If our societies are to become more resilient and more ecologically sustainable, then priorities must be changed, and then such a large share of resources cannot be permanently poured into the military – without any prospect of de-escalation. Our current shift must therefore contain more than the present rearmament.
War Abolition 201 is a six-week online course (Oct. 10-Nov. 20, 2022) providing participants an opportunity to learn from, dialogue with, and strategize for change with World BEYOND War experts, peer activists, and changemakers from around the world.
Robin Wright addresses “The New Nuclear Reality” by calling forth the need to “devise a new or more stable security architecture—with treaties, verification tools, oversight, and enforcement—to replace the eroding models established after the last major war in Europe ended, seventy-seven years ago.”
In this November 25 online panel discussion organized by the Berghof Foundation, peace education experts and peace researchers will initiate a dialogue on how both disciplines can find joint ways to cope with these new challenges.
In the sphere of national security strategy, COVID-19 opens the door to a possible shift toward a public health approach and way of developing security strategies. This enables us to see that cross-border harm, destruction, and violence are more synonymous with a contagious disease.
Across the globe, with security at the forefront of governmental action, education has remained a counter-balance in an attempt to build peaceful interdependent societies.
Tony Jenkins, Coordinator of the Global Campaign for Peace Education, is one of ten finalists in the Educators’ Challenge competition created by the Global Challenges Foundation. Tony is also in the running for the People’s Choice Award – and you can help him win by casting a vote by May 1!
This article by Betty Reardon is the second in a series exploring Betty’s 6 decades of peacelearning. In this post, Betty comments on “Peacekeeping,” a curricular unit in the secondary school series on “Perspectives in World Order” published in 1973. Betty’s commentary here focuses on two excerpts examining approaches to peacekeeping and alternative security. We post this article on the cusp of the 100th anniversary of “Armistice Day,” which marked the end of fighting in WWI (Nov. 11, 1918). The “War to End all Wars” turned out to be a false promise as evidenced by the persistence of major wars throughout the 20th and into the 21st century. We have much still to learn from this tragedy, and it is our hope that Betty’s inspiring and practical vision for “Teaching about Peacekeeping and Alternative Security Systems” might help us in that journey.
In this review essay, Janet Gerson writes that to understand Dr. Evelin Lindner and her new book “Honor, Humiliation and Terror: An Explosive Mix and How We Can Defuse It with Dignity” is to seek out an innovative transdisciplinary approach to key crises of our times. Her purpose is “intellectual activism” laid out through a “painter’s way of seeing, a journey in search of new levels of meaning.”
Understanding what makes us “secure” is an essential first step in designing a global system that assures security for all humans, other living species and the planet.
A global security system summarizes some key proposals for ending war and developing alternative approaches to global security that have been advanced over the past half century. The report also asserts that a sustainable peace is possible and an alternative security system necessary to attain it. Moreover, it is not necessary to start from scratch; much of the groundwork for an alternative security system is already in place.
“A Global Security System: An Alternative to War,” a publication of World Beyond War, describes the “hardware” of creating a peace system, and the “software” — the values and concepts — necessary to operate a peace system and the means to spread these globally. World Beyond War invites educators to consider “A Global Security System” for class adoption in peace studies programs. Free examination copies are available to faculty upon request.