4 Ways Wars Contribute Significantly To Underdevelopment
A war in whatever form is “an ill wind that blows no good.” If we have to go down memory lane, we will discover this to be very true.
Right from the time of the early man, wars were fought for the purposes of annexation, domination, and sometimes outright eradication of a race or people. They have always been brutally executed.
In the event of a war, any sense of decorum is thrown to the winds, children are killed, maimed, and women are raped and abused at will. Often, women and girls are regarded as booties of war.
In the book Mein Kampf ( “My Struggle” ) written by Adolf Hitler while in prison in the 1920s, he made a strong case for his theory of the Jews’ racial inferiority. That was one of the reasons he did everything possible to wipe out any trace of that entire face during the 2nd world war.
In the entire history of mankind, there is no single war that was fought for any developmental purposes. A quick run through the world’s top ten biggest wars in history will clearly point out this fact.
The wars in question are the American Civil War, Soviet War in Afghanistan, Vietnam War, Thirty Years’ War, Napoleonic Wars, Russian Civil War, Conquests by the Empire of Japan, World War 1, Mongol Conquests, and the World War 2.
Aii these wars and a lot of others have only contributed in rendering the world more underdeveloped in the following four different ways.
- Death toll
The essence of a war is to simply kill the “enemy” by whatever means. In a war, the end usually justifies the means. The more enemies you kill the more you are credited and decorated for gallantry.
As a war progresses so the death toll that arises from it increases. In certain instances, the death toll runs into millions. We are talking of millions of humans killed for the sole purpose of domination.
The Holocaust of world war 2 took the lives of 11 million people. Out of these 1.1 million were children and 6 million of those victims were Jewish. The situation got to the extent that by 1945, two of every three European Jews have been killed.
While we are talking of the generality of people killed in a war, you will agree with me that only able-bodied young men and women are drafted into the army. They are at the hot spots, exchanging bullets in a conventional war.
Taking all parameters into consideration, it will not be wrong statistically if we say that in a war, the world loses more able-bodied men and women.
The young men and women who we expect to take the world to the next level. Why then shouldn’t the world be underdeveloped since the wars have taken our fine crops?
Nobody will send a fool to the war front, you will go with your best materials intellectually since your game plan is to win. After killing our crop of intelligentsia at the war front, who do we have to fashion a way out of the doldrums we have found ourselves.
- Destruction of infrastructures
In any war situation, it is absolutely impossible to be selective in things that are destroyed. Once arsenals are rained down the order is, “clear everything on your path.”
Everything on the path of an arsenal you will definitely agree with me includes humans, trees, residential and corporate structures, other living and nonliving things.
A witness on the bombing raid by Luftwaffe on town of Guernica in Spain had this to say, “slowly and mechanically, heavy Junker 52s unloaded 100-pound bombs on the train station, a church, the marketplace. Then the swifter Heinkel 51s swooped over, strafing the fleeing villagers, machine-gunning donkeys and sheep, spilling incendiary bombs on the rooftops and streets.”
- Loss of huge financial resources
There is no doubt about it that a lot of financial resources go into the execution of a war. All the logistics that are involved are quite enormous.
The sad aspect of the whole issue is to see all the resources sunk into the production of ammunition, which should have been better used in the provision of basic amenities for the masses fired away one after the other just like that from the barrels and muzzles of assorted guns and other arms.
In the process too, a lot of hazardous wastes are discharged into our already comatose environment, making the whole situation of global warming worse.
- Time consuming
From the proclamation of a war to the final withdrawal of troops from the war, front take a lot of time. The planning of attacks and counter-attacks are all geared to consume time.
We are talking of time that should have been better utilized in some other facets of life for more productive ventures. You’ll need to see where generals and top war tacticians are bent over sheets pruning, hazarding, and asserting ways of battle engagements.
You can imagine the man hour that is lost by these highly intelligent ladies and gentlemen. You need just to harness what they should have been able to offer nature with all these their effort and time.
The time that should have been spent developing mankind is rather spent on destroying nature.
What a regrettable mess.
