The avoidance of war will be one of the world’s major goals in the upcoming decades, Minow Visiting Professor in Communications David Hamburg said Tuesday in a speech sponsored by the Center for International and Comparative Studies.

“The growing destructive capacities make this the prime problem of the 21st century,” said Hamburg, the President Emeritus of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a grant-making foundation, to an audience of 400 that filled the McCormick Tribune Center Forum and spilled outside the room.

While admitting that in some cases war can be justified, Hamburg advocated policies to help prevent war from occurring in the first place.

“The international community cannot afford to wait for a crisis,” Hamburg said. “Ideally, there should be ongoing programs of international help.”

Hamburg said that to promote peace, the international community ought to reach out to democratic and reforming leaders in volatile regions of the world.

“Unfortunately, all too often, they get murdered,” Hamburg said.

Democratic development is difficult in countries where democracy has never existed or where animosity is widespread, Hamburg said. He thinks programs that encourage science, technology, economic development and education work best to build democracy. “Universities can increase our knowledge and skills at preventing deadly conflict before it’s too late.”

In addition to averting war, Hamburg said, countries can strive to obstruct genocide.

“Every single one of the 20th century holocausts had a clear warning of a time of years,” he said.

Hamburg also suggested that newly-appointed ministers of defense, state and economic development gather yearly for a two-week conference to hear experts discuss the current knowledge about the prevention of war.

“I’m very encouraged that it can be done,” Hamburg said, adding that he believes United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan could help organize such a meeting. “I’m not sure most leaders of democratic countries want to remain ignorant even if they were elected ignorant.”

Hamburg also said he believes the war in Iraq could have been prevented.

“Clearly, there was the possibility to keep inspectors in there longer, at least a few months longer,” Hamburg said. “Establishing democracy by force is in general not such a hot idea.”

In addition, Hamburg said he believes the United States could have deposed Saddam Hussein during the 1991 Gulf War. He conceded, however, that the U.S. government was justified in thinking Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

“Partly we thought that because we’d given and sold them to him,” Hamburg said.

He also spent time discussing international cooperation. He recounted how he asked former President George H.W. Bush to write an essay and that Bush wrote about how important it was for him to form a multinational coalition, especially one including Islamic countries, in the 1991 Gulf War.

“That’s what he wanted to write,” Hamburg said. “He could have written about any situation in the world.”

Members of the audience, which consisted primarily of retirees, said they were impressed by Hamburg’s speech.

“It was a magnificent presentation and review of the world situation and the problem of eliminating genocide,” said Wilmette resident Dick Seyfarth.

Judy Baskin, a self-described peace activist from Chicago, said that Hamburg’s thoughts appealed to her.

“I was very interested in what he said about Kofi Annan and his idea,” Baskin said. “What he said, we should not give up on it.”