World security is currently rapidly deteriorating. Vicious circle of war grows, when violent groups or governments attack someone else, triggering reciprocal reactions, resulting in more killings and sufferings. Killings and mass murder became a common instrument of foreign policy. And we can see that "punished" are not just attackers, but also fellow citizens or random bystanders, who just happened to be in a wrong place at the wrong time. It is not hard for someone seeing its relatives or just women and children suffering to start hating, especially under the devastating influence of propaganda, which goal is always to produce concrete "enemies". The result is more and more people determined to "fight for the freedom". They do not realize that their "struggle for justice" often leads to the same suffering, injustice and determination to fight from the other side.
There was once a mechanism of collective security in place, based on the principle of forbidding military power in international relations. It could work, because everyone understand the value of peace. But the institution of mentioned collective security crumbled, when its rules ceased to be respected by their guarantors - members of Security Council themselves. This in turn strengthened the alternative mechanism. Among prevailing countries of western type democracy it was the NATO membership.
NATO membership is not a global solution for ensuring peace and stability. Paradoxically, it can create increased tension from the side of the non-members, who can perceive growing NATO strength as their own threat, which they try to decrease by seeking own alliances, secretly or publicly. Risk of war prevails, although the threshold for its start is higher. But this time it can be a war in gigantic proportions.
That is not to say that the NATO organization cannot be transformed into the important player in achieving global peace. It can, because it is strong enough and it is based on the "musketeer principle" of collective defence, making the attack at least on their members harder. NATO members consist of countries respecting values of freedom, democracy and non-violence and their philosophical setup can be therefore regarded as closest to elevate those principles of nations´ freedom, respect and non-violent cooperation into the global level as well. Positive on that is also that it consists with many small countries for which such global piece is vital, ant those countries have right of veto and right to influence the NATO policy.
NATO members also historically showed the tendency to be a "world policemen" in their engagement in some cases, where one state attacked another. Example is the current war in Ukrajine, Taiwan or the war in Kuwait. On the other hand some NATO members were also in the role of attackers, breaching the values of freedom by themselves, which needs to be changed in the first place in order to regain the necessary trust. This can be the hardest, since powerful states could regard it as deprivation of their own possibilities to interfere in international relations, but the mentioned developed democracies can understand, that the gains from this change would be many times greater than what they perceive to lose. And we cannot forget about the potential of small states of initiating this discussion, which do not have this "power dilema".
We can say that for democratic countries it is the only solution. Firstly, non-doing that only promotes extremist movements and their own territories, against which democracies are fragile. Secondly, their market-oriented economies cannot compete in the quantity of military production with large military superpowers which can finance it from selling natural sources or large surpluses from the foreign trade balance. To put it in another words, western democracies have potential to guarantee more peace to other countries as well, and in return they would get more peace in their own territories.
In order to transfer NATO into the efficient and effective collective security institution, after setting the rules, which we can name "rules of the peaceful cooperation, mutual respect and freedom of nations", membership must be open to anyone, who would declare and demonstrate the ability to follow those rules in return of gaining own protection. This membership will be of course different than the current NATO membership, where there are far more strict conditions including transparency in military issues, which not everyone would want to respect. But at the same time this "two type membership approach" would make process of enlarging faster and more universal for non-democratic countries as well. And also for neutral countries, which will be able to keep their neutrality. Neutral countries could also help to form "rules of cooperation, mutual respect and freedom of nations", since they are not far away from the concept of active neutrality.
We understand that NATO membership and neutrality is now considered not to go together. But why NATO as a whole cannot transfere its rules to act as neutral entity, who do not attack others, but only acts as peacemaker helping to stop the ongoing conflict? It would also require, new responsibility of all NATO members: anyone of them breaking the "rules of neutrality" by attacking someone will be automatically deprived of all NATO memberships. And it would be well justified too, increasing security for all members. Because aggressor who starts the war has no right to pull its allies into it too.
The above mentioned concept itself would decrease the tensions between NATO and some non-NATO members. It could, however, be ensured by other institution as well, for example through United Nations. Although this solution have advantages, its drawback is lack of capacities to engage against violators.
Rules of the peaceful cooperation, mutual respect and freedom of nations (example)
Rule No 1:
It is forbidden to use force against internal issues of foreign government.
The best method, how to decrease the risk of being invaded by foreign aggressor, is to ban any invasions. When foreign countries engage militarily to overthrow or support the dictator, it will only intensify and prolong the conflict, making the situation much worse.
Examples of events starting the war: someone murdered the politician, used chemical weapons, kills representatives of majorities, group of soldiers attacked other soldiers, etc., after of which concrete government was blamed and invasion followed. Only history then showed, that many of such “aggressive acts” were provoked or even staged by those planning the invasion, often under the "false flag".
After such event, media often “immediately know” who was (or was not) responsible for the attack. Any such news have to be regarded as suspicious as well. Presumption of innocence have to be applied all the time. More of that, it is not possible to understand the situation within the conflict from outside. Only the locals can do that. They also have best motivation and right to prevent or stop conflicts in their own country. They have also right to support or not support even their dictator. In reality, no dictator can rule without support of his population, when foreign military is not involved.
When country is attacked by foreign army, international community has right (with the agreement of the attacked government) to:
use their force to capture foreign soldiers,
help to protect borders to prevent further invasion.
Rule No 2:
Country illegally attacking someone else have no right to be protected.
Especially if one country attacks another by, for example, shelling from its territory across the borders, it would be fully legal for peacemakers to attack attacking guns to stop the shelling.
New members will also have obligation to pull back from all territories they occupy, if there is no other foreign army occupying this territory too.
Rule No 3:
Where internal conflict occur, it is international community shall make strict embargo to prevent inflow of arms or foreign soldiers from any part of the borders.
For this purpose, international community (or countries actively promoting peace) can use all their force, but they cannot engage into the issues in conflicted territory.