war experience essay

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First-hand Iraq War Experience

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Published: Dec 12, 2018

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Vietnam War: 6 personal essays describe the sting of a tragic conflict

The Vietnam War touched millions of lives. Within these personal essays from people who took part in the filming of The Vietnam War , are lessons about what happened, what it meant then and what we can learn from it now.

Long ago and far away, we fought a war in which more than 58,000 Americans died and hundreds of thousands of others were wounded. The war meant death for an estimated 3 million Vietnamese, North and South. The fighting dragged on for almost a decade, polarizing the American people, dividing the country and creating distrust of our government that remains with us today.

In one way or another, Vietnam has overshadowed every national security decision since.

We were told that our mission was to prevent South Vietnam from falling to communism. Very lofty. But the men I led as a young infantry platoon leader and later as a company commander weren’t fighting for that mission. Mostly draftees, they were terrific soldiers. They were fighting, I realized, for each other — to simply survive their year in-country and go home.

I had grown up as an “Army brat.” To me, the Army was like a second family. In Vietnam, the radio code word for our division’s infantry companies was family . A “rucksack outfit,” my company would disappear into the jungle, moving quietly, staying in the field for weeks. We all ate the same rations and endured the same heat, humidity, mosquitoes, leeches, skin rashes, jungle itch. We were like pack animals, carrying upwards of 60 pounds of gear, water, ammunition — and even more for the radio operators and machine gunners. I was impressed by how the men endured it all, especially the draftees who had answered the call to service.

I learned much about leadership. I was once counseled by a senior officer “not to be too worried about your men.” Incredible. I was concerned about my men’s safety at all times. Even though my company lost very few, I remember each of those deaths vividly. They were all good men, in a war very few understood.

On both of my combat tours, in 1968 at Huê´ during the Tet Offensive and in 1969-70 in the triple-canopy rainforests along the Cambodian border, we fought soldiers of the North Vietnamese army. They were good light infantry; I had respect for their determination and abilities. But they were the enemy; our job was to kill or capture them.

Though we were conducting a war of attrition, we were actually fighting the enemy’s birth rate. He was prepared and determined to keep fighting as long as he had the manpower to send south.

In terms of strategy, it seemed a war out of “Alice in Wonderland.” The Ho Chi Minh Trail, the enemy’s major supply line and infiltration route, ran through Cambodia and Laos. Yet until May 1970, both of those countries were off limits to U.S. ground forces. We bombed the trail incessantly, but the enemy’s ability to move troops and equipment south never seemed to slack. We never invaded North Vietnam. As demonstrated during Tet in ’68, the enemy could control the tempo of the war when he wished. We, on the other hand, would use unilaterally declared “truce” periods and would halt bombing to signal something never clearly defined — a willingness to talk, I imagined, which the enemy ignored.

Looking back, if our strategy was intended to force the enemy to say “enough,” resulting in a stalemate situation like that at the end of the Korean War, would the South Vietnamese have been able to defend themselves, independently? Unlikely.

Would the U.S. have been willing to commit and maintain American forces in South Vietnam indefinitely? Also unlikely.

Did we learn anything from that experience, which left such an indelible mark on our national psyche? History is a harsh teacher; there are still no easy answers.

Phil Gioia entered the Army after graduating from Virginia Military Institute in 1967. He left the military in 1977 and later was mayor in Corte Madera, Calif., and worked in venture capital and the technology industry. He lives in Marin County, Calif.

Hal Kushner

When I deployed to Vietnam in August 1967, I was a young Army doctor, married five years, with a 3-year-old daughter, just potty trained, and another child due the following April. When I returned from Vietnam in late March 1973, I saw my 5-year-old son for the first time, and my daughter was in the fifth grade. In the interim, we had landed on the moon; there was women’s lib, Nixon had gone to China; Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy had been assassinated.

I was the only doctor captured in the 10-year Vietnam War. I was back from the dead.

We prisoners endured unspeakable horror, brutality and deprivation, and we saw and experienced things no human should ever witness. Our mortality rate was almost 50% — higher even than at the brutal Civil War prisons at Andersonville or Elmira a century earlier. I cradled 10 dying men in my arms as they breathed their last and spoke of home and family; then we buried them in crude graves, marked with stones and bamboo, and eulogized them with words of sunshine and hope, country and family. The eulogies were for the survivors, of course; they always are.

On the Fourth of July in five successive years, we sang patriotic songs, but very softly, so our captors couldn’t hear the forbidden words, and we cried. One of us had a missal issued by the Marine Corps, our only book, but our captors had torn out the pages with the American flag and The Star-Spangled Banner .

At my release in Hanoi, I was shocked by the hair and dress of the reporters there. Once home, I saw television and movies with frank profanity and sex. When I left, Lucy and Desi slept in twin beds. I left Ozzie and Harriett and returned to Taxi Driver . What had happened to my country? Why did we suffer and sacrifice?

When my aircraft crashed on Nov. 30, 1967, I collided with one planet and returned to another. The Vietnam War, which had about one-fifth of the casualties of World War II but had lasted three times as long, had changed the country as much as the greatest cataclysm in world history. It had changed forever the way we think of our government and ourselves. The country had lost its innocence — and, for a time, its confidence.

This war, which had such a great impact on my life, is a dim memory today. There are 58,000 names on that wall, and it rates but a few pages in a high school history book.

I am dismayed by how little our young people know about Vietnam, and how misunderstood it is by others. The Vietnam War is as remote to them as the War of 1812 or the War of Jenkins’ Ear. Now, 40 years later, we must try to understand.

Hal Kushner joined the Army and served as a flight surgeon in Vietnam. In 1967, he was captured by the Viet Cong after surviving a helicopter crash. He spent nearly six years as a prisoner of war. He lives in Daytona Beach, Fla.

Mai Elliott

Having lived through war and seen what it did to my family and to millions of Vietnamese, I feel grateful for the peace and stability I now enjoy in the United States.

In Vietnam, my family and I experienced what it was like to be caught in bombing and fighting, and what it was like to flee our home and survive as refugees.

During World War II, in my childhood, we huddled in shelters as Allied planes targeting Japanese positions bombed the town in the North where we lived.

In 1946, when French troops returned to try to take Vietnam back from Ho Chi Minh’s government, French soldiers attacking the village where we were taking refuge almost executed my father (who had earlier worked for the French colonial authorities).

In 1954, fearing reprisals from the communists about to enter Hanoi, we fled to Saigon with only the clothes on our backs.

In 1955, we fled again when we found ourselves caught in the fighting between the army of President Ngo Dinh Diem and the armed group he was trying to eliminate, leaving behind our home, which was about to burn to the ground in the onslaught.

In April 1975, American helicopters plucked my family out of Saigon at the last minute as communist rockets exploded nearby.

The fear we felt paled in comparison to the terror that Vietnamese in the countryside of South Vietnam experienced when bombs and artillery shells landed in their villages, or when American and South Vietnamese soldiers swept through their hamlets; or the terror my relatives in North Vietnam felt when American B-52s carpet bombed in December 1972. Yet, our brushes with war were terrifying enough.

As refugees, we could find shelter and support from middle-class friends and relatives, while destitute peasants had to move to squalid camps and depend on meager handouts and help from the government in Saigon. But we did find out, as they did, that losing everything was psychologically wrenching, and that surviving and rebuilding took fortitude of spirit.

Only those who have known war can truly appreciate peace. I am one of those people.

Mai Elliott was born in Vietnam and spent her childhood in Hanoi, where her father was a high-ranking official under the French colonial regime. Her family became divided when her older sister joined the Viet Minh resistance against French rule. In 1954, her family fled to Saigon, where Mai later did research on the Viet Cong insurgency for the RAND Corp. during the Vietnam War. She is married to American political scientist David Elliott. They live in Southern California.

Bill Zimmerman

I graduated from high school in 1958, thinking myself a patriot and aspiring to be a military pilot. Thirteen years later, I sat in a jail cell in Washington, D.C., after protesting what military pilots were doing in the skies over Vietnam.

My patriotism wilted in the South in 1963, after a short stint with the civil rights movement. Simultaneously, as the U.S. slid into war in Vietnam, skepticism nurtured in Mississippi led me to discover that we were stumbling into a quagmire.

The war escalated in 1965, and I became an ardent protester over the next six years. I was fired from two university teaching positions. But my sacrifices were trivial compared with those of young Americans forced into war, or Vietnamese civilians dying under bombs and napalm. With other antiwar activists, I anguished over them all, and seethed with rage at our inability to stop the killing. In our fury, we became more forceful, committing widespread civil disobedience.

That’s how I landed in jail in 1971, trying unsuccessfully to block traffic to shut down the federal government. But our failure that day became a turning point. Antiwar leaders realized that while we had finally convinced a majority of Americans to oppose the war, our militant tactics kept them from joining us.

We changed course. Large demonstrations ended. New organizations sprang up to educate the public and lobby Congress. The work was confrontational but did not ask participants to risk arrest. Millions took part. Richard Nixon escalated the war, but he also felt the heat from a much broader antiwar coalition. In January 1973, his administration signed the Paris Peace Accords, and over the next two years, our intense lobbying persuaded Congress to cut funding for the corrupt South Vietnamese government, leading to its collapse in 1975.

We learned that in matters of war and peace, presidents regularly lie to the American people. Every president from Truman to Ford lied about Vietnam. We learned that two presidents, Johnson and Nixon, cared more about their own political survival than the lives of the men under their command. Both sent thousands of Americans to die in a war they already knew could not be won.

We learned that our government committed crimes against humanity. Agent Orange and other chemicals were sprayed on millions of acres, leaving a legacy of cancer and birth defects.

Most important, Vietnam taught us to reject blind loyalty and to fight back. In doing so, we meet our obligation as citizens … and become patriots.

Bill Zimmerman is a Los Angeles political consultant and the author of Troublemaker: A Memoir from the Front Lines of the Sixties (Anchor Books, 2012).

Roger Harris

When I think about the Vietnam War, I am torn by personal emotions that range from anger and sadness to hope. The Vietnam War experience scarred me but also shaped and molded my perspective on life.

As a 19-year-old African American from the Roxbury section of Boston, I voluntarily joined the U.S. Marine Corps, willing to fight and die for my country. I had experienced the tough neighborhood turf battles too often prevalent in the inner city. I had a gladiator’s heart and no fear. My father, all of my uncles, including a grand-uncle who rode with Teddy Roosevelt, all served in the military. I believed that it was now my turn, and if I were to die, my mom would receive a $10,000 death benefit and be able to purchase a house. I saw the war in Vietnam as a win-win situation.

In Vietnam, I served with G Company, 2nd Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment of the 3rd Marine Division. We were called the “Hell in a Helmet” Marines. We operated in I Corps, Quang Tri Province, mainly north of Dong Ha at the Demilitarized Zone, in hot spots called Con Thien, Gio Linh, Camp Carroll and Cam Lo. I vividly remember trembling with fear from the incoming shells in the mud-filled holes at Con Thien, wishing the shelling would stop and we could fight hand-to-hand. I remember those feelings like it was yesterday.

I, along with others, witnessed deaths unimaginable. We picked up the pieces of Marine bodies obliterated by direct hits. We stacked green body bags. I often wondered why others died and I lived.

I become angry when I think about the very young lives that were lost in Vietnam and the Gold Star families who have suffered. I am saddened by the sacrifices of true heroes and the disrespect that was shown to those who were fortunate enough to come home.

When I returned from Vietnam it was March 1968 in the midst of the civil rights movement. I landed at Boston’s Logan Airport in my Marine Corps Alpha Green uniform, with the medals and ribbons I had earned proudly displayed. I approached the sidewalk to catch a taxi, hoping that I wasn’t dreaming and would not awaken back at Camp Carroll to another bombardment.

Six taxicabs passed me by and drove off. I didn’t realize what was happening until the state trooper stepped in and told the next driver, “You have got to take this soldier.” The driver, who was white, looked up at us through the passenger side window and said, “I don’t want to go to Roxbury.”

That was my initial welcome home.

I now have an appreciation for the gift of life. Since returning home and completing college, I have devoted 42 years working in Boston schools. I see it as a tribute to my fellow Marines who paid the ultimate sacrifice.

I am very proud to have served my country as a United States Marine.

I am also very proud of the young men and women who continue to volunteer to join the armed services of our country.

Roger Harris enlisted in the Marines and served in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968. Afterward, he worked in the Boston public school system for more than 40 years. He lives in New York and Boston.

Eva Jefferson Paterson

This summer, I attended the 50th reunion of my high school class in Mascoutah, Ill., across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. My dad was a career Air Force man and was stationed at Scott Air Force Base nearby in 1960.

During dinner, before we rocked out to the Beach Boys and Stevie Wonder, a group of us talked about the war in Vietnam. The men remembered the draft system that required all young men to register to serve in the military. While I was in college at Northwestern from 1967 to 1971, a draft lottery was established. Numbers were drawn out of a big bin — similar to the one used for weekly state lotteries — corresponding to the days of the year. If your birthday corresponded to the first number drawn, your draft number was 1, and you were virtually certain to be drafted and sent to war. Most men from that period remember their number.

Some at our reunion had felt that it was their patriotic duty to serve; others were just delighted that their lottery numbers were above 300 and they were unlikely to be drafted. Few of us were anti-war at that time; I fully supported the war. My dad was sent to Cam Rahn Bay and Tan Son Nhut air force bases in Vietnam in 1966, my senior year in high school.

I remember being a freshman in college and actually saying to classmates who opposed to the war, “We have to support the war because the president says the war is good, and we must support the president.” Yikes! I changed my views as I got the facts.

Much of the fervor of the anti-war movement was fueled by the slogan “Hell no, we won’t go!” There was righteous indignation about the war, but fear was a strong motivator.

Now the burden of serving in wars falls on a very small percentage of the population, one that likely mirrors the patterns in the Vietnam era, with predominantly poor white, black and Latino men and women along with those who come from military backgrounds. It would be great to have a national discussion about this, but I fear our country is quite comfortable letting poor men and women and people of color and their families bear the burden of war.

Eva Jefferson Paterson grew up on air force bases and enrolled in Northwestern University in 1967, where she became student body president and politically active against the war. A civil rights attorney, she now runs the Equal Justice Society in Northern California.

U.S. general on Vietnam War: ‘This was some enemy’

Vietnam War: A timeline of U.S. entanglement

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How to Write a Perfect Essay On/About War (A Complete Guide)

War is painful. It causes mass death and the destruction of infrastructure on an unimaginable scale. Unfortunately, as humans, we have not yet been able to prevent wars and conflicts from happening. Nevertheless, we are studying them to understand them and their causes better.

In this post, we will look at how to write a war essay. The information we will share here will help anyone craft a brilliant war essay, whatever their level of education.

Let?s commence.

What Is a War Essay?

A war essay is an essay on an armed conflict involving two states or one state and an armed group. You will be asked to write a war essay at some point if you are taking a history course, diplomacy course, international relations course, war studies course, or conflict management course.

When asked to write about a war, it is important to consider several things. These include the belligerents, the location of the conflict, the leading cause or causes of the conflict, the course of the event so far, and the possible solutions to the conflict.

The sections below will help you discover everything you need to know about how to write war essays.

An essay about war can take many forms, including:

Expository essay ? where you explore the timeline of the wars (conflicts), losses/consequences, significant battles, and notable dates.
Argumentative essay . A war essay that debates an aspect of a certain war.
Cause and Effect essay examines the events leading to war and its aftermath.
Compare and contrast a war essay that pits one war or an aspect of the war against an
Document-based question (DBQ) that analyzes the historical war documentation to answer a prompt.
Creative writing pieces where you narrate or describe an experience of or with war.
A persuasive essay where use ethos, pathos, and logos (rhetorical appeals) to convince your readers to adopt your points.

The Perfect Structure/Organization for a War Essay

To write a good essay about war, you must understand the war essay structure. The war essay structure is the typical 3-section essay structure. It starts with an introduction section, followed by a body section, and then a conclusion section. Find out what you need to include in each section below:

1. Introduction

In the introduction paragraph , you must introduce the reader to the war or conflict you are discussing. But before you do so, you need to hook the reader to your work. You can only do this by starting your introduction with an attention-grabbing statement . This can be a fact about the war, a quote, or a statistic.

Once you have grabbed the reader's attention, you should introduce the reader to the conflict your essay is focused on. You should do this by providing them with a brief background on the conflict.

Your thesis statement should follow the background information. This is the main argument your essay will be defending.

The introduction section of a war essay is typically one paragraph long. But it can be two paragraphs long for long war essays.

In the body section of your war essay, you need to provide information to support your thesis statement. A typical body section of a college essay will include three to four body paragraphs. Each body paragraph starts with a topic sentence and solely focuses on it. This is how your war essay should be.

Once you develop a thesis statement, you should think of the points you will use to defend it and then list them in terms of strength. The strongest of these points should be your topic sentences.

When developing the body section of your war essay, make sure your paragraphs flow nicely. This will make your essay coherent. One of the best ways to make your paragraphs flow is to use transition words, phrases, and sentences.

The body section of a war essay is typically three to four paragraphs long, but it can be much longer.

3. Conclusion

In the conclusion section of your war essay, you must wrap up everything nicely. The recommended way to do this is to restate your thesis statement to remind the reader what your essay was about. You should follow this by restating the main points supporting your thesis statement.

Your thesis and the restatement of your main points should remind your reader of what your essay was all about. You should then end your essay with a food-for-thought, a recommendation, or a solution. Whatever you use to end your essay, make sure it is relevant to what you have just covered in your essay, and it shows that you have widely read on the topic.

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How to write a war Essay? ? The Steps

Several wars have taken place on earth, including:

World War I and II
Russian Civil War
Chinese Civil War
Lebanese Civil War
Syrian Civil War
The Spanish Civil War
The American Civil War
Afghanistan War

The list of wars that have happened to date is endless.

Writing a war essay is never easy. You need to plan your work meticulously to develop a brilliant war essay. If you are assigned to write a war essay or paper, follow the steps below to develop a brilliant essay on any conflict.

1. Read The Assignment Instructions Carefully

You must know precisely what to do to write a brilliant war essay. College professors typically provide multiple instructions when they ask students to write college essays. Students must then read the instructions carefully to write precisely what their professors want to see.

Therefore, when you get a war essay assignment, you must read the instructions carefully to understand what is needed of you entirely. Know exactly what conflict your professor wants you to focus on, what aspect of the conflict (the origin, the chronology of events leading to the war, external factors, etc.), what sources they want you to use, and the number of pages they want.

Knowing what your professor needs will help you to develop it nicely.

2. Do Your Research

After reviewing the war assignment instructions, you should research the topic you?ve been asked to focus on. Do this by Googling the topic (and its variations), searching it in your college database, and searching it in scholarly databases. As you read more on the topic, take a lot of notes. This will help you to understand the topic better, plus its nuances.

Once you understand the topic well, you should start to think about what precisely your essay should focus on. If you like, this will be the foundation of your essay or the thesis statement.

Once you settle on the thesis statement, read more on the topic but focus on information that will help you defend your thesis statement.

3. Craft A Thesis Statement and Create an Outline

At this point, you should have a rough thesis statement . Once you have read more information on it as per the previous step, you should be able to refine it into a solid and argumentative statement at this point.

So refine your thesis statement to make it perfect. Your thesis statement can be one or two sentences long but never more. Once you have created it, you should create an outline.

An outline is like a treasure map ? it details where you must go comprehensively. Creating an outline will give you an overview of what your essay will look like and whether it will defend your thesis statement. It will also make it easier for you to develop your essay.

Ensure your outline includes a striking title for your conflict essay, the topic sentence for each body paragraph, and the supporting evidence for each topic sentence.

4. Start Writing the Introduction

When you finish writing your essay, you should start writing the introduction. This is where the rubber meets the road ?the actual writing of your war essay begins.

Since you have already created a thesis statement and an outline, you should not find it challenging to write your introduction. Follow your outline to develop a friendly compact, and informative introduction to the conflict your essay will focus on.

Read your introduction twice to make sure it is as compact and as informative as it can be. It should also be straightforward to understand.

5. Write The Rest of Your Essay

Once you have created the introduction to your war essay, you should create the body section. The body section of your essay should follow your outline. Remember the outline you created in step 3 has the points you should focus on in each body paragraph. So follow it to make developing your essay?s body section easy.

As you develop your essay's body section, ensure you do everything nicely. By this, we mean you develop each topic sentence entirely using the sandwich paragraph writing method.

Also, make sure there is a nice flow between your sentences and between your paragraphs.

6. Conclude Your War Essay

After writing the rest of your essay, you should offer a robust conclusion. Your conclusion should also follow your outline. As usual, it should start with a thesis restatement and a restatement of all your main points.

It should then be followed by a concluding statement that provides the reader with food for thought. You should never include new information in your conclusion paragraph. This will make it feel like another body paragraph, yet the purpose of your conclusion should be to give your reader the feeling that your essay is ending or done.

7. Proofread and Edit Your Essay

This is the last step of writing a war essay or any other one. This step is final, but it is perhaps the most important step. This is because it distinguishes an ordinary essay from an extraordinary one.

You should proofread your essay at least thrice, especially if it is short. When you do it the first time, you should look for grammar errors and other basic mistakes. Eliminate all the errors and mistakes you find. When you do it the second time, you should do it to ensure the flow of your essay is perfect.

And when you do it the third and last time, you should use editing software like Grammarly.com to catch all the errors you might have missed.

When you proofread your war essay in this manner, you should be able to transform it from average to excellent. After completing this step, your war essay will be ready for submission.

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Tips for Writing a Brilliant War Essay

Follow the tips below to develop a brilliant essay.

A brilliant topic is always vital.

When you are assigned a war essay, you should do your best to choose or create a brilliant topic for your essay. A boring topic focusing on something discussed and debated a million times will never be brilliant.

A strong thesis statement is essential.

Along with a brilliant topic, you need a strong thesis statement to make your war essay brilliant. This is because a strong thesis statement is like a lighthouse ? it will guide safely to the harbor (conclusion).

Do not be afraid to discuss the tragedy.

Sometimes war details can feel too graphic or gruesome, leading to hesitance on the part of students when they are writing articles. Do not hesitate or be afraid to discuss tragedy if discussing tragedy will add to the substance of your essay.

Be impartial.

Sometimes it can be challenging to write an impartial essay, especially if you relate to or strongly support one side in a conflict. Well, this should never happen. As a researcher, you must be as impartial as you can be. You must inform your reader of all the facts available to you without bias so they have an accurate impression of whatever you are talking about.

Ensure your work has flow.

This is one of the most important things you must do when writing a war essay. Since war essays sometimes discuss disparate issues, ending with a disjointed essay is straightforward. You should do all you can to ensure your workflows are well, including using transition words generously.

Proofread your work.

You should always proofread your essays before submission. This is what will always upgrade them from ordinary to extraordinary. If you don?t proofread your work, you will submit subpar work that will not get you a good grade.

Explore unexplored angles.

Chances are, whatever war or conflict you write about has already been written on or reported on a million times. If you want your essay to be interesting, you should explore unexplored angles on conflicts. This will make your work very interesting.

War Essay Sample to Inspire your Writing

Here is a short sample of a war essay on the Russia-Ukraine War.

The most affected cities in the Russia-Ukraine War 2022

The Russia-Ukraine war has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions across Ukraine. It has also led to the destruction of civilian homes and infrastructure across Ukraine. The eastern cities of Bakhmut, Kharkiv, and Mariupol are the most affected cities in the Russia-Ukraine War 2022.

Bakhmut in southeastern Ukraine is the site of the bloodiest and longest-running battle between Russian and Ukrainian forces. The city is strategic as it is close to supply routes that the Russians use in the occupied territories of southern Ukraine. It is estimated that as much as 90% of Bakhmut has been destroyed in Russia?s bid to take over the city.

Mariupol is a Ukrainian port city between Russia and the Russian-occupied Crimea. Russia decided to take the city early on to deny Ukraine a foothold close to its border and operation areas in the south. Yet the city was defended by a fanatic Ukrainian military battalion that swore not to give it up. This led to Russia bombing much of the city to the ground. In the end, Russia won the battle for Mariupol and now controls the city and the surrounding area.

Kharkiv is Ukraine?s second biggest city. It is less than 45 minutes away from the Russian border. Taking the city was one of the top priorities for Russia at the start of the war because of its proximity to Russia. Nevertheless, Ukraine deployed much of its army to defend the city and has managed to do so. Nevertheless, this has come at a cost. Much of Kharkiv?s infrastructure is destroyed. Its power lines, highways, roads, railways, dams, and industries are destroyed.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict has affected much of Ukraine, especially the eastern cities of Bakhmut, Kharkiv, and Mariupol. All three cities have suffered tremendous infrastructure damage in the past few months. Efforts must be made by the two state parties and the international community to prevent further destruction of Ukrainian cities in this conflict.

War Essay Topic Ideas

Not sure what to write about in your war essay? Here are some ideas to get your creative juices flowing.

Causes of Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022
What led to Russia?s annexation of Crimea in 2014?
Causes of Tigray conflict in Ethiopia
Somalia-Kenya border conflict
Conflict in eastern DRC
Secessionist movements in the UK
Western Sahara versus Morocco
Causes of the Libyan Civil War
The American war of independence
The American civil war
The English civil war
The Napoleonic wars
The French invasion of Russia
Causes of the crusader wars
The German invasion of Poland and its consequences
The battle of Stalingrad and its bearing on the cause of WWII
The causes of World War I
The Japanese invasion of Southeast Asia
What caused America to end the Vietnam War
The Cuban Missile Crisis
The fall of the Berlin Wall
The Arms Race
Role of the cold world war in shaping the world we live today
The causes and consequences of the Syrian Civil War
The role of propaganda in the Iraq War
Implications of the Syrian Civil War

As you Come to the End, ?

An essay on war is not easy to write, but it can be written when you have the right information. This post provides you with all the vital information needed to write a brilliant war essay. We hope that this info makes it easy for you to write your war essay.

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The Five Reasons Wars Happen

Christopher Blattman | 10.14.22

Whether it is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threats of nuclear strikes or Chinese belligerence in the Taiwan Strait , the United States seems closer to a great power war than at any time in recent decades. But while the risks are real and the United States must prepare for each of these conflicts, by focusing on the times states fight—and ignoring the times they resolve their conflicts peacefully and prevent escalation—analysts and policymakers risk misjudging our rivals and pursuing the wrong paths to peace.

The fact is that fighting—at all levels from irregular warfare to large-scale combat operations—is ruinous and so nations do their best to avoid open conflict. The costs of war also mean that when they do fight countries have powerful incentives not to escalate and expand those wars—to keep the fighting contained, especially when it could go nuclear. This is one of the most powerful insights from both history and game theory: war is a last resort, and the costlier that war, the harder both sides will work to avoid it.

When analysts forget this fact, not only do they exaggerate the chances of war, they do something much worse: they get the causes all wrong and take the wrong steps to avert the violence.

Imagine intensive care doctors who, deluged with critically ill patients, forgot that humanity’s natural state is good health. That would be demoralizing. But it would also make them terrible at diagnosis and treatment. How could you know what was awry without comparing the healthy to the sick?

And yet, when it comes to war, most of us fall victim to this selection bias, giving most of our attention to the times peace failed. Few write books or news articles about the wars that didn’t happen. Instead, we spend countless hours tracing the threads of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, America’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, or the two world wars. When we do, it distorts our diagnosis and our treatments. For if we follow these calamitous events back to their root causes and preceding events, we often find a familiar list: bumbling leaders, ancient hatreds, intransigent ideologies, dire poverty, historic injustices, and a huge supply of weapons and impressionable young men. War seems to be their inevitable result.

Unfortunately, this ignores all the instances conflict was avoided. When social scientists look at these peaceful cases, they see a lot of the same preceding conditions—bumblers, hatreds, injustices, poverty, and armaments. All these so-called causes of war are commonplace. Prolonged violence is not. So these are probably not the chief causes of war.

Take World War I. Historians like to explain how Europe’s shortsighted, warmongering, nationalist leaders naively walked their societies into war. It was all a grand miscalculation, this story goes. The foibles of European leaders surely played a role, but to stop the explanation here is to forget all the world wars avoided up to that point. For decades, the exact same leaders had managed great crises without fighting. In the fifteen years before 1914 alone, innumerable continental wars almost—but never—happened: a British-French standoff in a ruined Egyptian outpost in Sudan in 1898; Russia’s capture of Britain’s far eastern ports in 1900; Austria’s seizure of Bosnia in 1908; two wars between the Balkan states in 1912 and 1913. A continent-consuming war could have been ignited in any one of these corners of the world. But it was not.

Likewise, it’s common to blame the war in Ukraine overwhelmingly on Putin’s obsessions and delusions. These surely played a role, but to stop here is to stop too soon. We must also pay attention to the conflicts that didn’t happen. For years, Russia cowed other neighbors with varying degrees of persuasion and force, from the subjugation of Belarus to “ peacekeeping ” missions in Kazakhstan. Few of these power contests came to blows. To find the real roots of fighting, analysts need to pay attention to these struggles that stay peaceful.

Enemies Prefer to Loathe One Another in Peace

Fighting is simply bargaining through violence. This is what Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung meant in 1938 when he said , “Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed.” Mao was echoing the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz who, a century before, reminded us that war is the continuation of politics by other means.

Of course, one of these means is far, far costlier than the other. Two adversaries have a simple choice: split the contested territory or stake in proportion to their relative strength, or go to war and gamble for the shrunken and damaged remains. It’s almost always better to look for compromise. For every war that ever was, a thousand others have been averted through discussion and concession.

Compromise is the rule because, for the most part, groups behave strategically: like players of poker or chess, they’re trying hard to think ahead, discern their opponents’ strength and plans, and choose their actions based on what they expect their opponents to do. They are not perfect. They make mistakes or lack information. But they have huge incentives to do their best.

This is the essential way to think about warfare: not as some base impulse or inevitability, but as the unusual and errant breakdown of incredibly powerful incentives for peace. Something had to interrupt the normal incentives for compromise, pushing opponents from normal politics, polarized and contentious, to bargaining through bloodshed.

This gives us a fresh perspective on war. If fighting is rare because it is ruinous, then every answer to why we fight is simple: a society or its leaders ignored the costs (or were willing to pay them). And while there is a reason for every war and a war for every reason, there are only so many logical ways societies overlook the costs of war—five, to be exact. From gang wars to ethnic violence, and from civil conflicts to world wars, the same five reasons underlie conflict at every level: war happens when a society or its leader is unaccountable, ideological, uncertain, biased, or unreliable.

Five Reasons for War

Consider Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. What do these five tell us about why peace broke down?

1. Unaccountable. A personalized autocrat , Putin doesn’t have to weigh the interests of his soldiers and citizens. He can pursue whatever course helps him preserve his regime’s control. When leaders go unchecked and are unaccountable to their people, they can ignore the costs of fighting that ordinary people bear. Instead, rulers can pursue their own agendas. That is why dictators are more prone to war .

2. Ideological. Consider Putin again. Most accounts of the current war dwell on his nationalist obsessions and desires for a glorious legacy. What costs and risks he does bear, Putin is willing to pay in pursuit of glory and ideology. This is just one example of intangible and ideological incentives for war that so many leaders possess—God’s glory, freedom, or some nationalist vision.

Societies have ideological incentives too. Unlike the people of Belarus or Kazakhstan, the Ukrainians refused to accept serious restrictions on their sovereignty despite what (at first) seemed to be relative military weakness. Like liberation movements throughout history—including the American revolutionaries—they have been willing to undertake the ruin and risks of fighting partly in pursuit of an ideal.

3. Biased. Most accounts of Russia’s invasion stress Putin’s isolation and insulation from the truth. He and his advisors grossly underestimated the difficulty of war. This is a story of institutional bias—a system that is unwilling to tell its leader bad news. Autocrats are especially prone to this problem, but intelligence failures plague democracies too . Leaders can be psychologically biased as well. Humans have an amazing ability to cling to mistaken beliefs. We can be overconfident, underestimating the ruin of war and overestimating our chances of victory. And we demonize and misjudge our opponents. These misperceptions can carry us to war.

4. Uncertain. Too much focus on bias and misperception obscures the subtler role of uncertainty. In the murky run-up to war, policymakers don’t know their enemy’s strength or resolve. How unified would the West be? How capably would Ukrainians resist? How competent was the Russian military? All these things were fundamentally uncertain, and many experts were genuinely surprised that Russia got a bad draw on all three—most of all, presumably, Putin himself.

But uncertainty doesn’t just mean the costs of war are uncertain, and invasion a gamble. There are genuine strategic impediments to getting good information . You can’t trust your enemy’s demonstrations of resolve, because they have reasons to bluff, hoping to extract a better deal without fighting. Any poker player knows that, amid the uncertainty, the optimal strategy is never to fold all the time. It’s never to call all the time, either. The best strategy is to approach it probabilistically—to occasionally gamble and invade.

5. Unreliable. When a declining power faces a rising one, how can it trust the rising power to commit to peace ? Better to pay the brutal costs of war now, to lock in one’s current advantage. Some scholars argue that such shifts in power, and the commitment problems they create, are at the root of every long war in history —from World War I to the US invasion of Iraq. This is not why Russia invaded Ukraine, of course. Still, it may help to understand the timing. In 2022, Russia had arguably reached peak leverage versus Ukraine. Ukraine was acquiring drones and defensive missiles. And the country was growing more democratic and closer to Europe—to Putin, a dangerous example of freedom nearby. How could Ukraine commit to stop either move? We don’t know what Putin and his commanders debated behind closed doors, but these trends may have presented a now-or-never argument for invasion.

Putting the five together, as with World War I and so many other wars, fallible, biased leaders with nationalist ambitions ignored the costs of war and drove their societies to violent ruin. But the explanation doesn’t end there. There are strategic roots as well. In the case of Russia, as elsewhere, unchecked power, uncertainty, and commitment problems arising from shifting power narrowed the range of viable compromises to the point where Putin’s psychological and institutional failures—his misperceptions and ideology—could lead him to pursue politics by violent means.

The Paths to Peace

If war happens when societies or their leaders overlook its costs, peace is preserved when our institutions make those costs difficult to ignore. Successful, peaceful societies have built themselves some insulation from all five kinds of failure. They have checked the power of autocrats. They have built institutions that reduce uncertainty, promote dialogue, and minimize misperceptions. They have written constitutions and bodies of law that make shifts in power less deadly. They have developed interventions—from sanctions to peacekeeping forces to mediators—that minimize our strategic and human incentives to fight rather than compromise.

It is difficult, however, to expect peace in a world where power in so many countries remains unchecked . Highly centralized power is one of the most dangerous things in the world, because it accentuates all five reasons for war. With unchecked leaders , states are more prone to their idiosyncratic ideologies and biases. In the pursuit of power, autocrats also tend to insulate themselves from critical information. The placing of so much influence in one person’s hands adds to the uncertainty and unpredictability of the situation. Almost by definition, unchecked rulers have trouble making credible commitments.

That is why the real root cause of this current war is surely Putin’s twenty-year concentration of power in himself. And it is why the world’s most worrisome trend may be in China, where a once checked and institutionalized leader has gathered more and more power in his person. There is, admittedly, little a nation can do to alter the concentration of power within its rivals’ political systems. But no solution can be found without a proper diagnosis of the problem.

Christopher Blattman is a professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. This article draws from his new book, Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace , published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image credit: Oles_Navrotskyi , via depositphotos.com

25 Comments

War, in the end, is about Armed Robbery writ large; whether Committing it, Preventing it, or Redressing it. It is all about somebody trying to take somebody else's stuff.

Peace is the time of waiting for war. A time of preparation, or a time of willful ignorance, blind, blinkered and prattling behind secure walls. – Steven Erikson

That is the right reason, I do not know about the others, but I will give you a+ on this one

its beeches thy want Resorces

Wars often come when a group of nations (for example the USSR in the Old Cold War of yesterday and the U.S./the West in New/Reverse Cold War of today) move out smartly to "transform"/to "modernize" both their own states and societies (often leads to civil wars) and other states and societies throughout the world also (often leads to wars between countries).

The enemy of those groups of nations — thus pursuing such "transformative"/such "modernizing" efforts — are, quite understandably, those individuals and groups, and those states and societies who (a) would lose current power, influence, control, safety, privilege, security, etc.; this, (b) if these such "transformative"/these such "modernizing" efforts were to be realized.

From this such perspective, and now discussing only the U.S./the West post-Cold War efforts — to "transform"/to "modernize" the states and societies of the world (to include our own states and societies here in the U.S./the West) — this, so that same might be made to better interact with, better provide for and better benefit from such things as capitalism, globalization and the global economy;

Considering this such U.S./Western post-Cold War "transformative"/"modernizing" effort, note the common factor of "resistance to change" coming from:

a. (Conservative?) Individual and groups — here in the U.S./the West — who want to retain currently threatened (and/or regain recently lost) power, influence, control, etc. And:

b. (Conservative?) states and societies — elsewhere throughout the world — who have this/these exact same ambition(s).

From this such perspective, to note the nexus/the connection/the "common cause" noted here:

"Liberal democratic societies have, in the past few decades, undergone a series of revolutionary changes in their social and political life, which are not to the taste of all their citizens. For many of those, who might be called social conservatives, Russia has become a more agreeable society, at least in principle, than those they live in. Communist Westerners used to speak of the Soviet Union as the pioneer society of a brighter future for all. Now, the rightwing nationalists of Europe and North America admire Russia and its leader for cleaving to the past."

(See "The American Interest" article "The Reality of Russian Soft Power" by John Lloyd and Daria Litinova.)

“Compounding it all, Russia’s dictator has achieved all of this while creating sympathy in elements of the Right that mirrors the sympathy the Soviet Union achieved in elements of the Left. In other words, Putin is expanding Russian power and influence while mounting a cultural critique that resonates with some American audiences, casting himself as a defender of Christian civilization against Islam and the godless, decadent West.”

(See the “National Review” item entitled: “How Russia Wins” by David French.)

Bottom Line Thought — Based on the Above:

In the final paragraph of our article above, the author states: "That is why the real root cause of this current war is surely Putin’s twenty-year concentration of power in himself."

Based on the information that I provide above — which addresses the "resistance" efforts of entities both here at home and there abroad — might we beg to differ?

From the perspective of wars between nations relating to attempts as "transformation" by one party (and thus not as relates to civil wars which occur with "transformative" attempts in this case) here is my argument above possibly stated another way:

1. In the Old Cold War of yesterday, when the Soviets/the communists sought to "transform the world" — in their case, so that same might be made to better interact with, better provide for and better benefit from such this as socialism and communism:

a. The "root cause" of the conflicts that the U.S. was engaged in back then — for example in places such as Central America —

b. This such "root cause" was OUR determination to stand hard against these such "transformative" efforts and activities — which were taking place, back then, in OUR backyard/in OUR sphere of influence/in OUR neck of the woods.

2. In the New/Reverse Cold War of today, however, when now it is the U.S./the West that seeks to "transform the world" — in our case, so that same might be made to better interact with, better provide for and better benefit from such things as market-democracy:

“The successor to a doctrine of containment must be a strategy of enlargement, enlargement of the world’s free community of market democracies,’ Mr. Lake said in a speech at the School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University.”

(See the September 22, 1993 New York Times article “U.S. Vision of Foreign Policy Reversed” by Thomas L. Friedman.)

a. Now the "root cause" of the conflicts that Russia is engaged in today — for example in places such as Ukraine —

b. This such "root cause" is now RUSSIA'S determination to stand hard against these such "transformative" efforts and activities — which are taking place now in RUSSIA'S backyard/in RUSSIA'S sphere of influence/in RUSSIA's neck of the woods.

(From this such perspective, of course, [a] the current war in Ukraine, this would seem to [b] have little — or indeed nothing — to do with "Putin's twenty-year concentration of power in himself?")

It’s easy to put the whole blame on Putin himself with his unchecked power . But this is a gross simplification of the reality in case of the Ukraine war. NATO expansion everywhere and especially into the very birthplace of Russia was a huge irritator , perceived as unacceptable, threatening, arrogant with no regard to Russia’s interests. Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 was a clear warning, that was completely ignored. Without NATO’s ambitions there would be no war in Ukraine. Or Georgia .

When the Soviet Union installed missles in Cuba , the democratic and presumably the country with all checks and balances in place almost started a nuclear war with the Soviets. It was a reckless gamble that could end the world Why expect anything less from the modern Russia that feels threatened by NATO encroachment?

In the end, whether it's about committing, preventing, or rectifying, war is all about armed robbery. The main plot is around a thief trying to steal from another person.

One of the main causes of war is nationalist garbage. This nationalist site conveniently omits this as they push their preferred chosen nationalist enemy(cold war leftovers in this case) on the reader. What do you expect from OVRA/NKVD reruns?

In addition to the reasons explored to further explain the cause of war, there are also self-defeating schema in thought structures that deteriorate over time. They become compromised by the wear-and-tear grind of life of individuals seeking natural causes and solutions collectively and apart. This is particularly relevant to the matter of war dynamics. When energies used to pursue peace are perceived as exhausted, unspent warfare resources appear more attractive. Particularly in the instances of deteriorating leaders who are compromised by psychopathy, war can quickly become nearly inevitable. Add a number of subordinated population that are unable to resist, and the world can quickly find itself following in the footsteps of leaders marching to their own demise. On the broader sociopolitical battlefield, with democracy trending down and the deterioration in global leadership increasing, the probability of both war and peaceful rewards increase. The questions that arise in my mind point to developing leaps forward to the structures of global leadership, particularly for self-governing populations, leveraging resources that mitigate the frailties of societal and individual human exhaustion, and capping warfare resources at weakened choke points to avoid spillovers of minor conflicts into broader destruction. Technology certainly can be used to mitigate much more than has been realized.

Wow, I could say all those things about the U.S. and its rulers.

We don't have a dictator.

Trump came pretty close to being a dictator, what with the way people were following him blindly, and the ways that all parties, (Both republicans AND democrats) have been acting lately I wouldn't be surprised if a dictator came into power

War happens because humans are predatory animals and preditors kill other preditors every chance they get. The 3 big cats of africa are a prime example. We forget that we are animals that have animal insticts. There will always be war.

The cause of war is fear, Russia feared a anti Russian Army in Ukraine would come to fruitinion in the Ukraine threatening to invade Moscow!

it takes one powerful man in power to start war and millions of innocence people to die, to stop the war . / answer!,to in prison any powerful person who starts the war , and save your family life and millions of lives, / out law war.

The biggest cause of war is the demonstration of weakness among democratic nations facing a well-armed dictator with irrational ambitions. In the case of Russia, the democratic world turned weak on Vladimir Putin at a time when both democratic institutions and peace might have been preserved. Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first-ever freely elected president, had given the newly democratic Russia a real chance to enter the community of free nations in 1991. But when Putin was elected in 2000, we saw the warning signs of trouble. Putin already was undermining democracy. In Russia’s transition from socialism, he used his old KGP connections to buy up all the political parties (except ironically the Communist Party, which now was tiny and unpopular). He also declared he yearned for the old greater Russia, with those Soviet Union borders. The U.S. and NATO didn’t take Putin’s greater-Russia statements too seriously. After all, once their economy stabilized after the transition from socialism, the Russian people were pleased with their new and free Russia, the removal of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain, and the new openness to the West. There was no popular call for retaking old territory. But Putin had his own plans, and as Christopher Blattman’s article observes, when you’re dictator (and even with ‘elections’ you are dictator if you own all the political parties) you can go your bloody way. Then came America’s ‘Russian re-set.’ As Putin consolidated his power, and forced the parliament, the Duma, to give him permission to run for several unopposed ‘re-elections,’ the U.S. decided to go gentle on Putin, in hopes he’d abandon his authoritarian course. This was the fatal mistake. When the U.S. should have been publicly encouraging Putin to commit himself to international borders and to democracy in Russia, the U.S. leadership instead was asking what it could do to make Putin happy. Putin saw this as weakness, an opening for his insane territorial desires, which focused mainly on Ukraine. He let a few more years go by, prepared secretly, and then in 2014, he ordered the invasion of Ukraine, killing about 14,000 people and claiming Ukraine’s Crimea for Russia. The U.S. imposed economic sanctions on Russia, but the terrible damage had been done. Because the Free World’s leaders had let down their guard, an awful precedent had been set. A new Russian dictator had murdered to steal territory. To him, the price was low. That told him he could do it again someday. And in 2022, again sensing weakness from the West, Putin invaded Ukraine once more. Not only have tens of thousands of Ukrainians been killed in this new war, but the Russian people themselves are now locked in an even tighter, more brutal dictatorship. Peace through Strength is not just a slogan. It’s as real as War through Weakness. My father, who fought in Europe in World War II, said an American soldier’s first duty was to preserve America’s rights and freedoms, as described in the Constitution. He said an American soldier also has two jobs. A soldier’s first job, he said, is to block the tyrants. Just stand in their way, he said, and most tyrants won’t even try to pass. That’s Peace through Strength. A soldier’s second job, he said, is to fight and win wars. He said that second job won’t have to be done often if we do enough of the first job.

I hope there will be no more wars in the world

This, pandemic of wars will soon make us realize and accept the fact that the global society’s compassion towards its individuals is numbed and will eventually be completely absent as it is transformed into a human super-organism, just as one’s body is not concerned about the millions of cells dying daily in it, unless it affects the body as a whole like the cancer cells where we consider them to be terrorists and actively kill them.

Boghos L. Artinian MD

I hope there is no more war in this world

war it not good for all humans

Ultimately, be it engaging in, averting, or resolving, war can be likened to organized theft. The central theme revolves around a thief attempting to pilfer from someone else.

In the end, whether involving, preventing, or resolving, war can be compared to organized theft. The core idea centers on a thief attempting to steal from someone else.

No nation would wage a war for the independence of another. Boghos L. Artinian

And I will give you one word that sums up and supersedes your Five Reasons: Covetousness James 4:2, ESV, The Holy Bible.

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Ernist Junger’s World War I Experiences Essay

Ernist Junger explores various experiences he underwent during World War One in his book The Storm of Steel. Junger’s book, written in form of a personal memoir, highlights how thousands of individuals were affected by the horrors of World War One.

When the Storm of Steel was published, it became a favorite in Germany since it adored the greatness of war and the huge sacrifices made by the Germany warriors to end the war victoriously. Junger believes he was lucky to participate in such a great war that will undoubtedly enter Germany’s history.

Despite the fact that Junger’s book is very detailed, it is easy to follow since it is divided into chapters regarding various times spent at different locations during the war. Also, the language used in the book is not limited to those in the military, and hence, any reader who understands English can easily read through the book.

In addition, the book explores the extent to which soldiers disregard life while at war and the various approaches they use in adapting to the deadly environment. Though the book glorifies the greatness of World War One, it also covers some subtle anti-war elements (Junger, 1996).

Accordingly, the book is in depth with several parts that are informative and interesting. For instance, Junger writes that he found so much pleasure when he adventured into war. This situation sounds unrealistic considering the consequences that war presents. In 1912, his father managed to retrieve him from the French Foreign Legion where he had joined voluntarily.

However, Junger’s father failed to contain him when he voluntarily joined another war that started in 1914 believing that trench fights would glorify his true nature. Here, it is crucial to emphasize that it is unfamiliar for someone to volunteer into war. By the fact that Junger willingly volunteered himself, a sense of concern is developed. Apparently, Junger was sane when he made his decision.

Besides, he believed that Germany soldiers had all the strength needed to win in that war. Even after he underwent the battle of Somme, Junger believed he needed to fight on alongside his friends who fought to death beside him (Junger, 1996).

This part of Junger’s book informs us of the determination that Germany soldiers had during World War One. Besides, it is so interesting and absurd at the same time that some soldiers like Junger fought on even after losing some of their friends to war.

Moreover, the manner in which Junger interprets duty must have undoubtedly influenced him during the war. When he explains why he did not run away from war at terrifying times, he says that deep inside his soul there was some strange voice that kept on besieging him to stay, and that specific voice was the power of Duty and Honor.

This can be interpreted that Germany soldiers were kept in the trenches of France and Flanders fighting because they were performing their duty. In fact, it was this duty that determined their relative performance in World War One, and relative performance was directly proportional to the honor that they were awarded.

Another very informative part of Junger’s work regarding duty and honor is apparent when he writes on the urge to quit fighting. He asserts that leaving was not optional as it would have displayed him as a wretch and a coward. Since it was Junger’s priority to gain respect and honor, he persistently and patiently waited until the last day of war.

However, the writer admits that the element of fulfilling duty needed a lot of sacrifice during the war. Junger goes ahead to inform us how far the Germany soldiers were willing to go in pursuit of performing their duty.

Furthermore, it is interesting to learn the kind of language used by Germany soldiers during World War One. In fact, Junger constantly uses the words “fell” or “fallen” instead of “killed” and “dead.” This implies that the Germany soldiers respected those of them who died while fighting. Again, this language is believed to lessen the grief that death usually presents.

For example, Junger calls death “glorious” when he writes about his friend who was departed by the fighting spirits and subsequently succumbed to a “glorious” death. He proceeds to write that “glorious” or “heroic” death in war is imminent and cannot be avoided by whatever means.

Here, the writer focuses on the do or die attitude soldiers hold once they are in the battle field. For the soldiers who survived in World War One, they witnessed the rebirth of a new country, but for those who fell, their names were held in glory.Throughout the book, Junger uses several of such passages and even sometimes talks of death without fanfare (Junger, 1996).

In addition, Storm of Steel is so informative regarding the extent of patriotism the Germany Army had for their country during the war.It is not by surprise that Junger’s patriotism earned him the nationalist right besides attending the Nazi Party (Junger, 1996). Fittingly, it needed more than love of the nation and duty for the Germany soldiers to make the sacrifices they made during World War One.

Factually, Junger’s argument regarding patriotism is very correct considering the fact that not all men in Germany volunteered to fight for their country. Therefore, it is credit for those soldiers who persevered through World War One. Junger proceeds to point out that men on either side of the battle went into war because they put the interest of their countries first.

He concludes by saying they fought and gave their lives for free to Germany unlike their enemies who fell for nothing. Indeed, the spirit of patriotism cannot go beyond what the Germany soldiers did for their country during World War One.

Overall, Junger’s book presents mixed messages in the most informative manner regarding World War One. Similar to other soldiers who were involved in the war, Junger went into it aiming to adventure but quickly got disillusioned.

The Germany soldiers did not give up the fight despite the great challenges that they met. Instead, they depended on the call of duty and honor coupled with the spirit of patriotism to come out of the war as heroes. This book is of great importance to different cadres of people especially historians since it supplies them with personal accounts of an individual who experienced the war in person.

Also, most of the events that happened in World War One are illustrated systematically in an interesting manner. The Storm of Steel remains the most popular book because the writer adopts a clear and open way of expressing the experience of soldiers in No Man’s Land.

Reference List

Junger, E. (1996). The Storm of Steel. New York: Howard Fertig.

Chicago (A-D)
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IvyPanda. (2022, April 19). Ernist Junger's World War I Experiences. https://ivypanda.com/essays/world-war-i-essay/

"Ernist Junger's World War I Experiences." IvyPanda , 19 Apr. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/world-war-i-essay/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Ernist Junger's World War I Experiences'. 19 April.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Ernist Junger's World War I Experiences." April 19, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/world-war-i-essay/.

1. IvyPanda . "Ernist Junger's World War I Experiences." April 19, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/world-war-i-essay/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Ernist Junger's World War I Experiences." April 19, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/world-war-i-essay/.

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Educational Resources

Narrative of the Great War Experience

Students will research through the use of primary source documents the lives of different segments of societies in WWI, and create a fictional narrative based on this study, to illustrate their understanding of the material.

The goal of this lesson is to give students a deeper understanding of diversity in WWI, and personalize the war; to bring home the humanity, through the use of primary resources.

Recognize a primary resource and analyze its resources.
Create a new document based on the use of other documents.
Recognize the different players in the First World War, and their unique roles.

SHOW ME STANDARDS

2. Continuity and change in the history of Missouri, the United States and the world

6. Relationships of the individual and groups to institutions and cultural traditions

7. The use of tools of social science inquiry (such as surveys, statistics, maps, documents)

KANSAS STANDARDS (High School-US History)

Benchmark 1: The student uses a working knowledge and understanding of individuals, groups, ideas, developments, and turning points in the era of the emergence of the modern United States (1890-1930).

6. (A) analyzes the reasons for and impact of the United States’ entrance into World War I.

Benchmark 5: The student engages in historical thinking skills.

1. (A) analyzes a theme in United States history to explain patterns of continuity and change over time.

2. (A) develops historical questions on a specific topic in United States history and analyzes the evidence in primary source documents to speculate on the answers.

3. (A) uses primary and secondary sources about an event in U.S. history to develop a credible interpretation of the event, evaluating on its meaning (e.g., uses provided primary and secondary sources to interpret a historical-based conclusion).

Textbook, histories of the period and the war.

Veteran’s History Project website, Mammoth Book of the First World War,

and other sources that can be located both at the local library as well as online. Wartime inspired poetry, literature, and memoirs can be a great source for inspiration, but may take more time to dissect.

The Project:

After a brief introduction to the war, and the participants in it, students will be introduced to this project. Students will be given an opportunity to choose a character, to take on said persona. They will choose between the following:

Young male, age 17, white, American born

Young male, age 19, black, American born

Young male, age 20, white, European born, immigrant to the U.S. (choose country of origin)

Young female, age 19, American or French

Older male, age 33, German/Austrian/Russian/etc.

Female, age 33, black, American born

Female, age 27, German/Russian

Male, age 17, Mexican, riding with Pancho Villa in 1915-1916

Assignment: Using primary sources, students will investigate the lives of real persons who fit the details of their category. Students will keep two separate DOCUMENTS: A research diary, in which they record data, details, and resources pertinent to their research. Emphasis should be placed on finding information that pertains distinctly to the role they are playing. For instance, if the student chooses to be a German male, look for statements about German feelings toward the war and the Kaiser. Stress what makes this persons experience unique. Also, they will record questions that arise, words or concepts they don’t understand, excerpts that they feel appropriate, and begin to flesh out their character. In the other, they will create a document (a diary, a journal, etc.) to illustrate a fictional experience. This will be a work of fiction, but will show the progression of understanding. Students may visit the NWWI Museum to get a deeper understanding of the humanness of their character. If the students visit the museum, have them look for representations of their persona around the museum.

The student will need to have some research done before they can begin their personal documentation (their story creation). This document can be used as an assessment of the research, at the instructor’s discretion. Students should give a citation for their sources of information, should they choose to follow up for more information. A minimum of four sources should be allowed, to fully flush out the character.

Did student keep a research journal?

Did the student use more than four sources to gain knowledge on their character?

Did the student create a fictional character based on that journal?

Does the Character portray a general understanding of the reality?

Does the journal/diary reflect reality of the person?

Are there historical errors? Can the student justify them through their research?

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The Ethics of War: Essays

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Some of the most basic assumptions of Just War theory have been dismantled in a barrage of criticism and analysis in the first dozen years of the twenty-first century. The Ethics of War continues and pushes past this trend. This anthology is an authoritative treatment of the ethics and law of war by eminent scholars who first challenged the orthodoxy of Just War theory, as well as by “second-wave” revisionists. The twelve original essays span both foundational and topical issues in the ethics of war, including an investigation of whether there is a “greater-good” obligation that parallels the canonical lesser evil justification in war, the conditions under which citizens can wage war against their own government, whether there is a limit to the number of combatants on the unjust side who can be permissibly killed, whether the justice of the cause for which combatants fight affects the moral permissibility of fighting, whether duress ever justifies killing in war, the role that collective liability plays in the ethics of war, whether targeted killing is morally and legally permissible, the morality of legal prohibitions on the use of indiscriminate weapons, the justification for the legal distinction between directly and indirectly harming civilians, whether human rights of unjust combatants are more prohibitive than have been thought, the moral categories and criteria needed to understand the proper justification for ending war, and the role of hope in the moral repair of combatants suffering from PTSD.

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Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

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The Ethics of War: Essays

Saba Bazargan-Forward and Samuel C. Rickless (eds.), The Ethics of War: Essays , Oxford University Press, 2017, 304pp., $78.00, ISBN 9780199376148.

Reviewed by Uwe Steinhoff, University of Hong Kong

On the back cover the book is advertised as "The authoritative anthology on the ethics and law of war." This might be an overstatement. While the best-edited volumes on just war theory focus on a particular issue (for instance, preventive war, humanitarian intervention, or legitimate authority), this volume does not really form a coherent whole.

In fact, Nancy Sherman's "Moral Recovery After War" has very little to do with either the laws or the ethics of war, dealing instead, as she herself acknowledges, with "philosophical moral psychology" (244). Moreover, the contributions by Adil Ahmad Haque on the principle of discrimination, of Kai Draper on the doctrine of double effect, and of Larry May on the rights of soldiers have appeared in very similar if not almost identical versions in other publications by these authors (as chapters of their books in the first two cases, and as a contribution to another edited volume in the latter case.) There is nothing intrinsically wrong with these three chapters (on the contrary, all are intelligent contributions). But in my view, such extensive recycling would only be justified if the three chapters had either established themselves as classics, which is certainly not the case given that these publications are very recent, or would clearly contribute to an "authoritative" or at least representative picture of the ethics of war. However, I see no indication for this. In any case, given that these chapters have appeared in similar form elsewhere, I will not discuss them further here. Furthermore, I only mention in passing Andrew Altman's very good chapter on the law and morality of targeted killing via drones (which together with Draper's and Haque's contributions is grouped in the laws of war section of the book.) Instead, I focus on the remaining philosophical contributions.

These contributions, according to the editors, belong to a new, allegedly "revisionist" school of just war theory: "Since the writing of the scholastics and jurists of the late Renaissance and Early Modern periods . . . two precepts have underwritten accounts of the morality of war," namely, that war is a "relation not between individuals but between states" and that "the rules governing conduct in war should proceed independently of whether the war fought is just or unjust" (xi). Bazargan-Forward and Rickless provide no textual evidence in support of these claims. This is not surprising as these claims -- although they have for some time now been the basis of self-proclaimed "revisionism -- are simply wrong. [1] Accordingly, the term "revisionism" in this context is a misnomer and should be rejected as misleading. [2] More importantly for present purposes, if the editorial foreword already makes sweeping but mistaken assertions about the just war tradition, then this undermines the volume's claim to be an "authoritative" contribution to this tradition.

Be that as it may, let us have a closer look at some of the individual contributions. Jeff McMahan believes in "liability justifications" for the infliction of harm. That is, he thinks that a person's being liable to the infliction of a certain harm (which means that she has forfeited the right that the harm not be inflicted) provides a defeasible justification for inflicting this harm on her. [3] Given that he also believes that mere moral responsibility -- which need not amount to culpability -- for a threat of unjust harm is the basis of liability to defensive harm, he faces the problem that a defender would, on his account, be justified in killing an infinite number of responsible but morally entirely innocent threats (like drivers who foresaw that driving would impose a tiny risk of harm on pedestrians, and then, through no fault of their own, lose control over their cars and pose a substantial threat to a pedestrian). McMahan's solution to this problem is to suggest a third kind of proportionality. In the past, he has already distinguished between "wide proportionality" and "narrow proportionality," where the former refers to harms inflicted on threats or aggressors, and the latter to harms inflicted on bystanders. Yet these conceptual innovations are unnecessary. The actual distinction, at least in law, is not between different kinds of proportionality, but between different justifications: the self-defense justification on the one hand, and the necessity or choice of evil justification on the other hand. In any case, McMahan now suggests solving the problem by an appeal to " proportionality in the aggregate " (25, emphasis in the original). However, this solution seems to be entirely ad hoc and to rely solely on McMahan's intuitions, without any theoretical foundation or further explanation.

This is precisely David Rodin's charge against McMahan's approach (45). Rodin's own solution to the problem involves what he calls a "lesser evil obligation" (28). Bear in mind that, as already mentioned, a liability justification is supposed to be defeasible . It is, for example, defeasible if acting on the liability justification would have consequences that are bad enough to override the justification. Regarding such consequences, Rodin states that "harm inflicted on a liable person is still an evil from an impersonal view" (36). Accordingly, if the number of liable persons is large enough, the overall evil that would be produced by acting on the liberty to kill all these persons can override this liberty -- thus producing an all-things-considered lesser evil obligation not to do what one has a Hohfeldian liberty to do. Unfortunately, the quite correct idea that harming a person constitutes an evil is incompatible with the very idea of a liability justification: if persons have intrinsic value, then the mere fact that they have forfeited a right not to be harmed does not yet provide a justification to harm them. [4] Your lacking a Hohfeldian right that I not kill you provides me with a Hohfeldian liberty to kill you, but it does not yet provide me with a justification to kill you (and to thereby destroy something of value). [5]

As an aside, while Rodin, to his credit, does not claim that the concept of a lesser evil obligation is a novelty, the editors make this claim in his stead (xiii). Yet, the idea that a "right bearer is all things considered obligated to behave in a certain way toward a person despite the fact that they have the right with respect to that party to behave otherwise" (33) is most definitely not novel at all; it has been known in the German legal literature for at least 200 years. [6] Anglo-Saxon legal scholars are acquainted with this idea too.

Richard Arneson sets out to resolve what Seth Lazar has called "the responsibility dilemma." Yet he apparently misunderstands what solving the dilemma means. Lazar rejects outright McMahan's responsibility account of liability (that is Lazar's external criticism) but makes it very clear that his "critique of McMahan's argument" in terms of the responsibility dilemma "is internal" to that account. [7] The challenge is basically that McMahan's account makes either too many civilians or too few combatants liable to attack. Accordingly, a solution would require a demonstration that McMahan's responsibility account is able to escape the dilemma. [8] Offering a completely different account of liability, in contrast, does not so much solve the dilemma as change the subject. This, however, is precisely what Arneson does. In fact, he offers two different accounts of liability (which are supposed to interact with each other.) . First, he "proposes abandoning" the idea that a right can be overridden although it is still present; that is, he seems to reject the idea that non-liable persons can be permissibly harmed. Instead, he states: "For any moral right not to be treated in certain ways, the right gives way if the ratio of the badness to nonrightholders if the right is not acted against to the badness to rightholders if the right is acted against is sufficiently favorable" (70). In other words, the availability of a lesser evil justification would not give one a justification to override existing rights. Instead, it would show that the harm inflicted on the basis of the lesser-evil justification does not infringe any rights in the first place -- the rights have "given way." This would mean that a war waged in accordance with a lesser-evil justification violates no one's rights, not even the rights of all the innocent people, including children, who have been killed, burned, and mutilated. While this might indeed be a way to avoid contingent pacifism, as Arneson is determined to do, it also leads to not taking rights seriously. Arneson's second account of liability is "fault forfeits first" (85). Since I demonstrate elsewhere that this account has entirely counter-intuitive implications and justifies all kinds of acts that Western jurisdictions quite reasonably qualify as murder, [9] I will not go into it further here. [10]

Victor Tadros's aim is "to show that there are circumstances in which duress can justify killing a person where that killing would otherwise be wrong" (115). He claims: "Duress justifies [an act v ] where X's [the threatener's] threat is sufficiently credible and grave to render it permissible for D to v ." (96) However, it should be quite obvious that it is not duress that is providing a justification here, but the threat's being sufficiently credible and grave to render the act permissible. That is, the actual justification is a lesser-evil justification. So all that Tadros shows is that acts committed under duress can sometimes be justified with a lesser-evil justification. However, first, that is nothing new, and second, the same can be said about acts committed against payment. In short, there is no such thing as a separate and independent "duress justification," just as there is no separate and independent "monetary-reward justification."

Mattias Iser tries to refute Richard Norman's and David Rodin's claim that it is always disproportionate to kill in defense of civil and political rights. (208) He does this in the context of revolutionary violence. However, it would appear that a refutation of the claim would be applicable to both national self-defense (which is the context in which the claim is usually discussed) and revolution. In other words, it is unclear what difference the reference to revolution is supposed to make. In any case, Iser puts heavy emphasis on "respect" and its "expression," and he claims that although individual attacks may "express utter disrespect, they can never humiliate as deeply as an unjust, for example racist, basic structure" (216). Thus, it seems that Iser's strategy is to accept -- at least for the sake of argument -- Norman's and Rodin's claims about individual self-defense, [11] but then to argue that much more is at stake in the case of revolution against an unjust regime. However, it seems to me that Iser is confusing things here. If according to the state's basic structure I have no right to vote, then the state will constantly keep me from voting. It is not so much that the state thereby "expresses" more "disrespect" than an individual who keeps me from voting on a single occasion; rather, the difference lies in constantly being kept from voting on the one hand and occasionally being kept from voting on the other. Moreover, if the state denies everyone the right to vote, it denies them democracy . In contrast, an individual who falsely imprisons me on election day does not deny me democracy. [12] Thus, the material harms are very different, and it is quite reasonable to suppose that this difference, not the expression of disrespect, is doing most of the work. To show that Iser might severely overestimate the evil that is the expression of disrespect, note that merely attempted murder expresses as much disrespect as successful murder, while accidental (non-negligent and non-reckless) killing expresses no disrespect at all. It is safe to assume that people would vastly prefer the former to the latter, and thus are far more concerned with material harm than with expressions of disrespect. After all, people can quite literally live with attempted murder. They cannot live with accidental death.

François Tanguay-Renaud examines the question whether there could be something like corporate state liability to attack. He thinks that the idea is intelligible but that such liability might be "of very limited relevance to the morality of war" (137). I am even more skeptical the Tanguay-Renaud, but his exploration of the question is thoughtful, cautious, and interesting.

Finally, Seth Lazar suggests new ways of structuring just war theory. He suggests that what he calls "Command Ethics" serves to "govern the morality of war as a whole," while "Combatant Ethics governs the morality of specific actions" (231). He rejects the suggestion that this distinction corresponds to the familiar distinction of jus ad bellum and jus in bello, between "analysis of the war as a whole and of individual actions and operations that compose it," as "confused" (231-232). His reasons for this assessment are, first, that "each individual combatant must also consider whether his resort to war is justified," and second, that "we should not confine Command Ethics to focusing only on the resort to war" (323). However, both reasons are unconvincing. The first is unconvincing because an individual combatant's jus in bello consideration of whether his acts of participation in the war are justified is clearly different from an individual combatant's jus ad bellum consideration of whether the collective war effort as a whole is justified. The second is unconvincing because the view that jus ad bellum concerns only the resort to war but not the question as to whether war should be continued is mistaken. [13] Lazar also proposes distinguishing "between the positive justifying reasons that count in favor of fighting, and the constraints that must either be satisfied or overridden for fighting to be permissible" (242). There is nothing wrong with this distinction, but it is unclear why it should affect the structure of just war theory. In any case, once one gives up the obsessive focus on liability common among self-proclaimed "revisionists" and avoids the misleading talk of "liability justifications," one might come to realize that any actual moral or legal justification necessarily comprises both elements.

This volume is not all bad, and some of the contributions are good, but on the whole it leaves much to be desired. It certainly is not "authoritative."

[1] As regards the (mistaken) claim that traditional just war theory saw war as a relation between states, see Gregory M. Reichberg, " Historiography of Just War Theory, " in Seth Lazar and Helen Frowe (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Ethics of War (Oxford University Press, 2015), Oxford Handbooks Online: DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199943418.013.18, section 1; Daniel Schwartz, " Late Scholastic Just War Theory, " in Lazar and Frowe, op. cit. , DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199943418.013.13, section 2.3; Uwe Steinhoff, " Doing Away with ‘Legitimate Authority,’ " Journal of Military Ethics , forthcoming. As regards the alleged independence of jus ad bellum and jus in bello in the tradition and the related claim that it endorses a " moral equality of combatants " – it should by now be clear that these charges against the tradition are flatly wrong (the claim to be " revisionist " seems to stem from a complete misunderstanding of the tradition). For proof, see, for instance, Cheyney Ryan, " Democratic Duty and the Moral Dilemmas of Soldiers, " Ethics 122 (2011), pp. 10-42, at 13-18; Uwe Steinhoff, " Rights, Liability, and the Moral Equality of Combatants, " Journal of Ethics 13 (2012), pp. 339-366, section 2; Gregory M. Reichberg, " The Moral Equality of Combatants – A Doctrine in Classical Just War Theory? A Response to Graham Parsons, " Journal of Military Ethics 12(2) (2013), pp. 181-194. All the texts just referenced do provide ample textual evidence for their claims.

[2] Seth Lazar suggests that the " revisionists" at least revise Walzer, and that one becomes revisionist by revising something. See http://peasoup.typepad.com/peasoup/2015/05/ethics-discussions-at-pea-soup-cecile-fabres-war-exit-with-critical-precis-by-helen-frowe.html . By the same logic, Walzer would also be a revisionist (he revised a lot), and virtually all present-day just war theorists deviate from Walzer in one way or the other (so who would be a non-revisionist?). Also, again by the same logic, all just war theorists would also be conservative at the same time – because they conserve something .

[3] In my view, liability is one thing and justification another. Liability provides no justification at all, neither defeasible nor otherwise. See Uwe Steinhoff, "Self-Defense as Claim Right, Liberty, and Act-Specific Agent-Relative Prerogative," Law and Philosophy 35(2) (2016), pp. 193-209.

[4] See ibid.

[5] To be sure, this problem could be "solved" by redefining liability in such a way that one can only be liable to harm that is inflicted on one for a certain reason. McMahan indeed often talks in this way: "people can be liable to harm only in relation to a goal …" See Killing in War (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 9. However, first, stipulative definitions do not solve substantive moral questions. Second, it is unclear how such a reason-dependent account of liability squares with McMahan's (and Rodin's, for that matter) simultaneously "objectivist," "fact-relative" account of liability. McMahan says that "justification provides exemption from liability only when it is objective ," and something is "objectively … justifiable when what explains its … justifiability are facts that are independent of the agent's beliefs" (ibid., p. 43). Since when, however, are an agent’s goals "facts that are independent of the agent’s beliefs"? McMahan’s account of liability seems to be incoherent: there is no objective and reason-dependent “liability justification” for harming someone – you simply cannot have it both ways.

[6] The now common term Rechtsmißbrauch (rights abuse) was introduced into the German legal literature more than 80 years ago, but the concept is at least 200 years old; in fact, some even trace it back to Roman Law. See Elke Widmann, "Der Rechtsmissbrauch im Markenrecht," dissertation, available at http://kops.unikonstanz.de/handle/123456789/3384;jsessionid=E5CC60B87151CA8B1C77FD3777EC6D24 . Incidentally, I mentioned this idea in a footnote in "Rights, Liability, and the Moral Equality of Combatants", p. 457, n. 15. Elsewhere I talk of a "necessity prohibition," see Uwe Steinhoff, "Shortcomings of and Alternatives to the Rights-Forfeiture Theory of Justified Self-Defense and Punishment," available at https://philpapers.org/rec/STESOA-5 . I took myself to be stating the obvious there, not to be "add[ing] an important resource to the reductive individualist's conceptual arsenal," as Bazargan-Forward and Rickless would have it (xiii).

[7] Seth Lazar, "The Responsibility Dilemma for Killing in War: A Review Essay," Philosophy and Public Affairs 38(2) (2010), pp. 180-213, at 189.

[8] McMahan tried on several occasions to show this – unsuccessfully, in my view. Seth Lazar's most recent reply to such attempts looks to me like a coup de grâce. See Lazar's "Liability and the Ethics of War: A Response to Strawser and McMahan," in Christian Coons and Michael Weber, The Ethics of Self-Defense (Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 292-304.

[9] See Uwe Steinhoff, "Replies," San Diego Law Review, forthcoming (see the part on Arneson).

[10] Incidentally, Arneson's account is very similar to Gerhard Øverland's in "Moral Taint: On the Transfer of the Implications of Moral Culpability," Journal of Applied Philosophy 28(2) (2011), pp. 122-136 (but Øverland is somewhat more cautious than Arneson). Arneson does not mention Øverland.

[11] There is actually no reason to do so. See Uwe Steinhoff, "Rodin on Self-Defense and the 'Myth' of National Self-Defense: A Refutation", Philosophia (2013), pp. 1017-1036; "Proportionality in Self-Defense," Journal of Ethics 21(3) (2017), pp. 263-289. Accordingly, there are more straightforward ways of refuting Norman's and Rodin's "bloodless invasion" (or a corresponding "bloodless tyranny") argument than Iser's appeal to the "expression of disrespect."

[12] Compare Helen Frowe, Defensive Killing (Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 143-145.

[13] See Uwe Steinhoff, "Just Cause and the Continuous Application of Jus ad Bellum ," in Larry May, Shannon Elizabeth Fyfe, and Eric Joseph Ritter (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook on Just War Theory (Cambridge, forthcoming).

Essays About War: Top 5 Examples and 5 Prompts

War is atrocious and there is an almost universal rule that we should be prevented; if you are writing essays about war, read our helpful guide.

Throughout history, war has driven human progress. It has led to the dissolution of oppressive regimes and the founding of new democratic countries. There is no doubt that the world would not be as it is without the many wars waged in the past.

War is waged to achieve a nation or organization’s goals, but what is the actual cost of progress? War has taken, and continues to take, countless lives. It is and is very costly in terms of resources as well. From the American Revolution to World Wars I and II to the Crusades and Hundred Years’ War of antiquity, wars throughout history have been bloody, brutal, and disastrous.

If you are writing essays about war, look at our top essay examples below.

1. War Is Not Part of Human Nature by R. Brian Ferguson

2. essay on war and peace (author unknown), 3. the impacts of war on global health by sarah moore.

4. The Psychosocial Impacts of War and Armed Conflict on Children by Iman Farajallah, Omar Reda, H. Steven Moffic, John R. Peteet, and Ahmed Hankir

5. Is war a pre-requisite for peace? by Anna Cleary

5 prompts for essays about war, 1. is war justified, 2. why do countries go to war, 3. the effects of war, 4. moral and ethical issues concerning war, 5. reflecting on a historical war.

“Debate over war and human nature will not soon be resolved. The idea that intensive, high-casualty violence was ubiquitous throughout prehistory has many backers. It has cultural resonance for those who are sure that we as a species naturally tilt toward war. As my mother would say: “Just look at history!” But doves have the upper hand when all the evidence is considered. Broadly, early finds provide little if any evidence suggesting war was a fact of life.”

Ferguson disputes the popular belief that war is inherent to human nature, as evidenced by archaeological discoveries. Many archaeologists use the very same evidence to support the opposing view. Evidence reveals many instances where war was waged, but not fought. In the minds of Ferguson and many others, humanity may be predisposed to conflict and violence, but not war, as many believe.

“It also appears that if peace were to continue for a long period, people would become sick of the monotony of life and would seek war for a changed man is a highly dynamic creature and it seems that he cannot remain contented merely with works of peace-the cultivation of arts, the development of material comforts, the extension of knowledge, the means and appliances of a happy life.”

This essay provides an interesting perspective on war; other than the typical motivations for war, such as the desire to achieve one’s goals; the author writes that war disrupts the monotony of peace and gives participants a sense of excitement and uncertainty. In addition, it instills the spirit of heroism and bravery in people. However, the author does not dispute that war is evil and should be avoided as much as possible.

“War forces people to flee their homes in search of safety, with the latest figures from the UN estimating that around 70 million people are currently displaced due to war. This displacement can be incredibly detrimental to health, with no safe and consistent place to sleep, wash, and shelter from the elements. It also removes a regular source of food and proper nutrition. As well as impacting physical health, war adversely affects the mental health of both those actively involved in conflict and civilians.”

Moore discusses the side effects that war has on civilians. For example, it diverts resources used on poverty alleviation and infrastructure towards fighting. It also displaces civilians when their homes are destroyed, reduces access to food, water, and sanitation, and can significantly impact mental health, among many other effects.

4. The Psychosocial Impacts of War and Armed Conflict on Children by Iman Farajallah, Omar Reda, H. Steven Moffic, John R. Peteet, and Ahmed Hankir

“The damage done by war-related trauma can never be undone. We can, however, help reduce its long-term impacts, which can span generations. When we reach within ourselves to discover our humanity, it allows us to reach out to the innocent children and remind them of their resilience and beauty. Trauma can make or break us as individuals, families, and communities.”

In their essay, the authors explain how war can affect children. Children living in war-torn areas expectedly witness a lot of violence, including the killings of their loved ones. This may lead to the inability to sleep properly, difficulty performing daily functions, and a speech impediment. The authors write that trauma cannot be undone and can ruin a child’s life.

“The sociologist Charles Tilly has argued that war and the nation state are inextricably linked. War has been crucial for the formation of the nation state, and remains crucial for its continuation. Anthony Giddens similarly views a link between the internal pacification of states and their external violence. It may be that, if we want a durable peace, a peace built on something other than war, we need to consider how to construct societies based on something other than the nation state and its monopoly of violence.”

This essay discusses the irony that war is waged to achieve peace. Many justify war and believe it is inevitable, as the world seems to balance out an era of peace with another war. However, others advocate for total pacifism. Even in relatively peaceful times, organizations and countries have been carrying out “shadow wars” or engaging in conflict without necessarily going into outright war. Cleary cites arguments made that for peace to indeed exist by itself, societies must not be built on the war in the first place.

Many believe that war is justified by providing a means to peace and prosperity. Do you agree with this statement? If so, to what extent? What would you consider “too much” for war to be unjustified? In your essay, respond to these questions and reflect on the nature and morality of war.

Wars throughout history have been waged for various reasons, including geographical domination, and disagreement over cultural and religious beliefs. In your essay, discuss some of the reasons different countries go to war, you can look into the belief systems that cause disagreements, oppression of people, and leaders’ desire to conquer geographical land. For an interesting essay, look to history and the reasons why major wars such as WWI and WWII occurred.

In this essay, you can write about war’s effects on participating countries. You can focus on the impact of war on specific sectors, such as healthcare or the economy. In your mind, do they outweigh the benefits? Discuss the positive and negative effects of war in your essay. To create an argumentative essay, you can pick a stance if you are for or against war. Then, argue your case and show how its effects are positive, negative, or both.

Many issues arise when waging war, such as the treatment of civilians as “collateral damage,” keeping secrets from the public, and torturing prisoners. For your essay, choose an issue that may arise when fighting a war and determine whether or not it is genuinely “unforgivable” or “unacceptable.” Are there instances where it is justified? Be sure to examples where this issue has arisen before.

Humans have fought countless wars throughout history. Choose one significant war and briefly explain its causes, major events, and effects. Conduct thorough research into the period of war and the political, social, and economic effects occurred. Discuss these points for a compelling cause and effect essay.

For help with this topic, read our guide explaining “what is persuasive writing ?”If you still need help, our guide to grammar and punctuation explains more.

Martin is an avid writer specializing in editing and proofreading. He also enjoys literary analysis and writing about food and travel.

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Essays on War Experiences

3 samples on this topic

The array of written assignments you might receive while studying War Experiences is stunning. If some are too challenging, an expertly crafted sample War Experiences piece on a related subject might lead you out of a deadlock. This is when you will definitely acknowledge WowEssays.com ever-expanding directory of War Experiences essay samples meant to catalyze your writing creativity.

Our directory of free college paper samples showcases the most bright instances of high-quality writing on War Experiences and related topics. Not only can they help you come up with an interesting and fresh topic, but also exhibit the effective use of the best War Experiences writing practices and content organization techniques. Also, keep in mind that you can use them as a trove of reliable sources and factual or statistical information processed by real masters of their craft with solid academic experience in the War Experiences area.

Alternatively, you can take advantage of efficient write my essay assistance, when our authors deliver a unique example essay on War Experiences tailored to your personal specifications!

The Civil War Period On Women Journal Essays Example

Introduction

Essay on War and Its Effects

Students are often asked to write an essay on War and Its Effects in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on War and Its Effects

Introduction.

War is a state of armed conflict between different countries or groups within a country. It’s a destructive event that causes loss of life and property.

The Devastation of War

Wars cause immense destruction. Buildings, homes, and infrastructure are often destroyed, leaving people homeless. The loss of resources makes it hard to rebuild.

The human cost of war is huge. Many people lose their lives or get injured. Families are torn apart, and children often lose their parents.

Psychological Impact

War can cause severe psychological trauma. Soldiers and civilians may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

War has devastating effects on people and societies. It’s important to promote peace and understanding to prevent wars.

250 Words Essay on War and Its Effects

War, a term that evokes immediate images of destruction and death, has been a persistent feature of human history. The consequences are multifaceted, influencing not only the immediate physical realm but also the socio-economic and psychological aspects of society.

Physical Impact

The most direct and visible impact of war is the physical destruction. Infrastructure, homes, and natural resources are often destroyed, leading to a significant decline in the quality of life. Moreover, the loss of human lives is immeasurable, creating a vacuum in societies that is hard to fill.

Socio-Economic Consequences

War also has profound socio-economic effects. Economies are crippled as resources are diverted towards war efforts, leading to inflation, unemployment, and poverty. Social structures are disrupted, with families torn apart and communities displaced.

Psychological Effects

Perhaps the most enduring impact of war is psychological. The trauma of violence and loss can have long-term effects on mental health, leading to conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder. Society at large also suffers, with the collective psyche marked by fear and mistrust.

In conclusion, war leaves an indelible mark on individuals and societies. Its effects are far-reaching and long-lasting, extending beyond the immediate physical destruction to touch every aspect of life. As we continue to study and understand these impacts, it underscores the importance of pursuing peace and conflict resolution.

500 Words Essay on War and Its Effects

War, an organized conflict between two or more groups, has been a part of human history for millennia. Its effects are profound and far-reaching, influencing political, social, and economic aspects of societies. Understanding the impact of war is crucial to comprehend the intricacies of global politics and human behavior.

The Political Impact of War

War significantly alters the political landscape of nations. It often leads to changes in leadership, shifts in power dynamics, and amendments in legal systems. For instance, World War II resulted in the downfall of fascist regimes in Germany and Italy, giving rise to democratic governments. However, war can also destabilize nations, creating power vacuums that may lead to further conflicts, as seen in the aftermath of the Iraq War.

Social Consequences of War

Societies bear the brunt of war’s destructive nature. The loss of life, displacement of people, and the psychological trauma inflicted upon populations are some of the direct social effects. Indirectly, war also affects societal structures and relationships. It can lead to changes in gender roles, as seen during World War I and II where women took on roles traditionally held by men, leading to significant shifts in gender dynamics.

Economic Ramifications of War

Economically, war can have both destructive and stimulating effects. On one hand, it leads to the destruction of infrastructure, depletion of resources, and interruption of trade. On the other, it can stimulate economic growth through increased production and technological advancements. The economic boom in the United States during and after World War II is an example of war-induced economic stimulation.

The Psychological Impact of War

War leaves a deep psychological imprint on those directly and indirectly involved. Soldiers and civilians alike suffer from conditions like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Moreover, societies as a whole can experience collective trauma, impacting future generations. The psychological scars of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings continue to affect Japanese society today.

In conclusion, war is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon with profound effects that can shape nations and societies in significant ways. Its impacts are not confined to the battlefield but reach deep into the political, social, economic, and psychological fabric of societies. Therefore, understanding its effects is not only essential for historians and political scientists but also for anyone interested in the complexities of human societies and their evolution.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

Essay on Kargil War
Essay on Disadvantages of War
Essay on Consequences of War

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

Regions & Countries

How u.s. jews are experiencing the israel-hamas war.

A person cries during a prayer service and candlelight vigil for Israel at Temple Emanu-El in New York City on Oct. 9, 2023. (Adam Gray/AFP via Getty Images)

Related: How U.S. Muslims are experiencing the Israel-Hamas war

American Jews report feeling a host of emotions – including sadness, anger, exhaustion and fear – in reaction to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing Israeli invasion of Gaza. Nine-in-ten say they think discrimination against Jews has risen in the United States since the Israel-Hamas war began. And three-quarters say they have felt personally offended by something they’ve seen in the news or on social media about the war .

But not all Jewish Americans are experiencing the conflict the same way. The survey, conducted Feb. 13-25, finds that younger and older Jews often view the war differently, mirroring patterns in the broader U.S. public. In both groups, younger adults tend to express much more negative attitudes toward Israel than older Americans do. U.S. Jews also differ by age when it comes to the level of connection they feel with Israel, as we found in our 2020 survey of Jewish Americans .

Pew Research Center conducted this survey to explore Americans’ views on the Israel-Hamas war, including what role the United States should play in the conflict. We surveyed a total of 12,693 U.S. adults from Feb. 13 to 25, 2024. Most of the respondents (10,642) are members of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel, an online survey panel recruited through national random sampling of residential addresses, which gives nearly all U.S. adults a chance of selection.

The remaining 2,051 respondents are members of three other survey panels – Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel, SSRS’s Opinion Panel, and NORC at the University of Chicago’s AmeriSpeak Panel – who were interviewed because they identify as Jewish or Muslim.

We “oversampled” (i.e., interviewed a disproportionately large number of) Jews and Muslims to provide more reliable estimates of their views on the topics covered in this survey. But these groups are not overrepresented in the national estimates reported here, because we adjusted for the oversampling in the weighting of the data. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education, religious affiliation and other categories. In total, 1,941 Jewish and 414 Muslim respondents participated in this survey.

While the sample design was identical for Jews and Muslims, the resulting sample sizes are different. There are two main reasons for this. The Jewish population in the United States is roughly double the size of the Muslim population . Consequently, national survey panels have roughly twice as many or more Jewish panelists as Muslim ones. In addition, decades of research on survey nonresponse has shown that some groups in the U.S. are more likely to participate in surveys than others. Generally speaking, Jewish adults are more likely to participate in surveys than Muslim adults.

The survey also included questions about where people were born and whether people identify as Arab or of Arab origin. Because of insufficient sample size, we are unable to analyze Arab Americans or Americans of Israeli or Palestinian descent separately.

In this survey, Jews and Muslims are defined as U.S. adults who answer a question about their current religion by saying they are Jewish or Muslim, respectively. Unlike our 2020 report on Jews in America , this report does not separately analyze the views of “Jews of no religion” (i.e., people who identify as Jewish culturally, ethnically or by family background but not by religion).

For more information on how we conducted this survey, refer to the ATP’s Methodology and the Methodology for this analysis. Here are the questions on views and knowledge of the Israel-Hamas war used in this analysis, and on perceptions of discrimination since the war began .

How and why the war is being fought

An overwhelming majority of Jewish American adults (93%) say that the way Hamas carried out its Oct. 7 attack was unacceptable.

But Jewish adults under 35 are divided over Israel’s military response: 52% say the way Israel has carried out the war has been acceptable, while 42% call it unacceptable, and 6% are unsure. Jews ages 50 and older are far more likely to say Israel’s conduct of the war has been acceptable (68%).

As for why the war is being fought in the first place, 77% of Jewish adults – including a majority in every age group – say Hamas’ reasons for fighting Israel are not valid. But Jewish adults under 35 are more likely than older Jews to say that Hamas’ reasons for fighting are valid: 31% of younger Jews take this position, compared with about one-in-ten of those ages 35 and older.

By comparison, 89% of Jewish Americans say Israel’s reasons for fighting Hamas are valid – far more than the 58% of all U.S. adults who say this . Younger Jews are less likely than their older counterparts to say Israel’s reasons for fighting Hamas are valid, though about eight-in-ten or more in every age group say this.

A bar chart showing that most Jews say Israel's reasons for fighting Hamas are valid; 16% say the same about Hamas' reasons for fighting Israel.

Views of the people and leadership involved in the war

A dot plot showing that young U.S. Jews are divided in their views of the Israeli government.

Around nine-in-ten U.S. Jews (89%) express a favorable view of the Israeli people, and 54% have a favorable view of the Israeli government. Jews are far more likely than the broader U.S. public to have a favorable view of the Israeli people (89% vs. 64%) and are also more likely than Americans overall to express a favorable opinion of Israel’s government (54% vs. 41%).

Four-in-ten American Jews have a favorable view of the Palestinian people – somewhat lower than the 50% of Americans overall who say the same. Very few Jewish Americans have a favorable opinion of Hamas, which has controlled Gaza, or the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank (3% and 12%, respectively).

Jewish Americans are divided by party in their views of the Israeli government. Jews who identify as Republicans or lean toward the Republican Party are about twice as likely as Jews who identify as Democrats or lean Democratic to say they have a favorable view of the Israeli government (85% vs. 41%). (Among Jews, 68% identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party and 29% identify with or lean toward the Republican Party.) On the other hand, Jewish Democrats are more likely than Jewish Republicans to say they have a favorable view of the Palestinian people (52% vs. 20%) and the Palestinian Authority (14% vs. 9%).

Jewish Americans also differ by age in their views of the people and leadership involved in the conflict. Compared with older U.S. Jews, younger Jews express less favorable attitudes toward the Israeli people and more favorable views of the Palestinian people. Younger Jews also hold somewhat more positive views of the Palestinian Authority.

When it comes to the Israeli government, there are age differences among Jewish Americans, as there are among American overall . For example, 45% of Jews under 35 have a favorable view of the Israeli government, while 53% have an unfavorable view. Jews ages 50 to 64 are the only age group in which a majority express a favorable opinion of the Israeli government (64%).

What role should the U.S. play in the conflict?

A bar chart showing that young U.S. Jews about equally favor military aid to Israel, humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians.

Most American Jews say the U.S. should play at least a minor role in diplomatically resolving the Israel-Hamas war. Majorities also favor providing military aid to Israel (74%) and humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza (61%). On all these questions, Jews tend to be more likely than U.S. adults as a whole to favor U.S. involvement .

Older Jews are more likely than their younger counterparts to say the U.S. should play a major diplomatic role in resolving the war: 54% of Jewish Americans ages 65 and older say this, compared with 33% of those ages 18 to 34. Older Jews are also more likely to favor the U.S. providing military aid to Israel to help in its war against Hamas (82% of those 50 and older vs. 61% of those 18 to 34).

A bar chart showing that most Jews say U.S. should play at least a minor role in diplomatically resolving the Israel-Hamas war.

When it comes to how U.S. President Joe Biden is handling the conflict, relatively few Jewish adults under 50 (35%) say he is striking the right balance between Israelis and Palestinians. By comparison, 53% of Jews ages 50 and older say Biden is striking the right balance.

Discrimination, taking personal offense at speech or news about the Israel-Hamas war

A dot plot showing that, among Jews, Democrats far more likely than Republicans to say discrimination against Muslims, Arabs has increased since start of war.

An overwhelming majority of Jewish Americans (94%) say there is at least some discrimination against Jews in America, including 72% who say there is a lot . Among Americans overall, a large majority (82%) also perceive at least some discrimination against American Jews.

Jewish Republicans and Democrats tend to perceive discrimination differently. Jewish Republicans are far less likely than Jewish Democrats to say that some groups – such as Muslims, Black people or Arab people – face a lot of discrimination in the U.S. today. Jewish Republicans are also far less likely than Jewish Democrats to say discrimination against Muslims and Arabs has increased since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

Meanwhile, about three-quarters of U.S. Jews (74%) say they have felt offended because of something they saw on the news or social media about the Israel-Hamas war, and half have been offended by something someone has said around them about the war. A quarter say they have stopped talking to someone in person – or unfollowed or blocked someone online – because of that person’s comments about the conflict. Jews are far more likely than the U.S. public overall to say they have felt offended or stopped talking with someone under these circumstances .

A bar chart showing that 47% of younger Jews have stopped talking to someone because of something that person said about the war.

Younger Jews are especially likely to say they have felt offended, both by something they saw on social media or by something that was said around them. Six-in-ten Jewish Americans ages 18 to 34 say they have been offended by both (62%), while half or fewer among older age groups say the same.

Similarly, 47% of Jewish adults under the age of 35 say they have stopped talking to someone in person or online because of something that person said about the war. Jews ages 65 and older are the least likely to have done this (11%).

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Rising Numbers of Americans Say Jews and Muslims Face a Lot of Discrimination

How u.s. muslims are experiencing the israel-hamas war, striking findings from 2023, americans’ views of the israel-hamas war, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Israel-Hamas War

Israel Has Been Accused of War Crimes in Gaza. Could Its Allies Be Next?

UN International Day Of Solidarity With The Palestinian People London

W hen Israel launched its retaliatory war to root out Hamas from Gaza in the aftermath of the group’s Oct. 7 massacre, it had the overwhelming support of a horrified world. Six months on, Gaza lies in ruin. Its 2.3 million population, most of whom have been internally displaced, faces widespread famine. More than 33,000 Palestinians, the majority civilians, have been killed. And Israel, once backed by the full-throttle support of its closest allies, appears more isolated than ever before.

Nothing exemplifies this isolation more than the growing calls for the U.S., the U.K., and Germany to suspend arms sales to Israel. These calls, which have only grown louder in the days following the killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in an Israeli airstrike, are now coming from some of the highest levels of transatlantic politics.

In the U.S., 56 congressional lawmakers (among them former House speaker Nancy Pelosi) penned a letter urging President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to withhold further weapons transfers to Israel until a full investigation into the deadly airstrike concludes, and to condition future assistance to ensure its compliance with U.S. and international law. One, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, even went so far as to say that Israel’s actions in Gaza could legally be considered a genocide .

Read More: ‘It’s Not Just a One-Off Incident:’ What the World Central Kitchen Deaths Reveal

In the U.K., Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is facing mounting pressure from parliamentarians and legal experts alike to suspend arms sales following revelations that the government received legal advice that Israel has broken international law in Gaza. Meanwhile, in Germany—which this week faces allegations brought forward by Nicaragua at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that it is “ facilitating the commission of genocide ” in Gaza by supplying arms to Israel—hundreds of civil servants have reportedly written to Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other senior ministers calling on Berlin to “cease arm deliveries to the Israeli government with immediate effect.”

Central to all of these calls is a concern over whether Israel’s conduct in Gaza could constitute a breach of international humanitarian law—and, if so, what it means for the countries that have backed the Israeli war effort with arms and assistance. If Western weapons are found to have been used in the perpetration of war crimes (or, worse, genocide ) in Gaza, what culpability could their suppliers face? If Israel is deemed to have fallen on the wrong side of international law, could it bring its allies down with it?

Legal experts tell TIME that the answer largely depends on which laws and treaties one consults. Among the most emphasized is the international Arms Trade Treaty, in which Article 7 requires party states to undertake a risk assessment of all arms transfers—and, where there’s an overriding risk that those arms could be used to commit or facilitate violations of international humanitarian law, to prohibit their export. The U.S. hasn’t been a party to the U.N. treaty since former President Donald Trump withdrew from it in 2019. (Washington does, however, have its own domestic legislation that prohibits it from providing military assistance to foreign military units suspected of committing human rights violations.) But it nonetheless applies to 113 other state signatories, including Germany, which is the second-largest provider of arms to Israel after the U.S. Some countries, including Canada and Italy , have already opted to halt their arms exports to Israel, citing concerns over their compliance with domestic and international law. In the Netherlands, the government was ordered to suspend its delivery of F-35 fighter aircraft after a Dutch court determined that there was a “ clear risk ” that they could be used to violate international humanitarian law.

Such a precedent could have serious implications for the U.K., a signatory, which despite providing far fewer arms to Israel has suspended its exports in the past: First in 1982 , and then again in 2009 . While the British government contends that its arms sales to Israel are compliant with international law, human rights organizations have argued that this position is inconsistent with mounting evidence of war crimes. “They’re very well aware that there’s equipment that they’ve currently already licensed, and component parts of equipment that they’ve licensed, that are likely to be used by the IDF in Gaza now,” Yasmine Ahmed, the U.K. Director of Human Rights Watch, tells TIME. “That means that they’re clearly breaching those obligations under international law.”

ICJ Delivers Order On South Africa's Genocide Case Against Israel

The obligation that perhaps looms largest over Gaza is the responsibility that states have to prevent and punish genocide under Article 1 of the Genocide Convention. In a landmark decision in January, the ICJ determined in an interim judgment that there is a plausible risk of Israel committing genocide in Gaza. While this doesn’t constitute a definitive ruling (genocide cases can take years to resolve), it does put Israel’s allies on notice. “It makes countries aware that there’s that risk,” Ahmed says. “Continuing to provide arms to Israel when an apex U.N. court has said that there’s a plausible risk of genocide means that there’s a very serious risk that countries are also violating the Genocide convention, to the extent that they’re failing to prevent genocide by continuing to arm Israel.”

That prospect, and the potential criminal liability that comes with it, has prompted concern among British civil servants overseeing U.K. arms exports to Israel, who last week requested to “ suspend all such work ” over fears that it could put them in legal jeopardy. Their request came a week after a third U.S. State Department official publicly resigned over the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Gaza—a decision that Annelle Sheline, who served in the office devoted to promoting human rights in the Middle East, attributed to the administration’s “flagrant disregard for American laws” and the inability of her or other federal employees to influence policy. Indeed, State Department staff have reportedly sent at least eight internal dissent memos registering their disapproval of U.S. policy on the war, according to the Independent . By contrast, just one was sent during the first three years of the Iraq War.

Read More: How Israel and Its Allies Lost Global Credibility

Michael Becker, a professor of international human rights law at Trinity College in Dublin and a former associate legal officer at the ICJ, tells TIME that in a situation where the ICJ has already determined that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide, “it would then be possible for another state that has provided arms to Israel—if such arms were used to commit genocidal acts—also to be found to have violated international law.” He adds, however, that it is difficult to prove that a state was legally complicit in genocide as it would require proving that the state was aware of another state’s genocidal intent; it's easier to prove that a state failed to meet its international obligation to prevent genocide, the responsibility for which is triggered the moment state learns there’s a serious risk that genocide will be committed. Nicaragua’s case against Germany at The Hague, a ruling on which is expected in the coming weeks, rests on the latter argument.

While what it means to meet one’s obligation to prevent genocide can vary from state to state depending on their relative capabilities or leverage, “Lawmakers in the U.S. and the U.K. and elsewhere need to be thinking very carefully about whether their conduct puts them at risk of violating or breaching their obligation to prevent genocide,” Becker says, adding: “I don’t think it’s a very big leap from that understanding of the obligation to prevent genocide to the conclusion that it’s problematic to continue providing arms to Israel without any meaningful safeguards.

While a judgement on whether Israel has committed genocide is likely years away, if the ICJ were to determine that Israel had committed acts of genocide in Gaza and found that its allies who supplied arms did so with full knowledge of risk, among the tangible consequences that states could face include an order from the ICJ to take remedial action, such as paying financial reparations. What’s less clear, however, is how such orders could be enforced. “The ICJ has no means of enforcing its decisions,” Becker says. “At the end of the day, the ICJ has to rely on others to carry out its decisions.”

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Write to Yasmeen Serhan at [email protected]

Everyone Wants to Seize Russia’s Money. It’s a Terrible Idea.

A reflected image of the neo-Classical headquarters of Russia’s central bank. A Russian flag flies atop the building.

By Christopher Caldwell

Mr. Caldwell is a contributing Opinion writer and the author of “The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties.”

The Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, has brought a glimmer of hope to supporters of the Ukrainian war effort. He suggested to Fox News on March 31 that he would try to rally his divided party behind the REPO Act . That piece of legislation would allow President Biden, working with European allies, to seize Russian currency reserves frozen in the West and use them to aid Ukraine.

Grabbing these reserves would be politically convenient. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the United States and its allies have thrown more than a quarter-trillion dollars into the war, to little ultimate effect. Ukraine has lately suffered a string of battlefield defeats. Prolonging the war is a project that Americans of all political leanings have been steadily less willing to fund through taxes.

Mr. Johnson backs Ukraine’s war effort and sees supporting it as a responsibility of American leadership. But his caucus — more in tune with the Republican voter base — has stymied him. The REPO Act might offer both Mr. Johnson and Mr. Biden a way to duck controversy.

Thus far, the idea of supplying Ukraine through a spending bill has brought scorn from congressional Republicans who wonder whether Americans’ taxes wouldn’t be better spent on defending the U.S.-Mexico border. The REPO Act, by contrast, could make “Russia foot the bill for its own aggression,” as a group of Brookings Institution scholars puts it . Mr. Johnson calls it “pure poetry.” It is a tempting idea.

But it is a bad one. In any free country there is a constitutional wariness of allowing the government to do anything without levying taxes, for good reason. Taxes and accountability go together. Generally, if citizens aren’t paying for a government program through taxes, they are paying for it in some less straightforward way — by taking on debt, for instance, or permitting an outsize governmental role for some corporation or other private interest.

The REPO Act carries additional risks. The very act of seizing Russian assets would pose dangers to the U.S. economy, because other countries, not just Russia, would view it as an act of brigandage. This could weaken the dollar’s status as the main global reserve currency.

The dollar is probably the most valuable strategic asset the United States has. We exercise a degree of control over the world economy because the world, for trading purposes, allows its transactions to pass through our currency. This leaves us with cheaper transaction costs and lighter financial burdens. It gives us leeway to run up debt ($34 trillion of it so far) that other countries lack.

If Russia, China and other diplomatic rivals were to decide that their dollar assets were vulnerable and that they could no longer trust the dollar as a means of exchange, we would feel the pain of that $34 trillion in debt in a way that we don’t now. Retaining the advantages of a reserve currency depends on our behaving as a trustworthy and neutral custodian of others’ assets. If we start stealing people’s money, that could change.

At the start of the war, Russia had about $600 billion in reserves. That means securities denominated in euros, dollars, British pounds, yen and various other stable, convertible currencies, along with gold. In normal times, Russia, like other countries, holds those currencies to facilitate trade and stabilize its own currency. Little of that money — a few billion dollars — is in the United States. Most talk of seizing Russian assets concerns the roughly $300 billion held in Europe, the bulk of it at a depository in Belgium called Euroclear.

Although Europeans regulate this money, they have mostly followed America’s lead on diplomatic and strategic matters since the start of the war. Individual European countries, above all Germany, have urged caution before laying hands on Russia’s reserves, fearing that such a move would jeopardize the euro’s status as a (lesser) reserve currency. The REPO Act could goad them to act more aggressively.

The European Union has proposed a compromise between leaving the money alone and seizing it all. It has asked Euroclear to hold in separate accounts the profits generated by its Russian assets. These profits could then be taxed at a high rate and the proceeds delivered to Ukraine — an accounting maneuver expected to yield about $3 billion a year.

Other Europeans have proposed a more reckless course. They argue that Russia’s hundreds of billions of dollars should be used as collateral for a large Western war loan to Ukraine, to be repaid out of anticipated reparations, for which the European Union could replace Ukraine as the claimant.

These debates come down to the difference between freezing assets and seizing them. For the past few months, Mr. Biden and his administration have called for seizing the Russian reserves outright and using them to fund the war against Russia — a move that would be, if not entirely unprecedented, at least radical. Freezing reserves happens. Actually seizing them has been done only in drastic circumstances and then only in a limited way.

The United States froze Iranian assets in the opening days of the hostage crisis of 1979, but most of these were unfrozen two years later. Frozen assets were used to pay war reparations to Kuwaiti victims of Iraq’s 1990 invasion, but that was according to a plan approved by the U.N. Security Council the following year. The United States seized about $1.7 billion from Iraq in 2003, but that was in the midst of war. And last September Mr. Biden returned a few billion dollars of frozen assets to Iran as part of a deal that saw the repatriation of Americans imprisoned there. Freezing has generally not meant seizing.

Things started changing, though, with the disorderly withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021. In the aftermath, the Biden administration froze the country’s $7 billion in reserves, earmarking half of it for a compensation fund for the families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. Even though it was arguably a wartime measure, this kind of seizure was irregular and surprising. Few viewed it as a precedent: Russia’s central bank was not hiding its reserves through shell companies or other trickery on the eve of its Ukraine invasion. No one seems to have considered the possibility that a foreign banking authority might simply take the money.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Johnson, in their different ways, are claiming the mantle of moral leadership for their respective parties. “American leadership is what holds the world together,” Mr. Biden said last fall, and walking away from Ukraine, he contends, would put that leadership at risk. Mr. Johnson has accused Mr. Biden of “projecting weakness” in his foreign policy and is presenting an alternative.

The larger worry is not moral but practical. If the REPO Act is enacted, then currency seizures, now seen as a tool of last resort, might turn into standard operating procedure, to America’s detriment. Any foreign government liable to having an American voting bloc riled up against it — China, for starters — would think twice before parking its assets in the United States or with one of its NATO allies.

That is not yet a probability, but it is a possibility that no politician of either party should lose sight of. For decades now, the United States has been deferring hard decisions at home and abroad and papering over partisan divisions with the tens of trillions of dollars that our advantageous international position has allowed us to borrow. Our options, though, are narrowing. If Mr. Johnson thinks the United States is “projecting weakness” now, wait till he sees it without its reserve currency.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

Christopher Caldwell is a contributing Opinion writer for The Times and a contributing editor at The Claremont Review of Books. He is the author of “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West” and “The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties.”

Israeli military pulls troops from southern Gaza

The Israeli military says it has reduced the number of ground troops in the southern Gaza Strip following the conclusion of its monthslong operation in the city of Khan Younis, raising questions about the future of its offensive in the enclave amid pressure from the U.S. to reduce the war’s humanitarian toll.

In a statement on Sunday, the IDF said it was pulling its 98th commando division “to recuperate and prepare for future operations,” as Israeli army vehicles were seen heading to a base in southern Israel.

"The achievements made by the IDF’s Division 98 and its units, are extremely impressive," Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant said. "They have eliminated terrorists and destroyed terror targets including warehouses, weapons, headquarters, communication centers and more. Their activities enabled the dismantling of Hamas as a functioning military unit in this area.”

The Nahal Brigade and the 162nd Division remain in Gaza, which the IDF describes as “a significant force” that will continue to “operate in the Gaza Strip, and will preserve the IDF’s freedom of action and its ability to conduct precise intelligence based operations.”

An Israeli brigade is typically made up of a few thousand troops. On Saturday, four Israeli soldiers were killed in Khan Younis.

It was not clear from the IDF’s statement if the withdrawal constituted a planned rotation of the troops, or signaled a turning point in Israel’s strategy for its military offensive in Gaza.

In response to a clarification request from NBC News, the IDF said it can’t comment on the deployment of its forces for security reasons.

Michael Horowitz, the head of intelligence at Le Beck International, a security and risk management consultancy, said, “I think this is a turning point in the campaign in Gaza.”

“The IDF contingent in Gaza will be the lowest since the ground invasion started in late October last year, made of only two brigades along an axis that cuts Gaza into two,” Horowitz said. “Essentially, this means the IDF is probably moving to a more long-term counterterrorism campaign of more target raids. This is something the U.S. had been asking for months.”

The move also does not appear to be a simple troop rotation, Horowitz said, as no troops are entering southern Gaza to replace the forces being pulled out.

“Operations in Khan Younis also appear to have been completed, and there is no logic in replacing troops in southern Gaza unless Israel launches a new offensive, against Rafah for instance,” he said, adding that Israel has been waving the threat of such an offensive, but has encountered a lot of pushback.

“The Gaza war is entering a new phase, one that will still last long, but may be of lesser intensity,” he added.

The National Security Council's John Kirby said Sunday "it's hard to know exactly what [the troop reduction] tells us."

"It is really just about rest and refit for these troops that have been on the ground for four months, and not necessarily that we can tell, indicative of some coming new operation for these troops," Kirby said on ABC's This Week.

A ground offensive in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, which is sheltering some 1 million people, has become an increasingly contentious point with the U.S., Israel’s strongest ally. Last month, President Joe Biden suggested that an invasion of Rafah was a qualified red line . And last week, sources said a meeting about Israel’s plans to evacuate the city erupted into yelling , as the U.S. criticized Israel’s plans as insufficient.

The timing of the announcement raises questions about whether it was in response to a pronounced change in rhetoric from the United States, following the killing of seven aid workers with World Central Kitchen last week, among them a U.S.-Canadian dual national.

In a call Thursday in the aftermath of the killings, which have sparked international condemnation, Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that U.S. policy going forward would hinge on Israel immediately addressing civilian harm and reducing humanitarian suffering.

Kirby on Sunday reiterated that there shouldn’t be a ground invasion in Rafah and said that too many aid workers have been killed in the Israel-Gaza conflict.

It also comes amid mounting international pressure for a cease-fire, and ongoing negotiations for a hostage deal. Hamas has sent a delegation to join talks in Cairo on Sunday, with CIA Director Bill Burns also expected to take part.

In comments to Israel’s war Cabinet on Sunday, Netanyahu did not directly address the withdrawal, nor did he appear ready to stand down, despite growing international isolation .

“I made it clear to the international community: There will be no cease-fire without the return of abductees. It just won’t happen,” Netanyahu said, adding that Israel intends to continue fighting into Rafah.

At a time of increased tensions, he also connected Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks to Iran, as well as the widening hostilities with Hezbollah, the Houthis, and militias in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. has expressed concern that Iran could strike targets in Israel in retaliation for the killing of several top Iranian officials in the bombing of its embassy in Damascus last week.

“Our war is ongoing,” Netanyahu said.

Meanwhile, the withdrawal has allowed Palestinians to move into areas that had previously been restricted by Israeli forces, with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society reporting that the departure of the IDF troops from the center of Khan Younis has allowed it to retrieve the body of one of its staff, who the group said had been killed during the siege on Khan Younis’ Al-Amal Hospital.

Sunday marks six months since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that killed more than 1,200 people and has led to Israel’s deadly offensive in the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 33,000 and sparked a humanitarian crisis that has brought an estimated 1 million people to the brink of famine .

Yuliya Talmazan is a reporter for NBC News Digital, based in London.

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First-hand Iraq War Experience. In the email from an American Soldier fighting in Iraq, the soldier writes home to his friends and family about his difficult living conditions. The email is a great example of how literary devices are integrated into writing to ease in the articulation of a point. The following essay will analyze how the soldier ...
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This essay examines how the "everyday" functions in war, not only for those on the home fronts, but for those in combat roles and for those living between the lines. Five important qualities, among others, shape the everyday in World War I: Waiting, Staying Connected, Food and Shelter, Managing Fear, and Camaraderie. Each of these themes plays out at the homes of those left behind, in the ...
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The body section of a war essay is typically three to four paragraphs long, but it can be much longer. 3. Conclusion. In the conclusion section of your war essay, you must wrap up everything nicely. The recommended way to do this is to restate your thesis statement to remind the reader what your essay was about.
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From gang wars to ethnic violence, and from civil conflicts to world wars, the same five reasons underlie conflict at every level: war happens when a society or its leader is unaccountable, ideological, uncertain, biased, or unreliable. Five Reasons for War. Consider Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
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For example, Emerson Nancy in her diary perceived that the war was a result of God's punishment to the Northern people for their sins (Ayers and Rubin 63). Others had faith that God would reunite their families after the war and grant them peace. For example, Sue Carter expresses her faith for the reunion.
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Here, the writer focuses on the do or die attitude soldiers hold once they are in the battle field. For the soldiers who survived in World War One, they witnessed the rebirth of a new country, but for those who fell, their names were held in glory.Throughout the book, Junger uses several of such passages and even sometimes talks of death without fanfare (Junger, 1996).
Narrative of the Great War Experience
Benchmark 1: The student uses a working knowledge and understanding of individuals, groups, ideas, developments, and turning points in the era of the emergence of the modern United States (1890-1930). 6. (A) analyzes the reasons for and impact of the United States' entrance into World War I. Benchmark 5: The student engages in historical ...
The Ethics of War: Essays
The Ethics of War continues and pushes past this trend. This anthology is an authoritative treatment of the ethics and law of war by eminent scholars who first challenged the orthodoxy of Just War theory, as well as by "second-wave" revisionists. The twelve original essays span both foundational and topical issues in the ethics of war ...
The Ethics of War: Essays
Saba Bazargan-Forward and Samuel C. Rickless (eds.), The Ethics of War: Essays, Oxford University Press, 2017, 304pp., $78.00, ISBN 9780199376148. On the back cover the book is advertised as "The authoritative anthology on the ethics and law of war." This might be an overstatement. While the best-edited volumes on just war theory focus on a ...
"This is my story": Children's war memoirs and challenging
Protectionist frames of children as passive, uncomprehending victims characterize the international architecture of responding to children in war. However, stories such as those in children's war memoirs draw attention to the agency and capacity of children to negotiate and navigate distinct traumas and experiences in war. Children experience particular vulnerabilities and risks in conflict ...
War Essay: Things To Write About
Writing about the war is one of the most challenging creative works at school, college, and even university. Modern students have almost no personal experience communicating with people who experienced the battle years' hardships on themselves. Typically, a war essay is not delivered in the classroom unexpectedly to students.
Essays About War: Top 5 Examples And 5 Prompts
Then, argue your case and show how its effects are positive, negative, or both. 4. Moral and Ethical Issues Concerning War. Many issues arise when waging war, such as the treatment of civilians as "collateral damage," keeping secrets from the public, and torturing prisoners.
The views and experiences of U.S. veterans: 9 key findings
1 The experiences of post-9/11 veterans differ from those who served in previous eras. About one-in-five veterans today served on active duty after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. These post-9/11 veterans are more likely to have been deployed and to have served in combat, giving them a distinct set of experiences compared with those ...
A Veteran's War Experience
Emotional Effects Of War On Soldiers Essay 1881 Words | 8 Pages. Soldiers train rigorously, preparing for the departure of war. They sacrifice all that they have to fight for their country. As they return after the war, they are left with painful experiences and traumatizing memories, suffering from their inevitable conditions.
The Experience Of War Essay
1051 Words 5 Pages. The Experience Of War Many authors have written about war themes, some extracts of the stories and poems that I have read and researched are The Upturned Face by Steven Crane .It is about a fictional war being fought in an imaginary Europe. Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell describes his senses and feeling of getting shot ...
War Essay
War Essay 1 (100 words) Beyond the physical wreckage, war leaves an indelible mark on humanity. Its tentacles reach deep into the human mind, changing perceptions and influencing society. Among the broken relics of combat are compassion, understanding, and trust. Families are shattered, and hopes are dashed.
War Experience Essays
The Things They Carried, written by William Timothy O'Brien. The story takes place in Vietnam, during the war, sometime in the 1960s. First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, and his unit are in Vietnam serving for the United States. Jimmy, is in love with a college woman named Martha from back home. Martha writes Jimmy.
Repression Of War Experience Essay
The Experience Of War Essay. The Experience Of War Many authors have written about war themes, some extracts of the stories and poems that I have read and researched are The Upturned Face by Steven Crane .It is about a fictional war being fought in an imaginary Europe. Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell describes his senses and feeling of ...
Analysis Of Repression Of War Experience By Siegfried Sason
Title In the poem, "Repression of War Experience", Siegfried Sasson tells a story of the stressors war has on a human mind for weeks or even years after the last shot has been fired. A mind state that many people to date are still able to unfortunately relate too. It's the horrific sights, sounds, smells, and acts of war that scar the ...
Civil War Experience Essay
Civil War Experience Essay. Better Essays. 1058 Words. 5 Pages. Open Document. Day 3: 6:00 am Since I went to bed so early last night, I woke up more of an appetite and ready to eat. I had an big breakfast from the hotel buffet of sausage, ham, eggs, cheese, biscuits, and of course earl grey tea with sugar cubes.
War Experiences Essay Examples
Comparison And Contrast Soldiers Experience In War Essay Examples. The war experience for soldiers in the various wars such as the Vietnam War, the two world wars and the civil wars were quite different. There is however some similar experiences that both soldiers can also share. In this paper, we shall be focusing on the differences and the ...
Essay on War and Its Effects
Students are often asked to write an essay on War and Its Effects in their schools and colleges. And if you're also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic. ... Moreover, societies as a whole can experience collective trauma, impacting future generations. The psychological scars of the ...
Opinion
Guest Essay. José Andrés: Let People Eat. April 3, 2024. ... They are not generic aid workers or collateral damage in war. Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, John Chapman, Jacob Flickinger, Zomi ...
Israel-Hamas war
American Jews report feeling a host of emotions - including sadness, anger, exhaustion and fear - in reaction to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing Israeli invasion of Gaza. Nine-in-ten say they think discrimination against Jews has risen in the United States since the Israel-Hamas war began. And three-quarters say they have ...
Changing Global Linkages: A New Cold War?
Global linkages are changing amidst elevated geopolitical tensions and a surge in policies directed at increasing supply chain resilience and national security. Using granular bilateral data, this paper provides new evidence of trade and investment fragmentation along geopolitical lines since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and compares it to the historical experience of the early years of the ...
Why Israel's Allies Could Be Accused of War Crimes
April 9, 2024 3:22 PM EDT. W hen Israel launched its retaliatory war to root out Hamas from Gaza in the aftermath of the group's Oct. 7 massacre, it had the overwhelming support of a horrified ...
Opinion
Prolonging the war is a project that Americans of all political leanings have been steadily less willing to fund through taxes. Mr. Johnson backs Ukraine's war effort and sees supporting it as a ...
Israel threatens to strike Iran directly if it launches attack
By The Associated Press. Israel's foreign minister threatened Wednesday that his country's forces would strike Iran directly if the Islamic Republic launched an attack from its territory ...
Israeli military pulls troops from southern Gaza
It was not clear if the move signaled a turning point in Israel's military strategy, but one analyst said it could mean "the Gaza war is entering a new phase, one that will still last long ...

First-hand Iraq War Experience

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The Ethics of War: Essays

Essays About War: Top 5 Examples and 5 Prompts

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Essay on War and Its Effects

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5. Is war a pre-requisite for peace? by Anna Cleary