War
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War, in a strict term, is that social conflict in which two or more relatively massive human groups —mainly tribes, societies or nations— confront each other in a violent manner, generally through the use of of all kinds of weapons, often resulting in death -individual or collective- and considerable material damage.
War is the most serious form of sociopolitical conflict between two or more human groups. It occurs in both tribal and civilized societies, but it is more serious among the latter because they are more complex, crowded and technical. It is perhaps the oldest of international relations and already at the beginning of civilizations the organized confrontation of armed human groups with the purpose of controlling natural or human resources (conflicts between nomadic hunters and sedentary gatherers who did develop the concept of & #34;property"), demand disarmament or impose some kind of tribute, ideology or religion, subduing, dispossessing and, where appropriate, destroying the enemy, in what could and frequently did lead to genocide. Furthermore, this type of gregarious behavior is extensible to most hominids and is closely related to the ethological concept of territoriality.
Wars originate from multiple causes, among which are usually the maintenance or change of power relations, resolving economic, ideological, territorial disputes, etc. In Political Science and International Relations, war is a political instrument, at the service of a State or another organization with eminently political purposes, since otherwise it would constitute a more disorganized but equally violent form: banditry by land or piracy by sea.. In primitive tribal societies its origin appears clearer: it derives from two elements: population pressure and scarcity of resources.
According to Richard Holmes, war is a universal experience shared by all countries and all cultures. According to Sun Tzu, "War is the greatest state conflict, the basis of life and death, the Tao of survival and extinction. Therefore, it is imperative to study it deeply." Furthermore, the most astute way to exercise it would be to avoid it so that there is no need to reach it. According to Karl von Clausewitz, war is "the continuation of politics by other means".
The rules of warfare, and the very existence of rules, have varied greatly throughout history. The concept of who the combatants are also varies with the degree of organization of the opposing societies. The two most frequent possibilities are civilians drawn from the general population, usually young men, in case of conflict, or professional soldiers forming standing armies. There may also be volunteers and mercenaries. Combinations of several or all of these military types are also frequent. The ways of making a war depend on the purposes of the combatants. For example, in the Roman wars, whose objective was to expand the empire, the main military objective was, once subdued, to incorporate the alien people into the empire and the laws and customs of Rome. Nowadays, a distinction is sometimes made between armed conflicts and wars. According to this view, a conflict would only be a war if the belligerents have made a formal declaration of war. In one conception of US military doctrine no distinction is made, referring to armed conflicts as fourth generation wars.
Between the end of World War II and 2010, there were 246 armed confrontations in 151 locations around the world.
Definitions and concepts
Plato does not speak of warriors, but of "guardians" of the polis, and further distinguishes between discord (which occurs between the Greeks) and war (which occurs between the Greeks and barbarians). Aristotle stated that war would only be a means in view of peace, as it is. work in view of leisure and action in view of thought, since he considers that war is as natural in human society as peace, since slavery in nature is also legitimate to maintain the hierarchy of the best over the worse, the social order:
- The exercise of war should not be pursued in order to enslave those who do not deserve it, but, first, not to be enslaved by others; secondly, to seek hegemony for the good of the governed, not for the desire to dominate all; and thirdly, to rule over those who deserve slavery.
War, affirms the Marquis de Olivart, is the litigation between nations that defend their rights, in which force is the judge and victory serves as the sentence. Hugo Grotius defined it as status per vincertatium qua tales sunt. For his part, Alberico Gentilis affirmed that Bellum est armorum publicorum ensta contentio. Funk - Bretano and Alberto Sorel wrote: "War is a political act by which several States, unable to what they believe are their duties, their rights or their interests, they resort to armed force so that it decides which of them, being stronger, will be able, by force, to impose their will on others.".
Joseph de Maistre (1821) said, in his Soirees de Saint Petersburg: "War is divine in the mysterious glory that surrounds it and in the no less explicable attraction that leads us towards it. War is divine because of the way it occurs regardless of the will of those who fight. War is divine in its results that absolutely escape reason".
G.W.F Hegel wrote: "war is beautiful, good, holy and fruitful; it creates the morality of the people and is indispensable for the maintenance of their moral health. It is in war where the State comes closest to its ideal because it is then when the lives and goods of citizens are more closely subordinated to the conservation of the common entity".
The Swedish Institute for International Peace Research defines war as any armed conflict that meets two requirements: facing at least one military force, either against one or more other armies or against an insurgent force, and having died ten thousand or more people.
Johan Huizinga establishes that war obtains a playful character when the agonal condition is met; the agonal element begins to act at the moment in which the adversaries consider themselves enemies who are fighting for something to which they claim to have a right.
The purposes of law are peace and justice, polysemic words; peace includes security; that is why war supposes the suspension of law. The jurist Rudolf von Ihering in his Der Kampf ums Recht or The Struggle for Law (1872) argued that force is the basis of law and that law without force it is a utopia. But the law is the fight against injustice:
- Every right in the world must have been acquired by the struggle; those principles of law that are in force today have been indispensable to impose them for the struggle on those who did not accept it, so every right, both the right of a people and that of an individual, assumes that they are the individual and the people willing to defend it. Right is not a logical idea, but an idea of strength; there is justice, which holds in one hand the balance where the law weighs, holds in the other the sword that serves to give it effect. The sword, without the balance, is the brute force, and the scale without the sword, is the right in its impotence; they are complemented reciprocally: and the right does not truly reign, rather than in the case where the force deployed by justice to sustain the sword, equals the ability it employs in handling the balance..
Causes of war
Looking for one or several causes of wars has been a constant for many historians and politicians in order to avoid possible future conflicts or find culprits. But the jurist Papiniano affirmed that "it is easier to commit a crime than to justify it" and Senator Hiram Johnson wrote as early as 1917 that "the first casualty when war comes is the truth." Authors such as Brian Hayes point out, however, that there is a consensus in having some causes as certain.
Traditional causes
One of the causes of war is that two nations have deep differences on various issues, which can only be resolved through arms. The Greek historian Thucydides states in his "Dialogue of the Melians", included in his History of the Peloponnesian War that "it is not shameful to submit to a stronger enemy, especially one who is offering reasonable terms... Justice is only counted in men's reasoning if the forces are equal on both sides; otherwise, the strong exercise their power and the weak must yield to them", but in fact many inferiors do not submit to reason but to war. From the socio-philosophical point of view, many theories have been advanced about the origin and cause of war. The first, more forceful, summarized, philosophical, rational (in terms of explaining the origin of a phenomenon) is the one proposed by Plato in The Republic (after affirming that a city he is happy if he takes care of having what is necessary and nothing else):
If we want to have enough pastures and labor lands, will we need to usurp something to our neighbors and our neighbors will do so much with us, if we transfer the limits of what is necessary, surrender as we do to the insatiable desire to enrich ourselves? [...] Will we do the war after this? [...] We have discovered the origin of this scourge, which when it unloads, carries evil to the states and to the individuals.Socrates
In addition, it seems possible to try to classify, very generally, theories into two major divisions: the one that sees war as a rational product of certain conditions, primarily political conditions (Carl von Clausewitz argued that war is the continuation of politics by other means) and another "irrationalist", which sees war as the product of an ultimately irrational tendency of human beings.
Irrationalist theories can be approached from two points of view:
1. Those who see the origin of war in causes not attributable to rational grounds, for example, religious sentiments or emotions. The logical extreme of this view—that man is an inherently aggressive animal subject to both competitive and competitive tendencies such as cooperation observed in social animals, a situation that demands the occasional expression of such tendencies—is found in some biological, psychological, or social psychological explanations of the origin of conflicts (see, for example: Robber's experiment).;s Cave).
2. The alternative view within this position sees war as originating, in some cases, due to mistakes or misperceptions. Thus, for example, Lindley and Schildkraut argue, based on statistical analysis, that the number of wars that could be argued to have a rational origin has decreased dramatically in recent times (Lindley and Schildkraut offer as examples of such blunders the War of the Malvinas although it is said that the cause was to increase the popularity of Margaret Thatcher of England declaring war since Argentina had not killed anyone and they sank the Belgrano that was going to the continent killing half of all the Argentines who died, and the Iraq War) that others allude to the desire for oil, wealth and dominance to the cause.
The alternative view of war as a rational activity is based on two perceptions. von Clausewitz's original about war constituting the pursuit of (objectives of) politics by other means, and a later insight (implicit in von Clausewitz) that war would be resorted to when gains are estimated to exceed gains potential losses (ie through a cost-benefit analysis). In turn, two positions can be distinguished:
1. The theory of the primacy of domestic policies: found, for example, in the works of Eckart Kehr and Hans-Ulrich Wehler (op. cit). For this position, war is the product of domestic conditions. Thus, for example, the First World War was not the product of international disputes, secret treaties or strategic considerations, but the result of sociopolitical conditions, including economic ones, which, despite being common to several societies, made each of them feel tensions. internally, tensions that could only be resolved through war.
2. The theory of the primacy of international politics, found, for example, in the conception of Leopold von Ranke, according to whom it is the decisions of statesmen motivated by geopolitical considerations that lead to war.
Pedro Luis Lorenzo Cadarso summarizes the origin of wars in three groups of theories:
- Psychogenetic Theorywhich considers war to be a way of channelling human aggression, which exists well for genetic reasons - instinctive, therefore-, well for certain psychological configuration of our character. The evolutionist Richard Dawkins links her to what she calls the selfish gene. Freud and psychoanalysis link it to the complex of Edipo, which generates frustration-competence that is found in the origins of aggression and competitiveness. Anthony Storr considers that human aggression can be controlled and channeled, but not suppressed and the human species is the most ruthless within the animal kingdom.
- Socioeconomic theory or infrastructurewhich links the use of war to the existence of imbalances between population and resources or to competition between groups for the possession or extension of available resources. An exponent of these theories is anthropologist Robert Ardrey.
- Political theory. The supporters of this theory tend to analyze war without moral or other apriorisms: war exists because in a hypothetical balance of costs and benefits it is profitable politically. It is the theory of Clausewitz; it is but one more strategy in the eternal confrontation for the division of the world among nations and the sharing of power and wealth among social groups. Paradoxically, war is socially useful because knowing that it can break up forces men to be more tolerant and to resort to negotiation and politics to avoid it.
Statistical disappointment
This desire to know the causes in order to predict when the next conflict will break out has been addressed on several occasions. One of the researchers of the war phenomenon was Lewis Fry Richardson. This author investigated all conflicts from the 19th century to the 1950s; considering conflict that confrontation where people have died due to the intentional cause of another person; In this way, he combined war conflicts with deaths from murder and homicide, the mixture was intentional due to his experiences in World War II, through which he was able to verify the effect of many of the orders he saw given and the fate suffered by many soldiers. sent to their deaths because of those orders.
Richardson had the idea of categorizing wars by death toll in a similar way to how earthquakes are categorized: by intensity. Thus, a war of magnitude 6 would be one in which 1,000,000 to 1,999,999 people would die; but for all the difficulties he found in knowing the number of deaths in a war (he went so far as to say that it was easier to know the number of stars in a galaxy or of neutrinos in the universe) Richardson applied an error rate of 0.5 (more less); With this error rate, a war of magnitude 3 would be one in which between 316,228 and 3,162,278 perished.
Although Richardson was not the first to compile war conflicts, his work is one of the most exhaustive, beginning in 1940 and continuing until the year of his death in 1953. According to his studies, between 1820 and 1950 there were 315 magnitude 2 conflicts.5 or higher (at least 300 deaths).
Despite recognizing that it is very difficult to know when a conflict begins and when it ends, if it is one or several at the same time or the aforementioned number of deaths; the results were somewhat disappointing:
The frequency with which confrontations break out follows the Poisson distribution, which seems to indicate that wars are a random event. Thus, the author concluded that the main cause of war is chance.
Secondly, he placed the conflicts chronologically and according to their magnitude, to know if some type of conflict was repeated or if one type of war was increasing or detrimental compared to the others. The results were not conclusive either, once again showing a distribution very similar to the random event. Thus, the conclusion is that one does not learn to avoid wars and that the probability of a new conflict breaking out is the same for any day, regardless of whether another has occurred before or the size of the conflict. this other.
Deepening his work, he conducted a study of neighboring countries that went to war. Measuring the borders he came to the conclusion that a country adjoins 6 other nations on average; so the probability of a nation going to war with a neighbor was almost 10%, if it were a random process; however, the statistics indicated that the probability was 87.33% (of 94 wars studied, only 12 had no common border). Therefore, according to the mathematician, another cause of war is the neighborhood.
Richardson also related wars to other factors commonly indicated by historians, such as economic crisis or religion, reaching many other disappointing conclusions:
- The arms race does not have to lead to armed conflict: out of 315 conflicts only in 13 there was a preparatory arms race.
- A common language does not prevent wars.
- An economic crisis does not have to lead to civil wars, nor between states.
- Only peoples of different religions are more likely to engage in wars among themselves. Likewise, it seems that Christian peoples show more bellicoseness than those of other creeds, having intervened in a much greater proportion of conflicts than the rest.
However, Richardson concluded that even religion is not a cause of great importance.
The next to investigate in this area are H. van Velzen and W. Wetering, who, in a comparative analysis on residence and conflict, came to the conclusion that local fraternal groups and patrilineality constitute the most significant variables in relation to the frequency of warfare. Some years later, this idea would be taken up by K. Otterbein, who, in a new cross-cultural investigation, would point out another important variable: polygyny.
In summary, Otterbein argues that patrilocal and polygynous societies and with local fraternal groups resort more easily to violence than non-patrilocal and polygynous societies and without such groups.
Moreover, according to this author, the societies with the greatest number of armed conflicts are those that have similar political communities. Orrerbein calls the conflict between them internal war, to distinguish it from that originating between culturally different communities or external war. Thus, based on their own statistical tabulation, it turns out that, out of a sample of twenty-eight patrilocal societies, 71% are characterized by frequent internal warfare and 19% by sporadic internal warfare, while in fourteen non-patrilocal societies, only 55% He has frequent internal conflicts.
Philosophical concept
For Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes, desire and ambition are part of human nature, which leads to collective insecurity and the war of all against all, and, therefore, this insecurity is the foundation of the law and of the State, which should at least reduce it. Hobbes determines that the main causes of war between men are:
- The first is competition; secondly, distrust; and thirdly, glory. The first makes men invade the land of others to gain; the second, to secure; and the third, to acquire reputation. The first makes use of violence, so that men become owners of other men, their wives, their children and their cattle. The second uses violence for a defensive purpose. And the third, to repair small offenses, such as a word, a smile, a different opinion, or any other sign of contempt directed towards the person himself or, indirectly, relatives, friends, homeland, profession or personal prestige.
It has been suggested whether, from a moral or philosophical point of view, it would be possible to speak of a just or lawful war. If that is the case, it is necessary to distinguish:
- If war in general can be lawful.
- If the required conditions are met or guaranteed.
At first sight it seems possible to propose that war is not necessarily illicit. There is the natural right of self-defense or legitimate defense against the external enemy when he unjustly attacks a people. If this right of legitimate defense is denied, the aggressor is strengthened and the peace of the peoples is endangered. However, it has been suggested from an ethical perspective that, for a war to be ethically legal, there are a number of additional conditions:
- Let there be a real, true and grave injustice.
- Inviability to defend itself peacefully.
- Perspective and hope of final success.
- May harm be avoided to innocent third parties.
The defense of the public good prevails over any right of the aggressor and even over the risks that the attacked themselves may have. But wrongful killing is considered illegal.
From that same philosophical point of view, the movement in favor of peace is considered deserving of the highest recognition. Said movement is a diffuser of a spirit of understanding and comprehension among the peoples. Its ethical and moral goal is to achieve peace and agreements without bloodshed.
Traders
Chinese general Sun Tzu, in his famous work The Art of War, stated that war had to be won before it was declared or existed in itself. In this regard, the famous general would expose in a succinct sentence his conception of the character of war: "War is the Tao of deception"; thus, he would try to establish that the virtuous strategist should base all his military decisions, seeking first to distract the enemy's attention on the most outstanding elements of his position, and if he did not have them, to invent them.
Sun Tzu's thought would leave a deep imprint on modern military thought, not only in renowned thinkers, but also in eminent strategists such as Napoleon Bonaparte, who in his renowned victory at the Battle of Austerlitz, applied those precepts of deception.
The concept of "just war" it was systematically presented by Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologiae.
Erasmus of Rotterdam, the renowned Renaissance humanist, described war with the phrase "Dulce bellum inexpertis est", whose translation into Spanish is " War is sweet to the inexperienced".
The Arab historian Ibn Khaldun first discovered the material causes of war.
Carl von Clausewitz, in his classic work On War, thought that modern warfare is "The continuation of politics by other means" and that its purpose was to "disarm the enemy," not exterminate him; From this was born the concept of mutual disarmament, which makes all war impossible and gives way to politics. The war would thus be a "political act" and this demonstration put into play what he considered the only rational element of the war.
Wars and history
According to the World Encyclopedia of International Relations and the United Nations, in the last 5,500 years there have been 14,513 wars that have cost 1,240 million lives and have left only 292 years of peace. And only between 1960 and 1982, said encyclopedia calculates 65 armed conflicts (only those that have produced at least a thousand deaths) in 49 countries, with a total of 11 million victims.
The first warlike conflict on record is the one between the Sumerian city-states of Lagash and Umma, around the year 2450 BC. C. The dispute arose over some irrigated land. The king of Lagash, Eannatum, commanded the army, which was victorious, and made Umma a vassal state.
Contemporary Wars
The wars in the list below represent wars for control of a state, in which a minimum of 1,000 people would have lost their lives in 2011 or 2012. Statistics are from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program in Sweden.
| Home | War/conflict | Country | Dead in 2010 | Dead in 2011 | Dead in 2012 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | War of Afghanistan |  Afghanistan
| 6377 | 7418 | 7396 |
| 1991 | Somali civil war |  Somalia
| 2076 | 1938 | 2620 |
| 2004 | War in Northwest Pakistan |  Pakistan
| 4858 | 2599 | 2705 |
| 2004 | Conflict of Sa'dah |  Yemen and  Saudi Arabia
| 175 | 1140 | 2321 |
| 2011 | Sudan Conflict (2011) |  Sudan
| 931 | 1248 | 1119 |
| 2011 | Syrian Civil War |  Syria
| - | 842 | 55 000 |
Modern Warfare
Modern warfare, although present in every historical period of military history, is generally used to describe the concepts, methods, and technologies that were in use during and after World War II. Although the First World War was a modern war, since it massively introduced elements of war that are well known today, such as tanks, machine guns, grenades, helmets and airplanes, etc.; therefore it marked a before and after in the history of wars.
With the advent of nuclear weapons, the concept of total war has the possibility of global annihilation, and that conflicts of this type since World War II were, by definition, "low intensity" 3. 4;.
Modern wars are aimed at gaining control over the social fabric as a way to destroy the enemy, usually separating the aggressors from the truth of their own acts. This is because murders, massacres or mass displacements eliminate the victims and give the victors an indisputable truth. Victory locks the victor in oblivion that frees them from remorse, essential feelings to find the truth.
Modern Warfare List
- 1904-1905: Russian-Japanese war
- 1912-1913: Balkan Wars
- 1914-1918: First World War
- 1917-1923: Russian Civil War
- 1919-1921: Polish-Soviet War
- 1932-1933: Collombo-Peruvian War
- 1932-1935: Chaco War
- 1936-1939: Spanish Civil War
- 1939-1945: Second World War
- 1941-1942: Peruvian-Ecuadorian War
- 1946-1954: Indochina War
- 1947-1991: Cold War
- 1947-1998: Conflict between India and Pakistan
- 1948-1949: War of the Independence of Israel
- 1950-1953: Korean War
- 1954-1962: Algerian War
- 1955-1975: Vietnam War
- 1960-1966: Crisis of the Congo
- 1960-1996: Guatemalan Civil War
- 1960: Colombian Armed Conflict
- 1961: Cochinos Bay Invasion
- 1961-1974: Portuguese Colonial War
- 1961-1990: Sandinista Revolution
- 1962: War but Indian
- 1962-1966: Indonesian-Malaya Confrontation
- 1963: Arenas War
- 1965: Indo-Pakistan War of 1965
- 1966-1990: South African border war
- 1967: Six Days War
- 1967-1970: Desert War
- 1968-1998: Northern Ireland Conflict
- 1971: Indo-Pakistan War of 1971
- 1973: Yom Kipur War
- 1974-1991: Ethiopian civil war
- 1975-2002: Angolan Civil War
- 1977-1978: Ogaden War
- 1978-1992: War of Afghanistan (1978-1992)
- 1980-1988: Iran-Irak War
- 1980-2000: State of terrorism in Peru
- 1980-1992: Civil War of El Salvador
- 1982: 1982 Lebanon War
- 1982: Falklands War
- 1983: Invasion of Granada
- 1983-2009: Civil War of Sri Lanka
- 1987-1993: First Intifada
- 1988-1994: War of the High Karabakh (1988-1994)
- 1988: Somali Civil War
- 1989-1990: American invasion of Panama of 1989
- 1990-1991: Gulf War
- 1991-2002: Civil War of Algeria
- 1991: Somali civil war
- 1991-1999: Yugoslav Wars
- 1992-1995: Bosnian War
- 1993: Batalla de Mogadiscio
- 1994-1996: First Chechen War
- 1995: Cenepa War
- 1996-1997: First war of the Congo
- 1998-1999: Kosovo War
- 1998-2003: Second Congo War
- 1998: Operation Desert Fox
- 1999: Kargil War
- 1999-2009: Second Chechen War
- 2000: Intifada de Al-Aqsa
- 2001: War on Terrorism
- 2001-2021: War of Afghanistan (2001-2021)
- 2001: Islamist insurgency in Nigeria
- 2001: Insurgency in Peru
- 2003-2011: Iraq War
- 2004: Conflict of Sa'dah
- 2004: War in Northwest Pakistan
- 2006: Lebanon War 2006
- 2006-2019: War on Drug Trafficking in Mexico
- 2008-2008: South Ossetia War 2008
- 2008: Turkish Incursion in Northern Iraq
- 2008-2009: Gaza Strip Conflict 2008-2009
- 2009-2017: Insurgency in the North Caucasus
- 2011-2013: Iraqi insurgency following the withdrawal of US troops
- 2011: Libyan War 2011
- 2011: militia violence in Libya (2011-present)
- 2011: Syrian Civil War
- 2011: Insurgency in Sinai
- 2012: Turkish participation in the Syrian Civil War
- 2012: Civil War of the Central African Republic (2012-present)
- 2012: Fronts in the Golan Heights
- 2012-2012: Operation Pilar Defensivo
- 2013-2014: Military intervention in Mali
- 2014: War against Islamic State
- 2014: Civil war in eastern Ukraine
- 2014: War of Libya (2014-current)
- 2014: Conflict between the Gaza Strip and Israel 2014
- 2014: Operation Barkhane
- 2014: Iraqi Civil War
- 2014: Islamist insurgency in Nigeria
- 2015: Military intervention in Yemen (2015-present)
- 2016: War of the Four Days
- 2020: Second War of Upper Karabakh
- 2021: Conflict between the Gaza Strip and Israel of 2021
- 2022: Russian invasion of Ukraine of 2022
Effect-based operations
Effects-Based Operations (often appears as EBO for Effects-Based O >perations). It is a way of looking at military operations that uses resources beyond what is simply military in such a way that efficiency is maximized and the erroneous effort of pursuing collateral objectives is minimized. Some authors define it as: " The physical, functional or psychological result, as well as an event or consequence that is obtained from a specific action that may or may not be military". Others "as a process to obtain a desired strategic result or effect on the enemy through the synergistic and cumulative application of a full range of capabilities, both military and non-military, at all levels of a conflict". Effects-Based Operations are used not only at the specific moment of the war period, but also go beyond and treat moments of peace, tension, conflict and post-conflict. The idea of EBO operations are conceived in planning systems where the full range of cascading effects, both direct and indirect, is taken into account. Some of the new ideas of the current military doctrine come from the concepts of Operations based on Effects, it can be said that others have undergone a certain refinement thanks to the introduction of this new concept. One of the refined concepts is that of effect, which can be understood in two different ways:
- The physical or behavioral state resulting from a given action.
- A change in the condition of behavior or degree of freedom.
In the same way, the concept of the enemy has been reviewed, sometimes compared to a system of systems, and its study has given rise to concepts such as the Analysis of systems of systems (in English: Ssystem -of-Ssystems Aanalysis - SoSA). The SoSA process includes in its beginnings very simple categories such as a system-blue (friendly forces), red (adversary forces) and green (neutral or non-aligned). The need to implement Effects-Based Operations made this classification expand to new Political, Military, Economic, Social, Infrastructure, Informational dimensions. All these dimensions are called in EBO with their initials PMESII.
Proxy Warfare
Proxy warfare is a type of war that occurs when two or more powers use third parties as substitutes, instead of directly confronting each other. Although superpowers have sometimes used entire countries as subsidiaries, it is usually preferred to use guerrillas, mercenaries, terrorist groups, saboteurs, or spies to hit the opponent indirectly. The objective is to damage, dislocate or weaken the other power without entering into open conflict. Proxy wars are often fought in the context of large-scale underground or violent conflicts. It is rarely possible to wage a pure proxy war, as the sides used have their own interests, some of which diverge from the interests of the bosses. Among the wars that are considered to have had an important subsidiarity component are the Spanish Civil War, the Greek Civil War, the Korean, Vietnam or Afghanistan wars, the Lebanese Civil War, the Angola War, the Indo- Pakistani, the Iraq War, the South Ossetian War, the Civil War in El Salvador, currently the war in Syria and in general, the conflicts derived from the Cold War, among which we find the revolutionary wars in Latin America promoted from Cuba.
Fourth Generation Warfare
The so-called Fourth Generation Warfare is a name within US military doctrine that includes guerrilla warfare, asymmetric warfare, low-intensity warfare, dirty warfare, State or similar and covert operations, People's War, Civil War, Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism, in addition to Propaganda, in combination with unconventional combat strategies that include Cybernetics, Civilian Population and Politics. In this type of war there is no confrontation between regular armies or necessarily between States, but between a state and violent groups or mainly between violent groups of a political, economic, religious or ethnic nature.
Record wars
According to the Guinness Book of Records the following conflicts are each at one extreme
- The shortest war known is that which was declared between Great Britain and Zanzibar (after joining with Tanganica to form the current Tanzania), on August 27, 1896, according to the records, lasted only 38 minutes.
- The longest war would have been the Hundred Years war that lasted 116 years. Another long-term war conflict was the Crusades, a series of battles that lasted about 200 years. However, the so-called Arauco war between Spaniards and Mapuche people, an interrupted series of battles, lasted about 300 years, with long periods of truce. If it is considered as a continuing war, the war of the Reconquest on the Iberian peninsula is the longest in history, with almost 800 years, if we do not consider the frequent treaties of peace, alliances and sporadic battles very localized. They were the typical feudal wars, which caused the proliferation of defensive castles, which gave the name to the Kingdom of Castile, although they also proliferated in the rest of the peninsula.
- The most bloody war in the number of deaths was World War II, with its more than 60 million deaths due to one or the other cause. However, the War of the Triple Alliance would be in relation to the annihilation of an organized national population (the Paraguayan population), descending the inhabitants of Paraguay from 500 000 to 120 000; surviving only 25% of the Paraguayan population, of which only 10% were men.
- World War II holds the record of being the most costly economically.
- The most bloody civil war, understood as the one that produced the greatest number of deaths, occurred in China of the Qing dynasty and is known as the Taiping Rebellion (Great Peace translated from Chinese). It was delivered between the aforementioned Qing dynasty and Manchu government troops, also Chinese, from 1851 to 1864 where the tightest calculations indicate that the deaths could range from 20 to 30 million people, including 100,000 killings by government forces in the plunder of Nanking, between 19 and 21 July 1864.
- The wars that most continents, territory and countries covered all over the world were the First and Second World War. Throughout history, however, there were several conflicts that covered a large number of territory and countries around the world, which are:
- Crusades
- War of the Seven Years
- War of the Spanish Succession
- War of Austrian Succession
- Thirty Years War
- Napoleonic Wars
- Hispanic American Independence Wars
- Great War
- Cold War:
- Vietnam War
- Korean War
- Greek Civil War
- Border War
- Angolan Civil War
- War of Afghanistan (1978-1992)
- War of Granada
- Arab-Israeli conflict
- Gulf War
- Kosovo War:
- Operation Allied Force
- Arab Spring:
- War of Libya
- War in Syria
- War on Terrorism
War and sexual violence
Rape (and the serious consequences it entails) has not only traditionally been excluded from the list of the horrors of war, but it was also, until recently, legally recognized. It was seen as an inevitable side effect, not as a violation of human rights, much less as a strategy or tool for war. According to George Rodrigue, "the legal basis for prosecuting those responsible for forced prostitution and sexual slavery has existed since time immemorial, although the processes have not been carried out in a solid way." Rape was not recognized as a war crime in the 1949 Geneva Convention or in the 1946 Nuremberg trial, and this recognition did not reach it until the ad hoc tribunals created for the former Yugoslavia (1993) and Rwanda (1994), as well as in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). In those, rape is defined as a crime against humanity in the event that these violations are generalized and systematic (systematization can be used to demonstrate the intent required). the crime of genocide, while the ICC specifies that, when rape is committed as part of an attack against civilians, it can be considered both a war crime and a crime against humanity. This may be a characteristic of the new wars, the recognition of the seriousness of the violations of women, but it is not at all a new phenomenon, but a consequence of the war in Europe (Bosnia and Herz egovina) and the visibility of its horrors, among which, as before in many armed conflicts, violence against women undoubtedly stood out.
What do you get with rape? Often humiliating, through women, the collective. With the rape, not only the woman is destroyed, but also the relatives who observe or are aware of the aggression. Many times the rapes are public, in a group, in the presence of the husband or other relatives. However, although close relatives also suffer the consequences, it is the women directly raped who bear the rejection of the community on numerous occasions, even when they can be recognized as victims and are objects of pity. Carlos Martín Beristain states that "while the men and women who are injured or killed are considered 'heroes' or 'martyrs', the pain of rape is kept silent or becomes a 'stigma'. Rape is both a weapon and an expression of war. In line with this statement, the Human Security Center states that the risk of sexual violence in war contexts was higher when pre-conflict norms on sexual violence were weaker.. But rape is not only an instrument of humiliation, it is also used to terrify societies (sometimes to force their displacement) or to punish or control. In fact, it is possible not to include rape in the field of sexuality, but in that of torture. The use of rape as a weapon of war has been proven in at least 13 countries between 2001 and 2004, although probably the number stay short. In addition to expression and instrument, rape can also be a consequence, because it is believed that "war exacerbates gender-based violence against women in peacetime".
Types of wars
Prisoner of War
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A prisoner of war (PDG), also known as an enemy prisoner of war (EPG), is a soldier, pilot or sailor who is taken prisoner by the enemy during or immediately after an armed conflict. Laws are in place to ensure that prisoners of war will be treated humanely and diplomatically. Nations vary in their compliance with such laws.
Article 4 of the Third Geneva Convention protects captured military personnel, some guerrillas, and certain civilians. This applies from the time of capture until when you are released or repatriated. One of the main points of the convention makes it illegal to torture prisoners, and the prisoner can only be asked for his name, date of birth, rank and service number (if applicable).
Qualifying as a prisoner of war
In principle, to have the status of prisoner of war, the alleged PDG must be in conditions such as those indicated by law: be part of a regiment, wear a uniform, flags and insignia and openly display their weapons. Thus, snipers, terrorists and spies can be excluded. In practice, this is not always strictly adhered to. Guerrillas, for example, may not wear a uniform or openly carry weapons, but are now given prisoner-of-war status if captured. However, guerrillas or any other combatant may not be granted PDG status if they try to pass for two types, civilian or military.