War Book

More than just names and dates (although it has that) black also explores differing conceptions of what war means and how changes over time sometimes subtly other times not.

For instance traditional conflicts such as World War Two followed a certain pattern with formal declarations that conformed to certain standards even if surprise attacks and mass destruction were the order of the day. What of the conflicts that for instance involve an uprising against a state or the suppression thereof which meet many of the basic standards of belligerence and bellicosity? Yet there is the tendency to see this as "civil unrest" for example while fighting our own domestic wars in the United States against drugs or poverty?

Perhaps it's best to paraphrase the famous statement by a supreme court justice on the definition of pornography and just say "I know it when I see it".

So I'd recommend this as a relatively far reaching and not so detailed outline of how war in various guises has shaped the history of humanity beginning with the smallest scale conflicts over basic resources and building over the centuries into the modern nation state conflicts and now arguably beyond that into a new realm of conflict involving non-state actors. The United States has been at war by general terms for several decades if not from the inception of the country for indeed one might use the terms Manifest Destiny and Indian Wars almost interchangeably as they are two sides of the same coin and began even before the first modern democratic republic was founded in the eighteenth century. It's a matter of perspective some like take the romantic view of the rise of democracy and deemphasize the role of war in the establishment of all modern societies including those of the west and the United States in particular and yet it is at the very foundation of the ideas upon which we lay claim to civilization all the same. The Greeks and the Romans also fought virtually never ending conflicts until the locus of those civilizations deteriorated and/or moved elsewhere.

Perhaps then there is more than one practical definition of war. One view is the role it plays in classical politics and philosophy and the other is the de facto state of affairs one experiences on the ground. The conservative definition would tend to limit the definition of outright war to the facing off of armies on a field of contest to discount the role of irregular militia or popular uprisings unless of course said forces prove successful as in the American case in the eighteenth century. Thus it is the case that the victor tends to define the history at least within their own borders. However for the average human being this classical approach to defining war and it's rules of engagement is likely to seem irrelevant for instance when even without a formal declaration of war the United States used police action principles to carpet bomb in Vietnam, Loas, and Cambodia. Was it war when the bombs fell?

It probably depends on whether you ask a lawyer or local villager but for all practical purposes one might need to look at instances of state sponsored violence in which people die as a form of war whether one chooses to redefine the different guises. Hitler did "wage war" on the Jews in World War Two for instance even though it was a decidedly one sided conflict.

That leaves the question of what role we assign to non-state actors such as al-Queda of course which is where we enter into relatively new and uncharted territory in this new century and millenium. The real issue there is again a challenge to the more conservative and traditional definitions when it comes to armed conflicts and this is due to the decline of the nation states influence relatively speaking. Whether the world continues in the direction to that course it has found itself on in recent years or not it seems clear both from the mass killings of 911 and from the role that non-government actors are playing in the world economy that the ability of nation states to effectively define the fields of conflict and of war has diminished markedly and the world is playing catch up.

It is possible to argue that if one can wage war on a concept such as terror or illegal drugs and that such war has equal standing to the traditional modus operandi of armed conflict that if in effect this is no mere case of revisionism or spin for propagandistic effect but rather a sea change in the affairs of the world itself. Borders do not matter as much in this sort of world view nor does citizenship and the expectations of security, privacy, and freedom from governmental presence and interference in ones life are like the concept of the nation state itself rapidly becoming outmoded.

If one were a fan of science fiction one might speculate whether the corporate identities and war as represented by Bruce Sterling in his book Islands In The Net might better reflect where the world will be by century's end. The rise of corporate mercenaries in the employ of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan may be no mere blip nor even a strictly political matter in the internal terms of traditional political philosophy if in fact it is the rise of just such a corporate militancy as has been speculated by Sterling and others in past decades. In time one might still pledge allegiance but not by oath but by corporate contract.

This is no mere corporate feudalism if true but rather the rise of a new socio-political state of affairs where the most powerful actors in the world are not nation states but rather the non-governmental organizations (NGO) to a status formerly reserved for heads of state and the like. The likely determinant in defining whether this is so would be to look at who determines the course of policy and indeed events such as armed conflicts. We as a society still associate war with the citizen soldier but in the age of the smart bomb and cruise missile is it not pertinent to ask whether a corporation as a legal person in the United States might also be seen as a citizen soldier?

If it is so or ever becomes so one might ask whether Eisenhower's warning concerning the military industrial complex was even then a moot point that the world had not yet realized. This theoretical rise of corporate citizen soldier within the United States would tend to put the Americans in the vanguard of rising influences that undermine not only traditional nation state conceptual frame works but the redefinition of security on every level from the international order itself right down the status of every human being on this planet.

We or our children, or our children's children shall see, given current life expectations at least those of the developed world. This model of a for profit international corporate political order would appear to favor the haves most decidedly over the have not's and to deepen the chasm between them. Such a thing is no mere reordering of the status quo or of historical patterns it is rather to suggest that the role of the corporation say in fascist Germany to that of the state is in effect being reversed.

One can plausibly argue that corporations are already leading the fight against terror and that they also led the world during The Cold War. Future historians may come to view the relevance of heads of state to turned the tide of history even more archaic than they presently do as the only person with the kind of power to do it from this point forward is likely a corporate one.

This final emphasis is not blacks but rather a restating of the facts which he has so well spelled out. This is the suggestion that the methodological approach that suggest the rise of Europeans and of The West to dominance was due to a military revolution might not be entirely off the mark while at the same time suffering from blinders. To suggest this thesis is in a sense to focus not on the present or the future tense but to argue in the past tense when in fact the revolution as such has evolutionary qualities that are ongoing. The military revolution which Black does well to trace well past the date of the rise of western hegemony into the general history of Eurasia may not have yet reached it's endgame. It is rather a case of shifting battlefields where the technology determines not only the victor but the theater of operations.

The hypothesis of state sponsored network attacks is for all practical purposes no longer the realm of science fiction as both the International Monetary Fund and the nation state of Iran have come under attacks that were to a degree successful in the past year (2010-2011). Both nation states and NGO belligerents it may be assumed incorporate such tactics by default today and into the future with information and it's sources targeted by both network resources as well as the barrel of the gun so to speak. Knowledge war is a war of intelligence and will lend itself to assassination and targeted attacks in an asymmetrical fashion that is already apparent.

The principles of Malthusian population adjustment have for some decades been largely mitigated when compared to past periods but the shift towards a decline in the power of nation states may in the end be one of the determining factors in reasserting it. When human society is defined by the utilization of resources and their value human life becomes just another resource. In an international order regulated on a corporate basis every individual is both owned and owner as a means for the non-corporeal entity to solidify it's position via it's society members. Where once hunter gatherer society and it's descendants may have emphasized mutual benefit and survival this model of resource management places the emphasis of group survival not on human beings but on the corporation wherein the resources reside. Human life by comparison is finite and limited in value a situation where a society's members compete to maximize the value of their own life in a scenario of limited resources. A corporate order on capitalistic lines is by definition not oriented to equitable distribution but is more purely Darwinian in nature.

This is not tangential to the subject of war it is rather part of a larger speculation on the implications and repercussions of the decline of state power, the rise of asymmetrical information centric conflict models with concurrent rise of NGO influences at a time when among other things global climate change while without question but a check on human population. One must add to the modern conceptual use of war against an idea the possibility of war by means of idea.

Taken in totality past uses of such things as intelligence and propaganda in an attempt to turn the tides of history may seem both simplistic and provincial compared to today if indeed another world war is in the offing. It is just such a conflict that will serve to further erode the power of the nation state and to marginalize the meanings of borders. To many accustomed to old ideas of the status quo this might on the face of it seem laudable but that is contingent upon what it is that replaces. A vacuum is always filled and I would argue that is exactly what is developing internationally right now where the nation state once fulfilled a role now diminished in an over populated world where first world nations such as Greece, Spain, Ireland and others are on the brink of collapse economically.

What I'm saying is not easy to digest or to explain but I am suggesting that the general outlines are already apparent for a real conflict in which recent ones may be seen as Spanish-American or Philippine Wars might compare to the First World War. Precursors where new technology or a shining white fleet made their appearance before the scale of things to come were realized.

It is always dangerous to generalize from history and yet those who do not know it are apt to repeat it. The order of magnitude in terms of resource usage, population growth, state actors, and non-state actors not to mention firepower pure and simple that we see out there today would have been unimaginable in past periods. The world wars of the past century spelled the end of an imperial order and I am fairly certain that if concepts of war continue to be based on the ideas and modern statesmen make the mistake of unleashing their arsenals that it will also spell the passing of an order.

I'm just speculating it will be the end of the nation state as we know it along the western model and that the pestilence, starvation, and disease that accompanies war in general may leave all past human conflicts in the pale. Modern multi-state international conflict involving modern European and Asian states will most certainly involve the United States as well and early on. Such events could easily kill a billion people and depopulate entire regions as the major powers are occupied and less stable regimes take advantage of this.

I would suspect this might emerge from economic collapse as war and it's causes are seldom separate from that but in when there is a power vacuum whether it is economic, political, or both the one form of power that can fill it quickly is in fact politics by other means.

War.