Van Creveld - The Transformation of War Flashcards
Reasons for war, other than politics
Non Political War 145
- Justice p146: war was regarded as a continuation of justice, not of politics.
-Religion p154: the idea of war as an instrument of religion should not come as a surprise. It is already much in evidence in the Old Testament, where wars between peoples were simultaneously conflicts in which the supremacy of their respective gods was proved or disproved.
-Existance p164: The ends for which people have fought have been extremely diverse. They have included every kind of secular “interest,” such as territorial expansion, power, and profit; but they have also comprised abstract ideals such as law, justice, “rights,” and the greater glory of God, all served in various combinations with each other and the secular interests. And the most important: war for the community’s existence. *It is to confuse policy with the nation’s independent identity, even its very existence. Very good example of war as a fight for existence is provided by
Israel in 1967.
War strategy
Obstacles to force
p.121
The great twin obstacles to warlike force, according to Clausewitz, are uncertainty and friction. He might have added inflexibility, thus completing
a trio that has bedeviled military forces since the beginning of time. Nor are these problems limited only to the level commonly known as “strategy”-> operations of war.
Elements of war
Convention about limitation of war (end 19th century)
The War Convention p.104
Limitations on war that emerged at the end of the 19th century. Dduring this time, many countries began to adopt codes of conduct and norms for the conduct of warfare, including the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907.
-Growing recognition of the need to limit the scope and intensity of warfare in order to mitigate the suffering of combatants and non-combatants alike. These conventions established rules for the treatment of prisoners of war, the protection of civilians and non-combatants, and the regulation of certain weapons and tactics.
-Had limited effectiveness in actually limiting the conduct of warfare. Many countries simply ignored the rules established by the conventions, and the conventions themselves did not prevent the outbreak of major conflicts (World War I).
- Attempts to regulate the new weapons started at St. Petersburg in 1868 and ended at the Hague in 1907, with numerous less important meetings taking between them.
Nuclear war
Over the last forty-five years it would be difficult to point out even a single case when a state possessing nuclear arms was able to change the status quo by threatening their use, let alone by using them; in other words, their political effect, if any, has been merely to enforce caution and freeze existing borders. The most important reason behind this state of affairs is, of course, that nobody has yet figured out how to wage a nuclear war without risk of global suicide. Truth to say, nuclear weapons are instruments of mass murder. Given that there is no defense, the only thing they are suitable for is an act of butchery that would be beyond history, and quite possibly would put an end to it. They cannot, however, be employed for waging war in any meaningful sense of that term.
Thus the effect of nuclear weapons, tactical ones in particular, was to threaten the continued existence of conventional forces, especially ground forces. Yet if fighting was to take place at all, the only forces that could engage in it without threatening to blow up the world were conventional ones.
Nor should the reader think that this is merely an interesting but irrelevant historical episode. On the contrary, the lack of a defense—the fact that war can be reduced to physics, and its outcome rendered certain—presents perhaps the most critical single element governing the contemporary world. It constitutes the principal reason why nuclear war is impossible; and why, in spite of forty-five years of intensive confrontation between the superpowers that by the logic of all previous history should have come to blows long ago, no conflict has taken place so far. Now this is not necessarily to say that nuclear weapons will never be used by anyone. They may be, and in fact some would argue that the chances of this happening are increasing daily because of the proliferation that is taking place. The point is that if they are used, whatever takes place will be not war in the historical sense of that term, but a massacre, an act of suicide, or a combination of both.
Low intensity conflicts
P.32
Since 1945 there have been perhaps 160 armed conflicts around the world, of those perhaps three quarters have been of the so-called “low-intensity” variety (the term itself first appeared during the 1980s, but it aptly describes many previous wars as well). The principal characteristics of low-intensity conflict (LIC) are as follows:
1. Tend to unfold in “less developed” parts of the world; the small-scale armed conflicts which do take place in “developed” countries are usually known under a variety of other names, such as “terrorism,”“police work,” or “troubles.”
2. Very rarely do they involve regular armies on
both sides, though often it is a question of regulars on one side fighting guerrillas, terrorists, and even civilians, including women and children, on the other.
3. Most LICs do not rely primarily on the high-technology collective weapons that are the pride and joy of any modern armed force. Excluded from them are the aircraft and the tanks, the missiles and the heavy artillery, as well as many other devices so complicated as to be known only by their acronyms.
Trinitarian war
War remained something waged by one state against another. Both before and after 1789 it was not people who made war, nor armies on their own, but governments. Nor, when everything is said and done, had even the nature of government itself changed all that much.
-Organized violence should only be called “war” if it were waged by the state, for the state, and against the state was a postulate that Clausewitz took almost for granted.
Historically speaking, trinitarian war—in other words, a war of state against state and army against army—is acomparatively recent phenomenon; hence, the things that the future has in store for humanity may also be very different.
If it was governments that made war, their instrument for doing so consisted of armies. Though the methods by which armies were raised underwent some changes, their fundamental nature was not transformed either by the French Revolution or by the wars that followed it. Armies were defined as organizations that served the government, whether monarchical, republican, or imperial.
As postulated by vom Kriege, the third vital element in any war consists of the people. Between 1648 and 1789 jurists and military practitioners were in agreement that, since war was a question of state, the people should be excluded from it as far as possible. This was carried to the point where they were prohibited from taking an active part in hostilities;
Trinitarian war and low-intensity conflicts
Total war and low- intensity conflicts
The last of Ludendorff’s books was called Der Totale Krieg (Total War), and was published in 1936. In it he tried to summarize his experiences and explain his mistakes away. The core of the work was formed by a direct attack on Clausewitz, whose definition of war as the continuation of politics Ludendorff wanted to “throw overboard.” Modern conditions had rendered it imperative that politics be made the continuation of war, now understood as a national struggle for survival with no holds barred. Der Totale Krieg was rife with complaints about people and organizations which, so its author complained, had obstructed him and prevented all of Germany’s resources from being committed to the war effort.
Finally, many of the distinctions between army and people which had been established by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century international law also broke down. Armed violence, far from being limited to combatants, escaped its bounds. Terrible atrocities, including even the planned starvation of tens of millions, were carried out against the inhabitants of occupied countries both in Europe and in Asia.
those who set out to establish a new world order after World War II did their work reasonably well. The principal reasons for this outcome were the ever present fear of nuclear Armageddon and, of course, sheer war-weariness. At any rate, to date there has been no repetition of “total” conflict on the model established by both World Wars. When the principal military powers went to war—always excepting the “low-intensity conflicts” which, though they formed a large majority, hardly counted as a war—they usually abided by the rules.
Trinitarian war and War conventions
A whole series of international agreements, most of which date to the period between 1859 (the battle of Solferino) and 1907 (the Second Hague Conference) codified these ideas and converted them into positive law. To distinguish war from mere crime it was defined as something waged by sovereign states and by them alone. Soldiers were defined as personnel licensed to engage in armed violence on behalf of the state; as part of this, the ancient practices of issuing letters of marque and privateering were prohibited. To obtain and maintain their license, soldiers had to be carefully registered, marked, and controlled, to the exclusion of privateering. They were supposed to fight only while in uniform, carrying their arms “openly,” and obeying a commander who could be held responsible for their actions.
Whether intended or not, one result of these agreements was that non- European populations that did not know the state and its sharply-drawn division between government, army, and people were automatically declared to be bandits. Whenever they tried to take up arms, they were automatically considered hors de loi.
Strategy vs. Tactics
As defined by the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century dictionaries,the
important distinction was between strategy and tactics. Tactics, derived from a Greek word whose original meaning was order, stood for theconduct of battle;
in plain words, the actual act of fighting. By contrast, strategy signified everything that took place in war before and after the physical clash. The task of tactics was to see to it that the slaughter should take place in good order and with the best possible outcome. That of strategy was to enable it to take place under the most favourable circumstances, and to make use of it once it had been accomplished; the strategist prepared violence and exploited it, but he did not himself engage in it.
