My January 5 post, “A Hopeful Side to Human Nature,” presented evidence which indicates that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the better angels of our nature may be winning the war on war. Today’s Wall Street Journal had an article which adds to that evidence. It starts off:
For a student of military history, the most astonishing fact about the current international scene is that there isn’t a single conflict in which two uniformed militaries are pitted against each other. The last one was a brief clash in 2008 between Russia and Georgia. In our day, the specter of conventional conflict, which has dominated the imagination of the West since the days of the Greek hoplites, has almost been lifted.
While the unconventional wars raging around the planet are certainly cause for concern, it is a very hopeful sign that conventional warfare may be dying out. In the 1980’s I worked with a group called Beyond War, which started with the nuclear threat, but quickly realized that dealing with that threat required “moving beyond war” in a step-by-step process. Is it possible that we are seeing more progress in that direction than the nightly news might lead one to believe?
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