ROW Episode 29

In this episode we examine how the war in Ukraine might have been averted if we had firstly had a global system of collective security in place capable of deterring nations from entering into conflicts and restoring peace when it is breached. And secondly if we had additionally had other global institutions like a properly functioning World Court, an International Legislature, and an International Intelligence and Inspections Agency, comprising a viable system of global governance fit for purpose for the 21st century and beyond.

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 examine how the war in Ukraine might have been averted if we had firstly had a global system of collective security in place, capable of deterring nations from entering into conflicts and restoring peace when it is breached. And secondly, if we had additionally had other global institutions, like a properly functioning world court and international legislature and an international intelligence and inspections agency, comprising a viable system of global governance fit for purpose. Given the current state of our world, it's understandable that many of us should be feeling demoralized and hopeless. To say that the past two years have been trying for many folks around the world, is an understatement. We're still reeling from the body blows inflicted by a global pandemic, which is not over, by the impact that the pandemic has had on our global economy. And while we're still trying to handle these twin crises, we know that climate change is continuing to barrel down the hill at us, and we haven't yet been able to get our arms around the change in habits that will need to happen if we're to avoid the worst calamitous effects of climate change. And indeed recent reports indicate that it's happening faster than even the scientists had imagined, with an increase in wildfires of 50 percent by 2100, and by the rising of sea levels at a faster pace than we'd imagined by yet another foot by the year 2050. And as though all of this were not enough, we are now faced with the specter of a war in Ukraine that could easily spread to other countries and pull other nations of the world into its orbit. To add insult to injury, such a war involves one of the world's great nuclear powers. So it's worth stopping and pausing for a second to note a reality. It seems that our tests repeat themselves until we learn a lesson. We're familiar with this phenomenon in our individual lives. I'm sure you've all experienced this. There's something that you're wrestling with in your life and you think that you've licked it and then it comes back again and it comes back again until you've actually managed to overcome it. This same phenomenon that applies in our individual lives also applies in our collective and societal life. It was interesting to hear the Secretary General of NATO say a couple of days ago, Mr. Stoltenberg, that we're seeing war of a scale and type we thought belonged to past history. And yet, when we actually stop and ponder this, we see that we've been here before, even since the last century, even since the Second World War. Ukraine and what's happening there is somewhat reminiscent of what happened in Syria. There're certain common features. There was no external territorial aggression of the kind we see in the Ukraine, but similar themes are emerging. The flow of refugees out of Ukraine into Western Europe and other countries in Eastern Europe, like Poland and Romania, and other countries, just as we saw in Syria. The fight over pieces of a country with different factions trying to gain a foothold and gain control over those pieces. It's pulling different countries around the world on different sides of the conflict. In Syria, it got so bad that one of the newspaper reports at the time called it a proto world war. And of course Syria became a breeding ground for terrorism and we're already starting to see far right militias from around Europe gathering arms and traveling to Ukraine in order to fight, which can't bode well for the future of the country, when you have lots of folks, foreigners, who come in and who are armed. That's never a good thing for any country in any situation. And as in Syria, here again, the world stood back and said, let them figure it out. We also, when we look at history, we see that we have had this repeated pattern of territorial aggression. In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. In 2014, Russia illegally annexed Crimea. The first time around with Iraq, we cobbled together a coalition of willing nations to go in and get Iraq out of Kuwait and free Kuwait. With respect to Crimea, the world really ineffectually stood by, did a lot of hand wringing and stern rebuking, but ultimately there was no action. So this test keeps coming back over and over again. In fact the way I think about it is that these tests come in waves, and the waves increase in number, increase in frequency, and increase in intensity, and ultimately turn into a tsunami that threatens to engulf us, which is exactly what is happening in the Ukraine right now. What can we do is the real question. We know that we certainly can't afford to be paralyzed and despondent and fearful and anxious, because we now need to act as we've never acted before in order to assure the peace, security, and tranquility of the world. Because without peace and security, we can't do anything else. The question becomes, What opportunities might be inherent in the present moment? And in order to identify those opportunities, we need to be clear eyed about what our past and present experiences teach us, about what not to do, and then determine what we can do differently. So let's look at our past reactions. A hallmark of our past reactions to this kind of scenario of territorial aggression has been to do too little too late. The international community has tended to abdicate its responsibility. Going back to our image of the tsunami, even though we have indications that a tsunami is coming, we have been throwing a few sandbags here and there. Or in the face of a 40 foot tsunami, we've been building walls that are 2 feet high or even 10 feet high, but nothing that is really capable of withstanding the force of the waves. The way we have done this business as usual, is that we've continued to take an approach and have a mindset of an us against them. We huddle in groups. We huddle in alliances. We huddle in coalitions. We get together and have bilateral agreements and trilateral agreements and small multilateral agreements. And our aim all along is merely to seek to maintain an equilibrium of the interests of various nations. Now this would make a lot of sense if we did not live in a world that was so interconnected and interwoven that essentially our interests are fused. It does not make sense any longer to think in terms of maintaining an equilibrium of interest. To me, this becomes very vivid when, as a human being, I stand back, I zoom out, and I look at what's happening in the Ukraine. We see a country burning, with folks being killed, and property and infrastructure destroyed. And here's the rest of the world standing by and saying, okay, you don't belong to this alliance that we call NATO, and so we're not going to step in and help you, but we're going to do things at the margins. We're going to shore ourselves up around Ukraine, so if this spills over into a NATO country, then we'll do something. And we'll impose some sanctions, but we know that sanctions in the past haven't really been effective. And in fact, they were not effective enough to deter the invasion in the first place. This is really child's play and nonsensical given the kind of world we live in. The truth is that we come to the question of what can we do differently. And we've got to understand that we stand at a fork in the road. We're faced with a stark choice. as humanity. We either deepen our unity or we self destruct. Now, it's interesting to me that the famous scientist Albert Einstein, as far back as 75 years ago in 1947, wrote an open letter to the United Nations in which he talked about the fact that the UN was really just a transitional body, and that the final goal of humanity should be, and here's the quote,"The establishment of a supranational authority vested with sufficient legislative and executive powers to build the peace." In other words, he was calling for the building of a United States of the world. Now, in this series of podcasts, the last 28 podcasts, we have been exploring the vision of precisely how we go about building such a system of global governance and collective security to ensure the peace and tranquility of the world. For those of you who may think that this was simply a theoretical exercise, I wanted to spend time today looking at the Ukraine and saying, okay, What might have happened if we had such a system, a robust system of global governance in place today, and this Ukraine crisis started? Would the outcome have been different? Would we have been able to avert war, and how? And how would we have been able to solve the differences? Let's start with the first thing that we have talked about, and that is the need to build an effective system of collective security. We've gotten to the point where it's time, and the creation of such a system I deeply believe is not only possible, but inevitable. It starts with an agreement between core group of the world's leaders who possess qualities of trustworthiness and high mindedness and who are courageous enough to have as their sole agenda the restoration of peace to the planet. As they get together, they need to sign an agreement and then having signed it, get other nations to ratify it. Interestingly, Albert Einstein in that letter that I talked about says that we need to have at least two thirds of the world's economic and industrial powers sign on to it, because then it will have enough of an influence and impact on the rest of the world. So under this agreement, the amount of arms that each nation could possess would be limited to that which is necessary to preserve internal peace. And we could set up an international commission to do studies to see what that would be. The second thing would be that all the rest of the armaments, the surplus, would have to be destroyed in all countries. Nuclear weapons: there would have to be an agreement that they all be destroyed. These leaders would also need to agree to dispense with war as an instrument of international relations. And one of the most important provisions of this treaty would be to agree that if one nation breaches the provisions of this agreement, then all nations would arise as one to bring it to heel. So if you think about it, as soon as we start to have an arms build up by any nation, that would immediately trigger collective action, starting with sanctions all the way up to the use of force, because we all know that the only way to deal with a bully on the playground is to take a united stand against him or her. Now, in order for such a system to function, we would also need another element that we have also talked about. We spent a whole podcast on this. We would need a supranational intelligence system that acts as an early warning system, so that we can nip things in the bud while they're still small. Very much like what happens with the tsunami. We now have parts of the world where they have created these early warning systems with these seismic monitors that they have on the floor of the ocean that detect even one inch in a difference in movement. We can then give warning and get people to safety. We need something similar in our system of global governance. What's interesting to me is that I'm starting to see glimmerings with this Ukraine crisis, a lot more sharing of intelligence. For the first time, for instance, from what I read in the media, the United States has been trying to quickly declassify intelligence reports that can be shared openly. And we've been hearing on the news, we have intelligence that we believe this country is going to do X, Y, and Z, and we think that these actions are going to be taken, there're going to be cyber attacks, there're going to be videos. It's been fascinating to see the world being forced to eventually take this step, but why not just go ahead and do it? That was one thing, which is a supranational intelligence agency. In addition, we also need to have an international court that we all trust because its members are elected as opposed to appointed in backroom deals. Again, we spent a whole podcast discussing how we need to reform our international court. This international court, most importantly, needs to have compulsory jurisdiction. Look, nations are inevitably going to have disagreements and disputes, and the point is to try to settle them without resort to force, and without it degenerating into destabilizing conflict. With respect to the Ukraine, if the question comes up, to whom do the territories in eastern Ukraine belong, and what nation should these people belong to, then that issue should come before, be referred to, this revamped international court for decision. The nations involved would have to submit without exception. They would not have the opportunity to opt out under this new, revised, revamped international court system, because there is compulsory jurisdiction. Moreover, once a verdict is rendered, all sides would have to abide by it. It would be binding and it would be enforceable, because without a system of enforcement, it's all meaningless. We end up back in the world of words. Which then leads us to the need for another element in this system of global governance that we also spent a whole session exploring, the need for an international standing force. This force would be comprised of units from all the nations of the world. So it would be representative of all the nations of the world. And it would act only according to collective decisions made by a global legislature the members of whom are directly elected by the peoples of the world and represents their collective interests. It would act in accordance with predetermined rules that this body had legislated on. So none of this fuzzy policy stuff that,"Oh, when if you're a nation we like, then we'll turn a blind eye. And if you're a nation we distrust, then we're going to come down hard on you." And action would only be taken in the collective interests of humanity. Now, who would pay for such a force? Again, something we talked about. The global legislature would have limited rights of taxation, the ability to tax the people of the world. So just like we pay local, state, and federal taxes, we would pay this global federal tax, if you like so that we could sustain this standing force. Let's see what else the system that we've been talking about would do to help us deal with all the problems that flow from the Ukraine crisis that we're faced with. One of the concerns is about energy and adequate access to natural gas and oil to meet the energy needs of Europe and other countries in the world. As you may recall, we talked about this global legislature that would be directly elected. One of its functions would be to serve as the trustee, the sole trustee, of the world's critical natural resources. including energy resources. So it would have exclusive authority over these resources and have the responsibility to manage and distribute them in a fair manner to all the nations of the world. Another concern that has arisen with respect to Ukraine is the nuclear concern. It's a little disconcerting. One could see this coming down the pipe, but one still wishes that it weren't happening. We're starting to hear in the news people talk about the fear of this escalating into a nuclear war, because Russia is a nuclear power, and of course we have members of NATO. God forbid if NATO gets dragged into the conflict, if there is accidental spillover from Ukraine into NATO territories, then we could see a war between, or conflict between nuclear powers which may not end very well, not because people want to necessarily have a nuclear war, but the truth is that once war starts, things easily get out of hand, and things escalate, and we often end up in a much larger war quite by accident. This is another benefit. We talked about first of all, eliminating the nuclear weapons, but then we still have nuclear facilities and the potential to create nuclear material that can then be used to make bombs. And so pooling those, just as the European Coal and Steel community did in the aftermath of the Second World War, pooling these resources in the hands of a supranational authority, this world legislature, again, which we spent, I think, two sessions unpacking, so that we don't have to worry about individual nations reaching for nuclear weapons. In short, it's really time to build, as we said, a United States of the World. Now, what are some of the benefits of creating such a system? It allows us, the world, the international community, to step in and act quickly, decisively, and effectively to nip problems in the bud while they're still small. So at the first sign...for instance, here with Ukraine, the problem really started in 2014 when Russia moved in and annexed Crimea in violation of international law. At that point already, if we'd had such a system, we should have taken steps. And when they also started sending troops and armaments to Eastern Ukraine, to the Donbass region. It's, if one wants to think about it this way, it's like administering chemotherapy early to to get rid of cancer cells in a body, if a certain behavior is going to risk the well being of the body. If a behavior of a certain nation is going to put the peace and tranquility of the world at risk, then the entire international community has the responsibility to stand up for peace and take steps to bring that country to heal. And the longer we wait and the more this behavior, this cancer metastasizes in the body of the world, the harder it is to take care of it. So if we'd taken care of this in 2014, we probably wouldn't be here today dealing with this problem with the Ukraine. Other benefits. We maintain the credibility of the international system and we uphold the authority of international law and institutions and thereby prevent nations from behaving with impunity, which they now do on a regular basis, knowing that they will not suffer any consequences. And we see this with Ukraine with Russia knowing that the countries, individual countries and NATO really doesn't want to confront Russia, and therefore we're all standing on the outside of Ukraine and hoping and praying that the war doesn't spill over into any of the NATO member states. But it, as I said before, it's a nonsensical place to be right now. It also it avoids sending a message to other nations that the only way they can protect themselves is by getting their hands on nuclear weapons as a deterrent. Because if that's the message that's sent, one of the likely consequences of what's happening now is that we're going to have an escalation in the nuclear arms race with other countries looking and saying,"Whoa! We all need to scramble now to create nuclear weapons programs when the whole goal of our planet has supposedly been to gradually get rid of our nuclear arms and to stop building any new nuclear weapons. Another benefit is that we can take all this money that we spend on building, on producing armaments and funnel it into addressing the well being of people, ensuring that people have clean water and food in places where there is drought, especially with climate change. That people have access to food, countering the effects of natural disasters, mitigating the effects of global warming, spending money on research and development to find alternative renewable sources of energy, and paying for an international standing force, and so many other things. Building such a system acknowledges in response to the reality that no single nation, no matter how powerful, can or should be the policeman of the world. It's too high a price for that nation to pay in terms of human life and financial costs. It always leads to a backlash. And we are now in a place, as we're starting to hear in the news, that we simply can't afford to do it. Which leads us to the next point. We simply can't spread ourselves too thin. Imagine if we have simultaneous conflagrations, say over Taiwan, over Ukraine, North Korea. Even the United States can't deal with all of these disasters at the same time. And it shouldn't have to, this is really the responsibility of the international community, which is why we need a global international supranational system of governance. We also don't have to worry about this idea that living in a multipolar world means that we can break the world up into spheres of influence. Rather, we come to recognize that our multipolarity is based on an awareness and acceptance of our oneness. Our interconnection and interdependence as a human race, and that therefore the next step in our natural evolution towards collective maturity is to create a global infrastructure of governance that meets the needs that we have as humanity today, and is capable of addressing our current challenges. Such a system also puts us in a position where we don't simply have to rely on sanctions, which while very important, a very important tool in our arsenal, have generally proven ineffectual at preventing the most egregious behaviors, including territorial aggression, including building and maintaining illicit nuclear weapons systems. We can stop relying on this system. That's what we've been doing, which is a piecemeal approach in tackling global challenges. We'll sanction banks here, companies there, we'll free some assets, we'll close some airspace, we'll propose legislation imposing tariffs, we'll close down deals for the transfer of gas from Russia to Germany using the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. We'll stop exporting semiconductors and limit access to technology, and so on. We need to have a viable, effective, swift strategy that actually works to nip this problem in the bud. In conclusion, we see the benefits of building a new system of global governance founded on, and this is an element we've also discussed in this series, on the basis of a set of shared global ethics, including our recognition of the oneness of humanity. This system is really our only hope for assuring the peace and security of our planet, as Albert Einstein so eloquently put it, thereby freeing up our material, mental, psychological, and spiritual resources so we can focus on doing what's important, which is fulfilling our individual and collective potential. If you guys are interested in this topic and in learning more, for those of you who may not have been following along with the series of podcasts, first of all, I'd urge you to go back and listen to some of them because we go into far more detail on how each of these various components actually work. And the other thing you may want to reach for is this this book called Building a World Federation, The Key to Resolving our Global Crises. It's a short read 45 minutes, 30 minutes if you read very fast, that really lays out comprehensively the vision here for what we need to do in order to maintain peace and security in the world by building a system of global governance infrastructure that actually does what it's supposed to do to keep us safe. All right, I will stop here and I'm going to look at comments to see if there are any questions. So Jay Tyson. Thank you, Jay. Yes, absolutely. There's been plenty of aggression by plenty of countries. We simply don't have time to go into it. In fact, if one takes out a map of the world and starts looking at the various countries that have exhibited aggression towards each other and to others, it's actually quite stunning. Thank you. And yes, one of the things that we need to do as part of this new system of global infrastructure is to have a new kind of global executive that serves this global legislature. If the system is premised on the fact that there is the shared ethic of our oneness, it's impossible to have a global body in which anybody has the right of veto, let alone, as you say, five individuals who may be, whose rulers may be old and paranoid human beings. So absolutely, we're talking about a radical overhaul in the system of infrastructure. And Moji says that right now, we're in a pickle. Right now starting an offensive attack against the offender would be met with a nuclear disaster, which is why we're talking about the importance, we need to start building now for future for future Ukraine disasters, because we've seen that these waves keep coming. This is not going to be the last time that this happens. If we manage to avert a nuclear disaster this time, we can be absolutely sure that there will be more Ukraine like instances, maybe not in the Ukraine itself, although that's quite likely, but in other parts of the world. And we need to wise up and get smart and start building very rapidly this new global governance system, so that next time, all the things we talked about can happen, and we won't find ourselves between a rock and a hard place. Yes, right now all of us, we find ourselves with our backs against the wall, and it's like watching a horror movie unfold in slow motion. It's just, it's amazing. For weeks we had the drumbeats of,"Oh, it's coming. And this is how it's going to happen." Like someone had written the script out in advance. It's not that we didn't know. And then we're watching it unfold. And the worst thing is to feel helpless. We don't need to feel helpless. That's the message of this series. Reimagining Our World is we need to take back our agency and say,"Okay. So far, we've not made very good choices, but going forward, what can we do now to ensure that five years from now--so between Crimea and this crisis it's been 2014 to 2022: eight, nine years. Imagine if we'd started in 2014 building such an infrastructure, where we might be today, right? I hope we're not having this conversation 50 years from now. I won't be around. I hope our children, my daughter and our children, our grandchildren will not be having this conversation about we need to do something. We don't have the luxury of time anyway, just given climate change. So it's time to get on board and just start acting. So please, as you go out into the world, have these conversations. We need to get this conversation permeating at the grassroots levels. So that we can elect the kinds of leaders who can get together and create the system of collective security that we talked about. Leaders with the qualities of wanting only the best interests of our world, not being egotistical and narcissistic, not thinking about their own self interest, not lacking in courage, being honest, transparent, trustworthy, and acting with ceaseless effort to do what's necessary. I don't see any other comments for now. I really appreciate you joining me, please. Let's continue this conversation on Facebook and YouTube. Please put your comments in, let's all engage as a community to talk about this and carry this message out and feel free if you like the video podcast, feel free to share it. You can find us on YouTube. We have our own channel. People can subscribe for free, so I invite you all to invite your friends to join in. Take care and have a wonderful month until next month. Goodbye for now. 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.