Militarism, Pacifism and War?

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I believe I covered this in the OP. My line of enquiry is into finer reasonings and peoples personal perspective. I take it this is yours? If so why is war inevitable? Most of human history most of the human race has been effectively peacefully coexisting.

peace j

Most of human history consists of city-states waring and plundering each other, tribes killing each other due to one having more food than the other, the control of trade routes, and otherwise petty reasons that humans too often treat as paramount.

I beg to differ if this I don't know what histories you have read but that is quite simply eronous. Unless of course you are considering only modern European history and even then this is debatable. What do you know of the history of the pre columbian Americas? or Aborigional Australia or African history prior to colonisation? or the broad scope of Polynesian history? Your statement is simplistic and flawed as an argument.

peace j

Although private property is a social convention of humanity with many intricate variations in all the many social arrangements throughout history it is a frightful error to view this as exempt from the general interactions of all life, animal, vegetable and otherwise since the competition for resources is an inherent element of the basic resources of evolution and survival. Although many of the living parts of each human began as invaders, many are now so thoroughly incorporated in the vital activities of maintenance of physiology as to be considered essential components. Societies are no different and citing cooperative phases does not negate competitive ones or vice versa. There are many examples of both.

@ sand.

Totally, I was not negating their existence just the perspective that places it as the pre-eminent or dominant mode of behaviour.

If humans spent more time waring against each other than getting on with peacefull co-existence we would possibly have failed to replicate at a faster rate than we were killing each other.

peace j

It is a notable and irrefutable statistic that inspite of the frightful treatment humans impose upon each other through war and other horrific social actions humanity is, at the moment, direly threatening the existence of a good deal of life on the planet including its own by its exuberant capabilities for reproduction. In all probability some micro-organism will find the nutritious mass of humanity a delight to bring the species into better relationship with the capabilities of the planet. All human efforts i this direction have been futile.

And I actually find it a hopefull prospect however we are drifting from the topic somewhat.

peace j

Admittedly a drift but I do not relish irretrievably rotting away at the advantage of some innovative life form. Basically the cooperative and aggressive interactions of humanity seem to have both resulted in tremendous human progress. The technology of weapons which delights humans very quickly mutates to more civilized very useful utilities.

Well, If the enemy is in your doorstep, it outnumbers you by a bunch, declares publicly that it wants to destroy you, etc etc. The only option is to launch an attack because it's a kill or be killed situation. OFC that "starting" this war is a last ditch effort, and the only available tacitcal choice in certain situations. For example the six days war was just like that (that's what I meant at least, I was refering to a specific case).

As I said earlier, sometimes you have a case where extreme violence is going on within a nation and intervention from abroad to stop it becomes an option. You can fail to act, but you've made a choice to let the violence continue. And that violence may impact your nation in dozens of ways beyond the loss of life. Such as a loss of reputation, a flood of refugees, lost opportunities to align yourself with similar ideologies, etc.

You can choose not to act but, if you had the power to act, you might be judged for it. The more extreme the violence, the harsher the judgement.

@RedHanrahan

This is a simple statement, but I don't consider it simplistic.



The pre-columbians were absolutely brutal, by any definition of the term. I know there is a bit of a tendency to cast Vikings and Mayans as traders and scientists, respectively; but for the most part their foreign policies both involved copious amounts head chopping and rape. If you look at a society long enough you will find something good to say about it... so now we know that Mayans were involved in science and astronomy and that the Aztecs had a rather fantastic system of trade. This work has no doubt been useful, but I don't think the image of Mayans as stargazers and Aztecs as traders it would cut much ice with the chaps having the hearts cut out for public spectacle by the Aztecs and the Children being given up to appease the stars by the Mayans.

As to indigenous Australians; they do seem to be remarkably peaceful. They did however engage in small scale, significant traditions of warfare for trade (in the North). One particular study shows that as much as 25% of all adult males in a single tribe had been killed by intertribal warfare. There is also substantial evidence of widespread cannibalism ( W.E. Roth "The Queensland Aborigines"). Pre-colonization West-Africa was also notoriously brutal Describing Africa as a whole in historical terms is not apt. I am not familiar with Polynesian History so I cannot comment on it. But for the most part I side with G'Kar:

'Why does any advanced civilization seek to destroy less advanced one? Because the land is strategically valuable, because there are resources that can be cultivated and exploited, but most of all, simply because they can.'

or

'It is said that the future is always born in pain. The history of war is the history of pain. If we are wise, what is born of that pain matures into the promise of a better world, because we learn that we can no longer afford the mistakes of the past.'

In pre-Columbus America, the indigenous Americans in the states, although differing by ideology of tribe, would kill each other for food or otherwise just for warfaring. The Aztecs had human sacrifices, prior to the conquest of the Aztec Empire by Cortez, in which they would sacrifice and eat the victims of their own bloody conquests. The Egyptians would fight with the Nubians and their other neighbors adjacent in Africa, otherwise I don't know much about the less technologically advanced tribal warfare there. In the Asian sector of Mesopotamia, the Philistines would have at it with the Hittites and the Assyrians and the Babylonians every single bloody year. The Sumerians and the Akkadians were also nearly always at war. The Medites and Elamites were at war with their neighbors also. In Europe you have the Greeks, who were at war with the Persians, and then the Romans who were at war with the Phoenicians/Carthaginians as well as with all of their neighbors. The Mongols and the Huns weren't exactly peaceloving hippies either, and neither were the hippies if they thought that destroying a war factory was "for the greater good". The Ottoman Turks weren't exactly opposed to war, and neither were the Byzantines who held back an invasion of Europe for centuries using flamethrowers invented by Callinicus of Heliopolis. The Chinese have had warfare throughout their history, as had the people of India. War has been interspersed throughout human history, and there is no reason for it to depart other than it being evil. It will still happen, especially as more people increase. We need to expand and spread out into space while we still can. War will still go with us, but at least more people will be able to live and live in people even so.

In response to the use of meso American cultures as representitive of all of the Americas.

I quite agree with the assertions in regard the Maya and Aztec as well as the Inca, Olmec and Toltec empires however when one considers the entire span of 15000 years [estimated length of time the Americas have been occupied by homo sapiens] and two whole continents this intensity of conflict is abnormal.
As to the rest of the scope of time and space this encompases I have found little evidence to support any argument that warfare was the normal mode of inter community interactions, in fact there is quite a lot of evidence to support the development of sophisticated social devices to avoid warfare.

As for Aborigional Australia, their level of intensity with regard warfare is negligable and for the most part highly ceremonialised.

Likewise the peoples of Polynesia maintained a warrior caste and warfare which, while incredibly intense and positively genocidal when it did occur was seldom and reluctantly engaged in for this very reason.

As for citing endless 'classical' examples to normalise warfare in it's modern context I would again disagree, not that it occurs, nor why it occurs but merely about it's dominance as a mode of inter community conflict resolution or of it's dominance as a basic mode of behaviour over time, the entire age of classical 'celtic' europe was one of highly ceremonialised warfare and the age of the 'champion', the dramatics of their storytelling tradition are just that dramatics and not accurate historical record.

War is 'Evil'? well undesirable yes but it is an unfortunate fact of life just as peace is a most fortunate fact of life, perhaps choosing it over peace when other options still present themselves as options is the actual evil here?

Interesting points though, just inconsistent with my conclusions. It is too much to presume you assume a generally a 'militarist' stance? or do I infer too much from your examples/assumptions and quotes?

@ Chummy, this conclusion with regard the six day war is overly simplistic, you are free to view it that way but I disagree. I don't desire to argue it's history or specifics as 'Israel right or wrong' is a subject I am bored with discussing as few people are non-partisan.

Now another aspect of this debate obviously covers motivation and again there are increments and subtleties to consider.

Looking at Europe since the mid 19th century and the rise of 'nationalism' as a doctrine and stance versus patriotism as a natural inclination, I can't help but conclude that the nationalist ideals that brought us 'Deutschland uber alles' Operation Barbarossa and the Balkanfieldzung and ultimately WWII, as against the more benign 'love of place and culture' [patriotism] that birthed Blakes 'Jerusalem' and motivated the defense of Moscow and Stalingrad, victory at Kursk, victory in the battle of Britain, the fire in the belly of the Partisan resistance in Jugoslavia and the French resistance.. well it has ultimately been a poor innovation by comparison?

As a friend of mine loves to say, 'stand in the street cursing my name - no sweat, kick my door in? well then you will meet a fiersome foe and be shown no quarter', indeed he is a man I have fought beside, I have never known him to start a fight but I have seldom seen him loose one, he is a man of honour and a degree of human dignity I have seldom had the pleasure of knowing.

Perhaps you could furnish an example here?

I think perhaps that humility is a virtue? this 'loss of reputation' is a poor reason to kill people and is surely an example of the ugliness of nationalism and it's attendant 'my nation right or wrong' absolutism. Similarly 'ideological' convergence, this is a fine principle to engage in cultural and material exchange, but was Geurnica's destruction by the Luftwuffe acceptable merely because it represented the assertion of an opportunity to align two ideologies, does this justify the USSR rolling the tanks into Hungary? The failing Socialist Afghan government invited Soviet support against public opinion and will was this correct? was it defensible?

If this is the case then surely peaceful aliances of nations on the grounds of ideology such as the 'Bolivarian' alliance in the southern Americas and the idea of Nassers 'pan-arabism' are unassailable on ethical grounds?

As for intervention in internal affairs, well they are certainly an option, Mussolini chose to support fascism against the will of the majority in Spain - an act of partisan intervention. The UN belatedly chose to intervene in Bosnia. Sometimes this option is inevitable and sometimes quite simply not defensible as it is not at all altruistic?

Is war OK as long as it serves your own interests but bad when it serves other peoples? How is such a simplistic and self interested policy stable in the long term and is it ulimately even remotely ethical? Are these too bigger questions to ask in an egocentric and materialist age?

peace j

Examples would be Rwanda, Kosovo, Libya and the initial invervention to deliver food in Somalia.

And your proposals for each? and why?

Be very careful with Libya.