War is essential to history. Only through warfare has humanity been able to come together in larger societies and thus to enjoy security and riches. It is largely thanks to the wars of the past that our modern lives are 20 times safer than those of our stone age ancestors. by fighting wars, people have created larger, more organized societies that have reduced the risk that their members will die violently.
In the Stone Age, you had as much as a 20 percent chance of dying violently at the hands of another human being. But in the 20th century — even with the trenches, even with Hitler, with Hiroshima, with terrorism and with a panoply of Third World wars — you had only a 1 or 2 percent chance of dying violently. Yes, as many as 200 million people may have died in wars throughout the 1900s, but roughly 10 billion lives were lived during that period. One may argue that this has merely been a matter of food production outpacing the production of assault rifles, so that violence has not so much been suppressed as overwhelmed by science. America may get into Middle Eastern quagmires, but its Navy and Air Force, not to mention the reputation of its land forces and intelligence apparatus, project power sufficiently throughout the world to reduce the level of conflict and so far eliminate major interstate war.
In the Stone Age, you had as much as a 20 percent chance of dying violently at the hands of another human being. But in the 20th century — even with the trenches, even with Hitler, with Hiroshima, with terrorism and with a panoply of Third World wars — you had only a 1 or 2 percent chance of dying violently. Yes, as many as 200 million people may have died in wars throughout the 1900s, but roughly 10 billion lives were lived during that period. One may argue that this has merely been a matter of food production outpacing the production of assault rifles, so that violence has not so much been suppressed as overwhelmed by science. America may get into Middle Eastern quagmires, but its Navy and Air Force, not to mention the reputation of its land forces and intelligence apparatus, project power sufficiently throughout the world to reduce the level of conflict and so far eliminate major interstate war.
I'm not sure if war is "good" per se, yet it is certainly a beneficial deterrent. The brutality linked to the idea of war prevents war itself. We live in a world of Nuclear giants and moral infants and have known war far more than we shall ever know peace. The good that comes out of that is lost on me for war is the greatest of all monsters that kills more than it lets others live. Therefore, I agree on the fact that while the proposed harm ensuing from war will create such a mass scale destruction that states immediately resort to other methods of solving issues simply because war is an option they cannot afford, War itself, was, is and will always continue being the ugliest part of human existence. Franklin quotes, "There was never a Good War or a Bad peace".
ReplyDeleteI love you Faraz, but you're dead wrong in this post for numerous reasons. Allow me to elaborate:
ReplyDelete1. Where is the evidence that demonstrates you had a "20% chance of dying violently at the hands of other human beings" in the "Stone Age"? Is this data from somewhere other than your mind?
2. I need more data on you 1-2% assertion. You can't make claims like these without backing them up with data.
3. How is "war good"? No where in your post do you demonstrate how it is "good". The best you do is say that through warfare states have been able to come together and enjoy riches. But was warfare necessary to come together? And doesn't warfare destroy riches?