War Making is an Organised Crime in International Politics

War Making is an Organised Crime in International Politics
July 9, 2022, 2:38 pm

Jwan Dibo

When war becomes the reality in a specific area of the world, then the question arises: Was it possible to avoid the war scenario and replace it with dialogue and peace? The answer briefly is no. The reason is that the outbreak of wars in peripheries, not in centres, serves the agendas and policies of the great powers, whether they are directly or indirectly involved. While the opposite alternative, that is, peace, stability, and prosperity does not serve the great power plans.

For the great powers, it is a purely arithmetic process subject to profit and loss calculations. Put differently, if the profits of the great powers from wars that take place far from their lands are much more than peace and stability, as is the case in Ukraine, then this means yes to the eruption and perpetuation of wars and no to the opposite, that is, negotiations, peace, and stability.

Therefore, the history of foreign policy of the great powers, especially the United States, can be summarised as follows: Firstly, managing the existing international and regional crises and preventing them from being settled as much as possible in a manner consistent with interests of the great powers. Secondly, creating new crises under the supervision of the great powers or their local agents to ensure profit, exploitation, and domination.

In this context, Charles Tilly, the American sociologist says that “In these circumstances, war became the normal condition of the international system of states and the normal means of defending or enhancing a position within the system.” This is what led Tilly to conclude that violence and its monopoly are the first building blocks for the emergence of the modern nation-state in Europe, not social contract, ideas, and philosophies. Tilly explains that the birth of the modern nation-state in Europe does not differ much from how organised crime gangs emerged and operated. Hence, he states that "War made the state, and the state made war."

The bleak conclusion here is that it is impossible to envisage a world without wars, or that it is impossible to conceive the great powers not rushing to fabricate wars. The reason in this case is that wars become a mainstay for the great powers at the international and regional levels to achieve the purposes of exploitation, profit, and control. British scholar Joseph John Thompson says, “Humanity has never sought peace, but an armistice between two wars.”

The great powers cannot live without wars and crises, whether in the peripheries or in the outskirts of the centres, or even within the opposing great powers. The reason is that wars are the superpowers' fuel for survival and continuity. In addition, the main task assigned to the great powers is to create crises and wars, not to solve them as they try to deceive the world through misleading media. The great powers themselves did not become great until they invaded, occupied, killed, plundered, burned, and annihilated, that is, became great at the expense of the misery and tragedies of others. What is more hideous than all this is that the wars made by the great powers turn into an organised and legitimate crime according to the so-called international law.