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- Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
- Path: sparky!uunet!wupost!mont!pencil.cs.missouri.edu!rich
- From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
- Subject: Let the Militaries Pay for Peace
- Message-ID: <1992Aug26.082323.20182@mont.cs.missouri.edu>
- Followup-To: alt.activism.d
- Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
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- Organization: PACH
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- Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 08:23:23 GMT
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- Lines: 93
-
- /** gen.newsletter: 122.6 **/
- ** Written 12:57 pm Aug 12, 1992 by sbrackman in cdp:gen.newsletter **
- War and Peace Digest - Vol 2, No. 3 Aug.1992
-
- The War and Peace Digest is a bimonthly international newsletter on issues of
- disarmament, government secrecy, media accountability, the nuclear threat (from
- both civilian power plants and the military weapons complex), ecological
- destruction, and peaceful conflict resolution through the structures of the
- United Nations. If you would like to be placed on our mailing list or
- receive a copy of our new information packet on nuclear power, contact
- Matthew Freedman at 32 Union Square East, New York, NY 10003-3295
- (Tel: 212-777-6626).
-
- Contributions are always welcome.
- All materials may be reproduced without permission.
- ---------------
- Let the Militaries Pay for Peace
-
- The Administration has requested that Congress pay $750 million to
- the United Nations for peacekeeping. The War & Peace Foundation
- joins with the World Federalists in urging support for Senate Bill
- S. 2560 to fund U.N.Us increasing peacekeeping efforts from the
- United States Defense budget, rather than from the International
- Affairs budget. In other words, the money to fund the UNUs
- peackeeping should come from the deep pockets of the Pentagon, not
- the State Department.
- As the world changes swiftly, the coming years are
- likely to see border
- conflicts and ethnic strife in many areas and the strain on the
- inadequate U.N. peacekeeping forces will increase. This has
- already become a major problem for the new Secretary General
- Boutros-Ghali who has expressed exasperation with the situation.
- Currently the U.S. is the biggest U.N. debtor nation, owing a
- total of $555 million in regular dues, plus another $112.4 million
- owed for peacekeeping. The United Nations is now working
- $2-billion dollars in debt, with the worldUs richest nations among
- the most tardy in their payments. In fact, outrageously, fewer
- than a dozen nations are fully paid up members of the U.N. The
- rest are, to some extent, freeloading.
- The economic advantages of peace are inestimable. If the
- United Nations has the support of the United States and other
- powerful nations in its peacekeeping efforts, everyone profits
- except the arms merchants. In a world at peace, the need for huge
- military budgets evaporates. The savings for militaries should be
- passed on first, to peacekeeping. It is a natural conversion. The
- means to maintain peace is the ultimate peace dividend. The
- initiative however, is unlikley to come from the militaries of the
- world. For example, although the Pentagon budget has grown by
- $5-billion since the cold war, it still devotes less than one
- tenth of one percent of its research budget to peace research.
- Overhwelmingly, like all militaries, it is preoccupied with
- costly, short-term military solutions. Therefore we urge that U.N.
- peacekeeping forces - operating under the Military Staff Committee
- of the Security Council - move quickly to replace all national
- armies. (For more on this, read Birth of A Global Civilization,
- by former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations,
- Robert Muller .)
- But the U.N.Us most urgent and immediate task is to quell
- the fires of war. Therefore we pay tribute to Senators Simon,
- Rudman, Pell, Cranston, Moynahan, Kerry, DeConcini, Rockefeller,
- Jeffords, Kassebaum and Bumpers in sponsoring S. 2560, a first,
- exemplary step toward transformation of the worldUs militaries
- into a permanant, global instrument for world peace. If the U.S.
- does this, other countries too will be encouraged to divert their
- military budgets to peace. Call your Senator to support the bill.
-
-
- U.N. Peacekeeping and World Government
-
- An adequately funded international peacekeeping force is an
- obvious first step in the direction in which the world is
- inevitably headed in the next century. In a thoughtful essay in
- Time Magazine , Strobe Talbot has predicted that within a hundred
- years nation-states as they still exist today will have vanished,
- absorbed into an interconnected, interdependent global community.
- This is where we are headed, despite the resistance of nationalist
- and nativist sentiments everywhere.To prepare for such a truly
- modern 21st century civilization, a federalist structure will be
- needed. We should begin preparing for the long-awaited Parliament
- of the World.
- Inadequate though it may be in many regards, only the
- United Nations has emerged as the basis for such a cooperative,
- democratic, global endeavor, seeking the necessary global
- solutions to increasingly global problems. As John Logue, Director
- of Common Heritage Institute has pointed out in the current issue
- of World Federalist News, considerable reconstruction of the
- present United Nations will be needed, including an end to the
- big-power veto in the Security Council, an end to
- one-nation-one-vote in the General Assembly, a PeopleUs Congress
- and probably a new U.N. Charter. Such is likely to be the
- evolution of a world government.
- ** End of text from cdp:gen.newsletter **
-
-