tire technology from real rubber mixed with gunpowder to synthetics which became more durable.

The human species, being somewhat volatile, basically self oriented, and possessing the aggressive hunter gene, has a tendency to enjoy war. Someone always wants what someone else has and is willing to get others to fight for them to get it. Look at the gangster era of the early 1900s, and the splintered gangs of today. One might also observe that the predominance of wars are initiated by men, who have an over abundance of aggressive testosterone and a psychotic desire for immense power.

14

“One might also observe that the predominance of wars are initiated by men, who have an over abundance of aggressive testosterone”

If someone claims or alleges that women’s behavior and decisions unrelated to sex are affected by hormones, their statement is (rightly) condemned as misogynistic. But it seems to be OK to say that men’s behavior and decisions are the results of hormones. For anyone who thinks that’s fair, for every situation where a man’s stupid or unacceptable behavior is chalked up to “testosterone poisoning” or some similar condescending phrase (with a hearty laugh track in the background if its a television show), imagine your reaction if someone criticized a woman’s decision as being the result of “estrogen poisoning.” :rolleyes:

“men, who have … a psychotic desire for immense power.”

Most men (and women) don’t have a “psychotic” drive towards anything. And there are certainly examples of women with unhealthy desires for power, now and in history.

15

One might also observe that women are very rarely in a position to initiate wars; a fortiori, wars are more often initiated by men, regardless of the quantity their testosterone or psychoses.