CHARLIE PADGHAM (Y11)
This article placed 1st in the KS4 category of the History Witold Pilecki Essay Competition 2022.
The definition of a war is ‘a state of armed conflict between different countries or different groups within a country’. The fact that a war is a ‘state of armed conflict’ will already create problems due to its inherent destructive nature creating economic hardship, many tragedies and often much social change for many people across the aforementioned conflict. Due to these issues for the populous of many states, causing or partaking in a war is an extremely tough decision to make and is never taken lightly. Over 108 million people were killed in wars across the 20th Century alone with estimates of deaths in wars across human history racking close in number to a billion. In the past 3,400 years, only 268 of them have been at peace. Just 8% of recorded history. War also costs countries unfathomable sums of money. WW2 cost the US 3 trillion dollars. The equivalent of 20,000 dollars per person. Even if war may be an extremely hardship filled event for our current society, it has rarely been prevented for long periods of time further accentuating the huge issues caused by war. It’s as if we have an insatiable appetite for war. In the last couple of centuries though, it could be argued that for many cases war is only an option when it is really needed to solve problems.
Take WWII for example, an obvious well known example of when war has been used to attempt to solve problems. Even if it’s on a global scale. Around 17 million people victim to the wrath of the Nazi regime and with Hitler wanting more ‘Lebensraum’, the West intervened. This is a very well known example of when different states intervened to solve systemic problems within Nazi Germany without even knowing the horrors of the Holocaust at the time. Intervention due to persecution or a state or group wanting more power and space has happened often with the Napoleonic wars, trying to limit the spread of Communism in the 20th century and more recently in the fight against persecution in states such as Syria and Afghanistan. These wars are very valid evidence for the case that the Western World has tried to solve problems in different states and that does get proven in many cases such as stopping the Nazis (albeit with violence and terror) to stop persecution and keep the World in as good of a place as possible. Although it is never as simple as that with a plethora of negative aftereffects as a result of initial intervention by other states.
Going back to WWII, the removal of the Nazi regime did successfully stop much persecution of minority groups in and around Germany but Europe has never been free of persecuted groups since. Political ideologies such as Communism and nationalism have fuelled this with the countries in the Eastern Bloc for example being silenced without the allowance to hold democratic elections due to Soviet Control. This persecution once again has been seen as totally unacceptable by many states across the globe and required war to solve the problems. Intervention in Vietnam caused 5 million deaths and over one million people had fled the country by October 1982 including many high skilled workers. This failed war to stop the spread of communism for the US cost them $1 trillion causing their economy and that of Vietnam to be negatively affected. The war against specific ideologies and persecution continues to this day and although it could be argued that the right intentions are put into practice by the West, every solution creates a separate problem and a sense of continuity in the way that wars and the world work due to the regularity of people in power having a corrupting instinct. Even if war may be waged with the right intentions to solve persecution and problems caused by different states, it is never that simple and is sometimes led by the utter lust for more power and resources.
The Persian Gulf War which started in August 1990 was fuelled by Sadaam Hussain to improve Iraq’s oil resources and make the country an economic powerhouse by invading Kuwait and taking their oil reserves. The West believed this was totally unacceptable and started a massive air bombing campaign on Iraq led by the US. This involvement in the war would set a huge precedent into the sheer amount of force which the seemingly ‘good guys’ would come to use in future years. Even though the invasion of Kuwait in 1990 could be seen as an entirely power hungry move by Saddam, the west were questionably in the clear as their so called ‘war on terror’ amounted to nothing but hundreds of thousands of deaths, hardship and the belief by many that the US and UK were attempting to exploit Iraq for their resources rather than there actually being anything of significant achievement for them in their war against terror. Politician Robert Pape studied the causes of all suicide attacks around the globe between 1980 and 2003. For the time period, most of these acts were carried out by the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, a movement comprised of Hindus, Muslims, and Christians with him concluding afterwards that there were few links between suicide attacks, fundamental Islam or any other religions. Hence strengthening the point that the West’s war against terror may have been based on less that first though out. Being accused of attacking Iraq for the exact same reason that they were attacking Kuwait in 1990 is not a way to create solutions through war.
Overall, the political state of the world and current wars seem to be stuck in an infernal spiral of trying to solve problems without weighing out the possible consequences of their actions in the years ahead. The geographical reach of war is over 100 countries. How is war solving problems if this many countries are getting involved? In theory wars against the supposed evil of humanity can be thought out to be positive and do solve some issues. Although, many issues in the world will never be solved through the utter continuity of violence and terror which our planet seems to be destined on continuing. Problems which war create are unprecedented and even if you stem one bud, another one will always be lurking in the soil with their views and actions just to get other states involved in a ‘groundhog day’ like cycle causing utter chaos in the world for many millions of people as seen in the past. Never-ending escalation seems to be the only option unless politicians are more reflective on policies of de-escalation. Surely only then can we give future generations of living in a time where the ratio of peace to conflict is swung towards the former. Creating a more lucid interpretation of why wars happen and the endless amount of issues that they create to allow society to not have to intervene in a way where wars currently create more problems than solutions even if they have the right intentions.
Bibliography
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/social
https://www.britannica.com/event/Persian-Gulf-War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Vietnam
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/books/chapters/what-every-person-should-know-about-war.html
https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4950-wars-don-t-solve-the-problem-they-make-it-worse