Peace, War and Policing the Planet

In whatever wars occur in the future, how will victory be defined? If a “war” is waged against a vague enemy such as “terrorism,” then how can victory ever be determined?

After all, in wars of the past, one country could invade and subdue another, and then be confident that their side had “won” the conflict. But when a country is waging war against a concept, it seems that there’s no clear way of ever determining that victory has been achieved.

It’s like trying to eliminate all prostitution, gambling or non-medical drug use. Such things can be controlled and limited, but a “war” against these practices is a waste of time.

Rather than wage wars, wouldn’t it be better to address the root causes behind lack of cooperation between countries? If through improved technology, living conditions can be made better for ALL of us, and the “gap” between the “haves” and “have-nots” dramatically decreased, then at least one cause of strife will be diminished.

Those of us in the “rich” societies are enjoying relative luxury in many ways at the expense of those in “less-developed” countries. But rich countries are using up our shared planet’s resources at a far greater rate than those in other countries. However, with more efficient means of using technology, such as those espoused by McDonough and Braungart, it now seems possible to improve the standard of living worldwide without destroying the environment for us all.

Poverty, after all, is the root cause of much crime, jealousy and conflict. Ignoring it can only increase the likelihood of war and especially terrorism in the future.

And poverty results in increased pollution and other environmental problems by people more concerned about trying to survive week-to-week than in keeping their surroundings pristine. The sad deforestation of Haiti is a prime example of this. Desperately poor people have cut down the trees to provide fuel for their immediate needs. The results have been devastating, but are totally understandable.

The problems of ethnic hatred, despotism and greed are of course much more complex. But war in the future will have to be limited, if for no other reason than preventing devastating damage to the planet that we all share. And it’s not just nuclear wars that can be devastating. Conventional and even “drug wars” can also wreak havoc on the planet.

Think of the deforestation of Vietnam caused by “Agent Orange,” sprayed there to remove enemy cover and destroy food crops. That defoliant not only poisoned vast areas of lush vegetation (including rain forests that helped cleanse the planet’s air), but also ruined the health of many human beings who were exposed to it, probably due to the carcinogenic dioxin that it routinely contained. Some areas of Vietnam that once contained three-tiered tropical forest still refuse to grow anything. And high levels of dioxin can still be found in much of Vietnam’s soil. There is much concern whether birth defects there may be linked to it, and of course, the ultimate damaging effects of Agent Orange on that beautiful tropical country and its people are still unknown.

Similarly, the herbicide glyphosate (used in the popular weed-killer Roundup®) has been used by the U.S. government to kill opium poppy and coca crops in Columbia. Although ostensibly sprayed by aircraft only on such drug crops, wind can easily carry it onto food crops and fragile rainforest plants. And when it comes to human contact with it, who’s to say whether glyphosate is really any safer than Agent Orange? Indeed, in 1996 Monsanto, the manufacturer of Roundup® (and also one of the former manufacturers of Agent Orange), made an out-of-court settlement in which it agreed that it would no longer advertise the product as "“safe, non-toxic, harmless or free from risk”.

On the United States mainland itself, in California, ecosystems in fairly remote areas of national parks are being damaged due to the diversion of environmentally-sensitive streams by marijuana growers to irrigate their crops. Due to the illegal activity, certain park areas may no longer be safe for visitors to trek into (per National Public Radio broadcast on 9/27/06). And in Mexico, large tracts of national park areas have been cleared by campesinos for subsistence farming only to fall under the control of drug traffickers who use the land to grow their illegal crops (National Public Radio broadcast on 9/24/06). But whether the land is used to grow corn or much more profitable “drug plants,” the native forest is still destroyed and ecosystems are severely impacted.

There can be no question that the detonation of nuclear material on Bikini Atoll had devastating effects on the natural environment. And while radiation levels have had time to decline and are now rather low, there is still contamination of the soil with cesium-137, which precludes the long-term consumption of any foods grown there. The place is still not safe enough for the Bikinians to return to, although it was their ancestral home and was damaged through no fault of their own.

And the firing of the oil fields during the first Gulf War dumped huge quantities of hydrocarbon smoke into an already-strained planetary atmosphere. Combined with the deliberate spilling of millions of barrels of oil into the Persian Gulf, the environmental damage was devastating. In fact, scientists predict that “damaged fisheries in the Gulf will not recover for at least 180 years.”

Especially in light of all of this, interdependence, rather than war, must become the “wave of the future.” Like symbionts in a coral reef or rainforest, we must learn to depend on one another for our mutual benefit and even survival. Transnational corporations have done this for years, with Toyotas and BMWs now being built in Tennessee, and Fords in Europe, Australia, Mexico, South America, South Africa, China and Russia. If companies can cooperate so effectively across national borders, then governments (and individuals) can, and must, also do so.

At least since the start of the industrial revolution, humanity has essentially been at war with the natural world itself. And now that the technology of wars between humans (including the “Drug War”) is also becoming more and more devastating in an environmental sense (with nuclear weapons at the top of the heap), we are in increasing danger of letting our intraspecies conflicts ruin the planet for ourselves and virtually all other life. How can it be worth it?

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