Small Wars Journal

Why is the World at War?

Sun, 03/04/2018 - 12:05pm

Why is the World at War? By Jason Burke - The Guardian

We live in a world of trouble. Conflicts today may be much less lethal than those that scarred the last century, but this brings little comfort. We remain deeply anxious. We can blame terrorism and the fear it inspires despite the statistically unimportant number of casualties it inflicts, or the contemporary media and the breathless cycle of “breaking news”, but the truth remains that the wars that seem to inspire the fanatics or have produced so many headlines in recent years prompt deep anxiety. One reason is that these wars appear to have no end in sight.

To explain these conflicts we reach for easy binary schema – Islam v the west; haves against have-nots; nations that “play by the rules” of the international system against “rogues”. We also look to grand geopolitical theories – the end of the Westphalian system, the west faced by “the rise of the rest” – or even just attribute the violence to “geography”. None of these explanations seems to adequately allay our concerns…

Read on.

Comments

When has the world not been at war? Its not like this is "our" problem exclusively.
The true insanity is believing there is an ideal peace that can exist by applying principles of social justice that are at best infantile and assume if we all hold hands and share everything in an atmosphere of agreed non-ownership the "bad" guys will wish to participate too.
Peace is gradated, we had achieved some peace in Iraq and then withdrawal of US forces provided an opportunity for forces serving a nefarious religious radicalism to surge back across the border and the soft stance of peace provided a blanket for what became genocide. Why did the DOD instruct us not to care about the deprivations inflicted on boys in Afghanistan?
While Americans are arguing whether guns or people kill school children in the USA, 63,000 Americans died from opiads last year.
Sane people are beginning to voice, why didn't we care that Hussein oppressed and murdered nearly 450,000 of his own people? It took the threat of WMDs or "Oil" as separate issues to serve as motivation to remove a first class tyrannical genocidal maniac?
We now have a US Congresswoman attacking the Israeli military courts and prisons for holding 17 year old "children" for murderous acts of terrorism. Did the Congressional approved and funded campaign to get Yosef Kony finally bring him to justice for his murderous acts indoctrinating boys in the most ruthless and criminal manner? He is characterized as a Christian but he is in fact a worshiper of spirits. Why is he characterized as a Christian?
Palestinian parents are programming their children to kill Jews, send their children out with knives or rocks to murder the Jews. Where is the moral indignation these "children" some 8 years old as was the case of one child who murdered a Jewish woman with a knife, encouraged by his parents where is the outrage?
If you ask me there are no national or internationally recognized and consistently applied moral standards to punish the indoctrination of children as employed by terrorists from the Taliban to UNWRA educated Palestinian children. And the wacko American left is attacking the Israelis who hold underage terrorists under a uniform military court system, where do they belong in a family court? Their families made them into murderers and their government, the PA reward them with US dollars.
But the idealists the peace makers want to use the pretext to boycott Israel?

Can President Trump come up with a new "peace plan" no one believes it is possible, why are we even thinking in terms of some final ideal peace? Its a contributing factor to terrorism and even war. The first step towards a decrease in levels of violence is to stop the madness of extremist idealism which at best is a ruse, a false positive wielded by unscrupulous political actors.

From our article above:

"We can blame terrorism and the fear it inspires despite the statistically unimportant number of casualties it inflicts, or the contemporary media and the breathless cycle of “breaking news”, but the truth remains that the wars that seem to inspire the fanatics or have produced so many headlines in recent years prompt deep anxiety. One reason is that these wars appear to have no end in sight."

Thus, as to this such "Why is the World at (Never-Ending) War" question, Emile Simpson -- in her 2017 Foreign Affairs article entitled "There is No War in Afghanistan" -- may have the answer; this being that, generally speaking, many of these conflicts are not "wars" at all but, rather, simply "imperial policing"(?) missions.

And, given that "policing" of a community -- as one knows -- this never really ends (herein, for example, as to "imperial" such missions, Simpson citing the near 100 year British effort in the AfPak region back-in-the-day), one:

a. Should not expect to "achieve victory" in any "war" sense and, thus, one:

b. Should not expect that the troops will ever come home?

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/29/there-is-no-war-in-afghanistan/