Why We Must Consider Our World by Iliad Nazari

Since the 20th century, the increase of Model United Nations conferences all around the world is still in progress. However, the titles that we are discussing in each committee are in the common scope with the UN’s matters. As you all have knowledge about the system of the conferences, you have seen the crisis-based or update-based committees or will do so. We have known and will resolve the great conflicts that have challenged our previous generation. And in this article’s contents, you shall be informed about the momentous battles and disasters that have been caused by mankind. As a reminder, please do not use this article as a source. 

Why we must consider our world

The world we are living in includes countless incidents, of which most of them are based on the expectations and needs of humanity. Our circle of friends, family, and acquaintances is also rapidly changing with different situations, requesting greater and more things than usual. And of course, it is not something that will be exhausted anytime soon. 

From thousands of years ago until today, mankind has fought wars by disobeying major cultural and traditional orders of the world. Sometimes we struggle with ourselves by asking the same question and we always get the same answer. The one and only question that comes to our mind are “how”. Finding a correct and stable response does not have any direct way. To someone, it is just a word, to someone else it is connecting important information and past crimes, but here we can find another question, “who?”. Again we face the same issue while starting to go deep and try to find a true explanation, thus you always find a new clue. At the heart of these incidents, focusing on the hints is not our goal. At first, glance, checking for the overall point and general structure will be better, to sum the points up, to get to the problem. Take rapid action for this activity, the percentage of finding new details is sky-high. 

But the ways to recognize a problem are many. Some people find details first, and then move on to check the big picture. Some of them just rebuild everything and start to implement their own ideas. Or sometimes a person can follow up the wrong solution, that is filled to the brim with non-ending questions. And again we can understand that everything has a connection, even the small and unobtrusive matters. To indicate the importance, we have had a surplus number of occasions in the past. Here are the important wars, revolutions, disasters, battles, and massacres; 

Trojan War 

One of the most important wars, which is also mentioned in Greek Mythology, is the Trojan War. The importance of this war will be discussed. The major cause of it is related to the Iliad and Odyssey by Homer. The incident started with Trojans Paris kidnapping Menelaus’s wife (Helen). The exact details can are explained in the Iliad. To explain the meaning of the story, we could say Iliad describes the last month of the 10 years of war. The vital point that we can connect to the description of the Odyssey is, it tells about the journey to Ithaka after the fall of Troy. Another outcome of this epic is mostly based on the attack on the city of Troy.

After a hundred years, one American and one German archaeologist reached the initial matter of today’s secrets. They found a city (Troy) rebuilt nine times in the southwest of Çanakkale. 

The Conquests of Cyrus the Great 

The period of Cyrus the Great is known as the biggest event of ancient Iranian history. The current majority of Iranians believe that it was an unbelievable era for their nation due to the establishment of the great empire (The Achaemenid Empire) and their capital city of Persepolis. 600 years before Christ, by order of Cyrus the Great, a group of Aryan people established the biggest state stretching close to three continents. After the death of Cyrus and passing years, Persepolis was destroyed and burned down by Alexander the Great of Macedonia. Alexander was young, brave, shrewd, and ambitious. Although regretting burning down the city of Persepolis, he managed to conquer the greatest empire of the time, whilst having control over half of the known world. After his untimely death at the age of 32, his kingdom fell apart. Hence, the impacts and influences caused by this hectic era, it has caused many researchers and tourists alike to visit this area. 

Peloponnesian War 

After and during the Greco-Persian Wars, the two city-states of Athens and Sparta became close allies. But as the years passed both city-states started to gain more and more allies, issues started to rise up, with tensions rising between them and their political differences (Athenians being democratic and Spartans being oligarchical) to just name a few, war broke out. The Spartans being masters in infantry and the Athenians ruling the seas, the war waged on for more than 70 years. It can be said that the Spartans won the war, but it was at a high cost to both them and the Athenians. The end of the Peloponnesian war can also mark the end of the Greek golden age. With Greece in financial and military ruin, it never rose up to its previous glory. 

Caesar’s civil war 

Few years before Christ(49-45BC), a conflict happened within the Roman Republic. The main causes of the battle were about serving a great victory and seeing which nation was superior. Julius Caesar, The Caesar of the Great Roman Republic, willing to destroy the Gallic, made a plan consisting of 60.000 legionary soldiers. To address the war, the Gallic had 80.000 soldiers, however, they didn’t take any action against Roman Republic. And they moved to Alesia castle to defend themselves. Both sides did not address any of the threats, this silenced action continued for a short while, but in this period, Caesar was working on a new attack plan, that was based on encompassing. Caesar knew about the situation and the main weak point of the Gallic people. He captured the castle and this operation caused them to stay inside, thus they couldn’t get any help or bring any food from outside. 

Putting Caesar’s thoughts into action, entailed seeing the future of the victory. Caesar was sure about the implementations and actions that he’d like to organize, hence the set of the Gallic started to fall down due to lack of enough food and necessary materials to survive. This resulted in a revolt by Gallic people within the Roman territory. But again Roman soldiers answered in due time and ended the turmoil within the Roman Republic. Nevertheless, before the establishment of the Roman Empire, this battle was one of the last politico-military struggles in the Roman Republic. 

American Revolutionary War 

At the current location of Massachusetts, Boston, we have seen a great war that also caused the rise of the United States of America. This state was colonized by the British Empire at the end of the 18th century and the conditions that American communities had been in an unending process. To know better, we will skip the smaller incidents and move on to the major reason. Most of the citizens around there were from Britain. Nevertheless, they had to deal with a myriad of issues, in which one took priority over all. The foremost problem they faced was taxes. American settlers have been mostly producing raw materials: Stone, Coffee, Iron, wood, etc. and they were selling them to Britain. After getting surplus material from Americans, the trigger point was based on the preparation of the British to produce substances. To give an example we could say, the molasses that Americans produced were sold to the British to be distilled and sold back to them as rum. And after a time of sending the raw materials to them, they’ve realized that the fees were increasing. Simultaneously, there was another major issue that caused Americans to make a revolt. The set of parliament in Britain did not have any American representatives. Americans informed the British about this temperament by sending them letters. The British did not respond to them. They decided to answer by boycotting them. With both sides in disagreement, the British started to send their soldiers (red coats) to these emerging conflict zones. Americans were outraged, they decided to send a letter to England, now known as the “Declaration of the independence”, to declare themselves as a sovereign nation. The British responded with war. The war was won by the Americans under George Washington. 

The French revolution 

The French revolution happened after the American revolution. At the time, the French empire was based on the monarchy. The king of that time was Louis XVI and the main problem of people was lack of food. In that period, the French and British were rivals, causing animosity between them. So the French decided to help the Americans gain their independence. And after a long time, due to previous help, the French empire was shattering economically. Another particular point that was in the country was the feudalist class system. The top ones were the king and the nobles. the second was the clergy and the third was the working class. Problems were also arising from tax issues. The nobles and clergy didn’t pay taxes. 

It was when people began protesting and the king decided to call on a national constituent assembly, which was comprised of the nobles, clergy, but mostly working people, to resolve the current issues by creating a national constitution. After that, the king was not looking at the same scope, he disagreed with them. So during a break from the assembly, Louis XVI decided to lock the door to the hall so that people couldn’t gather and write one. Against that, people came together and started to write a constitution, adding some laws and matters that they wanted to add and agreed on. They got power after a while, and besides these decisions, some set of them did not agree to keep the king. They took action to remove the king because they wanted a Republic. They called themselves Jacobins. This caused the separation of the people. In a nutshell, unfortunately, some of the people that sided with the new constitution killed some rioting Jacobins. And this is also causation of the increment in rebellions, hitherto in the end, Jacobins succeeded and killed the king to create their own republic. The most known execution tool that people created was the guillotine, thus the ones that were determined by others were killed by guillotine. Which king Louis had the pleasure of losing his head too. And meanwhile, after the king’s death, the temperament was bad whilst fighting other nations at the same time. During this time, Napoleon Bonaparte rose to power and became the ruler of France. But he was in many ways more of a dictator than Louis XVI, leading the people to rebel again and banish him to a remote island. And after years of huge struggles and battles, they created a new constitution to make France a republic. 

American Civil War 

For hundreds of years, slavery was the major issue of American life. In those days, there were cultural differences in the USA. For example on the northern side, people could share their ideas on the same path, meaning that people were free, but the southern side was not the same. They got used to turning the economy by taking huge numbers of slaves, but this situation was in progress only until Abraham Lincoln rose to power. He was the 16th president of the USA and while he was managing the country’s law policy, the only contradictory part of the constitution in his opinion was allowing slavery. He started to alter the constitution that allowed slavery under federal law. However, the troubling point was upon the disagreement of Southern people, due to their support of their states’ laws. The economy and monetary circulation of the Southern states were relying on slavery. After this non-dealing agreement, the northern side created a group called “The Union”. In reply, the southerners created “The Confederacy”. Thus the American civil war started. Both sides were in a long war, but in the end, the Union side won and it led to the ban of slavery forever. 

World war I 

Before looking at history, beginning with examples to get the general picture will be better. 

As we know, at the end of 1871, the war had just started between France and the Federation of North Germany. it was a 6-month continuous war that caused France’s defeat. After years passed, Germany had started to increase its economy and industry and started to rebuild the alliances with the Hungarian Empire and Italy rapidly and the world called them “Triple alliances”. Before going too deep, Germany got into the colonization of African territories. At the same time, France was allied with the Russian Empire, thus the British Empire took action by moving closer to France and to Russia. And again, they were called “Triple Entente”. 

 

Besides these nations’ cooperation, Balkan countries were willing to be united with South Slav communities, however against this, Russia had a relationship with Serbia itself. One day, a Serbian nationalist murdered a vital person (The heir to the Hungarian empire) in Sarajevo. And after this crime, Austria attacked the Serbian Government. Without counting days, the battle went to Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance. The one nation that did not address the war at that time was Italy. The great plan of Germany launched an offensive into France with Belgium and British armies, hence the French army had to retreat back. Furthermore, Germany had been supplying troops to avoid Russia’s action. And in this scope, the Ottoman Empire decides upon supporting Germany in the conflict. After this, Britain was trying to get into Ottoman land from both sides. The British Empire knew the weak point of them and summed up the implementations with promising Ottomans to be independent. In that period, in Asia, Japan took immediate action against Germany. German colonies were surrounded by French, British and Belgian forces. Nevertheless, in the Balkan areas, Serbia attacked France rapidly. While West Germany was in the progress with military plans and it would become, to send bombs from the air, hitherto London and Paris were under attack. And Germany was sending ships to that area. 

 

The outcome of these military activities caused huge numbers of casualties. And instead of acting at these roles, Germany stayed just on the economy for a while. Russia got thousands of deaths and then took place in a revolution that shut down the actions and their regime. In front of them, the United States of America faced itself becoming a victim of a commercial block in the Atlantic. And at the same time in Russia, the second revolution was happening and caused them to get more power, and finally, they made a ceasefire with Central Empires. But again Germany was taking very rapid battles, but in the end, they also retreated. Unfortunately, until the end of the fighting, the world saw more than 18 million casualties. Due to these reasons, Germany is responsible for most of them. And nations that were in those zones needed aid to rebuild themselves again. 

World War II 

The second World War is the greatest armed conflict that mankind has known until today. At the end of the First World War, Germany and its allies were responsible for the impacts that had threatened and destroyed peace between nations. At this time, Poland was in a recreating period and Germany was in the process of developing itself, however, due to the major debts, it started to revitalize the economy by printing banknotes. 

Between 1914 to 1923, the number of debts was over the billions. The temperaments were going in the same way, but in 1929, the world started crashing down on New York due to the economic crisis. Unemployment was rising in Germany again. In 1933, Germany became one of the strongest nations in the world due to the rise of Nazis and Hitler. This reset the country’s policies on international problems. Along with the situation in Germany, Italy also was in the hands of the fascist community. Italy started to cooperate with Albania, to sum up, what was missing. And one of the major problems was in Spain, due to the outbreak of a 3-year civil war and caused the intervention of the USSR. 

In the same way in Asia, Japan was continuing to enlarge its policies and territory. It started to put chemicals and biological weapons in operation in 1937. Another matter was that Germany was becoming a more powerful nation day by day. And another matter was the occupations in Lithuania and to address this point, Germany signed with the USSR a non-aggression pact. And these are the problems that occurred before the start of World War II. (Germany, USSR, and Allies). Besides these, USSR and Germany enlarged their lands to stay closer. And Germany reacted by invading Denmark and Norway and wanted to do the same thing to western nations as well. Annexation of French territory by Nazi Germany caused it to take the leading role. And again, Germany had the capacity to manage the areas that the French were in. In London, a set of people started to act against Nazi Germany, and at that time the USSR got a part of Romania. Nevertheless, Germany, Italy, and Japan got known as the Axis Powers. After a short while, Germany was bombing the zones near London, they got that there is no path to improve, thus they’ve changed their actions by taking Yugoslavia and Greece. The most important point was, most of the European places had been captured with either Communism or Nazi soldiers. On June 22nd, the biggest attack in history was in progress (battle of Stalingrad) to take major amounts of land from the USSR, resulting in 1,000,000 casualties. German soldiers behind Moscow prepared to set the following plans. 

These Eye-opening events also caused the United States of America to be on the Allies’ side. And Japan was in the territory of neighboring countries. In some countries, construction took priority. For instance, railway plans were into the nation’s scope, but again there is no huge expectation at this time because in Japan millions of women and children were under the attack of combat groups. An important action of Hitler was building an Atlantic wall to protect coasts from invasion. Meanwhile, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor (a territory belonging to the USA), Hence leading the Americans to join the war even stronger and in greater numbers than before. Which lead to the Americans taking Normandy beach and creating an opening into German territory from the west. And in Russian lands, there was an offensive to get back the lands and they were successful. And then the “Ranking Europe” period began, USSR got the lands back again, and Paris was not at the hands of Germany anymore. There was a time that caused the creation of the United Nations. On April 30th, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker just before the arrival of the Soviets. After 8 days, the country surrendered. 

And then the United States of America and the USSR attended the situation in the east to overcome the Japanese Empire. And at this time the USA bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The USSR was in the enlargement process again. To end up the war, on August 15, Japan surrendered, marking the end of World War II. 

9/11 attacks 

On September 11th, 2001, Also known as 9/11, two passenger airplanes from JFK were hijacked and were flown into the trade center towers in Manhattan, New York. The first airplane hit the building, without missing any minutes, the second airplane hit the second tower. As the towers burned, crumbling down, around 3,000 people were killed in this event. Soon after that, they learned that these attacks were implemented by terrorists. But there was another issue that happened simultaneously. A different airplane was launched to the Pentagon (center of the U.S. military), however, it was an ineffective operation. The world has known this as the biggest terrorist attack that happened until today. On the other hand, the attacks that have been continuing in the United States of America changed multiple actions of the US government. They attacked Afghanistan and Iraq due to beliefs that the US government had. Besides great alterations in other countries, the United States government also started toughening security within itself, pointing out what are they doing and how they work. One of the distinct matters that is in progress is the high-security activity in USA’s airports, especially on international passengers. Nevertheless, after the 9/11 attacks, not just in the USA, the world started fearing the Muslim nations. Even though still they do not trust them, this temperament was not astonishing. And this is what happened in previous years. 

– The conflicts that I mentioned before were the most known and it has changed the thoughts on our world’s circulation. In this case, another important incident that we should handle is a disaster that happened because of humans. It is; 

Chernobyl disaster 

The Chernobyl disaster was one of the most important incidents that happened in recent history and caused immense damage to the city by leaving more than thousands of death cases. Currently, the effects are still taking place in Ukraine. The city is %100 abandoned and it is open only to specific personnel. The area is secured by soldiers to keep people out of the burned and destroyed location. And if any of the security personnel feel threatened, they can arrest the person immediately. Therefore, if we go back in time, we can get information about the first nuclear power station to be built in Ukraine. On April 25 and 26, 1986, reactor operators disabled the reactor’s safety system to perform a power outage test (removing neutron disruptors).

The goal of the experiment was to find out if the Chernobyl turbines would be able to generate enough electricity to keep the plant running. The Chernobyl nuclear accident was a catastrophic nuclear accident that occurred on April 26, 1986, at the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine. An explosion and fire occurred in reactor No. 4 at Chernobyl Power Plant. The result was a reactor without a suitable damper and it went out of control. Without the ability to control the reactor, the temperature reached such a level that it was projected to exceed the output temperature. And it opened a door to the end of the local people’s lives. Moreover, the major problem that people had was being under the radiation effects for years. Impacts of radiation stretched to the United States, other parts of the USSR, and it reached Turkey as well by clouds. It had also damaged other countries. Mankind had faced mental problems and the other main issue was the radiation entering their bodies and killing them by burning their bodies from the inside. it caused a huge period with non-ending events of mutations. Right now, we know that this was a great fault of the 20th century, hitherto they learned to be more aware of their following implementations on nuclear power stations. Due to the situation that happened, first we and then they do not want to do this to the world again. According to this event, we understand again that today’s discussion will determine tomorrow’s conclusion. 

As we know, no nation has lasted forever. The Romans controlled half of the known world and they fell. The empire of the never-setting sun (British Empire) fell. The great Ottomans fell and so did the 9/11 attackers. So war and peace, chaos and order, black and white, are all an unending cycle that seems we cannot breakthrough. 

– Iliad Nazari