Lonan said:
I don't see the world as you do. You make it sound as though we are all just waiting to break out into full-scale war. That was true during the Cold War, but not anymore. Most war occurs by way of civil war in African countries nowadays, in the form of stealing, raping, and pillaging. It's not some grand global political/economic tug-of-war. The Cold War is over. I don't see how Canada benefits because I don't see what threatens us.
That's because we ARE on the edge of breaking into a full scale global war. What's more I'd argue that you, and almost everyone knows it too with a simple application of common knowlege. It's simply that most people don't want to accept it.
Let me put it to you this way. There aren't enough resources on the planet right now to support the population at anything close to the standards of living of the US/Canada or most of Europe. We're not just talking about energy here either, even though that's a big part of it. The simple usage of things like wood are a big factor as well. Even with 100% recycling we still come up operating at a massive deficit due to the constant growth of the population as well as the rate at which technology advances.
War has oftentimes been attributed to the "fear of not having enough" though that is not accurate due to the fact that it's a simple reality that there actually isn't enough stuff on the planet. Another part of it is of course human nature, and the fact that to solve the problem by obtaining resources from off planet and other issues is going to involve needing to establish a single world goverment/culture. This is something a lot of people find inherantly threatening hence a lot of the paranoia over a so called "New World Order" even ifthere is nothing paticularly wrong with the idea.
Patriotism and racism are also a factor to consider, I mean even in Canada you see a lot of pressure from people who are against the globalization of language and standardizing things to English (even if people can still learn and use other tongues). Pushing for French packaging for things like video games has been a big deal, despite some evidence with a recent incident with an important polish jet crashing because the Air Traffic controllers were not using English (like they were supposed to to prevent incidents like this, a demonstration as to why a global language is a good thing). Some cultures like China arguably also have racism intergrated into them to the point where the idea of a world ruled by anyone but themselves is basically an anethma above and beyond the simple range of patriotic pride that "we've been here like this for thousands of years, everyone should adapt to us".
There are a lot of reasons, and the idea isn't to debate any of them spcifically, the point I'm making is simply that it's not how *I* see the world, but simply how things are. As much as war blows chips, you can't magically produce resources out of air, and the bottom line is that people are inherantly resistant to the kinds of massive changes needed to resolve problems like that for a lot of reasons. We can't even agree to one language everyone learns (even among many) so everyone can talk to each other.
When it comes to civil wars in the third world, the people there have less to lose, and also aren't engaging on the same level that large nations are going to. As such things come down to violence a lot quicker and more frequently. I think right now it can be said that nobody in the civilized world really wants a war itself, though some DO want the results that will (hopefully) be achieved. I also think that deapite denying it, a lot of people realize how inevitable it's going to be, largely because even the biggest peaceniks are quite aware of the issues that are going to lead to it. You can't for example be an enviromentalist without realizing on some level that it's going to be those natural resources that are going to be a big part of the reasons why a war breaks out.
It's the threat of MAD that more or less maintains the peace, and the nations with the biggest an dmost powerful militaries (and those allied to them) that wind up being the most successful as well. Right or wrong, that's simply how it is. When people have said "Free Trade means he with the biggest guns trades freeely" part of what makes it amusing (darkly) is that it's very much true, along with other similar sentiments.
People in general do not want to die, nor do they want their loved ones to die. Wars, especially long wars, and most especially long, nessicary wars that can't be abandoned without a resolution due to the importance of matters involved, are not popular. Nobody wants to graduate High School, be sent out to boot camp, given a gun, and then sent do die in some mud puddle accross the world. Nobody wants to see that happen to THEIR kids either. But well, that's simply how things are, and people should be thankful for every year it doesn't happen. The civilized world has actually had a pretty good run without any kind of major engagements actually, and I think people should be more thankful for it than they are.
I am actually hoping that when things go down, and they WILL go down before too long, it will end with a global unity of sorts, and while violence and conflict won't end (including large ones) it will be the last engagement on that scale.
Of course a lot of this is sort of irrelevent to the overall discussion, being more about conflict itself and the reasons for it.
