It is a common commentary on Europe that we now have peace because war became too violent even for us as the victims involved increased exponentially in the Twentieth Century. The reasons for war never changed in all the centuries: tribes moving to new places to live as their populations expanded, greed, to gain advantage on a feared neighbour, power, desperation, retaliation and fervour. Then last is a comment on the expansion of armies followed by missionaries of new religions.
Have these gone away from Europe? Actually all of these reasons are merely dormant. Given the right kind of natural disasters or the wrong kind of financial ones any of these reasons would ignite conflict, as the shock wave caused by the Balkans showed in the 1990s. It seems we must all be ready for war whilst knowing peace is the better life style.
There is an old Indian fable about a king and his advisor playing chess. The King suggests they should campaign against their neighbour and the advisor asks if they win what they would do and the king says they would campaign against another neighbour and the conversation goes on and on and the kind keeps saying they will take another country, continent and eventually the whole world. What would we do then, asks the advisor. Then says the king, we could sit down and play chess. The advisor asks:
“Why do we need to go through all those years of blood and sorrow and mayhem just to do what we are already doing? “
To gain peace through war is not to gain peace, it is to be momentarily tired of war.