Opinion | A world slipping towards war needs peaceful leaders who will negotiate
- The world is on a path to serious global conflict, and great power contestation is contained only by mutual fear of all-out nuclear war
- When the path to war is ultimately nuclear annihilation, peace through negotiations, however painful and humiliating, is the only chance for coexistence
Reading Roman history during the Christmas holidays, I was struck by how the Romans were driven by almost perpetual war. Rome first consolidated power during the Punic wars against Carthage, but the spoils of war in Gaul, Syria, Egypt and elsewhere became booty for aggressive consuls and generals to buy political votes in Rome.
Ultimately, the war machine corrupted the Roman republic, turning it into an empire. When domestic political decay occurred from a corrupt elite and discontented masses, the Roman empire collapsed under the weight of invading barbarians and its own debt. War was glorious to Rome, but it was paid for by its victims.
We are already on a similar path to serious conflict. The 2022 Peace Research Institute Oslo annual conflict study reported that in 2021, 54 state-based conflicts occurred in 35 countries with nearly 85,000 battle-related deaths. Since 1946, intrastate conflicts have outnumbered interstate conflicts while battle deaths have increased.
Unlike in 1971, when the United States cleverly drew China out of the Soviet camp, the Biden administration is rallying allies through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Aukus and the Quad to contain Russia and China as existential threats.