A Combat Veteran Sees Irony In U.S. “Peace” Posture Today
- Ken Larson
- 27 minutes ago
- 2 min read
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The irony the United States faces, both within our country and globally, is a product of technology, weapons and power races inside human communication bubbling voids. This is high risk.
Both within our country and abroad, we are struggling to understand one another, having not taken the time to learn about each other’s respective values, cultures and objectives. We have much more in common than we have been led to believe.
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With the finest technological advances ever achieved to enable conversation, our focus has been to overpower one another and not listen and learn about each other to achieve compromise. Technologies like AI and advanced weapons and warfare will never achieve that end. Without effective human learning, understanding and communication these tools may end us.
Our leadership must understand the risks and communicate, bringing about agreement on actions at a level that facilitates learning about each other to develop solutions based on our mutual interests in avoiding impending disasters.
A win/win result is necessary to avoid everyone becoming survival losers.
The tragic lesson we are learning from our ironic posture in the world today is that someone different than us may not have the same value system we possess, but by learning about them we may be able to make distinctions between our values and theirs.
That learning process then could permit us to consider accepting the differences, communicate and move forward on constructive objectives.
When governments and weapons makers treasure the economic windfalls in collective military industrial technology or in political power, while refusing to negotiate, then values on both sides collide.
Soldiers and civilians often suffer and die while livelihoods and economies endure massive debt or risk collapse while other world powers are forced to take sides.
All confects, internal or external, eventually result in negotiated settlements. Avoiding them by learning and negotiation in the first place is the most effective war weapon and by far the least costly in materials, debt and lives.
A look over our shoulders at our recent warfare is useful when viewing our future while making prudent decisions regarding financial and defense security. Every citizen from the individual voter to the politician must consider the risks and the opportunities to avoid the risks.
Effective negotiation must involve learning the other party’s values, not simply the perceived threat they represent to us because we do not know them.
From the neighborhood to the boardroom, from the Statehouse to the Congress and the White House, we would do well to learn more about those different from us before we fight.
The way forward lies in developing a mutual understanding of our respective values and cultures in lieu of conflict, internal or external, using diplomacy and negotiation to save lives and economies.
Nations are evolving technological tools for communication and war fighting at a startling pace. Our diplomacy, and negotiation must keep pace by using those tools with communicative, knowledgeable leadership to keep the peace.
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