why is war necessary essay

• Student Opportunities

About Hoover

Located on the campus of Stanford University and in Washington, DC, the Hoover Institution is the nation’s preeminent research center dedicated to generating policy ideas that promote economic prosperity, national security, and democratic governance. 

• The Hoover Story
• Hoover Timeline & History
• Mission Statement
• Vision of the Institution Today
• Key Focus Areas
• About our Fellows
• Research Programs
• Annual Reports
• Hoover in DC
• Fellowship Opportunities
• Visit Hoover
• David and Joan Traitel Building & Rental Information
• Newsletter Subscriptions
• Connect With Us

Hoover scholars form the Institution’s core and create breakthrough ideas aligned with our mission and ideals. What sets Hoover apart from all other policy organizations is its status as a center of scholarly excellence, its locus as a forum of scholarly discussion of public policy, and its ability to bring the conclusions of this scholarship to a public audience.

• Scott Atlas
• Thomas Sargent
• Stephen Kotkin
• Michael McConnell
• Morris P. Fiorina
• John F. Cogan
• China's Global Sharp Power Project
• Economic Policy Group
• History Working Group
• Hoover Education Success Initiative
• National Security Task Force
• National Security, Technology & Law Working Group
• Middle East and the Islamic World Working Group
• Military History/Contemporary Conflict Working Group
• Renewing Indigenous Economies Project
• State & Local Governance
• Strengthening US-India Relations
• Technology, Economics, and Governance Working Group
• Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region

Books by Hoover Fellows

Economics Working Papers

Hoover Education Success Initiative | The Papers

• Hoover Fellows Program
• National Fellows Program
• Student Fellowship Program
• Veteran Fellowship Program
• Congressional Fellowship Program
• Media Fellowship Program
• Silas Palmer Fellowship
• Economic Fellowship Program

Throughout our over one-hundred-year history, our work has directly led to policies that have produced greater freedom, democracy, and opportunity in the United States and the world.

• Determining America’s Role in the World
• Answering Challenges to Advanced Economies
• Empowering State and Local Governance
• Revitalizing History
• Confronting and Competing with China
• Revitalizing American Institutions
• Reforming K-12 Education
• Understanding Public Opinion
• Understanding the Effects of Technology on Economics and Governance
• Energy & Environment
• Health Care
• Immigration
• International Affairs
• Key Countries / Regions
• Law & Policy
• Politics & Public Opinion
• Science & Technology
• Security & Defense
• State & Local
• Books by Fellows
• Published Works by Fellows
• Working Papers
• Congressional Testimony
• Hoover Press
• PERIODICALS
• The Caravan
• China's Global Sharp Power
• Economic Policy
• History Lab
• Hoover Education
• Global Policy & Strategy
• National Security, Technology & Law
• Middle East and the Islamic World
• Military History & Contemporary Conflict
• Renewing Indigenous Economies
• State and Local Governance
• Technology, Economics, and Governance

Hoover scholars offer analysis of current policy challenges and provide solutions on how America can advance freedom, peace, and prosperity.

• China Global Sharp Power Weekly Alert
• Email newsletters
• Hoover Daily Report
• Subscription to Email Alerts
• Periodicals
• California on Your Mind
• Defining Ideas
• Hoover Digest
• Video Series
• Uncommon Knowledge
• Battlegrounds
• GoodFellows
• Hoover Events
• Capital Conversations
• Hoover Book Club
• AUDIO PODCASTS
• Matters of Policy & Politics
• Economics, Applied
• Free Speech Unmuted
• Secrets of Statecraft
• Pacific Century
• Libertarian
• Library & Archives

Support Hoover

Learn more about joining the community of supporters and scholars working together to advance Hoover’s mission and values.

What is MyHoover?

MyHoover delivers a personalized experience at  Hoover.org . In a few easy steps, create an account and receive the most recent analysis from Hoover fellows tailored to your specific policy interests.

Watch this video for an overview of MyHoover.

Log In to MyHoover

Forgot Password

Don't have an account? Sign up

Have questions? Contact us

• Support the Mission of the Hoover Institution
• Subscribe to the Hoover Daily Report
• Follow Hoover on Social Media

Make a Gift

Your gift helps advance ideas that promote a free society.

• About Hoover Institution
• Meet Our Fellows
• Focus Areas
• Research Teams
• Library & Archives

Library & archives

Events, news & press.

Why Should We Study War?

In the latter years of World War I, Winston Churchill met with the novelist and poet Siegfried Sassoon. Sassoon was a winner of the Military Cross––he single-handedly routed 60 Germans and captured a trench on the Hindenburg Line––and a fierce pacifist. Sassoon’s reminiscences of that meeting reveal how odd my title question would have struck most people before our time. He recalled that during their conversation, Churchill “gave me an emphatic vindication of militarism as an instrument of policy and stimulator of glorious individual achievements.”

After Sassoon left, he wondered, “Had he been entirely serious . . . when he said that ‘war is the normal occupation of man’? [I]t had been unmistakable that for him war was the finest activity on earth.” Churchill, remember, had served under fire in India, Sudan, Cuba, and South Africa even before his service in the trenches, so his comments were not the braggadocio of the armchair militarist unfamiliar with the horrors of war.

Many of us moderns, of course, find Sassoon’s beliefs, expressed in his poems and novels, about the futility and misery of war more attractive than Churchill’s idealization of it, and consider such enthusiasm untoward, if not sinister. Such attitudes have made war a disreputable topic of study. Once vigorous in the academy, military history programs are rarely found at universities and colleges today, even as  “peace studies” programs have proliferated. Reasons for this change are not hard to find. America’s historically unprecedented military power, its enormous wealth, and since 1865 its freedom from battle on its own soil and from foreign invasion have all insulated Americans from war, and enabled the perception that rather than a foundational and ennobling experience of humanity, war is an unnatural anomaly, a species of barbarism from our benighted past, and hence an unsavory topic of formal study, even as it remains a lucrative (and, to many people, low-brow) subject for books, movies, cable television channels, and video games.

In contrast to the modern disdain for studying war, most people before the twentieth century would have found Churchill’s comments unexceptional, indeed banal, and they would have considered self-evident the answer to the question raised in this essay’s title. The ancient Greeks were one of the most civilized, artistic, and cultured peoples in history. But they never questioned the eternal necessity of war. “War is the father of all,” Heraclitus said of the original “creative destruction.”  Plato in the Laws has Cleinias say, “Peace is only a name; in reality every city is in a natural state of war with every other.” The arch-realist Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War has an Athenian ambassador tell the Spartans that states fight one another because of the constants of human nature such as fear, honor, and self-interest, and invoke higher ideals such as “justice” only when they cannot achieve their aims by force.

All these Greeks agree with Churchill that war is a non-negotiable necessity and a legitimate “instrument of policy,” given the realities of human nature and its perennial passions and interests. In a harsh world of limited resources and violent men, war is as critical for the survival of civilization as agriculture, and as such, it would be as great a folly not to study war, as it would be to ignore the craft and skills of farming.

So too with Churchill’s praise of war as the “stimulator of glorious individual achievements.” From the beginnings of Western literature in Homer’s Iliad , and of history in Herodotus’ Histories , the glorious deeds of warriors, their bravery and self-sacrifice for honor and community, have been celebrated and admired. Who can forget the doomed valor of Hector, when despite knowing he is fated to die at the hands of Achilles, says before his last charge, “But now my death is upon me. Let me at least not die without a struggle, inglorious, but do some big thing first, that men to come shall know of it”?

And even today, in an age of historical amnesia, the last stand of the vastly outnumbered Thespians and Spartans at Thermopylae is still remembered, when, as Herodotus writes, the Greeks, their spears and swords shattered, “defended themselves with knives, if they still had them, and otherwise with their hands and teeth, while the Persians buried them in a hail of missiles.”

Those before us knew that for all its horrors and misery––which our ancestors acknowledged as much as its glories––war is when the best that men are capable of is manifested, and great deeds worthy of memory are achieved. And they understood as well that the commemoration of these deeds by men “who knew their duty and had the courage to do it,” as Pericles said of his fellow Athenians, creates models of virtue and honor for subsequent generations to study and emulate. Only in that way can a civilization survive in a world of limited resources and ruthless aggressors.

Churchill’s comments, then, suggest two reasons for the study of war, one practical, and the other philosophical. If war is an unavoidable and necessary instrument of statecraft, then we should study the origins, conduct, successes, and failures of wars in order to find, as the Roman historian Livy describes the purpose of history, “what to imitate,” and to “mark for avoidance what is shameful in the conception and shameful in the result.” This need is particularly pressing in a democracy, where the military is subordinated to the civilian government, and the voters have the responsibility to debate and deliberate policies, and to choose leaders whose charge is to serve the security and interests of the citizens both in the short and in the long term.

Two historical examples, one ancient, one modern, illustrate the importance of military history for teaching the lessons of the past. In 415 B.C., over ten years into the war against Sparta, the democratic Assembly of Athens voted to send an expeditionary force 800 miles to attack the rich and powerful city of Syracuse. In Thucydides’ telling, this decision was based neither on short-term nor on long-term strategic national interests and security, but on the promise of an expanded empire and the greater revenues that would be available to the citizens through the tribute of subject states.

The charismatic and ambitious Alcibiades was a prime mover of the expedition. He dangled the lure of greater empire, telling the Assembly, “We shall either become masters, as we very easily may, of the whole of Hellas [Greece], or in any case ruin the Syracusans, to the no small advantage of ourselves and our allies.” As for the Assemblymen, Thucydides writes, “The idea of the common people and the soldiery was to earn wages at the moment [the treasury increased the pay for rowers, and the commanders of the ships promised bonuses as well], and make conquests that would supply a never-ending fund of pay for the future.” The expedition sailed, and became one of the most famous military disasters in history. The Athenians lost 6000 men and 200 ships, the whole expeditionary force and a relief fleet as well.

This disaster offers many lessons. First, dispassionate knowledge of the enemy and the logistics of war are critical for success. According to Thucydides, the Athenians were “ignorant of [Sicily’s] size and of the number of its inhabitants, Hellenic and barbarian, and of the fact that they were undertaking a war not much inferior to that against the Peloponnesians.” Thus the Athenians woefully underestimated the power and resources of the Syracusans and the dangers of resupply and relief when 800 miles from home, both factors in the ultimate debacle. Next, parochial self-interest, the selfish desire for personal wealth and glory rather than the safety and well being of the state as a whole, are dangerous motives for undertaking a war, as they obscure the limits and obstacles a more sober consideration might reveal.

Finally, politicians like an Alcibiades––who according to Thucydides was “exceedingly ambitious of a command by which he hoped to reduce Sicily and Carthage, and personally to gain in wealth and reputation by means of his success”­­––will end up sacrificing the state as a whole in order to further their own ambitions. These are all dangers that the citizens should beware when contemplating the use of force to pursue policy, and when deliberating and evaluating the aims which war will achieve.

The modern lesson comes from the origins of World War II. As Winston Churchill said in his famous “Sinews of Peace” speech in Fulton, Missouri in 1946, “There never was a war in all history easier to prevent by timely action than the one which has just desolated such great areas of the globe. It could have been prevented in my belief without the firing of a single shot.” Churchill was referring to the period before 1935, when Germany’s serial violations of the Versailles treaty, particularly its clandestine programs for rebuilding its army and armaments industry, were met with indifference or appeasement. But even later, timely military action could have stopped Nazi Germany at a fraction of the 50 million dead World War II cost.

In 1936, Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, the territory between the French border and the Rhine River, in violation of the Versailles treaty. His 36,000 policemen and green army recruits faced nearly 100 French and Belgian divisions, who did not fire a shot. Later Hitler would admit that the Germans would have had to “withdraw with our tails between our legs” had the French resisted. Two years later, England and France abandoned their ally Czechoslovakia, and Germany absorbed this strategically critical country. Yet if England and France had fought back with force, an outnumbered Germany would have been defeated, as Poland and the Soviet Union would likely have followed their ally France’s lead. A French advance east from the Maginot Line would have opened a second front and overwhelmed Germany’s manpower and materiel. As historian Williamson Murray writes, “Germany would have faced overwhelming Allied superiority . . . The results would have been inevitable and would have led to the eventual collapse of the Nazi regime at considerably less cost” than the butcher’s bill of World War II.

Once Hitler’s ambitions became obvious even to the appeasers after the debacle of Munich, the French and British announced that they would protect Poland’s territorial integrity should Germany invade. But this was the wrong place and time to draw that particular red line. The occupation of Czechoslovakia had strengthened Germany and put the Wehrmacht on the southern border of Poland, beyond the state-of-the-art fortifications the Czechs had built in their mountainous western region. And Germany now possessed the military hardware of the Czechs and the Skoda works, one of the largest arms manufacturers in Europe. In fact, the Panzer 35(t) and 38(t) tanks used in the invasion of Poland were actually Czech tanks produced by Skoda. Given Germany’s advantages, there simply was not much England and France could do militarily to help the Poles, which explains the 8 months of “phony war” marked by the Allies’ inaction after Hitler invaded Poland.

The lesson we should learn from this sorry history is that preemptive war is a necessity when facing a determined aggressor, and that the time and place of a potential conflict, and the capacity to wage war until its successful conclusion, must be carefully considered and prepared for when making treaty commitments and pledging the nation’s blood and treasure. This means that often a nation cannot merely wait to react to aggression, but must anticipate where the blow will fall.

To use the simile of the great fourth-century Greek orator Demosthenes, when he chastised the Athenians for serially failing to react to Philip of Macedon’s aggression, a nation must not deal with an aggressor the way a barbarian boxes: “The barbarian,” Demosthenes said, “when struck, always clutches the place; hit him on the other side and there go his hands. He neither knows nor cares how to parry a blow or how to watch his adversary.” Given that Hitler had 13 years earlier laid out his plan of conquest in Mein Kampf , the Allies should have anticipated the sequence of aggression that would culminate in the attack on Poland, and resisted the Germans in 1936 in the Rhineland, or in 1938 in Austria or Czechoslovakia.

The larger lesson, however, of this “low dishonest decade,” as W.H. Auden called the thirties, is that success in war depends on morale, not material superiority. Long before 1938, England and France had lost their nerve, and simply did not have the will to fight. Instead they had bought into the illusions of internationalism and collective security, pacifism and disarmament, which had merely fed the alligator of Nazism, to paraphrase Churchill, in the vain hope that they would be eaten last. And this brings us to the philosophical lessons the study of war teaches. Contrary to our modern therapeutic utopianism, the history of war shows us the unchanging, tragic reality of human nature and its irrational passions and interests that will spark state aggression and violence.

The modern world, in contrast, rejects the notion that human nature comprises destructive passions and selfish interests that will start wars only force can stop. On the contrary, to the modern optimist, humans are universally rational and peace loving, if only the external, warping constraints on these qualities––ignorance, poverty, parochial ethnic and nationalist loyalties, the oppression of priestly and aristocratic elites––can be removed. Then people will progress to the realization that their true interests like peace, freedom, and prosperity will be achieved not by force but by international trade, economic development, democracy, and non-lethal transnational institutions that can adjudicate conflict and eliminate the scourge of war.

This influential belief was famously expressed by Immanuel Kant in his 1795 essay “Perpetual Peace.” In it Kant imagined a “federation of free states” that would create a “pacific alliance . . . different from a treaty of peace . . . inasmuch as it would forever terminate all wars, whereas the latter only finishes one.” In his conclusion, Kant expressed the optimism that would become an article of faith in subsequent centuries: “If it is a duty, if the hope can even be conceived, of realizing, though by an endless progress, the reign of public right––perpetual peace, which will succeed to the suspension of hostilities, hitherto named treaties of peace, is not then a chimera, but a problem, of which time, probably abridged by the uniformity of the progress of the human mind, promises us the solution.”

Throughout the nineteenth century international institutions were created to realize this dream and lessen, if not eliminate, the savagery and suffering of war. The First Geneva Convention in 1864 and the Second in 1906 sought to establish laws for the humane treatment of the sick and wounded in war. The first Hague Convention in 1899 established an international Court of Arbitration and codified restrictions on aerial bombardment, poison gas, and exploding bullets.  The preamble to the first Hague Convention explicitly acknowledged its Kantian aims: “the maintenance of the general peace” and the “friendly settlement of international disputes” that both reflected the “solidarity which unites the members of the society of civilized nations” and their shared desire for “extending the empire of law, and of strengthening the appreciation of international justice.” One wonders how such optimism made sense of the Franco-Prussian War three decades earlier, when two of the world’s most “civilized nations” suffered nearly a million casualties, including 170,000 dead.

Even after the industrialized carnage of World War I showed international solidarity and universal progress to be a fantasy, the Versailles treaty established the League of Nations, the transnational institution intended to realize Kant’s dream of a “federation of free states” that would keep the peace and promote global progress. But within a few years the League had been exposed as ineffective, since the same sovereign nations that had fought each other so brutally in the war continued to pursue their zero-sum interests, frequently with force. No more effective has been the United Nations, a “cockpit in the Tower of Babel,” as Churchill feared it might become, that also has failed at its foundational goal of maintaining peace, becoming instead an instrument of the member-states’ nationalist interests, one that frequently supplements and abets, rather than controls or limits state violence.

Familiarity with the history of war should disabuse people of these Kantian illusions. Studying the causes and nature of armed conflict reveals that technological progress, better education and nutrition, global trade, and increased prosperity has not eliminated or reduced wars, but often made them more brutal and destructive. Military history teaches us that war is not a distortion of a peace-loving human nature that not yet has sufficiently progressed beyond such savage barbarism, but rather is a reflection of a flawed human nature, and the necessary instrument for states to protect their security and pursue their interests, whether these are rational and good, or irrational and evil. The study of war, in short, can remind us of the tragic wisdom evident on every page of history: that humans are fallen creatures prone to destructive violence that only righteous violence can check.

The lessons we can learn from studying war, of course, are more numerous than the few discussed here. Our judgment of any war, whether of its origins or its conduct, must be based on the record of history rather than the utopian fantasies of a world that will never exist. From the standard of history, in any conflict we should always expect mistakes, unforeseen consequences, civilian casualties, deaths from friendly fire, barbarism, and cruelty. All of these contingencies can be found in every war, including the so-called “good war,” World War II, from the Market Garden disaster in September 1944 that cost the Allies 16,000 casualties, to the harvesting of gold teeth from the Japanese dead in the South Pacific. These evils are the costs of using violence to defend our security and interests, and should be expected, though never condoned, the moment the decision to go to war has been made.

We also should expect­­––particularly in constitutional states where citizens are responsible for the decision to go to war––impatience, second-guessing, and frustration with these unfortunately perennial evils of armed conflict. And we should not be surprised when the citizens want to punish the politicians and leaders who started and managed the war. After news of the disaster in Sicily reached Athens, Thucydides writes, the people “were angry with the orators who had joined in promoting the expedition, just as if they had not themselves voted it.” We recently experienced the same phenomenon during the Iraq war in 2004, when many of the same Senators who had voted to invade Iraq year earlier, a decision based on the same intelligence the Bush administration had studied, responded to growing criticism of the war by turning against it and attacking the president.

Leon Trotsky allegedly said, “You may not believe in war, but war believes in you.” Though likely a mistranslation, the sentiment is still valuable. War and its horrors will always be with us, along with its unavoidable suffering and cruelty, “such as have occurred and always will occur as long as the nature of mankind remains the same,” as Thucydides writes. And as long as we cherish our way of life, with its freedom and human rights, its prosperity and its opportunity, we will at times have to make the awful decision to send our citizens to fight, kill, and die to defend those goods from those who want to destroy them. The more we know about war, the better equipped we will be to make that choice and see our efforts succeed.

This essay is based on a speech delivered at Hillsdale College. 

View the discussion thread.

Join the Hoover Institution’s community of supporters in ideas advancing freedom.

• Senior Fellows
• Research Fellows
• Submission Guidelines
• Media Inquiries
• Commentary & Analysis

Upcoming Events

• Past Events
• October 2021 War Studies Conference
• November 2020 War Studies Conference
• November 2018 War Studies Conference
• March 2018 War Studies Conference
• November 2016 War Studies Conference
• Class of 1974 MWI Podcast
• Urban Warfare Project Podcast
• Social Science of War
• Urban Warfare Project
• Project 6633
• Shield Notes
• Rethinking Civ-Mil
• Book Reviews

Select Page

Does the “Good Fight” Exist? Ethics and the Future of War

Nicholas Romanow | 04.07.22

Samuel Moyn, Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War (Macmillan, 2021)

Can a “humane” war ever be fought? Or is such a question doomed to irrelevance by an innate contradiction in its terms? These are two of the driving questions in Samuel Moyn’s Humane , a polemic against the US-led march into an era of endless war.

Moyn’s exploration of these question leads him to conclude, in part, that efforts to make warfighting more ethical and less cruel have in turn made war more common and long-lasting. Moyn also sets his sights on the military establishment, castigating it for a long succession of abuses, cover-ups, and manipulations. Published as the US military continues its transition from the post-9/11 wars to an era of great power competition, Moyn’s book is a thought-provoking reflection on the evolution of ethical and legal considerations in the use of military force. Still, it poorly anticipates the ethical dilemmas that military officers will face today and tomorrow.

Moyn’s central thesis (while seemingly paradoxical) is relatively intuitive. If war becomes less brutal, both decision makers and the public will raise fewer objections to going to war. If fewer people object to war, then wars will become easier to initiate and harder to terminate. Moyn traces this logic from the nineteenth century, through both world wars and the Cold War, and into the post–Cold War period. He highlights a fissure that emerged between peace advocates who oppose war of any kind, for any reason, and humanitarians who work to mitigate the worst effects of inevitable conflict. In effect, Moyn suggests, the efforts of the humanitarian camp actually contribute to making war more likely by reducing some of the most catastrophic impacts of war.

Throughout the book, Moyn maintains a caustic tone directed at those who have strived to constrain the use of force and hold the military to a high standard of accountability and self-control. This derision is off-putting for junior officers who hold their military mentors, and their efforts to apply violence in ways that limit any unnecessary harm, in high esteem. In his memoir, Call Sign Chaos , retired General and former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis wrote that “the need for lethality must be the measuring stick against which we evaluate the efficacy of our military.” Yet in the very same book, he observed that “rules of engagement are what separate principled militaries from barbarians and terrorists.” Moyn dismisses concepts such as strict rules of engagement and civilian casualty reporting as mere public relations tactics the military uses to avoid bad press.

The refinement of military ethics is a task without end; as long as war causes unnecessary damage and suffering, the task can and must continue. But the author overlooks ongoing efforts within the joint force to develop, refine, and enforce a robust set of military ethics—a defining feature of the military as a profession. Mentors and role models who embrace and pass on this professional obligation help establish a virtuous cycle where, at its best, each generation of new officers is cultivated to hold itself to an ever higher standard.

Consider such unforgivable abuses of military force such as the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. This episode and those like it are rightfully remembered as scandals in American military history. That’s why it’s important that they remain well-discussed, not just in American public discourse but in professional military education, as well. These are exceptions rather than the rule in American military affairs—unacceptable exceptions, but exceptions nonetheless. Efforts to ensure these cases are not only remembered institutionally within the military, but used to develop ethical leaders, are therefore vital. Black Hearts —a book about the brutal rape of an Iraqi girl and murder of her family by US soldiers—is required reading for every West Point cadet and a case study based on it forms the centerpiece of the academy’s capstone officership course. This and other efforts to develop ethical leaders matters in ways Moyn’s book fails to recognize.

The military justice system enshrined in the Uniform Code of Military Justice and upheld by the judge advocate general’s corps in every service is not just a publicity stunt. Rather, the concept of legality in warfighting is integrated in the daily routines of every servicemember. Conducting military operations ethically, morally, and legally is not an afterthought meant to massage the military’s public image. For junior officers who have recently completed their indoctrination training, including the wide range of legal briefings this entails, the implication that for a professional military the law of armed conflict is simply a farce does not align with actual experiences.

Moyn’s book was published last fall, within days of the withdrawal of US and allied forces from Afghanistan. But its analysis ends with the post-9/11 wars and counterterrorism mission, which are presented as an example of a dystopian end state wherein hyper-precise strike warfare against high-value targets has allowed the military to morph into some kind of global police force. This is a worthy discussion, but only part of a complete and current one, which limits its utility. There is no discussion on the impacts on military ethics of the raging debate in security circles on strategic competition, gray zone conflict, or the Thucydides Trap and tensions between the United States and China. While counterterrorism operations, stability operations, and irregular warfare will persist, these are no longer the raison d’etre for the armed services in the way they were for the better part of the previous two decades. Instead, competing in ambiguous situations that sit in the challenging middle ground between armed conflict and peace will require leaders who can confront murky ethical conundrums. Today’s officers can learn from the moral shortcomings that Moyn chronicles, but they must do so while deliberately planning for the challenges ahead.

This is the key for military readers of Humane , especially junior officers who will spend the years and even decades to come confronting new ethical challenges. Exploring whether wars can ever be fought humanely is a worthy endeavor. Tracing efforts to do so—and questioning whether they unintentionally expand the likelihood of war—is equally so. One of Moyn’s central contentions—that technology reduces risks in ways that can prolong wars—is convincing, at least to a degree. The use of unmanned aerial vehicles seems to have finally defeated General William T. Sherman’s adage that “every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.” Strikes by unmanned platforms controlled by aviators sometimes thousands of miles away have virtually eliminated the risk associated with manned aircraft missions, enabling such operations to continue in perpetuity because public resistance to military activity is most often tied to the casualties of American servicemembers. However, members of the military profession cannot reach that conclusion and stop there, but must look forward to future ethical challenges. As drone use proliferates globally, it is possible that this technology will one day be used against American servicemembers, either by an adversarial state or a terrorist group. How do the ethics of unmanned platforms—their development, what weapons they carry, whether artificial intelligence can and should be incorporated into them, and ultimately their employment—change in such a shifting environment?

Technology is an important motif throughout the book, especially its role shaping the laws and ethics of war. The advent of aerial bombardment and nuclear weapons made warfare far more destructive long before it became more precise. This history, which Moyn charts well, should inform ongoing debates over whether autonomous weapons, digital technology, and other emerging advances will pull warfare in the direction of more precision or more destruction.

No domain of warfare is as inadequately covered by the current body of law governing conflict as the domain of cyber. The deniability of cyberattacks allows them to skirt the traditional dichotomy of jus ad bellum and jus in bello . Cyberattacks may be referred to as acts of war in policy discourse, but no cyberattack has escalated into a full-blown war. Meanwhile, many cyberattacks occur in the absence of a state of war, such as last year’s Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack . Attacks like these also blatantly violate noncombatant immunity and often target critical infrastructure or private firms. Cyberattacks can also be perpetrated for a variety of purposes other than mere destruction, such as for espionage, extortion, or terrorism.

At the same time, we have yet to experience the “ cyber Pearl Harbor ” that would prove that a cyber weapon can be used to inflict casualties on an enemy. Despite the abundance of ink spilled on enshrining cyber norms and the need for a “ Digital Geneva Convention ,” cyberspace remains an unregulated battleground. While events like the Colonial Pipeline attack prove the possible effects of a coordinated cyber offensive, there are no clear boundaries on how far such a campaign may go before it is considered an overt act of war. At what point will cyberattacks trigger kinetic responses? How much certainty in the hacker’s identity will be needed to justify a response? Will the United States and other major powers accept constraints on their own cyber capabilities to avoid more and more devastating attacks? Is it even possible for these constraints to be enforced and verified? Perhaps both the legal aspects and the ethics of cyberwarfare were beyond the scope of Moyn’s book, but military professionals have no choice but to contend with these issues.

Moyn’s work is a thoroughly researched piece of intellectual history. Junior military professionals should read Humane and will find it useful, but should consider the ways in which the book’s utility is limited. Ultimately, they should take away from it a reinvigorated commitment to confronting head on the arduous ethical and moral dilemmas that a military officer will undoubtedly face throughout his or her career.

Ensign Nicholas Romanow ( @nickromanow ) is a cryptologic warfare officer in the US Navy stationed in the Washington, DC area. He holds a BA in international relations and global studies from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was also an undergraduate fellow at the Clements Center for National Security.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense., or that of any organization the author is affiliated with, including the United States Navy.

Image credit: Senior Airman Helena Owens, US Air Force

Leave a reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

The articles and other content which appear on the Modern War Institute website are unofficial expressions of opinion. The views expressed are those of the authors, and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

The Modern War Institute does not screen articles to fit a particular editorial agenda, nor endorse or advocate material that is published. Rather, the Modern War Institute provides a forum for professionals to share opinions and cultivate ideas. Comments will be moderated before posting to ensure logical, professional, and courteous application to article content.

Most Popular Posts

• The Illusion of Conventional War: Europe Is Learning the Wrong Lessons from the Conflict in Ukraine
• Defending the City: An Overview of Defensive Tactics from the Modern History of Urban Warfare
• Iran’s Neutralized Counterstrike: Israel’s Air Defense Operation Was Effective—Just Not Necessarily Replicable

Announcements

• Join Us Friday, April 26 for a Livestream of the 2024 Hagel Lecture, Featuring Secretary Chuck Hagel and Secretary Jeh Johnson
• Announcing the Modern War Institute’s 2023–24 Senior and Research Fellows
• Essay Contest Call for Submissions: Solving the Military Recruiting Crisis
• Call for Applications: MWI’s 2023–24 Research Fellows Program

Featured Topics

Featured series.

A series of random questions answered by Harvard experts.

Explore the Gazette

Read the latest.

A Chekhov play relatable to Americans today

Gain without pain

Everything, everywhere, all at once (kind of)

The humanities and war, in jefferson lecture, faust probes the literary draw of conflict.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As re-enactors don the blue and the gray to commemorate the Civil War’s 150th anniversary, young men and women dressed in fatigues are locked in combat half a world away under the flag of a nation that was reshaped by that 19th century conflict.

And as hundreds of writers have grappled with the meaning of the War Between the States, hundreds more will try to wrest some sense from the contemporary violence in the Middle East, just as authors have tried to explain war since the time of Homer.

But can we fully grasp the reality experienced by the combatants in Iraq or Afghanistan any better than we do the sacrifices made on the plains of Troy? Do the Civil War re-enactors, clad in their painstakingly replicated uniforms, fully embrace the meaning of the conflict that they play out for enthusiastic spectators?

And what is the role of the writer in framing our understanding of war?

Those questions were at the heart of an address by Harvard President Drew Faust , who Monday night (May 2) delivered the National Endowment for the Humanities ’ 2011 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities.

Our understanding of any war is shaped by the prevailing sociopolitical dynamics of our time. The humanities play a leading role in that process, since evidence gathered by researchers and writers provides the bulwark for the discussion of past conflicts, said Faust, a historian of the Civil War.

“Will we in this historic sesquicentennial — to be observed at a time when Americans are involved in real conflicts in three sites across the globe — forget what a heavy responsibility rests on those who seek to tell the stories of war?” Faust asked the audience of about 1,500 at the Kennedy Center.

In Faust’s view, the humanities and war have been engaged in a centuries-old seduction in which scholars and poets, drawn to the extraordinary human and political dimensions of military conflict, try to wring meaning out of violence carried out on such a scale that words cannot adequately describe it.

“As we have sought through the centuries to define ourselves as human beings and as nations through the prisms of history and literature, no small part of that effort has drawn us to war,” she said. Noting that the first masterwork of Western literature was “The Iliad,” “a tale that exerts a wrenching power more than two millennia after its origin,” she added that “we might even say that the humanities began with war, and from war, and have remained entwined with it ever since.”

The Jefferson Lecture is the most prestigious honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.

“History can sometimes be more controversial than current events. This is particularly the case with the Civil War where its causes remain subject to differing interpretations,” said former Congressman Jim Leach, chairman of the NEH. Faust’s lecture, he said, “provides important insights into our greatest internal conflict. By placing the Civil War and memories of it in the context of the history of war itself, dating back to the ancient Greeks, she sheds perspective on conflicts of all kinds in all circumstances.”

Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a leader of the Civil Rights movement who read Walt Whitman’s “Dirge for Two Veterans” before Faust was introduced, said he had attended many Jefferson Lectures, but “this is one of the most moving.”

“I loved how she had the ability and the capacity to say what war is all about. It’s messy. It’s dirty. We shouldn’t romanticize war. We should see it for what it is,” Lewis said. “I think it’s so fitting and appropriate for the times in which we live.”

More than reflecting the trials and consequences of battle, Faust said, the humanities have played a role in shaping the very concept of war. By labeling violence “war,” we frame it as a story with a plot and actors moving toward a promise of victory.

“How is it that the human has become so entangled with the inhumane?  That humanity’s highest creative aspirations of literature and imagination have been all but inseparable from its most terrible invention: the scourge of war?” Faust asked. “Humans are unique in their creation of an institution of war that is designed to organize violence, define its purposes, declare its onset, ratify its conclusion, and establish its rules. War, like literature, is a distinctively human product.”

The extraordinary nature of an event in which human life is at stake accounts for much of the attraction that war holds for writers, Faust observed, and ages of prose and verse extolling the virtues of an honorable battlefield death helped draw generations of young men into the horrors of war.

Even after history’s lens had shifted and the horrors of war were emphasized as directly as its glories, the attraction persisted. Ernest Hemingway once remarked to F. Scott Fitzgerald that “war is the best subject of all” because it gathers narrative material, speeds up the action, “and brings out all sorts of stuff that normally you have to wait a lifetime to get.” Faust likened Hemingway’s description of war to the dramatic structures laid out in Aristotle’s “Poetics.” “The inherent ‘magnitude’ of a war story is, of course, that it is about life and death, about the quintessential moment of truth when the ultimate is at stake,” Faust said.

The narrative promises of a war, Faust said, can also serve as political expedients. She suggested that declaring “war” on terrorism helped U.S. government leaders frame their response to what seemed a ubiquitous threat. “Responding to terrorism with war replaced the specter and fear of mass murder with a hope for the controlled, ordered force of war,” she said. “It offered the United States the sense of intention, the goal-directedness, and lure of efficacy that war promises and terrorism obliterates. …

“We expect wars to come with endings; that is part of their story. The language of war made Americans protagonists in a story they understood rather than the victims or potential victims of forces beyond their comprehension or control.”

Looking simultaneously back on the conflict that has been the focus of much of her career and ahead to the conflicts that await American soldiers in the weeks and months to come, Faust recalled the words of poet Walt Whitman, who warned that “the real war will never get into the books.”

“It would indeed be impossible ever fully to capture war’s contradictions, its paradoxes, its horror, and its exhilaration,” she said. “We have grappled to use the humanity of words to understand the inhumanity of war. As we continue to be lured by war, we must be committed to convey its horrors. We must make it our work to tell a true war story.”

Share this article

You might like.

At first, Heidi Schreck wasn’t sure the world needed another take on ‘Uncle Vanya’

OFA dance classes offer well-being through movement

There’s never a shortage of creativity on campus. But during Arts First, it all comes out to play.

Epic science inside a cubic millimeter of brain

Researchers publish largest-ever dataset of neural connections

Excited about new diet drug? This procedure seems better choice.

Study finds minimally invasive treatment more cost-effective over time, brings greater weight loss

How far has COVID set back students?

An economist, a policy expert, and a teacher explain why learning losses are worse than many parents realize

ENCYCLOPEDIC ENTRY

War is generally defined as violent conflict between states or nations.

Social Studies, Civics

Tank in Iraq Invasion

A United States Army 3rd Infantry Division M1/A1 Abrahms tank during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. While the use of force was authorized by Congress, like many U.S. military conflicts, war was not declared.

Photograph by Scott Nelson/Getty Images

War is generally defined as violent conflict between states or nations. Nations go to war for a variety of reasons. It has been argued that a nation will go to war if the benefits of war are deemed to outweigh the disadvantages, and if there is a sense that there is not another mutually agreeable solution. More specifically, some have argued that wars are fought primarily for economic, religious, and political reasons. Others have claimed that most wars today are fought for ideological reasons. In the United States, the legal power to declare war is vested in Congress; however, the president is the commander-in-chief of the military, so he or she holds power to conduct a war once it has been declared. In many instances, the president has used military force without declaring war . Just War Theory In Western tradition, there is a sense that the reasons for war must be just. This idea dates back to ancient times, but is most clearly traced to the writings of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. They attempted to justify war, and reconcile it with the Christian belief that taking a human life is wrong. To Aquinas, a war must be just in both the reasons for going to war and how war is fought. Reasons for going to war— jus ad bellum —are just if (1) war is declared by an appropriate authority; (2) the war is waged for a just cause; and (3) the war is waged for just intentions. An appropriate authority is a proper, governing authority. A “just cause” may include self-defense or a response to injustice. “Just intentions” mean that it must not be fought for self-interest, but for justice or a common good. In addition, (4) there must be a reasonable chance of success; (5) the good that will be achieved must outweigh the bad; and (6) war must be a last resort. Once just reasons for going to war are satisfied, conduct in the war— jus in bello —must be just as well. Just conduct in a war means that it must be specific and proportional. That is, noncombatants and civilians must not be deliberately targeted. Further, only such force as is necessary must be used, and harms must be proportionate to the goal sought. Law of War Some of the just war theories have been adopted as parts of international agreements and incorporated into the law of war (i.e., international law) that regulates the resort to armed force, the conduct of hostilities, and the protection of war victims. The Geneva Conventions , for example, are a series of international treaties that are designed to protect noncombatants, civilians , and prisoners of war . The treaties were negotiated in Geneva, Switzerland, between 1864 and 1977. The First and Second Geneva Conventions apply to sick and wounded soldiers and sailors. They contain provisions related to protecting the wounded and sick, as well as medical personnel and transports. The Third Geneva Convention applies to prisoners of war , and the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to people in occupied territories. The Third Convention requires humane treatment of prisoners, including adequate food and water. The Fourth Convention includes provisions that forbid torture and the taking of hostages, as well as provisions related to medical care and hospitals.

Media Credits

The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited.

Production Managers

Program specialists, last updated.

October 19, 2023

User Permissions

For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service. If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher. They will best know the preferred format. When you reach out to them, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource.

If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. If no button appears, you cannot download or save the media.

Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service .

Interactives

Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. You cannot download interactives.

Related Resources

EdSource is committed to bringing you the latest in education news.

But we can’t do this without readers like you.

Will you join our spring campaign as one of 50 new monthly supporters before May 22?

How can California teach more adults to read in English?

Hundreds of teachers in limbo after spike in pink slips

Beyond a bed: What this L.A. home offers young adults experiencing homelessness

How earning a college degree put four California men on a path from prison to new lives | Documentary 

Patrick Acuña’s journey from prison to UC Irvine | Video

Family reunited after four years separated by Trump-era immigration policy

Black teachers: How to recruit them and make them stay

Lessons in higher education: California and beyond

Keeping California public university options open

Superintendents: Well-paid and walking away

The debt to degree connection

College in prison: How earning a degree can lead to a new life

Getting California kids to read: What will it take?

May 14, 2024

April 24, 2024

Is dual admission a solution to California’s broken transfer system?

March 21, 2024

Raising the curtain on Prop 28: Can arts education help transform California schools?

Teacher Voices

Students should learn about the human impact of war

Marco Chacón

August 2, 2022.

EdSource’s journalism is always free for everyone — because we believe an informed public is necessary for a more equitable future for every student. Join our spring campaign as one of 50 new monthly supporters before May 22.

As I follow Ukraine coverage, full of vivid images and detailed, poignantly human descriptions of the upending of common people’s lives, I wonder: Why don’t more K-12 curricula — especially history classes — present other wars in this same way?

Igor , a 54-year-old driver, is shown standing in front of a two-story house turned to rubble, staring blankly into the distance, holding a coffee. He describes an airstrike that killed his wife and 12-year-old daughter sleeping in an adjoining room. “This was her wheelchair … now she’s dead.”

Displaced families queue for food outside a hospital after the bombing of a residential area. “We are all scared, why us?” wonders Svetlana. “We are ordinary folk.”

Lena , one of 15,000 people hiding in a Kiev subway tunnel, “wipes her brow in exhaustion,” entertaining 3-year old Max with her smartphone, so his parents can rest.

At a Berlin train terminal, crowds of smiling Germans offer lodging to fleeing, heavy-hearted Ukrainians leaving loved ones behind: “Welcome 2 people, as long as you want,” one sign reads.  Host Ms. Sanchez just wants to “make them feel safe.”

As adults, we understand war most deeply based on details like these, while textbooks most often omit them altogether. In my 10 years teaching history across grades 1-12, I never came across one textbook that portrayed a war in this way.

In one popular textbook , the Vietnam War is covered in one page: broad government goals and military actions towards stopping communism, general disagreements, years, presidents, casualty numbers. In another , the Cold War is explained as “a state of hostility between superpowers. … Later the United States used military intervention to keep communism out of countries.” No individual experiences mentioned.

Yet, when my undergraduate education students at UC San Diego reflect on the most memorable, impactful lessons from their schooling, and think through future curricula, many corroborate this need for reform. One recalled a guest speech from a Holocaust survivor. “That stuck with me more than the rest of my history lessons combined.” Another remembered a college classmate describing growing up in Palestine: hiding from soldiers, hearing gunshots, sneaking around the city in fear. Others describe family members’ moving personal stories of surviving the Japanese invasion of China, and of the Korean War.

Of course, the idea of teaching history in this way raises some valid concerns, but I believe they can be addressed and mitigated:

• Teachers may worry about adding extra content to their classes, given time constraints and already extensive coverage requirements. But an understanding of the human toll of conflict already fits under California’s existing history/social sciences content standards (e.g. 10.9.3, 11.9.3 ) and is already required for other major events, such as the Great Depression (11.6.3 ). Some war strategy, policy and presidential details covered at multiple grade levels could be partially replaced without important concepts being lost, while maintaining current scope and sequence. For example, we could have one Cold War lesson focused on the broader geopolitics and one on individual civilian consequences, instead of two with a broader scope.
• Parents may worry about traumatizing effects of graphic depictions of war victims. I would argue that much of the most impactful Ukraine news coverage illuminates common people’s terrifying everyday reality without any violent imagery, and K-12 lessons could do the same.
• More polarizing conflicts, such as Israel-Palestine have the potential to promote problematic partisanship: Teachers and textbook creators would have to be vigilant about providing balance and multiple perspectives. In Ukraine coverage, we see Russian protesters risking arrest, being applauded for their bravery ; some Russian soldiers portrayed sympathetically: scared 19- and 20-year-olds, feeling tricked , dying unnecessarily , in addition to the cruel acts of others. Worries about America or the military being denigrated would also need to be assuaged through similarly nuanced, multifaceted presentations.

Understanding that civilians being bombed want to flee and need refuge should transcend political allegiance. Wheelchair-using 12-year-olds and their mothers shouldn’t be killed or lose their homes, regardless whose government is in the wrong, and students should learn that collateral damage is inherent in armed conflict. Similar human stories from Vietnamese, Syrian, and Ethiopian wars could produce similar takeaways.

Few students will need to recite dates, presidents or military strategies as adults, but most will cross paths with people displaced by violence, and others from invading countries. They will elect officials who promote and oppose wars and refugee-related legislation. Informed reasoning about military action and fair treatment of future classmates, neighbors, and co-workers from such backgrounds requires an understanding of those human details.

Not everyone knows a Holocaust survivor, but many students and teachers know survivors of other violence who could share their stories. Books like “The Kite Runner,” “The Sympathizer” and “War Trash” can help supplement that local, human perspective. Resources showing the personal impacts of war can be found on open-access educational databases, including Facing History, OER Commons, the Shoah Foundation — which has created lifelike video interviews with Holocaust survivors — and individual stories and comparisons of Sudanese , Ukrainian and Syrian refugee experiences.

Unfortunately, textbooks lacking these elements are still often the default, and this needs to change. For kids to understand war on a deep level, teachers need to show the people caught in it.

Marco Chacón is a former K-12 history teacher and current doctoral student in the education studies department at the University of California San Diego, studying curricular models that promote deep learning.

The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our  guidelines  and  contact us .

Share Article

Comments (6)

Leave a comment, your email address will not be published. required fields are marked * *.

Click here to cancel reply.

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Comments Policy

We welcome your comments. All comments are moderated for civility, relevance and other considerations. Click here for EdSource's Comments Policy .

Nancy Freehafer 2 years ago 2 years ago

This is an important and difficult subject, and Mr. Chacon has done a masterful job in taking it on. The practice of school administrators and textbook publishers is generally to avoid issues they consider controversial. Unfortunately, these are the very issues that young people need to explore, and war is one of these issues. It is crucial to challenge these practices. Mr. Chacon's essay is in effect such a challenge. Not only does he demonstrate the importance … Read More

This is an important and difficult subject, and Mr. Chacon has done a masterful job in taking it on. The practice of school administrators and textbook publishers is generally to avoid issues they consider controversial. Unfortunately, these are the very issues that young people need to explore, and war is one of these issues.

It is crucial to challenge these practices. Mr. Chacon’s essay is in effect such a challenge. Not only does he demonstrate the importance of exploring war “on a deep level,” but he also responds effectively to the common reasons given for omitting such explorations. I salute him for this fine work.

Anne-Marie Douglas 2 years ago 2 years ago

Beautifully written and I agree with what you say. Having been a child in Europe during World War Two I experienced war as a child, and though my parents did their best to protect me and my brother, many scars remain. Young Americans, unless they have been to war, mostly do not understand the horrors of war and the long-lasting impact. The pictures from Ukraine have made that a little harder to ignore.

Lowen Berman 2 years ago 2 years ago

Mr Chacon raises an important issue here. If we want a peaceful future we need children to understand the realities of war. Too often the media, both news and entertainment, glorify war or present one sided views. When we see videos of destroyed Russian tanks we are never reminded that those tanks had crews of young soldiers, fighting for their country, dying in agony and leaving moms, dads, lovers and children at … Read More

Mr Chacon raises an important issue here. If we want a peaceful future we need children to understand the realities of war. Too often the media, both news and entertainment, glorify war or present one sided views. When we see videos of destroyed Russian tanks we are never reminded that those tanks had crews of young soldiers, fighting for their country, dying in agony and leaving moms, dads, lovers and children at home to weep and grieve.

We want children to become adults who understand that war is indeed hell and that there is always a better way to resolve conflicts. We tell our children that “violence never solves anything” and then contradict that statement by our own actions.

Margaret Burk 2 years ago 2 years ago

I agree. The coverage of war in educational books is primarily statistics which does not promote deep thinking and learning. This is an excellent article

Nick Wechsler 2 years ago 2 years ago

K-12 education can provide practice in developing critical thinking skills, empathy and understanding in relation to others, and an invitation to think beyond limited boarders of the heart, mind and practice of politics. K-12 education can promote a growing life of informed decision-making. But none of this can be accomplished without guided exposure to a world events. Young children are exposed and engaged in stories about war, violence, systemic and personal racism, and deprivation of human … Read More

K-12 education can provide practice in developing critical thinking skills, empathy and understanding in relation to others, and an invitation to think beyond limited boarders of the heart, mind and practice of politics. K-12 education can promote a growing life of informed decision-making.

But none of this can be accomplished without guided exposure to a world events. Young children are exposed and engaged in stories about war, violence, systemic and personal racism, and deprivation of human needs based on economic freedom. If this is limited to what they learn outside of school, their early learning teaches them the “importance of school learning with blinders on.”

I appreciated Chacón’s vision of creating a safe place to learn about and grapple with real world realities that are too easily muted in our classrooms.

Tim Morgan 2 years ago 2 years ago

Great ideas. To round out perspectives more completely, add the history (and varied acceptance) of conscientious objection to war.

EdSource Special Reports

For the four men whose stories are told in this documentary, just the chance to earn the degree made it possible for them to see themselves living a different life outside of prison.

Amid Israel-Hamas war, colleges draw lines on faculty free speech

The conflict in Gaza has rekindled efforts to control controversy and conversation on campuses. The UC system could be the latest to weigh in.

Dissent, no funding yet for statewide teacher training in math and reading

A bill sponsored by State Superintendent Tony Thurmond would provide math and reading training for all teachers. But money is scarce, and some English language advocates have problems with phonics.

Dual admission programs a tool for addressing state’s transfer challenges, panel says

Panelists discussed dual admission as a solution for easing the longstanding challenges in California’s transfer system.

EdSource in your inbox!

Stay ahead of the latest developments on education in California and nationally from early childhood to college and beyond. Sign up for EdSource’s no-cost daily email.

Stay informed with our daily newsletter

Essays About War: Top 5 Examples and 5 Prompts

War is atrocious and there is an almost universal rule that we should be prevented; if you are writing essays about war, read our helpful guide.

Throughout history, war has driven human progress. It has led to the dissolution of oppressive regimes and the founding of new democratic countries. There is no doubt that the world would not be as it is without the many wars waged in the past.

War is waged to achieve a nation or organization’s goals, but what is the actual cost of progress? War has taken, and continues to take, countless lives. It is and is very costly in terms of resources as well. From the American Revolution to World Wars I and II to the Crusades and Hundred Years’ War of antiquity, wars throughout history have been bloody, brutal, and disastrous. 

If you are writing essays about war, look at our top essay examples below.

1. War Is Not Part of Human Nature by R. Brian Ferguson

2. essay on war and peace (author unknown), 3. the impacts of war on global health by sarah moore.

• 4.  The Psychosocial Impacts of War and Armed Conflict on Children by Iman Farajallah, Omar Reda, H. Steven Moffic, John R. Peteet, and Ahmed Hankir

5. ​​Is war a pre-requisite for peace? by Anna Cleary

5 prompts for essays about war, 1. is war justified, 2. why do countries go to war, 3. the effects of war, 4. moral and ethical issues concerning war, 5. reflecting on a historical war.

“Debate over war and human nature will not soon be resolved. The idea that intensive, high-casualty violence was ubiquitous throughout prehistory has many backers. It has cultural resonance for those who are sure that we as a species naturally tilt toward war. As my mother would say: “Just look at history!” But doves have the upper hand when all the evidence is considered. Broadly, early finds provide little if any evidence suggesting war was a fact of life.”

Ferguson disputes the popular belief that war is inherent to human nature, as evidenced by archaeological discoveries. Many archaeologists use the very same evidence to support the opposing view. Evidence reveals many instances where war was waged, but not fought. In the minds of Ferguson and many others, humanity may be predisposed to conflict and violence, but not war, as many believe. 

“It also appears that if peace were to continue for a long period, people would become sick of the monotony of life and would seek war for a changed man is a highly dynamic creature and it seems that he cannot remain contented merely with works of peace-the cultivation of arts, the development of material comforts, the extension of knowledge, the means and appliances of a happy life.”

This essay provides an interesting perspective on war; other than the typical motivations for war, such as the desire to achieve one’s goals; the author writes that war disrupts the monotony of peace and gives participants a sense of excitement and uncertainty. In addition, it instills the spirit of heroism and bravery in people. However, the author does not dispute that war is evil and should be avoided as much as possible. 

“War forces people to flee their homes in search of safety, with the latest figures from the UN estimating that around 70 million people are currently displaced due to war. This displacement can be incredibly detrimental to health, with no safe and consistent place to sleep, wash, and shelter from the elements. It also removes a regular source of food and proper nutrition. As well as impacting physical health, war adversely affects the mental health of both those actively involved in conflict and civilians.”

Moore discusses the side effects that war has on civilians. For example, it diverts resources used on poverty alleviation and infrastructure towards fighting. It also displaces civilians when their homes are destroyed, reduces access to food, water, and sanitation, and can significantly impact mental health, among many other effects. 

4.   The Psychosocial Impacts of War and Armed Conflict on Children by Iman Farajallah, Omar Reda, H. Steven Moffic, John R. Peteet, and Ahmed Hankir

“The damage done by war-related trauma can never be undone. We can, however, help reduce its long-term impacts, which can span generations. When we reach within ourselves to discover our humanity, it allows us to reach out to the innocent children and remind them of their resilience and beauty. Trauma can make or break us as individuals, families, and communities.”

In their essay, the authors explain how war can affect children. Children living in war-torn areas expectedly witness a lot of violence, including the killings of their loved ones. This may lead to the inability to sleep properly, difficulty performing daily functions, and a speech impediment. The authors write that trauma cannot be undone and can ruin a child’s life.  

“The sociologist Charles Tilly has argued that war and the nation state are inextricably linked. War has been crucial for the formation of the nation state, and remains crucial for its continuation. Anthony Giddens similarly views a link between the internal pacification of states and their external violence. It may be that, if we want a durable peace, a peace built on something other than war, we need to consider how to construct societies based on something other than the nation state and its monopoly of violence.”

This essay discusses the irony that war is waged to achieve peace. Many justify war and believe it is inevitable, as the world seems to balance out an era of peace with another war. However, others advocate for total pacifism. Even in relatively peaceful times, organizations and countries have been carrying out “shadow wars” or engaging in conflict without necessarily going into outright war. Cleary cites arguments made that for peace to indeed exist by itself, societies must not be built on the war in the first place. 

Many believe that war is justified by providing a means to peace and prosperity. Do you agree with this statement? If so, to what extent? What would you consider “too much” for war to be unjustified? In your essay, respond to these questions and reflect on the nature and morality of war. 

Wars throughout history have been waged for various reasons, including geographical domination, and disagreement over cultural and religious beliefs. In your essay, discuss some of the reasons different countries go to war, you can look into the belief systems that cause disagreements, oppression of people, and leaders’ desire to conquer geographical land. For an interesting essay, look to history and the reasons why major wars such as WWI and WWII occurred.

In this essay, you can write about war’s effects on participating countries. You can focus on the impact of war on specific sectors, such as healthcare or the economy. In your mind, do they outweigh the benefits? Discuss the positive and negative effects of war in your essay. To create an argumentative essay, you can pick a stance if you are for or against war. Then, argue your case and show how its effects are positive, negative, or both.

Many issues arise when waging war, such as the treatment of civilians as “collateral damage,” keeping secrets from the public, and torturing prisoners. For your essay, choose an issue that may arise when fighting a war and determine whether or not it is genuinely “unforgivable” or “unacceptable.” Are there instances where it is justified? Be sure to examples where this issue has arisen before.

Humans have fought countless wars throughout history. Choose one significant war and briefly explain its causes, major events, and effects. Conduct thorough research into the period of war and the political, social, and economic effects occurred. Discuss these points for a compelling cause and effect essay.

For help with this topic, read our guide explaining “what is persuasive writing ?”If you still need help, our guide to grammar and punctuation explains more.

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

View all posts

December 2, 2021

Peace Is More Than War’s Absence, and New Research Explains How to Build It

A new project measures ways to promote positive social relations among groups

By Peter T. Coleman , Allegra Chen-Carrel & Vincent Hans Michael Stueber

PeopleImages/Getty Images

Today, the misery of war is all too striking in places such as Syria, Yemen, Tigray, Myanmar and Ukraine. It can come as a surprise to learn that there are scores of sustainably peaceful societies around the world, ranging from indigenous people in the Xingu River Basin in Brazil to countries in the European Union. Learning from these societies, and identifying key drivers of harmony, is a vital process that can help promote world peace.

Unfortunately, our current ability to find these peaceful mechanisms is woefully inadequate. The Global Peace Index (GPI) and its complement the Positive Peace Index (PPI) rank 163 nations annually and are currently the leading measures of peacefulness. The GPI, launched in 2007 by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), was designed to measure negative peace , or the absence of violence, destructive conflict, and war. But peace is more than not fighting. The PPI, launched in 2009, was supposed to recognize this and track positive peace , or the promotion of peacefulness through positive interactions like civility, cooperation and care.

Yet the PPI still has many serious drawbacks. To begin with, it continues to emphasize negative peace, despite its name. The components of the PPI were selected and are weighted based on existing national indicators that showed the “strongest correlation with the GPI,” suggesting they are in effect mostly an extension of the GPI. For example, the PPI currently includes measures of factors such as group grievances, dissemination of false information, hostility to foreigners, and bribes.

On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing . By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

The index also lacks an empirical understanding of positive peace. The PPI report claims that it focuses on “positive aspects that create the conditions for a society to flourish.” However, there is little indication of how these aspects were derived (other than their relationships with the GPI). For example, access to the internet is currently a heavily weighted indicator in the PPI. But peace existed long before the internet, so is the number of people who can go online really a valid measure of harmony?

The PPI has a strong probusiness bias, too. Its 2021 report posits that positive peace “is a cross-cutting facilitator of progress, making it easier for businesses to sell.” A prior analysis of the PPI found that almost half the indicators were directly related to the idea of a “Peace Industry,” with less of a focus on factors found to be central to positive peace such as gender inclusiveness, equity and harmony between identity groups.

A big problem is that the index is limited to a top-down, national-level approach. The PPI’s reliance on national-level metrics masks critical differences in community-level peacefulness within nations, and these provide a much more nuanced picture of societal peace . Aggregating peace data at the national level, such as focusing on overall levels of inequality rather than on disparities along specific group divides, can hide negative repercussions of the status quo for minority communities.

To fix these deficiencies, we and our colleagues have been developing an alternative approach under the umbrella of the Sustaining Peace Project . Our effort has various components , and these can provide a way to solve the problems in the current indices. Here are some of the elements:

Evidence-based factors that measure positive and negative peace. The peace project began with a comprehensive review of the empirical studies on peaceful societies, which resulted in identifying 72 variables associated with sustaining peace. Next, we conducted an analysis of ethnographic and case study data comparing “peace systems,” or clusters of societies that maintain peace with one another, with nonpeace systems. This allowed us to identify and measure a set of eight core drivers of peace. These include the prevalence of an overarching social identity among neighboring groups and societies; their interconnections such as through trade or intermarriage; the degree to which they are interdependent upon one another in terms of ecological, economic or security concerns; the extent to which their norms and core values support peace or war; the role that rituals, symbols and ceremonies play in either uniting or dividing societies; the degree to which superordinate institutions exist that span neighboring communities; whether intergroup mechanisms for conflict management and resolution exist; and the presence of political leadership for peace versus war.

A core theory of sustaining peace . We have also worked with a broad group of peace, conflict and sustainability scholars to conceptualize how these many variables operate as a complex system by mapping their relationships in a causal loop diagram and then mathematically modeling their core dynamics This has allowed us to gain a comprehensive understanding of how different constellations of factors can combine to affect the probabilities of sustaining peace.

Bottom-up and top-down assessments . Currently, the Sustaining Peace Project is applying techniques such as natural language processing and machine learning to study markers of peace and conflict speech in the news media. Our preliminary research suggests that linguistic features may be able to distinguish between more and less peaceful societies. These methods offer the potential for new metrics that can be used for more granular analyses than national surveys.

We have also been working with local researchers from peaceful societies to conduct interviews and focus groups to better understand the in situ dynamics they believe contribute to sustaining peace in their communities. For example in Mauritius , a highly multiethnic society that is today one of the most peaceful nations in Africa, we learned of the particular importance of factors like formally addressing legacies of slavery and indentured servitude, taboos against proselytizing outsiders about one’s religion, and conscious efforts by journalists to avoid divisive and inflammatory language in their reporting.

Today, global indices drive funding and program decisions that impact countless lives, making it critical to accurately measure what contributes to socially just, safe and thriving societies. These indices are widely reported in news outlets around the globe, and heads of state often reference them for their own purposes. For example, in 2017 , Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, though he and his country were mired in corruption allegations, referenced his country’s positive increase on the GPI by stating, “Receiving such high praise from an institute that once named this country the most violent in the world is extremely significant.” Although a 2019 report on funding for peace-related projects shows an encouraging shift towards supporting positive peace and building resilient societies, many of these projects are really more about preventing harm, such as grants for bolstering national security and enhancing the rule of law.

The Sustaining Peace Project, in contrast, includes metrics for both positive and negative peace, is enhanced by local community expertise, and is conceptually coherent and based on empirical findings. It encourages policy makers and researchers to refocus attention and resources on initiatives that actually promote harmony, social health and positive reciprocity between groups. It moves away from indices that rank entire countries and instead focuses on identifying factors that, through their interaction, bolster or reduce the likelihood of sustaining peace. It is a holistic perspective.  

Tracking peacefulness across the globe is a highly challenging endeavor. But there is great potential in cooperation between peaceful communities, researchers and policy makers to produce better methods and metrics. Measuring peace is simply too important to get only half-right. 

• Afghanistan

We Have No Idea What We’re Fighting for Anymore

O nce again, we are we seeing Americans being airlifted to safety amidst chaos and defeat, abandoning many of those who helped us. There will be much finger-pointing and political posturing about who is to blame . We can have those conversations. But the question no one is discussing is why for decades successive administrations of both parties continue to involve us in wars that not only we don’t win, but that for years we keep on fighting even when we know we can’t win and our objectives in those wars are confusing and malleable. If you look back over the history of our war in Afghanistan, it was clear as early as 2002 that we didn’t fully understand what we were doing there anymore or how to go about doing it. Yet we remained for nearly 20 more bloody years.

Why do we keep doing this? How can we stop?

We get into these wars on the recommendations of presidents who are influenced by their staffs, most of whom are selected by the president and share the president’s viewpoint. These come after we are already involved militarily. Before the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, Green Berets were advising the South Vietnamese armed forces, our Air Force was bombing North Vietnamese supply routes in Laos, and our Navy was supporting South Vietnamese raids against the North Vietnamese coastline. Before the October 2002 authorization of the use of force (AUF) in Iraq , we were operating a “no fly zone,” and had military bases in several neighboring countries, a clear signal we were prepared to use military force if Saddam Hussein didn’t behave. A decade before the October 2001 AUF in Afghanistan the CIA had been helping the Taliban fight the Russians and we had supplied them with sophisticated weapons. One month before that resolution, President Bush was openly talking about “the war on terror.” What debates there were over these AUFs were largely full of jingoism and rah-rah warrior language, the last thing we want when committing our young to their possible deaths.

Most Americans don’t seem to care about any of this until, after a series of escalations, the national pain crosses some hard to define threshold and the American people want out. The policy makers usually do not want out. Their reasons range from genuine belief in the war’s objectives to self-serving fear of being blamed for failure and the ensuing damage to their political or bureaucratic careers.

We often hear about fighting to defend “American interests.” There are a host of American interests ranging from protecting American citizens abroad to protecting American trade and markets. If we’re being honest most U.S. foreign policy focuses on the latter. There is nothing wrong with this. They are American interests. They are just not worth killing and dying over, ever. Yes, we need to defend American interests, but with the powerful tools of the Departments of State, Justice, Commerce, the Treasury, and the intelligence services, not those of the Department of Defense. Yes, we need to hunt down terrorists, but terrorists are not trying to destroy the foundation of American democracy; they are generally using terror to try to change U.S. foreign policy by killing innocent people with highly symbolic attacks against such targets as the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and the satiric newspaper Charlie Hebdo, or by making us afraid to use airplanes. These are criminal acts. They are not attempts to overthrow our government. They do not threaten our values; they threaten our lives. By giving terrorists, as we have proclaimed for 20 years, the status of being involved in a “war” against the U.S., we give them the prestige of “warriors,” which aids their recruiting and propaganda efforts and builds their morale. Moreover, holding them for years as “prisoners of war” without trial is a direct violation of American values and our hypocrisy helps fuel their recruiting.

Instead, we need to rethink our entire approach to the so called “war on terrorism.” Terrorists commit criminal acts which should primarily be in the province of international courts and police, such as Interpol, the FBI, and the French Gendarmerie Nationale. These organizations can be greatly aided by organizations such as British MI6 , the American CIA , and the French DGSE. Only rarely should they be aided by the judicious use of special military units, such as the SEALS, who are trained and designed to strike and get out.

Unleashing the awesome and massive power of the American military should only be done to defend against threats to our democracy and the values and hard-won rights of its citizens. Since World War Two, we have repeatedly used this power unwisely, resulting in a humiliating cycle of wasted lives and money.

But there are a wide range of ways to stop this. One way is getting more combat veterans, who have personally experienced war’s horrible costs, involved in decision-making, reigning in the corruptive elements of the military-industrial complex, and weeding out people whose careers are more important than what’s good for the country. But the best and overriding means of ending this cycle, however, is to get back in touch with what ultimately is worth fighting for. In Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq we sacrificed our young and spent massive amounts of money fighting to build nations that look and think like we do, a. goal that most Americans don’t really care about, especially when they don’t face getting drafted. In those wars there was no direct threat to Americans that our fundamental values would be taken from us . The reason we lose these wars is that our opponents are fighting for something they care about very much indeed.

Read More: American Leaders Made Defeat in Afghanistan Inevitable

These rights and values are broadly defined and open to interpretation. There is no hard line about when these rights and values are jeopardized enough to go to war. That is why our founders required that the Congress declare war, not the President, so that Congress can debate and discuss our choices. At best, in our current political balance, just over half of the American electorate has voted for a President and the policy debate about using military force takes place among people who work for and are chosen by the President. The Congress is a broad representation of the American people and therefore has a much better chance of expressing in open debate the wide range of opinion about what is at stake and how scared we should be about it. The debate should range over numerous interpretations and judgements, but then there is a vote. The result of the vote is an unambiguous hard line. What follows then is the strongest military organization in the world doing its Constitutional duty to fight or not fight and members of Congress having to go back to their states and districts to justify and defend their vote in open debate before their electorate. Politicians have sensitive antenna about voter opinion. If the American people decide they want out of a war, the Congress has far more incentive to do so than the Executive. Members of the House face a vote every two years. The President only faces a vote if the decision came in the first half of a two-term presidency.

The rights and values that I really care about, and I think I’m with a vast majority of Americans, are those clearly articulated in our nation’s founding documents.

I will fight if someone tries to take away from me and those I love the rule of law, trial by jury, the writ of habeas corpus, and a government with nobody above the law. I will fight to preserve government of the people, by the people, and for the people. I will fight to defend the self-evident truths that all people are created equal and have an unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of individual fulfillment. I will fight to protect those I love from violence. And I will fight to preserve a constitution that has wisely established a balance of power between the three branches government, which we are in danger of losing not from external threat, but from dereliction of duty.

We have sent our young to fight espousing these values, but we send them off to countries most Americans couldn’t locate on a map, and few really care about. Worse, too many people in power in those countries don’t really care about these values either, other than to mouth the rhetoric of American democracy to secure massive amounts of money and materiel, which in turn fuels massive amounts of corruption, both political and societal. In Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan we found ourselves involved in civil wars where the opposing sides were battling for power and control, not American values. In Vietnam we sided with a corrupt post-colonial government dominated by minority Catholics in a majority Buddhist nation. The South Vietnamese government was seen by the North Vietnamese government, not incorrectly, as stooges of the U.S. We saw the North Vietnamese government, not incorrectly, as a totalitarian police state that ruled its people by terror.

In Iraq we deposed a dictator who led a totalitarian police state ruling by terror who headed a minority Sunni Muslim government in a majority Shiite country. We put the Shiites in power by stripping the Sunnis of theirs and immediately were caught up in a civil war between the now deposed Sunnis fighting the American-blessed Shiites. In Afghanistan we kicked out the Taliban because we said, not incorrectly, that they were harboring al-Qaeda who had seriously hurt our people and were also horrible and repressive. However, instead of staying focused on eliminating al-Qaida and their leader, Osama bin Laden, we replaced the Taliban government with one riven with corruption and we also exacerbated tension between rival tribes and warlords. We then found ourselves in the middle of yet another civil war when the Taliban returned to fight against the new government.

We often hear the old shibboleth that “we’re fighting them abroad, so we won’t have to fight them at home.” That comes from a time when the only means of projecting power through violence was to invade someone else’s country.

The last nation that could have credibly invaded our own shores was Japan at the peak of its naval power in 1941 and they wouldn’t have gotten off the West Coast. The Taliban and the NVA were never capable of storming the beaches at Santa Monica. Sending in our ground forces to “fight them on foreign soil so we won’t have to fight them on our own” is a specious argument.

What threatens America today are nations with long-range missiles that can be launched intercontinentally from bases deep within their own territory or from submarines. We face cyber-attacks. We face possible chemical weapons attacks. We do not face invasion by China, Russia or North Korea. We are way better and far more experienced in amphibious warfare than any of these nations, and we would fail if we tried to invade them .

Sending in military forces to establish lasting governments in our own image has been demonstrated as a bad idea three times now. Democracy can’t be exported. It has to be home grown over a long time. Those ideals expressed in our founding documents didn’t just arrive in America full-blown in 1776; they developed over centuries in England and Western Europe through the sacrifices of brave men and women who suffered terrible torture, were burned alive, and spent decades in filthy prisons to establish them. The U.S. endured one of the bloodiest civil wars in history to affirm them. And even today in the U.S. we’re still fighting and debating how to uphold these sacred values. Telling nineteen-year-old Marines or paratroopers that they were fighting and losing friends in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan to protect American democracy and American values was seen as bullshit. It is.

“Protecting American democracy” must be a truthful statement, or it will not sustain the morale of those doing the fighting nor the will of the American people to endure the pain of war no matter what the cost and how long the war takes.

The last time Congress declared war was June 4, 1942, when we declared war against Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria, then allies of Nazi Germany. American presidents have gone to war ever since then without Congress fulfilling its Constitutional responsibility. True, Congress has passed authorizations for the use of force. These, however, fall far short of a declaration of war, primarily because of the symbolism of a declaration of war. They also land the decision – and the blame for possible failure—squarely with the Presidency. Authorizing someone else to take responsibility for a decision is very different from taking responsibility yourself.

However imperfect, an openly debated Declaration of War focused on a threat to our fundamental values is one of our best safeguards against repeating the mistakes we made in Vietnam and then repeated in Iraq and now in Afghanistan. We will continue to repeat those mistakes unless we have open, vigorous, and continuing debates about what we are fighting for and why it matters.

More Must-Reads From TIME

• What Student Photojournalists Saw at the Campus Protests
• Women Say They Were Pressured Into Long-Term Birth Control
• How Far Trump Would Go
• Scientists Are Finding Out Just How Toxic Your Stuff Is
• Boredom Makes Us Human
• John Mulaney Has What Late Night Needs
• The 100 Most Influential People of 2024
• Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Contact us at [email protected]

• Sign Up For Email
• Latest News
• Articles by Category

Recent Posts

• Steps To End War And Build A World Of Peace
• WBW News & Action: If peace breaks out
• Australia Is Deciding Whether It Thinks Palestine Should Have Statehood
• “Target Israel and we will target you”: U.S. Senators Play Schoolyard Bully Against the ICC
• Arms Embargo Now: Canadian Civil Society Escalates Push for End to Canada-Israel Military Trade

Latest Podcast Episode

• Chapters & Affiliates
• Advisory Board
• Youth Network
• Annual Conferences
• Our Funders
• Theory of Change
• Work for WBW
• Flyers and Fact Sheets
• Annual Reports
• E-Newsletters
• Email and Mobile Updates
• Press Releases
• Sign As Individual
• Sign As Organization
• Some Notable Signers
• List of Organization Signers
• Countries With Signers
• Get Sign-up Flyers
• Buy a Framed Poster of the Pledge
• Online Courses
• Live Webinars
• Mapping Militarism
• Fact Sheets
• Debunking Myths
• Reasons to End War
• Get It In Print
• Get It In PDF
• Audiobook (First Half)
• Audiobook (Second Half)
• Study Guide
• Summary Version
• A Global Security System
• The Peace Almanac
• Standin' in a Hard Rain
• Second Name of Earth is Peace
• Calendrier Africain De La Paix
• Organizing Resources
• Local Resolutions
• Candidates Questionnaire
• Media Outreach
• Speakers Bureau
• Discussion Listserv
• War Abolisher Awards
• Find Your Nearest Chapter or Affiliate
• Start a Chapter
• Chapter Toolkit
• Learn About Affiliation
• Latin America
• Close Bases
• Demilitarize Police
• 3% Plan to End Starvation
• Rule of Law
• Counter-Recruitment
• Online Actions
• Stop Arms Trade
• Childrens/Young People's Books
• Comic Books
• Radio/Podcasts
• Infographics
• Mailing Lists
• Signup Sheets
• Resolutions
• PowerPoints
• Conferences
• Case Statements

• World BEYOND War is supported by small donors. Here are several ways you can donate now.
• WBW Shop: Books, Wearables, Gear
• Sky Blue Scarves
• Fourth Wall Store
• CafePress Store
• Teespring Store
• Upcoming Online Courses
• Event Resources
• Recordings of Past Events

Move for Peace Challenge

Events Calendar

Myth: War Is Necessary

Fact: defense of freedom, democracy, and life itself, is better accomplished with nonviolent power. only undemocratic domination over others requires violence and war..

It has become uncommon for war makers to advertise their wars as desirable, and standard policy to claim that every war is entered into as a last resort. This is progress to be very pleased with and to build on. It is possible to show that the launching of any particular war was not, in fact, the last resort, that superior alternatives existed. So, if war is defensible only as a last resort, war is indefensible.

For any war that occurs, and even many that do not, there can be found people who believe at the time, and after, that each particular war is or was necessary. Some people are unconvinced by claims of necessity for many wars, but insist that one or two wars in the distant past were indeed necessary. And many maintain that some war in the future could conceivably be necessary — at least for one side of the war, thus requiring the permanent maintenance of a military ready to fight.

War Is Not “Defense”

The U.S. War Department was renamed the Defense Department in 1947, and it is common in many countries to speak of the war departments of one’s own and all other nations as “defense.” But if the term has any meaning, it cannot be stretched to cover offensive war making or aggressive militarism.  If “defense” is to mean something other than “offense,” then attacking another nation “so that they can’t attack us first” or “to send a message” or to “punish” a crime is not defensive and not necessary.

In 2001, the Taliban government in Afghanistan was willing to turn Osama bin Laden over to a third nation to be tried for crimes the United States was alleging he’d committed. Instead of pursuing legal prosecutions for crimes, the United States and NATO chose an illegal war that did far more damage than the crimes, continued after bin Laden was said to have left the nation, continued after bin Laden’s death was announced, and did serious lasting damage to Afghanistan, to Pakistan, to the United States and NATO nations, and to the rule of law.

According to a transcript of a meeting in February 2003 between U.S. President George W. Bush and the Prime Minister of Spain, Bush said that President Saddam Hussein had offered to leave Iraq, and to go into exile, if he could keep $1 billion. A dictator being allowed to flee with $1 billion is not an ideal outcome. But the offer was not revealed to the U.S. public. Instead, Bush’s government claimed a war was needed to defend the United States against weapons that did not exist. Rather than losing a billion dollars, the people of Iraq saw the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, millions made refugees, their nation’s infrastructure and education and health systems destroyed, civil liberties lost, vast environmental destruction, and epidemics of disease and birth defects — all of which cost the United States $800 billion, not counting trillions of dollars in increased fuel costs, future interest payments, veterans’ care, and lost opportunities — not to mention the dead and injured, increased governmental secrecy, eroded civil liberties, damage to the earth and its atmosphere, and the moral damage of public acceptance of kidnapping, torture, and murder.

Read also: Myth: China Is a Military Threat

War Preparation Is Also Not “Defense”

The same logic that would claim that attacking another nation is “defensive” can be used to try to justify the permanent stationing of troops in another nation. The result, in both cases, is counterproductive, producing threats rather than eliminating them.  Of some 196 nations on earth, the United States has troops in at least 177.  A handful of other nations also have a much smaller number of troops stationed abroad. This is not a defensive or necessary activity or expense.

A defensive military would consist of a coast guard, a border patrol, anti-aircraft weapons, and other forces able to defend against an attack.  The vast majority of military spending, especially by wealthy nations, is offensive. Weapons abroad, on the seas, and in outerspace are not defensive. Bombs and missiles targeting other nations are not defensive. Most wealthy nations, including those with numerous weapons that serve no defensive purpose, spend well under $100 billion each year on their militaries. The extra $900 billion that brings U.S. military spending up to roughly $1 trillion annually includes nothing defensive.

Defense Need Not Involve Violence

In defining recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as non-defensive, have we left out the viewpoint of Afghans and Iraqis? Is it defensive to fight back when attacked? Indeed, it is. That is the definition of defensive. But, let’s remember that it is promoters of war who have claimed that defensiveness makes a war justified. Evidence shows that the most effective means of defense is, far more often than not, nonviolent resistance. The mythology of warrior cultures suggests that nonviolent action is weak, passive, and ineffective at solving large-scale social problems. The facts  show just the opposite . So it is possible that the wisest decision for Iraq or Afghanistan would have been nonviolent resistance, non-cooperation, and appeal to international justice.

Such a decision is all the more persuasive if we imagine a nation like the United States, with great control over international bodies like the United Nations, responding to an invasion from abroad.  The people of the United States could refuse to recognize the foreign authority.  Peace teams from abroad could join the nonviolent resistance.  Targeted sanctions and prosecutions could be combined with international diplomatic pressure.  There are alternatives to mass violence .

Here is a list of successful uses of unarmed nonviolent action in place of war .

War Makes Everyone Less Safe

The important question, however, is not how the nation attacked should respond, but how to prevent the aggressive nation from attacking.  One way to help do that would be to spread awareness that war making endangers people rather than protecting them .

Denying that war is necessary is not the same as failing to recognize that there is evil in the world. In fact, war needs to be ranked as one of the most evil things in the world.  There is nothing more evil that war can be used to prevent . And using war to prevent or punish the making of war has proven a dreadful failure.

War mythology would have us believe that war kills evil people who need to be killed to protect us and our freedoms. In reality, recent wars involving wealthy nations have been one-sided slaughters of children, the elderly, and ordinary residents of the poorer nations attacked. And while “freedom” has served as a justification for the wars, the wars have served as  a justification for curtailing actual freedoms .

The idea that you could gain rights by empowering your government to operate in secret and to kill large numbers of people only sounds reasonable if war is our only tool. When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Thus wars are the answer to all foreign conflicts, and disastrous wars that drag on too long can be ended by enlarging them.

Preventable diseases, accidents, suicides, falls, drowning, and hot weather kill many more people in the United States and most other nations than does terrorism.  If terrorism makes it necessary to invest $1 trillion a year in war preparations, what does hot weather make it necessary to do?

The myth of a great terrorist threat is wildly inflated by agencies like the FBI that regularly encourage, fund, and entrap people who could never have managed to become terrorist threats on their own.

A study of real motivations for wars makes clear that necessity hardly figures into the decision making process, other than as propaganda for the public.

“Population Control” by Mass-Murder Is Not a Solution

Among those who recognize how damaging war is, there exists another mythical justification for this peculiar institution: war is needed for population control.  But the planet’s capacity to limit human population is beginning to show signs of functioning without war.  The results will be horrible.  A solution might be to invest some of the vast treasure now dumped into war into the development of sustainable lifestyles instead.  The idea of using war to eliminate billions of men, women, and children almost renders the species that could think that thought unworthy of preserving (or at least unworthy of criticizing Nazis); fortunately most people cannot think anything so monstrous.

• World War II could not have happened without World War I, without the stupid manner of starting World War I and the even stupider manner of ending World War I which led numerous wise people to predict World War II on the spot, or without Wall Street’s funding of Nazi Germany for decades (as preferable to communists), or without the arms race and numerous bad decisions that do not need to be repeated in the future.
• The U.S. government was not hit with a surprise attack. President Franklin Roosevelt had quietly promised Churchill that the United States would work hard to provoke Japan into staging an attack. FDR knew the attack was coming, and initially drafted a declaration of war against both Germany and Japan on the evening of Pearl Harbor. Prior to Pearl Harbor, FDR had built up bases in the U.S. and multiple oceans, traded weapons to the Brits for bases, started the draft, created a list of every Japanese American person in the country, provided planes, trainers, and pilots to China, imposed harsh sanctions on Japan, and advised the U.S. military that a war with Japan was beginning. He told his top advisers he expected an attack on December 1st, which was six days off. Here’s an entry in Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s diary following a November 25, 1941, White House meeting: “The President said the Japanese were notorious for making an attack without warning and stated that we might be attacked, say next Monday, for example.”
• The war was not humanitarian and was not even marketed as such until after it was over. The United States led global conferences at which the decision was made not to accept Jewish refugees, and for explicitly racist reasons, and despite Hitler’s claim that he would send them anywhere on luxury cruise ships. There was no poster asking you to help Uncle Sam save the Jews. A ship of Jewish refugees from Germany was chased away from Miami by the Coast Guard. The U.S. and other nations refused to accept Jewish refugees, and the majority of the U.S. public supported that position. Peace groups that questioned Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his foreign secretary about shipping Jews out of Germany to save them were told that, while Hitler might very well agree to the plan, it would be too much trouble and require too many ships. The U.S. engaged in no diplomatic or military effort to save the victims in the Nazi concentration camps. Anne Frank was denied a U.S. visa. Although this point has nothing to do with a serious historian’s case for WWII as a Just War, it is so central to U.S. mythology that I’ll include here a key passage from Nicholson Baker:

“Anthony Eden, Britain’s foreign secretary, who’d been tasked by Churchill with handling queries about refugees, dealt coldly with one of many important delegations, saying that any diplomatic effort to obtain the release of the Jews from Hitler was ‘fantastically impossible.’ On a trip to the United States, Eden candidly told Cordell Hull, the secretary of state, that the real difficulty with asking Hitler for the Jews was that ‘Hitler might well take us up on any such offer, and there simply are not enough ships and means of transportation in the world to handle them.’ Churchill agreed. ‘Even were we to obtain permission to withdraw all the Jews,’ he wrote in reply to one pleading letter, ‘transport alone presents a problem which will be difficult of solution.’ Not enough shipping and transport? Two years earlier, the British had evacuated nearly 340,000 men from the beaches of Dunkirk in just nine days. The U.S. Air Force had many thousands of new planes. During even a brief armistice, the Allies could have airlifted and transported refugees in very large numbers out of the German sphere.” [vii]

Perhaps it does go to the question of “Right Intention” that the “good” side of the war simply did not give a damn about what would become the central example of the badness of the “bad” side of the war.

• The war was not defensive. FDR lied that he had a map of Nazi plans to carve up South America, that he had a Nazi plan to eliminate religion, that U.S. ships (covertly assisting British war planes) were innocently attacked by Nazis, that Germany was a threat to the United States. [viii] A case can be made that the U.S. needed to enter the war in Europe to defend other nations, which had entered to defend yet other nations, but a case could also be made that the U.S. escalated the targeting of civilians, extended the war, and inflicted more damage than might have occurred, had the U.S. done nothing, attempted diplomacy, or invested in nonviolence. To claim that a Nazi empire could have grown to someday include an occupation of the United States is wildly far fetched and not borne out by any earlier or later examples from other wars.
• We now know much more widely and with much more data that nonviolent resistance to occupation and injustice is more likely to succeed—and that success more likely to last—than violent resistance. With this knowledge, we can look back at the stunning successes of nonviolent actions against the Nazis that were not well organized or built on beyond their initial successes. [ix]
• The Good War was not good for the troops. Lacking intense modern training and psychological conditioning to prepare soldiers to engage in the unnatural act of murder, some 80 percent of U.S. and other troops in World War II did not fire their weapons at “the enemy.” [x] The fact that veterans of WWII were treated better after the war than other soldiers before or since, was the result of the pressure created by the Bonus Army after the previous war. That veterans were given free college, healthcare, and pensions was not due to the merits of the war or in some way a result of the war. Without the war, everyone could have been given free college for many years. If we provided free college to everyone today, it would then require much more than Hollywoodized World War II stories to get many people into military recruiting stations.
• Several times the number of people killed in German camps were killed outside of them in the war. The majority of those people were civilians. The scale of the killing, wounding, and destroying made WWII the single worst thing humanity has ever done to itself in a short space of time. We imagine the allies were somehow “opposed” to the far lesser killing in the camps. But that can’t justify the cure that was worse than the disease.
• Escalating the war to include the all-out destruction of civilians and cities, culminating in the completely indefensible nuking of cities took WWII out of the realm of defensible projects for many who had defended its initiation—and rightly so. Demanding unconditional surrender and seeking to maximize death and suffering did immense damage and left a grim and foreboding legacy.
• Killing huge numbers of people is supposedly defensible for the “good” side in a war, but not for the “bad” side. The distinction between the two is never as stark as fantasized. The United States had a long history as an apartheid state. U.S. traditions of oppressing African Americans, practicing genocide against Native Americans, and now interning Japanese Americans also gave rise to specific programs that inspired Germany’s Nazis—these included camps for Native Americans, and programs of eugenics and human experimentation that existed before, during, and after the war. One of these programs included giving syphilis to people in Guatemala at the same time the Nuremberg trials were taking place. [xi] The U.S. military hired hundreds of top Nazis at the end of the war; they fit right in. [xii] The U.S. aimed for a wider world empire, before the war, during it, and ever since. German neo-Nazis today, forbidden to wave the Nazi flag, sometimes wave the flag of the Confederate States of America instead.
• The “good” side of the “good war,” the party that did most of the killing and dying for the winning side, was the communist Soviet Union. That doesn’t make the war a triumph for communism, but it does tarnish Washington’s and Hollywood’s tales of triumph for “democracy.” [xiii]
• World War II still hasn’t ended. Ordinary people in the United States didn’t have their incomes taxed until World War II and that’s never stopped. It was supposed to be temporary. [xiv] WWII-era bases built around the world have never closed. U.S. troops have never left Germany or Japan. [xv] There are more than 100,000 U.S. and British bombs still in the ground in Germany, still killing. [xvi]
• Going back 75 years to a nuclear-free, colonial world of completely different structures, laws, and habits to justify what has been the greatest expense of the United States in each of the years since is a bizarre feat of self-deception that isn’t attempted in the justification of any lesser enterprise. Assume I’ve got numbers 1 through 11 totally wrong, and you’ve still got to explain how an event from the early 1940s justifies dumping a trillion 2017 dollars into war funding that could have been spent to feed, clothe, cure, and shelter millions of people, and to environmentally protect the earth.

[vii] War No More: Three Centuries of American Antiwar and Peace Writing , edited by Lawrence Rosendwald.

[viii] David Swanson, War Is A Lie, Second Edition (Charlottesville: Just World Books, 2016).

[ix] Book and Film: A Force More Powerful, http://aforcemorepowerful.org

[x] Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (Back Bay Books: 1996).

[xi] Donald G. McNeil Jr., The New York Times , “U.S. Apologizes for Syphilis Tests in Guatemala,” October 1, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/02/health/research/02infect.html

[xii] Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America (Little, Brown and Company, 2014).

[xiii] Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States (Gallery Books, 2013).

[xiv] Steven A. Bank, Kirk J. Stark, and Joseph J. Thorndike, War and Taxes (Urban Institute Press, 2008).

[xv] RootsAction.org, “Move Away from Nonstop War. Close the Ramstein Air Base,” http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=12254

[xvi] David Swanson, “The United States Just Bombed Germany,” http://davidswanson.org/node/5134

See the list .

• Leaving WWII Behind
• War Is Not Necessary Resources
• War Is Not Necessary Articles

Recent Articles:

Video of Online Debate: Can War Ever Be Justified?

The Palaver Tree: Peacebuilding in Africa

The ‘Accepted Insanity’ of World War III

Dahr Jamail: Civilians Under Attack in the Battle of Fallujah, Iraq

U.S. Chooses Genocide Over Diplomacy in the Middle East

Murder Is Justice and Danger Is Safety

Inevitable?

Beneficial.

Translate To Any Language

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

The Ukraine Crisis: What to Know About Why Russia Attacked

Here’s why Ukraine’s importance extends far beyond its borders.

By Patrick Kingsley

Follow live coverage on Russia ’s invasion of Ukraine .

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, just as diplomats at the United Nations Security Council were calling on him to refrain from war and hours after Ukraine’s president made an impassioned bid for peace, appealing to the Russian people to remember their ties to his country.

It is not just Ukraine’s 44 million people whose lives have been upended. In the coming days, many others far from the field of battle maybe find themselves buffeted by ripple effects. The fate of Ukraine has enormous implications for the rest of the continent, the health of the global economy and even America’s place in the world.

Moscow’s move against Ukraine, once a member of the Soviet Union, is sure to increase fears over the security of other former Soviet countries in Eastern Europe. It will heighten concerns about the strength of the post-1989 international order and America’s ability to influence it. It could also raise fuel prices across the world.

Here’s how Ukraine ended up at the center of a global crisis.

Why do Russia, the U.S. and Europe care so much about Ukraine?

Both Russia and the West see Ukraine as a potential buffer against each other.

Russia considers Ukraine within its natural sphere of influence. Most of it was for centuries part of the Russian Empire, many Ukrainians are native Russian speakers and the country was part of the Soviet Union until winning independence in 1991.

Russia was unnerved when an uprising in 2014 replaced Ukraine’s Russia-friendly president with an unequivocally Western-facing government.

Most former Soviet republics and allies in Europe had already joined the European Union or NATO. Ukraine’s lurch away from Russian influence felt like the final death knell for Russian power in Eastern Europe.

To Europe and the United States, Ukraine matters in part because they see it as a bellwether for their own influence, and for Russian intentions in the rest of Europe.

Ukraine is not part of the European Union or NATO. But it receives considerable financial and military support from Europe and the United States. Russia’s invasion suggests that Moscow might feel empowered to turn up the pressure on other former Soviet republics that are now members of the Western alliance, like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Maps: Tracking the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Here’s where Ukraine has mounted multiple attacks this week in the apparent beginning of its long-planned counteroffensive.

The war could also further threaten American dominance over world affairs. By winning the Cold War, the United States established great influence over the international order, but that influence has waned in the past decade, and the Russian invasion might accelerate that process.

Ukraine was often in the news during the Trump administration. Why?

Ukraine was central to the impeachment of President Donald J. Trump in 2020.

Several months before impeachment proceedings, Mr. Trump blocked $391 million in military aid to Ukraine . Soon after, Mr. Trump asked the newly elected Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky , to investigate discredited corruption allegations involving Joseph R. Biden Jr., then the likeliest Democratic challenger to Mr. Trump.

As a result, Mr. Trump was accused of illegally asking a foreign entity — Ukraine — to intervene in the American political system, and of changing state policy to help himself personally. The impeachment vote passed, but Mr. Trump was acquitted of the charges in the Senate.

Ukraine was also at the heart of a scandal involving Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort . In 2018, Mr. Manafort was jailed for concealing more than $30 million worth of consultancy fees he received from Ukrainian oligarchs and government officials to promote the political fortunes of Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian Ukrainian president ousted in the 2014 uprising. Mr. Manafort advised Mr. Yanukovych between 2006 and 2014, before he fled to Russia, and before Mr. Manafort began working for Mr. Trump.

Didn’t Russia already invade parts of Ukraine?

Yes. After the uprising in 2014, Russian troops wearing unmarked uniforms invaded Crimea, a strategically important peninsula on the Black Sea. In a referendum condemned as illegal by most of the world, the region then voted by an overwhelming majority to join Russia.

Later in 2014, pro-Russian separatists backed by Russian troops and military hardware captured parts of eastern Ukraine, setting up two rebel republics — in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions — that remain unrecognized by any other state.

This week, Mr. Putin recognized the independence of those two territories and then dispatched Russian troops into the area, a move that became a prelude to the broader invasion. To many Ukrainians, the Russian intervention is merely the latest episode of a war that has been going on for eight years.

Why is Ukraine so vulnerable?

Though given money and arms by the West, Ukraine is not actually a NATO member, and so cannot count on the direct military support of the United States and its allies. And for all the hundreds of millions of dollars in Western aid its military has been given in recent years, it is still no match for Russia’s.

Ukraine is also surrounded by Russian allies and proxies — and by Russia itself.

During the lead-up to the invasion, Russian troops massed not only along Ukraine’s eastern border with Russia, but also along the Belarusian border, a little more than 50 miles north of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. Russian troops were also stationed in Transnistria, a small and unrecognized breakaway region from Moldova, to Ukraine’s west. That set the stage for an invasion from multiple directions.

What could the economic effects of the invasion be?

Some of the world’s main grain supplies are routed through the Black Sea, which borders both Russia and Ukraine, two major wheat producers. Military action could disrupt both grain production and distribution, raising food costs for consumers across the world.

Russia supplies about a third of Europe’s gas, much of which is currently shipped through Ukraine. Any disruption at either end of that supply chain would force European countries to look elsewhere for fuel, most likely raising world oil prices.

Before the invasion, President Biden stepped up sanctions against Russia, blocking two of its large financial institutions from Western finance and limiting Russia’s access to debt markets. He said the new measure was aimed at a subsidiary of Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, which built the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. The European Union also took aim at President Putin’s inner circle with an array of sanctions.

An earlier version of this story described incorrectly Mr. Trump’s first impeachment trial. The House voted to impeach him, and the Senate acquitted him of the charges.

How we handle corrections

Patrick Kingsley is the Jerusalem bureau chief, covering Israel and the occupied territories. He has reported from more than 40 countries, written two books and previously covered migration and the Middle East for The Guardian. More about Patrick Kingsley

Short Essay on War – Is It Necessary?

If war is necessary, it is a necessary evil. Its evil is sometimes concealed for a time by its glamour and excitement but when war is seen in its reality, there is a little glory about it. At its best, it is hideous calamity. It brings in awful loss of life. In recent great wars, millions of men, women and children were killed, many died of diseases, famines and untold sufferings. A war generally sweeps away the strongest and best men of a country and leaves the aged, the weak and the unfit to carry on the race. Then there are related sorrows and sufferings it causes to those whom it does not kills – the widows, the orphans and mothers rendered children’s.

The divested homes and wrecked hearts tell the rest of the story with tears. It brings in destruction of property, waste of health, dislocation of trade and industry, crushing burdens of taxation and general upsetting of the social life of the nation on war. That is not all as it brings in international hatred and bitterness also with itself that remain to be seeds of more wars in the future.

If war is such an evil, is it really necessary? Few people will be found to defend war as a good thing, especially after awful experiences of two Great World Wars. But many will argue that it is necessary. They say that so long as human nature is human nature, there must be wars, and that no other way has been devised of setting national disputes. This is an attitude of despair. Men have found way to abolish their great evils such as slavery and if they want to abolish war they can definitely find ways to do that as where there’s will there’s way.

Related Articles:

• 554 Words Short Essay on war: a blot on humanity
• 483 Words Short Essay on modern City Life
• Short Essay on the Background of Buddhism
• Short Essay on Religion in Our Daily Life