Maintaining global security

Offering adequate international security
Providing sufficient international security
Providing international security
Focusing on institutional security
Emphasizing institutional security

Implementation

The UN Charter, Articles 43 and 45, state that the Security Council can call on stand-by international military or police forces and deploy them swiftly in order to reduce or prevent conflicts from breaking out and/or continuing. Initial discussion on the eventual implementation of these provisions has commenced, though a number of governments are expressing their reservations in joining the scheme. Article 52 of the UN Charter calls for a stronger role and involvement of regional organizations during events requiring the resolution of conflicts and peacekeeping. This policy is increasingly being advocated in order to create a global bilateral international-regional security system, that may share the burden of, and tackle more effectively international conflict resolution. It has been argued that international cooperation in peacekeeping and conflict resolution at the global level should be maintained above regionalism, in order to avoid fragmentation into regional spheres of influence that may prove counter-productive to global cooperation.

The world's foremost regional (Europe) and interregional security structure (Europe and North America) is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and its Partnership for Peace arrangement for the European continent. Regional security structures in Europe are further provided by by the European Union, the West European Union, and the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). In other continents, regional security structures and their implications for regional peacekeeping and conflict resolution are less-evolved or non-existent, with the latter being the case in Asia and the Pacific. In Africa, the Organization for African Unity (OAU) is developing. Up to now, the Organization of American States has been ineffective with important issues.

Claim

If we want to have real security, people have to be secure, not only states.

More than ever the world needs a global system of comprehensive security based on cooperation and nonviolent means. This will require a wide-ranging transformation of security concepts, the commitment of far greater financial and human resource, and a serious of major institutional and policy changes. The latter should include preventative diplomacy, peaceful settlement of disputes, minimum-force peace-keeping and much reduced conventional arms production and transfers. A democratized and reformed UN could play a crucial role in bringing such a system into being. At the same time more sustained effort must be made by citizens of all countries to help bring together nations and people at risk of, or engaged in, military confrontation. If reconciliation and mutual tolerance are not active political and social priorities, few disarmament proposals hold any chance of success.