Geoferry Blainey in his book, “The Causes of War” quite appropriately says, “For every thousand pages published on the causes of war, there is less than one page directly on the causes of peace.” It is only because war has been more omnipresent than peace. And the outcome of these wars was the production and publication of massive literature on war and scant literature on peace. So, within these literatures, there have been numerous historical causes of wars.
From the historical perspective, wars have occurred due to abundant reasons. These causes include geographic expansion, economic interests, power show, high politics, and ‘survival of the fittest’. However, one of the most important factors leading to tragic wars has been the leadership and their decision making. Following this, the students of the ’causes of war’ have brought about thorough studies. They point out that war is less likely from social and economic forces. But war frequents because of deliberate decisions by national leaders. Leadership on the top of government matters quite incalculably. And the personality traits that a leader has is equally important. Therefore, this personality trait is equally important for the country the leader leads and for the world at large.
Very interestingly, John G. Stoessinger has written on this subject with a lucid theoretical position towards the personality traits and the decision making of the leaders of countries. In his “Why Nations Go to War”, he positioned himself on six studies of calamitous wars. These included the Korean War (1950), Vietnam War (1955), Indo-Pak Wars (1947, 1965, and 1971), Arab-Israel War, apart from two World Wars. One of the focal points that he stressed while studying these wars was the personality of the leaders. And there can never be a better case in point of a critical personality like Hitler. His Nazi ideology and thoughts about supremacy shattered Europe. Even today, European countries struggle to heal those injuries. Nevertheless, Europe is successful enough to bring a model of durable peace in comparison with the rest of the world.
Moreover, what John Lewis Gaddis called ‘the long peace’ is faltering. Following the assumption of leadership traits and war, today’s global political affairs are occupied with hawkish, warmongering, hyper-nationalists, and anti-globalist leaders. There are numerous leaders who are paving the way for war; however, some of them are more critical than others. First on this list is, undoubtedly, none other than the President of the United States, Donald Trump.
From the historical perspective, wars have occurred due to abundant reasons. These causes include geographic expansion, economic interests, power show, high politics, and ‘survival of the fittest’. However, one of the most important factors leading to tragic wars has been the leadership and their decision making
Noam Chomsky, the most critical political analysts of the presidents of the United States of America, was asked in an interview on “Up-Front” by Mehdi Hasan “Is Donald Trump most peculiar, the most astonishing choice the American people have made?” Chomsky replied blatantly, “He certainly is off the spectrum” and he added further that “It is hard to predict. In fact, the most predictable aspect of Trump is unpredictability.” This unpredictability of Trump is leading the world into a major flashpoint for a really deadly war. This can be well witnessed from his policies upheld towards the ‘Iran Crisis’ in recent times.
Furthermore, Donald Trump’s decision to hit and assassinate the Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani was nothing less than leading an entire region into a deadly war. While writing in the Washington post, Fareed Zakaria made a crystal-clear point on Donald Trump’s policies towards Iran. He said, “The killing of Soleimani could be justified as a way to respond to Iranian provocations, but this move, like so much of Trump’s foreign policy, was impulsive, reckless, unplanned and inconsistent – and as usual, the chief impact is chaos and confusion.” After the calculated assassination of the general, the reaction from the Iran side was rational. Iran is not going to stay back to counter any further attack from United States and its allies.
There is no doubt that realists focus on human nature to be power-seeking and self-interested, theoretically. And this self-interested nature of humans is not to be neglected. But if United States desires to perform the role of an international policeman, there must occur some categorical changes. And one of those changes should be to bring about peace related policies rather than pushing the world towards war.
In sum, as every dark cloud has a silver lining, similarly, this human nature has a great space for ‘perpetual peace’ as stated by Immanuel Kant. And this peace is common in most European countries. The same is possible across much of the rest of the world. This can be possible with a sense of voting and electing representatives who focus more on cooperation and collective representation than promoting wars. A single step towards total wars is likely to put an end to the human race. Hence, it will not be wrong to quote the words of Albert Einstein here, “I know not with what weapons World War Three will be fought, but World War Four will be fought with stick and stones”.
The writer is a social researcher interested in various social and political issues