Author Norman Cousins said Monday that just getting rid of weapons will not bring about world peace. World peace requires all nations to be brought under world law.
"No nation is able to use its sovereignty to protect its people," Cousins told a crowded audience at Highland High School Monday night. "We're all living in a prime condition of world anarchy. . . . Nations have to be brought under a rule of law."The president of the World Federalists Association and adjunct professor in the School of Medicine at the University of California said the citizens of the United States should make world security - in the form of a world government - a top priority.
Because of the freedoms enjoyed in the United States, Cousins said this country has a special obligation to understand what is needed and push for a body to govern the world. "There is no answer to war except a governed peace," he said.
"We have to create a governed society . . . to liberate people from those barriers that stand in the way of human development."
Cousins said the current state of anarchy in the world is destructive to freedom and said an authoritative third party is needed to enforce conflicts between nations. The United Nations, although originally organized to scourge the world of war, has little power and Cousins blames the United States and the Soviet Union.
The power of large nations is being used to circumscribe any world power in any way," he said, citing an incident when the U.S. ignored the decision of an international court.
"When any one nation has the right to veto a (world court), then all you have is anarchy," he said.
Cousins called for a revision conference of the United Nations and said delegates could define world problems, come up with responses on how to address those global problems and decide how to supplement the organization with authority to prevent abuses concerning the problems.
"No one can anticipate what would come from such a meeting," he said. "At the very least we could get something better than we have now."
Responding to a question from the audience, Cousins said he believes Secretary of State George Shultz made a mistake in denying PLO chairman Yasser Arafat a visa to the United States to speak to the United Nations. Now Arafat may not be as conciliatory or have as much constraint as he may have had if he was in New York, he said.
Because many countries have condemned the U.S. for denying the visa, Arafat may feel he has enough power to embarrass the United States, he said.