Ah well since no one else wants to take this up, I’ll break a lance with you.
In the 19th century, as I said above, with set piece battles, war was a determinator of conflicts between states.
That is not the case today. Wars do not resolve issues - nowadays they tend to fester on. Cyprus is an example of a war which got nowhere because of international intervention. Kosovo has no clear sign of the acceptance of the NATO victory by the losers, and NATO will probably maintain it as a protectorate. The Gulf War did not eliminate the menace of Saddam. Somalia and Rwanda become so chaotic that third party intervention was at that third party’s peril, and are still not decisively resolved.
Some theorists think that there has been no change - that the Western set piece battles with the conclusion accepted by the loser is a Western concept originating from hoplite battles between Greek city-states. The “modern form” of warfare is simply non-Western.
Well, there’s a certain irony to the fact that “War” was a hit for Edwin Starr and the E Street Band. Because Starr, like Clarence Clemons, is an African American. And the E Street Band’s Max Weinberg is Jewish.
What is war “good for”? Well, it’s good for freeing slaves and rescuing Jews from concentration camps, among other things. Without a strong U.S. Army, ready to wage war on its enemies, Edwin Starr and Clarence Clemons would be picking cotton on a Confederate plantation, and Max Weinberg’s family would be lampshades.
Other things such as checking a particularly nasty form of Japanese imperialism.
War is a very dirty business and it’s quite understandable that a lot of folks would rather have nothing to do with it. But as has already been pointed out, it is sometimes better than the alternative.
Erm…this computer device thing that I’m typing on and you’re using to reading this, I’m sure its genesis had something to do with war. Ultra? Alan Turing? Colossus? Hmmm…Without a war, would Turing been anything more than an obscure academic with great ideas but without the means to turn them into something practical? And would personal computers exist today? And would the Straight Dope Message Board be viable without PCs? Gasp!
War! Huh! What is it good for?
Lemme hear you say…Ess Dee Emm Bee!
Yes, there is that. War, and the threat of war, has been driving technological innovation for thousands of years. So many discoveries intended to help us destroy our enemies have found practical applications in the domestic sector, generally improving quality of life.
