my history

my history

The Evolution of Warfare: A Historical Perspective

1. Introduction to the Study of Warfare

The myth that barbarism, tyranny, and warfare are merely responses to the complex organization of civilization has existed since Roman times. That civilization causes warfare was refuted by anthropology and archaeology over sixty years ago. It is surprising that so little attention has been given to a diverse discussion. There is no agreement on a body of theory, nor can the conjuncture of several theories be said to form one. Research is characterized by amply funded, fine microanalysis of a narrow and largely dysfunctional focus. Moreover, for a study that claims to explain war avoidance, it is replete with the language of power, coercion, compellence, and deterrence. Political science has long needed a body of theory which encompasses all typologies of warfare and war avoidance, if it is to make an informed judgment of intentions. But is political science more generally distinguishing between warfare and consequences which spring from its very presence is presently more important than the outcome of these military activities. The distinction is not merely remedial of past paralysis.

The study of warfare has taken on increasing significance in recent years. The spread of nuclear weapons, the possibility of an all-out war, the reliance on force, and the increasing importance of the military among those underdeveloped countries that do have a military further pressing the importance of the subject. The conflict in Vietnam has given rise to strong antiwar movements throughout the Western world. How can you explain why such phenomena occurred in a world beset by such contradictions? It seems that one reason is to be found in the inadequacy of social science theory on the subject of international conflict. To date, political scientists have been only partially successful in their attempts to formulate a theory of military conflict.

2. Ancient Warfare: From Antiquity to the Middle Ages

The enemy faced by Greek citizens, a very manageable sort of polity under proper discipline, reaches its apogee in the fifth century BCE. At Marathon, it was represented by mass formations of the best heavy infantry of its day but armed only with sticks, their horde-like charge being much diminished by decisive volley fire before they had any chance to engage. The Romans faced the rugged Carthaginian heavy infantry and the ferocious Gallic charge with hedge-like formations of up to a thousand deep to close with thrusting pikes.

Ancient and pre-modern warfare was a matter of direct challenge on the basis of the carefully trained and equipped professional combatants who squared off at battlefields designated for the purpose. In ancient times, ancient empires fielded large and well-organized professional armies. They used complex and powerful logistics to supply those armies on campaign. They built great works of engineering like the Great Wall of China and the fortifications at Sebastopol in Crimea to permit them to use their preferred methods of direct challenge in relative safety. Each phase of ancient warfare had a process set by the technology of the time. The Greeks preferred single combat; the Romans heavy infantry in fielded battle. The whole process also started with well-organized wars.

3. The Age of Gunpowder: Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution

The first small cannon, or ‘roger,’ had been carried by Italian galleys early in the fourteenth century. By the beginning of the Organic Wars (1500-1815), armies were beginning to drag large cannons with them. Charles VIII used them to effect in his Italian War, and in 1547, Henry II consolidated the prestige of the artillery by using dozens of target pieces to send a cloud of arrows towards the English line of defense before commencing a determined but brief charge that won him the battle of Boulogne. In 1553, the Spanish sent several of their great pieces to siege the heavily fortified town of Thionville from close range. At the same time that Malta was rarely without a battle, because of the rebellions of the slaves from the Tunisian galleys, this massive Arquebus royal could produce a breach in its otherwise impenetrable walls.

Gunpowder had come to the attention of Europeans in the eleventh or twelfth centuries, but it was not until the fourteenth century that Europe really began to make use of it. The new weapon, which promised to break the deadlocks that had characterized siege warfare for two thousand years, was quickly applied. The English used it to great effect at Crecy and Agincourt (1346 and 1415), and the French used it in their conquest of Normandy (1450). The technology had matured so that when the Spanish were struggling to bring the curtain down on the conquest of their deteriorating kingdom using the last of their Crusader armies, they too could use it effectively against the native craftsmanship of the New World. In the meantime, Tamerlane (1333-1405) had used it with stunning effect against his Muslim opponents, and three hundred years later, Japanese and Koreans had used it with the same devastating effects against the Chinese.

4. Modern Warfare: World Wars and Beyond

Airpower came to be seen as a potentially decisive tool and in fact such thinking, largely modeled on past patterns, may have exaggerated the actual effects airpower had upon both the enemy’s perception of eventual outcome and his capacity to wage war. The apparent decisive direct role of air and sea power on the outcome of the First Gulf War, deceptively easy and relatively bloodless, encouraged revisionist thinking on the future shape of war as an aerospace phenomenon, an impression not yet shed. Meanwhile, the land powers had, in fact, studied the lessons of greater mobility inherent in the in-depth German operational warfare doctrine, and were in various stages of implementing similar reforms, with varied success according to their resources and resolution. The new operational doctrine was, essentially, a more sophisticated form of the tactical maneuver of the past, effectively utilizing or coordinating all the tools of technology: communications, aviation, armor, mobile artillery, and the combat engineer.

During any consideration of warfare in the twentieth century, two conflicts often take center stage: World Wars I and II. The First World War was the first major conflict to employ new cutting-edge technology as a large portion of warfare. By its end in 1918, the war did indeed enter the twentieth century from the 1870s as far as machines were concerned, dragging the armies and powers kicking and screaming behind them. The First World War proved to be an absolutely unprecedented slaughter with 10 million killed in Western Europe alone, mainly from entrenched positions and firepower. The Second World War, even more destructive, validated many of the aviation and armored tank notions of interwar theorists and innovators, and again reinforced the concept of mobility combined with mass.

5. Conclusion: Lessons from History for the Future of Warfare

The rapid technological and scientific changes of the last few centuries have brought the relative stability of the military patterns of the early modern period to an end by offering to almost all posing powers the temporary capability to achieve damage to the affluent and complex sensitive system of urban and industrial society upon which the power of the state was based in the early modern time. The new destructive technologies have permitted the return, however slowly, of mass army melees upon which the political entity, at its core, depended to protect its very existence. These new destructive technologies have produced not a military revolution, but a series of military evolutions based over time on the incorporation of technology into warfare, rather than the West’s supposed superiority in “military systems” when measured against its potential opponents. The next centuries will not really change this essence of the warrior’s journey.

Human history is, in most periods, a history of war, as leaders of all times have understood that force, rather than verbal advice or ethical admonitions, is their ultimate instrument of intended or planned behavior. From such a perspective, both the future and the history of war and warfare would seem to be an endless repetition of one another. At the end or the beginning of almost every war, men and women have thought and said that their war was unique, either that it was the last of its kind or that it was the first sign of a completely new kind. The emotions that have accompanied such statements, however, do not change the fact that the essence of war, or what Carl von Clausewitz termed “the nature” of war, has not changed significantly in over 2,500 years.