Global Peace Theory Essay

global peace, and it seeks to investigate whether a lasting international peace can be attained in the current global system.

The essay will first of all spell out the primary causes of war and peace, and then while referring to scholarly articles it will seek to determine the chances or possibility of for a lasting international peace. The study will also look into certain aspects that enable the construction of global peace as well as the areas of concern in regards to international peace.

Primary causes of war

Referring to studies conducted by Gaddis (1992), they are consistent to the United Nations charter that states; 'war starts in the minds of people' and perhaps to debunk the myth that the military men under the influence of politicians are collectively responsible for starting war, the book further says that war is starts on the whole society's collective consciousness or national mood. If there is a buildup of tension and stress within the society it would result to incoherence within such a society that has the overall impact of agitating certain groups or individuals thereby triggering or fueling violence in the form of war, crime or terrorism.

However Gaddis (1992), draws a contradictory argument to the above statement, he disagrees with the studies and instead points out that causes of war can be traced back to the personal greed and selfishness of authoritative leaders. This study cites some war scenario caused by leaders' personal greed and selfishness to support their argument, for example the Gulf war that was largely attributed to the former President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein's personal selfishness for power and wealth that led him to order an invasion to the city of Kuwait and so as to cease control over its' oil resources.

Divergent religious beliefs has also been blamed for causing war, an example of such a war is the Israel-Arab war which analysts and authors believe is caused by the Palestine/Israel land that's considered sacred and both parties lay claim to it as their own personal property.

Primary causes of peace

Viotti, Paul & Mark (1999) in their book "International Relations Theory" have indicated some causes of global peace that include; political ideologies that support democracy, in countries where democracy is observed dialogue is usually used to resolve the tensions and stress within the society which if otherwise left unaddressed could lead to conflict and possibly war between two communities or countries.This book further put across the capitalism peace theory which states that if world economies could become controlled by the government i.e. operate under capitalism war would be averted, this theory suggest that during the period when World economies were purely operating under capitalism there were no records of war erupting among different countries.

Another cause of global peace also mentioned in this book is Cobdenism, which refers to a state where there are no trade tariffs or barriers that could hamper the free movement of goods this leads to country be independent amongst each other and hence war can arise between two countries depending on each other, this argument is supported by the fact that self-reliance among countries is a necessity for long wars to prevail. Globalization another cause of global peace is in some way same as Cobdenism because it unifies different economies making them to become one hence possibility of war arising out of a unified global economy is almost impossible (Viotti, Paul & Mark, 1999).

The society's collective consciousness as mentioned above can be a cause of war, therefore another cause of peace could be self-organized peace where individuals or group in the society engage or participate in joint activity amongst the two different sides for better understanding of one another that could lead to peaceful co-existence between the two opposite sides.

Chances of a lasting international peace

Thou critics have pointed out that due to the human nature of irrationality and violence, global peace or the chances for a lasting international peace in the current global system is totally impossible. Studies conducted by Art, Robert & Jervis (2005) disagree with this opinion and instead they wrote that violence or….....