The Inevitability of War

     

     In Sven Lindqvist’s novel A History of Bombing, the first section of the labyrinth introduces the concept of “Bang, You’re Dead,” which conceptualizes the commodification and normalcy of war.  Through his introduction of wartime, Lindqvist states, “We didn’t need war toys.  Any old stick became a weapon in our hands, and pinecones were bombs...At five years of age I was already a seasoned bombardier” (Lindqvist 1).  Lindqvist suggests that as a child, he was preconditioned to believe that war was an action of playtime rather than an action of wartime.  Thus, prompting his mother to say, “If everyone plays war, there will be war” (Lindqvist 1).  Certainly, it seems ludicrous to make a parallel between children’s games and war; however, Lindqvist’s mother’s remark resinates as a signifier that war is an inevitable game.  The inevitability of wartime, whether it be through a child’s ability to “pretend” bomb a playground or a country’s ability to “actually” bomb a city, becomes an immediate and direct reflection of the constancy that is war.  Lindqvist’s statement, “War is inevitable” is not simply just a response to Robert W. Cole’s first novel The Struggle for Empire, but rather a statement that illuminates the permanence and strength of war in every day life across the globe.  Additionally, Lindqvist’s novel raises a multitude of questions about what constitutes the inevitable and how can war become unavoidable for some countries and races.  As a result, the question of normalcy and commodification must be called into question in order to understand the essence of the inevitable in terms of wartime.  Thus, by examining a portion of Rey Chow’s “The Age of the World Target,” the representation of war as a convention of humanity can further elaborate on Lindqvist’s notion of wartime as an inevitable trap.  

     By dissecting Einstein’s theory of relativity from which the bomb was derived, E= mc^2, Chow states that this equation “exists far more as an image and a slogan than as substance, and far more as a political than as a scientific art” (Chow 28).  Chow highlights Einstein’s equation’s ability to translate into a “neat little formula that anyone could recall and invoke, an epochal destruction became, for the ordinary person, an instantly perceivable and graspable thing, like a control button at his or her command” (Chow 29).  By harnessing the ability to alter history and civilization at the push of a button, the knowledge of science becomes “democratized” as a “weapon of attack” (Chow 29).  At this point, the knowledge, accessibility, and democratization of science prompts the inevitability of war. The great terror that one bomb could create becomes the great terror that one human could create.  And as the cycle of science continues to evolve and flourish, the cycle of war continues to evolve and flourish.  As a result, war is adapted into civilization as a normal and constant progression of all aspects of human life.