70. Dr Alexander Bellamy - R2P, Just War and prospects of World Peace - Part 1

The Voices of War

Today, I spoke with Dr Alex Bellamy, who is a professor of peace and conflict studies and director of the Asia Pacific Centre for the responsibility to protect at the University of Queensland.

He is the author of numerous books, including ‘World Peace And How We Can Achieve It’, which was the basis for our discussion today. However, as you’ll hear, we covered many topics, including:

• Outline of Responsibility To Protect (R2P)
• Origins of the World Peace movements
• Similarities of the extreme left and extreme right
• Individual rights as a bulwark to collective violence
• Importance of ideology and narrative in motivating wars
• The paradox of nationhood – internal coherence at the cost of external differentiation
• Galvanising of identity when under threat
• Internal contest for the American identity

Some of the topics we cover in Part 2, coming out on the 20th of October, are as follows:

• Are humans wired for violence?
• How states can actively reduce the likelihood of war
• Clash of ‘Helsinki’ vs ‘Yalta’ visions
• The paradox of US hegemony
• The UN as a global project
• Discussion on Interests vs Values
• Military Industrial Complex and acquisition of arms
• The role of International Humanitarian Law
• Implementing laws we already have to achieve Peace
• Rivalry between competing visions on how the world should be organised

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