How can we prevent ww3

Message to the U. This is a hard fix, given regional animosities and American weariness of Middle East engagement. Growing efforts to end the Yemen war, including an end to U. The United States has dynamism, resources, human capital and sources of attraction that could extend its global leadership.

However, with China on track to surpass the U. For the most part they approached questions before the Council as representatives of the special interests of their own countries. The question as to whether anything should be done when a country was threatened with aggression thus became, for the representatives of the other countries, a question of policy. They thought first of how their own countries, or the political interests of their own governments at home, would be affected by a decision to take vigorous action in defense of the victim.

The Council's conclusions were therefore reached chiefly through negotiation, pressure, intrigue, and compromise. They almost invariably ended in a decision to do nothing.

But—those who take this view say—the question whether an aggression is occurring, and if it is, whether it should be suppressed by the military forces at the disposal of the international organization, is not, or should not be, a question of policy at all. If the world security system is to work effectively, such a question should be removed from the arena of politics and diplomacy, and be treated simply as a matter of enforcing the established criminal law o f the community o f nations.

When a serious crime is committed in our municipalities, we don't call the city council or state legislature into session to discuss and decide whether to do anything about it. One can imagine that such a system of municipal law enforcement wouldn't be very efficient. The inefficiency of a system of international law enforcement of the same kind need not be left to the imagination; it is shown by the history of the League of Nations and by the present condition of mankind. Therefore, it is maintained by some, if the new international organization is to be free from the "most serious weakness of the old League, its constitution must 1 declare aggression to be an inter-national crime; 2 leave all decisions as to whether aggression is being committed or attempted, not to an ever-changing political body, but to a permanent court whose only duty shall be to apply the law; and 3 provide that when the court finds a country is engaged in aggression, it shall call upon all members of the organization to supply forthwith such forces as may be necessary to put down the aggression.

Under these conditions, it is argued, the use of force to repress the crime of aggressive war will be, as nearly as is humanly possible, certain and automatic. But only insofar as it is known in advance to be certain and automatic will powerful aggressors be restrained from taking a chance on getting what they want by violence. The aggressors of the 's knew that the use of force against them by the League was more than uncertain; it was very unlikely.

They could therefore proceed to carry out their criminal designs with good hope of success and impunity. Even if the peoples and governments united in an international organization have the will to enforce peace, one thing more is evidently necessary if that purpose is to be accomplished: The force at the command of the organization must be strong enough to do the job.

If, in a community of individuals, the gangsters are more numerous and better armed than the law-abiding citizens, a sheriff's posse would not be of much use. In the community of nations, the international force must not merely be strong enough to have a chance of defeating any aggressor; it must be so clearly superior in military strength that no country or combination of countries will be likely to take the risk of challenging it—for only then would it serve to prevent war.

Is there any way in which this could be assured, or at any rate made highly probable, so long as countries continue to have armies and navies of their own? Fortunately in no community, either of nations or individuals, are the gangsters likely to outnumber the law-abiding citizens. Most peoples, as has been said, want to live in a peaceful and orderly world. It might seem, therefore, that if they would all arm themselves and agree to act together to hold down the gangsters, the peace-loving majority could easily keep the community in order.

But unfortunately between nations there are far greater differences in power—in the ability to use force—than there ever are between individuals. Thus a very few of the most powerful ones might be stronger than all the others put together. The question is, then How, if at all, can we make it reasonably sure that the international peace force will be clearly stronger than any aggressive forces, even if one or more great powers should at some time be numbered among the aggressors? There are some who say that this cannot be done and that to attempt it would therefore be a dangerous mistake.

For a long time after this war, the great powers in the military sense—the countries whose manpower and ability to manufacture armaments will far exceed those of any other countries—will probably be only three: the United States, the British Commonwealth of Nations, and Soviet Russia. China is a great power, but until its industries are much more fully developed, it will not be among the first in military strength.

In a longer period of time other countries may, of course, become great powers, too. If as members of an international organization the three great powers were pledged to use their national forces against any aggressor, and if one of them were then to commit an aggression itself, the others would be bound to go to war against it.

Perhaps two of them might be on the side of aggression. Whichever way it was, the war would be long and on an immense scale, and it would not necessarily be certain in advance that the countries supporting the international organization could defeat the aggressor. For the defensive strength of each of these three powers is very great—so great, in fact, that it would certainly be hard, and might be impossible, for even two of the others to overcome it.

In any case, if the law-abiding members of the international organization fulfilled their pledges the result would be another world war. And it has been argued that if they should some day have to face this situation, they probably would not fulfill their pledges; they would find some excuse for doing nothing. Those who reason in this way, therefore, believe that the idea of compelling any of the great powers by force, or the threat of force, to obey the law must be given up.

We may hope that none of them will be tempted to aggression; we can try to keep their relations with one another friendly and cooperative; but in their case we cannot rely upon force as a means of preventing war.

On the other hand, it will be easy for the great powers to prevent disturbances of the peace by weaker countries. They are fully able to put down aggressions by minor states if they wish, and they might well find it to their interest to agree to do so. There could thus be established an international organization in which the smaller countries would be protected against one another by the Big Three or the Big Four , but in which there would be no guarantee of protection against any of the great powers, or of any of these against one another.

It will probably not be disputed that if this is all that can be done to prevent future wars, the outlook is a gloomy one. For it is, of course, aggressions by powerful states that most need to be prevented, because they are the most dangerous to all countries, large and small.

It is more important to prevent murder than petty larceny. After the last war, Germany and Japan were great powers—though they will probably not be after this one.

And in the 's the same situation existed which, under the program just outlined, would exist in the future. The League of "Nations did suppress a few attempts at aggression by small countries; but its members did nothing to stop the aggressions of Germany and Japan because they were great powers with which it would be probably dangerous, and certainly expensive, to interfere.

An attempt to stop them seemed to involve the risk of starting a great war. It was this fear of war on the part of the peaceful countries that chiefly explains the unwilling-ness of the members of the League to take any strong stand against Japan and Germany. We already know the result. Japan and Germany, finding that they could succeed in their first and comparatively small aggressions, went on to commit bigger ones, one after another, and in the end war came all the same.

It is a far greater and more desperate war than the one the League countries thought they were avoiding when they lacked the courage to use force to nip aggression in the bud. The history of the 's thus gives us a sample of what is likely to happen if an international organization for mutual defense and security is based upon the proposition that force is never to be used against a great power.

But the question still remains whether it is possible to make reasonably sure that the forces available for use by the international organization will be stronger than those of any aggressor, and so much stronger that aggression will be too dangerous to be attempted, even by a great power. Two means for accomplishing this have been suggested. One of them has already been outlined page 8 ; it is the plan of a purely international police force having the exclusive use of "heavy weapons.

By this plan it is proposed that all the important countries, the three or four great powers and a number of others also, should agree at the end of this war to fix the size and strength of their national armed forces at certain "quotas" or ratios. These would be such that no one country, and no combination which is in the least likely to be formed for aggressive purposes, would have a force anywhere near equal to the combined forces of all the other members of the international organization.

If such an agreement were made and carried out, a great state, though it would still have a sizable army, would not have such military strength, that it could hope to succeed in acts of aggression. Even if an attempt at aggression should be made, the law-abiding majority would not be prevented from suppressing it by fear of possible defeat or of a long and uncertain struggle.

Decisive strength would be known in advance to be on the side of the international organization-that is, of the law-abiding countries in that organization that want to live in a peaceful and orderly world. Those who propose this plan admit that it is not a simple matter to figure out just what the quotas of the different countries ought to be.

But they maintain that this calculation, though not so easy as twice-two-is-four, is entirely possible. The number of aggressive alliances that might conceivably be formed, in any future situation which we can imagine, is not really very large.

When these various possibilities are all set down, it is not particularly hard to figure a set of ratios between national forces which would give us the result desired in each case—that is, would give the decisive superiority of force always to the countries that would want to stop the aggressors. Working out the necessary proportions of the national forces, it is argued, is much easier because of two important facts: first, the majority of countries are pretty certain always to want to have peace preserved; second, we can be fairly sure that certain countries will not themselves attempt aggressions and will be ready to back up the international organization in enforcing peace once they have taken a binding pledge to do so.

Yet, so far his transition team also seems to be concentrating almost exclusively on the economy. This narrow focus must broaden when Gov.

Bill Clinton assumes the presidency. Clinton must have the foresight to look up from his immediate needs to improve the economy, and see the opportunity that is dancing on the horizon, because it may not be there for long.

The obvious mechanism for establishing collective security, should our leaders make the effort, is the United Nations. Unfortunately, after years of neglect the U.

Fraud and abuse seem to grow on whatever the U. Even more problematic is the wide rift between the industrialized and the developing nations. This dispute had been lurking under the more visible East-West division. With the end of the Cold War, it has emerged as the biggest single problem facing the U. Therefore, before collective security can work, the U. The world has changed too much to pretend that five permanent members are adequate. Third world countries, for their part, cannot view the U.

So far, no non-aligned movement, and no strong peace movement. Both are turning any moral high ground into moral deficit through continued expansion-occupation-siege and invasion-occupation-extrajudicial killings. The world is not against U. Reverse those policies and they could regain the moral high ground. But still no actors carrying concrete peace policies like the Helsinki Accords.

The reason lies in the difference between the West-Islam and the West-communism conflicts. Islam, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, covers more of the world territory and population than the West, but has few friends outside; unlike the West, emulated and admired by Russia-China-India, by Latin America and Africa.

In all but Israel, Islam has a huge and growing diaspora by immigration-birth-conversion. The result is uncertainty and fear: what do they want? A challenge to other worldviews, guaranteed by the freedoms of speech and religion.

Islam offers healing togetherness and sharing to a West suffering from materialist individualism and egoism. But Islam also threatens Western institutions with unwanted change. Western secular states won the struggle against the church with a secularism also exported to the Muslim colonies as loyalty to the state and the empires behind them.

For immigration to be a peace-building effort, immigrants must respect laws and customs of the host country and be met with curiosity and respect in dialogues, for mutual learning benefiting all.