When Negotians Fail

In war zones and areas of severe unrest we often hear news stories about the various sides sitting down and negotiating various things. Often these spouts of negotiation fail and hostilities resume. The underlying issue is that there are disagreements (duh, they were shooting at each other). And when there are important disagreements the disagreements need to be resolved. The most basic way to do this is force. If the other party is dead or too scared of you to press their point the disagreement is resolved and there can be peace.

Civilized societies are "civilized" because they have found ways of resolving these conflicts in nonviolent ways. Through the rule of law (arbitration, courts), and even through competitions in some cases. This allows conflict to be resolved with minimal damage to overall economic output and really makes the world a better place. There is much less dying this way.

Coming from the other direction though, we have situations where everything is peaceful and the rule of law stands. But as time progresses the various parties in conflict want increasingly contrary things and or the mechanisms for resolution break down and you reach a point where negotiations no longer work. This is where you see the start of violence. Violence that can lead, if negotiations continue to fail, to war. Not a "war of words" or a "flame war", but an honest to goodness shooting war with death and destruction.

The American Revolution is an excellent example of this. The colonies repeatedly asked the king for leniency in taxes and more say in taxation schemes and eventually they came to the conclusion that they could not gain the requisite hearing through words and that war was the only solution. It was a bad time, but did lead to a good thing in the end.

Unfortunately I am seeing hints of this in our own political discussion. The left and the right are increasingly at odds. Not just over "how to make America great again", but on issues like should America even be great? The very foundation of morality and justice. The principles upon which our nation was founded. The leftist ideology is, in it's fullness, truly irreconcilable with conservative fundamentals.

Do I think we are on the brink of civil war? No. However, if leftist ideology continues to grow in our nation it will bring with it increased conflict. That is already being seen in the routine news headlines about court battles over this social issue or that. So for now our civilized systems are working. But it is a possibility that that will not continue to be the case and violence will result. One could argue the recent attacks on police are evidence of this.

All in all we need to be aware of the significance of these events and realize that it is not impossible for negotiations to fail.