New U.S. President Barack Obama and the Democratic foreign policy establishment in the United States know they can't outlaw war. Believe it or not, that was actually done in 1928 in the Kellogg-Briand peace pact. U.S. Secretary of State Frank Kellogg and French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand were awarded Nobel Peace Prizes for their "achievement." They were arguably the most farcical Nobels ever given to anyone. Within nine years, the Imperial Japanese army had slaughtered three-quarters of a million Chinese people in its drive up the Yangtze River valley to Nanjing. Within 11 years of that "achievement," World War II, the bloodiest single conflict in human history, had begun.

However, Obama and his team are confident they can reduce tensions around the world. They are particularly hopeful of being able to end the century-old Israel-Arab conflict and the 30 years of ferocious hostility of Iran toward the Great Satan, as its leaders, broadcasters and educators continually call the United States.

The leaders of the giant European Union of 27 nations encompassing half a billion people -- the third-largest organization of human beings on the Earth after China and India -- are also firm believers in the so-called soft power of economic influence and diplomatic persuasion rather than the hard power of military might. Safe under the protective nuclear-armed shield of the U.S.-led NATO alliance for the past 60 years, they believe that major wars are a thing of the past too. Why should they be wrong?

The first reason is that war has never been successfully abolished in the entirety of recorded organized human history; one hesitates to use the term "civilized" for anything to do with war.

The second reason is that we don't live in an age of peace or even of receding war now. Genocide continues in Darfur, and the organized political groupings of the African Union, the Arab League and China -- together representing around one-third of the population of Earth, all strongly support Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, who remains completely unrepentant about the continuing brutalities of his armed forces against black Christian and animist peoples of Darfur.

Farther south, things are even worse in Congo, formerly Zaire. It has been in a state of anarchic chaos for well over a decade and is the largest, most populous and most hellish collapsed-state region on Earth. At least 10 million people have died there.

In Afghanistan, the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban and its al-Qaida allies are on the upsurge all across the country. Last week Obama outlined a new strategy he hopes to apply there. However, as yet it remains untested, with many military analysts expressing extreme skepticism about it having any relevance to the real cultural, economic and social conditions on the ground.

Continuing southward, Pakistan, already an Islamic nuclear power, teeters on the brink of disintegration. The civilian government has only the most tenuous control over the armed forces, and one-quarter of the area of the country, the huge North-West Frontier province, is already controlled by the Taliban and their allies.

The pattern of these already serious wars and conflicts around the world teaches us a great deal about the patterns of 21st century war. The high-tech, "lean, mean" militaries that President George W. Bush and his first defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, so enthusiastically pursued are irrelevant to all of them.

Part 2: Weapons and tactics of 21st century war

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