War: what is it good for?

From time to time the attention of the world switches from one civil war to another – as if warfare can ever be civil. Three years ago, it was Libya, then the Ukraine, and now Syria. In each case, groups are fighting for a particular ethnic or religious cause, and usually there are outside forces willing to supply training and weapons.

In  most cases, if a country has an established history of democracy it tends not to descend into fighting. However, if the political parties in a country actually represent different ethnic groups, the possibility of armed conflict still exists.

The Bahá’í answer to all of this is the concept of unity. Not a grey uniformity, but an underlying recognition that all human beings, of whatever class or level of education, following whichever religion or none, of whatever skin colour and speaking whatever language, are from one original stock, and should belong to one human family. There never should be a situation in which one person seizes power, as happened in both Libya and Syria, and then manipulates everything in the interest of his family and friends. The injustice in this situation always boils over at some point, and leads to the armed struggles. In 1995, when the Bahá’ís made suggestions intended to strengthen the United Nations, one of the suggestions was that only those governments which were freely elected by the people of the country should have a vote in the General Assembly. The various dictatorships would still be allowed to attend the sessions, but would clearly be seen as less legitimate governments than the democracies. (Of course, the forms of democracy currently practised in the world are far from perfect, but are still preferable to locking the population in tyranny.)

On the subject of war itself, ‘Abdu’l-Baha, the son of Bahá’u’lláh, said: “How is it possible for men to fight from morning until evening, killing each other, shedding the blood of their fellow-men: And for what object? To gain possession of a part of the earth!... Land belongs not to one people, but to all people. This earth is not man's home, but his tomb.”

To argue that war should be abandoned as a method of settling disputes should not mean that the well-meaning people of the world should stand aside and let bloodthirsty tyrants and psychopaths slaughter the innocent. Surely the nations of the world should be able to construct an army of peace-keepers to be inserted into trouble spots as soon as a situation begins to get out of hand, instead of after the fighting has finished, which is what often happens now. In various parts of Africa, this approach is now being tried, although the lack of a world language restricts their effectiveness somewhat.

However, the real answer is unity – that people should feel a loyalty to mankind, to the planet, to the human family, rather than to one ethnic background or to the leader of some fanatical group. Bahá’u’lláh said ”The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established.” At some point, everyone will see the sense of replacing war with peace. A world peace conference should fix the boundaries of each country, and produce a universal treaty to which all of mankind can give its loyalty: “…and so it shall be; these fruitless strifes, these ruinous wars shall pass away and the most great peace shall come.”

If we do not learn how to stop these wars, what will the twenty-first century have learned? Absolutely nothing!