Knowledge Partner
Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Diplomatist
When the war ended in
Libya, amidst all the smoke
and the rubble lay one
more discredited no@on,
that of going to war in the
name of peace.
democracy is to its own voters and legislators. The imposition of its values
on others is, indeed, not its business.
things for angelic purposes is either
naïve, or cynical, or both.
This is why the only true
warriors for peace are United
Na*ons peacekeepers, whose job is
to prevent the recurrence of
conflict, rather than to engage in
conflict in the name of ending it.
When the war ended in Libya, amidst all the smoke and the rubble lay
one more discredited no*on, that of going to war in the name of peace.
It doesn’t help, of course, that such aQempts at imposi*on have ojen gone
awry, as the years of chaos in Iraq ajer the American military triumph in
2003 demonstrated. War creates casual*es. Ojen these exceed the
beneficiaries; it has only been a few decades since an American general so
fatuously declared in Vietnam that ‘it was necessary to destroy the village in
order to save it’. If you want peace, you must prepare for war—only in order
not to have to go to war. Once you do, peace is no longer possible; the logic
of war renders the very idea absurd, as we are seeing every day in Libya. The
French philosopher Blaise Pascal remarked, centuries ago, that ‘he who
would act the angel, acts the beast.’ To pretend that angels must do beastly
This essay has been taken from the author's book, India Shastra, first
published in 2015. The author grants The DiplomaLst the right to re-publish
this essay in their magazine's 2017 annual ediLon.
Image 39: The United NaLons Millennium Summit brought together 149 Heads of
State and Government and high-ranking officials from over 40 other countries.
67