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Pyat writes about the purpose of war
Jun. 18th, 2007 09:04 amThe traditional assumed purpose of a war is territorial gain. The truth is that war is more commonly a tool of political coercion. Any actual conquest of territory is often temporary, and even undesirable. War is a stick used to convince another country to act in alignment with the views of your own country, and less often useful as a tool of conquest or liberation.
Actually conquering and holding a territory is troublesome and costly. In the modern world, wholesale genocide or cultural assimilation is not even considered (at least openly) by the most militarily advanced states, and as such real conquest may even be impossible in any practical sense.
Even in the earliest days of organized warfare, wars were relatively seldom undertaken to physically expand a kingdom. They were fought to gain promises of tribute, to force an alliance, or simply to cart away as much portable wealth as possible. How many times was Israel invaded in the Old Testament? In almost every case, the conquers marched in, took some slaves and gold, burned things… and marched right back out again, leaving the tribes of Israel to blame their lack of faith in Jehovah for the conquest.
Of courses, the tribes themselves were an exception, given their conquest of the Holy Land, though this was not so much a war an active attempt to displace the resident culture through genocide. Sunday schools usually gloss over this. For example, whenever I heard about the fall of Jericho, it generally ended with the magical collapse of the walls. I was in my 20s before I actually read the description of the invasion of Jericho –
“And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword… And they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein: only the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD.”
Kill them all and take their stuff! Who says the Bible is boring? Uh… anyway, I suspect there’s an entirely different essay in that topic.
My point is that people seem persist in the idea that the purpose of a war is the physical conquest and occupation of another nation. For example, during the Cold War there was a perception that the Soviets were on the brink of invading and conquering Europe. In the U.S., the public were sometimes presented with scenarios in which the Soviets actually invaded (or attempted to invade) the continental United States. While there may have been a real danger of Europe being invaded if relations had deteriorated to that point, a Soviet invasion on mainland America was very a nearly a physical impossibility. The Red Guard was never going to march down main street in Iowa, no matter what they say in Red Dawn.
Actually conquering and holding a territory is troublesome and costly. In the modern world, wholesale genocide or cultural assimilation is not even considered (at least openly) by the most militarily advanced states, and as such real conquest may even be impossible in any practical sense.
Even in the earliest days of organized warfare, wars were relatively seldom undertaken to physically expand a kingdom. They were fought to gain promises of tribute, to force an alliance, or simply to cart away as much portable wealth as possible. How many times was Israel invaded in the Old Testament? In almost every case, the conquers marched in, took some slaves and gold, burned things… and marched right back out again, leaving the tribes of Israel to blame their lack of faith in Jehovah for the conquest.
Of courses, the tribes themselves were an exception, given their conquest of the Holy Land, though this was not so much a war an active attempt to displace the resident culture through genocide. Sunday schools usually gloss over this. For example, whenever I heard about the fall of Jericho, it generally ended with the magical collapse of the walls. I was in my 20s before I actually read the description of the invasion of Jericho –
“And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword… And they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein: only the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD.”
Kill them all and take their stuff! Who says the Bible is boring? Uh… anyway, I suspect there’s an entirely different essay in that topic.
My point is that people seem persist in the idea that the purpose of a war is the physical conquest and occupation of another nation. For example, during the Cold War there was a perception that the Soviets were on the brink of invading and conquering Europe. In the U.S., the public were sometimes presented with scenarios in which the Soviets actually invaded (or attempted to invade) the continental United States. While there may have been a real danger of Europe being invaded if relations had deteriorated to that point, a Soviet invasion on mainland America was very a nearly a physical impossibility. The Red Guard was never going to march down main street in Iowa, no matter what they say in Red Dawn.
