Eight - War

Summary

The character of war has always shifted along with technological and societal change. After the Second World War and thus far in the 21st century, notwithstanding the current conflict in Ukraine and in and around the Gaza Strip, direct wars between major powers have been absent. Rather, these powers have either waged proxy wars or attacked smaller countries. The weapons at their disposal have grown exponentially in their destructiveness, which largely accounts for their reluctance to engage each other directly. In terms of numbers, by the time of the advent of post- 1970s’ rentier capitalism, annual deaths from warfare had reduced to ‘the low hundreds of thousands’ (fewer than those who die from traffic accidents) (Dyer, 2021). This is not to minimise the chronic conflict zones in south- western Asia, Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere, all of which have led, and continue to lead, to countless deaths of troops and citizens. But the inclusion of this chapter on war reflects its role in what is likely to be a rapidly growing family of threats to the very idea of a healthy society; and once again the omens are not good. Why is this?

Violent conflict has long characterised human society, for all that it is not plausible to refer to ‘wars’ in early hunter- gatherer bands, that is, prior to the emergence of more settled ‘tribal’ communities (see Box 1.1). Since then, the nature of war has evolved along with political and technological change. In the Occident, in the Fordist/ welfare capitalism of the post- Second World War years and in rentier capitalism, war for combat forces and publics alike might be said to reflect what Norbert Elias’ (1969), in a strict sociological sense, calls a ‘civilising process’. In other words, the deployment of anonymous technologies such as missiles and drones has replaced much, if not all, brutal hand-to-hand bloodletting. Indeed, waiting in the wings are novel Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS), namely, robots ‘free to make their own decisions’; these could be operational within the next decade. Modern warfare is sometimes referred to as ‘fourth- generation warfare’.