In terms of the loss of life, the de­struc­tion of in­fra­struc­ture, wide­spread in­volve­ment and im­pact, whether di­rect­ly or not, and the set­ting back of hu­man ad­vance- none of the wars of his­to­ry can com­pare with World Wars I and II.

But the en­gaged wars and po­ten­tial con­flicts on the tip of break­ing in­to full-fledged ex­plo­sions in the first quar­ter of the 21st cen­tu­ry are spread­ing across the world with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of en­gulf­ing mankind in a man­ner like nev­er be­fore.

Fran­cis Fukuya­ma, the Japan­ese-Amer­i­can his­to­ri­an, pre­dict­ed that when the ide­o­log­i­cal con­flict of the East-West na­ture was set­tled at the end of the Cold War, that would sig­nal the end of all ma­jor wars, bar­ring a few skir­mish­es of a trib­al na­ture. What he did not en­vis­age was that the hold­ing and wield­ing of po­lit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and mil­i­tary pow­er, and the sat­is­fac­tion of the per­son­al hubris­tic ego of a spe­cial kind of leader and his as­so­ciates, would fling the world in­to wide­spread tur­moil on a scale not ex­pe­ri­enced be­fore.

What was al­so not per­ceived or vig­or­ous­ly ar­tic­u­lat­ed by Fukuya­ma was that the avarice for ma­te­r­i­al ben­e­fit and the hold­ing and prac­tice of po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic pow­er will re­sult in a spread­ing of war as pre­vi­ous­ly not en­vis­aged. So too that the emer­gence of new wars, dri­ven by tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vances in the mak­ing of the tools of war, will ad­vance and spread in a pre­vi­ous­ly not an­tic­i­pat­ed man­ner and will be dri­ven and en­cour­aged by the hubris­tic de­sires of spe­cif­ic lead­ers of the ma­jor war­ring na­tions.

By the count­ing of the Unit­ed Na­tions, cur­rent ma­jor con­flicts are hap­pen­ing in Ukraine, Gaza, Su­dan, Syr­ia, DRC, and Myan­mar, with less large con­flicts like Iran-Is­rael ten­sions, car­tel vi­o­lence in Mex­i­co/Haiti, and in­sur­gen­cies in Nige­ria/Pak­istan be­ing the core wars of the pe­ri­od. The UN al­so iden­ti­fies the In­ter­na­tion­al In­sti­tute for Strate­gic Stud­ies (IISS), not­ing that it es­ti­mates ap­prox­i­mate­ly 135 con­flicts and ACLED (an in­de­pen­dent or­gan­i­sa­tion which mon­i­tors con­flicts) track­ing thou­sands of vi­o­lent events, in­di­cat­ing an es­ca­la­tion in glob­al in­sta­bil­i­ty.

What is in­struc­tive is in the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the caus­es and trig­gers of these wars, with pro­vi­sion for dif­fer­ences and ma­jor vary­ing caus­es of the wars cov­er­ing strate­gic lo­ca­tions on the world map. The dri­ving forces of to­day’s wars, con­flicts and build­ing wars, I ven­ture to be deeply as­so­ci­at­ed with the ac­cu­mu­la­tion, the hold­ing and the wield­ing of hege­mon­ic eco­nom­ic, po­lit­i­cal and dom­i­neer­ing pow­er.

As a re­sult of that quest to se­cure and hold the pow­er, the pro­duc­tion of weapon­ry through the war-mak­ing arms in­dus­try has grown sig­nif­i­cant­ly. The val­ue of the pro­duc­tion of arms reached US$679 bil­lion for the top 100 arms com­pa­nies in 2024, a 5.9 per cent in­crease from the pre­vi­ous year. With the wars of the past two years to ser­vice with arms, the es­ti­mat­ed fig­ure reach­es US$1 tril­lion, ac­cord­ing to the Stock­holm In­ter­na­tion­al Peace Re­search In­sti­tute. 

The im­por­tant is­sue to be ex­am­ined re­volves around the fac­tors dri­ving the vi­o­lence and the in­hu­man vi­cious­ness of it. There are ob­vi­ous­ly many, but I am se­lect­ing just a few from which there are many de­riv­a­tives that are at the cen­tre of the in­sti­ga­tion of wars.

The de­sire of lead­ers, sup­pos­ed­ly in the in­ter­est of their cit­i­zens, for con­trol over the re­sources of sov­er­eign coun­tries, the ac­qui­si­tion of mil­i­tary might to van­quish all who may seek to de­fend the coun­tries and the na­tive re­sources with­in those states.

The build­ing and dis­play­ing of mil­i­tary hard­ware is sup­posed to be a de­ter­rence to war—for ex­am­ple, if you con­struct a strong and var­ied enough war ma­chin­ery and demon­strate the ar­se­nals, that will fright­en a po­ten­tial op­po­nent in­to sub­mis­sion to your pow­er. Iron­i­cal­ly, the ef­fect has been to in­sti­gate the arms race to an­oth­er lev­el of quan­ti­ty of arms and their de­struc­tive pow­er.

That may be one in­ten­tion of the US pres­i­den­cy in the present in re­la­tion to as­sem­bling its mas­sive war-mak­ing ma­chin­ery in the Caribbean to ter­ri­fy the Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent in­to hav­ing him scut­tling for refuge in an­oth­er coun­try.

There are cer­tain­ly lead­ers who con­struct mil­i­tary hard­ware as a van­i­ty; they have egos to sat­is­fy and the de­sire to show off. That sure­ly must be the case with those coun­tries whose lead­ers as­sem­ble ma­jor mil­i­tary pa­rade dis­plays (Chi­na, Rus­sia, North Ko­rea and the US) to ful­fil the strat­e­gy of the de­ter­rence ef­fect of an es­tab­lished and ex­posed, seem­ing­ly un­con­quer­able war ma­chine de­signed to in­tim­i­date coun­tries in­to sub­ju­ga­tion and obei­sance.

Hav­ing the mil­i­tary hard­ware and, by ex­ten­sion, the pow­er, al­so sat­is­fies an in­ter­nal thirst for pow­er and the abil­i­ty to dis­play it to the world, and this is at the per­son­al lev­el; it’s re­ferred to as be­ing hubris­tic in na­ture, the de­sire of in­di­vid­u­als to ex­er­cise and ad­ver­tise ex­ces­sive pow­er.

But war-mak­ing is not on­ly about po­lit­i­cal and mil­i­tary pow­er, but war dri­ves the economies of the ma­jor pro­duc­ers of arms, to use the clichéd “next lev­el”. As in­di­cat­ed above, the pro­duc­tion of weapons for war swells the economies of states, so too, the hu­man needs re­quired to fight the wars, food, cloth­ing, footwear and much else.

There is an­oth­er el­e­ment of pow­er, the abil­i­ty and right to name the world.

To be con­tin­ued.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er – free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and News Di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona and St Au­gus­tine – In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.