"WAR!" What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
At the supposed end of every war mankind has engaged we always find that one regime is replaced with another. It matters not which new form of government replaces the other as it should be more than obvious by now that none of them seem to work or are any good. - For if they did work and if they were any good, then there would be no need to continue with more wars.
If we took a hard look at our government, or that of the American people, we would find that it is influenced by corporations that hire lawyers to manipulate through legislation the laws to their advantage with a total disregard for the rights of the people. Here, it is no longer a government of the people, by the people or for the people. It is a corporate-government. The American government is designed, primarily, to serve the interests of the people, whereas, corporations are not. They serve only their particular and selfish interests. Scenarios such as this are one of the ultimate foundations of war. Capitalization of the natural resources and thus slavery of the people. Of course, we cannot exclude, that governments and religions are the other two, if not first and foremost, in creating and allowing conditions for such corporations to manipulate the tranquility of the people.
This is the corporate-industrialized-complex that has taken over every form of government throughout the entire world and it is financed by the World Bank that was established during the 1600's. These corporations are also the manufacturers of the entire war machinery. Billions of dollars in profit are made by them as we stuggle through the propoganda of what we are lead to believe is the truth, cause and reason behind the war effort and as to why we willingly engage ourselves on the lines of production and the battlefields. These same corporations own and control the media and play the situations to us in such a manner that if we were to ever wake up and realize that we too are no more to them than just another resource; another product and a measured number in the stock markets and a tombstone-statistic in the cemetaries. They rely on us. They have calculated what we are going to do because they set it up that way. We are no more than sheep with a false sense of security and a surrealistic freedom.
In the past, the days of the adventurers, those who were brave and curious enough to set out to discover new worlds on the other side of the mountain and across the sea would also discover new and different people and cultures. Along with this they would also discover new resources. One of the methods they used to acquire these resources was cheap trading. In the next movement they would bring in their holy-men or the clergy in an effort to learn the beliefs of the people and thus use that information to subdue and overcome them. Most often, this latter process was not always acceptable, therefore, the next movement would be to send in their military forces to quell this resistence. After having done so they would then establish their form of government which was financed and controlled by a corporate-clergy.
Today, however, the entire process is a bit different. Now they just send in the CEO with the media as the propoganda machine to subdue with misinformation. Once the radical factor is exposed then the police, or the military, have their target and are instructed to eliminate the problem.
Competition is an element of warfare - whether it be a friendly game, marketing a product or service or beating your business associates to the deadline. Not everyone, or thing, needs to be catagorized as an advisary, foe or enemy. Often our choice of words in defining our meanings or discriptions of these subjects can be rather misleading if not confusing. 'Coining a term' is no more than establishing a particular mind-set for a particular reaction and is one of the most used methods of subduing the free-thinking of a people in order to incorporate their energy to the corporate effort. You hear it, you say and soon you believe it...because they said so.
Competition can be a good thing if it were left only to creating a better process in the development of a better product, service or condition without destroying people, other living things or the environment. But it rarily ever rests at this point. Corporations seem to believe they own the entire planet and its resources along with the inhabitants of the world - both human and non-human.
At one time people believed they were in competition with the other creatures of the world for water, food and shelter when, in fact, this was more survival and not war, at least, not until greed took over and then the entire reason and process changed. Things were eliminated, wasted and killed for power or domination. Everything that is on this planet is here for a reason and it all has a right to exist. Some of these things are gone forever. Most of these things have been eliminated by the actions of humans alone.

Man makes war on everything. Nothing makes war on man - eccept man.

We have yet to experience the greatest King or the greatest Leader as none of these throughout history have accomplished the peoples desires, wishes and dreams to end all wars - everywhere.

The only one who truly understands war is the warrior. Many warriors survived to become monks, hermits and teachers who endulged themselves towards methods of education and understanding for the societies and governments they served to end all wars by eliminating the conditions that start them.

There have been, and still are, children born into a world of war. Many of them know nothing else and many more die before they really have a chance to live. What do these children know of politics and religion and the endless fueds that exist because of their differences? Wars are conducted by those who want power and for no other reason. Children could care less about this. What do these children know of the modern world with its many devices that are supposed to make life easier, e.g., inside plumbling, heat, air conditioning, television, radio, telephones, cell-phones, computers, cartoons, games, toys, movies, microwave ovens, fast-food, more than one set of clothes to wear, shoes or even books? Do they have food or medicine? Does anybody really care? They don't even know if they're going to see their few friends the next day. Their parents use them to fight their wars. They load them down with explosives and more. We would call this barbaric. War is barbaric. There is no such thing as civilized warfare. That is just plain stupid.
If you are a member of a part of the world where your children have had the opportunity to grow up and, especially, where they were not or are not subject to the afore and above conditions, it may be very difficult for you to comprehend such matters.
Ask a combat hardened Veteran if they had to ever kill a child. Most will not answer you. This is one of the hardest burdens to carry for the rest of your life. They are the ones who have to live with this - not you. Many of them think that it could have been their child and most of them were and are young themselves.
The whole world is fighting about something and both opposing factors consider and believe that their particular cause is just and the most right. No one ever wins a war - nor is the ending compromise totally acceptable - by either side.

In mans concept of civilization and, any order to maintain this concept as a reality, we must accept from centuries of observation of the results, that war is the main instrument for establishing one nation over another and that there is a massive manipulation of human-kinds individualism to which the ultimate failure for being in such a state is that we have become our own downfall.

Contained herein is a study, on overview, documents, lectures, statistics, timelines, history and links that will help you to understand that humans can no longer continue on these destructive paths if it intends to survive.
We must learn from this information and devise very sound methods to end all wars once and for all. It can be done and we cannot rely on governments, religions or corporations to do this for us. It is a human thing and it must be done by those of us who are responsible and strong enough to engage the argument and win the war for peace - without the spilling of anymore blood and the destruction of our planet to meet the bottom line....corporate profits.

Study, learn, think, develop, apply. You are the solution. You cannot sit by and wait for someone else or the next generation to do what has needed to be done for centuries. It is time to apply ourselves to living the dreams of our ancestors for the sake of the future - World Peace.

How can anyone achieve greatness at the death of another?

Bravery is accomplished when one has no other choice.

Heroes are measured by how many lives they save - not by how many they kill.

____________

Excerpt from The Lucifer Principle:
A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History
Source

Where violence takes place, children crop up over and over again. Stags fight for the right to have them. Humans declare wars to make the world safe for them. Strange as it sounds, children--and the genes they carry--are one key to the mystery of violence.

An adult male langur who's become the head of the establishment ensconces himself at the center of his group looking ever-so-regal. He has every reason for sitting pretty. If you take a closer look at the cluster of langurs milling around him, you'll discover that all of them are either his wives or his children. The females do his bidding, and offer their bodies only to him. If they attempt a romance with some dashing bachelor, they are severely punished. So is the hopeful seducer. No wonder the central male looks so lordly. He is surrounded by a tribe devoted to one primary purpose--having and raising his kids.

As we saw several chapters ago, not every member of the langur society is happy about this state of affairs. In the jungle nearby roams a gang of post-pubertal hooligans who have left home permanently to hang with toughs their own age. Their newly spurting sexual hormones have triggered the growth of horniness, muscle and a cocky aggression. Periodically, the gang of youthful thugs advances on the territory where the well-fixed elder statesman sits in the midst of his massive family. The hoodlums try to get his attention. They mock and challenge the patriarch. He sometimes sits aloof, refusing to dignify their taunts with a response. On other occasions, he ambles over to the periphery of the harem, then rears up and puts on a display of outrage that chases the young Turks away. But from time to time, the massed delinquents continue their challenge, starting a fight that can be brutal indeed. If they are lucky, the upstarts trounce their dignified superior thoroughly, chasing him from his comfortable home.

Then the newly triumphant members of the younger generation execute an atrocity. They wade into the screaming females, grabbing babies left and right. They swing the infants against the trees, smash them against the ground, bite their heads and crush their skulls. They kill and kill. When the orgy of bloodlust is over, not an infant remains. Yet the females in their sexual prime are completely unhurt.

The mass murder is anything but random. Like Effie's infanticide, it has a simple goal. This cluster of wives was raising the children of the old man who just fled. As long as the ladies continued to suckle infants, they would be tied to the children of the toppled authority figure. A natural birth-control device called lactational amenorrhea would keep them uninterested in sex, preventing them from entering estrus, and blocking the females from carrying the seed of the new conquerors. When a mother's baby is killed and her suckling stops, however, the whole game changes. Her biochemistry shifts, resurrecting her sexual interest. She becomes an empty womb waiting to have another child. And this time, the child will not belong to the deposed monarch--it will carry the legacy of one of the invaders. But surely humans don't indulge in such barbarities. Or do they? In the rain forests near the Amazon live a people called the Yanomamo. Their ethnographer, Napoleon Chagnon, calls them "the fierce people." They pride themselves on their cruelty, glorying in it so enthusiastically that they make a great show of beating their wives. And the wives are as much a part of this viciousness as the husbands. A spouse who does not carry enough scars from her husband's blows feels rejected and complains miserably about her unbruised condition. It is a sign, she is certain, that her husband does not love her.

Yanomamo men have two great sports--hunting and war. The patterns of their warfare bear a strange resemblance to those of the langur. Yanomamo men sneak up on a neighboring village and attack. If they are successful, they kill or chase away the men. They leave the sexually-capable young women unharmed. But they move methodically through the lean-to-like homes, grabbing babies from the screaming captives. Like the langurs, the Yanomamo men beat these infants against the ground, bash their brains out on the rocks, and make the footpaths wet with babies' blood. They spear the older children with the sharp ends of their bows, pinning their quivering bodies to the ground. Others they simply throw from the edge of a cliff. To the Yanomamo, this is an exhilarating entertainment. They brag and boast as they smash fresh newborns against the stones. When the winning warriors have finished, not a single suckling child remains. Then the triumphant Yanomamo men lead the captured women back to a new life as secondary wives. No wonder the Yanomamo word for marriage means "dragging something away."

What have the Yanomamo victors accomplished? The same thing the langurs did. They have freed the females from the biochemical birth control device that keeps a suckling woman from bearing new progeny. The Yanomamo fighters have made the wombs of their captured consorts available to carry fresh children...their children. The Yanomamo are not some strange aberration dragged out of the jungle to illustrate a far-fetched point. In the early fourth century, Eusebius --the first historian of the Christian Church-- summarized what the study of history had focused on until his time: war, slaughters for the sake of country and children. Hugo Grotius in 1625 published De Jure Bellis ac Pacis (Concerning The Law of War and Peace), a book that tried to make Christian war more humane. In it, Grotius justified killing children. He cited the 137th psalm, which said, "Happy shall he be who takes and dashes your little ones against the rock." So Grotius was well aware of two things. That killing the children of the people you'd attacked was common in the days of the Old Testament. And that it remained as common as ever in the Europe of the 1600s. In fact, the restless effort of human males to find more wombs that will carry their seed has been dignified by the forefathers of western civilization. The rape of the Sabine women, a bit of Roman history anyone with a modest classical education can recount, was a stunt very similar to those frequently pulled off by the Yanomamo. The heros of the tale--a gang of early Romans--invited the neighboring tribesmen and their wives over for dinner and entertainment. The entertainment turned out to be a display of Roman weapons. The hosts pulled their swords, grabbed the girls, then attacked and chased away the husbands. There was a high time among the Roman founding fathers as they indulged merrily in sex with the weeping captives. And nine months later, there was more weeping as the kidnapped ladies gave birth to a fresh crop of infants--the babies of the banquet hosts.

The Trojan War also ended with a scene that any Yanomamo warrior would have understood. It started as a battle over one woman, a lovely creature who behaved very much like Konrad Lorenz' female duck. You remember, the aquatic female who triggered a fight, then ran back to her mate and tried to get him to join in. The instigator, in the case of the human conflict, was Helen of Troy. When the fighting was over, the winning Greeks were rewarded with a Yanomama-esque bonanza--captured plunder and conquered Trojan females. The warriors took the women home and ravished them. But you can be sure they didn't bother to carry many Trojan infants on the trip back across the Aegean Sea. (As Troy was going down in defeat, Andromache, one of the Trojan wives, told her baby that the odds were good "some Achaean will take you by the hand and hurl you from the tower into horrible death....") Less than a year later, the fresh crop of babies from the Trojan captives fattened the Greek bloodline.

The Yanomamo, the langurs, the Romans and the Greeks were all driven by the same force. They were hungry for sex. And that hunger translated into something else--the desire to populate the world with their own offspring. But the men were not alone. Effie the cannibalistic gorilla and Livia the Roman schemer were out for the same thing. Under the impulse toward violence often lies the simple urge to have kids. Which leads us to one of the fundamental forces behind The Lucifer Principle: the greed of genes.

____________

Published in the April 2003 issue of:
The Progressive
The Roots of War
by Barbara Ehrenreich

Only three types of creatures engage in warfare--humans, chimpanzees, and ants. Among humans, warfare is so ubiquitous and historically commonplace that we are often tempted to attribute it to some innate predisposition for slaughter--a gene, perhaps, manifested as a murderous hormone. The earliest archeological evidence of war is from 12,000 years ago, well before such innovations as capitalism and cities and at the very beginning of settled, agricultural life. Sweeping through recorded history, you can find a predilection for warfare among hunter-gatherers, herding and farming peoples, industrial and even post-industrial societies, democracies, and dictatorships. The good old pop-feminist explanation--testosterone--would seem, at first sight, to fit the facts.

But war is too complex and collective an activity to be accounted for by any warlike instinct lurking within the individual psyche. Battles, in which the violence occurs, are only one part of war, most of which consists of preparation for battle--training, the manufacture of weapons, the organization of supply lines, etc. There is no plausible instinct, for example, that could impel a man to leave home, cut his hair short, and drill for hours in tight formation.

Contrary to the biological theories of war, it is not easy to get men to fight. In recent centuries, men have often gone to great lengths to avoid war--fleeing their homelands, shooting off their index fingers, feigning insanity. So unreliable was the rank and file of the famed eighteenth century Prussian army that military rules forbade camping near wooded areas: The troops would simply melt away into the trees. Even when men are duly assembled for battle, killing is not something that seems to come naturally to them. As Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman argued in his book On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (Little, Brown, 1995), one of the great challenges of military training is to get soldiers to shoot directly at individual enemies.

What is it, then, that has made war such an inescapable part of the human experience? Each war, of course, appears to the participants to have an immediate purpose--to crush the "Hun," preserve democracy, disarm Saddam, or whatever--that makes it noble and necessary. But those who study war dispassionately, as a recurrent event with no moral content, have observed a certain mathematical pattern: that of "epidemicity," or the tendency of war to spread in the manner of an infectious disease. Obviously, war is not a symptom of disease or the work of microbes, but it does spread geographically in a disease-like manner, usually as groups take up warfare in response to war-like neighbors. It also spreads through time, as the losses suffered in one war call forth new wars of retaliation. Think of World War I, which breaks out for no good reason at all, draws in most of Europe as well as the United States, and then "reproduces" itself, after a couple of decades, as World War II.

In other words, as the Dutch social scientist Henk Houweling puts it, "one of the causes of war is war itself." Wars produce war-like societies, which, in turn, make the world more dangerous for other societies, which are thus recruited into being war-prone themselves. Just as there is no gene for war, neither is there a single type or feature of society--patriarchy or hierarchy--that generates it. War begets war and shapes human societies as it does so.

In general, war shapes human societies by requiring that they possess two things: one, some group or class of men (and, in some historical settings, women) who are trained to fight; and, two, the resources to arm and feed them. These requirements have often been compatible with patriarchal cultures dominated by a warrior elite--knights or samurai--as in medieval Europe or Japan. But not always: Different ways of fighting seem to lead to different forms of social and political organization. Historian Victor Hansen has argued that the phalanx formation adopted by the ancient Greeks, with its stress on equality and interdependence, was a factor favoring the emergence of democracy among nonslave Greek males. And there is no question but that the mass, gun-wielding armies that appeared in Europe in the seventeenth century contributed to the development of the modern nation-state--if only as a bureaucratic apparatus to collect the taxes required to support these armies.

Marx was wrong, then: It is not only the "means of production" that shape societies, but the means of destruction. In our own time, the costs of war, or war-readiness, are probably larger than at any time in history, in relation to other human needs, due to the pressure on nations not only to maintain a mass standing army--the United States supports about a million men and women at arms--but to keep up with an extremely expensive, ever-changing technology of killing. The cost squeeze has led to a new type of society, perhaps best termed a "depleted" state, in which the military has drained resources from all other social functions. North Korea is a particularly ghoulish example, where starvation coexists with nuclear weapons development. But the USSR also crumbled under the weight of militarism, and the United States brandishes its military might around the world while, at this moment, cutting school lunches and health care for the poor.

"Addiction" provides only a pallid and imprecise analogy for the human relationship to war; parasitism--or even predation--is more to the point. However and whenever war began, it has persisted and propagated itself with the terrifying tenacity of a beast attached to the neck of living prey, feeding on human effort and blood. If this is what we are up against, it won't do much good to try to uproot whatever war-like inclinations may dwell within our minds. Abjuring violent speech and imagery, critiquing masculinist culture, and promoting respect for human diversity--all of these are worthy projects, but they will make little contribution to the abolition of war. It would be far better to think of war as something external to ourselves, something which has to be uprooted, everywhere, down to the last weapon and bellicose pageant.

The "epidemicity" of war has one other clear implication: War cannot be used as a means to prevent or abolish war. True, for some time to come, urgent threats from other heavily armed states will require at least the threat of armed force in response. But these must be very urgent threats and extremely restrained responses. To indulge, one more time, in the metaphor of war as a kind of living thing, a parasite on human societies: The idea of a war to end war is one of its oldest, and cruelest, tricks.

Barbara Ehrenreich is a columnist for The Progressive. She is the author of "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" (Metropolitan Books, 2001) and "Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War" (Henry Holt, 1997).
Copyright 2003 The Progressive, Madison, WI

____________

A MILITARY HISTORY TIMELINE OF
WAR AND CONFLICT ACROSS THE GLOBE
3000 B.C. to A.D. 1999
Source: The War Scholar

This timeline is presented in order to give the user the ability to see what major conflicts were going on across the globe in any given year or time period. With the thousands of conflicts that man has been engaged in over the past 5,000+ years of recorded history, I have been able to include the major ones and many of the minor ones. This is an ongoing project which will take a great deal of time to finish but, in the meanwhile, it still does present some very interesting information. Most of the listings are color coded according to the continent or continents on which the conflict occured. My primary source of information is George C. Kohn's Dictionary of Wars. Please note that most of the dates for events that occured prior to about 400 B.C. are only approximate. The relative dearth of historical data for many of these events does not allow for exact dating. If you disagree with any of the facts that I have presented, please let me know.

Editors Note:
At the publication of this information the events of 9-11 and the deployment of United States Military forces into Afghanistan and Iraq had not occured. Other allied military forces were also deployed into this region from around the world. In essence, and historically speaking, this could be classified as World War III even though it has not been officially called that. Currently, the Congress and a major portion of the population of the United States are calling for an end to this conflict and withdrawal of American troops from these regions. This could also be classified as the first major war of the 21st Century.

Remember, this is only a few minor lists of wars that will give you an idea as to how insane mankind is to pursue such madness against himself, other living things and this planet for the mere idea of what is believed to be the best for human-cohabitation.

Hisorical Timeline of Ancient Wars

746-609 B.C. Assyrian Wars
736-716 First Messenian War
671-667 Assyrian-Egyptian War
670 Lelantine War
650-630 Second Messenian War
494 Argive War
490-479 Persian Wars
481-480 Carthaginian-Syracusan War
435-433 Corinthian-Corcyrean War
431-421 Archidamian War
431-404 Peloponnesian War
401-400 Persian Civil War
398-397 First Dionysius War
395-387 Corinthian War
328-281 Wars of the Daidochi
280-279 Damascene War
266-261 Chremonidean War
264-241 First Punic War
218-201 Second Punic War
208-206 Bactrian-Syrian War
200-196 Second Macedonian War
192-188 Seleucid War with Rome
172-167 Third Macedonian War
154-133 Celtiberian Wars
149-146 Third Punic War
98-94 First Mithridatic War
93-92 Roman-Armenian War
55-38 First Parthian War
43-34 Wars of the Second Triumvirate

____________

1071 to 1099
1071 - Battle of Manzikert - Byzantine army is destroyed by Turks.

1071-85 - Seljuk Turks conquer Syria, Jerusalem, and most of Palestine.

1085 - Toledo recaptured from the Moors.

1086 - Spanish defeated at Zallaca.

November 27, 1095: Pope Urban II presided over the Council of Clermont calling for a crusade to the Holy Land.

FIRST CRUSADE (1096-99)
Spring, 1096 - Peasants' (or People’s) Crusade sets out from Europe; 3 armies don't make it past Hungary

Spring-Summer 1096 - Massacres against German Jews occur on the way to the Holy Land. Crusaders believe that the battle against Christ's enemies ought to begin at home.

August, 1096 - Emperor Alexius of Constantinople shipped the Peasants' Crusade over the Bosporus.

Late Summer, 1096 - First Crusade leaders depart Europe.

October 1096 - Peasants' Crusade annihilated in Anatolia by the Turks.

Spring, 1097 - First Crusade contingents assembling in Constantinople.

End of April 1097 - First Crusade began the march in Anatolia to Nicaea.

May 14 - June 19 1097 - Siege of Nicaea.

July 1, 1097 - Battle of Dorylaeum (Eskisehir).

October 21, 1097 - June 3, 1098: Crusader siege of Antioch.

December 31, 1097 - First Battle of Harenc. Turkish prisoners were dragged within sight of the walls of Antioch and beheaded.

February 9, 1098 - Second Battle of Harenc.

February, 1098 - Emperor Alexius' general Tacitius abandons the siege of Antioch.

Mar 10, 1098 - Citizens of Edessa give Baldwin control of the city.

Jun 1, 1098 - Stephen of Blois & a large group of French crusaders flee the siege of Antioch with news of the arrival of Emir Kerboga of Mosul and his army of 75,000.

Jun 3, 1098 - Antioch falls to Bohemond and the remaining crusaders.

Jun 5-9, 1098 - Kerboga’s army arrives before Antioch, forcing Bohemond to assume the role of the beseiged.

Jun 14, 1098 - Peter Bartholomew discovers the supposed Holy Lance (the weapon which had stabbed Jesus during his crucifixion.) Crusader morale skyrockets.

Jun 28, 1098 - Battle of Orontes. Crusader victory forces Kerboga to lift the siege of Antioch.

Nov 27-Dec 11, 1098 - Crusaders capture M'arrat-an-Numan.

Jan 13, 1099 - Raymond of Toulouse, after disagreeing with Bohemund about the future crusader course of action, leads the majority of crusaders away from Antioch and toward Jerusalem.

Feb 14, 1099 - Raymond begins the disorganized siege of Arqah near Tripoli.

Late Mar, 1099 - Godfrey and Robert of Flanders join the siege of Arqah.

April 20, 1099 - Peter Bartholomew dies after attempting an ordeal by fire to prove the authenticity of the Hold Lance.

Mid-May, 1099 - Raymond lifts the siege of Argah and pushes to Jerusalem.

Jun 7, 1099 - Crusaders reach the walls of Jerusalem.

Jun 13, 1099 - Crusaders fail to take Jerusalem by storm.

Jul 15, 1099 - In the only fully coordinated operation of the First Crusade, Godfrey's forces succeed in scaling the walls of Jerusalem (near Herod's Gate) through the effective use of a massive siege tower and ladders. Once in the city, the Crusaders massacre the garrison of Fatimid Moslems and a large percentage of the Moslem and Jewish population. Godfrey elected Guardian of Jerusalem.
Aug 12, 1099 - Battle of Ascalon

RESOURCE LINKS:
 • Causes of War
    Resources & Information / Books & Papers
 • Root Causes of War
 •  Movement For The Abolition of War
 • Understanding Conflict & War
 • The Three Images of War
 • Common Dreams - (News)
 • Animated Atlas of U.S. History Timeline
    From 1780 to 2000
 • First World War
 • Photos of The Great War
     This is an excellent site.
 • The War List
     Copyright © 1998-2006 Roger A. Lee - The History Guy
 • Scientific Research
 • Human Radiation Experiments


We generally know when we wish to ask a question and when we wish to pronounce a judgement, for there is a dissimilarity between the sensation of doubting and that of believing.
But this is not all which distinguishes doubt from belief. There is a practical difference. Our beliefs guide our desires and shape our actions.
Some people seem to love to argue a point after all the world is fully convinced of it.
If the settlement of opinion is the sole object of inquiry, and if belief is of the nature of a habit, why should we not attain the desired end, by taking the answer to a question any we may fancy, and constantly reiterating it to ourselves, dwelling on all which may conduce to that belief, and learning to turn with contempt and hatred from anything that might disturb it? This simple and direct method is really pursued by many men.
[Charles Sanders Peirce / 1839-1914]
["The Ways of Justifying Belief" published - 1877]

Have you ever been entreated not to read a particular literary work least it might change your opinion? Question those who would lead you this way - not to read.


- War is everybodies business and concern and cannot be ignored nor is it prejudiced as to whom or what it effects. (Annonymous)

- There ain't no good guys, there ain't no bad guys... there's only you and me and we just disagree. (Dave Mason)

- In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act. (George Orwell)

- You must be the change you wish to see in the world. (Mohandas Gandhi) - All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing. (Edmund Burke)

- Hell is Truth Seen Too Late. (Thomas Hobbes)

- Modern man no longer regards Nature as being in any sense divine and feels perfectly free to behave towards her as an overwhelming conqueror and tyrant. (Aldous Huxley)

- A human being is part of the whole called by us universe ... We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. (Albert Einstein)


____________

The Philosophy of War
By: Alexander Moseley


Philosophically, examining war begins with very general questions: What is war? How can it be defined? What causes war? What is the relationship between human nature and war? To what extent can humans be said to be responsible for war? The philosophy of war then converges onto more specific and applied ethical and political questions such as: Is it ever right to wage war? Should certain acts of war be impermissible? What should be the legitimate authority to declare war? What is the individual's moral and political relationship to his comrades or countrymen in arms? The philosophy of war covers theoretical and applied areas and this article explores some of the general issues as well as connections that may be made for further consideration.

1. What is War?
The first issue to be considered is what is war and what is its definition. The student of war needs to be careful in examining definitions of war, for like any social phenomena, definitions are varied, and often the proposed definition masks a particular political or philosophical stance paraded by the author. This is as true of dictionary definitions as well as of articles on military or political history. Cicero defines war broadly as "a contention by force"; Hugo Grotius adds that "war is the state of contending parties, considered as such"; Thomas Hobbes notes that war is also an attitude: "By war is meant a state of affairs, which may exist even while its operations are not continued"; Denis Diderot comments that war is "a convulsive and violent disease of the body politic;" for Karl von Clausewitz, "war is the continuation of politics by other means", and so on. Each definition has its strengths and weaknesses, but often is the culmination of the writer's broader philosophical positions.

For example, the notion that wars only involve states-as Clausewitz implies-belies a strong political theory that assumes politics can only involve states and that war is in some manner or form a reflection of political activity. 'War' defined by Webster's Dictionary is a state of open and declared, hostile armed conflict between states or nations, or a period of such conflict. This captures a particularly political-rationalistic account of war and warfare, i.e., that war needs to be explicitly declared and to be between states to be a war. We find Rousseau arguing this position: "War is constituted by a relation between things, and not between persons…War then is a relation, not between man and man, but between State and State…" (The Social Contract).

The military historian, John Keegan offers a useful characterization of the political-rationalist theory of war in his A History of War. It is assumed to be an orderly affair in which states are involved, in which there are declared beginnings and expected ends, easily identifiable combatants, and high levels of obedience by subordinates. The form of rational war is narrowly defined, as distinguished by the expectation of sieges, pitched battles, skirmishes, raids, reconnaissance, patrol and outpost duties, with each possessing their own conventions. As such, Keegan notes the rationalist theory does not deal well with pre-state or non-state peoples and their warfare.

There are other schools of thought on war's nature other than the political-rationalist account, and the student of war must be careful, as noted above, not to incorporate a too narrow or normative account of war. If war is defined as something that occurs only between states, then wars between nomadic groups should not be mentioned, nor would hostilities on the part of a displaced, non-state group against a state be considered war.

An alternative definition of war is that it is an all-pervasive phenomenon of the universe. Accordingly, battles are mere symptoms of the underlying belligerent nature of the universe; such a description corresponds with a Heraclitean or Hegelian philosophy in which change (physical, social, political, economical, etc) can only arise out of war or violent conflict. Heraclitus decries that "war is the father of all things," and Hegel echoes his sentiments. Interestingly, even Voltaire, the embodiment of the Enlightenment, followed this line: "Famine, plague, and war are the three most famous ingredients of this wretched world...All animals are perpetually at war with each other...Air, earth and water are arenas of destruction." (From Pocket Philosophical Dictionary).

Alternatively, the Oxford Dictionary expands the definition to include "any active hostility or struggle between living beings; a conflict between opposing forces or principles." This avoids the narrowness of a political-rationalist conception by admitting the possibility of metaphorical, non-violent clashes between systems of thought, such as of religious doctrines or of trading companies. This perhaps indicates a too broad definition, for trade is certainly a different kind of activity than war, although trade occurs in war, and trade often motivates wars. The OED definition also seems to echo a Heraclitean metaphysics, in which opposing forces act on each other to generate change and in which war is the product of such a metaphysics. So from two popular and influential dictionaries, we have definitions that connote particular philosophical positions.

The plasticity and history of the English language also mean that commonly used definitions of war may incorporate and subsume meanings borrowed and derived from other, older languages: the relevant root systems being Germanic, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit. Such descriptions may linger in oral and literary depictions of war, for we read of war in poems, stories, anecdotes and histories that may encompass older conceptions of war. Nonetheless, war's descriptions residing in the literature left by various writers and orators often possess similarities to modern conceptions. The differences arise from the writer's, poet's, or orator's judgement of war, which would suggest that an Ancient Greek conception of war is not so different from our own. Both could recognize the presence or absence of war. However, etymologically war's definition does refer to conceptions of war that have either been discarded or been imputed to the present definition, and a cursory review of the roots of the word war provides the philosopher with a glimpse into its conceptual status within communities and over time.

For example, the root of the English word 'war', werra, is Frankish-German, meaning confusion, discord, or strife, and the verb werran meaning to confuse or perplex. War certainly generates confusion, as Clausewitz noted calling it the "fog of war", but that does not discredit the notion that war is organized to begin with. The Latin root of bellum gives us the word belligerent, and duel, an archaic form of bellum; the Greek root of war is polemos, which gives us polemical, implying an aggressive controversy. The Frankish-Germanic definition hints at a vague enterprise, a confusion or strife, which could equally apply to many social problems besetting a group; arguably it is of a lower order sociological concept than the Greek, which draws the mind's attention to suggestions of violence and conflict, or the Latin, which captures the possibility of two sides doing the fighting. The present employment of 'war' may imply the clash and confusion embedded in early definitions and roots, but it may also, as we have noted, unwittingly incorporate conceptions derived from particular political schools. An alternative definition that the author has worked on is that war is a state of organized, open-ended collective conflict or hostility. This is derived from contextual common denominators, that is elements that are common to all wars, and which provide a useful and robust definition of the concept. This working definition has the benefit of permitting more flexibility than the OED version, a flexibility that is crucial if we are to examine war not just as a conflict between states (i.e., the rationalist position), but also a conflict between non-state peoples, non-declared actions, and highly organized, politically controlled wars as well as culturally evolved, ritualistic wars and guerrilla uprisings, that appear to have no centrally controlling body and may perhaps be described as emerging spontaneously.

The political issue of defining war poses the first philosophical problem, but once that is acknowledged, a definition that captures the clash of arms, the state of mutual tension and threat of violence between groups, the authorized declaration by a sovereign body, and so on can be drawn upon to distinguish wars from riots and rebellions, collective violence from personal violence, metaphorical clashes of values from actual or threatened clashes of arms.

2. What causes war?
Various sub-disciplines have grappled with war's etiology, but each in turn, as with definitions of war, often reflects a tacit or explicit acceptance of broader philosophical issues on the nature of determinism and freedom. For example, if it is claimed that man is not free to choose his actions (strong determinism) then war becomes a fated fact of the universe, one that humanity has no power to challenge. Again, the range of opinions under this banner is broad, from those who claim war to be a necessary and ineluctable event, one that man can never shirk from, to those who, while accepting war's inevitability, claim that man has the power to minimize its ravages, just as prescriptive medicines may minimize the risk of disease or lightning rods the risk of storm damage. The implication is that man is not responsible for his actions and hence not responsible for war. Wherein lies its cause then becomes the intellectual quest: in the medieval understanding of the universe, the stars, planets and combinations of the four substances (earth, air, water, fire) were understood as providing the key to examining human acts and dispositions. While the modern mind has increased the complexity of the nature of the university, many still refer to the universe's material nature or its laws for examining why war arises. Some seek more complicated versions of the astrological vision of the medieval mind (e.g., Kondratieff cycle theories), whereas others delve into the newer sciences of molecular and genetic biology for explanations. In a weaker form of determinism, theorists claim that man is a product of his environment-however that is defined-but he also possesses the power to change that environment. Arguments from this perspective become quite intricate, for they often presume that 'mankind' as a whole is subject to inexorable forces that prompt him to wage war, but that some people's acts-those of the observers, philosophers, scientists-are not as determined, for they possess the intellectual ability to perceive what changes are required to alter man's martial predispositions. Again, the paradoxes and intricacies of opinions here are curiously intriguing, for it may be asked what permits some to stand outside the laws that everybody else is subject to?

Others, who emphasize man's freedom to choose, claim that war is a product of his choice and hence is completely his responsibility. But thinkers here spread out into various schools of thought on the nature of choice and responsibility. By its very collective nature, considerations of war's causation must encroach into political philosophy and into discussions on a citizen's and a government's responsibility for a war. Such concerns obviously trip into moral issues (to what extent is the citizen morally responsible for war?), but with regards war's causation, if man is responsible for the actual initiation of war it must be asked on whose authority is war enacted? Descriptive and normative problems arise here, for one may inquire who is the legal authority to declare war, then move to issues of whether that authority has or should have legitimacy. For example, one may consider whether that authority reflects what 'the people' want (or should want), or whether the authority informs them of what they want (or should want). Are the masses easily swayed by the ideas of the élite, or do the élite ultimately pursue what the majority seeks? Here, some blame aristocracies for war (e.g., Nietzsche, who actually extols their virtues in this regard) and others blame the masses for inciting a reluctant aristocracy to fight (cf. Vico, New Science, sect. 87).

Those who thus emphasize war as a product of man's choices bring to the fore his political and ethical nature, but once the broad philosophical territory of metaphysics has been addressed other particular causes of war can be noted. These may be divided into three main groupings: those who seek war's causation in man's biology, those that seek it in his culture, and those who seek it in his faculty of reason.

Some claim war to be a product of man's inherited biology, with disagreements raging on the ensuing determinist implications. Example theories include those that claim man to be naturally aggressive or naturally territorial, more complex analyses incorporate game theory and genetic evolution to explain the occurrence of violence and war (cf. Richard Dawkins for interesting comments on this area). Within this broad school of thought, some accept that man's belligerent drives can be channeled into more peaceful pursuits (William James), some worry about man's lack of inherited inhibitions to fight with increasingly dangerous weapons (Konrad Lorenz), and others claim the natural process of evolution will sustain peaceful modes of behavior over violent (Richard Dawkins).

Rejecting biological determinism, culturalists seek to explain war's causation in terms of particular cultural institutions. Again determinism is implied when proponents claim that war is solely a product of man's culture or society, with different opinions arising as to the nature or possibility of cultural change. For example, can the 'soft morality' of trade that engages increasing numbers in peaceful intercourse counteract and even abolish bellicose cultural tendencies (as Kant believes), or are cultures subject to an inertia, in which the imposition of external penalties or a supra-national state may be the only means to peace? The problem leads to questions of an empirical and a normative nature on the manner in which some societies have foregone war and on the extent to which similar programs may be deployed in other communities. For example, what generated peace between the warring tribes of England and what denies the people of Northern Ireland or Yugoslavia that same peace?

Rationalists are those who emphasize the efficacy of man's reason in human affairs, and accordingly proclaim war to be a product of reason (or lack of). To some this is a lament-if man did not possess reason, he might not seek the advantages he does in war and he would be a more peaceful beast. To others reason is the means to transcend culturally relative differences and concomitant sources of friction, and its abandonment is the primary cause of war (cf. John Locke, Second Treatise, sect. 172). Proponents of the mutual benefits of universal reason have a long and distinguished lineage reaching back to the Stoics and echoing throughout the Natural Law philosophies of the medieval and later scholars and jurists. It finds its best advocate in Immanuel Kant and his famous pamphlet on Perpetual Peace.

Many who explain war's origins in man's abandonment of reason also derive their thoughts from Plato, who argues that "wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires." That is, man's appetite sometimes or perpetually overwhelms his reasoning capacity, which results in moral and political degeneration. Echoes of Plato's theories abound in Western thought, resurfacing for example, in Freud's cogitation on war ("Why War") in which he sees war's origins in the death instinct, or in Dostoyevsky's comments on man's inherent barbarity: "It's just their defenselessness that tempts the tormentor, just the angelic confidence of the child who has no refuge and no appeal, that sets his vile blood on fire. In every man, of course, a beast lies hidden-the beast of rage, the beast of lustful heat at the screams of the tortured victim, the beast of lawlessness let off the chain, the beast of diseases that follow on vice, gout, kidney disease, and so on." (Brothers Karamazov, ii.V.4, "Rebellion")

The problem with focusing on one single aspect of man's nature is that while the explanation of war's causation may be simplified, the simplification ignores cogent explanations put forward by competing theories. For example, an emphasis on man's reason as the cause of war is apt to ignore deep cultural structures that may perpetuate war in the face of the universal appeal to peace, and similarly may ignore inherited pugnacity in some individuals or even in some groups. Similarly, an emphasis on the biological etiology of war can ignore man's intellectual capacity to control, or his will to go against, his predispositions. In other words, human biology can affect thinking (what is thought, how, for what duration and intensity), and can accordingly affect cultural developments, and in turn cultural institutions can affect biological and rational developments (e.g., how strangers are welcomed affects a group's isolation or integration and hence its reproductive gene pool). The examination of war's causation triggers the need for elaboration on many sub-topics, regardless of the internal logical validity of a proposed explanation. Students of war thus need to explore beyond proffered definitions and explanations to consider the broader philosophical problems that they often conceal.

3. Human Nature and War
A setting to explore the relationship between human nature and war is provided by Thomas Hobbes, who presents a state of nature in which the 'true' or 'underlying' nature of man is likely to come to the fore of our attention. Hobbes is adamant that without an external power to impose laws, the state of nature would be one of immanent warfare. That is, "during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man." (Leviathan, 1.13) Hobbes's construction is a useful starting point for discussions on man's natural inclinations and many of the great philosophers who followed him, including Locke, Rousseau, and Kant, agree to some extent or other with his description. Locke rejects Hobbes's complete anarchic and total warlike state but accepts that there will always be people who will take advantage of the lack of legislation and enforcement. Rousseau inverts Hobbes's image to argue that in the state of nature man is naturally peaceful and not belligerent, however when Rousseau elaborates on international politics he is of a similar mind, arguing that states must be active (aggressive) otherwise they decline and founder; war is inevitable and any attempts at peaceful federations are futile. (From Rousseau's notes on L'état du guerre criticizing the earlier pamphlet of the Abbé Saint-Pierre entitled Perpetual Peace, a title Kant later usurps).

Kant's position is that the innate conflict between men and later between states prompts humanity to seek peace and federation. It is not that man's reason alone teaches him the benefits of a pacifistic concord, but that war, which is inevitable when overarching structures are absent, induces men to consider and realize more peaceful arrangements of their affairs, yet even Kant retained a pessimistic conception of mankind: "War...seems to be ingrained in human nature, and even to be regarded as something noble to which man is inspired by his love of honor, without selfish motives." (Perpetual Peace)

Hobbes presents an atomistic conception of humanity, which many disagree with. Communitarians of various hues reject the notion of an isolated individual pitted against others and prompted to seek a contract between themselves for peace. Some critics prefer an organic conception of the community in which the individual's ability to negotiate for peace (through a social contract) or to wage war is embedded in the social structures that form him. Reverting to John Donne's "no man is an island" and to Aristotle's "man is a political animal", proponents seek to emphasize the social connections that are endemic to human affairs, and hence any theoretical construction of human nature, and thus of war, requires an examination of the relevant society man lives in. Since the governing elements of man's nature are thereby relative to time and place, so too is war's nature and ethic, although proponents of this viewpoint can accept the persistence of cultural forms over time. For instance, the communitarian view of war implies that Homeric war is different from war in the Sixteenth Century, but historians might draw upon evidence that the study of Greek warfare in the Iliad may influence later generations in how they conceive themselves and warfare.

Others reject any theorizing on human nature. Kenneth Waltz, for example argues: "While human nature no doubt plays a role in bringing about war, it cannot by itself explain both war and peace, except by the simple statement that sometimes he fights and sometimes he does not." (Man, War, and State), and existentialists deny such an entity is compatible with complete freedom of will (cf. Sartre). This danger here is that this absolves any need to search for commonalties in warriors of different periods and areas, which could be of great benefit both to military historians and peace activists.

4. War and Political and Moral Philosophy
The first port of call for investigating war's morality is the just war theory , which is well discussed and explained in many text books and dictionaries and can also be viewed on the IEP. However, once the student has considered, or is at least aware of the broader philosophical theories that may relate to war, an analysis of its ethics begins with the question: is war morally justifiable? Again, due notice must be given to conceptions of justice and morality that involve both individuals and groups. War as a collective endeavor engages a co-ordinated activity in which not only the ethical questions of agent responsibility, obedience and delegation are ever present but so too are questions concerning the nature of agency. Can nations be morally responsible for the war's they are involved in, or should only those with the power to declare war be held responsible? Similarly, should individual Field Marshalls be considered the appropriate moral agent or the army as a corporate body? What guilt, if any, should the Private bear for his army's aggression, and likewise what guilt, if any, should a citizen, or even a descendant, bear for his country's war crimes? (And is there such a thing as a 'war crime'?)

Just war theory begins with an assessment of the moral and political criteria for justifying the initiation of war (defensive or aggressive), but critics note that the justice of warfare is already presumed in just war theory: all that is being outlined are the legal, political, and moral criteria for its justice. Thus the initial justice of war requires reflection. Pacifists deny that war, or even any kind of violence, can be morally permissible, but, as with the other positions noted above, a variety of opinions exists here, some admitting the use of war only in defense and as a last resort (defencists) whereas others absolutely do not admit violence or war of any sort (absolutist pacifists). Moving from the pacifist position, other moralists admit the use of war as a means to support, defend, or secure peace, but such positions may permit wars of defense, deterrence, aggression, and intervention for that goal.

Beyond what has been called the pacificistic morality (in which peace is the end goal as distinct from pacifism and its rejection of war as a means), are those theories that establish an ethical value in war. Few consider war should be fought for war's sake, but many writers have supported war as a means to various ends other than peace. For example, as a vehicle to forge national identity, to pursue territorial aggrandizement, or to uphold and strive for a variety of virtues such as glory and honor. In this vein of thought, those who are now characterized as social darwinists and their intellectual kin may be heard extolling the evolutionary benefits of warfare, either for invigorating individuals or groups to pursue the best of their abilities, or to remove weaker members or groups from political ascendancy.

The morality of war traipses into the related area of political philosophy in which conceptions of political responsibility and sovereignty, as well as notions of collective identity and individuality, should be acknowledged and investigated. Connections back to war's causation can also be noted. For example, if the moral code of war concerns the corporate entity of the state, then it is to the existence or behavior of the state that we turn to explain how war's originate. This raises problems concerning the examination of the moral and political responsibility for war's initiation and procedure: if states are war's harbingers, then does it follow that only the state's leaders are morally and politically responsible, or if we accept some element of Humean democracy (namely that governments are always subject to the sanction of the people they rule or represent) then moral and political responsibility extends to the citizenry.

Once war commences, whatever its merits, philosophers disagree on the role, if any, of morality within war. Many have claimed morality is necessarily discarded by the very nature of war including Christian thinkers such as Augustine, whereas others have sought to remind warriors both of the existence of moral relations in war and of various strictures to remain sensitive to moral ends. Sociologically, those going to and coming back from war often go through rites and rituals that symbolize their stepping out of, or back into, civil society, as if their transition is to a different level of morality and agency. War typically involves killing and the threat of being killed, which existentialist writers have drawn on in their examination of war's phenomenology.

For the ethicist, questions begin with identifying morally permissible or justifiable targets, strategies, and weapons-that is, of the principles of discrimination and proportionality. Writers disagree on whether all is fair in war, or whether certain modes of conflict ought to be avoided. The reasons for maintaining some moral dimensions include: the preponderance or expectation of peaceful intercourse on other levels; the mutual benefits of refraining from certain acts and the fear of retaliation in kind; and the existence of treatises and covenants that nations may seek to abide by to maintain international status.

A useful distinction here is between absolute war and total war. Absolute war describes the deployment of all of a society's resources and citizens into working for the war machine. Total war, on the other hand, describes the absence of any restraint in warfare. Moral and political responsibility becomes problematic for proponents of both absolute and total war, for they have to justify the incorporation of civilians who do not work for the war effort as well as the infirm, children, and the handicapped and wounded who cannot fight. Supporters of absolute warfare may argue that membership of a society involves responsibilities for its protection, and if some members are literally unable to assist then all other able-bodied civilians have an absolute duty to do their part. The literature of war propaganda relates well here, as does the penal morality for those who refuse and the definitional politics of the wide range of people who may not wish to fight from conscientious objectors to traitors.

Similar issues dog those who support total warfare in which the military target traditionally sacrosanct people and entities: from non-combatants, women and children, to works of art and heritage buildings. Supporters may evoke the sliding scale that Michael Walzer describes in Just and Unjust Wars, in which graver threats to the body politic may permit the gradual weakening of moral constraints. Curiously, considering his strong emphasis on social virtues, David Hume accepts the abandonment of all notions of justice in war or when the agent's plight is so dire that recourse to any action becomes permissible (cf. Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, sect.3). Others merely state that war and morality do not mix.

5. Summary
The nature of the philosophy of war is complex and this article has sought to establish a broad vision of its landscape and the connections that are endemic to any philosophical analysis of the topic. The subject matter lends itself to metaphysical and epistemological considerations, to the philosophy of mind and of human nature, as well as to the more traditional areas of moral and political philosophy. In many respects the philosophy of war demands a thorough investigation of all aspects of a thinker's beliefs, as well as presenting an indication of a philosopher's position on connected topics. To begin a philosophical discussion of war draws one onto a long and complex intellectual path of study and continual analysis; whereas a cursory announcement of what one thinks on war can be, or points to, the culmination of thoughts on related topics and a deduction from one to the other can and should always be made.

____________

The Great War:
World War I and the American Century
By James Kratsas

Barely 18 months had passed since a reluctant President Woodrow Wilson led his country into battle against Old World autocracy as personified by Germany's bombastic Kaiser Wilhelm II. Over 100,000 of Wilson's countrymen had lost their lives in "the war to end war." By the time the guns at last fell silent in November 1918 the map of Europe had been radically changed.

World War I is the cradle of modern civilization. More than any other event, it shaped the 20th century, toppling kings, ushering in the Soviet Union, transforming relations between and within nations. The first truly mechanized war, it was fought with poison gas and bombs dropped from the air, with tanks and machine guns and in trenches stretching for 600 miles. Offsetting the lethal ingenuity of modern mass warfare, the Great War also inspired unforgettable songs, poetry, and literature. Words like liaison, Tommy, and doughboy enriched the popular vocabulary. On the homefront, Americans saw their government swell to a cost and scope never before imagined. Self-denying patriotism spawned Meatless Mondays and Wheatless Wednesdays, and sugarless gum was invented as a caloric test of Allied solidarity.

____________

Lectures on Modern European
Intellectual History
copyright © 2000 Steven Kreis
Source

At the turn of the century most Europeans were optimistic about the future, some even believed that European civilization was on the threshold of yet another golden age. Few suspected that European civilization would soon be gripped by a crisis that threatened its very survival. The powerful forces of irrationalism, illuminated by Friedrich Nietzsche, psychoanalyzed by Sigmund Freud, and creatively expressed in modernist culture, would erupt in a conflict that would ultimately make this century an age of anxiety.

Disoriented and disillusioned people searching for new certainties and values would turn to political ideologies that openly rejected reason and praised war. Utilizing what they understood about insights into the nonrational and unconscious mind, men like Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin succeeded in manipulating the minds of the masses to a degree never before witnessed in human history.

These currents began to coalesce toward the end of the nineteenth century but World War One brought them all together into a tidal wave. The Great War accentuated the questioning of established norms and the dissolution of Enlightenment certainties and caused many people to regard Western civilization as dying and beyond recovery. The war not only intensified the spiritual crisis of the late 19th century, it also shattered Europe's political and social order and gave birth to totalitarian ideologies that nearly obliterated the legacy of the Enlightenment. Paul Fussell has written that the Great War "was a hideous embarrassment to the prevailing Meliorist myth which had dominated the public conscience for a century. It reversed the Idea of Progress." Or, as the British journalist Philip Gibbs remembered:

The more revolting it was, the more . . . [people] shouted with laughter. It was . . . the laughter of mortals at the trick which had been played on them by an ironical fate. They had been taught to believe that the whole object of life was to reach out to beauty and love, and that mankind, in its progress to perfection, had killed the beast instinct, cruelty, blood-lust, the primitive, savage law of survival by tooth and claw and club and ax. All poetry, all art, all religion had preached this gospel and this promise. Now that ideal was broken like a china vase dashed to the ground. The contrast between That and This was devastating. . . . The war-time humour of the soul roared with mirth at the sight of all that dignity and elegance despoiled.

____________

We set to work to bury poeple. We pushed them into the sides of the trenches but bits of them kept getting uncovered and sticking out, like people in a badly made bed. Hands were the worst; they would escape from the sand, pointing, begging - even waving! There was one which we all shook when we passed, saying, "Good morning," in a posh voice. Everybody did it. The bottom of the trench was springy like a mattress because of all the bodies underneath...
Leonard Thompson - quoted in Ronald Blythe, Akenfield

____________

HEADS OF STATE
Kings and princes, presidents and politicians
And all this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization and our hopes, has been brought about because a set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that any one of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country's pride.
-Bertrand Russell

____________

What Nations were involved in WWI and WWII?

Annam, Austraila, Austria, Belgian Congo, Belgium, Bulgaria, Brazil, Canada, China, Czechoslovokia, Egypt, England, France, Germany, Holland, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Morocco, New Zealand, Philipines, Portugal, Roumania, Russia, Scotland, Senegal, Serbia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United States. There were more.

THE WORLD CRISIS
1931-1939

In the 1930s, several international crises led to world war. Source

Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933 and quickly established a ruthless dictatorship. Germany seized Austria in 1938, and occupied Czechoslovakia in 1938-39. Italy, another dictatorship, attacked Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935 and occupied Albania in 1939. After invading Manchuria in 1931, Japan attacked China in 1937. Britain and France appeased these brutal regimes in an effort to avoid another world war - a policy supported by most Canadians. The Nazis’ military aggression led directly to the Second World War. In August 1939, Germany insisted on territorial concessions from Poland. Finally abandoning ‘appeasement’, Britain and France pledged to assist the Poles and stop Hitler. On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland and, two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. The Second World War had begun.

World War II - Japan
During the era of the weak emperor Taisho (1912-26), the political power shifted from the oligarchic clique (genro) to the parliament and the democratic parties. In the First World War, Japan joined the Allied powers, but played only a minor role in fighting German colonial forces in East Asia. At the following Paris Peace Conference of 1919, Japan's proposal of amending a "racial equality clause" to the covenant of the League of Nations was rejected by the United States, Britain and Australia. Arrogance and racial discrimination towards the Japanese had plagued Japanese-Western relations since the forced opening of the country in the 1800s, and were again a major factor for the deterioration of relations in the decades preceeding World War 2. In 1924, for example, the US Congress passed the Exclusion Act that prohibited further immigration from Japan.

After WW1, Japan's economical situation worsened. The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and the world wide depression of 1929 intensified the crisis.

During the 1930s, the military established almost complete control over the government. Many political enemies were assassinated, and communists persecuted. Indoctrination and censorship in education and media were further intensified. Navy and army officers soon occupied most of the important offices, including the one of the prime minister.

Already earlier, Japan followed the example of Western nations and forced China into unequal economical and political treaties. Furthermore, Japan's influence over Manchuria had been steadily growing since the end of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05. When the Chinese Nationalists began to seriously challenge Japan's position in Manchuria in 1931, the Kwantung Army (Japanese armed forces in Manchuria) occupied Manchuria. In the following year, "Manchukuo" was declared an independent state, controlled by the Kwantung Army through a puppet government. In the same year, the Japanese air force bombarded Shanghai in order to protect Japanese residents from anti Japanese movements.

In 1933, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations since she was heavily criticized for her actions in China.

In July 1937, the second Sino-Japanese War broke out. A small incident was soon made into a full scale war by the Kwantung army which acted rather independently from a more moderate government. The Japanese forces succeeded in occupying almost the whole coast of China and committed severe war atrocities on the Chinese population, especially during the fall of the capital Nanking. However, the Chinese government never surrendered completely, and the war continued on a lower scale until 1945. In 1940, Japan occupied French Indochina (Vietnam) upon agreement with the French Vichy government, and joined the Axis powers Germany and Italy. These actions intensified Japan's conflict with the United States and Great Britain which reacted with an oil boycott. The resulting oil shortage and failures to solve the conflict diplomatically made Japan decide to capture the oil rich Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) and to start a war with the US and Great Britain.

In December 1941, Japan attacked the Allied powers at Pearl Harbour and several other points throughout the Pacific. Japan was able to expand her control over a large territory that expanded to the border of India in the West and New Guinea in the South within the following six months.

The turning point in the Pacific War was the battle of Midway in June 1942. From then on, the Allied forces slowly won back the territories occupied by Japan. In 1944, intensive air raids started over Japan. In spring 1945, US forces invaded Okinawa in one of the war's bloodiest battles.

On July 27, 1945, the Allied powers requested Japan in the Potsdam Declaration to surrender unconditionally, or destruction would continue. However, the military did not consider surrendering under such terms, partially even after US military forces dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, and the Soviet Union entered the war against Japan on August 8.

On August 14, however, Emperor Showa finally decided to surrender unconditionally.