Topic: War

Quotes

As is true with respect to other great evils, the measures by which war might be made altogether impossible for the future may well be worse than even war itself.#

Poland was the awkward piece on the global chessboard, a reminder that the war had not been so much a conflict between right and wrong as a struggle for survival.#

In this age of trade walls and migration barriers, of foreign exchange control and of expropriation of foreign capital, there are ample incentives for war and conquest. Nearly every citizen has a material interest in the nullification of measures by which foreign governments may injure him. Nearly every citizen is therefore eager to see his own country mighty and powerful, because he expects personal advantage from its military might.#

A co-ordinated administrative division between infantry, cavalry, and artillery, usually organized by the state, would normally defeat forces in which these activities were mixed up—at least in ‘high intensity’ warfare.#
Where stateless societies conquer ones with states, they either themselves develop a state or they induce social regress in the conquered society.#
We can estimate that in Near Eastern imperial societies up to Alexander the Great the maximum unsupported march possible for an army was about 60-75 miles. Alexander and the Romans may have extended it to nearly 100 miles, and this remained the maximum until the eighteenth century in Europe when a massive rise in agricultural productivity provided the logistical basis for far wider operations. Before then further distances required more than one campaigning phase, or—far more common if some degree of political control was sought—it required elaborate negotiations with local allies regarding supplies.#

To colour all empires black and to disavow all imperial legacies is to reject most of human culture. Imperial elites used the profits of conquest to finance not only armies and forts but also philosophy, art, justice and charity. A significant proportion of humanity’s cultural achievements owe their existence to the exploitation of conquered populations. The profits and prosperity brought by Roman imperialism provided Cicero, Seneca and St Augustine with the leisure and wherewithal to think and write; the Taj Mahal could not have been built without the wealth accumulated by Mughal exploitation of their Indian subjects; and the Habsburg Empire’s profits from its rule over its Slavic, Hungarian and Romanian speaking provinces paid Haydn’s salaries and Mozart’s commissions.#
Since 1945, no independent country recognised by the UN has been conquered and wiped off the map. Limited international wars still occur from time to time, and millions still die in wars, but wars are no longer the norm.#
A real ‘clash of civilisations’ is like the proverbial dialogue of the deaf. Nobody can grasp what the other is saying. Today when Iran and the United States rattle swords at one another, they both speak the language of nation states, capitalist economies, international rights and nuclear physics.#