Professors World Peace Academy

Intro­duc­tion to IJWP, June 2010

With the rise of the sov­er­eign nation-state, after the Peace of West­phalia in 1648, came a period of great sci­en­tific and tech­ni­cal advance­ment as well as the rise of national and inter­na­tional wars in which mil­lions of peo­ple have per­ished. The mod­ern state, which has the capac­ity for effi­ciently pro­vid­ing rule of law in which large pop­u­la­tions can live peace­fully, is more often than not a tool used by pow­er­ful peo­ple to exploit masses, or an instru­ment of power through which to seek world dominance.

The United Nations Secu­rity Coun­cil, orga­nized by the major pow­ers after two dev­as­tat­ing world wars and the devel­op­ment of weapons of mass destruc­tion, has pro­vided deter­rence against pow­er­ful states enter­ing into tra­di­tional wars against other states. How­ever, the state, as the cen­ter of sov­er­eign power, has been the tar­get for con­trol by unscrupu­lous indi­vid­u­als and groups every­where. The result is a world in which indi­vid­u­als and groups are oppressed by those who con­trol state power. Con­tinue read­ing Resolv­ing Eth­nic Con­flicts in Nation-States

Intro­duc­tion to Decem­ber 2009 IJWP

Realpoli­tik is a term derived from Ger­man. It refers to a pol­i­tics based on prac­ti­cal and mate­r­ial fac­tors rather than on the­o­ret­i­cal or eth­i­cal objec­tives (Merriam-Webster dic­tio­nary). His­tor­i­cally, many polit­i­cal plat­forms have been based on the­o­ret­i­cal, reli­gious, ide­o­log­i­cal, or moral arguments.

Most visions of ideal soci­eties, as dis­parate as Plato, Con­fu­cius, Jesus, and Marx, all rely on chang­ing basic human behav­ior. If we can only learn to love one another, to share with one another, to accept a Chris­t­ian, Mus­lim, or social­ist the­ory of jus­tice, or change our self­ish and exploita­tive behav­ior in some way, then we can cre­ate an ideal world. As we recently learned from the efforts of the Soviet Union to cre­ate a “new man,” one that is ratio­nal and sci­en­tific, the laws of nature are not eas­ily trumped. Instead of get­ting a “new man” who gives accord­ing to his abil­i­ties and receives accord­ing to his needs, the Soviet Union got the Nomen­klatura, the“old man” in a new bureau­cratic class, who used posi­tion and power in the Soviet polit­i­cal sys­tem for per­sonal and self­ish desires.
Con­tinue read­ing Realpoli­tik and World Peace

Intro­duc­tion to Sep­tem­ber 2009 IJWP

The mod­ern desire for democ­racy and self-rule is largely a reac­tion against a his­tory of oppres­sion and exploita­tion fol­low­ing mil­i­tary con­quest and imposed rule. World his­tory is pre­dom­i­nantly shaped by con­querors, yet most peo­ple desire to live their own lives and not serve as a means to some­one else’s ends. While self-rule requires the over­throw of imposed rule, it is more dif­fi­cult than the mere over­throw of a régime and the dec­la­ra­tion of free­dom and of rule of law. Self-rule requires self-discipline and the will­ing­ness to use force, when nec­es­sary, against for­eign aggres­sion and civil vio­lence. Con­tinue read­ing Anar­chy in Unse­cured Territories

Intro­duc­tion to June 2009 IJWP

Our lead arti­cle by James Yunker sug­gests ways in which global gov­er­nance could be improved, ways that could cre­ate a “more per­fect union” than the League of Nations, or the United Nations, which he com­pares to the Arti­cles of Con­fed­er­a­tion of the United States. This more per­fect union would involve three prin­ci­ples not present in the world gov­ern­ment pro­pos­als of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury. First, vot­ing prin­ci­ples must be changed so that an invol­un­tary redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth could not occur. Sec­ond, there should be an inalien­able right to with­draw from the Union. Third, each nation should be allowed to keep what­ever mil­i­tary power they desire. Con­tinue read­ing A More Per­fect Union