“It’s Getting Late”

For some time, it’s been apparent that the world’s nations are not meeting the growing challenges to human survival.

A key challenge comes from modern war.

Over the centuries, as military weapons have grown ever more destructive, war-related devastation has grown accordingly.  World War II was the deadliest military conflict in human history, with an estimated 70-85 million people perishing from the war directly or through read more

Overcoming the Obstacles to UN Maintenance of International Peace and Security

Although, according to the UN Charter, the United Nations was established to “maintain international peace and security,” it has often fallen short of this goal.  Russia’s ongoing military invasion of Ukraine and the more recent Israeli-Palestinian war in Gaza provide the latest examples of the world organization’s frequent paralysis in the face of violent international conflict.

The hobbling of the Security Council, the UN agency tasked with enforcing international peace and security, read more

Replacing a Disastrous War with a Just Peace in Ukraine

Although the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza has captured the world’s horrified attention, the war in Ukraine has had even more terrible consequences.  Grinding on for nearly two years, Russia’s massive military invasion of that country has taken hundreds of thousands of lives, created millions of refugees, wrecked Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and economy, and consumed enormous financial resources from nations around the world.

And yet, despite the Ukraine War’s vast human read more

Time to Abandon International Anarchy?

In December 1934, Arthur Henderson, a leader of the British Labour Party, declared in his speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize that the immense human suffering caused by World War I “led to the very clear realization that international anarchy must be abandoned if civilization was to survive.”

Unfortunately, that realization did not go very far or very deep.  Although, since that time, international law has been refined, nations remain far from adhering to its provisions or accepting its read more

World Peace and Security Require a Stronger United Nations

Addressing the UN Security Council on September 20, 2023, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered a heartfelt plea “to update the existing security architecture in the world, in particular, to restore the real power of the UN Charter.”

This call for strengthening international security under the aegis of the United Nations makes sense not only for Ukraine―a country suffering from brutal military invasion, occupation, and annexation by its much larger, more powerful neighbor, the read more

Spinning Illusions: The Anti-American Left and the Ukraine War

In recent decades, a segment of the global Left has looked upon the U.S. government as the Great Satan in international affairs, responsible for the world’s major ills.  Thus, on those occasions when countries at odds with the United States behaved like brutal imperialist powers, these “campists” (as they were called thanks to their division of the world into an evil U.S. imperialist read more

Two Ways That the Ukraine War Could Have Been Prevented and Might Still Be Ended

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of the immensely destructive Ukraine War lies in the fact that it could have been averted.

The most obvious way was for the Russian government to abandon its plan for the military conquest of Ukraine.

The problem on this score, though, was that Vladimir Putin was determined to revive Russia’s “great power” status.  Although his predecessors had signed the UN Charter (which prohibits the “use of read more

How Strengthened Global Governance Could Produce a Nuclear-Free World

It should come as no surprise that the world is currently facing an existential nuclear danger.  In fact, it has been caught up in that danger since 1945, when atomic bombs were used to annihilate the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Today, however, the danger of a nuclear holocaust is probably greater than in the past.  There are now nine nuclear powers―the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea―and they are currently engaged read more

The Ukraine War and International Law

The Ukraine War has provided a challenging time for the nations of the world and, particularly, for international law.

Since antiquity, far-sighted thinkers have worked on developing rules of behavior among nations in connection with war, diplomacy, economic relations, human rights, international crime, global communications, and the environment.  Defined as international law, this “law of nations” is based on treaties or, in some read more