Mars & Merriam(-Webster)

Michael Keane, the author of the forthcoming Dictionary of Modern Strategy and Tactics and a lecturer at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, had an interesting piece in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times. The piece discusses the importance of language and word choice in war time.

This got me thinking about Anthony’s post “On Defining War.” Merriam-Webster’s defines “war” as:

Pronunciation: 'wor

Function: noun

Usage: often attributive

Etymology: Middle English werre, from Old North French, of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German werra strife; akin to Old High German werran to confuse

1 a (1) : a state of usually open and declared armed hostile conflict between states or nations (2) : a period of such armed conflict (3) : STATE OF WAR b : the art or science of warfare c (1) obsolete : weapons and equipment for war (2) archaic : soldiers armed and equipped for war

2 a : a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism b : a struggle or competition between opposing forces or for a particular end c : VARIANCE, ODDS 3

Going a step further, “warfare” is defined as:

Pronunciation: 'wor-"far, -"fer

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English, from werre, warre war + fare journey, passage -- more at FARE

1 : military operations between enemies : HOSTILITIES, WAR; also : an activity undertaken by a political unit (as a nation) to weaken or destroy another

2 : struggle between competing entities : CONFLICT

Now one may quibble with the American “bastardization of the Queen’s English,” but it seems to me that warfare is a more suitable term for most of the struggle’s occurring today. Even if one accepts Van Crevald’s interpretation of Von Clausewitz’s primary trinity (and I happen to think that Anthony’s analysis of Van Crevald is spot on), I think that there are two factors that undercut the “non-state actors trump Westphalia” argument. First, non-state actors or “super-empowered individuals,” or whatever you want to call them, are tied to time and physical space that makes them very similar in most regards to previous state-based actors. Second, and most important, “super-empowered individuals” have a desired political end-state based in terms of a quest for power, cultural factors, or economic desires -- and generally a blend of all three -- that make them similar to states.

War as a term of art and as a phrase with very specific meaning in international law, however, is best left as a descriptive for inter-state conflicts. Warfare is better used for wider applicability in intra-state, inter-state, and even non-purely military conflicts.