War

(from OHG. werra, quarrel). Open, armed conflict between tribes, clans, states, large social, religious, or ethnic groups; the strongest form of violence. There have been more than 2,500 wars recorded in world history, among them two world wars. In the First World War, more than 20 million people died; in the Second World War, more than 50 million. Wars are conducted to redistribute social goods by means of armed violence, seizing them from some human beings and delivering them to others. In earlier times, not only was this selfish motive not concealed but it was openly displayed. In modern times this motive is hidden behind ostensible religious, geopolitical, or other motives (e.g. the defense of religious beliefs, access to sacred sites or the sea, restoring the rights of ethnic minorities, “ethnic cleansing” of territories, and many other such pretexts). In principle, it is possible to avoid the transformation of smaller conflicts into wars, but in contemporary society there are powerful social forces, including the military-industrial complex, chauvinist and nationalist groups, crime syndicates, etc., that have a vested interest in wars. The arms trade is the most lucrative business for the United States, France, England, Russia, China, and a number of other powers. Hopes that the League of Nations (following the First World War) and the United Nations (following the Second World War) would erect effective barriers to prevent the outbreak of war have been frustrated. Armed conflicts today grip the Balkans, the Middle East, Africa, as well as republics formed out of the collapse of the USSR. Notwithstanding this, humanity has created certain international principles and legal processes to punish war crimes and war criminals. The international tribunals at Nuremberg and Tokyo established a precedent of great importance that is now being carried on in the International Tribunal of The Hague, under the UN charter . Although the anti-war movement is no longer as large as it once was, this phenomenon has not died out and continues to develop. Humanism works to support the revival of the anti-war movement in order to bring peace to regional and local conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Chechnya and other places in the Caucasus; Rwanda and Burundi; Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico; Cambodia and East Timor.