The UN is certainly not set up to take over sovereignty from other countries but things don't have to stay that way. States could (at least in theory) push for higher integration by investing the UN system with more binding power. I'm not saying this is what I want necessarily but one of the most prevalent criticisms we hear today about the UN is that it's heavily political and bureaucratic, has little influence and is ultimately a proxy for the perpetuation of great power politics. This is the viewpoint that John Mearsheimer (the political scientist I quoted above and whom I was honoured to meet once) espouses. I do not espouse it personally but the least that can be said about it is that it's a very robust viewpoint.
If we agree with Mearsheimer then we do have to wonder about whether we think unipolarity, bipolarity or multipolarity is more likely to promote a peaceful state of affairs internationally. You say the West needs to contextualize the rise of the East, which could be taken as a commitment to multipolarity. I would share it for a number of reasons, including on moral grounds. And yet the history of the 20th century could be arguably said to show that bipolarity and unipolarity are more peaceful systems, in the sense that they produced fewer deaths than the multipolar contexts of WWI and WWII. Multipolar systems were less stable because there were more powers potentially vying against one another for domination. This is the paradox, in a sense. On this view, it seems that supporting the idea that any State should have full sovereignty to become as powerful as it can be might end up contributing to an international system inimical to world peace. I find that quite fascinating.
The same with nuclear deterrence: a MAD world (Mutual Assured Destruction) is also paradoxically, perhaps, a world in which there can no longer be any world war. Because mutual destruction would be assured by the possession of nuclear missiles on all sides. French people for instance, including left-wingers, tend to be in favour of nuclear weapons. A Green candidate who was quite popular ran for the presidential elections in 2012 and scored 1% (versus an initially projected score of 6%) after saying that she would de-nuclearise France. Call it an unconscious fear of Germany, a desire to remain relevant on the international scene, or a belief in the "virtue" of nuclear deterrence, but it's a real thing in France and I can at least understand it.
No, on some level I don't think peace is different for everyone. I think it's possible to have a definition of peace that is objective. It would be really interesting to see what people would come up with, actually. So far, the definition has been a "negative" one, as "A state of affairs in which there is no war and the death and destruction resulting from it". It is a pretty compelling definition in many ways. France is peaceful, South Sudan is not: how do we progress towards a world in which there are more peaceful countries like France and less conflict-affected countries like South Sudan? And a world which would be sustainably peaceful, not peaceful as a result of the contingency of history and political interest.
This is a great debate in my head (and in the community of peace scholars at large - of which I am not a part, but with which I interact and take insights from as much as I can) but I think a good start would be to inculcate the essential role that civil society must play as a counterpart to State power. Aiming for the flourishing of a culture in which joining civil society organisations, donating and acting within them literally becomes "the norm". A society in which everybody knows what Freedom House and Human Rights Watch are, as well as countless other more "local" organisations. Normatively moving away from an automatic commitment to the State as the sole agent of one's civic life.
If we agree with Mearsheimer then we do have to wonder about whether we think unipolarity, bipolarity or multipolarity is more likely to promote a peaceful state of affairs internationally. You say the West needs to contextualize the rise of the East, which could be taken as a commitment to multipolarity. I would share it for a number of reasons, including on moral grounds. And yet the history of the 20th century could be arguably said to show that bipolarity and unipolarity are more peaceful systems, in the sense that they produced fewer deaths than the multipolar contexts of WWI and WWII. Multipolar systems were less stable because there were more powers potentially vying against one another for domination. This is the paradox, in a sense. On this view, it seems that supporting the idea that any State should have full sovereignty to become as powerful as it can be might end up contributing to an international system inimical to world peace. I find that quite fascinating.
The same with nuclear deterrence: a MAD world (Mutual Assured Destruction) is also paradoxically, perhaps, a world in which there can no longer be any world war. Because mutual destruction would be assured by the possession of nuclear missiles on all sides. French people for instance, including left-wingers, tend to be in favour of nuclear weapons. A Green candidate who was quite popular ran for the presidential elections in 2012 and scored 1% (versus an initially projected score of 6%) after saying that she would de-nuclearise France. Call it an unconscious fear of Germany, a desire to remain relevant on the international scene, or a belief in the "virtue" of nuclear deterrence, but it's a real thing in France and I can at least understand it.
No, on some level I don't think peace is different for everyone. I think it's possible to have a definition of peace that is objective. It would be really interesting to see what people would come up with, actually. So far, the definition has been a "negative" one, as "A state of affairs in which there is no war and the death and destruction resulting from it". It is a pretty compelling definition in many ways. France is peaceful, South Sudan is not: how do we progress towards a world in which there are more peaceful countries like France and less conflict-affected countries like South Sudan? And a world which would be sustainably peaceful, not peaceful as a result of the contingency of history and political interest.
This is a great debate in my head (and in the community of peace scholars at large - of which I am not a part, but with which I interact and take insights from as much as I can) but I think a good start would be to inculcate the essential role that civil society must play as a counterpart to State power. Aiming for the flourishing of a culture in which joining civil society organisations, donating and acting within them literally becomes "the norm". A society in which everybody knows what Freedom House and Human Rights Watch are, as well as countless other more "local" organisations. Normatively moving away from an automatic commitment to the State as the sole agent of one's civic life.
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