As with any subject, the first Promethean question about war must concern its desirability or undesirability in terms of the advancement of life. War as currently and historically practiced we can readily recognize as almost wholly undesirable based on its effects, not only its inhibition of personal and shared human advancement, but also its imperiling of survival itself. The many reasons why are worth elaboration, and there are many different ways of proving the point, although all descriptions for the horrible detriments of warfare necessarily fall short. Nonetheless the inevitable conclusion becomes manifest using any of a number of reliable approaches to it, and so we must proceed accordingly from the idea that to those who fight for life, war deserves abomination. Our Promethean approach must involve the amelioration in human terms of the effects of war, or its elimination.

The first feeling of opposition to warfare probably began as soon as war became truly and consistently dangerous to warriors. Perhaps the first far-seeing ancient to name “the horrors of war” lived in our obscured, now theoretical prehistoric past described by anthropologists, when most of humanity exceeded merely hazardous "pre-military" warfare.

That is, usual human fighting practices mutated from forms of combat which still bowed to individual "primitive" instincts — both the auxiliary reluctance to kill humans perceptibly akin to oneself, and the even more primal wiring for self-preservation. We see similar instinctual combat in the behavior of fighting animals: averse to the gross and brutal resort of killing, posturing and scrapping to settle feuds, preferring to submit and yield territory rather than die. We would not recognize pre-military war as the concerted endeavor-in-itself we know as warfare, for it instead probably took the form of half-ceremonial battles for adjudication of group disagreements between competing minor tribes, as some remnant tribes have still pursued in recent, historical times. Rarely deadly, pre-military engagements were subjugated to other needs, not purposes unto themselves. They were likely fought by the original militias, hunters dabbling as warriors, not by martial specialists, soldiers.

From these roots human fighting practices mutated to engage in post-instinctual combat which no longer did follow but bent instinct, "military" warfare, war by militaries in which even self-preservation was expected to yield to the culturally-imprinted needs and aims of a military and that military's valued form of warfare. Slowly and inconsistently dispensing with pre-military habits and niceties, militant people moved on to the specialized, organized business of dealing death to “the enemy” according to the demands of a military ethic, such as entered a new era in Europe with the ancient Greek phalanx of hoplites, but which first began more anciently, along with the first territorial-political states concurrent with the domestication of agricultural crops in the Mideast and then India and China. Eventually any social group resistant to any stage of this change would have felt pressure to adapt in order to resist invasion and exploitation by those who embraced becoming military warriors. [1] Gradually and in fits and starts, that first military revolution of war would have followed from more complex military invention [2], local cultural cohesion, the productivity of specialized occupations (division of labor) accelerating around population concentrations — and most of all, from the first hierarchical organizations which might have resembled government.

So, in a way the type of warfare we still know today in the most inclusive sense, political in motivation, social in mentality, territorial in psychology, governmental in organization, and dangerous in effect, has been with us as long as the parallel sort of civilization we still know today (broadly speaking, and disregarding variations in the degree of bureaucratization, ethnic context, etc.). And with that type of warfare, has come a limited but undeniable ancient tradition of reaction against war. Perhaps this mainly involved war mourning, exemplified by elegies, lamentations or dirges, which need not object as much as despair. To generalize, the ancients were enormously conscious of the sorrow which they found in the death of young soldiers and other casualties of war (especially women and children), despite the strong ancient tradition celebrating glory. But it appears the reactions also included isolated protests, such as performing Aristophanes' antiwar comedic plays The Acharnians, Peace, and Lysistrata, but more often, at least a skepticism based on knowing the early horrors of war (e.g. the graphic violence and sacrifices depicted in Virgil's Aeneid in order to make Rome possible), even if it did not manifest as principled opposition to a war, or against the practice of war in general.

Still, millennia were required before antiwar movements became widespread and really influential — during the past century. More accurately understanding the effects of war, thanks to the accelerated development of a number of studies such as statistics, social science, economics, and history, may have made the development of greater antiwar sentiments almost inevitable in the modern era. And, political and social movements oriented around these modern sciences embraced often limited explanations for warfare based on supposedly deducted scientistic doctrines, further advertised antiwar ideas and capitalized upon opportunities to exploit antiwar sentiments to further their causes. Marxism-Leninism held that expansionist warfare followed from capitalism as a fight over markets (an insufficient and erroneous theory with precedents in writings of imperial advocates [4]), and most famously Russian communists successfully used opposition to the suffering of the eastern front of WWI as a springboard to power.

Conversely an economic support for antiwar ideas and behavior also arose with the industrial age, once peaceful business and trade began to promise more than before to those young men who compared profit to risk. Instead of a poor farmer's son or disadvantaged young aristocrat leaving home to profit from wages or plunder (and to seek adventure, maybe also making a reputation, or gaining the prestige and pension of rank), a choice typical in Europe from the time of the Christian crusades through the 18th century regiments, many prospective soldiers from the age of industrial capital economies could expect more and safer opportunity in civilian life. Volunteering for war, and certainly being drafted unwillingly, became somewhat less enticing to lower-income youth for this reason; however the modern phenomenon of nationalism also arose and often functioned as a counter, motivating enlistment for patriotic reasons rather than personal ones. (In Europe that answer to self-interest began in France after the Revolution, first under the Jacobins when France's whirlwind democracy found itself surrounded by enemies and desirous of converting them by force, and then under Napoleon. But the argument could be made that the American Revolution had truly set the precedent, and inspired the later exploitation of ideology for mass recruitment in France and elsewhere.)

But perhaps more influential or at least more generative than any of these other antiwar engines, the nineteenth and particularly twentieth centuries have also seen both dynamic invention and the human cost of invention as applied to war. The cause of the increasingly devastating and dehumanizing price paid for war has ostensibly been that wars have been fought with progressively more technological capability. Thus in the twentieth-century, growing antiwar movements have very often formed around a negative reaction to specific weaponry, and even modern technology and the scientific discoveries which made it possible. Anti-nuclear movements, whether against nuclear weapons or nuclear power, have been especially salient in this, as understandably follows from a technology so powerful. But for some, even the fact that efficient statistical technology was employed in WWII genocide imparts a taint to it. This anti-technology reaction is a trend that far exceeds any one instance.

Beginning with the First World War (also once known as “the war to end all wars” and “The Great War”) warfare became a practice so dangerous that an entire generation of soldiers could be decimated by advanced artillery, machine guns, poison gas and other by-products of innovations otherwise innocuous. It became conceivable that civilian populations could be reduced substantially in extended conflicts, especially once Second World War era aerial bombardment followed, sometimes nearly erasing the line between active soldier and civilian non-combatant. Then the terror inspired by all of these weapons was overshadowed by the implications of atomic weapons. Seen as the ultimate destructive weapon in existence, atomic bombs did change the character of war, toward limitation — but perhaps even more markedly, the prospect of atomic war solidified anti-war sentiments, as befits a technology able to extinguish all human life when employed in total war-fighting (and which nearly did enable the desolation of the earth according to one prevalent doctrine in the Pentagon, that of first-strike).

When the antiwar impulse grew from those barren Flanders fields ripped and harrowed by new weapons, one diverting model above all began to lead those bearers of antiwar banners not already given to serving a political end above antiwar interests toward another dead end of unfocused thinking and ineffectual effort. They have very often inextricably identified the aspects of warfare they detested with modern technologies, whether they have sought safety and morality in the practice of war by restricting application of specific technology, or with pacifism admitting no necessary wars even against aggression, have sought to prematurely end any and all warfare (due to somewhat presentist bias based only on the sort of war they have known, understandably blinded by the pointlessness of wars like Vietnam or WWI for examples). Since the trenches of WWI and especially in the last half-century (the atomic age), the psychology toward military technology has vastly changed, toward encompassing wariness or outrage as well as the more usual fascination or celebration. Many support attempts to ban or limit certain weapons in an effort to improve war, such as ill-defined "weapons of mass destruction" or weapons seen as unduly cruel. Today, even the use of (low technology) land mines receives major attention. Most drastically and perversely, the advocates of "gun control" seek to pacify fellow citizens on the basis of fearing and hating a combat technology itself — which certainly looks like a transmutation of the antiwar anti-technology zeitgeist with its objection, on behalf of the personal sphere, against what weapons used for the sake of authority do to persons, into an affirmation of a combat technology monopoly for authority transgressing against the personal sphere, and in a context removed from organized warfare.

But the whole anti-technology premise is quite muddled. What is really at issue, and deservedly, is the practice of war itself — especially unnecessary war, and war which destroys lives and ruins them uncontrollably or to a fearful degree. It is this character of modern era war which has really provided the substance to inspire the strong 20th century anti-war response (though often via misidentification of technical cause): the insufficient reasons for fighting, the frequency and scale of fighting, the potential violence and carnage of the battlefield, and certainly the intrusion of the battlefield, and preparations for the battlefield, into civil life.

And contrary to dogma both pro-military and anti-military, technology is not directly responsible for the character of war, and controlling it can fix nothing fundamental. Aside from the more compelling reason I will discuss next, we may also know this because in fact overwhelming evidence supports the supposition that relatively mundane weapons have caused and will continue to cause most of the suffering, casualties, and deaths in warfare. Most combat deaths and injuries in modern warfare have come from artillery shells. The basic principle of artillery is certainly not a new innovation, despite its gradual improvement. The same is true of small arms, the secondary killer. In fact, the carnage in lower-technology wars has on occasion compared unfavorably to higher-technology wars, if only because more potent technology may become decisive by being a more efficient killer (as long as the war is asymmetric, unlike WWI). Also, history proves that genocidal wars can be carried out with substandard weapons in modern times. [5] The same was certainly possible with pre-firearm weapons in prior times. [6] Finally, supposed "weapons of mass destruction," with the exception of atomic weapons, have generally presented less of a danger than "conventional" weapons to combat troops, and contributed less to those dangers blurring the line between civilian and combatant. Some of the most deadly bombing runs against Japan employed nothing more sophisticated than oil-soaked rags for firebombs; with these hundreds of thousands were burned to death. More died by fire in one night in Tokyo (about 0.1 million) than from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings combined.

But more on point, those involved in the anti-war movements have often confused the importance of weapons with the importance of the thoughts of the people who deploy them. In those beliefs of individual persons we will find the crux of the matter, and the authentic means of change. Technical means are inevitably tangential and superficial with regards to the deeper issue of conceptions. The psychology and various mindsets consigned to drafting technologies as killing tools rather than helpful or salutary tools must be addressed instead of the tool itself, with the same sense of perspective that realizes that we need only worry about a knife in the hands of a mugger, not a cook. Otherwise antiwar efforts can only expect a similar level of success as we might expect from a movement seeking to end knifings by banning knives. Furthermore, political interests (one subset of the thoughts of people who war) must be subordinated to the greater, more important interest of ending or ameliorating war, not the other way around. And once this becomes a given rather than a pretense, those opponents of war with political biases, loyalties and interests must ask themselves fearlessly to hold up their ideology to the light, asking: does this or could this comprise part of the psychological pattern of conflict I seek to erase? — and: do politics in general enable and contribute to conflict?

Antiwar movements have made mistakes, if they really want to curb war's effects on human beings. Many opponents of war have paid more attention to technology than personal aspects. Others have paid more attention to sociopolitical aspects than personal and individual. Focusing on opposition, antiwar opponents have typically not considered the importance of war in some sense as a necessary practice, or have neglected the possibility that mastering war might end war, through adopting and promoting individualism in the military sphere. Antiwar thinking has rarely focused on understanding either root causes of war, or causes of war's character; premature conclusions made to address these questions have all too often been superficial to philosophical basis, which has led to superficial activism (such as moralistic attempts to defend the principle of international law from transgression, by Noam Chomsky et al.).

We will not see the end of war shortly. The reason: basic ideas too many accept as self-evident. The existence of war as we know it depends on collective division organized under political powers supported by the principle of force (most commonly, under government). This system is certainly not about to disappear from the earth soon, given that today, few people think to question it.

But the character of war might also be improved in the meantime, and war-making might become limited to serving really necessitated causes — in short, conflicts to defend actual individual people (and not their notions of collective allegiance) — if we identify the roots beneath wars and beneath the character of wars more clearly, roots grounded in the culture born out of ideas.

War reflects culture, culture reflects war — really, culture and war are integrated in a pattern of beliefs. Thus if beliefs can change, war might be changed too. If war could evolve from pre-military hazard to military holocaust because ideas about desirable means and ends changed, and thus culture changed, then there seems no reason why another revolution is not possible, a fundamental evolution which abandons modern military warfare as we know it, preserving what must be preserved such as some professional specialization to match the profound complexity of human culture, and leaving behind what we no longer need or desire, such as everything which can make maelstroms. And, if war in its undesirable forms is within the accessible purview of ideas not immutable genetics, it might actually be ended. The reasons people fight or have to fight, and how they fight, are closely linked internally within us, in the domain of beliefs where ideas rule.

The unifying central thrust then of this series Fighting Future War is that its twin themes of fighting war and fighting against war in fact comprise one Promethean enterprise: an evolution of beliefs to simultaneously improve and surpass war, calling upon ourselves to fight only as demanded by the necessities of life, to fight only to advance the cause of life, and to seek methodology that values life (only including but not limited to reconsidering technology employed) — and otherwise to cease employing war to solve problems, for war is itself a mortal problem. Contrary to most real expectations of those in the military establishments of the world, or most expectations of their antiwar adversaries, the path of war can become a path of graduation transcending its limits and dangers, but only by evolving the path, not simply abandoning it, nor simply following it.

Footnotes:

1. A forcible conversion to military war happened to numerous of the more prosperous civilized populations during the second millennium BC, when Old Kingdom Egypt, Sumer, the Indus valley, and other fertile cradles of civilization were captured by skilled charioteers of poorer pastoral neighbors. For example, until they were forced to develop more professional militaries including chariots of their own, and crown warrior-pharaohs as generals to throw out the victorious Hyksos, Old Kingdom Egyptians still employed remarkably indeliberate soldiers and mostly ceremonial combat - despite having one of the most highly specialized, technically-advanced, centralized, disciplined and bureaucratized cultures in the world at the time. Egyptian military hierarchy seems to have stayed well behind other social hierarchy such as the administration of inundated agriculture, and clubs seem to have remained a principle weapon despite having the means to utilize deadlier weapons — all probably because Egyptians were sensible enough to not want war to become deadlier, until they were made to compete with practiced, efficiently-killing warriors. [back]

2. However, even the most primitive weapons such as clubs can be used as both pre-military/hazardous and military/deadly weapons. Weapons like simple bows, clubs, and hunting spears have often been the transition weapons used during the cusp between essentially pre-military war and essentially military war, as happened with clubs in the case of Easter Island; see An Easter Parable. [back]

3. The envisioned defensive aim of military warfare may be collective-preservation and perpetuation (the envisioned offensive aim being collective-empowering and enlargement), but the inescapable security dilemma means that people subjugating themselves to any military-fielding social collective risk struggle against significant rivals. This combined with the high attrition, destruction or cultural dissipation possible in any military war-fighting makes for wars capable of destroying collectives, including both cultures and social groups, whether by killing those subscribing to them or by altering their defining beliefs. Those engaging in military war intend to protect the social collectives to which they direct their loyalty and sense of belonging, but they can and often have destroyed the collective by preparing or pursuing war, with its unintentional tendencies to wreak havoc among the individuals composing a collective. [back]

4. This and any exclusively economic explanation of origins is insufficient if only because of the countless historical examples of ideological or religious conflict even contra financial interests, including several expansionist wars instigated by communist regimes. It is erroneous because it depends on the refuted notion of capital surpluses (declines in the rate of profit) in advanced economies requiring colonies to create new investment opportunities, a fiction refuted by economic experience that both shows a tendency toward expanding opportunities for profitable investment over time and exposes colonies as economic liabilities for both colonized and colonizer peoples, except for select monopoly interests. The surplus theory later adopted by Lenin was promoted originally to prove the supposed necessity of empire by 19th century British Empire advocates including John Stuart Mill, and later by American imperialists around the turn of the 20th century. [back]

5. E.g., Rwanda (including machetes), and the Cambodian civil war, and the Biafran War, in which the worst weapon was blockade with the consequence of famine — in fact blocking the hungry from trading has long been, and still remains a recurring candidate for the worst weapon of war, as recently with sanctions leveled against all people living in Iraq which has killed more than in Biafra and by all accounts far more than conventional weapons in the recent Iraq wars. [back]

6. E.g. the recently uncovered near-eradication of Australian aboriginal settlers in the prehistoric new world by Asiatic invaders (whose distant descendents are now called "Native Americans"), the Mongol invasions which are said to have destroyed entire great cities, and the suicidal internecine war of Easter Island. [back]

Selected Sources, Additional Reading and Inspirations

(Listed in rough order of relevance and recommendation for this Part, with the most highly recommended or important sources and inspirations for this series listed in bold.)

A History of Warfare by John Keegan

Antiwar.com

selected articles in The Peace Archive at lewrockwell.com

CounterPunch

Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War by S.L.A. Marshall

The Art of War in the Western World by Archer Jones

Combat Effectiveness: Cohesion, Stress, and the Volunteer Military by Sam Sarkesian

Ludwig von Mises Institute e.g. articles by Thomas DiLorenzo

The First World War by John Keegan

The Second World War by John Keegan

FirstWorldWar.com

The Poems of Wilfred Owen edited by Jon Stallworthy

Grave of the Fireflies (film) directed by Isao Takahata

Napoleon Bonaparte: A Life by Alan Schom

The Pentomic Era: The U.S. Army between Korea and Vietnam by A.J. Bacevich

How To Make War by James F. Dunnigan

Times Concise Atlas of World History edited by Geoffrey Barraclough

On Killing by Dave Grossman

Letter From Israel columns by Ran HaCohen

The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800 by Geoffrey Parker

On War (Vom Kriege) by Carl von Clausewitz translated by Peter Paret

War Poems edited by John Hollander

books by Friedrich Nietzsche

Paths of Glory (film) directed by Stanley Kubrick

The Face of Battle by John Keegan

Knight's Cross: A Life of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel by David Fraser

Sun-Tzu's The Art of War translated by Roger T. Ames

Vergil's Aeneid edited by Clyde Pharr (or translated by Robert Fitzgerald)

Americans Against Bombing

Guerrilla News Network

The History and Culture of Ancient Western Asia and Egypt by A. Bernard Knapp

excerpt from The History of the World Conqueror by Juvainî collected in The Islamic World edited by William H. McNeill and Marilyn Robinson Waldman

The Chronological Atlas of World War Two by Charles Messenger

Harper Collins Atlas of the Second World War

Great Battlefields of the World by John MacDonald

Great Battlefields of the Civil War by John MacDonald

Jane's Information Group

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