Rural Routes/Margot Ford McMillen

Too Many People with Too Few Resources Fuel War

On Nov. 4, I was driving through Columbia Mo., home of University of Missouri, when I came to a major road blocked, due to a student march through town. An angry protest march, in contrast to the jovial marches that happen on, say, International Women’s Day or Homecoming.

It was too far to see the signs or hear the chants,but when I got home I googled and learned that students were protesting the war that the media call “War In The Holy Land.” The march was nothing as dramatic as the protests during Vietnam that brought an estimated 2,000 to The Quad with a list of demands, and it looks from the pictures that the protesters were mostly students from the Mideast or members of the mosque in town, but it’s a beginning. A week later, at least 300,000 marched in downtown London, England. The protests will build as long as the war continues. Maybe until the end of human time.

Fifty years ago, we thought wars were fought for access to oil. Or maybe because leaders were concerned about threats to democracy. The cynics said that war was how to burn weapons so the corporations could make more. Or to control the population. Then, some smart-ass professors started saying “the cause of the next wars will be access to water …” and we were in disbelief. Water? We just turn on the tap and there it is … The profs might as well have said “access to air” or “access to gravity.” We took water for granted. But, now, we see.

The fights in Ukraine, Israel, Brazil, Venezuela and all the other conflicted places are fights for resources. Water and land. And those fights could be mitigated if human population was curbed so we weren’t pushing all the other species off the planet. Instead of curbing, however, leaders urge their followers to reproduce. Of course they do! To those in charge, reproduction means more taxpayers! More warriors!

Sometimes the commandment resonates through religion. Shocking and dismaying that even usually-God-free-PBS has fallen for “War in the Holy Land.” From a population of two million in 1960, Israel is now at 9.64 million, a number achieved partly by in-migration and partly from the large families urged by rabbis. There has been debate among rabbis whether the “mitzvah” or commandment to have children obligates only the man to reproduce or both the man and the woman, but the result of that debate are obvious, especially when women are celebrated only for their breeding potential.

Population of Palestine has also grown — from about two million to 4.923 million. Their median age is less than 20 years old, which helps explain why so many kids are in the casualties. And in the years since Israel’s founding, Palestine’s share of land, water and other resources, has been diminished by Israeli settlers. The same strategy of move in and then claim the land was effectively used by American settlers, by the way.

Where the women come into this equation is obvious and the situation can be reversed or at least mitigated is if women in all these cultures gain power. A hundred years ago, families might have felt it was necessary to have seven, eight, 10 children to guarantee survival of one or two. Now our health strategies guarantee better survival numbers. But if your priest or rabbi says there’s a commandment in the holy book, well, what’s a guy gonna do?

Mideastern women are sheltered from information about birth control. The Afghan women rescued in the US evacuation in 2021 have barely begun to speak English, but they are asking tutors for reproductive information. They’re here with large families already and they have few skills to share and money is extremely tight for them but they hope for better futures. Their children, boys and girls alike, are excelling in school and if the families can create some wealth for themselves, their future is bright and we can hope that their kids’ American families will be smaller.

Recently, a Progressive Populist reader sent me an article from the Wall Street Journal with the headline “World War III Will Be Fought With Viruses.” The argument, by Richard A. Muller, points out that coronavirus changed our history for a good long time and maybe forever. Computer viruses also make our entire population unsafe. Imagine if a virus takes down all the airports. Or all the banks. Or all the hospitals, drugstores or grocers. Or water systems. Even a cyberattack on the toilet paper manufacturers would send Americans spinning.

The article pointed out that a war fought with viruses can be covert. It might already be underway. But Muller ignores the reasons for war. Resources. A swollen population. If we can concentrate on that message and curb our populations, we can make war unnecessary.

Margot Ford McMillen farms near Fulton, Mo., and co-hosts “Farm and Fiddle” on sustainable ag issues on KOPN 89.5 FM in Columbia, Mo. Her latest book is “The Golden Lane: How Missouri Women Gained the Vote and Changed History.” Email: margotmcmillen@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, December 15, 2023

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