The end of war

Democratic UN At present five nations (China, France, Russia, the UK, and the USA) have permanent representation on the UN Security Council and have the right to veto any resolution that the remainder of the Security Council want to pass. A minimum change to the UN to make it acceptably close to being democratic would be to abolish the discrimination that gives permanent membership of the Security Council to some nations and certainly no nation should have a right of veto. If they chose, the governments of the bigger nations could cooperate to stop the production of, not only nuclear weapons, but also all weapons larger than rifles. If the USA, the European Union, Russia and China decided to greatly reduce their own production of major weapons, and stop all other nations from producing them, they could do it. They could then set up a small international force with a few major weapons, answerable only to the UN, to keep the peace between nations. This would be the only group in the world allowed major weapons. It could be spread around the world, with sections having primary loyalty to their own countries, to minimise any likelihood that its leadership would try to grab power. Finally they could ensure that the world's armies were gradually dismantled. The governments of the major nations have realised, about the time of the end of World War Two, that wars are not for them, wars are for poor nations. In my opinion there are three reasons that the governments of the big nations don't want to abolish war. The first reason is that the leaders of nations want to have as close to absolute power within their nations as they can get. (Better to be a big fish in a small pond than a little fish in a big pond.) To abolish war the leaders of nations would have to give up some of their power to the United Nations. The second reason is that the top nations (USA first among them) make obscene amounts of money from selling weapons. They would rather keep the money rolling in from arms trading than have peace in the world. The third reason is that the governments of at least some of the major nations want to opress their own citizens. If they were to give up absolute power to the United Nations they might loose this ability.