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Essay on WAR
War is a conflict involving the organized use of weapons and physical force by states or other large-scale groups. Warring parties usually hold territory, which they can win or lose; and each has a leading person or organization which can surrender, or collapse, thus ending the war. Until the end of World War II, participants usually issued formal declarations of war. The term is also used in constructs naming other forms of conflict, where the goal is the submission of one part by the other: trade war, psychological war, cold war.
The word war is sometimes used rhetorically to refer to a campaign against something, without territory to capture or an authority to defeat; e.g. the war on drugs, the war on terror.Wars usually take the form of a series of military campaigns between two opposing sides involving a dispute over, amongst others issues, sovereignty, territory, resources, religion, or ideology.” (John, 2004) A war to liberate an occupied country is called a war of liberation; a war between internal factions within a state is a civil war.
International hostilities sometimes continue for long periods of time without being acknowledged as wars. The Korean War was regarded by the U.S. government as a police action. Conflicts or wars in which major powers purposely refrain from employing all their armed strength are often known as limited wars. Short of peace, such limited wars are now recognized as a preferable alternative to the specter of nuclear war.
War seems as old as human society, and certainly features prominently in the recorded histories of state-cultures. In tribal societies engaging in endemic warfare, it is typical for the tribes armed force to consist entirely or mostly of militia or a warrior caste.The earliest city states and empires in Mesopotamia became the first to employ standing armies......
