The weapons of our warfare
A few years ago, I visited an archeological museum, the type that are found all over Europe, with glass cases featuring samples of tools from ancient times, gathering dust, under the hot lights of the display cabinets. The museum featured the usual suspects — broken pottery bowls, jewellery used to adorn and display wealth, knives made of flint. I paused for a moment, to reflect on the knives and the spears. Rudimentary weapons, created for man to defend himself, or to inflict harm on another. The only thing that seemed to separate centuries of civilization was that the weapons we used to annihilate another person had gotten more sophisticated. Yet, conflict itself has not been solved. If anything, it is worse. Our capacity to destroy another human being has just become even more abominable. Instead of flint knives, we have the atomic bomb, nuclear war, stealth fighters, mass starvation and the carpet bombing of entire countries. If the mark of civilization is solely in the sophistication of it’s weapons, human nature has not progressed. One. Little. Bit.
Surely a truly advanced civilization should be solving for the end of conflict in all its forms, not ever greater ways to inflict harm on another human being?
We’ve become a world that believes that we will all be saved by the next innovation in technology or AI. ‘AI will change the world’ is the rallying cry of the Silicon Valley entrepreneur (who, naturally, stands to make a lot of money from ‘saving’ the world in this way). But, as the flint knives from ancient times reminds us, technological sophistication cannot and will not solve the world’s problems if we are not asking ourselves the deeper questions. If we don’t respect our planet and put in place truly regenerative systems, an app is not going to solve climate change. If we don’t understand the imbalances that contribute to disease, AI solving one disease will never prevent others from emerging. If we haven’t truly solved for how and why conflict happens in the first place, there can be no true progress in our global peace and security.
Our global order is predicated on who has the biggest weapons.
We attribute power to the USA because of the sophistication of it’s military might. Power is accorded to those who have the capacity to destroy. And the rest of us live in fear. A country supposedly so advanced technologically, economically and militarily, is considered the world’s number one superpower. But the US is a country that cannot even feed all its people. Where drug addicts lie on the streets of affluent neighbourhoods, sitting on the doorsteps of the richest people in the world. Where a person of colour cannot even leave their house without fearing for their life. Where your children are at risk of being shot, just for going to school. And where it’s supposed commitment to democracy and freedom has littered the world with decades of conflict and colonialism.
We have also been taught to fear the rise of China and other emerging powers and like to make an enemy of that which we fear. Scant attention is paid to the fact that China, like no other country in the history of the world, certainly not the US, has succeeded in feeding and clothing such a large population, ensuring their basic needs are met, and achieving high levels of literacy and education at the same time. And with citizens with a far more sophisticated awareness and understanding of the world than that found in the US. What qualifies success in global leadership exactly?
I have written previously of the moral corruption of the US and I don’t need to write more about that here. But I am interested in asking the question of what it would mean for our world if leadership was accorded to how we actually invested in solving for the real problems our world faces? Not more sophisticated weaponry and the desire to dominate through fear, but leadership that invests in human potential and our capacity to create, rather than destroy. What if the ‘sophistication’ and advancement of our societies was predicated on the degree to which you could truly empower the potential of your people? And what would it mean if we, as citizens, had had enough of power being defined by economic and military might, and demanded leaders who prioritised the empowerment of their people, regenerating our planet and truly putting in place the freedom and equality of opportunity that democracy was supposed to stand for in the first place? What would our world look like if we realised that how we think and behave is actually the hallmark of our sophistication as individuals and communities, and then actually invested in the tools to make that happen? What would it mean if we invested properly in education, the arts and social justice, instead of building up our military, if we put down our weapons and actually talked and truly listened to each other?
The zero-sum game of global leaders played out as little boys fighting in the playground needs to stop. And we need to realise a global world order where power is conferred on those who truly raise up and build, not those who tear down and destroy.
Caroline Watson is the founder of The Centre for the Arts and Global Leadership, and a disruptive thinker, speaker and writer on issues of global governance and leadership.
