Our future is foreshadowed by our past, and few human activities have shaped our history more than our near-irresistible compulsion to fight each other. War is as characteristic of humanity as religion and the drive to procreate.
At our best, we aspire to beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. Religion has generally made a virtue of peace. History is replete with organizations that have campaigned against war in the abstract. Even now, the aptly named British-based MAW (Movement for the Abolition of War) asserts that war is not inevitable and imagines its eradication.
Whether the admirable goals of these efforts were ever actually realistic is not as important as the regrettable fact that they have manifestly failed. The scent of war is in the air, and it’s growing stronger. And as much as we may hate it, we cannot ignore it.
