Modern Warfare

There are quite a few wars on-going now. That's not surprising, because war is and has always been man's favorite sport.  Like other sports, there is always a war game  event somewhere in the world, usually several going on at the same time.  And we don't have to buy tickets to watch, since CNN or some other broadcaster will show it for free. But  modern war is different today than in the past. It used to be that wars were bloody battles to the end engaged in order to take another nation's land away. But now, wars seem more like propaganda campaigns for attention. Territory rarely ever is gained or lost for the combatants who are engaged in modern warfare.

There still is blood and deaths with these new age wars, because nations love their military gadgets and ....well...like kids, they have to fire them once in a while to see how they work.  But what is different with modern warfare is that the major part of it is the media campaign each side invests in to justify their reason for fighting. Both sides uses the media to posit their position, with the more skilled propaganda ministers wining the ar of wars. 

Just look at the many recent Israeli- Arab conflicts as an example. They happen all the time now, and there is never much destruction or death. Instead, a media blitz is launched by each side and the "war' is more a war of words and persuasion, not bullets. The generals appear on news broadcasts and at the United Nations to fight for their sides.  It ends when most of the world chooses a "right" side and decides to help that country with various economic or military grants. The other side realizes it has "lost" and just stops fighting for awhile so it will convince the world to stop helping the side it has decided to support.

Later, when the whole situation has calmed down the two sides will probably fight another war over some new imagined issue, and one or the other side will win the new media campaign, producing the same cessation of fighting. This process can last forever (as in the Arab/Israeli conflict), but I think is a far better kind of war than the old massacres we have seen throughout history.

I think the reason war has changed and is less bloody is because modern weapons are too horrible and destructive to use in earnest and because communication technology is so fast now that it's easier to fight with words than with bullets. We win wars now by winning world opinion and using that opinion to cripple the economy of one of the sides, not by winning on a physical battlefield. Thus, the new wars are more economic oriented ones more so than wars of bullets. Every nation's leader fears economic loss far more than invasion by another's army. This is because it is easier  to destroy an enemy economically than to fight with a military force. And in the end, what a country most prizes is economic prosperity at home, not possession of another nation's territory (and the problems that come about with that).

This is why some smaller, weaker nations like to star wars with a bigger and stronger opponent. They do so hoping to quickly lose and receive massive economic "rebuilding" grants after the surrender. So in the end, the little nation gains by starting and losing a war with another nation. The United Sates, in particular, has been an unlimited resource for losing nations, as the U.S. seems to think dumping hundreds of billions in aid to the losing nation will somehow make it strong enough to not start any more ears. Sad to say, the wealthy nations don't seem to realize that they are being swindled out of their assets, that the swindle never stops and that they are the biggest losers of the war (they didn't even fight).

Sigh....I hope we the world can one day just fight on-line, with some of those idiotic war game simulation games. At that point, I will know civilization is advancing.