Total War VS Civilized Warfare

Great Debates
1

Until relatively recently, war was considered a game, to be engaged in by gentlemen and fought for what was seen as honour or glory. The gentlemen would round up the peasants on their side, the opposing gentlemen would do likewise, and they’d line them up neatly on a battlefield and wait for the trumpets to sound before setting them loose on each other.

There were exceptions, of course, where battles were fought out of religious hatred and no quarter was asked or given, but it wasn’t until Napoleon that the concept of total war was widespread.

In the East, the ne plus ultra of warfare has traditionally been Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War,” which is about subtlety and the accomplishment of victory before the battle has even begun. In the West, however, the magnum opus of warfare is Clausewitz’s “On War,” a book which describes Napoleon’s philosophy of total war.

When total war is waged, it is not treated as a game or a pastime, nor is war about honour or glory. The philosophy behind total war is that war is ugly and brutal, and that it must be waged for the sole purpose of victory. There is no horror too great, no betrayal too dishonest, no violence too brutal if it will bring victory swifter and surer. It is this philosophy of total war, war without arbitrary rules, which has brought power and world domination to the Amerikan Empire.

My question is this: Has the philosophy of total war been worth it? We’ve seen an escalation of terror on all sides. The United States used nuclear weapons on civilian targets and trained torturers and death squads on an assembly line at the School of the Americas at Fort Bragg. In return, the US has seen an escalation of savagery from its enemies, culminating in the destruction of the US symbol of capitalist hegemony, the World Trade Centres.

Now the US has concentration camps and “pre-emptive imprisonment” without trial, while its enemies televise beheadings of aid workers and contractors. Torture, warrantless wiretapping, Homeland Gestapo, suicide bombings, child terrorists. they are all the result of the philosophy of “total war.” Yet is the alternative of polite murder and the systematic feeding of young men into a neatly-maintained meat grinder of ordered, by-the-rules warfare any better?

2

Warfare has never been “civilised” outside the mind of some romantics. Rome v carthage was total war, Rome v Persia, Byzantines v Arabs, Mongols all over the world, the Egyptians v Nubians and later the Hittites and Babylonians and Assyrians etc were vicious total wars.

3

From the middle ages on (in Europe), warfare became a highly stylized activity where nobles competed with each other using the lives of their chattel. As I said, there were certainly exceptions, but the idea of war with rules and codes of behaviour hung on until Napoleon, and vestiges of it remained until the First World War.

4

You’re going to have to make a case for this because from where I’m sitting war has always been a serious business. Honor and glory could be earned, yes, but this was predicated on the war bringing tangible benefits in the form of economic or political power.

I don’t think Napoleon’s army was in the habit of not accepting the surrender of enemy troops. It just doesn’t make sense.

Total war is a term that was invented in early 20th century but that doesn’t mean it was never practiced. During the Peloponnesian War you had civilians and even industry targeted.

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It is this philosophy of total war, war without arbitrary rules, which has brought power and world domination to the Amerikan Empire.
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For future reference there is no “k” in America. Read a little Seneca and see what he has to say about appearances while attempting to convince others that your argument is sound.

You’re the anarchist. You tell me.

5

Nope.

The idea of civilized warfare was only created around 80 - 110 years before Napoleon. It was the anomaly in history (and ignored every bit as much in the breach as the observance), so claims that it was, somehow, reversed by Napoleon are nonsense.

The only reason that earlier societies did not rain bombs from the sky was the lack of air transportation to do it.
Terrorism has been around as long as societies in which one group was vastly superior to another and television cameras merely changed the manner of disseminating the message.

(And misspelling “American” is simply a way of riling up other posters to no purpose beyond trolling, so I would not suggest that you continue with that or similar affectations.)

6

Highly stylized? Tactics and technology changed constantly. What applied to the 8th century probably didn’t apply to the 13th.
Odesio

7

As I recall, Genghis Khan or one of his successors had an idea that the Mongols never put into practice. Southern China was ideal land for raising horses. Why not depopulate it of humans and turn it into a massive horse pasture?

It wasn’t humanitarianism that stopped the plan, it was the logistics: it was simply too complicated to kill off a few million people to achieve the goal. However, the Mongols thought nothing of killing everyone in a resisting city, saving only a few artisans to produce marvels for the Khan.

And they weren’t alone. It was common practice among certain ancient conquerors to tell a city, “surrender now, and we won’t kill every single one of the hundred-thousand-plus people living inside your walls.”

Have you not studied the incredible atrocities committed by Romans? What about by Aztecs, who literally would murder ten thousand people in massive sacrifices on a single day?

Sun Tzu talked about how to win a war, not how to win a war ethically. The rules in place weren’t rules, they were strategies.

8

The idea that war it was a gentleman’s sport is so devoid of any historical reality that it cannot be taken seriously.

9

Our modern idea of what people used to think of as “gentlemenly” is heavily influenced by Victorian propaganda. And don’t think for a minute that Victorian “gentlemen” were particularly gentlemenly either. How do you think they managed to conquer 90% of the rest of the globe?

Victorian gentlemen could afford to be effete fops. But medieval aristocrats couldn’t. The were professional fighters, who trained their entire life to kill other human beings. They didn’t conscript the peasants to fight each other, on the contrary peasants were supposed to work. Lands and peasants to work those lands were the prizes over which the aristocracy fought. And if the peasants had other ideas, well, what do you think the outcome will be of a fight between a guy who has spent his entire life digging a living out of the dirt, and another guy who has spent his entire life training to kill? And one guy has a sharpened stick to fight with, and the other guy has a sword, armor, and a horse?

10

Do you really believe that the U.S. has engaged in total war in Iraq and Afghanistan? If America had practiced total war in Iraq, Baghdad would have been a smoking rubble long ago. The Iraq war was falsely sold and badly handled. It was arguably an evil act. I believe it’s hyperbole to call it total war.

11

Some of you folks are missing the point. Whether or not it’s historically accurate, what I’m asking is whether or not you believe war without boundaries, rules, or guidelines is, in the long run, a good or bad thing.

Yes, Odesio, I’m an anarchist. I don’t hunt down and assassinate police and landlords – although there’s a tradition for doing so. The reason for this is the State has some lines it generally does not cross. I don’t need to fear being assassinated in the night, and when I am imprisoned, I still have access to legal remedies… so far. We have agreed as a society up until this point that we will restrain our activities within certain boundaries, even when we are (depending on our sides) struggling for revolution or trying to prevent changes to the status quo. In other words, I don’t assassinate landlords, and in exchange the police don’t murder me in my sleep. Since both sides seem more or less content with this state of affairs (with exceptions on both sides, of course), it seems to argue that warfare with rules might be a viable option.

On the other hand, Clausewitz’s “On War” argues that total war is actually the kindest cut. By fighting with no boundaries and no lines until one side or the other is entirely eradicated, it makes the conflict shorter and less likely to damage crucial infrastructure. And it puts an end to unhappiness on both sides, one way or the other.

So do you believe we, as a culture, should be concerned about atrocities such as torture and concentration camps, internment and bio-warfare, or should everyone bring their full weight and might to the table, and to the ultimate victor goes the spoils?

12

Clausewitz also did not think “Total War” (a word he actually never used) would work in practice, only theory. The real world dictates other methods.

I think it’s actually backwards; war has begun to have rules that were followed only recently (if not followed, then punishment would result). Starting with the Lieber code during the US Civil war (a collection of the written customs of war), which in it’s current form is the Hague Convention treaty of 1899. These codes/laws of war dictate how a war can be fought, legally. There are also the Geneva Conventions which dictate treatment of non-fighters. There is also the UN idea of collective self-defense. All these aim to limit arbitrary and lawless wars.

13

Then you might consider, in future threads, not distracting from your own point by posting more historical errors than actual discussion point. If your discussion may be summed in 25 words or fewer and you post 500 words, 480 of them addressing a separate issue–and rife with errors–then you are probably going to mislead your audience into misunderastanding your question.

14

It was not “rife with errors.” I simply have no desire to argue that particular point, as it wasn’t what I was interested in soliciting opinion about. I don’t believe providing background and context for a question requires public scolding, especially since I have been scolded for quite the opposite. A more cynical man might believe I am being held in contempt for my political affiliations and occupation and can literally say or do no right, but fortunately I hold a much more generous view of human nature.

15

If war is ever less than total, if the belligerents ever mutually refrain from some brutality they might otherwise have perpetrated, it’s usually been because the two sides were Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum: essentially identical, and able to agree that they shouldn’t let their competition endanger the underlying basis of the system they both subscribe to. In such cases, war is basically a duel. The more incompatable the two sides’ systems are, the more brutal and total war tends to be, because for both sides the consequences of losing become more total: the extinction of the system that they adhere to.

A good fictional example can be found in 1984: despite the fact that all three sides are ultra-totalitarian, they limit their competition to Vietnam-style wars in Africa, the Middle East and south Asia, because the three powers are mirror images of each other and total war would mean the destruction of their power.

16

Here is a link to the actual work (or a translation thereof). Please cut and paste the part where Clausewitz says that the purpose of war is always to entirely eradicate the other side. Because I can’t find it.

He does say, on the other hand, that the purpose of war is to break the enemy’s will to resist, but that is hardly the same thing.

The rest of your posts are a little confusing. You claim that America built an empire thru the use of total war, but later admit that you are not particularly concerned with whether or not this claim is historically accurate.

So, apparently you are asking if America should start engaging in total war. The answer to that is simple - no, I see no advantage gained and some lost.

If I am mistaken and you are still claiming that America is engaging in total war, then I will have to ask for a cite. Why, for instance, is Baghdad or Kabul still standing? Why, in the first Gulf War, did we not simply shoot all the Iraqi troops instead of accepting their surrender?

Likewise for Germany, Japan, Panama, Grenada, etc.

Regards,
Shodan

17

OK, brief history of war first, because there seems to be a massive argument over it.

War throughout most of history was as brutal as the commanders made it. While is still certainly true in many instances, most war today has considerable other issues which may balance a commander’s whim (and these other issues may tend towards brutalism or kindness). If they wanted the land, they killed or drove off the inhabitants. If they wanted conquest, they didn’t. If they wanted to riad, they just took things and ran off.

In Europe, this started to change in the Middle Ages. The Church could rarely stop fighting, but it did (and we are talking about centuries-long change) gradually create the idea of “the noncombatant”. This started out as members of the cloth, but got extended to anyone working for a monastery, then anyone on land owned by a monastery or whatnot, and then to peasants generally. It was a never a perfect barrier, but people did bother the peasants much less. Over time, this has strengthened to the point where we argue over whether making somebody’s captured soldiers pose naked for our women’s amusement is kosher or not. :smiley:

Still, there was always a problem. While Napoleonic warfare did not really descend into Total war, there was a definite need to transport huge armies by foraging (which could result in mass starvation for the peasantry). It was not the start, but a step, of the recognition that the productive economy was now the cornerstone of the military.

Certain kinds of wars were much more Total than others. The Civil War was eventually resolved because neither side could really win without destroying that economy. WW1 and 2 were largely won because of economic destruction - the enemy simply was unable to match the manpower of the Russians or the firepower of the Americans and British.

18

Not rife with errors? Yeah, rife is a pretty good word for the errors in the OP. Don’t want to argue them? Then don’t post them as the purported basis of the discussion.
Why should “scolding” enter into a discussion, at all?
I am not sure about anyone holding you in contempt. I am not (yet) holding you in contempt; I don’t even know what your political affiliation is. (It seems to be on the margins of the political spectrum, but we have any number of posters whose views are far from mainstream.) I just find poorly articulated OPs tedious because they lead to disjointed debates that go on interminably for no good reason.

And here you are, arguing the minutiae around your position, (whatever that might be), without actually engaging your own debate. ::: shrug :::

19

The level of “totality” of a war depends on the war aims of the parties.

If your war aim is to add a city to your empire, it doesn’t make sense to try to destroy the city and kill everyone in it, because then you’ve destroyed the prize you went to war to claim. And if you plan on governing the city afterwards, you have to convince the population that it’s better for them to knuckle under and not make trouble, rather than fight to the death. And one way to do this is to convince the people of the city that life will go on pretty much as usual once you become the ruler of the city. They won’t be treated as animals, but the same as your other subjects.

Or perhaps your war aim is to steal a bunch of the neighboring village’s cattle and bring them to your village. In this case it doesn’t make sense to try to wipe out the enemy village, because they’re not even really your enemy, just people who have something you want to steal.

Or perhaps your war aim is to preserve the independence of your city in the face of a superior invading army. In that case you want to convince the invading enemies that conquering you would be too hard for too little gain. Total war doesn’t make any sense in this context either, because you just want the enemy to go home. You don’t have the capability to wage total war.

20

Okay, I propose that we set your error-ridden OP aside and focus on this point, as this seems to be what you’d like to do.

Of course we should be concerned about atrocities such as torture, concentration camps, etc. Failure to be concerned with such things is a negation of our own society, predicated as it is on a concern for the rights of the individual. Certainly our society has shamefully failed to live up to those concerns in the past and (I believe) in many ways in the present (Guantanamo is Exhibit A), but our struggle to protect rights of the individual defines who we are, and when we fail to protect such rights–when we actively work against them–it is a form of cultural autogenicide.

That said, we need to be careful that we don’t believe that a strict adherence to the Geneva Conventions makes us think that war is acceptable. Indeed, I’d prefer that our culture gets its nose shoved in the horror of war much more often than really happens. I’d prefer that people who engage in war are treated not as awesome heroes, but rather as tragic unhappy figures performing a dangerous and repellent but necessary job, similar to cleaning sewer lines or performing autopsies on bodies with contagious diseases. We need to treat war as far more of a last resort than we currently do.

The idea that total war would be kinder, given modern weaponry, is ridiculous. Total war fought by the US would naturally include nuclear weaponry and chemical weaponry. It would be technologically trivial for us to wipe out nearly every inhabitant of any country we chose in less than an hour. What, other than rules of war, would keep us from doing so?