The Peace about War

War is an ugly word and conjures up disgusting images. Not because any of us has seen the horrors of war, but because Steven Spielberg tells us so. I am in no way defending or advocating war or war crimes here but asking what I think is a pertinent question, is war a necessary evil?

A short, un-researched opinion is yes, war, or more specifically a credible threat of imminent conflict gives us a lot of intangible benefits that can only be perceived in their absence. Let me put it this way, in a world that saw war as ‘acceptable’, (say 100 years back) India and Pakistan would have gone to a bloody war, several casualties on either side, one of the sides would have won, captured the losing ruler and his/her family and had them drawn and quartered. The existence of this threat to life, made the rulers throne a difficult chair to sit upon. It is not out of nothing that the saying “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown” took hold.

In this scenario it is in the rulers interest that the population remains loyal to him, remains physically and mentally fit, becomes aware of ground realities and most importantly doesn’t turn cynical about who rules the country. This meant the ruler would provide for good education, a relatively corruption free structure and generally treat the population as family and not as someone who puts him in power to do what he likes for five years. He could not afford to be a bad ruler as that would weaken his kingdom and encourage attacks from other rulers which his population had become too cynical/ weak to defend. The result: not good for the ruler’s health.

What has happened today is the bogey of war as being pure evil raised by ‘intellectuals’ has taken the risk out of being a ruler. Merely to give an example, assume Pakistan attacks India and wins the war, is the PM (and allegedly super PM) going to face any threat to their lives? No. They will negotiate a treaty and continue to rule the country at best or move to Switzerland with a generous privy purse at worst. So, why should the current political system be interested in having a strong army and a fit and aware population? In fact quite the opposite is in their interest i.e. the population becomes so cynical that it never votes the incumbents out of power (isn’t that India today?). In short, the removal of war and the removal of this threat to life has resulted in the ‘politician’ taking over the ‘leadership’ role as there is no downside associated with being a bad ruler. The leader is concerned about what is best for his people, the politician is concerned about staying in power to milk the system. In fact, it is in the current system’s interest that ‘war’ remains a bad word and that it is considered glorious and not cowardly to be afraid of it. They want us to fear a war because they don’t have the physical or the mental capacity to fight it and face the consequences. It is a vicious cycle really, no threat of war, politicians become rulers, no incentive to have a strong population, results in a weak, amoral, emasculated populace, makes it easier to create fear and hatred for war, weaker people provide a good crop for politicians to select jokers (usually from within their family) to keep the farce going for another generation.

Unless the system evolves in some way to bring back some credible threat (war-like, not necessarily war) to the ruling classes and again make the ‘chair’ something that a weak person doesn’t aspire to be on, the present rot will continue. Unfortunately, nuclear weapons have made the threat of war negligible. Nukes are probably the only weapons that will never be used, but by their presence will ensure that a cathartic war never takes places. The small time conflict that we see in Kashmir etc will remain and in the longer run cause more damage than a war (even a nuclear war) can. Lets face it, the only reason that India will not attack Pakistan is because it doesn’t want to risk some mad mullah pulling the nuke trigger. This allows Pakistan to continue to kill Indian soldiers and civilians with impunity in the name of religion.

While not an elite-ist argument, this fictional conversation between Jim Hacker and his scientific advisor, in the BBC series (Yes, Prime Minister) is one of the most sophisticated discourses on how nuclear weapons are not really a deterrent as they will never be used. The only thing that they do deter is not war, but only a nuclear conflict (if that). They also prevent the system for cleaning itself up, the way nature would have wanted it.

After all I don’t think Thomas Jefferson was an idiot when he said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”