When you think about it rationally, the very concept of war is absurd.
War is what you get when you have a situation where one or more of the following is true, and neither side is willing to relent. (Note, this focuses on how wars get STARTED, not how they are mutually consummated-- this focuses on the aggressor, not the defender.)
1) A vital resource is available to one side, but not the other
2) A leader feels threatened by the actions of another leader
3) An ideology is at odds with another ideology
All of those can be reconciled through non-violent means, in nearly all cases. The trend mainiac is referring to is simply world leaders realizing that they can get their perks without resorting to scorched earth as their first option.
Going to war is the single most stupid thing a nation can do. It wastes tremendous amounts of resources, capital, human lives, and intellectual potential, just so some base (or worse, ephemeral!) thing can be accomplished, which is often simply not worth the expense when looked back on.
Take for instance, the infamous world wars. In WW1, we had an ideologically "tense" region go up in flames because of the tipping point of the assassination of the arch duke. This produced route #2 in my list-- a leader was threatened by the actions of another leader, but was itself caused by item #3, clashing ideologies that refuse to reconcile. Entire nations were destroyed in WW1, because some people just couldn't get along. Was it worth it? Then you have WW2. Germany was in shambles after WW1; it was hobbled by political edicts from outside nations that had boot-stomped it to prevent it ever militarizing again-- So, we have #2 and #3 again. The populace of Germany felt threatened by the politics of other nations, and were at odds with their (outsiders') politics. As the Nazi party rose to power, the topic of Libenstraum (however you spell that-- "living space", basically) came up, which then added #1 to the mix-- We also get the SS and the Semitic genocide on the table, which fits cleanly into #3. How much money was spent on that war? How many resources were consumed in it? How many lives lost? For what reason? Politics, and adamant refusals to budge on official positions, forcing hands-- or at least, galvanizing enough people to support forcing hands. Was "sticking to political lines" a good enough justification for what happened? (I don't think so.)
The people responsible for that kind of petulance are the political elites; the ones who make and enforce policy decisions. That's why I hold them accountable-- When they turn blind eyes to actual needs, concerns, and beliefs of others, simply to justify their own powerbase and political rhetoric, they inevitably cause wars. They are the ones which galvanize the public to commit these atrocities, they are the ones that produce the festering environment that spawns the conflict, and they are the ones that are willing to waste lives, infrastructure, capital, and resources on a fool's game. Nearly all wars could be stopped before they even start just by seeking to understand the needs and beliefs of our fellow human neighbors. Nationalism is a cancer upon the earth.
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Topic: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée (Read 1547853 times)