Today, I spoke with Dr Alex Bellamy, who is a professor of peace and conflict studies and director of the Asia Pacific Centre for the responsibility to protect at the University of Queensland.

He is the author of numerous books, including ‘World Peace And How We Can Achieve It’, which was the basis for our discussion today. However, as you’ll hear, we covered many topics, including:

Outline of Responsibility To Protect (R2P)
Origins of the World Peace movements
Similarities of the extreme left and extreme right
Individual rights as a bulwark to collective violence
Importance of ideology and narrative in motivating wars
The paradox of nationhood – internal coherence at the cost of external differentiation
Galvanising of identity when under threat
Internal contest for the American identity

Some of the topics we cover in Part 2, coming out on the 20th of October, are as follows:

Are humans wired for violence?
How states can actively reduce the likelihood of war
Clash of ‘Helsinki’ vs ‘Yalta’ visions
The paradox of US hegemony
The UN as a global project
Discussion on Interests vs Values
Military Industrial Complex and acquisition of arms
The role of International Humanitarian Law
Implementing laws we already have to achieve Peace
Rivalry between competing visions on how the world should be organised

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70. Dr Alexander Bellamy - R2P, Just War and prospects of World Peace - Part 1