War

An Enquiry

A. C. Grayling

• Editorial: Yale University Press
• Año: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780300226287
• Categoría: Philosophie
• Categoría: Ethik & Moralphilosophie

A renowned philosopher challenges long-held views on just wars, ethical conduct during war, why wars occur, how they alter people and societies, and more. For residents of the twenty-first century, a vision of a future without warfare is almost inconceivable. Though wars are terrible and destructive, they also seem unavoidable. In this original and deeply considered book, A. C. Grayling examines, tests, and challenges the concept of war. He proposes that a deeper, more accurate understanding of war may enable us to reduce its frequency, mitigate its horrors, and lessen the burden of its consequences. Grayling explores the long, tragic history of war and how warfare has changed in response to technological advances. He probes much-debated theories concerning the causes of war and considers positive changes that may result from war. How might these results be achieved without violence? In a profoundly wise conclusion, the author envisions "just war theory" in new moral terms, considering the lessons of World War II and the Holocaust, and laying down ethical principles for going to war and for conduct during war.

"Exceptionally incisive on war and peace…As a former professional soldier, and no stranger to conflict, I regret not having had access to [ War ] when it mattered."—Milos Stankovic, Spectator

"A brisk and sweeping survey."—Mark Mazower, Financial Times

"Wide-ranging, accessible, and crammed with insights. Though it does not underestimate the obstacles to peace, it is never cheaply cynical. The result is somber, yet also inspiring.'—Russell Blackford, author of The Mystery of Moral Authority

PART I

War in History
and Theory

CHAPTER 1

Ancient War

A survey of the history of war suggests that war-making falls broadly into two kinds, in one of which a certain sense of appropriate procedure, perhaps even chivalry or ethics, constrains what combatants do, and in the other of which the aim of winning justifies any and every act.

An example of the former is given by the case of the Duke of Sung in a battle in 638 BCE between the states of Chu and Sung. The Duke’s minister of war saw that the forces of Chu were not ready for battle, and because they outnumbered the Sung troops he realised that it would be an advantage to attack them before they became organised. He asked the Duke’s permission to attack, and was refused; he asked again, explaining his reasons, and was again refused. Only when the Chu forces were ready was battle joined. The Sung were defeated and the Duke himself wounded; asked afterwards why he had refused his minister’s request, given the circumstances, the Duke replied: ‘A gentleman does not inflict a second wound, or take a grey-haired man prisoner . . . Though I am but the unworthy remnant of a fallen dynasty, I would not sound my drums to attack an enemy who had not completed the formation of his ranks.’¹

An example of the other kind of war-making is provided by General Patton’s remarks to his troops in 1944, quoted as an epigraph to this book; by the view expressed by the Athenian generals at Melos, to the effect that the strong do what they like and the weak suffer what they must; and by the Mongols under Genghis Khan, whose military success owed itself in large part to a complete lack of interest in ethical niceties – victory was all, and the Mongols adopted the anything-goes approach accordingly. Fighters who do so have a great advantage over those who expect some proprieties to be observed. The Mongols would retreat in the face of counter-attack, which seemed cowardly to their enemies, but the retreats would be feints to draw their enemies into a trap. They gave no quarter to those they defeated, slaughtering the wounded where they lay and showing no mercy to non-combatants. They were not interested in heroics or refinements of any kind: ‘victory is all’ meant to them what it says.

Some military historians speculate that more restrained approaches to war-making have their roots in ‘primitive’ warfare, still observable among Amazonian and Papuan tribes today. (The term ‘primitive’ is used in this context by anthropologist Harry Holbert Turney-High in his study of the difference between ‘submilitary’ conflict and war as such.)² Among these peoples combat between opposed parties is tentative, with a good deal of posturing and hurling of insults rather than weapons, both sides keeping their distance and being reluctant to make close contact. Rituals and symbolic gestures play an important part, and casualties tend to be low if actual fighting occurs. In some cases conflict ends altogether if a single individual is wounded or killed, and in any case the opposing forces usually go home for supper after a day of shouting imprecations and dancing about – nimbleness in avoiding projectiles is regarded as an accomplishment.³

Anthropological studies of contemporary versions of ‘primitive’ warfare also show, however, that ritualistic confrontations are not the only form, and that more serious encounters often enough occur. Although the Yanomamo people of the Amazon indulge in ritualistic contests that adhere to set formulae, there can also be much bloodier fights, and in Papua New Guinea land transfer between stronger and weaker tribes can take the form of enforced displacement, murderous when resisted.⁴

It is obvious who is likely to have the upper hand in an encounter between the anything-goes warrior and the tentative ritual-observing warrior. It seems that, so far as the ethics of conflict goes, lessons were learned everywhere from the Mesopotamian civilisations’ fatal encounter with invading charioteers from the Central Asian steppes; the futility of resisting them in any but their own unrestrained style taught hard lessons. The later success of Roman arms in the building of empire was due to the lethal combination of highly disciplined fighting with indifference to moral niceties when necessary. Caesar reports in his Gallic Wars that his troops made much slaughter among those they fought, slaying non-combatants who were manning the baggage trains and pursuing and killing fleeing enemy warriors, and he was prepared to be brutal if agreements were broken by subjugated tribes. At the same time he was lenient with those who submitted and kept their promises: the courtesies of war were reserved for situations where danger was past.⁵

Both forms of warfare, and the supersession of the more by the less decorous general form, are fully visible in history. But it is difficult to say when war itself began, and whether its earliest versions really did have the character observed among Papuans and Amazonians at their most ritualistic. Even the more plausible idea that hominin ancestors and relatives of Homo sapiens must at times have engaged in fighting is not unambiguously supported by evidence.⁶ One of the skulls found in the ‘Pit of Bones’ (Sima de los Huesos) in Spain’s Sierra de Atapuerca suggests a violent attack, because it has two near-identical traumatic punctures on the left forehead suggesting a repeated blow. The skull is 430,000 years old.⁷ But it could have been an accident, or a crude effort at trepanning. A Neanderthal skeleton has been found which has the marks of a spear-thrust to its deceased owner’s groin, another with an apparent spear-thrust to the right side of its chest, the latter dating back perhaps 90,000 years (Neanderthals were extinct by about 30,000 BCE). But again, both could have been hunting accidents.⁸ The earliest traces of human record are cave paintings, some of which date back 35,000 years; they contain extremely little evidence if any – and even that little is ambiguous – of fighting between humans. The cave-art scenes in which darts or arrows appear to be in use are particularly doubtful, given that the bow-and-arrow weapon was not invented until the beginning of the Neolithic period around 10,000 BCE. Some cave art after this date depicts archery battles.

The picture changes after this date to more definite indications of war. Excavation of Jericho near the Dead Sea uncovered city walls of great height and thickness, dating back to 7000 BCE; the walls were 3.6 metres high (the height of two six-foot tall men, one standing on the other’s head) and 1.8 metres thick at the base (one six-foot man lying horizontally). Within the walls was a tower also 3.6 metres high, but as it was placed on a mound it afforded a view over the top of the walls. Mighty walls and a tower plausibly imply a need for defence, and a degree of foresight and organisation probably predicated on a recurrent danger of war or attack. But some archaeologists alternatively suggest that the walls were a defence against flood water, and that the tower could have had ceremonial use.⁹

The loose coincidence of dates between fortification and advance in weapons technology nevertheless adds to this suggestiveness. Previously there had been spears, clubs and sharp-edged instruments serving as knives, used for hunting prey and skinning and butchering carcasses; but no doubt prehistoric humans and their hominin ancestors sometimes used these instruments on each other as well. Spears and stones could be thrown, putting distance between hunters and dangerous prey, and this distance would have been useful in a fight between hominins too. But the bow and arrow is a different order of thing. In considerably supplementing muscle-power by mechanical means it makes the weapon more lethal because more forceful and accurate, and safer too because it permits engagement with the target from a greater distance. Given that among our contemporary hominid relatives, the chimpanzees, male gangs form to launch murderous raids on other groups of their own species, it would be more surprising than not if our hominin ancestors did not sometimes do likewise, fighting over territory or resources, or even just because the others were ‘other’. Such fighting is not war in the full sense of this term, but would of course be its precursor.

Although Jericho’s walls, and the availability of weapons equally efficacious for hunting and fighting, together make it implausible to think that groups of people did not fight each other – and indeed make war on each other in the full sense of the term – before the historical record begins, all is surmise until then. John Keegan suggests that war-making as such – as opposed to skirmishing and brawling – began about 5,000 years ago, and principally as a result of the development of settled agricultural communities whose vulnerability to attack by nomads made both sides attentive to questions of weapons, fortifications and tactics.¹⁰ Others place the origins of war very much earlier: Keeley rejects the ‘myth of the peaceful savage’ and, like Azar Gat, argues that humans have been fighting each other far longer than records suggest.¹¹ Indeed Gat makes the excellent point that the precariousness of prehistoric life would have given an evolutionary rationale to the practice of fighting in order to gain control over resources, so that the risks attached to it were outweighed by the advantage of having possession of land, animals, water, and (alas, but such were the realities) women.¹²

To anyone interested in the nuances of phrasing and naming, there seems to be no inconsistency in the idea that the origins of war lie very long in the prehistoric past in fighting between groups of humans, as Keeley, Gat and others argue, and for the reasons they identify; but that war as such, as an organised phenomenon lying above what Turney-High called ‘the military horizon’, requires a relatively advanced degree of social and economic sophistication, as we shall see shortly. No doubt the boundary between war and the conflicts from which it emerged is blurred, but a blurred boundary is still a boundary, and there is a difference to be marked here which is of use.

There is, however, a different but in fact more important question implicated in these debates. It is whether human beings are genetically programmed for fighting and therefore for its more organised form as war. Is human nature inherently violent? Or is violent conflict an artefact of social arrangements? Either way, is war inevitable? These questions are addressed in the next chapter.

The first actually recorded wars are those that occurred in southern Mesopotamia between competing Sumerian city-states between 3000 and 2500 BCE. The Stele of the Vultures records a battle in c. 2500 BCE between the cities of Umma and Lagash, in which the latter triumphed. It was fought between two organised armies, depicted as close-packed ranks of soldiers accompanied by solid-wheeled carts probably carrying dignitaries and supplies. The stele shows the ruler of Lagash, Eannatum, leading his army into the fray, and reports that he received an arrow-wound. But he survived to enjoy the victory, and the stele describes with relish how vultures feasted on the corpses of the enemy.

Sumerian warfare was evidently quite advanced; the stele shows troops in orderly formations wearing helmets, with a command structure and a supply train, and in itself bearing witness to a level of sophistication in which records are kept of significant military events. This places Sumerian war above Turney-High’s ‘military horizon’, below which is fighting that is little different from the brawling of gangs without much – if any – plan, preparation, command structure, or idea of what is to happen when the fighting stops. The concept of the military horizon is a useful if controversial one for distinguishing ‘war as such’ from skirmishes, raids, and the ‘primitive’ formulaic confrontations described earlier.¹³

In Turney-High’s view war as such (he calls it ‘civilised war’ to distinguish it from ‘primitive’ conflict) is characterised by ‘adequacy of team work, organisation, and command working along certain simple principles’.¹⁴ These principles have been invariant since the beginnings of the history of war; Turney-High cites examples and authorities to show that if one strips away considerations of armaments and dates, the essentials of battle are always and everywhere the same. Fighting involves fire (stones, arrows, bullets, shells, cruise missiles), shock (an infantry charge, cavalry, tanks, aerial bombardment), mobility (speed and effectiveness of manoeuvre), and protection (city walls, armour, helmets, trenches). By luck or judgement two or more of these might have been applied in combination by prehistoric groups of fighters, but in war as such their joint application is distinctively the product of planning and preparation.

As this suggests, among the main essentials of battle are organisation, co-ordination and the concentration of forces they enable, this latter most notably at critical points either offensively or defensively. Another essential is the integrity of tactical units, so that their members stick together, fight together, protect and aid each other, and divide tasks between them. Yet further essentials include co-ordination of firepower and mobility, correct utilisation of terrain, and clever use of intelligence and subterfuge. Equally essential are the simplicity of the plan of action, the advantages of surprise, and the proper exploitation of victory if gained. Turney-High calls these essentials the ‘principles of war’.¹⁵

The overarching principle is organisation. Troops must be deployed in orderly formations for entering into battle, sustaining their part in it, and leaving it, whether in victory or defeat, the former to profit from victory fully, the latter to prevent worse loss by slaughter or capture while in retreat. It is essential for proper command that troops be organised, so that their leader can control their movements and position them suitably to the needs of the fighting.¹⁶

The basics of proper military organisation are the column and the line. ‘Those people who do not avail themselves of these two simple sociologic devices are below the military horizon without argument’, Turney-High prescriptively asserts; ‘their fighting can be nothing but a scuffle, regardless of the amount of bloodshed, and cannot be called a war’.¹⁷ The column is the formation in which troops get to the battle, the line is the formation in which they fight it.¹⁸

Taken together, these considerations say that what divides war from ‘submilitary combat’ is tactics. But there is another factor besides: the ability to sustain a campaign with organised and secure supply. It is a notable feature of Caesar’s account in the Gallic Wars that he paid constant attention to supply and the fortification of encampments. The direction and nature of his campaigns was chiefly dictated by who had to be fought, of course, but how he went about the task was assiduously premised on considerations of supply.

Sumerian cities such as Umma and Lagash made war with each other probably for control of land and water resources, motives no different from those identified by Keeley and Gat in discussing the origins of war. With the appearance of Sargon of Akkad about 2300 BCE war takes on a different and more ambitious appearance. Sargon was not satisfied with local suzerainty, but sought conquest and empire. W...