Throughout the course of human history, one single phenomenon has asserted itself in almost every single civilization and mode of living. From the earliest days, man has been driven, at various times and for innumerable reasons, to wage war upon itself and amongst itself.
Whilst many civilizations throughout the ages have accepted and even gloried in the necessity of war, most notably those who exceled in the pursuit of it, in our society we are taught to abhor the violence that is war. War is decried from the top to the bottom of society as evil and barbaric, and yet still war exists. As ever, today’s wars are not just the preserve of the ‘uncivilized’ or of the undeveloped nations, but openly practiced by the most powerful and advanced states in the world. That these wars are not the simple efforts of conquests of previous eras does not lessen the fact that they are wars. Death, suffering, misery and grief are their products. Indeed, the nature of these wars indicates a subtle, yet insidious shift in the purpose of war.
The nature of man demands that, at any one time, there must be those who are strong, who have the necessary endowments to rule; and there must be those who are weak, who must submit to rule in order to survive. The particular identity of these groups, however, cannot remain the same indefinitely, or else the suffering of those on the bottom will grow too great as those on the top begin to cherish their power too much. It is a sad fact of mankind that once power is given (or taken), rarely is it ever handed back. An oligarchy clinging to power over an oppressed populace creates a stifling homogeny, suffocating any chance of progress as the ruling group seeks to crush anything ‘unorthodox’, from which progress must ultimately come.
War is therefore necessary as an opportunity for the abrupt changes in the balance of power necessary in preventing such homogeneity from becoming a permanent state of being. Without the possibility of war, of a forceful change, an oligarchy cannot be removed and is left free to act as it will. In such a situation, the ruling group would seek to both perpetuate and expand its power, as is its nature.
War as biological imperative
The common abhorrence towards war symptomatic of modern times is most likely a direct reaction to the two greatest conflicts mankind has yet set itself upon. The World Wars engendered loss of life and widespread devastation not seen before or since, and the twin spectres of totalitarianism and genocide are burnt indelibly into our society.
General Friedrich von Bernhadi (1849-1930), in The Next War (1911), noted that long periods of conflict always brought about a desire to remove war from political intercourse, rather than convincing men of its necessity. Most governments outwardly profess the necessity of maintaining peace, and when war does break out the “aggressor is universally stigmatized, and all Governments exert themselves, partly in reality, partly in pretense, to extinguish the conflagration.” Such pacifistic ideals, however, are seldom the real motive for their actions. The necessity for peace is employed “as a cloak under which to promote…political aims.”
“This desire for peace has rendered most civilized nations anemic, and marks a decay of spirit and political courage … ‘It has always been,’ Heinrich von Treitschke tells us, ‘the weary, spiritless, and exhausted ages which have played with the dream of perpetual peace.’”
This does not mean, by any stretch, that war should be sought whenever possible. The destructive nature of war disrupts industrial and economic development, destroying infrastructures and causing untold misery. Therefore, it is desirable that “wars for trivial reasons should be rendered impossible” and efforts made “to restrict the evils which follow necessarily in the train of war.” However, it is another matter entirely to desire the total abolition of war, if such a thing were at all possible, and to “deny its necessary place in historical development.”
This desire, according to Bernhadi, is directly antagonistic to the “great universal laws”. War is a “biological necessity of the first importance”, without which “an unhealthy development will follow, which excludes every advancement of the race, and therefore all real civilization.” As Heraclitus (c575-c435 BCE), said: “War is the father of all things.”
Clauss Wagner drew a parallel between the ‘intrasocial struggle’, the internal struggle in a society, the “struggle of thoughts, feelings, wishes, sciences, activities”; and the ‘extrasocial’ or ‘supersocial’ struggle, which “guides the external development of societies, nations and races”. Namely, this extrasocial struggle is war.
Just as all intrasocial property- all thoughts, inventions and institutions- are a result of the intrasocial struggle- the attempt of one factor in a social group to gain ascendance over another- the extrasocial development of mankind is guided by war- the attempt of one social group to gain ascendancy over another.
“In what does the creative power of this struggle consist? In growth and decay, in the victory of the one factor and in the defeat of the other! This struggle is a creator, since it eliminates."
Clauss Wagner, "War as the Creative World Principle"
The New War
In his seminal work, 1984, George Orwell describes a different mode and driving force for war than any seen previously. The three superstates that make up Orwell’s dystopia are in a constant state of war, which none can ultimately win as they are all militarily equal. Indeed, none of them wish to bring an end to the war, as it is vital to the maintenance of their oligarchy.
It is one of the most striking observations of Orwell’s work that just at the moment when mankind found itself on the verge of becoming capable of creating a world in which most of the great injustices are no more, the very hope for such a world was lost. Technological progress has now flourished to the point that “the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, [has] disappeared . . . hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy and disease could be eliminated within a few generations." Such a possibility is a grave threat to the perpetuity of Orwell’s oppressive ruling class, the Party, because “if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would learn to think for themselves," and would surely rise against the regime. Therefore, “a hierarchical society [is] only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance."
In order to prevent a surplus of production, made possible by technological progress, from making “the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent,” the perpetual war is planned so as to “eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the population . . . a deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another.”
This is not too dissimilar to the form of war we see practised by the major powers today. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, amongst others, are unlikely to see a conclusive end, even if all western troops were withdrawn. Instead, both sides are constantly perpetuated, with extremists and jihadists seeing our presence there as a reason for their attacks on the west, raising the danger to our own citizens and therefore the apparent necessity for our military presence in the Middle East.
The so-called ‘war on terrorism’ itself is a further extension of this type of war, declared not on an identifiable nation state or even group, but on a state of mind- the violent rejection of the current world order. Such a war is ultimately unwinnable, as there is no single identifiable condition of victory. Meanwhile, the apparatus built to wage the war on terror are maintained only by the fact that it is a war that cannot end.
“Homo homini lupus”- ‘Man is wolf to man’
Plautus
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