War, Peace, and Collective Morality

 Just as we are getting out of a devastating pandemic the world is in the grip of a war between Russia and Ukraine, as if we need uninterrupted misery. Every war has its own reasons. But should there be war in the 21^st century world? The answer may be ‘No’ but the actions go the opposite direction.

After the end of World War-II the world has witnessed a relatively peaceful coexistence with sporadic limited-edition wars, localised conflicts between nations and prolonged civil conflicts in many nations with military and diplomatic interventions from bigger nations.

There are several theories that explain this prolonged era of relative peace. One is that the human and economic consequences of the two world wars in the first half of the 20^th century remained live in the minds of two or three generations of people reducing the propensity for war. The other theory is that after the World War-II several nations came out of colonial rule and became independent and mostly democratic focusing more on the social and economic welfare of their citizens. These or other such theories may have been partially true for many nations for several decades.

Paradoxically, the birth of several new nations in the 20^th century also planted seeds of ultra- nationalism leading to expansionist rivalries and ethnic identities. The other post World War-II trend is the continued rise and growth of the defence industry both in the government sector and in the private sector often working collaboratively to mutual benefit. Peace is the enemy of ‘progress’ for the defence establishment. And continued peace will in fact lead to the death of the weapons industry. Thus, war is often seen as matter of national pride and a means of power and prosperity for some.

Most of us individually want peace and prosperity. But the powerful want war for prosperity and they don’t care what happens to posterity. And we the ‘peace loving’ individuals too collectively want to win the war for our nation. It doesn’t matter another nation is defeated, devastated, or occupied or all these three put together. We will be proud of our brave soldiers, government, and the weapon’s establishment. And in the event of our nation being defeated we will still feel proud of our ‘brave soldiers’ who laid their lives for us and build one more war memorial. And, of course, we will for ever keep our grudge against the winning nation and await the next best opportunity to strike.

Surprisingly a war is a good time for a lot of moral discourse. While the nations will be divided in their loyalties to the warring nations all of them will indulge in some collective moral grandstanding. Even those who support the war would propose peace as their objective. It is, therefore, not funny to hear Vladimir Putin saying that his country is engaging in a war against the small neighbour to avoid the World War-III. How noble a thought it is! Other nations while supporting one of these warring nations will indulge in providing humanitarian aid to the suffering and to quickly evacuate their nationals stuck in the war zone. And almost every nation will enhance their military and weapons budget. No one in power will seriously advocate to reduce defence budget or stop production and trade of weapons of mass destruction. The START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talk) has only ended up in talk while weapons industry grew well globally. The core of all diplomatic actions by nations is their own national interest. Nothing more. Nothing less. That is diplomatic morality if one can call it morality. All collective morality stops at the national border.

For most of the public, it is hard to get the whole truth during a war. Each side will create their own version of truth. In the age of digital media minting and disseminating misinformation or manufactured truth is a lot easier. Governments everywhere have a penchant for controlling media and the more autocratic the government the greater its control over media. In fact, every war is a war of misinformation. In such a context the collective morality is built over misinformation and motivated lies.

Well, philosophers will say that peace is not the absence of war and spiritual leaders will say that one could be at peace even during a war. Peace is an ‘inner’ thing- be at peace with self, with others and with God…and yet go out to wage a war for the sake of peace, for the sake of truth!

How do we make sense out of these paradoxes?

Not easy. Human race evolved from a tribal ancestry and the underlying collective emotion is tribal. In the recent centuries such tribal emotions have expanded up to the scale of a nation in many cases and sub-nationalities within large nations. It is harder for anyone of us to think humanity as priority, when we have a family, a community, religion, region, ethnicity, language, and a nation to belong to. With a constitution, a huge number of laws and government machinery we can protect the concept of the nation in some sense. But there are no such binding rules beyond that.

And there are no world leaders- worthy or worthless! All leaders are tribal or clannish while some of whom wear the mantle of national leaders. Yet, there is no dearth of literature on world peace and international brotherhood. "The whole world is one family", 'We are children of the same God', "Loka Samasta Suhkino Bhavantu", and " We are part of The International Community"- as if there is one such thing! All that is fiction, slogan, and poetry. But let us keep dreaming and let the imagination fly high. One day, there won’t be any need for war!

“You cannot prepare for war and peace at the same time.”- Albert Einstein