Causes and Prevention of Current Wars
A Medical View of War as Political Insanity
Image courtesy of X user @Sprinter99800
“Wars do not usually result from just causes but from pretexts. There probably never was a just cause why men should slaughter each other by wholesale, but there are such things as ambition, selfishness, folly, madness, in communities as in individuals, which become blind and bloodthirsty, not to be appeased save by havoc, and generally by the killing of somebody else than themselves “ - General Tecumseh Sherman, Speech to the graduating class of the Michigan Military Academy 1878
“Politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organising nothing better than legalised mass murder” - Harry Patch, The Last Fighting Tommy
"Insanity is when you do the same thing over and over, expecting a different result” - Albert Einstein
INDEX
INTRODUCTION
WAR AS POLITICAL INSANITY
METHODOLOGY
RELATIVE PEACE IS POSSIBLE
RESULTS
RELIGION AS A FACTOR IN WAR
- FATWA ON TERRORISM & DEFERRED TERRORISM
- THEOLOGIANS AS PEACEMAKERS
REDUCING DICTATORSHIPS AND AUTHORITARIANS
- GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS INDEX
CONTROLLING SMALLER WARS
*ETHNIC CLASHES
*MILITIAS
*CRIME
*CONFLICT BETWEEN HERDERS AND FARMERS
- AMMUNITION CONTROL
-IDEOLOGY AS A CAUSE OF WAR
*RESOURCES AS A FACTOR IN WAR
- KIMBERLEY PROCESS CERTIFICATION SCHEME
SEPARATISM / SECCESSIONISM
-UN AGENCY ON SECESSION
FOREIGN INTERVENTION AS A CAUSE OF WAR
CONCLUSION
APPENDIX
INTRODUCTION
The practice of war is the work of the military profession, the theory of war is the domain of the military theorists, the rules of war are a matter for specialist lawyers, the declaration of war is a matter for politicians, the sufferings of war are the lot of ordinary individual human beings, and the relief of that suffering is the work of the medical profession.
Therefore, although the writer is not a soldier, or a military theorist, or a lawyer, or a politician, but a physician, I claim the right to be heard on the matter of how we might lessen the burden of war on our children and grandchildren.
This essay looks at wars as psychiatry looks at mental illness, as a set of behavioural and emotional phenomena that humans experience as a result of a complex but identifiable set of causes. Every war, like every individual mental illness, is unique to the patient or nation suffering the condition, but there are always patterns that can be recognised, and behind every disease there are pathological causes to be uncovered, and treatments to be sought after.
In the case of war, once the conflict has started there is very little that anyone can do to stop it apart from denial of access to lethal technologies, and diplomatic efforts and communications must never stop. Once war has broken out, generally we have to wait until both sides are exhausted, and ready to talk about a peaceful settlement, which is, of course, what they should have done before the war started.
If treatment options for a deadly illness are limited, it is imperative that we look very hard at means of prevention. In 2024, it is not obvious that a lot of effort is being put into prevention of war, although no doubt many good, intelligent people are working on it, mainly in academia and in the United Nations. The problem here is that academics dare not speak out in public until they are in perfect mastery of every aspect of their field (that is, never), and the United Nations, although excellent in many ways, is a large bureaucracy headed by a Security Council that is in desperate need of reform.
The preventive suggestions put forward here come from the mind of an inventor and activist, not a scholar. We will see that preventive measures are available, are relatively simple and are certainly far more cost effective than warfare. The difficulty lies in getting politicians and bureaucrats to change their mind set.
Professionals tend to be irritated when a voice from outside the professional box dares to voice an opinion, but sometimes that voice can stimulate new thought. If any reader should think the suggestions put forward here are wrong, by all means say so, but at the same time, be sure to put forward your better solution.
The suggestions here to prevent wars are not put forward as the only possibilities. There are a host of other approaches that can be taken and measures that can be rolled out to contain the occasional slide of the leaders into the morass of political insanity that we call war.
WAR AS POLITICAL INSANITY
“War is madness” is a cliche, but it is a valid cliche, for three reasons.
First, war is madness in the US sense of mad as in angry. War is a political expression of frustration, anger and hatred. Anger is an outgoing emotional reaction to perceived threat, which bypasses reason. Anger gives us a feeling of wishing to hurt of destroy the object of anger, the Other, immediately, although history, reason and psychology teach us that in the process of destroying perceived enemies, the destroyer is creating yet more threatening Others.
Second, war is madness in the sense of detachment from everyday reality. In war, humans divert from the everyday central human purposeful work, that of trying to create healthy and happy human communities by addressing our real individual and societal needs. In war we are expected to turn our hand instead to destroying the lives, health and structures of our perceived enemies. War is the exact opposite of what the human race needs to be doing in the early 21st century, which is of course, to be working to normalise Earth’s greenhouse effect, to satisfy our human needs for health, education and security, and to protect and restore ecological systems. If work is defined as the setting of needed things in order, war must be seen as a form of anti-work.
Third, war is insanity in the sense that Einstein pointed to when he said “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”.
This applies very much to the Israel/Palestine situation, where both Hamas and the Israeli Government are participating in an upward spiral of hatred, violence, killing and destruction. The mantra of both Hamas and Netanyahu is that they both have a right to defend themselves, yet their actions are not defensive, they are clearly destined to produce the exact opposite of a secure and peaceful future for the people they claim to represent; they are simply storing up hatred against themselves that will rebound as violence in times to come.
War frequently arises from a state of mutual paranoia. We might characterise it as Paranoia Mutualis Caesarii - the mutual paranoia of political leaders - which often expresses itself in an arms race between two powers or power blocs caught in a vicious cycle of increased arms buildup by one side in response to increased arms buildup on the opposite side. This is clearly the case with nuclear weapons, where the USA and Russia achieved an irrational peak of some 60,000 warheads in the 1970s, which were later reduced to the present 15,000 nuclear warheads, which are still clearly a totally unreasonable number, far in excess of what might be believed necessary to deter a potential enemy.
In some cases, the description of mutual paranoia would be an oversimplification. Although it is occasionally the case that both sides bear an equal weight of responsibility for a war, the present war in Ukraine shows that sometimes the immediate cause of war is unilateral, since Putin ordered an invasion on 24th February 2022. The antecedent causes of the war go back to 2014 with the separatist troubles in the Donbas, and to the Maidan Revolution (which Putin and his supporters falsely characterise as a “coup”). Putin also has a range of grievances associated with the expansion both of NATO and of the EU. His mistake was that he chose not to invoke the Articles in Chapter 6 of the UN Charter which are designed to address precisely the concerns he has. Instead Putin chose to invade Ukraine.
Once Putin had invaded, Ukraine had no option but to resist in order to stay a free and independent nation. If the Ukrainian Government had fled, and the Ukrainian Army had surrendered, an occupation would have followed, with a smouldering guerrilla war fought against the occupiers that would eventually, after maybe a generation, build into an outright war to obtain freedom. The capitulation of Ukraine would almost certainly have encouraged Putin to expand into other countries bordering Russia with a sizeable Russian speaking minority.
All of which show that the pathogenesis of war can be both simple (in this case, invasion by a dictator) and complex (in this case, separatist sentiment in the Donbas, foreign intervention, and diverging views as to whether Ukraine should team up with the EU or with Russia).
Given that wars can be seen as a kind of collective mental illness, the question is, how can the outbreak of collective or political insanity be prevented?
In individual psychology it is a well established principle of anger management that the client must learn to be aware of the early warning signs of an outburst. If we are to apply this successfully to politics, we must be able to identify the main causes of war, and address them in their early stages.
So we will look at one of the main causes of the 21 wars and conflicts (defined as conflicts which have caused more than 1,000 deaths in the past year) which are burning in 2024.
METHODOLOGY
Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) collect and verify data about current wars on a weekly basis, and the Wikipedia sets out their data in an easy to use table. Wikipedia also is the source for information about the cause of each war.
(I am aware that the Wikipedia in not a perfectly valid source for a scholar, but I am not a scholar. As an activist, and as a retired physician, I want to get this approach to war out into the public arena before I am obliged to shuffle off this mortal coil. In fact, one source I checked through a networking showed that the Wiki herder/farmer account as a cause of war is inaccurate. This inaccuracy does not invalidate the preventive solutions applied to the problem.)
The specific method used here, which looks at the causes of all the conflicts that are taking place in real time, contrasts with the approach taken by war theorists, who tend to take a more generalist take on war, offering causes based on Freudian, Marxian, economic, evolutionary, religious and other frameworks.
The systemic causes of war are the drive for power, control and wealth, and the influence of the military-industrial complex. We have referred above to mutual paranoia between States, which leads to arms races, which in turn lead to war.
It is not claimed that the preventive measures put forward here are infallible or comprehensive. It is a source of optimism that there are many other approaches and suggestions on offer. Education is important, together with accurate public information and fair debate. The problem with discussions on news channels is that they are, understandably, preoccupied with dramatic news of wars taking place in real time, rather than calmer discussion of what might be done to avoid wars in future.
RELATIVE PEACE IS POSSIBLE
We are not talking here about some utopian state of absolute world peace and harmony, but of a world where we have fewer and less intense wars than we have at present.
The commonest objection by the man in the street to work for peace comes in the phrase “You can’t beat human nature”. This attitude has been described as the “Hydraulic Theory of Violence”, where pressure builds up and expresses itself periodically without any external stimulus.
Nothing comes of nihilism, and if we do nothing about wars, there may be nothing left of human civilisation, or indeed, of the human species.
RESULTS
Having looked at all 21 wars burning in 2024, and having picked out the main, headline facts contributing to each war, and being aware that there are many other underlying factors that have been left out, we arrive at the following table:
Factors leading to current wars
Religion 10
Dictators 8
Ethnic distinctions 6
Armed Militias 6
Foreign Intervention 6
Separatism/Secessionism 5
Crime/Drugs 5
Resources 3
Ideology 2
“Herder/Farmer” 2
Poverty/repression 2
This table is a snapshot of the wars taking place in 2024, and is not necessarily typical of the composition of all wars in modern history. For instance, separatism was responsible for nearly half of wars in 2013, and about one third of wars in 2008.
All wars have multiple complex causes that contribute to the outbreak, but here we are interested only in the most important factors. Imperfect though it may be, the table gives us a usable lead on what kind of preventive policies that humanity needs to put in place.
WARS ARE ON A DOWNWARD TREND
There is evidence that over the centuries, humans have become less violent. The cognitive psychologist Dr Steven Pinker has pointed to the decrease in signs of violent death in archaeological specimens, and more recently to the growth in empathy. Pinker’s work has been confirmed by Fagan et al., mathematicians at the University of York, who used a statistical method to conclude that battle deaths have decreased since the end of the Napoleonic wars.
Pinker’s claims have been contested, and will be so even more if they begin to gain traction, but we must always bear in mind the history of debate over the impacts of tobacco, pesticides, and fossil fuels, that scientific findings that are inconvenient to global industries will always be questioned, obfuscated, and contradicted by vested interests. The vested interest in the case of war is of course the arms industry, which was estimated in 2024 to have a global value of $2.4 trillion. For comparison the fossil fuel market in 2021 was $6.3 trillion. We can therefore expect a pushback from the arms industry on a par with the fossil fuel corporations’ climate denial campaign of the last 40 years.
Figure 1 shows an overview of wars since World War 2. We find a clear downward trend in war deaths until Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, and Netanyahu responded to the Hamas attack on October 7 2023 with his massacre of Palestinian civilians.
Fig 1
https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace
Taking a longer term view, the downward trend is confirmed; Fig 1a shows war deaths since the Napoleonic wars.
Fig 1a
Appendix 1 lists these major wars (defined as more than 10,000 deaths per year) and less intensive wars, (with deaths of between 1,000 and 9,999 per year), their duration, their estimated death toll, and their salient causes.
We will now walk through these headline causes and look at ways in which each category may be prevented or at least ameliorated.
RELIGION AS A FACTOR IN WAR
Religion is a factor in 9 of the 21 wars raging in 2024.
Israel Palestine: Fundamentalist Judaism vs Fundamentalist Muslim.
Maghreb : Islamic State (ISIS) vs 15 (fifteen) secular Arab/Muslim nations
Syria: Islamic State vs ?everyone
Nigeria: Boko Haram: Islamic State (tendency)
Somalia : al-Shabab (Islamic State)
Iraq: Sunni-Shia Muslim conflict
Afghanistan: Taliban (Sunni Muslim)
NW Pakistan: Various Islamist militant groups
Nigeria: Islamist-Christian conflict
It is clear that Islam is involved in all of these wars, and it is tempting to infer from this that Islam is not a religion of peace, as its adherents often claim.
To add balance to the discussion, we should remember that the USA is a nominally Christian nation, and has bombed no less than 36 countries since 1945.
Moreover, the USA and other nominally Christian nations (as well as some atheist nations) are prepared, by virtue of the nuclear weapons they they possess, to kill millions of children, women and men, acutely by blasting, crushing, and burning, chronically by starvation, irradiation and disease.
Nuclear deterrence is deferred terrorism. The deterrence strategy is not infallible, and because any failure of deterrence could bring about the end of human civilisation on this planet, it is logically necessary to abolish nuclear weapons totally.
Only a few serious Christians have condemned the nuclear deterrence strategy, so "Christians" (or "Westerners") are in no position of moral superiority over Muslims in relation to warfare.
That said, fundamentalist religion does exacerbate hatred by setting up absolute differences between people who hold different beliefs. Ironically, the etymology of the word “religion” indicates that it is a force that binds the people of faith together, a uniting force, although history shows that differences of doctrine within both Christianity (Catholic/Protestant) and Islam (Sunni/Shia) can lead to vicious and protracted wars, and that the supposed binding together does not apply to those who are outside the religious community, to the Others. "Otherness" is an essential part of hostility. The "Other" is different in some way; they may come from a different town, they may be a supporter of a different football club, they may have a different language or accent, a different skin colour, the causes of otherness are endless, but fundamentalist religion means that the other is actually rejecting God. Allah, or YHVH, the creator of the Universe, and this can be a very potent addition to the mix of motivations that may lead to war.
How can this religion-derived toxicity be resolved?
Time is an important factor. Three hundred years ago, the British Isles were tormented by wars between Protestant and Catholic brands of Christianity, and the Troubles in Ireland were only ended 28 years ago. Wars come to an end when the majority of people become sick and tired of them, and religious fervour itself wanes as the years pass.
It is important not to stimulate religious passions by attacking the religion. Yes, we must defend ourselves against any attacks they may make, but to try to defeat a religion by attacking its tenets ideologically, or its adherents physically, will only serve to increase their faith and devotion, since the holy texts often warn of the likelihood of such attacks.
- FATWA ON TERRORISM & DEFERRED TERRORISM
A second approach that might be tried is that mullahs and Imams should be asked by local people to declare a fatwa against terrorism (defined as the use of violence against civilians for political or religious purposes). This is not a new idea. In 1999, the Muslim Religious Council of North America issued a Fatwa against Terrorism, and in 2011 a book titled Fatwa on Terrorism was published by a leading Islamic scholar in Pakistan. So we have precedents, but ordinary people need to ask each mullah and mosque to issue their own fatwa until the knowledge is universal and ingrained, since it is specifically not admissible for the fatwa to be requested by Government. More on this topic may be found in this blogpost.
The beauty of the fatwa proposal is that it gives us, the ordinary citizens, a part to play in world peace, since Governments may not issue the request.
To balance the request, activists should pair their request for a fatwa with a request to the leaders of Christian churches to condemn the deterrence strategy, on the grounds that it is not infallible. The approach to Christian clergy can be created by adapting this letter addressed to MPs.
Religion as a factor in the causation of war is a thorny problem, but no human problem is beyond the power of humanity to ease it.
- THEOLOGIANS AS PEACEMAKERS
A further approach that might be useful in reducing religious tensions might be to create a series of meetings where theologians of the Abrahamic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - spend a day fasting and wordlessly contemplating the following question:
"Do the names YHVH, God and Allah refer to three different entities, or to one entity with three different human generated names?"
Having spent a day seriously considering the question, without speaking about it, the theologians are then asked to write their answer in less than (say) 10 words.
There is no guarantee that they will all agree that the names given to the Origin of the Universe are of human provenance, but if there is agreement that there is One Origin of which the names are social constructs, it might have some effect in inducing a sense of tolerance. If the consensus is that there are indeed three different gods, the world will be no worse off than we are at present.
REDUCING DICTATORSHIPS AND AUTHORITARIANS
Dictators, authoritarians, totalitarians and military juntas are behind eight of the twenty one wars happening in 2024.
Putin is the outstanding example of a dictator ordering an invasion. Assad in Syria is another example of a dictator presiding over a civil war that is a direct result of an attempt to get rid of him. In Burma, the military junta has been in power for most of the time since independence in 1948, and has presided over a constant violent struggle against several ethnic insurgencies. Netanyahu and the Hamas leadership occupy a grey area as elected dictators on whom their subjects have little or no influence, and who behave with the absence of human feeling that dictators commonly display.
The conflicts in Sudan, Somalia and Iraq illustrate what happens when dictators are removed suddenly and violently. Dictatorship represses all the aspirations to have a degree of power and influence over their state of diverse groups within society . On its removal, disorder tends to break out, as groups scramble to maximise their gains in their new-found freedoms. It is like suddenly taking the lid off a pressure cooker, instead of allowing it to cool slowly.
Dictatorships have been increasing over the last 15 years or so, and liberal democracies have been decreasing slightly (see Fig 3)
Fig 3
Source : https://ourworldindata.org/democracy
as the pendulum of global politics swings towards the right, with people like Putin in Russia, Netanyahu in Israel, Erdogan in Turkey, Duterte in the Philippines and numerous other right-wingers in or near to power. The organisation Planet Rulers lists 58 dictators in less developed countries in 2022. Interestingly, all of them are men.
Nearer to home, right-wing populists like Trump in the USA, Johnson, Truss and Farage in the UK, Abbott in Australia, and Le Pen in France, are all getting more than their reasonable share of media attention.
Many changes are necessary to correct the global swing towards far-right politics, not least reform of the media to place accuracy and truth at the centre of the profession of journalism, and to block the monopoly of media by oligarchs, but the global human rights index needs to be rolled out too.
- GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS INDEX
What can the international community do to inhibit the formation of dictatorships and to facilitate the peaceful transition towards democracy?
The Green Party of England and Wales has a powerful policy called the Global Human Rights Index (GLOHRI). The United Nations already has an Index of Human Rights that provides and regularly updates a written report of the human rights performance of each UN state. GLOHRI would express these accounts with a numerical score, a process that is already rolled out by more than one academic institution. One example can be found on this page in Our World in Data (scroll down to Human Rights Index 2023, then click Table at the top left of the map).
Here is a brief summary of the GLOHRI process as it appears in the Green Party’s Policies for a Sustainable Society:
The Green Party will press for the use of a United Nations Index of Human Rights to monitor governments that commit human rights abuses and to provide an explicit basis for seeking to restrain such regimes.
IP333 All governments will have their human rights record continuously assessed by a UN agency set up for that purpose. A scale will be established measuring several indicators of human rights performance. The scale will be finalised by agreement at the UN level, but will be centred on the following abuses:
- use of torture
- use of death penalty
- scale of ‘disappearances’
- abuse of political prisoners
- denial of right to fair trial
- denial of free speech
- denial of free movement
- denial of right to political or religious freedom
- denial of rights to women
- denial of child rights
- denial of minority rights
- denial of rights to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex people
A score reflecting their performance will be allocated to each state on an annual basis.
IP334 Once the Index is installed, governments with the worst record of human rights as measured on this Index will be referred to the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court. If the Court finds that their human rights performance falls below accepted legal standards, the regimes will be given time and assistance to improve their record. In the event of non-compliance, the matter will return to the Court, and if found at fault, the regime will suffer penalties in terms of its members’ privileges in the fields of finance, diplomacy, transport and trade. The severity of the penalties will increase as their human rights performance deteriorates, and decrease as their human rights performance improves. The penalties will be targeted to hurt the ruling elite rather than the general population.
IP335 At the same time, countries lying just above the level at which legal action will be taken will be offered help and advice to improve their human rights performance.
The effect of publishing this measurement of the human rights performance of each state annually by the UN will be to make the relative position of each state clear at a glance. Politicians will be unable to dissemble and obfuscate their position.
Many leaders will undoubtedly complain that their position in the table is set too low, but this reaction will be an advantage, because in response the UN can send rapporteurs to re-examine their assessment, beginning with the number of political prisoners in the country’s jails. This in itself will almost certainly lead to the freeing of many political prisoners by the regime before the rapporteurs arrive.
GLOHRI will exert a continuous, steady uplift in the HR performance of many countries.
The UN can constructively advise any regimes that ask for help to increase the levels of human rights, freedom and democracy.
Human rights need not be the only set of criteria in looking at states' governance. Democracy itself can be marked up in the assessment process.
A fuller discussion of GLOHRI can be found here.
While the UN is working from outside, people within repressive states may be encouraged to work for democracy by quietly and patiently collaborating in drawing up plans for the institutions that will belong to their democratic state.
Each country’s path from dictatorship to democracy will be unique, shaped by its history, culture, and circumstances. The key is to approach the transition with a commitment to inclusivity, justice, and the rule of law while fostering the development of democratic norms and institutions.
These measures are necessarily gradual and non-violent, because we can see from Syria and many other cases that violent attempts to bring about sudden change often lead to a period of civil war that may be followed by another dictatorship.
In conclusion, dictatorship is at present the second most frequent factor associated with wars in 2024, and the measures set out here offer sensible and non-violent ways of moving away from dictatorships. Of course, these are not the only means available; readers may be aware of other or better ways of progressing, and all suggestions will be gratefully received.
Next, we will look at how to control smaller wars and conflicts.
CONTROLLING SMALLER WARS
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Ammunition seized in Mexico’s drug war |
Having looked at war as a form of political psychosis, and having examined ways in which dictators can be removed, we now look at smaller wars based on ethnic differences, militias, gangs and other causes.
*ETHNIC CLASHES
Of the wars happening in 2024, six (Israel/Palestine, Darfur, Sudan, Myanmar, Ethiopia, and North West Pakistan) are based on ethnic differences - differences of ancestry or culture, or different tribes - and six are based on militia activity.
*MILITIAS
Militias and gangs are an important component of the wars in Kivu, the eastern province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where there is a bewildering variety of militias on the field. Militias are also important in North West Pakistan, where there is a low level insurgency; in Mexico, where a complex war is being fought out between drug gangs, which contributes significantly to the migration problem of the USA; in Haiti, and in the favelas of Rio de Janiero.
Armed ethnic or militia groups, perhaps under a the command of a warlord, often have little reason to go on fighting except that they are in the habit of fighting, and seem not to know how to stop fighting.
*CRIME
Some wars are caused by crime:
Mexican Drug War (since 2006, deaths 127-400K)
Favelas of Rio de Janiero (since 2006, deaths 14,000)
Haiti (since 2020, deaths 5,000) - Easing now
Columbia (since 1964, deaths 4.5K)
These wars centred around criminal gangs are a bewildering maze of violence, murder, control, money, drugs, power, poverty and politics. They represent partially failed states, where normal life finds itself set in no-go areas dominated by gangs. These no-go areas are usually deeply impoverished, and belonging to a gang is the most promising career on offer to a young man. In Rio, repressive policing has only reinforced this tendency.
It is extraordinary that the presidential elections in the USA are focussed on migration, and yet no politician seems to be able to look at one of the major causes of migration - the Mexican drug wars.
Illicit drugs are usually the feedstuffs for the trade of these criminal gangs. There is a strong case to be made for the decriminalisation of drugs, so as to convert cannabis to being a normal, if closely regulated, item of merchandise, with more addictive drugs such as cocaine and opiates being bought up by state authorities and medicalised. There is a massive need for morphine in Africa, where there is a presumption against its use in controlling pain, with the result that millions of Africans die in unrelieved agony from cancer and other conditions.
Decriminalisation of drugs is a massive topic that cannot be covered here. What is certain is that the "war on drugs" is, like all other wars, enormously expensive in terms of human life and in terms of money; governments are on the losing side of the war; and decriminalisation is taking place, slowly but steadily. It is also certain that serious politicians should start looking at all the costs of the war on drugs, and at the benefits of decriminalisation, beginning with the cessation of crime wars that have cost up to 423,000 lives already.
*CONFLICT BETWEEN HERDERS AND FARMERS
There are said to be serious armed conflicts between nomadic herders (or pastoralists) and settled farmers in several West African countries (Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Cameroon), as well as in the Central African Republic, Congo, Kenya, and Sudan (where clashes have been exacerbated by the ongoing civil war).
The narrative given by government authorities is that Herder/farmer conflicts have a long history, going back to the story of Cain and Abel in the book of Genesis in the bible. Man-made climate change is bringing added pressure on usable land, and population growth and improvements in the treatment of tetse fly and other cattle diseases are other factors.
However, research by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) found that there is no evidence of increasing violence between these groups, and that their conflict of interest is being exploited by jihadists and others. Government agencies are sometimes prejudiced against nomads.
- AMMUNITION CONTROL
The reasonable solution for some of these smaller, localised conflicts would be to co-opt militias into the service of the state by being trained up and employed as policemen, as rangers, or as soldiers for the Government, but to do that, we have to first arrange for the bullets to stop flying.
There is one certain way of doing this: cut off the supplies of ammunition.
Without ammunition, a gun is nothing but an expensive and unwieldy club. Of course, many people were killed in Rwanda without guns, but it is undeniable that guns are more efficient killing machines than machetes.
Between 10 and 14 billion bullets are manufactured every year. Of this enormous quantity, there is an official trace for only 17%.
Guns are durable goods that can be easily hidden and transported across borders. Guns have no distinctive smell, apart from the oil that coats them, which is indistinguishable from the smell of any other new, oiled machinery, so investigators have to make a visual or X ray inspection to confirm that a truck contains armaments rather than innocent machinery. In short, it is difficult to control arms transactions, arms transfers, arms exports and arms caches.
Ammunition on the other hand, has a distinctive smell. Detector dogs are now commonly trained to identify the presence of ammunition and explosives. Countries and agencies that invested in detector dogs could prevent the transfer of lethal products across their borders, swiftly and easily identifying consignments of ammunition by walking a sniffer dog in the vicinity.
Authorities could also possibly use highly skilled dogs to lead searches for ammunitions caches and munitions factories by driving them across parts of the country where such caches and factories might be located.
Detector dogs are an established and effective way of identifying the presence of ammunition. Therefore the many agencies with an interest in preventing the suffering and death that follows the use of small arms should concentrate on controlling the ammunition, as well as the arms.
Given the political will, it would be a relatively simple matter to train up and deploy large numbers of dogs that could identify consignments of ammunition in order to confiscate and destroy them.
Small wars are preventable, they are also, uniquely, susceptible to being treated.
The main lies in creating the necessary political will. Ammunition manufacturers (together with arms manufacturers) will mount an intensive campaign against this initiative, arguing that it will cost money, and will take time for the dogs to be trained. These are trivial and commonplace objections, but given the amount of money that ammunition manufacturers can throw at the problem, especially at politicians and influencers, their arguments will be influential. However, they can be countered by the stronger case of dedicated apologists for peace.
There is a political aspect to this effective measure that needs attention. It is a commonplace that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Some armed groups may have a strong case in that they are opposing an inhumane and oppressive regime. Agencies handling detector dogs will have to weigh up such claims with due diligence, and avoid being exploited by such regimes.
-IDEOLOGY AS A CAUSE OF WAR
The ideological clash between capitalism and communism that dominated the second half of the twentieth century, the clash that presented an existential threat to humanity with the nuclear arms race between the USA and the USSR, has now faded away to a scattering of small groups mainly operating in developing countries as insurgent groups. FARC in Colombia is perhaps the most significant left wing group to be fighting, but the Columbian Peace Process seems to be bringing even this to an end.
The Naxalite war was a significant Communist insurgency that has been burning for half a century, but that also seems to be fading away.
Ideologically, the world is left with the triumph of capitalism in its most extreme form, neo-liberalism (aka free market fundamentalism), which preaches that private corporations must be allowed to make their profits free of all government regulation, and that scientific findings like global warming must be set aside if they imply that the free market in fossil fuels must be restrained in any way.
The political challenge of our time lies in enabling democracy to bring mega-corporations back into the real world, to accept regulations that protect workers and the natural environment.
*RESOURCES AS A FACTOR IN WAR
It is surprising that in our snapshot list in 2024, only three wars are designated as having a resource component, given that war over resources is well documented in history, and indeed the Iraq war fought by Bush and Blair was about Iraq’s oil.
In Kivu, the eastern province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, deposits of Cassiterite (tin oxide), Coltan (Tantalum and Niobium ores, used in electronic equipment)) and Gold are fuelling the militias who operate in that region by providing them with an income.
Sudan has a complex history of political differences of ethnicity, and regions, boiling down to a struggle between two military leaders, but it is all made more intense by mineral resources of Gold, Copper, Iron, Chromium, Uranium and Oil.
Kivu, a province on the eastern border of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has resources of Gold, Coltan, Cassiterite, and Wolframite (Iron, Manganese and Wolfram ore). The 70-120 odd militias in the Kivu province have exploited the trade in these minerals, helping to finance their operations. It is probable, that these minerals serve to maintain the violence in the province.
In Colombia, coca is the resource that motivated and financed the FARC guerrillas.
What can be done to inhibit the ability of armed gangs to exploit resources?
- KIMBERLEY PROCESS CERTIFICATION SCHEME
“Blood diamonds” was the name given to diamonds sourced from war-torn areas. In 2003, the UN set up the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme "to ensure that diamond purchases were not financing violence by rebel movements and their allies seeking to undermine legitimate governments".
There are three steps to the scheme:
- The country producing the diamonds must ensure that a traded diamond does not finance a rebel group
- Every diamond gets a Kimberly Process certificate
- No diamond is to be imported from, or exported to, a non-member state.
The Kimberley Process has been criticised, but it is a start and may serve as a model for other precious materials. It could also possibly be extended to goods which come from mines where the human rights of the workers are not respected.
SEPARATISM/SECCESSIONISM
Separatism, or more accurately secessionism, is the advocacy of withdrawal of a group from a political entity. It is a factor in five of the forty wars happening in the world in 2024. Secessionism stands at about 12% now, while in 2013 it was 50%, and in 2008 it was 30%, so it is an important and constant cause of violence in our times.
Secessionism is capable of being resolved by non-violent means within the United Nations. Politicians have a duty to agree some rules and protocols on separatism, in order to extend the reach of politics to cover this common political situation.
Democracy should have a bearing on the matter. If it is truly the will of the people of a region that they should not be governed by their present rulers, then politicians should give attention to their wishes.
Does the majority of the people truly seek independence or autonomy, or is it simply the intense desire of an unrepresentative political group? This is a question that can be answered by referendum. Since it is unlikely that the state will be happy to offer a referendum, the process will have to be initiated by a people’s petition, which in some cases will have to be organised in secrecy.
-UN AGENCY ON SECESSION
The UN should create an agency specifically responsible for managing secessionist issues. Once this agency has received a peoples' petition, they can research and evaluate the situation. If they decide that there is a case, they should endeavour to set up negotiations between the state and representatives of the secessionist group, which should lead to a succession of plebiscites, leading towards a formal referendum. If the result of the referendum shows that a two thirds majority (say) is in favour of autonomy, negotiations can start in earnest, under the guidance of the UN or regional authorities.
Negotiations will be complex and protracted. No state wishes to lose bits of itself, just as no patient likes to go under the surgeon’s knife. However, people do agree to surgery if they are convinced that it is ultimately going to be good for their health. By allowing secession, the state is avoiding a war, with all its financial, human and environmental costs. Politically, it is gaining a cooperative neighbour on its doorstep, instead of a hostile entity. By agreeing to negotiate, they may end up with an autonomous region rather than a total loss of territory.
The arguments for secession are simple: the people do not feel themselves to be citizens of the present state. They feel ethnically or linguistically different. They may feel like second class citizens, or may even point to evidence of repression and human rights abuses. The people will need a good team of lawyers to put this case, because the arguments against secession will be complex and legalistic.
The government usually claims that loss of the region would make it difficult to defend the rest of the country. It may express anxieties about the safety of its ethnic minorities left behind, and guarantees for their property. They may argue that secession will have unwanted effects on the secessionists themselves. The precedent argument will be rolled out: Who will be next to secede? There will be legitimate arguments about who owns and pays for state’s previous investment in infrastructure. Any natural resources in the breakaway region will be a matter of legal argument.
These are all matters susceptible to study, discussion, debate and negotiation. The negotiations may well be difficult and protracted, but discussion and agreement is always preferable in human and financial terms than violent conflict. In the end, it is in the interests of the main state to agree a degree of autonomy rather than to wage a war that results in the end with alienation of territory and people.
Therefore there is clearly a case for the United Nations to set up a framework for discussion and resolution of separatist aspiration, and also to provide diplomatic and logistical help both for areas where separatist conflict is ongoing, and where there is a clear separatist sentiment that has not yet turned to violence. There should be a UN agency that will monitor separatist aspirations, and offer its services at an appropriate moment in the unfolding of separatist aspiration,
FOREIGN INTERVENTION AS A CAUSE OF WAR
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Foreign intervention is a factor in six out of the 21 wars happening at the moment.
1 Israel/Palestine, where the USA supports Israel, and Iran supports Hamas
2 Iraq, where the USA and UK invaded, leading to the present sectarian conflicts
3 Ukraine, where Russia invaded
4 Syria, where Russia, Turkey, Iran, USA and UK are involved
5 Yemen, where Iran and the Saudis are having a proxy war
6 Afghanistan, where there is long history of foreign interference, most recently Russia, USA and UK.
Intervention has a poor record of success. It can be a trigger for wars, It can cause escalation (“mission creep”), and can prolong and intensify civil wars. Factors that cause failure of interventions include vague, ill-defined objectives, long duration, poor execution, lack of local support, and lack of international support.
Arguably, it would be better if the USA abandoned its self-appointed role of world policeman, and handed it back to the United Nations, which since 2005 has had a globally agreed policy of Responsibility to Protect (R2P), introduced as a response to the genocide in Rwanda. This policy has three Pillars:
- An agreement that every state has a responsibility to protect its people
- States pledge to assist each other in discharging their responsibility
- If a state is failing in its responsibility, other states will take collective action
There exists a certain amount of doubt and misgiving about Pillar 3, since it implies a willingness for the UN to engage in military action. At this point the Global Human Rights Index would be helpful as a non-violent means of encouraging all governments to respect human rights.
CONCLUSION
A snapshot of the wars wasting life and resources globally in 2024 shows a number of identifiable causal factors, ranging from religion and authoritarian regimes, down through ethnic rivalries, militias and armed gangs, foreign interventions, secessionism, tailing off into a mixture of causes such as crime, ideology, and resources. While it is extremely difficult to stop a war once it has started, it is relatively easy to prevent wars before they start.
Awareness of the possibility of prevention is key. All too often, there is a nihilistic mindset at work: “There always will be wars. It’s all down to religion/money/resources/human nature”.
In fact, conscious examination of the real causes of wars happening in our time shows up preliminary situations and causes that can be addressed, given the political will.
In this essay, six fairly straightforward measures are put forward - two actions by, believe it or not, theologians, a Global Human Rights Index in the UN to inhibit the formation and development of dictatorships, an Ammunition Control measure using working dogs, the creation of a new section in the UN with a remit to provide negotiations in states where secessionism is on the rise, and extension and strengthening of the Kimberley Process to inhibit the exploitation of resources by armed militias.
Humanity faces a number of serious challenges in the twenty first century - man-made climate change, the loss of biodiversity, many forms of pollution, nuclear war, and conventional war. We face a systemic disorder - each part of this poly-crisis exacerbates the whole. At present, we are all in a kind of Phoney War situation - experiencing a greater or lesser sense of aiming to continue with business as usual, deploying the psychic defence mechanism of denial. Sooner or later the veil of denial will disintegrate, so that the flood of misinformation and disinformation from social and legacy media will become apparent, and we will all begin to become serious about our responsibilities in caring for each other and for the global environment. At that point, part of our task will be to prevent mankind’s occasional lapse into the war psychosis.
APPENDIX
List of the wars taking place in 2024, with their start year, cumulative deaths, and salient causes:
MAJOR WARS
These are defined as conflicts causing more than 10,000 deaths in the current year or previous year. There are six major wars taking place at the moment:
1 Israel Palestine (began 1948, cumulative deaths 240K)
Religion
Separatism
Foreign Interference (support for Israel from the USA, to Hamas from Iran)
Ethnic
Dictators (Netanyahu and Hamas leadership)
2 Invasion of Ukraine (began 2014, cumulative deaths 100-250K)
Dictator (Putin)
Ideology (conflict between alignment with Russia or the EU)
Separatism
3 Mexican drug war (began 2006, Cumulative deaths 127-400K)
Crime, Foreign intervention (War on Drugs)
4 Sudanese Civil War (began 2023, cumulative deaths 100-150K)
Background: Dictator Omar al-Bashir, head of Islamic National Congress Party. Coup 2019 > Military rule > Transitional Sovereignty Council > Coup 2019 > >Popular Resistance > civil war
Genocide in Darfur against ethnic groups (12 tribes, tension between farmers and nomadic herders)
At present (since 2023) war between General al-Burhan and Janjaweed leader Hermedti
Dictatorship (Rebellion against)
Resources
5 Maghreb Insurgency (began 2002, cumulative deaths 70K)
Religion - Islamic State
Myanmar (began 1948, cumulative deaths 28-189K)
Dictatorship
Ethnic
WARS
Defined as 1,000 - 9,999 deaths in past year
Ethiopia Since 2018 Cumulative deaths 600K
Ethnic
Separatism
Syrian Civil war (began 2011 cumulative deaths 600K)
Dictatorship
Religion - Islamic State
Foreign intervention (NATO-Russian)
Armed factions
Sudanese nomadic conflicts (began 2008, cu fatalities 400k)
Ethnic
Resources
Yemen began 2014, cu fatal 380k)
Religious (Sunni-Shia)
Iran-Saudi proxy
Ethnic
Boko Haram (began 2009, cu fat 373k)
Began against Nigeria, now spread to Cameroon, Chad, Niger
Religion - Islamic insurgency
Somali Civil war (began 1991, 1000K)
1991
1,000K
Dictator
Religion al-Shabab (Al-Qaeda)
Iraqi Conflict (began 2003, cu fatalities 1215K)
Dictator
US intervention
Religion (Sunni-Shia) & ISIS
Afghan Conflict (began 1978, cu fatal 2,600K)
Religion (Taliban)
Regional
Foreign interference
Kivu (East Uganda) (began 2004, cu fatal 104K)
Multiple gangs, remains of Rwanda and Congo wars
Resources
Mexican Drug War (began 2006, cu fatal 407K)
War on Drugs
Gang infighting
Rio Favelas (began 2006, cu fatal 14K)
Poverty, drug crime, repressive and corrupt policing, militias
Haiti gang war (began 2020, cu fatal 5.5k)
Gangs, crime
Anglophone crisis Cameroon Nigeria (Began 2017, cu fatal 7K)
Separatist (Anglophone)
Columbian crisis (began 1964, cu fatal 455K)
Left-Right Ideology
R Crime gangs, L FARC
North West Pakistan war (began 2004, cu fatal 61K)
Religion (A-Q) + tribal. Low level insurgency
Nigeria (began 1998, cu fatal 98K)
Religion
“Herder-farmer”
Ethnic
