Plowshares and Pruning Hooks

I have often wondered whether history is a poor tutor, or we are simply poor students. There was the Great War which was declared to be the “war to end all wars” in its horror and its carnage, but we still enrolled for World War II. World War II taught us that the League of Nations was dead in the water and that we needed a new tribunal to avert conflict between Nations. So the United Nations was born to watch through the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Seven Day War and others too numerous to name. Until at the end of the Millennium it seemed that the United Nations had gone the same way as its predecessor, and had demonstrated for the last time its powerlessness to prevent international conflict. Strangled by bureaucratic protocols, heartrending appeals by the oppressed for rescue fell on deaf ears, and UN troops were forced time and again to watch as innocents were slaughtered around them.

It was perhaps naïve to hope that an instrument of self interest designed by the victors of the Second World War would ever bring lasting peace, but it did serve to prevent the members of that select club from tearing at each others throats during its time. But it could not address the progressive economic imbalances that continued to develop between differing materialist ideologies and groups of Nations, and the use of economic coercion in lieu of outright military force. It seemed powerless to redress the establishment of puppet governments to serve the National interests of powers who chose not to intervene directly in the affairs of other Nations.

How fortunate then that the cold war should end before the United Nations was finally proven ineffectual in administering justice and therefore incapable of establishing and maintaining lasting peace. It was capitalist materialism, represented most prominently by the United States of America, which won the day over collective materialism. Such is the current disparity in military and economic power that it seems there is no longer any risk of international conflict involving conventional military forces, except for ‘rogue’ Nations, since there are no combatants willing to take the field against patently overwhelming force.

But a problem remains. While the most powerful military force to ever exist is left alone in the field, a new and pernicious enemy to peace has emerged. Terrorism does not provide a suitable adversary to a conventional army since its practitioners do not require the trappings of an army and can remain invisible within civilian populations until they choose to strike. The risk of collateral damage limits conventional military activity directed to rooting them out. September 11 was not the greatest damage inflicted by terrorists upon America. The most telling blow has been their ability to make the entire US Military powerless and therefore largely redundant. The control of terrorism requires police action by civil authorities, acting in close co-operation with their international colleagues. It cannot be overcome using conventional military forces without exterminating the civilian population in which the terrorists are embedded.

“And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” (Micah 4:3)