Nobody has ever won a war

As of Friday, the war in Ukraine has been going on for one year. It seems to me this is the first war of its kind – a World War fought within to a single country.

I call it a “world war” because of the number of countries involved. NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, currently has 30 member nations. And they’re all backing Ukraine, one way or another.

Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty requires signatories to agree: “An armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all … if such an armed attack occurs, each of them … will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking … such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force …”

Now, it should be noted that Ukraine is not a member of NATO, so the 30 members are not contractually obligated to defend it. But U.S. President Joe Biden made clear that this is HIS war against Russia, and he will not back down.

Theoretically, the other side consists only of Russia. But Iran is shipping weaponry to the Russian side, the same way the U.S. feeds weapons to Ukrainian forces. Belorussia supports Russia. Russia may be tapping the central Asian countries for foot soldiers. And no one knows what China might be doing.

That’s as many countries as were involved in either of the two official World Wars.

The First World War was fought mostly among NATO countries, but that was still enough to call it a “world war.”

World War II spread more widely, thanks to Japan’s involvement in the Pacific and south-east Asia. But many of the European countries were non-combatants, having been conquered and subdued by Germany.

The current war, it seems to me, is Vladimir Putin’s retaliation for Ukraine electing a media comedian as president, replacing of Petro Poroshenko, an oligarch more sympathetic to Putin.

Ukraine elected Volodomyr Zelenskyy instead. They might as well have smacked Putin in the face with a cream pie. Putin doesn’t take humiliation lightly. So now we have a world war taking place within defined boundaries. It’s like confining the Hatfields and the McCoy’s to a sandbox.

So far, everyone but Ukraine has gotten off scot free. Russia has not had a single war death on Russian soil. Economic sanctions yes. But the effect on Russian residents has been far different from Hitler’s midwinter march across central Russia.

The U.S., similarly, has not lost a single soldier. Indeed, until the Sept. 11 blitzing of the World Trade Center, war has not killed a single U.S. citizen on its own soil since the war of 1812.

Nor have any other NATO allies been hit directly.

But the Ukrainian sandbox looks worse than Turkey after two earthquakes.

It makes me wonder why nations resort to war, anyway.

No one ever wins a war. There are always unnecessary deaths. Destruction of property. Loss of food production.

So who actually benefits from a war? Short answer – no one.

(Except former General/President Eisenhower’s “military/industrial complex.”)

The winning leader claims bragging rights – at the price of thousands of his loyal citizens. The losing leader faces humiliation at best, suicide or execution at worst.

The lands over which the battles were fought will take generations to recover.

Nature itself may never recover. It will simply find a way to work around the devastation.

Both history and experience tell us that war is a dumb, stupid, thoughtless way to solve problems. And yet nations keep resorting to wars to settle disputes.

There have been some remarkably silly wars. In 1739, the British waged war against Spain, ostensibly over Spain cutting off the ear of British trader Robert Jenkins, eight years before. As recently as 1925, Greece and Bulgari went to war over a Greek soldier’s dog that strayed into Bulgarian territory.

Great or small, righteous or petty, wars never solve problems. They just bury animosities a little deeper.

Some years ago, I researched several so-called Peace Institutes. I found only one that actually studied peace. The rest all studied wars: how they started, how they were fought, with what weapons and tactics, what mistakes were made …”

As if you could create peace by studying war. Which makes as much sense as studying porn to promote chastity.

It should be obvious that war is never the answer.

Never.