9 Dec 2024
WAR WAS TRADITIONALLY DELEGATED TO MEN
In the last thousand years or so, nations that considered themselves civilised generally delegated the task of fighting wars to their male populations. On average, men were stronger and probably more violent and possibly less prone to the introspection that might question whether an order to engage in a near-suicidal action was stupid and pointless.
Napoleon and Wellington live on through war gamers who deploy men in ways that might have led to a different outcome at Waterloo. The US civil war (also a gamers’ favourite) was for a while peak slaughter of loyal male soldiers. In addition there were unsurprisingly many civilian casualties but these were regarded as regrettable mistakes.
And then came World War I. The women kept the home fires burning (and much else) but the reputation of that conflict is that it was a foolish and immoral waste of young male life.
AFTER WWI WE ALL BECAME INVOLVED
The result was widespread pacifism with a twist. George Orwell said that if nations insisted on going to war they should accept that the cost would and moreover should be borne by the whole population. The Spanish civil war and in particular the attack on Guernica in 1937 by German and Italian bombers brought to international attention what this meant – that civilians would be casualties of contemporary warfare.
Consequently, appeasement was an extremely popular response to the demands of the Nazis in the late 1930s. When Churchill voted against Neville Chamberlain’s Munich agreement of September 1938 he was nearly deselected by his own constituency party. A few months later Hitler broke his word and invaded Czechoslovakia. At that point war was seen as nearly inevitable and, correctly envisaging that London would be a bombing target, the government began to prepare for the mass evacuation of children, gasmasks in hand, to rural and seaside areas.
WWII is notorious for the attempted genocide of Jews but also for the bombing of cities. The “Battle of Britain” aimed at London, first by the Luftwaffe and then by V1 and V2 rockets, the destruction of German cities by British and US bombers in early 1945 and the atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those who felt that it was ethical to include civilians as casualties of war had everything for which they could have hoped.
ENOUGH ALREADY
It is no surprise that the pendulum of opinion swung the other way again and the aim of ensuring strength and peace, ideally, through a military spending arms race took hold.
In the post-war decades there was often a division between those who saw any kind of war as pointless and immoral (Vietnam) and those who believed there was a patriotic duty to get behind “our boys” (the Falklands). Any military action causing civilian casualties provoked cries of war crimes and calls for the intervention of the International Criminal Court.
I wonder whether the Russia/Ukraine conflict will change things again. While all the talk seems to be about funding weapons for Ukraine there is no clarity and perhaps deliberate obfuscation about the number of dead and wounded soldiers. Here is a news story from last month.
Ukrainian men dragged out of nightclubs and restaurants by army recruiters during ‘press-gang’ raids
And here’s one from Reuters last week.
Ukraine needs to get younger people into the military to succeed in the war being waged against it by Russia, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday. The call-up is currently from the age of 25.
I find it questionable that this is going on while Western politicians claim the moral high ground and cheerfully declare that they are helping Ukraine fight our proxy war with Russia. And according to Boris Johnson, we are not trying hard enough.
“Let’s face it: We’re waging a proxy war but not giving our proxies the ability to do the job.”
I know that the list of jobs that can be outsourced has been growing steadily for three decades but frontline combat seems like a stretch. The domestic workforces of first world nations are choosing to work from home. Were the men of Ukraine not trying to do the job for us we would need to turn to a sofa army of men and women who are reluctant to leave home for anything more challenging than walking the dog.
WE’RE ALL UP AGAIN
I think that there are some signs that the costs of future conflict will once again be shared by civilians. Despite much nervous talk about the use of nuclear weapons I suspect that the future will involve drones and cyberwarfare.
If you have been following closely you will have seen that the pro-Ukraine lobbyists in the US reassure the domestic audience that “aid” to Ukraine takes the form of orders for US defence contractors. One estimate claims that Ukraine aid is funding armaments manufacturing in more than seventy American cities.
This is quite likely to be true but it has also been suggested that the US is effectively offloading some old and arguably nearly redundant military hardware which for the sake of headlines can be valued at cost.
This week’s unexpected news from Syria illustrates that even experts in geo-politics have limited understanding of the origins of conflict or the combatants’ definitions of success. All we know is that our young men and women will not be joining in.
So when chattering heads worry about World War III they do so in the fearful belief that the days of “all in it together” are returning. They have nightmares about poisoned water reservoirs, nobbled energy supplies and crippled communication networks. Just as with Covid, granny will find herself on the front line.
Amazingly there is an investment angle to this as seen in the alleged positioning for the contracts to rebuild Ukraine – awarded perhaps to Americans by America? In that respect, also rather reminiscent of Covid vaccines, come to think of it.
From Reuters in January:
A Ukraine reconstruction bank being set up by Kyiv with help from BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase has at least $500 million in committed capital and could be ready to launch in 5-6 months with close to $1 billion, a senior Ukrainian official said on Wednesday.
I wonder if the populists who seem to be gaining electoral ground in much of the Western world could be characterised as people who want to fight cultural and moral wars at home rather than military conflicts elsewhere.