 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Conventional warfare" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(September 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Conventional warfare is a form ofwarfare conducted by usingconventional weapons andbattlefield tactics between two or morestates in open confrontation. The forces on each side are well-defined and fight by using weapons that target primarily the opponent's military. It is normally fought by using conventional weapons, notchemical,biological,radiological, ornuclear weapons.[1][2]
The general purpose of conventional warfare is to weaken or destroy the opponent's military, which negates its ability to engage in conventional warfare. In forcingcapitulation, however, one or both sides may eventually resort tounconventional warfare tactics.[1][2]
The state was first advocated byPlato but found more acceptance in the consolidation of power under theRoman Catholic Church. European monarchs then gained power as the Catholic Church was stripped oftemporal power and was replaced by thedivine right of kings. In 1648, the powers ofEurope signed theTreaty of Westphalia, which ended the religious violence for purely political governance and outlook, signifying the birth of the modern state.[3][4]
Within the statist paradigm, only the state and its appointed representatives may beararms and enter into war. In fact, war then became understood only as a conflict between sovereign states.Monarchs strengthened that idea and gave it the force oflaw. Anynoble had been allowed to start a war, but European monarchs had to consolidate military power in response to theNapoleonic Wars.[5]
Prussia was one of the countries that tried to amass military power.Carl von Clausewitz, one of Prussia's officers, wroteOn War, a work rooted solely in the world of the state. All other forms of intrastate conflict, such asrebellion, are not accounted for because in theoretical terms, he could not account for warfare before the state. However, near the end of his life, he grew increasingly aware of the importance of non-state military actors, as is revealed in his conceptions of "the people in arms", which he noted arose from the same social and political sources as traditional interstate warfare.[6]
Practices such asraiding orblood feuds were then labeled criminal activities and stripped oflegitimacy. That war paradigm reflected the view of most of the modernized world in the early 21st century, as is verified by examination of the conventional armies of the time: large, high-maintenance, and technologically advanced armies designed to compete against similarly designed forces.[7][8]
Clausewitz also forwarded the issue ofcasus belli. Wars had been fought for social, religious, or even cultural reasons, and Clausewitz taught that war is merely "a continuation of politics by other means." It is a rational calculation in which states fight for their interests (whether they are economic, security-related, or otherwise) once normal discourse has broken down.[9]
Most modern wars have been conducted using conventional means. Confirmed use ofbiological warfare by a nation state has not occurred since 1945, andchemical warfare has been used only a few times (the latest known confrontation in which it was utilized being theSyrian Civil War).Nuclear warfare has only occurred once: theAmericanbombing of theJapanese cities ofHiroshima andNagasaki in August 1945.[10][11][12]
The state and Clausewitzian principles peaked in theWorld Wars, during the 20th century, but they also laid the groundwork for their dilapidation fromnuclear proliferation. During theCold War, thesuperpowers sought to avoid open conflict between their respective forces, as both sides recognized that such a clash could very easily escalate and quickly involve nuclear weapons. Instead, the superpowers fought each other through their involvement inproxy wars, military buildups, and diplomatic standoffs. Thus, no twonuclear powers have yet fought a conventional wardirectly except for two brief skirmishes between China and Soviet Union in the 1969Sino-Soviet conflict and betweenIndia andPakistan in the 1999Kargil War.[13][14]
However, conventional wars have been fought since 1945 between countries without nuclear weapons, such as theIran–Iraq War andEritrean–Ethiopian War, or between a nuclear state and a weaker non-nuclear state, like theGulf War andRusso-Ukrainian War.[15][16][17]
.jpg)