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• For a start, try to get yourself better informed. Don't rely on the mainstream news media — it lies as much as anyone does, by omission if nothing else. Look at different news sources on the internet — they're not as biased, or at least they are diverse in their biases, because the internet is extremely inexpensive. Personally, my favorite news analysis website is Alternet, but I have several others as well, and your taste may differ.
  
  
• Then talk with people, in person or by phone or by email. Attend meetings where there are discussions. Become a part of the global conversation. Voting helps, voting is a good start, but voting is not enough. You will feel powerless when all you are isolated and all you have is your lone vote, but you will feel very powerful when you make yourself part of the political community and part of the discussion steering that community.
  
  
• Then join in protest. Wear a peace symbol everywhere you go. Put a big peace sign in your yard. If you have an office door where it is permitted (as do many mathematicians), post some political literature there for all passersby to see. To get a really big charge of energy, attend one of the mass rallies — generally there are at least one or two every year — you'll be amazed at how good it feels to join thousands of other people in exercising your constitutional right to peaceable assembly.

• A "classical" war is between two nations, or coalitions of nations, that are approximately equally matched, and that do not use atomic bombs or other super weapons. The war ends when one side surrenders to the other, more or less (though Truman delayed accepting Japan's surrender because he wanted to demonstrate the atomic bomb a couple of times first). The last "classical" war that involved the USA was World War 2. If Pakistan and India get into a war, it might be a "classical" war, though it probably wouldn't last long because they both have nukes. Indeed, now that more and more nations have nuclear weapons, the day of "classical" wars may be gone forever. However, "classical" wars still comprise the bulk of our mythology about wars, and perhaps the bulk of Washington's thinking and planning about wars.
  
  
• An asymmetric war is between a much bigger military power (e.g., the United States) and a much weaker power. The war goes on either because (i) the bigger power expects the weaker power to eventually surrender, or (ii) the bigger power wishes to make war for other reasons with surrender not being a particularly important goal among them. The weaker power, though vastly outnumbered and/or outgunned, might still not surrender, as long as it believes it is in the right and as long as it believes that it has nothing to lose.
  
  For instance, the war of the United States against the people of Viet Nam lasted from 1959 until the US finally withdrew in 1975. The USA's propaganda claimed that the USA was fighting on behalf of the Vietnamese people, but in fact the reason the "other side" never surrendered is because it recruited far more volunteers from the Vietnamese people than the USA could. When the guerrillas have the support of the general population, then the only way a "regular" (classical) army can defeat a guerilla army is by exterminating every last man, woman, and child in the native population. The USA had the military capability to do that (e.g., they could have nuked the entirety of Vietnam, from coast to coast, and left not a single living thing remaining), but the USA had not the stomach for that kind of "victory," nor could it pretend that this would be "on behalf of the Vietnamese people." As it is, however, the USA did defoliate a great deal of Vietnam with agent orange, a toxic chemical that has caused birth defects in large numbers of Vietnamese children ever since the war. The problem here is that the people in the Pentagon did not understand that the Vietnamese were actually human beings.
  
  The weaker side in an asymmetric war sometimes can use nonviolence as a successful tactic. This tactic was used by Gandhi to make the British leave India, and by Martin Luther King's movement to increase the level of civil rights in the USA. I think that nonviolence might be used successfully by the Palestinians in Gaza, if only they would try it. But I am not convinced that nonviolence is always a successful tactic. For instance, I think it would not have prevailed against Hitler. Nonviolence will only work if the person it is being used "against" recognizes one as human — i.e., it calls upon a minimal amount of empathy that is already present, in order to elicit greater empathy. If there is no empathy at all present, I don't think it will work. But I'm not sure that that can ever be the case. Can people ever be completely oblivious to the humanity of other people?

• Hate. Those people in that country over there, they're not people at all. The idea that they are related to us, that they could be the same species as us, that they are our brothers and sisters, is ludicrous. They're dirty filthy beasts, evil, an abomination in the eyes of God, like cockroaches or termites. Their mere existence is an affront to us all, and they are the source of all evil in the world. Let us exterminate them. -- I don't really understand this motivation, and I don't know what is its antidote; but I think both the cause and the cure might be at least partly religious in nature. Fortunately, I think this kind of hate may be dying out; I think the worldwide culture is starting to evolve beyond this motivation -- but we're not beyond it yet.



• Fear. Those people in that country over there want to hurt us, want to destroy us; they hate us. Or at least, their leader does. So we'd better attack them first. We don't necessarily need to exterminate them; we just need to weaken them so that they cannot hurt us. And then we'll have to keep them weak, too, because after we've hurt them, they're going to hate us even more. -- This motivation is actually quite logical: If you and your neighbor don't know each other very well, and each of you has been told that the other is a threat, then it makes sense to fear each other. The antidote, of course, is to spend some time with your neighbor, get to know each other, share a meal, play some Scrabble, whatever.
  
  
• Greed. Why is all of our oil buried under the desert sands of those stupid people over there? We'd better go and get it. -- This motivation is logical for people who lack empathy. Some world leaders are psychopaths, i.e., people with no empathy at all. Evidently we need to move our world culture in a direction that encourages more empathy. Recognize your brother or sister in everyone you meet.
  
  
• A political leader's lust for power. If I incite my people to hate and fear, and take them to war, then my people will do whatever I say. -- This is just a variant on the greed motivation. Again, the cause is psychopathy, and the remedy is empathy; but an additional remedy is to find out the real news, not just the stuff you get from the mainstrema media.