PERPETUAL WAR TO PERMANENT PEACE By T.S. Khanna, March 20,2022.

Perpetual War To Permanent Peace

T.S. Khanna, March 20, 2022,

 

After WWI, 1914-18 era, President Wilson at the time, reviewing the enormity of the war atrocities, thought the human experience of that war would be a great deterrent to future wars. 

 

In 1917, Bolshevik Revolution assassinated the Russian Tsar and a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was established in 1922, with a great hope for economic progress to improve the lot of the common man.  Russia placed itself in the commanding position, with some countries in the Eastern Europe and the Central Asia as members of the USSR.  WWII, 1939-45, proved Woodrow Wilson otherwise.

 

WWII was followed by a cold war between the power blocs of the Western democracies and the Russian dictatorship, giving rise to The NATO in 1949 and The Warsaw Pact in 1955.  Due to the economic failures and unmet promises, the USSR was dissolved in the 1990s.  The world took a sigh of relief believing that with the end of cold war the resources and efforts would be diverted for the welfare of humanity.

 

But the Russian dictator, Putin has proven otherwise.  He is desperate to recover the lost prestige of Russia due to the dissolution of the USSR.

 

Some historians believe that WWI set the stage for more wars (hot or cold) by inflaming ethnic and nationalist impulses.  In an effort to avert wars, a worldwide institution, United Nations, was established to resolve differences peacefully.  The UN, with no legal force, has had a limited success in the past.

 

As Putin invades the less powerful democratic country of Ukraine, the UN has condemned the invasion, but showed the helplessness to stop it.  Putin has defied the conventional wisdom that it takes two to start a war.  He has proven that it takes only one dictator to make a war on a weaker Ukraine, while several democracies watch feverishly, fearful of escalation if they got involved in protecting Ukraine.  The whole world is sympathetically watching the atrocities being committed on Ukrainians but not doing anything to stop them.

 

Democracies are inherently slow in the decision-making process and much less willed to fight wars. This political culture gives a free hand to a dictator, like Putin, to invade weaker countries and bring them in his fold.  This process gradually keeps transferring more power to dictator who would continue to focus on enhancing their military power to invade the economic production of democratic regimes.

 

Now we are in great need of a new World Order that may be war-proof----a system that may have a legal force to resist human greed, arrogance and the innate human desire to dominate others.  We urge the intellectuals and political scientists to develop plans for discussion.