Reasons for War

Human history is thick with wars. Some people say that humans beings are an inherently violent species - that this may in fact be why we survived and became predominant. The cycle of war, while constant throughout human history, has been one which many people wished to escape. Everyone has heard the famous maxim that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. However, as General William Tecumseh Sherman often spoke about after the Civil War, those that have not experienced the horrors of war cannot fully appreciate it as something to be avoided.

The entire prelude to the American Civil War seems to me to be a great suction into the conflict. It's as if war was out there as this irresistible force and men were drawn to it like moths to a flame.

I've often wondered if there is not something latent in men that does desire war. It would explain much, because when you look at history, the majority of wars were fought for entirely stupid reasons. I'm not saying that once some country becomes aggressive that the target nations should not defend themselves. I'm just pointing out that many conflicts, when viewed in retrospect, appear to be events that should have been avoided rather than embraced. Once the idea of war is openly discussed in a country, there seems to be no shortage of people stirring up fear or hatred to support that war. A fever seems to overtake men, subverting their higher reasoning, and making war inevitable.

There was an ancient Greek called Thucydides who wrote a famous history of the Greek Civil War between Sparta and Athens. This was 420BC, almost 2500 years ago. He describes the events leading to war and at one point touches on the motives that drive a state into War. He said they were fear, honor, and interests. Usually a combination of these interests will convince a group of people that they need to wag a war against another group. Fear of what the other group will do if they are not stopped is the first element of building up a war frenzy. If we don't stop them, they will surely hurt us. Honor is the form of pride that requires a group defend themselves or respond to a slight or offense. Interests are the greed that motivate men to think that there are gains to be had to going to war. Sometimes this interest is simply plunder, the other guys have a lot of nice things that we can simply take from them in a war. Many wars in history end with the victors enslaving the vanquished. Often, troops would simply take whatever they wanted after a victory. Often, the defeated land was absorbed or exploited for its resources or geographically advantageous position. In ancient times, going into battle for spoils was a more open motivation. The Romans would often seek out wars so that the soldiers could be properly compensated and would not be tempted to revolt against their leaders or the state. In modern conflicts, this may be a motive, but the aggressors usually deny it, and it is impossible to prove. Recently, many Iraq War opponents stated that the U.S. went to war for oil. Who can determine how much this played into the conscious or subconscious motivations for the war. Many people reject the premise offhand, because they tell themselves that it would be a dishonorable thing to do. On its face, it is an entirely stupid reason to fight, because war disrupts oil production and distribution.

However, history has often shown people to be overly optimistic about their chances in a conflict. History is thick with examples of people stating how quick and easy a war will be, partly as a preventative to those reluctant to start the war, and partly because people often believe the war will be quick and decisive. General Sherman was judged to be insane early in the Civil War when he said it would take 60,000 men to drive the rebels from Kentucky and 200,000 to win the war. These numbers ended up being very low, but were so far in excess of the estimates at the time that no one believed them. Consider the Iraq War again. This was a war we were supposed to be able to win very quickly, and it was supposed to pay for itself with oil revenue. Instead, it dragged on for 6 years and cost a fortune. The Iraq War is not unique in this respect, the only thing that would ever be unique about a war is if people were honest about it or came up with accurate estimates of the cost in time, money, and manpower at the onset of war.

No one ever expects what the eventual truth about a war will be when the war is just beginning. Before the Greek Civil War, the Spartans did not believe the war would be fought the way the Athenians said they would fight it. The Athenians were no match for the Spartans on an even battle field, foot soldiers against foot soldiers. They had an impressive navy, and had never developed large land forces that were strong and skilled. Their plan when they elected to go to war, put forth by Pericles, was to stay in their walled city, let the Spartans do what they wanted to the countryside, and outlast them with their wealth and huge navy. Neither the Spartans or the Athenians believed the war would be costly or long. Athens, goaded by honor and no longer persuaded by Pericles, abandoned their strategy later in the war, insuring that it would be a long drawn out affair which left both sides so weakened that they would eventually be ripe for takeover by other forces.

So, despite the lessons of history, people seem to forget that war often leaves them weakened and fails to achieve the goals they strive for at the beginning of the conflict. This does not mean that sanity should prevail and war will end any time soon, it just means that the voice of reason is often drowned out during the march to war.