Assignment 9 - Benjamin Givens

One of the reasons I play video games is to gain a perspective that simply cannot be understood by reading about it or ... . My perception on the justice of war was forever changed by playing Europa Universalis IV, where you are the ruler of a state, starting in 1444 and ending in 1821. In the game, very few wars are truly justified. In order to take your neighbors land, you fabricate a claim using spy's in order to create a Casus Belli (literally- "cause for war"). The real motivation for war is expansion; growing both security and economy. However, it is justified to the world using ideals, "Our people live in that land, and they deserve me as their monarch." All of these attempts at justification whether the Casus Belli is ostensibly about culture or privateering or balance of power or colonial intrusion come down to the same desire: they only way for me to quickly gain more resources is to take them from you. You don't create alliances because you share underlying ideals, but instead because they are the rivals of your rivals and they will help you fight a war to gain resources. It is a bleak and pessimistic view of the world that, as it is set in the 15th century, perhaps not entirely true to the modern age. But, it still makes me think critically about the disconnect between what the "justification for war" is and what each belligerent stands to gain. For while, I may start a war in a video game to conquer the world, I do not think that territory and economic gain are justifications for the horrors of war in real life. Perhaps, in some cases, conflict is necessary for the betterment of the world, but it would take enormous evidence of altruism beyond a Casus Belli to prove that it justifies the vast suffering and human loss it would result in. Alternatives to war to solve problems exist in compromise, diplomacy, and mediation, though they are often made impractical due to the hatred between the two sides in conflict. In the end, war, while sometimes moral, needs overwhelming justification beyond a cause in order to be so.