AFTER the horrible destruction of World War II, the world was expected to learn its essential lessons and move from swords to ploughshares on a path of peace. Instead, the world’s most dominant leaders chose to ignore the clearest lessons of the devastating war, which were crying out to be heard. They had similarly neglected the lessons of the preceding war.
Now Cold War and its mentality were allowed to take over, so that swords continued to get precedence over ploughshares. In some ways, this phase was even more dangerous than the earlier times, as now the ‘swords’ included nuclear weapons, and the world barely escaped vast destruction at times such as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
Around the year 1990, with the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union, opportunities appeared again to begin a new phase of peace. Several UN agencies and others were repeatedly talking around this time of the emerging peace dividend, as with the end of the Cold War big budgets could now be diverted from swords to ploughshares, from wars and weapons to the elimination of hunger and poverty.
However, again, such big peace and development opportunities were sacrificed at the altar of a new chain of wars, entirely avoidable ones, bringing huge destruction to one country after another. There could not be a more dangerous tendency than this in these times of proliferation of highly destructive weapons.
These trends draw attention to some more basic flaws in the current world systems, such as hugely powerful political and other interests establishing close relations with the military-industrial complex, in turn leading to important policy choices in favour of wars and weapons instead of peace and protection, in favour of swords instead of ploughshares. When those in charge of making crucial decisions are known to have their fortunes tied to promoting wars and weapons, how can the world hope for peace?
This, moreover, is only a part of a much bigger problem, relating to a basic character of all conquerors or exploiters or imperial systems, or of those leading persons of these systems who are entirely in sync with the ideology of these systems.
These systems and their dominant members simply cannot accept the objective of welfare of all and friendship for all for the simple reason that this does not leave them with their basic requirement of having plenty of those whom they can conquer, exploit, dominate, use, and discard.
The lions cannot be friends with the much larger number of deer in the forest because they need a daily supply of deer to devour. However, this analogy is not fair to the lions as they are naturally born to live this way. On the other hand, the most important role of human beings is a protective one, which is denied by conqueror and exploiter systems.
The conquering, exploiting, imperial systems may pay lip service to the objective of universal welfare, but the cruel reality is that by habit and character, they want a significant part of the universe for conquest and plunder. So, when those with an ideology of conquest and exploitation are asked to have a more inclusive view of security and stability by including all those who are being left out, they are extremely uncomfortable as their basic identity as conqueror faces an existential crisis — how can the conqueror and the exploiter survive if an inclusive system includes everyone under its protective umbrella and no one is left to conquer and exploit?
Hence, when the conquering systems lost the bigger colonies, they felt the need to still retain substantial territories away from home and, what is more, to retain wider systems which still operate based on transferring resources and wealth to the conqueror, although in ways that may be less visible. Whenever such extractive and plundering characteristics of the prevailing system are threatened, the conquering systems get angry and the swords come out.
However, as in the past, such conquer-based systems of dominance continue to be not just destructive to others but also to be self-destructive. The mentality and thinking of those who live by conquest and exploitation continue to be the same in their close relationships. Imagine someone who is trying to always conquer, subjugate, dominate, exploit and take advantage of others in his social relationships. This surely is a recipe for disaster, and so it is, as seen in the data on social disintegration of several conqueror societies (and here one is not just talking of the West but of a wider social reality).
Hence, the paradigm for seeking peace must be much wider, moving from conqueror and exploitative systems to systems of protection and cooperation, care and compassion. Only then can humanity realise its most essential role on earth — a protective role, protecting all human beings, all forms of life, and the environment.
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Bharat Dogra writes extensively on environment, development and welfare issues. The views expressed here are the writer’s own, and Clarion India does not necessarily subscribe to them. He can be reached at: bharatdogra1956@gmail.com
