Is war sometimes necessary? Is world peace possible?

War isn’t necessary and peace is possible but we need to profoundly change our priorities if this is ever going to happen. A lot of people don’t want to do that. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to do what we can.

I don’t know if absolute peace is possible, but think of this: only 60 years after being the main front in one of the biggest wars the world has ever seen, the European subcontinent is today not only a region of relative peace and prosperity, but also joining together to as a group to share more and more attributes traditionally belonging to that of the sovereign state. This isn’t to say the European model is perfect, just to point out that over time interdependence does breed stability. Not to sound too much like a neocon, but perhaps peace is the inevitable result of globalization.

Perhaps.

We will always have war. We will always have poor. We will always wish things were better. We will always be unwilling to do what it takes to end war and poverty.

IF war is necessary (that is a big IF – like if your country is attacked by an army) then it should be the people’s choice, not congress. (in other words it should be a collective decision, not a bunch of rich people in the house and senate telling other people that they have to go fight a war now)

i do believe that real and lasting peace is possible… but peace takes a lot of work. everything from educating our young population to maintaining healthy relationships with other countries and keeping military dictators ‘in check’. peace might even be more work than war.

World Peace is possible, but we won’t see it in our lifetime. I predict several hundred years before mankind becomes fully mature.

Does it matter whether war is necessary? Don’t we try our best to make it unnecessary?

Does it matter if world peace is possible? Don’t we try our best to make it a reality?

There is a great deal of optimism in this thread…and that’s not a bad thing.

That said, how do you seriously believe there will ever be an end to war and poverty? Mankind isn’t all bad but there certainly exists in us bad traits that we have a record of for thousands of years and haven’t really gone away. Mankind is greedy, violent, vengeful, etc (maybe not by majority but it’s there and it’s certainly undeniable).

If war, famine, poverty, death, etc has shaped and moved the wheels of history since as far back as we know, what makes you think it will ever go away?

Sorry to be such a fatalist but I don’t see man ever “becoming enlightened” and ending war, poverty, and suffering. There is an intrinsic drive within humans to look out for themselves at the expense of others. Not everyone is bad but there are enough bad people to keep the world from achieving the ideal Utopian state we all dream of.

With that said, I try and be a good person and help my fellow man. You can make the world a better place with your actions. I’m not advocating (or excusing) people to hurt others because they think the world will always be a terrible place. Just because the world will never be perfect doesn’t mean we should stop trying to change it for the better.

I’m merely saying I don’t believe the perfect society will ever exist. There have been plenty of years and plenty of chances for it to occur and we’ve yet to see it.

Sorry for being so long winded!

I think ww2 was necessary.

@Insomnia why are you bringing famine, poverty, and death into this? famine is almost entirerly preventable (see Amartya Sen), poverty sucks, but that is a whole other issue, and death…not preventable… no matter what.

@Capt_Bloth

Do you mean the Allied Powers’ reaction to Hitler?

I don’t think the war as a whole was necessary for mankind. I do think it was necessary to react to Hitler and the Axis Powers but the question is more about in general, is war necessary for mankind.

Am I making any sense? I fear I’m not explaining myself well at all…

On December 7, 1941 war became necessary for the US but if in 1918 and at several other points before Dec 7, other choices had been made, we might have avoided WWII. That’s generally the way it is with war, there are several choices that could have changed history. The problem is recognizing when you are at a crossroad and overcoming inertia and opposition by those who see a personal advantage in war and chaos.

War will end when “The day the Earth stood still” becomes a reality.

Klaatu barada nikto, Doc.

War can make authority among public and the war make an future for another generatione.

War is never necessary. World peace is entirely possible, but highly unlikely.

it depends:If throw war you understand physical violence than is not necessary but if throw war you understand mental war than this is necessary sometimes to construct the future.

jea christian 95,same focus.I though that I am a zero

World peace is not possible. War is inevitable. When people say war isn’t necessary they are being blind to the wars we fight every day in our streets against crime, drug use, domestic violence, etc. Those are wars too… just because they don’t always make the news is beside the point. War is part of life just as death is part of life. Pretending to ignore it, or say it isn’t necessary is naive and quite frankly preposterous.

Just airdrop a million copies of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ on our terrorist enemies.

That’ll fix everything.

It’s the height of smug hubris when pacifists ram their message down our throats while standing on war won and protected land.

It’s easy to take the moral high road when someone else died to protect your freedom to do so.

@Noel_S_Leitmotiv especially if they are CDs, not in their cases. They’d spin as they fall, and be little circular saws on their terrorist asses.

For almost all of history, “war” meant battles of attrition. You fought wars by killing as many of the other guys as possible. If you killed enough, their side would be scared into submission. Every single war up to WW2 was fought this way.

Then we got nuclear weapons, and people luckily realized that fighting a war of attrition with nuclear weapons is too high of a price to pay.

Wars fought since WW2—Korea, Vietnam, both Iraq Wars—have many vestiges of wars of attrition. But they are fundamentally lopsided. Any army facing a Western force is quickly overpowered and dissolves into a guerilla force blended in with the civilians. Modern wars are not fought against governmental structures or institutions, they are fought against ideology—Communism, or Islamic Extremism, or Drugs, or Terror, or Crime.

This state of affairs makes no sense. You cannot fight a war against an ideology. And you cannot spread an ideology like democracy by dropping bombs on civilians and killing tens of thousands of them.

Fundamentally, wars in the nuclear age resemble broad-scale police actions. You have an overwhelming force (American or NATO military) vs. lawless guerillas operating in civilian areas. We should not fight them using the tactics and weapons of wars of attrition. We should fight them like police fight criminals. Military technology should evolve so that it is far less lethal, far better at protecting civilians in areas where it is deployed. Airstrikes and drone attacks that sacrifice the lives of 30 civilians to kill one terrorist are absolutely immoral and strategically counterproductive. We can capture and kill terrorists without declaring “war” on them, by treating them like the criminals they are, and by sparing the civilians they shield themselves with.

Once we try to do this in earnest, there’s no reason to have war. Only police action would remain, and the world will be better off.

Although war is not really necessary, and the things it does to people are horrific, you must never forget: war ended comunism and nazism and many others from spreading and taking over.

Basically war happens whe nobody does anything to prevent the cause of the war to unfold…

War on some scale will always be with us, be it a neighbour disputing the cutting of that hedge or the nations of millions disputing that oil field. I’m sure that we can collectively lessen the devastating effects of these wars by collectively realising our resources as opposed to hoarding them.

@RareDenver It is entirely possible, and most common, for disputes of every kind to be solved by mutual consent, or arbitration. Coming to blows over every little dispute is not necessary, or desirable. For the larger disputes, a good game of Stratego would be a perfect dispute settlement, or some other non-physical, non-deadly approach.

Is is not unthinkable that human beings can and will eventually reach that point.

@YARNLADY I totally disagree that its possible to reach that point. Sure it’s wiser, smarter, more intelligent, much safer… but the likelihood of it actually taking place is a metric butt-ton to one

Granted, things may just happen exactly that way when the anti-christ rolls into town.. but that’s a completely different scenario. XD

It’s a last resort. It would have been necessary in Rwanda. But because the UN didn’t want to go to war hundreds or thousands of people were murdered.

But in most cases there are other solutions to deal with crises.

@NaturalMineralWater it is possible. as qingu points out “war” used to look very different from how it looks today. and it will probably continue to change. and as more countries gain the same technology and weaponry that we have, war will no longer be an option. and it would be in our BEST INTEREST (even though it is already in our best interest) to not fight wars.

i notice you had also mentioned the war on drugs, war on crime, etc, in one of your earlier answers, those are not wars, those are catch phrases, or buzz words

@alive
In all of the lessons of life there are to learn I would have thought that more would have learned one basic lesson: The hate and love of mankind are perpetual and terminal.
There are numerous definitions of the word “war” which apply to drugs, crime, etc. They are wars. The overuse of the word does not negate its definition.

it is not an over used word, it is a wrongly used word to get people to think of it as a war.
trying to get people to follow a law like “you cannot use marijuana” is not a war.
it is a question of what is lawful.

It seems that war is sometimes necessary, but I am very girly about these things, and just want everyone to make friends and get along. I do believe world peace is possible, I am very hopeful.

Yes world peace is certainly probable as long as we can imagine that the future does not have to be a repeat of the past.