Why War

My recent reading of Lee’s The Cutting-Off Way prompted me to reflect on warfare.  Specifically, there is a section at the end of the book where he discusses expectations for the results of war, and he gives the example of how, even in the past hundred years or so, our understanding of the “acceptable” outcomes of war has changed.  Where, a hundred years ago, the expected outcomes of war might have included reparations and conquest, today we are more apt to expect things like cease-fires and sanctions.  The book goes on to discuss, naturally, Native American expectations for the outcomes of war, and the whole discussion prompted me to reflect on warfare in fiction, and especially in my own writing.  After all, fictional cultures will have their own expectations for the outcomes of war, and they need not align with our own.

Sometimes, the reason for war, especially in fantasy, is as obvious as it is basic: survival.  When there is a determined, ultimate adversary (i.e., the Dark One, Sauron), the reasons for and the expected outcomes of war are straightforward for all involved.  If the story is more nuanced, though, and especially if the war is between cultures or peoples instead of between people and a supernatural adversary, the matter bears more consideration.  Understanding how the culture you’re writing understands these things will inform how they fight at a tactical level, how they engage and disengage in battle at an operational level, and how they construct strategic objectives for their conflict.  A society that values prisoners, for instance, whether for labor, exchange, adoption, or some other reason, will fight (and stop fighting) differently from one that considers prisoners dishonorable or a burden.

Even the taking of territory is more complicated than it is usually treated.  Territory can be seized and controlled through fortifications, outposts, installing political control over the native populace.  Or it could be seized by displacing the existing populace and moving your own people into the newly emptied region.  You could go even further, imagining all kinds of versions of territorial conquest.  Maybe one society casts a terraforming spell that prevents their enemy from being able to farm the land they want to possess.  Or maybe there’s a culture that conquers territory by infiltrating the people and subverting their loyalty.  Then again, perhaps your culture doesn’t care about physical territory at all, and instead seeks to conquer by spreading some key cultural element, or by invading the academic turf of a rival.

The point is not in the specifics, but in prompting you (and me) to consider these things when we write.  I’ve said it many times, and I’ll continue saying it; the most important decisions you make in your story might be the ones that you don’t even realize you’re making.  You don’t realize you’re deciding something because it is such a basic assumption that you don’t question it, you don’t even think of it as an assumption, but it is.  The more you can subvert these kinds of expectations and assumptions, the more interesting your story will be – but only if you do it deliberately, thoughtfully, and convincingly.  Warfare, its goals, its implementation, and its execution, is just one area of opportunity for such innovation.