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Actually I think they tried something like that. I can't remember what it was, but there was an international treaty that said nations could never go to war except to defend themselves. Obviously there was no way to actually enforce that, but it is an interesting idea that I personally agree with.
Individual acts of violence may continue, but full scale wars between nations could be avoided.
In addition, this is why people disliked the Bush Doctrine. It justified the U.S. invading any nation we saw as a potential threat. Clearly we could just B.S. the intelligence and invade wherever we wanted (coughIraqcough).
In addition, this is why people disliked the Bush Doctrine. It justified the U.S. invading any nation we saw as a potential threat. Clearly we could just B.S. the intelligence and invade wherever we wanted (coughIraqcough).
Personally, I prefer that than us all being dead by now... i mean, if the intelligence says they're a threat, and everyone in the world is backing you up, i really don't see why we should wait for them to launch a weapon before we decide "alright, now it's time".
Well really it becomes a choice between their dead citizens or our hypothetically dead citizens. What if we just kill everyone else in the world? Then there is no chance of them attacking us. We can't let fear dictate our actions.
Well what constitutes a threat? A hostile nation that has weapons? Because there are plenty of those...we could start eight wars at once. I mean look at the cold war...how did we all survive? Both the U.S. and Russia would not attack each other first, and instead resorted to containment and other policies that were not directly aggressive. Had we decided to just nuke the fuck out of Russia everyone would be dead...probably on the planet.
Russia was a much more reasonable country than Iraq. For starters, they flaunted the fact that they had nukes and used it to scare us. It was a Cold War, we both went under M.A.D.
Iraq was different. He claimed he had power to wipe us all out, and was even transporting Uranium (Saddam even admitted a while before that he would restart his nuclear program). and, when we would send in UN inspectors he would refuse them. It's not like Russia where we were agreeing not to fight. He was being an asshole and making us feel we were in much more danger than we really were.
He basically asked us to come in, but he was taunting us, he thought for some reason we wouldn't do it.
Well as funny as it is for Saddam, on some level he did a lot more damage to us by taunting then he ever could have by actually attacking. We now have spent nearly 6 trillion dollars and lost over 4,000 troops (and counting). Not to mention how our reputation has been damaged globally. Of course then there is the fact that more terrorists have been created by our invasion.
Finally let's not forget the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi's that have resulted from the war.
As for Russia, many thought we should have gone straight through Germany and attacked them at the end of WW2. At that point they didn't have nuclear weapons, and there was no M.A.D. Because they never attacked us though, we chose not to be the aggressors. Russian communism eventually fell, and we won the cold war, all without the major loss of lives that a direct war on Russia would have caused.
Yeah, I know a lot of sources say a million, but I was going with the conservative estimates to avoid sounding like I was exaggerating. In reality it probably is a million though.
What if a country wanted to defend itself against a stateless faction? The stateless group could do anything they want against the country, because they are not a country themselves and can't declare war, right? This would just provide loopholes for groups like these to use and stay safe from actual countries defending themselves. Even worse, there would be no way to punish these groups other than violence, because they are not a country. We could not economically harm them, negotiate, or really do anything to hold them accountable. It is pretty rare today when an actual country creates individual acts of violence on other countries, but it does happen, and that might be avoided, but how could you enforce this? Would you just go to war with them for breaking the no-war rule? There would have to be some kind of punishment for the country that goes to war.
First off your example is ridiculous. No nation is going to get upset because of a technicality in the rules. Look at what happened on 9/11 as an example. Our decision to go into Afghanistan was supported even though we weren't attacked by the country itself, but by an organization that existed in Afghanistan.
I can think of numerous ways to enforce this type of rule that would not involve violence. Halting all trade with a particular nation by all other nations in the world. This would quickly put pressure on those governments who went to war. If a nation knew their people might starve to death, or they might lose their oil supply they would be much more hesitant to go to war.
Trying to get all of the nations in the world to agree with this in the first place would be unreasonable. The countries that would be the hardest to turn over to our side would be the ones that have something to get, or want something that nobody can agree on. Who would get to decide which country gets control over contested areas, like Kashmir, the Gaza Strip, and others? One country wouldn't sit by and let some governing body decide whether they get an area or not, and that they can't do anything about it if they end up losing the area.
All of the threatening to halt trade from our country in the world isn't going to help if other countries don't agree with us and go sell stuff to them anyway. What would stop a country like China from just selling its products to this country? It would increase economic activities in the supplying country and open up a new market that may not have existed before.
We can't get all of the countries of the world to agree on simple things today. Banning something like war seems great, and believe me, I would love it if war stopped, but if a nation wants something really bad, and they are willing to sacrifice the lives of their citizens, they are not going to agree to this. Other countries would see the profit possibilities that could exist if they are the sole supplier of these 'exiled' countries.
Of course, I never said it would be easy, or even possible in the near future but with global cooperation and increased reliance on diplomacy this idea may become possible. In the near future I would say that we should put pressure on those groups currently in conflict to resolve their disputes peaceably, and make war a less acceptable option.
Obviously so long as we are so economically reliant on nations such as China then we are too weak to enforce these policies. The goal would be to get China and other nations on board with the idea.
Right. And if we're not careful, we will give so much of our power to countries like China that they can start making rules that we have no choice but to follow. Hopefully, we haven't crossed that line.
I mean, the idea of two people trying to kill eachother is pure insanity, much less entire nations.
It just doesn't seem so insane to us because we're so used to it, and we still believe in invisible men in the sky who take care of us for all eternity anyway, so dying isn't even that big of a deal.
At some point though, people are going to get to the point where we just don't kill eachother on purpose anymore.
And if we see someone dying or in need, that situation is improved before they feel a need to kill someone else to fullfill their own needs.
But that's probably hundreds of thousands of years away. Which from an evolution stand point, is still pretty quick.
I don't really like answering "yes" to this. I think that, no, war could not be banned but I do think that, yes, it could be prevented. I do not believe that it is so difficult to discuss differences instead of killing over them. We're all human. We're all capable of talking things out. War might get us somewhere (emphasis on might) but in the end, it would produce (hopefully) the same result as talking would. (Of course, discussing things would not result in millions of deaths as well.) So, I'm kind of yes and no on this.
Pretty much. But I just think that people just like to argue. They have nothing better to do so they choose to fight. If people didn't like to bitch and moan, there wouldn't be anyone on CD. It's just human nature ;)
That's just preposterous to believe! War is all around us whether it's the war on drugs, or the war on terror, or just a war between countries. We can even wage war on ourselves. Plus, I'm sure once we expand enough to travel the universe, we'll find some sort of entity that threatens us and we'll wage war on them as well.
people may try to make it banned but somewhere some greedy person/country is going to want more land than they already have or they will fight about religions. so I think that in no way war can be banned
This is exactly the correct answer, even though you were being sarcastic.
To ban something takes a group of people with the right to enforce..that is, someone with the legal right and ability to stop you from doing/having the banned action/item. So what does that enforcement body do to prevent it (and how, when a party is determined to go to war?
