The world needs a new security architecture

Editor's note: William Jones, a special commentator on current affairs for CGTN, is the former Washington bureau chief for Executive Intelligence Review News Service and a non-resident fellow of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

As the 11th Beijing Xiangshan Forum discusses "Building Peace Together, Sharing the Future," the world finds itself in an unprecedented situation, perhaps a more dangerous one than since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Western nations seem intent, propelled by the Anglosphere, on ceaselessly pursuing the conflict in Ukraine (and now in Russia) until they cross some red line of Russia which provokes a nuclear response, which no one wants to happen. While there may well be some in the West who perhaps want to bring this crisis to that state, most of the people who are promoting it foolishly feel that it will not happen, regardless of what outrageous provocations they perpetrate.

Threats to nuclear power plants now under the control of Russia would result in a catastrophe greater than the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986, and could spell the end of nuclear energy as a power source. And with it, the end of economic development as we have known it. We would probably enter a phase of development as that described in the post-apocalyptic Mad Max movies.      

It is also clear that the global system which has been in place largely since the demise of the Soviet Union in which the Western allies have largely determined world policy is presently in a shambles.

Arms control agreements have literally flown out the window with the major nuclear powers seeking ever more effective and ever more lethal nuclear weaponry. To strengthen the Anglosphere, the British are now asking the Americans to make their 10-year renewable agreement on sharing nuclear weapons permanent. If things continue to move in this direction, the stability and peace of the world will be at risk.            

There is, however, a popular consensus that the world must not be led to the brink of war by the shortsighted policies of individual nations that want to assure their right to determine the "rules of the road" for everyone. We already have such rules in the UN Charter and the UN system that was created after the last "Great War," and the horror experienced by the world after the use of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to major self-imposed restrictions by the powers possessing such weapons to prevent their eventual use. While that tenuous policy of mutual assured destruction kept these weapons alive as "deterrents," clear attempts were made to ban their use, limit their number, and eventually to relegate them to the dustbin of history.

At the present moment, the heightened level of tension coming out of the conflict in Ukraine is pushing the world to where these weapons might be unleashed. Bringing down that tension is a prerequisite to preventing that from happening. Calls for immediate negotiations to get a ceasefire in Ukraine and an eventual settlement of that conflict would be a first step in the right direction. There would be a general consensus among countries in support of such a move.

Yet, more fundamentally, we must move in the direction of creating an international security architecture in which all countries feel a sense of security. This must become a matter of discussion in all venues, multilateral  as well as bilateral, until it becomes a steady drumbeat that can no longer be ignored. The venue for such discussions more formally would probably be the United Nations. This is the reason that it was originally established.

This would also be the appropriate place to tackle the all-important issue of nuclear weapons. While nuclear agreements would have to be negotiated between those that possess such weapons, the question of their use or non-use will affect all nations and some consensus must be achieved at the international level to determine the direction that such talks must take. Perhaps some international body could be established to monitor nuclear agreements, similar to what the International Atomic Energy Agency.

It is also clear that the world order which, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, has been largely dominated by the nations of the West politically as well as economically, is no longer sufficient in providing peace and harmony. Countries like China and Russia are now playing a major role in providing development for the world at large. The attempt to deprive them of playing a role on the world stage, either by fomenting conflict or imposing economic penalties, is no longer acceptable and has brought discredit to the countries that have pursued such policies.

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