From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Let the Militaries Pay for Peace
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 08:23:23 GMT

/** gen.newsletter: 122.6 **/
** Written 12:57 pm  Aug 12, 1992 by sbrackman in cdp:gen.newsletter **
War and Peace Digest - Vol 2, No. 3 Aug.1992 

The War and Peace Digest is a bimonthly international newsletter on issues of
disarmament, government secrecy, media accountability, the nuclear threat (from
both civilian power plants and the military weapons complex), ecological
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---------------
Let the Militaries Pay for Peace

The Administration has requested that Congress pay $750 million to
the United Nations for peacekeeping. The War & Peace Foundation
joins with the World Federalists in urging support for Senate Bill
S. 2560 to fund U.N.Us increasing peacekeeping efforts from the
United States Defense budget, rather than from the International
Affairs budget. In other words, the money to fund the UNUs
peackeeping should come from the deep pockets of the Pentagon, not
the State Department.
                As the world changes swiftly, the coming years are
                likely to see border
conflicts and ethnic strife in many areas and the strain on the
inadequate U.N.  peacekeeping forces will increase. This has
already become a major problem for the new Secretary General
Boutros-Ghali who has expressed exasperation with the situation.
Currently the U.S. is the biggest U.N. debtor nation, owing a
total of $555 million in regular dues, plus another $112.4 million
owed for peacekeeping.  The United Nations is now working
$2-billion dollars in debt, with the worldUs richest nations among
the most tardy in their payments. In fact, outrageously, fewer
than a dozen nations are fully paid up members of the U.N. The
rest are, to some extent, freeloading.
        The economic advantages of peace are inestimable. If the
United Nations has the support of the United States and other
powerful nations in its peacekeeping efforts, everyone profits
except the arms merchants. In a world at peace, the need for huge
military budgets evaporates. The savings for militaries should be
passed on first, to peacekeeping. It is a natural conversion. The
means to maintain peace is the ultimate peace dividend. The
initiative however, is unlikley to come from the militaries of the
world. For example,  although the Pentagon budget has grown by
$5-billion since the cold war, it still devotes less than one
tenth of one percent of its research budget to peace research.
Overhwelmingly, like all militaries, it is preoccupied with
costly, short-term military solutions. Therefore we urge that U.N.
peacekeeping forces - operating under the Military Staff Committee
of the Security Council - move quickly to replace all national
armies. (For more on this, read Birth of  A Global Civilization,
by former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations,
Robert Muller .)
        But the U.N.Us most urgent and immediate task is to quell
the fires of war.  Therefore we pay tribute to Senators Simon,
Rudman, Pell, Cranston, Moynahan, Kerry, DeConcini, Rockefeller,
Jeffords, Kassebaum and Bumpers  in sponsoring S. 2560, a first,
exemplary step toward transformation of the worldUs militaries
into a permanant, global instrument for world peace. If the U.S.
does this, other countries too will be encouraged to divert their
military budgets to peace. Call your Senator to support the bill.


U.N. Peacekeeping  and  World Government

An adequately funded international peacekeeping force is an
obvious first step in the direction in which the world is
inevitably headed in the next century. In a thoughtful essay in
Time Magazine , Strobe Talbot has predicted that within a hundred
years nation-states as they still exist today will have vanished,
absorbed into an interconnected, interdependent global community.
This is where we are headed, despite the resistance of nationalist
and nativist  sentiments everywhere.To prepare for such a truly
modern 21st century civilization, a federalist structure will be
needed. We should begin preparing for the long-awaited Parliament
of the World.
       Inadequate though it may be in many regards, only the
United Nations has emerged as the basis for such a cooperative,
democratic, global endeavor, seeking the necessary global
solutions to increasingly global problems. As John Logue, Director
of Common Heritage Institute has pointed out in the current issue
of World Federalist News,  considerable reconstruction of the
present United Nations will be needed, including  an end to the
big-power veto in the Security Council, an end to
one-nation-one-vote in the General Assembly, a PeopleUs Congress
and probably a new U.N. Charter. Such is likely to be the
evolution of a world government.
** End of text from cdp:gen.newsletter **

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