The End of All War

1000 words, 5 minute read

It’s official. Our 5 millennia love affair with ‘intertribal’ warfare is finally over. The first recorded war was about 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, but it is likely that there were wars before then, probably going back all the way to the time when Homo Sapiens (HS) crowded out the more dovish Neandertals and Denisovans.

In any event, since the first recorded arrow was shot into the air, it is barely an exaggeration to say that we have been continuously at war. So much so that we classify conflicts by their duration: the 100 Years War, the 30 Years War, etc. The US apparently has a preference for 20 Year Wars: Vietnam, the Gulf Wars, Afghanistan.  

Peace has come to mean those rare periods of rest, reconstruction, and rearmament that inevitably punctuate martial history. War by whom, against whom, for what? Hardly matters! By everyone against everyone for only temporary advantage. We have met the enemy and he is us. - Pogo

So it is a pleasure to announce that we are the generation that ended warfare once and for all on Planet Earth. All those peace signs, sit-ins, and protest marches from the ‘60s and ‘70s apparently paid off. To quote the infamous Neville Chamberlain: We have “peace in our time!”

This doesn’t mean that all shooting will stop tomorrow, or that new skirmishes won’t break out. It does mean that war is no longer a viable, long term foreign policy option. It would be nice to think that humanity has at last acquired wisdom and virtue, that we have heeded the call of the prophet Isaiah to turn our swords into ploughshares; it would be nice… but it would be wrong.

Sadly, our appetite for battle has not subsided, not even a little bit. (Does the discovery of recoverable

Neandertal genes in our DNA offer hope?) And no, the international football pitch has not taken the place of the local battlefield. Sport, even American football, has not sublimated, much less satisfied, our thirst for blood.

The ‘problem’ is much more practical. The wave of warfare empowering technology has finally crested. Social scientists debate whether war is the mother of technological progress or whether technological progress whets our appetite for conflict. Most probably, warfare and technology constitute a self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing feedback loop, a vicious cycle.

Putting on our best imitation of Karl Marx, we can say that material conditions conducive to war no longer exist. Much as we might like to obliterate our neighbors, we lack the technology to do so effectively.

Hmm, that sounds strange, doesn’t it? Certainly, if I want you gone, I have more ways to accomplish that today than ever before! But if CSI is to be believed (and why wouldn’t you believe something that’s on TV?), I would almost certainly be caught, tried, incarcerated or executed. So I can kill you…but it’s no longer an effective way for me to deal with the nuisance you’ve become. Similarly, our technical ability to wipe out another nation has never been greater but our practical ability to do so has been permanently compromised. (Those who decry the advance of technology, take note!)

Consider the evidence. Since World War II, major wars have rarely had unambiguous outcomes. Korea, for example, ended with armistice and partition, Vietnam with a temporary peace, Iraq I with Al Quada, Iraq II with ISIS, Afghanistan with the Taliban.

As always, “It’s the economy, stupid!” Our ultimate weapons of mass destruction are too expensive to build, maintain, upgrade, and replenish; and their consequences make them too expensive to deploy. Our technology has made itself obsolete.

At the other end of the spectrum, for the price of a used car I can buy technology that will take out an entire neighborhood. Unexpectedly, war has democratized. Marx’ means of destruction are finally in the hands of the proletariat. The Carnegies and Vanderbilts of warfare (US, Russia) have become ineffectual figureheads, worthy of a deferential nod but little else. 

Consider Russia’s war with Ukraine, two sides killing each other, soldiers and civilians alike, in the most horrible ways possible. But Chernobyl is off limits and fighting must stop from time to time for grain ships to leave Odessa (or the world would starve), for oil and gas to pass through pipelines (or Europe would freeze), and, most of all, to keep Europe’s largest nuclear power plant safe and operational (or the entire region would risk annihilation).

Consider the US war with Iran, massive damage to infrastructure, assassinations of political and military leaders, retaliatory strikes on civilian neighborhoods, but the main focus is on getting oil through the Strait of Hormuz. The local human and material losses take a distant back seat to the global economic cost. And that cost is borne by people who have no interest in the war whatsoever, as well as the combatants.

We still have the illusion that the physical impact of wars can be contained in small corners of the planet; we conceptualize war as if it were a movie and we the passive but blood lusting audience. We have no such illusions about the economic costs. They affect Norwegian fishermen and Argentinian ranchers alike; and the costs are not minimal…or sustainable…or even supportable. Ergo, it is no longer economically feasible to engage in warfare. War has become, not impossible, but impractical!

Animals kill members of other species for food. They may fight with members of their own species over conjugal rights, etc. but those conflicts are rarely group affairs, and they rarely result in death. Plants and fungi have a symbiotic relationship. They can’t live without one another. Plus, animals and plants are engaged in a planet wide symbiotic pageant as they recycle each other’s carbon and oxygen. Homo has been the odd genus out… until now!