Essay on “Search For A Peaceful Future ” Complete Essay for Class 9, Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Search For A Peaceful Future 

Outlines : Three world leaders, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, Mr. George Bush and Mr. Mikhail Gorbachev, who were key participants from the days of the Cold War, held televised discussion, most of the time spent on referring to the advantages and limitations of the United Nations. As usual, Mrs. Thatcher was the most blunt. She spoke of how the ‘tyrant’ Mr. Saddam Hussein would still have been in Kuwait, probably down the Gulf and sitting on top of 60 per cent of the world’s oil reserves if Mr. George Bush’s America Rritian and other nations had not taken action.

Mrs. Thatcher did not stop with Mr. Saddam Hussein. She went on to argue that Bosnia, the way it had been handled, was a great mistake. “It should never have been under United Nations authority, but under the authority of those countries prepared to take action. Then we might have resolved it much more quickly”. The bottom line for both Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Bush was that the United Nations should stick to the role it was originally intended for or what it was comfortable with: they cautioned against the involvement of the world body in wars.

At a time when many are wondering about the role of the nation-state in the emerging world order, one got the feeling, listening to Mr. Bush and Mrs. Thatcher, that they were certainly not for surrendering critical decision of nationstates to any world body or to a world ‘government’. Mr. Gorbachev was the odd person out and not surprisingly so. At the State of the World Forum sessions, he was passionately speaking out for an enhanced role for the United Nations, which he thought needed to be changed or reformed. “The United Nations we have today is something we are not satisfied with, but that does not mean we do not need an international organisation”, the leader of the erstwhile Soviet Union noted. Pointing to the new centres taking hope by way of a united Germany, a Russia that will revive and a strengthening China and India. Mr. Gorbachev asked : “Do you think that all of them will agree to being secondary players, and do you not think you need a format of cooperation with them”? The disagreement between the three leaders is reflective of what is happening at a wider level of this ongoing debate on the role of the United Nations in a changed and changing global environment. Participants of the State of the World Forum meetings addressed this issue in all seriousness and sincerity, but could not come to any firm conclusions on the subject. Saying that the United Nations had to be changed or strengthened is easy—even Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Bush would agree to this. The problem comes on the specifics, particularly if nations would wish to assign a higher body certain decision-making powers. One of the arguments has been that if only nations spent a fraction of what they spent on arms acquisitions, to peace time operations by way of the United Nations, it would be a major boost to the role of the world body. Although, the problems of the United Nations are multifaceted, one of the key ones is the financial constraint the world body faces. What has been frequently pointed out is the financial responsibility of the major powers who have carved out for themselves an enviable role in the United Nations structure. These financially irresponsible nations have been lecturing others on not only the virtues of the United Nations, but also on ways to reform the body to make it more effective. In fact, one leader participating in the Forum discussions even mooted the idea that it was about time the world body moved on to a ‘no pay no vote’ mechanism. That should wake up several nations, including some prominent ones sitting as part of the permanent membership. To say that a consensus on how the United Nations should be reformed would come about quickly, is to overlook the problems of domestic politics in societies. This is especially true in some advanced Western nations where there is a systematic attack on international organisations and a political tendency to get out of mainstream involvement. The argument has been advanced that beyond the kind of role the United Nations could play in tackling certain crises, the regional mechanisms would have to be strengthened. There has been the call, heard also elsewhere recently, for a new United Nations, something that goes beyond numerical representation. At a broader level, it has been argued that the reform of the United Nations should make it less political, and more a, greater source of international law. There has been some talk to amending the Charter to make it a treaty or a binding legal document, with the International Court of Justice having the jurisdiction of interpretation.

By the same token, how is the World Court to be changed to make its role more relevant, so that nations accept its jurisdiction  Economical and technical boycott of countries that do not accept  the World Court as the body to settle contentious issues? Nations also need to come to consensus on the definition of the concept of sovereignty.

If the post Cold War era is supposed to have ushered in new opportunities for a transition to a new world order that is devoid of the viciousness of the past four decades, what is holding the process up? Is it that those steering the so-called new world order are striving for uniformity as opposed to diversity? That the problems are truly global but that the mindset is ‘local’, which prevents consensus on acceptable mechanisms for global decision-making to tackle global issues? All ingredients of the grand thinking are there, but the political will to see through the process is lacking? In other words, the so-called, ‘Timidity of Leadership’ is to blame for the persisting problem of uncertainty.

Mr. Gorbachev, at the State of the World Forum meeting, spoke of the main difference between a politician and a statesman : the former looks to the next election while the latter thinks about the next century. It was in line with what he has been saying at the Forum deliberations, that the political vacillation of leaders was understandable in the context of domestic constraints, but there was no justification for not doing enough. The New Kind of Politics in the era of globalization may be a combination of philosophy and the practical. Clearly, there is need to look beyond narrow and parochial interests. The world is not in short supply of paradigms, models or slogans. The new post Cold War era, as someone remarked during the proceedings, was really in short supply of ‘dreamers’