> One of the ideas behind Aikido is to not get in a fight in the first place.

I have heard many martial-arts instructors voice this same point. -EDIT: I do not know whether this may be emphasised more in Aikido- but it is hard to regard it as a serious argument when the amount of time spent on learning about this aspect, and practice of how to apply this aspect and the techniques to achieve it seems to be almost invariably a few minutes a year at most.

I had more practice 'de-escalating' tense situations on a 1-term clinical skills paper at medical school than in the 6 years I studied across two different martial arts (one Korean, the other Chinese). The medical school paper amounted to about 2 hrs on that subject that year - 1 theory, 1 practice.

I did some aikido lessons for maybe 6 weeks (studied Shotokan for 8 years, but that was a while ago). The classes I did spent a lot of time on understanding the intentions of the opponent and trying to find a mutual solution, and a lot of time on mastering one's own emotions. It was some of the best training in "diplomacy" I've had, where by diplomacy I mean "the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions" (Churchill?).

Self defence techniques such as Krav Maga teach you the exact same, while also teaching you how to actually defend yourself in a variety of scenarios.

There's no question that Krav Maga is effective, but whether or not it teaches you to solve conflicts non-violently depends very much on the teacher. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And if all you know is how to knock your opponent out, that's probably what you'll attempt to do in a conflict.

It should be stated that it there are PLENTY of questions about the effectiveness of Krav Maga. Any martial art that cannot be trained at high intensity against a resisting opponent should be looked upon with a healthy amount of skepticism.

I studied Krav Maga and it taught me nothing like that ... I had to quit it because it was having a detrimental effect on how I was approaching real life conflict ...

This might differ between countries and schools. I practised it for several years, and we had many classes that involved techniques useful for avoiding conflict (some as simple as just running away), keeping people at distance, and so on.

Well, yeah that was the fundamental principle alright. This even, isn't always the best approach in day-to-day life ... but even then once you go beyond that it's "smash their face til it's bloody". It's the space between this, and the nuance that Aikido explores that I found very beneficial.

Just like aikido, the teaching of other arts also varies... and yet those who like to badmouth us at every opportunity will assume the worst aikido school in the world is exactly representative of all of us.

And there is some utter nonsense out there, definitely. But we're hardly unique in that.

I'd never call Krav Maga an "art" though .. it's solely about brutal pragmatics.

(a) Then how should Sun Tzu have entitled his famous work, if not "The Art of War"?

(b) Krav Maga is clearly a highly time- and energy-efficient tool for hand-to-hand combat; why should any martial art strive for any different metrics? (other than coping with exceptional circumstances via malicious compliance, such as that old French martial-art that focuses entirely on kicks not fists)

I have no response for (a) except to say that there’s an exception to every rule.

(b) has been treated extensively in many discussions. These usually are usually oriented around the role of conflict in daily life and the suitability of these arts as a way of dealing with them, for instance.

> conflict in daily life and the suitability of these arts as a way of dealing with them

Good grief! I can't imagine the amount of paperwork that would accumulate if fighting was a day-to-day occurrence in my life (except in Army during wartime, where assault is the job instead of a crime).

You see, that’s where you’re missing the point entirely ... there’s more to conflict than violence ...

Mars being the god of war, calling something a Martial art denotes that it is suitable for conflicts that have escalated all the way to war/violence. My previous statement meant to imply my hope that martial arts are not suitable for the vast majority of conflicts that occur in daily life.