Warfare in History
making it more vulnerable to overthrow. The main
factor that tends to weaken states is war, especially in
the context of strong peasant communities and an
alienated dominant class. This work has been the
primary inspiration for the development of a ‘state-
centered’ approach to historical sociology.
6. Conclusion
This short summary has only been able to scratch the
surface of the voluminous literature on war. Future
research should attempt to link the several topics
discussed here, by bringing together the micro and
macro causes of war, and by tying the causes more
closely to the consequences of war. The increasing
development of technologies of mass destruction and
the rise of transnational political units will also
challenge existing theoretical frameworks. Like most
of sociology, the sociology of war is still in its infancy.
See also: Conflict and War, Archaeology of; Conflict:
Anthropological Aspects; Conflict Sociology; Geo-
politics; Military Geography; Military History; Na-
tional Security Studies and War Potential of Nations;
Peace; Peacemaking in History; War: Anthropolo-
gical Aspects; War: Causes and Patterns
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E. Kiser
Warfare in History
This article divides the history of warfare into five
periods: the classical era (including the wars of Greece
and Rome); the Middle Ages (roughly from AD 500 to
the Turkish conquest of Byzantium in 1453); the age of
gunpowder (from 1453 to the American and French
Revolutions beginning in 1776); the ‘long nineteenth
century’ (from 1776 to 1918); and finally the con-
temporary period (covering World War II and the
Cold War). Each of these periods will be defined by
changes in three dimensions. First and most obviously,
each period is associated with a general group of
military technologies. Second, each period also in-
volves a shift in the nature of military organization.
Finally, this periodization demonstrates changes in
the reasons why people have gone to war.
1. The Classical Period
1.1 Technology
The Classical period deserves consideration on its own
merits and in the context of an historical debate over
the influence of Greco-Roman warfare on later Euro-
pean patterns. In the field of technology, some
historians argue that the Greeks and Romans began a
pattern of using superior technology to compensate
for having to fight wars against numerically superior
enemies. The Persian Wars of the fifth century BC
demonstrated the need for Greek city-states to combat
the much larger armies of Persian kings Darius and
Xerxes. Needing to slow the Persians, Spartan general
Leonidas threw his much smaller force into a moun-
tain pass near Thermopylae in 480 BC knowing that it
would be destroyed to a man. Aware that his army
would not return, Leonidas took with him only those
men who had children to succeed them, an important
consideration because the army and the citizenry were
closely linked.
To avoid future Thermoplyaes, the Greeks devel-
oped both offensive and defensive technologies. Even-
tually, the typical Greek soldier wore nearly seventy
pounds of armor and carried spears and swords that
16367
Warfare in History
were superior to Persian weapons. These technological
solutions helped the Greeks win, but the unity that the
Greek city-states showed against Persia soon devolved
into internecine wars. During the most famous of
these wars, the Peloponnesian War (431–04 BC),
technology again proved critical. In this case,
Athenian naval vessels attempted to balance the
superior land power of their enemy, Sparta. Defensive
technologies evolved in counterpoint as Athens, Syra-
cuse, and other city-states built protective walls strong
enough to defy even determined sieges.
The Romans also leaned heavily on technology to
defeat more numerous enemies, though many Roman
military technologies were not necessarily weapons
systems. Building upon the Roman genius for en-
gineering, Roman armies assisted in the construction
of a system of roads (even today the Roman roads are
roughly contiguous with the European highway sys-
tem) that permitted the legions to move quickly from
one point in the empire to another. The Romans also
depended upon defensive works such as trenches and
walls (Hadrian’s Wall in the UK is the most famous
example) to contain their enemies rather than fight
them. Some historians argue that the Classical tra-
dition bequeathed to later Western militaries the
importance of looking for technological solutions to
military problems.
1.2 Organization
The Greeks based their military upon the hoplite
system. Hoplites (named for their shield, the hoplon)
were citizens of the republic and rough social equals.
Thus, Greek warfare had no concept directly anal-
ogous to the modern division of officers and enlisted
men. Greek generals (such as they were) received their
appointment by yearly election. Municipal assemblies
also voted on when and where the city-state would go
to war. As citizens, hoplites participated fully in these
elections.
As nonprofessionals, the hoplites needed a fairly
simple tactical system because so little time could be
devoted to formal training. The result was a dense
concentration called a phalanx. A hoplite’s shield
protected his own left side and his neighbor’s right
side. Thus the phalanx could only succeed when every
hoplite stood his ground, lest the gap between himself
and his neighbor be exploited. Once broken apart, a
phalanx soon dissolved, resulting in many casualties
by trampling.
The Romans trained and organized much more
formally than the Greeks. Groups of about 120 men
formed ‘maniples,’ thirty-five of which were then used
to form legions of approximately 4,000 infantry and
300 cavalry (the exact sizes of maniples and legions
varied significantly over time). This system fore-
shadowed the modern creation of platoons, com-
panies, and brigades. The Romans used professional
16368
gladiators (named for their short, thrusting sword, the
gladius) and evolved a concept of officers (usually
wealthier citizens) and ‘other ranks.’ Increased sophis-
tication and professional training allowed the Romans
to develop a military that used various weapons,
including soft iron javelins called pila. The soft iron
bent on impact so that enemies could not throw them
back. If victorious, however, Roman smiths could
recover the pila after the battle and reshape them. The
Roman system gave the legions flexibility, endurance,
and striking power that few militaries could match.
The Greek and Roman systems of warfare mirrored
their societies. Both preferred service by citizens,
perhaps another legacy to modern nation-states. The
Roman system extended citizenship to conquered
people, but the effectiveness of its army noticeably
declined as more non-Roman militia entered the
Roman military. The citizen model was less prevalent
in the armies of autocrats such as Alexander the Great.
The Romans also gradually separated wealth from
military service by introducing regular pay and even
retirement benefits.
1.3 Purposes
Among the legacies left by the Greeks and Romans to
later styles of warfare is the concept of pitched battle.
The Greeks especially tended to favor violent, but
short, battles intended to solve disputes in a single
afternoon. The bloody nature of Greek warfare
appalled many of their opponents, including the
Persians, who disliked a style of warfare that left even
the winners with high casualties. Despite its violence,
Greek warfare did follow certain understood rules,
including safe passage for heralds and ambassadors
and amnesty for temples and other religious sites.
Roman warfare followed a similar pattern. Wars
were generally fought with the single goal of annihi-
lating the enemy. The Roman sack of Carthage in 146
BC is the most famous, but hardly the only example.
Roman armies typically pursued retreating enemies
with cavalry and often treated prisoners severely. In
one case, Julius Caesar kept an opposing general on
display in Rome for six years before executing him.
The Roman preference for fast, deadly, decisive battles
differed significantly from other cultures. The Aztecs,
for example, believed that the purpose of warfare was
to capture prisoners for later sacrifice.
2. The Middle Ages
2.1 Technology
The most important Medieval technology, odd though
it may seem, was not a weapon, but the stirrup. The
stirrup changed the traditional relationship between

cavalry and infantry. With stirrups allowing riders to
grasp lances and shields firmly and with newer, more
durable horseshoes allowing horses to run faster and
farther, cavalry came to the forefront for most of this
period. The Mongols proved to be the most successful
of the horse-based military systems of the Asian
steppes; by the late thirteenth century they controlled
an empire that stretched from China to modern-day
Ukraine. Their military relied almost exclusively on
cavalry.
In Western Europe, cavalry proved to be no less
important. For the aristocrats who could afford the
extensive support systems that accompanied cavalry,
horses meant power. The European aristocracy, as
well as its Japanese counterpart, depended upon
horses, armor, and swords for offensive power and
increasingly larger castles for defensive power. The
victory of mounted Norman knights over Anglo-
Saxon infantry at the Battle of Hastings in 1066
underscored the value of cavalry. The Catholic Church
even tried to ban weapons (such as the crossbow) that
threatened the knight’s status, though the church
permitted the use of such weapons on infidels.
Technological changes also helped to end the period
of dominance by the mounted knight. The Hundred
Years War marks an important turning point. At the
battles of Cre! cy (1346), Poitiers (1356), and Agincourt
(1415), skilled English archers devastated French
knights with the Welsh longbow, a weapon capable of
rapidly delivering arrows powerful enough to pen-
etrate armor at ranges up to 400 yards. Lacking
effective missile weapons themselves, the French
knights suffered terribly. At Cre! cy, the longbows
allowed the English to defeat a French force three
times its size, further underscoring the Western pattern
of looking to technology to compensate for smaller
numbers.
2.2 Organization
Military training and military service was concen-
trated in a relatively small group of wealthy aristo-
crats. In most Eurasian systems, peasants and serfs
were not expected to engage in actual fighting, though
they might participate in ancillary operations, par-
ticularly as archers or pikemen supporting the cavalry.
The challenge to kings and other rulers, then, was to
maintain the loyalty and fealty of their aristocratic
vassals. In the Third Crusade (1189–92), for example,
Frederick I of Germany, Philip II of France, and
Richard I of England spent considerable time keeping
their unruly knights and barons in check. Powerful,
aristocratic military orders, relatively independent of
royal authority such as the Knights Templars and the
Teutonic Knights emerged from the Crusades as well.
In Japan a similar system developed, though loyalty
was ordinarily based more on personal than con-
tractual allegiances. The Japanese samurai class
Warfare in History
emerged in the twelfth century, replacing the conscript
armies that had existed previously. The samurai also
came to dominate Japanese politics, supplanting the
traditional Japanese aristocracy. The failure of
Mongol invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281 removed
any serious outside threat to the home islands, leaving
the small samurai class in near-complete charge of
military affairs. Civil wars and power struggles did
occur, but they rarely drew Japanese peasants into the
fighting.
In the Islamic world, the Abbasid Caliphate began
in the ninth century to use slave soldiers called
mamluks. Originally from the steppes of Asia Minor,
the mamluks soon translated their military dominance
into political dominance in Egypt and elsewhere in the
Middle East. They were the only major Islamic force
that proved capable of resisting the Mongols, defeat-
ing them in 1260 at the Battle of Ain Jalut in modern-
day Israel. The mamluks, the samurai, the Mongols,
and the European aristocracy, though different in
many ways, shared a near-monopoly over military
force in their societies, which were arranged in feudal,
or at least fief-based, political systems. All of these
systems were prone to succession crises and internal
strife. None proved to be militarily superior to any
other.
2.3 Purposes
Generally speaking, the motivations and purposes for
warfare in this period were either religious, feudal, or
both. The Islamic empires acquired tremendous ter-
ritory, in part through military conquest, without
significant technological advantages over their oppon-
ents. They did so by wedding religious ideology to
their military forces. Under the reigns of Caliphs
Umar (634–44) and Uthman (644–56), Muslim armies
conquered Spain, North Africa, Persia, and the Indus
River valley. Their fleets conquered Cyprus and raided
Sicily and Rhodes. Qur’an readers accompanied
Muslim armies, converting many men who may have
joined more for plunder than for religion.
The Crusades (1095–1291) also reflect a religious
basis for warfare in this period. In the eleventh century,
the success of the Seljuk Turks against the Byzantines
led Pope Urban II to call the First Crusade (1095–99)
to defend Christianity against the incursions of Islam.
The Crusades perfectly show the interplay of religion
and feudal obligation. The Pope acted both as a
religious leader and (more controversially) as a noble
in his own right. The First Crusade (also known as the
‘Peasants’ Crusade’) demonstrated that only knights
could be relied upon to form the center of Christian
armies. The peasant armies were too large to feed and
too unsophisticated to stand up to the Turks. Of the
30,000 non-nobles who fought in the First Crusade,
25,000 died. Sending young nobles off to the Middle
East also served a political purpose for the Pope,
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Warfare in History
removing warriors and weapons from the constant
internal struggles of feudal Europe. Thus by the
fifteenth century similar and roughly coequal military
systems existed in Western Europe, the Islamic Em-
pires, the Asian steppes, and Japan.
3. The Gunpowder Age
3.1 Technology
The Turkish capture of Constantinople in 1453 in-
volved 70 heavy artillery pieces, including a 19-ton
piece that fired a 1,500-pound projectile more than a
mile. The appearance of these weapons was not new.
Knowledge of gunpowder had moved from China to
the Middle East to Europe. At the Battle of Cre! cy
(1346) the English introduced very primitive gun-
powder weapons to European warfare. Nevertheless,
the dramatic Turkish success at a place Europeans
considered sacred marked a watershed in military
technology. Ironically, the Islamic empires subse-
quently proved slower to adopt gunpowder weapons
than did their European adversaries. By the end of the
eighteenth century, Europeans were the clear masters
of gunpowder warfare on land and at sea.
Early small arms, like the arquebus, were clumsy,
unreliable, and often more dangerous to the shooter
than to his intended victim. Until the widespread
adoption of the rifle in the nineteenth century the
common command given to musketeers was ‘level’
rather than ‘aim’ since one could not expect to hit a
specific target at any significant distance. Large ar-
tillery was even more dangerous to their users and so
large that pieces often had to be cast at the siege site.
By the sixteenth century Europeans had standardized
ammunition sizes, developed training systems for
musketeers, and invented more reliable firing systems
for small arms. These changes made both large and
small arms more mobile and effective.
Europeans developed gunpowder weapons much
more quickly than any other society in this period. The
simple availability of raw materials and craftsmen
were important prerequisites; men who could cast
church bells were in special demand as they could
easily cast cannon as well. European nobles also had
ample motivation to acquire new weapons for their
struggles with other nobles. Finally, the European
system proved more amenable to allowing private
enterprises to develop and sell new weapons. The
mamluks and the samurai showed a particular dislike
for guns as they tended to undermine the military
monopoly that kept them in power.
3.2 Organization
Guns threatened the very existence of a horse-based
nobility whose expertise was in swords and lances. The
age of the knight, already waning, came to an end.
16370
Non-noble musketeers replaced them. Because small
arms were so inefficient when used singly, musketeers
had to be arranged in lines and taught to fire and load
their weapons in uson. Armies thus became much
larger and more disciplined. Aristocrats who remained
in military service became the backbone of an officer
class that led armies mostly constituted of peasants.
Holland’s Maurice of Orange (1567–1625) and
Sweden’s Gustavus Adolphus (1594–1632) deserve
much of the credit for forming and training the new
armies. They introduced regular drill and other re-
forms that eventually led to the classic European
linear infantry formations (initially as many as 10 men
deep, later two or three deep) that permitted one line
to fire, then move to the back. This system maintained
a near-continuous rate of fire, but required intense
training (the first drill manuals appeared in 1607) and
discipline in order to assure the safe and effective
operation of guns. Every officer, furthermore, feared
the specter of mutiny. Intense discipline, therefore,
characterized most European armies; in many cases,
the men feared their officers more than they feared the
enemy.
Many European nations also developed powerful
sail-based navies in this period. England’s Henry VIII,
excommunicated from the Catholic Church in 1534,
sold Church lands to finance the construction of a
fleet. Future monarchs continued to build upon
Britain’s command of the seas, introducing men-of-
war in the seventeenth century that were durable
enough to carry large cannon. England’s HMS Vic-
tory, launched in 1759, was built from 2,000 oak trees,
27 miles of rope, and four acres of sails. It had 104
guns capable of firing 1,100 pounds of iron every 90
seconds. Seapower became critical to acquiring col-
onies, protecting merchant marines, and projecting
power. Britain dominated the ‘Great Age of Sail,’ but
Portugal, Spain, Holland, France, and others used
naval vessels to increase their wealth and status.
3.3 Purposes
Three purposes dominated warfare: religion; dynastic
ambition; and imperialism. The Thirty Years’ War
(1618–48) demonstrated the interplay of the first two.
Lutheran-Catholic-Calvinist antagonisms partially ex-
plain the bloody nature of the war; Germany pro-
portionately lost more people in the Thirty Years’ War
than in World War II. Religion, however, did not
always determine the allegiances of the participants.
Catholic France and Catholic Spain, for example,
consistently fought one another for control of Italy
and Flanders. Gunpowder weapons also led to a
concentration of power as wealthy kings, in command
of increasingly larger and more disciplined armies (not
to mention artillery able to destroy castles), could
compel their restless vassals to accept their rule.
The growth of monarchy meant that warfare often
followed the dynastic goals of kings. Louis XIV in

France, Peter the Great in Russia, and Frederick the
Great in Prussia all used gunpowder-based armies to
extend their power inside their kingdoms and enforce
their will outside. Often, dynastic wars spilled over
into the empires Europeans were in the process of
building with those same gunpowder weapons. In the
Seven Years’ War (1756–63), Britain seized France’s
Canadian and Indian colonies.
Finally, of course, Europeans translated their gun-
powder weapon advantages into overseas empires. In
this period, their greatest military advantage over non-
Europeans was in areas accessible to their great
warships. Navies allowed Europeans to enforce their
will along the coastlines of Africa and Asia. On land,
guns helped to make the Spanish, French, and British
empires in the Americas possible. In Asia, ‘gunpowder
empires’ such as the Ottomans and the Mughals also
concentrated political power. Japan, after an initial
period of experimentation with guns, effectively
banned gunpowder weapons in 1587 because of the
threat they posed to samurai dominance.
4. The Long Nineteenth Century, 1776–1918
4.1 Technology
This period, dominated by nationalism and indus-
trialization, marked a tremendous advance in military
technologies. Many existing technologies became
much more sophisticated. Smoothbore muskets gave
way in the nineteenth century to rifles, which have a
groove cut in their barrels. Rifling and the conical
bullet vastly increased the range and accuracy of small
arms fire. After the American Civil War (1861–65)
various forms of repeating rifles and machine guns
emerged. Artillery also became more deadly. By 1918
the Germans had developed a gun (albeit an inaccurate
one) with a range of 80 miles. Naval vessels became
more deadly as well. Iron and steel replaced wood as
the primary construction material and oil replaced
coal as the main fuel. HMS Dreadnought, launched in
1906, revolutionized warfare by carrying ten 12-inch
guns. Dreadnought set off a naval arms race that
helped to cause World War I. Winston Churchill
noted the importance of Dreadnought-class ships to
his nation thus: ‘the Admiralty asked for six, the
Cabinet proposed four, and we compromised on
eight.’
This period also introduced many new types of
weapons systems, including (in rough chronological
order), submarines, airplanes, poison gas, and tanks.
By the end of this period air forces had developed all
major roles for airpower in use today except midair
refueling. These technologies brought war directly to
civilians as never before. Many important communi-
cations technologies such as telegraphs (first used in
the Crimean War, 1854–56), railroads, and radio
Warfare in History
changed the nature of military command and control.
Advances in medical technology reduced the number
of men who died of wounds and disease.
These technological changes affected Western and
Westernized societies (including the USA and, after
1853, Japan) the most. Warfare between them, there-
fore, reached unprecedented levels of violence. Wes-
ternized societies also had tremendous advantages
against non-westernized societies. European imper-
ialists were thus able to use new military technologies
to move inland in Africa and Asia. Most visibly,
Japan, which Westernized very quickly after 1853,
easily defeated China, which did not, in the Sino-
Japanese War of 1894–95.
4.2 Organization
The most obvious change in the organization of armies
and navies in this period was the increasing connection
between military service and nationalism. National
volunteers and conscripts replaced mercenaries, once
common in Europe. Between 1776 and 1783, the
American colonies used a militia with both local and
national roots to defeat a British army partly de-
pendent upon mercenaries. This contrast partially
explains the fame of George Washington’s crossing of
the Delaware River in 1776: his national army cap-
tured 1,000 Hessian mercenaries in British service.
The American experience, though, is minor com-
pared to the French Revolution. The logic of the
Revolution and the wars that followed implied that
national armies must be populated by national sol-
diers. The le
eT e en masse of 1793 established the
principle that citizens of all ages, male and female,
bore some responsibility for national defense. Napo-
leon extended this principle and most European armies
soon copied the French pattern. Nationalism inspired
zeal and a willingness to endure. In 1814 Prussia
created the Landwehr as a permanent peacetime militia
and by the end of the nineteenth century most
European nations had introduced national conscrip-
tion. The militaries of states that were not also nations
(Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire) declined as a
result.
The two most important military reforms of this
period were Napoleon’s corps system and the Prussian
General Staff. A Napoleonic corps was large enough
to operate independently since it contained formations
of cavalry, artillery, and infantry that could act in
concert. This system, however, depended on capable
officers. Napoleon therefore introduced a professional
officer corps open to talent in place of the aristocratic
officer corps upon which Europe had come to depend.
Later in the century, Prussia developed a General Staff
system to plan wars. Detailed Prussian planning led to
victory in the Wars of German Unification (1864
against Denmark, 1866 against Austria, and 1870–71
against France). These successes led all major Western
militaries to copy the general staff idea.
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Warfare in History

4.3 Purposes military option of obliterating one’s enemy and, in the

process, taking the risk that a similar fate might befall
Military historians sometimes speak of a continuum
your own society. Atomic weapons created the post-
between ‘limited’ and ‘total’ wars. Because warfare in
World War II superpower system that so informed not
this period tended to be tied to national goals and
only the Cold War but dozens of regional conflicts as
national identity, this period represented a general
well. The challenge of fighting wars ‘under the nuclear
shift toward totality. The Wars of the French Rev-
umbrella’ led to American defeat in Vietnam, Soviet
olution, the American Civil War, and World War I
defeat in Afghanistan, and ‘war by proxy’ as the
stand as cases in point. In these wars and others, huge
superpowers tried to fight each other through client
proportions of national income were dedicated to
states in areas as diverse as Southeast Asia, the Middle
prosecuting wars and fundamental social, political,
East, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America.
economic, and cultural patterns were forever altered.
Of course, more than just atomic weapons are
The increased suffering (and intentional targeting) of
important to this period. World War II saw the
civilians also led to totality.
development of effective long-range bombers and
Advanced technologies also made imperialism
aircraft carriers, capable of bringing war directly into
(often as an extension of nationalism) cheaper and
an enemy’s homeland. Radar and sonar provided new
easier for the Europeans. European militaries moved
technologies to deal with enemy air and submarine
inland with steam-powered ships and railroads. Ma-
attacks. By the end of the war, jet aircraft and rockets
chine guns, furthermore, made military contests with
were operational, though neither proved decisive.
natives one-sided. By 1912, the Vickers-Maxim gun
More sophisticated transport planes and landing craft
could fire 250 rounds per minute. As poet Halaire
allowed for airborne and amphibious warfare to come
Belloc noted in a turn-of-the-century (twentieth cen-
into maturity as well.
tury) poem, ‘Whatever happens, we have got\The
Since World War II, electronics and computers have
Maxim Gun, and they have not.’ Nevertheless, iso-
revolutionized warfare yet again. Cruise missiles and
lated cases such as the Boer Wars (1899–1902) demon-
other ‘smart’ weapons ideally provide more accurate
strated that modern weapons in the hands of skilled
delivery of weapons and, hopefully, fewer civilian
practitioners could make imperialism extremely
casualties as a result. Satellites, helicopters, soph-
bloody and costly. The Boers, white settlers in South
isticated avionics, and stealth technology once again
Africa of Dutch ancestry, resisted the British with
have provided an upper hand to advanced societies,
breech-loading guns and smokeless powder. It took
though the Vietnam and Afghanistan cases prove that
the British empire more than two and a half years and
a technological advantage is not always enough to
almost 500,000 men to subdue less than 90,000 loosely
ensure victory. Nevertheless, today Western societies
organized Boers. The Boer Wars provided a taste of
still depend upon their technological advantages—
the changes to come in European military dominance
much as the ancient Greeks did—to compensate for
after World War II.
the smaller numbers of soldiers that they can place on
World War I caused 20,000,000 deaths, destroyed
the battlefield.
four empires, and left in place the conditions for
World War II. Only wars fought by national armies
could have been so destructive. Warfare in this period
combined the productive capacity of industrialization 5.2 Organization
with the inspiration of nationalism. This combination,
Initially, the organization of World War II armies was
when matched with the classical legacy for pitched
designed to avoid the totality of World War I. The
battle, produced a level of carnage that continues to
German blitzkrieg system attempted to win ‘lightning’
baffle historians today.
victories that would not drain German manpower in
the trenches. The Japanese, too, hoped to destroy the
American fleet at Pearl Harbor and force the USA into
5. The Contemporary Period, 1918–2000 a negotiated settlement. Nevertheless, totality soon
emerged as the Axis powers sought to annihilate, not
defeat, their enemies. More than ever before, entire
5.1 Technology
societies became mobilized. Women participated di-
Although this period has much in common with the rectly and indirectly in numbers and ways never before
previous period, one specific technology divides it envisioned. The pattern of increasing female par-
from all that had come before. Atomic weapons have ticipation has continued into the post-war period. The
changed the very definition of warfare. Some scholars USA armed forces used 35,000 women in the Persian
have argued that in the atomic age ‘strategy,’ as the Gulf War, many of them at or very near the front lines.
term was commonly understood before 1945, has no The totality of World War II ruined Europe and
real meaning because atomic weapons do not permit a Japan as first-rate military powers. The end of Euro-
society to apply a level of force proportionate to pean hegemony also meant the virtual end of imper-
desired political ends. In effect, a society only has the ialism. Many militaries resorted to guerilla warfare to

16372

try to defeat more technologically sophisticated en-
emies. Fighting underneath the ‘technology threshold’
has proven difficult for more advanced military sys-
tems. The Americans had great difficulty with the
Vietnamese but few battlefield problems with the
Iraqis in 1991 because the latter’s military was much
more like their own that the former’s.
Since the end of the Cold War, the general trend has
been to much smaller, but more sophisticated, mili-
taries. Virtually all European states have eliminated or
greatly reduced conscription. The USA abandoned
conscription during the Cold War (in 1973) partially
as a result of Vietnam War protest, but also to
acknowledge that sophisticated weapons systems re-
quire dedicated professional volunteers to operate
them.
5.3 Purposes
World War II was a contest of three ideologies:
democratic capitalism, fascism, and communism. As a
result, armies became politicized as never before.
Young German males often left Hitler Youth organi-
zations and entered directly into the Wehrmacht. In
the Soviet Union, political commissars (including
Nikita Khrushchev) served with Soviet military units
and had as much decision-making authority as gen-
erals. Ideology created what John Dower called a ‘war
without mercy.’ Though he was referring to the Pacific
War between the USA and Japan, the same phrase
could be applied equally to the war between Germany
and the Soviet Union as well. The Holocaust and the
German siege of Stalingrad, among other episodes,
show the cost of the war to civilians. The former killed
6,000,000 Jews and other targets of the Nazi state. In
the latter, Joseph Stalin refused to order the evacu-
ation of the city even in its most dire moments. In the
end, only nine Stalingrad children were reunited with
both biological parents.
The Cold War interacted with the general decline of
European hegemony to impact regional conflicts.
Throughout the Third World, nationalist movements
and civil wars became arenas where the superpowers
armed clients but, conversely, often went to great
lengths to reduce global tensions. In 1956 and 1973,
for example, the superpowers brokered truces in the
Arab–Israeli wars rather than risk a USA–Soviet
confrontation. Regional wars like the Iran–Iraq War
(1980–88) also became entangled with the Cold War;
the weapons that the superpowers made available
lengthened wars that had little relation to the global
capitalist–communist struggle.
The end of the Cold War raises as many questions as
it provides answers. The Persian Gulf War seemed to
set the model for American hegemony as the lone
remaining superpower. After building a coalition
based around itself, the USA operated in the Gulf
without the fears of Soviet response that had haunted
Korea and Vietnam. The NATO air war over Kosovo,
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences
Water Pollution: Marine
however, suggested that Russia (and perhaps China)
could not be ignored. Multipolarity appears to be
every bit as dangerous as bipolarity. The Western
powers continue to look toward technological solu-
tions (especially airplanes and cruise missiles) to solve
military problems, suggesting that in some ways we
have not come so far from the Greeks after all.
See also: Arms Control; Contemporary History; First
World War, The; Folklore; Geopolitics; History of
Technology; Home in Anthropology; Imperialism,
History of; International Relations, History of; Mili-
tary Geography; Military History; National Security
Studies and War Potential of Nations; Peace; Peace-
making in History; Revolutions, History of; Sacrifice;
Second World War, The; Violence, History of; War:
Anthropological Aspects; War: Causes and Patterns;
War, Sociology of
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M. S. Neiberg
Copyright # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd.
All rights reserved.
Water Pollution: Marine
This article will briefly define the term marine pollution
and then go on to consider the historic growth of
problems in this area and the perception of those
problems. The main areas of concern in terms of
marine pollution are then outlined and the inter-
national methods of regulating marine pollution prob-
lems are considered.
16373
ISBN: 0-08-043076-7