Modern wars will fail by default; and there will be no triumphant wars any more. Conflict is not a creative way to negotiate a social contract.
SAJI P MATHEW OFM
Nothing teaches so well as failures. There have been hundreds of wars of all kinds since the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, which once and for all defeated Napoleon’s lust for war. The toll of human misery and death
at war measures around 30,000,000 since the Waterloo, and there never have been any other result for war than death and misery. However humanity is yet to learn.
Why War?
‘Why war?’ is as easy and as complex as asking ‘why peace?’ There may be many less involved and quasi-spiritual answers that people and institutions blurt out. The study of wars and conflicts, starting from tribal wars to World Wars tell us that there are no easy answers. There have been theories in literature and in international politics, like, war is least likely if power is distributed equally, war is least likely if power is distributed unequally, or distribution of power has no effect on the likelihood of war; or again, war is least likely in a closed society, war is least likely in an open and free society, or how society thinks has no effect on the likelihood of war. In a corporate world, where business and profit are everything, the motives for war take other directions.
We are months into the Ukraine war. From dinner tables to international meeting tables everyone is talking about war. The world becomes vocal about wars after they are triggered off. Humanity has known wars; all these while we were okay with wars, we were preparing for wars. Isn’t war a form of accepted international behaviour? If not why are we making, accumulating, buying, and selling weapons of war?
The binary of war and peace is defied; today it is war and fear. Peace has become unpopular. We live in constant fear, and occasionally we have wars. People work at building fear as meticulously as they work at designing war; because both have the potential to gain control over the other. We have just witnessed elections in 5 states in India. Elections here and elsewhere have become as threatening as wars. They too put into practice war strategies of extermination, exhaustion, annihilation, intimidation and subversion.
They too need propaganda and polarisation. The Kashmir Files is playing in full house in multiple multiplexes and singles screens in India.
The Ukraine war is happening, it is not that there are no other wars happening. Even as we are preoccupied with the Ukraine war, there are other wars going on in the world. How much people and television channels speak about a war, how visible is a war depends on where it is happening. Ukraine war is discussed because it is happening in Europe. Ukraine war is opposed by other mighty powers not because they care for Ukraine but they are watchful of Russia.
Modern Wars Are Pointless
Ancient wars and conquests gave birth to empires and expansion of kingdoms. A stronger king defeats a weaker king; and everyone and everything in the kingdom obeys the mightier king. The mightier king unquestionably ruled over them. No modern wars will have the same result. After 20 years of war America withdrew from Afghanistan, not because they lost the war; but they could not rule. In modern times no people can be ruled over without their cooperation. Modern wars have failed. Wars will fail by default; and there will be no triumphant wars any more. Every modern war will hurt both the sides, however mighty a side is; and it eventually becomes a war against one’s own people.
There are many other ways to power than brute force. Conflict is not a creative way to negotiate a social contract. Fools still go to war; others build political power through mutual negotiations. Perhaps that is the way for the mighty and the weak to survive together, in the given capitalist world. The quality of one’s might is also be measured by the quality of one’s negotiations. Totalitarian rulers, unrestrained armies, and brute forces will lose respect in the modern world.
We must obstinately build peace. The key
to building peace in our times of conflict and war is Positive Peace, points out Global Peace Index 2021 of the Institute for Economics and Peace. Positive Peace is defined as the attitudes, institutions, and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies. High levels of Positive Peace occur where attitudes make violence less tolerated, institutions are resilient and more responsive to society’s needs, and structures create an environment for the nonviolent resolution of grievances. Merciless attitudes, non-functioning institutions, and corrupt structures must go for wars to end, fears to vanish, and peace to have a chance.
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