I have been writing about the effects of war for awhile now.

I have been warning that strife in other parts of the world has major affects on us all. Hate to say I told you so, but…

Here’s a perfect example. The headline reads ’10,000 refugees from Burundi coming to U.S.’

Hmmm…

Many of these folks fled their homeland as long ago as 1972. What were they fleeing?

Civil war.

They were being slaughtered in Burundi, so they fled to neighboring African nations. Those nations could not support them, so the UN set up a refugee camp for them in Tanzania.

Guess what?

Tanzania, also an underdeveloped nation, could not support them. So, for the past 34 years they’ve been in this camp, waiting for peace to return to their homeland. It did, last year, when the U.N. was finally able to negotiate a peace agreement. Still, and rightfully so, these Hutu tribe expatriates don’t feel safe returning to Burundi. After all, the Tutsi tribe was killing them by the tens of thousands. And, the Hutu were the majority!

Now, while it’s true that some Hutu will stay in the U.S., it’s almost a certainty that others will spread across the globe. And, they will need social services, healthcare, etc. until they are able to sustain themselves in their new homelands.

I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but for this cause I will. WAR ON PLANET EARTH MUST END. IT’S A PROBLEM THAT HURTS US ALL. Not because immigration is a bad thing. It’s not—it’s an important component of how we evolve as a species. The U.S. was built on immigration, and is generally not the worse off for it.

If you’ve read my profile, you know that my background is in business. So I’ll give you three business reasons why war should end (there are dozens of others, though):

1) It causes immigration for the wrong reasons. I’m sure that many people have left their homelands, their businesses, and their homes behind with disdain. It’s not easy to start over in a new country. Billions in worldwide revenue is lost every year that a war persists, due to the economic impoverishment a war-torn country (and its people) suffers. Its natural resources cannot be protected, or traded. And, freedom to trade goods is the cornerstone of our subsistence.

2) It puts added pressure on the world economy. There is a learning curve for most war immigrants—they need to learn a new language, a new culture, find schooling for their children, train for employment, etc. Developed countries usually fund this curve via taxation. More expenditures, higher taxes. And, let’s not forget the costs of waging war. Terrorists have made that a reality of life. Their war is global—explosion in London today, Tel Aviv tomorrow, Paris next week. How many additional police officers, bureaus and security personnel are there in your neck of the woods as compared to 10 years ago?

3) Finally, it skews our planet’s resources. Is there a new fuel source in Burundi? Maybe large quantities of a valuable mineral or ore? Could Bosnia have been the next ‘hot’ tourist spot? Could we have cured cancer with the money we’ve spent on war? And, what about the human resources lost, i.e., how many potential doctors, lawyers, nurses, teachers, musicians, politicians, chemists, social workers, economists, physicists, engineers, etc. have we lost to war?

I know you’re probably thinking, “Well, what can we do? This has been going for generations in some of these countries—they’ll never change. And, politicians say that they’ll change things, but then after they’re elected, we go right back to the same old thing. Some things should be left in the hands of fate, or God. It’s just too big for us.”

Consider this. When the world was educated about the impact of a build-up of nuclear weapons on our planet, we became committed. And, public opinion changed, over a decade or so, from the thought that western nations needed to build up nukes, to one that was ‘anti-nuke’. It was only too obvious, when we learned that we had the firepower to blow up the Earth 40 times, that if we used it, we’d get the enemy, but also kill ourselves in the process.

Committing ourselves to end war is about accepting one simple fact as truth—the biggest cost of war is the opportunities to advance that it robs us of as a species.

Let me give you another example. Planet Earth sits inside the Milky Way galaxy. Every day, Earth telescopes are finding that the Universe is much larger than any of us had imagined—and still expanding. So, it’s highly unlikely that we are the sole intelligent life form out there. To see us from deep space is difficult—the Milky Way appears as a gaseous cloud. Upon close examination though, an extraterrestrial visitor could find our solar system, and that the third planet from the Sun in that system is teeming with life.

It doesn’t really matter if the visitors are benevolent or malicious at that point. In either case, we probably couldn’t defend ourselves well, because we chose to divert resources away from advancing our species (so that we find them before they find us, for example), and to fight each other over ‘stuff’.

If we find our planet surrounded by a fleet of extraterrestrials, whether we like it or not, we’re all in the same boat, regardless of what nation we reside in. And, if they’re smart enough to find us—they’re probably smart enough to destroy us.

"No," you say. "This is fantasy!"

Why? Is there any good reason why extraterrestrials can’t visit us tomorrow? How do we know they haven’t already? How do we know that we aren’t already being watched?

Further, why should we assume that the human race can’t be annihilated? Who would care? I suspect that we add little value to the universe—we know too little about it. We could become extinct like the dinosaur, with about the same impact. Relics buried for some other species to discover—one that, at that time, calls Earth home. Evolution will continue, whether we're here to see it or not.

As we send probes deeper into space, for purposes of ‘exploration’, we must be prepared for the inevitability that we will alert another species that we exist. Hopefully, that will be a long time away, and by that time, we will have learned to resolve conflict without destroying ourselves and our resources via war.

My goal in this article is to convince you of this---there are peaceful, yet effective, methods of resolving conflict. We use them every day in the office, with our children, and with our friends. Believe it or not, they also work among nations.

"But, war has a lot of economics associated with it," you say. "And, the only way to stop some warmongers is to defeat them in armed combat."

Yes, but for a long time we held those same beliefs about nuclear armament. We overcame that, armed with knowledge, patience and persistence. Life went on. And, just like the Hutu and other cultures that will expand across the globe, humankind will adapt to life without war. We’ll even teach our children to avoid it. And, when we get the occasional problematic nation, we’ll learn to peacefully disarm it so that our goals of furthering ourselves as a species are not threatened--

That is, if we actively choose to support peace on our planet.

If not, I suppose we can simply wait until a nuke gets into the hands of a terrorist, or some alien race discovers us.

Which one of you volunteers to be the one whose final resting place displays your skeleton along with the sign, “Species Human, Extinct”?

Demand peace in our world.

See you at the top!
Wendi