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I actually wonder sometimes when the inevitability of war happens once more in human history, would it really be a bad thing to have occurred? No doubt that there would great ramifications such as economic collapses, famine would probably be a huge thing to deal with during and after it. The environment is getting fucked for sure, bombs aren't very good fertilizers. Evil men will commit atrocities in equal level or worse than those committed in the past, the obvious inevitability that millions will perish and considering the technology that we have today, well we could reach billions if we really feel like murdering everything.

So with all that in mind, of course it would be bad. But what if we consider the human mind in such a conflict? What I mean by this is what happens when an person is under adversity that they will strive to overcome that situation and create a better scenario then the one they had before the conflict began. Put that in a collective thought and we could end up in a better society than the one we have now. Through adversity we achieve progress. Least that is my hope.

TL/DR: I don't know, just feeling really down lately and my mind wanders in topics such as these. So is war necessary for humanity to progress to a better existence?

From what I've seen, engaging in war can be justifiable, so long as the other combatant (for lack of a better term) "started it". If a nation makes their intention of wiping another off the map clear, and there's a good reason to believe that they could do it, then of course it makes sense to spring into action in self-defense, and perhaps even in defense of others put under that predicament. But that's about it.

I never did agree with all those Aesop's about how anyone who fights in a war or participates is evil, or how War in itself is evil.

War is more than two groups of people's hatred running over, most wars are fought by one side grabbing power or abusing it and another side responding in defense after talking has failed. Be it against Genocide, Slavery, Oppression, there are many reasons it is justifiable and necessary to pick up arms and fight.

If America never decided to pick up arms, there would have been no America, no/delayed abolition of slavery, and who knows how the World Wars would have gone without American support. And if no one in Europe picked up arms, there would be no Jews and all of Europe would be speaking German. Eventually, someone is going to have to pick up arms against ISIS as well.

People who make all participants of a war equally evil obviously doesn't know much about wars and probably thinks you can solve any issue by talking it out, oblivious to the fact that there are many people who don't want to talk, or want things that no one will be willing to give them. Sometimes, it is necessary to go to war.

Ryumaru hit it on the nail: if the allies didn't stop the axis then there would be a lot less Jews in the world.

Sorry, I know this is serious debate but I just couldn't resist.

It depends on what we're defining "necessary" as. If you mean, because people are going to be morons and evil, it's necessary, then yes. However, in another way, it's not "necessary". If people would stop committing horrendous evils then war as a whole would cease to exist. Genocide, slavery, and oppression, the three things Ryumaru said are some causes of war, aren't ever necessary, and thus by extension war isn't. It all depends on how you define the question.

From an economic perspective, engaging in war is a costly move. With all the weapons, men, and vehicles you amassed, you charge in, kill people in a territory, damaging infrastructure along the way, then take over and spend even more money to rebuild. Nations and corporations nowadays are a lot smarter than that and prefer to win their fights without causing much wastage. Nowadays its evident to see nations take over other nations by subduing them into problematic situations say, crippling debt (nations work together to bring one nation down if necessary), up to the point that the nation 'under attack' would need foreign aid. The attacking nations would then 'lend a hand' (the nation under attack would be in such a lowly position that it would be foolish to refuse,) under certain conditions. These conditions will ensure that the winning nation always has an upper hand when dealing in business and trade with the 'losing' nation.

It works in a similar way with certain markets where predatory pricing is a thing. One thing new entries to the market have that makes their product appealing to the consumer is their cheap price. If this new-comer manages to obtain a relatively large slice of the market share, Super-corporations that already have a solid footing in the market will take notice, then they'll work together to bring their prices down, pressuring the new-comer to lower their prices even more because that's one of its biggest factors as to why people buy his stuff. The super corporations will continue to bring their prices down until the new-comer's prices aren't good enough for it to make a profit anymore. When the new-comer has already suffered great losses, the super-corporations will then essentially eat up the new-comer; buy him out of the business (in the state the business is in, the super-corporations would make an offer that would be foolish to refuse) and put a new branch in its place.

Now, compare the above approach to say, how drug cartels and businesses around dirty money handle competition they don't like. Gang wars happen where you'll have to pay for guns, men, and your life, if things go wrong. Essentially, it's a more costly and high-risk approach, kind of like war in general. Why make business bloody and wasteful when you have the option of going a route where you win with a much smaller chance of losing anything?

So I guess my answer is war isn't really necessary most of the time. Unless the nation has been put in a position where risking a war for economic benefit is the only option they have left, I don't think they should.

I don't think its necessary, but I do think it is inherent in human nature. Resolving conflict is one of the most innate drives in human nature. And when one cannot solve it passively, one usually turns into aggressive means for resolving a difference of some kind. Look at how the very word has changed, war is no longer between nations, but between ideologies over how society should be run. We've removed what a lot of people considered the root cause of war, yet war persists. So to me, its going to happen, but not quite in the same way as a world war.

Actually, that Civilization IV mod that I keep yammering on presented an interesting idea to me. If we managed to completely 100% automate warfare, for all sides of the conflict, then it could possibly create some sort of weird pacifism/ war fusion.

On the one hand, such a policy would mean that (theoretically) non-voluntary civilian casualties should be close to zero (barring a few accidents) although what happens to those citizens once they surrender (because they know that the robots will blow them to bits otherwise) is a whole different debate (civics I guess, since the war is technically over).

Additionally, non-civilian casualties would be much lower, due to most of the crime being fought by drones and missiles and robots and over computer networks. Robots can't do everything we can, but given enough time, they'll be able to do a whole lot-- enough that we could basically just have to command them from afar, with occasional interventions from actual humans who must be on the battlefield out of necessity, but a good deal of the threat to their well-being would be counter-acted with defensive automated stuff.

Also, a lot more money would be spent on technology rather than training, housing, supplying, etc. human troops since a better-developed firewall that makes your robots much harder to hack than your opponents, or the development of a better production method for machine parts, or the creation of a more-efficient microprocessor that would let the troops make judgements and follow orders more quickly would be much more helpful to a war effort (and can only be brought about with people putting their minds to science, math, engineering, and programming) than the number of human troops that could be "bought" with the same amount of grant money required to develop said technologies.
This idea's a bit less solid, but possibly, since "the face of war" would now be scientists, mathematicians, etc. plus robots, drones, etc. plus politicians, bureaucrats, strategists, etc. rather than soldiers and victims of war, then war itself will seem slightly less inhumane and it would be slightly harder for countries to paint each other as villains when both sides are doing practically the same thing, and it's robots that are doing most of the fighting.

Lastly, it would enable truly pacifist societies to defend their countries while (theoretically) never killing another human, since it would likely be possible to focus entirely on defensive measures without risking their own-well being, but at the same time, defending themselves in a way that does not promote or reward actions of suffering or cruelty, since the "greater good" would no longer require such measures.

I'm sure there's more than a few shaky points in this idea, but I find the idea fascinating, and I hope that if we can't achieve world-peace, and this doesn't lead to bad things that I haven't realized yet, then I think this would be a next-best solution that at least has more than just a very tiny chance of happening, even if that chance was still relatively small.

@Roy G.
That pretty much sums up the Cold War.

War is simply conflict. Without conflict you cannot remove faulty beliefs. Without the removal of faulty beliefs you cannot have progress. Without progress you might as well be dead.

The cold war was more like two people standing in a puddle of extremely flammable oil, with a matchbox on their person.

The scenario I'm describing is more like two people getting robots to do the fighting for them while they go off and do other things.

There's definitely some similarities, but fully automated warfare wouldn't necessarily lead to mutually assured destruction.

war is pretty damn necessary when you need to defend yourself from genocide and enslavement.

those are just my 2cents

It's just as Albert Einstein put it

"So long as there are men, there will be wars."

War
HUH
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
SAY IT AGAIN!

There is no way to determine this. A war completely justified could have a ripple effect that comes back to hurt everyone involved.

When Europe erupted into World War 1, do you think they thought about how this would lead to World War 2? Or the Cold War? or Any of the modern wars that the US got involved in?

If World War 1 never happened, Hitler wouldn't have risen to power.
Without Hitler the US never would have spread out into the world as a military super power.
No Military super powers no cold war.
No Cold war means the US didn't spread itself out trying to keep its assets under control.
This means they wouldn't have had the military desire to get involved with Vietnam, Or the Middle East.
No involvement in the Middle east means no terrorist attacks.

One justified war can rippled downward very quickly. Will a war be justified in 10 years? 50? 100?

The only time war should ever be declared is as a form of self-defence or defence of allies (unless your allies started it). This is because of the fact that when war happens ;people will die and if you want to continue a war you are going to have to get suicidal because of the strong possibility you die.A "reason" like weapons of mass destruction and spread of a particular ideology is not an acceptable way of conducting war.

In other words, conduct war if you are willing to pay the price of precious lives.

@Basilius

The "ripple" is the fault of the people who react that way, not the justified war.

If somebody says war is uneccessary just remind them of the United states civil war. Without that, slavery would still exsist in the confederacy but fortunately(for now) we have one country with no slavery.