and it's thought that this mission will pave the way for chinese astronauts to. walk on the moon some time in the 2030 s. the new zealand government has agreed to a $30000000.00 deal to buy disputed lands the lands at the center all of this feature seen a property development company and indigenous people while the government will take ownership of votes but it's not clear what happens after that. my. this is al jazeera these are the headlines yes just a 2 coronavirus records in one day a number of new deaths and new cases you know the 3600 people have died and cool suit 250000 were infected president selects joe biden plans to get vaccinated in front of the cameras as early as next week to demonstrate to the public that

it's safe and effective 3 former presidents bill clinton george w. bush and barack obama plan to do the same south africa has recorded more than 10000 new infections over the past 24 hours its highest figure since august several countries across the continents are bringing in new restrictions as they worry about a 2nd wave u.s. government agencies are rushing to beef up their computer security after confirming they've been hits in a long running and sophisticated hacking operation it's actors are suspected to be russian they appear cyber defenses at the treasury and commerce departments. one of the nigerian schoolboys who escaped capture from a faction of boko her arm a spoken about his kidnapping hundreds of students were abducted from a school in northern katsina state last week at least 17 have been rescued by security forces utility when one walked out of it after we scaled the fence we were

hearing voices saying that we should come back thinking there were police officers unknown to us it was the band that they then gathered us at a spot that was when we realised there were bandits wearing military uniform taking a more can for so long i was already exhausted i'm a sickle cell patients want to hold my friend shoulder on to my right the other to my left before i can continue the treacherous walk into the bush as the bandits continue to flood people from the back so that they move faster. and fijians have been warns that no parts of the pacific island nation will escape the approaching supercycle jasa is a category 5 storm which is at the top of the scale and is expected to bring flash flooding and huge waves well that is yet to date stay with us here on al-jazeera the stream is up next. it's tam he is since the arab spring shipped countries across the middle east a decade on from the fast uprising one look at the legacy of the revolution. join

us as we assess the changes in the and its accounts in the middle east and north africa. on al-jazeera. hey they're welcome to this stream i'm josh rushing sitting in for femi ok today 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 and 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 warden 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 a book even 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 floor 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 prevalent part of it but the book isn't just about war are there 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 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 that 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 where there were cameras and what have you found about the way people reflect on war well 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 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 ball 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 on it you're 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 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 over the violence excited or purposive 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 it is central 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 apply islands who or what you do it often in very cold and calculating way and so war is not the same as the violence that 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 or your book and you think about it going away back to homer in the iliad

through because some 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 of 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 italian 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 moral 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 1000 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 war as 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 church history in general that we are constantly changing our views the person asking different questions on 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's your 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 could 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 and to to 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 other nations strengths 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 law of war that somehow military flourishes were what you wanted disciplined willingness to sacrifice

willingness to die for your country or for 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 it for the 2nd world war believe in a strong armed forces so they can 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 is there 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 in 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 these change war the propensity of our societies to wage war and the huge differential between the richest and the poorest aside here in these i mean relationship i think there's no question and i don't see any of. these questions i want to add to that from our you tube community d.d. a 1000000 says the west has 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 oz or. 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 and 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 and so much of the war that has happened in the world since 1945 not all that but a lot of it has being powerless fighting a 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 it 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 and more 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 on very powerful countries so i think i see the future for us 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 to 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 to certainly in 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 that 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 where 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 mercenaries 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 there was great hope after 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 who 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 to say 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 when 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 the 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 meant to mariah's the things we carried a lot that's an excellent one my favorite is we die alone about the norwegian guy yawn buzzard i think it's miller mispronouncing his name yon buzzword have you read that book we highlight i haven't i know i'm economics 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 still ruby left them 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 been compassed 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 suddenly 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 that 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 your continue to be this extraordinary puzzle. you know buzz aldrin once told me that you know hundreds of years now look back on the twenty's the true the only thing that will be remembered as war 2 in landing on the moon real quick i 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 'd 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 and start in your book war that's what i'd recommend 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.

and people have finally folk in america is i slipped one america's off balance or become more dangerous the world is looking at us live mixture of sadness and beauty . with the election behind us will the republican party dump trucks to the feel we can take on us politics and society that's the bottom line. dissecting the headlines in the midst of a pandemic let's start with some of the on the ground realities affecting the news conference what's the lay of the land there stripping away the spam reaping story about presidential corruption it is real reporting it's not. challenging assumptions and the official line we all decided we need to tell our story look we don't want to rely on the authority and it's media the listening post on al-jazeera . played a role protecting it would. ringback double

grown a virus records in the u.s. its biggest one day rise in both infections and deaths south africa has counted more than 10000 infections in a single day as a 2nd wave gathers pace there and elsewhere across the continents. but i'm home i hear dina this is al jazeera my friend joe also coming up the u.s. government's confirms its networks are under attack from a significant hacking operation.