About this event

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Join us for the next instalment of our Political Mind series, with speaker Lord John Alderdice.

There has not been a time in many decades when a book about ending wars was more timely. People across the world are rightly terrified that the rules-based international order that brought a degree of peace is rapidly dissolving, and that we are descending into international antagonism, with a mixture of authoritarian governments and failing states—the result being unending war and chaos. This new multi-author volume, co-published by The Concord Foundation and ARTIS (Europe) Ltd in collaboration with the New England Journal of Public Policy, addresses these existential dangers.

Why do we have wars? They arise because human beings have differing and often conflicting interests and desires, both within themselves and between each other. When some decide to impose their will on others, and those others resist, conflict emerges. If violence is used and resisted in turn, this can escalate into war. Throughout history, this is how most groups have conducted their relationships.

Until 1945, the limits of our destructive capacity meant that, despite devastation and loss of life, humanity and the world could recover. Since the development of the nuclear bomb, there can be no such reassurance. For a time, the limited number of nuclear states and awareness of the consequences of nuclear war created a degree of restraint, supported by proxy conflicts, global institutions, and international law.

Today, those restraints are dissolving. At the same time, human activity is damaging the natural world’s capacity for repair. We now face the prospect of both nuclear catastrophe and environmental collapse, with only limited evidence that humanity is taking either threat seriously. We are living through one of the most dangerous periods in human history. What is to be done?

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