War and militarism have profound adverse consequences on women and children.

For Gandhi, greed led to violence, violence to militarism, militarism to war, and war to annihilation. His philosophy of non violence was aimed at the most basic form of human aggression the appetite for more than one s share.

It was regrettable that the other negotiating party had preferred warmongering and incitement of anti Armenian hatred, rather than serious efforts to find a negotiated solution to the conflict.

After all, genuine leadership cannot come from raw power, but only from other states consent or tacit acceptance. If leadership could be built on brute force, schoolyard bullies would be class presidents.

Second, unlike many other small countries, Mauritius has decided that most military spending is a waste. The US need not go as far just a fraction of the money that America spends on weapons that don t work against enemies that don t exist would go a long way toward creating a more humane society, including provision of health care and education to those who cannot afford them.

The rich will try to use their power to commandeer more land, more water, and more energy for themselves, and many will support violent means to do so, if necessary. The US has already followed a strategy of militarization in the Middle East in the naïve hope that such an approach can ensure secure energy supplies.

But America s real strength, more than its military and economic power, is its soft power, its moral authority. And this, too, was weakened as the US violated basic human rights like habeas corpus and the right not to be tortured, its longstanding commitment to international law was called into question.

The Arab public overwhelmingly regards Israel as an alien and illegitimate entity imposed by force on Palestinian land with Western support. If this perception was channeled democratically and allowed to shape Arab countries policies toward Israel, any peace negotiations would be even more complicated than they are now.

During the Middle Ages, sports were regularly forbidden in England because they came at the expense of military training. After France s defeat by Bismarck s Germany in the Franco Prussian War, Baron Pierre de Coubertin (who re launched the Olympic Games a few decades later) recommended a renewed national emphasis on sport, which by this point was seen as a form of military preparation.