As you read this, there are over 120 armed conflicts and anything between 11 and 30 full-scale wars on around the world, depending on whom you ask. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, we are living amid the highest number of active conflicts since the Second World War.
While major ones like the tussle between Ukraine and Russia are remembered the most (though it now seems to be relegated to the status of ‘business as usual’ on yet another war day), the latest one to hit our television and smart-phone screens is the three-week-long US-Israel-Iran conflict. The fact is that there is a war on in our lives.
Wars do not stay restricted to those who wage it. In today’s inter-connected global order, it touches all of us. That touch can be as lethal as an intercontinental ballistic missile—named differently and fancily by every nation to suit the ego of its warriors—that lands at your doorstep, if not on you. Alternatively, the daily heavy touch of the gas shortage in India, a petroleum shortage tomorrow or, for that matter, shortage of every kind of energy we have deemed fit to be of critical use in our lives the day after tomorrow.
Wars cause scarcity. They hike up prices for the poor. They create hardship for the deprived and the distanced. The only ones who seem to love a war are those rich enough to face the brunt of everything that can be thrown at their faces. To that extent, wars are for the rich and most certainly not for the poor.
Let me then think out the futility of a war. It helps no one. Yet it tends to soothe some egos. And at the same times, it tends to be as barbaric as we were once upon a time, before civilised society set up laws and rules to govern ourselves. Wars destroy every covenant of peace that has been decided upon by a society of people. Wars ruffle nations, regions and the world at large. Fortunately, the planet and the cosmos are not really concerned, as they know we are all too small in their scheme of things.
Modern society has put together two notions. One is called the ‘act of war’ and the other the ‘act of god’. Nothing ruffles living society more than these two phrases. Under an act of war status, anything goes. Everything is fair in war and love. And therefore everything goes. As we see today, every rule is binned and every covenant shredded.
Innocent children are killed, civilians injured, medical facilities destroyed, social, political, economic and religious infrastructure destroyed at will. That is the nature of war. And this current war in our lives is no different. As both sides of the active warring parties test out the efficacy of their stockpiles of arms and exhaust their inventories on a first-in-first-out basis, arms suppliers are in a state of glee. A glee they will not show overtly. More the war, greater the fear and higher the profit. The stock prices of those involved in war are up as of now, as a peek into the names of everyone involved in the defence sector would show. As an aside, I wonder why it is called the defence sector at all. It sure is the offence sector today.
Therefore, there are beneficiaries of war just as there are those who suffer from its direct and collateral damages. To an extent, if one is to carefully analyse the deeper meaning and intent in it all, the suppliers of drones, bombs and missiles are licking their lips in anticipation as they are watching the war unfold on their smart-phones. Those who fuel the war economy are excited.
And then there are those who suffer the direct hits of these missiles. There are civilians and military personnel who lose their lives. There are schools and hospitals and churches and mosques that are destroyed. They will need to be re-built. There are critical pieces of economic infrastructure like gas fields and pipelines that will need to be re-built.
And finally, there are those who will pay for this and every war. It is eventually the end consumer and the citizen in every country who suffers the collateral damage of a war. In India today, it is the common man who is running around for cooking gas cylinders. I recently went on road trips in Assam and Karnataka. Outside many village homes you pass by, you see gas cylinders kept outside, by the road. These are empty cylinders kept out in the hope that a truck would pass by and leave a replacement.
I am told that not even the tip of this iceberg of shortage has been felt by us yet. Induction electric stoves are flying off the shelves and the burden on our electricity grid is going to go up substantially. Electricity bills will bloat. Inflation is waiting to soar. The price of everything has a reason to soar. That one reason today is the three-letter word, war.
While the direct hit of a war is lost lives, the collateral damage is economic and, eventually, social and political—never mind how far you are from where the bombs are falling. The bombs are not falling in India (even though one nearly fell on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean). But the economic, social and political tumult is not too far from our living rooms. The first sign of it is shortage and the second is price rise. Rising prices always cause social tumult, and social tumult has a habit of causing political tumult. War is a cascade of events best avoided by all.
And yet, we do not learn. We jump into wars all too easily. We let our egos run the show. We act first and think later. We get back to cave-man sentiment and cave-man action all too fast. When shall we learn?
The world has bigger issues to grapple with. The future shortage of drinking water is one. Pollution is a big one that is already in our midst, with air pollution the biggest of them all. Global hunger is another big issue, along with malnutrition. There are several other huge issues seriously challenging the world. And yet we choose to focus on war? There is something really wrong with the way we think. More importantly, the way we act.
Harish Bijoor | Brand guru and Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc
(Views are personal)