Why we go to war, and have we lost its meaning: historian Margaret MacMillan

Symons Medal winner Margaret MacMillan will present her lecture on how the First World War shaped Canada on Friday in Charlottetown.

Born in Canada, MacMillan is a history professor at the University of Oxford, and author of a number of books on the First World War.

Earlier in the week, she talked to CBC Island Morning host Mitch Cormier about the nature of war in the 21st century. This interview has been edited for length.

Have we lost the meaning of the word 'war?'

Most of us have never seen a war or been near a war, and I think we tend not to think about it very much. We commemorate wars occasionally but I think we see, often, war as something that happens elsewhere, to other people, and is not part of normal human society.

We've taken the edge off the word. We war on everything, high prices, we war on obesity.

I once saw a book My War on my Husband's Cholesterol.

Perhaps by using the language of war so freely we forget that war is something that involves violence. It's an act of organized violence to get other people to do what you want or to prevent them from doing something to you. When you get right down to it war is about violence and killing, but perhaps we tend, by using the language so freely, to forget that.

Why do we need to go to war?

It does look like war goes back a very long way in human society.

The three different reasons for war, one, you want to take something from someone else. The second reason for war is fear. You're afraid if you don't fight something awful is going to happen to you.

There's a third category of reasons for war, and that is ideology, whether it's religious ideology or political ideology. You see yourself as fighting to make a different world or a better world and those who oppose you see themselves as wanting to prevent that. And we do often have disputes in societies which we settle without war and we've spent a lot of time trying to think about how to do that, but war remains an option.

Do you have fears as we see these waves of nationalism again?

I think the language is dangerous. Not all nationalism is bad. You can be proud of your country, you can say it's a pretty good country, I like it. But I think what is dangerous is beginning to say my people is better than any other people.

That's when you get these dreadful wars because what that kind of nationalism does is demonize and dehumanize people who aren't like you, so it becomes OK to kill them. So often, and we saw it in the 1920s and 1930s, when people begin to talk in these terms they begin to talk about those who aren't like them as vermin or lice or poison. In other words they're not really human and they don't deserve to be treated as humans. I think we're getting a bit of that language again today.

Could that push us to another world conflict?

I don't think it will push us to another world conflict but I think it will make it more probable.

We have to hope that the balance will be in favour of those forces for peace and for stability.

Why is it that countries define themselves by the way that they've used lethal might?

Even in our peaceable societies in North America we still have a fascination, a lot of us, with military things. If you go into a book store and look for books on war there are an awful lot.

Vimy has come to symbolize Canadians working together to do something, but there are many other things we could commemorate. But it's true in most societies great victories tend to draw our attention, perhaps because they are so dramatic and seem clear cut. Someone wins and someone loses.

Why do we commemorate that and not all the great things that we've given to the world?

It is something you can focus on. It's a single glorious episode. It's curious to me that we don't concentrate on some of the other great Canadian victories.

Is world peace something we should stop chasing?

I don't think we should stop chasing it at all.

When you think of the misery that is being inflicted on populations, civilian populations, in places like Somalia, in places like Yemen, in places like Afghanistan, those wars are enormously costly. I think we have to continue.

Where do you see the future of war headed?

Sometimes things as simple as machetes are used in some of the wars that are going on.

But I also see the possibility of a much more major war, using much more high-tech weapons between big states.

I find it worrying that in both China and the United States you get military planners and others talking about the possibility of war between those two countries. It seems to me once you talk about possibilities you get, in a funny way, psychologically prepared to accept that it might actually happen.

The Symons lecture is at 12:30 AT at the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown. The event itself is sold out, but will be live streamed on the centre's YouTube channel.

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