The Pen and the Sword

By Nana Dadzie Ghansah

“The pen isn’t mightier than the sword. Pens don’t win battles and swords don’t write poetry. Mighty is the hand that knows when to pick the pen and when to pick the sword.” - Anonymous

Pull back the curtain and one notices that though wars are fought by soldiers, the seeds for these bloody conflicts are often ideas sown by thinkers and philosophers. Sometimes too, these thinkers and philosophers legitimize these wars after they start with their ideas and words.

Let’s take a few examples from the last 100 years.

The groundwork of what became Nazism and the horrors of WWII were laid by 19th century writers like the Comte de Gobineau (1816–82), Richard Wagner (1813–83), and Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927). Their claims of the racial and cultural superiority of the “Nordic” (Germanic) peoples influenced Hiltler significantly. Later thinkers like Heidegger, Rosenberg, Jung, and Barumler legitimized the atrocities.

The Vietnam War was started because of the “Domino Theory”. It is thought that it was first formulated by President Truman. Basically, the fear was that with China and North Vietnam becoming communist, other countries in the region will fall like dominoes to the communists.