Security Council – Engaging Peace

[Today we welcome guest contributor Dr. Majed Ashy]

United Nations flag — U.N. flag. Image in public domain.

The world is facing serious political, economic, and social upheavals and challenges.

This calls for wisdom that goes beyond the narrow visions of ideologies, politics, parties, interests, pride, specialized knowledge and professions, strategies, and power conflicts.

What we need is wisdom derived from deep integrative knowledge characterized by a sensitive, perceptive and unfragmented view of the world, nature, knowledge and time. Such wisdom will derive from lessons of history, philosophy, and the deep underlying wisdom of religions.

We need wisdom that is devoted to the revelation of a holistic truth and justice–as much as humans can do that–and not to winning.

Thus, I would like to suggest an international meeting to be organized by the United Nations. Participants would include wise people from every nation without exception. These individuals would embody respect, experience, and the ability to put their own needs and narrow interests and visions aside.

Their task would be to:

Discuss the current international political and economical situations.
Declare to the Security Council and everyone in the world the truth as they see it.
Recommend a course of action.

This body in the UN can include wise people from various walks of life such as ex-politicians, economists, scientists, social scientists, ex-military officers, philosophers, religious scholars, and others. In addition, known international figures such as Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and Aung San Suu Kyi would be included.

In the day of the Internet and social networks it will not be difficult to identify the people in each nation who are considered wise and are respected for their wisdom.

Majed Ashy, Ph.D., Associate Researcher in Psychiatry, Harvard University/McLean Hospital; Assistant Professor in Psychology, Bay State College

By guest author Mike Corgan

The tragic course of violence in Syria, falling mostly as it usually does on women and children, highlights the limitations of the United Nations as a means of peaceful conflict resolution in the world.

Even at its best, the UN can only do in situations like the Syrian civil war what the Security Council allows, and that body is set to stop action rather than take it.

The best analogy of the Security Council is that of a circuit breaker. It shuts down anything that is too big for the system to handle. The idea is that if any of the five permanent members (P5) really don’t want an action, then taking it would likely cause a more widespread and destructive situation.

Right now China and Russia are both balking at anything more than admonitions to Syria for what the Assad regime is doing to its own people. Neither country, each with its own restive and sometime violent Muslim minorities in Central Asia, wants any kind of precedent-setting UN response that promotes intervention in internal state conflict, however bloody and barbaric.

Russia has the additional motivation of not wishing to be seen as weak because it abandons a decades-long client state.

Who else could intervene? NATO is withdrawing forces from both Iraq and Afghanistan as fast as it can. Trying to set the house in order for another Middle Eastern state is not on any member’s agenda.

The ratio of Arab League rhetoric to action is nearly infinite.

Israel can only watch and hope. Geopolitically speaking, a fractious Syria on its border is a positive thing–but one sunk into chaos is not.

And even if some outside power did step in to stop the massacres, the aftermath of regime change now evident in other Arab states like Libya and Egypt is not at all encouraging.

It is the inevitably depressing commentary on humankind that perhaps only exhaustion of one or both of the combatants will end the killing. Inspired leadership by someone, anyone, could also be the answer but, alas, that is an even fainter hope.

Michael T. Corgan, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Associate Chair, Department of International Relations, Boston University