Page 1 17 42 War is Peace A Review of Orwell s Wartime Vision in Nineteen Eighty Four and its Implications for the Future of Warfare Over the past century the global landscape of war 1 has changed profoundly whether by the advent of trench warfare toxic gases or most strikingly nuclear weapons Marred by two world wars and a series of international conflicts associated with the deadlock test of wills that was the Cold War the future of the geopolitical landscape was far from certain After World War II George Orwell wrote the quintessential dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty Four which painted a dark world that drew disturbing caricatures of the great world powers from this latest war Looking back we have passed that title year but the tradition of Orwell s predictions have stayed alive within our culture In the novel war is a critical element of the INGSOC society the government is in a constant state of war wherein the three major powers fight a limited war with minimal loss of life and minimal territorial gain Current predictions of the future of global warfare usually focus on the decentralization of conflicts against enemies like terrorists or the implications of a MAD 2 or whether an equilibrium peace state will eventually be reached We tacitly assume that our goal state is a peaceful war free system However the possibility of an Orwellian perpetual war landscape is rarely considered despite the fact that many of the conditions specified in Orwell s world are similar to conditions found in our contemporary world We must ask ourselves is an Orwellian state of perpetual limited war possible and if so is it a likely future Given the current balance of power international mutual nuclear deterrence 1 2 War will be defined unless otherwise noted as an international conflict involving violence Mutually assured destruction a state in which both countries are able to fully absorb a first strike nuclear attack and launch second strike counter value attacks capable of destruction of the opposing society Page 2 and intertwined nature of economic interests the future of warfare described in Nineteen Eighty Four is not likely however it is not a negligibly improbable possibility and elements of his war landscape namely the limited goals and scope have already manifest In Orwell s world there is an extreme tri polar balance of power there are only three nations Oceania Eastasia and Eurasia which are culturally distinct and each control a roughly equivalent share of the global resources The countries fight a warfare of limited aims between combatants who are unable to destroy one another 3 have no material cause for fighting and are not divided by any genuine ideological difference 4 In this world resources are viewed to be cumulative as the borderlands which are in contention hold cheap labor and mineral resources 5 However as each country ostensibly makes enough to care for its populace these resources are aggrandized solely for militaristic benefit in future conflicts Conquest is incredibly difficult both due to the similarity of weaponry the cultural ethnic differences between countries that make assimilation of conquered peoples almost impossible and because of the nuclear capabilities in which defending countries have an advantage because they will almost unconditionally be willing to risk use of nuclear weaponry and take larger losses in defense of their freedom The difficulty of conquest leads to limited aims of war allowing very small numbers of people mostly highly trained specialists to fight and causes comparatively few 3 This is implicitly unable to destroy each other without mutual destruction the Orwellian world is post nuclear revolution and the countries have the capacity to bomb each other mercilessly but choose not to after having nuclear usage on a large scale in the Nineteen fifties this destruction convince ed the ruling groups of all countries that a few more atomic bombs would mean the end of organized society and hence of their own power Orwell Nineteen Eighty Four pg 195 4 Orwell George Nineteen Eighty Four New York Harcourt Brace and Company 1949 195 5 Orwell George Nineteen Eighty Four New York Harcourt Brace and Company 1949 188 Page 3 casualties they fight on the vague frontiers and on strategic spots on the sea lane 6 which reduces the conflict to a test of strategy and alliances which flip flop roughly every halfdecade and a quest for better military technology that will give the country of discovery a simultaneous first strike advantage and window of opportunity to deliver a first strike counterforce attack that is so debilitating that the enemy s second strike counter value or counterforce capabilities are destroyed 7 All of this culminates in a state of perpetual war which consumes the excesses of the proletariat industrial production while keeping the populace in poverty to keep them controllable The populace is then further controlled by fear of the enemy rival state and can be coerced into accepting the dismal lifestyle or into adoring the savior that is Big Brother by justifying all actions as necessity for wartime As the war is perpetual there is a pseudo first strike advantage for surprise switches of alliances and nominal advantages achieved by better fighting technology however the conflict is essentially stagnant and given the aforementioned limited amount of human life that is expended in these unending conflicts this perpetual war de facto is a twisted sort of peace this gives rise to one of the iconic Party slogans War is Peace 8 At the heart of this argument lies the question of whether perpetual war is possible and if so at all probable for our world One of the central factors on Orwell s world is the equitability of resource and war making capacity of the major powers the balance of power is extremely multipolar The global balance of power to a large extent sets the stage for how war will occur 6 Orwell George Nineteen Eighty Four New York Harcourt Brace and Company 1949 187 7 Orwell on page 196 describes The plan is to acquire a ring of bases completely encircling one or other of the rival states and launch an attack with effects so devastating as to make retaliation impossible 8 Orwell states on page 200 A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as permanent war is the inner meaning of the Party slogan WAR IS PEACE Page 4 Economically the world is multi polar with the economic giants being the United States the European Union and