Tag: war

Wars and conflicts are perennial and are regarded in many parts of the world as states of peace.  The purpose of all wars is the accumulation of power, and the loss of human life and irreplaceable resources is broadly accepted as evil, but necessary.  It is why global political leaders try to convince their populations they are god-fearing and peace-loving.  And it is not so.  The great English writer and essayist George Orwell defined the state of the world clearly and without hesitation in his seminal work, 1984, with the euphemism that ‘war is peace’.  Modern news media are making it impossible to sneak in a war or two without anyone noticing.  Philosophers, historians, political scientists, and strategic studies experts spend long days trying to develop a sensible and universal body of work that defines what exactly just war is, to make killing humans and destroying civilizations palatable.  Their efforts, while commendable, are perennially inconclusive.  And that is so.

Warfare is the most ruthlessly amoral of all human endeavours, and notoriously a field in which everything is fair.  At best world opinions concerning the morality of contemporary conflicts are divided and confused (Schulte, 2012, p. 99).  Borrowing from Emerson, with respects, wars are the product of small minds and little statesmen.  Twenty-three nations, at present, claim neutrality, which most other nation-states respect.

Since the beginning of recorded history, up to this point, there have been wars and conflicts somewhere in the world every year (Levich, 2025, LinkedIn).  No philosophy, ideology, religious doctrine, nor laws or treaties have once prevented wars or conflicts.  Quite simply the world has never known peace.  And that is so.  And in the 250-year history of the United States, there have been 14 non-consecutive days when the country has been at peace.  Combat soldiers in the Vietnam War joked that peace gives you time to reload.  The decisions to go to war have been poorly defined by international law; and since the last time America entered a war with a full Congressional declaration of war was December 1941 – first the Pacific War and then followed by the European War.  Since 1945, the US Congress endorses the use of military force through ambiguously worded resolutions to provide space for deniability later.

Throughout the twentieth century any state, region, or nation that initiated a conflict anywhere failed to prevail.  Americans still like to believe they are a peace-loving and god-fearing people, and slow to anger, but will rise in their collective righteous indignation and march off to war, in somebody else’s country while singing hymns and praying for a lasting peace.  Since the end of World War II in Europe and the Pacific, the United States has chosen to maintain a full war-time footing while spending trillions of dollars in the misguided interests of national security.  Meanwhile, World Wars I and II set in motion a vast self-determination movement among regions that is still playing out and generally has been positive.

Peace has never been the default of humanity.  ‘In time of war; the law is silent’ (Walzer, 2015, p. 3).

Works Cited

Levich, Helen. (2005), ‘There Has Never Been a Year Without War,’ (LinkedIn.com/in/Helen Levich).

Schulte, Paul. (2012), ‘Morality and War,’ in The Oxford Handbook of War. Oxford: University of Oxford Press.

Walzer, Michael. (2015), Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations. New York: Basic Books.