Political Science 144
The Changing character of war
“if you want peace, understand war” “you may not be interested in war but war is interested
in you”
What is war?
Many definitions:
1. Any form of armed and organised physical conflict
2. A violent contact of distinct but similar entities
3. Act of force intended to compel our opponents to fulfil our will
4. A continuation of political intercourse with a mixture of other means
5. A state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations
6. Organised violence carried on by political units against each other
- Kill 1000 people annually (threshold) a bit arbitrary
- War understood as politics by other means
- Traditionally seen as a brutal form of politics way in which states sought to resolve
certain issues in international relations (state-to-state military rivalry) WW1 & WW2
- Done consciously
- To achieve political goals (might be more immediate causes)
- Around 14 400 wars have happened (recorded) claiming lives of 3.5 billion people
- Since end of cold war both the frequency and lethality of war have shown a sharp decline
- War between great powers has become much more unlikely than in previous eras
(globalisation) changes in international system may be changing the character of war
- New wars response to more amorphous and less predictable threats such as terrorism,
insurgencies, internal crises in other countries that seem to demand the projection of
military force to resolve them
- Objective nature of war elements common to all wars
- Subjective nature of war features that make wars unique (new ideas and social
conditions)
- Wars are socially constructed form of a large-scale human group behaviour
War and society
- Social and political behaviour
- Human beings are simultaneously the most violent and most cooperative species on earth
- Societies cooperate on a large scale as societies cooperate on an internal level
- On the other hand, societies feel compelled to fight other societies because they find it
difficult to cooperate on an external level
- Unless it’s a civil war, there is a curious sense in which a state at war is also at peace
1
The Changing character of war
“if you want peace, understand war” “you may not be interested in war but war is interested
in you”
What is war?
Many definitions:
1. Any form of armed and organised physical conflict
2. A violent contact of distinct but similar entities
3. Act of force intended to compel our opponents to fulfil our will
4. A continuation of political intercourse with a mixture of other means
5. A state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations
6. Organised violence carried on by political units against each other
- Kill 1000 people annually (threshold) a bit arbitrary
- War understood as politics by other means
- Traditionally seen as a brutal form of politics way in which states sought to resolve
certain issues in international relations (state-to-state military rivalry) WW1 & WW2
- Done consciously
- To achieve political goals (might be more immediate causes)
- Around 14 400 wars have happened (recorded) claiming lives of 3.5 billion people
- Since end of cold war both the frequency and lethality of war have shown a sharp decline
- War between great powers has become much more unlikely than in previous eras
(globalisation) changes in international system may be changing the character of war
- New wars response to more amorphous and less predictable threats such as terrorism,
insurgencies, internal crises in other countries that seem to demand the projection of
military force to resolve them
- Objective nature of war elements common to all wars
- Subjective nature of war features that make wars unique (new ideas and social
conditions)
- Wars are socially constructed form of a large-scale human group behaviour
War and society
- Social and political behaviour
- Human beings are simultaneously the most violent and most cooperative species on earth
- Societies cooperate on a large scale as societies cooperate on an internal level
- On the other hand, societies feel compelled to fight other societies because they find it
difficult to cooperate on an external level
- Unless it’s a civil war, there is a curious sense in which a state at war is also at peace
1
