"Archaeology in the Age of Special War" Topic

""Everything is very simple in War, but the simplest thing is difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction which no man can imagine exactly who has not seen War," wrote Carl Von Clausewitz in his classic magnum opus On War. Friction, he theorized, was what "distinguishes real war from war on paper."[1] In a hypothetical total war each side would increase its use of force in response to the other until one side was annihilated. In real life frictions intervene. Limited resources. Limited willpower. Human error. Rational calculations of interests which make negotiations a better option. All of these combine with a hundred other factors to prevent war from reaching its ideal state.

Clausewitz, however, wrote in the West, where a very specific set of customs was coded into the cultural conception of "war." Wars began with declarations, were decided on the battlefield in a violent and decisive struggle between combatants, and ended with peace treaties. The goal, according to Victor Davis Hanson, was to "focus a concentrated brutality upon the few in order to spare the many."[2] The savage violence unleashed on battlefields from classical Greece to Gettysburg and Verdun was actually a way to limit the destructiveness of war to one segment of the population…"
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Amicalement
Armand

An interesting piece, Armand, that does not deserve to be labelled 'drivel'.

Hmmm ? Evocative …

Glad you like it my friend!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand