A Culture of Peace Is Possible: Here’s How

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 24 Nov 2025

David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service

15 Nov 2025 – Why I think world history is accelerating, where it is going, and why this gives us a window of opportunity to change from the present global culture of war to a new global culture of peace. I argue that progress will come through multiple failures as the old system collapses. Divided into four chapters.

Chapter one: Global historical trends

We need to recognize six global historical trends over the past few centuries that continue in the present day.

• #1. The gap between the rich and the poor continues to increase ( note that just this week it was announced that Elon Musk’s fortune has become one trillion dollars).
• #2.  The amount of financial speculation has continued to increase to the point that the monetary value of daily speculation is greater than the monetary value of the global goods and services produced in a year (note that cryptocurrencies and investment in artificial intelligence have accelerated this trend).
• #3. The world’s economies have continue to become more interconnected by a process of mondialization (note that Trump’s attempts to reverse this by disconnecting his country’s economy are not succeeding).
• #4. More and more people live in cities, i.e. the process of urbanization, which means that fewer people are involved directly in the production of food.
• #5. Over the centuries the nation-state has come to monopolize violence on its territory, although in recent years we are beginning to see more “failed states” like Sudan where the state has lost its monopoly.
• #6. People throughout the world continue to become more connected by advances in communication such as internet, portable telephones, social media, etc.

The continued development of all these trends is not sustainable.  At some point some of them must reverse.  For example, the gap between rich and poor cannot get to the point where the rich have all and the poor have nothing.  And it is not possible that all the people of the world live only in cities.

Chapter Two: The Coming Crash

There are contradictions in these trends that can only lead to the most rapid and spectacular transformation in human history: a global economic crash followed by a global political crash and the massive migration of people from cities to the countryside.

To put it more specifically, the continued loss of buying power by the poor (#1) and the continued investment of money by the rich in speculation (#2) can only lead to an economic crash.

The fact that the world’s economy has become more interconnected (#3) means that this will be the greatest economic crash in world history.  It will be more global in scope than the Great Depression one century ago.  And it will be more severe because fewer people have direct access to food production.

Just as the economic crash of the Soviet Union was followed by its political collapse, so, too, a global economic crash will have serious political effects as the nation-states will no longer be able to perform many of their functions.

Some of the trends listed above will be reversed, in four or five great failures.

#1 and #2 Many of the rich will lose their wealth, although the poor will suffer more.  The rich will have less ability to speculate, but the global production of goods and services will also fall.

#3 The inter-connectedness of the world’s economy will be reversed.   Industrial food production, food distribution and supplies for industry depend upon transport which depends on fuel and the financing of fuel delivery.  There are stocks of fuel, but they must be replenished by deliveries that arrive by tanker-ships.  And when the economy crashes, the tanker-ships will remain in port.  This is what happened when the great depression began in 1930; there was an enormous reduction in ocean shipping because there was no financing for it.  Without fuel, airplanes will not take off and many power plants will shut down.  Industrial food production will be impaired.  Trucks will not have fuel to deliver food to the cities and supplies to factories.  Farmers will not have access to fuel for their tractors.  Without supplies that arrive by freight-ships or trucks, many factories will shut down.

Is it possible that before the inevitable economic crash, there will be a complete transition from transport based on fossil fuels to transport based on renewable energy that is produced locally?  Perhaps that is likely for automobiles, but I doubt that we will see it in time for ocean transport, truck transport and farm tractors.

#4 When fuel supplies run out and food is no longer delivered, cities will become un-liveable and urbanization will be reversed as people flee to the countryside in order to eat.  You might think that this will be a gradual process as stocks of fuel are reduced, but I don’t think it will be gradual.  The fact that people are in communication with each other means that the people in the cities will know that their supermarkets are going to lack deliveries.  How much time does it take for them to empty the supermarkets when people panic?  One day!

#5 Many states will fail to be able to control a great increase in violence within their territories.

#5 Global communication systems will be impaired, although this may be more easily remedied than the other failed systems.

Chapter Three: Coping with the Crash; progress through failure

Let us consider this process in detail, and how these massive failures can be turned into historical progress.

There is one agency that can manage the migration of people from the cities to the countryside.  It is the military.  Here is a potential role for national governments: transform the military into a migration agency and divide the military into units, assigning these to the cities on an equal basis along with their transport vehicles, fuel stocks, food stocks, tents and other temporary housing.

This would already be an important form of progress, converting militaries from killing machines to agencies for the assistance of migration.

The local role of the military throughout the country will help to contain the violence that has erupted following the crash.

There would need to be a new form of local governance, also a form of progress, in which city governments would need to make agreements with the farmers in their region so that, aided by the military, people can relocate to locations on the land of farmers, and in turn, the cities would receive food from these farmers.

Once relocated to farms, people should take part in food production, being paid in the form of the food that they help to produce.

Farmers, lacking fuel for their tractors, should diversify food production so that newly-arrived families can take part in a varied food production by planting, tending and harvesting gardens, chickens, etc.

The new demands on farmers may lead to a new wave of farmer cooperative movements.

In fact, this would also be an important form of progress, developing what is known as food sovereignty to replace the food systems we have today that are designed for maximum capitalist profit.

The production of factories should be converted to meet local needs.  As a result of the economic crash, In many cases it would be possible for the factories to be taken over and run by committees of their workers.

In fact, the overall economy may revert to something that looks more like that of the Middle Ages in Europe when the economy was organized locally in feudal systems.  Hopefully, unlike the case of the Middle Ages, it could be organized democratically through an enlargement of city government to include participation of the farmers and others in the surrounding region.

In addition to some coordination, advice and aid from their national government, cities could coordinate their efforts through their existing national and international networks.

There are many national networks; for example, in the United States, the National League of Cities and its US Conference of Mayors links 2700 cities.

Also there are many international networks of cities.  These include UCLG (United Cities and Local Governments) with sections on all the continents, ICLEI (local governments for sustainability) with more than 2500 cities, and Mayors for Peace with over 8500 member cities.

Chapter Four: A Reformed United Nations for Peace

Another failure to be expected is the reduced capacity of national governments to manage agriculture, education, scientific research, health-care, transport and communication.

Here, again, failures could be turned into progress.

The cities, through their membership in the national and international networks mentioned above, could make contact and obtain coordination, advice and aid from the United Nations agencies responsible for these functions: : agriculture from FAO, education and science from UNESCO, health care from WHO, transport from the International Civil Aviation Organization and International Maritime Organization and communication from the International Telecommunication Union.

Similarly, important guidance could be sought by the cities from the International Organization of Migration, from the International Labor Organization, and, in coordination with their national governments, from the International Bank and Monetary Fund.

And wouldn’t it be wonderful if there could be a new UN agency responsible for military conversion, that would aid the transition of national militaries into agencies for migration.

There would b a global demand for the conversion of ocean transport, truck transport and farm tractors to use solar energy, to be powered by solar installations on the ships, trucking centers and on the farms to power their tractors.  This, too, could be coordinated by a new UN agency.

If this scenario were to be followed, we would be well on the way to a United Nations that could finally fulfil its primary function to bring peace to the world.  The key would be the new and extensive coordination between the United Nations and the cities of the world.

As mentioned above the increase in violence after the economic crash would be greater than the nation-states could overcome with their reduced resources, .  The UN Security Council, which has become dis-functional over time because of vetos and great-power rivalry, would not be able to help.

Again, by overcoming this failure, we could make progress.

In the utopian novel I wrote in 2010, I propose that the United Nations Security Council should be governed by regional representatives of cities.  After all, cities have no interest in nuclear weapons or the military-industrial complex, they are free from the great-powers rivalries of the past, and they are more directly in contact with the people who suffer from violence.

The escalation of violence following the economic crisis would not be resolved by increasing nuclear arsenals. Instead, a United Nations Security Council, composed of representatives from cities and tasked with advising all the world’s cities, would be well-positioned to provide assistance. If a new UN agency were created for military conversion, this new Security Council could collaborate with it to share with cities the best practices of military personnel who have dealt with local violence while assisting migration. And, perhaps most importantly, such a Security Council could finally promote and support, on a global scale, the proven methods of organized nonviolent resistance.

A transformation of the UN’s role for peace based on cities could be greatly facilitated by involvement of the cities united in Mayors for Peace, and such a transformation would be greatly facilitated if there were a global movement for a culture of peace developed through the social media dissemination of the Peace Manifesto 2025.

In conclusion, when the old system collapses a new systems will emerge.  A culture of peace will be possible.

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Dr. David Adams is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment and coordinator of the Culture of Peace News Network. He retired in 2001 from UNESCO where he was the Director of the Unit for the UN International Year for the Culture of Peace.  Previously, at Yale and Wesleyan Universities, he was a specialist on the brain mechanisms of aggressive behavior, the history of the culture of war, and the psychology of peace activists, and he helped to develop and publicize the Seville Statement on Violence. Send him an email.

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