Were all wars pointless?

Have there been wars that, looking back, may be described as justified or that created “progress?”

Or were all wars pointless? Does it even make sense to ask this question?

Jean Amery writes: One should not and must not leave the past undisturbed, or it may rise once more and become a new present.

Let us look at the wars in Iraq first. In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. A few months later, a Coalition led by the USA began the fighting to liberate Kuwait. Kuwait was free just a few days later and the Iraqi troops suffered a devastating loss.

In 2003, a war was once again started in Iraq and led by the USA. The USA had suspected Iraq’s dictator at the time, Saddam Hussein, to be in possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). They toppled Saddam Hussein and pursued the goal of bringing a democratic government to power.

The Liberation of Kuwait by the armies of the Coalition was, without a doubt, a justified and successful operation.

In contrast, the Invasion of Iraq, which consequentially led to the toppling of the dictator, Saddam Hussein, must be described as a huge disaster.

The claim that Saddam Hussein had been developing WMDs turned out to be false. It is true that he supported terrorism and oppressed his people. But may allegations as these legitimize military interventions in the future? The Invasion of Iraq claimed many lives among Iraqi civilians and after the war was over, the situation deteriorated and resembled a civil war. This was an advantageous condition for terrorist attacks and the spread of the so-called Islamic State.

The intention to install a democratic government was completely unrealistic! The hope remains that the insight finally asserts itself that democratic governments can only be installed in countries with a population that is ready for it.

Were any lessons learned?

The conflict in Syria began in 2011 with peaceful demonstrations which quickly turned into armed clashes with the authoritarian regime of Assad. A large number of armed groups fought for power, who also represented the interests of foreign powers.

The heterogeneity of the Syrian state and society leads to a great potential for conflict. The Sunnis represent the majority of the population. The religious minorities include Shiites (Alawites, Druze), Yazidi and Christians. President Bashar al-Assad belongs to the Alawites. Most rebels were Sunni, who felt oppressed by Assad.

Starting in November 2012, the secret service CIA massively supported the rebels by means of covered operations (Wikipedia: Civil War in Syria since 2011).

From July 3013, the Obama Administrations only openly supported “moderate” rebels with weapons.

The “Islamic State” benefited from the chaos in Syria and quickly conquered large areas of the country. It could only be pushed back once US and Russian fighter jets intervened.

Half a million Syrians have lost their lives due to the war and more than 5 million have fled abroad.

Why did the Syrian people have to suffer? The rebels, the Obama Administration and many European states supported the removal of the despot, Assad. They received moral support from renowned newspapers in the US and Europe. Most newspapers were of the opinion that peace would not be possible with Assad in power.

Sure, Assad is a dictator who can only cling to power using brutal violence. But what is the alternative?

In predominantly Muslim Syria, a culture dominates in which violence is and always has been commonplace. The conflict between Sunni and Shia is not a new phenomenon. 18 years after the Prophet Mohammed died, the Sunni and Shia resolved their disputes in bloody conflicts. I do not believe that the West can develop Syria into a functioning state.

The violent toppling of Gaddafi in Libya has also not concluded in great success.

       The military deployments of the West described above were all carried out in foreign cultures.

The conflicts in Yugoslavia occurred in the realm of our culture and a military intervention there should therefore be rather successful.

NATO’s intervention in Kosovo cannot be explained without the mass murder of Srebrenica. People in the West felt guilty for not having intervened in Srebrenica.

In 1999, the conflict between Serbs and insurgent Kosovo-Albanians had reached a level that made it impossible for the public to simply stand by. The intervention of NATO was meant to protect Kosovo’s civilian population.

NATO assumed that a few heavy air attacks against military targets would suffice to make the Serbs change course. However, the Serbs only changed their actions after civilian infrastructure was also targeted, which led to about 500 civilian casualties.

In the end, the intervention brought about the contended independence of Kosovo, where the weapons are now silent, however.

Are there further wars or interventions that one could rate as a success today?

A website titled “Wars of Humanity” lists more than 400 wars. We are no longer concerned with most of these wars and can only discern why people budded heads back then with great difficulty.

Yet the War of Secession in the US still keeps our minds busy these days. There are countless articles online and easily hundreds of books have been written about the American Civil War. Yet only very few actually ask whether this war was necessary and what would have happened, had it not been fought. When Abraham Lincoln, who is seen as an opponent to slavery, was elected President, the South seceded and proclaimed the Confederate States of America. Lincoln could not accept the dissolution of the United States’ unity and started the Civil War in 1861. 

In 2015, the Frankfurter Allgemeine wrote: “It was only by means of that war that the USA could ascend to become a world power. The conflict revolutionized the economy of the North.”

I, however, have my doubts that the North’s economy would not have become stronger even without the war. And even if that is the case, was it worth the death of 620,000 people - 2 percent of the American population?

In my Pacifism post of November 2017 I wrote:

In recent years there have been two principle reasons for armed conflict:

·       Minorities without any autonomous rights are held in the central state by force of arms in order to preserve the unity of the states. How many deaths is the unity of a state worth? It should become customary law that all minorities should be allowed to vote on how many autonomous rights they wish to claim.

·       Over the past two thousand years, ideologies and religions have repeatedly led to catastrophic wars.

I believe that the Confederate and Union States would have found a way back together after several decades even without this bloody war and that the inhuman slavery would also have been abolished in the South. The citizens of the North, who wanted to use armed force to control the states of the South, certainly meant well, but..... (cf. Foreign Policy of Oct. 2017).

The question does arise whether it is appropriate to interpret US history as a European. The assessment of the US Civil War still has an effect on the whole world to this day. Because if you are of the opinion that Lincoln had to invade the South to end slavery and preserve the Union, then you will take the same view today - that governments that violate human rights must be overthrown by use of force.