War Is Futile

Is war futile? This question has been debated for the past millennium and further, some say that the benefits outweigh the downfalls; others say that no event in human history has destroyed so many lives. Many arguments have been made but none have definitively won the argument.

War wastes lives; there is no argument against this fact. For example in World War 1 there were over 10,000,000 men, women and children that died. This by anyone's standards is a massive number of people; no event in human history should ever take that many lives. Whether it is the soldiers fighting so called "justified" wars or the civilians that are just by products of the whole thing, people are killed by the millions, running into billions, in wars all over the world. And it begs the question - why?

Most of the wars that have happened over the last century or so have been either about religious beliefs or totarialistic leaders talking men and women into helping their countries "cause", but what god would ever wish their people to kill each other over rivalries and small differences? It is only when these small differences grow into large differences that war erupts. Centuries ago, one small boy may have been teased about his religion by another boy of a different religion and held a grudge until he was able to stand for parliament and lead his people to war. OK this is a worst case scenario and sure you may be thinking it will never happen in Australia or in other more socially civilised countries, but what about in other socially undeveloped countries like Iran, Iraq, Pakistan? They all have nuclear capability or will have soon and what would happen if they did drop a bomb on a country as large as, say, America? I'm sure that America wouldn't stand for it, they'd want to get the people back and nuclear war would erupt, killing millions more people. And what would it be about? Small differences between race and culture.

Another thing that war damages is not just lives but livelihoods. Picture the scene if the whole of Australia was wiped clean by an explosion and only 10,000 people remained? You wouldn't know what to do, your family would be gone, friends gone, and everything normal in your life would be destroyed in an instant of blinding light. You would have to build your life again, starting with how you would pass the day. There would be hardly any teachers or resources left so you wouldn't go to school, no friends to talk to, no chores to do. You would be completely and utterly desolate and alone. This is what happened to many people in the war, their houses bombed they had to rebuild their lives, starting from scratch. An example of this is in 1922, after the war, the Americans rejected a German plea to postpone the payment of war debts. This forced Germany into a state of economic and social depression. The mark was not worth the paper it was printed on, a loaf of bread cost more than 200 billion marks, children played with the bundles of worthless money using them as building blocks. Imagine dragging a truckload of bundles of notes to the local deli just to get food for the family. It and many others were hopeless situation.

On the other side of the story, however, is the productivity of war. When is financial stability at its highest? In the midst of war. The amount of jobs created by war is amazing, millions of people are put to work to create bombs, tanks, even army supplies like pots and pans. Also the rate at which technology is produced is amazing. Some of the products of war that are still being made are the Volkswagen range of cars, radars, perfected aeroplanes, electric shaver, communication advances, dehydrated food and of course atomic technology. Communications is of course the biggest and most useful product of war, many of today's technology including the Internet and satellite telephones were thought of and developed in the stages of war.

Although the benefits may be a small consolation, war definitely is futile, millions of lives and livelihoods destroyed and countries divided. One question still remains to be answered in the textbook of war, who really wins?