Unfortunately, the news is not good. It rarely is.

You would think that after the Cold War ended that the world was in line for peace and prosperity. So why are there still so many people killing each other all over the world? Why hasn’t peace broken out in the Middle East? Why are people still running around the streets of Africa with machine guns and grenades? Why is the United States still mired in conflicts all across the globe? Why hasn’t war been eliminated as a natural progression of relations?

Perhaps that’s the problem right there. War has become so institutionalized in society that it is no longer seen as the last course when dialogue has completely broken down, but it is seen as a part of negotiating strategy, almost as if there’s a blueprint none of us believe we’re following, but we all use it nonetheless, and eventually when we’ve stopped talking, tanks will roll and soldiers will start marching. And perhaps it’s always been somewhat this way, but we’ve been so convinced of our own moral superiority that we’ve forgotten that when man is brought back down to base natural values, war always seems to be one of the easiest methods of resolving our differences.

Think back on history. It wasn’t that long ago that foreign policy WAS war. Look at the continuous conflicts that erupted in Europe, and you see nations that followed self-important leaders who used war as a natural part of their personal foreign policy. Quite often, they used war as their personal basis for responding to perceived slights from other powerful leaders. Not surprisingly, that usuallly led to large groups of mobilized soldiers heading off to fight wars that were nothing more than brutal responses to angry rebuttals.

But we would like to think that war has evolved so much these days that we’re no longer the primitive societies we once were, a few hundred years ago. Now, we have huge brokered alliances, econonic treaties and defense pacts that no longer seem to be the whims of powerful men and women who treated foreign affairs as tokens of their egos.

So why are we participating in so much war and killing these days if we’ve become so enlightened?

I put forth the thesis that we’re not that much different than we used to be. And that we believe otherwise is probably equally as dangerous as the fact that we’re still the same brutal followers of momentary passions that if experienced by an individual, we might actually have that person in therapy. So how does knowing this help us in any way? Or does it?

Part of the problem in fixing this situation is that it is very difficult to fix something within the very paradigm that needs to change itself. In other words, we know there’s something wrong, but as long as we exist within a system that sees war as part of its solution process, it is really hard to come up with better alternatives when we don’t change the fact that what we’re doing is wrong in the first place. In order to change the natural order of war as a solution, we have to change the paradigm to reflect that war is never a good thing, no matter how much we have been raised to think otherwise. As long as anyone sees war as a positive vessel for change, no one will ever benefit by trying to eliminate it.

This means we need to start seeing things through the eyes of people who want to institute change without having to come to blows to do it. You can’t do this by forcing thoughts on others, which is exactly what war requires. If everyone isn’t interested in pursuing a specific ideology, then perhaps the ideology needs to change to match current needs, or current needs to be changed to fit into the particular ideology. The former is easy; it requires a new thought process to achieve, but it is capable of being achieved through an open mind. However, not always is an easy solution to this problem available, so while it may appear easy to achieve, achieving it without new ideas is not so simple. The latter possibility is problematic only because it requires time and patience. People aren’t very good at waiting for change; they want things right now and right here. Communism is a good example of a particular ideological change that needed time to be seen as relevant, but instead of wait for it Lenin and company tried to force a square peg into a round hole, and they ended up with a dysfunctional system that they kept hoping would eventually fit into that round hole. Some European countries, specifically Eastern European countries, seem to be going through the former type of ideological change, which is taking time, so the results may eventually yield new results. Or they may not. That’s the problem with incremental change: You don’t always know it’s happening until it already has happened.

Part of the difficulty of this whole exercise is that there are too many people with egos that represent nations that have egos of their own as well, and no one is interested in common good solutions but in zero sum solutions that benefit only one side. In the old days of empire diplomacy, some of the greatest crafters of negotiations were those who were capable of bringing benefits to all sides. The United States claimed it was above this whole zero sum empire benefiting process with its condemnation of European posturing during the xyz affair, yet years later, we’re still going out of our way to craft international diplomacy that speaks only to hegemonic power and self-beneficial desires. And when things don’t work out as we plan, we then resort to the “unfortunate” rationalization that war was all we had left. That was the argument we used for Afghanistan, and it was the strategy we invoked for dealing with Saddam Hussein.

The answer to this dilemma is simple, but no one is interested in changing the current status quo because often the ones who need to change things are the ones who have so much already staked on the outcomes of dealing with things the old way. The United States right now would lose a lot by deciding to go with a communal strategy in international diplomacy instead of the old tit for tat game theoretic we have been using for a century now. As long as we keep seeing the future as “what will we lose” instead of “what will everyone gain” then we’re never going to achieve peace in the world.

And why is that? Well, to begin with, as long as others are always under the impression that they have nothing to gain by mutual negotiations with a hegemonic power, then their only recourse is to avoid negotiations or to take the underground as a policy of process improvement. Right now, so many countries in the world right now deal with the United States and mainstream Europe through terrorism, piracy, protest and taking hostages/prisoners. They do this because they realize that this is the only way they can possibly deal with a set of powers that have no qualms about launching cruise missiles from the ocean and blasting away at anyone they perceive as an enemy. No nation can possibly emerge from negotiations in this manner without taking a serious loss because they realize that they have practically nothing to bargain with. Even countries that do have assets for bargaining, like the Middle East, have chosen to avoid direct negotiations and confrontation because they realize that to antagonize a powerful hegemony can result in losing the very asset they once had in their favor. Look at Iraq for an example of that.

I wish I had a simple answer for what needs to be done, but as an unimportant non-cog in a wheel that doesn’t need me to move, I just don’t see a future of anything happening any differently than they have been. There are too many people, businesses and entities invested in the process of keeping things as they have always been, and as long as this is the case, expect decades of people wondering why peace can never be achieved. Unfortunately, the smartest men in the room are not always the wisest men necessary for the task. And to make matters worse, too many people are interested in making a career and a name for themselves that they have lost the bigger picture and see only where they can add their name to the roster. That’s politics, and as long as politicians are the ones negotiating the future, you have to remember that their best interests are not always the interests of the bigger picture, even if they are go into the matter thinking they are after the best alternative for everyone.

As long as the current paradigm remains the active one, it’s hard to expect anything different than the direction we’ve grown so used to traveling.