Luttwark - Essay Example

Since the establishment of the United Nations and its peace-enforcing arm, the Security Council wars among small countries are not allowed to run their course and instead, cease-fires are enforced, only to be broken, when the combatants rejuvenate themselves, leading to a renewal of hostilities. History is replete with such instances including the Arab-Israeli war of 1948-1949 and the Balkan Crisis which ended in the breaking up of former Yugoslavia into Croat, Serb, and Bosnian states.

The problem with the brokered peace in such wars is that multi-lateral agreements stem from frivolous motives. The author argues that the UN would be better off assisting the strong to overcome the weak for lasting peace. In peace,-making steady the peace-making efforts only add to the continuity of the war by encouraging the weaker forces to remain as refugees and make for potential outbreaks of hostility, as is seen in Rwanda. The UN peacekeeping forces are usually ineffective in ensuring a lasting peace through the proper use of force and the usual outcome of UN and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) peacekeeping efforts is the creation of refugee nations, as is the case with Palestinians living in scattered refugee camps in the Middle-East. It is in these refugee camps that resentment of their plight and the respite provided by the peacekeeping efforts lengthens the conflict.

There should be a political will not to unnecessarily intervene in wars. Powerful nations like the United States of America should discourage multi-lateral efforts to bring about peace. New rules should be created to ensure that refugee relief by the UN does not allow the creation of refugee camps, but instead, repatriation, local absorption, and emigration should be encouraged to prevent any permanency of the refugee camps. These measures may seem perverse but in keeping with the paradoxical logic that wars bring peace.

The strength of this article lies in its highlighting of the ineffectiveness of the peace-making efforts by the UN and international bodies, whereby there is hardly any resolution to the war remains, but instead, it creates permanency to the presence of conflict in a region.

Evaluation

History has shown us that wars arise out of the human instinct to fight on principles, religion, or ideology, the nature of the domestic economic or political systems of nations, and the distribution of power between nations Such an observation on the causes of war suggest that war will continue to occur, as these causes are not preventable through changes (Evera, 1999, pp.14-34). Exhaustion of the combatants by letting a war proceed to its resolution does not change these underlying causes of war and war will again erupt on the basis of these causes unless there is uniformity on principles, religion, ideology, and the nature of domestic economic or political systems to remove these causes, which is an unlikely scenario.

The just war theory suggests that the five principles involved in it are just cause, right intention, legitimate authority, last resort, and the likelihood of success (Dolan, 2005. pp. 23). When a set of people feel that there has been injustice inflicted upon them, then their human instinct to fight for reparation is strong and it is easy to raise the call for war on the enemy causing injustice. The author has used the example of the Arab-Israeli war in 1948 war and the creation of Palestinian refugees in the Middle East through the peace brokered to end the war to justify the continuing lack of peace in the area. For the Palestinians, however, the Arab-Israeli war had a just cause, as it sought to get back their lands taken away from them for the creation of the State of Israel by the international community, their intent was right and the war was a last resort for justice. They believed that they would be successful, but were defeated (Khalidi, 2007, pp.12-34).

 However, the will to fight has remained, because of their firm belief in an injustice done to them. It is not the refugee camps that keep the embers of war burning in their hearts but the principle of righting a wrong done to them, and unless that wrong is undone the embers will remain threatening peace in the Middle East (Kemal, 1986, pp.21-28).

When the war is not a just war, but is permitted to last till the stronger combatant vanquishes and destroys the weaker combatant totally, it may bring immediate peace, but not lasting peace. Elements within the weaker combatant with strong feelings of injustice heaped on them will want to strike back. Their capability to wage all-out war may have been curtailed, but they are quite likely to attempt to strike back in by any other means laying the grounds for terrorism. Hotspots of terrorism like Afghanistan and Iraq belie the requirement of refugees to threaten peace in an area but instead show that strong feelings on religious issues can be the catalyst for its growth, threatening peace and stability in areas where it is present (Silberman, Higgins & Dweck, 2005, pp.761-764).

Conclusion

 War stems from the human instinct to fight on principles, religion, or ideology, the nature of the domestic economic or political systems of nations, and the distribution of power between nations. When there are strong emotions on principles, religion, or ideology, particularly linked with acts of injustice in any of the combatants of war, then exhaustion through allowing the war to run its course seldom acts as a further deterrent to war for ushering in peace. Furthermore when the victor crushes the vanquished and there is the loss in the ability to fight a war again the pent-up emotions of injustice will cause the vanquished to look at any means to seek reparation, which may be even through terrorism. Thus there is no validity in the statement that allowing war to proceed to its ultimate resolution brings about lasting peace.