For the reader who is short of time:

There are some suggestions that many current and past massive social dislocations have been caused primarily by Goliaths, individuals who amassed vast power over many people in many places; and that wars have always been the solutions to their reigns, and that war is the only solution now.

I suggest that war has become Our State of Being, and is no longer (if ever) a solution.

The deeper read:

A recent book by Luke Kemp, Golilath’s Curse: the History and Future of Society’s Collapse, suggests that much of the world’s turmoils over the centuries have been the causes and results of the rise of “Goliaths”, particular individuals who amassed vast power over many people in many places.  These have been political and /or financial Goiiaths.  They spawn wars, conquer peoples and lands, and subjugate people while amassing ever more power and wealth.  It is these few people, he maintains, and not necessarily just circumstances, who cause much suffering in the world. The solution to their presence has been war.  He covers many empires in many lands over the centuries, but the most recent example which my readers can readily understand, was that WWII broke the misery of the depression, and cleared the way to develop liberal democracies, more nearly social and economic justice for the masses, and reduce the power of the rich (although by the 1980s they made a comeback).

Linda Colley (The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen:  Warfare, Constitutions, and the Making of the Modern World) likewise posits that constitutions have been written (whether or not adopted by  governments) by people during times of subjugation or active rebellion, who want to define their national purpose and government structure for themselves.  These have been either academic exercises or proposals, or documents meant to be the basis for a new order.  But she is quite clear that these come about in reaction to being a conquered people.

Jill Lepore (We, the People: a History of the U.S. Constitution) recounts the stories of the many constitutions written by the first states while the Revolutionary War was on-going.

Ingrid Robyns Limitarianism:  the Case Against Extreme Wealth, would agree.

(A different view is offered by Alvin Finkel (Humans:  the 300,000 Year Struggle for Equaity), who posits that oral histories of the centuries demonstrate that people have always been struggling for equality, but that Goliaths and oppressive organization have been impediments to the natural course of history, rather than a primary causes of change.)

All these examples, I think, are based on the classic understanding of war:  combat  between identifiable, if not uniformed and structured groups, between nations or tribes or political factions, within political boundaries or outside or across them. Such wars are conducted by people (and trained animals, e.g., horses, dogs, dolphins, pigeons) mostly in person, but aided by weapons which extend the range such as arrows, catapulted objects, bullets, canon, aircraft, tanks, and ships and submarines, and missiles.  They were and are usually in support of some cause either fictitious or real, with the purpose of destroying the enemy, or conquering territory, or capturing slaves, or warding off invaders.

But today’s wars include not only these, but additionally, more internal wars to secede (“civil wars” used to describe these), or to assert one ideology or religion over another. 

It can be thought that wars have long been ever present, if one thinks about colonial conquests and maintenance of empires against resistance; the underground battles of the Cold War; and the operations of intelligence agencies which go beyond mere spying.

But we are now, in addition to those actions, in a time of perpetual cyber wars which have been on-going for at least twenty years (I won’t bother citing sources – read the New York Times or Guardian for a few months, and you will see these stories arise and disappear). 

These are not always within the awareness of any general public, but they have effects on infrastructure, bank accounts and other financial transactions.  Even though they include invasion and overpowering of local citizens’ cell phones and computers, this is often not obvious (see particularly Ron Diebert Chasing Shadows: Cyber Espionage, Subversion, and the Global Fight for Democracy, and Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence, James R. Clapper {you may think these are old books, but they show how long this has been going on}). There are also acts of intimidation, extortion, and assassination, which do get people’s attention.

The near future will also see water surface-going reconnaissance and weaponized drones, as well as subsurface ones; airborne and space-born reconnaissance and weaponized drones; fractional orbit bombardment systems (“It’s almost in orbit. Oops! It’s coming back down – at us!”); multi-orbital bombardment systems (“round and round she goes, where she’ll stop, nobody knows”); focused energy weapons; and satellites for reconnaissance and weapons delivery, as well as for attacking other satellites.  Armed forces will compare the efficacy and costs of drone weapons against such classic systems as bombers, fighters, destroyers, aircraft carriers, and the vulnerability of the classic weapons against the vulnerability of drones.  The Russian invasion of Ukraine has spawned varieties of drone warfare which target not only army lines and installations, roads, bridges, rail lines, and airfields, but energy systems deep within enemy homelands, along with industry and command and control facilities. 

Many reconnaissance satellites and communication systems are controlled by private industry on contract to the combatants, participating for profit more than for a cause (probably always true for much of the arms industry). While it has always been true that aircraft, submarines, ships, boats, artillery, and ammunition have been built by civilian corporations, we now have major components of warfare actively controlled by today’s Goliaths, who sometimes interfere with military plans (think of Musk’s shutting off his satellites to keep Ukraine from hitting Russian ships in one area).

Some defense systems against drones now use not only those satellites, but artificial intelligence to avoid being hampered by electronic counter-measures and hacking. Likewise, “wingman” drones accompanying a primary manned fighter or bomber, will have human-directed functions augmented by artificial intelligence for mission accomplishment with or without the human fighter craft.¹

I myself conclude that war is no longer “diplomacy by other means,” in von Clausewitz’s oft-cited aphorism. 
It is Our State of Being. 

It has been brought into being not exclusively (nor, perhaps even primarily) by Goliaths, but by the simple fact of technological possibilities and capabilities, brought to us by innovative people who must always try the next new thing.  These people may be motivated primarily by their own personal drives in that direction, or by financial greed, or both  (See also We know what we’re doing, right? Part I – Upon reconsidering… and We know what we’re doing, right? Part II – Upon reconsidering….).

The enthusiastic uses of these capabilities are driven perhaps as much by their own momentum and decisions by massive government and commercial bureaucracies, as by Goliaths.  Some things are done simply because they are possible.

So, if ever wars were the solutions to Goliaths, they are no more. They are the state of being for Goliaths as well as for the rest of us.

What to do? 

We are all probably familiar with the maxim “Never underestimate the ability of a small group of dedicated people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”(Margaret Mead and probably others).  In my own experience, this certainly has not been validated. 

Malcolm Gladwell  (The Revenge of the Tipping Point) maintains that there is a tipping point, i.e., a proportion of the population (roughly one-third), which can carry the day simply by virtue of their numbers, and not necessarily because they had good arguments and the right information.  I think that this alone isn’t necessarily effective.

But I do see success sometimes in this strategy: start with the people most likely to entertain change, and then move from and with them to the next proximate group perhaps open to change (“Well, if Betty thinks this is a good idea, I should give it some thought”), and so on.  It can be slow, but less confrontational than other approaches, and it offers the possibility of genuine consensus rather than, for example, majority voting. A buy-in is better than a win/lose proposition.

Hopefully, there are better strategies, and more of them. I hope that some books I have ordered will improve my thinking on this, and I will publish more on this after reading them.

In the meantime, I would be interested to know how this blog’s readers react to the concept of “war as Our State of Being.” 

¹ Almost any newspaper frequently has articles about Ukrainian drones and computer systems, and comparisons between Chinese and American procurement processes, but also: Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Future of War by Raj M. Shah; The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal, by William J. Burns; David Sanger’s The Perfect Weapon:  How the Cyber Arms Race Set  the World Afire; New Cold Wars:  China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion, and America’s Struggle to Defend the West; and Confront and Conceal:  Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power;  the blog “The D Brief;” the Autonomous Weapons Newsletter (https://autonomous.news); and The Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto The Citizen Lab – University of Toronto.