Saturday, December 13, 2003
How Long, How Dark, is the Road to Peace?
Japan is the only country whose constitution prohibits war (as far as I know). Now, however, Japan is planning to send some defensive troops to Iraq to engage in unwarlike activity. Such offshore movement of Japanese forces would have been unthinkable in the past, and many are afraid of what this will bring in the future.
But leaving that fear aside for the time being, I would like to consider the history of how things got to be this way, and show some of the implications it might have for the whole world’s progress toward peace.
Japan used to be the world’s most war-hungry nation, yet after the tragedy of its involvement in the second world war, it went to the opposite extreme. For nearly 50 years now, we have had at least one nation on earth for whom war itself was illegal, according to its own constitution—certainly this was a major breakthrough in the history of humanity.
It is not inconceivable then, that such a change could be brought about on an international scale. The real question is: what measure of horror will finally awaken the human race to the fact of war’s continual failure to bring us good in this world? Have recent wars been enough for us to realize that all nations must be forced by law to work together in peace? Do we require another wake-up call as bloody or worse than what has already happened, or can peace come as a result of the collective efforts of relatively small groups of people to educate the world about the best interests of humanity as a whole?
The last two years since that fateful September day have seen the apparent return of warmongering to the world. The relative international tranquility seems forever shattered, and all the nations are wondering who’s going to preemptively strike who next.
I admit that this may be the beginning of a century that will show us the horrors of war even more clearly than the last, but who can deny that this will give us even more obvious reasons to establish unassailable laws of peace—not only in one nation, but in many?
Eventually, there must come a turning point, at which humankind will have to chose either peace or extinction—and let’s admit it: that’s not such a hard decision to make. Already the choice is clear to some of us, and we would just as soon choose peace now rather than later. How much effort must we dedicate—and how many lives must be sacrificed—before the choice is apparent to the whole world community?
Whether peace is to be reached only after unimaginable horrors precipitated by humanity’s stubborn clinging to old patterns of behaviour, or is to be embraced now by an act of consultative will, is the choice before all who inhabit the earth. At this critical juncture when the intractable problems confronting nations have been fused into one common concern for the whole world, failure to stem the tide of conflict and disorder would be unconscionably irresponsible.(source)
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