Humanity Has Two Choices: Unification or Mass Suicide

Sovaida MaaniEwing

July 29, 2024

The intensifying cascade of global crises including intractable wars, massive human rights atrocities, nuclear proliferation, climate change and environmental degradation, the growing inequality between the rich and the poor, recurring bouts of global financial instability, and the increasing risks of pandemics to name but a few, call to mind the warning sounded by Arnold Toynbee, one of the most highly-regarded authorities and foremost experts on international affairs and world history in the 20th century, that humanity would be faced with an existential crisis followed by his recommendation as to what we, the family of nations, should do in response.

 

Toynbee contended that in the atomic age, humanity would have to choose between political unification and mass suicide. He believed the chief obstacle to political unification was a long-standing destructive habit of the West which he referred to as the habit of “divisive feeling” to which we tended to easily succumb as opposed to reaching for our more recently adopted habit of “world-mindedness.”  The good news, he said, was that just as new habits could be adopted, old ones could also be modified or abandoned. He stressed that as a general rule we humans would opt to abandon even our most deeply rooted habits once it became clear that clinging to them would spell disaster.

He recommended that we replace our outworn habit of divisive feeling with a new habit of common action on a worldwide scale through the creation of some form of limited world-state that would be empowered to act in humanity’s collective interest in certain narrow fields of endeavor. Already, as far back as the 1970’s, he believed that the global community needed to engage in common action on a world-wide scale in at least two areas: to control atomic energy through a World Authority and to administer the production and distribution of food through another World Authority. Now, 50 years hence, we can confidently add climate change to this list.

Toynbee predicted that global circumstances we unwittingly created through our technological advancements would eventually force us to submit to a limited world government once we realized it was our only hope for salvation in the face of an existential threat. He believed we would wait until the 11th hour before making a radical shift to establish such a government even though we would do this kicking and screaming all the way.

He was very clear in recognizing our visceral fears about and knee-jerk reaction in opposition to a world government that might become a draconian centralized bureaucracy imposing its will on local governments around the world. He made the following compelling arguments to dispel these fears.

First, that a world government should be minimal and should be limited in its sphere of action. World leaders should therefore confine the authority of a world government they established only to that which was strictly necessary for their self-preservation right now.

Second, he stressed that in the atomic age, world government should come about voluntarily through the mutual consent and cooperation of world powers rather than by force. He warned that any attempt to impose political unity by force would be ineffective as it would only lead to stiff resistance and a resurgent nationalism as soon as an opportunity to revolt presented itself.

Third, the prerequisite for such an endeavor to succeed lay in the universal adoption of an ideology of world-mindedness that we had never achieved before.

Toynbee believed that the structure of a limited world state would likely be a federal one in which previously independent units would voluntarily come together in a global union. He argued that this was the most likely scenario given that states generally prefer to preserve their identity and retain their autonomy to act locally; they would likely be willing to cede some power to a world government only in limited areas in which it served their collective interests to do so.

Finally, he believed that humanity needed to forge some unity of thought as to what constituted right and wrong. In other words, it was necessary to adopt a shared set of moral values that would serve to harmonize the disparate social and cultural heritages that had evolved independently of each other over the course of human history. Without fundamental agreement on moral issues he argued, it would be difficult to achieve political unification.

Given the rapid disintegration of countries and societies around the world and the accelerating fragmentation and polarization that are rending apart the fabric of our global society, is it not time for us to step up and make the choice to collaborate, cooperate and deepen our integration as a global society? To this end is it not time we take a step in the direction of collective maturity by voluntarily consenting to political unification by forming a limited democratic federal world government? Imagine what we could achieve if we engaged in collective and consultative decision-making to meet the pressing needs and the greatest global challenges of our time as opposed to opting for what Toynbee coined the “Great Refusal” that would inevitably result in carnage and devastation on a scale never before seen.

 

Voting Against Nuclear War

Scott Ritter

As America wrestles with the question of who will emerge victorious from the three-ring circus that is the 2024 Presidential election, there is increasing talk about the existential nature of this election and the role played by the two primary candidates — the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, Kamala Harris, and her challenger, the Republican Party nominee, Donald Trump — in taking the nation to the brink when it comes to the future of American democracy as an institution.

The choices couldn’t be starker — the living embodiment of “DEI establishment politician” (Harris) versus the textbook definition of a “populist political outsider” (Trump).

In many ways, the rhetoric about the critical nature of the 2024 Presidential race isn’t exaggerated — in terms of sustained political viability, the stakes couldn’t get any higher.

A Harris victory would effectively end the MAGA movement, since it is largely a populist exercise built around the cult of personality that has surrounded Donald Trump, whom most people agree is running his last political race.

A Trump victory, however, would project into the political mainstream his running mate, J.D. Vance, who would be given the opportunity to claim the MAGA throne in 2028, setting up the potential for a 12-year MAGA run which could very well spell the end of establishment politics in America as we know it.

America has gone through numerous presidential contests in its 248-year history in which the essence of the nation could be said to be at stake.

The first of these took place in 1800, when Thomas Jefferson defeated John Adams in a race that literally decided the future of the United States by ending the conservative Federalist hold on political power and replacing it with the more progressive Democrat-Republican party.

Andrew Jackson’s 1824 victory over John Quincy Adams saw the reemergence of the Federalist ideology in the form of the new Democratic Party prevail over Adams and the Republicans in an election that served as the foundation for the emergence of the two-party system that dominates American politics until today.

And the 1860 election, won by Abraham Lincoln, literally carried with it life or death decisions which propelled America into a Civil War. It is the only American election which can genuinely be described as existential in terms of its consequences.

The point to be made here is that no matter what anyone says about 2024, while the future direction of American politics, and the societal issues thus manifested, will be decided in November, the existential fate of the United States is not on the line.

Neither is the fate of “American democracy.”

All Existence Is at Stake

The 2024 presidential race, however, does directly impact the existential survival of the United States, the American people, and indeed the entire world, but not because of its outcome.

The harsh reality is that regardless of who among the two major candidates wins in November, American policy vis-à-vis Russia, especially when it comes to nuclear posture and arms control, is hard-wired to achieve the same result.

And it is this result that seals the fate of all humanity unless a way can be found to prompt a critical re-think of the underlying policies that produce the anticipated outcome.

A future Harris administration is on track to continue a policy which commits to the strategic defeat of Russia, the lowering of the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons in Europe, the termination of the last remaining arms control treaty (New START) in February 2026, and the re-deployment of intermediate-range missiles into Europe, also in 2026.

Trump, meanwhile, has proffered rhetoric which has led many to believe he would end the conflict in Ukraine, and thereby open the door for better relations with Russia.

The ‘Perfect Call’

But this policy is predicated on the concept of the “perfect phone call” between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin where the Russian leader accedes to American-dictated terms regarding Ukraine which would fall far short of Russia’s stated goals.

Trump has made it clear that if Putin fails to bend the knee on Ukraine, he will then flood Ukraine with weapons —basically the Biden policy of strategically defeating the Russians on steroids. It was Trump who pulled out of the INF treaty in 2019, and as such put in motion the policy direction which has U.S. INF weapons returning to Europe in 2026.

And Trump is not a fan of arms control treaties, so the notion that he would save New START or replace it with a new treaty vehicle is mooted by reality.

No matter who wins among the two major candidates in November, the United States is on track for a major existential crisis with Russia in Europe sometime in 2026. The re-introduction of INF-capable systems by the U.S. will trigger a similar deployment by Russia of nuclear-capable INF systems targeting Europe.

Back in the 1980’s, the deployment of INF systems by the U.S. and Russia had created an inherently destabilizing situation where one mistake could have set off a nuclear war.

The experience of Able Archer ’83, a NATO command and control exercise that took place in the fall of 1983, bears witness to this reality. The Soviets interpreted the exercise as being a cover for a nuclear first-strike by NATO and put its nuclear forces on high alert.

There was no room for error — one miscalculation or misjudgment could have led to a Soviet decision to pre-empt what it believed to be an imminent NATO nuclear attack, thereby triggering a full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

The INF treaty, signed in 1987, removed these destabilizing weapons from Europe. But now that treaty is no more, and the weapons that brought Europe and the world to the brink of destruction in the 1980’s are returning to a European continent where notions of peaceful coexistence with Russia have been replaced with rhetoric promoting the inevitability of conflict.

When one combines the existence of a policy objective (the strategic defeat of Russia) which, when coupled with a policy of supporting a Ukrainian victory over Russia predicated on Ukraine regaining physical control over Crimea and the four territories of Novorossiya (New Russia — Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk, and Lugansk), one already has a recipe for disaster.

This policy, if successful, would automatically trigger a Russian nuclear response, since doctrinally nuclear weapons would be used to respond to any non-nuclear scenario where the existential survival of Russia is at stake. (The loss of Crimea and the New Territories is like the United States losing Texas, California, or New York — a literal existential situation.)

Add to this the end of arms control as we know it come February 2026, when the New START treaty expires. The Biden administration has declared that it will seek to add new nuclear weapons “without limitation” once the New START caps on deployed weapons expires — the literal definition of an arms race out of control.

One can only imagine that Russia would be compelled to match this rearmament activity.

INFs Again in Europe

And finally, the recent agreement by the U.S. and Germany to redeploy intermediate-range missiles on European soil in 2026, and Russia’s decision to match this action by building and deploying its own intermediate-range missiles, recreates the very situational instability which threatened regional and world security back in the 1980’s.

When one examines these factors in their aggregate, the inescapable conclusion is that Europe will be faced with an existential crisis which could come to a head as early as the summer of 2026.

The potential for the use of nuclear weapons, either by design or accident, is real, creating a situation that exceeds the Cuban Missile Crisis in terms of the risk of a nuclear war by an order of magnitude or more.

While a future nuclear conflict would very likely start in Europe, it will be virtually impossible to contain the use of nuclear weapons on the European continent. Any use of nuclear weapons against Russian soil, or the territory of its ally, Belarus, would trigger a general Russian nuclear response which would lead to a general, global-killing nuclear war.

The question Americans confront today is what to do about this existential threat to their very survival.

The answer put forward here is to empower your vote in the coming presidential election by tying it not to a person or party, but rather a policy.

In short, empower your vote by pledging it to the candidate who will commit to prioritizing peace over war, and who pledges to make the prevention of nuclear war, not the promotion of nuclear weapons, the cornerstone of his or her national security policy.

Don’t give your vote away by committing to a candidate at this early stage — when you do this, you no longer matter, as the candidates will simply turn their attention to those uncommitted voters in an effort to win them over.

Make the candidates earn your vote by linking it to a policy posture that reflects your core values.

And this election, your core value should be exclusively centered on promoting peace and preventing nuclear war.

Such a policy posture would be built upon for basic pillars.

    1. Immediately end the current declaratory policy of the United States which articulates the strategic defeat of Russia as a primary U.S. objective and replace it with a policy statement which makes peaceful coexistence with Russia the strategic goal of U.S. foreign and national security policy.

    Such a policy redirection would include, by necessity, the goal of rethinking European security frameworks which respect the legitimate national security concerns of Russia and Europe, and would incorporate the necessity of a neutral Ukraine.

    2. A freeze on the re-deployment of INF-capable weapons systems into Europe, matched by a Russian agreement not to re-introduce INF-capable weapons into its arsenal, with the goal of turning this freeze into a formal agreement that would be finalized in treaty form.

    3. A commitment to engage with Russia on the negotiation and implementation of a new strategic arms control treaty which seeks equitable cuts in the strategic nuclear arsenals of both nations, a reduction in the number of nuclear weapons each side can retain in storage, and which incorporates limits on ballistic missile defense.

    4. A general commitment to work with Russia to pursue verifiable and sustainable nuclear arms reduction globally using multi-lateral negotiations.

I will be working with Gerald Celente, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Garland Nixon, Wilmur Leon, Max Blumenthal, Anya Parampil, Jeff Norman, Danny Haiphong, and many others to put together an event, Operation DAWN, on September 28, 2024.

The goal of this event will be to get as many American citizens as possible to tie their vote to the policy posture spelled out above, and then to leverage these commitments in a way that compels all candidates for the presidency to articulate policies that meet this criterion.

In doing so, the voter would be fighting for a chance to save democracy by making his or her vote count, save America and the world by creating the possibility to avert nuclear conflict, all by making the candidates for presidency earn their vote, as opposed to simply giving it away.

Operation DAWN is still in the preliminary planning stages. More details will be published here as the planning progresses.