Finding Peace

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War! Huh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.

(Shout out to Edwin Starr who sang the song ‘War’ to wonderful effect.)

There are a disturbing number of concerning wars in the world right now. Just yesterday, Iran attempted, with some but not a great deal of success, to attack Israel. That doesn’t exactly constitute a war between Iran and Israel but it’s not exactly peace either, you know?

And that’s just a little side dish to the other wars going on the world right now. Such as: Russia and Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of people have died in this war and many more have been made refugees. The Ukrainians are, through no fault of their own, a people who know no peace right now.

Then there is, of course, the Israeli Palestinian war. That’s not only been horrific for all involved, it is also spreading tentacles beyond its borders and fucking things up more generally.

Then there’s war in Yemen. This is supposedly a civil war, but it’s really a war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, conducted at the expense of the civilians of Yemen. Which means it’s really a war between Shia and Sunni Muslims. And which, somehow or another, means it has to be wound up in the Israeli Palestinian war as well. The Israeli Palestinian war wants to pretend, sometimes, that it is a war about religion, although really it’s a war about people who absolutely fucking hate each other with a passion that is hard to describe deciding to be their most asshole selves.

Then there’s war in the Sudan currently being conducted by Sudanese against Sudanese. This gets very little attention compared to the Russia Ukraine war but the people who live in the Sudan (or used to) are not very happy about it.

Then there’s a war going on in Myanmar that few are paying attention to either. There was a military coup there and those military coup-ers are not being very nice to anyone in the country other than themselves. So people are fighting back and it is not pretty. Or peaceful.

Ethiopia has been a bloody mess of war for a long time, but it’s hard for anyone but Ethiopians to pay attention to it given larger conflicts with bigger geopolitical implications like the Russia Ukraine war.

Speaking of which, Armenia and Azerbaijan are waging war over a place called Nagorno-Karabakh, which Armenia currently occupies. This is another conflict that struggles to get attention from anyone other than those involved because what is going on in Palestine is so much more dramatic. But this war is an outgrowth, in its own way, of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. You see, Russia is so busy harassing Ukraine that it doesn’t have the time, energy, or resources to keep watch over what used to be its sphere of influence in Armenia and Azerbaijan.

And the poor Syrians, who cannot seem to get a break, are dealing with not only the Russians, but the Israel Palestinian Iranian conflict as well. Ai yai yai!

To put it another way, a big dramatic war between two countries begets instability in other places which can lead to, you know, war.

This is what we here at getprettyfedup.com like to call ‘not great.’

And I haven’t even gotten into things like the ongoing class war that the ultra-rich are waging against everyone else. Or the various drug wars (OMG Mexico!) raging around the world. Not good.

There are, according to the Geneva Academy, 110 armed conflicts around the world as defined by international humanitarian law (a form of law, by the way, that should be getting more respect). Some of these armed conflicts have been raging for about as long as I’ve been alive. Which means that there are people in some of these regions who have never really known anything other than war.

And yet, there are, at the very least, traces of peace throughout the world as well. Despite themselves, the U.S. and China are not at war. In fact, most of the Americas are not at war, although it is not correct to say that the Americas are peaceful. There are problems in Colombia and Brazil and other places as well. But most of the Americas are not, for the moment, actively at war.

The Koreas, in spite of themselves, are not at war. Well, technically, they’ve been at war since the Truman administration, but they are not actually killing each other. North Korea keeps threatening, but the ongoing talk has not translated into deaths so far (thank god).

Most of Europe isn’t at war, a fact that makes most Europeans glad indeed.

To put it another way, there are only about 7 or 8 places in the world with a high number of fatalities due to war

(7,000 casualties in a year I consider to be a high number of casualties). Everywhere else – people are not dying in wars.

That’s pretty good. Humans have spent most of their history killing each other in wars (although people are not nearly so good at killing people as disease is. Mosquitos alone put humanity’s most advanced and terrifying wars to shame so far.).

Arguably, it’s pretty important to acknowledge that we can find traces of peace all over the place. We can even find traces of peace in places where wars rage the worst. Because humans need and want peace. A small number of people think to assert their interests via war, but if there’s one thing people all over the world crave – it’s peace.

Which makes it important to both look for and find peace where it is. Media outlets, not exactly unreasonably, are running stories about the prospect of World War III. They are running these stories because people whose jobs are to worry about things like World War III are worried. They are looking at, and finding, war and the possibility of war.

That’s not crazy. The world has gone through some tough times in the 21st century: 9/11. The ensuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A world economic meltdown in 2008. An impressive global pandemic. Burgeoning economic inequality that threatens democracies around the world, just as autocratic regimes are getting enthusiastic about enforcing autocracy and oligarchy everywhere they can.

All these things have destabilized a globe that enjoyed long and uncharacteristic periods of stability after World War II. So it’s not crazy to be scared.

After all, what goes around comes around. History doesn’t repeat, it rhymes. Chickens come home to roost. Karma’s a bitch. And so on. And there are plenty of chickens, karma, and history to worry about.

It does look like the next couple of years are pretty dicey, certainly for the U.S.

Which again makes it important to look at, and for, peace wherever we can find it. And to remember that wars do end and consequences follow.

It can be easy to idealize war. The Confederates in the U.S. Civil War thought they were embarking on a romantic adventure. A noble cause.

But the Civil War wasn’t romantic. And their cause was not noble. The war was bloody, brutal, disease-ridden, and very very fatal.

Let’s look for peace. And get pretty fed up with war.

Tags: Russia, war