Daily Times

President Dr Arif Alvi Thursday urging the need to shun destructive security paradigms and doctrines in international relations, said that the world order should be based on rules, morality and ethics for making the world a better place for everyone.

He added that doctrines such as Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), Humane Warfare, and Cold War mentality, should be discontinued and replaced with a philosophy of Total Peace, where war was completely eliminated.

The President expressed these views while addressing a special session of the Margalla Dialogue, an interactive and policy-driven discussion, on the theme of “Navigating the Great Power competition: Developing World Perspective”. The session, organized here by the Islamabad Policy Research Institute, was attended by diplomats, foreign dignitaries, members of the academia and intelligentsia, a press release issued by the President’s Media Wing said.

The President said that destructive philosophies and ideas needed to be replaced with the philosophy of Total Peace where resorting to war was not an option. This, he added, was possible when all nations and nation-states and people living in them were treated with dignity, honour and respect without any discrimination on the basis of colour, creed, race or language.

The President said that the principle of giving preferred status to some nations in the form of VETO power should have no place in the new world order which, based on experience, had the potential to be misused to bring misery and war to less powerful nations.

He further stated that the world powers had been pursuing the philosophy of Mutually Assured Destruction, Humane Warfare, and the Cold War, where every nation was producing lethal and dangerous weapons having the ability to destroy the entire world many times over by investing precious resources.

The President said that superpowers spent trillions of dollars on creating lethal and powerful weapon systems, adding that even a fraction of these huge amounts could have helped mitigate the effects of climate change and global warming, and eliminated hunger and misery in the world.

He said that the world was entering another phase of warfare which was even more destructive, lethal and deadly, adding, that Cyber warfare capabilities were being developed at a neck-breaking speed, and could be used for neutralizing the communication networks of a country, making its defence system non-functional, disrupting the provision of services including health services, and rendering the country completely paralysed.

The President said that the immense power of Cyber warfare should be intelligently used, not for the destruction of humanity but for the progress, development and prosperity of the entire mankind.

He further said that as in the current era, social media had resulted in the spread of fake news and created misunderstandings and violence among countries and societies, it should be countered with self-learning and education and by nurturing our ability to sift authentic news from fake news.

The President said that the internal systems of nations should be based upon democratic values of negotiations, consultations and deliberations and engaging relevant stakeholders to build consensus and to decide a way forward.

He added that bilateral engagements between the nations, in a fair and transparent manner, should be the basis for resolving conflicts and disagreements.

The President highlighted that there were bigger issues facing the current world order, which included Global Warming and Greenhouse Gas emissions, that were threatening many vulnerable countries and negatively impacting the lives and livelihoods of the people in different regions.

President for total peace, morality-based new world order

He said that privileged and developed countries should put their resources together to reverse the damage being done by climate change and to stop the emission of Greenhouse Gases.