What Have We Learned?

Memorial to W.W. I Soldiers

 My husband and I graduated from college during Viet Nam.  We were about to retire when nine-eleven shocked America.  Today, America is involved in helping those we believe are in the right to defend themselves against others who started war against them. We are not fighting, but we are indirectly involved.  Centuries ago, Plato said "Only the dead have seen the end of war."

The existence of the United States of America began on April 19, 1775, when 700 British soldiers were confronted by 77 minutemen. Both sides thought they were in the right.  Decades later, Winsten Churchill said "War is mainly a catalogue of blunders."  

If we know that what these men who have experienced war concluded, why do wars continue?  John Steinbeck explained it this way:  "All war is a symptom of man's failures as a thinking animal."  While that may be true, it does not offer a solution.  Richard Nixon thought he had the answer, when he said:  "Short of changing human nature,,.. the only way to achieve a practical peace in a world of competing nations is to take the profit out of war."  While that may sound like a solution, aren't most wars fought for some perceived benefit--to acquire land that is valuable in some way, to gain access to a shipping passage, to achieve a benefit of some kind?  His comment seams more of an observation than a solution.

Yet, great minds have warned that we must find a way to halt war.  H.G. Wells said, "If we don't end war, war will end us."  Albert Einstein described the importance of avoiding wars in this way:  "I know not what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

In more recent times, Madeleine Albright said, "I am an optimist that worries a lot. ...I have seen enough examples of altruism and sacrifice to live in astonishment at what humans are willing to do for one another; and enough examples of cruelty to despair at what we are capable of doing to each other.  The contradictions within human nature are inescapable.  Liberty is our gift and our burden, carrying with it both the responsibility to choose and accountability for the choices we make." 

At the end of WW I there was a genuine effort made to end wars, and Woodrow Wilson was a part of it.  He said of the American soldiers, they fought for "the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free."  He would have been saddened by the wars that have followed since then.

To answer my question, What Have We Learned? I have not found an answer.  I don't suppose I should feel embarrassed, since those far wiser than I am, cannot seem to find the answer either.  I suppose that what is important is that we do keep trying to find an answer as best we can. 

 

Why Wars?

 On April 21, 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives finally passed Appropriations for Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific.  Certainly, Americans have been focused on those three places, and while we are not at war, we are assisting in ways we believe to be right.  Even those who disagree cannot fail to recognize the brutal attack by Hamas into Israeli territory to slaughter, rape, and take hostage innocents, even if they disapprove of the Israeli response that in turn has resulted in the deaths of innocents.  Nor can we ignore that Putin's assault on another country is brutally unjustified.  And, while China has not started a war, they have provoked tensions. Has not the world experienced enough wars to realize the savagery, the killing of innocents, the suffering of both sides?

New Hampshire Memorial from WW I

 

Looking to history, we come across attorney and political ethicist Mahatma Gandhi, who described the 7 Blunders of the World that Lead to Violence.  They are:  Wealth without Work, Pleasure without Conscience, Knowledge without Character, Commerce without Morality, Science without Humanity, Worship without Sacrifice, and Politics without Principle.  Those 7 suggestions are worth reflection, because they offer a means for hope.  Most of us agree that the Seven reminders are things to which many aspire.

A search online suggests that wars are fought primarily for economic, religious, and political reasons.  Other reasons are the desire for revenge or retaliatory punishment.  There are those, however, who believe we have certain innate and psychological reasons for starting wars.  For whatever reasons, history tells us there has been no year without armed conflict for centuries.

It is worth reminding that wars are not just fought with other nations.  As proof, today there are internal conflicts within Sudan, Myanmar, and Ethiopia.  Other forms of War are Haiti's Gang Violence and Mexico's struggles with Drug Cartels.   

To counter that bad news, there are actually some countries that have never been at war, among them Iceland and Greenland.  

Geneva Academy, established in 2007 by the Faculty of Law at the University of Geneva and the Graduate Institute of International & Development Studies monitors more than 110 armed conflicts, some of which make headlines and others go ignored.  While there are new conflicts occurring, others have lasted more than 50 years. 

My research led me to a previously unknown but logical source, The Modern War Institute at West Point.  The article by Christopher Blattman, titled "The Five Reasons Wars Happen" begins with the primus that "fighting--at all levels from irregular warfare to large-scale combat operations--is ruinous and so nations do their best to avoid open conflict."  It is easy to forget the averted wars, since authors and reporters are far less likely to write about wars that did not happen than those that were not averted.  Blattman quoted Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung in 1938, when he said, "Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed."

What is needed to avert war is discussion and concession, with leadership on both sides engaging in a strategizing much like players of poker or chess.  As in those games, war happens when something interrupts the normal incentives for compromise, with the result being bargaining through bloodshed.

Things go wrong when leaders are unaccountable, unchecked and unaccountable to their people, pursuing their own agendas.  Or, when leaders are ideological, blinded by Beliefs, Glory, or some nationalist vision.  Being biased by isolation and insulation from truth can also blind leadership.  Uncertainty, about all kinds of things needed for appropriate judgement, can also lead to war.  The caution resulting from unreliable positions in power, caused by transitions in leadership or unreliable advice can also cause things to go wrong during negotiations.

Peace is more likely when the power of autocrats has been checked, when uncertainty and  misconceptions have been avoided through dialogue, and when written constitutions and bodies of law make shifts in power more stable.  With these tools, incentives to fight rather than compromise can be  successful in creating a safer world.    

While we know that history tells us that there has never been a year without conflict for centuries, there are times when the world has seemed relatively calm.  It is encouraging that West Point teaches ways to avoid war, despite the need to be ready if war comes.  Sadly, we are living in troubled times.  It is important to remember that it is not entirely or even primarily up to our military to make America safe.  It is up to us to be informed, to send the right people to our state and national capitals, to remember what the Founding Fathers gave to us that is so special--a nation like no other.  

When I happened upon the "7 Blunders that lead to Violence," it led me to the research for this blog.  I was feeling discouraged, not just by the wars but also by the anger and hatefulness it was causing in our own country.  Instead of choosing between hatefulness and hopelessness, perhaps we should give some attention to the Blunders Gandhi identified.  Sometimes even the little things that we do in our own lives can make a difference.  It seems worth considering.  

 

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