War redundant by 2005
Peter Cadogan
History is an account of wars, recoveries from war and the preparations for war - no more so than at the present time. In 1794 Kant produced his 'Perpetual Peace' in which he predicted that wars would continue until they ceased to be feasible and became too expensive. After some 200 years he is now about to be proved right. The cost of war preparations is doing impossible things to all the main global powers. It will bring them to their knees. The effect for us may be comparable. There is no way that Green priorities and militarism can co-habit. A quarter of our civil servants and half our R&D are in the service of the Ministry of Defence. The distortion is lethal.
'In 1794 Kant produced his Perpetual Peace in which he predicted that wars would continue until they ceased to be feasible and became too expensive. After some 200 years he is now about to be proved right'
Wars are not being won any more, they are being stopped, called off, as too expensive in both human and monetary terms. The Gulf war is the classic case. The redundancy of war puts demilitarisation, not disarmament, on the agenda. We can now proceed to demilitarise both sides of Europe and North America, when once the Russian and American peoples have dealt with their own military-industrial complexes. These are the political showdowns that the world awaits.
The historical record shows that the major cultural changes take 60-90 years, eg Copernicus to Galileo, the story of the steam engine or parliamentary reform or votes for women. At any given moment we are somewhere in the middle of any number of these cultural cycles. If the international war cycle began to wind up in 1945, that means that such wars can be finally disposed of by the year 2005.
Adapted from an article in BAR by Peter Cadogan, of 3 Hinchinbrook House, Greville Road, London NW6 5UP (tel 071 328 3709).
Editorial comment
In the present circumstances of civil wars and threats of many more such, the best way for the various main military powers to promote peace might be to agree between themselves a certain set procedure for setting up an ultra-democratic state, which any new small would-be nations must go through, if they wish their borders to be guaranteed by these powers. The conflict between Serbia and Croatia would never have escalated if NATO, Russia, etc had had such normative procedures in place, warning both Serbia and Croatia in advance of exactly the conditions that they would be required to accept. Sensible criteria for the international community to announce might include, for instance, that it would recognise and guarantee the security of any small would-be nation as long as:
- It has more than 100,000 inhabitants.
- A referendum (to be supervised by the international community) is on offer to the inhabitants, with a majority vote required for independence.
- A democratic and cantonised system (on the Swiss model) is proposed along with adequate protection for minorities, including Local Balance Representation as an electoral system for the territory if it has different ethnic groups which are to some extent geographically segregated (see David Chapman's article on 'Avoiding Civil Wars' in the chapter on International and Developing World for details of this).
- It guarantees to accept the right to secede of any yet-smaller territory within this new country which can likewise meet these criteria.
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