Oscar Arias, former president of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace Laureate, expressed a desire for peaceful solution-seeking and an end to world economic poverty and inequality in the future during a speech to a packed crowd in 105 Dartmouth Hall last night.
Calling peaceful solutions to disputes "a profound and difficult process," Arias said violence can never truly end conflicts.
"I do not believe in peace because it is easy, but because it is necessary," Arias said.
Giving the example of Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi, Arias said peaceful solutions are possible by promoting love and compassion. In Central America, "after a long struggle, the guns were silenced," he added.
Arias said in a era of globalization the world must pursue nonviolent methods of dispute resolution.
Arias attacked current levels of poverty and economic equality in the world, adding the present global system leads to the rich becoming richer, while further impoverishing the poor.
He criticized investment bankers who invest money not to help small businesses grow but to make more money for themselves.
Criticizing people who dismiss the present economic crises as over, Arias said there are economic problems which are "a much deeper crisis."
Arias highlighted how his goals of a peaceful, economically balanced world may be achieved. The United States needs to exercise new ethics of leadership and practice preventive diplomacy, he said.
Dismissing NATO as an "elite club of wealthy countries," Arias said, "As a Central American, NATO does not represent me."
Arias said he did not expect the United States to pursue a cooperative framework for conflict resolution when it has not signed agreements on biological and chemical weapons, land mines, nuclear testing and an international court for testing of war criminals.
He was disappointed with the "arrogance with which Washington is behaving these days," adding "You [United States] want to tell the world what to do."
Blaming the Clinton administration and the United States for "moral irresponsibility," Arias said increasing defense spending by $110 billion sends "a wrong signal to other countries."
Arias said the best way for the United States to perpetrate poverty in developing countries is to sell them arms, adding, the U.S. government uses tax payers' money to support "this immoral trade."
The money used in arms buildup can be used to provide "human securities" such as education, sanitation, portable water, health care and nutrition, Arias said.
Arias proposed an International Code of Conduct on Arms Transfers which only allowed sale of arms to democratic countries that respected the rule of law, observed human rights, did not support terrorism or aggression against other countries or peoples and observed UN arms stipulations.
Despite the endorsement by seventeen Nobel Peace Laureates, Arias said, the Code was considered unpractical by the government. The Code is not only morally sound but also politically correct, Arias added.
The world today, Arias said, faces a choice - bloody conflict or peaceful solutions, economic disparity or financial equality. "Let us choose life; let us live in peace."
