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The Inescapable Shadow: Humanity's Complex Relationship with War
Margaret MacMillan's "War" has become a modern classic, earning praise from military historians and peace advocates alike. This unflinching examination of humanity's most destructive activity was named one of Barack Obama's favorite books of 2020, while military leaders like General David Petraeus have cited it as essential reading for understanding conflict's complexities. The book's balanced approach-neither glorifying war nor dismissing its occasional necessity-resonates with readers seeking to comprehend why, despite our technological and moral evolution, warfare persists as a defining feature of human experience.
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War and Human Society: An Inseparable Bond
War is not an aberration or simply the absence of peace-it's fundamentally intertwined with human society. The evidence for war's ancient roots is overwhelming, from Otzi the Iceman's violent death around 3300 BCE to countless archaeological sites revealing skeletons bearing marks of organized violence. Even hunter-gatherer societies, once romanticized as peaceful, show patterns of systematic conflict in anthropological studies.
What distinguishes war from mere violence is its organized nature. As Clausewitz noted, "War is an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will." This organization emerged alongside complex societies, with the advent of agriculture creating communities with possessions worth defending and resources worth taking. The debate about whether humans are becoming more or less violent continues-Steven Pinker argues violence is proportionally declining, while others point to the unprecedented bloodshed of the 20th century.
Our closest evolutionary relatives offer contrasting models: chimpanzees wage organized territorial warfare while bonobos resolve differences through social bonding. This reflects the philosophical divide between Hobbes and Rousseau regarding human nature. Rousseau's optimistic view of naturally good humans corrupted by society appeals to our sensibilities, but archaeological evidence points firmly toward Hobbes' darker vision of life in the state of nature as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
Paradoxically, war brings peace through the emergence of powerful states. The state's monopoly on violence creates internal stability, as demonstrated by Rome's success. Strong governments provide consistent laws, reasonable taxes, and security, allowing economic prosperity. However, this relationship works both ways-war makes the state, and the state makes war. Military needs drive organization, record-keeping, taxation, and bureaucracy. Britain's naval dominance stemmed partly from superior financial systems that funded the fleet that made it a world power.
War's relationship with social change is equally complex. It can trigger massive political transformations when it weakens government legitimacy, as when the Russian tsarist regime collapsed during WWI. War brings both destruction and creation-scientific advances like jet engines, transistors, computers, and penicillin developed because of wartime needs. Women gained rights and access to careers through war participation, with Britain extending voting rights in 1918 in recognition of women's war contributions. The welfare state emerged after WWII, and civil rights for African Americans advanced during the Cold War.
Though we'd prefer peace, war often concentrates attention on social problems that might otherwise be ignored, narrowing wealth gaps and breaking down class barriers as conscription throws together people from different backgrounds.
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The Tangled Roots of Conflict
Wars often appear to start from absurd causes, but typically reflect deeper tensions. The Trojan War, whether mythical or historical, transformed territorial disputes between rapacious states into art. Captain Jenkins's severed ear provided a convenient excuse for British ambitions for Spanish American trade. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand gave Austria the perfect pretext to attack Serbia, triggering World War I through a cascade of alliances.
Despite varied justifications across time and place, certain motives recur: greed, self-defense, and powerful emotions and ideas. Greed has always motivated war-whether for food, women, minerals, trade, or land. As Hobbes observed, humans fight "to make themselves masters of other men's persons, wives, children and cattle." The weak can choose to fight rather than submit to the strong, as Finland did against the Soviet Union in 1939-40, preserving its independence while surrendering some territory.
Fear drives conflict in multiple ways. Sometimes wars are launched preemptively against anticipated threats-Sparta voted for war fearing Athens's growing power, while Israel struck first against its neighbors in 1967 believing they planned a coordinated attack. Paradoxically, fear of too much peace can drive conflict, as pre-1914 Europeans worried peace was softening society. Mutual suspicion between rivals can create perceived threats where none exist, as during the Cold War when both superpowers interpreted innocent events as hostile actions.
Honor and glory have launched countless wars. Alexander the Great modeled himself on Achilles and slept with the Iliad under his pillow. Louis XIV beggared France pursuing personal glory through wars that didn't benefit his country. Austria's leaders in 1914 felt they couldn't let the archduke's assassination go unanswered, even facing "a hopeless struggle." After France's 1871 defeat by Germany, the French draped black cloth over Paris statues to mourn lost provinces, while Germans viewed the Treaty of Versailles as vindictive, enabling Hitler's rise.
Ideologies-whether nationalist, religious, or political-drive history's greatest conflicts. Hitler aimed to secure German domination as the "master race." Crusaders traveled dangerous distances to the Holy Land driven by divine mission, massacring Jerusalem's inhabitants in 1099 until "streets ran with blood." Wars of ideology are often cruelest because the promised paradise justifies all atrocities.
Civil wars are particularly horrific because they rip apart social bonds and feature unrestrained violence. These wars divide families and friends permanently, as illustrated by Sir Ralph Hopton and Sir William Waller, childhood friends in 17th century England who chose opposite sides in their country's conflict. Though both were Puritans who initially agreed on opposing Charles I's policies, they ultimately chose different paths-Hopton supporting the king while Waller sided with Parliament. Their heartbreaking correspondence reveals the personal tragedy of civil war, with Waller writing that "hostility itself cannot violate my friendship" while acknowledging they must act their assigned parts "in this tragedy."
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The Evolution of Warfare: Culture, Technology, and Strategy
Making peace proves harder than waging war, as Clemenceau observed. Nations often begin hostilities without clear objectives or peace plans. Germany's Schlieffen Plan before WWI was tactically sophisticated but strategically flawed, lacking consideration of what would follow military victory. Similarly, Japan's 1941 war plans were dangerously vague, with Prime Minister Tojo comparing the decision to "jumping off a cliff with one's eyes closed."
Military planners frequently assume victory will solve all problems. Before the Iraq War, General Zinni's war games predicted fragmentation along religious/ethnic lines and growing hostility toward occupiers-warnings that went unheeded. This foreshadowed coalition forces' struggles against guerrilla tactics in both Afghanistan and Iraq, where occupations lacked clear post-victory objectives.
Societies cultivate warrior values through cultural transmission, teaching young men to value discipline, bravery, and self-sacrifice. The Iliad shows Sarpedon urging comrades to fight in the front lines to avoid future shame, while medieval European chivalry created an aristocratic warrior culture through troubadour songs and Arthurian legends. Ancient Sparta was history's most militarized society-unfit male infants were killed, boys taken from families at age seven for military training, and mothers told sons to return "with their shields or on them."
By contrast, classical China valued civilian virtues above military ones. Chinese literature has no equivalent to the Iliad, and prestige came from being a scholar or poet rather than a warrior. Sunzi taught that the greatest general wins without fighting, and successful generals might receive a scholar's gown as special honor.
Geography fundamentally shapes military culture and strategy. Island nations like Britain invest heavily in naval power to control seas, protect shipping, project power abroad, and strangle enemy economies through blockades. America's oceanic buffers and weak neighbors allowed a tradition of detachment and limited land forces, while Germany's position between France and Russia created obsession with two-front wars.
Past wars profoundly shape military planning. The Thirty Years War's horrors led eighteenth-century Europeans to wage war more sparingly and treat civilians better. After WWI's bloodletting, France built the Maginot Line and both France and Britain pursued appeasement to avoid casualties.
Western military thinking often fixates on decisive battles that force enemy surrender, yet alternative approaches exist: Sunzi argued "Preserving their army is best, destroying their army second best," while Chinese dynasties managed northern nomads through walls and bribes rather than battles.
Military innovation follows a perpetual cycle of measure and countermeasure. Armor developed to counter metal weapons, infantry formations countered cavalry, and machine guns forced armies into defensive postures until tanks and aircraft restored offensive capability. Yet institutional memory often fails-Europeans forgot Roman road-building techniques, Americans abandoned counterinsurgency doctrine after Vietnam, and successive generations had to relearn how to counter mounted warriors with disciplined infantry formations.
Until recently, military technology evolved slowly. Alexander the Great reportedly wore armor dating from the Trojan Wars, and basic weapons-swords, spears, bows-remained largely unchanged from classical Greece through medieval Europe. Three major pre-modern innovations transformed warfare: metal weapons replacing stone, horse domestication enabling mobile warfare, and gunpowder revolutionizing combat on land and sea.
War and technology exist in a complex relationship of mutual influence. Military necessity drives innovation, but warfare also adapts existing civilian technologies: Romans converted wine press mechanisms into stone-throwing catapults; church bell metallurgy improved gun-making; Nobel's mining dynamite found military applications; farmers' barbed wire became defensive barriers; and tractor treads were incorporated into tanks.
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The Birth of Modern Warfare
Modern warfare emerged from three transformative forces: nationalism, industrialization, and social change. The symbolic birth came at Valmy in 1792, when revolutionary French forces defeated professional Prussian troops not through tactical brilliance but through revolutionary fervor. As Goethe witnessed, "From this place, and from this day forth, begins a new era in the history of the world."
The French discovered new tactics that unsettled their enemies: singing revolutionary songs mid-battle, taking unnecessary risks, fighting with passionate fervor rather than professional discipline. This symbolized the defeat of old-style eighteenth-century professional armies by citizen forces motivated by love for their cause rather than fear of officers.
Nationalism provided the passion, industrialization the tools, and social changes the bodies to fight and civilian support for war efforts. Napoleon's 1812 Russian invasion used 600,000 men; by 1870, German forces doubled that; in 1914, Germany mobilized over 3 million; and in 1944, Stalin deployed 6.5 million against the Axis powers.
For much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, technology favored the defense as improved firepower extended the killing zone attacking soldiers had to cross. Multiple conflicts demonstrated this defensive advantage: the American Civil War, Franco-Prussian War, Russo-Turkish War, Russo-Japanese War, and Balkan wars all showed well-defended positions could resist larger forces. Yet by WWI's end, the advantage began shifting back to offense through innovations like poison gas, flamethrowers, mortars, tanks and aircraft.
Modern war demanded constant feeding of both bodies and resources. In 1914, armies discovered their pre-war stockpiles depleted with shocking speed-France used half their ammunition in less than a month, Germany exhausted their artillery shells within six weeks. This blurred the line between legitimate and illegitimate targets until it nearly vanished. Railway lines, fuel depots, munitions factories and dams became fair game as ways to undermine the enemy's capacity to fight. A new term entered the language: the home front.
The tragedy of modern war lies in how societies' strengths-organization, industry, science, resources-transformed them into effective killing machines. Nations could sustain battles for months or years rather than days, with devastating casualty counts. The First World War killed around 9 million combatants; the Second World War at least doubled that figure. Civilian casualties increased even more dramatically as belligerents gained greater capacity to strike enemy homelands.
During the Napoleonic Wars, the Vicomte de Chateaubriand lamented war's new gigantic shape. The old style of "civilized warfare" left peoples in place while "a small number of soldiers do their duty." The new type brought mass mobilization through emerging nationalism. The French Legislative Assembly's 1792 call for all French men to defend their nation, followed by the 1793 levee en masse, created unprecedented mobilization that included women.
In the century after Napoleon, nationalisms welded together peoples who had never thought of themselves as one "nation." Education and improved communications spread national languages-by the late nineteenth century, most people in France spoke French rather than regional languages like Breton. National histories created shared stories and myths, while nationalism adopted religious language and iconography.
War was seen as necessary for national emergence, even sanctifying it. Heinrich von Treitschke argued that war creates both state and nation by welding people together. For many nationalists, war was the nation's midwife, giving it vitality. Mussolini declared that war "brings to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it."
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The Human Experience of War
War is uniquely transformative for those who participate in it. Military training fundamentally reshapes individuals through drill and synchronized movement. This "muscular bonding" helps warriors obey orders and perform tasks together even in difficult circumstances. Training and discipline are essential for military effectiveness, helping soldiers overcome natural inhibitions against risking their lives and taking others'.
However, military hierarchy and strong cohesion can also enable atrocities. Heinrich Himmler's SS exemplified how ordinary men could commit extraordinary evil when following orders. Christopher Browning's study of a German police battalion that massacred Jews showed that while some were anti-Semites, most were simply obeying orders, with fewer than a dozen out of 500 men requesting transfers when given the option.
War remains a profound mystery both to combatants and observers-simultaneously abhorrent and alluring, promising glory while delivering suffering and death. As Frederic Manning wrote in his novel about WWI, war is "a peculiarly human activity" that serves as both "a crime against mankind" and "the punishment of a crime."
The confusion of battle is universal-even when officers try to behave like movie heroes, as one British commander did thinking he should "behave like David Niven," shouting orders while German bullets whizzed overhead. The resulting action became so chaotic he found it "hard to make any coherent narrative."
Many describe the intense psychological pressure of battle-the fear of death alongside the strange elation that can emerge. Private David Thompson at Antietam noted "the consuming passion in the breast of the average man is to get out of the way," yet soldiers follow orders despite this. The sensory overload is overwhelming-"the sky throbs, the ground throbs, your heart seems about to burst."
Soldiers fear not just death but failing the test of war. As Tim O'Brien wrote of Vietnam: "Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to." They use humor, ritual, religion, and sometimes alcohol or drugs to cope with the madness. Death comes randomly-Lussu watched a university friend killed mid-conversation by a single shot.
War inverts normal morality and daily rhythms. On the Western Front, night was safe and day dangerous. Objects valuable in peacetime become worthless while wire cutters or foot powder become precious. Behavior unacceptable in civilian life-swearing, stealing ("scrounging"), casual sex-becomes normalized as soldiers face mortality.
The gulf between combatants and civilians proves unbridgeable. When asked about the front, Gordon can only reply "Fine, thanks"-how could civilians possibly understand? Soldiers resent those profiting from war or enjoying civilian comforts. In Remarque's novel, Paul Baumer finds himself unable to communicate war's reality during home leave, concluding sadly he never should have returned.
Ironically, civilians often hate the enemy more than those doing the fighting. Studies showed those far from danger were more vengeful than frontline troops. Soldiers frequently develop respect for enemy combatants who share their hardships. During Christmas truces on the Western Front, men "mucked in all day with one another," exchanging beer and pudding, united in being "fed up with this damned war."
What sustains combatants isn't abstract ideals but bonds with comrades. "Friendship" seems too weak a word for this connection that drives men to sacrifice for each other. Manning called it "an intensity of feeling which friendship never touches."
Veterans often look back nostalgically at wartime camaraderie and simplicity amid horror. A British pilot after WWI missed "the terrific binges and the inimitable comradeship" alongside "the ghastly fear." Like the bomb disposal expert in "The Hurt Locker" bewildered by supermarket cereal choices who reenlists, many find civilian life comparatively empty.
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The Forgotten Victims: Civilians in War
As Berlin awaited Soviet forces in April 1945, civilians huddled in basements, wondering what fate awaited them. Too often war narratives focus exclusively on warriors while neglecting civilians who are caught in the crossfire. Civilians can be war's cheerleaders, sometimes hating the enemy more fiercely than frontline troops. War can occasionally benefit them through spoils, economic opportunities, or breaking social taboos. Yet they remain war's innocent victims, paying through starvation, murder, rape, slavery, forced labor or mass deportation.
The German siege of Leningrad reduced the city's population from 7 million to 4.25 million through death and evacuation. In the Second World War, between 50-80 million civilians died-sometimes as "collateral damage" but often as deliberate targets to weaken enemy morale. In their 1937 sack of Nanjing, Japanese forces killed up to 300,000 people, raped 20,000 women, and burned a third of the city.
The sacking of cities has a dishonorable history spanning millennia. When Crusaders took Beirut in 1110, they slaughtered thousands of fleeing Muslims caught between land and sea forces. In Magdeburg during the Thirty Years War, imperial troops killed 20,000 civilians, leaving only 449 survivors by the following year.
The twentieth century's total war mentality, fueled by nationalism and technological advancement, enabled unprecedented civilian targeting. German atrocities in Belgium during WWI were not merely propaganda-troops shot innocent civilians, used human shields, and forcibly transported 120,000 Belgians to work under appalling conditions. Britain's blockade of Germany, including food, left poor German children undernourished.
Between the wars, technological advances made killing from a distance easier. Western powers found bombing a cheap way to control "less-civilized peoples" in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ethiopia. When WWII began, all belligerents targeted civilians to disrupt war efforts and break morale. Allied bombing killed 40,000 in Hamburg (1943), 35,000 in Dresden (1945), and 80,000-100,000 in Tokyo's incendiary bombing.
As war evolved, the distinction between combatants and non-combatants blurred. Civilian support became crucial for modern warfare-through volunteer work, labor, bond purchases, and maintaining morale. When public support collapsed, as in Russia (1917), Germany (1918), or America during Vietnam, governments struggled to continue fighting.
Civilians displayed extraordinary resilience during wartime. Nella Last in bomb-targeted Barrow-in-Furness kept chickens, stretched rations, and worked tirelessly for the Women's Voluntary Service while maintaining cheerfulness for others despite her depression. Women became great improvisers-painting stocking seams on bare legs during shortages and finding strength in daily routines.
War upends traditional gender roles. During both World Wars, women's participation in the workforce increased dramatically-British industry saw female employment rise from 23% to 34% during WWI. Women moved into traditionally male jobs, adopting practical clothing like trousers and short hair. "The Kaiser," noted one Scottish supervisor, "handed British women an opportunity which their own fathers and brothers and mothers had ever denied them."
Art helps process war's inexplicable nature. Homer was considered a "doctor of the soul" by Greeks, while Vietnam veterans found catharsis in Philip Caputo's "A Rumor of War." Creating art became an act of defiance in wartime-French composer Olivier Messiaen wrote his "Quatuor pour la fin du temps" as a German prisoner, premiering it outdoors in the rain with fellow imprisoned musicians playing on battered instruments.
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Controlling the Uncontrollable: Laws, Ethics, and the Future of War
In 1827, Franz Lieber, a German immigrant to America with a background fighting against Napoleon, developed what would become a foundational document in the laws of war. His code, issued as General Order #100 by President Lincoln, established principles that later informed the Geneva Conventions.
Bertha von Suttner, a noblewoman who had witnessed the Russian-Ottoman conflict of 1877, dedicated herself to abolishing war entirely. Her melodramatic but influential novel "Lay Down Your Arms" captured Europe's growing anxiety about industrialized warfare. These two figures represent complementary approaches to humanity's struggle with war-one seeking to regulate it through laws, the other aiming to eliminate it entirely.
The paradox of controlling something inherently violent has not stopped humanity from repeatedly attempting to establish laws of war. Modern international laws distinguish between ius ad bellum (laws governing when war is justified) and ius in bello (laws governing conduct during war). These frameworks raise difficult questions about civilian targeting, prisoner treatment, and which weapons are permissible.
Predicting war's future is notoriously unreliable-military planners misjudged both world wars, expecting the first to be mobile and offensive and the second defensive. Yet certain trends are identifiable. Future conflicts will operate simultaneously at two levels: professional forces using advanced technology and loosely organized groups employing low-cost weapons, with these forms increasingly overlapping.
Warfare is rapidly expanding into new dimensions. The agreement against militarizing space is weakening as powers develop space-based weapons and countermeasures against satellites. Cyberspace has become a battlefield, from Estonia's 2007 "denial of service" attacks to the Stuxnet virus disabling Iran's nuclear program. Meanwhile, traditional battlefields see both hypersonic gliding missiles and miniature surveillance drones weighing just 32 grams.
Most concerning are fully autonomous weapons being developed by major powers-raising questions about human control, moral distance from killing, and the potential for catastrophic errors. Despite campaigns against "killer robots," history suggests such technological development rarely stops.
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War's Enduring Shadow
We cannot afford to let memories of war fade away. War demands our attention because it remains with us, requiring understanding of its causes, impacts, how to end it and how to avoid it. In studying war, we learn something profound about humanity itself-our organizational abilities, our emotions and ideas, and our capacity for both cruelty and good.
We fight from necessity, to protect what we cherish, or because we imagine different worlds. We fight because we can. Yet the long intertwining of war and society may be reaching a terminal point-not because human nature has changed, but because technology has. With terrifying new weapons, artificial intelligence, automated killing machines, and cyberwarfare, humanity itself faces potential extinction.
Now more than ever, we cannot avert our eyes from what we find abhorrent. We must think about war.
