FAQ

A slowdown in the decision to go to war should be seen positively: It avoids that irrational things are decided in the affect that are irreversible. Apart from that, even the normal war preparations take time. And at least in democracies, government decisions have typically to be confirmed by parliament. Adding an additional direct vote by the population to these already existing processes should only slightly delay things. Modern electronic voting methods could possibly be used to speed up things. But no matter how the process is implemented in practice, the time required is well invested, because such an important decision needs to be carefully considered. For cases in which immediate intervention is really necessary, e.g. for the evacuation of citizens from a country in which a civil war suddenly breaks out, certain well-defined exceptions could be specified.
Alliances are ultimately as strong as their support in the population. It would do no harm if everyone knew that the promise of mutual military support still has to be democratically legitimized - or can be stopped by popular veto. That would just be part of democracy. Even now, military support in an "alliance case" (e.g. of NATO) is not completely automatic, but subject to approval by parliament in its member states. Finally, it should not be forgotten that e.g. the NATO treaties date from 1949, i.e. were negotiated by a completely different generation in a completely different time, shortly after the Second World War. The negotiators of that time had no mandate to decide on war from today's young generation, and so it would be good to give people today a minimum say. Ultimately, alliances and communities of solidarity should be strengthened by democratic legitimacy that will reduce joint military actions to situations in which a common threat is recognized. And with the goal of all members of the United Nations putting the same veto possibility of war decisions into place, if there is a weakening, it will be the same for everybody and hence not disfavor any country or alliance over another.
No - at least not without any possibility of control. At least since the deplorable spectacle with which the George W. Bush administration and its "experts" drove the US into the devastating Iraq war, expert opinions should be treated with caution. Still, with our proposal the existing decision-making process will not be abolished. But it will be supplemented by a last opportunity for the people to object, which at least offers the chance to stop the worst abuses. Furthermore, the number of politicians who, by virtue of their office, have access to more information than others, is very small. E.g. only 38 members of the German Federal Parliament sit in the Defense Committee - out of the current 736 parliamentarians in total. Those who may be able to vote in a more informed manner are therefore a small minority and likely not very representative of the population.
A certain risk of influencing the population through media, interest groups, etc. exists in principle for any election. In our proposal, the referendum constitutes, however, an additional barrier that by construction can only reduce the probability of war. The "people" by themselves do not have the possibility to start a war in the proposed construction. Only the possibility to either approve a war decision already taken by their governments or to stop it by veto.
They are definitely a problem - but not the only one. With our petition and hopefully occurring correction of the design flaw of war decisions that exists even in (indirect) democracies, there is hope that as least some wars will be avoided in the future.
Not the petition, but the main goal is to trigger negotiations of an international treaty, which will be legally binding. To get there, one billion signatures world wide will create such a strong message that politicians cannot ignore it. Indeed, many will want to support it. The power of the people - our power! - should not be underestimated. Also the international campaign for banning landmines started as a grass route movement and in the end led to an international treaty, supported by resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly , see this wikipage for more of the history. Nor should the power of such laws be underestimated. Even if not all countries sign them or respect them immediately, on the long term a common consciousness does arise of what is right and what is not. Just as for other human rights, it will take time, but once people get used to having them, they don´t want to miss them anymore. The path might not be straight, but laws agreed upon by a large fraction of Earth´s nations will have a normative function that sets the right direction for others to follow.
Necessary or not is not the question here. The question is how war decisions are reached: democratically or not. No state can truly call itself democratic if its people have strictly nothing to say in one of the most important decisions that their country has to take. War concerns us all. The decision should not be left to a few politicians. One cannot exclude that in cases where a military intervention appears to be necessary (e.g. to stop a brutal aggressor that invaded another country) the people might say "No" and refuse to help that country. But it is to be expected that on the long term and on average "mistakes" in this direction are less harmful than the other way round.
That is ok - you don´t have to. If you don´t participate, others will decide for you - without referendum the politicians in power, with referendum ultimately the people. But since a referendum is only called for if the politicians made a decision for war already, the referendum plays only the role of an additional barrier. It can only reduce the probability for war, the people themselves cannot take the initiative for war. The referendum provides just an ultimate possibility for the population to stop a war machine of their own country, over which so far they had no control whatsoever. It constitutes an essential element in an approach of "checks and balances", central to democracy, where so far the body, from which all power should emanate - the people - had no "check" possibility at all.
If humanity wants to survive, we have to see things on a long time scale. Imagine a world, in which all member countries of the United Nations have laws in place that give the people the right to veto a war decision of their governments. The war-ridden history of Europe that led to WWI and WWII would be highly unlikely, because the probability that one country, with the consent of its population, attacks another one is so much reduced compared to having no veto possibility of the people. The world would be more peaceful, and humanity could focus on its more important problems. Dictators with belligerent political goals will be unlikely to get into power in the first place. And if they do, the people of such a country would still have a legal, democratic way of stopping the attack of another country by their own one. So the need of "morally legitimate" or even "morally mandatory" military intervention of one country in another for helping that country stop an aggression by a third one will arise less frequently. And if it does, it does not mean that it will not be done - but the people will have to be convinced that it is really necessary.
The goal is ambitious, indeed! But we see vetowar.org also as a huge social experiment: Can the united people of the world convince their politicians to pass laws that for once are in the interest of the people, rather than the interest of arms industry and a bunch of power-hungry politicians, misguided by illusions of divine or nationalistic mission and grandeur? What comes to our advantage are social media. In times where videos like pinkfong or gangnam style get billions of clicks, maybe so can get a petition to the United Nations. Your choice - your click!
Eliminating wars from Earth´s surface would make a huge contribution to reducing world-wide CO2 emissions. Military is responsible for about 5% of greenhouse gases world-wide - a whopping 2.5 times more than global air traffic! So there is no way that we can reach a carbon-free mode of functioning without taking care of military greenhouse emissions. And the best way of doing so would be to make the world more peaceful - apart from all the other benefits.
No democracy has ever started a war against another one. This well established empirical result in political sciences of "democratic peace" has been attributed to the fact that - everything else equal - a country that is democratic is seen as less threatening by the population in a possible aggressor country. Hence, in a world where the right of referendum in case of a war decision is in place, not only is there an additional barrier for going to war, but also countries that have that referendum barrier will be seen as less threatening - and hence if ever there is a referendum, chances that the people say "yes" to aggressing such a country militarily is even lower. This implies a two-way stabilization, leading to a positive feed-back loop!
Then consider this: On average, women are substantially more prudent when it comes to questions of war. One reason might be that in most parts of the world women are still the ones who carry the largest burden of raising children, not to speak of pregnancy and giving birth, of course. So seeing their children killed or mutilated in the fraction of a second in a war is particularly heart wrenching for them. Add to this the fact that sexualized violence and war crimes against women are often systematically used as "weapon" in armed conflicts. At the same time, in the overwhelming part of the world, women are still grossly underrepresented in the parliaments and governments. So even if one thinks that there was a democratic justification for war decisions through elected governments, it is certainly even less representative for women than for the entire population. So if you want to fight for gender balance, fight for your right to veto war!