![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() A primitive kind of warfare may exist among chimpanzees. ![]() The biological roots of warfare may be quite deep. It has frequently involved, for instance, refusing to make distinctions between combatants and noncombatants, and glorying in rape, pillage, torture, and even cannibalism. War “reaches into the most secret places of the human heart, places where self dissolves rational purpose, where pride reigns, where emotion is paramount, where instinct is king.”Īs a result, as Keegan documents, warfare is both ancient and also, quite often, appalling brutal. John Keegan, the preeminent military historian of our age, writes that warfare between human communities-group on group aggression involving killing or maiming opponents-“is almost as old as man himself.” For Keegan, warfare is not usually a rational continuation of policy by other means, as Clausewitz taught, but instead has more often been driven by culture, emotion, and atavistic aggression. A review of David Armitage, Civil Wars: A History in Ideas (Alfred A. ![]()
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