IGCSE Writing to Argue

‘‘All war is a symptom of mans failure as a thinking animal’’-John Steinbeck

In the world today one of the biggest problems is war, it has numerous amounts of consequences; lives are lost, families left heart broken and countries shattered with the effect that war leaves on the world. A substantial issue faced because of war is terrorism, one of the worst terrorist attacks was on the Twin Towers on the 11th of September 2001 which has scarred America as a nation, there has been many conspiracies on who planned the attacks, many people believed it was caused by Al-Qaeda, a global militant organisation, 9/11 sparked a deadly war that is still currently happening and in which a lot of countries are involved. One of the saddest thing about war is the amount of deaths that occur in combat, World war two which was a worldwide war has an estimate of between 40,000,000 to 85,000,000, from 1939 to 1945 a minimum of 40,000,000 people died in those six years, also a civil war in Russia that has deaths between 5,000,000 and 9,000,000. Terrorist attacks also have an impact on war as they lead to countries into conflict between one another, also the numbers show the destruction that is left due to war and the mass amount of life that is lost.

A significant problem with war is that people have died because they have been protecting their country and usually the reasons why war is happening in the first place is either for political or economical reasons. A vast quantities of wars have arisen because of the country’s leader beliefs and ideas on how their nation should be led. Dictators such as Stalin and Hitler are great examples as they wanted to exert dominance in the world by any means necessary. Political leaders, especially dictators have an enormous impact on the decisions made for their country, this is one of the reasons on why war goes ahead is because of power and control that leaders have. Referring back to Stalin’s dictatorship, people of the USSR only did what he said out of fear and terror, political leaders have a big influence on war because of their power and control which can be proven by dictators such as Stalin and Hitler.

There are plenty of wars that have happened and are currently occurring, but the civil war in Syria hasn’t only just affected the fighters but the mothers and innocent children have been involved in all the chaos that is happening in their country. The war is currently in its fourth year, the families have been ruined and cannot change the matter and don’t have confidence that the problems will be resolved. Children have been injured because of the napalm strikes and they don’t have the medical attention to help them recover. Syrian families have fled to other countries such as Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey to escape the violence. Eye witness accounts from The Guardian shows what it is really like for the people of Syria, ‘2am shells start to crunch east of the capital and Hassan and her four children are wide awake to the familiar sounds of bombs falling on buildings and the empty road below’ this puts into perspective what everyday life is like for adults and children living in a country during battle.

It must be said that war is also very costly, loads of money is wasted in such an unnecessary area where it could be distributed into more important areas such as public goods like the police and fire service the money can also be used to develop a country by improving its infrastructure.

World military expenditure in 2012 was estimated to have reached $1.756 trillion dollars but if we look back ten years military expenditure was estimated in the region of $1.2 trillion dollars, a lot of money is spent on the preparation for war and then money is required for the havoc left in its wake. Money should be distributed into more important areas and should not be wasted on war.

 War shows that the people of society have lost civility, there is other ways to resolve problems rather than through aggression and violence. War is not required, it justs results in loss of life and confidence, economic depression, health problems and aggressively competition. The world would be a much better place if war wasn’t around.