Ciara Farrell: Blog post #2

 Blog post #2

The idea of war is frightening which causes people to deny its potential occurrence, and ignore the fact that it is possible at any moment. As we discussed the topic of war in class, war is not on the decline, which demonstrates that violence cannot stop as world peace will never be achieved.  The conflicts happening with Russia and Ukraine prove that war can come just as easily as it is halted. Just because a pause in violent wars has taken place, does not equate to the decline of violent wars as a whole. Wars can happen over anything and as a society I think people underestimate the power it holds over all nations. Once a war begins, it takes one leader for the violence to increase and the danger to the population to come into action. Western countries are failing to recognize the validity of war and how it could come but even since recent weeks, the idea of war has become more threatening. In many cases the wars are not being fought in Western, powerful countries and more so in the Middle East and countries that are not yet completely developed. Even though countries seem to be attempting peace and putting on a civil display for the rest of the world to see, I believe that if one country were to be attacked that country would move in full force. This is most likely true of the United States and as the threat of Russia continues, the US is on higher alert. 

We can see this now with Russia and Ukraine, people have begun to realize the severity of what a war could mean, especially when other powers such as the US show potential involvement. Nikita Lalwani and Sam Winter-Levy similarly explain in the article “Is the World Getting Safer?” that war is not declining as some may think. I think that because there was no extreme war starting, people think war is just not present but in reality once a violent war begins, which will most likely happen one day, the cycle will continue. Years go by where war is not a thought crossing minds, and other years war is continuously a threat and anxiety provoking issue to society. Russia decided to invade Ukraine which has caused complete chaos, but up until that moment most of the world was unsure if it would actually happen. This is because people want to believe that it won't, so they tell themselves this. The ordeal with Russia and Ukraine has developed and is increasingly getting worse as threats and violence increase in Ukraine. 

It is also important to recognize that although war is not declining, world peace itself would not be beneficial overall to society. There needs to be times where peace is challenged when countries are posing a threat to others or to their people. Having world peace will not cure the terrible regime ruling in countries, such as the Taliban. The real meaning of world peace is undefined leaving a lot of room for open interpretation, but countries will never be able to agree as one. World peace threatens that power will be held over those, causing potential domination. When I think about peace I think about a government. In the US we are ruled by a democracy, many people voting towards leaders and goals who will run the country. Everyone in charge does not agree nor get along with each other which is why we are able to express the many opinions of US citizens and are able to debate topics. If one person were in charge of everything, rule would be corrupt and peace still would have never been achieved. World peace is not something people strive for all in all and, with this, the occurrence of violent wars is very much a possibility in the far or near future as war has not declined.


Comments

  1. Grant VoytovichMarch 8, 2022 at 5:43 PM

    Ciara, I think that you did a very good job in constructing this blog post. I agree with your points, but do you think there is any legitimate argument that war is declining? If you look at the war death rates over the past century, you can see a sharp decline in deaths throughout the years. A graph by Max Roser from Our World in Data shows that the "Great Powers" haven't fought each other from 2000 to 2015, and it demonstrates the same decreasing trend. A lot of these graphs show the same thing. Like I said I do agree with you that war isn't declining, but the other side of the argument is interesting.

    Citation:
    Koehrsen, Will. “Has Global Violence Declined? A Look at the Data.” Medium, Towards Data Science, 7 Jan. 2019, https://towardsdatascience.com/has-global-violence-declined-a-look-at-the-data-5af708f47fba.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ciara FarrellMarch 8, 2022 at 7:10 PM

      War is not on the decline as a total and I think the misconception is that it is on the decline simply because war has slowed since 1945. I do not think this fraction of time is representative of the total decline of war. In our near or far future I think it would be very unlikely there is not a large war that will take place. I think the factor of luck needs to also be brought in to represent the last few decades because this is a time that does not reflect much of history. In the past 200 years there is no downward trend in the occurrence or the deadliness of war.

      Delete
    2. Grant VoytovichMarch 9, 2022 at 7:17 PM

      Gotcha. So, it's probably just that small sample size that shows war is declining.

      Delete
  2. Kevin YinMarch 8, 2022 at 7:45 PM

    That is a quite powerful analysis on different systems! As a Chinese student, I can tell you something about the last paragraph you wrote. I really feel bad for a lot of policies and controls in China. As you said, Communist party is right now in charge of everything in China. With that being said, they have to hide some facts because they need to stabilize their leadership. You cannot even imagine how people's freedom of speech is restricted in Chinese social apps. There are no different voices allowed in Chinese structure. Honestly, I cannot judge if what they did is completely unfair, but I have to say I admire how people in most countries are able to talk freely. I agree your point that world peace should not be forever held because there are so many unresolved problems around the world. Although we don't want to see war happening, we have to admit that war sometimes is the only way to eliminate villains, especially when those villains are dominators.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Brooke WallaceMarch 9, 2022 at 6:02 PM

    One of your comments really resonated with me: Having world peace will not cure the terrible regime ruling in countries, such as the Taliban. Some things simply won't change much. I totally agree with your stance that although war is not declining, world peace reaps mostly temporary benefits - as Kevin mentioned above, sometimes a country is left with no other choice than to wage war to overthrow tyrannical dictators (coincides with the US justification for the Iraq War).
    It doesn't seem like there is a peaceful solution to a global/geopolitical conflict like Russia v. Ukraine. You bring up an interesting point that countries put on a "civil display" and if one country is attacked, countries (like the U.S. feel the need to intervene). This ties in directly with our lecture about 'buck-passing' as the U.S. does not have the option of letting another country deal with Vladimir Putin. Overall, this blog post is very well written, and I love how you brought democracy v. China (a Communist dictatorship) and tied that into world peace. Nice job!

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