#91 THE ART OF WAR
FIRST IN A SERIES ON WAR
TECHNOLOGY LEAVES BEHIND NOTHING PRETTY ABOUT WAR
THE ART OF WAR
By PETER THOMAS BUSCH
W
hy do we love and why do we love to fight is a complicated matter that may not be answered by the end of the day.
People love, for sure. And the existence of tell-tale signs of love confirms everyone’s suspicions. But love remains complicated despite the affections and gentle signals. Expensive fragrant flowers do not always mean intimacy. And flowers are never enough when love stops working that magic, while love with flowers may quite often signal the beginning of the end of the relationship.
Why people hate each other and go to war as a result of hate is even more complicated since war is often a tragic struggle from beginning to end, with much loss on both sides. People go to war, though, despite the inevitable hardships regardless of the final tallies as to who won and who lost.
The blood of the war dead still stains the dark soil throughout the world.
At least with love, people however briefly find joy.
And while mutual love has almost always been pleasurable, although not quite everlasting, war is almost guaranteed to result in long term, painful losses on either side of the conflict that have long term consequences.
War, what is the hatred between civilizations all about?
The intimacy of the struggle and the immediacy of death on the battlefield might have been compelling when life was so regimented and boring hundreds of years ago. When life is so difficult and uncertain and dire, the finality of the result of war becomes somewhat alluring.
Love can be tiring for sure if the love interests do not pace themselves, but hate is almost always exhausting, taking great effort and consuming great individual resources just to carry around that emotional burden. Love fits within the moral compass by which individuals are guided. Hate is without.
People may react to those people operating without a moral compass, but still this conflict of sometime opposites does not have to lead to war. Rules play a part in peace. People have rules. Even people outside of society have rules. Society may have too many rules for some people, but individuals have their own rules like house rules and bedtime rules and these people normally function quite well within that set of rules.
The French have two rules. One rule is that when people fall in love people make love, and another rule is that when people find an injustice, people riot, rebel and quite too often go to war. These basic principles seemed lost even among the freedom and democracy states.
Love is love until love is overpowered by hate. But while love is love and hate, war often exists as a different entity altogether when even innocence takes on a different shade of humanity – or perhaps, jumps out of its own skin and loses any semblance of innocence.
BLOOD OF THE WAR DEAD STILL STAINS
France has been the staging grounds for many horrendously brutal wars between civilizations not just of the last one hundred years but throughout history. The Great War only became named World War I when there was a World War II, just a few short years later.
The horrors of the battlefield when men and, now more often, women soldiers as well, lose all semblance of humanity are the inevitable consequence of ignoring the moral compass. Soldiers on either side taking to the militarized zone have already lost the intrinsic battle that humanity faces each and every day to stay inside and follow the directions given.
People quite often do not listen to their inner voice, let alone other people.
But listening to the moral compass inside ourselves compels the other choices available, which are almost invariably always there now in these modern times. The great modernization of civilizations around the world with industry and then technology and now artificial intelligence creates more and more choice, yes more choices for war for sure, but also more choices for peace.
War deconstructs. Nothing pretty is left on the battlefield after the war these days. War has become so destructive, the motives must be hate to the point that Russia must be forced to explain to the global village what it is they had hoped to accomplish that is so important that justifies 200,000 war dead in 12 months.
To divide the world into one camp filled with democrats and one camp filled with autocrats might be necessary to maintain peace. Then a great construction period will begin with initial border walls required to keep people from one camp fleeing into the other camp.
Ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu argued that the true art of war is to take every measure necessary to avoid going to war and to achieve the goals of the state by every other means available than going to war.
Unjust wars never go well. And war generally does not go well as a product of the state. Individuals among themselves may squabble, but few individuals in the housing projects will go to war with the neighbourhood.
The neighbourhood may imploy a bit of state craft from time to time. Certain undesirables operating without a moral compass are unwanted, for sure.
NEIGHBOURS IMPLOY STATE CRAFT
But when Russia attacked the NATO weakness in the non-membership of Ukraine, one state took an opportunity to dominate another state, and spread chaos throughout the world regardless of the consequences to a broader humanity.
One state wishing to dominate through military victory seems no longer acceptable, today.
World War I began as a result of the assassination of Austria’s Archduke Ferdinand in 1914. Austria was a major world power at the time. And the empire with an alliance began a frantic rush to war as a result of the assassination.
And the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy was followed by the escalation of conflict in Southeast Asia, although still no one wants to connect the two events as cause and effect so as to avert a third world war. The reasons for war can be at times complicated and multi-faceted, and remain undisclosed for generations.
What state became Germany lost World War I and took a lesser shape during the interwar years as a result of the loss.
The world had not yet seen fit to push for freedom and democracy on a global scale, although the choice is held out there in plain view. The definition of state was in flux after the trauma of the brutal trench wars and the millions dead in Europe again. Territorial borders remained a concern.
Diplomatic and political cooperation between European states first began in earnest after the Napoleonic Wars on the continent from 1803-1815 during which 5 million individuals were killed. But that fragile peace lasted only a relatively few decades.
French Emperor Napoleon had 12 years of victories expanding territory and unifying Europe under the French flag, but the end came suddenly with national resources depleted and all the world in opposition. A decade of victory was followed by 200 years of losses and the end of a global empire.
Russia today promises peace if the communist state cloaked in democracy can control one more border land.
But once one state is in control, the question remains whether the individual peace can thereon be maintained, and humanity restored with peace of mind and freedom of conscience and other democratic notions of freedom that may never have been accepted by the Russian state before.
The true colors of the world are showing with the Ukraine conflict. So, this is how it is with Iran aligning with Russia, and with China looking to profit on both sides as a result.
The War in the Ukraine may result in a border wall to keep people out of the west and keep people in the east and to create a telling symbol of an ideological wall swirling about the globe, always moving steadily forward.
If the world keeps dividing until the Far East is roundly in the Chinese sphere of influence, Russia will suffer, too. China has always found ways to prosper as that great nation has made steady gains since the Sino-Japanese Wars and the Chinese Communist Revolution.
Although Russia uses the state’s past territorial possessions as a mirror into history, the real battle for global dominance is not border controlled land, but in the marketplace and the great exchange of goods and ideas that is occurring more and more on a global scale.
The great loss to Russia from the Ukrainian wars will come from the loss of access to the marketplace and the denial of consumers from the other parts of the world in purchasing goods, as well as hundreds of thousands of more military casualties, as many as there are munitions.
The broken dove defense in the face of the Americanization of the world will not be enough to convince the rest of the world to continue sharing advancements in western civilization with the East.
Freedom and democracy is the best system humanity has to make the world a cohesive place in which as many individuals as possible can prosper and experience joy within the same society.
War happens, anyway, though.
Diplomacy, espionage, state craft, assassinations come before war. War is the answer for those states often looking for a defense of last resort in a complicated world order that is closing in on itself.
Sun Tzu stated that to win without fighting was the art of war partly because war causes great losses on every side. But then, if war is necessary, as many claim war is inevitable, Sun Tzu has advice for the military generals in those instances as well.
Sun Tzu and the Art of Modern Warfare, by Mark McNeily, New York, Oxford University Press, Inc, 2001.