Do we see evidence to support these hypotheses?

A few recent events may serve to establish the force of popular will: the Republic of the Philippines overthrew a strong-man rule without outside assistance. The Warsaw Pact crumbled when Eastern European peoples rose up against their regimes, individually and without outside help. The Peoples Republic of China has been forced by internal pressures from their populace to open and expand their society. Then of course there are the images of the Russian White House siege, and of President Yeltsin rallying the Russian People against the remnants of the Soviet Regime from atop a Soviet tank. These changes were each brought about by popular will, and against the will of the established authorities.

A decline in the popularity of war over the past century should suffice to illustrate that there is a ubiquitous desire among the people of the world to eschew warfare. At the beginning of the 20th century, glory, honor and duty were emphasized when the topic of war came up for discussion. By the end of the century, we have come to understand that warfare demeans a people, debases the combatants and squanders lives, property and resources.

The difference between the flag-waving patriotism in the United States, evident for popular support of the Spanish American War and at the onset of American involvement in World War I, and the cautious, reluctant approach to warfare demonstrated during the most recent Balkan conflicts is a profound one. Wholesale slaughter is not glorious; impersonal death-dealing contains no honor. All that remains is duty. Now, the voices that advocate a higher duty to preserve life are heard in opposition to those who proclaim duty to military defense. But, is non-violent response to conflict evident in human history?

Peace can come about through collective agreement, or it can be imposed. The "Pax Romana" of the Roman Empire is an example of a regime forcing its populace to behave lawfully. Vigorous law enforcement is required and freedoms (personal, cultural, religious and commercial) suffer under this approach.

The American Old West gives an example of peace through collective agreement. The earliest Vigilance Committees, later known as Vigilantes, in genesis were citizen's groups composed of the top citizens of a given community. Since many towns were established outside the boundaries and authority of the United States, the community members agreed to be bound by laws of their own making and to enforce those laws by committee.

Utopian systems for peace have been proposed wherein people require neither policing nor laws because each member of the community is safe, secure and prosperous, and all goods/resources are equally distributed. Karl Marx proposed the prototype for this system in his landmark work: "Das Capital." Other utopian schemes include the Libertarian system, wherein each citizen is self-sufficient, laws are few and each citizen is responsible for his/her own security. This system is probably the oldest and seemingly worked well for the earliest hunters, gatherers and foragers until about 7,000 years before present.

Of these systems, my choice for the most workable is one of collective agreement. I see this as the one system which has the force of human experience behind it, and the one that leaves the most societal freedoms intact. I see collective agreement as the only one of these schemes that can be made acceptable to individual cultures, nationalities and institutions. The international community of nations has made two attempts at establishing collective forums in modern history: the League of Nations and the United Nations. Each was formed in response to the threat of international, world-wide military conflict. Neither was sufficiently supported by member nations in order to fulfill its charter responsibilities.

These later attempts at collective agreement can trace their roots back to ancient efforts, by the Egyptians, Greeks, and early Christian leaders of the Holy Roman Empire, to establish forums for solving conflict between city-states and nations. All of these attempts had some measure of success, and all of them ultimately failed. I subscribe to the premise that each of these collective forums was more successful than the previous attempt and each one achieved a wider degree of authority.

Whether future world comity is achieved through the offices of currently extant organizations, (World Communism, United Nations, NATO, etc.) or by an institution yet to be invented, it seems clear to me that only such a collective forum can be subscribed to by such diverse interests as we find in the world of the 21st Century.

Only a world forum with collective authority, and the resources of each of its members made available can hope to establish the basis for world peace: fairness, egalitarianism, material sufficiency and safety.

Is world peace possible? Given the trends outlined above, perhaps the more apt question is, "Is world peace avoidable?"