War is one of the most abhorrent and horrifying experiences that human society can go through. There are never winners in war because the devastation that wars cause on every party take societies back several steps at once. There are always casualties involved and the suffering often goes beyond what is quantifiable.
The word ‘war’ can be traced back to the old high German which means “to confuse” or “to bring into confusion”. Perhaps one of the simplest and easiest ways to define war is that it is a state in which all rational, societal, and interpersonal relations cease. War is an interruption of the status quo, and it is marked by violence, death, and uncertainty.
Let’s take a look at the condition of war, its meaning, its causes, and its consequences. The best way to examine war is to read about it from the perspective of some of the greatest thinkers, those who observed it, those who participated in it, and those who suffered because of it.
“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.” – Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway captures the true pain of war and uncovers the basic principle of war – there is no justice and good in it. Whoever wages it, against whomever, it always results in crimes against humanity. Hemingway experienced this first-hand when he was barely even an adult and he participated in the First World War as an ambulance driver, experiencing both the physical and mental horrors of war..
“I wish those people who talk about going on with this war whatever it costs could see the soldiers suffering from mustard gas poisoning. great mustard-colored blisters, blind eyes all sticky and stuck together, always fighting for breath, with voices a mere whisper, saying that their throats are closing, and they know they will choke.”- Nurse Vera Brittain
Vera Brittain was a nurse that wrote about war and the terrors that she experienced during the war. You can read more about it in her 1933 memoir, Testament of Youth. War is truly a horrifying thing and some of the most painful witnesses of the consequences of war on a human body and mind are the people who are tasked with taking care of the sick and wounded on both sides.
“The First World War was a horror of gas, industrialized slaughter fear and appalling human suffering.” – Nick Harkaway
Harkaway is a British novelist who painted a very realistic picture of what the First World War was. For the first time in human history, industrialization played such an enormous role during a war. New ways of taking human lives were invented such as poisonous gasses. Since the industrialization of war, the way we wage wars against each other has completely taken a turn for the worse.
“God created war so that Americans would learn geography.” – Mark Twain
Mark Twain hinted at an omnipresent superpower that redefined war in the last couple of decades. The United States of America went from being a rather isolated country into quite an interventionist in the global arena, leaving its mark in the Middle East and many other places throughout the world, with the approval of some, while stark disapproval of others.
“War is what happens when language fails.” – Margaret Atwood
War can be usually prevented with diplomacy and communication where opposing sides try to reach an understanding that can potentially lead to a peace agreement. Words have a powerful impact on people, so much that they have prevented wars and saved millions of innocent lives. On the other hand, when all fails and when no words help, war is almost always the next choice for humans. Despite everything, communication is all we have, and we should always strive to reach understanding before using any other means of conflict resolution.
“I know not what weapons World War Three will be fought with, but World War four will be fought with sticks and stones.” – Albert Einstein
Who better to talk about the dangers of war and nuclear power than Albert Einstein, the person that was one of the reasons behind the development of the world’s first nuclear bombs? Human creativity and genius often overshadow rationality.
In a sad way, human creativity is perhaps most visible when it comes to causing harm to others. Therefore, Einstein is worried about the future, having plenty of experience of the first two world wars. The third one may be unimaginably horrifying and there might not be anything left other than sticks and stones to wage the fourth one.
“War must be, while we defend our lives against the destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.” – J.R.R. Tolkien
If not for the First World War, we would perhaps never have gotten to read and enjoy the stories of the Lord of the Rings and the rich mythos created around the fantasy world of Middle Earth in which dark forces are plotting to destroy all good.
The plot is about a war set in a fantasy world using so many realistic elements that even an amateur reader would feel like they are in the midst of a battlefield.
This is not a surprise knowing that J.R.R. Tolkien saw the deaths of many of his compatriots in the battles of the First World War and experienced unimaginable horrors that left permanent scars. These experiences found their place within the pages of the Lord of the Rings.
“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” – Sun Tzu
Sun Tzu wrote one of the greatest treatises in which he examined wars and gave many rational ideas about waging wars. Those who can wage wars without shedding a single drop of blood and cause human misery and suffering are the ultimate masters of war. Nothing that causes human suffering is worthy of applause. A victory that involves death and destruction can never bring pleasure.
“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?” – Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi was a famous fighter against oppression and colonialism and was the central figure in India’s fight to achieve independence from the British Empire by using peaceful means.
Gandhi makes an important note that wars are fought for all sorts of reasons. They may be waged by dictators or democracies, but they all end up sewing death, destruction, and misery regardless of the ideology that started them.
“War does not determine who is right – only who is left.” – Anonymous
At the end of every war, there are only those who are left to pick up the broken pieces, the bodies, and those who are tasked with the impossible i.e., to rebuild, to help heal, to forgive, and to move on. This is a feat in its own respect and those who remain are left with the burden of carrying life-long scars.
“Every gun that is made every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed, this world in arms is not spending money alone. it is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. this is not a way of life at all in any true sense. under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.” – Dwight D Eisenhower
Eisenhower perfectly captures the reality of the world that we often forget. War comes at a great cost and the cost is numbered in human lives, the loss of time and energy, the waste of creativity and the hunger and poverty that ensues. Those who profit from wars are only looking for short-term profits. There is no grace in being a vulture.
“There’s never been a true war that wasn’t fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous.” – Neil Gaiman
Most wars are fought by those who believe that their truth is the only truth. When one is blind to the obvious and chooses to follow one path blindly, then there is nothing that can stand in their way, not even human lives. War and blind determination go hand in hand.
“If everyone fought for their own convictions, there would be no war.” – Leo Tolstoy
Wars are usually fought for the convictions of a very small and selected group of people that have interests vested in the outcome of war. These interests are often highly selfish and do not correspond to the needs or the wishes of the general population. Those with vested interests are rarely the ones who risk their lives in fighting these wars.
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
Most war critics point out how futile it is to spend so much money, knowledge, and other resources on something that in consequence destroys all these things. War is the self-mutilation of human creativity, knowledge, and capacities because it rarely allows for the continuation of these activities on the same level while it creates more poverty and instability.
“I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life, but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another.” – Erich Maria Remarque
Wars also destroy youth, and it takes away from the early formative childhood experiences and it makes people grow up earlier than they should. War is the destroyer of material things, and it is also a destroyer of spiritual things and what it means to be human.
“When the rich wage war it’s the poor who die.” – Jean-Paul Sartre,
Many theoreticians of war claim that war is a fight of the rich against those who are impoverished. It is almost a universal truth that those who wage wars, plan them, and fund them are never on the front lines and they count on the participation of others to keep waging their merciless campaigns.
“It is not enough to win a war; it is more important to organize the peace.” – Aristotle
Every war has a “What now?” moment and it usually comes after it is over when many tough calls need to be made and people need to organize and strive for a better future. This is virtually impossible in a state in which there are no resources left for that to be achieved. After wars, trying to find a way forward both spiritually and physically is an entire feat in its own respect.
“The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.” – Carl Sagan
The past century brought the possibility of mutually assured destruction by nuclear weapons between world superpowers. Several countries have access to nuclear weapons. While we often talk about the number of nuclear weapons that a certain country has, all it would take is one of them to be used to trigger all-out destruction.
“War doesn’t negate decency. It demands it even more than in times of peace.” – Khaled Hosseini
War is the most inhumane situation we can imagine and there is no grace or decency in waging wars and destroying lives. There is decency in those human actions that aim to preserve the value of human life, decency of human personality, and human rights which inherently belong to all of us, regardless of our differences. Light can shine through even in the most inhumane situations when people embrace and show their humanity.
“Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace.” – John Lennon
Imagine has become a beacon of hope and an idea of a time and place that we might never live to see. Lennon finds causes of war in the existence of countries, borders, and artificial differences that sometimes divide us rather than unite us. Lennon is also wary of religion and how it can be abused. Although we may never be able to achieve a world without war and conflict, we must be able to imagine it and strive towards it, step by step.
“The whole world can become the enemy when you lose what you love.” – Kristina McMorris, Bridge of Scarlet Leaves
When what we hold dear is in question or we are threatened to lose something important to us, we become more susceptible to making rash decisions and using actions that may lead to unimaginable consequences.
“Why do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled “enemy”?” – Sylvia Plath
Human history has been marked by a very specific love affair between the concept of nationalism and the fetishization of war and armies. Soldiers have become a synonym for safety, national pride, and the love for one’s country while at the same time, there are many examples of armies committing the most abhorrent actions against human lives, property, and dignity for which they were being celebrated and awarded.
“It is the oldest ironies that are still the most satisfying: man, when preparing for bloody war, will orate loudly and most eloquently in the name of peace.” – Alan Moore
The fact is that those who want to wage a war will always find a way to start one. This is what we call Casus Belli, and it means the reason for war. Those that seek to start a war will stop at nothing to start it, regardless of whether their reasons are legitimate or not.
“You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.” – Winston Churchill
Churchill is probably one of the greatest statesmen to have ever lived and he bravely led his country to war against Nazi Germany and achieved victory against Fascism and Nazism in Europe and all over the world.
Churchill helped create a new world system in which diplomacy was put to the forefront at the United Nations and through many different outlets. He was a unifying force and a polarizing leader, and he is remembered as one of the champions of liberal democracy in Europe and around the world.
“Men make war to get attention. All killing is an expression of self-hate.” – Alice Walker
Killing usually requires a certain degree of hate towards others, many times this hate does not come from our misunderstanding of the qualities of other people but from the hate we might feel towards ourselves.
What is War?
Our relationship with war has been very delicate throughout the centuries. Many societies have collapsed because of wars. While some societies profited from constantly waging wars and expanding, others suffered and did not survive to see a future.
In the last couple hundred years or so, wars have been a perpetual state of play and they have been almost normalized in certain places in the world like Europe. Generations of people were born, grew up, and died during the times when the world around them was in a constant state of war.
The previous century brought the two most destructive moments in human history, the First and the Second World Wars, that took the lives of tens of millions of people around the world, destroyed infrastructure, cultural heritage, and wreaked havoc on world economies.
A minority of people believe that a world without war is possible and that we must strive to ensure that our children and grandchildren live in such a world in which peace exists between every nation. For others, the state that war is as universal and inevitable as any other human condition, and they believe that we can never be fully rid of it.
Regardless of what you think about war and where you stand, it remains a moment in which so much of our humanity is shed away and the cold, dark aspect of human existence comes to the surface, revealing that there is potential for evil in almost all of us.
Wrapping Up
Many people have written about war, tried to find the causes of it and suggest the way forward, and yet, somehow, we cannot seem to prevent it. One of the greatest achievements of our civilization is diplomacy and communication.
Communication is always the best way to prevent a war, although, words often fail us. There is an indication that there are fewer wars than ever, but there is no sure indication that the human civilization might truly abandon war to resolve issues.
For as long as there will be wars, there will be those that talk against it, those that believe in communication and peaceful resolution. We hope you learned something new about the many ingredients that go into waging a war and the many terrible consequences of it.
