Global peace is under threat from armed conflict. The war between Russia and Ukraine has entered its fifth year, and the entire Middle East has been engulfed in flames following attacks on Iran by the United States and Israel. The United States launched airstrikes on Venezuela and arrested its president. International norms are being disregarded, and diplomacy is losing its power in the face of fear and intimidation stemming from the might of superpowers.
Weaker nations hold their breath and bow their heads to the superpowers. Democracy is weakening, and the outdated imperialist “economy of death” from the 19th century is threatening world peace. Wars are waged to demonstrate power, and temporary peace is disguised as a commodity to be traded. War has become a business that generates national interests, and politics and national defense have become tools for economic territorial expansion.
The equal, inherent human rights of global citizens are being trampled by capital and power. Great powers are becoming giant multinational corporations solely for their own interests, while weaker nations are becoming their franchises. People have become mere means and tools in the competition for resources and technology. All that remains in the lives of humanity, shattered by war, is the trauma of hatred and anger.
As the war between Russia and Ukraine drags on as a protracted war of attrition, it is leaving both sides with nothing but massive “debt” instead of “profit.” Hundreds of thousands of young people have vanished from the battlefield, and markets have been destroyed. The U.S. airstrikes on Venezuela were ostensibly aimed at combating drug trafficking, but in reality, they were about securing hegemony over oil resources through military force. The global economy is now reeling from an energy shock caused by the situation in the Middle East.
As the logic of power overrides international law, the predictability of the global market economy has diminished further. Russia is in decline due to economic isolation, and the U.S. has suffered a blow to its international standing and moral leadership following its airstrikes on Iran and Venezuela. War is not a zero-sum game but a negative-sum game. While business pursues mutual benefit, war leaves even the victors with nothing but a hollow glory.
Peace is not a commodity to be traded through war. Moreover, human life cannot be the subject of a transaction. A ceasefire is merely an unstable peace that can flare up again at any moment due to economic greed. The so-called “geopolitical gains” claimed to be achieved through war are nothing more than fictitious figures that benefit only a tiny elite. The skyrocketing prices and supply chain collapses caused by war push the poorest and most marginalized to the brink of ruin.
Security that safeguards the economy is possible only on the foundation of predictable peace. Fair investment and mutual benefits must be guaranteed. The war business of major powers is primarily aimed at arms exports, post-war reconstruction booms, and securing resource hegemony. However, war is nothing but an anti-economic catastrophe that destroys all the physical and moral assets humanity has accumulated.
In his encyclical *Fratelli Tutti*, Pope Francis stated that “war is a denial of every right and a tragic violation of the environment” (No. 257). He further declared that “war is a failure of politics and of humanity, a shameful surrender, a defeat to the forces of evil” (No. 261). True peace cannot be achieved through the pursuit of one-sided, exclusive interests alone. It begins with fair and just cooperation and solidarity.
Rising from the ashes of the devastating Korean War, we achieved a peaceful era of national prosperity and military strength through industrialization and democratization. However, Northeast Asia is now caught in a competition for economic and security hegemony among major powers,
