ROW Episode 35

In this episode we examine the need to take a principled approach to solving global challenges by identifying, agreeing upon, and methodically applying a set of shared global ethics or first principles. These principles should also be used as an indispensable underpinning for the institutions and processes we adopt as we build a peaceful and just world.

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 examine theneed to take a principled
approach to solving globalchallenges by identifying,

(00:31):
agreeing upon, and methodicallyapplying a set of shared global
ethics or first principles.
These principles should also beused as an indispensable
underpinning for theinstitutions and processes we
adopt as we build a peaceful andjust world.

(00:51):
It is evident that our world isfaced with a series of cascading
crises.
You see this term cascadingcrises everywhere now.
It's a phrase that I've beenusing since the early 2000s as I
looked ahead at all of thesecrises that in my mind were
developing like clouds in thedistance, nuclear proliferation,

(01:12):
terrorism,, migration, climatechange border conflicts, lack of
economic resources and so on.
But here we are now and we'refacing it.
The storms are definitely hereand we're in the midst of them.
Humanity is essentially beingsqueezed in a vise.
There are definitely lessons tobe learned.

(01:34):
I firmly believe that this iswhy all this is happening.
It's all happening for a purposeand until we learn our lessons,
these crises are not going tolet up.
In fact, they're just going toget worse and worse.
The primary lesson that we haveto learn is that it is time to
adopt a set of first principlesto form the foundation of a new

(01:59):
system of interrelationshipsbetween nation states.
A new system, if you like, ofinternational relations.
Humanity has matured and grown,we're interconnected as never
before, and the needs ofyesterday and our capacities of
yesterday no longer meet ourneeds today.
So it's really time to revisitthis whole idea of Identifying

(02:23):
and achieving consensus around aset of first principles from
which we can extrapolatesolutions to global challenges.
And indeed, one of the themesthat I want to hammer home in
today's episode, because I findit fascinating and I have a
feeling you will too, is thatwhenever humanity has identified

(02:44):
and been able to agree on a setof principles, especially in the
last century, those principlesprovided a springboard for a
quantum leap in humanity'sgrowth, especially in terms of
its societal organization.
Now, our current approach isclearly not working.
It is an outworn one.

(03:04):
I'm not going to belabor it.
It's basically a scattershotapproach based on reactivity,
reacting to the crisis of theday, whatever that happens to
be.
We have many fires we need toput out.
There seems to be little senseof farsighted leadership, where
leaders take a proactiveapproach to problems that they

(03:27):
see appearing over the horizonand tackling them before they
become emergencies.
Our reactions tend to be basedon short termism, crafting
solutions based on short termand narrow self interest, the
interests of one nation or onegroup of nations.
Consequently, we never actuallysolve any single problem, and we

(03:49):
leave the embers to continue toburn and wait for the next wind
to fan the flame and bring thatcrisis to the fore with ever
greater strength.
I'm reminded, for instance, ofthis idea of holding nations
hostage to energy.
This is nothing new.
We've seen this happen.

(04:11):
Russia did this in 2006 withUkraine and Belarus.
We've seen this.
It was done over and over again,and at the time, I remember
writing about this in my book,Collective Security Within
Reach, warning that if we didn'tactually open our eyes and
tackle this issue up front,chances were that countries,

(04:31):
writ large, countries who sat onthese energy resources would
feel very comfortable holdingthe whole world eventually
hostage.
And this is with Ukraine, we'venow seen that.
We've seen this Ukraine conflicthas really resulted in a global
energy crisis.
We're all suffering because wedidn't take care of business
when we could have and shouldhave.

(04:53):
The second problem with the waywe're doing things now, the way
we tackle global problems isthat solutions we craft in one
area usually undermine and areincongruent with solutions in
another area.
Because we want energy from aparticular country, we are
willing to turn a blind eye totheir bad behavior in other

(05:14):
areas, including human rightsand so on.
We see this over and over againin many parts of the world.
It's not, none of these problemsis limited to any one nation or
group of nations.
This is just humanity's poorhabits that we've adopted over a
long period of time.
I'm not in the business ofpointing fingers,"This country
did this and it's wrong, or thatcountry did that and it's

(05:35):
wrong." It's the patterns thatwe see.
What are the bad habits that wehave and how can we change them?
That's really the interestingquestion.
What can we replace the oldhabit with?
The third problem with ourapproach is that every solution
we craft seems to sow the seedsof an even bigger disaster
different from the one thatcomes back.

(05:56):
Because the wind fans the flamesand we see this, for instance,
with Brexit.
Britain thought she was solvingone problem and taking control
over her destiny, but it turnsout that Brexit actually took
away a lot of control, and shenow finds herself flailing in
many respects and suffering as aresult of this decision that was

(06:19):
taken without really looking atthe consequences, without all
the politicization of the peoplewho were for and against both
sides, exaggerated things, sopeople were left without
adequate information to make aninformed decision.
And ultimately, our approachmeans that there is no glue that

(06:42):
gives coherence to all oursolutions in different areas.
As we tackle climate change, aswe tackle the economic crisis,
as we tackle nuclearproliferation, as we tackle arms
production, what is the gluethat is going to hold the
solutions together?
The only answer is to adopt aset of first principles from

(07:03):
which we can extrapolatesolutions to all global
challenges no matter what theyare and then the solutions that
we craft hang together in acoherent fashion and don't
undermine each other.
In order for us to do this, weneed to really understand that
our global challenges and reallyall societal challenges, name
them, whether local, national,international, are really

(07:26):
symptoms of a disease that has aroot cause.
And the role that principlesplay, if we're able to identify
certain common principles, somepeople call them global ethics
or common organizing principles,the benefit of doing that is
those principles actuallyaddress the root causes and

(07:49):
create conditions in which wecan then address all the
problems in a manner that iscoherent.
I find it very interesting thatwhen we look at the human body,
apparently autoimmune diseasestend to come in clusters also.
So if you develop one autoimmunedisease, chances are very high

(08:12):
that you will then develop atleast one or two others.
The reason is that the rootcause of all of these autoimmune
diseases, they're discovering,is really an imbalance in the
microbiome, in the gut.
So if you want to actually treatyour autoimmune diseases and not
develop new ones on top of theone you have, what you actually
want to do is to make sure thatthe balance of the good and bad

(08:35):
bacteria in your gut is a goodbalance; so that the bad
bacteria are not dominating thegood.
To me, when I think about it, Ithink principles play that same
role.
It's like injecting goodbacteria into the microbiome of
humanity's organized existencein order for us to live a
healthy societal life.

(08:57):
Now what are the kinds ofprinciples we're talking about?
I think we do well to start at avery meta level and talk about
principles starting with thethree that I have laid out here:
oneness, justice andtruthfulness, making them the
ruling principles ofinternational life.
What do we do with theseprinciples?

(09:18):
I think these principles need tobe, once we agree on them, and I
think these three are ones thateverybody can agree on.
And in a second, I'll come towhat some naysayers say and
address some of theirobjections.
But, first of all, how do we usethese principles?
I think in two key ways.
One is, as I alluded to beforeas first principles that we use

(09:43):
to extrapolate solutions to anygiven problem.
If you want to have ademonstration of how this works,
I would commend to you the firstbook I wrote actually in 2008
called Collective SecurityWithin Reach.
It goes in and takes a series ofglobal challenges and it
demonstrates how identifying andapplying methodically a set of

(10:06):
these global principles,including the ones I've just
laid out here, actually yieldsvery simple politically
palatable and practicalsolutions to these challenges,
and with the benefit, addedbenefit, that all the solutions
then hang together and don'tundermine each other.
The second way in which theseprinciples need to be used is to

(10:28):
serve as a foundation for newset of supranational
institutions that we need tobuild in order to address the
needs and challenges of aninterconnected world that has
become a single organism.
So there are two roles for theseprinciples to play and that's
really critical.

(10:49):
Let's look at what some of thenaysayers say.
There are those individuals andnations or governments who claim
that the such a project isimpossible.
First, they say there is no suchthing as universal values and
they go on to say that anyattempt to identify such values
really amounts to an impositionby one set of countries, for

(11:10):
instance the West, to impose itscolonialist aspirations or
racist values on the rest of theworld.
That's not true.
Let's just tackle this head onand see where we get with this,
because it's important to engagein dialogue and really unpack
these things and not let peoplejust frame conversations and
say,"Oh, okay.
They said so.
Therefore it is." Let's examinethe assumptions underlying this.

(11:33):
The first thing I'd invite allof us to do is to look at the
Universal Declaration of HumanRights.
Let's remind ourselves this cameabout in 1948.
It was created as a document tocomplement the United Nations
Charter.
It was a roadmap to give rightsto individuals everywhere.

(11:54):
In fact, it was the first timethat the world had agreed to a
document that asserted that allhuman beings were free and
equal, regardless of sex, color,creed, or religion.
Now, the first interesting thingis that contrary to what some
governments and people wouldhave you believe, there was
diverse representation on thedrafting committee of the

(12:19):
Universal Declaration of HumanRights.
Among them was a gentleman, Mr.
Chang, who was Chinese.
We had somebody from the SovietUnion, Mr.
Kresky.
We had Mr.
Santa Cruz of Chile, Mr.
Malik of Lebanon, Dr.
Cassin who was French.
And we had only one woman,Eleanor Roosevelt.

(12:41):
And so on.
So I'm just trying todemonstrate that it was actually
a very diverse group.
So contrary to common beliefthat this was something imposed
by the West on the rest of theworld, in fact, the whole world
had a say except Africancountries.
And the reason for that was thatthere were only four independent
countries who had won theirindependence on the whole of the

(13:04):
African continent.
The rest was still undercolonial yoke, and so that's why
it was that way then.
But it is time, as you will see,I believe it's time to revisit
and reconsider some of theseprinciples, confirm some of
them, and maybe add some newones with new input from an even
broader representation andspectrum of society.

(13:26):
Now, a couple of reallyinteresting things.
This document is really a set ofmoral principles.
It's a charter of moralprinciples for the world.
In a June 1947 meeting in theminutes, you will see that Dr.
Cassin, the Frenchrepresentative, was telling the
committee, we have to ensurethat three principles are

(13:49):
included.
And I find this fascinating, soI want to share it with you.
One is, quote, the unity ofhumanity.
Second, quote, solidarity andfraternity.
The third, the right to betreated one like another.
Also, the Chinese representativeon the drafting committee was
responsible for inserting a wordin Article 1 of the Charter of

(14:14):
the Human Rights Declaration,the word conscience.
And this was a really theinsertion of a critical concept
from Chinese culture that reallydenotes something akin to
compassion, conscience,compassion.
And it reflects Chinese conceptsof morality and responsibility

(14:35):
in terms of how one human beingshould treat another and duties
that we have towards each other.
It's beautiful, because we'veinclusion of this beautiful
principle in this universaldocument.
Another point that I want tomake that is really fascinating
is that the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights
itself was built on another setof principles that were

(15:00):
articulated by PresidentRoosevelt in a State of Union
speech he gave to Congress inJanuary of 1941, in which he
articulated four universalfreedoms, including freedom of
speech, freedom to worship,freedom from want, and freedom
from fear.
And these four universalprinciples that he was trying to

(15:22):
use to get Congress to continueAmerica's aid to Britain during
the Second World War.
These are really foundationalprinciples that make their way
into and become the launchingpad for both the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights andlater for another document which
we will come to later.

(15:44):
Another point that's reallyinteresting.
The Declaration of Human Rights,it is true, is not a binding
document in the sense that it'snot a treaty.
However, it is a universaldocument.
And therein lies its strength.
It has been incorporated into alot of national constitutions
and into a lot of nationaldomestic legal frameworks.

(16:08):
It's also become the springboardfor the development of legal
binding human rights treaties,including the treaty against
genocide and the treaty againstthe elimination of all forms of
racial discrimination, and theconvention on the elimination of
all forms of discriminationagainst women, and the
convention on the rights of thechild, and the convention

(16:29):
against torture.
You see my drift here.
Because of this inculcation ofthese principles into all of
these treaties and all of theselaws, it has come to be viewed
now as part of customaryinternational law.
Because it has been used sooften by so many people over a
long period of time, it has cometo be regarded as customary

(16:51):
international law.
But over and above all of that,it is viewed as a charter of
moral principles applicable toall.
And this is really critical.
So yes, we can do it.
We've done it before.
And principles are the launchingpad for so many good things.
All of these human rightstreaties that I mentioned and

(17:13):
others have made our world,believe it or not, a better
place than it would have beenwithout them.
To those who say that,"Oh, it'simpossible because it'll take
forever.", I just want to remindthem that the text of the
Declaration of Human Rights, theentire text was prepared in two
years.
So there we have it.
Once we set our minds to doingsomething, we can do it.

(17:34):
Now, the third thing I want toaddress is, look, folks human
progress is uneven, but theunevenness of this progress does
not give us an excuse to giveup.
To say"Oh look, we have thisUniversal Declaration of Human
Rights, but countries have notbeen implementing it perfectly."

(17:55):
Yes, that is true, but we'rebetter off with it than we are
without it, and we are a work inprogress.
And if we don't aim high, we'renever going to achieve anything.
I want to offer another coupleof observations.
First of all, we know that evenin our individual lives, we have
to periodically update ouridentity and decide who do I

(18:16):
want to be?
Do I like how I'm showing up?
And reassess the direction inwhich we're going and figure out
where's this trajectory takingme?
Do I like the destination atwhich I'll arrive?
And if not, then adjust ourdestination and our trajectory,
our behavior.
And humanity, having as acollective whole evolved through

(18:37):
various stages of childhood andcurrently in the throes, it
seems, of a turbulentadolescence, now stands also in
need of new capacities andcapabilities.
So it's time.
It's okay to recognize that,"Hey, we haven't done things
perfectly so far", and we can doa lot more, and we can do a lot
better, and come together anddecide what that looks like.

(19:01):
There's no need to beatourselves up or to use this as
an excuse to say, let's justthrow the baby out with the
bathwater.
We need to have a compellingvision of the destination that
appeals to us, i.e.
a peaceful and just world iswhat I would submit is what we
all want and want to aim for andto aim high.

(19:22):
Now, the fourth thing that Iwant to mention and this is the
nub of today's presentation, weknow from our past experience
that when we have done this--being identifying a set of
first principles, agreeing onthem and applying them
methodically,-- humanity hastaken a leap forward.

(19:43):
Let's look at a couple ofexamples to demonstrate this
point.
The first example is WoodrowWilson's 14 points that he
presented to a joint session ofCongress on January 8, 1918.
In the midst of the First WorldWar, it was his proposed
framework for a lasting peace.

(20:05):
In his message to Congress, hesaid that the U.S.
objective was to vindicate theprinciples of peace and justice
in the life of the world.
Beautiful.
And of the 14 points, 8 of thepoints were focused on specific
territorial issues that weregoing on in the world, but then
five were general principles fora peaceful world.

(20:27):
And the last point, the 14thpoint, was his proposal for a
League of Nations, anassociation of nations that
would focus on maintaining peacein the world.
Despite all his best intentions,a number of Woodrow Wilson's 14
points were not implementedbecause the world was not ready

(20:47):
yet.
But since 1918, we've had acentury and four years.
We've had a lot of experienceand I believe that this
experience has taught us thevalue of these 14 points.
For example, let's look at acouple of the points that he
proposed that have not beentaken on board that we would do

(21:10):
well to revisit now and actuallyimplement.
One of them was to reduce thearmaments of all nations to the
amount necessary for each ofthem to maintain domestic order
within their borders.
Imagine if we were to do thistoday.
I was just reading in the newsthis week.
Japan has decided to double herexpenditure on on arms

(21:31):
production, her defense budget,because she feels unsafe.
She feels threatened, because ofthe neighbors around her, China
and North Korea.
The United States Congress isabout to approve in bipartisan
fashion 858 billion ofexpenditure for arms production

(21:52):
for one year, and it's juststaggering, mind boggling.
When you think of all the needswe have in the world, when you
think about climate change, youthink about the catastrophes,
the food crisis, the energycrisis, the economic crisis,
poverty, on and on, we need thismoney.
We're misallocating ourresources.
Another point of WoodrowWilson's that was not

(22:12):
implemented was that accordingto his proposals nations were to
agree not to resort to war, butrather to give the right to
initiate a war to the League,give it exclusive power, and it
would do so basically just tomaintain peace in the world.
Again nations were not ready forit, but when we look again at

(22:34):
the Ukraine conflict today,imagine if we had this principle
in place, imagine what adifferent experience the people
of Ukraine and the world wouldbe having now, and we wouldn't
be spending all these hundredsof billions of dollars in
armaments that are just gettingused up.
Not to mention the maiming, thekilling, the death and

(22:56):
destruction, the psychologicaltrauma, and so on that is
occurring.
Unfortunately, Woodrow Wilson'spoints did not get implemented
because most of them werescuttled by Britain and France,
who were at the time colonialpowers and were clinging to
outworn nationalistic ideals.
They wanted to get backterritories they'd lost during
the First World War and try toget some more, but they also

(23:19):
wanted to punish Germany andmake her pay for having gotten
them into a First World War withall the casualties.
There were other problems.
The U.
S.
Senate didn't adopt the treatyand failed to allow the U.S.
to participate in the League ofNations, because they believed
that the treaty undercutAmerican autonomy in

(23:41):
international matters.
Again, the nationalisticapproach.
In short, we paid a very highprice, we being humanity, for
not implementing WoodrowWilson's points.
And these unaddressed points ledto the Second World War.
Indeed, Wilson predicted thatthe U.S.
not becoming a member of theLeague would lead to war within

(24:04):
a generation, and he wasabsolutely right.
So it's time to learn from ourmistake.
Every, every, mistake is anopportunity to learn.
Even though the failures of notimplementing Woodrow Wilson's
points were very costly forhumanity, if we learn the

(24:24):
lessons from it, then it won'tall have been for naught.
Let's look at a few lessons thatthis failure yielded and take
them on board.
We learn from this what happenswhen there's no general
consensus or meeting of theminds or unity of vision,
however you want to frame it.
We need to have nations andleaders who are able to come

(24:47):
together, lead their people to aunity of vision and be able to
consult with each other asleaders in order to attain a
unity of vision for how toattain peace in the world.
There were some nations focusedmore on self determination.
Woodrow Wilson himself was veryeager to allow people to have

(25:07):
the right to self determination,but then other countries were
more interested in holding on totheir colonial territories.
So you've got this conflictright up front between these two
aspirations.
Another thing we learn is thecost of the absence of universal
participation in an importantorganization like the League of

(25:27):
Nations.
The United States didn't join,the Soviets weren't part of it,
and Germany, Japan, and so on.
By 1920, only 48 countries hadjoined the League, and at its
peak, 58.
Another lesson we learned isthat the time has come and gone
for having internationalinstitutions, i.e.

(25:48):
institutions where nations comeand they try to maintain an
equilibrium of the balance ofpower between them.
This was something WoodrowWilson realized wasn't going to
work, the trying to maintainbalance between amongst military
alliances.
And incidentally, it's somethingwe've talked about in these in
these podcasts.
Jean Monnet, the father of theEuropean Union, was very big on

(26:10):
this.
He recognized that if Europewere to survive it would need to
create a union, which he hopedwould be a European federation,
in which we would focus on thefusion of the interests of the
nation of Europe, rather thanmaintaining an equilibrium
between them.
And in fact, I think hisexperiment with the European
Union is a really amazing one tolook at and to emulate in some

(26:35):
respects and do this at theinternational level in terms of
learning to fuse nationalinterests around the world.
Another thing we learned is whathappens when you require
unanimity in decision making.
It doesn't work.
You come up with the lowestcommon denominator decision
making.
The League failed, because itwas not able to maintain peace

(26:55):
in the world.
Another thing we learned is whathappens when you humiliate a
nation, as the victors of theFirst World War ended up
humiliating Germany in what'scalled the War Guilt Clause in
the Versailles Treaty, in whichthey demanded a ridiculous
amount of reparations that bredresentment.

(27:18):
And we know the story how itgave rise to the right wing and
the fascists in Germany and ledto the Nazi movement and to the
Second World War ultimately.
We also learn what happens whenwe give a mandate to an
international organization or asupranational organization
without giving it proper toolsto actually carry out and

(27:40):
implement the mandate, like nostanding force to go in and
bring nations to heal when theydisturb the peace of the world.
The final thing we learned isthe importance of transparency
and inclusion of all parties.
One of the mistakes WoodrowWilson himself made was that
when he drafted the 14 points,he actually got a team of 126

(28:00):
academics together.
He called the inquiry to come upwith ideas, and he didn't
include Republicans.
And he didn't includeRepublicans in the delegation to
the peace conference in Paris.
That was a huge mistake and itwas the Republicans who then
regained the majority inCongress and the Senate who
scuttled the treaty and refusedto ratify it and refused to have

(28:25):
the U.S.
join the League of Nations.
So it's time to try again now totake these points that we talked
about that Woodrow Wilson hadproposed that were never
implemented, and we really needthem today.
Now, a second example ofprinciples acting as a launching
pad or springboard for thecreation of yet a better or a

(28:50):
higher order of organization inthe world are the principles of
the Atlantic Charter that werereally the foundation for the
creation of the United Nations.
So what is the Atlantic Charter?
Prime Minister Churchill andPresident Roosevelt, FDR, met
aboard the USS Augusta inPlacentia Bay, Newfoundland on

(29:10):
the 9th and 10th of August 1941.
Why did they meet?
To discuss their respective waraims, of Britain and the United
States, and to outline a postwar international system.
They came up with, as a resultof this meeting, with a charter
that included eight principles.
You remember we talked about thefour freedoms that Roosevelt had

(29:32):
articulated in January of 1941?
Now fast forward, this is eightmonths later.
Those principles again fed intoand were the springboard for
these eight principles.
So really interesting againseeing the role of principles in
making the world a better place,essentially.
And this Atlantic Charter was adocument.

(29:54):
Although it wasn't a bindingtreaty, it laid out the vision
of two very important nationsfor the post war, which was,
interestingly, very similar toWilson's vision.
It demonstrates that humanityhad yet another opportunity for
growth.
Now I want to call yourattention to two important
principles that were articulatedthat I think we need to revisit,

(30:15):
just like we talked aboutrevisiting some of the points
that Woodrow Wilson made.
Article six of the AtlanticCharter called for peace which
will allow all to dwell safelyand an assurance that they will
live in freedom from fears andwants.
Remember these are two of thefreedoms of the four freedoms
that Roosevelt had articulatedto Congress in January of that

(30:37):
same year.
Then Article 8 calls fordisarmament and a system of
collective security under whichall countries would abandon use
of force, again like whatWoodrow Wilson had called for.
So the world keeps learningagain that we really need this
and without this we're going toget ourselves into a world war.

(30:59):
Now there's very interestingphrasing that I find fascinating
that I want to share with youthat is included in the Atlantic
Charter.
This is stunning.
It says, for spiritual andrealistic reasons, all nations
must abandon the use of force.

(31:20):
Wow.
So it's both morally right andspiritually right.
And it's practicable andrealistic.
We're not talking about peoplesitting on some hilltop smoking
something.
This is Churchill, who was avery practical human being and
FDR.
These are people who wereleaders, visionaries, but also

(31:44):
very practical people whotackled immense challenges, both
within their countries and atthe international level.
And this is the wording thatthey come up with.
So let that be a great lesson tothe rest of us.
In short, it's clearly time forhumanity to revisit these
principles, to say, okay, we'venow attained a new stage of

(32:06):
growth as a collective humanity.
What elements of WoodrowWilson's 14 points can we now
implement?
Because we're ready.
We're grown up enough.
We've seen the value of them.
We've seen what happens when wedon't do it.
What principles of the AtlanticCharter can we implement because
we've learned our lesson?
Let us take the resources thatwe're misallocating.

(32:29):
Let's take these hundreds ofbillions of dollars and the two
trillion dollars that the worldspends on armaments and the arms
industry every year and let usreallocate it to coming up with
solutions to climate change andto alleviating poverty and so
on.
Interestingly, another elementin the Atlantic Charter, which I

(32:49):
found really interesting, Iwanted to share with you, talks
about including access for allnations to raw materials needed
for economic prosperity as wellas an easing of trade
restrictions.
Given again with the Ukraineconflict, we've come to
recognize how interconnected weare and that when there is a
conflict, of the kind inUkraine.

(33:12):
It constricts the amount ofenergy resources that the whole
world needs.
We have people everywhere sufferbecause there's a shortage of
gas and energy resources, andthe prices go up, and it has a
domino effect on people's lives.
The cost of living goes up andpeople are straining everywhere.
It has an effect on food andaccess to food and the

(33:35):
quantities of food available.
This is again another topic thatwe have covered extensively in

these podcasts (33:41):
the need to pool to create a supranational
organization into whose hands wepool certain critical resources
starting with energy resourcesin order to solve a triad of
issues.
If you want to look at thoseformer podcasts, you can look at
number 34 which was last month'sthe pooling of resources to

(34:04):
solve three problems, climatechange, the equitable
distribution of energy.

Episode 29 (34:09):
what happens when we don't have a system of
collective security and how wecould have avoided the Ukraine
war if we had, along with thecontours of how we create such a
system and what it looks like.
And episode 23 also talks aboutthat, the need for an effective
system of collective security.
And lastly, there is a video onthe YouTube channel.

(34:32):
It's a talk called, It's Time toBring Order to our Global Home.
It's a presentation I deliveredin November last month at the
NewKind conference talking aboutwhat we need to do.
By the way, with the AtlanticCharter, just to wrap that up, a
group of 26 allied nationseventually pledged their support

(34:53):
for the principles that thesetwo gentlemen, these two world
leaders, had proposed, and inJanuary 1942, these 26 allied
nations signed a declaration byUnited Nations.
And then this documentthereafter became foundational
towards the establishment of thebody that we know as the United

(35:17):
Nations organization in 1945.
So again, look at the power ofprinciples to be a springboard
to get humanity to a betterplace, and one set of principles
spawns a bunch of things andleads to a larger set of
principles.
Four freedoms lead to theUniversal Declaration of Human

(35:38):
Rights and lead to the AtlanticCharter and lead to the United
Nations Organization and theyalso lead to the League of
Nations, which is fascinating.
There's no need for us to beatourselves up that we haven't
gotten there yet, but it's timeto acknowledge that we now need
to actually revisit these.
The seeds have been sown.

(35:59):
We've had time to get used tothe idea, and now it's time to
implement them, because we alsohave gained a lot of experience
in what life on planet Earthlooks like without the
implementation of theseprinciples, and it doesn't look
so pretty.
How can we do this?
We start with a few high mindedand trustworthy leaders who get

(36:20):
together and come up with a planand then they get the leaders of
other nations to ratify it,because we do need a unity of
vision and we do need to haveunity of action.
This has been done before.
If you look at episode 27, welaid out a roadmap for doing
this based on our experiencewith doing it with the

(36:40):
Responsibility to Protectprinciple.
Essentially what's required isfor us to aim high, a large
dollop of perseverance andpatience, understanding we won't
get there overnight, but if wedon't start today, we're going
to be having this conversation10, 20, 30 years from now when
the situation in the world willhave just deteriorated

(37:01):
considerably, and so many moremillions of people have
suffered, and ceaseless endeavoris required.
Now, if you want to learn moreabout all these concepts of the
importance of the adoption offirst principles, again, please
look for the book CollectiveSecurity Within Reach that's
available on Amazon, and feelfree to reach out to me through

(37:23):
CPGG dot org, the website of theCenter for Peace and Global
Governance.
I'd love to engage with you.
Okay I hope that you found thisinteresting and I look forward
to seeing you next month on the21st of January at 3 p.
m.
Eastern time.
Take care.
Bye bye for now.

(37:43):
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
podcast platform.
This series is also available invideo on the YouTube channel of
the Center for Peace and GlobalGovernance, CPGG.