Perpetual War - Examples From History

Examples From History

• The Warring States Period (476-221 BC)
• The Crusades (a series of nine related episodes over a long period 1095–1291)
• The Hundred Years' War (1337–1453)
• The Ottoman wars in Europe (1356-18th century)
• The Eighty Years' War (1568–1648)
• The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648)
• The Northern Crusades (beginning 1193 and ongoing through the 16th century).
• The Cold War, (began with the Truman Doctrine in 1947 and ended with the official dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991), is a phrase denoting a polarized state of hostility between economically capitalist NATO allied nations and economically communist Warsaw Pact nations. The phrase also generically denotes a polarized condition where nations are not actively fighting one another, but are fighting each other through client states, economic policies, and are prepared to engage one another with maximum force at any moment. Such a circumstance was often described by a diplomat or media Pundit (expert) as the cold war "warming up" or "going hot". The cold war emphasized a theory of Balance of power in international relations and, due to the possession of thousands of nuclear weapons by each belligerent, used the doctrine Mutual assured destruction. During proxy wars, the major powers provided aid and support to their respective client state. Warsaw pact rhetoric called these "wars of national liberation" and NATO allied rhetoric called these "Anti-communism" or "Freedom Fighter" wars. When the major powers became directly involved, as the U.S. did in the war in Vietnam, or the Soviet Union did in the Afghanistan, the results were generally a disaster for the major power due to diminished economic opportunity cost, military combat readiness, military morale, and public morale.
• The Indochina Wars, wherein rebel Vietnamese forces fought from 1941 until 1979 against a variety of invading forces (including Japan, France, the United States, Cambodia, and China), as well against indigenous Vietnamese factions including ethnic Vietnamese of South Vietnam and various "hill tribes" (such as the Hmong) supported by and allied to the U.S., but largely hostile to the ethnic Vietnamese.