Inadvertent War -- Historical Issues

Inadvertent War -- Historical Issues and Concerns

The modern history of human warfare illustrates that in addition to the general threat of deliberate warfare, the prospect of human error also adds the risks of war initiated by accident or as the result of unauthorized private action. There is also a risk of inadvertent escalation during wartime. Several times, events in the 20th century resulted prematurely in war that could possibly have been averted; in other instances, attacks during wartime were escalated in response to erroneous perception of enemy intentions. In the 1960s, outright warfare between two Cold War superpowers could have easily been precipitated by accident, unauthorized orders, or misunderstanding. Safeguards exist to mitigate such risks but may not necessarily be capable of eliminating the types of human error in perception and judgement capable of resulting in inadvertent war in the future.

Historical Background of Inadvertent War and Escalation of Warfare:

To some degree, the manner in which World War I broke out in 1914 could be considered the result of mistaken assumptions and characteristics of armed conflict at the time that greatly increased the momentum toward war even where the leaders of respective nations had not decided that war was necessary or inevitable. Specifically, armies of the day required much longer to mobilize than in the modern technological era, measured in weeks instead of days or hours. In fact, the speed with which European nations could mobilize large forces had become one of the most important factors in evaluating the strength of 19th century armies. Generally, warfare was preceded by weeks of partial mobilizations and counter-mobilizations in response as nations postured and prepared for war. The process of mobilization for war became such an important aspect of national power and signal of imminent geopolitical intention that mobilization sometimes actually precipitated the outbreak of war prematurely or even in circumstances were war could possibly have still been averted through political negotiations. That is precisely what happened in Europe on the eve of World War I.

Slightly one month after the assassination of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Bosnia by a Serb, tensions were great as Austro-Hungary was on the verge of attacking Serbia. Russia began mobilizing forces in the event it became necessary to protect Serbia against Austro-Hungary. Germany declared war on Russia almost immediately in response to their mobilization. Convinced that France would enter any war between Germany and Russia on the side of Russia, Germany also declared war on France after France failed to indicate her specific intentions in response to high-level German inquiries. Germany had no basis for seeking a war with France other than the concern with pre-empting the entrance of France into the war on the Western Front after Germany was fully involved with Russia on the Eastern Front.

Germany did not seek war with Britain at the time either but guaranteed Britain's entrance into the war inadvertently by virtue of Germany's long-planned strategy for (1) avoiding a two-front war and (2) avoiding French military installations on the French-German border. Specifically, Germany's von Schlieffen Plan called for the invasion of Belgium, another neutral country protected by international treaties, purely for the purpose of invading France without confronting the fortified French-German border areas.

In that sense, World War I was initiated somewhat inadvertently when the von Schlieffen Plan went into action mainly as a result of Russia's mobilization, France issued a noncommittal response to Germany's solicitation for assurance of neutrality, Germany relied on an inflexible strategic plan that considered war with Russia only in connection with a simultaneous war with France, and Germany failed to consider the larger ramifications of invading neutral Belgium for strategic reasons that had nothing to do with any conflict with Belgium.

Inadvertent Bombing Escalation During World War II:

Approximately thirty-five years later, Britain and Germany would again find themselves at war, although this time there was no doubt that the war was inevitable and necessary by the time it was declared. However, human error and responses based on mistakes of interpretation greatly escalated the respective bombing campaigns of Britain and Germany. Specifically, both nations had purposely avoided bombing one another's civilian populations when, on August 24, 1940, several German bombers accidentally bombed residential areas of London (Commager & Miller, 2002). In response, Britain bombed factories and airfields near Berlin; the relative inaccuracy of bombing operations of the era lead Hitler to conclude that those raids were intended as attacks on civilians. He immediately began ordering indiscriminate bombing attacks on London, eventually exposing German civilians to even more intense bombing campaigns by the Allies later in the war (Commager & Miller, 2002). To a certain extent, the exchange of attacks on civilian population centers on both sides was the result of inadvertent misunderstanding of intentions that escalated the horrors of Word War II even further.

The Prospect of Inadvertent Nuclear War:

On January 25, 1995, the U.S. launched a research rocket jointly with Norway for the purposes of charting the Arctic (Roberts, 2000). Long-established protocols for notifying the Soviet Union of such events were followed but no message was ever received by Russian authorities. Russian President Boris Yeltsin was awakened in the middle of the night and proceeded, for the first time ever, to activate the nuclear launch codes for a counterattack on the United States (Roberts, 2000).

To Russian satellite monitoring systems, the research rocket had the same trajectory as a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) fired by a U.S. submarine in Arctic waters aimed directly at Russia (Roberts, 2000). During very tense conversations with the highest levels of political and military leadership, Yeltsin had only minutes to decide whether or not to believe that the information indicated an imminent attack on his nation and whether or not to retaliate with a nuclear launch of his own (Roberts, 2000).

The crisis was only averted when the alert was cancelled after Russian radar systems followed the missile out to sea (Roberts, 2000). The most disturbing aspect of what could have been an inadvertent nuclear attack on the U.S. is that procedures designed after the Cuban Missile Crisis were supposed to prevent any such miscommunication altogether (Roberts, 2000; Sorensen, 1965).