War is evil. Its cruelty, harm and damage caused incomprehensible and appalling. However, despite knowing that, despite the great efforts of many humans to prevent it, wars continue to erupt in the world in the modern age, such as the Iraq and Afghanistan War. The evolvement of dangerous weapons and larger global consequences of war had made humans question, is war necessary?
There is no denial that war is evil. It brings about large amounts of deaths, destruction and suffering. Humans had thought of many ways to prevent war in this day and age, such as international co-operation and peace talks. However, they have their flaws and thus, war it is still needed in this world for it is still the only way to defend a countries’ interests and dealing with uncooperative and oppressive countries.
Countries inevitably have to protect their own self-interests, at the end of the day. Thus, going to war for self-defence will happen simply because at the end of the day, there will be unreasonable countries like North Korea which will attack other countries and refuse to settle the matter in a cool manner. This could be well seen from North Korea sinking the South Korean navy ship, The ROKS Cheonan , and the subsequent bombing of South Korean Yeonpyeong Island, provoking retaliation from the South. Tensions still remain high between the two countries, with not only South Korea but also America too threatening to fight back on any further provocation, which clearly shows that without a clear stance that their country is powerful and fighting back, a country will be unable to guarantee its self-interests and will be at the mercy of the enemy. Thus, in such cases, a country has to resort to force to ensure the safety and prosperity of their own nation.
Also, military intervention is needed when a country is being brutally oppressed but their leaders. In the Middle East and Africa, many countries that have oppressive regimes are facing protests and revolutions, which had sparked a violent response from the government. A stark example will be the situation in Libya, where a revolution had evolved into a civil war between the rebels and Colonel Gadaffi’s army. This had led to the international community intervening as Gadaffi had been cruelly oppressing his people with military power, causing a humans’ right issue. With no compromise for negotiation, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) had intervened, with the aerial bombing of Libya’s army’s facilities to prevent them from harming civilians. For others have a responsibility to intervene, when seeing such cruelty happening, which leads to such cases today.
While the ideas of peace talks and international agreements may sound great, it requires for amicable leaders and countries, which is an almost utopian notion in a far too realistic political environment. The six-party talks for the Nuclear disbarment of North Korea had broken down, another oppressive regime, Syria, had refused to budge from its position of oppressing its civilians despite facing great outcry, criticisms and possible sanctions from other countries. These situations clearly show that the reason why peaceful measures fail to prevent war is most importantly, the refusal of illogical and unreasonable leaders to settle for things the way they are, which then requires force to prevent them from posing danger. Even so, there could still be a glimmer of light on the horizon. North Korea and South Korea did solve their tension peacefully at the end by South Korea not attacking back again. This proves that with more cool and reasonable minds, peace is still attainable.
To conclude, war is a necessary evil for there are still situations when people and countries are suffering or are being threatened that calls for war. However, we must always remember that war is essentially evil and we must do all we can, no matter what to maintain peace.
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