“If war is the answer, you are asking the wrong question.” by Meesha Rana

“If peace is equated simply with the absence of war, it can become abject pacifism that turns the world over to the most ruthless.” Henry Kissinger, former United States Secretary of State, and a political scientist, said this. He was involved in the Vietnam War, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize, for negotiating a ceasefire. He was also involved in various other wars, aiding them to negotiate peace, mainly during the Cold War period. He was a diplomat who believed that war was sometimes neccessary to navigate diplomacy. Now, almost 50 years sicne he held office, it is an almost established fact that war is a lucrative business that churns out many soldiers. And kills just as many. But if it is such a profitable business, almost every world leader should be engaged in it. But, contrary to popular opinion, studies show that millions of political leaders around the world are predisposed towards peace. “Aloofness, and at a times, predisposition towards peace, rather than war, is found amongst some of the leaders,” (Stoessinger, 2010, 153) However, despite what Kissinger said, war is not a neccesary tool of diplomacy and it’s only because of certain factors that it flourishes as well as it does.

The main thing that aids any war waged over any problem is complicity. Being compliant to what is happening in the world because it doesn’t concern half of it is not the way to go. Humanity deserves to be spoken about, regardless of where they are from. There is a very famous prose piece written by Pastor Martin Niemöller, which has one of its most powerful lines as follows: Then they came for me/And there was no one left/To speak out for me. (Holocaust Memorial Day Trust | First They Came – by Pastor Martin Niemöller, n.d.). This prose highlights the complicity of ordinary citizens and even, to some extent, political leaders when a crime against humanity happens. The very nature of war demands that people speak out against it. The road to perpetual peace isn’t perpetual war. It cannot be. War is one such phenomenon that has been occuring throughout evolution, whether it be the Trojan War, the two World Wars, the Gulf Wars, the Global War on Terror; war has been occuring throughout centuries of humanity’s existence. History is littered with wars, and blood splattered like ink on its pages. Peace is the one thing humans have craved and evolved for, and its in the name of peace that these wars are fought.

Additionally, the rise of social media has also instigated the need for war to be the new normal. The constant information that people learn about in a single day has desensitised them to anything brutal. Anything remotely ‘sensitive’ on feeds and television screens is blurred out, and even if it wasn’t, people would barely flinch if gruesome pictures of wars popped up when scrolling. The Russia-Ukraine war, the Israel-Palestine War, the Gaza conflict, all of that has been dragged up from the ground and to the limelight. The trend of fighting has gained popularity with the rise of the internet, where people from one corner of the world comment on world affairs, despite having absolutely no knowledge. Twitter feuds, Instagram debates, the cancel culture, all of that is the internet’s equivalent of a war, doing nothing but draining mental health. Even in wars fought on-ground, resulting in bloodshed, studies have shown that there is a sharp decline in the happiness status of people that are situated in war-zones, or in places that are affected by war directly. The study compared this decline in happiness to one a relatively well-off person would experience if they were to become poor (Coupe & Obrizam, 2016, 1). 

The threat of nuclear war, moreover, is increasingly becoming an acute political reality. Starting with the bombing of Hiroshima-Nagasaki at the end of the Second World War, most countries in the world have gained nuclear power. This reality is what threatens most wars in the contemporary world. Nuclear weapons, although not having been used in an armed conflict, since after World War II, still play an important role in determining wars. The race to control nuclear power is also sometimes, what leads to wars. For example, the Nuclear Arms Race between the United States of America and the Soviet Union was a competitive race to reach and claim the title of nuclear power first. There’s arguments that claim that the Nuclear Arms Race played a key role in both escalating as well as defining the Cold War which immediately followed. So, while nuclear power is both a boon and a bane for the development of wars, it certainly is an important factor in shaping war.

War has never solved anything in humanity’s long history, and it never will. It isn’t a solution to any problem that people have, especially not problems concerning races, religion, or the people of a state itself. Wars, unfortunately, pit religion against religion, belief against belief, country against country, but in the end, they pit people against people. They turn people of one faith against people of another, lead civilians to become soldiers who murder civilians, and start a vicious, never-ending cycle of bloodshed after bloodshed in a desperate attempt to solve the problem of how to achieve peace. But peace, instead of being a state free of disturbances, is now increasingly becoming a state between wars. Because despite mounting evidence towards the contrary, leaders are plunging their countries and economies into despair by waging wars. But what is incredibly simple to see is this: war is not a solution, It won’t ever be a solution. And if war is the answer, they are asking the wrong question.

References

Coupe, T., & Obrizam, M. (2016). The Impact of War on Happiness: the Case of Ukraine. Kyiv School of Economics.

Holocaust Memorial Day Trust | First They Came – by Pastor Martin Niemöller. (n.d.). Holocaust Memorial Day. Retrieved November 22, 2025, from https://hmd.org.uk/resource/first-they-came-by-pastor-martin-niemoller/

Stoessinger, J. (2010). Why Nations Go to War (F. Vreÿ, Ed.). Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies, 38(2).

About the Author

Meesha is an 18-year-old college student who loves to read and write. Her interests lie in literature, history and philosophy.