How Has War Changed Over Time

Widely discussed, war is one of the world’s most consistent troubles. Naturally, because it has existed since what seems like the beginning of time, it has changed in some ways, while also remaining quite the same. Over time nations have resorted to war because it was the only way they knew how to resolve conflict, but today’s society seems to be one of peace making and peace maintenance, ushered in and upheld by the action of the United Nations. Alternatively, there is an ignorance that is ever present in times of war, and this lack of knowledge has possibly existed from the beginning of time and always will, because war narratives always contain some level of untruth. Here I will discuss these changes as they relate to War and Peace over

Prior to this conflict was often resolved by way of war, the U.N. helped to change all of this. In his book Winning the War on War, Joshua Goldstein discusses in depth the years following the United Nations creation. “The reduction in war over several decades suggests that the international community is doing something right in trying to tame war.” (Goldstein 7), he goes on to speak about how we are winning the “war on war”. The United Nations, since its creation has been doing its job and keeping war at a minimum. This is a time where nations are coming together to create treaties and pacts to minimalize the violence. It feels as though the United Nations is slowly, but surely teaching the world non-violence, and it is slowly being implemented. Mark Goulding’s The Evolution of United Nations Peacekeeping expands upon the United Nations’ efforts saying that “peacekeeping is a technique which has been developed, mainly by the United Nations, to help control and resolve armed conflicts” (Goulding 115). The United Nations is doing the work of world, controlling outbreaks of violence and keeping peace as best they can and thusly changing the attitude toward war. Alternatively, Page Fortna says that she is left “quite skeptical” of

In war time, there is often so much that the public doesn’t know, but they maybe easily tricked into thinking that they know. Discourse, Reality, and the Culture of Combat in a novel by John A. Lynn where he analyzes the realities of war and the misconceptions of those realities. Lynn says that discourse “signifies the complex of assumptions, perceptions, expectations, and values regarding conflict, violence, and armed struggle.” (Lynn 475), meaning that discourse encompasses all the ideas that are true as well as the ones that are not. It is very easy for a government to only allow its citizens to know what they want them to know, and that is often lost on them. Kenneth Boulding says in National Images and International Systems that “we must recognize that people whose decisions determine the policies and actions of nations do not respond to the “objective” facts of the situation, whatever that may mean, but to their “image” of the situation” (Boulding 46). What Boulding is saying here is that ultimately be people up top are creating the narrative they want their habitants to believe or the “image” they want them to see as the truth. Countries would have far more difficulty maintaining war support if they showed the raw truth of what was going on behind enemy lines. This discrepancy is what Lynn was referring to, there is the “Discourse on War” and the Reality of War” happening