By Patrick T. Hiller

December 20, 2013: “The War to End all Wars” never achieved what H.G. Wells implied with this term. On the contrary, World War I not only resulted in the death of more than 16 million humans, it also resulted in a victor’s peace directly setting the stage for World War II where an estimated 60 to 100 million people died. I like to believe that no World War is on the horizon, but I was quite surprised to read the headline of a Wall Street Journal opinion piece “To Secure Peace, Be Ready for Battle.” The surprise was not so much the title itself. This language — promoting ‘peace’ by amassing more military — has been all-too-familiar and all-too-common in the twenty-first century perpetual ineffective and counterproductive war on terror and other misguided relics like humanly insane nuclear deterrence or the offensive, war-waging North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

My surprise with this opinion piece came after the headline when I realized it was not one of our usual media “experts” whose insights supporting the military status quo are abundantly available in major corporate media. The article is authored by Catherine Ashton, high representative of the European Union for foreign affairs and security policy and vice president of the European Commission. Wait, didn’t the European Union receive the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize?

Read the full article here.