Originally published on the CGS blog on May 29, 2016.
Thanks to President Obama for visiting Hiroshima and thereby calling attention to the increasing horror of warfare. The President has an important message which much of the media seems to be missing, that in the future humanity must avoid not only nuclear war but all warfare.
It is past time for the world’s leaders to see that the development of any kind of weapons is not the cause of war but rather the effect of leaders expecting wars and wanting to win them rather than lose them. Wars are a disease of our human society, and the desire to make ever more destructive weapons is a symptom of that disease.
Some people think that we must always have wars because there will always be conflicts, but that is a mistake. Not all conflicts are wars. Humans engage in warfare when they do not rely on a better way to deal with conflicts.
In fact, we humans have developed a peaceful way of resolving conflicts, even intense conflicts between groups with opposing interests. It is called democratic government, and we are seeing it at work right in our election taking place this November. Different groups have different views about what policies the government of our community should follow. A few even want to continue to use violence to deal with these conflicts, but fortunately most are committed to having elections according to agreed-upon rules. Then the winning majority make laws which are in effect until the next election. Courts are established to determine how the laws apply to particular cases. We will have a very contentious election, but there will not be a war.
The United States of America is not the only country that has demonstrated the value of democracy, that is, of resolving conflicts by political and judicial means along with regular elections. Democracy promotes bit-by-bit progress over a long period of time.
Our national history also provides another important lesson for the world community today. After winning the Revolutionary War, our thirteen newly independent colonies began fighting wars with each other. The Articles of Confederation worked rather well during the war, but after that we needed the federation called the United States of America. Under the leadership of Federalists such as Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington some but not all of the sovereignty of the 13 states was subordinated to the sovereignty of the new nation. The tension between the sovereignty of the states and the sovereignty of the federation eventually led to the Civil War won by the Union forces. The tension remains, but the supremacy of the welfare of the country as a whole was established.
In order to eliminate war among the nation-states with their unlimited national sovereignty, a similar move from the confederal United Nations to a democratic world federation is needed. It may need to be preceded by regional federations such as the European Union and the African Union, but to avoid wars between those regional federations a democratic world federation is also needed. Forming such a federation will not be easy, but it is the only way to abolish warfare.
