The Nature of War Theory
U.S. Army War College Strategy Research Project
The Nature of War Theory
By Lieutenant Colonel Paul B. Olsen, U.S. Army
Dr. Thomas J. Williams, Project Adviser
Download the Full Research Project: The Nature of War Theory
Today's advances in evolutionary biology are unifying competing theories of natural selection and serve as a timely call for a similar unification of competing theories of war. This paper explores the relationship between war and natural selection by first examining war's biological origins, and then placing them within a multidisciplinary framework called the Nature of War Theory.
This theory, as its name implies, reconciles natural selection and war to reveal a shared overarching and paradoxical duality, displaying that war is characterized by the simultaneous violent interplay of evolutionary individual-level and group-level adaptations, manifested by individualist and altruistic wars, respectively, and highlighted by trends and insights recognizable to both students of war and evolutionary biology.
Download the Full Research Project: The Nature of War Theory
LTC(P) Paul Olsen is currently a student at the U.S. Army War College, Advanced Strategic Arts Program. He holds Masters Degrees from Websters and George Mason University. His former assignments include speechwriter to the Commander, Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth and command of the 249th Engineer Battalion (Prime Power).
