by Jennifer Coote
Introduction
J. Schell surveys the resumption of the resort to war and mass slaughter in the twentieth century as the nineteenth century systems of peace in Europe broke down. Only the rise of the nuclear threat paralysed the great powers. President Wilson’s vision of a peaceful world based on principles of democracy, self-determination and the rule of law were countered by three protracted revolutions, scientific, democratic and industrial which provided vast new resources and recruits for the war system. The UN tried to bridge the Cold War Impasse and foster the Wilsonian vision in the face of the emerging scourge of “peoples war”, where politics rather than advanced technologies provided the strategy. As the destructive power of war has accelerated, a new path to peace emerged, the Gandhian revision of violence and politics, which eventually enabled Eastern European masses to peacefully change their political system. (continue…)