Why Should We Study war?

War is incongruously an articulation of our established animal nature and the pinnacle of our most bluster and valued civilized virtues. The incongruities of war instruct us to comprehend that war is not only a specific part of human existence but is plausibly one of the essential factors in making us who we are. “War happens when language fails.” (Margaret Atwood) War leaves a significant mark on society. Many technological progressions are the derivatives of military developments and military research.

Moreover, throughout history, war has altered culture seriously; For example, the transformations of WW1 and WW2 brought gender-established societal stereotypes eventuated in the manumission of women and embodiment into the job market. Moreover, due to war, there were extensive migratory flows. These flows resulted in profound changes, for example, society’s social and cultural composition. In this regard, war can metamorphose our everyday validities in ways beyond the hodgepodge of brutality in warfare.

In co-occurring times, military history has evolved frumpish in our schools, colleges and university campuses. The academic delinquency of war has also become intense nowadays. Military history as a discipline has wizened very few professorships, journal articles or degree programs. After the bloodbath and barbarity of the 2oth century’s world wars, leaders and governments endeavoured to revamp international politics with restorative organisations. To bring an end to wars forever, the league of nations and the united nations both nurtured the hope that global cooperation would lead to corporate security and international order. Nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction (MAD) were extrapolated to make future conflicts outlandish, yet the world today is as violent and conflict-ridden as ever, and whether we like it or not, the cardinal issue in our life is whether we are going to have a war or not; hence the uncertainty prevails. Therefore studying military history is a gist and an attempt to prevent war or ease its ruinous effects.

The significance and gainsay of the academic study of war are to palliate general interest into a more severe and comprehensive understanding that seeks answers to such questions as why wars break out. How do they pinnacle? Why do the winner’s triumph and the losers yield? How best to debar war or contain their worse effects? A wartime public illiterate about past conflicts can smoothly find itself paralysed in the acerbity of the present. Without the standards of historical comparison, it will prove ill-equipped to make informed judgements. The concept of war dates back to 400BC when Thycuides indited the history of the Peloponnesian war. By studying the Peloponnesian war, Thycuides believed people would be better prepared to interpret future conflicts because human nature, emotions, and grandiloquence remained constant over the centuries and thus are generally anticipated.h Moreover, by snubbing history, the modern age is free to interpret war as a collapse of communication or diplomacy as the assailants don’t know what they are doing.

Also read: Over 55pc online Islamophobia content originates from India: report

Yet it is hard to find a few wars that effect by misperception. Far more often, they erupt due to ill intent and the absence of deterrence. Military history is as often the tale of appeasement as of warmongering. The malignant military careers of Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler would have ceased early had any of the numerous enemies united when the odds favoured them.

Western societies have been reluctant to use force to prevent greater future violence. In the 21st century, it is easier to surrender to technological determinism. The idea that science, new weaponry and globalisation have modified the very rules of war, but the study alongside tells us that it is highly dubious that a new weapon will materialise from the pentagon or another location that will change the very essence of the armed conflict.

Furthermore, military history has the moral purpose of educating us about past sacrifices that have secured our present freedom and security. If we know nothing of the 1948 war, 1965 war, 1971 war and 1999 Kargil war, our martyrs’ graves are just pleasant white marbles on lush green earth and nothing else. Pakistan was born through war, fragmented by war in 1971, and safe from destruction by war in 2007 through the Swat operation and many others. No future generation, comfortable and affluent, should escape that terrible knowledge.

What can we do to restore the study of war to its proper place in Pakistan’s populace life? The challenge is not just to reform graduate school or professoriate well; that would help on a deeper level. We need to re-examine the larger values that have devalued the very idea of military history. We must forsake the naive faith that with enough money, education or good intentions, we can change the nature of humanity so that conflict by fit becomes a thing of the past.

Ultimately, the study of war reminds us that we are men, not omnipotent. Some men will always prefer war to peace, and others who have learned from the past have a moral obligation to stop them.