How a Forgotten Battle Created a More Peaceful World

The included descriptions of the battle’s aftermath are haunting.

As much as movies and documentaries usually reflect the horrors of combat itself, they rarely deal with the aftermath - not lights out in an adrenaline fueled moment, but lying for hours in a random patch of land no longer having a mouth, trying to cry for help knowing that no one will come until dying from exposure and maggots.

This was the reality for millions of young people; still is. Let’s hope we never see it firsthand.

Based on the title, I thought this was an article about The Kalinga War, a war so bloody it moved the Emperor Ashoka to embrace non-violence and spread Buddhism throughout Asia.

Interesting story which I didn't know. However, the author perspective is a bit flawed:

But the world did get more peaceful. There was no World War III, and countries at least had to pay lip service to these universal values of peace and human rights.

The world didn't really get more peaceful. Some nations which used to wage wars between themselves did not anymore after World War II (excluding "incidents" like Belgrade bombing). This doesn't diminish the rest of the article at all, if anything calls for more rules and diplomacy preventing war.

What stuck with me most is how fragile that whole structure still is. We take for granted that countries will at least pretend to follow international norms, but that's largely because a handful of idealists laid the groundwork and others kept it alive.

Yes, where would we be without the rules-based international order? Perhaps we would be watching videos every day of children blown apart by weapons of war.

"You who is afraid of wars

Tell me where does peace come from"

Ait Menguellet, Kabyle poet and singer.

"autoritarian regimes"

"Rules based international order"

This guy has the mind so brainwashed by western media talking points he cannot even understand the propaganda he cheerfully chews on.

Poor innocent 'rules based' order :(. I am sure the "rules based international order" prevented the USA from invading Iraq based on lies, right? Oh wait, the rules didnt work that time. But at least they are preventing Israel of massacring thousands of babies and toddlers in Gaza! Wait, also no. But at least they stopped the USA from deploying a mass surveillance system to spy on every citizen of the world, like Snowden revealed. Uhm, also no. The "rules based international order" is for suckers.

It's ironic that in my city there's a bridge called Solferino which was blown up by nazis retreating from pisa in 1944 (it was eventually built again)

"International law is a funny thing. Within a country, lines of authority are clear. The government makes laws, it has agencies that enforce them, and the penalties for violating the laws are clear. But, in our modern system of sovereign states, no authority sits above the nation. Each country is sovereign. International laws are, therefore, more fragile, because they require the consent of everybody involved to keep them going."

This was the purpose of the imperium, not necessarily in the narrow sense of empire we often have in mind, but as a kind of order (e.g. the HRE).

In our case, the United States as hegemon has played the role of the global imperium over much of the world over the last few decades, and over a good chunk of the world since WWII. The reigning doctrine of the American empire has been liberalism (which explains why many if not most Americans/Westerners treat liberalism as a "neutral" position; it is the water we swim in). It explains why the US has intervened in numerous distant conflicts, engaged in countless "nation building" campaigns aimed at spreading liberal democracy around the world, and successfully influenced peoples worldwide through its film and media. These were all intended to preserve and enlarge the liberal imperium.

Now that liberalism has devoured and corroded the Protestant mother that held it together, and escaped the containment it created - in large part through the infusion of liberalism into Protestant doctrine - we are witnessing the fullness of the tensions inherent in liberalism playing out in the human psyche and society and unraveling liberalism and the liberal order. The shape of the emerging postliberal order is uncertain. The noisiest contenders seem to be an increasingly overt tyrannical liberalism and fascism, though a less conspicuous movement aiming to return to pre-liberal classical traditions is also in play.

The conclusion of the article is flawed.

The article could have been a nice recollection of a battle with a wonderful, long-lasting effect, yet unknown to most people - generally speaking, I mean... you'll surely have studied it if you grow up in the countries around the Alps.

But the conclusion is useless and wrong:

> the international order that diplomats have painstakingly built

Diplomats did not build anything, apart for those cases where the peoples had already decided they didn't want to go to war with one another.

In every other situation, it was the military R&D that shaped the current world order. Putin, Jong-un, and Khamenei still ruling their countries, while Gaddafi and Saddam are no more, does not let any chance of being misinterpreted: is you have nuclear weapons, you can be an a**; if you don't have them, you can only choose between complying with civil manners or being obliterated.