So, is the peaceful road adequate for our political issues, or do we sometimes have to revert to force?
Ultimately, it would depend on people's reasonableness and willingness to discuss their differences and reach a compromise. If we look back over the past 500 years of human history, we can see that the West did not become prosperous and powerful by being peaceful - or even decent. The age of exploration and colonization brought about great wealth and technological advancement, but was characterized by aggression, land-grabbing, slavery, atrocities, and exploitation of all kinds. In the process, the West became wealthy, powerful, turning into the modern industrialized nation-states which still exist today, while much of the rest of the world was left in a shambles.
The modern world was built up by force, and it has taken force to maintain and secure it on a global scale. As much as we try to delude ourselves into thinking otherwise, there has never really been any "peaceful" way. We defined "peace" as when the top warlords of the world occasionally decided to agree on sharing the spoils, leading to temporary lulls in fighting each other on such a grand scale.
Britain was, of course, a leading player and enjoyed a position of paramountcy in the world for a few centuries, taking lands once held by France, Spain, Portugal, Holland - who took them from their Native indigenous inhabitants.
The United States was merely an offshoot and a hybrid which manifested a continuation of the same basic processes which were set in motion.
France tried to make a play for the top spot, but Britain stopped them cold. Then Russia tried to make a play in the Crimea, and both France and Britain sided with Turkey to stop them. Then Germany tried to muscle in for what they saw as their piece of the action, and it took the combined forces of Russia, France, Britain
and the U.S. to stop them. And even then, it wasn't really enough, since the Germans rebounded and came back 20 years later, when it took even more force to stop them. The Japanese were also an up-and-coming power which opposed Western colonialism and hegemony in Asia, and it also took a great deal of force, including atomic bomb horror, before they would finally capitulate.
That's what set the tone for the direction the world would take in the aftermath. War had become an industrial, scientific, and technological affair to the point where the potential destruction and devastation was so great that "the only winning move was not to play." Also, along the same lines, Russia and China became more formidable adversaries, while the U.S. was still attempting to maintain Western hegemony over the colonial and former colonial world, which was seething with resentment and anger over what the West had done to their homelands.
While the U.S. leadership was frothing at the mouth over the spread of communism, we would hear about various hot spots throughout the world, in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa - with multiple countries descending into chaos as a consequence of previous policies which built up the power and wealth of the West. Obviously, the West wanted to maintain that power, wealth, and position of paramountcy over the world, but they also wanted to prop up their image as responsible, benevolent, freedom-loving, compassionate, democratic, liberal - not like those mean old Soviets who were painted in a very unflattering light by Western propagandists. It was pretty much a sham, as it involved propping up tinpot dictatorships throughout the world, in Iran, Cuba, South Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Panama, and many other countries throughout the world.
Now that the Cold War is over, what's left of what used to the Soviet Union is descending into chaos. China's wealth and power has grown exponentially, and they are also a major force to be reckoned with. There's still widespread poverty and misery in the former colonial world, along with the resultant political instability - while the West continues to struggle with trying to be some sort of "law enforcement" influence which is slowly waning and diminishing.
The best way to achieve peace would be for the Western leadership to start sharing the wealth and stop acting like a bunch of hypocrites. But since we know that does not suit the Western leadership or our political culture, they'll try to keep playing their current game for as long as they can. But it's clearly an uneasy situation, possibly untenable, since the Western political culture has largely been dominated by those who believe we can have our cake and eat it, too. It's not going to work in the long run.
It's worked up until now because we had the accumulated wealth, resources, and national power to maintain it - but things are starting to crack, and it's showing. There are widespread worries that the U.S. political system is in danger, threatened by those who would subvert it to something more regressive, which would be reminiscent of past governments we've seen.
Either way, it appears that the use of force will be a necessary evil. Peace is not really possible unless there is justice, as there are too many people at the top who don't want real justice (but they want to exude the appearance of it), while there are many others who don't think we can afford it, or that we don't have enough resources to sustain a just world. It might infringe upon our comfortable, insular, luxury lifestyles; people are driven to protect that, even if it means using whatever force and violence is needed to do so. That's the world order which was set in motion more than 5 centuries ago, and it's what we've been doing ever since.
