The included descriptions of the battle’s aftermath are haunting.
As much as movies and documentaries usually reflect the horrors of combat itself, they rarely deal with the aftermath - not lights out in an adrenaline fueled moment, but lying for hours in a random patch of land no longer having a mouth, trying to cry for help knowing that no one will come until dying from exposure and maggots.
This was the reality for millions of young people; still is. Let’s hope we never see it firsthand.
These days there are drone recordings of wounded soldiers in Ukraine sometimes ending their lives using a hand grenade or their gun.
And several weeks ago whole Russia celebrated a video of knife fight between an Ukrainian soldier and a Russian soldier lost by the Ukrainian who at the end dies from his wounds.
Such deformity and mutilation may result from an errant jump on a dirt bike. I intend to fly because it is there, it is the right of children to be free. Do a flip. And, yes, some will break a jaw or crush a testicle like a grape. We are not meek souls.
Semi-irrelevant comment, but I think it is required for the wider topic on battle/luxury/comfort zones/etc. I don't like to 'tell people what to do', especially on massive scale. I am of the opinion though that ALL (able) MEN must go basic military training (and why not.. women too).
I have ran one of them 'obstacle courses + distance + mud + pain + cold' some years back. I was by far NOT the stronger man there, and I saw some guys that were STRONG (hulk-smash dudes) and they couldn't crawl in the mud to save their lives, or they were skipping leg day, or.. or.. or.. I could see men that were 'normal/average' with military training and plowed through (perseverance to the max) while gym-boys an gym-girls were (rightfully afraid) of injuries as their bodies were 'too clean'.
So, in my 'checklist' of 'basic military training' (fully able/healthy people should/would/could..)
Know how to crawl and/or spider-walk in the mud/forest/river/etc. for 5km
Know how to climb up & down on a rope.
Know how to use a gun (and never have to).
Know how to carry a wounded/incapacitated person.
Know how to administer (the very) first aid.
Know how to (try and) stop bleeding.
Know how to read a map.
Know/practice rucking with 50kg for a 20km brisk walk (maintain speed 7-8 km/h) on uneven terrain, and no water (speak to your doctor first)
Fast for 3-4 days (just to see what it feels like)(speak to your doctor first)
Thirst for 1-2 days (just to see what it feels like)(speak to your doctor first)
And then...
many of the 'free spirit' people might get a new perspective in life.
many of the city-dwellers might start seeing the benefits on being in/near nature
> Know/practice rucking with 50kg for a 20km brisk walk (maintain speed 7-8 km/h) on uneven terrain, and no water (speak to your doctor first)
Ermm..... This is so far beyond basic militarytraining. Did you mean 5kg? And no water? There are special forces units that wouldn't be able to do this.
Full kit loadout is like 20 kilos, maybe 25-30 if you are the LMG/Nlaw carrier in your unit.
>Fast for 3-4 days (just to see what it feels like)(speak to your doctor first)
>Thirst for 1-2 days (just to see what it feels like)(speak to your doctor first)
No water for 2 days is MUCH worse than no food for 4.
> Water
Yes. I can easily fast for 4-5 days once a month with no problem. Water, I've only done it a 3-4 times in my life, just to see how I react on it. I 'imagine' (not really) the scenarion of being in some country that is frequently earthquake-struck and being without access to water because of damaged infrastructure, etc. Again, the purpose is to know one's limits and _not_ to harm oneself.
How many people live in such zones where strong earthquake are frequent, and they have the real/possible risk of being trapped under some rubble for 1-2-3 days without access to food or water? Knowing your limits and not panicking helps.
>50kg
What if you got a kid and you new to carry it for some distance? What if you have to kill an animal and bring it back to chop it and eat it? Again, the purpose is to do it a couple of times in your life to know what you can and cannot do. Not ruin your spine aimlessly.
I never wrote "do it every week for the fun of it". This is more like 'do it once in your life so you know what thirst feels like'. Knowing one's limits, _without_ putting your life at risk is good in life. I foresaw silly/scary/scared responses thus the 'speak to your doc'.
The comment of yours is likely in good spirit, but it mixes reasonable things with completely outlandish ones.
From experience, averaging 8 km/h for 2.5 h with 50 kg on the back is just not possible for most people, and likely not for you or me either. Doing it in uneven terrain sounds completely unrealistic no matter how fit you are.
Just suggest something realistic instead, like 20 kg and 5 km/h in easy terrain for healthy people, and and least it would be something possible to discuss.
Going 4 days without food is something you can absolutely try if you like, if you are healthy or otherwise secure. But going 2 days compeltely without water is stupid. Don't do it on purpose, ever, no matter how fit you think you are.
No, there were always ways. Folklore is full of stories of people avoiding being drafted. You can only draft someone who is there (and who is healthy).
> No, there were always ways. Folklore is full of stories of people avoiding being drafted. You can only draft someone who is there (and who is healthy).
And the stories people tell are about the exciting and unusual things. You're not going to have folklore about people being harshly punished for resisting the powers that be, because it the likely outcome and expected.
Actually, also yes. I was not just refering to fairytales. And unlike people seemed to assume about my comment, that it was easy, nor convenient. Just that draft dodging is as old as the concept of forecfully drafting.
Just shy of swimming across the English channel, very few excuses actually helped people escape impressment. If the press gang had you, the only way you could become less desirable would be to permanently disfigure yourself. Desertion could mean execution, the only safe path to freedom was by doing your service.
>Folklore is full of stories of people avoiding being drafted.
Mulan!
Also there was a fellow down the way one time, who caught a talking fish and the fish was like don't eat me, and he said, well I need to because the king needs me fit for military service, and the fish made him lame and go blind right then, so he let the fish go!
You are a free spirit, and the very first to take a bullet in the head when someone (in time of war) will tell/order you "do _this_" and you will say "no". Better a corpse than a naysayer.
I don't know how many here are Iron Maiden fans/listeners, but for those who don't know their work, I propose a read at the lyrics of The Trooper [0]
Based on the title, I thought this was an article about The Kalinga War, a war so bloody it moved the Emperor Ashoka to embrace non-violence and spread Buddhism throughout Asia.
Ashoka's transformation after the Kalinga War is actually the first thing that came to my mind too. Wild how two completely different battles, in totally different parts of the world and eras, led to similar moral reckonings.
TFA points out that International Law (an output of moral reckoning, if you will) is being dismantled by those in power whose morals are lose.
I wonder, just how long is the memory of civilizations to remember the lessons + morals of the past & how many generations does it take for a civilization to unlearn the wrong lessons.
Interesting story which I didn't know. However, the author perspective is a bit flawed:
But the world did get more peaceful. There was no World War III, and countries at least had to pay lip service to these universal values of peace and human rights.
The world didn't really get more peaceful. Some nations which used to wage wars between themselves did not anymore after World War II (excluding "incidents" like Belgrade bombing). This doesn't diminish the rest of the article at all, if anything calls for more rules and diplomacy preventing war.
global nuclear annihilation did more to prevent WW3 than a Convention that most militaries do their best to tiptoe around (or just ignore where they can)
Europe used to be at constant war with each other. Only France and the UK has some nukes. Now the EU is one of the most peaceful and prosperous places in the world. That is built on rules and trade.
that is incorrect. Europe has had armed conflict since the second world war. Maybe not well advertised, but they happened nonetheless. I share your perspective though, that rules and trade should be continued in order to be even better.
What stuck with me most is how fragile that whole structure still is. We take for granted that countries will at least pretend to follow international norms, but that's largely because a handful of idealists laid the groundwork and others kept it alive.
And they did, because the imperialist, walled-in-gardens, zero-sum multipolar world ran its cause and produced the hyper-imperialist zero-sum lebensraum madness that was nazi-germany. The old world was a dead end- and with nukes everywhere soon, its a dead end for humanity.
We either solve our problems together or we all die together.
Yes, where would we be without the rules-based international order? Perhaps we would be watching videos every day of children blown apart by weapons of war.
Those videos are occurring because of a major power hypocritically flouting the rules-based international order. In spite of it, not because of it. We know the counterfactual of the rules-based order. It's nonstop European warfare in the 19th and the early 20th centuries.
Maybe not nonstop warfare, but there was still a lot of violence going on. European powers were engaged in more-or-less nonstop warfare overseas in their empires, but maybe you're excusing that because those weren't in Europe.
In Europe itself, you have quite major conflicts in the Franco-Prussian War, Austro-Prussian War, and the Crimean War, plus more minor conflicts around the unification (more like conquest) of Italy, the independence of various Balkan states from the Ottoman Empire starting with Greece, Prussia's war against Denmark. And then you have all of the internal civil wars or strife people usually don't call outright wars, but in the 19th century, were often quite violent. The Revolutions of 1848, for example. Or France switching governments four times (July Monarchy, Second Republic, Second Empire, Third Republic) after the restored monarchy, all of them quite violent transitions.
Not to mention the fact that the stresses of urbanization and concomitant social changes provoked a lot of resistance from the lower classes, which was often quite violent. It's not until well into the 20th century that major strikes don't involve lots of bloodshed!
19th century Europe is only peaceful relative to the quite bloody conflicts that bookended the time period, which themselves rank among the bloodiest conflicts in all of human history.
Greek War of Independence (1821-1832)
French invasion of Spain (1823)
Russo-Persian War (1826-1828)
Russo-Turkish War (1828-1829)
Hungarian Revolution and War of Independence (1848-1849)
First Schleswig War (1848-1851)
Wars of Italian Independence (1848–1866)
Crimean War (1854–1856)
Second Schleswig War (1864)
Austro-Prussian War (1866)
Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871)
Russo–Turkish War (1877–1878)
Serbo-Bulgarian War (1885)
Greco–Turkish War (1897)
Together, that adds up to multiple decades of war.
I think https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-in-wars-project-ma... puts this in perspective. The period from 1815 to 1915 was a much more peaceful period measured by deaths in war than 1915 to 2015, though 1975 forward seems like a return to that level (but world population is so much larger now that it's even better than it seems).
Counting the years when there was a war anywhere is Europe, you'll end up with a large number.
I'm counting how often each country was at war. Several countries had no wars, and even the most war torn country didn't fight for more than 10-15 years.
That's really not true if you look at the European neighbors and European territories of Russia and the Ottoman Empire.
Also not true of Spain, which spent a lot of time in internal warfare (with occasional outside interventions.)
But, yes, excluding those, most of the countries in Europe were too busy fighting endless wars throughout their (or their allies’ or enemies’) colonial empires (whether to expand them, defend them, or put down or assist rebellions in them) to bother fighting other powers in Europe in that period.
I've listed most of the conflicts that occurred on the European continent (I've omitted several Russian wars, and there's a couple more civil wars I've also omitted). And some of that is because I'm doing wildcards rather than trying to, e.g., track down every single Balkan conflict in the 19th century.
If you think I've included most of the conflicts that involved European powers on one side... no. Not even close. This is an era when Europeans are essentially in a permanent state of war with everybody they consider inferior to themselves. And, albeit at the tale end of this era, it's still the era when private companies assert the right to go to war against other people. Don't forget that non-European wars can still leave indelible imprints on the European psyche--the Boer War and the Russo-Japanese War both had massive implications for their home countries, and it's ultimately the Italian invasion of Libya that kicks off World War I.
> Probably the most peaceful century in the history of Europe.
World War II is not yet 100 years gone, but there's not really going to be any question that that the 100 years after WWII will be the most peaceful 100 years in recorded history. For comparison's sake, you're probably looking at like roughly a Napoleonic Wars' amount of death in conflict on the European continent between the Napoleonic Wars and WWI. And as I've mentioned, you're really lucking out that there's just under 100 years between two of the bloodiest conflicts of European history, so you get to pick a 100 year time period without the largest conflicts. If the time period were instead 110 years, now you'd have to confront the bloodbath not only of WWI but also the Russian Civil War.
Also I don't know exactly when they started having police and gendarmerie (riot police) but probably not until 20th century, so the usual response to an angry mob was to bring the army. And army doesn't know much but shoot. Hence, lots of bloody massacres.
> The time between the Napoleon wars and WW1 (1815-1914) was very peaceful in Europe.
If, when you talk about "Europe", you exclude Spain and also Greece, the Balkans, and much of Eastern Europe, sure, the powers in "Europe" did most off their fighting in colonial wars in the period rather than at home (they did a quite a lot of fighting in colonial wars, though.)
I can sympathize the with the cynicism, because I also see the bombing of Ukraine and Gaza in the daily news, which nobody seems to be capable or willing to stop.
Unlike Solferino, there are children dying on a daily basis, which breaks my heart. Yet it remains true that what Dunant has established is a better state than the world would have been in if he had done nothing.
Solferino was a big and cruel battle by the standards of its time, but not by today's standards - in stats: 150,000 men against 150,000 men, 24 km battle front fighting through one night, resulting in 6,000 dead, 2,000 wounded and 12,000 missing [1] (but note Solferino today has less than 2,600 inhabitants today). So a joke if compared to WWII stats. But the point here is a single individual made a difference, and beyond their lifetime, and that should give us some hope.
>but note Solferino today has less than 2,600 inhabitants today
Solferino (like other places nearby where battles have been fought or where armies marched) has always been a very small town with "vast" extensions of cultivable area or pastures around. That (uninterrupted plain ground) explains a battle front so extended.
Logically, that is just stupid. And it glorifies human suffering as something necessary for peace.
It’s easy to imagine a world where violence between nations was almost forgotten and conflicts were always solved by negotiations and following previous agreements. See what the EU accomplished: can anyone imagine, say, Germany go to war with France today, even considering the history of those countries.
Yes, I’m afraid of wars! I don’t want my children dying alone in the cold mud. I don’t want my grandchildren crying of fear in a shelter. I don’t want our prosperity used to build tanks and airplanes instead of building schools and hospitals and fight climate change.
That means we should embrace life as it is, we should accept its good and bad sides because there is no good without bad, and no bad without good.
It's like in the story written by Khalil Gibran where a pastor passed by an injured Satan who asked for his help and to not let him die.
In the beginning, the pastor refused because Satan is the enemy of humankind, he's behind everything bad that happens to us.
By the end, the pastor helped the wounded Satan because without him, the pastor's job and social status can not even exist.
Without the Satan/War/Bad there is no Pastor/Peace/Good. And vice versa.
This is a perspective I’ve seen before but I just don’t buy it. People who have suffered a lot generally don’t become the happiest - often, they end living with PTSD. While people who grow up in nurturing, healthy environments enjoy happiness.
In the context of an article about the birth of the Red Cross, what exactly does accepting the bad side of life mean? Are we to end the ICRC? Accept the Geneva Convention but make no new conventions about behaviour in war? Should we accept and return to the flies and the maggots that are so vividly described in the article as part of the aftermath of battle?
This guy has the mind so brainwashed by western media talking points he cannot even understand the propaganda he cheerfully chews on.
Poor innocent 'rules based' order :(. I am sure the "rules based international order" prevented the USA from invading Iraq based on lies, right? Oh wait, the rules didnt work that time. But at least they are preventing Israel of massacring thousands of babies and toddlers in Gaza! Wait, also no. But at least they stopped the USA from deploying a mass surveillance system to spy on every citizen of the world, like Snowden revealed. Uhm, also no. The "rules based international order" is for suckers.
Please read the article again, all of it. Maybe this time you will be able to understand that it actually addresses your points (which are just propaganda of a different source, with certainly no better aims).
Yaya, I read how he "addressed" my points. "It isnt perfect but is the best we got" yadayada. "Rules based international order" never existed. It's just a buzzword promoted by NATO apologists to defend their imperialist expoliation. It never existed. There are no "international rules" for the powerful, the Hague was created to persecute poor third-world warlords or at best the enemies of NATO. It was not created to persecute Bush, Obama or Netanyahu. The WTO was created to sustain american capitalism and benefit american interests, when China started outgrowing american influence then suddenly the WTO is the enemy. There are no rules at all that stopped NATO to bomb Yugoslavia, Lybia, Syria, Yemen, Iraq or Afghanistan.
Its just a buzzword, a talking point parroted by american apologists. Never existed in the past and it certainly doesnt exist now. "Rules based international order" in practice means: NATO gets to do whatever the shit they want, as they have always done. That's it. That's the whole rules in actual practice.
And regarding the supposed reduction in warfare after WWII:
You can thank the existence of the Soviet Union, which united much of the western imperialist powers (Europe, America and its vessel states like Japan, Australia or South Korea) against the first real menace against capitalism in history. That's pretty much the reason why inter-european warfare stopped after WWII. And they focused on warfare against the third world (Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, South America, Central America, etc.) They function as an imperialist block with the same interests. It has little to do with the supposed existence of "rules" or an imaginary "order".
The "rules based international order" isn't perfect but better than what went before it. The percentage of the population killed in warfare has gone from like 15% in the ancient world, 2 or 3% in Napoleon/Hitler times and maybe 0.1% in the modern world (numbers approx).
Is not that "it isnt perfect". It never existed. The Hague was created to persecute backwater third world shithole warlords or at best the enemies of NATO. Not to persecute Bush, Obama or Netanyahu.
You can thank the reduction in warfare killing to the existence of the Soviet Union, which united much of the western imperialist powers (Europe, America and its vessel states like Japan, Australia or South Korea) against the first real menace against capitalism in history. That's pretty much the reason why inter-european warfare stopped after WWII. They function as an imperialist block with the same interests. It has little to do with the supposed existence of "rules" or an imaginary "order".
Personally I put quite a lot in the long term reduction in killing down to tech improving with things like the printing press, the internet and such like.
"International law is a funny thing. Within a country, lines of authority are clear. The government makes laws, it has agencies that enforce them, and the penalties for violating the laws are clear. But, in our modern system of sovereign states, no authority sits above the nation. Each country is sovereign. International laws are, therefore, more fragile, because they require the consent of everybody involved to keep them going."
This was the purpose of the imperium, not necessarily in the narrow sense of empire we often have in mind, but as a kind of order (e.g. the HRE).
In our case, the United States as hegemon has played the role of the global imperium over much of the world over the last few decades, and over a good chunk of the world since WWII. The reigning doctrine of the American empire has been liberalism (which explains why many if not most Americans/Westerners treat liberalism as a "neutral" position; it is the water we swim in). It explains why the US has intervened in numerous distant conflicts, engaged in countless "nation building" campaigns aimed at spreading liberal democracy around the world, and successfully influenced peoples worldwide through its film and media. These were all intended to preserve and enlarge the liberal imperium.
Now that liberalism has devoured and corroded the Protestant mother that held it together, and escaped the containment it created - in large part through the infusion of liberalism into Protestant doctrine - we are witnessing the fullness of the tensions inherent in liberalism playing out in the human psyche and society and unraveling liberalism and the liberal order. The shape of the emerging postliberal order is uncertain. The noisiest contenders seem to be an increasingly overt tyrannical liberalism and fascism, though a less conspicuous movement aiming to return to pre-liberal classical traditions is also in play.
The USA's efforts in South America (for example) were not aimed at spreading liberal democracy - the USA routinely intervened after democratic elections appointed leaders they didn't like, and installed military juntas or dictators that they did like. There was an overt tendency in US foreign policy to install right-wing leaders where possible, partly as a defence against Cold War Communism.
The wars that the USA engaged in since WW2 have not been about promoting liberalism, or removing totalitarian regimes. They have been explicitly about protecting US economic interests abroad, and generally feeding the military-industrial base as Eisenhower predicted.
> The reigning doctrine of the American empire has been liberalism (which explains why many if not most Americans/Westerners treat liberalism as a "neutral" position; it is the water we swim in).
Most definitely not. The reigning doctrine has been enforcing American wishes, wants and airs, both public and private, by force. Liberalism is a poor guise, mainly to brainwash the locals into accepting the status quo on both sides of the aisle.
The article could have been a nice recollection of a battle with a wonderful, long-lasting effect, yet unknown to most people - generally speaking, I mean... you'll surely have studied it if you grow up in the countries around the Alps.
But the conclusion is useless and wrong:
> the international order that diplomats have painstakingly built
Diplomats did not build anything, apart for those cases where the peoples had already decided they didn't want to go to war with one another.
In every other situation, it was the military R&D that shaped the current world order. Putin, Jong-un, and Khamenei still ruling their countries, while Gaddafi and Saddam are no more, does not let any chance of being misinterpreted: is you have nuclear weapons, you can be an a**; if you don't have them, you can only choose between complying with civil manners or being obliterated.
The included descriptions of the battle’s aftermath are haunting.
As much as movies and documentaries usually reflect the horrors of combat itself, they rarely deal with the aftermath - not lights out in an adrenaline fueled moment, but lying for hours in a random patch of land no longer having a mouth, trying to cry for help knowing that no one will come until dying from exposure and maggots.
This was the reality for millions of young people; still is. Let’s hope we never see it firsthand.
These days there are drone recordings of wounded soldiers in Ukraine sometimes ending their lives using a hand grenade or their gun.
And several weeks ago whole Russia celebrated a video of knife fight between an Ukrainian soldier and a Russian soldier lost by the Ukrainian who at the end dies from his wounds.
The video of the russian drowning in a ditch.. haunting..
Such deformity and mutilation may result from an errant jump on a dirt bike. I intend to fly because it is there, it is the right of children to be free. Do a flip. And, yes, some will break a jaw or crush a testicle like a grape. We are not meek souls.
You point out agency yourself, which is indeed the differentiator. Combatants in wars are rarely on the battlefield by their own choice or design.
Everyone has a choice.
This is the kind of belief that people with the luxury of choice often assume applies to everyone else.
Semi-irrelevant comment, but I think it is required for the wider topic on battle/luxury/comfort zones/etc. I don't like to 'tell people what to do', especially on massive scale. I am of the opinion though that ALL (able) MEN must go basic military training (and why not.. women too).
I have ran one of them 'obstacle courses + distance + mud + pain + cold' some years back. I was by far NOT the stronger man there, and I saw some guys that were STRONG (hulk-smash dudes) and they couldn't crawl in the mud to save their lives, or they were skipping leg day, or.. or.. or.. I could see men that were 'normal/average' with military training and plowed through (perseverance to the max) while gym-boys an gym-girls were (rightfully afraid) of injuries as their bodies were 'too clean'.
So, in my 'checklist' of 'basic military training' (fully able/healthy people should/would/could..)
And then... many of the 'free spirit' people might get a new perspective in life. many of the city-dwellers might start seeing the benefits on being in/near nature> Know/practice rucking with 50kg for a 20km brisk walk (maintain speed 7-8 km/h) on uneven terrain, and no water (speak to your doctor first)
Ermm..... This is so far beyond basic militarytraining. Did you mean 5kg? And no water? There are special forces units that wouldn't be able to do this.
Full kit loadout is like 20 kilos, maybe 25-30 if you are the LMG/Nlaw carrier in your unit.
>Fast for 3-4 days (just to see what it feels like)(speak to your doctor first)
>Thirst for 1-2 days (just to see what it feels like)(speak to your doctor first)
No water for 2 days is MUCH worse than no food for 4.
> Water Yes. I can easily fast for 4-5 days once a month with no problem. Water, I've only done it a 3-4 times in my life, just to see how I react on it. I 'imagine' (not really) the scenarion of being in some country that is frequently earthquake-struck and being without access to water because of damaged infrastructure, etc. Again, the purpose is to know one's limits and _not_ to harm oneself.
How many people live in such zones where strong earthquake are frequent, and they have the real/possible risk of being trapped under some rubble for 1-2-3 days without access to food or water? Knowing your limits and not panicking helps.
>50kg What if you got a kid and you new to carry it for some distance? What if you have to kill an animal and bring it back to chop it and eat it? Again, the purpose is to do it a couple of times in your life to know what you can and cannot do. Not ruin your spine aimlessly.
2 days without water sounds completely idiotic. It could seriously affect your health.
The idea that everyone should do some basic military training is a good one, but the above seems focused on some over the top macho stuff.
Some basic first aid training however should probably even be taught in schools, and then repeated at least every decade.
I never wrote "do it every week for the fun of it". This is more like 'do it once in your life so you know what thirst feels like'. Knowing one's limits, _without_ putting your life at risk is good in life. I foresaw silly/scary/scared responses thus the 'speak to your doc'.
The comment of yours is likely in good spirit, but it mixes reasonable things with completely outlandish ones.
From experience, averaging 8 km/h for 2.5 h with 50 kg on the back is just not possible for most people, and likely not for you or me either. Doing it in uneven terrain sounds completely unrealistic no matter how fit you are.
Just suggest something realistic instead, like 20 kg and 5 km/h in easy terrain for healthy people, and and least it would be something possible to discuss.
Going 4 days without food is something you can absolutely try if you like, if you are healthy or otherwise secure. But going 2 days compeltely without water is stupid. Don't do it on purpose, ever, no matter how fit you think you are.
Your choice was to resist the kings men and die, or take the spear and maybe die.
Well, in the olden days, your choice was between being drafted, or being executed on the spot.
No, there were always ways. Folklore is full of stories of people avoiding being drafted. You can only draft someone who is there (and who is healthy).
> No, there were always ways. Folklore is full of stories of people avoiding being drafted. You can only draft someone who is there (and who is healthy).
And the stories people tell are about the exciting and unusual things. You're not going to have folklore about people being harshly punished for resisting the powers that be, because it the likely outcome and expected.
Actually, also yes. I was not just refering to fairytales. And unlike people seemed to assume about my comment, that it was easy, nor convenient. Just that draft dodging is as old as the concept of forecfully drafting.
Just shy of swimming across the English channel, very few excuses actually helped people escape impressment. If the press gang had you, the only way you could become less desirable would be to permanently disfigure yourself. Desertion could mean execution, the only safe path to freedom was by doing your service.
>Folklore is full of stories of people avoiding being drafted.
Mulan!
Also there was a fellow down the way one time, who caught a talking fish and the fish was like don't eat me, and he said, well I need to because the king needs me fit for military service, and the fish made him lame and go blind right then, so he let the fish go!
Just have a rich dad and pay a doctor to say you have bone spurs! easy!
You are a free spirit, and the very first to take a bullet in the head when someone (in time of war) will tell/order you "do _this_" and you will say "no". Better a corpse than a naysayer.
I don't know how many here are Iron Maiden fans/listeners, but for those who don't know their work, I propose a read at the lyrics of The Trooper [0]
[0]: https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/ironmaiden/thetrooper.html
War is hell.
War is worse than hell. In hell there are no innocent bystanders.
Hell technically is a bunch of people who didn't repent. Might be pretty much like normal life, people wise.
Saw Warfare tonight at the cinema. Brutal doesn’t really get very close. Definitely seems like hell.
Where could you possibly get that idea?
[dead]
Okay? What a weird flex. How does this relate to anything being discussed?
Based on the title, I thought this was an article about The Kalinga War, a war so bloody it moved the Emperor Ashoka to embrace non-violence and spread Buddhism throughout Asia.
Ashoka's transformation after the Kalinga War is actually the first thing that came to my mind too. Wild how two completely different battles, in totally different parts of the world and eras, led to similar moral reckonings.
> led to similar moral reckonings
TFA points out that International Law (an output of moral reckoning, if you will) is being dismantled by those in power whose morals are lose.
I wonder, just how long is the memory of civilizations to remember the lessons + morals of the past & how many generations does it take for a civilization to unlearn the wrong lessons.
Interesting story which I didn't know. However, the author perspective is a bit flawed:
But the world did get more peaceful. There was no World War III, and countries at least had to pay lip service to these universal values of peace and human rights.
The world didn't really get more peaceful. Some nations which used to wage wars between themselves did not anymore after World War II (excluding "incidents" like Belgrade bombing). This doesn't diminish the rest of the article at all, if anything calls for more rules and diplomacy preventing war.
Indeed there hasn't been WW3 yet but we had WW1 and 2 after Dunant did his thing.
global nuclear annihilation did more to prevent WW3 than a Convention that most militaries do their best to tiptoe around (or just ignore where they can)
Europe used to be at constant war with each other. Only France and the UK has some nukes. Now the EU is one of the most peaceful and prosperous places in the world. That is built on rules and trade.
that is incorrect. Europe has had armed conflict since the second world war. Maybe not well advertised, but they happened nonetheless. I share your perspective though, that rules and trade should be continued in order to be even better.
Note that I was careful to write the EU in the second part, considering that both the Balkans and Ukraine are in Europe.
What stuck with me most is how fragile that whole structure still is. We take for granted that countries will at least pretend to follow international norms, but that's largely because a handful of idealists laid the groundwork and others kept it alive.
And they did, because the imperialist, walled-in-gardens, zero-sum multipolar world ran its cause and produced the hyper-imperialist zero-sum lebensraum madness that was nazi-germany. The old world was a dead end- and with nukes everywhere soon, its a dead end for humanity.
We either solve our problems together or we all die together.
Yes, where would we be without the rules-based international order? Perhaps we would be watching videos every day of children blown apart by weapons of war.
Those videos are occurring because of a major power hypocritically flouting the rules-based international order. In spite of it, not because of it. We know the counterfactual of the rules-based order. It's nonstop European warfare in the 19th and the early 20th centuries.
The time between the Napoleon wars and WW1 (1815-1914) was very peaceful in Europe. Absolutely not nonstop warfare!
Maybe not nonstop warfare, but there was still a lot of violence going on. European powers were engaged in more-or-less nonstop warfare overseas in their empires, but maybe you're excusing that because those weren't in Europe.
In Europe itself, you have quite major conflicts in the Franco-Prussian War, Austro-Prussian War, and the Crimean War, plus more minor conflicts around the unification (more like conquest) of Italy, the independence of various Balkan states from the Ottoman Empire starting with Greece, Prussia's war against Denmark. And then you have all of the internal civil wars or strife people usually don't call outright wars, but in the 19th century, were often quite violent. The Revolutions of 1848, for example. Or France switching governments four times (July Monarchy, Second Republic, Second Empire, Third Republic) after the restored monarchy, all of them quite violent transitions.
Not to mention the fact that the stresses of urbanization and concomitant social changes provoked a lot of resistance from the lower classes, which was often quite violent. It's not until well into the 20th century that major strikes don't involve lots of bloodshed!
19th century Europe is only peaceful relative to the quite bloody conflicts that bookended the time period, which themselves rank among the bloodiest conflicts in all of human history.
You're listing pretty much all the wars of that era.
That adds up to about 5 years or less at war for almost all European countries. Probably the most peaceful century in the history of Europe.
During this time, European population also doubled, life expectancy increased by 10-15 years, and GDP/person more than doubled.
That's not true. Here's an abbreviated list from:
http://historyguy.com/major_wars_19th_century.htm
I'm sure there are others. It lists:
Together, that adds up to multiple decades of war.I think https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/deaths-in-wars-project-ma... puts this in perspective. The period from 1815 to 1915 was a much more peaceful period measured by deaths in war than 1915 to 2015, though 1975 forward seems like a return to that level (but world population is so much larger now that it's even better than it seems).
We're talking about different things.
Counting the years when there was a war anywhere is Europe, you'll end up with a large number.
I'm counting how often each country was at war. Several countries had no wars, and even the most war torn country didn't fight for more than 10-15 years.
That's really not true if you look at the European neighbors and European territories of Russia and the Ottoman Empire.
Also not true of Spain, which spent a lot of time in internal warfare (with occasional outside interventions.)
But, yes, excluding those, most of the countries in Europe were too busy fighting endless wars throughout their (or their allies’ or enemies’) colonial empires (whether to expand them, defend them, or put down or assist rebellions in them) to bother fighting other powers in Europe in that period.
I've listed most of the conflicts that occurred on the European continent (I've omitted several Russian wars, and there's a couple more civil wars I've also omitted). And some of that is because I'm doing wildcards rather than trying to, e.g., track down every single Balkan conflict in the 19th century.
If you think I've included most of the conflicts that involved European powers on one side... no. Not even close. This is an era when Europeans are essentially in a permanent state of war with everybody they consider inferior to themselves. And, albeit at the tale end of this era, it's still the era when private companies assert the right to go to war against other people. Don't forget that non-European wars can still leave indelible imprints on the European psyche--the Boer War and the Russo-Japanese War both had massive implications for their home countries, and it's ultimately the Italian invasion of Libya that kicks off World War I.
> Probably the most peaceful century in the history of Europe.
World War II is not yet 100 years gone, but there's not really going to be any question that that the 100 years after WWII will be the most peaceful 100 years in recorded history. For comparison's sake, you're probably looking at like roughly a Napoleonic Wars' amount of death in conflict on the European continent between the Napoleonic Wars and WWI. And as I've mentioned, you're really lucking out that there's just under 100 years between two of the bloodiest conflicts of European history, so you get to pick a 100 year time period without the largest conflicts. If the time period were instead 110 years, now you'd have to confront the bloodbath not only of WWI but also the Russian Civil War.
Also I don't know exactly when they started having police and gendarmerie (riot police) but probably not until 20th century, so the usual response to an angry mob was to bring the army. And army doesn't know much but shoot. Hence, lots of bloody massacres.
> The time between the Napoleon wars and WW1 (1815-1914) was very peaceful in Europe.
If, when you talk about "Europe", you exclude Spain and also Greece, the Balkans, and much of Eastern Europe, sure, the powers in "Europe" did most off their fighting in colonial wars in the period rather than at home (they did a quite a lot of fighting in colonial wars, though.)
> (1815-1914) was very peaceful in Europe. Absolutely not nonstop warfare!
No, absolutely not. This is factually incorrect.
Crimean War 1853-1856? Austro-Prussian War 1866? Italian Wars for Independence throghout the 19th century?
Franco Prussian War 1871
Danish vs Austri-Hungary and Prussia 1864.
Belgian Independence 1831
Civil Wars in SPain 9Carlist War) and Portugal 1830s
Revolutions of 1848
Europe was busy conquering their colonial empire.
Yep, and UN had been expressing "serious concerns" every time. Although I haven't heard even those for a long time.
I can sympathize the with the cynicism, because I also see the bombing of Ukraine and Gaza in the daily news, which nobody seems to be capable or willing to stop.
Unlike Solferino, there are children dying on a daily basis, which breaks my heart. Yet it remains true that what Dunant has established is a better state than the world would have been in if he had done nothing.
Solferino was a big and cruel battle by the standards of its time, but not by today's standards - in stats: 150,000 men against 150,000 men, 24 km battle front fighting through one night, resulting in 6,000 dead, 2,000 wounded and 12,000 missing [1] (but note Solferino today has less than 2,600 inhabitants today). So a joke if compared to WWII stats. But the point here is a single individual made a difference, and beyond their lifetime, and that should give us some hope.
[1] https://www.kvwuerzburg.brk.de/das-brk/selbstverstaendnis/di...
>but note Solferino today has less than 2,600 inhabitants today
Solferino (like other places nearby where battles have been fought or where armies marched) has always been a very small town with "vast" extensions of cultivable area or pastures around. That (uninterrupted plain ground) explains a battle front so extended.
"You who is afraid of wars
Tell me where does peace come from"
Ait Menguellet, Kabyle poet and singer.
Logically, that is just stupid. And it glorifies human suffering as something necessary for peace.
It’s easy to imagine a world where violence between nations was almost forgotten and conflicts were always solved by negotiations and following previous agreements. See what the EU accomplished: can anyone imagine, say, Germany go to war with France today, even considering the history of those countries.
Yes, I’m afraid of wars! I don’t want my children dying alone in the cold mud. I don’t want my grandchildren crying of fear in a shelter. I don’t want our prosperity used to build tanks and airplanes instead of building schools and hospitals and fight climate change.
What's the meaning here? It sounds very close to a Mao Zedong saying.
That means we should embrace life as it is, we should accept its good and bad sides because there is no good without bad, and no bad without good.
It's like in the story written by Khalil Gibran where a pastor passed by an injured Satan who asked for his help and to not let him die.
In the beginning, the pastor refused because Satan is the enemy of humankind, he's behind everything bad that happens to us. By the end, the pastor helped the wounded Satan because without him, the pastor's job and social status can not even exist.
Without the Satan/War/Bad there is no Pastor/Peace/Good. And vice versa.
This is a perspective I’ve seen before but I just don’t buy it. People who have suffered a lot generally don’t become the happiest - often, they end living with PTSD. While people who grow up in nurturing, healthy environments enjoy happiness.
In the context of an article about the birth of the Red Cross, what exactly does accepting the bad side of life mean? Are we to end the ICRC? Accept the Geneva Convention but make no new conventions about behaviour in war? Should we accept and return to the flies and the maggots that are so vividly described in the article as part of the aftermath of battle?
"autoritarian regimes"
"Rules based international order"
This guy has the mind so brainwashed by western media talking points he cannot even understand the propaganda he cheerfully chews on.
Poor innocent 'rules based' order :(. I am sure the "rules based international order" prevented the USA from invading Iraq based on lies, right? Oh wait, the rules didnt work that time. But at least they are preventing Israel of massacring thousands of babies and toddlers in Gaza! Wait, also no. But at least they stopped the USA from deploying a mass surveillance system to spy on every citizen of the world, like Snowden revealed. Uhm, also no. The "rules based international order" is for suckers.
Please read the article again, all of it. Maybe this time you will be able to understand that it actually addresses your points (which are just propaganda of a different source, with certainly no better aims).
Yaya, I read how he "addressed" my points. "It isnt perfect but is the best we got" yadayada. "Rules based international order" never existed. It's just a buzzword promoted by NATO apologists to defend their imperialist expoliation. It never existed. There are no "international rules" for the powerful, the Hague was created to persecute poor third-world warlords or at best the enemies of NATO. It was not created to persecute Bush, Obama or Netanyahu. The WTO was created to sustain american capitalism and benefit american interests, when China started outgrowing american influence then suddenly the WTO is the enemy. There are no rules at all that stopped NATO to bomb Yugoslavia, Lybia, Syria, Yemen, Iraq or Afghanistan.
Its just a buzzword, a talking point parroted by american apologists. Never existed in the past and it certainly doesnt exist now. "Rules based international order" in practice means: NATO gets to do whatever the shit they want, as they have always done. That's it. That's the whole rules in actual practice.
And regarding the supposed reduction in warfare after WWII:
You can thank the existence of the Soviet Union, which united much of the western imperialist powers (Europe, America and its vessel states like Japan, Australia or South Korea) against the first real menace against capitalism in history. That's pretty much the reason why inter-european warfare stopped after WWII. And they focused on warfare against the third world (Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, South America, Central America, etc.) They function as an imperialist block with the same interests. It has little to do with the supposed existence of "rules" or an imaginary "order".
The "rules based international order" isn't perfect but better than what went before it. The percentage of the population killed in warfare has gone from like 15% in the ancient world, 2 or 3% in Napoleon/Hitler times and maybe 0.1% in the modern world (numbers approx).
Is not that "it isnt perfect". It never existed. The Hague was created to persecute backwater third world shithole warlords or at best the enemies of NATO. Not to persecute Bush, Obama or Netanyahu.
You can thank the reduction in warfare killing to the existence of the Soviet Union, which united much of the western imperialist powers (Europe, America and its vessel states like Japan, Australia or South Korea) against the first real menace against capitalism in history. That's pretty much the reason why inter-european warfare stopped after WWII. They function as an imperialist block with the same interests. It has little to do with the supposed existence of "rules" or an imaginary "order".
Personally I put quite a lot in the long term reduction in killing down to tech improving with things like the printing press, the internet and such like.
Citation very much needed. If anything, I'm afraid that the internet will eventually spark wars, with all the polarisation it encourages.
"International law is a funny thing. Within a country, lines of authority are clear. The government makes laws, it has agencies that enforce them, and the penalties for violating the laws are clear. But, in our modern system of sovereign states, no authority sits above the nation. Each country is sovereign. International laws are, therefore, more fragile, because they require the consent of everybody involved to keep them going."
This was the purpose of the imperium, not necessarily in the narrow sense of empire we often have in mind, but as a kind of order (e.g. the HRE).
In our case, the United States as hegemon has played the role of the global imperium over much of the world over the last few decades, and over a good chunk of the world since WWII. The reigning doctrine of the American empire has been liberalism (which explains why many if not most Americans/Westerners treat liberalism as a "neutral" position; it is the water we swim in). It explains why the US has intervened in numerous distant conflicts, engaged in countless "nation building" campaigns aimed at spreading liberal democracy around the world, and successfully influenced peoples worldwide through its film and media. These were all intended to preserve and enlarge the liberal imperium.
Now that liberalism has devoured and corroded the Protestant mother that held it together, and escaped the containment it created - in large part through the infusion of liberalism into Protestant doctrine - we are witnessing the fullness of the tensions inherent in liberalism playing out in the human psyche and society and unraveling liberalism and the liberal order. The shape of the emerging postliberal order is uncertain. The noisiest contenders seem to be an increasingly overt tyrannical liberalism and fascism, though a less conspicuous movement aiming to return to pre-liberal classical traditions is also in play.
This is a very skewed reading of actual history.
The USA's efforts in South America (for example) were not aimed at spreading liberal democracy - the USA routinely intervened after democratic elections appointed leaders they didn't like, and installed military juntas or dictators that they did like. There was an overt tendency in US foreign policy to install right-wing leaders where possible, partly as a defence against Cold War Communism.
The wars that the USA engaged in since WW2 have not been about promoting liberalism, or removing totalitarian regimes. They have been explicitly about protecting US economic interests abroad, and generally feeding the military-industrial base as Eisenhower predicted.
another one is the CIA-backed overthrow of democratically elected Mossadegh in Iran
> The reigning doctrine of the American empire has been liberalism (which explains why many if not most Americans/Westerners treat liberalism as a "neutral" position; it is the water we swim in).
Most definitely not. The reigning doctrine has been enforcing American wishes, wants and airs, both public and private, by force. Liberalism is a poor guise, mainly to brainwash the locals into accepting the status quo on both sides of the aisle.
At nations level anarchy is the rule of law.
That is one theory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy_(international_relatio...
It's ironic that in my city there's a bridge called Solferino which was blown up by nazis retreating from pisa in 1944 (it was eventually built again)
The conclusion of the article is flawed.
The article could have been a nice recollection of a battle with a wonderful, long-lasting effect, yet unknown to most people - generally speaking, I mean... you'll surely have studied it if you grow up in the countries around the Alps.
But the conclusion is useless and wrong:
> the international order that diplomats have painstakingly built
Diplomats did not build anything, apart for those cases where the peoples had already decided they didn't want to go to war with one another.
In every other situation, it was the military R&D that shaped the current world order. Putin, Jong-un, and Khamenei still ruling their countries, while Gaddafi and Saddam are no more, does not let any chance of being misinterpreted: is you have nuclear weapons, you can be an a**; if you don't have them, you can only choose between complying with civil manners or being obliterated.
Khamenei doesn't have nukes as far as we know, although they've tried a bit.
And I don't think the relative peace in Europe since WW2 has been down to military R&D. (I'm excluding Russia attacking Ukraine from that.)