Views on War

Views on War

Introduction

The War on Terrorism is a campaign of United States supported by several members of NATO and other allies, with the stated purpose of ending terrorism Post modern, systematically eliminating the terrorist groups as considered by the Organization United Nations (UN). In addition to, all those suspect of belonging to these groups, based on the universal declaration of human rights, and put an end to the alleged sponsorship of terrorism by states. This Post-modern offensive was launched by the Bush administration after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 in New York and Washington, DC, by al-Qaeda. It became a central part of the foreign and domestic policy of former U.S. President, George W. Bush, supported by other States. The report of the Long Commission in the United States into the suicide attacks on the American marine barracks in Beirut in 1985, advocated a military response to terrorism in the future. There was already a strong body of opinion within the American government that terrorism had to be viewed as war. Could the military respond? Defining terrorism as 'war' placed undue pressure on the military against an ever changing protagonist - Shiite terrorists in Lebanon, leftist groups in Europe, revolutionary organizations in Latin America or transnational suicide bombers. Even the US military cannot be everywhere at once (Lincoln, 2003).

The Phenomenon of War

Interstate war is a recurring phenomenon that appears to be part and parcel of the Westphalia system; there were 278 such wars between 1648 and 1940, or one every 2 years. In 2003, J. David Singer calculated that there had been 412 interstate and intrastate wars between 1816 (when there were 23 states) and 1997 (when there were 181); 135 of these wars occurred after 1950. In all, there were 179 wars in the 19th century and 233 in the 20th century. Of the 2,340 weeks between 1945 and 1990, only 3 were entirely free of war. According to Singer, the record is not encouraging: The two decades with the largest number of wars since 1816 have been the 1970s (36 wars) and the 1990s (31 wars). The good news is that as a proportion of the number of states in the world and the world's population (both of which are growing), the number of wars is decreasing. The ratio of wars to states has fallen steadily over the decades, from 0.74 in the 1890s (the highest in history) to 0.26 during the 1940s and 0.17 during the 1990s (one of the lowest in history). However, the number of battle deaths has been stable since 1950, at an average of approximately 2.6 million per decade, or one per 1,000, for a total of approximately 13 million dead. (These figures do not include indirect victims of war.) Wars caused an estimated 38 million battle deaths (including 11 million soldiers) between the years 1 CE and 1899 and more than 46 million deaths (including 22 million soldiers) between 1900 and 2000. From 1816 to 1939, interstate wars ...