War

War. There’s been a bit of it about.

Actually, there’s been whole lot less of it about over the last century or so, believe it or not. Conflict on an international scale is arguably at an all-time low. But, unfortunately, those conflicts are producing more deaths, due to an “inexorable intensification of violence”, according to a 2015 survey and report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies – which has the unfortunate acronym IISS.

There’s another organisation that specialises in the study of civil wars. They say that “civil wars are often characterised as more brutal conflicts with a greater number of casualties”. See:

https://ourworldindata.org/civil-wars/

Given that most of the conflicts happening around the world today are largely civil in nature, it follows that plenty of people are still being killed. There may be fewer deaths than, say WWII, but plenty nonetheless, and the great tragedy is that most of them are civilians. And that is so often the case. There’s a table in that venerable repository of knowledge called Wikipedia, (don’t scoff – it’s gaining significant street cred, backed up with plenty of references) that shows the proportion of military to civilian deaths in major conflicts over the last few hundred years. See this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

The table shows that, in WWII, of about 85,000,000 deaths (you read that right), about 25,000,000 were military. That means that 60,000,000 civilians perished! And “perished” means to die in a sudden and/or violent way, i.e. before one’s time. Members of the military can half-expect that sort of an end, but the man/woman/child in the street?

In ancient wars (see Braveheart) a bunch of soldiers would march off to battle another army in a field somewhere, and hack each other to pieces. Hence the term battlefield. But it was army to army – few civilians involved – because the fighting was hand-to-hand, sword and shield stuff. Very little accidental collateral damage when a soldier’s circle of influence has a radius of arm-length + sword length.

The importation from China of the idea of gunpowder changed that. A soldier’s effective range suddenly was far greater, but battles were initially still fought face-to-face in a field. (Until Napoleon, but that’s a whole other topic.) Hand weapons were still inaccurate and limited in range, but artillery was being developed, and suddenly collateral damage came into play, although limited at first.

It doesn’t take much imagination to understand the subsequent developments in accuracy, power, and portability of weapons, and to see where the world is at today. Airborne firepower since WWI has grown exponentially. Explosive technologies likewise. Missile guidance and delivery systems allow over-the horizon and even intercontinental warfare with pinpoint accuracy. And, although it hasn’t been used in anger since 1945, the threat and possibility of a nuclear strike is ever-present.

Pinpoint accuracy in one thing, but coupled with three other factors it becomes disastrous. Firstly, the aforementioned explosive power of the weapon. It’s okay to drop a bomb down the aircon chute of a target building from 300 km away – amazing in fact – but, when the explosive payload is enough to level a small town, there will be casualties among the surrounding population who had no involvement in the issue, and no clue what was about to hit them.

Secondly, that aircon chute is not always where it was envisioned. What intelligence services thought to be the underground headquarters of some local warlord who also happened to be the spiritual and strategic leader of the current enemy-of-the month, sometimes turns out to be a local hospital – built into the side of a hill as the only safe refuge from incessant bombardment.

Thirdly, accuracy is not always spot on. A bomb that misses that aircon chute by 20 metres (not a bad effort from 300km away) lands in the local fish market. Guess the rest.

To go back to the original Meanderings mind map, there are a couple of sub-topics and links worth exploring at this point. One of the major links is Population. During WWII, about 3.5% of participant countries’ population were killed. Clearly that has the hallmark of unSustainability (mind map link), especially as many of those are of productive age. Had that war gone for too much longer, whole national economies would have collapsed simply for lack of labour to produce the wherewithal of war. Sustainability runs also into themes of energy supplies, food production (how much of Europe’s food-producing land was laid waste in WWI?), and just plain money. With 3.5% of the population dead, it doesn’t take long before there are not enough working people left to pay taxes to fund the war. No matter – print more, and deal with the consequences later.

Other points worth considering are:

• is it human nature to fight wars?
• the gender balance (imbalance) involved.

A number of cultures still allow men that have a number of wives. This is allegedly a historical throwback to times when there weren’t enough men left to go around, after they’d marched off the battle and been relieved of their heads. The men who remained were required to breed furiously to keep up the supply of soldiers.

So, why all the fighting?

All animals fight for survival. Human consciousness, though, seems to have shifted the survival instinct up a notch, so that we not only desire to survive, but to dominate. In the animal realm, we don’t see armies of lions moving out of Africa to take over the Asian territory of tigers. Sure, lions will fight each other for the right to pass on their genes – that’s the process that got lions to the top of the heap. The biggest, strongest, smartest lion won, mated with all the lady lions, and the overall quality of the pride took a step forward, ensuring survival. But they left the tigers alone.

That may lead to the argument that it’s a form of biological imperative for humans to fight wars. The lions don’t have our consciousness. They don’t have any idea that Asia exists. They haven’t woken up yet to concepts such as desire, envy, or ego. But home sapiens has, and he’s going to harness those ideas to not only cement his place in his current environment, but to expand into everyone else’s as well. That’s human nature, goes the line.

And that human nature finds expression in a number of guises. Today’s perceived issue is Islamic expansionism as, some say, is decreed in the Qaran. We’ve all heard the non-Muslim agitators quoting selected verses as calls for every Muslim to rise up and conquer the infidel. This is not the forum to debate the validity of such interpretations, however, because that is simply the latest in a long line of world-conquering escapades that have risen, and fallen, throughout history.

Just to touch (very simply) on a few of these expansionist empires, consider these:

Alexander the Great set out at age 20, when he acceded to the throne in 336BCE (Cleopatra’s time) to reach “ends of the world and the Great Outer Sea”, and launched an unprecedented military campaign to do so. His armies marched from Macedonia eastwards through what is now Turkey, Iraq, Iran, to Pakistan, and peeled of south to take in Palestine, all the way to Egypt. The Egyptian seaport of Alexandria is named after him. He was obviously a great leader and military mind, because his empire fell apart through a series of civil wars soon after his death.

Enter, Rome. There are myriad books and movies about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Suffice to say that it made Alexander’s patch look tiny. At its height, Rome controlled all of the land the once belonged to Alexander, plus a northward push into Eurasia, westward beyond Egypt to take in the entire north African Mediterranean coast, all of Mediterranean Europe, plus England. Those pesky Picts stopped Hadrian from going further north still. It’s interesting to note that the empire transformed from a pagan society that threw Christians to the lions, and eventually adopted Christianity as the state religion. The whole thing came gradually unstuck under pressure from, among many other things, immigration from what is now Germany – now there’s an irony. But parts of the empire lasted for centuries and contributed much to the culture, politics, and engineering of the modern world.

Possibly one of the bloodiest conquests in history was that of Genghis Khan. His thirteenth century domination of the bulk of Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe was notable for the near-genocidal killing of local populations. Despite being religiously tolerant on most issues, he forbade circumcision, and halal and kosher food practices among Muslim and Jewish subjects respectively. Genghis Khan is credited with unifying the Silk Road’s political regime, including Muslim and Christian interests with those of East Asia, so some good came out of the exercise. He decreed that, after his death, the empire was to be shared among his sons and grandsons. The expansion rate increased for a while under his sons, but eventually the empire waned as the smaller kingdoms lost their supremacy.

The Ottoman Empire lasted, with plenty of ups and downs, much longer than the others, for about 600 years until its final undoing at the end of the First World War. At its zenith it had expanded from its Constantinople base to take in Mediterranean Africa, the Horn of Africa, much of the Middle East, and southeast Europe. Of course the Turks, as the Sunni Caliphate was known in Europe, had to deal with four European Christian Crusades over a couple of centuries.

Out of all this (and that’s a very, very potted version) comes the question about war being caused by religion. Or is it just power and politics? Or a combination? Of course, Alexander predates both Christianity and Islam. He was taught by Aristotle, one of history’s greatest philosophers and scientists. As we see, the Romans had a major shift in religious outlook over time. Genghis Khan allowed religious freedom, with some restrictions. And the Ottomans ran schools for Christian boys. So it seems that wealth and political power are the main drivers for invasion and domination, not religion per se. While it may, at times, be dressed up as a religious mission, that is probably not the root of the matter.

What are the consequences, on a grand scale? (the quantum of individual human consequences and suffering cannot even be estimated)

Here’s a table that details the world’s major wars, and the death tolls related to each. Some of the numbers are a bit rubbery, of course (not sure how many dead bodies Genghis Khan would have bothered to count, for instance) but it’s pretty mind-boggling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll

By comparison, the Mongol invasions make the Napoleonic Wars look like a walk in the (very cold) park. But even that doesn’t come close to the Conquest of the Americas.

In spite of all that, there are parts of humanity that have gone past the all-conquering phase. They call it enlightenment. It’s the overcoming of “instinct” – a way of seeing the world that doesn’t require conquest, but finds advancement in co-operation and love.

Often I try to imagine what the world be like without war. There would be peace of mind that humanity has probably never experienced, but that’s an almost abstract concept that most people can’t sit still long enough to grasp. So let’s put it in more concrete economic and social terms, picking on the USA first up. In 2015, 54% of US Federal discretionary spending went to the military – about 600 billion dollars. Yup. That’s 3.9% of the country’s GDP. Australia, depending on who is doing the ranking, comes in at 12th or 13th in military spend – 24 billion, or 1.9% of GDP. The world, according to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, spent 1,676 billion dollars on “defence” in 2015.

If that money were to be spent elsewhere, almost anywhere else, the divisions and inequities that drive countries and peoples to war could be virtually eliminated in a couple of years.

But where to start? Trust is the number one issue. Who trusts “the enemy” to disarm, permanently, at the same time we do? Respect is number two, allowing different cultures to be. And that enlightened, co-operative attitude, and an understanding that combined efforts will yield more for all.

One day…