CKNW Editorial
for July 18, 2000

It is, of course, unthinkable to say what I’m about to say … war is sometimes good for you. This, of course flies in the face of all we’re taught although not the teachings of the Bible, incidentally, which has some very bloodthirsty passages indeed.

I’m prompted to say what I just did by reason of two books I have on the go … the second volume of Blanche Weisen Cook’s biography of Eleanor Roosevelt and Robert D Kaplan’s small but fascinating book called The Coming Anarchy, subtitled Shattering The Dreams of the Post-Cold War.

In the thirties Mrs Roosevelt was a pacifist who was slowly dragged to the realization that if Hitler wasn’t stopped all that she held dear would be shattered. Mr Kaplan is a realist who makes some persuasive arguments that an absence of war simply means that the bully always wins.

The theory behind the position taken by Mrs Roosevelt and all peace movements is very noble, of course. One starts with the truism that arms manufacturers and brokers make wicked profits from war and may indeed influence the happening of wars in the first place. From that we move to another truism, namely, that if we all got together and followed the teachings of Jesus, Mohommad, Buddha and the like, there would be no war. Mixed into these truisms are others such as it is the women and children who suffer, wars never decide anything except that there’s going to be another one and so on. Against that torrential argument there should be no rebuttal remaining … except, unhappily, there is.

The western world went through nearly 100 years of peace from 18i5 to 1914 except for the overwhelming victory of Bismark over the French in the short Franco-Prussian War of 1970-1. There was another war which I’ll deal with in a moment. Because no one in Europe had any real memory of conflict the major nations of Europe stupidly marched in lockstep to the start of the Great War in 1914. Cheering crowds poured into the streets of Berlin, Paris and London when war was declared and everyone knew it would be over by Christmas. It wasn’t, as we all know, but became a soldier’s holocaust. There was a preview of this if anyone had troubled themselves to look – which they didn’t – and it was the American Civil War. Had some mind been paid to that horrifying slaughter by the crowned heads of Europe, the carnage of World War I might have been avoided.

The argument for the necessity of keeping war in the front of our leaders’ minds takes another gruesome twist. It was probably a good thing that an atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945 though there is no excuse for Nagasaki. Once the capability for the bomb was there it had to be exploded so that man, in all his stupidity, could see what actually happens. Exploding bombs on a desert aren’t enough to teach us a lesson and it can be argued – perhaps speculated is a better word – that we would have had a nuclear holocaust by now had not both the United States and the Soviet Union had actual proof of the deterrent of mutually assured destruction – MAD.

In a way this manifests itself today in the Americans insane notion to build a nuclear shield around itself. If they do this it means that Russia must develop the ability to pierce that shield and the arms race is on again.

Why must this happen?

Because if the United States is invulnerable to attack, Russia has no deterrent to an American strike against her. Perhaps we know that the United States would never do such a thing but President Putin and the Russian military are not so trusting.

I suppose I’d better, sooner or later, return to my theme that war is inevitable. I don’t know that nuclear war is bound to happen though the odds are pretty good. But struggles for the local version of freedom will always have dictators to fight. Struggles in our history which we find noble and honourable now we now consider to be inexcusable conflicts when fought by others.

As we go into the 21^st century next year the object is not to avoid war but to minimize them and contain them. The lamb is not going to ever lie down with the lion because all experience tells him he’ll get eaten if he does. There are hot spots all over the Earth which show no signs of cooling – indeed quite the opposite. Some of those hot spots have growing nuclear arsenals. It’s going to take all we have including divine help and lots of luck if we can contain these problems, some of which go back in the mists of time to the time of Christ and before.

War is indeed sometimes good for us – especially if it prevents an even worse one.

One thing is for sure – war is a long way from being unfashionable in this dangerous world that gets more dangerous every day.