Department of World Peace

A speech by Prof. Joseph K. Alexander at “Towards establishing a Department of Peace in Sovereign states” discussion on 3rd march 2006 at Press Club Hall organized by IIPA and Gandhi Media Centre and Centre for Gandhian Studies, University of Kerala.

Department of World Peace

Pre- Society man.
Man is a social animal. But individually he is a bundle of unlimited material and immaterial human wants, a self-seeker, a fighter to satisfy his wants with any and all around. So his life in the Pre-society stage was “brutish, nasty and short” The cave man used to do whatever he thought was good to him. Hazlitt in his essay “On going a Journey” says that if you are alone in a train compartment, you can do whatever you want; to go naked, to dance or even stand on your head. But if there are others in the compartment, you cannot do these things.
Post-Society Stage.
When one becomes a member of a society, there are a lot of rules to obey. Basic nature of social life is desoverignised individual. He gives up a part of his absolute sovereignty or freedom to the society, so that the society can be formed and man can live peacefully together. The Social contract theory of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau highlight this aspect. Man in his different facets of life is a member of different social organizations. As a political animal, he has to obey the rules of state, as member of the religious group he has to keep the rules of the religion, as a member of the club; he has to keep to the rules of the club and so on. In other words peaceful existence in social life warrant self-control and obedience to the relevant rules of the organizations one is a member.
Globalised World.
With the onslaught of information technology and modern methods of mass communication the whole world has shrunk to a tiny ball about which we come to know whatever and whenever it happen in any apart of it. In this globalised world, peaceful existence warrant obedience by all States or nation states to the rules of co-existence. In other words each nation has to have self-control and respect for other entities. Thus world peace can come about only when each individual, each family, each society, and nation- state impose self discipline, respect the rights of other similar social and political units and keep the rules of the game of world peace.
Visionaries.
It is the inadequacies of the present day social life that led many visionaries to dream about an ideal society and how to organize it. It is the concept of perfection inherent in human mind and the imperfect behaviour of man that prompted thinkers to imagine about a better social life and a social structure to lead homosapiens to a happy, prosperous and peaceful life. These dreams were social Political, economic, religious and what-not.
Sir Thomas Mora’s Utopia, Plato’s Ideal State, Marx’s Communist society, Gandhiji’s Rama Rajya or Grama Swaraj, Budhism of Guthama Budha, Maha Vir’s Jainism, Christ’s Sermon on the Mount and teaching to obey thy God and love thy neighbour as thyself, Bhgawat Githa in Ramayana are all examples.
Self-restraint is the rule.
All these dreams have the basic approach. Man must restrain his instincts to sovereignty for the sake of peaceful existence as a social being with others. Respect and recognition of the rights of one’s neighbours is the essence of social life.
Attempts to bring international Peace started lately with the Peace Bureau originated by the peace Congress in Rome in 1891. A number of pacifists groups aspired for a peaceful existence
But then the militant imperialists brought the First World War. At the end of it the Word agreed to create the League of Nations to end the World war forever. The old Peace Bureau was given a decent burial in this League of Nations.
Even the League could not bring peace. Various peace movements that sprang up to counter the spirit of militarism even before the First World War, specially spearheaded by the socialists, also professed the peace move. But these very socialist were forced to abandon their professed ideal during the Second World War when they aligned with allies to defeat Germany and its Axis powers.
The end of the Second World War brought about a number of international organizations like the World Bank, IMF and The United Nations to end the War forever. USA led the world in these organizations to champion the cause of world peace.
Meanwhile the cold war between the west and the east led by Soviet Union, ended with the dissolution of USSR under the leadership of Gorbechov and his glasnost and perestroika.
The question was must the post -cold war international system should evolve according the play of power and interests of the nations? Would the bipolar world eventually end in uni-polar world led by UNO or would it fragment into a multi-polar-system with new threats and issues on ethnic and regional terrorism and violence?
If we look at the world after 1996, the prospect of world peace in a uni-polar system is bleak enough to be skeptic.
In the Middle East the Palestinian- Israeli conflict still remain unsolved. In the former Yugoslavia wide-scale fighting between Serbs and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1998 later forced Milosevic to accept a peace plan. But the issue still simmers, though he was extradited to Netherlands.
In Northern Ireland the Belfast agreement in 1998 was signed by Ireland and Northern Ireland, the issue of decommissioning the paramilitary groups continue to undermine the agreement. The British Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997 on a formula of “one country two systems’. But now China is forcing Taiwan to endorse one China policy. In 1998 India and Pakistan started a series of nuclear tests despite the opposition of nuclear powers. .On the other hand the two Koreas have agreed to cooperate
Economic globalization brought benefits and cancers. The IMF, WB, WTO are now considered by the underdeveloped countries as machines of exploitation of the weaker nations of the world.
These all show how difficult it is to bring about peace.
A mere opening and operating a special department of peace cannot do much in bringing world peace. It can serve at best as an educative process towards world peace, whenever it can come up later in the world.