WHY IS IT so difficult to make peace? In Northern Ireland, diehard Ian Paisley is back, once more empowered to throw up obstacles to the longed-for resolution of the Protestant-Catholic conflict. Despite overwhelming Irish readiness for reconciliation, the bitter fringe can still poison the future.

When Israeli and Palestinian private citizens demonstrate the possibility of agreement by proposing the so-called Geneva Accord, they are treated as mischief-makers by many from both sides. When hardened Israeli military figures -- a former army chief, three former heads of the security service, Air Force pilots -- label Ariel Sharon's approach as self-defeating, they are dismissed as "soft," or even denounced as traitors, as if loyalty to Israel requires devotion to the unbearable status quo. Meanwhile, Palestinians who seek accommodation with Israel are made by some among their own to fear for their lives.

In America, the difficulties of peace-making exist in a different order. At the end of the Cold War, when the enemy against which the United States had defined itself disappeared, this nation's military establishment proved unwilling or unable to change. Because the Pentagon continued to perceive a world of mortal threats, levels of investment in weapons systems -- including nuclear -- remained extraordinarily high, with the result that American military capabilities have become literally unrivaled. The simple possession of such might, when unmatched, carries with it an irresistible momentum toward use, which in large part explains why the United States now goes to war even when it is unnecessary to do so.

Iraq, of course, is showing two things that are wrong with this situation. First, the perception of threats that justify such military assumptions is rooted not in the actuality of the threat (There are no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction), but in the a priori need to vindicate those assumptions, since they consume so much treasure and are a source of so much national meaning. And second, even unparalleled military supremacy is irrelevant to winning hearts and minds -- which is always the endgame of war. The more we smash those who hate us, the more they hate us, and the more of them there are. As the nine newly dead Afghani children reveal, American firepower is what creates America's enemies.

A curtain was lifted last week on the fundamental cause of this quagmire. Clearly exposed, if only briefly, were the real reason why the Pentagon clung to Cold War thinking even after the Soviet threat was gone, as well as the root source of George W. Bush's own hair-trigger war policy. A week ago yesterday, Philip M. Condit shamefully resigned as CEO of Boeing, the giant aircraft manufacturer. In the days preceding that disgrace, Boeing had acknowledged that other senior executives had committed ethical, if not legal, violations in pursuit of a $20 billion contract with the Air Force for the construction of a new fleet of tanker aircraft. The chief financial officer and a vice president were fired, causing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to begin his own inquiry.

But the scandal was not just Boeing's. The hugely expensive tanker project had been nursed along by, among others, Richard N. Perle, an intimate of Secretary Rumsfeld and President Bush -- and a beneficiary last year, as The New York Times reported, of a $20 million Boeing investment in the financial company he heads. Furthermore, the aircraft project had advanced with Capitol Hill support that had been secured by Boeing lobbyists and campaign contributions. In 2002, Boeing received almost $20 billion in federal contracts, while spending almost $4 million on lobbyists and almost $2 million to help friendly legislators win elections.

Critics, like Senator John McCain of Arizona, had argued that the Air Force did not need the new planes at all, but hard-pressed Boeing needed the business, and the Air Force depends on such endless rounds of gross expenditure. If there is a brand new fleet of tanker aircraft, can a brand new fleet of the bombers they service be far behind? Whether there is an actual, real-world need for any of this is simply not the question. America's global military posture is defined not by requirements of national security but by the profit-driven collusion -- capitalism's real "hidden hand" -- of contractors, Pentagon officials, politicians and pundits. The obvious waste is one outrage, but the more grievous problem is what this corruption leads to in the world. What it has led to in the broken cities of Iraq.

Why is it so difficult to make peace? In places like Northern Ireland and the Middle East, the answer is all about the passions of grief, unforgiven wounds, fears that won't yield. But in the United States, the answer is far more coarse. Not grief, hurt, or fear. Alas, the answer is money. War remains the turbine that drives America's economy -- therefore, its politics, its shallow pride.

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

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