Good wars are always few and far between. Most wars are horror stories, leaving societies and nations involved in them in a huge mess. There are wars of national liberation, wars which are directed at pushing oppressors out of occupied countries. Such wars are good and necessary. There are wars which are imposed on nations, with consequences that are felt for years, even decades.
And then there are wars which are not thought through. In this month of June, we are reminded of the Six-Day War which left the geography of the Middle East changed forever. It was a conflict which devastated three Arab countries --- Egypt, Jordan and Syria --- because of bad planning.
When President Gamal Abdel Nasser decided that Israel needed to be brought to its knees through a combined strength of Arab armies, he did not have a strategy in place. In many ways, the leadership in Amman and Damascus were unable to understand what military strategy they were expected to adopt in a war they thought would right all the wrongs inflicted on Palestinians in May 1948 by the creation of Israel.
The Arabs badly lost the June 1967 war. And they lost because they procrastinated, because they lost time in hurling verbal threats at Israel. They baited the Israelis, the result being that Tel Aviv went for pre-emptive action against Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Egypt's air force was destroyed on the ground by a lightning Israeli air force strike. It was proof that in war bluster brings about defeat. Intelligent planning carries the day.
Terrible destruction was inflicted on Amman and Damascus. The Arabs had good chunks of their territory seized by Israel. Egypt lost Sinai, Syria had the Golan Heights go under Israeli occupation and Jordan had its rich West Bank swallowed by Israel. The holy and historic city of Jerusalem, all of it, passed into Israeli control, and remains in that predicament to this day.
Memories of that ruinous war in the Middle East arise in the mind even as we observe a war that is being waged fruitlessly between Russia and Ukraine. In every sense of the meaning, it is a war which not only threatens the stability of Europe but has also had economic ramifications around the world. Given the state of things as they are, it is a war which is being fomented by almost everyone involved in it.
The United States, together with its allies in NATO, and the European Union have clearly convinced themselves that their arming of Ukraine with tanks, armoured vehicles, missiles and jet fighters will lead to battlefield victory for Kyiv. For his part, Vladimir Putin finds himself in a war from which it is impossible for him to extricate his country with his dignity intact.
This war will leave the world worse off than it is now. It reminds us of the circumstances which led to the outbreak of the First World War, a conflict which led to the death of millions in the fields and trenches all over Europe. If the First World War was confined to Europe, the Second World War broadened out to regions beyond Europe. Again, millions perished before Nazi Germany and militaristic Japan were defeated.
Six million Jews were done to death in the concentration camps. France, Poland and indeed the entirety of the European continent was defaced beyond recognition. Two atomic bombs dropped over Japan only intensified people's sufferings. Food grains meant for the famine-stricken people of Bengal were diverted as relief for British soldiers fighting Japan in Asia.
That is the legacy of war in our times. Both world wars broke out in Europe. The Russia-Ukraine war is being waged in Europe. The shock is that there are no nations, no reputed diplomats who can engage in efforts to have the war draw to an end. In effect, the Moscow-Kyiv conflict has been assuming dimensions that are a throwback to 1914 and 1939. Civilians on both sides are the victims, with Russian missiles flying into buildings in Kyiv and Ukrainian drones exploding in Moscow.
The war, unrelated to other contemporary situations, is nevertheless causing new tremors elsewhere. The incident of two warships, one Chinese and the other American, missing each other narrowly, by 150 yards, in the Taiwan Strait, reflects the bellicosity which today dominates ties between Beijing and Washington. At the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, the Chinese defence minister and the US secretary of defence did not have the time or the inclination to speak to each other.
President Biden has spoken of a meeting with President Xi Jinping soon. That will likely not result in any rolling back of the increasing tensions between their two countries. The problem is out there for everyone to observe. The Chinese are unwilling to agree that the South China Sea is an international zone to which other nations have equal and legal access. The Americans are worried that Beijing might sooner or later resort to force to reclaim Taiwan, a territory it regards as a renegade province of China.
The threat of a military conflict between Beijing and Washington is yet far-fetched. But, again, there can hardly be any guarantee that such a conflict, even on a limited scale, will not break out at some point. With all the new Cold War hysteria around us, it is hard to see if there could be any way of bringing it to a close. With the US declining in its global appeal as a power and with China increasingly asserting itself in so many ways around the globe, the danger cannot be ignored. In recent times, with moves by the US and its allies to put a check on China, circumstances have only been exacerbated.
Armed conflict between nations are always issues of grave concern in these times specifically owing to the technological sophistication which has been going on in military production. A spark can ignite a fire, the fire expanding into a conflagration. How then do leaders handle the situation? With concerns growing over the nature of Artificial Intelligence, with fears of where AI might push the world, there is a grave need for diplomacy to be allowed to take centre stage in Europe and across the South China Sea.
Gamal Abdel Nasser certainly had credible motives behind the conflict he provoked in June 1967, though Egypt and its allies were beaten hollow by Levi Eshkol and Moshe Dayan. In Ukraine today, a pointless war is being waged. And Beijing and Washington are eyeball to eyeball, hostility that may soon not let people around the world sleep well at night.
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