Why do we fight wars
Transcriber: Aya Gaser
Reviewer: David DeRuwe
In her book, “The Unwomanly Face of War,”
Svetlana Alexievich said that war remains,
as it has always been,
one of the chief human mysteries.
And this begs the question of why?
Why, despite the enormous,
and indeed obvious,
social, financial, and human costs of war,
why has it been the case
that, time and time again,
we resort to conflict?
Why has blood and iron
been our go-to solution
for just about everything
from defending religion
to amassing wealth?
Today, I’ll be discussing
the various factors that have motivated
the pursuit of war
over the course of human history
and attempting to uncover
some sort of common root,
so that we can understand
why we fight wars.
Perhaps the most obvious reason
to go to war is a desire for more -
more land, more wealth,
taking slaves, building an empire,
or any number of things.
Julius Caesar captured or enslaved
more than one million girls
over the course of the Gallic wars,
while in the early modern period,
France and Austria battled it out
for decades over control
of the Italian city states like Milan
for their immense wealth and culture.
However, greedy desires
for wealth and money alone
aren’t enough to warrant war.
My neighbor has a nicer TV than me,
but I don’t turn up at his door
with 10,000 angry Marines behind me.
Not yet, anyway.
(Laughter)
I think the question to consider here
is why these states deemed it necessary
to seek such expansion in the first place.
Why Julius Caesar, for instance,
felt it advantageous
to sacrifice his men, Roman lives,
or why French leaders
in the conquest of Algeria
felt it worth sacrificing
their own citizens
for their country’s wealth.
Surely, this challenges
the very concept of a state
to defend its citizens above all else.
Perhaps the real reason humankind
is so relentless in its rush to war
lies in what justifies this economic gain
and places it firmly in the
interest of the state and its citizens,
rather than to their detriment.
So what is this mysterious force?
Fear and vulnerability.
In 1941, Japan attacked
the American naval base at Pearl Harbor,
thus triggering American entry
into the Second World War against them.
So why did Japan do this?
Well, often a pre-emptive strike
is designed to do
exactly as the name suggests:
cripple enemy morale and resources
before they have a chance
to use these things against you.
But there isn’t always
an imminent military threat in history.
The South African Zulu people
were hardly marching on London in 1879
before Britain decided
to go to war against them.
And yet, this element of fear remains,
albeit behind a different mask.
If we look at this through a Marxist lens,
imperialism and expanding economies
demand the conquest of foreign markets,
or else they will simply be overtaken.
While it may not always
be as black and white as this,
there is still merit to the view.
Had Spain, for instance,
decided to pause that colonial expansion
and not enter conflict with the Aztecs
and other people in Latin America,
their neighbor Portugal may well have
overtaken them economically,
and possibly, in the long run,
even become the dominant force
of the Iberian Peninsula.
It becomes somewhat clearer, therefore,
that fear and vulnerability,
whether of an economic nature
or a military nature,
can be significant determinants
in pushing a party to war.
Throughout history, fear is able
to push people over the edge
and make war seem attractive,
as it prompts a desire for gain
in order to defend oneself.
But for such a sense of fear
to manifest itself in the first place,
there must be something worth protecting,
something that is put at risk
by the actions of other states and groups
or by a lack of action yourself.
And that is where ideas come in,
whether they be ideas
of religion, ethnicity, nationality,
or any other form of ideology.
Ideas are pivotal in not only shaping
the way a conflict unfolds,
but also in justifying it
in the first place.
In the aftermath of the Protestant
Reformation in Europe,
various wars were fought
over matters of religious truths.
The Thirty Years War was one of them,
and it was born out of a religious dispute
between Protestant nobles in Bohemia
and the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor,
Ferdinand the Second.
Even today, conflicts rage in places
like Afghanistan or the Middle East
between combatants who at least claim
to be fighting in the name
of their religious beliefs.
Ethno-nationalism drove
the various sides of the Bosnian War
as different ethnic groups
sought to establish
the rights and freedoms
and statements of their people.
Ideas and ideology form the very basis
of any warring side’s motives,
whether it be the active
protection of them
or their propagation and consolidation.
Regardless of the nature
of the war being fought,
be it a war of conquest, a colonial war,
or even a defensive war,
this defense, an imposition of ideas,
will almost always form its bedrock.
However, simply having
differing ideas is not enough.
Britain, today, is an extremely diverse
and multicultural place,
and yet there isn’t open warfare
out in the streets.
It is when these different groups
feel a dawning sense of vulnerability,
or when one group attempts to make
gains at another’s expense,
that conflict becomes
more and more possible an outcome.
So to return to my original question,
“Why do we fight wars?”
I think the answer is fear -
the fear that a set of ideas,
the ideas that define a group of people,
that tell them who they are,
that give them a sense of self-worth
are coming under threat,
which in turn prompts
a desire to defend them.
For more offensive wars,
we can apply a more economic form of fear,
specifically the fear of falling behind
and thus assuming
a position of vulnerability
versus rival states or groups,
come a future conflict.
Wherever this source of fear
happens to manifest itself,
war and conflict are possible outcomes.
Thank you.