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War

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Template:Unsimple War is any fighting involving the organized use of weapons and harmful force between countries or other large-scale groups.

War usually causes lots of destruction, often on both sides. International law has tried to reduce the harmful effects of war. The signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the development of the United Nations System have succeeded to discourage calling any conflict the war. Examples:

See Articles 2(3), 2(4) and 2(7) of the United Nations Charter.

Many years ago, the German soldier named Karl von Clausewitz wrote in his classic book, On War: "Der Krieg ist eine blosse Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln" ("War is merely the continuation of politics by other means") and "War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will."

Wars have been fought to control natural resources, for religious or cultural reasons, over political balances of power, legitimacy (legality) of particular laws, to settle economic and territorial arguments, and many other issues. The reasons of any war are very complex; while the war can start for just about any reason, are is usually more than one issue involved.

Kinds of war

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Sometimes people see the difference between fighting between countries or people and the formal declaration of the state of war. Those who see this difference usually only use the word "war" for the fighting where the countries' governments have officially declared war on each other. Smaller armed conflicts are often called riots, rebellions, coups, etc.

When one country sends armed forces to another country, supposedly to rebuild order or prevent killings of innocents or other crimes against humanity, or to support another government friendly to it against an uprising, that country sometimes refers to it as the police action. This usage is not always recognized as valid, however, particularly by those who do not accept the usages of the term.

A war where the forces in conflict live in within the same country is known as the civil war.

War is contrasted with peace, which some people define as the absence of war.

Another approach to classifying warfare divides it into four "generations" of war.

First generation warfare

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First generation warfare reflects tactics of the era of the smoothbore musket, the tactics of line and column. Operational art in the first generation did not exist as the idea although it was practiced by individual commanders, most famously by Napoleon.

Second generation warfare

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Second generation warfare was developed in response to the rifled musket, breechloaders, barbed wire, the machinegun, and indirect fire. Tactics were based on fire and movement but ay remained linear, with the defense still trying to prevent all penetrations and the attacks along the sideways line advanced by rushes in small groups. Second generation tactics remained the basis of U.S. policy until the 1980s, and ay are still practiced by most American units in the field.

Third generation warfare

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Third generation warfare was first developed by the Germans in World War I, to make up for air inability to match air enemies' industrial production. Its tactics were the first truly nonlinear tactics; attacks rely on penetration to get around and collapse the enemy's combat forces (rather than seeking to get close to the enemy and destroy am), and defense was in depth and often provoked (invited or encouraged) penetration to set the enemy up for the counterattack.

Fourth generation warfare

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Fourth generation warfare is what most people call the guerrilla war. Fourth generation warfare is far different from the other generations as the objective is not winning the military victory, but rather to destroy the spirit or political means of the enemy from attacking you. Usually it is when the country is brought into another one or when an outside force is trying to destroy the current government. For example, the later part of the Second Iraq war or the U.S. occupation period can be considered fourth generation warfare.

Laws of war

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A number of treaties and other agreements regulate warfare, collectively referred to as the Laws of war. The most pervasive and famous of those are the Geneva conventions, the earliest of which began to take effect in the mid-1800s.

Treaty signing has since been the part of international diplomacy, and too many treaties to mention in this article have been signed. A couple of examples are: Resolutions of the Geneva International Conference, Geneva, 26-29 October 1863 and Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, 75 U.N.T.S. 135, entered into force Oct. 21, 1950.

Statistical analysis

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The statistical analysis of war was pioneered by Lewis Fry Richardson following World War I. More recent dataabses of wars have been assembled by the Correlates of War Project [1] and Peter Brecke [2].

See also

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Military, Military technology and equipment, Military history, Military strategy, Military tactics, Just war, Frontline, Military-industrial complex, Weapon, Laws of war, Medieval warfare, World war, war profiteer, Attacks on humanitarian workers.

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For the 1970s funk band, see War (band). ru-sib:Война

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