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AP Language and Composition
A War on War
When I was little, I enjoyed playing war with all of my friends. We would break out our
“guns”, “shoot” each other, and “die”. One time, a soldier on the opposite side grabbed me and
called me his “slave”. At first, I was shocked that he would use slavery in such a light-hearted
context, but after we had lost the battle, I began to realize that the ethical jump from war to
slavery was not as great as I imagined.
In reality, war and slavery are not all that different. Both subject human beings to misery
most people cannot imagine. Both cause staggering amounts of casualties. Both have existed as
long as civilization itself. Much the same way slavery was eradicated, certain corrections can be
made in today’s society by making war as intolerable as human trafficking, including an
abolitionist movement, a call for government involvement, and, differing from ending slavery,
the avoidance of a war.
The idea that kick-started a call to end slavery was abolition. In order to end war, there
must first be a call to end war. “All these [abolitionist] activities provoked widespread . . .
responses from [the] North” (Stewart, par. 5). Before the abolitionist movement, the idea that
slavery was unethical was not considered popular until after the movement began. Abolitionists
raised awareness in half the country, which was a step in the right direction for the eventual
riddance of slavery. Just like the idea for the abolition of slavery began with a group of radicals,
the Vietnam War was protested similarly by a group known as the Doves.
“D esire for non-violence;
O pposition to military action;
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V oice in the wilderness;
E yes set on peace” (Suess, par. 3).
The idea of the abolition of war is not an entirely foreign one. During the Vietnam War, this
movement of war protestors called to pull American soldiers out of Vietnam. While that was
localized to the specific war, this idea needs to be expanded upon to encompass war as a whole.
Only until these groups are formed can the next step take place: government attention.
The motion to completely abolish slavery did not come until the northern government
took a stance alongside the abolitionists to end slavery in the South. War cannot be stopped until
world governments decide to settle conflicts without soldier genocide. The Emancipation
Proclamation freed southern slaves, giving the Union an ethical goal to back (“Emancipation
Proclamation”, par. 5). It was this document that made the Civil War about freeing American
slaves. This begs the question: since it took government involvement to free the slaves in
America, what would happen if governments around the world decided to solve conflict by
peaceful negotiations instead of declaring war? This concept has already taken place multiple
times throughout history. “Between 1940 and 1990, only 20% of civil wars ended in
negotiations, . . . by 1998, 21 [wars] ended by peace agreements . . . and 30 had other outcomes
such as cease fire agreements” (Patel 2). The world has only become more efficient in solving
conflicts without war, but the idea of a world without war still needs to be fought for. The
biggest issue: governments taking the “fought for” in the previous sentence literally.
Slavery may never have ended in the United States had the Civil War never taken place.
However, since the idea here is to eliminate war as a whole, the absolute goal is to avoid war.
When it came to the Civil War, there were 3,953,696 slaves in the United States prior to the Civil
War (Epperson, par. 1-3), all of which were freed eventually due to the war. With no disrespect
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towards the lives lost, only 620,000 soldiers died in the Civil War (“Civil War Facts”, par. 5),
barely 16% of the total number of slaves prior to the war. These soldiers lost their lives so the
slaves could live theirs free, but when the result is to end wars rather than end slavery, the
benefits of the Civil War are lost, and the loss of life has the potential to go from bad to
catastrophic. A war to end all wars would include all nations, as all nations have seen war,
marking the outbreak of a third world war with the potential to have an even higher death toll
than the previous two world wars.
Wars can be eradicated much the same way slavery was with certain changes, namely a
need for the public to plant the idea of the unethicality of war, world governments to use
negotiation in place of war, and yet the avoidance of the equivalent of a global civil war. It may
seem impossible to end something that has been happening since civilization has existed, but we
just have to remember that we have done it before. We ended slavery. We can do it again.
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Works Cited
“Civil War Facts.” America’s Civil War Battlefields Civil War Trust. Council on Foreign
Relations, n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2015.
“Emancipation Proclamation.” America’s Civil War Battlefields Civil War Trust. Council on
Foreign Relations, n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2015.
Epperson, James F. “Selected Statistics on Slavery in the United States.” Causes of the Civil
War. N.p., 1 Feb. 1996. Web. 26 Oct. 2015.
Patel, Seema. “Stopping Internal War: Theoretical Frameworks for Multiparty Negotiations.”
Tufts Open Courseware. Tufts University, n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2015.
Stewart, James Brewer. “Abolitionist Movement.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d.
Web. 27 Oct. 2015.
Suess, Kevin J. “Doves and Hawks.” Doves and Hawks. Watson Institute for International
Studies Brown University, n.d. Web 27 Oct. 2015.