What would happen if there weren't any wars?

Answer 1

"...The world would be better and alot richer..."

Perhaps. Firstly, let's attend to the "It had to happen, so the question is dumb" response.

Many historians regard the political situation in Europe (with its line-up of tri-partite treaties and so on) as a situation so tense that the European "great" powers were just waiting for an excuse to go to war to resolve all manner of grievances. The tensions in the Balkans - mostly over who would get the one-time provinces of the ailing Ottoman Empire - had generated a situation that just about any old excuse would have been found or manufactured such that the Powers could have their war to clear the air, so to speak.

As it so happened, anarchist Gavrilo Princip provided the excuse Austro-Hungary needed to invade Serbia with his assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand of Austro-Hungary and his wife Sophie. After that, a network of alliances and pacts drew the Powers, one after the other, into war. Everything snowballs from there to the world we have today.

However, it need not have developed that way - so the question is not dumb. Decisions to go to war are made by human beings, and human beings can say "yes" or "no" - even politicians. The conflict between the Austro-Hungarian empire and Serbia might have been over in a month had the other powers decided to dump on Serbia and let it be drawn into the A-H empire. The Ottoman empire was crumbling, anyway, and the Great Powers would have helped themselves to this, that or the other Balkan province. Agreements could have been made.

What would be the result then, if WWI never happened?

European ascendency over the world would have continued well throughout and beyond the Twentieth Century. Africa's people would have developed into European imperial zones, or dominions - with their native cultures being rapidly eliminated, for good or ill. Britain would not so much have lost the Raj as such, but overseen its progression towards becoming a 'dominion' of her Empire. Similarly France and Germany would have retained their African and east Asian possessions.

America would have remained a Western Hemisphere power. Japan would not have gained the seeds-of-empire that were once Germany's one-time Pacific possessions and so might never have felt confident to begin her 30 year long imperial adventure that only ended with Hiroshima. To that end, the nuclear bomb would never have been developed because it did so only through extreme expense on America's part - who only developed it because they were in a war with Japan... which would never have happened in the first place had the Japanese not had the wherewithall to start an imperial adventure in China.

China, without the turmoils created by the Imperial Japanese during the 20s and 30s, would have stayed Nationalist.

Russia would not have gone Communist - but haemophiliac Alexei would not have continued the Romanov dynasty. The liberalisation of the Russians might've progressed well without the weak and corrupted Romanovs.

Germany's European empire would've grown stronger, and with peace and prosperity more liberal and democratic movements would have been allowed to flourish. A series of non-aggression pacts or deals with Britain, France and Russia would've been drawn up.

The crumbling Ottoman Empire would have seen Palestine up for grabs - with Britain, France or Russia most likely all wanting a piece of the Mediterranean Eastern seaboard. The Jews might have gotten themselves an 'autonomous limited dependency' within Palestine at best under the control of any one of those Great Powers. No doubt the Russian Empire would've been glad to get rid of its (undeservedly despised) Jews. Similarly, the French. The Arabs might not have liked it, but with all their lands carved up among the big European empires, they would never have been in a possession to exercise the "oil muscle" that led to the global mess we have now.

So. A world with no nuclear bombs, no Cold War, no Arab-Israeli wars, no Middle Eastern oil crisis, no Islamic fundamentalism, no Communist China (or Russia), continued colonial Africa and India...

... Europe's excess populations expanding throughout the planet, Middle Class Christendom would never have been shattered as it was from world wars I and II ... the utopian visions of the Victorian and Edwardian idealists might have come true...

... Sounds like a fantasy doesn't it?

And yet, all this might have been had calmer heads prevailed. You decide if that's a better world or not.

Answer 2

Germany's depression wouldn't have been as bad, which might've made people think twice about giving Hitler all of these positions, and could've made the Holocaust never happen.

Answer 3

if there were no wars the world would be at peace and there would be many people but we would all die some time.