End War With No Conditions, Why Not?

BIMBO CABIDOG

War is a monster as anybody knows. The better option is always to turn the sword into ploughshare or, in our contemporary times, the military-industrial complex into haven of production for the basic needs of man.

But the makers of war say it is the only way to triumph over evil, build a better world, or end war itself. Since every would-be protagonist has his own good cause and better world to fight for, the cycle of war goes on turning to perpetuity.

Finally, the use of arms to resolve social contradictions defeats the very cause why it is purportedly resorted, that is: the improvement of human life. At the conclusion of every violent conflict, societies find themselves worse off than before. Decades of peace are then needed to heal the wounds, get over the trauma, and rebuild from the ashes.

World War II is up to this day still the most devastating military conflict in human history. The scale of it was unprecedented in any previous war.

The global conflict involved the commitment of entire human and economic resources of participating nations. It fudged the line that separated combatant from non-combatant, and included all of the enemy’s territory in the zones of battle. The military atrocities on civilians and, on the part of Nazi Germany, genocide against Jews, gypsies and homos as a specific war aim made it the most unique in modern times for unparalleled savagery.

It was also the first time where a highly important determinant of the outcome was industrial capacity. Towards its conclusion, two new devastatingly effective weapons surfaced: the long-range rocket and the atomic bomb.

The United States tested the latter on the two Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the wink of an eye, each drop of the atom bomb decimated hundreds of thousands of civilians who were incinerated by the blast. Communities were instantly wiped out. No infrastructure remained standing in the horizon.

Worse cataclysms than World War II may yet happen. But in that horrendous conflict, the statistics of human and material expense are already mind-boggling. Three quarters of the world’s population or 1.7 billion people from 61 countries took part. The war mobilized a total of 110 million individuals for military service.

The Union of Soviets and Socialist Republics (USSR) accounted for more than half of them. Germany fielded 17 million, the United States of America 16 million. The conflict also involved the largest number of active duty personnel at any time: USSR–12,500,000, US – 12,245,000, Germany – 10,938,000, the British Empire – 5,720,000; Japan – 7,193,000, and China – 5,000,000.

By money spent, it would be the most expensive with a combined cost of $1 trillion compared to other wars. The US spent an estimated $341 billion. The Russian government calculated that the USSR lost 30 percent of national wealth. The amount of loss to Nazi exactions and looting in the Soviet Union and other German-occupied countries is incalculable.

Technological advancement inflicted unparalleled ferocity. The war saw bestiality and horror never hitherto witnessed in the history of humankind. Civilians were mixed into the war zones and targeted as parts of fighting fronts. They were hit by diseases, malnutrition, and starvation. They suffered destruction of towns and cities, innumerable injuries and deaths.

The loss of lives appalls. The USSR chalked the highest toll at 20 million civilian and military personnel killed including great numbers of Russians deliberately starved to death in German prison camps. The Allied civilian losses went up to 40 million. Civilian losses of the Axis powers numbered 11 million. Military deaths on both sides numbered 19 million in Europe, and 6 million in the Asian theater under Japanese aggression.

The unimaginable scale of destruction and genocidal slaughter that war brings upon its zones of engagement would continue until now despite sophisticated diplomacy and the United Nation’s mechanisms at conflict management.

In countries, like the US, the hawks always get the upper hand in decisions whether to launch or not unilateral aggression on other countries. This was true in the decision to wage war on Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mindless of consequences, the bearing of arms prevails against the baring of cold reason not to. Mindsets home in on the imperative to defeat the other side, to beat it in the race if one needs to cut throat. Sober logic is defeated by the war mongers’ pretexts for going into it.

The Second World War did not end all wars, but spun off other localized conflicts. The Philippines for one remains a host to Asia’s longest running insurgency being waged by the New People’s Army under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines. Like the other wars of the past, the communist armed struggle does not exempt the uninvolved from its ravages, whether as total effect on the country’s social and economic life, or inevitable harm inflicted by operations along the fighting fronts.

The government’s total war response attended by atrocities in military campaigns and militarization has turned rural interiors into a swamp of terror and grinding hardships. Amid the clashing forces, the local folks are caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand they are compelled by exigency to make friends or at least show non-hostility with the armed elements lurking in the shadows. On the other hand, they must also accommodate the civil-military intrusions into their communities by security forces.

The “revolutionary war,” as the communist leadership calls the insurgency, promises liberation from the exploitative and oppressive social order under which the great masses of the people are reeling. But it could not even mobilize them in their millions and deliver the condition of complete victory for the promised radical change to happen.

The powers-that-be composed of the dominant elite cliques in the country looks at a time horizon in ending the armed challenge. But if the self-claimed revolutionaries couldn’t graduate from even the first stage of winning the war – the so-called strategic defensive, to convert the dream of political power into real McCoy, the generals are getting boils from frustrating setbacks in their boasted timetables at totally quelling the armed rebel challenge before they fade into retirement.

Thus, the war and its deleterious effects fester with no end in sight. While the nation yet fails to rise up from the condition of stunted growth and reproduction of socio-economic crises generation after generation, and the people continue to lose opportunities at development, energies for years are being drained on a conflict with no perceivable resolution.

It is high time now to call on both sides to take a fresh look at it, and train their sights on a different non-militaristic approach. Almost half a century of warfare, counting the NPA insurgency alone, has not brought it near any victory or rapprochement. The vow on the part of government to bring the full might of the Armed Forces and crush it for good has had several lapsed deadlines with no decisive conclusion.

Isn’t winning by any side, with the people’s popular rejection of armed warfare and the current realities of it being aided by highly advanced science and technology, already wishful thinking? Meanwhile, the opportunity loss for the country in proceeding with peaceful options at growth, the havoc and devastation an open-ended war brings, and the Filipino lives claimed on both sides pile up.

The people demand peace, not from any political settlement but from consideration of their just clamor and real-time wellbeing. It is fair enough for the National Democratic Front, the umbrella organization of the CPP-NPA and their affiliates, to listen. It is also fair enough for the Government of the Republic of the Philippines to be guided by the sentiment of the vast majority.

Both parties, claiming to advance the interest of the people, can prove true to it by taking the option least paid attention or merely ignored before: the cessation of hostilities sans the condition of political settlement yet.

The quieting of guns can now pave the way to the peaceful resolution of the causes of conflict through the democratic space and means available under the prevailing political order. Let an enlightened, politically conscious and organized citizenry then take over the pursuit of even radical reforms. The people can use for good measure the strength of their numbers at effecting pivotal changes in the socio-political structure.

The people have suffered enough over the past half a century of internal warfare. What they have been going through now merit respite. The causes Filipino brothers and sisters have been fighting on in the ranks of the insurgency as well as soldiery can be far better addressed by the dynamics of development and nation building in a climate of peace and mutual trust.

The great majority of the people deserve to be heard and have a part in the decisions that shape their destiny. Such should not just be a matter of whose self-proclaimed agenda or programme among the parties to the conflict shall win. It is not for a messianic few to determine what’s good for a country of 100 plus million citizens.

The masses should be relied to provide the guarantee in ironing out age-old injustices through non-violent political contention. After going through so much pain, loss and destruction from a protracted period of armed belligerence, they should now be given the chance to try methods and processes at overhauling the conditions and situations of their existence with no resort to arms.

The tragedy of having been at war for almost all of the past century is enough reason not to wage it anymore. End it with no conditions, why not?