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Published: 02 July 2014

Science and war

Nature volume 511 , page 6 ( 2014 ) Cite this article

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As the centenary of its outbreak approaches, Nature looks back on the First World War.

Safe in the twenty-first century, it is easy to look back at the terrible events of 1914–18 and wonder how the world turned on itself with such ferocity. Despite a century of continued conflict, the images of the First World War remain branded on our collective consciousness — the trenches, the barbed wire, the gas masks, the mud, the misery, the slaughter on an industrial scale.

The Great War was more than a clash of armies. It was a fight for supremacy in Europe and a battle to harness applications of science and technology. For the first time, machines gave the bulk of the advantage to the defenders. Science set about correcting that — an effort that climaxed in fire and fury with the dropping of atomic bombs in 1945.

Almost a century since the war broke out, Nature this week publishes intriguing takes on the conflict. In a Comment on page 25 , Patricia Fara analyses the implications of the wartime move to recruit women into laboratories and factories. And on page 28 , David Edgerton applauds writer Taylor Downing’s effort to delve beneath the clichés of history and unpick how the conflict built on science from many fields. Much of that work was described in this journal, and Nature this month delves into its treasure trove of an archive to publish a collection of articles from the time, including editorials, news, correspondence and book reviews, available at go.nature.com/zhlclo . Most are directly relevant to the war, but some report on other events that have entered history: the Antarctic voyage of explorer Ernest Shackleton, for instance, and work on “gravitation and the principle of relativity” presented by one “Prof. A. Einstein”.

Others give a flavour of academic life. Surprisingly (or not), little has changed. There are squabbles about advertising for staff while candidates are at war; grumbles about a lack of resources (only poor-quality rubber was available for research balloons, so many burst) and a sniffy response to suggestions that scientific societies cancel their meetings. Perhaps most pertinent are articles that show how central science was to the war effort: a few days after allied troops were first gassed at Ypres, for example, a Nature analysis pinpointed chlorine as a probable culprit.

A warning: Nature at the time was rooted in the British Empire. That, and a wartime anti-German sentiment, means that some opinions and terms are not in keeping with today’s enlightened internationalist attitudes. Apologies for any offence but, well, there was a war on.

The articles are bookended with striking editorials. The first, from September 1914, pointed out that Britain must restructure its industry “broadly based on science”. The final piece, published days after the Armistice in 1918, presciently warned that morals must advance with scientific knowledge, “for it is possible to conceive of a time when the forces at man’s disposal will be so strong that a hostile army or an enemy’s city may be destroyed almost at the touch of a button”. The war to end all wars was only the beginning.

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Science and war. Nature 511 , 6 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/511006a

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Published : 02 July 2014

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On the Study of War and Warfare

Lt. Gen. HR McMaster | 02.24.17

Editor’s Note: This article, by Lt. Gen H.R. McMaster, appointed national security advisor this week, originally appeared in 2014.

Approaching the Study of War and Warfare

It is hard to improve on the approach to studying war and warfare found in historian Sir Michael Howard’s 1961 seminal essay on how military professionals should develop what Clausewitz described as their own “theory” of war. First, to study in width: to observe how warfare has developed over a long historical period. Next to study in depth: to study campaigns and explore them thoroughly, consulting original sources and applying various theories and interdisciplinary approaches. This is important, Sir Michael observed, because as the “tidy outline dissolves,” we “catch a glimpse of the confusion and horror of real experience.” And lastly to study in context. Wars and warfare must be understood in context of their social, cultural, economic, human, moral, political, and psychological dimensions because “the roots of victory and defeat often have to be sought far from the battlefield.”

To develop understanding in “width, depth, and context,” we must be active learners dedicated to self-study and self-critique. Discussion and debate with others exposes us to different perspectives and helps us consider how what we learn applies to our responsibilities. Participative intellectual activity is critical to the “Self-Development Domain” of our Army’s leader development efforts. And the self-development domain is as important as the Operational Domain (unit training and operational experience) and the Institutional Domain (official Army schools) in helping leaders prepare for the challenges of future war. This is why forums such as the WarCouncil.org are important. Discussions on this site should challenge our assumptions and refine our thinking. [Editor’s note: WarCouncil.org is the domain on which MWI articles were previously published].

Understanding the Context—and the Continuities—of War

Successful American military leaders supplemented their formal learning through active reading, study, and reflection. In 1901, the father of the Army War College, Secretary of War Elihu Root, commented on “the great importance of a thorough and broad education for military officers,” due to the “rapid advance of military science; changes of tactics required by the changes in weapons; our own experience in the difficulty of working out problems of transportation, supply, and hygiene; the wide range of responsibilities which we have seen devolving upon officers charged with the civil government of occupied territory; the delicate relations which constantly arise between military and civil authority.” Thus, Root wrote, there was a “manifest necessity that the soldier, above all others, should be familiar with history.”

Self-study and professional discussions help leaders understand the character of particular conflicts, inform ideas of how armed conflict is likely to evolve, and help leaders understand the complex interactions between military, political, and social factors that influence the situation in war. Because leaders cannot turn back time once war occurs; they must develop an understanding of war and warfare before they enter the field of battle. As nineteenth-century Prussian philosopher of war Carl von Clausewitz observed , the study of war and warfare “is meant to educate the mind of the future commander, or, more accurately, to guide him in his self education, not to accompany him to the battlefield; just as a wise teacher guides and stimulates a young man’s intellectual development, but is careful not to lead him by the hand for the rest of his life.” Clausewitz continued, emphasizing that leaders should use their knowledge of military history “to analyze the constituent elements of war, to distinguish precisely what at first sight seems fused, to explain in full the properties of the means employed and to show their probable effects, to define clearly the nature of the ends in view, and to illuminate all phases of warfare in a thorough critical inquiry.”

Many of the recent difficulties we have encountered in strategic decision-making, operational planning, and force development have stemmed, at least in part, from the neglect of critical continuities in the nature of war. Military professionals, through their study of war and warfare in width, depth, and context as well as through discussion and debate in a variety of forums can help identify changes in the character of conflict as well as underscore important continuities in the nature of war. Consider these continuities, for example:

First, war is political. As von Clausewitz observed, “war should never be thought of as something autonomous but always as an instrument of policy.” In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, defense thinking was hijacked by a fantastical theory that considered military operations as ends in and of themselves rather than just one of several instruments of power that must be aligned to achieve sustainable strategic goals. Advocates of the “Revolution in Military Affairs” (RMA) predicted that advances in surveillance, communications, and information technologies, along with precision-strike weapons, would overwhelm any opponent. Experience in Afghanistan and Iraq revealed the flawed nature of this thinking. Professionals should be skeptical of ideas and concepts that divorce war from its political nature. And skepticism is particularly appropriate concerning theories that promise fast, cheap, and efficient victories through the application of advanced military technologies.

Second, war is human. People fight today for the same fundamental reasons that the Greek historian Thucydides identified nearly 2,500 years ago: fear, honor, and interest. Thinking associated with the RMA dehumanized as well as depoliticized the nature of war. The cultural, social, economic, religious, and historical considerations that comprise the human dimension of war must inform wartime planning as well as our preparation for future armed conflict. In Iraq and Afghanistan, gaining an appreciation of the fears, interests, and sense of honor among their internal communities was critical to move those communities toward political accommodations.

Third, war is an uncertain contest of wills. War’s political and human nature place armed conflict squarely in the realm of uncertainty. The dominant assumption of the RMA, however, was that that knowledge would be the key to victory in future war. Near-perfect intelligence would enable precise military operations within a realm of certainty. In Afghanistan and Iraq, planning was sometimes based on linear projections that did not account for enemy adaptations or the evolution of those conflicts in ways that were difficult to predict at the outset. War remains fundamentally uncertain due to factors that lie outside the reach of information and surveillance technologies. Moreover, war’s uncertainty and non-linearity are results of war’s political and human dimensions as well as the continuous interaction with determined, adaptive enemies. And wars are uncertain because they are contests of wills that unleash unpredictable psychological dynamics.

While a student at the German staff college between the World Wars, Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer noted that “an indomitable will and broad military knowledge, combined with a strong character, are attributes of the successful leader.” Wedermeyer continued, stating that leaders “must have a clear conception of tactical principles and their application,” and “only by continual study of military history and of the conduct of war with careful attention to current developments can the officer acquire the above stated attributes of leadership.” As professional soldiers, we share a moral and professional obligation to read, think critically, and engage in professional discussions. Forums such as WarCouncil.org are critical because junior leaders must develop an appreciation for leadership at the operational, joint, and strategic levels so they can place the actions of their units in context of war aims and develop an ability to advise senior military and civilian leaders on matters of policy and strategy.

To help develop professional expertise, the Maneuver Center of Excellence has developed the Maneuver Leader Self-Study Program (MSSP). The MSSP consists of books, articles, doctrine, film, lectures, practical application exercises, and online discussion forums to educate maneuver leaders about the nature of war and the character of warfare, as well as to emphasize their responsibilities to prepare their soldiers for combat, lead them in battle, and accomplish the mission. The broader intent of the of the MSSP is to enhance understanding of the complex interaction between war and politics in “width, depth, and context.” The program is also meant to foster a commitment to lifelong learning and career-long development to ensure that our leaders are prepared for increased responsibilities. Each MSSP topic contains a brief summary of the chosen topic, its relevance to maneuver leaders, and several study questions for reflection. Topics also contain annotated bibliographies as well as a link to an online discussion forum. In addition to your participation in WarCouncil.org, I invite you to explore the topics—and the discussions—of the MSSP .

Image credit: Sgt. Michael J. MacLeod, US Army

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January 11, 2021

The interplay between scientific progress and violence in modern war

by Katherine Unger Baillie, University of Pennsylvania

Scientific advancements can both heal and harm. The discoveries that underlie technologies from the gun to the atomic bomb emerged from the minds of scientists. Consequently, the creators of those and many other technologies have found themselves in moral quandaries resulting from the violent application of their insights.

In a new book, " Rational Fog: Science and Technology in Modern Warfare ," published by Harvard University Press, M. Susan Lindee, a professor in Penn's Department of History and Sociology of Science, explores how science and scientists have engaged in the advancement of military might.

In nine chapters that span the invention of guns in the Middle Ages to the emergence of drone warfare, she charts the nuanced moral terrain scientists have walked in developing these technologies. Without labeling the work itself as moral or immoral, Lindee notes how some researchers embraced the implications of their studies and innovations, while others distanced themselves from the consequences. The book is already generating discussion among historians of science and technology; Japanese and Russian translations are in the works.

Lindee spoke with Penn Today about "Rational Fog," including how it emerged from her teaching at Penn; the moral crises some scientists faced; and what the flashpoints for science's application in violence may be in years to come.

What is the origin story of the book?

It's a long set of thought processes. I've been teaching the course Science, Technology, and War for almost 20 years. As I taught the course I've been continually trying to think, "How do you convey this subject to students? How can you help them see what escapes them? What will they read that will really connect with them?"

My own research has been about the atomic bomb and the Cold War and how geneticists and biological scientists navigated this era, how they reacted to the idea that military interests could shape their interests. I got interested in the bigger theme and the more personal theme: How do individuals navigate these complex and morally vexing circumstances?

So I thought, "Let's pay attention to how individuals make their way through circumstances they consider vexed or contradictory to their core values." I didn't want to say, "Here are the good guys, and here are the bad guys." It's a way of making yourself innocent.

What do you mean by 'making yourself innocent?"

One thing I'm trying to suggest is, in the complexity of the culture we live in now, it's hard to see how you get to an innocent place, how you don't have a connection to suffering. So given that, I'm interested in what it means to move forward with integrity.

In the book, these guys—and it's mostly guys I'm talking about—they were caught in a system that violated some core values of what it meant to be a good person. I focus on the individual, what happens to the individuals who are caught inside these massive systems.

The book runs essentially chronologically, with each chapter focusing on different time periods or different wars. Why did you choose that structure?

The book very much reflects my lectures. The first chapter, on the gun, asks how a gun is to be understood as part of a sociotechnical system. It's about using the gun and even rejecting it. That lecture began as, "What does it mean to stand with a gun in your arms? What is the culture you're inside when you hold this thing steady, an object capable of inflicting injury at a distance?"

So it is chronological in some ways, but it's not a conventional history. It starts not with a detailed history of the gun but rather an exploration of what you learn if you think about the gun in that way. I'm interested in what the historical experiences of these technological systems help us see. What do they bring out into the open?

Some readers might be surprised to see the links between social science and war, which you talk about in a later chapter, "Battlefield of the Mind."

The social science stuff is fascinating. When debates about the creation of the National Science Foundation began in 1946, it was in theory a replacement for the wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development. OSRD did so much. It started work on the atomic bomb; it oversaw the development of penicillin. Scientists came out of the Second World War feeling like they had transformed the war; they won the war not just with the bomb but with healing technologies, too.

When the NSF was finally approved by Congress in 1950, it included no money for the social sciences. Social sciences were considered a lower form of technological knowledge production—way below physics for example! But eventually it was understood by U.S. leaders that the social sciences were going to be important for learning how you can persuade people, how you can control human behavior.

The Cold War was a war of display of weaponry, but it was also a war of persuasion. They had to persuade people in what was then called the Third World or what we call the Global South or the poor world that democracy and capitalism were better than communism.

Social science could help address this with investigations of how the human mind works, how can you educate people because education is a form of persuasion. Anthropology became a hand maiden to the Cold War, and of course psychology was also really important.

A lot of this work obviously happened at universities, like Penn. Can you describe how research ties together the modern university and war?

The modern university was invented as a site of defense funding. Who went to college in the early 1900s? A very small percentage of the population. Many colleges were not accessible to women, many were not accessible to people marked by race in any way. It was a very narrow thread of wealthy white guys who went to college.

So what happened to universities in the U.S. and elsewhere was shaped by the Second World War and the realization that victory might depend on having good scientists. And there is not any scientific field that did not at some point get pulled into defense interests in the course of the 20th century—even fields like archeology and ornithology. The number of faculty went up like a balloon in the '50s and '60s. People would finish their Ph.D. and have seven job offers.

And as a result, there were shifts in who was supposed to go to college. It became plausible for someone from the working class to attend university. And this period also sees the opening of many universities to women, especially public universities.

You can talk about all the liberal ideas at universities. But they are also defense hubs. They make new knowledge for national defense organizations.

And you note that the reverse is true, that war is a hub for new scientific knowledge.

One of the key arguments in the book proposes that battlefields have been significant scientific field sites over the last century. I show how scientific research could be built into invasion plans, and knowledge could be one downstream result of violence, just as violence was one downstream outcome of knowledge production. The idea that war generates 'collateral data' in this way—unexpected knowledge produced by the chaos of war—has been noticed by reviewers and picked up by other scholars.

I also propose, somewhat controversially, that those injured and killed by weapons systems should be understood, in our historical accounts, as 'consumers' of weapons systems. So much historical attention has been afforded to those who make weapons, use them, and decide to deploy them. But understanding technological systems of all kinds requires attention to those who consume them. The experiences of these involuntary consumers on the ground are crucial to any historical assessment of military technology. I actually find it a bit odd that entire books can be written about guns without mentioning people who were shot and killed.

Your title references the "fog of war," but what do you mean by "rational fog?"

In my field there's a lot of attention to modern rationality. The concept comes out of the scientific revolution. It's the valorization of the idea that reason can get us somewhere new, somewhere different, with a better understanding of the world.

When Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian military analyst, talks about the fog of war, he means that the view of a commander moving into a battlefield is obstructed, that the situation is uncertain and unpredictable. Decisions about when to attack, when to withdraw, take place in a kind of a dream state of intuition, experience, guessing.

My title extends this idea to technical experts. I suggest that my actors, the scientists I write about, who valorize reason and who take reason as the purpose of their work and their life, are also themselves inside the fog. The fog is a moral and ethical fog. They're moving forward, trying to make decisions about what questions to pursue and technologies to produce, often doing so without foresight, reflection, or overt ethics.

What do you see as the major moral scientific quandaries to come in the future?

The brutal stuff that's coming is drones and cyberwar. I talk about both in the book's conclusion. Cyberwar is now where significant funding is going. States and nonstate actors are already engaged in manipulating information in cyberwar. But there are also equally scary efforts aimed at intrusion into corporate networks, disruption of banking systems, having an impact on water purification systems, or, most recently, disrupting the cold chain for the new coronavirus vaccine. These are nightmare scenarios.

Drones are somewhat different. I talk in the course and in the book about how drones affect the concentration of military power. They remove what we might call a natural brake on military action. Individuals can and do sometimes refuse to fight; soldiers can shoot their guns above people's heads, they can desert, they can protest, all forms of resistance. All through the history of warfare, in order to have an effective army, it has been necessary for states to persuade relatively large numbers of people to fight.

The new prospect of drone warfare is roughly this: A billionaire can have an army of 100,000 and doesn't have to persuade a single person that their cause is just. We're not there exactly yet, but drones are a way of concentrating power in corporate actors, or extremely wealthy individuals. Military theorists propose that the robot or the drone eliminates the risks to individual soldiers, but the risks to individual soldiers are part of what puts a brake on violence.

How did you get interested in the questions of science applied in war in general?

I was raised in an intense Catholic environment. I grew up in a world where the words of a priest determined what truth was. Even then I began to think, "Do priests have a reason for what they believe? Do they know what they're talking about?"

It was a very powerful system for policing truth. And when I got interested in science it was exactly that property of science—as a philosophical system for policing truth and deciding what's true—that interested me.

In looking at these difficult subjects what I'm saying is, "Let's notice this; let's not turn away from this." Why do we how to send a missile around the curve of the earth while we don't know how to cure malaria? There's an inherent critique in the book: What if we turned knowledge to human needs and human benefits instead? One of my friends says the book is subversively pacifist. Maybe that's true.

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Science and Technology in War

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Science and Technology in War by William J. Astore LAST REVIEWED: 06 February 2012 LAST MODIFIED: 06 February 2012 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791279-0054

Science, technology, and warfare exist in a nexus of dependencies and possibilities. Science may be defined as organized knowledge; technology, as applied knowledge; and warfare, as organized violence. But warfare generates chaos, leading to unpredictability, uncertainty, and even irrationality. The rationality associated with science and technology rests uneasily with the chaos of war. That said, as long as humans have fought, they have sought advantages in speed, firepower, protection, reach, and similar qualities amenable to enhancements by rational methods of science and engineering. Some of history’s best minds––Archimedes of Syracuse, Leonardo da Vinci, J. Robert Oppenheimer––devoted much of their lives working as military engineers or scientists. The challenge is to situate science, technology, warfare and its practitioners into broader historical and social contexts, thereby revealing linkages to political structures, economic concerns, logistical and material considerations, and moral beliefs and constraints.

Eight studies pointed the way for sophisticated analysis of science, technology, and warfare. They have become classics in the field. Mumford 1934 highlights the intrusion of military imperatives and values on technological change, a critique the author develops further in Mumford 1967–1970 . Holley 1953 illustrates the importance of doctrine to the development and effectiveness of weapons in war; Morison 1966 shows how commitments to preexisting modes of training and fighting may discourage technical innovation. Nef 1968 and Kranzberg and Pursell 1967 provide context on the economic and technical factors driving changes in weaponry and warfare in the industrial age. Cipolla 1988 and Smith 1977 are model case studies of groundbreaking developments in a Western way of war that drew strength from its cannon-bearing oceangoing vessels and its ability to mass-produce firearms for its foot soldiers. White 1962 shows how the marriage of comparatively simple technology (stirrups) within a complex social structure (feudal Europe) can have astonishing impact and staying power.

Cipolla, Carlo M. Guns, Sails, and Empires: Technological Innovation and the Early Phases of European Expansion, 1400–1700 . Manhattan, KS: Sunflower University Press, 1988.

Classic study that highlights cannon-laden galleons as Europe’s weapon of power projection in the early modern period. Concludes that non-Western peoples had to adopt or adapt to Western technology or be subjugated. Whichever path they chose led to a loss of indigenous cultural and intellectual diversity vis-à-vis “the West.” Originally published in 1966 (New York: Pantheon).

Holley, I. B., Jr. Ideas and Weapons: Exploitation of the Aerial Weapon by the United States during World War I; A Study in the Relationship of Technological Advance, Military Doctrine, and the Development of Weapons . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953.

Privileges doctrine as defining “the scope and potential capabilities” of weapons systems and its foundational role in shaping which weapons will be selected for development. Doctrine defines roles and responsibilities, but more importantly it shapes what is considered to be desirable or even possible.

Kranzberg, Melvin, and Carroll W. Pursell Jr., eds. Technology in Western Civilization . 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Standard reference source in the history of technology; see in particular Thomas A. Palmer’s chapter on “Military Technology” in Volume 1, and Edward L. Katzenbach Jr.’s article on “The Mechanization of War, 1880–1919” in Volume 2.

Morison, Elting E. Men, Machines, and Modern Times . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966.

Especially strong on bureaucratic resistance to technological change and the way in which change creates uncertainty and thus resistance within tradition-minded military circles.

Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilization . New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1934.

Classic statement on the interconnectivity of technology with civilization and culture, by the doyen of the field. “In short,” says Mumford, “the partnership between the soldier, the miner, the technician, and the scientist is an ancient one.” Filled with provocative insights, for example, weapons and machines as “a means of creating a dehumanized response in the enemy or victim,” a facilitator of estrangement as well as of death. Essential.

Mumford, Lewis. The Myth of the Machine . 2 vols. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967–1970.

Irascible, at times brilliant, critique of technology and its dehumanizing qualities; each volume concludes with an annotated bibliography whose pithy assessments are often spot on and always entertaining. Volume 1, Technics and Human Development ; Volume 2, The Pentagon of Power .

Nef, John U. War and Human Progress: An Essay on the Rise of Industrial Civilization . New York: W. W. Norton, 1968.

Classic statement of the interconnectivity of war with the industrial revolution, commerce, and capitalism. Comprehensive and erudite. Originally published in 1950 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul).

Smith, Merritt Roe. Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: The Challenge of Change . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977.

Winner of the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize in 1978, a model study of arms manufacturing in antebellum America that addresses “The American System” of manufacturing (interchangeable parts and mechanization), as well as workers’ reactions (and resistance) to the same. Based on deep archival research.

White, Lynn, Jr. Medieval Technology and Social Change . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962.

Groundbreaking work that highlighted the role of stirrups in the ascendancy of knights as an arm of shock and decision in feudal Europe. Criticized, undeservedly so, for its apparent technological determinism.

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Essay on Science and War

Essay on Science and War:

It is a common, though the misplaced, belief that science is responsible for the frequent, highly destructive twentieth-century wars. This century has witnessed two extremely disastrous global wars. Even the debris of the first war had not been cleared when the second broke out. And this war proved more devastating than the first. It was towards the end of this war that America dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki completely effaced the two towns from the world map. Since the twentieth century is also the age when science has attained the highest state of its development, a suspicion naturally creeps into the minds of the people that there is some vital correlation between science and war.

But mankind used to indulge in fighting even when science was in its embryonic stage. Acquisitional instinct was as strong in Alexander’s mind as in Hitler’s. The absence of scientific weapons did not deter. Alexander from setting out on an ambitious program of world conquest. Nor was it the availability of those techniques that spurred Hitler to march his troops into Austria. The two were incorrigible power-maniacs. As long as there exist Alexanders and Hitlers in this world, there will be no end to war. Thus to hold science responsible for war is wholly unjustified.

Science has, of course, brought about a revolutionary change in the technique of war. Our ancestors marched to the battlefield on foot, on horseback, or elephants, and they fought with fists and cudgels; they hurled stones at their enemies. A little later, swords and bows and arrows appeared on the scene. Even these weapons involved the knowledge of scientific principles but this knowledge was direct and empiric. It does not need any insight. But modern war is a highly mechanized affair. We use Migs and Gnats, tanks and submarines, missiles, and anti-aircraft guns. There exist such ingenious methods of killing the enemy as the use of fatal bacilli and poisonous gases.

It was the discovery of gun powder and its effectiveness as a killer along with the use of motorized vehicles that changed the whole complexion of the war. With gun powder came the rifles and the cannon. Jeeps led to amphibians tanks. Since the latter was too strong to be pierced by ordinary bullets, powerful explosives were discovered to destroy them. And since it is impossible to exist when they are raining fire and death, fighting from behind the trenches and pill-boxes was devised.

Bombers and submarines were the next innovations. They are generally unmanned and are operated from a laboratory. Bombers fly at a fantastic speed, rain mighty explosives, and come back. Submarines, almost impossible to detect, prove even more dangerous. Sometimes they can explode an entire fleet. These instruments of war have rendered manpower useless. H. G. Wells once wrote about a war that would be fought with robots. His dream seems to have been realized. Yesterday’s fantasy is today’s reality.

The latest pests introduced by science are atom bombs and other nuclear weapons. They threaten the complete annihilation of this planet. But even the atom bomb is not the end. We now hear of the hydrogen bomb, the cobalt bomb, and the G. gas, which would be a million times more deadly than the existing weapons. In the Second World War, some American scientists were approached to discover gaseous products that wouldn’t kill but make the whole population blind. It was H. G. Wells again who once wrote about an anarchist who wanted to pour the live germs of cholera into the reservoir supplying water to a city and cause the death of thousands of innocent citizens. Even this has been unused in modern war. Battlefields just do not exist now. We kill from laboratories and die in dormitories. It is all a simple push-button-die affair.

It is often argued that war has given a great incentive to scientific advancement, particularly in the sphere of medicine. Necessity is said to be the mother of invention. And war creates not only a necessity but urgency. If there exist bombers, there must be invented anti-aircraft guns. The production of an invulnerable tank must lead to the discovery of mightier explosives to smash it. Large-scale use will rapidly consume and exhaust natural resources. This has led to the manufacture of synthetic products. Synthetic yarns are today more popular than natural cotton and silk. For want of external food supplies during the war, some countries are faced with the threat of starvation. This has led them to make efforts to attain self-sufficiency in food. They try to raise the productivity of soil by controlling land temperature, using scientifically prepared fertilizers, by speeding up the maturing process. Scientists have even gone to the extent of producing synthetic food. A large number of soldiers used to be fatally wounded in the war. Their wounds would soon turn skeptic and they would painfully creep to a wretched death. Their pathetic plight made Sir Alexander Fleming work day and night and give to the world the wonder drug- penicillin. This and the subsequently discovered more powerful antibiotics have saved thousands of lives. Replacement of limbs and translation of various organs of the body have also been successfully tried.

Though war stimulates scientific progress, it would be wrong to think that but for war, there would have been no progress at all. War creates urgency but it also creates insecurity. And nothing very creative can be achieved when a scientist’s mind is not at peace with himself. If the scientists had been given peace and the requisites to facilitate work, their achievements would have been even more miraculous, more laudable.

There is another aspect worthy of consideration, too. If science makes war more dangerous, it also acts as a deterrent to war. All the nations are quite aware of the monstrous strength wielded by nuclear weapons. They know that in the event of another nuclear war breaking out, their very existence would be threatened. This dissuades even the most headstrong among the statesmen from declaring hostilities.

– NIOS

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Essay on “Science And War” Complete Essay for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Science And War

Essay No. 01

“Science has improved the circumstances of man, not the man himself.”- Wingfield

Modern war has become a total war. It is not two armies’ war. It is a war by all for total destruction. With advance of science war has become horrible. It brings untold sufferings. It causes death by millions. Old war was fought in the battle field alone. Modern war is fought in different countries. Modern war is fought only on land but also in the air and on the sea.

Sword is not bad if we use it in good purpose. Hence science is a good slave in our power but a bad master having power over us. There is nothing good or bad master having power over us. There is nothing good or bad but thinking (use) makes it so.

Science has placed huge power in the hands of men. Inventions are made for the welfare human beings, but they are mostly misused. The result is that Science has become our greatest enemy. Instead of increasing our happiness, it has brought about death. Miseries and destruction in the world. War is the deadly enemy of the human race and civilization. No peace loving nation likes wars. War is an unmixed evil.

A careful analysis will show that war is fought only because of lust for power. The basis of all wars is selfishness and ambition. The modern war takes place more for economic reasons. Now nations fight to get monopoly over the trade and commerce of a particular country. Modern war is the fight for markets to sell the manufactured goods and to buy raw materials. The production of goods on a large scale is indirectly the cause of the present wars.

Modern war has very destructive after – effects. Generations are affected by the radio – active effects of nuclear weapons. Children are born defective. Those who escape death become disabled. There is all round misery, starvation and sickness.

For commerce and Industry a war is fatal. It kills normal trade and commerce and they are thoroughly dislocated. During the war time mills and factories produce goods mostly for the army. It has an evil effect on the trade and commerce of the countries. War is also very harmful for the progress of art, culture and literature. Things become too dear. The country as a whole has to suffer.

The modern war has a degrading effect on public morals. During the war there is hatred and ill feeling everywhere. The feeling of love and sympathy are driven out form the hearts of the people. Moral and economic corruption prevails in the country. War is the mother of many evils.

All the discovers and invention of modern science are used for the destruction of humanity and not for their comfort and happiness. The aeroplanes are used for dropping bombs. The best machines are used for the production of arms and ammunition. Sciences has produced horrible weapons like Atom bombs, hydrogen bombs, tanks, poisonous gases, bomb aeroplanes, rockets, battle ships etc. In modern war nothing is safe.

If an atomic war takes place, all will suffer. The whole world including who has no concern would be turned into ashes. It will end our civilization from this earth. There will be chaos.

According to Dr. Radhakrishnan, we do not suffer from split atom but from split mind. When the sense of brotherhood passes away from mind and when we forget kindness, goodness and fellowship, we enter into wars. Mentality of man is the root base of war. Science can be called indirectly responsible to make war more destructive because mind makes a heaven of hell and hell of heaven.

Essay No. 02

Science and War

Wars have been taking place from the beginning of mankind. Earlier these were combined to the battlefield and were fought with traditional weapons like swords and spears. However with scientific development, wars today have become many times more dangerous and destructive. The two Super Powers possess bombs which, in the event of a war between them, can wipe out the human race.

The history of mankind tells us that wars have been a recurring feature of human existence. Even in the early stages of civilization men fought among themselves. They fought over property which comprised land, cattle and women. Later on, wars were fought between kings of different countries. Wars between England and France in the 16th century are a relevant example. In our own times, two World Wars in 1914-1918 and in 1939-1945 have been fought. All this confirms the belligerent nature of man who, periodically, must indulge in wars.

But wars in the olden times were not so dangerous and deadly. The weapons of warfare were primitive and simple. To begin with, swords and spears were used. The damage done by wars both in terms of men and soldiers was minimal. Wars were confined to the battlefield and soldiers. Then the guns and cannons were invented. Babar was the first to use a Cannon (then known as Topkhana) in war.

The nature of modem war has completely changed. it is no longer restricted only to the battlefield. Civilians too are attacked and killed: In the modern warfare, it is not so much a soldier’s courage that counts, it is the nature and quality of machines that matter. The victory depends on the superiority of the lighting equipment. During World War –II Five hundred to one thousand bombers used to raid England almost every night. There was enormous loss of life and all round destruction. Innocent children and women also became the victims of war.

Swift means of travel and transport have been invented. Supersonic aerial transport and the modem means of communication have compressed the world in to small unit. Therefore, a war breaking out in one part of the world is very likely to involve other nations as well. Today, a war is always in the danger of turning into a global War.

Scientific inventions of sophisticated instruments of warfare have increased the destructiveness of modern war. Widespread destruction is wrought in war with the help of submarines, magnetic mines, tanks long-range guns, highly inflammable explosives, poisonous gases and missiles.

Another feature of a modern-war is that it a total war. Besides being fought on land, it is also fought on so under sea and in the air. There are submarines to sink the ships carrying cargo and men. The lighter bombers discharge lethal bomb on the enemy-territory. Thus, a vast destruction of men and properly is caused.

The discovery of atomic energy by scientists has added a new dimension to the modern warfare. lt has led to the manufacture of atomic bombs. During the Second World War, the two bombs thrown over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan caused untold destruction of life and property. Eight thousand people were killed in Hiroshima and an equal number in Nagasaki. The successive generations till today have not completely recovered from the ill-effects of the atomic bombs. The heat-flash from the bombs burnt up objects even at a great distance. Each bomb was the equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT. The explosive content in the Hiroshima bomb was uranium 235. The Nagasaki bomb had Plutonium in it.

Ever since the Second World War, the two Super Powers-the United States and the former U.S.S. R had been vying with each other in inventing deadlier weapons of destruction. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki appears to be already outdated. The hydrogen bomb a much more destructive weapon has been developed. This bomb has millions of tons of TNT. The fifty-megaton and the hundred megaton bombs in large numbers are known to exist in the arsenals of the Two Super Powers. The U.S Seventh Fleet is reported to possess atomic bombs with a total explosive force 16,000 megatons. Spectrum bomb has been perfected by the U. S. A. This bomb has a power 01 one million tons of T, N. T. and can be bred by a three stage Spartan Missile.

The scientists both in the USA and USSR have perfected a far worse weapon than even the hydrogen bomb. This is the sandwich Triple F bomb. It is a three stage device going from fusion to fusion and back to fusion again. The-H- bomb is coated with Uranium-238. its turns into a weapon capable of spreading radio- active fission over the world.

Science has made available different types of guided missiles. These have turned warfare into a terrifying business. There now exist air to surface missiles, ground to air missiles, surface-to-surface missiles, and. Air to air missiles. The inter-continental ballistic missiles can release a bomb from a long distance with perfect precision to hit the target.

Mans urge to destruction is heading him towards newer and more lethal methods of warfare. Biological warfare is also a possibility now. Bombs tilled with bacteria would be dropped. “they would spread disease, poison the soil and the crops, make women sterile and so on. A biological war will even be more dangerous than the nuclear war. Also different gases have been discovered to kill and destroy human beings. Tear gas and nausea gas have been considered obsolete now. Nerve gas has been found to be fourteen times deadlier than mustard gas. These gases have much larger killing potential than other weapons. Their system of delivery makes them really fearsome. Large quantities of gas will be spread in the enemy area by surface to surface missiles and artillery with extreme ranges.

Science has placed in the hands of man lethal weaponry. It has turned the modern wars into gigantic engines of destruction. Although the modernization of weapons might reduce the duration of wars, the extent of destruction will be more than the conventional wars.

The two super powers-the USA and former USSR-have been distributing their weapons to the countries who are members of their pacts or are friendly to them they are also training their personnel for handling these weapons.

January l7, l991 will be recorded in history as start of war in the Gulf where a variety of arms and ammunition was used and the number of countries involved was perhaps second only to World War II. The US and its allies had their state-of-the-art weaponry while, Iraq had its relatively outdated arms supplied by the very forces ranged against it. The allied used their latest bombers, Tomahawk Cruise Missiles and aircraft carriers in the war, lraq used the Soviet supplied Scud missiles. To counter the Sends the USA used the Patriot missiles. lraq sometime threatened to use Chemical weapons against the allies. These weapons can bring death in minutes or stretch the agony into hours, there is no protection against it unless the country concerned has a large number of protection suits and mask for its people. lraq has suffered huge losses in this conflict of 40 days both in men and materials.

Taking lesson from the Gulf war the UNO and Super powers should tumours and set the human body right is many other ways. Discovery of antibiotics has made the cure of infectious diseases very easy. Open heart surgery and treatment of even cancer have become a possibility. Immunity against certain diacritics like plague, cholera and small-pox can be ensured with the help of inoculation. Atomic energy is being used to cure diseases like cancer, radioactive isotopes are being increasingly used for this purpose.

Travelling has become fast, safe and comfortable. Long distances can he covered by aeroplanes, and fast moving trains. Cars, limes, trams and scooters have contributed to making man so much more mobile.

Science has performed wonders in the Field of communications. One can send messages to a friend over a distance to thousands of kilometres. One can even talk with ones nears and dears over the telephone in other cities and now even in other countries. Wireless is indeed a wonderful means of communication. Communication satellites like lNSAT-1B. have added to the marvels of science.

Scientific and technological advancement has brought about machines which have considerably reduced the burden of physical labour. The workers in factories today are much more comfortable than their counterparts in the years gone-by. Machines have particularly made agriculture less strenuous”. There are now composite machines which take care of cutting, threshing and winnowing of crops as also sloughing and sowing.

Science has also made life more interesting and exciting. There are numerous means of recreation which our ancestors could not even imagine. Cinema, television, radio, tape-recorders and now V.C.Rs (including numerous video games) are available to amuse and entertain us. One need not sit feeling bored in the evenings. One can now easily choose the means of entertainment one likes best.

The most important discovery of science is that of atomic energy. Atomic energy is increasingly being used for the welfare of mankind. It is beneficially used in the fields of medicine and surgery. it is made use of to produce cheap electricity. In the Field of agriculture. it is used to destroy insects and pests. ln industry, it has-increased the production of goods of better quality and cheaper in price. At this rate atomic energy may well come in handy in running trains, motor vehicles and aeroplanes.

But this is only one side of the picture. Science which has given so many blessings to mankind can be a curse also. The proof lies in the past.

It has given man deadly weapons which he uses for destroying his fellow men. In olden times, men fought with swords and spears. A war was confined to the fighting armies only. Also the number of human casualties was small. But the two World Wars have demonstrated the destruction that science can bring about. The memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has not faded. The ill-effects of atom bombs dropped on those areas can still be seen among the children of hundred aeroplanes raided Britain every night for months together. They caused untold destruction, while the Allied planes wrought and materials were wrecked by submarines. Science has contributed to the arsenals of the countries. Submarines, magnetic mines, tanks, long-range guns, high explosives, ground to air missiles, surface-to surface missiles, aeroplanes, atom bombs, hydrogen bombs and neutron bombs (capable of destroying men and leaving the “property undamaged), and intercontinental ballistic missiles (which one country Can aim at the other by just stirring a finger) have been made available. The ultra sophisticated weapons in the possession of the United States and Russia, in fact, are capable of destroying the whole world in the event of a Third World War.

More and more countries like China, France (even Pakistan is trying to possess) are in possession of nuclear weapons. Therefore, the possibility of the Third World War is increasing The world today appears to be sitting on a pile of nuclear weapons if they are used by the slightest misunderstanding between the Super Powers, mankind will be completely destroyed.

Besides tanking war an extremely deadly affair, science is also responsible for affecting the health of man. Establishment and expansion of factories has resulted in all round pollution. Pollution is taking its toll. The high-rise chimneys which belch out clouds of smoke and soot pollute the atmosphere and air, causing diseases of bronchial tube and lungs. Noxious effluents from the factories are discharged into rivers and canals. The water is turned into an active agent of diseases of the stomach. The increasing industrialization is also responsible for noise pollution. The increased decibel value in the atmosphere affects the nervous system and ear mechanism. Nervous strain makes men impatient, irritable” and quarrelsome.

Machines have no doubt reduced the amount of energy and labour to be put in by the workers But they have simultaneously aggravated the problem of unemployment. Electronic machines and computers threaten to make thousands of men jobless Introduction of machines has reduced the importance of men workers in the factories Man today is secondary to the machines He is so completely dependent on them that without these he feels handicapped.

Science has made men more materialistic. Scientific theory of evolution” of mankind does not recognise any God or Creator. This in turn has knocked off the Spiritual basis of humanity. Godless men and women have begun to feel rootless and frustrated If there is no God, there cannot be any divine agency enforcing justice Hence, men have become callous and cruel to their fellow brethren. Cutthroat competition among men is a prominent feature of modem scientific societies.

Therefore, should we do away with science and its discoveries and inventions? Should one throw away the baby with the bath-water? If science has made wars dangerous, it is not the fault (if science as such. It is man s lust for power. His instinct to fight needs to be curbed. “Poison can be used to kill and cure diseases. Similarly, science can be used by man either for his welfare, or for the destruction of his fellow beings. Ways and means canoe found to check the pollution resulting from industrialization. And men need not abandon their humaneness while pursuing materialistic goals.

There is, therefore the urgent need to check the destructive propensities of man rather than give up the advantages that Science has conferred on mankind.

Essay No. 03

Science is a blessing to mankind as well as a vehicle of war. Nuclear weapons started to-appear after the Chinese first invented the gunpowder. Nuclear war started with the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima during the Second World War. Millions of people died. The Gulf War II shattered Iraq economically. Modern wars are no longer confined to the battlefield.

Major cities and sometimes whole nations are targeted. Developing countries like India and Pakistan would have already become developed nations if they -had not spent crores of .rupees for the collection of weapons. There are military stations and spy satellites in .space which pose a threat to mankind. Man should utilize nuclear energy for useful purposes rather than killing himself.

Science is a blessing to mankind. Man has been able to provide himself with all the best comforts. He has turned the world into a global village. He has conquered space. He has conquered the depth of the oceans also. It is all because of science. Now man has started misusing science. Science has become the medium for the manufacture of destructive nuclear weapons. The whole mankind will be destroyed if a nuclear war starts. However, science is not to be blamed for it. Man should check the destructive aspect and use science for the progress of humanity.

Science has become an active associate of war after the Chinese invented gunpowder. Initially, it was used in firecrackers. That was a harmless purpose. But soon man began to misuse gunpowder for destructive purposes.

With the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in August 1945, World War II came to an end. The loss of millions of lives and the aftermath surprised the whole world. Property, worth millions of rupees was destroyed. The Americans used Uranium 235 on Hiroshima and Plutonium on Nagasaki. The people who survived suffered from mutation caused by the radioactive elements.

Today, the nuclear powers like the USA have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the entire world. More countries are on the way of becoming ‘nuclear powers. Modern wars are being fought with scientific weapons like tanks, guns, bomb, missiles, aeroplanes and rockets. War is extended from the land to sea, and then from sea to air.

Man doesn’t think destruction while using weapons for killing his own fellow beings. This is because of the loss of human values. He has become a slave of machines. His attitude towards his fellow beings has become mechanical.

Developing countries like India, Pakistan etc. are investing crores of rupees for buying and manufacturing nuclear weapons. If this amount had been used for economic development, they would have already become developed nations. But nuclear weapons, are necessary for national security. All nations should unite and co-operate to leave nuclear weapons. They should realize the essence of common brotherhood. They should consider themselves the citizens of one world, not of different nations.

Man can use weapons for peaceful purposes. With increasing population. Transportation, industries, etc., the natural resources like petroleum, coal, etc. will be exhausted one day. Thus, nuclear or atomic energy if used for such purposes can prove to be a boon to mankind.

Essay No. 04

“War! that mad game the world so much loves to play.”

Man is a fighting animal. There have been wars since times immemorial. Science is certainly not the cause of wars. But the inventions of modern science have changed the nature of war. Science has made modern war much more destructive and horrible.

Modern warfare is not doubt fought by soldiers, but it has become more and more a war of machines. Soldiers still have occasion to show their valour and sense of sacrifice but if they are short of machine power, they are bound to fail.

Moreover the war of today is not only a war at the war front or in the field of war. The war of today affects the civilian population as well. A bomb dropped on a military installation can also destroy by it the civilian’s life neighbouring it. In this way the modern war is not fought only on the battle field but is carried deep into the hearts and homes of people who have remotely nothing to do with it.

In the beginning of the world, men used to fight with the help of stones and sticks. A little later, they started using bows and arrows. The bows and arrows were replaced by swords, axes, daggers and spears. Horses and elephants were used to carry the fighting soldiers. Whenever there was a war, not more than a few hundred persons were killed or wounded on either side. As civilization advanced further, wards became more and more horrible with the advance of science, gun powder was invented. Guns and cannons now came to be used. Aeroplanes made the movement of soldiers easy and quick. This made wars quite terrible wars now started taking a heavy toll of life and property.

Modern science has made things even worse. Today, man is equipped with dangerous weapons of destruction. He can cause large scale deaths and devastation. The atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Second World War spelt doom and disaster on the two cities. The two cities were completely destroyed. Thousands lost their lives, property worth millions was reduced to ashes.

All this has taught no lesson to man. Today we hear of bombs which are thousands of times deadlier than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The atomic submarine, deep penetration aircrafts, guided missiles and poisonous gases have made wards more horrible today. It is estimated that the whole world in a matter of minutes if, God forbids, a world war breaks out, it will certainly be the last was to be fought by humanity. Nobody will be left alive to fight another war. The Third World War would mean a total extinction of humanity can’t we have a world free from wards. In the context of this possibility only, the leaders of the world are now working for the destruction or delimitation of these giants of destruction America and Russia have agreed to cut down their stockpiles of nuclear weapons. A lot, however, no mains to be done.

There is a German proverb, which says, “A great war leaves the country with three enemies – an army of cripples, an army of mourners and an army of thieves- . The greatest curse that can be entailed on mankind is a state of war. All the atrocities committed in years of peace, all that is spent in peace in secret corruptions, or by the thoughtless extravagance of nations, are mere trifles compared with the gigantic loses of war. God is forgotten in war and Devil is the ruler. It is nothing less than a temporary repeal of the principles of virtue. It is a system out of which almost all the virtues are excluded and all the vices are included. It is a concentration of all crimes, violence, malignity, rage, fraud, perfidy, rapacity and lust, all are the natural ingredients of war. If there is anything in which earth, more than any other, takes after hell, it is war.

The mighty weapons are hanging on the head of the world like the sword of Damocles. We cannot imagine the horrors of a modern war. Let the war-mongers feel the consequences of the Third World War. It is high time they take a vow never to wage a war. Let them make this world a heaven of peace, free from wars. They should act upon Pachsheel (Five Principles of Co-existence). In them and them alone lies the progress and salvation of mankind.

We can only pray with Lord Tennyson :

“Let knowledge grow from more to more : And more of wisdom in us dwell That mind and soul proclaiming well, May make one music as before.”

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The connection of science with war has grown gradually more and more intimate. The greatest men of the Renaissance commended themselves to the powerful by their skill in scientific warfare. The Crimean war could still be celebrated by Kinglake in the romantic language of the ages of chivalry, but modern war is a very different matter. Some wars in the past were quite as disorganising and as destructive of the civilisation of devastated areas as was the Second World War. Modern warfare, so far, has not been more destructive of life than the warfare of less scientific ages, for the increased deadliness of weapons has been offset by the improvement in medicine and hygiene. The mortality rate in such campaigns was far greater than in the two great wars of our own century. North Africa has never regained the level of prosperity that it enjoyed under the Romans.

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Science and Technology as Powerful Tools of Warfare and Destruction Essay (Article)

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Technology advances and innovations have always been tightly connected with warfare and military purposes. Throughout the history technology and science were developing gradually; however, starting from the 20 th century, the scientific advances have undergone a significant change. Though some scientific achievements are used for the population’s welfare, I am strongly convinced that the majority of scientific advances are used as revolutionary and powerful tools of warfare and destruction.

Scientific discoveries and achievements obviously help improve, facilitate and simplify the everyday life of the population. For instance, the invention of satellites enables people to explore the space, receive synoptic and geographical data, make high-resolution photos and have access to wireless communications and the Internet. Moreover, satellite observations of the Earth over the last 50 years help the scientists analyze and comprehend the processes that govern the planet, thus, it is possible to predict the disasters and save human lives ( Earth observation from space: the first 50 years of scientific achievements 2008). Among other scientific accomplishments, there are innovations in pharmacology and medicine. The scientists have invented vaccines against many viruses, developed new drugs that are more effective and less aggressive to the human body, and advanced diagnostic methods. On the other hand, all the aforementioned scientific accomplishments can be used to the detriment of the humans’ lives and well-being. Though technological benefits for the population are indisputable, I suggest that breakthrough technologies are often used to invent powerful weapons, improve the conduct of warfare and increase military effectiveness.

First of all, technology makes killing less personal. For instance, the invention of remote-controlled drones, ranged weapons and nuclear bombs enables the army to preserve anonymity and avoid field battles (Lukparta & Andeshi, 2014). Stroeken in his book War, Technology, Anthropology (2012) states that introducing of stealth technologies results in many casualties since face-to-face combats become mediate and the victims are dehumanized (p. 7). Complete automation of weapon, such as land-based missiles, makes it possible for the army to kill the enemy by pressing a button. “The machine identifies the enemy attack and responds by firing warheads at stationary” (Van Creveld, 1991). Consequently, technological achievements eliminate the necessity of open field battles and make the killing of the enemy less personal.

Secondly, scientific advances induce the appearance of a more aggressive weapon and more twisted methods of warfare. Nowadays the leading countries use high-tech weapons with accurate target acquisition and greater range of lethality. It means that the area of the battlefield is about 150 by 150 km, and the death toll is bigger as well (Lukparta & Andeshi, 2014). The invention of eavesdropping technologies, air defense systems, and unmanned aircrafts make the war more complicated and intricate. Moreover, with the appearance of cyber power, the battlefield is also transferred into the virtual space. For instance, organized denial-of-service attacks can prevent the whole country’s Internet system from functioning, like it happened to Georgia in 2008” (‘Power and national security in cyberspace’ 2011). Though such methods are considered illegal, they are still widely used by the opponents. Thus, technologies are applied to make more advanced tools of war.

Finally, technologies promote the application of non-traditional methods of warfare, such as mass influence via media. Propaganda has been successfully and skilfully used since the ancient times (Bratic, n.d). However, the period of World War I was crucial in the development of mass persuasion techniques via sharing printed materials, movies and papers (Bratic, n.d). Nowadays propaganda methods are even more delicate. “Information can travel through cyberspace and create soft power by attracting citizens of another country” (‘Power and national security in cyberspace’ 2011, p. 13). Weapon defeats the military while propaganda affects civilians, which means that the impact is much more distinct, especially in long-term perspective. In this way, the development of communication technologies and cyberspace is highly damaging and destructive for the population.

The undeniable fact is that technological benefits are used both by the civilian population and the army. The scientific achievements always imply the improvement of the military tools and weapons. Despite the evident advantages of the technologies, they may be highly destructive to the humanity, if used for military purposes.

‘Power and national security in cyberspace’ 2011, in K Lord (ed.), America’s cyber future: Security and prosperity in the information age, Center for a new American Security, Washington D.C., pp. 7-21.

Bratic, V. (n.d). Examining piece-oriented media in areas of violent conflict . Web.

Earth observation from space: the first 50 years of scientific achievements 2008, Washington D.C.: National academies press.

Lukparta, V. & Andeshi C. (2014). Impact of technology on modern life: a colossus in defence and security. 2(2). 45-56. Web.

Stroeken, K. (2012). War, technology, anthropology . New York: Berghahn Books.

Van Creveld, M. (1991). Technology and war . New York: Free Press.

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Science and war are heavily intertwined subjects. Advancements in science and technology have played a major role in the evolution of warfare throughout history, from the invention of gunpowder and cannons to the development of atomic bombs and drones. Scientists have contributed to war efforts by designing new weapons and strategies, improving communication and surveillance technology, and conducting research on topics such as physiology and psychology to help soldiers better withstand the physical and emotional stresses of combat. However, the use of science and technology in war has also raised ethical concerns about the morality and consequences of certain weapons and tactics, highlighting the complex relationship between science, war, and society.

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Article contents

The conduct and consequences of war.

Alyssa K. Prorok Alyssa K. Prorok Department of Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
and Paul K. Huth Paul K. Huth Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.72
Published in print: 01 March 2010
Published online: 22 December 2017
This version: 25 June 2019
Previous version

The academic study of warfare has expanded considerably over the past 15 years. Whereas research used to focus almost exclusively on the onset of interstate war, more recent scholarship has shifted the focus from wars between states to civil conflict, and from war onset to questions of how combatants wage and terminate war. Questioned as well are the longer-term consequences of warfare for countries and their populations. Scholarship has also shifted away from country-conflict-year units of analysis to micro-level studies that are attentive to individual-level motives and explanations of spatial variation in wartime behavior by civilians and combatants within a country or armed conflict. Today, research focuses on variations in how states and rebel groups wage war, particularly regarding when and how wars expand, whether combatants comply with the laws of war, when and why conflicts terminate, and whether conflicts end with a clear military victory or with a political settlement through negotiations. Recent research also recognizes that strategic behavior continues into the post-conflict period, with important implications for the stability of the post-conflict peace. Finally, the consequences of warfare are wide-ranging and complex, affecting everything from political stability to public health, often long after the fighting stops.

interstate war
laws of war
civilian victimization
war termination
war severity
post-conflict peace

Updated in this version

Updated introduction, subheadings, references, and substantial revision throughout.

Introduction

Over the past 15 years, research by social scientists on the conduct and consequences of war has expanded considerably. Previously, scholarly research had been heavily oriented towards the analysis of the causes of interstate war and its onset. Three simultaneous trends, however, have characterized scholarship on war since the early 2000s. First, studies of the dynamics of civil war have proliferated. Second, war is conceptualized as a series of inter-related stages in which the onset, conduct, and termination of wars as well as post-war relations are analyzed theoretically and empirically in a more integrated fashion. Third, studies have shifted away from country-conflict-year units of analysis to micro-level studies that are sensitive to spatial variation in behavior within a country or conflict.

This article reviews and assesses this body of recent scholarship, which has shifted the focus from war onset to questions of how combatants wage war and what are the longer-term consequences of warfare for countries and their populations. Scholarly research examines the conduct and consequences of both interstate and civil wars.

The analysis is organized into three main sections. It begins with research on how states and rebel groups wage war, with particular attention given to questions regarding war expansion, compliance with the laws of war, and war severity. Section two turns to the literature on war duration, termination, and outcomes. Different explanations are discussed, for when and why wars come to an end; then, the question of how war’s end influences the prospects for a stable post-war peace is considered. In section three, recent scholarship is examined on the consequences of war for post-war trends in political stability and public health. The concluding discussion addresses some of the important contributions associated with recent scholarship on the conduct and consequences of war as well as promising directions for future research.

The Waging of Civil and International Wars

What accounts for the nature of the wars we see? This broad question drives a new research tradition in conflict studies that compliments traditional analyses of war onset by shifting the focus to state behavior during war. This research goes beyond understandings of why states fight one another to engaging questions of why states join ongoing wars, when and why they follow the laws of war, and what explains the severity of wars. Taken together, these questions open the black box of wartime behavior.

Intervention and the Expansion of Interstate Wars

Research on war expansion developed as a natural outgrowth of analyses of war onset: scholars studying why states initiate conflict shifted focus to understand why third parties join ongoing wars. The link between alliances and joining behavior has been central to studies of war expansion, spawning a broad research tradition that focuses on alliances and geography, differences among types of alliances, and the characteristics of alliance members. Siverson and Starr ( 1991 ), for example, find a strong interaction effect between geography and alliances, in that a warring neighbor who is an ally increases the likelihood of a state joining an existing conflict. Leeds, Long, and Mitchell ( 2000 ) also find that the specific content of alliance obligations is critical to understanding when states choose to intervene, and that states uphold the terms of their alliance commitments nearly 75% of the time. Most recently, Vasquez and Rundlett ( 2016 ) found that alliances are essentially a necessary condition for war expansion, highlighting the importance of this factor in explaining joining behavior.

Alliance behavior is also an important topic in the study of democratic wartime behavior. While Choi ( 2004 ) presents findings suggesting that democracies are particularly likely to align with one another, Reiter and Stam ( 2002 ) provide counter-evidence that democracies are willing to align with non-democracies when it serves their strategic interests. Given the tendency to uphold alliance obligations, and empirical evidence showing that war initiators are more successful when their adversary does not receive third-party assistance (Gartner & Siverson, 1996 ), recent theoretical research suggests that states, understanding joining dynamics, might manipulate war aims to reduce the likelihood of outside intervention (Werner, 2000 ).

These studies suggest that war expansion should be understood as the consequence of a decision calculus undertaken by potential joiners. While much of the contemporary literature focuses on alliance behavior, this only indirectly gets at the question of who will join ongoing conflicts. A full explanation of war expansion from this perspective would also require that we explain when states form alliances in the first place. Further, the analyses of Gartner and Siverson ( 1996 ) and of Werner ( 2000 ) suggest that strategic thinking must be the focus of future research on war expansion. Recent research begins to address this issue: DiLorenzo and Rooney ( 2018 ) examine how uncertainty over estimates of third party resolve influence war-making decisions of states, finding that rival states are more likely to initiate conflict when domestic power shifts in potential joiner states (i.e., allies) increase uncertainty over the strength of that alliance commitment. Future research should continue to investigate the links between expectations of third-party behavior and initial war initiation decisions, as this research highlights important selection processes that empirical research has not yet fully explored.

Finally, recent research goes further to connect war initiation and expansion by arguing that commitment problems—one of the key bargaining failures leading to war initiation—also helps explain war expansion. Shirkey ( 2018 ) finds that wars caused by commitment rather than information problems are more likely to expand, as they are generally fought over greater war aims, are more severe, and last longer. These factors generate risks and rewards for intervention that encourage expansion.

The literature on interstate war expansion has made progress in the last decade with much closer attention to modeling strategic calculations by combatants and potential interveners. The result has been a better understanding of the interrelationship between onset and joining behavior and the realization that the timing and the sequence in which sides intervene is critical to war expansion (Joyce, Ghosn, & Bayer, 2014 ).

Expansion of Civil Wars

The analog to studies of war expansion in the interstate context has traditionally been the study of intervention in the civil war context. Research in this field treats the decision to intervene in much the same way as the war expansion literature treats the potential joiner’s decision calculus. That is, intervention is the result of a rational, utility-maximizing decision calculus in which potential interveners consider the costs and benefits of intervention as well as the potential for achieving desired outcomes. Understood in these terms, both domestic and international strategic considerations affect the decision to intervene, with the Cold War geopolitical climate much more conducive to countervailing interventions than the post-Cold War era has been (Regan, 2002a ), and peacekeeping-oriented interventions most likely in states with ethnic, trade, military, or colonial ties to the intervening state (Rost & Greig, 2011 ).

Whether states are most likely to intervene in easy or hard cases is a central question. While Aydin ( 2010 ) showed that states will delay intervention when previous interventions by other states have failed to influence the conflict, Rost and Grieg ( 2011 ) showed that state-based interventions for peacekeeping purposes are most likely in tough cases—long ethnic wars and conflicts that kill and displace large numbers of civilians. Finally, Gent ( 2008 ) shows that the likelihood of success may not affect the intervention decision equally for government and opposition-targeted interventions. He finds that both types of intervention are more likely when governments face stronger rebel groups, thus implying that intervention in support of rebel groups occurs when the likelihood of success is highest, but intervention supporting governments is most likely when states face their most intense challenges.

There are two likely sources of the discrepancies in this literature. First, most analyses have focused exclusively on the intervener’s decision calculus, or the supply side, failing to account for variation in the demand for intervention. Second, there is significant inconsistency in the literature’s treatment of the goals of interveners. Some analyses assume that states intervene to end conflicts, while others don’t make this limiting assumption but still fail to distinguish among interventions for different purposes.

Newer research takes important strides to address these issues. First, Salehyan, Skrede Gleditsch, and Cunningham ( 2011 ) developed a theory of third party support for insurgent groups that explicitly modeled both supply-side and demand-side factors driving the intervention decision. They found that demand is greatest among weak rebel groups, but supply is greatest for strong groups. Second, research by Cunningham ( 2010 ) explicitly measured whether third party states intervene with independent goals, and Stojek and Chacha ( 2015 ) theorized that intervention behavior is driven by economic motivations. Trade ties increase the likelihood of intervention on the side of the government.

Finally, Kathman ( 2010 ) focused on contiguous state interveners in examining motives for intervention. He developed a measure of conflict infection risk that predicts the likelihood of conflict spreading to each contiguous state. Empirically, he finds that, as the risk of contagion increases, so does the probability of intervention by at-risk neighbors. This research develops a convincing mechanism and empirical test to explain a subset of interventions and provides a clear link from intervention research to recent research on civil conflict contagion. While the contagion literature is too broad to review here, mechanisms posited for civil war expansion across borders range from refugee flows (Salehyan & Gleditsch, 2006 ), to ethnic kinship ties (Forsberg, 2014 ), to increased military expenditures in neighboring states (Phillips, 2015 ).

The literature on intervention into civil wars has grown significantly over the past decade as internationalization of civil conflicts has become common and often results in escalatory dynamics that are of deep concern to analysts and policymakers.

Compliance With the Laws of War

Scholars have recently begun studying the conditions under which compliance with the laws of war is most likely and the mechanisms most important in determining compliance. This research shifts the focus toward understanding state behavior during war and the strategic and normative considerations that influence decision-making processes of states. Two key questions drive scholarship in this tradition; first, does international law constrain state behavior, even when the state is threatened by severe conflict, and second, can observed compliance be attributed to ratification status, or is it instead a result of strategic decision making?

Scholars have yet to provide conclusive answers to these questions; while compliance is observed in many circumstances, most scholars attribute observed restraint to factors other than international law. Legro ( 1995 ), for example, found that international agreements had limited impact on Britain and Germany’s use of unrestricted submarine warfare, strategic bombing of civilian targets, and chemical weapons during WWII. In analyses of civilian targeting during interstate war, Downes ( 2006 ) and Valentino, Huth, and Croco ( 2006 ) also found that international law itself has little impact on a state’s propensity for civilian targeting. Downes argued that civilian targeting occurs most often when states are fighting protracted wars of attrition and desire to save lives on their own side, or when they intend to annex enemy territory with potentially hostile civilians. Valentino et al. ( 2006 ) similarly found that the decision to target civilians is driven by strategic considerations and is unconstrained by treaty obligations relating to the laws of war. Finally, Fazal and Greene ( 2015 ) found that observed compliance is explained by identity rather than law; violations are much more common in European vs. non-European dyads than in other types of dyads.

While these analyses suggest that international law has little effect on state behavior and that observed compliance is incidental, Price ( 1997 ) and Morrow ( 2014 ) argued that law does exert some influence on compliance behavior. Price attributed variation in the use of chemical weapons to the terms of international agreements, arguing that complete bans are more effective than partial bans. Morrow ( 2014 ), however, demonstrated that law’s impact varies depending upon issue area, regime characteristics, and adversary identity. Of eight issue areas, he found the worst compliance records on civilian targeting and prisoners of war, which perhaps accounts for the largely negative conclusions drawn by Downes ( 2006 ) and Valentino et al. ( 2006 ). Additionally, Morrow found, unlike Valentino et al., that democratic states are more likely to comply after ratification than before, suggesting that obligations under international law do affect state behavior, at least in democracies. Finally, he demonstrated that compliance increases significantly when an adversary has also ratified a given treaty, arguing this effect is due to reciprocity.

More recent scholarship expands this research, showing that law may affect state behavior through additional mechanisms that previous research had not considered. For example, Kreps and Wallace ( 2016 ) and Wallace ( 2015 ) found that public support for state policies as diverse as drone strikes and torture of prisoners of war are critically influenced by international law. International condemnation of U.S. policies reduces public support most when such condemnation focuses on legal critiques. This suggests that international law influences state behavior in democracies through its effect on public opinion, not through liberal norms of nonviolence. Additionally, Appel and Prorok ( 2018 ) and Jo and Thompson ( 2014 ) showed that external constraints influence states’ compliance behavior. Specifically, Appel and Prorok showed that states target fewer civilians in interstate war when they are embedded in alliance and trade networks dominated by third party states who have ratified international treaties prohibiting the abuse of non-combatants during war. Jo and Thompson showed that states are more likely to grant international observers access to detention centers when they are more reliant upon foreign aid. These findings suggest that international law can influence state behavior indirectly, through pressure exerted by international donors and backers.

Scholarship on compliance with the laws of war in interstate wars has made considerable progress over the past decade. We now know much more about the contingent support of democratic state leaders and publics for compliance with the laws of war. This key finding opens up new areas of research on the strategic efforts of political and military leaders to convince publics of their commitment to international law and whether those strategies are likely to be successful.

Civilian Targeting in Civil War

The mistreatment and deliberate targeting of civilian populations is an active area of research by scholars who study civil wars (Hultman, 2007 ; Humphreys & Weinstein, 2006 ; Kalyvas, 2006 ; Valentino et al., 2004 ; Weinstein, 2007 ; Wickham-Crowley, 1990 ). Most research on this topic treats the use of violence against civilians as a strategic choice; that is, combatants target civilians to induce their compliance, signal resolve, weaken an opponent’s support base, or extract resources from the population. In his seminal work on the topic, Kalyvas ( 2006 ) demonstrated that combatants resort to the use of indiscriminate violence to coerce civilian populations when they lack the information and control necessary to target defectors selectively. Similarly, Valentino ( 2005 ) and Valentino et al. ( 2004 ) found that incumbents are more likely to resort to mass killing of civilians when faced with strong insurgent opponents that they are unable to defeat through more conventional tactics.

More recent analyses have built upon these earlier works, adding levels of complexity to the central theories developed previously and examining new forms of violence that previous studies did not. Balcells ( 2011 ) brought political considerations back in, finding that direct violence is most likely in areas where pre-conflict political power between state and rebel supporters was at parity, while indirect violence is most likely in locations where the adversary’s pre-war political support was highest. Wood ( 2010 ) accounted for the impact of relative strength and adversary strategy, finding that weak rebel groups, lacking the capacity to protect civilian populations, will increase their use of violence in response to state violence, while strong rebel groups display the opposite pattern of behavior. Lyall ( 2010a ) also found conditionalities in the relationship between state behavior and insurgent reactions, demonstrating that government “sweep” operations are much more effective at preventing and delaying insurgent violence when carried out by forces of the same ethnicity as the insurgent group. Finally, Cohen ( 2016 ) advanced research by focusing on wartime sexual violence. She found that rape, like other forms of violence, is used strategically in civil war. Specifically, armed groups use rape as a socialization tactic: groups that recruit through abduction engage in rape at higher rates, to generate loyalty and trust between soldiers.

This large body of research provides many insights into the strategic use of violence against civilians during civil war. However, until recently, little research addressed questions of compliance with legal obligations. With the recent formation of the International Criminal Court, however, states and rebel groups are now subject to legal investigation for failure to comply with basic principles of the laws of war.

Emerging research suggests that the International Criminal Court (ICC) and international law more generally do affect the behavior of civil war combatants. For example, Hillebrecht ( 2016 ) found that ICC actions during the Libyan civil war reduced the level of mass atrocities committed in the conflict, while Jo and Simmons ( 2016 ) found that the ICC reduces civilian targeting by governments and rebel groups that are seeking legitimacy, suggesting international legal institutions can reduce violations of humanitarian law during civil war. These findings should be tempered, however, by recent research suggesting that ICC involvement in civil wars can, under certain conditions, extend ongoing conflicts (Prorok, 2017 ).

Finally, beyond the ICC, Stanton ( 2016 ) and Jo ( 2015 ) both demonstrated that international law constrains civil war actors by establishing standards against which domestic and international constituencies judge the behavior of governments and rebel groups. Particularly when rebels are seeking legitimacy, Jo argues, they are more likely to comply with international legal standards in a variety of areas, from protection of civilian populations to child soldiering. This research suggests that even without direct intervention by the ICC, international law can influence the behavior of governments and rebels engaged in civil war.

While recent research has shown that the laws of war can influence civilian targeting in civil wars, the large loss of civilian life in the Syrian civil war highlights how fragile the commitment to international law can be. It points to important future research questions about when threats of various sanctions by the international community against non-compliance are actually credible and which actors can apply effective coercive pressure.

Losses Suffered in Wars

Recent scholarship has taken up the issue of war severity. Empirical research suggests that the tactics and strategies used by states during war, and the political pressures that compel them to adopt those policies, affect the severity of conflict. Biddle ( 2004 ), for instance, argued that war-fighting strategies influence the magnitude of losses sustained during war, and found that states employing the modern system of force reduce their exposure to lethal firepower, thus limiting losses. Valentino, Huth, and Croco ( 2010 ) examined the reasons behind different strategic choices, arguing that democratic sensitivity to the costs of war pressure democratic leaders to adopt military policies designed to limit fatalities. They found that increasing military capabilities decreases civilian and military fatalities, while reliance on guerrilla or attrition strategies, as well as fighting on or near one’s own territory, increases fatalities. They reported that democracies are significantly more likely to join powerful alliances and less likely to use attrition or guerrilla strategies, or to fight on their own territory.

Speaking to the conventional wisdom that interstate warfare is on the decline, recent research by Fazal ( 2014 ) suggests that modern medical advances mean that, while war has become less fatal, it has not necessarily become less severe. This raises questions about common understandings of broad trends in conflict frequency and severity as well as questions about best practices for measuring conflict severity. Future research should grapple with both of these issues.

Civil war studies have recently begun to focus more on conflict severity as an outcome in need of explanation. Many key explanatory factors in early research mirrored those in interstate war research, making comparison possible. For example, like interstate war, civil war scholarship consistently finds that democracies suffer less severe conflicts than nondemocracies (Heger & Salehyan, 2007 ; Lacina, 2006 ; Lujala, 2009 ). Regarding state military strength, research by Lujala ( 2009 ) demonstrated that relative equality between government and rebel forces leads to the deadliest conflicts, as rebels with the strength to fight back will likely inflict more losses than those without the ability to sustain heavy engagement with government forces. Finally, recent research by Balcells and Kalyvas ( 2014 ) mirrored work on interstate war by focusing on how the military strategies adopted by combatants affect conflict intensity. They found that civil conflicts fought via conventional means tend to be more lethal than irregular or symmetric nonconventional (SNC) wars, as only the former involve direct confrontations with heavy weaponry. While research on conflict severity is still developing, these studies suggest that democracy, military strength, and strategy are consistent predictors of conflict severity, although the mechanisms posited for the effects of these variables sometimes differ between civil and interstate war.

What this research does not provide clear answers on is how battle losses trend throughout the course of conflict, as most factors examined in the above research are static throughout a conflict. As our ability to measure conflict severity at a more micro temporal and spatial level has improved, emerging research is beginning to address these questions. For example, Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon ( 2014 ) find that increasing UN troop presence decreases battlefield deaths by increasing the costs of perpetrating violence. Dasgupta Gawande, and Kapur ( 2017 ) also found reductions in insurgent violence associated with implementation of development programs, though the pacifying effects of such programs are conditional upon local state capacity. Additional research shows that trends in violence in Islamist insurgencies vary predictably, with violence suppressed due to anticipated social disapproval during important Islamic holidays (Reese, Ruby, & Pape, 2017 ). Recent research also suggests local variation in cell-phone coverage affects local levels of insurgent violence, as increasing cell-phone communication improves the state’s ability to gather information and monitor insurgent behavior, thereby reducing insurgent violence (Shapiro & Weidmann, 2015 ). These recent studies represent an important trend in conflict severity research that more carefully examines the dynamics of escalation and de-escalation within given conflicts, both spatially and temporally. We encourage additional research in this vein.

The Duration, Termination, and Outcome of War

What accounts for the duration, termination, and outcomes of interstate and civil wars, and the durability of the peace that follows these conflicts? These questions represent a central focus of contemporary conflict studies, and are closely linked in terms of their explanations. A major innovation in this literature in the past 10 to 15 years has been the extension of the bargaining model of war from its original application in the context of war onset (Blainey, 1973 ; Fearon, 1995 ) to its use in the context of war duration, termination, and outcome.

The turn to bargaining models has placed relative military capabilities and battlefield developments at the center of much of the theoretical literature in this area. This focus, however, has spawned a backlash in recent years, as patterns that contradict the implications of bargaining models are detected and theorized. The bargaining approach and its critiques are discussed in the following sections.

Duration of Wars

Understood within the bargaining framework, war duration is closely linked to factors that influence the relative strength of combatants. Theoretical and empirical research suggests that longer wars occur when opponents of relatively equal strength cannot achieve breakthroughs on the battlefield (Bennett & Stam, 1996 ; Filson & Werner, 2007b ; Slantchev, 2004 ), although this pattern does not hold for wars involving non-state actors where a large asymmetry in power increases war duration (Sullivan, 2008 ).

Additional research suggests, however, that relative military strength may not be the best predictor of war duration. Bennett and Stam ( 1996 ), for example, demonstrated that military strategy has a large impact on war duration, independent of military strength, with attrition and punishment strategies leading to longer wars than maneuver strategies. The type of political objectives sought by a war initiator may also offset the impact of military strength, as war aims that require significant target compliance generally lead to longer wars (Sullivan, 2008 ). Still others argue that domestic political sensitivity to concessions-making increases conflict duration, while domestic cost sensitivity leads to shorter wars (Filson & Werner, 2007a ; Mattes & Morgan, 2004 ). Thus, democracies are expected to fight shorter wars (Filson & Werner, 2007b ), whereas mixed regimes will fight longer wars as they gamble for resurrection in the face of high domestic costs for war losses (Goemans, 2000 ). Research by Lyall ( 2010b ), however, suggests that this relationship is conditional upon conflict type, as he found no relationship between democracy and war duration in the context of counterinsurgency wars.

Biddle ( 2004 ) more directly challenged bargaining models of war duration by comparing the predictive power of models including traditional measures of relative military capabilities to those accounting for combatants’ methods of force employment. Biddle demonstrated that models taking force employment into account generate more accurate predictions of war duration than those assuming an unconditional relationship between military power and war duration. A second important challenge to traditional applications of bargaining models comes from Reiter ( 2009 ). He demonstrated that the argument that decisive battlefield outcomes promote quick termination is conditional upon the absence of commitment problems. When compliance fears dominate information asymmetries, battle losses and the expectation of future losses may not be sufficient to end conflict, as belligerents will continue fighting in pursuit of absolute victory to eliminate the threat of the losing state defecting from post-war settlements. Reiter thus demonstrates that commitment problems and information asymmetries have varying effects on war duration, and both must be accounted for in models of conflict duration and termination.

Despite these critiques, more recent research continues to approach the question of war duration from the bargaining perspective. Shirkey ( 2012 ), for example, argued that late third-party joiners to interstate conflicts lengthen those disputes by complicating the bargaining process. Joiners add new issues to the war and increase uncertainty about relative power among combatants, thus requiring additional fighting to reveal information and find a bargained solution. Weisiger ( 2016 ) similarly focused on information problems, but attempts to unpack the mechanism by focusing on more specific characteristics of battlefield events. Using new data on the timing of battle deaths for specific war participants, Weisiger found that settlement is more likely after more extensive fighting, and that states are more likely to make concessions after their battle results have deteriorated. Finally, recent research has also begun to problematize resolve, considering how variation in actors’ resolve affects their willingness to stay in a fight or cut losses (Kertzer, 2017 ). This represents a fruitful area for future research, as conceptually and empirically unpacking resolve will shed new light on costs of war and how they relate to war onset, duration, and termination.

Scholars studying the duration of civil wars also commonly apply a rationalist perspective. Factors that increase the costs of sustaining the fight generally shorten wars, while those that raise the costs of making concessions tend to lengthen conflicts. Along these lines, research suggests that the availability of contraband funding for rebel groups lengthens conflicts by providing rebels with the economic resources to sustain their campaigns (Fearon, 2004 ). However, additional research demonstrates that the influence of contraband is mitigated by fluctuations in its market value (Collier, Hoeffler, & Söderbom, 2004 ), by how rebels earn funding from resources (through smuggling versus extortion; Conrad, Greene, Igoe Walsh, & Whitaker, 2018 ), and by the composition of state institutions (Wiegand & Keels, 2018 ).

Research suggests that structural conditions also affect civil war duration, such as the stakes of war, ethnic divisions, and the number of combatants involved. For example, ethnic conflicts over control of territory are generally longer than those fought over control of the central government (Balch-Lindsay & Enterline, 2000 ; Collier et al., 2004 ; Fearon, 2004 ). Regarding the role of ethnicity, Wucherpfennig, Metternich, Cederman, and Skrede Gleditsch ( 2012 ) demonstrated that the effect of ethnic cleavages is conditional on their relationship to political institutions. Regarding the complexity of the conflict, Cunningham ( 2011 ) found that civil wars with a greater number of combatants on each side are longer than those with fewer combatants. Findley ( 2013 ), however, showed that the number of conflict actors has varying effects across different stages of conflict, encouraging cooperation early on while impeding lasting settlement.

Third party intervention has also received significant attention in the civil war duration literature, with scholars generally arguing that intervention affects duration by augmenting the military strength of combatants. Empirical findings in early studies are mixed, however; while results consistently show that unbiased intervention or simultaneous intervention on both sides of a conflict increase war duration (Balch-Lindsay & Enterline, 2000 ; Balch-Lindsay, Enterline, & Joyce, 2008 ; Regan, 2002b ), biased interventions generate more inconsistent results.

In a valuable study addressing limitations of earlier research, Cunningham ( 2010 ) focused on the goals of third parties, and found that when interveners pursue agendas that are independent of those of the internal combatants, wars are more difficult to terminate due to decreased incentives to negotiate and a higher likelihood that commitment problems stymie settlements. This suggests that the empirical finding that intervention lengthens war may be driven by a subset of cases in which third parties intervene with specific goals. Ultimately, analyses focused on intervention do not account for the potential selection effect that influences when states will intervene. If Gent ( 2008 ) is correct, biased intervention should be most likely when the power ratio between government and rebel forces is close to parity, a factor which, if ignored, may bias the results of these analyses.

More recent studies have continued to unpack intervention, demonstrating that there are important distinctions beyond the biased versus balanced debate. Sawyer, Cunningham, and Reed ( 2015 ), for example, showed that different types of external support affect rebel fighting capacity differently. Specifically, fungible types of support like financial and arms transfers are particularly likely to lengthen conflict because they increase uncertainty over relative power. Similarly, Narang ( 2015 ) also focused on the uncertainty induced by external support. He showed that humanitarian assistance inadvertently increases both actors’ uncertainty over relative power, thereby prolonging civil war.

Until recently, this literature suffered from a major weakness in that it relied empirically on state-level variables that did not fully capture the dyadic nature of its theoretical propositions. Cunningham, Skrede Gleditsch, and Salehyan ( 2013 ) new dyadic data represents an important contribution to the field, as it explicitly measures the relative strength, mobilization capacity, and fighting capacity of rebel groups and applies a truly dyadic empirical approach. New research in this field should continue to approach questions of war duration and outcome with dyadic data and theory along with more micro-level studies that seek to explain variation in rebel and state fighting across different geographic locations and over time (e.g., Greig, 2015 ).

Ending Wars as a Bargaining Process

Interstate wars rarely end in the complete destruction of the defeated party’s military forces. Instead, new information is revealed through combat operations and negotiating behavior which enables belligerents to converge on a mutually agreeable settlement short of total war. Wittman ( 1979 ) provided the first formal articulation of the bargaining model in the context of war termination. He argued theoretically that war continues until both adversaries believe they can be made better off through settlement. Subsequent analyses have focused on both the battlefield conditions and strategies of negotiations leading states to believe settlement is the better option.

These analyses show that, as a state’s resources are depleted from battle losses, it has incentives to negotiate a settlement more acceptable to its adversary rather than suffer total defeat (Filson & Werner, 2002 ; Smith & Stam, 2004 ). Further, fighting battles reduces uncertainty by revealing information about resolve, military effectiveness, and the true balance of power between adversaries, causing expectations on the likely outcome of the war to converge, and making settlement possible (Wagner, 2000 ). Wartime negotiations provide adversaries with additional information, which Slantchev ( 2011 ) argued makes war termination more likely.

Challenging traditional notions regarding the likelihood of termination in the face of large asymmetries in capabilities, Slantchev ( 2011 ) argued that war termination depends upon states’ abilities to both impose and bear the costs of fighting. If a weaker state can minimize the costs it bears while forcing its adversary to expand its war effort, the benefits of fighting relative to its costs are reduced, and the stronger state may choose termination. The implication of this argument relates closely to Biddle’s ( 2004 ) empirical critique of the bargaining literature, which finds modern methods of force employment can mitigate losses during war, thereby shifting the balance of costs and benefits independent of relative military capabilities. Reiter’s ( 2009 ) critique of bargaining approaches also has implications for war termination. While traditional approaches argue that fighting battles reveals information and increases the likelihood of termination, Reiter suggested that this is only the case if belligerents expect their opponent to comply with the post-war status quo. If commitment problems are severe, information revealed during battles and war-time negotiations will have little effect on termination.

Biddle’s argument that country-year measures of military capabilities are inexact and crude proxies for the concepts advanced in theoretical models is a strong one that should be taken seriously by scholars. We therefore appreciate the contributions of Ramsay ( 2008 ) and Weisiger ( 2016 ), which use more fine-grained battle trend data rather than country-level measures of military capabilities to empirically test the implications of bargaining theories of war termination, and advocate future research adopting this strategy for testing the implications of bargaining theories.

Much of the literature on civil war termination also focuses on how battlefield developments affect the termination of civil wars. Collier et al. ( 2004 ) built on the idea of war as an information revelation mechanism, arguing that the probability of settlement should increase as war duration increases and more information is revealed regarding the relative strength of each side. Others focus on the costs of battle, with research showing that settlements are more likely when the costs of battle are high and the relative payoffs from victory decrease (Walter, 2002 ). Also, a relatively equal balance of power between combatants creates a mutually hurting stalemate, in which neither side can achieve victory, and settlement becomes more likely (Walter, 2002 ).

Empirical results support many of these theoretical predictions. Several scholars show that the longer a civil war lasts, the more likely it is to terminate (Collier et al., 2004 ; Fearon,, 2004 ; Regan, 2002b ), and that the probability of negotiated settlement increases as conflict duration increases (Mason, Weingarten, & Fett, 1999 ). The magnitude of conflict, measured as total war deaths, also correlates positively with the probability of adversaries initiating negotiations (Walter, 2002 ). Finally, Walter ( 2002 ) found that military stalemates significantly increase the likelihood of negotiations as well as the implementation of a ceasefire.

While these results support the theoretical predictions surrounding “hurting stalemates,” Walter’s coding of stalemates does not account for the timing of the stalemate or the number of stalemates that occur throughout the course of conflict. We therefore see great value in more recent research that uses new micro-level data to more closely capture actual battle dynamics and incorporate more information at the conflict and group-level. For example, Hultquist ( 2013 ) used a novel troop strength measure to better capture relative strength between rebel and government forces. He found that relative power parity increases the likelihood of negotiated settlement, while power imbalances extend civil war. Making use of fine-grained data on battle event dates and locations, Greig ( 2015 ) showed that the location, and changes in location over time, of battle events relays information to combatants that, in turn, affects their willingness to negotiate and settle their conflicts. We encourage additional research in this vein moving forward.

Domestic-Level Factors and War Termination

Recent research suggests that domestic political conditions influence war termination. Specifically, domestic political accountability, the domestic audience’s expectations, and cost-sensitivity affect leaders’ decisions to continue fighting versus settling on specific terms (Mattes & Morgan, 2004 ). Along these lines, Goemans ( 2000 ) argued that the postwar fate of leaders influences their choice between terminating and continuing a war. The threat of severe punishment by domestic actors increases the costs of war losses for leaders of semi-repressive regimes, leading them to continue fighting a war they are losing in the hope of achieving victory. Thus, war termination does not follow strictly from battle trends.

Empirically, Goemans ( 2000 ) found that losing mixed regimes suffer significantly more battle deaths than democratic or autocratic losers, and that wars fought against losing mixed regimes last, on average, almost twice as long as those fought against either democratic or autocratic losers. Taken together, these results suggest that mixed regime leaders are likely to sustain rather than terminate a losing war, and more generally, that regime type significantly influences war termination. Croco ( 2015 ) refined Goemans’s work by arguing that the individual responsibility of leaders for involving their country in a war has important effects on war termination patterns, with culpable leaders more likely to fight for victory in order to avoid being punished domestically for poor wartime performance. Croco and Weeks ( 2013 ) refined this logic further, showing that only culpable leaders from democracies and vulnerable nondemocracies face increased punishment risk from war losses. Koch and Sullivan ( 2010 ) provide another take on the relationship between domestic politics and war termination, demonstrating that partisanship significantly affects democratic states’ war termination decisions. Faced with declining approval for military interventions, their results demonstrate, right-leaning governments will continue the fight, while left-leaning executives will be more likely to end their military engagements.

The analog to studying domestic-level factors in interstate conflict would be to examine the effect of internal state and rebel characteristics on civil war termination. Traditionally, civil war studies have focused only on state characteristics, as data on rebel groups’ organization and internal characteristics has been unavailable. Early research argued that state capacity, regime characteristics, and ethnic/religious divisions influenced war termination by influencing the balance of power, accountability of leaders, and stakes of conflict, but empirical results provided mixed support for these theories (e.g., DeRouen & Sobek, 2004 ; Svensson, 2007 ; Walter, 2002 ).

More recent research has made significant strides in understanding how internal characteristics of combatants affect civil conflict termination by using new data to explore how the composition and practices (i.e., leader characteristics, governance, and internal cohesion) of rebel groups influence civil conflict dynamics. This research demonstrates that some of the same leader-accountability mechanisms that affect interstate war termination also influence civil conflict. For example, Prorok ( 2016 ) used novel data on rebel group leaders to show that culpable leaders are less willing to terminate or settle for compromise outcomes than their non-culpable counterparts in civil wars, just like in interstate conflicts. Heger and Jung ( 2017 ) also advanced existing research by using novel data on rebel service provision to civilian populations to explore how good rebel governance affects conflict negotiations. They found that service-providing rebels are more likely to engage in negotiations and to achieve favorable results, arguing that this reflects the lower risk of spoilers from groups with broad support and centralized power structures. Finally, Findley and Rudloff ( 2012 ) examined rebel group fragmentation’s effects on conflict termination and outcomes. Using computational modeling, they find that fragmentation only sometimes increases war duration (on fragmentation, also see Cunningham, 2014 ).

These studies underscore the value of exploring rebel group internal structures and practices in greater detail in future research, as they have an important impact on how, and when, civil wars end.

Victory/Defeat in Wars

Recent scholarship on victory and defeat in war suggests, as in the duration and termination literatures, that domestic politics, strategies of force employment, military mechanization, and war aims mediate the basic relationship between military strength and victory. Empirical results show that strategy choices and methods of force employment have a greater impact on war outcomes than relative military capabilities (Biddle, 2004 ; Stam, 1996 ), that high levels of mechanization within state militaries actually increase the probability of state defeat in counterinsurgency wars (Lyall & Wilson, 2009 ), and that weak states win more often when they employ an opposite-strategy approach in asymmetric conflicts (Arreguin-Toft, 2006 ) or when the stronger party’s war aims require high levels of target compliance (Sullivan, 2007 ). High relative losses and increasing war duration also decrease the likelihood of victory for war initiators, even if prewar capabilities favored the aggressor (Slantchev, 2004 ).

More recent research focuses on counter-insurgent conflicts, using new micro-level data and modeling techniques to address questions of counterinsurgent effectiveness in these complex conflicts. For example, Toft and Zhukov ( 2012 ) evaluated the effectiveness of denial versus punishment strategies, finding that denial (i.e., increasing the costs of expanding insurgent violence) is most effective, while punishment is counterproductive. Relatedly, Weidmann and Salehyan ( 2013 ) used an agent-based model applied to the U.S. surge in Baghdad to understand the mechanisms behind the surge’s success. They found that ethnic homogenization, rather than increased counterinsurgent capacity, best accounts for the surge’s success. Finally, Quackenbush and Murdie ( 2015 ) found that, counter to conventional wisdom, past experiences with counterinsurgency or conventional warfare have little effect on future success in conflict. States are not simply fighting the last war.

An important area of research that has fostered significant debate among scholars focuses on explaining the historical pattern of high rates of victory by democracies in interstate wars. The strongest explanations for the winning record of democracies center on their superior battlefield initiative and leadership, cooperative civil-military relations, and careful selection into wars they have a high probability of winning (Reiter & Stam, 2002 ). Challenging these results both theoretically and empirically, however, Desch ( 2002 ) argues that “democracy hardly matters,” that relative power plays a more important role in explaining victory. This debate essentially comes down to the relative importance of realist-type power variables versus regime type variables in explaining military victory; while scholars such as Lake ( 1992 ) and Reiter and Stam ( 2002 ) argued that regime type matters more, Desch asserted that relative power is the more important determinant of military victory.

Ultimately, we find Desch’s objections to the relevance of democracy to be overstated and his theoretical and empirical justifications to be largely unconvincing. First, Desch’s analysis is biased against Reiter and Stam’s argument because it is limited to dyads that Desch labels “fair fights,” that is, dyads with relatively equal military capabilities. This does not allow Desch to test the selection effect that Reiter and Stam discuss. Second, Desch failed to recognize that many of the realist variables he attributes the greatest explanatory power to are actually influenced by the foreign and military policies adopted by democratic leaders (Valentino et al., 2010 ). Democracy thus has both a direct and an indirect effect on war outcomes, and because Desch ignores the latter, he underestimates democracy’s total impact. Finally, the impacts of power variables may be overstated, as recent research demonstrates that military power’s influence is conditional upon method of force employment and military mechanization (Biddle, 2004 ; Lyall & Wilson, 2009 ).

More recent research examines some of the mechanisms suggested for the unique war-time behavior of democracies, raising some questions about existing mechanisms and suggesting alternatives to explain democratic exceptionalism. For example, Gibler and Miller ( 2013 ) argued that democracies tend to fight short, victorious wars because they have fewer territorial (i.e., high salience) issues over which to fight, rather than because of their leaders’ political accountability. Once controlling for issue salience, they find no relationship between democracy and victory. Similarly, using novel statistical techniques that allow them to account for the latent abilities of states, Renshon and Spirling ( 2015 ) showed that democracy only increases military effectiveness under certain conditions, and is actually counterproductive in others. Finally, new research by Bausch ( 2017 ) using laboratory experiments to test the mechanisms behind democracy and victory suggested that only some of these mechanisms hold up. Specifically, Bausch found that democratic leaders are actually more likely to select into conflict and do not mobilize more resources for war once involved, contrary to the selection and war fighting stories developed by Reiter and Stam ( 2002 ). He did find, however, that democratic leaders are less likely to accept settlement and more likely to fight to decisive victory once conflict is underway, and that democratic leaders are more likely to be punished than autocrats for losing a war. Thus, the debate over the democratic advantage in winning interstate wars continues to progress in productive directions.

Theoretical arguments regarding civil war outcomes focus on state/rebel strength, positing that factors such as natural resource wealth, state military capacity, and third-party assistance influence relative combatant strength and war outcomes. Empirical studies find that increasing state military strength decreases the likelihood of negotiated settlement and increases the probability of government victory (Mason et al., 1999 ). Characteristics of the war itself also affect outcomes, with the probability of negotiated settlement increasing as war duration increases (Mason et al., 1999 ; Walter, 2002 ), and high casualty rates increasing the likelihood of rebel victory (Mason et al., 1999 ).

Debate remains over how third-party interventions affect civil war outcomes. UN intervention decreases the likelihood of victory by either side while increasing the probability of negotiated war terminations (DeRouen & Sobek, 2004 ). This impact is time sensitive, however (Mason et al., 1999 ). Further, the impact of unilateral interventions is less clear. While Regan ( 1996 ) found intervention supporting the government to increase the likelihood of war termination, Gent ( 2008 ) found military intervention in support of rebels to increase their chance of victory but that in support of governments to have no significant impact. More recent research by Sullivan and Karreth ( 2015 ) helps explain this discrepancy. They argued that biased intervention only alters the chances for victory by the supported side if that side’s key deficiency is conventional war-fighting capacity. Empirically, they show that because rebels are generally weaker, military intervention on their behalf increases their chance of victory. For states, however, military intervention only increases their odds of victory if the state is militarily weaker than or at parity with the rebels.

Additional new research by Jones ( 2017 ) also represents an important step forward in understanding the effects of intervention in civil war. By examining both the timing and strategy of intervention, Jones demonstrated that the effects of intervention on conflict outcomes are much more complex than previous research suggests.

Post-War Peace Durability

As with studies on war duration, termination, and outcomes, much of the literature on the stability of post-war peace grows from extensions of the bargaining model of war. For these scholars, recurrence is most likely under conditions that encourage the renegotiation of the terms of settlement, including postwar changes in the balance of power (Werner, 1999 ) and externally forced ceasefires that artificially terminate fighting before both sides agree on the proper allocation of the spoils of war (Werner & Yuen, 2005 ). Building off of commitment problem models, Fortna ( 2004b ) argued that strong peace agreements that enhance monitoring, incorporate punishment for defection, and reward cooperation help sustain peace. Specific measures within agreements, however, affect the durability of peace differently. For example, troop withdrawals and the establishment of demilitarized zones decrease the likelihood of war resumption, while arms control measures have no significant impact (Fortna, 2004b , p. 176).

Postwar intervention is also expected to increase peace duration by ameliorating commitment problems, as peacekeepers act as a physical barrier and reduce security fears, uncertainty, and misperceptions between former adversaries (Fortna, 2004a ). Empirical results support this theoretical prediction, and while the size of the force is not significant, both monitoring and armed forces missions increase the durability of post-war peace (Fortna, 2004a ).

The debate that remains in this literature is whether or not peace agreements can effectively mitigate the influence of relative power variables. Recent research by Lo, Hashimoto, and Reiter ( 2008 ) suggests that they cannot. They demonstrated that cease-fire agreement strength has almost no significant impact on post-war peace duration, while factors encouraging renegotiation receive partial support. While discrepancies in results may be in part attributable to differences in time periods covered, this result essentially confirms Warner and Yuen’s ( 2005 ) finding that externally imposed war termination invites resumption of conflict, regardless of the presence of strong cease-fire agreements.

If, at the end of a civil conflict, each side maintains its ability to wage war, issues of credibility can undermine the peace and cause the conflict to resume. Thus, wars ending in negotiated settlements are more likely to recur than those ending with a decisive victory because both sides have the ability to resume fighting to gain greater concessions and neither can credibly commit to the peace (Licklider,, 1995 ; Walter, 2002 ). More recent research confirms that conflicts ending in military victory are less likely to recur than those ending in settlement (Caplan & Hoeffler, 2017 ; Toft, 2009 ), though Toft suggested that this is particularly true for rebel victories.

This understanding of post-war peace in terms of the bargaining model’s commitment problem has led scholars to examine three primary avenues through which commitment problems might be overcome and peace maintained. First, partition has been advanced as a possible solution to post-war instability. The separation of warring factions is expected to reduce security fears by creating demographically separate, militarily defensible regions (Kaufmann, 1996 ). Empirical evidence generally supports this strategy. Partitions that successfully separate warring ethnic groups significantly reduce the risk of renewed conflict (Johnson, 2008 ), while those that do not achieve demographic separation increase the risk of renewed hostilities (Tir, 2005 ). Further, relative to de facto separation, autonomy arrangements, or maintenance of a unitary state, partition is significantly less likely to lead to war recurrence (Chapman & Roeder, 2007 ).

Second, third-party intervention is expected to play a role in ameliorating the security dilemma arising from commitment problems in post-conflict states (Fearon, 2004 ; Walter, 2002 ). Empirical results confirm that third-party security guarantees are critical to the signing and durability of peace settlements (Walter, 2002 ). Once settlement has been reached, third-party guarantees and international peacekeeping establish punishments for defection (Fortna, 2008 ; Walter, 2002 ), thereby reducing incentives for and increasing costs of renewed conflict. More recent research that employs more fine-grained data on the size and composition of UN peacekeeping forces suggests, however, that this type of third-party guarantee is most effective when it has the military power to enforce the peace. Specifically, Hultman, Kathman, and Shannon ( 2016 ) found that increasing UN troop presence increases peace durability, but the presence of other types of UN monitors has little effect on peace duration. By using more fine-grained data, this study makes an important contribution by allowing us to parse the mechanisms driving the role of third party guarantees in promoting peace.

Third, the incorporation of power-sharing arrangements that guarantee the survival of each side into the postwar settlement is also expected to solve post-civil war commitment problems (Walter, 2002 ). These arrangements allow adversaries to generate costly signals of their resolve to preserve the peace, thus ameliorating security fears (Hartzell & Hoddie, 2007 ). Empirical results indicate that given a negotiated settlement, the agreement’s ability to ameliorate security concerns is positively associated with the preservation of peace. Thus, the more regulation of coercive and political power included in an agreement, and the greater the number of dimensions (political, territorial, military, economic) of power sharing specified, the more likely agreements are to endure (Hartzell & Hoddie, 2007 ).

More recently, scholars have begun to extend this research by focusing more broadly on settlement design. Whereas previous research tended to simply count the number of power-sharing dimensions, newer analyses focus on issues such as the quality of the agreement (Badran, 2014 ) and equality in the terms of settlement (Albin & Druckman, 2012 ). Martin ( 2013 ), for example, found that provisions that share power at the executive level are less effective than those that regulate power at the level of rank-and-file or the public, as elite-level power-sharing is relatively easy for insincere actors to engage in at a relatively low cost. Cammett and Malesky ( 2012 ) found that proportional representation provisions are particularly effective at stabilizing post-conflict peace because of their ability to promote good governance and service provision, while Joshi and Mason ( 2011 ) similarly found that power-sharing provisions that expand the size of the governing coalition result in more stable peace. These analyses suggest that delving further into the design and content of settlement agreements is a positive avenue for future research. Future research should also examine how implementation of peace agreements proceeds, and how the timing and sequencing of implementation affects the durability of peace (e.g., Langer & Brown, 2016 ).

Finally, emerging research on civil war recurrence also shifts focus toward rebel groups and how their composition and integration affect post-conflict peace. For example, new research finds that rebel group fragmentation hastens the recurrence of civil war (Rudloff & Findley, 2016 ), while greater inclusion of former rebels in government improves prospects for post-conflict peace (Call, 2012 ; Marshall & Ishiyama, 2016 ). Emerging research on post-conflict elections also represents an important area for further study, as debate remains over how elections affect conflict recurrence. While some argue that they destabilize the peace (Flores & Nooruddin, 2012 ), others suggest they actually reduce the risk of conflict recurrence (Matanock, 2017 ).

The Longer-Term Consequences of Wars

What are the political, economic, and social consequences of interstate and civil wars, and what explains these postwar conditions? As Rasler and Thompson ( 1992 ) recognized, the consequences of war are often far-reaching and complex. Given this complexity, much of the literature varies significantly in quality and coverage; while post-war political change has received significant attention from political scientists, the social and health-related consequences of war are less well-known.

Post-War Domestic Political Stability and Change

Scholarship on post-war political stability focuses on both regime and leadership change, positing political accountability as a central mechanism in both cases. Interstate war has been theorized to induce internal revolution both indirectly (Skocpol, 1979 ) and directly (Bueno De Mesquita et al., 2003 ; Goemans, 2000 ). Empirical results support the accountability argument, as war losses and increasing costs of war increase the likelihood of post-war leadership turnover (Bueno De Mesquita & Siverson, 1995 ) as well as violent regime overthrow (Bueno De Mesquita, Siverson, & Woller, 1992 ). Related work shows that accountable leaders are also more likely to face foreign-imposed regime change at the hands of war victors (Bueno De Mesquita et al., 2003 ).

A central focus of recent research has been the conditional relationship between war outcomes and regime type. In his seminal study, Goemans, 2000 ) found that leaders of mixed and democratic regimes are more likely to be removed from office as a result of moderate losses in war than are leaders of autocracies. These findings, however, have been challenged by recent scholarship. Colaresi ( 2004 ) finds no difference in leadership turnover rates across all regimes types under conditions of moderate war losses, and Chiozza and Goemans ( 2004 ), employing a different measure of war outcomes and discounting the impact of termination over time, find that defeat in war is most costly for autocratic leaders and has no significant impact on tenure for democratic leaders.

Recently, research in the civil war literature has begun to focus more on post-war democratization, elections, and how groups transition from fighting forces to political parties. Much of the early work in this area focused on the link between war outcomes and the development of democratic institutions in the post-war period, specifically arguing that negotiated settlements facilitate democratization by requiring the inclusion of opposition groups in the decision-making process (Doyle & Sambanis, 2006 ; Gurses & Mason, 2008 ). More recent research, however, challenges this conventional wisdom, showing that the benefits of negotiated settlement are limited to the short-term and that economic factors are better predictors of post-war democratization (Fortna & Huang, 2012 ).

Recognizing that not all negotiated settlements are created equal, scholars have also begun to examine how variation in power-sharing provisions influences democratization. Debate remains on this topic as well, however. While some argue that power-sharing facilitates democratization by generating costly signals that create the stability necessary for democratization (Hoddie & Hartzell, 2005 ), others argue that they undermine democratization by reifying wartime cleavages, incentivizing political parties to seek support only from their own wartime constituencies, and undermining public confidence in governmental institutions (Jung, 2012 ). However, after accounting for non-random selection into power-sharing, Hartzell and Hoddie ( 2015 ) found that the inclusion of multiple power-sharing provisions in peace agreements increases post-civil war democratization. Future research should delve further into this debate, and consider more carefully whether specific types of provisions or institutional designs vary in their ability to promote democracy. Joshi ( 2013 ) represents an important first step in this direction, finding that institutional designs that favor inclusivity (e.g., parliamentary systems and proportional representation) are more successful at producing democracy.

Debate also continues over the effects of international intervention on post-conflict democratization. While some scholars expect intervention to facilitate postwar democratization by mitigating commitment problems and raising the costs of defection (Doyle & Sambanis, 2006 ), others suggest it is used as a tool by interveners to impose amenable, generally non-democratic, institutions in the target country (Bueno De Mesquita & Downs, 2006 ). Doyle and Sambanis ( 2006 ) found multidimensional UN missions incorporating economic reconstruction, institutional reform, and election oversight, to be significantly and positively correlated with the development of postwar democracy. However, Gurses and Mason ( 2008 ) and Fortna and Huang ( 2012 ) challenged this finding, reporting no significant relationship between UN presence and postwar democratization, and Paris ( 2004 ) and Bueno de Mesquita and Downs ( 2006 ) showed that peacebuilding missions and UN interventions actually decrease levels of democracy.

Future research should attempt to reconcile many of these open debates in both the interstate and civil conflict literatures. It should also build upon emerging research on post-conflict elections (Flores & Nooruddin, 2012 ; Matanock, 2017 ) and rebel governance (Huang, 2016 ). Huang’s work on rebel governance, in particular, shows that how rebels interact with civilian populations during conflict has important implications for post-conflict democratization.

Public Health Conditions in the Aftermath of Wars

Social scientists have recently begun to study the consequences of war for the postwar health and well-being of civilian populations. Theoretical arguments developed in this literature generally do not distinguish between interstate and civil war, instead developing mechanisms that apply to both types of conflict. The most direct public health consequence of war, of course, results from the killing and wounding of civilian populations. Scholars argue, however, that more indirect mechanisms cause longer-term public health problems as well. War, for example, is expected to undermine long-term public health by exposing populations to hazardous conditions through the movement of refugees and soldiers as vectors for disease (Ghobarah, Huth, & Russett, 2003 ; Iqbal, 2006 ), damaging health-related facilities and basic infrastructure (Li & Wen, 2005 ; Plümper & Neumayer, 2006 ), and reducing government spending and private investment on public health (Ghobarah et al., 2003 ).

Many empirical analyses, unfortunately, do not directly address the mechanisms outlined above. Overall, findings indicate that both civil and interstate war increase adult mortality in the short and long term (Li & Wen, 2005 ) and decrease health-adjusted life-expectancy in the short term (Iqbal, 2006 ). Conflict severity is also influential; while low-level conflict has no significant effect on mortality rates, severe conflict increases mortality and decreases life-expectancy in the long run (Li & Wen, 2005 ; Hoddie & Smith, 2009 ; Iqbal, 2006 ). Comparing the health impacts of interstate and civil wars, analysts have found interstate conflict to exert a stronger, negative impact on long-term mortality rates than civil war, despite the finding that civil war’s immediate impact is more severe (Li & Wen, 2005 ). Finally, many analysts have found that the negative, long-term effects of war are consistently stronger for women and children (Ghobarah, et al., 2003 ; Plümper & Neumayer ( 2006 ) than for men.

This developing field provides important new insights into the civilian consequences of war, but remains underdeveloped in many respects. First, while some evidence suggests that civil and interstate war might affect public health differently, the mechanisms behind these differences require further elaboration. Research by Hoddie and Smith, represented an important contribution in this respect, as it distinguishes between different conflict strategies, finding that conflicts involving extensive violence against noncombatants have more severe health consequences than those in which most fatalities are combat-related. Second, theoretical models are generally much more developed and sophisticated than the data used to test them. While data availability is limited, efforts should be made to more closely match theory and empirics.

Third, analyses that employ disaggregated measures of health consequences (Ghobarah et al., 2003 ) provided a more thorough understanding of the specific consequences of war and represent an important avenue for additional theoretical and empirical development. Iqbal and Zorn ( 2010 ) thus focus specifically on conflict’s detrimental impact on the transmission of HIV/AIDS, while Iqbal ( 2010 ) examines the impact of conflict on many different health-based metrics, including infant mortality, health-associated life expectancy, fertility rates, and even measles and diphtheria vaccination rates. These studies represent important advances in the literature, which should be explored further in future research to disentangle the potentially complex health effects of civil and interstate conflict.

Finally, recent research has begun to conceptualize health more broadly, accounting for the psychological consequences of wartime violence. Building upon research in psychology, Koos ( 2018 ) finds that exposure to conflict-related sexual violence in Sierra Leone generates resilience: affected households display greater cooperation and altruism than those unaffected by such violence during conflict. Bauer et al. ( 2016 ) similarly find that conflict fosters greater social cohesion and civic engagement in the aftermath of war. This is an important area for future research. As conceptions of conflict-related violence broaden, our conceptualizations of the consequences of violence should also expand to include notions of how conflict affects psychological health, community cohesion, and other less direct indicators of public health.

This final section highlights some of the contributions generated by scholarship on the conduct and consequences of war, as well as some of the gaps that remain to be addressed. First, this body of scholarship usefully compliments the large and more traditional work of military historians who study international wars, as well as the work of contemporary defense analysts who conduct careful policy analyses on relevant issues such as wartime military tactics and strategy as well as weapon system performance. The bargaining model of war has also proven a useful theoretical framework in which to structure and integrate theoretical analyses across different stages in the evolution of war.

Second, a number of studies in this body of work have contributed to the further development and testing of the democratic peace literature by extending the logic of political accountability models from questions of war onset to democratic wartime behavior. New dependent variables, including civilian targeting, imposition of regime change, the waging of war in ways designed to reduce military and civilian losses, and victory versus defeat in war have been analyzed. As a result, a number of new arguments and empirical findings have improved our understanding of how major security policy decisions by democratic leaders are influenced by domestic politics.

Third, this literature has advanced scholarship on international law and institutions by examining questions about compliance with the laws of war and the role played by the UN in terminating wars and maintaining a durable post-war peace. The impact of international law and institutions is much better understood on issues relating to international political economy, human rights, and international environmental governance than it is on international security affairs. As a result, studies of compliance with the laws of war, the design of ceasefire agreements, or international peace-building efforts address major gaps in existing literature.

Fourth, this new body of research has explicitly focused on the consequences of war for civilian populations, a relatively neglected topic in academic research. Research on questions such as the deliberate targeting of civilians during wars and the longer-term health consequences of war begin to address this surprising gap in research. As such, this new literature subjects the study of terrorism to more systematic social science methods and also challenges the common practice of restricting terrorism to non-state actors and groups when, in fact, governments have resorted to terrorist attacks on many occasions in the waging of war.

While this literature has advanced scholarship in many ways, there remain several theoretical and empirical gaps that future research should aim to address, two of which are highlighted here. First, while research on interstate war duration and termination is more theoretically unified than its civil war counterpart, the dominance of the bargaining model in this literature is currently being challenged. Recent research on asymmetric conflict suggests that the basic tenants of the bargaining model may not hold for non-symmetric conflict, while research on force employment and mechanization suggest that traditional power measures exert a conditional impact at best. Additional research is needed to determine the conditions under which bargaining logic applies and its relative importance in explaining wartime behavior and war outcomes.

Second, the accumulation of knowledge on civil war’s conduct and consequences has lagged behind that on interstate war, partially because the civil war literature is younger, and partially because sub-national level data is only now becoming more readily available. While bargaining logic is often applied to civil war, we have little cross-national information on relative capabilities and battle trends, and thus a very limited understanding of the way in which these variables affect civil war duration and outcomes. New micro-level data and studies that are beginning to address these problems represent a promising direction forward for civil conflict research.

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The Art & Science of War: An Interview with James FitzSimonds

Nelson: You’ve spent more than two decades as an educator and, prior to that, 27 years as a naval officer. What are your thoughts on the naval profession today?

FitzSimonds: I continue to be impressed with the professionalism and enthusiasm of the midgrade officers I deal with daily. They are highly motivated individuals who truly desire to master their profession and prepare themselves to engage in combat operations. That said, I think our professional military education system does not adequately prepare our officer corps for the challenges of future warfare at the high end of the conflict spectrum.

Officers tend to be well-informed regarding capabilities within their own narrow specialties but have very limited knowledge of the broad range of systems and operational concepts across their services and the joint force—and how all those capabilities will interact and integrate across warfighting domains. Likewise, threat capabilities generally are not well known outside an officer’s own narrow tactical focus. Officers appear to be well-served by their tactical training at the junior level, but they are afforded very limited education for planning, acquisition, and command for joint force operations at higher levels.

Nelson: How do we better balance the “art” and the “science” of war?

FitzSimonds: For a variety of reasons—technological complexity probably being the foremost—professional military education over the past several decades has come to focus primarily on the art rather than the science of war. The result is a dialogue at the operational level of war that is cast almost exclusively in terms of abstract concepts—for example, domain dominance and systemic disruption—rather than the technical details of joint force employment.

It is critical for officers to master the science of war—all the basic warfighting systems and their operational concepts for both the United States and its prospective adversaries—before the art of war can be usefully addressed. At the joint operational level, current knowledge of warfighting science—weapons, sensors, command and control, and operational concepts for both the United States and its prospective adversaries—does not appear to be sufficient for an adequate application of military art.

Nelson: In your opinion, what is the average lieutenant commander’s knowledge of the operational level of war?

FitzSimonds: Most of my insights are drawn from my daily exposure to officers in the context of wargames at the high end of the conflict spectrum, along with some empirical testing that our research group has done in the past. There are no forcewide examinations of officer knowledge of warfighting outside of their own narrow tactical specialties. Moreover, there are no forcewide standards for such knowledge. I would assess the overall knowledge of midgrade officers regarding the operational level of war as low—perhaps less than 25 percent of what I would deem required to adequately develop, understand, and execute a theater operational war plan against a competent adversary.

I am not alone in this assessment. The former Chief Learning Officer of the Navy identified departmentwide “gaps in knowledge about the value and limitations of emerging technologies and potential adversary capabilities and intentions.”

Nelson: What do we need to do to improve their knowledge? What are the big but necessary steps the Navy needs to take to shift the focus of knowledge from post–Cold War to the current challenges?

FitzSimonds: The educational challenge is daunting. Warfare today is far more complex than at any time in history. The rapid pace of technological change is continually introducing new systems and capabilities—few of which have been employed in combat against a high-end foe. There seems to be little disagreement that greatly enhanced officer knowledge of warfighting is desirable, but there are a host of challenges to addressing the issue.

• What specific knowledge is required, and who will decide what the knowledge standards will be?

• Who will provide the continual updates to these standards as the technology of warfare evolves?

• How will this knowledge be provided to the officer corps? In-residence courses might address a portion of the requirement, but other approaches will be needed to support continuous learning, especially out in the fleet.

• How will mastery of knowledge be assessed or validated throughout a career? The educational emphasis needs to be placed on the output rather than the input—on officer learning rather than educational programs. Will there be a series of knowledge tests at all levels? What will be the incentives or penalties associated with knowledge mastery or lack thereof?

• Perhaps most important, what will be sacrificed to free the time needed for officers to master the operational elements of their profession that are outside their tactical specialties? There remain only 24 hours in a day and few opportunities for dedicated professional education in an officer’s career. A critical issue here is the desirability of refocusing officer advanced education away from collecting degree credentials in favor of the acquisition and retention of warfighting knowledge.

At the end of the day, all officers ultimately are responsible for their own preparation for combat; however, the current joint professional military education system can do a lot more to help facilitate that preparation.

Nelson: In your opinion, what are the bureaucratic and political impediments to force development and military doctrine?

FitzSimonds: Perhaps the greatest impediment is the current focus on the successful management of a peacetime military rather than victory in warfare at the high end of the conflict spectrum. After the end of the Cold War, the U.S. military essentially transitioned to a peacetime presence force that has been employed for operations against low-level opponents. There are very different personnel and organizational incentives in terms of promotion, command, and resource control for operational success in low-intensity conflict versus combat success in great power war.

One detrimental aspect of the post–Cold War period has been the migration of our professional military education system toward broad strategic and operational abstractions and away from the nuts and bolts of the tactical-operational level of war. This has only served to reinforce a military culture that might not be fully prepared for the rigorous challenges to U.S. sea and air control that the joint force should expect to be facing.

Nelson: Talk a bit about the late Andrew Marshall, the famous yet quiet director of the Office of Net Assessment. Tell us something you learned from working with him.

FitzSimonds: I was fortunate to have served as a military assistant to Andrew Marshall for four years in the early 1990s, when I was exposed to truly critical thinking regarding force structure and employment. At that time, Mr. Marshall held firmly to two overarching beliefs. The first was that the U.S. military should always assume it is in an interwar period and that the years immediately after the Cold War offered a brief hiatus that should have been employed with some urgency for preparing U.S. forces to face the next military peer competitor.

The second was that the prolonged period without major combat following World War II would result in a significant change in the character of warfare that would render major portions of our existing military force obsolete, requiring us to innovate and adapt profoundly to remain competitive. The military rise of China and the present-day dominance of long-range precision strike appear to have validated both of these predictions.

Nelson: Do you think the Navy should do more experimental wargaming?

FitzSimonds: Undoubtedly, but it is more important right now to expose as many officers as possible—and as often as possible—to operational-level wargaming centered on near-term challenges with existing systems. In the absence of combat experience, wargaming is the only means by which an officer can gain a reasonable understanding of the modern war fight in its totality; that is, how all the individual elements of modern military forces come into play across all warfare domains and under a broad range of circumstances. After officers have mastered war as it is, they can begin to delve usefully into experimentation with future alternatives to existing and planned forces. At present, very few officers have the opportunity to participate in wargames at any level.

Nelson: If there is such a thing as a recipe for Halsey Alfa’s success, what is it?

FitzSimonds: The Halsey Alfa program offers a small cadre of joint officers with complementary skills the opportunity to focus for some 9 to 15 months on the modern war fight at the high end of the conflict spectrum—from both the Red and Blue perspectives. This is done through a continuing series of ten-week tactical/operational-level wargames supplemented by readings, seminars, and lectures. Our underlying philosophy is that midgrade joint officers need an adequate understanding of both tactics and operations across all warfare areas. Detail and realism in a compelling scenario provide a visceral experience of combat that stimulates active learning and innovative thinking.

Nelson: Should Halsey Alfa—or the methods you teach—be a core learning requirement and not an elective in a naval professional military education?

FitzSimonds: Anything that routinely exposes all officers to the modern fight at the high end of conflict spectrum is needed—and should be the basis for a continuing program of joint professional military education. Overcoming the institutional impediments for achieving that goal will be a daunting challenge.

Halsey Alfa has a small officer throughput, is resource intensive, and provides little formal follow up for program graduates. Feedback from student alumni and from the leaders of their gaining commands support the idea that the program is having a positive impact. The information provided by the program provides a basis for an educational system, but different methods need to be developed to reach the broad mass of the officer corps.

Nelson: How do you see the future relationship of operations and intelligence in a world that, presumably, will be full of machine learning, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence [AI]?

FitzSimonds: We certainly can make much better use of computer technology—potentially including virtual reality and so-called artificial intelligence —to enhance and speed combat decision-making and professional military learning. It would appear that the military is woefully behind the commercial world in the exploitation of advanced computer and network applications. This probably stems from the lack of a clear incentive to adopt rapidly new information technologies on the military side.

That said, we should be careful not to try to substitute machine learning for human learning. Future advances in AI might well facilitate better battlefield decision-making and force employment, but there is little evidence to date that AI can replace the well-informed human decision-maker. Applications such as AI and augmented reality need to be approached as useful supplements to, not replacements for, the arduous task of mastering the details of the modern joint war fight.

Captain FitzSimonds served 27 years as both a surface warfare officer and intelligence officer, retiring in 2001. His operational assignments included the USS Blakely (FF-1072), Enterprise (CVN-65), and the America (CV-66) Battle Group. His ashore assignments included tours with the Chief of Naval Operations Current Intelligence Division, Naval Warfare Directorate, and Strategic Studies Group; the Navy Operational Intelligence Center Detachment-Newport; the Net Assessment Directorate of the Office of the Secretary of Defense; and the U.S. Naval War College. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the National Defense University.

Commander Christopher Nelson, U.S. Navy

Commander Nelson is the deputy senior naval intelligence manager for East Asia at the Office of Naval Intelligence. He is a naval intelligence officer and graduate of the U.S. Naval War College, the Maritime Advanced Warfighting School in Newport, Rhode Island, and the artist behind the Naval Institute’s "Vulture’s Row.”

Rebalancing the Science and Art of War for Decision Advantage

The ‘Agile’ Wargames that Can Test Force Design, Part 1

The Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarine USS Nevada (SSBN-733) transits the Hood Canal as she returns to her homeport of Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, Washington. Officers do not have to wait until attending War College to reap the benefit of wargaming. Wargames can be devised and played in ship wardrooms.

Introduce Wargaming to Wardrooms

View the discussion thread.

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Science Wars: The Battle over Knowledge and Reality

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What do scientists actually know and what do they know about ? Answers to these questions are crucial not only for our understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge, but also for the formulation of effective science-based public policies, from global warming and energy to biotechnology and nanoscience. There is a lack of convincing answers to these questions because of an illogical conflation within modern science of epistemology and ontology, seeking to transcend experience and produce knowledge of reality using experience itself. Attempts at explaining the nature of scientific knowledge from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries reveal that scientific reasoning has selectively employed deduction and induction, rationalism and empiricism, the universal and the particular, and necessity and contingency as if these opposites were compatible. As Thomas Kuhn showed, the history of science belies the definitive truth of ontological claims deduced from theories and, as a corollary, the definitive truth of theories themselves. Science Wars reviews the competing conceptions of scientific knowledge from Plato and Aristotle in the fourth century bce to the “science wars” of the 1990s and provides thought-provoking analyses for understanding scientific thought in the twenty-first century.

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Is India a Safe Place for Women? Another Brutal Killing Raises the Question.

The rape and murder of a trainee doctor at her own hospital has brought up, once again, uncomfortable truths about a country that wants to be a global leader.

Young women protesting with raised fists and holding a banner saying “we want justice”

By Anupreeta Das and Sameer Yasir

In December 2012, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student boarded a bus in New Delhi a little after 9 p.m., expecting it would take her home. Instead, she was gang-raped and assaulted so viciously with an iron rod that her intestines were damaged. She died days later as India erupted in rage.

Nearly 12 years later, the nation is convulsing with anger once again — this time, over the ghastly rape and murder of a 31-year-old trainee doctor in a Kolkata hospital, as she rested in a seminar room after a late-night shift. Since the Aug. 9 killing, thousands of doctors have gone on strike to demand a safer work environment and thousands more people have taken to the streets to demand justice.

For a country desperate to be seen as a global leader, repeated high-profile cases of brutal sexual assaults highlight an uncomfortable truth: India, by many measures , remains one of the world’s most unsafe places for women. Rape and domestic violence are relatively common, and conviction rates are low.

This week, the Supreme Court of India took up the Kolkata case as one of fundamental rights and safety, questioning how hospital administrators and police officers had handled it and saying new protective measures were needed. “The nation cannot wait for another rape and murder for real changes on the ground,” Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said.

Gender-related violence is hardly unique to India. But even as millions of Indian women have joined the urban work force in the past decade, securing their financial independence and helping to fuel the country’s rapid growth, they are still often left to bear the burden of their own safety.

Longstanding customs that both repress women and in many cases confine them to the home have made their safety in public spaces an afterthought. It can be dangerous for a woman to use public transportation, especially at night, and sexual harassment occurs frequently on the streets and in offices. Mothers tell their daughters to be watchful. Brothers and husbands drop their sisters and wives off at work.

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COMMENTS

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Science, Technology, and War ALEX ROLAND I introduced the military technology session at the Madison confer-ence by noting that the history of technology and war differs in many significant ways from other fields within the history of technology.' The papers and discussion that followed, however, suggested just the opposite.
Science and Technology in War
Nef, John U. War and Human Progress: An Essay on the Rise of Industrial Civilization. New York: W. W. Norton, 1968. Classic statement of the interconnectivity of war with the industrial revolution, commerce, and capitalism. Comprehensive and erudite. Originally published in 1950 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul). Smith, Merritt Roe.
Essay on Science and War (1000 Words)
Essay on Science and War: It is a common, though the misplaced, belief that science is responsible for the frequent, highly destructive twentieth-century wars. This century has witnessed two extremely disastrous global wars. Even the debris of the first war had not been cleared when the second broke out. And this war proved more devastating ...
Essay on "Science And War" Complete Essay for Class 10, Class 12 and
Essay No. 04. Science and War "War! that mad game the world so much loves to play." Man is a fighting animal. There have been wars since times immemorial. Science is certainly not the cause of wars. But the inventions of modern science have changed the nature of war. Science has made modern war much more destructive and horrible.
Science and War
ABSTRACT. The connection of science with war has grown gradually more and more intimate. The greatest men of the Renaissance commended themselves to the powerful by their skill in scientific warfare. The Crimean war could still be celebrated by Kinglake in the romantic language of the ages of chivalry, but modern war is a very different matter.
Science, Technology, War, and the Military
views 3,891,922 updated. Science, Technology, War, and the Military. World War II transformed the relationship between war and the military on the one hand and science and technology on the other. What had been a fitful and uncomfortable relationship before the war became continuous and consistent thereafter. Important ties existed before 1941 ...
Science and Technology in Warfare and Destruction
Science and Technology as Powerful Tools of Warfare and Destruction Essay (Article) Exclusively available on IvyPanda®. Technology advances and innovations have always been tightly connected with warfare and military purposes. Throughout the history technology and science were developing gradually; however, starting from the 20 th century, the ...
Science And War : Science Or War Essay
Satisfactory Essays. 2162 Words. 9 Pages. Open Document. Science and war Science and war are two different terms but they are found to have been deeply related. The existence of war initiated before the invention of scientific discoveries which are nowadays used as the means of war. The mode of war has been made destructive due to the misuse of ...
Science And War
Science And War Science Our Future Sea. 5. The Curious Science of Humans at War By Mary Roach. Words • 827. Pages • 4. Paper Type: 750 Word Essay Examples. On March 20, 1959, Mary Roach was born. She was raised in Etna, New Hampshire.But she is now living in Oakland, California.
The Conduct and Consequences of War
Over the past 15 years, research by social scientists on the conduct and consequences of war has expanded considerably. Previously, scholarly research had been heavily oriented towards the analysis of the causes of interstate war and its onset. Three simultaneous trends, however, have characterized scholarship on war since the early 2000s.
Science, Ethics, and War
Science, Ethics, and War. We scientists understand that it is difficult to get at the facts, let alone the truth. With regard to this observation, I was intrigued by the confluence of themes in three pieces in the 28 March issue. In his News Focus article "U.N. inspections find wisps of smoke but no smoking guns" (28 Mar., p. 1967 ...
Technology, war and the state: past, present and future
The article is divided into three parts. The first explores the war-state relationship and the factors that shaped it during the Cold War. It explains why technological innovation became so important in war, and how this imperative influenced both our understanding of war and the interaction between war and the state.
Science AND WAR
The modern war has a degrading effect on public morals. During the war there is hatred and ill feeling everywhere. The feelings of love and sympathy are driven out from the hearts of the people. Moral and economic corruption has prevailed in the country. Thus war is the mother of many evils. Science has become our greatest enemy.
Technology and War: The Historiographical Revolution of the 1980s
and War: A Bibliographic Essay," in Military Enterprise and Technological Change: Perspectives on the American Experience, ed. Merritt Roe Smith (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985), pp. 347-79; and "Science and War," Osiris, 2d ser. 1 (1985): 247-72, republished as Historical Writing on American Science: Perspectives and People, ed. Sally
Science
The Manuscript Division holds the papers of mathematicians, chemists, astronomers, nuclear physicists, and anthropologists that illustrate how different disciplines responded to the demands of the Cold War. The period fostered advances in many branches of American science. These, in turn, affected political policy and military strategy.
Science and Religion: Ten Models of War, Truce, and Partnership
This essay provides an updated inventory of ten popular conceptual models for relating science and theology, when theology is understood as rational reflection on religion. Four influential models assume that a war is taking place: (1) scientism; (2) scientific imperialism; (3) theological authoritarianism; and (4) the evolution controversy ...
The Art & Science of War: An Interview with James FitzSimonds
FitzSimonds: For a variety of reasons—technological complexity probably being the foremost—professional military education over the past several decades has come to focus primarily on the art rather than the science of war. The result is a dialogue at the operational level of war that is cast almost exclusively in terms of abstract concepts ...
Science Wars: The Battle over Knowledge and Reality
Science Wars reviews the competing conceptions of scientific knowledge from Plato and Aristotle in the fourth century bce to the "science wars" of the 1990s and provides thought-provoking analyses for understanding scientific thought in the twenty-first century. Keywords: ontology, epistemology, science, modern science, philosophy of ...
Science
Science Essays from Aeon. World-leading scientists and science writers explore topics from theories of evolution to theories of consciousness, quantum physics to deep time, chemistry to cosmology. ... War and peace. A war meteorologist's riveting account of how the Allies averted a D-Day disaster. 6 minutes. Save. essay. Politics and government.
After Kolkata Rape Case, India Asks Why It Can't Protect Women
In December 2012, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student boarded a bus in New Delhi a little after 9 p.m., expecting it would take her home. Instead, she was gang-raped and assaulted so viciously ...
A Long, Hard Year: Russia-Ukraine War Lessons Learned 2023
Disclaimer: Articles, reviews and replies, review essays, and book reviews published in Parameters are unofficial expressions of opinion. The views and opinions expressed in Parameters are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of Defense, the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.