ROW Episode 23

In this episode we discuss the urgent need for creating a global system of collective security backed by an international standing force as an indispensable foundation for building a lasting peace and a powerful bulwark against war, including nuclear war and world war.

Transcript

Sovaida: 0:08

Hello and welcome to Reimagining Our World, a podcast dedicated to envisioning a better world and to infusing hope that we can make the principled choices to build that world. In this episode, we discuss the urgent need for creating a global system of collective security backed by an international standing force as an indispensable foundation for building a lasting peace and a powerful bulwark against wars lit writ large, including nuclear war and world war. All right, last time we talked about the fact that recently it's come to light that during the 20th century we came a lot closer to nuclear war than we ever thought. The reason why it's important for us to know that is because today, once again, the threat of nuclear war and holocaust looms large over us and has reached a dangerous pitch again, so much so that the UN's Undersecretary General for Disarmament recently said the risk of nuclear detonation is at its highest peak since the Cold War. So if we are to actually continue our growth as a human race towards maturity and start to learn some lessons and not repeat our past, we have to start to recognize what it is that drove us to coming so close to a nuclear holocaust. What could drive us again and what steps we might take to avoid it. In other words, it's time to stop playing Russian roulette because the stakes are just way too high and as we covered at length last time we simply can't afford to have any kind of nuclear skirmish, however limited in duration or in geography. And for those of you who missed last week's episode, please do go back. It's episode 22 on this YouTube channel and watch it so, you get some context. Now, to understand what led us to getting so close to nuclear war, we need to ask ourselves what are the main drivers that cause nations to want to have nuclear weapons? And there are a number of them, but the two main ones from what I've been able to glean are, first of all, feelings of insecurity. It can arise because a nation feels like they don't have enough conventional arms to oppose the forces of another nation with conventional arms. Or it could be the feeling on the part of a non nuclear weapon state that in order to feel secure in the face of a neighbor that has nuclear weapons that they too need to have nuclear weapons. It also stems from another driver, which is a sense of unfairness on the part of many nations who don't have nuclear weapons, that wait a minute, what kind of a system is this? Why do a handful of nations get to have nuclear weapons and the rest of us don't? And that sense of fundamental unfairness and injustice and lack of a level playing field causes them to pursue nuclear weapons. And we saw this in spades when Pakistan, for instance, went in search of nuclear,weapons. If you read a lot of the quotes from the person who's considered the father of the nuclear bomb in Pakistan, A. Q. Khan, a lot of it has to do with the fact that wait a minute, we too deserve to have our own nuclear weapons programmed. Why should other nations have these weapons and we be deprived of them. So the feeling of unfairness is part of this whole scheme. So the two drivers, two main drivers, a feeling of insecurity and injustice, and a sense also that In order to garner respect in the world, somehow as a nation, you need to have nuclear weapons, because then other people, other nations sit up and pay attention to you. Unfortunately, this is reflected in the fact that the permanent members of our security council are all nuclear weapons states. So we've crafted this system that has built into it this implicit message and incentive that if you want to be taken seriously and be a big player in the international arena, you really need to have nuclear weapons. That's a really unfortunate message. Last time we looked at one piece of a potential solution as we re imagine our world which is our goal here in this series, and say what could we be doing differently? And the piece that we covered last time was the importance of having an international intelligence and inspections agency. But that's just one small piece. There is another piece of this imagined solution to this particular problem of avoiding nuclear holocaust, and that is the need to create a viable system of collective security in the world. This is actually a really crucial idea and It is comprised of several components that I want to share with you. The first idea I have here is that it's time for us at the global level to create an international commission. Now, ideally, this would happen once we created that world legislative institution that we talked about, a world parliament that would be truly representative of the peoples of the world, in which everyone's voice would be heard, and that could pass binding legislation. That body, ideally, would set up an international commission whose job would be to determine the amount of arms, including nuclear weapons, that each nation has right now and also determine the amount that each nation needs to maintain peace within its borders and a certain modicum of self defense. It would have to do deep research into the demographics and the history and the geographic location and, basically, take into account the voices of the people of that country and surrounding countries. This would have to be in depth investigative work. Once it is determined what does each nation have and how much does each nation need, the second step in creating this system of collective security would be for the Commission then to come up with a schedule for destroying the excess amount that each nation has. In other words, the difference between what they have and what they need, and to do it under international supervision, ideally under the supervision of the International Inspections and Intelligence Agency. And we've already had some experience in the world with various arms treaties, including the INF Treaty between Russia and the United States, in which we have experimented with what kind of supervision works. But this would be supervision at the global level, not just supervision between two countries, because it would affect all the countries of the world. The third step, and this is a crucial piece, for nations to be willing to have the excess amount of arms that they have destroyed, they would need to feel secure, because we said one of the drivers for them wanting nuclear weapons is precisely this feeling that,"Oh my gosh, without this, we don't feel secure and feel like we can't protect ourselves against potential enemies." This security can be guaranteed and must be guaranteed to all nations in the form of an international treaty to which all nations would sign up. It would basically be mandatory. Nobody could opt out of it. And it would say that if any one nation disturbs the peace of the world or threatens the peace, all the other nations agree to unitedly arise against it and bring it to heel. So we're no longer in a world where we're doing what we're doing right now, where nations look at security guarantees from a nation. For instance, in Northeast Asia, South Korea and Japan looking to the United States to try to provide them with a guarantee in the event that North Korea attacks them, right? So we get rid of all this to ing and fro ing and bilateral and groups of nations coming up with deals amongst themselves and then unraveling those deals and going and making deals with others. This would be a global robust system in which everybody's signed on to it and all nations realize,"Yes. We all are protected by this security guarantee." Then the fourth step would be to monitor to ensure that there's no further production of new weapons, either conventional arms that go beyond that limited amount that's been determined by the commission that each nation needs, or any new development of weapons of mass destruction. So there has to be a moratorium. And then lastly, all existing stockpiles of soft nuclear weapons need to be destroyed in a phased manner, in a parallel schedule across the world so that everybody, reduces by 5%, in the next two months, everybody reduces by 10 percent over the next four months, so that you're not waiting for one nation to start before another nation acts. And this is all done under international supervision. Now, for this to work, we also need another tool in our arsenal of global institutions, and that is we need to create a permanent international standing force. This is one of those agencies that would act at the behest of the world executive that we also talked about in this series. Now, what is this permanent standing force? It would essentially be comprised of forces representing all nations of the world. In other words, troops and personnel would be drawn from all regions and countries of the world so that they all feel they have a stake in its success. It will take enforcement action at the behest of the international executive and in accordance, this is really crucial, with laws and criteria that all nations have agreed upon in advance. So the world legislature will have defined the circumstances in which this standing force can act. It would act in the collective interests of humanity in order to preserve the peace and enforce international laws and also enforce the judgments of the world court, because, if you recall from the session which we discussed how we need a new world court with compulsory jurisdiction and the ability to enforce its judgments, this is how you enforce judgments. You have to have a Force, that is enabled to implement the judgments if a nation refuses to do so. And this force would have to be held to high standards of accountability for any unlawful actions of its personnel. So there have to be a lot of criteria in place, and its finances would also be regulated and determined by the world parliament. Now, what are the benefits of having such a force? The first big benefit is its deterrent value. A potential aggressor nation knows that the international community has both the will and means to stand up to it and is therefore less likely to engage in its aggressive behavior, because it is going to face a unified world. The second benefit is that a rogue or a recalcitrant nation can't pit other nations against each other, making them impotent in the face of its destructive behavior, by doing what many nations do today, accusing other nations of nefarious motives like religious prejudice,"You don't like our religion, that's why you're standing up to us" or"You want our energy resources, our oil or gas, that's why you're standing up to us," or"You have colonial aspirations." All that will be gone, because they're facing a united global front. The third benefit is that the global community through the World Executive can act quickly and effectively at the first sign of trouble without allowing problems to fester and grow big, unwieldy, and then very difficult and costly to contain. I think of Syria very often. If we had such a standing force, the first sign that a regime was acting against the interests of its own people and using, for instance, chemical weapons, a standing force that we had, it would be able to intervene and we may have been able to prevent the civil war, fertile ground for terrorism to grow, the incredible refugee crisis, the displacement of over 40 percent of the people of an entire country, and the knock on effects it had in Europe with the rise of populism, driven in large part because of the migration of large number of refugees and so on. The fact that we came very close to what the journalists called a proto world war in Syria, where you had different world powers arrayed on different sides against each other and acting through proxies. It was another very dangerous time. Another benefit is that having a ready deployable force will bolster the credibility and authority of a world executive. Instead of having a security council that continually issues resolutions calling for a nation to cease its bad behavior like the Security Council did with respect to Iraq when it had a an illegal nuclear weapons programs and having Iraq just ignore it and the Security Council lose its credibility. Here you would be able to maintain the credibility and authority of a world executive. Also, a world executive could then move quickly and decisively. Another benefit is no one country would have the burden of being the world's policeman with a high cost in lives and money and a thankless task that often leads to backlash, because there is blame apportioned about what are your motives in engaging in this policeman like behavior? Such a force would be able to deal with other issues like terrorism and transnational organized crime. It could help deal with insurgents and militias where they weaken and destabilize states. It could deal with emergencies such as the pandemic, right? Helping for instance, distribute the vaccines and get supplies out where they're needed and also help handle crises from natural disasters like tsunamis and earthquakes and so on. So it would eventually work very closely with the regional offices and the local offices of the International Inspections and Intelligence Agency. So as accurate, shared, and timely and credible intelligence comes in, you have the standing force that is also able, under the auspices of a world executive, to act quickly, in order to quell the crises. What do we have now? Unfortunately the system we have now under the United Nations is nothing close to the kind of permanent standing force we've been talking about. We have what is called the UN Peacekeeping Readiness Capability System, which is a new name they came up with in 2015 for basically a system where nations pledge in advance certain units to the United Nations for use in peacekeeping operations. And this is key. Peacekeeping occurs when the parties consent to having the UN send forces in. So it's not the UN stepping in when a nation's behaving badly and saying, for instance,"Stop producing nuclear weapons" or"Stop genocide" and being able to act coercively to stop the behavior. Voluntary peacekeeping by consent, means that the nations invite the UN to please bring your troops in to maintain peace between the parties. It's very conditional and the troops have very limited authorization to use force, usually just in self defense and to keep the parties apart. This system just doesn't work. The nations that pledge units can withdraw their pledges at any time. So it's a very shaky system. When the UN needs troops, it actually takes a long time, usually six to 12 months before they can cobble together enough troops. And that's just for these consent driven peacekeeping operations. The world has recognized over the years that we need a permanent force that can go in, first of all, more rapidly to nip things in the bud. There have been some ideas in the past, there was something called Sherbrig that was a high readiness brigade. It was headquartered in Denmark and basically you had four to five thousand troops that had been pledged by eleven different countries to go in when there was a hot spot in the world and to be there very quickly to try and help quell the problem. But that was wrapped up, unfortunately, in 2009. Again, it wasn't a global force, and it wasn't under the auspices of a global regime. But it was a good effort, and we learned a lot from it. There's been another idea of having a UN 9 1 1. In other words, a permanent force of 10 to 15, 000 volunteer personnel that would receive the best training and equipment possible. The ideas have recently again this year been resurrected and it's being discussed again. What I propose a possible plan forward is a three step incremental process. The first step is to create a network of coherent regional security organizations that encompass the whole planet. So we know, for instance, that the African Union has a standby force. It's the force of the African Union. The EU tried to have a rapid reaction force in 1999 and is now proposing it again. 14 countries in the EU have again said let's try this again so that they can go in again when there are hot spots in the world and help quell, the problems or hotspots in their own backyard. What we need to do is to encourage the creation of new regional security arrangements, for instance, in Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia, in the Middle East, Central America, where they have a big gangs problem, and they've been talking about doing this for a while, but haven't yet. It's easier to create regional security arrangements where you already have regional security cooperation of some kind. For instance, if politically or economically, like the EU nations have already gotten together to create a robust economic system that they all benefit from, and they are in the habit of meeting together, the leaders of the countries on a regular basis, the region, and developing trust and building understanding and so on. It's easier to start regionally because it's easier for nations to cede sovereignty over security to a regional organization that they may feel is closer to them, is more representative of their interests, where there are more commonalities in language, culture, way of life, and mentality. By doing this, you're also starting to create pockets, albeit regional pockets, of collective actions. You're creating a culture of collective action within each region. And they have a strong incentive of self interest, because if anything happens in that region, they're the ones who are going to be hit first and be affected. It also appeals to those who are more fearful of and suspicious of centralized authority, especially at the international level. It avoids the pitfall of having individual militarily strong countries within a region undertake policing functions like Syria did in Lebanon for 14 years. They entered, sent their troops as peacekeepers, and then overstayed their welcome until a great number of nations in the world said to them,"Get out." And because of that unity in the world, they did. They left. Also, the benefit is no one nation's military and financial and human resources are overstretched. And another benefit is you have troops and equipment positioned close to where the problems occur in the region. Now, the second step, having created these security region organizations is to establish an international framework requiring each of these regional organizations to formalize their relationship with an international executive, like the Security Council, and make their forces available for its use. So at this point, you have the Security Council here. And then you have an agreement between it and each of these regional organizations who offer their troops up to the Security Council. You start by allocating responsibility for each region with each of these regional organizations. So if something flares up in one region, that regional organization can send its troops in, but first has to ask permission from the Security Council. That's really important. The Security Council can then give them a time frame within which to resolve the problem. And if they don't succeed, the Security Council can then ask another regional organization to help them out. The third step is to consolidate the regional forces and integrate them into one independent standing force stationed in those regions, but serving as permanent UN units operating at the behest of the executive. These forces evolve from having their primary loyalty to regional organizations to being integrated units of an international standing army that serves solely at the behest of this global international executive. They then have joint training exercises and integrated communication systems, compatible equipment, and a shared language. And they're positioned regionally, so the Security Council can draw on whichever units are closest to the hotspots to step in. This three step process basically is marked by increasing levels of integration and unity and cohesion. You start small, you build trust, you build the habits and you eventually get to this permanent standing force. Now, a common question that comes up here is,"Isn't this so expensive?" The short answer is no. Experts who have actually looked at this say that it's going to cost a lot less to create such a permanent standing force. Basically, probably a 2 billion setup cost, and then every year, 900 million, close to 1 billion, which is, a lot less than what some individual countries like the U. S. are paying every year and which the world has been paying if you add up what the cost is of military interventions. For instance, in the 1990s, just in seven interventions around the world we spent over 200 hundred billion dollars. And that wasn't even covering all of the conflicts around the world. This is a fraction of the cost. Frankly this should resonate with you apropos of the pandemic. Remember we said that there had been calls to set up an international network to investigate viruses and to prepare ourselves to face the pandemic. Well, we didn't do it because we said,"Oh, it's so expensive," even though, again, it wasn't going to be that expensive compared with what the world has had to pay to deal with COVID 19. It was a minuscule fraction of that cost. Back to the principles of seeing the end in the beginning, being proactive, thinking in the long term, taking steps now to forestall catastrophe in the future. The final thought that I have to share with you is that one of the enormous benefits of creating a standing force is that all the monies that are currently being spent for military purposes, military expenditures worldwide, can then be reallocated to help us with amazing things like dealing with climate change, finding alternative renewable sources of energy, helping nations and cities and countries adapt to climate change, helping to resettle migrants who have to move because their homes will be underwater, to pay for COVID vaccine production and distribution, to help victims of natural disasters, of drought, of flooding, cyclones, and so on. Last year, it was estimated that global military spending rose to roughly two trillion dollars a year. And the IMF this year told us in June that the world needs 50 billion, only 50 billion compared with the two trillion, to get the whole world vaccinated, to get rid of this pandemic, and still the nations are not willing to commit to the 50 billion. We've said,"Oh, we'll give 500 million or 1 billion or so on," but we need 50 billion. So we have a long way to go. And yet if we were to stop all this military expenditure. We would have so many resources available to quell things like the pandemic and quash it so much more easily and quickly and effectively. All right those are my thoughts for today. Thank you for joining me. I'm going to look at comments. Thank you Farzan. I am glad you're enjoying this presentation. I'm glad that you found it useful today. If any of you have any comments. Last time, a number of you wrote to me directly and we were able to engage in conversation. You had questions and comments, and I'm happy to engage with you. You can do it either on Facebook or on YouTube in the comments, or feel free to reach out to me directly, you can go to cpgg. org. That's the Center for Peace and Global Government. org. There's a contact button there. You can reach me through that. But otherwise I think that's it for today. For those of you who haven't yet looked at a copy of this latest book, The Alchemy of Peace: Six Essential Shifts and Mindsets and Habits to Achieve World Peace, please do take a look, available worldwide on Amazon as a digital book or soft copy. And thank you again very much. Look forward to seeing you and to hearing from you. Take care. Bye bye. That's all for this episode of Reimagining Our World. I'll see you back here next month. If you liked this episode, please help us to get the word out by rating us and subscribing to the program on your favorite podcast platform. This series is also available in video on the YouTube channel of the Center for Peace and Global Governance, CPGG.