I came to the realization the other day that despite all the armed conflicts going on in the world at the moment, we are probably closer to world peace right now than at any other time I can think of.
I don't dispute there is still a lot of
fighting going on. There are countless military insurrections going
on at all times in Africa, and have been without stopping since the
end of the colonial era. The International War on Terror continues
unabated for 13 years now. The new outbreak between Russia and
Ukraine is slowly but surely still continuing. Of course, Israel is
still at war with every other country in the area, but like the
African insurrections that's nothing new.
What's striking is that only two of
those – the Russian/Ukrainian conflict and the continuing siege of
Israel are really the only two conflicts going on in the world right
now that fit the traditional definition of a war. They are the only
cases where one state, with an organized government, recognized
borders, etc. is fighting militarily with another (or several)
state(s). That deserves some recognition.
We're mostly focused on the War on
Terror here in the US because that's the one that has most of our
soldiers in it. Although, as I'll come to in a minute, even that is
nearing its end. Because we have so many soldiers deployed in combat
zones right now, it takes a little bit of looking at it to realize
that we aren't fighting the sort of war we have been up until about
20 years ago. What I mean is that we aren't fighting local
governments, but alongside them. Our troops are being quartered in
their country, with their cooperation, to fight a common enemy within
their own populace. We aren't so much fighting a war, at least in the
sense of the World Wars, Cold War, Spanish-American War, etc. as we
are aiding an existing government fighting its own rebels. And we're
doing it in more of a mercenary capacity than we have in the past –
we're helping them because the defeat of their rebels is as good for
our country as it is for theirs. The fact that the rebels are
terrorists and hate us in particular doesn't change the underlying
fact that our enemy is in fact the enemy of the country they're
fighting from, which means our soldiers aren't so much invading and
occupying as they are assisting.
This difference may not seem like much
in a practical sense, and it may not be. The risk of death and injury
is pretty much the same no matter what your enemy calls themselves if
they have the same weapons, tactics, and training as organized armies
we've fought in the past. But from an economic and diplomatic
standpoint, what's going on right now is hugely different from
anything the world has ever seen before. The two continuous sort of
conflicts, the insurrections we're not involved in and the situation
in Israel, aren't new. There are no new strategies or tactics or
weapons or anything else to be tried, it seems. The Russian invasion
has dropped out of the news altogether, because no matter how they
want to spin it Russia looks like the villain here and they have not
got a single ally in the world on their side, and at least 10
countries ready to fight them if they don't back down. Anyone with
any sense will realize that it's suicide to go to war against the
entire rest of the planet over a little stretch of land that is just
as accessible in someone else's hands as in yours.
What's more, the fighting the US is
doing in the War on Terror is beginning to decline, and it's because
of something that's being maligned here at home as sinister and
downright scary. Drone warfare is about to abolish something that's
existed for thousands of years. People have always said that you will
never be able to replace the human soldiers in fighting, but
experience is showing that is no longer true either. People (mostly
right wingers) are even complaining about the harm being done (mostly
by Obama) in killing jobs and cutting the funding for the military,
but they're ignoring the fact that the funds are being cut because
costs are being cut. Ships are replacing complicated missile defenses
with lasers and rail guns that cost thousands instead of millions to
build and use. And the all-important ground troop is at last becoming
obsolete.
It's a wonder the spin doctors haven't
pointed out the fact that soldiers and military personnel may lose
their jobs, but only because the whole idea of Americans dying on the
battlefield is about to become a thing of the past. We're staring at
not a future but present situation where military graveyards are no
longer going to have new graves dug in them. The victory that
represents is singular; it has never happened before; we're the only
country in the world that can claim it at the moment; and we don't
seem to realize just how much we have won.
Our economy tends to thrive in war, but
for the past decade of this pseudo-war it hasn't been doing well. The
reason is that it really isn't a war-time economy. It's a peace-time
economy. We're making goods and services for our own consumption and
export. The manufacture of planes and bombs and the training of
soldiers, that's all continuing at its normal peace-time pace. Things
are even being built faster than they're being used at the moment,
which is why military units are disbanding as well. Back home our
local artillery unit, again technically DURING WAR was sent home to
stay because there's no work for them to do.
The Bible says there will always be
war, or at least rumor of war. But we ought to notice and to
celebrate that there has never before been so much rumor and so
little to talk about.
