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WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 523
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WCL 523 July 2006
Will our grandchildren die in war?
Watching dispossessed Lebanese families fleeing their homes in ruined villages and towns should remind us of how fragile is the line between peace and war. Life was ever thus but formerly the scourge of war was limited by geography. In the past seventy years this has become steadily less important. American bombs and Iranian rockets can land anywhere, at any time, and the victims are usually, like our grandchildren, innocent of anything except living where they do.
The deadly quarrels that lead to such an outcome look like anarchy, i.e. lack of law. But in fact they result from conflict of laws. The Israeli army follows national law to protect its borders and obey its democratic government. The Lebanese authorities uphold weak and ineffective national laws to try to keep the country from fragmenting. Hizbollah act according to Muslim law which offers some protection to Palestinians and Shia Lebanese - at the cost of the lives of Israelis civilians and soldiers. International law, which should forbid the violence, is poorly upheld, often confused, and never adequately enforced.
The end result is that our grandchildren and other hundreds of millions throughout the world, are in peril of international violence. Worse, they will continue to be, because we are not willing - or even trying - to change the "system" of international law or replace it with something better. The United Nations, which has not managed to do that in 70 years, is clearly not an answer. What is?
World peace requires three principal changes. First, it needs large numbers of people - millions at least ceasing to regard themselves first and foremost as subjects of national governments and instead recognising their responsibilities as world citizens. Second, it needs world laws designed in order to prevent international violence and allow people like the Lebanese - and us - to live without fear of attack. Last and equally important, it requires a democratic world assembly established to enact the world law in necessary detail and also institutions to be set up that will be capable of enforcing the world law.
This may seem a tall order: remember the looming alternative.
This message is one I have been repeating for minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years since 1945, when the first two atom bombs changed the world for ever. I do not expect to have it attended to before I die and I doubt if, when finally heeded, there will be time to save the world from catastrophe. As H G Wells said just before his death in 1946 - "I told you so!"
John Roberts
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