What is war? The essay by Bruno Cabanes

In recent years, most of us have enjoyed an enormous privilege: that of rejecting war at the margins of our lives. We are, in fact, among the few generations in world history that have not known conflicts on our lands and we have almost been able to convince ourselves that fighting was a dusty legacy of the past, something to be locked away in the pages of books or in the scenes of some film. Yet war, this monstrous and destructive being that has accompanied man since the dawn of time, has continued to rage in many parts of our planet and then in recent times almost reached our doorstep.

Willingly and unwillingly we have realized that fighting and dying continue to be cruel current events, even if this – for now, but are we sure forever? – moves outside the confines of our security.

Millennia ago it was written in the Bible: “They will beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks; nation will no longer lift up sword against nation, they will no longer practice the art of warfare." Millennia later the word is still at arms, even if in the meantime the war seems to have changed its face… or not? And are we sure we know exactly what war is? Are we able to define the "boundaries", the purposes, the causes, the consequences?

It is from questions like these that " A history of war " (Bompiani, 2022, 32 euros, pp. 848. Also Ebook) begins, a powerful essay edited by the French military historian Bruno Cabanes and which collects more than fifty contributions, precious for understanding the dynamics resulting from the conflicts of the last two centuries. From the end of the eighteenth century to today, the experience of war has, in fact, radically changed with the disappearance of traditional battles, the use of increasingly sophisticated weapons and the progressive approach of the war front to the perimeter of civilian life. The increasingly marked overlapping of places of death with those of life has meant that in the most recent conflicts civilians have become targets of bombings, massacres, genocides and ethnic purges.

A history of war then tries to offer us an all-round view of the war phenomenon, a vision resulting from a multidisciplinary approach that brings into play history, sociology, psychology, economics, anthropology to find new interpretations of the "war phenomenon". The volume thus explores two and a half centuries of wars and their impact on society and the environment, the role of political and military institutions, the economy and interpersonal relationships, without forgetting the long trail of wounds and traumas that every war leaves behind him. Because every war, for those who experience it and suffer it, establishes a before and an after. It undoubtedly represents the most shocking collective experience that an individual or group of individuals can face.