The Paradoxes of War teaches us to understand that war is not only a normal part of human existence, but is arguably one of the most important factors in making us who we are. Through this course, I hope that you will come to appreciate that war is both a natural expression of common human emotions and interactions and a constitutive part of how we cohere as groups. That is, war is paradoxically an expression of our basest animal nature and the exemplar of our most vaunted and valued civilized virtues. You will learn some basic military history and sociology in this course as a lens for the more important purpose of seeing the broader social themes and issues related to war. I want you to both learn about war, but more importantly, use it as way of understanding your everyday social world. So, for example, the discussion of war and gender will serve to start you thinking about how expectations of masculinity are created and our discussion of nationalism will make clear how easy “us-them” dichotomies can be established and (ab)used. I will suggest some readings for you to complement the class and assign some activities through which you will be able to apply the theoretical insights from the course to your observations of everyday life. At the end of the course, you will start to see war everywhere and come to appreciate how much it defines our life. All the features of this course are available for free. It does not offer a certificate upon completion.
Strategic Bombing
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From the course by Princeton University
Paradoxes of War
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From the lesson
The War of Societies
Wars can also be about societal survival and we look at three examples: conquest, genocide, and strategic bombing.
Meet the Instructors
Miguel A. CentenoMusgrave Professor of Sociology and Professor of Sociology and International Affairs
Sociology
Now we can move to the third example of wars of societies.
Strategic bombing.
Now Giulio Douhet, in the command of the air, described
the wars of the future as decided by air power alone.
This serves as sort of the intellectual
origin of the concept of strategic bombing.
Massive fleets of bombers were destroying enemy cities, before even the more
traditional forces of army and navy could even be mobilized, the [UNKNOWN] action.
To the frustration and the death of World War I.
This was seen in a sense as a more decisive
and if you will, a cleaner form of war.
Total destruction it advocated the targeting
of the productive capacity of the enemy.
And, very explicitly, the terrorizing of it's population.
So it was about taking the battle from the frustrating
trenches and take it directly to the societies of the enemy.
As explained by Stanley Baldwin in 1932, there is no power on
earth that can protect the man on the street from being bombed.
The bomber will always get through.
The central dynamics of Dubay's thesis, define
warfare, in a sense, in the 20th century.
This idea, that you have to take the
war from the battlefield, into the enemy society.
Strategic bombing, however, brought about a new dilemma.
Since defense was impossible, only offense would work.
Any war would involve the mutual destruction of both sides.
The logic of this drove both sides to this assured mutual destruction.
Again, the words of Baldwin.
You have to kill more women and children, more
quickly than the enemy, if you want to save yourselves.
So the only way to save ourselves is to eliminate that other.
Is to exterminate that other society.
This dynamic takes us far from the notion of war
as having any kind of certainly any kind of material purpose.
The instrument itself has become the causes belly.
Even if nothing is to be gained, I must destroy you.
Because I fear you may destroy me.
The means of war in a sense have become the very ends.
In the origins of strategic bombing, we may find many of the characteristics
that would dominate this kind of strategy for a century.
First it was often used against those
whose essential human kinship was in doubt.
The Italians, the French, the Spanish and the British used
terra-bombing against colonials subjects, along with the Japanese in China.
So it was being used against those who's shared humanity was in
question, this new efficiency of killing could be apply to this population.
The motivation was not necessary to destroy infrastructure or
arm forces, but to destroy the will of the society.
Whether that society is Iraq in the 1920s or China in the 1930s.
It was decided, it was a strategy about destroying the will to resist.
Not about destroying the means of those, of those resistance.
It was also closely tied to the organizational
ambitions of the Air Force, our new military arm.
So there's an organization intra-organizational element here
that you have part of the bureaucracy
that wants to push this new form of killing as it's the most efficient.
It is seen as an improvement in the
efficiency of killing, it spares one's own army.
What's interesting here and perhaps one of the
greatest paradoxes presented by war, it's just this impeccably
rational and instrumental logic that seeks to reduce
damage to one's own, that seeks to get around.
The problem of the trenches in World
War I then produces the potential for cataclysmic madness.
That rationality takes itself back forward, towards madness.
We see the strategic bombing of the 1940s.
The London Blitz is perhaps the most memorialized and
best known example of civilian bombing in WWII.
But the birth of strategic bombing was actually carried out
by the US and by Britain against Japan and Germany.
London, the London Blitz is real, what happened in London
was horrific but the real bombing war wasn't over London.
It was over the cities of Japan and Germany.
The original aim of strategic bombing.
Was to target industry and transport.
Again, the means of war.
But these bombing campaigns were frustrated by inaccuracy and danger.
And so the target had to shift to include
not only military, industrial targets but the societies as well.
That is they attempt to concentrate the bombing.
On those material resources, on the means of war, was frustrated, yet
having this kind of weapon, it had to be turned into something else.
In Europe, the purpose of this promiscuous bombing.
Was the simple destruction of Germany's cities.
Nearly 3 million tons of bombs were dropped in
Europe by the Royal Air Force and the U.S. Air
Force resulting in the destruction of probably half a
million deaths and the destruction of most of urban Germany.
So this logic was used by the Allies in order to impose.
In a sense, this new terror, this new threat on the enemy, population.
The most infamous raids occurred in Hamburg
in 1943, the fire bombing of Hamburg.
And Dresden in 1945, memorialized of course, by Slaughterhouse Five.
And in the case of Dresden.
Half of the city was destroyed and roughly 100,000s were killed.
The campaign against Japan was arguably even worse.
With more explicit targeting of civilians, totaling about 500,000.
In March, 1945, for example, a fire storm
destroyed 60 square miles of Tokyo and by midsummer.
Practically every single large city in Japan was ruined.
Now it is difficult to determine the worth of
strategic bombing as a means of achieving political ends.
During the war, many endorsed General Curtis Lemays belief that
if you kill enough of them, they will stop fighting.
There was a belief the strategic bombing and the subsequent
extermination of citizens ultimately would save lives by shortening the war.
Unfortunately, today the consensus is the strategic bombing of
Germany and Japan was not critical in wining the war.
It contributed in some secondary ways, but
it was not the solution that everyone thought.
Despite this, despite the fact that it didn't seem to
work, strategic bombing evolved into its next stage of Nuclear Armageddon.
Now, the strategic and ethical line
between the bombings of Hamburg, or Dresden
of Tokyo and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is blurry at best.
How do we distinguish between these two forms of violence.
Despite the fact that they were aware of the destructive power of the weapon.
The first nuclear bomb was largely seen
as an extension of scale of strategic bombing.
And it took some time for the
notion of a nuclear difference to be widely understood.
That is after the explosion many recognized that a line had been crossed.
But there was still sort of confusion about
how the atomic bomb was different from others.
Now in terms of human suffering, the two atomic bombings were on
par with the worst incidents of strategic bombing in 1943 and 1945.
And then if you want to compare it to the eastern fronts 30 million or more
deaths in less than four years the destruction
in Japan in August of 1945 was not exceptional.
What was different here from the kind of strategic bombing that had occurred,
was the logistical support needed to annihilate
a city, was the amount of effort.
Now, granted, the production of an atomic bomb required billions of dollars and a
massive scientific infrastructure, but the delivery of
the death blow required only a single bomber.
In the case of Japan,.
There was not even any escorts needed, given that the Japanese
air force and it's ability to protect, the, Japan had essentially disappeared.
What you have here is new ratio of resources per casualty.
That is, that a, a fewer direct resources
are being used to annihilate even more people.
It's a much more dramatic transformation
than even that of the gunpowder revolution,
which again, improved, if you will, the capacity
of one group of humans to kill another.
The atomic bombs in a sense, took that to the very next level.
The new question after 1945 was how to use this bomb?
Initially the mystery and novelty of the weapon
gave the U.S. an inestimable advantage and the promise
of even more damage may have played an
important role in the timing of the Japanese surrender.
Initially it also served as a deterrent for any Soviet consideration of
utilizing their massive and regular forces in the European theater.
That is, that the threat of the atomic bomb
could protect and could make up for the fact
that the Soviet armies were much more powerful in
the European continent than those of the other allies.
The existence and the monopoly of the weapon, provided the
US with the strategic safety switch allowing for rapid disbarment.
This is important, that the presence of the
atomic bomb, in a sense allow the United
States to get a piece dividend very, very
quickly which was critical for the post war economy.
After 1949 and the Soviet success in producing
their own bomb, this strategic logic was altered.
Even with limited numbers of weapons, each side could threaten
the destruction of whole armies in significant parts of Europe.
Its potential as destroyer of worlds, however.
Remained uncertain due to the limitations of delivery.
So everyone was aware of this, the
capacity for destruction but this notion that
it would lead to the complete destruction of the world had not quite developed.
In fact some, like Douglas MacArthur thought of the bomb
that could be treated almost as a powerful battlefield weapon.
The aura of its power, in a sense, was still shrouded, and it could still be
treated as just another advancement in the kind of weapons that had been used in war.
Two key developments transformed nuclear weapons into
a very different sort animal.
First, the exponential increase in destructive power.
The the term used The Net Damage Efficiency.
We see this with the development of the hydrogen bomb.
By both the United States and the Soviet Union in the early 1950s.
Little Boy, the bomb used in Hiroshima, had four times
the destructive power of the 48 hour bombing of Dresden.
So, again, we see this increase, if you will, in the efficiency of killing.
But in the mid-1950s, the U.S. was
testing bombs with 1,000 times this destructive power.
It's an exponential leap.
Nuclear weaponry could now threaten the
very viability of an opponent's entire society.
That, that net damage efficiency had grown so
high as to make this weapon unique in history.
A second element was the evolution
of missile delivery systems beginning in 1957.
This meant that the time of attack would be reduced to hours, if not minutes.
With the possibility of preventing enormous damage.
Rendered practically null.
To paraphrase Stanley Baldwin, the missile would always get through.
Defense was impossible.
So by 1960, the US and the USSR could hold each other hostage in a sense.
Winning a nuclear war was impossible by
any conventional meaning of the term.
The problem of winnability of nuclear war.
How could you win a nuclear war?
It would produce something of a quandary.
And the response to this had several stages with the key distinction
being between strategies that had to do with tactical versus strategic use.
Now, using nuclear weapons in a battle setting
as a form of ultra artillery was considered.
And this, the contemplation of this fluctuated through out the cold war.
The use more associated with nuclear weapons was to defeat an enemy.
By the absolute annihilation of their society.
That is, there were thoughts about using these nuclear weapons, in their
elements of them, in tactical, and again an expansion of the gunpowder revolution.
But the real use, the more common use was
this idea of the capability of destroying, another society.
This created a sensitive and morbid dynamic where
no protagonist could assume a monopoly on use.
In these instances, in the Cold War, enemies destruction
was accompanied by one own and the terrance was all.
In the case of the Polaris Missile, Senators Anderson
in the American senate said, you may
say with confidence that nuclear propelled ballistic missile submarine
marks the closest approach, now foreseeable to a ultimate deterrent.
The whole point was not to destroy the enemy, but to threaten
the enemy with such destruction that the enemy dare not move.
But again this was a dilemma and great efforts were made to escape it.
Civil defense measures, antimissile systems for example.
But this never seamed to be able to guarantee the survivability of a society.
And the emphasis on atomic weapons and
nuclear weapons was fueled by inter-service competition.
Each service had to have control over some kind of nuclear weapons.
Institutional inertia. Once we had them what were we going to do with them?
Domestic political coalitions, that this was a cheaper form of war.
That the development of these technologies could benefit certain congressional
districts and this dilemma in a sense kept going.
And it produced a mad equilibrium that by 1980,
we had this system between the Soviet Union and the United
States and associated allies, there
was the capacity to produce, 60,000 Hiroshimas.
Imagine that destruction of Hiroshima, multiply it 60,000 times.
Which would led literally to, and again this
became increasingly well known in the 1970s and 1980s
with the advances on nuclear winter, that it
would lead to the obliteration of the human race.
How do we understand this?
How do we understand how a rational
process, rational institutions could produce such a thing?
And I think the lessons from strategic bombing
can also apply to genocide and to conquests.
There were four key elements involved in this evolution of
strategic bombing, to this mutually
assured destruction, to this planetary destruction.
First, is there authorization of each side.
Second, the precision of the strategies, the apparent technical
ability to destroy only what wanted one to destroy.
Third, the industrial capacity and wealth of these societies.
And then, the mutual agreement and
understanding required to maintain this system.
And, again, these are characteristics that we're going to
be, that we have observed throughout the process of war.
First the authorization.
The US experienced several waves of red scares, throughout the 20th century.
That produced images of communists, not dissimilar to
the more racialized construction against the Japanese in World War Two.
This strategic technocratic distance that characterized
nuclear panic allowed intelligent men and rational
men to talk about biblical levels of
destruction with this passion and with precision.
The industrial capability and wealth of nuclear powers allowed
them to maintain a particular kind of monopoly over the rest of the world.
All these combined, in effect that industrial capacity
was something the United States was extremely proud of.
Dwight McDonald was quoted as saying the atomic bombs could
be seen as an expression of the American standard of living.
Finally, as in many wars, there was a mutual agreement
between the two sides about the appropriate use of nuclear weapons.
That this kind of madness, this, irrationality could actually,
it depended on a rational construction of relationships between two societies.
So again we see all the consequences that we have seen in this progress of war.
How you create an enemy?
How, the weapons and the means that you use,
reflect, and it helped to create your own society?
And how war in this sense, requires
an organization, not just in each warring society,
but in the sense, an agreement between the
two societies about what is going to happen.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
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