Outline of war

Types of war

Types of warfare

• Asymmetric warfare
• Expeditionary warfare
• * Expeditionary maneuver warfare

  Warfare by objective

• Defensive warfare
• Offensive warfare

  Warfare by strategic doctrine

Warfare by terrain

Warfare by equipment or weapon type

[|Warfare by era]

Warfare by stages

• First-generation warfare – refers to battles fought with massed manpower, using line and column tactics with uniformed soldiers governed by the state. It includes the earliest stages of organized, state-controlled armed forces waging war in the modern era.
• Second-generation warfare – tactics of warfare used after the invention of the rifled musket and breech-loading weapons and continuing through the development of the machine gun and indirect fire.
• Third-generation warfare – focuses on using speed and surprise to bypass the enemy's lines and collapse their forces from the rear. Essentially, this was the end of linear warfare on a tactical level, with units seeking not simply to meet each other face to face but to outmaneuver each other to gain the greatest advantage.
• Fourth-generation warfare – conflict characterized by a blurring of the lines between war and politics, soldier and civilian. It includes any war in which one of the major participants is not a state but rather a violent non-state actor. Fourth-generation warfare is characterized by the nation states' loss of their near-monopoly on combat forces, returning to modes of conflict common in pre-modern times.

  Other

• Champion warfare
• Underwater warfare

  History of war

• Naval warfare in the Winter War
• Naval warfare of World War I

  Warfare by era

Wars

Wars by death toll

• List of wars by death toll

  Wars by date

Wars by region

Wars by type of conflict

Battles

• Lists of battles
• * List of battles by casualties
• * List of orders of battle
• List of sieges

  Factions and forces

Weapons of war

Military theory

• Military theory
• Philosophy of war
• Principles of war
• War cycles

  Military organization

Operational level of war

• Blitzkrieg
• Soviet deep battle
• Maneuver warfare
• * Operational manoeuvre group

  Military operations

• * List of military operations
• * Military operation plan
• * Military operations other than war

  Types of military operations

• Theater – operation over a large, often continental area of operation and represents a strategic national commitment to the conflict such as Operation Barbarossa, with general goals that encompass areas of consideration outside of the military such as the economic and political impacts.
• Campaign – subset of the theatre operation, or a more limited geographic and operational strategic commitment such as Battle of Britain, and need not represent total national commitment to a conflict, or have broader goals outside of the military impacts.
• Battle – subset of a campaign that will have specific military goals and geographic objectives, as well as clearly defined use of forces such as the Battle of Gallipoli, which operationally was a combined arms operation originally known as the "Dardanelles landings" as part of the Dardanelles Campaign, where about 480,000 Allied troops took part.
• Engagement – tactical combat event of contest for specific area or objective by actions of distinct units. For example, the Battle of Kursk, also known from its German designation as Operation Citadel, included many separate engagements, several of which were combined into the Battle of Prokhorovka. The "Battle of Kursk" in addition to describing the initial German offensive operation, also included two Soviet counter-offensive operations Operation Kutuzov and Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev.
• Strike – single attack, upon a specified target. This often forms part of a broader engagement. Strikes have an explicit goal, such as, rendering facilities inoperable, to assassinating enemy leaders, or to limit supply to enemy troops.

  Military strategy

• Attrition warfare
• Battlespace
• Military deception
• Strategic defence
• Offensive
• Strategic goal
• Naval strategy

  Grand strategy

• Containment
• Economic warfare
• Military science
• Philosophy of war
• Strategic studies
• Total war

  Military tactics

Politics of war

• Casus belli – Latin expression meaning the justification for acts of war. In theory, present international law allows only three situations as legal cause to go to war: out of self-defense, defense of an ally under a mutual defense pact, or sanctioned by the UN.
• Declaration of war
• War effort
• War economy
• Surrender
• * Capitulation an agreement in time of war for the surrender to a hostile armed force of a particular body of troops, a town or a territory.
• * Strategic surrender – surrender to avoid a last, chaotic round of fighting that would have the characteristics of a rout, allowing the victor to obtain his objective without paying the costs of a last battle.
• * Unconditional surrender – surrender without conditions, except for those provided by international law.
• Victory
• * Debellatio – when a war ends because of the complete destruction of a belligerent state.
• * No quarter – when a victor shows no clemency or mercy and refuses to spare the life of the vanquished when they surrender at discretion. Under the laws of war "... it is especially forbidden... to declare that no quarter will be given".
• * Pyrrhic victory – victory with such a devastating cost that it carries the implication that another such victory will ultimately lead to defeat.

  Philosophy of war

• Militarism – belief that war is not inherently bad but can be a beneficial aspect of society.
• Realism – its core proposition is a skepticism as to whether moral concepts such as justice can be applied to the conduct of international affairs. Proponents of realism believe that moral concepts should never prescribe, nor circumscribe, a state's behaviour. Instead, a state should place an emphasis on state security and self-interest. One form of realism – descriptive realism – proposes that states cannot act morally, while another form – prescriptive realism – argues that the motivating factor for a state is self-interest. Just wars that violate Just Wars principles effectively constitute a branch of realism.
• Revolution and Civil War – Just War Theory states that a just war must have just authority. To the extent that this is interpreted as a legitimate government, this leaves little room for revolutionary war or civil war, in which an illegitimate entity may declare war for reasons that fit the remaining criteria of Just War Theory. This is less of a problem if the "just authority" is widely interpreted as "the will of the people" or similar. Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions side-steps this issue by stating that if one of the parties to a civil war is a High Contracting Party both Parties to the conflict are bound "as a minimum, the following provisions." Article 4 of the Third Geneva Convention also makes clear that the treatment of prisoners of war is binding on both parties even when captured soldiers have an "allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power."
• Absolutism – holds that there are various ethical rules that are absolute. Breaking such moral rules is never legitimate and therefore is always unjustifiable.
• Pacifism – belief that war of any kind is morally unacceptable or pragmatically not worth the cost. Pacifists extend humanitarian concern not just to enemy civilians but also to combatants, especially conscripts. For example, Ben Salmon believed all war to be unjust. He was sentenced to death during World War I for desertion and spreading propaganda.
• Right of self-defence – maintains that the use of retaliatory force is justified against repressive nations that break the zero aggression principle. In addition, if a free country is itself subject to foreign aggression, it is morally imperative for that nation to defend itself and its citizens by whatever means necessary. Thus, any means to achieve a swift and complete victory over the enemy is imperative. This view is prominently held by Objectivists.
• Consequentialism – moral theory most frequently summarized in the words "the end justifies the means," which tends to support the just war theory.

  Laws of war

• Laws of war
• War crimes
• * List of war crimes

  Prisoners of war

Effects of war

• Casualties
• * Casualty
• * Casualty classifications
• ** KIA – Killed In Action
• *** DOW - Died Of Wounds
• ** MIA – Missing In Action
• ** WIA – Wounded in action
• List of genocides by death toll

  War and culture

War organizations

• Council of war
• Ministry of War

  War museums

• War museum
• * Imperial War Museum

  War-related media

War publications

• The Art of War
• On War

  War films

• List of war films and TV specials - lists movies and shows by the war depicted in them, the sections arranged chronologically

  Persons influential in war

• List of military writers

  Inventors of Military Technology

• Mozi
• Archimedes
• Wei Boyang
• Kallinikos
• Roger Bacon
• Leonardo da Vinci
• Richard Jordan Gatling
• Mikhail Kalashnikov
• Albert Einstein

  During the Classical Period

Ancient Egypt">Military of ancient Egypt">Ancient Egypt

• Mentuhotep
• Ramesses II
• Muwatalli I
• Cleopatra

  Ancient Near East

• Hammurabi
• Sargon II
• Nebuchadnezzar II
• Cyrus the Great
• Darius I
• Xerxes I

  [Ancient Greece]

• Themistocles
• Leonidas I
• Dionysius I of Syracuse
• Philip II of Macedon
• Alexander the Great
• Diadochi
• Pyrrhus of Epirus

  [Ancient India]

• Porus
• Ashoka
• Chandragupta

  Ancient China and its enemies">Ancient China">Ancient China and its enemies

• Sun Tzu
• Lian Po
• Bai Qi
• Li Mu
• Qin Shi Huang
• *Wang Jin
• Modu Chanyu
• Huo Qubing
• Wei Qing
• Trung Sisters

  Ancient Rome and its enemies">Campaign history of the Roman military">Ancient Rome and its enemies

• Mithridates VI of Pontus
• Scipio Africanus
• Hannibal
• Gaius Marius
• Julius Caesar
• Vercingetorix
• Arminius
• Boudica
• Decebalus
• Trajan
• Aurelian

  [Late Antiquity]

• Constantine
• Flavius Aetius
• Atilla
• Clovis I
• Bahram Chobin
• Belisarius
• Shahin and Shahrbaraz
• Heraclius
• Khalid ibn al-Walid

  [Middle Ages]

[Early Middle Ages]

• Charlemagne
• Ivar the Boneless
• Alfred the Great
• Cnut the Great
• Basil the Bulgar Slayer
• William the Conqueror

  [High Middle Ages]

• Frederick Barbarossa
• Henry II of England
• Richard the Lionheart
• Philip II of France
• Alexander Nevsky
• El Cid

  [Islamic Golden Age]

• Tariq ibn Ziyad
• Mahmud of Ghazni
• Alp Arslan
• Saladin
• Baibars

  Medieval India

• Rajadhiraja Chola
• Prithviraj Chauhan

  Medieval China

• Li Shimin
• An Lushan
• Zhao Kuangyin
• Yelu Dashi
• Zhu Yuanzhang
• Zheng He

  Medieval Southeast Asia">History of Southeast Asia#Medieval History">Medieval Southeast Asia

• Jayavarman II
• Gajah Mada
• Ramathibodi I
• Le Loi

  [Mongol Conquests]

• Genghis Khan
• Ogedei Khan
• Subutai
• Kublai Khan
• Timur

  [Hundred Years War]

• Edward III
• Henry V of England
• Charles VII of France
• Joan of Arc

  During the Early Modern Period

Japanese Wars">Sengoku Period">Japanese Wars

• Oda Nobunga
• Toyotomi Hideyoshi
• Tokugawa Ieyasu
• Yi Sun shin

  Islamic Empires

• Mehmed the Conqueror
• Suleiman the Magnificent
• Vlad the Impaler
• Jean Parisot de la Valette
• Nader Shah
• Akbar

  [European Colonization of the Americas]

• Hernan Cortez
• Cuauhtémoc
• Francisco Pizzaro
• Powhaten
• Pontiac
• Tecumseh
• Sitting Bull

  Early Modern Europe

• Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden
• Oliver Cromwell
• Peter the Great
• Frederick I of Prussia
• James Wolfe
• Louis-Joseph de Montcalm

  [Golden Age of Piracy]

• Francis Drake
• Captain Kidd
• Blackbeard
• Anne Bonny

  Chinese Qing Dynasty">Qing Dynasty">Chinese Qing Dynasty

• Wu Sangui
• Kangxi Emperor
• Koxinga
• Ching Shih
• Hong Xiuquan

  [American Revolutionary War]

• George Washington
• Horatio Gates
• Benedict Arnold
• Marquis de Lafayette
• Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis

  [Napoleonic Wars]

• Horatio Nelson
• Napoleon
• Arthur Wellesley
• Andrew Jackson

  Modern Period

[American Civil War]

• Ulysses S Grant
• Stonewall Jackson
• Robert E Lee
• George Mcclellan
• William Tecumseh Sherman

  During World War I

• Douglas Haig
• Ferdinand Foch
• Louis F. d'Esperey
• John J. Pershing
• Joseph Joffre
• Paul von Hindenburg
• Erich Ludendorff
• August von Mackensen

  During World War II

Political Leaders

• Winston Churchill
• Adolf Hitler
• Benito Mussolini
• Franklin Roosevelt
• Chiang Kai Sheck
• Joseph Stalin
• Hideki Tojo
• Harry S. Truman

  Commanders

• Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis
• Omar Bradley
• Zhu De
• Dwight D. Eisenhower
• Charles de Gaulle
• Hermann Göring
• Heinrich Himmler
• Douglas MacArthur
• Ioannis Metaxas
• Bernard Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein
• George S. Patton
• Erwin Rommel
• Richard Sorge, Russian spy
• Hajime Sugiyama
• Josip Broz Tito
• Isoroku Yamamoto
• Mao Zedong
• Georgy Zhukov

  Others

• Sofia Vembo

  War

Wars