An Ultra Brief History of War
Human societies, together with their conflicts, have been growing steadily.
Tribes, towns, kingdoms, empires
We began as tribes who regularly traded with, and occasionally raided and fought with, neighbouring tribes. Tribes gave way to townships and then to monarchies, who also traded and occasionally raided. Dominance of one monarchy over another began to be a motivation for war, and this led to the formation of empires. The control exerted by empires created conditions of relative peace within the empire (“Pax Romana”) with conflict relegated to the borders.
Empires and countries grew, and with them, the size of their wars. Israel between 2023 and 2024 had dropped as much tonnage on Gaza as had been dropped on Hamburg, Dresden and London combined in WWII. (See Escalation or De-escalation).
Nukes
Nuclear weapons have taken the magnitude of destruction to the ultimate degree, so that a global nuclear war would be an act of suicide by human civilisation, or rather, and act of omnicide (total destruction) by a tiny body of nuclear strategists perpetuated against 7 billion humans, although the strategists have done it with their tacit permission.
The three crumbling pillars of the Nuclear Defence
The rational foundation for this existence-ending situation is hard to believe.
One pillar of the nuclear case is this: “Humans are a war-fighting species, but nuclear deterrence has put an end to war between nuclear weapons states”.
The second pillar is this “No rational man would fight a nuclear war”. Donald Trump is an object lesson in demonstrating how easily an irrational man can take charge of a huge nuclear arsenal.
The third pillar is “Nukes are only there to deter, they are not there to be used”.
But deterrence is not infallible.
The flimsiness of these arguments is evidence for the lack of a serious public debate about nuclear strategy. Part of the remedy for this lack of debate lies in engaging with our MPs.
We must make history
History shows that the magnitude of our conflicts has been growing. We are now at the point in history where reason has to cause the number and intensity of conflicts to decrease, because if we do not, we may not have a history because survivors will be too busy trying to kill enough rats for dinner.
A More Peaceful World 