Imagine you’re having dinner on the terrace of an Italian restaurant in a luxury shopping mall in Bangkok, with background music provided by the Gipsy Kings. In the midst of that you browse on your iPad through the pages of a book on asymmetric conflict, i.e. warfare fought between unequal forces. The book is entitled Moral Dilemmas of Modern War. The author, Michael L. Gross, is chair of Applied Ethics at The Department of International Relations at Haifa University. In the preface he writes: “I see it as a practical guide, because it aims to answer the moral and legal questions posed by policymakers, military officers, political leaders, journalists, philosophers, lawyers, students, and citizens as they confront the different tactics, weapons, and practices placed on the table during asymmetric conflict”. The practical guide that follows covers themes such as torture, targeted assassination, heavy-handed interrogators, non-lethal weapons (whether chemical or structural, such as logistics), attacks on civilian combatants, blackmail, and terrorism. All analysed with a cool and clinical gaze. Machiavelli and Hobbes look like Candide in comparison. While you scroll quickly through the backlit pages, which look like just another table decoration, your brain short-circuits due to the overload of information, the meaning, and the discrepancy between the words and your surrounding environment.
In this surreal situation, you start to think that you’re turning into a monster: how can you enjoy your food, the music, the evening, while reading about acronyms such as Sirius (superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering)? A vague feeling of fear grips you. It’s not your conscience pricking you; it’s the fear caused by reality dawning, the fact that the alternatives are limited: either you get involved in the events or you try to analyse them.
And that’s what I began to do. I found out that the company of “monsters”, i.e. those that also chose to analyse without giving in to politically correct stereotypes, is numerous and interesting. For example, professor Peter Andreas, who wrote the unsettling and fascinating book Sex, Drugs and Body Counts, subtitled The Politics of Numbers in Global Crime and Conflict. In this book I discovered that in these cases it’s almost impossible to obtain real statistics because they are manipulated to fit the situation: when governments push for an intervention (such as in Kosovo), the figures are exaggerated; when they want to stay away (as in Darfur), they are toned down. This happens for the number of people killed in genocides, the number of migrants, the scale of drug and human trafficking. Apparently it’s a widely held belief that figures speak louder than words, especially when no one bothers to dispute them. Once again, then, we need some clean-cut analysis.
Another “monster” shedding light on the dark side of the current world order is Laura Dickinson, director of the Center for Law and Global Affairs at Arizona State University. In her book Outsourcing War and Peace: Preserving Public Values in a World of Privatized Foreign Affairs she addresses an increasingly widespread phenomenon, that of contractors, who used to be called “mercenaries”. Dickinson does not make judgements. She acknowledges the issue and assesses the risks posed by the use of contractors while attempting to set out reforms so that contractors too can be made accountable, and respectful of human rights, democracy and transparency.
However, some people aren’t content with just understanding; they take action. Even more so in the West, so spoilt by its wellbeing and tranquillity. It wouldn’t take much, after all. Just minor acts of civil resistance or opposition to what we feel is unjust. We’d only have to follow the example of those that have already done so, at much greater risk, across the planet. Their stories are told by Steve Crawshaw and John Jackson, both on the front line of civil rights defence, in Small Acts of Resistance: How Courage, Tenacity, and a Bit of Ingenuity Can Change the World. The book is a collection of minor yet great stories of people who stood up to repressive authorities with more or less legal (considering the relative value of the concept) but always non-violent action. It shows that, in the end, something can be done. It just might be a little tough and mean giving something up. “So long as it’s not my pizza”, some might say.

Extract from: Finché c'è guerra c'è speranza (While There's War There's Hope), directed by and starring Alberto Sordi.

“Because you see...wars aren’t made by weapons factories and the travelling salesmen that sell them. They’re also made by people like you, families like yours that want, want, want and can never get enough! Houses, cars, motorbikes, parties, horses, rings, bracelets, fur coats and whatever else they can get their hands on! ...That all costs a lot, and in order to get it someone has to lose out!”