Assignment 9- Sarah Clark- the necessity of war (look at yugoslavia)

Yes, there is a time for war. Although compromise and diplomacy are obviously preferred, it is naive to think that war is completely avoidable. People look to Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and President Eisenhower as “great men.” Neville Chamberlain is no hero: he foolishly declared “Peace in our time” in 1938, he chased after appeasement as a viable form of foreign policy, he expected the Munich Agreement, where he attempted to satiate Hitler with the Sudetenland, to be enough for a land-hungry and bloodthirsty fascist. To an extent, compromise is the right solution, but we must understand when it is no longer realistic.

War is never necessarily morally right. Innocent men, fighting for their respective countries, and dying for a cause that seems to get lost along the way is not right. However, when compromise fails, humans (myself included) are lost on what to do next. War is the next logical step, as it has been for all of history.

Although countries never have to go to war, I do believe countries have responsibilities to go to war. For example, when Milosevic was attempted to ethnically cleanse Yugoslavia of Bosnian Muslims, was NATO supposed to sit idly by? No. When human rights are being infringed upon, war is necessary, and countries in power are responsible for protecting those rights.

As for alternatives to war, I have yet to figure that out. For now, I suppose, I am satisfied with compromising until compromising is no longer possible. Although I wish it weren’t the case, at a certain point, war is the only viable option.