A world without wars? How hard can it be?
an incisive appeal for reason in an arms-mad world
Hard as this is to believe, we live in one of the most peaceful periods of human history.. Homicides
have been falling in most parts of the world for centuries.2 Despite the horrors beamed across the
internet, violent deaths from wars between states are at historic lows. It's hard to imagine a world
without war. But don't forget that slavery -- another barbaric human practice -- existed for thousands
of years and is now banned around the globe.
What did it take for our species to decide that owning another human being is unacceptable in a
civilized society? Centuries of intellectual and religious opposition, followed by an international
movement of abolitionists that never stopped preaching, mostly to an indifferent world, why the
slave trade was immoral and had to end.
We might also think about the blood-soaked soil of Europe, the result of centuries of catastrophic
warfare. Today, half a century after the end of World War II, the nations of western Europe -- yoked
together by powerful economic and political ties -- no longer fight each other and have grown
increasingly wary of using war as an instrument of foreign policy.
Globalization, paradoxically, may one day help put an end to war. In the short term, of course, the
rapid expansion of global trade -- unregulated and ungoverned by international institutions -- has
intensified ethnic and religious conflict, widened the gulf between rich and poor, and sparked
"resource wars" to control oil and water.
But there is a darker side to the story.6 Many societies ostensibly “at peace” are far from peaceful.
Some of them are experiencing endemic violence that exceed death rates in warfare. These
situations can only be improved with better quality governance, rather than traditional peace
agreements and peacekeepers. Almost nine out of ten violent deaths across the world today occur
inside countries and cities that are not at war in the traditional sense.7
But someday, new political institutions may catch up with this dizzying expansion of trade and global
culture and right the wrongs caused by rapid globalization. Newly synthesized sources of energy may
even make resource wars a thing of the past.
f no one protests against intolerance the world will not essentially be peaceful. It will only be quieter
in the absence of opposition.
There is no doubt about the detrimental effect and consequences of war and the fact of its being
undesirable in its entirety-no segment of war, or any sort of hostility can ever be advocated for.
Wars lead to not just animosity and destruction but also a squandering of resources both, human
and natural. Meanwhile, we should draw upon our rich tradition of intellectual and religious
opposition to war. Some of those courageous voices -- Jeanette Rankin, Jane Addams, Albert Einstein,
Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., -- tried, but failed, to prevent war during the last
calamitous century.
