War Essay -- essays research papers

The premier issue to be considered is what is contend and what is its definition. The student of struggle needs to be careful in examining definitions of state of war, for the likes of any social phenomena, definitions are varied, and practically the proposed definition masks a fussy liquidal or philosophical stance paraded by the author. This is as legitimate of dictionary definitions as surface as of articles on armament or political history. Cicero defines war broadly as "a contention by force" Hugo Grotius adds that "war is the assign of contending parties, considered as such" Thomas Hobbes notes that war is as well an attitude "By war is meant a state of affairs, which whitethorn exist even while its operations are not act" Denis Diderot comments that war is "a convulsive and violent disease of the body politic" for Karl von Clausewitz, "war is the continuation of governing by other means", and so on. Each definition has it s strengths and weaknesses, but often is the culmination of the writers broader philosophical positions. For example, the fancy that wars only involve states-as Clausewitz implies-belies a strong political theory that assumes politics can only involve states and that war is in some agency or form a reflection of political activity. War defined by Websters Dictionary is a state of open and declared, hostile armed skirmish among states or nations, or a period of such conflict. This captures a particularly political-rationalistic account of war and warfare, i.e., that war needs to be explicitly declared and to be in the midst of states to be a war. We find Rousseau debate this position "War is constituted by a relation between things, and not between personsWar then is a relation, not between man and man, but between State and State" (The Social Contract). The military historian, John Keegan offers a useful characterization of the political-rationalist theory of war in his A History of War. It is assumed to be an orderly affair in which states are involved, in which there are declared beginnings and expected ends, slow identifiable combatants, and high levels of obedience by subordinates. The form of rational war is narrowly defined, as distinguished by the expectation of sieges, pitched battles, skirmishes, raids, reconnaissance, police and outpost duties, with each possessing their own conventions. As ... ...ine war not in effect(p) as a conflict between states (i.e., the rationalist position), but also a conflict between non-state peoples, non-declared actions, and highly organized, politically controlled wars as well as culturally evolved, ritualistic wars and guerrilla uprisings, that appear to have no centrally controlling body and may perhaps be depict as emerging spontaneously. The political issue of defining war poses the first philosophical problem, but once that is acknowledged, a definition that captures the clash of arms, the state of mutual tension and threat of violence between groups, the authorized answer by a sovereign body, and so on can be drawn upon to distinguish wars from riots and rebellions, collective violence from personal violence, metaphorical clashes of set from actual or threatened clashes of arms. Back to Table of Contents2. What causes war?Various sub-disciplines have grappled with wars etiology, but each in turn, as with definitions of war, often reflects a tacit or explicit acceptance of broader philosophical issues on the nature of determinism and freedom. For example, if it is claimed that man is not free to choose his actions (strong