War and duel - There is a difference

Video

There is a difference between war and duels, and knowing the difference is crucial and saves a lot of suffering.

I know, Von Clausewitz wrote: “War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale.” (and I’ve added the rest of his perspective at the end below.)

OK, this is so wrong. Stay with me for a few minutes to understand why and how it impacts not only the decisions made by military commanders but my decisions when I argue with family, friends and haters.

We can make an educated guess, what corrupt times and society bred Von Clausewitz abomination of a philosophy, (and, I add, made it so popular since) but we do not have to live under this shadow.

Yes, sure, people, me, we feel with our body that war and duels are identical. This might be the result of much evolutionary simpler lifestyles, social conditioning or microbiome.

But by definition, duel is not a battle, campaign or war. A duel is a finite state by definition. War is an intense-armed conflict that many times makes waves many decades after the so-called victory.

A duel is a ritual with set rules, it is surrounded by conventions of honor and conduct. With this description, we can look at sport competitions, from badminton to MMA, and see that all these events share an inner skeleton of rules and are finite. Sure, there might be a rematch, but if all is fair and square, the looser will not come looking for revenge afterward.

All these conventions and attributes are missing from war. War has no lamina, no boundary, no set end in time and scale. An example, some crazy terrorists win a criminal (what they think is a duel) on civilians in 9/11 and get to know the essence of what I try to explain here. How many lives, on the terrorists’ side, were lost. War can be forever, and its causes grow from the hearts of people who are sure that war is a duel. How stupid and horrible.