Assignment 9 Lena Ilagan

"Bella! Horrida bella!" exclaims Vergil in his book The Aeneid. Though at first glance, Vergil's quote seems to refer to beauty, but a closer look at the Latin behind the phrase reveals that the quote actually means, "War! Terrible war!"

Humanity has come far since its genesis into this earth in terms of quality of life and understanding the world, yet there remains one facet of its existence that refuses to disappear: war.  But, many cases rarely require war to please the involved parties.  Fights in both everyday life and world politics both revolve around one key element of discourse: misunderstanding.  Nearly every major war in human history finds its roots in a simple misunderstanding; the Viking raids of the Middle Ages arose out of misunderstanding of language, both World Wars arose out of a miscommunication of needs, the Gulf War arose out of a misunderstanding of cultural and diplomatic actions, and the list goes on and on.

If war is the rock, diplomacy is the paper.  The only problem with diplomacy is its tedious and occasionally frustrating nature. However, with the proper training and execution, diplomacy could be a country's best weapon.  The Soviet Union and The United States managed to not kill each other (literally) during the Cold War thanks to the two's iron diplomacy.  The diplomatic relations between the two proved diplomacy's worth in modern world politics, and hopefully other countries and conflicts will follow suit in the future.  Though there may be times when diplomacy is impossible to achieve, it should remain the common goal for conflicting parties, with all-out war being a final resort.