UN at 74: Restoring lasting peace to a troubled world

ALFRED Bernhard Nobel, a Swedish industrial and chemist, has been lauded worldwide for his being a “merchant of death”. Nobel invented dynamite and made a fortune from manufacturing and selling lethal explosives. After his death in 1896, a startling discovery was made. Nobel stipulated in his will that $9million be set aside and that each year the interest accrued be awarded  to individuals who made note-worthy achievements in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature and Peace.

At first, many people were perplexed; even till today, many are still wondering why would an explosives merchant be so eager to award benevolent and even peaceful attainment. Some assumed that Noble was conscience-stricken over the destructive nature of his business. Others however, came to feel that Nobel was working for peace all along; that as weapons became more deadly, war would become less likely.

He reportedly told a writer that, “perhaps my factories will put an end to war even sooner than your congresses”. Nobel believed then that peace could be maintained if nations possessed deadly weapons. After all, nations could quickly unite and bring gruesome ruin to any aggressor. This would be a force that would make war impossible.

Less than 20 years after Nobel’s death,  World War I broke out. This conflict saw the use of new deadly weapons. The barbarity of World War I caused renewed peace.

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This led to the formation of the League of Nations. American President Woodrow Wilson, a prominent figure in this cause, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919. Yet any hopes that war would end once and for all were dashed when, in 1939, World War II broke out. In many respects, this was even more horrendous than World War I.

During this conflict period, Adolf Hilter expanded Nobel’s factory in Krummel into one of Germany’s largest ammunition factories, with over 9,000 employees. Then at the end of the war, Nobel’s factory was completely annihilated by an allied air raid that dropped a thousand bomb. Ironically, those bombs were developed with help of Nobel’s own invention.

I wish Nobel were alive to witness the World War I and World War II and how humanity and barbarity worked hand-in-hand. The destructive cycle begins with a series of small local or regional conflicts. In the first circle, during the  early part such conflicts began in the Balkans.

At the start of the second turn of the cycle, in the 1930’s, these small wars included the Spanish Civil War, the Japanese assault on China and Italian attacks on North Africa. The third sequence, in the late 1940’s, began with similar events, the Greek Civil War, the Berlin blockades and the initial Korean part of the Korean war.  Then the next stage of the cycles evolves.

These small outbursts escalated into larger disputes which drew major powers into prolonged battles. More than 20 million people died during World War I and World War II; about 50 million people died in 130 local and regional wars of which Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and the Central American conflicts are the best known.

These greatly and costly struggles have been won by powers which espouse value of freedom and democracy. The victories aroused high expectations. Foremost among them were hopes for a new era of well-being. The end of major conflicts  also provoked the collapse of empires: the Austro-Hungarian, Ohoma, German and Czarist Russian empires after World War I.

A kind of global rationalisation takes place with any small and medium-sized states evolving and sovereign boundaries being redefined. As it was started with smaller wars, the cycle seems rotating into 21st Century. Take a close at Bosnia, lraq, the lndo-Pakistan border conflict, Checknya, civil wars in Libya, Yemeni, Somalia, Syrian Civil War and insurgency  in Nigeria, etc. It all began again with the involvement of the big powers in these situations.

History begins to walk in the same track. Do we have to repeat 20th Century history and pass through still another cycle, or can we break out of the pattern and create a new feature? A decade or so ago, at the end of the cold wars, history presented us with an unusual condition – a clean stage on which to design a brave New World. The old ideological cobwebs and hangups had been swept away.

For a few years, things appeared exceedingly positive. Peace arrangements, arms control treaties, collective responses to cross border aggression were symbols of the early 1990’s. A cluster of global conferences, town meetings of the world sponsored by the United Nations, such as Rio Earth Summit of 1992, prepared a new planetary agenda. Ideas of internationalism, interdependence, global community and sustainable development dominated practical discourse. Democracy, the ideological victor of the Cold War, was expanding rapidly.

Soon, however, this proved a false dawn. Several barbaric forces, ethnic nationalism, religious fundamentalism, international terrorism, the proliferation of weapons mass destruction and transnational crime cartels challenged these constructive evolutions. Fearful ideologies are gaining ground.

International peacekeeping system is not working well. The economy is in deep trouble and about one quarter of the world’s population was suddenly plunged into recession in 1997 and 1998. A more democratic world would be a less troubled world. Democracy ventilates important modern issues and brings them into the public arena.

Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen pointed out that famine is most frequently generated by a lack of freedom of the press, not a lack of food. Famines and upheavals associated with them often begin the chain reaction that ignites cyclical disturbances. Modern market economics without regulatory and humanising mechanisms contain the seeds of it’s own destruction. It took the New Deal to save the American economy during the Great Depression. It took the welfare state to save European capitalism after World War II.

We must find methods and structures to regulate contemporary global-electronic economy residents of the older industrial countries quite well. But its recent expansion into societies with few, if any, social safety market economics. The prolonged wars and conflicts in Congo, Liberia and Sierra-Leone were due to economic plundering of the countries by the leaders through proxy rebels either in the bush or office.

All the blood diamonds were sold to the leaders who in return supply the destructive weapons. Cooperation efforts by civil societies, business and governments with United Nations is the only way forward to restore lasting peace to the world.

• Aduwo is President and Permanent Representative of the Centre for Convention on Democratic Integrity (CCDI) to the United Nations.

Nigerian Tribune