The entire program up to this point-including the cuts in arms holdings, production, and trade-will support a shift, which takes placed mainly in Phases III and IV, from national to multilateral means of military intervention to preserve or restore peace. Just as in Phase I, efforts will continue during Phase II to strengthen institutions for conflict prevention and resolution, and to prevent the outbreak of civil wars, violent ethnic conflicts, and genocide. In Phase II, participants will commit themselves to implement their obligations under Articles 43 and 45 of the UN Charter to make available to the Security Council pre-designated trained and equipped ground, air, and naval personnel, ships, and planes. At the same time, an all-volunteer force will be established, and the standing peacekeeping forces at the disposal of the UN and regional security organizations will undertake a gradual transition from national contingents earmarked for multilateral use to all-volunteer personnel. Little by little, reliance on national military contingents will be phased out except for large operations. Participants will also implement their obligation under Article 47 to establish a functioning Military Staff Committee to provide strategic direction of these forces on orders from the Security Council, and will establish regional counterparts to the Military Staff Committee.
These growing international means of conflict prevention will begin to be funded in TRAC II by a tax of one one-hundredth of one percent of all international financial transactions over $10,000.
Phase III: Third Treaty to Reduce Armed Conflict, TRAC III, 10-year duration
In a third Treaty to Reduce Armed Conflict (TRAC III), participating countries, including the major powers, will test the effectiveness of the expanded international security system by making a commitment not to deploy their armed forces beyond national borders except as part of a multilateral deployment under UN or regional auspices. By the beginning of Phase III the UN and its regional security counterparts, which will have expanded their peacekeeping and peace-enforcement capabilities throughout Phases I and II, should be willing and able to take responsibility for these tasks. In other words, they should be prepared to take steps, authorized by the Security Council (or a regional counterpart), to launch rapid multilateral non-military or, as a last resort, military action aimed at preventing or ending the outbreak of war, genocide, and other forms of deadly conflict. When considering armed intervention in internal conflicts, the Security Council will decide on a case-by-case basis whether intervention is justified, using criteria such as the threat or conduct of genocide, threats to international security, or the failure of governments to meet the requirements for stewardship of their citizens' security and welfare.
At any time during Phase III, if participating nations conclude that their security is endangered by a failure of the international security system, they will have the right to withdraw from TRAC III; and since TRAC II cuts will reduce national forces by no more than a third, capabilities for unilateral military action will still exist.
Withdrawal from TRAC III will not vitiate the commitments made under TRACs I and II, but a successful TRAC III trial-a decade with no withdrawal and no unilateral military action by nations with large armed forces-will be a prerequisite for proceeding with TRAC IV. During the TRAC III trial, talks will take place on another round of cuts in conventional forces and military spending to be carried out in Phase IV, when there is full confidence in the effectiveness of the international security system.
By the time the TRAC III is agreed, nuclear disarmament should have reached a point at which the small remaining stocks of warheads and delivery systems have been immobilized by being placed in internationally-monitored storage-that is, the last step before the complete abolition of nuclear weapons. In this case, the TRAC III trial transfer of responsibility for military intervention from national to international hands, preceding the permanent transfer, would parallel the trial immobilization of nuclear weapons preceding their complete abolition.
Phase IV: Fourth Treaty to Reduce Armed Conflict, TRAC IV, indefinite duration
Following the trial run in TRAC III, the TRAC IV agreement, a treaty of indefinite duration, will complete the transfer of the responsibility and capability for peacekeeping and peace enforcement (but not for defense of national territory) from individual nations to the international security system operated by the UN and regional security organizations. This transfer will permit and require further cuts in national forces like those in TRAC II (one-third, one-quarter, and 15 percent, respectively, for countries with very large, large, and small forces). It will also require a further increase in the scale of the peace-keeping and peace-enforcement forces maintained by the UN and regional security organizations. Production of major weapons will be restricted to systems needed by individual nations for defensive security (defense of national territory) and those needed by the UN and regional organizations for peacekeeping and peace-enforcement. The latter will conclude their transformation to all-volunteer forces. This means that force-projection capabilities-air, naval, and logistical forces that permit military attacks on the territory of nations far from national borders-will be removed from national arsenals, in whole or in part.
Ultimate Goals-Phase V
As confidence in the international security system grows and military threats diminish, further changes will be desirable and should be possible.
The initial long-term goal will be for all nations to convert fully to defensive security, by limiting national armed forces strictly and narrowly to territorial defense (air defense, coastal defense, and border defense), and making the UN and regional security organizations alone capable of large-scale military intervention beyond national borders. Efforts to achieve this goal are likely to be mutually reinforcing. As confidence in the international security system grows and national armed forces shrink, the multilateral forces needed to deter and defend against cross-border aggression and other forms of large-scale violence will be both smaller and more likely to succeed. At the same time, as expectations of peace grow, nations and national leaders will become more comfortable with the idea of limiting their armed forces to defense of national territory. In particular, the major military powers (especially the United States), which would be giving up their capabilities for large-scale military action beyond national borders, will have concluded that their security is better served by the new system, and will actively support it.
Eventually, the world's nations may reach a degree of commitment to peaceful conflict-resolution such that the UN and regional security organizations will have only police functions: verifying adherence to defensive security limits by individual nations, and preventing the use of violence for gain or for political intimidation by non-state actors such as terrorists and criminal syndicates. At this point we could reasonably say that war had been abolished.
A Plan for Action
Building a Global Movement
Global Action to Prevent War sets out a vision of a comprehensive approach to war prevention, with a plan to reduce the frequency and devastation of war and the scale of preparations for war throughout the world. As stated above, the long-term goals of this approach are for nations to adopt policies of defensive security, limiting national armed forces to territorial defense; for the UN and regional counterparts to enforce the peace with small, standing all-volunteer forces; and for nations, groups, and individuals to accept the rule of law in resolving disputes.
Most experts agree that, once implemented, Global Action will achieve these goals, but that implementation could be slow and difficult, especially at the outset. That is why we are planning a long effort, which will have to be supported over the years by a broad coalition of supporters, until Global Action gains enough salience and visibility to elicit interest and cooperation from the governments of large countries, including the United States.
While the implementation of the entire Global Action program lies far in the future, the individual components of the first two phases of the program are politically modest and feasible. They involve strengthening conflict-prevention and conflict- resolution mechanisms that already exist, initiating new measures of similar scope, and taking modest steps to reduce the longer-term risks of major international war, including cuts in armed forces built up during the Cold War. Most of these measures can be put into effect separately.
We are now in the first stage of disseminating the Global Action concept and coalition-building. We ask interested individuals, groups and organizations to discuss the Global Action program in detail and distribute it to friends, relatives, colleagues, religious and political leaders, and others. Our first goal is to become widely known.
A reasonable short-term goal for this program to achieve in two to three years is to establish an international coalition of seriously interested groups and individuals sufficiently committed and influential to make Global Action known worldwide as a serious long-term enterprise with increasing visibility and momentum, a project whose name and general character people and governments will widely recognize. The international coalition we are working on now is the first step to that objective.
A desirable five-year goal would be to get name recognition and understanding of our aims roughly equivalent to the campaign for the abolition of nuclear weapons. When we are able to convince a number of committed people throughout the world that Global Action entails a practical and effective program to make armed conflict rare, we will have succeeded in tapping the universal desire for peace and the end of war, and Global Action will rapidly gain in influence.
Among governments, our short-term goals include the circulation of Global Action to Prevent War into higher ranks of government with favorable endorsement by working level officials; introduction of the Global Action program into the agenda of the UN General Assembly by one or more friendly governments, as Costa Rica has done with the Model Nuclear Weapons Convention; mention of the Global Action program by influential media representatives; and positive public mention of Global Action by government leaders-for example, in annual speeches to the UN General Assembly.