Prompt: Is compromise always the best way to resolve a conflict?
“If you want to bring an end to long-standing conflict, you have to be prepared to compromise.”- Aung San Suu Kyi. If we look at the past, and the present, our observations will tell us something: Many wars started as an argument, and ended with a compromise. If the compromise was made before the war, many lives could have been saved. We can look upon one recent event, and one past event.
A very recent event was the Iran Nuclear Deal. In short, it forced Iran to give up 95% of it enriched uranium, 17,000 of its 20,000 machines, and keeps Iran from getting a nuke. But Iran gets to sell its oil, which tends to sell at a discount, to many gas-hungry countries, like China, U.K., the U.S., and Germany. It’s a win-win situation. Iran won’t build any nukes, so they can’t start a nuclear war, which is good for us. And Iran’s economy gets a boost as sanctions were removed off of Iran’s oil. Compromise here stopped a potential world war 3, maybe saving millions of lives. And sanctions on Iran’s oil not only made the economy suffer, but the people suffer, as oil companies laid off more and more people. Now, these companies need workers, and have begun to re-hire many that were laid off.
And speaking of economies, Germany’s economy after world war one was a complete disaster. Inflation was so high, even millions of dollars of German Marks were worthless. It couldn’t even buy a slice of bread, never mind an entire loaf. The Treaty of Versailles wasn’t a compromise. It was a punishment. Germany didn’t even have a say in the proceedings. It was a lose-lose situation. Germany’s economy was in a wreck. People were starving; others were using their money to keep their stove burning. All the savings people had were worthless. Not only was it a loss for Germans, it was a loss for the Allies too. Adolf Hitler took advantage of the dire situation and rose to power as a dictator. His rise to power led to world war two, and the Holocaust, and the rise of the atomic bomb. All of this led to eighty-five million deaths. Had the Treaty of Versailles been an actual compromise, a lot of lives and money were lost.
Thanks to these examples, compromise is the best way to resolve conflict, or even prevent a conflict before it happens. Use these in daily life too, and you will find you have a lot less “enemies” than you had before.
Oh and this was 424 words total in 23 minutes.