“The war that we have known throughout history, and up until a few years ago, does not exist and presumably will not exist anymore. War will increasingly know no bounds and will be asymmetrical. Not only that: the distinction between peace and war, civilian and military, nation and nation, war and post-war will disappear.”
“The opposition of war and peace and the very notion of war as a function of peace disappear in the face of a new situation in which we all are and will be in a permanent state of war. So war and peace will effectively become, or are already, obsolete concepts”.
These are two extracts from an interesting book entitled Guerra e Società (War and Society) by Enzo Rutigliano, sociology professor at the university of Trento.
The book, explains Rutigliano, aims to investigate the role that societies have played in the evolution of wars and the role that wars have played in the development of societies. “According to our hypothesis, the sociology of war is the analysis and interpretation of the changes occurring in society and their effects on the evolution of war (the way it is conducted, the strategies it uses) and in the social strata that take part in it”.
This book is part of a new school of thought, which has been called The Softer Side of War. It’s an expression that describes the philosophy of war or, rather, the culture of war. Further examples and confirmation of this new approach are provided by two other recent books which explore the influence of culture on military doctrine: The Culture of Military Innovation by Dima Adamsky and Beer, Bacon, and Bullets by Gal Luft. Both affirm that culture plays a basic role in the conduct of war, and that policy makers and military leaders must either understand culture’s impact on military matters or face the unpleasant consequences of their ignorance.
It is an inescapable factor also for those that write about and report on war. “The future will be one of continuous global conflict and one of its chief instruments will be, and in fact is, information, which includes information, misinformation and counter-information. But it also includes the contamination of news on the economy and stock exchanges or, simply, the use of the news media”, writes Rutigliano.
In short, we have to get over any political correctness and become embedded in the most profound sense of the term: immerse, insert, amalgamate and entrench ourselves in war. Not just physically but also conceptually. Only in this sense, perhaps, will we be able to resolve the doubts, schizophrenia and criticism aimed at embedded reporters, who are considered, depending on ideological standpoint, as purveyors of “War Porn”, of the obscenity of war, spokespersons of power, partial observers, and information contractors. As the photographer (and friend of mine) Andrea Pistolesi wrote in his blog, this induces us to believe “that there are no doubts on the rightness of an action or a war, or rather, no doubts should be stated in the media”. Doubts, nonetheless, cannot be created or resolved by taking one side or the other (granted that ‘being on the other side’ enables their actions to be reported on). It’s rather a question of being courageous enough, being so embedded, as to analyse war as just another cultural phenomenon, as a timeless condition of man.