War & Peace: Weak shall not Inherit the Earth

Out of 3434 years of recorded history of man, only 268 have been free from a major war ( many remote civilization like Incas not include). This is an insult to those modern humanists who see man as a basically peace loving animal. Thus it behaves us to study the war not just as a slogan of patriotism, but as an all prevailing force in history of human evolution.

War is a competition between two opposed parties. Competing groups are nothing but aggregations of competing individuals. They have all the vices and virtues of competing individuals, acquisitiveness, pugnacity, partisanship and pride. State being individuals multiplied is what individuals are. It does everything an individuals does, but only on a grander scale. Man has acquired these characters through eons of evolution, they are as deeply embedded in his nature as any other facet of evolution.

Patterns of war during different stages of human history have corresponded to the needs of that particular society. In hunting age, the ability to kill, brutality, and sexual readiness were requirements of life which naturally reflected upon the mode of war. In the agriculture age industriousness, ability to maintain peace, and monogamy became the way of life and wars became defensive in nature. Uncertainty of present day society has resulted in a state of cold war.

A condition of peace is at best a state of unstable equilibrium. Peace can never be maintained per sec, it can only be maintained by acknowledge supremacy of one power, or by two equal powers (in which case it again is potentially unstable).

Peace essentially entails freedom and equality for all, but we have to remarkably naive to believe that such utopias can exist by themselves without use of force. Man was born unfree and unequal and he will remain so, because it is an inevitable precondition for the selection of the fittest. To maintain this natural status quo wars are fought, irrespective of their apparent immorality. We must remember that nature and history do not agree to our concepts of good and bad. They define good as that which survive and bad as that which goes under. History has no prejudice in favor of a Christ or a Gandhi , as against Genghis Khan.

In this jungle of human competition war emerges as a final arbitrary.
We are aware that now humanity has the power to destroy itself in a matter of minutes. From Paleolithic age till the dawn of nuclear age it was not possible for a group of mankind to eradicate the other group or to  eliminate the humans species. Now this cataclysm is possible. Now the power has grown disproportionate to most of the objectives in dispute.

The development of such a degree of destructive power is unprecedented, hence partially unknown, and as a result unstable. The conflict must be resolved otherwise this palpable uncertainty will explode into unimaginable catastrophe. So now as we move towards a higher plateau of competition and turn a new chapter in history, the  phoenix of history is perched precariously on edge, nervously awaiting its fare, who knows whether it will rise again or not.

Logic dictates that that in the next phase of human development, one of the present power shall aggregate enough power to annihilate the other group, without being destroyed its self. The result would be a new global empire.

The nation which would do this would have clarity of vision( under stands the logic of war), singleness of purpose and quite a certain degree  of ruthlessness. Necessity requires that all other nations standing in way this development be eliminated. Unfortunately for us we are a nation that could very likely end up as vanquished rather than the victor. If we want to survive we must relentlessly strive to become THE STRONGEST nation, because its not only the best way, its the only misplaced sense of kindness would lead to failure and in the words of Field Marshal Sir William Slim:

                   "This may be the reason, but its no excuse"

A failure now would not mean no excuse, it would mean nobody left to make an excuse.