US Military Power Versus Peaceful Co-Existence
Military Superiority May Act as Obstacle to Global Peace
May 19, 2009
Historically, the US has sought to maintain a strong military force capable of protecting its own citizen's well-being and its access to natural resources critical to human survival. In the last century, wars and an untold number of violent acts of aggression served to spur an unprecedented build-up of American military might.
The terrorist attacks on the US homeland on September 11, 2001 further supported the notion that there can never be too much defensive capability available to counter a surprise enemy attack. The 2001 attacks are grim reminders that no nation may be considered totally secure or is immune from acts of war or terrorist attack.
In remarks delivered at a December, 2008 meeting of the University Philosophical Society in Dublin, Ireland, Peter Brooks, a Senior Fellow for National Security Affairs at The Heritage Foundation noted that while military strength alone cannot be expected to solve every problem, "diplomacy without the credible threat of military force is nothing but a prayer."
Competition for Natural Resources Threatens Peace, Widens Conflict
At this point in the planet's history, all nations of the world find themselves in competition for the rapidly dwindling and increasingly scarce resources which support life and improve the quality of living. Thus, a primary issue involves not only the safety and security of a nation's people, but also the protection of an expected standard of living and the natural resources that are made available to its citizens.
A world now made more complex by ongoing crises linked to environmental and climate change, to hate and discrimination, intolerance, nationalism and cultural superiority threatens the social peace, and correspondingly the prospects for global peace. It may well be that peaceful co-existence for all nations is reasonably attainable only through unilateral global cooperation in a number of areas.
US Military Spending at Odds With Prospects for Peace
According to Charles J. Hanley, in his recent article, "Gorbachev: US Military Power Block 'No Nukes'",the United States currently spends more than $600 billion annually on military spending. Hanley goes on to note that Mikhail Gorbachev described the superior strength of the US military as an "insurmountable obstacle" to prospects for nuclear disarmament and world peace.
For possibly the first time since the Reagan years, the world's greatest superpowers may only now be realizing that global peace may be unattainable in a world with more than 23,000 nuclear warheads standing at the ready. Such difficult challenges to global peace should urge the world's superpowers toward more cooperative efforts in forging a fundamental set of ethical principles which are supportive of the halt of nuclear proliferation.
Cooperative Efforts, Disarmament Calls for Ethical Approach
President Barack Obama has called for a nuclear-free world. That noble objective and its attendant long-term implications may no longer simply be a theoretical proposal. World peace and the long, continuing evolution of man may be dependent upon ethically responsible, reasonable individuals sitting down to rationally discuss cooperative efforts in matters involving policy, in the more equitable distribution of natural resources and in matters of national security.
Anything less than these efforts could potentially threaten to undermine not only the long-term prospects for global peace, but the very survival of mankind as well.
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