Sir: Sadly, wars, conflicts, and social strife are a common human phenomenon. The last five years have seen a rise, a twist, and a return to an ugly past; the return to wars between sovereign nations.
Since Mankind started binding together into societies, wars between different social groups have been a constant.
Wars, conflict, strife, whatever the nomenclature it could take, is regrettably unavoidable but mankind should cooperate like a beehive and together find ways to make positives out of this constant and avoid being drawn into it for its gains be it socio-economic, geo-political strategy or ideology.
The close of the 20th century and early 21st century saw humans now more engaged in civil wars ( endless list) and the post-September 11 war on perceived terrorist groups and the attendant proxy wars they became.
Surely, mankind is not learning from history and no matter how advanced we think we are, there’s little difference between those primates that discovered hunting tools and those gleaning for colonies on uncharted parts of the universe.
At the turn of the 20th Century, the global elites made popular rhetoric of a war to end all wars, that rhetoric birthed two global conflicts and over 50 million deaths. Today, the global community with numerous challenges like climate change, staring us down like a carnivore stalking its weakened prey, cannot afford to continue having wars on industrial scales. We can’t keep having wars that add the latest technological innovations to its so-called tools and platforms.
The Cold War in my humble opinion is the most iconic period of human existence, as it birthed space conquest, Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), geopolitical and ideological struggles, Kissinger’s Real Politik, and most importantly, the current world order.
The Cold War further birthed proxy wars, increased global trade in arms and ammunitions, nuclear proliferation, religious terrorism in all its forms, the rise of liberalism as well as innovative forms of tyranny and not to be left out of technology beyond fathom decades prior.
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Scholars argue that conflicts can’t be separated from the human fabric, as explained in most human societies jibe of the tongue and teeth. But if slavery, a historical social norm could be abolished despite its real socio-economic drawbacks at the time, (thanks to the advent of the Industrial Revolution), then human conflicts could be a thing of the past simply by starting with a deliberate public campaign as little and similar as William Wilberforce’s agitation those years ago.
A disturbing trend bedevilling our world today, since COVID-19 lockdowns, making authoritarians and their Wannabees lurking in the halls of power more aware of their powers is an increased thirst for unbridled power. Unfortunately, this alarming trend is leading mankind to perdition.
The dynamic decades of the 1980s, 1990s, 2000’s and 2010’s made the social fabric of the world stronger as it experienced the end of the aforementioned Cold War, commenced the US-led war against terror, and deepened joint efforts to solve civil wars in Asia, Europe, and Africa.
Unfortunately, the closer-knit social fabric among the comity of nations didn’t take into consideration the threat of another Allied Vs Axis powers type of war rapidly taking shape on the doorsteps of NATO. We may have on our hands, the drawing of new alliances at the turn of the next decade.
A point to note is that the rise of these re-merged types of wars could accelerate MAD, a term we all thought had gone with the Cold War, but indeed the world got it wrong.
Wars do no one good including the authoritarians and tyrants in power who view it as a tool for more power. To the detriment of the mongers of war, they could easily become its victims, the Nazis, Soviets in Afghanistan, and Jihadists in the Levant easily come to mind
A good alternative to these senseless acts of aggression could be a concept of shared markets. This concept has proved effective in the European Community once known to be hotbed of wars (almost 100 since the Napoleonic wars). The concept of shared markets would transform regions the world over into prosperous zones, where the need for aggression arising from fear of diminished resources becomes non-existent.