Story Archives of 'war'

Turn on the evening news and it’s hard to avoid the horror of war. From the deserts of Iraq, to the mountain ranges of Pakistan and Afghanistan, to the jungles of eastern Congo, we see a world consumed by violent conflict. These images feed the assumption that large scale combat is on the rise.

Yet research indicates that warfare has declined since historic and prehistoric times. Anthropologist Lawrence Keeley found that as many as twenty five percent of deaths in hunter-gatherer and tribal societies were caused by war, compared to an estimated three percent of modern humans killed in the wars and genocides of the twentieth century.

Even if humans are proportionately less brutal than our ancient ancestors, most people regard warlike aggression is a part of human nature. Some scholars are questioning that presumption. John Horgan is director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology. He wrote about new research on war and human nature for New Scientist magazine. He joins us to lay out his argument.

New Scientist: How humans could end war

(Photo by Jayel Aheram via Flickr/Creative Commons)

War and environmental degradation share a long history.

The Romans blighted the fields of Carthage with salt back in 146 BC. The flattened villages of Flanders...Agent Orange stripping the jungles of Vietnam...the burning oil wells in Iraq. These are just a few illustrations of the long term environmental ruin left after battle. There’s a term for it, in fact: ecocide, literally meaning the killing of the environment.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, 12 years of conflict have cost more than five million human lives. One million people have been displaced, many living in over-crowded camps with little food and little hope. More tragic still, the enduring toll on the environment will likely affect citizens for generations to come. Washington Post reporter Delphine Schrank spent a year in the DRC as an International Reporting Project fellow. She witnessed the bloodshed and the ecocide and joined us on the line from New York with more.

The Atlantic: As Go The Hippos...

(Photo by *Simian* via Flickr/Creative Commons)

War is hell - except in science fiction movies, where war is usually a thrilling clash of laser fire between a hero and a bunch of robot fighters.

That sci-fi scenario is on its way to a battlefield far, far away... but directed from a command post near you. Many of the unmanned drones now fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are operated from Nevada. In one year, one of those Skywarrior drones found and killed more than two thousand insurgents. In 2003, the U.S. military had zero robots on the ground. Now it has 12,000. South Korea and Israel are already deploying armed robot border guards. We're in the midst of a revolution in how wars are conducted. And P.W. Singer, director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution, is our guide to this fast-changing world. He's written a new book called Wired For War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century.

In the book we meet oddball roboticists, military pilots, human rights activists and four-star generals, and we're asked to consider the profound strategic, moral and ethical changes these new machines could make in warfare.

Below: video of an Army "crusher" robot. Click to see more robot videos at P.W. Singer's website.

(Photo by Army.mil via Flickr/CC)

A crisis continues in the middle east; Israel’s assault on Hamas-controlled Gaza is now in its eleventh day. Rockets fired by Hamas militants are still falling on Israeli towns, while Israeli ground troops move closer to population centers in the dense Palestinian territory. Hamas and Jerusalem show little interest in international calls for a truce, despite intense diplomatic efforts by Arab and European leaders. More than 550 Palestinians have been killed in the violence. Israel has lost four civilians.

It’s difficult for those of us who’ve never experienced war first-hand to imagine the scene in Gaza right now. The reports we get are mostly filtered through mainstream news sources, but the folks at Global Voices Online keep track of what local and regional bloggers are writing about the conflict as it unfolds. Deborah Dilly joins us on Word of mouth – as she often does – to give us a sense of what people are saying across the world’s informal news network on the blogosphere. Deborah is a writer and editor for Global Voices.

Click here to check out the site’s extensive Gaza coverage.