[MUSIC].

In this program I would like to think with

you about
conditions for war and peace.
This is a question
that has plagued the thoughts of many
thinkers in
the past.
War, of course, is a terrible destruction.
So many people die.
And so many peoples' living are uprooted.
And therefore, it is only legitimate to
think that
wars of all kinds should be eliminated
from the Earth.
But when it comes to the measures for
peace, what we
need to prevent warfare, then suddenly,
the whole discussion becomes so
complicated.
Like, for example, one way to avoid war
would be to have a strong military and
show force to ones neighbors, so that you
would not be attacked so easily.
The other extreme would be to eliminate
all possession of arms,
that weapons should disappear from the
earth, so that people can enjoy peace.
And as you can see, thinking about
condition
of war and peace is an extremely
controversial manner,
matter that does not allow easy answers.
And that is exactly what I want to do in
this course.
Instead of providing you answers, I want
you, I want to
provoke your ideas, your reactions, your
internal
in-, in-, internal difficulty in facing
the problems.
Let's start
from the most easy and the most difficult
question.
Can war be necessary?
That alone is an extremely controversial
issue.
For we would like to think that war is
unnecessary
but that not be, that not may be the case.
And there's a problem.
As wars produce much disasters and
calamities
it is easy to reach conclusions that wars
are not desirable.
But then what war is not desirable?
What is not desirable is an invasion to
your homeland.
And, even if it, it accompanies many

victims of such aggression, it must be

legitimate to fight against the invaders.
And then here, you have the heroes
who fight against the invaders and the
victim
who suffered from the aggression from the
invaders.
In this light, it is not that the war is
unnecessary here.
It is that the invasion was unnecessary
and that we should fight back.
This combination of hero and victim is
almost ambiguous
when we follow the tradition of war
memories in every country.
Starting from the, from the First World
War to
the Second World War, you see many war
memorials
that are dedicated to those people who
passed away
and those people who fought gallantly
against the enemies.
But at the same time, we must start to
think that war is something that cannot be
avoided anyway.
That war is like part of our human nature,
that cannot be challenged.
So this leads to this question, can wars
be avoided?
In many ways, wars were seen as something
similar
to natural disasters.
Just like earthquakes or
fires, war is something that just happens,
and
that it is the will of the God that
dictates such
calamities.
God's ways are always so difficult to know
for the mortals and that is something that
is beyond our reach.
At the same time, there were some ideas
that emerged essentially
in Europe in the 17th century, that
war is not a natural disaster but
something conducted by humans.
And because it is conducted by humans, we
can change it.
Now by arguing that war is a human
behavior, and one
that can be controlled.
I'm not arguing that those in 17th
Europe argued about abolishing warfare.
Far from it.
They were arguing that war is actually a
tool of a state's policy.
A government has a right
to use war as a rational tool of foreign
policy.

If you follow that line, then the argument

is quite different from
the one that you might anticipate from
taking wars as natural disasters.
And in many ways, it was this legacy
of the renaissance or the humanitarian
views on war.
Not humanizing war but taking war as a
human behavior that formed the basis of
international law.
And of course, we can argue that wars
of, wars of self-defense is an inherent
right of
individual nations.
And also, so long as governments decide to
go to war, there is no reason that such
action should be limited.
But then, the argument should go even
further than that.
For, for example, take a case where a
large of number of people
are being massacred.
Which happens all the time,
in many wars, but it can also happen
without a war.
Take for example a dictator who is killing
people in his or her, his or her land.
Thousands of people are being slaughtered
by the
dictator, should such situation be allowed
to continue.
Then you have a very different question
here.
This is not about war as a rational tool
of foreign policy.
This is a question about intervening into
a humanitarian
disaster and save people from tyranny and
violence.
We will discuss later about this question
of responsibility to protect.
So, as you can see, this avoidance of war
is closely
be-, closely related to another question
that is, should wars be avoided?
Under certain circumstances, war it might
be the
case that we should fight war to save
people.
And refusing to participate in a military
action against
a violent villain, would be taken as, not
only cowardice, but
a conspiracy of silence, that allows so
many people to die.
But then, if it is the case, that there
can be a necessary war, we also have to
pay attention to the fact that war brings
out much casualties and destruction.
Now who are we to argue that war is

necessary when the war is killing a large

number of
people and the destruction brought about
by that war is
much larger, could be much larger than the
war itself.
And that leads to the question, the final
question here.
When are wars necessary and when are wars
unnecessary?
Establishing a principle
on this issue is not only important in
observing
wars, but also in proposing very concrete
foreign policy.
For, if you, if we fight unnecessary wars,
wars that are unnecessary,
then we are simply allowing people to be
involved in mass killings.
and we are allowing people who do not have
to die pass away before their fate.
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