War how is it good for

In a lot of ways, war is just a large-scale version of these personal emotions and reactions. It was a large number of city-states, which often fought against each other. These included Athens, Sparta, Delphi and many more. It was a complicated environment, very different to our idea of how a country works. Citizens of Sparta thought of themselves as both Spartans and Greeks. Citizens of Athens thought of Spartans as both brothers and enemies.

When the Persian Empire which was keen to expand and saw the Greeks as an easy target attempted to invade Greece, the Greek city-states banded together, resisted, fought and won - defeating the Persians in many battles and eventually driving off the invaders. WWII is another example - the background to the war is highly complex, but in part it was self-defence against the aggressive Nazi movement in Germany. Germany's actions before and during the war put its own interests ahead of those of any other country or group of people, and these actions were not only a direct threat to many but also a moral threat to us all.

By going to war, the world was removing a threat to its own social existence. War seems to be a catalyst - it makes us think harder, move faster and accept more change than anything else. It could be argued that the First World War paved the way for gender equality and women's rights. As more and more men were sent off to fight, women were required to leave the home and work in the jobs that men had left behind, including in factories and on farms.

After the war, many women were reluctant to return to their old lives and campaigned for greater rights and freedoms. It can certainly be said that WWII sped up the development of antibiotics, gave us air travel, introduced Radar a technology which eventually led to Satnav and kick-started computing and where would you be without your phone? Wars have also reduced the amount of suffering in the world - by acting against Germany in WWII, the allies prevented more and more oppression of Jewish people, travellers, gay people, the mentally ill and anyone else the Nazi movement considered sub-human.

It takes lives from all sides. It can displace millions and leave children without their parents, wives without their husbands, brothers without their sisters. There are suicide bombers, creating mass graves of innocent victims. International efforts to keep the peace resulting in the deaths of innocent men and women. The resounding truth of war is, quite simply, that people always suffer and lives will always be lost. You decide. Which war caused one of the biggest oil spills in history, wasting vital resources and resulting in long-term damage to the environment?

Which war freed Peru from the control of the Spanish, whose rule they had been under for over years? Which war led to huge numbers of people in Japan experiencing radiation sickness and also caused birth defects in thousands of newborn babies? Which war helped to end slavery in the United States, but was also responsible for the formation of the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan?

The shortest war on record took place in , when Zanzibar surrendered to Britain after just 38 minutes. University of Oxford expert Patricia Clavin takes us on a whirlwind tour of the piggybanks of countries like Germany, Japan, Britain, Austria and the US, looking at how they were affected financially — for better and for worse — by their involvement in a war.

We all seem to agree that violence is a bad thing in everyday life — so how can it ever be ok to go to war when war is such a violent thing? Oxford Professor Jeff McMahan tries to answer this question. Some wars are fought in the pursuit of freedom. The French revolution started as an attempt to free people from oppression. More recently, The Cuban revolution of the s saw the government overthrown in a coup designed to bring about a fairer society.

At least million people have been killed in wars in the last years - probably more. The First World War disfigured a generation. But New Zealand doctor, Harold Gillies and his team opened a special hospital to develop better and more innovative plastic surgery methods.

Previously, plastic surgery had been viewed with suspicion, but soon it became an important process for reversing the consequences of war. By sending high-frequency sound waves underwater, the Allies could find enemy u-boats. It was only after the war ended that big thinkers saw the uses this technology could have in other fields, like medicine.

War can have devastating long-term impacts on both countries and individuals. The hydrogen bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War led to huge numbers of people in Japan experiencing radiation sickness and caused birth defects in thousands of newborn babies. The oil slick spread miles by 42 miles and was five inches thick in some areas, resulting in severe long-term damage to the environment.

Morris explores various scenarios for future warfare, from guerrilla insurgencies to robotic warriors to missiles in space.

He tends to be optimistic, believing that humanity after millennia of war may reach a culmination point, in which the number of humans killed by other humans continues to drop dramatically. In this, he is in league with Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker's book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, which also sees a continuation in the decline of human violence.

Keep in mind, though, that these optimistic scenarios and others may, among other things, be products of their times. For we still live in the relatively benign aftermath of World War II, in which the greatest interstate war in history has led to 70 years without interstate war between the great powers. The 19th century in Europe, between the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars and the outbreak of World War I, was a similar period when many people lost their sense of the tragic only to be shocked by what came afterward.

We can only hope that Morris' defense of war actually proves accurate so that we can continue to enjoy relative peace. This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here. More From Forbes. Jun 25, , am EDT. Apr 15, , am EDT. May 8, , pm EDT. May 6, , pm EDT. Dec 11, , pm EST. Aug 22, , pm EDT. Jul 27, , pm EDT. Jul 10, , pm EDT. Edit Story. In the Stone Age, humans were a rough lot. When people 10, years ago disagreed, they usually solved their arguments without violence; but when they did decide to use force, they faced far fewer constraints than the citizens of functioning modern states.

Violence was normally on a small scale, in homicides, vendettas, and raids, but because populations were also tiny, the steady drip of killing took an appalling toll. If we fast-forward to the 20th century, we see a stunning contrast. The century suffered world wars, genocides, and nuclear attacks, not to mention civil strife, riots, and murders. Altogether, we killed a staggering million of our own kind. Ian Morris. So if you were lucky enough to be born in the 20th century, your risk of dying violently was just one-tenth of that in the Stone Age; and since , the United Nations tells us, the risk of violent death has fallen even further, to 0.

These are astonishing statistics, but the explanation is more astonishing still. In perhaps the greatest paradox in history, what made the world safer was war itself. What happened, it seems, is that starting about 10, years ago, the winners of wars began incorporating the losers into larger societies. The victors then found that the only way to make these larger societies work was by developing stronger governments; and one of the first things these governments had to do, if they wanted to stay in power, was suppress violence among their subjects.