After the Second World War, we established the United Nations with the primary purpose of saving succeeding generations from the scourge of war. In the past 100 years, we have, however, learned a great deal about how to prevent conflict. Other flashpoints over disputed islands in the South China Sea, tensions on the Korean peninsula and over Kashmir are just some of the easily identified points of escalation. Violence is raging in the Middle East, Europe and Russia are poised on the edge of conflict over Ukraine, the United States is once more engaged in military action in Iraq and, as NATO pulls out, Afghanistan is vulnerable. If we add in all the means and methods of warfare − conventional, nuclear, cyber, drones, and so on − we have the military potential to destroy ourselves entirely. The risks of a third world war are enormous. The machinery of war and the available firepower has increased dramatically. Since the ‘war to end all wars’ − as H G Wells so wrongly predicted a century ago − the world has seen the ‘peace to end all peace’ lead to the horrors of the second world war, proxy wars through the Cold War and, today, violent conflicts that increasingly affect civilians disproportionately and cross the red lines laid by the laws of armed conflict. I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images. Names of missing soldiers at the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in Ypres, Belgium.
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