Mars

The planet Mars, also known as the Red Planet, is named after the Roman god of war.  The association between Mars and war goes back to the Babylonian civilization, in which the planet was known as Nergal, the deity of death, fire, and destruction.  Anthropologists disagree upon whether warfare was common throughout human history, but there is no dispute that war is the essential characteristic of the rise of statehood.  The English word “war” is derived from the Old High German word “werran,” meaning to confound, or to cause confusion by acting against expectations.  It is defined as a series of engagement between well-organized masses, moving as a team, acting under a single, overarching will, and directed against a definitive objective.  War is not defined by damage, however great, but by an intent to conquer.

For the undeniable consequences of war are violence, destruction, and death, today we debate concepts of a just war, which are imbued in contemporary international standards such as the Geneva Conventions.  However, in the history of human warfare, there did not exist a universal moral concept.  In The Art of War, Sun Tzu defined the Moral Law as that which “causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler, so that they will follow him regardless of their lives, undismayed by any danger.”  When our judgement upon inflicted damages and our moral burdens are withheld, it is evident that the strategies of warfare not only apply to conflicts between states, but also between any other organizations in a competitive environment, which is why the Art of War is not only studied at West Point, but also in business schools and in sports.

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu instructed that it is of vital importance to the state, a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin, a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.  In accordance with this perspective, Niccolò Machiavelli dictated the prince of a state to have no other object, or thought, or take up anything as his profession, except war and its rules and discipline, for that is the only art that befits one who commands.  When princes have thought more of luxurious living than of arms, they have lost their state.  The chief cause which makes you lose it is to neglect this art, and the way to acquire it is to be an expert in this art.  With respect to the military, Machiavelli advised to only employ citizens as soldiers, for only they are sufficiently patriotic to be willing to sacrifice their lives to protect the state.  The mercenaries and auxiliaries are dangerous, for they have no love or any motive that keeps them in the field other than a salary, which is not enough to make them willing to die for you.  Thus if anyone has a state founded on the arms of mercenaries, he will never be stable or secure.  In demonstration, he cited examples of the wealthy states of Italy who hired mercenary armies to fight for them during the 15th century, eventually leading themselves into ruin.

Going beyond the state, wars are just as closely correlated with the rise and fall of civilizations.  In its 500 years of expansion, the Roman Republic was in a near-perpetual state of war.  Its first enemies were its Latin and Etruscan neighbors, as well as the Gauls.  After the Gallic war, Rome conquered the whole Italian Peninsula in a century.  It waged three wars against Carthage to become the dominant power of ancient Mediterranean. It then embarked on a long series of conquests, defeating Philip V and Perseus of Macedon, Antiochus III of the Seleucid Empire, the Lusitanian Viriathus, the Numidian Jugurtha, the Pontic king Mithridates VI, Vercingetorix of the Arverni tribe of Gaul, and the Egyptian queen Cleopatra.  By the 1st century AD, the collapse of the Roman Republic ushered in the golden age of the Roman Empire, in which its institutions and culture influenced the language, religion, art, architecture, literature, philosophy, law, and forms of government across its territories.  Latin evolved into Romance languages while Medieval Greek became the official language in the eastern Mediterranean. The Empire’s adoption of Christianity led to medieval Christendom’s formation.  The Italian Renaissance was inspired by classical Roman and Greek art.  The rediscovery of classical science and technology in medieval Europe contributed to the Scientific Renaissance and Scientific Revolution, which in turn birthed the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century.

In East Asia, a similar story is told for China, who witnessed relentless warfare in its early formation, in which thousands of political units consolidated into a single state.  The transition from a decentralized feudal state to a unified empire was accomplished entirely through conquest.  In the 294-year duration of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, beginning in 771 BCE, more than 110 political units were extinguished through more than 1211 wars.  In the following 254 years, 468 wars took place between the surviving warring states.  Throughout its history of conflicts within and beyond its borders, the Middle Kingdom expanded its territories as far as Japan to the East, Tibet and Central Asia to the West, and Vietnam to the South.  Consequently, China’s influences upon languages, religions, cultures, architectures, and technologies spread across these territories.  In the 1st century AD, Buddhism entered China by the Silk Road, then spread East to Korea and Japan and South to Vietnam.  Until the 1960s, Koreans were taught Hanja, which are Chinese characters for Korean language.  Modern-day Japanese are still expected to learn Kanji, a writing system adapted from Chinese script.  And Vietnam used the Classical Chinese system, called Chữ Hán, until it became a French colony, when the alphabet system was introduced.  Some other prominent cultural imports include Confucianism, the Luna calendrical system, and the hip-and-gable roof design seen on palaces and temples throughout East and Southeast Asia today.      

Most recently, the two world wars, which occurred in the early 20th century, brought to climax the conflict between European powers, effectively terminated Europe’s global hegemony.  World War II’s aftermath gave rise to a new global power, the United States of America, as its enormous demand finally put an end to the Great Depression while ushering in a new era of economic growth and massive innovations in technologies and medicines.  The post-war economic boom, the GI Bill providing home loans to veterans, the construction of the Interstate Highway System, and the rise of car ownership and mass housing production spurred vast suburban development across the country.  In electronics, it sped up the development of computer and radar technologies; in chemistry – plastic; in medicine – blood transfusion, skin graft, and antibiotics.  Then, the following Cold War propelled nuclear and space technologies forward to support the arms and space race between the United States and the Soviet Union.  In the 1960’s, the first Internet, called ARPANET, was established by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the United States Department of Defense.

In Human, All Too Human, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “As yet no means are known which call so much into action as a great war, that rough energy born of the camp, that deep impersonality born of hatred, that conscience born of murder and cold-bloodedness, that fervor born of effort in the annihilation of the enemy, that proud indifference to loss, to one’s own existence, to that of one’s fellows, to that earthquake-like soul-shaking which a people needs when it is losing its vitality.”  Perhaps it is precisely so – that the capability for violence and conflict is innate within us, like an evolutionary tactic developed over generations in order to survive and thrive.  Wars and conflicts build up civilization, and then just as well, tear it down when the corruptions and destructions within inflate beyond its ability to control them.  “It is midnight in a night of specters.  Both the new reign of Empire and the new immaterial and cooperative creativity of the multitude move in shadows, and nothing manages to illuminate our destiny ahead.  Nonetheless, we have acquired a new point of reference, and tomorrow perhaps a new consciousness, which consists in the fact that Empire is defined by crisis, that its decline has always already begun, and that consequently every line of antagonism leads toward the event and singularity.”*
*Hardt & Negri, Empire.