‘The war to end war’ — if only
In 1914, H. G. Wells thought that WW I would be the last war, “the war to end war,” in his memorable phrase. President Woodrow Wilson thought that WW I would “make the world safe for democracy.” In the scope of human history, 25 years is a mere blip, yet it was only a blip after the onset of WW I — on Sept. 1, 1939 — that WW II came. Some 50 million people were killed in that war, including the inexplicable: the deliberate, mechanized murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust.
Eighty years later, it seems that humanity has learned little. We cannot count the wars since the end of WW II in 1945. Even the genocides have piled up, most notably, but not exclusively, in Cambodia and Rwanda. The desire to commit another genocide against the Jews is uttered and fervently desired by Iran. War — the instrument of mass death — is alive and well.
Which region of the world has not witnessed war after WW II? Africa? Witness Sierra Leone, the Congo, Algeria. Asia? Witness Laos and Vietnam in Southeast Asia; India, Pakistan, Kashmir and Afghanistan in Southwest Asia; Georgia and Ukraine in Eurasia. The Middle East? Witness Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Israel. South America? Witness the Falklands and Colombia. Central America? Witness Nicaragua. These are only the “highlights,” if that is the word; all these parts of the world have known more wars, including civil wars, than the ones we have named. While American territory has escaped war, America has not. We fought in Southeast Asia, with hundreds of thousands of casualties, taking both sides into account.
Of the world’s large countries after WW II, only Canada and Australia have escaped the plague of war, along with Europe, settled as it is in an historic yet increasingly unstable, experimental “union.” But taken as a whole, measured by both population and territory, most of the globe has known major wars since the end of WW II.
Call this a failure of politics, or a commentary on human nature, or a function of ever more sophisticated technology, or a fundamental human inability to live with “the Other,” be it ethnic, religious, racial, nationalistic or economic.
Clearly, the United Nations has not been the answer. The threat of “Mutual Assured Destruction” may have prevented war in its worst possible form (nuclear war), but otherwise has not been the answer, as millions of post-WW II war dead would testify if they could. We come down inexorably to human nature.
The human race has advanced unimaginably since its beginnings — think medicine, think transportation, think communication, think comfort — but in its fundamentals, human nature has not yet conquered itself. Call it hate, call it impulsiveness, call it self-defense, call it jealousy (geographical, economic, egotistical), call it ideology, call it sheer folly, but whatever you call the continuing cause of war, the human race remains with its most difficult challenge. Not even a Holocaust could conquer it.
Copyright © 2019 by the Intermountain Jewish News
