Arendt and the Question of War

Abstract

Many of us were shocked by the news of the Russian advance against Ukraine and have unilaterally blamed Russia for it. Rather than such a reaction, we should carefully consider the growing presence of NATO in Eastern Europe after the Cold War and the internal disorder of Ukraine ascribed to the so-called Maidan revolution. However, we are indeed aware that the war as a means of politics has become obsolete. Using Nietzsche’s words, one could say, “the god of war is dead.” The development of military technology in the 20^th century, especially the monstrous invention of weapons of mass destruction, has made it nearly impossible for mankind to resort to war in its entirety. This does not imply that we have achieved world peace; on the contrary, it means that we are now fighting with the shadow of the dead god of war. In her posthumous work Introduction to Politics, Arendt made a thought-provoking observation about the change in the nature of war. According to her, modern warfare is characterized by the concept of “war of annihilation.” From this perspective of total war, the goal of war is no longer a peace treaty between warring governments, but the total political or even physical destruction of the enemy. In the modern world after the Cold War, where the dominance of the American forces is literally global, we realize that the ideal of the victor annihilating the loser remains alive.