War and civilisation: a brief history

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2024 on Sunday 20 October at Church House, Westminster.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

In August 2024, it emerged that the US was preparing for the possibility of a nuclear attack coordinated between China, Russia and North Korea. Add in the support of Iran, and we might ask: is this an alliance of four rather different civilisations ranged against the Western sort? The 100million-strong Chinese Communist Party, Russian nationalism, North Korean Stalinism and Shia Islamism have little in common with each other. But all of these forces share the feeling that the West has lost its grip. Is that true?

In this lecture, Professor James Woudhuysen takes us swiftly through over 200 years of history to look at the way war has changed the world, from forging the nation state – a powerful force for civilisation – to the way it has been used not just to defeat external opponents, but internal opponents, too. While the 80th anniversary of D-Day reminds us that great, global ‘hot wars’ have been absent for decades, wars in Ukraine and Gaza are a reminder that conflict is never far away – with ramifications far beyond the particular battlefields on which it is fought.

With historical perspective on our side, what should we make of the various threats to the West today? Are we facing an existential threat from without or is the sabre-rattling merely bluster? If Western nation-states were shaped by war, do the same tendencies make future wars inevitable? Is the real problem that the West itself has lost confidence in Western civilisation?

SPEAKER
James Woudhuysen
visiting professor, forecasting and innovation, London South Bank University

CHAIR
Jean Smith
founder member, Our Fight UK; co-founder and director, NY Salon