War Without End?
If we leaf through history books, we see a story of war after war: war between nations, civil wars, wars of conquest, religious wars, genocidal wars, wars for resources and even wars based on misunderstandings. Throughout history, we have celebrated warriors and generals, and if we are to trust science fiction stories, war will follow us into space, where we will continue to fight amongst ourselves or against warlike or just hapless aliens. It sure looks like we can’t live without war.
Archaeological research suggests that war is as old as mankind. When homo sapiens sought to leave Africa and move into the Middle East, Asia and Europe, the Neanderthals and the related Denisovans already living there fought back, and did so very effectively, in a war that lasted more than a hundred thousand years before we finally exterminated our rivals about twenty-five thousand years ago. Exterminated, that is, except for the few we interbred with, as shown by the roughly two percent Neanderthal genes in the DNA of all non-African modern humans. We could well call this World War Zero; a continent-spanning war that lasted twenty times longer than recorded history, with heroes and war criminals that have long been forgotten, though presumably preserved in oral traditions for centuries or even millennia, given our love of warriors.
In more recent times, mankind has experienced wars fought with weapons of mass destruction so terrible that we began speaking of ‘the war to end all wars’. This was World War I, and as we know to our sorrow, it didn’t end war. Just two decades later, it was followed by even more devastating war. Nor did the nuclear bomb, which ended World War II, finally end war, though considered so terrible that it was certain to do exactly that — or it would certainly end mankind. Thankfully, we have not had a nuclear war, but we have had plenty of other conflicts since World War II, though none extensive enough to deserve being called a World War. Nothing that we think will end war seems to do that.
Are we, then, doomed to war without end? It is possible, but there are indicators that war is in decline, recent conflicts in the Middle East to the contrary. Since the end of World War II, the number of annual battle-related deaths has been in decline, taking the broad view. If we draw a line between the peaks of war-related deaths since then, it will reach zero before 2050, indicating a total end to war within three decades. We should, however, remember that there was a long lull in war deaths during the first decade of this century, with only ten to twenty thousand annual deaths, making it easy back then to think that war was finally all but over — but you would have thought wrong, as the last ten years have shown.
Most armed conflicts since World War II have taken place in developing countries, and it has been speculated that once nations reach a certain level of wealth and comfort, they no longer care to wage war. In response, I will point to how the United States and other developed countries have participated in almost all these conflicts: the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War and the wars in the Middle East following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, to mention a few. I could also point to the Balkan War of the 1990s and more recent Ukrainian conflicts, which only involved developed countries. Leading up to the recent US presidential election, there were real fears that a disputed result could trigger a second US civil war — and this is supposed to be the most developed nation in the world. It seems that a high level of development is no guarantee against war, and neither are unions between nations, as seen in the first US civil war and in the Balkan War, which was fought between countries that had been united under a single flag, a single currency and a single leader.
The question then is whether the overall decline in war, or at least war deaths, over the last three-quarters of a century indicates that warfare is in its last throes, or if we are just experiencing an extended lull before the next World War or series of major conflicts. The fear of the destructiveness of nuclear bombs as well as chemical and biological warfare suggests that all-out global war may be a thing of the past, but then again, fanaticism has been a large part of recent wars, and fanatics seldom worry about the larger costs of their holy wars for God or maximum profit.
Even so, the nature of war seems to be changing. We rarely see long front lines of battle that move back and forth on strategic maps; instead, we see concentrated attacks on cities and other points of strategic interest (such as oil wells), mixed with harassment in the shape of roadside bombs, sniper attacks and terrorist attacks far from the battle zones, not to mention propaganda warfare and cyberwarfare. War seems to become less extensive, but in return perhaps more intensive, with devastating precision attacks against nests of enemies or even single enemy leaders. With remote-controlled drones and missiles, battle is no longer fought up close and personal, but can be waged from a safe distance, with little cost in lives on the attacker’s side — unless, of course, the opponent retaliates with similar means.
Could a post-scarcity society put an end to war? After all, ideologies and propaganda aside, most wars have been about resources — plunder, land, oil, precious stones and metals, trade — and if there is enough of everything for everybody, maybe the reasons for war will vanish. We can hope so, but given how deeply war is ingrained in our natures, I doubt that war will ever go away. At best, wars will move to the arena of entertainment, where people will wage war with each other on game boards and in virtual worlds; something that is already a popular pastime in even the most peaceful and civilised nations. Then, perhaps, the warriors and generals we will celebrate in history books will only be responsible for virtual deaths.
