Is Global Peace an Illusion

Q. 6 Over several centuries, the collaborative goal of the world has been to attain the harmony, understanding and interdependent relationships between nations that brings peace, security and stability to the world. However, although global peace is attainable, much collaborative effort is needed to turn global peace into a reality, instead of living in a world of deception where global peace is merely a false belief.

Therefore, the world aims to attain global peace via international efforts and individual contributions, to counter the problems that prevents global peace of being attained, such as due to the lack of understanding and collaboration between nations, as well as due to selfish demands and the lack of initiative from individuals to make it work. Some people may think that global peace is simply too good to be true due to the lack of collaboration and understanding between nations.

As the people of different nations have their own set of ideologies and beliefs, this leads to conflicting ideologies between nations which could spark an international dispute such as in the case of the cold war which occurred between the United States of America which practiced capitalism, as well as the Soviet Union which practiced communism. This vast difference in belief thus led to conflicts between the nations, which sparked feelings of hatred and resentment between the people of the two nations. This prevented the success of efforts to call for further global peace.

Additionally, differing interests of the nation could lead to violence, as well as terrorism, such as in the case of the Bali Bombings in 2005 which involved a terrorist group, Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) of Al Qaeda. They bombed specific tourist sites in Bali to display their displeasure towards people of another nation, as well as to rebel against the newly adopted democratic practice. This led to great instability within the country, as well as many people from around the world to feel dubious about the Indonesians in general.

This led to an even greater segregation as well as isolation of the Malay race and Muslim religion as they were thought to be terrorists, deterring the progress of the world to achieve global peace and harmony. Secondly, the lack of individual initiative to push for greater global peace leads to the inefficiency of the world to achieve global peace. As individuals make up the largest percentage of the country, they have arguably the most influence to ensure that efforts to achieve global peace are successful. Hence, individuals are the key driving force for the achievement of global peace, and not relying solely on governmental efforts.

However, as many individuals are simply pushing the responsibility to the government, global peace cannot be achieved However, commendable efforts have been made by international organizations (IGOs) and governments to make global peace a reality, which includes international governmental organizations such as the United Nations (UN) and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Such organizations aim to promote regional and international peace and stability, and to promote active collaboration and mutual assistance between countries which would foster stronger bonds, thus promoting harmony between nations.

An example is when the UN started the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to alleviate income inequality between nations to prevent conflict between nations due to growing income disparity between the rich and the poor. On 1 December 2000, the United Nations General Assembly also adopted a resolution on the role of diamonds in fuelling conflict, breaking the link between the illicit transaction of rough diamonds and armed conflict, as a contribution to prevention and settlement of conflicts.

The ASEAN-Korea Summit in 2009 also contributed to greater understanding between the countries involved, and thus helped to bridge differences. Hence, international efforts by IGOs, along with the cooperation from respective governments, are able to pave the way towards attaining global peace and harmony by promoting mutual understanding between nations which would promote the forging of strong bonds between the nations, instead of conflicts due to differences in beliefs.

In conclusion, although global peace is able to be attained, it is not able to be sustained for a long period of time. Global peace is also not able to be achieved universally as efforts to call for peace are inadequate as lack sufficient support from the people in the world. Thus, the ephemeral nature of peace inevitably causes global peace to be nothing but a false belief, seemingly attainable yet out of reach.