The Wider Reality Missing in Most Discourse on Wars | Bharat Dogra

Increasing concern has been expressed in recent times regarding the several dangerous ongoing wars and civil wars and the possibilities of their escalation and expansion. While any discourse motivated by peace objectives is most welcome, we argue here that a lot of recent discussion may be missing out on a wider and very important reality that has two important aspects. Firstly, human society may be becoming more of a violent society with intolerably high levels of physical and emotional violence, which in turn helps in the emergence of the kind of leadership which follows more aggressive and violent agenda. Secondly, very powerful and resourceful lobbies have emerged that want some wars or the other to continue for their narrow and selfish reasons and are willing to spend vast amounts of money on media and think tanks to push for wars. A combination of these two factors create conditions in which wars become more likely and are likely to continue for longer periods. Hence regardless of the more specific conditions of this war or that war, a broader reality is that overall conditions are more favorable for increasing wars and violence.

The number of people who are victims of violence is in the hundreds of millions in any given year. As