STANDING ORDERS FOR A PEACEFUL WORLD

We know more than enough to choose policies that will help prevent protracted deadly conflict and terrorism. We also know more than enough to avoid policies that will cause protracted deadly conflict and terrorism.

• Maintaining public order and preventing social turbulence from escalating into protracted deadly conflict are prerequisite to the success of all other development policies.

• Polarising political rhetoric and tactics must be forgone, however tempting their short-term benefits may seem. Like mustard gas, which had to be abandond as a weapon in World War I, this strategy has a tendency to "blow back" upon the user.

• Meeting the needs and aspirations of fighting age young men should be the first priority of national development policies and of programs funded by international donors.

• Developing counties should have internal security forces (police and paramilitary) that are generously funded, professional, apolitical and trained to meet the complex challenges of maintaining public order in a changing society.

• Development policies that meet human beings`common aspirations - to feel good about their lives, the circumstances in which they live and future prospects for themselves and their children - will contriute most effectively to keeping violent conflict and terrorism within acceptable bounds.

• Those who frame development policies should seek a middle path between capitalism`s efficient, but Darwinian precepts, and socialism`s egalitarian, but stultifying precepts.

• Good governance and democratisation must be a part of the "successful development" mix. Most important are governance institutions that are open to "bad news" and self-correcting.

• Multinational corporations, businesses and businessmen`s organisations should play a more active role in supporting successful development policies.

• Successful development requires a long-term view. Giving sufficient weight to the long-term requires institutional mechanisms and discourses that extend beyond the next election and term in office of political leaders presently in power.

• There must be realistic, rigorous, opportunity-cost analyses of military options, versus equivalent expenditures for non military options, before proceeding down the slippery slope of "military solutions" to complex development problems.

Now just obey Canute and all of his very wise standing orders.