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Is War Inevitable?
The modern human mind has sought to present findings and evidence that would lead to some form of an indication or conclusion regarding the inevitability of war through the multifarious fields of science and technology; anthropology; political science; economics; psychology (both humanist and evolutionary); and cultural studies. The general perception for most people – gauged through academic surveys and Social Networking websites – is that the innate biological tuning, socio-cultural infrastructure, geo-political systems, economic scarcity, and the massive amounts of arsenal possessed by mankind will never allow humans to transcend the atrocities of brutality, violence and aggressive bloodshed. Unfortunately,
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Anthropological and ethnic studies have shown that, long before the emergence of modern nation-states, human beings waged war in the tribal setting, basing these conclusions on archeological findings. Furthermore, observance of the behavior of our closest evolutionary cousins, the chimpanzees, has encouraged the perception that just the way chimpanzee troops tend to wage war on other chimpanzees – sometimes even beating them to death – similarly, we too are biologically programmed and naturally hardwired for aggression. In “Are Humans Hardwired to Behave Aggressively?” Margie Wylie says that a new and upcoming field of genealogy suggests that the Y-Chromosome in human beings causes us to be, at least in part, “hardwired for aggression and troublesome behavior”. The question is posed to any logical mind: can we allow ourselves to conveniently use this as an excuse for war and crime? No. We can not. Yale’s “Human Relations Area Files” (Ember), a database of around 360 cultures around the world from the past and present, shows that nearly nine-tenths of these cultures have engaged in warfare. However, the frequency, intensity, and time spans of these wars varies vastly from one culture to the next. "There is variation in the frequency of warfare when you look around the world at any given time," says Melvin Ember. "That suggests to me that we are not dealing with genes or a biological propensity."
Even if we do consider the biological propensity and
attitude....Complete destruction of Poland is the military aim. To be fast is the main thing.
Instinctivist theories on human aggressiveness often promote the notion that warfare is in the nature of humankind and therefore cannot be prevented. However Margaret Mead eloquently refuted this idea in her renowned essay Warfare: an Invention – Not a Biological Necessity. Mead states, “War is inevitable unless we change our social system and outlaw classes, the struggle for power, and possessions; and in the event of our success warfare would disappear, as a symptom vanishes when the disease is cured.” Through this statement Mead makes it clear that because aggression and subsequently warfare is a learned invention, it can be avoided. For the purposes of this essay, aggression will be defined as “a response that delivers noxious stimuli to another organism.” This essay will outline how and why aggression, and thus warfare, is not biological and is rather a behaviour that is learned as a reaction to social stimuli. Furthermore, it will be explained that violence is used by societies as a political weapon to achieve ostensible objectives.
War leads to oppression and leaves negative implications on all people and societies by impacting the poor, women, children, and nations as a whole. "War is a state of violent conflict between one or more groups" (Rasenberger 3). Rasenberger defines war as a state of conflict between one group within itself or several groups in combat with each other, what is not mentioned are the after-effects of war. War itself leads to many civilian and military deaths, an estimated 1.5-3.8 million people died during the Vietnam War and an approximate 500,000 people died in the Iraq war. The biggest tragedy of War is that it always results in fatality, but another key, negative, factor to understand is that after the War many adverse implications arise. Post-war ramifications in the nation fall upon the poor, women, and children, making them weaker and less motivated leading to the downfall of a society. Regardless if a nation wins or is defeated in war they have to deal with consequences of war and find solutions to the impacted people and society. It is essential to understand that there is never a true victor in war because regardless of the outcome, fatality and a fall of morale within society on both sides are inevitable. War has often been the solution to situations that required force or violence, but in recent times this has
What is the Just War theory and how did it pertain to St. Augustine? According to Augustine there is no private right to kill. According to Paul Ramsey opposes in The Just War, Christian participation in warfare “was not actually an exception to the commandment, “you shall not murder” but instead an expression of the Christian understanding of moral and political responsibility. One can kill only under the authority of God. St. Augustine argued that Christian rulers had such an obligation to make peace for the protection of his subjects even if the only way to eliminate such a threat was through force of arms. St. Augustine believed that in wars there was a right intention.
War is a human endeavor. Humanity continually pursues solutions to counter evolving threats with the end of preserving power while also enabling peace. Civilizations resort to war to maintain their perception of this equilibrium. Defined threats and adversaries have changed throughout history, however, the essence of human nature and the base concept of conflict itself have not. Carl von Clausewitz’s theories on warfare capture the relationship between humanity and its application of war, remaining relevant in today’s era through their pensive explanations of timeless philosophical principles regarding the concept of war. These theories regarding war in politics, the key factors affecting war, and the extent that war is applied are inherently interconnected, providing insight on the relationships between humanity and its application of war.
Throughout much of the history of civilizations, states have declared war for land, valuables, and resources. In the course of the mid-20th century and the 21st century, ascendant super powers have invaded foreign lands for resources such as oil, and weapons companies have profited from the ongoing cycle of war these super powers promote. The populations of these states have been fed lies vis-à-vis the media; propagandizing these “rogue nations” and promoting an ‘Us vs. Them’ mentality, to garner support for these armed conflicts. War is our primordial instinct, as humans are territorial and aggressive. That is our nature, and by looking at events in our history, one may see that war appears to be timeless and inevitable.
Most poets use their unique gift of writing poetry to relieve stress or just to document their emotions towards a given subject. Others use it as a key to bring about social change and voice their opinion on modern events. This is the case in Stephen Crane’s War Is Kind. The speaker in the poem uses irony as a strategy to convince the reader of the harsh reality of war.
There are no universal theories to explain the true nature and character of war, and any war theories are not a fact or absolute truth. All strategic principles are dynamic and contextual, so “every age had its own kind of war, its own limiting conditions, and its own peculiar preconceptions.” The battlefield environment of the 21st century will be the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, and nature of war will be completely different because of the Revolution in Military Affairs. Highly advance communication and information technologies, a dramatic increase in computing capabilities, developed of precision munitions, dominant air and space power ‘war could be waged by the projection of
War has been going on just about as long as people have been alive. Whether it is just some cavemen fighting over a fire, or multiple countries going to war for justice, there has always been some scale of war. I am going to be analyzing way through functionalist, conflict, and symbolic interactionist perspectives.
“War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children. This famous quote is from James Earl “Jimmy” Carter, Jr., who served as the 39th President of the United States. It implies that war can be justified under strict circumstances where it can be necessary, but it is still abhorrent. War is defined as a state of armed conflict between different countries or different groups within a country. Justification refers to the action of showing something to be right or reasonable. War brings many negative and catastrophic impacts not just to the country, but to the people living in the country as well, which this paper
War is controversial, unfortunate, and certainly misunderstood; it is a transforming agent, a catalyst for change. Nonetheless, many people focus on war's negative consequences, while positive effects are downplayed. War is a necessary evil in the sense that it stabilizes population, encourages technological advances, and has a very high economic value. Without war, the overpopulation of the human race is inevitable. It is this reason that war is a useful tool by not only Mother Nature, but also humans themselves to institute population control.
Martin van Creveld wrote The Transformation of War book in 1991 when he detailed a predictive hypothesis about the changing character of war into what he called ?Nontrinitarian War. There were conflicts arise as intrastate wars and were not based on the simplified version of Clausewitz?s ?remarkable trinity? of government, people and military forces (Van Creveld, 1991, pg. 49). In his book, Van Creveld offers an account of warfare in the previous millennium and suggests what the future might hold. The drive was that major war was draining and the emergence of forms of war ?that are simultaneously old and new? now threatened to create havoc.
Throughout the history of mankind there has come to be two factors that are seen as inevitable. The first is progress, humans are naturally competitive creatures who not only want to insure their own safety but also get one up on their neighbours. Progress has led to huge leaps forward, not only technologically but also socially. However, aside from progress there is another factor, war. Time and time again throughout history humans have fought and killed each other for their own selfish reasons and security. And according to political theorists such as Hobbes this is simply the state of nature, a perpetual state of ‘war of all against all’, further surmising that it is due to this that mankind is fundamentally selfish. However, just because so far, mankind’s history has consisted of an endless cycle of wars, does that mean that it must continue to be this way? Political Philosopher Immanuel Kant outlines a number of articles that he hypothesises could lead towards a perpetual peace. There are many criticisms of Kant’s perpetual peace, many argue that it is to idealistic and utopian. However, Kant doesn’t deny these claims. Instead Kant argues that if this ‘perpetual peace’ is even a remote possibility then for the good of mankind, we have a duty to try make it a reality.
2. There are different theories that seek to explain why humans still fight in war. Some of the individual, state and global level theories of conflict are based on: Human Nature or Individual Leaders, States’ Internal characteristics, and Global Level System (Turetzky lec 11). Human Nature arguments for the causes of war are based in Sigmund Freud idea that “aggression is simply part of human nature that stems from humans’ genetic programming and psychological makeup.” Realists also “argue that violence is a product of bad human nature” and that there is not anything to eliminate this bad human habit. I believe that it is true that humans’ nature is composed with an instinct of violence (War). However, society has a lot to do with the expansion of this bad habit. Today aggression is embedded in everything, which enforces our acceptance and practice of violence. Obviously, as realists argue, it is almost impossible to eliminate this bad habit from human nature. In contrast, the individual Leader arguments blame the state leaders for wars. However, we can’t blame a country’s leader for war. The author Stoessinger, stated in his book that a state head’s perceptions are decisive in war (Stoessinger 65). I believe that a leader’s
War has been a part of human culture since it's birth. It has led to a great many massacres and has shown us the evil that exists within the souls of humanity. Some have even gone as far as saying that war is human nature. To better understand the reasons behind war and how it affects others, I've examined several different societies and cultures so as to better understand the necessity of war and see the cause of their external war attitude. To do so, different variables from two topics (military institutions and external war attitude) were matched up and crossed so as to look into the answers to these questions. The variables were then calculated and through these graphs, I was able to find different societies in which