"Who would be the leader of the free world if the United States no longer had that role?"
"Great Britain, probably."
"Hmmm. They're such a small country."
"They have a lot of history though. And money."
"That's true. I suppose that's more important than land...do you ever wonder what would have happened if the Germans had successfully bombed London and won the war?"
"I don't think people would have put up with Hitler for very long. Japan probably would have started another war."
"Yeah. You know, war always seems like the best solution at the time, but I wonder if it really is. It seems like every war just creates more war."
"Like in 1991 when we went into the Gulf the first time. I think the fact that we had been there before made it easier for us to decide to go back in this time."
"Could be. You know, I think I may be a pacifist. I know the Bible is a little ambiguous about war and there sure are a lot of wars in the Bible, but I don't think war actually permanently resolves anything. Every conflict seems to make the next one easier to start."
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"If we seek our security and peace at the expense of someone else's, it can only fuel the cycle of retribution. By investing our security in more weapons to protect ourselves, we merely further the cycle of retribution and generate endless arms races, knowing our adversary will do the same. And then our security will be further threatened." -Jim Wallis, The Soul of Politics (1994)
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2 comments:
Unfinished wars create more wars. For a war to be successful, one side has to be definitively defeated and its government dissolved and replaced with a better one of your choosing.
The Confederacy lost the Civil War and we didn't have another one. Germany and Japan lost WWII and we haven't had a problem with them.
In WWI, however, Germany's government wasn't really dissolved. The Korean War was left incomplete (technically, the war hasn't ended) and so North Korea is still a problem. Iraq was left intact after the Persian Gulf War (we even sold out the dissidents we encouraged to rebel) and so Saddam continued to be a problem. Had we overthrown Saddam in '91, we would not be having the trouble there were are now... that and millions of people would still be alive.
You can go back even further in history. The Romans didn’t follow through on defeating Carthage in the First Punic War nor in the Second Punic War (which resulted from Carthage remaining after the first). Rome finally destroyed Carthage in the Third Punic War and it was never a problem again.
If a war is not prosecuted to its proper conclusion, then you have only imposed a break in fighting. Eventually, the conflict will have to be settled.
War, frankly, only fuels a cycle of retribution when people are left in place to seek revenge. If one side is eliminated (this doesn't necessarily mean killed), then the cycle cannot be perpetuated; it's broken.
If you dislike war, that's understandable - it's ugly and you should dislike it. But fear more the war that is left unfinished because you have only pushed the burden of completing it onto future generations.
I would also argue that not fully prosecuting a war against totalitarian dictatorships is immoral. You say that people wouldn't have put up with Hitler for long (I'm not sure if you mean that the eventual revolt means we shouldn't have gone to war at all and that we should have instead waited for the eventual revolt). People wouldn't have liked it, but they wouldn't have had a choice. It could have been decades before the Nazi yoke was thrown off. Think of the damage and death the Nazis would have wrought in the meantime and the even greater number of Jews who would have been executed. Japan would have continued to occupy large chunks of Asia, with the Rape of Nanking repeated everywhere.
Similarly, our incomplete prosecution of the Korean War has left an entire populace under the power of a dynastic line of dictators who oppress the populace and let them starve. Not removing Saddam in '91 meant that tens of thousands were executed as Hussein reasserted control.
There are worse things than war and one of them is living in fear under an oppressive totalitarian government.
Also, Wallis is simply wrong, as the Cold War demonstrates. Our security was not threatened by the arms race, it was preserved by the race. Furthermore, the alternative is not to be armed which would demonstrate a profound naivety about the way things are. There are those who understand only power and aggression and will expand and conquer as much and as far as their power will let them. It is up to responsible states to demonstrate enough power to thwart the designs of the aggressors. Even if you think arms and wars perpetuate a cycle of violence (which I've argued is false), the alternative is to be conquered by evil aggressors. If those are my choices, I'll take the cycle.
"and generate endless arms races, knowing our adversary will do the same"
Wallis is also wrong here about the cold war. The Soviet economy could not keep up with the US economy and would not be able to match our arms spending. Reagan knew our economy could handle long term government deficits to finance a buildup and the soviet economy could not. The rulers of the USSR figured this out too (especially after star wars) and gave up.
Wars and armies are an unfortunate necessity in a world with evil men.
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