World Security: The New Challenge

J.L. Granatstein is a history professor at York University and the
co-author of the Dictionary of Canadian Military History and Empire to
Umpire: Canada and the World to the 1990s.

The Cold War may be over, but the peace promotion industry continues.
This volume, produced by the Canadian Pugwash Group, assesses some of
the current global dangers and proposes solutions. They are, to be
blunt, the usual ones proposed by the usual distinguished group of
Canadian contributors—noted scientists, bureaucrats, and military
leaders. The United Nations must be strengthened. Nations must turn
their armed forces toward peacekeeping and away from war-making.
Population control is essential, as is improving the health of mothers
and their children. The environment must be protected, and fossil fuel
use reduced.

It’s all true, all written with conviction, all sensible and probably
even achievable—if there is the will to do it. But is there? The
regrettable truth is that virtually every major nation on earth is
racked by debt problems, employment is declining, society is fracturing,
and nations are turning inward. The end of the Cold War wrote finis to a
chapter half a century long, and the crisis of the new century looks to
be of interest only to the committed few. Until some explosion forces
the world to react, the Pugwashers will continue to be voices crying in
the wilderness.