THE HARMS WROUGHT BY NATIONAL CONFLICTS AND WARFARE

It seems a self-evident fact that peace and prosperity vary at similar rates, and in direction proportion to each other.  In accounts concerning periods as far back as ancient Greece, we frequently encounter the proposition that intervals of peace favored and promoted economic growth.  Descriptions of the "arabization" period said that agriculture flourished, and trade revived and expanded, during these placid years.  Similarly, accounts of Europe during the Middle Ages refer to expanded trade and greater prosperity as a result of longer periods without war. 

In the same manner, England has been described as having enjoyed a century of tranquility between 1650 and 1750.  This hundred years has been credited with being "of literally incalculable benefit to the [British] economy." (J. A. S. Grenville, A History of the World of the Twentieth Century)

For the world economy, the years of peace prior to World War I are said to have constituted one of the most prosperous eras in our history.  Europe enjoyed pre-eminence in industry, technology, and science; and the beginnings of real globalization were in the process of taking place.  Currencies were stable; food prices, freight charges, insurance rates, interest rates, and taxes were all low.  Then came 1914, the mobilization of sixty million men, and a colossal European war, the magnitude of which had never before been witnessed.  It produced an abrupt and sweeping halt to all that had been accomplished to date.

 Writing about this era, British author Norman Angell cites the free trade and commercial connections that were taking place in growing proportions among the Western industrial nations--as proof of the insanity of the warfare that followed.
(Norman Angell, The Great Illusion).  Such hostilities, he concludes, are incredibly foolish, because they render ruin upon the winner as well as the loser.

Another such period of increased globalization and prosperity has commenced during the current years of relative peace and international stability, among the major powers, since the end of World War II.  It is, of course, possible that a worldwide conflagration
might at any time curtail once more mankind's presumed progress to date.

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On December 31, 1999, New Years celebrations around the world marked the end of a millennium.  It was capped by our latest century, the twentieth, which has been described as mankind's bloodiest and deadliest.  All told, during this violent century, at least 187 million people perished from war, massacre, persecution, and policy-induced famine.  It stands out as being a century during which more human beings died at the hands of each other, or as a result of each other's efforts, than due to natural disasters.  And this waste and suffering goes on into our new centuryand millennium, as groups of people continue to consider, and bear consequent hostility toward, other groups of people as enemies--instead of all of us working together to defeat the real problems that beset all of us.

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Of course, wars produce propaganda while they are going on, and substantial amounts of ill will after they are over.  The hostility among people as a result of the American Civil War of 1861 to 1865 continues in some parts of the United States to this day.  Grudges on the part of many Frenchmen, resulting from their defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and '71, survived to contribute to the start of the First World War, more than forty years later.

World War I itself was fraught with much propaganda, whereupon it has been noted that this horrendous conflict "fed upon itself," causing the governments of the involved nations to become "prisoners of their own propaganda."  The same processes took place during World War II, and many of the same kinds of bitterness and grudges followed--among which some continue unto today.

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In a world of nation-states, there are always conflicts, as well as all-out wars going on between, or within, a number of them.  In fact, since 1931, there have hardly been more than a few weeks at a time that legions of human beings were not fighting one another somewhere in the world.  Many of these nation-states are small, non-industrial, or otherwise incapable of producing their own weapons for their warfare.  Consequently third party nation-states often seek to get funds or favor of one or more of the combatants by supplying the necessary equipment for their battles.  Thus, we see many instances of larger, more industrialized, nation-states supplying the tools of war to one or perhaps several of the involved nations. 

For example, during the Yom Kippur war between the Arabs and Israelis in 1973, Russia became the supplier to the Arab nations, while the U.S. assumed the same role in regard to Israel.  Another instance can be found during the period between 1986 and 1990, when the United States, and our then continuing grand competitor, Russia, supplied nearly two-thirds of the implements of warfare that were imported by all Third World countries.  Interestingly, during the long war between Iran and Iraq, which took place between 1980 and 1988, fifty three countries sold arms to the belligerents--and twenty eight of these countries sold arms to both sides.

This ready availability of arms produces an abundance of armies, instantly ready to do combat with each other.  In 1990, for example, there were at least 30 million military personnel worldwide, ready to annihilate whomsoever they should be ordered to.  The presence of so many armies, so well equipped and ready for battle, each guarding the perceived interests of its respective nation-state, causes the outbreak of warfare to become somewhat inevitable.  Thus, the number of wars being carried on at any one time has risen from an average of ten during the 1950s, to thirty four in 1993.

In their World Peace through World Law, authors Grenville Clark and Louis Sohn suggest that each step in man's progression into larger and larger agglomerations--frin faanily, to tribe, to town, to city, to national state--has been accompanied by efforts to assert or defend the new larger grouping's interests via violence or threats of violence.  They cite the two great wars of our twentieth century, and the maintenance of the most elaborate and destructive armed forces that the world has ever possessed as being the means and instrumentalities via which the latest steps in this progression have been grandly effectuated and preserved.  They further warn that if genuine peace is to be had, this formidable array of armed forces must be abolished, along with our "ancient method of international violence."  It is interesting to note that the final step in this aforesaid progression--from national state to a single world government--would for the first time be different--for the new agglomerate entity would have no need to protect its interests via violence or threat thereof--in that there would be no parallel entity toward whom violence or threat thereof would need to be flaunted.

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