Peace is a topic that is sometimes downplayed and even misrepresented, and yet it is pivotal to creating a better world for New Zealanders and citizens everywhere.
How can we make the world a more peaceful place when there is so much injustice?
What do I mean by peace? Peace can be defined as a sustained period of tranquillity or the systemic absence of war. However, this conception of peace has rarely been achieved.
According to one estimate, there have been only 292 years of peace in the world over the past 5600 years, and during that time more than 3.5 billion people have died in, or as a result of, more than 14,000 wars.
So wars rather than enduring peace seem to have been the norm in global politics. But what do we mean by the term war?
War is an organised, armed and often prolonged form of conflict that is conducted between states, non-state actors and other parties. It is typified by extreme aggression, social dislocation and usually high mortality.
In 2024, there are more than 20 wars raging around the world.
The majority of these are intra-state or civil wars, while the remainder are inter-state.
While today’s world is far from peaceful, we must also acknowledge war is not raging everywhere and that it is largely confined to particular regions and countries.
However, the uneven nature of war is not the only source of injustice in the world.
Today, in a world of 8 billion people, 733 million do not have enough to eat, 773 million are illiterate and 2 billion do not have access to clean water. At the same time, the wealthiest 1% of world’s population own 43% of all global financial assets.
These trends have cast a long shadow and provide some insight into why violence and conflict never seem to be too far below the surface.
So do we conclude that war is inevitable — that humanity is doomed — and we are hostage to forces we cannot control?
No, we should not be defeatist. As Willy Brandt observed, "problems created by humans can also be solved by them".
If we are serious about reducing the number of wars in an unjust world, we should start by examining why the institution that has formal responsibility for maintaining global peace and security, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), so often fails to do so.
In the period since 9/11, the UNSC has been repeatedly paralysed by the willingness of permanent members states such as the United States, Russia and China to act unilaterally to protect their perceived national interests.
In 2003, George W. Bush’s administration bypassed the UNSC and launched an illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.
In 2011-12, Russia and China used the veto three times to thwart UNSC resolutions to end the Syrian Civil War and enabled Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship to prolong a conflict that has subsequently killed more than 230,000 Syrians.
In late February 2022, Russia vetoed a UNSC resolution that demanded Moscow immediately end its invasion of Ukraine.
More recently, following a horrendous terrorist attack on Israel on October 7 last year, Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, backed unconditionally by Joe Biden’s administration, embarked on a relentless military offensive in the densely populated Gaza Strip "to annihilate" Hamas.
The results have been truly devastating. According to the UN, 69% of the more than 40,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza are thought to be women and children. In particular, it is estimated at least 15,000 children have been killed during the Israeli military offensive.
Why has the UNSC failed to exercise its formal responsibilities to relieve this almost unimaginable suffering? The answer is clear. The Biden administration exercised its right of veto on October 18, December 8 and February this year to block UNSC resolutions calling for humanitarian pauses or immediate ceasefires.
On June 10 — eight months into the Gaza conflict — the Biden administration finally tabled a ceasefire proposal, which was adopted by the UNSC, but Washington has done little except exhort the Netanyahu government to comply with this binding resolution.
Having floated a modified version of the US-backed ceasefire proposed via a mediation effort involving Egypt, Qatar, Hamas and Israel, the Biden administration recently insisted "the time for a ceasefire is now" and it was "working round the clock" to make this happen.
But such rhetoric counts for little when the rest of the world can see the Biden administration refuses to halt the supply of US weapons to Netanyahu’s government.
And now the Gaza conflict threatens to engulf the Middle East region. The Netanyahu government in the last 12 days targeted Hizbollah officials in Lebanon with exploding communication devices and unleashed a wave of air strikes that have killed more than 1000 people — including Hasan Nasrallah, Hizbollah’s longtime leader — and extended to Houthi targets in Yemen.
In effect, the Biden administration’s almost unlimited support for Israel’s right of self-defence is inconsistent with humanitarian law and has continually frustrated international diplomatic attempts to halt a conflict that has killed many thousands of innocent lives in Gaza and threatens to do the same in Lebanon.
This raises an more important question. In an increasingly interconnected world in the 21st century why should questions of war and peace rest almost entirely on the whims of five permanent members of the UNSC?
It should be recalled the founders of the UN in 1945 conferred the right of veto on five great powers of that time to ensure they remained in the organisation and helped solve the world’s problems.
But 80 years on, it is clear that great powers cannot run today’s world — even if they have the political will — because many of the challenges facing states in the security, health, environmental or economic spheres do not respect borders and are simply too big for even powerful states acting alone or with a few allies to resolve.
In essence, the disastrous Gaza situation today confirms again that the use of veto powers by UNSC permanent members is largely incompatible with the broader goal of maintaining international peace and security in the 21st century.
At present, global security matters are hostage to the interests of five permanent members of the UNSC.
Without curtailing the use of the veto in the UNSC or significantly increasing the power of the UN General Assembly, it is difficult to envisage any real improvement in the security of the world.
The five permanent members of the UNSC will obviously be reluctant to lose their veto privileges, but determined pressure from the wider UN membership could force a new arrangement whereby General Assembly resolutions with two-thirds support or more become binding and not subject to a veto.
Reforming the veto powers of the UNSC will not be a magical cure for all of the injustices in the world, but it could end the current farcical situation where one or several permanent members can support and sustain wars which the vast majority of states in the UN strongly oppose.
Such a reform would strengthen the UNSC as a barrier against war and thus constitute a practical step forward in the important quest for a more peaceful world.
• Robert G. Patman is a specialist in international relations at the University of Otago. This is a speech he recently gave to a peace symposium organised by Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at.
