ENLIGHTENED
PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES
COULD
USE THE U.S. MILITARY FORCES
AS
AN INTERIM WORLD
PEACE FORCE
SYNOPSIS:
Given the fact that the United States of America
has
the strongest military forces on Earth,
it should be possible for the commander-in-chief of these forces
to stop using the U.S. Army, Navy, Marines, & Air Force
to enforce
U.S. foreign
policy
and to use these troops instead
to enforce universal
principles of
peace
and justice.
If and when it become evident that disarmament is
possible,
then this role can be gradually handed over to a World Peace
Force,
which would be independent of the national interests of the USA.
OUTLINE:
1.
SEVERAL U.S. PRESIDENTS COULD USE FORCE FOR PEACE.
2. UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLE OF PEACE.
3.
WORLD PEACE DOES NOT REQUIRE WORLD GOVERNMENT.
4.
THE AMERICAN WAR IN VIETNAM AS AN EXAMPLE:
INSTEAD OF
FIGHTING COMMUNISM,
WE COULD HAVE
PURSUED PEACE.
5.
EVEN BEFORE THE EMERGENCE OF THE WORLD PEACE FORCE,
THE U.S.
MILITARY COULD BE USED IN
NON-PARTISAN WAYS
TO DISARM ALL
WHO CONTINUE TO FIGHT.
6.
CANADIAN PEACE FORCES MIGHT BE A PARADIGM.
7. COULD U.S. PRESIDENTS PURSUE BOTH AMERICAN INTERESTS
AND WORLD
PEACE?
8. U.S. PRESIDENTS COULD BECOME LEADERS FOR WORLD PEACE.
ENLIGHTENED
PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES
COULD USE THE U.S. MILITARY FORCES
AS AN INTERIM WORLD PEACE FORCE
by
James Leonard Park
1. SEVERAL U.S. PRESIDENTS
COULD
USE FORCE FOR PEACE.
Because it will take several decades
for the World
Peace Force to come into being,
and because U.S. Presidents are limited to 8 years in office at the
most,
no single President will achieve this transition by himself
or herself.
But the WPF could be affirmed by several U.S. Presidents.
And this new policy could be supported by
the U.S. Congress,
since these elected representatives of the American people
would be voting to continue financing U.S. military forces,
even when American soldiers are used to enforce world peace.
How soon will U.S. Presidents put peace on Earth
ahead of any narrow foreign policy goals of the USA?
Because we Americans enjoy democratic systems of government,
we are sometimes tempted to re-make the world into our own image.
We have tried to impose
democracy
on peoples who have no experience of such forms of government.
But if U.S. military forces limit themselves to ending the fighting
wherever organized killing is found on planet Earth,
then after the shooting and bombing stops
the people of any particular place on Earth
will create some form of government that works for them.
And some of them will be attracted to the patterns of democracy
that have worked well in the Western world.
What would a World Peace Force do?
Instead of trying to spread democracy,
the World Peace Force would focus on ending the fighting and killing.
After the civil strife is over, the peoples of that part of our planet
will have to decide for themselves (by non-violent means)
exactly what forms of political and civil order they want.
2. UNIVERSAL
PRINCIPLE OF
PEACE.
The planet Earth does not yet have a code
of peace,
but such principles can be created step-by-step
as they are needed to apply to specific situations.
The long road to
peace on Earth will have some detours.
There will be times when the U.S. national interest will come ahead
of the universal principles of peace we hope to embrace.
The U.S. President will always be elected
by the people of the USA,
not all of the people of the
planet Earth.
Ever since the USA emerged, we have assumed that the
President
would make decisions that favor the people of the USA
—sometimes
having adverse consequences for citizens of other countries.
But very enlightened Presidents of the USA
might be able to fulfill their role of protecting the American people
while enforcing universal principles of peace.
The specific principles to be enforced by
the World Peace Force
(and temporarily by U.S. military forces)
cannot be completely predicted at any stage in their development.
But we already see some
principles that are likely to be included.
Genocide
against any identified group should be outlawed on Earth.
Changing borders by
violent means should also not be permitted.
Much more controversial will be disarming all nation-states.
This could only be achieved after the emergence
of an effective World Peace Force to police the
Earth.
Only when the vast majority of the people on Earth
are convinced that the WPF can maintain order on our
planet
will they be willing to give
up their national military forces.
3. WORLD PEACE DOES
NOT
REQUIRE WORLD GOVERNMENT.
Some past proposals for a World Peace Force
have assumed (without much analysis) that a World Peace Force
would presuppose some form of world-government.
But why?
If good laws are established anywhere on the planet
Earth,
then those laws can be enforced by non-political police forces.
The police should enforce the same laws
no matter which political
leaders are in charge anywhere.
We can see this most obviously in local
law-enforcement:
The police of the City of Minneapolis have the same laws to enforce
no matter what individuals are in the office of mayor and city council.
When we change our elected city government,
we do not expect any change
in our local laws or their enforcement.
Good police forces enforce the laws without regard to
office-holders.
And police should not care who holds office,
as long as taxes are collected to keep the police
department operating.
Some individuals might try to use the Minneapolis
police
to enforce their special plans for law-and-order,
but the police should rightly resist
any such partisan use.
The police should enforce the laws
without regard to the identity of
the law-breakers
or any friends they might have in high places.
The same non-partisan, non-national, non-racial
pattern could exist
when enforcing
universal principles of peace.
At first, some Americans will put U.S. interests before world peace.
But other Americans will support world-wide peace,
even if U.S. military forces no longer enforce American foreign policy.
4. THE AMERICAN WAR
IN
VIETNAM AS AN EXAMPLE:
INSTEAD
OF FIGHTING COMMUNISM,
WE COULD HAVE
PURSUED PEACE.
If
the practice of enforcing universal
principles of peace
had prevailed in the years of the U.S. war in Vietnam (1963-1975),
that war would have come to the same conclusion years earlier.
It was not valid for any foreign military forces
to attempt to support any particular form of government for Vietnam.
And once the foreign troops were withdrawn,
the people of Vietnam were able to govern themselves
without the blood-bath predicted by U.S. supporters of the war
and without all other countries of the area 'falling to Communism'.
From the beginning of U.S. involvement in 1963 until
1975,
the USA supported any
anti-Communist
government
that could be put together by the people of South Vietnam.
But after we stopped interfering, a new Vietnam emerged,
which now seems to be open to private property.
Was it ever worth the costs in U.S. lives and dollars
to attempt to impose a non-Communist system on Vietnam?
If a World Peace Force had been operating during
those years,
the Vietnam war would have ended years sooner
because the World Peace Force would not have attempted
to impose any particular form
of government.
The World Peace Force would have disarmed all fighters.
And the people of Vietnam
would then
have created whatever government
worked for them
as long as military force was not the basis of government.
5. EVEN BEFORE THE
EMERGENCE OF THE WORLD PEACE FORCE,
THE U.S. MILITARY COULD BE USED
IN NON-PARTISAN WAYS
TO DISARM ALL WHO CONTINUE TO
FIGHT.
Afghanistan is a current example where this new
policy could apply:
Instead of using U.S. military forces to support the present government,
U.S. soldiers could go everywhere in that land to take away weapons.
A disarmed Afghanistan would not continue its present government,
and we could not be certain what new law-and-order would
emerge,
but we could be certain that fewer U.S. soldiers would die
in a futile attempt to shore-up one kind of government or another.
Any government that stays in power because of U.S. military support
is doomed to disappear when the American soldiers return to the USA.
If it were in existence, the World Peace Force
would disarm all military forces still fighting in Afghanistan.
The borders and airports of Afghanistan would be sealed
to prevent any further shipments of arms and ammunition.
All arms manufacturing within
Afghanistan would be ended.
Then some new forms of government would emerge in
Afghanistan.
These could be tribal forms at first,
because family ties are more important than any political system.
They could try any form of
government organization,
as long as violence was not used to enforce any political system.
Local government would be permitted to maintain
local police,
as long as police were never used to support only one faction.
And local police have no need for tanks or airplanes.
Police do not need weapons that kill more than one person at a time.
See another on-line essay entitled:
WHAT WOULD THE WORLD PEACE FORCE DO?
Disarm All Sides in Afghanistan:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-website-jamesleonardpark---freelibrary-3puxk/CY-AFGH.html
6. CANADIAN PEACE FORCES MIGHT
BE A
PARADIGM.
Without much fanfare, the
military forces of Canada
have already been used to enforce world
peace.
Because Canada is a small nation,
it is not perceived to be forcing its will on the world
whenever its military forces are used anywhere on Earth.
Canada does probably have some foreign-policy aims,
but those purposes do not distort how Canadian forces are
used.
Canada joins with other nations to control and
prevent genocide.
The taxpayers of Canada do not seem to object to
Canadian forces
being used to support a more peaceful world.
Could this be an actual example of how a national
military force
could be used for purposes beyond any narrow national interests?
Would it be possible for the taxpayers of the USA
to endorse a similar use of U.S. military forces anywhere on Earth
even if no national interests of the USA were at stake?
In the past, whenever U.S. military forces were
deployed,
the President had to explain
how that deployment advanced
American interests.
The soldiers who died were said to have given their lives for
America.
And the soldiers themselves might have believed
that they were protecting
the United States from attack
even when they were fighting poorly-armed peasants in distant lands.
7. COULD U.S. PRESIDENTS
PURSUE
BOTH AMERICAN INTERESTS
AND WORLD
PEACE?
In some situations of violent conflict on the planet
Earth,
American interests might coincide
with the wish for world peace.
For example, Afghanistan was taken over in 2001 by U.S. military forces
because Afghanistan allowed Al-Qaeda to have training
camps.
We wanted to prevent future attacks by people trained in Afghanistan.
This mission expanded to fighting everyone thought
to be 'Taliban'
or thought to support the Taliban.
Because one faction of Taliban was in power
when Al-Qaeda was permitted to train terrorists in Afghanistan,
we felt that all 'Taliban' had to be removed from power and influence.
But because the Taliban had wide control in the
rural areas,
the U.S. military forces got bogged down in an unwinnable war.
However, we could change U.S. aims in Afghanistan:
Instead of attempting to enforce any particular form of government
or helping one group of leaders to stay in power,
we could disarm all sides
and prevent any further training of terrorists in Afghanistan.
8. U.S. PRESIDENTS
COULD
BECOME LEADERS FOR WORLD PEACE.
Even tho the Presidents of the United States of
America
will continue to be elected (indirectly)
by the voters of the USA,
could some U.S. Presidents become leaders for world peace?
Instead of appealing to narrow American interests in the world,
such enlightened U.S. Presidents could use military force for peace.
And eventually such peace-making and peace-keeping
efforts
could be taken over by the World Peace Force.
Created
May 26, 2011; Revised 5-28-2011; 6-3-2011; 6-18-2011; 6-22-2011;
8-24-2011; 10-26-2011;
2-17-2012; 9-8-2012; 9-27-2012; 2-6-2013; 9-4-2013; 9-25-2013;
9-26-2013;
8-19-2014; 2-13-2015; 4-17-2017; 12-16-2020;
AUTHOR:
James Park is an independent philosopher
living and
writing in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
Much more will be discovered about him on his website:
James
Leonard Park—Free
Library
The
following are the most relevant on-line essays.
Could Presidents of the USA pursue the same policies
before a World Peace Force is created?
WHAT
WOULD THE WORLD PEACE FORCE
DO?
Eliminate
all Weapons of Mass Death
End all
Military Dictatorships
When
National Governments Collapse
Separate the
Arabs and Jews in Palestine
Disarm All Sides
in Afghanistan
World Peace
Force—Early Thinking
This
link leads to a collection of other essays by James Park
dealing
with various dimensions of the proposed World Peace Force.