The paradox of our time: Preparing for war, forgetting peace
In 1971, John Lennon asked the world to imagine something simple: no countries, nothing to kill or die for. The lines are often dismissed as sentimental optimism of a musician who didn't have to manage borders or armies. Yet, its power lies in the discomfort it produces.
The modern world can imagine almost anything. But what it struggles to imagine is peace. We organise our politics around armies, deterrence and enemies with such practised seriousness that questioning the arrangement feels naive. Violence becomes almost respectable and a kind of guiltless carnality of nations, where power pursues its instincts without the burden of moral embarrassment.
There is even grim humour in how confidently the language of geopolitics sanitises this reality. Wars are described as 'operations,' invasions as 'stabilisation' and human suffering as 'collateral damage.' This shrinking of language has also quietly shrunk the way we think about peace itself.
Gandhi, Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr lived in different centuries and confronted different crises. But they arrived at a similar instinctive truth: peace cannot grow out of humiliation. Gandhi saw violence not merely as a tactic, but also as something that corrupts the moral fabric of a society. The moment cruelty is justified in the name of righteousness, the cause begins to change shape.
Lincoln came to a similar realisation. Leading a nation through its bloodiest conflict during its civil war, he understood that military victory might end the fighting while leaving the deeper war alive in memory, resentment and wounded pride. King Jr, perhaps, exposed the most subtle illusion of all: order and peace are the same thing. A society can look calm on the surface while injustice sits quietly at its centre. That calm, King Jr warned, is not peace. It's oppression that has learned good manners.
Their ideas point toward a much deeper understanding. Conflict is unavoidable and is woven into human life. People disagree, societies collide and history leaves wounds that do not easily disappear. The real question is not whether conflict can vanish, but whether it must always descend into violence and domination.
Yet, domination remains a reflex of geopolitics. Wars are still announced with a familiar promise of making the world safer. The Iraq war was justified in those terms: removing Saddam Hussein, eliminating the threat of WMDs and stabilising the region. Two decades later, we wonder: safer for whom, and in what sense?
As per the 2025 Global Peace Index, there are now 59 active state-based conflicts worldwide, the highest number since WW2, with 78 countries involved in conflicts beyond their borders. Military spending has climbed to roughly $2.7 tn while peacekeeping and peacebuilding account for 0.52% of that sum.
What follows from this is a more difficult question: by what authority does one country decide that another people's ruler must be removed? However flawed or dangerous a leader may be, the political bond between a society and its government is not incidental. It's not only a matter of sovereignty in the legal sense, but also a matter of historical agency. A population must live with the consequences of its rulers. But it must also retain the right to alter that fate from within.
Once external power assumes the right to dismantle regimes, it does not merely remove a leader, it unsettles the political life beneath. Institutions hollow out, legitimacy fractures, grievance deepens. These are not temporary costs. These are costs that children inherit as mistrust, humiliation and disorder. That is why imposed solutions often fail: they mistake submission for consent.
In Iraq and Syria, the war launched in the name of stability has left between 5.5 lakh and 5.8 lakh people dead, with more than 7 mn refugees and nearly 8 mn internally displaced. This is a society broken not only in its present, but in its continuity. Even the aggressor does not emerge intact.
Brown University's 'Costs of War' project estimates that the US's post-9/11 wars have cost about $8 tn. More than 7,053 US service members have died in those wars and at least 4x service members and veterans have died by suicide as in combat while the long tail of caring for those veterans is expected to cost another $2.2 to $2.5 tn by 2050.
That is the fraud at the heart of war's promise. The invaded country inherits ruins, the invading country inherits debt, damaged veterans and the moral habit of calling devastation strategy.
If anything unites arguments of Gandhi, Lincoln and King Jr, it's a difficult truth: peace does not emerge automatically when violence pauses. Nor does it grow out of domination. It requires dignity, legitimacy and patience to allow societies to repair themselves without humiliation.
Yet, modern geopolitics knows how to organise force, remove regimes, redraw alignments and call the aftermath stability. What it struggles with is the quieter work that sustains peace: trust strong enough to outlive victory and institutions strong enough to outlive resentment. That may be the real paradox of our time. Humanity has become sophisticated at preparing for war while peace remains something we speak about in abstractions. Perhaps the most unsettling thought is this: we may not lack the means to achieve peace, but we may lack the imagination to take it seriously.
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of www.economictimes.com)
The modern world can imagine almost anything. But what it struggles to imagine is peace. We organise our politics around armies, deterrence and enemies with such practised seriousness that questioning the arrangement feels naive. Violence becomes almost respectable and a kind of guiltless carnality of nations, where power pursues its instincts without the burden of moral embarrassment.
There is even grim humour in how confidently the language of geopolitics sanitises this reality. Wars are described as 'operations,' invasions as 'stabilisation' and human suffering as 'collateral damage.' This shrinking of language has also quietly shrunk the way we think about peace itself.
Gandhi, Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr lived in different centuries and confronted different crises. But they arrived at a similar instinctive truth: peace cannot grow out of humiliation. Gandhi saw violence not merely as a tactic, but also as something that corrupts the moral fabric of a society. The moment cruelty is justified in the name of righteousness, the cause begins to change shape.
Lincoln came to a similar realisation. Leading a nation through its bloodiest conflict during its civil war, he understood that military victory might end the fighting while leaving the deeper war alive in memory, resentment and wounded pride. King Jr, perhaps, exposed the most subtle illusion of all: order and peace are the same thing. A society can look calm on the surface while injustice sits quietly at its centre. That calm, King Jr warned, is not peace. It's oppression that has learned good manners.
Their ideas point toward a much deeper understanding. Conflict is unavoidable and is woven into human life. People disagree, societies collide and history leaves wounds that do not easily disappear. The real question is not whether conflict can vanish, but whether it must always descend into violence and domination.
Yet, domination remains a reflex of geopolitics. Wars are still announced with a familiar promise of making the world safer. The Iraq war was justified in those terms: removing Saddam Hussein, eliminating the threat of WMDs and stabilising the region. Two decades later, we wonder: safer for whom, and in what sense?
As per the 2025 Global Peace Index, there are now 59 active state-based conflicts worldwide, the highest number since WW2, with 78 countries involved in conflicts beyond their borders. Military spending has climbed to roughly $2.7 tn while peacekeeping and peacebuilding account for 0.52% of that sum.
What follows from this is a more difficult question: by what authority does one country decide that another people's ruler must be removed? However flawed or dangerous a leader may be, the political bond between a society and its government is not incidental. It's not only a matter of sovereignty in the legal sense, but also a matter of historical agency. A population must live with the consequences of its rulers. But it must also retain the right to alter that fate from within.
Once external power assumes the right to dismantle regimes, it does not merely remove a leader, it unsettles the political life beneath. Institutions hollow out, legitimacy fractures, grievance deepens. These are not temporary costs. These are costs that children inherit as mistrust, humiliation and disorder. That is why imposed solutions often fail: they mistake submission for consent.
In Iraq and Syria, the war launched in the name of stability has left between 5.5 lakh and 5.8 lakh people dead, with more than 7 mn refugees and nearly 8 mn internally displaced. This is a society broken not only in its present, but in its continuity. Even the aggressor does not emerge intact.
Brown University's 'Costs of War' project estimates that the US's post-9/11 wars have cost about $8 tn. More than 7,053 US service members have died in those wars and at least 4x service members and veterans have died by suicide as in combat while the long tail of caring for those veterans is expected to cost another $2.2 to $2.5 tn by 2050.
That is the fraud at the heart of war's promise. The invaded country inherits ruins, the invading country inherits debt, damaged veterans and the moral habit of calling devastation strategy.
If anything unites arguments of Gandhi, Lincoln and King Jr, it's a difficult truth: peace does not emerge automatically when violence pauses. Nor does it grow out of domination. It requires dignity, legitimacy and patience to allow societies to repair themselves without humiliation.
Yet, modern geopolitics knows how to organise force, remove regimes, redraw alignments and call the aftermath stability. What it struggles with is the quieter work that sustains peace: trust strong enough to outlive victory and institutions strong enough to outlive resentment. That may be the real paradox of our time. Humanity has become sophisticated at preparing for war while peace remains something we speak about in abstractions. Perhaps the most unsettling thought is this: we may not lack the means to achieve peace, but we may lack the imagination to take it seriously.
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of www.economictimes.com)
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