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Global Security System: an Alternative to War

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Global Security System: an Alternative to War 2 A GLOBAL SECURITY SYSTEM: AN ALTERNATIVE TO WAR EXECUTIVE SUMMARY esting on a convincing body of evidence that violence is not a nec- essary component of conflict among states and between states and non-state actors, World Beyond War asserts that war itself can be ended. We humans have lived without war for most of our existence and most people live without war most of the time. Warfare arose R about 6,000 years ago (less than 5% of our existence as Homo sapiens) and spawned a vicious cycle of warfare as peoples, fearing attack by militarized states found it necessary to imitate them and so began the cycle of violence that has culminated in the last 100 years in a condition of permawar. War now threatens to destroy civilization as weapons have become ever more destructive. However, in the last 150 years, revolutionary new knowledge and methods of nonviolent conflict management have been developing that lead us to assert that it is time to end warfare and that we can do so by mobilizing millions around a global effort. Here you will find the pillars of war which must be taken down so that the whole edifice of the War System can collapse, and here are the foundations of peace, already being laid, on which we will build a world where everyone will be safe. This report presents a comprehensive blueprint for peace as the basis of an action plan to finally end war. It begins with a provocative “Vision of Peace” which may seem to some to be utopian until one reads the rest of the report which comprises the means for achieving it. The first two parts of the report present an analysis of how the current war system works, the desirability and necessity of replacing it, and an analysis of why doing this is possible. The next part outlines the Alternative Global Security System, rejecting the failed system of national security and replacing it with the concept of common security (no one is safe until all are safe). This relies on three broad strategies for humanity to end war, including thirteen strategies for 1) demilitarizing security and twenty-one strategies for 2) managing conflicts without violence and 3) creating a culture of peace. The first two are the steps to dismantling the war machine and replacing it with a peace system that will provide a more assured common security. These two comprise the “hardware” of creating a peace system. The next section, eleven strategies for accelerating the already developing Culture of Peace, provides the “soft- ware,” that is, the values and concepts necessary to operate a peace system and the means to spread these globally. The remainder of the report addresses reasons for optimism and what the individual can do, and ends with a resource guide for further study. While this report is based on the work of many experts in international relations and peace studies and on the experience of many activists, it is intended to be an evolving plan as we gain more and more experience. The historic end of war is now possible if we muster the will to act and so save ourselves and the 3 planet from ever greater catastrophe. World Beyond War firmly believes that we can do this. TABLE OF CONTENTS 7 1. INTRODUCTION: A BLUEPRINT FOR ENDING WAR 9 2. WHY IS AN ALTERNATIVE GLOBAL SECURITY SYSTEM BOTH DESIRABLE AND NECESSARY? 9 2.1 THE IRON CAGE OF WAR: THE PRESENT WAR SYSTEM DESCRIBED 12 2.2 THE BENEFITS OF AN ALTERNATIVE SYSTEM 13 2.3 THE NECESSITY OF AN ALTERNATIVE SYSTEM - WAR FAILS TO BRING PEACE. 14 2.4 WAR IS BECOMING EVER MORE DESTRUCTIVE 14 2.5 THE WORLD IS FACING A CRISIS 16 3. WHY WE THINK A PEACE SYSTEM IS POSSIBLE 16 3.1 THERE IS ALREADY MORE PEACE IN THE WORLD THAN WAR 16 3.2 WE HAVE CHANGED MAJOR SYSTEMS IN THE PAST 16 3.3 WE LIVE IN A RAPIDLY CHANGING WORLD 16 3.4 COMPASSION AND COOPERATION ARE PART OF THE HUMAN CONDITION 17 3.5 THE IMPORTANCE OF STRUCTURES OF WAR AND PEACE 18 3.6 HOW SYSTEMS WORK 18 3.7 AN ALTERNATIVE SYSTEM IS ALREADY DEVELOPING 19 3.8 NONVIOLENCE: THE FOUNDATION OF PEACE 21 4. OUTLINE OF AN ALTERNATIVE SECURITY SYSTEM 21 4.1 COMMON SECURITY 21 4.2 DEMILITARIZING SECURITY 21 4.2.1 SHIFT TO A NON-PROVOCATIVE DEFENSE POSTURE 22 4.2.2 CREATE A NONVIOLENT, CIVILIAN-BASED DEFENSE FORCE 23 4.2.3 PHASE OUT FOREIGN MILITARY BASES 24 4.2.4 DISARMAMENT 24 4.2.4.1 UNITED NATIONS OFFICE FOR DISARMAMENT AFFAIRS 24 4.2.4.2 END THE USE OF MILITARIZED DRONES 25 4.2.4.3 PHASE OUT WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION 28 4.2.4.4 CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS 29 4.2.5 END INVASIONS AND OCCUPATIONS 30 4.2.6 REALIGN MILITARY SPENDING, CONVERT INFRASTRUCTURE TO PRODUCE FUNDING FOR CIVILIAN NEEDS (ECONOMIC CONVERSION) 32 4.2.7 RECONFIGURE THE RESPONSE TO TERRORISM 34 4.2.8 DISMANTLE MILITARY ALLIANCES 34 4.3 MANAGING INTERNATIONAL AND CIVIL CONFLICTS 34 4.3.1 SHIFTING TO A PRO-ACTIVE POSTURE 34 4.3.2 STRENGTHENING INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS 35 4.3.3 REFORMING THE UNITED NATIONS 35 4.3.3.1 REFORMING THE CHARTER TO MORE EFFECTIVELY DEAL WITH AGGRESSION 36 4.3.3.2 REFORMING THE SECURITY COUNCIL 37 4.4.3.3 PROVIDE ADEQUATE FUNDING 38 4.3.3.4 FORECASTING AND MANAGING CONFLICTS EARLY ON: A CONFLICT MANAGEMENT 39 4.3.3.5 REFORM THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY 39 4.3.4 STRENGTHEN THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE 41 4.3.5 STRENGTHEN THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT 42 4.3.6 NONVIOLENT INTERVENTION: CIVILIAN PEACEKEEPING FORCES 43 4.3.7 INTERNATIONAL LAW 4 44 4.3.8 ENCOURAGE COMPLIANCE WITH EXISTING TREATIES 44 4.3.9 CREATE NEW TREATIES 44 4.3.10 CREATE A STABLE, FAIR AND SUSTAINABLE GLOBAL ECONOMY AS A FOUNDATION FOR PEACE 45 4.3.11 DEMOCRATIZE INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC INSTITUTIONS (WTO, IMF, LBRD) 46 4.3.12 CREATE AN ENVIRONMENTALLY SUSTAINABLE GLOBAL MARSHALL PLAN 46 4.3.13 A PROPOSAL FOR STARTING OVER: A DEMOCRATIC, CITIZENS GLOBAL PARLIAMENT 46 4.3.13.1 INHERENT PROBLEMS WITH COLLECTIVE SECURITY 47 4.3.13.2 THE EARTH FEDERATION 48 4.4 INTERNATIONAL NON-GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONS: THE ROLE OF GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY 49 5. CREATING A CULTURE OF PEACE 51 5.1 TELLING A NEW STORY 52 5.1.1 THE UNPRECEDENTED PEACE REVOLUTION OF MODERN TIMES 54 5.1.2 DEBUNKING OLD MYTHS ABOUT WAR 59 5.1.3 PLANETARY CITIZENSHIP: ONE PEOPLE, ONE PLANET, ONE PEACE 60 5.1.4 SPREADING AND FUNDING PEACE EDUCATION AND PEACE RESEARCH 62 5.1.5 CULTIVATING PEACE JOURNALISM 63 5.1.6 ENCOURAGING THE WORK OF PEACEFUL RELIGIOUS INITIATIVES 64 6. ACCELERATING THE TRANSITION TO AN ALTERNATIVE SECURITY SYSTEM 65 6.1 EDUCATING THE MANY AND THE DECISION AND OPINION MAKERS 66 6.2 NONVIOLENT DIRECT ACTION CAMPAIGNS. 68 7. CONCLUSION 71 APPENDIX 5 A VISION OF PEACE e will know we have achieved peace when the world is safe for all the children. They will play freely out of doors, never wor- rying about picking up cluster bombs or about drones buzzing overhead. There will be good education for all of them for as far as they are able to go. Schools will be safe and free from W fear. The economy will be healthy, producing useful things rather than those things which destroy use value, and producing them in ways that are sustainable. There will be no carbon burning industry and global warming will have been halted. All children will study peace and will be trained in powerful, peaceful methods of confronting violence, should it arise at all. They will all learn how to defuse and resolve conflicts peacefully. When they grow up they may enlist in a shanti sena, a peace force that will be trained in civilian-based defense, making their nations ungovernable if attacked by another country or a coup d´etat and therefore immune from conquest. The children will be healthy because health care will be freely available, funded from the vast sums that once were spent on the war machine. The air and water will be clean, soils healthy and producing healthy food because the funding for ecological restoration will be available from the same source. When we see the children playing we will see children from many different cultures together at their play because restric- tive borders will have been abolished. The arts will flourish. While learning to be proud of their own cultures--their religions, arts, foods, traditions, etc.--these children will realize they are citizens of one small planet as well as citizens of their respective countries. These children will never be soldiers, although they may well serve humanity in voluntary organizations or in some kinds of universal service for the common good. 6 1. INTRODUCTION: A BLUEPRINT FOR ENDING WAR Whatever purpose the war system might once have served, it has now become dysfunctional to future human survival, yet it has not been abolished. Patricia M. Mische (Peace Educator) n On Violence, Hannah Arendt wrote that the reason warfare is still with us is not a death wish of our species nor some instinct of aggression, “. .but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene.”1 The Alternative Global I Security System we describe here is the substitute.
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