The “martial” portion of the term should indicate that the “art” is directly related to military warfare. While many traditional arts can credit their development to how warfare was conducted prior to the widespread use of gun powder, a lot has changed a lot since then.

It is important to remember that warfare was (and still is) the politics of force. Warfare is not conducted as a spiritual journey for the troops (though it might be one for individuals). Warfare exists to achieve the political aims of the leadership. Morality is defined by that leadership. More modern systems (specifically Judo, Aikido, Karate-do) have a moral philosophy that was part of the design goals. In many ways this completely severs any philosophical linkage to warfare.

There is certainly some overlap between the principles or techniques between warfare (both ancient and modern), “martial arts”, and self defense, but there might well be incompatibilities between the moral and or philosophical underpinnings of different disciplines.
If we consider a hypothetical scenario where we are confronted with an individual threat the response can differ wildly:

• The practitioners of “ethical” disciplines (Aikido, Judo, etc.) might attempt to redirect and control the aggressor.
• The practitioners of “fighting” disciplines (Boxing, Karate, etc.) might subdue the assailant by pummeling him into submission.
• The traditional military response is generally to bring overwhelming firepower to bear against the threat.

The “appropriate” response depends upon both the nature of the threat and the moral perspective of the defender. This is where we being to see the “toolboxes full of hammers” problem and indeed, most disciplines tend to view all problems in terms of their particular solutions. The top MMA heavyweight doesn’t have much more chance of winning a gunfight than the top IPSC/IDPA shooter has winning in the octagon.

Another way to think about this is that a particular discipline is a framework for viewing the world. Within this framework are a subset of physical and philosophical principles and from these a set of techniques are derived. Those techniques do not necessarily represent a direct stimulus-response type of relationship, but rather serve as examples for how the framework can be applied in different situations. Mastery is the understanding of the principles to point of not just simply applying the optimum technique at the right time, but inventing new ones to fit the situation.

Obviously a multidisciplinary approach is required but in practice most of these tend to be little more than cobbled together strings of techniques. Without a unifying framework the “system” becomes an endless series of “options” and stops being systematic at all. This problem is further compounded by the introduction of modern weapon systems.

Consider a hypothetical system that includes western boxing as a foundation – as soon as you are holding a handgun you can forget about combination punching. Obviously this hypothetical system believes that firearms and boxing exist as separate states: you are either boxing or you are shooting. There is no rule that states deadly threats and non deadly threats cannot be intermingled, or that a static situation can’t change over time: After shooting the lethal threat you are immediately confronted with a non-lethal threat. The “system” of boxing and shooting didn’t have a framework (or didn’t include such situations in its framework) and simply stitched together marksmanship skills with boxing techniques.

This is not to say that studying a martial art (or several) is not a good idea or a beneficial practice. What is important is to look for the underlying framework in any discipline and make some smart decisions about how each integrates into your overall self-defense plan.