In what way the nature of war described?

Since the early history, people have fought against other people.Any struggle in which 2 large groups try to destroy or conquer each other is a war. War can be identified as a contest between nations or states for extention of land,for wealth,for natural resources,for power. Wars have always caused great suffering and hardship.

There are many kinds of war : local,world,religion,gaurilla wars,wars between families,nations.

To understand why wars continue to go on when nearly everyone wants to live in peace, we must look into the nature of war. Sometimes war results from a disagreement between 2 nations,sometimes from a desire for conquest.

In ancient times people often fought for land so that they could get enough to eat. This type of war is no longer common. People of ancient empires fought for wealth. A ruler who conquered new lands didn’t drive the people out of the lands. He wanted to collect taxes from the people. Most countries fear the possibility of attack and maintain forces to defend themselves. A nation may decide to choose its own time and strike the 1t blow. A nation can conquer a weaker neighbor and increase its own resources.

The causes of war may be selfish, base, but the reasons are usually lofty and noble. In modern times, a nation usually does not make war for a single simple reason. In every country there are groups of people with different aims and different hopes. People in any country are likely to see their own interests more clearly than those of people in another country. People’s own desires seem so reasonable and so important that the desires of people in another country look selfish and unreasonable. Many people with different purposes may unite to make war, but they often start quarelling among themselves when the war is over. When the victory is won, general terms become specific and don’t satisfy all the winners.

Changes has happened in the ways of waging warfare. Guns took the place of spears, swords, arrows as the chief weapons of war. Modern warfare moved away from the days when soldiers with rifles were the most important part of an army. War has been mechanized.

During the 1 WW machine guns and other new arms fired more accurately and more rapidly than earlier weapons. Steamships and railways could speed the movement of troops and supplies. By the end of the 1800’s technology enabled countries to fight longer wars and bear greater losses than ever before.

During the 2 WW armies used machine guns, tanks, aeroplanes, submarines, aerial bombing. The nuclear age opened with the development of the atomic bomb during WW2. The German introduced a new method of warfare – blitzkrieg(lightening war). The blitzkrieg stressed speed and surprise.

By 1952 both USA and USSR had hydrogen bombs that were more powerful than atomic bombs. Intercontinental ballistic missiles had been developed by 1957. USA and USSR also had intermediate range ballistic missiles.

Origins of the Cold War

The Cold War is the term applied to the period of confrontation and tension between the United States and the Soviet Union from the end of the 2d WW to the end of the 1980s. The origins of the Cold war lie in the 1917 Russian Bolshevic Revolution. The Cold war was rooted in the mutual mistrust, misreading of intentions, non-cooperation, opposing interests of the Soviet and the Western blocs. The Cold War tentions intensified because the Soviet required a buffer zone of eastern European states which would offer some guarantee against future invasion from the West. As the West refused the Soviets a role in the post war reconstruction of Japan, Italy, so the Soviets excluded the West from Eastern Europe. Us foreign policy believed Soviet intentions were to extension territory.In response US adopted policy to prevent the Soviet spreading communism. In 1949 NATO was created. The Soviet response to NATO was the creation of the Warsaw pact in 1955. The Warsaw pact was designed to maintain the communist regimes of eastern Europe against the threat of internal opposition. Until 1959 Cuba’s leaders had supported the USA. After the revolution that brought Fidel Casttro to power, Cuba adopted communism and received help from USSR. The Soviet sent weapons to Cuba. American military also began practice moves in the seas around Cuba and built troops in nearby Florida. There were nuclear missiles in Cuba and Castro feared there would be an invasion to capture these. People feared that a nuclear war would start. Khruschov sent letters to Kennady suggesting that he would remove the missiles from Cuba if the Americans didn’t invade and remove US missiles from Turkey. Kennady ignored and said that Americans invade if the missiles remained. The Soviets accepted. The USA and the USSR realized how close they had come to nuclear war and worked to improve relations.

Factors contributed ti the ending of the Cold War included: The Soviet economic stagnation, the impact of 10year military intervention in Afghanistan, the leadership of Michail Gorbachev. The end was finally signaled in 1989, when Gorbachev accept the rejection of communist rule. The fall of Berlin wall in 1989 signalled the end of artificially constructed east Germany state, and by 1991 the Soviet Union had itself collapsed.