This
year’s
timely book by Gwynne Dyer, The Shortest
History of War: From Hunter-
Gatherers to Nuclear Superpowers – A
Retelling for our Times, Cormorant
Books, 2022, is what it claims -short. And
from earliest times to right now –
with a March 2022 Coda written in
the early days of Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine. We began as a species
with war in our genes. Now we have nuclear
weapons. Nuclear powers at war with
nuclear weapons would likely end this
civilization. Dyer has hope that humans
can understand their situation and change
enough to do differently. On the
current human situation with nuclear weapons,
and the world wars leading up to
it, Dyer gives poignant insights. The
Introduction claims: “despite occasional
dramatic events like the war in Ukraine,
this is probably the most peaceful time in
world history. Yet weapons are more
lethal than ever before.” Dyer ends the
introduction saying the book “is a
study of war as a custom and tradition, as a
political and social institution,
and as a Problem.” It is about “why we do this
thing, and how we might stop
doing it, now that we really need to.” Chapter
1. Origins The
chapter claims humans inherited war and
repeats the Enlightenment
notion that war came with civilization and was
not a problem for hunter-gathering
communities. Yet current hunter-gatherer
tribes and chimpanzees all have low
level raiding on individuals, with statistics
that add to significant overall
deaths. There were Neanderthal mass killings,
and a later one, ~ 2000 BCE, in
Kenya. Dyer gives conditions for war. He then
asks whether the evidence means
humans are doomed to wage ever greater wars
until they destroy themselves. For
human hunter-gatherer groups, competition for
resources is a factor. Historic
hunter-gatherer
and horticulturalist societies comprised
egalitarian males – strongly so for
tens of thousands of years. But this did not
prevent frequent war with neighbouring
bands. The equal males did lead to males
teaming with the females in human
families. With the advent of agriculture
things changed. War remained. Chapter
2 on How Combat Works
takes the perspective of those doing the
fighting.
It is the province of uncertainty where ¾ of
things on which action is based
are hidden. Officers make fast decisions with
inadequate information while invisible
people are trying to kill them. They cling to
past rules. Tactical doctrines
are unreliable. Attacks fail. Soldiers die.
The Military rigidity seen in peacetime
becomes useful in a chaotic situation. Rank
rigidity is necessary. The officer
is the manager of violence who does not use
weapons but who tells others to do so
– even to death. Professional ethics apply.
Military virtues like fortitude,
endurance, loyalty and courage are necessities
in the military society. Officers
are an unusually truthful and loyal group of
people. Managing breakdown is
dealing with soldiers whose training and
loyalty is balanced against physical
terror and a desire not to die. Fear can take
on physical aspects like pounding
hearts and losing control of bowels. Pre-20th
century battles expected 20-50%
dead or wounded – but the battle would be a
day in a year. Now 2% daily loss is
more usual but the battles go on for weeks or
longer. Soldiers can only handle
about 6 weeks of combat before losing
effectiveness. Forces will be a mixture
of green to burnt-out soldiers. Basic training
has to find ways to allow
soldiers to kill – with evidence that
otherwise they resist. It has to get rid
of civilian attitudes and inculcate other
reactions and responses. Soldiers
tend to avoid firing weapons at other people,
but can be tricked into doing so.
There are a few natural born killers.
Distanced from people “they look like
ants” and killing is easier. Drone pilots and
bomber crews have the ‘benefit’
of distance from human persons. Dyer ends with
the fears of artificial
intelligence – robot killers. Chapter
3. The Evolution
of War 3500-1500 BCE.
The first army
battle probably took place in Sumer (Iraq)
around 5,500 years ago. Farmers had
the numbers and social structure for such a
thing. Ten or more times the size
of a hunter-gatherer band, armed with spears,
knives, axes, maybe bows and
arrows they would fight obeying a single
commander. The lower Euphrates was a
hunter-gatherer
paradise. Seed could be spread where the river
flooded and crops harvested when
the water receded. Early settlers spoke the
same language and about a dozen settlements
were city states by the 4th century BCE. Wars
were infrequent and not severe. There
were no kings, but religious leaders who
settled disputes. City walls were to prevent
raids. After 5-10 centuries a dry climate
trend brought competition for
resources. Cities a day or so apart built
serious city walls. Equality in
cities fell as very rich and poor emerged.
With domestication of livestock the
alternative lifestyle of pastoralism arose.
Pastoral groups were on the fringe
of city agriculture and left in Spring for
higher ground and pastures. These “nomads”
were outnumbered by farmers, but they depended
on the settled societies for
technologies and metal weapons. And they could
swiftly raid, rob and leave. This
is a reason for city walls. And it is a reason
for the development of
discipline and control for city defenders
against raids. The lethal nature of
battles began to rise. Homer describes battle
under the walls of Troy around 1200 BCE. On
the
ground are infantry phalanxes – 3 or more
lines of men with shields and spears,
they move towards enemy lines where they push
and stab until one side panics
and tries to retreat, but others are behind
pushing so the losing formation crumbles.
There is ruthless slaughter on an
unprecedented scale. This began in the city
states of Mesopotamia. The saga of Gilgamesh
2700 BCE gives insights from the Sumerian
city of Uruk in a transitional stage from
egalitarian settlement to tyranny. As
tyrannies deepened in those Sumerian cities,
the inexpensive phalanx citizen
army gave way to standing armies and hired
soldiers. War continued among the 13
cities that were now in a balance of power
situation. Balance of power produces
frequent wars and has gone on for 5,000 years
into 20th century Europe. Alliances
shift among the constant wars. Since 1800 CE
Britain France, France Germany,
USA Britain have been both enemies and allies
– like the Sumerian city states. By the 2300s BCE newcomers
speaking Semitic languages moved onto the
Mesopotamian plain and set up cities. Sargon,
who was Semitic and who set up
the first military multinational empire grew
up in the old Sumerian city of
Kish. He conquered the other cities and
beyond, appointed governors and
permanent garrisons and built a capital,
Akkad. The army was a professional
multi-ethnic
force of some 5,400. It was the first army to
campaign far from home because it
had a logistical train to bring up supplies
behind it. It could undermine walls
or scale them with ladders. The new composite
bow was the best weapon for
thousands of years. By 2000 BCE people were
mostly farmers living in very unequal
states with semi divine kings at the top and
slaves and serfs at the bottom. Was
it the result of living in mass societies?
Probably yes. The old system was
dead and so was equality. Now the system
passed orders from the top that were
slavishly followed from the bottom. Because
people were not ants and remembered
freedoms, the empires were unstable. Things
got worse. Between 2000 – 1500 BCE pastoral
people from the steppes with horses and war
chariots conquered the Old-World centres
of civilization. Horses and wheels enabled
nomads to carry belongings on wagons
and to herd and control animals. They combined
chariots with the composite bow,
used their herding skills and moved into
civilized areas. Amorite, Egyptian and
North Indian civilizations fell. The Shang
dynasty in China ~1700 BCE brought
the appearance of chariots and suggests
Indo-European pastoralist origins.
Within a generation or two the pastoralists
were either removed (Egypt, Babylon)
or were no longer pastoralists (Greece,
Anatolia, North India, China). Everyone
was militarized after this period. Chapter
4. Classical
War 1500 BCE – 1400 CE.
During this period, war
was constant with farms cities and armies.
There were rapid military developments:
fortifications, phalanxes, composite bows,
chariots, cavalry, siege machinery,
etc. This package remained for centuries
including the transition from bronze
to iron ~1200 BCE. At this time a dark period
saw the collapse of Middle Eastern
civilizations. Then
the Assyrians established
a large empire. They introduced siege
machinery and brought appalling massacres
and population deportations. Medes, nomad
invaders, gathered the enemies of
Assyria to bring down the hated empire. They
erased any sign of its capital,
Nineveh. There were parallels. Troy was sacked
and destroyed after a long siege
– the “horse” was likely a siege machine.
Carthage was stormed by Roman troops in
146 CE after a 3-year siege. The few survivors
of the 300,000 citizens were
sold into slavery and the devastated site left
uninhabited. The phalanx
returned for the Greeks and Romans. Cavalry
arrived with stronger-backed horses.
But horses could not charge into a row of
spears. Cavalry was used to scout and
for chasing down members of a fleeing broken
phalanx. Heavy infantry dominated 550
BCE – 350 CE and training and morale mattered
more than numbers – as Alexander
the Great showed by defeat of the Persian
Darius at Issus in 333 BCE. The Romans
made improvements to the phalanx, using
lighter throwing spears and having short
swords for close combat.
Navies arrived to protect bulk
transport,
move armies and to destroy the other’s navy.
The war galley rapidly developed to
a standard with sails and oars for up to
several hundred rowers. This is a kind
of machine. Making it in large numbers
required organization and production
techniques
resembling industrial societies. The boat
rammed an opposing boat with a brass
ram on the front or sheared off the oars,
crushing the rowers along one side or,
in tight spaces, soldiers fought it out on one
deck or another. By 480 BCE
Greeks had 250 galleys and they destroyed the
Persian fleet at Salamis, forcing
Emperor Xerxes to retreat from Greece. In 256
BCE a Roman fleet of 330 routed a
similarly sized Carthaginian fleet off North
Africa costing 30 – 40,000 lives. The
returning Roman fleet met a storm and lost
100,000 lives. Eighteen hundred
years later in 1571 CE fleets of largely
similar galleys from western Europe
and Turkey met at Lepanto. Thirty thousand
died in an afternoon. Naval losses of
life were huge.
Rome lacked the wealth for total war.
Societies based on subsistence agriculture
cannot afford to withdraw more than
3% of the population from food production for
war. In the late 3rd century when
the empire’s population was 100 million and
barbarian pressure on the frontiers
was getting serious, the army never exceeded ¾
million troops. It was a good
army – well paid, possibility of pensions,
and, in centurions, the first professional
officer corps. Then change in climate or
population on the Central Asian
Steppes set nomads moving and a ripple effect
hit the Roman borders. In the end
Rome went under, taking Europe with it. But
this empire took a long time to die
after the west was overrun by barbarians in
the 4th and 5th centuries. In the
east, the Roman Empire based in Byzantium
survived for 2 more centuries. Then Arabs,
united in the Islam faith, conquered North
Africa and the Fertile Crescent in the
7th and 8th centuries. A Greek- speaking
Christian Eastern empire continued in
the Balkans and Asia Minor until the Turks
destroyed the Byzantine army at
Manzikert in 1071. The invaders in the west
were societies on the move. An elite of
mounted
warriors came but most were farmers. In places
like France and Spain they
settled down to farm again. They never
outnumbered the remaining Roman citizens,
were Christianized and dominated by the Latin
language. However, the ways of
the newcomers prevailed. When social structure
reemerged in western Europe, it
was over a small area and dominated by a
warrior. Cavalry dominated the battlefield
in both east and west. In the Muslim east,
warfare until the 15th century was
in the nomad tradition – fast, lightly-armed
horsemen with composite bows for
distance and a sword and light spear for
closer encounters. In the
west, the cavalry evolved into heavily
armed riders on sturdy horses relying on the
physical impact of their charge.
By the Crusades in the 12th century the
European cavalry was fighting like a
mounted phalanx 8ft tall moving at 25 mph. If
it hit, that was the end. But it
was easy to evade unless you were committed to
fighting that way. In the end,
these armies went back to Europe. By the late
Middle Ages, infantry reemerged
as the dominant force on the battlefield. Chapter
5.
Absolute Monarchs and
Limited War 1400-1790 CE.
Infantry weapons
made a comeback in the Hundred Years War
between England and France. English
longbow men dug outwardly pointing stakes in
the ground to protect from horses
and repeatedly decimated French formations of
heavily armoured cavalry as in
Agincourt 1415. By the 16th century fighting
was in a style Alexander would have
recognized at Ceresole near Turin in the
Italian wars in 1644 – if he’d had a
short course in firearms.Infantry phalanxes
were the same but the French had a
rank of men with muskets behind the first
lines of pikes. It remained mainly
infantry push and shove with pikes, with
muskets at short range. When the
French Cavalry hit, the German infantry folded
and 5,000 out of 7,000 landsknechter
(pikemen) died. Italian and Spanish infantry
were chased down retreating from
the field. It was like the ancient Issus
battle in Persia.
In the 16th century the most powerful
weapons were great siege canons that could
kill a few close people at a few
hundred yards. Today’s ballistic missiles can
kill several million at several
thousands of miles. Until the last 150 years
the weapons of the West were not
special. The so-called gunpowder empires of
the Islamic world were first to use
firearms in an infantry force. In Europe,
ambitious monarchs sought absolute
power and needed to deal with feudal
aristocracy that could choose to supply
cavalry
or not. A switch to infantry helped them. But
monarchs did not want to train
their subjects in war for fear of uprisings.
Instead, they chose to buy
mercenaries who would be loyal to whoever
paid. Poorer parts of Europe, like
Switzerland, trained mercenary soldiers in a
kind of national industry. Because
soldiers cost so much, armies were kept small.
Europe followed the lead of Spain,
the then dominant power. Spain had phalanxes
of pikemen, musketeers at the
corners and canon across the front of the
line. The firearms were secondary,
but more useful than those of China, China
invented gunpowder but did not
develop serious weapons using it. But the new
weapons mattered in sieges. In 1453
the Turkish army’s cannons breached the walls
of Constantinople, the world’s
greatest city for most of the past thousand
years. It ended the Roman empire in
the East. Firearms played a bigger role in the
Thirty Years War in Europe.
Mid 16th century, the Protestant
Reformation set off ten civil wars in France
and an uprising against Spanish
rule in the Netherlands. In 1618 local wars
merged and by the end in 1648
battles took the form which lasted until a
little over a century ago and left 8
million dead. Unintended, a system of European
states was emerging where
everyone played the same game in which a gain
of power for one was a loss for
others. When Spain and Austria (the Hapsburg
dynasty) seemed to be getting too
strong, Catholic France joined the protestants
so balance was restored. Much of
the war was in Germany where most losses took
place. Here the escalation of
European wars stopped. Rulers realized that if
wars got out of hand, whole
states and dynasties could disappear. Members
of the rulers’ club would not be
allowed to lose too badly. A time of limited
warfare was coming. Firearms took
over the battlefield as a result of a tactic
by Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus.
He turned 2/3 of his pikemen into musketeers
3-deep and trained to fire in
volleys – one standing, one crouching, one
kneeling. He replaced cannons with
lighter artillery guns. He would shatter a
pikeman formation from a hundred
yards by musket fire, then charge with cavalry
to make disorder a rout. His
intervention was not decisive, but his tactic
changed the practice of warfare.
Casualties in 18th century battles
rivalled ancient war. In Blenheim 1704, the
winner lost 12,500 (24%) and the losers
20,000 (40%). In the Seven Years War, the
Prussian army lost 180,000, 3-times
the number it started out with. Yet between
the Thirty Years War and the French
Revolution was a time of limited warfare with
minimal impact on civilian
society, despite the bigger battles. By 1700
European countries had standing
armies of regular soldiers paid by the
government. Regulars were more reliable
than mercenaries, and monarchs didn’t have to
rely on their citizens. Nobles were
given the monopoly of officer jobs. They were
losing power as wealth moved from
land to trade; this way they kept some
prestige. Soldiers came from the other
extreme of the social spectrum: landless
peasants and outright criminals. Nonetheless,
the trained soldier was an expensive commodity
and not to be rashly squandered
in battle. Since training was important and
took time, countries fought with the
troops they had, so the army had to be at full
strength. Soldiers were no
longer allowed to live off the land. A a big
store or “magazine” was set up way
behind the army with supplies, then field
ovens were 60 miles ahead of the magazine
to bake bread that was delivered 40 miles to
the army. Despite the tight controls,
80,000 men managed to desert the Russian army
during the Seven Years War and
70,000 from the French army. Moreover, wars
could be fought only with grass in
the fields because 40,000 animals accompanied
an army of 100,000. Wars tended
to be in border areas with fortresses, and so
there were many sieges.
Marlborough’s 1708 siege equipment required
3,000 wagons, 16,000 horses and
filled 30 miles of road. The balance-of-power
system meant “no great power
could suffer total defeat, because the others
would pile in to stop the big
winner from taking over the whole system”. So
wars tended to spread to include
all the powers. In addition, by the 18th
century European empires ran most of
the planet so that wars were world wars in
terms of geography. But the lethality
of the killing systems and scale of casualties
were lower. World conquest came
in two stages. Conquest of the Americas came
easily with killer diseases removing
90% of the population. The return of forest
reduced CO2 and helped reverse(?) the
Little Ice Age. In the early years Muslim,
Chinese and European armies were
comparable. As late as 1683 an Ottoman army
was able to besiege Vienna. At this
point, European control rarely extended
further than a cannon shot from the
ocean and their sea power. In the second
phase, 1700-1900 the British conquered
India, the Ottoman borders shrank under
pressure from Austria and Russia and
Africa fell under colonial rule. This took
longer. There were no significant
changes in weaponry until the very end of the
period. European discipline and
organization could not be matched by
opponents. For civilians, war had been a
bearable evil. It had been limited and
rationalized. That would change. Chapter
6.
Mass Warfare 1790
– 1900. In 1789 revolution came to
France, the richest
and most populace nation in Europe. Other
monarchies saw this as a threat and
sent armies. In France, the National
Convention launched conscription and by
New Year’s Day 1794 the French armies numbered
some 770,000 and exploited a fervent
nationalism. It gave soldiers loyalty and
initiative to fight in open and
mobile formations. Unlikely to desert, they
lived off the land. Freed of
magazines and supply trains, they could move
fast and far. Napoleon made
himself emperor in 1804 and for 10 years
supplied victories. War costs were
high but the highly centralized government
controlled the arms factories and
prices. In the early days money flowed in so
that wars paid for themselves. Britain
introduced the first income tax in 1799 to
meet its commitments. Napoleon kept
winning and replacing monarchs with his
relatives or field marshals. There was
no new weaponry. The change was political.
Mass societies ditched the kings and
brought back the old principle of equality.
Why Europe? Part of Dyer’s answer
is “print”. The Reformation in the West
created a drive towards literacy: 40%
in England and 70% in the US. The Chinese and
Ottoman literacy levels were 10%
and 15% respectively. Printing and literacy
made it possible to discuss affairs
in a mass society. Societies could become
self-directing. But it could also
bring a pseudo egalitarianism - nationalism.
Spain waged a nationalistic guerilla
(little war) in the name of the exiled king.
In 1812 Napoleon invaded Russia
with 440,000 but faced Russian nationalism. He
won all battles, occupied Moscow
but had to retreat in winter for lack of
supplies. Only a few thousand successfully
returned from Russia. Then Prussia, riddled
with class privileges and inequalities
brought in conscription, giving an equality in
arms with nationalism. It worked.
In 1813 at Leipzig and in 1815 at Waterloo
Napoleon was decisively defeated.
These
battles were not different in style and
weaponry. It was the sheer number of battles.
The Thirty Years War had 3 or 4 battles
per year. From 1792 to 1814 there were 49
battles, plus smaller but still significant
battles, averaging one per week. Four million
were killed, mostly soldiers. For
most of the 19th century civilians were
spared the worst horrors of war. Then for 40
years after Napoleon’s attempted
comeback in 1815, a conservative reaction
moved Europe back from mass
conscription to professional armies. When a
spate of wars returned 1854-70,
conscription returned except in Britain,
protected by a navy. And new
technology arrived. The American Civil War was
the greatest mid-century war; 622,000 American
soldiers died in it. Both sides used
conscription so the armies were huge.
During the previous decade, new muskets had
arrived quintupling the range at which
an infantry man could hit an opponent. Within
months defending infantry were
sheltering behind natural objects whenever
possible. In battle, the range for
opening fire in an engagement didn’t change
from 127 yds, but soldiers could
aim and hit targets. Taking cover changed the
course of battles. The forerunner
of practically every modern weapon was used in
the Civil War: early
machine guns, breech loading cannons,
submarines,
iron-clad warships, aerial reconnaissance from
balloons. Troops could be moved
by railway and there was telegraph
communication. Had this war been delayed
10-15 years so these weapons and artillery
could have improved, the war would
have looked like WWI. As it was, lines around
St Petersburg in 1865 had field
entrenchments resembling WWI. This war showed
how hard it would be to have a
decisive victory over even a relatively weak
opponent. More accurate longer-range
weaponry means decisive victory is harder, so
war drags on. The pressure increases
to win by any means. Ruthless economic warfare
then reaches the whole
population. This results in mass deaths and
civilian suffering - the 20th
century war. Chapter
7.
Total War. WWI
had no clear cause! France
feared German population and industrial
growth, so had allied with Russia. Germany
felt encircled and had allied with
Austro-Hungary that competed with Russia for
bits of Ottoman empire. Britain had
made an entente with France and Russia. If
anyone got to fight someone outside as
Austro-Hungary did with Serbia in 1914 it
could pull the others in. That
happened a little over a month later. It was
expected to be fast. What ended
war of movement and drove soldiers into
trenches was repeating rifles, machine
guns, quick firing and long-range artillery,
barbed wire and the like. By mid-August
1914 trains had delivered ~1,500,000 German
troops to French and Belgian
borders. The French, Austrians and Russians
performed similar organizational
miracles, but by October all armies had ground
to a halt. By 1915 it was realized
there were no flanks to get around - just two
trench systems stretching 475 miles
from the channel to the borders of neutral
Switzerland. The huge firepower
meant a single rifleman every 3 yds could stop
frontal attacks. Even if an
attack were successful, the defenders could
set up a new trench just behind. Men
spent their time in trenches close to the
enemy risking death daily and living
in a ditch. Attack had to be frontal. Infantry
would be slaughtered if they
tried to advance unaided. Generals realized
that breakthrough required
destroying the enemy’s firepower and smashing
trenches and gun positions by
shellfire before any attack. Half the
casualties were now from shellfire. Still
there was no breakthrough. Enough defenders
survived to make an advance costly.
The battle of the Somme 2016 cost 415,000
British soldiers or 8,000 per square
mile gained – and similar numbers for German
soldiers. Since Britain, France and
Russia had a higher total population, even
inefficient battles would eventually
give them an upper hand. This affected
civilians because around 20% of French
and German young men were conscripts. Women
ran factories producing munitions.
An economic war was fought at sea. The
British
blockaded German ports. The Germans used
submarines to stop overseas supplies.
In 1917 the unrestricted submarine attacks
brought the USA into the war. That
offset the loss of Russian forces by the
Bolshevik revolution. And Germany used
Zeppelins and aircraft to target factories and
drop incendiary bombs on London.
In late 1916 the British introduced tanks or
“landships” to protect from machine
guns and carry their own guns. They were used
in Cambrai in 2017 in a surprise
attack with air support to spot artillery,
enabling an advance of 6 miles in 6
hours. Still a vigorous counter attack closed
the breach. In 1918 the Germans
used massive surprise attacks to make gains at
a huge cost without reaching
Paris or the channel. Then the Allies used
similar mass attacks. By November
2018 the German army was collapsing and Berlin
asked for an armistice. Was the punitive treaty
with huge reparations and entire empires
dismantled the reason peace lasted only 20
years? This was the first total war
and the protagonists found it almost
impossible to stop short of total victory
for one side and surrender for the other when
propaganda had enabled the huge
losses within the 60 million soldiers
conscripted to be accepted. Almost half were
either killed (8 million) or wounded (20
million). And there were collapses,
revolutions and mutinies: the Russian army
collapsed with near starvation and
revolution in early 2017; half the divisions
of the French army mutinied in
April 2017 with resulting court martials; and
the British acknowledged unrest. The
Empires on the losing side, the German and
Austrian, as well as the Russian and
Ottoman, were destroyed by the war. Austria,
Russia and Ottoman were chopped
into new countries and territories. Half the
people of Europe, Middle East and
Africa found themselves living in a radically
different regime. In 1939-41, the early days
of WWII, Germany seemed to have the answer to
trench stalemate using tanks and “blitzkrieg”
(lightening war). Highly mobile
tanks, infantry, artillery, all on tracks or
wheels and supported by aircraft,
broke through defenses on a narrow front,
spreading chaos and overrunning command
posts and communications far behind the front.
The front collapsed when troops realized
they were cut off from headquarters and
supplies. The German Blitzkrieg destroyed
the Polish army in 3 weeks in 1939 and was
even more successful in overrunning France
and the low countries in 1940 in 6 weeks. By
the middle of the war when German
troops fought deep inside the Soviet Union,
the Soviets made the defended zone
many miles deep with mine fields, gun
positions and tank traps to slow down the
spearheads and wear them down. Then using
tanks did not abolish the continuous
front. The armies of the West got off
relatively lightly because from 1940 to 44
they were not active in German-occupied
Europe. But on the Eastern front the losses
were enormous. Two thirds of Russia’s
aircraft, tanks and artillery were
destroyed. Fully mobilized industrial
societies can absorb enormous punishment
and keep going. The Germans had 2/3 of men
18-45yrs in the forces and lost 3.4
million dead, but they were fighting in April
1945 when two fronts, Soviets from
the east and Anglo-Americans from the west,
were back-to-back down the middle
of devastated Germany. Civilian losses were
worse. Belgorod in southern Russia
ended up with 140 of its 34,000 citizens alive
in the ruins. The rest were
refugees, conscripts or dead. The front moved
across it four times, almost obliterating
it. WWII killed twice as many soldiers as WWI,
but also killed twice as many
civilians as soldiers. Strategic bombing,
destroying the enemy’s homeland became a
natural
weapon in total war. The German blitz,
September 1940 to May 1941 killed 40,000
civilians – less than expected because the
bombers were unsuitable. The British
and American bombers were better, but had to
fly by night to avoid air defenses
so that hitting targets like factories and
railways was hard. Targets were abandoned
in the mass bombing of Cologne in April 1942.
Over 3 years the bombing killed
593,000 and destroyed 3.3 million homes. But
it wasn’t cost effective warfare because
losses of crew and aircraft were high so that
maintaining this force was costly.
The US bombing force also suffered high
casualties. In July 1943 bombing
Hamburg created a firestorm and nobody in
underground shelters survived the
incinerating heat and carbon monoxide. On the
street, the great wind swept
people into the centre of the firestorm.
Twenty thousand died in 2 hours. That
happened once more in Dresden in 1945. In the
war against Japan, the American
bombers faced less air defense and casualties
were lower and firestorms more
frequent. Strategic bombing produced results
wiping out huge parts of cities. A
quarter of Tokyo was destroyed by incendiary
bombs and the water in canals
boiled. The Manhattan project was
initiated to produce an atomic bomb because
refugees
claimed the Germans were working on one. They
were not, but the British, Japanese
and Russians had rudimentary programs. The
bomb was tested in 1945 and the
scientists were stunned. At the time, the
military saw it as a more effective
way of doing what they were doing in Japan –
destroying cities by bombing.
August 6 1945 the bomb was dropped on
Hiroshima and 70,000 were killed in 5 minutes.
War between great powers was near the end of
the road. Great powers will be
destroyed if they cannot break the war habit. Chapter
8.
A short history of
Nuclear War 1945 -1990.
Two small nuclear weapons
were dropped on Japan and none have been used
since. We don’t know how they
would work except that it would be very bad.
The psychological, electromagnetic, and
climate effects are unknown. There
is only the experience of the Cold War, the
45-year confrontation 1945-90.
There is no defense because defense works by
attrition and if even a few nuclear
weapons got through the destruction would be
unacceptable. Moreover, there are
few targets in a society worth using nuclear
weapons on. They would amount to
the destruction of the society. Beyond a
certain number, the actual number of
nuclear weapons doesn’t matter. Deterrence is
the only sane policy. Using a
nuclear weapon was pointless, because the
result would be guaranteed retaliation.
The policy is hiding weapons underground or in
submarines so as to make sure of
ability to retaliate. This was the logic, but
it took a time to take hold in
the military, which preferred a “massive
retaliation” policy; the US maintained
a 10-1 superiority in nuclear weapons rather
than just the minimum number to
maintain deterrence. It took to 1957 to change
the policy. Britain and France
took the view that they needed to protect
their people and needed their nuclear
weapons as deterrents. During the 1980s both
countries built their nuclear
forces so as to destroy 1000 targets. China
was more restrained in numbers, but
sent missiles out on submarines. Israel, that
probably built weapons in the 60’s,
didn’t use submarines until later. In the UN
non-proliferation treaty of 1968,
five declared nuclear powers agreed not to
share them with other countries and
over a hundred other countries agreed not to
develop them. Israel kept quiet. Thirty
years passed before another nuclear country
emerged. In 1961 and the Kennedy
years, it was discovered that US retaliation
would
use all the weapons in a massive response to
USSR, its satellite countries and
China, holding nothing back. That was modified
to attacking military targets
and holding back on Soviet cities. A
restrained use of weapons was agreed on –
but reality changed that. In 1962 Khrushchev
secretly deployed short range
weapons to Cuba – an ally. The US discovered
the missiles and the Cuban Missile
crisis erupted. Kennedy announced that any
strike from Cuba would be treated as
an attack by Russia and would get a full
retaliatory response. He planned to
invade Cuba if USSR did not back down because
he believed warheads were not yet
on missiles in Cuba – but they were.
Khrushchev backed down offering a
compromise. The faulty intelligence did not
come to light until 1992. There
remained a faction in the US that believed a
limited nuclear war was viable
while others held the minimum nuclear
deterrence philosophy. US minutemen had
long watches in concrete bunkers, a job a bit
like a duty engineer at a nuclear
generating plant! In the 80’s came Regan who
was sold on Star Wars defense for
ballistic missiles yet such “defense” is only
attrition so some weapons will get
through. There is no real defense. In 1865
Gorbachev brought change to the USSR
and in 1987 signed with Regan the Intermediate
Nuclear Forces Treaty. In June
1988 Regan announced in Moscow the Cold War
was over. A so called TTAPS (probably
should say what it stands for) group of
scientists examined effects of atmospheric
dust clouds on Mars and on earth. They
concluded a major nuclear exchange would
cover at least the northern hemisphere in a
cloud of smoke and dust putting all
in darkness for up to 6 months and drop the
surface temperature by 40C.
Sunlight would return without an ozone layer
and thus causing blindness and
burning. And it was known a major war would
immediately kill several hundred
million people in NATO and Warsaw Pact
countries and destroy most of the world’s
cultural heritage. Fallout would kill more and
disrupt agriculture. Nuclear winter
would kill off species of plants and animals
weakened by radiation. The effects
would be worse from burning cities. A hundred
one-megaton air bursts on one
hundred cities would do this. India and
Pakistan are close to the threshold for
this impact. “… war is now lethally
incompatible with an advanced technological
civilization.” Chapter
9. Trifurcation:
Nuclear; Conventional; Terrorist. After
1945 there
were three kinds of war. Great powers prepared
for nuclear war but could never
fight it. Guerilla wars and terrorism have
held public attention for the past
75yrs. “Conventional wars” continued to
flourish in the nuclear stalemate.
Conventional, in the sense of armies taking
and holding territory, has become exceedingly
dangerous. Yet the great powers have not
solved this war dilemma. Technically,
a world war is one in which all great powers
of the time are involved and join
in two rival alliances. At the end, all
outstanding disputes get resolved in a
peace treaty. There have been six of these:
the Thirty years War, the War of
Spanish Succession, the Seven Years War, the
Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
and World War I with II. Apart from the 19th
century gap, the great powers have
gone to war at 50-year intervals. They shuffle
the pack, redefine the rank of
the powers and the borders and solidify all of
that in a peace treaty. World
War III did not arrive on schedule.
For 4 decades there was a sustained
attempt to turn Central Europe into a
conventional war zone because a return to
total war would be a nuclear one. But the
distinction was flimsy. There was
talk of a tactical nuclear response. Was this
not just a foolish failure to
grasp that the work now was to avoid war?
A limited nuclear war on a Central
Front would have destroyed most of
the armies involved and killed millions or 10s
of millions of civilians in
days. Moreover, the current weaponry – swarms
of drones, battlefield
surveillance, “one shot kill” capability is
transforming conventional war. The real
RMA (Revolution in Military Affairs) has been
the huge increase in rate of loss
of combat systems in battle “partly because
the new weapons have become so complex
and expensive to build that there are far
fewer of them, and partly because
they are lethally good at destroying each
other”. Since WWII the average size
of national forces world-wide has gone down –
unless there is a particular perceived
threat. In a war armies would lose equipment
at a rate they could not replace.
Dyer gives examples like aircraft - WWII
spitfire £5,000, a current Tornado £17
million. The expected pattern is a burst of
high tech, then falling back to
older style warfare for rebuilding.
There was a rapid drop in army size
with the end of the Cold War as Russia moved
into the 1990s. Vladimir Putin’s
return to autocracy in 1999 did not lead to an
arms race. Russia shorn of its
satellite countries was now a more distant
threat. “On the other hand, a
Russian leader seeking a pretext for
reassembling the old Russian/Soviet empire
could certainly present NATO’s eastward
advance … as a threat that justified
taking some or all of the countries
immediately west of Russia back under Moscow’s
control …” Warsaw pact countries could not be
refused requests to join NATO
given their more recent and vivid trauma than
Russia’s memories of Moguls 1237,
Muslim slave raids 1769, Napoleon 1812 and
Hitler 1941. “Everyone needs
reassurance, but the newly democratic eastern
European countries had just
emerged from a half century of Russian/Soviet
control, and they were entitled to
guarantees for their security …” The location
of NATO boundaries is of little
significance when nobody imagines a future
confrontation between NATO and
Russia would be decided by tank armies racing
across the steppes. By 2020 the
Warsaw Pact was long gone and the 15 Russian
republics had separated, leaving 145
million relatively impoverished Russians to
face NATO, which draws on 870
million people and greater wealth. “The
location of NATO’s eastern borders and
its distance from Moscow are red herrings”.
The relatively sparse military near
the borders of either side are just trip
wires. Any NATO Russian conflict would
rapidly migrate to the nuclear strategic level
– hopefully without actual
nuclear weapons. At that level, it doesn’t
matter where missiles are based but they
are unlikely to be based along vulnerable
borders.
There are two places where sizeable
military forces currently face each other: at
India’s borders with Pakistan and
China, and in Korea. In both cases, nuclear
weapons are at hand. The Taiwan strait
is a possible third, “but it’s not there yet”.
There is the Middle East, but a
military ‘solution’ to Arab-Israeli
conflict is hard to imagine. Most small conventional
wars offer few strategic or tactical lessons.
In
the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijan war, Turkish
missile-firing Bayraktar TB2 drones
and Israeli-made “kamikaze” drones destroyed
the majority of Armenian tanks, artillery,
as well as multiple rocket launch and surface
to air missile systems in 6 weeks,
by which time the Armenians had lost. In the
world of the early 21st century
cross-border wars between conventionally
equipped armies have virtually
disappeared, but it has been a golden era for
guerilla and terrorist wars. Those
in these wars are not soldiers, but they use
force for political ends and so what
they are doing is technically war. Dispersed
in the hills, forests, and swamps and
doing only hit and run, they inflict a
constant toll on an occupying power.
After WWII, this extended to European colonial
empires. There was little chance
of a military victory, but if guerillas or
terrorists could make the cost of their
remaining high enough, the colonial power
would leave. When this vulnerability became
clear, European powers decolonized without
war. However, if the “power” is a
local government, it cannot just pull out and
go home. Dyer points to South Sudan
and Eritrea and then to the exception: the
Chinese Communist Party seized power
in China in 1949. Mao turned his guerillas
into a real army to beat a corrupt,
divided and incompetent KMT government. Only
in Cuba and Nicaragua was a
similar feat accomplished. Chapter
10.
The End of War. Dyer
reports a death of bully baboons from
poisoning
that radically changed a troop of baboons in
Kenya. Instead of the formerly vicious
males, status-obsessed and bullying, the
survivors were relaxed and began treating
each other more decently. There is still
fighting amongst equals, but they don’t
beat up inferiors and they don’t attack
females at all. We primates are
malleable and adaptive in our cultures. Even
baboons are not shackled by their
genes. Surely, we have enough incentives to
escape from war. The end of the
Soviet Union replaced an anticipated WWIII
with worries about ethnic cleansing
and the odd terrorist attack. Now the fear of
WWIII is back. Yet only those in
the system – the diplomats, soldiers, a few
statesmen and historians, that understand it
was the system itself that
produced a cycle of great power conflicts
called world wars. There has been
some useful action. UN rules against
aggression were used in 1991 to restore
Kuwait, as in Korea 40 years before. In the
1990s the UN decided intervention
could be used to prevent genocide. But little
was done to boost the habit of
multilateralism. By the end of Bush’s 2nd term
in 2008, much progress had been
lost. In 2017 Trump further attacked
multilateralism.
Three big changes might tip things
back into disorder: global warming, the rise
of new great powers and nuclear
proliferation. The disastrous effects of
global warming on food production in
the tropics could provoke mass movements,
border lock downs and an end of
cooperation. Only countries of continental
scale will emerge as superpowers:
US, China and India. So declining countries
will jostle for position. In theory
this could be managed. Of potential nuclear
powers, North Korea is the only one
to emerge with a weapon. North Korea
understands
deterrence and how to use it to prevent the US
from taking it over. It doesn’t
need many weapons to deter. Yet a war between
India and Pakistan could be big
enough to produce a general nuclear winter for
the world. Non-proliferation has
held for ¾ of a century, but getting through
the next century will require luck.
Dreaming is unhelpful. Solving the problem of
war can only come from the
existing state system model – preserving and
expanding the multilateral system
that emerged from WWII. Rising powers must be
absorbed into a system that emphasizes
cooperation and makes room for them rather
than one that deals in confrontation
and raw military power. Pooling sovereignty
for peace emerged from WWI in the
League of Nations, but states could not
release any power so they got WWII. The
pooling sovereignty for peace notion was
reinforced after WWII with a Security
Council and with war to be limited to
self-defense or at the will of the
Security Council. And the then great powers
were given a special role on the
Security Council. It still didn’t work. A
further post-WWII initiative was punishing
War Crimes following the 1947 Nuremburg
Principles and the 1949 Geneva
Conventions. And there are notable successes
from the fighting in Afghanistan,
in particular holding Australian forces
accountable. As Dyer concludes: “Little
by little …”
There has been “tremendous domestic
opposition” to attempts of an international
body (which body is trying to influence
this?)to influence populist/nationalist
governments in US, UK, Brazil, Poland,
Hungary, India and Philippines, but
arch-populist Donald Trump has already lost
office. A single dominant global culture with
local variants is still coherent
enough to be swept by waves of political
fashion. Populism is unlikely to be
the last word. Progress at the UN will be in
small steps and over decades. No super-Gandhi
can change human hearts and free them from
obsession with national interest and
power. We can never get all we want. If the
time has come for a different
method of settling disputes, it can only be
done by the cooperation of the world’s
governments for it is their absolute
independence that makes war possible.
Nationalists are right to worry about a
powerful UN. To guarantee countries from
attack would require the UN to have very
powerful forces. The nations know what
to do to end international war but they are
not yet willing to do it. As now,
they would reach their agonizing political
decisions within the boundaries of
reason only by the shared recognition that
they must not damage the interests
of any powerful member or group of members so
badly as to destroy the
fundamental consensus that keeps war at bay.
There has always been a special
group of people whom we regard as full human
beings with equal rights and duties
that we must not kill even when we quarrel. It
was a tribe with kinship and
ritual ties, then a state with shared
interests among millions, and now finally
the entire human race, or we perish. This is
not idealism. It’s recognizing we
are better off respecting each other’s rights
and submitting to arbitration
than killing one another. “In any given year
there is a small danger that
another world war might begin and put an end
to human civilization.” Given the
long time needed for human change, that danger
becomes extreme. Our job is to
transform the world of independent states into
an international community hoping
that it will abolish the ancient institution
of warfare. Coda
March
2022 on Ukraine. A
full range
of possibilities remained at that time. This
will not ‘change the world forever’--unless
the unlikely full nuclear war comes from it.
Rather, this “marks a decisive
step in Russia’s gradual descent from
great-power status …” Little new technology
has been used, but the scale and
comprehensiveness of the sanctions are new. “…
the brazen affrontery of the Russian invasion
with no plausible pretext or
provocation produced an unexpectedly united
front among Western countries for
sanctions so extreme that they seriously
threaten the economic stability of the
Russian Federation.” The post 1945 ban on
changing borders by military force was
seen as in danger of disappearing. It happened
earlier in 2014 in Crimea, and letting
this stand would return to the lawless past
when wars of conquest were acceptable
if you won. The hope is that rational
self-interest will lead most people and
states to support the rule of law, and that
the human culture is malleable
enough to abandon institutions like war if
they no longer serve people’s
interests.
Urban
guerilla warfare has the same problem as a
rural
guerilla war: “it lacked a good endgame.” The
guerillas were supposed to
provoke greater repressive measures. The
populace was then supposed to just
rise up, but it just didn’t. The guerillas
were just crushed. A range of
terrorist groups mainly served as bogeymen
useful to right-wing governments
seeking to vilify legitimate left-wing
opponents. Two groups did impact events,
both Arab. The Palestine Liberation
Organization re-branded refugees in Israel as
Palestinians and Arabs and thus with a claim
on Palestine. Aircraft were hijacked.
However, once the Palestinians were active
participants in their own future,
the terrorism stopped but for mavericks.
A high point was the signing of the
Oslo 1993 accords. After Rabin was
assassinated
by a right-wing extremist, Palestinian
terrorist attacks resumed by new groups,
undermining the two-state solution. The
bombing campaign drove Israeli voters
into the right-wing arms of Netanyahu instead
of progressive Peres. Those seeking
to block the two-state solution were
successful.
For the Islamist project
behind
al-Qaeda, Islamic State and its clones and
affiliates, the sorry plight of
Muslim countries was because they were half
Westernized and lax in observance
of Islam. So all these existing governments of
Muslim countries had to be
overthrown and replaced by the Islamist that
could then use the governmental
power to bring Muslims back to the right ways
of believing and behaving. These
groups have used terrorism for decades in Arab
countries. But the people rarely
run into the streets for the Islamists. So
Al-Qaeda’s strategy was to go after
the West: a variant of the strategy of
provoking excessive repression so that
the populace rises up. That was the aim of the
9/11 attacks on New York and
Washington. Al Qaeda did get the US with NATO
to march into the Muslim world of
Afghanistan with a big army, then the US on
its own to march into Iraq. The resultant
anger did push many in the Muslim world into
the arms of Islamist revolutionary
organizations, but the consequences were not
revolutionary. It took the Taliban
20 years to get the West out of Afghanistan,
but they are now unlikely to get
into international Jihad. In 2014 Sunni
resistance in Iraq morphed into the
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS, but by
2019 ISIS was defeated and largely
expunged. Al-Qaeda continues in terrorist
groups in parts of the Middle East
and Africa. Not invading Iraq might have
helped, but invading Afghanistan was hard
to avoid, as Al Qaeda had planned. Thus far
Al-Qaeda has not used any new
techniques, just low-tech bombings and mass
shootings. Although its lone wolf
bombers are harder to detect, they also
produce fewer casualties.
Why do Islamist
terrorists continue now that it is known that
even major Western invasions do
not drive enough Muslims into the arms of the
Islamists? A nuclear weapon in
terrorist hands would be a bigger problem, but
it would be a localized disaster.
The main aim is typically to avoid
over-reaction and that is unlikely.(What is
unlikely?
It sounds like you mean avoiding over
-reaction is unlikely but I think you mean
over-reaction is unlikely? But
obviously use of a nuclear weapon is
something to try to prevent. “The world lived
for 40 years with the daily threat
of global nuclear holocaust … It can live with
the distant possibility that a
terrorist group might one day get possession
of a single nuclear weapon and
bring horror to a single city.” The point is
not to panic, but to hold patience.
National
politics works in the same sort of way. In
principle the concessions
a population makes to allow a national
government to operate could extend to
international governance. But no population in
any country of the world is
willing to surrender sovereignty to the United
Nations. If the abolition of
great-power wars and the arrival of
international law are a hundred-year project
the glass is half full. The UN Charter’s ban
of forcibly changing borders has
not stopped border wars. There has not been
WWIII, but the Russians occupied Crimea
and the US invaded Iraq. As for wars between
middle powers, the UN can fairly
quickly fix up a cease fire and provide
peacekeepers to give a way out. Most of
the deaths in the past 30 years are from civil
wars mainly in Africa, over which
the UN lacks authority. But the existence of
the UN has brought a new context to
history. New threats include conflict over
geo-engineering to slow global
warming – a higher priority for equatorial
powers than powers in temperate climates.
Relatively cheap weapon systems like drones
that can operate in swarms are a
threat, making big powers vulnerable to
crippling anonymous attacks by small
countries.
Communications technologies are enabling human
beings to recapture their ancient
egalitarian heritage – but not necessarily
freedom from war. Democracies fight,
but they tend not to fight each other. So our
institutions will need tweaking
to prevent our more communicative world from
toppling us back into war.