How to create a completely peaceful world Essay

To create a fully peaceful world, both Federalism and non-violent resistance are necessary. Federalism and non-violent resistance can cooperate well to completely eliminate war in the world. In this essay, I am arguing that neither federalism nor non-violent resistance can achieve a peaceful world independently. War comes from conflicts between communities or nations. We can find the roots of conflicts from human nature. I believe that the human nature is a complex combination including both Hobbes’ human nature theory and Hegel’s master and slave theory. By looking at human nature, we can see that federalism, which aims to establish a powerful global government, and non-violent resistance, which includes demonstrations, obstruction, refusal to cooperate, boycotts, strikes, civil disobedience and so on, can deal with the conflicts and achieve peace (Awad 158). In the real world, however, there are some challenges to set up a powerful global federal government and perform the non-violent resistance policy. The challenges are unsolved in this essay. Firstly, a single world government with its own dominant army is one of the necessary prerequisite for a peaceful world. The reason comes from Hobbes’ human nature theory. Hobbes believes that human nature is the drive for gain, safety and reputation (Hobbes 30). The drive cause conflicts between human beings. Moreover, â€Å"for as to the strength of body, the weakest has the strength to kill the strongest, either by secret machination, or by confederacy with others, that are in the same danger with himself† (Hobbes 29). Thus, without a powerful government, the human society will inevitably be in war, and â€Å"such a war, as is of every man against every man.† (Hobbes 30). And consequently, the â€Å"life of man will be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. † (Hobbes 31). At present, the international society is very compatible with Hobbes’ theory. With nuclear Chen 2 weapons, the weakest nation has the potential ability to destroy the strongest nation. Each nation has the nature drive for economic gain, safety and glory. Conflicts between nations are inevitable because of the natural drive. Therefore, war becomes inevitable. Furthermore, the fast growing globalization has changed the world to be a â€Å"small village†. Before the industrial revolution, people needed months or years to travel cross the continents or oceans. Geographic barriers greatly reduce the incentive of waging war to a faraway nation. The conflicts of gain, safety and reputation were greatly weakened by geographic distance. For example, no nation wanted to wage war from North America to the Middle East thousands of years ago. In fact, lots of nations were sort of isolated from the other nations. Thus, in the ancient time, there had no war of every nation against every nation. However, nowadays technology has made the geographic barrier almost be vanished. Information transfers within the world in a few seconds. People can travel to anywhere in a couple of days. The world becomes a â€Å"small village†. In this â€Å"small village†, every nation is competing with others for gain, safety, and reputations. With the natural conflicts between nations and the deadly power of nuclear weapons, sooner or later, the world will be inevitably in a war of every nation against every nation, and in such a war, the life will be â€Å"solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.† Only a world government with dominant military power can prevent such horrible condition. The world government can use its great coercive power to maintenance the peace between nations. If there is a war between nations or a civil war inside a nation, the world government can step in by its powerful army to stop the war. In terms of Hobbes’ first natural law, man is â€Å"to seek peace, and follow it â€Å"(Hobbes 33). Here, nations also apply to the first natural law, which is that all nations seek peace, so they follow the global government. Chen 3 However, it should be noted that peace can not be fully achieved by the coercive global government. The global government uses its coercive military power to stop war, but it cannot fully prevent war. For example, when two nations have conflicts, and fight in a war, the world government can only send its powerful army to stop the war after the war has begun. On the other hand, the world government may have to use war to stop the war. For example, if one nation invades another nation, the world government may have to attack the invader to force it to retreat from the victim country. So the war still exists. Under this condition, non-violent resistance is the only way to prevent the war. Non-violent resistance is associated with Hegel’s view of human nature. Hegel believes that human nature is the drive of gaining recognitions from others. To gain recognition, individual must struggle to have superior power than others. Therefore, individual can have freedom as a master to force others to be slaves. The slaves have to work for the masters, and be surviving by the exchange of acknowledging the master’s identity (Hegel 36). According to Hegel’s theory of human nature, the conflicts between human beings are not necessary to lead to war or violence. In other words, war is not inevitable. Since the human nature is to seek for recognition from others, if other individuals are killed by war or violence, the recognition by the other individual can not exist. So, human beings do not naturally have incentive to use violence or war to solve conflicts. Human beings, however, must want to only threaten others with death for recognition. The threat will never be credible, because the death of the slavers will make the master be meaningless. A master can not be a master if there are no slavers at all. Therefore, non-violent resistance makes sense in dealing with conflicts in the world. For example, suppose there is a very small community with only two men inside. In terms of Hegel’s Chen 4 human nature theory, both of the two men will struggle for recognition of being the master. The natural drive will cause conflicts between the two men. To solve the conflict, the stronger man will make a death threat to the weaker man. However, the stronger man actually will never kill the weaker man if the weaker man does not use violence against the stronger man, because the stronger man desires the recognition from the weaker man. So the weaker man does not need to fear the death threat. At the same time, the weaker man can not use violence to fight with the stronger man, because the weaker man will definitely be killed during the violent fight. Therefore, the weaker man can deal with the conflicts by non-violent resistance. Firstly, he knows that a violent fight will certainly cause his death. Secondly, he knows that non-violent resistance will never cause his death. By non-violent resistance, the weaker man does not obey the stronger man’s order and he does not cooperate with the stronger man. Eventually, the stronger man cannot be a true master, and the weaker man will not be a true slave. Non-violent resistance can be used between communities and nations as well. In the global community, nations have natural desire to be acknowledged to be the dominant nation. For example, during the cold war era, both the Soviet Union and the United States wanted to dominate the world. With much greater military power, the two superpowers have invaded some weaker countries. If all the weaker countries have used non-violent resistance strategy, the war could be prevented. Meanwhile, since the weaker countries do not cooperate with the invader, the weaker countries would never be truly occupied. I am arguing that non-violent resistance can prevent war or violence, but I do not mean that non-violent resistance can always prevent war or violence. The assumption of using the non-violent resistance strategy is that the two individuals or nations in conflicts have very distinct Chen 5 power difference. If the two nations have similar power, nobody can know which nation is undoubtedly more powerful. Thus, while having conflicts, the two similar powerful nations have to fight each other to find out who is really more powerful. As a result, there will have a war before the non-violent resistance to prevent wars. Thus, both federalism and non-violent resistance are necessary to achieve a completely peaceful world. The global government must have superior military power to deal with conflicts between nations. Inside individual nations, the national government must have dominant military power to deal with conflicts between different communities of the nation. While facing conflicts, all the weaker sides, for example, a community which has conflicts with the national government, or a nation which has conflicts with the global government, must deal with the conflicts by either negotiation or non-violent resistance instead of war or violence. Finally, the completely peaceful world will be achieved. Both Federalism and non-violent resistance are necessary because I believe that human nature is a complex combination of both Hobbes’ and Hegel’s theory. Human beings have the first natural desire for safety. The second natural desires are gain, glory and recognition. Without life, all the gain, glory and recognition are meaningless. So safety must be the first natural desire. When security is guaranteed, human beings will turn to pursue gain, glory and recognition. In theory, I argue that Federalism and non-violent resistance can completely eliminate war. In the real world, however, there are some challenges to realize Federalism and non-violent resistance. For instance, many people have Hobbesian syndrome. They buy into Hobbes’ human nature theory, but they do not agree with Hegel’s theory. Thus, they believe that war is inevitable without a powerful global government. However, there is no powerful global government now, so Chen 6 the people who have Hobbesian syndrome always suggest investing heavily on military resources to prepare for the future â€Å"inevitable war†. If a superpower holds this view, it is very difficult to establish a global government with dominant military power. For example, today the only superpower, the United States, has nearly half of the whole world military spending annually. If the United States does not disarm, it is very difficult to set up a global government which has greater military power than the United States. It is a circle, without a powerful global government, the United States believes that it must engage great military resources. When the superpower United States engage great military resources, it is very difficult to set up a global government with a more powerful military. Another challenge comes from the non-violent strategy. When facing conflicts, sometimes it is ambiguous to know whether the conflicts come from the desire for safety, gain, glory or recognition. If the conflicts come from recognition, the non-violent resistance strategy will be very effective to prevent war or violence. However, if the conflicts come from safety, gain and glory, using non-violent resistance might just simply like suicide. In history, there were lots of evidences of genocide incidents. For example, in the World War II, Nazi tried to kill all the Jews. So it is difficult to persuade everybody to always behave non-violent resistance while having conflicts with much more powerful competitors. In sum, human nature is the natural desires of safety, gain, glory and recognition. To fulfill the natural desires, conflicts between individuals or nations will emerge. The conflicts are the very root of wars. A powerful world government and universally accepted non-violent resistance strategy can terminate wars in the world. However, there are some unsolved challenges of establishing a powerful world government and accepting non-violent resistance universally. Awad, Mubarak E., â€Å"Nonviolent Resistance: A Strategy for the Occupied Territories† from Non-violence in theory and Practice, Robert L Holmes. Ed. Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1990. Hegel, G.W.F, â€Å"Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Relations of Master and Servant† from Phenomonology of Spirit, 2nd ed. Forrest E.Baird and Walter Kaufmann, eds, Prentice-Hall, 2000. Hobbes, Thomas, â€Å"excerpt† from Leviathan, Public Domain, 1651.