WAR N PEACE PHASE ONE

WAR

War is an organized and often prolonged conflict that is carried out by states and/or non-state actors. It is characterised by extreme violence, social disruption, human suffering, and economic destruction. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political communities, and therefore is defined as a form of political violence or intervention. The set of techniques used by a group to carry out war is known as warfare. An absence of war is usually called peace.

In 2003, Nobel Laureate Richard E. Smalley identified war as the sixth (of ten) biggest problem facing the society of mankind for the next fifty years. In the 1832 treatise On War, Prussian military general and theoretician Carl von Clausewitz defined war as follows: "War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will."

While some scholars see warfare as an inescapable and integral aspect of human culture, others argue that it is only inevitable under certain socio-cultural or ecological circumstances. Some scholars argue that the practice of war is not linked to any single type of political organization or society. Rather, as discussed by John Keegan in his History of Warfare, war is a universal phenomenon whose form and scope is defined by the society that wages it. Another argument suggests that since there are human societies in which warfare does not exist, humans may not be naturally disposed for warfare, which emerges under particular circumstances. The ever changing technologies and potentials of war extend along a historical continuum. At the one end lies the endemic warfare of the Paleolithic with its stones and clubs, and the naturally limited loss of life associated with the use of such weapons. Found at the other end of this continuum is nuclear warfare, along with the recently developed possible outcome of its use, namely the potential risk of the complete extinction of the human species.

The largest still ongoing conflict, in terms of cumulative number of deaths since start, is the Second Congo War, with 3–5 million deaths since 1998, nearly invisible in non-African media. As of 2013, the largest ongoing conflict in terms of deaths is the Mexican Drug War and the Syrian civil war.

List of wars before 1000

• Prehistoric warfare
• Mythological wars
  • Battles between Devas (gods) and Asuras (demons)
  • Battle of Zhuolu about 2500 BC
  • War in Ramayana
  • War in Mahabharata, based on warfare in the Kuru kingdom of ancient India, ca. 1200-900 BC
  • Trojan War, based on events of ca. 1200 BC
• ca. 2670 BC - Battle of Mag Itha in Ireland
• ca. 2500-2450 BC - Border wars between Umma and Lagash
• ca. 2492 BC - Battle between Haik and Nimrod
• ca. 2330 BC - conquest of Sumer by Lugalzagesi
• 2300 BC - conquests of Sargon of Akkad
• Early 2nd millennium B.C. - Battle of Siddim
• ca. 1720 BC - Kassite attacks on Babylon
• 1650-1600 BC - conquests of Hattusili I and Mursili I
• 1600 BC - Hyksos conquest of Egypt
• 1600 BC - Xia-Shang War in China
• ca. 1400 BC - Battle of the Ten Kings
• 1430-1350 BC - Kaska invasions of Hatti
• 1274 BC - Battle of Kadesh
• 1100 BC - Sea Peoples harrying the Mediterranean; Dorian invasion
• 1046 BC - Shang-Zhou War in China.

REST TO BE CONTINUED...........................................