In 2009, countries have reached perilous new levels of conflict, tension and military spending characterised by nuclear proliferation, ideological warfare and pre-emptive invasions of sovereign nations. As news reports highlight an intensifying competition over natural resources, the international community is faced with a stark choice - to share resources and cooperate, or to continue on the path to further warfare.
To believe that nuclear weapons are a generally positive contributor to establishing a just and peaceful world is an irresponsible view. It is unimaginable to reach any plateau of global justice
without acting with resolve to rid the world of nuclear weaponry, argues Richard Falk.
A groundbreaking report identifies more
than 300 banks, pension funds, insurance companies and asset managers
in 30 countries with substantial investments in nuclear arms producers. By the
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).
With growing competition over the world's increasingly scarce natural resources, governments
will only be able to avoid future military conflict by embracing
a policy of economic cooperation that prioritises resource conservation and
climate change mitigation, argues Richard
Heinberg.
We urgently need to
move beyond our limited concept of national security as being exclusively aligned to
military power. A larger vision of security must also include factors
that promote the internal resilience of the nation, such as public health, education
and environmental sustainability, explains David Orr.
Creating a more stable peace-based local economy demands shifting from military to civilian work in factories,
laboratories, and military bases. It is time for the peace movement to capture people's imagination with the concept of economic conversion, writes Mary Beth Sullivan.
The arms business is the most corrupt and deadly trade in the world, and also one of the least regulated. What will it take for governments to stand up to an industry with so much political clout? Andrew Feinstein and Dinyar Godrej discuss in the New Internationalist.
Some cheer the "Responsibility to Protect" as a breakthrough in international relations, but the dangers of another western intervention in a Muslim Arab country show the near impossibility of peacekeeping in times of war. By Pyllis Bennis.