Dialectics: War and Peace

The recent uprisings in the Middle East, as well as the very recent offensive in Libya have brought up the question: how do we attain, and maintain, peace? In this dialectics blog I would like to discuss how sometimes war and peace are at times, inextricable.

Peace: the normal, non-warring condition of a nation, group of nations, or the world. Based purely on definition, peace is essentially the lack of war. But when it comes to attaining peace, many times it seems like war is the only option, or at least the only one the world has turned to in recent history. For example, World War II. The only way to stop Adolf Hiter and bring peaceto Europe was essentially for the entire world to get involved in the biggest conflict in history for almost ten years. Tens of millions had to die, simply to assure people didn't have to die. Obviously that is a very simplified version of what happened and other issues were involved, but the fact that people were killed just to assure peace seems counterproductive. It makes you wonder, is peace worth all the trouble it causes to maintain it? If Kurtz is right in claiming the human race is inherently bad, then why do we try so hard to be something we are not?

On the flip side, you can't have war without peace either. What would you be fighting for? The sake of fighting? The Latin American liberator Simon Bolivar once said, "I fear peace more than war." At first this sounds crazy, but if one really looks deeper into his circumstances and motives, it is very profound. When at war, his people were unified under nationalistic pride. At peace, citizens were infinitely more likely to try to better their position with revolts, rebellions, or even revolutions. In fact, following the unified effort to defeat the common enemy, the imperial Spain, or France, or Britain, the region of Latin America broke up into dozens of small states. Generally in war, you know what is coming. Fighting. But in peace, there is no common cause. Anything could erupt at any time.

To conclude, war and peace are both incredibly important and necessary in today's culture. Obviously if war is avoidable than we should take that route, but sometimes it isn't. In situations like those, war can be a terrible yet effective way to facilitate peace. Once that peace is achieved however, the cycle begins anew.