Every pageant princess since the dawn of time has spouted off that she would like nothing more than to live on a planet with world peace, but world peace isn’t all that great of an idea. In fact, it’s a terrible idea. For the purposes of this analysis, let’s go textbook with this and say that “world peace is an ideal of freedom, peace, and happiness among and within all nations and/or people. It is an idea of planetary non-violence by which nations willingly cooperate, either voluntarily or by virtue of a system of governance that prevents warfare.” Sound charming, but the effects of world peace would be completely disastrous.
1. Massive Unemployment: In the United States alone, there are currently about 2.7 million people employed within the military, both active and reserve. The military is the US’s largest jobs provider. Presumably in order to obtain world peace these individuals would be employed briefly in the destruction and dismantling of all the nations guns, nukes, war ships, planes, military instillations and the like, but after that process is done, there will be at least half that number, the active personnel, in the US alone who are completely without employment and or benefits. How and where would we employ 1.4 million people on top of the already high unemployment rate we currently have? And that’s just in the US. The problem becomes worse in other smaller poorer nations where citizens join the military because it is often the only place in which their government or their nation provides any sort of financial benefit for families to live upon.
2. Living Toll Rises/Overpopulation: Globally about 378,000 people die due to war per year, and about 1,000 people die per day from small arms alone. Just by virtue of world peace, the population would automatically begin to increase exponentially. It is a well-documented fact that in peace times, the population swells. Without that pesky killing going on, there’s not much to do but get it on apparently. Baby Boom anyone? So we now have 1.4 million extra people coming home and getting it on (and that’s just in the US) and creating a population crisis which then creates a massive shortage in our resources. Housing, food shortages, school overpopulation, etc. which will drive the price of goods and services up dramatically to try to curb the use of our resources creating a financial burden for most of the world not to mention the quick destruction of the world’s natural resources.
3. Famine and Disease: Even with the exclusion of any weaponry, physical violence will be on the rise as the fight for resources increases dramatically. You cannot inject a million people or however many into a populous, plus the new baby boomers, and expect peace within a nation as resources dwindle. With space now at a premium, much the way we see in Japan today, you will see more and more outbreaks of disease and an increase in famine as people just cannot afford to buy food and pay for the now premium resources and space available to live.
4. A Boon in Corrupt Governments: Now that all nations would be at peace, essentially we’d be trusting that nations could now peacefully rule their own people without interference from other nations, but this would have disastrous consequences on already corrupt nations. As much as I or anyone else can rally against war and violence, sometimes throughout history it has been proven the only way for either the people of said corrupt nations or outside nations to enforce change, peace, or rid their nation of overt violence and corruption, is through war. World peace simply means, countries aren’t warring with each other but that doesn’t mean they still can’t do what they’ve always done to their own nation. Just because we’ve rid the world of guns and weapons of mass destruction doesn’t mean we’ve rid the world of all violence. Hands, tools, anything can be used to subdue, torture, hunt and capture anyone. Things like surveillance would increase in an attempt to strong hold a people, kidnappings would increase. With peace will come this idea that we must increase the amount of jail and be even more diligent with those actually committing crimes or those that will be presumed to be committing crimes all for the benefit of peace. It will be these nations biggest propaganda campaigns to date and they will be effective because no one will be coming to help these people. It would essentially be impossible if other nations intend to uphold the idea of world peace which would be a frightening proposition.
5. An Explosion in Other Crimes: Time and freedom in theory are wonderful, but with a swelling unemployment and population rate, the fight for resources, a baby boom, and with countries suffocating their own nations through pre-existing corruption, there must be a place for this extra bad energy to go, and those that have no desire to maintain peace, those individuals who have always existed, will still exist and seek out other ways by which to obtain power, control, and violence over others. Cyber hacking, extortion, exploitation, theft, a rise in gangs, just to name a few, would increase. Remember world peace would only stop you from warring against other nations. It doesn’t solve the problems within.
Unfortunately we need war and death to control our current population, to stave off disease to some degree, to employ individuals and provide benefits, and to prevent another baby boom on our already strained planetary resources. War and a lack of world peace is quite literally a necessary evil. I do think at one point in our history world peace could have indeed been possible, but today our world history, previous wars, the strain on our population, the current level of world corruption, and our interconnectedness actually have had unforseen negative consequences on the ability to obtain a planet of peace.
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