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. ...