Ok so lets look at the american war of independance vs the second indochina war. The first war, there was a declaration of independance, but no declaration of war. How can you the American war of independance a war if there were no declaration of war?
We called it a war because we "won" it and told them to bugger off, and the British called it something else (avoided the term war) because there was no official declaration and did not recognize us as a nation so even if we sent them a declaration of war they would not have recognized it anyways.
Double standard? Yup. Also back then there were less legalities for what constituted a war, and was largely believed that if you attacked someone it was a war (a nice, sane way to look at things instead of the needlessly complicated thing we have now), so if held to modern day standards I am not sure what it would be called (likely would be nit picked at and disputed all the same).
thank god for 20th century historical revisionism.
Indeed, wait another hundred or two and we will likely have a clear cut "yes it was a real war" instead of the political semantics we have now on the matter.
It is extremely important to note that what one culture/government calls a war another may disagree. It obviously is and was a war in some other nations and languages, due to different more sane criteria.
