From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
I was working in Russia from 1998-2002... You also had this extraordinary episode where Putin is on record being asked a question, 'President Putin, do you think Russia could ever join NATO?' to which he replied, 'Why not?!' – what he actually said was 'why not…' provided that Russia could be a fully-fledged partner in NATO.
Historically, conflicts typically ended with the major players negotiating peace agreements, often including amnesties. The more brutal and involved in crimes a party was, the more significant their role at the negotiation table. This approach changed after the Second World War with the Nuremberg trials.
More girls have been killed in the past fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the battles of the twentieth century. More girls are killed in this routine 'gendercide' in any one decade, than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the twentieth century.
The fundamental starting point is to acknowledge that outside actors can rarely create peace, local ownership in resolving the conflicts is vital. You cannot import peace, it is created within society.
I flew home with this profound sense of the simultaneity of human suffering; I've never been able to get over that sense that even as I'm talking to you right now, there are people who are living unbearable lives.
As two adversaries accumulate a longer history of conflict, their rivalry relationship tends to become 'locked-in' or entrenched, with future conflict becoming increasingly difficult to avoid; characteristics of their past confrontations can hasten or reverse this movement toward rivalry.
I don't think it was inevitable until the point where the tanks started rolling-in. It was unstoppable at that point… But 20 years ago, would we have realised this was going to happen? My sense would be absolutely not.
Ridicule, mockery and humour are some of the best tools of the powerless, they are weapons of the weak! Finding ways to intervene with levity and humour can build strength and sustain a movement. Humour is one of the most powerful weapons of non-violent resistance.
The countries where people are happiest are ones which are much more domestically oriented and not seeking world-power.
As war ravaged Liberia, I realized it is women who bear the greatest burden in prolonged conflicts. We began organizing Christian and Muslim women to demonstrate together, launching protests and a sex strike to help oust Charles Taylor.
Nuclear weapons were invented out of fear. The United States was afraid that Hitler was developing an atomic weapon, and they had to get one to deter him from ever using it. When the U.S. Manhattan Project that built the bomb began, no-one ever thought we would use a weapon like this; it was considered beyond the pale—a weapon that would indiscriminately kill hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.