On February 24, Russia attacked Ukraine. This day was called "the day of national shame" by educated and liberal Russians, including myself. The war is motivated by the paranoid thoughts of Vladimir Putin, who still dreams of restoring the USSR. The key problem of this war is not that it is automatically lost for Russia (since there are no Nazis in Ukraine and Ukrainians will defend their country to the last body), but that Putin does not understand the contemporary world order. Are wars even relevant now?
In ancient times, groups of people fought each other for resources - natural resources (water, agricultural areas, etc.). The basis of the agrarian economy was just such resources. Then the economy became industrial - and the value of natural resources increased - oil, deposits of various ores, etc. However, the wars of that era were not economic, but political. But economic benefits contributed to these wars. The Second World War turned out to be so destructive that there were no economic and even more moral justifications for such wars.
In modern times, there are hybrid wars, military operations - Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, etc. These wars are limited in nature and serve rather to conquer a single resource like oil.
But what is the main economic resource now? People? No, rather the creativity of people. It is much more difficult to make people create something unique not just the same type of work in the plant. People will create only under certain conditions - and developed countries try to create these conditions in various parts of the world, only a few succeed (Silicon Valley, London, Stockholm, etc.). One thing is clear - freedom is a prerequisite for these conditions, meaning freedom from unnecessary boundaries - national, gender, class, etc. Wars, by definition, create these frameworks, separating natives from strangers (enemies). A successful creative person has no enemies, her goal is not to defeat enemies, but to create herself the way she wants.
The task of the society of the 21st century is to build these conditions for free creativity anywhere in the world. Any wars and ways of fighting for already irrelevant resources will only take us away from this. I don't know how to stop these wars. Even as a Russian, I don't know how to stop Putin. Putin has one superweapon that really works: propaganda. This is where it should start...