The next theme is the relationship between politics and war. Strategic history is all
about the threat or use of organized violence carried on by political units against each
other for political motives (Bull, 1977: 1 8 4). ‘[F]or political motives’ has been added to
Bull’s definition. War is political behaviour using the agency of force. In strategic history,
politics are sovereign. In the 1790s, as today, strategic history moved to the beat of
political passions and calculations. The entire sad story told and analysed here is, at root,
a political one. War has no meaning beyond the political, at least it should not, though it
certainly has multidimensional consequences. It ought not to be waged for its own sake,
though at times that reversal of the proper order of things can appear to occur. It should
not be conducted for entertainment, regarded as a spectator sport (McInnes, 2002), or
resorted to for the psychological satisfaction of mentally disturbed leaders, to cite but a
few possible pathologies. Some societies, the American being a prominent case, draw
a sharp distinction between politics and war. They have a tradition of civil–military
relations which insists upon a rigorously apolitical professional military. Such societies
are apt to suffer severely from the malady that one could call the strategy deficit. After
all, strategy is the bridge between military power and political purpose. Since war should
only be waged for political ends, who ensures that the organized violence is directed to
the ends that are politically intended? And just how do the distinctive professions of
soldier and politician–policy-maker conduct the ‘unequal dialogue’ that is so essential if
strategy is to be devised, pursued and, when necessary, revised (Cohen, 2002)? It is one
thing to assert, accurately, that war is a political instrument; it can be quite another to
wage war in such a manner that it privileges one’s political objectives. Strategic history
is chock full of examples of wars waged in ways that were politically, if not militarily,
self-destructive. For an extreme example, today, fortunately the historical jury is still out
on the questions of whether nuclear weapons are really weapons, and whether nuclear
strategy is a contradiction in terms. Can nuclear war be regarded as an instrument of
policy?
The third theme is the relationship, and often the tension, between war and warfare.
All too often the two are simply conflated by careless or ignorant commentators. War is
a legal concept, a social institution, and is a compound idea that embraces the total
relationship between belligerents. In contrast, warfare refers to the actual conduct of war
in its military dimension. Warfare bears the characteristic, even defining, stamp of
violence. States and other political communities wage warfare in order to prosecute their
wars. However, the two concepts are vitally different, as the past 200 years reveal with
startling clarity. Historical illustration provides the clearest explanation of the distinction.
6 War, peace and international relations
Box 1.1Themes in strategic history
- Continuity and discontinuity in strategic history.
- The relationship between politics and war.
- The relationship between war and warfare.
- The relationship between politicians and soldiers.
- The dependence of war on society.
- The relations between war and peace, and between peace and war.