Report of Proceedings: “Canada’s Contribution to Global Security”
Canadian Pugwash Group Conference
Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, July 23-25, 2017
This report is also available as a PDF download: "Canada's Contribution to Global Security" Report of Proceedings.
CPG Conference, July 2017: Recommendations to the Government of Canada
The Canadian Pugwash Group (CPG) held a conference entitled “Canada’s Contribution to Global Security”, July 23-25 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The conference commemorated the 150th anniversary of Confederation as well as the 60th anniversary of the international Pugwash movement. The focus of the conference was the current and future contribution Canada could make to global security and to countering existential threats to humanity.
“If War Goes On…”: The imperative of ‘joined-up thinking’ in the search for sustainable peace
Remarks in Response to Assigned Question: “Can International Security and Cooperative Security Be Combined?”
Sean Howard, Adjunct Professor of Political Science, Cape Breton University
My title alludes to If the War Goes On, ‘Reflections on War and Politics’ by Hermann Hesse, from which I’d like to read two quotes, first from a December 1917 essay, Shall There Be Peace?: “The bigger, the bloodier, the more destructive these final battles of the World War prove to be, the less will be accomplished for the future, the less hope there will be of appeasing hatreds and rivalries, or of doing away with the idea that political aims can be attained by the criminal instrumentality of war.” And from a December 1918 article, The Path of Love: “Good ideas are in the air – the brotherhood of man, a League of Nations, friendly cooperation among all peoples, disarmament. There has been much talk of them both here and in the enemy countries, some of it not very serious. We must take these ideas seriously…[f]or never again must we revert to what we were: a powerful people with a great deal of money and many cannon, governed by money and cannon. … To do so would be to renounce everything which, prompted by deep affliction and desperate self-knowledge, we have done and begun...”
Not Destiny But Resilience: Achieving a Nuclear Weapons-Free World
Address by Hon. Douglas Roche, O.C. to Canadian Pugwash Conference, “Canada’s Contribution to Global Security,” commemorating Canada’s 150th and Pugwash’s 60th Anniversaries
Halifax, July 24, 2017
We are challenged to open this conference by considering “Nuclear Weapons and the Destiny of Humanity.” The title surely forces us to think anew about our work in nuclear disarmament. Since the human proclivity for the acquisition of power seems to have been ingrained in people since Adam and Eve, are we destined to have nuclear weapons forever? Or does the maturation of humanity, evident in virtually every field of human activity, lead inexorably to the universal outlawing of all weapons of mass destruction? Are we doomed or are we saved?