ASIA
15 October 2025
About war
How can we understand the tragedy of war?
As I write, there are hopes that the tragic war in Gaza is coming to an end. At the same time, the Ukraine war, provoked by Russia’s invasion, is still underway. And cyber warfare, meaning cyberattacks by a nation-state or international organization to damage another country's computer networks, information systems, or critical infrastructure, are widespread.
How can we understand the historical phenomenon of war? Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan's book, "War: How Conflict Shaped Us", published in 2020 before the present Gaza and Ukraine conflicts, argues that it would be stupid to think that we have moved on from war. MacMillan is an emeritus professor of History at the University of Toronto and Oxford University
First of all, what is war? For MacMillan war means collective and organised violence. It is not a barroom brawl. Nor is the word used correctly when we refer to the war on poverty or other such things. She is reluctant to accept the term cyberwar, though she concedes that she may have to relent.
MacMillan argues war is an embedded part of human history. It is one of the great forces affecting human history, along with pandemics, economics, demography, geography and political institutions. If we want to understand the human past, we need to understand how war fits in. War has been very much a part of human evolution. The more we try to understand how wars start, perhaps the more hope we have of making peace.
How and why wars break out?
The systematic study of war arguably began with Thucydides in his "History of the Peloponnesian War". He argued that war began with the growth in the power of one state and the alarm this caused in another – in particular, Sparta feared the growing power of Greece. Harvard’s Graham Allison has developed this into a dogma, known as the Thucydides's Trap, according to which America and China may be “Destined for War”. MacMillan doubts the tightness of this argument. After all, another case is that of Britain which did not contest the passage of global leadership to the US in the late 19th century.
MacMillan argues that if you look behind the very proximate, immediate causes of wars, there are three broad reasons why countries go to war: (i) greed – one side wants something the other side has, like land; (ii) fear – of what their neighbors might be up to; and (iii) the power of ideas or ideologies like religion, Marxism, Bolshevism or nationalism.
As abominable as war is, it has acted as a stimulus to social reform and technological innovation. For example, the two World Wars actually helped to create more equal societies in countries like the US, Britain and Canada. The rich were obliged to pay taxes and governments were obliged to give benefits to the poor to gain their support and to keep the whole war effort going. The welfare state in Britain was set up after the Second World War, very largely because the government and the ruling classes recognised they had to do something about society.
French economist Thomas Piketty argues that the great compression of incomes that occurred throughout much of the first two-thirds of the 20th century was really driven by the necessities of war. Women began to play a more active role in society and the economy due to the 20th century wars. They were called upon to work in factories and other jobs, things that men did before they went off to war. During the Second World War, they flew airplanes.
A lot of things were developed for military reasons which then had an application in society as a whole. In medicine, penicillin was discovered before the Second World War, but it was too expensive to put it into production. Then the Second World War came, and suddenly, it wasn't too expensive. So a drug that was going to save literally millions of lives was produced and had enormous impact in peacetime as well as in war.
A lot of things happened during the Cold War. Huge amounts of money were poured into research for transistors and microprocessors, which brought huge benefits to society in peacetime. Research for the Manhattan Project produced the atom bomb. In today’s Ukraine war drones have become a major weapon.
The 19th century saw many great changes in the nature of war. Prior to the 19th century, most Europeans were subjects of their royal leader. But after the French Revolution, there was a new relationship between government and society. The French were citizens who owned their government, with an obligation and motivation to defend their society. Their belonging to society was also fostered by the spread of literacy. Another factor was the Industrial Revolution which enabled the production of all sorts of weapons and uniforms, and new means of communication like railways and steamships which facilitated the movement of soldiers and equipment.
Perhaps one of the most worrying things in the US today is the rise of militias, marching with uniforms, carrying weapons in otherwise peaceful cities. The US is still resorting to using violence to solve disputes. This trend is a backward step from what happened in European societies in the 16th and 17th centuries when governments increasingly got a monopoly on violence and began to get rid of the private militias.
MacMillan reminds us of the fallacy of Norman Angell’s proposition that countries with close economic relations won't fight with each other. Wars with close trading partners are more costly, but they still happen, as in the case of Britain and Germany in the case of World War 1. Today, economic relations are very intense between the US and China, as are political tensions, as China has become more assertive regarding Taiwan and the South China Sea.
How can we understand the historical phenomenon of war? Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan's book, "War: How Conflict Shaped Us", published in 2020 before the present Gaza and Ukraine conflicts, argues that it would be stupid to think that we have moved on from war. MacMillan is an emeritus professor of History at the University of Toronto and Oxford University
First of all, what is war? For MacMillan war means collective and organised violence. It is not a barroom brawl. Nor is the word used correctly when we refer to the war on poverty or other such things. She is reluctant to accept the term cyberwar, though she concedes that she may have to relent.
MacMillan argues war is an embedded part of human history. It is one of the great forces affecting human history, along with pandemics, economics, demography, geography and political institutions. If we want to understand the human past, we need to understand how war fits in. War has been very much a part of human evolution. The more we try to understand how wars start, perhaps the more hope we have of making peace.
How and why wars break out?
The systematic study of war arguably began with Thucydides in his "History of the Peloponnesian War". He argued that war began with the growth in the power of one state and the alarm this caused in another – in particular, Sparta feared the growing power of Greece. Harvard’s Graham Allison has developed this into a dogma, known as the Thucydides's Trap, according to which America and China may be “Destined for War”. MacMillan doubts the tightness of this argument. After all, another case is that of Britain which did not contest the passage of global leadership to the US in the late 19th century.
MacMillan argues that if you look behind the very proximate, immediate causes of wars, there are three broad reasons why countries go to war: (i) greed – one side wants something the other side has, like land; (ii) fear – of what their neighbors might be up to; and (iii) the power of ideas or ideologies like religion, Marxism, Bolshevism or nationalism.
As abominable as war is, it has acted as a stimulus to social reform and technological innovation. For example, the two World Wars actually helped to create more equal societies in countries like the US, Britain and Canada. The rich were obliged to pay taxes and governments were obliged to give benefits to the poor to gain their support and to keep the whole war effort going. The welfare state in Britain was set up after the Second World War, very largely because the government and the ruling classes recognised they had to do something about society.
French economist Thomas Piketty argues that the great compression of incomes that occurred throughout much of the first two-thirds of the 20th century was really driven by the necessities of war. Women began to play a more active role in society and the economy due to the 20th century wars. They were called upon to work in factories and other jobs, things that men did before they went off to war. During the Second World War, they flew airplanes.
A lot of things were developed for military reasons which then had an application in society as a whole. In medicine, penicillin was discovered before the Second World War, but it was too expensive to put it into production. Then the Second World War came, and suddenly, it wasn't too expensive. So a drug that was going to save literally millions of lives was produced and had enormous impact in peacetime as well as in war.
A lot of things happened during the Cold War. Huge amounts of money were poured into research for transistors and microprocessors, which brought huge benefits to society in peacetime. Research for the Manhattan Project produced the atom bomb. In today’s Ukraine war drones have become a major weapon.
The 19th century saw many great changes in the nature of war. Prior to the 19th century, most Europeans were subjects of their royal leader. But after the French Revolution, there was a new relationship between government and society. The French were citizens who owned their government, with an obligation and motivation to defend their society. Their belonging to society was also fostered by the spread of literacy. Another factor was the Industrial Revolution which enabled the production of all sorts of weapons and uniforms, and new means of communication like railways and steamships which facilitated the movement of soldiers and equipment.
Perhaps one of the most worrying things in the US today is the rise of militias, marching with uniforms, carrying weapons in otherwise peaceful cities. The US is still resorting to using violence to solve disputes. This trend is a backward step from what happened in European societies in the 16th and 17th centuries when governments increasingly got a monopoly on violence and began to get rid of the private militias.
MacMillan reminds us of the fallacy of Norman Angell’s proposition that countries with close economic relations won't fight with each other. Wars with close trading partners are more costly, but they still happen, as in the case of Britain and Germany in the case of World War 1. Today, economic relations are very intense between the US and China, as are political tensions, as China has become more assertive regarding Taiwan and the South China Sea.