A Global Forum Dedicated to the Prevention of Conflict: The Visionary Architects

Before such a far-fetched idea like the United Nations (UN) could exist, a body devoted to peaceful resolution of disputes first had to be imagined—a far more difficult task than it would seem because despite centuries of religious valorization of peace, no society had been able to avoid the endless repetition of war. Most people through the ages could be forgiven for thinking that war was, if not God-given, a natural fact of life. After all, it was supported by the key institutions of most ages, the crown and church, both of which were able to neuter any dissenting voice by either exile, excommunication, or worse. It was no wonder that the first thinkers to do the imagining of what a potential alternative to war was were intellectuals on the fringes of the society, obscure monks and clergymen, and one or two amateur philosophers. These small number of European intellectuals were eager to seek alternatives to constant war and busied themselves in designing imaginative “peace projects”— forums where the world’s rulers could sit down with each other and negotiate their way to resolving conflict peacefully. The designs they came up over roughly five hundred years constitute, as one writer suggests, “a largely undervalued intellectual tradition.”1