Can Warfare be Anything Other than Barbaric - Essay Example

Can Warfare be Anything other than Barbaric? Introduction It is completely possible for a rightful war to be waged in a barbaric way and for a barbaric war to be waged in rigid compliance with a set of laws. However, this freedom is still baffling. It is morally wrong to perpetrate violence, but violent war is an endeavour guided by law. It is right to fight violence, but the struggle is governed by moral limitations. This dualism makes the issue of morality of war problematic.1 This essay analyses if warfare is absolutely barbaric. Above all, it is important to define ‘barbarism’. This essay uses the following definition given by R.G. Collingwood (1942): By barbarism I mean hostility towards civilisation; the effort, conscious or unconscious, to become less civilised than you are, either in general or in some special way, and, so far as in you lies, to promote a similar change in others.2 Hence the major question is, is warfare really barbaric? Most people will answer ‘yes’. Human lives are slaughtered, and usually in huge numbers. War is a nightmare. However, it is important to deeply analyse this belief, because people’s thoughts about warfare on the whole and about the actions of combatants rely greatly on how human beings are slaughtered and on who these victims are. In that case, maybe, the most appropriate way to depict the barbarism of warfare is basically to argue that there are no restraints at these thoughts: human beings are butchered with every imaginable cruelty, and people from all walks of life, regardless of sex, age, or moral state, are slaughtered.3 This image of war is vividly portrayed by Karl von Clausewitz in his book On War. It is his pioneering descriptions that have influenced the thoughts of subsequent scholars. There are some unrealistic individuals who think that morality and war are unable to coexist. War is barbaric, they argue, war is inhuman; in its existence it is bizarre, virtually nonsensical, to evoke morality. The truth is, as most people usually overlook, and at times are not aware of, morality is basically a norm of a culture. It is a set of rules which is in uninterrupted movement. However, in an integral and meaningful way morality represents the actions or behaviour of a society’s majority.4 Hence implicit, it is evident that in the contemporary period warfare still has dealings with morality. That there actually such a thing as morality of warfare, and that almost all enlightened and civilised cultures essentially share a particular traditional rule regarding the deeds which may or may not be committed in warfare, has been quite evidently witnessed throughout contemporary wars. This moral rule is generally claimed to be rooted in international policies and agreements. However, is it the common moral rule which is deep-seated, and international rule is simply an effort to put that morality into effect. In view of these arguments, a look at the continuous barbarisation of warfare from the 19th to the 20th century, which modern scholars examined, is important. Evolutions in the conduct of warfare have been erratic, and this relates as well, perhaps mostly, to their impacts and to how these are viewed.5 Perspectives on barbarism in warfare is subjected to cultural standards, and the beliefs based on these, like the total number of deaths caused by war, in relation to deaths caused by other actions. Furthermore, the practice of warfare since the Roman period did not evolve in a single direction from crude warfare towards more sophisticated techniques or the larger study of limitations on warfare, or a grander warfare. Rather, the transformation of warfare ebbed and flowed intensely. What the world witnessed after the mayhem that swelled in Europe with the fall of the West Roman Empire and the measured rebuilding and modernisation of an expanded civilisation with recognised rules is primarily lethargic but, since the 19th century, continuous development with ‘jus in bello’, or also known as ‘law in war’, to integrate further civilised elements intended to discourage deeds viewed as explicitly barbaric.6 Nevertheless, there are unbiased standards for barbarism. One relates to the slaughter of the defenceless. Compared with the atrocities of earlier wars, the overall numbers of civilians injured or killed climbed to fully unparalleled numbers from the middle part of the 19th to the 20th century, concluded in the massive atrocities meted out by Adolf Hitler. There are major explanations for this. First is the exponential increase in populations all over the world that clarifies the disparity of magnitude. The 20th century hence witnessed an abrupt change; its massacres were not extraordinary in motive, but completely unmatched in the numbers of casualties. More European lives were extinguished in World War II than populated the region at any given period in the 17th century.7 Another explanation is that only a superior government, made up of ‘eager killers’, subservient and pitiless, and holding the technological resources to monitor populations can carry out mass extermination.8 These two reasons mutually facilitated the degree of militarisation and the sophisticated warfare of the German Wars of Unification and the subsequent major global wars. In the same way, they facilitated the mass exterminations of the 20th century with their unparalleled overall numbers.9 The release of poison gases and use of advanced artilleries, the demolition of masterpieces, churches, and monuments, the meting out of merciless punishments on the defenceless who have refused to take part in the hostilities, all these deeds of warfare as such horrify common morality. The common sentiment about these tactics, even when infused with intellectual abilities, is that they are barbaric. In fact, this accusation of barbarism against such techniques of warfare which appal humanity’s moral foundation should not be viewed too factually. The techniques of genuine barbarians in warfare are not particularly barbaric. They have at times perpetrated atrocities which are disgusting to most people nowadays, but on the whole the extremes of barbaric warfare have been ransacking and burning, alongside sexual harassment of women, and such immoderations have been quite common within the 19th and 20th century10, and still at present, that they could also be viewed as ‘civilised’ as ‘barbaric’. The Goths pillaging of Rome at the advent of the 5th century spawned a massive sentiment during the ancient period, as an unmatched fury. However, nowadays, in view of most people’s understanding of what warfare may entail, the deeds of the early Goths appear quite naive.11 The reality appears to be that although war is presently less persistent than of earlier times, less drawn out, and more difficult to inflame, it is a grave misconception to think that it is also less barbaric. Most people think that it should be so basically because they assume their lives, on the whole, is becoming more cultured and less barbaric. Still, warfare naturally represents degeneration from civilisation to barbarism. War is largely a type of oppression. It is perfectly explained by restating the dictum of Trotsky about the argument: “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”12 The risks are great, and the attention that the military institution gives to a person who would choose to be elsewhere, performing a different task, is undoubtedly terrifying. Thus the odd dreadfulness of warfare: it is a political and social tradition wherein coercion is exercised by and against individuals as faithful or inhibited societal members and not as persons who decide their own actions and endeavours. When people say warfare is barbaric, it is the casualties of the hostility that they are referring to. Nevertheless, warfare is barbaric even when the set of laws are followed, even in cases where only combatants are massacred and innocent people are always safeguarded. Certainly, no event of contemporary warfare has engraved its atrociousness quite profoundly in most people’s memories as the hostilities in the dugouts of the First World War, and in the dugouts the lives of the civilians were seldom endangered. The differentiation between civilians and soldiers is considerably essential in the theory of war, but the primary and central moral verdict does not rely on it. Civilians and combatants are not that dissimilar: the combatants would more or less definitely be non-participating civilians if given a choice.13 The oppression of war is frequently explained as if warfare itself were the oppressor. As described by Thomas Sackville in a poem: Lastly stood War, in glittering arms y-clad, With visage grim, stern looks, and blackly hued; In his right hand a naked sword he had That to the hilts was all with blood embrued, And in his left (that kings and kingdoms rued) Famine and fire he held, and therewithal He razed towns, and threw down towers and all.14 Warfare does not start on its own. It may ‘explode’, like an unintended fire, under circumstances almost impossible to consider and where the assignment of accountability seems unlikely. However, more often than not they more resemble intended burning than mishap: war has breathing perpetrators as well as breathing preys. These perpetrators are rightly classified as ‘criminals’. Their morality is established by the moral nature of the task they compel others to take part in. They are accountable for the misery and loss of human lives that stem from their actions, or at least for the misery and death of every individual who does not prefer war as a personal endeavour. In existing international law, their transgression is labelled ‘aggression’.15 War is not viewed as barbaric because it is waged unrestrainedly. It is more accurate to argue that, when specific limits are implemented, the barbarism of war forces people to cut loose from all these limitations in order to triumph. This is the definitive barbarism: people who oppose violent are obliged to replicate, and possibly even to surpass, the aggressor’s cruelty. Seven decades ago, in the History of Civilisation, Buckle argued frankly that only ill-bred and foolish nations still valued principles of warfare. His argument was somewhat factual. For example, it is a reality that France is currently one of the nations that detest militarisation, yet previously the most militarised.16 However, it is merely a fraction of the truth. The basic reality that capability has in the contemporary period replaced morality in the most endeavours, presents a new groundwork for warfare when war is incited on intellectual or scientific rules for the intention of reinforcing the demands of State law. At present it is apparent that it is not adequate for a nation to develop knowledge and become well-informed, in the assumption that warfare will mechanically die. It is somewhat likely to become highly scientific, most persistently intellectual, and rooted in that groundwork to develop principles of warfare substantially more barbaric than those of the ancient times.17 The assumption appears to be that the world at present is crossing the threshold towards a period wherein warfare will not simply thrive as forcefully as in earlier periods, even though not in very persistent sort of way, but with a generally new viciousness and callousness, with a considerably heightened power of annihilation, and on a magnitude and severity including a damage to humankind and the civilised world which no ancient wars ever meted out. Furthermore, such situation forces nations, which have up till now, by their status, their state of mind, considered themselves as generally unbiased, a new challenge of defence so as to guarantee that objectivity. It has been declared that this warfare is a war to obliterate militarisation.18 Nonetheless, the obliteration of militarisation that is only demolished by a larger militarisation provides no assurance whatsoever for any success of humankind or civilisation. Conclusions It appears evident that people have to realise that their intellectual rulers who proclaimed that to guarantee the dissolution of warfare they only have to be submissive and be mere spectators of the benevolent expansion of science and intelligence were severely misguided. Warfare remains one of the dynamic and unremitting forces of the contemporary period, although in no way the sole force which it is in humanity’s capacity to control. By humanity’s vigorous endeavour the existing status quo can be reshaped. It is the in the interest of everyone, and particularly of those civilisations which are stable and powerful and knowledgeable enough to shed light on the most important human concerns, to exert considerable effort towards the establishment and the mobilisation of this significant attempt. The vision of warfare to relinquish warfare point towards an era which is decisively nonviolent, a far-flung era that is located across a certain unheard of interval, without militarisation and methodical killing. This vision of a world free from barbaric acts will not become a reality until the presence and powers of immorality have been ultimately crushed and humanity released eternally from the hunger for expansion and supremacy. In humanity’s legends and dreams, the death of warfare is also the death of worldly history. People who are caught within that history cannot do anything but to keep on fighting, protecting the principles to which they are entrusted, except if there are other ways of security or resistance to be uncovered or created. The sole substitute is peaceful defence, without an armed struggle. Humanity can still defend the ideals of liberty and collective rights in a nonviolent way, and this idea poses significant issues about the theory of war and the general image of warfare. Barbarisation of warfare is a thing of the past and should not be replicated. It is a part of history that should not repeat itself. Works Cited Collingwood, Robin George. The New Leviathan: Or, Man Society, Civilisation and Barbarism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942. Print. Delpech, Therese & George Holoch. Savage Century: Back to Barbarism. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 2008. Print. Dinstein, Yoram. War, Aggression, and Self-Defence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Print. Ellis, Havelock. Essays in War Time. Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger Publishing, 2004. Print. Ferguson, Niall. The War of the World: History’s Age of Hatred. New York: Penguin, 2007. Print. Fiala, Andrew Gordon. The Just War Myth: The Moral Illusions of War. UK: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008. Print. Fisher, David. Morality and War: Can War Be Just in the Twenty-First Century? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print. Heuser, Beatrice. The Evolution of Strategy: Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Print. Kassimeris, George. The Barbarisation of Warfare. UK: Hurst, 2006(a). Print. Kassimeris, George. Warrior’s Dishonour: Barbarity, Morality and Torture in Modern Warfare. UK: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2006(b). Print. Orend, Brian. The Morality of War. UK: Broadview Press, 2006. Print. Walzer, Michael. Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations. New York: Basic Books, 2000. Print. Read More