WAR

What is war?
War is an organized, armed, and, often, a prolonged conflict that is carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. 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.

Nationalism: deep devotion to ones nation. - This force unifies people, yet
it can cause animosity, competition towards others, and feeling superiority. Rivalries were enormous between the five Great Power Great Britain, France, Italy, Russia, Germany, Austria, Hungry.

Imperialism - The Scramble for Africa since Imperialism: policy which a

strong country seeks to dominate other countries politically, economically, and socially. - The industrial revolution made it necessary to obtain more and more natural resources, so the European countries looked to other places to get their resources. - The 1800s spawned huge reveries Germany and France nearly went to war in 1905 over Morocco for example.

Militarism: Glorifying war and keeping a military ready for war - A big arms
race developed in the 1890s European armies doubled between 1890 to 1914 - By 1914, conscription (the draft) was normal in the Western world (Great Britain and the US were exceptions). This made for huge armies. Alliances Alliances: military agreements to support your ally in war (a defensive pact is a bit different it only works if you/an ally are attacked first) - Lead by the Iron Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, Germany was united in 1871 after the Franco- Prussia war (France lost to Prussia). - Germany saw France as a danger, and desperately wanted to isolate them. As a result, they allied with Austria-Hungry and later Italy. This was the Triple Alliance. By 1887, a peace treaty with Russia was completed, so this gave Germany a lot of protection.

War against Afghanistan:

The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a nine-year war during the Cold War fought by the Soviet Army and the Marxist-Leninist government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan against the Afghan Mujahedeen guerrilla movement and foreign "ArabAfghan" volunteers. The mujahedeen received wide military and financial support from Pakistan, also receiving direct and indirect support by the United States and China. The Afghan government fought with the intervention of the Soviet Union as its primary ally. The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, as the armed forces of the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Afghan United Front (Northern Alliance) launched Operation Enduring Freedom. The primary driver of the invasion was the September 11 attacks on the United States, with the stated goal of dismantling the alQaeda terrorist organization and ending its use of Afghanistan as a base. The United States also said that it would remove the Taliban regime from power and create a viable democratic state. More than a decade into the war, NATO forces continue to battle a widespread Taliban insurgency, and the war has expanded into the tribal area of neighboring Pakistan. The War in Afghanistan is also the United States' longest running war. The preludes to the war were the assassination of the Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud on September 9, 2001, and the September 11 attacks in the United States, in which nearly 3,000 civilians were killed in New York City, Arlington, Virginia, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The United States identified members of alQaeda, an organization based in, operating out of, and allied with the Taliban's Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as the perpetrators of the attacks. In the first phase of Operation Enduring Freedom, ground forces of the Afghan United Front working with teams of U.S. and British Special Forces and with U.S. air support, ousted the Taliban regime from power in Kabul and most of Afghanistan in a matter of weeks. Most of the senior Taliban leadership fled to neighboring Pakistan, some being flown out in the Kunduz airlift. The democratic Islamic Republic of Afghanistan was established and an interim government under Hamid Karzai was created which was also democratically elected by the Afghan people in the 2004 general elections. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was established by the U.N. Security Council at the end of December 2001 to secure Kabul and the surrounding areas. This was after the US sought to make sure that it would not interfere with its ongoing counterterrorism initiatives in the country, changing the originally titled "International Security Force" to ISAF. NATO assumed control of ISAF in 2003. ISAF includes troops from 42 countries, with NATO members providing the core of the force. The stated aim of the invasion was to find Osama bin Laden and other high-ranking alQaeda members to be put on trial, to destroy the organization of al-Qaeda, and to remove the Taliban regime which supported and gave safe harbor to it. In 2003, Taliban forces started an insurgency campaign against the democratic Islamic Republic and the presence of ISAF-troops in Afghanistan. Their headquarters are alleged to be in or near Quetta, Pakistan. Since 2006, Afghanistan has experienced a dramatic increase in Taliban-led insurgent activity. Since the coalition intervention in 2001, more than 5.7 million refugees have returned to Afghanistan. On May 21, 2012 the leaders of the NATO-member countries endorsed an exit strategy during the 2012 NATO Summit in Chicago.

War of Bosnia:
The Bosnian War or the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1 March 1992 and 14 December 1995. The war involved several factions. The main belligerents were the forces of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and those of the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat entities within Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republic of Ruska and Herzeg-Bosnia, who were led and supplied by Serbia and Croatia respectively. The war came about as a result of the breakup of Yugoslavia. Following the Slovenian and Croatian secessions from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991, the multi-ethnic Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was inhabited by Muslim Bosnians (44 percent), Orthodox Serbs (31 percent) and Catholic Croats (17 percent), passed a referendum for independence on 29 February 1992. This was rejected by the political representatives of the Bosnian Serbs, who had boycotted the referendum and established their own republic. Following the declaration of independence, the Bosnian Serbs, supported by the Serbian government of Slobodan Milosevic and the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), mobilized their forces inside the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to secure Serbian territory, then war soon broke out across the country, accompanied by the ethnic cleansing of the Bosnian population, especially in Eastern Bosnia. It was principally a territorial conflict, initially between the Serb forces mostly organized in the Army of Republic Ruska (VRS) on the one side, and the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBH) which was largely composed of Bosnians, and the Croat forces in the Croatian Defense Council (HVO) on the other side. The Croats also aimed at securing parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina as Croatian. The Serb and Croat political leadership agreed on a partition of Bosnia with the Karaorevo and Graz agreements, resulting in the Croat forces turning on the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Croat-Bosnian war. The war was characterized by bitter fighting, indiscriminate shelling of cities and towns, ethnic cleansing and systematic mass rape, mostly led by Serb and, to a lesser extent, Croat forces. Events such as the Siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre would become iconic of the conflict. The Serbs, although initially superior due to the vast amount of weapons and resources provided by the JNA, eventually lost momentum as the Bosnians and Croats allied themselves against the Republic of Ruska in 1994 with the creation of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina following the Washington agreement. After the Srebrenica and Markel massacres, NATO intervened during the 1995 Operation Deliberate Force against the positions of the Army of Republic of Ruska, which proved key in ending the war. The war was brought to an end after the signing of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina in Paris on 14 December 1995. Peace negotiations were held in Dayton, Ohio, and were finalized on 21 December 1995. The accords are now known as the Dayton Agreement. A 1995 report by the Central Intelligence Agency found that Bosnian Serb forces were responsible for 90% of the war crimes committed during the conflict. As of early 2008, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia had convicted 45 Serbs, 12 Croats and 4 Bosnians of war crimes in connection with the war in Bosnia. The most recent research places the number of people killed at around 100,000110,000 and the number of people displaced at over 2.2 million, making it the most devastating conflict in Europe since the end of World War II.

Advantages and Disadvantages of WAR

There are advantages and disadvantages in every war that can either be minute details or change the whole course of the war. In the Revolutionary war, there were many advantages and disadvantages of either side. America and Britain both had different things working for them or against them; many of these things were very significant by the end of the war. Although both sides had various advantages and disadvantages, America's advantages outweighed those of the British. In the war, America had many things working for them, including familiarity of the land, quick access to supply lines, aid from abroad, and the motivation of fighting for a cause. The Americans were extremely familiar with most of the lands that they fought on, giving them the strategically advantage. The supply lines in America were very important to the soldiers getting munitions, food, and medical supplies to armies quickly in order for them to be able to fight again fast. A major advantage the Americans had in the war was the help from the French, getting supplies and troops. The most important advantage for the Americans was having a cause to fight for. The idea of freedom from an oppressive king and freedom of government gave the Patriots a very deep sense of commitment to the cause, which helped them to fight better. Although the Americans had many advantages, they did have their share of disadvantages coming into the war. The Americans were extremely outnumbered by the British, having only 19,000 men. The Americans were also poorly trained and poorly armed, making it difficult to inflict many casualties on the British army. Throughout the war, the British had more disadvantages then advantages. The war started out with many British advantages like a giant army, a navy, and many quick wins in the beginning of the war. The British army was composed of over 32,000 soldiers, nearly two times the size of the American's army.