essay peace and war

December 2, 2021

Peace Is More Than War’s Absence, and New Research Explains How to Build It

A new project measures ways to promote positive social relations among groups

By Peter T. Coleman , Allegra Chen-Carrel & Vincent Hans Michael Stueber

PeopleImages/Getty Images

Today, the misery of war is all too striking in places such as Syria, Yemen, Tigray, Myanmar and Ukraine. It can come as a surprise to learn that there are scores of sustainably peaceful societies around the world, ranging from indigenous people in the Xingu River Basin in Brazil to countries in the European Union. Learning from these societies, and identifying key drivers of harmony, is a vital process that can help promote world peace.

Unfortunately, our current ability to find these peaceful mechanisms is woefully inadequate. The Global Peace Index (GPI) and its complement the Positive Peace Index (PPI) rank 163 nations annually and are currently the leading measures of peacefulness. The GPI, launched in 2007 by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), was designed to measure negative peace , or the absence of violence, destructive conflict, and war. But peace is more than not fighting. The PPI, launched in 2009, was supposed to recognize this and track positive peace , or the promotion of peacefulness through positive interactions like civility, cooperation and care.

Yet the PPI still has many serious drawbacks. To begin with, it continues to emphasize negative peace, despite its name. The components of the PPI were selected and are weighted based on existing national indicators that showed the “strongest correlation with the GPI,” suggesting they are in effect mostly an extension of the GPI. For example, the PPI currently includes measures of factors such as group grievances, dissemination of false information, hostility to foreigners, and bribes.

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The index also lacks an empirical understanding of positive peace. The PPI report claims that it focuses on “positive aspects that create the conditions for a society to flourish.” However, there is little indication of how these aspects were derived (other than their relationships with the GPI). For example, access to the internet is currently a heavily weighted indicator in the PPI. But peace existed long before the internet, so is the number of people who can go online really a valid measure of harmony?

The PPI has a strong probusiness bias, too. Its 2021 report posits that positive peace “is a cross-cutting facilitator of progress, making it easier for businesses to sell.” A prior analysis of the PPI found that almost half the indicators were directly related to the idea of a “Peace Industry,” with less of a focus on factors found to be central to positive peace such as gender inclusiveness, equity and harmony between identity groups.

A big problem is that the index is limited to a top-down, national-level approach. The PPI’s reliance on national-level metrics masks critical differences in community-level peacefulness within nations, and these provide a much more nuanced picture of societal peace . Aggregating peace data at the national level, such as focusing on overall levels of inequality rather than on disparities along specific group divides, can hide negative repercussions of the status quo for minority communities.

To fix these deficiencies, we and our colleagues have been developing an alternative approach under the umbrella of the Sustaining Peace Project . Our effort has various components , and these can provide a way to solve the problems in the current indices. Here are some of the elements:

Evidence-based factors that measure positive and negative peace. The peace project began with a comprehensive review of the empirical studies on peaceful societies, which resulted in identifying 72 variables associated with sustaining peace. Next, we conducted an analysis of ethnographic and case study data comparing “peace systems,” or clusters of societies that maintain peace with one another, with nonpeace systems. This allowed us to identify and measure a set of eight core drivers of peace. These include the prevalence of an overarching social identity among neighboring groups and societies; their interconnections such as through trade or intermarriage; the degree to which they are interdependent upon one another in terms of ecological, economic or security concerns; the extent to which their norms and core values support peace or war; the role that rituals, symbols and ceremonies play in either uniting or dividing societies; the degree to which superordinate institutions exist that span neighboring communities; whether intergroup mechanisms for conflict management and resolution exist; and the presence of political leadership for peace versus war.

A core theory of sustaining peace . We have also worked with a broad group of peace, conflict and sustainability scholars to conceptualize how these many variables operate as a complex system by mapping their relationships in a causal loop diagram and then mathematically modeling their core dynamics This has allowed us to gain a comprehensive understanding of how different constellations of factors can combine to affect the probabilities of sustaining peace.

Bottom-up and top-down assessments . Currently, the Sustaining Peace Project is applying techniques such as natural language processing and machine learning to study markers of peace and conflict speech in the news media. Our preliminary research suggests that linguistic features may be able to distinguish between more and less peaceful societies. These methods offer the potential for new metrics that can be used for more granular analyses than national surveys.

We have also been working with local researchers from peaceful societies to conduct interviews and focus groups to better understand the in situ dynamics they believe contribute to sustaining peace in their communities. For example in Mauritius , a highly multiethnic society that is today one of the most peaceful nations in Africa, we learned of the particular importance of factors like formally addressing legacies of slavery and indentured servitude, taboos against proselytizing outsiders about one’s religion, and conscious efforts by journalists to avoid divisive and inflammatory language in their reporting.

Today, global indices drive funding and program decisions that impact countless lives, making it critical to accurately measure what contributes to socially just, safe and thriving societies. These indices are widely reported in news outlets around the globe, and heads of state often reference them for their own purposes. For example, in 2017 , Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, though he and his country were mired in corruption allegations, referenced his country’s positive increase on the GPI by stating, “Receiving such high praise from an institute that once named this country the most violent in the world is extremely significant.” Although a 2019 report on funding for peace-related projects shows an encouraging shift towards supporting positive peace and building resilient societies, many of these projects are really more about preventing harm, such as grants for bolstering national security and enhancing the rule of law.

The Sustaining Peace Project, in contrast, includes metrics for both positive and negative peace, is enhanced by local community expertise, and is conceptually coherent and based on empirical findings. It encourages policy makers and researchers to refocus attention and resources on initiatives that actually promote harmony, social health and positive reciprocity between groups. It moves away from indices that rank entire countries and instead focuses on identifying factors that, through their interaction, bolster or reduce the likelihood of sustaining peace. It is a holistic perspective.  

Tracking peacefulness across the globe is a highly challenging endeavor. But there is great potential in cooperation between peaceful communities, researchers and policy makers to produce better methods and metrics. Measuring peace is simply too important to get only half-right. 

Essay on War and Peace

No doubt war is an evil, the greatest catastrophe that befalls human beings. It brings death and destruction, disease and starvation, poverty, and ruin in its wake.

One has only to look back to the havoc that was wrought in various countries not many years ago, in order to estimate the destructive effects of war. A particularly disturbing side of modern wars is that they tend to become global so that they may engulf the entire world.

But there are people who consider war as something grand and heroic and regard it as something that brings out the best in men, but this does not alter the fact that war is a terrible, dreadful calamity.

This is especially so now that a war will now be fought with atom bombs. Some people say war is necessary. A glance at the past history will tell that war has been a recurrent phenomenon in the history of nation.

We have had advocates of non violence and the theory of the brotherhood of man. We have had the Buddha, Christ and Mahatma Gandhi. But in spite of that, weapons have always been used, military force has always been employed, clashes of arms have always occurred; war has always been waged.

War has indeed been such a marked feature of every age and period that it has come to be regarded As part of the normal life of nations. Machiavelli, the author of the known book, The Prince, defined peace as an interval between two wars Molise, the famous German field marshal declared war to be part of God’s world order.

Poets and prophets have dreamt of a millennium, a utopia in which war will not exist and eternal peace will reign on earth. But these dreams have not been fulfilled. After the Great War of 1914-18, it was thought that there would be no war for a long time to come and an institution called the League of Nations was founded as a safeguard against the outbreak of war.

The occurrence of another war (1939-45), however, conclusively proved that to think of an unbroken peace is to be unrealistic And that no institution or assembly can ever ensure the permanence of peace.

Large numbers of Wars, the most recent ones being the one in Vietnam, the other between India and Pakistan, or indo-china War, Iran-Iraq war or Arab Israel war, have been fought despite the UN. The fact of the matter is that fighting in a natural instinct in man.

When individuals cannot live always in peace, it is, indeed, too much to expect so many nations to live in a state of Eternal peace. Besides, there will always be wide differences of opinion between various nation, different angles of looking at matters that have international importance, radical difference in policy and ideology and these cannot be settled by mere discussions.

For example, Germany wished to avenge the humiliating terms imposed upon her at the conclusion of the war of 1914-18 and desired to smash the British Empire and establish an empire of her own. Past wounds, in fact, were not healed up and goaded it to take revenge.

He wants something thrilling and full of excitement and he fights in order to get an outlet for his accumulated energy. It must be admitted, too, that war Has its good side. It spurs men to heroism and self-sacrifice. It is an incentive to scientific research and development. War is obviously an escape from the lethargy of peace.

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Essay on Peace and War

Introduction to Peace and War

“Peace: The Path to Prosperity, War: The Road to Ruin.”

In the complex tapestry of human history, few themes resonate as profoundly as the dichotomy between peace and war. These two forces, often depicted as opposed, are intrinsic to the human experience, shaping societies, cultures, and civilizations throughout the ages. While peace embodies harmony, stability, and cooperation among individuals and nations, war symbolizes conflict, turmoil, and the breakdown of social order. Understanding the dynamics between peace and war is paramount, as it illuminates the complexities of human interaction and the perennial struggle for equilibrium on a global scale.

At its core, peace entails societies experiencing tranquility and harmony, characterized by the absence of conflict within and among them. It encompasses a spectrum of meanings, ranging from inner serenity to societal cohesion and international diplomacy. Conversely, war epitomizes the ultimate manifestation of conflict, characterized by violence, aggression, and the pursuit of dominance or territorial expansion. The interplay between these two forces is not merely theoretical but has profound real-world implications, shaping the course of history and the destiny of nations.

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Historical Perspectives of Peace and War

1. Marked Peaceful Periods

Historically, notable periods have seen societies experiencing relative peace and stability, minimizing conflicts, and flourishing in harmony. These epochs test humanity’s capacity for cooperation and progress amidst historical upheavals. Some of the marked peaceful periods include:

• Pax Romana (Roman Peace) : A period of relative peace and stability that lasted around 200 years (27 BCE – 180 CE) within the Roman Empire, characterized by minimal military campaigns and internal strife. It facilitated economic prosperity, cultural exchange, and the spread of Roman civilization across vast territories.
• Pax Mongolica (Mongol Peace) : During the 13th and 14th centuries, large areas of Eurasia saw a degree of economic unification and relative peace under the rule of the Mongol Empire. The Mongol Empire’s expansive trade networks and diplomatic efforts fostered stability and cultural exchange across diverse societies.
• European Enlightenment : The 17th and 18th centuries witnessed the emergence of the European Enlightenment, a philosophical and intellectual movement that emphasized reason, human rights , and the pursuit of knowledge. Despite political tensions and occasional conflicts, this era saw significant advancements in science, philosophy, and governance, contributing to intellectual and cultural harmony.

2. Major Wars in History

World War I (1914-1918)

• Causes: The conflict began due to imperial competition, tensions between European nations, and the assassination of Austria-Hungary’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
• Consequences: The Treaty of Versailles, which laid the groundwork for World War II , resulted in millions of casualties, political upheavals, and the redrawing of national boundaries.

World War II (1939-1945)

• Causes: Expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, militaristic ambitions of Japan, and unresolved issues from World War I .
• Consequences: Unprecedented devastation, including genocide such as the Holocaust, marked the emergence of the United Nations and the onset of the Cold War era.

Cold War (1947-1991)

• Causes: Ideological rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, nuclear arms race, and geopolitical competition for global influence.
• Consequences: The dynamics of international politics during the Cold War era were affected by proxy conflicts like the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, the weapons race, the space race, and the segmentation of the globe into spheres of influence.

Importance of Peace

• Human Flourishing: Peace provides the conditions for individuals to thrive, pursue their aspirations, and contribute meaningfully to their communities. It constructs an atmosphere where people can focus on personal and collective development, fostering creativity, innovation, and overall well-being.
• Social Cohesion: Social cohesion and unity are more likely in peaceful societies. People are more inclined to work together for common goals, fostering a sense of community and shared responsibility . It, in turn, contributes to creating resilient and supportive social structures.
• Economic Prosperity: Peace is a catalyst for economic growth and prosperity. Stable environments attract investments, encourage entrepreneurship, and facilitate trade. Nations at peace can allocate resources to development rather than defense, leading to sustainable economic progress.
• Health and Safety: Peace directly correlates with improved public health and safety. During peace, efficient operation of healthcare systems allows for the directed allocation of resources towards disease prevention and healthcare infrastructure. Additionally, reduced conflict-related hazards contribute to overall safety.
• Educational Opportunities: Peaceful environments foster conducive conditions for education. Schools and educational institutions can operate without the disruptions caused by conflicts. This enables the population to access quality education, empowering someone with the knowledge and skills necessary for personal and societal advancement.
• Environmental Conservation: Peace plays a crucial role in environmental conservation. During conflict, parties often ravage ecosystems and exploit resources for strategic advantage. In peaceful conditions, societies are more likely to prioritize sustainable practices and environmental stewardship.
• International Cooperation: Peace is essential for fostering diplomatic relations and international cooperation on the global stage. Nations can work together to address common challenges, such as climate change , poverty, and pandemics, leading to collective solutions that benefit the entire global community.

Impact of War

The impact of war is profound and far-reaching, leaving enduring scars on individuals, societies, and the world. War inflicts a multitude of consequences, both immediate and long-term, across various aspects of human existence. Understanding the multifaceted impact of war is crucial for appreciating the urgent need for conflict resolution and peacebuilding. Some of the key dimensions of the impact of war include:

• Human Casualties and Suffering: War results in the loss of countless lives, causing immeasurable pain and suffering for individuals and their families. The direct impact includes fatalities, injuries, displacement, and the psychological trauma endured by those directly involved or affected by the conflict.
• Destruction of Infrastructure: Armed conflicts often lead to the destruction of infrastructure, including homes, hospitals, schools, and vital public facilities. The devastation disrupts daily life and hinders post-war reconstruction efforts, prolonging the recovery process for affected communities.
• Economic Consequences: War has severe economic ramifications, causing disruptions to trade, production, and investment. The allocation of resources to military efforts drains financial reserves that could otherwise be used for development, leading to long-term economic setbacks for nations involved in conflicts.
• Social Disintegration: War can result in the breakdown of social structures and community ties. Displacement, loss of cultural heritage, and the erosion of social trust contribute to a sense of dislocation and disarray within affected societies.
• Environmental Degradation: Conflict often brings about environmental degradation , as resources are exploited for strategic advantage, leading to deforestation, pollution, and habitat destruction. The long-term environmental impact can exacerbate ecological challenges and hinder sustainable development.
• Political Instability: War frequently begets political instability, fostering conditions conducive to authoritarianism, corruption, and power struggles. The aftermath of conflict may see the emergence of fragile governments, contributing to ongoing tensions and regional instability.
• Generational Trauma: Subsequent generations inherit war trauma. Trauma leaves a legacy that impacts the mental health and general well-being of succeeding generations. These consequences include psychological scars, cultural upheavals, and generational knowledge loss.
• Humanitarian Crises: War often leads to humanitarian crises, with widespread displacement, food insecurity, and inadequate access to healthcare. The challenges humanitarian organizations encounter in delivering relief worsen the suffering of marginalized communities.
• Global Repercussions: The impact of war extends beyond national borders, influencing geopolitics, international relations, and global security. Wars can create refugee crises, trigger regional instability, and contribute to the proliferation of weapons, affecting the broader international community.

The Dynamics Between Peace and War

• Geopolitical Forces: Nations often navigate a delicate balance between cooperation and competition. Geopolitical considerations, such as territorial disputes, resource competition, and power dynamics, can foster collaboration or escalate tensions, influencing the trajectory toward peace or conflict.
• Diplomacy and Negotiation: The diplomatic efforts of nations play a vital function in shaping the dynamics between peace and war. Successful negotiations and diplomatic initiatives can lead to peaceful resolutions, while breakdowns in communication or failed diplomacy may escalate tensions and trigger conflicts.
• Arms Race and Military Buildup: The accumulation of military capabilities and the pursuit of technological advancements in weaponry can create a precarious environment. An arms race may heighten the likelihood of conflict as nations seek to assert their military prowess or deter potential adversaries.
• Economic Factors: The dynamics of peace and war closely link economic stability and prosperity. Nations experiencing economic hardships may be more prone to internal strife or external aggression. Conversely, peaceful cooperation can contribute to economic development and shared prosperity.
• Cultural and Ideological Differences: Cultural and ideological disparities can be sources of cooperation and conflict. Understanding and respecting diversity can foster peace, while intolerance and cultural misunderstandings may contribute to tensions and confrontations.
• Global Governance and Institutions: The effectiveness of international organizations and governance structures, such as the United Nations, is pivotal in maintaining global peace. These institutions serve as platforms for diplomatic dialogue, conflict resolution, and establishing norms that guide state behavior.
• Civil Society and Grassroots Movements: The engagement of civil society, grassroots movements, and non-governmental organizations can influence the dynamics between peace and war. Advocacy for human rights, social justice , and diplomacy at the grassroots level can contribute to peacebuilding efforts.
• Technological Advancements: Technological progress introduces new dynamics into the peace-war continuum. Advancements in communication, cyber capabilities, and artificial intelligence can either facilitate peaceful purposes or present new challenges and risks that could escalate into conflict.
• Environmental Pressures: Environmental issues, such as resource scarcity, climate change, and competition for natural resources , can influence the dynamics between peace and war. Preventing conflicts caused by environmental stressors relies on individuals and communities actively cooperating to address these challenges.
• Historical Context and Memory: Historical events and collective memory can shape perceptions and attitudes toward peace and war. Learning from past conflicts and understanding historical grievances can contribute to conflict prevention, while unresolved historical issues may perpetuate tensions.

Factors Affecting War

1. Political Factors

• Geopolitical Competition: Rivalry between nations for strategic influence, resources, and territory can escalate tensions and lead to armed conflict.
• Government Instability: Weak or unstable governments may resort to militarization or aggression to maintain power or divert attention from internal issues.
• Ideological Conflicts: Clashes of ideology, such as communism versus capitalism or religious fundamentalism, can fuel conflicts driven by ideological differences.

2. Economic Factors

• Resource Scarcity: Competition over scarce resources, such as oil, water , or arable land, can trigger conflicts, especially in regions prone to environmental degradation or climate change.
• Economic Inequality: Disparities in wealth distribution and access to economic opportunities can exacerbate social tensions and lead to unrest and conflict.
• War Profiteering: Actors may perpetuate or escalate conflicts for financial gain by engaging in economic interests such as arms sales and exploiting conflict resources like minerals and drugs.

3. Social Factors

• Ethnic and Religious Divisions: Deep-seated ethnic or religious tensions can erupt into violence, often exacerbated by historical grievances or competition for resources and power.
• Social Injustice: Discrimination, marginalization, and unequal treatment of certain social groups can lead to resentment and social unrest, contributing to the likelihood of conflict.
• Demographic Pressures: Rapid population growth, urbanization , and youth bulges can strain resources and exacerbate socioeconomic inequalities, increasing the risk of conflict.

4. Military Factors

• Arms Proliferation: The widespread availability and proliferation of weapons, including small arms and light weapons, increase the likelihood of armed conflict and escalate existing conflicts.
• Military Buildup: The buildup of military capabilities and the pursuit of military superiority can create a security dilemma, leading to arms races and heightened tensions between nations.
• Proxy Warfare: External powers may support or sponsor proxy groups or insurgencies to advance their geopolitical interests, leading to localized or regional conflicts.

5. Environmental Factors

• Climate Change: Environmental degradation, resource scarcity, and climate-induced disasters can exacerbate tensions and trigger conflicts over land, water, and natural resources.
• Natural Disasters: The devastation caused by natural disasters, such as earthquakes, floods, or famines, can destabilize regions and create conditions conducive to conflict, especially in vulnerable or fragile states.

6. Ideological and Cultural Factors

• Nationalism and Patriotism: Political leaders can manipulate ideological narratives based on nationalism or patriotism to justify aggression or military intervention, thereby fostering a culture of militarism.
• Ideological Extremism: Radical ideologies, including religious extremism, nationalism, or separatism, can fuel conflicts by promoting intolerance, exclusion, and violence.

7. Historical Context and Legacy

• Historical Grievances: Lingering historical grievances, unresolved conflicts, and unresolved territorial disputes can serve as sources of tension and contribute to the outbreak of war.
• Legacy of Colonialism: The legacy of colonialism, including arbitrary borders, ethnic divisions, and economic exploitation, can contribute to instability and conflict in post-colonial societies.

8. Technological Factors

• Military Technology: Advancements in military technology, including drones, cyber weapons, and precision-guided munitions, can change the dynamics of warfare and influence the decision-making of actors involved in conflicts.
• Information Warfare: Using propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation in information warfare can shape public perceptions, manipulate public opinion, and influence the outcome of conflicts.

9. International Relations

• Alliances and Treaties: International alliances, security treaties, and defense pacts can draw nations into conflicts or serve as deterrents against aggression.
• Foreign Interventions: Foreign interventions, including military interventions, covert operations, or diplomatic meddling, can exacerbate existing conflicts or trigger new ones.

10. Psychological Factors

• Perceived Threats: Perceptions of threat, insecurity, or vulnerability can fuel fear, mistrust, and aggression, contributing to the escalation of conflicts.
• Psychological Warfare: Psychological warfare tactics, including propaganda, fear-mongering, and manipulation of public opinion, can shape perceptions and attitudes, influencing the behavior of conflict actors.

Peacebuilding Efforts

Peacebuilding efforts encompass a range of initiatives to address the root causes of conflict, promote reconciliation, and foster sustainable peace within and among societies. Governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and international organizations often lead these efforts, each playing a distinct role in advancing the peacebuilding agenda. Here’s a closer look at the initiatives undertaken by these entities:

Initiatives by Governments and NGOs:

• Conflict Resolution and Mediation: Governments and NGOs actively engage in conflict resolution and mediation processes to facilitate dialogue and negotiation between conflicting parties. They serve as mediators, facilitators, or impartial observers, bridging differences and building stakeholder trust.
• Peacekeeping Operations: Governments contribute troops and resources to international peacekeeping missions authorized by the United Nations or regional organizations. These missions aim to stabilize conflict-affected areas, protect civilians, and create conditions conducive to peacebuilding and reconstruction.
• Reconciliation and Peacebuilding Programs: Governments and NGOs implement reconciliation, peacebuilding, and post-conflict reconstruction programs. These initiatives may include trauma healing, community dialogue forums, capacity-building for local institutions, and socioeconomic development projects to manage the underlying drivers of conflict.
• Humanitarian Assistance and Development Aid: Governments and NGOs provide humanitarian assistance and development aid to conflict-affected regions, addressing immediate needs such as food, shelter, healthcare, and education. These efforts help alleviate suffering, build resilience, and create long-term stability and peace opportunities.
• Promotion of Human Rights and Rule of Law: Governments and NGOs advocate for human rights, justice, and the rule of law as essential pillars of sustainable peace. They support efforts to strengthen legal institutions, promote accountability for human rights violations, and empower marginalized groups, including women and youth.

Role of International Organizations

• United Nations (UN): The UN plays a central role in international peacebuilding efforts through its various organs, including the Security Council, General Assembly, and specialized agencies such as UNDP and UNICEF. The UN facilitates worldwide conflict prevention, peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peacebuilding activities.
• North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO): NATO contributes to peacebuilding through its military and civilian operations, crisis management, and partnership programs. NATO-led missions focus on stabilizing conflict-affected regions, strengthening security sector reform, and promoting good governance in partnership with other international actors.
• Peacebuilding Commissions and Special Envoys: The UN Peacebuilding Commission and special envoys appointed by the Secretary-General are critical in coordinating international efforts and mobilizing support for peacebuilding initiatives in post-conflict countries. They provide strategic guidance, resources, and advocacy to facilitate sustainable peace processes.
• Peacekeeping Operations: UN peacekeeping operations, authorized by the Security Council, deploy military, police, and civilian personnel to conflict-affected regions to help maintain peace, protect civilians, and support the implementation of peace agreements. These missions work closely with governments, local communities, and other stakeholders to build trust and support long-term peacebuilding efforts.

The Role of Individuals in Promoting Peace

1. Interpersonal Relationships

• Conflict Resolution Skills: Individuals can cultivate and employ practical conflict resolution skills in their relationships. By practicing active listening, empathy, and open communication, individuals can contribute to resolving disputes peacefully.
• Promoting Tolerance and Understanding: Embracing diversity and fostering a spirit of tolerance in personal interactions helps break down stereotypes and prejudices. Individuals can actively seek to understand different perspectives, fostering an environment of mutual respect.

2. Community Engagement

• Community Building: Individuals can engage in community-building activities that promote social cohesion and solidarity. Participating in local initiatives, events, and neighborhood projects helps build a sense of shared responsibility and belonging.
• Supporting Local Peacebuilding Initiatives: Individuals can actively support and participate in local peacebuilding initiatives led by community organizations, NGOs, or grassroots movements. These efforts may include dialogue sessions, conflict resolution workshops, and community development projects.

3. Education and Advocacy

• Promoting Peace Education: Individuals can advocate for and engage in peace education initiatives, both formal and informal. Promoting awareness of conflict resolution, human rights, and social justice helps instill values that contribute to a culture of peace.
• Advocacy for Peaceful Solutions: Individuals can use their voices to advocate for peaceful solutions to local, national, and international conflicts. It may involve supporting campaigns, participating in advocacy groups, and influencing public opinion.

3. Nonviolent Activism

• Civil Disobedience: Engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience and activism can be a powerful tool for individuals promoting peace and justice. Peaceful protests, demonstrations, and advocacy campaigns draw attention to social issues and encourage positive change.
• Supporting Human Rights: Individuals can actively support and champion human rights causes. Advocating for protecting basic rights, including freedom of expression, equality, and justice, builds a foundation for lasting peace.

4. Conflict Prevention and Mediation

• Early Warning and Conflict Prevention: Individuals can contribute to conflict prevention by identifying and addressing potential sources of tension within their communities. Early intervention and dialogue can prevent conflicts from escalating.
• Mediation Skills: Acquiring mediation skills allows individuals to play a direct role in resolving disputes. Training in mediation techniques equips individuals to facilitate constructive dialogues and help parties find mutually acceptable solutions.

5. Promoting Gender Equality and Social Justice

• Empowering Women and Minorities: Recognizing and advocating for the rights and empowerment of women and marginalized groups contributes to creating a more inclusive and just society. Gender equality and social justice are integral to building sustainable peace.
• Addressing Structural Injustices: Individuals can work towards addressing systemic issues contributing to inequality and injustice. Advocating for fair policies, challenging discriminatory practices, and supporting social reforms contribute to a more equitable and peaceful society.

The essay has explored the intricate dynamics between peace and war, highlighting the historical perspectives, the importance of peace, the impact of war, peacebuilding efforts, and factors influencing conflict. Understanding these complexities fosters global cooperation, conflict resolution, and lasting peace.

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• How to End a War

How to End a War

Essays on justice, peace, and repair.

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• Edited by Graham Parsons , United States Military Academy , Mark Wilson , Villanova University, Pennsylvania
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Book description

How and when should we end a war? What place should the pathways to a war's end have in war planning and decision-making? This volume treats the topic of ending war as part and parcel of how wars begin and how they are fought – a unique, complex problem, worthy of its own conversation. New essays by leading thinkers and practitioners in the fields of philosophical ethics, international relations, and military law reflect on the problem and show that it is imperative that we address not only the resolution of war, but how and if a war as waged can accommodate a future peace. The essays collectively solidify the topic and underline its centrality to the future of military ethics, strategy, and war.

‘How to End a War is a strong anthology by a major group of scholars which makes important contributions to the crucial issues in the area that has come to be called jus post bellum.'

Steven P. Lee - Hobart and William Smith Colleges

‘A marvellous set of essays that together provide a stimulating overview of cutting-edge issues in contemporary ethics of war.’

Source: Journal of Peace Research

‘How to End a War is worthwhile reading for its new perspectives on jus ex bello and jus post bellum, the integral view on just war theory (where the different branches are intimately connected), and for highlighting the links between the theory and related issues that are equally important for the justice of ending wars. In this way, the volume also draws much needed attention to the experiences of the combatants that we send to war.’

Source: Ethics and International Affairs

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How to End a War pp i-ii

• Get access Check if you have access via personal or institutional login Log in Register

How to End a War - Title page pp iii-iii

• Essays on Justice, Peace, and Repair

Copyright page pp iv-iv

Contents pp v-vi, contributors pp vii-viii, acknowledgments pp ix-x, introduction pp 1-9.

• The Ethics of War after the Longest War
• By Graham Parsons , Mark A. Wilson

Chapter 1 - The Lament of the Demobilized pp 10-30

• By Cheyney Ryan

Chapter 2 - Moral Injury and Moral Failure pp 31-58

• By Lisa Tessman

Chapter 3 - Stoic Grit, Moral Injury, and Resilience pp 59-76

• By Nancy Sherman

Chapter 4 - Political Humiliation and the Sense of Replacement pp 77-91

• By Nir Eisikovits

Chapter 5 - Minimum Moral Thresholds at War’s End pp 92-110

• By Colleen Murphy

Chapter 6 - Ending Endless Wars pp 111-131

• By Alex J. Bellamy

Chapter 7 - Forever Wars pp 132-149

• Time and Value in War
• By David Rodin

Chapter 8 - Two Conceptions of the Proportionality Budget for Jus Ex Bello pp 150-169

• By Darrel Moellendorf

Chapter 9 - Toward a Post Bellum Lieber Code pp 170-193

• By Dan Maurer

Chapter 10 - Reconciliation Is Justice – and a Strategy for Military Victory pp 194-214

• By Daniel Philpott

Bibliography pp 215-232

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Peace Importance and War Effects on Countries Essay

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Introduction

World war ii, effects or war/lack of peace, importance of peace, works cited.

The emphasis of peaceful interactions among the nations cannot be undermined at any cost. Peace is one of the fundamental factors that influence growth in economic activities, development of political governance, among other important aspects of living. Without peace, many areas of human existence are affected. Peace is the essence of living, and the lack of it can be termed as the opposite of life. When people cannot interact peacefully, there will be chaos and disarray. Therefore peace is supreme in the world, and without it, nothing is achievable. This essay seeks to outline several evidences to prove that peace is the most important thing in the world.

The Second World War was one of the most destructive battles in the world. Its effects especially in Japan are felt up to date. The war broke out form a simple conflict between nations, and it eventually turned into a global conflict. As seen in the picture, American soldiers are kissing and celebrating with their wives their victory against Japan. Looking at the picture, one can clearly see that all the people captured are happy and excited to know that their spouses are back home safe and sound. Peace brings happiness to families and among nations. It took years before Iraq became a fully politically run state (Dumas and Thee 89).

World War II had greatly destabilized Europe, and all that people wanted to be an end to the fighting. This photograph was taken in Times Square on the 14 th of august 1945, and it has been used in many occasions to commemorate the day of peace in America ( History.com par. 2). The conflict between 30 countries including Japan, Germany, the Great Britain, France among others led to a war that lasted for six years and caused millions of deaths both military and civilians ( History.com par 2). Considering such damage, peace is therefore one of the most important things in the world today.

Where there is no peace, there is war. War can be among people from different races, clans, tribes, religion among other profiling strategies. Nonetheless, when war occurs in a particular region or country, the effects are horrible. One of the major effects of war is hunger and starvation. the World War II was greatly influenced by the instability that was created by the first world war which had only ended two decades earlier ( History.com par. 8).Adolf Hitler’s greed for power and his urge to dominate the world led him to rearm his nation. As Germany invaded Poland, the Great Britain and France reacted in protest declaring war against Germany ( History.com par. 8).

This regional conflict ended up in a global and the destruction caused was beyond measure. As Hitler rose to power, he believed that the only way for humans to acquire enough living space was through war ( History.com par. 8). Unfortunately, he was obsessed with the idea of domination and he believed that pure Germans were the only race worth of the living space. Such a mentality can ruin and comprise any efforts to achieve peaceful coexistence among nations.

Peace is a very crucial aspect of human life. Peace allows people to interact in civilized and planned structures which give life a meaning. Through peace, people are able to shear common values and enhance the promotion of common decency through laws and policies (Acharya 45).

Governance and political structures are products of peaceful agreements brokered with the best interests of the people at heart. Peace has enabled the world to come together in many occasion and to work together to fight some of the deadly vices in the world. For instance, the United Nations that was formed as a result of an end to a deadly conflict among nations is a product of peace. It is very important to foster peaceful relations among nations because it allows interaction and through such interactions there are major benefits that may accrue. Peaceful nations for instance trade together and they allow their citizens to trade in better terms of trades.

In every country, peace is the major influence of any positive development. Whether it is political, economic, social or infrastructural success, peace is the key to achieving it. Without peace the world can achieve nothing. According to the evidenced given in this essay, one can evidently connect peace to other areas of growth in a country. For instance, Somalia has been mentioned and clearly one can understand the impacts of peace just by looking at the country’s development and infrastructural growth. Somalia is one of the poorest countries in terms of GDP while its wealth in fuel is one of the bets world’s known.

Therefore, this essay shows that regardless of a country’s natural resources, peace is paramount. Rwanda has also been used in this essay as an example and clear the country’s fertility was compromised the 1994 genocide where conflicting communities were starving in a land of great agricultural potential.

Acharya, Amitav. Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia: ASEAN and the Problem of Regional Order: ASEAN and the Problem of Regional Order , New York, NY: Routledge, 2014. Print.

Dumas, Lloyd J., and Marek Thee. Making peace possible: the promise of economic conversion , New York, NY: Elsevier, 2014. Print.

History.com: America Enters World War II . 2009. Web.

• The Humanitarian Intervention in Somalia
• Somalia's State Building and Failing Approaches
• Water Shortage in Somalia: Reasons and Solutions
• Optional Self-Defence War Against Lesser Aggressor
• Vietnamese in Greene's The Quiet American and Terry's Bloods
• The American Combat Soldier in Vietnam by Grunts
• The First and Second Chechen Wars Comparison
• The Arab Spring: Change and Resistance in the Middle East
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• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2020, August 15). Peace Importance and War Effects on Countries. https://ivypanda.com/essays/peace-importance-and-war-effects-on-countries/

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IvyPanda . (2020) 'Peace Importance and War Effects on Countries'. 15 August.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Peace Importance and War Effects on Countries." August 15, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/peace-importance-and-war-effects-on-countries/.

1. IvyPanda . "Peace Importance and War Effects on Countries." August 15, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/peace-importance-and-war-effects-on-countries/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Peace Importance and War Effects on Countries." August 15, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/peace-importance-and-war-effects-on-countries/.

Essay on War and Peace

Students are often asked to write an essay on War and Peace in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on War and Peace

Understanding war and peace.

War and peace are two sides of the same coin, representing conflict and harmony respectively. War often arises from disagreements, leading to violence and destruction. On the other hand, peace symbolizes tranquility, unity, and cooperation.

The Impact of War

War can cause immense suffering and loss. It destroys homes, breaks families, and causes physical and emotional pain. Moreover, it can lead to economic instability and environmental damage, affecting future generations.

The Importance of Peace

Peace is essential for the well-being of individuals and societies. It fosters growth, prosperity, and happiness. Peace encourages dialogue, understanding, and mutual respect, helping to resolve conflicts peacefully.

250 Words Essay on War and Peace

Introduction.

War and peace, two contrasting states, have shaped human civilization, politics, and cultural identity. The dichotomy between these two conditions is not merely a matter of physical conflict or tranquility but extends to philosophical, psychological, and ethical dimensions.

War: A Double-Edged Sword

War, often perceived as destructive, has paradoxically been a catalyst for some societal advancements. Technological innovations, political shifts, and social change have all been byproducts of war. However, the cost of these “benefits” is immense, leading to loss of life, displacement, and socioeconomic upheavals.

The Necessity of Peace

Peace, on the other hand, is a state of harmony and cooperation, conducive to prosperity, growth, and human development. It fosters an environment where creativity, innovation, and collaboration can thrive. Peace is not merely the absence of war but also the presence of justice and equality, which are fundamental for sustainable development.

Striking a Balance

The challenge lies in striking a balance between the pursuit of peace and the inevitability of war. This balance is not about accepting war as a necessary evil, but about understanding its causes and working towards preventing them. Peacebuilding efforts should focus on addressing root causes of conflict, like inequality and injustice, and promoting dialogue, understanding, and cooperation.

In conclusion, the complex relationship between war and peace is a reflection of the human condition. Striving for peace while understanding the realities of war is a delicate but necessary balance we must achieve. It is through this equilibrium that we can hope to progress as a society, ensuring a better future for generations to come.

500 Words Essay on War and Peace

War and peace are two polar opposites, yet they are inextricably linked in the complex tapestry of human history. They represent the dual nature of humanity: our capacity for both destruction and harmony. This essay explores the intricate relationship between war and peace, the impacts they have on societies, and the philosophical perspectives that underpin both.

The Dualism of War and Peace

War and peace are not merely states of conflict and tranquility, but rather manifestations of human nature and societal structures. War, in its essence, is a reflection of our primal instincts for survival, dominance, and territoriality. It exposes the darker side of humanity, where violence and power struggles prevail. Conversely, peace symbolizes our capacity for cooperation, empathy, and mutual understanding. It showcases the brighter side of humanity, where dialogue and diplomacy reign.

Impacts of War and Peace

On the other hand, peace allows societies to flourish. It fosters economic growth, social development, and cultural exchange. Yet, peace is not merely the absence of war. It requires active effort to maintain social justice, equality, and mutual respect among diverse groups.

Philosophical Perspectives

War and peace have been subjects of philosophical debate for centuries. Realists argue that war is an inevitable part of human nature and international relations, while idealists contend that peace can be achieved through international cooperation and diplomacy.

Philosophers like Thomas Hobbes viewed humans as naturally combative, necessitating strong governance to maintain peace. Conversely, Immanuel Kant argued for ‘Perpetual Peace’ through democratic governance and international cooperation. These differing viewpoints reflect the complexity of war and peace, and the ongoing struggle to reconcile our violent instincts with our aspirations for a peaceful world.

In conclusion, war and peace are multifaceted concepts that reveal much about the human condition. Understanding their dynamics is crucial to shaping a world that leans towards peace, even as it acknowledges the realities of war. The challenge lies in mitigating the triggers of war and nurturing the conditions for peace. It is a task that requires not just political and diplomatic effort, but also a deep introspection into our collective values and aspirations.

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Article Contents

Introduction, the perennial problem of speaking about peace, the obligation to write about war, traditions of international thinking, funder information.

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What Do We Learn about War and Peace from Women International Thinkers?

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Glenda Sluga, What Do We Learn about War and Peace from Women International Thinkers?, Global Studies Quarterly , Volume 3, Issue 1, January 2023, ksad018, https://doi.org/10.1093/isagsq/ksad018

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The aim of this essay is to ask what can we learn about war and peace from women international thinkers? As I will show, new and old historical evidence of women thinkers points us in directions that suggest, first, the privations women regularly faced in order to make their arguments against the background of actual war, addressing both the more conventional “women's” topic of peace and the often masculinized controversies of the nature of violence. This same history sounds out the range and changing (gendered) registers of international thought, including the diminished tones of peace as a defining objective. Then there are the diverse locations of specifically women's international thought, from manifestos to pamphlets and newspaper articles to published tomes. These lead us to the intersecting political and intellectual networks of activism and influence that colored the intertextual referentiality that thinking generated. Finally, I will argue that the evidence at hand, and the related examples it connects to, underscores the broad transnational European settings of the texts that specifically address war and peace. It even suggests, as I suggest, that the borders of that transnationalism extended not only across the Atlantic, but also through the entangled continental political histories of Western Europe and Russia. In the twenty-first century, these contours of the history of women's international thought remain relevant, not least because they pose the question for us, what difference have women thinkers made?

Cet article traite de la question suivante: que peut-on apprendre sur la guerre et la paix grâce aux penseuses internationales ? Je montrerai que les nouvelles données issues des penseuses, mais aussi les plus anciennes et historiques, révèlent d'abord les privations auxquelles ont été régulièrement confrontées les femmes quand il s'agissait de présenter leurs idées en temps de guerre. Elles rejoignent le sujet « féminin » plus habituel de paix et les polémiques souvent masculinisées autour de la nature de la violence. Cette même histoire nous donne une idée de l'ampleur et de l’évolution des registres (genrés) de la pensée internationale, notamment la perte de vitesse de la présentation de la paix comme objectif ultime. Ensuite, la pensée internationale spécifiquement féminine s'exprime sur différents supports, des manifestes aux volumes publiés en passant par les pamphlets et articles de journal. Nous constatons ainsi l'intersection des réseaux politiques et intellectuels de militantisme et d'influence qui ont faussé l'intertextualité et la référentialité générées par cette pensée. Enfin, je soutiendrai que les données à disposition, et les exemples connexes, soulignent le large cadre européen transnational des textes qui traitent précisément de la guerre et de la paix. Elles indiquent aussi, comme je le montrerai, que les frontières de ce transnationalisme non seulement s’étendaient par-delà l'Atlantique, mais traversaient aussi l'enchevêtrement des théories politiques continentales de l'Europe occidentale et de la Russie. Au 21e siècle, ces contours de l'histoire de la pensée internationale des femmes conservent toute leur pertinence, notamment parce qu'ils s'interrogent sur l'importance du rôle des penseuses.

El objetivo de este artículo es hacernos la siguiente pregunta, ¿qué podemos aprender de las mujeres pensadoras internacionales acerca de la guerra y de la paz? Como demostraremos, tanto la nueva como la antigua evidencia histórica de las mujeres pensadoras nos indican direcciones que sugieren, en primer lugar, las privaciones a las que las mujeres se enfrentaron regularmente para poder presentar sus alegatos contra el contexto de la guerra real, abordando, o bien el tema más convencional de la paz «de las mujeres», o bien las controversias, a menudo masculinizadas, de la naturaleza de la violencia. Esta misma historia tantea tanto el rango como los registros cambiantes (de género) del pensamiento internacional, incluyendo los reducidos matices de la paz como objetivo definitorio. También podemos encontrar los diversos lugares del pensamiento internacional específicamente femenino, desde manifiestos a panfletos y desde artículos periodísticos hasta tomos publicados. Estos nos dirigen a las redes políticas e intelectuales entrecruzadas de activismo e influencia y que dieron color a la referencialidad intertextual que generaba el pensamiento. Por último, argumentaremos que la evidencia disponible, así como los ejemplos relacionados con los que se conecta esta evidencia, recalcan la amplia configuración europea transnacional de los textos que abordan específicamente la guerra y la paz. Esto incluso nos indica, tal como sugerimos, que las fronteras de ese transnacionalismo se extendieron no solo a través del Atlántico, sino a través de las enredadas historias políticas continentales de Europa Occidental y de Rusia. En el siglo XXI, estos perfiles de la historia del pensamiento internacional de las mujeres siguen siendo relevantes, entre otras razones porque nos plantean la siguiente pregunta, ¿cuál es el diferencial que han aportado las mujeres pensadoras?

Through the twentieth century, women have been “at the forefront of geopolitical thinking”; they have written “powerful analyses of war, the organized, reciprocal killing and maiming of people and destruction of things.” And yet, women have been “completely absent from the academic canon of international thought” ( Owens et al. 2022 , 2; Owens and Rietzler 2021 ). 1 This is the paradoxical intellectual setting of Patricia Owens, Katharina Rietzler, Kimberley Hutchings, and Sarah C. Dunstan's Women's International Thought: Towards a New Canon , an anthology that assembles texts by women on the canonical themes of international politics since 1899: imperialism, anticolonialism, world economy, diplomacy, and foreign policy. Many of the women whose voices come through might be well known to feminist historians, even if they have not been read conventionally through the lens of “international thought”—as intellectual historians acknowledge, the field of international thought is (surprisingly) relatively new ( Armitage 2015 , 116–30; Sluga 2015 , 103–15; Huber, Pietsch, and Rietzler 2021 , 121–45). Even as Women's International Thought revolves around (mostly) Western European and trans-Atlantic examples, its enterprise is indicative of the historical breadth and diversity of the fabric of women's international thinking, textured by the warp and weft of its multivocality and inevitably dissonant tendencies. My aim in this essay is to make use of the anthology and these representative strengths to pose a specific historical question: what do we learn about war and peace from women international thinkers ?

In broaching this question by drawing on this anthology, I have preferred to frame women's international texts as manifestations of thinking , a potentially more generous concept than thought in its canonical accommodations. By emphasizing thinking , my intention is not unlike that of the anthology's editors, namely to draw attention to the same “multiple power relations” that have determined the canon of international thought so far and to expand, and possibly even challenge that canon, by incorporating an even wider spectrum of views on war and peace. In practical terms, the preference for thinking over thought allows me to capitalize on the anthology's own approach to its textual landscape, to incorporate a range of genres: manifestos, pamphlets, and newspaper articles as well as published tomes. I also take the opportunity to historically connect complementary thinkers from inside and outside the anthology, not only Bertha von Suttner, F.M. Stawell, Merze Tate, and Hannah Arendt, for example, but also European and Russian thinkers who, in this same period, were connected across the continent through their methods, and across the boundaries of nonfiction and fiction through their concerns. Among those concerns are the tensions between idealism and realism, the diminishing status of peace as a defining political objective, and the distinctive gendering of war. Then there is the history of the challenges women regularly faced in order to make their arguments, often against the backdrop of actual wars. Here, these themes are organized under the headings: “The perennial problem of speaking about peace”; “The obligation to write about war”; “The politics of war”; and “Traditions of international thought.” In positing the prospect of “traditions,” I also take up the question interrogated by Women's International Thought: Whether, given “the multiple intersecting relations of power that shape intellectual production,” there can be “such thing as a women's tradition [my emphasis] of international thought”? The evidence of the anthology itself, I propose, shows that, through the twentieth century, women international thinkers have regularly confronted the significance of their difference, even as they have attempted to reorient their gendered positionality. In particular, tinctured with the darkest events of the past hundred years, the examples collected here suggest that some women themselves fostered a sense of intellectual tradition around the longevity (and persistence) of their gender-inflected political aims. In this essay, their stories and their insights are connected by my overarching claim: in the second decade of the twenty-first century, the long history of women's international thinking speaks to the difference that women's international thinking continues to make ( Sluga 2014 , 65–72).

To the extent that it has existed as a field, “international thought” has often evoked the history of pacifism, and pacifism has been associated with femininity, and even, occasionally, feminism ( Owens and Rietzler 2021 , 17; Sluga 2021 , 226). Historically, women have been well aware of the impact of these associations on any attempt to speak to peace as a legitimate international imperative. At the turn of the twentieth century, Bertha von Suttner—a baroness who founded the Austrian peace movement and eventually impressed the dynamite king Alfred Nobel to fund a peace prize—struggled against the stigma of being both a woman and a pacifist.

Since then, she has remained perhaps the best known of the women associated with turn-of-the-twentieth-century international thinking about war. She has hardly lacked biographers, and she was herself an early publicist of her ideas ( Moyn 2021 , 32). 2 Her autobiography—published in German in 1889 as Die Waffen nieder! , in English in 1892 as Lay down your arms! , and, later, in many other languages—reached at least a million readers in her own lifetime. In 1905, Suttner (like many of the women under discussion in this intellectual history) was even awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in part for her role at the 1899 Hague peace congress famously organized by the Russian Tsar Nicholas II to somehow manage the escalating militarization of Europe's imperial powers. This was the tense setting in which Suttner took up as one of her main themes the realism of pacifists.

Suttner's address to the 1899 congress—now reproduced in the Women's International Thought anthology—directly attacks what she saw as a prevailing and disabling misconception: that “members of peace societies imagine under the name of universal peace a condition of general harmony, a world without fighting or divisions, with undisputed frontiers settled for all time, and inhabited by angelic beings, overflowing with gentleness and love.” She attributes this misrepresentation to the enemies of the peace movement, who accuse it of “absurdities … which it has never asserted.” In contrast, Suttner describes pacifism's realism: “[t]he friends of peace do not desire to found their kingdom on impossibilities, nor on conditions that might perhaps prevail thousands of years hence, but on the living present and living humanity” ( von Suttner 1899 , 50–69). The peace movement she leads does not demand the “avoidance of disputes,” as she clarifies, “for that is impossible” ( von Suttner 1899 , 56). Rather, she stresses, it is realistic; what pacifists want is for disputes between states to be settled “by arbitration instead of by force” ( von Suttner 1899 , 56).

In the early twentieth century, despite such protestations of realism, the authority of the peace movement's faith in arbitration remained vulnerable to the derision of its “enemies” and to the impact of the unprecedented scale of the arms race that provoked the 1899 congress in the first place. After war broke out in late 1914, the American economist and pacifist Emily Greene Balch acknowledged an inevitability to the “widespread feeling” “that this is not the moment to talk of a European peace” (Balch would eventually win the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1946). In October 1915, she equally insisted that “the psychological moment” for talking about peace was near. It could even be coaxed forth by beginning preparations for peace, through discussion of the terms and principles of a future peace:

In each country there are those that want to continue the fight until military supremacy is achieved, in each there are powerful forces that seek a settlement of the opposite type, one which instead of containing within itself the threats to international stability that are involved in annexation, humiliation of the enemy, and competition between armaments, shall secure national independence all round, protect the rights of minorities and foster international co-operation. ( Balch 1915 , 24)

Earlier that year, as battles raged through the nerve centers of Europe's security alliances, Balch was among the women—three British, some American, and one thousand mostly Dutch delegates—who gathered from April 28 to May 1 in The Hague, not uncoincidentally the site of the 1899 congress. Their aim was precisely to pursue the discussions required for a just and early peace. The Women's International Thought anthology includes texts from many of the women involved in The Hague congress, although not the famous manifesto on which the women agreed ( National Peace Federation 1915 ; Costin 1982 , 301–15; Vellacott 1993 , 23–56).

Hardly a conventional intellectual text, the intellectual authority of the 1915 Hague manifesto rests on its capture of the thinking of well-known American and British feminists such as Balch, Jane Addams, and Helena Swanwick, as well as the Hungarian Rosika Schwimmer ( National Peace Federation 1915 ). On the one hand, the manifesto plainly states the principles that Balch predicted would dominate peacemaking: national independence, minority rights, and international cooperation. Indeed, their international thinking possibly influenced, and certainly anticipated, the eventual terms of peacemaking in 1919, from the creation of international institutions, and the principle of nationality, to the democratic control of foreign policy. On the other hand, as importantly, the manifesto espouses topics that were not acceptable in the delineation of a new international politics: the importance of education and women's suffrage as means by which peace might be permanently maintained. Indeed, the Council of Ten who eventually decided the terms of the postwar peace explicitly and unanimously refused to accommodate the status of women in the peace settlement on the grounds that authority over that question defined national sovereignty and thus could not be put on an international agenda ( Sluga 2005a , 166–83; 2005b , 300–19; 2006 ). For our purposes, the manifesto and the history surrounding it is a vital example of how women's rights and women's political roles were consistently the point of distinction between women's international thinking and international thought more narrowly defined.

Over the course of the twentieth century, the women's Hague congress and its decisions were co-opted into general historical inventories of pacifism and internationalism, particularly as part of the story of the creation of the enduring organization “Women's International League for Peace and Freedom” (WILPF), although its specific peacemaking agenda was as often neglected. Less attention has been paid too to the ways in which these women were targeted by governments for their convictions. We know that some European governments attempted to deter attendance on the grounds that so-called peace propaganda might have undermined strategic wartime patriotic programs. In this same context, social historians have shown the extent of censoring of peace publications as well as unprecedented levels of harassment through raids and surveillance that took place in England. The German government, which overall tried to avoid arrest and prosecution, resorted instead to blocking the circulation of peace activists’ publications and views ( Ewing and Gearty 2001 ). In the United States, there is the example of Balch's activism leading to the loss of her academic position at Wellesley. In Russia, in 1915, Anna Shabanova was forced by police order to dismantle the Petrograd (Saint Petersburg) women's peace society she had established on the Austrian model of Bertha von Suttner ( Cohen 2012 , 184).

The connections between the Russian and other European experiences, events, and ideas ran deep. Before the Hague meeting, in March 1915, Shabanova and other socialist women organized their own anti-war meeting in the (wartime) neutral Swiss capital of Berne. Clara Zetkin, the German Secretary of the International Bureau of Socialist Women and one of the key organizers of this Berne congress, faced the opprobrium of her male peers in the German Socialist Party (SPD), which forbade its members’ attendance. The French women's delegation too suffered the criticism of the (male-dominated) French socialist party. When, regardless, the Berne peace congress went ahead, its participants—twenty-two women from Russia, France, Britain, Italy, Poland, and Sweden—agreed a manifesto that was the work mainly of Zetkin, drawn up in their company. The Berne women shared with the Hague attendees a certain obstinacy and pariah status—and the Hague and Berne women even supported each other's efforts to some extent. However, there were also important differences. The Hague manifesto was intrinsically a liberal document asserting the importance of peace, the intrinsically pacifist nature of women's influence, and the pacific influence of free seas, commerce, and trade routes. The Berne manifesto, in contrast, was oriented toward a socialist rather than liberal critique. It targeted not just arms, but also capitalism, making space for violence in the interests of politics: “Down with capitalism, which sacrifices untold millions to the wealth and power of the propertied! Down with the war! Forward to socialism!,” it proclaimed ( Manifesto of the International Conference of Socialist Women at Berne 1915 ).

The themes of the Berne congress are represented by the Russian socialist Alexandra Kollontai, who contributed her thinking to the congress from a distance. Kollontai had a history of participating in anti-war protests in Sweden, Switzerland, and Belgium; she had been arrested for organizing an anti-war demonstration in Belgium the previous year and was absent from Berne because she could not get permission from the French government to cross its territory. In the circumstances, she wrote her breathless pamphlet, Who Needs the War ?. Echoing the message of the Berne gathering, Kollontai describes the war as “a madness, an abomination, a crime,” and, more specifically, as benefitting only capitalism and a capitalist class ( Kollontai 1916 ; Kollontai [1926] 1994 , 123). On these same grounds, she argues in favor of a different imperative: a workers’ revolution. As we will see, political ideology was a critical theoretical dividing point for some women international thinkers on the question of when war might be justified.

Just as the First World War drew women to reflect on war and peace in a range of political contexts, so too did the end of the war, and the novel postwar international institutional setting ( Stöckmann 2018 , 215–35). The unprecedented intergovernmental body, the League of Nations, was the product of wartime activism. New research by Helen McCarthy, for example, has shown the extent of popular support among women as well as men during the war for a League of Nations that might be equipped to ensure peace in the future ( McCarthy 2011 ). Among those supporters was the Cambridge-based classicist Florence Melian Stawell, whose activism took the form of writing pamphlets and addressing the compatibility of national patriotism and internationalism ( Sluga 2021 , 223–43). After the war, Stawell contributed to the English “Home Library” series a long history of the internationalist basis of peace thinking. Her book, The Growth of International Thought (1927), was meant to educate a broader public in the enduring and universal internationalist values of the newly established League of Nations, as an instrument of world peace ( Stawell 1929 , 7, 18–26). From the viewpoint of intellectual history, The Growth of International Thought is the product of Stawell's classicist expertise, which she shared with so many of the male scholars who led the wartime English League of Nations movement ( Sylvest 2004 , 409–32; Sluga 2006 , chapter 2; Stapleton 2007 , 261–91; McCarthy 2011 ). Like other classicists, she turned to Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian wars, “in which oligarchs fought against democrats, where there was ‘every form of murder and every extreme of cruelty’,” as “one of the strongest indictments against war ever written.” The Peloponnesian wars taught that the causes of belligerence are “the lust for power and gain.” War not only has its origins in the motivations of men, it changes them; once war begins “men are tempted by dire necessity,” and many “grow like the lives they lead” ( Owens and Rietzler 2021 , 41).

Stawell's interest in classical texts also underlines what women's international thinking often added to discussions of war and peace, namely an explicit engagement with the difference women made, such as their gendered investment in peace. Sometimes, the rationale for this difference was biological motherhood. Some of the authors of the 1915 Hague manifesto argued that since women's maternal roles instinctively inclined them to peace, granting women rights would inevitably encourage peace. Mostly, however, arguments for making women's rights a basis for peace were proposed on the grounds of social not biological reasoning: the social forms of masculinity that supported gender inequality also contributed to war. On this same view, conventional forms of femininity were more likely to be associated with pacifist ambitions. Emily Greene Balch understood that women could have the same emotions as men, and be likewise “inflamed by nationalism, intoxicated by the glories of war, embittered by old rancors” ( Balch 1922 , 334–36). However, she ventured that psychologically, women “have a less powerful instinctive pugnacity than men,” and she underlined the sociological fact that women had “in the mass… taken little part in the political life of their peoples.” In war, women “always stood to lose even more than men, as Europe knew” ( Balch 2022 , 493). Stawell turned as well to Euripides’ Trojan Women and Aristophanes’ Lysistrata for lessons about the different roles men and women could take in international thinking ( Owens et al. 2022 , 21; Sluga 2021 , 28; Stawell, 2022, 42). 3 In both plays, women reject men's violence. Most famously, Lysistrata , the eponymous figure (“whose name means ‘the Peacemaker’”) determines to band women from all sides together “in a vow that they will have nothing to do with men until the senseless war between them is ended” (cited in Owens et al. 2022 , 42).

Through the twentieth century, in the face of prevalent episodes of imperial and nation-state-based violence, women have felt an obligation to think and write about the fundamental causes of war. Emily Greene Balch explained that “the great war” revealed human nature to be “a thin crust barely concealing a substratum of explosive passions and interests which may break out in a disastrous eruption at any time.” This same truth made it all the more imperative to ask what could be done “to prevent the calamity?” Virginia Woolf, among the most famous of English writers, arrived at this sense of obligation too, but only belatedly, more than a decade after the First World War or Great War as it was known.

Initially, in the face of the overwhelming tragedy of the First World War, its decimation of a generation of men, Woolf felt that the war could not be spoken about; its suffering was so great that it could not be given words and had to be passed over in silence. In A Room of One's Own (1929), she reflected that feelings that were possible before the First World War—including “the abandonment and rapture” excited by love poetry—“could not be written about after it” ( Caine 2015 , 20; Winter 2019 , 223–35; Beganovic 2020 ). By the 1930s, however, as Woolf contemplated the second year of the conflict of the Spanish Civil War, the ominous onward march of colonial wars and militarism, and accruing refugee crisis, all compounding the threat of another cataclysmic war in Europe, she saw it as her duty to write about war, and to ask how war might be prevented. Her answers took up the themes of A Room of One's Own —the social and political constrictions of gender roles and relations, women's inequality in the professions and in education, the (incomplete promise of) the postwar expansion of the franchise, and the broader social and psychological damage inflicted on individuals by “patriarchy”—and brought them to bear on her understanding of war ( Beganovic 2020 ).

In Three Guineas (1938), published on the eve of the Second World War, Virginia Woolf set out to understand the ways in which middle-class women's exclusion from the corridors of power and influence was tied to predominant forms of masculinity, and masculinity to the causes of war. Observing the powerlessness of middle-class women such as herself, she noted that women could not be members of the stock exchange so they could not use the pressure of force nor the pressure of money to prevent or stop wars. Women could not be diplomats so they could not negotiate treaties to end wars. In England, women could participate in civil service and legal institutions, but they had precarious positions and little authority ( Woolf 1966 , 45). Women could write to the press to voice their views; however, the decision what to print or not was in hands of men. In sum, Woolf declaimed, identifying with her middle-class female subject, “we have no weapon with which to enforce our will”: “all the weapons with which an educated man can enforce his opinion are either beyond our grasp or so nearly beyond it that even if we used them we could scarcely inflict one scratch … educated women [are] even weaker than working class women who can use their labour in the munitions factories to protest” ( Woolf 1966 , 12). Woolf connected the precarity of the public situation of women such as herself to their private circumstances, to “the fear which forbids freedom in the private house. That fear, small, insignificant and private as it is, is connected with the other fear, the public fear, which is neither small nor insignificant, the fear which has led you to ask us to help you to prevent war” ( Woolf 1966 , 129–30). This connection between the private and the public becomes her method of dissecting the origins and prevention of war and illustrating its tragedy.

While Stawell returned to classical texts to understand how men's psychological and material motivations could lead to war, and how war changed men, Woolf dwelt on the contemporary situation, drawing on the evidence of everyday life. In particular, she discusses the photographs sent by the Spanish Government to media outlets “with patient pertinacity about twice a week” as witness to the civil war there, and intended to arouse sympathy: “They are not pleasant photographs to look upon. They are photographs of dead bodies for the most part” ( Woolf 1966 , 10).

This morning's collection contains the photograph of what might be a man's body, or a woman's; it is so mutilated that it might, on the other hand, be the body of a pig. But those certainly are dead children, and that undoubtedly is the section of a house. A bomb has torn upon the side; there is still a birdcage hanging in what was presumably the sitting room, but the rest of the house looks like nothing so much as a bunch of spillikins suspended in mid-air. ( Woolf 1966 , 10–11)

The gaze in Woolf's text belongs to women, in this case. She suggests that women's specific social and historical situatedness connects them: “A common interest unites us; it is one world, one life. How essential it is that we should realize that unity the dead bodies, the ruined houses prove. For such will be our ruin if you, in the immensity of your public abstractions forget the private figure, or if we in the intensity of our private emotions forget the public world. Both houses will be ruined, the public and the private, the material and the spiritual for they are inseparably connected.”

Woolf also uses photographs to dissect the social origins of the gendered dimensions of war as a profession, war sold as a source of happiness and excitement for men, and war as an outlet for manly qualities. In particular, she analyses circulating representations of the masculinity embodied by the orchestrators of the violence erupting across Europe, their portraiture declaiming “[t]he quintessence of virility, the perfect type of which all the others are imperfect adumbrations”:

He is a man certainly, His eyes are glazed; his eyes glare. His body, which is braced in an unnatural position, is tightly cased in a uniform. Upon the breast of that uniform are sewn several medals and other mystic symbols. His hand is upon a sword. He is called in German and Italian Fuhrer or Duce ; in our own language Tyrant or Dictator. And behind him lie ruined houses and dead bodies – men, women and children.

Woolf was not focused on this image, she explained, “in order to excite once more the sterile emotion of hate”. Instead, she wanted to use the photo “to release other emotions such as the human figure, even thus crudely, in a coloured photograph arouses in us who are human beings.” She was interested in the “connection” it suggested, between the public and private worlds: “the tyrannies and servilities of the one, are the tyrannies and servilities of the other.” ( Woolf 1966 , 142).

In using the medium of the photograph to gender and to connect the private figure and the public world, Woolf anticipates later treatments of atrocity photography and humanitarianism, and discussions of the representations of fascism, whether by Susan Sontag or feminist international relations scholars. She shares an interest in patriarchy as an elemental cause of war, and, like other women international thinkers before her, renders women's socially and historically determined difference, “their membership of the ‘society of outsiders,’” “in the historical, social circumstances” they face, “their only weapon in the prevention of war.” For Woolf in particular, women's “outsider” position becomes their means of challenging “whether the new militarization of the society was really inevitable and necessary” ( Woolf 1966 , 115). “Different as we are,” Woolf contends, “as facts have proved, both in sex and education … it is from that difference, as we have already said, that our help can come, if help we can, to protect liberty, to prevent war” ( Owens et al. 2022 , 499).

Significantly, Woolf does not claim that any dimensions of masculinity or women's difference are natural, even if they are normative. They are, instead, she argues, symptomatic of “patriarchy.” They are the product of patriarchal institutions and practices. This same explanation means, she argues, that patriarchal gender norms can be tackled through education: “What kind of society, what kind of human being … should [education] seek to produce?”; What is “the kind of society the kind of people that will help to prevent war”? ( Woolf 1966 , 3). In reply, she posits that instead of the arts of dominating other people, the arts of ruling, of killing, and of acquiring land and capital, education should focus on “medicine, mathematics, music, painting and literature,” and “the arts of human intercourse” ( Woolf 1966 , 34). 4

The gender emphasis of Woolf's argument for how to prevent war, and the writer's obligation to take up that topic, has resonated in the themes of women international thinkers, before and after. Her educational thematic has woven its way in and out of twentieth-century rationales for inventing international institutions, not least the League of Nations Intellectual Cooperation initiative, and the United Nations Education, Science, and Culture Organization. It also underlines the extent to which women's international thinking—with its interest in the intersecting spheres of the private and public, the emotional, intimate relationship between masculinity in the private sphere and militarism in the public sphere, moving across textual/visual sources, and across the boundaries of fiction and nonfiction—has evaded the generic limitations of the existing canon of international thought. Here I want to take up the potential for this same international thinking to link Virginia Woolf to the Nobel literary prizewinner Svetlana Alexievich, writing at the other end of the twentieth century, in the midst of the authoritarian violence of the Russian and Belorussian states in the post–Cold War ( Beganovic 2020 , 28, 33). 5

Born in 1948 in West Ukraine to a Belorussian father and Ukrainian mother, Svetlana Alexievich has been a prominent anti-war voice since the end of the Cold War, convinced that writing about war is an obligation ( Alexievich and Gimson 2018 , 71–72). 6 She is a fiction writer whose novels have been characterized as “attempts to explore human nature through the accounts of war witnesses and to explain more complex social structures in order to understand the causes of wars and prevent them”; “Alexievich says that she wants to show how disgusting wars are, so that even thinking about war would be impossible, even for generals, and so, she does not write a history of war, but the history of feelings or emotional knowledge about wars” ( Novikau 2017 , 320).

In Boys in Zinc (1989), Alexievich’s witness account of the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989), she poses the question, “How can we recover a normal vision of life?”: “After the great wars of the twentieth century and the mass deaths, writing about the modern (small) wars, like the war in Afghanistan, requires different ethical and metaphysical stances” ( Alexievich 2017 , 18–19). Against the background of ongoing Russian imperial wars, her interest lies in reclaiming the specificity of the single human being ( Moorehead 2019 ); “The only human being for someone. Not as the state regards him, but who he is for his mother, for his wife, for his child” ( Alexievich 2017 , 19). Like Stawell and others before her, Alexievich understood that war changed people; she also believed that analyzing postwar time is often more important than analyzing the war itself: “People do not change during war. People change after the war when they look at reality through the lens of their war experience” ( Novikau 2017 , 322).

As we have seen, in these repertoires the diagnosis of war, as often fundamentally associated with masculinity, has made the discussion of war a difficult, if not illegitimate, intellectual terrain for women, while also providing the provocation for women's contributions as different. Is Alexievich an international thinker? She is certainly connected to a tradition of women's international thinking, of women writing about war and peace across its disciplinary confines. Alexievich, like Woolf, works with a “biographical historical method” that aims to dismantle the structures that provoke “the strong emotions which push people, particularly men, to fight” ( Beganovic 2020 ). As writers, Alexievich and Woolf are exemplary of a particular strand of international thinking—characterized by the interplay of fiction, biography, and historical narrative—that can be traced through the twentieth century. As we have seen, in the early twentieth century, the challenge of writing about peace manifested in the ways in which women thought about war, and the way they experienced the costs of that writing, whether social opprobrium, threats, physical attacks, and criminal penalties. While the sociohistorical connections between a middle-class English writer of the interwar years and a female Soviet/post-Soviet intellectual are thinner than those that might connect Alexievich to Anna Shabanova and Alexandra Kollontai, for example, even Woolf bore the brunt of visceral attacks for her “peace propaganda” ( Lee 1997 , 698). In the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Alexievich—like Russian and European women before her engaging the imperative of writing about peace and war— has been accused of “defamation” and “desecration of the soldiers’ honor” ( Sud nad tsinkovimi malchikami 1994 , 130). She has endured vicious political persecution at the hand of Belorussian courts. These have charged her with distorting and falsifying the testimony of Afghan veterans and of offending mothers with portraits of their boys “as soulless killer-robots, pillagers, drug addicts and rapists” ( Sud nad tsinkovimi malchikami 1994 , 130). Facing threats to her personal safety, Alexievich has continued her criticism of Belorussia in the current Ukraine war through her fiction and nonfictional writing, pursued as a kind of obligation ( Belarusian Nobel Laureate Alexievich 2022 ). Just why states object to women's international thinking is clarified by the thinkers themselves, who have detailed the entangled private and public, state and individual interests at stake.

The Politics of War

If we follow the tracks laid by the anthology Women and International Thought , the Second World War leads to other unexpected albeit prominent women thinkers, working across literary and political genres. Some of these women were more enmeshed in the disciplinary landscape of international politics, and yet their status as thinkers was equally neglected. Merze Tate's (1942 ) The Disarmament Illusion —originally a Harvard doctoral thesis—was written as “a transnational intellectual history of debates about war as a mechanism for dispute resolution, about the conflict between state sovereignty and the need for international cooperation, and about the perpetuation of historical power imbalances” ( Savage 2021 , 271). Writing in the context of the Second World War, from the double marginality of her gender and race difference, as an African-American woman, Tate thought about disarmament in the context of the long history of the imperial wars of the previous century: “conflicts fought in the Far East and South Africa”; whether Russia in Manchuria, or “a combined European and American army” avenging “the outrage of the Boxers by sacking Peking”; or England fighting in the Transval, “5000 miles from her base of supplies”; and even the United States, “conquering and holding under military rule conquered possessions an even greater distance from home waters” ( Tate 1942 , 294).

Traversing “economic imperialism” and the state-building military precepts of the late-nineteenth century, Tate does not presume that the prospect of disarmament is an illusion. Rather, she argues that disarmament policies have been ineffective ( Tate 1942 , xi). Disarmament is an issue that stands “for a general simultaneous reduction or non-augmentation of armies and navies or military budgets” ( Tate 1942 , ix). It is not “a matter of mathematics nor of morals but of politics” ( Tate 1942 , 346). By politics, she means the ideological investments of states “seek[ing] to give effect to their national policies through armaments as well as through monetary and immigration policies, tariffs and embargoes”: “armament competition is inextricably interwoven with political tension, and international agreement on armaments is possible only when the national policies of states are not in conflict”; in this same context, an international disarmament process standardizes “the relative diplomatic power of the countries involved and prevents the use of armament competition to upset the political equilibrium” ( Tate 1942 , 27, 246).

The historian Barbara Savage tells us that given the failure of disarmament and the cascade of early twentieth-century wars, Tate had much less confidence than her male mentors, or her female predecessors, that “an educated public might bring pressure to bear on these issues, or that more open diplomacy might yield different results.” In canvassing explanations that acknowledged economic or gender determinism, Tate “resisted the idea that women were early or especially effective advocates of disarmament” and she was skeptical of any “materialistic anti-war impulse.” “Peace would only come from ‘a juster conception of international relations’ and some ‘rational international political system’” ( Savage 2021 , 273). Nevertheless, we also find that when Tate studied past peace congresses, churches, international jurists, interparliamentary groups, and “public opinion,” she reasserted a realist pacifist tradition stretching back to the 1899 Hague peace congress and to Bertha von Suttner.

As we have already seen, the question of realism is a persistent thematic in women's international thinking, defining the reach and limits of reflection on the prevention of wars and the maintenance of peace. When we move (as the anthology does) to Hannah Arendt, among the best-known most often cited women thinkers of the latter half of the twentieth century, we return to the predominant concern with the relationship of war to peace, how war changes men and women, and how this fact impacts politics. Writing in the full knowledge of the consequences of the Second World War, and the Holocaust, Arendt's “The Question of War” (1958–1959) takes a lesson from the classical past. Because “military action invalidated the basic equality of citizens … war belongs, as the Greeks saw it, in a non-political sphere” ( Owens 2022 , 114):

What was uniquely wrong about wars of annihilation … was not just the numbers of the dead or the destruction of entire cities, but the destruction of an ‘historical and political reality … that cannot be rebuilt because it is itself not a product … [the] action and speech created by human relationships’ ” (Owens 2002, 83).

Given this understanding of how war undermines politics, as Owens explains, there is only one situation in which Arendt “would have supported the principle of military action,” namely “for the immediate and short-term goal of stopping genocide since it ‘destroys the very possibility of a political world’” ( Owens 2007 , 115). We learn from Arendt that violence is “only rational to achieve immediate and short-term ends, such as ending ethnic cleansing or genocide, not abstract goals of any kind.” Indeed, “all other war should be ruled out if in practice it resulted in a challenge to any ‘actually existing solidarity of mankind’” (Owens 2009, 147). 7

In this same vein, Arendt anticipates that “a future war will not be about a gain or loss of power, about borders, export markets, or Lebensraum, that is, about things that can also be achieved by means of political discussion and without the use of force” ( Owens 2021 , 110). War cannot be understood as “the ultima ratio of negotiations, whereby the goals of war were determined at the point where negotiations broke off”; rather, it is “a continuation of politics by other means,” “the means of cunning and deception” ( Owens 2007 , 91–110; Arendt 2009 , 165).’

Arendt's prognosis resonates with the thinking of women in the past, such as F.M. Stawell, who argues that war not only has its origins in the motivations of men, it changes them; once war begins, “men are tempted by dire necessity,” and many “grow like the lives they lead” ( Committee on the Bureau of International Research in Harvard University and Radcliffe College [n.d. c. 1923] , 41). 8 It also resonates with our present, in which the idea of “new wars”—Mary Kaldor's term—and “forever war” suggests that violence has become its own raison d'etre ( Kaldor 2005 , 491–98). Like women international thinkers before her, Kaldor represents in this “tradition” a woman whose scholarly or theoretical work overlaps with their activist engagement with war and peace. For these same reasons—her gendered relationship to a tradition built on women's difference, and her activism—her thinking can be central to international thought, while she herself has been forced to constantly negotiate a place in a male-dominated canon and discipline.

As women have addressed the realities of war, at times their international thinking has insisted on the links between peace and women's rights as a dimension of the realism of peace itself. It has also referenced an accruing realist/pacifist tradition. In the mid-twentieth century, Merze Tate insisted that her book Disarmament Illusion was “not peace propaganda,” and distinguished her proposals and ideas “for a general, simultaneous reduction or non-augmentation of armies and navies or military budgets” from “the complete abolition of armaments as implied in [Bertha von Suttner's] phrase ‘lay down your arms’” ( Tate 1942 , ix; Savage 2021 , 271). 9 Of course, this was not how Suttner argued the realism of the pacifist cause. Suttner saw herself navigating “that narrow path between fruitless utopianism on the one side and reckless realism on the other, leading to a higher form of international relations” ( Stöcker 2022 , 405). But even as Tate's relatively critical invocation of Suttner's motif anticipated criticisms of the impossibility of disarmament, it inadvertently echoed Suttner's insistence that realism grew out of the ideal; ideals once considered utopian had in fact become real. Suttner noted at the turn of the twentieth century that there was nothing more utopian than the prospect of an “international parliament” and plans for an “International Permanent Tribunal of Arbitration.” “One forgets to contemplate,” she observed in regard to the 1899 Hague peace congress, “the overwhelming fact that such a Conference has been called together by an autocrat in our ultra-military times, and in which every State takes part. Apart from all that will be achieved by speeches, propositions and resolutions ( Suttner 2022 , 375).” She insisted that “the significance and the effect of the event itself must be of the greatest influence, and the first official Peace Conference appears like a miracle in the history of the world.” The conference, in her view, cut through the distinction between ideal and real, because it had created a reality. Half a century later, Merze Tate too presented “the fact of the [1899] Conference itself” (“this wildest dream of the Utopians”) as evidence that governments had taken up debates that are otherwise the concern of philosophers, jurists, and even utopians ( Suttner 2022 , 377).

We can pick up these same threads in 1985, as the Swedish international thinker Alva Myrdal gives her 1985 Nobel Peace Prize lecture. In the fractious landscape of the Cold War's hot conflicts and a nuclear arms race, Myrdal explicitly orients her intellectual journey to disarmament thinking by referencing Suttner's (1899) motif—not uncoincidentally, since Suttner had all but invented the prize ( Sluga 2014 ). Myrdal comments that despite Hiroshima, in the first decade of the post–Second World War, she herself did not really pay much attention to “the problem of ‘atomic weapons’ as they were known.” She was more concerned with reconstruction and “the great historic drama of decolonization”; “I was not from the outset alert to the great risks of an incipient militarization of the word; I was not ready to cry out: Down with weapons”. “My opposition,” she declares, “was directed more against the repression of human rights and the cruelties of war, particularly the bombing of civilians; I personally experienced some of it in London. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons shocked me as it did the rest of the world, but I shared the hope of many that the end of the war also meant the end of nuclear weapons” ( Myrdal 1977 , xxi.).

Which tradition of women's international thinking should we remember? The imperative to write about war, the consequences of writing about peace? The relationship between the private and the public? The role of education and other social institutions? The determinism of patriarchy and/or gender? To be sure, discerning a tradition of women's international thinking offers no simple answers to the question “how to prevent war,” or the challenge of peace, or the difference women's international thinking has made. Instead, that thinking has navigated usefully the difficult path between ideal and real choices by capitalizing on the sociohistorical bases of difference and the possibilities for change. Woolf acknowledges that it is hard to maintain “the recurring dream that has haunted the human mind since the beginning of time, the dream of peace, the dream of freedom” when one has “the sound of the guns in your ears.” In these same circumstances, she ventures that even when the imperative is “how to prevent war,” rather than to consider the nature of peace, women's difference can be put to use:

since we are different, our help must be different … The answer to your question must be that we can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods. We can best help you to prevent war not by joining your society but by remaining outside your society but in cooperation with its aim. That aim is the same for us both. It is to assert “the rights of all-all men and women – to the respect in their persons of the great principles of Justice and Equality and Liberty.” ( Woolf 1966 , 673)

In this tradition of women's international thinking, the tension between realism and idealism has also been converted into a tension between the past—which has to be broken with—and a reimagined future initiated in the present. Here is Arendt on this same theme: “The lifespan of man running towards death would inevitably carry everything human to ruin and destruction if it were not for the faculty of interrupting it and beginning something new, a faculty which is inherent in action like an every-present reminder that men, though they may day, are not born in order to die but in order to begin” ( Arendt [1958] 2019 , 246; Cooper 1991 ; Beckman and D'Amico 1994 ; Sluga 2005b , 2017 , 2021 ).

Whether we consider the status of the international order, our era of artificial intelligence, the changing nature of wars, or the changing position of women themselves, women's difference still matters to international thinking. On the one hand, in many European and trans-Atlantic countries, women now have profiles in the public sphere to the extent that searching for the particularism of gender in analyses of war and peace and women's international thinking seems irrelevant. On the other hand, the gendered nature of women's difference remains relevant, whether in commentary that remarks on the presence of women or, indeed, on the difference that feminist foreign policy itself could make to the prevention of war. In the early twenty-first century, women lead countries and regions, and intergovernmental institutions. They can use the pressure of force and the pressure of money; they can even negotiate treaties. Women, the German press suggests, have been prominent in the commentary field on the war in Ukraine. The Moscow Times talks of the “feminine” face of Russian war protests. Female prime ministers of Finland, Sweden, and Estonia have overseen decisions about membership of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In 2022, the European Union (EU) stateswomen Ursula Van der Leyen and Roberta Metsola were prominent early visitors of the embattled president in Kyiv and supporters of the war against Russia as a just war. Even where women do not lead, “feminist foreign policy” ostensibly guides the thinking and strategy of some of the countries looking on, not least the EU itself. In a prime example of the confluence of these shifts, the green German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock has had to reconcile a new era of German militarization and her commitment to “feminist foreign policy” ( Speech by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock 2022 ).

We also know, thanks to the anthology, that women's international thinking does not always diverge from the existing canon of international thought dominated by men. Certainly, the Vietnam war and its purpose found its supporters among women international thinkers such as Roberta Wohlstetter, whose 1960 Bancroft winning book Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision argued that “US national security required an assiduously aggressive posture, a willingness to fight and win a nuclear war” ( Speech by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock 2022 ). In 2022, this is a position that echoes through Anne Applebaum's insistence that democracies should not only have weapons, but also wield them or risk the annihilation of democracy ( Applebaum 2022 ). However, it is also true that individual women have regularly taken up the problems of war and peace by thinking against the grain of ideological gender constraints. If we want to understand the lack of enthusiasm of African and Asian states for the United States and Europe's rallying call against the Russian invasion in Ukraine, we need only look at Women's International Thought’ s examples of writing about the dangers of imperial exceptionalism, not least Mary McCarthy's Cold War “The other war,” which lambasted the moral standing of Washington, DC (the “Athens” of the twentieth century) and its war of “pacification” in Vietnam ( Bessner 2022 ; McCarthy 2022 , 121–26).

Women have always drawn on uncommon examples, arrived at uncommon conclusions, and forged alternative intellectual traditions in the process, even when they themselves did not remember them accurately. The difference that women thinking about war and peace have made should inspire us to further collections and considerations, picking up the remnants we still have, diverse in their historical contexts and languages, incorporating voices imagined as subaltern, or outside Europe, and back in time, picking up echoes we may have forgotten along the way. These remind us too of the importance of international thinking itself. This is the difference that the history of women as international thinkers makes.

I want to thank the editors of that volume, and Ekaterina Abramova for their advice and help with this essay. This essay was originally presented as a keynote at the Women's International Thought conference, LSE, May 2022.

In his recent critique of “forever wars,” and the maintenance of the oxymoronic legal concept “humane war,” Sam Moyn singles out the importance in the history of peace thinking of Suttner's Lay Down Your Arms , or Down with Weapons? Die Waffen nieder!

As the anthology editors note, even Stawell's middle name recognized the conquered inhabitants of Melos, her feminist reading of the “Greeks” prefigures more recent calls for “a Melian security studies.” “Introduction”, Owens et al. 2022 , 28.

I have drawn here from a broader selection of Three Guineas than that included in the anthology Women's International Thought .

This connection is inspired by the work of Velid Beganovic, a Bosnian scholar of Woolf who links her method to that of Alexievich.

All Russian texts here are translated by Ekaterina Abramova.

On these same grounds, in the postwar Arendt supports an international criminal court “to try and punish those responsible.”

“So it goes on till there is nothing but suspicion everywhere. There was no treaty binding enough to reconcile opponents: everyone knew that nothing was secure and therefore he thought only of his own safety; he could not afford to trust another.”

The quote continues “but in the wider significance given to it in popular language as meaning ‘limitation and reduction of armaments.’”

Research for this article has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement no 885285).

Alexievich Svetlana . 2017 . Boys in Zinc . London : Penguin .

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Article contents

Culture, religion, war, and peace.

• Yehonatan Abramson Yehonatan Abramson Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190846626.013.44
• Published in print: 14 December 2013
• Published online: 30 November 2017

Religion and culture have historically been neglected in international relations (IR) theories and in political science more generally. It was only recently that IR began to consider the role of culture and religion in war and peace. Several main scholarly trends in the study of culture, religion, conflict, and peace can be identified, starting with the definitional problems that IR scholars had to deal with as they tried to incorporate culture and religion. The first major attempt in the IR field to understand war almost exclusively through the religious prism was that of Samuel Huntington, who in his Clash of Civilization (1993, 1996) identifies two main reasons why religion can cause war: first, religion can be considered as a primordial and immutable identity; and second, religion is a form of ideology rather than identity. The scholarly literature has also addressed themes such as religious fundamentalism and violence, the role of religious actors in international conflict, the practical use of religion and culture to promote peace via diplomacy, and engagement of religion and culture in existing peace theories such as democratic peace theory. Avenues for future research may include the relational and constantly changing aspects of religion; what, when, and how various religious interpretations receive political prominence in promoting conflict or peace; how religion can be used as an independent variable across cases; and the hidden set of assumptions that are embedded in the cultural and religion labels.

• international relations
• Samuel Huntington
• religious fundamentalism
• democratic peace theory

Introduction

Historically, international relations (IR) theories neglected ideational factors such as identity, religion, and culture. Although culture was a part of political science since Almond and Verba's seminal book in 1963 , IR's dominant schools of thought (Realism and Liberalism) overemphasized material, structural, and “objective” factors in explaining states’ behavior. Religion was ignored altogether not only in IR, but also in political science in general (Wald and Wilcox 2006 ; Bellin 2008 ). In recent years, IR began to consider the role of culture and religion. Culture as a variable appeared during the end of the Cold War together with the “constructivist turn” (Lapid and Kratochwil 1996 ; Checkel 1998 ; Finnemore and Sikkink 2001 ). Religion entered the field a decade later alongside a scholarly focus on ethnic and religious conflicts and religious-inspired terrorism (Fox 2001 :53; Philpott 2009 :184; Snyder 2011 :1).

This essay reviews the main scholarly trends in the study of culture and religion as sources for conflict and resources for peace. After a brief survey of the early works of political theorists regarding religion and war, this essay turns to review how the topic has been understood within IR. As the essay demonstrates, the attempt to deal with religion and culture as part of identity is a source of much confusion. In order to avoid confusion and reiteration of other comprehensive review essays on culture and IR (such as the essays titled “Culture and Foreign Policy Analysis” and “Nonrealist Variables: Identity and Norms in the Study of International Relations” in this work), this essay gives special focus to the topic of religion in studies of conflict and peace. In IR, religion is usually an independent variable that causes war or peace, or an intervening variable that shapes the probability of a conflict and its violent potential (Hasenclever and Rittberger 2000 :644–8). Some scholars focus on what religion says, while others research what religion does; some scholars deal with religion in the individual level, while others emphasize the societal and organizational aspects of religion (Haynes 1998 ). The next section reviews the ways IR scholars define culture and religion and suggests that religion should be viewed as a part of culture. The following sections discuss the clash of civilizations debate; the relationship between fundamentalism and violence; religion as a cause of war; religion and the intensity of war; culture, religion and diplomacy with some references to cross-cultural negotiation; and culture and the democratic peace with some references to the debate regarding religion and democracy. The essay concludes with suggestions for future directions for research.

Conceptualizing Culture and Religion in IR Scholarship

Despite some exceptions, such as Adda Bozeman ( 1960 ), Jack Snyder ( 1977 ), and to some extent Robert Jervis ( 1976 ), IR scholars did not realize the importance of culture and religion to the understanding of peace and conflict until the post-Cold War era and the introduction of constructivism. The first task facing IR scholars trying to incorporate culture and religion is the task of definition. The understanding that these concepts can be rather distinct, but at the same time intrinsically connected has been a source for much confusion and contention. As this section suggests, different IR scholars treat culture and religion in different ways and sometimes use these concepts interchangeably with other concepts, such as norms, identity, and ethnicity.

The first example for such confusion exists in the writings of IR scholars from the English School, who understand religion as the main component in a society's culture. To Bozeman ( 1960 , 1971 ), for example, culture means civilization, and what dictates the mode of thinking and the normative order in a civilization is religion. Similarly, as Buzan ( 1993 :333) and Thomas ( 2005 :153–4) describe, Martin Wight argues that international societies can be formed on the basis of shared culture, but underlines the role of religion in not only promoting such peaceful unity but also holy wars. This view of religion as the core component of civilization is also shared by non-English School scholars such as Huntington ( 1996 ) and some of the authors in the volume edited by Katzenstein ( 2010 ).

While English School theorists understand culture as part of religion, the constructivist theoretical framework does the opposite. In constructivist studies, culture includes religion as well as other concepts such as identity, norms, or ideas (Lapid and Kratochwil 1996 ; Katzenstein 1996 ; Checkel 1998 ; Desch 1998 ). Cohen ( 1997 :11–12), for example, defines culture as “an acquired unique complex of attributes of a society that is subsuming every area of social life,” and we can find a similar approach in Mary Adams Trujillo et al. ( 2008 ). For others, such as Avruch ( 1998 :17) and Abu-Nimer ( 2001 :687) who draw on Theodore Schwartz's definition, culture is a less homogeneous and static concept and it “consists of the derivatives of experience, more or less organized, learned or created by the individuals of a population, including those images or encodement and their interpretations (meanings) transmitted from past generations, from contemporaries, or formed by individuals themselves.”

Subsuming religion under culture kept the concept under-theorized. It is notable that a canonical constructivist text, Alexander Wendt's Social Theory of International Politics ( 1999 ), does not include “religion” in the index (Snyder 2011 :2). An exception is Kubálková ( 2000 ), who brings religion into the study of IR through rule-oriented constructivism. However, the increasing interest in communal conflicts, such as ethno-national wars, and especially the September 11th attacks, have led to a resurgence of religion in the study of world politics (Fox 2001 :53; Philpott 2009 :184; Snyder 2011 :1).

Religion presents further definitional problems. The definition must encompass numerous but exclude from other phenomena such as ideologies or cults (Philpott 2003 ). Some of the early studies that deal with religion and international conflict, such as Ryan ( 1988 ), Azar ( 1990 ), Gurr ( 1994 ), and Gagnon ( 1994 ), consider religion to be part of a larger concept of ethnicity, or communality. Seul ( 1999 :553) tries to explain “the frequent appearance of religion as the primary cultural marker distinguishing groups in conflict,” and concludes that religion often exists “at the core of individual and group identity” (Seul 1999 :558). For Rothschild ( 1981 :86–7), however, religion is subsumed under the concept of ethnic identity. Correlation of War (COW) data uses both religion and ethnicity in measuring culture (see Henderson 1997 :661). Finally, Anthony Smith traces modern nationalism to religious origins (Smith 1999 ; see also Brubaker 2012 ).

Haynes ( 1998 ) provides a brief discussion about the definition dilemma and draws on Aquaviva while offering two sociological definitions. One sees religion as “a system of beliefs and practices related to an ultimate being, beings of the supernatural,” and the other considers religion to be what is “sacred in a society, that is, ultimate beliefs and practices which are inviolate” (Haynes 1998 : 4). The latter kind of definition is sometime referred to as ‘civil religion’ (Liebman and Don-Yiḥya 1983 ).

Toft ( 2007 :99) lists the common elements in most definitions: “a belief in a supernatural being (or beings); prayers and communication with that being; transcendent realities that might include some form of heaven, paradise, or hell; a distinction between the sacred and the profane and between ritual acts and sacred objects; a view that explains both the world as a whole and a person's proper role in it; a code of conduct in line with that world view; and a community bound by its adherence to these elements.”

On one hand, this discussion provides us some indicators to distinguish between religion and culture: the first belongs to the realm of the sacred and involves a relatively stable doctrine that connects the individual with the transcendental, while the latter belongs to the realm of the profane and involves a malleable combination of practices, customs, and expectations in relation to the society. On the other hand, religion and culture are intrinsically connected by myths, practices, and moral judgments that make religion a part of culture.

War and Peace in the Works of Religious Scholars and Political Theorists

Almost all religious texts have references to war and peace – the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, the Quran, the Iliad and Odyssey, the Rig Veda, Mahabharata and Ramayana, Arthasastra, and so on. These references offer different treatments of war and peace. Some describe human nature as aggressive or as pursuing peace, some explain war and peace as a result of divine intervention and will, and some define the conditions in which war and peace can be achieved. Some references in sacred texts condition peace on the society's moral behavior. Other texts determine with whom, when, and how a war can be held and a peace treaty can be signed. Most of the sacred texts also have detailed historical narratives of war and peace, from which we can draw conclusions how the religion conceives war and peace. Religious figures and leaders are still creating new interpretations and commentary about peace and war, and this rich genre receives a lot of attention from scholars. In the Western world, books on Judaism and Christianity were written focusing on analyzing peace and war in the Hebrew Bible, in the New Testament, and in sermons, letters, and other external texts and exegeses (Arias 1533 ; Belli 1563 ; Benezet 1776 ; Heaton 1816 ; Dymond 1834 ). In the Muslim world, a similar attempt was made (Shaybani 1335 ; Ibn Khaldun 1377 ; Baladhuri 1866 ). This trend is still relevant in contemporary research today in Christianity (Faunce 1918 ; Barrett 1987 ; Swartley 2006 ), in Buddhism (Kraft 1992 ; Jerryson and Juergensmeyer 2010 ), in Islam (Khadduri 1940 ; Khadduri 1955 ; Kelsay and Johnson 1991 ; Abu-Nimer 2003 ; Mirbagheri 2012 ), in Judaism (Homolka and Friedlander 1994 ; Eisen 2011 ), in Hinduism (Banerjee 1988 ), and in some of them together (Jack 1968 ; Ferguson 1978 ; Smock 1992 ; Gort et al. 2002 ; Nelson-Pallmeyer 2003 ; Nan, Mampilly, and Bartoli 2012 ).

Political philosophy also includes religion in its scholarship. Religion, God, and faith exist in the writings of Hobbes, Machiavelli, Grotius, Rousseau, Locke, Kant, and other early Western political thinkers. All of them considered religion to be an inherent part of life and society that had to be accounted for in political analysis. Some perceived religion as a moral and ethical guideline for individuals and society, and some debated whether religion is an obstacle for government and society or an integral part of it. The relationship between religion and political life remains a vibrant subject of debate to this day (Eisenach 1981 ; Beiner 1993 ; Martinich 2003 ; De Vries 2003 ). Despite the richness of the contributions of religious scholars and of philosophers, these works have not yet offered a scientific theory regarding the role that religion plays in war and peace.

Religion and Conflict: The Clash of Civilization Debate

The first major attempt in the IR field to understand war almost exclusively through the religious prism was that of Samuel Huntington in his well-known article and book Clash of Civilization ( 1993 , 1996 ). Huntington, rejecting Francis Fukuyama's notion of the “End of History,” divides the world into seven or eight major civilizations that are fundamentally different from each other “by history, language, culture, tradition and, most important, religion” (Huntington 1993 :25). Instead of the traditional territorial nation-states, Huntington recognizes a world comprised of various identities that are not necessarily delineated by national boundaries. He argues that the end of the Cold War and the ideological battle between the West and the East will be replaced by a battle of civilizations, which is the broadest category of identification for individuals and is mainly determined by religious beliefs. More specifically, Huntington predicts that the main civilizational conflict will be between the Islamic civilization and the Judeo-Christian Western civilization, due to conflictual history from both sides, a large gap in values, the rise of Islamic extremists and fundamentalism, and a clash of identities as a result of Muslim immigration.

In sum, Huntington's view clarifies two main reasons why religion can cause war. First, religion can be considered as a primordial and immutable identity. The Manichean perception of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ that religion provides is a main source of conflict (Dark 2000 :4–5, 11). Second, globalization, which folds within it rapid economic development and an increase in interactions between individual groups, creates a clash between traditional customs and Western modernity (Fox 1997 :3; Thomas 2000 :5). The desire of other civilizations to maintain their core values and traditions, and to prevent the domination of Western culture lead Huntington to claim that civilizational differences will be the main source of future wars (Huntington 1993 :29–31, 40).

Huntington's thesis received a lot of interest in scholarly and political discourse, and his thesis was tested and criticized from many angles. Ajami ( 1993 ), Bartley ( 1993 ), and Weeks ( 1993 ), for example, argue that states are still the main actors in the international system and that the English-Western secular modern force is more powerful than Huntington thinks. Kirkpatrick ( 1993 ) claims that intra-civilizational conflicts are more common than inter-civilizational conflicts. Others, such as Tipson ( 1997 ), Pfaff ( 1997 ), and Said ( 2001 ), criticize Huntington's facts and methodology (for more comprehensive reviews of the clash of civilization debate see O'Hagan 1995 ; Fox and Sandler 2004 ; Fox 2005 ). Katzenstein ( 2010 ) rejects Huntington's conception of civilizations as homogeneous in favor of a pluralistic view recognizing internal diversity. Katzenstein ( 2010 ) further questions the Huntingtonian “clash” with the evident capacity for inter-and trans-civilizational encounters.

Scholars have also made quantitative attempts to test Huntington's theory. Russett, Oneal, and Cox ( 2000 ) examine inter-state wars between 1950 and 1992 and conclude that realist and liberal variables provide better explanations of these conflicts than civilizational factors. Henderson and Tucker ( 2001 ) examine international wars between 1816 and 1992 and find no connection between civilization membership and international wars. In addition, Henderson and Tucker find that conflicts within civilizations are more likely than conflicts between civilizations. More recent attempts also do not find support for the clash of civilization thesis (Chiozza 2002 ; Ben-Yehuda 2003 ; Bolks and Stoll 2003 ; Fox 2004 ; Henderson 2005 ). However, Henderson's ( 1997 :663) findings suggest that “the greater the religious dissimilarity between states, the greater the likelihood of war.” Similarly, Roeder ( 2003 ) examines ethnopolitical conflicts and finds support for Huntington's thesis. Fox, James, and Li ( 2009 ) bring a different angle to the clash of civilizations debate in examining international interventions on behalf of the same ethno-religious group in another state. Although they focus only on conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, their findings show that Muslim states are more likely to intervene on behalf of other Muslim minorities. Moreover, ethnic conflicts with a religious dimension seem more likely to attract intervention than other ethnic conflicts.

Another view of religion as a cause of war sees religion as a form of ideology rather than identity. In this kind of approach, the emphasis is not on how clashing religious identities create conflict, but rather how religious ideas shape worldviews that justify or are consistent with conflict (see also Desch 1998 ). According to Beker ( 2008 ), for example, the Jewish notion of the “chosen people” has fueled many ideological conflicts between Jews and non-Jews. He further demonstrates how the battle over “chosenness” is evident in modern anti-Semitic discourse. Khadduri ( 1955 ) makes an analogous point with the concepts of dar al-harb (territory of war) and dar al-Islam (territory of Islam) in Islamic laws of war. Similarly, in examining Chinese thought and culture and their influence on Ming strategy towards the Mongols, Johnston ( 1995 :xi) finds that the non-militant ideas usually associated with Confucianism may be “inaccurate, misleading, or plainly wrong.” Juergensmeyer ( 2003 ) focuses on ideas that affect “cultures of violence.” Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and others, Juergensmeyer claims, share a worldview of cosmic war between darkness and light (Juergensmeyer 2003 :13, 35). Because religious ideology is a defined non-negotiable set of rules, resolving a religious dispute peacefully is harder than with other disputes (Dark 2000 :1–2).

Religious Fundamentalism and Violence

The relationship between religious worldviews and war leads us to religious fundamentalism and violence. Of special note is the five-volume work by Marty and Appleby ( 1991 –5) that encompasses different approaches and case studies related to fundamentalism. Marty and Appleby ( 1992 :34) define fundamentalism as “a distinctive tendency – a habit of mind and a pattern of behavior – found within modern religious communities and embodied in certain representative individuals and movements … a religious way of being that manifests itself as a strategy by which beleaguered believers attempt to preserve their distinctive identity as a people or group.” They recount the ideological extremism in social, political, and structural conditions, such as social deprivation, repressive regimes, reaction to secularization, and economic crises. Marty and Appleby argue that religious ideas are not the goal for the fundamentalists, but rather they use religion as a means to achieve political ends. Fundamentalists use “old doctrines, subtly lift them from their original context … and employ them as ideological weapons against a hostile world” (Marty and Appleby 1991 :826). Fundamentalism, in this view, is a religious backlash against secular rule (see also Tibi 1999 ). Juergensmeyer ( 1993 ) shares this view but opposes labeling this religious fervor as fundamentalism due to the accusatory and ambiguous meanings of the term.

Eisenstadt ( 1999 ) agrees with Marty and Appleby that “contemporary” fundamentalist movements are thoroughly modern movements, but disagrees with the link they draw between religious force and fundamentalism. For Eisenstadt, contemporary fundamentalist movements rest on the same universal, utopian, totalistic, and secular claims of modernity that the Jacobins and the communist revolutions were based upon but “promulgate anti-modern or anti-Enlightenment ideologies” (Eisenstadt 1999 :1). The direction which a fundamentalist movement takes depends on its civilization, the political and social circumstances surrounding the movement, and the international setting (Eisenstadt 1999 ). Reviews of religious fundamentalism and violence include Gill ( 2001 ) and Ozzano ( 2009 ).

Religious Actors and International Conflict

Scholarship has gone beyond the clash of civilizations debate and the study of fundamentalism to explore further questions about how and under what conditions religion leads to war. One approach has been to consider individual values and mindsets in the lists of factors that affect decision making by leaders, including decisions about war. Brecher ( 1972 ), Jervis ( 1976 ), and Fisher ( 1997 ) focus on culture, while Fox ( 2001 ), Sandal and James ( 2010 ), and Warner and Walker ( 2011 ) focus specifically on religion. On the collective level, society's core values, conceptions, and assumptions about the world and the enemy can influence foreign policy outcomes (Booth 1979 ; Hudson and Vore 1995 ; Reeves 2004 ). Religious beliefs should not be dismissed as irrational or marginal, but should be included in the strategic calculations of leaders and states (Toft 2007 :129).

Religious affinities on the collective level are not confined to traditional territorial state boundaries. Transnational religious actors are another good example of the role of religion in conflict. Religious terrorist groups that have cells in different countries can initiate a conflict between states, and global riots can result from injury to religious sentiment, as in the Danish caricature case (Dark 2000 :5–10; Fox 2001 :67–9; Haynes 2001 ). These kinds of conflicts can be international, when religious diaspora is engaged in the conflict, or remain domestic (civil wars). Fox and Sandler show how local wars can capture the interest of members of transnational religious groups due to the possible involvement of holy sites (Fox and Sandler 2004 :63–82). Even without direct participation in violence, religious transnational movements and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) participate in global conflict by lobbying or protesting in order to encourage a state to intervene in a distant war between ethno-religious minorities (Fox, James and Li 2009 ).

Religion may also have an indirect effect on war since it can be used as a tool to mobilize people and to enhance legitimacy (Fox 2001 :65–7; Haynes 2004 :456; Snyder 2011 :11). This does not necessarily mean that political leaders actually hold religious beliefs but that such beliefs serve them in accomplishing their political interests. This view holds that the recent global resurgence of religion in various societies occurs as a result of instrumental use of religion by political elites (Fox 1997 :4; Hasenclever and Rittberger 2000 :643–6).

The question of whether religion is the cause of a conflict, or just a tool or a dimension of it was addressed in several quantitative studies. Gurr ( 1993 ) uses the Minorities at Risk data to examine mobilization and collective action in “communal conflicts.” His findings indicate that an essential basis for mobilization is a sense of group identity. Gurr measures group identity by using six indicators including religion, ethnicity, and social customs. Fox ( 1997 , 2002 ) tries to isolate conflicts between groups from different religions. Using the same data as Gurr, Fox concludes that in such cases “religious issues play, at most, a marginal role” (Fox 1997 :16). Henderson, however, using Correlates of War data, concludes that “cultural difference, especially in the case of religion, is positively associated with war” (Henderson 1997 :666). Durward and Marsden ( 2009 ) offer a more nuanced and developed understanding of how religious beliefs, discourses, and practices are politicized and used to trigger conflicts, justify military interventions, and facilitate resolutions.

Religion and the Intensity of War

Another trend in the study of religion and war asks whether religious conflicts are more violent than other conflicts and if some religions are more prone to use more violence than others. Fox and Sandler ( 2004 ), using Minorities at Risk data, conclude that “religious conflicts … are consistently more violent than nonreligious conflicts.” A study by Pearce ( 2005 ) using a different data set supports this conclusion.

As for the relationship between a specific religion and violence, Pearce's ( 2005 :349) results show that Judaism and Hinduism are more violence prone, but this may be due to a small number of cases. Fox and Sandler's ( 2004 :132) results demonstrate “conflicts involving Islamic groups are more violent than conflicts not involving Islamic groups,” and conflicts within the Islamic civilization “are slightly more violent” than conflicts between civilizations. Due to the fact that there are many Muslim states, but only one Jewish state and one Hindu state that are each experiencing protracted conflict, it is still unclear whether specific religions are more violent than others, or whether it is a false image created by the uneven numbers of religious groups. The finding that Islamists were involved in 81 percent of the religious civil wars between 1940 and 2000 led Toft ( 2007 ) to eventually conclude that “overlapping historical, geographical, and, in particular, structural factors account for Islam's higher representation in religious civil wars.” More importantly, her theory suggests that religious aspects are an instrument by political elites for gaining more legitimacy in order to survive, or to achieve another objective (Toft 2007 :97–8, 128).

The degree of religious violence does not have to be related to a specific religion, but rather to the type of regime or degree of state power. Thomas ( 2000 :14–15) suggests that the appeal for religious ideas grows larger especially in weak states. Fox ( 1997 ) shows an increase in religious discrimination and grievance in autocratic states compared with democratic regimes. When a transition to democracy happens, the chances of such communal violence rise due to the diminishing power of the regime and an ease of autocratic repression (Gurr 1994 ).

Culture, Religion, and Diplomacy

Scholars have also been interested in the practical use of religion and culture to promote peace. Discussing culture specifically, Kevin Avruch ( 1998 ) suggests that culture is a significant variable in conflict resolution as each negotiator comes with his or her own subculture (class, region, ethnicity, and more). In contrast, Zartman ( 1993 :17) gives culture little substantive significance and argues that it is as relevant as the breakfast the negotiators ate. Fisher ( 1980 ) and Cohen ( 1997 ) occupy the middle ground suggesting that culture matters together with other variables. For a good introductory review regarding these approaches, see Ramsbotham, Miall, and Woodhouse ( 2011 ).

Cultural gaps may involve language barriers, create problems of interpretation, and disrupt the transfer of information (Gulliver 1979 ; Fisher 1980 ; Faure and Rubin 1993 ; Cohen 1997 ; Berton et al. 1999 ). The dichotomy, made by Hall ( 1976 ) between high-context cultures and low-context cultures, is useful in explaining these cultural obstacles in international negotiation. High-context cultures are generally associated with collective societies in which communication is less verbal and more indirect, emphasizing the context in which things are said and done. High-context cultures require communicators to pay attention to nuances and body language. Consequently, those from such cultures are more sensitive socially, they try to please their audience, and they see great importance in small talk and group consensus. Low-context cultures, on the other hand, are individualistic in character, and communication is direct and with a clear message. Accuracy in the written or spoken word is very important in low-context culture, and less attention is paid to context, body language, and facial expressions (Cohen 1997 ; Rubinstein 2003 ). When two societies from the two different types of culture meet around the negotiation table, potential pitfalls are evident. This line of research has specific practical implications. The US Institute of Peace published a series of works analyzing different negotiating styles and behaviors to equip negotiators with a better understanding of cultural differences. Examples include Wittes ( 2005 ), Solomon and Quinney ( 2010 ), and Schaffer and Schaffer ( 2011 ).

As for structure and the process of negotiation, culture can play an important role in the degree of trust between the sides, which can define negotiation strategy and whether there is a need for mediation. These factors can also influence the size of the delegations, the different roles within the delegation, the degree of unity within the delegation, negotiating procedures, seating arrangements, and public announcements (Berton et al. 1999 :3–5).

This vast literature regarding culture and diplomacy has little to say about religion. As former United States Secretary of State and international relations scholar Madeleine Albright confesses, diplomacy, conflict resolution, negotiation, and peace were all conceptualized in secular terms with no room for religion and faith prior to the terror attacks of September 11th (Albright 2006 :8–9). Indeed, most of the IR studies on culture and diplomatic practices to promote peace were written during the 1980s and 1990s. Only after September 11th did religion and faith become a primary topic.

Many scholars agree that the same power that religion has in inciting conflicts can also be used to promote peace (Gopin 1997 ; Appleby 2000 ; Broadhead and Keown 2007 ). Some works continue the trajectory of previous studies on cross-cultural negotiation and focus on a specific religion. In the case of Islam, Alon ( 2000 ), Alon and Brett ( 2007 ), and Pely ( 2010 ) focus on Muslim perceptions of conflict resolution, values of honor, and the institutional mechanism of sulha (reconciliation). Other studies consider how peace can be achieved with an emphasis on shared religious values, such as empathy, forgiveness, mercy, compassion and the Golden Rule to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Gopin 1997 ; Gopin 2001 ; Cilliers 2002 ; Carter and Smith 2004 ). Similarly, Albright ( 2006 :73) mentions the religious notion that “we are all created in the image of God” as a common ground. Shore ( 2009 :2) shows how “Christianity played a central role in South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” and how values of forgiveness and justice were important in South Africa's peaceful transition to democracy. Similarly, Gopin ( 2002 ) argues that in the Israeli-Palestinian case, the marginalization of religious aspects was crucial in the failure of the Oslo agreement. He adds that by putting religion in the middle of the reconciliation process, and with dialogues between key religious figures from both sides, peace in the Middle East can be achieved.

While traditional realpolitik diplomacy has had difficulties coping with religion-inspired conflicts, non-state actors, such as religious leaders and members of religious NGOs, had more success in promoting peace in different forms – whether peacemaking, peacebuilding, peace enforcing, or peace keeping (Little 2006 :102). Cynthia Sampson ( 1997 ) overviews the various roles and methodologies used by religious-motivated institutional actors in the process of peacebuilding. She provides manifold examples of conflict intervention by religious institutional actors that advocate (such as during the Rhodesian war of independence), intermediate (such as in the 1972 Sudanese peace process), observe (such as during the 1991 Zambian elections), and educate (such as in Northern Ireland). Appleby ( 2000 ) offers a similar approach focusing on religious actors and their roles.

The vast examples of religious involvement in peacebuilding have led Johnston and Sampson ( 1997 ) and Johnston ( 2003 ) to conceptualize this type of diplomacy as “faith-based diplomacy,” which takes place through track II channels (the informal and unofficial negotiations). In general, the Catholic Church receives more scholarly attention than other religious institutions in mediating disputes. Examples include the 1968–89 internal dispute in Bolivia (Klaiber 1993 ) and the Beagle Channel dispute between Argentina and Chile (Garrett 1985 ; Lindsley 1987 ; Laudy 2000 ). Bartoli's analyses of the reconciliation process in Mozambique specify how religion plays a role in conflict resolution. He demonstrates that religion does not replace or transform the political process of negotiation, but rather provides motivation, organizational capacities, legitimacy, and flexibility (Bartoli 2001 , 2005 ; see also Toft, Philpott, and Shah 2011 ).

The volume edited by David Little ( 2007 ) offers a different perspective that focuses on individual religious figures, rather than institutions, as peacemakers. Examples from El Salvador, Israel/Palestine, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, and Sudan highlight the grassroots efforts by religious individuals to promote peace. Using religious texts, rituals, and networks these individuals increase global attention, help find common ground, provide moral justification, and facilitate face-to-face communication between the warring sides (see also Smock 2008 ; for more on the topic of diplomacy and religion see “Diplomacy and Religion”).

Recently, there is a growing interest in challenging the secularist assumptions of United States foreign policy. Hurd ( 2008 ), for example, demonstrates that the perceived separation between religious and secular political authorities is a result of a political process and is socially constructed. By identifying two trajectories of secularism – a laicist one and a Judeo-Christian one – she shows how religion and secularism were never apart. Thus, instead of characterizing religion as a threat, diplomats and decision makers should realize that there are various political representations and interpretations of religion and should make more room for non-Western forms of politics (Hurd 2007 ). From a different perspective, Farr ( 2008 ) calls for rejecting the American narrow version of religious freedom that focuses on humanitarian violations in favor of a more tolerant and broader version that builds and encourages different versions of religious freedom in different regimes. Philpott ( 2013 :31) supports Farr's conclusions by highlighting how religious freedom is a “critical enabler of peace.”

Culture, Religion, and the Democratic Peace

Another research theme in IR tries to engage religion and culture in existing peace theories. The main example is democratic peace theory, by which liberal democracies tend not to fight each other. One of the explanations for democratic peace argues that shared cultures, values, and norms favoring compromise and peaceful solutions lead liberal democracies to solve disputes peacefully (Maoz and Russett 1993 ). But the traditional cultural explanation for democratic peace focuses on political culture and not on other elements such as ethnicity, language, and religion. Henderson ( 1998 ) tests the theory with those elements included and concludes that religious similarities within democratic dyads decrease the likelihood of war, while ethnic and lingual similarities increase this likelihood.

The connection between peaceful behavior and regime type led scholars to examine the connection between specific religions and democracy as a way to better understand the conditions for democracy and presumably for peace. After Huntington's theory and the events of September 11th, Western scholars tested Bernard Lewis’ hypothesis that Islamic religion conflicts with democracy (Midlarsky 1998 :486). This topic was researched from different angles. Some argue that Muslim resistance to modernity is an obstacle to democracy (Sivan 1990 ); some argue that lack of sufficient economic development holds back democracy; others claim that the possession of oil and the concept of the ‘rentier state’ hinder democracy (Ross 2001 ; Fish 2002 ); and some claim that the ideas grounded in Islamic thought and religion are incompatible with democracy (Huntington 1984 ; Lewis 1996 ). On the other hand, Esposito and Piscatori ( 1991 ) and Esposito and Voll ( 1996 ) argue that Islam is not necessarily hostile to democracy, and urge us to remember that Islam, like democracy, has a variety of interpretations, meanings, and political practices. Midlarsky ( 1998 ) tries to test the relationship between Islam and democracy using a political rights index (measuring procedural democracy) and an index of liberal democracy (measuring liberal freedoms). He finds that Islam, measured by the percentage of population that is Muslim, has a negative correlation with liberal freedoms but does not necessarily rule out democratic procedure. Recently, Hunter and Malik ( 2005 ) offer an antithesis to this view and demonstrate how military, colonial, international economic, and domestic economic factors prevented the creation of a civil society that is crucial for democracy. Sonn and McDaniel's chapter in the same book demonstrates how modern Islamic thought is quite similar to Western values, including rationality and tolerance.

Future Research

In the study of war and peace, religion long played a marginal role. Both sacred texts and Western canonical philosophical works contain religious references to war and peace, but none of the main theoretical works in IR address religion. Since the end of the Cold War and the growing attention to ethnic conflicts, new interests in culture and religion emerged. Scholars first explored the interplay of culture, war, and peace focusing on decision making, negotiation, national character, and the cultural construction of friends and foes. Then, as a result of the growing attention to ethnic conflict and terrorism, there was a resurgence of interest in religion in IR scholarship. Treated both as a central component of social identity and as an overarching ideology, religious international violence is understood by some scholars as a reaction to global population flows, modernization processes, and secularization.

Religion, as a social phenomenon, is also able to help us understand the growing power of actors outside the traditional boundaries of the state. Transnational actors that share religious beliefs with each other can pursue different, and sometimes contradictory, goals from those of the nation-state. Such actors can ignite conflicts, but can also help in mediating negotiations and promoting peace. Diplomats have learned to use key religious figures in their reconciliation attempts and they try to emphasize common values and diminish differences between religions.

The rediscovery of religion in IR scholarship has produced many studies that try to theorize the role of religion in conflict and peace. Thus far, these studies treat religion either as a political tool used by agents for their own interests or as an essentialist ideological scheme that informs actors’ behavior. Future research may focus on the relational and constantly changing aspects of religion and show what, when, and how various religious interpretations receive political prominence in promoting conflict or peace. Moreover, IR scholarship could use more theorization of how religion can be used as an independent variable across cases. How can one compare the religious passions animating the Crusades, with the religious passions during the Thirty Years War, or with modern fundamentalist terrorism? The definitional problems, mentioned earlier, provide difficulties in that regard.

A new way to look in more depth at religious and cultural elements of international politics is to use them as interpretive tools. Culture can be conceptualized as the “practices of meaning-making,” and thus open an opportunity to investigate the ways in which meanings are created within a society (Wedeen 2002 ). For example, examining political rhetoric can help us understand how meanings become inscribed within a society and how changes in rhetoric can lead to changes in foreign policy (Krebs and Jackson 2007 ; Krebs and Lobasz 2007 ). Another beneficial way to engage the elusive concepts of culture and religion is to trace the hidden set of assumptions that are embedded in the cultural and religion labels. What does “democracy” or “freedom” mean to different cultural or religious groups? What types of behavior are expected from a negotiator who is labeled Muslim or Buddhist and how does it affect the negotiation process? Moreover, how does popular representation of different religions shape these hidden assumptions?

IR literature will probably continue to engage culture and religion in its research, but in order to develop the field and avoid academic stagnation, it is important to enable scientific pluralism that will force us to reconsider how we treat religion and culture. A deeper understanding of different religions and cultures will open our understanding of the different “worlds” within “our world” and will identify the values that drive these worlds.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Renée Marlin-Bennett for her valuable guidance and comments, and Andrew Mark Bennett for his meticulous assistance.

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Links to Digital Materials

Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs. At http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/ , accessed August 21, 2013 . The Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs, based at Georgetown University, is an educational and a research center for the study of religion in relation to various international phenomena, such as globalization, human rights, ethnics of war, negotiation, and more. The website also includes data regarding international religious freedom.

The Institute for Cultural Diplomacy (ICD). At http://www.culturaldiplomacy.org/index.php?en , accessed August 21, 2013 . The ICD is an international NGO whose main goal is to enhance the intercultural relations between peoples and areas in the world. The ICD offers reports and publications researching various aspects of cultural diplomacy – definitions, efforts, implementation, and future directions. The institute combines academic development of the field with practical programs and educational resources.

Minorities at Risk (MAR). At http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/mar/ , accessed August 21, 2013 . The MAR project, located at University of Maryland, collects data regarding active conflict between communal groups. Among other variables, the MAR data measures religious characteristics of the conflicting groups.

Religions and Ethics in the Making of War and Peace Project. At http://relwar.org/ , accessed August 21, 2013 . The project on Religion and Ethnics in the Making of War and Peace, based at the University of Edinburgh, is an academic and practical forum to discuss the relationship between military and religious ethics. The publication section includes several articles on that topic.

Religions for Peace. At http://religionsforpeace.org/ , accessed August 21, 2013 . Religion for Peace was founded in 1970 as a coalition of representatives from the world's major religions dedicated to promote peace. The website offers guides and resources aimed to help religious leaders decrease violence and encourage development and peace.

United States Institute of Peace. At http://www.usip.org/ , accessed August 21, 2013 . Beside various books dealing with negotiation styles of different cultures, the United States Institute of Peace offers panels, initiatives, reports, and other publications dealing both with culture and religion in diplomacy and in war.

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• Introduction

Historical context

Writing war and peace.

• Why were the Napoleonic Wars important?
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War and Peace

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• Academia - Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace
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• Table Of Contents

War and Peace , historical novel by Leo Tolstoy , originally published as Voyna i mir in 1865–69. This panoramic study of early 19th-century Russian society, noted for its mastery of realistic detail and variety of psychological analysis, is generally regarded as a masterwork of Russian literature and one of the world’s greatest novels .

War and Peace begins in the Russian city of St. Petersburg in 1805, as fear of Napoleon ’s ongoing war making begins to set in. Most of the characters are introduced at a party, including Pierre Bezukhov , Andrey Bolkonsky , and the Kuragin and Rostov families. Much of the novel focuses on the interactions between the Bezukhovs, Bolkonskys , and the Rostovs. After their introduction, Andrey Bolkonsky and Nikolay Rostov go to the Austrian front under General Kutuzov, a fictional representation of Mikhail Kutuzov , to engage with Napoleon’s troops. Andrey is then injured at the Battle of Austerlitz and presumed dead, until he arrives home to his wife, Lise, who dies during childbirth soon after. Pierre, meanwhile, has married Helene Kuragina. She is unfaithful to him, and Pierre duels with the other man, almost killing him. He soon becomes overwhelmed by his marriage and leaves Helene. He joins the Freemasons , which influences his personal and business fortunes greatly. In the meantime Nikolay has racked up a large amount of gambling debt, which causes the Rostov family to lose most of their fortune. He is encouraged to marry a wealthy heiress, despite promising to marry Sonya, his cousin. Nikolay eventually witnesses the peace between Tsar Alexander I and Napoleon ( Treaties of Tilsit , signed in 1807). Andrey soon becomes involved with Natasha Rostov only to be told by his father that he must wait a year before marrying her. After some time away, Andrey discovers that Natasha has been unfaithful. He rejects her, and Pierre consoles her, eventually falling in love with her.

In 1812 Napoleon invades Russia, forcing Alexander to declare war. Andrey returns to service, and Pierre is driven to believe he must personally assassinate Napoleon. As the French advance, Mary, Andrey’s sister, is forced to leave her house. Nikolay finds her in the streets, and the two reconnect. Pierre, still crazed by his imaginary duty, is apprehended by French forces and witnesses a number of executions, which deeply affect him. During his imprisonment, he befriends Platon Karatev, a wise peasant. He is later freed from the French and promptly falls ill. After recovering, he marries Natasha, and they have four children together. Nikolay weds Mary, and the two enjoy a happy married life.

War and Peace is known for its realism, something Tolstoy achieved through intensive research. He visited battlefields, read history books on the Napoleonic Wars , and drew on real historical events to create a novel of living history. Tolstoy had originally planned to write a novel centring on the Decembrists , whose revolution in 1825 against the tsar attempted to end autocratic rule in Russia. The Decembrists failed, however, and those who were spared execution were sent to Siberia. Tolstoy wanted to depict a Decembrist , now old, returning from exile . As Tolstoy wrote and revised, however, the novel evolved into the War and Peace known today—a novel that takes place more than a decade before the Decembrist movement. The novel’s primary historical setting is the French invasion of Russia in 1812, which was a turning point in the Napoleonic Wars and a period of patriotic significance to Russia. Some historians argue that this invasion was the event that metamorphosed into the Decembrist movement years later.

Many of the family names used in War and Peace are slight alterations of real names Tolstoy had encountered in his life—a deliberate strategy intended to make the novel feel familiar to the Russians who read it. Bolkonsky, for example, is a manipulated version of Tolstoy’s mother’s family name , Volkonsky. Tolstoy also created the majority of his characters with his own family members in mind; for example, his sister-in-law, Tanya, was the inspiration behind Natasha. Tolstoy’s firsthand knowledge of war likewise influenced War and Peace . When he was 26 years old, he fought in the Crimean War , which he also wrote about in three sketches describing, graphically, his experiences during the Siege of Sevastopol (published 1855–56).

Tolstoy wrote War and Peace over the course of six years. The novel was originally serialized by the Russian periodical Russkiy Vestnik under the title 1805 starting in 1865, but its somewhat indifferent reception and Tolstoy’s compulsion to revise spurred him and his wife, Sofya, to decide to stop the serialization and instead focus on publishing the novel in volumes. Tolstoy continued to write, and he also hired the prominent artist Mikhail Bashilov to illustrate the novel. By 1868 three volumes had been released and were selling rapidly. Tolstoy finished three more volumes between 1868 and 1869. Sofya had copied several drafts, all by hand. All told, War and Peace filled more than 1,200 pages when first published.

For a discussion of War and Peace in the context of Tolstoy’s life and work, see Leo Tolstoy: The period of the great novels (1863–77) .

Essay on Peace

500 words essay peace.

Peace is the path we take for bringing growth and prosperity to society. If we do not have peace and harmony, achieving political strength, economic stability and cultural growth will be impossible. Moreover, before we transmit the notion of peace to others, it is vital for us to possess peace within. It is not a certain individual’s responsibility to maintain peace but everyone’s duty. Thus, an essay on peace will throw some light on the same topic.

Importance of Peace

History has been proof of the thousands of war which have taken place in all periods at different levels between nations. Thus, we learned that peace played an important role in ending these wars or even preventing some of them.

In fact, if you take a look at all religious scriptures and ceremonies, you will realize that all of them teach peace. They mostly advocate eliminating war and maintaining harmony. In other words, all of them hold out a sacred commitment to peace.

It is after the thousands of destructive wars that humans realized the importance of peace. Earth needs peace in order to survive. This applies to every angle including wars, pollution , natural disasters and more.

When peace and harmony are maintained, things will continue to run smoothly without any delay. Moreover, it can be a saviour for many who do not wish to engage in any disrupting activities or more.

In other words, while war destroys and disrupts, peace builds and strengthens as well as restores. Moreover, peace is personal which helps us achieve security and tranquillity and avoid anxiety and chaos to make our lives better.

How to Maintain Peace

There are many ways in which we can maintain peace at different levels. To begin with humankind, it is essential to maintain equality, security and justice to maintain the political order of any nation.

Further, we must promote the advancement of technology and science which will ultimately benefit all of humankind and maintain the welfare of people. In addition, introducing a global economic system will help eliminate divergence, mistrust and regional imbalance.

It is also essential to encourage ethics that promote ecological prosperity and incorporate solutions to resolve the environmental crisis. This will in turn share success and fulfil the responsibility of individuals to end historical prejudices.

Similarly, we must also adopt a mental and spiritual ideology that embodies a helpful attitude to spread harmony. We must also recognize diversity and integration for expressing emotion to enhance our friendship with everyone from different cultures.

Finally, it must be everyone’s noble mission to promote peace by expressing its contribution to the long-lasting well-being factor of everyone’s lives. Thus, we must all try our level best to maintain peace and harmony.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Conclusion of the Essay on Peace

To sum it up, peace is essential to control the evils which damage our society. It is obvious that we will keep facing crises on many levels but we can manage them better with the help of peace. Moreover, peace is vital for humankind to survive and strive for a better future.

FAQ of Essay on Peace

Question 1: What is the importance of peace?

Answer 1: Peace is the way that helps us prevent inequity and violence. It is no less than a golden ticket to enter a new and bright future for mankind. Moreover, everyone plays an essential role in this so that everybody can get a more equal and peaceful world.

Question 2: What exactly is peace?

Answer 2: Peace is a concept of societal friendship and harmony in which there is no hostility and violence. In social terms, we use it commonly to refer to a lack of conflict, such as war. Thus, it is freedom from fear of violence between individuals or groups.

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Essays About War: Top 5 Examples and 5 Prompts

War is atrocious and there is an almost universal rule that we should be prevented; if you are writing essays about war , read our helpful guide.

Throughout history, war has driven human progress. It has led to the dissolution of oppressive regimes and the founding of new democratic countries. There is no doubt that the world would not be as it is without the many wars waged in the past.

War is waged to achieve a nation or organization’s goals , but what is the actual cost of progress? War has taken, and continues to take, countless lives. It is and is very costly in terms of resources as well. From the American Revolution to World Wars I and II to the Crusades and Hundred Years’ War of antiquity, wars throughout history have been bloody, brutal, and disastrous. 

If you are writing essays about war , look at our top essay examples below.

1. War Is Not Part of Human Nature by R. Brian Ferguson

2. essay on war and peace (author unknown), 3. the impacts of war on global health by sarah moore.

• 4.  The Psychosocial Impacts of War and Armed Conflict on Children by Iman Farajallah, Omar Reda, H. Steven Moffic, John R. Peteet, and Ahmed Hankir

5. ​​Is war a pre-requisite for peace? by Anna Cleary

5 prompts for essays about war, 1. is war justified, 2. why do countries go to war, 3. the effects of war, 4. moral and ethical issues concerning war, 5. reflecting on a historical war.

“Debate over war and human nature will not soon be resolved. The idea that intensive, high-casualty violence was ubiquitous throughout prehistory has many backers. It has cultural resonance for those who are sure that we as a species naturally tilt toward war. As my mother would say: “Just look at history!” But doves have the upper hand when all the evidence is considered. Broadly, early finds provide little if any evidence suggesting war was a fact of life.”

Ferguson disputes the popular belief that war is inherent to human nature, as evidenced by archaeological discoveries. Many archaeologists use the very same evidence to support the opposing view. Evidence reveals many instances where war was waged, but not fought. In the minds of Ferguson and many others, humanity may be predisposed to conflict and violence, but not war, as many believe. 

“It also appears that if peace were to continue for a long period, people would become sick of the monotony of life and would seek war for a changed man is a highly dynamic creature and it seems that he cannot remain contented merely with works of peace-the cultivation of arts, the development of material comforts, the extension of knowledge, the means and appliances of a happy life.”

This essay provides an interesting perspective on war; other than the typical motivations for war, such as the desire to achieve one’s goals ; the author writes that war disrupts the monotony of peace and gives participants a sense of excitement and uncertainty. In addition, it instills the spirit of heroism and bravery in people. However, the author does not dispute that war is evil and should be avoided as much as possible. 

“War forces people to flee their homes in search of safety, with the latest figures from the UN estimating that around 70 million people are currently displaced due to war. This displacement can be incredibly detrimental to health, with no safe and consistent place to sleep, wash, and shelter from the elements. It also removes a regular source of food and proper nutrition. As well as impacting physical health, war adversely affects the mental health of both those actively involved in conflict and civilians.”

Moore discusses the side effects that war has on civilians. For example, it diverts resources used on poverty alleviation and infrastructure towards fighting. It also displaces civilians when their homes are destroyed, reduces access to food, water, and sanitation, and can significantly impact mental health, among many other effects. 

4.   The Psychosocial Impacts of War and Armed Conflict on Children by Iman Farajallah, Omar Reda, H. Steven Moffic, John R. Peteet, and Ahmed Hankir

“The damage done by war-related trauma can never be undone. We can, however, help reduce its long-term impacts, which can span generations. When we reach within ourselves to discover our humanity, it allows us to reach out to the innocent children and remind them of their resilience and beauty. Trauma can make or break us as individuals, families, and communities.”

In their essay , the authors explain how war can affect children. Children living in war-torn areas expectedly witness a lot of violence, including the killings of their loved ones. This may lead to the inability to sleep properly, difficulty performing daily functions, and a speech impediment. The authors write that trauma cannot be undone and can ruin a child’s life.  

“The sociologist Charles Tilly has argued that war and the nation state are inextricably linked. War has been crucial for the formation of the nation state, and remains crucial for its continuation. Anthony Giddens similarly views a link between the internal pacification of states and their external violence. It may be that, if we want a durable peace, a peace built on something other than war, we need to consider how to construct societies based on something other than the nation state and its monopoly of violence.”

This essay discusses the irony that war is waged to achieve peace. Many justify war and believe it is inevitable, as the world seems to balance out an era of peace with another war. However, others advocate for total pacifism. Even in relatively peaceful times, organizations and countries have been carrying out “shadow wars” or engaging in conflict without necessarily going into outright war. Cleary cites arguments made that for peace to indeed exist by itself, societies must not be built on the war in the first place. 

Many believe that war is justified by providing a means to peace and prosperity. Do you agree with this statement? If so, to what extent? What would you consider “too much” for war to be unjustified? In your essay , respond to these questions and reflect on the nature and morality of war. 

Wars throughout history have been waged for various reasons, including geographical domination, and disagreement over cultural and religious beliefs. In your essay , discuss some of the reasons different countries go to war, you can look into the belief systems that cause disagreements, oppression of people, and leaders’ desire to conquer geographical land. For an interesting essay , look to history and the reasons why major wars such as WWI and WWII occurred.

In this essay , you can write about war’s effects on participating countries. You can focus on the impact of war on specific sectors, such as healthcare or the economy. In your mind, do they outweigh the benefits? Discuss the positive and negative effects of war in your essay . To create an argumentative essay , you can pick a stance if you are for or against war. Then, argue your case and show how its effects are positive, negative, or both.

Many issues arise when waging war, such as the treatment of civilians as “collateral damage,” keeping secrets from the public, and torturing prisoners. For your essay , choose an issue that may arise when fighting a war and determine whether or not it is genuinely “unforgivable” or “unacceptable.” Are there instances where it is justified? Be sure to examples where this issue has arisen before.

Humans have fought countless wars throughout history. Choose one significant war and briefly explain its causes, major events, and effects. Conduct thorough research into the period of war and the political, social, and economic effects occurred. Discuss these points for a compelling cause and effect essay .

For help with this topic, read our guide explaining “what is persuasive writing ?”If you still need help, our guide to grammar and punctuation explains more.

Insight and Analysis from Foreign Affairs Practitioners and Scholars

Established 1996 • Raymond F. Smith, Editor

Winning the War for Peace, Justice and Prosperity: A Vision

In 1946, military analyst Lee Yuri (李浴日) of China pointed out that this dilemma may arise from the practice of a military doctrine that is not based on saving people, but on killing people. When a war does not end in justice for all, another battle erupts soon afterward. He contended that the world needs to practice a military doctrine that seeks to save people and to provide justice to all. He named this practice a “Military for Mankind” in his book On Victories 1 .

In this essay we first elaborate on the concept of Military for Mankind, which we broaden to include government and business. The concept of fighting a War of Peace, Justice and Prosperity is described in his book. Because justice is the key accomplishment of the War, we abbreviate it as the War of Justice. Ten precepts to practice “Military, Government and Business for Mankind” and to win a War of Justice are constructed from the book On Victories . We then examine what the world has right and wrong during the last two centuries from the perspective of these precepts.

The essay concludes with a list of recommendations for the leaders of the world to consider. The implementation of these recommendations might well lead to winning the War of Justice for the people of the world and thereby to achieving peace, justice and prosperity for all.

II. Military for Mankind . Lee Yuri emphasized the importance of the concept of Military for Mankind:

“The wars fought in 20th Century have been directed more toward a military doctrine of killing people and conquering enemies. Scientific advances have further exaggerated this problem, inasmuch as nuclear weapons are able to kill people by the millions. If military actions are allowed to intensify in this direction, the world will be destroyed and mankind will vanish from this planet.

Today, we must correct this wrongful “military doctrine” and establish one that has been devised to fight wars with the goal of saving people and achieving justice and prosperity for all. This doctrine and its practice will be termed “Military for Mankind” and the war to which it will apply will be termed the War of Peace, Justice and Prosperity.

The Chinese military doctrine developed 25 centuries ago was based on saving people. This doctrine must be reestablished throughout the world.”

Because we are currently engaged in a total war, we need to broaden “Military for Mankind” to “Military, Government and Business for Mankind”. In all countries, the military is a part of the government. For some countries, the country may own most of the businesses. This broadening of the military doctrine facilitates the examination of how each of the three components helps to win the War of Justice.

Government for Mankind was a concept that Confucius examined fully. This concept was adapted by many dynasties to manage the government of China throughout history.

III. War of Peace, Justice and Prosperity . In his classic book, On Wars, Clausewitz deals with the fighting of a battle. He explicitly states that the goal in fighting a battle or a war is to be established by the leader of the government. If the leader establishes the goal as peace, justice and prosperity, his generals must practice Military for Mankind and win the War of Justice for his country. Thus, what we are doing is placing the concept of Military for Mankind into a framework that can be used to analyze wars being fought and their consequences for peace, justice and prosperity.

The War of Justice was examined by Mencius in China. At about the same time, Socrates discussed the moral concept of Good and Justice, and the meaning of justice (i.e., What is Justice?). He spoke about the “medicine of Justice”. In essence, the concept of the War of Justice has long existed in both the Western and Eastern worlds.

The world won World War II in Europe. All nations that were involved there received justice. Germany has long re-emerged as a major power of the world. Peace and prosperity were gained by many nations. Thus, it is appropriate to say that the world won the European War of Justice. On the other hand, no justice was given to many Asian countries that were invaded by the Japan Empire, even if they were allies of the US. As a result, disputes have developed in Asia. Their elevation to a trade war is imminent.

The key point in winning the War of Justice is whether the people (of allies and enemies) gain justice. This is to say that fighting the War of Justice and the actions occurring during and after the battle should respect human life and human rights. In this way, the people will have no intention or desire to fight another war. On the other hand, the War of Justice should be fought without mercy against warlords, drug lords, and terrorist leaders.   IV. Ten Precepts on Military for Mankind and War of Justice. On Victories contains these five books written by Lee Yuri:

• Analysis of Sun Zi’s Art of War
• The Essence of War Principles by Clausewitz
• Sun Yat-sen’s Principles of Revolution
• Essays on Sun Zi’s Art of War
• Essays on Military Doctrines.

He urged soldiers and commanders to study these books. For a country to be strong and to prosper, its politicians and government leaders should practice the principles stipulated in On Victories on all aspects of government and the conduct of war. Because the war is a people’s war, Lee Yuri expected the also the people to read On Victories .

Instead of expecting readers to read that book of 600,000 Chinese words, I have summarized them in the following 10 precepts for your review.

• What is necessary to win the War of Justice :

This requirement was given by Sun Zi in Chapter 1 on Planning for War and interpreted by Lee Yuri as “What is first required of us to win the war is dao 道. What is dao ? It is the good governance by the government leader and military commander. If the leader and commander practice dao , their citizens will be in complete accord with their leader. The people will follow the leader in the War of Justice with no regard to their lives, and undismayed by any danger. They will be imbued with a must win attitude, and fight for their country fearlessly in all situations.“ This precept also implies that if a government does not practice dao , the citizens will not fight for that government.

• Winning the enemy by the War of Justice .

Victory in the War of Justice requires that the people of the enemy have a new government that practices dao . If you have no plan to build this new government of dao , then you are not ready to fight the War of Justice. This strategy can also be described as subduing your enemy with justice so that he becomes your friend. If you should win the war without a battle, the rationale for this precept becomes compatible to the saying of Sun Zi that subduing your enemy without battle is of supreme excellence. The way to “subdue” your enemy is to build a government of dao to serve the enemy’s people or to convert the existing government to one that practices dao for its people. Prevailing should not be achieved by killing only.

• The forms of war :

The war can be a water cannon fight, a crusader war, a revolutionary war, a conventional war, a prolonged war, a guerrilla war, a propaganda war, a psychological war, a media war, a legal war, a nuclear war, a cold war, an ideal or absolute war, a deterrent war, a war of poverty, a trade war, a war against self-destruction or, finally, a War of Justice. Clausewitz identified this  expanded list of wars The world has suffered through or fought all of these wars, except completion of the last war. It is also appropriate to suggest that a war of poverty and a trade war can be identified as part of a War of Justice. Some of these war forms will be elaborated later. In order to win the battle of these wars, Clausewitz believed that it was important that the commander conducts a scientific analysis of the battle and that the government leader sets the objective of the battle and provides the commander with the resources and authority necessary to execute the battle. The form of the war can affect the specific objectives to be established and the time and timing to fight the war.

• The principle to win the war : This principle that was enunciated by Sun Zi is interpreted by Lee Yuri as “If you (the leader and the commander) know your situation and that of your enemy, you will not be endangered in hundred battles. If you do not know the situation of your enemy but only yours, you may win or lose with no certainty in the outcome of the war. Lastly, if you know neither, you will lose every battle.” (Knowing means that you know all aspects of the countries fighting the war: how to fight the battle, what you should and can do during the battle, what is the likely war casualty, can you definitely win the war, and how you can achieve lasting peace after battle victory has been achieved?)
• The need for people to know the Art of War :  Lee Yuri said, “Whether you are strong or weak, it all depends on the thrifty of the Art of War.” He also said, “Wars will be with us for centuries. The world of today has wars. We must promote “Military for Mankind” and educate the people in the right Art of War. The Art of War is the foundation of military might, and the war knowledge of the people, military generals and government leaders is the Great Wall of the country”.
• The essence of fighting any war : “In today’s world, if you can fight, you will persevere. If you cannot fight, you will die,” Sun Yat-sen said. The word “fight” is interpreted as “win in wars against enemy within or without”. Lee Yuri further stated that a government without dao, corrupted officers and greedy people are internal enemies that can cause a country to self-destruct or die.
• The virtues of leaders and commanders : Sun Zi said, “A leader or a commander must have these five virtues: wisdom, honesty, humanity, courage, and discipline.” Lee Yuri expanded on this with “The wisdom is the device of a good plan that ensures success. With honesty, a leader can mete out appropriate awards and penalties and make his administration, especially its financial operation, transparent. With humanity, he cares for his soldiers, his people and his enemy. With courage, he remains calm in the face of adversity and leads the fight. With discipline , he is solemn, respectful and strict in operation of the military and government.” Lee Yuri pointed out in his book, On Victories, that President Roosevelt, President Truman, General and President Eisenhower, General Marshall and General MacArthur had these leadership characteristics and were visionaries.
• The time to fight the war : This was uttered by Sun Zi and interpreted by Lee Yuri as “The visionary leader lays his plans well before sending his troop to fight. The good and kind commander makes his plans for a short battle, a quick war and a complete victory.” Sun Zi also said, “The leader does not moves his troops unless he sees an advantage to his country; does not use his troops unless there is victory; and does not send his troop to fight unless his country is in peril.” The basic principle of establishing the time to fight and win must be firmly adhered to by the leader and commander.
• The basis of winning the battle : Sun Zi said, “A skillful commander first makes his army invincible. When he discovers an enemy’s weakness, he seizes the opportunity, attacks swiftly, and spares nothing to defeat his enemy.” Sun Zi then summed up this point as “A commander who commands his troop, not only cultivates his dao, but also preserves the integrity of his military system. He will take advantage of an enemy’s weakness and ensure victory.” Earlier, Sun Zi described the military system as the organizations, rules and supports in getting the military operational. Similar logic should be applied to the leader of the government and the operation of his governmental system.
• The benefit of victory : In contrast to counting how many people you killed and how many countries you colonized, winning the War of Justice should give you peace for centuries and justice and prosperity for all. This precept emphasizes the importance of winning at all three fronts: peace, justice and prosperity. The war has not ended if we win at only one or two fronts. A corollary of this precept is to fight no war that has the potential to bankrupt yourself.

Because the fighting power of the world’s major powers is so superior, winning a battle over a lesser country is a foregone conclusion. As a result, we differentiate the doctrine for Military for Mankind and War of Justice from the conventional doctrine on military and government operation by emphasizing the following factors:

1. Justice for all people, but without mercy for warlords, drug lords, and terrorism lords. 2. Winning the hearts of the people following the battle 3. The essential for a government to practice dao , i.e., to have good governance.

V. On the World. In the last three decades, international exports increased at a rate of about 9% a year or about 12-fold. The improvement in productivity, removal of trade and investment barriers, growth of international and national markets, and innovation and development of high-tech and information systems have contributed to this dramatic increase. However, despite these successes, financial crises still develop. Many countries are fighting for resources and battling for trading advantage. People are suffering as a result of high unemployment and/or lack of food and medicine.

Will we have peace, justice and prosperity for the world in 20 years? Based on the outcome of the wars fought during the last 20 years, the answer may be negative. However, the progress in world affairs by the major powers gives us hope that we will have a yes answer.

Before elaborating more on the yes or no issue, we will examine from the perspective of Military for Mankind and War of Justice the world’s current conditions, discuss the world order, and address the root cause of wars and financial crises. After further examination of China’s situation and that of the USA and the relationship between the two countries, we have five recommendations for the world to act on.

Table 1 contains six groups of data that characterize the strengths and weaknesses of four countries. The first group is the resources that the four countries have. Their productivities are appeared as the second group. The third group is the debt owed by governments. The investment by these countries in their military operation is shown as the fourth group. The last two groups are data of the health of their people and some indices characterizing the corruption of government operations.

Table 1. Resources, productivity, debt, military expenditures, health and corruption of four countries.

* The conversion is calculated at assumed values of $100 per barrel and $4 per 1,000 cubic feet. ** The first number is years of remaining reserves based on oil reserves. The number in parenthesis is the number of years increased by the shale reserves if consumption remains at the same rate. *** The public debt of USA does not include the debt $5T owed to governmental agencies such as Social Security Trust Funds. Foreign entities own $5.72T of the $12.1T public debt; The Federal Reserve owns $1.79T, State and Local governments own $0.7T; and private entities and individuals own $3.89T. The public debt of China includes $2T that is incurred by provincial and local governments. **** www.transparency.org.

VI. New World Order. The recent signing of a chemical weapon agreement with Syria and a nuclear weapon agreement with Iran by six major powers — USA, China, Russia, Great Britain, France and Germany — certainly indicate the emergence of a new order of the world’s powerful countries. Among these six countries, USA is clearly a superpower . This is due to the Americans’good citizenship; its highly regarded functional legislatures; its exceptional legal system; the strength of America’s democratic government; the superiority of its armed forces; its No. 1 status in GDP; innovation, business practice and business size; and the abundance of its natural resources. With its present, new leadership, China’s GDP will grow rapidly, the corruption will be controlled and the country will progressively move from a developing country to a developed country. Then, China may advance to second rank among world powers.

Five of these major powers have nuclear armaments. They understand well the disastrous effect on the world of a nuclear war. The possibility of nuclear wars among the six major powers is nil.

The relationhip of Russia and China to the four other major powers is no longer like that to the Soviet Union led by Joseph Stalin or the China led by Mao Zedong. Instead, the six major powers are working together to reach an agreement with Iran for a reduction of its nuclear stockpile. Although this agreement is only the first step towards ensuring that Iran will not possess nuclear weapon, the signing of theagreement reflects a major breakthrough by the six major powers in that they are working together first to impose economic and financial sanctions on Iran and then to negotiate a compromise for all parties. Hopefully there will be no nuclear threat to Israel and the world by Iran and Iran will revise its government operation so that it will no longer be regarded as a state that sponsors terrorism.

The second good news item is that USA, Russia and Syria have worked out an agreement to free Syria of its chemical weapons. At present, all chemical weapons have been identified and ships that are capable of destroying the weapons are on their way to Syria. The destruction of all Syrian chemical weapons that were sold to that country by Western powers will relieve Israel and the world of one key security concern about Syria. On the other hand and based on the outcome of the Iraq and Afghanistan war, the approach taken by the USA to resolve the conflict between the Syrian government and its opposition forces will not succeed in building a Syrian government that can govern the Syrians well. It is not likely that USA will be fighting a Syria war, but the human suffering of Syrians caused by a Syria war is simply not acceptable. A new way to deal with the Syrian conflict must be developed jointly by the USA and Russia.

All other countries of the world will be separated into those countries that are civilized and those that are uncivilized. A civilized country works within international laws. It has demonstrations that can be regarded as peaceful. Some have high unemployment and operate with huge government deficits. These countries do not sponsor terrorism. Their legislators and government officials are elected by a majority of their citizens or by a selected group.

We will use the China throughout her Century of Humiliation as an illustration of an uncivilized country. During that period (up to 1949), internal turmoil was produced by government corruption and/or the greed of warlords. China suffered and many people died. Mentioned in his 1932 book The Japanese Prison in Shanghai War, Lee Yuri told his fellow inmates that the turmoil and corruption that were happening in China would destine China to extinction. Several countries (excluding the USA) took advantage of China’s situation to compound further the atrocities of killing or looting in China.

The uncivilized countries are usually governed by a dictator or tyrant. As a way to protect his interests within his country, the dictator may use his power and resource to export terrorism to the world. Iraq was such a state.

VII. Corruption and Greed . The root cause of most world problems is the corruption of some officials and greed of some people. Three incidents or crises will be examined to support this reasoning. The first is the financial crisis of 2008, the financial loss and human suffering of which are given in Table 2.  In contrast to the second incident — the Iraq and Afghanistan War — the financial loss of 2008 crisis was about eight times the financial cost of the War. The human suffering of the first incident is in the form of unemployment and company bankruptcies, whereas that of the second incident is given in numbers of military deaths and wounded personnel.

Table 2. Cost and Suffering of Three American Crises or Wars.

* The first number is the sum of row 4 and 5 of Table 3 on military deaths and wounded personnel. The second number does not include the deaths of terrorists and people wounded by, or getting cancer through, the Attack.

The financial crisis of 2008 resulted first from the greed of some financial executives who sought more commissions by granting mortgages to unqualified home buyers. At the same time, the home buyers hoped to be enriched by inflation and committed themselves to purchase homes that they could not afford. Meanwhile, some industries were overburdened by labor costs and became uncompetitive. Unable to survive the financial crisis, many companies declared bankruptcy and were reorganized subsequently. Fortunately, wise decisions made by the governments and people and the correction of the financial system imposed by governments enabled many banks and companies to recover. One noticeable example was the return of General Motor to its position as the leading automobile manufacturer in the United States. The description of the cause of the 2008 financial crisis certainly supports the suggestion that our government and laws could not restrain people’s greed. As a result of this failure, there were enormous financial losses and unspeakable human suffering.

The Iraq and Afghanistan war is the response of USA to the third incident which resulted from terrorists’ greed for revenge. These two wars were made under an unwise decision (i.e. USA can win easily). The estimated cost of the war is given in a report by Linda Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz. This report states, “The fresh calculation — which includes the cost of spiraling veterans’ care bills and the future interest on war loans — paints a grim picture of how America’s future at home and abroad has been mortgaged to the two conflicts entered into by George W Bush in 2001 and 2003.” The report’s stark conclusion is, “There will be no peace dividend and the legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan Wars will be costs that persist for decades.” The projection can be much grimmer if another Saddam Hussein emerges in Iraq and the Taliban retakes Afghanistan.

Corruption usually means the acceptance of bribes by government officials. From the perspective of Military for Mankind, Government and Business and War of Peace, Justice , and prosperity; corruption means these seven crimes or unjust practices:

• Taking bribes,
• Obtaining votes by unethical means to get elected (for the purpose of getting more money or power),
• Using governing power beyond the ordinary (as exemplified by the power grabbing of Mao during The Cultural Revolution),
• Wasting government funds (as in the building of a bridge to a deserted island),
• Gouging customers for profit (as in the use of patent law or monopoly position to set up unjust pricing),
• Polluting air, land and sea for more profit,
• Avoiding or evading fair taxation (as exemplified by the move of a company to a country that has no corporation tax).

With this broadened definition of corruption, two issues should be addressed. In many countries, executives are granted lavish bonuses whether or not they improve their company’s performance. In other countries, government officials who get important projects done well and at an optimum cost are not rewarded with a bonus. As a result, accepting bribes becomes a necessity for them to have a living standard that is comparable to those who receive a bonus. The second issue is for the companies to not use the loopholes in international laws and the legal protection of domestic laws to earn extraordinary profits and not pay a fair share of taxes. If the companies are conducting themselves properly in their business practices, people will have more money to invest in their country and the country will have more money to deal with the problem of overspending.

VIII. On the United States of America. “In the twentieth century, no country has influenced international relations as decisively and, at the same time, as ambivalently as the United States. No society has more firmly insisted on the inadmissibility of intervention in domestic affairs of other states, or more passionately asserted that its own values were universally applicable.“ This is a statement that was made by Kissinger in his book, Diplomacy .

How successful is the U.S. ambivalence and passion? Table 3 gives the casualties that the USA has suffered in wars since World War II. In World War II, U.S. casualties were high. If it were not for this U.S. sacrifice and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world would not be as good and peaceful as it is today.

Table. 3. American casualties in wars during the last sixty years (source: Wikipedia).

* The U.S. casualties in the Pacific Theater were about 67% of those listed.

During World War II in the Pacific Theater, the atrocities committed by the evil Japanese Empire to Asian countries were horrendous. As an example, 40 million Chinese persons were killed in that war. The reparation established by the San Francisco Peace Treaty merely required Japan to return the property that it had looted from China. Injustice was perpetrated on China by the signers of the Treaty.

The Korean War may be described as stagnant. The good news is that we have a strong South Korea that practices dao and that China is helping the world to change the behavior of North Korea. Although the U.S. retreated hastily from South Vietnam, Vietnam is changing by itself. Overall, we may say that the sacrifice of the U.S. in these two wars has been somewhat justified.

After we won the battles for Iraq and Afghanistan, we built up the world’s two most corrupt governments through the democratic model of U.S. The U.S. sacrifice did not end with a halt to the killings between the Sunnis and Shiites of Iraq. As our troops withdraw from Afghanistan, the Taliban is poised to overrun the current government.

Hopefully, the leaders of the U.S. can appreciate three lessons of these two wars. The first is that the people of Iraq and Afghanistan differ from Americans. What is important to us may not be important to them. When we apply our system and/or passion to them, the government that is built up may not function in the way that we expect. Second, we need to do a better job of Precept 4, i.e., knowing yourself and the enemy. We knew that we could win the battle for Iraq, but did not know that we could not establish a good Iraqi government. Knowing how to win a battle that is not a War of Justice as defined by Precept 2, is not a sufficient reason for the U.S. to send its generals, men and women into harm’s way to do an impossible job. Thirdly, USA did not select the right timing to fight the war (Precept 8). If the economic sanction were extended for a few years, Saddam Hussein might surrender and USA would win the battle without a fight.

The two world’s foremost reserve currencies are the U.S. dollar (62%) and the Euro (24%). Economist Paul Samuelson and others have maintained that the overseas demand for the dollars enables the United States to maintain persistent trade deficits without causing the value of dollar to depreciate or the flow of trade to readjust. This monetary advantage of the USA is further enhanced by the country’s superpower so that the U.S. treasury bonds become the vehicle into which foreign countries invest their export/import surplus.

The Federal Reserve has set the interest rate at an unprecedented low level to promote economy recovery from the 2008 financial crisis. Such an interest rate significantly lowers the U.S. government’s burden of paying interest on the public debt.

Samuelson stated in 2005 that, in some uncertain future period, these pressures (the continuous accumulation of trade deficits, the printing of paper money, the increase in public debt, and an increase in interest rate) would precipitate a run against the U.S. dollar with serious global financial consequences.

If the U.S. does default on its public debt, will that make the U.S. government one of poor governance (i.e., the violation of Precept 1)? However, a better question to ask is whether we should do something now to reduce the pressures or wait until bankruptcy before we reorganize the U.S. back into its status as the world’s superpower. The revamping of General Motor suggests that the U.S. and Americans will succeed in the reorganization.

The world has many conflicts. Another world financial crisis is on the horizon. One important thing for the U.S. to consider is what changes in our foreign and domestic policy we should make so that we can still be the superpower and the country that works for peace, justice and prosperity throughout the world.

IX. On China “The Chinese economy displays both unmatched dynamism and unrivaled complexity. Since the early 1980s, China has consistently had the most rapidly growing economy on earth, sustaining an average annual growth rate of 10% from 1978 through 2005.“ This is a 2006 assessment of China by Barry Naughton in his book The Chinese Economy . The China’s GDP in 2013 is expected to grow to $9.16 trillion, which is much higher than the $5.8 trillion GDP of Japan. In January of 2014 it was reported that China may already have edged out USA as the country that has the highest level of trade of all countries. Most importantly, the Chinese now know that they must depend on growth in their domestic market to ensure that the dynamic growth of their economy continues.

President Xi Jinping is the new leader of China. His China Dream is to make China rich with goodness. He also has a Military Dream, which is to make the armed forces of China strong and committed to winning the War of Justice for all people.

In China, a new leadership team is elected by party members about every 10 years. The election of leaders involves an elaborate process. The leaders so chosen are well prepared to do their jobs and each has a specific assignment.

Let us use the rise of Xi to the presidency of China to explain how the Chinese election works. First, his father was prosecuted during The Cultural Revolution. As a result, Xi was sent out to a poor county for reeducation. However, his father was released from prosecution and assumed an important role in the success of the market economy policy of Deng Xiaoping. Xi’s effective dealings with the people in that county and his hard work gained him admittance to Tsinghua University, a top ranking university in China. Before his rise to the upper echelon of the central government, he listened to the concerns of people and worked to resolve them. He worked diligently to attract foreign investment. Resources are allocated to support the growth of new foreign and domestic companies. Before he became president, he had cultivated an important leadership position in the military.

His China Dream really motivates all Chinese not only to become richer, but also to become good citizens. Even if the defense expenditures as a % of GDP remains at the current level (which is about one half of that of the USA), his Military Dream will narrow the gap in the number of weapons between USA and China. China’s success in the landing of Chang’e 3 on the moon certainly suggests that their technology or quality gap in military technology may be narrowing. If Xi can effectively resolve the problem of corruption, China will be a formidable opponent of the USA.

Let me offer six personal observations (derived from my contact with Chinese persons of various levels and my readings of Chinese news) for consideration by the readers:

• Government Control. Practically speaking, the government owns all lands and most companies in China. Because of the abolishment of agriculture tax for all farmers, they will not be considered in this observation as persons working for the government. Accordingly, we can be assured that the workforce that is employed by the government will constitute a much larger percentage of the population than that of the other major world powers. As the government gains more experience in running the market of China, foreign companies that exporting goods to China may be asked to do more than selling their products to China and taking their profits out of the country.
• Infrastructure. Everyone knows that infrastructure is being constructed in China at an unprecedented level. Its accomplishment in this regard is even more amazing as a country with the least corruption (according to the corruption index listed in Table 1) may not be able to do it at the quality and for the cost that China achieves.
• Corruption . My merchant friends regard corruption in China as rampant. On the other hand, many foreign companies thrive without bribing officials and some companies, wanting to increase sales, got convicted by China for bribery.
• Farmers around prospering cities. The farmers are taking extra job as small businessmen and earning a great deal of extra income.
• No housing bubbles in robust cities. Many people there are betting for housings. In addition, the farmers are buying houses in cities so that their children can have a better education. The two top most priorities for Chinese families in China are owning a house and getting the best education for their children.
• Education . Good and free education is available for every child. Children in remote areas are learning English and computer skills. Recognizing the moral bankruptcy subsequent to The Cultural Revolution and the rise of materialism following Modernization, schools are taking the lead to promote the teaching of Confucius, Mencius, and dao in order to give the future generations a moral anchor.
• Research and Development. This is aggressively pursued as exemplified by the success in building a high speed railway system, sending a rover Chang’e-3 to the moon and making enormous progresses in biological science and engineering.

Three critical issues require our consideration:

• The first is whether we want China to be a formidable friend of the USA.
• Second, should we do everything in our (super)power to weaken China so that she will never be our opponent?
• Third is whether USA, China, Britain, France, Germany and Russia should collaborate and become the maker of peace, justice and prosperity of the world.

Before we consider these issues, one thing that Precept 4 calls for is that we know Chinese and China. Martin Jacques said in his book, “Soon, China will rule the world”. If his “soon” means in the next 10 to 50 years, this statement is definitely not supported by the data given in Table. 1. However, he did point out that the West was ignorant of China and its culture. If the U.S. is ignorant in these aspects, can U.S. make objective assessments of and intelligent decisions on the three issues mentioned earlier?

Here is an example of how the new China conducts foreign policy and practices the for-mankind doctrine. By avoiding domestic political affairs and funding the construction of a pipeline system across Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, China wins the friendship of these countries, stabilizes their economic and political conditions, and resolves China’s energy needs. Similarly China and India have improved their relations by signing a border agreement while China and Vietnam are working to resolve their dispute concerning the South China Sea.

As China’s economy was improving, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao and the leaders before them made a significant investment to build up the educational system. The graduates are assuming important government positions. Many of them are committed to correcting past errors, such as the corruption of government officials, and leading their nation to new heights. These two Chinese leaders worked vigorously to establish a system that can eliminate corruption in government and greed in people.

With the rise of Xi to the presidency and Li Keqiang to the premiership of China, their determination to clean up the government, the threat that corruption may destabilize the Chinese government will disappear. China will have a strong and wise government to serve her citizens.

Many world events indicate that China is a major power for world peace. It is not the China of the 20th Century. China is destined to grow and be a country for mankind.

X. On Sino-American Relation . A good relationship began in 1784 as the “Empress of China” sailed to Canton, China. Washington signed a Sea Letter and sent a delegate with the hope that the Empress of China could open up a new pathway and a new market to bring new life to the newly formed USA. The Americans took gentian roots from the Appalachian Mountains and red and white wines to China. They brought back a great deal of Wuyi tea (Bohea) from Fujian and china, which generated a huge profit for the sponsors of the ship. One of the sponsors was Robert Morris, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Up to 1949, the USA was the friendliest of the “Imperialist” countries to China. During World War II, the USA provided a huge amount of supplies and materials with which China could fight the evil Japanese Empire. Many brave Americans came and risked their lives to help China fight the Sino-Japan War. Flying Tigers downed 2,600 Japanese airplanes. The Americans who lost their lives in the Pacific Theater as listed in Table 3 may have reduced Chinese casualties by tens of millions. Similarly the strong resistance of China to Japan’s invasion weakened Japanese capability to fight against MacArthur’s brazen island hopping assault. China should also be grateful to the USA and Great Britain for China being appointed as one of the five permanent members of the Security Council of the United Nations.

Unfortunately the ascendance of Stalin and Mao to power and the fighting of the Korean and Vietnam War degraded Sino-American relation to an adversarial relationship. The USA’s China policy became one of containment.

Fortunately, the establishment of a normal Sino-American relationship through Ping-Pong Diplomacy and trade between China and the outside world has increased rapidly. The granting of most favorable nation trade status to China by President Bill Clinton further increased trade between the USA and China.

On the other hand, the USA’s containment policy is still in effect as demonstrated by the military confrontations that have occurred in the Diaoyu Islands and the South China Sea. However, the improvement in submarines, the increased range of missiles, and the number of nuclear warheads of China make the containment policy obsolete.

The USA must have a new China policy so that confrontation will seldom be escalated into a battle with human casualties. Equally important is that the major powers should never think of a nuclear war as a means to destroy the other major powers.

The meeting of President Obama and Xi at Sunnylands, California is a good beginning. Their desire that the USA and China form a new major nation relationship is so important that the world would applaud it.

Americans do a great deal of good in the world. They also do things that are not good. Similar comments apply to the Chinese. If they do collaborate to resolve world conflicts peacefully (i.e., with minimal human casualties), then U.S.A, China and the world will have and enjoy a win-win-win situation.

XI. Recommendations. Some suggestions were made earlier for the two countries being assessed here. Five general recommendations are given below for consideration by all civilized countries:

• On Corruption and Greed : The world should work together to reduce seven forms of corruption or greedy crimes described earlier. The United Nations needs to develop a body of international laws for use in prosecuting the crimes. Countries that are unwilling to enforce the laws should be excluded from world trade. Domestic laws should be amended or rewritten to reduce crimes of corruption within and without.
• On International Collaboration : All countries — the major powers and lesser nations — should collaborate in world affairs and use trade, instead of deadly weapons, as a means to change a government to one of good governance. Human values and the suffering in each country differ. The killing of people should be the first issue to be addressed by collaborative effort. Changes to an existing government are less formidable than the formation of a new government that is free of corruption.
• On the Prevention of Financial Crisis : The culprit in this crisis is corruption, government overspending, insufficient taxation, export import deficits, and low interest rates that are unsustainable. The government and the people must make some sacrifices to ensure that there will be no financial crisis and the associated economic human suffering for decades.
• On Research : The world may run out of oil and gas in 20~30 years. We should invest in the research and technology necessary to deal with this issue. Investment needs to be made by the world on technologies that will lead to more energy, higher food production, and more practical medical technology so that energy, food and healthy people will be there to run the world when there is no longer any oil output from the ground.
• On Education : The people need to be educated on what is Military, Government and Business for Mankind, why we fight the War of Justice , how to be a good citizen in a way to assure that our government does practice dao , what sacrifices are needed to assure effective government operation, and answers to other issues raised in this article. People must learn that greed, injustice and doing things only for their own self-interests are culprits that will destabilize their government and create wars among countries.

The tasks called for by the recommendations are being done by the world. We just reword them under the perspective of Military for Mankind, the War of Justice and a broadened definition of corruption to highlight the urgency for the world to carry out the tasks.

Corruption and financial crisis can cause a country to self-destruct. The USA and China should join forces in a war against self-destruction.

1. This book, others and essays written by Lee Yuri are on the website: www.leeyuri.org . Hard copies can be obtained with a donation.

American Diplomacy is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to American Diplomacy.

This book, others and essays written by Lee Yuri are on the website: www.leeyuri.org. Hard copies can be obtained with a donation.

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Guest Essay

America’s Military Is Not Prepared for War — or Peace

By Roger Wicker

Mr. Wicker, a Republican, is the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee.

“To be prepared for war,” George Washington said, “is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” President Ronald Reagan agreed with his forebear’s words, and peace through strength became a theme of his administration. In the past four decades, the American arsenal helped secure that peace, but political neglect has led to its atrophy as other nations’ war machines have kicked into high gear. Most Americans do not realize the specter of great power conflict has risen again.

It is far past time to rebuild America’s military. We can avoid war by preparing for it.

When America’s senior military leaders testify before my colleagues and me on the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee behind closed doors, they have said that we face some of the most dangerous global threat environments since World War II. Then, they darken that already unsettling picture by explaining that our armed forces are at risk of being underequipped and outgunned. We struggle to build and maintain ships, our fighter jet fleet is dangerously small, and our military infrastructure is outdated. Meanwhile, America’s adversaries are growing their militaries and getting more aggressive.

In China, the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, has orchestrated a historic military modernization intended to exploit the U.S. military’s weaknesses. He has overtaken the U.S. Navy in fleet size, built one of the world’s largest missile stockpiles and made big advances in space. President Vladimir Putin of Russia has thrown Europe into war and mobilized his society for long-term conflict. Iran and its proxy groups have escalated their shadow war against Israel and increased attacks on U.S. ships and soldiers. And North Korea has disregarded efforts toward arms control negotiations and moved toward wartime readiness.

Worse yet, these governments are materially helping one another, cooperating in new ways to prevent an American-led 21st century. Iran has provided Russia with battlefield drones, and China is sending technical and logistical help to aid Mr. Putin’s war. They are also helping one another prepare for future fights by increasing weapons transfers and to evade sanctions. Their unprecedented coordination makes new global conflict increasingly possible.

That theoretical future could come faster than most Americans think. We may find ourselves in a state of extreme vulnerability in a matter of a few years, according to a growing consensus of experts. Our military readiness could be at its lowest point in decades just as China’s military in particular hits its stride. The U.S. Indo-Pacific commander released what I believe to be the largest list of unfunded items ever for services and combatant commands for next year’s budget, amounting to $11 billion. It requested funding for a raft of infrastructure, missile defense and targeting programs that would prove vital in a Pacific fight. China, on the other hand, has no such problems, as it accumulates the world’s leading hypersonic arsenal with a mix of other lethal cruise and attack missiles.

Our military leaders are being forced to make impossible choices. The Navy is struggling to adequately fund new ships, routine maintenance and munition procurement; it is unable to effectively address all three. We recently signed a deal to sell submarines to Australia, but we’ve failed to sufficiently fund our own submarine industrial base, leaving an aging fleet unprepared to respond to threats. Two of the three most important nuclear modernization programs are underfunded and are at risk of delays. The military faces a backlog of at least $180 billion for basic maintenance, from barracks to training ranges. This projects weakness to our adversaries as we send service members abroad with diminished ability to respond to crises.

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Environmental impact of war and military motivations for peace.

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Panorama of shoreline with smoke during coastal bombing (Photo by Dirck Halstead/Getty Images)

On May 15, 2024 the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge Massachusetts, hosted an exploratory meeting of experts titled Climate Conundrum: Bridging the Gap Between Science and Security. The venerable convening venue was graced with a promenade of framed letters from historical members of the Academy that include General George Washington as well as Nelson Mandela. I was invited to the workshop by Oxford professor Neta Crawford, a member of the Academy, who published a book recently titled The Pentagon, Climate Change and War which won the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas that Improve World Order . A key question that underpinned the conversations that day was - are contemporary conflicts considering environmental costs in any meaningful way in comparison from the wars of yesteryears? Recall the Vietnam war when defoliants like Agent Orange were being sprayed without much care across the vast rainforests of Indochina by the United States.

The conversation was sobering. Despite numerous ostensible efforts at “greening of warfare,” the material and energy usage of current conflicts is astonishingly large. A neglected aspect of the cost of war that came through was the infrastructure damage and reconstruction footprint. The Conflict Environment Observatory, a charity based in the UK has the most detailed tracking of the environmental footprint of wars. A presentation at the event by Linsey Cottrell from the Observatory presented data collected by the Initiative for GHG Accounting of War and is presented in the pie chart below. They calculated that in the current Ukraine war, the largest carbon footprint by far of the war will be in reconstruction of destroyed infrastructure. This could be even worse per capital for the war in Gaza given the far greater amount of bombing intensity in that conflict.

Estimates of emissions from the war in Ukraine from data starting February 24, 2022, to September 1, ... [+] 2023, based on calculations by Initiative on GHG Accounting of War and partners. Lennard De Klerk, December 2023. Open-Source Data and Report

Deliberate targeting of environmental resources as a weapon of war has been observed in modern conflicts, most recently the oil spills and fires that were started by the Saddam regime following the first Gulf War. Environmental clean-up has thus been given a security dynamic and the United Nations Environment Program set up a post-conflict assessment process after that conflict which is now housed within their “Disaster and Conflict” unit. Yet, the challenge remains as to how much of these efforts at data gathering can motivate change among adversaries in hastening peace agreements. From all indications in the current conflicts, environmental factors are low politics and are on no one’s radar in terms of mitigating conflict intensity or duration.

Perhaps the incentives of the war economy, that led erstwhile General and President Eisenhower to warn us of the “military industrial complex” in his farewell address, remain a potent hurdle to peacebuilding. However, there is a way to give the military some livelihood assurance through other more peaceful professional pursuits as well. As an institution, the military’s functionality is often perceived by the public as an insurance policy to address security challenges through defensive or offensive mechanisms. There can often be some excess capacity within military establishments during periods of relative peace. To remain relevant to its public mandate, particularly in these periods, the military can provide important services in other non-combat crises.

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Historically, countries with large militaries have used such excess capacity by volunteering troops for peacekeeping through the United Nations system. Countries such as Bangladesh and Pakistan, which have very large militaries, have often been key providers of military human capital for peacekeeping missions with the United Nations, that are often labeled “blue helmet” missions. In a similar vein, there can also be an important role for militaries in international environmental conservation, remediation, and enforcement missions (green helmets).

The United States Department of Defense (DoD) has an “ Army Environmental Command.” The USAEC mission states that it is “committed to delivering environmental solutions in support of U.S. Army readiness and sustainability.” There is also the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that has been involved in numerous environmental remediation projects. Such organizations within current militaries provide some hope that environmental factors could lead to more informed choices on material and energy usage, but they must also be part of the broader calculus of combat decisions. In this election year the immense power that the world’s largest miliary has should also be used to raise alarm about the environmental impact of war — and also as a motivation for more rapid peace-making.

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War and Peace

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — A Separate Peace — The Multifaceted Nature of Conflict in “A Separate Peace”

The Multifaceted Nature of Conflict in "A Separate Peace"

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Words: 815 |

Published: Jun 13, 2024

Words: 815 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Table of contents

Gene's internal conflict, interpersonal conflict between gene and finny, societal conflict and the impact of war.

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Essay On War And Peace &#8211; For All Class Students

• Abdul Aouwal
• May 21, 2024

Man, the noblest child of Nature, has waged wars among themselves to fulfill his own selfish desires or to satisfy his eccentric purposes. In the process of the gradual evolution of civilization, many by-products have emerged.

War is the ultimate consequence of these by-products. The man at times has made a shamble of this patient earth. He has thrown into dust the palaces he made with his own hands, has tinged his hands with the sacred blood of his own brethren. He has at times played with life as if it were a trifling plaything. But peace-loving people do not want war, what they want are peace and happiness.

Naturally, man is thirsty for peace. He believes in peace. Yet why do wars take place? Maybe man acquired some amount of beastliness from the struggles he had to do with wild animals and natural calamities in the ancient times. Or maybe some people are inherently beastlike by birth.

But whatever the reason, though they want to disguise their beastlike nature under the costumes of modern education etiquettes and modesty, their real nature at times gets disclosed. Then we see the primitive intransigent beast in him. Such people are always fond of destruction games. And war is an inevitable consequence of their willful thoughts and desires.

The world could have become a good paradise by virtue of the gifts it was offered by the industrial revolution in Europe. But, much to peoples' surprise, by being instigated by a handful of greedy people, some countries of Europe spread over the other parts of the world with the power in hand which the revolution equipped them with.

An orgy of blood started. They started to exploit the power of science to fulfill their ill-motives. They not only robbed people of their wealth, but they also sucked their blood, killed them, tortured them; and more pitiably, they waged wars as and when they met problems in the distribution of power and wealth with their rival robbers. Thus, war broke out like an epidemic almost all over the world. The current trend of the world is but an extension of that historical evil.

War means destruction, carnage, and a backward movement from progress. People thrills at the destruction and decimation that took place at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thousands of innocent men women and children who were blithely thriving in the free atmosphere of nature had to die an immature death. War is, therefore, a curse.

No party benefits from it-neither the winner nor the defeated. The nacked danger of war has been seen in the Gulf-war, in the freedom struggle of Chechnia, in the civil war of Bosnia and Afganistan, in the freedom struggle of Palestine, and in dozens of other wars.

From the legendary and mythological history, we hear of the devastating battles of Lanka, Troy, and Karbala. None of these wars has ever brought about any good for any human being or tribe or nation. It is, undoubtedly, always destructive.

To what direction is the world moving in this age? Where can we hunt the elusive golden-deer of peace? When we look at the developed countries, we have little hope seeing that they are being. tickled by arms-competition. Under the veil of fake fraternity and courtesy flash the savage fangs of doubts and disbelieves.

The fundamental philosophical contradiction between socialism and democracy is always fanning the cinder of an ever-living outrageous war among various countries. However, people have taken a revolutionary initiative to catch hold of the golden-deer of peace by establishing the United Nations Organization. Now there are many official discussion-rooms in Geneva for peace talks. One scholar, during the second world war, made the following comment about Geneva.

"Geneva gave me the impression of archaeological remains, with the dead bodies of hundreds of international organizations that had their headquarters there."

Perhaps the same comments, at least to some extent, can be made of today's UNO.

Peace is like happiness—the more given away, the more received. And maybe that is why there is a paucity of them both in today's world. Here most people, at least most of those who lead other people, are very greedy, egotistic, or self centred.

Each of them has different aims, different purposes, different ways. But if there were only one main goal of everyone-world-peace, then there would actually be peace. No matter whatever the difference between various systems or philosophical beliefs, we all can easily disregard it for a greater peaceful world.

We have to ensure nonproliferation and mutual tolerance. The UNO should now come forward with more strength and liberality. We have built up our civilization by thousands of years of effort. So, we must not damage it, or let anyone damage it simply because we or somebody of us is angered. "We must love one another or die."

Essay About War

Effects of war on civilization:.

Introduction: Civilization is a way of life in which the wilder passions of humanity are restrained, the nobler instincts and inclinations are developed and allowed to prevail. As civilized men we want the all-around development of human culture, literature, science and the arts, giving goodbye to the jungle laws, In a word, civilization is a state when the highest ideals of the human society are attained.

All things are naturally and spontaneously reflected in man's thoughts and actions. If we admire the civilization of ancient Greece and Rome, it is not for the wars that they waged, but for their literature, art, and architecture, their philosophic thoughts.

Historical background : History teaches us one thing, that is, man has attained his highest civilization in times of peace. The military success of ancient time was only to illustrate the greatness of the human mind that then exploits of heroic fighters displayed. But imagine the cost of wars. Men, money and material have been wasted for sheer destruction.

War-lords often claims that war is a healthy tonic and should be waged to re-establish moral values. They offer a dangerous plea - that war is unavoidable and that civilization has progressed in the powder cart. But compare the achievements of the premise paths of peach in the tapoban of ancient Greece, or the schools and University of the modern world. The argument that some thinkers advance that war is necessary for the development of many virtues. am a

A sentiment: Civilization is a sentiment which results in peace. So disturbance of peace destroys the conditions on which civilization depends. In the first place, war rouses the brutal passions of the human mind where man is less than human. It is Organised butchery, mass killing of young men at the doorstep of life, Civilization implies a high standard of social behavior that encourages the finer sentiments; jet Loro Sebi

A destructive science: War is a science of destruction. It is not certainly favourable to these. On the contrary, it makes men cruel, greedy and selfish. More war carries destruction what man has created over the years. Modern war carries destruction even to areas of peace, inhabited by civil population.

Cities and corn fields and bridges and factories are blasted out by heavy bombing from the air. It puts back the hands of the progress of years, and man has to build afresh what he had created with so much money and toil.

Finally, modern war demands a people's all-out efforts, and little time left to devote to art and architecture. To be thinking all the time

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U.S. Constitution.net

Constitution on war and peace, war powers allocation.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 states that Congress has the power to declare war. Initially, the draft of the Constitution granted Congress the power to make war. There were suggestions to give this power solely to the President, solely to the Senate, or to both the President and the Senate. However, the Framers decided that involving both the President and Congress addressed their concerns. They didn't want just one person to decide something so significant, nor did they trust a single branch alone.

Jefferson's handling of the Bey of Tripoli presents a classic case. The Bey declared war on the U.S., and Jefferson sent frigates to defend American ships. He limited their mission strictly to defense, showcasing his interpretation of the Constitution—he acted without declaring war. Hamilton had a different perspective; he believed that if another nation initiated war against the U.S., the President didn't need Congress to formally declare war. Instead, they only needed to respond.

Fast forward to Lincoln's blockade of Southern ports in 1861 before Congress could act. The Supreme Court in The Prizes Cases (1863) upheld Lincoln's blockade, arguing that a state of war existed. Even if Congress wasn't in session, the President had to act according to the situation. The Court reinforced this stance in The Protector when it referred to the President's proclamations to determine when the war started and ended. This cemented the idea that a state of war could exist without Congress's formal declaration.

But what about initiating military hostilities? This has been more contentious. The Supreme Court hasn't tackled this issue, and lower courts usually avoid it, seeing it as a political question. This means Congress and the President have had to work together to reach mutual understandings, without clear judicial guidance. This relationship between the branches underscores the Framers' intention to balance power, ensuring neither Congress nor the President acts unchecked.

Historical Precedents and Interpretations

Building on the earlier era, Jefferson's engagement with the Bey of Tripoli is pivotal. When the Barbary pirate leader declared war on the United States, Jefferson took decisive action by dispatching a squadron to the Mediterranean to defend American interests. Though this move was defensive, Jefferson's actions were deliberately confined to the narrowest sense of defense—highlighting his adherence to constitutional limits in the absence of a formal declaration of war. This set a practical example of how a President could act under imminent threat without overstepping constitutional bounds.

Alexander Hamilton provided a contrasting perspective, emphasizing a broader executive authority. He argued that when the United States was attacked, the nation was effectively in a state of war, eliminating the immediate need for a congressional declaration. This nuanced view suggested that the President could swiftly respond to threats, drawing a line between initiating and responding to hostilities, thus underscoring flexibility within the constitutional framework.

The Civil War era further complicated this dynamic. Lincoln's unilateral decision to blockade Southern ports in 1861, while Congress was not in session, led to the seminal Prizes Cases in 1863. Here, the Supreme Court upheld Lincoln's actions, reasoning that a state of war was an incontrovertible fact that necessitated immediate presidential response. The majority opinion stressed that the President, bound to uphold national security, had to act swiftly without waiting for congressional approval. This reinforced the concept that the practical circumstances of war might sometimes mandate executive action outside formal declarations.

Further clarity was provided in The Protector , where Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase articulated that the President's actions during recesses of Congress were critical for marking the beginnings and conclusions of wartime activities. This judgment underscored the significant, albeit provisional, authority bestowed upon the President in wartime contexts, especially when faced with emergencies.

Despite these historical precedents, the issue of initiating military hostilities without explicit congressional authorization remains contentious. The constitutional silence and lack of judicial decisions force Congress and the President to navigate these challenging waters through political negotiations and accommodations. The Framers' design aimed at this very balance, ensuring that power neither concentrated excessively in the hands of one nor left unchecked by the other.

International Agreements and Peaceful Relations

The Constitution, under Article II, Section 2, grants the President the power to make treaties, provided that two-thirds of the Senate concurs. This requirement of Senate approval serves as a critical check on executive authority, reflecting the Framers' intent to balance presidential initiative with legislative oversight. The process of treaty-making is thus characterized by a necessary interplay between the executive and legislative branches, ensuring that the President cannot unilaterally bind the nation to international obligations.

Historically, this has allowed the United States to engage in a wide spectrum of international agreements, ranging from trade pacts to arms control treaties. For instance, the ratification of the Treaty of Paris in 1898, which ended the Spanish-American War, required Senate approval and highlights the constitutional mandate for collaborative governance in foreign affairs.

Yet, not all international agreements come under the category of formal treaties. The Constitution permits the President to enter into executive agreements, which, unlike treaties, do not necessitate Senate ratification. These agreements are often used for less formal or immediate diplomatic concerns and have been instrumental in shaping U.S. foreign policy. Prominent examples include the Lend-Lease agreements during World War II, which were pivotal in supporting Allied nations financially and militarily.

Despite the flexibility afforded by executive agreements, there remains a constitutional expectation for the President to consult with Congress. This consultation helps maintain the checks and balances envisioned by the Framers, ensuring that the nation's diplomatic actions reflect broader legislative consensus and popular will.

Enforcement and termination of treaties also present significant constitutional considerations. Once the Senate has ratified a treaty, it becomes part of the "supreme Law of the Land," under Article VI of the Constitution, obligating both federal and state governments to comply. However, circumstances may arise where treaties need revision or termination. The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, an international agreement itself, provides some guidelines on this matter, yet the U.S. often relies on its domestic legal framework to address these issues.

The President, as the nation's chief diplomat, often assumes responsibility for enforcing treaties. This role underscores the executive's crucial function in ensuring adherence to international commitments. However, if significant changes or termination of a treaty are deemed necessary, congressional involvement comes into play. For instance, the termination of the Mutual Defense Treaty with Taiwan in 1979 by President Carter drew extensive debate, illustrating the complexities of such decisions. While the Supreme Court has not definitively ruled on whether the President can unilaterally terminate treaties, historical practice suggests the necessity of some form of legislative engagement or acquiescence.

This careful balancing act between the President and Congress not only prevents unilateral executive action but also ensures that the nation's foreign policy decisions benefit from diverse perspectives and democratic legitimacy. This dynamic interplay highlights the brilliance of the Constitution as a living document—craftily designed by the Founding Fathers to adapt to the evolving necessities of governance while preserving fundamental principles.

The Third Amendment and Civil-Military Relations

The Third Amendment, while often considered one of the least litigated and directly relevant amendments in modern contexts, embodies crucial principles that resonate deeply with the American ethos. Drafted in an era marked by the colonies' resistance to British quartering practices, it addresses the involuntary housing of soldiers in private homes without the owner's consent, particularly in times of peace. This historical context offers significant insights into the Founders' intentions and their commitment to protecting individual rights and ensuring civilian control over the military.

In the eighteenth century, the English, having developed a significant aversion to standing armies, especially in domestic settings, viewed the forced quartering of soldiers as a severe violation of personal autonomy and property rights. The oppressive quartering acts imposed by the British Parliament on the American colonies exacerbated tensions and fueled revolutionary sentiments. Colonists, inheriting the English distrust of permanent military forces among civilians, anticipated and ardently resisted any form of military imposition on their private lives.

Although few legal disputes directly invoke the Third Amendment today, its underlying principles continue to influence contemporary constitutional interpretations and civil-military relations. Notably, scholars and legal experts suggest that its emphasis on individual privacy and civilian supremacy over the military remains relevant in various modern contexts.

One such context is the government's response to terror attacks and natural disasters. While the Third Amendment does not directly address modern tactics such as surveillance or emergency preparedness, its spirit invites ongoing scrutiny of government measures that might infringe upon personal freedoms under the guise of security. This perspective resonates with the general constitutional ethos of checking government power and protecting civil liberties.

Another pertinent application of the Third Amendment's principles is the increasing militarization of the police force. In recent years, the deployment of military-grade equipment and tactics by local law enforcement agencies has sparked debates about the appropriate limits of police power in a free society. The amendment's historical emphasis on separating military power from civilian life underscores concerns about the potential for abuse and the erosion of public trust when police operations resemble military maneuvers.

Ultimately, the Third Amendment encapsulates essential constitutional values that remain pertinent to contemporary governance. Its clear stance against the involuntary quartering of soldiers embodies a broader commitment to protecting personal privacy, maintaining civilian oversight of the military, and vigilantly guarding against unwarranted government intrusion. As challenges and threats evolve, these principles continue to serve as a guiding framework for evaluating the balance between national security and individual rights.

Congressional Declarations of War

The process of making a congressional declaration of war is a profound exercise of constitutional responsibility and reflects the Framers' intention in creating a balanced and accountable system of governance. Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution endows Congress with the power to declare war, a mechanism designed to ensure that such a significant decision is made with broad legislative consensus and not by the unilateral decision of a single individual.

A poignant example of this constitutional principle in action is President Woodrow Wilson's address to Congress on April 2, 1917. As hostilities erupted and escalated across Europe in 1914, Wilson initially maintained a stance of neutrality, urging Americans to remain impartial. However, a series of provocative actions by Germany—including the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare and the infamous Zimmerman Telegram —culminated in Wilson's call for a declaration of war against Germany. Wilson's appeal resonated with Congress, which voted in favor of the declaration, thus formally bringing the United States into World War I. This monumental decision underscored the gravity of congressional declarations of war and their capacity to mobilize national resources, rally public support, and unify the country under a common cause.

The significance of congressional declarations of war lies not only in their immediate impacts but also in their broader constitutional implications. By requiring legislative approval, the Framers ensured a collective deliberation process. This serves as a safeguard against rash or unilateral decisions, reflecting the republic's foundational principles of checks and balances. The deliberative nature of congressional approval helps to legitimize military engagements, ensuring that they have the support of the representatives of the people and states.

Throughout American history, the procedural requirement for a congressional declaration has been pivotal in moments of national crisis. For instance, the declarations of war against Japan, Germany, and Italy in 1941 following the attack on Pearl Harbor resulted in a unified military response that was crucial to the Allied victory in World War II.

However, the formal process of declaring war is not without its complexities. While the Constitution explicitly grants Congress the power to declare war, the evolving nature of global conflicts and the emergence of new forms of warfare have sometimes blurred the lines of this authority. For instance, the Korean War, Vietnam War, and various military interventions in the late 20th and early 21st centuries were conducted without formal declarations of war. Instead, these conflicts were often justified through congressional resolutions, executive orders, or interpretations of existing authorizations, such as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution or the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF).

Despite these deviations from formal declarations, the underlying constitutional principles remain salient. Each instance requires a careful balancing of powers, with both the executive and legislative branches playing critical roles in decision-making. This dynamic interplay ensures that, even in the absence of formal declarations, there is a measure of accountability and oversight consistent with the Framers' vision.

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• |  June 12, 2024
• By Staff Reporter
• -  June 12, 2024

CHINESE Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, attended the BRICS Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, on Monday, and all parties highly praised the important role of the BRICS mechanism and the achievements of its expansion. They believe that the inclusion of more countries in BRICS co-operation accelerates the process of world multipolarity, and promotes a more just and reasonable international order. Over the past year, the BRICS co-operation has been marked by brightness, speed, and strength, Wang said. By expanding our membership, we have ushered in a new era of joint self-reliance for the Global South, with the influence and appeal of BRICS continually rising, and we stood at the forefront, achieved success through mutual support, and united as one, accelerating despite headwinds, the top Chinese diplomat noted. “The BRICS brand is shining brighter, and our voice is more powerful.” In the face of current global changes, BRICS must maintain a high and far-sighted perspective, Wang said. The politicisation and excessive securitisation of economic issues are rampant, and unilateral sanctions and technological barriers are on the rise. In the face of the contest between forces promoting world multipolarity and those maintaining unipolar hegemony, and the clash between economic globalisation and “anti-globalisation” tendencies, we must follow the trend of history, stand on the side of fairness and justice, and make the right choices, he said. Looking to the future, the “Big BRICS” must undertake great responsibilities and achieve significant accomplishments. We should fully leverage the strategic significance and political impact of the “Big BRICS”, transforming BRICS into a new type of multilateral co-operation mechanism that is based on emerging markets and developing countries, globally oriented, and open and inclusive, Wang said. The top Chinese diplomat called on nations to uphold the banner of multilateralism, leading in maintaining the international system centred on the UN, and firmly resisting actions that undermine international order and violate international rules. The BRICS should also promote an equitable and orderly world multipolarity, and inclusive economic globalisation, enhancing co-ordination and co-operation while highlighting the Global South moment in significant international agendas and placing development at the centre. Wang also called on promoting capacity building in the digital economy and artificial intelligence (AI) for developing countries, ensuring equal participation and equal benefits. On security issues, Wang stressed that no matter how complex the situation, dialogue and consultation cannot be abandoned. No matter how sharp the conflict, political resolution must be pursued. On the Palestine-Israel conflict, we must firmly promote an immediate, comprehensive, and sustainable ceasefire in Gaza, alleviate the humanitarian crisis, and prevent the conflict from spilling over, Wang noted. He also called on supporting Palestine’s membership as a full-fledged UN member state and restarting the “two-state solution” to achieve lasting peace in the Middle East. Meanwhile, as the Ukraine crisis continues, China supports the timely convening of peace talks that are accepted by both Russia and Ukraine, with equal participation from all parties and fair discussion of all peace proposals, Wang noted. The BRICS should adhere to independence and objectivity, promote the international community’s consensus on peace, and oppose the instigation of a “new Cold War” under any pretext, he said. The top Chinese diplomat also suggested fully leveraging the resources and market advantages of the “Big BRICS”, strengthening the supporting role of financial and trade co-operation, ensuring energy and food security co-operation, driving innovation co-operation, and acting as a bridge for cultural exchanges. China has established the “China-BRICS AI Development and Cooperation Center” to promote co-operation in industry alignment and capacity building, welcoming active participation from all countries, Wang noted. All parties involved in the meeting called for adherence to multilateralism, opposition to unilateralism and protectionism, and the promotion of reforms in the international financial structure, according to a readout released by China’s Foreign Ministry on Monday night. They also emphasised the need to strengthen and improve global governance, enhancing the voice and representation of developing countries. All parties stressed the importance of resolving disputes peacefully through dialogue and consultation and supported all efforts conducive to the peaceful resolution of crises. The meeting also issued a joint statement of the BRICS Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, according to the readout.

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• | 2024-06-14

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