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20 Essential Photoshop Shortcuts & Tips

1. Use the Spacebar to Navigate

Let’s start with a simple one! While holding down the Spacebar and clickingand dragging with the left mouse button, you can pan around the canvas. This way, you won’t have to use the red box in the Navigator panel, or the scrollbars around the canvas to move around.

2. Hide Selections and Guides

You can toggle the visibility of all your guides and currently active selections by pressing Ctrl+H (that’s Cmd+H on the Mac). It’s a good way to check your artwork without all the disturbing lines here and there. Press Ctrl+H to toggle them back again.

3. Undo More, Redo More

You must know that Ctrl+Z (or Cmd+Z) undoes the last step, but did you know that hitting Ctrl+Alt+Z will undo more steps? It can definitely save you a lot of time by not having to hit the Step Backward command in the Edit menu. And it works in reverse by hitting Ctrl+Shift+Z, which will Redo one step. These two must be my most used shortcuts!

4. Rotate Canvas

Rotating the canvas can come very handy for designers using graphic tablets. By hitting the R key and then left-clicking-and-dragging, you can rotate your document on the canvas. You’ll see a compass with the red side pointing upwards, when doing so.

5. Paste in Place

Press Ctrl+Shift+V instead of the normal Ctrl+V command to paste your copied selection in place, e.g. to the exact same position where you copied from. You can not only paste in place in the document you copied from, but in new ones as well.

6. Quickly Open Documents

Did you know that when you have no documents on your canvas, and double-click in the empty area, the Open window appears? Kind of saves only a second, but many a little makes a mickle, so they say!

7. Quickly Close Documents

Pressing Ctrl+W will close the currently active document. PressingCtrl+Shift+W will close all open windows. You can also close all documents byShift+clicking the X’s on the right side of the document tabs.

8. Reset Dialog Boxes

When you open up any dialog box, make some changes but want to revert all of them, we would all click Cancel, and reopen the dialog box.

Let me tell you a secret: if you hold down the Alt key (Option on Mac) while a dialog box is open, the Cancel button will automagically transform into a Resetbutton. Now, how cool is that?

9. Pro Tips for the Crop Tool

Check out the Options Bar when you’re on the Crop Tool next time, because there are some pretty cool stuff there!

You can choose a constrain from the list under Unconstrained or you can set a custom ratio. This is really helpful when you want to tailor an image for your screen size, or create a square shaped avatar. The circle-shaped arrow reverses the values, and the selection accordingly (Image taken from Photoshop CS6; Photoshop CC has a couple different values).

And there’s one more thing! Check out the cogwheel icon in the Options Bar, where you can find the absolute sweet stuff! I usually pump up the opacity of the Crop Shield, kind of helps me better see what I’m going to crop.

Also, if you don’t want the excess to be deleted, only hidden, then you should uncheck Delete Cropped Pixels!

10. Hide All Except the Selected Layer

You must know that the little eye icon beside the layers toggles their visibility. Here’s a trick: when you Alt+Click the Eye icons (Option+Click for Mac users), all the other layers will be hidden; so that leaves only that one layer visible. Pretty cool trick to learn when you want to see a layer on its own!

11. Finish Editing Text

There are two hotkeys to use when you want to finish editing a text object: theNumEnter key on the numeric keypad, or if you don’t have a numeric keyboard, you can go with Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Return on the Mac).

12. Change Guide Orientation

Is the ruler bar too far to reach out? Did you go to the horizontal ruler and realized you need a vertical guide instead?

Not a problem! Hold down the Alt (or Option) key on your keyboard while dragging out a Guide, and it will become perpendicular to the ruler bar.

13. Precise Cursors

The Caps Lock key toggles between normal and “precise” cursors. This works with lots of tools, and sometimes it can come helpful. Most of the time I use it with the Eyedropper tool (I). Can you find all the tools it works with?

14. Scrub Values

Use the Left mouse button on certain Labels to scrub the values next to them. Click on the label, and drag left to decrease, right to increase the value. Works pretty well, for example, on the Opacity and Fill labels in the Layers panel.

15. Quickly Change Opacity

Press the number keys on your keyboard to set the Opacity of any drawing tool (Brush, Eraser, etc.) by increments of 10. You can hit the 4 key for 40% opacity, but you can also quickly type 26 for 26% opacity.

When you’re on the Move tool (V), you can set the current Layer’s opacity when hitting the number keys!

16. Quick Switch Between Dodge and Burn

The Alt key is our friend again. Select the Dodge tool to lighten parts of an image, and just hold down the Alt (or Option) key to temporarily switch over to the Burn tool to darken. And vica versa. Pretty awesome for retouching!

17. Change Brush Size and Hardness

Ever heard about the Alt key? Get the Brush tool (B), hold down Alt (or of course Option on the Mac), and while holding the Right mouse button, move the mouse downwards to add, upwards to reduce hardness. Move it to the left to reduce the size of the brush, move it to the right to increase the size.

18. Merge All Layers into One

When you’re working with a lot of layers, sometimes you need to merge all your layers into one, without flattening the whole document. The shortcut isCtrl+Alt+Shift+E, (which is Cmd+Opt+Shift+E on the Mac).

19. Selection Operations

Use the Shift key to Add to the selection, hold down Alt to Subtract from a selection, and use the Shift+Alt keys together to Intersect the selections. Definitely easier than clicking on the above icons all the time!

20. Generate CSS code from Layer Styles

Now this is something you might want to upgrade to Photoshop CC! There’s a feature wen you right click on a layer with layer styles applied that will generate CSS code from those layer styles.

The option is called Copy CSS, which will copy the CSS code to the clipboard.

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Basic operations For linux or Ubuntu

any_command --help |more 

Display a brief help on a command (works with most commands). "--help" works similar to DOS "/h" switch. The "more" pipe is needed if the output is longer than one screen.

man topic 

Display the contents of the system manual pages (help) on the topic. Try man man first. Press "q" to quit the viewer. The command info topic works similar and may contain more up-to-date information. Manual pages can be hard to read. Try any_command --help for short, easy to digest help on a command. If more info needed, have a look to the directory /usr/doc. To display manual page from a specific section, I may use something like in this example:  man 3 exit (this displays an info on the command exit from section 3 of the manual pages).

apropos topic 

Give me the list of the commands that have something to to do with my topic.

help command 

Display brief info on a bash (shell) build-in command.

ls 

List the content of the current directory. Under Linux, the command "dir" is an alias to ls. Many users have "ls" to be an alias to "ls --color".

ls -al |more 

List the content of the current directory, all files (also those starting with a dot), and in a long form. Pipe the output through the "more" command, so that the display pauses after each screenful.

cd directory 

Change directory. Using "cd" without the directory name will take you to your home directory. "cd -" will take you to your previous directory and is a convenient way to toggle between two directories. "cd .." will take you one directory up.

cp source destination 

Copy files. E.g., cp /home/stan/existing_file_name .  will copy a file to my current working directory. Use the "-r" option (for recursive) to copy the contents of whole directories, e.g. , cp -r my_existing/dir/ ~  will copy a subdirectory under my current working directory to my home directory.

mcopy source destination 

Copy a file from/to a DOS filesystem (no mounting necessary). E.g., mcopy a:\autoexec.bat ~/junk . See man mtools for related commands: mdir, mcd, mren, mmove, mdel, mmd, mrd, mformat ....

mv source destination 

Move or rename files. The same command is used for moving and renaming files and directories.

ln source destination 

Create a hard link called destination to the file called source. The link appears as a copy of the original files, but in reality only one copy of the file is kept, just two (or more) directory entries point to it. Any changes the file are automatically visible throughout. When one directory entry is removed, the other(s) stay(s) intact. The limitation of the hard links are: the files have to be on the same filesystem, hard links to directories or special files are impossible.

ln -s source destination 

Create a symbolic (soft) link called "destination" to the file called "source". The symbolic link just specifies a path where to look for the file. In contradistinction to hard links, the source and destination don't not have to tbe on the same filesystem. In comparison to hard links, the drawback of symbolic links are: if the original file is removed, the link is "broken", symbolic links can also create circular references (like circular references in spreadsheets or databases, e.g., "a" points to "b" and "b" points back to "a").

rm files 

Remove (delete) files. You must own the file in order to be able to remove it. On many systems, you will be asked or confirmation of deleation, if you don't want this, use the "-f" (=force) option, e.g., rm -f *  will remove all files in my current working directory, no questions asked.

mkdir directory 

Make a new directory.

rmdir directory 

Remove an empty directory.

rm -r files 

(recursive remove) Remove files, directories, and their subdirectories. Careful with this command as root--you can easily remove all files on the system with such a command executed on the top of your directory tree, and there is no undelete in Linux (yet). But if you really wanted to do it (reconsider), here is how (as root): rm -rf /*

cat filename | more 

View the content of a text file called "filename", one page a time. The "|" is the "pipe" symbol (on many American keyboards it shares the key with "\") The pipe makes the output stop after each screenful. For long files, it is sometimes convenient to use the commands head and tail that display just the beginning and the end of the file. If you happened to use "cat" a binary file and your terminal displays funny characters afterwards, you can restore it with the command "reset".

less filename 

Scroll through a content of a text file. Press q when done. "Less" is roughly equivalent to "more" , the command you know from DOS, although very often "less" is more convenient than "more".

pico filename 

Edit a text file using the simple and standard text editor called pico.

pico -w filename 

Edit a text file, while disabling the long line wrap. Handy for editing configuration files, e.g. /etc/fstab.

find / -name "filename" 

Find the file called "filename" on your filesystem starting the search from the root directory "/". The "filename" may contain wildcards (*,?).

locate filename 

Find the file name of which contains the string "filename". Easier and faster than the previous command but depends on a database that normally rebuilds at night.

./program_name 

Run an executable in the current directory, which is not on your PATH.

touch filename 

Change the date/time stamp of the file filename to the current time. Create an empty file if the file does not exist.

xinit 

Start a barebone X-windows server (without a windows manager).

startx 

Start an X-windows server and the default windows manager. Works like typing "win" under DOS with Win3.1

startx -- :1 

Start another X-windows session on the display 1 (the default is opened on display 0). You can have several GUI terminals running concurrently. Switch between them using <Ctrl><Alt><F7>, <Ctrl><Alt><F8>, etc.

xterm 

(in X terminal) Run a simple X-windows terminal.  Typing exit will close it.  There are other, more advanced "virtual" terminals for X-windows. I like the popular ones: konsole and kvt (both come with kde) and gnome-terminal (comes with gnome).  If you need something really fancy-looking, try Eterm.

xboing 

(in X terminal). Very nice, old-fashioned game. Many small games/programs are probably installed on your system. I also like xboard (chess).

shutdown -h now 

(as root) Shut down the system to a halt. Mostly used for a remote shutdown. Use <Ctrl><Alt><Del> for a shutdown at the console (which can be done by any user).

halt 

reboot 

(as root, two commands) Halt or reboot the machine. Used for remote shutdown, simpler to type than the previous command. 

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Common commands--system info for Linux

pwd 

Print working directory, i.e., display the name of my current directory on the screen.

hostname 

Print the name of the local host (the machine on which you are working). Use netconf (as root) to change the name of the machine.

whoami 

Print my login name.

id username 

Print user id (uid) and his/her group id (gid), effective id (if different than the real id) and the supplementary groups.

date 

Print or change the operating system date and time. E.g., I could change the date and time to 2000-12-31 23:57 using this command: 

date 123123572000 

To set the hardware (BIOS) clock from the system (Linux) clock, use the command (as root) setclock

time 

Determine the amount of time that it takes for a process to complete + other info. Don't confuse it with the date command. E.g. I can find out how long it takes to display a directory content using: 

time ls

who 

Determine the users logged on the machine.

rwho -a 

(=remote who) Determine all users logged on your network. The rwho service must be enabled for this command to run. If it isn't, run setup as root to enable "rwho".

finger user_name 

System info about a user. Try: finger root

last 

Show listing of users last logged-in on your system.

history | more 

Show the last (1000 or so) commands executed from the command line on the current account. The "| more" causes the display to stop after each screenful.

uptime 

Show the amount of time since the last reboot.

ps 

(=print status) List the processes currently run by the current user.

ps axu | more 

List all the processes currently running, even those without the controlling terminal, together with the name of the user that owns each process.

top 

Keep listing the currently running processes, sorted by cpu usage (top users first). In KDE, you can get GUI-based Ktop from "K"menu under "System"-"Task Manager" (or by executing "ktop" in an X-terminal).

uname -a 

(= Unix name with option "all") Info on your (local) server. I can also use guname (in X-window terminal) to display the info more nicely.

free 

Memory info (in kilobytes).

df -h 

(=disk free) Print disk info about all the filesystems (in human-readable form)

du / -bh | more 

(=disk usage) Print detailed disk usage for each subdirectory starting at the "/" (root) directory (in human legible form).

cat /proc/cpuinfo 

Cpu info--it show the content of the file cpuinfo. Note that the files in the /proc directory are not real files--they are hooks to look at information available to the kernel.

cat /proc/interrupts 

List the interrupts in use.

cat /proc/version 

Linux version and other info

cat /proc/filesystems 

Show the types of filesystems currently in use.

cat /etc/printcap 

Show the setup of printers.

lsmod 

(As root. Use /sbin/lsmod to execute this command when you are a non-root user.) Show the kernel modules currently loaded.

set|more 

Show the current user environment.

echo $PATH 

Show the content of the environment variable "PATH". This command can be used to show other environment variables as well. Use "set" to see the full environment.

dmesg | less 

Print kernel messages (the content of the so-called kernel ring buffer). Press "q" to quit "less". Use less /var/log/dmesg  to see what "dmesg" dumped into this file right after the last system bootup. 

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Essential shortcuts and sanity commands for Linux

<Ctrl><Alt><F1> 

Switch to the first text terminal. Under Linux you can have several (6 in standard setup) terminals opened at the same time.

<Ctrl><Alt><Fn> (n=1..6) 

Switch to the nth text terminal.

tty 

Print the name of the terminal in which you are typing this command.

<Ctrl><Alt><F7> 

Switch to the first GUI terminal (if X-windows is running on this terminal).

 <Ctrl><Alt><Fn> (n=7..12) 

Switch to the nth GUI terminal (if a GUI terminal is running on screen n-1). On default, nothing is running on terminals 

8 to 12, but you can run another server there.

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How to Enable auto shutdown in Transmission with your own script in Linux

Transmission is a simple yet powerful torrent client. It’s available in some of the Linux distributions by default. However, one very important torrent client must have feature is missing in transmission. Now, we are going to add that feature by ourselves with our own shell script. We will make that shell script execute in Transmission after download completes. Let’s first get started by writing a single line shell script for shutdown. Most of you reading this may have used command to restart and shutdown your system. If you don’t know this, yes you can shutdown and restart Linux system from your terminal.

Go to home directory, fire up your text editor, create a file and write a script. I will use vim. Name the file shutdown.sh and add the following code into that file:

sudo -h shutdown now

 

Make the file executable:

chmod +x shutdown.sh

That’s all we would include in the script file.
Now, we will need gksu. If it’s not available in your system by default install it. It’s available in the repo of most Linux distributions. For Debian users:

sudo apt-get install gksu

Drag your Transmission icon in Desktop, right click and under basic heading you will find a command field. Add “gksu command” in that field. Gksu command makes transmission executable as a super user.

Or you can start transmission as a root from the terminal.

sudo transmission

Now, go to Edit> Preferences and under Downloading check on “Call Script when torrent is completed”. Give the path of the script file and that’s it.
However, there’s one hassle in this process. If you are downloading more than one torrent at once, your system will shutdown after completing one download. If you have a way to remove this hassle, share with us as a comment.

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How to format pen drive, USB drive or external drives in Linux By Using Terminal, GUI, or Something else

It’s very easy to format pendrive or any other external hard drives in Linux. The formatting of the drive will erase all the files and directories in your drive which cannot be recovered. So, be careful while formatting the drive. You can use either command line or the graphical way to format the drive. Once, you plug in external drives in the computer, that will map to /dev/sda or /dev/sdb1 etc. The names can vary. We will identify external drive with the name. Follow these simple steps to quickly format the USB drive or pendrive or external drive in Linux:

Format using Terminal:

1. Identifying drive:

Insert the external drive and type the following command in the terminal:
 

dmesg | tail

The word “sdb” between the big brackets is the name of your external device that you just inserted. And the sdb1 is the partition name or generally it is the actual name that we are going to use while formatting  the drive.

2. Unmount the drive:

After we identified our drive, another step is to unmount the external drive. Use the following command:

sudo umount /dev/sdb1

The word “sdb” between the big brackets is the name of your external device that you just inserted. And the sdb1 is the partition name or generally it is the actual name that we are going to use while formatting  the drive.

3. Format the drive:

The drive can be formatted into two formats: EXT3 and FAT32. The EXT3 format only works in Linux machines whereas FAT32 format works in Linux, MAC and PCs.

Format in FAT32 file system:
Use the following command:

sudo mkdosfs -n 'New' -I /dev/sdb1

Format in EXT3 file system:
Use the following command:

sudo mkfs.ext3 -n 'New' -I /dev/sdb1

Wheres, -n ‘New’ gives the name ‘New’ to the formatted drive and -I force the format to work properly. However, they both are not mandatory.

Format using GUI:

If command line scares, you there’s a tool called Gnome format that lets you to format external drives easily. Install gnome format using the following command:
In Ubuntu/Mint:

sudo apt-get install gnome-disk-utility

In Fedora/Cent OS/Red Hat:
Most probably, Gnome Disk Utility is already available in Fedora, Cent OS or Red Hat machines.
If it’s not, type the following command to install.

 sudo yum install gnome-disk-utility

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Create a HTML Document using shell script in Linux

You can actually create a HTML document using the shell script. If you are tired to see the output of your command in the terminal, you can redirect your output to the HTML document. This will allow you to see the output in the web browser like the website. I will assume, you know the basics of HTML. Even if you don’t, it’s very easy to learn. Find some good tutorials and get started.Now, let’s get started by writing a simple shell script with HTML tags in it.

 #!/bin/sh
echo "<htmL>"
echo "<head>"
echo "<title>"
echo "Output in a HTML Document"
echo "</title>"
echo "</head>"
echo "<body>"
cat freshtutorial
echo "</body>"
echo "</html>"

This simple shell script called “test” will display the file called freshtutorial which I have already created in my home directory. Every HTML tags have to be quoted with echo. Redirect the script to HTML document.

sh test >> test.html

Open the test.html and see the output. Instead of creating a output into the terminal itself, it redirects the output to a webpage.

We don’t want to put echo in every HTML tags. This will make our job tedious and dirty. Thus to simplify this we will use “<< “.


#!/bin/bash
display="HELLO WORLD"
cat << noEcho
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE> Cool Bash trick </TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
$display
</BODY>
</HTML>
noEcho


“noEcho” is called token in the above script named “display”. You can assign any token as you want besides the bash keywords. Redirect the script into a webpage issuing the following command:

sh display >> display.html

This all might seem confusion at the beginning. Once you get used to it, it feels amazing. It is a nice cool shell programming trick as well. If you have any confusion, feel free to ask questions as comment.

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Download notepad plus plus 6.3.1

Notepad++ v6.3.1 new features:

1. Fix replacing ‘\n’ bug in both extended and regex mode.
2. Remember folding states for each file in session.
3. Fix a crash bug on uncommenting.
4. Add “Set Updater proxy…” command for setting the proxy of updater.
5. Fix the problem of Window position not saved/restored properly.
6. Add new API NPPM_GETCURRENTVIEW.

Download by your need from below :

Notepad Plus Plus

• Notepad++ Installer : Take this one if you have no idea which one you should take.
• Notepad++ zip package : Don’t want to use installer? Check this one (zip format).
• Notepad++ 7z package : Don’t want to use installer? 7z format.
• Notepad++ minimalist package : No theme, no plugin, no updater, quick download and play directly. 7z format.
• SHA-1 digests for binary packages : Check it if you’re paranoid.
• Notepad++ source code : The source code of current version.

Know me below in comment if anything goes wrong or, link doesn’t work

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How To Install Adobe Photoshop on Ubuntu Linux

Installing Adobe Photoshop on Ubuntu Linux is pretty easy. In this tutorial I will show you how to install Photoshop using Wine.Wine is a translation layer capable of running Windows applications on Linux operating system. Windows programs running in Wine act as native programs would, running without the performance or memory usage penalties of an emulator, with a similar look and feel to other applications on your desktop.
Steps To Install Photoshop in Linux
1. First install Wine in Linux.
2. Then right click on Adobe Photoshop Setup.exe and click Open with Wine Windows program loader.
3. The installation Process will start automatically.
4. That’s it you have successfully installed Adobe Photoshop in Linux.
5. Goto Applications –> Wine –> Programs –> Adobe Photoshop
Thanx everybody.

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World War I (part 2)

The initial stages of the war

Initial strategies

The Schlieffen Plan

Years before 1914, successive chiefs of the German general staff had been foreseeing Germany's having to fight a war on two fronts at the same time, against Russia in the east and France in the west, whose combined strength was numerically superior to the Central Powers'. The elder Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the German general staff from 1858 to 1888, decided that Germany should stay at first on the defensive in the west and deal a crippling blow to Russia's advanced forces before turning to counterattack the French advance. His immediate successor, Alfred von Waldersee, also believed in staying on the defensive in the west. Alfred, Graf von Schlieffen, who served as chief of the German general staff from 1891 to 1905, took a contrary view, and it was the plan he developed that was to guide Germany's initial wartime strategy. Schlieffen realized that on the outbreak of war Russia would need six full weeks to mobilize and assemble its vast armies, given the immense Russian countryside and population, the sparsity of the rail network, and the inefficiency of the government bureaucracy. Taking advantage of this fact, Schlieffen planned to initially adopt a purely defensive posture on the Eastern Front with a minimal number of troops facing Russia's slowly gathering armies. Germany would instead concentrate almost all of its troops in the west against France and would seek to bypass France's frontier fortifications by an offensive through neutral Belgium to the north. This offensive would sweep westward and then southward through the heart of northern France, capturing the capital and knocking that country out of the war within a few weeks. Having gained security in the west, Germany would then shift its troops to the east and destroy the Russian menace with a similar concentration of forces.
By the time of his retirement in 1905, Schlieffen had elaborated a plan for a great wheeling movement of the right (northern) wing of the German armies not only through central Belgium but also, in order to bypass the Belgian fortresses of Liège and Namur in the Meuse Valley, through the southernmost part of the Netherlands. With their right wing entering France near Lille, the Germans would continue to wheel westward until they were near the English Channel; they would then turn southward so as to sever the French armies' line of retreat from France's eastern frontier to the south; and the outermost arc of the wheel would sweep southward west of Paris, in order to avoid exposing the German right flank to a counterstroke launched from the city's outskirts. If the Schlieffen Plan succeeded, Germany's armies would simultaneously encircle the French Army from the north, overrun all of northeastern France, and capture Paris, thus forcing France into a humiliating surrender. The large wheeling movement that the plan envisaged required correspondingly large forces for its execution, in view of the need to keep up the numerical strength of the long-stretched marching line and the need to leave adequate detachments on guard over the Belgian fortresses that had been bypassed. Accordingly, Schlieffen allocated nearly seven-eighths of Germany's available troop strength to the execution of the wheeling movement by the right and centre wings, leaving only one-eighth to face a possible French offensive on Germany's western frontier. Thus, the maximum of strength was allocated to the wheel's edge—that is, to the right. Schlieffen's plan was observed by the younger Helmuth von Moltke, who became chief of the general staff in 1906. Moltke was still in office when war broke out in 1914.

Eastern Front strategy, 1914

Russian Poland, the westernmost part of the Russian Empire, was a thick tongue of land enclosed to the north by East Prussia, to the west by German Poland (Poznania) and by Silesia, and to the south by Austrian Poland (Galicia). It was thus obviously exposed to a two-pronged invasion by the Central Powers; but the Germans, apart from their grand strategy of crushing France before attempting anything against Russia, took note of the poverty of Russian Poland's transportation network and so were disinclined to overrun that vulnerable area prematurely. Austria-Hungary, however, whose frontier with Russia lay much farther east than Germany's and who was moreover afraid of disaffection among the Slav minorities, urged some immediate action to forestall a Russian offensive. Moltke therefore agreed to the Austrian general staff's suggestion for a northeastward thrust by the Austrian Army into Russian Poland—the more readily because it would occupy the Russians during the crisis in France.
The Russians, for their part, would have preferred to concentrate their immediately available forces against Austria and to leave Germany undisturbed until their mobilization should have been completed. The French were anxious to relieve the German pressure against themselves, however, and so they persuaded the Russians to undertake an offensive involving two armies against the Germans in East Prussia simultaneously with one involving four armies against the Austrians in Galicia. The Russian Army, whose proverbial slowness and unwieldy organization dictated a cautious strategy, thus undertook an extra offensive against East Prussia that only an army of high mobility and tight organization could have hoped to execute successfully.

The strategy of the Western Allies, 1914

For some 30 years after 1870, considering the likelihood of another German war, the French high command had subscribed to the strategy of an initial defensive to be followed by a counterstroke against the expected invasion: a great system of fortresses was created on the frontier, but gaps were left in order to “canalize” the German attack. France's alliance with Russia and its entente with Great Britain, however, encouraged a reversal of plan, and after the turn of the century a new school of military thinkers began to argue for an offensive strategy. The advocates of the offensive à l'outrance (“to the utmost”) gained control of the French military machine, and in 1911 a spokesman of this school, General J.-J.-C. Joffre, was designated chief of the general staff. He sponsored the notorious Plan XVII, with which France went to war in 1914.
Plan XVII gravely underestimated the strength that the Germans would deploy against France. Accepting the possibility that the Germans might employ their reserve troops along with regular troops at the outset, Plan XVII estimated the strength of the German Army in the west at a possible maximum of 68 infantry divisions. The Germans actually deployed the equivalent of 83 ¹/₂ divisions, counting Landwehr (reserve troops) and Ersatz (low-grade substitute troops) divisions. But French military opinion ignored or doubted this possibility; and during the war's crucial opening days, when the rival armies were concentrating and moving forward, the French Intelligence counted only Germany's regular divisions in its estimates of the enemy strength. This was a serious miscalculation. Plan XVII also miscalculated the direction and scope of the coming onslaught: though it foresaw an invasion through Belgium, it assumed that the Germans would take the route through the Ardennes, thereby exposing their communications to attack. Basing itself on the idea of an immediate and general offensive, Plan XVII called for a French thrust toward the Saar into Lorraine by the 1st and 2nd armies, while on the French left (the north) the 3rd and 5th armies, facing Metz and the Ardennes, respectively, stood ready either to launch an offensive between Metz and Thionville or to strike from the north at the flank of any German drive through the Ardennes. When war broke out, it was taken for granted that the small British Expeditionary Force (BEF) under Sir John French should be used as an adjunct to France's forces, more or less as the French might see fit. It is clearly evident that the French were oblivious to the gigantic German offensive that was being aimed at their left (northern) wing.

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World War I (part 1)

Introduction

 An international conflict that in 1914–18 embroiled most of the nations of Europe along with Russia, the United States, the Middle East, and other regions. The war pitted the Central Powers—mainly Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey—against the Allies—mainly France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, Japan, and, from 1917, the United States. It ended with the defeat of the Central Powers. The war was virtually unprecedented in the slaughter, carnage, and destruction it caused.
World War I was one of the great watersheds of 20th-century geopolitical history. It led to the fall of four great imperial dynasties (in Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey), resulted in the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and, in its destabilization of European society, laid the groundwork for World War II.

The outbreak of war

With Serbia already much aggrandized by the two Balkan Wars (1912–13, 1913), Serbian nationalists turned their attention back to the idea of “liberating” the South Slavs of Austria-Hungary. Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević, head of Serbia's military intelligence, was also, under the alias “Apis,” head of the secret society Union or Death, pledged to the pursuit of this pan-Serbian ambition. Believing that the Serbs' cause would be served by the death of the Austrian archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir presumptive to the Austrian emperor Francis Joseph, and learning that the Archduke was about to visit Bosnia on a tour of military inspection, Apis plotted his assassination. Nikola Pašić, the Serbian prime minister and an enemy of Apis, heard of the plot and warned the Austrian government of it, but his message was too cautiously worded to be understood.

Austrian archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, riding in an open carriage at Sarajevo …

At 11:15 AM, on June 28, 1914, in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, Francis Ferdinand and his morganatic wife, Sophie, duchess of Hohenberg, were shot dead by a Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Princip.The chief of the Austro-Hungarian general staff, Franz, Graf Conrad von Hötzendorf, and the foreign minister, Leopold, Graf von Berchtold, saw the crime as the occasion for measures to humiliate Serbia and so to enhance Austria-Hungary's prestige in the Balkans; and Conrad had already (October 1913) been assured by William II of Germany's support if Austria-Hungary should start a preventive war against Serbia. This assurance was confirmed in the week following the assassination, before William, on July 6, set off upon his annual cruise to the North Cape, off Norway.
The Austrians decided to present an unacceptable ultimatum to Serbia and then to declare war, relying on Germany to deter Russia from intervention. Though the terms of the ultimatum were finally approved on July 19, its delivery was postponed to the evening of July 23, since by that time the French president, Raymond Poincaré, and his premier, René Viviani, who had set off on a state visit to Russia on July 15, would be on their way home and therefore unable to concert an immediate reaction with their Russian allies. When the delivery was announced, on July 24, Russia declared that Austria-Hungary must not be allowed to crush Serbia.
Serbia replied to the ultimatum on July 25, accepting most of its demands but protesting against two of them, namely, that Serbian officials (unnamed) should be dismissed at Austria-Hungary's behest and that Austro-Hungarian officials should take part, on Serbian soil, in proceedings against organizations hostile to Austria-Hungary. Though Serbia offered to submit the issue to international arbitration, Austria-Hungary promptly severed diplomatic relations and ordered partial mobilization.
Home from his cruise on July 27, William learned on July 28 how Serbia had replied to the ultimatum. At once he instructed the German Foreign Office to tell Austria-Hungary that there was no longer any justification for war and that it should content itself with a temporary occupation of Belgrade. But, meanwhile, the German Foreign Office had been giving such encouragement to Berchtold that already on July 27 he had persuaded Francis Joseph to authorize war against Serbia. War was, in fact, declared on July 28, and Austro-Hungarian artillery began to bombard Belgrade the next day. Russia then ordered partial mobilization against Austria-Hungary; and on July 30, when Austria-Hungary was riposting conventionally with an order of mobilization on its Russian frontier, Russia ordered general mobilization. Germany, which since July 28 had still been hoping, in disregard of earlier warning hints from Great Britain, that Austria-Hungary's war against Serbia could be “localized” to the Balkans, was now disillusioned insofar as eastern Europe was concerned. On July 31 Germany sent a 24-hour ultimatum requiring Russia to halt its mobilization and an 18-hour ultimatum requiring France to promise neutrality in the event of war between Russia and Germany.
Both Russia and France predictably ignored these demands. On August 1, Germany ordered general mobilization and declared war against Russia, and France likewise ordered general mobilization. The next day, Germany sent troops into Luxembourg and demanded from Belgium free passage for German troops across its neutral territory. On August 3 Germany declared war against France.
In the night of August 3–4 German forces invaded Belgium. Thereupon, Great Britain, which had no concern with Serbia and no express obligation to fight either for Russia or for France but was expressly committed to defend Belgium, on August 4 declared war against Germany.
Austria-Hungary declared war against Russia on August 5; Serbia against Germany on August 6; Montenegro against Austria-Hungary on August 7 and against Germany on August 12; France and Great Britain against Austria-Hungary on August 10 and on August 12, respectively; Japan against Germany on August 23; Austria-Hungary against Japan on August 25 and against Belgium on August 28.
Romania had renewed its secret anti-Russian alliance of 1883 with the Central Powers on Feb. 26, 1914, but now chose to remain neutral. Italy had confirmed the Triple Alliance on Dec. 7, 1912, but could now propound formal arguments for disregarding it: first, Italy was not obliged to support its allies in a war of aggression; second, the original treaty of 1882 had stated expressly that the alliance was not against England.
On Sept. 5, 1914, Russia, France, and Great Britain concluded the Treaty of London, each promising not to make a separate peace with the Central Powers. Thenceforth, they could be called the Allied, or Entente, Powers, or simply the Allies.
The outbreak of war in August 1914 was generally greeted with confidence and jubilation by the peoples of Europe, among whom it inspired a wave of patriotic feeling and celebration. Few people imagined how long or how disastrous a war between the great nations of Europe could be, and most believed that their country's side would be victorious within a matter of months. The war was welcomed either patriotically, as a defensive one imposed by national necessity, or idealistically, as one for upholding right against might, the sanctity of treaties, and international morality.

Technology of war in 1914

The planning and conduct of war in 1914 were crucially influenced by the invention of new weapons and the improvement of existing types since the Franco-German War of 1870–71. The chief developments of the intervening period had been the machine gun and the rapid-fire field artillery gun. The modern machine gun, which had been developed in the 1880s and '90s, was a reliable belt-fed gun capable of sustained rates of extremely rapid fire; it could fire 600 bullets per minute with a range of more than 1,000 yards (900 metres). In the realm of field artillery, the period leading up to the war saw the introduction of improved breech-loading mechanisms and brakes. Without a brake or recoil mechanism, a gun lurched out of position during firing and had to be re-aimed after each round. The new improvements were epitomized in the French 75-millimetre field gun; it remained motionless during firing, and it was not necessary to readjust the aim in order to bring sustained fire on a target. Machine guns and rapid-firing artillery, when used in combination with trenches and barbed-wire emplacements, gave a decided advantage to the defense, since these weapons' rapid and sustained firepower could decimate a frontal assault by either infantry or cavalry.

There was a considerable disparity in 1914 between the deadly effectiveness of modern armaments and the doctrinal teachings of some armies. The South African War and the Russo-Japanese War had revealed the futility of frontal infantry or cavalry attacks on prepared positions when unaccompanied by surprise, but few military leaders foresaw that the machine gun and the rapid-firing field gun would force armies into trenches in order to survive. Instead, war was looked upon by many leaders in 1914 as a contest of national wills, spirit, and courage. A prime example of this attitude was the French Army, which was dominated by the doctrine of the offensive. French military doctrine called for headlong bayonet charges of French infantrymen against the German rifles, machine guns, and artillery. German military thinking, under the influence of Alfred, Graf von Schlieffen, sought, unlike the French, to avoid frontal assaults but rather to achieve an early decision by deep flanking attacks; and at the same time to make use of reserve divisions alongside regular formations from the outset of war. The Germans paid greater attention to training their officers in defensive tactics using machine guns, barbed wire, and fortifications.

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War (part 3)

The control of war

The international environment within which states and the people within them operate is regarded by many theorists as the major factor determining the occurrence and nature of wars. War remains possible as long as individual states seek to ensure self-preservation and promote their individual interests and—in the absence of a reliable international agency to control the actions of other states—rely on their own efforts. It is no accident that reforms of the international system figure prominently in many prescriptions for the prevention of war. Whereas the reform of human propensities or of the state is bound to be a long drawn-out affair if it is at all possible, relatively straightforward partial reforms of the international system may produce significant restraints upon resorting to war, and a thorough reform could make war impossible.
Some theorists, being more optimistic about the nature of states, concentrate upon the removal of the fear and suspicion of other states, which is characteristic of the present as well as of all historical political systems; others, being less optimistic, think mainly of possible controls and restraints upon the behaviour of states. The underlying reasoning of both parties is generally similar. If individual states in competitive situations are governed by a short-term conception of their interests, acute conflicts between them will occur and will show a strong tendency to escalate. Thus, one state erects a tariff barrier to protect its industry against the competition of a trade partner, and the partner retaliates, the retaliatory interaction being repeated until the two countries find themselves in a trade war. Armaments races show a similar tendency to escalate, particularly so in an age of rapid technological change. The economic and scientific efforts necessary to avoid falling behind rivals in the invention and development of rapidly improving weapons of mass destruction have already reached unprecedented heights. And yet, neither trade wars nor arms races necessarily end in violent conflict. There seem to be operating some restraining and inhibiting factors that prevent an automatic escalation. Much of the theory of war concerns itself with the identification, improvement, and development of these restraining factors.

Diplomacy

The outcome of starkly competitive behaviour leading to wars is clearly against the interests of states, and it is rational for them to seek more desirable outcomes. If competitive behaviour is dangerous, theorists seek for alternative methods of cooperative behaviour that would not jeopardize the interests of the state through exposing it to the possibly less cooperative behaviour of others. Some theorists concentrate upon improving the rationality of the decision making of individual states through a better understanding of the international environment, through eliminating misperceptions and irrational fears, and through making clear the full possible costs of engaging in war and the full destructiveness of an all-out war, possible in our age.
The relative paucity of wars and their limited nature throughout the century following the Napoleonic Wars (1815–1914) stirred great theoretical interest in the nature of the balance-of-power system of that period—that is, in the process by which the power of competing groups of states tended toward a condition of equilibrium. Contributing to the successful operation of the balance-of-power system of the 19th century were relatively slow technological change, great diversionary opportunities for industrial and colonial expansion, and the ideological and cultural homogeneity of Europe. Pursuit of a balance of power is a way of conducting foreign policy that is perhaps less prone to war than other types of policy because, instead of indiscriminately increasing their power, states increase it only moderately, so as not to provoke others; and instead of joining the strongest, they join the weaker side in order to ensure balance. States in a balance-of-power system must, however, be ready to abide by constraints upon their behaviour in order to ensure stability of the system.
The application to international relations of a branch of mathematics—game theory—that analyzes the strategy of conflict situations has provided a new tool of analysis. In state interaction, as in any game situation, one side's strategy generally depends upon that side's expectations of the other side's strategy. If all sides in a game are to maximize their chances of a satisfactory outcome, it is necessary that some rational rules of behaviour be conceptualized and agreed upon, and this idea of a set of rational rules can be applied to competing states in the international system. Game theorists distinguish antagonistic situations called zero-sum games, in which one state's gain can be only at the expense of another state because the “payoff” is fixed. Even then a mutually acceptable distribution of gains can be rationally reached on the basis of the “minimax” principle—the party in a position of advantage satisfies itself with the minimum acceptable gain because it realizes that the other party, in a position of disadvantage, would yield on the basis of its possible minimum loss but would violently oppose a distribution even more to its detriment. In other situations, called non-zero-sum games, the payoff is not constant but can be increased by a cooperative approach; the gain of one participant is not at the cost of another. The contestants, however, have to agree about the distribution of the gain, which is the product of their cooperation.
The theory of games is the foundation of theories of bargaining that analyze the behaviour of individual states in interaction. Diplomacy based upon such theories is less likely to lead to war. Policymakers pursuing such strategies will conduct conflicts of the zero-sum type so that war is avoided. More than that, with some skill, such situations can be transformed into the non-zero-sum type by introducing additional benefits accruing from cooperation in other interactions and also, more generally, by eliminating the likelihood of war and, consequently, by reducing the costs of preparing for one.

Regional integration

Because wars within states have been eliminated through the establishment of suitable political structures, such as central governments that hold a monopoly of coercive power, many theories concentrate upon the establishment of parallel structures within the international context. Regional integration (cooperation in economic, social, and political affairs, as, for example, within the European Union) and the establishment of security communities (such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) have made much greater advances than attempts at the reform of the entire global international system.
Because conflicts among neighbours tend to be frequent, regional integration is an important advance toward reducing the incidence of war. Even if it were to become generally successful, however, regional integration would simply shift the problem of war to a different level: there would be fewer possibilities of war because intraregional conflicts would be contained, but interregional conflicts could still give rise to wars of much greater scope and severity. The phenomenon of war must, therefore, be analyzed at the universal level.

International law

Some of the most influential thinking about war and the international system has come from specialists in international law. All of them postulate that there exists an international society of states that accepts the binding force of some norms of international behaviour. These norms are referred to as international law, although they differ fundamentally from municipal law because no sovereign exists who can enforce them. Most international lawyers realistically accept that international law is, consequently, among rather than above states. It is, according to legal doctrine, binding on states but unenforceable.
International law concerns itself largely with two aspects of war: its legality and its regulation. As far as the legality of war is concerned, there arose in the 20th century a general consensus among states, expressed in several international treaties, including the Covenant of the League of Nations, the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, and the Charter of the United Nations, that resort to armed force, except in certain circumstances such as self-defense, is illegal. Such a legalistic approach to the prevention of war, however, remains futile in the absence of a means of enforcement. The enforcement provisions of the United Nations Charter, which entail the application of military and economic sanctions, have never been applied successfully, owing to political disagreement among the major powers. This underlines the fact that legal norms, to be effective, must reflect an underlying political reality.

The United Nations

The United Nations is charged with the maintenance of international peace and security. The several approaches to peace outlined in its Charter and developed in its practice are based upon and clearly reflect the cumulative development of the relevant theories of war.
Drawing heavily upon the experience of the League of Nations, the Charter develops three interrelated approaches: first, pacific settlement of disputes, which would leave nations with nothing to fight about; second, collective security, which would confront aggressors with too much to fight against; and third, disarmament, which would deprive them of anything substantial with which to fight.

Peaceful settlement of disputes

Pacific settlement of disputes is based upon the assumption that war is primarily a technique for settling disputes, although it can, of course, also serve other purposes, such as allaying fears and seeking status. Further assumptions are that war frequently comes about because of the unawareness of decision makers of the possibility of settling disputes peacefully to the mutual advantage of both sides—an unawareness due to mere ignorance, pride, lack of imagination, or selfish and cynical leadership. It is thus possible that international organizations can contribute to the prevention of wars by devising and institutionalizing alternative, peaceful techniques for the settlement of disputes and by persuading the states to use them.
The scope of this approach is limited, for states are notoriously reluctant to abide by impartial findings on matters they regard as being of vital importance. Hence, what the procedures really offer is a means of slowing down the progression of a dispute toward war, giving reason a chance to prevail.

Collective security

Collective security is an approach to peace involving an agreement by which states agree to take collective action against any state defined as an aggressor. Leaving aside the problems of settling disputes or enforcing law or satisfying justice, it concentrates upon forestalling violence by bringing to bear an overwhelmingly superior international force against any aggressor. Although collective security, in somewhat different forms, played a prominent part in the League of Nations Covenant and is embodied in the United Nations Charter, it has completely failed in both cases. Failing an international government capable of ultimately determining the issues, nations have not managed to agree on an unequivocal definition of aggression, have not in practice accepted the principle that aggression must be acted against independently of the identity of the perpetrator, and, therefore, have not established the international collective security force envisaged in the Charter.

Disarmament

 Disarmament and limitation of armaments are based upon the theory that states are inclined to strive for dominance in arms over any potential rivals and that this leads to arms races that tend to end in war. The major besetting sin of this theory is that it often tends to confuse cause with effect. Although arms races develop momentum of their own, they are themselves the result of political tensions leading to war. In short, it is the tensions that cause war, not the arms races. To hold otherwise is to mistake a symptom for a cause. Hence, reducing the levels of armaments does not necessarily reduce these tensions. Furthermore, it is the instability of strategic balances, rather than their level, that leads to war; agreements about disarmament or limitation of armaments may easily disturb the existing precarious balance and, therefore, be actually conducive to war.

Limiting conflict

As these major approaches to peace envisaged in its Charter have not proved very fruitful, the United Nations has developed two new procedures aiming at the limitation of wars. First, “preventive diplomacy,” largely comprising the diplomatic initiatives of the secretary-general and the stationing of peacekeeping forces, has served to contain local conflicts and to prevent escalation, especially the involvement of the superpowers. Second, although the General Assembly's recommendations have no legal binding force, they have become increasingly influential, for the assembly has become an important agency for what has been called the collective legitimization of state policies. Resort to war becomes more costly when a state is faced with the prospects of a collective condemnation. This new restraint upon war does not, however, act upon conflicts that the assembly may favourably regard as wars of colonial liberation. Nor could the assembly's disapproval be relied upon to deter states from waging war in pursuit of an interest they deemed to be truly vital.

World government

Both the shortcomings and the limited practicability of all the approaches to the elimination of war through the reform of the international system have driven many thinkers to accept the idea that war can only be abolished by a full-scale world government. No midway solution between the relative anarchy of independent, individual states and a world government with the full paraphernalia of legislative powers and of an overwhelming military force would provide a sufficiently stable international framework for the nations to feel that wars would not break out and thus stop them from behaviour that is often conducive to wars. In an age faced with the danger of a war escalating into a general extermination of mankind, the central importance of preserving peace is obvious and is generally accepted. But here the thinkers divide. Some press on from this analysis to the logical conclusion that mankind must and, therefore, will establish a world government, and they advance ideas on how best to proceed in this direction. Others regard the world government as completely utopian, no matter how logical and desirable it may be. Yet, in terms of actual policies, the adherents of the two schools do not necessarily divide. Whether they do or do not believe that world government is attainable, they agree that the complex phenomenon of war represents a potential calamity of such a magnitude that all theorists must endeavour to understand it and to apply their understanding to the prevention and mitigation of war with all the means at their disposal.

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War (part 2)

The Causes of War

Contemporary theories of the causes of war divide roughly into two major schools. One attributes war to certain innate biological and psychological factors or drives, the other attributes it to certain social relations and institutions. Both schools include optimists and pessimists concerning the preventability of war.

Biological theories

Theories centring upon man's innate drives are developed by ethologists, who draw analogies from animal behaviour, and also by psychologists and psychoanalysts.

Ethology

Ethologists start with the persuasive argument that study of animal warfare may contribute toward an understanding of war as employed by man. The behaviour of monkeys and apes in captivity and the behaviour of young children, for example, show basic similarities. In both cases it is possible to observe that aggressive behaviour usually arises from several drives: rivalry for possession, the intrusion of a stranger, or frustration of an activity. The major conflict situations leading to aggression among animals, especially those concerning access of males to females and control of a territory for feeding and breeding, are usually associated with patterns of dominance.
The analogies of animal to human behaviour drawn by many ethologists, however, are severely questioned by their more restrained colleagues as well as by many social scientists. The term “aggression,” for example, is imprecisely and inconsistently used, often referring merely to the largely symbolic behaviour of animals involving such signals as grimaces.
Observed animal behaviour can be regarded as a possible important source of inspiration for hypotheses, but these must then be checked through the study of actual human behaviour. As this has not yet been adequately done, the hypotheses advanced have little foundation and are merely interesting ideas to be investigated. Further, human behaviour is not fixed to the extent that animal behaviour is, partly because man rapidly evolves different patterns of behaviour in response to environmental factors, such as geography, climate, and contact with other social groups. The variety of these behaviour patterns is such that they can be used on both sides of an argument concerning, for example, whether or not men have an innate tendency to be aggressive.
Two particularly interesting subjects studied by ethologists are the effects of overcrowding on animals and animal behaviour regarding territory. The study of overcrowding is incomplete, and the findings that normal behaviour patterns tend to break down in such conditions and that aggressive behaviour often becomes prominent are subject to the qualification that animal and human reactions to overcrowding may be different. Ethologists have also advanced plausible hypotheses concerning biological means of population control through reduced fertility that occurs when animal populations increase beyond the capacity of their environment. Whether such biological control mechanisms operate in human society, however, requires further investigation.
Findings concerning the “territorial imperative” in animals—that is, the demarcation and defense against intrusion of a fixed area for feeding and breeding—are even more subject to qualification when an analogy is drawn from them to human behaviour. The analogy between an animal territory and a territorial state is obviously extremely tenuous. In nature the territories of members of a species differ in extent but usually seem to be provided with adequate resources, and use of force in their defense is rarely necessary, as the customary menacing signals generally lead to the withdrawal of potential rivals. This scarcely compares with the sometimes catastrophic defense of the territory of a national state.

Psychology

One school of theorists has postulated that the major causes of war can be found in man's psychological nature. Such psychological approaches range from very general, often merely intuitive assertions regarding human nature to complex analyses utilizing the concepts and techniques of modern psychology. The former category includes a wide range of ethical and philosophical teaching and insights, including the works of such figures as St. Augustine and the 17th-century Dutch philosopher Spinoza.
Modern writers utilizing psychological approaches emphasize the significance of psychological maladjustments or complexes and of false, stereotyped images held by decision makers of other countries and their leaders. Some psychologists posit an innate aggressiveness in man. Others concentrate upon public opinion and its influence, particularly in times of tension. Others stress the importance of decision makers and the need for their careful selection and training. Most believe that an improved social adjustment of individuals would decrease frustration, insecurity, and fear and would reduce the likelihood of war. All of them believe in the importance of research and education. Still, the limitations of such approaches derive from their very generality. Also, whether the psychological premises are optimistic or pessimistic about the nature of man, one cannot ignore the impact upon human behaviour of social and political institutions that give man the opportunities to exercise his good or evil propensities and to impose restraints upon him.

Social theories

Whereas psychological explanations of war contain much that seems to be valid, they are insufficient because man behaves differently in different social contexts. Hence, many thinkers have sought their explanations in these contexts, focusing either on the internal organization of states or on the international system within which these operate. The most voluminous and influential theories attributing war to the nature of the state fall into two broad streams, which can be loosely called liberal and socialist.

 Liberal analyses

The early or classical liberals of the 18th and 19th centuries distinguished three basic elements in their analysis—individuals, society, and the state—and regarded the state as the outcome of the interaction of the former two. They assumed that society is self-regulating and that the socioeconomic system is able to run smoothly with little interference from the government. Economy, decentralization, and freedom from governmental control were the classical liberal's main concerns, as shown particularly clearly in the writings of John Stuart Mill. They accepted the necessity of maintaining defense but postulated the existence of a basic harmony of interests among states, which would minimize the incidence of wars. Economic cooperation based upon an international division of labour and upon free trade would be in the interests of everybody—commerce would be the great panacea, the rational substitute for war.
In explanation of wars that did occur, however, liberals emphasized a variety of factors. First, they focused on autocratic governments, which were presumed to wage war against the wishes of peacefully inclined people. It thus became a major tenet of liberal political philosophy that war could be eliminated by introducing universal suffrage because the people would surely vote out of office any belligerently inclined government. From the early American pamphleteer Thomas Paine onward, a major school of liberals supported republicanism and stressed the peaceful impact of public opinion. Although they could not agree about actual policies, they stressed certain general ideas concerning relations between states, paralleling their laissez-faire ideas of the internal organization of the state with ideas of a minimum amount of international organization, use of force strictly limited to repelling aggression, the importance of public opinion and of democratically elected governments, and rational resolution of conflicts and disputes. Later in the course of the 19th century, however, and especially after World War I, liberals began to accept the conclusion that an unregulated international society did not automatically tend toward peace and advocated international organization as a corrective.

Socialist analyses

Whereas liberals concentrated on political structures, regarding them as of primary importance in determining the propensity of states to engage in war, socialists turned to the socioeconomic system of states as the primary factor. Early in the 20th century the two streams did to some extent converge, as evidenced by the fact that the English radical liberal John Hobson explained wars in terms later adopted by Lenin.
Karl Marx attributed war not to the behaviour of states but to the class structure of society. To him wars occurred not as an often voluntary instrument of state policy but as the result of a clash of social forces. To Marx the state was merely a political superstructure; the primary, determining factor lies in the capitalist mode of production, which leads to the development of two antagonistic classes: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie controls governmental machinery in its own interests. In its international relations, the capitalist state engages in wars because it is driven by the dynamism of its system—the constantly growing need for raw materials, markets, and supplies of cheap labour. The only way to avoid war is to remove its basic cause, by replacing capitalism with socialism, thus abolishing both class struggle and states. The Marxist doctrine, however, gave no clear guidance about the interim period before the millennium is reached; and the international solidarity of the proletariat proved a myth when war broke out in 1914, facing the European Social Democratic parties with the problem of adopting an attitude to the outbreak of the war. The Second International of working-class parties had repeatedly passed resolutions urging the working classes to bring pressure upon their respective governments to prevent war, but, once war had broken out, each individual party chose to regard it as defensive for its own state and to participate in the war effort. This was explained by Lenin as being due to a split in the organization of the proletariat that could be overcome only through the activity of a rigidly organized revolutionary vanguard.
Socialists in the West turned increasingly, although in varying degrees, to revisionist interpretations of Marxism and returned to their attempts to revise socioeconomic structures through evolutionary constitutional processes, seeing this as the only possible means of preventing wars. In the Soviet Union the socialist theory of war changed as the new communist regime responded to changes in circumstances. Soviet theoreticians distinguished three major types of war: between capitalist states, between capitalist and socialist states, and colonial wars of liberation. The internecine wars among capitalist states were supposed to arise from capitalist competition and imperialist rivalries, such as those that led to the two world wars. They were desirable, for they weakened the capitalist camp. A war between capitalist and socialist states was one that clearly expressed the basic principle of class struggle and was, therefore, one for which the socialist states must prepare. Finally, wars of colonial liberation could be expected between subjugated people and their colonial masters.
The weakness of the theory was that the two major expected types of war, the intracapitalist and the capitalist-socialist, did not materialize as frequently as Soviet theoreticians had predicted. Further, the theory failed to adequately analyze the situation in the Soviet Union and in the socialist camp. Even in communist countries, nationalism seems to have proved more powerful than socialism: “national liberation” movements appeared and had to be forcibly subdued in the Soviet Union, despite its communist regime. Also, war between socialist states was not unthinkable, as the doctrine indicated: only the colossal preponderance of Soviet forces prevented a full-scale war in 1956 against Hungary and in 1968 against Czechoslovakia; war between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China was a serious possibility for two decades after the Sino-Soviet split in 1962; and armed conflict erupted between China and Vietnam after the latter country became the most powerful in Southeast Asia. Finally, the theory did not provide for wars of liberation against socialist states, such as that conducted by the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet Union from 1979 to 1989.

 Nationalism

Many theories claim or imply that wars result ultimately from the allegiance of men to nations and from the intimate connection between the nation and a state. This link between the nation and the state is firmly established by the doctrine of national self-determination, which has become in the eyes of many the major basis of the legitimacy of states and the major factor in their establishment and breakup. It was the principle on which the political boundaries of eastern Europe and the Balkans were arranged after World War I and became the principal slogan of the anticolonial movement of the 20th century, finding expression in Chapter I, article 1, of the Charter of the United Nations in the objective of “self-determination of peoples,” as well as in the more specific provisions of Chapters XI and XII. It is this intimate link between nationalism and statehood that renders them both so dangerous. The rulers of a state are ultimately governed in their behaviour by what is loosely summed up as the “national interest,” which occasionally clashes directly with the national interests of other states.
The ideal of the nation-state is never fully achieved. In no historical case does one find all members of a particular nation gathered within one state's boundaries. Conversely, many states contain sizable national minorities. This lack of full correlation has frequently given rise to dangerous tensions that can ultimately lead to war. A government inspired by nationalism may conduct a policy aiming at the assimilation of national minorities, as was the general tendency of central and eastern European governments in the interwar period; it may also attempt to reunite the members of the nation living outside its boundaries, as Adolf Hitler did. National groups that are not in control of a state may feel dissatisfied with its regime and claim self-determination in a separate state, as demonstrated in the attempt to carve Biafra out of Nigeria and the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan.
There is no rational basis for deciding on the extent to which the self-determination principle should be applied in allowing national minorities to break away. As a rule, the majority group violently opposes the breakaway movement. Violent conflicts can ensue and, through foreign involvement, turn into international wars. No suitable method has been found for divorcing nationalism from the state and for meeting national demands through adequate social and cultural provisions within a larger unit. Such an attempt in the Austro-Hungarian Empire before its dissolution in World War I failed. Even the Soviet Union was not permanently successful in containing its large proportion of national minorities.
Nationalism not only induces wars but, through the severity of its influence, makes compromise and acceptance of defeat more difficult. It thus tends to prolong the duration and increase the severity of wars. Possibly, however, this is the characteristic only of new, immature nationalisms, for nationalism has ceased to be a major cause of conflict and war among the nations of western Europe.
Nationalism is but one form of ideology: in all ages people seem to develop beliefs and try to proselytize others. Even within particular ideological groups, schisms result in conflicts as violent as those between totally opposed creeds, and heretics are often regarded as more dangerous and hostile than opponents. As long as individual states can identify themselves with explosive differences in beliefs, the probability of a war between states is increased, and its intensity is likely to be greater.

 Special-interest groups

Whereas some theories of war regard the state as an undifferentiated whole and generalize about its behaviour, other theorists are more sociologically oriented and focus on the roles played within the state by various special-interest groups.
A distinction is made by these theorists between the great mass of people and those groupings directly involved or influential with government. The people, about whose attitudes adequate knowledge is lacking, are generally assumed to be taken up with their daily lives and to be in favour of peace. The influential groups, who are directly involved in external affairs and, hence, in wars, are the main subject of analysis. Warlike governments dragging peace-loving people into international conflict is a recurrent theme of both liberal and socialist analyses of war. Some writers have gone to the length of postulating a continuous conspiracy of the rulers against the ruled that can be traced to prehistoric times, when priests and warriors combined in the first state structures. Most writers, however, narrow the field and seek an answer to the question of why some governments are more prone to engage in war than others, and they generally find the answer in the influence of important interest groups that pursue particular and selfish ends.
The chief and most obvious of such groups is the military. Military prowess was a major qualification for political leadership in primitive societies; the search for military glory as well as for the spoils of victory seems to have been one of the major motivations for war. Once the military function became differentiated and separated from civilian ones, a tension between the two became one of the most important issues of politics. The plausible view has generally been held that the military strive for war, in which they attain greater resources and can satisfy their status seeking and, sometimes, also an aspiration for direct and full political power. In peacetime the military are obviously less important, are denied resources, and are less likely to influence or attain political power directly. At the same time, a second, although usually subsidiary, consideration of the military as a causal agent in war holds that an officer corps is directly responsible for any fighting and is thus more aware of its potential dangers for its members and for the state as well. Although intent on keeping the state in a high state of preparedness, the military may be more cautious than civilians about engaging in war. It is often held, however, that increased military preparedness may result in increased tensions and thus indirectly lead to the outbreak of war.
Closely allied are theories about groups that profit from wars economically—capitalists and the financiers, especially those involved in industries catering to war. All these play a central part as the villains of the piece in socialist and liberal theories of war, and even those not subscribing to such theories do not deny the importance of military-industrial complexes in countries in which large sectors of the economy specialize in war supplies. But, although industrialists in all the technologically advanced systems are undoubtedly influential in determining such factors as the level of armaments to be maintained, it is difficult to assume that their influence is or could be decisive when actual questions concerning war or peace are being decided by politicians.
Finally, some scientists and technologists constitute a new, much smaller, but important group with special interests in war. To some extent one can generalize about them, although the group is heterogeneous, embracing as it does nuclear scientists, space researchers, biologists and geneticists, chemists, and engineers. If they are involved in defense work, they all share the interest of the military in securing more resources for their research: without their military applications, for example, neither nuclear nor space research would have gone ahead nearly as fast as it has. War, however, does not enhance the status and standing of scientists; on the contrary, they come under the close control of the military. They also usually have peaceful alternatives to military research, although these may not be very satisfactory or ample. Consequently, although modern war technology depends heavily upon scientists and although many of them are employed by governments in work directly or indirectly concerned with this technology, scientists as a group are far from being wedded to war. On the contrary, many of them are deeply concerned with the mass destruction made possible by science and participate in international pacifist movements.

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