How to Achieve World Peace
A Guide
World peace is on the bucket list of every religious leader, politician, and beauty pageant contestant. And yet, while many have worked tirelessly to promote peace, humanity has failed to come up with a convincing theory for how to achieve it. The best we’ve done is come with with ideas for how to “advance the agenda of peace”. Ideas like foreign aid, charity work through building infrastructure or teaching in other countries, the non-violent protest movement, UN mediation, and traditional diplomacy have all played their part in shaping a more peaceful world.
And the world does seem to be getting more peaceful. Violence per capita of all kinds is far less than it was 20 or 50 years ago (tho there are more civil conflicts). There is also strong evidence that politically competitive large-coalition Democracies are far more stable than dictatorships and that strong factors motivate elites in a dictatorship to expand their coalition. Because of this, it may very well be inevitable that every country becomes a stable democracy of some kind.
“There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare” – Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Civil wars are still rampant (20 are ongoing as of this writing) and are again on the rise since a reprieve in the 1990s and 2000s. We still have the threat of nuclear annihilation, which is culturally accepted as the most likely way humanity may go extinct (tho even if we set off all the nukes we have, civilization wouldn’t end). And while we have gotten better at diplomacy, we have no framework for ensuring that major conflicts are resolved and no framework for ensuring the nations of the world are equipped to deal with conflicts peacefully. In the next few paragraphs I’ll lay out the few unsatisfying theories and ideologies that exist before explaining how the world can achieve lasting peace.
Peace out of Reach
There have been many ideas surrounding world peace and how to achieve it. Sending all the politicians to the moon is a particularly enticing one.
Some take the position that if we all only learned and preached a set of basic human rights, we will achieve world peace. This idea is incredibly naive. In fact, most human rights are things every human naturally believes they have until taught differently by stark realities in their environment. Everyone believes they have the right to speak and think when they want until a tyrant teaches them to fear it. As I talked about in a previous post, rights don’t just happen if you believe hard enough. Governments grant and uphold rights, and they can just as easily refuse to uphold them.
Similarly, some believe the idea that preaching ideologies or even religions that promote peace is the key. This is equally naive. It isn’t the peaceful converted we have to worry about, but those that benefit from violence.
Some think if we only taught the knowledge of how to create peaceful countries to the leaders of those countries, we could then achieve world peace. But as shown in the books Why Nations Fail (by Acemoglu and Robsinson) and The Dictator’s Handbook (by De Mequita and Smith), the leaders of many countries in the world intentionally create environments that breed poverty and violence, to their own personal benefit. So we can’t rely on simple education to solve the worlds problems.
Various political ideologies claim that they will bring about world peace (without much logical support). Ideologies such as Marxist Communism have made many claims, not least of which that it will somehow bring about world peace. Left out is a logical reason that peace would be a consequence.
Mutually assured destruction is yet another theory of peace. The idea is that we won’t fight with weapons beyond a certain grade because of the fear of retaliation. While this seems to have more or less worked so far, the logical grounds are shaky. It relies on many assumptions about the states involved, including that states are rational, feel the imperative to survive, and are aware of who initiates a nuclear attack. It also relies on the idea that defending a nuclear attack is impossible. Many of these assumptions can be easily violated in the future, and therefore this theory is again unsatisfying. Beyond this, it only applies to weapons of mass destruction, and not to more conventional violence. Its a tense peace at best.
It is often claimed that democracies rarely wage war against each other, and thus making every country a democracy would bring about world peace. But democracies have in fact waged war against each other in both the more distant and very recent past, including right now in the war between Russia and Ukraine that has been going on since 2014. Now, it is true that Russia’s democracy isn’t very representative, and that giving the people more power there could help. While Democracies may fight fewer wars and their stability would also reduce civil wars, turning every country into a democracy may only lower the likelihood of war. And this by itself doesn’t explain how we help foster democracies.
Along the same lines, some (like the Economic Norms Theory) conjecture that capitalism, free trade, and globalization will bring about world peace. While its undeniable that it has certainly helped bring the world together, this theory is unsatisfying because it gives no guidance on how to reach that free trade. It also relies on the idea that countries are always better off by cooperating in a free market. Unfortunately this isn’t always true – the domination (via war) of one country over another can often make the winning country better off than it would be with free trade, at least in the short run. The best this can do is lower the likelihood of war, and doesn’t stand a chance of eliminating war.
Some believe that only some people are ready for world peace – only some people are peaceful – and that to achieve world peace, we have to somehow change our society to produce only peaceful people. This too is naive: this idea that somehow some people are inherently more peaceful and we just need to create those people. All people get upset at injustices, feel the urge to defend themselves when attacked, and become desperate when they can’t meet their basic needs. There will always exist people who can be corrupted by the persuit of power. World violence occurs not because we are breeding violent people, but because we are creating violent environments.
World Peace and Where to find It
And that may be part of the solution – limiting violent environments. If everyone grows up and lives in environments that motivate peace and provide no motivation for violence, we may indeed achieve world peace. But how do we create such environments? The governments of the world all create environments that breed various levels of violence. But by and large, nations with pluralistic governments have created environments where war almost never happens within them.
Countries like the United States, France, England, and Australia have achieved widespread political stability, with only the US having had a civil war since its democracy was established (it should be noted that it was not an entirely pluralistic democracy given its subjugation of black peoples in the south). This is not simply a property of democracies, as many “democracies” can be pointed to that have had more recent civil wars. But only “democracies” with corrupt elections and other significantly non-pluralistic behaviors have had such upheavals. In areas where political power is spread very evenly throughout the population, you see widespread peace.
This concept of achieving a local peace via pluralistic institutions can be easily extended into a theory of achieving world peace. To achieve a lasting local peace, pluralistic institutions must be set up that govern a locality. Therefore to achieve world peace, pluralistic institutions must be set up to govern the world.
I’m talking about an international government.
“There is only one path to peace and security: the path of supranational organization.” – Albert Einstein, 1948
Some of you might be saying “we have the UN already, and that hasn’t brought about world peace” and you’d be right. But the UN doesn’t satisfy one of the simple criteria for achieving world peace. It isn’t pluralistic – when was the last time you voted for a UN official? It also doesn’t have much ability to govern the world. It is a weak institution by design – as the elites in the most powerful nations have felt threatened by a world government more powerful (or less powerless) than the UN. I gave a brief overview of the history of the UN in my last post.
In my last post, I put forth the idea that world peace will only be achieved when peace is enforced by a world government. But this government need not be an all-powerful institution that rules over every person. In my post about the rise of modern democracy, I recounted how federations often fostered a lasting peace between the member states of that federation. These ideas can combined to lead us toward a meaningful plan toward finally achieving world peace. An International Federation.
Convincing the Old Guard
To be accepted by the current leaders of the world, such a government would have to walk the line between having true power to enforce international laws while at the same time not threatening the power of national governments. This is achievable by using well understood governmental theories – a limited government of checks and balances. Two major limitations of such a government would dispel almost any fears that the leaders of national governments might have. These limitations are:
that the international government only be able to create laws limiting the coercive force of governments (and not able to create laws that any nation’s citizens are required to follow), and
by requiring a high percentage majority agreement in order to pass a law (say a 70% majority agreement).
Governments can be secure in their sovereignty knowing that this international government can’t create laws that directly affect their citizens.
At the same time, representatives of this international government must be elected by the people directly, this is the only way a government can be pluralistic and therefore prevent destabilizing uprisings or violent takeovers. As a government that creates laws affecting the entirety of the world’s people, it would make sense to have a higher level of agreement needed to create laws in the international congress. I suggest a 70% agreement. This would mean fewer laws would be created and that those laws would be of a higher quality – laws that more people and nations agree with. And knowing that such a high level of agreement is required, national governments can be secure in their sovereignty without UN-style veto powers.
While the limiting of coercive force will be a far bigger concern for authoritarian nations than democratic ones, few nations are powerful enough to wage war against a coalition of the most powerful democracies. Since the international government is likely to focus on only the most heinous of crimes, democratic governments (which are much more internally peaceful) will be less likely to feel threatened by this power of an international government.
Importantly, such a government must also have the power to enforce its policies, without relying on voluntary cooperation of its member nations. Therefore it must be able to gather taxes from countries and requisition an army from the nations of the world to enforce its laws.
With such a system, it would be simple to create a mediation framework for disputes between nations and to simply outlaw one nation attacking another without the authority of the international government. If an act of war does happen, the full force of the rest of the world will be there to enforce consequences in response to such an act.
All those countries that are wary of relying on the United States military to keep the world at peace could then feel more at ease knowing that military power is distributed and decentralized without any nation being strong enough to make war against the rest of the world. And many in the United States would be happy to be able to reduce their millitary spending by an order of magnitude.
The road to peace need not be meandering and slow. Creating an international government can be non-threatening and even attractive to the most powerful countries in the world, while at the same time providing a framework for limiting the power of governments large and small.
Its possible that some kind of devastating war would be necessary to convince people and nations that a stronger world government is needed. Perhaps this means that we are powerless to prevent WWIII, but by putting forth this idea now, we may be able to prevent WWIV and finally bring about a permanent state of peace and prosperity.
In the next few posts, I’ll be going over the main characteristics that would make an ideal International Federation before posting a full constitution detailing a draft of its workings.