Updated September 14, 2000

War as:

This is a list of short definitions of war, for purposes of reflection only.  References are missing or scant in some cases.  Recommendations welcomed.
 

War as: "Just shooting" (1)

War as: A force of Nature

War as: A Moral Equivalency

War as: A form of tyranny (2)

War as: A social creation (3)

War as: A last resort

War as: A Diversion

War as: al-jihd (Struggle in the path of God)(4)

War as: An accidental recourse to terrorism(5)

War as: An Abstract Concept (6)

War as: An attempt to redefine sociopolitical order(7)

War as: Art of contextualizing(8)

War as: Arbitration by arms (9)

War as: Beautiful-though it may be fatal-play (Ruskin in Walzer)(10)

War as: Builder of Nations

War as: Conventional Law (11)

War as: Divine Law

War as: Education(12)

War as: Either a crusade or a crime(13)

War as: Evil, immorality

War as: Fire and Maneuver(14)

War as: Gambling

War as: Hell(15)

War as: Hunting(16)

War as: Judge

War as: Language, Communication

War as: Medicine (17)

War as: a natural art of acquisition(18)

War as: Natural Law

War as: Not a Rational Judgement(19)

War as: Policy carried on by other means(20)

War as: Punishment

War as: Recreation

War as: State-sponsored manifestation of political and military enmity(21)

War as: The Supreme Solvent(22)

War as: Teacher, School of Nations

War as: "the testimony of our imbecility and imperfection." (23)

War as: The ground of dialogue.(24)
 

War as: The resort of Despair

War as: The sport of Kings (Hunting as sport)

War as: The ultima ratio of states(25)

War as: Virtú and Fortuna (Machiavelli)

War as: Worse than useless(26)

"War would end if the dead could return" -- Stanley Baldwin

"War is the unfolding of miscalculations" -- Barbara Tuchman

"War is fear cloaked in courage" -- Gen. William Westmoreland

"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified,

is not a crime" -- Ernest Hemingway

 stroble@hawaii.edu

Notes

1. (post WWI Indian response, Frazier, Great Plains, p.181)

2. (Walzer. p. 29)

3. (Walzer, p. 24)

4. Kelsay, John "Religion, Morality and the Governance of War: The Case Classical Islam. " In: The Journal of Religious Ethics. Fall 1990 v 18 n 2 Page: 125,

5. (Coady, p. 58)

6. (Clausewitz according to Robert L. Phillips)

7. Ames, Sun Tzu, TheArt of Warfare,  p. 70

8. Ames, Sun Tzu, The Art of Warfare, p.67.

9. Robert L. Phillips,   War and Justice. Univ. of Oklahoma Press, Norman,Oklahoma, 1984.

10. See also in Man and Warfare, Irmscher, ed., p. 40

11. (Johnson, intro.)

12. Admiral Noel Gayler, "Nuclear Deterrence- Its Moral and Political Implications" in Military Ethics, p. 158:"There are great powers and there are smaller ones which, if not constrained by other powers, will in fact subjugate their neighbors if they get a chance. They must be contained; they must be restrained and educated, if you will, possibly in the school of hard knocks, to make sure that the freedoms we value are protected."

13. Tawney's aphorism, War and Justice, p. 97.

14. Brien Hallet, taken from Clausewitz. Hallet maintains that all other definitions are of merely literary merit.

15. General Sherman, of course. Is there a locus classicus for this?

16. Aristotle, Politics, Book I. 1255b: "But the art of acquiring slaves, I mean of justly acquiring them, differs both from the art of the master and the art of the slave, being a species of hunting or war."

17. (Bonet, The Tree of Battles, IV,1)

18. Aristotle, Politics, 1256b.

19. Vattel according to Gallie, p. 19.

20. Clausewitz, On War, p. 84, 24.

21. David P. Barash, Beloved Enemies: Our Need for Opponents, Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1994, p. 20.

22. Gore Vidal, The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, p. 15

23. Montaigne, quoted in Shklar, Judith,Ordinary Vices, p. 16

24. Or as Billaçois thinks, it is in the duel a re-establishment of dialogue:
 

This relation between the language of duelling and that of dialogue was possible because in practice there is a successive substitution of duel and dialogue: the duel is substituted for an interrupted dialogue, and then a re-established dialogue is substituted for the finished duel.

Billacois, François, The Duel: Its Rise and Fall in Early Modern France, p. 200.

25. (Manicas, War and Democracy,  p.364, Senate Res. 411, feb. 14, 1923)

26. Gore Vidal, The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, p. 25