So, the seminar series at the beginning of calendar year 2004, the first term of the programme's existence, was designed to address the big question of what is war, the better able to address the principal, but necessary second-order, issues. After a series of talks by subject specialists both in areas where the programme lacked research expertise as well as areas in which it possessed it, we agreed on fiver criteria. First, war involves the use of force, although there there can be a state of war in which active hostilities are suspended, and some would argue that the threat of the use of war (as in the Cold War - constitutes war. Fighting is what defines war, a point made by Clausewitz, and echoed in this book by Barkawi and Brighton. Second, war rests on contention. If one party attacks another, the other must respond for war to occur, or else what will follow will be murder, massacre, or occupation. The reaction means that possibly the most important feature of war is reciprocity: part of the problem much operational thought in the 1990's was that it had forgotten that the enemy has a vote and that his response might be 'asymmetrical' or even unpredictable. Third, war assumes a degree of intensity and duration to the fighting: scale matters, and skirmishes and border clashes are not necessarily war. Fourth, those who fight do not do so in a private capacity, and fifth, and consequently, war is fought for some aim beyond fighting itself.
Both the last two criteria tend normative to be associated with states and there policies, but they do not have to be defined in these ways, and wars have been pursued -- for example, by Germany and Japan in 1945 -- beyond the point at which they seem able to deliver worthwhile results.
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