American soldiers on patrol last month in Kandahar, Afghanistan, found and blew up a Taliban bunker. An influx of troops has begun to change the area. Michael Kamber for The New York TimesJason Burke, The Guardian: Why is the world at war?
Syria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen, Afghanistan, Ukraine – the globe is scarred by violence
We live in a world of trouble. Conflicts today may be much less lethal than those that scarred the last century, but this brings little comfort. We remain deeply anxious. We can blame terrorism and the fear it inspires despite the statistically unimportant number of casualties it inflicts, or the contemporary media and the breathless cycle of “breaking news”, but the truth remains that the wars that seem to inspire the fanatics or have produced so many headlines in recent years prompt deep anxiety. One reason is that these wars appear to have no end in sight.
To explain these conflicts we reach for easy binary schema – Islam v the west; haves against have-nots; nations that “play by the rules” of the international system against “rogues”. We also look to grand geopolitical theories – the end of the Westphalian system, the west faced by “the rise of the rest” – or even just attribute the violence to “geography”. None of these explanations seems to adequately allay our concerns.
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WNU Editor: I am a student of wars and conflicts .... it is why I have this blog. There is no easy answer to "why is the world at war" .... except one .... we have always been at war, it is our nature. Case in point .... The Oldest Known Evidence Of Human Warfare Has Been Confirmed (January 21, 2016).
