One might suppose that the prospects for peace in the 21st century must be better than they had been for the 20th century – or at least that they could hardly be worse. We look back today on a previous century eight out of whose ten decades featured prolonged war, hot or cold, covering much of the globe for most of the time.
We need to rediscover and enlarge the art of peace, which is or should be as complex a science as the art of war.
But peace in its fullest sense means meeting these many challenges in a coordinated way, with a coherent, unified, agenda. The cause of nuclear disarmament, on its own, will never overcome the status quo defended by the nuclear weapon states.
It may sound slightly old-fashioned to campaign for peace these days: the p-word has never really recovered from being misappropriated for propaganda purposes by both the US and the Soviet Union. – and discredited by them when it was used by genuine campaigners for peace.
The “peace dividend” which was supposed to accrue from the easing of international tension never materialised . Great aims were proclaimed – to take serious steps towards global nuclear disarmament at the Geneva Conference; to tackle world poverty more effectively through the Millennium Goals – but not achieved.
In the words of St Augustine, “It is a higher glory still to stay war with a word, than to slay men with a sword”. Third, national peace will only be secured in a wider environment where injustice , inequality , and poverty are tackled effectively.
As Mikhail Gorbachev said in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, “Peace is the movement towards globality and universality of civilization. Never before has the idea that peace is indivisible been so true as it is now.”.
A new war has begun, so it is claimed, between Islamist extremism and liberal democratic values, which will be of a “generational” nature. Talk of reforming the United Nations – a necessary prerequisite for giving that organisation the peace-making powers which had been intended for it but never realised – has soon faded.
Peace in the 21st Century. One might suppose that the prospects for peace in the 21st century must be better than they had been for the 20th century – or at least that they could hardly be worse. We look back today on a previous century eight out of whose ten decades featured prolonged war, hot or cold, covering much of the globe for most ...
2011 — Commandos conduct a raid in Pakistan, which ends with the killing of Osama bin Laden. On May 2, a group of United States Navy SEALs of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group kill the first leader of the Islamist group Al-Qaeda.
2010 — 33 men are rescued from a mine in Copiapó, after being trapped for 69 days. At the San José copper–gold mine in the Atacama Desert, all 33 trapped miners are rescued by the Chilean government.
Beginning at just after 9pm, when suicide bombers strike outside the Stade de France, Paris is struck by a series of attacks, culminating in a massacre at the Bataclan theatre.
In a vast tent in Qunu, and attended by 4,500 people, the ceremony was also televised around the world. It also featured a 21 gun salute for the leader, and a formation flyover.
On June 26, the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down all state bans on same-sex marriage, legalising it in all fifty states, and requiring states to honour out-of-state same-sex marriage licenses.