Photo credit: Times of India
“Jaw, jaw is better than war, war.” – Harold Macmillan, it was also repeated by Winston Churchill – both were Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom at various times.
The expression is all about the futility of war. While it is normal for one party to feel slighted by another’s action or inaction, it is always better to find ways of negotiating instead of resorting to warfare.
This is more so when we consider wars’ economic, social, political, and environmental implications.
Economic implications include poverty and employment, supply chain disruption and effects on economic production.
Social implications include community and family destruction, psychological trauma, violence against women and change in social attitude
Political implications include the creation or weakening of nations, the rise of authoritarian regimes and increased militarization.
Environmental implications include environmental degradation and loss of wildlife.
Wars lead to death, injury, sexual violence, malnutrition, illness, disability, and forced migration.
Wars expose the inhumanity of man to fellow men.
As much as possible, peaceful resolution of conflicts is preferable to warfare. it might take some time, but wars take time in many instances.
Wars are pointless and destructive, especially with weapons of mass destruction like nukes and armed, fully autonomous drone swarms.
As of 2023, military spending globally was a record $2.44 trillion. Meanwhile, a miserly $40 billion per year is needed to end world hunger.
We need peace in the world!
Three hostages have been released by Hamas as the ceasefire starts on Sunday. We salute all those who facilitated it. However, more work needs to be done on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
We should be thinking of a two-state solution!
