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WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 509
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WCL 509 February 2006
The route to world peace
If we are seriously concerned to make our world safe from international violence and to abolish war we cannot continue to stock the globe with weapons and prepare for forthcoming wars. Nor shall we "end poverty" while we spend 10, 20 or 50 times as much on arms as we do on arming every state, big and small. Nor can we hope to mitigate global warming, or achieve the co-operation that may be required in the event of other natural catastrophes that could yet afflict our planet. Focused on their designs for security through nuclear and other arms, our politicians will never be able to cope with population explosion and other real threats more urgent and real that "terrorism."
But apart from these pre-conditions, we must be quite clear about what are the necessary preconditions for abolished war. They involve, first and foremost, the convincing of millions of world citizens. That is to say, people in all parts of the world who feel a loyalty to humanity as well as being loyal to their nation, tribe or religion. Without those committed world citizens, there will never be either the determination to reform and build a different sort of world or the potential for reform that is needed.
Without them it will not be possible to overcome the entrenched prejudices and partisan interests that uphold the present order. Once that base for abolishing war has been created on a scale commensurate with the task, there will be a series of stages to go through. Briefly, they involve the acceptance of law - international and world - and the creation of more and better global institutions. Those will have to undertake reform of the world political structures, instituting global democracy and the achieving of all the aims of the United Nations that have been foiled and prevented for 60 years by the vigour of the nation-states and their electorates’ acceptance of the old patterns of power-politics.
There must not be any new attempt to construct yet another "balance of power" as has happened since the end of the Cold War. That has simply involved repetition of the policies that have prevented, and will continue to prevent, the winning of a "war or terror", the making poverty history and nuclear disarmament. On the contrary, the present policies are leading and will continue to lead, to a line-up with nearly half the world in one armed camp and much of half in another. China, India and Pakistan will be bribed and bullied to join one or the other camp, with other countries being dragged by traditions, economic necessity or fear into the conflict. And all the time we shall be wasting the world's resources whilst global warming or some equally dangerous threat is being ignored. War is always more urgent that provision against natural catastrophe.
The global control of violence will have to include a cessation of the arms-trade and acceptance of national disarmament, both nuclear and conventional. Without that there will be no security and therefore no state will dare to disarm. But that will only be possible if a political system is created that is viable and vigorous enough to permit the working out of the inevitable tensions that will otherwise lead to war. Such an innovation is so radical that only the imminent threat of the alternative - a third world war - is likely to make it acceptable. It will also require that the reformed global political system be made as democratic as the world can manage. A world parliament to ensure representation of people in all countries - not the present United Nations that almost entirely represents governments - is already much needed and will have to be created. At the same time the world courts, the newly-formed International Criminal Court and the long-established International Court of Justice, will require strengthening.
It is quite impossible to imagine that these reforms, difficult but essential if a serious move to abolish war is intended, will even be attempted without a huge base of world citizens aware of the needs of the time and the peril into which our present policies have plunged us. The global environment, oceans, deserts and conurbations, are all at risk and nothing short of global authority is going to give us even a small chance of surmounting the challenges of this century. To pursue policies that start little wars is pathetically irrelevant to the chief problem - survival.
And there is a corollary: in the present globalizing world, if we do not travel the road to world peace and the abolition of war, we shall find that there is no chance of peace at all.
John Roberts
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