A Short History of Wars Starting By Accident

The recent headlines of a U.S. fighter jet shooting down not just a Syrian Air Force jet but also one of its drones definitely raised an alarm or two in my head.  It was made even more disconcerting by the fact that the Russians said they would target U.S. warplanes west of the Euphrates River and were cutting their avenue of communication to us. And that's not even accounting for Syria or Iran's feelings about it. It seemed like yet again that the situation in the Middle East was spinning out of control.

Now, I don't think that these two instances will escalate to a war with Russia or even fundamentally alter the current situation in the region. Everyone just might get off easy. However, if the parties involved aren't careful and mindful of the implications of their actions, in the future a similar incident could occur. If heads are too hot, it could prove to be the spark to greater quagmire and bloodshed, if not in Iraq and Syria then elsewhere.

Sadly, there's plenty of wars that by accident. I'm not referring to instances where deliberate attacks were staged with full awareness of the potential consequences, such as the Nazi invasion of Poland or the Confederates firing on Fort Sumter. Nor am I referring to parties being tricked into fighting, like the French in the Franco-Prussian War. No, here are just a few wars that started because some people unable to keep their #$%& together.

• First World War

Perhaps the most well-known example of a seemingly distant geo-political conflict spiraling out of control. The assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire by the Serbian separatist-terrorist organization the Black Hand quickly roped in treaty-bound (and opportunistic) European nations. Austria-Hungary threatened war with Serbia if its government wouldn't turn over the terrorists. Then Russia jumped in to protect a fellow Slavic/Eastern Orthodox nation. Then Germany stood up for its ethnic German sibling and attacked Russia...'s ally France first because they bordered Germany, which drew Britain in shortly after. Within a couple of short months, a Balkan regional squabble had escalated into a full-scale European war, engulfing the world within a few years.

• Sino-Japanese War

China had already been mired in civil war between communists and nationalists, and in 1931 the Japanese decided to take advantage of the chaos and annex Manchuria in the north, renaming it Manchukuo. Then 1937, nationalist soldiers traded shots with a Japanese dispatch along the Yongding river outside of Beijing. The skirmish itself passed without incident as no one was killed, but the next day when a Japanese soldier was missing at roll call, it was all the Japanese command needed. By the time that soldier returned from the local brothel, fighting had already broke out and in just a few weeks the Japanese crossed the Marco Polo Bridge into China proper. 

• Seven Years War

Frederick the Great of Prussia thought (with good reason) that the rest of Europe was gearing up to attack him. So in 1757 Frederick launched a preemptive attack against where his enemies would most likely strike, Saxony. Though the attack itself was perfect, unfortunately Frederick guessed the wrong country, and it turned out he attacked a neutral country without a declaration of war or a provocation. This made it easy for Russia, France, and Austria to declare war on Prussia. However, Frederick's tactical brilliance and huge war chest would keep the war going for years. 

Again, these are just a few examples of wars, and and only wars. That being said, we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves and curse past stupidity. Just because some of these wars started by accident doesn't mean they probably weren't going to happen at all. In many cases, one or both sides were itching for a fight anyway and it would have come to blows sooner or later, by accident or on purpose.

The point is that wars rarely, if ever, start from nothing. Tensions often grind on for years or even decades between parties, steadily escalating until someone makes one final provocation and someone else starts shooting. Long fuse or not, the spark has to be snuffed long before it reaches the dynamite.

The Only History Book You'll Ever Need to Read

If I was only ever to do one review of anything for this blog, it would be for The Great Big Book of Horrible Things, by Matthew White. If you seem unsettled, or skeptical with the title, don't; I really don’t think anything else I would potentially recommend would surpass or even equal the impact that this book would have on you, as it did for me when it was first bought for me as a throwaway Christmas present five years ago.

Neither a macabre coffee table book nor an impossibly dense collection of stats, this book is essentially an editorialized reference book. Now that may seem like a contradiction, and in most cases it would be, along with being not all that interesting. But White, a self-described “numbers freak” with a gift for historical writing masterfully weaves bold classifications with sober analysis and goofy commentary to create an utterly unique work, one that almost seems unrecognizable from others. White's goal in this book is to bring the best justice he can to the countless of overshadowed or altogether forgotten victims in historical killings, and those efforts shine bright. Horrible Things is credited by distinguished psychologist Steven Pinker, who provides the foreword, as the "the most comprehensive, disinterested and statistically nuanced estimates available." Ever since I’ve read it, I’ve tried to emulate White’s approach and style and I’ve proudly cited it multiple times in my own reports.

In assessing history's deadliest man-made events, White, who has no formal training in history or statistics, approaches the subject with a scientific method. He rejects consensuses about the death toll of a given event, instead going straight back to primary and secondary sources. He throws out the highest and lowest numbers and plugs in the median. How does he get these sources, you ask? "The short answer is money," White replies. "Even if a general is reluctant to tell the newspapers how many men he lost in a bungled offensive, he still has to tell the accountants to drop 4,000 men from the payroll... Head counts (and by extension, body counts) are not just an academic exercise; they have been an important part of government financing for centuries." The length of each chapter is proportional to the deadliness of the event.

However, it's not the numbers that are of the most interest in this book, even if it is the selling point. It's how White incorporates them into his writing. Each chapter is categorized rather surprisingly, and loaded with unexpected, juicy terms of White's invention, like 'atrocitology,' 'multicides,' and 'hemoclysm' that capture the reader's imagination much more than dry terms like 'genocide.' His commentary captures the ironies, tragedies, and downright absurdities of history. Here are some examples, starting with his chapter on Timur:

TIMUR

Death toll: 17 million
Rank: 9
Type: world conqueror
Broad dividing line: Timur vs. everyone he could get to
Location: central Asia, the eye of the hurricane being Samarkand
Who usually gets the most blame: Rimur; also called Tamburlaine (old version) or Tamerlane (newer version) from his insulting nickname, Timur Lenk ("the Lame")
Another damn: Mongol invasion

Here's an example of White describing Saladin In his Crusades chapter (3 million deaths):

In reality, Saladin's sense of honor was flexible... []Two leading crusaders were brought to him in chains. He fed the first one, explaining that the rules of hospitality now forbade him from killing a prisoner who had been given food and drink by his captor. Another prisoner... lunged for a cup of wine and downed it before anyone could stop him. [He] thought, Aha! I'm safe! But Saladin killed him anyway because no one likes a smartass.

White understands, however, the issues and contention that really do affect our modern life and knows when to be serious, not tolerating some minority opinions. Believe it or not, there's a sizable minority of people who believe that the Western democracies fought on the wrong side of WWII (along with the faction that denies the Holocaust). White responds with this: 

In this case, revisionists seem to forget the world went to war against Hitler because he was dangerous, not because he was evil. This is an important distinction in international relations. You can do whatever you want inside your own country, but when you start invading your neighbors, the rest of the world gets jumpy. No matter how brutal Stalin may have been to his own people, he was content to stay inside the borders of the Soviet Union. By the time Stalin began grabbing small countries for himself, the West was already committed to war with Hitler. The choice wasn't between fighting Hitler or Stalin. The choice was to fight Hitler or both of them.

Despite his unorthodox form and his use of black humor, it’s understandable to think that reading White’s book about humanity’s worst achievements might get a little depressing after a while. However, with each chapter I absorbed, I got steadily more excited until I felt downright enlightened by the end. This is because what happens as you travel across time and the world in White’s book is that you feel a remarkable sense of discovery. Because of White’s information, style, and arguments, you really do feel that you understand not just history but humanity so much better. White passes the historian’s ultimate test with flying colors and imprints it on the reader: He effectively makes history relevant to the reader, and uses it to better understand our present and prepare for the future. It worked for me and it will surely work for you. 

For more on Matthew White visit his website (don't be fooled, it deliberately looks old-school) or the New York Times review of Horrible Things.

To check out the book itself, click here.