Daniel Henninger questions whether terrorists will destroy civilization in the October 18, 2002 Wall Street Journal. While reading it, I pondered whether war is simply a natural state of the human condition.

I read in the 1973 Guinness Book of World Records that the world has experienced a total of 14 days of total peace since the beginning of recorded history. The Guinness book defined total peace as being when no wars between countries or civil wars within countries occurred anywhere on the entire planet at the same time. Therefore, if you add up the all the minutes, hours, and days where the entire planet did not experience any wars you arrive at 14 days total. There is always some conflagration ongoing somewhere on our planet.

You cannot stop war. The United Nations cannot stop war. Seven
hundred wars and civil wars occurred worldwide following the UN chartering conference on October 24, 1945 was hosted by Alger Hiss. War is simply a natural state of the human condition. The United Nations has a chance to follow the United States’ lead in this war on terrorism or risk becoming irrelevant.

All we can reasonably expect are periods of relative peace such as the Pax Britannica or the Pax Romana. These periods of relative peace resulted from one hegemonic power or worldwide power bartering and/or enforcing relative peace between nations. The balance of power model anchored the period of recent world history known as Pax Britannica.

This war on terrorism is a new permutation of an old problem. This is not war waged directly between warring nations; instead, non-sovereign terrorist groups are waging war against sovereign nations supported by, or conveniently ignored by, sympathetic governments. Saddam Hussein heads one such sympathetic government. Terrorists cannot operate outside all sovereign territory. They must exist within some country or territory governed by a sovereign government. And we must hit any government sponsoring terrorism hard militarily, economically or politically.

That is why Saddam Hussein must go. We cannot allow terrorists to win; allowing them to win will spell the end of western civilization.

Today’s terrorists resort to terrorism realizing they cannot successfully confront the United States, Israel, and other nations in the field of battle. They instead believe they can accomplish their political ends through terrorism. Nobody else can defeat terrorism if we do not. If terrorists win then terrorist bombings become worldwide quotidian events. Nobody will be safe anywhere.

I doubt the United Nations will do more than follow. Resolution of this war on terrorism requires the leadership of a strong world power. That is the United States.