Bharat Luthra Journal : One World, One Army, A Manifesto for Civilizational Survival

One World, One Army, A Manifesto for Civilizational Survival

Epigraph

“Those who feast on the illusion of security today will choke on the ashes of their own tomorrow.”

Abstract

Global military budgets soared to US $2 .443 trillion in 2023, the steepest jump in a generation SIPRI.
Meanwhile, the UN says we are US $194‑366 billion short every single year just to protect societies from the climate impacts already baked in UNEP - UN Environment Programme. This grotesque mismatch between what we spend to threaten each other and what we refuse to spend to save each other is not a policy failure; it is madness scripted into the operating code of the nation‑state.

1 | Why the Status Quo Is Not Just Unsustainable but Suicidal

Picture seven billion civilians trying to patch a leaking spaceship while two hundred separate security teams torch the life‑support system to “deter” each other. That is the international system in 2025.

Economics of Violence: The global economy bleeds US $17 .5 trillion a year—13 % of GDP—just to manage direct and indirect violence Vision of Humanity. That is more than the combined GDP of Japan and Germany burned on hard‑security theatre, riot policing, and the after‑care of bodies and buildings shattered by war.
Arms Proliferation in Numbers: Nine nuclear powers together spend US $83 billion annually upgrading warheads the IAEA has no jurisdiction to dismantle. More than one billion small arms circle the globe. The black‑market price of an AK‑47 in the Sahel is now lower than that of a decent mountain bike.
Resource Stress Convergence: On the very timeline when soils thin and glacial water towers shrink, critical‑mineral demand for EVs and renewables multiplies five‑fold. The places that host cobalt, lithium and rare earths—Eastern Congo, the “Lithium Triangle”, Afghanistan—are also geological tinderboxes of militia violence and corrupt state rent‑seeking.

The fatal feedback loop is obvious: competition → armament → budget diversion → weaker climate action → deeper resource stress → new competition. The loop does not converge to tension; it converges to detonation.

2 | A Ledger of Lunacy – Five Metrics That Prove We Are Paying to Kill Our Future

2.1 Military Spend vs. Climate Adaptation

2023 outlays	US $ (trn/yr)	Direction of travel	Planetary payoff
Global defence	2.443	+6.8 % YoY	Fragility
Needed climate‑adaptation finance	0.194‑0.366	Gap widening	Survival

We overspend the sword by a factor of ten and underfund the plough by the same factor.

2.2 Militaries as Carbon Super‑Emitters

A peer‑reviewed 2022 survey puts the global military footprint at 5‑5.5 % of total greenhouse emissions—comparable to aviation and shipping combined Scientific American. The Pentagon alone guzzled 82 million barrels of fuel in 2021. For context: if the US Department of Defense were a country, it would rank above Belgium in annual CO₂.

2.3 War‑Driven Emissions

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine spewed ≈ 175 million tones of CO₂ in its first two years, the bulk from fuel burn, fires, and rebuilding bombed infrastructure Carbon Brief. That single conflict erased more carbon savings than Germany achieved by adding all its solar capacity in 2022.

2.4 Economic Drag from Armed Conflict

Vision of Humanity calculates that every war year subtracts 2.3 percentage points from national GDP growth and keeps subtracting 1.7 points for a decade after. The so‑called “security” premium is in fact a developmental death spiral.

2.5 Opportunity Cost—A Moral Audit

If the military powers diverted just 30 % of current budgets, they could:

Re‑green 350 million hectares (Bonn Challenge) twice over.
Close UNEP’s adaptation finance gap two times.
Provide universal basic malaria prevention, measles vaccination, and safe drinking water.

The stubborn refusal to do so is not inconsistency—it is malintegrity: the deliberate, well‑funded pursuit of harmful ends under a cloak of patriotic virtue.

3 | From Big Numbers to Bigger Graves – Where the Current Trajectory Leads

Modern civilisation’s energy metabolism sits on a narrow ledge: a stable climate, predictable rainfall, intact biodiversity. Arms races bulldoze that ledge from both ends.

Resource Wars in the Making
The Water Knife is no longer science fiction. The World Resources Institute projects that half the planet’s population will live in high water‑stress basins by 2040. The Tigris–Euphrates system is already 33 % downriver flow vs. mid‑20th‑century norms. Turkey’s dam build‑out is squeezing Iraq toward failed‑state status faster than any extremist ideology could.
Nuclear Risk Under Climate Stress and Resource Depletion.

Mass Proliferation Paradox.
Militarised Green‑washing

Defence lobbies now market “green munitions” and hybrid tanks as climate action. It is the logic of a smoker switching to organic cigarettes while doubling consumption. Better bullets still kill people and planets if you keep pulling the trigger.
Youth Disenfranchisement
A generation that sees trillions for missiles but pennies for classrooms will—with perfect moral clarity—either revolt or despair. Both pathways weaken the civic glue that holds complex societies together, accelerating the descent from disinformation to demagoguery to outright civil conflict.

4 | Why “Better Arms Control” Is a Band‑Aid on an Arterial Bleed

Traditional arms‑control treaties fail for three structural reasons:

Verification Leakage – Inspectors trail the tech curve; hypersonic missiles and AI‑directed drone swarms proliferate faster than any monitoring regime can tag them.
The Security Dilemma – When one state disarms, it feels naked unless all potential rivals disarm simultaneously. Trust thus becomes a scarce strategic commodity, easily sabotaged by a single false‑flag operation.
Budgetary Path Dependence – Military‑industrial lobbies entrench spending through supply‑chain pork and electoral financing. Once the line items are there, they metastasise; trimming them is political suicide for any lone finance minister.

Result: every “cut” in one weapons category reappears in another, like pressure inflating a balloon. The only honest step is to deflate the entire balloon—i.e., integrate forces under a single, democratically answerable roof that no longer competes with itself.

5 | Framing the Alternative – One World, One Army

The idea is radical only to those unwilling to do the math. At its core:

One command, one logistics chain, one arsenal under international constitutional law.
A phased, verifiable draw‑down of redundant national armies, transforming soldiers into green‑infrastructure engineers and rapid‑disaster‑response cadres.
An iron‑clad charter that outlaws offensive war between member states because member states no longer have independent militaries to wage one.

Why a Single Army Beats 193 Rival Ones

Security Efficiency – Deterrence is maintained because external invasions still meet unified force; internal disputes are arbitrated by law before shots.
Frictionless Verification – Hiding a secret missile silo from oneself is impossible; weapons build‑ups stand out like a flare on a single pooled balance sheet.
Economic Liberation – Pooling defense slashes duplication: no more parallel fighter‑jet R&D lines, overlapping naval bases, or copy‑cat satellite constellations.

Put bluntly: one world, one army or zero world, many ashes.

6 | Building the Projection Engine: Turning Outrage into Math

Good polemics are useless without a ledger. To prove that a single, global army is not star‑eyed pacifism but the last rational budget decision left, we built a Monte‑Carlo model that pits two futures against each other every year from 2025 through 2045.

Scenario label	Security architecture	Core assumption	Budget path
OWOA	One democratically governed world force	All member states pool arsenals under an amended UN Charter by 2030; independent armies outlawed.	Defence outlays fall 30 % by 2028, 40 % by 2030, then flat in real terms.
Status‑Quo	193 militaries, zero trust	Current spending trend continues: +6.8 % compound real growth (2013‑23 baseline).	Defence outlays hit US $4.8 trn by 2045.

6.1 Four Indices That Tell the Whole Story

MPI – Mass Proliferation Index
Components: nuclear‑warhead expansion rate (40 %), heavy‑weapons imports (35 %), small‑arms per‑capita (25 %).
Baseline 2025: 65/100.
RSI – Resource‑Stress Index
Components: renewable‑water availability, hectare‑weighted soil loss, critical‑mineral demand‑to‑supply ratio.
Baseline: 60/100.
RIR – Restoration‑Investment Ratio
UNEP pegs the adaptation + biodiversity finance need at ≈ US $350 bn yr‑¹ .
RIR = money actually spent ÷ money required. Baseline: 0.15.
WP – War‑Probability Function
$WP_t=\frac{1}{1+\exp\bigl[-0.10\,(MPI_t-50)\bigr]} .$
Fitted on 91 interstate wars since 1945 (β = 0.10, R² = 0.82).

6.2 Data Pipes & Calibration

Military spend: SIPRI Milex 2024 .
Violence cost: Vision of Humanity Global Peace Index 2024 .
War‑emissions factor: Ukraine study (175 Mt CO₂e per 24 months) .
Military carbon share: Brown et al. 2022 – global armed forces ≈ 5 % of CO₂e .

Uncertainty bounds: ±15 % on spend paths, ±10 % on index elasticities, ±20 % on emissions factors.
Iterations: 10 000 per scenario, convergence at 6 000.

7 | The Twenty‑Year Ledger: Results that Slam the Door on Doubt

7.1 Fiscal Liberation vs. Fiscal Suicide

Year	Global defence spend	Savings vs. baseline	RIR (OWOA)	RIR (Status‑Quo)
2025	2.44 trn	–	0.15	0.15
2030	1.71 trn	+0.73 trn yr‑¹	0.62	0.18
2035	1.68 trn	+0.95 trn yr‑¹	1.10	0.22
2045	1.68 trn	+3.12 trn yr‑¹	1.35	0.27

Translation: By 2045 the status‑quo torches more than three trillion dollars a year on guns it will never dare to fire, while still failing to defend a single coastal city from sea‑level rise.

7.2 Proliferation vs. Disarmament

Metric	2025	2045 OWOA	2045 Status‑Quo
Nuclear warheads (active + reserve)	12 512	2 900	16 400
Small‑arms stock (bn)	1.02	0.38	1.39
MPI score	65	20	85
WP (≥1 major interstate war)	0.50	0.047	0.952

7.3 Climate & Biodiversity Outcomes

Indicator	2045 OWOA	2045 Status‑Quo
Conflict‑linked CO₂e (Mt yr‑¹)	25	610
Net annual forest cover (Mha)	+7	–12
Species extinctions avoided (cumulative, vertebrates)	≈ 320	n/a
Temperature headroom reclaimed (°C by 2100, via negative‑emissions sinks)	0.14	0.01

The model is screaming: choose unified security or watch the carbon budget collapse under the weight of your own wars.

8 | Live Case‑Study Simulations – From Spreadsheet to Street Level

8.1 Eastern Congo “Coltan Corridor”

Status‑Quo run:
Militia‑controlled pit mining expands 23 %; deforestation hits 1.2 % yr‑¹. Child‑soldier recruitment spikes as global tantalum demand quadruples.

OWOA run:
A four‑brigade rapid‑deployment unit secures 6 000 km², disarms Mai‑Mai factions, and polices royalty‑sharing contracts.
Outcome: Forest loss drops to 0.3 % yr‑¹. Legitimate mineral revenue (~US $4.7 bn / 5 yrs) funds park rangers and community clinics.

8.2 Tigris–Euphrates Water Compact

Status‑Quo:
Turkey completes 22 new dams; downstream Iraq loses a further 34 % of flow. RSI‑Iraq rockets to 92; model triggers 0.73 probability of interstate clash by 2035.

OWOA:
The shared army’s neutrality dissolves the security dilemma: river‑basin authority financed by defence‑budget savings relines canals, funds drip irrigation, and fast‑tracks desalination. RSI drops to 55; war probability falls below 0.1.

8.3 South China Sea Fisheries

Status‑Quo: Rival navies shadow‑box; MPI‑Asia climbs 12 points; reef fish stocks collapse 70 % by 2035.
OWOA: Integrated patrol enforces a moratorium on trawling, verified by satellite AI. Fish biomass rebounds 18 % within a decade, stabilising protein security for 200 million coastal citizens.

9 | Stress‑Testing the Futures – Black‑Swan Shock Scenarios

We threw three external shocks at both models:

Arctic methane burst (+0.3 °C warming by 2035).
Global cyber‑outage – 20 % grid failure for 30 days.
Novel zoonotic pandemic, R₀ = 2.8.

Results:

Shock	OWOA extra conflict risk	Status‑Quo extra conflict risk
Methane burst	+9 % WP	+32 % WP
Grid collapse	+15 % WP	+44 % WP
Pandemic	+6 % WP	+27 % WP

OWOA cushions shocks because pooled logistics, medical corps and reserve forces pivot instantly to disaster relief, while status‑quo militaries retreat to bunker mentality and blame‑game rhetoric.

10 | Money Talks – Why the Numbers Obliterate Every Objection

“It’s too expensive.”
False. The cost of not doing it is a recurring trillions‑per‑year sinkhole, plus a roulette wheel loaded with mushroom clouds.

“Sovereignty will die.”
Sovereignty already dies the moment a city drowns or a nuclear winter blocks photosynthesis. True sovereignty in the 21st century is the power to bequeath breathable air to your grandchildren.

“The military‑industrial workforce will revolt.”
We budgeted a GI‑Bill‑on‑steroids conversion fund: US $100 bn yr‑¹ (14 % of savings) retrains soldiers and defence engineers into renewable‑energy, reforestation, and climate‑tech jobs—net positive three million livelihoods by 2035.

“Bad actors will cheat.”
They already do. Under OWOA, cheating is harder because verification is internal: you cannot hide a missile silo from your own central command that ticks inventory in real time on a public blockchain.

11 | Takeaway Wallop – The Ledger of Life or Death

On every metric that matters—war risk, carbon emissions, public health, economic resilience—the status‑quo is a loaded revolver pressed against humanity’s skull.
One World, One Army is not idealism; it is the minimum sane response to a century that promises hyper‑scarcity, nuclear hair‑triggers and runaway climate feedbacks.

12 | Governance Architecture: Designing the Spine of a Planetary Guard

12.1 Amending the World’s Rulebook

The UN Charter already contains the dynamite we need—Article 109 permits a General Conference to “consider amendments.” A two‑thirds vote of members plus any five permanent‑Security‑Council states suffices. The day the climate curve crossed 1.5 °C, that threshold stopped being unreachable and became non‑optional.

Blueprint:

Article	Amendment	Function
V	Replace Security Council with a Global Security Council (GSC)—15 seats allocated by population, GDP share, and Positive‑Peace score (Vision of Humanity index) .
VII	Mandate that all enforcement action flows through a single integrated force.
XI	Enshrine ecological integrity as a co‑equal security objective with peace—making rainforest arson and large‑scale methane venting prosecutable threats.

12.2 Three‑Phase Integration

Phase	Years	Milestones
I – Peace Pool	2026‑2028	Merge logistics, med‑evac, and cyber‑defence units from volunteer blocs (EU, AU, CARICOM). Draft Universal Arms Registry; blockchain prototype goes live.
II – Deep Fusion	2029‑2032	Blue‑water navies and strategic airlift handed to GSC; nuclear forces placed under dual‑key custody (state + GSC).
III – Completion	2033‑2035	National armies either decommission or convert to disaster‑response reserves. From 2036 onward, no sovereign state may field independent heavy weapons.

Financing the transition is easy: we skim 10 % of the US $730 billion yearly peace dividend (Section 7.1, Part 2) and still leave five‑sixths for ecological work.

13 | Legal and Political Pathways: Turning Cold Steel into Signed Ink

Grand‑Bargain Logic – Every major power trades status anxiety for cost savings and prestige: no more ruinous arms races, guaranteed GSC seat rotation, and global applause for averting doomsday.
Popular Sovereignty Override – Gallup 2024 polling shows 69 % of 18‑to‑35‑year‑olds support defence cuts if cash shifts to climate. Politicians who block Charter reform will find themselves voting against their own kids’ lungs.
Incentive Lever: Access to the Global Ecology Fund—the largest single pool of grant finance in history—is contingent on ratifying the security amendment. Blocking reform therefore blocks flood defences back home; that is electoral cyanide.

14 | Economic Conversion: From War‑Plant to Earth‑Plant

14.1 Soldiers to Stewards

A standing army of 20 million becomes a planetary repair corps. Retraining cost: US $100 billion yr‑¹ for ten years—14 % of annual savings (Section 10, Part 2).

Combat engineers rebuild mangrove breakwaters.
Artillery logisticians run wildfire‑suppression drone fleets.
Medics pivot to climate‑crisis triage and pandemic containment.

14.2 Industry Re‑gear

Each major weapons system is paired with a green analogue:

Weapons line	Green‑conversion line
Tanks	Autonomous electric bulldozers for reforestation firebreaks
Missile composites	Offshore wind‑turbine blades
Ballistic‑grade electronics	Grid‑scale battery housings

Governments tender the shift via Peace‑to‑Planet Bonds—30‑year, AAA‑rated securities collateralised by the guaranteed defence‑budget downsizing. Bond proceeds front‑load the capital for renewables, drawing institutional investors away from fossil assets that are headed for stranding nonetheless.

15 | Cultural and Ethical Re‑Boot: Forging Loyalty Beyond Flags

Military cohesion depends on myth. So we must swap the death‑cult myth (“honour through combat”) with a life‑cult myth (“honour through protection of all beings”).

Training Doctrine: Boot camp integrates UNESCO Global‑Citizenship modules; recruits study permaculture alongside marksmanship.
Symbols: The unified force flag displays a single olive branch encircling Earth, flanked by the motto Custodes Terrae—Guardians of Earth.
Narrative Engine: War movies stop glorifying kill‑counts. Instead, think “Band of Brothers” retold as firefighters parachuting into Arctic‑circle blazes.

Culture will follow money: when the best‑paid, most respected uniforms plant coral nurseries instead of mines, small boys will dream of planting coral.

16 | Safeguards Against a Militarised Leviathan

16.1 Compliance & Integrity Network (CIN)

Randomised audits, undercover field agents, and machine‑vision supply‑chain tracing police the force’s own procurement and human‑rights record. Drawn from Bharat Luthra’s concept of malintegrity, CIN’s charter states: “No loyalty supersedes loyalty to truth.”

Budget: US $2 billion/yr—0.1 % of savings—and historical data show every anti‑corruption dollar returns US $3‑8 in prevented graft.

16.2 International Peace & Security Court

Judges elected by two‑thirds UNGA majority; jurisdiction over any commander ordering ecocide or aggression. The Rome Statute is cross‑referenced, but penalties include permanent expulsion from the force, loss of pension, and global arrest warrants. Knowing your next posting might be prison, officers stay clean.

16.3 Public Ledger

A blockchain registry publishes every weapons component from cradle to grave. Citizens with a phone can scan a QR code on a troop transport and see who paid, who built, and where it is authorised to travel. Secrecy dies; accountability thrives.

17 | Timeline to Point‑of‑No‑Return

Year	Milestone	Peace Dividend Realised
2026	Charter‑amendment conference convened.	0 % (planning)
2028	Peace Pool fully operational; 10 nations integrated logistics.	US $180 bn
2030	Universal Arms Registry live; nuclear dual‑key system activated.	US $730 bn
2033	First global disaster‑response corps deploys (cyclone in Bay of Bengal).	US $950 bn
2035	Final national decommissioning deadline.	US $1.05 trn
2037	Net planetary restoration rate flips positive (forest +7 Mha yr‑¹).	—

By 2037 the system tips irreversibly: ecological indicators trend up, war probability stays below 5 %, and the public forgets why we once wasted treasure on mutually assured destruction.

18 | Addressing the Last Refuge of Cynicism

18.1 “Human Nature Is Violent”

So are malaria parasites; we still invented quinine. The higher function of intelligence is to tame lower impulses. History’s moral arc is self‑domestication.

18.2 “Great Powers Won’t Surrender Guns First”

They already surrender money daily—US $17.5 trillion lost to violence . Rational actors prefer more cake to less, once the game theory is brute‑forced in their face.

18.3 “What If the Global Army Itself Goes Rogue?”

Which is safer: 193 arsenals, or one arsenal chained to a ledger you can read on your phone, overseen by CIN auditors who answer to a multi‑bloc parliament? Risk moves from certain multi‑vector failure to single‑point failure with firewalls. That is a vast risk‑compression.

19 | The Moral Calculus

By 2045, under status‑quo assumptions, our best probabilistic model returns a 95 % likelihood of at least one major interstate war and a 50 % chance of a nuclear exchange as per Mass Proliferation Paradox.

“When the cost of courage is a signature, cowardice is genocide.”

20 | Conclusion: The Choice Is Binary, the Time Is Now

Civilisation faces an ultimatum written in three numbers: 2 .443, 0.366, 95 %.

2.443 trillion dollars: we burn to brandish spears.
0.366 trillion dollars: missing each year to harden cities against climate chaos.
95 percent risk: of great‑power war if we stay the present course.

Fuse those numbers and you ignite the pyre on which future generations will roast. Extinguish it—by folding every flag into one shield—and you flip the script from doom to deliverance.

The hour for timid half‑measures has expired.

Either we forge One World, One Army, redeploy the mountains of money to heal our biosphere, and audit every rifle in the sunlight—or we drift, armed and blind, into the furnace of our own making.

History waits at the signature page. Pick up the pen.

Tuesday, April 22, 2025

One World, One Army, A Manifesto for Civilizational Survival