Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T12:18:26.626Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Thinking about World Peace

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2020

Alex J. Bellamy
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

For as long as humans have fought wars, we have been beguiled and frustrated by the prospect of world peace. Only a very few of us today believe that world peace is possible. Indeed, the very mention of the term “world peace” raises incredulity. In contrast, as part of the roundtable “World Peace (And How We Can Achieve It),” this essay makes the case for taking world peace more seriously. It argues that world peace is possible, though neither inevitable nor irreversible. World peace, I argue, is something that every generation must strive for, because the ideas, social structures, and practices that make war possible are likely to remain with us. The essay proceeds in three parts. First, I briefly set out what I mean by peace and world peace. Second, I explain why I think that world peace is possible. Third, I examine how the world might be nudged in a more peaceful direction.

Keywords

world peacewarviolencejusticeworld politics
Type
Roundtable: World Peace (And How We Can Achieve It)
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , Spring 2020 , pp. 47 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I am very grateful to A. C. Grayling, Pamina Firchow, Nils Petter Gleditsch, Jacqui True, and the editors of Ethics & International Affairs for their thoughts and feedback, which have contributed immensely to the ideas presented here.

References

NOTES

1 Sontag, Susan, Regarding the Pain of Others (London: Picador, 2004)Google Scholar.

2 See, for instance, Biggar, Nigel, In Defence of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 1Google Scholar; and Coker, Christopher, Can War Be Eliminated? (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity)Google Scholar, p. 97.

3 This is one of the principal messages delivered by Margaret MacMillan in her 2018 series of Reith Lectures (Margaret MacMillan, Reith Lectures, 2018, radio broadcast, BBC Radio 4, www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00729d9/episodes/player). Also see Margaret MacMillan, “It Would Be Stupid to Think We Have Moved on from War: Look Around,” Guardian, June 24, 2018.

4 This essay draws on arguments advanced in my book World Peace (And How We Can Achieve It) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).

5 Caplan, Richard, Measuring Peace: Principles, Practices, and Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Keane, John, Reflections on Violence (London: Verso, 1996)Google Scholar.

6 See Hippler, Thomas, Governing From the Skies: A Global History of Aerial Bombing (London: Verso, 2017), pp. 9Google Scholar, 62.

7 Idris, Murad, War for Peace: Genealogies of a Violent Ideal in Western and Islamic Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019)Google Scholar.

8 Banks, Michael, “Four Conceptions of Peace,” in Sandole, Dennis J. D. and Sandole-Staroste, Ingrid, eds., Conflict Management and Problem Solving: Interpersonal to International Applications (New York: New York University Press, 1987), p. 269Google Scholar.

9 Ember, Carol R. and Ember, Mervin, “Warfare, Aggression and Resource Problems: Cross-Cultural Codes,” Behavior Science Research 26, nos. 1–4 (February 1992), pp. 169–226CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also, Ember, Carol R. and Ember, Mervin, “Resource Unpredictability, Mistrust, and War,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 36, no. 2 (June 1992), pp. 242–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ember, Carol R. and Ember, Mervin, “War, Socialization, and Interpersonal Violence: A Cross-Cultural Study,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 38, no. 4 (December 1994), pp. 620–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Otterbein, Keith F. and Otterbein, Charlotte, “An Eye for an Eye, a Tooth for a Tooth: A Cross-Cultural Study of Feuding,” American Anthropologist 67, no. 6 (December 1965), pp. 1470–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Wright, Quincy, Study of War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), p. 546Google Scholar.

12 Hochschild, Adam, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005)Google Scholar.

13 The Arms Trade Treaty entered into force on December 24, 2014. At the time of writing (December 2019), the treaty had 130 signatories and 104 parties.

14 Collier, Paul, Elliott, V. L., Hegre, Håvard, Hoeffler, Anke, Reynal-Querol, Marta, and Sambanis, Nicholas, Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2003), p. 13Google Scholar.

15 Bacevich, Andrew J., America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History (New York: Random House, 2016)Google Scholar.

16 Hedges, Chris, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2014), p. 23Google Scholar.

17 Gat, Azar, The Causes of War and the Spread of Peace: But Will War Rebound? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017)Google Scholar.