Art of War Studies Essay

What is fight?In stray to describe what state of fight is one has to define it. According to The Collins Dictionary contend is1. idle armed conflict between devil or more spark offies, nations or states 2. a particular armed conflict the 1973 war in midst East. 3. the techniques of armed conflict as a study, science, or profession. 4. and conflict or contest the war against crime. 5. (modifier) of, resulting from a characteristic of war war constipation war history.This is obviously straight to the render, slake does non go into teeming detail to fully describe what war is. Cla affairwitz chooses non to follow the definitions consecrate forward by, what he calls, publicists, in Vom Kriege. Instead he puts forward his confess view that it is nonhing and a imputablel on an colossal scale. To fully understand what war is you digest to look at the 4 main factors in war soldiers, the agents mired, intensity and duration, and teleology.The use of quarter and the idle record of it is arguably the most obvious feature of war. However, one has to contract what force actually is, the answer to this creating signifi faecest disagreement. When talking about the use of force as a feature of war one at one time considers this force to be of military form, whereby weapons are apply to strike downcast their opponents. This is of course true to an extent, only when is not the only force utilize in war. Force do-no little(a)g also be political or ideological force, as seen in the beginnings of the Cold warfare. Here, the Soviet Union uses their ideological ties with other countries in Eastern Europe to force them to reject the marshall Plan in their war against the United States of America (US) for dominance.Clausewitz resume War, whereby the nations uses all of their wealth and resources, putting them on the line, in order to nullify their enemys armies, property and even their citizens, ties in with this use of force. Here, force is eve rything that the dishonoring group can muster together in order to destroy the other groups allow for to fight and turn a quick, decisive victory, and can involve killing soldiers as tumefy as destroying important buildings.Wars are not always wish this, and with the entree of nuclear weapons, Van Creveld believes that courtly war is effectively at its end. Also, if this Total War was true past more groups would use nuclear weapons in order to win the war, save they do not. This is due to mutually aware destruction and the risk of a backlash from other nuclear powers. in that location has been plans to try and incorporate nuclear weapons into conventional war, but this was unsuccessful.When considering what is war, it is not solely a case of the use of force by the fight party, but one has to take in account the opposed force. Without this opposed force it would not be war, it would simply be a massacre or perchance genocide. The form of opposition force, like an attack ers force, can vary, whether they respond in an offensive or defensive manner. If they are defending the war exit be restricted to their own turf and their forces concentrated on preventing attack and protecting certain people or buildings. However, the offensive force of the attacking party can be met with similar offensive force. The war will ultimately begin on their turf as they are cosmos attacked, but they will set out to remove the threat and then attempt to destroy them as in Clausewitz Total War.If force is and then the use of weapons, then one has to consider what sort of weapons are used in war. Weapons have changed through time, becoming increasingly high-tech to the point of nuclear weapons that could remove all humans off the face of the earth, but they have not been used to their full extent as of yet. The big powers tend to use weapons such(prenominal) as aircrafts with bombing and firing capabilities, tanks and battleships, whilst the soldiers involved will ca rry such things as guns and grenades.Martin van Creveld puts forward his dissertation that in future wars weapons will become less sophisticated due to the types of groups involved. With this, he believes the production of high-tech weapons will stop and cheaper, but still effective weapons, will be used. This is already happening in the war between Al-Qaeda and the West, where they are trying to bring down the US and the whole western system. They did not kill people with high-tech weapons in their most devastating strike against the US, which killed thousands of people, but took over two aeroplanes slightly New York and flew them into two buildings, which were among the most important in the West, showing it does not have to be all guns and bombs in wars.Another important part of war is the agents involved in it. In todays world, since the quietness of Westphalia, one would find it very tempting to say that war is a game played out by states. However, it is increasingly emerging to be not just a game played by states, but other groups are emerging that take refuge in human states that wage war on other states or groups. One such group is Al-Qaeda, which took refuge in Afghanistan in their fight against the West.If it is states fighting wars then this will be very similar to Clausewitz Trinitarian war, which is made up of a trinity of the government, the army and the people. In this situation, the government decides whether to go to war but they do not fight it. The army are strictly the players in the game and the ordinary civilians are not allowed to join in at all. If indeed this is true then all wars in the world would be an army versus an army.However, in todays world we see wars conflagrate out between armies and a group of civilians, like the situation in Iraq at the moment and the War against terror. Wars can even get into out between two non-army organisations, such as a plurality warfare between Mafia groups, although obviously the scale will not be as big as van Crevelds conventional war. These wars which do not occur between armies does not fitted into Clausewitz Trinitarian war, but is more an element of van Crevelds non-Trinitarian war. He sees a decline of the state and with this the liquidation of boundaries between the trinity. This nitty-gritty that it will not only be armies that fight wars, but also groups of civilians, as seen with groups like Al-Qaeda.This arises another important part of war, which is how intense or how long it has to go on for in order for it to be classed as a war and not a skirmish of any other act of force play that is not a war as such. A war cannot simply be a single gun fight between two gangs as this is just a one off event. It has to be a series of events or battles between two or more groups for a certain cause. The saying you may have won the battle, but you have not won the war, although is a very dramatic saying, is perhaps the most obvious quote that war cannot just simply b e one battle, that would be a skirmish. War is number of these skirmishes and would ultimately be more than two. The intensity is another matter, and this varies from war to war depending on the strength, nature and will to destroy of the groups involved. Wars do not necessarily have to be high intensity, although Clausewitz Total War would be, where as Van Crevelds outset Intensity Conflict would not.War would not happen if it was not fought for a certain reason, for that fact one has to understand what means war is fought for. This can be seen in Clausewitz definition that war is the continuation of politics by other means. War is not always going to be fought for political reasons and can in fact be due to such things as ideological and economic factors.In conclusion one can see that the definition of war in a dictionary is not explicit enough. Saying war is an open armed conflict between two or more parties, nations or states is much too thin an answer to discuss what war is in who is involved. Discussing fully the four factors in the introduction brings about a clear definition of war, which cannot really be put into a few sentences as it varies a great item and is ever changing through time, whether it be who is involved, the weapons used or the means of which it is fought for.BibliographyMartin van Creveld Transformation of WarCarl von Clausewitz On WarLawrence Freedman WarThe Collins Dictionary