Friday, January 5, 2018
Little and not-so-little wars
For a supposedly peaceful period, there are an awful lot of conflicts, actual and potential, going on around the globe. Strategy Page has listed most of them, with a 'state-of-play' commentary, to keep us informed. Their list includes Afghanistan, Algeria, the Balkans, Central Asia, Chad, China, Colombia, Congo, Ethiopia, India-Pakistan, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Korea, the Kurds, Libya, Mali, Mexico, Myanmar, Nigeria, Philippines, Russia, Rwanda-Burundi, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, Uganda and Yemen.
Click over there to read the current status and expected progression of each conflict. Sobering stuff.
Peter
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4 comments:
There has always been, and shall always be war. It is a part of the human condition. Peace is the time between conflicts, used to prepare for the next war.
The problem is that most places the US is fighting there is no real reason for us to be there and places like Afghanistan one can't even tell the participants from the populace. We live in an era that is the result of 70 years of military adventurism. US meddling in other countries for the benefit of corporations and foreign dictators created the mess we live in just exactly the type of foreign adventurism the founding fathers feared from a nation with a standing army. The second amendment was written as it is to emphasize an armed populace as the primary defense of the United States. Military appropriations are limited to two years duration in an attempt to hinder the growth of a large standing army. And I would note we are at war without even a hint of a declaration of war.
The list of conflicts reminded me of a book read some long time ago, titled "The Savage Wars of Peace," by Max Boot*. It was the first place I had been enlightened, as McChuck says above, to the notion that there has never really been time of peace: the political subdivisions of Earth's planetary surface are always either waging war (big or small), preparing to wage war, or recovering from war. Nations have always striven to form alliances, be they military, commercial, political, to either prevent or wage war. It does appear to be a permanent affliction of the human condition, some futile attempts to achieve globalized comity aside.
* I used to like Max Boot's writing, until he fell into the never-Trump delusional pit - that has quite soured me on giving any great degree of value to his opinions.
"Nations have always striven to form alliances, be they military, commercial, political, to either prevent or wage war."
...I meant to add that such attempts never quite seem adequate to eliminate war.
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