WAR

WAR is a TLA that could refer to: * Warrenton Railroad * Web Application Archive * WAR (wrestling promotion), a Professional wrestling in Japan wrestling promotion See also: War

War

:''For other uses of War, see War (disambiguation).'' War is a state of widespread conflict between states, organisations, or relatively large groups of people, which is characterised by the use of violent, physical force between combatants or upon civilians. Other terms for war, which often serve as euphemisms, include armed conflict, hostilities, and police action (see War#Limitations on war below). War is contrasted with peace, which is usually defined as the absence of war. ==History of war== :''Main article: History of warfare'' War is as old as human societies. Certain hunter-gatherer societies engaged in skirmishes over territory and resources. The earliest city states and empire in Mesopotamia became the first to employ standing army. Organization and structure has since been central to warfare, as illustrated by the success of highly disciplined troops of the Roman Empire. As well as organizational change technology has played a central role in the evolution of warfare. Inventions created for warfare have also played an important role in others fields. The continued advance of technology has led to an increase in the destructiveness and cost of warfare throughout human history. The study of warfare is known as military history. ==Morality of war== Throughout history war has been the source of serious moral questions. Although many ancient nations and some more modern ones viewed war as noble, over the sweep of history concerns about the morality of war have gradually increased. Today war is almost unanimously seen as undesireable and morally problematic. Many now believe that wars should only be fought as a last resort. Some, known as pacifists, believe that war is inherently immoral and no war should ever be fought. This position was forcefully defended by the Indian leader Mohandas K. Gandhi (called "Mahatma" or "Great One"). The negative view of war has not always been held as widely as it is today. Many thinkers, such as Heinrich von Treitschke saw war as humanity's highest activity where courage, honour, and ability were more necessary than in any other endeavour. At the outbreak of World War I the writer Thomas Mann wrote, "Is not peace an element of civil corruption and war a purification, a liberation, an enormous hope?" This attitude was embraced by many societies from Sparta in Ancient Greece and the Ancient Rome to the fascist states of the 1930s. The defeat and repudiation of the fascist states and their militarism in the Second World War, combined with the unquestioned horror of nuclear war have contributed to the current negative view of war. Today, some see only just wars (which also cause suffering, but are started to counter what is deemed even worse suffering) as legitimate, and it is the goal of organizations such as the United Nations to unite the world against wars of unjust aggression. ==Limitations on war== At times throughout history, societies have attempted to limit the cost of war by formalizing it in some way. Limitations on the targeting of civilians, what type of weapons can be used, and when combat is allowed have all fallen under these rules in different conflicts. Total war is the modern term for the targeting of civilians and the mobilization of an entire society. While culture, law, and religion have all been factors in causing wars, they have also acted as restraints at times. In some cultures, for example, conflicts have been highly ritualized to limit actual loss of life. In modern times, increasing international attention has been paid to peacefully resolving conflicts which lead to war. The United Nations is the latest and most comprehensive attempt to, as stated in the preamble of the [http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter U.N. Charter], "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." Sometimes the term "war" is restricted by legal definition to those conflicts where one or both belligerents have made a declaration of war of war. This has resulted in wars (in the informal sense, as defined in the introduction to this article) without formal declaration and combatants who officially choose terms other than "war," such as: * "armed conflict"; * "state aggression by armed force"; * "police action"; * "crime against international peace". For example, the British Government was very careful to use the term "armed conflict" instead of "war" during the Falklands War in 1982 to comply with international law. A number of treaty regulate warfare, collectively referred to as the ''laws of war''. The most pervasive of those are the Geneva conventions, the earliest of which began to take effect in the mid 1800s. Treaty signing has since been a part of international diplomacy, and too many treaties to mention in this scant article have been signed. A couple of examples are: Resolutions of the Geneva International Conference, Geneva, 26 October-29 October 1863 and Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, 75 U.N.T.S. 135, entered into force 21 October 1950. ==Causes of war== There is great debate over why wars happen, even when most people do not want them to. Representatives of many different academic disciplines have attempted to explain war. ===Historical theories=== Historians tend to be reluctant to look for sweeping explanations for all wars. A. J. P. Taylor famously described wars as being like traffic accidents. There are some conditions and situations that make them more likely but there can be no system for predicting where and when each one will occur. Social scientists criticize this approach arguing that at the beginning of every war some leader makes a conscious decision and that they cannot be seen as purely accidental. ===Psychological theories=== Psychologys such as E.F.M. Durban and John Bowlby have argued that human beings, especially men, are inherently violent. While this violence is repressed in normal society it needs the occasional outlet provided by war. This combines with other notions, such as displacement where a person transfers their grievances into bias and hatred against other ethnic groups, nations, or ideologies. While these theories can explain why wars occur, they do not explain when or how they occur. In addition, they raise the question why there are sometimes long periods of peace and other eras of unending war. If the innate psychology of the human mind is unchanging, these variations are inconsistent. A solution adopted to this problem by militarists such as Franz Alexander is that peace does not really exist. Periods that are seen as peaceful are actually periods of preparation for a later war or when war is suppressed by a state of great power, such as the Pax Britannica. If war is innate to human nature, as is presupposed by many psychological theories, then there is little hope of ever escaping it. One alternative is to argue that war is only, or almost only, a male activity and if human leadership was in female hands wars would not occur. This theory has played an important role in modern feminism. Critics, of course, point to various examples of female political leaders who had no qualms about using military force, such as Margaret Thatcher. Other psychologists have argued that while human temperament allows wars to occur, they only do so when mentally unbalanced men are in control of a nation. This school argues leaders that seek war such as Napoleon, Hitler, and Stalin were mentally abnormal and thus if some sort of screening process, such as elections, could prevent these types from coming to power, war would end. A distinct branch of the psychological theories of war are the arguments based on evolutionary psychology. This school tends to see war as an extension of animal behaviour, such as territoriality and competition. However, while war has a natural cause the development of technology has accelerated human destructiveness to a level that is irrational and damaging to the species. We have the same instincts of a chimpanzee but overwhelmingly more power. The earliest advocate of this theory was Konrad Lorenz. These theories have been criticized by scholars such as John G. Kennedy, who argue that the organized, sustained war of humans differs more than just technologically from the territorial fights between animals. ===Anthropological theories === Anthropology take a very different view of war. They see it as fundamentally cultural, learnt by nurture rather than nature. Thus if human societies could be reformed war would disappear. To this school the acceptance of war is inculcated into each of us by the Religion, Ideology, and Nationalism surroundings in which we live. Anthropologists also see no links between various forms of violence. They see the fighting of animals, the skirmishes of hunter-gatherer tribes, and the organized warfare of modern societies as distinct phenomena each with their own causes. Theorists such as Ashley Montagu emphasize the top down nature of war, that almost all wars are begun not by popular pressure but by the whims of leaders and that these leaders also work to maintain the system of ideological justifications for war. ===Sociological theories=== Sociology has long been very concerned with the origins of war, and many thousands of theories have been advanced, many of them contradictory. Some use detailed formulas taking into account hundreds of demographic and economic values to predict when and where wars will break out. The statistical analysis of war was pioneered by Lewis Fry Richardson following World War I. More recent databases of wars and armed conflict have been assembled by the Correlates of War Project, Peter Brecke and the Uppsala Department of Peace and Conflict Research. So far none of these formulas have successfully predicted the outbreak of future conflicts. A detailed study by Michael Haas found that no single variable has a strong correlation to the occurrence of wars. One correlation that has found much support is that states that are democracies do not go to war with each other, an idea known as the democratic peace theory. Many sociologists have attempted to divide wars into types to get better correlations, but this has also produced mixed results. Data looked at by R.J. Rummel has found that civil wars and foreign wars are very different in origin, but Jonathan Wilkenfield using different data found just the opposite. Sociology has thus divided into a number of schools. One based on the works of Eckart Kehr and Hans-Ulrich Wehler sees war as the product of domestic conditions, with only the target of aggression being determined by international realities. Thus World War I was not a product of international disputes, secret treaties, or the balance of power but a product of the economic, social, and political situation within each of the states involved. This differs from the traditional approach of Karl von Clausewitz and Leopold von Ranke that argue it is the decisions of statesmen and the geopolitical situation that leads to war. ===Information theories=== A popular new approach is to look at the role of information in the outbreak of wars. This theory, advanced by scholars of international relations such as Geoffrey Blainey, argues that all wars are based on a lack of information. If both sides at the outset knew the result neither would fight, the loser would merely surrender and avoid the cost in lives and infrastructure that a war would cause. This is based on the notion that wars are reciprocal, that all wars require both a decision to attack and also a decision to resist attack. This notion is generally agreed to by almost all scholars of war since Karl von Clausewitz. This notion is made harder to accept because it is far more common to study the cause of wars rather than events that failed to cause wars, and wars are far more memorable. However, throughout history there are as many invasions and annexations that did not lead to a war, such as the United States-led invasion of Haiti in 1994, the Nazi Germany invasions of Austria and Czechoslovakia preceding the Second World War, and the annexation of the Baltic states by the Soviet Union in 1940. On the other hand, Finland's decision to resist a similar Soviet aggression in 1939 led to the Winter War. The leaders of these nations chose not to resist as they saw the potential benefits being not worth the loss of life and destruction such resistance would cause. Lack of information may not only be to who wins in the immediate future. The Norwegian decision to resist the Nazi invasion was taken with the certain knowledge that Norway would fall. The Norwegians did not know whether the German domination would be permanent and also felt that noble resistance would win them favour with the Allies and a position at the peace settlement in the event of an Allied victory. If in 1941 it had been known with certainty the Germans would dominate central Europe for many decades, it is unlikely the Norwegians would have resisted. If it had been known for certainty that the Third Reich would collapse after only a few years of war, the Nazis would not have launched the invasion at all. This theory is predicated on the notion that the outcome of wars is not randomly determined, but fully determined on factors such as doctrine, economies, and power. While purely random events, such as storms or the right person dying at the right time, might have had some effect on history, these only influence a single battle or slightly alter the outcome of a war, but would not mean the difference between victory and defeat. There are two main objectives in the gathering of intelligence. The first is to find out the ability of an enemy, the second their intent. In theory to have enough information to prevent all wars both need to be fully known. The Argentinean dictatorship knew that Britain had the ability to defeat them but their intelligence failed them on the question of whether the British would use their power to resist the annexation of the Falklands. The American decision to enter the Vietnam War was made with the full knowledge that the communist forces would resist them, but did not believe that the guerillas had the capability to long oppose American forces. One major difficulty is that in a conflict of interests, some deception or at least not telling everything, is a standard tactical component on both sides. If you think that you can convince the opponent that you will fight, the opponent might desist. For example, Sweden made efforts to deceive Nazi Germany that it would resist an attack fiercly partly by playing on the myth of Aryan superiority, and by making sure that Hermann G�ring only saw Elite troops in action, often dressed up as regular soldiers, when he came to visit. ===Economic theories=== Another school of thought argues that war can be seen as an outgrowth of economic competition in a chaotic and competitive international system. That wars begin as a pursuit of new markets, of natural resources, and of wealth. Unquestionably a cause of some wars, from the empire building of Britain to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in pursuit of oil this theory has been applied to many other conflicts. It is most often advocated by those of the left (politics) of the political spectrum who argue that such wars serve only the interests of the wealthy but are fought by the poor. ===Marxist theories=== The economic theories also form a part of the Marxist theory of war, which argues that all war grows out of the class war. It sees wars as imperial ventures to enhance the power of the ruling class and divide the proletariat of the world by pitting them against each other for contrived ideals such as nationalism or religion. Wars are a natural outgrowth of the free market and class system, and will not disappear until a world revolution occurs. ==Types of war and warfare== Smaller armed conflicts are often called riots, rebellions, coup d'�tats, etc. When one country sends armed forces to another, allegedly to restore order or prevent genocide or other crimes against humanity, or to support a legally recognized government against Insurgent, that country sometimes refers to it as a police action. This usage is not always recognized as valid, however, particularly by those who do not accept the connotations of the term. A war where the forces in conflict belong to the same country or empire or other political entity is known as a civil war. Asymmetrical warfare is a conflict between two populations of drastically different levels of military mechanization. This type of war often results in guerilla tactics. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a common example of asymmmetrical warfare. A Conventional warfare is a war where nuclear or biological weapons are not used, whereas, unconventional warfare (nuclear warfare) is a war where such weapons are used. ===Geographic warfare=== The terrain over which a war is fought has a big impact on the type of combat which takes place. This in turn means that soldiers have to be trained to fight in a specific type of terrain. These include: * Arctic warfare * Desert warfare * Jungle warfare * Naval warfare or Aquatic warfare * Sub-aquatic warfare * Mountain warfare (sometimes called alpine warfare) * Urban warfare * Air warfare * Space warfare ==See also== *Civil war *List of wars *List of battles *List of orders of battle *List of invasions *List of military commanders *List of current wars *Military science *Military technology and equipment *Military strategy *Military tactics *Military-industrial complex *Private military contractors *Weapons *War profiteer ==External links== *[http://www.umich.edu/~cowproj/ Correlates of War Project] *[http://cow2.la.psu.edu/ Correlates of War 2] *[http://www.inta.gatech.edu/peter/PSS99_paper.html Article by Peter Brecke] *[http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/4th_gen_war_gazette.htm The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation] *[http://www.pcr.uu.se/ Uppsala Department of Peace and Conflict Research] *[http://www.unesco.org/shs/human_rights/hrfv.htm 1986 Seville Statement on Violence] *[http://www.culture-of-peace.info/ssov/title-page.html The Seville Statement on Violence: A Progress Report] *[http://www.culture-of-peace.info/myth/title-page.html The Myth That War Is Intrinsic to Human Nature Discourages Action for Peace by Young People] *[http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm Rough estimates of the number of deaths in various wars and conflicts] War bn:যুদ্ধ la:Bellum nds:Orlog simple:War

War

----- I quote the page: "Other psychologists have argued that while human temperament allows wars to occur, they only do so when mentally unbalanced men are in control of a nation. This school argues leaders that seek war such as Napoleon, Hitler, and Stalin were mentally abnormal and thus if some sort of screening process, such as elections, could prevent these types from coming to power war would end." Hindenburg was elected to the presidency and then appointed hitler chancellor, that was in his power just like the president appoints a cabinet, the nazi party, which hitler was leader of, was also voted in with a controlling majority in the Reichstag, they then passed the enabling act giving hitler dictator type powers, hindenburg died, hitler combined the office of chancellor etc etc, my big beef is where it asks for a screening process such as elections, basically they were elected, so that should be taken out. ---- Could anyone publish a HOW-TO on how to start a war? We shouldn't keep this all historic and theoretic. The three easiest ways to start a war seem to be: question someone's parentage/legitimacy, question their religion, or just think you personally are better suited to lead a particular country. Sure, there are some purely political wars... The first sentence excludes Civil War. Is civil war considered a type of war? ---- ---- (on head page) "It has been said that war is the continuation of politics and diplomacy? by other means". Sounds like :Klauswitz to me. --User:drj. : Karl von Clausewitz said: "War is an extension of politics by other means". Lenin said "politics is concentrated economics". So you could add the two premises, perform a deduction, and conclude that war is an extension of economics. But that might be a bit oil grab. User:Adhib 17:00, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC) ---- Article says: After the :Geneva convention, a war must fulfill a number of formal criteria. Activities that most people would label a war should in that nomenclature in actuality be an :armed conflict. Two questions: (1) which Geneva convention? There are actually several Geneva conventions relating to the rules of law, so we normally say "Geneva conventions", not "Geneva convention". Could you please quote the full title of the convention(s) in question? (2) what are the "formal criteria" that determine what is a "war" and what is an "armed conflict"? Is it a question of whether it is of international character (wars between states) or an internal war (civil wars, rebellions, etc.)? -- SJK ---- I'm bit hazy on all of this, someone with better info really should have a go at this important article...Alas the actual dates and formal name I have no idea about. One of the formal requirements are alt least that both states declare war on each other. For example: During WWII, England ad Germany were at war, USA and Germany were not, as the US never formally declared war on Germany. And so on and so forth. Furthermore, should we include information on the rules of war (for example restrictions on shotguns, laser weapons for blinding and like questions)? On alla accounts, proper names of the treaties and the dates of their signing should be here. International warcrimes tribunal also needs mentioning. Much to be done, i'm afraid... --Anders Torlind ---- US declared war on Germany -Dec 11, 1941 after they declared war with us. http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/77-1-148/77-1-148.html ---rmhermen ----- Bad example then. Anything to add perhaps? --Anders T�rlind. ---- War is the health of the state. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense . . . In a nation at war, every citizen identifies himself with the whole, and feels immensely strengthened in that identification . . . He achieves a superb self-assurance, an intuition of the rightness of all his ideas and emotions, so that in the suppression of opponents or heretics he is invincibly strong; he feels behind him all the power of the collective community. - User:Randolph Bourne ---- While the Toledo war is an interesting bit of historical trivia, I don't think I would count it as a "significant" war in world history. ---- How are significant wars defined? I noticed that there are mostly western wars, included some which i don't consider important from my, central european perspective. On another hand, what about ealier ones: Hussite Wars, Great War with Teuton Order, 13years war, Northern wars, Polish-Soviet war... Which were significant and which weren't and why? Could i add any war i consider significant? :I should think a "significant" war is one which had long lasting and far reaching consequences. The rise or fall of an empire would count, and one that introduced new methods of warfare would count. One very wide in scope would count also. Beyond that it seems like a matter of judgement really. As to whether you should add any particular war, I would say that if you are in doubt, be sure to write a justification for it being there. :Wikipedia is not paper, so having a rather large list doesn't seem problematic to me, as long as it is well organized and a reason is given for its significance. --User:Dmerrill ---- "War," by definition is any large-scale conflict between nations which utilizes weapons (whether formally declared or not). I tend to agree with Dmerrill concerning what constitutes a "significant" war in history. Recent history is a bit more difficult to judge. Some military historians lump the Korean Conflict, the War in Vietnam, the military actions in the Dominican Republic, the incursion into Cuba, the conflict in Panama, and several other "minor" altercations under either "a continuation of World War II," or as part of the "Cold War." I rather suspect that many more recent conflicts, such as Bosnia, Chechnya, and perhaps the Russian invasion of Afghanistan (as prelude), will qualify as "geopolitcal realignment" shortly before and after the collapse of the USSR. The Gulf War and the current military actions in Afghanistan will probably be seen as part of a continuing, long-term conflict between the West and extremist Islamic geopolitical/georeligious aspirations. F. Lee Horn, CPT, INF, USA (Retired/Disabled) ---- ''http://www.sigmaxi.org/amsci/amsci/issues/comsci02/Compsci2002-01.html'' I got a "404 Not Found" error with this link. Anyone? User:Tzartzam 19:34 Sep 12, 2002 (UTC) ---- I'd like to float an idea. We need as a group (the military writers for Wikipedia) to discuss an overall structure, so we can weave in the vast amount of information on this subject throughout the Military portion of Wikispace at least. I've been searching throughout Wikispace for individual military knowledge, and I've found that it is impossible to find anything easily. Most things are bizzarely referenced. For example, placing military under "see also:" on this page seems rather strange. A description of how War operates without using a reference to organized militaries in the description seems very weird to me. I think that this entire section (War, Military, Strategy, etc.) needs an overall strategy, operations plan, and plan of attack itself. I was thinking that the group could discuss things like - "I'm writing on AAAA. I'm including references to XX, YY, and ZZ. Anyone think I should add other links, or include more detail about XX and it's relationship to AAAA?" Or conversely "Hey, your article on XX is great. I'm gonna add references to it in my articles AAAA, YY, and ZZ". That way, as new things are expanded or added, we can keep the space pointing toward root concepts that form the body of knowledge. The goal is to have a coherent work that can be referenced throughout Wikispace (via any entrance) that will flow toward the root concepts. In this way, someone can educate themselves about military matters and be able to apply that knowledge to the specific (usually non-military) question they asked of the 'pedia. I don't mean to imply ownership and exclusivity towards anything - I love Wikipedia for its application of applied anarchy. But to take the military motif to its logical end..... If we create a general staff, then give various staff officers a piece of the overall plan, than I think we could get a much more organized and coherent overall body of work up in no time at all. Well, at least stuff with logical references to the core threads of knowledge. Thoughts? ''Related thoughts on ideas above:'' A how to on war is a great idea. Various postulated reasons for starting wars is a great idea as well. (I for one, don't think wars start for any other reason than economics - the pomp and circumstance of religion, succession, etc. is all window dressing to me. I don't believe in World War I and World II being separate wars, I think of them as the 20th century 30 years war..... etc. - all these ideas and more should be discussed.) References to Clausewitz are useless for normal people, we need to summarize and clarify information resources such as these - that's why people read encyclopedias, after all. The Geneva conventions need to be discussed, what they are and how they apply, and a discussion of relevant examples - Guantanamo Bay, for example. I have an article (an opinion piece) on that specific question that I could use as a start, but this overall is a really big area, more than one person can handle. What were the excesses of the original 30 years war? Why did that lead to a basic formulation of the concepts for a law of war? Why did all combatants in the second 30 years war reject the lessons of the first? (Take allied strategic bombing in WWII, was that a war crime? And is the law written by the winners (as in WWII) for their benefit only - that melds into questions of law in general.....) Again, a overall plan would be nice..... User:Bobdobbs1723 16:48 Sep 25, 2002 (UTC) ---- Regarding the Clausewitz quote: I have changed the German text to the original (heading of Paragraph 24, Chapter 1, Book 1). The text is available at the German Gutenberg project at http://projekt.gutenberg.de/clausewz/krieg/buch01.htm. I have also changed the English translation to become more literal. (Note on this: in today�s usage, ''eine blo�e'' means ''a mere'' but in Clausewitz�s use it seems more appropriate to render this as ''merely a'') User:Kosebamse 08:04 May 7, 2003 (UTC) ---- Why this sentence which is the best definition of war was destroyed with no justification? ''War does not determine who is Right, Only who is Left!'' :It is POV. User:Sam Spade 04:05, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC) To indicate that it's by Bertrand Russell isn't enough? :I wasn't aware that you gave a citation of who wrote it. If you do that, and its in the right place in the article, it should be fine. To me it looked like you randomly stuck it in, w no citation. User:Sam Spade 02:54, 19 Mar 2004 (UTC) ---- Edit warfare sidebar at Mediawiki:warfare -User:StevertigoUser_talk:Stevertigo 08:28, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC) :Why are Violence - Total war Genocide - Democide - Ethnic cleansing - Population transfer Murder - Terrorism - Assassination - Execution Coersion - Torture - Intimidation - Rape including under a listing of warfare? These things are objects that belong to violence and intimidation rather than war. Armies do not rape or murder, individuals do. Warfare does not involve these things, rather they are crimes; something that war technically is not. This is very POV and should be reworked or removed. User:Stargoat 22:27, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC) ---- I agree with Dobbs (above) about the need for structure. I wanted to add a number of elements regarding war and presidential powers, what is and what is not a traditional military activity. (For non-US readers, this has important relevance to how the US forces and the US President can initiate and report on wars). Would it be better if the war page was a mainly summary page, linking to the other aspects? I am worried this will make it too fragmentary, but it has other advantages. Maybe the article needs a complete rewrite? User:Magicmike 31 Mar 2004. --- In describing the Hitler quote, it seems erroreous to say he was "...avowing any belligerent aims...." I think it more likely that he was "disavowing" any belligerent aims, or, avowing "no" belligerent aims. Don't know the source of the quote, so let the original contributor make corrections to the description. ---- I think attempting to coordinate a staff to organize all warfare related topics is a little overly ambitious. It might be a better idea just to create a special index page (consisting of primarly links and very little content) to serve as a jumping-off point for those interested in warfare. That way one can see the macroscopic picture at a glance and then delve into more specific content as they need to. This might actually be a good idea for wikipedia at large. We could create two tiers of pages, one tier for the articles themselves and another tier for content/index direction pages. Does this sound like a good idea to anyone else? User:Digitalwarrior 19 Jun 2004. ---- I got rid of the Orwell quote. [http://wikiquote.org/wiki/List_of_misquotations Wikiquote lists it as a misquotation], and I think most Orwell scholars agree. --User:Max power 11:38, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC) ---- I have serious concerns about the second half of the third sentence here (" . . . the continued existence of a losing group as an entity is in doubt.") The problem is that the phrase is ambiguous. A casual reader might conclude that war usually ends with the extermination of one side or the other. I think the author means that war often ends with one side being conquered, losing its sovereignty or the like. During the time for which there are written records there have been only a handful of wars of extermination. Third Punic War, American-Indian Wars, some others. Most wars end with some change in the political relationship of the combatants. Perhaps someone could suggest a wording change that would make this clearer. User:WardHayesWilson 13:39, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC) Cut from article: :Typically, warfare is mortal and lives of combatants are deliberately taken by enemy forces and the continued existence of a losing group as an entity is in doubt. In view of this, rules for the conduct of war are unenforceable during active conflict. A person faced with death, or an organisation faced with extinction, both have little incentive to obey rules that contribute to that result. If they can survive by breaking the rules they are likely to do so, and some would argue justifiably. The above 4 sentences sound like a contributor's personal opinion. I do not consider the passage to be factual (except for the phrase which I placed in bold). I suggest these ideas belong in a code of conduct or rules of warfare article. People differ over whether war is necessarily utterly immoral (or amoral, if there's a difference). Some armies have had no scruples at all: just kill anyone who gets in your way, take all the land and property you can grab, etc. Other armies have held themselves to various standards of conduct (shoot only at "combatants", negotiating terms of surrender, etc.). I studied quite a bit about this during my 5 years in the US Army, before ultimately deciding NOT to make a career as a military officer. I found many admirable, principled elements in the US military, but not enough to devote my life to it. (Maybe I'm biased; if so, please help me to write about war in an un-biased way.) --User:Ed Poor 18:16, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC) Regarding "Edit warfare sidebar at Mediawiki:warfare -SV(talk) 08:28, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)" I suggess to add more to the sidebar. If you look at the whole picture of many wars, you would see posititution, sexually-transmitted deseases, anxiety, nerveous break-down, looting, hunger, moral-deppravion, medicine/matterial shortages ... on and on, and many other side-products. So many illnesses and areas there are not covered. Those areas probably require more information provided here to be sensible whether a government should support a war or how to manage a war. If these micro-facets are not eveluated as importance, the result of war would always be good. There should be no bad wars, except you lost it. You know? Historians need all these to his work for his a job. Historians should not be post for a reincarnated politician or columnist. == War without weapons == The definition is good, but war requires weapons. Try imganining war just fought with fists. Barbara Ehrenreich said in a book review in Foreign Affairs "War is not a barroom brawl writ large." There is an important lethality element to war. There has never been a bare-handed war. Wars are always fought with weapons. User:WardHayesWilson 12:41, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC) * This makes sense, Ward, of course. I put or left (I don't recall which) the "usually" in there simply because I couldn't be sure there were no counterexamples. But the requrement is so compelling it makes sense to leave it in until presented with such. Fists could be viewed as weapons, for that matter. With "usually" dropped, though, the sentence needs some rearrangement to read optimally. --User:NathanHawking 20:37, 2004 Sep 30 (UTC) == Added "Costs and benefits of war" section == I'd appreciate other eyes on this section, checking for neutral POV, etc. --User:NathanHawking 00:52, 2004 Oct 4 (UTC) :I think the neutrality is fine. I would insert quotations rather than pose questions. I appreciate the urge to put some sort of "cap" on the subject - a summation. Perhaps move the section on the morality of war to the end to serve this function? User:WardHayesWilson 00:58, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC) ::Thanks once again for your thoughtful feedback, Ward. I'll have a look with fresh eyes, by now, when I get a little extra time. I think your idea of moving the morality section to the end is excellent, a denouement of sorts. I'll put it on my to-do list, but don't hesitate to jump in if the urge strikes.--User:NathanHawking 06:22, 2004 Oct 17 (UTC) Benefits are a values based judgement/comparison and is POV. I've removed it but you can revert if you want to discuss it. It's a fine topic for an essay, and you have written it fairly for the most part, but it doesn't belong in Wikipedia. For example, I could also write "some benefits include gaining control of natural resources, strategic positioning for future warfare, and power over the citizens of Iraq.. I mean.. the defeated country" which should give you an idea of my POV. --User:Benapgar 03:31, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC) == Information theory == I just added a paragraph of criticism to this section. I don't think I explained it very clearly, but I didn't want to leave it as it was. This theory is completely wrong as an explanation for war, for a number of reasons. First off, it makes the dubious assumption that each nation is a rational player. That's wrong for two reasons. First, war is sometimes about cold, rational calculations, but it's also about irrational things like national pride, militarism, etc. Second, a nation is not an individual, and the burden of war on a nation will not be the same as the burden on it's leaders. A tin-pot dictator may not care about the costs to his people, as long as a war increases his odds of staying in power. Not only that, but here's the killer: even perfectly rational nations (each treated as a single united entity) can fight wars. It only takes one side to decide that there will be a war. The only choice the other defender has is to fight or give up and lose by default. The war itself will be costly, but the benefits of even a small chance of winning (and thus not losing independence, or losing territory, or whatever it is that the aggressor is after) can be much higher. Few people would suggest, for example, that a rational Poland should have just surrendered to Nazi Germany just because the Germans were almost certain to win. Considering what happened afterward, even the tiniest chance of victory made fighting worthwhile. After some consideration, I think that the best thing might be to remove the section. I don't know how popular the theory really is; if it's widespread enough, it might be worth debunking, but I feel like it would clutter the article. The explanation above is lengthy, and this is a general article. Comments anyone? User:Isomorphic 14:58, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC) :The information theory is an important, if not the most important, current theory of why war occurs. See works by Geoffrey Blainy, T.C.W. Blanning, and others for example. You seem to misunderstand some of the ideas behind this theory so perhaps I did not do a good enough job explaining it. - User:SimonP 16:23, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC) ::I appreciate the rewrite, but I'm still not satisfied. Perhaps I was not sufficiently clear either. The statement "In theory to have enough information to prevent all wars [capability and intent] need to be fully known." is false. Even in theory, war could still occur with two sides that had complete and perfect knowledge of both the capabilities and intent of their opponents. The current article seems to be saying something more like "war wouldn't happen if both sides could see the future", which may or may not be true but is irrelevant to the real world. User:Isomorphic 18:06, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC) :::Could you provide some examples? Game theory tends to break down when both sides know exactly the behaviour of the other person and also have the time and ability to negotiate and compromise before any decision is made. The allegation that "knowing the future" and thus preventing all wars is impossible is correct, but it does not rule out that it is possible to better predict the future and by doing so make wars less likely. - User:SimonP 18:47, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC) ::::Game theory doesn't break down when you have time to negotiate, it just becomes cooperative game theory. I don't know what you mean about knowing the behavior of the other person; if you can accurately predict the behavior of your opponent, then you don't face a game, just an optimization problem. I'll try to give an example or two below. User:Isomorphic 19:31, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC) ::::Wow, that's sad. No article on cooperative game theory. I should correct that when I've got sources handy. User:Isomorphic 19:33, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC) Information theory is moderately widely discussed. Popular in part because of the dominance in the US of game theory and rational choice schools in securities studies. I disagree with the theory, but I vote for its place in the pantheon. I don't follow what is going on in paragraphs two and three. Perhaps someone who knows more about this could distill them down to one shorter paragraph? This section does seem a little longer than others. User:WardHayesWilson 14:10, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC) Another example than the Danish one should be chosen. Denmark sadly did NOT resist the occupation by the nazi troops. Denmark rolled over and cooperated in almost every way, both before and during its occupation. There was a small resistance movement in Denmark during the occupation, but more danes fell on the eastern front helping the germans than fell resisting them. JOhan Bressendorff(student of history Denmark) == Information examples == OK, here's an example of what I'm talking about. Let's imagine two countries deciding to go to war or not over a disputed, resource-rich territory. The available strategies for each nation are just "war" and "no war". If each nation chooses peace, the land/resources will be split 50/50. If one nation chooses war and the other peace, the aggressor takes 100%. If both choose war, then winner takes all. Now, continuing our simplification, let's assume there are only two kinds of militaries, strong and weak. A strong military beats a weak military 2/3 of the time, equally matched opponents have 50/50 odds. Now, we'll assume both players know which type they are and which type their potential opponent is. In our game, equally matched opponents will see that they are equally matched, and will prefer a certainty of 50% of the resources rather than a 50% chance of all the resources and a certainty that the war will be costly. However, in the case of a mis-match, the outcome depends on the expected cost of the war. If weak calculates that a losing war will inexpensive enough, it may be worth it to fight and have a chance taking everything, even though it's more likely to be a waste. Formally, weak will choose war if (1/3)V - W > 0 where V is the value of the resources, and W is the cost of the war. The above situation will result in war no matter how you work it. I've already given each side a perfect knowledge of the others' capabilities, so there isn't any more information to give. Negotiation won't help; strong is better off going to war no matter what weak decides, and weak is better off fighting than submitting to strong's aggression. Formally, peace/peace is not an equilibrium because strong will deviate, and war/peace is unstable because weak will deviate. If you forbid negotiation or add the possibility of surprise attack, you switch to non-cooperative game theory and you will get war even between equally matched opponents. Apologies for going on and on about this. Does the above example make sense? I realize it's vastly oversimplified, and I ignored risk aversion and some other points, but it's just a proof-of-concept. I'm not claiming that having more information wouldn't prevent ''some'' wars. If, for example, strong believes that their opponent is weak, but the opponent is actually another strong, then there is an information failure and the war could potentially be prevented. However, it's false to state that having all nations share all information will necessarilly lead to a peaceful outcome, ''even in theory''. User:Isomorphic 20:21, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC) :The flaw in this reasoning is "a strong military beats a weak military 2/3 of the time, equally matched opponents have 50/50 odds." Historians would argue that the nation better prepared for war, either with a better army, stronger economy, or more intelligent leadership, will beat the weaker side 100% of the time. Almost completely random factors like storms, human error, or the right person dying at the right time may effect the result of a battle or slightly change the outcome of a conflict, but whether a war results in victory or defeat is dependent on fundamentals. - User:SimonP 21:48, Oct 20, 2004 (UTC) ::Ah! Thanks. That's an important assumption to state in the article, then. I was assuming that war has an important random element even if relative strengths are known. Whether that's true or not would be very hard to decide. After all it's hard to guage the relative fighting strength of two nations on anything other than which one wins when they fight. User:Isomorphic 01:37, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC) :::Sorry about that. I think historians and social scientists tend to see major historic events as predetermined, since if they were random it would make to whole task of trying to explain them rather pointless, and thus negate our entire profession. - User:SimonP 02:10, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC) ----------------------------------------------------------- The reasons presented for war seem to ignore the obvious: some wars start because of precieved injustice: One of the sides in the conflict sees the status-quo as unbearable and prefers war to it's continuation. This simple interpretation may well be thought to be wrong, to be solely excuses for the war made by leaders to rally the people behind the war etc, but it should at least be presented.... My backgroud allows me to offer these examples to clarify my point: Egypt started a war against Israel in 1973 because they considered Israel holding the Sinai pininsuala an unaccpetable situation. The Palestinians support the intifada (war according to the def. here), and often in their rehtorics a total war, because of the injustice they procceve in the Israeli occupation. Saddam invaded Quwait claiming that it is injust for a small, oil-rich territory to be enclosed as a separate nation, making them extreemly rich on account of other people who remain poor. I don't quite know how this should be added to the article. I think that there's probobly a notable scholar who published these ideas, and should be linked. The examples shouldn't be added, as they're quite specific and might be considered POV. User:Cederal 16:50, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC) ==intervention != war== the example that war may be 'cost-effective' in case of an intervention to ethnic cleansing etc. seems faulty to me. because, if you intervene in such a case, this means there is ''already'' a (civil) war, and you're only helping to end it. You may argue it can be cost-effective to throw more money and effort at an already ongoing war, in order to end it, but not that it can be cost-effective to ''start'' a war. User:Dbachmann User_talk:Dbachmann 15:12, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC) == Lexical Integrity as the Cause of Social Unrest == We can theorize that basis of much political turmoil is a lexical one. This analysis is based on votes and money, but the analysis of other words would also be sufficient to explain other causes of political unrest. Votes are intended to equal among all people, and money is intended not to be. Both are "markers" that seek to account for the value of people in society. Political unrest can occur when, from a social perspective, these words lose their expected meaning. Examples: There is a pervasive social expectation that it's wrong to "blur the distinction" between money and votes. Citizens get angry when politics affect their personal income, and vice versa, when money is used to influence their politicians. Likewise, political upset also occurs when the words otherwise lose their original meaning. When one person's vote counts significantly more than another's, these votes would no longer serve the purpose of recognizing our sameness. Finally, when money is handed out liberally by a government, without requiring effort on the part of the recipient, money loses its expected social definition as a measure of effort and achievement. In economic theory, confidence in money is the very basis of it's value. The key here is that "lexical integrity" can be viewed as a fundamental cause of social unrest, and not any given political party or theory. ==SimonP== Why did you revert me? George W. Bush is a current example of a leader who sought war. User:EventHorizon User talk:EventHorizon 07:50, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC) :With no response, I am reincluding Bush. User:EventHorizon User talk:EventHorizon 20:20, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC) :: I disagree. Why include Bush, of all people, and not include, say, Putin, Bismarck, Caesar, Charlemagne, Hirohito, ... Granted, Bush sought war, but is the Iraq war really on equal footing with the wars of Napoleon or Hitler? In 50-200 years, will we look back on Bush and say "yes, the fact that he started the 2003 Iraq war truly changed the world, like Hitler did." User:Saturnight 00:05, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC) ::Do you have a citiation showing that some psychologists haved used Bush in this argument? Otherwise it is original research. - User:SimonP 23:46, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

War

Politics Security National security International relations Violence War is conflict involving the use of Weapons and physical force between nations, country, or other large-scale armed groups. Warfare is the conduct of war. See also the List_of_reference_tables#Military and :Category:Peace.

War

-- User:Longhair | User talk:Longhair 04:36, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

See other meanings of words starting from letter:

W