ROW Episode 30

In this episode we look to the war in Ukraine as evidence of the operation of two distinct yet simultaneous processes of disintegration and integration and explore how both processes seem to be driving humanity to the same goal of recognizing its essential oneness.

Episode Transcript

Sovaida (00:08):
Hello and welcome to Reimagining Our World, a podcast
dedicated to envisioning abetter world and to infusing
hope that we can make theprincipled choices to build that
world.
In this episode, we look to thewar in Ukraine as evidence of
the operation of two distinctyet simultaneous processes of

(00:33):
disintegration and integration,and explore how both processes
seem to be driving humanity tothe same goal of recognizing its
essential oneness.
Delighted to have those of youwho are able to join me be here
with me.
All right, let's dive in.
As I've watched the unfoldingdisaster in Ukraine, I've been

(00:58):
struck by the following threethings.
The first is how clearly we candiscern the operation of two
distinct yet simultaneousprocesses, a process of
disintegration and a process ofintegration.
The second thing I notice isthat both processes, integration

(01:24):
and disintegration, are gainingin momentum.
They're both accelerating.
And the third thing that strikesme is that both processes seem
to lead to the same outcome.
They have a shared goal, whichis the tearing down and sweeping
away of those barriers that havehindered humanity from attaining

(01:49):
the next step in its collectiveevolution towards its maturity,
towards its collective maturity.
And that step is the step of therecognition of its oneness and
eventually the building of itsUnshakeable unity.
You may recall way back when, inone of the earlier episodes, we

(02:11):
talked about this idea that veryoften when new things are about
to be born in life, in nature,in the world, we see these two
processes at work, and theanalogy that we used then was
that of the caterpillar thattransforms into butterfly.
I'm not going to recap all ofit, but we talked about the

(02:34):
cocoon, that where things getreally messy once the
caterpillar has gorged itselfenough, having eaten and eaten,
and then it wraps itself in thiscocoon.
And then it literally starts toexude enzymes that lead to the
destruction of its own body.
So it's eating itself or,throwing acid on itself and
disintegrating.

(02:54):
And it's a chaotic goopy,disgusting process.
But at the same time, we saidthat there are certain things
called imaginal disks within thebody of the caterpillar that we
don't see, but that are thesesmall groups of cells, each of
which correlates to a part ofthe butterfly that is to emerge.

(03:15):
And while this process ofdisgusting disintegration is
going on, at the same time,these imaginal cells are
starting to proliferate rapidlyand turn into the parts of the
butterfly.
And when both processes havereached their climax the
disintegration is complete andthe integration, the development

(03:36):
of the parts of the newbutterfly is completed, then
we're ready for this newcreation to burst from its
cocoon.
I want us to bear that analogyin mind as we explore the ideas
today in the context of whatwe're learning with this
horrific war in Ukraine.

(03:58):
Let's begin by examining theprocesses of disintegration,
first of all.
We don't need to belabor them,right?
We know what they are.
We're seeing the indiscriminatekilling of innocents, including
pregnant women, children, oldfolks, the bombing of hospitals
and schools and holy places andhomes and apartment buildings.

(04:19):
The fact that half the childrenof Ukraine have been displaced.
3 million refugees in the courseof one month alone have had to
flee Ukraine.
These are just some of theevidences of disintegration.
As I say, we don't need tobelabor them because we get
plenty of information in thenews.
The more interesting questionfor today's purposes is in what

(04:43):
way is this horror creatingawareness, and what kind of
awareness is it creating?
Honestly, it seems to be rudelytearing from our eyes the scales
that we have had in placeapropos of a number of things.
The first is the reality thatwe're very slowly and painfully

(05:08):
starting to recognize, inundeniable fashion, the
interdependence andinterconnectedness of humanity
and our essential oneness, thatwe all need each other.
And that what happens to one ofus, or to one country, affects
those, the rest of us, or thoseof us in other countries.

(05:28):
We're seeing this realityunfold, both in the effects of
the conflict in Ukraine, and inthe responses that we're
crafting to it.
For example, in the realm ofenergy, we're seeing that this
conflict has created instabilityin energy markets, resulting in
shortages of critical energy,oil, gas, coal in many parts of

(05:53):
the world, resulting in turn ina spike in prices that affects
the cost of transportation.
Even in the United States,people are worried about not
having enough money to be ableto get to work and back because
the cost of gasoline has gone upso much.
And in other parts of the worldwhere people by and large are so
much poorer, one can onlyimagine the impact.

(06:16):
The rise in cost oftransportation also affects the
price of goods and commodities,which then exacerbates
inflation, which we've alreadybeen suffering from, and that
again has a direct effect on thelives of you and me and ordinary
people everywhere.
To top it off, when centralbanks increase their interest

(06:36):
rates, it also hits folks.
Especially the poor folks suffermore than others.
That's one area where we'restarting to see that what
happens in Ukraine doesn't stayin Ukraine, but affects the
lives of ordinary peopleeverywhere.
Another is the food crisis, thelooming food crisis that has

(06:57):
been triggered by this conflict.
Many of us have not focused onthe fact that 33 percent of the
world's wheat comes from thebread basket that is Ukraine and
parts of Russia, but mainlyUkraine.
17 percent of our corn worldwidecomes from there and 32 percent

(07:18):
of our barley.
In addition, the United Nationsestimates that up to 30 percent,
a third of Ukrainian farmlandcould become a war zone.
Now, how is this affectingcountries?
Many countries rely for theirstaple on bread.
And this is true in many partsof the world.

(07:38):
The price of bread is going uprapidly.
It's spiking.
And we know from history, andnot such the distant past, that
the rise in the cost of breadleads to instability.
In fact, it is what triggeredthe Arab Spring and all the
turmoil and tumult.
Now, the sanctions that we'veimposed, so not just the

(08:01):
conflict, but the sanctions thathave been imposed in an attempt
to end the conflict and tosqueeze Russia, are also a cause
of further pain, not just forRussians, but for people
everywhere.
Let's look at a simple example.
A good chunk of the world'spotash based fertilizer comes

(08:24):
from Russia.
And the price of this fertilizerhas gone up by 40 percent.
Without fertilizer, crops don'tyield as bountifully and so we
end up with a shortage of foodand again a spike in food
prices.
To demonstrate theinterconnectedness, I found this
fascinating.

(08:44):
The fertilizer in Belarus, whichis also subject to sanctions
during this war, is critical formajor crops like soybeans.
Brazil, which grows a lot ofsoybeans, imports most of its
fertilizer from Belarus.
And then it turns around and itsells most of its soybeans to
China, which uses the soybeansto feed its livestock, cows,

(09:06):
pigs, and chickens.
Now that the prices have goneup, there's less fertilizer,
fewer soybeans less food for thelivestock.
The price of meat is also goingto go up, and there's going to
be less crop yield.
In summary, the United Nationsin March of this year has told

(09:27):
us that without this fertilizer,and we're just talking about
fertilizer, 7.6 to 13.1 millionpeople around the world could go
hungry.
Another instance where we seethis interdependence and the
fact that what occurs in oneplace affects us everywhere: the
impact on poverty, education,and the pandemic.

(09:49):
There was an interesting articlewritten in one of the South
African daily papers, TheMaverick.
It noted that the war in farawayEurope will be felt in every
village and town of South AfricaEven before missiles have been
fired, they said, it will take adreadful toll by diverting
billions of dollars intorearmament instead of putting it

(10:14):
into tackling poverty,pandemics, education,
inequality, and the burgeoningclimate crisis.
Another piece of evidence thatwe are so interconnected is the
nuclear threat.
The danger of nuclear war isescalating with every passing
day.

(10:34):
And here's a fact that very fewof us focus on.
Even if we had a war that waslimited geographically and
limited in duration couple ofdays, it would, according to
experts, result in 10 years ofno summer.
That would mean no crops.
That would then leave onebillion people of the world's

(10:55):
population hungry.
And then we have the threat ofthe use of other weapons of mass
destruction like chemical andbiological weapons and it's
crazy to think that NATO is nowsending equipment to the
countries that are next toUkraine, members of NATO, in
order to test the soil and theair to see if chemical weapons

(11:20):
are used.
So the effects are not going tobe confined to an area.
Again, the effects are going tobe global and are likely to also
drag the rest of humanity,starting with NATO and the
United States, into a war withRussia, resulting in presumably
then a third global war, whichis something we all really want

(11:43):
to avoid.
In short, one of the lessonsthat we should be learning from
all of this is that is that theold game that we have played for
such a long time of trying tomaintain the equilibrium between
various national interests is afutile game, because we live in

(12:04):
a world in which we arebasically so interconnected, we
are a single organism.
What we need to recognize isthat we sink or swim together
and that our interests areessentially fused.
Which, by the way, was aninsight that Jean Monnet, the
gentleman who was the foundingfather of the European Union,

(12:24):
recognized when he made hisproposals for the creation of
the European Coal and SteelCommunity, that is the
foundation of what we know todayas the European Union, and it is
what brought peace to Europeuntil now, right?
The peace in Western Europe isstill intact so far.
What we learn are that theinterests of all nations are

(12:46):
fused.
I just wanted to Hammer thathome.
Now, the second thing that welearn from from this Ukrainian
horror story that we are allwatching is that our global
institutions and laws and thesystems we have in place to
counter an act of unprovokedaggression that flouts clear

(13:10):
international law with impunityare completely inadequate,
because they were designed for aperiod of in which humanity was
still immature.
Times have changed, we havebecome more interconnected, and
we now need systems that aredesigned and fit for purpose to
take the reality of today'sworld into account.

(13:35):
So we need to createinstitutions that are capable of
reacting to challenges liketerritorial aggression quickly
and effectively before the rotsets in.
We're seeing how ineffectual theSecurity Council is in the
discharge of its really primaryresponsibility, which is to

(13:55):
maintain peace or to restore itrapidly.
And we're also seeing that toolsthat we've had in our toolkit,
like sanctions, although theycan be effective up to a point,
cannot be truly effective unlessthey're applied universally,
unless everybody's on board withthem.
And we're seeing the effects ofthis not happening.

(14:18):
There are a bunch of countriesthat have refused to impose
sanctions.
We've got countries with theirown interests to think of, like
China and India or Iran or theUnited Arab Emirates.
They each have their owncalculations about why they
won't sign on to sanctions.
The third lesson that we'relearning from this

(14:40):
disintegration is that our oldhabit of tackling global
challenges with short termthinking and with taking into
account narrowly craftednationalistic self interest
doesn't serve us anymore.
Instead, we need to take thelong view, be proactive and act

(15:01):
on principle.
Why is it we're learning thisfrom the Ukraine crisis?
Here's one way.
One of the reasons we're in thepickle we're in now, this Catch
22, where there is this horrificwar and the nations, like NATO,
are afraid to jump in and helpbecause they don't want to start
a world war and they don't wantto trigger a nuclear crisis, so

(15:24):
we're kind of Catch 22.
The reason why we're here isbecause of choices we've made in
the past.
This has a long story.
One can start a long time ago,but even if we just go back to
the 90s with the two wars foughtin Chechnya, the world stood by
and watched and did nothing.
Then in 2008 we let things slidewhen there was that several day

(15:49):
conflict or war over the twobreakaway provinces of South
Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia.
Then Syria happened.
The civil war in Syria andchemical weapons were used, from
2013 onwards.
In 2017, we know that sarinnerve gas was used and chlorine
was used over a long period oftime.

(16:12):
Again, the internationalcommunity stood by and let
things slide.
Instead of coming together,standing in solidarity, and
acting with determination tostop the horror there.
In 2014, we had anotheropportunity with Crimea, with
the illegal annexation ofCrimea, and we stood by and let

(16:32):
it happen.
The natural takeaway from thisseries of events is for a nation
to say,"Okay, I can act withimpunity.
And there's no deterrent systemthat is effective.
There is no standing armyrepresenting the international
community.
There is no system of collectivesecurity.

(16:54):
When people draw red lines inthe sand, it's just words.
It's not followed by action.
And so that means I can dowhatever I want." In some sense,
we shouldn't be surprised tofind ourselves now where we are
with this war in Ukraine.
And really the big question I'dlike us all to keep in mind is,

(17:14):
okay, we are where we are now.
We're in a horrible situation,but let's start, as we deal with
this situation, let's also startthinking proactively about,"What
can we do so we don't findourselves in a similar situation
five years from now, 10 yearsfrom now, 15 or 20, where the
stakes might be even higher?" Wesee this principle of thinking

(17:38):
short term play out in otherareas.
Also, energy.
The European Union entered intoa deal with Russia to get two
fifths of its energy resourcesfrom Russia.
Even though it knew that Russiahas in the past used energy as a
means of holding countrieshostage, if they don't like the
policies they're pursuing.

(18:00):
It makes no sense when you thinkabout it, unless you're thinking
very short term, like we needenergy now, so we'll just do
what it takes, and then we'llthink about the consequences
later.
But now here we are.
They're having to rapidlyunravel that, and the United
States has promised this pastweek to help the EU wean itself
off its reliance on Russianenergy sources and supply a

(18:23):
certain amount by the end ofthis year, and the EU is
planning to wean itself offcompletely by the year 2030.
Between now and then we haveanother eight years.
So what they're going to do,we're just going to have to
cobble things together.
The next thing thatdisintegration is teaching us is
that the suffering is instillinga sense of responsibility in our

(18:47):
leaders that has hitherto,frankly, been lacking.
There's been a huge abdicationof responsibility for the
welfare of the world and itspeace and security.
And what was fascinating wasseeing President Zelensky's call
for the creation of newinstitutions that are capable of
averting war.

(19:07):
In his speech to Congress thispast week, he says, today the
world does not have such tools.
And it's so true.
Our current systems of globalgovernance are not capable still
of stopping this conflict.
He says, old institutions don'twork.
So we need new ones.
And he's called for a U24, whichis an interesting idea, right?

(19:30):
U stands for United for Peace,and 24 means that within 24
hours, a coalition of countriesthat want only to maintain peace
in the world would have deviseda system--collective security--
that is capable of responding toa crisis within 24 hours.
That's what the 24 stands for.

(19:51):
So here we have it, folks.
This is the beginning ofsomething that has been my dream
for ages.
I've been going on and on aboutit for 20 years.
I've written five books thathave covered the subject amongst
many others and people alwaysthought I was crazy, but
unfortunately now we're seeingthat the world is absolutely has

(20:15):
to come to this.
This system was reallyenvisioned in the 19th century
in the writings of what Ibelieve is the world's biggest
peacemaker, Bahá'u'lláh, whocame from Iran of all places
--almost hard to believe-- whotalked in the middle of the 19th
century about the need forcreating a global system of

(20:37):
collective security and aninternational standing force.
How amazing is that, right?
Anyway, we're also seeing thisgrowth in the sense of
responsibility of governmentsand nations and what's happening
with countries that havehitherto been neutral like
Sweden, Finland, and Switzerlandstepping to the plate in order

(20:59):
to help with the Ukraine war.
More on that later.
Now let's talk about the processof integration.
So far we were talking about oneof the twin processes, the
process of disintegration andwhat we're learning, seeing in
the Ukraine war with respect tothat.
Now, let's look at the othersimultaneous process of

(21:19):
integration.
What's exciting is that we'reseeing a lot of integrations.
These are the imaginal discs,right?
in the caterpillar that arestarting to proliferate, that
will bring about a new creation.
That butterfly, that newcivilization that we're looking
forward to in this world, inwhich peace and security reign.
So we're seeing, first of all,unanticipated unity between

(21:42):
countries in Europe and theUnited States, which frankly
people thought was not going topass over imposing sanctions,
trying to do something in theface of unlawful aggression.
Secondly, unprecedented steps bySweden and Finland who have
always shirked away from wantingto join NATO and are now

(22:02):
starting to seriously considerit after years of neutrality
because they didn't want toanger Russia.
Sweden is also sending militaryaid to Ukraine, and Finland is
sending weapons and ammunitionas well.
This is really quite historic.
Switzerland, which has long hada history of neutrality since

(22:23):
1815, since the Congress ofVienna had this long standing
tradition, has also broken thattradition and has joined in with
the imposition of sanctions.
Then we see individuals puttingpressure on companies who are
doing business in Russia to pullout, even though it meant for

(22:43):
many of these companies leavingbehind very valuable assets,
which were going to beconfiscated by the Russian
government.
Individuals have also beenrising up everywhere in the
world.
We see it in the neighboringcountries where the refugees are
fleeing.
People have opened their doorsto streams of refugees, taken

(23:04):
them in.
You see them on television andyou see them saying,"I wish I
could do more.
I've taken in as many as I can.
It's like nothing I can do isenough." We also see people in
other parts of the world doingreally creative things, like
using the Airbnb app to bookpeople's homes in Ukraine, even
though they're not going to gouse them, in order to be able to

(23:26):
support the Ukrainian people andgive them funds so they can get
their day to day needs met.
And yet we have a long way to goto bolster these forces of
integration.
Remember we said both of theseprocesses are accelerating,
gathering momentum, and bothhave to reach a climax.

(23:48):
So we need to do a lot ofmindful, intentional work to
bolster and boost the forces ofintegration.
Why is that important?
Because to the extent we delay,we are going to enable more
suffering, physical and mental,to happen.
Our ability to boost the forcesof integration will require us

(24:11):
to overcome a natural tendencythat we have in times of crises,
which is to do one of twothings, do more of the same or
take a step back.
When we hear talk of,"Oh, we'regoing to revert back to a new
cold war.
That's taking a step back.
Been there, done that.
Wasn't helpful.
Let's not go there again." Sothose are our natural two

(24:32):
tendencies.
The third thing that we need totrain ourselves to do, which is
our third option, is to findwhat the famous Harvard
psychologist Sean Aker calls thethird way, which is, as he says,
using the momentum of ourcollapse to catapult ourselves
in a new direction, in adirection that we never imagined

(24:56):
before.
This is key.
We need to be able to radicallyreconceptualize the way we want
to structure our world.
The effort we have to make hasto be commensurate with the
dangers we're facing.
I love this quote from RobertSchuman, the foreign minister of
France who was one of thecreators of the European Union

(25:20):
at its foundation, the EuropeanCoal and Steel Community.
He says,"World peace cannot besafeguarded without the making
of creative effortsproportionate to the dangers
which threaten it." So what mustwe do?
The first thing is to recognizethat the articulation of lofty
principles, while important, isnot sufficient.

(25:42):
We know we have thisResponsibility to Protect
principle that all the nationsof the world agreed on in 2005
at the summit in New York at theUN.
But principles have to beassociated with institutions
that are capable of givingeffect to them.
This is, I think, what PresidentZelensky meant when he talked

(26:04):
about the need to createinstitutions that address the
needs of humanity and recognizethat we are all in this mess
together, so to speak.
The second thing we need torecognize, is that if you listen
and look at what's being said,every nation really is clamoring

(26:28):
for security.
It wants to feel safe.
It is a crying need.
Some countries may use it as anexcuse, but still, because we
don't have a system that assuresthe security of all the nations
of the world, they're able tomaybe take advantage of this.
Even in this conflict, Russiaclaims to be worried about its

(26:52):
security.
It worries about forces in NATOcountries that border it.
It worries about the melting ofthe snow and ice in the Arctic
Circle.
It has the very long borderalong the Arctic Sea, and it
feels like it's going to beexposed.
At least that's what it claims.

(27:12):
So let's carve a system in whichRussia's security can be
assured.
The Ukraine also gave up itsnuclear weapons in 1994.
It had, briefly, the thirdlargest nuclear arsenal in the
world.
It gave it up in return forsecurity guarantee from the U.
S., the U.
K., and Russia.

(27:33):
NATO countries this week haveclearly decided that they still
need the nuclear umbrella tocounter even conventional
threats.
So they're feeling insecure aswell.
Other countries are also seekingnuclear weapons.
Saudi Arabia wants to feel safein an area where it thinks Iran
may have nuclear weapons.

(27:54):
South Korea feels unsafe becauseNorth Korea has nuclear weapons
and on.
You see how this story unfolds.
So this is where proactivethinking foresight comes in.
If we don't do something now tocreate a system of collective
security, we're going to getinto an escalating arms race,
including a nuclear arms race.

(28:15):
That is not going to end wellfor us.
Those nuclear weapons willeventually be used either
deliberately or accidentally.
So it is time now to build aglobal system of collective
security that meets the needs ofall nations.
We need to radically reconceptualize our understanding

(28:38):
of society, viewing it as asingle organism, and to that
end, build this system system ofcollective security.
We talked about the details lasttime.
I'm not going to go into detail,but remember each nation's arms
have to be limited to a certainamount necessary to maintain
order within its borders.
Everything else has to bedestroyed under international

(28:59):
supervision.
The system has to apply toeveryone.
There can't be opt outs.
Everybody must agree that if onenation flouts the rules, all the
nations bring that nation toheal, that government to heal,
using a collective standingforce that represents all of
them.
The way I see it, if thescientists were able to devise a

(29:22):
vaccine, to put aside theiregos, come together in a time of
global crisis, collaborate,share their knowledge, share
their findings and develop avaccine in record time.
In 11 months, not just onevaccine, but several vaccines,
whereas in the past, it normallytook 12 to 14 years.
Surely our leaders in light ofthe dangers and threats we're

(29:47):
facing can put aside their egosand their nationalistic egos and
collaborate together and worktirelessly to craft a system of
collective security in recordtime that will act as an
inoculation, if you like,against war.
We can do this.

(30:08):
The reason why we need thesystem of collective security,
again, let me be very clear.
Another analogy that helps iswhat we have right now is
completely inadequate.
Sanctions are going to kill notjust Russia, but all of us
slowly, as we've seen.
So to me, it's somebody who haspancreatic cancer and if you see

(30:33):
the malignancy and it's stillconfined and it hasn't
metastasized and spread in therest of the body, you can go in
and do a targeted kind ofWhipple surgery to excise the
mass, the contaminated stuffaround it.
Otherwise, you're going to allowthe cancer to spread in the body

(30:53):
and then you've got to apply astrong poison, chemotherapy,
which is going to kill a lot ofgood cells and weaken the body
system tremendously.
There is so much we need to do.
Let's focus.
Let's start by building thesystem of collective security.
We also need to thinkproactively.
We talked about that.

(31:14):
Long term proactive thinkingversus short term and expedient
thinking.
And one of the areas in which weneed to think long term is about
energy.
How do we create a global systemwhere every nation has equitable
access to energy to meet thebasic needs of its population?

(31:34):
And we can look at the EuropeanCoal and Steel Community, the
pooling of energy resources inthe hands of a supra national,
say, global legislature.
I've written a lot about thisfor those of you who are
interested.
I've written a book on thiscalled Bridge to Global
Governance that lays out a fullprescription for how to tackle

(31:56):
this issue.
We also need to thinkproactively about how we're
allocating resources in theworld.
In 2018, the world spent almosttwo trillion dollars on military
expenditures.
And Congress in the UnitedStates have just passed a bill
for 13.6 billion to helpUkraine, half of which is

(32:18):
humanitarian.
And then they passed anotherbillion.
So what if we were to just stopbuilding all these armaments?
With a system of collectivesecurity with limited arms, you
can, everybody can stop thisescalating arms race, eliminate
nuclear weapons and redirect allthat money to into tackling the

(32:39):
real challenges that we have.
And lastly, we need to learn toelect fit leaders, who are fit
to tackle the challenges of ourtime.
We're seeing that poorleadership lacks foresight,
fails to respond.
When they respond, it's toolittle too late.
And then they engage inincrementalism, bit by bit.

(33:03):
So the way I think about it is,we've got a tsunami coming at
us, and we're busy now puttingsandbags out.
To me, it's untenable that wecould see this war in Ukraine
coming.
We were writing about it.
We were reporting about it.
Our intelligence agencies knewabout it and yet the
international community wasparalyzed and was unable to step

(33:26):
in and stop it before ithappened.
It's like seeing your child playon the train tracks and say,"Oh
my gosh, there's a train coming.
It's coming.
It's coming.
It's going to be another 10minutes, another five minutes,
another two minutes.
Let me call an ambulance so thatwhen that child is crushed, the
ambulance can pick up thepieces." This is essentially
what we've been doing withUkraine--not that I don't feel

(33:49):
strongly about it-- and we needto stop doing that.
We need to actually get globalcollective systems in place.
I agree that unilateral actionis not appropriate and even
acting in coalitions in today'sworld is not appropriate.
We need to figure out a globalsystem where we can all agree to
act collectively in accordancewith certain rules that we all

(34:12):
agree on in advance.
It has to be a rule basedsystem.
In conclusion, it's time todecide that we've had enough
suffering, right?
And that we need to be braveenough to radically
reconceptualize and restructureour global society in accordance
with the ideas we've presented,in order to boost--what?-- the

(34:34):
processes of integration.
Disintegration is doing its workall on its own.
It doesn't need any help fromus.
And we need to make theestablishment of peace a
priority, because it's becomeexistential now.
Without peace, if we selfdestruct, if we get into a
nuclear war, we won't have tothink about poverty and social
justice issues and climatechange.

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We need to first survive inorder to be able to tackle our
other challenges.
And finally, we have to act nowas though there were not no
tomorrow.
So we don't find ourselveshaving this conversation five
years from now or 10 years fromnow.
We owe it to our children andour grandchildren to create a
better world for them.

(35:17):
So with that I want to thank youall.
I will look at the comments.
By the way, I've had someinquiries about, how does the
system of collective securitywork?
I wrote a book a number of yearsago called Collective Security
Within Reach.
And it's available everywhere onAmazon.
It actually lays out everything,including how you create a

(35:38):
standing army, and what you dowith a global legislature, and
and a security council, and soon and so forth, and the system
of collective security, andexactly the steps that would
need to be taken to get usthere.
All right let me go to thecomments.
All great comments.
Yes, the sooner the better.

(35:58):
And someone's put electric cars.
Yes, all of that too, becauseclimate change is the other
existential threat that we'refacing.
It was really wonderful to havethe opportunity to be with you
again.
Thank you very much.
And for those of you who aregoing to be listening to the
recording, I hope that you findit of value and enjoy it.
And please, if you do, share it.

(36:20):
with your circles of friends,colleagues, family,
acquaintances.
Take care.
Bye bye.
That's all for this episode ofReimagining Our World.
I'll see you back here nextmonth.
If you liked this episode,please help us to get the word
out by rating us and subscribingto the program on your favorite

(36:42):
podcast platform.
This series is also available invideo on the YouTube channel of
the Center for Peace and GlobalGovernance, CPGG.