Alvi calls for peace, morality-based new world order

ISLAMABAD: 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 was organised here by the Islamabad Policy Research Institute. 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.

Alvi 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. He said the cyber warfare capabilities were being developed at a neck-breaking speed, and could be used for neutralising 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 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. The president said that technology should be distributed and transferred fairly to the countries where it was needed the most. He said that the Netherlands, which was 19 times smaller than Pakistan, was among the top food-exporting countries of the world.

The president added that technology, which was used in creating high-yield food products, drought-resistant crops, manipulation of rain patterns, conservation of water, vertical farming and other such sophisticated and high-tech techniques, should also be shared with the poor and developing countries to enable them to counter hunger, malnutrition, stunting and food insecurity.

President Islamabad Policy Research Institute, Ambassador Dr Raza Muhammad welcomed the president and briefed the participants about the discussions being held on different topics related to national security, geostrategy and international relations.