Is War Inevitable?

Why War?
Richard Overy
Pelican
June 2024
400 pages
ISBN: 978-0241567609

---

The question of why war exists is a commonly asked one. Why have human beings throughout the history of the species engaged in organised violence against one another? In our modern world, why do educated and mostly civilised people support the large-scale slaughter of their fellow man?

A distinguished military historian like Richard Overy – whose greatest expertise relates to those most destructive of wars waged during the 1930s and 1940s – is well-placed to try to answer this.

Published in June, Overy’s Why War? is an ambitious work. His book is broken down into two sections. Firstly, Overy examines the general causes of warfare, surveying the theories which have been proposed and the evidence which has been uncovered in areas such as biology, psychology, anthropology and ecology.  Secondly, he looks at the specific motives for warfare under four headings: resources, belief, power and security. These, he stresses, are not mutually exclusive. Many wars will be waged for more than one reason, even if one reason is cited as casus belli.

It is most welcome that Overy rightly dismisses the modern trend to overlook lethal violence from the pre-state past, as if organised violence was something relatively new in human history. He cites chilling archaeological evidence of ancient massacres, including the discovery of the remains of sixty-six human beings who were mostly butchered with axes near Vienna around 7,000 years ago.

On the question of biological determinism and the controversial claim of the Harvard entomologist Professor Edward Wilson that aggression was innate, Overy suggests that recent research on behavioural genetics has mostly vindicated Wilson’s findings.

If our genes explain some part of this mystery, the evolution of human psychology is another factor worth pondering. “The evolution of a psychology for warfare is a universal, species-typical adaptation, even though it is manifested in different locations and times in a variety of ways,” Overy writes. This psychological basis for conflict can be as extreme as those martial values cultivated in ancient Sparta or amongst the Vikings, or it can be observed in the sanitised military culture of any modern army. When combined with a strong in-group attachment – and expressed against an out-group enemy – this warrior spirit can become extraordinarily lethal.

Prehistoric conflict is particularly interesting. As Overy explains, there are serious challenges involved in interpreting the archaeological evidence of such conflict, whether that be skeletal trauma, iconography such as cave drawings of battles, weaponry or fortifications. While historians can continue to argue over whether conflicts between small tribes can really warrant the term “warfare,” it takes an incredible amount of naivety to follow the example of Jean Jacques Rousseau in assuming that our ancestors lived peaceful and idyllic lives.

One case-in-point is the Alpine iceman, Ötzi, whose frozen remains were discovered in 1991 more than 5,000 years after his death. Ten years after this discovery, analysis showed that in Ötzi’s back there was an arrowhead. On his blade, there was the blood of at least three different humans.

The second half of the book is less interesting, dealing as it does with the various reasons why groups choose to engage in warfare. Resource shortages are certainly important, and Overy references the cross-cultural work of Carol and Melvin Ember who found that a fear of resource scarcity has led to the great majority of conflicts. Gold or slaves were the prizes of choice in the past, just as oil has been a crucial factor in many cases since the Industrial Revolution began. In the coming decades, wars may be fought over the critical raw materials upon which the modern economy is built. Alternatively, in a return to the past, wars could be waged over access to that most crucial resource: clean water.

With virtually all wars having multiple causal factors, there has been a tendency in this secular age to refuse to seriously examine the role of religious belief in explaining conflicts. Conversely, anti-religious voices (the Marxist writer Christopher Hitchens for example) have often wildly overstated religion’s role in their struggle to bully their way to a secularist society.

In the post-9/11 world, Overy suggests that “historians and social scientists have begun to argue that belief must be injected back into any analysis of warfare where religious or ideological motives can be seen to be paramount.” This represents some progress, even if the return to bloodshed represents atavism. The conflicts which exist between countries and within countries cannot be solved unless they are understood, and that will often require a more serious religious dialogue than has been heard in recent times.

Arguably the most important geopolitical development in recent years has been the collapse of the “End of History” narrative which Francis Fukuyama put forward when arguing that liberal democracy would become the universal form of government after the Cold War. What we are now witnessing is a return to history: the renewed willingness of autocracies to wage industrial-scale warfare, the rearming of Europe and the growing importance of alliances and great power rivalry.

In this situation, Overy’s book is timely and very worthwhile, even if the writing style is rather dull, possibly due to the difference between this type of book and the great historical narratives which he has specialised in up until now.

In his conclusion, Overy quotes his fellow academic, Kenneth Waltz. “Theorists explain what historians know: War is normal.” A more captivating quote would have been from Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, when Judge Holden hears his accomplices discussing the morals of warfare, and quickly silences them: “It makes no difference what men think of war,” the monstrous Judge, the Devil incarnate, tells them. “War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.”

As leaders ready their countries’ defences in preparation for an uncertain future, it is also time to arm ourselves with knowledge of why war is so large a part of the human experience. This book is a very good place to start.