LOOKING AT WAR & PEACE THROUGH PRINCIPLE OF DUALITY

ON UN WORLD PEACE DAY 21^st OF SEPTEMBER 2022

 

“History of mankind is a saga of destructive warfare driven by base human instincts, and continues to be so in today’s world as well, albeit cloaked with a self-righteous veneer of morality.”  – Col RS Sidhu

 

Chimera of World Peace Day

Coincidentally, in September 2001, the opening day of the UNGA happened to be 11^th of September, the day now remembered for the infamous 9/11 attacks that brought down the Twin Towers of New York, a mere distance from the UN Headquarters. This was also the session that adopted another resolution that fixed 21 September as the annual World Peace Day.

Who wants War?

Maintaining a national environment conducive to enterprise is the essence of the complete spectrum of obligations of the State towards its citizens. State of war is certainly not conducive to enterprise, so why do wars take place?

To combat an existential threat, such as the byzantine Arab -Israel conflict, or a perceived existential threat such as the ongoing Ukraine conflict.

Competing ideologies, the more widely known ‘Crusades’ to save Christianity from Islam during the medieval era, the ‘White Man’s Civilisation Burden’ to colonise half the world from 18^th to the first half of the 20^th century, the recent past era of ‘Ideological Conflict’ to make the world safe for democracy from communism, and the ongoing latent ‘Clash of Civilisations’ as popularised by Hutchinson.

Human rapaciousness, by leveraging power, domestic political compulsions, and to gain commercial advantage.

Who wins and who loses?

In any war the broad stakeholders are the involved countries political leadership, the big business, the military, and the common citizen. Even in a winner takes all stakes, while some losses are apportioned to all the stakeholders, the hardest hit is the military and the common citizen.

Spiritual Prism

Gods of War. The presence of Gods and Goddesses of war in the religious belief of most ancient civilisations, is a good enough indicator of the pervasiveness of wars since times immemorial. Even in India where professing peace is a religious dogma, the idols of the Gods and Goddesses are often displayed adorned with exotic weapons. Wars just cannot be wished away.

‘Vasudev Kutumbakam’. Ancient India or Bharat is the oldest civilisation the world has known, with thousands of years old rich cultural, scientific and social heritage. Bharat has always held the belief that the energy field vibrations generated by living organisms are interlinked with the world at large. They therefore hold the world to be an interconnected whole, ‘Vasudev Kutumbakam’, the world is one. Wars are cataclysmic events with debilitating global impact, depending on the ferocity and the width of its canvass.

Cycle of Time. There is no universal or constant truth, not even death, nor God! So, there can be no permanent friends or enemies, nor can there be only peace or only war. In a cyclic Brahmand, linear too is cyclic, and so is the cycle of war and peace.

Principle of Duality. In the cosmic forces the light and visible energy exists harmoniously with the dark energy flowing alongside. Both are essential to the existence of life. As Indians we are comfortable with duality. It's embedded in our philosophy, so in our psyche, thus too in our thought process, hence visible in our actions. Understanding the diversity inherent in thought and action is another way to look at this principle.

Hinduism is an interesting religion that also practices the principle of duality. In its outward form it is indeed materialistic where the overwhelming majority enters into verbal contracts with their God to fulfil materialistic yearnings. And yet it is highly spiritual and looks at long term goals and aspirations of individuals as well as society. In the latter form it looks at life beyond life and evolution of self into a higher being.

East to us is where the sun rises, but the Western world’s Near East is India’s West! My freedom fighter may be another man’s terrorist. But it is hypocrisy that best showcases the principle of duality in action in our day to day life.

Realistic Appraisal

Carrying forward with the Principle of Duality, religions preach universal peace, or should be. But maximum blood has been shed in wars fought in the name of religion.

Similarly, since formation of the UN, maximum combat military interventions have been undertaken by the five permanent members - US, Russia, China, UK, and France - of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), the very body responsible to ensure, to use the words of India’s Foreign Minister S Jaishankar though in a different context, a ‘rule based international order’.

There is simply no place for ethics and righteousness in determining the outcomes and decisions on the world stage, national self-interest being the primary guiding factor. Discourse in the international organisations whether by the permanent members of the UNSC, or in the World Trade Organisation, or while allotting carbon emission goals towards environment conservation, and even for protection of Human Rights, is invariably guided by competing national interests of respective countries, and also points to the inequality amongst nation states.

Post Second World War a new world order emerged which saw the establishment of a two tiered United Nations Organisation (UNO). The UNGA is the comity of member nations where the voice of all nations, large and small, has equal weightage, and decisions are taken by majority vote. Unfortunately, its resolutions are non-binding. The two tiered UNSC has fifteen member countries, of which five pre-eminent countries, accorded permanent member status with veto powers over decisions of the UNSC, wield the real power. The other ten member countries of UNSC are elected by the UNGA for a two years rotational tenure.

These five great powers informally carved major parts of the world into their respective spheres of geopolitical influence, where pre-eminence to the national interest of the concerned great power was tacitly acknowledged. So while the US propounded the ‘Monroe doctrine’, the USSR came up with its own ‘Brezhnev doctrine’. The continued and extensive use of military force in resolving international disputes despite an established world order, and the inevitable involvement of the great powers in such interventions, points to the special status acquired by them.

With the world powers, without exception, pursuing national interests rather than promoting the principle of natural justice, the principle of ‘rule based order’ in reality has degenerated into a ‘two rules order, one for the powerful countries and another for the rest’. This promotion of national interest through force is very often camouflaged with an ambiguous cloak of ideological conflict, as a tool to influence public opinion. The US led Western ‘democratic’ bloc disguises its slew of combat military interventions as being critical to ‘safeguarding democracy from communism’, while Russia and China cover up their combat military interventions under the smokescreen of ‘defending against exploitation by Western colonial powers’.

Perforce, the failure to limit the combat military interventions is to be laid at the doors of this skewered world order, and the ideological conflict for geopolitical supremacy spawned by it.

Collapse of the USSR in the early nineties, led to the emergence of the US as the sole superpower. However, a rising China and a resurgent Russia threaten US pre-eminence, and the global financial, monetary, trading infrastructure which has largely ensured continued global dominance by US led ‘Western Bloc’ countries. The rising comprehensive national power (CNP) and geopolitical influence of countries such as Brazil, Germany, India, Japan, and South Africa, is leading to calls for reforms in the established world order. Concomitantly, the relative drop in CNP and geopolitical influence of the erstwhile great powers such as Russia, France and UK has lent further credence to the movement for global reforms. 

The increase in sensitive military hotspots worldwide and the changing nature of major combat military interventions in recent years, reflects the increased intensity of the global power conflict.

Food for Thought

While it may be wishful to abrogate wars from global stage, increasing the component of peace in the cycle of war and peace is definitely more practical option. Broadly speaking it devolves down to pursuing two pronged strategy.

Any organisation is as good or bad as the human resource working it, so an existential need exists to develop better human beings and evolve more humane societies.

Undertaking structural reforms in the UN and other international organisations are a must to balance the existing skewered international order responsible for world peace.