Once again, they gather in Davos to mourn the world’s fracture and remind us, solemnly, that the strong do what they will, and the rest must adapt. They will say it’s complex— that it’s geopolitics, historical cycles, inevitable entropy. But behind all the rhetoric lies a simple truth: THERE ARE ONLY TWO PATHS TO PEACE And our future depends on choosing the right one.

The first is the old path. It stretches from Heraclitus to Hobbes, from Schmitt to Clausewitz. It tells us: “In the beginning was war.” That conflict is natural, and order requires force. That if you want peace, prepare for war. Si vis pacem, para bellum. It's the logic behind global armament, our strategic blocs, our economic coercion. It is the path that built NATO and nuclear deterrence, that invaded Ukraine, that bombs Gaza. It is the path of Trump, Putin, Netanyahu—the gospel of realism, dominance, and control.

The second path is older—and far more radical. It begins not in war, but in logos: “In the beginning was the word”. In reason, relationships, and the refusal of domination. This is the tradition of Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas. It does not deny conflict, but sees war as the failure of human dialogue—the corruption of the word into force. And from this tradition flows another imperative: Si vis pacem, para civitatem.

If you want peace, prepare a civilisation—a shared life grounded in law and mutual respect, where freedom is real, dignity is common, and no one is left to violence or despair.

But here is the problem.

Only the first path is deemed “realistic.” It dominates our schools, our institutions, our doctrines of strategy. It is not taught as one worldview among others, but as nature itself. And that is the lie we must refuse.

As Mark Carney said, we do not need a world of fortresses. We need a peace that is disarmed—and disarming. Not a fragile silence of weapons, but a just order that removes the causes of war: inequality, exclusion, the dehumanisation of the weak.

This isn't utopia. It is the recognition that true peace requires human development. And “development” does not mean GDP. It means emancipation—from fear, from poverty, from structures of violence. It means granting every person not just freedom from, but freedom for: the freedom to realise their gifts in service of the common good.

Let us be clear: we are not powerless. Middle powers, cities, companies, movements—we can build new institutions, new norms, new solidarities. The power of the less powerful begins with honesty: naming the rupture, rejecting the rituals of realism, daring to stop living a lie.

Davos doesn’t need another brilliant speech. It needs the courage to admit that peace is not the absence of war, but the presence of justice—and the structures that make it last.

So let us begin.

Take the signs out of the window. Because history is never finished. It begins, and begins again, with us. With our shared commitment to justice—and peace.

#Leadership #Peace #Justice #Civitas #GlobalOrder