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Posts Tagged international organizations

Global Peace and Security: Why Wars on Humanity? By Mahboob Khawaja, PhD.

Editor’s Note
Dr. Khawaja makes a reasoned and impassioned argument for international organizations oriented towards peace, primarily the United Nations Organization (UNO), and humanity to step forward and change direction. Clearly, we live in a time of hardening lines and increasing extremism that perpetuates destruction and chaos; primarily to deliver the “rewards” to the hands of a powerful few. Organizations oriented towards peace, order, and the protection of humanity seem either incapable or unwilling to perform the roles for which they were created.

 

 

 

It is noted that most of the organizations were created to resolve the chaos of WWII and prevent such atrocity from swamping the world in the future. Herein lies the basic flaw. These organizations are not partnerships of equals where participating nations have equal voice and power. They reflect the power of the few with the United States being the “most equal” of all in a “Lord of the Flies” world. Whether we look at the UN, NATO, OECD, or IMF, we find that the power of the United States not only overrules the voices of many but silences them as well. In fact, the Security Council of the UN has had the effect (intentional or not) to enhance the power of the US in the UN’s ability (or lack thereof) to protect populations from the predation by others. When that fails, time after time the United States has acted unilaterally in direct violation of UN dictates and rulings. Further, the US has hamstrung efforts from basic UN operation to humanitarian response by withholding its dues – a critical amount in any budget.

Adding insult to injury, the United States has determined that it will not recognize, nor be bound by, the International Criminal Court – another critical component in addressing international crimes against populations and humanity.

It is clear that if there is to be an institution where the world comes together to promote peace and justice and work towards resolving conflicts and averting disasters, it needs to either be an organization of true equals with the ability to enforce decisions, or current institutions must restructure themselves so that the collective has more power than any individual nation. There is another viable option –

Mass non-cooperation by the people to participate and support our own destruction – a rolling global strike of sorts.

“The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”  (Albert Einstein)

 

Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD.

The global systems of political governance are dominated by the power politics of the few and are fast becoming irrelevant and unrepresentative of the primary concerns and priorities of the vast majority of global humanity. Neither the UNO  or superpowers take preventive measures to protect mankind in critical situations like Myanmar-Burma (Rohingyas), Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Yemen and Palestine; global governance tends to be a fantasy than a reality under these challenges.  You wonder if the UNO has lived up to its role and the Charter-based responsibility to safeguard the people of the world from the ‘scourge of wars’, horrors of planned violence, and the resulting devastation to human cultures and habitats. All in all, it is humanity which is subjected to untold miseries, bloodbaths and catastrophic consequences that linger on for generations. There are a few who are the source of evil driving mankind to unrestrained tyranny. The Statute of the International Criminal Court states “planning and waging a war of aggression is a crime against humanity.”

The Global War Agenda against Reason

The author intends to share a critical analysis of some of the contemporary issues and to inspire global rethinking for a navigational change in the redundant structures and role of the international institutions, inept leadership, obsolete systems of power politics and approaches to peacemaking, security and conflict management. The perpetuation of fear and political chaos overwhelms the obsolete global political governance. The war-agenda has shifted actions from the Western industrialized societies to the oil-producing Arab world. The Middle East is in ruins by the ongoing sectarian warfare; indiscriminate bombing; terrorism; and destruction of life, habitats and the natural environment. Nobody can rebuild what has been destroyed by the war agenda that repeatedly sweeps through the same regions.

To us – the living and conscientious humanity- time and accountability make it clear that global systems are operating contrary to reason. Amongst all the creations on Planet Earth, humans are the only one equipped with thinking, language and intelligence to claim morality as an attribute of life and value. This reality emphasizes and differentiates us from the other creations of God. If we propel uncertainty in our thoughts and behaviour, nothing can stop us from surpassing the limit of immorality and insanity. With knowledge-based 21st-century human communications improving the possibility of global collaboration, we are not moving in a direction where human logic and truth spell out for our conduct in peaceful relationships. The impulse and actions for cruelty and sadistic behaviour are increasingly propelling alarming trends for present and future generations to be shaped by our implicit wickedness and resulting failure in global affairs. As humans, we are not thinking or moving for the unity of mankind to be at peace and harmony being the chief creation of God. Staying on this destructive path will make us something much less than our God-given potential for unity and peace.

We the People of the Universe and Tyranny of the Few

The 21st-century knowledge-based critical thought highlights unilateral absolutism as the cornerstone of superpower’s policies and practices.  David Armstrong(“Dick Cheney’s Songs of America”: Information Clearing House: 09/19/2011), points out how the US politicians view the world to be governed by the American strategic dictates:

It was published as Defense Strategy for the 1990’s…. The Plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the United States to maintain its overwhelming military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies alike. It says not that the United States must be more powerful, or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful.

The Plan is disturbing in many ways, and ultimately unworkable. Yet it is being sold now as an answer to the “new realities” of the post-September 11 world, even as it was sold previously as the answer to the new realities of the post-Cold War world. For Cheney, the Plan has always been the right answer, no matter how different the questions….

Another new theme was the use of preemptive military force. The options, the DPG noted, ranged from taking preemptive military action to head off a nuclear, chemical, or biological attack to “punishing” or “threatening punishment of” aggressors “through a variety of means,” including strikes against weapons-manufacturing facilities.

Under the George W. Bush administration, America continued to pursue this approach to global affairs. Reasoned politics and safeguard of global humanity were not the purposes of such a belligerent plan. The USSR was already dismantled as a challenger and the US politicians saw the opportunity to determine the future of global mankind through militarization and occupation of the poor and vulnerable nations. Its first victim was Afghanistan, then Iraq and Libya, and onward to the whole of the Arab world. Under NATO, America continued its influential role to destabilize the USSR and former allies of Eastern Europe. There was no balancing of reason.

Where power beyond human capacity is entrusted to the few, the chances are high it will be misused against the people. The political tensions of the militarization of the globe led to oppression and miseries for the people of the world. We have not seen any tangible movement in political behaviour to lessen the unstable clash of fanaticism and evil imposed on the innocent victims of this devastating political agenda. The UNO was overwhelmed by the same scenarios of inept outcomes in situations that warranted urgent and swift humanitarian action to safeguard the civilian population in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Palestine and Kashmir. Why is the prevention of man-made tyranny, oppression and conflicts fast becoming unacceptable norms in global systems of governance?  Should the contemporary leaders of the world answer this vital question, or should it be left to the impulse of history to explain it to future generations?

To Imagine Change in the Working of the Global Institutions

The global institutions were aligned and shaped by the historical at the end of the 2nd WW, not to knowledge-based proactive 21st century of technological innovation, reason and change. Global leadership and systematic working of international political affairs are managed by wrong thinking, wrong people and wrong priorities. None seem to have the capacity to further the cause of global humanity, peace, conflict resolution and security. Humanity looks for change, but there seems to be no systematic mechanism for integrated change to ensure continuity of encompassed human thoughts, hopes and ideals for tomorrow, whether near future or distant future. Despite the sketchy illusions of freedom, democracy, human rights, liberty and justice, we are encroached, stuffed and at terrible risk of annihilation more accidental and by an error of judgment than a planned scheme of things by Man against Man. The Western political mythology enflames hatred against Islam and blames Muslim as being “terrorists.” The raging wars in the Arab Middle East are a net outcome of ignorance and lack of wisdom against Islam. Western installed puppets Arab leaders do not represent the masses. Often false propaganda, deception and prejudice are combined in a trajectory of plans to sell weapons and console the egoistic leaders as allies of the Western military alliance. This political delusion is full of inherent inconsistencies. Gary Wills (What the Qur’an Meant and What It Matters. Viking, NY, 2017), a leading American scholar explains the reality in his new book:

Our enemy in this war is far less localizable than it was in the World War 2 or the Cold War. Terror is a tool, not a country. Declaring a war on it is less like normal warfare, country versus country, there is No VE Day or VJ Day in such wars… living with fear is corrosive…the less we know about the reality of Islam, the more we will fight shadows and false emanations from our apprehension. Ignorance is the natural ally of fear. It is time for us to learn about the real Islam beginning with its source book – The Qur’an.

Global Leadership and Its Moral and Intellectual Decadence and Humanity

That conscious realization is absent from global thinking and observations of the outcomes of the major international institutions is obvious. None of the global institutions seems to reflect the sacred nature of life and the role of Man (human beings) in preserving life and its encompassing standards as the pivotal role and obligations to the planet. What is the cure to the raging indifference and emboldened cruelty toward the interests of the people of Syria, Iraq, the United States and Western Europe, and for that matter to the whole of mankind?

Remember that civilizations and humanity are not developed by the political-military-industrial complexes led by economies, or IMF operative bankers, ruling elite, speculatory stock markets, legal judgments, kings and queens, morally and spiritually decadent generations and crime-riddled authoritarian ruler. Rather, thriving civilizations are the tangible progressive outcomes of proactive intellectual and moral visions of the societal thinkers, poets, philosophers, knowledge, truth, compassion and continuous movement by man to support humanity and its natural striving for new thinking, change and progress. Politics is problematic and increasingly becoming irrational and a burden on man’s conscience. Now, it is up to the focused mind of Man and Spirit of Humanity to assume the new-age responsible leadership for a navigational change.  We the People, We the Humanity, are capable of envisaging a navigational change towards reasoned dialogue for change and a sustainable future – new proactive visions and new reformed global systems; working international institutions to unite humanity and contribute to peace, harmony, security and respect amongst the diverse fabrics of mankind.

 

All material is under a Creative Common share with attribution license unless otherwise noted.

Posted April 9, 2019, by Rowan Wolf in category “Mahboob A. Khawaja, Ph.D.“, “Militarism“, “Peace

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