The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own."

~Aldous Huxley

 

Peace requires law. Enforceable law. In a perfect world, we wouldn't need law to "keep the peace". We do not live in a perfect world. The reason many of us live in a relatively peaceful and secure society is because we have laws. You may think that laws restrict your freedom, and they do; they, for example, restrict you from committing murder. But without those same laws, other people would not be restricted from murdering you. So it’s the law that protects you from murder, that allows you to walk through the streets unafraid. It’s the law that gives you that freedom.

It's that law, that small limitation on your personal sovereignty, that makes a dramatic improvement in your life.

Unfortunately, enforceable laws only exist within nation-states. The rule among nations is anarchy. Which is why we have war. Unresolvable conflicts have no effective court to settle disputes. There are no enforceable laws to guide the parties to a peaceful resolution. And where there are laws, they can be ignored as there is no organization to enforce them.

Within nation-states, we have laws and a police force to enforce the laws and courts to settle the matters. This works quite well in large parts of the world. What would make us think we don't need any of that to resolve disputes among nations? 

What if war (effectively state-sanctioned murder) was illegal? Not just "war crimes" but war itself. What if we, an international community of people, decided that nuclear weapons and all other military weaponry were prohibited? 

Enforceable laws between nations are exactly what we need to prevent war. Preventing war is what the UN was meant to do. In this it has obviously failed. It currently holds neither the power nor the legitimacy to fulfill its radical mission - to end war. 

We desperately need supranational, enforceable laws, and we need them now. And for that, we need a democratic World Federation.

We often feel helpless to do anything, but we must take responsibility. We must make radical changes.

Peace on earth is actually attainable - if we really want it. Do we?

Peace Within Nation-states

We largely have peace within most democratically governed nation-states, and we even have peace within many non-democratically controlled nation-states. The common denominator, the reason that we have peace in most countries, is the rule of law. Generally, where the rule of law is weak, we have less peace. Where the rule of law is stronger, we have more peace. Where the rule of law does not effectively exist, as between nation-states, we too often have war.

Globally, we need democratic parliamentarians to enact global laws, we need an agency to enforce those laws, and we need courts to adjudicate disputes between nations. Otherwise, we are left with the perpetual tragedy of nation-states using war as a last resort to solve intractable disputes.

Unless we establish some form of world government, it will not be possible for us to avert a third world war."

~Winston Churchill

 

It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it."

~Eleanor Roosevelt

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