Why do we still believe a war is only happening if it’s formally declared? That seems like an outdated notion from when war was symmetrical. No nation attacking first has any good reason to declare that they’re attacking. Shouldn’t 2 nations that are undermining each other, posturing, testing defenses, fighting in every way you can except on a battlefield be at least treated like your at war?
With full scale nuclear war mostly preventing a world war 2 style war, Shouldn’t we consider acts like cyber attacks, propaganda attacks through social media designed to agitate and harm another countries civilian population, trade wars, influencing elections and such as war? I mean that’s what a country trying to defeat you would do. Why wouldn’t you be at war if they’re at war with you already?
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>Shouldn’t we consider acts like cyber attacks, propaganda attacks through social media designed to agitate and harm another countries civilian population, trade wars, influencing elections and such as war?
No. While it might change over time, war has certain connotations. If some country commits an act of war against you, armed retaliation is generally justified. Do you think it would be justified for a country to invade another because they influenced (very loose term here) an election? Say they ran some ads against a candidate that was running on being hostile to them? Putting tariffs of some sort on a given product from that country?
Because war means everybody goes and shoots at each other and trade stops, and neither of those things are good. There are ways of getting the trade thing without the shooting thing, and they’re pretty common.
Real politik. A country could accidently fly a kite over your airspace during a boy scouts activity and it will be declared an act of war if it suits an agenda.
By the same token you can ship thousands of soliders, pilots, billions of weapons and just call it a “squabble” if that description benefits you more.
Weigh all the options and consequences, and especially in even the most token of democracy make sure you’re courting voters.
The whole world is a stage, and the truth is generally more of an inconvenient plot point swiftly covered up and forgotten about when setting narratives or acting out characters.
Formal declarations of war are required due to legal and strategic reasons.
Allied nations (esp. NATO members) may have agreements obligating them to commit troops and materials if an ally is openly at war.
It also allows for more legislative and military leeway. More resources and manpower than normal are made available to command.
And eventual diplomacy is possible if conflict is openly declared and recognized. It makes reparations and war crimes easier to prosecute. The flip side of course, is that without an open declaration, it leaves some wiggle room for future negotiations due to plausible deniability.
Whether or not a conflict is declared war is an international law matter. It’s kind of like the legal differences between murder and manslaughter. In both instances the victim is dead, but the consequences are different for the perpetrator.
We don’t follow outdated notions of war.
Nothing about the basic aspects of war has changed in 50 thousand years.
What you are witnessing is the amount of ignorance the common people have regarding the topic, which makes it appear their beliefs are outdated (when they are merely inadequate & lacking – as they have always been since time began).
Noble boys receive a war-focused education (such as Prince William the future King of England) because military service and knighthood are core components of their societal roles and expected duties. Noble families were and are currently expected to provide soldiers for the country. Kings and Chieftains run wars because the common folks don’t know how to. (meaning those born into rulership and military Generals who gained their position through merit in warskills & warfields) Even the villager, William Wallace, (Braveheart) was formally educated. It is the educated men who start wars and lead wars. Common people have limited notions of war, whereas educated men are historically trained in leadership, and sometimes in warfare itself -even to this day.
It is very untrue that war would always be formally declared in the past. You can’t get your history from Hollywood – the movie might be based on a true story, but they mess with the facts to make it more extreme, crazy, and dramatic. It’s fun to watch but you have no idea where they made the story line more obscene and dramatic just to get attention from viewers.
War was often sudden, surprise attacks. If they were coming from a very long distance, you might have time before an attack to get word that a army was marching on your location, but even in this case, it doesn’t mean there was a formal declaration of any sort.
Nations, or Kingdoms (as the human population was much smaller back in history) did not always declare an attack. And today not all Nations declare an attack either. There are many wars in the world right now, and some of them kicked off as surprise attacks. Some nations, such as the USA try to adhere to moral rules which they culturally believe in as a society (which other societies do not agree with), and will for a variety of reasons, like interpersonal considerations, domestic needs, and international considerations bring a formal declaration that clarifies the circumstances leading to the conflict, defines the legal status of hostile actions, and explains the requirements for future surrender or the requirements to have the war end. Other countries will never do this, and it is a free -for – all of horror you could never imagine.
Yes, 2 nations that are undermining each other, posturing, testing defenses, fighting in every way you can except on a battlefield should be treated like your at war, and they are….just not in the way you are referring to.
It’s politically necessary to be able to publicly ignore such things when convenient. And if there is relation, do it secretly, at least with no public acknowledgment.
If every little test or provocation were war, it would cause problems with trade and political deals. There’d be a shooting war all the time.
The US exchanges a ton with China and the relationship is valuable to both sides. But both are also sabotaging, testing, stealing, and plotting against the other in all kinds of ways. That’s how power politics work.
The majority of politically relevant countries have intelligence agencies that interfere and harm other nations.
For example, the US was revealed to spy on numerous European officials (via Denmark). Is the US at war with these states? No, because everybody does it. It didn’t end up being that big a deal.
If what you said was true, then all major countries would be at war with each other. The fact of the matter is that the level of belligerence between countries is a spectrum, rather than a binary yes or no.
You’ve completely debased the notion of what a war is. If all war is simply tension and competition between countries, fuck, I will happily and fruitfully live under war conditions, and I’m doing very nicely thanks
Countries avoid declaring war because not doing it leaves easy access to diplomatic “off ramps” to deescalate the conflict. There is no real benefit to officially declaring it.
During the Cold War, both the US and USSR realized that a Tit for Tat game theory response was mathematically the best option to avoid war.
Basically, when one country is aggressive to another in some way, the other country is required to respond with a proportional response to act as a deterant. You don’t want to allow them to push you around, but you also don’t want to escalate to an actual war.
This method also makes it “turned based” and slows down the conflict, which again increases the opportunity for deescalation. It also allows nations to show off their strength and capabilities, which arguably helps both sides not want to start a war. Who wants to start a war that you might not win?
the list of formally declared wars in recent times is awfully short.
Declaration of war was a thing for a while, but many have found we can well do without.
Mainly because the aim of the war is to win the war.
If you do not declare it, they cannot oficially surrender .
Imagine if Ukraine wanted to srrender but Russia is like, what are you talking about? We did not declare war, we cannot negotate your surrender since we are not atacking…
This would be stupid, and a declaration that someone else is responsable? if the real author is someone the president or king is then just a pupet
(And because the claim is false, nobody would believes a war is happening “only if it is declared”)
No.
War is a specific term within policies. You don’t want to bring policies for war in to place in a lot of the circumstances you list.
A trade war for example, if we consider that to be a war, that means we can respond to another countries trade war with military force, after all, that’s what one does when one is at war, but in the case of trade wars that would be a huge escalation that is not necessarily beneficial to anyone. It would also open the possibility of war taxes, conscription and other emergency measures reserved for war time.
I do agree, the criteria for when we consider ourselves to be at war may need updating, as you rightly point out formal declarations of war are uncommon these days, I don’t believe there has been a formal declaration between Russia and Ukraine, but I don’t think any reasonable person would see that ad anything other than a war.
>Why do we still believe a war is only happening if it’s formally declared?
We don’t.
Read the Geneva Conventions on the topic of war declaration and de facto war.
>Shouldn’t 2 nations that are undermining each other, posturing, testing defenses, fighting in every way you can except on a battlefield be at least treated like your at war?
No because “posturing” and “testing defenses” are nothing whatsoever like actual war.
>Shouldn’t we consider acts like cyber attacks, propaganda attacks through social media designed to agitate and harm another countries civilian population, trade wars, influencing elections and such as war?
No, we should consider cyberattacks to be espionage, propaganda to be propaganda, trade wars to be commercial disputes, and influencing elections to be espionage.
We already have terms and concepts for these things. They are not like actual war in many highly significant ways.
Your question is like asking why, if someone calls you an insult or steals your lunch, we don’t consider it the equivalent of them literally shooting a gun at you.
To call that a false equivalence is a bit of an understatement.
In the modern era, declaration of war is less about how we treat other nations and more about how we treat our own citizens.
Most of what you’ve described (undermining, posturing, testing defenses, cyber-attacks) can be done by a modern nation-state (and their vast infrastructures and economies) as regular operations. While they are conflict, and can have consequences, they’re not generally understood to be “war.” Allies compete in all sorts of ways (and even spy on each other all sorts of ways).
But if you’re going to pull special powers, declare martial law, execute a draft, confiscate resources to aid the war effort, constrain freedom of travel, or start evicting peaceful non-citizens, and you’re a democracy? There’d better damn well be a casus belli declared and an assent from the legislature that war is necessary.
Otherwise, the executive can do those things any old time and it’s just sparkling dictatorship.
Your exact point is not clear. We don’t follow “outdated notions of war”.
>Why do we still believe a war is only happening if it’s formally declared?
Most people who are rational and paying attention don’t believe this. “War” can mean a lot (hot war, cold war, trade war, etc.) The truth is ALL countries have varying level of conflict ranging from trade competition all the way up to full scale hot war. Each country pushes the envelope of what is acceptable without creating escalations of hostility – whether that’s dropping bombs, spying, or simply applying tariffs.
Back in the 80s there was bullshit argument around “the US could have won Vietnam if we had declared war.” I’m sorry, but we were absolutely at full scale war with Vietnam, and I assure you the US threw everything it had at that little country before retreating in defeat. We didn’t declare war on Iraq or Afghanistan. Those absolutely were full scale wars.
Barring an all out, life and death struggle for humanity, I doubt you’ll see a formal declaration of war by any major country. Heck – if Ukraine didn’t declare war on Russia… then the concept is dead.
We’re mechanical. Also most don’t realize that we’re being preyed upon for our nationalism and that blinds us to the fact that a couple old guys(leaders) are disagreeing about something, and they’re using the nineteen year olds to settle it for them.
At this point we are told to kill our brothers because they are dangerous. The only dangerous people are the ones who would tell us to kill our brothers to maintain their personal power.
What the f—k do you think has been happening in America the last 10 years?
DEI and gender identity aren’t a way to divide us?
The difference, and the mistake, is that these countries that are influencing our politics made, is that they picked the unarmed side, because they could manipulate them.
Thankfully it hasn’t worked in America.
Outdated notions of war?
Have you even read Art of War by Sun Tzu or On War by von Clauswitz?
I’ve been saying for a while now that we’ve been at war with China since the 90s, if not before. All warfare is economic in nature.
As an over generalization, before WW1 we didn’t have the idea of modern governments and many nations were in constant true wars, but they were usually between 2 nations. Dub uno and dub dub dos happened, most countries understood they had to at leastt have the semblance of a direct democracy. The romantic ideals of war were dead in the trenches, coupled with the fact that world wide treaties meant large scale conflicts because some dude somewhere discovers bigger army diplomacy. Citizens truly understand war and don’t like it. In turn governments who are now elected made it so war must be declared universally or no war at all. So state leaders decided to….. not deal with any of that. Because it was easier, and because modern tactics and technology made a frontal assault a bad bad bad plan. Now we send in “peacekeeping” forces to “train” locals. And that….. hasn’t worked ever.
There are active cyber attacks. The North Koreans stealing Crypto, the Iranians, and Russians are running active 5th column attacks using bots and social media. The Chinese have been accused of stealing American IP, which looking at their 5th Gen fighter/ bombers looks true.
There’s currently a proxy war between Europe and Russia in Ukraine. Russia is active in central Africa and the US continues to prop up regimes in Africa. Proxy conflicts due to Russia and the US tensions.
Countries are also conflicting in trade through sanctions and tariffs.
China continues to steal international ocean in south East Asia by claiming small islands as soverign land, building them up with sand, then claiming the surrounding ocean.
No one wants to start another world war. If you look at the alliance system, it is very similar in that if one country formally declared war, then entire alliances would be at war with each other.
What’s the line from fallout? “War never changes.”
War has always been a multifaceted plague. The undeclared war is no more true now than it ever was.
War is a story we tell each other to commit, excuse, or extinguish atrocities. The name. The designation. The accusations of who may or may not have started which fractions of what. These are eternal.
You can read shakespeare. You can read caesar. You can read the tales from ancient greece. You will find everything there that you will find in today’s newspapers.
If anything, barring the list of the current five or six genocides that everybody takes turns ignoring the world in general is less at War today per person per region then it has ever been before.
Not as measured by poles and newspaper articles but measured by the probability that you personally will die in war or as a result of the exigencies of War.
Every century, every decade, every year, and every month the whole of humanity is moving away from War by fractions.
But the hot spots have gotten hotter and uglier and easier to find. They stand out more because they are happening in tighter and more cruel circles and we have better ways to look on and collect our tongues while we make half-hearted demands that our leaders stop the atrocities well our leaders collect their tongues even louder in the mute helplessness that has been so well purchased in those leaders by The bad actors who insist on never growing up and never letting go of the rites of cruelty.
We haven’t declared war since WWII and yet we have fought several.
What we don’t do, is consider non lethal actions to be worth killing over….
So if someone cyber attacks you, you retaliate in kind – similar to how nobody went to war over cold war era spying….
Proportionality is actually part of the customary international law governing armed combat…
War is a discrete social/legal act with defined objectives. What you’re referring to are generalized conflicts between global powers. Enemies and even allies spy on each other, test each others defenses, and probe for weaknesses. There’s a difference between nations posturing and using underhanded/aggressive tactics to secure advantage and an actual war.
I don’t think anyone alive today in north america has been through declared war. they’d learn the difference real damn fast if it ever were. luxuries would shut down. jobs would move. everything would focus on the war. the world would turn upside down.
our leaders are so used to all of these luxuries, of course, I’m not sure they ever will declare war again. they’ll get their emergency powers other ways…
because law is an instrument of power and States’ domestic legitimacy would be negatively affected by open rebudiation of law as an institution
because the geneva conventions are framed in such a way that war crimes can only be committed between States that are at war with each other, which incentivizes States to interpret the definition of war as narrowly as possible