World peace
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World peace is a future ideal of freedom, peace and happiness among and within all nations. The realization of world peace may also make the idea of individual nations obsolete.
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History
Some historians identify a long-term trend where nation-states stop fighting and become united. For example, old Europe with wars culminating in World War I and World War II, compared with the European Union; warring Chinese states compared with the modern Chinese nation. Some historians theorize that the world will eventually follow this pattern as well.
Dr. Frank Laubach, an American missionary to the Philippines in 1935 saw poverty, injustice and illiteracy as impediments to world peace. He developed the "Each One Teach One" literacy program which taught about 60 million people to read in their own language.
World peace is often claimed to be the inevitable result of some political ideology. Thus, communist thinkers such as Leon Trotsky assumed that the world revolution would lead to a communist world peace, and neoliberal thinkers such as Francis Fukuyama assumed that the rise of Western democracy will inevitably lead to the "end of history".
The plausibility of world peace tacitly relies on the assumption of rational agents that base their decisions on future consequences, which is not self-evident. Bertrand Russell once expressed his scepticism regarding world peace:
After ages during which the earth produced harmless trilobites and butterflies, evolution progressed to the point at which it has generated Neros, Genghis Khans, and Hitlers. This, however, I believe is a passing nightmare; in time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life, and peace will return.1
Assessment
Whether world peace is achievable or not depends on what exactly we mean by it.
The utopian ideal of conflict-free interaction between all humans (or even all sentient beings) seems quite improbable to achieve, most basically because of the wide ranges of behaviour and personal circumstances there exist. Some people, acting in some manner, in some circumstances, are likely to get into a conflict over one thing or another. Indeed, the case can be made that if we did not conflict in any way with others, we would either be totally independent from them (rendering the issue moot) or we would have none of the individuality that makes us human.
Most interpretations of the concept are not so extreme, however. For one thing, there are many kinds of conflicts. If we only include armed conflicts, world peace may simply entail the resolution of all minor conflicts through nonviolent means (and possibly, the strong guarantee that this will always remain so—whatever is required for that). If, on the other hand, we interpret world peace as the total absence of things like trade conflicts or border disputes, achieving it becomes quite a bit more difficult.
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Even if world peace (in whatever sense it is taken) is unachievable, this doesn't imply that striving for it is not a worthy (personal) goal. In this sense (and others), it is much like perfection.
In 1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono gave obtaining world peace a try when they held their two Bed-In's for Peace.
The democratic peace theory
Proponents of the democratic peace theory claim that strong empirical evidence exists that democracies never or almost never make war against each other. An increasing number of nations have become democratic since the industrial revolution. A world peace may thus become of possible if this trend continues.
Cobdenism
Proponents of Cobdenism claim that by removing barriers and tarrifs for trade and creating international free trade wars would become impossible as it prevents a nation from becoming self sufficient, a requirement for long wars.
Mutual assured destruction
It has been noted that the number of deaths due to wars between nations as a fraction of world population has declined dramatically since the development of atomic weapons. Proponents of the policy of mutual assured destruction during the cold war attributed this to the increase in the lethality of war to the point where it no longer offers the possibility of a net gain for either side.
See also
- Clash of civilizations
- End of History
- Hospitality services - a peacebuilding idea
- Inner Peace
- John Lennon's "Imagine" song
- Paradise
- peaceful coexistence
- Service for Peace
- United Nations
- World Peace Council
- World government
External links
- World Peace Society of Australia (http://worldpeace.org.au)
- Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace (http://www.irfwp.org/)
- Women's Federation for World Peace (http://www.soros.org.mk/ngo/wfwp/en/)
- World Peace Forum (http://sknkwrks.ath.cx:1957/writewiki/wiki.pl?World_Peace)
- Pax Mundo (http://www.paxmundo.org/)
- The ACTivist Magazine (http://www.activistmagazine.com)
- World Community Service Centre (http://vethathiri.org)ja:世界平和
Notes
1: Cited by Judy Toth, Bertrand Russell Quarterly, February 2003.