Thoughts of peace, world of war

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/01/2024 (606 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

My wife and I were hunkered down in our easy chairs one evening, as the outside temperature dipped down into the minus mid-twenties this past week, when she handed her tablet over to me to see a cartoon she’d found on-line. It portrayed an alien couple checking out the Christmas card display on their mantle. One alien says to the other: “Again, no ‘Peace on Earth’ cards from those humans.”

Indeed, our world is at war. It is, it seems, always at war somewhere, but these days it seems much worse. Back in 1795, German philosopher and Enlightenment thinker, Immanuel Kant, wrote a brief (70 pages) theoretical piece entitled “Perpetual Peace.” In it, he laid out what he thought was needed to bringing lasting peace and prosperity to the world as he knew it. The backdrop to his state of mind was the French Revolution (and American Revolutionary War) during the latter stages of his own life.

Enlightenment thinkers were the radicals of their age, advocating for greater rights for people and a social contract between those at the top and those struggling to survive. They believed that it is natural for people to have certain freedoms, but this was a world still wracked by colonialism, slavery, and exploitation of labour. Kant wanted to reduce the chances of war, one of the main realities that made life fragile in those days.

Kant couldn’t understand why nations would wage war when it cost them the lives of their young men in battle, the innocent civilians who got in the way, and when it meant the destruction of buildings, roads and bridges, and the loss of commerce as businesses were lost. Given the structure of nation states at the time, a key concern of Kant’s was that people were ruled by, and decisions were made by, unelected leaders, that is in those days, royalty.

He felt that nations were ruled by greedy and aggressive leaders and policies, always looking at how they could take advantage of their neighbouring states, if necessary by going to war with them in order to enrich themselves. He also felt that there was no common cause among people of different communities, cultures and countries.

Kant argued that if countries acted as republics and were more democratic, “the people” would choose peace over war, and cooperation over competition. He argued that countries needed to do the same, to find ways to work together instead of against each other. He proposed that some kind of institution be created, like what was established in the 20th Century with the League of Nations and then the United Nations.

Kant called all of this “good will” and said it was the most valuable attribute for nations to adopt. He said that people should always respect the humanity of others, an ethic that might remind us of the Bible’s “Do Unto Others as you would have them to unto you.” Kant was ahead of his time in believing in the rights of all people, a true idealist who was criticized as being irrational, given what history has taught us about how nations act and how many people think. He was told that, especially in international relations, power and anarchy were the norm.

The alternative to perpetual peace is, of course, at least in Kant’s thinking, the peace of the graveyard, where destroyed lives, businesses, nations and property end up. An internet search shows that the number of armed conflicts annually on our planet has not dipped below 100 for decades and that in recent years the number has been more like 150. These are not all wars in the official definition of the word, but include conflicts between and among countries, internal or civil conflicts and ongoing significant violence within countries.

Uppsala University in Sweden reported that over 237,000 people died in “organized violence” in 2022, an increase of 97 per cent over the previous year and the highest since the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The largest mortality numbers came from wars in Ukraine and Ethiopia. In 2022, there were 55 different international conflicts ongoing and 82 other internal ones that involved gangs, drug cartels, targeted internal violence and state oppression. These would include governments oppressing their own people and rebel groups eliminating their opponents. Of course, 2023 has added to those numbers.

A brief newspaper column like this can only scratch the surface of this issue. For this author, 2023 has brought shock, grief and disillusionment. Maybe, like Kant, I am too much of an idealist. Some would say that “the pendulum swings back and forth in human history,” from prosperity to poverty, from rights to oppression, from peace of a sort to overwhelming war and back again. Let’s hope we swing back to peace, prosperity and security as soon as possible.

» Zack Gross is Board Chair of the Marquis Project, a Brandon-Westman based international development organization.