#125

PEACE BETWEEN TWO NEIGHBOURS NEVER SEEMS TO LAST FOR TOO LONG

by PETER THOMAS BUSCH

P

eace in the neighborhood never seems to last, let alone the ever diminishing possibilities of global peace.

Conflict has been humanity’s great diversion for millennia. Conquering has proven to be an addictive elixir over and over again, even during times of prosperity, with people moving from having plenty to plundering more and more, from the wheat fields and the oil reserves.

The language of war describes, the more the better, the greater the struggle, the greater the conqueror, and the more war dead, the more justification for having chosen conflict over compromise.

The great adventure of simultaneously exploring while engaging in armed conflict, with a lot of collateral damage along the route, and lethal consequences all around, occurred at a time when life was shorter and less eventful.

In retrospect, history continually fills and refills with the old wrongs that occurred once upon a time, but then too often recur, during the journey of nation states, as an excuse to relive the past in the present.

Waiting for revenge can be an exercise in processes with those past wrongs inevitably pulling people and nations into perpetual conflicts.

The global community is much different now, although, humanity does ever so still struggle with the competing interests of good and bad, as frequently as light and shadow flickering into opposing paths.

And yet, does the need for war still exist, since those ancient contexts have more often than not been irrevocably altered?

The esoteric rewards of taking a little less, when others need a bit more, have little sway when people are so desperately locked in the emotive responses triggered by past decisions.

In such circumstances, even the slightest overtures can only carry the message of peace in a climate of trust and understanding. Those parties bent on conflict must clearly enunciate the grievances so that at least genuine attempts may be made to engineer a work-around.

The practicality of peace cannot be overstated.

Death has such limited benefits. And destruction comes with greater and greater costs. The organic growth of civilization may be erased, by conflict, causing greater harm than benefit.

The benefits of war or the benefits of threats of war can only genuinely be guaranteed to flow toward the military industrial complex, which, like all legal entities, requires a reason for existing.

Revenge may just be an excuse to continue forward on a perpetual war footing that keeps the munitions factory furnace burning, while fear may be the justification for continually replenishing defensive armerments.

Little remains after the cost of munitions and the cost of reconstruction.

War more often than not causes unnecessary suffering, while perpetual war becomes a self fulfilling enterprise with particularly atrocious acts of violence during war making future sustained peace impossible.

One does not want to acquiesce to war while in the same breath wanting to prevent particularly ugly wars during which certain acts can never be forgiven – even once peace has finally been restored.

The victors, if their can be such an entity in modern warfare, wear the scars on their faces just as much as the victims. Survivors look ugly carrying the signs of another person’s death all about.

The loss of family alone, especially to senseless avoidable war, is such a bitter pill during peacetime that nations ought to respect each other more. Killing ought never to be justified.

Political borders have been defined over centuries, often incorporating geographic limitations, such as mountain ranges and deep bodies of water into the beginning and end of territorial claims. The added security of geographic distance cannot be overstated in the positive effect on deterring future wars.

Despite this settling-in of the homeland states, within distinctly defined borders, borders are often insufficient to contain aggression.

Communities of people that had disappeared were given a homeland to return to, and universal human rights were protected by the implementation of democratic institutions.

The map was redrawn to create more realistic nation states in a manner that would promote self-determination and universal rights for people within those independent states – and to reduce the cause of future conflicts.

And democracy creates the necessary balancing of competing interests, while globalization has made the world smaller in a way that demystifies the opposition.  And the Empire always has oversight, and a lot of leverage with the homeland states to negotiate access, for the greater good of humanity, mind you.

Conditions for war have often been created by demonizing adversaries, but the world is so small now, that one can self identify with one’s neighbour, at least on the very basic level of being human beings with the same shared needs and desires – and shared stories of surviving life’s constant struggles, at the root of their humanity.

Everyone has to ramp up their game a bit more. Aggressors must be identified earlier on, with their legitimate and their fabricated grievances identified.

The international community must prosecute criminal enterprises of every sort so that the worst sorts among the global enterprise are deterred from being persuaded by temptation.

Law has no power against an assault rifle, even less against an atomic bomb, without deterrence.

And hate should never be a motivating force.

The bare knuckle nature of taking from others interferes with the careful community balance so necessary for maintaining safe neighborhoods and a peaceful global community.

Afterall, individuals are merely humans, with all the human frailties as everyone else – tempted by all the same temptations, and fearful of all the same fears.

In many instances, only the community can keep people safe.

Neighbourhoods with invisible borders are the building blocks of community. You don’t have to remind everyone that Brooklyn is different from Harlem, or that London is distinct from Paris.

What keeps New Yorkers in Queen’s from crossing over into Hell’s Kitchen has a lot to do with the social engineering of cities. Humanity is so fragile that civilizations must continually turn the tinder boxes of competing interests into a safe equilibrium.

And the global community must convince nation states to respect other nation states just as much as a neighbour must respect the neighbourhood. If one neighbour has a dire need, the community might at least endeavour to address the issue, and thereby avoid another catastrophic world war.