2030 asian games the world's 2nd biggest multi-sport event after the olympics got us capital was announced the winner after a vote by the olympic council of asia in oman it will be the 2nd time joe has hosted the event on a saudi capital will host the event for the 1st time in 2034 a decision comes against the backdrop of the ongoing blockade of qatar by saudi arabia and other gulf nations. from out of the top stories around jazeera the world health organization says the corona virus pandemic could worsen in europe early next year it comes as several countries report rising numbers of cases including germany just seen a record number of deaths it's entered a hard knock down which will be in place until january the 10th in the u.k. prime minister barak johnson says he will not ban christmas gatherings despite

pleas from some of the country's top doctors and said he is urging people to be extremely cautious as the 4 separate nations of the country present differing advice while it would not be right we think to criminalize people who have made plans and simply want to spend time with their loved ones we're collectively the cross the u.k. government at every level asking you to think hard and in ditto about the days ahead and whether you can do to protect yourself and others we're keeping them the same but we want to say the same message the smaller christmas is going to be a safer christmas. the many parties to the iran nuclear deal have held talks as tensions rise the signatories including european nations urged iran to reverse the violations of the deal committed since the u.s.

pulled out the deal has on ravel those sanctions increased and iran developed its facilities in response u.s. president elect joe biden says he plans to rejoin the deal once he takes office. yemen has topped the international rescue committee emergency watch list for the 3rd straight year it says the country is at greatest risk of humanitarian catastrophe with great swathes of the population suffering from malnutrition your ongoing civil war has left the country on the brink of famine. some of the school peoples kidnapped in northern nigeria have been released but the government says it has not done a deal with the attackers 15 of a group of more than 300 kidnapped students were freed with the government of the northwestern state of katsina not providing any further information there's a top stories do stay with us al-jazeera the stream is up next and i'll be back with more news straight after that determine if you can buy for.

hey there welcome to the stream i'm josh rushing sitting in for femi ok to day now look if you're watching this live on you tube i want you to help me out see that box over there that is a live youtube chat and we have a producer sitting there waiting to get your questions and your comments to me so that i can ask them during the show today and what a show it is we're talking about war and that's the title in the subject of one of the hottest books of 2020 it got picked as

a top 10 book by the new york times for nonfiction and we're lucky enough to be joined by its author margaret mcmillan professor mcmillan is a professor of history at the university of toronto in americus professor of international history and a former wharton of st anthony's college at the university of oxford in oxford is where she's joining us from today good day professor how are you very well thanks all right so let's start with the book you've written a lot of books about that the 20th century and then you wrote this one which is of course about the 20th century which is known for these great wars but it's actually a much more broad look at history on this one topic of war why did why did you write it i'm also curious are you surprised at all by the response to it. well the 2nd question is easy to answer yes i am it's something i've been thinking about for a long time but i thought it will come out it's a book that a few people might like be nice it got some nice reviews that i am i am surprised

it's something i've been thinking about it for a long time if you do history war comes in and out of history a lot it has a huge impact on history and i suppose war was in my own background like it's in the background of a lot of people my age my father was in the canadian navy in the 2nd world war both my grandfathers were in the 1st war who are as doctors as it was something i heard about as a child and for some reason it's a subject the whole subject of war through the ages is something that has always fascinated me it's interesting because every history book i've ever read it's a war of the prevalent part of it but the book isn't just about war are there a category of human experiences that you might put on the same level like love or sex or economy or like what what kind of category are you placing war in terms of your experience. war is one of the great challenging experiences for humans i suppose it brings out both the best and the worst in human nature it can

have a profound impact on societies or it can be something that's fought somewhere else by other people and we don't think about it very much but i think it intensifies what it is to be human and in war you are faced with well you being in war so you know better than me you're faced with the most elemental decisions you have to try to save your life you might have to try and take another life you do things for other people you might not do in peacetime and so it is something i think which is not natural to us necessarily but it is an enormously testing part of what it is to be human. you know it's tough but not natural i must not natural experience of war which i've been to many many times as a journalist and only once as a rain as a marine you have a reason that you're there a purpose the adjustor unjust but you definitely know why you're there as a journalist when you're there obviously you're there it's important to witness it but at the same time. you feel foolish finding yourself in that kind of like who

finds himself on about a field without a weapon it's just a weird weird thing and you you ask yourself these questions like what am i doing here but you document in your book you know the time people being on the battlefield the cameras when they 1st were there were cameras and what have you found about the way people reflect on war. when i think it depends whether you know there is an observer and i think if you're only there is an observer i mean of course your life is in danger and you're part of it in some ways but you are fighting and so you are not a good experience in the same way and what i'm very conscious of is i'll never really understand what it is to be in combat and what i try and do is read about it look at pictures about it and i think so just those who find themselves often trying to capture that in the 20th century their own memoirs and then when cheap cameras came in the 1st little who're it was possible for so to carry a very small cheap camera and in the pocket of his uniform they tried a st george coded as much as they could in their own ways because i think they

probably sense this is something that they wanted if not to remember fondly but to but to capture because it was such a crisis moment in their lives we have a question for you from someone from our community this is caroline paul she's an academic librarian in derby and she has a question about steven pinker's book which you mention a few times in your book your letter asking. as several times in this book you mentioned steven pinker and his book the better angels of our nature in which he argues that sam violence has declined in human societies throughout history and i wonder having written this book the focus is exclusively on who or what you think about that argument are we listening to the better angels of our next year in becoming less violent or are we got staying the same or maybe even becoming more violent i wonder what you think about. steven pinker's book is enormously challenging and i think very important but i would make a distinction i've been thinking about it a lot since i've read it never read other books which which take i take issue with

him and what i would say is that we may be becoming in some societies less prone to random violence or less prone to use violence in everyday lives but we don't expect people to come outside pubs anymore and brawl and we disapprove of it if that happens and it used to happen a lot more and we don't enjoy public executions of public displays of cruelty so i think in some ways perhaps a better angels of our natures at least in some societies have run out but more is quite different it's not random violence war is organized violence and you can take someone who is perfectly peaceful and doesn't want to kill us and turn that person into someone who is a disciplined warrior who will do it and i think the crucial thing about war is that it's organized and in some ways the violence exist in a war yes there is violence will the violence exciting or its purpose if it's intentional and sometimes i think it's a great deal more devastating and cruel than the random violence when when we just lash out but are you making the argument that you think peter is wrong in essential

argument that these are believed by the times in human history. well i think it depends what you're talking about if you're talking about 7 societies yes they are said enjoying least less violent times although i mean there are exceptions his own country the united states has one of the highest homicide rates in the world you know it's way out on the end of one scale for most of the developed world but what i think about war is it's not that sort of violence it uses violence is an element but war is highly organized an answer apologist sentiment i've been thinking about it in the sense war is the most organized a lot of human activities and you will try and islands in war but you do it often in very cold and calculating way and so war is not the same as the violence you might see in societies where violence is endemic where people used to beating each other up and trying to kill each other or simply being cruel to each other war is organized purpose of violence and so i would say that in some ways in the beginning nice and but we still have a tremendous capacity to organize ourselves for destruction and for killing others

you talked to us about how wars shaped culture was really i really enjoyed the last chapter your book and if you think about it going all the way back to homer in the iliad through a costume cornucopia or all the great writing that came out of war one he just i don't know if that's fully appreciated as much as perhaps it should be. i think or does 2 things with culture want is that war can vote the response in and people great creativity and they try to make sense of it i mean some of the great racing that came out of the 1st world war was those who were engaged in that war trying to make sense of the war itself over this tremendous industrial killing machine which europe had built and painters and musicians as well i think try and make sense the more they try to understand it because it's such a challenge to understanding who we are and what we are and so who are think will provoke among great artists a very thoughtful and often passionate response do you think a passes going into that extraordinary painting you did to the town in f.o.c.

defenseless basque town in the spanish civil war one of the 1st times that civilians had been bombed from the air and it caused a tremendous response and produce one of the great paintings of the 20th century but culture also shapes when we look at war and we know that culture can react to the horrors of war and portray them that cultural artifacts can also try to portray or something glorious and the portrayal of who or something glorious and it's there in the end even the horror of war is there as well as also influence people in their attitudes towards war many of the end soldiers who went off to fight in the 1st or were particularly from the middle and upper classes had been educated on the classics and they thought they were going off to fight a noble war like the trojan wars or like their own wars and so it works both ways more commute is cultural cultural responses and cultural creations but those creations in some cases can also help shape our attitudes towards and help naismith

because perhaps ready to fight in some cases there's also something in that about the way that we remember war i want to bring in another comment this is from an associate professor of history at uva going to charlottesville virginia they have to differ sessions. one really important impact of war on society is how the war is remembered and how memories of war are used politically in the present if we take the imperial wars that europeans and americans fall in the 18 and 19 hundreds for instance where the you see them now as and stances of national glory or race this violence is really about what empire mean see you today and how it relates to your contemporary values who we see as the heroes of the villains of wars and the palace is as much about who we identify with in the present as it is about what happens historically. which when we look at the fights about monuments that have

been going on over the last couple of years of arkansas home or monuments european colonial monuments this is what's really going on. and i think that's very true and i think it's true history in general that we are constantly reshaping our views the question asking different questions of it depending on what we're preoccupied with in the present and what concerns we have about ourselves you know i think i quite agree so when you look at the debate happening in the united states over the civil war monuments what would you take away from that what does history tell us about that debate well how we look at monuments changes and a lot of the civil war monuments will put up actually i hadn't realized how recent some of them was some of them a put up in the fifty's when the civil rights movement was beginning to get going and i think there could have very deliberately by white supremacists in the united states to show that we won and you lost and you and to tell it to the black americans and you had better watch it and now of course as american society is coming to terms with its own racism and with the tensions between the races those

monuments again are being singing a different light and i think this happens a lot that how we see things is very much affected by what's happening to us today and i think it's quite right and proper that we should question such things as we question our histories. why does it seem normal bet every country on earth needs to train some of its young people to be killers and not unrestrained killers but some kind of control killers where it's ok to kill here and then but not here and now. how does that normalized well it's partly fear i think it's fear that if we don't prepare ourselves others might attack us i think it plays a very large part in preparations for war and thinking about war and always has done but there are those who believe and have believed that training people to be ready to fight is actually good for the nation it helps to be it's a mark of the nation strength it's good for young people to be given discipline i

mean that was quite prevalent in a lot of european countries for example before the 1st floor war that somehow military flourishes were what you wanted discipline and willingness to sacrifice willingness to die for your country or for whatever cause and so i think there are a number of things that drive societies prepare for war and one is clearly fear but sometimes there are those in society who say we need to get ready because we may want to fight a war to take what we want and the japanese militarists before the 2nd world war believed in a strong armed forces so they could seize more land on the mainland of china so they could make a stronger japan and so there are many motives for wars and many reasons why people still prepared to fight them there are some years in parts of the book where you talk about the technological advancements that have come from war away from stair ups to silk shirts to. still ships and airplanes we have to have a comment from this is from a professor of history in florence italy. now the reaches

societies on earth are fast approaching the moment when they may be able to wage war almost entirely by machines and those who made systems without exposing their own men and women to destruction. so how do these change war the propensity of our societies to wage war and the huge differential between the richest and the poorest society in these i mean relationship i think is in the question and i don't see any. cost i want to add to that from our you tube community d.d. a 1000000 says the west is made war worse than it was people used to fight with swords on a battlefield without children without women innocent men the western world has added fuel to the fire causing the us and so she's on not the answer to war or becoming worse and also i'd add one more thing that have you noticed that the recent drone war that happened in her vision with our many other use of drones for

military writers are saying this stigma is a new age of warfare. because if you wanted to comment about what it what the commit was. what i thought the 1st remark was was that it was very good and i have to end pessimistic because what's happening is it's possible to wage war a great distance on people you have a sea of people you never engage with and that may make the waging of war much much easier i mean so much of the war that has happened in the world since 1945 not all that but a lot of it has being powers fighting well away from their own territory sending their armed forces abroad and it's impossible for people in countries like united states or canada my own country or britain to see war as something that others do and happens elsewhere and i think that is very very dangerous and i do worry about the growth of artificial intelligence and more the growth of self guiding machines in war and i think that is really a worry i think developed nations who want to wage that sort of war however will

find that more may come to them one of the things that the military in developed countries are wearing a lot about now and they rightly show this urban warfare and the possibility for small urban guerrillas or small groups of people often suffer cruises to wage war even in very powerful countries so i think i see the future of war as moving both in the very high tech level and often far away from the countries that are waging war but also war are a low level which will cause a great deal of misery as far as the west being responsible for using technology in war i think it's not just the west any peoples that has come across a new technology has i think photo about how it might be used for war the mongols learnt that the horse could be useful in war it made them very effective worries and they learned how to make very very powerful compass it blows through the developments in steel production of steel was

a great help to some of the armies that rampage through the middle east so that i don't think in the west or certainly in recent centuries been responsible for a great deal of the technological advance in war and a new for a great deal of the destruction of war but it is i think something that is throw human history when a new technology comes along societies have often wanted to see how they can use it for war and that i think is pretty much something that that is part of humanity. you know for what i saw in iraq and afghanistan i wouldn't be surprised if you told me that the u.s. deployed more laptops and computers to those wars owns than they did guns i mean is really a signal that the information age innermost that quote from your book about rommel saying that the war is fought by quartermasters long before the battle begins i think you know so much that is put toward that kind of controlling and understanding information and logistics and supplies and and all that but what happened in as or for john which i just hinted at is that this thing a been in

a stalemate between these 2 territories for the you know like 2030 years and then they came in with a bunch of drones and within a month were able to force their millions into really a terrible compromise it was because of drone technology so when you can do that without risking the life of the young people from your country there becomes a disconnect between the political will that's required for politicians to conduct war and actually doing it are there examples of that historically that were countries from able to pay mercenaries to fight wars for them so that they didn't require the political will of their people. walk necessary was have been common throughout history and most neris have often come understandably from the poorest parts of the world because it's a way out of it and in the wars in europe in the 16th and 17th centuries the listeners came from places like switzerland ireland scotland because those were the poorer parts of europe and young men didn't have much opportunity in life and war

gave the release a chance to leave and possibly survive and possibly going on in the world but i think what we've also seen is always a search for a particular and developed societies for types of technology that will enable you to spend the lives of your own men and those great hopes are for the 1st world war that the airplane will make mass armies on the ground are necessary and it will be possible to wage war at a distance using machines and i think this is something that societies keep on looking for the sort of solution that will enable them to get the edge over their enemies and not have to sacrifice their lives and the young people and i think what's also happening and it happens in different societies at different times is a number of societies no longer are willing to see their young people sacrificed in war i think the 1st and 2nd were more had a huge impact on public opinion in the countries that fought them and i think in many countries is a real distaste now for risk rescue risking the lives of those they would have risked in the past we have another comment for someone in our you tube community

right now it is as nationalism the main cause of modern acceleration of war i know nationalism played a big role in the great wars of the 20th century and now we see nationalism on the rise again with people like trump impulse naro impress it should we be it is a canary in the coal coal mine that we should be watching for. i think nationalism has been a factor in war and it very much from the 18th to the end of the 18th century onwards before that most peoples did not organize themselves or identify themselves as being part of national groups but they didn't begin to do so nationalism as we know as a very powerful force it's like a religion in a way that people will do it for the sake of something they see as much bigger than them much more important than them which will out live then and people are prepared to sacrifice and die for this thing called the nation it's enormously important as a way of identifying ourselves and i do worry because what nationalism so often is not just saying we're a people and bring us together it also points out those who are excluded it draws

a line and it says they're not part of us and they're our enemy and so nationalism tends to want to find opponents attention much plain enemies and therefore i think is very dangerous and we're seeing i think arises of nationalisms around the world which i do think a potentially very dangerous indeed i mean the recent clash in the high mountains between india and china engaged nationalist passions in both countries and there was a tendency to look on the other the people on the other side as somehow you are mortal enemy who have to be confronted so yes i agree with the questioner market which your favorite book on war now that i've heard your book was the next one you'd recommend to me well i start with the end because it is both a masterpiece and a foundation i think of of world literature but it also brings out the horror and yet the fatal attraction of war you know the killer says this great warrior and he's terrifying and in some ways in human but he's also greatly admired and so i

think i'd start with that but i think it's hard to list all the things i think are wonderful i tend to like the novels and the works of literature because they seem to me to capture something about war. i know it's really mountain o'brien's the things we carried a life that's an excellent one my favorite is we die alone about the norwegian guy you know on buzzard i think it's miller mispronouncing his name yon was rude of you to read that book we highlight i have and i know i'll make a notes i'm a great admirer of tim o'brien and that an american novelist i mean i think his description in viet nam and in the things they carried of what the selves lesser but he also gets at something which i think is a very important component of kind of war and that's the camera that's the feeling that those who are fighting have for each other and i think he gets that very well indeed i mean it's a wonderful book. what will people remember. say 20300

years from now what will be remembered about the 20th century if we're still really be left in the dust bins of history as told genocide well i think people will look back at the 20th century as there are already looking back at saying you know what an extraordinary century i mean in some ways such great progress enormous scientific and technological advances social advances not uniform but certainly changes often for the better in societies and also what horrors it produced how could this century have income pissed so much that was good about humanity in some much as bad how could it produce these hideous to taser ships the the nazi dictatorship some of the dictatorship a whole host of other dictatorships miles dictatorship totalitarian states how could it have improved the lives of so many people and also introduce killing on a mass scale it's one of the most bloody centuries i think in human history and yet it has this paradox and it also produced tremendous advances and advances in the

way we think about each other advances in human rights advances in the sense of common humanity i don't know how people the future will characterize the 20th century i think it will continue to be this extraordinary puzzle. you know buzz aldrin once told me that you know hundreds of years now look back on the twister the only thing that will be remembered as war 2 and landing on the moon real quick i've got less than a minute but i want to know if you had a nephew come to you and say they were thinking about joining the military or nice in less than a minute what would you advise them going to read about it read the memoirs of those who feel if this is what you want and there are very good things about being in the military yes you will get an education you'll learn who are from your people people you meet you'll meet some wonderful people but remember that base what you're doing is preparing if necessary to chill others and be killed. sage advice margaret and they could definitely course places a start in your book war that's what i'd recommenced start there and visit a v.a.

hospital maybe. margaret thank you for the time today and everyone in our audience thank you i'll see you next time. business leaders just want to find a bra spot. for

. business leaders just for to buy no bra spot. the usa is always of in fact the people all right the wall people pay attention to what goes on here and i do see it as very good at bringing the news to the world. i was raised in france. these are my go. parents. these are my parents and this is mean. by them both isis and the us are.

the 1st of a 2 part epic tale of a remarkable family. the father the son and the jihad part one on al jazeera. coordinator in london the top stories are now jazeera the world health organization says the corona virus pandemic could worsen in europe early next year it comes as several countries report rising numbers of cases including germany which received a record number of deaths it scented a hard knock down which will be in place until january the 10th in the u.k. prime minister barak johnson says he will not christmas gatherings despite pleas from some of the country's top doctors instead he's urging people to be extremely

cautious. one it would not be right we think to criminalize people who have made plans and.