Origins

This is coolbert:

Here are the comments, as promised, I have on "The Origins of War" article I have previously posted about. You can see the article in it's entirety by going here.

My comments, as usual, are in bold:

I am using for this entry, the textbook definition of war as being two groups of people, using arms, and each trying to impose their will upon the other.

Also keep in mind that Clausewitz defined war as "politics by other means".

This blog entry is partially in response to a question posed by a friend of mine, "when does skirmishing end and war begin, and how do we differentiate between blood feuds and war?".

"Although it is possible to dismiss virtually all forms of hostility among animals as being not truly warlike, there remains one glaring exception... ants."

Here, the author seems to neglect the studies and observations of Jane Goodall. That chimps seems to possess a basic innate aggressiveness that is probably present in humans too. When the resources of chimps are threatened by another troop of chimps, the chimps engage in violent behavior that can only be described as war. Led by the boss ape, the alpha male, this sort of thing has been mentioned in previous blog entries.

"And eventually it would permit us [humans] to wage war, not because our genes compelled us, but as a premeditated response to external conditions."

Is the author ruling out the innate aggressive nature of humans with this statement?

"However, war as we have defined it would have been basically irrelevant in a world in which personal property had to be limited to what could be carried, seasonal diversity more than territory dictated the availability of food, and the genetic necessity for outbreeding made it advisable to avoid alienating other local gene pools."

I am not sure if the author has even properly defined war at this point. Seems to suggest that war as we moderns understand war is the only type of behavior that can be called war. And again, chimps, when having their resources threatened by another troop of chimps, do respond with what can be called warlike behavior. And these are critters that do not even carry or store food or move with seasonal diversity to any other locales.

"able to undergo a transformation that in relatively short order would find us living in vast despotic societies that were at least broadly analogous to those of the social insects."

This would of course be the transformation from hunter-gatherers to the "civilized" societies of the "land between the two rivers" type of cultures. Sumer, Ur, Chaldea and such. Sargon the Great the warrior king is the archetype despot the author has in mind here.

"This was not China's fate. Here, the patterns of social and political evolution predisposed the Chinese to remain wary of the institution of war. Given the continuing pastoral threat from the steppe, the necessities of armies and defense could never be ignored. Yet they approached war gingerly, shackling it with all manner of intellectual and governmental restraints."

This is both in part right and wrong. Surely the author is not ignoring the history of China in the period of the warring kingdoms?? Without the incessant wars fought during this period, Sun Tzu would not have been able to amass the background to write so profoundly as he did on the subject of war. In the chapter of Sun's dealing with spies, great emphasis is placed upon capturing enemy spies and turning them against their master. This would seem to imply having an effective counter-intelligence organization in place with a lot of experience. You cannot turn a spy against their own master unless you can catch them first!! Sun is supposed to have written his book in around 500 B.C. So we can infer that war was a constant in the centuries prior to Sun, and was a constant in China at least until the Chin Emperor united the various warring kingdoms under his rule!!

"Though sporadic and geographically irregular, these raids would have had economic and even ideological motivation sufficient to mark them as the beginning of something approaching true warfare among humans."

The Canadian writer Gwyn Dyer writes that until relatively recent times the phenomenon of nomadic but powerful and dangerous tribesmen descending upon sedentary village or city dwellers [burgers, bourgeois, burgesses] in fortified towns was something that occurred throughout ancient history and found an apogee of development in the predations of the Mongols under the great Genghis. This form of warfare, nomadic but very dangerous tribesmen attacking the farmers and city dwellers was a fact of human life for thousands of years, ended only in relatively recent times, perhaps only since the advent of gunpowder. [are we seeing a return to this type of warfare with the "barbarians" [read terrorists], attacking the village dwellers [read NYC]].

"Armed male elites, the first true armies, rose quickly to prominence, fostering governmental structures, unequal access to resources, and coerced organization of labor."

Here I would disagree with the author. From the observations made of ancient horse cultures, it would seem that the ancient Indo-Europeans, a semi-nomadic people, did possess even in very ancient times, the stuff that armies and war making societies are made of. The caste system with priests, warriors, and all the rest of the people [Julius Caesar divides the people of Gaul into such groups] was well established even before the first cities and towns were built. Of course, the warriors were engaging in behavior that we would now call "cattle rustling", or protecting the cattle from same. Witness the role of the kshatriya warriors of India or the warriors mentioned in the Irish epic poem, "The Great Cattle Raid of Cooley". These warriors were even in the most ancient of antiquity, highly trained in warcraft and all the weaponry associated with same. My previous entries blog entries mentioned how chess is based upon the forces arrayed upon the climactic battlefield of the Mahabharata [1400 B.C.]. Horsemen [knights], men-a-foot [infantry], elephants with towers [tanks], etc. [combined arms of a high order even at that early date!!!]. This all seems to suggest a high level of development that was thousands of years in the making, pre-dating the development of cities. And this from a society that is characterized as semi-nomadic!!

And also.

How would the fighting of such "primitive" societies as the "mudmen" of New Guinea fit into the author's equation of war. These societies, using blood feuds and the desire to acquire the "goods" of neighboring tribes, fought for thousands of years combats that can only be described as war. War that was well organized, had specific intent, and was very bloody and apocalyptic for the losers. "Mudmen" can scarcely be called civilized or highly developed in any sense of the word!!

"But imperial societies (contingent upon their origins, location, and internal dynamics) varied considerably in their dependence on war. Thus Egypt, sheltered geographically and blessed with environmental factors that moderated the swings of demography, gave more attention to building monumental architecture. Assyria, surrounded by enemies, came to be driven by war, pursuing it almost for its own sake until it was finally destroyed by belligerence. The very feature that made warfare a serviceable equilibrator;that it could be initiated as a matter of choice; also allowed it to become an all-consuming pursuit."

And.

"Perhaps most interesting from a theoretical perspective is the independent development of warfare in the Americas. Here the absence of a sufficient array of animals to support independent pastoralism, and the resulting urge among agriculturalists to huddle behind walls, caused social and political consolidation to take place in a less abrupt fashion, under conditions that reduced demographic instability. War was plainly part of the process, but its role was more exclusively political; a matter of conflict among elites, not peoples."

What is the reader to make of this when contemplating the warrior societies of the North American Indian?? As I have said, some American Indian tribes were placid hunter-gatherers contented and living in peace with their neighbors. And other tribes [Sioux, Apache, Iroquois] seem to have waged war almost strictly for the sake of waging war, and were very successful at it too. None of the American Indian Tribes in North America can be said to have developed the high culture found in the "land between the two rivers", or for that matter, in other parts of the world. And yet some American Indian tribes waged war in what can only be described as war as understood by moderns.

I am not exactly sure what is the author's message in this article. It seems that some sort of entropy is on the mind of the author. An equilibrium is achieved and an energy transfer of resources is made by waging war?? It is hard to tell? The way the article is written is in my estimation poor and does not adequately address the author's intent. My opinion.

coolbert.