What Does “Total War” Mean? Essay Example

Introduction

By its very nature, war can be characterized as a cultural entity that is universally popular and common. It has been practiced since the earliest civilizations and it is still part of our social institutions. Objectively, war cannot be linked to a singular political society or organization. Indeed, it is proper to call war a universal civil phenomenon that always assumes a scope and form defined by the particular society waging it. From civil to total wars, the very conduct of war always extends within a continuum of severity. The tribal wars in history, some of which occurred before the recorded history, are comparable to the city wars that later became a norm, to slowly become nation’s wars and finally empire’s wars (Black, 2006).

It is important that we understand the implication and weight of the above characterization. While war still remains a constant definition, different societies at different times have given in forms and scopes that are distinctly different. As Black (2006) says, the bow and arrow fights have over the years gone through a metamorphosis to total wars, the like that were experienced in the 20^th Century. The one thing that has changed in war has been the technology adopted in such warfare. The only difference that exists between World War 2 and an ancient war in Greece is the technology used to make weapons. Otherwise, the war principles, motivations and goals are the same. That is why the statement that the scale and form of war is determined by the society that wages it, stands true.

As Sutherland and McWhiney (1998) notes, once technology used to make weapons changes, the scale of war changes. The tactics adopted changes. The number of casualties’ changes. The effects of war changes. War weapons once used by soldiers could only kill a single enemy soldier. In First World War, tanks that could kill a hundred men emerged. By the Second World War, bombs that could be dropped on thousands of men, on cities and buildings came around (Longmate, 1983). The future total wars, if there be any will be fought with weapons that could decimate continents and kill billions of people within the fraction of a second. The Atomic Bomb may be the greatest weapon that nations have in their arsenal today for the sake of warfare and it is similar to the bow and arrows ancient warriors kept in their huts. Both are weapons of war, differentiated solely by technology. The only difference is the wreck each can cause.

Consequently, while wars were only possible between villages in history, they soon became possible between tribes. Soon, weapons allowed cities to wage war against each other. Gradually, nations were able to wage war against each other, empires thereafter. By the end of the 20^th century, regions (incorporating many nations) became allies in waging war against other regions. The future may see continents waging war against each other (something that almost happened during the Cold War). It is important, again, to repeat here that the ability of man to wage such ever increasing intensities and scopes of warfare is not inherently because of their increasing, military skill, wisdom or knowledge. The single enabling factor for increased war scopes has been the technology used to manufacture and operate weapons (Sutherland & McWhiney, 1998).

It is on that background that we must understand total wars. Total wars refer to those warfare scopes and forms that are unlimited in their demands and effect until victory ensues. Total wars have unlimited scope and warring factions mobilize all available resources and those at the disposal of their allies (whether industrial, human, agricultural, natural, military, technological etc) to destroy entirely their rival’s ability and capacity to continue offering resistance. Total war as a concept has been used for centuries. It was however, during the late 19th Century and 20^th Century that the concept of total war became distinct. Scholars finally identified it as a distinct type of warfare. A central characterization of total war is that, warring factions have no differentiation whatsoever between the enemy’s non-combatants (civilians) and combatants (soldiers) during the conflicts. As will be detailed hereafter, every scrap of human resource; be they civilians or soldiers, are considered targets of destruction by total war (Black, 2006).

For the purposes of this paper, we shall regard total wars as those waged by mature industrialized nations between each other. This therefore will constrict our consideration to two historical total wars, First and Second World Wars, in an effort to illustrate how weapon developing technology will shape future total wars.

Thesis Statement

Total war, which refers to a wide scale indiscriminate destruction of enemy’s ability to maintain resistance, was first made possible by technological advances in weapon manufacture and control. Without this technology, total wars would be impossible to attain in the globalized society. The fact that the same technology has been advancing in a phenomenal rate only amplifies the scope and effect of future total wars. Without doubt, the prospects of future total wars will be defined by a destructive capability, casualty numbers and execution speed that is incomparable in intensity to anything seen during the first two total wars.

Total War in the Context of Global Society

During the Second World War, total war was redefined with organization of military tactics. Combatants involved armies on land, navy on sea and the air force from the air. For the first time in the history of war, combat was conducted simultaneously and distinctly from more than one theatre. The concept of total war was taken further since a country could totally decimate the other by approaching it from three different fronts, each of which utilized precisely specialized weapons suited for the theatre in which war was waged. The bombers took into the air, battleships lined the coasts and armies walked in the streets felling buildings, bridges and cornering enemy soldiers to areas where they could be severely bombed by the air force. This seemed to have set the stage for a new definition of total wars, for the first time indicating that it was possible to totally decimate a nation, civilians, soldiers and all infrastructures included, in a single war (Longmate, 1983). The United States punctuated that confirmation with the Hiroshima and Nagasaki drops, two bombs that completely disabled the axis nations from waging war.

The age when a nation could wage war with a whole continent had come. An age when war did not have to be prolonged to years and years of battle had finally arrived (Sutherland & McWhiney, 1998). The world awoke to a new era of total war, where a single nation could decide to make an entire continent if not continents dysfunctional. War analysts begun projecting on future wars that will be fought within minutes and whole nations would disappear just as if they were never there.  This inspiration yielded the Civil War, with countries having deciphered weapons that could be used to totally incapacitate others in war. Incidentally, many claim that that was why the Civil War was never fought with weapons, since the West and the East had finally acquired nuclear weapons that could totally wreck each other within minutes.

The irony in this is that, the possession of better weapons and better armies had forever been the motivation of going to war in earlier civilizations. But here was a time that weapon making and control had finally calmed the ambition of going to war. How was that possible? It is rather simple. Nations learnt that they had weapons that could wage a brief and deadly total war, but so did their enemies. Having such weapons and technology became its own defense the threat being enough to keep attackers away. By the time you destroyed part of a nation, that nation could respond with similar or better weapons that could also destroy your nation. It became better to keep the weapons than use them.

That scenario is what we are in even to this day. America, Britain, Russia for instance, have not waged war against each other since each one of them have weapons that could wage a decisive total war against each other. But that has not kept these nations from invading other nations, notably those nations without the ability to retaliate with similar total war weapons of the late 20^th Century. America does not hesitate to invade Afghanistan, Iran and the like, for the mere reason that these nations do not have the atomic ability to wage total wars. But the same America have kept off the bay of Russia and similar nations, despite inflamed hostilities at times, since Russia has the ability to retaliate in a decimating total war mode.

This paper finds it logical to propose that the globalized society in which we live in, have made total wars inappropriate. Indeed, the 2005 Human Security report by the United Nations documented a very significant decline of the frequency and severity of wars (armed conflicts) after the Cold War ended. In the 1990’s and early 21^st century, national and regional wars have been fewer and none has approached the definition of total wars.

Nonetheless, in the 2008 edition of the same report as analyzed anew by the Center for International Development and Conflict Management, there was cause for alarm. Their ‘Peace and Conflict’ report indicated an overall decline in conflicts stalling at a particular level, and not going down. It is therefore not wise to conclude that total wars are no longer possible. They are possible. In fact, the ability to wage the kind of total wars the world has never seen is with us today. The intensity and scope of future total wars is unfathomable given the weapons that could fight such wars. Nonetheless, it would be very hard for any nation to commit to such a war, knowing how easy it would be to suffer the same feat at the hands of the enemy or its allies.

Winning a Total War

The understanding of total war construes wars in which whole populations, all their resources, the whole fleet of combatants, civilians and infrastructure is fully committed to achieving victory. In the same vein, enemy nations target all of these to ensure that their enemies cannot wage the war any longer. The concept of total war legitimizes indiscriminate attacks where everything that the enemy owns or has, becomes military targets. Before the 20^th Century wars, all other historical wars were limited by the fact that they could not completely annihilate their enemies. The important achievement of war was surrender. The winning side took over everything that the surrendering party owned. The 20^thCentury total wars were however characterized by the absence of limits, rules and restraint in pursuit of victory. In the two recent total wars, the fighting was maintained and driven to extents that were not objectively called for in the war. The motive was one, destroy anything and everything that supports or ascribes loyalty to the enemy (Longmate, 1983).

Some schools of thought have described total wars as military conflicts in which contenders result to mobilizing all of their military and civilian resources as the only means of obtaining victory. All lives, infrastructure and resources are committed to war such that the enemy combatant has to destroy all of these too if they are to obtain victory. Total war as a modern concept stresses the importance of completely crushing an adversary’s forces, escalating the application of violence and approaching the enemy from all possible fronts toward an absolute termination (Sutherland & McWhiney, 1998).

The Two Total Wars in History

The causes, motivations and effects of the past two total wars were almost the same, what had changed was the approaches used, especially the technology used to design and deploy weapons.  The lethality of these weapons caused a great depopulation of nations. The civilized nations of the time, such as Britain and France, were brought aback in their economies. That is why America emerged as a lone superpower since her infrastructure, population and resources had not been deployed and destroyed to the extent that of European nations was.

World Wars One and Two are thus typical cases of total wars, especially World War two, mainly because the weapons employed had the ability to annihilate anything belonging to the enemy. The Cold war uncovered that absolute prospect when an all-out nuclear combat between the major world powers became likely. Nations however were reluctant to engage in such a war and weapons were kept in the arsenal (Campbell, 2007).

We can only use the Second World War therefore to determine the quintessential requirements of winning a total war in modern times and the nature future total wars could take. In essence, national mobilization of human, infrastructural, economic and natural resources on both sides of a conflict is a major requirement. In modern times, a total war takes the battle space to the air, oceans and land as the theatre of war with a heightened scale of the resources committed to air forces, armies and navies. In this, there is a noted forced conscription of the population to form soldiers, something that makes civilians a core target by enemy military. In total war, not only humans count. Civilian property, military installations and government centers are attacked to disenable an enemy’s war propagation, with a total disregard of the collateral damage. The Second World War displayed unrestricted targeting of enemies and took a multi-continental scale.

The Third Total War

The two 20^th Century World Wars represent the greatest outbursts of national pride and ambition the world has ever seen. Note they are not the biggest wars ever, not based on casualties, but the most costly and technologically advanced wars of all time. They took up almost everything that Europeans nations had, demanded the highest levels of technical advancement and refined military tactics in a way that the world had never seen.

The two were so different in scale and approach, the Second World War being the most technologically advance of the two. Yet it only took twenty years to make the advances in technology applicable in WW2. While in August 1914 we had firestorms consume whole cities, 1945 saw atom bombs bring Hiroshima and Nagasaki to a total wreck. That is a shadow comparison to what future total wars could mean, given that weapons have continued to be manufactured, refined and amplified in impact since then.

World War 3 could swallow the globe as it were. For instance, World War II ended with over 60 million people as casualties of war, and in these, only 20 million were soldiers. Over 40 million of those who died were civilians. The Soviet Union alone lost over 27 million people in World War II casualties. To make these possible, some inferior bombs were used and only two atomic bombs. Now, to calculate the casualties of a war in which each nation engages better nuclear weapons than those used in World War 2, is much more like counting the world population. The largest number of deaths among civilian during WW2 was in Leningrad, where 1.2 million citizens died in a day. A hundred times that number would be possible today were a single atomic-power-possessing nation to attack another atomic-armed country.

In essence therefore, future total wars would be brief and overly devastating. Fewer soldiers would die since armies would no longer have to take to the trenches. A few atomic weapons would decide the fate of nations, killing civilian and destroying all national resources in a minute. Such wars would hurt even those nations that are not involved in conflict not only because of climatic reactions to nuclear releases, but also in the repucursions of such attacks on neighboring regions. Africans were engaged in World War 2 without being party to the conflict. Future total wars would thus engage the globe in effects if not in combat (Campbell, 2007).

Conclusion

There is no doubt that the concept of total war is still applicable in today’s globalized society. Rapid technological advances in war weapons have made the destructive capability of warring nations even worse. This might however be the one thing that prevents a third outbreak of total war since nuclear World War III would definitely annihilate the world completely. As Albert Einstein said after initiating the atomic bomb technology, ‘I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones’ (Campbell, 2007). Our only luck is that there is little motivation for nations to engage in such an attack.

Nuclear war possibilities introduced caution among nations that an all-out war could mean the end of the world, of humanity and of civilization. A doomsday scenario is today possible but the cold war taught nations that such an open conflict could easily escalate until nuclear weapons became a last result. Indeed, after World War II, all industrial nations have kept large, decisive wars at bay for the mere fact they recognize their vulnerability to the destructive ability that these weapons carry, such that their use offsets any possible advantages of victory. World War 3 could possibly not take any longer than ten minutes. Nonetheless, nations are aware that nuclear attack would definitely call for a nuclear counter-attack by the other. That would result to a situation described by Nikita Khrushchev, where the living remnants would envy the dead.

References

Black, J. (2006). The Age of Total War, 1860-1945. London: Praeger Security International. 72.

Campbell, A. (2007). This is Not Your Father’s War: The Changing Organization of Militarism and Social Movements. New York: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. 76

Longmate, N. (1983). The Bombers. London: Hutchins & Co. 246

Sutherland, D. and G. McWhiney. (1998). The Emergence of Total War. Abilene: McWhiney Foundation Press. 47