Seventy years after World War II ended, should we be thinking about war or about peace?
World War I, in its day, was called ¡°the war to end all wars.¡± It was not. Would World War II be? Two nations, in its aftermath, went pacifist. Japan was one, Article 9 of its postwar Constitution declaring, ¡°The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.¡±
Costa Rica was the other. On Dec. 1, 1948, this tiny Central American country¡¯s president, Jose Figueres Ferrer¡ª having himself seized power in a blood-soaked military coup ¡ª sledgehammered a hole through a stone wall at military headquarters to symbolize a radical reorientation of national priorities: Militarism out, pacifism in. Brute power had had its day. Let pacified power rule. Military headquarters, Figueres announced, would be converted into an art museum.
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