Today the lecture was on the Great War which was held from 2014 till 2018. Countries around the world got involved in the war and many lives, properties and infrastructures were destroyed. The world has never seen such destruction before the Great War. That is why it is called “The Great War.” The world not only just brought into the affected regions destruction and losses, but it also originated few good impacts which can be described as using gas as weapons, military aviation, beginning of air-traffic control, use of primitive drones and submarines. In the later wars such as WWII, and inter-country wars such as Iraq-Kuwait war and Afghanistan-US war, we have seen use of these drones and submarines which can target the enemies from its origin point and can destroy it without any mistake. After the invention of airplanes in 1903, it was the first show of aircrafts at war.
Now, let us go back to the previous discussion. The worldwide destruction and negative consequence of The Great War created the League of Nations in 1920. During the war, not only countries involved directly were affected, but also other colonized and third world countries were affected physically and financially. While the League of Nations were founded not every countries joined them. For example, U.S. and Germany stayed out of being members of the organization. It was not stable for long time. After two decades, in 1941 the League of Nations collapsed and in 1941 the whole world saw another “Great” war, the World War II. The amount of destruction and losses were two to three times of the previous year in this war. Therefore, again the world realized the necessity to form another global organization. This time the policy was different. Five super powers of that time formed the Security Council of United Nations and other remained general members. Gradually, other 15 countries joined the UN and currently the number of member countries is 193.
At the next session, students and lectures participated in a question and answer session which was conducted by our Deputy Vice Chancellor. Some significant questions were,
1. Is war avoidable and is permanent peace achievable?
2. How do we create a world without wars? And
3. Distinguish between peace-keeping, peace-making and peace-building?
Answer to the first and second question would be, in my point of view, yes, war is avoidable and permanent peace can be achieved by establishing peace-bond among the nations, understanding others’ cultures, respecting others’ customs and sharing actions globally. Furthermore, I would say (question 3), peace keeping is to maintain the peace which has already been established; peace-making is the establishment of peace; and peace-building is a sustainable peace-making process. Peace keeping is the most difficult part to maintain, as we have seen many countries after liberation even again got involved in wars. Peace-making though is not very easy, but can be obtained through signing deal and treaty. Peace-building needs the attention, interest and action from the nations around the world which nations through UN and other global organizations are trying to do.