Though it has been years since a major regional conflict has threatened the fragile balance of peace that exists today, the horrors of war and the memories and lessons that were the bitter fruits of the acts of monstrosity must not be forgotten. It is true that with the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the subsequent end to the Cold War that had more than once threatened to throw the world back into chaos, the world has become more peaceful and the foundations for a lasting peace have been set in stone. However, the frequent occurrence of minor regional hostilities such as in Bosnia and Kuwait serve as constant reminders that the vengeful ghost of war still poses a threat to our peaceful survival, and affirms the fact that in a war, that are no winners only losers.
The act of war, as many perceive, is the act of hostility between two factions that develops with explosive force into a full scale conflict, with both sides pouring their entire resources into attaining victory by crushing the enemy in a military campaign.
Map of Cold-War era Europe and the Near East showi...
English: Richard Nixon meets Leonid Brezhnev June ...
English: US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Gen...The violent and militaristic nature of war itself ensures that the spilling of blood and loss to human life is inevitable. The death count for a war that embroils the entire globe may run into the millions as shown in World War Two, where more than twenty million out of a population of just over a hundred million died in Russia. The method of presentation of those figures lulls us into the deadly tendency to write off these figures as being merely "statistics", but it must not be forgotten by mankind that each and every single one of the "statistics" represents a precious human life, forcibly taken away by the simple declaration of war.
In any war,