SHREVEPORT – Historians are most comfortable examining events that have already happened, but renowned Britain military historian Dr. Jeremy Black said historians must grapple with the present and the future in an attempt to influence events that have yet to take place.
Black addressed a crowd of high school and college students Monday at the University Center Theater on the LSUS campus.
Black, who is 68, said the world’s population has nearly tripled to about eight billion people just in his lifetime.
With the population predicted to hit about 11 billion by the year 2100, competition for resources in addition to environmental degradation that could potentially shrink the available resource pool could put the world’s current standard of living in serious jeopardy.
“When you’re trying to summarize a world with eight billion people and 193 separate countries, war is going to mean different things and be differently displayed,” said Black, who has authored 180 books. “But the key aspect is not to pretend that there is one clear answer.
“If we never as historians engage with the present and the future, we’re staying in our comfort zone, our hobbit hole. We need to engage intelligently with the world we are in and with its future.”
After the world suffered through two world wars, regional conflicts that involved world powers and the threat of war with nuclear weapons on both sides, global leaders assumed this type of conflict wouldn’t happen anymore when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.
“War is much more common now than people thought is going to be in the 1990s,” Black said. “There was the belief that with the end of the Cold War and the Soviet Union, that this would be a period where there’d be small conflicts but not another major war again.
“People were very confident in that. Military expenditures massively decreased, and countries significantly expanded social welfare programs.”
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were termed “wars of choice,” meaning the external power could choose whether or not to take part.
“But the current situation is less happy,” Black said. “North Korea says it could reach the U.S. with its intercontinental missiles. There’s the possibility that the exchange of nuclear missiles and hypersonic missiles could make people anywhere a target.
“Widespread conflict no longer appears to be something just in the world of fiction or just historical, but it’s a present-day phenomenon. It’s not just in Ukraine or Gaza or other countries where major conflicts are going on like Myanmar. War is common in quite a few areas now or in the very recent past.”
The possible restriction of future natural resources could increase the likelihood of conflicts which could spread rapidly in scale.
Geopolitical events such as Russia’s entry into a country that belongs to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a U.S.-China flare-up over Taiwan or a broader Middle Eastern war surrounding the Israel-Gaza conflict are just a few triggers that could lead to widespread conflict.
“All of these things create tensions between states and within states,” Black said.
Technological or size advantages don’t guarantee victory as witnessed by Russia’s initial invasion thrust into Ukraine or ultimately the U.S.’s military occupation of Afghanistan.
“To win a war, one must get the defeated group to accept the result,” Black said, using the Germans after World War II as an example and the ensuing rapid shift away from militarization that followed. “But with counterinsurgencies, the use of non-professional military elements that don’t operate in the open, evasive actions can be used in a war of attrition.
“It’s much harder to define and declare victory in these types of conflicts.”
Societal differences such as the degree of individualism in the West has decreased interest in joining militaries, whereas other societies accept mandatory conscription or are more willing to sign up for military service.
The latter societies may be more willing to fight and potentially die on a larger scale.
“I think the Vietnam War really frayed political cohesion … and I think that conscription now probably wouldn’t work in places like the United States and the UK,” Black said. “Too many people were avoiding the draft in the U.S.
“In the UK, conscription ended because it’s expensive. Generals prefer professional soldiers to be operating their expensive equipment. That’s great if you’re fighting another small and select group of professional soldiers. But what if you need more force and also civil society to back you up? That remains unclear.”
Black contends that whatever the factors that might ignite another world-wide conflict, human nature hasn’t really evolved from the thousands of years of violent conflict its experienced in its past.
“At every stage with war, we have to remember that we’re talking about human beings whose bodies and minds are being blown apart, twisted, distorted and damaged,” Black said. “It’s a horrible process.
“That’s neither better or worst than in the past. You’ve got to be very wary of thinking in terms of human progress, however defined. The reality is that in key and essential natures of the human condition, we remain as we always were – an animal of the species rather than something transformed that’s morally above this process.”
