Category: The Abolition of War

If increased destructive potential enhances security, one must conclude that people are more secure today than they were thirty years ago. Are they?

Indoctrination achieves its results by narrowing the channels along which thoughts are allowed to run. Enlightenment broadens both the range of knowledge and ways of attaining it.

It is discouraging to see in the current debate on national security, outstanding scientists in the service of demagogy, rationalizing their betrayal of the scientific ethos by posing as "hard-headed realists" condescendingly explaining the facts of life to the naive.

The three modes of conflict suggest three approaches to peace research, the systemic, the strategic and the ideological. If peace research is to contribute to the hope of establishing a durable peace on this planet, all three directions must be synthesized into a science of peace.

Let poverty, disease, injustice, tyranny play the role of the common enemy of humankind. And of course the institution of war can play the star part.

Our ancestors used to say that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Americans, in their comfort, their pursuit of individual advantages, in their worship of the bitch goddess of success, forgot to pay the instalments, and their liberties were re-possessed.

Put in this way, the question suggests that humanity is an actor endowed with intentions and a range of capabilities for carrying these intentions out. The question is similar to questions like "Can John stop drinking?" or "Can Tokyo reduce traffic accidents?" These questions can be answered by "yes" or "no," because both John  and… Continue reading Can Humanity Eliminate War? →

Reflections on morality occasioned by a rare American war crimes trial.

The problem, as I see it, is that of inducing integration in concentric circles, as it were, from self to family to community to a culture to humanity, inducing a realization that loyalty to one of these need not clash with loyalty to another.