I
s war insane? A sort of inexplicable madness that we're all comewhat cuplable for? This idea that war is always and irrevocably evil, and therefore should never be engaged in, gets floated from time to time, most recently in my readings by renegade philosopher Chis Bateman, but it gets around -- even Tolstoy had a thing or two to say about it.
I'm not entirely sure how to make sense of the statement. Certainly, war is extremely terrible, never to be entered into lightly, and starting a war for the vast majority of reasons is probably an unpardonable crime. But the issue always is: it only takes one side to make a war. The "war is insanity" argument seems to be something like "it takes two to tango", but with war, this is clearly not true. If your country is invaded, there don't seem to be many good alternatives other than to engage in warfare. And once this principle is admitted, game theory takes over. If your neighbors might invade your country, you should be prepared to defend yourself. Preparing for war can look aggressive to those same neighbors. Pre-emptive strikes can massively shift one's expected losses in a conflict, and so on and so forth.
Perhaps there are ways of peacefully preventing conflicts, but it has to be admitted that attempting this kind of thing is a risk -- one could fail to prevent a conflict peacefully, and if it starts, be at a tremendous disadvantage. Saying that we've just gotten into the mental habit of imagining war as inevitable doesn't really seem to help anyone make concrete choices related to war. When we say war is madness, to whom are we talking? Leaders? Commanders? Soldiers? Civilians? Is defensive war permissible? Is aiding another country in their efforts permissible? Is trusting your own leaders when you accept orders permissible?
Sure, it would be nice if there were no aggressive leaders in the world, and nothing to be gained by engaging in armed conflict. But, in fact, there are such people, and there are such motivations. Peace should always be our goal, but to imagine that it is always and everywhere possible just doesn't seem like it has any relation to reality.