Peace Movements Worldwide [3 Volumes] 9780313364792, 9780313364785

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P E A C E M OV E M E N T S W O R L DW I D E

Recent Titles in Contemporary Psychology Preventing Teen Violence: A Guide for Parents and Professionals Sherri N. McCarthy and Claudio Simon Hutz Making Enemies: Humiliation and International Conflict Evelin Lindner Collateral Damage: The Psychological Consequences of America’s War on Terrorism Paul R. Kimmel and Chris E. Stout, editors Terror in the Promised Land: Inside the Anguish of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Judy Kuriansky, editor Trauma Psychology, Volumes 1 and 2 Elizabeth Carll, editor Beyond Bullets and Bombs: Grassroots Peace Building between Israelis and Palestinians Judy Kuriansky, editor Who Benefits from Global Violence and War: Uncovering a Destructive System Marc Pilisuk with Jennifer Achord Rountree Right Brain/Left Brain Leadership: Shifting Style for Maximum Impact Mary Lou D
e costerd Creating Young Martyrs: Conditions That Make Dying in a Terrorist Attack Seem Like a Good Idea Alice LoCicero and Samuel J. Sinclair Emotion and Conflict: How Human Rights Can Dignify Emotion and Help Us Wage Good Conflict Evelin Lindner Emotional Exorcism: Expelling the Psychological Demons That Make Us Relapse Holly A. Hunt, Ph.D. Gender, Humiliation, and Global Security: Dignifying Relationships from Love, Sex, and Parenthood to World Affairs Evelin Lindner

P E AC E M OV E M E N T S W O R L DW I D E Volume 1: History and Vitality of Peace Movements

Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler, Editors

CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY

Chris E. Stout, Series Editor

Copyright 2011 by Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Peace movements worldwide / Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler, editors. p. cm. — (Contemporary psychology) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-313-36478-5 (hard copy : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-36479-2 (e-book) — ISBN 978-0-313-36480-8 (vol. 1 hard copy : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0313-36481-5 (vol. 1 e-book) — ISBN 978-0-313-36482-2 (vol. 2 hard copy : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-36483-9 (vol. 2 e-book) — ISBN 978-0-313-36484-6 (vol. 3 hard copy : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-36485-3 (vol. 3 e-book) 1. Peace movements 2. Peace movements—History. I. Pilisuk, Marc. II. Nagler, Michael N. JZ5574.P44 2011 303.60 6—dc22 2010037446 ISBN: 978-0-313-36478-5 EISBN: 978-0-313-36479-2 15 14

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This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. Praeger An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

ix

Set Introduction

xi

Introduction to Volume 1

xv PA R T I

THE MEANING CHAPTER

1

CHAPTER

2

CHAPTER

3

4

CHAPTER

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P E AC E

1

Eternal Peace Michael N. Nagler A Philosophy of Peace Barry L. Gan Peace and Development Today: An Overview Johan Galtung

T H E P E AC E CHAPTER

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PA R T I I I N H E R I TA N C E : S C I E N C E A N D O F H U M A N N AT U R E

The Evolution of Peace Michael N. Nagler and Angel Ryono Psychology and Peace Marc Pilisuk and Mitch Hall

THE

3 18 31

PROMI SE 37 41 52

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Contents

PA R T I I I A S O C I E TA L P E R S P E C T I V E CHAPTER

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CHAPTER

7

CHAPTER

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Cultural Understanding in Peacekeeping, Peacemaking, and Peace Building Paul R. Kimmel Rethinking ‘‘Identity’’ for a Global Age: Emerging Responsibilities and Duties Rebecca Joy Norlander and Anthony J. Marsella Cultures of Peace or Culture of Peace? David Adams PA R T I V RELIGIOUS DIMENSIONS

CHAPTER

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CHAPTER

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CHAPTER

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CHAPTER

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CHAPTER

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CHAPTER

15

P E AC E

The Spirit of Change: Spiritual and Religious Resources for Peace and Justice Movements Donald Rothberg When Prayer and Revolution Became People Power Hildegard Goss-Mayr Catholic Social Teaching: Integrating the Virtue of Nonviolent Peacemaking Eli Sasaran McCarthy Alternatives to War and Violence: An Islamic Perspective Mohammed Abu-Nimer and Jamal A. Badawi

GENDER CHAPTER

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PA R T V I N WA R A N D P E A C E

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Women: Battleground for War, Resource for Peace Gianina Pellegrini 175 Nothing Short of a Revolution: Reflections on the Global Women’s Movement Kavita Nandini Ramdas 185 A Feminist Ethical Perspective on Weapons of Mass Destruction Carol Cohn and Sara Ruddick 197

Contents

PA R T V I THE CHALLENGE BEFORE US CHAPTER

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CHAPTER

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CHAPTER

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War, Peace, and Climate Change: A Billion Lives in the Balance Jan Egeland The Moment for Turning: Living as if Peace and Sustainability Really Mattered David C. Korten Against So Much Money and Power, Can the Peace Movement Succeed? Marc Pilisuk and Ellen Gaddy

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225

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A Final Word Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler

253

Bibliography

255

Index

277

About the Editors and Contributors

289

About the Series Editor and Advisory Board

299

About the Series

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A C K N OW L E D G M E N T S

The three volumes of this book were invited by our publisher who saw, as we do, the value in an overview, as far as it was possible to take one, of the peace movement as a whole. First Debora Carvalko and then Lindsay Claire and Denise Stanley have been immensely supportive throughout. We soon found that the task of inviting, identifying, and editing selections from academics, officials, and activists from the varied aspects of the search for peace was a challenge to our time and organizational talents. To all of our contributors, some world renowned, all busy, we extend our thanks and appreciation for working with us, sometimes on short notice, to include their chapters. We remain amazed and grateful for the work for peace described in their contributions and the courage and persistence of the people they write about. The Metta Center for Nonviolence receives a special thanks for providing us with a welcoming place to meet. This collection could never have seen the light of day without the dedicated involvement of a number of people. Gianina Pellegrini spent long hours beyond the few for which she was compensated to keep us on task, to communicate respectfully to hundreds of people through thousands of messages. She edited manuscripts, recruited other graduate students from Saybrook University to help, organized tasks and meetings, volunteered to write two articles on her own that we truly needed, fell behind in her own studies but never despaired or lost a chance to encourage others. Chris

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Acknowledgments

Johnnidis of the Metta Center provided initial help in setting up an interactive filing system. The project got a boost when Gianina spread the word at Saybrook University. Saybrook deserves thanks for finding some of the most talented and dedicated students anywhere. Rebecca Joy Norlander provided endless hours of editing, evaluating, and reformatting articles and is a co-author of an article. Angel Ryono likewise helped write, edit, and find authors to fill gaps, and is a co-author of two articles. Other students whose generous help included becoming chapter authors are: Nikolas LarrowRoberts, Rev. Jos
e M. Tirado, Ellen Gaddy, and Melissa Anderson-Hinn. Two other colleagues, Mitch Hall and Daniel J. Adamski, saw enough in the project to pitch in with major editing tasks and went on to be co-authors of chapters. Many others whom we were not able to include in the anthology helped us tremendously, sharing their specific expert knowledge and contacts to help us frame the task. These include Donna Nassor, Sandy Olleges, Kevin Bales, Curt Wands, Glen Martin, Byron Belitsos, Ethel Tobach, Douglas Fry, Ahmed Afzaal, Susan McKay, Joel Federman, Gail Ervin, Dan Christie, and Josanne Korkinen. Marc wants to express appreciation for the inspiration of two mentors, Anatol Rapaport and Kenneth Boulding; of his parents, who always valued peace and justice; and to his wife Phyllis, who tolerated his sleep-deprived state for close to a year understanding what he was trying to do. He thanks Michael N. Nagler for being a partner whose knowledge and belief in the peace movement is just amazing. Michael wants to thank the staff at the Metta Center for giving him the space and the encouragement to see this task through; his friends and colleagues in the peace movement for stepping up with translation (Matthias Zeumer), ideas, and other contributions; Marc Pilisuk for inviting him on board in the first place; and above all his mentor and guide, Sri Eknath Easwaran of the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, for showing him his life’s path and never losing faith that he would follow it to the end.

S E T I NTRODUCTION

The only thing we can, and therefore must control, is the imagery in our own mind. —Epictetus

We humans have great abilities to create images, and with them, to build a significant part of our reality, and therefore to nurture or to destroy our species and its surroundings. We have used these abilities creatively but not always kindly, or wisely. As our science and technologies have made it possible to appreciate how our lives are part of one global world, they have also provided us with the means to destroy earth’s capacity to support life. The peace movement that is growing throughout the world gives recognition and power to the first side of the balance, reacting against violence and war, raising aloft a higher vision of harmony and peace. It provides us with a living history of the strength of people, of communities and tribes, and sometimes of governments, to create social institutions and ideas that give peace its chance to grow. It is in the search for peace, for a way to live in harmony with each other and with the natural order that we seem to come most alive and closest to the meaning of our existence on this earth. The peace movement is likely the only undertaking that holds out a promise that the remarkable experiment of life can go on. We consider peace to include both the absence of unnecessary violence and the pursuit of a world that offers deep contentment with the process of

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life. We feel some dismay as we look at paths taken by humans toward large-scale violence. But the destruction and suffering we find is not the whole story. There is another and far more hopeful story, partly old, partly new, and partly yet to be written. Peace connotes a world with harmony among people and between people and their environment. It is surely not a world without anger or one without conflict. But it is a world in which the fulfillment of human needs can occur without inflicting preventable violence and human beings can grow closer to one another in spirit, which, as St. Augustine said, is the ultimate purpose and underlying desire of our very nature (see Volume 1, Chapter 2). Like science, which has a capacity for change as new evidence emerges, the pursuit of peace is an ongoing process in which its adherents can and do learn from the past and continually make new discoveries. Like democracy, the pursuit of peace does not always produce a better world right away, but that pursuit unquestionably has the capacity to bring correctives into the directions of our evolution as a species. The peace movement is an exciting and empowering wave of worldwide change that can harness the power of each of us, individually and collectively, for love and for life. There are many books about peace. In the three volumes of this anthology we have chosen not to be an encyclopedia of the efforts for peace, peace,1 or a history of worldwide efforts to realize it;2 nor for that matter a celebration of a hopeful future. Rather we have tried to present a mosaic that gives due recognition to the obstacles to be overcome while sampling the amazing creativity of what has been and is being done to overcome them. The doers are scientists and poets, professors and peasant women, intergovernmental agencies and community art projects, soldiers and pacifists, environmentalists and defenders of human rights. Rather than force a rigid analysis on how all their efforts combine we have tried mainly to let the voices be heard. Volume 1 focuses on different ways people have looked at peace—to construct a theory of its nature and possibilities. We present a framework for peace studies set forth by Johan Galtung, who more than anyone living deserves to be considered the founder of the field (peace entered academic discourse as a discrete subject only very recently), and we go on to writings that examine the deeper meanings of peace. The ubiquity of human aggression and violence leads some to the despairing conclusion that we are inherently warlike. We report on the new perspectives in biology, anthropology, and psychology that paint a different picture of what humans are or are not constrained to do by our nature, and take issue with the prevalent concept that we are ‘‘wired’’ to fight—or even to cooperate—which implies a determinism that is denied by science and common experience. Because world

Set Introduction

xiii

peace will require some transformative changes in the way we view ourselves and our world, a section is devoted to the issue of human identity and the culture of peace. We look at the contribution of organized religion to the quest for peace. (Spirituality, as somewhat distinct from organized religion, and other broad topics are treated in Volume 3). Volume 1 ends with chapters taking a hard look at the magnitude of change required for peace and the institutional, particularly economic and monetary, forces, that need to be transformed if peace is to reign. Volume 2 looks at what is being done in response to war and other forms of violent conflict. Moving along the chain of causality, we cite efforts to prevent mass killing by monitoring and controlling weapons that in some cases are capable not only of ending lives needlessly but of obliterating life as we know it, as well as the ongoing efforts to expose corporate beneficiaries of war and to invest instead in enterprises that promote human and environmental health. Then we examine the aftermath of violence—the trauma, the scars, and the all-important processes of reconciliation and healing. We end Volume 2 with accounts of select national and regional movements, the world over, that have grown in opposition to war. Volume 3 is the proactive and constructive complement to the anti-war movements described in Volume 2. Here we illustrate efforts at building a peaceful world and its cultural infrastructure through peace education and reform of the media that at present do little to counter those powerful forces that promote a culture of violence and even instigate incidents of mass violence. We sample some highly creative ways that peace is being built at levels from courageous individuals to developing villages and on to international treaties and institutions. Then we examine, with examples, the process by which people can experience transformative change on a personal level that empowers participation in building a peaceful world. When ‘‘peace’’ is taken in its full meaning, when one backs out from the simple cessation of one armed conflict or another to begin to sense the preconditions, the ‘‘dispositions’’ (as Erasmus says) that produced the outcome of conflict and its cessation, one begins to realize that the search for peace is almost coterminous with the evolution of human consciousness, of our destiny. Such a discussion obviously cannot be covered even in an anthology of this size. What one can do, and what we have tried to do, is sketch out a picture reasonably faithful to the variety, the intensity, and the unquenchable audacity of the men and women who have taken up this struggle from above (through law and policy), from below (from grassroots to civil society), and most characteristic of the present, from within (through personal transformation). For this goal, many have laid down their very lives. We come away

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Set Introduction

from our survey of all this activity, dedication, and sacrifice with a combined sense of awe and inspiration. At the end of the day, it is this inspiration that we wish to share with you. For as various writers in all three volumes have noted, all the ingredients for an evolutionary step forward toward this as-yet unrealized world are in place—some of them have been for some time. What is missing is the overview, the sense of the big picture, and the confidence in the heart of each one of us that we can make a difference. This we can do even in face of the apparently never-to-be-dislodged juggernaut of war: the mindset, the dehumanizing training, the institutions, the frightening technology. In face of that enormity, a countering awareness has arisen of the unquenchable drive for peace and what it has brought into being. The art, science, and practice of peace are having impacts on human understanding, institutions, and behaviors that are indispensable—if not for the courage to get engaged, at least for our sanity. But we hope for more; we hope you will come away from this set of books with re-fired determination to join this struggle, and a slightly sharper sense of where to make your best contribution. Nothing would please us more.

NOTES 1. Lazlo and Yoo, 1986; Kurtz and Turpin, 1999; Powers and Vogele, 1997. 2. Among many examples, see Chatfield and Kleidman, 1992; Chatfield, 1973; Beales, 1971; and http://www.peacehistorysociety.org/. For conscientious objection worldwide, see the works of historian Peter Brock.

INTRODUCTION

TO

VO LU M E 1

The three volumes that constitute this collection move, as we have pointed out, from an investigation into what exactly peace is, along with some early efforts to achieve it (or restore it, if we consider the warless state of early societies as a state of peace), to resistance efforts in the modern period that have largely arisen as reaction to war and repression, and finally to more proactive attempts to build a peaceful world from positive resources—the equivalent of Gandhi’s ‘‘constructive program.’’ In this first volume, accordingly, we look at the ways people have sought to understand peace through various lenses available to them—philosophical, psychological, sociological, religious, and gender-based. We add a section on ‘‘the challenge before us’’ to give some feeling for the situation in which we find ourselves at time of this writing (Fall 2009). We have not reached ‘‘the end of history,’’ by any means. We will never reach it until war is laid to rest. That belief is shared by virtually all the authors in this collection. As one of the interviewees in Laura Bernstein’s chapter on a typical grassroots peace effort put it, ‘‘I don’t want my grandchildren to read about this conflict in the newspaper; I want them to read about it in history books’’ (see Volume 3, Chapter 14). The expectation that our grandchildren will see that state either with regard to the Israel-Palestine conflict or the planet at large may not seem likely; but the hope that our descendants will reach it sometime can never be abandoned.

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Introduction to Volume 1

In 1938, a number of English writers took up a similar task to ours: to motivate readers to work for peace by marshalling some ideas, language, and metaphors that might help them. Storm Jameson was one of them. In her essay she sheds light on the great paradox: why is peace, which is so ‘‘devoutly to be wished,’’ as Augustine said, that no one does not wish for it, so rarely chosen and worked for in practice? She said, ‘‘Yes, we wish for peace; but we do not will it.’’ Although it is quite incorrect to say that war is ‘‘instinctual’’ (see Part II in this volume), there is clearly something deeper than ordinary thinking that drives us into war—and that, when harnessed to another path, could loft us toward peace. It is interesting to read the various chapters in this volume (and from others that could be added) with the question in mind, How does wish become will; when and how will peace be an idea whose time has come? With this question in mind we examine some of the cultural mechanisms in human societies past or present to keep warfighting at bay and/or create the institutions of a robust peace. It is encouraging to note that the way we understand peace has developed, albeit slowly, through cultural history; for surely if we want to build something we must have some idea of what it is. Arnold Toynbee once said that what rouses will is ‘‘an ideal that takes the imagination by storm, and a definite, intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice.’’ Combining the insights into the possibility of peace that we have in this volume with the practical efforts to achieve it, negative and positive, that are offered in the next two might just fill that bill. A young German friend of ours recently wrote a moving song about war with the refrain, Sei es immer so heilig, ich mache nicht mit (‘‘sacred as it may be, I won’t take part’’). Surely as long as war is thought of as sacrosanct no will can be mobilized to renounce it. In this regard, the human capacity for contradiction is impressive. Although ‘‘the name of God is peace,’’ as Jewish and Islamic scriptures declare, and the greatest gift of God is that eternal peace, which is his very being, as Augustine and many others report, most people seem to believe that the most reliable way to sanctity is to die in the act of killing others. On the wall of the Munich cathedral one can see a basrelief of a soldier rising out of the grave, Wehrmacht helmet and all, to receive a crown at the hands of God: Sie verdienten eine Krone am Hande Gottes, ‘‘they earned a crown at the hand of God.’’ It is hard to understand the persistence of this belief other than as a desperate attempt to whitewash with sanctity a behavior about which we in fact feel an intolerable kind of guilt (the abundant scientific evidence for this guilt is described in the discussion by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman and psychologist Rachel MacNair’s concept of perpetration-induced traumatic stress outlined in Volume 2,

Introduction to Volume 1

xvii

Chapter 21. Martydom, a Jewish invention of the second century BCE, is a dangerous idea, as we see in the minds of terrorists today. In 1981, Michael Nagler wrote a brief article called ‘‘Peace as a Paradigm Shift’’ for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that was widely read and translated. Thomas Kuhn’s concept had given us a way to name and thus better understand the kind of transformation of consciousness that would be required to strip killing and death-in-killing of their aura of sanctity and rediscover the sanctity of life and the protection of life. How paradigm shifts happen is still a mystery, just as it is difficult to explain how crowds (or for that matter mobs) take up a dramatic idea and run with it, or large groups of people spontaneously self-organize and carry out complex tasks. But these are not quite as mysterious as they were, thanks to some studies that could not be included in this volume. That is important, because there is widespread agreement that these questions must be better understood because the scale and the urgency of the shift is such that we cannot wait for it to happen of itself. Perhaps the diverse insights offered by the chapters of this volume can help in that understanding.

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PART I

THE MEANING

OF

PEACE

Properly speaking, peace does not have a meaning. It is the meaning behind everything we do, even biologically, as St. Augustine eloquently points out in the City of God. Peace is the summum bonum that requires no elucidation from an outside concept but is the elucidation of all concepts. That said, with rare exceptions our awareness of peace falls far short of that vision, and so we must try to understand it through the lenses we have ground ourselves. One of them is ‘‘philosophy,’’ handled in this brief section. It begins with Michael Nagler’s attempt to bring out some of the foundational insights in the peace section of Augustine’s magisterial City of God. This passage has, in our view, been neglected and underappreciated. Though it is the first extended and articulate discussion of the peace concept in the Western tradition, as far as we know, it was far ahead of its time in recognizing that peace is positive, not merely the absence of war or violence, and contains other insights that should have put the discourse on peace far down the road. No doubt the fact that Augustine frames his discussion in religious terms, seeing peace as not a but the positive reality, allows many to label him as religious and dismiss him as impractical. There is a parallel in the objection that was raised in India to Gandhi’s adopting the ancient term swaraj, used to denote spiritual freedom, for political freedom. He replied that he had adopted it deliberately, because he did not see a wall of separation between the spiritual or eternal freedom and the political and temporal freedom for which they were struggling. If there were such a wall, would not all religious thinking be irrelevant?

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History and Vitality of Peace Movements

Barry Gan then brings us down to contemporary thinking on many of these questions. He stresses, albeit implicitly, the interconnectedness of life when he points out that in peace thinking today all life must be held in respect—one of the surest differentiating tenets from the views that accept force and violence. Similarly, he refutes the doctrine that ends justify means, which by a stroke knocks the justification out from under war reasoning. (Because of this truth, as Gan points out, ‘‘for all intents and purposes all modern war is immoral.’’) Johan Galtung, considered the founder of peace studies, contributes the synoptic overview, a practical philosophy of where peace creation is and where it will have to go from here. Galtung is not technically a philosopher. His degrees were in mathematics and sociology and his work, through TRANSCEND, is to reduce conflicts and avert wars through peacemaking, peacekeeping, and where possible, peace building. These now standard terms Galtung invented are referenced at various points in this book, but for convenience, they are defined as follows: • Peacemaking equals stopping an ongoing conflict and bringing about rapprochement between or among contending parties. • Peacekeeping equals policy and monitoring a fragile peace and preventing relapse into violence. • Peace building equals restoring the underlying conditions the distortion of which caused the conflict.

His descriptions of direct, cultural, and structural violence are critical to the conception of peace in this anthology. The peace movement we identify works as diligently to remove injustice and inequality as to prevent shooting wars. What Galtung brings to the table is his uncommon familiarity with peace activities and peace thinking worldwide, and his analytical ability to categorize them usefully. Toward what goal is the peace movement (or the movement towards peace) going? Surely the movement toward peace requires an appreciation of this unfolding vision and beautiful phenomenon. To understand peace one must recognize that it is still slowly evolving and understand as well the relationships among its many facets. The concept of peace is at once amazingly simple and compelling, and yet still part of an unsolved mystery. The chapters in this section illustrate that the study of peace is indeed a discipline that has come of age and has begun to shed some important light on the path. —Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler

CHAPTER

1

E T E R NA L P E AC E Michael N. Nagler

Even on the level of earthly and temporal values, nothing that we can talk about, long for, or finally get is so desirable, so welcome, so good as peace. —St. Augustine, The City of God, XIX.11, p. 451

Before there were peace movements, there was the ‘‘movement toward peace.’’ This was pioneer peace researcher Kenneth Boulding’s term for the inexorable, slow mobilization of the human desire for creating and maintaining peace,1 an ongoing, evolutionary process that is taking place unevenly in all societies, as opposed to the more visible work of civil society organizations and—occasionally—governments. While much of these three volumes will be concerned, quite appropriately, with that more formal and more easily documented side of peace creation, I focus here on a few highlights in the development of an underlying culture, a shared understanding of peace. This underlying vision is the infrastructure of formal organizations and eventual policy. The longing for peace that Augustine so poignantly describes is not going away; it is part of our nature. In fact, this movement toward peace, he and many others believe, is nothing less than the unfolding of human destiny. Note, in this connection, that while it is fitting to speak of peace movements in the plural, there is only one movement toward peace.

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History and Vitality of Peace Movements

THE PREVAILING PARADIGM AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS In February 2009 a Sri Lankan, Umar Jaleel, was abducted by nine gunmen from a house in Basilan, the Philippines. Nothing unusual, unfortunately, except that Jaleel, like Tom Fox, who met his death at the hands of kidnappers three years earlier in Iraq, was in Basilan as a peacekeeper. Specifically, he was a field team member for Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP), an organization that is building a worldwide service of nonviolent intervention along the lines Gandhi chalked out much earlier for his shanti sena, ‘‘armies of peace.’’ Armies of peace may sound a bit paradoxical, but paradoxes and double negatives characterize the universe of discourse on peace. The reason is that the prevailing, popular concept of peace takes war and violence to be real, while peace and nonviolence can be enjoyed only in their interstices: take away war and what’s left is peace. It’s not that easy. Nor is it easy, apparently, to grasp that peace and nonviolence (the mother of all double negatives in this field) are real and that war is the absence of them. The first news reports of Jaleel’s abduction stated that he had an armed bodyguard who saved himself from the attackers by gunfire! This proved to be an outrageous falsehood, and NP spokespeople were quick to correct it (but as usual the damage was done). It is hard to realize that people are risking their lives, and in some cases forfeiting them, partly to help humanity correct its vision, to wean us from what was long ago declared a heresy but still holds sway over our minds: the idea that evil is real and good only its temporary suppression. For the record, there was no bodyguard, much less an armed one. When a more amateur peace team prepared to enter Sarajevo in 1995 and members of the UN protection force, UNPROFOR, offered to escort their thrown-together convoy of buses down the dangerous ‘‘sniper alley,’’ the team refused and pointed out that to accept such ‘‘protection’’ would negate the whole point of their mission. In they went, without a shot fired (though by that year the snipers had wounded 1,030 people and killed 225 [60 of whom were children]).2 I invited the head of Air Force Military Science to speak to my nonviolence class some years ago, and raised examples like this one. My friend came back with, ‘‘Well, that’s nice, but please, when you do something like that, have a rifle platoon behind you to back you up.’’ One of my students, whose whole family was Air Force, calmly said, ‘‘No, sir. We believe nonviolence is its own protection.’’ What’s at stake here is much more than an annoying misunderstanding. It is a paradigm. Starting from the ‘‘take away war’’ concept, from what is called today negative peace, humanity has never gotten past Vegetius: ‘‘if

Eternal Peace

5

you want peace you have to prepare for war,’’ or if you want a modern reincarnation, President Reagan’s doctrine of ‘‘peace through strength.’’ Untold damage has been done by that belief, which is as tenacious as it is mischievous. In an attempt to correct it during Reagan’s tenure (he wanted, remember, to dub the MX missile ‘‘peacemaker’’), I wrote an op-ed with the provocative title ‘‘Strength through Peace.’’ I was pleased when it was accepted by a major newspaper—but my smile faded when the piece appeared with the title ‘‘Peace through Strength.’’ An editor had, no doubt unconsciously, ‘‘corrected’’ my title to the conventional form. Yet, as the Old Testament psalm says, ‘‘The horse is a vain thing for safety; neither doth he deliver anyone by his great power’’ (33:17). There is no doubt that war can accomplish a great deal, but it cannot accomplish peace. Gandhi’s vision provides a bracing contrast: The world rests upon the bedrock of satya or truth. Asatya meaning untruth also means non-existent, and satya or truth also means that which is. If untruth does not so much as exist, its victory is out of the question. And truth being that which is can never be destroyed. This is the doctrine of Satyagraha [soul-force, literally clinging to truth] in a nutshell.3

In the historical record of the understanding of peace in the West there have been two major breakthroughs.

Peace Is Positive In her 1981 study of the vocabulary of war and peace in the early Greek poets, Dominique Arnould points out that the various words for peace are fewer than those for war at all periods.4 As she says, Le d
e s
e quilibre entre les deux domaines est tre s net: the vocabulary of peace is far poorer. What’s more, she points out, each term for ‘‘war’’ in this universe of discourse brings up a set of specific activities; it is both a concrete and articulate semantic field. As she asks rhetorically, Mais la paix a-t-elle des activit
e s propres? What, indeed, are the activities proper to peace? Sitting under one’s own fig tree, for example, are activities that peace makes possible: but what makes peace possible? What is peace itself ? Understanding how our present concepts of peace (for they are plural) developed, and where they still need to go, can suggest some answers. The asymmetry Arnould turned up in the early Greek poets only increases as one moves down toward the Classical period, and in the end, she discovers (p. 107) such metaphors that you get for ‘‘peace’’ are only the negatives of war metaphors. And that dyslexic vision, as we’ve just seen, is

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History and Vitality of Peace Movements

in part still with us. Some years ago the Department of the Navy defined peace as ‘‘perpetual pre-hostility.’’ People misuse the hallowed name of peace to mislead themselves and anyone listening. Augustine points this up clearly: ‘‘anyone who is rational enough to prefer right to wrong and order to disorder can see that the kind of peace that is based on injustice . . . does not deserve the name of peace.’’5 But it often does get that name. Much public discourse today is an awkward mixture of these fundamentally incompatible definitions of peace, as positive and negative reality. In 1979, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace (the history of the prize is itself an interesting study of confusions and ambiguities). One reason she richly deserved it is that when she heard that disabled children had been abandoned in an orphanage in Beirut during the intense bombardment of 1982 she went in and rescued 37 children—and both sides stopped fighting to let her do so. The only problem was that Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who had ordered the shelling, had also gotten the Nobel the year before. Now, in practical terms, it is possible to arrive at peace within a given system by systematically eliminating war and the possibility of war from that system. Actors poised on the brink of ‘‘pre-hostility,’’ or even somewhat further back, cannot meaningfully be said to be at peace; but it is conceivable that by systematically dismantling every threat of war in their environment they could in time find themselves left with peace. It is unlikely that that happy state could last very long, however, unless some positive concept of peace were there to reorient, guide, and sustain the parties who are trying to uphold it. This is why Gandhi, who was so far ahead of his time, created what was to be called the Constructive Programme (CP) alongside his Satyagraha (active resistance) from the earliest days of his public activities in South Africa (1894). One of his arguments for CP was that while an ‘‘effervescent’’ uprising can at times throw off a despised regime, a sustained campaign can never be held in place by ‘‘non-cooperation with evil’’ (here using King’s well-known phrase); it requires ‘‘cooperation with good.’’ Likewise, when the peace movement was confronting the very real (and still not dispelled) possibility of nuclear holocaust, it eventually found, or at least some of its representatives did, that survival was not a compelling idea that could keep the movement going forward because even cockroaches would survive such a holocaust. Something more positive was needed as a rallying cry—and unfortunately no agreed upon candidate was ever found. As is pointed out elsewhere in this book (Volume 3, Chapter 17) the litany of environmental and other disasters with which well-intentioned activists seek to rouse the public is only paralyzing and disempowering people.6 Even the rallying cry of sustainability, I would argue, does not sufficiently

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stir our imagination. To get from apathy to enthusiasm, Toynbee pointed out that first of all we need an idea that ‘‘takes the imagination by storm.’’ This is why we need to claim and even enlarge on Augustine’s legacy. Immanuel Kant began his brilliant sketch Towards Perpetual Peace (Zum ewigen Frieden, ein philosophischer Entwurf, 1795) by contrasting what he was about to describe with the words ewigen Frieden, ‘‘perpetual peace,’’ seen on a gravestone. The peace that he is arguing for is not ‘‘the peace of the grave,’’ but what is it? For him it is a peace based on a set of arrangements that would head off—not eliminate or convert—whatever it is that causes humans to go to war. In this, Kant is a particularly brilliant example of the ‘‘perpetual peace’’ tradition that began as early as the 11th century in France and included such luminaries as Erasmus, Hugo Grotius, Abb
e St. Pierre, Rousseau, and William Penn. The sketch is a brilliant example of an attempt to back into a positive idea of peace by eliminating war permanently. Yet fully 1,300 years earlier than Kant’s treatise, Augustine had offered a far more positive definition of peace, grounded in a much deeper reality. His peace was closely identified with life itself, and he uses this telling parallel (p. 457): Notice that there can be life without pain, but no pain without some sort of life. In the same way, there can be peace without any kind of war, but no war that does not suppose some kind of peace.

That is, even those who wage war do so to achieve some kind of ‘‘peace,’’ however limited by their faulty understanding (p. 451f): The whole point of victory is to bring opponents to their knees—this done, peace ensues. Peace, then, is the purpose of waging war; and this is true even of men who have a passion for the exercise of military prowess. . . .7

Augustine’s point is that peace is such a compelling value—indeed the value to which all others refer—that even war is waged in its name. This can be a reprehensible and dangerous hypocrisy, as we know to our cost, but is at least a back handed acknowledgment of the priority of peace. The great value of this argument is in how clearly it demonstrates that peace—and all fundamental goods, for at their core they all seem to converge—is the ontological reality of which war is the absence, exactly as Gandhi stated in Indian and (paradoxically) more modern terms. Augustine wrote the City of God (from ca. 410 to 426 CE) to restabilize a badly shaken world that was reeling from the unthinkable sack of Rome, the eternal city, by barbarian hordes, who of course did not think of themselves as such. The parallels to 9/11 readily recommend themselves. His goal was

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History and Vitality of Peace Movements

to overcome the all-but-inevitable feeling of many Romans, Pagan and Christian, that the disaster befell them because the empire had left its ancient traditions (the formal adoption of Christianity as a state religion was just 100 years old). The main thrust of his argument, built on his penetrating critique of human civilization in relation to its divine prototype and ultimate future—the city of God—is that sufferings of this kind are not only inevitable within but a means of leading us beyond our present flawed state and urge us to strive for the goal that the new religion has revealed. At intervals throughout the work (and his other writings) there occurs as a mantra, if you will, this explanation for our present mixed or flawed condition: duo amores faciunt duas civitates. Literally this would mean ‘‘two loves bring about two cities’’; but in modern terms it really means that two drives within us that would create (if allowed to function fully) two contrasting world orders (because there was not yet the concept of a ‘‘nation’’ between the city-state and the empire—Rome was both). We live in a mixture of two orders that arise from these two contrasting, indeed opposing drives—the one toward self-gratification and the other toward the service of God. This brings us to the second breakthrough on which I wish to comment.

Peace Comes from within the Person The concept of ‘‘inner peace’’ is very common today, at least in certain circles—and I dare say it is universally recognized, if nothing else than as a poignant absence. ‘‘If anyone wanted peace,’’ Gandhi says of the tumultuous days of the South Africa Satyagraha, ‘‘he had to find it within.’’ He is describing peace as a kind of refuge from the turmoil of the world; but there is much more: of late more and more people (though by no means a majority) are coming to recognize that inner peace is the source of all outward peace—in the family, society, or world.8 In another magisterial work of Christian inspiration, Dante’s Divine Comedy, the poet says to souls who want him to convey a message to the upper world (Purgatorio V. 61): voi dite, ed io far
o par quella pace che . . . di mondo in mondo cercar mi si face. (Do you but speak, and I shall do it in the name of that peace which . . . makes me seek after it in world after world.)

When Jewish monotheism swept through the West as what we now call Christianity, it was a major enabling condition for a deeply grounded peace

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that is still far off in the future. Monotheism actually involves two simultaneous breakthroughs: it symbolizes the unity of humankind—one’s ‘‘God’’ concept is a code for the underlying reality of the world—and, perhaps even more importantly if less obviously, it implies the sanctity of the human individual. The idea that there is but one God brings with it the idea that each person is made in the image of that supreme reality; he or she is a microcosm of that wholeness (the meaning of the Hebrew shalom), that integrity. I am reminded of George Orwell’s reflection on watching a man walk to his hanging in Burma: ‘‘One life less, one world less.’’9 There was also an important shift that created a model of history that we now take for granted that happened prior to Christianity in classical Greek thought, namely, the shift from a devolutionary concept of the world process—the idea that paradise existed in the past and we are doomed to fall progressively further from it as time goes inexorably by—to a modern evolutionary view, that paradise lies, at least potentially, ahead of us and we therefore can and must strive to attain it. This shift was fully capitalized on and given articulate imagination in Augustine’s Christianity. His vision takes up a position in conflict with, for example, Manichaean Christianity, which denied that anything could be done about the world because it was inherently evil, and in opposition to most forms of paganism, which denied anything needed to be done about it because it was already good—as we would say, ‘‘this is as good as it gets.’’ This was also a crucial shift, since if the only possible paradise lay in the past there was no point in striving for it (and not much point in living, when you stop to think about it). It is therefore not only the ethic of Jesus, his profound gentleness, that placed in stark contrast the ethic of Judea’s Roman conquerors, but his vision of the microcosm of the individual and his challenge of creating a world that would allow him or her to flourish. Modern historical research has emphasized that when the accretions of mythological status are stripped away, the ‘‘Jesus of history’’ stands forth as a supremely nonviolent figure who, even if he did say that he had come ‘‘not to bring peace but the sword’’ (Mt. 10:34), meant that he would bring to the surface vast violence that was ignored or taken for granted (what we call today structural violence) so that it could be resolved. This is exactly what Gandhi would do in our own time with the structural violence of foreign domination in India. That domination, as he correctly pointed out, was causing far more violence than the more open violence he had to risk unleashing to relieve it.10 While the nonviolence of Jesus was lost soon enough in the construction of a ‘‘pragmatic’’ religion from the scarce remains of his known legacy, it never disappeared entirely from view. Indeed, its periodic rediscovery has been seen as the punctuating events of Christian history, for example, by Geoffrey Nuttall.11

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History and Vitality of Peace Movements

Perhaps its reincarnation today in groups like Pax Christi, Witness for Peace, and many others, is writing another chapter of that punctuated equilibrium. The discovery of the inner life slowly caught on among more receptive individuals and communities throughout antiquity,12 and can be said to climax with Christianity—at least the ‘‘mystical’’ Christianity of one like Augustine. In my view, it was precisely the ability of thinkers within the Christian movement to describe inner experience and prescribe the care and management of inner life that lead to its astonishing success. In any case, no one was more at home in this interior landscape than Augustine, whose God was ‘‘more inward than my most intimate within’’ (Conf. III. vi) and this is evident throughout his teachings on violence and peace: ‘‘Imagine thinking that one’s enemy could do him more damage than the enmity he harbors against him’’13 (Conf. I. xxix). With his doctrine of the two loves Augustine states that the peace of the world must arise from the peace within the person (though he says little in this discussion about how that is to be done). The beauty of inner peace is that it can never be destroyed, but is there to renew the peace of the world that we seem to destroy periodically. This idea of causality is still controversial, particularly in the West. There are those like Orwell, who see the only hope for peace in the righting of social arrangements, while there are those like Dickens who see it coming from a change of heart, in line with the famous statement of Spinoza that ‘‘peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.’’14 It is not achieved by putting a different kind of people in power but by awakening a different kind of power in people. Let me quote from a highly revered seer of modern India, Sri Ramana Maharshi. When a devotee asked him why the peace he felt in the great man’s presence was not lasting, he explained: That Peace is your real nature. Contrary ideas are only superimpositions. This is true bhakti, true yoga, true j~ nana. You may say that the peace is acquired by practice. [But] the wrong notions are given up by practice. That is all. Your true nature always persists. These flashes are only signs of the ensuing revelation of the Self.15

Compare Augustine, who says that a wrongdoer . . . hates the peace of God which is just and prefers his own peace which is unjust. However, he is powerless not to love peace of some sort. For no man’s sin is so unnatural as to wipe out all traces whatever of human nature. (emphasis added)16

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It is this belief more than any other that constitutes the core of the nonviolent worldview and inspires people the world over to a commitment to restorative justice as a replacement for retributive justice in the civic sphere and peace development as a replacement for the war system at large. There is no such thing as perpetual pre-hostility; when parties nourish resentment and hostility against others, it is only a matter of time before those hostilities express themselves in action. But more than this, would we want to live in such a state?

PRACTICAL OUTCOMES For an increasing number of peace researchers and activists the question of peace has become how to awaken inner peace so that it can express itself through remaining ‘‘superimpositions’’ of our conditioning. Very few are na€ve enough to believe that this is all we must accomplish: we can work on the development of peace from within or without, and indeed the wisest course is to do both. Inner and outer peace react on each other. What the Maharshi calls superimpositions can seem overwhelming, artificially, but powerfully maintained by culture. Let us go back to Augustine for a minute to see whether he has practical insights as vivid as his inspired vision. Eternal peace and its reflection within the mirror of the human soul are the sources of human peace. The former acts as a ‘‘great attractor’’; the latter acts as the guarantee that humans can in theory always be attracted. But there’s a problem. To what degree is Augustine’s peace—and we see this in the epigram to this chapter—within the reach of human societies in any foreseeable future? What good is an ideal if we can’t realize it except in Heaven (in which many cannot fully believe)? Actually, quite a lot. Progress requires a goal, an ideal to work toward, whether or not one expects fully to achieve it; the ideal of eternal peace is a paramount example. To cite Gandhi again, I may be taunted with the retort that this is all Utopian and, therefore, not worth a single thought. If Euclid’s point, though incapable of being drawn by human agency, has an imperishable value, my picture has its own for mankind to live. Let India live for this true picture, though never realizable in its completeness. We must have a proper picture of what we want, before we can have something approaching it.17

Elise Boulding, Joanna Macy, and many other contemporary peaceworkers have made use of precisely this potential to promote the imagining of peace as a vital step toward achieving it: ‘‘Without a vision, the people perish’’ (Proverbs 29:18). Augustine’s time Christian communities were still

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coping with the realization that the ‘‘second coming’’ of Christ had not happened as expected, that is, within a lifetime or so of the apostles. It was therefore unclear whether the millennial expectations had a time frame and should be anticipated as a realistic, if distant future. He does make it perfectly clear, however, that the tradition is not (only) individualistic or otherworldly: For if the life of the saints had not been social, how could the City of God . . . have a beginning, make progress, and reach its appointed goal?18

As for us, nothing we now know about human nature today compels us to believe that a stable regime of universal peace is beyond the realm of possibility. Under the right conditions, some very early societies may have achieved it;19 some technologically simple societies living quietly around fringes of our own world today are holding onto it.20 And even if one were not to believe in such a possibility (which Gandhi said was to disbelieve in the goodness of God), even small progress toward that happy state would constitute an enormous improvement on a world order that in many ways is scarcely better than Augustine’s. Those who work for peace are motivated by a feeling of connection with others that extends even to those yet unborn; therefore, the prospect of an eventual peace gives them intense motivation to work for it. In this way Augustine’s vision of absolute peace was in some sense the goal of human life. Whether that vision is ‘‘true’’ or not is vastly more useful than the negative peace which is as far as many people can go in envisioning peace even today. Although Augustine says little in the City of God about how the individual can undertake personal transformation to express his or her inner endowment for peace in the social realm (that is the job of Confessions, and in fact Augustine at one point or other in his many writings discusses every method of meditation known in his time), he does at least offer us a model. His model for the expression of eternal peace on earth is the well-ordered home under the loving guidance of the paterfamilias who, suitably idealized, ‘‘ought to look upon [his] duty to command as harder than the duty of slaves to obey.’’ This condition of benevolent authority is to last until there is no need to wield authority of any kind over others who are already perfectly happy—such as in the state of immortal life.21 Not only anarchists but many people on the political left who make up the bulk of those arguing and/or working for peace in today’s secular world have been profoundly uncomfortable with Augustine’s acceptance of the markedly vertical structures of dominance that are obtained in his world and are still obtained in our own to various degrees. We want equality. The infamous Milgram experiments have shown how dangerous ‘‘obedience to authority’’

Eternal Peace

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can be as an enabling condition of violence. Interestingly enough, however, this was not Gandhi’s position. He was perfectly comfortable with authority, because when it was working correctly it was the only way to avoid the thing he was profoundly uncomfortable with—hatred and violence. Chaos, in his experience (and has anyone’s been different?), did not resolve itself into an egalitarian order, but caused the greatest anguish and generally resulted in strict authoritarianism. He had no difficulty presenting himself, for example, during the heat of Satyagraha campaigns, as a ‘‘general’’—as long as he was wanted in that capacity. Authority of some kind was unavoidable, he felt, and even unobjectionable. To make it work, however, you needed another advance that goes beyond Augustine’s thinking. In Augustine’s world (and it would be unfair to hold him to moral standards that have since evolved), even a benevolent authority would, albeit reluctantly, apply corrective punishment to subordinates with verba seu verbera ‘‘words or whipstrokes.’’22 Judicial torture was, as we’ve seen, a regrettable and transitory necessity given the fallen condition of humanity. But Gandhi knew of another kind of family, if you will, the ashram, or intentional community gathered around a spiritual guide. In that role himself, he hit on a solution to the deplorable necessity of punishment, and by extension, of domination and torture which Augustine had to accept as provisional and ‘‘penal in character.’’ When faced with some misbehavior by some young people under his care, Gandhi felt that some corrective had to be applied but that in an ashram punishment has no place. The solution? He fasted. There was some justice in this—had he been a more perfect model for them they would not have made the slip—but more to the point it was a highly effective remedy. This was pure Satyagraha. In Satyagraha, as distinct from all other forms of power, means must prefigure ends, which has led Johan Galtung to define nonviolence as ‘‘peace by peaceful means.’’23 In this view, war, by virtue of its destructive means, cannot be ‘‘just’’; it carries injustice in the instrumentality of violence itself, regardless of the end toward which it is aimed. When Augustine takes the well-ordered home as ‘‘a beginning or fragmentary constituent of a civic community’’24 he is thinking of the homes of the wealthy, of course, which were indeed small societies consisting of an extended family and in some cases hundreds of slaves. That well-ordered home (when it was well ordered), was the ‘‘world order model’’ for peace: ‘‘the ordered harmony of authority and obedience among those who live together has a relation to the ordered harmony of authority and obedience between those who live in a city,’’25 which was, as mentioned, the largest unit in the world order itself. ‘‘After the city comes the world community.’’26

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This model invites comparison with Gandhi’s ‘‘Oceanic Circle’’ (this is the utopian model he was referring to in the earlier quote): In this structure composed of innumerable villages, there will be ever-widening, never-ascending circles. Life will not be a pyramid with the apex sustained by the bottom. But it will be an oceanic circle whose centre will be the individual always ready to perish for the village, the latter ready to perish for the circle of villages, till at last the whole becomes one life composed of individuals, never aggressive in their arrogance but ever humble, sharing the majesty of the oceanic circle of which they are integral units. Therefore the outermost circumference will not wield power to crush the inner circle but will give strength to all within and derive its own strength from it.27

These are both ‘‘bottom up’’ models of order, at least once one gets beyond Augustine’s family unit, which itself is hierarchical because of our fallen condition Gandhi’s village unit was a bit different, as the traditional village was governed by a panchayat or council of five elders. Anyone familiar with peace theories today will take this bottom-led direction for granted, but it was somewhat startling in Augustine’s time. But to think that structures alone can change the character of a regime is what Galtung once called ‘‘the most na€ve fallacy.’’ We must also consider what kind of energy, or bond, holds the parts of the given structure together. Here Gandhi goes a step or two further than Augustine in his recognition that the system’s whole energy comes from the bottom, the individual, and that the bond of self-sacrificing love that constituted that energy would show up, in extremis, as a willingness to perish for the next larger unit. He had, of course, mobilized this very power in his various Satyagrahas, and was not just speaking from speculation or wish-fulfillment. And in his case we can see also that this same love was very different from rote obedience. Once roused, ‘‘person power’’ not only should not but could not be held down by higher circles of authority.28 A just appreciation of Augustine’s achievement would have to take into account that he had to overcome the disadvantage of his own vocabulary. As Zampaglione, Illich, and others have pointed out, the Latin word for ‘‘peace’’ pax, derives from pac-tum, ‘‘arrangement.’’ In fact, pax meant the cessation of conflict that the vanquished beg for, as in our expression ‘‘sue for peace.’’ Very Tacitean indeed; as such it invites comparison with the Greek word, eirene, from the root ar, ‘‘to articulate, fit together’’ which, while it at least implies an agreement between equals rather than a form of defeat for the vanquished, still frames peace as a contract—in other words, a pause between wars.

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Both these Western terms appear shallow in comparison to either the Hebraic shalom, implying wholeness (among other things) or the Sanskrit shanti that includes in its semantic range the satisfaction of all longing. Ivan Illich brought this out in a brilliant article of 1981, where he compared (in a picture recalling Augustine’s paterfamilias): . . . a Jewish patriarch when he raises his arms in blessing over his family and his flock. He invokes shalom, which we translate as peace. Shalom he sees as grace, dripping down from heaven, ‘‘like oil dripping through a beard, through the beard of Aaron the forefather.’’ For the Semitic father, peace is the blessing of justice which the one true God pours over 12 tribes of recently settled shepherds.

This stands in sharp contrast to Roman peace (pax romana) that was declared by the victorious general when he planted the standards of his legion on a conquered land.29 We are the inheritors of both these traditions, and trying to function awkwardly with that contradiction. Take the term ‘‘nonviolence,’’ for example (or worse, in the earlier spelling, non-violence). I am among those who believe that Gandhi was right that the emergence of his nonviolence ‘‘is the harbinger of the peace of mankind.’’ But is it to be thought of as the German Gewaltlosigkeit, ‘‘absence of violence’’ or the Tagalog alay dangal, ‘‘to offer dignity’’? Is security gained by force or the threat of force a deterrence (literally ‘‘frightening off ’’), or in the emerging framework of common security and human security, a condition free from, not dependent on, fear and including all dimensions of human well-being (economic sufficiency, health care, etc.) rather than the single, military dimension?30 The realization that peace is positive, and the second realization that it is to be found within us feel—admittedly, I am going by intuition here—like sides of the same coin. Thus the evolution from pax to shalom (or shanti) is ultimately a shift in the conception of human nature, and thus is part of a very large paradigm shift that has been struggling to emerge now for several decades.31 As we have seen, however, these are not all-embracing historical steps; in fact, most people alive today have not made either of them. They are, nonetheless, ‘‘attractors’’ that are quietly, slowly, and with many undertows that take us back toward chaos, the destiny of the planet. Recently there was a remake of a science-fiction classic, The Day the Earth Stood Still. In this wish-fulfillment fantasy, highly (technologically) advanced aliens send an emissary to earth to force humans to make peace— that is, stop making war. Even these enlightened aliens, we should note, have no particular love for us, but are actuated purely by self-interest (the

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unleashing of the atom threatens other planets). Moreover, they make no attempt to persuade dense mortals but operate entirely by threat (at least in the original version of the film). Whatever breakthroughs have been made in the understanding of peace, East or West, they have not penetrated very far into the popular discourse or, consequently, the halls of policy makers. Augustine’s exalted vision of the true meaning of peace, a sober critique of the relative peace that is the best that can be enjoyed here, in the city of man provides a lodestar toward which his contemporaries could orient themselves—and this is still true a millennium and a half down the road. He was ahead of his time. Unfortunately, he also seems to be ahead of ours. We have some catching up to do.

NOTES 1. Cf. Lazlo and Yoo, 1986. 2. Wikipedia, 2010. 3. Gandhi, 1926. 4. Arnould, 1981. 5. Walsh, 1950. All quotes, unless otherwise indicated, are from this translation here p. 454. 6. Nordhaus and Schellenberger, 2007. 7. Aristotle had said that war is never waged for its own sake; Augustine here goes a step further in saying that it is actually waged for the sake of peace. 8. See Kumar, 2009. According to the Indian concept of peace (the) individual is basic source of its creation and development. In other words, human being is the first centre of peace. 9. Orwell, 1968. 10. In the Bengal famine of 1943, for example, somewhere between 1 to 3 million Indians died of starvation when the rice crop was appropriated for the British army. See Greenough, 1980. 11. Nuttall, 1958. 12. Cf. Snell, 1953. Socrates was the first, it seems, to regularly use words like ‘‘within’’ to describe the psyche in any but a physical sense. 13. St. Augustine, translated 1950. 14. Spinoza, 1670. 15. Maharshi, 2000. 16. St. Augustine, 454. 17. Gandhi, 1926. 18. St. Augustine, translated 1950. 19. Cf. Anthony, 2007. One influential example is Marija Gimbutas’s popular writing on ‘‘Old Europe,’’ but recent scholars have found it naively optimistic. 20. Melko, 1973. 21. St. Augustine, translated 1950. 22. Ibid.

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23. Galtung, 1996. Some have seen support for this view even in the breakdown of classical causality in quantum physics. 24. St. Augustine, translated 1950. 25. Ibid. For a pre-city parallel, cf. Odysseus’s bed, which is built on a still living oak tree: the life and order of nature yields up the oikos or extended home unit, the largest recognized by name at that time. 26. Ibid, 7, 446. 27. Gandhi, 1946. 28. ‘‘Person power’’ is a term I have coined to supplement ‘‘people power,’’ the well-known opposition to the power of the state in nonviolence circles. Even people power is a collective of the power of individuals. 29. Illich, 1981. 30. Likewise, to the concept of peacekeeping Galtung has added peacemaking— resolving the conflict—and peace building—restoring just conditions that preempt war. Also see Paul Kimmel’s chapter in this volume. 31. ‘‘For our culture as a whole,’’ Huston Smith recently pointed out, ‘‘nothing major is going to happen until we figure out who we are. The truth of the matter is, that today we haven’t a clue as to who we are. There is no consistent view of human nature in the West today,’’ Quoted in Glazer, 1999.

CHAPTER

A PHILOSOPHY

2

OF

PEACE

Barry L. Gan

Following reports that the United States had killed over 100 civilians one evening in a bombing raid in Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld remarked, ‘‘There is no question but that when one is engaged militarily that there are [sic] going to be unintended loss of life.’’1 Apologists for the atomic bombing of Japan also justify the deliberate killing of civilians by a calculus that subtracts the number of civilian dead from the alleged number of U.S. troops who might have been killed in a land invasion of Japan. Just war theory itself fashions a defense of war on the basis of a calculus of intended outcomes. But such attitudes and reasoning extend beyond war. Modern popular culture has placed efficiency on a pedestal. In popular culture today, our ethic is: ‘‘Git ’er done,’’ and we have ceased to regard patience as a virtue. Instead, we raise people who break the rules to the level of heroes, slash the Gordian knot, and justify their actions on the basis of the goals they seek. In the end we don’t care if the goal was achieved unjustly or illegally. It’s all about outcome, not about process. We justify our actions by the ends at which they are aimed, and we justify our characters by the outcomes we intend or achieve, not by the means by which we pursue them. Portions of this chapter were previously presented as part of the Presidential Address at the 2006 annual meeting of Concerned Philosophers for Peace at St. Bonaventure University and also at a 2009 symposium in honor of Robert L. Holmes at the University of Rochester.

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19

The infamous 1970 Ford Pinto case, in which Ford justified its decision to continue to manufacture cars that were firetraps on a calculation that it was cheaper to settle lawsuits over people incinerated in accidents than to redesign the cars, is matched more recently, in 2009, by the Peanut Corporation of America, which knowingly distributed contaminated peanut products to groceries, restaurants, and other food services rather than swallow a shortterm loss in profits. Again, following September 11, 2001, under the George W. Bush administration, civil liberties were regularly set aside on the grounds that such measures were necessary for national security, even though most people understand that civil liberties in the first place are a central feature of what is meant by security in one’s nation. Even in games, in sporting events, rule-breaking has become part of the larger strategy. A philosophy of peace pursues a different path. It recognizes that every action either builds community or destroys it. Every action either uses something solely as a means to an end, or shows respect for what is used as an end in itself as well. One who pursues a philosophy of peace seeks to plant oneself as fully as possible in the realm of building community, in the realm of respecting everything in the world as an end in itself. To do less is to destroy community and to disrespect others. Yet few, if any, of our actions occupy one realm or the other exclusively. Often we destroy community as we attempt to build it. Often, despite our respect for others, we use them for some ends other than their own. This is practically unavoidable because, as Albert Schweitzer put it: ‘‘I am life which wills to live, and I exist in the midst of life which wills to live.’’2 Indeed, it may be impossible to live a philosophy of peace to the fullest. Nonetheless, a philosophy of peace may inform our lives and infuse our values far more often and far more deeply than is our current practice. People pursue peace in many ways, from ‘‘the war to end all wars’’ to mindful meditation. Peace scholars of the late 20th century distinguished between negative peace— an absence of war—and positive peace—the presence of justice and well-being in a society. But ultimately, peace is not merely a condition; it is the specific means by which any condition is sought. Nor is it the single end of positive peace alone but a way of pursuing any and all ends. A philosophy of peace exercises itself in both means and ends, seeking to avoid the destruction of community, seeking to preserve and promote all ends by the manner in which it pursues them. A rich philosophical history informs such a philosophy of peace.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND ETHICAL BASIS FOR A PHILOSOPHY OF PEACE Perhaps Plato provides the oldest secular support for such an orientation. In his dialogue Crito, Plato portrays Socrates arguing with Crito:

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[We must not] when injured injure in return, as the many imagine; for we must injure no one at all. . . . [W]e ought not to retaliate or render evil for evil to anyone, whatever evil we may have suffered from him. But I would have you consider, Crito, whether you really mean what you are saying. For this opinion has never been held, and never will be held, by any considerable number of persons.3

Some people understand Jesus’ dictum of turning the other cheek in exactly this way. Others, including Jesus himself, in one passage, anyway, see it as ‘‘heaping coals upon the heads of one’s enemies.’’ But a philosophy of peace sees such behavior not as retaliation but rather as both a tactic for breaking the cycle of violence and also as the extension of a hand of friendship in spite of past differences, a willingness to endure injury rather than perpetrate and thereby perpetuate it. In his second formulation of the categorical imperative, the principle of humanity, Immanuel Kant offers an arguably less extreme position but one, which, regardless, requires a deeper respect for all persons than is commonly practiced. He says, ‘‘Always act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or that of another, always as an end and never as a means only.’’4 Kant’s point is not that we may never use people as means to our ends, but that if we do so, we must ensure that our use of them does not frustrate their pursuit of their own ends but rather, respects it or, ideally, enables it. For instance, a professor may offer instruction to students to fulfill her own ends, namely, to earn a living or to take satisfaction in the progress of those we help. But such a pursuit, when done well, enables students to fulfill their own ends as well. It is only when one pursues one’s ends at the expense of another’s ends that Kant takes exception. Martin Buber, the great Jewish thinker of the 20th century, makes a similar distinction but draws the line even more sharply. In the opening pages of his masterpiece, I and Thou, he says: To man the world is twofold, in accordance with his twofold attitude . . . The I of man is also twofold. For the I of the primary word I–Thou is a different I from that of the primary word I-It . . . As experience, the world belongs to the primary word I-It. The primary word I-Thou establishes the world of relation. . . . First . . . with nature . . . Second, with men . . . [and t]hird, with spiritual beings.5

According to Buber, human existence depends on experience, on using the world for sustenance, but it fails to be fully human if it never enters into a relation that is all-consuming, a relation that regards the other not as an other but as the being in whose light all else lives.6

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In this respect Buber’s concepts resemble strongly Gandhi’s call for people to shed fear, to shed attachment to the material world, and to pursue truth wholeheartedly. And again, although it may not be possible to do so permanently, fully, without jeopardizing one’s very life, the striving for such an ideal is what makes more likely a heaven on earth, or, in Kant’s terms, a kingdom of ends, where everyone’s individual pursuits are so regardful of others that everyone’s ends are entwined and mutually reinforcing. Some of the greatest peacemakers have attempted to capture these insights in various ways. Gandhi said, ‘‘The means may be likened to a seed, the end to a tree: and there is just the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree.’’7 A. J. Muste, a major figure in American nonviolence during the 20th century said, ‘‘There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.’’8 And Martin Luther King, Jr., said, ‘‘Darkness cannot put out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.’’9 The insight might also be characterized by the Zen Buddhist maxim, ‘‘Attention!’’ a maxim that urges one to focus on the task at hand, to focus more on the present means than the future ends. Each of these thinkers or approaches offers a point of view that stands apart from that of the multitude. Although many people regard means as justifiable by reference to the ends, others—like the thinkers above, far fewer in number but present throughout all ages—see the necessity of linking the justifiability of the ends necessarily to the justifiability of the means. Robert L. Holmes, in a lengthy footnote in his book On War and Morality, establishes this necessary moral connection between means and ends. He says: One is justified in performing an act only if he is justified both in employing the means necessary to its performance and in performing any subsidiary acts constitutive of it. I cannot be justified in watering my garden unless I am justified in attaching the hose and turning on the water . . . Some, of course, would argue that if the end is justified, then so must be the means. And this is true, if properly understood. But it does not follow from it that the end justifies the means. For there is an asymmetry here. One must justify the necessary means before one can justify pursuing the end, whereas the reverse is not the case. I do not need to justify watering my garden before I justify hooking up the hose and turning on the water; I may do these things as a means to a different end, such as washing the car. If the end is justified, the means will in fact be justified. But that is because one must justify them in the course of justifying the end, not because the justification of the end in isolation somehow justifies them.10

Most people are either ignorant of this moral relation between means and ends—or are dismissive of it. But its implications are manifold and far-reaching.

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THE IMPLICATIONS OF A PHILOSOPHY OF PEACE One of the major implications of such a philosophy of peace, as Holmes argues in his book, is that for all intents and purposes all modern war is immoral. Since the means used to wage war regularly entail the killing of innocent lives—more innocent lives in the 20th century than lives of combatants themselves—it is only possible to justify war if one can justify the taking of innocent lives, and in modern war, extraordinary numbers of innocent lives. While some may argue that modern war is often, also, a question of saving large numbers of innocent lives, one cannot know in advance whether one’s actions in a modern war will, in fact, result in saving more innocent lives than would otherwise be lost. This is so, at least in part, because the decision to end a war, once begun, is never up to one side alone. Do what I may, just or unjust, I cannot be certain how others will respond to what I do. And thus, to use unjust means—in hopes that others will respond as I wish and thereby bring about a worthy end—is, in the final analysis, simply to do injustice. Another major implication of a philosophy of peace is that the pursuit of profit for the sake of profit is immoral. The pursuit of profit requires that people buy products and services, and if the people who buy these products and services become incidental to the profits sought, then the philosophy of peace is violated. So when one sells a piece of furniture, a cell phone, or an inkjet printer that is known to break within the first two years of normal use, or an automobile that gets recalled regularly, or a balloon mortgage that far outstrips a person’s long-term ability to pay, or an academic program to students who have a poor record of success as students, one violates a philosophy of peace. Whether or not an invisible hand guarantees a long-term outcome beneficial to all, the philosophy is violated because the means are sacrificed for an intended outcome—profit—that becomes everything. The process by which the outcome is achieved becomes irrelevant. A philosophy of peace rejects such an approach. Even within the field of nonviolence itself one can find violations of a philosophy of peace. Strategic nonviolent action—recently widely touted as a new way of changing policy, overthrowing dictators, doing battle—distinguishes between means, which it calls tactics and strategies, and ends, which it calls goals or objectives.11 Insofar as the tactics and strategies always offer one’s opponents a choice—do as I wish or make me suffer, then nonviolent strategic action fits well within a philosophy of peace. But when the strategies and tactics take on a different tone—do as we wish or you will suffer, then the dynamic begins very much to resemble the dynamic of war itself.

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The notion of doing as I wish or making me suffer is allied very closely with Jesus’s dictum of turning the other cheek. The willingness to suffer demonstrates to the opponent and to others that one is willing to suffer for what one believes in. Its dynamic is antithetical to the dynamic of war, for it invites one’s own suffering and shows one’s opponents that one will not visit harm on them. It says, ‘‘I will stand for what I believe in, but I will not harm you because of it.’’ Perhaps the best example of this attitude, of the practice of a philosophy of peace, can be found in parenting. Not all parents, of course, do a perfect job of raising their children, but almost all parents aspire to an ideal that is difficult if not impossible to realize. That ideal entails a goal—a child who will become a productive, likeable, fair-minded, and fulfilled adult, or something along those lines. But no good parent would dream of treating the child in harmful ways to achieve that result. Many good parents sacrifice much for the sake of their children, preferring to sacrifice themselves in little ways like missing meetings or larger ways like giving up job opportunities so that their children might flourish, might learn, might grow into the adults we hope they will become. But only a foolish parent—and many such parents exist—would employ unjust or harmful means to accomplish such a purpose. Most of us would view such means as inimical to the very goal we seek. Why, then, would we not extend such reasoning to other means and ends in our lives?12 The world is violent, not only because natural phenomena like earthquakes, tsunamis, and tornados violently destroy much of what people value, but also because we ourselves choose to destroy much of what we value. Often we do violence in relatively inadvertent ways; more often we regard violent choices that we make as having undesired side effects, what the Pentagon euphemistically calls collateral damage. Undesired side effects vary: they may be a dozen insects smashed on a car’s windshield during a summer drive to the beach, a dozen children killed in a school by a misguided missile, or the bulk of the civilian population of a Japanese city obliterated or radiated by an atomic bomb. But these side effects are foreseeable consequences of our actions, and all too often the desired effects of our actions are more wishes than likelihoods. Few people disagree on what ends we desire. Almost all of us seek a peaceful home, a peaceful community, a peaceful nation, a peaceful world. No, what we differ on, what distinguishes peacemaking from other work, whether one is an electrician, a retail clerk, or a philosopher, is the means by which one does one’s work. The insight was driven home to me even more when I made one of my infrequent visits to a synagogue, in this case the synagogue in which I had grown up as a teenager in Rochester, New York. I noticed that since I had

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last been there, the prayer books had been replaced. And I also noticed that in the new prayer books the translation of a very famous line from Isaiah had also been changed. Each week, one of the Sabbath prayers that I had uttered and heard as a teen had been: Lo yiseh goy el goy herev, v’lo yl-medu od ml-hamah. ‘‘Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. Neither shall men learn war anymore.’’

But though the Hebrew remained unchanged in the prayer book, the English translation had changed. It now read: ‘‘Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. Neither shall men experience war anymore.’’ That’s curious, I thought. In the original Hebrew the idea was that paradise would be a place where people would not learn war anymore. But now the idea had shifted from a world in which nations would not learn war to a world in which nations would not suffer war. After the service I approached the rabbi and asked him about this change. I asked him whether the Hebrew word yl-medu meant ‘‘learn’’ or ‘‘experience.’’ I knew what it meant, and so did he. It means ‘‘learn.’’ It does not mean ‘‘experience.’’ But he made excuses for the translation. And it was clear to me, at least, why such a translation in an American prayer book had been altered. Israel and the United States both spend a great deal of money, time, and effort in learning war. Both nations have turned away from the paradise envisioned by Isaiah. The wishes of both nations are that neither of them experience war in their own territories. Neither wishes to suffer war, but both are willing to learn it. Both are willing to learn war in the mistaken view that by doing so they will not suffer it. But the Bible strongly suggests that paradise is the circumstance that obtains, not when nations suffer war no more, but when they learn it no more. One cannot reach the end one desires by pursuing means inimical to those ends.

AN OBJECTION And so we return to the question: what is a philosophy of peace? This much, is clear: a philosophy of peace does not countenance making war. It does not entail harming others intentionally or out of negligence. To put it in Platonic terms, it requires that we not make others worse off. If one is making any others worse off, one is not engaged in peacemaking. But some think otherwise. Some think, along with the Pentagon, that it is often necessary to use violence to prevent harm to innocent people. In 2006,

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I heard Archbishop Celestino Migliore speak at the annual conference of the Peace and Justice Studies Association. Migliore at that time was the Pope’s representative to the UN, and, though I shouldn’t have been, I was surprised to hear some of his remarks. When asked whether the Church would condone the use of violence in some circumstances, he said that it would be wrong sometimes to turn the other cheek. I was curious to see how he would explain this since it contradicts what Jesus says in the Beatitudes, and he obliged me by trotting out the following worn example: ‘‘Imagine a person carrying a baby, assaulted by a third person. Should the person charged with the care of the baby turn the other cheek? No, said the archbishop, not if it means that the baby would be assaulted—because one has an obligation to protect innocent third parties.’’ If there were a Frequently Asked Questions book for pacifists and nonviolentists, it would begin with this example. The responses are also standard, but they point the way toward a deeper understanding of genuine peacemaking. One response is put forward by Leo Tolstoy,13 who speaks not of a baby allegedly about to be assaulted but of a child allegedly about to be killed. He says first, that the person wishing to protect the child could not know whether or not the child would be harmed before it is. Nor, he continues, could one know that the world would be a better place if the child instead of the third person were saved. Both assumptions presume that we can know another’s intentions. To know that the child would be harmed is to know not only the capabilities of the other person but also his or her intentions. To know that the world would be a better place if the child were spared at the expense of the alleged attacker is to know what each being will make of himself or herself in the future. And both assumptions presume that we can know that the outcomes of our actions will be as we desire them. Both assumptions are unprovable. Another response is to acknowledge that many actions short of doing violence might stop an attack. One of my friends was once accosted in Kansas City at gunpoint in an attempted street-corner robbery. He looked the potential robber in the eye, spoke quietly to him, and talked him out of the robbery. There is, of course, no guarantee that such efforts will always yield such outcomes, but what must be realized is that there is no guarantee that violent efforts will always yield desirable outcomes, either. In the end, the most important question one can ask oneself is: what sort of person do I want to be? Do I want to be the sort of person who injures others, who occasionally kills others? Or do I want to be a person who shows faith in the goodness of others, and who is willing to absorb a blow or two rather than deliver one? Most people, like the archbishop, would hedge on that question. They would say that, well, yes, it would be nice to be the sort of person who never

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injures or kills others, but sometimes duty requires me to injure another. After all, I don’t want to be the sort of person who allows innocent third parties—such as babies—to be injured. Built into such a response, in certain circumstances, is a major moral misunderstanding. I am not obliged to do whatever I must to prevent innocents from suffering wrongdoing. I am certainly obliged not to contribute to their suffering. But I am not obliged to do whatever is necessary to prevent wrongdoing to innocents. We may have an obligation to inform others that what they are about to do is morally questionable, or wrong, especially if those others are people under our care. I would call this bearing witness, in much the same way that Socrates and Thoreau bore witness to what they believed to be wrongdoing. But bearing witness to alleged wrongdoing should not involve harming others or, as Socrates argued in the Crito, harming the concept of law by which people govern themselves. Gandhi notes that we are finite beings who cannot know with any certainty that wrongdoing is about to occur. Thus we should not knowingly or negligently harm others in an attempt to prevent what may not happen. This is one major insight at the basis of Gandhi’s philosophy of ahimsa, though he did allow that when wrongdoing was virtually certain to occur (the well-known ‘‘madman with the sword’’ scenario), one must use harmful, even lethal force in such emergencies. If one tried as far as possible to do so without anger or fear or conviction that this is an ideal way to solve such emergencies in the future, it could be considered a nonviolent act. Again Robert Holmes captures this insight rather neatly in his book Basic Moral Philosophy.14 There he distinguishes between what he calls mediated and unmediated consequences of actions. An unmediated consequence of an action, he says, is a consequence that results directly from my action, without the intervention of another human being’s actions. The example he offers is that of breaking a window. The broken glass is an unmediated consequence of my throwing a stone through it. A mediated consequence, on the other hand, is a consequence that results indirectly from one of my actions by the response my action generates in another. If I admonish a student in front of other students and he runs to the dean and complains that I’ve humiliated him, his complaint to the dean is a mediated consequence of my action. Gandhi would have said that as finite beings, we cannot know the mediated consequences of our actions, only the unmediated consequences. Thus we cannot justify unmediated consequences of our actions on the basis of expected mediated consequences. For this reason it is quite possible that the readiness to do violence in the defense of innocent people is one of the major sources of all violence in the

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world. This is true because those who do violence allegedly for this purpose are often fooling themselves and/or trying to fool others, and they are often not even trying to learn from their experiences. Of course, such a reaction could only be considered nonviolent—and fully justified, in an emergency. Gandhi said this argument could not be used to justify preparing to use harmful force against a future threat because if one had the time to do that he or she would also have the time to prepare non violence. But there is yet another response to the archbishop’s example, and trite though this response may at first appear, nothing about it is trite at all. One can ask: what are you doing with a child in a dark alley, anyway? How did you get there? And what did you expect to find? Somehow, for some reason, while walking with this child, or carrying this baby, you decided it would be perfectly all right to walk down this dark alley, to place yourself in a circumstance where a crisis was, if not likely, at least reasonably possible. Why? If I have someone in my care, then I have obligations with respect to that person, obligations that include planning intelligently what I will be doing while that person is in my care. For example, last year I offered to drive some friends to the nearest major airport, a good 70 miles away. I knew I had a couple of tires on my car that would soon be in need of replacement. I decided to replace them a bit early rather than run into a problem while these friends were in my care. In this way I avoided a potential crisis. Here’s another example: we knew that the dikes in New Orleans needed repair long before Hurricane Katrina hit, but we did little or nothing to address that problem until it became a crisis. Yet another example is the continuing spread of nuclear weapons. Almost half a century ago the nuclear nations of the world had an opportunity to begin disarmament of their weapons and thereby reduce incentives for other nations to acquire nuclear stockpiles. Today the United States and Russia each still have well over 6,000 nuclear weapons each in their arsenals, and the United States is complaining about North Korea’s detonation of a nuclear device so small that at first people weren’t even certain the explosion was an atomic explosion. The United States and Russia both had the opportunity, beginning in 1970 or even earlier, to reduce desire among the nations of the world to acquire nuclear weapons. But unwillingness to make significant reductions, even to levels of hundreds rather than thousands of nuclear weapons, ensured that other nations would seek to acquire the same power. Unwillingness to address an acknowledged problem before it became a crisis guaranteed that the problem would become a crisis. Some may still object that what I am doing is blaming the victim. Doesn’t one have the right to walk with a child down any dark alley one chooses

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without having to worry about being assaulted? Isn’t the person who assaults me the person who should be blamed? Actually, there is a legal principle, well established, that addresses a similar question. It is the principle of ‘‘last clear chance.’’ The principle asserts that a person who had a last clear chance to avoid injury or damage but chose not to do so may not recover damages. This principle is not a principle of criminal law; it’s a principle of civil law, and in recent years it has been replaced in most states with the notion of comparative negligence. But it captures, nonetheless, the intuition at the heart of this particular argument, namely, that people have some responsibility to avoid placing themselves in circumstances where injury is likely, especially if they seek to recover damages from the party that injured them.

CONCLUSION So we can draw some conclusions about a philosophy of peace. As we said at the outset, a philosophy of peace distinguishes means from ends but finds them practically and morally inseparable. One cannot justify means that harm others or might harm others by appealing to the ends that we seek. In short, a philosophy of peace, of necessity, is nonviolent in all of its means, all the time. Second, a philosophy of peace demands long-term work. If one is in crisis mode, odds are good that one is not doing genuine peacemaking, especially if crisis mode means that one is acting in ways that may harm others. Labeling something as a crisis is often though not always another way of justifying the doing of violence to those we perceive as ‘‘enemies.’’ Newton Garver, a philosopher, Quaker, and pacifist, once remarked: ‘‘I think that crisis management is itself a disease.’’ A philosophy of peace requires patience. Nice! I am reminded of this each time I recite the prayer that is called St. Francis’s Prayer (even though it is not). The prayer begins, ‘‘Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon.’’ The prayer does not talk about supplanting hatred with love, supplanting injury with pardon. It talks about planting love, planting pardon. It implies that these orientations are like seeds, or seedlings, to be nurtured, watered, protected, and, above all, not to be hurried along because they can’t be hurried along. Third, a philosophy of peace recognizes, as Plato said, that it is better to be harmed than to harm.15 A philosophy of peace, in other words, recognizes Gandhi’s insight that people, as finite beings, cannot know the mediated consequences of their actions and thus cannot justify unmediated consequences

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of actions on the basis of expected mediated consequences. We know the effects of many of our actions on the environment. We know the effects of over-consumption. We know when we have more than we need. We harm others, negligently if not deliberately, in allowing such a great divide between rich and poor, and also in allowing over-consumption. As Nietzsche said, ‘‘The superfluous is the enemy of the necessary.’’16 Finally, a philosophy of peace requires a creative tension. It is the tension between working on oneself to become a better person while working to make the world a better place. The world is never made a better place if we become so certain of ourselves that we think we are entitled to harm others to achieve our vision of a better world. Should we work to make peace by working on ourselves or by working on others? We must do both. Socrates asserted that a wise person knows that he doesn’t know. And such wisdom precludes one from ever undertaking to do violence to others. To do so is to be smug, to be certain, to regard oneself as more than finite. This is why one must develop one’s own character while working to develop the character of the world. The earth and all its creatures should be regarded as our family. Schweitzer’s observation that we are life that wills to live in the midst of other life that wills to live reveals (1) that we are not privileged in creation in our will to live and that, (2) because of that, there is a presumption against destroying any of what many would call God’s creations. A philosophy of peace requires that we must show them patience, forbearance and love, and care for the earth and all its creatures; and we must have faith that, whether we live to see the fruits of our actions, whatever those mediated and unmediated fruits may be, at least, in not deliberately or negligently harming others, we have done the right thing.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

CNN.com Transcripts, 2001. Schweitzer, 1987. Holmes and Gan, 2005. Plato, 360 BCE. Buber, 1958. Ibid., 8. Gandhi, 1926. Muste, 2009. King, reprinted 1986. Holmes, 2007. Sharp, 1973; Ackerman and DuVall, 2000. Ruddick, 1989.

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Tolstoy, reprinted 1987. Holmes, 2007. Ibid. Nietzsche, reprinted 1997.

CHAPTER

3

PEACE AND DEVELOPMENT T O DAY: A N O V E RV I E W Johan Galtung

To work for peace is to work against violence: by analyzing its forms and causes, predicting in order to prevent, and then acting preventively and curatively. Peace relates to violence much as health relates to illness. Of particular concern is genocide, or massive category killing, across the fault-lines in human society: nature (between humans and their environment), gender, generation, race, class, exclusion, nation, and state. Whether as direct violence or as the indirect slow, grinding violence of social structures that do not deliver sufficient nutrition and health at the bottom of world society, enormous suffering, the Buddhists’ dukkha, is the effect of violence. To work for peace is to build sukha, liberation, wellness in a world at peace with nature, between genders, generations, and among races—where the excluded are included but not by force and where classes, nations, and states serve neither direct nor structural violence. In such a world they would all pull together for better livelihood for all. That would be true globalization, unlike the present abusive reduction of that term to represent only state and corporate elites in a handful of countries. The best instrument of true globalization would be an improved UN, with a UN People’s Assembly for global democracy, and without any veto power for privileged states, probably located where most people live, somewhere in the Third World, like in Jerusalem or Hong Kong.

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An improved UN would build on civil society actors—nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and local authorities (LAs)—and Transnational Corporations (TNCs), underutilized as peace actors. The modern state system, from the ‘‘peace’’ of Westphalia 1648 on, has clearly been over-utilized. It is a war system, giving states the right of war (except for Japan: Constitution, Article 9 still denies Japan that right). An improved UN would also have to learn to build on nations, striving for autonomy, not privileging states. States were not created to bring peace into the world but to satisfy ‘‘national interests’’ defined by elites of elite nations. Peace has lower priority as seen comparing the size of the state institutions for war and for peace. Very problematic are predatory states who see national interests located outside their territory—euphemistically called their ‘‘sphere of interest’’— and inside the smaller states. When states pretend to work for peace it is very often as a way of solidifying their sphere of interest. Should the effort be honest it is usually painfully clear how little they know and how amateurish their endeavors. Nothing of this, however, prevents them from claiming a monopoly on peace, even as they do on war. From this it does not follow that non-states, in the world civil society as NGOs and as LAs, or TNCs, or individuals, are necessarily competent. Nor does it follow that states cannot be improved, nor that states cannot often be excellent peacemakers across the other divides defined by nature, gender, generation, race, class, and exclusion. Such efforts are codified in a major instrument for peace, human rights (universal, indivisible), and partly protected by the institutions of democracy. But these two institutions are far from culturally neutral. And their practice in inter-nation and inter-state relations, at the macro and mega levels of the human construction where state and regional egotisms prevail, supported by democratic majorities of dominant nations and civilizations, leaves much to be desired. To put it mildly. Hence, this explains the rise early last century (but with forerunners in the high Middle Ages) of non-state actors working for peace. There are at least three generations of such approaches, so far. To understand them better, the definition peace equals ability to handle conflict, with empathy, nonviolence, and creativity may be useful, since so much violence is due to mishandling of conflict. Conflict equals attitudes plus behavior plus contradiction: an ABC triangle. At the root of the conflict is a contradiction, the incompatible goals. Hateful/apathetic attitudes and behavior often come later, all three stimulating each other. After some time the situation crystallizes, polarizes around friend/self and foe/other, the former surrounded by increasingly positive and the latter by increasingly negative attitudes and behavior. Friend-and-foe images become megalomaniac and paranoid, unable to include anything negative in the former and positive in

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the latter. We can talk about social pathologies bordering on collective psychoses the way we classify individuals with similar traits. Rationality evaporates. Deep culture with grotesque ready-made polarization takes over. Violence, even with mass destruction, is not far away. The Cold War was a case of this ABC dynamic that was only dissipated when forces in civil society had a sobering, depolarizing effect. So are conflicts in and around Yugoslavia, the Middle East in general, and over terrorism by state or non-state actors. We can use the ABC triangle to identify deep attitudes, deep behavior, and deep contradictions, assuming that they steer or at least influence the surface level of the incompatible goals, of what people say they feel or think and how they act and behave. ‘‘Deep’’ would mean subconscious, hidden, under the surface. We can identify those three with deep culture, basic human needs, and deep structure, the latter referring to the eight fault-lines in the human social construction mentioned above. We then get peace approaches by trying to change all six, the attitudes, the behavior, the contradictions; at the surface level and deeper down. And we get three generations of peace approaches: 1. First Generation of Peace Approaches: Up to World War II A—oriented: peace movements, advocating, demonstrating; B—oriented: war abolition, eliminating war as social institution; C—oriented: global governance, globalizing conflict transformation. The three were related, with people expressing themselves through the movements, with governments searching for regional and global harmonization, and for war abolition through mechanisms of democracy, human rights, and regimes. Motto for this generation: Peace is too important to leave to the generals. 2. Second Generation of Peace Approaches: After World War II A—oriented: peace education/journalism, for knowledge/information; B—oriented: nonviolence, to be able to struggle, but nonviolently; C—oriented: conflict transformation, solving conflicts creatively. The three are related, evolving from the first generation. People start doubting that peace ranks high among the interests pursued by governments, and doubt their capability, watching them stumble at the brink of nuclear abyss, through the Cold War. People start demanding education and research for peace, and turn to the streets to fight, inspired by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., Mandela, and Tutu. Patterns of people’s NGO diplomacy start emerging to solve conflicts rather than waiting for governments. Motto for this generation: Peace is too important to leave to the states. 3. Third Generation of Peace Approaches: After the Cold War A—oriented: peace cultures, going into deep cultures if needed; B—oriented: basic human needs, as non-negotiable pillars; C—oriented: peace structures, repairing fault-lines like gender.

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This period is characterized by a search for foundations for peace below the surface, generalizing Freudian-Jungian needs and culture approaches and Marxian ones of needs and structure. Motto for this generation: Peace is too important for shallow approaches.

The first generation was a reaction against war. People demanded peace through governmental cooperation, above nations and states. The second generation is a reaction against governments. People become increasingly skeptical and want to work for peace themselves. In the third generation there is a reaction against simplistic peace approaches, realizing how deep-rooted—and linked to development, to the satisfaction of basic needs—these problems are.

CONFLICTS HAVE LIFE CYCLES, OR PHASES, WITHIN THEM • Phase I: Before violence: 1. Peacemaking (conflict transformation), 2. Peace building • Phase II: During violence: 3. Peacekeeping, 4. Peace Zones • Phase III: After violence: 5. Reconciliation (with reconstruction),

This overall scheme opens possibilities for cooperation with states. Nonstates are not contesting state monopoly on violence, but its practice, along with any state monopoly on peace action. Cooperation among various actors is needed for all five approaches above. Non-state actors may be able to transform conflicts; states may follow and formalize an outcome in a treaty. Peace building is essentially the antidote to polarization and the individual and social pathologies mentioned, used preventively in Phase I and curatively in Phases II and III. Peacekeeping (violence control) and Peace Zones (models of normality) are best practiced by military, police, and civilians together. And reconciliation to heal traumas of violence and bring about closure of a conflict has to include state actors if the latter used violence. Reconciliation between Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo/a is needed, but so is reconciliation with French and Dutch UN peacekeeping forces, with NATO, with U.S./UK bombers, and Austrian and German protectorate administrators. How do we obtain peace? It has to cover all approaches, and more, and draw on theory from micro (intra/inter-personal), meso (intra-social), and macro (inter-nation and inter-state) levels of human organization. The old

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model of one semester or summer courses will have to yield to treating peace studies like health studies with its own university faculty, and a four- to fiveyear study with practice, preparing for professional activity. We thus have a number of approaches that together can model a more peaceful world: • Peace Movements: NGO advocacy of commitment to peace by all states and all corporations, making them accountable to peace programs. • War Abolition: more states without armies; outlawing research-productiondistribution-use of major arms, as for hard drugs. • Global Governance: democratizing the United Nations through direct elections to a People’s Assembly and abolition of the veto power. • Peace Education: to be introduced at all schools all levels all over like civics, hygiene/sex education, and knowledge of one’s own culture. • Peace Journalism: that all decent media inform the public about ways out of conflicts, building a solution culture, not a violence culture. • Nonviolence: that nonviolent ways of fighting for a cause and to defend one’s integrity, for example, one’s basic needs, become common skills. • Conflict Transformation/Peacemaking: conflict-handling knowledge and skills as part of training citizens anywhere, again like hygiene. • Peace Culture: that people start discussing their own culture, what can be done to make it more peace-productive—and then do it. • Basic Needs: that basic needs, particularly of the most needy, is the guideline for politics and economics; peace and development. • Peace Structure: from exploitative and repressive structures with nature, genders, races, classes, nations, states to equity, parity. • Peace Building: build good and bad rather than good or bad images of the world’s actors, and build positive ties in all directions. • Peacekeeping: with minimum violence as a protection for the defenseless and as a protective in-between for the violent. • Peace Zones: starting with oneself as one-person peace zone based on the principles above, constructing archipelagoes of peace. • Reconciliation: learning to apologize and accept apologies, how to ask for forgiveness and forgive, how to heal and close conflicts.

More can doubtless be added, as human experiences of peace and the construction of peace accumulate. Does the model have a chance or is it only a fata morgana, some mirage over a desert overheated by the excessive violence, not to mention the threats, of the 20th and 21st centuries (the little we have seen so far?). Well, it can be argued that humanity has been through much worse; and that there is no reason that military and civilians, politicians and people could not do all of this together, given more knowledge, skill, and will. And much reason, of course, why they must.

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PART II

T H E P E A C E I N H E R I TA N C E : S C I E N C E AND THE PROMISE OF H U M A N N AT U R E

When church leaders and scientists rose in opposition to Darwin’s theory of natural selection in the famous Oxford debate of 1860, their fear was that Darwin would make nature self-regulating, thus making God superfluous. The theory did have some such effect, but its real damage to human wellbeing and understanding has been the legitimization of competition and violence that popularists made of it—something Darwin never intended at the time and from which he distanced himself more and more as his understanding grew. The two chapters of this brief part attempt to suggest a much greater topic: that the hand of cooperation and peace can be seen at work at every level of evolution, indeed perhaps in the structure of reality itself as understood in the post-Newtonian age and certainly in the psychology of human consciousness. Nature was ‘‘red in tooth and claw’’ only when we looked on her with sanguinary eyes; the true story is more complex, more hopeful, and more challenging. Michael N. Nagler and Angel Ryono attempt to outline the changing outlook of science with regard to the peace potential, starting with the quantum

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revolution, then touching on the new ethology that is balancing out the distortions of the Lorenzian and popularizing era of ‘‘innate aggression,’’ and climaxing with eye-opening discoveries made possible only since the late 1980s by precise, noninvasive studies of the living brain and central nervous system. Their point is that while we think that science is giving us a picture of reality, we are really, as Carolyn Merchant (1980) pointed out in her groundbreaking book The Death of Nature, telling science what to tell us, based on already formed preconceptions—getting the science we deserve, so to speak. This makes the current expansion of science into more positive areas most encouraging, and as Nagler and Ryono imply, peace work should take full advantage of it. Marc Pilisuk and Mitch Hall provide a remarkably condensed overview of some of the important ways that the ‘‘softer’’ psychological disciplines shed, similarly, much light on the often disregarded human capacity for empathy and peace. They focus on the special circumstances in the lives of children that make some more, and others less, prone to violence and the intensive sanctions required to turn ordinary people into soldiers. They stress the human capacity to construct the worlds of symbols in ways that can make cruelty seem either like second nature or outrageously inhuman. Huston Smith remarked some years ago that there would be no significant progress for this civilization until we came up with an agreed-on, reasonably accurate image of the human being. These two chapters, brief as they are, seem to offer a beginning template for the elaboration of that new image. There is one important topic that neither of these studies touches on: the existence, historically and in the present, of ‘‘peaceful societies’’ that live without war and often without much conflict of any kind (they are briefly referenced by David Adams in Chapter 8). These human experiments are of two kinds: most are pre-industrial societies like the Semai of Malaysia and many others (an early paper on this subject bore the title ‘‘Fifty Peaceful Societies’’). Anthropologist Douglas Fry1 reports his finding of 70 welldocumented nonwarring societies. These societies are not utopias. They face many of the problems of living with environmental conditions and with other humans. But they demonstrate well that nothing we have learned about the evolving human animal can cast doubt on the living proof that humans can live in peace for very long periods of time. Clearly we should be learning from them with diligent attention, particularly as many of them, like the Mbuti of central Africa, are disappearing. The other type is quite different: ‘‘enclaved’’ communities like the Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites, and Quakers who live in the midst of, but have maintained a measure of cultural separation from modern industrial societies. Both are beginning to receive due recognition in the form of a Web

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site, http://www.peacefulsocieties.org, that includes the beginnings of an encyclopedia. Of these peaceful societies, two observations should be made: (1) they vary in the degree to which they actually practice active forms of nonviolence as opposed to conflict avoidance, and more significantly perhaps, (2) their institutions and cultural memes are not always applicable in the industrialized world. In particular, many of them have perfected peaceable customs that give them a quite stable regime within their relatively isolated environment. Among the Semai and the Mbuti, for example, there is no love lost between themselves and respectively the lowland Malays or the surrounding African peoples. More than this, they have worked out mechanisms that do not survive the inevitable contact with industrial ‘‘civilizations’’; and when that contact occurs they often react with violence, sometimes more violence than other groups. For example, the Semai, so peaceable within their own territory, broke out in bloodthirsty behaviors when they were swept up in the Cold War struggles for power in Southeast Asia. There is a lesson to be learned here, too. As so often in peace development we must avoid romanticism (or any kind of naivet
e); however, we must never fail to learn from an experiment that has even partly succeeded. Too much is at stake and there is too little time to reinvent those slowly evolved cultural patterns that provided ways to live without inflicting serious harm on one another. —Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler

NOTE 1. Fry, 2007.

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CHAPTER

4

T H E E VO LU T I O N

OF

PEACE

Michael N. Nagler and Angel Ryono

King started from the essentially religious persuasion that in each human being, black or white, whether deputy sheriff or manual laborer or governor, there exists, however tenuously, a certain natural identification with every other human being; that, in the overarching design of the universe which ultimately connects us all together, we tend to feel that what happens to our fellow human beings in some way also happens to us, so that no man can continue to debase or abuse another human being without eventually feeling in himself at least some dull answering hurt and stir of shame. Therefore, in the catharsis of a live confrontation with wrong, when an oppressor’s violence is met with a forgiving love, he can be vitally touched, and even, at least momentarily, reborn as a human being, while the society witnessing such a confrontation will be quickened in conscience toward compassion and justice. —Marshall Frady

STEPPING OUT OF THE SHADOWS Kenneth Boulding, the distinguished economist who was one of the giants in peace studies, used to say that the field of nonviolence is like that of science in that it seeks to discover truth. In any field of science, falsehood or misinformation, once disclosed, is always rejected while truth, once discovered, is kept. It should be noted that in all sciences, the pursuit of knowledge is an evolving process—old views are subject to review and to alterations through

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better understanding. However optimistic Boulding’s assessment may appear, it does seem that science as a whole is broadening its perspective, particularly on the nature of human beings. The science of human and animal behavior is moving from a preoccupation with the dysfunctions that can lead to aggression and war to exploring the inherent potential of the human being for nonviolence and peace. A landmark development in the exploration of our capacity for peace was the ringing publication The Seville Statement on Violence that was disseminated under UN auspices in 1986.1 Eighteen distinguished ethologists, psychologists, and bioscientists systematically refuted the assumptions that we are by nature defined by competitive behaviors and biologically inclined to war-making. The driving concern of the authors of The Seville Statement was that the myth ‘‘war is intrinsic to human nature’’ is widespread and presents a real challenge to the progress toward peace.2 Although there is violence in nature and in human societies, there is also nonviolence in the form of cooperation, sharing, mediation, reconciliation, and even self-sacrifice. Moreover, biology, as understood in its most common definition, does not exclusively determine human behaviors. Humans have the ability to accept or override biological influences. As Nagler has said in oral presentations: ‘‘We are not wired for violence, and we are not wired for nonviolence. We are wired for choice.’’3 Therefore, it is either overreaching or na€ve to say that war-making—a phenomenon and an institution that involves a highly complex system requiring intricate and extensive planning and the dedication of vast resources—is ‘‘inevitable.’’ Like the sciences, a parallel widening of the lens is discernible today in the field of history. Gandhi once argued, ‘‘Hundreds of nations live in peace. History does not and cannot take note of this fact. History is really a record of the interruption of the even workings of the force of love or the soul. History, then, is a record of the interruptions of the course of nature. Soul-force [satyagraha], being natural, is not noted in history.’’4 Conversely, psychology and psychiatry, like other sciences, have been increasingly confronted with the ‘‘dual-use dilemma’’ of their work.5 Although scientists usually do not consider ‘‘ominous applications’’ for their research, the dawn of contemporary studies of human brain processes and behavior rose inseparably with the increasing sophistication of war-making institutions.6 Although only a small number of clinicians in psychology and psychiatry worked for the military in World War I, the employment of psychologists and psychiatrists in various aspects of military and central intelligence institutions saw a dramatic increase about a year after World War II began. ‘‘By the end of the war, 1,710 psychologists were serving in the U.S. military, an astounding figure because in 1945, APA [the American Psychological Association] had only 1,012 full members.’’7 Although similar increases have occurred in other

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parts of the western world, the U.S. government and military is, by far, the biggest employer of psychologists and psychiatrists. In the United States an inexhaustible military budget has brought significant patronage to studies of the brain and human behavior. War-making institutions have expanded the research and duties of psychologists and psychiatrists beyond strategies to resist enemy interrogation or to improve the morale of troops during battle; they have been asked to exploit the human potential for and consent to acts of violence, among other disturbing ‘‘applications’’ of their expertise8 (see Latonick-Flores and Adamski, Chapter 9, Volume 2 of this set). In fact, some of today’s most established subfields in psychology and social sciences were born out of U.S. naval research projects.9 Psychologists were thus deeply involved in one of the most disturbing uses of science in the modern world: we have improved on the crude methods used in the past to overcome the natural human aversion to injuring or killing another person. Science, at the service of the military, has succeeded in dehumanizing military personnel so that the actual gun-firing rate of men in combat could be raised from an estimated 15 percent in the Korean War to over 90 percent in the Vietnam War.10 Further, in 1947, the establishment of a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) commenced a long and ‘‘disturbing’’ relationship with APA officials.11 It has been documented that APA officials were involved in the development of ethical standards ‘‘governing psychologists’ participation in interrogations and those involved in overseeing and facilitating the Bush administration’s . . . programs of torture.’’12 Other psychology experiments or research like those conducted in the 1960s by Stanley Milgram and in the 1970s by Philip Zimbardo focused on investigating the negative tendencies of human behavior in the context of group pressure or in response to authority. Milgram’s research on obedience and Zimbardo’s discovery of the Lucifer Effect, although helpful in understanding such social phenomena, nevertheless influenced our worldview that humans under certain not uncommon circumstances are constitutionally violent and destructive. Today, as global-scale problems threaten all human beings, if not all life on earth, studies of the mind and brain science are turning the corner to explore the other edge of human potential: ‘‘. . . while ordinary people have the potential to do evil, they also have the power to do good.’’13

THE SUBATOMIC WORLD The development of quantum theory paints a picture of the universe at the subatomic level that is far more unitary and resonant with the consciousness-pervaded reality understood by the mystics and sages than the

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Newtonian model or classical mechanics. For instance, the dual characteristics of light, being both a particle and a wave, and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity challenge Newtonian laws of physics and the paradigm that the universe can be fully explained through cause and effect. Physicists must now take seriously the idea that consciousness is affecting experimental outcomes: non-determinism. These ideas are friendlier, at least as analogy, to the interconnected world of peace research, and much else. As quantum theorist Henry Stapp states, The assimilation of this quantum conception of man into the cultural environment of the twenty-first century must inevitably produce a shift in values conducive to human survival. The quantum conception gives an enlarged sense of self . . . from which must flow lofty values that extend far beyond the confines of narrow personal self-interest.14

Indeed it must, though the flow has yet to become a river to sweep away the mechanical and deterministic world view that has influenced the imagination of the general public or many scientists. Much is still to be explored in the notional importance of a paradigm shift in the physical science and how it impacts our general worldview, and specifically its implications for peace.

THE SUBHUMAN WORLD In 1975, primatologist Frans de Waal observed a flare-up among the chimpanzees in the colony at the Arnhem Zoo. He also witnessed the animals bring themselves back to their calmer state, and got curious about what he had just seen, clearly a form of conflict resolution and reconciliation. When he went to check the literature on this second phenomenon he made an interesting discovery: there wasn’t any. De Waal observes: Fires start, but fires also go out. Obvious as this is, scientists concerned with aggression, a sort of social fire, have totally ignored the means by which the flames of aggression are extinguished. We know a great deal about the causes of hostile behavior in both animals and humans, ranging from hormones and brain activity to cultural influences. Yet we know little of the way conflicts are avoided—or how, when they do occur, relationships are afterward repaired and normalized. As a result, people tend to believe that violence is more integral to human nature than peace.15

In biology, particularly in relation to evolution, biological psychology, and neuroscience, we are beginning to appreciate how grievously Darwin’s ideas have been misinterpreted to protect the misleading notion that nature and the general life process are a ruthless competition for physical survival.

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45

New findings in research are beginning to vindicate Peter Kropotkin’s argument that cooperation plays a key role in evolution.16 Ironically, the simplistic notion of ‘‘survival of the fittest’’ or the purely material universe composed of random events—in which, as Alvin Toffler has said, we are made to feel like an anomaly, like ‘‘gypsies of the universe’’—is held aloft to support a belief in a world in which no one really wants to live.17 To think of ourselves as part of a competitive, mechanical, and statistically based reality has obscured our true relationship with one another and the environment, and has discouraged us from discovering who we truly are. It is worth citing an example of how the biological sciences are evolving away from a limited view based on scarcity and competition. Much of the evidence about aggression in our animal ancestors relied on one of the genetically closest primates, the common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), which exhibits seriously aggressive behavior, particularly in the captive environments in which they are constrained (and almost all observation of them took place until recently). Then, in 1928, a German zoologist, Ernst Schwarz, discovered evidence of a related species, now known as bonobos (Pan paniscus), that was flourishing in a small area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Bonobos are genetically quite similar to the chimpanzee (and consequently to us), but their social structures and behaviors are remarkably different. They practice sex differently and conflict very differently, such that if they had been discovered first we might have derived a more tempered understanding of our biological inheritance for violence and aggression and their opposites. New research evidence shows that pre-human animals possess the entire repertoire of behaviors and emotions that we do, violent and nonviolent. In a brilliant experiment, de Waal placed a group of stump-tailed macaque monkeys—a relatively egalitarian and pacific species—among the hierarchically organized and fight-oriented rhesus monkeys. At first, the Rhesus monkeys were puzzled that the placid stump-tailed macaques did not respond in an expected way when attacked, neither running away nor fighting back. In fact, stump-tailed macaques interacted with the dominant rhesus monkeys by offering an extremity for a ritual bite that never causes harm, but serves to end the confrontation. Interestingly, the pacific behaviors of the stump-tailed macaques were, over time, adopted by the aggressive rhesus and remained even when the stump-tailed monkeys were removed. As de Waal writes, ‘‘we had infused a group of monkeys of one species with the social culture of another.’’18 What we have put in italics are three well-known principles of active nonviolence, uncannily represented in the subhuman world. A final note from de Waal: ‘‘My main purpose is to correct biology’s bleak orientation on the human condition. In a decade in which peace has become

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History and Vitality of Peace Movements

the single most important public issue, it is essential to introduce the accumulated evidence that, for humans, making peace is as natural as making war.’’19 Primate research is admittedly complex: behaviors differ in the wild and in captivity, between species and even within the same species when they are found in harsh versus plentiful and secure environments. Scientists have interpreted studies in ways that emphasize either the war-like or the peaceful activities of the great apes. But a fair view would suggest that our closest primate relatives show capacities for avoiding violence and transforming or redirecting the impulses that lead to it. Monkeys show capacities for peace. They are already affected by the apparent universal dynamics of nonviolence.

WHAT ARE WE ‘‘WIRED’’ FOR? We arrive now at some of the important discoveries in neuroscience and biological psychology that have helped balance the story about the human capacity to build a more peaceful society. Much of this progress has been made possible by new, noninvasive studies of brain activities in living, waking subjects. On another level, they also arise from a felt need to balance the picture by looking at both sides of the human potential. Recent studies have shown that empathy is involved in mediating aggression, developing emotional literacy, and increasing competency in interpersonal communications. The limbic system is considered the neuroanatomical center of human emotions. It is composed of subcortical structures that mediate interactions or information flow between the primitive brain stem and the cerebral cortex, control the release of major bodily hormones, and modulate the storage and recall of memory.20 By identifying structures that are involved in emotional responses and understanding how they are central to a multitude of brain processes scientists have gained a tremendous amount of information about how, for example, emotions are involved in daily, conscious behaviors. A summary of key facts about the neuroscience of emotions can be gleaned from Kandel, Embry, Adkins, and the larger body of research on emotions:21 • Human emotions are now ‘‘visible,’’ thanks to modern scanning devices that measure electrical activity in the brain and biochemical levels in the body. • Emotional states directly affect attention and therefore play a crucial role in memory.

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• Emotional responses are both a product of inherent tendencies and environmental influences. • Neural pathways for emotions demonstrate neuroplasticity, meaning that experiences and environmental factors can physically alter the way brain cells interact over time.22 • Although activity in the primitive structures of our central nervous system can override more complex emotional (and consequently cognitive) processes, studies have shown that the reverse occurs as well.

Recent studies on neurochemicals and hormones reveal important information about the mechanics of positive social behaviors such as attachment, the forming of relationships, and compassion for others. Breakthrough investigation of the hormone oxytocin has generated compelling data about positive behaviors of individuals and even information about interpersonal relations.23 For one example, studies of the combined effects of the hormone oxytocin and activation of the vagus nerve show that they produce behaviors that are clearly opposite of aggression leading to a theory of ‘‘tend and befriend.’’24 The vagus nerve is perhaps the most significant communication line between the brain and the rest of the body, particularly in regulating the heartbeat. It is the longest running nerve, extending from the brain stem to the abdominal area. It is in exploring oxytocin’s impact on the vagus that researchers begin to understand the physiological foundations of the human ability to focus on ‘‘the other.’’ Individuals who feel secure are likely to engage in ‘‘prosocial behaviors’’ such as protecting another person, acting compassionately, and so forth. Feelings of security and affiliative behavior have been measured in children to be correlated with the ‘‘resting tone’’ of the vagus nerve.25 The resting tone of the vagus nerve has been discussed in many studies to help individuals attend to social cues and process information like facial expressions and body language about others during interpersonal communication. In 1988, Iaccomo Rizzolati and Vittorio Gallasse made a revolutionary discovery in the field of brain science. Their research with the frontal lobe of macaque monkey brains showed that the same group of neurons in the ventral premotor area appears active whether the subject is performing a set of complex tasks or whether the subject watches others perform the same tasks. These neurons have been appropriately termed mirror neurons and have significantly advanced our ability to explain how the brain functions during social activities or while engaged with more complex interactions with the external world. Mirror neurons, fundamentally motor and association neurons that are located throughout the brain, have been discovered to ‘‘imitate’’ the actions that we observe and are involved in basic encoding of the intentions of the observed actor. Further research with human subjects at the University of

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History and Vitality of Peace Movements

California, Los Angeles (UCLA) showed that mirror neurons reinforce and maintain learned skills through ‘‘simple observation’’ and that the mere observation of similar behaviors or movements, or simply hearing the sounds of such behaviors (like kicking a soccer ball or putting a cup down on the table), or even imagining the behavior in question also trigger the same brain processes.26 The resonance between one person’s brain and the perceived actions and behaviors of another person can be so intense that a set of ‘‘super mirror neurons’’ must intervene to remind the observer that his or her own responses are independent of the observed expressions or behavior.27 In studies of autistic children, brain wave recordings reveal that a dysfunctional mirror neuron system is linked to difficulties in showing empathy.28 Mirror neuron findings suggest that we have the capacity to fully identify with another person’s behavior to the point that we require other neuromechanisms to inform us that we are not that other person. As he puts it, ‘‘mirror neurons . . . show that we are not alone, but are biologically wired and evolutionarily designed to be deeply interconnected with one another.’’29 A striking neurophysiological parallel that a few scientists have begun to document speaks to the disastrous psychological and neurochemical effects of inflicting pain on another.30 (See Rachel Chapter 21, Volume 2 on the effects of killing.) Iacoboni summarizes from his mirror neuron research: ‘‘although we commonly think of pain as a fundamentally private experience, our brain actually treats it as an experience shared with others.’’31 Briefly, but cogently, Iacoboni asserts that we are ‘‘wired for empathy,’’ and ‘‘we have evolved to connect deeply with other human beings. Our awareness of this fact can and should bring us even closer to one another.’’32 Indeed it should. What light does King’s belief that ‘‘no man can continue to debase or abuse another human being without eventually feeling in himself at least some dull answering hurt and stir of shame’’ shed on the enormous amount of violence played out constantly on television and movie screens? Iacoboni argues, ‘‘if all this violence could somehow disappear for one week (we are so wired for empathy that) it would never come back.’’33 All this having been said, it is important to note that the existence of a neural network or any physical or physiological mechanism has never been proved to directly cause human beings to have certain emotions or carry out specific behaviors. Rather we understand that biochemical events and psychological events, heavily invested with meanings we have created, are reflections of a single reality and one that humans have helped to construct. We humans have evolved higher control systems, consistent with a complex cerebral cortex that make people quite able to override impulses generated from hormones and other neural pathways. We are in this sense our own pilots. To believe otherwise is to set aside human will, freedom, and responsibility—as

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Shakespeare puts it, it is an ‘‘admirable evasion of whoremaster man.’’ The innate aggression theory encouraged the all-too-common exclusion of will, choice, and responsibility in human behavior. When scientists set aside the will, which the 14th-century classic on contemplation called the Cloud of Unknowing calls the highest part of the soul, they are unwittingly contributing to the dehumanization that precedes all violence. In spite of the new research in brain science, ‘‘[o]ther findings show that mirror neuron activity is instrumental for interpreting the facial expressions and actions of others but may not be sufficient for decoding their thoughts and intentions.’’34 The discovery of mirror neurons is without doubt a major breakthrough in neuroscience, but there are legitimate doubts among researchers that we currently have the ability to explain fully how humans understand, respond to, or are changed by observed social behaviors. Jacob and Jeannerod caution science against explaining social interactions as simply the brain imitating the observed movements and behaviors of others, and Goldman believes that mirror neurons are at best the brain’s preliminary system for recognizing, coding, and understanding actions.35 As the Buddha said, ‘‘Our life is shaped by our mind,’’ which resonates with findings in neuroscience—our hormones or our genes do not exclusively shape us. The recent discovery of neuroplasticity, mentioned above, gives a physical reality to this ancient insight. Hormones and genes, and neural networks are only a part of a constellation of factors that affect our behavior. More recently, neuroscientists and others, including the general public, are taking a renewed interest in the effects of constructive social behaviors, peaceful and nonviolent practices, and even attitudes, on the brain. This enthusiastic and long overdue turning away from war-based research has brought modern, ‘‘’hard’’ scientists in touch with the ancient practice of meditation: ‘‘. . . [B]rain research suggest[s] that compassion can be learned and increased with practice, similar to any skill or talent. Some researchers believe that compassion meditation may benefit depressed people or young people who struggle with aggression and violence.’’36 Meditation is above all a continuing act of will, and as such it is no surprise that measurable brain activity associated with the practice typically begins in the frontal or prefrontal area of the cerebral cortex. Fascinating connections have been found in monitoring and imaging the brain during meditation that reveal voluntary control of or at least influence over the limbic system, especially in regulating the activity of the amygdala, a limbic system structure that has been associated with producing aggression and anxiety. In this connection, one important study must be added to what we have discussed so far. We are aware that altruistic acts are accompanied by surprisingly intense pleasure responses in the brain equal to feelings that accompany

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addictive drug experiences.37 Neuroscience has suggested that we are ‘‘wired for empathy,’’ in other words, our central nervous system contains important mechanisms that resonate with the mental states of others—giving a scientific basis, for those who require it, to the nonviolent effect Frady mentions. Another supportive finding for nonviolence is that the biological inheritance that predisposes us to fear and aggression, built deeply as it is into our very brain stem and in higher brain structures, can be overridden.38 A clever study by two Princeton scientists, Mary Wheeler and Susan Fiske, showed that the simple act of asking a research subject questions like ‘‘does the person you’re about to see like crunchy or smooth peanut butter’’ successfully suppressed the amygdala’s ‘‘fight or flight’’ reaction that normally accompanies seeing the face of an unknown person from a different race.39 One can reflect on how this study helps to support the idea that by seeing a person as an individual rather than a stereotype, that is, by rehumanizing that person, the negative conditioning embedded in millions of years of evolution can be neutralized. Meditation involves not only the slowing down and concentrating of our normally rapid and scattered thought processes but also, and by some yet to be understood corollary, the conversion of destructive to constructive content of our thoughts.40 Perhaps the most popular form of meditation in the West today is Vipasanna, or ‘‘insight.’’ As seen by brain scientists, this practice ‘‘is associated with enhanced prefrontal cortical regulation of affect through labeling of negative affective stimuli.’’41 Thus, isolating the act of mindfulness is contributing to the understanding that humans have the ability to control and change their aggressive behaviors, especially if the ability is practiced over a long period of time. In 1901, Wilhelm Roentgen received the first Nobel Prize in Physics for his serendipitous discovery, six years earlier, of what we now call X-rays. By that time the British army of the Sudan already had a portable X-ray unit traveling with every company. It would take 50 years more, however, before X-ray technology was widely available for peacetime medicine. To study the human potential for peace is obviously not as easy to do or as well supported as research designed (or subsequently used) to manipulate people and otherwise cause violence and fear. It will be a great day for science, and humanity, when that priority is reversed.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Frady, 1992, 70. Adams, ‘‘The Seville Statement on Violence,’’ 1989. Ibid. Gandhi, 1944. Mauk, 2007.

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6. Ibid. 7. Summers, 2008. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Grossman, 1995. 11. Raymond, 2009. 12. A recent New Yorker article revealed that G.W. Bush’s administration consulted with professionals who helped to build an interrogation program that ‘‘appl[ied] theories of ‘learned helplessness’ on [human] detainees based on findings from experiments with abused dogs.’’ See Jane Mayer, ‘‘The Secret History: Can Panetta Move the CIA Forward without Confronting Its Past?’’ New Yorker, 2009. 13. Landau, 2008. 14. Stapp, 1989. 15. de Waal, 1989. This realization has lead to a long series of superb books by de Waal. 16. ‘‘Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution.’’ In Encyclopdia Britannica, 2000. 17. Prigogine and Stengers, 1984. 18. de Waal, 1996. For further discussion of these issues see Clark, 2002. 19. de Waal, 1989. 20. ‘‘Emotion.’’ In Encyclopdia Britannica, 2000. 21. Kandel, 2000; Adkins, 2009. 22. Doidge, 2007. 23. Kok, 2008. 24. Ibid., 5. 25. Ibid., 7. 26. Tyson, 2009. 27. Iacoboni et al., 2005. 28. ‘‘Autism,’’ 2005. 29. Iacoboni et al., 2005. 30. See Rachel MacNair, vol. 2: ch 21. 31. Iacoboni et al., 2005. 32. Iacoboni, 2008. 33. Iacoboni to Michael Nagler during a recent interview. 34. Goldman, 2009. 35. Jacob and Jeannerod, 2005. 36. Ingles, 2008. 37. Angier, 2002; Rilling et al., 2002. (We do not believe, of course, that the neuronal activity is the ‘‘basis’’ of cooperation). 38. As would be suggested by de Waal’s study of the Rhesus and Stump-tailed monkeys cited earlier in the chapter. 39. Wheeler and Fiske, 2005. Getting subjects to see faces as individuals rather than (racial or gender) categories overrides Amygdala reactions to stereotypes. 40. An effective form of meditation built on this very synergism is ‘‘passage meditation’’ developed by Sri Eknath Easwaran (cf. www.easwaran.org). 41. Creswell, et al., 2007.

CHAPTER

P S YC H O LO G Y

5

AND

PEACE

Marc Pilisuk and Mitch Hall

There are two peace psychologies, one expressed in studies, the other in stories. The first involves the work of psychology scholars who apply their tools to understanding why humans engage in violence and war or in peaceful and cooperative relations.1 The second gives witness, through stories, to what is happening in the hearts and minds of people confronting a world awash in violence. In such stories, we hear the voices of those who have suffered violence, fought in wars, and initiated nonviolent reconciliation of conflicts. From those who have found ways to repair the wounds of violence, we learn of capacities for forgiveness, healing, reconciliation, and love. Both studies and stories provide insights into why people kill and go to war, how to reconcile differences without violence, how the trauma of violence and fear affects us, and how we recover and sometimes become advocates for peace. We begin with two characteristics of the human species: our ability to create psychological constructions of social reality and our potential to kill large numbers of our own species. The two are likely related.

PSYCHOLOGICAL ABILITIES TO CONSTRUCT OUR WORLD Our earliest human ancestors survived against more powerful predators by collaborating with others, using tools, and storing information in large, complex brains. They created intricate languages for communication and taught successive generations what was learned through experience.

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We now live in a world we have largely created—a physical world we have changed more in the last 300 years than nature has done in 3 million—and in a symbolic world of mental images that define what we assume to be true. The most comprehensive symbols are the prevailing myths about who we are as humans and as members of larger groups. The myths identify our place and purpose in the world, provide a framework for our beliefs, and lead to ritual practices observed with dedication.2 Our images of larger social entities, such as nations and religions, exist only because we believe they are real. We invest them with sovereign powers and sacred attachments. Many willingly kill or die for them. We live by role expectations prescribed by our cultural worldviews and social-group identifications. This, according to terror management theory, enhances our selfesteem, gives meaning to our lives, and buffers us from the anxiety and terror that our uniquely human awareness that we are going to die can induce in us.3 Soldiers are assigned a special role in the world of attachment to national symbols. They are depicted as heroic defenders against alien forces who would hurt us. No matter how endangered the soldiers, leaders manipulate the national myths and tell us that we cannot pull out of an armed conflict because it would dishonor the troops. How people behave in roles within these larger symbolic realms is often confused with inherent ‘‘human nature.’’ Violent conflicts among larger groups are commonly attributed to human aggression. That view fails to recognize the myths of nationhood and, of relevance here, the dominant Western worldview. All cultures give special value to insiders, who in some languages are identified by the same term that means ‘‘humans.’’ For cultures with hegemonic aspirations, the myths surrounding prejudicial favoring of one’s own group may determine whether outsiders are to be converted, conquered, enslaved, or annihilated. Cultural attitudes toward outsiders are therefore essential for understanding aggressive societal policies. Our stored constructions of people from other parts of the world depend largely on whether they are brought to us by media. When Iran held 51 American hostages their well-being was a global concern. When thousands of people are abducted and killed extra-judicially by state terrorism in Guatemala, Colombia, Haiti, Indonesia, or Egypt, governments favored by the United States, their plight is not part of our reality. Human compassion may well extend to individuals, even to species never personally known to us, but this cannot be tapped to stop violence when the facts are concealed.

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WESTERN WORLDVIEW The dominant Western worldview is among the most potent, though often latent, psychological constructions of the contemporary developed world. Its propositions encompass ownership of resources, inequality, legitimacy of power, amorality, force, and inevitability.4 This worldview is a constellation of beliefs and values that include: • All people are free to compete for success, typically defined as expanded wealth. • The world’s resources exist for exploitation by those best able to take advantage of its gifts. • Private property is favored by law over either unowned nature or public property. • Freedom to speak includes the unlimited right to use wealth to influence opinion and public policy. • Problems can be fixed with technical solutions.5 • Corporations shall have the protection by law afforded to citizens. • Corporate investors are the creators of wealth and jobs. • Efficacy is more important than ethics in the attainment and protection of wealth. • Disparities in wealth of any magnitude are natural and acceptable. • Poverty is due to deficiencies in the poor. • Military force is justified to protect corporate interests (often defined as national interests). • Limited parliamentary democracy (mandating elections while allowing wealth to be used for persuasion) is the much-preferred form of government. • Psycho-cultural values of power, masculine domination, acquisition, and development are aspects of the natural world order. • Those not accepting these views or the policies that flow from them pose a danger and must be either trivialized or eliminated.

The above beliefs and values define what is thought to be the inevitable and universal path to progress.6 These beliefs define a system with little tolerance for alternatives. Against the background of such belief systems we can evaluate the contribution of human aggression to the occurrence of war.

WAR AND HUMAN AGGRESSION In developed societies, unless we live in high-violence urban zones, our images of how violent humans are derive less from what we witness directly and more from media depictions. Media always select and frequently distort.

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Media create an unrealistically violent view of our communities and world. By reporting the tragedy of victims without serious analysis of what social and economic conditions foment violence, they increase our fearfulness of people. Despite the highlighting of violence in media, people mostly cooperate, share, care, compete peacefully, act altruistically, and forgive. Despite the frequency of conflict, most humans go through a typical day without being either a perpetrator, victim, or witness of any type of physical violence. Across continents and cultures, conflicts are mostly handled by talking over differences. Ridiculing, persuading, coaxing, arguing, shouting, grumbling, or walking away are all common. One finds people agreeing to compensate for damages, compromising, reconciling differences, and negotiating settlements, often using third parties to help.7 Most individuals cope with bullying, insults, competitive conflicts, and disappointments without resorting to violence or inflicting serious harm on adversaries. Even in cultural settings considered violent, most daily behavior is entirely nonviolent. Comparative studies show that major violence in societies, while common, is not universal and that human nature does not make war inevitable.

AGGRESSION Human capacities for anger and aggression are deeply rooted in our bodies. Cruel, selfish, and violent activities appear to be as fundamental a part of human nature as creative, caring, and cooperative actions. So we examine one aspect of what makes war possible: the capacity and the motivation of humans to be aggressive and to kill other humans. Erich Fromm’s The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness8 describes diverse forms of aggression—some benign, accidental, or playful. Many forms are seen by the aggressor to be purely defensive or instrumental to achieving a noble purpose. Such actions often reflect a need to conform to the prejudices of one’s group. And some aggression is malignant and intended mainly to destroy. Frustration frequently increases the arousal of aggressive tendencies. But from the time of our foraging ancestors, those bands whose symbolic worlds included means to resolve conflicts without killing off their members were those that remained. Angry temptations are universally present, but it is more than fear of consequences that keeps us from physically harming one another. Internalized cultural symbols, particularly moral standards, also help. The world in which such moral standards abound is one that humans have created. In simple foraging societies, violence, if it does occur, is personal and not the basis for long-term feuds. Tribal hierarchies sometimes permit organized group violence that is typically short-lived. It is at the level of nation states that organized military force to inflict war becomes possible.

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Even within larger hierarchical societies, people are typically living peacefully even as powerful leaders prepare for war. The world in which organized violence or war can be considered a choice is a world predicated on the way feararousing symbols are mobilized.

FACING AND AVOIDING DANGER The psycho-physiological ability to mobilize thoughts and behavior rapidly in the face of threats is essential to survival. If we were continuously frightened by an immediate threat of nuclear annihilation or of floods to come with global warming, we likely would be overwhelmed with emotion and unable to act. Avoiding recognition of real-world dangers is a manifestation of psychological denial. Pushing danger from awareness has implications for the prevention of mass violence. Not fearing the enormity of such dangers, we may increase their risks by delaying action to prevent them. Fortunately, we humans have the capacity to deal with long-term issues with creative dedication and with opportunities to engage with others in building solutions. Movements for peace and justice lie within human psychological abilities.

US AND THEM: DEHUMANIZATION AND ENEMIES We retain long-term conceptions of others; some are known personally, others known only by images offered to us by secondary sources. An intriguing experiment by Bandura9 shows how easy it is to set up negative images of an unknown group. In this case it was just overhearing some derogatory comments. People acted on this information by applying more intense shocks, (or so they believed) to the negatively represented group than to others. To engage in killing other humans, or to sanction such killing, we make use of a capacity to withdraw a human connection to the target person or group. Dehumanization is a composite psychological mechanism that permits people to regard others as unworthy of being considered human. On a conscious level it can be fostered by blinding appeals to hate a particular evil adversary. Beneath the level of awareness, dehumanization permits us to resolve selfdoubts by finding a scapegoat as the target for blame. Terror management researchers argue that many cultural beliefs and identities are symbolic attempts to buffer us from the terror of inevitable death. We may hide such existential terror by projecting bad intentions onto members of out-groups who are deemed evil.10 War depends on a designation of out-groups as enemies. It is a special ‘‘game’’ in which governments grant license to kill.

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CREATING SOLDIERS For most people at most times, personal violence against others is not part of what we condone.11 How then do we turn people into professional warriors? Lt. Col. Dave Grossman who has studied soldiers’ willingness to kill approximates that only 2 percent can kill with no feelings of remorse. They are dangerous, psychopathic people who often choose work in missions with special forces involving the chance to kill. The task of turning most civilians into soldiers who kill is more difficult. The U.S. Army had to change training methods from one war to the next over the past century to increase the percentage of soldiers capable of killing. In World War II, Grossman reported, only 15 to 20 percent of soldiers in combat fired their weapons. By the Korean War, the percentage increased to 50 to 55 percent, and by the Vietnam War, it had risen to 90 to 95 percent.12 Recruitment to the military is presented as a patriotic endeavor to defend one’s homeland, prove masculinity, and learn skills. The recruit is brought into an institution with an absolute hierarchy of command based on rank. Boot camp is harsh and aims to create a soldier who will follow orders, act courageously, and be able to kill. While training mentions the obligation of soldiers to follow the accepted rules of warfare, the military tolerance for insubordination or questioning an order is small. Retired marine Sergeant Martin Smith reflected on the poor and poorly educated recruits he trained: a recovering meth(amphetamine) addict, a young male who had prostituted himself to pay his rent, an El Salvadorian immigrant serving in order to receive a green card, a single mother who could not afford her child’s healthcare needs as a civilian, and a gay teenager who entertained his platoon by singing Madonna karaoke in the barracks. They were a cross-section of working-class America hoping for a change in their lives from a world that seemed utterly hopeless.13

U.S. soldiers in recent wars were typically from poor or middle-class backgrounds, distinguishing them from the privileged government officials who had decided to engage in war. Recruiters promised them education and job training they could not otherwise afford. No part of their recruitment or training described the likelihood of their own death, the consequences to their families, or the effects that the experience would have on them for the remainder of their lives. In contrast, the upper classes that benefit most economically from war have been practically absent from military service.14 The transformation of people into warriors has less to do with human motives to fight than with the absence of other opportunities for education,

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job training, socially respected employment, and participation in the larger society. The professional soldier does not describe his or her work as killing but rather to engage in a designated mission, to protect fellow soldiers, to eliminate a ruthless enemy, or to secure a territory held by dehumanized enemies. In the increasingly common circumstance of war against insurgents opposed to military or police occupation of their countries, and supported by local kin and sympathizers, the facade of professionalism often wears thin. Anger rages against suicide bombers and unreliable collaborators who are able to kill one’s buddies. In such cases, angry abuse of insurgents and of civilians defies the professional rules of law. Recognition for self-sacrificing contributions to a larger cause has long been understood as a benefit of war. In 1906, William James, perhaps the first peace psychologist, called for a moral equivalent to war, a cause that would command the dedication and focus of young people for building communities rather than for destruction of enemies.15 More recently, Chris Hedges provided a compelling look at the group psychology of war.16 The peacemovement community would benefit from studying his book and finding ways to offer people the same sense of identity and belonging in the work of peace building that they otherwise find in supporting or participating in war.

COPING WITH THE AFTERMATH OF WAR: TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE Soldiers return from war harmed physically or psychologically. Brain damage from head trauma, spinal cord injuries, amputated limbs, loss of sight or hearing, and shattered dreams are all common for thousands of wounded veterans. ‘‘Somebody’s got to pay the price,’’ said Col. Joseph Brennan, a head and neck surgeon, ‘‘And these kids are paying the price.’’17 The colonel did not challenge the premise that such wars have to occur. His reference to soldiers as ‘‘kids’’ evokes an unconscious, collective myth organized around the ancient archetypal theme of child sacrifice, a dominant cultural symbol, in the biblical stories of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, Isaac, and the crucifixion of Jesus as ‘‘God’s only begotten son.’’ Not counted in the casualty figures are soldiers who suffer delayed psychological trauma of combat. During the Vietnam War these psychological effects became so common that the mental health category of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was created. In coping with trauma, what is first buried from awareness continues to live on. Symptoms include persistent reliving of the traumatic event, hyper-vigilance, sleep disturbance, nightmares, a numbing of emotions, feelings of estrangement, inability to experience intimacy,

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withdrawal from feelings of connection to the outside world, and avoidance of frightening reminders. People with PTSD sometimes experience heightened fearfulness, amnesia, irritability, and uncontrollable outbursts of anger. Among combat veterans, high rates of alcoholism and drug abuse reflect efforts to dull the torment, while high rates of domestic violence, child abuse, and suicide reflect the difficulty of doing so. Some researchers have documented that soldiers who have killed develop perpetration-induced traumatic stress symptoms that are even more severe than the PTSD in soldiers who have been traumatized in combat but have not killed.18 Young children are often traumatized by the sights, sounds, and losses of war. But similar fears may be brought on by punitive parenting, by inconsistent or unpredictable discipline, and to a great degree, by neglect. Such parenting occurs in all social classes and among many cultures, but it is exacerbated by poverty and by forced displacement of people from their familiar origins. Like war veterans, many of these children still maintain a remarkable resilience and ability to recover their sense of caring, especially if they benefit from at least one caring, empathic relationship with, for example, a grandparent, teacher, or other mentor.19 Also like traumatized veterans, some children who remain traumatized from early abuse and/or neglect, will remain prone to act out violently against others and themselves and will be easily recruited into gangs or armies in which their impulse to strike out can be rewarded. Involvement in violence, and particularly in killing, has longterm consequences.20

FINDING ENEMIES Designating some people as evildoers who must be found, imprisoned, or killed is common in the lead-up to executions and to war. Certain behavior, real or fabricated, is interpreted as a reason for killing. But this interpretation reflects what psychologists have long studied as attribution error, the tendency to ascribe behavior to the enduring characteristics of individuals while ignoring circumstances that are often more important factors. Often, attempts by one country or group to defend against assault are interpreted by adversaries as aggressive.21 During the Cold War, the common perception among leaders and public alike was that the opposing country, the United States or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), could not be trusted and that none of its policies could be considered other than aggressive in intent. Bronfenbrenner described this as the mirror image in U.S.-Soviet relations.22 The Nazis who committed genocidal killings of unprecedented magnitude are viewed as pathological killers. Yet, in her study of Nazi storm troopers, Hannah Arendt noted that the most remarkable thing about the Nazis was

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how like the rest of us they were.23 Social psychologists have put forth compelling evidence to support the view that the capacity to engage in evil or harmful behavior lies within all of us and that surrounding circumstances play the major role in releasing violent behavior.24 This is the situationist perspective, in contrast to the view that ascribes behavior to individual dispositions. In a famous series of experiments that inform the situationist position, Milgram25 showed that ordinary American citizens could be induced into administering what they believed to be harmful electric shocks to strangers under circumstances in which the experimenter explained to them that this was what they should do. Remarkably, administering even a potentially lethal shock could be induced among most subjects, males and females, across all ages and educational levels. Sixty-five percent of the subjects would do this if the experimenter said it was okay, if they saw their peers doing it, and if the victims were presented as being in some way inferior. According to Zimbardo,26 a contractual agreement, verbal or written, contributes to the willingness to justify immoral violence. One critical factor is the cover story that what is being done is for a good cause. The depiction of Panama’s Manuel Noriega as a brutal drug lord or of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein as a political leader stacked with concealed weapons of mass destruction are examples of cover stories that were false but never the less helped to legitimize violence. Another major factor is the promise that the cruel activity can be done anonymously and without individual identification. The cloak of the hangman and the uniforms of soldiers contribute to such anonymity. Societies that mutilate their victims in warfare typically provide masks to their warriors.27 The people behind the cloak appeared on Christmas Eve, 1914, on a World War I battlefield in Flanders. As the troops were settling in for the night, a young German soldier sang Stille Nacht (‘‘Silent Night’’). The British and French responded by singing other Christmas carols. Eventually, soldiers from both sides left their trenches and met in the no-man’s-land between them. They shook hands, exchanged gifts, and shared pictures of their families. Informal soccer games began, and an informal service was held to bury the dead of both sides, to the displeasure of the generals. Men who have come to know one another’s names and seen family pictures are less likely to want to kill. War often seems to require a nameless, faceless enemy.28

DEVILS AND BAD APPLES We distinguish in language heroic warriors from undisciplined killers. The evidence that most of us can be drawn by circumstances into committing violence does not preclude the alternative perspective that there are vast differences among people in the willingness to inflict pain or to kill.

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A psychological developmental perspective helps to account for such differences. Formative early relationships predispose us toward certain behaviors, which current situations may also influence. Because we have learned that killing is wrong, those who readily engage in such behavior often reflect a traumatic history that has blunted their capacities for empathy. Young children are helped by the predictable assurance of a parent figure to fix within their neural pathways an ability to return from perceived danger to a psychologically safe zone. Abuse and/or neglect early in their lives can interfere with early bonding and affect the long time ability to form later attachments. Such adult assurance is again important in adolescence so the developing person can cope with fear and anger as controllable parts of the self. Punitive child-rearing, particularly inconsistent punitive discipline, leaves children vulnerable to feelings of worthlessness, easily catapulted into violence by their own emotions and prone to find assurance from gangs of others like themselves. Early violent experience often limits our ability to reexamine dangerous events, rather than striking out in anger.29 Trauma has been associated with neuronal and brain-chemistry dysfunction affecting areas of the brain responsible for emotion regulation and empathy. Individual trauma history and the presence of subsequent healing relationships account for the fact that not all of those who were severely abused are prone to react with impulsive acts of aggression. Others who were egregiously neglected are more likely to perpetrate calculated, predatory violence.30 Arendt’s cogent observations on the ‘‘banality of evil’’ among the Nazis did not take into account the developmental perspective later presented. Historical data include accounts of widespread abusive child-rearing practices in Germany at the turn of the 20th century that probably contributed to the childhood traumatization of many who later became Nazis.31 Hitler’s own background is one example affirming Stephenson’s studies of 14 modern tyrants. All had suffered multiple childhood humiliations, were shame-based, and had grown up in violent, authoritarian families.32 While their rise to power may well reflect the current situations faced by their populations, the contribution of childhood trauma affecting the predisposition to violence should not be ignored. The research on impacts of early trauma is complicated because some individuals with a history of unhealed, violent trauma have a socialized, normal-appearing personality housed in one part of the brain, along with dissociated alter personality in which feelings of terror, helplessness, rage, humiliation, and identification with the perpetrator of early traumatic experience are stored and, under certain circumstances, activated.33 Observations of killing at the level of the individual homicide contribute to understanding a complex relation between personal and situational factors. Many are related to family or group pressure (for example, honor killings or

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street gang activity). Convicted killers do not all share the same personality type. Some fit the image of mean, aggressive, impulse-driven males with little sign of sensitivity or compassion for others. But another group of first homicides are committed by people who are more androgynous or feminine, gentle, shy, and with no prior record of violence.34 One study of blood chemistry of violent inmates found two distinctive, abnormal blood profiles; one was associated with episodic, explosive violence followed by remorse, and the other with frequent, assaultive behavior followed by no remorse.35 The forensic psychiatrist Gilligan, who worked for 20 years with violent inmates, found a primary cause of their violent acts was overwhelming shame that they unsuccessfully tried, through killing, to replace with pride. They did not perceive themselves as having alternative nonviolent ways of relieving themselves from feelings of shame, humiliation, and low self-esteem. Also, they lacked the capacity to experience the feelings that normally inhibit violence, such as love and guilt in relation to others and fear of consequences for themselves.36 Social psychologists Milburn and Conrad and linguist George Lakoff have presented evidence that punitive political attitudes, including the favoring of war as an instrument of national policy and capital punishment, are consequences of punitive upbringings and venues through which people, particularly males, beaten, terrified, and shamed by parental authorities as children, displace their childhood anger onto political issues and outgroups.37 In light of these findings, it is significant that James Dobson, the influential, conservative, evangelical leader, child psychologist, best-selling author, radio and television journalist, and founder of Focus on the Family, explicitly advocates the physical punishment of children, along with not allowing them to cry in pain for more than two to five minutes before they are hit again.38 Dobson is an example of the misappropriation of both psychology and religion in the service of an authoritarian personal and political agenda that, to the extent it is implemented, increases levels of violence in the home, society, and the wider world. Individuals who are more prone to violence find inducements to act violently in a culture that accentuates individual achievement through competition and glorifies retribution against evildoers. Such retribution begins in the homes of some fundamentalists who teach their children that they are born sinful and who use physical punishment in child-rearing more than do other groups.39

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE Ordinary soldiers fight in wars begun by others who rarely engage in direct combat themselves and who decide on national interests and the costs

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to be tolerated in their pursuit. Moreover, Johan Galtung has drawn attention to structural violence, which requires no fighting but takes a far greater number of casualties than wars and other forms of direct violence.40 Consider the statistics. The World Health Organization has reported that 1.5 million people are killed worldwide each year due to direct violence of all kinds, including war.41 This tragic reality is compounded by structural violence, which causes from 14 to 18 million deaths per year as a result of starvation, lack of sanitary water, inadequate access to medical care, and other consequences of poverty.42 Direct violence, Galtung noted, is episodic, and typically harms or kills people quickly and dramatically. Episodes of overt violence are often intentional, personal, instrumental, and sometimes politically motivated. Structural violence, by contrast, represents a chronic affront to human well-being, harming or killing people slowly through relatively permanent social arrangements that are normalized and deprive some people of basic need satisfaction. Structural violence results from how institutions are organized, privileging some people with material goods and political influence while depriving others. Acting without hostile intent, some people make routine decisions in the global marketplace that necessitate the destitution of others—depriving them of their land, their resources, their jobs, and their hopes. These decisions are not accidents or mistakes but rather understandable consequences of a distorted process. The horrors of this indirect violence, as well as the benefits attributed to these market decisions, are products of the system, not of an omnipotent conspiracy. Most of the harm that privileged political, corporate, financial, and military elites cause has been sanctified by custom and law, which protect their privileges. Beneath the eyes of the citizenry, a high level of planning in a high-stakes game of attaining competitive advantage takes place, at times in secret meetings or in normal operating procedures.43 The perpetrators of structural violence who order wars and economic exploitation are rarely studied. They often make use of game theory to calculate strategies for winning and levels of acceptable costs. It is permissible within game theory to consider which country might be coerced into ensuring a greater amount of oil for the United States, but impermissible to ask whether more oil is desirable.

LEGITIMIZING GLOBAL VIOLENCE The mindset in which the world and its inhabitants are all instruments in an elite game to gain competitive advantage is very much a part of the belief system that legitimizes global violence. Human beings, on either side of a conflict or competition, are not considered for their feelings, needs, and

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rights, but are abstractly viewed as expendable pawns. In a military occupation where torture is used to find, punish, and intimidate resistance, the game has been redefined as one in which the rules permit such abuse. Toxic chemicals, radioactive pollution that will harm lives for millions of years, unhealthy fast foods, or brain-injured war veterans all enter into costbenefit analyses. The acceptability of risks may look different for executives of a corporation producing toxic chemical pesticides used to dust crops than to the migrant-laborer parents of a child with leukemia. The dehumanized mode of thought of game theorists requires that we consider everything, including material products, human lives, natural resources, and the sound of songbirds, to have a monetary value. To justify apparently immoral and illegal intervention activities, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once explained we have no principles, only interests. Even within the game-theory framework, its practitioners are prone to offer technical advice on playing the wrong game. So many situations that might turn out better if the parties are allowed to engage in trust and to seek mutually rewarding solutions are recast by the strategists (with media help) into zero-sum contests, obliging someone to get hurt. Completely absent from this formulation is appreciation of human motivations for empathy with other humans, for altruistic behavior that defies the balance sheets of self-interest and greed and for the gratifications that come from sharing, cooperation, and nurturing those in need. Leaders know their followers may be mobilized to follow their game plan, for short periods, with fear-arousing threats. But they also know that most people do not like the violence of war. A government that has chosen to act with military violence since the end of World War II is continually in need of justifying its compassion. For example, in a famous exchange on TV in 1996 between Madeleine Albright and reporter Lesley Stahl, the latter, while speaking of U.S. sanctions against Iraq, asked the U.S. ambassador to the UN and future secretary of state: ‘‘We have heard that a halfmillion children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And—and you know, is the price worth it?’’ Albright replied, ‘‘I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.’’44 Internationally agreed-on rules for the game of war preclude unprovoked, preemptive military attack, the kidnapping, extradition, and torture of captives, and starving of civilians. Under existing international laws for the conduct of war, those responsible for the war in Iraq have engaged in criminal behavior. However, like Madeleine Albright, they find justifications and see themselves as serving good ends that justify any means.

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We all compartmentalize the symbolic maps that guide us. People in power may not be devoid of compassion, although they may be in psychological denial of the human suffering their decisions cause and of their own consequent culpability. In the roles afforded them by governments or corporate structures, their realities are shaped only by what can be measured as winning. Perhaps paradoxically, organizational psychology finds that ignoring one’s nonmeasurable and unselfish potentials is detrimental to achieving even competitive military and corporate objectives. The army knows this and uses it to build teams of soldiers.

ALTERNATIVE WAYS TO RESOLVE CONFLICTS Whereas conflicts are often inevitable, creative, nonviolent ways to resolve them exist. A conflict can be a sign that democratic participation in decision making is alive and well. A premise of coming together on conflicts over divisive beliefs or ideologies is that the parties should be able to hear and acknowledge each other’s actual position, which is more difficult than it would appear to be. One model requires each party to restate the other’s position in a manner satisfactory to the other party. Once this is mutually achieved, the next step would be to validate points of agreement and to note symmetries. While neither adversary is converted to the other’s views, both sides can see their similarities with and differences from each other. The common ground humanizes the adversary and opens a space for compromise.45 Mediation is the most studied form of third-party intervention. For apparently intransigent conflicts, Fisher and Ury46 pioneered a model that encourages empathy, separates personal characteristics from underlying issues, avoids criticism, and invents creative options that provide mutually advantageous outcomes. Here psychology helps by teaching not to use ‘‘war words’’ and by distinguishing expressed positions from the actual needs they serve. When alternative ways to meet the needs are found, conflicts can often be resolved. Many creative options for coming together use the principle that antagonists who need each other to attain a shared goal will lessen their hostilities through common action. Even when parties have been locked into a pattern of hostility and distrust, methods are available to reverse the escalation of hostilities. Charles Osgood’s proposal of graduated reciprocation in tension reduction47 enables one of the parties to take the courageous first small step by announcing a specific minor conciliatory initiative and following through regardless. The practice is repeated. Eventually the opposition is tempted to reciprocate, if for no other reason than to establish its credibility as the nonbelligerent party. This process has been shown to work in

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controlled psychological experiments.48 Historically, the process occurred in the Kennedy and Khrushchev era of the ‘‘thaw’’ in the Cold War. Methods of alternative conflict resolution are wonderful if they avert violence. They can also be misused in situations of unequal power. A large corporation charged with destroying a community’s habitat or chemically poisoning their groundwater may avoid full costs of restitution by mediating with some of the victims. Families impoverished by injury or illness, by loss of a wage earner, or by property made worthless, lack the resources to contest corporate lawyers in a drawn-out process. They are pressed during mediation to settle for a compensatory financial agreement along with a promise not to discuss the case. Similar dynamics exist in negotiations between small countries and international funding organizations. Such examples show the difference between conflict resolution and peace. When conflict resolution maintains injustice, it perpetuates structural violence.49 To address this problem, transformative mediation aims to establish a relationship between parties, improve mutual understanding, and open a channel for continued dialogue.50 Overall, nonviolent conflict resolution strategies are a remarkably effective substitute for violence. The problem is not their efficacy but the unwillingness to try them. Fairly viewed, psychology teaches us that humans can restrain their hostilities and find creative ways to live together with respect. We can be caring, fair, and peaceful. But to do this, we will need to remake the constructions we have made of militaries, mega-corporations, and nations, and to amplify our reverence for life.

NOTES 1. For a comprehensive review of what peace psychologists in this group have done, see Christie et al., 2008; Blumberg et al., 2007; Kool, 2009. 2. Langer, 1942. 3. For a comprehensive presentation of terror management theory, see Pyszczynski et al., 2003. 4. Pilisuk and Zazzi, 2006. 5. Postman, 1992. 6. Pilisuk and Zazzi, 2006. 7. Seager, 1993; Bredemeier and Toby, 1972. 8. Fromm, 1973. 9. Bandura, 1988; Bandura, et al., 1975. 10. Pyszczynski, et al., 2003. 11. Fry, 2007. 12. Grossman, 1995. 13. Smith, 2007. 14. Roth-Douquet and Schaefer, 2006.

Psychology and Peace 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

James, 1995. Hedges, 2003. Robichaud, 2007. See Rachel MacNair, vol. 2: ch. 21. Perry, 2008. Schore, 2003. Holsti, 1982. Bronfenbrenner, 1986. Arendt, 1968. Zimbardo, 2007. Milgram, 1974. Zimbardo, 2007. Watson, 1973. Wallis, 1994. Perry, 2008. Schore, 2003. Miller, 1983; DeMause, 2006. Stephenson, 1998. Schiffer, 2002. Zimbardo, 2007. Bitsas, 2004. Gilligan, 1996. Lakoff, 1996; Milburn and Conrad, 1996. Blumenthal, 2009. Grille, 2009. Galtung, 1969. World Health Organization, 2009. Gilligan, 1996. Pilisuk, 2008. Stahl, 1996. Rapoport, 1960. Fisher and Ury, 1983. Osgood, 1962; Rubin, 1994. Pilisuk, 1984. Pilisuk, 2008. Bush et al., 1994.

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PART III

A S O C I E TA L P E R S P E C T I V E

Why can’t we just get along and live in peace? Much of the answer depends on what is meant by ‘‘peace’’ and much depends on what is meant by ‘‘we.’’ Peace is not just a state that may descend on us but rather a pattern of actions and ideas that can and should be incorporated into the basic beliefs and daily activities—the culture—of the human family. Peace, in this view, must be reflected in the institutions we create to encourage caring and to hold ourselves accountable for violence and injustice. Earlier selections (Nagler and Ryono, and Pilisuk and Hall) have established the case that we humans are defined in large measure by our ties with others, by the symbols and images we share, and by the images of our own identities. We wear lenses that bias our stored realities and limit our appreciation of the realities of others. Such differences, if not understood with empathy, can lead to dangerous assumptions of the intentions of others. This is especially true when shorthand stereotypes abound in the media and help to reinforce our blinders. Human contact at every level can help to increase awareness of our prejudices and opportunities to engage in dialogue as the way to deal with differences. But this is only true if we are aware of what we each bring to the table and if we come with an open mind and a caring heart. In this part Paul Kimmel suggests the depth of enculturation into beliefs about the groups that provide our identities and our images of those who are considered others. He highlights

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the ways in which cross-cultural misunderstandings can be turned into crosscultural understandings and the importance of training in cultural awareness for reconciliation efforts to succeed. On the deepest personal level the definition of ‘‘we’’ is challenged by the awareness of how intimately interdependent humans have always been in their connections with others and with their immediate environment. At this time that awareness clearly includes ties with others whom we will never meet from places we will never visit and with a global environment that affects the air, water, resources, and climate on which all of us rely. The question of what basic identification we need with the web of living things for a planet to be capable of survival is raised by Norlander and Marsella. It adds something of beauty to a self-image that already borrows much of this identity from teachings of the world’s great religions (see Chapter 9, ‘‘The Spirit of Change,’’ by Rothberg, and Chapter 1, ‘‘Eternal Peace,’’ by Nagler). Finally, David Adams describes an international movement to create an identifiable culture of peace that transcends national borders. In response to a dominant, media-driven culture of war, Adams describes a UN General Assembly-initiated effort to describe a universal standard for a culture of peace. Its eight principles stand as a beacon for the global society that must evolve if there is to be a future worthy of the values we profess for humanity. —Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler

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C U LT U R A L U N D E R S TA N D I N G P E A C E K E E P I N G, P E A C E M A K I N G, AND PEACE BUILDING Paul R. Kimmel

We have come to realize that it is not enough to send peacekeeping forces to separate warring parties, or to engage in peace-building efforts after conflict has taken place. It is not even enough to conduct preventive diplomacy. We need to act at a deeper level for the prevention of violent conflicts before they arise. We need, in short, a Culture of Peace. —Kofi Annan, UNESCO Guidelines, 2000

CURRENT DESTRUCTIVE CONFLICTS Since 1989, there has been a shift in the genesis of organized violence from national states toward groupings of peoples that I will call ‘‘cultural states.’’ Whereas the analysis of national wars is the domain of political scientists and specialists in international relations, the analysis of cultural wars is more suited to the theories and perspectives of psychologists and sociologists. The emergence of cultural states is related to a decline in the power of many This chapter is a revision and update of ‘‘Cultural and Ethnic Issues of Conflict and Peacekeeping,’’ which appeared in H. Langholtz, ed., The Psychology of Peacekeeping (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1998), 57–74.

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national states both internally (the loss of patriotism) and externally (the breakdown of international relations).1 National states with growing cultural movements of peoples whose identities are anchored in existential feelings, called ‘‘primordial sentiments’’2 can develop a diminution of the individual’s sense of being a state citizen.3 Subgroups of peoples dedicated to cultural identities surface with cultural imageries that often idealize their group and demonize others. The conflicts in Bosnia, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Rwanda, Cambodia, Somalia, and Sudan exemplify the resurgence of political structures and identities based on the primordial sentiments of ethnicity, language, race, tradition, religion, and region, and the primal violence that follows. National wars are becoming less frequent while cultural and ethnic wars are multiplying.4 In battles among cultural states, the organized, technologically managed warfare of nations has been replaced by primal violence.5 Violent conflicts involving peoples who believe they are fighting for the survival of their way of life are more personal and inhumane than wars for economic or political advantage fought by nation states. Because the cultural enemy is often seen as totally inhuman and maximally threatening, there are fewer rules and standards regarding the wounded, captured, and civilians in cultural conflicts than there are in international wars. There is less likelihood of a cease-fire, truce, or armistice in a cultural conflict. There are many more attacks on noncombatants, including massacre, torture, rape, starvation, and incarceration.6 Cultural conflicts lead to struggles that demand genocide, fights to the finish, ethnic cleansing, and unconditional surrenders. They are especially cruel and vicious and have long-term repercussions. Recently, the phenomenon of nation states initiating and/or prolonging cultural and ethnic wars has also added to the shift from international to primal violence. The recent U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan are illustrations of this phenomenon.

CULTURAL IDENTIFICATION AND ETHNOCENTRISM The social actualities of language, ethnicity, customs and traditions, religion, race, and region evoke existential feelings or emotions called primordial sentiments7 during each individual’s enculturation. They are the basis for social connections called ‘‘primordial bonds.’’ Associations based on primordial bonds create a consciousness of kind that separates us from those who are different. Sumner8 coined the term ethnocentrism to describe the acceptance of those who are culturally like oneself and the rejection of those who are different. As individuals are socialized, their thoughts and emotions reflect the primordial sentiments of their people. In addition to learning that there are differences between

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one’s own cultural group and other cultural groups, children also learn that the standards of their people are better than other peoples’ standards; that they have superior ways of handling the tasks of human existence. This growing sense of in-group superiority and out-group inferiority is the result of enculturation. All humans go through the same processes of enculturation, albeit with very different emphases and content. Thus, the roots of identity in everyone are chronologically and historically primordial.9 The movement from the chauvinism of the infant to the ethnocentrism of the child is the first step in this enculturation process.10 As Volkan11 pointed out: For centuries, neighboring tribes had only each other to interact with, due to their natural boundaries. Neighboring groups had to compete for territory, food, and physical goods, for their very survival. Eventually this primitive level of competition assumed more psychological implications. Physical essentials . . . evolved from being tokens of survival to becoming large group symbols that embodied an ethnic group’s self-esteem and glory.12

Peoples organized around primordial sentiments—that is, groups emphasizing their ethnicity, language, race, tradition, religion, and/or region—have the personal sense that their values, norms, and systems of thought are right and sensible and those of others are wrong and illogical. If they have not moved beyond this stage of cultural development, they are more prone to engage in cultural wars when they conflict with others, especially those who are also primarily ethnocentric. Such conflicts can occur within or between nation states. The identification process is the bridge between the culture and the individual personality that binds people together as cohesive groups. This process creates strong roots that provide security, familiarity, and order. There are other, less ethnocentric possibilities for individual identity formation beyond one’s primordial roots, of course, but the primordial groupings of family and local community come first and are strongest in the individual’s enculturation. Primordial sentiments’ pervasive influence on the individual is difficult to overcome, since they generate an internal sense of normality (as, for example, in the use of one’s native language). The salience and characteristics of cultural identification vary with the social and psychological situations of cultural groups. Primordial bonds and sentiments are the source of constructive (patriotic, humanitarian) and destructive (nativistic, xenophobic) behaviors. When a people feel secure and content, they are unlikely to demonize and attack other cultural groups. Their civic activities may include programs designed to improve and enhance the life conditions of the entire populace according to the dominant

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social norms (for example, the American dream). Rather than being preoccupied with the dangers and uncertainties of the present and the ills and injustices of the past, peoples with a positive future based on a satisfactory present can work together toward political and economic goals and visions. Their social and psychological security allows them to tolerate and even appreciate a wide range of cultural differences in their society and the world. Cultural identification serves a positive social function in such evolving civic states. They have gone beyond ethnocentrism and reached the stage of tolerance in their cultural identity.13 However, when a people’s social or psychological security is severely threatened, their primordial sentiments are more easily aroused by cultural differences so that cultural identification serves a negative function: the promotion of their group values, norms, and patterns of thought at the expense of those of other groups. When peoples perceive themselves to be threatened, there is a tendency to become more ethnocentric and to seek an enemy as the focus of their fears and anger. Peoples whose identities depend on less-flexible primordial sentiments rather than on more-adaptable civic actualities are less able to deal with rapidly changing economic and political conditions. In difficult times, political and ethnic leaders can incite these peoples to become frightened, angry, defensive, and intent on getting even.14 There are many well-known social and psychological processes that lead to violence in such situations. These include dehumanization, scapegoating, negative stereotyping, fundamental and ultimate attribution errors, propaganda, groupthink, censorship, black and white images, and moral superiority.

CONFLICT MANAGEMENT AND CONCEPTIONS OF PEACE Conflict is inevitable in human groups and societies and is often constructive. Western social scientists have developed peace processes and training programs to make conflicts more productive.15 There are three conceptually distinct approaches to stopping violence and managing conflicts: peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peace building.16 According to Galtung17 the traditional peacekeeping approach views peace as a somewhat negative concept, the controlled absence of violent conflict between the inevitable wars of history. Conflict management is peace enforcement: the application of military force to separate combatants and stop violence when there have been breaches of peace.18 Although peace enforcement may be required when violent conflict is occurring, peace psychologists are wary of the use of force. Violence is malignant. It corrupts those using it and those that it is used against. It fosters revenge, vengeance, and other negative emotional states in the victimized and aggression

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and dehumanization in the victimizers.19 It can arouse and reinforce negative cultural identities and promote ethnocentrism. Peacemakers aspire to a more positive conception of peace. Peacemaking programs are designed to bring potential and former combatants together to manage their differences through negotiation, mediation, and conciliation. Lawyers, diplomats, and social scientists believe that with their assistance as mediators people can work through their problems, reach compromises, and manage their conflicts more constructively.20 They can become tolerant of each other. The most proactive view of peace is that of the peace builders. They have as their goal the creative resolution of conflicts without any use of force or coercion.21 Conflict management depends on building and maintaining personal relationships and organizations that promote understanding and collaboration among a variety of individuals and groups. Old enmities are addressed and reconciled through active programs in forgiveness and reconciliation.22 The peace-building approach has the most promise for managing current and future cultural conflicts productively.23 Peace building reinforces positive cultural identities and promotes cultural understanding. Through peace building, cultures can move beyond tolerance to cultural understanding in their identities.

TRADITIONAL PEACEKEEPING Traditional peacekeeping has been epitomized by the separation of combatants.24 In today’s world, traditional international peacekeeping often involves UN peacekeeping forces (see the UN home page on the World Wide Web for a listing of past and current UN peacekeeping operations, http://www.un.org). However, UN peacekeeping forces have expanded their missions. Examples of recent peacekeeping activities and locations include patrolling cease-fire lines (Cyprus), protecting humanitarian relief shipments (Rwanda), demobilizing troops (Bosnia), disarming militias (Somalia), organizing and supervising elections (Cambodia), instilling respect for human rights in police, soldiers, and government officials (Central Africa), and even functioning as surrogate governments (El Salvador). Intervention in the form of peace enforcement often precedes these peacekeeping activities. The timing and procedures used in these expanded peacekeeping missions involve cultural considerations. These considerations are particularly important in violent conflicts among cultural states.25 As Paris26 has pointed out, nearly half of the peace processes managed by the international community have failed within five years. These failures are especially pronounced in complicated cultural conflicts. Today’s peacekeeping missions provide intercultural challenges for peacekeepers. Because UN forces come from different countries and are

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usually working in unfamiliar cultures, culture shock and cultural misunderstandings are inevitable. Communication is a constant challenge in any intercultural endeavor, more so under the stress of violent conflict or its aftermath among cultural states. Peacekeepers are not always welcome in the wake of peace-enforcement programs, as the situation in Bosnia vividly illustrated. Bureaucratic confusion adds to the difficulties. Peacekeepers experience tedium, boredom, and a lack of privacy in the field. They suffer from loneliness, isolation, and intimidation. Differences and inconsistencies in organization and training among multicultural peacekeeping forces create pay and privilege differences and bias among some contingents toward host populations.27 Any past political and economic alliances among the nations of the peacekeepers and those of the combatants can further complicate matters, as expectations about friends and enemies come into play. Though the majority of peacekeeping activities have been free of conspicuous difficulties, newspaper reporters have documented charges of sexual harassment, graft, torture, and murder involving some peacekeeping troops in Cambodia and Somalia, allegations of waste from officials in some countries hosting peacekeepers in Africa, and assertions of conflicting loyalties among some UN troops and national authorities in Bosnia.28 The level of cultural identification among the peacekeepers is a critical factor that affects all of these problems. The risk of violent confrontations between peacekeepers and combatants and among combatants is increased when trust and communication break down and cultural differences are emphasized. Peacekeepers need training in cultural awareness to help them, not only with the combatants, but also with the local customs, meaningful contacts with citizens and other peacekeepers, and being good role models. Without such training, the peacekeepers’ own primordial sentiments often are aroused, making them part of the problem rather than part of the solution. The primal violence associated with destructive cultural conflicts decimates human relationships.29 The reestablishment of a civic culture after such conflicts requires new and innovative programs. Traditional international peacekeeping and peacemaking efforts, as seen in recent UN activities, have not been effective during or after primal violence. It is difficult to undertake even the most limited missions using military forces without becoming snared in the dynamics of primal violence (witness Somalia and Cambodia). The continued salience of the primordial sentiments aroused during the violence makes elections, the relocation of refugees, and communal activities prone to renewed violence. It has been found to be more productive for combatants to work jointly on the more technical and economic problems of rebuilding, letting the development of community and the refocusing of their cultural identities from

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primordial to civic follow from these more impersonal problem-solving efforts. Such rebuilding activities can contribute to the construction of civic institutions and identities.30 To facilitate rebuilding and the construction of new identities, peacekeepers need training in cultural awareness.

TRAINING IN CULTURAL AWARENESS Cultural awareness training could be conducted (1) in the countries from which the peacekeeping contingents are coming (screening stage), (2) in a common location near the place of their mission (assignment stage), and (3) in the field as they carry out their duties as peacekeepers (performance stage). Effective military training and a sense that the peacekeeping mission reflect national policy is related to more effective functioning in the field.31 Successful completion of the first phase of training along with military training in the home countries would be a prerequisite for selection to certain peacekeeping forces and missions. Some trainees would be screened out of the peacekeeping force based on poor performance in this phase. Successful completion of the second, more intensive phase of cultural awareness training at a common location would be a prerequisite for assignment to certain positions or duties. More advanced trainees could be assigned to more challenging duties. Culture-specific information on critical aspects of the mission would be provided in the field for each individual peacekeeper during the third phase of the training, as needed for their successful performance. During this training, peacekeepers would learn how their experiences with and feelings about conflict and other cultures impact their work. Current problems faced by the peacekeepers on their assigned missions would be specifically addressed. All of the different parties’ beliefs regarding conflict and peace are crucial to such training. Especially important is information on the primordial sentiments that have been aroused in each party by the conflict. Cultural awareness training must be adapted to the existing levels of awareness of the trainees.32 For those trainees whose identity is at the ethnocentric level of awareness, the main goal of the initial training is to provide a better understanding of cultural differences and their implications for their own behavior. For these trainees, the training would emphasize the relativity of some of their own values and assumptions. As Stewart, Danielian, and Foster33 put it, ‘‘The primary intention of such an approach would be to increase his [sic] awareness of the possible limitations of his own cultural frame of reference and of the possibility of alternative ways of perceiving a situation.’’ In other words, to help them reach the level of tolerance in their awareness. For trainees with more cultural experience and knowledge of cultural differences, it is possible to illuminate some of their values and assumptions

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and to improve their skills in intercultural communication. They can be helped to go from tolerance to cultural understanding. I have found a model of intercultural perception and reasoning that Edmund Glenn34 and I developed to be very helpful in working with such trainees.35 Using this model, the trainer can summarize and integrate discussions of individual and social growth as well as illustrating intercultural communication in face-to-face situations. These training programs would increase the level of cultural awareness of peacekeepers so they can go beyond their ethnocentric roots and primordial sentiments. The graduates of these programs would be better managers of the conflicts to which they are assigned and would help others in the field become more culturally aware. Cultural awareness training would give the peacekeepers a common orientation toward their mission, motivating them to become more involved with each other, nongovernmental organizations on the same mission, and local populations. Understanding that they are role models would encourage them to get better acquainted with other troops and the local populations. These new relationships and challenges would reduce the problems currently associated with UN peacekeeping missions as peacekeepers become partners with each other, other organizations, and the local populations rather than outsiders pushing an agenda or enforcing separation.36

PEACEMAKING, PEACE BUILDING, AND LEARNING HOW TO LEARN Bringing the former belligerents together moves the peacekeeping operations to peacemaking groups. Successful problem-solving groups in conflict intentionally avoid interpersonal issues in their initial meetings.37 These meetings focus on technical concerns, while personal concerns are held in abeyance, so that conflicting cultural identifications are muted. Over time, successful interactions establish trust and greater understanding occurs as members become involved with common problems. The more group members come to understand and explain their interests, positions, and relationships to each other, the greater their shared vision of a desirable future.38 At this point, these problem-solving groups become cultural retraining groups. Unfortunately, most of them never reach this point during and after cultural conflicts. To become cultural retraining groups, the participants in peacemaking groups need special training to gain more conscious control over their own cultural identities. Face-to-face communications call for new skills, such as high tolerance for uncertainty, constructive use of evidence, positive feedback,

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meaningful nonverbals, suspension of judgment, considering cultural as well as personal attributions, and listening responsively. Basic to the development of these new skills and concepts is training in intercultural exploration. Representatives must learn how to learn in these complex situations if their peacemaking efforts are to be successful. Training in learning how to learn is needed to develop the required skills and concepts through direct experience with and feedback from intercultural communication specialists. The major challenge for any program designed to help individuals manage conflicts among cultural groups more effectively is that their reference culture and identities are sociologically and psychologically different from those with whom they are in conflict. Thus, the program must help them to become aware of and able to modify their own cultural assumptions and accommodate other assumptions in their interactions with their antagonists. This is the process of learning how to learn. Programs that provide the needed training in learning how to learn are different from most current conflict-management programs. Training in learning how to learn begins with cultural self-awareness and results in the ability to participate effectively in intercultural dialogues or intercultural explorations.39 Those with these skills have the capacity to be cultural integrators.40 Cultural self-awareness enables the individual to make conscious the deep culture internalized in an unconscious manner over a lifetime. Trainees must become more aware of their enculturation from the basic level of perceptions to the abstract level of values if they are to cope with their primordial sentiments and cultural sentiments. Such awareness must precede training that develops the individual’s abilities to examine, understand, and control their judgments, feelings, and conceptions in intercultural situations (see below). There is little possibility for better intercultural communication and effective peace building without cultural self-awareness. Many of the skills for successfully interacting with individuals from different cultural backgrounds are similar to skills developed during enculturation. However, the problem-solving, decision-making, and negotiating skills learned in one’s own culture will interfere with successful communication in an intercultural situation. More generic skills taught by someone who understands the other culture(s) in question are required. After increasing trainees’ cultural self-awareness, a successful learning how-to-learn program will focus on the management of their communications with others, especially others whose primordial sentiments differ greatly from their own. Because all perceptions involve stereotypes that enable individuals to organize and categorize the characteristics of less-familiar groups, a program in learning how to learn must assess the positive and negative stereotypes in each participant’s culture. In developing such programs, the trainers must also know which social actualities

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(race, ethnicity, religion, language, tradition, and region) are important and relevant in the history and political culture of the groups being trained. Programs in conflict management presented through seminars, discussions, and lectures are unlikely to get at the emotional aspects of the cultural differences embedded in the cultures of the trainees. Mere information about one’s own and others’ cultures will not affect cultural awareness nor provide a solid basis for intercultural exploration. More emotional involvement and practical skills are needed. Training that stimulates real interaction and communication among the trainees will satisfy these requirements. Cultural topics provide context for such interaction and communication and the social actualities associated with relevant primordial sentiments generate the emotions that make them meaningful. As Stewart et al. noted, ‘‘It is only through the commitment demanded by a ‘realistic task-oriented problem’ situation that many trainees will confront and re-evaluate longheld assumptions and values about the nature of people and of the world’’ 41 Cultural training in learning how to learn is specific, not general. Each training program must be tailored to specific trainees, jobs, and situations. Successful communication is learned within and in relation to specific cultures. Role plays that use scenarios containing such contextual information will help trainees understand and grow beyond cultural identities associated with primordial sentiments and bonding. Using such role plays, it is possible to increase the level of cultural awareness of individuals and help them communicate beyond their ethnic roots and primordial sentiments. Finding and empowering successful trainees among the local populace and the peacekeepers will be crucial to the long-term success of peace-building efforts. Funding them and providing follow-up evaluations of their efforts will require more resources from international agencies.

THE TRAINING DESIGN The technique that I have found most useful for improving cultural understanding is the culture contrast training exercise,42 in which trainees interact with role players who portray contrasting psychological views of culture. The role players’ identities are constructed to contrast dramatically with relevant cultural values and assumptions of the trainees. Realistic scenarios are used to involve the trainees. Through lively discussions before and after the role plays, trainers can help trainees understand their normal reactions in intercultural situations. By directly experiencing misperceptions and miscommunications, they become more aware of their own cultural backgrounds and their impact on others. Through repeated participation in these lifelike simulations, trainees also improve their skills in intercultural communication and

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conflict management. Rather than trying to correct or change the perceptions and behavior of their counterparts, they learn how to communicate their ideas and values in ways that are better understood and acted on. The culture contrast training program for increasing cultural awareness has seven phases: (1) a reconstruction of each trainee’s relevant cultural experiences by professional facilitators to elicit meaningful behaviors, perceptions, and emotions in context; (2) an analysis of these reconstructions by intercultural communication specialists familiar with the trainee’s culture to isolate crucial primordial sentiments and to relate these to cultural values, assumptions, and thought patterns; (3) the construction of cultural values, assumptions, and thought patterns that contrast with those of the trainee, and of riveting scenarios designed to bring out these contrasts; (4) the training of a professional role player to portray the behaviors and perceptions of a representative of the contrast culture; (5) the facilitation of a simulation using the scenarios (step 3) and role player (step 4) with each trainee; (6) a discussion of the simulation using an edited videotape to illustrate and examine misperceptions and misunderstandings between the trainee and the role player; and (7) the facilitation of additional scenarios with videotape (repeating steps 5 and 6) to refine cultural self-awareness and improve intercultural communication skills. A key consideration, of course, is persuading the UN and contributing nations to develop and use cultural awareness training programs. Special military courses in peacekeeping in Canada, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden have been effective in the field.43 However, policy makers and trainees in some countries may belittle unfamiliar training programs for peacekeepers. Opponents of such training must be convinced that it is possible to manage violent conflict nonviolently. Illustrations of peacekeeping successes produced by effective cultural awareness training programs can generate the credibility for these programs that victory in battle has for the military or catching criminals has for the police. At its best, peacekeeping, like community-oriented policing, can serve a preventative function. For example, greater involvement in the communities of belligerents can inhibit terrorists or make them more obvious. Being on the street and interested in people leads to trust. Culturally aware peacekeepers will become concerned neighbors who want their adopted communities to prosper. They will create social conditions that encourage and enable the belligerents to undertake peacemaking and peace-building activities that avoid violence. UNESCO’s Culture of Peace Program44 is promoting the further development of peacekeeping activities within a more proactive model of peace and reconciliation. This program could be enlarged within the UN to support the kind of training proposed for peacekeepers.

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CONCLUSION Learning to detect the cultural biases in one’s own assumptions, conceptions, perceptions, and behaviors and substituting for these interests, concerns, and messages that connect with the assumptions, feelings, and concepts of the other parties is basic to facilitating understanding and communication in intercultural interactions. Individuals who understand their own identities and are willing to learn about the identities of those from other cultures with whom they are communicating can reduce misunderstandings and facilitate the search for mutually acceptable solutions in conflicts. The relationships they form while working together can ameliorate or avert destructive cultural conflicts and promote agreements that lead to cultural understanding. Training in cultural awareness begun today with peacekeepers in places like Ireland, Cyprus, Bosnia, and many Middle Eastern, African, and Asian countries will have repercussions for many others. This training will help peacekeepers overcome the stresses and frustrations that are inevitable in their missions. The interpersonal relationships and integrative programs created by trainees will develop a momentum of their own. Local meetings, organizations, and programs involving these individuals will facilitate peace building. Their relationships will avert conflicts based on misunderstandings and promote a positive sense of peace among the peoples with whom they are working. Through increased cultural awareness and intercultural exploration, these peoples can overcome the negative ethnocentrism often associated with their primordial sentiments and cultural identifications and work toward positive peace. Our old concepts of peace as stability, quiescence, balance of powers, and avoidance are dysfunctional in today’s world. Understanding and controlling our ethnocentric primordial sentiments through intensive and extensive training in learning how to learn can enable us to come together as a world community in the context of a global ecology, rather than identifying as diverse groupings in the context of our local social actualities. Developing cultures that promote intercultural exploration through teaching potential peace builders high tolerance for uncertainty, cultural awareness, constructive use of evidence, positive feedback, meaningful nonverbals, suspension of judgment, and empirical perception will help us create such a future.45 Such peace building requires empathy, imagination, innovation, commitment, flexibility, and persistence from individuals devoted to the development of relationships and the creation of consensual meanings and outcomes. We are now approaching the end of the UN’s International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World. Many nations have signed the Manifesto 2000 for the Culture of Peace and

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Nonviolence.46 The networks for facilitating the kind of training that I have suggested are in place. What is needed is for the UN to convene groups of trainers, practitioners, and participants in peacekeeping to learn how to learn and begin spreading this ability to those in these networks that can benefit from it. The time for such meetings is now. Of course, there is a great deal more to peace building than reducing intercultural misperceptions and misunderstandings. There are structural as well as relational considerations. Improvements in infrastructure, health care, and sanitation are critical. Civic institutions dedicated to cultural and political rights and freedoms are also necessary. Pluralistic assumptions and values achieved at the local level by problem-solving groups must be elaborated at the economic and political levels of the culture.47 Cultural understanding is also vital for these structural changes to occur. Given enough citizens with cultural understanding and a growing number of healthy societies with pluralistic institutions, we can learn to work collaboratively in open groups on the issues that threaten us (like environmental sustainability) rather than threatening each other. Peace can become an active state of cooperation that maximizes the welfare of all.

NOTES 1. Fukuyama, 1995. 2. Geertz, 1973. 3. Kaplan, 1994. 4. Gottleib, 1993. 5. Emminghaus, 1997. 6. Suedfeld, 1989. 7. Shils, 1957. 8. Sumner, 1906. 9. Stewart, 1987. 10. Kimmel, 2006. 11. Volkan, 1991. 12. Ibid. 13. Kimmel, 2006. 14. Welch, 2008. 15. Black and Avruch, 1989. 16. These concepts were first described by Galtung, 1976; and elaborated by Pease, 1987. 17. Galtung, 1976. 18. Wurmser and Dyke, 1993. 19. Staub, 1996. 20. Burton, 1987; Cantril, 1961; Etheridge, 1987. 21. Wagner and Christie, 1994. 22. Feldman, 1991; Njeri, 1993; Volkan, 1991.

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23. See Kimmel, 1984, 1985, 1989, 1994. 24. Galtung, 1976. 25. Montville, 1990. 26. Paris, 1997. 27. Segal and Gravino, 1985. 28. Bates, 1997; Fisher and Smith, 1997; Meisler, ‘‘Baby-sitters in Blue Berets,’’ 1992. 29. Staub, 1996. 30. Galtung, 1976; Kimmel, 2006. 31. Segal and Gravino, 1985. 32. Bennett, 1986; Kimmel, 1994. 33. Stewart, el al., 1969. 34. Glenn, 1981. 35. Kohls, 1987; Kohls, 1977; Kimmel, ‘‘Facilitating the Contrast-Culture Method,’’ 1995. 36. Donais, 2009. 37. Kelman, 1992. 38. Lumsden and Wolfe, 1996. 39. Kimmel, 1989. 40. Kimmel, 2006. 41. Stewart et al. 1969. 42. Stewart et al., 1969; Kimmel, ‘‘Facilitating the Contrast-Culture Method,’’ 1995; Stewart, 1995; DeMello, 1995. 43. Segal and Gravino, 1985. 44. Adams, UNESCO and a Culture of Peace, 1995. 45. Kimmel, ‘‘Sustainability and Cultural Understanding,’’ 1995, 2006. 46. UNESCO, 2000. 47. Donais, 2009.

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RETHINKING ‘‘IDENTITY’’ FOR A GLO BA L AGE: EMERG ING RESPONSIBILITIES AND DUTIES Rebecca Joy Norlander and Anthony J. Marsella

THE WORLD TODAY PRESENTS NEW CHALLENGES FOR IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION In the search for a peaceful and just world, it is more common to suggest what must be done than to consider who should be responsible for actually doing it. When we try to identify the players, whether ruling elites, displaced people, groups advocating change, guardians of tradition—or even ourselves—we confront the fundamental reality that each person has an identity that gives meaning to one’s life and the life of others. Every victim of violent conflict, every contributor to the destruction of people and planet has a life story in which his or her identities help to explain what guides his or her values, thoughts, and behavior. Some of the current identities to which we adhere are no longer consistent with survival of our species or of life on our planet. Identities are changing because we live in a time when traditional bases for identity formation are changing. This chapter explores the nature and meaning of identity—its personal, cultural, and national nuances, and its relevance for a sustainable and just peace in a global era. Indeed, many of our traditional political, economic, social, and religious institutions—long a major source for shaping individual

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and collective identities—have become part of the problems we face in the formation and negotiation of identities now needed for the continuity of life. Amid the current changes we humans find ourselves assaulting life in all its forms; species are becoming extinct, bio-diversity is declining, global warming is occurring, and there is a depletion of our water, energy, and agricultural resources. Destructive conflict and war are endemic. This chapter proposes that a solution to many of the challenges we face may be to move beyond our conventional identifications to an identification with life. We must now answer the age-old questions regarding identity—‘‘Who am I?’’ What do I believe?’’ ‘‘What is my purpose?’’ ‘‘What are my responsibilities?’’ ‘‘How did I become who I am?’’—amid a context of unavoidable competing and conflicting global forces that are giving rise to increasing levels of unpredictability, confusion, and fear. The critical question to be asked is whether such change can lead to universal identity that nurtures the splendor and mystery of life and the need for it to be sustained in a world committed to peace. Changes in telecommunications, transportation, and economic ties are linking our welfare and well-being to events and forces in distant lands. Emerging social, cultural, political, and environmental problems around the globe are imposing intense and complex demands on individual and collective psyches; these are testing our sense of identity, control, and well-being. Previous generations have been faced with major global challenges and opportunities. For example, the industrial revolution tore apart the identities of individuals shaped by their life-long participation in familiar tribes and kinship groups. Writing in 1936, anthropologist Ralph Linton referred to the fundamental social unit as the band. He expressed hope that growing industrialization would not push society further toward a collection of rootless individuals searching in vain for the bands they had lost. We have lived though an era of war and massive social change and upheaval in which rifts in our web of caring ties have produced high levels of alienation and anomie. But the current situation is different. Never before, for example, have our destinies been so linked to one another in such an intricate maze of changing social forces, technologies, and institutions that are global in proportion and scope. Telecommunications, mass transportation, and interdependent economies have created a new global context for daily human life. In addition to the sheer depth and complexity of current global changes, there is also the problem posed by their time-compressed speed and unpredictability. There are specific syndromes of distress and disorder associated with this problem that have been labeled future shock, culture shock, acculturation stress, rootlessness, and identity confusion. There are societal and group disorders, such as cultural disintegration, cultural dislocation, social

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disillusionment, sick societies, failed states, urban blight and decay, social fragmentation, cults based on myths of superiority and hatred of scapegoats, and cultural abuse and collapse.1 Whether it has been done intentionally or willingly, our world has become the fabled ‘‘global village.’’2 The scale, complexity, and impact of recent events and forces constitute a formidable challenge. In a global era, identity has become even more complex because we are exposed to the demands of a myriad of choices and pressures that go far beyond those previously limited to more confined cultural and physical settings. We are faced with new responsibilities that are part of the negotiation and management of global interactions and an implicit ‘‘world’’ citizenship. Comforting assumptions of the past that were both simple and unquestioned (if such certainties ever were true) have now yielded to the demands of confusing and conflicting needs, choices, and values that have a global context. And yet, the roots of identity—the locus in which we pursue and define it—remain at personal, cultural, and national levels.

PREVIOUS WAYS OF UNDERSTANDING IDENTITY ARE NO LONGER SUFFICIENT To be adapted to the current context of globalization, we see a need for some revered bases of identity, namely, personal, cultural, and national to be transcended or transformed. One place to begin this difficult challenge is with an appreciation for and exploration of the function served by identity. We all live in a world of symbols, an encyclopedia of constructed images held in our memory. They are organized into meaningful sequences and ordered according to degree of relevance to our respective self-concepts, all of which vary greatly across cultures. Some are indicative of close ties to others and to nature, other selves more bounded by individual bodies and motives. But every self comes with a set of markers by which we determine who we are. A sense of identity is at the core of human existence and meaning. It is the self-reflective and dialogical anchor—both conscious and unconscious— that grounds us amid the constant changes in our settings. It offers a sense of who we are and what we are. The varied forces that shape our identities are found in both unique and shared experiences. The accumulation of these experiences—their dynamic interactions and their constant appraisal, evaluation, and modification—form the crucible in which we as individuals and as members of groups claim place, position, and agency. Erich Fromm (1900–1980), a social psychoanalyst, has argued that identity is a basic human need along with rootedness, belonging, frame-of-reference, and transcendence.3 The positing of identity as an essential human need creates a timeless context for our human search for understanding our nature. Identity,

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for Fromm, is at the core of human existence and dominates the endless pursuit for human meaning and purpose. With Fromm’s thinking, our understanding of identity soars beyond a simple description of the characteristics by which we assert identity (such as name, age, gender, religion, ethnicity, citizenship, physical features, memberships, traits, and dispositions) to a powerful statement of our very nature. We are driven to seek an identity and to pursue it constantly through relationships, beliefs, and belonging. And ultimately, we aspire to transcend, to rise above what we are and to move toward ever new levels of awareness, being, and experience. Such efforts are often seen in the pursuit of religion and spirituality. One of Fromm’s central theses is that human beings often feel isolated, lonely, and estranged from others and from life itself. The search for freedom and individuality comes with the burdens of increasing responsibility and separation from other people. Such demands are often overwhelming and people find themselves surrendering their unique identity in favor of group, organizational, and national identities that diminish their individuality and their possibilities for connection with anything that challenges the group’s goals and ethos. We become the identity prescribed by one group, one nation, or one religious sect. Thus, we neither connect with humanity nor with life. Fromm stated: The problem of the sense of identity is not, as it is usually understood, merely a philosophical one, nor a problem concerning only our mind and thought. The need to feel a sense of identity stems from the very condition of human existence, and is the source of the most intense strivings. Since I cannot remain sane without the sense of ‘‘I,’’ I am driven to do almost anything to acquire this sense. Behind the intense passion for status and conformity is this very need. It is sometimes even stronger than the need for physical survival. What could be more obvious than the fact that people are willing to risk their lives, to give up their love, to surrender their freedom, to sacrifice their own thoughts, for the sake of being one of the herd, of conforming, and thus of acquiring a sense of identity, even though it is an illusory one.4

For Fromm and others concerned with identity formation, understanding personal identity requires an understanding of cultural and national identities. These, too, are determined by the broad social and institutional contexts in which personal identity is negotiated, defined, and maintained. A more contemporary case for the embeddedness of identity in its social and cultural context is seen in the work of Kwame Appiah, a professor of philosophy at Princeton University. This context may be viewed both as an anchoring of a deep identity and as a submerging of aspects of identity.

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Cultural identities are a critical determinant of individual identity. They express the affiliate groups by which individuals choose to communicate their personal sense of who they are and what they stand for—their ties and allegiances to family, gender, ethnicity, race, religion, and other local socialization contexts. Indeed, in some contexts, a cultural group identity can become so powerful that there is no longer a sense of pride in individual distinctness, but rather a near-blind loyalty to the cultural identity. Cultural identities also bring with them a history of affiliation with specific social labels, roles, and contexts and their implicit and explicit values, attitudes, and behaviors. Inherent within each of these micro-cultural contexts are the forces for the socialization of ‘‘shared meanings and behaviors’’ that serve to affirm and anchor identities. Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize winner in economics, writes: I can be at the same time, an Asian, an Indian citizen, a Bengali with Bangladeshi ancestry, an American or British resident, an economist, a dabbler in philosophy, an author, a Sanskrit, a strong believer in secularism and democracy, a man, a feminist, a heterosexual, a defender of gay and lesbian rights, with a non-religious lifestyle, from a Hindu background, a non-Brahmin, and a non-believer in an afterlife . . . This is just a small sample of the diverse categories to each of which I may simultaneously belong—there are of course a great many other membership categories too which, depending on circumstances, can move and engage me.5

Cultural identities emerge from our construction of reality learned within the daily socialization contexts in which we live. Such identities position us in society and help anchor our personal sense of who we are. One can only imagine, then, the difficulty—even trauma—that can accompany identity development and change among immigrant populations, especially those living under conditions of complete powerlessness and marginalization such as refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented workers. Appiah explains that our identities become subject to those labels used to describe members of our group. We internalize these labels and then behave according to labels—often pejorative—even when they are imposed by others. We become embedded in a complex of labels and markers that shape our thoughts and actions and the responses to them by others. Once labels are applied to people, ideas about people who fit the label come to have social and psychological effects. In particular, these ideas shape the ways people conceive of themselves and their projects. So the labels operate to mold what we may call identification, the process through which individuals shape their projects—including their plans

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for their own lives and their conceptions of the good life—by reference to available labels, available identities. In identification, I shape my life by the thought that something is an appropriate aim or an appropriate way of acting for an American, a black man, a philosopher. It seems right to call this ‘‘identification’’ because the label plays a role in shaping the way the agent makes decisions about how to conduct a life, in the process of the construction of one’s identity.6

In a global era that is challenging traditional constructions of reality and the roles that support them, personal, cultural, and national identities are under serious challenge. Pressures to conform, integrate, acculturate, accommodate, and assimilate are challenging our sense of who we are, what we are, where we are going, what we can do, and why we can do it. Certain identities are valued, privileged, or empowered over others. Labels and markers must now be negotiated in a global arena in which differences are more profound and more obvious. At stake is our sense of meaning and purpose. We are finding ourselves unable to anchor or position ourselves because of constantly changing demands for competency and mastery. We shift and change. We are more hesitant to define ourselves in fixed and concrete ways, at the risk of making ourselves vulnerable, protean, and obsolete.7 The dynamics of interaction are changing in the world. Technological advances and improvement in transportation are examples of how people who would have previously existed in relatively exclusive spaces now coexist. Encountering ‘‘otherness’’ is by no means a new phenomenon. There are examples throughout history of different cultural and ethnic groups interacting. Yet the speed and extent to which this is now occurring demands particular attention. Identity is the pursuit of meaning and purpose. Edward Said’s groundbreaking theories in the field of identity construction focused on major distinctions in the claim for identity between regions he referred to as the Occident and the Orient. Since colonial times, social science had been responsible for ‘‘homogenizing vastly different peoples, places, cultures, and histories.’’8 In his seminal book Orientalism,9 Said first introduced the notion of co-constructed identities. He saw Western ‘‘experts’’ as depicting a homogeneous image of the East, solidifying a system of representation that served the interests of the West. The ‘‘us versus them’’ mentality reinforced power relationships. Said’s work has been prescient, given the ‘‘clash-of-civilizations’’ rhetoric that has proliferated in the post-9/11 world. It is a rhetoric that has been perpetuating a stereotypic and intolerant stance toward non-Western peoples, ideas, and cultures. According to Said, globalization was set in motion by imperialism. Said expands his ideas about identity by advocating what he termed ‘‘contrapuntal

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reading,’’ a way of juxtaposing the ideas and attitudes of the colonizers and colonized.10 The technique of contrapuntal reading is helpful for understanding the co-created relationship between the imperialists and those they exploited; the existence of each was constituted by and dependent on the presence and actions of the other. The traditional ‘‘us versus them’’ mentality, with its strong ties to the nation state, potentially engenders xenophobia. Indeed, of all the identities that can characterize individuals or groups, a strong national identity (that is, identification with a nation) potentially constitutes one of the most dangerous, as evidenced by the long history of war associated with nationalistic fervor. There is an increased risk of violence that often accompanies unbridled patriotic fervor with its appeal to self-righteousness, conformity, and blind obedience. We see this with the very term homeland that is now popular in the United States. Homeland has been used throughout history by many nations to evoke a strong need to defend one’s home against invasion from outsiders. National governments gain increased control and conformity by appealing to high levels of fear and distrust and labeling certain groups as enemies (that is, enemification) and demonizing them, often invoking religious justification. For Said, what we call ‘‘culture’’ becomes a combative source of identity. Culture is how we refer to the conglomerate of behaviors, practices, customs, and beliefs that determine who we are. Rallying behind an exclusive claim for the universal rightness of one’s own perspective is unhelpful, even dangerous. It is dangerous because our ability to create a meaningful existence depends on our understanding of cultural identity. Said went on to argue that one of the paradoxical legacies of imperialism was that, in addition to bringing previously exclusive people together, it also allowed them to believe that they were only, mainly, exclusively, white, or Black, or Western, or Oriental. Yet just as human beings make their own history, they also make their cultures and ethnic identities. No one can deny the persisting continuities of long traditions, sustained habitations, national languages, and cultural geographies, but there seems no reason except fear and prejudice to keep insisting on their separation and distinctiveness . . . Survival in fact is about the connections between things.11

The social scientific tradition of the Western world—the objectivist tradition—has contributed to a political system based on separate and distinct unitary identities. The tradition in Western science is to isolate entities for study and to emphasize their distinguishing characteristics that may then be measured and subjected to empirical test. Critical theory has emerged to question whether such an approach can actually capture the essence of

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complex phenomena such as identity. A fundamental reality of the world is that it is pluralistic and that it became and remains this way due to the ongoing presence of the ‘‘other.’’ The ‘‘other’’ ceases to be a separate entity and is brought in and made part of the center. This shift points the way to curb the perpetuation of inequality. We create our own social fabric, and in turn are created by it. The ‘‘I’’ cannot be separated from the ‘‘other.’’ Joan Halifax, in her book on creating cultures of peace, stated: We cannot turn our backs on the tendency to turn the world and its beings into objects which we call ‘‘other.’’ We are called more than ever to realize the obvious, that we are not, nor were we ever, living in a world of isolation. We are completely and inescapably interconnected and interdependent.12

Culture (and therefore identity) is not homogeneous; any attempt at making it so will be detrimental: ‘‘All cultures are involved in one another; none is single and pure, all are hybrid, heterogeneous, extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic.’’13 For Said, it was imperialism that ushered in the process we now call globalization, because it ‘‘consolidated the mixture of cultures and identities on a global scale.’’14 This has made it impossible to label people as ‘‘purely’’ one thing, because cultural purity is a myth in the era of globalization. ‘‘Labels . . . are not more than starting-points, which if followed into actual experience for only a moment are quickly left behind.’’15 National identities are a part of the growing challenge we face in our global era. Issues of diversity, opportunity, and the distribution of power become subjects of debate as appeals are made to protect certain identities and to devalue or deny others. This introduces an even more dangerous mix when power and the threats to it become part of intergroup and international conflicts and we begin to hear the clarion calls for patriotism and defense of the homeland—‘‘Your nation needs you!’’ Under these circumstances, we seek new levels of protection and security that may isolate us from others in our nation, region, and across the world in a protective and xenophobic cocoon of imagined security. Our personal identity becomes extended to a larger national identity reinforced by appeals to fear and vulnerability. Yet today, even as unbridled nationalism seems to be growing in some places, the need for nations is being contested as globalization pressures encourage the growth and empowerment of multi-national corporations— entities that hold no national allegiance beyond profit for shareholders. Via the Internet, people find others more like themselves in distant lands than in their own locales. With national governments being exposed as military

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and economic protectors of international investors, rather than of the wellbeing of their own citizens, regard for nations is weakened. The assault on our pursuit of identity is endless—from above and below. As nation states collapse, many of the intense ethnic and religious rivalries, previously suppressed by a strong national government, become renewed and emerge again. Further, as the economic, political, and social pressures of hegemonic global political economy spreads, new groups, movements, and coalitions form to resist the pressures from above by asserting their local rights, needs, and impulses for recognition. They unite to assert or protect their identity. Local opportunities for mutual caring have challenged reliance on governments. Yet, for many, efforts to actively shape and control their personal and collective lives seem futile in the face of overwhelming globalization pressures.16

IDENTITY AS INTERCONNECTION Each time we as human beings assert our identity, we are challenged to understand the essential principle of separation and connection. Existence is affirmed, meaning created, and connections and positions established with every utterance ‘‘I am.’’ But unless we learn that ‘‘I’’ is not a separate entity—but rather an interconnected and interdependent necessity—we run the risk of the ‘‘I’’ in our identity becoming a travesty with regard to what is possible and what is required. When we separate the ‘‘I’’ from all else, we engage in an affront to the most important cosmic principle revealed across time—we are part of something more than ourselves and if we reject or ignore this essential truth, we face the risks of isolation, disharmony, and destructive conflict. Identity, then, in all its forms, personal and collective, is ultimately, in our opinion, the pursuit of meaning and purpose, and is best found in those moments of conscious awareness that recognize that separation and unity can never be thought of apart from one another. The very principle of separation and unity—fission and fusion—constitutes an awe-inspiring and reverential statement about the nature of life and the cosmos itself. Fission and fusion are, after all, the principles by which the cosmos appears to have originated and to continue to exist. The idea is so profound that it taxes our comprehension because of the limitations in our language, logic, and learning. This principle of fission and fusion as represented in the dynamics of separation and connection is the fundamental challenge of identity formation and negotiation. A critical consideration of identity necessitates a new understanding of ethical obligations, resulting in the notion of a global cultural citizenship. Successful participation in the global community suggests increased interaction

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with, and dependence on, former ‘‘others.’’ Globalization is not a trend that will reverse. However, the effects of globalization can either be beneficial or detrimental to society. An ethical system, and corresponding sense of responsibility, emerges from a changed understanding of identity, allowing a model of globalization to advance that aims at reducing marginalizing tendencies and combats inequalities. Identity and ethics are overlapping concepts. The identity of a person who engages in shooting another human determines whether the act is seen as one of heroism or of murder. New ideas about identity construction bring about new ethical considerations; at the same time, a changing ethical system introduces forces that shape identity. At the core of meaningful human existence is our ability to express and embody a meaningful social identity. The ‘‘success’’ of this identity is based on the choices that we make. In an increasingly globalized world, there are many forces competing for the ability to determine our decision-making capabilities. Traditional social, political, or religious institutions that used to be sources of determining identity are no longer adequate. Appiah discusses the ineffectiveness, and even danger, of labeling people.17 Labels have a dramatic social and psychological effect because of their ability to mold processes of identification. The construction of an identity takes place according to what is deemed ‘‘appropriate’’ within the confines of a particular label, which then has consequences for conduct and decision making. In their respective works, Appiah and Said both argue the same point: the necessity of recognizing society as increasingly pluralistic and constituted by otherness. Furthermore, both scholars push their ideas into the realm of ethics. The job facing the cultural intellectual is therefore not to accept the politics of identity as given, but expose the forces behind representations and show how they provide a rationale for inclusion or exclusion.18 Although he rejects the term globalization, Appiah defines new global identity—his and ours—as being cosmopolitan. This understanding of identity is a shift away from national exclusivity and traditional boundaries and is not based on previous gendered and racial thinking. Cosmopolitan identity pushes humanity into the moral realm. A cosmopolitan world is culturally pluralistic and characterized by an increased vested interest in the ‘‘other,’’ resulting in the need for global responsibility. Moving away from the falsely dichotomous ‘‘us and them’’ model, it becomes possible to develop an ethical system that is fair to and representative of all. In the spheres of communication, mobility, and environmental regulation there is ample evidence of the extent to which decision making by some impacts all. Decisions made about regulating carbon emissions or subsidizing agricultural production, for example, have global

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ramifications. We are undeniably constituted by and dependent on our interaction with others, implying a correlating ethical responsibility to them. Said and Appiah, both implicitly and explicitly, work within the framework of moral philosophy. A discussion of culture, or cultures, necessarily has ethical implications. The more that society is understood as an enormous diverse web, the more urgently we need to locate specific ways to give meaning to our lives. Appiah’s recommended ethical guidelines are rather loose, likely because he recognizes that positing a stringent moral system would undercut his point about cosmopolitanism. He suggests, therefore, that some universal values hold firm for everyone, but that there are also many local and specific values that are adapted accordingly, and that our understanding of ethics must allow for this. When it comes to morality there is no one single truth. His analogy of a conversation is helpful, referring not only to ‘‘literal talk but also as a metaphor for engagement with the experience and the ideas of others . . . Conversation doesn’t have to lead to consensus about anything, especially not values; it’s enough that it helps people get used to one another.’’19 The point echoes with the emergence of transformative conflict resolution in which long-term appreciation of the adversary’s position outweighs the benefit of a sometimes uneasy resolution. A correct understanding of contemporary identity and ethics should ideally result in global-cultural citizenship. Many hesitate to use the term global governance because of the negative associations it conjures–anything from ambitious totalitarian regimes to American economic and military exploitation around the globe. World citizenship (not governance) is already implicit, due to the co-constitution of identity and interconnectedness of our decision making. Since it is already a reality, the need to determine what it should look like is urgent. Any notion of global citizenship must link concern for social justice and human rights with cultural respect and equal opportunity of expression and participation. In our global era, replete with all of its contestations of individuals, groups, and nations, a widespread spirit of ‘‘versus-ism’’ emerges in which compassion, cooperation, and collaboration are urgently needed yet denied amid the felt need for protection. The old way of thinking about identity and ethics must be transcended, giving way to a re-imagined global mandate. The old paradigm is nationalistic, imperialist, patriarchal, conformist, militaristic, homogeneous, exploitative, and ideologically hegemonic. The new paradigm must transcend these former characterizations by being universally empowering, emancipatory, diverse, creative, peaceful, and based on principles of equitable resource distribution and concern for quality of life. To bring about this paradigm shift, education is essential.

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There are two fundamental concerns that have emerged from the discussion about globalization that must be cultivated through education—responsibility and participation. Said and Appiah have convincingly portrayed globalization as a phenomenon occurring in the space of overlap between contemporary identity issues and ethical concerns. The necessary outcome, then, is to combine their theory with praxis—developing a sense of responsibility toward others and then making a commitment to increased participation. Post-colonial, cosmopolitan identity, as heterogeneous and co-constituted, should result in a participatory cultural citizenship. Likewise, any identity born out of recognition of the influence of otherness necessitates an ethical system that transcends the old paradigm. Moving beyond traditional concepts of citizenship into an understanding that encompasses cultural considerations of inclusion is the only way to achieve these goals. Educating global citizens is the first step toward changing the global reality.

IDENTITY—TRANSFORMED AND TRANSFORMATIVE Arthur Koestler (1905–1983), the famous writer, theorist, and social commentator, noted in his book The Ghost in the Machine,20 that within all living things from cells to human beings to universes, there are two basic impulses: a self-assertive impulse designed to support independent survival and an integrative impulse, designed to connect independent units with others, and in doing so, to produce and reveal a new and emergent dimension of being. And so it is with human beings. We can exist separately and unconnected to others, unconcerned about an expanded sense of our nature. But when we join with others, when we choose to serve the common cause, when we advance the collective, there is a new dimension to our being—we are part of something larger. From the point of identity, this impulse to be part of something larger may be an inherent characteristic of life itself. The quest for identity is not only a basic human need at a personal level, but also one that is sought at cultural and national levels of organization. Amid the destruction of life about us, it should now be clear that we need to identify with something more if we are to survive. We can move beyond the struggles for identity at individual, cultural, and national levels, in favor of a more encompassing identity—life and the ecologies that nurture and sustain it. Identification with life could be recognized as our most essential and most authentic identity. This identity with life should, in our view, be placed above personal, cultural, and national identities. It is the most important because it implicates all other identities in a far more meaningful way. If we accept the truth that we are part of life, a new sense emerges of connection and harmony with the world about us. We experience

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the life-affirming impulses of evolving, developing, and becoming. There emerges a sense of humility and wisdom that offers insights into unforgivable carelessness and disdain we have demonstrated for life in all its forms—how much we have done to destroy life and, in the process, perhaps to destroy ourselves. With this affirmation and acceptance, we can build a foundation for connection to all forms of life, and we can move beyond the struggles for identity that are now present at individual, cultural, national, and regional, and global levels, in favor of the ultimate identity—we are life.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

For example, Marsella, 2009. McLuhan, 1989; Fiore and McLuhan, 1968. Fromm, 1941, 1955. Fromm, 1995. Sen, 2006. Appiah, 2005. Lifton, 1993. Roman, 2006. Said, 1978. Ibid. Ibid. Halifax, 1999. Said, 1993. Ibid. Ibid. Sandel, 1996. Appiah, 2005. Said, 1993. Appiah, 2006. Koestler, 1968.

CHAPTER

C U LT U R E S

8

P E A C E O R C U LT U R E OF PEACE?

OF

David Adams

As far as I know, the first time that the UN General Assembly ever called for a global movement was in the 1999 Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace.1 This standard-setting instrument for peace, still relatively unknown in the United States although much better known elsewhere in the world, is the equivalent of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for human rights. In one of the key paragraphs of the Programme of Action, it calls for a ‘‘global movement for a culture of peace’’ through partnerships between the UN, UNESCO, the Member States, and the civil society. In fact, when we prepared the World Civil Society Report2 for the midpoint of the UN Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World in 2005, we found that while the UN, UNESCO, and the Member States had done little, the civil society had made a great deal of progress in the promotion of a culture of peace.3 Hence, it is appropriate to speak of a ‘‘global movement for a culture of peace.’’ Unfortunately, this movement is not well known because it is not considered newsworthy by the mass media because, I would argue, the mass media are very much in the employ of the culture of war. In this chapter, I wish to explain why the phrase is ‘‘culture of peace’’ and not ‘‘cultures of peace.’’

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First, let us consider the nature of culture. For this, I rely on the work of the great anthropologist Leslie A. White and his seminal book, The Evolution of Culture4: We may think of the culture of mankind as a whole, or of any distinguishable portion thereof, as a stream flowing down through time. Tools, implements, utensils, customs, codes, beliefs, rituals, art forms, etc., comprise this temporal flow, or process. It is an interactive process: each culture trait, or constellation of traits, acts and reacts upon others, forming from time to time new combinations and permutations. Novel syntheses of cultural elements we call inventions . . . . . . The interrelationship of these elements and classes of elements and their integration into a single, coherent whole comprise the functions, or processes, of the cultural system . . . For certain purposes and within certain limits, the culture of a particular tribe, or group of tribes, or the culture of a region may be considered as a system. Thus one might think of the culture of the Seneca tribe, or of the Iroquoian tribes, or of the Great Plains, or of western Europe as constituting a system. . . . But the cultures of tribes or regions are not selfcontained, closed systems in actuality, at all. They are constantly exposed to cultural influences, flowing in both directions with other cultures.

Although White never lived to consider an analysis of the culture of war (he died in 1975), I think he would agree with me that it is a culture that has dominated the world for thousands of years. It can be described, using his words above with my additions in brackets, as a culture that involves mankind as a whole . . . as a stream flowing down through time [involving] Tools, implements, utensils [i.e., weapons, weapon systems and other military supplies], customs, codes, beliefs, rituals, art forms, etc. [as] an interactive process: each culture trait, or constellation of traits, acts and reacts upon others, forming from time to time new combinations and permutations.

It is this universal culture of war that we set out to address when the UN General Assembly, in 1998, requested UNESCO to prepare a draft Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace.5 It is in the singular, because, as I like to say, if Dwight Eisenhower, David Petraeus, Napoleon, Alexander the Great, and Genghis Khan could be put into a room with translators, they would understand each other perfectly. And, in fact, it is said that Mao Tse Tung followed closely the advice of Sun Tzu’s Art of War6 which dates from the time of Confucius. The culture of peace (not ‘‘cultures of peace’’) was formulated as an alternative to the eight principal aspects of the culture of war in the draft

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document that we sent in 1998 from UNESCO Paris to the General Assembly in New York. Here are some key excerpts:7 1. Education is the principal means of promoting a culture of peace . . . The very concept of power needs to be transformed—from the logic of force and fear to the force of reason and love. [Although education for the culture of war and violence is not specifically mentioned here, it is inferred that it is based on force and fear, i.e., the basic qualities of terrorism.] 2. Sustainable human development for all . . . This represents a major change in the concept of economic growth which, in the past, could be considered as benefiting from military supremacy and structural violence and achieved at the expense of the vanquished and the weak. 3. The elaboration and international acceptance of universal human rights, especially the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, has been one of the most important steps towards the transition from a culture of war and violence to a culture of peace and nonviolence. It calls for a transformation of values, attitudes, and behaviors from those which benefit exclusively the clan, the tribe or the nation towards those which benefit the entire human family. 4. Equality between women and men . . . can replace the historical inequality between men and women that has always characterized the culture of war and violence. 5. Democratic participation and governance . . . the only way to replace the authoritarian structures of power which were created by and which have, in the past, sustained the culture of war and violence. 6. There has never been a war without an ‘‘enemy,’’ and to abolish war, we must transcend and supersede enemy images with understanding, tolerance, and solidarity among all peoples and cultures. 7. Participatory communication and the free flow and sharing of information and knowledge . . . is needed to replace the secrecy and manipulation of information which characterize the culture of war. 8. International peace and security, including disarmament. [It seemed so obvious that we did not bother to state that this is an alternative to the soldiers and weapons that are central to the culture of war.]

Following my years of work at UNESCO designing the culture of peace program with its national programs in El Salvador, Mozambique, and so forth and managing the International Year for the Culture of Peace (2000), I have lectured around the world on the culture of war and culture of peace. In Africa and Latin America, there is no difficulty eliciting the characteristics of the culture of war from the audience; they have lived through it. They quickly relate to the prospect of replacing the culture of war with a culture of peace (in the singular).

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But in the United States, one encounters ‘‘American exceptionalism’’ that includes a preference to speak of ‘‘cultures of peace’’ instead of ‘‘culture of peace.’’ Why is this? One reason may be that Americans are so isolated from the rest of the world that they are not aware of (or, in many cases, not interested in) the UN initiatives for a culture of peace and their standard-setting instruments. To understand the need for a culture of peace in the singular, it is necessary to understand and accept the fact that the world is dominated by a culture of war in the singular. But for many in the Global North this has been difficult to accept. It was the representative of the European Union who, in 1999, insisted that all references to the culture of war must be stricken from the culture of peace resolution before they could sign on to it. As a result the final resolution refers only to the culture of peace and not to the culture of war. The American delegate agreed with this, but went further by insisting that the phrase the ‘‘human right to peace’’ must also be stricken from the resolution because ‘‘if this is adopted it will be more difficult to start a war.’’ American exceptionalism was evident in the lack of response to the Manifesto 2000 by which we mobilized people during the International Year for the Culture of Peace. Over 75 million people around the world signed the Manifesto, pledging to cultivate a culture of peace in their family and community. Here’s where most of the signatures came from: • • • • • • • • •

India—35 million Brazil—15 million Colombia—11 million Korea—1.6 million Japan—1.2 million Nepal—1.2 million Western Europe—1.1 million Algeria—789,000 (with probably another half million not reported) Morocco and Tunisia—550,000

Where was the United States? Despite formal commitments to circulate the Manifesto and collect signatures by the National Council of Churches (50 million members) and the American Association of Retired Persons (another 50 million members), as well as a number of other major U.S. civil society organizations, there was a news blackout on the Manifesto and in the end there were only 45,000 signatures. As a result, most Americans have never heard of the Manifesto 2000. Nor are most Americans aware of UN initiatives for the culture of peace, not only the Manifesto 2000, but also the International Year for the Culture

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of Peace (2000), the International Decade (2001–2010), or the standard-setting Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace (1999). These have never been considered newsworthy by the mass media. One rationale that I have heard for ‘‘cultures of peace’’ is from those who have sought to identify non-state societies that do not have a culture of war. Perhaps the best example is the Peaceful Societies Web site.8 Indeed, it is possible that some societies, such as those described on this Web site, did not experience war, but if so they were exceptional. At least half of the particular societies listed on the Web site were observed in conditions where warfare was impractical because of extreme environmental conditions and/ or populations that were widely scattered or pacified by outside forces. In fact, several societies listed on the Web site, including the Kung San and Mbuti pygmies, had historical accounts of warfare at earlier times when their peoples were more numerous and less scattered or were not ‘‘pacified’’ by other peoples.9 In fact, there are so few reported cases of people without a history of war that when the cross-cultural anthropologists Mel and Carol Ember set out to examine the ethnographic record for predictors of warfare, ‘‘we could not compare societies with and without war to see how else they might differ, because there were too few unpacified societies without war.’’10 Some people point to ancient Crete as an example of a culture of peace, and indeed the traditional archaeological data tend to support this. However, in recent years there are new findings of extensive military fortifications on the island dating from the period that is considered to be its culture of peace. Hence, the question needs to be re-examined. A related rationale for ‘‘cultures of peace’’ is from those who say that unlike the culture of war, a culture of peace needs to respect the autonomy and integrity of all cultures rather than forcing them to conform to a dominant global culture. Indeed, the basis of this argument is quite sound. One of the eight program areas of the culture of peace is international understanding, tolerance, and solidarity that should be interpreted as respect for all cultures, including indigenous cultures. With this in mind, perhaps the most complete formulation should not be ‘‘culture of peace or cultures of peace’’ but rather ‘‘local and regional cultures and societies of peace in the framework of a global culture of peace.’’ Such a formulation would reflect the need to replace the global culture of war by a global culture of peace, as well as the need for local and regional societies and cultures to flourish without being dominated by other cultures. In saying this, however, one should not overlook the understanding, as expressed above by White, that ‘‘the cultures of tribes or regions are not self-contained, closed systems in actuality, at all. They are constantly exposed to cultural influences, flowing in both directions with other cultures.’’

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Is a global culture of peace possible, or is it a utopian idea with no chance of ever coming into existence? The first question to consider is whether the culture of war reflects biological factors in human evolution that cannot be overcome through cultural change. Consider the Seville Statement on Violence11 that has adequately answered this question by disposing of biological explanations. This opinion is supported by the American Psychological, Anthropological, and Sociological associations, all of which endorsed the Seville Statement with its conclusion, paraphrased from Margaret Mead, that ‘‘the same species that invented war is capable of inventing peace.’’12 But if a culture of peace is possible, who are the actors that will bring it to pass? Let us consider four sets of actors: the state, the UN, the civil society, and local authorities.

THE ROLE OF THE STATE Traditionally, it has been assumed that peace (and by extension, a culture of peace) must be obtained through reform of the state. Hence, for example, peace movements direct their message to the state. The state is demanded not to make war, or, once a war has started, to stop the war and ‘‘make peace.’’ Revolutionary movements also address their message to the state, calling for its replacement by a new revolutionary government with the assumption that the new state will bring peace. I have come to believe that the state cannot make a culture of peace, and that a new strategy is therefore needed. This conclusion is based on my experience as the initiator of the culture of peace program of UNESCO (1992–1997) and director of the International Year for the Culture of Peace (1998–2001). And it is based on the study and writing of the first ever ‘‘history of the culture of war,’’ which is now being published.13 To put it briefly, the last 5,000 years of the culture of war may be summarized as the progressive monopolization of the culture of war by the state. A graphic allegory is presented by the American Western film genre. Prior to the arrival of the sheriff, there is lawless violence in the frontier town, whether by Indians, outlaws, or feuds. The sheriff arrives and announces that he represents the state and that only the state has license to kill. The sheriff can deputize others to kill, but only in the name of the state. As Max Weber put it a century ago, the definition of the state has become the organization that has a ‘‘monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.’’ And as it is seen at the UN, the definition of a ‘‘failed state’’ is one that has lost its monopoly of violence.

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When the U.S. delegate objected to a ‘‘human right to peace’’ by saying that if this were adopted it would be more difficult to start a war, he was implicitly stating that the fundamental right of the state is the right to make war. In this regard, the dream of a UN that could enforce international peace through universal disarmament had a fatal flaw. The flaw was article 2.7 of the Charter: Article 2.7: Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state. . . .

This is a fatal flaw because one of the essential and indispensable functions of the culture of war for the state is the ability to use military force as a last resort to suppress internal opposition. And this is precisely what the UN is forbidden to address. In 1995, I published ‘‘Internal Military Interventions in the United States,’’ in the Journal of Peace Research.14 Compiling the data from the U.S. Army and National Guard for the years 1892 to 1992, I showed that in the United States there were 18 interventions and 12,000 troops per year, on average, during the period 1886 to 1990 against striking workers, urban riots, etc. The rate has been more or less constant over time, when one includes the interventions to stem urban riots throughout the United States in the 1960s and again in 1992 in Los Angeles when 4,000 National Guardsmen and 4,000 U.S. Army soldiers and marines were deployed.15 The question of the internal function of military force in so-called ‘‘democracies’’ is a taboo topic, not only at the UN, but also in academia: The unchanging rate of internal military intervention in the USA and the lack of attention to such intervention in the literature on war and peace are in striking contrast to the rapid changes in other aspects of war and peace. It is argued here that this reflects an oversight which peace researchers and activists should address in the coming years.16

During the intervening years since this article was published, there have been only four academic references to it according to the Social Science Citation Index, even though the Journal of Peace Research is a prestigious journal that one would expect relevant researchers to read. I have searched throughout the academic literature and as far as I can see, no other researchers have taken up the challenge independently. From all of the above, I conclude that the state is incapable of promoting a culture of peace.

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THE ROLE OF THE UNITED NATIONS As long as the UN remains an inter-governmental organization run by the Member States, one should not expect it to play a role other than that dictated by the states themselves. However, as will be suggested below, we can look forward to the day when the UN is no longer run by states but by another system that brings to pass the initial lines of the UN charter, which begins ‘‘We the peoples. . . .’’ The UN organization and its specialized agencies have the capacity to work for a culture of peace. When they are able to act without the direct control or interference of the states they are quite capable of representing the interests of peace and justice. A good example is the national culture of peace programs that I was privileged to participate in during the 1990s at UNESCO. As representatives of the UN, we were able to make great progress with civil society and local authority representatives in the El Salvador and Mozambique National Culture of Peace Programmes until it came time to involve the Member States. It was only later when these programs failed to get the necessary support from the powerful states in Europe and the United States that they had to be shut down.

THE ROLE OF THE CIVIL SOCIETY In 1998, realizing that the powerful states would oppose and weaken the culture of peace resolution, we proposed in the draft Programme of Action for a Culture of Peace that it should be promoted by a global movement for a culture of peace including not only the UN and its Member States, but also the civil society. This provision was kept intact in the final version of the UN resolution, and as mentioned above, it was the first time that the UN General Assembly ever called for a global movement. The resolution calls for the promotion of this movement through sharing of information among its actors, including the civil society. In this spirit, from 1999 to 2000, for the International Year for the Culture of Peace, we launched the global campaign, as mentioned above, for individuals to sign the Manifesto 2000 committing them to work for a culture of peace in their daily lives. Most of the 75 million signatures were obtained through the efforts by a great number of civil society organizations around the world. In 2005, at the midpoint of the UN Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World, we carried out a survey of actions for a culture of peace by 700 civil society organizations around the world. Most of them reported that they were making progress toward a culture of peace in their own area of work, but that few people knew about

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it because it was not treated as newsworthy by the mass media or the academic community.17 We found, in conducting the survey that the civil society promoting a culture of peace extends far beyond what is usually considered the ‘‘peace movement.’’ When one considers all the civil society initiatives around the world working on the various aspects of a culture of peace, including human rights, sustainable development, women’s equality, democratic participation, etc., then the civil society initiatives for a culture of peace touch the lives of most of the world’s inhabitants. For example, all trade unions may be seen as working for the economic and social rights of workers. For another example, the initiatives for sustainable development include not only obvious ecology organizations, but also those working for local sustainable agriculture and farmers markets. Because of the strengths of the civil society, its enormous scope and complexity and energy, it is tempting to think that the civil society itself, working independently of the state, and gradually coalescing into a global movement, could eventually bring about a transition from the culture of war to a culture of peace. No doubt, civil society is a powerful force for the culture of peace, and must play a very important role, but for the following reasons, I believe that the civil society, working alone, cannot accomplish the task. First, civil society organizations are not truly representative of the peoples of the world. Civil society organizations are not elected by the people. Instead, they are self-appointed, and their leadership develops independently within each organization. Of course, they wish to be recognized by the people they serve. They try as much as possible to involve these people as a force to strengthen and expand their capacities, but, at the same time, they are not required to obtain a mandate from the people. In some cases, they give the people they serve a voice in the decisions about how and what actions to undertake, but the leadership of the organization itself is not usually decided by the people at large. This is both a source of strength and a source of weakness. On the one hand, it gives civil society organizations the freedom to be ‘‘ahead of their time’’ and be an educational force for the future. On the other hand, they do not have the democratic legitimacy to become a political counterforce to the culture of war of the nation state, and in the final analysis, the transition from a culture of war to a culture of peace is a question of political power, not just a struggle of ideas and good works. Second, civil society organizations are often locked in a fierce competition, one against another, for limited resources. For example, many organizations must devote a high proportion of their efforts to finding enough

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money to pay their staff on an ongoing basis. In doing so, they are competing with other organizations doing the same thing, and the overall effect of the various organizations is often greatly reduced. Third, there is often a lack of synergy among organizations working for different components of the culture of peace. Organizations working in one area, for example, freedom of the press, do not necessarily join forces with organizations working for other areas, for example, disarmament or women’s equality. This ‘‘fragmentation’’ of the culture of peace is unlike the unity of the various components of the culture of war. For example, those working in the arms industry know full well that they are in synergy with those working for economic exploitation, male domination, propaganda for enemy images, and vice versa; those working in these other areas recognize their alliance with the arms industry, etc. The various forces of the culture of war pool their energies in the traditional political process, ensuring that most national presidential campaigns support the various aspects of the culture of war, explicitly or implicitly, and once the politicians are in office, the lobbies of the culture of war are synergetic. Fourth, much of the energy of civil society is directed toward trying to change policies of the state. No doubt this is important and many important victories have been won, including the prevention of some wars. But in the long run, for the reasons I have provided earlier, it is not likely that the transition to a culture of peace can be accomplished at the level of the state. It will be more productive in the future, as I will argue further below, to put more of the energy of the civil society into making changes at the local level while continuing to think globally and acting in liaison with local authorities. For all the above reasons, it makes sense to redirect the primary emphasis of the civil society toward working together with elected officials at the local level instead of the national level. That does not mean abandoning completely their work at national and international levels, which will continue to achieve important victories. But it does mean a radical shift of emphasis and priorities.

THE ROLE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENTS (CITIES, TOWNS, AND REGIONS) Over the centuries, as the state has increasingly monopolized the culture of war, the city, town, and local region has lost its culture of war, ceding it to the national authorities. If we visit European cities, we can still see fragments of the old city walls with their turrets spaced at intervals so that archers or musketeers can shoot an invading enemy on all fronts. In many

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cases we will see the old gates that could be closed to keep out an invading enemy or to control who could come in and out of the city, much as today’s states control the traffic through their customs at each port of entry into the state. No longer do cities and towns maintain armies to protect against invasion or to put down internal rebellions. Police forces are armed to encounter one or a few potential ‘‘enemies,’’ and one does not imagine them to have tanks, missiles, nuclear weapons, and the weapons of the modern battlefield. The same is true for the various other areas of the culture of peace in the context of local government. One finds that policies in most of these areas are much less aligned with the culture of war than their equivalents at the national level, and instead one finds considerable evidence of the culture of peace. The strategy proposed here is to link civil society to local governments to developa culture of peace at the local level, and eventually to develop a new global democratic order based on regional networks of local authorities as a replacement for the role of the Member States in the UN. This strategy is already being developed in city culture of peace commissions, beginning in Brazil and now spreading to other parts of the world. These commissions are official bodies of local government with a certain number of elected officials or city representatives and an even larger number of representatives from local civil society organizations. This strategy has a number of key advantages. First, by working together with local elected officials, the civil society achieves a legitimacy of working for the people as a whole, and it increases the possibility of broadening the base of involvement to include everyone in the community. Second, by working together with local elected officials, the civil society can find common ground, beyond the level of their competition for limited resources. For the projects with city or town officials, resources may be provided by the city or town budget or by foundations and other financial sources that will give their money to a city or town project while they might not give it to a particular nongovernmental organization. Third, by working together on the culture of peace, the civil society organizations that would normally concentrate on their own particular area, can now take part in a more holistic and mutually reinforcing approach involving all of the program areas of a culture of peace. Fourth, by putting energy into local government, they can help build the base for a new world order that is democratic, global, and free from the culture of war.

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At the same time, the involvement of civil society makes possible contributions of the city to a culture of peace that would not otherwise be done by local government working alone: 1. Passion, energy, and local experience provided by civil society organizations in each of the various areas of a culture of peace. 2. Linkage to global civil society movements concerned with each of the various areas of a culture of peace. 3. Continuity when local government changes hands in election reversals.

TOWARD A NEW WORLD ORDER BASED ON LOCAL GOVERNANCE Already there are global organizations of cities working on sustainable development, such as the International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives, and democratic participation (the International Observatory of Participative Democracy); one can imagine similar global initiatives of local initiatives for the other eight program areas of the culture of peace. These global initiatives of local authorities show that it is not necessary to pass through the nation state to achieve global governance based on a culture of peace. In this regard, I can imagine an eventual shift of the UN from its present dependence on the Member States to a dependence on regional representatives of local governments (perhaps organized by continent) that are aligned locally with civil society for a culture of peace.17 To cite an example of such regional organization, ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives [now officially called Local Governments for Sustainability]) has regional offices in South Africa (for Africa), Japan, Korea, Germany (for Europe), Argentina (for Latin America and the Caribbean), Canada, United States, Australia (for Oceania), India (for South Asia), Philippines (for Southeast Asia), and Mexico. Just imagine how the agenda of the Security Council would change if it were dependent on representatives of local government. For example, nuclear disarmament would be one of the first items on the agenda. Of course, such a shift would not take place under normal conditions, but it seems likely that the world is headed in the next few decades for one of its periodic breakdowns of state power. In the past these breakdowns have been associated with World Wars I and II and with the Great Depression as well as the breakdown of the Soviet Empire at the end of the 1980s. When

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the state system breaks down, there is a void and a period of opportunity for radically different approaches. What concerns me is not so much that there will be such a crash, historical void, and period of opportunity, but rather that it will come too soon for us to prepare for it. In the past, the crashes of empires and states often have been followed by fascism and/or revolutionary governments that reflect the culture of war of the revolutionary movements that brought them about. The institution of a culture of peace instead would be a radically different response, without historical precedent, and perhaps the greatest challenge our species has ever faced. The time to begin developing this alternative is now.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

United Nations, 1999. World Civil Society Report, 2005. Ibid. White, 1959. United Nations, 1998. Tzu, 1910. Adams, 2008. Peaceful Societies. Adams, ‘‘Why There Are So Few Women Warriors,’’ 1989. Ember and Ember, 2001. Adams, ‘‘The Seville Statement on Violence,’’ 1989. Adams, 2008. Ibid. Adams, ‘‘Internal Military Interventions,’’ 1995. Adams, 2008. Adams, ‘‘Internal Military Interventions,’’ 1995. Adams, 2009.

PART IV

RELIGIOUS DIMENSIONS

OF

PEACE

It is said that at a dinner party in Cairo, Jaan Christian Smuts, Gandhi’s chief political opponent in South Africa, said to Winston Churchill that Gandhi succeeded because he could appeal to the religious feeling of his followers, while they (Churchill and Smuts) could not. Churchill failed to get the point; but it is true nonetheless. Religion has had a major role in the creation of ethical standards and the sense of individual and group identity. Some have argued that it has greatly hindered peace by framing differences in absolute terms. Such rigid, exclusionary identities provide obstacles to dialogue and produce artificial incentives to fight against those not accepting one’s own faith. Others say that without religion, our merely secular beliefs would lack the moral strength that enable us to resist temptations for violence. Both are correct. Because religion, for better and for worse, touches deeper commitments and feelings than almost any other area of our lives, it has been the greatest stimulus to both peace and war. Despite the secularization of peace concepts at the beginning of the last century, no attempt to understand the dynamics of peace even in today’s nominally secular world can avoid it. We introduce this part with an overview by Buddhist practitioner and teacher Donald Rothberg of the theologies of most of the major religions as they treat the all-important issue of war and peace, down the ages and

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today. Some the world’s best known advocates for nonviolence, Christ, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr., drew their inspiration from their faith. This is followed by special attention to two of the traditions, Christianity and Islam. Specifically, Catholic Christianity is examined as the basis of lifelong activism by the revered nonviolence trainer Hildegard Goss-Mayr who, with her husband Jean, helped bring nonviolent and anti-war movements to fruition in the Philippines, Central America, and elsewhere (see Chapter 10, Volume 2, for the work of Maryknoll Missionary Father Roy Bourgeois who was inspired by his faith to resist the violence traced to School of the Americas, a military training school). The next contribution in this part is directed more to a scholarly analysis of Catholic doctrine, though its young author has also been quite the activist. Eli Sasaran McCarthy deals with a specific question within the Catholic social teaching on peace, namely, its recent shift from a rule-based or morality-derived set of norms to a more pragmatic position. Sasaran’s chapter is pertinent to the entire field of peace thinking (and consequently peace creation), which has long been at a disadvantage when peace and nonviolence have been thought of, sometimes even by practitioners, as based on abstract norms rather than practical realities, in an age when such norms are often disregarded as, in fact, only abstractions. At times of heightened conflict, extremists within a religious group sometimes find an excuse for violent activities in the words of their sacred texts. These same words are sometimes used to justify hatred by outsiders toward an entire religious faith. The word jihad, is a current example. Typical in such use of religion to fan violence is a distorted view of what the actual teachings of the world’s great religions do in fact promote. It is at such moments that examining the actual beliefs within a religion becomes important. In doing so we find the world’s great religions reflect serious dedication to the goals of living in peace, rejecting injustice, and respecting other humans. Mohammed Abu-Nimer is one of the most widely regarded scholars of Islam and its teachings on nonviolence and peace. Here, he and Jamal Badawi go in depth into the Islamic tradition’s teachings on these subjects, showing as they do how many facets of ethics and many aspects of life are integral to a peace perspective and culture. No one should pretend that the scriptural bases of peace, sampled in this section, are all that one needs to bring peace about, for they are often honored more in the breach than the observance; but no one should pretend either that they are not, at least potentially, an invaluable support to the seekers after peace in their respective traditions. —Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler

CHAPTER

9

T H E S P I R I T O F C H A N G E : S P I R I T UA L AND R ELIGIOUS R ESOURCES FOR P E AC E A N D J U S T I C E M OV E M E N T S Donald Rothberg

Spiritual and religious traditions at their best have provided powerful resources for peace and justice movements. Out of such traditions have come the principles of justice, nonviolence, interdependence, and equality; visions of peace, reconciliation, and the ‘‘beloved community’’; analyses of the roots of suffering and injustice; an emphasis on cultivating core virtues, such as love, compassion, courage, patience, equanimity, and wisdom; and the life stories of numerous exemplary figures. Such resources, sometimes appearing in modern, secular forms are, I believe, invaluable to help us respond to the challenges, local and global, that we now face. In what follows, these resources will be identified, both ancient and contemporary.

DEFINING SPIRITUALITY AND RELIGION But first it’s helpful to clarify the often confusing terms, spirituality and religion. For the purposes of this chapter, spirituality involves the lived transformation of self and community toward fuller congruence with or expression of what is

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understood, within a given cultural context, to be sacred. This transformation may or may not be supported by doctrines, practices, and social organization. The term religion is used as a broader term signifying the organized forms of doctrine, ritual, myth, experience, practice, spirituality, ethics, and social structure, which together constitute a world in relation to what is known as sacred. In this sense, religion has a wider scope than spirituality. It is important to note that, following these definitions, there can be both nonreligious (that is, nonorganized) spirituality and nonspiritual religiosity. Furthermore, neither spirituality nor religion as such is inherently good or bad. Those acting in the name of spirituality and religion at times have manifested great love and wisdom, on the one hand, and great brutality, on the other.

THE MODERN SPLIT BETWEEN RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS AND SECULAR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS Those wanting to use the resources of spiritual and religious traditions for contemporary peace and justice movements, however, have to contend with the modern world’s fundamental split between religion (and implicitly spirituality) and secular social movements. Modernity, emerging in the 17th century, takes as one of its basic starting points a series of fundamental critiques of religion—as irrational, dogmatic, superstitious, and unsupported by evidence, as linked with oppression, and as based on psychological immaturity. Such critiques have led typically to the outright rejection of religion (or at best its marginalization). At times, particularly recently, spirituality has been distinguished from religion and seen as valuable, but only as an inner, private phenomenon. Therefore, the idea of using spiritual and religious resources in public social movements goes against the grain of modernity. Furthermore, many modern social and political movements have been explicitly anti-religious; we might think of the 19th-century anarchist slogan ‘‘Ni dieu ni maitre’’ (neither God nor master) or Marx’s analysis of religion as the ‘‘opium of the people.’’ In this context, many secular social activists consider spirituality and religion as oppressive and delusive, as at best an irrelevant escape, and a misguided attempt to emphasize transformation—the transformation of economic, social, judicial, and political institutions and policies.

THE VISION OF A CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUAL ACTIVISM Yet a case can be made that progressive forms of socially engaged spirituality may play a crucial role in helping contemporary peace and justice

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movements. By socially engaged spirituality, I refer to both traditional and contemporary forms in which spiritual qualities are developed not by leaving the everyday social world (whether as a monk or nun, hermit, wanderer, or a member of a separated intentional community), but rather in the context of involvement in family, work, community, society, and/or politics. By ‘‘progressive,’’ I generally refer to those who attempt to integrate the ‘‘achievements’’ of modernity—especially science and democracy—with spirituality, and explicitly distinguish progressive from ‘‘regressive’’ forms of socially engaged religion and spirituality, notably from various forms of fundamentalism. I have argued elsewhere1 that progressive forms of socially engaged spirituality represent a potential transformative force that might help us preserve what is most valuable about modernity and elicit the emergence of ‘‘postmodern’’ forms better able to help us respond to the needs of our times.2 In what follows, I focus on four broad traditions: (1) the prophetic traditions of social action in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; (2) Hindu and Buddhist traditions of nonviolent social action, grounded in meditation; (3) indigenous (particularly Native American) traditions, with their emphases on community- and earth-based spirituality; and (4) contemporary efforts to connect spiritually based action to depth psychology, concerns related to gender and ecology, and interfaith cooperation.3

THE PROPHETIC TRADITIONS OF JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY, AND ISLAM The prophetic traditions originating in Judaism have arguably been, directly or indirectly, the most significant source for many generations of peace and social justice movements in Europe and the Americas. Many of the most prominent spiritually minded social activists and writers of the 20th and 21st centuries trace their lineage directly back to the prophets of Israel. Furthermore, many interpreters of Western radical and revolutionary movements understand the penetrating moral and analytical critiques of capitalism, and the related attempts at radical social transformation as based in secularized versions of the prophetic tradition. The Jewish, Christian, and Islamic prophetic traditions continue to offer many important resources. I will focus on three: (1) the archetype of the prophetic figure who speaks out on behalf of the oppressed—seeking righteousness, compassion, and justice—as a model for activists and public intellectuals; (2) the centrality of the principles of justice and peace, linked with

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trenchant moral critiques of injustice and violence; and (3) powerful visions of the just and peaceful society.

THE PROPHETS FROM ISAIAH TO JESUS The prophets of ancient Israel, such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, Hosea, and Ezekiel, lived mostly during a two-century span, from the mid-8th century BCE up to the time of the Exile. Later, Jesus framed his ministry in prophetic terms, understanding his own life as a completion of the work of the prophets, saying, ‘‘Do not imagine that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to complete them’’ (Matthew 5:17–18). The original prophets called on their contemporaries to realize God’s will in their societies, to manifest a just and peaceful society. Toward that end, they pointed out the problems of their times—moral transgression, religious hypocrisy, and self-centeredness—that led to a lack of compassion for those not well off. According to Heschel, the prophets both shook people’s complacency and inspired them. They were, he wrote, ‘‘some of the most disturbing people who have ever lived.’’4 Isaiah spoke of how many of his contemporaries had abandoned Yahweh (Isaiah 1:4), pursuing self-interest: ‘‘All are greedy for profit and chase after bribes’’ (1:23). The people wear all sorts of ornaments (3:18–24) and lack piety: ‘‘Once integrity lived there, but now assassins’’ (1:21). There is no compassion—for the oppressed, the orphan, the widow, the poor—or justice (5:23). Yet, as Isaiah communicated, ‘‘I, Yahweh [God], love justice, I hate robbery and all that is wrong’’ (61:8). He proclaimed the ‘‘good news’’ to the poor, those whose hearts are broken, captives, those in prison, and those who mourn (61:1–3). Similarly, Jesus criticized the religious hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees, and the lure of money—throwing the money changers out of the temple. He spoke for the oppressed, the downtrodden, the suffering, ‘‘those who mourn . . . those who hunger and thirst for what is right . . . the merciful . . . the pure in heart . . . the peacemakers . . . those who are persecuted’’ (Matthew 5:1–10). The prophets complemented their strong criticisms with enduring visions of living according to God’s will. Isaiah invoked the image of a world beyond war, an image that would be carried through speech and song to many social movements: ‘‘These will hammer their swords into plowshares, their spears into sickles. Nation will not lift sword against nations, there will be no more training for war’’ (2:4). Jesus announced the coming

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of the kingdom of God, based in the love of enemies, reconciliation, and the ending of an ‘‘eye for an eye’’ (Matthew 5:38).

CONTEMPORARY JEWISH PROPHETS In our own times, there are many who have continued to offer prophetic resources. Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972), one of the most important interpreters of the Jewish prophetic tradition (1962), was a rabbi and refugee from the Nazis. In the latter part of his life, he became a friend and colleague of Martin Luther King, Jr., participating actively in the civil rights movement, and linking Hasidic mysticism and prophetic social action. Other major contemporary Jewish prophetic voices include Heschel’s daughter, Susannah, who has been prominent in helping to develop Jewish feminist analyses,5 along with Judith Plaskow and others. Michael Lerner,6 a student of Heschel’s, is perhaps the most prolific and visible Jewish prophetic exponent of our times.

CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN PROPHETIC FIGURES AND MOVEMENTS Twentieth- and twenty-first-century Christian prophetic figures and movements have understood themselves to be following the example of Jesus. The following are some of the most prominent.

Martin Luther King, Jr.: Spiritual Responses to Racism, Poverty, and Militarism Martin Luther King, Jr., arguably the most powerful moral and spiritual actor and speaker in the history of the United States, combined prophetic action with fiery moral critiques of racism, militarism, and poverty, as well as inspiring visions of his ‘‘dream’’ of the ‘‘beloved community.’’7 His work was particularly focused on healing what may be the core wound of the United States—the unresolved legacy of centuries of slavery and racism— although later in his life he also addressed more fully the related systemic issues of poverty and militarism. King’s initial approach was predominantly ethical and spiritual, modeled especially on Gandhi’s nonviolence and expressed through active resistance to and noncooperation with the ‘‘evil’’ of racist laws. In such action, often entailing civil disobedience, the actor voluntarily takes on suffering, whether through going to prison or making oneself vulnerable to the

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violence of police or vigilantes. The strategy of nonviolent action is to break the cycle of violence, by not reacting to violence with further violence. It is also to appeal to the capacity for good of the oppressors and those who passively support the oppressors, as their hearts are opened by witnessing the suffering of nonviolent actors. The distinction between the sin (in this case, racism) and the redeemable sinner suggests the possibility of reconciliation.

Liberation Theology: Spiritual Responses to Poverty and Injustice Liberation theology is a contemporary Catholic movement, centered especially in Latin America, but also very influential in Asia, Africa, and North America. Born from the worldwide social ferment of the 1960s, it can especially be seen as a response to the suffering connected with poverty, inequality, and injustice. Phillip Berryman writes that liberation theology is ‘‘an interpretation of Christian faith out of the suffering, struggle, and hope of the poor.’’8 Such an interpretation leads liberation theologians to develop critiques of social, political, and economic systems, as well as cultural and political ideologies, which keep poverty in place, critiques that are often aimed at the past and present Catholic Church itself. Being and working with the poor and oppressed, the ‘‘salt of the earth’’ (Matthew 5:13), has since the time of Jesus been a fundamental moral response of many Christians, and for some it is at the heart of Christian faith. And so liberation theologians have worked closely with grassroots groups and particularly encouraged the development of ‘‘base communities.’’ Typically led not by priests but by laypersons, a base community of 10 to 20 persons might meet once a week to reflect on life issues in the light of the Gospel. Liberation theologians have thus redefined the role of theologians and priests; Leonardo Boff, a Brazilian theologian silenced for a year by the Vatican, has written that all prayer must be linked with ‘‘a lived commitment to the liberation of the oppressed.’’9

Contemporary Christian Peace and Justice Activists Many other Christian prophetic activists have also been prominent in the last century. Dorothy Day, the co-founder in 1933 with Peter Maurin of Catholic Worker houses in the United States, was also primarily focused on serving the poor and destitute. For her, the heart of the gospel was to ‘‘comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.’’10 A number of Christian activists, particularly Jesuit priests Daniel and Phillip Berrigan and John Dear, have focused on countering militarism and

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war. They have engaged in a number of highly public symbolic acts to draw attention to the institutions of war—destroying draft records, symbolically damaging weapons at military bases, and committing civil disobedience— participating in what they have called, echoing Isaiah, the Plowshares movement. The Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, also wrote extensively about the roots of war and peace. Other prophetic figures have focused on concerns of justice. Jim Wallis,11 the editor of Sojourners, has helped to develop an evangelical prophetic voice, with particular attention to economic, political, and moral issues. Cornel West12 has developed a contemporary prophetic stance, at once philosophically nuanced, historically grounded, socially active, and attuned particularly to concerns of race and democracy. Rosemary Ruether has, along with other Christian feminists, developed critiques of sexism in the Christian tradition, and developed innovative spiritual practices and theological perspectives that might support more egalitarian gender relationships. Ruether rests such efforts on the claim that the essential Christian message is not sexist, that it is rather the (nonsexist) ‘‘prophetic-liberatory’’ approach of both Judaism and Christianity that is normative.13 In Europe, a number of Christian theologians and activists were prominent in opposition to fascism, both during World War II and in the post-war period; their examples remain very significant. We might think especially of Simone Weil (1909–1943), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945), and Dorothee S€olle (1929–2003).

SOCIALLY ENGAGED SPIRITUALITY IN THE ISLAMIC TRADITION14 For Muslims, the Prophet Muhammad is the archetypal example of a human being of highly developed character concerned with issues of morality, social justice, oppression, and humanitarianism. As such, he set the example to be followed by all Muslims. In a hadith, Abu Sa’id al-Khudri said, ‘‘I heard the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, say, ‘Whoever of you sees something wrong should change it with his hand; if he cannot, then with his tongue; if he cannot, then with his heart.’’’15 Zakat, the giving of charity, is one of the ‘‘five pillars’’ of Islam. Muslims are required to give at least 2 percent of their yearly income to the poor. Both historically and in the contemporary Muslim world, there have been many organizations working to re-distribute wealth to help the poor. The belief is that allowing some to remain in poverty while others have excessive wealth is an injustice that should not be tolerated.

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Such mainstream Islamic forms of socially engaged spirituality have been overshadowed in recent times by other forms often linked with fundamentalism and violence, such as the Iranian revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood in North Africa, Salafism, Wahabism in Arabia, the Tablighi Jamaat, and Deobandism in South Asia. Although many of their roots can be found in some (arguably dogmatic) aspects of Islam, they can also be understood as a significant part in reaction to what we might call the shadow side of modernity: Western dominance of Muslim regions, and in many cases, national and cultural humiliation. Nonfundamentalist spiritually motivated action in the manner of the Prophet is much more representative of modern Muslims. For example, Abdul Sattar Edhi in Pakistan has established a social welfare system that includes caring for orphans, providing medical care, saving abandoned babies, recovering and burying dead bodies, and training Muslim women as nurses. There is also Muhammad Yunus, who established the Grameen bank, helping people to establish small businesses without incurring major debt. A number of contemporary Muslim women, such as the scholar-activist Amina Wadud16 and Meena of Afghanistan, have been motivated by their spiritual beliefs to increase women’s roles in the mosque and in world affairs, and to ensure that the rights of women according to Islamic law are upheld.

HINDU AND BUDDHIST RESOURCES FOR CONTEMPORARY PEACE AND JUSTICE MOVEMENTS From among the multitude of offerings from many centuries of Hindu and Buddhist traditions, I want to select four crucial resources: (1) the Hindu idea of karma (‘‘action’’) yoga as a spiritual path; (2) the principle of ahimsa—nonharming or nonviolence—particularly as interpreted and enacted by Gandhi; (3) the parallel Buddhist grounding of social transformation in meditative practice; and (4) the Buddhist archetype of the bodhisattva, dedicated to the liberation of all beings.

Karma Yoga The idea of karma yoga, of spiritually guided action, dates back at least to the time of the Bhagavad Gita (ca. 2nd century BCE). In the Gita, karma yoga—the cultivation of union with the divine through action—is presented as one of the four main spiritual paths, along with j~nana yoga, coming to the divine through intuitive insight; bhakti yoga, loving devotion to the divine; and raja yoga, a primarily meditative path.

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In the Gita, Krishna, in dialogue with the warrior Arjuna, reminds Arjuna that action is inescapable, that one is always acting, and that therefore the question is how to act. Krishna recommends a formula that Gandhi later exemplified: choose the right action, use the right means to attain it (that is, nonviolence), and cultivate an attitude of nonattachment to the fruits (that is, the personal benefits) of one’s action (Gita 2:48). The message of the Gita, again embodied by Gandhi, is that working through our attachments to outcomes while simultaneously (and paradoxically) acting fully and responsibly, in a kind of increasingly ‘‘selfless service,’’ is a basic path of spiritual realization.

Nonviolence and the Legacy of Gandhi Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948) linked the idea of karma yoga with the equally ancient Hindu idea of ahimsa, or ‘‘nonharming.’’ Gandhi’s great innovation was to apply the ideas of karma yoga and ahimsa to large-scale social transformation, in his case, to the movement for the independence of India in the first half of the 20th century. For Gandhi, only nonviolent action could produce a new and free society. Indeed, a nonviolent movement is itself a ‘‘transformation of relationships’’17 that results eventually in a transfer of power. Echoing the ancient Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist texts, Gandhi declared that ‘‘hatred can be overcome only by love. Counter-hatred only increases the surface as well as the depth of hatred.’’18 Such nonviolence, whatever its origins, provides one of the great resources for peace and justice movement drawn from spiritual traditions. Nonviolence for Gandhi was an ongoing spiritual practice that one must apply not just in social action, but in all activities and all relationships. As in the model of karma yoga, the task is to purify one’s mind and heart of desire and hatred, coming closer to one’s true nature, while at the same time confronting violence and oppression. Ahimsa, nonviolence, and love, Gandhi tells us, are the very essence of our being; this is why nonviolent action is an expression of spiritual truths and why it eventually works, why the oppressor or violent one eventually responds. The basic principle of nonviolence is that of noncooperation with what is oppressive and unjust. The activist or satyagrahi (one who ‘‘holds to truth’’) works to purify him- or herself from any hatred against the oppressor, even though one’s noncooperation may well lead to suffering and even death. Gandhi in fact hoped that through nonviolence the British might move from the position of oppressor to that of reconciled friend—as they did.

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Meditation in Action: Socially Engaged Buddhism Socially engaged Buddhists have also articulated the importance of spiritual practices for social action, particularly focusing on the practices of mindfulness, loving kindness, and compassion. They have taken as central the teachings of the Buddha about the transformation of greed, hatred, and ignorance into generosity, compassion, and wisdom, and understood such transformation as occurring on both individual and collective levels.19 In Asia,20 socially engaged Buddhists have responded to violence with peace walks; nonviolent demonstrations; massive meditative rallies (in Sri Lanka, one rally in 2002 gathered some 650,000 persons); dialogue; and nonviolence trainings. They have formed resistance and reconciliation movements in the midst of war and/or oppression in Vietnam,21 Tibet, Burma, and the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. In Sri Lanka, the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement, a massive network of village-based community development activists led by Dr. A. T. Ariyaratne, has for over 50 years linked personal and social liberation. In the West,22 socially engaged Buddhists have worked on human rights issues, especially having to do with Asian countries such as Tibet, Burma, and Cambodia. They have also participated in various other movements, protests, and activities—anti-war, anti-violence, anti-racist, and environmental, among others. There have been numerous meetings and conferences of Buddhist women, concerned especially with the patriarchal strands of Buddhist teachings and organizations, the revisioning of Buddhist practices, and sensitivity to gender issues in Buddhist communities.23 Socially engaged Buddhists have also brought Buddhist teachings to prisons, developed hospices and centers for people with AIDS, and worked with the homeless. In these activities, there has often been an explicit connection of action and meditative practice, a connection particularly relevant for contemporary peace and justice activists. Traditional formal daily practice, weekly or monthly days of practice, and periodic retreats provide an essential support for action in the world, helping to provide balance and renewal, as well as powerful tools both to cultivate states of clarity, compassion, love, and equanimity, and to work skillfully with difficult states, such as anger, despair, grief, or confusion. Some socially engaged Buddhists have also developed new ways to bring meditative resources (and wisdom teachings) to engagement in the fields of interpersonal relations, group dynamics, conflict, work, service, relationships with the nonhuman world, and social change strategies.24

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The Bodhisattva Like the figures of the prophet or karma yogi, the Buddhist figure of the bodhisattva25 has captured the imagination of many contemporary spiritual activists. The bodhisattva, literally a ‘‘being’’ (sattva) oriented to ‘‘awakening’’ or ‘‘enlightenment’’ (bodhi), suggests a life of spiritually grounded service to others, a life centered in the aspiration to liberation—for self and others.

INDIGENOUS RESOURCES FOR A SOCIALLY ENGAGED SPIRITUALITY26 Indigenous spirituality, both traditional and contemporary, is in many ways less accessible than the traditions of the world religions, yet nonetheless offers important resources for peace and social justice movements. We might selectively summarize those resources, particularly as drawn from Native American traditions, as (1) the grounding of spirituality in community, and in relationship with the earth and all beings; (2) the understanding of spirituality, everyday life, and social action as of one piece; and (3) the use of particular practices relevant to peace and justice work.

The Centrality of Community, Relationship, and Interdependence We can characterize indigenous traditions as consciously based on locally, ecologically, and seasonally contextualized truths that are narratively anchored in natural communities. Stories and ceremonies help individuals to find internal and external balance within a relational conversation that participates in the life of ancestors, animals, plants, stars, humans, rocks, mountains, and other beings.27 Because of the tendency to idealize or romanticize Native American peoples, it seems important to understand this general characterization as paradigmatic in indigenous cultures, but not necessarily fully achieved. Indigenous spiritual practice can thus be seen as an engagement that arises locally yet goes beyond one’s own community. The traditional Hopi, like other tribes, see their responsibility for keeping their villages in balance not just as an obligation to their own tribe, but to the entire world. Many indigenous authors speak of the ongoing conversation with all beings. In the S
ami language, this has been expressed as humalan eatnama, ‘‘I converse with the earth.’’ In Aymara, it becomes nayasa kollo achachilampi uywaysastssta, ‘‘I am letting myself be nurtured by the apu—the spirit of the mountain—as I am nurturing the spirit of the mountain. Peruvians use the

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Spanish criar y dejarse criar, ‘‘to nurture and let oneself be nurtured,’’ as equivalent to the Aymara wording.

The Integration of Spirituality, Community, and Social Action Native people do not typically separate ‘‘sacred’’ and ‘‘secular,’’ frequently stating that everything is sacred. According to Beck and Walters,28 Native Americans understand life as sacred and as pervaded by a mystery—of all things moving in circles, dependent on each other. They also describe the personal commitment made to the sources of life through purification, blessings, sacrifices, offerings, and prayerful conversation. Given indigenous participation in this ongoing sacred engagement, it seems that such participation is by its nature spiritual and socially engaged, as well as communally and ecologically based.

Indigenous Practices Relevant for Activists in the Context of the Recovery of Indigenous Mind On the deepest level, individuals seeking a socially engaged spiritual practice that is informed by native traditions might see themselves as involved in what has been called ‘‘recovery of indigenous mind.’’ This term has been suggested directly and indirectly by Native American thinkers, among them Apela Colorado, who point to the importance of European Americans returning to the earth-based knowledge of their ancestors. Working with the issues of racism and genocide seems to be a crucial ingredient in relating to indigenous traditions. Kremer29 points to the need for working through cultural shadow material: With me walks a shadow. Before me I project the shadow of forgetting where I came from. Behind me trails the shadow of the tears of native peoples. Below me I march on the shadow of the lands my peoples have raped. Above me looms the shadow of the spirits which I am blind to . . . I hope to heal by remembering and seeing the shadows that walk with me so that I can become complete.

Hopefully within such a context of recovery of indigenous mind and decolonization, versions of some practices based in indigenous cultures have begun to enter into the repertoire of spiritual activists. Many organizations use a variant of ‘‘Council,’’ originally from the Iroquois,30 as a way to speak publicly in groups so as to deepen community, work with conflicts, and open up communication. Others may periodically enter into wilderness to come more in touch with deeper motivations and directions, or be inspired by

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other native ways of working with conflicts.31 A deepened appreciation of the place of ritual and ceremony may also help frame action in a sacred way.

FOUR FURTHER CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUAL RESOURCES FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE WORK Four further general resources for a socially engaged spirituality have roots in these contemporary areas of inquiry and action: (1) depth psychology, (2) gender, (3) ecology, and (4) interfaith collaboration.

Depth Psychology Depth psychology, originating in the pioneering work of Freud and Jung, and continuing through later psychoanalytic, Jungian, existential, phenomenological, humanistic, and transpersonal approaches, offers some powerful theoretical models and therapeutic methods, many of them spiritually oriented, relevant for peace and justice movements. Although some depth psychologists have made significant connections with social movements, many possible connections remain relatively undeveloped. This lack of development has been particularly influenced by the well-known Freudian critiques of religion as psychologically immature, and the pervasive asocial and individualistic interpretations of depth psychologies in the last 70 years, particularly in the United States.32 Generally speaking, what seems most valuable about depth psychology for spiritually grounded peace and justice work are: (1) the identification of unconscious dimensions of human experience connected with injustice and conflict, including both individual, familial, social, cultural, and universal aspects, that need to be understood to work for justice and peace; and (2) the development of a variety of therapeutic methods that help to bring awareness, healing, and transformation where there has been unconsciousness and suffering.

Contemporary Approaches to Gender and Socially Engaged Spirituality As we have seen, a dynamic revisioning of gender is widespread in the contexts of the world religions, involving: (1) identification of nonpatriarchal texts and approaches within a given tradition; (2) arguments for the tradition’s ‘‘essence’’ as pointing beyond patriarchy; (3) understanding historically how and why the patriarchal strands have gained ascendancy; (4) imagining and enacting interpretations of their traditions in which men and

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women are seen as increasingly equal in terms of political and spiritual power and potential; (5) emphasizing the ‘‘immanent’’ aspects of spirituality, particularly community, relationships, the body, emotions, and the earth; and (6) linking analysis of gender to issues of race, class, sexual orientation, and ecology. Others have in parallel ways found nourishment and inspiration in reconstructing, through scholarship and contemporary practice, various ‘‘goddess’’ traditions and pre-patriarchal ways of life in which the ‘‘feminine’’ seems central, with much less polarization of male and female roles.33 Still others have revived ‘‘pagan’’ traditions of Wicca, healing ‘‘witchcraft,’’ and magic, sometimes34 with social and political engagement.

Ecology and Spirituality Similarly, awareness of the urgent need for corrective and restorative action around a host of ecological issues has influenced both the world’s religions and emerging spiritual forms and practices. Paralleling the critical self-examinations made in terms of gender issues, many have examined their traditions both for problematic aspects, as well as resources for responding to ecological issues.35 Three contemporary resources are particularly valuable for contemporary peace and justice activists: (1) deep ecology, (2) ecofeminism, and (3) earth-based practices and rituals. Deep ecology36 is an attempt to identify a spiritually grounded framework for recasting human relationships to other beings and to the earth. Its core principles put in question many characteristically modern views (many of them held by mainstream environmentalists), namely, (1) a view of humans as ‘‘above’’ the natural world, rather than immersed in it; (2) the centrality of the individual, separate self, as opposed to a sense of self-incommunity; (3) an emphasis on central government, rather than local autonomy and decentralization; and (4) a denial of the ethical import of nonhumans, including land and place, rather than what deep ecologists call an ‘‘ecocentric’’ ethic. Ecofeminists (some more secular, some more spiritual) have identified the connection between the domination of women and the domination of the earth. Originating from a number of sources, ecofeminism has strongly influenced many in the world religions.37 Partly influenced by these contemporary perspectives, many have also developed new earth-based spiritual practices.38 Particularly influential has been the work of Joanna Macy, who has developed a large body of group practices, such as the ‘‘Council of All Beings’’ (with John Seed) and ‘‘Deep Time’’ practices, in which one relates to past and future generations.39

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Interfaith Approaches Interfaith dialogue and cooperation has occurred in many settings and through organizations such as the Fellowship of Reconciliation and Religions for Peace. Increasingly, those of different traditions (and those outside of traditions) are recognizing that the great challenges of our times—increasing conflict, violence, and fear; the mounting gap between rich and poor; ecological crisis; and challenges to democracy and civil liberties in an age of globalization, militarism, and imperial ambition—are sufficiently demanding as to require a spiritual response to summon the depth required to face them skillfully, a response dialogically across many traditions and approaches to offer the power required to meet them adequately, and access to many traditions to have the resources needed to meet our challenges.

NOTES 1. Rothberg, 1993. 2. I will assume rather than attempt to establish the plausibility of that important and complex argument. 3. I have been selective, and not mentioned a number of traditions and authors that might be covered in an expanded treatment. 4. Heschel, 1962. 5. Heschel, 1983. 6. Lerner, 2006. 7. Washington, 1986. 8. Berryman, 1987. 9. Boff, 1992. 10. Day, 1952. 11. Wallis, 1994. 12. West, 1999. 13. Ruether, 1983. 14. This section has been helped by the work of my student, Anisah Bagasra, the main author of a much longer treatment of this theme to which I also contributed: Rothberg et al., 2007. 15. Imam Muslim, 2009. 16. Wadud, 1999. 17. Merton, 1965. 18. Ibid. 19. Loy, 2008. 20. Queen and King, 1996. 21. Hanh, 1993. 22. Queen, 2000. 23. Gross, 1993.

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24. Macy and Brown, 1998; Rothberg, 2006. 25. Leighton, 2003. 26. This section depends in large part on the work of my colleague, Dr. J€ urgen Kremer, in Rothberg et al., 2007. 27. Kremer, 2004. 28. Beck and Walters, 1977. 29. Kremer, 2000. 30. Zimmerman and Coyle, 1996. 31. For example, as fictionalized by Storm, 1994. 32. Ferrer, 2002; Jacoby, 1986. 33. Eisler, 1987. 34. For example see Starhawk, 1987. 35. Gottlieb, 2003. 36. Devall and Sessions, 1985. 37. Diamond and Orenstein, 1990. 38. Gottlieb, 2003. 39. Macy and Brown, 1998.

CHAPTER

10

W H E N P R AY E R A N D R E V O L U T I O N B E C A M E P E O P L E P OW E R Hildegard Goss-Mayr

We know that not one step, not one seed, not one action that is carried out in the spirit of nonviolence is ever lost. It bears fruit, in the history of nations and of the world. But even though we know this, it is encouraging and helpful to be able to see the practical results of nonviolent action from time to time. That is why I would like to share with you some of the things that happened in the Philippines during the recent liberation struggle, although—I should like to add immediately—it is only a first step in the struggle for a life of dignity for all Filipinos. The international press has covered it quite well, but there are aspects of what the people of the Philippines lived through that very few journalists have been able to grasp. The press could not relate the events that occurred to the traditions and the attitudes of the people that made them possible. Nonviolence—this power of truth and love—always develops out of a given historical and cultural background. The Filipino people were under Spanish domination for three centuries, and were a U.S. colony for half a century. Later on, during World War II, they were occupied by the Japanese and liberated by the Americans. Although the United States did not set up another This chapter appeared in Richard Deats, Marked for Life, The Story of Hildegard Goss-Mayr (New City Press, 2009) and was originally printed in Fellowship (March 1987): 8–11.

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colonial regime, it established a strong military presence in the Philippines and made that country economically dependent on the multinational firms. Three centuries of Spanish rule brought Christianity to the Philippines, leaving behind, as in Latin America, a mostly Catholic country in the Spanish tradition. It is important to understand that the majority of the Filipino people are a believing people, with a faith like that of children, but not in a negative sense, at all. Our children often have a very close relationship to God. There is no theology in between. Many Filipino people are like those in Latin America who have said to me, ‘‘God has spoken into my ear, He said this and this.’’ Sometimes the Gospel comes directly into the hearts and minds of the people, in a way that is not rationalized, as it is in other countries. More recently, there were almost 20 years of the Marcos regime with the suffering of the people increasing, seen in unemployment, hunger, and misery. Whenever groups in some of the dioceses began to form in the struggle for justice, repression set in immediately. Very great atrocities were committed. This repression came down on the peasants, students, labor unions, and committed Christians. Only a small part of the Church opted to stand on the side of the people and work for social justice. There were perhaps some 30 dioceses where Christian Base Communities were formed. Bishop Claver in Mindanao was one of the first to develop nonviolent liberating actions in his diocese. Some of the sisters and priests were persecuted, but the majority of the Church leadership and most of the middle class were linked to the regime. As in Latin America, the Church as an official institution was linked to those in power much too long. It is easy to understand why idealistic young people—seminarians and lay people alike—saw no other way out but to join the guerillas. Known as the New People’s Army (or the NPA), they were established as the armed branch of the Communist Party, more or less on a Maoist basis. These young people saw no other way to struggle for justice against an unjust regime. I think the Church must bear a large part of the responsibility for the development, due to the cowardice of large sections of the official Church. People cannot remain passive under certain circumstances. Unless there is the offer of a nonviolent alternative, they will have to take to counterviolence. Gandhi has said that the lowest possible attitude is to remain passive; if you don’t know another way, you choose counterviolence. This is not to defend counterviolence, but I think it is a reality of which we must be aware. Wherever the moral authorities—whether it be Christian churches or other moral authorities—do not take the lead in nonviolent resistance there will be counterviolence and, sooner or later, civil war. I think we should understand this, and never condemn those who join the guerillas because they see no other way. But we must try to live that alternative.

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Another important event in the Philippine story was the assassination of Ninoy Aquino. This opposition leader had been imprisoned for seven years when he became very ill and had to be operated on in the United States. It may not be well known that while he was in prison Ninoy Aquino underwent a radical change, a kind of conversion. He was certainly an honest person, but like all politicians he had been trying to get power. While in prison, he read the Gospel and Gandhi and began to understand that a politician must serve the people. He decided then that if he ever had the chance to assume responsibility for his country, he would try to be a politician who worked with nonviolence and served the people rather than himself. It is important to understand that this man, who sought leadership in a country where corruption among the political and economic leaders was a way of life, underwent a deep conversion. When Ninoy Aquino returned to the Philippines in 1983 he knew he had been condemned to death. When he stepped off the plane and was shot to death, his act of courage in returning held great meaning for the Filipinos. They saw him, as we say in the Old Testament, as a ‘‘just one,’’ who gives his life for the people, rather than take the life of the enemy. And we also know from the early Church that the blood of the martyr is fruitful; it has the strength to renew people, to bring a challenge and change those who are passive, or those who are collaborative with the dictatorship. Ninoy’s giving the gift of his life was really the beginning of a strong popular effort in the Philippines to try to overcome the dictatorship through nonviolence. Following the assassination, demonstrations began to take place all over the Philippines. The fact that one person had the courage to give his life encouraged thousands and thousands of others to overcome the fear that had kept them passive. They poured into the streets to witness to truth and justice, and to demand that martial law be discontinued and human rights respected. The demonstrations lasted for months, but there was no ongoing nonviolent action; people were not yet prepared for that. Polarization increased; repression became fierce; and the economic situation continued to deteriorate. NPA actions were on the increase in two-thirds of the provinces of the Philippines. It was then that a few religious communities wrote to Jean and me, asking if we would come just to study the situation and see whether there might be the possibility of developing a well-organized, coherent nonviolent resistance to the existing injustice. We thought perhaps our Latin American experience might help us understand the Philippine situation, so we accepted. We went to the Philippines for the first time in February 1984. With the help of religious sisters and priests, we traveled throughout the islands and met many people: people close to the regime, people in opposition, peasants, laypeople, union leaders, priests, bishops, and politicians.

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Jean and I felt that we were coming into the situation with nonviolence at a very late hour. I think we must say to our shame that we all closed our eyes for a long time in the face of injustice. Very often those who see no other way than counterviolence are the first ones to take action against injustice. It is very difficult to come in later and say no, we should take another path. We, as Christians, should be the first ones to open our eyes to injustices, and to speak out and bring the power of nonviolence into the revolution. We felt it was late, but we felt that there were people really searching for the nonviolent alternative. One thing that made us decide to accept the challenge was when, on the last day of our first visit, the brother of Ninoy Aquino—he’s called Agapito (‘‘Butz’’) Aquino—came to see us. He said to Jean and me: ‘‘A few days ago, we were approached by arms merchants, who said, ‘Do you think you will be able to overthrow this regime with demonstrations? Don’t you think you need better weapons than that? We’re offering them to you. Make up your mind.’’’ And then he said to us: ‘‘It is providential that you have come at this time, because ever since their visit I have been unable to sleep. Do I have the right to throw my country unto a major civil war? What is my responsibility as a Christian politician in this situation? Is there really such a thing as nonviolent combat against a system as unjust as this one?’’ Jean and I told him that at least he could try. ‘‘You don’t lose anything if you try with nonviolence,’’ we said. ‘‘But you must make up your own mind, and if you decide to try it, you must prepare yourself inwardly, because nonviolent methods are the fruit of the vision of man that we have. If you want to have seminars in preparation, let us know, and we will come back.’’ A few weeks later, we were invited back to carry out a series of seminars on nonviolent liberation. One of these seminars was with the group of bishops that had already committed itself to working for social justice. Bishop Claver had organized a seminar for them. The others were mainly for leaders from the political opposition, for labor unions, peasants, students, and church people—priests, sisters, and laypeople. In each of these seminars, we would first analyze the situation of violence together, and how we were a part of it. The seed of the violence was in structures, of course, and in the dictator. But wasn’t it also in ourselves? It’s very easy to say that Marcos is evil. But unless we each tear the dictator out of our own heart, nothing will change. Another group will come into power and will act similarly to those whom they replaced. So we discovered the Marcos within ourselves. In some of these seminars, there were political leaders of the opposition, and there were peasant leaders. In one seminar, the peasants would not speak to the politicians. ‘‘We have no faith in the politicians,’’ they said.

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‘‘Even if they are from the opposition, they have betrayed us too often.’’ So one evening when we celebrated the Eucharist together, Father Jose Blanco, a Jesuit priest, distributed the host immediately after consecration. ‘‘Let us now break the bread,’’ he said, ‘‘and bring one part of the host to someone with whom you have not yet talked during our seminar.’’ There was a deep silence. Finally one person from the labor unions got up, walked to up to one of the political leaders present, and shared his host with him. Deeply moved, the politician promised that if he got the chance of political leadership, he would firmly stand on the side of the poor. This was the breakthrough: unity was achieved. This unity is the pre-condition for nonviolent liberation work Those seminars were more than just training people in methodology. The goal was for each one of us to undergo a deep change, a conversion. The nonviolent movement of the Philippines, called AKKAPKA, developed out of these seminars, under the leadership of Father Blanco. AKKAPKA is Tagalog for ‘‘I embrace you,’’ as well as an acronym for Movement for Peace and Justice. Everybody who took part in a seminar was asked to pass on what they had learned, what they had experienced. And during the first year AKKAPKA was in existence, those few people held 40 seminars in 30 provinces of the Philippines. They saw an urgent need to share what they had learned, so that the people might be prepared, at least to some extent, for nonviolent change in the country. When the so-called ‘‘snap’’ elections were announced at the end of 1985, AKKAPKA discontinued the training to work at preparing for the electoral process. They encouraged people to have the courage to vote for the person who they really believed should be the leader in the country, and to refuse to accept the money that was offered by the government for Marcos votes. They prepared people to defend the ballot boxes. Young and old, men and women, priests and laypeople, stood unarmed around the urns that held the ballots in the face of armed agents who came to steal them. AKKAPKA also decided that from the middle of January to the end of the struggle, they would have ‘‘prayer tents.’’ One tent was set up right in the banking center in Manila, where the financial power of the regime was concentrated. This big prayer tent was set up there in a little park. And around it, people who promised to fast and pray had a presence day and night. We cannot emphasize enough the deep spirituality that gave the people the strength to stand against the tanks later on. People prayed every day, for all those who suffered in the process of changing regimes, even for the military, and for Marcos: that he would find the strength not to use his huge arsenal against the people—that what little love for his people that was perhaps left in his heart might prevent him from giving the order to shoot into the millions of people who were demonstrating.

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It makes a great difference, in a revolutionary process where people are highly emotional, whether you promote hatred and revenge or help the people stand firmly for justice without becoming like the oppressor. You want to love your enemy, to liberate rather than destroy him. Radio Veritas, the Catholic station, helped tremendously in this task. It coordinated the whole resistance, around the clock, with news of the events as they happened. Day and night, they read passages from Martin Luther King, the Sermon on the Mount, Gandhi, and so forth—asking the people to follow those examples. Radio Veritas also encouraged the soldiers to remember their vow of loyalty to the nation, and not to one person. They kept urging the troops, ‘‘Refuse to shoot at the people, on whose side you should stand. Refuse unjust orders.’’ To do all this in a situation where the dictatorship was still powerful took more than human courage. It was marvelous to see the atmosphere in which it all took place, where prayer and revolution had become one. The revolutionary effort was really a revolution of the strength of truth and love. This is why, in the midst of it all, people were able to sing and dance. They knew they had a strength within them that was stronger than their own little human strength, that the power of love and truth was carrying them along. Therefore, although they were afraid, they knew at the same time that victory was possible. Because truth is stronger than lying, and love is stronger than the hatred and the repression of the regime, it will win in the end. Now I should like to say a word about Cory Aquino1, because it seems like a miracle that this nation was able to unite in so short a time. One factor was certainly the deep suffering the people shared. Their suffering and their faith united them. But I think the pole around whom everything revolved was Cory Aquino. In the eyes of the people, she represented the opposite of all the corruption, oppression, and violence of Marcos. When the Filipino people united around Cory Aquino, I think it was because they felt the authenticity of this woman. In the end, there were only two pillars of the regime left. One was the United States, which gave its support to the Marcos government until the very last moment. And one was the army. While we were there last year, with Cory Aquino, Cardinal Sin, and the others, a number of scenarios of possible conflicts that might evolve in the struggle were developed. The scenario everybody feared the most was that the army would split. We knew that if the army split, a great deal of blood would be shed. We had to ask ourselves what could be done if this should happen. That was, in fact, the scenario that evolved. When the reform movement of the army separated from Marcos, he gave the order to his armed forces to crush the dissidents. As planned, Radio Veritas immediately called on the people to fill up the streets, to stand in

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front of the tanks, to speak to the soldiers. Eventually there were several hundred thousand people who spent a whole weekend in the road, blocking the tanks so that they could not move against the dissident groups. They spoke to the soldiers, gave them flowers, hugged them, and said, ‘‘You belong to the people; come back to those to whom you really belong.’’ While it was very important for the people to experience the strength of the poor and the power of love and truth to overcome evil, we all know it is only the first step. What is before the Filipino people now is at least as difficult, if not more difficult, than what has gone before. It will require perseverance. And it will need the continued conversion of those who still adhere to the old regime, who have important places in the provinces; to dismantle the private armies of the landlords; to carry out land reform so that the mass of the people can live in dignity; to negotiate with the Muslim minority; to negotiate with the NPA, so that perhaps they will be willing to put down their arms and become one of the democratic parties in the country; to rebuild the economy. It is important that we do not forget Cory Aquino and those who support her, and our prayers accompany her. We must also encourage our own governments to give economic and moral support to this new government. Not the kind of economic support that makes the Philippines dependent on others, but economic support that will enable the Philippines to realize its own model of economy and its own model of social reforms. The nonviolent revolution in the Philippines comes to us as a great gift. It has given hope to countries like Chile, South Korea, and others where there are still dictatorships. Perhaps the peace movement, where we have experienced a little bit of what the strength of God in the poor can mean, can also receive this gift, if we really believe in it and if we act accordingly.

NOTE 1. President Corazon Aquino died on August 1, 2009 after the writing of this article.

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C AT H O L I C S O C I A L T E A C H I N G : I N T E G R AT I N G T H E V I R T U E O F NONVIOLENT PEACEMAKING Eli Sasaran McCarthy

Much of the resistance to the possibility of a robust, lasting peace today comes from people who think that claims of nonviolence and peace are ‘‘moral,’’ by which they mean rule-based rather than pragmatic.1 In contrast, those who work diligently for peace are coming by and large from an entirely different philosophical framework, namely, that peace is a worthwhile endeavor and a potentially achievable political arrangement like any other, and the claims of nonviolence are entirely scientific, that is, practical (as Gandhi always insisted, apparently without much success in some quarters). In this chapter I will examine a particular and potentially influential arena in which this argument is shifting toward integrating the ‘‘moral’’ and pragmatic through virtue ethics, namely, Catholic social teaching. Catholic social teaching (CST) is both a tradition of religious discourse and of translating such discourse into arguments for policy. Contemporary CST stands in a tradition of ethical discourse that has been moving toward integrating human rights and virtue. However, CST still maintains the tendency toward rule-based assessments of nonviolent peacemaking.2 This tendency gets expressed in a rights-based approach to confronting conflicts, especially acute conflicts, and this approach offers some contributions but also some significant limits in correctly assessing nonviolent peace making.

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I maintain that CST ought to employ a virtue-based assessment of nonviolent peacemaking supplemented by aspects of human rights theory.3 This move would yield a more adequate way of understanding and describing nonviolence in CST documents and more readily bring to light as well as sustain us in a set of core practices.

CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING ON NONVIOLENCE CST’s rule-based assessment of nonviolent peacemaking often truncates the imagination of nonviolent practices, both for daily life and public policy, and gives inadequate attention to forming the persons and groups interpreting and applying the rules.4 Further, CST primarily measures the success of nonviolent peacemaking practices by their protection of human rights, that is, a set of rules. CST tends to argue that nonviolence is often unable to protect and promote certain human rights, such as the right to self-defense or the duty to defend the innocent. In turn, CST has held that nonviolent peacemaking was only or primarily for individuals. Thus, this rights-based ethic also reinforced an emphasis on just war theory and more recently on humanitarian intervention, more than nonviolent peacemaking practices, especially those that concern government or state actors. It is at least partly for this reason, I believe, that U.S. Catholic leadership often failed to adequately challenge U.S. political and military leadership on the use of war and preparation for war, for example, the atomic bomb in World War II. Scholars have pointed out other significant limits of a human rights-based approach.5 However, a gradual recognition of the importance of virtue has been increasing in CST, especially since Vatican II, but also more clearly since the U.S. bishops’ 1993 document The Harvest of Justice Is Sown in Peace.6 The combination of drawing more readily on the Bible, especially the Christian Scriptures, with its clearer resonance to virtue ethics, and the extending of the call to holiness to all persons has contributed to positions in CST that have increasingly questioned the possibility of a just war and increasingly valued the potential of nonviolent peacemaking practices for public policy. The particular practices of nonviolent peacemaking illustrated by Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the many successful nonviolent movements of the 1980s, especially the Solidarity movement in Poland, have also contributed to these positions arising in CST. Pope John Paul II, who was a key contributor to the Solidarity labor movement in Poland and the largely nonviolent movements that toppled communism in Eastern Europe, taught that peace is the fruit of solidarity, which he also described as a key virtue.7 He increasingly taught the priority

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of nonviolence and the need to end war, which Christianson argues was summarized in his statement about ‘‘violence, which under the illusion of fighting evil, only makes it worse.’’8 The Pope had even argued that ‘‘violence is evil.’’9 He exhorted persons not to follow leaders who train you in the way of inflicting death . . . Give yourself to the service of life, not the work of death. Do not think that courage and strength are proved by killing and destruction. True courage lies in working for peace . . . Violence is the enemy of justice. Only peace can lead the way to true justice.10

In the 1983 Challenge of Peace, the U.S. bishops offer some reflections on the value of nonviolent means of conflict resolution. Although a virtuebased ethic is not predominant in their document, the bishops acknowledge that some Christians since the earliest days have ‘‘committed themselves to a nonviolent lifestyle.’’11 They note that: the objective is not only to avoid causing harm or injury to another creature, but, more positively, to seek the good of the other. Blunting the aggression of an adversary or oppressor would not be enough. The goal is winning the other over, making the adversary a friend [emphasis added].12

It is an emphasis consistent with viewing nonviolent peacemaking as a virtue. In Harvest of Justice the U.S. bishops orient the document by discussing the theology, spirituality, and ethics of peacemaking.13 The bishops argue that for Jesus’s gift of peace to transform our world, it also requires ‘‘peaceable virtues, a practical vision for a peaceful world and an ethics to guide peacemakers in times of conflict.’’14 The list of virtues includes: faith and hope to strengthen our spirits by placing our trust in God, rather than in ourselves; courage and compassion that move us to action; humility and kindness so that we can put the needs and interests of others ahead of our own; patience and perseverance to endure the long struggle for justice; and civility and charity so that we can treat others with respect and love.15

The ethics to guide peacemakers in terms of conflict consists of the increasing importance of nonviolent peacemaking and the increasing questions about just war theory.16 On nonviolent peacemaking and public policy, they argue, Although nonviolence has often been regarded as simply a personal option or vocation, recent history suggests that in some circumstances

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it can be an effective public undertaking as well . . . One must ask . . . whether it also should have a place in the public order with the tradition of justified and limited war . . . Nonviolent strategies need greater attention in international affairs.17

In the midst of the bishops’ increasing questioning of just war theory, they consider the importance of character and a properly formed conscience: Moral reflection on the use of force calls for a spirit of moderation rare in contemporary political culture. The increasing violence of our society, its growing insensitivity to the sacredness of life and the glorification of the technology of destruction in popular culture could inevitably impair our society’s ability to apply just-war criteria honestly and effectively in time of crisis. In the absence of a commitment of respect for life and a culture of restraint, it will not be easy to apply the just-war tradition . . . given the neglect of peaceable virtues . . . serious questions remain about whether modern war . . . can meet the hard tests set by the just war tradition.18

This increasing emphasis on virtue, character, conscience, and vision in CST strengthens CST’s position that all persons, not just political leaders, are responsible for the common good. After describing an agenda for peacemaking,19 the bishops conclude with discourse congenial to virtue, such as conversion and imagination: . . . today’s call to peacemaking is a call to conversion, to change our hearts, to reject violence, to love our enemies . . . To believe we are condemned . . . only to what has been in the past . . . is to underestimate both our human potential for creative diplomacy and God’s action in our midst which can open the way to changes we could barely imagine . . . For peacemakers, hope is the indispensable virtue.20

Pope Benedict XVI has also indicated a way of thinking that supports the trajectory of further integrating virtue ethics into CST. He argues that the centrality of love can be commanded because God has first given love.21 In other words, the central theme of Christian ethics is about a response to a gift, an attraction to a good and more than assent to a command, duty, rule, or right. He attends to the interrelation of key virtues, such as charity.22 In 2007, Pope Benedict spoke about the Gospel text ‘‘love your enemies.’’ He described nonviolence for Christians as not mere tactical behavior but a person’s way of being, the attitude of one who is convinced of God’s love and power, who is not afraid to confront

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evil with the weapons of love and truth alone. Loving the enemy is the nucleus of the ‘‘Christian revolution,’’ a revolution not based on strategies of economic, political or media power [emphasis added].23

When we combine his reflections on love, which prioritizes attraction to the good over command and rule, with his reflection on the centrality of love of enemies and particularly nonviolence as a way of being rather than mere tactic or strategy, he further opens the conceptual space to understand nonviolent peacemaking as a virtue, which realizes the good of conciliatory love. However, the movement toward integrating virtue ethics still has significant growing edges. I have noted how CST has historically relied primarily on a rules-based and more recently rights-based assessment of nonviolence. Even within the [1983] document, rights language has a significant, if not primary role. The term ‘‘virtue’’ is only used 13 times, while the term ‘‘rights’’ is used over 50 times. In the vision of a peaceful world, the three components are each defined in terms of human rights. The just war tradition is understood in terms of a state’s right and duty to defend against aggression as a last resort, and as aiming at the kind of peace that ensures human rights. Humanitarian intervention, such as using lethal force, is permitted in exceptional cases as a right and duty. Securing human rights is one of the five components of their agenda for peacemaking. Seriously considering nonviolent alternatives by national leaders is described as a moral obligation, or what Christianson calls a ‘‘prima facie public obligation.’’24 Yet, in the ethics section, nonviolence is promoted as being an ‘‘effective public undertaking’’ under some circumstances, and thus, ‘‘nonviolent strategies’’ deserve more attention. In this instance, nonviolence gets portrayed primarily as a strategy or tactic, precisely in the context of arguing for its increased role in public discourse and policy. Further, in the 2004 compendium, the priority of rights is even more pronounced and there is no mention of ‘‘peaceable virtues’’ or ‘‘nonviolence.’’25 The relationship between peaceable virtues, nonviolence, and human rights needs further clarification and development in CST, particularly for public discourse and policy.

VIRTUE OF NONVIOLENT PEACEMAKING The scriptural evidence, particularly the witness of Jesus, makes it difficult to argue that the pattern of nonviolent peacemaking or love of friends and enemies would not be at least one of the paradigmatic actions that corresponds to one of the key Christian virtues, and thus, not merely a utilitarian strategy.26 However, a Christian virtue entails key features that are also satisfied by the portrayal of nonviolent peacemaking in the scriptural witness.

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First, a virtue is a habit, disposition, or practice that realizes a specific good or instance of human flourishing. Drawing on Bernard Haring’s work, we may say that the Christian virtue of nonviolent peacemaking realizes the good of conciliatory love.27 This virtue would differ from the Thomistic virtue of charity in that it aims particularly at transforming enemies into friends, and deals with conflict or acute conflict, which calls forth a unique set of paradigmatic practices. Second, Joseph Kotva explains that virtues are a means to and constituent elements of human flourishing, that is, our human end or telos.28 For Christians, Jesus is the way (the means) and the one who ushers in the present and coming-to-completion Reign of God (the telos). Thus, Jesus’s pervasive and consistent practices of nonviolent peacemaking support the characterization of nonviolent peacemaking as a virtue, which constitutes our telos. Third, William Spohn argues that ‘‘each virtue of the Christian moral life is shaped by the story of Jesus and preeminently by its conclusion, the cross and resurrection.’’29 The instances of nonviolent peacemaking arise centrally in the narratives about Jesus, and the power of nonviolent peacemaking to realize conciliatory love is ultimately conveyed in the reconciling cross and resurrection. Fourth, a virtue entails the formation and transformation of character, rather than being primarily an external law or rule for us to obey by rote. Jesus’s practice of nonviolent peacemaking aimed to disclose the conciliatory character of God and to transform the character of his disciples toward a conciliatory love, especially regarding the outcasts, poor, and enemies.30 Fifth, a virtue consists in being a practice rather than being a mere technique or instrument that produces goods tangential to the activity. Spohn explains that practices are primarily ‘‘worthwhile and meaningful in themselves; the enhancement and satisfaction they bring comes from doing them well.’’ The primary intent of Christian nonviolent peacemaking entails a satisfaction found in expressing our love and gratitude for God’s love, rather than primarily as an instrument to gain political power or receive the reward of heaven. As far as nonviolent peacemaking cultivates the transformation of our character, nonviolent peacemaking entails an enhancement from the activity itself, which is a constitutive element of a practice. Further, Spohn argues that practices are activities that make up a way of life. Jesus, again often called the ‘‘way,’’ offered us a way of life, which entailed central practices such as those of nonviolent peacemaking. Because the portrayal of nonviolent peacemaking in the scriptural witness satisfies these five key features of a Christian virtue, we ought to consider nonviolent peacemaking a distinct virtue rather than merely subsuming it in the paradigmatic practices of other virtues.

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INTEGRATING THE VIRTUE OF NONVIOLENT PEACEMAKING IN CST A virtue-based assessment of nonviolent peacemaking supplemented by some aspects of human rights offers particular contributions toward developing CST. These contributions consist of both a more adequate way of understanding nonviolence, and a set of practices that arise more clearly and will more likely be sustained. The shift in understanding consists in assessing nonviolent peacemaking as a virtue, which realizes the specific goods of a conciliatory love that turns enemies into friends, and truth, particularly the truths of our ultimate unity and equal dignity.31 Recognizing this virtue qualifies key virtues, such as justice, courage, solidarity, and humility, and uplifts a certain set of related virtues to more prominence, such as hospitality, mercy, and empathy. For instance, the virtue of solidarity with its focus on the poor and oppressed would affect our analysis of preparing and directly engaging in war, our analysis of those who exercise lethal force by emphasizing the question ‘‘what kind of persons are they becoming,’’ and our care for the environment.32 The virtue of justice would orient us to restorative more than retributive justice.33 The virtue of courage that prioritizes endurance over attack would now include the practice of suffering out of reverence for the dignity of others (and self) by risking, perhaps even giving, one’s life without the protection of violent force. Further, particular aspects of human rights can supplement this virtuebased assessment, which presently has less moral traction in public discourse. The contributions of human rights theory in CST already include a strong presumption against war and a fuller range of human rights that includes socio-economic and political-civil rights.34 These aspects enhance the priority of nonviolence, the challenge to the exorbitant and disproportionate U.S. military spending and selling, and even Gandhi’s insight about the constructive program in nonviolence. To take the approach outlined would set the stage for naming and elaborating a set of paradigmatic practices that correspond to the virtue of nonviolent peacemaking and its related set of virtues. I now turn to this set of practices as the second core contribution of a virtue-based assessment of nonviolent peacemaking for CST. Seven paradigmatic practices would include: (1) celebrating the nonviolent Eucharist, with secondary components of prayer, meditation, and fasting; (2) training and education in nonviolent peacemaking, with the secondary component of forming nonviolent peacemaking communities; (3) attention to religious or spiritual factors, especially in public discourse, and learning about

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religion, particularly in the form of intra-religious or inter-religious dialogue; (4) a constructive program with its particular focus on the poor and marginalized; (5) conflict transformation and restorative justice, particularly in the form of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions; (6) third-party nonviolent intervention both in the form of international implementation and local peace teams; and (7) civilian-based defense. The following examples are a further elaboration. Pope Benedict recognized the central role of the Eucharistic practice in drawing us into the ‘‘revolution’’ of nonviolent love.35 Fr. Cantalamessa, the Preacher to the Papal Household in 2005, affirmed the growing attention to the Eucharist as the sacrament of nonviolence and God’s absolute no to violence.36 Rev. Emmanuel McCarthy argues that the words ‘‘suffered and died’’ in the Eucharistic prayer are theologically correct, but pastorally insufficient. He suggests the Eucharistic prayer include something like the following: On the night before He went forth to His eternally memorable and life-giving death, rejecting violence, loving His enemies, praying for His persecutors, He bestowed upon His disciples the gift of a New Commandment: ‘‘Love one another. As I have loved you so you also should love one another.’’ . . . But, we remember also that he endured this humiliation with a love free of retaliation, revenge, and retribution . . . we recall also that He died loving enemies, praying for persecutors, forgiving, and being superabundantly merciful to those for whom [retributive] justice would have demanded [retributive] justice.37

This practice of connecting the Eucharistic prayer with nonviolent peacemaking can be extended to the practice of prayer in general, but also to the practice of meditation. The virtue of nonviolent peacemaking not only foregrounds the significance of these practices, but also informs how and to what end(s) they should be practiced. For instance, prayer and meditation can function to re-connect us with the source of our lives and with the interconnectedness of all being. These practices often generate solidarity and patience, as well as a capacity to locate and focus on the deeper issues, desires, wounds, and needs. When situations of conflict become particularly trying and long-lasting, these practices nourish our energy and sustain us for the long haul. Fasting has often accompanied prayer or meditation. Fasting can function as a way of discernment, along with cultivating a sense of solidarity with the poor, hungry, and vulnerable. Further, Gandhi illustrated how fasting can function to stir the hearts, especially of loved ones to transform their ways from violence toward nonviolent peacemaking. Policy makers

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who engaged in prayer, meditation, or fasting informed by the recognition and appreciation of the virtue of nonviolent peacemaking would likely become the kinds of people who can better see, imagine, and commit to policies oriented to nonviolent peacemaking. The attention to formation that a virtue-based assessment offers raises a second core practice: training and education in nonviolent peacemaking. The U.S. bishops have spoken generally about how our nation needs more research, education, and training in nonviolent means of resisting injustice. But the specifics can be clarified and the implementation can be enhanced by a virtue-based assessment. Scott Appleby makes the argument that we need stronger religious education in nonviolent peace building, and that spiritual-moral formation is the key internal condition for moving beyond violence.38 John Paul Lederach suggests an emphasis on the moral imagination as a way to transcend violence, which resonates well with a virtue-based assessment of nonviolent peacemaking.39 Connecting the moral imagination to peace building, he argues that such education should provide early and continual space for exploring questions of meaning and the journey such as: Who are we? What are we doing? Where are we going? What is our purpose?—all questions that get further emphasis with a virtue-based assessment.40 Other examples of training and educating for nonviolent peacemaking include the development of peace studies programs and service-learning opportunities. A virtue-based assessment would uplift this need for more emphasis in our education on nonviolent peacemaking, and suggest relevant courses toward developing ‘‘deep nonviolence,’’ such as meditation or contemplation, and nonviolent communication.41 Other educational projects could include the movement to establish a Peace Academy,42 analogous to the academies for the armed forces, a substantial increase in resources for the U.S. Institute of Peace, and perhaps the realization of a U.S. Department of Peace. Closely related to the practice of training and education is the formation of communities committed to the virtue of nonviolent peacemaking. These communities provide a fertile and sustaining space to encounter nonviolent peacemaking, to grow in the virtue of nonviolent peacemaking and its related virtues, and to experiment with or imagine practices of nonviolent peacemaking. The Community of the Ark, the Bruderhof, and the Catholic Worker communities are good examples.43 Catholic dioceses and even public policy makers at various levels could also set up pilot programs or experiment with the formation of nonviolent communities in the hope of drawing wisdom and practices eventually for the larger societies. A third core practice arising more clearly in a virtue-based assessment of nonviolent peacemaking is attention to (1) religious or spiritual factors,

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especially for public discourse, and to (2) learning about religion(s), particularly in the form of intra-religious or inter-religious dialogue. A virtuebased approach emphasizes conceptions of the good life, which persons in the major religious traditions have been reflecting on and enacting for hundreds of years. Appleby and Douglas Johnston have both elaborated on numerous examples of how the religious factor and religious actors can become a richer resource for peacemaking and U.S. statecraft.44 The U.S. government has recently developed a Civilian Response Corps to provide civilian experts for deployment to regions at the risk of, in, or transitioning from conflict.45 However, although they draw on various fields of expertise for this Corps, they do not but should include expertise in religion and religious peacemaking. A fourth core practice is what Gandhi called constructive program or social uplift of one’s own community. Martha Nussbaum’s central capabilities theory, corrected by Lisa Cahill, represents a policy framework for actualizing the focus on the poor and marginalized found in the constructive program. The constructive program would also enhance our commitment to the Millennium Development Goals,46 particularly since most of the goals are still not on target.47 The Human Development Index, grounded in capabilities theory, would also receive more prominence in a virtue-based assessment, particularly compared to a Gross Domestic Product or economic development.48 Further, since a constructive program would also aim to construct and sustain peaceful societies, we would take more seriously the policy implications of the Global Peace Index, which ranks the United States 83 out of 140 countries.49 Finally, the fair trade movement would find stronger support with its emphasis on the poor and easily exploited. A constructive program helps our understanding that nonviolence is in fact primarily a constructive endeavor. Stassen’s cohort that developed the 10 practices of just peacemaking theory (JPT) is an example focusing attention on the practices that make for peace, rather than simply on avoiding violence—or indeed justifying war.50 JPT resonates well with a virtuebased approach. A fifth core practice is conflict transformation, particularly in the form of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions. By conflict transformation I follow Lederach, who describes it as envisioning and responding to ‘‘the ebb and flow of social conflict as life-giving opportunities for creating constructive change processes that reduce violence, increase justice in direct interaction and social structures, and respond to real-life problems in human relationships.’’51 Conflict is not held to be problematic, something merely to manage or resolve, but rather as a creative opportunity for personal, relational,

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structural, and cultural growth or transformation.52 Thus, conflict transformation arises more clearly in a virtue-based approach, which is personal, relational, and growth-oriented. The accent on reconciliation in conflict transformation resonates well with Pope John Paul’s addition of forgiveness to what Christianson calls the convoy concept of peace in CST,53 and with the John Paul’s message of ‘‘no justice without forgiveness.’’54 Christianson argues, ‘‘Catholic Social Theory needs a theory of conflict and principles of conflict transformation and reconciliation.’’55 Kenneth Himes acknowledges the underdevelopment in CST of alternative ways to achieve peace and particularly strategies for conflict resolution,56 calling for CST to give more attention to the themes of reconciliation, truth-telling, restorative justice, and forgiveness, as well as to develop an ethic for resolving conflict that goes beyond the strategy of dialogue. Yet, when Himes alludes to developing an ethic for resolving conflict, he primarily points to more rules in the form of just post bellum norms, rather than a virtue-based ethic with the virtue of nonviolent peacemaking. A virtue-based ethic would more adequately address the need to cultivate the character, which can imagine ways to achieve peace and respond to conflict, particularly enhancing the conflict transformation themes he mentions and sustaining the persons in their practice. O’Neill and Philpott have contributed to a deeper integration of virtue regarding the notion of reconciliation.57 Conflict transformation and particularly Truth and Reconciliation commissions (TRCs) could greatly enhance contemporary policy decisions. For instance, policy leaders even in the peace-building field sent a proposal to the new U.S. administration in late December 2008 but left out conflict transformation and reconciliation because they are not ‘‘on the radar for many policy thinkers.’’58 A virtue-based assessment of nonviolent peacemaking would contribute to this disconnect by clarifying the meaning and value of conflict transformation in general, and TRCs in particular. These commissions could enhance U.S. policies regarding Iraq and Afghanistan, among other issues,59 as well as UN policy for example as at least a complement to the International Criminal Court, if not an eventual substitute. A sixth core practice is third-party nonviolent intervention (TPNI), or as it is now called ‘‘unarmed civilian peacekeeping (UCPS).’’ This practice entails an outside party intervening in a conflict as a nonpartisan, with compassion for all parties, without violence, with the aim of reducing violence and creating a space for reconciliation and peace building. The virtuebased assessment of nonviolent peacemaking cultivates the kinds of persons who can imagine, prepare for, and enact UCP, as well as highlight the themes of compassion for all, aiming toward reconciliation and empowering

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all persons, including civilians. The Nonviolent Peace Force, which arose from reflecting on Gandhi’s idea of shanti sena (peace army), is an attempt to professionalize UCP and take it to global scale.60 Other examples include Christian Peacemaker teams, the Michigan Peace Team, and the recently formed Muslim Peacemaker teams in Iraq.61 The further development of UCP could contribute to CST and present public discourse and policies in the following ways. First, the UN peacekeeping force is still based on military operations, although it has been expanding its repertoire.62 UCP povides an alternative form of peacekeeping, which would change the debate on UN peacekeeping, such as the use of private military contractors.63 It could potentially shift the ground of UN peacekeeping from military operations to civilian operations; shift the training from military virtues to the virtue of nonviolent peacemaking and its related set of virtues; offer the specific practices of nonviolent modeling and interposition; and more adequately integrate the aim of reconciliation rather than primarily keeping parties apart. Second, although the U.S. government has recently developed a Civilian Response Corps (CRC), the implementation of the originating directive has faced bureaucratic roadblocks and taken a backseat to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.64 Further, the emphasis of the CRC is on mere stabilization with concern for U.S. national security interests.65 A virtue-based approach to nonviolent peacemaking could enhance the policy of developing and implementing a CRC because it (1) raises the value of civilian participation and intervention, (2) clarifies UCP as well as the practice of conflict transformation and the particular form of TRCs, and (3) indicates that the CRC should also include experts in UCP. Third, UCP could offer some insights to the just policing model or to policing in general. One of these insights is the creation of local peace teams as a supplement to and perhaps eventually a substitute for armed police. Both the Michigan Peace Team and the success of street outreach workers, such as the Street Outreach Team in Oakland, California, which entails training and deploying unarmed, nonpolice, street-smart persons to patrol high-violence areas, are movements in this direction.66 A seventh core practice that becomes clearer in a virtue-based and human rights approach is civilian-based defense (CBD). This practice entails using nonviolent resistance or force to defend against military invasion, occupation, or coups d’
etat. The resistors do not physically prevent invading troops from entering their territory. Everyone participates in the resistance, taking responsibility for their defense rather than delegating it to an elite group.67 The power of this practice is in part grounded in the notions that (1) one who refuses to submit cannot be ruled, and (2) the

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distinction between resolutely acknowledging the humanity of persons, while resisting their unjust agenda.68 A virtue-based assessment is particularly congenial to everyone’s personal growth, such as the participation and taking fuller responsibility, which CBD emphasizes. Further, a virtue-based assessment would be especially helpful in drawing our attention to developing the courage and solidarity to engage this practice, the sustenance to maintain it in the face of ongoing repression, the imagination to find ways to noncooperate, and the capacity to discriminate between the shared dignity of persons and their agenda. The recognition of shared dignity or humanity in CBD also entails relating to the other as potential friends, that is, with the conciliatory love that the virtue of nonviolent peacemaking enacts and aims toward. Taking different forms, CBD has been tried a number of times in the past century and has recently been incorporated into the defense planning of some governments.69 Drawing on Adam Roberts’s four stages toward CBD policy,70 the UN, the United States, and the Catholic Church, particularly Catholic schools, could all develop and emphasize policy on funding research and investigation into CBD (stage 1), as well as general public education in CBD with concentrated training and organizational preparations (stage 2).71 If the United States would move toward a CBD policy, then this could help correct our excessive funding for military research and free up research funds for addressing root causes of violence, other social injustices, pollution, and human development.72 Further, if Catholic schools of higher education were to give priority to the virtue of nonviolent peacemaking and similarly to prioritize research into corresponding practices like CBD, Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) programs on campus would require serious reconstruction of their curriculum, or indeed should be given a diminished authority on campus, if not completely discontinued. In sum, I have argued that a virtue-based assessment of nonviolent peacemaking supplemented by aspects of human rights contributes to CST by (1) offering a more adequate understanding than a rules-based approach, and (2) offering seven core practices that arise more clearly and more frequently in our imagination, and that will more likely be sustained. These practices further the integration of virtue and rights, especially in CST, but also contribute to public discourse and policy.

NOTES 1. Peace primarily as a rule against war. 2. Cahill, 1994.

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3. I use ‘‘peacemaking’’ broadly to include peacekeeping, peacemaking, and peace building. 4. Further limits articulated in McCarthy, 2009. 5. See Nussbaum, 2001. 6. U.S. Catholic Bishops, 1993. 7. Pope John Paul II, 1992. 8. Pope John Paul II, 1991. 9. Pope John Paul II, 2002. 10. Ibid. 11. U.S. Catholic Bishops, 1992. 12. Ibid. 13. U.S. Catholic Bishops, 1993. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. Pope Benedict, 2005. 22. Ibid. 23. Pope Benedict, Vatican City, 2007. 24. Christianson, 2008. 25. Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, 2004. It does refer to peace as the fruit of justice and love, which are often described as virtues in the broader document. Rather than ‘‘nonviolence,’’ the compendium acknowledges the value of the ‘‘witness of unarmed prophets’’ but gives it little explication except to condition it on the defense of human rights (C.11, par. 494, 496). 26. Stassen and Gushee, 2003. 27. Haring, 1997. 28. Kotva, 1996. 29. Spohn, 2003. 30. Consider the Good Samaritan and the transforming initiatives noted by Stassen and Gushee, 2003. 31. Gandhi contributes the object of truth and its particular aspects. 32. Attention to who soldiers are becoming is particularly significant in light of the levels of PTSD, suicide, murder, abuse of women and children, and homelessness. See ‘‘Mental Illness Common among Returning U.S. Soldiers,’’ 2007. 33. For more on the difference between the virtue of justice and the virtue of nonviolent peacemaking, see McCarthy, 2009. 34. For more on the integral relationship between virtue and human rights see King, 1986 and O’Neill, 2008. 35. Pope Benedict, 2005. 36. Fr. Cantalamessa. 37. McCarthy, 1992. 38. Appleby, 2000.

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39. Lederach, 2005. 40. Ibid. 41. Rosenberg, 2003. 42. National Peace Academy supports, advances, and nurtures cultures of peace by conducting research and facilitating learning toward the development of peace systems–local to global–and the development of the whole spectrum, of the peace builder–inner and outer, personal and professional. In all its operations, internal and external, the National Peace Academy strives to embody and reflect the principles and processes of peace. 43. Founder: Lanza Del Vasto. See Shephard, 1990. 44. See Appleby, 2000. He argues this would inculcate forgiveness and compassion as political virtues and provide a stronger concept of reconciliation beyond the political realm. See Johnson and Sampson, 1994. 45. Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization. 46. UN Millennium Development Goals, 2008. 47. Ibid. 48. United Nations (UNDP) 2010. 49. Vision of Humanity, 2010. 50. Stassen, 2008. 51. Lederach, 2003. 52. Lederach, 2007. 53. Christianson, 2008. 54. Pope John Paul II, 2002. 55. Christianson, 2008. 56. Himes, 2008. 57. O’neill, 2008. 58. Schirch, 2008. 59. TRCs have also been proposed in the United States. for issues like torture, racism and structural injustice, sexism and patriarchy, poverty and U.S. foreign policy in Central America. 60. Nonviolent Peace Force, 2002. 61. Muslim Peace Teams, 2005. 62. UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations. 63. Isenberg, 2008. 64. Bensahel et al., 2009. 65. Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization. 66. Grant, 2004. 67. Nagler, 2004: 252–253. 68. Ibid. 69. Sharp, 2005; Lakey, 2010. 70. Roberts, 1967. 71. U.S. Catholic Bishops, 1983. 72. Zahn, 1996.

CHAPTER

12

A LT E R N AT I V E S T O W A R A N D VIOLENCE: AN ISLAMIC PERSPECTIVE Mohammed Abu-Nimer and Jamal A. Badawi

Many Muslim and non-Muslim scholars and writers have emphasized the peaceful nature and message of Islam. They have identified values and principles such as unity, supreme love of the creator, mercy, subjection of passion, accountability for all actions, relying on the innumerable verses in the Qur’an commanding believers to be righteous and above passion in their dealings with their fellow beings. Love, kindness, affection, forgiveness, and mercy are recommended as virtues of the true faithful.1 Other Islamic values are cited as directly connected to peace building and development, such as Adl (justice); Ihsan (benevolence); Rahmah2 (compassion); and Hikmah (wisdom). Amal, yakeen and muhabat (service, faith, and love) are another set of Islamic values identified by Abdul Ghaffar Khan,3 making the connection between Islam and peace building more prominent than the stereotypical violent characterization of the religion. In this chapter we categorize values and principles that have a direct relationship and applicability to peace building (here an umbrella term used to capture the various processes of conflict resolution, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and nonviolence resistance). In many cases the categories and their applicability to peace building will be selfevident, but in others the connections will be briefly clarified.

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PURSUIT OF SOCIAL JUSTICE A main call of Islamic religion is to establish a just social reality. Thus, the evaluation of any act or statement should be measured according to whether, how, and when it will accomplish that desired reality. In Islam acting for the cause of God is synonymous with pursuing Adl—justice. Islam calls for action whether you are strong or weak. The following Qur’anic verses have strong messages concerning social justice and responsibility. They show that it is the Muslim’s duty to work for justice and reject oppression and injustice on interpersonal and structural levels. Allah commands justice, the doing of good, and liberality to kith and kin, and he forbids all shameful deeds, and injustice and rebellion (16:90). Allah doth command you to render back your trusts to those to whom they are due; And when ye judge between man and man, that ye judge with justice: verily how excellent is the teaching which he giveth you! (4:58) Ye who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah, even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, whether it be (against) rich or poor: for Allah can best protect both. . . . Follow not the lusts (of your hearts), lest ye swerve, and if ye distort (justice) or decline to do justice, verily Allah is well-acquainted with all that ye do. (4:135) O ye who believe, stand out firmly for God, as witnesses to justice and let not the enmity of others make you swerve from the path of justice. Be just: that is next to righteousness, and fear God. Indeed, God is well acquainted with all that you do. (5:8)

Continuously, the Qur’an reminds Muslims of the value of justice, thus it not only encourages, but divinely orders believers to pursue justice (5:8; 57:25; 16:90; 4:58; 42:15). Justice is an absolute and not relative value. It is a duty to be pursued among the believers and with the enemies.4 The early Caliphates were known for their strong pursuit of justice, particularly Umar Ibn Khatab who had a distinctive tradition in pursuing it: Worship God and associate naught with Him and behave benevolently towards parents, kinsmen, orphans, the needy, the neighbor that is a kinsman, the neighbor that is a stranger, the companion, by the roadside, the wayfarer and those who are under your authority. Surely God loves not the proud and boastful who are niggardly and enjoin other people to be niggardly and conceal that what God has given them of His bounty. (4:36, 37)

The connection of peace building with justice is thus never far from the surface in Islam. Peace is the product of order and justice. One must strive for peace through the pursuit of justice. This is the obligation of the believer as well as the ruler, more than that it is a natural obligation of all humanity.5

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‘‘God does command you to render back your trust to those whom they are due. And when you judge between people, that you judge with justice. Indeed, how excellent is the teaching that He gives you. For verily God hears and sees all things’’ (4:58). ‘‘God loves those who are Just’’ (60:8). Rulers are expected to follow the same message. In his message to Al Ashtar, the governor of Egypt, Ali instructed him: O Malik, let it be known to you that you have been appointed to the governorship of Egypt. All of your actions as the Governor will be open to the criticism of the people. You should do good deeds. Keep your passions under control. Your dealings with your subjects should be just and fair. Treat them affectionately and love them. There are two kinds of subjects to be governed, firstly your brethren in Islam, and secondly the minorities whose protection has been guaranteed. Intentionally or unintentionally the people are apt to make mistakes. It will behoove you to excuse them, as you expect that God will forgive your sins. Do not be ashamed if you pardon them. Never find pleasure in punishing them. Do not be short tempered. Never say that you are Governor above them, for it breeds a feeling of inferiority in them. Should you ever take pride in your exalted office then think of the power and grandeur of God, for that is the only means to check your arrogance. Remember that God hates the cruel and the arrogant. Be fair and just, for if you fail in it, you are a tyrant and tyrant is the enemy of God. God hearkens to the weak and the afflicted. Follow the path of moderation in your doings, and try to please your subjects.6

Within the pursuit of justice there is a consistent message to resist and correct conditions of injustice through activism and third-party intervention, and through divine intervention. Justice and peace are interconnected and interdependent.7 In addition, the Prophet has called Muslims to mobilize and be steadfast against injustice, even if the injustice is originated by a Muslim: ‘‘O, Ye who believe, be steadfast in service of God’s truth and bear witness for justice and let not hatred of a people seduce you so that you deal with them unjustly. Act justly for that is what piety demands.’’ Again, ‘‘He who supports a tyrant or oppressor knowing he is a tyrant casts himself outside the pale of Islam.’’8 Peacemakers as well as disputants are expected to pursue justice in the means and ends of their conflict resolution processes.

SOCIAL EMPOWERMENT THROUGH DOING GOOD (KHAYR AND IHSAN) As a religion, Islam was spread on the basis of helping and empowering the weak and the underdog, and it continues to be characterized as such a

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religion. Struggling against oppression (Zulm), assisting the poor, and pursuing equality among all persons are core religious values emphasized throughout the Qur’an and Hadith. One should do good (Ihsan—grace, beneficence, kindness) not only to one’s parents and relations but also to the orphans, the needy, the helpless, and the neighbor whether he is related to one in any way or not at all (17:24– 26). The Prophet himself reinforces this by the saying: ‘‘A true Muslim is one who does no mischief to any other Muslims,’’ but the true Mu’min (man of genuine faith who is superior to a formal Muslim in merit) is one who does no mischief to his neighbors and of ‘whom they have no fear.’’’9 The emphasis in Islam is on doing good (Khayr) not on power and force (Quwwat). Good deeds are associated with Sirat El Mustaqim (straight way) and with all the virtue of the Prophet. Those who believe (in the Prophet of Islam) and those who are Jews and Christians and the Sabians (that is who belongs to any religious group) who believe in God and the Last Day of Judgment) and whose deeds are good, shall have their reward with their Lord. On them there shall be no fear nor shall they grieve. (2:62)

To ensure social justice (distributive, administrative, or retributive) and empowerment, Islam has many teachings, rules, and institutes. Social and economic justice is so important in Islam that they are even equated with worshiping God.10 The value of Zakah (almsgiving) and Sadaqah (voluntary charity) relate to individual and collective responsibility. These obligatory and voluntary duties are intended for the poor; there are also stipulations of fixed shares of inheritance for women, children, and a host of regulations regarding the just treatment of debtors, widows, orphans (90:13–16), and slaves (24:33).11 Zakah and Sadaqah (charity) are central virtues for doing good in life and helping others particularly the needy people. Zakah is one of the five main pillars of Islam and it is aimed at ensuring distributive social justice and empowerment of the weak. Charity is a good deed that every Muslim has to carry out within his or her limits. Charity is prescribed in at least 25 Qur’anic verses, and all encourage Muslims to take more responsibility for the unjust systems that exist in their communities. It is not righteousness that ye turn your faces towards east or west; but it is righteousness to believe in Allah and the last day, and the book, and the messengers; to spend your substance, out of love for him, for your kin, for orphans, for the needy, for wayfarer, for those who ask, for the ransom of slaves; to be steadfast in prayer, and practice charity, to fulfill

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the contract that ye have made, and to be firm and patient in pain (or suffering) and adversity. (2:177)

People are responsible and have obligations to those who are underprivileged in their community. Islam repeatedly stresses such principles: ‘‘Did He not find thee an orphan and provided for thee shelter (and care). And He found thee wondering and gave thee guidance and He found thee in need and made thee independent [in the financial sense]’’ (93:7–9). The Prophet’s compassion that he brought in his treatment of the underprivileged who suffered from personal misfortune or from social and economic injustices, was not the result of the Qur’anic teaching only, but was born from his own experience.12 The Qur’an supported such compassion: ‘‘Therefore treat not the orphan with harshness, nor repulse the petitioner (unheard)’’ (93:9–10). Caring and helping those underprivileged constitute a central mechanism for social empowerment and for maintaining a sense of community. Abolishing slavery was a clear example of the ethical standpoints and principles that guided Muslims in dealing with oppression, poverty, and human suffering. On the interpersonal level, preserving good relationships with others is an expectation that a Muslim must fulfill: ‘‘No Muslim can become a Mu’min (genuine believer) unless he likes for all others (not only Muslims) what he likes for him and he makes friends with them for God’s sake.’’13 ‘‘God Commands you to treat (everyone) justly, generously and with kindness.’’ (16:90). ‘‘Be good and kind to others even as God is to you’’ (28:77). Doing good extends beyond the interpersonal to a group or community level. A nation cannot survive according to Islam without making fair and adequate arrangements for the sustenance and welfare of all the poor, underprivileged, and destitute members of the community. The ultimate goal would be to create a situation under which they can eliminate their suffering and poverty. In short, for Muslims, a conflict resolution process is expected to result in justice and good deeds that lead to empowerment in any interaction or behavior with other Muslims and non-Muslims.

PROMOTE AND PRESERVE THE UNIVERSALITY OF ALL HUMAN DIGNITY Islam brings a firm and clear message through the Qur’an and Hadith of the universal man. This is conveyed through the belief in equal origin, calls for equal rights, treatment, and solidarity among all people. Man (and woman) is an integral part of an ocean of humanity. Man is the most dignified and exalted of all creatures. He has the potential to learn and know, the

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ability to decide which actions to take, and to bear the consequences of his actions. Man is God’s vice-regent on earth. The Qur’an states: ‘‘when your Lord said to the angels verily I am going to appoint a vice-regent (Khalifa) in Earth’’ (17:70). Thus protecting human life and respecting human dignity is sacred in Islam. The honor that God bestowed on humans is also stressed: ‘‘We have honored the sons of Adam; provided them with transport on land and sea; given them for sustenance things good and pure; and conferred on them special favors, above a great part of Our Creation’’ (17:70). Therefore, the work, worship, and life of a person should be aimed preserving, protecting, and achieving human pride and dignity as a main principle and value in Islam. Islamic scholars have cited several Qur’anic verses to establish the importance of human dignity and pride: We have indeed created man in the best of moulds (95:4). It is We Who created you and gave you shape; then We bade the angels bow down to Adam, and they bowed down; not so ibl‘is; he refused to be of those who bow down (7:11). Behold, thy Lord said to the angels: ‘‘I will create a viceregent on earth.’’ They said: ‘‘wilt thou place therein one who will make mischief therein and shed blood Whilst we do celebrate Thy praises and glorify Thy holy (name).’’ He said: ‘‘I know What ye know not’’ (2:30).

It is considered a good deed to intervene or act to protect the basic dignity and pride of the person, because the creation of man by God makes him a creature who deserves respect and protection: ‘‘In Islam every person has the human sacredness and is under a protection and sacrosanct until he himself violates his sanctuary. He removes with his own hands such protection blanket by committing a crime that removes part of his immunity. With this dignity, Islam protect its enemies, as well as its children and elders. This dignity which God blessed humanity with each member is the base for all human relationship.’’14 Elder Muslim mediators and arbitrators have often utilized social and cultural techniques to preserve the human dignity of the victim as well as the offender (such mechanisms are used in conducting Sulha—a traditional ritual based on public ceremony to restore honor and dignity of the victims). In fact, in many cases successful resolution of a conflict depends on the capacity of these traditional mediators to restore the victims’ social and cultural dignity in public (though sometimes by bringing public shame on the offender’s family). Thus participating and supporting international organizations that act globally to protect universal human rights and advocate for the basic rights and dignity of all humankind is an integral part of Islamic values and faith.

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PROMOTING EQUALITY AND RESISTING DISCRIMINATION AND PREJUDICE Islamic teaching goes beyond reaching a settlement in a specific dispute; it aspires to achieve one human family. Equality among the members of this family is promoted and acknowledged as a basic value, based on the common human origin of all people: O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other (not that ye may despise each other). Verily the most honored of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most righteous of you. And Allah has full knowledge and is well-acquainted (with all things). (49:13)

In Islam, there is no privilege granted based on race, ethnicity, or tribal association. The only two criteria to be deployed are the faith (Iman) and good deed (aml-I-salih). There is no difference whatever between people except in their devotion to Allah, since God is the common creator of all. A saying of the Prophet acknowledges the origin and universal equality among humans: ‘‘You are all from Adam and Adam is made of dust.’’ Ibn Taymiya (a well-known Muslim scholar, 1263–1328) argued in these terms: ‘‘The desire to be above other people is injustice because all people are of the same species. A man’s desire to put himself higher and reduce the others lower is unjust.’’15 Islam underscores that all people are the children of Adam and Eve, and such sayings are often cited by traditional mediators and arbitrators as a recommendation or a call for brotherhood and harmony. In a conflict resolution or other nonviolent processes, this principle of equality requires the third party to treat its disputants with equal measures throughout the entire process of intervention. Mediators or arbitrators, regardless of their affiliation, are obliged to promote equal rights and treatment of all persons.

PRESERVE THE SACREDNESS OF HUMAN LIFE Peace building and development approaches assume that human life must be saved and protected, and that resources should always be utilized to preserve life and prevent violence. The Qur’an clearly suggests the sacredness of human life, ‘‘And if any one saved a life, It would be as if he saved the life of the whole people’’ (5:32). ‘‘And do not take a life which Allah has forbidden save in the course of justice. This he enjoins on you so that you may understand’’ (6:15). Each person’s life is an integral part of the great cosmic purpose. Consequently, what the individual does matters profoundly. ‘‘Lord, Thou hast not created all this in vain!’’16

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Thus, destroying and wasting resources that serve human life is prohibited. Even when Muslims in the early period launched an armed conflict, their rulers instructed them to avoid destruction and restrict their wars. Abu Bakr, the first Caliph, made this well-known speech when he dispatched his army on an expedition to the Syrian borders: Stop, O people, that I may give you ten rules for your guidance in the battlefield. Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman or an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy’s flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services, leave them alone.17

Based on the above principle, nonviolence intervention in resolving conflicts becomes a primary guide for Muslims to resolve their conflicts. It also limits the type and nature of force that can be used in fighting the other. The strict conditions on how to treat innocent people are beyond any doubt prohibiting excessive force and violence as a means to resolve any conflict. According to these Islamic values, suicide bombing, beheadings, promotion of nuclear weapons and mass destruction is prohibited and illegitimate. Muslims are instructed to oppose these measures and avoid them when dealing with their enemies or other Muslims.

THE QUEST FOR PEACE Peace in Islam is a state of physical, mental, spiritual, and social harmony. Living at peace with God through submission, and living at peace with fellow beings by avoiding mischief on earth is real Islam. Islam obligates its believers to seek peace in all life domains. The ultimate purpose is to live in a peaceful as well as a just social reality. However, it should be noted that there are certain conditions in which, for defensive purposes, Muslims are allowed to use limited force: ‘‘There are circumstances in which Islam contemplates the possibility of war—for instance, to avert worse disasters like the denial of freedom to human conscience—but the essential thing in life is peace. It is towards the achievement of peace that all human efforts must be sincerely diverted.’’18 Peace is viewed as an outcome that can be achieved only after the full submission to the will of God. Thus, peace has internal, personal, as well as social applications, and God is the source and sustainer of such peace. Accordingly, the best way to ensure peace is by total submission to God’s will and to Islam.19

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Shunning violence and aggression in all its forms has been another primary focus of Islamic values and tradition. Many Qur’anic verses stress this principle, among them is: ‘‘Whenever they kindle the fire of war, God extinguishes it. They strive to create disorder on earth and God loves not those who create disorder’’ (5:64). Tolerance, kindness to other people, and dealing with all people in such manner with no exception is also emphasized in these verses: ‘‘God commands you to treat (everyone) justly, generously and with kindness’’ (16:90); ‘‘Repel evil (not with evil) but something that is better (Ahsan)—that is, with forgiveness and amnesty.’’ In supporting this value in Islam, Jawdat Said (1997) provided a famous Hadith, widely quoted in Islamic literature and often seen hung as a calligraphic adornment in the homes of people: ‘‘whenever violence enters into something it disgraces it, and whenever ‘gentle-civility’ enters into something it graces it. Truly, God bestows on account of gentle conduct what he does not bestow on account of violent conduct.’’20 The quest for peace is also clear in the Prophet’s life. The use of violence as a mean to address conflict played a minor role in the Prophet’s life, and the Qur’an, the Hadith, and Islamic tradition are rich in examples of nonviolence and peace-building strategies.21 During the Meccan period of the Prophet’s life (610–622 CE), the Prophet showed no inclination toward the use of force in any form, even for selfdefense. He conducted nonviolent resistance, through all his instructions and teaching during that period in which Muslims were a minority. The Prophet’s teachings were focused on the value of patience and steadfastness in facing the oppression. For 13 years, the Prophet fully adopted nonviolent methods, relying on his spiritual preaching in dealing with aggression and confrontation. In Islam, the quest for peace extends to both interpersonal and community cases of quarrel or disagreement. Muslims should not use violence to settle their differences, but rely on arbitration or other forms of intervention such as: ‘‘You should always refer it (disputes) to God and to His Prophet.’’ ‘‘And Obey Allah and His Messenger; And fall into no disputes, lest ye lose heart And your power depart; and be patient and persevering: for Allah is with those who patiently persevere’’ (8:46). Peace in Islam is reflected in the word itself and its meaning in Arabic. It indicates the ‘‘making of peace,’’ thus the idea of ‘‘peace’’ is the dominant one in Islam. A Muslim, according to the Qur’an, is one who has made peace with God and man. Peace with God implies complete submission to His will who is the source of all purity and goodness, and peace with man implies the doing of good to his fellow man: ‘‘Nay, whoever submits himself entirely to God, and is the doer of good to others, he has his reward from His Lord . . .’’ (2:112). The centrality of peace is reflected in the daily

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greetings of Muslims of each other ‘‘Al Salam Alikum,’’ ‘‘A peace be on you.’’ The Qur’an states: ‘‘And the servants of Allah most gracious are those who walk the earth in humility and when others address them, they say ‘peace!’’’ (25:63) ‘‘And their greeting therein shall be, Peace’’ (10:10). Peace is also a reward which the believers will enjoy in paradise: ‘‘They shall hear therein no vain or sinful talk, but only the saying, Peace, Peace (56:26). Peace is the ideal that Muslims strive to achieve and they are constantly reminded of this value through the names of God: ‘‘Abode of peace’’ (10:25). In Islam, the goal and the nature of humans is to live in peace, and it is mirrored in the few basic principles about nature of man: (1) Man’s fundamental nature is one of moral innocence, that is, freedom from sin; and (2) Man’s nature is to live on earth in a state of harmony and peace with other lives. This is the ultimate import for the responsibility assigned by God to man his Khalifah (vice-regent) on this planet (2:30).22 The various Islamic principles and values of peace cannot be fully identified without addressing the value of jihad. In the Qur’an and Muslim practice, jihad refers to the obligation of all Muslims to strive (jihad, self-exertion) or struggle to follow God’s will. This includes the virtuous life and the universal mission of the Muslim community to spread God’s rule and law through teaching, preaching, and where necessary, armed conflict.’’23 The debate over jihad is well described by Esposito as a common issue associated with the spread of Islam in which Westerners are quick to characterize it as a religion spread by the sword or through holy war, while modern Muslim apologists sometimes explain jihad as simply defensive in nature.24 Scholars agree that there are conditions that permit the use of force, and there has been a massive amount of research and lively debates by Muslims and non-Muslims to provide interpretations of the context and meaning of jihad. Many such studies conclude that jihad does not mean the constant use of the sword to resolve problems with non-Muslim enemies, or among Muslims. On the contrary, jihad has been interpreted as by ‘‘means of the Holy book itself ’’ (25:52). In clear words the Qur’an states: ‘‘there is no compulsion in religion’’ (2:256). In addition to the previous verses that indicate the possibility of peaceful and nonviolent jihad, different sects in Islam have emphasized the principle that there are several levels of jihad and that the self-jihad is the most difficult to achieve.25 Regardless of the different definitions and interpretations of jihad that can be provided in this discussion, scholars agree that the current religious meaning and interpretation of jihad as a holy war has been broadened from the interpretation of Qur’anic jihad, and influenced by the role of Muslim jurists throughout the history, particularly true of the early periods, in which they justified the offensive jihad wars.26

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STRIVE TO BE A PEACEMAKER Open communication and face-to-face confrontation are considered in peace building as more conducive to building good relationships than avoidance or violence. They reduce the cost of an ongoing conflict and address grievances of all parties. The role of the third party, as an integral part of a peace-building intervention, is mainly to facilitate the communication, reduce tension, and assist in rebuilding relationships. Such interaction is functional and necessary to engage the parties in a true peace-building process. Islamic values encourage such process through an active intervention, particularly among Muslims themselves. If two parties among the believers fall into a quarrel, make you peace between them. But, if one of them transgresses beyond bounds against the other, then fight against the one that transgresses until it complies with the command of Allah. But, when it so complies, then make peace between them with justice and be fair. For, God loves those who are fair. The believers are but a single brotherhood; so make peace between your brothers and fear Allah that you may receive mercy. (49:9–10)

These verses have been pointed out by scholars who search for a legitimate base for the use of violence in Islam and to disqualify the pacifist hypotheses. Nevertheless, they clearly support the concept of mediation and third-party intervention to resolve disputes using fairness and justice as the primary values of intervention. In addition, they reflect a core Islamic value of shunning aggression. Muslims should not be involved in aggression at all. ‘‘. . . And let not the hatred of some people in (once) shutting you out of the sacred mosque lead you to transgression (and hostility on your part). Help one another in righteousness and piety. But help ye not one other in sin and rancor’’ (5:2). Lack of tolerance and hatred should not lead one to become an aggressor’’ or hostile to the other disputant, even if they shut you out of the house of God, which is an act of exclusion and violence. No doubt that Muslims have to settle their conflicts peacefully based on both the Qur’an and the Prophet’s tradition: ‘‘The believers are but a single brotherhood: so make peace and reconciliation between your two (contending) brothers’’ (49:10). From the Prophet’s tradition, peacemaking was one of his central qualities while living in Mecca, even prior to his prophecy. Being known as al Amien (the faithful) allowed him to act as mediator and arbitrator in many disputes among the various tribes. During that period, his creative methods of peacemaking and advocating justice were highly praised by believers and nonbelievers; Islamic conflict resolution methods can easily rely on these classic cases of intervention.

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Having established the primacy of peacemaking and peace at the core of Islamic tradition we would like to discuss, necessarily in briefer compass, some of the ancillary values that make such a goal and process possible; for any meaningful peace, as is well known today, depends on much more than the abstention from open conflict.

FORGIVENESS (AFU) It is a higher virtue to forgive than bear hatred. While justice ought to be pursued and evil fought, forgiveness nevertheless, remains a higher virtue (see 42:40 and 24:43). In fact, believers are urged to forgive even when they are angry (42:37). The Prophet said: ‘‘God fills with peace and faith the heart of one who swallows his anger, even though he is in a position to give vent to it.’’ When the Prophet entered Mecca with his Muslim followers, he set an example of a great forgiving attitude toward Meccans who fought him: ‘‘There is no censure from me today on you (for what has happened is done with), may God who is the greatest amongst forgivers forgive you.’’27 A saying in Islamic ethic: ‘‘The most gracious act of forgiving an enemy is his who has the power to take revenge.’’28 Such a value is supported by a story about the Prophet when some of his followers came to him asking that he invoke the wrath of God on the Meccans because of their persecution of early Muslims. His reply was: ‘‘I have not been sent to curse anyone but to be a source of Rahmah (beneficence) to all.’’29 Successful conflict resolution process according to the above principles should result in forgiveness and reconciliation among disputants rather than temporary settlement. Despite the strict conditions of the use of violence or retributive justice, nevertheless, forgiveness is held in higher moral and ethical levels. The virtue of forgiveness is clearly favored.

TAKE INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY Islam puts emphasis on doing; lip service is not enough, the real test of a virtue is in action: ‘‘If you do good, it will be for your own self; if you do evil, it will react on you’’ (17:7). An individual is responsible for his or her deeds. No one else can bear the responsibility of one’s actions: Whoso bringeth a good deed will receive tenfold the like thereof, while whoso bringeth an ill deed will be awarded but the like thereof; and they will not be wronged (6:161). It is not that We wronged them but they wronged themselves. (11:101)

According to Islam, a person has three major levels of responsibilities on which he or she will be judged by God: (1) responsibility toward Allah to be

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fulfilled through the performance of religious duties faithfully; (2) responsibility to oneself by living in harmony with oneself; and (3) responsibility to live in harmony and peace with other fellow humans. Persuasion of the other (as opposed to coercion) and allowing free choice are two important principles in Islam. Even the Prophet himself was not responsible for the others’ decisions: ‘‘But if they turn away, Say: Allah sufficeth me: there is no god but He: on Him is my trust–He the Lord of the Throne (of Glory) Supreme!’’ (9:129). If others did not accept the message, it was their choice; therefore, you (as a person) are only responsible for your actions.30 Allah is the sole arbitrator who judges the choices of the people.31 The sense of individual choice and call for involvement extends to the political governing system in which the ruler expects his followers to take full responsibility and stop injustice if it is committed. Abu Bakr told the people: ‘‘I am no better than you . . . I am just like any one of you. If you see that I am pursuing a proper course, then follow me; and if you see me err, then set me straight.’’32 Thus, persuasion (being persuaded by evidence and faith) is a strong quality that puts humans in charge of their own fate; it is also a reason for individual actions. Persuasion as a main strategy in the Qur’an is reflected in the great number of verses that present the arguments and claims of opposition during the Prophet period, and the systematic nullification of these arguments through proof and evidence.33

PATIENCE (SABR) Muslims are encouraged to be patient and to suspend their judgment of others, whether Muslims or non-Muslims. Patience is a virtue of the believers who can endure immense challenges and still maintain strong belief in God. Such a value is very appropriate to peace building and nonviolent resistance, because while it often produces few macro impacts or short-term changes, it is a long-term investment in the community. It may be noted that sabr often translates ‘‘nonviolence’’ in Arabic writing today.

COLLABORATIVE ACTIONS AND SOLIDARITY There is a well-known traditional saying: ‘‘help your brother (Muslim) whether he is an aggressor or a victim of aggression.’’ When the Prophet was asked, ‘‘How can we assist our brother when he is aggressor?’’ He replied, ‘‘By doing your best to stop him from aggression.’’34 This is a clear message about solidarity among Muslims, in contrast to tribal solidarity (Assabiyyah); it also, of course, refutes the misconception that nonviolence is a kind of passivity.

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UMMAH The concept of Ummah or ‘‘community’’ has functioned as a base for collective action since the Prophet’s period. During the early period of Islam in Mecca, where the Prophet lived for 13 years, he utilized such values as collaboration and collectivism to mobilize his followers and to respond nonviolently to those who did not follow his prophecy. Moreover, to this day, as Esack Farid argues, ‘‘The notion of Ummah . . . continues to give Muslims a deep sense of belonging . . . The universal community under God has always been a significant element in Muslim discourse against tribalism and racism.’’35 It has been even expanded to include God-believing non-Muslims. In supporting this argument scholars stress that the People of the Book, as recipients of the divine revelation were recognized as part of the Ummah, based on the Qur’anic verse: ‘‘Surely this, your community (Ummah), is a single community’’ (23:52). The charter of the Medina—the first constitution created by the Prophet—is also proof of such an inclusive and religiously diverse community.36 Islamic conflict resolution is based on the inclusion of communal and collective solidarity, which we often see in the public rituals for reconciliation (Sulha). In addition, most interventions (mediation or arbitration) are not restricted to the individual disputants and the semiprofessional third party, but involve additional people from the extended family and community at large.

INCLUSIVITY Participatory forums and inclusive procedures are considered more productive and effective than authoritarian, hierarchical, and exclusionary decision-making approaches. Thus, peace-building strategies are based on either assisting parties in joint interest-based negotiation or bringing a third party to facilitate such processes, rather than using imposition and competition. The Muslim tradition of mutual consultation (Shura) exhibits a number of key points: 1. It is not a mere consultation by the rulers, but an inclusive process in which all Ummah are asked to provide input. Consultation is not obligatory, but Shura is obligatory and a duty. 2. It involves all matters of concern to the Ummah. 3. The people of the Shura represent all the segments of the society (parties, religious groups, Muslim and non-Muslim, etc.). They are different from people of Ijtihad who are the Islamic faqihs or jurisprudents.

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4. The freedom of expression is the core of Shura. If freedom of expression of all people is not guaranteed, then Shura is not practiced.37

The principle of inclusivity is seen dramatically in the way the religion encourages involvement and responsibility of the people rather than passivity or acceptance of oppression. In fact, it is the duty of the Muslim to resist the Zulm (oppression) and work against it. A saying of the prophet instructs: ‘‘Best of the jihad is a word of truth (Haq) to an oppressing sultan.’’ ‘‘If people saw the oppressor and did not warn or consult him God is about to punish them.’’

PLURALISM AND DIVERSITY The Qur’an supports diversity and tolerance of differences based on gender (49:13; 53:45); skin color, language (30:23); beliefs (64:2); ranks (6:165); social grouping and communities (2:213; 10:19; 7:38 13:30; 16:63; 29:18; 35:42; 41:42; 64:18). It asserts that differences are inherent in human life (11:118–119; 10:99; 16:93). Scholars cite a pertinent saying of the Prophet: ‘‘My Ummah’s difference is mercy’’ (a highly disputed Hadith, however, very popular among Muslims).38 The equality of the followers of different religions is reiterated in both the Qur’an and Hadith many times. Muslims are asked to remember that there is no difference in the treatment of people of different religions except in their faith and deed (3:113–114; 2:62; 5:68). The Qur’an affirms the validity of the other religions and requires its followers to respect their scriptures (see 3:64; 5:68–69). Among Muslims themselves, there was no single Islamic law or constitution and no standardization of the Islamic law. The Sunni tradition, when it standardized such laws, came up with four legitimate schools.39 Moreover, the Qur’an is used to legitimize the validity of differences (Ikhtilaf). On the other hand, Islam is far less tolerant of the nonbelievers or infidels. Throughout history those who were cast as ‘‘Kufar’’ (Kafir is infidel) were persecuted and punished by rulers and followers. The existence of differences is, as mentioned, a given in Islam; consequently, there is no justification in violating peoples’ right to existence and movement due to their different religious affiliation (42:15). Islam thus spread and coexisted in many different cultures and ethnic groups in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South east Asia, where it typically created a new civilization that was multicultural and pluralist. Although not always perfectly observed in practice, these values have been integral parts of Islam since its inception.

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ISLAMIC NONVIOLENT PROCESSES AND PROCEDURES In North America and the West generally, conflict resolution has developed and been professionalized, including various processes and frameworks for resolving conflicts according to their nature, level, and scope: interest-based negotiation, arbitration, mediation, facilitation, joint problem solving, dialogue, etc. On the peace studies side, advocacy and nonviolent resistance have also been developed and conceptualized based on rich field experiences and solid empirical research. Such research has not been carried out in the same systematic manner in the developing field of Islamic peace and conflict resolution; however, since the early 1990s there have been serious efforts in this direction.40 Today there are a few academic courses, offered mostly in Western universities and institutes, that focus on Islamic sources of peace and conflict resolution41 and practices such as arbitration (tahkim), mediation (wasatah), and reconciliation (sulh)—all of which often rely on Quranic foundations, such as: If you fear a breach between them (man and wife), then appoint an arbitrator from his people and an arbitrator from her people. If they desire reconciliation, God will make them of one mind. God is all knowing, all aware. (4:35)

The Prophet’s numerous interventions and Seerah (Awus Khazraj; Black stone; negotiating the Hodaibyah agreement, Charter of Medinah, etc.), which have been well documented and verified by many Muslim scholars, constituted a path or a guide for Islamic third-party interventions. Naturally, these mediation and arbitration processes rely on a particular set of cultural and religious principles that differs from the North American models; they are mostly collective in their nature, involving the entire community in settling a family, interpersonal, or tribal dispute, especially in rural or nonurban areas. In short, there is no shortage of stories recounting practices of Islamic conflict resolution carried out by the Prophets and other Muslim leaders such as the first four Khaliphates. All Islamic educational curricula incorporate these stories of the Prophet’s mediation, arbitration, and conciliation efforts.

CONCLUSION The ideals of Islamic peace described in this brief survey have not been applied or adopted on a wide scale by most Muslims, due to both external

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and internal factors. Internally, Islamic communities often face a socialization that instills obedience to authoritarianism, supported and maintained by a set of cultural values, rewards, and punishment codes, for one example. It is true that these factors are maintained by educational systems that are corrupt and function as a force of oppression, by socializing young generations into conformity, obedience, and discouragement of self-critique or self-reflections. The outcome of such patterns is reflected in a cultural code of ‘‘shame and honor’’ that stifles creativity in dealing with conflict. Needless to say, external factors such as colonial and post-colonial policies have greatly taken advantage of these internal drawbacks, often using them to reinforce control and continue extracting natural and human resources from Muslim societies. British, French, Spanish in North Africa and the Middle East, and Americans in the early 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s heavily relied on these policies of legitimizing authoritarian regimes, on patriarchal and hierarchical governance systems, and co-opted religious leaders. Nevertheless, in our discussion we have identified important Islamic principles and values that constitute the basic elements of an Islamic peace building and conflict resolution approach to all types and levels of conflicts (interpersonal, organizational, family, community, and national, too). This framework if applied in a community context with an emphasis on peace building, could go far toward creating more just and peaceable societies within and among Muslim communities themselves and between them and this pluralistic but still violent world. Finally, it is the duty of Muslims who are living in Western societies to reach out to others without apologies or defensiveness, but with creative initiatives and constructive programs.

NOTES 1. Ahmad, 1993. 2. ‘‘He who does not show compassion to his fellow men is undeserving of God’s compassion.’’ Cited in Saiyidain, 1976. 3. A Muslim leader who created a nonviolent social and political movement to fight the British colonial forces in Pakistan, before independence. 4. Hwadi, 1993. Cites A. Zamakshari: ‘‘and in this-pursuing justice with enemies—there is a great warning that if justice is a duty to be applied when dealing with the infidels (Kufar) who are the enemy of God, if it had such a powerful characteristic then what is its duty among the believers who are God’s supportive and favorites?’’ 5. Kelsay, 1993. 6. United Nations Development Program and Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, 2002; Reza, 1984, see Nahjul Balagha, Letter No 53 ‘‘An Order to Malik-ul-Ashtar.

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7. The notion that peace can not be achieved without justice is echoed by many peace-building researchers and activists. See Lederach, 1997 and Burgess and Burgess, 1994. 8. Based on this Hadith and others, Saiyidain, 1976, argues that refusal to support wrongdoing by one’s country is either proof of patriotism or an act of virtue. 9. Saiyidain, 1976. 10. Ibid. 11. Zakah is also encouraged and described in detail with its rewards in the Koran. 12. Saiyidain, 1976. 13. Ibid. 14. Hwadi, 1993. 15. Kishtainy, 1990. 16. Saiyidain, 1976. 17. Siddiqi, 1976–1979: 838; as cited in Satha-Anand, 1993:11. 18. Saiyidain, 1976. 19. Kelsay, 1993. 20. A Syrian religious scholar who is known for his reformist writing. 21. Abu-Nimer, 2003. 22. Hashimi, 1996. 23. Esposito, 1988. 24. Unfortunately, the association of Muslims with jihad and violence has become very strong particularly in Western media. Such mischaracterization is reflected in the popular term ‘‘A people of the Sword.’’ Some argue that the self-fulfilling prophecy of jihad has become a phenomenon of our times. Not only are Muslim activists (violent and nonviolent alike) suffering the imagery of age-old misperceptions and misrepresentation, but the religion and its followers also sustain the labeling and stereotyping as a result. There is much emphasis and domination of such stereotypes and generalization among writers when studying Islam in general and political Islam in particular. Esposito has captured such misperception when he stated: ‘‘A combination of ignorance, stereotyping, history, and experience, as well as religio-cultural chauvinism, too often blind even best-intentioned when dealing with the Arab and Muslim World.’’ (Esposito, 1993). 25. There are several Hadith that support such interpretations. Also there are Muslim groups that emphasize the spiritual rather than the physical jihad (such as Sufism and Ahmaddiyya); others suggested that Da’awa or (Calling—the spreading of Islam through preaching and persuasion) to be the major form of Jihad for Muslim. 26. Sachedina, 1996. 27. Based on Ibn Sad Al-Tabaqa Al Kubra, vol. II., p. 142 Beirut 1957. Cited in Saiyidain, 1976. 28. Saiyidain, 1976. 29. Based on Ibn Sad Al-Tabaqa Al Kubra, vol. II., Beirut 1957. Cited in Saiyidain, 1976. 30. See other verses in the Koran emphasizing the same principle of individual choice and responsibility, 5:8; 9:6; 16: 125; and 42: 48.

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31. Individual responsibility, choice, and God’s arbitration in the Judgment Day are reflected in the verses 18:29; 109:6; 88: 21,22; and 34:28. 32. At the same time there is the Al-Ash’ari and Din ibn Jama’a (1333) who forbade uprising against tyrants. The duty of Muslims is obedience no matter how unjust the ruler. See Saiyidain cited in Thompson, 1988. 33. Hwadi, 1993. 34. Saiyidain, 1976. 35. See Esack, 1997. He has completed a pioneer study on the Islamic theology of liberation based on the experience of Muslims in South Africa in fighting against the apartheid. Esack describes an astonishing account of the utilization of Islamic beliefs and values in mobilizing Muslims to resist and fight the South African system, particularly by building community coalitions with non-Muslims. Such experience affirms the great potential to construct coalitions across religious boundaries and identities in resisting war, violence, and injustice. 36. Also Akbar Ahmad supports such a notion about the Ummah being a diverse religious and individual community particularly in the Medinan period in which the Qur’an mentions it 47 times, and only 9 times in Meccan period. See Ahmad, 1979: 38–39. 37. Tawfiq Al-Shadi Fiqh Al-Shura Walestisharah (the jurisprudence of Consultation and Shura), p. 293). Cited in Hwadi, 1993. 38. Hwadi, 1993: 23. 39. Esack, 1998. 40. See Abu Nimer, 1996; Crow, 1997; Jalabi, 1998; Sachedina, 1996; Sai’d, 1997; Said, 1994; and Kishtainy, 1990. 41. See American University International Peace and Conflict Resolution.

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PART V

GENDER

IN

WA R

AND

PEACE

The history of women in the world of violence has unique aspects. Their work is consistently exploited and their bodies routinely violated in war and in economic mistreatment. Yet, there is a special role for women in the pursuit of peace. Women are associated with life-affirming tasks of caring for others. Their voices are needed to reclaim this life-affirming outlook for present and future needs. Throughout the ages, patriarchal arrangements of society have co-opted human energy and knowledge to control and dominate other human beings and the natural world. Under industrial capitalism that model of domination has worsened. The great problems of our time—poverty, inequality, war, terrorism, and environmental degradation—are due largely to flawed economic systems that set the wrong priorities and misallocate resources to the ends of competition and acquisition. If we define ourselves by a patriarchal economic model, then success is measured by who and what we are able to dominate.1 Conventional economic models fail to value and support the most essential human work of caring and caregiving. Hence basic human needs are neglected, and life becomes a struggle in which we fight over what we see as a scarcity of resources. In the 21st-century reality, a different worldview is gaining momentum. Matriarchy, recognizing all forms of life as being interconnected, provides an alternative. Women’s organized efforts most often reflect aspects of culture

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and environment particular to their immediate circumstances—lack of rights to own property or to gain education, sexual assault, or hunger for themselves and their children. But an underlying theme is opposition to a system of patriarchy and a demand that women have a prominent part in decisions affecting their lives. One theme of Riane Eisler’s book The Power of Partnership,2 is that we are always in relationship not just with our immediate circle but with a wider web of relationships impacting every aspect of our lives. This echoes a theme showing that human health, well-being, and indeed survival are dependent primarily on our connections.3 We are defined by our relations—by intimate relations, by relations in the workplace and local community, and by relationships with the nation, the international community, and Mother Earth. Spiritually we are related to life itself. All elements are interrelated. Feminist theory, vision, and practice draw strength from humanity’s common matriarchal history—uncovered in the stories of women from Africa, Asia, the Pacific, Europe, and the Americas. Heide Goettner-Abendroth’s edited anthology on matriarchal societies demonstrates well that there is an alternative to patriarchy that has been widely practiced. Indigenous cultures and archaeological accounts of lost cultures show examples of common principles of matriarchy occurring in societies across time and geography. Societies as different as the Bear Clan of the Ohio Seneca, Iroquois, and the Yunnan of southwest China illustrate the link between roles assigned to women as peacemakers and the absence of violence in the greater community.4 War almost always has a most devastating impact on women and children, leaving them homeless, vulnerable to disease and sexual assault, and lacking in economic security. Women have also been leaders in challenging the destruction. In Argentina they have appeared as the Mothers of the Disappeared (The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) who have fought for the right to re-unite with their abducted children; in Liberia united Christian and Moslem women forced the resignation of a brutal ruler, Charles Taylor, and the withdrawal from violence of the rebel gangs. In Colombia where a U.S.-supported government with an atrocious human rights record and an unaccountable paramilitary group, both fighting an often violent guerilla opposition, women have been in the leadership of peace communities that have declared their separation from this manmade nightmare (see Lozano, Chapter 7, Volume 3). The case of Malalai Joya,5 the first woman elected to parliament in Afghanistan, is particularly instructive. Her country is among the world’s poorest. The tribal society is ruled by warlords who came to power and increased their weapons through their liaisons with the invading Soviet Union and later though liaisons with NATO invaders. The invaders always worked with one group of warlords

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and promised to improve the well-being of women subjected to extreme fundamentalist groups. At great risk, Joya told her fellow parliamentarians that they were warlords unsuited to rule the country. But she has been equally clear that the U.S.-led NATO military incursion widens a war that is devastating to Afghan women and should end immediately. The sacrifices of male warriors are sometimes honored. Women casualties of war go relatively unnoticed. In this section Gianina Pellegrini compiles the painful facts of the effects of both military violence and ongoing domestic violence against women. She goes on to describe the leadership taken by women’s groups to eliminate such violence and to restore peaceful and sustainable communities. The variety of such activities and the impact they are having on peace and development is described by Kavita Nandini Ramdas of the Global Fund for Women. The change is profound, not only for its impact on ending inequality between men and women but also between the affluent and the landless, between masters and slaves, between militias and peasants. Women’s groups have stepped beyond the divisions of class and caste, the pillars of a dominator society. Taken as a whole they describe a revolutionary change in the assumptions that have perpetuated inequality and violence. Finally in this section Carol Cohn and Sara Ruddick describe ‘‘anti-war feminism’’ a concept that should make us all look critically at how we buy unwittingly into a language of abstractions that permit and encourage violence. The distancing language and male stereotypes, so common in the abstractions used to discuss war, serve to shelter us from the human capacities for caring and compassion. Not all feminists and certainly not all women view war in the same way. However one major thread has been labeled ‘‘anti-war feminism.’’ Carol Cohn and Sara Ruddick6 have drawn attention to the fundamental contribution of the concept. The values and language of domination are so deeply planted in Western imperial culture that they often go unnoticed. The typical public discussion of war has images of macho bravado neatly concealed by an abstract language of strategies and weapon systems. Emotional expressions of abhorrence for the killing, or compassion for the children being traumatized, and the despair over a bombed out-home; these are associated with feminine weakness. The claim to rationality is afforded those who can leave such human emotions out of their deliberations. We buy unwittingly into a language of abstractions that permits and encourages violence. The distancing language and male stereotypes, so common in the abstractions used to discuss war, serve to shelter us from the human capacities for caring and compassion. Anti-war feminism reclaims for all of us the right, indeed the necessity, to honor and to express our love of life.

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The feminist traditions of the Western World were built on social movements involving the rights to vote, hold title to property, and to obtain an education. Another wave of feminism is aimed at the rights of women to choose in matters of sexuality, marriage, childbearing, and jobs. Despite historically important associations between women’s movements and opposition to war, some aspects of feminism called for equal opportunity only for inclusion in a patriarchal society. Others have argued that such equality is not enough and that it continues to permit the institutions of war and poverty to victimize members of both genders and all ages. Women who take on the tough, sexist, and dehumanizing language of the military do not tap the special talents of women to be nurturers of families, communities, and the living environment and models for nonviolent power. Most women have less power than men in their families and poor women less power than either men or women in middle and upper classes. Having fewer options for inflicting serious harm, women, particularly through the experience of mothering, have become experts in the exercise of nonviolent methods. It is for most women the means by which they raise children and by which they talk with other women about how to confront challenges without turning to violence. Many women replicate the basic applications of Gandhian theory of nonviolence in the practice of their daily lives. This is a special wisdom and a special form for the exercise of power that must be honored lest the technology available to practitioners of the dominator model lead to unspeakable violence and war. Markets do not always rule. Neither do strategists with advanced weapons. When caring is valued psychologically, the economy moves from competition over scarcity to sustainable, shared abundance, and the culture of war becomes a culture of peace. Women are leading a worldwide struggle to recover the humanity and harmony lost to patriarchy not so many years ago. They give us hope that this new world is possible. —Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Eisler, 2007. Eisler, 2003. Pilisuk and Parks, 1986. Goettner-Abendroth, 2008. Joya and O’Keefe, 2009. Cohn and Ruddick, 2004.

CHAPTER

13

W O M E N : B AT T L E G R O U N D F O R W A R , RESOURCE FOR PEACE Gianina Pellegrini

It is now more dangerous to be a woman than to be a soldier in modern conflict. —Maj. Gen. Patrick Cammaert, 20081

There is one global resource located on every continent and in every corner of the world. This resource is more valuable and instrumental to human survival and development than oil, water, minerals, or land. This resource is often overlooked, its strength not fully realized, and its worth depreciated. This resource is women. Like many other valuable global resources, women are often neglected, abused, and exploited. For centuries, women in all parts of the world, from all ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds, have been victims of oppressive, patriarchal social systems that leave them vulnerable to numerous forms of abuse. This chapter illustrates the abuse perpetrated against women in times of relative peace and specifically in times of war. Women experience extreme levels of abuse, exploitation, and discrimination in warring and nonwarring societies; and yet they also demonstrate a remarkable ability to transform their experiences into powerful forces for peace. After identifying some of the abuses perpetrated against women, the chapter closes with a brief

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description of the international efforts to include women in all levels of the peace process and highlights a few women’s groups that have contributed to the worldwide movement toward peace. Until recently, the world viewed violence against women as domestic, private affairs and failed to recognize the global impact such abuse would have on human development. Violence against women has a serious and potentially irreversible impact not only on the women who have been hurt but also on human development more generally. For the attainment of sustainable peace to be possible, the protection of women must be recognized as an essential concern and fundamental priority in the global peace movement. The assault on women is an assault on all of humanity. Violence perpetrated against women, whether in times of violent conflict or relative peace, has reached epidemic proportions and must be acknowledged as a serious international human rights emergency that threatens global security. In stable, nonwarring societies, women are subjected to extreme forms of abuse including rape, sexual exploitation, mutilation, physical abuse, and honor killings.2 Globally, at least one in three women and girls is beaten or sexually abused in her lifetime. Domestic violence causes more deaths and disability to women aged 15 to 44, than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war. At least 60 million girls who would otherwise be expected to be alive are missing from various populations, mostly in Asia, as a result of sex selective abortions, infanticide, and neglect. Annually, 4 million women and girls are trafficked into forced labor and sexual exploitation, including prostitution and sexual slavery. Each year, an estimated 5,000 women are victims of honor killings3 and an estimated 3 million girls are at risk of undergoing female circumcision and other forms of genital mutilation.4 Permitting violence against women during times of peace is directly reflected in the methods of warfare used in contemporary violent conflicts. The last two decades have seen a dramatic increase in the frequency and severity of gender-based violence deployed as a weapon of war in conflicts throughout the world. Contemporary warfare includes deliberate and strategic attacks on civilians, many of which are women and children. Intentionally targeting civilians is a military tactic used to intimidate, instill fear, and control entire groups of people, communities, and populations. An estimated 75 percent of casualties of war are civilians, many of who are women and children.5 Eruption of violent conflict results in the breakdown of the social and political structures that once provided some level of civilian protection. During violent conflicts families and communities are dispersed, adequate health and human service resources diminish, and economic opportunities become limited. Women who are often subjected to some level of marginalization before the conflict become more vulnerable to violence,

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abuse, and discrimination within their communities. Although women are typically the minority of combatants and perpetrators of war, they are increasingly the most impacted by the violence. There is an undeniable link between sexual, gender-based violence and armed conflict. Wars and violent conflicts that were once fought between combatants on battlegrounds removed from civilians are now being waged within communities and directly on women’s bodies. Women’s bodies have irrefutably become the battleground for many contemporary wars.

SEXUAL VIOLENCE AS A WEAPON OF WAR I was in the fields with five other women. My baby girl was on my back. Four interahamwe [FDLR] soldiers approached, wearing military fatigues and carrying grenades. They chose me and another woman and forced us with them into the forest. We walked for hours through the bush to reach their camp, which was like a village they’d organized in the middle of the forest. There were around 50 women there, like us, taken by force. The commander chose me as his woman and raped me every day. My baby was beside me when this took place. After, I was left bleeding and weak. —Testimony from Constance, a 27-year-old single mother from Rutshuru territory in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 20076

Constance is one of many women subjected to sexual violence during violent conflict. Sexual, gender-based violence, including rape, sexual slavery, gang rape, mutilation, physical abuse, forced pregnancy, and sexual exploitation, is being systematically deployed against women as a weapon of war in contemporary violent conflicts. Sexual violence attacks the most basic fabric of society, bringing pain, fear, and shame to the victim and also to her family and community. There are countless examples throughout the world and throughout history of sexual, gender-based violence being utilized as a military tactic in violent conflicts.7 Sexual-based violence occurs within all countries and communities throughout the world. What follows is a description of those countries where sexual, gender-based violence has been most documented. This does not imply these are the only countries where such violence occurs. Without a doubt, much of the sexual, gender-based violence that women experience goes underreported or undocumented. However, the accounts that follow present a clear description of the atrocities women encounter during violent conflicts. In Europe, sexual, gender-based violence has been reported in conflicts in Azerbaijan, Croatia, Georgia, Russia, Serbia, and the former Yugoslavia. Most notably, the three-year, inter-ethnic war that followed Bosnia and

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Herzegovina’s declaration of independence from Yugoslavia in 1992 involved multiple reports of sexual violence perpetrated against women. During the war, thousands of women were raped, sexually tortured, abducted, and forced into sexual servitude. Muslim women were systematically targeted as a form of ethnic cleansing. Detention sites known as ‘‘rape camps’’ were developed where women, primarily Muslim women, were repeatedly raped, forcibly impregnated, and detained so that the pregnancy could not be terminated. Up to 162 detention camps were formed and estimates of 20,000 to 50,000 women and girls were raped.8 In the Americas, armed conflicts in Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua, Peru, and Colombia utilized sexual, gender-based violence as a military and often political tactic to terrorize women and their communities. Throughout the ongoing conflict in Colombia, government and paramilitary forces utilized sexual violence against women as a counter-insurgency tactic to punish those suspected of supporting rebels or on those merely residing in rebelcontrolled territories. As a result, hundreds of women have been subjected to sexual violence, including rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, and sexual mutilation.9 The United States has been accused of utilizing sexual violence against suspected terrorists and prisoners of war in military prisons operated on foreign land. Even among their own people, the United States is guilty of sexual violence against women: one in three women in the U.S. military is raped or sexually abused.10 Sexual violence has been reported in conflicts throughout the vast Asian continent, including Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, India, Burma/ Myanmar, Cambodia, Nepal, Philippines, Indonesia, Papua-New Guinea, and East Timor. In East Timor, Indonesian troops and Indonesian-backed militia have been accused of widespread sexual violence, including sexual torture, sex slavery, forced sterilization, and forced prostitution.11 Sexual violence, including rape, abductions, sexual exploitation, and forced marriages has been widely reported in Afghanistan since post-Soviet rule and sexual violence continues to be a considerable problem in the region. In 2006, the Afghanistan Independent Commission on Human Rights registered 1,651 cases of sexual and gender-based violence, including 213 cases of forced marriage, 106 cases of self-burning, 50 cases of murder, 41 cases of girls being traded off for various reasons, and 34 cases of rape.12 Sexual, gender-based violence is less documented in the Middle East primarily due to the stigma associated with such assaults and the widespread repercussions, such as honor killings, that a woman could suffer when reporting sexual violence. Sexual violence has been most reported in Iraq and reports of gender-based violence have significantly increased since the United States occupation began in 2003. Soldiers from the American, British, Italian,

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Polish, and Spanish military have been accused of raping thousands of women since the beginning of the occupation, and there has been a distinct rise in the number of abductions of women as well as women being tortured, raped, and killed in this region. Honor killings have also been reported in Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, and Yemen.13 The use of sexual violence as a military and political tactic has ravaged the African continent during past and current armed conflicts in countries such as Burundi, Chad, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Uganda, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In Sudan, rape, sexual mutilation, and torture of non-Arab women have been employed as acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing during the civil war between Northern and Southern Sudan and more recently in the Darfur region. Countless women have been victims of sexual violence perpetrated by Sudanese security forces, militias, rebel groups, and former rebel groups.14 For over 15 years, the civil unrest and violent conflict in the DRC has subjected tens of thousands of women to sexual violence, including rape, gang rapes, rapes leading to serious injury or death, and the abduction of girls and women to be used as sexual slaves. A peace treaty was signed in 2003, yet the violence against women and girls has not subsided. In 2008, Human Rights Watch documented 15,966 new cases of sexual violence reported throughout the country. In the first five months of 2009, 143 cases of rape by army soldiers were reported in North Kivu, and an estimated 40 women and girls are raped each day in the South Kivu region.15 The violent conflicts throughout the African continent have been especially brutal to women and girls. Extremely atrocious forms of sexual violence, such as mutilation, rape with inanimate objects, physically violent gang rape, forced pregnancy, and the rape of extremely young children and babies have been documented in numerous countries including Sudan, the DRC, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. The brutality of sexual violence has resulted in many women suffering traumatic gynecologic fistula.16 As the above examples illustrate, the magnitude of violence and injustices experienced by women during and following violent conflicts is overwhelming. Utilizing sexual, gender-based violence as a weapon of war during armed conflicts has detrimental, long-term consequences on human development. Violence against women, whether perpetrated during violent conflicts or times of peace, is a global epidemic that must be abolished.

EFFORTS TO ABOLISH SEXUAL ABUSE IN CONFLICTS In a direct response to the increase of violence perpetrated against women in conflict zones, there has been an increase in international attention and

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global awareness of women’s experience of armed conflict. International efforts such as the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action brought forth at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women (1995), UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (Women, Peace, and Security, 2000), and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) are a few international mandates that have introduced strategies and tools to enhance women’s empowerment and obtain gender equality in all spheres of private and public life. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action was developed in an effort to accelerate the implementation of the Nairobi Forward-Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women (1985).17 The Platform for Action introduced methods to enhance women’s social, political, and economic empowerment. advancement, and equality. The UN reconvened in 2000 and 2005 to discuss the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, reevaluate the challenges women continue to experience, and identify new initiatives to obtain full and accelerated implementation of the commitments made in 1995. In 2010, the UN will reconvene for a 15-year review of the Beijing Platform for Action. In 2000, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1325 (Women, Peace, and Security), the first UN resolution to specifically address issues pertaining to women’s role in the formal peace process. Resolution 1325 calls for greater participation of women in conflict prevention, peace building, and peacekeeping processes. The resolution contains 18 provisions that call to all parties of conflict to acknowledge the impact of conflict on women’s lives and to protect women and girls from gender-based violence, to institute policies that respond to women’s needs during and after conflict, and to end impunity for crimes against humanity affecting women.18 The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), often referred to as the international bill of rights for women, is the human rights treaty devoted exclusively to gender equality. CEDAW establishes legal standards that if incorporated into national law would enhance gender equality through the elimination of political, social, economic, and cultural discrimination against women. This global human rights treaty identifies steps to achieving gender equality in a wide range of areas relating to trafficking and prostitution, political participation, nationality, education, employment, health care, economic, social, and cultural life, and family relations. CEDAW has been ratified or acceded to in 183 countries, meaning that these countries are legally bound by international law to implement its provisions, including eliminating discrimination against women in all spheres of life and establishing institutional measures to advance gender equality.19

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The Beijing Platform of Action, Resolution 1325, and CEDAW are a few examples of international efforts to obtain gender equality and enhance women’s empowerment in both the private and public sectors. Sustainable peace relies on these international efforts that emphasize the inclusion of women in all aspects of society, and specifically a role in the reconstruction of their communities following violence. Women rightfully deserve a more inclusive role in all aspects of the peace process and failure to obtain equal representation has detrimental consequences to society and the aspirations of sustainable peace. The formal peace process provides the opportunity to reconstruct the social and political policies that have for centuries marginalized women in society. There is a vital link between women’s experiences during violent conflict and their full participation in conflict resolution and post-conflict reconstruction. Their experiences as victims of violence make them key contributors in determining the terms surrounding any peace negotiations. Unfortunately, international efforts to eliminate gender-based violence and enforce equal gender representation in the peace process are difficult to implement due to the existing social structures that marginalize women in society. In principle, these initiatives are promising, yet in practice they continue to leave much to be desired. It is often women that organize on the local, grassroots level that initiate effective change within their communities. Despite the lack of equal gender representation in most formal peace processes, women have mobilized within their communities to demand an end to violence and promote sustainable peace. Women on every continent have shown a remarkable ability to transcend their experience as victims and organize as leaders of peace movements. Often without the support of international or governmental entities, women have transformed the peace process through activism, leadership, and unprecedented action to obtain peace. In 1955, Jean Sinclair founded the Black Sash organization to resist the apartheid government in South Africa and aid oppressed black women and men. Wearing black sashes to symbolize the mourning of those oppressed by the apartheid system, this nonviolent organization held street demonstrations, spoke at political meetings, held vigils outside Parliament and government offices, campaigned against apartheid legislation, and brought forth issues of injustice to members of Parliament. They assisted black women and men with legal issues and provided secure locations for them to reside when faced with racial and gender persecution.20 During the ‘‘Dirty War’’ in Argentina from 1976 to 1983, those opposed or thought to be opposed to the violent military dictatorship were abducted, tortured, and killed, though often referred to as ‘‘disappeared.’’ Many of those captured and disappeared were youth who had spoken publicly about

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their opposition to the regime. In response to the thousands of disappeared youth, a group of mothers, known as Madres of the Plaza de Mayo formed nonviolent demonstrations at the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, the site of Argentina’s government. The mothers wore white head scarves embroidered with their children’s names in an attempt to draw attention to their missing children and to pressure the government to acknowledge the assaults that were taking place. The number of mothers that gathered each week grew significantly and gained international attention, forcing the government to recognize their demands for political, social, and legal reparations. The women first began their demonstrations as an effort to protect and save their children, and through this process they were educated on their children’s views and reasons for opposing the dictatorship. The Madres of the Plaza de Mayo organization grew from mothers protecting their children to a large group of women, now human rights activists mobilizing for justice and to bring change to the oppressive government through political reform. Mothers from other South American countries, such as Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay, formed similar groups protesting against their ‘‘disappeared’’ sons and daughters.21 In 1988, in response to the Palestinian Intifada, Israeli Jewish women began a nonviolent organization to protest Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. The organization, Women in Black, held weekly vigils in public places holding signs in Arabic, English, and Hebrew calling for an end to the occupation of Palestinian territories. The women, dressed in black to symbolize the tragedy suffered by Israelis and Palestinians, maintained silence during their weekly vigils and often stood in busy, highly populated areas to raise public awareness of the severity of the occupation and to show support for the Palestinians. Women in Black groups sprung up throughout Israel, gaining support from Israeli Jewish women and Palestinian women living in Israel and the occupied territories. In some cases, vigils would be held at border crossings with demonstrations occurring on both sides of the border. Women in Black organizations began as a direct response to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and have since grown into an international women’s anti-war movement with an estimated 10,000 activists around the world. Although the international organizations began in solidarity with the Israeli group, many have also embraced other social and political issues. Women in Black organizations are located: in Europe, the United States, South America, India, the Philippines, Nepal, and China.22 In 2000, a group of West African women came together to promote full participation in the process of preventing and managing conflicts and restoring peace in Africa. The meeting was organized by the nongovernmental organization Femmes Africa Solidarit
e and the African Women’s Committee

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for Peace and Development with the sole purpose of establishing a subregional project for and by the women of the Mano River countries that would complement national efforts to build and sustain peace and resolve and prevent conflicts in the region. From this initial meeting, women of Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia started the Mano River Women’s Peace Network with the goal of achieving sustainable peace in the region. The primary objective of the Mano River Women’s Peace Network is to educate and raise awareness on issues pertaining to sustainable peace, such as human rights, democracy, gender equality, development, and conflict prevention and resolution. In solidarity with other women’s organizations, such as African Women’s Committee for Peace, and the African Women’s Federation of Peace Networks, their goal is to become an instrumental player in the peace and reconciliation process in the region.23 The Naga women of northeastern India have demonstrated astounding leadership in the mediation of violent conflicts. In 1963, the formal state of Nagaland was established following the 50-year political conflict between the 40 tribes of the Naga Hills and post-colonial India. A long and violent conflict prevailed between the armed subgroups of the Naga people, the government of India, the Indian state of Nagaland, and border states and tribes as the Naga people fought for independence. The Naga women have played an instrumental role in reducing the violence and promoting peace by acting as mediators between the fighting forces. Women would act as physical barriers between civilians and soldiers and appeal to underground fighting groups by walking into their camps and pleading with the leaders to stop the violence. The leaders of the fighting forces recognize women as key contributors to the stabilization of violence in the region. The first cease-fire agreement was signed in 1997 and has been signed subsequently each year. Although some violence still prevails, women continue to be active participants in the peacebuilding and peacekeeping process and are often requested by leaders to attend public activities and formal negotiations.24 The above examples are merely a few illustrations of peace movements initiated by women throughout the world. An entire anthology could be dedicated to representing the multiple movements women have created in a response to violence within their communities. These few examples illustrate how women continue to play an important role in the attainment of peace within their families, communities, and nations. Despite the pain women experience, both in the absence and presence of conflict, women show an unmatched strength to transform their suffering into creative and effective ways to advocate for the end to violence. The global peace movement cannot ignore the disparities women face in the modern world, nor can it ignore the vital contributions women provide in the attainment of

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peace. Just as the world must preserve and protect its natural resources, an essential priority for human development and security is the protection and preservation of women.

NOTES 1. United Nations (UNIFEM), 2009. 2. The following statistics on violence against women were obtained from the UN Secretary-General’s database on violence against women. ‘‘General Assembly. In-Depth Study on All Forms of Violence against Women: Report of the Secretary General,’’. July 6, 2006. http://webapps01.un.org/vawdatabase/home.action. Specific information on the prevalence of specific types of abuse can also be obtained on the World Health Organization Web site. http://www.who.int/gender/violence/en/ and the United Nations Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender http://www.un.org/womenwatch/. 3. Honor killings is when a girl or woman is murdered by a relative, typically her husband or father to cleanse the family of the perceived shame associated with rape or other forms of sexual violence. 4. For more information on Female Genital Mutilation, see United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) & United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 2010. 5. United Nations Security Council, 2009. 6. Amnesty International, 2008. 7. For more information see Ward and Marsh, 2006 and Ren and Sirleaf, 2002. 8. Ward, 2009 Bastick et al., 2007. 9. Bastick et al., 2007. 10. Sadler et al., 2003. 11. Bastick et al., 2007. 12. Afghanistan Independent Commission on Human Rights, 2005. 13. Human Rights Watch, 2003. 14. Human Rights Watch, 2008. 15. Human Rights Watch, 2009. 16. Fistula is when a woman’s vagina and her bladder or rectum, or both, are torn apart, sometimes during birth but in this context as a result of violent force to her genitals. Fistula results in the inability to control the constant flow of urine and/ or feces. For more information on sexual violence in Africa, see Stop Rape Now, UN Action against Sexual Violence in Conflict, http://www.stoprapenow.org/updates_ field.html. 17. Nairobi Forward-Looking Strategies, 1985. 18. United Nations (Resolution 1325), 2009. 19. United Nations (CEDAW). 20. Spink, 1991. 21. Bouvard, 1994. 22. Sharoni, 1995. 23. Mano River Peace Network, 2009. 24. Manchanda, 2005.

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N O T H I N G S H O RT O F A R E VO LU T I O N : REFLECTIONS ON THE GLOBAL W O M E N ’ S M OV E M E N T Kavita Nandini Ramdas

In Togo, West Africa, a women’s legal rights group mobilizes widows to claim inheritance rights and demand pension payments from the government. A few years ago, they were living in penury, denied their rights to inherit their husbands’ land, unable to support their families and often vulnerable to sexual abuse by male neighbors. Today they are leaders in their community and working to educate young women about their rights and their vulnerability to sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS. In Yunan Province in China, the group Ecowomen leads a regional campaign to reduce the use of pesticides in agriculture, drawing connections to the impact on women’s health and reproduction, the well-being of children, and the safety of agricultural workers, most of whom are women. The group educates children on environmental sustainability and works to influence policy. In Serbia and Montenegro, the Anti-Trafficking Center seeks to protect and defend the rights of girls and young women at high risk of being trafficked into sex work or other forms of exploitative labor. Its work begins This article was originally printed in Conscience Magazine: The Newsjournal of Catholic Opinion, XXVII, No. 2, Summer 2006.

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with self-help groups of high school girls who are experiencing violence, abusive relationships, and incest. The group’s male allies also launched an initiative to deconstruct patriarchal stereotypes and behaviors among men and boys who have grown up in a culture of violence in the aftermath of the recent Balkan wars. In Bolivia, Mujeres Creando organizes indigenous women to ensure that women’s voices are included in the new Constitutional Assembly that is to be launched under the leadership of President Evo Morales. Women hold very few positions of political power in the country and continue to live under situations of extreme poverty, lacking access to basic health care and education. Palestinian refugee women in Lebanon find hope and economic independence in the programs of Association Najdeh, which trains and educates women in income generation skills and business management. At the same time, women and girls receive education about their own rights and support for their struggles against violence at home and in the community. Five stories, five continents, five examples of women-led initiatives for change in their own communities. Each one of these examples is local, small-scale, surviving on volunteer efforts and small grants. In many ways these may seem far from the kind of massive social interventions we have come to associate with the word ‘‘global.’’ However, viewed through the lens of the Global Fund for Women, it is clear that these five efforts are part of an extraordinary, irreversible, and growing movement to advance women’s rights and participation in every part of the world. In its 18-year history, the Global Fund for Women has heard from more than 25,000 women’s organizations from countries as tiny as El Salvador and as huge as China. Indeed, its creators, Frances Kissling, Anne Firth Murray, and Laura Lederer, were at least in part inspired by the burgeoning women’s movement already apparent in 1985 at the UN sponsored Nairobi conference for women when independent nongovernmental organizations organized the first parallel meeting to a UN conference.

WHAT IS A GLOBAL WOMEN’S MOVEMENT? The dictionary defines the women’s movement, or feminism, as a movement to secure legal, economic, and social equality for women. It has its roots in the 19th-century women’s movement, which sought, among other things, to secure property rights and suffrage for women. The modern feminist movement in the West was galvanized by the publication of Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique. Increasingly visible mobilization by women activists for equality began in the 1960s and continued through the

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1970s across the United States and Europe. Among other goals, its advocates sought equal access to employment, equal pay for equal work, improved day care arrangements, and the right to safe and legal abortions. Although the modern feminist movement became best known in the West as a struggle by women to be allowed into previously exclusively male preserves, in much of the rest of the world, women’s liberation efforts were closely linked with broader social justice movements. This was particularly true of women in the so-called Third World who had been active and equal partners to men in anti-colonial or anti-imperial liberation movements. Thus, women in the Arab world struggled both against British and French imperialism and the traditional restrictions on women’s freedom and mobility in their own societies. In South Africa, women played a critical leadership role in the African National Congress’ battle against apartheid, while they also challenged long-held patriarchal beliefs that justified domestic violence and early marriage. In the Indian subcontinent, women fought alongside male colleagues in the freedom struggle while demanding changes in practices that harmed women and girls, such as dowry and the terrible treatment of widows. In the indigenous cultures of South America, women also waged a dual struggle, working alongside their men to push back the forces of industrialization and capitalist exploitation of natural resources while demanding recognition and dignity as women within their homes and communities. In each of these instances, women defined their struggle for justice and equality within the larger context of their own cultures and political realities. They eagerly sought solidarity and support from women around the globe, including Western feminists. But their movements were not anemic copies of a Western feminism; because of their connection to larger mass movements for national liberation, they tended to have a stronger class analysis than their counterparts in the developed world.

OUR DISTINGUISHING MARKS

A Shared Analysis Women’s movements worldwide are too scattered and too diverse to claim a narrowly defined ideology, but there is a broad, shared analysis that sees discrimination in the prevailing social structure that privileges men over women as the main problem; in a word, patriarchy. Although the phrase was coined by early feminist theorists who emerged from the West, its analysis and fundamental quest for equality, dignity, and justice are shared by movements of women in many different parts of the world. In the deepest sense, this analysis goes beyond merely seeking to make women equal with men. It dares to ask the fundamental question: equal to what? It

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does not simply seek to give women the opportunity to participate in the existing world order as it is, but rather asks what is the most beneficial and effective way to organize society—not to simply maximize profit, but to enhance the quality of life for all human beings, women and men. It challenges the underlying premises of current social, economic, and political structures with their assumptions of hierarchy, use of force, and the privileging of the individual over society and the earth. In turn, feminism privileges a sense of shared possibility, equal opportunity, compassion, and community over narrow linear definitions of tribe, nation, and state.

Linkages The global women’s movement has from its earliest stages seen itself as being in a struggle to transcend traditional boundaries of class, religion, nation, and region. It has a strong emphasis on building and strengthening alliances and networks and an understanding that isolation is one of the worst barriers to women’s emancipation. Thus the movement seeks to dismantle the barriers that are used to control and restrict the free mobility of individual women and is determined to challenge those barriers in its own structures.

Equality The movement is fueled by its belief in the equality of all human beings. From the earliest suffragettes to current activists there has been support for efforts that extend beyond gender equality—a vision that does not stop at equality between men and women, but calls for equality between slave and slave owners, between minority communities and majority populations, and between other groups of oppressed or marginalized people. Among a certain subset of feminist activists, sometimes referred to as ecofeminists, it also calls for equal consideration and care for other living beings and the planet Earth.

Freedom/Liberty of Individuals A common theme for women’s movements across the globe is a challenge to restrictions on personal freedom and mobility. Women are often not free to move outside the home on their own, nor free to make decisions about their own bodies or their education and marriage. Even in countries where they have formally been accorded these rights, the environment of violence, insecurity, and traditional expectations continues to confine and restrict women from exercising them.

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Dignity of the Human Person The women’s movement is deeply concerned with preserving bodily integrity and places a high value on liberating women’s bodies from the physical control of others. It also encourages women to take comfort, delight, and pride in the well-being and health of their own bodies. Around the globe, women and girls are often little more than beasts of burden who carry backbreaking loads and perform incredibly hard labor, mostly in service of others and with little control over the outcome or income generated as a result of that labor. In addition, women’s bodies are routinely subjected to incredible violence both within and outside the home through rape, battery, and assault. Women’s bodies have, from the earliest times, been viewed as the property of male guardians—fathers, brothers, husbands. Women and girls have traditionally lacked the ability to control what is done to their bodies by others. In particular, women’s sexuality has been seen as something to be controlled by practices that range from mutilation (foot binding in China and female circumcision in Africa) to death (honor killings in many parts of Latin America and the Middle East). Today discrimination against lesbians and transgendered individuals continues as a legacy of this fear of women’s independent sexuality. In most societies women’s ability to move freely outside the home and/or to take pleasure in their own bodies has been tightly controlled and restricted.

Diversity and Tolerance Ours is a movement that believes in diversity—it understands that the conditions and circumstances within which women live are incredibly varied and complex, and that movements for justice emerge from a specific context within which women articulate a need for their own independence, freedom, and equality. This is both the movement’s greatest strength and its greatest challenge since it does not have the cohesion and centralized decision-making structures that can ensure it achieves the clout and influence it needs to make a consistent impact at national and international policymaking levels.

Nonviolence and Peace For the most part, the women’s movement worldwide repudiates violence as inimical to the goals and objectives of true freedom and equality for all. Women and girls are so often the subjects of violence that women’s movements have sought to make nonviolence and peaceful strategies a high priority

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in all aspects of their work. This does not mean that women’s movements cannot be forceful and determined and engage in resistance, but it does mean that activists for women’s rights tend to be deeply suspicious of the use of force as a method of resolving conflict. This is especially true since throughout history, wars have often been waged allegedly to protect the weak and defenseless, that is, women and children, yet war almost always has the most devastating impact on the same women and children, leaving them homeless, vulnerable to disease and sexual assault, and lacking in economic security.

Education and Economic Independence Although women do more than two-thirds of the world’s labor, they own less than 1 percent of the world’s assets. They are paid less for the same work and remain vulnerable to poverty and abuse because they are dependent on others for their own security and that of their children. Women have fought for decades for what has only recently been confirmed by numerous studies—giving women equal access to education and work and the ability to control their own income and inherit and own property benefits society as a whole by improving the health of children, reducing fertility levels, and providing higher levels of education for both girls and boys.

OUR CHALLENGES The women’s movement has never had an easy time; its challenges to the fundamental ways in which most societies have been organized have ensured that it has struggled from its inception. Among current social movements, it is one of the youngest, barely a century old. As well as playing itself out on the world stage, ours is the only social justice movement that locates its struggle in the most private and personal of venues—the family and the home. For other movements, whether national liberation struggles, worker’s rights efforts, or peasant mobilizations, the venues have tended to be public spaces: the factory, the fields, the polis, the state. But women’s struggle must be fought and has always been waged on two extremely different yet connected levels. It is a struggle for equality and justice in the public venues of workplace, government, and international institutions, but it is also waged in the most intimate spaces where the individual woman and girl also face the most significant threats to their safety, mental and physical well-being, and personal self-esteem. As Nobel Peace Prize– winner Shirin Ebadi said recently, ‘‘The women’s movement does not have big offices across the country, but we have a branch in every home in Iran!’’

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The nature of this struggle is what makes the famous feminist saying ‘‘The Personal Is the Political’’ so true. This dual nature of the women’s struggle poses a special challenge for the movement. Contrary to the commonly held view that it is a movement that is ‘‘anti-men,’’ it is not a movement against any particular group of people— capitalists, colonialists, factory owners, or landlords. It is a movement against a system called patriarchy in which men benefit by oppressing women, gaining greater power and wealth in the process. It is a system in which both women and men are trapped in roles that prevent them from achieving or aspiring to their fullest potential. It is a movement in which both women and men can participate. Indeed what is striking about women’s movements, particularly in the developing world, is how closely they work with and rely on male allies in their struggle. As a Zapotec woman working to end domestic violence in her village said to me some years ago in Oaxaca, Mexico, ‘‘We explained to the men that if they beat us we cannot be strong and they need us to be strong so that we can stand next to them and support them as their partners. We do not try to be strong against them—we want to be strong for them and for us.’’ But this reality is a challenge for maintaining momentum. If there is no ‘‘enemy,’’ then what do we go after? Where do we seek to make an impact and how can we achieve sweeping changes in the ways families, societies, and laws are structured so that women and girls have a real chance? How can the movement challenge long-held assumptions about male roles and female roles without alienating men? How do we measure progress and what kinds of indicators are needed to show that the movement is making a difference?

OUR WEAKNESSES ARE OUR STRENGTHS The contradictions outlined above are reflected in the fact that our strength arises out of those challenges. This is an intensely global and profoundly local movement all at once. It is not restricted to one country or one region—it is fought in small villages and big cities, in highly developed economies like Japan and desperately poor ones like Zambia. It is fought inside the home and at the workplace—to quote Eleanor Roosevelt, ‘‘in small places, close to home.’’ Indeed, it seems that from its inception, the women’s movement has understood the power of the personal connection that transcends boundaries of region, state, and nation. Women’s organizations in the global South have long counted on their sisters in the industrialized world to be allies in the struggle and have greatly valued the exchange of ideas, strategies, and tactics that has marked the international women’s movement. From Mexico in 1975 to Nairobi in 1985 to the

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groundbreaking work done by women’s groups at the Cairo conference in 1994, women’s groups from North and South have worked in concert (not always in agreement about everything, but together on the broad issues) to advance an agenda for women’s human rights. This was most evident in the Beijing Platform for Action, approved in 1995 at the UN Conference for Women. Today, there is not a country in the world that does not at least claim to be doing something to improve the status and position of women and girls. In most democracies, women have won the right to vote and run for office; within families women have gained the right to control their own financial resources, own and inherit property, and the ability to fight for the custody of their children. These are not insignificant achievements and they have certainly contributed to a world in which women’s rights are hailed as a global good from almost as many pulpits as the equally celebrated notion of ‘‘democracy.’’

WHERE ARE WE TODAY? The dramatic world events of the past 10 to 15 years, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dissolution of the former Soviet Union, rapid globalization and its accompanying discontents, and the rise of the United States as the global hegemon, have had a significant impact on the women’s movement. The challenges faced by women in the developing world and in countries of so-called ‘‘transition’’ have been dramatic and extreme. They are also deeply connected to the inequality underlying the current economic and political status quo. In particular, the women’s movement sees clearly how many aspects of globalization reinforce the oppression of those in the global South, with women, as always, bearing the brunt of new economic policies, even as narrowly defined structures of electoral democracy and free markets claim to be a source of liberation for women. Meanwhile, in the West and especially in the United States, a certain kind of complacency has set in—there is a flawed assumption that the issues raised by both the women’s movement of the 1970s and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s (from which it learned so much) have adequately addressed the needs of both women and minorities. Indeed, the gains that were hard-won by the feminists of the 1960s and 1970s—in schools, in sports, in higher education, in access to professional development, and in the protection of their basic reproductive health and rights—are all but forgotten by many young women in the United States. I often hear from individuals who speak about women’s rights being natural to Western culture—forgetting that barely 100 years ago, U.S. women, like slaves, were considered the private property of white men.

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Thus in many parts of the United States today, the word feminist is either derided or dismissed as describing a dated and irrelevant movement. Young women who are strongly committed to equality and justice are somewhat ambivalent about being described as feminists. Among the general population, there are widely held misconceptions about feminists being anti-male or men-haters. This is puzzling for many activists in other countries who are well aware of the achievements of previous and current generations of U.S. feminists, who took the lead in raising awareness about a range of issues, including female circumcision or genital mutilation, fistulas, early marriage and pregnancy, inheritance rights, the position of women under regimes like the Taliban, honor killings, unsafe abortions, the increased vulnerability of women to HIV/AIDS, and the connections between violence and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). It is important to note that the United States remains the only Western industrialized country to have failed to sign CEDAW (the UN convention against discrimination against women), apparently for fear that this would force a re-examination of the struggle over equal pay for equal work. Under the Bush administration, much of the energy and efforts of the current U.S. women’s movement have been directed to preserving the gains of the past few decades, particularly in the areas of reproductive health and rights. Simultaneously, in the age of the war on terror, there have been conservative forces pushing the women’s movement further to the center and challenging its traditionally strong ties to women’s struggles in the rest of the world. Indeed, to many outside observers, the women’s movement in the United States seems to have lost much of the popular support, momentum, and energy that defined it in previous eras.

AN EMERGING LEADERSHIP Yet, even as women in the United States seek to cope with growing conservatism within their own communities, there has been an explosion in creative, innovative, and inclusive strategies for revolutionary change in gender relations and social justice from women in the South. Despite pessimism about the state of play in the North, we are, in fact, witnessing a period of exciting growth and the flourishing of an increasingly strong and articulate leadership in the global women’s movement. The leaders of the new women’s rights movement are not well known in the West. In fact, they often work on issues that are not even considered ‘‘women’s issues’’ and often are groups of women working collectively rather than charismatic individuals. They are environmental activists like Medha Patkar in Gujarat, Oral Ataniyazova in Uzbekistan, and Wangari Maathai in Kenya; they are parliamentarians like Mu Sochua in Cambodia, Pregs Govender

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in South Africa, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia, and former president Michelle Bachelet of Chile, they are judges like Navi Pillay in South Africa and human rights lawyers like Shirin Ebadi in Iran, Asma Khader in Jordan, and Asma Jahangir in Pakistan; they are teachers like Sakena Yacoobi in Afghanistan and Betty Makoni in Zimbabwe; they may be reinterpreting religion in ways that empower and celebrate women like Fatima Mernissi in Morocco and Zainah Anwar of Sisters in Islam in Malaysia; they are entrepreneurs with new ideas about how to organize and protect women’s labor rights like Nari Uddug Kendra in Bangladesh and the South Korean Workers Union in Seoul. They are young girls, often not more than 14 or 16 years of age, in places like Juarez, Mexico, or Rwanda, Zimbabwe, and Uganda, who have shown amazing leadership in challenging traditional practices like Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), sexual abuse and early marriage—not by running away from their communities but by seeking to work with their elders, their mothers and aunts, their fathers and brothers; they are peacemakers brokering dialogue between rebels in Liberia and Guinea like the Mano River Women’s Network, or between Arabs and Israelis like the Jerusalem Women’s Center in Palestine and Bat Shalom, Israel. And, because the West in general (and this includes Western journalists, policy makers, academics, politicians, and, even some Western women’s groups as well) is not used to recognizing or accepting leadership that does not come with titles, degrees, or even Western education, it will take time to develop a new relationship based on respect, trust, and equality. In this 21st century, the rest of the world is questioning many of the givens in so-called Western civilization. Women’s rights organizations are delighted by the promise of some aspects of science and technology, but are not sure that the model of excessive consumption and disregard for the environment is the best one. They are not sure that the atomization and isolation of individuals in a community is what they should aspire to as an indication of development. Many grassroots organizations across the developing world are questioning the Western model of development—its reliance on petroleum chemicals, large dams, nuclear power plants, and genetically engineered food crops. There is growing pressure among women’s groups to look for more sustainable strategies to ensure sufficient energy and food for all. They would like more equality and democracy in their societies, but they do not think that elections in and of themselves are a substitute for grassroots participatory processes, representation of all population groups, and the rule of law. In other words, they are challenging some of the underlying assumptions of progress as defined by the West. They are doing this in a fiercely contested space, since religious extremists of every faith are also reacting to the pressures of globalization and modernization with a reaction that is regressive

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and seeks refuge in a simplistic interpretation of religion (whether that is Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or Judaism) and is determined to re-impose control over women as a way to return to a mythical golden era when men were men and women knew their place. Women’s groups in the rest of the world are grateful for the support and solidarity of their like-minded sisters and brothers in the West. They need investments and financial resources that are given with respect, but they do not need charity or missionary zeal. They do not need to be empowered— rather they need their allies in the West, especially women’s organizations, to stand by the human rights principles they uphold and apply them fairly to all societies, not just the ones that are the current favorites of the U.S. government. They want fair trade, not free trade that provides huge subsidies to Northern farmers, while demanding that Senegal and Sri Lanka open their economies to large multinational corporations. They need our respect and our support for their own powerful efforts to re-envision their societies. They want us to acknowledge that cultures are not static, but are continually evolving. They know that there is nothing inherently democratic about Western societies. The best thing we can do for them is to set a good example ourselves and not be hypocritical (for example, bringing liberation to Afghan women while Southern Baptists require women to ‘‘obey’’ their husbands or turning a blind eye to Mormon polygamy even as we gasp about the harmful traditions of the Middle East or South Asia). Lastly, women’s groups in other countries urge U.S. women’s organizations to strengthen the women’s movement here to be more inclusive of poor women, of migrant women, of native or indigenous women, of black and Latina women. They urge them to recognize that the policies of the United States have damaging impacts on women—not just women-specific policies such as the ‘‘global gag rule,’’ but other policies such as North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), subsidies on cotton and sugar, unfair trade practices, the export of tobacco and substandard drugs and the refusal of pharmaceutical companies to provide retroviral drugs at low cost to AIDS victims so that the companies can preserve their intellectual property rights. They welcome tough laws on trafficking but urge the United States to remember that patriarchy, poverty, and lack of economic choices fuel trafficking in women and that women are worthy of dignity and respect regardless of what forced them into the sex trade. Most importantly, they are concerned that women and the women’s movement in the United States do not recognize the huge impact of the U.S. war on terror and the export of military might and weapons on women in the rest of the world. They are concerned that the women’s movement in the United States appears to be relatively disconnected from the global peace movement and that the fear factor created

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after 9/11 has made it difficult for women in the United States to understand their country’s policies and have actually made thousands, if not millions, of women and their families around the world less secure and safe. This is not just because in places such as Iraq, Israel, and Afghanistan, war and conflict have actually threatened women’s lives and those of their families, but because the war on terrorism has enabled both the United States and other governments to divert desperately needed development resources in the fields of health, education, and social services into military and defense expenditures. Jeffrey Sachs, an economist at Columbia University, recently stated that the U.S. government gives ‘‘just $16 billion in development assistance, but our defense budget is nearly $450 billion each year. . . . We are flying a lopsided plane and it is bound to crash.’’ Women’s rights groups around the world want to be given the chance to shift and change attitudes within their own communities from within— without the pressure of feeling that they are being ‘‘saved’’ from either their own cultures or their own backwardness by Western forces of modernization and progress. They cannot do this if they feel that their societies as a whole are under attack from the West. They cannot successfully challenge domestic violence while their fathers, brothers, and husbands are assumed to be terrorists and their faith is dismissed as tribal. This does not mean they have all the answers and it does not mean that they do not make mistakes. It does mean that all of us in the West—and not just the women’s movement—need to re-examine our relationships with women in the rest of the world and to proceed with a degree of humility and openness as we listen to and learn from and with them, allowing them to be their own articulate advocates for an alternative vision of a future that is just, peaceful, and sustainable.

CHAPTER

15

A FEMINIST ETHICAL PERSPECTIVE ON W E A P O N S O F M A S S D E S T RU C T I O N Carol Cohn and Sara Ruddick

The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians. —President Harry Truman, August 9, 19451

I heard her voice calling ‘‘Mother, Mother.’’ I went towards the sound. She was completely burned. The skin had come off her head altogether, leaving a twisted knot at the top. My daughter said, ‘‘Mother, you’re late, please take me back quickly.’’ She said it was hurting a lot. But there were no doctors. There was nothing I could do. So I covered up her naked body and held her in my arms for nine hours. At about eleven o’clock that night she cried out again ‘‘Mother,’’ and put her hand around my neck. It was already ice-cold. I said, ‘‘Please say Mother again.’’ But that was the last time. —A Hiroshima survivor2

This piece is excerpted from a significantly longer chapter that originally appeared in Steven Lee and Sohail Hashmi, eds., Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction (New York: Cambridge University Press, C 2004 Cambridge University Press. Reprinted with permission. 2004). Copyright


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ANTI-WAR FEMINISM There is no single feminist position on war, armament, and weapons of mass destruction (WMD). We report here on one feminist tradition we call ‘‘anti-war feminism,’’ which opposes war-making as a practice and seeks to replace it with practices of non-violent contest and reconciliation.3 Anti-war feminists’ opposition to the practice of war is simultaneously pragmatic and moral. We have an abiding suspicion of the use of violence, even in the best of causes. The ability of violence to achieve its stated aims is routinely over-estimated, the complexity of its costs overlooked. Our opposition also stems from the perception that the practice of war entails far more than the killing and destroying in armed combat. It requires the creation of a ‘‘war system’’ that entails arming, training, and organizing for possible wars; allocating the resources these preparations require; creating a culture in which wars are seen as morally legitimate, even alluring; and shaping and fostering the masculinities and femininities which undergird men’s and women’s acquiescence to war. Even when it appears to achieve its aims, war is a source of enormous individual suffering and loss. Modern warfare is also predictably destructive to societies, civil liberties and democratic processes, and the non-human world. State security may sometimes be served by war, but too often human security is not. The tradition as a whole is not typically ‘‘pacifist’’ as that term is usually understood. While some anti-war feminists are indeed pacifists, the tradition as a whole neither rejects all wars as wrong, nor condemns others because they resort to violence. Indeed, some anti-war feminists have supported military campaigns against oppressive regimes. Although they do not reject violence in principle, they are, however, committed to ‘‘translating’’ or ‘‘transfiguring violence into creative militant nonviolence.’’4 To suggest the distinctive character of anti-war feminism, we identify four of its constitutive positions.

1. War Is a Gendered Practice First, anti-war feminists insistently underline the gendered character of war, stressing its domination by men and masculinity, thus making visible what has been taken for granted. But they also stress that women’s labor has always been central to war-making—although it has also consistently been either unacknowledged, or represented as tangential, in order to protect war’s ‘‘masculinity.’’5 Secondly, they challenge the view that war is inherently gendered—in particular, the view that biology renders men ‘‘naturally’’ war-like and war therefore a ‘‘natural’’ male activity. The simple link of some innate male

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aggression to the conduct of war is belied both by what men actually do in war6 and by many men’s reluctance to fight.7 Anti-war feminists identify the association of manliness with militarized violence as the product of specific social processes which they try to change.8 Finally, anti-war feminists analyze the ways that war-making is shaped by a gendered system of meanings. We understand gender not just as a characteristic of individuals, but as a symbolic system—a central organizing discourse in our culture, a set of ways of thinking, which not only shape how we experience and represent ourselves as men and women, but which also provide a familiar set of metaphors, dichotomies, and values which structure ways of thinking about other aspects of the world. In other words, we see the ways in which human characteristics and endeavors are culturally divided into those seen as ‘‘masculine’’ and those seen as ‘‘feminine’’ (for example, mind is opposed to body; culture to nature; thought to feeling; logic to intuition; objectivity to subjectivity; aggression to passivity; confrontation to accommodation; war to peace; abstraction to particularity; public to private; political to personal; realism to moral reflection), and the terms coded ‘‘male’’ are valued more highly than those coded ‘‘female.’’ We see the devaluation of what is seen as ‘‘feminine’’ as distorting basic national security paradigms and policies. Once the devaluation-by-association takes place, it becomes extremely difficult for anyone, female or male to express concerns or ideas marked as ‘‘feminine.’’ What then gets left out is the emotional, the concrete, the particular, human bodies and their vulnerability, human lives and their subjectivity.9

2. Start from Women’s Lives Applying a central tenet of feminist methodology, we look at war and weapons from the perspective of women’s lives, making women’s experiences a central rather than marginal concern. In the context of war, ‘‘women’s lives’’ has two primary referents: the work women do and the distinctive bodily assaults war inflicts on them. Women’s work traditionally includes life-shaping responsibilities of caring labor: giving birth to and caring for children, protecting and sustaining ill, frail, or other dependents, maintaining households, and fostering and protecting kin, village, and neighborhood relations. War threatens the wellbeing, and even existence, of the people, relations, and homes that women maintain.10 Women are often in effect conscripted for dangerous or demeaning work whose effects may also survive the official end of war. The practice of war implies a willingness to inflict pain and damage on bodies, to ‘‘out-injure’’ the other in pursuit of war’s aim.11 Women are no

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more or less embodied than men; but their bodies are differently at risk. There has been a quantitative shift in the ratio of women to men sufferers as civilian casualties come to outnumber those of the military. Rape is the conqueror’s reward and taunt. It is a weapon against women and also against the men and community to whom they belong. The woman who becomes pregnant by rape may be seen by the rapist, or by herself, as forced to join the enemy, to create him. She may fear, and her rapist may hope, that she is contributing to the destruction of her own people.12 Given the multiple ways that war commits violence against women, it is suspect, at the least, to look for security from militaries. Conceptions of security based in the military defense of state borders and interests often mean greater insecurity for women.

3. War Is Not Spatially or Temporally Bounded Anti-war feminism rejects the conception of war as a discrete event, with clear locations, and a beginning and an end. In our vision it is crucial not to separate war from either the preparations made for it or its long-term physical, psychological, socio-economic, environmental, and gendered effects.13 War’s violence is not separate from other social practices. There is a continuum of violence running from bedroom, to boardroom, factory, stadium, classroom, and battlefield, ‘‘traversing our bodies and our sense of self.’’14 Weapons of violence, and representations of those weapons, travel through interlocking institutions—economic, political, familial, technological, and ideological. Before the first gunfire is the research, development, and deployment of weapons; the maintaining of standing armies; the cultural glorification of the power of armed force; and the social construction of masculinities and femininities that support a militarized state. When the war is over, what remains is a ripped social fabric: the devastation of the physical, economic, and social infrastructure through which people provision themselves and their families; the havoc wrought in the lives and psyches of combatants, noncombatants, and children who have grown up in war; the surfeit of arms on the streets, and of ex-soldiers trained to kill; citizens who have been schooled and practiced in the methods of violence, but not in nonviolent methods of dealing with conflict; ‘‘nature’’ poisoned, burned, made ugly and useless.15 Typically peace includes official punishment—retribution, reparations, domination, and deprivation.

4. Alternative Epistemology Both in philosophy and in Western thought more generally, ‘‘objective’’ knowledge is produced by socially autonomous reasoners who have transcended

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institutional constraints, gender identifications, and emotion. Many feminists propose an alternative epistemology, which stresses that all thinkers are ‘‘situated’’ within epistemic communities that ask some but not other questions, and legitimate some but not other ways of knowing. We are each of us also situated by social identities and personal histories.16 Knowing is never wholly separated from feelings. We begin with and return to concrete openended questions about actual people in actual situations. Finally, we measure arguments, and ideals of objectivity, partly in the goods they yield, the pleasures they make possible and the suffering they prevent.

ANTI-WAR FEMINISM AND WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION Grounded in this alternative epistemology, we are ambivalent about making ethical distinctions among weapons. We recognize that some weapons, and uses of weapons, are worse than others. Some weapons can be carefully aimed to cause minimal damage; others cannot. Some weapons may be deliberately cruel (dum dum bullets), outlast the occasion that apparently justified them (land mines), harm indiscriminately (cluster bombs, land mines again, or poison gas in a crowded subway), or injure massively and painfully (incendiary bombs). While respecting these distinctions, we nonetheless fear that stressing the horror of some weapons diminishes the horrors that more ‘‘acceptable’’ weapons wreak. For us the crucial question is not, ‘‘How do we chose among weapons?’’ but rather, ‘‘How can we identify and attend to the specific horrors of any weapon?’’ In contrast to the attention given to WMD, for example, the horrors of small arms and light weapons (SALW) are too often ignored. SALW are weapons light enough to be packed over a mountain on a mule, including stinger missiles, machine guns, grenades, assault rifles, small explosives, and handguns. They are inexpensive, require little or no training to use, and are easily available, often unregulated by state, military, civic, or even parental authority. They have a long shelf life, travel easily, and therefore can, in the course of time, be traded, turned against various enemies, and brought home. They are a staple of the arms market, and the principal instrument of violence in armed conflicts throughout the world. When one looks at it from the perspectives of women’s lives, SALW are seen as the cause of enormous, sustained, and pervasive suffering of very specific kinds. They are an instrument and enforcer of sexual violence, they wreak havoc among the relationships women have tended, and destroy women’s capacity to obtain food, water, and other necessary staples, to farm and to keep their animals safe. In the lives of women around the world, small arms and light weapons are ‘‘weapons of mass destruction in slow motion.’’

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Regarding what are more typically thought of as WMD, anti-war feminists have focused on nuclear weapons, and the discourse through which their use is theorized and legitimated—what we call ‘‘technostrategic discourse.’’17 Critically, this discourse functions in myriad ways to divert attention from the specific horrors of the weapons’ use. Anti-war feminists have written about both the sexual and domestic metaphors that turn the mind’s eye toward the pleasant and familiar, rather than toward images of indescribable devastation. They have identified in nuclear discourse techniques of denial and conceptual fragmentation. They have emphasized the ways that the abstraction and euphemism of nuclear discourse protect nuclear defense intellectuals and politicians from the grisly realities behind their words. 18 Abstract discussion of warfare is both the tool and the privilege of those who imagine themselves as the users of weapons. The victims, if they can speak at all, speak quite differently as seen in the following two statements. While a U.S. defense intellectual says: [You have to have ways to maintain communications in a] nuclear environment, a situation bound to include EMP blackout, brute force damage to systems, a heavy jamming environment, and so on.19

In an account by a Hiroshima survivor we read: Everything was black, had vanished into the black dust, was destroyed. Only the flames that were beginning to lick their way up had any color. From the dust that was like a fog, figures began to loom up, black, hairless, faceless. They screamed with voices that were no longer human. Their screams drowned out the groans rising everywhere from the rubble, groans that seemed to rise from the very earth itself.20

Needless to say, it is easier to contemplate and ‘‘justify’’ the use of nuclear weapons in the abstract language of defense intellectuals than in the descriptive, emotionally resonant language of the victim. Detailed, focal attention to the human impact of weapons’ use is not only considered out of bounds in security professionals’ discourse; it is also de-legitimated by its association with the ‘‘feminine,’’ as is evident in this excerpt of an interview with a physicist: Several colleagues and I were working on modeling counterforce nuclear attacks, trying to get realistic estimates of the number of immediate fatalities that would result from different deployments. At one point, we remodeled a particular attack, using slightly different assumptions, and found that instead of there being 36 million immediate fatalities, there would only be 30 million. And everybody was sitting around nodding, saying, ‘‘Oh yeh, that’s great, only 30 million,’’ when all of a sudden, I

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heard what we were saying. And I blurted out, ‘‘Wait, I’ve just heard how we’re talking—Only 30 million! Only 30 million human beings killed instantly?’’ Silence fell upon the room. Nobody said a word. They didn’t even look at me. It was awful. I felt like a woman.21

ANTI-WAR FEMINISM AND THE FULL COSTS OF HAVING WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION If we must accord full weight to their daily effects on the lives of women, we find that the development and deployment of nuclear weapons, even when they are not used in warfare, exacts costs that particularly affect women. In the words of an Indian feminist: The social costs of nuclear weaponization in a country where the basic needs of shelter, food and water, electricity, health and education have not been met are obvious. . . . Less food for the family inevitably means an even smaller share for women and female children just as water shortages mean an increase in women’s labor who have to spend more time and energy in fetching water from distant places at odd hours of the day.22

Although the United States is not as poor a nation as India, Pakistan, or Russia, it has remained, throughout the nuclear age, a country in which poverty and hunger are rife, health care still unaffordable to many, low-cost housing unavailable, with crumbling public schools and infrastructure, while the American nuclear weapons program has come at the cost of $4.5 trillion.23 In addition to being economically costly, nuclear weapons development has medical and political costs. In the U.S. program, many people have been exposed to high levels of radiation, including uranium miners; workers at reactors and processing facilities; the quarter of a million military personnel who took place in ‘‘atomic battlefield’’ exercises; ‘‘downwinders’’ from test sites; and Marshallese Islanders. Politically, nuclear regimes require a level of secrecy and security measures that exclude the majority of citizens, and in most countries, all women, from defense policy and decision making.24 From the perspective of women’s lives, we see not only the costs of the development of nuclear weapons, but also the spiritual, social, and psychological costs of deployment. One cost, according to some feminists, is that ‘‘Nuclearization produces social consent for increasing levels of violence.’’25 Another cost, for many, is that nuclear weapons create high levels of tension, insecurity, and fear. As Arundhati Roy puts it, nuclear weapons ‘‘[i]nform our dreams. They bury themselves like meat hooks deep in the base of our brains.’’26

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Further, feminists are concerned about the effect of nuclear policy on moral thought, on ideas about gender, and how the two intersect. Nuclear development may legitimize male aggression, and breed the idea that nuclear explosions give ‘‘virility’’ to the nation that men as individuals can somehow share. The strange character of nuclear policy making, which not only sidelines moral and ethical questions, but genders them, creates an elite that represents itself as rational, scientific, modern, and of course masculine, while ethical questions—questions about the social and environmental costs—are made to seem emotional, effeminate, regressive, and not modern. This rather dangerous way of thinking, which suggests that questions about human life and welfare are somehow neither modern nor properly masculine questions, or that men have no capacity and concern for peace and morality, can have disastrous consequences for both men and women.27 All in all, we find the daily costs of WMD development and deployment staggeringly high—in and of themselves enough to prevent deterrence from being an ethical moral option. A so-called ‘‘realist’’ response to this judgment might well argue that the results of a nuclear attack would be so catastrophic that the rest of these considerations are really irrelevant. We make two rejoinders to this claim. First, we question the very assumptions that bestow the mantle of ‘‘realism’’ on such a constrained focus on weapons and state power. Rather than simply being an ‘‘objective’’ reflection of political reality, we understand this thought system as (1) a partial and distorted picture of reality, and (2) a major contributor to creating the very circumstances it purports to describe and protect against. Second, just as feminists tend to be skeptical about the efficacy of violence, they might be equally skeptical about the efficacy of deterrence. Deterrence theory is an elaborate, abstract conceptual edifice, which posits a hypothetical relation between two different sets of weapons systems, presided over by ‘‘rational actors,’’ for whom what counts as ‘‘rational’’ is the same, independent of culture, history, or individual difference. It depends on those ‘‘rational actors’’ perfectly understanding the meaning of ‘‘signals’’ communicated by military actions, despite dependence on technologies that sometimes malfunction; despite cultural difference and the difficulties of ensuring mutual understanding even when best friends make direct face-to-face statements to each other. The dream of perfect rationality and control that underwrites deterrence theory is highly dangerous, since it legitimates constructing a system that only could be (relatively) safe if that perfect rationality and control were actually possible. ‘‘Realists’’ are quick to point out the dangers of not having WMD for deterrence when other states have them. Feminist perspectives

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suggest that that danger only appears so self-evidently greater than the danger of having WMD if you discount as ‘‘soft,’’ the serious attention to the costs of development and deployment.

THE ETHICS OF PROLIFERATION We have been asked to address the question, ‘‘If some nations possess weapons of mass destruction (either licitly or illicitly) for defensive and deterrent purposes, is it proper to deny such possession to others for the same purposes?’’ We believe that the rampant proliferation of weapons of all kinds, from handguns to nuclear weapons, is a massive tragedy, the direct and indirect source of great human suffering. Given this starting point, we, of course, oppose the proliferation of WMD. But our opposition does not allow us to give a simple ‘‘yes’’ answer to the question above, as it is posed. Before turning to proliferation as a phenomenon, we must first consider current proliferation discourse.

Proliferation as a Discourse Proliferation is not a mere description or mirror of a phenomenon that is ‘‘out there,’’ but rather a very specific way of identifying and constructing a problem. Proliferation, as used in Western political discourse, does not simply refer to the multiplication of WMD on the planet. Rather, it constructs some WMD as a problem, and others as unproblematic. It does so by assuming pre-existing, legitimate possessors of the weapons, implicitly not only entitled to those weapons, but to modernize and develop new generations of them as well. The problematic WMD are only those that ‘‘spread’’ into the arsenals of other, formerly nonpossessor states. This is presumably the basis for the ‘‘licit/illicit’’ distinction in the question; it does not refer to the nature of the weapons themselves, nor even to the purposes for which they are intended—only, in the case of nuclear weapons, to who the possessor is, where ‘‘licitness’’ is based on the treaty-enshrined ‘‘we got there first.’’ Thus, use of the term proliferation tends to locate the person who uses it within a possessor state, and aligns him or her with the political stance favoring the hierarchy of state power enshrined in the current distribution of WMD. The framing of the question ‘‘. . . is it proper to deny [WMD] possession to others for the same purposes?’’ seems similarly based in a possessor state perspective, as it is presumably the possessor states who must decide whether it is proper to deny possession to others. As we have already stated, we find WMD themselves intrinsically morally indefensible, no matter who possesses them, and we are concerned about the

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wide array of costs to any state of development and deployment. We therefore reject the discourse’s implicit division of ‘‘good’’ and ‘‘bad,’’ ‘‘safe’’ and ‘‘unsafe’’ WMD (defined as good or bad depending on who possesses them). Our concern is to understand how some WMD are rendered invisible (‘‘ours’’) and some visible (‘‘theirs’’); some rendered malignant and others benign. Here, we join others in noting that the language in which the case against proliferation is made is ethno-racist and contemptuous. Generally, in Western proliferation discourse as a whole, a distinction is drawn between ‘‘the ‘‘Self ’’ (seen as responsible) versus the non-Western ‘‘Unruly Other.’’28 The United States represents itself as a rational actor, while representing the Unruly Other as emotional, unpredictable, irrational, immature, misbehaving. Not only does this draw on and reconstruct an Orientalist portrayal of Third World actors;29 it does so through the medium of gendered terminology. By drawing the relations between possessors and nonpossessors in gendered terms—the prudential, rational, advanced, mature, restrained, technologically and bureaucratically competent (and thus ‘‘masculine’’) Self, versus the emotional, irrational, unpredictable, uncontrolled, immature, primitive, undisciplined, technologically incompetent (and thus ‘‘feminine’’) Unruly Other—the discourse naturalizes and legitimates the Self/possessor states having weapons that the Other does not. By drawing on and evoking gendered imagery and resonances, the discourse naturalizes the idea that ‘‘We’’/the United States/ the responsible father must protect, must control and limit ‘‘her,’’ the emotional, out-of-control state, for her own good, as well as for ours. This Western proliferation discourse has had a function in the wider context of U.S. national security politics. With the end of the ‘‘Evil Empire’’ in the late 1980s, until the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States appeared to be without an enemy of grand enough proportions to justify maintaining its sprawling military-industrial establishment. This difficulty was forestalled by the construction of the category of ‘‘rogue states’’—states seen as uncontrollable, irresponsible, irrational, malevolent, and antagonistic to the West.30 Their unruliness and antagonism was represented as intrinsic to their irrational nature; if it were not in their ‘‘nature,’’ the United States would have needed to ask more seriously if actions on the part of the West had had any role in producing that hostility and disorder. The discourse of WMD proliferation has been one of the principal means of producing these states as major threats. To say this is neither to back away from our position opposing WMD, nor to assess the degree to which WMD in the hands of ‘‘Other’’ states actually do threaten the United States, the ‘‘Other’’ states’ regional opponents, or their own population. But it is an assessment of the role of WMD proliferation discourse in naturalizing and

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legitimating otherwise-difficult-to-make-appear-rational programs and expenditures such as National Missile Defense.31

Proliferation as a Phenomenon Within the logic of deterrence theory and proliferation discourse, the phenomenon of WMD proliferation is understandable in two main ways. States either acquire WMD for purposes of aggression—that is, to use WMD or to threaten their use in acts of aggression, intimidation, and/or coercion against other states or populations within their own state. States also acquire WMD to enhance their own security by deterring an opponent from attack. Within a strategic calculus, either is understood as a ‘‘rational’’ motivation for WMD possession, even if not everyone would view these reasons as equally morally defensible. Some in the security community have argued that this ‘‘realist consensus’’ about states’ motivations for development of WMD ‘‘is dangerously inadequate.’’ They argue that ‘‘nuclear weapons, like other weapons, are more than tools of national security; they are political objects of considerable importance in domestic debates and internal bureaucratic struggles and can also serve as international normative symbols of modernity and identity.’’32 We agree, but would add that the understanding any of those motivations will be incomplete without gender analysis. We argue that gendered terms and images are an integral part of the ways national security issues are thought about and represented—and that it matters. During the Gulf War, for example, the mass media speculated whether George Bush had finally ‘‘beat the wimp factor.’’ When in the spring of 1998 India exploded five nuclear devices, Hindu nationalist leader Balasaheb Thackeray explained that ‘‘we had to prove that we are not eunuchs.’’ An Indian newspaper cartoon ‘‘depicted Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee propping up his coalition government with a nuclear bomb. ‘Made with Viagra,’ the caption read.’’33 Feminists argue that these images are not trivial, but instead deserve analysis. Metaphors that equate political and military power with sexual potency and masculinity serve to both shape and limit the ways in which national security is conceptualized.34 Political actors incorporate sexual metaphors in their representations of nuclear weapons as a way to mobilize gendered associations and symbols in creating assent, excitement, support for, and identification with the weapons and their own political regime. Moreover, gendered metaphor is not only an integral part of accomplishing domestic power aims. The use of these metaphors also appropriates the test of a nuclear weapon into the occasion for reinforcing patriarchal gender relations.

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That a nation wishing to stake a claim to being a world power (or a regional one) should choose nuclear weapons as its medium for doing so is often seen as ‘‘natural’’: the more advanced military destructive capacity you have, the more powerful you are. The ‘‘fact’’ that nuclear weapons would be the coin of the realm in establishing a hierarchy of state power is fundamentally unremarked, unanalyzed, taken for granted by most (nonfeminist) analysts. Some anti-war feminists, by contrast, have looked with a historical and post-colonial eye, and seen nuclear weapons’ enshrinement as the emblem of power not as a natural fact, but as a social one, produced by the actions of states. They argue that when the United States, with the most powerful economy and conventional military in the world, acts as though its power and security are guaranteed only by a large nuclear arsenal, it creates a context in which nuclear weapons become the ultimate necessity for and symbol of state security. And when the United States or any other nuclear power works hard to ensure that other states don’t obtain nuclear weapons, it is creating a context in which nuclear weapons become the ultimate arbiter of political power.35

An Ethical Nonproliferation Politics? Finally, after our critique of both the framing and political uses of Western proliferation discourse, and our questioning of the adequacy of the models through which proliferation as a phenomenon is understood, there remains the question: ‘‘If some nations possess WMD (either licitly or illicitly) for defensive and deterrent purposes, is it proper to deny such possession to others for the same purposes?’’ We have spoken of the multiple costs of developing and deploying nuclear weapons to their possessors and the immense suffering that WMD would bring. Given what we have said, we should not be indifferent to other states’ developing nuclear weapons unless we were indifferent to them. Additionally, we believe that more WMD in more places would make their ‘‘accidental’’ or purposive use by states, as well as their availability to terrorists, more likely. So we are opposed to the development and deployment of any WMD, by any state or non-state actor. Despite this clear opposition to the spread of WMD, we are uneasy simply answering ‘‘no’’ to the question as it is posed. The question assumes that some states already have WMD, and asks only whether it is proper to deny WMD to others. Denying WMD to others implies maintaining the current international balance of power, in which the West is privileged, politically and economically. As feminists, we oppose the extreme inequality inherent in the current world order, and are troubled by actions that will further

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enshrine it. But at the same time, we cannot endorse WMD proliferation as a mode of equalization; nor do we see it as an effective form of redress. Second, we come to the question not only as feminists, but as citizens of the most highly armed possessor state. As such, we must ask: are citizens of possessor states entitled to judge, threaten, allow, or encourage the decisions of nonpossessor states to develop WMD? On what grounds? In what discursive territory? As we have outlined above, we find the existing proliferation discourse too ethno-racist, too focused on horizontal rather than vertical proliferation, and too sanguine about the justifiability of ‘‘our’’ having what ‘‘they’’ are not fit to have. Our task then, as anti-war feminists, is to learn how to participate in a constructive conversation,36 eschewing the vocabulary of ‘‘proliferation,’’ learning to listen, perhaps publicizing the warnings that women—and men—are issuing about the multiple costs and risks of WMD in their particular states. As citizens of the most highly armed possessor state, our credibility as participants in this conversation will be contingent on our committed efforts to bring about nuclear disarmament in our own state, and our efforts to redress the worldwide inequalities that are underwritten by our military superiority.

NOTES 1. Truman, 1945. 2. Thompson, 1988. 3. Certain figures are taken as representatives of anti- war feminism. Images of Kathe Kollwitz’ art work and phrases from Virginia Woolf ’s writing appear on postcards and T-shirts. On a deeper look each of these women expresses complexities of anti-war feminism. Kollwitz, who sent her son ‘‘off to war’’ with flowers and a blessing, slowly and with difficulty achieved an anti-war stance. Woolf, whose imagination was fundamentally shaped by her fear and rejection of war, found her anti-militarism tested by Nazi aggression. Woolf explicitly situated her anti-war feminism within a particular class: ‘‘daughters of educated men.’’ Yet Cynthia Enloe, who studies the effects of masculinist militarization on women’s lives across the globe, finds that Woolf ’s Three Guineas (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1938) sheds ‘‘new light on the subtle practices of militarization’’ with each new group of students from ‘‘the United States, Japan, Mali, Korea, Bulgaria.’’ See Cynthia Enloe, Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 2000). The editors of Feminist Studies chose for its post-September 11th cover a photograph of Jane Addams at 70 ‘‘campaigning for peace’’ with her friend Mary McDowell, who, like Addams, was a pacifist, suffragist, and unionist. Jean Bethke Elshtain, herself an engaged reporter on and ambivalent participant in anti-war feminism, has just produced a biography of Addams and a ‘‘reader’’ that collects Addams’s writings. Addams was ostracized for reporting that many soldiers were loath to kill, that they could use

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a bayonet only after they were given ‘‘dope.’’ Were Addams now to become representative, as Kollwitz and Woolf are, she would highlight the typical commitments of anti-war feminism to social justice and to the well-being of men made killers in war. Our tradition is represented by groups as much as by individuals. Among the most venerable is the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), which was founded in 1915 to protest World War I, and which today is actively involved in disarmament and non-proliferation issues, as well as in advocacy for gender analysis in security affairs at the United Nations. During the Cold War, many women’s movements protested nuclear weapons. Many other women’s protest movements represent some but not all aspects of anti-war feminism. The courageous protest of the Madres of Argentina against a military dictatorship only gradually became anti-militarist and seems never to have been conventionally feminist. Women in Black began in Israel/Palestine and has moved to many conflictridden sites around the world; though it nearly everywhere engages in struggles for peace, its members differ about the extent and generality of its anti-militarism. In armed conflict zones around the world, there are many other women’s peace initiatives and groups, although many would identify themselves as anti-war, fewer would adopt the label ‘‘feminist.’’ An excellent place to start researching these groups is the Web site www.peacewomen.org, which was started to provide a clearinghouse of information and Web site links for women’s peace groups. 4. A substantial literature exists regarding feminism and pacifism. See Deming, 1984 and Woolf, 1953. 5. Cynthia Enloe has been a pioneer in this field. See Enloe, 1983, 1989, 1993. 6. On the multiple masculinities required by war-making, see Ruddick, 1995. 7. For men’s reluctance to fight, see Goldstein, 2001 especially Ch. 5. The relation between masculinity, aggression, and war remains highly controversial. Goldstein provides a lucid, balanced assessment of this debate. 8. See Enloe, 1993. 9. Cohn, 1987, 1993. 10. On war’s destructive effects on women’s work, see Tripp, 2000 and Cockburn, 1999. 11. Scarry, 1985. 12. See original text for an extensive list of further reading on this topic of rape as an instrument of war. 13. For the classic statement of this perspective, see Woolf, 2009; Cuomo, 1996; and Schott, 1996. 14. Cockburn, 1999. 15. This is primarily a description of after-effects on societies whose territories have been the site of warfare. But even those societies whose soldiers fight in distant lands suffer related effects. Surviving soldiers may bring home the effects of violence: injured bodies and minds; remorse, rage and despair; habits of aggression and abuse; syndromes of suffering. 16. The phrase ‘‘alternative epistemology’’ comes from Margaret Urban Walker, ‘‘Moral Understandings: Alternative ‘Epistemology’ for a Feminist Ethics,’’ Hypatia 4, no. 4 (1989): 15–28. See original text for an extensive list of further readings.

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17. Cohn, 1987. 18. See Cohn, 1993; Griffin, 1992; and Wolf, 1984. 19. General Robert Rosenberg, formerly on the National Security Council staff during the Carter Administration, speaking at the Harvard Seminar on C3I. ‘‘The Influence of Policy Making on C3I,’’ in Incidental Paper: Seminar on Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence, Spring 1980. Center for Information Policy Research, Harvard University, 59. 20. Hisako Matsubara, Cranes at Dusk (Garden City, NY: Dial Press, 1985). The author was a child in Kyoto at the time the atomic bomb was dropped. Her description is based on the memories of survivors. See Matsubara, 1985. 21. Cohn, 1993. 22. Some defenders of nuclear weapons argue that nuclear weapons are actually economically beneficial, as a form of ‘‘defense on the cheap’’ (in contrast to the costs of conventional weapons and armies). Sangari et al. reject this argument, pointing out that ‘‘Nuclearization will not eliminate the necessity for conventional weapons. On the contrary, by provoking neighboring countries severely, it has made the prospect of conventional warfare far more imminent, and has stepped up military investment altogether.’’ See Sangari et al., 1998. 23. In 1995, a study by the Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project Committee was the first systematic attempt to catalog the comprehensive cost of the U.S. nuclear weapons program from inception in 1940 to 1995. The amount, $ 4 trillion, did not include the cost of disposing of hundreds of tons of uranium and plutonium. It did not include the money spent on National Missile Defense nor the costs of environmental clean up necessitated by the ‘‘unprecedented legacy of toxic and radioactive pollution at dozens of sites and thousands of facilities across the country,’’ which they estimated would cost at least half a trillion more, where it can be cleaned up at all. See Schwartz, 1995. 24. This point is made by Sangari et al., 1998. 25. Ibid. 26. Roy, 1999. 27. Sangari et al., 1998. 28. Wright, 2001. Manuscript by courtesy of the author. 29. Said, 1978; Biswas, 2001. 30. For ‘‘rogue states,’’ see Klare, 1995 and Wright, 2001. 31. Berry, 2000. 32. Scott Sagan, for example, has argued that ‘‘nuclear weapons programs also serve other, more parochial and less obvious objectives.’’ See Sagan, 1996. In our view all three of the models Sagan outlines—the ‘‘security model,’’ the ‘‘domestic politics model,’’ and the ‘‘norms model’’—are seriously weakened by their failure to incorporate gender analysis. 33. Basu and Basu, 1999. 34. Cohn, 1993. 35. Arundhati Roy put it this way: ‘‘But let us pause to give credit where it’s due. Whom must we thank for all this? The Men who made it happen. The Masters of the Universe. Ladies and gentlemen, the United States of America! Come on up here, folks, stand up and take a bow. Thank you for doing this to the world. Thank

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you for making a difference. Thank you for showing us the way. Thank you for altering the very meaning of life.’’ See Roy, 1999. Some Indian feminists have combined this attention to weapons as symbols in world power relations with an analysis of the gendered meanings of power. Basu and Basu argue that the Bharativa Janata party decision to explode five nuclear bombs was in part an attempt ‘‘to shatter stereotypes about the ‘effeminate’ Indian that date back to the period of British colonialism.’’ The British particularly disparaged ‘feminized’ Hindu masculinity, while seeing Muslims as ‘‘robust and brave.’’ See Basu and Basu, 1999. 36. The term ‘‘constructive conversation’’ was introduced to us through a conversation Carol had with Laura Chasin, the director of the Public Conversations Project. Their Web site, http://www.publicconversations.org, would be a valuable resource for anyone who is trying to think about political conflict.

PART VI

THE CHALLENGE

BEFORE

US

Poverty and hunger are particularly grievous results of structural violence. They are not consequences of one particular violent activity but rather of the way that society at all levels is organized. Poverty has a demographic distribution internationally and within cities. It also reflects the distribution of resources and the system of laws and rules that regulate the ways they are allocated. Poverty reflects the system of information exchange telling who gets what communication and who governs the flow of information. Finally, poverty relies on a system of values that permit all of these and other dimensions of inequality to continue. We should, of course, feed hungry people, and we should enhance their capacities to obtain and provide food; but serious reduction of the violence of poverty requires a change in a larger system. Similarly, the direct violence of war is embedded in a larger pattern of the way we do things, the way we obtain and protect wealth, the position we afford states to define personal identity and security—and ultimately the value we place on human life. Every violent incident we can prevent is important, but building a world in which the active pursuit of peace replaces the embedded activities of war is a greater task. In this part we examine some of the central supports of the system of global violence, particularly those having to do with the prevailing system of resource distribution and economic activity. The three chapters included

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consider the difficulties of moving that system, the costs of not doing so, and the possibility of making such a change. Jan Egeland writes about organized efforts at a global level to distribute resources vital to sustain life. His years of working with the UN to combat poverty provide a keen vantage point on the areas that have improved, but also the billion lives that face dire poverty and are not being reached. He notes the dangers to peace and security that have resulted and the rather stingy assistance offered by industrialized countries. David Korten addresses the power of corporations and of large centralized systems and suggests a mobilization to regain control of decisions by groups more attuned to the reality of local needs. Pilisuk and Gaddy extend that argument to show how corporate power and military decisions are related and how needed changes require an understanding and redefinition of the taboo topic—the monetary system. Where does money come from, who determines what it is worth, and what might it look like in a peaceful world? In general the three articles suggest that the system of violence runs deep, but that we made it and we can change it. —Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler

CHAPTER

16

W A R , P E A C E , A N D C L I M AT E C H A N G E : A BILLION LIVES IN THE BALANCE Jan Egeland

We can for the first time in a very long time say confidently that for a majority of us in this world, the situation is improving. There is 50 percent more peace and less war now than when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the watershed of our generation. Researchers found when they made the Human Security Report that there were 10 genocides in 1989. There are many fewer today. There was, in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, an average of 10 to 20 military coups per year; now there are between two and four per year. And for the first time ever the World Bank economists found in their surveys in 2007 that there are fewer than 1 billion fellow human beings who struggle to survive on less than $1 per day. Given the growing world population, this means that hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty in China, India, Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. Palestinians still constitute the largest segment of the world’s refugees facing unique geopolitical circumstances. However, there were more than 20 million other refugees in the beginning of the 1990s. Four to five million of those were in Europe, where we had several

This is an address by Jan Egeland delivered on March 4, 2008, at the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies, University of San Diego, San Diego, California. Thanks to Rebecca Norlander and Patrick Landewe for help in editing this and preparing it as a chapter for publication.

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wars in the Balkans at the time. Today there are around 10 million nonPalestinian refugees, half as many today as there were only 15 years ago. However, we live in a world of increasingly stark contrasts. Nations will be dismantling big arms that are remnants of the Cold War, as a consequence of the disarmament agreements between the NATO West and the old Warsaw Pact countries. But there will be a spread of small arms, some also left over from the same Cold War, to be used in the endless cruel wars of Africa and elsewhere. Although there are fewer refugees, the number of displaced people remains the same, around 23 million. Even though there are many more people in school, including higher education, there are still an enormous number of people who are deprived of even a minute of education and who will remain illiterate for the duration of their lives. So, we have a world of contrasts where the good news is that there are only 1 billion people who live on around $1 a day; but that is, of course, also the bad news and is why I call my book A Billion Lives. We’ve never been richer as an international community, and still nearly 1 billion people will go to bed hungry today. They will not have had access to safe drinking water today. They will not even have access to primary health care. And surviving on $1 per day is, in relative terms, even more difficult now than before; they know how well off we are. And I think this is one of the new things of our time and age. The 2 billion under $2 per day is perhaps an even better measure; they know exactly how we are living in San Diego, in Oslo, in Geneva, in Tokyo, in Seoul—places where we are shielded in a degree of peace, prosperity, welfare, like no other generation before us. And that makes them angry like nowhere before, no time before. That resentment is perhaps strongest among the 1.3 billion human beings in the age group between 12 and 24 years. Of them, the majority will get education and jobs, but a very sizable minority, hundreds of millions of those 1.3 billion, will get neither of the two. If you deprive tens if not hundreds of millions of youth of all hope, they will get angry and want to move. They want to go north toward this fence at the U.S. border, or they want to go to the fences of Europe, or of Korea or Australia or of Japan. Now, what are the biggest clouds on this horizon in addition to the contrast between the rich and the poor? Well, there is one new cloud that we’re focusing on in particular, which is by far the biggest existential threat against mankind now in a time when we see so much improvement—and that is climate change. There have always been climate variations. I was in Oslo with the secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization in the spring of 2008. He went into detail to explain the difference between climate variation, which has always happened, and climate change, which is not induced by the globe going in a new pattern around the sun and

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thereby creating an ice age or an ice meltdown—it is human induced for the first time ever. And for the first time ever, there is no doubt anymore. There is a consensus among scientists that we do have climate change which is human induced through the emission of greenhouse gases. Now, the question becomes, would this lead to war, would it lead to catastrophe, or can we adapt? On that the jury is out because we can still have influence on the outcomes. I have of late been more involved in the discussion of the possible climate wars. Many declared, perhaps a bit too early when the Nobel Peace Prize was given to Al Gore and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that that was in a way evidence that climate change is leading to climate wars. And some said that Darfur is one of the first climate wars. That is not necessarily true. We’ve now gone through, in the last 15 years, a unique period of end to wars. That is the period when we’ve seen, for example, in the Sahel or in the hurricane belts of the world, a tripling of natural disasters because of climate change. More vulnerable people live more exposed to extreme weather. Where it’s dry it’s getting drier; where it’s wet it’s getting wetter; where it’s windy it’s getting windier. That is the whole thrust of climate change. Whether that will lead to more conflict or more cooperation remains to be seen. Many have predicted it will lead to more conflict, but we’re actually seeing more peace as of late. There are indications that the world, the UN, the regional organizations have had some success in inducing cooperation instead of conflict. Fifteen years ago we were predicting water wars in the Middle East and elsewhere. It was predicted that there would be fighting around and for the water of the river Jordan, around and for the water of the river Euphrates and the river Tigris. None of those wars happened for those scarce water resources. Cooperation regimes were successful. The same thing is true in Africa around the river Niger and the river Mano. A Mano River initiative was successful. We can influence more cooperation in meeting the resource scarcity, but we can also see more conflict. Certainly in Darfur, which was a man-made disaster, a cruel regime armed some old militias and said, ‘‘Do whatever you want against the civilian population,’’ which support two guerilla movements. Then all hell broke loose and there was an ethnic cleansing campaign. Now, the 6 to 7 million people in Darfur today live on less green land than they did 10 years ago, and there is also population growth. This means that it is very hard now for those of us involved in the peace efforts to help people back out of refugee camps, even with the peace agreement, to a new and good life in this desert that is more inhospitable because of climate change. That again means that we need to have a big international investment not only on the political level to get more cooperation, but also on the development level: give people hope, give people a new future in these

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circumstances. The nomads have to get help for a new life. There will have to be more irrigation. There will have to be more ways of doing agriculture. And there has to be more employment in other areas. I mentioned the growth of natural disasters. Unfortunately, I don’t think that it’s widely known that there are three times more natural disasters in this decade than there were in the 1960s and 1970s because of more extreme weather and because more vulnerable people live more exposed. There are seven times more livelihoods devastated from natural disasters now than from war in our time and age. It is estimated that the Millennium Development Goals will be impossible to reach if this growth of natural disasters continues and if more is not done to adapt and mitigate the results. We can also safely predict that in the future there will be gradually fewer refugee flows coming from war and conflict (as the current positive trend continues), and there will be more migration from environmental degradation. Totally inhospitable areas can become wastelands, like parts of the Sahel or Yemen in the southern tip of the Arab peninsula, where there is no groundwater left even now. People cannot live there except at a great cost; they cannot afford to live there unless they are heavily subsidized by their Saudi Arabian cousins in the north, who seem not very willing to help them. Sea level rise, which is pretty certain under any of the predictions of the UN climate panel, will lead to coastal communities having to move inland. There are many reasons there will be migratory trends. I hope and believe we will have cooperation in the international community to meet these climate changes to help make poor people survive those great changes. But the investment will be enormous. It is probable that the total global bill of preventative measures, fewer emissions, technology transfer (from all those who have technology to all those who need technology), and clean energy (all those places where they are using coal and other things that should not be used anymore)—will cost trillions of dollars. Is that more than is possible for humankind to invest? No. It is probably between 1 to 2 percent of the gross national income of the industrialized countries. It will be a totally different kind of investment than we’ve seen so far to foreign assistance, but it is possible. It is a question of will. And I, for one, having seen all of these places and visited all of these countries on all these continents, remain an optimist. I feel it is amazing what we can do when we work together as humankind. When I started in the UN, I saw peace break out gradually in Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, southern Sudan, most parts of the Congo, East Timor, Kosovo, and Nepal, to mention a few. This is very often not recognized—what we did and how we managed to do that. For the United States it was a triumph, working with and through the UN, making peace in

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Liberia. The United States was the lead country on that, just as Britain was the lead country on Sierra Leone’s peace process. Those were places where people specialized in killing and massacring each other in the most brutal ways. At the time of this writing, Liberia has a female president who is an example of good governance; that’s been a total, total change. And the warlord Charles Taylor, who specialized in using child soldiers to kill other children, is in jail at The Hague waiting for his verdict. Let me give the other example of relief operations, which was my area of responsibility. In the Southeast Asian tsunami, 90 countries gave assistance and 35 militaries participated. The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln helped the UN jump-start operations after the tsunami all over Aceh. Nobody died because of lack of food, lack of medical services, or lack of basic relief. It’s the same in northern Pakistan; 3.3 million people were without a roof after the earthquake. It was four weeks until the Himalayan winter would descend on us, and I was there to help start the relief operations. It was a race against the clock. We got enough helicopters. We got enough Pakistani and international efforts on the ground. And no more died that winter than would have in a normal year. And when spring came, there were more girls in school than in a normal year. The UN can be very cost-effective in these efforts as well as effective in meeting the humanitarian goals. All of these places have been made peaceful with UN, African Union, and local and national efforts with a budget for peacekeeping of $6 billion a year. That is one-sixth of the U.S. military bill in Afghanistan this year, and it is around 5 percent of the cost in Iraq this year—5 percent: for peace in all of these countries through a multilateral effective action, where the United States played a very effective and constructive role with and in the UN. I would like to sum up the lessons of my 31 years of international work since I came through San Diego as a 19-year-old with my friends from Norway, driving a second-hand car from Canada to Panama on the way to work as a volunteer in a Catholic relief organization in Colombia. In those 31 years, the little bit of wisdom which has accumulated has led me to the following 10 conclusions. The first conclusion is: Prevention is better than cure. It’s a strange thing perhaps to say for somebody who’s had his salary from emergency relief. But it’s insane how much we spend on the fire brigade, trying to cure the wound that could have been healed beforehand. Climate change makes this more important than at any time before. We’re talking about mitigation, adaptation, preparedness, early warning; we’re talking about environment work; we’re talking about development work. That is how we can get out of this vicious cycle of returning again and again and again to certain countries like Ethiopia,

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which could feed itself and thereby make its own population resilient. There are enough natural resources and enough talent in the population to do so, but we have never had a coherent national and international effort to make them resilient to the droughts and the natural disasters and the internal strife that have come back again and again and again. An African friend said the approach we’ve had is, ‘‘Save me today, kill me tomorrow.’’ Why don’t we have an approach that says let’s invest in long-term protection for these populations? Now, the second lesson is related to what I just said about the UN, because I think the multilateral institutions must be empowered to become more effective. The world is getting increasingly multi-polar, with not only the United States as a superpower, but soon also China, India, the European Union, and to some extent Russia, Brazil, Nigeria, Indonesia—there will be many powers. Just look at Africa: who is doing most of the investment and who is providing most of the international presence now? We must look also at China and India. In this world, the UN must be empowered to become effective. I’ve been working in the UN; I’ve seen how it can be effective, but also seen how it can be ineffective. The second thing that has to happen with the UN is that we have to make the structure more operational. It takes a year to fill a post. It is nearly impossible to re-allocate posts. The secretary-general and others need more executive power within the organization so that it can respond more flexibly to world problems as they arise. I have time and again been surprised that we did so much good in so many countries, from the tsunami to the earthquakes to all of this peacemaking, not because of, but in spite of the organizational structure. The third lesson is that there must be not only prevention through development and environment action, but there also needs to be early, predictable political and security action to protect civilian communities, which in this time and age are as exposed or more exposed to violations than before. Again, it’s one of the paradoxes of our time that yes, there are fewer wars, but they appear to be crueler against the civilian population. I sat at the table when Darfur was going from a small emergency to a full-blown ethnic cleansing catastrophe. We saw that there were one or two cease-fires mediated with our humanitarian envoys—not the political ones, but humanitarian envoys—yet no real effort by our member states to enforce these ceasefires and restrain the armed men and the government that was arming them. Predictable security and political action has to happen. Too often, I find that humanitarian efforts become the alibi for lack of political and security action. You send the humanitarians, they provide enough food, water, and blankets to keep people alive, but we don’t protect them. A woman who led a delegation from camps in western Darfur approached me during my last visit there. Conditions were so bad in the camps that I couldn’t go because there probably would have been riots between the various groups.

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There was so much anger in the camps, and they were surrounded by the militias. So, the women came to me. I always speak to the women because then you get the truth as it is. This very articulate lady—illiterate, had never gone to school—said more or less the following: ‘‘Thank you for the food. [It came from America.] Thanks for the school in a box [which came from UNICEF]. Thanks for the health post—we have never had a health post before, ever. We’ve got all of this in this camp. But do you know that tonight they may come back? They may rape us. They may pillage everything again. Do you realize how it has been 1,200 days and 1,200 nights in fear?’’ And I had to admit, ‘‘No, I don’t know that. And it is a shame really that you have had to live 1,200 days and nights in utter fear and suffer so much when it should have been an international responsibility to protect you.’’ In 2005, world leaders—from my prime minister to your president to all of these other national leaders—solemnly swore in the General Assembly hall of the UN the following: ‘‘[W]e are prepared to take collective action in a timely and decisive manner through the Security Council in accordance with the Charter including Chapter VII’’ that is the one which mandates the use of force—‘‘. . . should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.’’ We are now trying to remind these leaders what they solemnly swore, because they seem to be retreating from this commitment, because still there is no protection in Darfur, still there is no protection for the women in eastern Congo, for the people who are in the camps in Chad or in Colombia. My fourth lesson is that, given our resources, given the situation, given our potential, we must set ourselves ambitious goals. We cannot do less and the sky is the limit. We felt that very strongly when we were four Norwegian individuals who in deepest secret facilitated the first talks ever between the Palestine Liberation Organization and the state of Israel in Norway, which led to the famous Oslo accords. We felt the same when we did the tsunami relief. I went in 2003 to northern Uganda to see conditions for myself because my first day on the job I asked my most experienced relief colleagues, ‘‘What is the most neglected place on earth?’’ And they said immediately, ‘‘It must be northern Uganda. Nobody’s aware of what’s really happening at the hands of the Lord’s Resistance Army [LRA] in northern Uganda, and we failed to wake up the world.’’ So, I said, ‘‘Okay, let’s go.’’ So, we went. And I was shocked to my bone by seeing a place where 20,000 children had been kidnapped by a terror organization which had made them into child soldiers, attacking their own population. Very often, they, the LRA, brought them to their own village from where they had been kidnapped and terrorized into becoming soldiers, and made them burn their own village. Then the LRA told the children, ‘‘Now you have nothing to return to. We are your new

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family. You have to live and fight with us forever.’’ Terror worked in northern Uganda. So, what did we do? We put it on the international news media. We got much more money for emergency relief, so we lifted standards in the camps. We got it on the Security Council agenda, and when south Sudan started discrete mediations between the government and the Lord’s Resistance Army, we gave money, facilitation. I went myself to the jungle to meet Joseph Kony—this elusive leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army—and told him that if you continue holding the cease-fire agreement, we will give food to your soldiers, we will organize the assembly points, we will be observers there so you are not attacked by the Ugandan army, but you have to stop looting, pillaging, massacring. And it did stop. Two weeks ago, the permanent cease-fire was declared after nearly two years of effective cease-fire. Hundreds of thousands of people are returning home as we speak, and the children are coming back. The fifth lesson is that we need to be more generous to be able to reach all of these good, ambitious goals that we have set for ourselves. Many years ago it was agreed at several international conferences that the goal should be 0.7 percent of gross national income in the rich industrialized countries that goes to foreign assistance. It’s not one-tenth we’re talking about. We’re talking about 0.7 percent. So, how did it go in these 20 years of trying to meet that goal? Well, the average is now I think 0.22 percent or so for the rich industrialized world. Neither in the Bible nor in the Quran do we read: Keep 99.8 percent to yourself and give 0.2 percent to the neediest in the world. What we have now is not good enough. Moreover, it was interesting that the G-8 countries in 2005, at the good initiative of Tony Blair, said, ‘‘We will build up to this goal of 0.7 percent and we will definitely by 2010 have $50 billion more for Africa.’’ I was very happy. I welcomed that in the world media. Next year, I checked: How did it go? Foreign assistance decreased from the G-8 countries, except the United Kingdom. So, my word was ‘‘stingy.’’ I could have found perhaps better words, but it’s not very generous when you give 0.2 percent and it goes down in a world of great, great needs. Now, it’s not only the Western countries that should step up to the plate. What about the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries and the Arab countries, who have rapidly growing economies? I have been many times to Singapore and South Korea and the Gulf countries to say, ‘‘Look, when my country was half as rich as you are now, we had 0.7 percent of gross national income in foreign assistance. Why is it not happening here?’’ I think in a way there has to be a campaign which says there are 50 rich countries now—not 5, 50—that could help lift up the bottom billion people to the levels which should be there. We need to control the arms flows, and these are on two levels. One is the proliferation of small arms. The Kalashnikov is really the most lethal weapon

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in our time and age. It has spread all over contemporary armed conflicts and it’s creating havoc. With unemployed, angry youth in so many places, as I mentioned previously, and access to small arms, it is nearly impossible to create security for ordinary people, and the wars continue and continue. The other big goal has to do with weapons of mass destruction, which are closer to being used than probably at any point since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why? Because you can today on the Internet find the prescription to make a dirty bomb by nuclear material or bacteriological, biological or chemical weapons. You can buy it through the black market from Eastern Europe and elsewhere. It is not widely acknowledged that a terror organization or a rogue government can pretty easily get all of the materials and all the prescriptions needed. I think we have to be more consistent in speaking the truth always as we see it, hear it, smell it, feel it when we go to the field, to the trenches, to where people suffer. It has indeed put me in trouble many times. There were five heads of state in government who were after my scalp when I was in the UN and wanted me to leave my position. I was defended always by Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Why is it so important to speak the truth? Because it’s what shields the voiceless, and the voiceless are the ones we are there to help. It’s a strategic choice who should speak out, how, where, and in what format, and very often it is not the NGO worker in the field or even the UN fieldworker who should do it. It is people like me, people like you here in shielded San Diego, who can and must speak the truth as it is and without censorship. Whether or not this may be about our friend—John Foster Dulles said famously about the brutal ruler, Anastasio Somoza Garcia, ‘‘He’s a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch,’’ we have to speak the truth as it is. And the eighth lesson is derived from that: We have to focus more on the forgotten, the neglected, and the voiceless, because I feel too often that we prove again and again that we’re great as humankind when CNN and all the limelight is there, such as the tsunami. In Lebanon, we really did what was needed to get the senseless war to end. It had escalated so fast; 1.2 million people fled in a fortnight. It ended; there was a UN force on the ground in no time, there was a billion dollars pledged in no time, a lot of things happened. This does not happen in French-speaking Africa and elsewhere because it is neglected. There are special needs of the civilian population, especially children and women, who have to be focused on. I mentioned that the wars are fewer but crueler. Perhaps the one thing, next to the kidnapped children who become child soldiers in northern Uganda, which was really unbearable was to meet the raped and abused women of eastern Congo. At the hospital called Panzi there was a group of 1,200 women who assembled in a big field. They and

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the doctor wanted to meet me and hear what I had to say, which was not easy. They were all physically and mentally destroyed by the rapes they had been subjected to. Slowly but surely they were helped together physically, medically, mentally to return to society, which often rejected them because they had been so broken and abused. It is a cancer in modern war which has to end. And we have to focus on this abuse of women, often children, in armed conflict. This can only be done by a very systematic effort to bring the accountable for all of this abuse to justice. An end to impunity is what it is really a question about. The tenth and final point is that those of us who are involved in international work—we’re all involved in international work directly or indirectly— need to ensure there is quality control, transparency, accountability. I often try to explain to colleagues and young people joining that this is work where the difference between excellence and mediocrity is measured in human lives. If you make soap, it is good to have good soap and it is bad to have bad soap, but it’s not a question of life and death. In international work, it is a question of life and death if we do bad work. We cannot allow ourselves not to do the best in all of this, and we cannot lose a penny on the way. We cannot allow any corruption; we cannot allow any kind of cowardice as we are on this quest for very big things. Now, are we first and foremost accountable to the donors? No. We are also accountable to the donors and the budget has to be audited for every penny, but the biggest accountability you have is to the vulnerable themselves. I remember one epic evaluation which was on drought relief in the 1980s in Africa, and the first sentence was that the dispossessed, the vulnerable, the poor should at least have one human right remaining, and that is to be protected against mediocrity in international relief work. So, that’s why it’s so important with work like you are doing here with peace studies, humanitarian studies, human rights studies; it’s a question of being better and doing what is important. I would like to end with the following question, which is a follow-up to my first question: Is the world getting better or not? It’s a question of what we can do to make it even much better. My answer is, I think, for the generation now coming and studying here, the sky is really the limit. If my generation is now 50-and-a-half years old; if we, sort of half-asleep and with half-hearted efforts, managed to make these strides ahead, what can one not do now with resources, private and public, which are infinitely bigger than at any time before in human history; with technology that is infinitely stronger and better than at any point in human history; and with organizations—nongovernmental, multilateral, bilateral, governmental—that are much better tools than ever before? We have everything that is needed to do very great things. It’s a question of will.

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THE MOMENT FOR TURNING: LIVING A S I F P E A C E A N D S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y R E A L LY M AT T E R E D David C. Korten

For peace to reign, people everywhere need secure access to the resources essential to their survival and well-being. For far too long, if nations, corporations, or peoples consumed or destroyed their own natural resource base, they sought to acquire the resources of their neighbor through one means or another, traditionally through military conquest and more recently through trade agreements that open resources everywhere to expropriation by global corporations. Through such means, the more powerful parties advance their private interests by depriving those less powerful of their livelihood and their dignity. Economic expansion, concentration of wealth, and war are all linked. We see the consequences of the underlying dynamic by which the powerful expropriate the resources of the weak in the current credit meltdown, a shrinking middle class, stagnant wages, escalating food and energy prices, a dramatic decline in U.S. manufacturing and research capability, billion-dollar Portions of this article were drawn from ‘‘After the Meltdown: Economic Redesign for the 21st Century,’’ which appeared in Tikkun Magazine and from an address to Veterans for Peace Northwest Regional Conference at Kirkland Unitarian Church, Kirkland, WA, March 8, 2009, ‘‘Real Security, Community, and the New Economy.’’ The author and editors express appreciation to Ellen Gaddy for editorial help.

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pay packages for hedge-fund managers, skyrocketing consumer debt, an unstable U.S. dollar, a multi-trillion-dollar bailout for Wall Street, and the spreading collapse of earth’s ecological systems. In the world’s richest country over 20 million Americans suffer regularly from hunger.1 India, bolstered by international loans to increase its energy production, is now the fastest growing economy, yet the rapid development does nothing to change the fact that India is still home to 40 percent of the world’s malnourished children.2 Even with gross budget deficits, the Pentagon maintains an expanding empire of over 6,000 domestic and 725 overseas military bases comprising only a portion of the half of all U.S. government discretionary expenditures dedicated to military preparedness and actions.3 By any credible measure, our economic system has failed. When economic failure is systemic, temporary fixes, even expensive ones like the Wall Street bailout, are like putting a Band-Aid on a cancer. They may create a temporary sense of confidence, but the effect is solely cosmetic. Politicians and most pundits are looking only at the tip of the economic iceberg. Pull away the curtain to look behind the headlines, and we find a potentially terminal economic crisis with four defining elements: 1. Excessive human consumption, which is accelerating the collapse of earth’s ecosystem. 2. Unconscionable inequality and the related social alienation, which are advancing the social collapse manifest in terrorism, genocide, crime, and growing prison populations. 3. An economic system ruled by financial markets, global corporations, and economic theories devoted to increasing consumption while rolling back real wages and benefits for working people to make money for the richest among us. 4. A gigantic military establishment needed to protect those who profit in the short term from the passions of those who are displaced by an economy of waste.

This is a time for decisive action. Getting out of this economic crisis requires a total commitment from every person on the planet who has a moral conscience and a sound mind. For those who believe there is a better way, this is in fact a truly exciting time to be alive. The old system is destroying itself to make way for a new economic system.

THE OLD ECONOMY ECONOMIST VERSUS THE NEW ECONOMY ECOLOGIST The task before us is to replace the culture and institutions of a 20thcentury economy designed and managed to serve financial values with the

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culture and institutions of a new 21st-century economy designed to serve life values. The former undoubtedly leads to global violence and environmental, social, and economic collapse. The later holds promise of leading to the world most humans really want for themselves and their children—a world of happy, healthy children, families, and communities living together, in peace, in vibrant, healthy, natural environments. It is ours to choose. The choice between the path of failure and the path of possibility is framed with dramatic clarity by two influential authors, one a 20th-century economist and the other a 21st-century ecologist. Jeffrey Sachs, in Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, prescribes a Band-Aid.4 James Gustave Speth, in Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, prescribes a holistic cure grounded in a cultural and institutional transformation.5 Sachs opens Common Wealth with a powerful and unequivocal problem statement that raises expectations of a bold break with the economic orthodoxy of what Sachs refers to as ‘‘free-market ideologues’’: The challenges of sustainable development—protecting the environment, stabilizing the world’s population, narrowing the gaps between rich and poor, and ending extreme poverty—will take center stage. Global cooperation will have to come to the fore. The very idea of competing nation-states that scramble for markets, power, and resources will become pass
e. . . . The pressures of scarce energy resources, growing environmental stresses, a rising global population, legal and illegal mass migration, shifting economic power, and vast inequalities of income are too great to be left to naked market forces and untrammeled geopolitical competition among nations.6

This statement would have served equally well as an opening statement for Speth. Beyond the problem statement, Sachs and Speth both agree that there is an essential role for government and for greater cooperation among nations. From there, however, as I will elaborate later, we might wonder whether they live in the same world. Sachs assures us that we can easily end environmental stress and poverty using existing technologies. By his estimation, with modest new investments we can sequester carbon, develop new energy sources, end population growth, make more efficient use of water and other natural resources, and jump-start economic growth in the world’s remaining pockets of persistent poverty. Sachs made clear his belief that there is no need to redistribute wealth, cut back material consumption, or otherwise reorganize the economy as stated in his lecture to the Royal Society in London, which was broadcast by the BBC: I do not believe that the solution to this problem is a massive cutback of our consumption levels or our living standards. I think the solution is

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smarter living. I do believe that technology is absolutely critical, and I do not believe . . . that the essence of the problem is that we face a zero sum that must be re-distributed. I’m going to argue that there’s a way for us to use the knowledge that we have, the technology that we have, to make broad progress in material conditions, to not require or ask the rich to take sharp cuts of living standards, but rather to live with smarter technologies that are sustainable, and thereby to find a way for the rest of the world, which yearns for it, and deserves it as far as I’m concerned, to raise their own material conditions as well. The costs are much less than people think.7

Far from calling for a restraint on consumption, Sachs projects global economic expansion from $60 trillion in 2005 to $420 trillion in 2050. Relying on what he calls a ‘‘back-of-the-envelope calculation,’’ he estimates that the world’s wealthy nations can eliminate extreme poverty and develop and apply the necessary environmentally friendly technologies to address environmental needs with an expenditure of a mere 2.4 percent of projected mid-century economic output—problem painlessly solved, at least in Sachs’s mind. Sachs gives no indication of why, if we can stabilize the global population and meet the needs of the poor with modest expenditure, we should need or even want a global economy six times larger than its present size. With most economists, and indeed the general public, Sachs simply assumes that economic growth is both good and necessary. In a dissenting voice, economist Kenneth Boulding once observed that anyone who believes that an economy can grow infinitely on a planet with finite resources must be either insane or an economist. But it apparently does not occur to Sachs to question this assumption, which Speth demonstrates to be false, as I will elaborate later. Furthermore, Sachs maintains that there is no need for more than the very modest redistribution he estimates is required to put the poorest of the poor on the path to economic growth; hence he seems to assume that consumption will continue to increase across the board. He says nothing, however, about what forms of consumption he believes can continue to multiply without placing yet more pressure on already overstressed natural systems. Unless more people are driving cars, living in big houses, eating higher on the food chain, traveling farther with more frequency, and buying more electronic gear, what exactly will we be consuming more of ? And from what materials will they be fabricated? Sachs neither raises nor answers such questions. Nor does Sachs mention the realities of political power and resource control; for example, the reality that in most instances poor countries are poor not for want of foreign aid but because we of the rich nations have used our

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military and economic power to expropriate their resources to consume beyond our own means. It is troubling, although not surprising, that Sachs’s reassuring words get an attentive hearing among establishment power holders. To his credit, Sachs has used his public platform to remind both governments and the general population of the extent of poverty and the destitution it entails. It is his conclusion, however—that we can change to a world of peace and sustainability without vast changes in the functioning of a corporate economy—that must be questioned. In stark contrast to Sachs, Speth concludes, ‘‘The planet cannot sustain capitalism as we know it,’’ calling for nothing less than a complete economic redesign. No simple back-of-the-envelope projections for Speth. He takes a hard look at the research on growth and environmental damage in relation to gross domestic product (GDP) and concludes that despite a slight decline in the amount of environmental damage per increment of growth, growth in GDP always increases environmental damage. The relationship is inherent in the simple fact, which apparently escaped Sachs, that GDP is mostly a measure of growth in consumption, which is the driving cause of environmental decline. Speth is clear that although choosing ‘‘green’’ products may be a positive step, not buying at all beats buying green most every time: To sum up, we live in a world where economic growth is generally seen as both beneficent and necessary—the more, the better; where past growth has brought us to a perilous state environmentally; where we are poised for unprecedented increments in growth; where this growth is proceeding with wildly wrong market signals, including prices that do not incorporate environmental costs or reflect the needs of future generations; where a failed politics has not meaningfully corrected the market’s obliviousness to environmental needs; where economies are routinely deploying technology that was created in an environmentally unaware era; where there is no hidden hand or inherent mechanism adequate to correct the destructive tendencies. So, right now, one can only conclude that growth is the enemy of environment. Economy and environment remain in collision.8

Speth is clear that we are unlikely as a species to implement the measures required to bring ourselves into balance with the environment so long as economic growth remains an overriding policy priority, consumerism defines our cultural values, and the excesses of corporate behavior are unconstrained by fairly enforced rules. To correct our misplaced priorities, he recommends replacing financial indicators of economic performance, such as GDP, with wholly new measures based on nonfinancial indicators of social and environmental health—the things we should be optimizing.

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Speth quotes psychologist David Myers, whose essay ‘‘What Is the Good Life?’’ claims that Americans have: Big houses and broken homes, high incomes and low morale, secured rights and diminished civility. We were excelling at making a living but too often failing at making a life. We celebrated our prosperity but yearned for purpose. We cherished our freedoms but longed for connection. In an age of plenty, we were feeling spiritual hunger. These facts of life lead us to a startling conclusion: Our becoming better off materially has not made us better off psychologically.9

This is consistent with studies finding that beyond a basic threshold level of about $10,000 per capita per year, equity and community are far more important determinants of health and happiness than income or possessions. Indeed, as Speth documents, economic growth tends to be associated with increases in individualism, social fragmentation, inequality, depression, and even impaired physical health. Speth gives significant attention to social movements grounded in an awakening spiritual consciousness that are creating communities of the future from the bottom up, practicing participatory democracy, and demanding changes in the rules of the game: Many of our deepest thinkers and many of those most familiar with the scale of the challenges we face have concluded that the transitions required can be achieved only in the context of what I will call the rise of a new consciousness. For some, it is a spiritual awakening—a transformation of the human heart. For others it is a more intellectual process of coming to see the world anew and deeply embracing the emerging ethic of the environment and the old ethic of what it means to love thy neighbor as thyself.10

Finally, Speth examines the abuses of corporate power and endorses calls to revoke the charters of corporations that grossly violate the public interest, exclude or expel unwanted corporations, roll back limited liability, eliminate corporate personhood, bar corporations from making political contributions, and limit corporate lobbying. He recommends a redesign of ‘‘the operating system of capitalism’’ to support the development of local economies populated with firms that feature worker and community ownership and to charter corporations only to serve a public interest. The differences between the worldviews of Sachs and Speth are instructive, because any effort to address the current potentially fatal threats to the human future necessarily begins with deciding whether to focus on adjustments at the margin as recommended by Sachs, the economist, or deep

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system redesign as recommended by Speth, the systems ecologist. By this point in time, given the strength of the evidence to the contrary, it is difficult to consider seriously an analysis that assumes, without question, that the global economy can expand six times between now and 2050 without collapsing earth’s life support system. The perspective, widely shared in economics, reflects the myopic limitations of perspectives from a single discipline. When we seek guidance on dealing with the complex issues relating to interactions between human economies and the planetary ecosystems in which they are embedded, we are best advised to turn to those, like Speth, who view the world through a larger and less ideologically clouded lens.

RALLYING THE ‘‘TROOPS’’ FOR SUSTAINABILITY AND PEACE We cannot resolve the issues of environmental destruction, extreme inequity, and global violence by treating the symptoms. Instead, we must turn our present economic system upside down and inside out. We must replace so-called ‘‘free-trade’’ agreements based on the misguided ideology of market fundamentalism, which has hollowed out our national industrial capacity, mortgaged our future to foreign creditors, and created global financial instability, with a system of trade that is fair and balanced between nations. Fair and balanced trade between nations means that we, in the global North, cannot consume more than our fair share. We should begin by taking stock of all of our available resources and ensure that each and every one is used responsibly and sustainably to meet the needs of all people and all living beings. To accomplish this task, we must rein in the economic power of transnational corporations. An unprecedented concentration of power in transnational corporations that owe no allegiance to any nation, place, or purpose undermines democracy, distorts economic priorities, and contributes to a socially destructive concentration of wealth. The only legitimate reason for a government to issue a corporate charter, which gives a group of private investors a legally protected right to aggregate and concentrate economic power under unified management, should be to serve a well-defined public purpose under strict rules of public accountability. Because absentee ownership invites irresponsibility, we should urge our government to create incentives for publicly traded corporations to break themselves up into their component units and convert to responsible ownership by their workers, customers, or small investors in the communities in which they are located. We must create a true ownership society in which all people have the opportunity to own their own home and to have ownership stakes in the enterprises on which their livelihoods depend.

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In summation, we must replace the Wall Street economy, whose main purpose is to make money for people who have money without the burden of producing anything of value in return, with the Main Street economy, comprised of local businesses and working people engaged in producing real goods and services to meet real needs. The Main Street economy requires new, nonfinancial performance indicators that evaluate economic performance against indicators of what we really want—healthy children, families, communities, and natural systems. This would place life values ahead of money values and dramatically reframe both our public and private economic priorities. The Main Street economy has been battered and tattered by the predatory intrusions of Wall Street corporations. We must help communities declare independence from Wall Street and, in so doing, revitalize Main Street and the middle class. A strong, middle-class society is an American ideal. Our past embodiment of that ideal made us the envy of the world. We must act to restore that ideal by rebalancing the distribution of wealth. Necessary and appropriate steps should be taken to ensure access by every person to quality health care, education, and other essential services, and to restore progressive taxation, as well as progressive wage and benefit rules, to protect working people. We must take the necessary steps to eliminate automobile-dependence in favor of compact communities that bring home, work, recreation, shopping, and other aspects of our lives into close proximity; curtail advertising and redirect those creative and media resources to education; and end financial speculation and redirect investment to sustainable enterprises devoted to meeting community needs. Examples of sustainable enterprises include locally owned family businesses, cooperatives, community banks, and the many other forms of community- or worker-owned enterprises that promote a more equitable distribution of wealth. Main Street policies that favor local ownership of local enterprises by people who have a stake in the health of their communities and economies may seem familiar to older Americans; this is because they are the policies that created the middle class in the first place, the policies to which we must now turn to help create a peaceful and sustainable worldview. In addition to converting from the Wall Street economy to a Main Street economy, we must convert from the war economy of our past to a green economy of the future. War is an outmoded institution that serves no beneficial purpose, other than to enrich the unscrupulous, and it has become an act of global scale collective suicide. Marine Major General Smedley Butler warned of this in 1935: There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is a racket. There isn’t a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has ‘‘finger men’’ to point out enemies, its ‘‘muscle men’’

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to destroy enemies, its ‘‘brain men’’ to plan war preparations, and a ‘‘Big Boss’’ Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.11

The greatest threats to U.S. security do not come from any foreign army, but rather from weather chaos, oil dependence, disruption of food supplies, water scarcity, environmental degradation and toxicity, domestic gun violence, and highly speculative financial institutions. The greatest military threat to our domestic security is from a handful of terrorists armed primarily with a willingness to die for their cause. Yet, U.S. military expenditures account for more than half of the U.S. federal discretionary budget and account for roughly half of the world’s military expenditures. We must mobilize our human and material resources to address the real threats to our security and use our global influence and take the lead in renouncing war as an instrument of national policy and dismantling the means of conducting war. Now is the time to create a world of peace—to turn our swords into ploughshares and our spears into sickles so that one nation shall no longer lift its sword against the life of another. It is time to convert our economies from war to peace and to devote every resource at our command to the vitalization, rather than the destruction, of life. Our need is to create societies that affirm and celebrate the love that is life. We must work to build cooperation among people and nations with the ultimate goal of eliminating terrorism and its underlying causes. To accomplish our goal of global peace, we will have to resolve conflicts through peaceful diplomacy, roll back military spending and demilitarize the national economies of all nations, restore environmental health, and increase economic stability. Additionally, we must work to replace a global system of economic competition with a global system of economic cooperation based on the sharing of beneficial technology and the right of the peoples of each nation to own and control their own economic resources to meet their needs for food, energy, shelter, education, health care, and other basic needs. This is our work, and it is a Great Work.

CONCLUSION The time has come to make real the world of peace, justice, and ecological sustainability for all—the world of which most humans have dreamed for millennia. We must either work for the good of all or collapse into ecological and global violence. Our collective wisdom endows us with the knowledge that peace is more than the absence of war. True peace is community, sharing, and partnership—a world in which we each care for our neighbors as we care for ourselves. Forging a peaceful and sustainable worldview is the greatest creative challenge our species has ever faced. It requires that we replace the culture and institutions of an economy devoted to the service of money with

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the culture and institutions of an economy devoted to the service of life. It requires that we rebuild in ways that actualize the founding ideals of liberty and justice for all on which our nation was founded. It requires new leadership from all of us as we put aside outmoded assumptions and false values that have led our nation, species, and ecological environment to the brink of ruin. Above all else, it requires that we rediscover that which makes us truly human and reinvent our societies to nurture our human capacity to create, care, and cooperate rather than our capacity to dominate and destroy. The time has come to break the silence and acknowledge the sins of our collective past even as we celebrate the possibilities of our future. We need to break the isolation that has separated us by race, class, ethnic origin, and religion so we may become a true national community within a larger planetary community of peoples and nations. We must enact our shared dream of a world in which people and nature live in dynamic, creative, cooperative, and balanced relationship. Despite all our differences, people need and want the same things. We want to breathe clean air and drink clean water. We want nutritious food uncontaminated with chemicals and pesticides. We want our children to be healthy and happy. We want meaningful work, a living wage, and security in our old age. We want a say in the decisions our government makes. We want a vibrant natural ecological and social environment. We want world peace. Unfortunately, we have become so accustomed to cultures and institutions that reward and celebrate the pathologies of individualism, greed, hubris, deceit, ruthless competition, and material excess that some of us have come to doubt even the possibility that we humans might have, as a species, the capacity to cooperate in the interest of a common good. We fail to notice what science has recently been saying, and the world’s wisdom traditions have never ceased saying, that service to the common good is our most important value. We may even fail to notice that most people daily demonstrate our human capacity for caring, sharing, honesty, cooperation, compassion, peacemaking, service, and material sufficiency. Now is the time to join together and redesign and reshape our culture and institutions to consign the promotion of global violence and ecological destruction to the dustbin of history. We have the power to turn this world around for the sake of ourselves, our children, and life’s continuing creative journey. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

NOTES 1. Food Research and Action Center, Hunger and Food Insecurity in the United States. (2005) Available at: http://www.frac.org//html/hunger_in_the_us/ hunger_index.html.

The Moment for Turning 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

Watson, 2006. Hagan and Bickerton, 2007. Sachs, 2008. Speth, 2007. Sachs, 2008. Sachs, 2007. Speth, 2007. Ibid. Ibid. Butler, 1935.

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AGAINST SO MUCH MONEY AND P OW E R , C A N T H E P E A C E M OV E M E N T S U C C E E D ? Marc Pilisuk and Ellen Gaddy

This set of books can scarcely acknowledge, in three volumes, the inspiring work for peace accomplished every day. To recognize and celebrate these efforts is a joy. To assess their potential for ending mass violence and war is more daunting. Here, we examine the forces that enable large-scale violence so that we may better answer the central question for the peace movement: Can it bring peace? The endless struggles by peace advocates are sometimes effective, sometimes futile, over whether a particular war should be continued or ended, whether modest measures will be adopted toward saving our increasingly warm and toxic environment, and whether some private-sector exploitation of the global South and its resources will cease. We rejoice over our victories and see the potential of advances in global communication and social networking for the creation of a more aware and engaged citizenry. Then, a harsh reality sets in. Despite tireless efforts, we have little power to bring crucial items to the public agenda. Hence, our larger concerns and questions remain unheard. Can we prevent rather than merely respond to the heart-wrenching suffering and ecological destruction that surrounds us? Must war, military

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preparedness, and the military-industrial-media complex continue unabated? Should not all people have the right to derive resources from their own communities, sufficient to sustain healthy lives, before transnational corporations are permitted to usurp those resources to appease the global North’s insatiable appetite? Will electoral and legislative processes be made free of the influence of corporate money? And finally, could the vast resources currently being used to promote enmity be used instead to promote community? The absence of these items from the public agenda is not an accident, but rather a product of a social system created and maintained by humans. Even as we celebrate our victories, we know that the hidden wheels of the larger destructive and inequitable system continue to turn. Audre Lorde once warned, ‘‘. . . the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.’’1 Lorde believed that the efficacy of any approach to social change still embedded in the systems and institutions of the dominant worldview will be greatly diminished. Why? Because the master is the architect of the game, knows better than anyone how to win, how to lose, and when to change the rules. Our goal is to unmask the often-concealed master, the major beneficiary of the existing social, economic, and monetary system. We will also uncover the master’s increasingly apparent game of imperial hegemony, characterized by the concentration of power within elite networks and the transfer of wealth and resources from the public to the private sector, from the global South to the global North, from Main Street to Wall Street.2 Imperial hegemony consolidates wealth while spreading poverty and ecological destruction. The ensuing conflicts over resources result in direct military violence. Innocent people suffer and die from the unholy marriage of war and industry, as destitution follows from militarily protected procurement of local resources by remote corporations.

THE COSTS OF WAR We live under an existential burden in which the exchange of nuclear weapons, by accident or intent, could put an end to humankind and the natural environment. Thus far, we have escaped this fate. However, we have yet to escape the hell of global violence and war. Although war is often glorified in history as the triumph over evil, revered in the memory of soldiers as a time of ultimate camaraderie and courage, and used as a rallying point by political leaders calling for patriotism, unity, and sacrifice, the actual human consequences of armed conflict are increasingly devastating. Since the end of World War II, upward of 250 major wars have claimed over 50 million lives

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and left tens of millions homeless.3 Genocides and asymmetrical conflicts, in which civilians constitute the majority of casualties, have ushered in the 21st century in Darfur, Congo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Burma, Tibet, Gaza, Lebanon, Colombia, Somalia, and Sri Lanka. The heartrending consequences of such violence include the suffering of displaced refugees, mostly children and women; civilian deaths and injuries; the creation of orphans; abused and tortured prisoners of war; and the soldiers who are killed, as well as those who are driven to suicide or who return disabled and psychologically scarred in ways that diminish the quality of their own lives and the lives of their families and communities. The costs of war include the money spent on weapons and the scientific talent to develop destructive capabilities, both of which might have been used to improve the quality of human life and the fragile ecology. Additional hidden costs of war include cancer and radiation sickness among those who worked in, or lived downwind of, nuclear weapons facilities and war zones; the continuing calls for retribution by the losers; the costs of rebuilding infrastructure; and the killing and maiming of unsuspecting children and farmers from hidden landmines long after hostilities have ended. The gains of war are questionable. Historian Barbara Tuchman’s The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam outlines a history of humankind’s propensity to engage in violent wars.4 This history of bloodshed includes numerous cases in which the potential gain for participants, on either side of the conflict, was small compared to the costs. Indeed, a detailed review of all U.S. wars and military intervention since World War II demonstrated that most conflicts have produced unintended consequences, detrimental to the United States and her people.5 Unlike the costs of natural disasters, these consequences result from the decisions by humans who have historically demonstrated a propensity for inflicting suffering and death on their own kind. So, why do we do it? And, why have our efforts, thus far, failed to stop us from advancing this tragic game?

THE COSTS OF STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE In the most widespread form of mass violence, giant transnational corporations, owing no allegiance to any one nation and maintaining the right of corporate personhood, usurp control over arable land, water, oil, gas, and other minerals. They control market places, workforces, media, and the regulatory functions of government, and leave in their wake the casualties of structural violence. These casualties include children who die of curable and preventable disease; impoverished villagers forced to travel long distances to work in dangerous factories for negligible wages; children and young women forced into hard labor, some enslaved, some trafficked for the global

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sex industry, and some forced into the only viable local economy—drugs. Dissenters to the game of imperial hegemony are often labeled as revolutionaries or terrorists. These labels justify the reigns of terror and torture against dissenters and often result in their untimely disappearances. Government leaders seeking to regain control of local resources from the corporate network have been isolated, coerced, bribed, and assassinated, which begs the question ‘‘By whom?’’6 Militarism, patriarchy, capitalism, human aggression, and fundamentalism have each been named as the essential cause. Each of these identifies a genuine problem. However, the most compelling answer for why violence continues is that a small group of powerful people benefit greatly from the havoc. By looking at the primary beneficiaries of the destructive system, we may gain a clearer perspective on what social transformation is required to create a peaceful and sustainable world.

THE POWER ELITE A common belief is that the United States is the economic, political, and military hub of the game of imperial hegemony.7 Economist James Galbraith has a slightly different perspective. He sees the United States as the primary vehicle for the dealings of a supranational ‘‘Predator State,’’ controlled by the elite group, with the sole purpose of diverting wealth from public to private interests.8 According to Galbraith, the Predator State is the culmination of the neoliberal path toward deregulation, privatization, and free trade. It is characterized by an intricate network of corporate and financial elites working together to make money off the state and the global economy ‘‘so long as they control it.’’9 Like the mandarins of imperial China, the strategists funded by this elite weave the rationale for imperial rule. Power is typically a taboo subject. Rarely do we see identified the persons who, often from behind the scenes, dominate a policy process that favors calling for war and for the displacement and impoverishment of people. Telling this neglected story is not for the purpose of placing blame. Those with inordinate power may be kind or cruel and are often acting in ways they believe will help everyone. Whether cruel or kind, the roots of continuing violence are to be found among a network of powerful beneficiaries, a force, so far, sufficient to constrain the nurturing potential of humans and to conceal the destructive system and avert the mayhem of war and poverty. This elite group of individuals with enormous wealth, social capital, and influence use their resources and connections to ensure that the system in which they have succeeded does not change.10 Whose special interests are intrinsically protected by their network connections and who gets left out of the vital connections needed to thrive in

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today’s global economy? To find out, one might start with an examination of the multiple positions held by the occupant of an important political office. Take, for example, former Secretary of the Navy Gordon England. Secretary England was appointed 72nd Secretary of the Navy in May 2001. While holding this position, Mr. England led America’s Navy and Marine Corps and was responsible for more than 800,000 military and civilian personnel and an annual budget of more than $120 billion. He joined the Department of Homeland Security in January 2003. Prior to joining the administration of President G. W. Bush, Mr. England was executive vice president of General Dynamics Corporations where he was responsible for two major corporate sectors: Information Systems and Technology and International Contracting. Previously, he had served as executive vice president of the Combat Systems Group, president of General Dynamics Fort Worth aircraft company (now Lockheed Martin), president of General Dynamics Land Systems Company, and also as the principal of a mergers and acquisition consulting company.11 Such corporate-government connections are commonplace within the imperial game. But corporations are also connected with one another. One can track the board memberships of England’s General Dynamics (GD) colleagues as well as the accounting and law firms that serve GD. Among the GD board are retired generals and admirals; directors of major financial firms (Morgan Chase and LLC investment banking), the food industry (Sara Lee), and pharmaceutical companies (Schering Plough). The web of interconnections extends further. With high-level government and corporate officials one finds multiple links to certain financial institutions, law firms, accounting firms, and trade organizations like Petroleum Institute or PhRMA. The networks include links to managers of major media corporations and to research centers and think tanks. People central in these powerful networks are sought after for boards of universities and major medical centers where they help to attract donors and play an integral role in ensuring the continuous supply of trained persons to help turn the wheels of an acquisitive society and the imperialist game.12 England’s situation is more the rule than the exception. A ‘‘revolving door’’ exists in which corporate and financial officials assume roles in government and then return to corporate and financial lobbying activities with greater influence resulting from their past government ties.13 The future efficacy of the peace movement will be determined by its ability to demystify and address these networks and systems of power.

THE CENTRALIZED MONETARY SYSTEM To understand how and why a well-positioned group has gained sufficient power to impede change, it is important to examine their dominant currency

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of power and interaction, namely, money. As David Korten observed: ‘‘Money is a system of power and . . . the more dependent we are on money as the mediator of human relationships, the more readily those who have the power to create money and to decide who gets it can abuse that power.’’14 Centralized monetary systems, both national and international, on which the free-market system rides, are the foundation for the game of imperial hegemony. To create a peaceful, sustainable, and equitable world we must gain an understanding of how centralized monetary systems, governed by central banks, consolidate wealth and power by monopolizing and politicizing the money supply. So what is a centralized monetary system? How is money created? And for that matter, what is money? In centralized monetary systems, central banks, such as the Federal Reserve, control the money supply.15 They also serve as the state’s bank, providing the state with the money necessary to carry out its operations. Thus, in centralized monetary systems money, banking, and finance have been politicized because, as Thomas H. Greco, Jr., a leading authority on freemarket approaches to monetary and financial innovation, revealed, ‘‘national governments have arrogated to themselves virtually unlimited spending power, which enables them to channel wealth to favored clients, to conduct wars on a massive scale, and to subvert democratic institutions and the popular will.’’16 Essentially, central banks fund state operations directly, so that the state does not have to tax its citizenry to raise funds for its deficit spending. Indeed, the military-industrial complex could not maintain itself were it not for the U.S. government’s arrangement with the Federal Reserve.17 Convincing the public to fight a war is one matter. Convincing the public to both fund and fight a war is altogether different. Many have argued that the arrangement between the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve constitutes a threat to both civil liberty and democracy.18

MONEY AND ITS CREATION On August 15, 1971, President Nixon took the U.S. dollar off the gold standard internationally, which shifted the entire global monetary system to a fiat standard. Fiat money is money that is no longer grounded to the natural world. It is backed by nothing, and created out of nothing, by a central authority.19 The U.S. Federal Reserve is the central authority that controls the money supply by buying or selling primarily U.S. Treasury securities on the open market, which is referred to as the monetization of government debt.20 The amount of securities bought or sold on the open market determines the amount of money available to the banking system as a whole. The amount of money a commercial bank is allowed to borrow at the federal funds

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rate, to be lent to its customers at a significantly higher interest rate than the federal funds rate, is determined by the commercial bank’s reserves.21 Centralized monetary systems are based on the fractional reserve banking system.22 The fractional reserve system allows banks to loan up to 10 times the amount of their actual reserves, which greatly increases the private banks’ income derived from interest and overall investment potential.23 For example, say the Federal Reserve writes a check to the U.S. government for $100,000. By the time this money works its way through the banking system as a succession of deposits and loans, $900,000 in credit money will be added to the monetary system as a whole, all of it bearing an interest charge to be paid to the bank.24 So what is money? At various junctures in its history, money was backed by tangible objects of value such as gold, silver, cattle, or grain.25 At present, all money, except for coins and some special notes in circulation today, is created from debt and backed by nothing more than the government or debtor’s promise to repay the loan plus interest.26 For example, a bank may, with a few keystrokes on a computer, make a loan of up to $10,000 to a debtor, so long as that bank retains $1,000 in reserve on that loan, effectively creating $9,000 in money that does not exist. Concurrently, the debtor acquired a legal obligation to repay the principal amount of $10,000, plus interest.27 Interest is the fee charged for use of the central bank’s monopolized credit money and places an unnecessary burden on debtors. The classic argument used to justify interest is that banks take on a risk when they loan money. This argument holds weight if money were actually backed by something of intrinsic value, such as gold, and/or the lender had actually labored to earn the money being loaned. But this is simply not the case in a debt-based monetary system in which banks create money from nothing the moment a loan is approved. Furthermore, if the money supply were not monopolized, then competition among currencies (credit) would temper commercial banks’ profits and reduce them to reasonable service fees.28 Indeed, the charging of interest, although highly profitable for the super class, has serious consequences for the majority of the population as well as the natural environment.

THE PROBLEM WITH INTEREST The charging of undue interest, known as usury, undermines social justice and threatens the sustainability of the ecological environment. We already noted that commercial banks create money the moment a debtor takes out a loan. However, commercial banks only increase the amount of money in the economy to match the principal amount of a loan. Commercial banks do not increase the amount of money in the economy to cover the interest on that

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loan. In this way, money is made intentionally scarce, which forces debtors to compete against each other for the interest. As there is never enough money in the system at any one time to cover both the collective’s principal and the collective’s interest, default is inevitable. Worse, the charging of interest on debt money results in a debt imperative in which debt is exponentially growing at all times.29 This debt imperative leads to a growth imperative in which the economy must grow fast enough to maintain the demand for new loans, thus creating enough new money to cover the interest on old loans.30 Hence an elite group of wealthy investors benefit from an endlessly expanding economy. The real growth of goods and services in the economy rarely keeps up with the average interest rate and, even if it did, limits on the natural environment and its resources will eventually check economic growth. Thus, the centralized monetary system guarantees the consolidation of wealth and power in the hands of the super class by way of profits derived from the charging of interest, which is multiplied tenfold in a fractional reserve system; by accumulating assets when debtors default on loan payments; and by investing upward of 30 percent of money created in their own accounts.31 Next, Wall Street takes over and, using a myriad of inventive and speculative investing, trading, and lending vehicles, helps the super class create and consolidate even more phantom wealth.32 That this option is not readily available to victims of war or economic displacement, or simply to members of the poor and working classes, leads to the creation of a class structure that is strikingly similar to that of feudal, medieval Europe.33 The debt imperative and growth imperative, fueled by the competition for scarce money, prohibit the creation of a steady-state, sustainable economy based on growing real wealth, such as quality goods and services and healthy communities. Our monetary system demands that we appease the growth imperative by churning out as many cheap, environmentally ruinous, and unnecessary goods as possible in an attempt to outrun exponentially increasing debt. Furthermore, the growth imperative, based on competition for interest, pressures the financial system for short-term returns, usually derived by speculation, rather than long-tem sustainability. Within our centralized monetary system, the creation of a steady-state, sustainable economy is not profitable enough in the short-term to keep apace with the debt imperative. Unfortunately, war has the effect of staying abreast of the debt imperative, at least in the short term. War results in the expansion of credit money, which whether intentional or not, has the effect of ‘‘priming the pump’’ of the economy.34 Thus, history suggests that, in addition to a debt and growth imperative, the centralized monetary system lends itself to a war imperative as well. The problem of interest makes it unlikely that a peaceful, sustainable world can be created without addressing the centralized monetary system.

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THE PROBLEM OF INFLATION Inflation occurs in an economy with ‘‘too much money chasing too few goods.’’35 It results from the improper issue of money whereby the money supply is expanded without the proportional expansion of goods and services in the market place. Greco likened inflation to a form of legal counterfeit, as both decrease the purchasing power of money.36 As money becomes worthless, the prices of goods and services must rise to offset the watered-down money supply. Thus, inflation creates a growth imperative to offset the decreased value of money. Effectively, the Federal Reserve inflates the money supply any time it monetizes long-term government debt, particularly war debt.37 The problem is that inflation must be reigned in, at which point the Federal Reserve restricts the amount of credit (money) available in the economy. At this time, the economic cycle ‘‘busts,’’ massive defaults ensue, and wealth is further consolidated in the hands of those few who are able to buy up the assets now available at bargain prices.

A BAILOUT FOR THE FINANCIAL ELITE The recent financial crisis presented an opportunity for the current administration to curtail Wall Street’s speculative ventures and make radical changes to our inequitable monetary system. It might also have replaced expenditures on the war sector with investments in education and health that produce significantly more jobs. Instead, the politicized money power triumphed, and Wall Street was rewarded for its recklessness in the form of a multi-trillion-dollar bailout, a significant portion of which was used for bonuses, vacations, and golden parachute executive payouts. The bailout is testament to the power elite’s commitment to maintaining the status quo and revealed the revolving door between the U.S. government and Wall Street. Take for example the case of Goldman Sachs, the world’s most powerful investment bank. According to Matt Taibbi, the history of the financial crisis and resulting bailout ‘‘reads like a Who’s Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.’’38 Henry Paulson, President George W. Bush’s Treasury secretary and former CEO of Goldman Sachs was the architect of the bailout, which seemingly benefited the interests of Goldman Sachs and friends over other financial institutions and, more importantly, the American people. For example, Robert Rubin, President Clinton’s former Treasury secretary and former Goldman Sachs employee of 26 years, received $300 billion in taxpayer dollars for Citigroup, of which he is chairman; former Goldman Sachs employee John Thain, now head of Merrill Lynch, received billions of taxpayer dollars, funneled through

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Bank of America; and Robert Steel, former executive of Goldman Sachs, who was rewarded with a $250 million golden parachute executive payout for running his bank, Wachovia, into bankruptcy. Other notable Goldman Sachs alums include Joshua Bolten, President Bush’s chief of staff during the bailout; Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff under President Obama; the heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, and the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The financial and political power and reach of Goldman Sachs is behemoth, and Taibbi’s outline of Goldman Sach’s involvement in, and profit derived from, every major market manipulation (bubble) since the Great Depression exposed the damage that results from the centralized and politicized monetary system. The centralized monetary system is an important tool for the proliferation of the master’s game because it consolidates private wealth and power in interlocked hierarchies between government, industry, and the financial elite, influences the direction of the economy by favoring short-term gains over long-term sustainability, contains a built-in war imperative, and burdens governments and people with debt. The global debt-based, centralized monetary system has also proved ruinous for the economies of underdeveloped and developing nations. As Jubilee South proclaimed, ‘‘Debt is essentially an ideological and political instrument for the exploitation and control of our peoples, resources, and countries by those corporations, countries, and institutions that concentrate wealth and power in the capitalist system.’’39 Members of Jubilee South call for nothing less than debt cancellation, debt repudiation and reparation, and for the creation of community-oriented, socio-economic and political systems based on serving the needs of the people.

CONCENTRATING WEALTH In addition to the centralized, debt-based monetary system, which was designed to consolidate wealth and power, the power elite have enriched themselves by buying out their competitors and by acquiring resources of the world for a pittance while leaving the environmental and health costs of their activities to be paid by others. Some of their wealth has come from loans made to governments of poor countries in the form of a structural adjustment package. The stipulations for the procurement of a loan from the IMF and World Bank, largely controlled by nations in the global North, almost always include economist Milton Friedman’s ‘‘triumvirate of privatization, deregulation/free trade and drastic cuts to government spending.’’40 The privatization of poor countries and their resources enables the siphoning of wealth from the global South to the global North.

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Beyond privatization, the elite group has found other ways to concentrate wealth and promote inequity. For example, they have welcomed into the workplace immigrants and women, to whom they can pay shamefully low wages. They have overseen technological advances in industry and communications, which have replaced still more workers. They have sold the dream that every generation will have more than the previous generation. The dream of collective enrichment was true from the 1820s through times of boom and bust, including even the Great Depression. However, it ceased to be true in the 1970s when more workers and more members of a family began to invest longer hours at work to maintain the same income. Corporate globalization forced demands for higher productivity on workers without raising their wages or benefits. With limited labor costs and an increase in productivity, profits soared among the wealthiest. Incidentally, the 1970s also marked the time when President Nixon took the U.S. dollar off the gold standard internationally, thereby forcing international currencies to ‘‘float’’ against each other in a highly speculative, and exploitable, currency exchange market.41 Currency speculation allowed for the further concentration of wealth at the expense of poorer nations and their people. Herve Kempf effectively demonstrated the excessive concentration of wealth among a small minority: 793 billionaires possess $2.6 trillion dollars, which, according to the Committee for the Cancellation of Third World Debt (CADTM) is the sum equal to ‘‘the entirety of developing countries’ foreign debt.’’42 The corporate elite marketed excessive consumption by selling the myth that ‘‘the good life’’ was to be had by buying more stuff that could be paid off on installments. Instead of providing higher wages to match increases in productivity, the financiers extended credit, once again turning ordinary people into supporters of the most wealthy through interest payments on their loans and credit cards.43 The elite limited safety nets by selling the idea that people were individually responsible for their own well-being, even though their own enterprises relied heavily on government subsidies, sweetheart contracts, and tax loopholes. In the wake of their growth, corporations left a population deeply stressed and heavily in debt, wanting change, but still hoping that it might come without undue sacrifice.

CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE From the inception of the nation state, there have always been dominating elites, distrustful of the capacity of ordinary people to make the decisions of the state, and therefore needing to be controlled, whether by persuasion or by police force. This system is inordinately influenced, as we have demonstrated, by a small interconnected group of corporate, financial,

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military, and government leaders. They have the power to instill fear, to protect and to increase their excessive fortunes, and to restrict information, particularly information that concerns their own clandestine dealings or information that threatens the imperialist game. Over the past century leaders of this elite became more skilled in the art and science of propaganda by tapping into emotional needs, both conscious and unconscious. The media are used with even greater sophistication to manage perceptions and to manufacture consent.44 They were carefully used to bring a reluctant U.S. public into World War I. They were central to the demonization of the Soviet Union following World War II and crucial for the development of a permanent war economy.45 Additionally, media were used to turn ordinary citizens into passive consumers who measure their identities against what they purchase, thereby leaving poor people deficient not only in goods but in self-esteem as well.

THE MYTH OF PROGRESS Some excessive spending of the elite class on ridiculously expensive clothing, multiple homes, vacations, art collections, and ‘‘yacht wars,’’ has the effect of establishing prestige. The super-rich live in secluded mansions, gated communities, and restricted penthouses, apart from the common space shared by others.46 The image of their lifestyle is an object for both envy and mimicry. The illusion that ordinary people can realistically aspire to the lifestyle of the elite fuels the idolization of successful superstars, the purchase of lottery tickets, and the gullibility of electorates for the message, repeated each electoral season, that corporate-selected candidates are just like the rest of us. Although they may be like us in their personal human qualities, they differ from the rest of us in the roles they play in the master’s game. Though many recognize the absurdity of the vast inequity, they have lived so long with a plantation mentality that they cannot imagine an equitable and peaceful life beyond the master’s game. Indeed, the hopes of people have been cast in the mold of progress and growth. When failures occurred, there was always a new frontier, or a new technology, that would sustain the myth of exponential growth.47 Now, there is no new frontier waiting to be discovered and exploited, which has led many to view the future green economy as the savior of a fledgling global economy and financial system.48 But alas, in a world of finite resources, even a green economy will be insufficient for the task of saving a system run by, and for, an elite addicted to their own game, who have demonstrated a willingness to use violence to protect their own interests. We must work to change the myth of progress from a faith in new frontiers and exponential

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economic growth to a hope that life can be fuller and healthier with better stewarding and sharing of resources and power. Only then will we be able to dismantle the master’s house and bring about genuine social change.

WHAT NEXT? The failures of globalization have resulted in a collective scrutiny of the master’s game. The stage may now be set for social transformation in the inseparable directions of ecological sustainability, economic justice, and nonviolent resolution of differences. Paul Hawken, author of Blessed Unrest, optimistically describes a revolution presently occurring, without any discernable leader, subscribed doctrine, headlines, or coordination, in which people the world over are actively engaged in transforming society.49 We hope Hawken is right, but fear that this ignores the taboo topic of power and the privatization and consolidation of power and wealth. Many of the wonderful projects we see are affirmations of the values and practices that were necessary for the viability of the bands, tribes, and villages in which most of humanity lived for centuries prior to the industrial revolution. The groups that survived and flourished were the ones that worked out ways to live peacefully among themselves, to preserve their ecological nests, and to use the wisdom of their elders for the betterment of the community. The current flood of grassroots actions for peace and sustainability undoubtedly taps into the human capacity for caring and empathy, and they are critical for the success of the movement. However, change must be both local and global. Some issues, like control and elimination of nuclear weapons, accountability for war crimes, the prevention of epidemics, the clean-up of toxic wastes, the conversion to a peacetime economy, and the forgiveness of Third World debt, require governments and international regulatory agencies to play a major role. The creation of community-oriented, socio-economic, and political systems based on serving the needs of all people, rather than the needs of the wealthy elite, is not possible, we believe, without a concerted, global effort on the part of governments, their people, and international regulatory agencies. The plantation we now occupy is heading for potential economic and ecological disaster and collapse. Replacing it will require that we dismantle the master’s house. Those now heading recovery efforts strive mainly to return to a point where we are able to resume consumption of things we do not need with credit and thereby restore a system requiring growth and military action to protect it. On the most personal level, the changes must encompass the values we live by and the way we create self-esteem. As a global society, we face changes in the control over money and over the means to kill. We

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come close to the heart of what must change by raising the issue of complementing the centralized monetary system with a decentralized, abundant, and inexpensive monetary system that is not embedded in the power network.50 Given the interlocking of the U.S. government and the money power, it is doubtful that any significant transformation will come about from within the existing monetary system, whether nationalized or privatized. Former senior Central Bank executive Bernard Lietaer recognized the perils of challenging the money power. He suggested that monetary transformation must arise from private initiative in the form of a complementary monetary system, which will operate alongside the centralized monetary system.51 The goal is to create democratic, locally controlled, depoliticized, interestfree monetary systems designed to strengthen local economies and communities, while simultaneously providing a buffer against the inflationary and monopolized national currency with its inevitable cycles of boom and bust. The result is a mutual credit system in which money is created at the moment of exchange between parties. At present, one of the most comprehensive mutual credit systems is ROCS—Robust Complementary Community Currency.52 The system was designed to provide the best buffer against the centralized monetary system and the fairest means of exchange between parties.53 Though no complete ROCS systems are presently in use, elements of the system are seen in existing mutual credit systems such as LETSystems, Ithaca Hours, and Time Dollars. ROCS is a robust currency designed to withstand external shocks such as economic bust cycles, inflation, or even economic collapse. ROCS are issued by participants, rather than a central authority, which means that the amount of credit in the system is always balanced. Unlike some mutual credit systems, which are tied to the national currency, ROCS are measured in hours of service. However, mutual credit systems are not limited to the hour for their unit of account. Any unit of account that is beyond the grasp of state and financial hierarchies, such as a basket of commodities, could be used in place of hours. Unlike other mutual credit systems, the ROCS system allows participants to negotiate the rate of exchange. In this manner, participants whose hour of service required more training, skills, hard and/or undesirable labor, or the use of expensive equipment is worth more than those whose hour of service required less demanding work. Finally, the ROCS system contains a demurrage fee that is applied to both positive and negative balances. Demurrage can be thought of as a negative interest rate, the purpose of which is to help keep the mutual credit circulating, rather than hoarded. The collective demurrage fee can then be used for operational costs, community projects, or to help the most impoverished in the community gain the skills and training necessary to participate in the local mutual credit system.

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Despite the potential of the ROCS system to provide a buffer against external shocks and empower the people with an abundant, inexpensive, and fair means of exchange, the problem of the centralized money power remains. Articulating a comprehensive strategy for the transformation of the current global monetary system into one that promotes sustainability, justice, and equity is beyond the scope of this article. However, the wisdom of Bernard Lietaer points in the right direction. Lietaer called for the private sector to create a global reference currency (GRC), which he called the Terra, whose unit of account is grounded in the natural world in the form of a basket of commodities.54 The purpose of the Terra is to provide a reliable and stable reference currency for international trade and to reinstate the international standard of value, which was removed by President Nixon in 1971, thereby hampering the speculative global currency casino. Additionally, the Terra would contain a demurrage fee, which can also be thought of as a sustainability fee. The purpose of the sustainability fee is to both counter the global growth imperative and prevent hoarding during periods of external economic shock. Thus, the Terra would serve a similar purpose for the global economy as a local mutual credit system serves for the local economy. The hope is that local and global democratic, sustainable, and equitable monetary systems might, one day, build sufficient support to peacefully supplant the money power’s centralized monetary system. A second big change in the master’s game must be the removal of war. The United World Federalists express hope for an international federation of separate governments that would have great accountability to its member states, but which would have predominant control over the military force which would be used only for the restoration of peace after all other efforts have failed.55 The question is again one of accountability. With governments now accountable to the corporate sectors with whom they are also closely connected, it is remarkable that the UN continues to address some of the issues of the inclusion of all people in the world community. In addition to the UN, new institutions like a nonviolent police force and a World Social Forum will need to grow in power and influence on the world stage. Indeed, projects reflecting our humanity on a local level may have to be melded into programs and agencies with global impact. Additionally, local communities and the people who work in corporate structures will have to find ways to share in the responsibility for these structures, to keep them accountable to local needs. We will have to welcome conflicts as well as creative resolutions among local projects that promote life with global regulatory institutions that prevent violence. With a newfound respect for the responsibilities of preserving a sustainable world at peace, we confront the elephant in our living room. We will enter the plantation, bring light to its dark corners, and gradually replace the

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needs of the master with the needs of all stakeholders on the global plantation. To create a peaceful worldview, the power elite, now central to a system requiring violence, must be faced. We must remind ourselves that revolutionary transformations do occur. However, the magnitude of the revolutionary transformation needed for peace and sustainability to reign requires many shifts. We may need to find meanings in our self-concept that unite us more closely to the web of life and to our local communities. This can guide us to eat differently, to invest in the health of our communities, to use the gifts of our planet wisely, to be more accepting of differences and more knowing of nonviolent ways to resolve disputes, and to care more deeply for those most deserving of that care. It is the special task of this generation to liberate both the oppressed and the oppressors from the monetary, economic, and political systems that perpetuate injustice and engender violence. We can and must demystify and confront the master’s game, in which we are all entangled, and write a peaceful and sustainable story for our species.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

Lorde, 1984. Korten, 2006, 2009. Peace Pledge Union, 2005. Tuchman, 1984. Hagan and Bickerton, 2007. Perkins, 2004. Korten, 2006. Galbraith, 2008. Ibid. Perruci and Wysong, 1999. Pilisuk, 2008. Ibid. Public Citizen Report, 2009. Korten, 2009. Greco, 1990. Greco, 2009. Rockwell, 2008. Ibid. Lietaer, 2001. Brown, 2007. The Federal Reserve System Board of Govenors, 2005. Zarlenga, 2002. Brown, 2007. Lietaer, 2001. Zarlenga, 2002. Wolff, 2009.

252 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

History and Vitality of Peace Movements Korten, 2009. Greco, 2009. Ibid. Brown, 2007. Ibid. Korten, 2009. Kelly, 2001. Rockwell, 2008. Greco, 2009. Ibid. Ibid. Taibbi, 2009. South, 2002. Klein, 2007. Brown, 2007. Kempf, 2008. Wolff, 2009. Pilisuk, 2008. Ibid. Kempf, 2008. Ibid. Sachs, 2008. Hawken, 2007. Greco, 2009. Lietaer, 2001. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Tetalman and Belitsos, 2005.

A F I NA L WO R D Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler

Like the surface of the earth itself, the prevailing war system is a relatively thin and unstable layer that effectively conceals intense energies of greater fluidity beneath its surface—energies that occasionally burst forth. Our journey through the manifold energies and projects that are represented in the chapters of these three volumes did not reveal a single, unified world peace movement, but it certainly did reveal wellsprings of activity, more intense, more creative and more widespread than one would imagine. The bubbling energies appear as contributions to a gigantic wave surging against the barriers that societies have entrenched into laws and ideologies that make inequality, exploitation, and violence appear inevitable. Slowly but with increasing likelihood, individuals and groups of individuals, facing incredibly diverse manifestations of that age-old inhumanity, are finding courage, as people have done through history, to rise up against it. But in this generation many more of us are also identifying the existing exploitative system underlying diverse violence and recognizing that this system is failing. And some are daring to view the movements toward peace, justice, and sustainability as a yet-unrealized but potentially unstoppable movement. This emergence is all the more amazing as it comes on the heels of a century in which control over human identity has become all-pervasive and quite often malicious; when the war propaganda is based, ironically enough, on

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adaptations of Sigmund Freud’s theories about the power of appealing to basic needs and fears; when such propaganda hurled masses of humanity into paroxysms of anti-Semitic hatred, among other examples of targeted dehumanization; and when the self-image of human beings as ‘‘happiness machines that have become the key to economic progress’’ (to paraphrase President Hoover) came to predominate.1 The power of such manipulation and control is breaking apart and yielding to a culture in which the better natures of people can assert themselves. One cannot review the efforts described in these volumes, and the many more that we could not include, without realizing that the wave is powerful and has not yet reached its crest. The power and impact of these healthier alternatives are evident and they are springing up everywhere. They remain seriously under-reported by the mainstream media that instead deliver a constant stream of tragedies, local and national, as though they were singular occurrences rather than looking deeply into the failures of unfettered corporate expansion and the war system. It is an ironically hopeful sign that the failures of that system are becoming apparent to people the world over, despite the impressive capacity of a powerful elite to ‘‘spin’’ the coverage. Some former powerful players of that system, some of whom appear in these pages, have recognized the failure of an unbridled quest for development and unending search for enemies. A more heartening sign is that the activists described in the final chapter of Volume 3 do not wait for powerful officials to lead them. In ways small and large, people are devoting their creativity, their energy, their dreams, and their quest for a meaningful life to make peace a reality. One cannot come away from the story of these efforts without being heartened by the fact that so many others have stepped forward. We are resourceful and caring custodians of the force of life. The peace movement worldwide is an inchoate but amazing force. It grows because it must prevail. And if we nurture it, it will.

NOTE 1. BBC documentary, 2002.

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INDEX

ABC triangle, 32–33 A Billion Lives, 216 absentee ownership, 231 Abu-Nimer, Mohammed, 112 active resistance, 6 Adams, David, 70 Addams, Jane, 209–210n3 Adl (justice), 151, 152 adult assurance, 61 Afghanistan, 238; sexual gender-based violence in, 178 Afghanistan Independent Commission on Human Rights, 178 Africa: sexual gender-based violence in, 179 African Women’s Committee for Peace, 182–183 African Women’s Federation of Peace Networks, 183 aggression, 55; in animal ancestors, 45; and empathy, 46; human, and war, 54–55; in Islam, 159 ahimsa, 26, 120, 121 AKKAPKA, 133 alay dangal, 15 Albright, Madeleine, 64

Alexander, 99 ‘‘Al Salam Alikum,’’ 160 alternative epistemology, 200–201 amal (service), 151 ‘‘American exceptionalism,’’ 100 Americas: sexual gender-based violence in, 178 aml-I-salih (good deed), 156 Amos, 116 amygdala, 49 Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, The, 55 anger, 55 animals, 44; ancestors, aggression in, 45 Annan, Kofi, 71, 223 ‘‘anti-men,’’ 190 Anti-Trafficking Center, 185 anti-war feminism, 173–174, 198–201; representatives of, 209–210n3; and weapons of mass destruction, 201–203 Anwar, Zainah, 194 ‘‘A people of the Sword,’’ 168n24 Appiah, Kwame, 89, 94, 95 Appleby, Scott, 144, 145 Aquino, Agapito, 132 Aquino, Cory, 134, 135

278 Aquino, Ninoy, 131 arbitration, 166 Arendt, Hannah, 59 Ariyaratne, A. T., 122 Arjuna, 121 arms flows: controlling, 222 Art of War, 99 asatya, 5 ashram, 14 Asia: sexual gender-based violence in, 178 Assabiyyah (solidarity), 163 Association Najdeh, 186 asymmetrical conflicts, 238 Ataniyazova, Oral, 193 attribution error, 59 authority, 13 autism: and empathy, 48 Bachelet, Michelle, 194 Badawi, Jamal, 112 Bakr, Abu, 158 Basic Moral Philosophy, 26 basic needs, 35 Begin, Menachem, 6 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, 180, 192 Benedict XVI, Pope, 139, 143 Berrigan, Daniel, 118 Berrigan, Phillip, 118 Berryman, Phillip, 118 Bhagavad Gita, 120 bhakti yoga, 120 Bible, 137 biological inheritance, 50 biological psychology, 44 biology, 42, 44 Black Sash, 181 Blair, Tony, 222 Blanco, Jose, 133 Bodhisattva, 123 Boff, Leonardo, 118 Bolten, Joshua, 245 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 119 bonobos, 45 boot camp, 57 Boulding, Kenneth, 228 Boulding, Elise, 11

Index brain-chemistry dysfunction, 61 brain science, 47–48 Brennan, Joseph, 58 Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability (Speth), 227–230 Bruderhof, 144 Buber, Martin, 20–21 Buddha, 49, 122 Buddhism: resources, for peace and justice movements, 120–123; socially engaged, 122 Burma, 238 Bush, George W., 19, 207 Butler, Smedley, 232–233 Cahill, Lisa, 145 Caliphates, 152 Cancellation of Third World Debt (CADTM), 246 Catholic Christianity, 112 Catholic dioceses, 144 Catholic social teaching (CST), 136; on nonviolence, 137–140; nonviolent peacemaking, virtue of, 140–141; integration in CST, 142–148 Catholic Social Theory, 146 Catholic Worker, 144 central bank, 242 centralized monetary system, 240–241, 242, 243, 245 Challenge of Peace, 138 character, 139, 141 Chechnya, 238 chimpanzee, 45 Christianity, 112; prophetic traditions of, 115–116; prophetic movements, 117–119; prophets in, 116–117; contemporary, 117–119; contemporary peace and justice activists, 118–119 Christian Peacemaker Teams, 147 Christian virtue, 140 Churchill, Winston, 111 Citigroup, 244 City of God, 7, 12 civil disobedience, 117–118

Index civilian-based defense (CBD), 147 Civilian Response Corps (CRC), 145, 147 civil liberties, 19 civil society: organizations, 106–107; role of, and culture, 105–107 Claver, Bishop, 130 climate change, 215; goal setting, 221–222; long-term protection, 219–220; political and security actions, 220–221 ‘‘cloud of unknowing,’’ 49 collaborative actions, in Islam, 163 collective enrichment, 246 collective scrutiny, 248 Colombia, 238 Colorado, Apela, 125 Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (Sachs), 227–230 communication, 76, 78, 100; face-to-face, 78; participatory, 100 Community of the Ark, 144 concentrating wealth, 245–246 conceptions of peace, 74–75 conflicts, 32; life cycles and phases, 34–35; management, 74–75; resolving, alternative ways, 65–66; transformation, 35, 145–146 Congo, 238 Conrad, Sherrie D., 62 conscience, 139 consciousness, 44 constance, 177 constructive conversation, 209, 212n36 constructive program, 145 consumerism, 228–229 contradiction, 32 ‘‘contrapuntal reading,’’ 90–91 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), 180 conversion, 131, 133, 139 cooperation with states, 34 corporate globalization, 246 corporate power, abuses of, 230 cosmopolitan identity, 94 ‘‘Council of All Beings,’’ 126 counter-hatred, 121 counterviolence, 130

279

courage: virtue of, 142 Creando, Mujeres, 186 creative tension, 29 credit meltdown, 225 credit money, monopolization of, 242 critical theory, 91 cultural awareness, 82; training in, peacekeeping, 77–78 cultural group identity, 89 cultural identification, 72–74 cultural identities, 89 cultural purity, 92 cultural retraining groups, 78 cultural self-awareness, 79, 81 ‘‘cultural states,’’ 71–72 cultural wars, analysis of, 71 cultural understanding: conceptions of peace, 74–75; conflict management, 74–75; cultural awareness, training in, 77–78; cultural identification, 72–74; destructive conflicts, current, 71–72; ethnocentrism, 72–74; peace building, 78–80; peacemaking, 78–80; traditional peacekeeping, 75–75 culture, 91; nature of, 99; of peace, 98; new world order, 109–110; role of civil society, 105–107; role of local governments, 107–109; role of state, 103–104; role of United Nations, 104 culture contrast training program, 80, 81 currency speculation, 246 danger, 56 Darfur, 179, 217, 220, 221, 238 Darwin, Charles, 44 Day, Dorothy, 118 Day the Earth Stood Still, The, 15 Dear, John, 118 deep ecology, 126 ‘‘deep nonviolence,’’ 144 ‘‘Deep Time,’’ 126 dehumanization, 56 democracies: military force functions in, 104 democratic participation, 100 denial, 56 Department of the Navy, 6

280

Index

depth psychology, 125 destructive conflicts: current, 71–72 detention sites, 178 deterrence theory, 203 de Waal, Frans, 44, 45 direct violence, 63 Dirty War, 181 disarmament, 100 discrimination, resisting, 157 diversity, 165 Dobson, James, 62 domestic violence, 176 dukkha, 31 Dulles, Foster, 223 earth-based spiritual practices, 126 East Timor: sexual gender-based violence in, 178 Ebadi, Shirin, 189, 194 ecofeminists, 126, 188 ecology and spirituality, 127 economic failure, 226 economic growth, 230 economic justice, 154 Ecowomen, 185 Edhi, Abdul Sattar, 120 education, 95–96; and culture of peace, 100 Eisenhower, Dwight, 99 Eisler, Riane, 172 Elshtain, Jean Bethke, 209n3 Ember, Carol, 102 Ember, Mel, 102 emotions, 46–47; and mirror neurons, 47–48 empathy and aggression, 46 enculturation, 73 enemies, finding, 59–60 England, Gordon, 240 England’s General Dynamics (GD), 240 equality: promoting, 157 eternal freedom, 1 eternal peace, 3; prevailing paradigms, 4; practical outcomes, 11–16 ethics: and identity, 94; of proliferation, 205–209 ethnic cleansing, 178 ethnocentrism, 72–74

Europe: sexual gender-based violence in, 177–178 Evolution of Culture, The, 99 evolution of peace, 41; subatomic world, 43–44; subhuman world, 44–46 ewigen Frieden, 7 Ezekiel, 116 face-to-face communications, 78 ‘‘failed state,’’ 103 Farid, Esack, 164 fasting, 143, 144 Federal Reserve, 241, 242, 244 Fellowship of Reconciliation and Religions for Peace, 127 Feminine Mystique, The, 186 feminist, 173–174, 193; movement, 186 Femmes Africa Solidarit
e, 193 fiat money, 241 financial elite, 244–245 Fisher, Roger, 65 Fiske, Susan, 50 fission and fusion: principle of, 93 forgiveness, 162 fractional reserve system, 242 freedom, 1 free-market ideologues, 227 free-trade agreements, 231 Freud, Sigmund, 125 Friedan, Betty, 186 Friedman, Milton, 245 Fromm, Erich, 55, 87–88 Galbraith, James, 239 Gallasse, Vittorio, 47 Galtung, Johan, 62, 73 game theory, 63, 64 Gandhi, Mahatma, xv, 1, 5, 6, 9, 11, 13, 21, 26, 27, 28, 111, 112, 130, 137, 143; legacy of, 121; ‘‘Oceanic Circle’’ model, 14 Garcia, Anastasio Somoza, 223 Garver, Newton, 28 Gaza, 238 gender, 171–174; equality, 100; and socially engaged spirituality, 125–126 gendered metaphors, 207

Index genocide, 31, 238; and indigenous traditions, 125 gewaltlosigkeit, 15 Ghost in the Machine, The, 96 Gilligan, James, 62 global-cultural citizenship, 95 global economy, 228 Global Fund for Women, 186 ‘‘global gag rule,’’ 195 global governance, 35, 95 globalization, 31, 86, 90, 94 global movement, 105 Global Peace Index, 145 ‘‘global village,’’ 86 global violence: legitimizing, 63–65 global women’s movement, 186; challenges, 190–191; current status, 192–193; defining, 186–187; dignity of human person, 189; diversity and tolerance, 189; education and economic independence, 190; emerging leadership, 193–196; equality, 188; freedom, 188; liberty of individuals, 188; linkages, 188; nonviolence and peace, 189–190; shared analysis, 187–188; weaknesses and strengths, 191–192 Goettner-Abendroth, Heide, 172 Goldman Sachs, 244–245 Gore, Al, 217 Goss-Mayr, Hildegard, 112 Govender, Pregs, 193 Great Depression, 245 Greco, Thomas H., Jr, 241 gross domestic product (GDP), 229 Grossman, Dave, 56 Gulf War, 207 hadith, 119 Hague, The, 219 Halifax, Joan, 92 harmony, xii Harvest of Justice is Sown in Peace, The, 137, 138 Hawken, Paul, 248 Hedges, Chris, 58 Heschel, Abraham Joshua, 116, 117 Heschel, Susannah, 117

281

Hikmah (wisdom), 151 Himes, Kenneth, 146 Hindu resources: for peace and justice movements, 120–123 history, 42 Hitler, Adolf, 61 Holmes, Robert L., 21, 22, 26 homeland, 91 homicide, 61 Hopi, 123 hormones, 47 Hosea, 116 human aggression and war, 54–55 human compassion, 53 Human Development Index, 145 human dignity, 156; universality of, promotion of, 155–156 humanitarian intervention, 140 humanity, 20, 35 human life: sacredness of, preserving, 157–158 human relationships and peacekeeping missions, 76 human rights: acceptance of, 100; and virtue-based assessment, 142 Human Rights Watch, 179 Human Security Report, 215 Hussein, Saddam, 60 Iacoboni, Marco, 48 I and Thou, 20 identity: construction, challenges for, 85–87; cultural, 89; and ethics, 94; formation, 88; as interconnection, 93–96; old ways of understanding, 87–93; transformed and transformative, 96–97 Ihsan (benevolence), 151, 154 Illich, Ivan, 14, 15 images, 53 imagination, 139 Iman (faith), 156 imperial hegemony, 237, 239 inclusivity, 164–165 India, 226 indigenous spirituality, 123; centrality of community, relationship, and interdependence, 123–124; integration

282

Index

of spirituality, community, and social action, 124; practices for recovery of indigenous mind, 124–125 individual responsibility: in Islam, 162–163 industrial revolution, 86 inflation, 244 Information Systems and Technology and International Contracting, 240 in-group superiority, 73 injustice, 118 inner peace, 8–10 insiders, 53 ‘‘insight,’’ 50 intercultural exploration, 79, 80, 82 intercultural perception, 78 interest (loan), 242–243 interfaith cooperation, 127 international bill of rights for women, 180 International Council of Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), 109 International Decade, 102 international peace and security, 100 international work, 224 International Year for the Culture of Peace, 100, 101–102, 103, 105 Intifada, 182 Iraq, 238; sexual gender-based violence in, 178–179 Isaiah, 116 Islam, 112; prophetic traditions of, 115–116; socially engaged spirituality in, 119–120 Islamic alternatives: for war and violence, 151; collaborative actions and solidarity, 163; discrimination and prejudice, resisting, 157; equality, promoting, 157; forgiveness, 162; inclusivity, 164–165; individual responsibility, 162–163; nonviolent processes, 166; patience, 163; peacemaker, 161–162; pluralism and diversity, 165; quest for peace, 158–160; sacredness of human life, preserving, 157–158; social empowerment through doing good,

153–155; social justice, pursuit of, 152–153; Ummah, 164; universality of human dignity, promotion of, 155–156 Ithaca Hours, 249 Jahangir, Asma, 194 Jaleel, Umar, 4 James, William, 58 Jameson, Storm, xvi Jeremiah, 116 Jesus Christ, 9, 20, 23, 112, 116, 141 jihad, 112, 160, 168n24 jnana yoga, 120 John Paul II, Pope, 137–138 Johnston, Douglas, 145 Journal of Peace Research, 104 Joya, Malalai, 172–173 Judaism: contemporary prophets in, 117; prophetic traditions of, 115–116 judicial torture, 13 Jung, Carl, 125 justice, virtue of, 142 just peacemaking theory (JPT), 145 just war tradition, 140 Kalashnikov, 222 Kant, Immanuel, 7, 20 karma, 120 karma yoga, 120–121 Kempf, Herve, 246 Khader, Asma, 194 Khan, Abdul Ghaffar, 151 Khan, Genghis, 99 Khatab, Umar Ibn, 152 Khayr (doing good), 154, 155 al-Khudri, Abu Sa’id, 119 Kimmel, Paul, 69 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 21, 112, 117–118, 137 Kissinger, Henry, 64 Kissling, Frances, 186 knowledge, 41 Koestler, Arthur, 96 Kollwitz, Kathe, 209n3 Korten, David, 241 Kotva, Joseph, 141 Kropotkin, Peter, 44 Kufar, 165

Index Lakoff, George, 62 learning how-to-learn program, 79–80 Lebanon, 238 Lederach, John Paul, 144, 145 Lederer, Laura, 186 Lerner, Michael, 117 LETSystems, 249 liberation theology, 118 Lietaer, Bernard, 249, 250 life cycles in conflicts, 34–35 limbic system, 46 Linton, Ralph, 86 local authorities (LAs), 32 local governments: role of, and culture, 107–109 Lorde, Audre, 237 Lord Krishna, 121 love: centrality of, 139, 140 Maathai, Wangari, 193 Macy, Joanna, 11, 126 Madres of Argentina, 210n3 Madres of the Plaza de Mayo, 172, 182 Main Street economy, 232 ‘‘making of peace,’’ 159 Makoni, Betty, 194 Man, 155–156 Manichaean Christianity, 9 Manifesto 2000, 82, 105 March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, The (Tuchman), 238 massive category killing, 31 matriarchy, 171 Maurin, Peter, 118 McCarthy, Eli Sasaran, 112 McCarthy, Emmanuel, 143 media, 54–55 mediated consequence, 26 mediation, 65 Medina, 164 meditation, 49, 50, 122, 143, 166 Mernissi, Fatima, 194 Merton, Thomas, 119 Michigan Peace Team, 147 middle-class society, 232 Middle East: sexual gender-based violence in, 178 Migliore, Celestino, 25

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Milburn, Michael A., 62 Milgram, Stanley, 43, 60 militarism, 117–118 military recruitment, 57 Millennium Development Goals, 145, 218 mirror neurons, 47–48; and autism patients, 48; and interpretation of facial expressions, 49 modernity, 114 modern state system, 32 modern war, 22 money: creation, 241–242; fiat money, 241; monetization of government debt, 241; monopolized credit money, 242 monotheism, 8–9 moral imagination, 144 Mother Teresa, 6 ‘‘movement toward peace,’’ 3 muhabat (love), 151 Muhammad, 119 multilateral institutions: empowering, 220 Mu’min (genuine believer), 155 Murray, Anne Firth, 186 Muslim Peacemaker Teams, 147 Muslim women: sexual gender-based violence in, 178 Muste, A. J., 21 mutual credit system, 249 Myers, David, 230 myth, 53; of progress, 247 Naga women, against sexual violence, 183 Nairobi Forward-Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women, 180 Napoleon, 99 Nari Uddug Kendra, 194 national identities, 92 National Peace Academy, 150n42 national states, 72 Native Americans, 124 natural disasters, 218 Nazis, 59, 61 negative peace, 4, 19 neurochemicals, 47

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neuronal dysfunction, 61 neuroplasticity, 47 neuroscience, 44 New People’s Army (NPA), 130 new world order, 109–110 1999 Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace, 98, 102 Nixon, Richard, 241, 246, 250 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 32 non-state actors, 34 nonviolence, 4, 13, 15, 35, 117–118, 121, 129; Catholic social teaching on, 137–140; for Christians, 139 Nonviolent Peace Force (NP), 4, 147 nonviolent peacemaking: committee formation, 144; education and training in, 144; virtue of, 136, 140–141; integration in CST, 142–148 nonviolent processes: in Islam, 166 nonviolent revolution, 134, 135 Noriega, Manuel, 60 normality, 73 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 195 nuclear weapons, 202, 211n22; medical and political costs, 203; from moral perspective, 204 Nuclear Weapons Cost Study Project Committee, 211n23 Nussbaum, Martha, 145 Occident and the Orient, 90 ‘‘Oceanic Circle,’’ 14 old economy economist versus new economy ecologist, 226–231 On War and Morality, 21 organizational psychology, 64 Orientalism, 90 Orwell, George, 9, 10 Osgood, Charles, 65 ‘‘otherness,’’ 90 out-group inferiority, 73 oxytocin, 47 Palestine Liberation Organization, 221 Pan paniscus, 45 Pan troglodytes, 45

Paradise Lost, 8 parenting, 23 participatory communication, 100 ‘‘passage meditation,’’ 51n40 paterfamilias, 12 patience (sabr), 163 Patkar, Medha, 193 patriarchy, 190 Patterson, Mark, 245 Paul, Pope John, 146 Paulson, Henry, 244 Pax Christi, 10 pax romana, 14, 15 peace, xi–xii; conceptions of, 74–75; etymology of, 14; generations of approaches, 33–34; imaging, 11; inner, 8–10; meaning of, 1–2; as perpetual pre-hostility, 6; philosophy of, 18; as positive reality, 5–8; quest for, 158–160; societal perspective of, 69–70; and war, 7; world order model for, 13–14 Peace and Justice Studies Association, 25 peace building, 2, 17n30, 34, 35, 74, 78–80 peace culture, 35 peace education, 35 peace enforcement, 74 peace journalism, 35 peacekeepers, 76 peacekeeping, 2, 17n30, 34, 35, 74, 81; traditional, 75–77 peacekeeping missions, 75–76; cultural identification in, 76; training in cultural awareness, 77–78 peacemaker, 161–162 peacemaking, 2, 17n30, 35, 74, 75, 78–80, 161 peace movements, xii, 35 peace studies programs, 144 ‘‘peace through strength,’’ 5 peace zones, 34, 35 people power, 17n28 people’s consent, 246–247 perpetual peace, 7 perpetual pre-hostility, 6, 10 personal identity, 88, 92 person power, 17n28

Index persuasion, 163 Petraeus, David, 99 Petroleum Institute, 240 phases in conflicts, 34–35 Philippines, 129–135; as Catholic country, 129–130 philosophy of peace, 18; implications of, 22–24; objection, 24–28; philosophical and ethical basis for, 19–21 PhRMA, 240 Pillay, Navi, 194 Plaskow, Judith, 117 Plato, 19–20, 28; Crito, 19–20 Plowshares Movement, 119 pluralism, 165 political freedom, 1–2 political power and resource control realities, 228–229 positive peace, 19 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 58 poverty, 117–118, 213, 239 Power of Partnership, The, 172 prayer, 129, 133, 143 Predator State, 239 pre-hostility, 6 pre-human animals, 45 prejudice, resisting, 157 pride, 156 ‘‘prima facie public obligation,’’ 140 primate research, 46 ‘‘primordial bonds,’’ 72 ‘‘primordial sentiments,’’ 72, 73, 82 principle of ‘‘last clear chance,’’ 28 private sector, 250 profit, 22 Programme of Action for a Culture of Peace, 105 proliferation: as discourse, 205–207; ethical nonproliferation politics, 208–209; ethics of, 205–209; as a phenomenon, 207–208; Western, 206 prophets: Christian, 116–119; Jewish, 117 prosocial behaviors, 47 psychiatry, 42–43 psychology, 42–43; and peace, 52; aftermath of war, coping with, 58–59;

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aggression, 55; danger, 56; dehumanization, 56; devils and bad apples, 60–62; enemies, finding, 59–60; global violence, legitimizing, 63–65; psychological abilities, 53; resolving conflicts, alternative ways, 65–66; soldiers, creating, 57–58; structural violence, 62–63; war and human aggression, 54–55; Western worldview, 54 public accountability, 231 punitive child-rearing, 61 quantum theory, 43 Qur’an, 151, 152, 155, 156 racism, 117–118; and indigenous traditions, 125 Radio Veritas, 134 Rahmah (compassion), 151 raja yoga, 120 rape, 179, 200 ‘‘rape camps,’’ 178 Reagan, Ronald, 5 realists, 203 reconciliation, 34, 35, 156, 164, 166 ‘‘recovery of indigenous mind,’’ 125 reference currency (GRC), 250 relief operations, 219 religion: definition, 113–114; and peace, 111–112 religious resources, 113; contemporary Christian prophets and movements, 117–119; contemporary Jewish prophets, 117; contemporary spiritual activism, vision of, 114–115; Hindu and Buddhist resources, 120–123; indigenous spirituality, resources, 123–125; interfaith approaches, 127; prophetic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, 115–116; religious traditions and secular social movements, split between, 114; socially engaged spirituality in Islam, 119–120 Reserved Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), 147 revolutionary movements, 103

286 Rhesus monkeys, 45 Rizzolati, Iaccomo, 47 Roberts, Adam, 147 Robust Complementary Community Currency (ROCS), 249 Roentgen, Wilhelm, 50 ‘‘rogue states,’’ 206 role-plays, 80 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 191 Rothberg, Donald, 111 Roy, Arundhati, 203 Royal Society, London, 227 Rubin, Robert, 244 Ruether, Rosemary, 119 Rumsfeld, Donald, 18 Sachs, Jeffrey, 196, 227–231 Sadaqah (voluntary charity), 154 Said, Edward, 90, 94, 95 Said, Jawdat, 159 satya, 5 Satyagraha, 6, 13 satyagrahi, 121 Schering Plough, 240 Schwarz, Ernst, 45 Schweitzer, Albert, 29 science, 43 ‘‘second coming,’’ 12 secular social movements: and religious traditions, split between, 114 self-awareness: cultural, 79, 81 ‘‘selfless service,’’ 121 Sen, Amartya, 89 Seville Statement on Violence, The, 42 sexual abuse: efforts to abolish, 179–184 sexual-based violence, 177 sexual metaphors, 207 sexual violence, as weapon of war, 177–179 Shakespeare, William, 49 shalom, 15 shanti, 15 shanti sena (peace army), 4, 147 Shura (mutual consultation), 164 Sin, Cardinal, 134 Sinclair, Jean, 181 Sirat El Mustaqim (straight way), 154 Sirleaf, Ellen Johnson, 194

Index small arms and light weapons (SALW), 201; proliferation of, 222 Smith, Martin, 57 ‘‘snap’’ elections, 133 Sochua, Mu, 193 social justice, 154; pursuit of, 152–153 socially engaged spirituality, 114–115, 122; gender and, 125–126; indigenous resources for, 123–125; in Islam, 119–120 Socrates, 19–20, 26 soldiers: creating, 57–58 solidarity: in Islam, 163; virtue of, 142 S€olle, Dorothee, 119 Somalia, 238 South, Jubilee, 245 Speth, James Gustave ‘‘sphere of interest,’’ 32 spiritual freedom, 1 spirituality: definition, 113–114; ecology and, 127 spiritual resources. See religious resources Spohn, William, 141 Sri Lanka, 238 Sri Ramana Maharshi, 10 St. Augustine, xii, xvi, 1, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13 St. Francis’s Prayer, 28 Stahl, Lesley, 64 Stapp, Henry, 44 Steel, Robert, 245 strategic nonviolent action, 22 structural violence: costs of, 238–240; psychology of, 62–63 Stump-tailed Macaques, 45 subatomic world, 43–44 subhuman world, 44–46 sukha, 31 Sulha (reconciliation), 156, 164, 166 Sumner, William G., 72 Sunni tradition, 165 super mirror neurons, 48 sustainable enterprises, 232 sustainable human development, 100 swaraj, 1 symbols, 53

Index tahkim (arbitration), 166 Taibbi, Matt, 244, 245 ‘‘take away war’’ concept, 4 Taylor, Charles, 219 Taymiya, Ibn, 156 technostrategic discourse, 202 temporal freedom, 1 Terra, 250 terrorism, eliminating, 233 terror management theory, 53 Thackeray, Balasaheb, 207 Thain, John, 244 third-party nonviolent intervention (TPNI), 146–147 Third World, 187 Thomistic virtue of charity, 141 Thoreau, Henry, 26 threats: to U.S. security, 233 Tibet, 238 Time Dollars, 249 Toffler, Alvin, 45 Tolstoy, Leo, 25 torture, 63 Towards Perpetual Peace, 7 Toynbee, Arnold, xvi, 7 traditional peacekeeping, 75–77 training: in cultural awareness, peacekeeping, 77–78; design, 80–81 transformative mediation, 66 transition, 192 transnational corporations (TNCs), 32 Truman, Harry, 197 truth, 5 Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, 145, 146 Tuchman, Barbara, 238 Tzu, Sun, 99 Ummah (community), 164 unarmed civilian peacekeeping (UCPS), 146–147 UNESCO, 98, 99, 100, 103, 105; Culture of Peace Program, 81 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), 59 United Nations, 31, 32, 219, 250; Decade for a Culture of Peace and NonViolence for the Children of the

287

World, 82, 98, 105; Fourth World Conference on Women (1995), 180; General Assembly, 98, 99, 105; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 217; peacekeeping and, 75, 147; People’s Assembly, 31; role of, and culture, 104; Security Council Resolution 1325 (Women, Peace, and Security, 2000), 180 United Nations protection force (UNPROFOR), 4 United States, 239; Navy and Marine Corps, 240; and nuclear weapons, 202; sexual gender-based violence in, 178; and UN peacekeeping, 218–219; women’s organizations, 195 United World Federalists, 250 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 98, 100 University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), 47–48 unmediated consequence, 26 untruth, 5 Ury, William L., 65 U.S. Army, 57 U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 43 USS Abraham Lincoln, 219 usury, 242 ‘‘us versus them’’ mentality, 90, 91 Vajpayee, Atal Behari, 207 Vatican II, 137 ‘‘versus-ism,’’ 95 violence: consequences of, 238; in Islam, 159; against women, 176 Vipasanna, 50 virtue, 140; for nonviolent peacemaking, 140–141 Vitruvius, 4 Volkan, Vamik, 73 Wadud, Amina, 120 Wallis, Jim, 119 Wall Street, 243, 244; economy, 232 war, 2; abolition, 35; aftermath of, coping with, 58–59; costs of, 237–238; as gendered practice, 198–199; hidden

288 costs of, 238; and human aggression, 54–55; masculinity, 198; and peace, 7; trauma, 59; violence, 200 warfare: abstract discussion of, 202 war-making, 42; institutions, 43 war theory, 139 wasatah (mediation), 166 wealth, concentration of, 245–246 weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), 223; anti-war feminism and, 201–203; cost of having, 203–205; proliferation, ethics of, 205–209 Weber, Max, 103 Weil, Simone, 119 Western proliferation, 206 Western science, 91 Western worldview, 54 Wheeler, Mary, 50 White, Leslie A., 99 wisdom, 29 Witness for Peace, 10 women, 155–156, 171–172, 223–224; domestic violence, 176; as resource, 175; sexuality, 189; violence against, 176 Women in Black, 182, 210n3

Index Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), 210n3 women’s rights organizations, 194; empowering, 195 Woolf, Virginia, 209n3 world, 53 World Bank, 245 World Health Organization, 62 World Meteorological Organization, 215 World Social Forum, 250 World War II, 57 wrongdoing, 26 X-rays, 50 Yacoobi, Sakena, 194 yakeen (faith), 151 yl-medu, 24 Yunus, Muhammad, 120 Zakah (almsgiving), 154 zakat, 119 Zampaglione, Federico, 14 Zen Buddhism, 21 Zimbardo, Philip, 43, 60 Zulm (oppression), 154, 164

ABOUT THE EDITORS CONTRIBUTORS

AND

Co-editor Marc Pilisuk got his PhD in clinical and social psychology from the University of Michigan in 1961 and went on to teach, research, and write at several colleges ending up at the University of California and Saybrook University. His various departmental affiliations—psychology, nursing, administrative sciences, social welfare, public health, community mental health, human and community development, city and regional planning, peace and conflict studies, and human sciences—convinced him that academic disciplines could be blinders and should be crossed. He was a founder of the first Teach-in on a University Campus (Michigan) and the Psychologists for Social Responsibility, helped start SANE (now Peace Action), and is a past president of the Society for the Study of Peace Conflict and Violence. He has received several lifetime contribution awards for work for peace. Marc’s books cover topics of underlying social issues, poverty, international conflict, and the nature of human interdependence. His most recent (Who Benefits from Global Violence and War) uncovered information that was sufficiently shocking to motivate this new undertaking on Peace Movements Worldwide. Co-editor Michael N. Nagler was sensitized to issues of peace and justice (the usual term is ‘‘radicalized’’) through folk music and various influences

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About the Editors and Contributors

by the time he left his New York City birthplace. After attending Cornell University and finishing his BA at New York University, he arrived in Berkeley, CA, in 1960, in time to finish a PhD in Comparative Literature before the advent of the Free Speech Movement. The successes and failures of that movement broadened his outlook so that he joined the group forming around meditation teacher, Eknath Easwaran, late in 1966 and soon launched a parallel career—inward. Nonviolence, and Gandhi in particular, became a way to carve out a meaningful niche for himself within academia. At Berkeley, he went on to found the Peace and Conflict Studies Program (PACS; now probably the largest in terms of student majors in the United States) and off campus co-founded the Metta Center for Nonviolence (www.mettacenter.org). He also became chair of Peaceworkers (www.peaceworkers.org) and eventually co-chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Association (www.peacejusticestudies.org). He stopped teaching at the university in 2007 to devote his time to Metta and the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation. A frequent speaker on nonviolence and related themes around the world, his most recent recognition is the Jamnalal Bajaj International Award for Promoting Gandhian Values Outside India. His books include The Upanishads (with Eknath Easwaran, 1987), Our Spiritual Crisis (2004), and The Search for a Nonviolent Future, which won a 2002 American Book Award and has been translated into six languages, most recently Arabic. Mohammed Abu-Nimer is a professor in the International Peace and Conflict Resolution program at the School of International Service. In addition to his teaching position, he is also director of the Peacebuilding and Development Institute at American University and founder of the Salam Institute for Peace and Justice. An expert on conflict resolution and dialogue for peace, Abu-Nimer has conducted research on conflict resolution and dialogue for peace among Palestinians and Jews in Israel. His work has focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and on application of conflict resolution models in Muslim communities. Abu-Nimer has also conducted interreligious conflict resolution training, and interfaith dialogue. In the last decade, he has completed many evaluation projects and reports of peace building and development programs. As a scholar/practitioner, he has been intervening and conducting conflict resolution training workshops in many conflict areas around the world, including Palestine, Israel, Egypt, Northern Ireland, Philippines (Mindanao), Sri Lanka, and other areas. In addition to his numerous articles and publications, he is also the co-founder and co-editor of the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development.

About the Editors and Contributors

291

David Adams, since his retirement from UNESCO in 2001, has continued to devote his energies to the Global Movement for a Culture of Peace. In addition to the books listed in the references to his article, Adams has established a number of Web sites: the Culture of Peace info Web site (http://www.culture-of-peace.info); the Culture of Peace News Network (http://cpnn-world.org); the Web site of the Civil Society Report to the UN on the Culture of Peace (http://decade-culture-of-peace.org); and the culture of peace game (http://culture-of-peace-game.org). At UNESCO, he was the director of the Unit for the International Year for the Culture of Peace, proclaimed for the year 2000 by the UN General Assembly. He came to UNESCO in 1992 to develop the national culture of peace programs as a supplement and alternative to military peacekeeping operations. On behalf of UNESCO he drafted UN documents, including the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace (1999). Previously, at Yale and Wesleyan, he published many studies on the brain mechanisms of aggressive behavior, the evolution of war, and the psychology of peace activists, and he helped to develop and publicize the Seville Statement on Violence. Jamal A. Badawi completed his undergraduate studies in Cairo, Egypt, and his MA and PhD degrees at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is professor emeritus at St. Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he served as a professor of both management and religious studies. During its May 2008 Convocation, Saint Mary’s University granted him an Honorary Doctorate of Civil Law in recognition of his promotion of ‘‘a better understanding of Islam’’ and contribution ‘‘to civil society around the world.’’ Badawi is the author of several works on Islam, including books, chapters, articles, and a 352-segment television series on Islam. Some of his works such as ‘‘Muslim and Non-Muslim Relations,’’ ‘‘Gender Equity in Islam,’’ ‘‘Muslim Contribution to Civilization and Apostasy’’ are available on various sites especially islamonline.net under ‘‘Reading Islam,’’ ‘‘Contemporary issues,’’ and other headings. In addition to his participation in lectures, seminars, and interfaith dialogues in North America, Badawi has been invited to speak on Islam in 38 other countries. He is a member of the Islamic Juridical [Fiqh] Council of North America, The European Council of Ifta and Research, and the International Union of Muslim Scholars. Carol Cohn, is the director of the Boston Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights. Carol is a leader in the scholarly community addressing issues of gender in global politics generally, armed conflict, and security. Cohn’s research and writing has focused on gender and security issues

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About the Editors and Contributors

ranging from work on the discourse of civilian defense intellectuals to gender integration issues in the U.S. military, weapons of mass destruction, and the gender dimensions of contemporary armed conflicts. She conducts training and workshops on 1325 and consults on gender mainstreaming and gender and organizational change. She has worked actively with the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security since 2001 and is now working with the Social Science Research Council to design a Global Centre for Research on Gender, Crisis Prevention and Recovery for the UN Development Programme. In addition to her research and policy consulting, Cohn is deeply committed to teaching in the area of gender and global security. She came to the position as director of the Consortium after 20 years of teaching at the college and university level. Jan Egeland is the director at NUPI and is currently professor II at the University of Stavanger. He has substantial experience in the field of humanitarian relief and conflict resolution within the UN system. From 2006 to 2008 he was special advisor to the UN secretary-general for Conflict Prevention and Resolution. From 2003 to 2006 he was under-secretary-general for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator at the UN Headquarters. From 1999 to 2001, he was under-secretary-general and special advisor to the secretary-general for International Assistance to Colombia. He has long-time experience in conflict resolution from Colombia, the Middle East, Sudan, Guatemala, and the Balkans. From 1990 to 1991, he was state secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Egeland holds a magister in political science from the University of Oslo. He has received a number of awards for his work on humanitarian and conflict resolution issues. In 2008 he published A Billion Lives—An Eyewitness Report from the Frontlines of Humanity. Ellen Gaddy is a graduate student in psychology and social transformation at Saybrook University, where she studies the psychology of sustainability and sustainable monetary systems. Ellen also co-directs Smokey Mountain Hollers Cooperative, which operates a local currency and trade exchange located in Asheville, North Carolina, as well as NewDay Africa, a not-for-profit organization that supports community-based programs for the orphaned, the ill, and the impoverished in East Africa. Johan Galtung, widely considered the founder of peace research, gained the equivalents of MA and PhD degrees in respectively mathematics and sociology at the University of Oslo in 1955 and 1956. Seeing his beloved

About the Editors and Contributors

293

father arrested by the Nazis when he was 12 years old was a defining event that turned him to a lifelong career in peace. After teaching briefly at Columbia University, he returned to Norway and founded the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO). It was the first of many groundbreaking institution foundings that culminated most recently in 1993 when, leaving behind a distinguished academic career that spanned the world, he co-founded TRANSCEND to employ a new method of conflict reduction and train others to continue it. Galtung has published more than 1,000 articles and over 100 books, most of which contain extremely cogent if not groundbreaking contributions to the understanding of nonviolence and peace, leading economist and fellow peace researcher Kenneth Boulding to comment that Galtung’s ‘‘output is so large and so varied that it is hard to believe that it comes from a human.’’ Barry L. Gan is professor of philosophy and director of the Center for Nonviolence at St. Bonaventure University. He is co-editor with Robert L. Holmes of a leading anthology on nonviolence, Nonviolence in Theory and Practice (2nd edition) and editor of The Acorn: Journal of the Gandhi-King Society. He has served as co-editor of Peace and Change: A Journal of Peace Research, Journal of the Peace History Society and the Peace and Justice Studies Association; and for two years he served as program committee chair of the oldest and largest interfaith peace group in the United States, the Fellowship of Reconciliation. He has taught at St. Bonaventure University for the past 25 years after receiving his MA and PhD degrees in philosophy from the University of Rochester. Prior to that, he taught high school and junior high school English for six years. Hildegard Goss-Mayr is an Austrian Catholic pioneer in teaching the philosophy and practice of nonviolence amid great historical events of the past half century. During childhood and as a young person she experienced Nazism, the persecution of her family, and World War II. After graduation with a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Vienna she worked, together with her husband, Jean Goss, as a staff person of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation for East-West-Dialogue during the Cold War. She supported nonviolent struggles to overcome colonialism and racism (Angola, Mozambique, South Africa) and helped to build up ‘‘People Power’’ in the Philippines to overthrow the dictatorship of President Marcos. During the Second Vatican Council the Goss-Mayrs set up a peace lobby in Rome to promote the out-ruling of the just war concepts and the development of a theology of peacemaking built on the nonviolence of Jesus. During recent years she helped to build up nonviolent movements in francophone

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About the Editors and Contributors

African countries. She published several books and numerous articles and interviews. She has been awarded several peace prizes. Mitch Hall is a peace activist, children’s rights advocate, scholar, writer, and speaker. He currently works with a nonprofit mental health clinic as a counselor for underprivileged children and youth who live in a high-violence urban area and have suffered significant trauma. His interests include peace psychology, attachment research, interpersonal neurobiology, human rights, social justice, psychohistory, meditation, yoga, and natural healing. Mitch serves on the Board of Parents and Teachers against Violence in Education, which promotes nonviolent childrearing and education. He is a certified yoga teacher with the Niroga Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing the transformative life skills and benefits of meditation, breathing practices, and yoga poses to underserved populations, including children who have been traumatized, at-risk youth, seniors, and medical patients recovering from serious disorders. He is also on the board of AHIMSA Berkeley, a nonprofit organization that explores how spirituality, science, and social action can contribute to peace building. Mitch is a member of Psychologists for Social Responsibility and has posted on their Web site blogs about children’s issues in relation to structural violence and cognitive dissonance. He has many publications and has spoken at numerous conferences, primarily about peace building and the personal and societal importance of providing for children’s attachment security in nurturing, nonviolent homes, schools, and communities. Paul R. Kimmel received a doctorate in social psychology from the University of Michigan in 1963. He is currently teaching at the Saybrook University. He has also taught at Iowa State University, American University, UCLA, and Pepperdine University. He was the first public policy fellow at the American Psychological Association and in the first group of peace fellows at the U.S. Institute of Peace. He has published articles and book chapters about intercultural communication, peace building, and the culture of peace. His research includes major evaluations for the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Washington International Center. For over 40 years he has been designing and conducting programs in intercultural understanding for diplomats, UN personnel, the police, Americans going abroad, and international business persons. He has been an officer and is currently active in the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, Psychologists for Social Responsibility, and the Division of Peace Psychology of the American Psychological Association. He recently edited a book on the psychological consequences of America’s war on terrorism.

About the Editors and Contributors

295

David C. Korten is the author of Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth and The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. His previous books include the international best-seller When Corporations Rule the World and The Post-Corporate World: Life after Capitalism. Korten is co-founder and board chair of the Positive Futures Network, which publishes YES! Magazine, and is founder and president of the People-Centered Development Forum, a board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), and co-chair of the New Economy Working Group. He is also a founding associate of the International Forum on Globalization (IFG) and a major contributor to its report on Alternatives to Economic Globalization. Korten holds MBA and PhD degrees from the Stanford Business School, has 30 years’ experience as a development professional living and working in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and has served as a Harvard Business School professor, a captain in the U.S. Air Force, a Ford foundation project specialist, and a regional advisor to the U.S. Agency for International Development. Anthony J. Marsella is professor emeritus, Department of Psychology, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, where he was a member of the faculty for 33 years. He earned his PhD from Pennsylvania State University in clinical psychology. During his tenure at the University of Hawaii, Marsella served as vice president for Academic Affairs, director of Clinical Psychology Training, director of the WHO Psychiatric Research Center, and director of the Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance Training Program. Marsella has published 14 books and more than 200 book chapters, journal articles, technical reports, and popular articles. He also served as co-editor for two encyclopedias of psychology and currently serves as editor for a book series on cultural and international psychology for Springer SBM Publications. He is the recipient of numerous research and training grants for studies of (1) culture, psychology, and psychopathology; (2) serious mental disorders; and (3) global challenges. He has received several American Psychological Association awards for contributions to the advancement of international psychology, the Asian-American Psychological Association Presidential Award for lifetime contributions to Asian American and Pacific Island psychology, and numerous other professional and scientific awards. The University of Copenhagen awarded him an honorary doctorate degree for his contributions to international peace and understanding. Eli Sasaran McCarthy is a PhD candidate at the Graduate Theological Union in the area of ethics and social theory with a particular focus in peace and justice studies, such as nonviolent peacemaking and Truth and

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About the Editors and Contributors

Reconciliation Commissions. His dissertation project is a ‘‘Virtue Ethic Assessment of Nonviolent Peacemaking.’’ This project examines how to more adequately assess nonviolent peacemaking practices, and more effectively draw them into public discourse and policy. His article titled ‘‘The Virtue Ethic Difference in the Just War Discourse of James Turner Johnson and Catholic Social Teaching’’ is coming out in the Journal of Political Theology, and he has an article is under review called ‘‘Truth and Reconciliation Commissions: Toward a More Just U.S. Society.’’ He has taught courses at St. Mary’s College and Holy Names University, as well as being a teaching assistant at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Graduate Theological Union. He is a member of the Community of Sant’ Egidio, created a conflict transformation program for undergraduates at the Berkeley, did peace building in Israel and Palestine with the Nonviolent Peaceforce and UN, and spent five months in Haiti doing grassroots peace building and learning about structures of injustice. Rebecca Joy Norlander has a master’s degree in French cultural studies from Columbia University and is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in human science at Saybrook University, with a concentration in social transformation. Her primary areas of interest are post-conflict education curriculum development and peace building. Rebecca has spent much of her life living, working, traveling, studying, and volunteering abroad; cultivating an interest in intercultural communication and conflict resolution that she hopes will further the interests of grassroots change initiatives that aim to improve the quality of life for all of earth’s inhabitants. Gianina Pellegrini is a doctoral student at Saybrook University, pursuing a degree in psychology with a concentration in social transformation and certification in international peace and conflict resolution. While obtaining a master’s degree in psychology, Gianina researched how spiritual, religious, and traditional customs in sub-Saharan Africa influenced the care and treatment of HIV-positive children. Her primary areas of interest include issues pertaining to human rights, public health, and social justice. Kavita Nandini Ramdas has served as president and CEO of the Global Fund for Women since 1996. She has dedicated herself to empowering women worldwide with the financial resources to increase girls’ access to education, defend women’s right to health and reproductive rights, prevent violence against women, and advance women’s political participation, as well as other vital issues. Kavita has served on the boards of the Women’s Funding Network, the Women’s Rights Prize of the Gruber Foundation,

About the Editors and Contributors

297

and the Ethical Globalization Initiative. She is the recipient of numerous philanthropic and leadership awards, including most recently, the Haridas and Bina Chaudhuri Award for Distinguished Service presented by the California Institute of Integrated Studies (CIIS). Kavita recently joined the Global Development Advisory Panel of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Advisory Panel of the Asian University for Women, and the board of trustees of Princeton University. Donald Rothberg is a member of the Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s Teachers Council in Northern California, writes and teaches on Buddhist meditation, spiritual practice in daily life, transpersonal studies, epistemology and spirituality, and socially engaged Buddhism. He has helped to guide training programs in socially engaged spirituality for the Buddhist Peace Fellowship (a number of six-month ‘‘BASE’’ programs), Saybrook University (several 18-month interfaith programs), and Spirit Rock (the ‘‘Path of Engagement’’ 24-month program). An editor of ReVision: A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation for 10 years, he is the co-editor (with Sean Kelly) of Ken Wilber in Dialogue: Conversations with Leading Transpersonal Thinkers (Quest Books, 1998) and the author of The Engaged Spiritual Life: A Buddhist Approach to Transforming Ourselves and the World (2006). Sara Ruddick received her PhD in philosophy from Harvard University. She then taught for many years at Eugene Lang College, New School University where she is now Faculty Emerita. She co-edited three feminist anthologies: Working It Out, Between Women, and Mother Troubles. She is the author of Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace (Beacon Press, 1989, 1995). For the 20th anniversary of this book Andrea O’Reilly prepared a collection of essays entitled Maternal Thinking: Philosophy, Politics, Practice. Angel Ryono is a master’s degree student in the human sciences at Saybrook University. She was inspired to pursue graduate studies after working as a researcher and associate editor for Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research in Honolulu, Hawaii. Currently, Angel is affiliated with the War Crimes Studies Center at University of California, Berkeley, particularly in working to support transitional justice projects in Southeast Asia. Her research focuses on the historical and structural challenges to peace building in Cambodia.

ABOUT

SERIES EDITOR A D V I S O R Y B OA R D THE

AND

SERIES EDITOR Chris E. Stout, PsyD, MBA, is a licensed clinical psychologist and is a Clinical Full Professor at the University of Illinois College of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry. He served as an NGO Special Representative to the United Nations. He was appointed to the World Economic Forum’s Global Leaders of Tomorrow and he has served as an Invited Faculty at the Annual Meeting in Davos. He is the Founding Director of the Center for Global Initiatives. Stout is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, former President of the Illinois Psychological Association, and a Distinguished Practitioner in the National Academies of Practice. Stout has published or presented over 300 papers and 30 books and manuals on various topics in psychology. His works have been translated into six languages. He has lectured across the nation and internationally in 19 countries and has, visited 6 continents and almost 70 countries. He was noted as being ‘‘one of the most frequently cited psychologists in the scientific literature’’ in a study by Hartwick College. He is the recipient of the American Psychological Association’s International Humanitarian Award.

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About the Series Editor and Advisory Board

ADVISORY BOARD Bruce Bonecutter, PhD, is Director of Behavioral Services at the Elgin Community Mental Health Center, the Illinois Department of Human Services state hospital serving adults in greater Chicago. He is also a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. A clinical psychologist specializing in health, consulting, and forensic psychology, Bonecutter is also a longtime member of the American Psychological Association Taskforce on Children and the Family. He is a member of organizations including the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, International, the Alliance for the Mentally Ill, and the Mental Health Association of Illinois. Joseph Flaherty, MD, is Chief of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois Hospital, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois College (UIC) of Medicine and a Professor of Community Health Science at the UIC College of Public Health. He is a Founding Member of the Society for the Study of Culture and Psychiatry. Dr. Flaherty has been a consultant to the World Health Organization, the National Institute of Mental Health, and also the Falk Institute in Jerusalem. He is the former Director of Undergraduate Education and Graduate Education in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois. Dr. Flaherty has also been Staff Psychiatrist and Chief of Psychiatry at Veterans Administration West Side Hospital in Chicago. Michael Horowitz, PhD, is President and Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, one of the nation’s leading not-for-profit graduate schools of psychology. Earlier, he served as Dean and Professor of the Arizona School of Professional Psychology. A clinical psychologist practicing independently since 1987, his work has focused on psychoanalysis, intensive individual therapy, and couples therapy. He has provided Disaster Mental Health Services to the American Red Cross. Horowitz’s special interests include the study of fatherhood. Sheldon I. Miller, MD, is a Professor of Psychiatry at Northwestern University, and Director of the Stone Institute of Psychiatry at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. He is also Director of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, Director of the American Board of Emergency Medicine, and Director of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Dr. Miller is also an Examiner for the American Board of Psychiatry and

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Neurology. He is Founding Editor of the American Journal of Addictions, and Founding Chairman of the American Psychiatric Association’s Committee on Alcoholism. Dr. Miller has also been a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Public Health Service, serving as psychiatric consultant to the Navajo Area Indian Health Service at Window Rock, Arizona. He is a member and Past President of the Executive Committee for the American Academy of Psychiatrists in Alcoholism and Addictions. Dennis P. Morrison, PhD, is Chief Executive Officer at the Center for Behavioral Health in Indiana, the first behavioral health company ever to win the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) Codman Award for excellence in the use of outcomes management to achieve health care quality improvement. He is President of the Board of Directors for the Community Healthcare Foundation in Bloomington, and has been a member of the Board of Directors for the American College of Sports Psychology. He has served as a consultant to agencies including the Ohio Department of Mental Health, Tennessee Association of Mental Health Organizations, Oklahoma Psychological Association, the North Carolina Council of Community Mental Health Centers, and the National Center for Heath Promotion in Michigan. Morrison served across 10 years as a Medical Service Corp Officer in the U.S. Navy. William H. Reid, MD, is a clinical and forensic psychiatrist, and consultant to attorneys and courts throughout the United States. He is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Health Science Center. Dr. Miller is also an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at Texas A&M College of Medicine and Texas Tech University School of Medicine, as well as a Clinical Faculty member at the Austin Psychiatry Residency Program. He is Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board and Medical Advisor to the Texas Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association, as well as an Examiner for the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He has served as President of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, as Chairman of the Research Section for an International Conference on the Psychiatric Aspects of Terrorism, and as Medical Director for the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation. Dr. Reid earned an Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. He has been cited on the Best Doctors in America listing since 1998.

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ABOUT

THE

SERIES

THE PRAEGER SERIES IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY In this series, experts from various disciplines peer through the lens of psychology, telling us answers they see for questions of human behavior. Their topics may range from humanity’s psychological ills—addictions, abuse, suicide, murder, and terrorism among them—to works focused on positive subjects, including intelligence, creativity, athleticism, and resilience. Regardless of the topic, the goal of this series remains constant—to offer innovative ideas, provocative considerations, and useful beginnings to better understand human behavior. Series Editor Chris E. Stout, Psy.D., MBA Northwestern University Medical School Illinois Chief of Psychological Services Advisory Board Bruce E. Bonecutter, Ph.D. University of Illinois at Chicago Director, Behavioral Services, Elgin Community Mental Health Center

304

About the Series

Joseph A. Flaherty, M.D. University of Illinois College of Medicine and College of Public Health Chief of Psychiatry, University of Illinois Hospital Michael Horowitz, Ph.D. Chicago School of Professional Psychology President, Chicago School of Professional Psychology Sheldon I. Miller, M.D. Northwestern University Director, Stone Institute of Psychiatry, Northwestern Memorial Hospital Dennis P. Morrison, Ph.D. Chief Executive Officer, Center for Behavioral Health, Indiana President, Board of Directors, Community Healthcare Foundation, Indiana William H. Reid, M.D. University of Texas Health Sciences Center Chair, Scientific Advisory Board, Texas Depressive and Manic Depressive Association

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P E A C E M OV E M E N T S W O R L DW I D E

Recent Titles in Contemporary Psychology Preventing Teen Violence: A Guide for Parents and Professionals Sherri N. McCarthy and Claudio Simon Hutz Making Enemies: Humiliation and International Conflict Evelin Lindner Collateral Damage: The Psychological Consequences of America’s War on Terrorism Paul R. Kimmel and Chris E. Stout, editors Terror in the Promised Land: Inside the Anguish of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Judy Kuriansky, editor Trauma Psychology, Volumes 1 and 2 Elizabeth Carll, editor Beyond Bullets and Bombs: Grassroots Peace Building between Israelis and Palestinians Judy Kuriansky, editor Who Benefits from Global Violence and War: Uncovering a Destructive System Marc Pilisuk with Jennifer Achord Rountree Right Brain/Left Brain Leadership: Shifting Style for Maximum Impact Mary Lou D
e costerd Creating Young Martyrs: Conditions That Make Dying in a Terrorist Attack Seem Like a Good Idea Alice LoCicero and Samuel J. Sinclair Emotion and Conflict: How Human Rights Can Dignify Emotion and Help Us Wage Good Conflict Evelin Lindner Emotional Exorcism: Expelling the Psychological Demons That Make Us Relapse Holly A. Hunt, Ph.D. Gender, Humiliation, and Global Security: Dignifying Relationships from Love, Sex, and Parenthood to World Affairs Evelin Lindner

P E AC E M OV E M E N T S W O R L DW I D E Volume 2: Players and Practices in Resistance to War

Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler, Editors

CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY

Chris E. Stout, Series Editor

Copyright 2011 by Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Peace movements worldwide / Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler, editors. p. cm. — (Contemporary psychology) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-313-36478-5 (hard copy : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-36479-2 (e-book) — ISBN 978-0-313-36480-8 (vol. 1 hard copy : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0313-36481-5 (vol. 1 e-book) — ISBN 978-0-313-36482-2 (vol. 2 hard copy : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-36483-9 (vol. 2 e-book) — ISBN 978-0-313-36484-6 (vol. 3 hard copy : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-36485-3 (vol. 3 e-book) 1. Peace movements 2. Peace movements—History. I. Pilisuk, Marc. II. Nagler, Michael N. JZ5574.P44 2011 303.60 6—dc22 2010037446 ISBN: 978-0-313-36478-5 EISBN: 978-0-313-36479-2 15 14

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This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. Praeger An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

ix

Set Introduction

xi

Introduction to Volume 2

xv PA R T I PREVENTION

CHAPTER

1

CHAPTER

2

CHAPTER

3

CHAPTER

4

Shedding the Tools of Destruction: The Disarmament Effort Marc Pilisuk Nuclear Disarmament: The Path Forward, Obstacles, and Opportunities Alice Slater Hiroshima Day: America Has Been Asleep at the Wheel for 64 Years Daniel Ellsberg Citizen Diplomacy and the Ottawa Process in Banning Landmines: A Lasting Model? Jody Williams and Stephen D. Goose

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CHAPTER

5

CHAPTER

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Bringing the Corporate Role in Global Violence to Daylight Gianina Pellegrini Socially Responsible Investing, Peace, and Social Justice Tessie Petion and Steven D. Lydenberg PA R T I I RESISTING VIOLENCE

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CHAPTER

9

CHAPTER

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CHAPTER

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CHAPTER

12

CHAPTER

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CHAPTER

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CHAPTER

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A Hand for Peace in a Zone of War Kathy Kelly Human Security: Providing Protection without Sticks and Carrots Christine Schweitzer Psyched up to Save Psychology: A Tale of Activists’ Efforts to Resist Complicity in U.S. Human Rights Violations Post–9/11 Jill Latonick-Flores and Daniel J. Adamski Shut It Down! A Brief History of Efforts to Close La Escuela de Asesinos (The School of Assassins) Jill Latonick-Flores with Father Roy Bourgeois Structured Cruelty: Learning to Be a Lean, Mean Killing Machine Martin Smith If You Start Looking at Them as Humans, Then How Are You Gonna Kill Them? Inigo Gilmore and Teresa Smith Where Is the Rage? Justin C. Cliburn Soldiers in Revolt Howard Zinn

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91 95

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159 163 166

PA R T I I I HEALING THE WOUNDS

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Out of the Inner Wilderness: Torture and Healing Diane Lefer and Hector Aristiz
abal

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Contents CHAPTER

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From Grief to Gratitude: The Tariq Khamisa Foundation Azim N. Khamisa Steps toward Reconciliation: Understanding and Healing in Post-Genocide Rwanda and Beyond Ervin Staub and Angel Ryono Interactive Problem Solving: Informal Mediation by the Scholar-Practitioner Herbert C. Kelman From Young Soldiers to Young Peace Builders: Building Peace in Sierra Leone Michael Wessells Modern-Day Slavery Melissa Anderson-Hinn Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress Rachel M. MacNair P A R T IV P E A C E M O V E M E N T S W O R L DW I D E

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CHAPTER

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CHAPTER

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The West German Peace Movement Andreas Buro Habil Peace in Transition: The Peace Movement in South Korea Jujin Chung Life in Peace: The Emergence of the Indian Peace Movement Ramu Manivannan Peace Psychology in Asia Cristina Jayme Montiel Active Nonviolence: A Creative Power for Peacemaking and Healing Hildegard Goss-Mayr Nonviolent Skills versus Repressive Conditions: The Iranian Women’s Movement and Codepink: Women for Peace Cynthia Boaz The 1991 Gulf War and Aftermath Stephen Zunes

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Contents

A Final Word Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler

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Bibliography

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Index

403

About the Editors and Contributors

415

About the Series Editor and Advisory Board

429

About the Series

433

A C K N OW L E D G M E N T S

The three volumes of this book were invited by our publisher who saw, as we do, the value in an overview, as far as it was possible to take one, of the peace movement as a whole. First Debora Carvalko and then Lindsay Claire and Denise Stanley have been immensely supportive throughout. We soon found that the task of inviting, identifying, and editing selections from academics, officials, and activists from the varied aspects of the search for peace was a challenge to our time and organizational talents. To all of our contributors, some world renowned, all busy, we extend our thanks and appreciation for working with us, sometimes on short notice, to include their chapters. We remain amazed and grateful for the work for peace described in their contributions and the courage and persistence of the people they write about. The Metta Center for Nonviolence receives a special thanks for providing us with a welcoming place to meet. This collection could never have seen the light of day without the dedicated involvement of a number of people. Gianina Pellegrini spent long hours beyond the few for which she was compensated to keep us on task, to communicate respectfully to hundreds of people through thousands of messages. She edited manuscripts, recruited other graduate students from Saybrook University to help, organized tasks and meetings, volunteered to write two articles on her own that we truly needed, fell behind in her own studies but never despaired or lost a chance to encourage others. Chris Johnnidis of the Metta Center provided initial help in setting up an interactive filing system. The

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Acknowledgments

project got a boost when Gianina spread the word at Saybrook University. Saybrook deserves thanks for finding some of the most talented and dedicated students anywhere. Rebecca Norlander provided endless hours of editing, evaluating, and reformatting articles and is a co-author of an article. Angel Ryono likewise helped write, edit, and find authors to fill gaps, and is a co-author of two articles. Other students whose generous help included becoming chapter authors. They are: Nikolas Larrow-Roberts, Rev. Jos
e M. Tirado, Ellen Gaddy, and Melissa Anderson-Hinn. Two other colleagues, Mitch Hall and Daniel Adamski, saw enough in the project to pitch in with major editing tasks and went on to be co-authors of chapters. Many others whom we were not able to include in the anthology helped us tremendously, sharing their specific expert knowledge and contacts to help us frame the task. These include Donna Nassor, Sandy Olleges, Kevin Bales, Curt Wand, Glen Martin, Byron Belitsos, Ethel Tobach, Douglass Fry, Ahmed Afzaal, Susan McKay, Joel Federman, Gail Ervin, Dan Christie, Jeff Pilisuk, and Josanne Korkinen. Marc wants to express appreciation for the inspiration of two mentors, Anatol Rapaport and Kenneth Boulding; of his parents, who always valued peace and justice; and to his wife, Phyllis, who tolerated his sleep-deprived state for close to a year understanding what he was trying to do. He thanks Michael Nagler for being a partner whose knowledge and belief in the peace movement are just amazing. Michael wants to thank the staff at the Metta Center for giving him the space and the encouragement to see this task through; his friends and colleagues in the peace movement for stepping up with translation (Matthias Zeumer), ideas, and other contributions; Marc Pilisuk for inviting him on board in the first place; and above all his mentor and guide, Sri Eknath Easwaran of the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, for showing him his life’s path and never losing faith that he would follow it to the end.

S E T I NTRODUCTION

The only thing we can, and therefore must control, is the imagery in our own mind. —Epictetus

We humans have great abilities to create images, and with them, to build a significant part of our reality, and therefore to nurture or to destroy our species and its surroundings. We have used these abilities creatively but not always kindly, or wisely. As our science and technologies have made it possible to appreciate how our lives are part of one global world, they have also provided us with the means to destroy Earth’s capacity to support life. The peace movement that is growing throughout the world gives recognition and power to the first side of the balance, reacting against violence and war, raising aloft a higher vision of harmony and peace. It provides us with a living history of the strength of people, of communities and tribes—and sometimes of governments—to create social institutions and ideas that give peace its chance to grow. It is in the search for peace, for a way to live in harmony with each other and with the natural order that we seem to come most alive and closest to the meaning of our existence on this earth. The peace movement is likely the only undertaking that holds out a promise that the remarkable experiment of life can go on. We consider peace to include both the absence of unnecessary violence and the pursuit of a world that offers deep contentment with the process of

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life. We feel some dismay as we look at paths taken by humans toward large-scale violence. But the destruction and suffering we find are not the whole story. There is another and far more hopeful story, partly old, partly new, and partly yet to be written. Peace connotes a world with harmony among people and between people and their environment. It is surely not a world without anger or one without conflict. But it is a world in which the fulfillment of human needs can occur without inflicting preventable violence and human beings can grow closer to one another in spirit, which, as Augustine said, is the ultimate purpose and underlying desire of our very nature (see Volume 1, Chapter 2). Like science, which has a capacity for change as new evidence emerges, the pursuit of peace is an ongoing process in which its adherents can and do learn from the past and continually make new discoveries. Like democracy, the pursuit of peace does not always produce a better world right away, but that pursuit unquestionably has the capacity to bring correctives into the directions of our evolution as a species. The peace movement is an exciting and empowering wave of worldwide change that can harness the power of each of us, individually and collectively, for love and for life. There are many books about peace. In the three volumes of this anthology we have chosen not to be an encyclopedia of the efforts for peace,1 or a history of worldwide efforts to realize it,2 nor for that matter a celebration of a hopeful future. Rather we have tried to present a mosaic that gives due recognition to the obstacles to be overcome while sampling the amazing creativity of what has been and is being done to overcome them. The doers are scientists and poets, professors and peasant women, intergovernmental agencies and community art projects, soldiers and pacifists, environmentalists and defenders of human rights. Rather than force a rigid analysis on how all their efforts combine we have tried mainly to let the voices be heard. Volume 1 focuses on different ways people have looked at peace—to construct a theory of its nature and possibilities. We present a framework for peace studies set forth by Johan Galtung, who more than anyone living deserves to be considered the founder of the field (peace entered academic discourse as a discrete subject only very recently), and we go on to writings that examine the deeper meanings of peace. The ubiquity of human aggression and violence leads some to the despairing conclusion that we are inherently warlike. We report on the new perspectives in biology, anthropology, and psychology that paint a different picture of what humans are or are not constrained to do by our nature, and take issue with the prevalent concept that we are ‘‘wired’’ to fight—or even to cooperate—which implies a determinism that is denied by science and common experience. Because world peace will require some transformative changes in the way we view

Set Introduction

xiii

ourselves and our world, a section is devoted to the issue of human identity and the culture of peace. We look at the contribution of organized religion to the quest for peace. (Spirituality, as somewhat distinct from organized religion, and other broad topics are handled in Volume 3.) Volume 1 ends with chapters taking a hard look at the magnitude of change required for peace and the institutional, particularly economic and monetary forces, that need to be transformed if peace is to reign. Volume 2 looks at what is being done in response to war and other forms of violent conflict. Moving along the chain of causality, we cite efforts to prevent mass killing by monitoring and controlling weapons that in some cases are capable not only of ending lives needlessly but of obliterating life as we know it, as well as the ongoing efforts to expose corporate beneficiaries of war and to invest instead in enterprises that promote human and environmental health. Then we examine the aftermath of violence—the trauma, the scars, and the all-important processes of reconciliation and healing. We end Volume 2 with accounts of select national and regional movements, the world over, that have grown in opposition to war. Volume 3 is the proactive and constructive complement to the anti-war movements described in Volume 2. Here we illustrate efforts at building a peaceful world and its cultural infrastructure through peace education and through reform of a media that at present does little to counter those powerful forces that promote a culture of violence and even instigate incidents of mass violence. We sample some highly creative ways that peace is being built at levels from courageous individuals to developing villages and on to international treaties and institutions. Then we examine, with examples, the process by which people can experience transformative change on a personal level that empowers participation in building a peaceful world. When ‘‘peace’’ is taken in its full meaning, when one backs out from the simple cessation of one armed conflict or another to begin to sense the preconditions, the ‘‘dispositions’’ (as Erasmus says) that produced the outcome of conflict and its cessation, one begins to realize that the search for peace is almost coterminous with the evolution of human consciousness, of our destiny. Such a discussion obviously cannot be covered even in an anthology of this size. What one can do, and what we have tried to do, is sketch out a picture reasonably faithful to the variety, the intensity, and the unquenchable audacity of the men and women who have taken up this struggle from above (through law and policy), from below (from grassroots to civil society), and most characteristic of the present, from within (through personal transformation). For this goal, many have lain down their very lives. We come away from our survey of all this activity, dedication, and sacrifice with a combined sense of awe and inspiration.

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At the end of the day, it is this inspiration that we wish to share with you. For as various writers in all three volumes have noted, all the ingredients for an evolutionary step forward toward this as-yet unrealized world are in place—some of them have been for some time. What is missing is the overview, the sense of the big picture, and the confidence in the heart of each one of us that we can make a difference. This we can do even in face of the apparently never-to-be-dislodged juggernaut of war: the mindset, the dehumanizing training, the institutions, the frightening technology. In face of that enormity, a countering awareness has arisen of the unquenchable drive for peace and what it has brought into being. The art, science, and practice of peace are having impacts on human understanding, institutions, and behaviors that are indispensable—if not for the courage to get engaged, at least for our sanity. But we hope for more; we hope you will come away from this set of books with re-fired determination to join this struggle, and a slightly sharper sense of where to make your best contribution. Nothing would please us more.

NOTES 1. Lazlo and Yoo, 1986; Kurtz and Turpin, 1999; Powers and Vogele, 1997. 2. Among many examples, see Chatfield and Kleidman, 1992; Chatfield, 1973; Beales, 1971; and http://www.peacehistorysociety.org/. For conscientious objection worldwide, see the works of historian Peter Brock.

INTRODUCTION

TO

VO LU M E 2

In this volume of Peace Movements Worldwide we deal with the antithesis of peace: the mass violence typically associated with war. Peace movements have arisen because of the unspeakable damage that war inflicts. We include efforts to prevent war through the control and abolition of weapons, to resist the human participation in the killing that war brings, and to heal the devastating consequences of violence. The volume ends with a sampling of peace movements that have grown in various parts of the world as expressions of a very human desire to oblige war makers to let us live in peace. The social realities we have created commit and justify violence. We create enemies to punish or to destroy. We recall history by recounting and glorifying military victories. We leave many of our species destitute but use deadly force to control their dissent. Our resources are drained by a culture of violence. The magnitude of the damage in violent conflicts reflects the ingenuity humans have applied to create ever more effective tools of destruction. Some of the most deadly have been used, some not, at least not yet. The most deadly so far are nuclear weapons. Those who work on them have created a secret society with elements of a cult1 and a scientific and technocratic language that distances themselves from the human consequences of their work.2 Yet such consequences defy our capacity for recognition of their horror. Explosion of a single megaton weapon creates a crater 300 feet deep and 1200 feet in diameter. The surface fireball radiates three times the light and

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heat of that same area on the surface of the sun. In less than 12 seconds a blast of compressed air destroys every structure within three miles. Winds of 250 mph propel debris that kills 50 percent of the people in the area, all before the spread of death from massive firestorms and radiation. A disturbing trend has been to design nuclear weapons that blur the line between their claimed use as a deterrent and their actual use in combat. A similar trend has occurred in the use of chemical and biological weapons, the banning of which has not prevented their stockpiling or their use in defoliating land, contaminating crops, and destroying both wild and domesticated animals. Chemicals such as depleted uranium and white phosphorous add to the damage from incendiary weapons. Landmines and antipersonnel weapons provide a special challenge since they are developed to kill and maim unsuspecting people and vehicles and they continue to do so long after hostilities have ceased. A significant part of the energy of the peace movement has aimed to bring about an end to the reliance on weapons of all types as a means for settling conflicts. Some of the most courageous work in the movement for peace is seen in efforts to protect people caught in the violence of war. The proportion of civilian to military casualties has grown in every war since World War II and civilian casualties now greatly exceed those of soldiers. They are more than numbers: They are children who have lost a parent or a limb; hungry and scared families huddled helplessly awaiting the return of soldiers or bombs that have already devastated their lives. And the movements to resist further violence have reflected the best in courage and compassion that human beings have shown. Unarmed peace brigades have provided shields of protection. Women’s groups, such as those in a coalition of Christian and Muslim women in Liberia have massively but nonviolently forced back both government and opposing warlord factions to bring an end to unprincipled rampages of killing and rape. Rescue workers and doctors have beaten a path to bring food, water, and medicines to help victims survive and resist. Resistance has grown against the military perpetrators of violence, the specialized training programs that teach military leaders to control, intimidate, and eliminate adversaries. This resistance aims at those who do the dirty work of protecting corporate and military empires. The often clandestine intelligence agency support for those who inflict violence has been met by whistle-blowers and by groups set up to be watchdogs to expose such activities. The School of the Americas Watch is one such group. Another group of dissident psychologists has organized to resist the misuse of their field in assisting programs of torture. Resistance has spread to contractors who supply both mercenaries and the infrastructure to feed and house armies and to those who sell weapons and profit from the arms trade.

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Soldiers through history have risen up against their officers and the national policies that have sent them with a promise of glory into a situation of hell. It takes enormous courage for a soldier to break ranks from the disciplined institution that demands their sacrifices and nurtures their loyalty to one another. But many have and their voices speak strongly because their experience has been direct. The trauma involved in war has effects that linger long after the formal cessation of hostilities. This is widespread among soldiers and particularly severe among those who have engaged in killing. Healing the wounds becomes important to restore their lives but also to prevent the internalized and lasting fear and anger from generating more violence. All of the victims need healing: people who have lost a family member to murder; victims of torture; thousands of people who have survived a genocidal conflict and must now live among their former enemies; the children who have known no life other than being a child soldier; and those—mostly women—who have spent their lives forced into slavery. All need to be a part of recovery from violence. Finally in this volume we sample the peace movements around the world that have grown to give voice to ordinary people taking on the extraordinary task of opposing war and all forms of unnecessary violence.

NOTES 1. Gusterson, 1998. 2. Cohn, 1987.

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PART I

PREVENTION

What has made the devastation wrought by war so great over the past 100 years is the development of ever more ‘‘sophisticated’’ weapons. Much human ingenuity has been devoted to their invention, development, and use. The most deadly so far are nuclear weapons. Their damage from blast, firestorm, and radiation is so great that a single bomb destroyed most of Hiroshima. Thousands of such weapons, each many times more destructive than the first ones used, are in to be found in Russian and U.S. stockpiles. They are now in the arsenal of many nations and are continuing to proliferate and to be used in threats. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki produced the greatest immediate mass death from individual weapons yet known. One 20-megaton bomb exploded on the surface of Columbus Circle in New York would produce a hole where 20 city blocks had been, a hole deep enough to hide a 20-story building. All brick and wood frame houses within 7.7 miles would be completely destroyed. The blast waves would carry through the entire underground subway system. Up to 15 miles from ground zero, flying debris propelled by displacement effects would cause more casualties. There would be 200,000 separate fires ignited, producing a firestorm with temperatures up to 1,500 degrees F. and wind velocities to 150 miles per hour. The infrastructure of food and water supplies, roads, medical services, fuel for transportation, and electric power would be destroyed. And radiation damages that destroy and deform living things would continue for 240,000 years.1 Such bombs, and others still more destructive, are contained

2

Players and Practices in Resistance to War

in the warheads of missiles, many of them capable of delivering multiple warheads from a single launch. The massive industry of weapons development, trade, and sales (beyond nuclear weapons) has also been the cause of massive deaths. Marc Pilisuk describes the history and status of efforts to control weapons and to achieve disarmament. Attempts to control nuclear weapons, to prevent proliferation, and to work toward their abolition have been a goal of peace seekers since they were discovered. Alice Slater, New York director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and a founder of the Abolition 2000 coalition to ban nuclear weapons, describes the history and current status of these efforts and the prospects for the future. In addition to the international presence and pressure of the nuclear disarmament coalition, powerful community groups have arisen around each nuclear weapons facility. Some like Tri Valley Citizens Against a Radioactive Environment have dominated environmental impact hearings, debunked denials of health risks, and sued the Livermore National Weapons Laboratories. The horror of contemplating the use of nuclear bombs has been a force causing people to shy away from the problem. Dedicated scientists and others have fortunately kept the issue before us. Daniel Ellsberg, famous for his exposure of the Pentagon Papers, which helped to unravel what was being concealed about the Vietnam War, reports a personal history of his life-long commitment to help us all overcome the denial that leaves nuclear policy to others and jeopardizes our common future. Among weapons, landmines have stood out as having a particularly deadly pattern. They are designed to disable people and vehicles without warning. They make no distinction between soldiers or civilians and children are particularly vulnerable. After hostilities cease, soldiers may turn in their rifles, but landmines continue to kill people and farm animals and to make farmland unusable. Nobel Laureate Jody Williams and colleague Stephen Goose describe a process for dealing with the consequences of landmines and for abolishing their use. The amazing ‘‘Ottawa process’’ provides a model for the effective mobilization of various nongovernmental and citizens groups to gain a foothold in the official processes of government and inter-government organizations and offers an example of citizen diplomacy for the cause of peace. Weapons are produced, with few exceptions, by giant corporations whose personnel and lobbying efforts are extensive in the halls of governments. Their market is largely dependent on the degree to which governments act as guarantors for corporate interests in other countries. These often concealed corporate actors are part of the machinery of war. Gianina Pellegrini provides an account of the work of groups, surely a part of the peace

Prevention

3

movement, to expose corporations involved in destructive processes, and to hold them accountable. Finally, there are opportunities to vote with one’s money for peace, justice, and sustainability. This occurs in consumer choice in support of particular products but also in capital investments. Tessie Petion and Steven Lydenberg provide an account of the intentions and accomplishments of socially responsible investing through the eyes of one of its pioneering investment houses. Weapons, it has been said, do not cause killing; people do. But weapons make killing an easy choice and make possible killing people in numbers that could never be justified for any cause. They have become powerful parts of our culture and our economy. Prevention of war requires their control and elimination. In a larger sense, the prevention of mass violence involves more than putting a lid on weapons, more than identifying the weapon profiteers, more even than investing more wisely into nonviolent enterprises. Prevention of mass violence will need changes in culture, in judicial accountability, and in the vitality of resistance and of peace building. Nonetheless, reducing weapons and facing their corporate benefactors are absolutely necessary steps to prevent exorbitant loss of life. —Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler

NOTE 1. Scientists Committee for Radiation Information, 1962.

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CHAPTER

1

SHEDDING THE TOOLS O F D E S T RU C T I O N : T H E D ISARMAMENT EFFORT Marc Pilisuk

Both the ability to fight wars and the extent of their destruction depend on weapons. Production of military weapons reached record levels in the first decade of the 21st century. Worldwide sales and transfer agreements exceed $37 billion in a typical year. Despite some changes in the types of arms transfers since the Cold War era, weapon sales continue to be concentrated in developing nations.1 This extensive global market in weapons provides the tools by which ethno-political wars are being fought.2 In the aftermath of such costly bloodletting, people, and their governing officials, often reflect on whether the weapons used have produced suffering that might well have been avoided and whether the actual presence of such weapons presents a threat of future use. The responses have been varied. The hawkish response has been to create an overwhelming superiority of weapons to deter potential enemies, a path that has not historically been successful. Disarmament is another response. It has more than one meaning. History provides numerous examples in which disarmament referred to the winning side forcing elimination of weapons in the conquered countries. In classical antiquity, the Romans tried to disarm Carthage, their long-time rival. Following Napoleon’s military victories, France placed limits upon the

6

Players and Practices in Resistance to War

size of the Prussian and Austrian military. In the 20th century, the treaty ending World War I placed limits on the German army and navy. The intent, during a period of deep English/German rivalry over the oil needed to fuel industrial growth, was to prevent Germany’s military from posing a serious threat. At the end of World War II, both Germany and Japan were disarmed. After more than 60 years, both countries still observe limitations on their armed forces and neither country has tried to reassert power by developing nuclear weapons. The reverse of enforced disarmament by countries with victorious military establishments has also occurred. For example, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, in 1898 called for the Hague Conference to meet to prevent wealthier powers from modernizing their armed forces.3

CONTROLLING AND LIMITING WEAPONS The doves have promoted more multi-party alternatives for attaining arms control and disarmament. The suggestions reflect a spectrum from partial to complete elimination of weapons, from phased reductions of certain weapon categories to immediately enforced elimination, and from unilateral to multilateral efforts—the latter often requiring provisions for inspection and enforcement. Disarmament is not synonymous with arms control. Agreements among nation states to limit or to reduce particular weapons occur in a pragmatic context. This context does not address an anarchic international community in which autonomous nation states are assumed to compete for interests as defined by their governments. Within this mindset, military might is considered a tool to pursue national interests and protect against aggression by other states. The advent of highly destructive biochemical and nuclear weapons has made the costs of waging all-out war incommensurate with any possible gains. Arms control does not aim to eliminate the competitive assumptions that drive nation states, or even to eliminate violent conflict. The goals are better understood as promoting international stability and reducing the likelihood of war. Additional goals are to reduce the costs of weapons and to limit the damage that follows violent conflict, in a sense permitting the military system to continue, with some limitations on its capacity for destruction. Governments consider arms control a part of their security policy. The U.S. Congress, for example, established the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) in 1961 to provide an institution for dealing with arms control issues.4 Arms control examples date back to 12th-century Europe when the Church sought to ban crossbows in warfare among Christians. That attempt did not succeed and crossbows remained in use throughout Europe. Arms control negotiations were prominent during the 20th century. After

Shedding the Tools of Destruction

7

World War I, the major naval powers undertook a serious effort to negotiate their relative levels of naval force. The Washington Conference (1921 to 1922) and the London Conference (1930) succeeded for a time in limiting naval arms. League of Nations efforts to advance international disarmament culminated in the Geneva Conference (1932 to 1934) where a distinction was made between ‘‘offensive’’ and ‘‘defensive’’ weapons with the intention to get rid of the offensive ones. That is a difficult line to draw since perceptions of intention play a major role. In what psychologists have called the attribution error, armaments held by an opponent are typically viewed as indicators of aggressive intent, while one’s own arms are seen as a defensive response to a situation presented by others. During the 1930s the Western democracies felt threatened by the rise of Japanese, German, and Italian imperialism, and this important effort at arms control was aborted.5 Successful stories of disarming the borders between neighboring states include the Rush-Bagot Agreement (1817), which led to demilitarization of the U.S.–Canada border. This illustrates the way disarmament between modern nations can be achieved and the European Union (EU) has moved in this direction. Such agreements do not actually call for nations to reduce their weapons or the size of their armies. However, they affirm a nonmilitary and cooperative relationship among the parties.6

THE PURSUIT OF DISARMAMENT General disarmament addresses a more far-reaching goal for a world in which competing states no longer have the responsibility to promote their own security in an international environment in which might makes right. The image of disarmament is of a world in which conflicts still occur but clear rules preclude use of lethal weapons to resolve them. It prescribes a world with enforceable restrictions in place against the massing of armaments and soldiers along with universal openness for early detection of violations. Disarmament calls for the support of institutions like the International Court of Justice that would be called on in a dispute to make binding judgments and for available police capacities to monitor outbreaks of violence. In the present climate, nations are unlikely to disarm voluntarily. Realistically, their leaders would consider such actions suicidal, at least until other nations also renounce war and armaments. Moreover, disarmament has a psychological-cultural component. It requires not only laws and official agencies but also a willingness of people to respect those laws and institutions and to consider the goal of pursuing peace by peaceful means to be a universal value on which the survival of life depends. Hence, disarmament is often considered a long-range goal associated with transforming the international

8

Players and Practices in Resistance to War

political environment and ending the law of the jungle among nations by establishing some form of world government or an effective system of collective security.7 The ideal of a world banning access to highly destructive weapons often runs into the argument that weapons are needed to prevent another Adolf Hitler or similarly obsessed leader from dominating the world. The claim is that there will always be such enemies and that disarming would give an upper hand to rulers with evil intent. The answers to this are complex. Risks under disarmament may be greatly reduced by enforceable and universal agreements. Our willingness to undertake such limited risks makes sense only in comparison to the risks incurred by allowing the current and costly patchwork efforts at security to grow worse as the number of parties with access to weapons of mass destruction increases. Moreover, using weapons to deter enemies leaves untouched the basic reasons why violent conflicts occur. To address these concerns, the world will need to deal with gross inequality and exploitation of people and the habitats that sustain them. We will need to address the scarcity of education about effective forms of nonviolent resolution of conflict. These forms include ways to convert potential enemies rather than to confront them and to augment the scant resources now offered for those committed to building cultures of peace. When resources are devoted to preparing for war, we continue a caste of military and corporate professionals whose life work is to find enemies and to fight them. One early example of arms limitation began in Japan in the mid-1600s and lasted for more than 200 years. The Japanese successfully renounced the use of firearms. During this long period of self-imposed restriction, the sword remained the dominant weapon. This ban changed only in the mid19th century after outside powers threatened intervention in Japanese affairs. The end of Japan’s isolation within the international political system also brought this experiment in disarmament to an end.8 In the Western world during the 19th century, disarmament advocates believed that wars occurred because of the competition in armaments among major powers. World War I was precipitated by an assassination of one leader but was rapidly escalated by the involvement of heavily armed states. In a frequently quoted statement, Great Britain’s foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey (1906 to 1916), observed, ‘‘The enormous growth of armaments in Europe, the sense of insecurity and fear caused by them—it was these that made war inevitable.’’ This theory of the cause of violent conflicts had policy implications. Disarmament, it was thought, could provide a way to reduce international tension and to prevent war. With the goal of promoting a humane international order, President Woodrow Wilson advocated disarmament as part of his Fourteen Points program. The call for disarmament

Shedding the Tools of Destruction

9

was not followed and the failure of other powers to disarm after World War I was offered as an excuse by the Hitler regime for rearmament of Germany in the 1930s.9

BANS ON SELECTED CATEGORIES OF WEAPONS Attempts to ban particular types of weapons have had some success. The horrible consequences of poison gas in World War I led, in 1925, to acceptance of the Geneva Protocol. Eventually 132 nations signed the Protocol banning the use of chemical and ‘‘bacteriological’’ weapons.10 A conference held in Paris, in 1989, to strengthen the Protocol was followed by creation of a UN forum for discussion of disarmament issues. These deliberations led to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) adopted by the UN General Assembly and signed in 1993 by 130 countries.11 The CWC finally went into force in April 1997. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the treaty’s implementing organization, came into operation one month later. Each signatory nation agrees, under the treaty, never ‘‘to develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile or retain chemical weapons.’’ It agrees not to use or prepare to use chemical weapons (CW) and not to assist others in acting against any of the prohibitions of the convention. Chemical weapons control also requires states to destroy any CW in their possession, to destroy any of their own CW abandoned on the territory of another state, and to dismantle their CW production facilities.12 One problem, however, in restricting the use of chemical weapons is that the range of products produced is great and most research and production activity is done secretly.13 One particularly insidious source of death and disability comes from antipersonnel landmines. Their destructiveness continues long after actual combat has ended. Soldiers typically turn in their guns when peace returns but landmines do not recognize a cease-fire. They cannot be aimed but lie dormant until the detonating mechanism is triggered by an unsuspecting person or animal, killing or injuring civilians, soldiers, peacekeepers, and aid workers alike. Children are particularly susceptible. Over the past decades, hundreds of thousands of landmine deaths and injuries have occurred. An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 new casualties are caused by landmines and unexploded ordnances each year, some 1,500 new casualties each month. The numbers are underestimates since some countries with landmine problems, such as Myanmar (Burma), India, and Pakistan, do not provide public information on the casualties.14 One hundred fifty-four countries have signed the 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production, and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction. Forty countries, including

10

Players and Practices in Resistance to War

Russia, China, and the United States, have not signed. Some antipersonnel landmines from earlier conflicts still claim victims in many parts of the world. Though improved in recent years, the situation remains a global crisis. Antipersonnel landmines are still being planted and minefields dating back decades continue to claim innocent victims. Extensive stockpiles of these weapons remain in warehouses around the world and a few countries still produce them.15

CONTROL OVER NUCLEAR WEAPONS The era of atomic weapons begun with the end of World War II added a further incentive for advocates of disarmament. Many prominent thinkers supported efforts to ‘‘ban the bomb,’’ even if this entailed starting with unilateral disarmament. Nuclear disarmament became for many a moral imperative for the stakes at risk seemed nothing less than the extinction of the human species. Movies and television popularized an apocalyptic image, helping to garner new support for the disarmament movement. Leaders of the superpowers gave considerable attention to arms control during the period of the Cold War. A relaxation of tensions in superpower relations, or d
etente, coincided with several important arms control agreements. The first round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) was concluded in 1972, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) agreement in 1987, and by Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) in 1991. Some policy analysts concluded that arms control could play a useful (if limited) role in helping to manage the uncertainty of their armament competitions among rival states. A different view by some advocates of disarmament was that arms control was a subterfuge on the part of the leaders of the major powers to frustrate genuine disarmament. The Soviet Union sometimes urged disarmament as a way of causing domestic political embarrassment for the governments of the United States and other NATO countries. Moreover, both superpowers could well have been accused of using the nuclear weapons agreements as a way to make the world safe for wars of domination that used military threats, economic pressures, political assassinations, and conventional weapons in their attempt to create allies in the polarized world of the Cold War.16

AFTER THE COLD WAR After the Cold War, attempts to limit the spread of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and to eliminate the use of chemical and biological agents as weapons of mass destruction, emerged as important policy concerns. Paradoxically, disarmament has even been used as a justification for resorting

Shedding the Tools of Destruction

11

to war. The coalition that fought Iraq in 1991, for instance, aimed not only at restoring Kuwait as an independent, sovereign state, but also at eliminating Iraq’s ability to manufacture and use nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. The prospect for a major war in northeast Asia was brought on by North Korea’s desire to build a nuclear arsenal and the determination of the United States and South Korea to prevent this. The conflict illustrated a common attempt to further international disarmament on a selective basis. A neo-liberal world order could therefore entail the paradox of fighting wars for the sake of disarming particular nations. Hence the plea of disarmament advocates that weapons themselves cause war, might come to have a new, more ominous meaning. Weapons might be justified as instruments for disarming other countries by attacking them.17 The UN deserves credit for whatever progress toward disarmament has occurred. UN responsibility falls on the First Committee of the UN General Assembly (a committee of the whole), which is responsible for disarmament and security matters. All 191 member states are included and hundreds of matters are discussed. The UN Disarmament Commission meets in New York once, sometimes twice, each year to work on the agenda proposed by the First Committee for talks in the Conference on Disarmament. Resolutions are passed by a majority vote or by a two-thirds majority for issues deemed important.18 The UN Conference on Disarmament (CD), with 66 current members, is a more specialized body. It meets in Geneva to produce multilateral agreements, and is the only group with authority both to set its own agenda and to negotiate actual treaties. The CD takes into account recommendations from the UN General Assembly, and submits annual reports to the General Assembly. Progress has been slow but any progress is remarkable given the wide differences among members on what should be discussed. Some nations refuse to participate in discussions limiting one type of weapon or the weapons in one particular geographic area unless weapons threats from other sources are also on the table for consideration. For example, Egypt has urged Arab states not to consider the Chemical Weapons Treaty until Israel signs the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty. The United States might want to mobilize international support for disarming what it considers ‘‘rogue states.’’ Others will only agree to such discussion if they include attention to the weapons within the United States that are seen as a threat to other nations. The United States opposed any negotiating mandate on general nuclear disarmament, while China opposed negotiating a fissile material cut-off treaty in the absence of negotiations on general nuclear disarmament.19 In 2005, the UN disarmament agenda set forth the following priorities: cessation of the nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament, prevention of

12

Players and Practices in Resistance to War

nuclear war, including prevention of an arms race in outer space, effective international arrangements to ensure non-nuclear weapon states that they would be protected against the use, or threat of use, of nuclear weapons (negative security assurances), new types of weapons of mass destruction, radiological weapons, comprehensive programs of disarmament, transparency in armaments, and landmines.20 Although talks always provide greater basis for hope than belligerent proclamations, little significant progress was achieved on any of the items. To understand why is important to place the issues of disarmament in a larger, economic, political, and psychosocial context.

PROFITS AND THE WEAPONS MARKET Weapons are sold throughout the world and sales are highly profitable. Small arms transfers involve independent entrepreneurs and arms brokers who engage in weapons transfers to armed groups and even to repressive governments that are under UN arms embargoes. One well-known arms broker, Victor Bout, has been implicated in violating UN arms embargoes in Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The armed groups wreak havoc on innocent civilians. Yet Bout, along with many other dealers, remains free to traffic arms to abusers of human rights, all outside the purview of international regulations. In just one example, arms brokers were reported to have shipped 3,117 surplus assault rifles from Nicaragua to Panama. These weapons, however, were diverted to Colombia’s paramilitary group, Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC). This occurred at the time the AUC was accused of killing thousands of civilians and was on the U.S. Department of State list of terrorist organizations.21 Both U.S. and international efforts have tried to curtail such transfers. The U.S. government adopted a law on arms brokering in 1996. The law restricts a range of activities including transporting and financing. It requires arms brokers both to register and to apply for a license for each activity. The law was used to prosecute a British citizen who was attempting to sell shoulder-fired missiles in the United States to a group intending to use the missiles to shoot down a commercial airliner. Many governments, however, have very weak laws or none at all on the arms market. Irish law, for example, does not restrict weapons supplies from foreign countries. Ireland was unable, therefore, to prosecute an arms broker who was reportedly involved in efforts to supply 50 tanks from Ukraine to the Sudanese military. In January 2004, the European Union strengthened its arms embargo on Sudan out of concern for its ongoing civil war. The U.S. law cannot be truly effective until similar laws are adopted and enforced by other states. In the 14 years since the adoption of the law, the United States has only

Shedding the Tools of Destruction

13

prosecuted five individuals. Recognizing the importance of small arms in abuses of human rights, Amnesty International has called for an international agreement to prevent such transfers to governments and groups with consistent records of gross human rights violations.22

DISARMAMENT WITH WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION Development of weapons of mass destruction has been occurring with little public awareness. The Cold War is long past. One might have expected that the United States would be a leader in the effort to fulfill its 30-year-old promise, stated in Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, ‘‘to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.’’ But the dramatic change in the past decade has come only in the words used to describe U.S. nuclear and missile development programs. In actual fact, efforts to produce new, high-technology weapons have increased.23 The Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons research facilities at Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia continue this highly classified research. Hidden from view they are advocates for the research and development needed to enter a new era of expansion in nuclear weapons. Among such projects, the National Ignition Facility will house a laser 40 times more powerful than any yet in existence and will have nuclear weapon applications. Space-based laser weapons are viewed as a means to destroy chemical or biological weapons that might threaten the United States. The matter not examined should be of great concern. Are the threats significant? Might they be better prevented by establishing peaceful economic and social relations with other countries? Are the exorbitant costs worthwhile given the dubious feasibility of such weapons? Surely the space lasers will lead to proliferation of nuclear weapons and surely they will interfere with international hopes for the United States to ratify and abide by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The United States is clearly not living up to its promise to reduce nuclear weapons capabilities and more nations are developing nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. The video game image of an endless scientific competition to have missiles with nuclear warheads dodging ballistic defense systems may have appeal to armchair military strategists and to defense contractors. But pursuing this activity will make progress toward the elimination of nuclear arsenals impossible and guarantees indefinite continuation of nuclear weapons development. The costs of such activity have been great. The activity has produced serious consequences to the environment and to human health.24 Weapons produced by superpowers have created incentives for other countries to

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Players and Practices in Resistance to War

develop their own arsenals. Espionage activities have been designed to capture weapons secrets. Secrecy has led to the cover-up of dangerous consequences from research and testing. The diversion of public funds from needed programs in health, education, housing, and renewable energy development—all of which produce more employment for the same money— has been a regrettable part of history. Funding for the small amounts needed for peacekeeping activities that should provide greater security has suffered. Now, after the end of the Cold War when the United States has no credible military adversaries, it will indeed be tragic if the opportunity to end preparedness for nuclear war is lost. A costly policy of unending weapons development can only exist because the weapons laboratories operate in relative secrecy. They employ bright scientists and furnish them with unmatched equipment and facilities. They provide lucrative contracts to defense industries, which in turn provide extensive consultation to government. The world’s most destructive weapons are conceived, justified, funded, and developed behind closed doors.25

THE UNITED STATES AND DISARMAMENT In the liberal democracies of the industrially developed world, organizations promoting disarmament retain some clout in the domestic political arena. A current view holds that modern liberal democracies can achieve effective disarmament among themselves, because they seem less prone to make war on one another. The spread of democracy, then, conceivably advances the cause of disarmament.26 The U.S. government has been the primary proponent of the theory that democracies are not sources of aggression. However, its own record has been of providing military support for either democracies or dictatorial police states depending only on the favorability of their policies to corporate economic interests.27 An alternate theory is that the powerful nation state is itself the obstacle to ridding the world of destructive weapons. Nation states are not well designed for disarmament. Some operate in the old model as vehicles for expanding the interests of rulers. More recently nations exist as the vassals for large corporate interests.28 Even those nations professing to do what is best for their own citizens find the lure of weapons to be great; hence the cautiousness about agreements that might weaken military power. Genuine progress toward disarmament will likely require the development of some form of world government with the ability to police limits on weapons and with the moral authority to require mediated or judicial resolution of conflicts. But intermediate steps can buy time and citizen involvement makes this possible. Groups like Peace Action have

Shedding the Tools of Destruction

15

helped to highlight the impacts of weapons policies on local communities. The Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) Committee on Disarmament, Peace, and Security has provided services and facilities to hundreds of citizen’s groups concerned with disarmament and related activities of the UN helping to ensure that people not in government can weigh in on international disarmament issues. The United States as the remaining superpower is particularly important for any progress toward disarmament but the record is not promising. After two world wars, European nations were ready to forgo weapons and policies that had created such devastation. The animosity of governments in capitalist economies to the communist experiment in the Soviet Union remained but primarily as a battle to prevent the colonized world from developing socialist governments and controlling their own resources. The United States as the first atomic power assumed this role of containment primarily through military superiority. The United States dismissed offers by Stalin and later by Khrushchev to permit unification of Germany in exchange for substantial mutual reductions and controls in armaments29 and the United States won the competition to become the most heavily armed state.30 Between World War II and the end of 20th century the United States led 73 military interventions throughout the world, almost double the total from the preceding 55-year period.31 If we include all covert operations in which casualties occurred the figure rises to 196.32 The Pentagon has an everexpanding empire of over 6,000 domestic bases, and 725 overseas. The United States spends more for defense than the next 45 highest-spending countries in the world combined, accounts for 48 percent of the world’s total military spending—5.8 times more than China—98.6 times more than Iran.33 U.S. policy has often been guided by an assumption that interests, defined by the United States, take precedence over international agreements. This has occurred first in matters that might constrain U.S. military activities. In 2001, the United States withdrew from a major arms control accord, the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty. Also in 2001 the United States walked out of a conference to discuss adding on-site inspectors to strengthen the 1972 Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention, which was ratified by 144 nations including the United States.34 Meanwhile, U.S. preparations to use chemical and biological weapons at Fort Dietrich and other sites have been extensive.35 The United States was the only nation to oppose the UN Agreement to Curb the International Flow of Illicit Small Arms. The Land Mine Treaty (banning mines) was signed in 1997 by 122 nations but the United States refused to sign, along with Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Vietnam, Egypt, and Turkey. Again in 2001 the United States refused to join 123 nations pledged to ban the use and production of anti-personnel bombs.36

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Players and Practices in Resistance to War

PREPAREDNESS FOR WAR HAS BEEN COSTLY The United States spent $10.5 trillion dollars on the military during the Cold War.37 The nuclear powers of that time spent an estimated $8 trillion on their nuclear weapons.38 If current annual U.S. expenditures for such weapons were instead invested into global life-saving measures the result could have covered all of the following: the elimination of starvation and malnutrition, basic shelter for every family, universal health care, the control of AIDS, relief for displaced refugees, and the removal of landmines.39 The United States poured more than $1 billion per week into the Iraq war that could otherwise have been spent on health care, schools, and infrastructure at home. One might think this would raise the demand for a conversion from weapons spending in the direction of disarmament. However, the dollars are not evaporated. They go largely to contractors, specialized not only in the production of weapons but also in the marketing of strategies in which such weapons appear to be needed and to the support of officials sharing their views. U.S. plans for the future are no more promising than the record of the past. These involve nuclear weapons and their use in outer space.40 The National Missile Defense proposal (previously referred to as ‘‘Star Wars’’) poses the greatest threat to the erosion of existing arms control agreements. In preparation for the transition to the use of space for warfare, the Air Force science and technology community has doubled its commitments in ‘‘space only’’ technologies from 13 percent in FY 1999 to 32 percent by FY 2005. This activity jeopardizes the modest stability afforded by the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Yet major lobbies for the defense industries, such as the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, provide constant pressure for continued development of space weapons. According to a scientific panel convened by the National Resources Defense Council, the G. W. Bush team assumed that nuclear weapons will be part of U.S. military forces at least for the next 50 years. Plans are in place for extensive and expensive programs to modernize existing weapons, including a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) to be operational in 2020 and a new heavy bomber in 2040. In addition, the Pentagon has drafted contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons against at least seven countries, naming not only the ‘‘axis of evil’’ (Iraq, Iran, and North Korea) but also Russia, China, Libya, and Syria. The Pentagon has also launched research and testing programs for a missile defense system. Although technically dubious, the large program has been viewed by other nations with alarm as a signal that the United States is working toward being able to attack other nations with the security that it could intercept missiles sent in retaliation. Such planning has the obvious consequence of provoking other nations to develop their own arsenals, a process already

Shedding the Tools of Destruction

17

taking place. Russia and China have responded with plans for new or updated development for nuclear weapons. Without enforceable controls, nuclear weapons technology is spreading.41 Disarmament is more than a set of formal agreements. It is also a commitment to a vision of the world as a place where mutual cooperation can provide more of what is important to all parties than violent conflict. The reliance on weapons to provide security has been outmoded by technology. The threatened use of force typically begets retaliatory force. Retribution continues a cycle of animosity and violence. Conversely, a proposal for graduated reciprocation in tension reduction (GRIT) suggests that a series of small unilateral moves toward conciliation, announced in advance, are likely to be gradually reciprocated and move the adversaries to more trustful and less threatening relations.42 A period of thaw in the Cold War included a speech in 1961 by President Kennedy calling for a reappraisal of the Cold War, for new modes of cooperation, and for suspending nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) broadcast the Kennedy speech intact and Premier Khrushchev responded with a conciliatory speech. The USSR stopped production of strategic bombers and removed objections to the presence of UN observers in Yemen. The United States then removed objections to restoration of the full recognition of the Hungarian delegation to the UN. A limited nuclear weapons test ban was signed. The Soviet foreign minister Gromyko called for a nonaggression treaty between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Kennedy called for joint efforts to ‘‘explore the stars together.’’ Direct flights were scheduled between Moscow and New York. The United States agreed to the sale of wheat to the USSR. Gromyko called for a pact outlawing nuclear weapons in outer space. Kennedy responded favorably and an agreement was reached on the exchange of captured spies.43 Studies in the laboratory provide confirming evidence that humans in conflict situations can use the GRIT strategy to reduce the distrust that keeps them armed and start a process toward mutually beneficial disarmament.44 To appreciate why such a conciliatory strategy is not more actively pursued it is important to examine the stakes of powerful decision makers. The perceived short-term benefits to certain beneficiaries of war often dominate the policy process. The small group obsessed with weapons development and with military support for corporate expansion is unduly influencing a dangerous direction for American policy.45 It is a policy that blurs the lines of reality between video game dueling and the actual domination of space by lethal weapons. The public has not been told this story and has not been asked if this should be the national direction. The survival of the planet will require progress toward disarmament. Public demand for, and involvement in, a culture of

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peace appears necessary if leaders are to respond to the challenge to convert our swords into ploughshares and study war no more.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

Shanker, 2005. Renner, 1998. Towle, 1997. Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies, 2005. Maurer, 2005. Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies, 2005. Myrdal, 1982; Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies, 2005. Maurer, 2005. Hyde, 1988; Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies, 2005. UNIDC, 2005. OPCW, 2005. UNIDC, 2005 Barnaby, 1999. International Campaign, 2005a. International Campaign, 2005; Human Rights Watch, 2003. UNIDC, 2005. Maurer, 2005. United Nations Department for Disarmament Affairs, 1988. Etzioni, 1967. UNIDC, 2005. Amnesty International, 2010. Multilateral Arms Regulation and Disarmament Agreements, 2005. See Chapter 2 by Alice Slater. Bertell, 2004; Boly, 1989; 1990. Pilisuk, 1999. Maurer, 2005. Chomsky, 2004; Pilisuk and Zazzi, 2006. Korten, 1998; Johnson, 2004; Pilisuk, 2001. Potyarkin and Kortunov, 1986. Chomsky, 2004. Grossman, 1999; Blum, 2004. Ferraro, 2005. Peace Action. Du Boff, 2001. Barnaby, 1999. Du Boff, 2001. Markusen and Yukdin, 1992. Sivard, 1996. Gabel, 1997. Carroll, 2008. Roche, 2002.

Shedding the Tools of Destruction 42. 43. 44. 45.

Osgood, 1962. Etzioni, 1967. Pilisuk and Skolnick, 1968; Pilisuk, 1984; Pilisuk, 2001. Pilisuk and Zazzi, 2006.

19

CHAPTER

2

N U C L E A R D I S A R M A M E N T : T H E P AT H F O RWA R D , O B S TA C L E S , A N D OP P O RT U N I T I E S Alice Slater

Despite the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, nearly 20 years ago, and more than 50 years of movement building and dedicated leadership to ban the bomb, the world still faces the nuclear sword of Damocles President Kennedy hoped to avert when, under enormous public pressure, he promoted and passed the first nuclear arms control measure, the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty. Sadly, that treaty merely banned atmospheric nuclear tests, sending the toxic explosions underground where the arms race, driven by the nuclear weapon laboratories, continued to escalate between the United States and the Soviet Union. Over the years, the nuclear arms race was interrupted by a number of successful arms reductions campaigns, eliminating certain classes of weapons like the MX missile, and most recently the nuclear bunker-buster earth penetrator. But these reductions took place without an ongoing commitment to nuclear abolition and without questioning the whole premise of U.S. foreign policy and the expanded national security state that threatened the very foundations of our democracy itself. With the election of President Barack Obama, there are new opportunities to pursue a genuine end to the nuclear scourge. Recent calls by former

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Cold War leaders Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Sam Nunn, and William Perry for the United States to make new commitments for the elimination of nuclear weapons1 have been echoed by Obama during his presidential campaign in which he stated that ‘‘I will seek a goal of a world without nuclear weapons.’’2 But to move forward, we need to be cognizant of what has gone before: the offers on the table that were spurned over the years by the United States; the damaging effects of U.S. plans to dominate and control the military use of space on prospects for reaching agreement with Russia and China on nuclear abolition; the effect on the U.S.-Russian relationship of NATO expansion; and plans to base missile and radar bases on Russia’s border in the Czech Republic and Poland that Russia views as provocative and threatening to its national security. Equally important to achieving the goal of nuclear abolition is the need to address the frightening explosion of nuclear proliferation. Corporate spin-masters promote so-called peaceful nuclear technology with deadly bomb-making material metastasizing in reactors around the world creating new nations to be targeted for preemptive war by an unchecked imperial United States; however, it is manifestly apparent that a genuine commitment to nuclear disarmament requires a worldwide phaseout of nuclear power and support for clean, safe, sustainable energy.

BACKGROUND Today there are still more than 26,000 nuclear weapons on our planet— 25,000 of them in the United States and Russia—with thousands of bombs in those countries poised at hair trigger alert and ready to fire in minutes— and arsenals numbering in the hundreds in the United Kingdom, France, China, and Israel and stockpiles of less than 100 warheads in India, Pakistan, and North Korea. Plans from the Bush administration to rebuild the entire nuclear weapons complex and to replace the existing U.S. nuclear arsenal with brand new hydrogen bombs, so-called reliable replacement warheads, have yet to be rejected by the new Obama administration. Indeed, the Obama administration’s holdover defense secretary, Robert Gates, made a prominent speech in October 2008, shortly after his appointment was announced, emphasizing the need for the refurbished weapons complex under the Bush plan and the new ‘‘safe’’ replacement warhead, saying, ‘‘Try as we might and hope as we will, the power of nuclear weapons and their impact is a genie that cannot be put back in the battle at least for a very long time.’’3 We’ve been pushing our luck for over 60 years since the first and only two atomic bombs to be used in war obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9, 1945, killing more than 214,000 people in the initial days, and causing numerous cases of cancers, mutations, and birth

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defects in their radioactive aftermath, new incidences of which are still being documented today. During these tragic years of the nuclear age, every site worldwide, involved in the mining, milling, production, and fabrication of uranium, for either war or for ‘‘peace,’’ has left a lethal legacy of radioactive waste, illness, and damage to our very genetic heritage. Nuclear bombs and reactor-created plutonium stays toxic for more than 250,000 years and we still haven’t figured out how to safely contain it. Citizens have been mobilizing for nuclear disarmament for more than 50 years. Prominent international scientists led by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, formed the Pugwash Association of scientists, which met in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, to address nuclear disarmament subsequent to the call of the Russell-Einstein manifesto in 1955. They warned that: The general public, and even many men in positions of authority, have not realized what would be involved in a war with nuclear bombs. The general public still thinks in terms of the obliteration of cities. . . . but the best authorities are unanimous in saying that a war with H-bombs might possibly put an end to the human race. It is feared that if many H-bombs are used there will be universal death, sudden only for a minority, but for the majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration.

They concluded that: In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.4

In the early 1950s, children were trained to ‘‘duck and cover’’ in ludicrous school drills where they were instructed to ‘‘duck’’ under their desks and ‘‘cover’’ their heads with their hands as their teachers told them that these futile exercises would help them avoid injury from a nuclear bomb attack.5 Underground bomb shelters were designated as a part of a Civil Defense plan against nuclear attack, and there are still government fact sheets and information available to the public on how to build a fall out shelter in case of nuclear attack.6 The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) was launched in the United States in 1957, driven by citizens’ fears of radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear testing and burgeoning nuclear arsenals in the United States and the Soviet Union. In a series of advertisements signed by prominent Americans including Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Albert Schweitzer, and its founder, Norman Cousins, SANE launched an

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urgent plea to end nuclear testing, engendering thousands of public responses that resulted in the first nuclear testing moratorium.7 In 1958, St. Louis dental associations, organized by Dr. Barry Commoner, reported that radioactive fallout from above ground nuclear tests had led to statistically significant geometric increases in radioactive carcinogenic strontium-90 levels in children’s teeth between 1945 and the early 1960s, raising public awareness of the painful price we were paying for our nuclear folly.8 The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1961, a terrifying series of events that might have led to a nuclear attack on the U.S. mainland by Soviet missiles planted in Cuba, added to the pressure on President Kennedy to ultimately ratchet down the nuclear arms race, which unfortunately only resulted in a Partial Test Ban Treaty. Nuclear testing went underground and for our Dr. Strangeloves in the weapons labs it was business as usual as they continued to design ever more lethal nuclear weapons. Global stockpiles of nuclear bombs have been declining from a peak of 70,000 warheads in 1986, but it was the enactment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) in 1972 that provided an opening for a series of verified arms control agreements—Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) I, II; Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) I, II—that put successively lower caps on the numbers of long-range ‘‘strategic’’ nuclear warheads in the U.S. and Russian arsenals. (The START agreements do not address short-range ‘‘tactical’’ nuclear weapons, such as the estimated 150 to 240 tactical nuclear weapons currently deployed in five NATO states— Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey9—or inactive and retired warheads built for weapons systems now withdrawn from operational service.) The ABM Treaty was enacted to prevent an ever spiraling nuclear arms race. The two Cold War adversaries agreed that the deployment of a missile shield would only provoke the other side to build more nuclear-armed missiles to overcome the shield. The 1993 START II agreement, ratified by Congress in 1996, limited each side to 3,500 long-range missiles and was ratified by Russia in April 2000. The Russia’s Duma delayed its approval because of a series of provocative actions by the United States—the expansion of NATO up to the Russian border, the unauthorized bombing of Iraq, the bombing of Yugoslavia without Security Council sanction—each event occurring on the eve of an anticipated Duma vote on the treaty.10 At the time Russia ratified START II it also ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which went down to ignominious defeat in the U.S. Senate as our nuclear weapons scientists gave testimony against its passage, despite Clinton’s deal-sweetener to buy their support for an end to underground nuclear explosions with a ‘‘stockpile stewardship’’ program.

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Players and Practices in Resistance to War

This benign-sounding ‘‘stewardship’’ program funded our weapons designers with billions of dollars each year from the time full-scale underground testing ended. It enabled the weapons labs to develop new nuclear weapons with computer-simulated virtual reality testing coupled with so-called subcritical nuclear tests in which plutonium is shattered in tunnels 1,000 feet below the desert floor at the Nevada test site, without causing a ‘‘critical’’ chain reaction. We’ve detonated over 24 ‘‘sub-critical’’ tests,11 under both Clinton and Bush. For 2009, Bush proposed that Congress fund the weapons labs at $6.6 billion for research, design, testing, and nuclear weapons activities, with a total budget of some $54 billion for nuclear weapons.12 Plans to replace the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal with ‘‘reliable replacement warheads,’’ and reconfiguring a new bomb-making complex, fail to account for the estimated hundreds of billions of dollars that will be needed in our continuous struggle to contain the enormous waste and toxic contamination across America, plaguing our nation since the Manhattan Project began.13 To his credit, President Obama, during his campaign, said he would revisit these issues, although his holdover appointment of Defense Secretary Gates would seem to undercut any efforts to halt the new weapons work planned at the laboratories. Interestingly, in Eisenhower’s famous farewell address, in which he warned the country of the military-industrial complex, in a little noted aside, he also cautioned, presciently, against the abuse of science, warning that: [I]n holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system—ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.14

Can there be any doubt that the ‘‘scientific-technological’’ elite at Los Alamos and Livermore Laboratories have been driving the nuclear arms race, squandering lost opportunities for nuclear disarmament since the end of the Cold War, and developing new untested weapons designs that create the need for more tests which are then used as an excuse to block U.S. ratification of the Test Ban Treaty? The intertwining of those interests Eisenhower warned about is manifested in the unholy relationship that the Regents of the University of California hold with the nations’ nuclear weapons laboratories. The Regents are responsible for managing and overseeing the laboratories, placing them in a clearly equivocal moral position. Over the years, students have organized to protest this unsavory relationship between academia and lethal weapons development, and have worked to focus public attention on that untenable relationship.15

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25

In 2000, Putin announced on the ratification of START II and the CTBT in Russia, that he would like to begin START III talks and reduce the longrange missiles from 3,500 to 1,500 or even 1,000 instead of the original levels contemplated for START III of 2,500 warheads.16 This forward-looking proposal was accompanied by a stern caveat that all Russian offers would be off the table, including the START II ratification, if the United States proceeded with plans to build a National Missile Defense (NMD) in violation of the ABM Treaty. Astoundingly, U.S. diplomatic ‘‘talking points’’ leaked by Russia to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists revealed that the Clinton Administration was urging the Russians that they had nothing to fear from our proposed NMD as long as they kept 2,500 weapons in their arsenal at launch-on-warning, hair-trigger alert. Despite Putin’s offer to cut to 1,500 warheads, or even less, the United States assured Russia that with 2,500 warheads Russia would be able to overcome the U.S. NMD shield and deliver an ‘‘annihilating counterattack.’’17 Bush came into office and simply withdrew from the ABM Treaty in order to pursue U.S. plans ‘‘to dominate and control the military use of space, to protect U.S. interests and investments,’’ as set forth in the U.S. Space Command’s Vision 2020 mission statement and in the Rumsfeld Commission report of 2000.18 He negotiated the Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty (SORT) with Putin, in 2002,19 but compared to previous U.S.-Russia nuclear reduction treaties it fell far short. The treaty limits deployed strategic warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200, but it has no provisions for verification, no timeline for implementation, and it allows each side to take its weapons out of storage on the first day of 2013. SORT does not call for the elimination of any warheads or delivery vehicles and does not include short-range tactical weapons. It’s a ‘‘sort of ’’ treaty. Meanwhile, Putin declared in 2002 that he would not be bound by the START II agreement, because of the U.S. abrogation of the ABM Treaty.20 Bush offered to engage in negotiations for a treaty to regulate a cut-off in producing nuclear materials for weapons, but was unwilling to have any verification or monitoring provisions for the treaty, rendering the U.S. proposal worthless. Most egregiously, from 2005 to 2008, at the United Nations, the United States has been the only country in the whole world to vote against a resolution to ban weapons in space. In 2006, Russia argued that if all states observe a prohibition on space weaponization, there will be no arms race. Russia and China submitted a draft treaty for a space ban in 2007 and 2008, which the United States rejected out of hand, characterizing it as ‘‘a diplomatic ploy by the two nations to gain a military advantage.’’21 Barack Obama has publicly stated he is against the weaponization of space, so a shift in U.S. policy on space would provide an enormous opportunity to move forward, paving the way for progress on nuclear disarmament. It remains to be seen

26

Players and Practices in Resistance to War

what the Obama administration will do about the provocative missile and radar bases planned in the Czech Republic and Poland that threaten to derail any progress on nuclear abolition between the United States and Russia. Together they possess more than 95 percent of the world’s nuclear bombs. For nuclear disarmament to occur, the United States and Russia must first reach agreement to make deep cuts in their own arsenals before other countries would be willing to join in final negotiations for the total elimination of all nuclear weapons.

THE LEGAL BASIS FOR NUCLEAR ABOLITION There are 187 nations that signed the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in which a deal was struck that the five nuclear weapons states—the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, and China—would give up their nuclear weapons in return for a promise from the other nations not to acquire them. India refused to agree to this arrangement, arguing that it was discriminatory and that the better course would be to negotiate for all nations to abolish nuclear weapons. Pakistan and Israel, following India’s lead, also refused to sign. North Korea has since withdrawn. The NPT required that there be a review and extension conference 25 years later, and in 1995 the five nuclear powers, who had promised to give up their weapons, pressured the rest of the world to extend the NPT indefinitely. To secure the indefinite extension, the nuclear weapons states pledged in 1995 to work for the ‘‘ultimate’’ elimination of nuclear weapons, to negotiate a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT) for weapons purposes, a Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction, and to have a ‘‘strengthened’’ review process every five years, with interim meetings to prepare for the five-year reviews. Civil Society turned up in force at the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference to hold the nuclear weapons states to their promises in Article VI of the treaty to make good faith efforts for nuclear disarmament. When it became apparent that there was no commitment to actually eliminating nuclear weapons, more than 65 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), in a basement room at the UN, drafted an Abolition Statement calling for a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons, as part of an 11-point plan, to be completed by the year 2000.22 They recognized the ‘‘inextricable link’’ between nuclear weapons and nuclear power and called for the establishment of an International Sustainable Energy Agency and the phase out of nuclear power. The statement was faxed out all over the world and by the end of the four-week NPT meeting, more than 600 NGOs had signed on and the Abolition 2000 Network was formed.

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In 1996, in an unprecedented break with the rules of consensus at the Commission on Disarmament in Geneva, the CTBT was brought to the UN General Assembly for signatures over India’s objections that there was no provision in the treaty to preclude the continued computer-simulated virtual reality testing of nuclear weapons or ban underground ‘‘sub-critical’’ tests.23 Thus it wasn’t comprehensive and it didn’t ban tests. And less than two years after the CTBT was signed, India went overtly nuclear, arguing that it didn’t want to be left behind while the current nuclear powers reserved the right to use advanced technology to develop new weapons without full-scale underground tests. Pakistan followed swiftly on India’s heels to join the nuclear club. In 1996, a global Civil Society campaign resulted in a decision by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to grant a request from the General Assembly to issue an Advisory Opinion on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons. The 14 judges voted unanimously that under the NPT ‘‘there exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.’’ In May 2000 the NPT had its first five-year review after the 1995 extension conference. The New Agenda Coalition (NAC), formed in 1998, with eight nations—Ireland, South Africa, Mexico, Sweden, Brazil, New Zealand, and Egypt (Slovenia, eager to join NATO, dropped out under U.S. pressure)— had begun lobbying other nations to press the nuclear powers for more progress on disarmament in UN meetings. Together with Civil Society, particularly the Abolition 2000 Network, which had produced a Model Nuclear Weapons Convention, Costa Rica introduced NAC guidelines into the General Assembly.24 The NAC had a major impact on the NPT Review as the nuclear weapons states committed to ‘‘an unequivocal undertaking by the nuclearweapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals.’’ The final statement of the NPT Review further asserts that ‘‘the total elimination of nuclear weapons is the only absolute guarantee against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons.’’ Additional pledges were made for practical steps to demonstrate compliance with the NPT including: • Further unilateral disarmament. • Increased transparency by the nuclear weapons states of their arsenals. • Further reduction of nonstrategic nuclear weapons (those with a shorter range). • Concrete measures to further reduce the operational status of nuclear weapons systems. • A diminishing role for nuclear weapons in security policies (providing a basis for challenging the nuclear doctrines of the nuclear weapons

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Players and Practices in Resistance to War

states and NATO that continue to promote reliance on nuclear weapons as the ‘‘cornerstone’’ of their security). • The engagement as soon as appropriate of all the nuclear weapons states in the process leading to the total elimination of nuclear weapons. • The early entry into force and full implementation of START II and the conclusion of START III while preserving and strengthening the ABM Treaty as a cornerstone of strategic stability.

These new NPT commitments were made by Clinton on May 19, 2000, as the weapons laboratories continued to perform sub-critical tests at Nevada and to lobby for a new earth-penetrating bunker-busting nuclear weapons and more ‘‘usable’’ nuclear weapons, and as Star Wars proceeded in full swing with Administration lawyers making frivolous arguments about the meaning of the restrictions in the ABM Treaty, which Clinton appeared to be violating.25 At the close of the NPT, both Russia and China took exception to the final document without actually blocking consensus, warning that if the ABM Treaty were to be abrogated, the promises made could not be fulfilled. China said none of the steps above would succeed unless a treaty to maintain space for peaceful uses was phased in simultaneously. The next review of the NPT in 2005 was a disaster as the Bush Administration haggled over the agenda for two weeks of the four-week meeting, objecting to any mention of the promises made by the United States at the 2000 NPT review for ‘‘an unequivocal commitment to the total elimination of nuclear weapons,’’ and the other incremental steps including maintaining the ABM Treaty and ratifying the CTBT. The meeting broke up without any agreement on new steps for nuclear disarmament, while at the time a brutal war was being waged on Iraq based on the false assertions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and threatened the world with a ‘‘mushroom cloud,’’ and a new drumbeat of hostilities was sounded against Iran and North Korea over the issue of nuclear proliferation.

THE FAUSTIAN BARGAIN IN THE NPT FOR CIVILIAN NUCLEAR POWER One of the ironies of the NPT is that to secure the promise of the nonnuclear weapons states not to acquire nuclear weapons, the nuclear weapons states promised them an ‘‘inalienable right’’ to the ‘‘peaceful uses’’ of nuclear technology, enabling the very nuclear weapons proliferation the treaty is designed to prevent. The drafters of the CTBT were well aware that by having a nuclear reactor, a nation had been given the keys to a bomb factory when they required the signatures of 44 ‘‘nuclear-capable’’ nations to be

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included in any effort to ban nuclear tests, regardless of whether they proclaimed any intention to develop weapons.26 And former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director George Tenet said, ‘‘The difference between producing low-enriched uranium and weapons-capable high-enriched uranium is only a matter of time and intent, not technology.’’27 There are now 440 ‘‘peaceful’’ reactors in 31 countries28—all producing deadly bomb materials with 272 research reactors in 56 countries, some producing highly enriched uranium.29 There are about 270,000 tons of irradiated fuel containing plutonium and other radioactive elements in storage, much of it at reactor sites. The waste is currently increasing by about 12,000 tons each year.30 There are 500 tons of weapons usable plutonium already separated out of reactor waste and 1,000 tons of highly enriched uranium making about 1.5 million kilograms of weapons usable fissile materials. It takes only 5 kilograms of plutonium or 17 kilograms of highly enriched uranium to make one nuclear bomb.31 The Bush Administration had plans to build 50 more reactors by 202032; there are now 34 new nuclear reactors under construction in 11 countries33—to churn out more irradiated waste on tap for bomb-making, with no known solution to safely containing the tons of nuclear waste that will be generated over the unimaginable 250,000 years it will continue to threaten life on earth.34 New projects are under way to mine uranium on every continent, mostly on indigenous lands, where first peoples have suffered inordinately from radiation poisoning. Yet countless studies report higher incidences of birth defects, cancer, and genetic mutations in every situation where nuclear technology is employed— whether for war or for ‘‘peace.’’ A National Research Council (NRC) 2005 study reported that exposure to X-rays and gamma rays, even at low-dose levels, can cause cancer. The committee defined ‘‘low-dose’’ as a range from near zero up to about 10 times that from a CT scan. ‘‘There appears to be no threshold below which exposure can be viewed as harmless,’’ said NRC panelist, Herbert Abrams, professor emeritus of radiology at Stanford and Harvard universities.35 Tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste accumulate at civilian reactors with no solution for its storage, releasing toxic doses of radioactive waste into our air, water, and soil and contaminating our planet and its inhabitants for hundreds of thousands of years. What does it take for a country to be willing to inflict the toxic assault of nuclear waste on its own people in light of the lessons we have learned during the past 60 years of the nuclear age? One delegate at the disastrous 2005 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review shared, quite frankly, at an NGO panel that his country was unwilling to forgo its ‘‘inalienable right’’ under the treaty because their scientists wouldn’t want to be left behind in state-of-the-art knowledge. They need to play in the major leagues of science with the big

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Players and Practices in Resistance to War

boys. So despite the promise of clean, safe, abundant energy from the sun, the wind, the tides, many non-nuclear weapons states have underscored their equal rights to the dark fruits of nuclear technology. Will this kind of scientific machismo, which has created so many gruesome chapters in world history, be supported at the expense of the health of so many people and of the very survival of our biosphere? Will we satisfy our scientists’ dangerous thirst for knowledge and status despite the obvious possibility that the peaceful nuclear reactor can readily be converted to a bomb factory? The industry-dominated International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been instrumental in covering up the disastrous health effects of the Chernobyl tragedy, understating the number of deaths by attributing only 56 deaths directly to the accident as of 2004.36 This was a whitewash of health studies performed by Russia and the Ukraine, which estimated thousands of deaths and tens of thousands who suffered thyroid cancer and leukemia as a result of the accident.37 This cover-up was no doubt due to the collusive agreement between the IAEA and the World Health Organization (WHO), which under its terms provides that if either of the organizations initiates any program or activity in which the other has or may have a substantial interest, the first party shall consult with the other with a view to adjusting the matter by mutual agreement.38 Thus, our scientists and researchers at the WHO are required to have their work vetted by the industry’s champion for ‘‘peaceful’’ nuclear technology, the IAEA. For example, WHO abandoned its 1961 research agenda on human health effects of food irradiation, ceding to the IAEA responsibility for researching its safety. The IAEA is leading a global campaign to further the legalization, and consumer acceptance of irradiated foods. ‘‘We must confer with experts in the various fields of advertising and psychology to put the public at ease,’’ one IAEA report states, also recommending that the process ‘‘should not be required on the label.’’39 Yet, the NRC study, stating that there is no safe dose of radiation, clearly justified the public’s rational fear of radiation. Today, in the face of catastrophic climate change, we now see the nuclear industry devoting its resources to public relations campaigns perpetuating the myth that the toxic technology is ‘‘clean’’ and ‘‘safe.’’40

CONTROLLING THE FUEL CYCLE IAEA Director, Mohammed ElBaradei has stated: We just cannot continue business as usual that every country can build its own factories for separating plutonium or enriching uranium. Then

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we are really talking about 30, 40 countries sitting on the fence with a nuclear weapons capability that could be converted into a nuclear weapon in a matter of months.41

The current flurry of negotiations and the move to try to control the production of the civilian nuclear fuel cycle in one central place, as proposed by El Baradei, would be futile. It would create just another discriminatory aspect of the NPT, with a new class of ‘‘haves’’ and ‘‘have-nots’’ under the treaty, as was done with those permitted to have nuclear weapons and those who are not. Now it is proposed that some nations be permitted to make their own nuclear fuel, while others, such as Iran, would be precluded from doing so. And in the wake of the stern warnings to Iran, and the referral of the issue to the Security Council, which has provoked Iran to begin reprocessing of nuclear fuel under its ‘‘inalienable’’ right, the United States has incomprehensibly announced its Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). The GNEP is designed to control the spread of nuclear materials in which ‘‘supplier’’ nations would manufacture nuclear fuel rods, ship them to other countries—by rail, road, and sea—to use in their reactors and then take back the irradiated fuel and reprocess it, breaking a 30-year ban in the United States on turning irradiated reactor fuel into weapons-grade material, first instituted by Presidents Carter and Ford.42 Brazil, too, recently got into the action, firing up its own major uranium enrichment plant while we were warning Iran that such action would be viewed as hostile. And six new Arab nations—Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates—have announced their intention to develop ‘‘peaceful’’ nuclear technology, in what appears to be an attempt to acquire civilian nuclear capacity before the dominant industrial nations succeed in putting the nuclear fuel cycle and access to materials under their exclusive control.43 Further undermining the integrity of the NPT bargain, the United States made a deal with India in 2008 to supply it with ‘‘peaceful’’ nuclear technology, even though the NPT prohibits any sharing of nuclear technology with nations who have not signed the treaty.44 Trying to control the reprocessing and distribution of nuclear fuel would be going down the same path we’ve been on for the past 50 some-odd years for nuclear arms control. There is no more likelihood that France, Japan, or the United States, for example, will surrender control of nuclear materials production, any more than the nuclear powers have surrendered control of atom bombs. We would have a long drawn-out contentious effort to establish a discriminatory regime—when, instead, we could be expending our energy and intellectual treasure on shifting the energy paradigm to make nuclear, fossil, and industrial biofuels obsolete.

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It is time for the IAEA to give up its dual mission in nuclear technology. While the Agency plays an indispensable role in inspecting and verifying compliance with nuclear disarmament agreements, it should not continue to act with a manifest conflict of interest in promoting the commercial interests of the nuclear industry.

HARBINGERS OF CHANGE: TIME TO END THE NUCLEAR AGE • In June 2008, 69 members of the European Parliament from 19 countries signed a call to negotiate a nuclear weapons convention based on the draft Abolition 2000 Model Nuclear Weapons Convention45 submitted to the UN, now updated and being promoted by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) spearheaded by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. • The U.S. Conference of Mayors, responding to a call from the Mayors for Peace, led by the Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, endorsed a call for negotiations on a Nuclear Weapons Convention to begin in 2010, with complete nuclear disarmament by 2020.46 • A new campaign, Global Zero, launched in December 2008, has organized more than 100 world leaders calling for ‘‘a legally binding verifiable agreement, including all nations, to eliminate nuclear weapons by a date certain.’’47 Congresswoman Lynne Woolsey’s House Resolution 68 calls on the United States to enter into negotiations to abolish nuclear weapons.48 • In October 2008, UN Secretary-General Ban-ki Moon put forward a fivepoint proposal to get nuclear disarmament back on track by renewing a general call on nuclear weapons states to meet their nuclear disarmament obligations, and by encouraging nuclear weapons states to negotiate ‘‘a nuclear-weapons convention, backed by a strong system of verification.’’49 • Germany has convened a series of meetings this year resulting in 51 nations cooperating to initiative an International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).50 Just as the Comprehensive Test Ban has rendered inoperative Article V of the NPT, which provided a right to ‘‘peaceful’’ nuclear explosions, the establishment of IRENA would supersede Article IV and the ‘‘inalienable right’’ to ‘‘peaceful’’ nuclear technology, providing a benign, non-proliferating substitute of safe, clean, abundant energy that will help turn the world from strife and resource wars. • Congressman Ed Markey has proposed a resolution, HR 5529, for the United States to support and participate with IRENA.51 • Public opinion supports nuclear disarmament. A 2007 poll, jointly conducted by the University of Maryland and Russia’s Levada Center, shows large majorities in both Russia and America in favor of eliminating nuclear weapons.52

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The current crisis over Iran’s intentions to exercise its legal ‘‘inalienable right’’ to ‘‘peaceful’’ nuclear technology presents an opportunity for new American leadership to negotiate an end to the nuclear age. Rather than pursuing a lethal path of preemptive war, a new U.S. administration, riding on the shifting currents of world opinion that point to new common understanding that nuclear abolition is an idea whose time has come, could seize this moment and move to finally end the nuclear scourge.

NEXT STEPS FOR U.S. LEADERSHIP FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT • Take the Russians up on their offer to cut our arsenals to 1,000 warheads and then take China up on its offer calling for all the other nuclear weapons states (United Kingdom, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea) to negotiate a treaty for the elimination of all nuclear weapons. • De-alert all nuclear weapons. • Commit to never be the first to use a nuclear weapon. (Only China has this policy.) • Cut all funding for new nuclear weapons research and substitute a passive custodial program for maintenance of the arsenal during dismantlement. • Close the Nevada test site just as France and China have closed theirs in the South Pacific and Gobi Desert. • Bring all U.S. nuclear warheads back from Europe and abandon NATO policy to rely on nuclear weapons for its security. • Take up Russia and China’s offer for negotiations to maintain the peaceful use of space for all time. • Stop any further nuclearization and militarization of space. • Support negotiations for a missile ban treaty. • Institute a moratorium on uranium mining. • Call for a global phase out of nuclear power and join Germany’s initiative to fund and establish IRENA to promote the use of clean, safe energy. • Support global efforts for the reallocation of worldwide subsidies of $250 billion to nuclear, fossil, and industrial biomass fuels for clean, safe, sustainable solar, wind, geothermal, and marine energy, and work for the reallocation of $40 billion of U.S. subsidies and tax breaks now supporting unsustainable energy resources to be applied to clean, safe energy. • Reallocate the resources saved to redress the environmental devastation and human suffering caused by nuclear mining, milling, production, and testing, which have been disproportionately borne by the world’s indigenous peoples. • Provide adequate resources to address the toxic legacy of the nuclear age.

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NOTES 1. Shultz et al., 2008. 2. Obama, April 2008. 3. Gates, 2008. 4. Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell and others. 5. ‘‘Duck and Cover,’’ 1950. 6. ‘‘Cold War Relics or Tomorrow’s Family Life-Savers?’’ 2005. 7. Stassen and Wittner, 2007. 8. Radiation and Public Health The RPHP, 2003. 9. Kristensen, 2009. 10. Sokov, 2000. 11. ‘‘Urge Congress to Cease and Desist on Subcritical Testing.’’ August 28, 2006. 12. Cabasso, 2008. 13. Schwartz, 1998. 14. Eisenhower, 1961. 15. Paddock, 2007. 16. Arms Control Association, 2002. 17. Missile Defense and the ABM Treaty, 2002. 18. Vision for 2010. 19. Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions, 2003. 20. Slater, 2008. 21. Ibid. 22. Weiss, 2007. 23. Indian Embassy, 1999. 24. Securing our Survival, 2007. 25. Spring, 1999. 26. CTBTO Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. 27. Tenet, 2004; Broad and Sanger, 2004. 28. Power Reactor Information System, (PRIS), 2010. 29. NTI, 2009. 30. World Nuclear Association, 2009. 31. International Panel on Fissile Materials, 2007. 32. Galbraith, 2010. 33. World Nuclear Association, 2010. 34. Basic Physics of Nuclear Medicine, n.d. 35. Daniel, 2005. 36. World Nuclear Association, 2010. 37. Greenpeace, 2006. 38. Bertell, 2004. 39. Public Citizen, 2002. 40. Farsetta, 2008. 41. El Baradei, 2005. 42. Edwards, 2006. 43. Beeston, 2006.

Nuclear Disarmament 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

Pan and Bajoria, 2008. Securing Our Survival, 2007. Akiba, 2009. Global Zero, 2010. International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), 2008. Ki-Moon, 2008. International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), 2008. Ibid. WorldPublicOpinion.org, 2007.

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CHAPTER

3

H I R O S H I M A D AY: A M E R I C A H A S B E E N A S L E E P AT T H E W H E E L F O R 6 4 Y E A R S Daniel Ellsberg

It was a hot August day in Detroit. I was standing on a street corner downtown, looking at the front page of the Detroit News in a news rack. I remember a streetcar rattling by on the tracks as I read the headline: A single American bomb had destroyed a Japanese city. I thought: ‘‘We got it first. And we used it. On a city.’’ I had a sense of dread, a feeling that something very ominous for humanity had just happened. A feeling, new to me as an American, at 14, that my country might have made a terrible mistake. I was glad when the war ended nine days later, but it didn’t make me think that my first reaction on August 6 was wrong. Unlike nearly everyone else outside the Manhattan Project, my first awareness of the challenges of the nuclear era had occurred—and my attitudes toward the advent of nuclear weaponry had formed—some nine months earlier than those headlines, and in a crucially different context. It was in a ninth-grade social studies class, in the fall of 1944, and our teacher, Bradley Patterson, was discussing a concept that was familiar then in sociology—William F. Ogburn’s notion of ‘‘cultural lag.’’ The idea was A similar version of this article originally appeared at Truthdig.com. For more of Daniel Ellsberg’s work, visit his blog: www.ellsberg.net.

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that the development of technology regularly moved much further and faster in human social-historical evolution than other aspects of culture: our institutions of government, our values, habits, our understanding of society and ourselves. Indeed, the very notion of ‘‘progress’’ referred mainly to technology. What ‘‘lagged’’ behind, what developed more slowly or not at all in social adaptation to new technology was everything that bore on our ability to control and direct technology and the use of technology to dominate other humans. To illustrate this, Mr. Patterson posed a potential advance in technology that might be realized soon. It was possible now, he told us, to conceive of a bomb made of U-235, an isotope of uranium, which would have an explosive power 1,000 times greater than the largest bombs currently being used in the war. German scientists in late 1938 had discovered that uranium could be split by nuclear fission, releasing immense amounts of energy. Several popular articles about the possibility of atomic bombs and specifically U-235 bombs appeared during the war in magazines like The Saturday Evening Post. None of these represented leaks from the Manhattan Project, whose very existence was top secret. In every case they had been inspired by earlier articles on the subject that had been published freely in 1939 and 1940, before scientific self-censorship and then formal classification had set in. Patterson had come across one of these wartime articles. He brought the potential development to us as an example of one more possible leap by science and technology ahead of our social institutions. Suppose, then, that one nation, or several, chose to explore the possibility of making this into a bomb, and succeeded. What would be the probable implications of this for humanity? How would it be used, by humans and states as they were today? Would it be, on balance, bad or good for the world? Would it be a force for peace, for example, or for destruction? We were to write a short essay on this due within a week. As I remember, everyone in the class had arrived at much the same judgment. The existence of such a bomb, we each concluded, would be bad news for humanity. Humans could not handle such a destructive force. People could not control it, safely, appropriately. The power would be abused: used dangerously and destructively, with terrible consequences; evidenced by the allies’ bombing of German cities and the earlier German attempts to destroy Rotterdam and London. Civilization, perhaps our species, would be in danger of a collapse from which it would never fully recover. As I recall, this conclusion didn’t depend mainly on who had the bomb, or how many had it, or who got it first. And to the best of my memory, we in the class weren’t addressing it as something that might come so soon as to bear on the outcome of the ongoing war. It seemed likely in the way the

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case was presented to us that the Germans would get it first, since they had done the original science. But we didn’t base our negative assessment on the idea that this would necessarily be a Nazi or German bomb. It would be a bad development, on balance, even if democratic countries got it first. It was months before I thought of the issues again. I remember the moment when I did, I can still see and feel the scene and recall my thoughts, described above, as I read the headline on August 6. I remember that I was uneasy about the tone in President Truman’s voice on the radio as he exulted over our success in the race for the bomb and its effectiveness against Japan. I generally admired Truman, then and later, but in hearing his announcements I was put off by the lack of concern in his voice, the absence of a sense of tragedy, of desperation or fear for the future. It seemed to me that this was a decision best made in anguish; and both Truman’s manner and the tone of the official communiqu
es made unmistakably clear that this hadn’t been the case. Which meant for me that our leaders didn’t have the picture, didn’t grasp the significance of the precedent they had set and the sinister implications for the future. And that evident unawareness was itself scary. I believed that something ominous had happened; that it was bad for humanity that the bomb was feasible, and that its use would have bad long-term consequences, whether or not those negatives were balanced or even outweighed by shortrun benefits. Looking back, it seems clear to me my reactions then were right. Moreover, reflecting on two related themes that have run through my life since then—intense abhorrence of nuclear weapons, and more generally of killing women and children—I’ve come to suspect that I’ve conflated in my emotional memory two events less than a year apart: Hiroshima and a catastrophe that visited my own family 11 months later. On the Fourth of July, 1946, driving on a hot afternoon on a flat, straight road through the cornfields of Iowa, on the way from Detroit to visit our relatives in Denver, my father fell asleep at the wheel and went off the road long enough to hit a sidewall over a culvert that sheared off the right side of the car, killing my mother and sister. My father’s nose was broken and his forehead was cut. When a highway patrol car came by, he was wandering by the wreckage, bleeding and dazed. I was inside, in a coma from a concussion, with a large gash on the left side of my forehead. I had been sitting on the floor next to the back seat, on a suitcase covered with a blanket, with my head just behind the driver’s seat. When the car hit the wall, my head was thrown against a metal fixture on the back of the driver’s seat, knocking me out and opening up a large triangular flap of flesh on my forehead. I was in coma for 36 hours. My legs had

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been stretched out in front of me across the car and my right leg was broken just above the knee. My father had been a highway engineer in Nebraska. He said that highway walls should never have been flush with the road like that, and later laws tended to ban that placement. This one took off the side of the car where my mother and sister were sitting. It was amazing that anyone had survived. Looking back now at what I drew from reading the Pentagon Papers later and from my citizen’s activism since then, I think I saw in the events of August 1945 and July 1946, unconsciously, a common message. I loved my father, and I respected Truman. But you couldn’t rely entirely on a trusted authority to protect you and your family from disaster. Some vigilance was called for, to awaken them if need be, or warn others. They could be asleep at the wheel, heading for a wall or a cliff. I sensed almost right away, in August 1945 as Hiroshima and Nagasaki were incinerated, that such feelings—about our president, and our bomb— separated me from nearly everyone around me, from my parents and friends and from most other Americans. These were thoughts to be kept to myself. They were not to be mentioned. They could only sound unpatriotic. Before that day perhaps no one in the public outside our class—no one else outside the Manhattan Project (and very few inside it)—had spent a week, as we had, or even a day thinking about the impact of such a weapon on the long-term prospects for humanity. And we were set apart from our fellow Americans in another important way. Perhaps no others outside the project or our class ever had occasion to think about the bomb without the strongly biasing positive associations that accompanied their first awareness in August 1945 of its very possibility: that it was ‘‘our’’ weapon, an instrument of American democracy developed to deter a Nazi bomb, pursued by two presidents, a war-winning weapon and a necessary one—so it was claimed and almost universally believed—to end the war without a costly invasion of Japan. For nearly all other Americans, whatever dread they may have felt about the long-run future of the bomb (and there was more expression of this in elite media than most people remembered later) was offset at the time and ever afterward by a powerful aura of its legitimacy, and its almost miraculous potential for good that had already been realized. For a great many Americans still, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs are regarded above all with gratitude, for having saved their own lives or the lives of their husbands, brothers, fathers, or grandfathers, which would otherwise have been at risk in the invasion of Japan. For these Americans and many others, the bomb was not so much an instrument of massacre as a kind of savior, a protector of precious lives.

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Most Americans ever since have seen the destruction of the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as necessary and effective—as constituting just means, in effect just terrorism, under the supposed circumstances—thus legitimating, in their eyes, the second and third largest single-day massacres in history. (The largest, also by the U.S. Army Air Corps, was the firebombing of Tokyo five months before on the night of March 9, which burned alive or suffocated 80,000 to 120,000 civilians. Most of the very few Americans who are aware of this event at all accept it, too, as appropriate in wartime.) To regard those acts as definitely other than criminal and immoral, as most Americans do, is to believe that anything—anything—can be legitimate means: at worst, a necessary, lesser, evil. At the very least we can say that it is done by Americans, on the order of a president, during wartime. Indeed, we are the only country in the world that believes it won a war by bombing— specifically by bombing cities with weapons of mass destruction—and believes that it was fully rightful in doing so. It is a dangerous state of mind. Even if the premises of these justifications had been realistic (after years of study I’m convinced, along with many scholars, they were not; but I’m not addressing that here), the consequences of such beliefs for subsequent policy making were bound to be fateful. They underlie the American government and public’s ready acceptance ever since of basing our security on readiness to carry out threats of mass annihilation by nuclear weapons, and the belief by many officials and elites still today that abolition of these weapons is not only infeasible but undesirable. By contrast, given a few days’ reflection in the summer of 1945 before a presidential fait accompli was framed in that fashion, you didn’t have to be a moral prodigy to arrive at the sense of foreboding we all had in Mr. Patterson’s class. It was as easily available to 13-year-old ninth-graders as it was to many Manhattan Project scientists, who also had the opportunity to form their judgments before the bomb was used. But the scientists knew something else that was unknown to the public and even to most high-level decision makers. They knew that the atomic bombs, the uranium and plutonium fission bombs they were preparing, were only the precursors to far more powerful explosives, almost surely including a thermonuclear fusion bomb, later called the hydrogen bomb, or H-bomb. That weapon—of which we eventually came to have tens of thousands—could have an explosive yield much greater than the fission bombs needed to trigger it. A thousand times greater. Moreover, most of the scientists who focused on the long-run implications of nuclear weapons, after the surrender of Germany in May 1945, belatedly believed that using the bomb against Japan would make international control of the weapon very unlikely. In turn that would make inevitable a desperate

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arms race, which would soon expose the United States to adversaries’ uncontrolled possession of thermonuclear weapons, so that, as the scientists said in a pre-attack petition to the president, ‘‘the cities of the United States as well as the cities of other nations will be in continuous danger of sudden annihilation.’’ (In this they were proved correct.) They cautioned the president—on both moral grounds and considerations of long-run survival of civilization— against beginning this process by using the bomb against Japan even if its use might shorten the war. But their petition was sent ‘‘through channels’’ and was deliberately held back by Gen. Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project. It never got to the president, or even to Secretary of War Henry Stimson until after the bomb had been dropped. There is no record that the scientists’ concerns about the future and their judgment of a nuclear attack’s impact on it were ever made known to President Truman before or after his decisions. Still less was made known to the American public. At the end of the war the scientists’ petition and their reasoning were reclassified secret to keep it from public knowledge, and its existence was unknown for more than a decade. Several Manhattan Project scientists later expressed regret that they had earlier deferred to the demands of the secrecy managers—for fear of losing their clearances and positions, and perhaps facing prosecution—and had collaborated in maintaining public ignorance on this most vital of issues. One of them—Eugene Rabinowitch, who after the war founded and edited the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (with its Doomsday Clock)—had, in fact, after the German surrender in May, actively considered breaking ranks and alerting the American public to the existence of the bomb, the plans for using it against Japan, and the scientists’ views both of the moral issues and the long-term dangers of doing so. He first reported this in a letter to the New York Times published on June 28, 1971. It was the day I submitted to arrest at the federal courthouse in Boston; for the preceding 13 days my wife and I had been underground eluding the FBI while distributing the Pentagon Papers to 17 newspapers after injunctions had halted publication in the Times and the Washington Post. The Rabinowitch letter began by saying it was ‘‘the revelation by the Times of the Pentagon history of U.S. intervention in Vietnam, despite its classification as ‘secret,’’’ that led him now to reveal: Before the atom bomb-drops on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I had spent sleepless nights thinking that I should reveal to the American people, perhaps through a reputable news organ, the fateful act—the first introduction of atomic weapons—which the U.S. Government planned to

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carry out without consultation with its people. Twenty-five years later, I feel I would have been right if I had done so.1

I didn’t see this the morning it was published, because I was getting myself arrested and arraigned, for doing what Rabinowitch wishes he had done in 1945, and I wish I had done in 1964. I first came across this extraordinary confession by a would-be whistle-blower (I don’t know another term like it) in Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial by Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell.2 Rereading Rabinowitch’s statement, still with some astonishment, I agree with him. He was right to consider it, and he would have been right if he had done it. He would have faced prosecution and prison then (as I did at the time his letter was published), but he would have been more than justified, as a citizen and as a human being, in informing the American public and burdening them with shared responsibility for the fateful decision. Some of the same scientists faced a comparable challenge four years after Hiroshima, addressing the possible development of an even more terrible weapon, more fraught with possible danger to human survival: the hydrogen bomb. This time some who had urged use of the atom bomb against Japan (dissenting from the petitioners above) recommended against even development and testing of the new proposal, in view of its ‘‘extreme dangers to mankind.’’ ‘‘Let it be clearly realized,’’ they said, ‘‘that this is a super weapon; it is in a totally different category from an atomic bomb’’3 I learned much later, knowledge of the secret possibility was not completely limited to government scientists. A few others—my father, it turns out, was one—knew of this prospect before it had received the stamp of presidential approval and had become an American government project. And once again, under those conditions of prior knowledge (denied as before to the public), to grasp the moral and long-run dangers you didn’t have to be a nuclear physicist. My father was not. Some background is needed here. My father, Harry Ellsberg, was a structural engineer. He worked for Albert Kahn in Detroit, the ‘‘Arsenal of Democracy.’’ At the start of World War II, he was the chief structural engineer in charge of designing the Ford Willow Run plant, a factory to make B-24 Liberator bombers for the Air Corps. Dad was proud that it was the world’s largest industrial building under one roof. It put together bombers the way Ford produced cars, on an assembly line a mile-and-a-quarter long. Once, my father took me out to Willow Run to see the line in operation. For as far as I could see, the huge metal bodies of planes were moving along tracks as workers riveted and installed parts. But as Dad had explained to

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me, three-quarters of a mile along, the bodies were moved off the tracks onto a circular turntable that rotated them 90 degrees; then they were moved back on track for the last half mile of the L. Finally, the planes were rolled out the hangar doors at the end of the factory—one every hour: It took 59 minutes on the line to build a plane with its 100,000 parts from start to finish—filled with gas and flown out to war. It was an exciting sight for a 13-year-old. I was proud of my father. His next wartime job was to design a still larger airplane engine factory—again the world’s largest plant under one roof—the Dodge Chicago plant, which made all the engines for B-29s. When the war ended, Dad accepted an offer to oversee the buildup of the plutonium production facilities at Hanford, Washington. That project was being run by General Electric under contract with the Atomic Energy Commission. To take the job of chief structural engineer on the project, Dad moved from the engineering firm of Albert Kahn, where he had worked for years, to what became Giffels & Rossetti. Later he told me that engineering firm had the largest volume of construction contracts in the world at that time, and his project was the world’s largest. I grew up hearing these superlatives. The Hanford project gave my father his first really good salary. But while I was away as a sophomore at Harvard, he left his job with Giffels & Rossetti, for reasons I never learned at the time. He was out of work for almost a year. Then he went back as chief structural engineer for the whole firm. Almost 30 years later, in 1978, when my father was 89, I happened to ask him why he had left Giffels & Rossetti. His answer startled me. He said, ‘‘Because they wanted me to help build the H-bomb.’’ This was a breathtaking statement for me to hear in 1978. I was in fulltime active opposition to the deployment of the neutron bomb, which was a small H-bomb, that President Jimmy Carter was proposing to send to Europe. The N-bomb had a killing radius from its output of neutrons that was much wider than its radius of destruction by blast. Optimally, an airburst N-bomb would have little fallout and it would not destroy structures, equipment, or vehicles, but its neutrons would kill the humans either outside or within buildings or tanks. The Soviets mocked it as ‘‘a capitalist weapon’’ that destroyed people but not property, but they tested such a weapon, too, as did other countries. I had opposed developing or testing that concept for almost 20 years, since it was first described to me by my friend and colleague at the RAND Corp., Sam Cohen, who liked to be known as the ‘‘father of the neutron bomb.’’ I feared that, as a ‘‘small’’ weapon with limited and seemingly controllable lethal effects, it would be seen as usable in warfare, making the United States the first to use it and ‘‘limited nuclear war’’ more likely. It would be the match

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that would set off an exchange of the much larger dirty weapons that were the bulk of our arsenal and were all that the Soviets then had. In the year of this conversation with Dad, I was arrested four times blocking the railroad tracks at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Production Facility, which produced all the plutonium triggers for H-bombs and was going to produce the plutonium cores for neutron bombs. One of these arrests was on Nagasaki Day, August 9. The triggers produced at Rocky Flats were, in effect, the nuclear components of A-bombs, plutonium fission bombs of the type that had destroyed Nagasaki on that date in 1945. Every one of our many thousands of H-bombs, the thermonuclear fusion bombs that arm our strategic forces, requires a Nagasaki-type A-bomb as its detonator. (I doubt that one American in 100 knows that simple fact, and thus has a clear understanding of the difference between A- and H-bombs, or of the reality of the thermonuclear arsenals of the past 50 years.) Our popular image of nuclear war—from the familiar pictures of the devastation of Nagasaki and Hiroshima—is grotesquely misleading. Those pictures show us only what happens to humans and buildings when they are hit by what is now just the detonating cap for a modern nuclear weapon. The plutonium for these weapons came from Hanford and from the Savannah River Site in Georgia and was machined into weapons components at Rocky Flats, in Colorado. Allen Ginsberg and I, with many others, blockaded the entrances to the plant on August 9, 1978, to interrupt business as usual on the anniversary of the day a plutonium bomb had killed 58,000 humans (about 100,000 had died by the end of 1945). I had never heard before of any connection of my father with the H-bomb. He wasn’t particularly wired in to my anti-nuclear work or to any of my activism since the Vietnam War had ended. I asked him what he meant by his comment about leaving Giffels & Rossetti. ‘‘They wanted me to be in charge of designing a big plant that would be producing material for an H-bomb.’’ He said that DuPont, which had built the Hanford Site, was to have the contract from the Atomic Energy Commission. That would have been for the Savannah River Site. I asked him when this was. He replied, ‘‘Late 1949.’’ I told him, ‘‘You must have the date wrong. You couldn’t have heard about the hydrogen bomb then, it’s too early.’’ I’d just been reading about that in Herb York’s then-recent book, The Advisors. The General Advisory Committee (GAC) of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)—chaired by Robert Oppenheimer and including James Conant, Enrico Fermi, and Isidor Rabi— were considering that fall whether or not to launch a crash program for an H-bomb. That was the ‘‘super weapon’’ referred to earlier. They had advised strongly against it, but President Truman overruled them.

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‘‘Truman didn’t make the decision to go ahead till January 1950. Meanwhile the whole thing was super-secret. You couldn’t have heard about it in 1949.’’ My father said, ‘‘Well, somebody had to design the plant if they were going to go ahead. I was the logical person. I was in charge of the structural engineering of the whole project at Hanford after the war. I had a Q clearance.’’ That was the first I’d ever heard that he’d had a Q clearance—an AEC clearance for nuclear weapons design and stockpile data. I’d had that clearance myself in the Pentagon—along with close to a dozen other special clearances above top-secret—after I left the RAND Corp. for the Defense Department in 1964. It was news to me that my father had had a clearance, but it made sense that he would have needed one for Hanford. I said, ‘‘So you’re telling me that you would have been one of the only people in the country, outside the GAC, who knew we were considering building the H-bomb in 1949?’’ He said, ‘‘I suppose so. Anyway, I know it was late 1949, because that’s when I quit.’’ ‘‘Why did you quit?’’ ‘‘I didn’t want to make an H-bomb. Why, that thing was going to be 1,000 times more powerful than the A-bomb!’’ The first explosion of a true H-bomb, five years later, had 1,000 times the explosive power of the Hiroshima blast. At 15 megatons—the equivalent of 15 million tons of high explosive—it was over 1 million times more powerful than the largest conventional bombs of World War II. That one bomb had almost eight times the explosive force of all the bombs we dropped in that war: more than all the explosions in all the wars in human history. In 1961, the Soviets tested a 58-megaton H-bomb. My father went on: ‘‘I hadn’t wanted to work on the A-bomb, either. But then Einstein seemed to think that we needed it, and it made sense to me that we had to have it against the Russians. So I took the job, but I never felt good about it. He said, ‘‘There was another thing about it that I couldn’t stand. Building these things generated a lot of radioactive waste. I wasn’t responsible for designing the containers for the waste, but I knew they were bound to leak eventually. That stuff was deadly forever. It was radioactive for 24,000 years.’’ There were tears in his eyes. He said huskily, ‘‘I couldn’t stand the thought that I was working on a project that was poisoning parts of my own country forever, and that might make parts of it uninhabitable for thousands of years.’’ I thought over what he’d said; then I asked him if anyone else working with him had had misgivings. He didn’t know.

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‘‘Were you the only one who quit?’’ He said yes. He was leaving the best job he’d ever had, and he didn’t have any other to turn to. He lived on savings for a while and did some consulting. I thought about Oppenheimer and Conant—both of whom had recommended dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima—and Fermi and Rabi, who had, that same month Dad was resigning, expressed internally their opposition to development of the superbomb in the most extreme terms possible: It was potentially ‘‘a weapon of genocide . . . carries much further than the atomic bomb itself the policy of exterminating civilian populations . . . whose power of destruction is essentially unlimited . . . a threat to the future of the human race which is intolerable . . . a danger to humanity as a whole . . . necessarily an evil thing considered in any light.’’4 Not one of these men risked his clearance by sharing his anxieties and the basis for them with the American public. Oppenheimer and Conant considered resigning their advisory positions when the president went ahead against their advice. But they were persuaded by Dean Acheson not to quit at that time, lest that draw public attention to their expert judgment that the president’s course fatally endangered humanity. I asked my father what had made him feel so strongly, to act in a way that nobody else had done. He said, ‘‘You did.’’ That didn’t make any sense. I said, ‘‘What do you mean? We didn’t discuss this at all. I didn’t know anything about it.’’ Dad said, ‘‘It was earlier. I remember you came home with a book one day, and you were crying. It was about Hiroshima. You said, ‘Dad, you’ve got to read this. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever read.’’’ I said that must have been John Hersey’s book, Hiroshima.5 (I read it when it came out as a book. I was in the hospital when it filled The New Yorker in August 1946.) I didn’t remember giving it to him. ‘‘Yes. Well, I read it, and you were right. That’s when I started to feel bad about working on an atomic bomb project. And then when they said they wanted me to work on a hydrogen bomb, it was too much for me. I thought it was time for me to get out.’’ I asked if he had told his bosses why he was quitting. He said he told some people, not others. The ones he told seemed to understand his feelings. In fact, in less than a year, the head of the firm called to say that they wanted him to come back as chief structural engineer for the whole firm. They were dropping the DuPont contract (they didn’t say why), so he wouldn’t have to have anything to do with the AEC or bomb-making. He stayed with them till he retired. I said, finally, ‘‘Dad, how come you never said anything about it?’’ My father said, ‘‘Oh, I couldn’t tell any of this to my family. You weren’t cleared.’’

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Well, I finally got my clearances, a decade after my father gave his up. And for some years, they were my undoing, though they turned out to be useful in the end. A decade later they allowed me to read the Pentagon Papers and to keep them in my ‘‘Top Secret’’ safe at the RAND Corp., from which I eventually delivered them to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and later to 19 newspapers. We have long needed and lacked the equivalent of the Pentagon Papers on the subject of nuclear policies and preparations, nuclear threats, and decision making—above all in the United States and Russia but also in the other nuclear-weapons states. I deeply regret that I did not make known to Congress, the American public, and the world the extensive documentation of persistent and still-unknown nuclear dangers that was available to me 40 to 50 years ago as a consultant to and official in the executive branch working on nuclear war plans, command, control, and nuclear crises. Those in nuclear-weapons states who are in a position now to do more than I did then to alert their countries and the world to fatally reckless secret policies should take warning from my and others’ earlier inaction: and do better. That I had high-level access and played such a role in nuclear planning is, of course, deeply ironic in view of my personal history. My feelings of revulsion and foreboding about nuclear weapons had not changed an iota since 1945, and they have never left me. Since I was 14, the overriding objective of my life has been to prevent the occurrence of nuclear war. There was a close analogy with the Manhattan Project. Its scientists— most of whom hoped the bomb would never be used for anything but as a threat to deter Germany—were driven by a plausible but mistaken fear that the Nazis were racing them. Actually the Nazis had rejected the pursuit of the atomic bomb on practical grounds in June 1942, just as the Manhattan Project was beginning. Similarly, I was one of many in the late 1950s who were misled and recruited into the nuclear arms race by exaggerated, and in this case deliberately manipulated, fears of Soviet intentions and crash efforts. Precisely because I received clearances and was exposed to top-secret intelligence estimates, in particular from the Air Force, I, along with my colleagues at the RAND Corp., came to be preoccupied with the urgency of averting nuclear war by deterring a Soviet surprise attack that would exploit an alleged ‘‘missile gap.’’ That supposed dangerous U.S. inferiority was exactly as unfounded in reality as the fear of the Nazi crash bomb program had been, or, to pick a more recent example, as concern over Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and nuclear pursuit in 2003. Countering an illusory threat, I and my colleagues distracted ourselves and helped distract others from dealing with real dangers posed by the mutual and spreading possession of nuclear weapons—dangers that we were

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helping make worse—and from real opportunities to make the world more secure. Unintentionally, yet inexcusably, we made our country and the world less safe. Eventually the Soviets did emulate us in creating a world-threatening nuclear capability on hair-trigger alert. That still exists; Russian nuclear posture and policies continue, along with ours, to endanger our countries, civilization, and much of life itself. But the persistent reality has been that the nuclear arms race has been driven primarily by American initiatives and policies and that every major American decision in this 64-year-old nuclear era has been accompanied by unwarranted concealment, deliberate obfuscation, and official and public delusions. I have believed for a long time that official secrecy and deceptions about our nuclear weapons posture and policies and their possible consequences have threatened the survival of the human species. To understand the urgency of radical changes in our nuclear policies that may truly move the world toward abolition of nuclear weapons, we need a new understanding of the real history of the nuclear age. Using the new opportunities offered by the Internet—drawing attention to newly declassified documents and to some realities still concealed—I plan over the next year, before the 65th anniversary of Hiroshima, to do my part in unveiling this hidden history.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Rabinowitch, 1971. Lifton and Mitchell, 1995. York, 1976. Ibid. Hersey, 1946.

CHAPTER

4

C I T I Z E N D I P L O M A C Y A N D T H E O T TAWA P RO C E S S I N B ANNI NG L ANDMINES: A LASTING MODEL? Jody Williams and Stephen D. Goose

When six nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) came together in October 1992 to form an International Campaign to Ban Landmines, every government that we met with at that time—without exception—viewed the young campaign as a quixotic effort doomed to failure.1 Most people around the world—except, of course, those in countries contaminated by landmines— were completely unaware of the humanitarian problems caused by this weapon. Yet within the short span of five years, conventional wisdom about humanitarian law and arms control negotiations was turned on its head as the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty was born. For the first time in history, a weapon widely used for many decades was banned. The process that evolved—commonly referred to as the ‘‘Ottawa Process’’—gave the promise of a new dimension in diplomacy—‘‘citizen diplomacy’’—and generated hope for its wider applicability.

This chapter is taken from chapter 11 of the book, Banning Landmines: Disarmament, Citizen Diplomacy, and Human Security, edited by Jody Williams, Stephen Goose, and Mary Wareham (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008). The original chapter benefited significantly from the early input of Dr. David Atwood, Executive Director, Quaker UN Office (QUNO), Geneva.

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In awarding the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and its coordinator, Jody Williams, the Nobel Committee highlighted the ICBL’s role in both the process and the treaty, stating that the campaign had been able to ‘‘express and mediate a broad range of popular commitment in an unprecedented way. With the governments of several small and medium-sized countries taking the issue up . . . this work has grown into a convincing example of an effective policy for peace.’’ It concluded, ‘‘As a model for similar processes in the future, it could prove to be of decisive importance to the international effort for disarmament and peace.’’ There clearly was reason for such hope. The mine ban movement demonstrated that it is possible for NGOs to put an issue—even one with international security implications—on the international agenda, provoke urgent actions by governments and others, and serve as the driving force behind change. It showed that civil society can wield great power in the post–Cold War world. Moreover, the mine ban movement demonstrated the power of partnerships by achieving rapid success internationally through common and coordinated action by NGOs, like-minded governments, and other key actors such as UN agencies and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). It showed that that change is most likely to be effected through concerted action. The mine ban movement also demonstrated that it is possible for small and medium-sized countries, acting in concert with civil society, to provide global leadership and achieve major diplomatic results, even in the face of opposition from bigger powers. It showed that it is possible to work outside of traditional diplomatic forums, practices, and methods. Yet, for many states, citizen diplomacy was simply unacceptable. Involving civil society actors in treaty negotiations added too many unpredictable and uncontrollable elements to diplomatic processes forged over centuries.2 Apart from those who actively wished to see the model fail, there were— and still are—some observers who believed that it would not be possible to replicate the mine ban experience. This view holds that the Ottawa Process only succeeded because of the confluence of a variety of factors, such as the particular timing (in terms of world affairs); the skill and audacity of a handful of key government officials and representatives of nongovernmental and international organizations; the reality of the limited military utility of antipersonnel mines and the limited economic stake involved; and the fact that the campaign had to focus only on a single weapon and had the advantages of an easy-to-grasp message with highly emotional content. How has the model stood up in the 13 years since the Mine Ban Treaty was signed by 122 nations in two triumphant days at the end of 1997? What have its strengths and weaknesses been? What lessons from and aspects of the model have been applied by NGOs in their work on other

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issues? Has the Ottawa Process model proven to be of ‘‘decisive importance’’ as hoped by the Nobel Committee—or of any meaningful importance at all? Is there a future for such a model of campaigning and diplomacy, particularly in the post–9/11 world? We will look first at lessons learned from the campaigning side of the model, and then at the diplomatic side, before considering the applicability of the model to other issues.

THE CAMPAIGNING MODEL3 The NGOs of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines have been the engine behind the Ottawa Process that resulted in the Mine Ban Treaty. The work of the members of the ICBL in the movement to ban antipersonnel mines has been held up by many as a quintessential example of global citizen diplomacy. Following are the key campaigning lessons that we identify, which also can be seen to constitute key elements of the model: organizing skills; a flexible coalition structure; strong leadership and committed workers; action plans and deadlines, with outcome-oriented conferences; communication skills; follow-up and follow-through; expertise and documentation; clear and simple articulation of goals and messages; use of multiple fora to promote the message; a focus on the human cost; inclusivity and diversity, yet speaking with one voice; and, finally, recognition that international context and timing matter. • Know how to organize. A positive mythology often invoked about NGOs is that they are selfless and tireless, and that they inherently ‘‘know how to campaign.’’ Nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is that the typical members of many NGO coalitions, including research and advocacy organizations and even grassroots organizations, usually do not have skills and experience in large-scale organizing. There is often little understanding of coalition-building and how to work successfully in coalition. Campaigners may have in-depth understanding of their issue, but if they can’t work together effectively that expertise may prove of little value. Without a firm grasp of these fundamentals, it can be extremely difficult to campaign successfully.4 • Maintain a flexible structure. We are convinced that the ICBL’s informal and loose structure has been one of its major strengths.5 The lack of centralization was a conscious decision. Each NGO has to find a way to participate in making the campaign work. This helps to ensure that the ICBL belongs to all of its members, and that these members have to be active in the process to achieve the campaign’s goals. There is no bureaucratic structure that either dictates to members how they

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•

•

•

•

should contribute to the campaign or does the work for them. ICBL members have met regularly to strategize and plan joint actions, but each NGO and national campaign has been free to carry out whatever aspects of the work best fit its individual mandate, political culture, and circumstances. Enlist leaders and committed workers. Successful coalitions will naturally be large and diverse, but experience shows that most operate on the extensive work of a committed and dedicated few, supported by the many. Most organizations cannot devote full-time staff to coalition efforts, but it is essential that there be a core of people working fulltime. With diverse coalitions, strong and effective leadership provided by a handful of organizations and individuals is essential. The leadership of the ICBL has been and continues to be those who choose to step up to the plate and follow up their words of commitment with concrete and consistent action. Always have an action plan and deadlines, with outcome-oriented meetings. The Ottawa Process can be characterized as an ongoing series of international, regional, and national conferences and meetings, both NGO and diplomatic. Although it is easy, and perhaps usually correct, to criticize costly get-togethers, in the case of the mine ban movement, face-to-face contact is carefully planned with concrete objectives in mind, with the intention of one meeting building on another, and most importantly, with an action plan emerging in which various actors took responsibility for specific tasks to move the ban forward. Deadlines are essential to spurring action. Provide communication, communication, and more communication. Clear and consistent communication is an irreplaceable element of success. Information is power and it is absolutely key that information is shared throughout a coalition. In the early days of the campaign, individual members gained strength by being able to speak with authority about what was happening everywhere to eliminate the problem. Sharing the successes and failures of the work empowered all organizations and lessened the possibility of isolation of any one. Because of strong communication, the ICBL often has known of developments before governments, which made the ICBL a focal point of information for governments and NGOs alike. Follow up and then follow through. While there are always plenty of good ideas about what needs to be done, the difficulty is implementing those ideas. Follow-up and follow-through are what make the difference. Holding individuals and NGOs accountable for commitments has worked in the ICBL; when commitments have been broken, other campaigners have quickly stepped in and filled the void. A large measure of the trust that governments have for the ICBL has been the result of its consistency in following up and following through on its words with actions.

Diplomacy and the Ottawa Process

• Provide expertise and documentation. The founding members of the ICBL were NGOs engaged in clearing mines, putting prosthetics on victims, and documenting the impact of mines on civilians. NGOs carried out a concerted research agenda, and published informational materials extensively and distributed them widely to governments as well as the public. They provided comprehensive materials on the impact of landmines around the world, on global mine production, trade, stocks, and use, as well as sophisticated legal analysis; all of which were powerful tools for advocacy. Since the treaty entered into force in 1999, the ICBL has further expanded this role through its Landmine Monitor initiative, the first time that NGOs have come together in a sustained, systematic, and coordinated fashion to monitor and report on the implementation of an international disarmament or humanitarian law treaty. • Articulate goals and messages clearly and simply. The importance of clear, concise, and consistent articulation of goals and messages is hard to overstate. This is true not only with respect to the overarching goals of a campaign, coalition, or movement, but also for each phase, conference, or event. While it is necessary to demonstrate expertise and an understanding of complexities and subtleties, for campaigning purposes simple and direct is always better. • Focus on the human cost. Much of the success of the ICBL has been due to keeping the international focus on the human beings who have suffered because of landmines—the humanitarian aspects of the issue, not the arms control or security aspects. This has been crucial not only in influencing public opinion, but also in influencing governments. • Use as many fora as possible to promote the message. Though it seems obvious, few take advantage of the many opportunities available internationally to get an issue on the agenda and language in final statements and declarations and resolutions to support their cause. It can take considerable effort to do this, first to identify the fora, and then to do the necessary advocacy to bear fruit, but with every success, new audiences are reached. • Be inclusive, be diverse, yet speak with one voice. The ICBL has always ascribed to the big tent theory. To join, it was only necessary for an NGO to inform the coordinator that it shared and endorsed the campaign’s call for a total ban on antipersonnel mines, as well as increased resources for mine clearance and victim assistance programs. No dues, no requirements, no restrictions. The big tent had built-in diversity almost from the start, because so many different countries, as well as so many different fields, sectors, and interest groups were affected by mines. The ICBL Advisory Board, which includes representatives from mineaffected states, organizations involved in mine clearance and victim assistance programs, as well as human rights, humanitarian aid, and religious organizations. There have been occasional tensions in the campaign, but

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the general principle has been, and remains, that leadership positions should go only to those willing and able to bear the burden of the work, and not just be names on letterhead. Beyond the sheer numbers of NGOs and individuals involved in the ban movement, there have been other benefits when one can speak as a coalition on behalf of many. Often, even when pursuing similar objectives as NGOs, governments have traditionally been reluctant to deal with NGOs as partners, or to permit their meaningful participation in diplomatic meetings, in no small part because of the fear of being overwhelmed by numbers and diverse views. In that respect, the ability of the ICBL to serve as a banner for nearly every NGO working on the issue, and to speak authoritatively with one voice, has served the movement very well. The campaign has been able to have a seat at the table, with virtually the same status as states, during the Ottawa Process diplomatic meetings and since. It would not have been possible to achieve this status with a larger number of NGOs each working independently and perhaps in competition. • Recognize that international context and timing do matter. The changing global situation in the late 1980s and early 1990s was a critical factor in the development of the movement to ban landmines. With the end of the Cold War governments, NGOs began to look at war and peace issues differently, and many governments were no longer as constrained in their possible responses to issues of global humanitarian and security concern. Many NGOs were looking for new issues in which to become engaged. Increased attention was being devoted to conventional, as opposed to nuclear, weapons at the same time that the impact of antipersonnel landmines was reaching a crescendo, due to widespread and increasing use from the mid-1960s forward. In the global political context the ban movement emerged and achieved dramatic success.

THE DIPLOMATIC MODEL NGO campaigning has been an important part of the success of the mine ban movement, but many other factors have contributed. Perhaps the most notable feature of the ‘‘new diplomacy’’ has been the partnership formed between key governments and civil society to achieve common humanitarian aims. Other vital elements have been meaningful and consistent: NGO involvement; leadership by small and mid-sized states; and a willingness to operate outside the UN system when necessary, including rejection of consensus rules. These elements have been sustained since the signing of the treaty in what might be called the Mine Ban Treaty Process. Without the close cooperation of NGOs (primarily through the ICBL), governments, the ICRC, and UN agencies, there is little question that the Mine Ban Treaty would not have come into existence in 1997, and it would

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not have been so effectively universalized and implemented in the past decade. The mine ban movement certainly was not the first where civil society lobbied for change and governments responded positively.6 But it has likely been unique in the level of closeness, openness, and cooperation of the partnership, and the degree to which it has been sustained over so many years. Historically, NGOs and governments have often seen each other as adversaries, not colleagues—and in many cases rightly so. And at first many in the NGO mine ban community worried that governments were going to ‘‘hijack’’ the issue to undermine a ban. But a relationship of trust among the relatively small ‘‘core group’’ of governments (most notably Canada, Norway, Austria, and South Africa) and ICBL leadership quickly developed and has been maintained and expanded over the years.7 The willingness of certain governments and individuals in those governments to engage in nontraditional diplomacy and to take risks (to say nothing of their dedication and talent) has been crucial to the success of the Mine Ban Treaty Process. Small and mid-sized states have provided such leadership in the face of opposition from bigger states. Not all campaigners have been comfortable, however, with such close collaboration with governments. Some believe that it is more reflective of NGO cooptation by governments than partnership and are wary of the relationship. Others have been outspokenly critical of the cooperation, considering it a ‘‘sellout.’’ They hold a belief that the proper role of NGOs is always that of opposition and as opposition. At the same time, not all governments share the same degree of enthusiasm for the partnership either and the relative informality of treaty-related meetings has caught more than one diplomat off-guard.8 And despite the long-standing partnership and the joint efforts to advance treaty compliance through ‘‘cooperation’’ rather than coercion, at times there have been serious strains in the partnership when NGOs have differed with governments in interpretation of some of the treaty’s obligations—in particular those related to its arms control aspects. So at times, what has been the great strength of the mine ban movement— the civil society–government partnership—has almost paradoxically been problematic. When the partners cannot or will not recognize and accept differing rights and responsibilities of each other, it can be quite difficult to navigate those waters and maintain the cooperative nature of the process that has resulted in such continued momentum in the work to eliminate landmines.

IS THE MODEL APPLICABLE TO OTHER ISSUES? A number of governments showed great vision and leadership in recognizing that ‘‘normal’’ diplomacy was not adequate to tackle the mine problem.

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Yet, even as some governments were anxious to apply the landmine model to other issues, others were trying to make sure that the process was understood to be ‘‘unique to the landmine issue’’ and not precedent setting in multilateral diplomacy—particularly in arms control or other security-related issues. In the past 10 years, there have been campaigning and coalition efforts that demonstrate both the applicability and nonapplicability of the landmine campaign experience. Among those that most closely resemble the ICBL and Ottawa Process model are the efforts on the International Criminal Court, child soldiers, cluster munitions, and the Disability Rights Convention. Those that have not taken much from the model include small arms and light weapons, blood diamonds, global poverty, and ‘‘human security.’’ We will look more closely at one example from each category.

The International Criminal Court The successful negotiation of the Rome Statute in July 1998 creating the International Criminal Court (ICC) came quickly on the heels of the Mine Ban Treaty success. Various aspects of that effort recall the work of the landmine ban movement, with governments and NGOs pressing for the creation of an international criminal court—a goal harkening back to the Nuremberg Trials after World War II. As with landmines, a coalition of NGOs came together to lobby for a court, and like-minded governments came together to press for a diplomatic meeting on the subject. When it was decided in the latter part of 1997 that a diplomatic conference would be held in Rome in mid-1998, both governmental and NGO activities took on increased urgency and NGOs pressed the governments to agree to fundamental elements of the court. As Don Hubert succinctly describes in comparing the ICC work with that of the landmine movement, there were many similarities.9 The expertise offered by NGOs was first rate, especially on substantive legal issues related to an international criminal court. The NGO Coalition produced newsletters daily, as had the ICBL in the Oslo negotiations. NGOs were given observer status, and individual NGO representatives were on a number of government delegations. Although the Rome Conference was a UN negotiating session, rules of procedure were somewhat like those used in Oslo for the Mine Ban Treaty—issues could be decided by a two-thirds majority vote and were not held hostage to consensus. As with the Mine Ban Treaty and ICBL, the NGO Coalition for the ICC undertook a ratification campaign to help ensure that the Rome Statute became international law as quickly as possible and it continues to work to ensure the Court is functioning effectively.

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In one notable difference, the United States exhibited fevered opposition to the ICC and aggressively sought to undermine it. The United States did not sign the Mine Ban Treaty, but rarely openly attacked it, and, with some exceptions, did not make serious efforts to dissuade other countries from joining.

Small Arms and Light Weapons Although the many problems related to the proliferation of small arms and light weapons have been documented for years, it was not until 1998 that NGOs came together to form a new network, the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA). The NGOs in the network wanted to try to enhance cooperation and communication as they pressed governments to take action to deal with the problem. When IANSA was being formed, some among its leadership felt the ICBL as a model was overly centralized and dominated by NGOs from the North. IANSA instead focused its work on the regional level, with regional coordinators. The leadership body was deemed the ‘‘Facilitation Committee,’’ rather than a steering or coordination committee. There was no central focal point to develop common messages and there were no global spokespeople. As one participant in the work put it, this structure led to ‘‘paralization’’ with little coordination and no one to make decisions. The network appeared consumed with form and structure, rather than substance. Matters improved after 2001, when IANSA built a secretariat based in London, but some actively involved still describe the network as a whole as very inefficient.10 Although NGOs were not exactly clear on what shape their work on small arms and light weapons should take, many governments were clear that they wanted any work on the issue to be carried out under the auspices of the UN. Even though there was cooperative work between NGOs and governments in the lead up to a 2001 conference on the ‘‘Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All its Aspects,’’ that conference was carried out within the UN, consensus ruled, and NGOs were largely kept outside of the deliberations—as the ICBL had been during the early days of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) Review Process through 1996. The outcome of the 2001 conference was a ‘‘Program of Action’’ to take steps to deal with SALW and which would lead to another conference in 2006. Although cooperative work between NGOs and governments increased in those five years, and NGO representatives were included on some government delegations at the 2006 Conference, IANSA and other NGOs acting on their own behalf were still not permitted meaningful participation in that

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meeting. As one SALW campaigner wrote, ‘‘It is a frequent refrain amongst small arms diplomats and government officials that ‘we’ must keep the global process on small arms control within the UN. This constant referencing of the specter of the Ottawa Process and the success of people-centered campaigning in the late 1990s has certainly had a negative influence on the imagination of government officials.’’11 Growing civil society pressure helped bring about the encouraging adoption of a UN General Assembly resolution in December 2006 in support of an Arms Trade Treaty, with 153 governments voting in favor.12 The resolution requested the UN secretary-general ‘‘to seek the views of Member States on creating a legally binding instrument and to establish a group of governmental experts, commencing in 2008, to examine the feasibility, scope, and draft parameters of such an instrument.’’13 As work unfolds around the Arms Trade Treaty, it remains to be seen how governments and NGOs will interact in the process.

The Convention on Conventional Weapons Developments in the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) forum also provide an interesting gauge of the impact of the mine ban movement model. The failure of the CCW to deal adequately with antipersonnel mines during deliberations from 1993 to 1996 as part of its first Review Conference led to Canada’s call for an outside process aimed at a ban on the weapon. Those were extremely frustrating years for NGOs on the diplomatic front, as they were blocked from participation in all sessions except the rare plenary meetings. In the wake of the Mine Ban Treaty experience, the situation in the CCW, in many respects, changed significantly, and for the better. At the Second and Third Review Conferences in 2001 and 2006, respectively, and in the working meetings in between and since (carried out under the banner of ‘‘Groups of Governmental Experts’’), NGOs have rarely been excluded from participation. They have not only made statements during plenary meetings, but have had the opportunity to intervene and respond on a regular basis during deliberations, and more notably have been asked to give presentations on a wide range of subjects. Most importantly, during the development of what became CCW Protocol V on explosive remnants of war from 2001 to 2003, there was extensive consultation and cooperation—though largely behind the scenes—among NGOs, the ICRC, and some key governments, especially the Netherlands, which took the lead on the protocol. Without the backdrop of the mine ban experience, and the relationships and working methods formed during that process, it is unlikely that Protocol V would have come into being.

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Without question, the CCW has evolved in a positive way as a result of the Ottawa Process. It is interesting to note that this has not occurred in the other quintessential security forum based in Geneva, the Conference on Disarmament (CD). And it is likely not a coincidence that the CD has not been able to accomplish anything over the past decade, struggling even to agree on an agenda or work program. But, as discouraging as it is to acknowledge, things have not changed in a fundamental way in the CCW. This is true even though only 15 of the CCW’s 102 members are not party to the Mine Ban Treaty. Although mostly the same people are in the room, the atmosphere and the way of doing business stand in stark contrast to Mine Ban Treaty meetings.14 This is due in large part to the fact that decisions—such as they are—are made by consensus among governments, ensuring minimal change, implemented at a snail’s pace, if at all. This undermined the potential of the protocol on explosive remnants of war, which in the end was watered down to the point that it contains few binding obligations and is more of a voluntary regime. The notion of a joint sense of commitment to humanitarian aims seems inevitably to lose out in the CCW to narrowly defined assertions of national security interests.

CONCLUSION: ENDURING PARTNERSHIPS TAKE CONSTANT WORK What does the future hold? The Ottawa Process happened in a post– Cold War, but pre–9/11 world, where both civil society and governments felt there was room for new multilateral efforts and perhaps even new ways to consider ‘‘security.’’ But after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the ‘‘war on terrorism’’ and all that has come with it, creative thinking about security and multilateralism has a much more perilous future. It is not in the least bit surprising that many—perhaps even most—governments would want to return to the known, controllable, and comfortable world of traditional negotiations, closed to civil society, particularly in relation to arms control, disarmament, and security issues. It is fair to say that some have worked to ensure that the Ottawa Process was an anomaly and not a precedent. What is surprising is that, in some instances, even prominent pro– Ottawa Process states seem reluctant to apply the model to other issues. Some glaring examples have been the lack of NGO-government cooperation in the ‘‘human security’’ endeavor and the desire of so many states to cling to the CCW to deal with cluster munitions, despite the Oslo Process launched in 2007.

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Key nations of the mine ban movement, emboldened by the success of the Ottawa Process, launched the Human Security Network at a meeting of Foreign Ministers held in Oslo on May 21, 1999. And although there is much debate on the merits of a ‘‘human security framework,’’ the initiative has not gained significant traction and momentum in large part because it has been almost entirely government-driven with minimal inclusion of civil society. Given that the founders of the Network are the same governments that worked side by side with NGOs—and continue to do so to this day—to ensure the success of the Mine Ban Treaty, it is difficult not to wonder about their broader commitment to inclusion of civil society in dealing with global issues. The world has benefited from the partnership between government and civil society that resulted in the Mine Ban Treaty. In this globalized world, transnational civil society has a role to play in finding solutions to our common problems. But it will be up to civil society to ensure that the Ottawa Process model does endure. If the partnership is to grow and develop and be applied to resolve many issues in the world, it will be up to civil society to press harder and more consistently, based on a clear understanding of what works and what does not. One helpful step, perhaps at the initiative of the ICBL given its pioneering role, would be to bring NGOs and different coalitions and campaigns together in various configurations to share what they have learned and to identify what still needs to be learned to ensure that the voice of civil society is heard on issues that affect our individual and collective human security. Such discussions would benefit at an early stage from input from ‘‘like-minded’’ government allies who share the vision of new frameworks of security, developed and put into practice through a partnership of governments, civil society, NGOs, and international organizations.

NOTES 1. The six NGOs were Handicap International (France), Medico International (Germany), Mines Advisory Group (UK), Physicians for Human Rights (USA), the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation (USA), and the host of the meeting in New York, Human Rights Watch (USA). One of the more memorable dismissals of the campaign came from then-Minister of Foreign Affairs of Australia, Gareth Evans, who in 1995 described the call for a ban on landmines as ‘‘hopelessly utopian.’’ Questions without Notice, Australian Senate, June 1, 1995. 2. As used by the Centre for Civil Society of the London School of Economics, ‘‘Civil society refers to the arena of uncoerced collective action around shared interests, purposes, and values. In theory, its institutional forms are distinct from those of

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the state, family, and market, though in practice, the boundaries between state, civil society, family, and market are often complex, blurred, and negotiated. Civil society commonly embraces a diversity of spaces, actors, and institutional forms, varying in their degree of formality, autonomy, and power. Civil societies are often populated by organizations such as registered charities, development nongovernmental organizations, community groups, women’s organizations, faith-based organizations, professional associations, trade unions, self-help groups, social movements, business associations, coalitions and advocacy groups.’’ See Centre for Civil Society of the London School of Economics, ‘‘What Is Civil Society?’’ http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/CCS/what_is _civil_society.htm. 3. This section draws on earlier writing by the authors, including Williams, 2000; Goose and Williams, 2004. 4. The ICBL has produced educational materials and carried out workshops on how to organize national campaigns, prepare for major conferences, interact with the media, and other aspects of international campaigning work. In addition to advancing the work to ban landmines, these skills can be used by campaigners in many ways and in other work for social change. 5. Indeed, the ICBL was not even a legally registered entity until after it received the Nobel Peace Prize at the end of 1997. There has never been a secretariat or central office of the ICBL, and until 1998, no ‘‘ICBL’’ employees or joint ICBL budget. Various NGOs in essence seconded (and provided funding for) individuals to work on the campaign. 6. For a fascinating example, see Hoschild, 2005. 7. Given the success of the Ottawa Process and the Mine Ban Treaty, few now recognize or acknowledge the risks involved to both sides as we ventured into that partnership and worked to ensure the success of the ‘‘rogue’’ negotiating process of the Mine Ban Treaty. There were many times when we were not at all certain of the outcome and felt we were working with ‘‘smoke and mirrors,’’ convinced that the fragile process could collapse at any moment. Had the process fallen apart, it no doubt would have had a chilling effect on any future civil society, government partnerships, and dampened any governmental ‘‘thinking outside the box’’ in trying to find new solutions to global problems. 8. One example that still causes amusement in the retelling is when a new diplomat replaced his predecessor and apparently had not been fully briefed about the informal nature of meetings. The president of a session had given the floor to Steve Goose, calling him by his first name only, who then spoke about the ICBL position on some aspect of the treaty. Subsequent speakers kept on referring to ‘‘Steve’’ and finally the new diplomat was called on and in quite apparent frustration started his remarks with ‘‘And who IS this Steve?’’ Many in the room could not stifle their laughter—which likely added to the diplomat’s discomfort. 9. Hubert, 2000. 10. NGOs that are part of both the ICBL and IANSA have often complained to the authors about the inability of IANSA to fully engage its members and make them feel like important, contributing stakeholders. 11. E-mail from Felicity Hill, anti-nuclear activist, in response to questions from the authors and after discussion with SALW activist Cate Buchannan, August 9, 2006.

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12. Twenty-four nations abstained from the vote and the United States was the only country to vote against the resolution. For more information see IANSA Web site at: http://www.iansa.org/un/2006/GAvote.htm; also Arieff, 2006. See also ‘‘Arms Trade Treaty: A Nobel Peace Laureates’ Initiative,’’ http://www.armstradetreaty.com/. 13. UN Department of Public Information, 2006. 14. For an interesting analysis, see Cave, 2006.

CHAPTER

5

B R I N G I N G T H E C O R P O R AT E R O L E I N G L O B A L V I O L E N C E T O D AY L I G H T Gianina Pellegrini

Long before President Eisenhower’s prophetic warning in 1961 about a military-industrial complex, Major General Smedly Butler noted in 1933, ‘‘War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.’’1 Butler went on to document the wars fought to extend corporate markets, the exorbitant profits in war contracts, and the casualties to soldiers. Today, war continues to be ‘‘just a racket’’ and the inside players consist primarily of government officials and corporate executives. The militaryindustrial complex has expanded significantly and poses a severe threat to humans and the environment. Multinational corporations have established a mutually dependent relationship with government forces. This relationship relies almost entirely on the profits from war. Corporate executives transfer in and out of government positions, promoting war and the industries that supply military weapons and equipment. This major force in the business of destruction continues in part because its operations are unseen. There are, however, several important groups that watch them closely and provide the possibility to bring daylight to a major obstacle to peace. This chapter focuses on two, and surely not the only two, multimilliondollar corporations that epitomize the military-industrial complex and the

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organizations that have mobilized to stop them. General Electric and Bechtel Corporation have profited from war since the beginning of World War II and today continue to be top United States defense contractors. Not-forprofit organizations such as Corporate Accountability and CorpWatch expose the revolving relationship between corporations and the government and how such relationships threaten the world. Since engaging in war relies directly on the corporations that supply military weapons and equipment, one method of establishing peace is to stop the military contractors that manufacture and provide the necessary supplies to engage in war.

GENERAL ELECTRIC General Electric (GE), one of the world’s most diverse companies, has a long-standing reputation as a consumer and commercial industry, involved in the design and production of lightbulbs, household appliances, locomotives, plastics, aircraft engines, and medical equipment.2 Often hidden from public view is GE’s primary profit-making business as a military contractor, involved in the design, development, and production of military weapons and equipment. GE’s business as a military contractor peaked during World War II, when it became the first U.S. producer of jet engines and quickly transitioned into the production and operation of nuclear reactors.3 During World War II, GE was involved in the highly secret Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bombs. The plutonium used for the bombs was manufactured at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Richland, Washington, that had been built and operated by General Electric. GE’s early involvement in nuclear research and development gave them a leading role in the production of nuclear reactors, nuclear propulsion, and nuclear weapons.4 The production of military equipment and nuclear weapons proved to be a highly profitable business. GE’s profits tripled during World War II and pushed GE into a billion-dollar company. GE’s military production expanded so rapidly that in 1942, Fortune magazine referred to GE’s headquarters as ‘‘the nerve center of one of the world’s largest and most complex war machines.’’5 By 1986, GE maintained primary U.S. government contracts on the Minuteman, Trident, and MX Missiles, Trident nuclear submarines, B-1 and Stealth Bombers, and military radar and satellite systems.6 Today, General Electric continues to be one of the world’s largest military contractors. GE and its many subsidiaries continue to contract with the U.S. government for the manufacturing of military weapons, equipment, and the production of nuclear energy. Since 2003, GE and its subsidiaries have been awarded military defense contracts with the U.S. government valuing over

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$7 billion. In March 2009, the General Electric Company Aircraft Engines Business Group was awarded a $438 million contract to produce engines for the U.S. Navy.7 Many current contracts awarded to General Electric are for work in the Middle East, including extensive involvement in post-war Iraq and Afghanistan. In April 2003, GE Energy Rentals Inc., a division of GE Power Systems, was contracted to provide electrical generators to the U.S. military in Iraq and a contract worth over $5 million from the U.S. Army Engineer District to provide gas services in Afghanistan, primarily at the Bagram and Kandahar airbases.8

GE: Bringing Good Things to Life For decades General Electric’s marketing pitch has been: ‘‘we bring good things to life.’’ Yet, the company’s long involvement in the production of military equipment and nuclear bombs has caused irreversible damage and destruction to humans and the environment. The full extent of the damage cannot be quantified because the destruction goes far beyond the damage caused by the detonation of bombs or the use of other military weapons. Although incapable of accepting full responsibility for the consequences of their actions, GE is responsible for contaminating the environment and destroying lives during the production of nuclear weapons.9 General Electric constructed the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State in 1943 and operated the facility for 18 years as a part of America’s weapons program. As mentioned, this facility produced the plutonium used in the first atomic bombs. Beginning in 1949, General Electric, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, participated in a secret experiment called the ‘‘Green Run’’ where radioactive material was deliberately released in the air to see how far downwind the material would travel. It was reported that one cloud of radioactive material drifted 400 miles to the California–Oregon border. The amount of radiation carried by this one cloud is estimated to be thousands of times higher than radiation emitted at Three Mile Island.10 By 1978, two-thirds of the most dangerous nuclear waste in the United States had accumulated at the Hanford Plant. INFACT newsletter reported the Hanford Nuclear Reservation as ‘‘the most contaminated of all the U.S. weapons complexes and one of the most toxic places on earth.’’11 In 1990, 40 years after the first release, the Department of Energy informed the public for the first time that toxic contaminants had been intentionally released into the air and the Columbia River from the Hanford plant. The Department of Energy admitted that the amount of radiation released at the Hanford Nuclear Weapons facility in the 1940s and 1950s was significant

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enough to cause cancer and up to 35,000 residents of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho were exposed to heavy doses of radiation.12 The ‘‘down-winders’’ from the Hanford Plant were exposed to twice as much radiation as those at Chernobyl. A stretch of road near and down wind from the Hanford site, labeled as ‘‘Death Mile,’’ reflects the human damage of GE’s release of radioactive material: Of the 28 houses along Death Mile, 27 homes had incidents of cancer, early heart diseases, or handicapped children. Livestock also suffered severe deformities and birth defects following the release.13 To this day, GE has refused to acknowledge any responsibility for the release and the subsequent human health and environmental damage it caused.14 In addition to the release of radioactivity into the air, GE is also responsible for dumping millions of gallons of radioactive materials on the ground and into trenches and ponds. The toxic waste subsequently accumulated in the Columbia River, which is the most radioactive river in the world.15 And if intentionally polluting the earth and water did not cause enough damage to human life, information disclosed in 1986 revealed that the United States and General Electric conducted nuclear experiments on human subjects. One of the most appalling experiments was performed on prison inmates in Walla Walla, Washington (near Hanford), in 1963. Without fully disclosing the risks associated with the experiment, 64 male prisoners had their scrotums and testes irradiated to determine the effects of radiation on human reproductive organs.16 As GE boasted their ability to ‘‘bring good things to life’’ with their production of medical equipment and household appliances, the company simultaneously and knowingly threatened the lives of thousands of people. GE operated many nuclear production facilities in the latter half of the 20th century that contributed to the destruction of the environment and loss of human life. Some examples include the Pinellas plant, the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, and Hudson Falls and Fort Edward facilities in upstate New York. GE operated the Pinellas, Florida, plant from 1956 to 1992 for the U.S. Department of Energy (then called the Atomic Energy Commission). The trigger mechanism for every U.S. warhead was produced at the Pinellas plant during the time GE operated the facility. The grounds surrounding the plant were contaminated with toxic chemicals and radioactive tritium, contaminating the groundwater and surrounding land. As a direct result, Pinellas County had the highest cancer rates in the country during the time the facility was operated by GE.17 The Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, built in 1946 and operated by GE until 1991, was the location for the design of nuclear reactors for the U.S. Navy. GE’s 40-year involvement in secret work on submarine reactors left radioactive residue in the soil, on buildings, and in the Mohawk River. GE knowingly built an employee parking lot on a site with a radioactive contamination level 110

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times higher than state safety levels, exposing their own workers to high levels of plutonium. Two months after General Electric sold the facility to the U.S. government for $1, the reports of the contamination were made public. The Department of Energy is still attempting to clean up the toxic site.18 From approximately 1947 to 1977, the General Electric Company operated the Hudson Falls and Fort Edward facilities in upstate New York. During this time, GE was responsible for discharging as much as 1.3 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the Hudson River. PCBs are considered to be probable human carcinogens and are linked to a number of health problems, including low birth weight, thyroid disease, immune disorders, and developmental diseases. Under supervision from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), GE is now responsible for dredging and removing the PCB-contaminated sediment along the 200-mile stretch of the Hudson River, a project expected to cost $460 million. GE began the cleanup of the Hudson River in early 2009 and it is expected to take 30 years to complete.19 The EPA has labeled the Hudson River the nation’s largest Superfund site. A Superfund site is ‘‘an uncontrolled or abandoned place where hazardous waste is located.’’20 General Electric is reported as the #1 Superfund polluter, bearing at least partial responsibility for the cleanup of 87 active Superfund toxic waste sites around the United States.21 GE has a long reputation of misconduct affecting the health and safety of humans and the environment. In 2002, the Project on Government Oversight released a study of misconduct by the top 43 government contractors and GE ranked at the top of the repeat offenders list. At this time, GE had 63 instances of actual or alleged misconduct since 1990 that resulted in almost $1 billion in fines, judgments, and out-of-court settlements. GE’s reported acts of misconduct include environmental violations, fraud in dealings with the government and consumers, workplace safety violations, and employment discrimination.22 In multiple instances, General Electric has failed to bring good things to life.

BECHTEL CORPORATION Founded in 1898, family-owned Bechtel Corporation is the largest contractor in the United States and is actively involved in multiple construction projects worldwide. As one of the world’s largest engineering and construction firms, Bechtel Group, Inc., comprises 19 known joint-venture companies and numerous subsidiaries with investments in water, nuclear, energy, and infrastructure projects. Bechtel Group develops, manages, engineers, builds, and operates telecommunication projects, water systems, petroleum and chemical plants, pipelines, nuclear power plants, mining and metal

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projects, and civil infrastructure projects.23 Bechtel is well known for its construction of the Hoover Dam, the San Francisco Bay Bridge, the Alaska pipeline, nuclear reactors in Qinshan, China, and oil refineries in Zambia. The company was responsible for the cleanup of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and is currently one of the primary contractors responsible for the cleanup of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Bechtel companies sign new contracts around the world on a daily basis and have worked on over 20,000 contracts in 140 different countries.24 Bechtel companies have contracted with multiple U.S. government departments, including the Department of Energy; EPA; U.S. Navy, Air Force, and Army Corps of Engineers; Defense Nuclear Agency; Defense Threat Reduction Agency; and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).25 Bechtel has positioned itself to be at the forefront of nuclear construction since the dawn of the nuclear age. In 1951, Bechtel built the world’s first nuclear reactor in the United States that was reportedly designed to generate electrical power. Bechtel then built the first Indian nuclear plant at Tarapur, which is now the largest nuclear facility in Asia. The construction of the nuclear plant allowed for the detonation of India’s first atomic bomb using plutonium produced by the Tarapur reactor. The construction of this facility not only initiated a nuclear arms race in South Asia, the plant also experienced major leaks, resulting in severe radiation exposure throughout the surrounding areas.26 One of Bechtel’s most important programs, Bechtel Nevada, manages the Nevada test site, an outdoor laboratory larger than the state of Rhode Island, which conducts defense-related nuclear experiments and national security experiments for the National Security Administration (NSA). In conjunction with the Nevada test site was Bechtel’s construction of the ‘‘doomsday town’’ in the Nevada desert, a town specifically built to measure the damage a nuclear weapon would have on a typical American town. Bechtel Nevada works on projects for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, NASA, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the U.S. Air Force, Army, and Navy.27 In 2007, the Department of Energy awarded Bechtel the contract to operate the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory which, among other national security projects, designs and produces nuclear warheads used by the U.S. military. Bechtel, through various partnerships, is now in control of the bulk of the U.S. nuclear weapons facilities, including the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Savannah River Site, Hanford Site, Pantex Plant, Y-12 National Security Complex, and the Nevada Test Site.28 Bechtel has a long history of constructing and managing chemical and nuclear power plants, many of which are now experiencing leaks or are not in compliance with current safety regulations.29 Ironically, Bechtel has been awarded many of

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the contracts to decommission and/or clean up the same nuclear development facilities they constructed in the 1950s. Not only did Bechtel profit during operation of these plants but it also now profits from being contracted to clean up the toxic mess it left behind.

Bechtel’s Involvement in War Today, the majority of Bechtel’s profits derive from oil, gas, chemicals, and most often U.S. government contracts. From 1990 to 2002, Bechtel National Inc., which handles all U.S. government contracts, received over 2,000 contracts worth more than $11.7 billion for work in Iraq and Afghanistan.30 Bechtel Groups have played a prominent role in the construction of highways, airports, and other infrastructures throughout the Middle East since World War II. During World War II, Bechtel companies were responsible for the construction and expansion of oil refineries in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and later built a pipeline from Saudi Arabia to Jordan. In 1950, Bechtel built a pipeline from Iraq’s northern oilfields in Kirkuk to Syria. Bechtel associates are closely connected with well-known company executives in the Arab world, including the Bin Laden Construction firm.31 Bechtel profited greatly from the most recent war in Iraq. In a secret, undemocratic process, Bechtel received a request to bid on the reconstruction of Iraq before the actual invasion even began.32 The U.S. government awarded several multimillion-dollar contracts to Bechtel for the reconstruction of Iraq’s infrastructure, including schools, roads, water, and wastewater systems. When awarded the contracts (worth $680 million) to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure, Tom Hash, president of Bechtel National said, ‘‘Bechtel is honored to have been asked to help bring humanitarian assistance, economic recovery, and infrastructure reconstruction to the Iraqi people.’’33 What Tom Hash does not report, though, is that the ‘‘humanitarian assistance’’ spans far beyond basic infrastructure: Bechtel is also heavily involved in building the lethal weapons that perpetuated the war and subsequent destruction of Iraq. Bechtel Plant Machinery is responsible for the production of military weapons and equipment. Since 2006, Bechtel Plant Machinery has been awarded contracts to produce military equipment valuing more than $2 billion.34 Bechtel has an extensive history profiting from war: the company has engaged in numerous business ventures that coincidentally took place in resource-rich parts of the world. A prime example is Bechtel’s investments in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Bechtel was involved in classified and supragovernmental black projects in the Congo leading up to and during the first Congo War of 1996 to 1997. In 1996, Bechtel commissioned and paid for NASA satellite studies of the country to develop detailed maps of the region’s

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mineral deposits. The maps were considered to be the most comprehensive mineralogical and geographical data ever assembled. The company provided these maps to the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of CongoZaire (AFDL), who where responsible for ousting President Mobuto Sese Seko and bringing Laurent Kabila into power. Bechtel International, Inc., executive Robert Stewart established a very close relationship with Kabila and acted as an advisor to him before and during his presidency.35

Bechtel in Bolivia Bechtel presents an image concerned about the environment and humanity. The Bechtel Web site boasts their commitment to environmental excellence and protection stating that ‘‘each of [their] projects, whether a power plant, a refinery, a new road, or a telecommunications facility, has the potential to affect people, animals, plants, and the land. [And their] goal always is to protect the environment during a project, and to build in safeguards that will keep protecting it long after the project is complete.’’36 What the company fails to reveal is its long history of environmental destruction and absolute disregard for human rights. Bechtel has for decades profited at the expense of people and the environment. One of the most notable examples of Bechtel’s disregard for humanity is their role in the privatization of water in Bolivia. In the late 1990s, the World Bank forced Bolivia to privatize the public water system of its third largest city, Cochabamba, by threatening to withhold debt relief and other development assistance if they did not comply. Bechtel was granted a 40-year lease to take over Cochabamba’s water through a subsidiary called Aguas Del Tunari. Within weeks of Bechtel taking over the water supply, the cost of local water was increased to such a rate that many residents were unable to pay. The local minimum wage in Bolivia was at the time approximately $60 a month and many were forced to pay $20 a month, 25 percent of their total income, for local water.37 In response to the water price increase, residents of Cochabamba began protesting Bechtel. The Bolivian government enforced martial law in an attempt to stop the protests and remain in good relations with Bechtel and their agreement with the World Bank. The social unrest and the response of the Bolivian government resulted in hundreds injured, one death, and multiple arrests. The Bolivian government was unable to stop the social unrest. In 2000, only 8 months after Bechtel arrived in Bolivia, the Cochabamba citizen coalition known as La Coordinadora, along with less organized protesters within Bolivia and internationally, forced Bechtel to withdraw from the country.38

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Eighteen months after withdrawing from Bolivia, Bechtel and its coinvestor, Abengoa of Spain, filed a $50 million lawsuit against the Bolivian government to compensate for its investments (estimated at less than $1 million) and lost future profits. The lawsuit, brought before the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), operated by the World Bank, was protested by Bolivian ‘‘Water Warriors’’ and supporters in the United States. The lawsuit was eventually dropped in 2006 in response to Bolivian and U.S. anti-Bechtel protests and Bechtel’s fear of bad publicity. Bechtel settled the dispute with a payment of approximately 30 cents.39

THE CORPORATE-GOVERNMENT REVOLVING DOOR It is by no strange coincidence that the weapon manufacturing corporations are the same companies hired to clean up the destruction produced by the use of these weapons. An undeniable relationship exists between corporate executives and government officials. The Military-Industrial Complex is sustained by a revolving door that transports executives to and from government and corporate offices. General Electric and Bechtel Corporation have frequently utilized this revolving door and have influenced government policy for decades. In 1956, GE ran the Technical Military Planning Operation (TEMPO) ‘‘think tank’’ described by its director, Thomas Paine, as a ‘‘go between for the military community and the industrial community.’’40 Paine then served as a NASA Administrator from 1968 to 1970 and resigned under charges that he had rigged bidding procedures to guarantee a contract for GE. After resignation from NASA, he became GE’s Vice President. Former Secretaries of Defense Thomas Gates and Neil McElroy helped write the 1968 Republican National Platform that called for the development of the B-1 Bomber and the Trident Submarines: the billion-dollar contracts for each were awarded to General Electric. Gates and McElroy later became Directors of GE.41 From 1977 to 1982, GE hired 120 mid- to high-level Pentagon employees and 12 GE employees moved to mid- to high-level positions in the Pentagon.42 David C. Jones was the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1978 to 1982. In 1986 he became a part of GE’s board while simultaneously sitting on the Star Wars Advisory Panel. Before joining GE in 1993, Kenneth V. Meyer, a vice president of GE Aircraft Engines, was a major general in the U.S. Air Force and served as director of Air Force contracting at the Pentagon and chief of staff for Air Force Systems Command.43 Francis S. Blake, a former senior vice president at GE, served as deputy secretary of energy from May 2001 until he resigned in April 2002. He played a key role in the formation of President Bush’s controversial national

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energy plan, but resigned after less than a year on the job. He attracted criticism for holding a series of policy meetings that were dominated by energy industry representatives. Prior to joining GE in 1991, Blake had been general counsel at the Environmental Protection Agency during the final three years of the Reagan administration and, prior to that, deputy counsel to former Vice President George Bush and deputy counsel to the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief.44 Bechtel has similar connections with the U.S. government. Bechtel’s relationship with the CIA began in the 1940s when the company built a major pipeline through Saudi Arabia. Bechtel quickly established a strong presence in the Middle East and developed close relationships with highly influential governments and companies in this region. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) utilized Bechtel’s intelligence of the region to influence political and economic developments.45 In the early part of the 20th century, Stephen D. Bechtel partnered with John A. McCone, who became Eisenhower’s chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and later became chief of the CIA under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. In the 1970s Bechtel hired a number of government officials to help with its expanding international operations, including the former Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Casper Weinberger, Atomic Energy Commission chief executive Robert Hollingsworth, and former ambassador to Turkey and Saudi Arabia, Parker T. Hart.46 Most notably, George P. Shultz, Treasury Secretary under President Nixon, was hired in 1974 as Bechtel’s executive vice president. In 1982, Shultz was appointed secretary of state by President Ronald Reagan.47 In 1983, Shultz sent Middle East peace envoy Donald Rumsfeld on a special mission to Iraq to meet with Saddam Hussein to negotiate Bechtel’s bid on the construction of an oil pipeline from Iraq to the Jordanian port of Aqaba. After retiring from the State Department in 1989, Shultz rejoined Bechtel as a member of its board of directors.48 These same players have been involved in more recent reconstruction efforts in Iraq. In 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appointed Pentagon official Jay Garner to oversee Iraq’s reconstruction. Garner met with Bechtel’s Terry Valenzano in Iraq to devise a plan for the reconstruction. Also in 2003, Riley Bechtel was sworn in as a member of President Bush’s Export Council to advise the government on how to create markets for American companies overseas.49 In 1998, Bechtel hired former Marine four-star general Jack Sheehan as senior vice president responsible for project operations in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia. Sheehan also sits on the Defense Policy Board, a Pentagon-appointed board that advises the President on war and defense issues.50 Additional former government officials hired by Bechtel

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include Charles Redman, former ambassador to Sweden and Germany and special envoy to Haiti and Yugoslavia, and now-deceased Richard Helms, former CIA director and ambassador to Iran.51 Former Bechtel employees have also relocated to the government sector as service providers or consultants. In 2001, former Bechtel Energy Resources President Ross J. Connelly became chief operating officer for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), which provides financing insurance for U.S. companies operating internationally. In 2002, Daniel Chao, Bechtel senior vice president of Bechtel Enterprises Holdings, Inc., was appointed to the U.S. Export-Import Bank advisory board. Former Bechtel chief executive officer (CEO) Stephen D. Bechtel also sat on its advisory committee from 1969 to 1972 and former Vice President John L Moore headed the advisory board from 1977 to 1982. The Export-Import Bank provides loans and other financial support for U.S. companies working internationally. It is no surprise that many of the countries that obtained loans from ExportImport Bank later hired Bechtel companies for construction projects.52 In 1998, the Clinton administration appointed former president of Bechtel’s Civil Global Industry Unit, Bob Baxter, to the President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection and appointed former Bechtel Technology and Consulting manger Larry Papy to the Panel on Energy Research and Development of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology in 1997.53 Corporations like General Electric and Bechtel also spend millions of dollars toward lobbying and campaigning. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan Washington-based group that tracks campaign finances, Bechtel Groups and its employees have been among the biggest political donors in the construction industry. The company and its workers contributed at least $446,000 to federal candidates and party committees in the 2008 election. General Electric is also deeply invested in campaign and lobbying efforts due to their diverse business ventures: From 2006 to 2008, GE contributed over $2 million to federal candidates and political parties.54

CAMPAIGN TO STOP CORPORATE INFLUENCE ON GOVERNMENT AND WAR Information about these large corporations and their role in global violence is not easily found in the mainstream media messages. Mainstream media sources are often biased, reflecting the views and opinions of the corporations that own the stations, newspapers, and magazines. Six corporations control the major U.S. media: Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, Time Warner, Disney, Viacom, Bertelsmann, and General Electric. General

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Electric owns NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Telemundo, Bravo, Universal Pictures, and 28 TV stations.55 The news cannot be considered unbiased when these corporations control the major media sources and the news that is ultimately presented to the public. The peace movement depends on accurate, honest, and current information from reliable, independent sources to effectively change the corrupt system of corporate control over government policy. One significant effort of the peace movement is to educate the general population on corporate influence on government decisions to engage in violent conflicts. Not-forprofit organizations like CorpWatch and Corporate Accountability report on the corporate role in global violence and mobilize campaign efforts to stop such corporations. Founded in 1996, CorpWatch is a not-for-profit organization that performs investigative research and journalism to inform, educate, and mobilize the public. CorpWatch ‘‘investigates and exposes corporate violations of human rights, environmental crimes, fraud and corruption around the world, [and] work[s] to foster global justice, independent media activism, and democratic control over corporations.’’56 Through the CorpWatch.org Web site, the organization provides critical information that exposes corporate abuse and advocates for corporate accountability and transparency in an attempt to ‘‘foster global justice, independent media activism, and democratic control over corporations.’’57 CorpWatch has mobilized people to participate in numerous campaigns targeting corporations participating in human rights violations and practices that are destroying the environment. In 1997, the organization began campaigning against Nike’s working conditions at their facilities in Vietnam, leading to greater oversight of their factories and changes in their corporate practices. CorpWatch spearheaded a series of other campaigns to expose human rights abuses and dangerous corporate practices from a series of entities, including the United Nations. In 2002 and 2003, CorpWatch began to track companies like Bechtel, DynCorp, and Halliburton, who are profiting greatly from the ‘‘war on terrorism.’’ CorpWatch led two investigative journalist teams to Iraq to investigate the outsourced reconstruction efforts after the U.S. invasion. The organization has released a number of reports and films uncovering the truth behind corporate involvement in war and global violence.58 For over 30 years Corporate Accountability has successfully campaigned against multinational corporations engaging in irresponsible and dangerous practices that threaten the health and survival of people and the planet. Corporate Accountability was established in 1977 as the Infant Formula Action Coalition (INFACT) in response to Nestl
e’s marketing of infant formula in developing countries. Nestl
e falsely advertised their infant formula to be

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healthier than breast milk and convinced thousands of women in developing countries to convert to using the formula. The formula, however, was not healthier than breast milk and was too expensive for women to purchase. After finishing the formula samples provided by Nestl
e, new mothers were unable to produce breast milk and were forced to continue to purchase the expensive formula. As a result, the formula was often mixed with water to make the supplies last, providing even less nutrition to newborn babies. The World Health Organization reported that 1 million babies a year died of malnutrition and disease related to the introduction of infant formula in developing nations. INFACT began an international campaign against Nestl
e and eventually forced the company to stop their exploitive marketing practices.59 In 1984, after a successful six-year campaign against Nestl
e, INFACT turned their attention to stopping the production of nuclear weapons, specifically targeting General Electric. While General Electric boasted the ‘‘We Bring Good Things to Life’’ motto, INFACT publicly exposed their role as a military contractor, organized protests at GE facilities and corporate meetings, and influenced an international boycott of GE products. By 1985, INFACT organized over 10,000 protests at 12 major nuclear weapons manufacturing corporations. At this time, General Electric had $3.53 billion in nuclear weapons revenues. By 1986, INFACT’s campaign had expanded to all 50 states in America, and over 2 million Americans were boycotting GE’s products, causing GE’s total revenue to decrease by 16 percent. Through direct engagement with the company and major hospitals and retail stores participating in the boycott, INFACT negotiated with GE to stop producing the nuclear bomb trigger in 1990. Through enormous public pressure and substantial loss in revenue, GE pulled out of the nuclear weapons business in 1993.60 CorpWatch and Corporate Accountability also provided critical information that strengthened the efforts that inevitably forced Bechtel out of Bolivia. The successful campaigns against General Electric’s production of nuclear weapons and Bechtel’s privatization of water in underdeveloped countries demonstrate the effectiveness of organizing. These campaigns illustrate the power of thousands of people working together for a single purpose. It is possible to change the practices of huge multinational corporations. This chapter illustrates the intricate relationship between corporations and the governments that promote war. In an effort to obtain a peaceful world, people must join together to stop the corporations that fund, support, and profit from war and violent conflicts. Putting an end to the corporations that promote, develop, and manufacture military weapons and equipment would be one effective way to stop the violence. Waging war would be impossible without weapon production.

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What happens behind closed doors often dictates what will or will not happen in the occurrence of war and the destruction of the planet. Groups such as CorpWatch and Corporate Accountability help to identify for us the players and their stakes. Advocates for peace urge people not to turn their eyes away from the victims; we need also to look directly at the responsible institutions and hold them accountable.

NOTES 1. Butler, 2003. 2. OpenSecrets.org, ‘‘General Electric.’’ 3. INFACT, ‘‘Chicago INFACT Newsletter,’’ 1986. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Military Industrial Complex, ‘‘Contractor/Contract Detail.’’ 8. The Center for Public Integrity, ‘‘Windfalls of War.’’ 9. Cray, ‘‘General Electric.’’ 10. Ibid.; CleanUpGE.org, ‘‘GE Misdeed.’’ 11. INFACT, ‘‘INFACT Newsletter: Nuclear Weaponmakers Campaign Update,’’ Fall 1989. 12. Ibid., INFACT, ‘‘INFACT Newsletter: Nuclear Weaponmakers Campaign Update.’’ 1990. 13. INFACT, ‘‘INFACT Newsletter: Nuclear Weaponmakers Campaign Update,’’ 1991; Chasnoff, 1991. 14. INFACT, ‘‘INFACT Newsletter: Nuclear Weaponmakers Campaign Update,’’ 1989; 1990; CleanUpGE.org, n.d. 15. Washington State Department of Health, n.d.; Reaching Critical Will, ‘‘The Environment and the Nuclear Age.’’ 16. INFACT, ‘‘INFACT Newsletter: Nuclear Weaponmakers Campaign Update,’’ Fall 1989. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. US Environmental Protection Agency, ‘‘Hudson River PCBs’’; The Center for Public Integrity, ‘‘Windfalls of War.’’ 20. US Environmental Protection Agency, ‘‘Superfund Sites Where you Live.’’ 21. US PIRG, n.d.; The Center for Public Integrity, ‘‘Windfalls of War.’’ 22. The Center for Public Integrity, ‘‘Windfalls of War.’’ 23. Ibid. 24. Chatterjee, 2003; Pilisuk, 2008. 25. The Center for Public Integrity, ‘‘Windfalls of War.’’ 26. Reaching Critical Will, ‘‘Bechtel Corporation.’’ 27. Ibid. 28. Werner, 2007. 29. Reaching Critical Will, ‘‘Bechtel Corporation.’’ 30. The Center for Public Integrity, ‘‘Windfalls of War.’’

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31. Ibid.; Chatterjee, ‘‘Bechtel Wins Iraq War Contracts.’’ 32. Food and Water Watch, ‘‘Bechtel;’’ Source Watch Online, ‘‘Bechtel Group, Inc.’’ 33. Source Watch Online, ‘‘Bechtel Group, Inc.’’ 34. Military Industrial Complex, ‘‘Contractor/Contract Detail,’’ 35. Alternatives Action and Communication Network for International Development, ‘‘Untold Suffering in the Congo; Reaching Critical Will, ‘‘Bechtel Corporation;’’ Montague, 2003. 36. Bechtel, ‘‘Sustainability and Environment.’’ 37. Chatterjee, ‘‘Bechtel’s Water Wars.’’ 38. Food and Water Watch, ‘‘Bechtel.’’ Pilisuk, 2008. 39. Ibid. 40. INFACT, ‘‘Chicago INFACT Newsletter.’’ 1986. 41. Ibid. 42. INFACT, ‘‘Twin Cities INFACT Campaign Center Newsletter,’’ 1986. 43. The Center for Public Integrity, ‘‘Windfalls of War.’’ 44. Ibid. 45. Reaching Critical Will, ‘‘Bechtel Corporation.’’ 46. The Center for Public Integrity, ‘‘Windfalls of War.’’ 47. Ibid. 48. Chatterjee, ‘‘Bechtel Wins Iraq War Contracts.’’ 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid.; The Center for Public Integrity, ‘‘Windfalls of War.’’ 51. The Center for Public Integrity, ‘‘Windfalls of War.’’ 52. Ibid.; Chatterjee, ‘‘Bechtel Wins Iraq War Contracts.’’ 53. The Center for Public Integrity, ‘‘Windfalls of War.’’ 54. Chatterjee, ‘‘Bechtel Wins Iraq War Contracts;’’ OpenSecrets.org, ‘‘Bechtel Group.’’ 55. Goodman and Goodman, 2005. 56. CorpWatch.org, ‘‘About CorpWatch.’’ 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid. 59. International Baby Food Action Network, ‘‘Information to Consumers;’’ Corporate Accountability International, ‘‘Infant Formula Campaign.’’ 60. INFACT, ‘‘INFACT Newsletter,’’ 1986, 1990, 1991; Corporate Accountability International, ‘‘Our Victories.’’

CHAPTER

6

S O C I A L LY R E S P O N S I B L E I N V E S T I N G , PEACE, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE Tessie Petion and Steven D. Lydenberg

Peace and social justice have been among the core values promoted by socially responsible investing (SRI) over the past 40 years as it has transcended its roots as a faith-based activity and has become an integral part of the mainstream investment community. SRI—which goes by many names including socially responsible investing, ethical investing, sustainable investing, triple-bottom-line investing, green investing, best-of-class investing, or simply responsible investing—at its core seeks to maximize a variety of social goods while achieving competitive financial returns. In its modern form, SRI evolved in the United States in the early 1970s as a response to the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and growing environmental concerns. SRI attracted investors who shunned corporate profits that were coming at the price of human suffering and environmental degradation. In addition, investors realized that they could raise their voice on these issues as a way to influence companies. During that era the primary tools of the current SRI movement evolved: screening and advocacy. Screening involves the setting of certain social and environmental standards to determine the investment eligibility of publicly traded companies. The most common standards applied by socially responsible mutual funds are those related to alcohol, tobacco, gambling, defense/weapons, environmental issues, human rights, labor issues, and community relations.

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Through shareholder advocacy or engagement, socially responsible investors exercise their right as owners to influence a corporation’s actions. The filing of proxy resolutions on social and environmental issues is the most prominent form of shareholder advocacy—they give socially responsible investors a seat at the table. In addition to screening and advocacy, SRI has increased the demand for corporate transparency on issues like human rights, defense contracting, and environmental justice. This increasingly detailed Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting has provided benchmarks for nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and governments to evaluate corporations’ records in these areas, and to act on these evaluations. Since the 1970s, SRI has grown from a curiosity in the world of finance to a worldwide phenomenon accepted by many of the largest institutional investors. While there are many ways in which SRI can influence human rights, the environment, and economic development, this chapter highlights SRI’s ability to promote peace and social justice.

ORIGINS SRI dates back to the 17th century. Religious institutions such as the Society of Friends (Quakers), Mennonites, and the Methodists believed that investing was not a neutral activity, but implied values. These groups shunned ‘‘sin’’ stocks, which were those of companies involved in alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and in certain cases, weapons.1 In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a number of the church investment funds started to explore ways of avoiding investments in companies operating in South Africa or involved in the Vietnam War. At that time, Ralph Nader and Saul Alinsky, two U.S. consumer and community activists, started to make use of the shareholder right to appear at corporate annual meetings and to file shareholder resolutions to raise social and environmental issues directly with corporate management. Nader’s General Motors campaign led to the submission of two socially based resolutions on the annual meeting proxy ballot in 1970.2 These tactics were soon adopted by the SRI movement and became an important tool for the responsible investor. Historically, many religious investors have drawn connections between war and the companies who profit from war. The first ethical mutual fund, the Pax World Fund, was established in the United States in 1971 by founders who had worked on peace, housing, and employment issues for the Methodist Church and wanted to make it possible for investors to align their investments with their values. Pax challenged corporations to establish and live up to specific standards of social and environmental

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responsibility.3 As its name implies, Pax only invested in non–war-related industries. In 1972 the Corporate Information Center (CIC), a precursor to the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), released a study revealing that several Protestant denominations and the National Council of Churches held sizeable investments in companies supplying materials for the Vietnam War, although they were on record opposing the war as immoral and profoundly sinful. In this case, the groups did not sell their defense stocks, choosing instead to exercise their shareholders’ right to speak to management, raising concerns about corporate profiteering from the war. In doing so, they established a modus operandi that came to characterize that of ICCR’s members on issues of peace and social justice over the coming decades.4 In the early 1980s, SRI started to take root in Europe. In the United Kingdom, the Friends Provident Stewardship Unit Trust was launched in 1984. The Stewardship Unit Trust aimed to invest in companies that made a positive contribution to society and excluded companies providing products or services it viewed as unethical, such as arms, gambling, and tobacco.5 By the 1990s, SRI became strongly established throughout the Continent, with a strong emphasis on sustainability and the environment. For example, a number of ‘‘eco-banks’’ such as Triodos Bank in the Netherlands were founded during that time.6 SRI, which originally developed in a political climate of social protest, has now been transformed from a faith-based activity into an activity promoting a public awareness of the ‘‘social responsibility’’ of corporations and of investing.7 As it has gained acceptance in the mainstream, it has in part left behind its activist image and become a more broadly accepted investment endeavor. Some of the largest national pension funds in the world, including, for example, those of Norway and Denmark, refuse to invest in manufacturers of landmines or nuclear weapons.

SRI TODAY SRI is a worldwide movement with assets under management that totaled more than $6 trillion at the end of 2007. In the United States, SRI assets under management were $2.71 trillion in 2007, representing 11 percent of the $25.1 trillion in total assets under management.8 In Europe between 2002 and 2007, the number of SRI funds increased by 150 percent to 447 in 2007.9 According to the European Social Investment Forum, SRI accounts for 17.6 percent of total European funds under management.10

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Pension funds, as a group, are the largest single owners of corporate stock. Their increasing participation in the SRI movement means that corporate managers must take their responsibilities to society and the environment seriously. In the United States, for example, more than 80 percent of all assets socially screened for institutional clients are managed for public retirement systems or other state and local investment pools.11 Large institutional investors such as these have access to corporate management and their willingness to raise social and environmental issues with management has furthered the movement. The United Nations–sponsored Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) coalition currently demonstrates how SRI has become a worldwide phenomenon and is no longer a niche market among a handful of institutional investors. Signatories to the PRI, who have agreed to incorporate environment, social, and corporate governance issues into their investment analysis and decision making, represented more than $18 trillion in assets by the end of 2008.12 In addition, in several European countries, legislation and regulations now require pension funds to publicly state the degree (if any) to which they take into account social, environmental, and governance considerations in their investment decisions.13

SRI AND MILITARY SCREENS Weapons screening is today among the most frequently used screen in the SRI world and plays a major role this investment practice.14 Recently a number of Europe’s largest pension funds have adopted screening techniques tied to international norms and standards, entering the screening space by screening out companies involved in the manufacture of landmines and antipersonnel or nuclear weapons. For example, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund will not make investments that may contribute to violations of fundamental humanitarian principles, serious violations of human rights, gross corruption, or severe environmental damages. In March 2009, it divested $36 million in Textron shares because of their production of cluster bombs.15 While many social investors around the world have military screens of one sort of another, few investors exclude all companies that sell anything to the military. In most cases, military screens eliminate companies that only sell weapons or weapons systems.16 For example, Domini Social Investments, a manager of a family of socially screened mutual funds in the United States, believes that nuclear terrorism and war are grave threats to humanity, that military spending by major powers raises threats to international peace, and that the

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international trade in conventional arms fuels internal and regional conflicts around the world. Military spending also diverts funds from muchneeded investments on the range of domestic public goods and international aid that are essential for the creation of prosperous, stable nations. Therefore Domini does not invest in companies deriving significant revenues from the manufacture of military weapons. Nor does the company invest in companies that are significant owners or operators of nuclear power plants, the spread of which is difficult to divorce from the proliferation of nuclear weapons. By contrast, other SRI funds argue that there are legitimate national security threats and needs that require the production of weapons and their use in certain circumstances. For example, Calvert Investment’s weapons policy avoids investing in companies that manufacture, design, or sell weapons or the critical components of weapons that violate international humanitarian law and companies that manufacture, design, or sell inherently offensive weapons.17

ENGAGEMENT AND MILITARY ISSUES In addition to using screening to express their concerns, SRI investors have actively engaged corporate management on issues of peace and social justice. They have filed shareholder resolutions and joined in coalitions to enter into public dialogue on issues as diverse as plans for peace conversion, censorship in China, lobbying and political contributions, support for repressive regimes, access to capital, and environmental justice. ICCR is one of the longest, strongest centers for such engagement initiatives. ICCR, established in 1971, is a coalition of faith-based institutional investors, including national denominations, religious communities, pension funds, foundations, hospital corporations, economic development funds, asset management companies, colleges, and unions. ICCR draws on common religious values and its goals are social and economic justice. Through its efforts over the years, ICCR has sponsored or co-sponsored hundreds of proxy resolutions (more than 100 each year). Individual shareholders in the United States have the right to place issues on corporate proxy statements for votes by all shareholders at company annual meetings. These resolutions don’t always pass—in fact, they rarely do—but that is not the most important point. The point is that they allow the expression of dissent and diversity within a corporation and introduce new issues in new ways to corporate managers. In response to the filing of these resolutions, company management frequently sits down with dissident investors to discuss the issues raised and what changes might be required for the

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Table 6.1. Top Ten Targeted Companies, 1972–2009 Company

Number of Shareholder Proposals

General Electric

37

General Dynamics

28

Boeing

23

Raytheon

23

Textron

23

Lockheed

21

McDonnell Douglas

21

Rockwell

19

United Technologies

19

Honeywell

16

Source: ICCR

shareholders to withdraw their resolution.18 Studies show that 40 to 45 percent of proposals sponsored by religious investors or socially responsible mutual funds are withdrawn each year, often indicating some type of favorable corporate response.19 From its earliest days, anti-militarism has been one of the issues that ICCR members have regularly focused on. Through proxy resolutions they have raised issues such as corporate involvement in foreign military sales, weapons in space, nuclear weapons, landmines, and peace conversion. They have targeted the largest military contractors, such as General Electric and Boeing, on a broad range of issues over the years (see Table 6.1 for a list of the 10 companies that have received the most military-related resolutions from ICCR members over the years).

HUMAN RIGHTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE In addition to their concerns about corporations’ involvement in the military, SRI investors around the world have often pressured governments abusing human rights by publicly refusing to invest in the stocks of companies doing business with them. This practice received wide attention in the 1970s and 1980s in the South Africa divestment campaign and continues today in Sudan and Burma. In addition, they have asked companies to address human rights and labor standards issues directly in their own operations or those of their vendors.

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South Africa The issue of South Africa played a crucial role in the development of the SRI movement during the 1970s and 1980s. The history of the involvement of investors in this issue illustrates its ability to play a supporting role in addressing many of the most important issues of our time. Post–World War II, South Africa’s government officially established the system of racial segregation known as apartheid. The apartheid system classified inhabitants into racial groups and stripped blacks of their citizenship. The government segregated education, medical care, and other public services. The policies drew scrutiny and were denounced, but those outside the country at first did little to foster change. International opposition to apartheid strengthened after the 1960 Sharpeville massacre when South African police shot a crowd of black protesters. In 1971, the Episcopal Church filed the first church-sponsored shareholder resolution on South Africa. The resolution called on General Motors to withdraw from South Africa. Though the resolution didn’t pass, it launched ICCR’s divestment campaign.20 At the same time, Reverend Leon Sullivan (a General Motors board member) drafted a code of conduct for practicing business in South Africa that became known as the Sullivan Principles (see Table 6.2). The Sullivan Principles gained wide use in the United States. The Principles laid out a series of graded positions that permitted several levels of screening, from very strict to very mild, for pension funds to participate in the divestment process.21 The framework provided by the Sullivan Principles allowed SRI to establish credibility and made corporations accountable for their records on human rights. Table 6.2. The Sullivan Principles for Corporations in South Africa 1.

Non-segregation of the races in all eating, comfort, and work facilities.

2.

Equal and fair employment practices for all employees.

3.

Equal pay for all employees doing equal or comparable work for the same period of time.

4.

Initiation of and development of training programs that will prepare, in substantial numbers, blacks and other nonwhites for supervisory, administrative, clerical, and technical jobs.

5.

Increasing the number of blacks and other nonwhites in management and supervisory positions.

6.

Improving the quality of employees’ lives outside the work environment in such areas as housing, transportation, schooling, recreation, and health facilities.

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Using these principles as guidelines, cities, states, colleges, faith-based groups, and pension funds throughout the United States began divesting from companies operating in South Africa. Before the end of South Africa’s apartheid era, the principles were formally adopted by more than 125 U.S. corporations that had operations in South Africa. Of those companies that formally adopted the principles, at least 100 ultimately completely withdrew their existing operations from South Africa.22 The subsequent negative flow of investment dollars eventually forced a group of businesses, representing 75 percent of South African employers, to draft a charter calling for an end to apartheid. Although the SRI efforts alone didn’t bring an end to the apartheid system, it focused persuasive international pressure on the South African business community.

Sudan The Sudan divestment movement of today has parallels with that of South Africa from the 1970s and 1980s. The conflict in Darfur, Sudan, started in 2003 when rebel groups began attacking government targets. The government of Sudan responded to the military challenges in Darfur by arming, training, and deploying Arab ethnic militias. The militias and Sudanese armed forces launched a campaign of ethnic cleansing and forced displacement by bombing and burning villages, killing civilians, and raping women. The conflict is believed to have resulted in the death of at least 200,000 people in Darfur and has displaced over 2 million people.23 In 2004, a number of institutional investors identified divestment as a possible tool to exert pressure on the Sudanese government. In particular, divestment policies have focused on companies supporting Sudan’s oil industry, in part because 80 percent of the government’s export revenue is from oil. (Sudan lacks the internal expertise or capital to extract resources itself and is therefore completely dependent on foreign companies to exploit its oil reserves.) Firms such as China National Petroleum Corporation, Oil and Natural Gas Company of India, and Petronas of Malaysia can therefore be regarded as providing an economic lifeline for the regime. Though these firms are aware of the conflict, they are reluctant to disrupt the pipeline of natural resources. The model for the divestment campaign promoted by the Conflict Risk Network (formerly the Sudan Divestment Task Force) encourages shareholders to exert pressure only on companies that provide significant support to Khartoum and fail to benefit Sudan’s marginalized populations. Rather than asking companies to leave Sudan completely, this divestment model asserts that companies can remain in Sudan and use their leverage to contribute to positive change. Shareholder divestment is only used if the company is not responsive to engagement.

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A number of companies have responded to this divestment campaign. Rolls Royce, CHC Helicopter, ICSA of India, and others have left Sudan, citing the humanitarian crises in the country. Schlumberger and La Mancha Resources continue their operations, having adopted and implemented responsible business plans in Sudan.24 Thus far the Sudan divestment movement has been centered in the United States. U.S. pension funds, like the $210 billion California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), have banned investments in companies that do business in Sudan. However, investors from abroad are also beginning to address Sudan-linked companies. In 2008, PGGM, one of the largest pension funds in the Netherlands, decided to disinvest from PetroChina because of its involvement in human rights violations in Darfur.25 Divestment has helped alter company behavior toward Sudan, which in turn has placed pressure on the Sudanese government. Though divestment has raised consciousness of the seriousness of the human rights issues in Sudan among many Western companies, many of the publicly traded companies doing business in Sudan are Chinese companies that have not been so susceptible to this influence. Though shareholder activism and divestment have not starved the Sudanese government of funds, they have helped to continue to focus international attention on the conflict in the region.

Burma Burma is another region where social investors hope to bring international pressure to bear on a government on human rights issues. Burma’s military dictatorship has been accused of serious and ongoing human rights violations. Though the divestment movement is not as formalized as it is for Sudan, many socially responsible investors believe that corporations should not do business in Myanmar (Burma). The country’s economy is almost entirely government controlled—corporations operating there provide direct financial support to the regime. In particular, Chevron has received pressure from investors to speak against human rights abuses in the country. Chevron, through its acquisition of Unocal in 2005, has become partnered with the Burmese government in a pipeline project that hired the Burmese military to provide security services. In doing so, the military allegedly committed numerous human rights violations, including the use of forced labor. Chevron has been subject to lawsuits alleging human rights abuses filed in U.S. courts.26 Although Chevron points to the community projects they have in place in the country, many

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SRI investors feel that these programs pale in comparison to the hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue the pipeline provides the military regime. ICCR members have been a major player in the campaign against Burma. They scored two major victories during the 1997 proxy season. After a shareholder resolution was filed calling for withdrawal from Burma, PepsiCo announced that it was leaving the country. Shortly thereafter Texaco divested its holdings in Burma’s natural gas industry.

LABOR STANDARDS Social investors have also asked companies to directly address issues of environmental justice and labor rights in their operations. For example, Freeport-McMoran’s operations in the Indonesian territory of Papua have been the subject of substantial shareholder activism within the SRI world. It is alleged that between 1998 and 2004, this U.S. mining company gave military and police officials in Papua approximately $20 million to shield it from environmental regulations. Freeport employs a natural river system to dispose of close to 230,000 tons of tailings each day and releases large quantities of sediments and toxic heavy metals into the water, including copper, cadmium, mercury, and arsenic. In 2006, Indonesia’s Minister of the Environment charged that the company was operating in violation of the government’s water quality regulations. In May 2006, the Indonesian Friends of the Earth issued a report that alleged that Freeport committed violations of Indonesian environmental laws and regulations. Faith-based investors were among the first to raise the issue of the company’s impact on the environment and indigenous peoples in the region. A number of institutional investors have committed to long-term engagement with Freeport over its operations there. In June 2006, the Norwegian Ministry of Finance ordered the divestment of Freeport McMoran stock from the Norwegian national pension fund citing serious damage to the river system and parts of the rainforest as well as considerable negative consequences for the indigenous people in the area. The government also found that the environmental damage caused by Freeport’s mining operations was extensive, long-term, and irreversible.27 Over the years socially responsible investors have also encouraged corporations to take responsibility for conditions in the factories where they source their products and to ensure that workers are covered by basic standards concerning safety, working hours, and pay. Gap Inc. released its first Social Responsibility Report after two years of dialogue with a coalition of socially responsible investors. Gap had initially resisted the idea of quantifying its performance in this area and a shareholder resolution served

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as an important negotiating tool. As a result of this dialogue, Gap became the first clothing retailer to publicly rate the way its contractors treat their workers, and set a new standard for transparency in its industry. This report and subsequent Gap reports tackled the difficult challenges the company faced in enforcing global labor standards, including obstacles imposed by its own business model and purchasing practices. Gap’s initial report has also contributed to an informal standardization of reporting with Nike and Hewlett Packard using a similar format of a key chart in their reports.28

THE LARGER CONTEXT OF SRI This chapter has focused on the role of peace and social justice issues within the SRI world, but these are only two of a broad range of social and environmental issues of concern to socially responsible investors. While other issues are as varied as climate change, affordable health care, excessive chief executive officer compensation, and corporate involvement in the marketing of tobacco, alcohol, and gambling, underlying them all is a basic concern for the creation of a safe and equitable society. In this chapter we have stressed particularly the involvement of religious organizations in the United States because they had been by far the most active over the years in filing resolutions—and among resolution filers, the most active in raising issues about militarism in our society. But they have also raised, and continue to raise, the full spectrum of SRI concerns. And, as SRI has grown over the years, numerous other organizations have joined these religious groups in taking up the tools of screening and engagement to raise these issues. Today they include socially responsible mutual funds, pension funds, unions, and human rights and environmental activist organizations. SRI has from its earliest days placed a strong emphasis on, and made a constant demand for, increased corporate disclosure on an extensive range of social and environmental issues crucial to society. In filing resolutions on many issues, shareholders’ first demand is often for a company report to the public on the topic. Through their support for such organizations as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and their frequent surveys on CSR initiatives undertaken by corporations, SRI investors have demonstrated the demand for and catalyzed the evolution of improved CSR disclosure. (The GRI has developed a comprehensive framework and guidance for CSR reporting through a thorough stakeholder consultation process.) Indeed, one of SRI’s most tangible accomplishments has been to turn CSR reporting from an exceptional company practice in the 1980s to something that in certain regions of the world is rapidly becoming the rule. In France, for example, large publicly traded companies have been required to report on

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some 40 key social and environmental indicators since 2003 and Sweden will require all companies with state ownership to report in accordance with the GRI starting in 2009.29 The number of CSR reports issued around the world as of 2009 approached the 4,000 mark, up from less than 100 as recently as the early 1990s.30 These reports form the foundation on which various dialogues between corporations and those concerned with the creation of a better world are often built. Throughout its development, critics of SRI have raised two broad objections to this practice. The first asserts that limiting one’s investment universe by screening out certain companies or whole industries on nonfinancial grounds will hurt financial performance and is therefore a violation of fiduciary duty—the obligation of money managers to act in the best interest of their clients. Literally hundreds of academic studies have been conducted since the 1970s on the effects, or lack thereof, of screening on performance and of CSR on profits. Although results have varied widely, the preponderance of these studies shows either a positive relationship between screening and financial performance and CSR and profits, or a neutral one—it doesn’t help and it doesn’t hurt.31 The Web site, sristudies.com, maintains an extensive bibliography with annotations of the most important of these studies. The second major criticism of SRI is that it is ineffective—no more than a form of window dressing that may make investors feel good, but accomplishes little in reality. It is a criticism that was often heard 20 years ago about divestment of companies involved in South Africa and is heard today about similar policies for involvement in Sudan. These critics assert, for example, that ‘‘A fundamental assumption underpinning the decision to divest from a company is that investors are able to affect the financial fate of the targeted firms and therefore induce a change in corporate policy and/or behavior.’’32 To back up this assertion, economists point out that that boycotting a stock is unlikely to have any impact on its price. Socially responsible investors, however, measure success in terms of economic, ecological, and social gains, and their effectiveness in terms of the promotion of public debate about the role of corporations and society. Although numerous specific accomplishments can be cited resulting from direct dialogue between corporations and various players in the SRI world, the long-term strength of SRI lies not primarily in its ability to change the world one company at a time. Rather it lies in SRI’s ability to influence the vocabulary that is used to discuss and evaluate the relationship of corporations to society and the environment. SRI has played a strong role in legitimizing the demands of society that corporations disclose their policies and practices on a tremendous range of issues vital to society—and in doing so, has begun to alter the whole

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framework, the whole range of expectations, within which corporations exercise their license from society to continue their daily operations. Because they hold an ownership stake in the companies in which they invest, members of the SRI world are uniquely positioned to promote this new vocabulary and demand that dialogue take place on these new concerns. At the core of these concerns and this dialogue is the question of how a more peaceful and sustainable world can be created and how all elements of society, including corporations, can cooperate to achieve that goal.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

Kinder, Lydenberg, and Domini, 1993. Massie, 1997. Pax World Investments, 2009. Kinder, Lydenberg, and Domini, 1993. Ibid. Louche and Lydenberg, 2009. Sparkes, 2001. US SIF, 2008. Lipper, FERI, 2008. Eurosif, 2008. SIF, 2008. Grene, 2009. Lydenberg and Louche, 2009. Eurosif, 2008. O’Dwyer, 2009. Kinder, Lydenberg, and Domini, 1993. Calvert Investments. Makower, 1994. Tkac, 2006. Massie, 1997. Ibid. Ibid. Soederberg, 2009. Wisor, 2007. Eurosif, 2008. Lifsher, 2005. ICCR, 2007. Kanzer, 2009. Baue, 2002. Kropp, 2009. Orlitzky, Schmidth, and Rynes, 2003; Statman, 2006. Soederberg, 2009.

PART II

RESISTING VIOLENCE

Wars, unlike hurricanes and earthquakes, do not ‘‘just happen.’’ They come as a result of human decisions and human-created institutions. But wars do happen and when they do some people recoil at the horror inflicted and resist. Resisting violence has a long history including illegal efforts to free slaves, soldier revolts, standing between gunmen and civilians, dismantling weapons or drenching them with blood, blocking shipments of weapons, and withholding taxes. Some reach out to help the victims, some to record the casualties and make them known, and others to prevent some of the killings from happening. A special group are the soldiers who come to resistance from their personal experiences with the disparity between what they were led to believe and the consequences they actually see. Some return as veterans opposed to war and join groups reaffirming continuing efforts to end agencies that are designed to recruit and to create warriors and hitmen. Some sign petitions, some march in protest, some dedicate their personal lives to be free from violence, some pray for peace, and many do nothing. Kathy Kelly has been the coordinator of Voices in the Wilderness, a Chicago-based group that organized over 70 citizen delegations to Iraq to report how sanctions were affecting people in that country during the 1990s. In addition, Kelly twice led delegations that literally camped out in the way of the U.S. invasions of Iraq in 1991 and 2003. Her contribution speaks to one of the most basic truths about war and aggressive policies: that they continue because we lose sight of the human victims of all ages. It also speaks of the heroic courage that can save lives in the face of efforts

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that destroy them. Christine Schweitzer writes of the work of a nonviolent peace force. The concept is that a coordinated group of trained, unarmed civilians can enter the area of hostilities with a specific mission of working directly with people on the ground—averting violent activities, mediating where possible, interposing where necessary, and bearing public witness. The group takes on major tasks of protecting peacemakers as well as other civilians; negotiating with authorities, with community leaders, and with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); and building the transitional structures that will aid reconciliation, reconstruction, and healing. Some illustrations in Sri Lanka and in the Balkans point out both the problems and the promise of this activity. The nonviolent force is particularly promising because it illustrates that people are not powerless in the face of hostilities. It shows also a potential for escalation of peacemaking activities. This is the opposite of the escalations of violence that commonly follow hostilities and can stimulate further hostilities and produce the horror of war. Here is a way to break the cycle. The way that military and foreign intelligence operations of the United States are spread into almost every sector of American society leaves many different professions and businesses actively collaborating with the planning and execution of wars. Jill Latonick-Flores and Daniel J. Adamski describe the involvement of the psychology profession in the program of torture of prisoners, the attempt of the American Psychological Association (APA) to refrain from calling this unethical, and the movement among psychologists to protest this stance of their own professional organization and to demand accountability from the APA. Over the years of colonial domination, major powers have linked themselves to governments in other countries that were capable of curbing resistance to domination by wealthy corporate elites. These elites are part of the colonial legacy and provide the partners for neo-colonialism. Such wealthy families ruled in much of the global south with the support of police and military forces. Their alliance with Western governments ensured weapons and training sufficient for control of mostly peasant populations, and of the social workers, labor organizers, priests, or guerrilla groups that sought to speak for the poor. To provide the most effective military response, both to protect the oligarchs and to overthrow populist leaders, the United States opened a School of the Americas (SOA) to train Latin American military officers. Because of its reputation for violence—it was popularly called the School of Assassins—it was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute of Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). Many of its graduates have been implicated in efforts to steal elections and intimidate opponents and even in brutal assassinations conducted with impunity. Father Roy Bourgeois was a

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founder of School of the Americas Watch, which has been working since 1983 to expose the activities of the SOA and its graduates and to close it down. He and Jill Latonick-Flores write to describe the activity of this group. (In the following part, Hector Aristiz
abal, a victim of torture by Colombian military provides a first hand account.) As the Vietnam War was ending, we became aware of the psychological legacy soldiers bring home. Many are deeply scarred. Some return with an internal demon interfering with every aspect of their lives and the lives of their families, and many are homeless, frightened, and confused substance abusers to this day. Among those who return, some find solace in reaffirming the patriotic myths justifying the price they and their comrades paid. Others seek therapy, and for a substantial number their healing has involved participation in soldiers’ anti-war movements. The remaining chapters in this part deal with resistance among soldiers. To understand this phenomenom more fully we look into recruitment and training as described by former Marine Sergeant Martin Smith. Inigo Gilmore and Teresa Smith describe the critical element of dehumanizing that will enable soldiers to kill and how the ability to see others as people is important for living with one’s conscience. Justin Cliburn writes of the efforts that soldiers make to come to an understanding of the horror they see and even their own part in the violence. The writers have identified with efforts of veterans to speak out for peace. Historian Howard Zinn, himself a veteran of World War II, concludes this section with a review of the history and meaning of soldier resistance and its central importance for the peace movement. Taken as a whole, this part demonstrates that overt violence can be resisted. For many of us, veterans or not, these documented accounts should provide some inspiration. —Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler

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CHAPTER

A HAND

FOR

PEACE

7

IN A

ZONE

OF

WA R

Kathy Kelly

On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. Four days later, the United Nations began to enforce against Iraq the most comprehensive economic sanctions ever imposed in modern history. But Saddam Hussein did not withdraw from Kuwait, and the United States began a massive military buildup for an eventual war against Iraq. It seemed unlikely that the United States was preparing to invade Iraq because the U.S. government refused to tolerate either a brutal dictator or an illegal invasion. The United States had recently invaded Panama and before that, Grenada, and the United States had helped install and prop up several dictatorships in Latin America. I believed that the war was being prepared to dominate and control the resources of another country. But nothing could prepare me for the realities encountered in Iraq or in the United States, as an increasingly imperial attitude developed the illusion that the United States was so powerful, militarily and economically, that it could create its own reality, regardless of the consequences borne by people whose lands were attacked by our military and economic policies. In the fall of 1990, some months before the 1991 Gulf War began, I applied to join the Gulf Peace Team, a nonviolent, nonaligned encampment that would position itself on the Iraq side of the Iraq–Saudi border, between the warring parties. The organizers placed me on a waiting list. In early January 1991, word arrived that I could join a U.S. contingent leaving on a plane that would be the last to land in Baghdad before the bombing began.

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Probably the most courageous thing I did during that year was to ride the bus to my family home on Chicago’s southwest side and tell my mother what I was about to do. She was vehemently opposed. Leaving my family home, I caught a blast of frigid air in my face and my mother’s thick Irish brogue at my back. ‘‘What about the incubators?’’ she cried out. ‘‘Kathy, what about the incubators?!’’ She was referring to testimony from Nayireh, a young Kuwaiti girl, who told the U.S. Congress that she had witnessed invading Iraqi soldiers barge into a Kuwaiti hospital and steal incubators. With luminous eyes and a compelling presence, Nayireh told of her horror as she watched the menacing soldiers dump babies out of incubators. Months later, when the war was a distant memory, U.S. reporters learned that Nayireh was actually the daughter of a Kuwaiti emir; that doctors in Kuwait could not corroborate her testimony; that in fact the supposedly stolen incubators had been placed carefully in storage during the invasion; and that the Hill and Knowlton Public Relations firm had rehearsed with the young woman how to give apparently false testimony effectively. Was Nayireh’s testimony false? We can’t be absolutely sure. Did Iraqi soldiers steal or damage valuable medical equipment? I’m not sure of that either. Here are some things of which, unfortunately, we all can be sure. The Desert Storm bombardment destroyed Iraq’s electrical grid. Refrigeration units, sewage and sanitation facilities, and all sorts of valuable equipment were ruined. Life-saving devices found in a modern hospital were rendered useless. As the allied bombing went on and on, my mother’s question became more and more relevant, yet went largely unasked. ‘‘What about the incubators?’’ Years later, when peace teams visited Iraq during 13 years of deliberate siege, we saw incubators, broken and irreparable, stacked up against the walls of hospital obstetrics wards. Sanctions prevented Iraqis from importing new incubators and from getting needed spare parts to repair old ones. And this was only one vitally needed item that sanctions prohibited. I was in Iraq during the first 16 days of the Gulf War, one of 73 volunteers from 18 countries who formed the Gulf Peace Team. We intended to sit in the middle of a likely battlefield and call for an end to hostilities. I still feel a glimmer of pride recalling that we succeeded in setting up an encampment in the desert almost exactly on the border between Iraq and Saudi Arabia and near a U.S. military camp. Author Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit and human rights activist, once said that one of the reasons we don’t have peace is because pacifists aren’t willing to pay the price of peace. Soldiers are expected to sacrifice their lives in the name of war, but peacemakers often decline to take similar risks. The

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Gulf Peace Team was a diverse group, but I think almost every person there was motivated by just the willingness that Berrigan spoke of, a readiness to pay the price of peace to bear witness against the war.1 Our U.S. contingent did indeed land in Baghdad on the last plane allowed into the country prior to the war. We had linked with European and Asian contingents in Amman, Jordan, and then traveled together, by bus, beyond Baghdad. To reach the desert camp, our bus passed through Kerbala, in southern Iraq. Our team was mesmerized by the city’s beauty. Students, gowned and graceful, sauntered along palm-tree–lined university streets. Mosques shimmered in the sunlight. All of us voiced a hope that we could one day return to Kerbala. The Gulf Peace Team camp was already humming by the time I got there. Latrines had been dug, tents were set up, food preparation and clean-up tasks were assigned, and in spite of language and cultural differences people were learning about each other. We also began learning to live quite simply. We had to ration our food, eventually reducing our meals to one per day. Water and electricity were very scarce. The camp was an abandoned way station once used by pilgrims on their way to and from Mecca. We slept in huge tents with corrugated tin roofs. The nights were bitter cold, but daytime brought an intense sun. Communicating with each other took great patience because we came from so many different countries and walks of life. It took weeks for us to form ourselves into affinity groups that allowed for at least some democratic process in decision making. The night the war broke out, our team members took turns clustering around a tiny short-wave radio, anxious to know whether there would be a last-minute resolution to prevent the war. Military experts had predicted that the bombing would begin on a moonless night. That night, there was no moon. At about 2:00 A.M., on January 16, the United States began bombing. We crawled out of our tents and huddled together, watching planes fly overhead.2 I remember feeling the deepest dismay I’d ever known. Every dog in the region began barking when the U.S. and allied war planes appeared overhead. Those dogs barked themselves hoarse. I felt that was the most appropriate response to the war. Each night, bombers flew above us, sometimes at five-minute intervals. And each one carried a devastating payload of bombs. I imagined there would be nothing left of Iraq. On January 27, 1991, as the ground war loomed, the Iraqi government decided to evacuate us. It seems that they believed we actually would be in the way of invading forces if the U.S. military were to attempt a pincer movement designed to block retreating Iraqi soldiers. An Iraqi government representative instructed us to break down our camp and pack for an early morning departure the next day. Buses would take us to

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Baghdad. We were divided about whether to stay or to go. A hard argument ensued. Finally we agreed that 12 of our number would form a circle, holding signs that said, in Arabic and in English, ‘‘We Choose to Stay.’’ The next morning, buses were lined up, awaiting us. The unenviable task of coordinating our removal fell to Tariq, a civilian with the Ministry of Culture who had visited our camp several times before. He seemed genuinely fond of us and was eager to understand why we had placed ourselves in such peril. When he saw the dozen people seated, holding their placards, Tariq was baffled. I doubt that he had ever read much of Gandhi or the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Maybe he’d never heard of nonviolence. He asked me, ‘‘What am I to do?’’ ‘‘Tariq,’’ I answered, ‘‘Nobody here wants to harm you or disrespect you. They’re just unable to board the buses voluntarily—it’s a matter of conscience.’’ He nodded, and then walked away. Moments later I saw him walk up to Jeremy Hartigan, a gentle British barrister, seated cross-legged on the ground, holding his sign as others softly sang. Jeremy was a Buddhist. At intervals, he chanted, ‘‘Omm.’’ Tariq bent over, kissed Jeremy on the forehead and pointed northward, saying, ‘‘Baghdad!’’ Then he and several aides gently placed their hands under Hartigan—it reminded me of levitation games we played as children—and carried him aboard the bus. With solemn faces, they continued one by one with the others, carefully placing them on the buses. By late afternoon, we were aboard buses traveling a road that was under constant bombardment. The buses swerved around huge bomb craters and we saw the charred, smoking remains of oil tankers, an ambulance, a passenger bus, and several civilian cars. Later I learned that the station chief for CBS News had been attacked from the air while driving a tiny Toyota. In Baghdad, we stayed for four days at the plush Al-Rashid hotel, which could offer no running water and was pitch dark because all electrical power had been knocked out.3 However, in the women’s restroom there was a light. I went there to write and read, from time to time, and there I met mothers and children. The mothers were very friendly to me, and the children, after initial shyness, were glad to play. Sometimes I’d see them again, in the hotel’s basement bomb shelter, late at night, when the bombing was more intense. Fathers held children in their arms and reassured them. But the men’s faces showed unmistakable anxiety and fear. We found an old typewriter, abandoned by journalists. It lacked a typewriter ribbon, but I had learned, in Nicaragua and in prison, that if you place a sheet of carbon paper in front of a clean sheet of paper, it will

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function like a typewriter ribbon. We melted a candle onto the typewriter and soon I was able to produce our team’s statement about why we were in Baghdad. An Iraqi official spotted me managing to type something and soon returned with a document he needed typed in English. We were reluctant, at first—was it right for a team claiming neutrality to assist an Iraqi government official? We asked to read the letter. It was a letter to then Secretary General of the United Nations, Javier Perez de Cuellar, asking him to seek an end to bombardment of the Iraqi highway between Baghdad and the Jordanian border. This road was the only way out for refugees and the only way in for humanitarian relief supplies. Our team had traveled on this road for some distance, en route to Baghdad, and had seen charred and smoking vehicles. Our bus drivers would swerve to miss craters in the road. It was a very dangerous route. We agreed to type the letter, knowing that according to Geneva conventions warring parties must provide a way out for refugees to exit and a way in for humanitarian relief. The official returned with crumpled stationery, signed by a cabinet-level official, Adnan Dawoud Al Salwan, and red carbon paper that had been used five times over. Imagine cabinet-level correspondence being typed on wrinkled stationery by an extranational from the country that is bombing you, who is using an abandoned typewriter and working by candlelight. This was the situation of Iraq’s government. Then imagine the support available to the Pentagon. On January 31, in Baghdad, a bomb hit the servant’s quarters of the hotel where we were housed. Iraqi authorities, once again concerned about our safety, hurried the whole Gulf Peace Team onto buses and moved us to Amman, Jordan. But they first issued visas to 33 of us who had asked to stay with families in Baghdad, assuring us that we could return at a later date. In Amman, a large press conference had been arranged for us. I was to speak for U.S. Gulf Peace Team participants, but I felt at a loss for words. ‘‘How can I begin?’’ I asked George Rumens, a British journalist and a member of our team. ‘‘Tell them,’’ he said, ‘‘that when the war fever and hysteria subside, we believe the lasting and more appropriate responses to this war will be felt throughout the world, deepest remorse and regret for the suffering we’ve caused.’’4 Desert Storm continued. We called it Desert Slaughter. Many of the Gulf Peace Team members returned to their home countries to campaign for an end to the relentless bombing and destruction. Those of us who had visas for a return trip to Iraq organized, as best we could, medical relief convoys to bring desperately needed medicines into Iraq. We hoped that we might safeguard the road between the Jordan–Iraq border and Baghdad, thinking that if authorities from the United States and

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the United Kingdom knew that ordinary citizens from their own countries were traveling along that road, delivering medical relief, they might be less inclined to consider every moving vehicle a military target. Announcing the convoy project would give us a chance to remind the U.S. war planners about the Geneva conventions. In Amman, a few of us began calling Jordanian pharmacists and charity organizations to learn more about procuring medicines for delivery to Iraq. A Jordanian businessman, Mr. Nidal Sukhtian, heard of our project and decided to donate a semi-truck full of powdered milk. He also volunteered to pay for petrol, hire a driver, and help us out with an interpreter. Suddenly our project became much more manageable. I took responsibility to contact the media. A NBC TV correspondent decided to cover our departure. I don’t remember her name, but I do remember a steady exchange of phone calls setting up the time and date for the convoy to film us loading up trucks with food and medicine and then driving back into the war zone. The day before our planned departure, someone from the United Nations finally managed to get through to us that our convoy wasn’t going to enter Iraq unless we were prepared to ram our way through a UN checkpoint. Sanctions prohibited delivery of almost all goods to Iraq, save for a short list of medical supplies and medicines. Realizing that our powdered milk shipment could never pass the checkpoint, we divvied up a long list of tasks: offload the semi-truck and return it to the owner, find two small trucks to carry whatever we could find that was on the list, call pharmacies, find a new source for fuel and new drivers, change the press release, and change the departure time. In the frenzy of activity, I completely forgot to call the NBC correspondent. She was out in the field waiting to film us, with a full camera crew, and it was raining. I saw her that night, at the Red Crescent office, where we both had turned up to get documents that would allow us to enter Iraq. She was livid. ‘‘I will assure that you and your team never again get coverage from NBC,’’ she said. I murmured how sorry I was. She turned, walked away, and then paused, looking over her shoulder, to add, ‘‘I shouldn’t even tell you this, but offloading the truck WAS the story.’’ My heart sank. Had NBC covered Janet Cameron, the Scottish doctor on our team, tearful as she hauled cartons of powdered milk off of the semi-truck, had this image been beamed into living rooms across the United States, it might have ‘‘jump-started’’ awareness about the most comprehensive sanctions ever imposed in modern history. I still feel ashamed, even now, recalling that story. I feel shame and sorrow because throughout all the years of the long war against Iraq, offloading the truck never stopped being the story.

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By 2007, a combination of sanctions, war, and occupation had brought to Iraq the world’s worst deterioration in child mortality rate. Writing for The Independent, Andrew Buncombe cited a Save the Children Report, released in 2007, which stated that ‘‘in the years since 1990, Iraq has seen its child mortality rate soar by 125 percent, the highest increase of any country in the world. Its rate of deaths of children under five now matches that of Mauritania. . . . Figures collated by the charity show that in 1990 Iraq’s mortality rate for under-fives was 50 per 1,000 live births. In 2005 it was 125.’’5 Massive convoys should have been going into Iraq, bearing all manner of humanitarian relief. They should have been, but they weren’t, and in December 2006 donor nations cut in half the money they would commit to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. Eventually, in late March of 1991, our team did return to Kerbala, the city that had so impressed us when we first traveled into Iraq. We stared in awe as we drove along streets devoid of palm trees, lined by wreckage and smoking ruins. We entered the main hospital and our feet stuck to the floor because the blood was so thick. Beds were smashed; equipment was torn out of the walls. We saw clusters of badly frightened doctors. Henry Selz, who had lived in Lebanon during the civil war there, spotted bullet holes near the rooftops of buildings as we walked along a side street. One elderly woman pulled us aside and began whispering about mass graves. What had happened? I learned in fits and starts, fitting together pieces of the horror story that still isn’t completed. Margaret Thatcher remarked once on television that after the ceasefire had been declared, Saddam Hussein’s generals asked if they could keep their helicopters and the U.S. generals said, ‘‘Yes.’’ Then they asked if they could keep their attack helicopters—again the answer was ‘‘Yes.’’ Those attack helicopters swiftly took off in pursuit of insurgents who were rebelling in cities all through southern Iraq: Amarah, Qut, Najaf, Nassiriyeh, Basra, and Kerbala. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, U.S. allies in the 1991 war against Iraq who were helping fund the war, had told President George Bush Sr. to keep Saddam Hussein in power because otherwise uprisings of Shi’ite people in the south could give rise to a dominant Shi’a governance in Iraq that would be sympathetic to coreligionists ‘‘next door’’ in Iran. Hence the long regime of economic sanctions that kept Saddam crippled externally but strengthened internally—punitive sanctions that were always evaluated only on the basis of whether or not they prevented Saddam from acquiring weapons of mass destruction and never with regard to how the sanctions affected innocent and vulnerable Iraqis, particularly children.6

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After the war, Iraq agreed to let us enter the country with study teams to document the combined effects of the war and economic sanctions. I stayed in the region for the next six months helping to organize medical relief and study teams. In March of 1991, I was with a small team that visited the neighborhood of Ameriyah, Iraq, where, on February 13, 1991, U.S. smart bombs were so smart that they were able to enter the ventilation shafts of a building that sheltered hundreds of Iraqi women and children. The exit doors were sealed shut and the temperature inside rose to 500 degrees centigrade. All save 17 survivors were melted. I had begun to cry, staring at the scene, when I felt a tiny arm encircling my waist. An Iraqi child was smiling up at me. ‘‘Wel-kom,’’ she said. Crossing the street were two women, draped in black. As they approached, I felt sure they were coming to withdraw the children who now surrounded us. I had learned just a few words of Arabic. ‘‘Ana Amerikia, wa asif,’’ I stammered. ‘‘I’m American, and I’m sorry.’’ ‘‘La, la, la,’’ said the young Iraqi mother. She was saying ‘‘No, no . . . ,’’ and then motioned to her son to bring us the glasses of tea that he carried on a small platter. Perhaps it was for the best that without electricity these women and children couldn’t know what was being said, just then, in the United States. It wasn’t until I returned that I heard those popular lines, ‘‘Rock Iraq! Slam Saddam!,’’ shouted by college students as they hoisted another beer mug to cheer the war on. ‘‘Say hello to Allah!’’ sung out by U.S. soldiers when they blasted Iraqi targets. And the unforgettable words of General Colin Powell, when asked about the number of Iraqis who died in the war: ‘‘Frankly, that number doesn’t interest me.’’ Senate and congressional investigating committees should have heard testimony from Iraqi eyewitnesses who survived the Desert Storm war, much as they had heard from Nayirah, the Kuwaiti teenager whose testimony helped market the war. Instead, the U.S. leadership told legislators and the general public very little about the consequences of the war. Very few people understood that when you destroy a nation’s infrastructure and then cripple it further with punishing sanctions, as the United States insisted must happen for the next 13 years, the victims are always the society’s most vulnerable people—the poor, the elderly, the sick, and most of all the children. I recall driving out of Iraq, in mid-March 1991, as a passenger next to a brave Palestinian driver, Taha, who had courageously driven along dangerous desert treks to make repeated deliveries of humanitarian relief shipments to Iraq. Taha drove our small team back to Jordan. Along the road, we passed an isolated village. Suddenly, a group of youngsters ran down an embankment toward our speeding vehicle. They stretched out their arms,

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touched their lips, and then made the motion of forming chapattis, the bread of the poor. They were desperately hungry. ‘‘We cannot stop,’’ Taha said, blinking back tears. ‘‘Anyway we have nothing to give.’’ The road had turned into a gauntlet, flanked with wave after wave of child beggars. Taha shook with frustration, then finally heaved with sobs as we drove on through the desert. In the course of the 1991 Desert Storm bombing, U.S. aircraft alone dropped 88,500 tons of explosives on Iraq, the equivalent of nearly five Hiroshima nuclear blasts. Seventy percent of the so-called smart bombs missed their intended targets, falling sometimes on civilian dwellings, schools, churches, mosques, or empty fields. The 30 percent that blasted on target wiped out Iraq’s electrical generating plants and sewage treatment networks. Iraq’s infrastructure—bridges, roads, highways, canals, and communication centers—was systematically destroyed.7 Just before leaving the United States, a reporter asked me if there were any alternatives to the impending Gulf War. ‘‘Yes,’’ I said. ‘‘The United States could allow continued usage of UN economic sanctions to coerce Saddam’s withdrawal from Kuwait.’’ Who could have known, then, how poorly informed I was? I had no idea how swiftly and violently the economic sanctions would punish innocent Iraqis who had no control over their government. Neither did most U.S. people. However, crucial information was available to U.S. policy makers. Even though successive U.S. administrations claimed that the sanctions were intended only to contain Iraq and deter Saddam Hussein’s regime from acquiring weapons of mass destruction, a 1991 report written by the United States Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) showed that the United States understood that just six more months of economic sanctions could be expected to thoroughly degrade Iraq’s water treatment systems. The report, ‘‘Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities,’’ noted that ‘‘although Iraq has made a considerable effort to supply pure water to its population, the water treatment system was unreliable even before the United Nations sanctions.’’8 Commenting on the anticipated effect of the economic sanctions, the DIA analysis speculated that, ‘‘With no domestic sources of both water treatment, replacement parts, and some essential chemicals, Iraq will continue attempts to circumvent United Nations sanctions to import these vital commodities. Failing to secure supplies will result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much of the population. This could lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease.’’9 The report also noted that Iraq’s rivers ‘‘contain biological materials, pollutants, and are laden with bacteria. Unless the water is purified with chlorine, epidemics of such diseases as cholera, hepatitis, and typhoid could

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occur.’’10 By 1991, with importation of chlorine embargoed by sanctions, the chlorine supply in Iraq was, according to the DIA, ‘‘critically low.’’ The report concluded that ‘‘full degradation of the water treatment system probably will take at least another 6 months.’’11 The sanctions continued for 13 years. I was a ‘‘late arrival’’ in coming to grips with the question of how to nonviolently resist U.S. addiction to war making. But, with regard to U.S. invasion of Iraq, my involvement was relatively early, as part of the 72-person Gulf Peace Team on the Iraq–Saudi border. Several years later, an even smaller group formed Voices in the Wilderness, aiming to defy the UN/U.S. economic sanctions against Iraq by exercising civil disobedience. We broke those sanctions as often as we could, bringing medicines to Iraqi children and families. We knew, then, what we were doing and why. We felt confident that we could return to the United States with explanations of what we had seen and heard, and we hoped that our testimony could build awareness in the United States about the awful consequences as a silent, economic warfare brutally and lethally punished hundreds of thousands of innocent people, over half of them children under age five. In the summer of 2000, we spent nine weeks living in the most impoverished area of Iraq’s poorest city, Basra. We wanted to show that siege warfare caused intense suffering among people who meant us no harm. During Operation Shock and Awe, the Iraq Peace Team lived alongside Iraqi people, throughout a coming war we hoped we could prevent. We couldn’t allow war to sever the bonds that had developed between ourselves and the people who had offered us unstinting hospitality. We remained in Iraq throughout the U.S. bombing and initial months of occupation. In each of these circumstances, we knew what we were doing and why. But, since the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, I’ve been floundering in efforts to nonviolently challenge terrible crimes committed against people bearing the worst consequences of U.S. warfare in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and now, increasingly, in Pakistan. Younger friends of mine, individuals deeply committed to peacemaking in Iraq, maintain a blog titled ‘‘War, Endless War.’’12 Skillful commentators describe the tsunami of misery caused by the war. The photos of mournful mothers cradling sickened infants poisoned by contaminated water still fill the pages of UN booklets. Asked to speak about conditions we encounter among people who’ve fled from Iraq, I and several friends deliver heartbreaking stories of bereavement, torture, and displacement endured by people whose entire lives have been marked by ‘‘war, endless war.’’ I feel staggered by the bludgeoning force of the U.S. war machine. The war has caused spiraling levels of chaos and revenge. And yet, I generally write or speak from a safe, secure distance.

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People sometimes ask me how I find hope or happiness in life, in spite of being intensely aware of so much suffering. Truthfully, the best way to pursue that question is to visit Iraqis who’ve directly borne the war’s consequences. How do they find hope and happiness? They don’t receive invitations to speak about their travails, much less find themselves nominated for awards. Since 1991, consistently, in the simplest of homes, I’ve felt overwhelmed by genuine and generous welcomes from Iraqi friends. The hospitality extended to me and dozens of people who traveled with Voices delegations doesn’t obscure impoverishment, loss, pain, and anger. But the friendships and forgiveness extended to us anchors my faith and hope. In Amman, Jordan, in January 2007, while visiting an Iraqi family living in a wretched home and coping with poverty, disease, and trauma, I felt amazed that in spite of their harsh circumstances, the family extended a warm welcome to me and my friends. Over the course of several visits, I learned that they’d lost their home and all of their material resources in Iraq, because kidnappers holding their 16-year-old son demanded a huge ransom. They sold everything they owned, secured the son’s release after he had been tortured for four days, and immediately fled Iraq. Later that year, the family suffered another blow when the father, crushed by the burden of being unable to provide for his family and deranged with anger when he learned that his cousin had been tortured and killed, suddenly disappeared. The 10-year-old son seemed overcome by a numbing depression that wouldn’t lift. Each time I visited, he turned away from the family, apparently absorbed in ‘‘Tom and Jerry’’ cartoons on TV. Even when his older brother, the ransomed son, was recognized with medals and applause while playing soccer as an Iraqi representative on an international team, the youngster refused to join in the family’s joy. I knew his mother wanted desperately to help her young son emerge from the fog of despair. Certainly his suffering required time for healing. But his knowing mother watched him carefully, and one summer day, when an art teacher and I turned up with a bag of notebooks, art supplies, and small bouncing balls, the boy’s mother flashed me an impish smile and began juggling the balls. Her son’s eyes widened as he watched his mother playfully juggling, and, slowly, a smile spread across his face. Soon he was shyly giggling in his mother’s arms. The boy’s mother did what she could to find happiness and future hope for her family. Here is a story about other mothers, in a U.S. prison, who did what they could to bear a share of the war’s burdens. In 2004, I was imprisoned at the Pekin Federal Prison Camp in Pekin, Illinois. I had trespassed at Fort Benning as part of the School of the Americas Watch campaign, and was sentenced to three months in prison. On Saturday, May 1, 2004, several prisoners hurried into the prison library, wanting me to come and see news

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releases on CNN. ‘‘Girl, you gotta’ see this,’’ they said. ‘‘It’s just terrible, what’s happening.’’ Together, we watched the photos that are now nearly iconic: ‘‘The hooded man,’’ ‘‘the man on a leash,’’ ‘‘the pyramid,’’ ‘‘the man and the dog.’’ The women I knew at Pekin prison would have had good reason to identify with the shame, fear, and anxiety of other prisoners anywhere. But the emotions behind their tearful questions came, I think, from genuine concern for their country. ‘‘What’s happening to our country?’’ they asked. ‘‘What can we do?’’ It was hard to imagine a less relevant spot from which to take action, locked up in a U.S. prison. But, later that day, several of the women approached the warden, seeking permission to gather, twice a day, on the oval track outside the prison, simply to pray. The warden said yes. Initially, a small group of women gathered, holding hands, at sunup and again at sundown, to voice their prayers. Days later, the group enlarged as several dozen women joined the circle. By the time I left the prison, as many as 80 women came together to pray. The women prayed for their children, for children in Iraq, for the children of U.S. military people in Iraq, and for the guards in the prison and their families. They prayed for an end to war. Prayers for forgiveness, prayers for compassion, prayers for peace—these were among the greatest signs of hope I’ve ever experienced as women held hands, gathered on the oval track at the Pekin prison. Hand holding hand, we can yet proclaim our nonviolent resistance to what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King called ‘‘the demonic suction cup’’ of U.S. militarism. We do that best when we can stand among those who bear the brunt of war and injustice, and therein seek essential compassion and justice. I think of those who taught me to imagine one hand gently beckoning people into heightened awareness of wrongdoing while the other hand helps offer balance, encouraging people to gain control over their fears. Such hands have been extended to me, throughout my life, but most extraordinarily in prisons, war zones, and impoverished neighborhoods. When overwhelmed by struggles and fears, when shamed by floundering through preventable calamities wrought by human hands, we can still revere the hands that reach out to us.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Kelly, 1997, 4. Ibid., 5. Ibid., 5. Ibid., 5. Buncombe, 2007. Balkwill, 2007.

A Hand for Peace in a Zone of War 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Kelly, 1997, 6. U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, 1991. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Electronic Iraq.

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H U M A N S E C U R I T Y: P R OV I D I N G P RO TECTION WITHOUT S TICKS AND C ARROTS Christine Schweitzer

This chapter focuses on one sector of the broad field of nonviolent intervention that can be called ‘‘nonviolent peacekeeping.’’ Peacekeeping aims to prevent or at least lower the level of violence. While military peacekeeping is dissociative, that is, it aims to keep warring armies apart, unarmed missions try to protect parties within a community: they deal mostly with targeted assassination of individuals, for example, human rights defenders or social activists, or the protection of communities or groups such as refugees returning home. Nonviolent peacekeeping can be used to support those struggling to change their society (nonviolent struggle) or for maintaining their own way of life (nonviolent or social defence), by protecting them and by opening or maintaining open some social space. Sometimes protective accompaniment is used as a generic term to describe these activities. The literature on nonviolent intervention is mainly descriptive. When it does discuss nonviolent peacekeeping, little has been done to put this into a theoretical framework. The important exception is the work on protective This chapter originally appeared in Howard Clark, ed., People Power: Unarmed Resistance and Global Solidarity (London: Pluto Press, 2009).

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accompaniment of Mahony and Eguren, especially their book on Peace Brigades International (PBI).1 They develop a theory of nonviolent deterrence to explain how protective accompaniment works or does not work depending on certain variables. This chapter, drawing on experiences other than PBI, argues deterrence is not the only mechanism operating in nonviolent peacekeeping and suggests integrating different approaches into a framework of an escalation of conflict without arms.

THE THEORY OF NONVIOLENT DETERRENCE The deterrent power of international accompaniment is that it raises the costs of attacking an accompanied activist.2 The aim is to affect the chain of command, from decision makers down, but accompaniment can also give pause to individuals: We should not assume that the thugs who pull the trigger are unaffected by international presence. No one wants an unexpected witness around when they are carrying out a crime. The volunteer’s presence may have a moral influence on individual perpetrators. It also introduces an uncertainty factor—the attacker does not know what the consequences of this witness will be, so unless he has explicit orders that take the accompaniment into account, he is likely to restrain himself rather than risk getting in trouble with his superior.3

Mahony and Eguren go into detail about assessing the impact of accompaniment on political space, and in their subsequent work have further developed procedures on risk assessment for local activists.4 The key protagonists in their work remain the local activists—those who are primarily exposed to violence, those who invite accompaniment and who at times jointly plan its strategic use. Two main criticisms have been made of the nonviolent deterrent theory: 1. In many situations, the external governments most likely to apply pressure are North American or European. This could therefore mean, it is argued, that the tactic uses existing power imbalances, neo-colonial dependencies, and patterns of privilege, even to some extent reproducing them.5 2. The kind of pressure exerted is usually out of the hands of the nonviolent projects, and might sometimes include military threats. In the case of the OSCE’s Kosovo Verification Mission, 1998 to 1999, a large unarmed mission was in effect part of a military escalation: it was introduced by threatening military intervention and its

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denunciation of Serbian atrocities in Kosovo prepared the way for NATO’s 1999 military intervention.

Most nonviolent accompaniment organizations are aware of these problems and take steps to mitigate them. This chapter suggests that there is much to be gained from viewing ‘‘protective accompaniment’’ not just from the perspective of ‘‘deterrence’’ but also from other perspectives and especially that of human security.

UNARMED APPROACHES TO HUMAN SECURITY Human security is distinct from state security. It refers to ‘‘freedom for individuals from basic insecurities caused by gross human rights violations.’’6 It widens the notion of threat to include ‘‘protection of citizens from environmental pollution, transnational terrorism, massive population movements, such infectious diseases as HIV/AIDS, and long-term conditions of oppression and deprivation.’’7 Looking at how NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) provide human security, Slim and Eguren distinguish five main modes of action: 1. Denunciation: publicly pressuring authorities into meeting their obligations and protecting those individuals or groups exposed to abuse. 2. Persuasion: further private dialogue to convince authorities to fulfil their obligations and protect those exposed to violations. 3. Mobilization: discreetly sharing information with selected people, bodies, or states with the capacity to influence the authorities to fulfil their obligations. 4. Substitution: directly providing services or material assistance to the victims of violations. 5. Support to structures and services: empowering existing national and/or local structures by helping projects that enable them to carry out their functions to protect individuals and groups.8

Methods used include humanitarian assistance, presence, and accompaniment; monitoring and human rights reporting; and humanitarian advocacy. Apart from substitution, the other modes of action directly refer to the goal of opening space and protecting civil society in resistance. As well as deterrence, two other mechanisms are at work: persuasion defined as making authorities act of their own accord, and substitution defined as the NGO acting in place of the authorities. The Nonviolent Peaceforce Feasibility study—after studying many examples of peace teams, civil peace services, larger-scale unarmed monitoring

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missions as well as military peacekeeping—identified the following sources of protection in addition to deterrence.9 • Identity. Factors here might be age, gender, country of origin, religion, and others. • Role (peacekeeper) and who you represent (for example, the UN). This has become important in international missions when members of those missions would probably not have been respected because of their identity alone. • Law and tradition. (For example, social norms against harming unarmed opponents or of hospitality). • Communication: making oneself known and trusted by creating personal relationships, using rational argument and moral appeal, or setting examples, by acting in ways that differ from usual, expected patterns (such as working in teams whose members come from nations known as enemies of each other).10

NONVIOLENT PEACEFORCE IN SRI LANKA Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP) shows some of these nondeterrent factors at work in Sri Lanka. NP is a young international NGO founded with the goal of developing an alternative to military peacekeeping through deploying large numbers of nonviolent field staff. It launched its first project in Sri Lanka in late 2003 at the invitation of and in partnership with local groups. NP in Sri Lanka (NPSL) consists of a headquarters in Colombo and five teams of approximately 20 to 25 internationally recruited field team members (most of them from countries from the Global South), applying unarmed peacekeeping methods such as protective accompaniment, mediation, observing, and reporting in volatile areas in the North and East of Sri Lanka. Their objectives are to reduce the level of tension and prevent violence; support and improve the safety, confidence, and ability of Sri Lankan peacemakers and other civilians to address conflict in nonviolent ways; and work with Sri Lankans to provide human security and deter resumption of violent conflict in partnership with Sri Lankans. Primary partners and beneficiaries of NPSL’s work are CommunityBased Organizations (CBOs) working to prevent violence and protect human rights on the ground. In addition NP has entered into agreements with national NGOs to assist with election monitoring, accompaniment, and the creation of a Shanti Sena (Peace Army). NPSL is also partnering and cooperating with international NGOs and a UN agency. It has played key roles in resolving disputes among ethnic and other groups, securing the release of child soldiers, providing protective presence in camps for displaced

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people and at temple festivals, monitoring the delivery of aid to Tsunamiaffected areas, and accompanying local aid workers who are under threat in certain areas. The first field team members were trained in the approach of George Lakey of Training for Change—emphasizing four elements of nonviolent peacekeeping: accompaniment, presence, monitoring, and interpositioning. They were to apply the first three. However, on arriving in Sri Lanka, it quickly became clear that these elements did not constitute the full repertoire of activity for NPSL. Ellen Furnari summarizing the early internal reports, noted that specific methods and activities included:11 • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

connecting people to resources linking CBOs with national NGOs and International Organizations (IOs) facilitating people to connect with local leaders/authorities networking CBOs in different places with each other, making them known to other people accompanying activists or other threatened people providing transportation when appropriate for peace work, crisis management, or protection presence at events or places at risk facilitation within or between communities including mediation and/ or building bridges over communication and community barriers documentation of threats to human rights and/or violence support of local groups and individuals including accompanying local NGO workers as requested documentation, monitoring, and fact-finding that contributes to rumor control or supports nonviolent problem solving visiting and listening consulting with local activists and people in general on options of what to do in crisis supporting the development of the Rapid Deployment Peace Brigade of Sarvodaya providing safe places to meet introducing International Non-Governmental Organization (INGO) and IOs to areas that are difficult, remote, or familiar to NP helping build nonviolent alternatives supporting early warning efforts supporting new, emerging leaders working for nonviolent solutions to individual and community problems training in nonviolence and nonviolent methods and sharing inspiration and experiences of peace and human rights work from different parts of the world or different regions of Sri Lanka

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• supporting free and fair elections through work with People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL) • being a trusted partner to think about and plan difficult issues, especially in a crisis.

This list—together with the detailed team reports not publicly available— indicate that additional elements are necessary to accompaniment, presence, and monitoring.12 Two major sets of activities link people to authorities or agencies and support meetings and dialogue at the community level, while training is a further addition. Clearly, none of these would fit into the classic ‘‘dissociative’’ definition of peacekeeping. However, they are part of a strategy to provide human security since most have the goal of increasing people’s well-being by helping them to get access to aid, solving conflicts that otherwise would probably lead to communal violence and killings, and helping civil society groups to come together to develop their own activities against violence and human rights violations. Moreover, this list matches rather well with the five modes of action of Slim and Eguren—only ‘‘substitution’’ is missing. NP has neither the means of enforcement available to ‘‘robust’’ (military) peacekeepers, nor does it have ‘‘carrots’’ in forms of humanitarian aid. This has often required explanation and at first some disappointed expectations by local people who associate INGOs with aid. NP found that it needed a lot of time to explain its particular approach of nonviolent peacekeeping, and finding and building trust. Until recently, if asked what NP’s source for security of its own staff was, the answer would have been: ‘‘to be known and trusted by the local community.’’ So the impact has depended on personal relations: ‘‘our relationships deepen as trust builds over time and as our own understanding of situations matures, we are able to have more impact.’’ Although NP started to build up an international Emergency Response Network following the example of PBI, this network is much less effective. During the first two years in Sri Lanka it was never used, and when it was used—twice in early 2006—the response rate was disappointing. Therefore NP falls short of having the kind of international clout needed in the eyes of PBI to achieve protection for those they accompany and for their own staff. Nevertheless, NP has been a protection in many cases. Countless times teams have accompanied local activists and aid workers, mediated in community conflicts, and coordinated and maintained a presence at events where forced recruitment (abduction of children) was feared. In May 2006, however, NP and some other INGOs came under direct attack by unknown perpetrators. A grenade exploded in front of their office,

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wounding one of its international staff. Although not knowing for sure, the assumption is that NP’s nonpartisan approach, which has involved contacts and accompaniment to all sides in the multiple-sided conflicts in that area of Sri Lanka, has become a threat to one or the other of these sides. The trust that NP had built in the community had not been sufficient to protect it from the attack (though of course the perpetrators themselves may have come from outside the community). From this point NP began to engage more forcefully than before in the strategy of nonviolent deterrence, using its contacts to officials, international agencies, and embassies to develop international clout.

BALKAN PEACE TEAM The Balkan Peace Team (BPT) was an international volunteer project working in Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia between 1994 and 2001.13 It had a broader mandate than PBI or NP, although it shared the goal of opening space for local actors rather than being one of the countless NGOs in the area following their own agendas and doing their own externally-planned projects. Its main focuses were protection and support of dialogue, with protection being more important in Croatia, while support of dialogue at the civil society level had priority in Serbia and Kosovo.14 Many BPT activities in Croatia had to do with human security. The teams accompanied local human rights activists in trying to prevent the illegal eviction of Serbs from their homes and monitoring the situation in the areas militarily reintegrated into Croatia in 1995 to deter harassment or worse of the remaining Serbs. BPT was an experiment in combining several roles that other projects tended to keep apart. Unlike many peace building projects, it focused on human security/protection (civil peacekeeping) without rigidly limiting its role to this one aspect. And it allowed itself to get involved in a range of peace building activities without feeling that doing so would lose its character or endanger its nonpartisanship. The ways in which BPT made a difference included: • Serving a preventive function in regard to potential human rights violations. • Fulfilling a mediating role between local NGOs and international organizations or NGOs. In Croatia, BPT was often called on because, as an international NGO, it had easier access to other international organizations than local activists. Bigger international bodies sometimes paid lip-service to local involvement but rarely took local groups seriously.

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• Serving as a bridge between local NGOs or private citizens and local authorities in the same way as NP does in Sri Lanka. • Facilitating contact between NGOs from ‘‘different sides.’’ As internationals, BPT had more freedom of movement between the conflict areas than local NGOs. • This placed the organization in the position to support civil society dialogue. Meetings mediated by BPT between activists and students from Serbia proper and Kosovo did not take place abroad (as with most dialogue projects), but with people accompanied by BPT to visit each other in their towns, so giving participants more sense of ownership over the meeting than in an international workshop. • Carrying out an active advocacy role. BPT alerted other international organizations about, for example, the policy of Croatia regarding refugees or occasions when the practices of international bodies were not very helpful.

BPT was able to play these different functions because it was an international project. And in many instances its effectiveness probably can be explained by the deterrence theory. But there is one important modification: The former Yugoslavia was an arena with a multitude of international interveners, many—and the most conspicuous—of them being backed by military force. BPT made a point of distancing itself from high-profile international interventions, both on the symbolic level (not using the fancy four-wheeldrive white cars favored by the UN and EU) and on the practical level by seeking dialogue rather than invoking the threat of international power. So while it certainly profited from this power, its approach was different from PBI’s, and the sources of its influence consisted rather in their being different from the rest of the international community.

ADDITIONAL EXAMPLES AND DISCUSSIONS • Peacekeeping is not confined to ‘‘internationals.’’ There are more local or national initiatives than tend to be recognized in international literature. The probably best-known examples are the Pakistani and Indian peace armies as developed by Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Gandhi, and a number of local peace teams or peace monitoring missions that can be found in such varied countries as Croatia, Indonesia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and, of course, India today.15 Their effectiveness is probably mainly derived from respect in the community, being centered inward, not outward to the international world. The focus of the Indian Shanti Sena is and was on convincing those ready to apply violence and to strengthen the communities to resist that violence, using

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methods of dialogue, counteracting rumors, physical interpositioning, and aid and reconstruction.16 • A relationship of a two-layered protection scheme has been sketched in NP’s work to develop a project in Mindanao, Philippines. In brief, this system is that the local communities look after the international field team members, making sure that they do not fall victim to kidnapping or violence, while the internationals would carry with them the ‘‘international eye,’’ being witnesses from the outside. • The Nonviolent Peaceforce Feasibility Study found that larger-scale unarmed peacekeeping missions, mostly governmental, relied on local people for security, albeit to differing degrees. ‘‘Relying on the Bougainville people to ensure the safety of peace monitors reinforces the realization that peace on Bougainville is the responsibility of the Bougainville people. They are only too aware that, should the safety of the PMG [Peace Monitoring Mission] be placed at risk, there is a very real danger that the peace process will falter. This was emphasized on a number of occasions when Bougainvillians assisted patrols in difficult circumstances.’’17 • Research on the concept of a nonviolence without deterrence or force by a group of German researchers led by Martin Arnold suggests that there is indeed some almost universal mechanism of principled nonviolence taking effect by making an opponent change his or her behavior through what they call ‘‘guetekraft,’’ which they see as an equivalent to ‘‘force of love.’’18

LOOKING FORWARD: THE ESCALATION OF NONVIOLENT INTERVENTION The examples above demonstrate that there are mechanisms other than deterrence to provide human security. In regard to keeping opponents apart, there are obviously different approaches to achieve that. One of the major ones identified is building on trust and protection by the local community, so that attackers would refrain from action not because of fear of sanctions or repercussions from the international wider community, but from within their own community. This seems to be a mechanism working both for international and for local unarmed peacekeepers. But this way of achieving effect seems not always to work as the example of NP showed when in spite of seemingly good relations in the community an attack was carried out against the team. Therefore the idea suggests itself that there is some kind of escalation model of nonviolent intervention. This is the question that will be pursued in the last paragraphs of this chapter.

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NONVIOLENT ESCALATION The activities of international nonviolent intervention discussed here have all been based on an invitation from local activists and have at least to some degree been strategized with local activists. Any escalation model therefore needs to be based on the strategy of local groups and developed as a transnational strategic element. Furthermore, to the extent that the focus of escalation is nonviolent peacekeeping, human security, or protection, it has to be viewed in the context of the range of activities—by locals as well as internationals—under that heading. Theodor Ebert, building on Gene Sharp’s work, has defined three stages of escalation in nonviolent action; each stage having both subversive/opposition and constructive elements.19 This escalation is presented in the context of the growing extent to which those ruled withdraw their consent and refuse to obey. However, while transnational nonviolent intervention works in alliance with local movements, it does not really include this dimension of struggle. For instance, a powerful weapon of nonviolent movements, such as withdrawal of cooperation, is not available to international nonviolent peacekeepers on the ground, even if ultimately sanctions and boycotts might be tools used by transnational movements of solidarity. Sharp himself has commented on transnational intervention that: World opinion on the side of the nonviolent group will by itself rarely produce a change in the opponent’s policies. Frequently a determined opponent can ignore hostile opinion until and unless it is accompanied by, or leads to, shifts in power relationships, or threatens to do so.20

This finds support from John Paul Lederach who argues that, for conflict transformation to take place, a counter power has to be developed to challenge the unequal distribution of political power, to clarify the issues in conflict, and to bring about a new relationship between the parties in conflict.21 It may be helpful to lay out some of the functions of intervention according to a scale of nonviolence. 1. Protection through persuasion of those who would otherwise threaten protected parties. 2. Protection through sources of power internal to the society in which the conflict takes place. Here the interveners may be either locals (Shanti Sena) or internationals who have gained respect and trust through their previous work. 3. Protection through mobilization (discreet sharing of information with those who can influence those responsible).

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4. Protection through shaming (public denunciation) that often goes together with the threat of undefined or vague sanctions (‘the international eye’)—the PBI deterrence approach. At this point the escalation ladder becomes increasingly coercive and the mechanisms are more likely to be carried out by governments than by nonviolent groups. 5. Protection through the threat of concrete sanctions. As the UN has applied other sanctions when military peacekeeping is failing, it should be possible that a nonviolent peacekeeping mission could also be backed up in this way. 6. Protection through international sanctions. By now, the escalation ladder is in transition from coercive to military action. 7. Protection through the threat with direct enforcement—an example would be the (unarmed) Kosovo Verification Mission of the OSCE in Kosovo from 1998 to 1999, that made the threat with a NATO intervention as backup. 8. Direct military action.

This chapter needs to end with two warnings. The first is that all this is highly speculative and based more on intuitive insights and on assumptions held by local partners or the interveners themselves than on hard-core facts. The second is that this escalation ladder does not necessarily reflect growing effectiveness. It would need much further and comparative research into projects and missions of this type of unarmed or nonviolent intervention to be able to draw conclusions on that question.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Mahony and Eguren, 1997. See also Nagler, 2004, 28–35. As proposed by Mahony and Eguren, 1997; also Mahony, 2004, 2006. Mahony, 2004, 8. Mahony and Eguren, 1997. Kinane, 2000; Boothe and Smithey, 2007. A Human Security Doctrine for Europe, 2004. Human Security Now, 2003, 6. Derived from Slim and Eguren, 2004. Schweitzer et al, 2001. Ibid., Chapter 2, Summary Furnari, 2006, 260–268. Nonviolent Peaceforce, 2006.

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13. The Balkan Peace Team was founded and run by a group of mainly European-based peace organizations from Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. They included Austrian Peace Service, International Fellowship of Reconciliation, Peace Brigades International, War Resisters’ International, Federation for Social Defense (Germany), Brethren Service (U.S.), and MAN (Mouvement pour une alternative nonviolente [France]). Its tightly-run coordinating office was based in Germany. 14. M€ uller, 2004; Schweitzer and Clark, 2002; Schweitzer 2005. 15. Further examples include Shanti Sena, Sri Lanka; peace teams set up in eastern Croatia; the Philippine NGO, Bantay Ceasefire monitoring in Mindanao. 16. Weber, 1996, 116–117. 17. Foster, 1999. 18. See www.guetekraft.de (only in German) and Arnold, 2011. 19. Ebert, 1981. 20. Sharp, 1973, 662. 21. Lederach, 1997.

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P S Y C H E D U P T O S AV E P S Y C H O L O G Y: A TA L E O F A C T I V I S T S ’ E F F O R T S T O R E S I S T C O M P L I C I T Y I N U. S . H U M A N R I G H T S V I O L AT I O N S P O S T– 9 / 1 1 Jill Latonick-Flores and Daniel J. Adamski

Individuals form social activist groups based, in part, on shared values and on aspects of their own identity that support these values. As professionals ethically committed to ‘‘do no harm,’’ psychologists began organizing among themselves when, in late 2004, the New York Times reported that detainees at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were being treated in strange and seemingly abusive ways.1 The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), a decidedly independent source for the monitoring of international human rights compliance, reported that a group of ‘‘psychologists and psychological workers’’ had played an uncertain role in the mistreatment of persons held in detention centers worldwide, including the center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.2 One aspect of this mistreatment was described as mental torture and was conceptualized as distinct from physical torture. So-called Behavior Science Consultation Teams had advised military interrogators in a manner that raised suspicions about their role in potential human rights violations. Alarmingly, the ICRC declared that due to the conditions of their confinement, the treatment of detainees in some instances was ‘‘tantamount to torture.’’3 The article

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highlighted core issues about the role of psychologists in these circumstances, including the ethical considerations of psychological workers as related to secret national security situations, and it specified the obscure characteristics of abuses, noting ‘‘. . . one regular procedure was making uncooperative prisoners strip to their underwear, having them sit in a chair while shackled hand and foot to a bolt in the floor, and forcing them to endure strobe lights and loud rock and rap music played through two close loudspeakers, while the air-conditioning was turned up to maximum levels.’’4 After 9/11 Vice President Dick Cheney told the American public that it was time to remove constraints on human rights protections and to work the ‘‘dark side’’ of intelligence gathering.5 And according to Cofer Black, onetime director of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) counterterrorism unit: ‘‘After 9/11, the gloves came off.’’6 Newsweek reporters Michael Isikoff and Stuart Taylor Jr., said the term ‘‘the legal equivalent of outer space,’’ which was widely used to describe the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was first used by a Bush administration working group in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 as the group looked for ways to circumvent U.S. obligations to international human rights laws.7 Without Geneva protections, detainees were afforded less legal protection than were iguanas on the island.8 These events and others like them drew anger from citizens and social activists alike. The Convention Against Torture, which the United States signed in 1988, states no public emergency or state of war can be used as a reason to disengage from human rights commitments.9 When the Times report was released, institutional policies and domestic adherence to international law was in disarray. In some situations, certain high-ranking public officials, such as attorneys John Yoo and David Addington, were wittingly complicit in the remaking of American’s commitments to international human rights treaties and obligations. In other situations, the purpose and implications of Bush administration legal changes led to confusion and unwitting participation in the abuses.10 According to White House legal advisor Alberto Gonzales, the Geneva Conventions were rendered ‘‘quaint’’ in the aftermath of 9/11.11 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld proclaimed the detainees at Guantanamo Bay were the ‘‘worst of the worst’’ of terrorists and they likely held information that could be used to prevent further attacks.12 Discussions as to whether the practice of water boarding constituted torture dominated political conversations. At a White House press conference, President Bush questioned the meaning of human rights protections: ‘‘And that Common Article 3 says that, you know, there will be no outrages upon human dignity. It’s like – it’s very vague. What does that mean, outrages upon human dignity? That’s a statement that is wide open to interpretation.’’13

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While the administration overtly professed to a commitment to human rights, it worked to redefine torture and abuse. Domestic law now permitted tactics long known to be violations of human rights and granted impunity to purveyors of the new tactics. Nevertheless, like other professionals, psychologists have the privilege and duty to uphold the highest standards of morality within the ethical and legal realms of their science. To these ends, two principles are foundational to the ethical practice of psychology: to improve human welfare and to ‘‘do no harm.’’ If professional ethics conflict with laws, then these basic principles must supersede the law. Post–9/11 concerns brought into question whether national security was a sufficient reason to re-define professional psychology ethics in such a way that the moral dictum to ‘‘do no harm’’ was relegated from a mandate to an elective. A few persons within the top echelon of the American Psychological Association (APA), the largest group of psychologists in the United States, made efforts to redefine the practice of psychology in a way they believed would best meet national security goals. One example of their efforts is this message from Dr. Gerald Koocher, APA president in 2006: In many of the circumstances we will discuss . . . [how] the psychologist’s role may bear on people who are not ‘‘clients’’ in the traditional sense. Example, the psychologist employed by the CIA, Secret Service, FBI, etc., who helps formulate profiles for risk prevention, negotiation strategy, destabilization, etc., or the psychologist asked to assist interrogators in eliciting data or detecting dissimulation with the intent of preventing harm to many other people. In this case the client is the agency, government, and ultimately the people of the nation (at risk). The goal of such psychologists’ work will ultimately be the protection of others (i.e., innocents) by contributing to the incarceration, debilitation, or even death of the potential perpetrator, who will often remain unaware of the psychologists’ involvement.14

The early challenges of the psychologists’ anti-torture advocacy were twofold. First, the profession needed greater understanding of the processes of legal exceptionalism that permitted widespread abuses. Second, they needed greater understanding of how they had obscured these changes in public conversation and of how they were replicated within the APA. For many activists-psychologists, nothing less than the ‘‘soul of psychology’’ was at stake.15 Psychologists began to mobilize by targeting myths about the effectiveness of torture and psychology in interrogation and resolved to uphold their ‘‘do no harm’’ commitments. Psychologists-turned-activists urged the APA to adhere to international law standards and appealed to its constituents’ ethical integrity as a means of maintaining a core professional identity.

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Using broad strokes, this chapter outlines the key developments in the psychologist–human rights activists’ efforts to restore integrity to the APA.

HISTORICAL MISUSE OF PSYCHOLOGY After 9/11, many human rights organizations were well aware that for over 50 years, from Vietnam to Honduras to Guatemala, psychologists had been involved in the development and dissemination of torture and abuse in general and the development of mental torture in particular.16 The public, including many people engaged in the profession of psychology, seemed less aware of the misuse and abuse of psychological knowledge. Central to this condition was the government’s effort to cover up the misuse of psychological knowledge through use of a sanitized language. In 1963, after years of research into Soviet mind control experiments, the KUBARK manual (a CIA code name for itself) was published. The manual outlined ways that the military could make use of psychological knowledge to further its goals. Specifically, it outlined the nature of the use of psychological knowledge and the militarization of scientific findings: It is true that American psychologists have devoted somewhat more attention to Communist interrogation techniques, particularly ‘‘brainwashing,’’ than to U.S. practices. Yet they have conducted scientific inquiries into many subjects that are closely related to interrogation: the effects of debility and isolation, the polygraph, reactions to pain and fear, hypnosis and heightened suggestibility, narcosis, etc. This work is of sufficient importance and relevance that it is no longer possible to discuss interrogation significantly without reference to the psychological research conducted in the past decade. For this reason a major purpose of this study is to focus relevant scientific findings upon CI [counterintelligence] interrogation. Every effort has been made to report and interpret these findings in our own language, in place of the terminology employed by the psychologists.17

This tradition continued post–9/11 in the APA’s use of Orwellian language.18 In a letter to the American Psychological Association, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) urged the organization to stand firm on its ethical commitment, declaring: ‘‘The history of torture is inexorably linked to the misuse of scientific and medical knowledge. As we move fully into the 21st century, it is no longer enough to denounce or to speak out against torture; rather, we must sever the connection between healers and tormentors once and for all. As guardians of the mind, psychologists are duty bound to promote the humane treatment of all people.’’19

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THE DARK SIDE On September 16, 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney met with Tim Russert on the television show, Meet the Press. Cheney detailed the administration’s response to the recent terrorist attacks. In doing so, he outlined procedures he thought were essential to American success in the fight against terrorists. Cheney encouraged the necessity of ‘‘working the dark side’’ of the intelligence world.20 In time, his short description would prove central to anti-torture advocates’ illumination of the immorality of Bush administration tactics: MR. RUSSERT: When Osama bin Laden took responsibility for blowing up the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, U.S. embassies, several hundred died, the United States launched 60 Tomahawk missiles into his training sites in Afghanistan. It only emboldened him. It only inspired him and seemed even to increase his recruitment. Is it safe to say that that kind of response is not something we’re considering, in that kind of minute magnitude? VICE PRES. CHENEY: I’m going to be careful here, Tim, because I— clearly it would be inappropriate for me to talk about operational matters, specific options or the kinds of activities we might undertake going forward. We do, indeed, though, have, obviously, the world’s finest military. They’ve got a broad range of capabilities. And they may well be given missions in connection with this overall task and strategy. We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in, and so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective. MR. RUSSERT: There have been restrictions placed on the United States intelligence gathering, reluctance to use unsavory characters, those who violated human rights, to assist in intelligence gathering. Will we lift some of those restrictions? VICE PRES. CHENEY: Oh, I think so. I think the—one of the byproducts, if you will, of this tragic set of circumstances is that we’ll see a very thorough sort of reassessment of how we operate and the kinds of people we deal with. There’s—if you’re going to deal only with sort of officially approved, certified good guys, you’re not going to find out what the bad guys are doing. You need to be able to penetrate these organizations. You need to have on the payroll some very unsavory characters if,

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in fact, you’re going to be able to learn all that needs to be learned in order to forestall these kinds of activities. It is a mean, nasty, dangerous dirty business out there, and we have to operate in that arena. I’m convinced we can do it; we can do it successfully. But we need to make certain that we have not tied the hands, if you will, of our intelligence communities in terms of accomplishing their mission. MR. RUSSERT: These terrorists play by a whole set of different rules. It’s going to force us, in your words, to get mean, dirty, and nasty in order to take them on, right? And they should realize there will be more than simply a pinprick bombing. VICE PRES. CHENEY: Yeah, the—I think it’s—the thing that I sense— and, of course, that’s only been a few days, but I have never seen such determination on the part of—well, my colleagues in government, on the part of the American people, on the part of our friends and allies overseas, and even on the part of some who are not ordinarily deemed friends of the United States, determined in this particular instance to shift and not be tolerant any longer of these kinds of actions or activities.

In an ironic twist of fate, and perhaps unknown to Cheney himself, his framing of the ‘‘dark side’’ term facilitated greater understanding of the secret activities by allowing people to generalize meaning of the term across multiple domains of experiences: that is, to connect the dots between overt support of human rights and covert violation of U.S. treaties and obligations. During the interview, Cheney specifically described a reassessment of U.S. operations around wartime tactics and in forming alliances with those persons who violate human rights. In short, ‘‘No discussions’’ meant don’t ask questions of your government. ‘‘Operating in the shadows’’ meant secrecy without accountability. ‘‘Having on the payroll some very unsavory characters,’’ meant colluding with those who violate international standards for human rights. ‘‘Certified good guys’’ implied that adhering to international human rights laws was restrictive. ‘‘We have to operate . . . in the mean, nasty, dangerous dirty business’’ to be ‘‘successful’’ was a warning that further harm could come to the American people if the ‘‘dark side’’ was not accommodated. Further, Cheney implied that there was no other choice in the matter. Over the ensuing years, according to popular opinion polls, Cheney’s advocacy of ‘‘dark side’’ strategies seemed in line with many of those people surveyed. A January 2005 Associated Press poll found that 53 percent of Americans would agree to torture, with 37 percent opposed. In late 2005, similar results were obtained with 61 percent of Americans surveyed believing torture is justified and only 36 percent saying it could never be justified.

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By 2008, a Pew Survey found that 48 percent of those surveyed believed that torture is acceptable. Eighty-two percent of FOX News Channel viewers said that torture is acceptable in ‘‘a wide range’’ of situations.21

SAYING ‘‘YES’’ TO TORTURE BY DEHUMANIZING OTHERS Torture is a war crime; a crime against humanity. And, assuming the polls have it right, also part of the ‘‘accumulation’’ is the fact that a majority of our fellow citizens have been frightened into believing that it is permissible to dehumanize others to the point of torture.22 —Ray McGovern, Ex-CIA Analyst and Antiwar Activist

Popular culture characterized torture as an effective means of gaining information for national security purposes. In the United States and the United Kingdom, public understanding of torture was influenced by portrayals on television of its circumstances and forms. Jack Bauer, the anti-hero policeman played by Keifer Sutherland in the series 24, is credited with making great strides for the good using torture tactics. Military interrogators in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib reported soldiers imitated the tactics portrayed on the television series.23 In a series of articles titled ‘‘Torture Hits Home,’’ Mother Jones magazine discussed the FOX News Channel series Voluntary Confinement. The reality show subjected people to ‘‘days of isolation . . . just a few hours of sleep and minimal food. [And] . . . to the amplified screams of infants and hours stuffed into a small box that kept getting hotter.’’ One contestant saw ‘‘little gray rabbits staring up at him.’’ The producers of the show felt as if their tactics were safe and ethical because the process was vetted by psychologists and physicians who monitored the participants’ destabilization.24 Mother Jones magazine reporter Michael Mechanic asked psychologist Philip Zimbardo, a professor emeritus at Stanford University well known for his 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, whether he thought the television show had any redeeming characteristics. ‘‘My sense,’’ Zimbardo replied, ‘‘is it’s a debasement of human nature, and it doesn’t matter if the process is a competition, a game show, or a war.’’ Psychologists, like other human rights organizers, recognized that this sort of entertainment desensitizes audiences to the suffering of others. In the process everyone involved is dehumanized. Public figures engaged in the same practice, repeatedly depicting the detainees at Guantanamo Bay as the ‘‘worst of the worst.’’25

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When coupled with the myth that torture was an effective means of dehumanization, these descriptions seemed likely to foster the acceptance of torture and abuse. Psychologists for Social Responsibility, an organization of psychologists working to build cultures of peace with social justice, collaborated with military interrogators to deconstruct the myth that torture was an effective means of gaining information for national security purposes.26 The findings from this collaboration were distributed to human rights organizations in the United States and around the globe. Survivors of torture taught human rights advocates about abuses and the processes that enfold them after the events of 9/11. Among untold dozens of others, the stories of Moazzam Begg, an Islamic bookstore owner of British descent who was captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan and psychologically and physically abused at Bagram, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, helped human rights advocates weave together the insidious processes of legal exceptionalism and psychological torture.27 Mahar Arar, a Canadian citizen born in Syria, was abducted by U.S. officials as he traveled through New York. He was taken to Syria and tortured. On his release, he made efforts to communicate to the public how innocents could be kidnapped and abused during the United States’s practice of ‘‘extraordinary rendition.’’28 Anti-torture advocates communicated stories of the tortured and disappeared when they could not speak for themselves. Physicians for Human Rights, an organization of health professionals who work to investigate the health consequences of human rights violations and stop them, was instrumental in informing concerned persons about the insidious nature of psychological torture. This effort culminated in the subsequent release of an in-depth report titled ‘‘Leave No Marks.’’ In addition to specifying differences between physical torture and psychological torture, the report sheds light on ways that psychological torture could be concealed from human rights observers and how to obscure the ways that it harmed prisoners. Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition, the only organization founded by and for survivors of torture, gave their accounts of the effects of mental torture in a video presentation called Breaking the Silence.29

ORGANIZING FOR A MORAL PSYCHOLOGY: THE EFFORT TO BE HUMAN After the ICRC report was leaked, several professional associations in the United States began issuing resolutions clearly stating their expectations for ethical conduct within the confines of their professional ethics. The APA and the American Medical Association set clear standards by stating their members should not participate in interrogations. The APA responded to member

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dissent by setting up a task force called Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS).30 Eventually, in opposition to the APA efforts to include psychologists in potentially unethical positions during military interrogations, two members of the task force, psychologists David Wessels and Jean Maria Arrigo, called on the APA to set aside the report and its conclusions. Wessels resigned from the task force and Arrigo went on to develop guidelines for ethical interrogation practices. Arrigo was also instrumental in developing support networks for whistleblowers who came forward during the Abu Ghraib scandal. Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, spoke with Wessels and Arrigo in the first of many interviews on APA complicity with Bush administration torture and abuse tactics.31 Many psychologists continued to work within the auspices of the APA to create needed change (the APA has many subdivisions in which psychologists address specific areas of the science). Other concerned psychologists sought to effect change by forming alliances with human rights organizations, lawyers, and other anti-torture activists. The most outspoken psychologists submitted suggestions to the APA leadership council and encouraged the highest attainable ethical positions.32 The Coalition for an Ethical Psychology is a small group consisting of research psychologists, psychoanalysts, an attorney, and at least one psychologist specializing in military ethics. This group was highly successful in capturing media attention, which helped explain the political affairs within the APA and its tendencies to undermine ‘‘do no harm’’ principles. Newsweek, the Boston Globe, and the New York Times covered their efforts.33 Frustrated with APA leadership between 2007 and 2008, the group successfully orchestrated the bid of one of its members, Steven J. Reisner, for the APA presidency. Reisner obtained an overwhelming majority of support in preliminary rounds of membership polls but lost in the final vote. Nevertheless, his human rights—based platform was publicized throughout APA candidacy forums, and in the process large numbers of APA members obtained necessary background information about the wrongs of the APA engagement policy. Significantly, Reisner’s candidacy statement contained a plea for humanizing values in face of life’s tragedies: I come from a family of Jewish refugees. My mother is from a small town in Poland. She is the only member of her immediate family who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp. My father is from Warsaw. When the war began, and the Soviet Union and Germany conquered and divided Poland, my father fled into Soviet Russia. He was picked up by the secret police and interrogated with the classic Soviet methods (which now have become American methods).

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My mother told me a story about the first roundup of Jews in her small town when she was 14. The Nazis pushed all the Jews into a small circle and beat those on the outside of the circle with clubs. My mother observed that some of the Jews tried to protect the weak, the elderly, and the very young, while others pushed the weaker ones to the outside to protect themselves. ‘‘I knew from that moment that to be human would not always come naturally,’’ she told me. ‘‘I knew that I would have to make an effort to be human.’’34

RESOLUTIONS Between 2005 and 2008, the APA leadership was presented with a series of resolutions stating that the association should adhere to the highest possible ethical standards. Each submission was met with increasingly stronger statements that the APA was ‘‘unequivocally opposed’’ to torture, yet the APA’s complicity in human rights violations remained. All resolutions contained contradictions and large loopholes that permitted violations of international human rights obligations and subjected psychologists to unethical situations, even if unwittingly.35 Furthermore, the principles expressed could not be practically applied to the problems described by APA critics and human rights advocates, nor could they be overseen by the APA. During the summer of 2007, when the APA held its annual convention in San Francisco, 85 percent of the APA council refused to endorse an independent amendment to its resolutions on psychological ethics that stated ‘‘. . . the roles of psychologists in settings in which detainees are deprived of adequate protection of their human rights should be limited as health personnel to the provision of psychological treatment.’’36 This refusal led many psychologists to believe the APA leadership endorsed the use of psychological knowledge for harm under the guise of national security operations.37 A town hall meeting was held to discuss the status of the changes in ethics and the efforts the APA was making to address the participation of psychologists in detention centers and interrogations. During this meeting, the APA leadership informed Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! that the media were permitted just 10 minutes to cover the discussions. Goodman took to the microphone and told meeting participants of the APA’s attempts to censure large portions of the public discussion. Tellingly, participants voted that the media should continue to cover the event and they did.38 The membership wanted transparency in its workings, even if the leadership did not. In later months, Goodman continued to inform the public about APA/ Bush administration collaborations by claiming many other psychologists were ‘‘in denial’’ about these relations.39

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Those within the APA who advocated psychologist engagement in military interrogations did so, in part, because they felt psychologists could help ensure interrogations were ‘‘safe, legal and effective.’’40 In acting as ‘‘safety officers’’ psychologists could ensure that the treatment of prisoners during interrogations did not slide into the realm of torture. Critics, however, claimed psychologists were being used as experts that could provide legitimacy to the Bush administration’s legalization and legitimization of torture and abuse.41 To protest the APA’s participation in interrogations under the guise of acting as safety officers, bestselling author Mary Pipher returned her Presidential Citation award from the APA. In a letter to the association’s president, she wrote, ‘‘. . . I do not want an award from an organization that sanctions its members’ participation in the enhanced interrogations at CIA ‘black sites’ and at Guantanamo.’’42 In August 2008, the Raging Grannies, a peace and advocacy group, many of whom were dressed in brightly colored aprons, protested the claim of the APA’s ‘‘safety officers’’ outside the Boston convention by ‘‘sounding off ’’ on this uneasy relationship: I don’t know but I’ve been told Psychologists are way too bold They’re in bed with Rice and Bush Ethics gone with a great big whoosh! They’re ‘‘guardians’’ ‘‘saving lives’’ We don’t buy one-uh their lies Waterboarding, it’s a game Career advancement, with no shame Dealers of death—torture and pain They do it for financial gain They’re not Doctor, Mister, Miz Let’s call them what they really is Murderers with PhDs Torturing with impunity We demand that APA Stop all torture, right away. Sound Off, Sound Off Sound Off, Sound Off Sound Off, 1-2-3-4 NO MORE!

Many more psychologists began to distance themselves from the APA. With the intention of pressuring the APA to increase its commitment to international human rights law, psychologist Ghislane Boulanger founded

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the ‘‘Withhold Apa Dues’’ activist group. Her effort resulted in several hundred APA members withholding their yearly dues from the APA. Group members were encouraged to write a letter of protest to the Chief Executive Officer of the APA stating their demands for change and offering to resume membership dues once changes were implemented. Members advertised their cause by sporting blue ribbons during APA conventions. After withholding dues for a period of two years, some members chose to leave the APA. Individual letters of resignation were publicized to highlight the outrage of wellknown APA members.43 Michael Jackson, Associate Professor of Psychology at Earlham University, made a resolution requesting changes in APA policy.44 Focusing on the conflicts between international human rights laws and changes in domestic laws and APA policies, the resolution called for the adoption of ethical congruency between these areas. Jackson submitted his resolution to his department and then to the APA. His efforts were publicized in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Over the next year, 10 universities adopted similar resolutions and sent them to the APA.45 The APA continued to create the appearance of complicity in human rights violations as late as 2008 by contributing to the misuse of psychological principles and practices (acts of commission) and failing to respond to well-documented abuses of psychology (acts of omission). With the slogan, ‘‘There is no right way to do a wrong thing!’’ Psychologists for Social Responsibility’s End Torture Action Committee outlined ways the APA side-stepped ethical principles and urged the following corrections: Acts of Commission • Militarization of psychological knowledge and practice. The APA still lauds its Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) report, developed by a task force dominated by military-intelligence officials and consultants, several with direct involvement in chains of command implicated in torture.46 Given the conditions under which the PENS report was produced, the APA needs to heed the call of the two independent members and set aside the report and its conclusions. • Dual roles. After Bush administration policies redefined torture from ‘‘pain and suffering’’ to ‘‘prolonged pain and suffering,’’ psychologists and others became complicit in calibrating cruelty, under the guise of acting as ‘‘safety’’ officers. This dual role imposes an intractable burden upon psychologists and stands in opposition to established UN human rights procedures and medical ethics. • Escape clauses. Ethics code 1.02 states that psychologists can choose to follow the ethics code or U.S. law when faced with a conflict between the two. Because U.S. law has been altered to circumvent Geneva

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principles, this standard would permit persons to discard Geneva principles and remain compliant with APA ethics. The APA needs to provide clear direction and mandates for international human rights laws and increase the involvement of the entire membership when making these decisions. Acts of Omission • ‘‘Black sites.’’ The APA must advocate to stop torture and to refrain from allowing psychologists’ participation in secret detention centers. Psychologists implicitly lend credibility to structural cruelties when operating in settings where persons are held outside of or in violation of international law. • Extraordinary renditions/disappearances. It is unethical for psychologists to actively participate in situations where enforced disappearances and incommunicado detention occur without charge or trial. Current APA policy does not address these practices. • Inadequate safeguards against charges of torture place psychologists in jeopardy of charges of war crimes. Of the 19 techniques prohibited by the APA in 2007, many techniques—such as isolation and sensory deprivation—are used to gather intelligence for national security purposes and they are often routine conditions of confinement. Isolation for up to 30 days was Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) at Guantanamo in 2004.47 In darkened cells or in cells that are constantly flooded with light, isolation can contribute to the increased dependency of a person on other human beings and to problems with concentration, memory, and orientation. Isolation can result in hallucinations. Psychologists served as Behavioral Science Consultants aiding interrogations during the time this SOP was developed and implemented. The APA needs to make clear that these techniques and similar ones are unethical, whether used in interrogation or as part of the conditions of confinement. Further, it needs to investigate potential involvement of psychologists in the implementation of isolation and other abuses. • Unanswered ethics complaints. In 2005, Major John Leso was documented to have been present during portions of the interrogation of Mohamed al Qahtani. Despite ethics charges having been filed against Major Leso in 2006, two years later, the APA has made no statement about these serious charges.48

Anti-torture activists asserted psychologists held inadequate authority in military chain of command situations and were no better equipped to end abuses than were other professionals. The Red Cross is the official organization whose duty it is to monitor adherence to international human rights, not the APA.

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PSYCHOLOGISTS REJECT THE DARK SIDE49 Gradually, the ‘‘dark side’’ metaphor became an easily recognized term that described how the Bush administration veered from its international human rights obligations and encouraged public acquiescence for their new torture paradigm. Activists, investigators, and human rights organizations made use of the dark side metaphor to expose the underbelly of abuses and related human rights violations along with the processes of legal exceptionalism that accompanied them. Jane Mayer detailed the military’s use of psychologists Mitchell and Jenson in her book, The Dark Side.50 Her investigations illuminated the connections between psychological knowledge and psychological practitioners who were said to ‘‘reverse engineer’’ military survival teachings (also known as SERE training) by transforming them into torture tactics that could be used against detainees. Likewise, the documentary Taxi to the Dark Side described the kidnapping, torture, and death of an innocent taxi driver presumed to be a terrorist in Afghanistan. An editorial in The Washington Post revealed, ‘‘Cheney’s Dark Side Is Showing.’’51 In late 2007, APA members Dan Aalbers, Ruth Fallenbaum, and Brad Olson took the issues into their own hands after learning of an APA bylaw that allowed the entire membership of the organization to develop policy through voting on referendum proposals. The bylaw requires that 1,000 members support a proposal, which can then be sent to the entire association for a vote. A petition Web site was used to track progress toward obtaining 1,000 signatures and to explain the referendum.52 Members produced the following: Whereas torture is an abhorrent practice in every way contrary to the APA’s stated mission of advancing psychology as a science, as a profession, and as a means of promoting human welfare; Whereas the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Mental Health and the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture have determined that treatment equivalent to torture has been taking place at the United States Naval Base at Guant
anamo Bay, Cuba;53 Whereas this torture took place in the context of interrogations under the direction and supervision of Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs) that included psychologists;54 Whereas the Council of Europe has determined that persons held in CIA black sites are subject to interrogation techniques that are also equivalent to torture,55 and because psychologists helped develop abusive interrogation techniques used at these sites;56 Whereas the International Committee of the Red Cross determined in 2003 that the conditions in the U.S. detention facility in Guant
anamo

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Bay are themselves tantamount to torture,57 and therefore by their presence psychologists are playing a role in maintaining these conditions; Be it resolved that psychologists may not work in settings where persons are held outside of, or in violation of, either International Law (e.g., the UN Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions) or the U.S. Constitution (where appropriate), unless they are working directly for the persons being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights.58

In a video taped presentation that highlighted the urgency of voting for the referendum, Psychologists for Social Responsibility members explained the referendum’s goals, sent the tape to pertinent divisions within the APA, and posted it on their Web site and on YouTube. The referendum was also endorsed by a multitude of anti-torture advocates including the School of Americas Watch, Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition, and Physicians for Human Rights. By 2008, members of the APA held a clearer understanding of the marriage of institutional and government torture tactics. They knew that like the Bush administration, top officials of the APA had taken the wrong side of the struggle. The referendum passed by a majority of votes, 8,792 to 6,157.59 In an article about the passing of the referendum, psychologists Stephen Soldz and Brad Olson declared ‘‘Psychologists Reject the Dark Side.’’60 According to Withhold APA Dues, the passage of the APA membershipwide referendum banning psychologists’ work within the U.S. military chain of command in detention facilities that operate outside of or in violation of U.S. law, international human rights statutes, and/or the Geneva Conventions was historic in several respects. It represented the first member-sponsored referendum brought under Article IV, section 5, of the APA bylaws in the APA’s history. Second, it was passed with one of the largest voter responses in APA history for any vote, including presidential elections. Third, it represented a resounding repudiation on the part of the full population of American psychologists of the APA’s policy of supporting psychologists’ consultation in detainee interrogations in such settings.61 As of this writing, the APA is failing to implement the changes expressed in the referendum by claiming that previous resolutions accomplished the same goals.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT This chapter is gratefully dedicated to those survivors of torture who have made grueling sacrifices to bring their horror to light and, in doing so, have made the greatest contributions to anti-torture advocacy. And to those who did not survive or whose horrors remain hidden, you are not forgotten.

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NOTES 1. Lewis, 2004. 2. Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross (IRCR), 2004. 3. Ibid. 4. Lewis, 2004. 5. ‘‘The Vice President Appears on Meet the Press with Tim Russert,’’ 2001. 6. Gaston, 2007. 7. Isikoff and Taylor, 2006. 8. Guantanamo Voices, 2009. 9. United Nations, 1997. 10. Mayer, 2008; Sands, 2008. 11. ‘‘Geneva Accords Quaint and Obsolete,’’ 2006. 12. Fisher, 2009. 13. ‘‘Geneva Accords Quaint and Obsolete,’’ 2006. 14. Kaye, 2009. 15. Soldz and Olson, 2008. 16. McCoy, 2006. 17. KUBARK, 1963. 18. ‘‘Guantanamo Bay Use of Psychologists for Interrogations 2006–2008.’’ 19. Goodman, 2008. 20. ‘‘The Vice President Appears on Meet the Press with Tim Russert,’’ 2001 21. McGovern, 2005. 22. Ibid. 23. Lagouranis and Mikaelian, 2007. 24. Mechanic, 2008. 25. Fisher, 2009. 26. Arrigo and Wagner, 2007. 27. Begg, 2006. 28. Mayer, 2005. 29. Pilger, 2003; Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition, n.d. 30. ‘‘American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security,’’ 2005. 31. Goodman, 2007. 32. Soldz and Olson, 2008. 33. Ephron, 2008; Soldz and Olson, 2008; Carey, 2008. 34. ‘‘Candidates for APA President: Dr. Steven J. Reisner,’’ 2008. 35. Soldz and Olson, 2008. 36. Ibid. 37. ‘‘WithholdAPADues,’’ n.d. 38. Goodman, ‘‘APA Members Hold Fiery Town,’’ 2007. 39. Goodman, ‘‘Psychologists in Denial,’’ 2007b. 40. ‘‘American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security,’’ 2005. 41. Soldz and Olson, 2008. 42. Goodman, ‘‘Renowned Psychology Author,’’ 2007. 43. ‘‘WithholdAPADues,’’ n.d.

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44. ‘‘Resolution Regarding Participation by Psychologists in Interrogations in Military Detention Centers,’’ 2007. 45. ‘‘Resolutions Urge Psychology Assn. to Take Tougher Stand on Interrogating Prisoners,’’ 2007. 46. ‘‘American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security,’’ 2005. 47. ‘‘Changes in Guantanamo Bay SOP Manual,’’ 2007. 48. Bond, 2007. 49. Soldz and Olson, 2008. 50. Mayer, 2008. 51. Froomkin, 2005. 52. ‘‘Petition to APA,’’ n.d. 53. United Nations Commission on Human Rights, 2006. 54. Miles, 2007. 55. Council of Europe Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, 2007. 56. United Nations Commission on Human Rights, 2007. 57. Information Clearing House, n.d. 58. It is understood that military clinical psychologists would still be available to provide treatment for military personnel. 59. Interrogations and Ethics, 2008. 60. Soldz and Olson, 2008. 61. ‘‘WithholdAPADues,’’ n.d.

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S H U T I T D OW N ! A B R I E F H I S T O R Y O F EFFORTS TO C LO SE L A ESCUELA DE A S E S I N O S (T H E S C H O O L O F A S S A S S I N S ) Jill Latonick-Flores with Father Roy Bourgeois

The School of the Americas Watch (SOA Watch) is a grassroots peace movement based on principles of nonviolent direct action as exemplified by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. Founded in 1983 by Maryknoll Missionary Father Roy Bourgeois, the movement has mobilized many thousands of people toward a distinct goal: to close a military training institute located at Fort Benning, Georgia, once called the School of the Americas (SOA) but renamed in 1998 the Western Hemisphere Institute of Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). The school is known widely throughout Latin America as La Escuela de Asesinos, or the School of Assassins. As a symbol of U.S. foreign policy, the SOA Watch/WHINSEC site is used by SOA Watch activists to educate Americans of the effects of unjust policies and the human costs of a militarized global economy. Racial discrimination, economic deprivation, human rights violations, and environmental injustice are but some of the trajectories of militarized economic policies. The SOA Watch affirms through word and deed that these systems can be converted to more just and peaceful systems, ones that are rooted in cooperation and the affirmation of human connections to the earth and to each other. Once a person’s eyes are opened to the structures that perpetrate

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injustice, it becomes harder to accept conditions that contribute to the suffering of so many for the benefit of so few. It then becomes easier to say ‘‘Nuncas m
as!’’ (No more!) and to undertake the task of enacting a new way of being in the world. We can learn to say ‘‘A better world is possible!’’ and ‘‘Si se puede!’’ (Yes, we can!). The SOA Watch movement aims to increase public awareness of a multitude of issues that create conditions of injustice, inequality, and repression. The SOA Watch’s vision for a better future and its willingness to celebrate and affirm life in the midst of struggle provide the inspiration and hope that have energized the movement for close to two decades. The effectiveness of the SOA Watch lies in its ability to communicate a common purpose, to mobilize multiple avenues of activity toward that purpose, and to work both within and outside of conventional systems to meet its goals. The movement has adapted its strategies across time and circumstance to accommodate shifting political and social realities. Through the perspective of Father Roy Bourgeois, the following account examines a brief history of the SOA Watch movement and explores its origins, its structures, and some of its strategies.1

ORIGINS How do you teach democracy behind the barrel of a gun? —Father Roy Bourgeois, SOA Watch founder

During the 1980s, the populations of Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru, Chile, El Salvador, and Nicaragua lived under the constant threat of death squads, torture, and forced disappearance (the kidnapping, abuse, and frequent murder of citizens). The financial elite in these countries relied on military force to carry out certain economic policies that benefited the powerful few and exploited the resources and cheap labor of the poor. Terror tactics such as demonstration violence—kidnapped and tortured bodies left in public places—were prevalent. In the village of El Mozote, El Salvador, over 900 innocent people were massacred in two days.2 Under such repressive conditions, to speak out against the powerful was to dig your own grave. Untold thousands who were killed, ‘‘disappeared,’’ or tortured into silence were left with no prospects, no ‘‘voice’’ for social or political change. Indeed, help did not come from the North. The U.S. government contributed to the repression in these countries by backing certain military dictators and providing training to soldiers in commando tactics, torture, and various counter-insurgency methods at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas. Although the United States claimed that it was operating to support democratic

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regimes, all too often it propped up military dictators and contributed to the overthrow of democratically elected leaders. Despite rhetoric to the contrary from the SOA/WHINSEC military training school in Fort Benning, Georgia, soldiers typically returned to their countries and waged war against their own people. The insurgents in these instances were poor peasants, religious leaders, human rights leaders, and intellectuals—primarily student and university leaders. Labor leaders and union organizers were also among the prime targets of SOA violence because they worked to change economic conditions. In El Salvador, Archbishop Oscar Romero began pleading to the military to stop the killing. For his efforts he was assassinated on March 24, 1980. But before he was killed, Archbishop Romero avowed that the struggle for justice would continue if he were to die. ‘‘I do not believe in death without resurrection. If I die, I will be resurrected in the voice of the Salvadorian people,’’ he said. He urged those with a voice to speak for those who are voiceless.3 Today a sea change is occurring throughout Latin America. The people are no longer voiceless. They are not powerless. The people of Latin America are louder and stronger than ever. Yet still, too many children in the region live in abject poverty and will die before reaching adolescence. And the militaries are still very much feared and powerful. There is, therefore, still much work to be done to bring an end to U.S. foreign policies wherein the powerful elite throughout the Americas is enriched and the poor continue to suffer.

TORTURE AND MURDER After serving as a navel officer during the Vietnam War, Roy Bourgeois became a priest with the Maryknoll Missionary Order and began working in Bolivia among poor peasants. The poor became his teachers. They taught him how the quality of their lives was harmed by U.S. foreign policy. At that time Bolivia was under the military dictatorship of General Hugo Banzer Suarez, a SOA graduate who is prominently featured at SOA/WHINSEC’s ‘‘Hall of Fame’’ and a brutal dictator responsible for the torture and killings of innocents.4 As a religious person aiding the poor, Father Roy was viewed by the political elite in Bolivia as subversive. He worked in that country for five years before being tortured, imprisoned, and banished from the country. On returning to the United States, Father Roy heard similar stories of torture and oppression mostly from religious persons who had served in South and Central America. On December 2, 1980, four churchwomen from the United States, Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel, and Cleveland Lay Mission Team member Jean

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Donovan, were arrested, raped, and murdered by members of the National Guard of El Salvador. Consequently, these killings brought increased international attention to the gross human rights violations in the region. Two of these women were Father Roy’s close friends. Salvadorian activists, nuns, and priests began to investigate the likelihood of U.S. complicity in these horrors. They discovered that the U.S. army was training Salvadorian soldiers at an army base located in Fort Benning, Georgia.

THE SOA WATCH’S FIRST NONVIOLENT DIRECT ACTION ‘‘Have You Been to Jail for Justice?’’ —song by Anne Feeney

In 1946, the School of the Americas was opened in Panama. It was forced to close in 1984 under the conditions of the Panama Canal Treaty. Thus, in 1983, the School of the Americas was still officially located in Panama. Unofficially, it was training Salvadorian soldiers at Fort Benning. With the skills they received at the training school, Salvadorian soldiers returned home and waged war against their own people. To draw attention to this development, in August 1983, Father Roy and two Salvadorian activists donned military garb and sneaked onto the base after dark. They had a flashlight, some rope, a portable stereo cassette player, and a recording of the speech Archbishop Oscar Romero delivered the night before he was assassinated, his last homily. The base housed 525 Salvadorian soldiers. While the soldiers were sleeping, the trio scaled a large pine tree and blasted Archbishop Romero’s message from the cassette player: I would like to appeal in a special way to the men of the Army, and in particular to the troops of the National Guard, the Police, and the garrisons. Brothers, you belong to our own people. You kill your own brother peasants; and in the face of an order to kill that is given by a man, the law of God should prevail that says: ‘‘Do not kill!’’ No soldier is obliged to obey an order counter to the law of God. No one has to comply with an immoral law. It is time now that you recover your conscience and obey its dictates rather than the command of sin. The Church, the defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, of the dignity of the human person, cannot remain silent before so much abomination. We want the government to seriously consider that reforms mean nothing when they come bathed in so much blood. Therefore, in the name of God, and in the name of this long-suffering people, whose laments rise to heaven every day more tumultuous, I beseech you, I beg you, I command you in the name of God: ‘‘Cease the repression!5

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As Romero’s voice rang through the military base, lights from the dormitories flickered on. Soldiers poured out into the night. The trio, Linda Ventimiglia, Father Larry Rosebaugh, and Father Roy Bourgeois, were apprehended and arrested. All three activists spent over a year in federal prison. This trio would be the first of several thousand to trespass on the base or ‘‘cross the line’’ by enacting nonviolent direct actions, a hallmark of the SOA Watch movement, to close the school.

THE FIRST SOA WATCH VIGIL: NOVEMBER 16, 1990 On the night of November 16, 1989, a Salvadorian Army patrol entered the University of Central America in San Salvador and massacred six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter. Nineteen of the military officers cited for this atrocity had received training at the U.S. Army School of the Americas. On November 16, 1990, the first anniversary of this carnage, Father Roy and 10 activists camped outside of the gates of Fort Benning. For the next 35 days, they participated in a hunger strike during which they only drank water. The hunger strike was successful in generating publicity about the SOA and the atrocities perpetrated by its graduates. This first vigil was made up of religious people. Most of them were nuns and priests who had witnessed first-hand the atrocities in the region. As an extension of their missionary service, their faith was foundational to their effort. But as the movement began to grow, many people who joined were not Catholic and many were not particularly religious. Father Roy aimed to be sensitive to these differences so that the gatherings could be as inclusive as possible: ‘‘What brings us together is a desire for peace and our love for others. We are people of goodwill.’’ Since 1989, an annual vigil with direct action (the pinnacle of which is a solemn funeral procession on Sunday morning) is held every third weekend in November.

THE SOA CLOSES AND RE-OPENS AS WHINSEC ‘‘New Name, Same Shame!’’ —SOA Watch Slogan

Beginning in 1990 and spearheaded by Joseph Kennedy II (D-Mass.), several congressional members began researching connections between the SOA and reports of human rights abuses from Latin America. A real boost

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to the effort came on March 15, 1993, when the United Nations Truth Commission Report was released. It cited the names of specific officers charged with committing atrocities in El Salvador.6 Vicky Imerman of the SOA Watch matched the names cited in the UN Report with names in a U.S. government document. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) permitted Vicky and other SOA Watch researchers to seek the truth about the crimes and those responsible for ordering and carrying them out. In the meantime, SOA Watch activists spent 40 days on the steps of the U.S. Capitol engaging in a juice-only fast to draw congressional attention to the documents that validated what they had been saying for years. These actions coincided with the 103rd and 104th Congresses in which legislation was introduced to investigate the school and cease its funding. Two separate congressional votes came increasingly close to shutting down the school.7 Then, in 1995, the SOA Watch released the documentary, The School of Assassins, narrated by actress Susan Sarandon. The video sold 20,000 copies and was later nominated for an Oscar award.8 The documentary detailed the struggle to educate Congress about the misuse of military funds and the shame the institution had brought on the United States. On August 16, 1996, more than 300 religious leaders organized by Leaders Conference of Women Religious held a prayer vigil outside of the military base at Fort Benning. ‘‘We believe our action is critical in breaking through the wall of ignorance concerning the true nature of the SOA,’’ said Sister O’Brien, a Sister of St. Joseph from New York. ‘‘The veil of silence about U.S. financing and training of Latin American militaries that abuse and violate human rights must be lifted,’’ she added.9 In 1996, a Pentagon report revealed that between the years 1982 and 1991, the United States instructed South and Central American military officers in extortion, torture, beatings, coercions, and various forms of disappearance and demonstration violence.10 Thousands of military officers from 11 countries in South and Central America including Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador were issued the manuals, which were printed in Spanish. This ‘‘veil of silence’’ was raised when on September 24, 1996, a news story by Dana Priest, ‘‘U.S. Instructed Latins on Executions, Torture,’’ appeared in the Washington Post.11 The article detailed portions of the content of the torture manuals used at the SOA between 1982 and 1991 and gave the names of some of the SOA graduates and the human rights violations attributed to their command. The graduates included Roberto D’Aubuisson, ‘‘the leader of El Salvador’s right-wing death squads; 19 Salvadorian soldiers linked to the 1989 assassination of six Jesuit priests; Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, the deposed Panamanian strongman; six Peruvian officers linked to

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killings of students and a professor; and Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez, a Guatemalan officer implicated in the death of an American innkeeper living in Guatemala and to the death of a leftist guerrilla married to an American lawyer.’’12 The Washington Post article generated a number of related newspaper articles and editorials. Public indignation swelled. The following spring, between April 19 and April 29, approximately 200 people demonstrated every day on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. They held signs and large banners protesting the School of Assassins. They handed passersby lists documenting human rights abuses in Latin America and distributed the lists to their congressional representatives. Several of the activists fasted during the 10 days. Others held a mock trial of human rights abusers in a street theatre production that told of the injustices, the plight of those who suffered, and the role of the SOA behind the veil of secrecy and denial.13 Also in 1997, 17 people were arrested for digging a mass grave on the grounds of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.14 Street theatre was used to draw attention to atrocities in Latin America and the grave was made to bury the massacred. That same year, news reports told the story of Medal of Honor recipient Charles Liteky who together with six other SOA Watch activists ‘‘painted anti-SOA messages on the Fort Benning main gate and threw a blood-like substance on the brick wall that marks the entrance to the Army base.’’15 During the 106th Congress, a bipartisan amendment to close the school and conduct a congressional investigation came within 10 votes of passing.16 In December 2000, a Department of Defense Proposal included in the Defense Authorization Bill for fiscal year 2001 closed the SOA.17 It reopened, however, on January 17, 2001, with a new name: the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). According to Father Roy, this change was the result of a slick public relations campaign designed to clean up the school’s image.18 After the events of September 11, 2001, the Freedom of Information Act was restricted in the sense that researchers have found it increasingly difficult to track human rights abuses because the names SOA and WHINSEC are blacked out on the documents released to the public. In spite of SOA/ WHINSEC’s claim that they have nothing to hide, they have become increasingly secretive in this manner.19 In October 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the McGovern (SD)—Sestak-Bishop (GA)—Lewis (GA) amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2010 with a 224 to 190 vote. The amendment forced the public release of names, country of origin, rank, courses taken, and dates of attendance of SOA/WHINSEC’s graduates and instructors to the public.20

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STRUCTURES Trying to explain how so many pulled together in the Oaxaca struggle, Kiado, a young Zapoteca leader, said ‘‘in our language, there is no word for ‘I’. We only exist in relation to one another.’’21 —Lisa Sullivan, SOA Watch Latin American Coordinator

The organizational structure of the SOA Watch is egalitarian and nonhierarchical. Although Father Roy is the founder and figurehead of the movement, he is not the sole person in charge of the SOA Watch. This organization’s structure is marked by cooperation, equality, nonviolence, nonracism, and nondiscrimination. The organization aims for transparency and accountability in all of its endeavors and decision making, as well as in its communications with the general public. Interested activists are included in all major decisions. Like many social change movements, SOA Watch has a Web site, a Facebook page, and can be found on Twitter. The SOA Watch newsletter, Presente! is published three times a year. Communications are in both Spanish and English. Sign language is provided at the annual vigil. In Washington, D.C., five SOA Watch staff share a strip of small rooms adjacent to Catholic University of America, the national university of the Roman Catholic Church. The Maryknoll Missionary order owns the building. The Latin American coordinator and the Latin American Communications coordinator are located in Venezuela. Father Roy’s efficiency apartment, located on Fort Benning Drive, is home to the SOA Watch movement in Georgia. The council meets face to face at least twice a year to coordinate major decisions for the movement. Representatives are elected at regional levels or self-nominated, depending on the number of activists from the region. In between meetings, teleconferencing and e-mail are important ways of communicating. The national council consists of representatives from 12 regions of the United States and Latin America. Leaders from Veterans for Peace and Torture Survivors and Support Coalition International have seats on the council as do persons from the SOA offices in Washington, D.C., and Georgia. The national council coordinates suggestions from the working groups and makes decisions that affect the entire movement. Conflict management strategies are built into a consensus model of decision making. Each decision is shaped by the input of every person or group on the national council. Decisions are not final until an agreement that is acceptable to all members has been reached. Every person has the power to refuse the group decision. Depending on the issue, decision making can last days or months. One

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major decision, the possibility of moving the annual vigil to Washington, D.C., has been discussed for years. SOA Watch working groups allow individuals to affirm issues that are most important to them, to highlight their issue’s relevance to the movement’s goals, and to carry out particular actions. Working groups consist of like-minded persons that come together with a particular focus: Spanishlanguage media, research, legislative action, anti-discrimination, media, translation and interpretation, women’s issues, and direct action are among a number of working groups. There are working groups to bring together the sound equipment for the vigil and there are working groups to raise money.

SOLIDARITY Closing the SOA/WHINSEC is more than simply putting an end to the physical structures of the facilities at Fort Benning. The SOA/WHINSEC represents the militarized arm of oppressive economic, political, and social injustices. Military might is used to enact the unjust policies that benefit multinationals and elite populations at the expense of the poor. These social and economic injustices are rooted in various types of discrimination that include, but are not limited to, race, gender, class, physical ability, and sexism. At meetings and at the annual vigil, people who have suffered the most from the gross human rights violations in Central and South America inform people in the movement of accounts of injustice. Torture survivors speak for themselves, as do peace activists, labor organizers, and students. Indigenous farmers share their knowledge and experience. The SOA Watch learns from the speakers and seeks to collaborate with them in providing information and logistical support for peace and social justice efforts in their regions. Speakers’ stories guide and inspire others in the movement and offer sustenance for activists as they continue the struggle on return to their communities. However, SOA Watch activists acknowledge that speaking out is difficult or impossible for some persons who have been traumatized by past horrors or the possibility of current death threats, as in Colombia. There are those, too, who cannot afford to travel inside the United States to come to the vigil or do not have the appropriate papers and are fearful of speaking out in this country. Workshops, teach-ins, and creative presentations by SOA Watch activists address these types of discriminations and the struggles to change them. In this way and others, the movement strives to examine itself for hidden and obvious sources of white supremacy and discrimination-based activity. SOA Watch organizers scrutinize power dynamics involved between alliances when a privileged population, such as SOA Watch activists in the United

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States, seeks to support a less privileged and oppressed population such as human rights organizers in Latin America. Individual and collective efforts to end inequalities in power relations are ongoing. The newsletter Presente! outlines the connectedness between social and economic injustices, racism, and militarism. Challenging racism in the world may cause activists to more quickly recognize discrimination on personal, interpersonal, and community levels. Person-to-person discrimination can be just as difficult as challenging global injustices. But, rather than just talking about anti-oppression goals, activists attempt to enact more egalitarian ways of being in community with others. Most recently, Father Roy has run into difficulties with the Vatican by giving his support to women who desire to enter the priesthood. Despite being threatened with excommunication, he continues to support the effort to make real the equal standing of women in the church. ‘‘Justice is not something you can be selective about’’ he says.22

STRATEGIES In February of each year, a strategy meeting takes place in one of 12 regions. Activists review recent events that have affected the movement’s goals. Lobbying tactics and talking points are developed. People generate new ideas, practice effective ways of communicating important points, and develop plans for direct action and legislative efforts. These meetings oftentimes coincide with the SOA Watch’s ‘‘Lobby Days,’’ when activists instruct members of Congress and foreign policy staffers about SOA/WHINSEC. The movement’s strategies are as diverse as its constituents. Creative nonviolence that includes fasting, street theatre, and sit-ins is used in conjunction with more traditional methods of achieving social change, such as letter writing campaigns, petitioning, and lobbying members of Congress. People then can decide for themselves what type of action they can contribute toward the movement’s goals.


NO MORE! THE SOLEMN FUNERAL PROCESSION: NO MAS! The ritual of the annual vigil doesn’t name God but appeals to a universal spirituality that connects us all. No one would call the SOAW movement a Christian movement and no one would call it a secular movement. Our movement’s power comes from a diversity of people that view the task of closing the SOA as a moral issue.23 —Eric Le Compte, SOA Watch Organizer

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Musty incense rises into the towering pines that line the road leading to the gates of the U.S. military post at Fort Benning, Georgia. This weekend, like every third weekend in November for almost two decades, the mile-long road is blocked to traffic. A large stage is positioned at one end of the street before the entrance to the base. A 10-foot chain-link fence topped with barbed wire restricts civilians from access to the base. A ‘‘No Trespassing’’ sign is posted on the fence. On the stage speakers from countries across the Americas tell of their experiences of life and struggle. A group of musicians has traveled from Colombia and is sending out the light and gentle thump of Andean music. The street is full of art and action. Near the opposite end of the busy street, puppetistas, enormous puppets held in the air by two men each, symbolize the processes of death and rebirth. Black and gray-faced puppets symbolizing death mix with equally large sunshiny yellow, green, and orange smiling faces affirming life. Street artists dramatize the plight of indigenous farmers. Flower-draped men, women, and children walk on stilts. Farm workers, black-masked teens, and allages and nationalists tread slowly alongside somber-faced nuns, brown-cloaked monks, and families carting young children. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Women Religious, Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International, Colombia Support Network, Grandmothers for Peace, Veterans for Peace, Witness for Peace, the AFL-CIO, and Christian Peacemaker Teams are but a sample of the many groups gathered here. A cluster of orange-shrouded Buddhist monks has walked for miles to gather with the crowd. But not all those at the vigil are SOA Watch supporters: uniformed Military Police observe the crowd lazily but assuredly. They gaze up on the regularity of its movement with a strange mix of fascination and boredom. The crowd becomes silent. Shortly thereafter, in unison, a commitment to nonviolence is affirmed by all of the participants. Willowing through the breeze, a song affirms the solidarity of the people who have suffered so from the brutalities: Nuncas m
as! Never again! No m
as, no more! shout the hills of Salvador. Compa~neros, compa~neras, we cry out, ‘‘No m
as, no more!’’ Within minutes, a Gregorian-tuned voice rings through the crowd announcing the first of several hundred names of the dead: ‘‘Archbishop Oscar Romero.’’ The crowd affirms the presence of the memory and spirit of Romero by sounding, slowly, in unison: ‘‘Pre-sen-te!’’ Hundreds of people in the crowd raise religious symbols over their heads. Countless white crosses have the names of the dead written on them. Then the mass of demonstrators takes a small step closer to the fence that divides those gathered today from the military base at Fort Benning. Thus begins the solemn funeral procession of the annual vigil of the School of the Americas Watch.

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LEGISLATIVE ACTION Since 1993, legislative action has been at the forefront of strategies used by SOA Watch activists to close the school. In addition to shutting down the school completely, shutting off funding for the school has been a method to advance the movement’s goals. SOA Watch’s legislative action committee provides training for activists to research congressional representatives and to learn how to set up meetings with them. Postcards outlining details of proposed amendments are provided by the movement to local organizers and the interested public, for a small fee. Non-violent direct action You can Jail the Resisters but you can’t Jail the Resistance! —SOA Watch T-Shirt

Since its inception, SOA Watch activists have used nonviolent direct action to draw attention to their purpose. Nonviolence is decisive noncooperation with injustice. It is not passivity; it is not revenge oriented. Nonviolence requires self-discipline, goodwill, sacrifice, persistence, and guts. Nonviolence requires love. In the years since 1983, over 275 people have carefully planned and carried out nonviolent direct action in an effort to increase public attention to the effort to close the school. Referred to as Prisoners of Conscience (POCs), each person has spent about six months in federal prison, typically for trespassing on government property by walking onto the base or ‘‘crossing the line.’’ The charge is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 and six months in federal prison. Although it is rare in this country to be sentenced to federal prison for a misdemeanor charge such as trespassing, most activists who have crossed the line expect to receive this punishment and a fine.24 Many activists choose to waive the fine and instead, they spend increased time in jail. Most of the 275 protesters had never been arrested before engaging in this nonviolent direct action.25 Activists can choose to receive training in nonviolence at the SOA Watch workshops scheduled to occur prior to the annual vigil. Legal advisors inform activists about what to expect on their arrest. The purpose of crossing the line is to educate the general public about the SOA/WHINSEC through media attention of the direct action, through prison witness, and through books, articles, and public speaking engagements. During the 1998 vigil, 2,319 activists risked arrest by crossing onto the base. In 1999, that number almost doubled, reaching 4,408.26 In 2000, up to 3,500 people ‘‘crossed the line.’’ During those years demonstrators

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walked onto the base en masse and were not always arrested and taken to jail. Instead, they were taken by bus to a local park and released. In the form of a ‘‘ban and bar’’ letter, those arrested and processed were warned not to return to the base for five years.27 After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the SOA/WHINSEC officials formally requested that the SOA Watch withhold its protests. The army claimed that the political conditions post–9/11 indicated a demonstration could be unsafe. Eventually, a court order ruled in favor of the SOA Watch. In discussing his decision, Federal Magistrate G. Mallon Faircloth said, ‘‘It was a question of First Amendment rights, and you can’t play with that. I am sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution. I think I did that today.’’ SOA Watch Council member Ken Hayes reported rumors that Judge Faircloth said that if the army at Fort Benning needed this kind of protection against the SOA Watch, with its lengthy history of nonviolence, then ‘‘we are all in a lot of trouble.’’28 Later in 2001, the New York Times reported on two siblings, both of whom were nuns who had been barred from the base for previous acts of trespass.29 Sister Dorothy Marie Hennessey, aged 88, and Sister Gwen L. Hennessey, aged 68, spent six months in federal prison for their dedication to protesting human rights abuses. The Times story gave a history of the SOA/WHINSEC and recounted human rights abuses committed by graduates of the school. Of course, this was the goal of the women’s actions. Octogenarian Ed Lewinson, a Professor Emeritus of History at Seton Hall University, further exemplifies the persistence and dedication of SOA Watch activism. Lewinson crossed the line during the vigils in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2007, but the state initially refused to prosecute him for his first three acts of civil disobedience because he is blind. It would appear that the judge did not want to draw the media’s attention by sentencing an elderly blind man to jail for advocating the SOA Watch cause. Eventually, in 2007, he was ordered to pay a $500 fine and sentenced to 90 days in federal prison.30 Of the hundreds of activists who have chosen arrest, thousands of others have supported them through letter writing, financial gifts, and legal aid. Singing protest songs outside of the Columbus jail is one of the ways that SOA Watch activists who do not choose arrest support the cause of the people who do. As in all cases of creative nonviolence, the action should bring increased attention to the cause and make clear the hidden benefits of SOA Watch creative nonviolence to energize other activists in the movement and further the overall goal. Not all activists can risk the sacrifices that going to jail for six months entail, yet witnessing the sacrifice of others can be an inspiration to continue to work hard to address the movement’s goals.

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FUNDING THE MOVEMENT Funding and material resources come from donations and grants. The movement is funded by its members through direct mail campaigns or through voluntary donations during the annual November vigil. Those in attendance are encouraged to give a minimum of one dollar. Grant monies, typically between $1,000 and $5,000, come from various religious groups. Women’s Religious and the Maryknoll order are but two of the contributors. Father Roy receives donations from speaking events that generate close to half the SOA Watch’s income.31 In addition, activists support one another by funding travel expenses and sharing transportation to the vigil. A ‘‘ride’’ board is posted on the organization’s Web site. It designates travel routes to the November vigil and connects riders and drivers from all regions of the country. An annual ‘‘Journey for Justice’’ in which Salvadorian torture survivor Carlos Mauricio and others travel from San Francisco to Fort Benning to inform others about the SOA/WHINSEC is funded by small donations along the way. Food is also generously donated during the days-long gathering in November. Typically, it is provided by charitable organizations, from various religious orders, and from ‘‘Food Not Bombs’’ for those who cannot afford to purchase food during the November weekend.

CITIZEN DIPLOMACY Prior to 2006, SOA Watch activists took delegations to regions in Latin America to learn from fellow activists and to see how U.S. foreign policies such as Plan Colombia and NAFTA/CAFTA affected the people there. They saw how military force served to undermine populations struggling for dignity and survival. Christian Peacemaker Teams and Witness for Peace delegations collaborated with locals and informed U.S. activists of ongoing human rights violations. They detailed activities needed for change. In 2006, at the annual strategy meeting in Washington, D.C., a suggestion was made to form a working group in Latin America, composed of Latinos and Latinas to coordinate efforts with the SOA Watch in the United States. A working group, Partnership America Latina (PAL), was founded in Venezuela and has been successfully organizing citizen diplomacy meetings in eight countries. At these meetings, SOA Watch delegations meet directly with heads of state and military defense officials to urge them to cease sending soldiers to the SOA/WHINSEC.32 SOA Watch activists wanted to see more of these sorts of collaborations on the ground in the countries where the SOA/WHINSEC trains soldiers. The goal of the Latin American Project was to ask the leaders from different

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countries to stop sending soldiers to the school. This effort was a slight twist on the usual strategies for closing the school: If there are no soldiers at the school there can be no school. At the national strategy meeting in early 2006, organizers voted to begin a Latin American Project in which people-to-people grassroots efforts would be coordinated by Latinos in their own countries. Lisa SullivanRodriquez, a Maryknoll lay leader who had lived and worked for peace throughout Latin America for 29 years, was chosen to bring together this effort. Asking high-level government leaders to stop sending soldiers to the SOA/WHINSEC is but one of the aims of the Latin American Project. They also increase the issue of the SOA in public debate and further engage local human rights activists in insisting on their country’s withdrawal from this institution. Since 2005, the Latin American Project has met with human rights organizers, indigenous leaders, military defense leaders, vice-presidents, and presidents throughout Central and South America. SOA Watch delegations have met with high-level government officials from 14 countries. In 2005, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela was the first President to withdraw soldiers. Since then three more countries have made a commitment to stop sending soldiers—Argentina (2005), Uruguay (2005), and in 2007, Costa Rica. (Costa Rica has no army but was sending members of its police force.)33 Although formal channels for requesting contact with government and military officials exist in most countries, this novel approach to international diplomacy (or citizen diplomacy) was made possible by the efforts of partners in the struggle in many countries. During trips by certain delegations, such as that to Colombia, local organizers risked their lives to speak out about the human rights violations during meetings between military personnel and SOA Watch organizers. Men with machine guns listened attentively as displaced people struggling to survive talked of the injustice.34 When SOA Watch delegates spoke to leaders about the SOA/WHINSEC, its graduates, and its atrocities, the officials were woefully aware of the painful legacy of its operations. Many high-level government officials that the SOA Watch delegates met with are themselves torture survivors and were at one time political prisoners. In Bolivia, SOA Watch delegates met with President Evo Morales, the first indigenous leader to be elected to that office. In Argentina, alongside the renowned mothers of the disappeared (Madres de la Plaza de Mayo) and thousands of others who had gathered to mourn and remember, the group marked the 30th anniversary of the dictatorship. They shared hugs with Argentines who thanked them for coming and for speaking out to close the school. In Panama, delegates met with Jorge Illueca, who was the President of Panama when the SOA

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was kicked out of that country in 1984. It is he who first referred to the School of Americas as ‘‘the School of Assassins.’’35 The leaders would consistently give SOA Watch delegates considerably more information than they had obtained to date. Human rights violators and dictators trained at the SOA are household names in many countries the delegations visit. As of this writing, the United States continues to train soldiers, such as those that implemented the coup that illegally ousted democratically elected President Zelaya of Honduras in June 2009. General Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, widely credited with spearheading the military coup, appears to have been trained at the SOA when torture manuals were used.36 The struggle continues. Howard Zinn, 1922–2010, died leaving both a lifetime of dedicated work for peace and justice but also the narratives that may make peace possible. He added the voices of ordinary people, dissenting soldiers, slaves, civil rights workers to the telling of history. Their voices now stand along side the generals and the corporate scientists as makers of history and as prophets for an era of peace and justice. We are honored by his granting us permission to include his work.

NOTES 1. Bourgeois, 2009. 2. Danner, 1994. 3. Wright, 2008. 4. School of the Americas Watch, 2007. 5. Wright, 2008. 6. Report of the UN Truth Commission on El Salvador, 1993. 7. Legislative Action Index, n.d. 8. Richter, 1994. 9. The School of the Americas Watch, ‘‘Three Hundred Religious Leaders Hold Prayer Vigil.’’ 10. Ibid. 11. Priest, 1996. 12. Ibid. 13. The School of the Americas Watch, ‘‘Action History.’’ 14. The School of the Americas Watch, ‘‘Grave Diggers.’’ 15. Le Compte, 2009. 16. Legislative Action Index. 17. Ibid. 18. Fr. Roy Bourgeois, telephone conversation with Jill Latonick-Flores, September 12, 2009. 19. Ibid. 20. Legislative Action Index, n.d.

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21. The School of the Americas Watch, ‘‘SOA Watch Delegation to Mexico and Costa Rica.’’ 22. Bourgeois, 2009. 23. Kjos, 2004. 24. Bourgeois, 2009. 25. Ibid. 26. School of the Americas Watch, n.d. 27. Bourgeois, 2000. 28. Hayes, 2009. 29. Goodstein, 2001. 30. School of the Americas Watch, 2007. 31. Hayes, 2009. 32. The School of the Americas Watch, ‘‘The SOA Watch Latin American Project.’’ 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. Institute for Southern Studies, 2009.

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S T R U C T U R E D C R U E LT Y: L E A R N I N G T O BE A LEAN, MEAN KILLING MACHINE Martin Smith

I will never forget standing in formation after the end of our final ‘‘hump,’’ Marine-speak for a forced march, at the end of the Crucible in March 1997. The Crucible is the final challenge during Marine Corps boot camp and is a two-and-a-half-day, physically exhausting exercise in which sleep deprivation, scarce food, and a series of obstacles test teamwork and toughness. The formidable nine-mile stretch ended with our ascent up the ‘‘Grim Reaper,’’ a small mountain in the hilly terrain of Camp Pendleton, California. As we stood at attention, the commanding officer made his way though our lines, inspecting his troops and giving each of us an eagle, globe, and anchor pin, the mark of our final transition from recruit to Marine. But what I recall most was not the pain and exhaustion that filled every ounce of my trembling body, but the sounds that surrounded me as I stood at attention with eyes forward. Mixed within the repetitive refrains of Lee Greenwood’s ‘‘God Bless the USA,’’ belting from a massive sound system, were the soft and gentle sobs emanating from numerous newborn Marines. Their cries stood in stark contrast to the so-called ‘‘warrior spirit’’ we had earned and now came to Originally published on 2-20-07 by CounterPunch, http://www.counterpunch.org/smith02202007 .html.

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epitomize. While some may claim that these unmanly responses resulted from a patriotic emotional fit or even out of a sense of pride in being called ‘‘Marine’’ for the very first time, I know that for many the moisture streaming down our cheeks represented something much more anguished and heartrending. What I learned about Marines is that despite the stereotype of the chivalrous knight, wearing dress blues with sword drawn, or the green killing machine that is always ‘‘ready to rumble,’’ the young men and women I encountered instead comprised a cross-section of working-class America. There were neither knights nor machines among us. During my five years in active-duty service, I befriended a recovering meth addict who was still ‘‘using,’’ a young male who had prostituted himself to pay his rent before he signed up, an El Salvadorian immigrant serving in order to receive a green card, a single mother who could not afford her child’s health care needs as a civilian, a gay teenager who entertained our platoon by singing Madonna karaoke in the barracks to the delight of us all, and many of the country’s poor and poorly educated. I came to understand very well what those cries on top of the Grim Reaper expressed. Those teardrops represented hope in the promise of a change in our lives from a world that, for many of us as civilians, seemed utterly hopeless. U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) boot camp is a 13-week training regimen unlike any other. According to the USMC’s recruiting Web site, ‘‘Marine Recruits learn to use their intelligence . . . and to live as upstanding moral beings with real purpose.’’ Yet if teaching intelligence and morals are the stated purpose of its training, the Corps has peculiar way of implementing its pedagogy. In reality, its educational method is based on a planned and structured form of cruelty. I remember my first visit to the ‘‘chow-hall’’ in which three drill instructors (DIs), wearing their signature ‘‘smoky bear’’ covers, pounced on me for having looked at them, screaming that I was a ‘‘nasty piece of civilian shit.’’ From then on, I learned that you could only look at a DI when instructed to by the command of ‘‘Eyeballs!’’ In addition, recruits could only speak in the third person, thus ridding our vocabulary of the term ‘‘I’’ and divorcing ourselves from our previous civilian identities. Our emerging group mentality was built on and reinforced by tearing down and degrading us through a series of regimented and ritualistic exercises in the first phase of boot camp. Despite having an African American DI and a Latino DI, recruits in my platoon were ridiculed with derogatory language that included racial epithets. But recruits of color were not the only victims, we were all ‘‘fags,’’ ‘‘pussies,’’ and ‘‘shitbags.’’ We survived through a twisted sort of leveling based on what military historian Christian G. Appy calls a ‘‘solidarity of the despised.’’

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We relearned how to execute every activity, including the most personal aspects of our hygiene. While eating, we could only use our right hand while our left had to stay directly on our knee, and our eyes had to stare directly at our food trays. Our bathroom breaks were so brief that three recruits would share a urinal at a time so that the entire platoon of sixtythree recruits could relieve themselves in our minute-and-a-half time limit. On several occasions, recruits soiled their uniforms during training. Every evening, DIs inspected our boots for proper polish and our belt buckles for satisfactory shine while we stood at attention in our underwear. Then, we would ‘‘mount our racks’’ (bunk beds), lie at attention, and scream all three verses of the Marine Corps hymn at the top of our lungs. While the DIs would proclaim that these inspections were to ensure that our bodies had not been injured during training, I suspect that there were ulterior motives as well. These examinations were attempts to indoctrinate us with an emerging military masculinity that is based on male sexuality linked to respect for the uniform and a fetishization of combat. After the playing of ‘‘Taps,’’ lights went out. At which time, a DI would circle around the room and begin moralizing. ‘‘One of these days, you’re going to figure out what’s really tough in the world,’’ he would exclaim. ‘‘You think you’ve got it so bad. But in recruit training, you get three meals a day while we tell you when to shit and blink,’’ he continued. The DI would then lower his voice, ‘‘But when you’re out on your own, you’re gonna see what’s hard. You’ll see what tough is when you knock up your old woman. You’ll realize what’s cruel when you get married and find yourself stuck with a fat bitch who just squats out ungrateful kids. You’ll learn what the real world’s about when you’re overseas and your wife back in the states robs you blind and sleeps with your best friend.’’ The DI’s nightly homiletic speeches, full of an unabashed hatred of women, were part of the second phase of boot camp, the process of rebuilding recruits into Marines. The process of reconstructing recruits and molding them into future troops is based on building a team that sees itself in opposition to those who are outside of it. After the initial shock of the first phase of training, DIs indoctrinate recruits to dehumanize the enemy to train them how to overcome any fear or prejudice against killing. In fact, according to longtime counterrecruitment activist Tod Ensign, the military has deliberately researched how to best design training for how to teach recruits how to kill. Such research was needed because humans are instinctively reluctant to kill. Dr. Dave Grossman disclosed in his work, On Killing,1 that fewer than 20 percent of U.S. troops fired their weapons in World War II during combat.

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As a result, the military reformed training standards so that more soldiers would pull their trigger against the enemy. Grossman credits these training modifications for the transformation of the Armed Forces in the Vietnam War in which 90 to 95 percent of soldiers fired their weapons. These reforms in training were based on teaching recruits how to dehumanize the enemy. The process of dehumanization is central to military training. During Vietnam, the enemy in Vietnam was simply a ‘‘gook,’’ ‘‘dink,’’ or ‘‘slope.’’ Today, ‘‘rag head’’ and ‘‘sand nigger’’ are the current racist epithets lodged against Arabs and Muslims. After every command, we would scream, ‘‘Kill!’’ But our call for blood took on particular importance during our physical training, when we learned how to fight with pugil sticks, wooden sticks with padded ends, how to run an obstacle course with fixed bayonets, or how to box and engage in hand-to-hand combat. We were told to imagine the ‘‘enemy’’ in all of our combat training, and it was always implied that the ‘‘enemy’’ was of Middle Eastern descent. ‘‘When some rag head comes lurking up from behind, you’re gonna give ’em ONE,’’ barked the training DI. We all howled in unison, ‘‘Kill!’’ Likewise, when we charged toward the dummy on an obstacle course with our fixed bayonets, it was clear to all that the lifeless form was Arab. Even in 1997, we were being brainwashed to accept the coming Iraq War. Abruptly interrupting a class (one of numerous courses we attended on military history, first aid, and survival skills), a Series Chief DI excitedly announced that all training was coming to a halt. We were to be shipped immediately to the Gulf, because Saddam had just fired missiles into Israel. Given that we lived with no knowledge of the outside world, with neither TV nor newspapers, and that we experienced constant high levels of stress and a discombobulating environment, the DI’s false assertion seemed all too believable. After a half-hour panic, we were led out of the auditorium to face the rebuke and scorn of our platoon DIs. It turned out that the interruption was a skit planned to scare us into the realization that we could face war at any moment. The trick certainly had the planned effect on me, as I pondered what the hell I had gotten myself into. I also now realize that we were being indoctrinated with schemes for war in the Middle East. Our hatred of the Arab ‘‘other’’ was crafted from the very beginning of our training through fear and hate. Almost 10 years since I stood on the yellow footprints that greet new recruits at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, I express gratitude for my luck during my enlistment. I was fortunate to have never witnessed a day of combat and was honorably discharged months after 9/11. However, joining the military is like playing Russian Roulette. With wars raging in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the likelihood of military action against Iran, troops in the Corps today are playing with grimmer odds.

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In these ‘‘dirty wars,’’ troops cannot tell friend from foe, leading to war crimes against a civilian population. Our government is cynically promoting a campaign of lies and deception to justify its illegal actions (with the complicity of both parties in Washington), and our troops are fighting to support regimes that lack popular support and legitimacy. With over 3,100 U.S. troops now dead and thousands more maimed and crippled, I look back to the other young men I heard sobbing on that sunny wintry morning on top of the Reaper. The reasons we enlisted were as varied as our personal histories. Yet, it is the starkest irony that the hope we collectively expressed for a better life may have indeed cost us our very lives. When one pulls the trigger called ‘‘enlistment,’’ he or she faces the gambling chance of experiencing war, conflicts that inevitably lead to the degradation of the human spirit. The war crimes committed by U.S. troops in Iraq, such as the brutality exhibited at Mahmoudiya, in which soldiers allegedly gang-raped a teenaged Iraqi girl and burned her body to destroy the evidence, are, in fact, part and parcel of all imperialist wars. The USMC’s claim that recruits learn ‘‘to live as upstanding moral beings with real purpose’’ is a sickening ploy aimed to disguise its true objectives. Given the fact that Marines are molded to kill the enemy ‘‘other’’ from TD One (the first training day), combined with the bestial nature of colonial war, it should come as no surprise that rather than turning ‘‘degenerates’’ into paragons of virtue, the Corps is more likely capable of transforming men into monsters. And yet as much as these war crimes reveal about the conditions of war, the circumstances facing an occupying force, and the peculiar brand of Marine training, they also reflect a bitter truth about the civilian world in which we live. It speaks volumes that in order for young working-class men and women to gain self-confidence or self-worth, they seek to join an institution that trains them how to destroy, maim, and kill. The desire to become a Marine, as a journey to one’s manhood or as a path to selfimprovement, is a stinging indictment of the pathology of our class-ridden world.

NOTE 1. Grossman, 1996.

CHAPTER

12

I F Y O U S TA R T L O O K I N G AT T H E M A S H U M A N S , T H E N H OW A R E YO U G O N NA K I L L T H E M ? Inigo Gilmore and Teresa Smith

At a press conference in a cavernous Alabama warehouse, banners and posters are rolled out: ‘‘Abandon Iraq, not the Gulf coast!’’ A tall, white soldier steps forward in desert fatigues. ‘‘I was in Iraq when Katrina happened and I watched U.S. citizens being washed ashore in New Orleans,’’ he says. ‘‘War is oppression: we could be setting up hospitals right here. America is war-addicted. America is neglecting its poor.’’ A black reporter from a Fox TV news affiliate, visibly stunned, whispers: ‘‘Wow! That guy’s pretty opinionated.’’ Clearly such talk, even three years after the Iraq invasion, is still rare. This, after all, is the Deep South and this soldier less than a year ago was proudly serving his nation in Iraq. The soldier was engaged in no ordinary protest. Earlier this month, for more than five days, around 200 veterans, military families, and survivors of Hurricane Katrina walked 130 miles from Mobile, Alabama, to New Orleans to mark the third anniversary of the Iraq war. At its vanguard was Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), a group formed less than two years ago, whose very name has aroused intense hostility at the highest levels of the U.S. military. Originally published March 29, 2006 by Guardian Unlimited Available at http://www.guardian. co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1741942,00.html.

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Mobile is a grand old southern naval town, clinging to the Gulf Coast. The stars and stripes flutter from almost every balcony as the soldiers parade through the town, surprising onlookers. As they begin their soon-tobe-familiar chants—‘‘Bush lied, many died!’’—some shout ‘‘traitor,’’ or hurl less polite terms of abuse. Elsewhere, a black man salutes as a blonde, middle-aged woman, emerging from a supermarket car park, cries out, ‘‘Take it all the way to the White House!’’ and offers the peace sign. Michael Blake is at the front of the march. The 22-year-old from New York state is not quite sure how he ended up in the military; the child of ‘‘a feminist mom and hippy dad,’’ he says he signed up thinking that he would have an adventure, never imagining that he would find himself in Iraq. He served from April 2003 to March 2004, some of that time as a Humvee driver. Deeply disturbed by his experience in Iraq, he filed for conscientious objector status and has been campaigning against the war ever since. He claims that U.S. soldiers such as him were told little about Iraq, Iraqis, or Islam before serving there; other than a book of Arabic phrases, ‘‘the message was always: ‘Islam is evil’ and ‘They hate us.’ Most of the guys I was with believed it.’’ Blake says that the turning point for him came one day when his unit spent eight hours guarding a group of Iraqi women and children whose men were being questioned. He recalls: ‘‘The men were taken away and the women were screaming and crying, and I just remember thinking: this was exactly what Saddam used to do—and now we’re doing it.’’ Becoming a peace activist, he says, has been a ‘‘cleansing’’ experience. ‘‘I’ll never be normal again. I’ll always have a sense of guilt.’’ He tells us that he witnessed civilian Iraqis being killed indiscriminately. It would not be the most startling admission by the soldiers on the march. ‘‘When IEDs [improvised explosive devices] would go off by the side of the road, the instructions were—or the practice was—to basically shoot up the landscape, anything that moved. And that kind of thing would happen a lot.’’ So innocent people were killed? ‘‘It happened, yes.’’ (He says he did not carry out any such killings himself.) Blake, an activist with IVAW for the past 12 months, is angry that American people seem so untouched by the war, by the grim abuses committed by American soldiers. ‘‘The American media doesn’t cover it and they don’t care. The American people aren’t seeing the real war—what’s really happening there.’’ We are in a Mexican diner in Mississippi when Alan Shackleton, a quiet 24-year-old from Iowa, stuns the table into silence with a story of his own. He details how he and his comrades in Iraq suffered multiple casualties, including a close friend who died of his injuries. Then he pauses for a moment, swallows hard, and says: ‘‘And I ran over a little kid and killed

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him . . . and that’s about it.’’ He has been suffering from severe insomnia, but later he tells us that he has only been able to see a counselor once every six weeks and has been prescribed sleeping pills. ‘‘We are very, very sorry for what we did to the Iraqi people,’’ he says the next day, holding a handwritten poster declaring: ‘‘Thou shall not kill.’’ As we get closer to New Orleans, the coastline becomes increasingly ravaged. Joe Hatcher, always sporting a keffiyeh and punk chains, reflects on his own time in the military and the hostility he has met from pro-war activists at home in Colorado Springs, Colorado, a town with five army bases where he campaigns against the war at town hall forums. He says: ‘‘There’s this old guy, George, an ex-colonel. He shows up and talks shit on everybody for being anti-war because ‘it’s ruining the morale of the soldier and encouraging the enemy.’’’ ‘‘I scraped dead bodies off the pavements with a shovel and threw them in trash bags and left them there on the side of the road. And I really don’t think the anti-war movement is what is infuriating people.’’ When we reach Biloxi, Mississippi, the police say that there is no permit for the march and everyone will have to walk on the pavement. This is tricky because Katrina has left this coastal road looking like a bomb site. Jody Casey left the army five days ago and came straight to join the vets. The 29-year-old is no pacifist; he still firmly backs the military but says that he is speaking out in the hope of correcting many of the mistakes being made. He served as a scout sniper for a year until February 2006, based, like Blake, in the Sunni triangle. He clearly feels a little ill at ease with some of the protesters’ rhetoric, but eventually agrees to talk to us. He says that the turning point for him came after he returned from Iraq and watched videos that he and other soldiers in his unit shot while out on raids, including hour after hour of Iraqi soldiers beating up Iraqi civilians. While reviewing them back home he decided ‘‘it was not right.’’ What upset him the most about Iraq? ‘‘The total disregard for human life,’’ he says, matter-of-factly. ‘‘I mean, you do what you do at the time because you feel like you need to. But then to watch it get kind of covered up, shoved under a rug. . . . ‘Oh, that did not happen.’’’ What kind of abuse did he witness? ‘‘Well, I mean, I have seen innocent people being killed. IEDs go off and [you] just zap any farmer that is close to you. You know, those people were out there trying to make a living, but on the other hand, you get hit by four or five of those IEDs and you get pretty tired of that, too.’’ Casey told us how, from the top down, there was little regard for the Iraqis, who were routinely called ‘‘hajjis,’’ the Iraq equivalent of ‘‘gook.’’

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‘‘They basically jam into your head: ‘This is hajji! This is hajji!’ You totally take the human being out of it and make them into a video game.’’ It was a way of dehumanizing the Iraqis? ‘‘I mean, yeah—if you start looking at them as humans, and stuff like that, then how are you going to kill them?’’ He says that soldiers who served in his area before his unit’s arrival recommended them to keep spades on their vehicles so that if they killed innocent Iraqis, they could throw a spade off them to give the appearance that the dead Iraqi was digging a hole for a roadside bomb. Casey says he didn’t participate in any such killings himself, but claims the pervasive atmosphere was that ‘‘you could basically kill whoever you wanted—it was that easy. You did not even have to get off and dig a hole or anything. All you had to do was have some kind of picture. You’re driving down the road at three in the morning. There’s a guy on the side of the road, you shoot him . . . you throw a shovel off.’’ The IVAW, says Hatcher, ‘‘is becoming our religion, our fight—as in any religion we’ve confessed our wrongs, and now it’s time to atone.’’ Just outside New Orleans, the sudden appearance of a reporter from the Washington office of al-Jazeera electrifies the former soldiers. It is a chance for the vets to turn confessional and the reporter is deluged with young former soldiers keen to be interviewed. ‘‘We want the Iraqi people to know that we stand with them,’’ says Blake, ‘‘and that we’re sorry, so sorry. That’s why it was so important for us to appear on al-Jazeera.’’ A number of Vietnam veterans also on the march are a welcome presence. For all the attempts to deny a link between the two conflicts, for both sets of veterans the parallels are persuasive. Thomas Brinson survived the Tet offensive in Vietnam in 1968. ‘‘Iraq is just Arabic for Vietnam, like the poster says—the same horror, the same tears,’’ he says. Sitting on a riverbed outside New Orleans, Blake turns reflective. ‘‘I met an Iraqi at one of the public meetings I was talking at recently. He came up to me and told me he was originally from the town where I had been stationed. And I just went up to this complete stranger and hugged him and I said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ And you know what? He told me it was OK. And it was beautiful. . . .’’ He starts to cry. ‘‘That was redemption.’’

CHAPTER

WHERE IS

13

THE

RAGE?

Justin C. Cliburn

Where is the rage? I had drill this weekend. Drill has been a foreverevolving presence in my life for the past six years. I went from looking forward to drill to hating it to missing it while I was in Iraq and back to looking forward to it when I returned. I used to hate drill, but found myself liking the weekends where I was reunited with those with whom I spent a year in Iraq. Over the past few months, that [thought of returning] has turned into dread, and I am questioning whether or not I can remain an effective member of the military. Over the course of our many bull sessions at drill, the topic of Iraq inevitably came up. We exchanged stories and shared laughs as the new guys who didn’t deploy looked on with wonder. Stories about clandestine drunken nights, the anger that comes with being kicked out of the chow hall for being sweaty, and getting to the point where you ignore gunfire took up most of the time; however, not all of the stories were so innocent. The same set of soldiers that in 2005 said they couldn’t wait to kill ‘‘ragheads’’ were now bragging about times they scared Iraqis, bent the rules of engagement, and generally enjoyed playing bully for a year. I like these guys a lot, but I don’t know why I was surprised. I had thought that maybe being there for a year would eventually change them and open their eyes to how their actions were inhumane, but I was wrong. Adapted from a Sept. 7, 2007, blog post at http://www.progressiveu.org/224930-where-is-the-rage.

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Someone who had not deployed before asked if we would go again. ‘‘In a heartbeat!’’ one soldier replied. Others assured him that they would have no problem going back. Now, the eyes were on me. ‘‘No, I am not going back to participate in that war.’’ The look of shock and awe on their faces quickly gave way to a flurry of questions about how I would get out, what I would do, how could I do that to my comrades, why did I feel the way, what did I think I was proving, and why did I think I could make a difference. The question that got me on a roll, however, was none of the above. ‘‘What are you going to do . . . become a conscientious objector?’’ one soldier and friend said with a smirk and a chuckle. ‘‘In fact, I just may do that. That’s what I am, essentially, isn’t it?’’ You could have heard a pin drop as the smirks fell from their faces; this appeared to be the worst thing I could have said. It amazes me how they had just gotten done talking about taking pleasure in bullying Iraqis and I was somehow demonized for stating that I had a moral objection to the occupation and subjugation of a Third World nation. I have a conscience, and that upset them more than anything else I could have said for some reason. I then spent about 20 minutes explaining why I had a moral objection to scaring Iraqis for the fun of it, occupying a country that didn’t attack us, risking my life and the lives of my comrades for a war that does nothing but make the world more dangerous and less stable, and giving complicit approval to policy that has failed on every front. What stuck out to my comrade, however, wasn’t about killing or risking my life. ‘‘Why do you keep talking about how unstable the Middle East has become as a result of the war? I mean, you almost seem to take it personally. Why do you care if wars break out there?’’ I was exasperated, but I kept trying to make him get it. I care because where there is war, there are innocent people dying. It doesn’t matter if they’re Iraqi, Syrian, Lebanese, Israeli, Palestinian, Iranian, or Turkish; I do not want them to experience the horrors of the war. On a more selfish front, the more unstable the region is, the more chance there is that we’ll have to eventually intervene. The region has gotten worse and worse since our invasion to ‘‘stabilize the region,’’ and constitutes a gross failure of the Iraq War. ‘‘Yeah, but why take it so seriously? I mean, you’ve got to defend your country either way. You’ve got to have the balls to go even if you don’t agree with it.’’ No, it takes balls not to go when you don’t agree. The courage to resist is oftentimes more honorable than the courage to enter a foxhole. These same friends of mine told me that they concede that the situation did nothing but get worse in our year in Iraq and that they didn’t see how we could really ‘‘win.’’ One went so far as to say he didn’t believe in the war, but could never ‘‘abandon’’ his country. One said he agreed with everything I said . . . he just

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lacked the political will to do anything about it. Another stated his agreement with me, but said he was just going to hope that his contract runs out before they ever call us up again. Out of all those sitting there, only one fully supported the war, but all were willing to go back either for some misguided belief in honor or because they were too lazy or scared to do anything about it. I thought I could do this; I thought I could oppose the war and remain in the military. Change from within, I thought. I realized this weekend that that was a pipe dream, for me at least. I spend half my time in that uniform cringing at exaggerated stories; expressed pleasure in other peoples’ pain; and empty, misguided proclamations of honor, integrity, and selfless service. I am done with the military. I don’t know how exactly I will leave the service just yet, but I know that I will. I entered the army in an honorable fashion and I will leave it that way, but leave it I will. I participated in the September 15, 2007, protests in Washington, D.C., with tens of thousands of other concerned Americans, including representatives of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, Gold Star Families, and the ANSWER Coalition. I am taking more and more responsibility within IVAW to end this war, take care of our veterans, and provide reparations for the Iraqi people and it feels right. I accepted the position of Regional Coordinator-Gulf Coast Region and look forward to working with other IVAW Regional Coordinators in the future. In the meantime, I simply ask, ‘‘Where is the rage?!’’

CHAPTER

SOLDIERS

IN

14

R E V O LT

Howard Zinn

As the situation in Iraq worsens with increasing attacks on U.S. troops, increasing numbers of roadside bombs, and increasing casualties, there are growing signs of resistance from the ranks of U.S. servicemen and servicewomen who do not want to fight the war. The United States has a long history of resistance from within the military. Probably the most astonishing examples came from Vietnam with the appearance of what came to be called ‘‘fragging,’’ the use of grenades and other explosive devices by disgruntled soldiers against their commanders. By the time U.S. soldiers were withdrawn from Vietnam in March 1973, there had been 86 deaths due to fragging. In Vietnam, African American soldiers and sailors were more prone to rebellion than others, and GIs who came from the working class were less enthusiastic about the war than those from more privileged backgrounds. In short, racial resentment and class anger fueled much of the disaffection from the war in Vietnam. Historically, rebellion in the ranks long predates Vietnam—from the Revolutionary War, the War with Mexico, the Civil War, the War with the Philippines and onward—although the antiwar activities of the Vietnam era were certainly the most massive, and the most successful in the nation’s history. Originally published in Howard Zinn, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress (San Francisco: City Lights Publishers, 2007), 173–77.

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In his book Soldiers in Revolt,1 David Cortright documents the rebellion of U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam years in stunning detail. Cortright’s work is especially important to recall today because the war makers in the White House have been so anxious to put to rest what they call ‘‘the Vietnam syndrome.’’ The word ‘‘syndrome’’ refers to a disease, in this case the disease against popular opposition to a war of aggression fought against a small country half the world away. The word ‘‘disease’’ has shown up again, as more Americans declare their opposition to the war in Iraq. Surely, one of the factors in this national disapproval is the resemblance of the Iraq war to the war in Vietnam. The bombing and invasion of Iraq, the public has begun to realize, is not to defend the United States, but to control an oil-rich country already crushed by two wars and more than 10 years of economic sanctions. It is undoubtedly the nature of this war, so steeped in deceptions perpetrated on the American public—the false claims that Iraq possessed ‘‘weapons of mass destruction’’ and was connected to 9/11—that has provoked opposition to the war among the military. Further, the revelations of torture, the killing of Iraqi civilians, and the devastation of the country from bombardment, foreign occupation, and sectarian violence, to which many of the dissenting soldiers have been witness, contribute to their alienation. A CBS News dispatch on December 6, 2004, reported on American GIs who have deserted the military and fled north across the border to live in Canada. Theirs were among the first 5,000 desertions that have occurred over the opening years of the war in Iraq. One soldier told the CBS journalist: ‘‘I didn’t want ‘Died deluded in Iraq’ on my gravestone.’’ Jeremy Hinzman, of Rapid City, South Dakota, went to Canada after being denied conscientious objector status by the army. He told CBS: ‘‘I was told in basic training that, if I’m given an illegal or immoral order, it is my duty to disobey it, and I feel that invading and occupying Iraq is an illegal and immoral thing to do.’’ His contract with the government, Hinzman said, was ‘‘to defend the Constitution of the United States, not take part in offensive, preemptive wars.’’ According to the Toronto Globe and Mail report on December 8, 2004: ‘‘Jimmy Massey, a former marine staff sergeant, told an immigration and refugee board hearing in Toronto that he and his fellow marines shot and killed more than 30 unarmed men, women, and children, and even shot a young Iraqi who got out of his car with his arms in the air.’’ A New York Times story of March 18, 2005, told of an increasing number of soldiers seeking to escape in Iraq. One soldier from Hinesville, Georgia, was reported to have asked a relative to shoot him in the leg so he would not have to return to war. The deserters in Canada, according to this story,

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came from various parts of the country but reported the same kinds of motivations for wanting out of the military. ‘‘Some described grisly scenes from their first deployment to Iraq. One soldier said that he saw a wounded, weeping Iraqi child whom no one would help. . . . Others said they had simply realized that they did not believe in war, or at least not in this war.’’ Not all the dissension in the military has been due to an analysis of the moral nature of the war. As in other wars, very often, the soldiers simply feel maltreated by their officers, sent into dangerous situations without proper defenses, their lives considered cheap by higher-ups. On October 18, 2004, the New York Times reported that a platoon of 18 men and women refused to deliver a shipment of fuel from one air base to another because they said their trucks were unsafe and lacked proper armed escort. In November 2004, the New York Times reported that the army was having trouble calling into duty members of the Individual Ready Reserve. These were former soldiers being ordered back into the military. And of 4,000 given notice to return to active duty, more than 1,800 of them requested exemptions. Furthermore, reports were multiplying, in the spring of 2005, of the difficulties army recruiters were finding in getting young people to enlist. In early 2005, Naval Petty Officer Third Class Pablo Paredes refused to obey orders to board an assault ship in San Diego that was bound for the Persian Gulf. He told a U.S. Navy judge: ‘‘I believe as a member of the armed forces, beyond having a duty to my chain of command and my President, I have a higher duty to my conscience and to the supreme law of the land. Both of these higher duties dictate that I must not participate in any way, hands-on or indirect, in the current aggression that has been unleashed on Iraq.’’ For this, Paredes faced a year in the brig, but the navy judge, citing testimony about the illegality of the Iraq War, declined to give him jail time, instead gave him three months of hard labor, and reduced him in rank. Especially disturbing are the stories of female soldiers who desert to escape sexual harassment by their male superiors. On June 26, 2006, National Public Radio reported the story of 21-year-old army specialist Suzanne Swift, who ‘‘deserted because of sexual harassment she suffered during a year-long appointment to Iraq.’’ Police arrested Swift at her home in Oregon and transferred her to Fort Lewis, Washington. Since her story has been publicized in national media, Suzanne Swift’s family has been contacted by scores of other female soldiers who have also been sexually harassed by fellow soldiers, but had not reported it. In a reminder of the creation of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a number of men and women returning from Iraq formed Iraq Veterans Against the War. One of its founders, Kelly Dougherty, asked an audience at Harvard University in February 2005 to follow the precedent of Vietnam

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protests. In Iraq, she felt: ‘‘I’m not defending freedom, I’m protecting a corporate interest.’’ The level of GI protest in the current Iraq war is still far from what it came to be during the war in Vietnam, but as the war in Iraq continues, a point may be reached where men and women in uniform can no longer tolerate the injustices they witness and experience. It is encouraging to be reminded of the basic desire of human beings to live at peace with one another, once they have seen through the official lies and have developed the courage to resist the call to war.

NOTE 1. Cortright, 2005.

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PART III

HEALING

THE

WO U N D S

When considering whether the cost of any new war is worth taking on, we rarely take into account the many costs that are unseen. After experiencing violence, major loss, and situations of deep fear, individuals carry lasting wounds. Trauma often appears to heal on the surface but remains to affect the quality of people’s lives—and their propensity for violence in the future. Our ability to ameliorate the suffering caused by such human tragedy has much to do with whether we can break the cycle of violence at any point. In the previous section we noted the trauma experienced by soldiers. Here we focus on the circumstances of others who used the experience of trauma to reduce the enduring psychological pain and anger in order that such violence might not be repeated. Hector Aristiz
abal, a Colombian-born psychologist, actor, and torture survivor, recounts, with Diane Lefer, the mental state that made it possible for him to survive his torture and to share the perspectives of victims and perpetrators to audiences as a path toward healing. In recent years there has been attention directed to the process of forgiveness. Azim Khamisa, whose son was the victim of random violence, went on to forgive his son’s murderer, and to teach forgiveness and prevent future occurrences of violence through a foundation that he set up for these purposes. As forgiveness becomes a larger part of human cultures, we lay the foundations for a justice system based not on retribution or revenge but on restoration. In restorative justice, as this system is now called, the perpetrator of the violent crime takes responsibility, shows remorse, and takes

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on the tasks of compensating for the harm and sometimes working to build a society in which such violence is eliminated. After the Rwandan genocide, people returned to live in the same areas as family members of people they had killed. The Gacaca court, a community justice system, was brought into play to help alleviate an overwhelmed judicial system and to assist a population needing closure for psychic wounds. These courts focus on confession, indications of remorse, and opportunities for forgiveness. In one instance a woman faced the man who killed her children and her husband and told him that she could never forget but she accepted his apology and he was welcome to find shelter in her home where she would treat him as a son. Ervin Staub and Angel Ryono report a study of a major reconciliation effort in Rwanda working with groups of people, with leaders, and with media to create a shared narrative, incorporating the historical context of the problem and establishing a shared history as a basis for peace. Some of the healing after violence depends on a settlement between warring parties. The conflict between Israel and Palestine has been present since the inception of the state of Israel. A modern, highly militarized democratic state is pitted against territories holding the world’s largest number of refugees, and in the case of Gaza, led by groups that carry out violent attacks on Israelis. Israeli military acts are defended in the name of security and attacks on Israelis are defended as retaliation for repression and killing of Palestinians. A political resolution of the conflict is made difficult by the unquestioning support of the Israeli military by the United States as well as by hardened extremist positions, which feed on the repetition of violence. In this climate one essential component of healing is the ability to keep people of goodwill, on both sides of the issue, in a dialogue outside of the posturing and blaming of the official political process. A specific project aimed at such healing is described by Laura Bernstein in Volume 3, and a basis for humanizing the Muslim ‘‘other’’ by understanding Muslim beliefs is described by Mohammed Abu-Nimer and Jamal Badawi in Volume 1. Herbert Kelman describes a long-term process bringing people positioned to be influential in policy into quiet dialogue out of the spotlight but highly important for preserving a necessary voice for peace. In war, children are often kidnapped or lured into the role of child soldiers. They are easily forced or persuaded to accept the absolutely subservient roles to soldiers on whom they depend and to accept killing as normal. Some grow to be warriors in numerous civil clashes often extending beyond national boundaries. Michael Wessells deals with the circumstance of child soldiers and the culturally sensitive efforts, sometimes successful, in bringing them into a role as advocates for peace.

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Without declared war, 27 million people are currently enslaved in every continent. Their daily traumatic abuse reflects the even grander displacement of people in the global economy and the willingness of most people not to notice. Melissa Anderson-Hinn describes the issues raised by slavery for the movement for peace and against violence. These issues are public information, rescue, rehabilitation, and prevention of this ultimately inhuman practice. In Volume 1 the case was made that humans are not naturally inclined to kill others of their species (Nagler and Ryono, Pilisuk and Hall), that but must be programmed to do so by experience or psychological intervention. Even with such programmed efforts the trauma of knowingly killing another human being is often profound. Rachel MacNair presents the evidence for a special form of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), that is, perpetrationinduced traumatic stress (PITS), that is highly prevalent among those who have killed. As militaries in the course of war have created ways to make soldiers more likely to pull the trigger, they have simultaneously created a larger pool of people afflicted by this syndrome whose need for treatment becomes critically important not only for their own well-being but to forestall future violence. Their treatment is thus a necessary component of the search for peace. More than this, the recognition that we have badly underestimated human nature by overlooking this powerful innate empathy in every one of us provides an irresistible demand that we get on with that task. —Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler

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CHAPTER

OUT

15

INNER WILDERNESS: TORTURE AND HEALING OF THE

Diane Lefer and Hector Aristiz
abal

This is a story of helplessness. It’s also a story of agency and of healing.

THE NARRATIVE OF HELPLESSNESS It was 4:00 A.M. at a low-income housing project on the outskirts of Medell
ın, Colombia. The whole neighborhood shook as military trucks rumbled into the barrio on the hunt for subversives. It was 1982 and I was 22 years old. We were living under the Estatuto de Seguridad, a repressive law that looked on almost any opposition to the government as communistinspired. It was dangerous to talk politics. Sometimes it was even more dangerous to create art. Friends of mine from the university had been seized and they disappeared only to reappear as cadavers found in a ditch, bodies covered with cuts and burns, toes and fingers broken, tongues missing, eyes gouged out. It could happen to me. With my theater company, I performed plays that encouraged dissent by poking merciless fun at the military and the rich, at presidents and priests. I’d participated in protests and human rights demonstrations and had organized cultural events that included free and open discussion. It could happen to my younger brother. It might already have happened. Juan Fernando had left the house two days earlier to go camping with three

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other kids. Then my family got word he had been arrested. My father and I went searching for him and were told he’d been turned over to the army, but we hadn’t been able to learn his whereabouts or anything about his case. Did that mean he had been ‘‘disappeared’’? I’d spent a restless night, my sleep troubled by fear for my brother. Now I was instantly alert. I pulled on a T-shirt and warm-up pants and ran to look out through the blinds. A truck was stopped in front of our house directly beneath my window. Should I try to escape? A cold mist made everything indistinct, but by the light of the streetlamp I could see Juan surrounded by soldiers in the open back of the truck. So at least he was alive. But there was no running for it now. I couldn’t try to save myself if the army had my brother. ‘‘Open the door! This is a raid!’’ shouted a soldier, as a platoon of 10 soldiers and a sergeant burst in, pointing their weapons at my terrified parents. My father grabbed our little dog, his beloved Chihuahua, trying to keep her still. ‘‘All of you! Sit there!’’ ordered the sergeant. There was my teenage sister Estela, scared and embarrassed to be seen in the old nightclothes she slept in. And there were my brothers, Hern
an Dar
ıo, who was fighting demons of his own that had nothing to do with politics, and Ignacio, the steady, reliable one who worked as a delivery boy to help support the family. ‘‘You! What’s up there?’’ said one of the soldiers as he pointed his rifle at me. ‘‘It’s where the boys sleep. Me and my brothers,’’ I answered. I led them up the stairs. They overturned furniture, threw clothes and papers everywhere, and tossed my mattress as they ransacked my room. As I watched them search, I started to calm down. I figured they weren’t after me for anything I’d done. They expected to find something and I knew they wouldn’t. I always cleaned the house when a government crackdown was expected. Pamphlets that criticized the president, leaflets demanding social justice, anything that mentioned trade unions or socialism—including books assigned at school—I’d gotten rid of everything. That’s what I thought, and I was wrong. When I was 14 years old, I’d written a letter to Radio Havana Cuba asking for books and magazines about the revolution. I was so proud of that letter that I’d kept a copy for myself. I had forgotten all about it. Now it was in the hands of the soldiers. And worse. Among my school papers, they found a booklet from the ELN, the Ej
ercito de Liberaci
on Nacional, the second largest guerrilla group in the country. This little pamphlet could mean a death sentence. It had to be Juan Fernando’s. No one else in the family had any interest in the ELN. Was he hiding it? Or had he left it for me to find, a follow-up to our recent disagreement? Then they picked up the photos. As a

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psychology student, I had been documenting the degrading treatment of mental patients at the charity hospital. According to the sergeant, these wretched looking human beings were hostages held by the guerrillas. My mother cried and begged the soldiers to let me go, but I was handcuffed and pushed out to the street. It was August, winter in Colombia, and a cold gray dawn was breaking. All the world’s colors seemed washed out, gone. And it was quiet, abnormally quiet. No shouts, no street vendors, no radios. But hundreds of neighbors had come out of their houses to see what was happening. They watched in silence and I remember thinking, witnesses, hoping that it would make a difference, hoping that the Army would not be able to just disappear us when so many people had seen us detained. I was put in the back of the truck with my brother. ‘‘Juan,’’ I cried. Soldiers kicked us and struck us with their rifle butts and told us to shut up but I had to talk to him. If we couldn’t explain away that ELN booklet, one or both of us might die. ‘‘I’m going to say you’ve been in the mental hospital, okay?’’ I said. We could admit he might have picked up some guerrilla propaganda, but I would explain that he wasn’t capable of understanding what it meant. My brother said nothing, but his eyes were full of pain. We were driven to an army post in another part of town. Followed by three more trucks, we entered the compound. Each truck carried one of the boys who’d gone camping. Soldiers ordered us out and stood us facing a wall. I remember the sun breaking through at last, throwing shadows against the whitewashed adobe, and the brief touches of warmth, now on my shoulders, now my back. ‘‘Comunistas!’’ ‘‘Subversivos!’’ they shouted. Soldiers ran by in formation, hollering insults: ‘‘Hijueputas!’’ The firing squad stopped and aimed their rifles. Someone shouted: ‘‘The one with the red shirt!’’ Bang! ‘‘The one with the long hair!’’ My heart exploded in my throat. ‘‘Long hair’’ meant me. Bullets slammed into the wall again and again just above my head, but they didn’t hit me. What were they going to do to us? We stood under guard for hours at that wall. The day went on and on and I shivered in the cold, waiting. ‘‘Don’t look!’’ they ordered, but I looked and saw a short fat man lead my brother’s friends away one by one. They were so young, just kids. What would happen to them? At last the soldiers brought them back. ‘‘Don’t look!’’ But I saw the boys were soaking wet and trembling. ‘‘Shut up! Don’t talk!’’ But there were whispers. We were tortured. They were tortured. A man took Juan Fernando. Minutes went by. Then hours. He didn’t bring my brother back. Images roared through my mind: mutilated bodies, my brother’s face. Torture. When the man came back, he was alone.

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The man came for me. He led me up a hill to a cell at the end of a long one-story building. He blindfolded me. He barked out questions: ‘‘Name?’’ ‘‘Nickname?’’ ‘‘What organization do you belong to?’’ ‘‘Sir, I don’t belong to any organization.’’ The blow knocked the wind out of me. The fists slammed into my stomach again. I doubled over and he kicked me. ‘‘What actions have you planned? Where do you cache your weapons?’’ he demanded. I had no answers for him, and so he beat me. Except for when he knocked me to the ground, I was not permitted to lie down or sit but had to remain standing day and night. When he left, the torture became psychological as I waited for his return with no hope of rescue. The door creaked open. No food. No water. No sleep. But still more questions for which I had no answers. A second interrogator came to see me. From his way of speaking, this one seemed to be an educated, well-mannered man. He pretended to be my friend. ‘‘If you don’t give me names,’’ he said in a kind voice, ‘‘that man is going to come back. Your brother is already in very bad shape, and if that man comes back, I can’t guarantee you will survive.’’ But I had no names to give him. The torturer called for soldiers to help him. They hold my head under water, and they bring me to the verge of drowning again and again. They strip me and attach electrodes to my testicles and send jolts of electricity tearing through my nerves. I scream, but only they can hear me. Then, el potro—an ingenious technique that can leave permanent damage but no scars. Soldiers I cannot see cover my hands and my lower arms with what feels like a wet sweater. Something is pulled tight, then my arms are jerked behind me and somehow I’m hanging painfully in space over an abyss, arms wrenched from sockets, my body extended so that the pain is everywhere. I’m utterly abandoned. The pain disseminates itself to every cell. It extends to the brain and blows out all conscious thought, all sense of self. Was there always a void in the center of me? It’s there now. I disintegrate and fall into it. Days later, soldiers drove me around in a small Jeep. One pushed the barrel of his rifle into my mouth. ‘‘You’re going to die now,’’ he said. ‘‘Just like your brother.’’ Instead, they forced me into an underground passage where I found Juan and his friends alive, all of us hidden from view—as we later learned—while a human rights delegation searched for us somewhere aboveground. The ceiling of our dungeon was so low we had to crawl. The air was hot and

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thick, and the stench unbearable from human waste and from the festering wounds of a black man from Choc
o we found chained and shackled there, bleeding to death in the dark. He told us he had no idea why he’d been arrested and tortured. ‘‘Worse than a street animal,’’ he said. There was nothing we could do to help him or ease his pain till it turned out another prisoner had bribed a guard for marijuana which he offered to the dying man. ‘‘Here, brother,’’ he said. The man dying in shackles filled his lungs and began to laugh and the smoke filled the dark and filthy crawlspace. We all filled our lungs and laughed and I believe I’ll hear our laughter echoing in that cave and in my nightmares for the rest of my life. It must have been the witnesses and the human rights delegation that saved us. We could have been executed in secret. Instead, we were brought before a judge. Our mental hospital story worked. The ELN booklet was deemed harmless, but my brother went to prison for carrying a subversive weapon—a machete. He went in an idealistic young man: He came out a committed revolutionary, convinced there was no alternative to the armed struggle. As for me, 10 days after my arrest, the Army let me go, but the ordeal marked me. It marks me still. My torturer. I could never forget what he looked like: short curly hair, thick eyebrows, a small moustache, stocky body, broad shoulders, a small but noticeable belly, and penetrating greenish eyes. If I ever found him, I would have my revenge. My torturer. That’s a pronoun I need to lose, and one I hear from so many other survivors—my perpetrator, my rapist—because while the statesponsored violation of a person’s body is a very specific assault, it has much in common with other atrocities. When you’re in that room, that isolated place where no help can reach you, where you can no longer count on family or friends or human decency, there is one person there with you. He was entirely focused on controlling me, watching me, listening to my breath, keeping me alive, yet all the while holding over me the power of life and death. And I had never in my life paid such close attention to anyone. I was alert to him and to his every response, trying to predict his every move with all my senses until pain overwhelmed everything and I lost my very identity. In that moment of utter surrender, when everyone else had abandoned me, when my own body and mind betrayed me, only he was there. For a long time the man who tortured me was a primary figure in my mental life. I now understand that one of the long-lasting effects of such trauma is to confuse that enforced and claustrophobic connection with intimacy. I need to break that connection and recreate the loving connections in my life.

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I need to think of that man as a torturer, not my torturer, and to understand that he belonged to the army, to the system of repression, and not to me.

THE NARRATIVE OF AGENCY What I’ve told you so far is true, but it’s not the whole truth. There’s a slightly different narrative I tell myself, a form of recycling. I look at a dirty experience, one I instinctively wish to get rid of, and instead try to find in it something of value. I will not allow myself to remain obsessed with my weakness. I tell myself: I survived. I revisit my wound to remember what made me strong. So here’s the other, equally true, version of my story—a narrative not of my helplessness, but of my resistance. A man blindfolded me. Someone pushed me into a room. About 20 minutes later, I heard the lock turn, the door creak open, and I recognized the same smell of tobacco and sweat. Though the man who came to torture me tried to disguise his voice, I realized I was dealing with the same fat man in civilian clothes who had led me up the hill. At that moment, I lost all respect for him. He thought he could hide his identity. He thought I was completely vulnerable and at his mercy but at that moment, I felt superior. I could identify him. That meant I was holding a card he didn’t know I had and that gave me a feeling of power. It is true the pain was often unbearable. It is also true that I often exaggerated it. As I’d done so much physical training as an actor, I could make myself fly back through the room when he hit me. I’d land back against the wall and get some idea of the dimensions of this terrible space. When they submerged my head, I put on such a great act of drowning that I scared them. I pretended to be more exhausted than I was, falling against the torturer. And when he instinctively reached out to catch me, I sighed and pretended to fall asleep in his arms. He didn’t like that one bit! Though I could not resist the things they did to me, I refused to be passive. Would my ploys be of any use? I had no idea, but each time I believed I’d outwitted my tormentors, I felt stronger. ‘‘Your brother has told us everything,’’ he said. ‘‘We know you’re an urban guerrilla commander. You’re the one who’s training those kids.’’ The son-of-a-bitch had to be lying. Juan Fernando would never have said such a thing. Again, I assured myself I knew more than he did. ‘‘He’s crazy,’’ I said. ‘‘My brother has been hospitalized.’’ The worst pain was imagining what they might do to him. ‘‘Please don’t hurt him,’’ I pleaded. I tried to learn as much about my situation as I could even when I had no idea how the information might serve me. A loose paving stone in the passageway echoed with a clunk every time the torturer or a guard came within

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9 or 10 steps of the cell. At first, the sound made me panic. It meant I was going to be hurt. But then I realized it gave me warning. I knew when the torturer was coming back. More important, the sound let me know when I was alone and when I was being watched. I counted out the time it took for the guard to make his transit up and down the passage, so then I knew how long I had before I’d be seen. There was something else I could use to my advantage: my hands had been bound behind my back when I was arrested, but after the mug shot, the soldier had handcuffed me in front. That meant I could raise my wrists and push back the blindfold . . . if I dared. Clunk. With my heart pounding, I waited. Then I slowly raised my wrists but I didn’t have the guts to go further. I counted the minutes. I waited. Clunk. I tried again. Were they watching? I let myself touch the blindfold. I scratched my forehead, waiting to see if anything would happen. I waited. No one hit me. I counted out the time. Clunk. I had to remove the blindfold but—Next time, I kept telling myself. I’ll do it next time. But they’ll catch me, I thought and then again promised myself next time. It took me what felt like forever but then I did it. I pushed the blindfold back. There through the bars I could see down the hill. There was the wall, and there was Juan Fernando, alive, looking scared. Even at a distance I could sense his tension, but he was alive. He was okay. They had lied to me. In the story I tell myself now, I saved my brother and he saved me. Every time the torturer entered, all I could talk about was Juan Fernando. Where is my brother? What are you doing to him? He’s fragile. If anything happens to him, our mother will die. I named people I knew at the mental hospital and claimed they had treated him. By holding onto my love and concern for my brother, I never entirely lost my connection to humanity outside that room. My emotional ties were not completely broken. Once I finally pushed the blindfold back and got away with it, I did it again and again; however, each time the torturer returned, I was standing obediently in exactly the same place in the room. Each time I looked, my first act was to reassure myself that my brother was still all right. Then I went further. To my surprise, I saw my cell had a toilet. Though I had kept complaining of hunger and exhaustion and thirst, now, when unobserved, I was able to drink from the tank. The interrogators had left a pile of evidence in the middle of the room. There was the ELN pamphlet. There was a photo of one of the mental patients from the hospital in a barred cell—the so-called guerrilla hostage. And there, at the bottom of the pile, was the only evidence with my name and with my handwriting—the copy of the letter to Radio Havana Cuba. I tore it up and flushed it down the toilet. The noise was a risk, but not taking that risk seemed the greater danger. At the end of 10 days, I was released for lack of evidence.

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HEALING Besides revising the narrative I tell, I have tried to see the time of my torture as an initiatory ordeal. The initiate is separated from his accustomed world. He doesn’t know where he has been taken. Naked and unprotected, he will face severe trials. He won’t know what comes next. He must accept the unknown outcome. Afterward, he returns to his society and is recognized in celebration. I am not saying the torture was an initiation, but that for my own sake, to move past the victim position and claim my own power, I have tried to resignify it as such. I had gone through an ordeal—not at the hands of the elders, but at the hands of perpetrators. The elders would have taught me to love life and to value my culture. Instead, the torturers made me lose faith in life. They made me wish I could die just to end the pain. They left in me a desire for revenge, fueled by a violent and deadly rage. I had survived but unlike the traditional initiate, I wasn’t brought back to the community and celebrated. The perpetrators left me in the wilderness and it was up to me, through my own resources, to find the way home. But merely returning home is not enough. Like the shaman—though I would not presume to claim that title—the torture survivor has experienced a break with the reality on which most of us rely. His identity has disintegrated. He has descended to hell but he has also returned and that means he knows the path. He can go and come back, descend and return. From the terrible depths the shaman brings back medicine and knowledge. For me, this means that to return in the fullest sense, I must take a story back to the world, I must speak out against torture, I must provide healing to those who’ve been to hell and are finding it hard to rediscover the path back to life. Today, approximately half-a-million torture survivors live in the United States. Many survivors speak reluctantly, if they are able to speak at all. Besides sometimes permanent or chronic physical damage, the psychic disintegration that accompanies torture leaves the survivor on unstable ground. Survivors cope with the symptoms of post-traumatic stress, with impaired memory, anxiety, depression, and difficulties in forming or maintaining relationships. You may know a survivor without being aware of it. You may have a neighbor, friend, partner, teacher, student, patient, client, or colleague who copes silently with torture’s long-term effects. We Latin Americans who survived the horrific repression of the 1970s and 1980s (often sponsored by the U.S. government and carried out by military officers trained by the U.S. Army at the School of the Americas) have had decades to process our emotions and to learn that breaking

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silence is part of healing. The trauma robs you of your community, your language, and your relations. All of these connections are broken. If we don’t reconnect, we replicate the isolation of the torture chamber over and over. We have to find the door and the key to unlock it. I had spoken out against torture for years, but when photographs surfaced of the hell of Abu Ghraib, old feelings of helplessness and rage threatened to overwhelm me. In collaboration with my friend Diane and my friend Enzo Fina, a musician, I created ‘‘Nightwind,’’ an autobiographical solo performance about my arrest and torture; I’ve toured performing the program over thousands of miles and through several countries to mobilize public opinion. After a performance, someone always asks how it affects me to relive the trauma. The truth is, I’m not sure, though I have many answers. Turning the experience into art, into an aesthetic object, gives me a sense of control and, I hope, creates beauty where once there was only pain. And that very pain empowers me as an activist as I seek allies in the struggle against such horrendous practices. Performing has become for me a way to unlock that chamber door. I used to think I needed to unlock it to get out; however, now it occurs to me an open door also serves to invite people in. Torture occurs in isolation, in secret. When I bring an audience into the experience with me, I am supported by their active participation as witnesses, and the space can no longer be a torture chamber. The space itself is transformed. To help others heal, I joined the board of the Program for Torture Victims (PTV), the first program in the United States dedicated to treating survivors suffering the physical and psychological consequences of statesponsored violence. PTV got its start in 1980, after two Latin American exiles met in Los Angeles. Dr. Jos
e Quiroga, a cardiologist, had been Chilean president Salvador Allende’s personal physician before the military coup that cost Allende his life. Ana Deutsch, a psychologist, survived the dirty war in Argentina, escaping to the United States along with her family after the military government threatened to arrest them for their opposition activities. Ana and Jos
e knew there were survivors in Los Angeles who weren’t getting the care they needed due to poverty, fear, or a powerful reluctance to speak of what they had endured. The two simply began offering their services, often in their own living rooms, free of charge. In 1994, PTV gained nonprofit status and the founders were finally able to seek outside funding, rent offices at Mercado La Paloma, and expand a staff of therapists, social workers, and administrators, as well as build a roster of cooperating doctors and immigration asylum attorneys. Initially, most clients came from Latin America. Today, PTV serves people from more than 65 countries around the world, from Afghanistan to

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Zimbabwe. As a board member, I often speak on behalf of PTV while also reaching out to my fellow survivors through the Healing Club. We get together to dance and play theatre games and soccer. We have fun, but also serve a serious purpose. When a severely traumatized person cannot make eye contact or speak, how will this person be able to go to an asylum hearing and face the immigration judge and answer questions about torture and rape? The games we play are a way to prepare them. I don’t do anything threatening. I don’t bring up the big issues, at least not at first. And there is nothing at stake. We just play, and in this way we come back into our bodies and reclaim our voices. I recently worked—or played—with a survivor from Cameroon who arrived in the United States rendered mute. Months later, he was able to make a statement to a group of college students. Admittedly, his presentation was brief and he spoke in general terms, offering no personal account. More privately, he told me he loves the United States because in this country, everyone gets a fair trial and only terrible criminals go to prison. He asked: ‘‘Why doesn’t the United States care about Cameroon? President Bush invades Iraq to get rid of a dictator. Why won’t he invade my country?’’ This man had suffered horribly for speaking out against his government in his homeland. Now, as much as I quietly disagreed with his opinions, what mattered to me most was that he could express them. Then there’s Meluleki. He’s a tall, handsome young man, always clean cut and, like many Africans I’ve met in Los Angeles, he’s rather formal. For his first two years in the United States, my friend Meluleki sat in an apartment, doing nothing, utterly depressed as he waited for the government to decide whether to grant his application for asylum. ‘‘Go out,’’ I suggested once. ‘‘Get a job, even if it’s a crummy job. It would be something to do.’’ ‘‘No,’’ he said. ‘‘They told me since I asked for asylum I’m not allowed to work. If they catch me working, I don’t get it.’’ So Meluleki waited. No money. Nothing to do. All he had were memories of the life he used to lead and the political violence and torture that made him leave that life behind. I imagine he was like me in that chamber, tormented not just with the pain, not just with the interrogator’s questions, but the bigger questions that never leave you: Where is everybody? Where are my family, my friends, the country, and the values of this society? Why can this happen apparently with such ease? How can people treat other human beings like this? Why doesn’t anyone care? Where are the people? In Zimbabwe, Meluleki was an actor, which is why his therapist, Ken Louria, wanted us to meet. Now he speaks so softly, the words come out

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and are swallowed back almost before I can hear what he’s said. Someone who doesn’t know the consequences of torture might find it hard to believe this man once projected his strong voice in street theatre performances, out in the open air. I take him to buy a drum—a djembe drum, a healing drum. We find drums painted in the colors of Africa, and another in a multi-mask design, adorned with brightly patterned swirls. But the drum Meluleki chooses isn’t painted. Instead, it’s the grain of the wood and the simplicity of the braided cord around the drumhead that give it beauty. The sales clerk comes over to offer help, but for the first time since I’ve known Meluleki, it is clear he needs no help from anyone. As soon as his hand touches the goatskin, my friend is fully alive. Over lunch, I ask Meluleki about the initiation rites of his tribe. ‘‘The older men of the village initiate you,’’ he explains. ‘‘Your uncles, not your father. If something is bothering me or I am in some trouble, I tell my uncle. He may then talk to my father or instruct me, but in our custom, I never go directly to my father.’’ ‘‘Who would be the equivalent of your uncle in Los Angeles?’’ I ask. He names his therapist. He names the whole PTV program. ‘‘And you,’’ he says, ‘‘because you went with me to get this drum.’’ ‘‘When you get your asylum, we should celebrate,’’ I say. ‘‘Your uncles should offer you a welcoming ceremony.’’ He smiles, saying, ‘‘That will be good, and I will tell you how.’’ And so one day in May, we all sit in a circle in the meeting room downstairs at Mercado La Paloma. The conference table is gone and the walls are decorated with African fabrics. We are survivors and staff and children and friends. We come from the United States and Sri Lanka, Congo, Guatemala, Eritrea, France, Italy, Palestine, El Salvador, and more. We speak English, Spanish, Shona, Russian, Armenian, Georgian, Tigrinya, Singhalese, Arabic, Italian, Amharic, and more African languages than I can name. ‘‘I am Hector,’’ I say, moving my arms in a flourish. Everyone repeats, ‘‘I am Hector,’’ and the whole circle copies me, waving their arms. ‘‘I am Melu,’’ says Meluleki. One by one, we introduce ourselves with a name and gesture, to be imitated and celebrated by all. At last, we’re back to Meluleki. Now it is his chance to say more than his name, to tell us all exactly how he wants to be known. He begins to drum. He speaks in remembrance of those who have died in Zimbabwe and then he says: My name is Meluleki. My umbilical cord was buried in the red soils of kwaGodlwayo omnyama. . . . [Instantly the Zimbabwean women in the

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room begin to ululate, galvanizing us all. They join in Meluleki’s praise of his people:] . . . umahlaba ayithwale owadeluku biya ngamahlahla wabiya ngamakhand’ amadoda. This is how I praise my chief and identify with the sons and daughters of the soil, the people of my origin, the Ndebele tribe. I remember growing up in the presence of the Fifth Brigade, commonly known as the ‘‘gukurahundi,’’ one of the most ruthless armies that have ever existed on this planet. They massacred more than 30,000 of my beloved brothers and sisters on the instructions of the socalled angel of death, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, who has successfully destroyed my motherland for the past 27 years. I tried with my fellow comrades to voice our concerns through staging theatre shows in the schools, creches, youth centers, and streets of Bulawayo, but the message was too clear to go unheard by the little dogs that he has planted all over. These people visited me without an invitation and, believe me, it was not a pleasant visit. This is what they did to me.

He doesn’t speak now, but his hands fly as he drums, hard and fast, and then faster. ‘‘Today I have a scar on my forehead. When I look at the mirror I see a defeated warrior, but it’s only for the moment,’’ he tells us. Will Mugabe fall at last? Will Meluleki someday return home? He taps his drum. His fellow countrymen join him as they sing the national anthem: Mayihlom’ ihlasele, nkosi sikelel’ izwe lase Zimbabwe. We welcome him to the PTV family, first with words. He receives a welcome from his therapist, Ken Louria. A man from Cameroon talks of the support people must give each other: ‘‘No matter where you are or how bold, you need someone in front carrying the torch.’’ We welcome him then with our drums. I’ve got mine. Enzo is playing, too, and so is case manager Saba Kidane who’s brought a drum of her own and can’t stop smiling as she joins in. We teach each other songs in our different languages and when we start to dance, I see the African woman—the one who has sat silent and stiff with tears on her expressionless face—suddenly rise. She’s out in front now, leading the dance, swaying and clapping. ‘‘Look, look,’’ says her friend. ‘‘This is the first time I see her happy since she arrives in the United States.’’ Now we have welcomed Meluleki and this woman, too, into the PTV community. It remains to be seen whether they will be welcomed by Los Angeles and into the wider community of the United States of America. Where is everybody? We are here.

CHAPTER

16

F R O M G R I E F T O G R AT I T U D E : T H E T A R I Q K H A M I S A F O U N D AT I O N Azim N. Khamisa

If we are to have real peace in the world, we shall have to begin with the children. —Mahatma Gandhi

The Tariq Khamisa Foundation (TKF) is dedicated to empowering kids to say ‘‘no’’ to gangs, guns, and violence, to saving lives, and to teaching peace. I founded it as my life’s mission in response to a tragedy. On January 21, 1995, my 20-year-old son Tariq Khamisa, a San Diego State University student, was delivering pizzas when he was shot and killed by a stranger, a 14year-old named Tony Hicks, who fired the fatal bullet on orders from an 18-year-old gang leader. While I will mourn Tariq’s tragic death for the rest of my life, I have channeled my grief into a powerful commitment to stop kids from killing kids through the violence-prevention educational programs of TKF, established in October 1995 in loving memory of my son. TKF was inspired in a beautiful instant when I was embraced with love in the arms of God. In the midst of that peace and safety, I understood that there were victims at both ends of the gun. My son was a victim of the This chapter is an adaptation from Azim Khamisa, From Forgiveness to Fulfillment (ANK Publishing, 2007).

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shooter, Tony Hicks. And Tony himself was a victim of early childhood abuse and neglect. Although living with his loving grandfather, Tony was still angry because of many early problems. When the gang leader told him to shoot a pizza deliveryman for two pizzas, he did. Holding the gun, he was an angry 14-year-old who had come from an extended family of violent gang members. In that murderous moment, he didn’t value any life, including his own. Then Tony realized this was the worst thing he’d ever done and that it could not be reversed. Who is responsible for causing, and for stopping, youth violence in our society? Every day 75 kids, aged 12 to 18, get shot, and 13 of them die. Another 237 youth are arrested daily for violent crimes involving a weapon. About 760,000 kids are in 24,000 youth gangs. Homicide is the leading cause of death in California for youth aged 15 to 19. Fifty percent of kids do not feel safe at school. Statistics reveal the tragic likelihood that if a kid joins a gang, he or she will either be in prison or dead by the age of 25. No less than the combined hearts of every one of us needs to be caring for all of our children faced with such daunting challenges. Before Tariq’s death, I rarely considered the overall welfare of society’s children. I took care of my own children and thought, as many people do, that other children were the responsibility of their own parents. Little did I know how many parents and guardians are violent role models for their kids. How then are these children supposed to live differently when violence is promoted as a way of life? When I became aware of the violent youth statistics in our country, I began to ask, ‘‘Why do our kids join gangs?’’ The answers I found horrified me. Joining gangs is macho. Kids join to get a sense of respect. Or they join for protection because they live in an area where if they don’t join this gang, then that gang will target them. Kids also join gangs for a sense of belonging. The fact that kids join gangs indicates a gross lack in what our families and communities offer children. Otherwise, no youth would need to join a gang to gain respect, to feel safe, or to have a sense of belonging. After learning the truth about gangs and youth violence, I knew in my heart that I had to do something to save children from becoming victims like Tariq and Tony. I also knew that I couldn’t do it alone. As these thoughts were arising, my spiritual teachers reminded me that there is a time to grieve and a time to stop grieving. After our 40-day ritual, it was time to let Tariq’s soul fly to freedom. My teachers affirmed that by doing good deeds I could accumulate spiritual currency to help my son’s soul on its way. TKF was born of this dual inspiration: to do good deeds to advance Tariq’s journey and to give my life’s attention to helping children learn to make nonviolent and peaceful choices. If I could save one child, I would feel that

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I had made a difference. My desire to stop kids from killing kids took root. Today it has blossomed into a fully staffed, nonprofit organization that successfully implements several youth and parent programs. Since 1995, the work of the foundation to end the epidemic of violence has touched millions of children through in-school assemblies, video presentations, and broadcasts into the classroom. We have touched at least as many adults through extensive national and international print and electronic media coverage, as well as television and radio exposure. These students, teachers, and parents—as well as many others I reach through forgiveness workshops and speaking at conferences and other venues—are coming to the selfempowering realization that they always have choice. They learn that even though they’ve been exposed to violence, they do not have to pattern their lives after it. Violence begets violence. It is never a good choice. Through violence-prevention education, TKF inspires students away from a destiny of violence. Through community and educational partnerships, we’re cultivating new attitudes and behaviors by role modeling integrity, kindness, empathy, understanding, peace, forgiveness, compassion, and respect. TKF empowers future leaders by inspiring young people to choose nonviolence. Through our programs, we are nurturing a generation of peacemakers who will create a world free from youth violence. We provide antidotes to negative influences, whether from violent family members and peers or from the media where extreme violence and aggression are sensationalized. Since gang members begin pressuring kids at the fifth-grade level to join gangs, our prevention strategy focuses on youths in the fourth to eighth grades. Our messages of nonviolence and forgiveness instill in the kids the desire to be peacemakers, not gang members. And the strength of our belief that TKF’s programs make a difference is backed up by measurable results.

MISSION AND CORE VALUES TKF’s mission is stopping kids from killing kids and breaking the cycle of violence by inspiring nonviolent choices and planting seeds of hope for our children’s future. Three core values guide the implementation of the mission. They are integrity, compassionate confrontation, and forgiveness. Integrity means being honest and genuine in our dealings with others and holding fast to our commitments rather than our desires. We make many commitments to TKF, to ourselves, and to our community. At times these commitments may be in conflict. To remain steadfast to our deepest commitments, we bring these conflicts to light and work together to resolve them. Confrontation involves openly and honestly facing our differences, conflicts, and contradictions. Compassion means caring about the suffering and

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well-being of others. At TKF, we embrace compassionate confrontation to achieve a higher understanding with mutually beneficial results. This practice requires compassionate listening and is a healthy ingredient to human interactions. It creates opportunities for change. We confront one another with a loving and compassionate intent. Forgiveness means letting go of resentment. It starts with acknowledging that harm has been done. Through feeling this pain, we tap into the power of forgiveness, the release of resentment. Ultimately, we reach out with love and compassion to the offender. We forgive others when they have wronged us or someone else. We ask for forgiveness when we have wronged others. We acknowledge that at times we will fail to forgive. We help each other to forgive, to accept forgiveness, and to accept each other through the process. We strive to forgive. The core values are important to our foundation because they ensure that we are doing everything possible to walk our talk. When we go into the schools to teach peace, nonviolence, and forgiveness to the students, they know whether or not we are speaking the truth. Kids are very much in tune with ‘‘vibes,’’ and if they sense that we are not speaking from a place of integrity, they’ll stop listening.

BREAKING THE CYCLE OF VIOLENCE In breaking the cycle of violence, prevention is clearly the ultimate solution. We must keep our vulnerable youth from joining gangs and engaging in other risky behaviors that can destroy their own futures and cause serious harm to others. How do we approach breaking the dreadful cycle of violence, so often promoted in our society? We raise awareness in children, especially those predisposed to vengeful and aggressive behaviors, of the consequences of their actions, consequences beyond just doing some time in juvenile hall. We show how one mindless, violent decision, such as the one Tony made, can affect many lives for generations to come. We instill awareness that other decisions can be made. We want them to discover the power of a peaceful decision and a forgiving heart. We show that Tony had a choice that night to pull the trigger on that gun or not to pull it. TKF executive director Lisa Grogan said, ‘‘When Tony made that one violent choice in that one moment, not only did Tariq’s and Tony’s lives change, but also so did other lives of infinite proportions. Maybe Tony, who wanted to become a doctor, would have saved people’s lives and in turn would have affected so many other people. Perhaps Tariq and his fianc
ee would have had children, who then would have had more children, who all

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would have done wonderful things. The world will never know. That is the power of one poor, thoughtless, violent choice.’’

THE POWER OF CHOICE AND THE SIX KEY MESSAGES TKF’s mission is to teach kids they have choices and to lead them toward lives of peace and nonviolence. To this end, we have developed several programs within the framework of our comprehensive strategy. Two of these programs are the Violence Impact Forum Assembly (VIF) and Ending the Cycle of Violence. Both are held during school hours and are facilitated by TKF and/or school staff. All of our programs are designed to inspire the kids to learn and essentially live by TKF’s six key messages: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Violence is real and hurts everyone. Actions have consequences. Youth can make good and nonviolent choices. Youth can work toward forgiveness as opposed to seeking revenge. Everyone deserves to be loved and treated well. From conflict, love and unity are possible.

Our programs deliver these messages and are designed to transform kids by offering them education beyond the basics of reading, writing, and mathematics. Many of the principals, teachers, and counselors at the schools where we speak tell us that our messages are important, because no matter what other future life choices these kids make, most of them are going to become parents one day. As parents, the skills that they will most certainly need are those that we teach: nonviolence, compassion, and forgiveness. The kids in our programs learn to cope with loss and trauma and with emotional highs and lows. They discover they are not alone in experiencing these sorts of things. They learn to give a direction to their lives to be of benefit to others, not just themselves. They learn how to release anger without causing harm, and they look at alternative, win-win ways to resolve conflicts nonviolently. We do our best to instill the values and practices of empathy, compassion, and forgiveness through our teaching and example.

VIOLENCE IMPACT FORUM ASSEMBLY (VIF) Our first program, the Violence Impact Forum Assembly (VIF), is an interactive, in-school assembly that shares the real-life TKF story of Tariq and Tony. It demonstrates to students the devastation and consequences of violence. A video presentation reenacts the shooting and its aftermath and

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shows the truth about gangs and prison life. The goal is to empower youth for resiliency and positive choices. Through our focus on forgiveness and choices, students come to understand the lifelong consequences of Tony’s one deadly choice and the critical importance of choosing nonviolence. As mentioned, we take the VIF into elementary and middle schools, beginning with the fourth grade. If we can get to the kids first and impress on them that they have the personal power and free will to make nonviolent and peaceful choices, then we may save them from the lives of violence that they may otherwise have chosen. Some teachers say our assembly is more needed than almost any other curriculum. Not every child is going to join a gang or be pressured to join. However, violence comes in many forms: bullying, starting a rumor, name calling, segregation. Every child has experienced some violence, so we teach what violence looks like in varied forms. Before the day of the VIF, an information sheet is sent out to the students’ parents, along with an opt-out letter in case a parent does not want his or her child to attend. Many of these kids come from families where gang activity is the norm. The opt-out letter is rarely returned. We also provide a teacher’s guide for the VIF. Each school that participates agrees to do a follow-up session with their students. Our teacher’s guide facilitates that follow-up with the TKF vision statement, an abbreviated version of the TKF story, a description of the VIF, objectives, the teacher’s role, and a student debriefing agenda. ‘‘Tariq’s Philosophy of Life’’ essay and Tony’s sentencing speech are also included. The VIF is a transformative experience for the kids. As the video plays, the kids are immediately drawn in by the rap music. Those who are still talking to their friends quiet down as the dramatic scene unfolds before them of street-smart youths hanging out in the shadows while the pizza delivery man becomes more and more frustrated by his inability to find the right address. When ‘‘Tony’’ points the gun at ‘‘Tariq,’’ any remaining noise from the students’ normal energetic distractions dissolves, and the school auditorium is perfectly still. The hush is palpable, the students’ breaths drawn in. And then, with the sound of the shot, it’s as if the students exhale in one united breath. What they have just witnessed is something they may never have witnessed before. Or, if some of them have, the dramatic video likely may have triggered memories of events from their own lives. With the video over and the lights becoming brighter, Sal Giacalone, Tariq’s boss from the Italian restaurant where he was working the night of the shooting, comes on stage and welcomes the students. He thanks them for having TKF come to their school, for their respect, and for paying close attention to the video and to the speakers who will be coming on stage.

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He tells the kids that members of TKF have come to talk to them about making choices, and he instills in them the idea that each of them has the power to make different choices than Tony did. He impresses on them the notion that they can make positive choices to stop the cycle of violence. ‘‘Today you are going to be meeting people who have been deeply affected by violence and how it hurts,’’ he tells them. ‘‘Each of you is important. We care deeply about each and every one of you, and we don’t want to lose any of you to violence.’’ Sal then talks about his relationship with Tariq and how they were more than boss and employee, about how they had grown to be good friends. ‘‘I was at home on my day off the night I got the call saying Tariq had been shot. I thought it must be a mistake and told my employee to find out what happened and call me back. The next call was from my store manager. He said it was true. Tariq was lying in the street . . . dead.’’ As Sal continues with his personal story of the events of that tragic night, some of the students are antsy. Some of them are captivated. All of them are listening. He describes how he went to the restaurant and told the police officers every detail he could remember about Tariq’s last day at work. Not yet knowing who had shot him, the officers were trying to accumulate as much information as possible. ‘‘The restaurant phone rang,’’ Sal says. ‘‘It was Jennifer, Tariq’s fianc
ee, wondering where he was. I told her I didn’t know and that she should call back in a little bit. A little while later, the phone rang again, and one of the police officers grabbed me by the shirt and said, ‘Don’t answer that. We have people trained to make those phone calls.’ The phone kept ringing and ringing and ringing, but I didn’t answer it.’’ ‘‘Still to this day,’’ Sal tells the kids, ‘‘when I hear a phone with that tone, it brings me right back to that night that my friend was murdered. And I don’t care where I am. I don’t care if I’m at a show, at a store, at work, in somebody’s office, I relive his death every time.’’ By the time Sal finishes his story and introduces me and Tony’s grandfather, Ples Felix, the kids are curious. ‘‘What exactly does all of this have to do with me?’’ some of them might be wondering. ‘‘I’m not in a gang. I’m not robbing pizza delivery men.’’ Ples and I walk out on stage and take two seats next to each other. Sal walks behind us and lifts his hand over Ples’s shoulder and then mine saying, ‘‘This man’s grandson murdered this man’s son.’’ He repeats it. ‘‘This man’s grandson . . . murdered this man’s son. And today they sit in front of you in the spirit of compassion and forgiveness.’’ Sal introduces me, and I stand up to speak. The kids are intent on finding out more about this story about Tariq and Tony, me and Ples. I share with

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them the pain I felt when I heard my son had been shot and killed. I talk about how he was my only son and had been shot for no good reason. ‘‘Violence is extremely painful,’’ I say. ‘‘It hurts very deep. It scars the soul, and sometimes it scars it forever.’’ I talk to them about how we see a lot of violence in our culture through movies, television, and video games. ‘‘But you don’t see the pain that violence causes,’’ I tell them. ‘‘I really believe that if we knew this excruciating pain that violence causes, as human beings we would never, ever be violent.’’ The kids listen as I speak to them about the different forms violence takes, whether it’s bullying someone, spreading rumors, starting fights, or harassing others in some other way. Some of the kids shuffle in their seats. Maybe they’ve been the bully. Maybe they’ve been on the receiving end. They all know what I’m talking about. Then I ask the hard question, the one that will really open some of their hearts to our assembly. Without their knowing it, they’ve been prepared for the question by watching the video reenactment and by listening to the stories Sal and I shared about our pain and our loss. Because of the groundwork we so carefully laid, they are willing to answer my question. ‘‘How many of you have lost family members as a result of violence?’’ I ask. Often, two-thirds of the students raise their hands. Two-thirds! On many occasions TKF staff are approached post-assembly by teachers, counselors, or vice principals with shock and sadness on their faces. ‘‘We didn’t know,’’ they’ll say. ‘‘We had no idea so many of our children had been exposed firsthand to this kind of violence.’’ I tell the students who’ve raised their hands (and I know that I’m also speaking to some of those who didn’t), ‘‘I understand the pain of losing someone you love. When Tariq died I felt like a nuclear bomb went off in my heart. How many of you have brothers and sisters?’’ Many hands go up. ‘‘Tariq had an older sister, Tasreen. Maybe you lost a brother or a sister, a mother or a father, an aunt, an uncle, or a cousin. Perhaps this violence has happened in your family. If not, imagine that your brother or sister was killed in an act of violence. How many of you would seek revenge? Raise your hand if you would seek revenge.’’ Almost all of the hands in the auditorium fly up in unison. ‘‘I completely understand that you would feel like you wanted to have revenge,’’ I tell them. ‘‘But what would revenge do? Would it bring Tariq back? Would it stop the pain in my heart?’’ The kids shake their heads no. ‘‘What would it do?’’ I ask them. ‘‘Make it worse,’’ they say. ‘‘Cause more violence.’’ They understand in their hearts that violence doesn’t make things better. Deep inside of them, they know that revenge and violence are never the answer.

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‘‘I understand that it can be difficult,’’ I say. ‘‘In some of your homes you are encouraged not to be violent and at the same time you’re told to get revenge if anyone is bullying you or harassing you. These mixed messages can be difficult to understand. But I’m here to tell you,’’ I say emphatically, ‘‘never to choose revenge. I’m here to tell you that violence is never a solution. The consequences of violence are always going to be negative. When Tariq was killed, instead of revenge I chose forgiveness, and I reached out to Tony’s grandfather, who is now like a brother to me and is one of my best friends.’’ I point to Ples sitting in his chair on stage. He is looking at me. ‘‘I would do anything for Ples, and he would do anything for me,’’ I say. ‘‘How many of you would like a friend like that?’’ All the hands go up. ‘‘Would we have this kind of friendship if I was seeking revenge?’’ They shake their heads back and forth in unison. ‘‘No,’’ says the chorus of voices in the auditorium. I take a moment and then say, ‘‘This kind of friendship comes from forgiveness. And you find forgiveness in your heart.’’ The kids look at me standing in front of them wearing my pain on my sleeve and at Ples still sitting in his chair. They know that his grandson shot and killed my son. And they know that I have forgiven both Tony and his family for the tragedy. But they still don’t know why. I tell the kids that I know forgiveness is hard to do and that it is absolutely okay to be angry and to want revenge. I let them know it’s okay to have the feelings, but that they don’t need to act on them. I acknowledge the feelings they might have, and I offer an alternative to transform the negative emotions into something positive. ‘‘Forgiveness is letting go of your anger toward a person who has done something wrong to you. Every morning I wake up and I forgive Tony. Because I practice every day, my forgiveness muscle is very strong. It takes courage to let go of your anger, but I am healing from my pain because I forgive Tony every day.’’

My Brother Ples When I introduce Tony’s grandfather, Ples, and the kids see us hugging like loving brothers, they are very curious about nonviolence and forgiveness. Not all the pieces completely fit for them yet, but once Ples starts talking, it all begins to come together and make sense. Ples is savvy and street smart and knows how to reach the kids at their ‘‘I wanna be tough’’ level. He tells it like it is and makes no secret of the fact that his grandson adversely affected many lives—including his own—by his one act of violence. Ples gets down to the nitty-gritty and talks to the students about Tony and the bad choices he made—those bad choices that

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put him into the prison system. He talks about how he, too, lost a son, since Tony was as close to a son as he’d ever had. He doesn’t hold back any punches when he tells the kids that Tony’s been serving a 25-years-to-life sentence in an adult prison since the age of 16. Tony’s entire life has changed because of one bad choice he made after a day of hanging with his friends, drinking alcohol, and smoking pot. Tony woke up angry that day. And though he didn’t know it when he woke up, this was going to be the last day of his life as he’d known it. Everything was about to change . . . for Tony and for all of us.

He tells the students that when we’re angry, we’re not thinking people. We’re only reacting people. ‘‘And when we’re reacting people,’’ he says, ‘‘we’re not aware people. We’re not aware of what’s going on around us. We’re not aware of what’s going on inside us. We’re not aware of how on the edge we are to doing something that will put our lives off track. Because we’re angry and reacting,’’ he says, ‘‘we are not aware.’’ He tells them how Tony woke up angry that morning and decided to run away from home. He ran away because he was angry and didn’t like the discipline at home where his grandfather required him to study, do well in school, and choose friends wisely so that he could have a successful life. Ples talks to the kids about what makes a good friend. You might think someone’s your friend, but if they bully you or tell you to do something that you don’t really want to do, they’re not a friend, so don’t think they are. Tony thought these people were his friends. They weren’t. One of them put a loaded gun in his hands. And after Tony pulled the trigger that night, these so-called friends told him to run, run, run and not drop the gun. They weren’t concerned. They didn’t care about Tony.

Ples tells the kids how Tony made his first bad choice when he decided to be angry that morning and that all day long he continued to make bad choices that finally resulted in his shooting and killing Tariq. ‘‘Azim and his family lost Tariq. I lost my grandson to the prison system. And as a result of one bad decision, Tony has lost his freedom. Even after he gets out, he will always have to report to the state of California. He will be living with the consequences of this one bad choice for the rest of his life.’’ Ples then asks the students how many of them have dreams. All the hands go up. He tells them: It’s important that you keep your dreams close to you. Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t live your dreams. People will tell you that.

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They’ll tell you that you can’t have your dreams. But you have to be strong enough to understand, this is your dream. It doesn’t have anything to do with those folks. This is your dream. Accomplish your dreams. But you don’t want to set obstacles up to prevent you from realizing your dreams by committing yourself to choices that are violent, that are not peaceful, that create consequences for you, your family, and the community.

Before Ples closes, he makes sure the kids understand who’s responsible for the death of my son. He says, ‘‘Let me hear it loud and clear. Who’s responsible for the death of Tariq Khamisa?’’ ‘‘Tony,’’ the kids shout back. Ples says, Tony is responsible. You have to be able to take responsibility for your choices. Nobody makes you do something. When you do a violent act, you do it because you choose to do it. And you’re responsible for it. So when you’re out there making choices, understand that the choices you make are going to have consequences or benefits to you. So make the right choice. Be peacemakers.

Panelists After Ples speaks, our panelists come on stage to talk to the kids. These speakers have been there, exactly where the students are now. They’ve been exposed to violence on the streets and in their homes. And they’ve been tempted to join the gang family for a sense of belonging and safety. They tell the kids that when they were their ages, they made the wrong choice. Our panelists, both male and female, engage the kids’ attention because they speak from the heart about their choices, painful consequences, and how they turned their lives around to choose the ways of peace and nonviolence.

The TKF Peacemaker Pledge At the closing of the assembly, we ask all the kids to stand and join us in a pledge of nonviolence: I pledge on my honor to be a peacemaker; In my home In my school And in my community. I am a peacemaker. I AM A PEACEMAKER

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Garden of Life Being able to express grief is a first step in healing, and so following the VIF elementary school assemblies we hold a special ‘‘Garden of Life’’ ceremony on campus. A tree is planted in memory of Tariq and any family members the students have lost, and the kids also plant flowers in memory of their loved ones. This garden becomes a place they can visit every day, a place they can go for healing or remembrance. Ples expresses a beautiful perspective about the programs and especially about the Garden of Life. I see and experience the programs as an opportunity to help children see the potential of divinity within themselves. I always project that when we finish one of the VIFs, I see these students walking around with this great, glowing light coming from their hearts. The light itself is symbolic of the inspiration having been turned on to make decisions that will change them for the rest of their lives. That’s the kind of vision I walk away with from every VIF. But the Garden of Life accentuates that even more for me, because it ritualizes for the students and everyone else in attendance an opportunity through the planting of a flowering plant for the expression of grief. And for the expression of caring for someone lost. And it’s done in such a loving, reverential, nonreligious kind of way that whenever that’s done, I visualize those lights coming from these students being one thousand times brighter. Each of these students touched a living plant, dug a hole in God’s earth, and planted this flower with loving intention for its growth, blossoming, and beauty as a means of expression to memorialize or to say goodbye or to honor someone they’ve lost. Some of these children are so reverent with respect to the application of the Garden of Life, even after they plant the flowers, they step back and just close their eyes briefly in silence. Then when the kids have completed that process, you can see that they have been unburdened. They have not only been unburdened, but they have also been freed to make choices that will prevent them from engaging in violence in a way that will really help their lives.

HOPES I wish that Tariq were still with me. And I sometimes wish that TKF programs had existed before Tony decided to join a gang. I think that maybe if he had participated in a VIF or had gone through the Ending the Cycle of Violence curriculum, he would have been transformed from a life of violence to a life of peace. But these wishes are only impulses of the heart and have no substance in reality.

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I know only too well that it is because of the death of my son at the hand of Tony Hicks that TKF came into existence. This is what makes this story both a tragedy and a blessing. ‘‘He always wanted to leave this world a better place . . . and he has,’’ Tasreen says about her brother. Yes, he has. Without the ultimate sacrifice of his death, TKF would not exist. And without the programs of TKF, many more children would remain lost in lives of violence, living without hope, living in the darkness of despair, revenge, and hatred. I have great hopes for TKF. I believe that as we continue to accumulate data and results, more and more school districts will hear of our work and choose to make TKF a part of the mainline curriculum in all of their schools, bringing our message of hope and nonviolence to more and more kids. Just like going to a math, reading, history, or science class, kids will go into a TKF class and learn the core values we teach through our six key messages. It is my dream that once we have achieved this goal in the U.S. school system, we’ll go to places like Iraq, Israel, Palestine, and North Korea, where there is such dire conflict. I would like to see TKF go all over the world, because when we have been able to touch all the kids of the world and they have learned how to create brotherhood, sisterhood, love, and unity from conflict, then we will manifest a world at peace. I’ve always maintained that no child is born violent. It follows that since violence is a learned behavior, nonviolence can also be learned. But who in our society teaches nonviolence? TKF does and does it successfully. In fact, San Diego State University has been so impressed with the results of our programs over the past 12 years, they have proposed creating a TKFendowed professorship on peace and nonviolence. Since San Diego State is the highest teacher-producing university in the country, with the professorship in place, every graduating teacher will have been trained in our curriculum. The university also has 20 international centers, so through our partnership we will be able to take our programs into these other countries. Being involved with an institute that can support the research and development of our programs is a dream come true. Ples and I have committed the rest of our lives to the principles of peacemaking and teaching nonviolence, and when the TKF meets its mandate, we will see the beginning of a peaceful society.

CHAPTER

17

S T E P S T OWA R D R E C O N C I L I AT I O N : U N D E R S TA N D I N G A N D H E A L I N G I N P O S T-G E N O C I D E R WA N DA A N D B E Y O N D Ervin Staub and Angel Ryono

During the era of its colonial rule, the policies of Belgium greatly influenced the identity and shaped the relationship between the major groups in Rwanda, Tutsis and Hutus. The Belgians favored the Tutsis and had them rule in their behalf. Under their oversight the already existing differences between the two groups increased and political and social divisions intensified. The oppression of the Hutus and the hostility that developed between the groups established a foundation for violent conflict.1 The period just preceding and the decades following the formal pronouncement of Rwandan independence were marked by violence against, and at times mass killings of, Tutsis. In 1994 there was a horrific genocide—a 100-day massacre of over 700,000 Tutsis, and about 50,000 Hutus because they were seen as politically moderate or enemies for other reasons.2 For decades since Rwanda’s independence, Tutsis have left Rwanda to escape the violence against them and sought refuge in neighboring countries. In 1990, a rebel group consisting mainly of descendants of Tutsi refugees, calling themselves the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), entered the homeland from Uganda. A civil war followed. There was a cease fire and an opportunity for political conciliation was presented by the Arusha Accords

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in 1993. However, animosity toward the Tutsis continued and Hutu extremists planned a genocide. The plane of the President of Rwanda was shot down, and immediately the genocide began, on April 7, 1994. Fighting between the RPF and the government army resumed, and with the international community remaining passive bystanders, the RPF brought the genocide to a halt. The RPF assumed leadership over a new government. Following the genocide, there was continued armed conflict between the RPA (the Rwandan Patriotic Army, the new name of the government army) and Hutu perpetrators of the genocide who escaped into Zaire, now the Congo, and killed Tutsis in the course of incursions into Rwanda. The violence spread into the Congo, resulting in over five million deaths by 2009, due to killings, violence, and disease.3 Since 1994, national and international efforts have included a focus on reconciliation and reconstruction. These efforts include but are not limited to the following: government-supported memorial sites and media programs; government-sponsored education and re-education camps espousing unity; United Nations (UN)-funded International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR); and grassroots and community-based platforms for truth telling and justice (Gacaca).4 However, overcoming the rift between groups after mass violence is an enormous task. In the aftermath of a genocide perpetrated by residents of the same nation and locality, as in Rwanda, how can formerly opposing groups continue to live together and build a non-violent future? How can they resolve the traumatic past and establish harmonious relations? Among the many steps toward reconciliation, there is a critical role for processes that address the psychology of individuals and groups. Of great importance is understanding the roots of violence. What are the external conditions, and what are their psychological effects that lead to violence? Understanding these factors that lead to violence can help people resist the influence of these external conditions and enable them to take action to prevent violence. It can also help them act out their psychological effects in constructive ways. What is the impact of past violence, the psychological woundedness it creates? How can healing or psychological recovery, and other aspects of reconciliation be promoted? To promote reconciliation and thereby both prevent new violence and contribute to harmonious societies requires a comprehensive approach, including changes in how the community attends to problems in human relationships, particularly to conflict and the imbalance of power and injustice. Otherwise, violence is likely to recur.5 The intent of this chapter is to describe and to illustrate an approach to post-conflict healing and reconciliation that uniquely draws upon

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the principles of psychology. Understanding the influences leading to violence and healing from psychological trauma and emotional scarring are stressed as important steps to reconciliation and preventing future violence. This understanding and healing approach builds on previous theoretical work and research done by the lead author and his associates, in particular, Laurie Anne Pearlman, a trauma specialist. The approach was used in seminars, workshops, and trainings with community workers, journalists, national leaders, and then in collaboration with George Weiss and the Dutch NGO he directs, LaBenevolencija, applied to educational radio programs. This project was supported by multiple philanthropic foundations, including the John Templeton Foundation, and by the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Netherlands, Belgium, the European Union, and individual donors. The approach to understanding, healing, and reconciliation in Rwanda showed indications of success. An evaluative study is described showing the effects of implementing this approach in reconciliation-related activities in Rwanda.6 We believe that adaptations of the same model can find useful application in other post-conflict settings.

GENOCIDE IN RWANDA—A BRIEF HISTORY There were differences between Hutus and Tutsis before colonial rule; European colonialists exploited and enhanced the differences, increasing the divisions between the two groups socially, politically, and economically, in service of control of the country.7 The Belgians institutionalized the divisions by requiring Hutus and Tutsis to carry identification cards. Tutsis were regarded and treated as superior to Hutus. These colonial policies and visibly unjust practices cemented the Hutus’ bitterness towards Tutsis. In 1959 Hutus revolted against the oppression, killing Tutsis, (thousands of them according to earlier reports, hundreds according to later reports) with many thousands seeking refuge in neighboring countries as Hutus assumed power.8 The massive transfer of power to the Hutus led to discrimination against Tutsis and periodic violent attacks, some on the scale of mass killing. In 1990, the RPA entered from Uganda, initiating a civil war with Hutu forces. In 1993, after a cease-fire, the Arusha Accords were signed, intending to establish a shared government. However, on April 6, 1994, Hutu President Habyarimana was killed when his plane was shot down. An intense public campaign of hostility towards Tutsis had led to the planning of genocide,

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which began after Habyarimana’s plane was shot down. Over a 100-day period beginning on April 7, 1994, about 800,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsis, were killed. The perpetrators in this government-organized violence included members of the military, young men organized into paramilitary groups, and ordinary people including neighbors and even family members in mixed families.9 The community of nations watched in horror, but remained passive, while about 10,000 Tutsis a day were slaughtered. The genocide ended only when the RPA defeated the government army and took over leadership. In recent years, the RPF-led government has taken active steps towards reconciliation and is espousing national unity. However, the government has been increasingly intolerant of ‘‘divisionism,’’ even accusing those who are potential opponents, non-compliant, or dissenters as propagators of genocidal ideology. Little open public discussion and political opposition interfere with reconciliation. Eugenia Zorbas considers this a ‘‘papering over of cleavages’’ and a systematic denial of the still deep wounds left by the complex history of violence.10

DEFINITION AND GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF RECONCILIATION Reconciliation is a result of a change in attitudes and behaviors of an individual or group toward the other. Reconciliation means that groups in conflict do not see past relationship as defining the present. It means that they come to see and accept the humanity in one another, welcome forgiveness, and have a vision of the possibility of a future, constructive relationship. Political and social processes, structures, and institutions are part of the context of conflict and also play a role in reconciliation.11 They solidify or maintain the progress of psychological transformations that result from reconciliation. This psychological definition of reconciliation is consistent with Louis Kriesberg’s, which focuses on the relationship between parties.12 The definition is also compatible with Broneus’ definition stating that changes in attitude and behavior between parties are important in bringing about mutual acknowledgment of past suffering.13 Following great violence, such as genocide and mass killing, reconciliation is achieved through a difficult and long-term process.14 Theory, research, and practice in this area are in their early phases. Demands and challenges exist for developing effective and expeditious interventions that promote reconciliation because, in many post-conflict settings, perpetrators and victims continue to live next to each other.

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THE IMPACT OF MASS VIOLENCE ON SURVIVORS, PERPETRATORS, AND PASSIVE BYSTANDERS Genocide and mass killing deeply affect survivors, their perception of themselves and of the world. Victims of such violence see the world as dangerous and feel diminished and vulnerable.15 Victimization has a negative effect on survivors’ identity, interpersonal relationships, and their view of the world.16 Because individual identity is rooted in group identity, members of the victim group who were not directly involved in the conflict are also traumatized by the destruction of their group or group identity.17 In Rwanda, ‘‘returnees’’ are children of Tutsi refugees from earlier violence who repatriated from neighboring countries after the 1994 genocide. Returnees come back to devastated families and communities. With the Tutsis’ return to govern Rwanda, the impact of genocide on Tutsis’ psychology and the early experiences of the returnees can have significant political consequences. The psychological effects of victimization include heightened sensitivity to new threats.18 If new conflict arises, then this sensitivity makes it challenging for survivors to balance their needs against the needs and concerns of others. Corrective experiences, an important element of which can be community healing with neighbors helping each other to promote psychological recovery, can promote social healing. Without such experience, survivors of mass violence will not easily be open to reconciling damaged relationships. They may believe that they need to defend themselves forcefully or aggressively against new threats—even when aggression is unnecessary or inappropriate. They may strike out in response to new threats or conflict, hence becoming perpetrators.19 An aggressive response continues the cycle of violence. Perpetrators also suffer psychological wounds. Past experiences of political persecution, being forced into servitude, or past violence against them can be a source of trauma and lead to unhealed wounds.20 As they engage in violent actions, perpetrators psychologically distance themselves from their victims to avoid feeling empathy or acknowledge the victims’ humanity. This psychological distance from and devaluation of the targeted, or victim, group is likely to generalize to other groups and situations of conflict.21 But it does not provide perpetrators with sufficient psychological protection. Recent research shows that people who engage in varied forms of violence against others are psychologically wounded by their own actions22 (See also Rachel MacNair, chapter 21 in this volume). Passive bystanders are defined as members of the perpetrator group who did not enact violence but were in a position to know about it (in a

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‘‘position to know’’ because bystanders often close their eyes and try to avoid knowing) and in a position to take action. Passive bystanders witness the evolution from hostile social conditions, to indirect violence, to direct violence. They may have joined their group in discriminatory behaviors and passively accepted harmful actions that preceded the genocide or mass killing. Their passivity in the face of harm to others is likely to wound passive bystanders as well. They progressively distance themselves from victims in order to maintain connection to their own group, which is perpetuating this violence. They do this by increasingly devaluing the victims, seeing them in increasingly negative light, and as deserving their fate.23 The extent and nature of psychological woundedness of the three groups are different. Its moral meaning is also different: survivors of violence are wounded because they, their relatives, their group has been harmed, perpetrators because they have inflicted great harm. However, to achieve reconciliation it is important to address the woundedness of all groups. For the purpose of this discussion, woundedness is defined as enduring psychological distress accompanied by feelings of vulnerability. When violence ends, perpetrators and passive bystanders tend to assume a defensive stance. The tend to continue to devalue and blame the victims and tend to be unwilling to assume responsibility for their own or their groups’ actions.24 To address perpetrators’ woundedness and trauma helps diminish their defensiveness and increase their capacity for reconciliation. Helping perpetrators become aware of their usually unacknowledged guilt and shame, and engaging with their historic losses and distress due to their actions, in a safe environment, can open them to the humanity of their victims. This can lead them to feel and express empathy, regret, and sorrow, which in turn lead to positive responses from survivors. Together with other aspects of reconciliation, this process can lead, in turn, to such positive responses from survivors as understanding the context of the perpetrators’ behavior, wishing for reconciliation and considering a measure of forgiveness.25 In summary, healing that is inclusive and obtained at the community level appears an important requirement for reconciliation.26

AN OVERVIEW OF CONCEPTS AND PRACTICES THAT CONTRIBUTE TO RECONCILIATION Truth and justice are important concepts in a comprehensive approach to promote reconciliation.27 In working with survivors of genocide, one

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comes to understand their yearning for the truth about what was done to them and for their suffering to be acknowledged.28 For example, the Armenian people continue to suffer when Turkey refuses to claim responsibility for the genocide in the early 1900s. All groups, including survivors of the Holocaust, respond with pain and anger at those who deny mass violence perpetrated against them. When the global community recognizes and condemns victimization of a group of people, the message helps survivors feel that moral order is reinstated and increases their sense of security. Truth and the acknowledgment of suffering may repair diminished identity. Acknowledgment from perpetrators, through expressions of regret and empathy, is of special importance to victims’ psychological recovery. Unfortunately, perpetrators typically continue to justify their actions and to devalue and blame their victims. Empathy with perpetrators, difficult as it may be given the nature of their actions, can help them heal, reduce their defensiveness, and enable them to act in a way that helps to heal the victims and contribute to a reconciliation process. The history of group conflict in Rwanda adds complexity to post-conflict dialogue and reconciliation. While the genocide in 1994 targeted Tutsis, as the woman who was the justice minister during the genocide told Ervin Staub when he interviewed her in prison, Hutus focus on their servitude (she called it ‘‘slavery’’) before 1959.29 Hutus also refer to RPF violence against Hutu civilians during the civil war and violence against Hutu refugees in Zaire, now the Congo.30 Unacknowledged and unexamined violence in the past cause conflicting groups to focus on their own suffering and attribute blame to the other. Reconciliation is advanced as in the course of coming to understand the roots of violence and engagement with each other. A healing process is promoted when each side is able to acknowledge the suffering of the other. However difficult this may be, the acknowledgment of pain on both sides, the mutual search for truth, and groups in conflict moving toward a shared history, advance reconciliation. The importance of justice in promoting reconciliation has also received substantial attention.31 Survivors of genocide need justice, as it is another form of acknowledgment and it re-establishes a moral order. Truth is a prerequisite for justice. One form of justice is punishment, it is important for survivors and may deter future perpetrators to some extent. However, excessive punishment risks rekindling antagonisms. Procedural justice is especially important in reconstruction and developing the capacity for a lawful society. Justice can also be compensatory or restorative, engaging the parties with each other and with perpetrators, contributing to the

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rebuilding of society. Restorative justice is likely to contribute to the healing process.32 Empirical evidence about the role of truth in reconciliation is limited.33 However, it is clear that the absence of truth and justice inhibits or stalls reconciliation. As mentioned earlier, the Armenian community struggles to heal and move beyond the genocide of early 1915–1916 because Turkey has persistently denied responsibility and has used its political influence to stop others from acknowledging the genocide. It has attempted to influence scholars and exerted pressure on countries, including the United States.34 When overt acknowledgment and justice are not forthcoming, a community will need to find internal healing processes.35 An important aspect of justice is economic. This includes labor by perpetrators or members of their group that helps rebuild survivors’ lives. It also includes establishing equitable relations between groups within a society. In Northern Ireland, the possibility of resolving the conflict between Catholics and Protestants was greatly increased by improving economic and educational access and opportunities for the Catholic minority.36 Contact also contributes to reconciliation, especially if it includes deep engagement of people belonging to hostile groups. Social psychological theories and a meta-analysis of a large body of research on contact affirms its positive effects.37 People from different groups working together for shared goals can overcome devaluation and prejudice. In the face of incidents that were incitements to violence, Hindus and Muslims from some cities responded differently from their counterparts in other cities. In three Indian cities where Hindus and Muslims belonged, and were committed to the same organizations, members from both groups worked together, responding to the incitement in ways that prevented the outbreak of physical violence. In three other cities where such inter-group contacts did not exist, similar incitements did result in violence.38 Some Indian cities are beneficiaries of the Shanti Sena, an organization begun by both Hindu and Muslim followers of Gandhi. Shanti Sena are peace-keepers, mediators, diplomats, and crisis counselors whose voluntary intervention as a third party has been useful in preventing violence from occurring or from spreading, even when customary interactions between groups may be less strong than desired.39 Forgiveness is also an important aspect of reconciliation.40 Both theory and research suggest that forgiveness eases the anguish of victims as they learn to let go of hostility and desire for revenge and develop a more positive attitude toward the perpetrators.41 An important difference between forgiveness and reconciliation is that the former is one-sided and the latter requires mutual participation and mutual change. Anecdotal information gathered in

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Rwanda points to instances in which forgiveness by a survivor may draw out expressions of regret and apology from the perpetrators. However, it is more typical that regret and apology expressed by perpetrators facilitate forgiveness. Many practical interventions that can promote reconciliation have been developed.42 Dialogue between members of conflicting groups is a centerpiece in conflict resolution. Sometimes influential members of groups, at other times ordinary members of the communities, are participants. Dialogue between leaders is important. Dialogue groups can set goals that are both material and psychological, helping to resolve both practical and emotional challenges to coexistence. Dialogue is an important form of contact, and can create deep engagement between participants. For dialogue groups to be able to resolve practical issues of living together, there have to be psychological changes.43 Participants need to move from negative attitudes to experiencing some degree of empathy with each other and developing the capacity to accept responsibility for their own group’s actions.

THE COMBINED ROLE OF PSYCHOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE Psychological elements that advance reconciliation are essential. However, social structure plays an important role in supporting the reconciliation process. Psychological elements are defined as perceptions, interpretations, evaluations, attitudes, memory, and emotional responses associated with an individual’s or a group’s past history and future expectations. Social structure is defined as policies, social practices, and institutional rules and procedures. The equality or equity of policies and their perceived fairness can contribute to the success and sustainability of reconciliation goals. When institutions provide just social and legal structures, and when they promote and create access to resources and opportunities for contact, they help make reconciliation possible. It is hoped that psychological change, over time, can have a progressively expanding influence. This influence can be achieved through a combination of efforts, some directed to the training of people for direct work with the local community, others directed toward community and national leaders and to the national media. In the work of Ervin Staub and his associates, bringing about change involved training community workers, members of the media and national leaders, and public broadcast of educational radio programs that directly reach a majority of the population. Engaging the population and promoting psychological change in the public, can in turn shape policies and institutions.

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UNDERSTANDING AND PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALING: THEIR PLACE IN RECONCILIATION The theories and scholarly work of the lead author about the origins and prevention of genocide and reconciliation, drawing also on the work of others, informed this project on promoting reconciliation in Rwanda.44 Research and experiential work related to trauma and healing by the lead author’s associate in this work in Rwanda, Laurie Anne Pearlman, also drawing on others’ work, provided another basis for the psychological approach to reconciliation.45 The first focus for the approach to understanding and healing was the use of psychological concepts to promote understanding of the roots of mass violence. A second and related focus was to help people understand the human impact of violence. A third focus was psychological recovery and healing. One ultimate aim of the approach was to prevent new violence by effectively contributing to reconciliation. The specific goals in the Rwanda project included mitigating trauma, strengthening diminished identity, educating about psychological woundedness, establishing in each group a degree of openness to the other group, developing understanding of mass violence and genocide, encouraging critical dialogue, and promoting awareness of social justice to provide for basic human needs. Through all this the intent was to empower people to be active bystanders, to help each other heal and promote coexistence and peace. These goals were incorporated into education and communication programs and activities that reach the majority of Rwandans. They included trainings and workshops at the community level, and with journalists and national leaders who can influence the community, and educational radio programs that reached the whole population. Participants in trainings and listeners to the radio programs are encouraged to engage with each other, share experiences, and support each other. This helps to heal and strengthen all members of the community, thereby making important contributions towards reconciliation.46

PROMOTING UNDERSTANDING AND HEALING AT ALL LEVELS OF RWANDAN SOCIETY In early 1999, during a visit by the lead author and his associate, Laurie Pearlman, to Rwanda, the tremendous psychological impact of the genocide was visible in the many faces on the streets, seemingly frozen in pain, people immediately talking about their horrible experiences to strangers in a country known for such conversations before only with family. The need for

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healing and reconciliation was evident. Rwanda, a country of eight million people, has a culture that is rooted in communal experiences; both because of this, and because both victimization and perpetration happened in groups, healing in groups was likely to be most effective.47 The project began training thirty-five Rwandans, both Hutus and Tutsis, employed at various local organizations working with the community. The training composed of psycho-educational lectures, extensive group discussions, and experiential components that included sharing experiences and developing ways to use the lessons gained from the seminar in future community work. The training introduced the following main ideas: • Origins of genocide and mass killing—Introduce a broader context so that participants learn about the origins of other genocides, the specific influences that have led to violence in other communities. Understanding influences that shape the thinking and actions of perpetrators can mitigate the tendency for victims to blame themselves and to see perpetrators as purely evil. • Trauma and victimization—Information and awareness about widespread behavioral, physiological, cognitive, emotional, interpersonal, and spiritual impact of violence. • Avenues to psychological healing recovery. One example is to create settings in which people can safely talk about their painful experiences.48 Talking about the trauma has contributed to psychological recovery.49 • Basic psychological needs—Basic human needs play a role in both the origins of genocide and in post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation. Thus, understanding basic psychological needs—security, positive identity, feelings of effectiveness, trust, positive relationships, a world view that makes reality comprehensible—can help people meet them more effectively, and constructively, and combat scapegoating and destructive ideologies that occur after violence.50 • Positive engagement with the others—Encourage empathic responses to others’ experiences with listening skills and emotional support— and thus person-to-person healing. • Integration of methods—Combine psychological healing with existing or traditional approaches in community building activities.

CHANGES CREATED BY THE UNDERSTANDING–HEALING APPROACH Some participants in training expressed the realization that their tragedy is part of a larger, albeit horrific, human history and experience—that the genocide in Rwanda was not divine punishment that targeted their group.

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There was a shift toward ‘‘rehumanizing’’ the opposing group. Participants reported that they understood the influences that lead to genocide, and believe that it is possible to prevent future violence. Participants gained experiential understanding of the roots of mass violence by connecting the facts and framework of violence from other genocides with the Rwandan genocide and their own experience. A field study was conducted to assess how members of the community who received training in newly set up community groups, facilitated by the members of local organizations trained in the approach had changed.51 Working with Rwandan research associates, trauma symptoms, attitudes toward members of the other ethnic group, and about ‘‘conditional forgiveness’’ were assessed. The results showed that the understanding—healing approach helped to move Rwandans closer to reconciliation. Information was obtained from a time before the training, immediately after it, and again two months later. Findings from participants in the program were compared to members of groups led by facilitators who were not trained in the approach and to members of other groups that received no training. Trauma symptoms decreased in the groups that were facilitated by participants in the workshops/seminars, and positive orientation by Tutsis and Hutus towards one another also increased. Positive orientation included the following components: (1) seeing the genocide as having complex origins; (2) willingness to work with the other group for important goals; (3) indicating awareness or belief that some Hutus resisted the genocide and some saved lives; and (4) willingness to forgive provided that there was acknowledgment of suffering and sincere apology. Evidence of such positive orientation may indicate that each group is ready to reconcile with the other. The changes were significantly greater in groups led by the facilitators who received the training, prior to the onset of sessions and two months later, and in comparison to change in the other groups.

WORKING WITH NATIONAL LEADERS In 2001, two seminars were conducted with national leaders as participants. There were about 32 national leaders: government ministers, members of the Supreme Court, heads of national commissions and of the national prison system and the main Kigali prison, an advisor to the president, and members of the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission. In 2003, a one-day seminar, similar to the first, was conducted with 69 participants including the addition of members of Parliament and political parties. After exposure and discussion of information about the origins and impact of violence and avenues to prevention and reconciliation, the participants

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considered, in small groups, whether particular government policies and practices would make violence more likely, or would help prevent violence and promote positive relations. Would they contribute to devaluation by one group of another or humanize the ‘‘other,’’ intensify or appropriately moderate respect for authority, and so on? The leaders discussed what they could do to shape policies and practices to reduce the likelihood of future violence and address the need for psychological recovery. There was active discussion with national leaders about the creation of a shared history. Collective memories have been recognized in prevention and promoting reconciliation; stressing the importance of working for the creation of shared histories.52 Some participants argued that history is objective. But the majority of the participants recognized that history could be told from different perspectives. Hence, national leaders came to a consensus that it is important to create a shared view of history. A small group discussion from the 2001 seminars resulted in a variety of proposals for creating a shared history. One proposal suggested asking each group to take the role of the other in describing Rwanda’s history. Another proposal emphasized the peaceful coexistence between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda’s early history. In the end, many participants expressed doubt that it would be possible to achieve a shared history so soon after the genocide. During the second national leaders’ seminar, a participant referred to an earlier ‘‘genocide.’’ In 1959, the Hutu revolt against Tutsi rule led to the killing of Tutsis (earlier believed to be in large numbers but more recent investigation suggests hundreds rather than thousands were killed at that time). There is a general understanding that colonial rule intensified and institutionalized prior divisions between Hutus and Tutsis, elevating Tutsis further. The persistent injustice during colonial rule fueled the revolution, which led to some killings, but not to genocide. The discrimination and violence against Tutsis under subsequent Hutu rule could be understood as the outcome of the psychological woundedness, fear, and anger felt by the Hutus, and their intense devaluation of Tutsis. Policies and practices of Hutu leadership after 1959 created new injustices. The past became a ‘‘chosen trauma’’ for Hutus.53 They were further wounded by their own dehumanizing actions towards the Tutsis. The ‘‘understanding approach’’ of the seminar worked to inspire a mutual and balanced awareness of the past. Lectures about the origins of genocide were used to help participants understand how mass violence usually comes about.54 Social conditions, characteristics of cultures, and their psychological effects that breed violence were identified: severe economic problems, political instability, persistent conflict, intense devaluation of the other, scapegoating and destructive

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ideologies, and the evolution of increasing violence. These and other concepts were then applied in the analysis of other examples of genocide. Participants in every workshop were then asked to apply the concepts to Rwanda.55 This activity is a part of helping the group to develop a sustainable understanding about their experiences. Creating a story and constructing meaning out of tragic experiences have been identified as important contributors to healing from trauma.56 But understanding also has positive psychological effects and creates the possibility of constructive actions. The lectures and subsequent discussion also considered avenues to prevention and healing that were suggested by understanding the origins.

WORKING WITH JOURNALISTS, THE MEDIA, AND COMMUNITY LEADERS A number of seminars were conducted with the media and community leaders similar to the national leaders’ seminars. Participants concluded that the media have the power to humanize people or to devalue them; hence they have the potential to add to or dissuade violence. Media influence was intense during the months leading up to the Rwandan genocide. Radio and other media communicated hate against Tutsis; they were the vehicles that propagated destructive ideologies. But media can also have positive effects. Following inter-ethnic violence in the case of Macedonia, journalists belonging to different ethnic groups joined together to write collaborative newspaper articles about the lives of families from various ethnic groups. In this instance, media portrayed the humanity of members of each group in the service of harmonious relations.57 Individuals who are in leadership roles within their communities possess similar capacities to influence inter-group acceptance. The Gacaca trials were a special issue brought to discussion. The Gacaca court, a community justice system, was created both to serve justice and help to alleviate an overwhelmed jail system that detained about 120,000 accused genocide perpetrators. About 250,000 Rwandans were elected to act as judges in the Gacaca trials and serve as administrative personnel, with about 10,000 Gacaca courts created. Later the number of judges was reduced. The Gacaca, which ended in 2009, was conducted in every community once a week. Members of the local community were to attend and participate. Their goal included establishing the truth of what was done, bringing about justice and promoting reconciliation. Participants and the leaders’ workshops/seminars talked about potential psychological consequences of these courts, such as testimonies about the genocide retraumatizing survivors and generating renewed anger in both groups. Children attending the trials would be newly traumatized.

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Participants discussed what could be done to mitigate possible trauma. Ideas were put forth stressing community support, positive presence, and empathic listening. They thought that promoting the understanding of the societal, cultural, and psychological roots of violence presented in the seminars/workshops to a larger community would be useful. As people engage with, listen to and respond to the testimonies at the Gacaca court, the psychological changes in thinking and feeling that can result from people adopting an understanding orientation can limit the severity of re-traumatization and make the Gacaca a more effective tool of reconciliation. After the first leaders’ workshop, discussions with the then general secretary of the RPF—later to be appointed foreign minister—and the justice minister at the time, led to an agreement to initiate educational radio programs for this purpose.

EDUCATIONAL RADIO PROJECTS Radio is the primary form of media that Rwandans use to access information and current events. While not every person owns a radio, village members will often listen to radio together. In 2001, the lead author and his collaborator, Laurie Pearlman, began to work with George Weiss of LaBenevolencija, a Dutch non-government organization (NGO), to produce two types of radio programs, aimed at the same goals of reconciliation, healing, and violence prevention as Staub and Pearlman’s previous work in Rwanda. A radio drama titled ‘‘Musekeweya,’’ or ‘‘New Dawn,’’ deals with two neighboring villages in conflict. The understanding and healing approach was embedded in the story to provide information about the roots of violence, possibilities of healing and prevention, and traumatic impact of violence on individuals and groups. ‘‘Musekeweya’’ also reflected complexities of human society with subplots about love between a young woman and man from the two villages, friendships, and family relations. Rwandan writers authored weekly episodes based on the objectives of understanding the roots of violence and its prevention, psychological healing, and reconciliation. Starting in 2004, and continuing since then, the radio drama broadcasts twice a week in the national language, Kinyarwanda. A survey of general radio listening in 2005 reported that 90 percent of the population listens to radio, and 89 percent women and 92 percent men among them listened to this program, reflecting the program’s popularity among a nationwide audience. A large study has evaluated the impact of the program on knowledge, and on behavioral and cognitive changes that resulted from listening to the radio drama.58 The results indicate changes in both attitudes and behavior after a year of airing the program.

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Participants who as part of an experimental study listened to the radio drama when compared to those who listened to a different program were found to: • • • • •

Have greater empathy for victims, perpetrators, leaders; Understand more the importance of talking as a means of healing trauma; Express greater willingness to speak out when they disagree; Engage more in discussions about when there are issues to resolve; Act more independently of authority.59

Some of these findings suggest that the radio drama can help society move to more critical thinking and greater pluralism, in contrast to an authorityoriented culture. An informational/journalistic radio program was launched in September 2004 and aired monthly. Elements of the understanding–healing approach were integrated into discussions that involved local commentators, experts, and citizens with relevant experience. In January 2005, the radio drama began airing in Burundi, which has the same Kinyarwanda language, and where there was also a great deal of violence between Hutus and Tutsis, with new programs starting in 2006. The Rwandan’s civil war and genocide have led to intense violence in the Eastern Congo. Between 1996, two years after the Rwandan genocide, and 2010, about five million Congolese people have died due to violence that spilled over from the Tutsi-Hutu conflict, but also partly resulted from the instability and corruption under Mobutu’s leadership before 1996, and the intense disease and hunger brought on by long-term violence. In 2006, both types of radio programs were also created for and began to broadcast in the Eastern Congo. The radio programs were adapted to fit the nature of violence and conditions in the Congo—a society with more ethnic groups vying for influence, power, and security.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS Understanding the influences that lead to violence and its enduring impact and the ways of healing at the individual, local community, and national level promote a positive orientation of one group toward another. In Rwanda, this approach opens an important door to reconciliation and helps the society move towards creating a shared history. A psychological approach that promotes ‘‘experiential understanding’’—understanding that connects with people’s own experience, which furthers healing—can be essential to create the motivation to work together to rebuild society in the wake of violence. In a

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post-conflict setting, restoring the community’s sense of safety, facilitating healing activities, promoting group contact, and supporting dialogue are among ways to re-build a community. Understanding, healing, and individuals becoming active bystanders in building a better society can be advanced by education and mass communication programs. The success of the project must be viewed in the context of continuing socioeconomic and political problems. Large numbers of people have been displaced and lost family members been impoverished and have engaged in violence. The conflict between Hutus and Tutsis has carried over to the Eastern Congo, when the RPF brought the genocide to an end and both perpetrators and over a million other Hutus escaped into Zaire, later renamed the Congo. The RPA moved into the Congo to fight the genocide perpetrators.60 Conflicts and violence have been aggravated by exploitation of the Congo’s natural resources. Incursions by and fighting between foreign armies, starting in 1998, and the creation and emergence of many militias including the Tutsi-led National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) and Hutu-led Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), have exacerbated existing conditions of violence and instability. Both the armies and militias have committed grave offenses against the residents of the Congo. Reconciliation in Rwanda will not only increase long term security for the Rwandan people, but it may shape the Rwandan governmental policies in ways that help promote reconciliation and peace in the Eastern Congo as well.61 Research, theory and practices that promote reconciliation are in nascent stages of development. However, these efforts are important as they have implications for the prevention of future violence. The project’s apparent success in Rwanda, even though tested by challenge of the intense impact of violence on all parties, the political conditions and restrictions on public discussions, encourages further application of the approach and practices of Staub, Pearlman, and LaBenevolencija in promoting reconciliation in real world settings. This approach is unusual in that it is based on past research and theory in psychology, points to the importance of using research and theory in psychology, and points to the importance of using research scholarship in developing methods to prevent violence, promote reconciliation, and build harmonious societies.62

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4.

Mamdani 2002. des Forges, 1999. United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, 2002. Zorbas, 2004.

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5. Lederach, 1997; De la Rey, 2001. 6. Staub et al., 2005; Staub and Pearlman, 2001; Staub and Pearlman, 2006. 7. Lederach, 2001. 8. Powell, 2008. 9. des Forges, 1999. 10. Zorbas, 41. 11. Staub and Pearlman, 2001. 12. Kriesberg, 1998. 13. Broneus, 2003. 14. Staub and Bar-Tal, 2003. 15. Staub, 1998. 16. McCann and Pearlman, 1995; Pearlman and Saakvitne, 1995. 17. Tajfel, 1982; Staub, 1998. 18. Herman, 1992; Staub, 1998. 19. Mamdani, 2002. 20. Staub, 1998; Volkan, 1997. 21. Staub, 1989. 22. MacNair, 2002; Rhodes et al., 2002. 23. Staub, 1989. 24. Staub and Pearlman, 2001; Staub and Pearlman, 2006. 25. Staub, 2005a. 26. Montville, 1993. 27. Gibson, 2004; Proceedings of Stockholm International Forum on Truth, Justice and Reconciliation, 2002. 28. Hovannisian, 2003. 29. Staub, 2006. 30. des Forges, 1999. 31. Gibson, 2004. 32. Tyler and Smith, 1998. 33. Gibson, 2004. 34. Hovannisian, 2003. 35. Staub, 2003a. 36. Cairns and Darby, 1998. 37. Pettigrew and Tropp, 2006. 38. Varshney, 2002. 39. Helmick and Petersen, 2002; Staub and Bar-Tal, 2003. 40. ‘‘Report of the American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security,’’ 2005. 41. Kelman and Fisher, 2003. 42. Kelman and Fisher, 2003; Kriesberg, 1998; Staub, 2011; Volkan, 1998. 43. Cairns and Darby, 1998. 44. Staub, 1989; 1996; 1998; 1999; 2003b; Chorbajian and Shirinian, 1999; Totten et al, 1997; Staub and Bar-Tal, 2003. 45. McCann and Pearlman, 1990; Pearlman and Saakvitne, 1995; Saakvitne et al, 2000; Staub, 1998; Allen, 2001; Herman, 1992; Staub, 1998; Esterling et al, 1999; Nadler, 2003; Nadler, Malloy, and Fisher, 2008.

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46. ‘‘Report of the American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Psychological Ethics and National Security,’’ 2005. 47. Staub and Pearlman, 2006; Herman, 1992; Wessells and Monteiro, 2001. 48. Foa et al, 2000. 49. Pennebaker, 2000. 50. Staub, 1989; 2003a, 2011; Pearlman and Saakvitne, 1995; Saakvitne et al., 2000. 51. Staub et al., 2005b; Staub, 2011. 52. Bar-Tal, 2002; Cairns and Roe, 2002; PRI 2004; Staub and Bar-Tal, 2003; Staub, 2011; Willis, 1965. 53. ‘‘Chosen trauma’’ was proposed by Vamik Volkan (1997) to describe the focus of a group on a historical trauma and its psychological and behavioral consequences. 54. Staub, 1989, 2003c, 2011. 55. Staub and Pearlman, 2006; Staub, 2011. 56. Herman, 1992; Pennebaker, 2000. 57. Information Clearing House, n.d. 58. Paluck, 2009; Staub and Pearlman, 2009; see also Staub, 2011 for a detailed discussion of both the workshop-trainings and radio programs and their results. 59. Interrogations and Ethics, 2008. 60. Prunier, 2009; Staub, 2011. 61. A detailed description of the work promoting healing, reconciliation and the prevention of new violence in Rwanda (and the Congo) can be found in Staub, 2011. 62. A detailed description of the work promoting healing, reconciliation, and the prevention of new violence in Rwanda (and the Congo) can be found in Staub, 2011.

CHAPTER

18

I N T E R A C T I V E P R O B L E M S O LV I N G : I N F O R M A L M E D I AT I O N B Y T H E SCHOLAR-PRACTITIONER Herbert C. Kelman

For nearly 40 years now, my colleagues and I have developed and applied an unofficial, academically based, third-party approach to the resolution of international and intercommunal conflicts known as ‘‘interactive problem solving.’’ The approach is derived from the pioneering work of John Burton1 and is anchored in social-psychological principles. It is a form of unofficial—or what is now often called ‘‘track two’’—diplomacy. It has also been described as ‘‘informal mediation by the scholar-practitioner’’2 to emphasize the unofficial and facilitative form of the intervention and the academic base of the third party. My own special emphasis has been on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Interactive problem solving is quintessentially social-psychological in its orientation in that its goal is to promote change in individuals—through face-to-face interaction in small groups—as a vehicle for change in larger social systems: in national policies, in political culture, in the conflict system at large. The core of interactive problem solving is a particular microprocess, This chapter is a revised version of an article that appeared in Zeitschrift f€ ur Konfliktmanagement (Verlag Dr. Otto Schmidt, Cologne), 2009, Volume 12(3): 74–79. It is based on remarks presented at the Thirteenth Mediations-Kongress, April 2, 2009, in Berlin, on the occasion of receiving the Sokrates Prize for Mediation from the Centrale f€ ur Mediation, Cologne.

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best exemplified by problem-solving workshops, which is intended to produce changes in the macroprocess of official negotiations—in the peace process.3 The microprocess relates to the macroprocess in two ways. Most important, it provides inputs into the macroprocess. Furthermore, it can serve as a metaphor for what needs to happen in the macroprocess of conflict resolution.4 The three components of the term interactive problem solving suggest what is required at the macrolevel of conflict resolution: (1) the process has to address the problem, which is in essence a shared problem in the relationship between the parties—a relationship that has become entirely competitive to the point of mutual destruction; (2) the process has to search for a solution that addresses the underlying causes of the problem—that can be located in the parties’ unfulfilled or threatened needs—and that leads to a transformation of the destructive relationship; and (3) solution of the problem is best achieved through an interactive process, in which the parties share their differing perspectives and learn how to influence each other through mutual responsiveness. A solution arrived at through the direct interaction between the parties is more conducive to a stable, durable peace and a new, cooperative relationship than an imposed solution, because it is more likely to address the parties’ fundamental needs and to elicit their commitment to the agreement and sense of ownership of it. Moreover, the interactive process of arriving at the solution in itself initiates the new relationship that the solution is designed to foster. This view of the macroprocess of conflict resolution suggests some key components of the process that must take place somewhere in the system if the process is to fulfill itself and ultimately lead to a peace agreement (see Table 18.1): 1. Identification and analysis of the problem—requires mutual exploration of each other’s basic needs and fears, from the perspective of the other, as well as of the escalatory dynamics of the conflict. 2. Joint shaping of ideas for a solution—involves identification of options, reframing of issues to make them more amenable to negotiation, and generating creative approaches to a win-win solution, all of which are necessary ingredients of a process of ‘‘pre-negotiation.’’

Table 18.1.

Components of the Conflict Resolution Process

1.

Identification and analysis of the problem

2.

Joint shaping of ideas for resolution

3.

Influencing the other side

4.

Creating a supportive political environment

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3. Influencing the other side—calls for a shift from the heavy reliance on force and the threat of force to the use of positive incentives, including mutual reassurance that it is safe to enter into negotiations and mutual enticement through the promise of attractive gains; to this end, the parties must learn (as I have already suggested) how to influence the other by being responsive to the other’s needs and fears. 4. Creating a supportive political environment for negotiations—calls for an environment marked by a sense of mutual reassurance fostered by sensitivity to each other’s concerns and the development of working trust, by a sense of possibility that a mutually satisfactory solution can be found, and by a shift in the dominant political discourse from power politics to mutual accommodation.

These components of the conflict resolution process, as I have suggested, must occur somewhere in the larger system if conflict resolution is to become possible. Problem-solving workshops and related activities in the spirit of interactive problem solving seek to provide special opportunities for these processes to occur. Let me turn, then, to a brief description of the microprocess of problem-solving workshops, which bring together members of the political elites of the conflicting societies for direct, face-to-face interaction, facilitated by a third party knowledgeable about international conflict, group process, and the conflict region. The precise format of problem-solving workshops may vary as a function of the phase of the conflict, the nature of the participants, the particular occasion and setting, and the specific purpose. Whatever their format, these workshops represent a microprocess that is specifically designed to insert—in a modest, but systematic way—the components of conflict resolution that I have outlined into the macroprocess. One can think of problem-solving workshops in the literal sense of the term, like a carpenter’s or an artisan’s workshop: a specifically constructed space, in which the parties can engage in a process of exploration, observation, and analysis, and in which they can create new products for export, as it were. The products in this case take the form of new ideas and insights that can be fed into the political debate and the decision-making process within the two societies and thus penetrate their political cultures. Workshops are not negotiating sessions. They are not intended to substitute for negotiations or to bypass them in any way. Negotiations can be carried out only by officials who are authorized to conclude binding agreements, and workshops, by definition, are unofficial and nonbinding. But it is precisely their nonbinding character that represents their unique strength and special contribution to the larger process. They provide an opportunity for the kind of exploratory interaction that is very difficult to achieve in the context of official negotiations. The nonbinding character of workshops allows

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the participants to interact in an open, exploratory way; to speak and listen to each other as a means of acquiring new information and sharing their differing perspectives; and to gain insight into the other’s—and indeed their own—needs, fears, concerns, priorities, and constraints and into the dynamics of the conflict relationship that leads to exacerbation, escalation, and perpetuation of the conflict. Even though workshops are not negotiations and not meant to be negotiations, they are directly linked to the negotiations and complementary to them. I view them as an integral part of the larger negotiation process, potentially relevant at all of its stages (see Table 18.2). At the pre-negotiation stage, they can contribute to creating an environment that is conducive to moving the parties toward the negotiating table. Alongside of negotiations, at the paranegotiation stage, they may be particularly useful in helping the parties deal with the setbacks, stalemates, and loss of momentum that often mark the negotiations of intense, protracted conflicts—as we have observed in the IsraeliPalestinian conflict and many other cases. Thus, they may contribute to creating momentum and reviving the sense of possibility. They can also deal with issues that are not yet on the table, providing an opportunity for the parties to identify new options and reframe the issues in ways that make them more amenable to successful negotiation by the time they get to the table. In periods marked by a breakdown of negotiations, such as the current stage in the IsraeliPalestinian case, workshops can contribute to rebuilding trust in the availability of a negotiating partner and a sense of possibility and hope, and thus help the parties find a way back to the negotiating table. Finally, at the postnegotiation stage, workshops can contribute to resolving the problems of implementation of the negotiated agreements, as well as to the post-conflict process of peace building, reconciliation, and transforming the relationship between the former enemies. Until 1991, our Israeli-Palestinian workshops were all obviously in the pre-negotiation phase. Moreover, until 1990, all of our workshops were onetime, self-contained events, usually consisting of separate pre-workshop Table 18.2. Relationship of Interactive Problem Solving to Negotiations Pre-negotiation stage: creating an environment conducive to moving to the table Para-negotiation stage: helping to create momentum, identify options, reframe issues Breakdown of negotiations: rebuilding trust in the negotiating partner and sense of possibility and hope Post-negotiation stage: contributing to implementation, peace-building, and reconciliation

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sessions (of 4 to 5 hours) for each party and two-and-a-half days (often over a week end) of joint meetings. Some of the individual participants in these workshops took part in more than one such event, but the group as a whole met only for this one occasion. In 1990, we organized our first continuing workshop with a group of influential Israelis and Palestinians who participated in a series of meetings over a three-year period. We have since had a Joint Working Group on Israeli-Palestinian Relations, which met between 1994 and 1999 and—for the first time in our work—was explicitly dedicated to producing joint concept papers on issues in the final-status negotiations. We now have another joint Israeli-Palestinian working group that began in 2001, after the failure of the Camp David summit and the onset of the second intifada, with a special focus on rebuilding trust in the availability of a negotiating partner, and which has met periodically since then. To give some indication of what happens at workshops and the principles that govern them, I shall describe a typical one-time workshop between Israelis and Palestinians. There are, understandably, important differences between one-time and continuing workshops. There is also considerable variation among one-time workshops, with respect to the nature and number of participants, the size of the third party, the occasion for convening the workshop, the setting, and other considerations. But despite such variations, there is a set of key principles that apply throughout and can be gleaned from the description of an ideal-type one-time workshop. The typical workshop participants are politically involved and, in many cases, politically influential members of their communities. However, with occasional exceptions, they have not been current officials. They have included parliamentarians; leading figures in political parties or movements; former ministers, military officers, diplomats, or government officials; journalists or editors specializing in the Middle East; and academics, many of whom are important analysts of the conflict in the public media and some of whom have served in advisory, official, or diplomatic positions and are likely to do so again in the future. We look for participants who are part of the mainstream of their societies and close to the center of the political spectrum. But they have to be interested in exploring the possibilities of a negotiated solution and willing to sit with members of the other society as equals. With some exceptions, our workshops have generally included three to six members of each party, as well as a third party of two to four members. The academic setting is an important feature of our approach. It has the advantage of providing an unofficial, private, nonbinding context, with its own set of norms to support a type of interaction that departs from the norms that generally govern interactions between conflicting parties. Conflict norms require the parties to be militant, unyielding, and dismissive of

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the other’s claims, interests, fears, and rights. To engage in a different kind of interaction, which enables each party to enter into the other’s perspective and to work with the other in the search for mutual benefits, requires a countervailing set of norms. The academic setting is one setting (a religious setting is another) that can provide such norms that both permit and require participants to interact in a different way. The third party in our model performs a strictly facilitative role. We do not generally propose solutions or participate in the substantive discussions. Our task is to create the conditions that allow ideas for resolving the conflict to emerge from the interaction between the parties themselves. The role of the third party is important. We select and brief the participants, set and enforce the ground rules, and propose the main lines of the agenda. We moderate the discussion and make a variety of interventions: content observations, which often take the form of summarizing, highlighting, asking for clarification, or pointing to similarities and differences between the parties; process observations, which suggest how interactions within the group may reflect the dynamics of the conflict between the two societies; and occasional theoretical observations, which offer concepts that might be useful in clarifying the issues under discussion. Finally, we serve as a repository of trust for the parties who, by definition do not trust each other: They feel safe to come to the workshop because they trust the third party and rely on it to make sure that confidentiality is maintained and that their interests are protected. The ground rules governing the workshop, which are presented to participants several times—at the point of recruitment, in the pre-workshop sessions, and at the beginning of the workshop itself—are listed in Table 18.3. The first ground rule, privacy and confidentiality, is at the heart of the workshop process. It stipulates that whatever is said in the course of a workshop cannot be cited for attribution outside of the workshop setting by any participant, including the third party. To support this ground rule, the typical workshop has no audience, no publicity, and no record. To ensure privacy, we have no observers in our workshops; the only way our students are able to observe the process is by being integrated into the third party and accepting the discipline of the third party. To ensure confidentiality, we do not tape workshop sessions. Confidentiality and nonattribution are essential for protecting the interests of the participants. In the earlier years of our work, meetings between Israelis and Palestinians were controversial in the two communities. The very fact that they were taking part in such a meeting at times entailed political, legal, or even physical risks for participants. Now that Israeli-Palestinian meetings have become almost routine, most (though not all) people are not concerned if their participation becomes known. Privacy and confidentiality—particularly the

Interactive Problem Solving

Table 18.3.

225

Workshop Ground Rules

1.

Privacy and confidentiality

2.

Focus on each other (not constituencies, audience, third parties)

3.

Analytic (non-polemical) discussion

4.

Problem-solving (non-adversarial) mode

5.

No expectation of agreement

6.

Equality in setting

7.

Facilitative role of third party

principle of nonattribution—remain essential, however, for protection of the process. This ground rule makes it possible for the participants to engage in the kind of interaction that problem-solving workshops require. Confidentiality gives them the freedom and safety to think, listen, talk, and play with ideas, without having to worry that they will be held accountable outside for what they say in the workshop. Ground rules 2 through 4 spell out the nature of the interaction that the workshop process is designed to encourage and that the principle of privacy and confidentiality is designed to protect. We ask participants to focus on each other in the course of the workshop: to listen to each other, with the aim of understanding the other’s perspective, and to address each other, with the aim of making their own perspective understood. Workshops are radically different, in this respect, from debates. Focusing on each other enables and encourages the parties to engage in an analytic discussion. The purpose of the exchange is not to engage in the usual polemics that characterize conflict interactions. Rather, it is to gain an understanding of each other’s needs, fears, concerns, priorities, and constraints. A second purpose is to develop insight into the dynamics of the conflict, particularly into the ways in which the conflict-driven interactions between the parties tend to exacerbate, escalate, and perpetuate their conflict. Analytic discussion helps the parties move to a problem-solving mode of interaction, in contrast to the adversarial mode that usually characterizes conflict interactions. In line with a ‘‘no-fault’’ principle, the participants are asked to treat the conflict as a shared problem, requiring joint efforts to find a mutually satisfactory solution, rather than try to determine who is right and who is wrong on the basis of historical or legal argumentation. We are not asking participants to abandon their ideas about the justice of their cause, nor are we suggesting that both sides are equally right or equally wrong. We are merely proposing that a problem-solving approach is more likely to be productive than an attempt to allocate blame.

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The fifth ground rule states that in a workshop—unlike a negotiating session—there is no expectation to reach an agreement. Like any conflict resolution effort, we are interested in finding common ground, but the amount of agreement achieved in the discussion is not a measure of the success of the enterprise. If the participants come away with a better understanding of the other side’s perspective, of their own priorities, and of the dynamics of the conflict, the workshop will have fulfilled its purpose, even if it does not produce an outline of a peace treaty. The sixth ground rule states that, within the workshop setting, the two parties are equals. Clearly, there are important asymmetries between them in the real world—asymmetries in power, in moral position, in reputation. These play important roles in conflict and, clearly, must be taken into account in the workshop discussions. But the two parties are equals in the workshop setting in the sense that each party has the same right to serious consideration of its needs, fears, and concerns in the search for a mutually satisfactory solution. The final ground rule concerns the facilitative role of the third party, which I have already discussed. In keeping with this rule, the third party does not take positions on the issues, give advice, or offer its own proposals, nor does it take sides, evaluate the ideas presented, or arbitrate between different interpretations of historical facts and international law. Within its facilitative role, however, it sets the ground rules and monitors adherence to them; it helps to keep discussion moving in constructive directions, tries to stimulate movement, and intervenes as relevant with questions, observations, and even challenges. One of the tasks of the third party is to set the agenda for the discussion. In the typical one-time workshop, the agenda is relatively open and unstructured, as far as the substantive issues under discussion are concerned. The way in which these issues are approached, however, and the order of discussion are structured so as to facilitate the kind of discourse that the ground rules seek to encourage. The workshop begins with personal introductions around the table; a review of the purposes, procedures, and ground rules of the gathering; and an opportunity for the participants to ask questions about these. We then typically proceed with a five-part agenda, as outlined in Table 18.4. The first discussion session is devoted to an exchange of information between the two sides, which serves primarily to break the ice and to set the tone for the kind of discourse we hope to generate. Each party is asked to talk about the situation on the ground and the current mood in its own community, about the issues in the conflict as seen in that community, about the spectrum of views on the conflict and its resolution, and about their own position within that spectrum. This exchange provides a shared base of information and sets a precedent for the two sides to deal with each other as mutual resources, rather than solely as combatants.

Interactive Problem Solving

Table 18.4.

227

Workshop Agenda

1.

Information exchange

2.

Needs analysis

3.

Joint thinking regarding solutions

4.

Discussion of constraints

5.

Joint thinking regarding overcoming constraints

The core agenda of the workshop begins with a needs analysis, in which each side is asked to talk about its fundamental needs and fears—those needs that would have to be satisfied and those fears that would have to be allayed if a solution is to be acceptable in its society. Participants are asked to listen attentively and not to debate or argue about what the other side says, although they are invited to ask for elaboration and clarification. The purpose of this phase of the proceedings is to help each side understand the basic concerns of the other side from the other’s perspective. We check the level of understanding by asking each side to summarize the other’s needs, as they have heard them. Each side then has the opportunity to correct or amplify the summary that has been presented by the other side. Once the two sides have come to grasp each other’s perspective and understand each other’s needs as well as seems possible at that point, we move on to the next phase of the agenda: joint thinking about solutions to the conflict. There is a clear logic to the order of the phases of this agenda. We discourage the participants from proposing solutions until they have identified the problem, which stems from the parties’ unfulfilled and threatened needs. We want the participants to come up with ideas for solution that are anchored in the problem—that address the parties’ felt needs. What we ask the parties to do in phase 3 of the agenda is to generate—through a process of joint thinking (or interactive problem solving)—ideas for the overall shape of a solution to the conflict, or to particular issues within the conflict, that are responsive to the fundamental needs and fears of both parties, as presented in the preceding phase of the workshop. The participants are given the difficult assignment of thinking of solutions that respond, not only to their own side’s needs and fears (as they would in a bargaining situation), but simultaneously to the needs and fears of both sides. It goes against the grain for parties engaged in a deep-rooted conflict to think of ways in which the adversary too can ‘‘win’’—but that is precisely what joint thinking requires. Once the parties have achieved some common ground in generating ideas for solutions that would address the fundamental needs and fears of both sides, we turn to a discussion of the political and psychological constraints

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within their societies that stand in the way of such solutions. Discussion of constraints is an extremely important part of the learning that takes place in workshops, because parties involved in an intense conflict find it difficult to understand the constraints of the other, or even to recognize that the other—like themselves—has constraints. However, we try to discourage discussion of constraints until the parties have gone through the phase of joint thinking, because a premature focus on constraints is likely to inhibit the creative process of generating new ideas. We try to see whether the particular individuals around the table can come up with new ideas for resolving the conflict. Once they have generated such ideas, we explore the constraints that make it difficult for these new ideas to gain acceptance in their societies. Finally, to the extent that time permits, we ask the participants to engage in another round of joint thinking, this time about ways of overcoming the constraints against integrative, win-win solutions to the conflict. In this phase of the workshop, participants try to generate ideas for steps that they personally, their organizations, or their governments can take—separately or jointly—to overcome the constraints that have been identified. Such ideas may focus, in particular, on steps of mutual reassurance—in the form of acknowledgments, symbolic gestures, or confidence-building measures— that would make the parties more willing and able to take the risks required for innovative solutions to the conflict. The ground rules and agenda that I have described are designed to help achieve the dual purpose of workshops (see Table 18.5), to which I alluded earlier. The first purpose is to produce change in the particular individuals who are sitting around the workshop table—to enable them to gain new insight into the conflict and acquire new ideas for resolving the conflict and overcoming the barriers to a negotiated solution. However, these changes at the level of individual participants are not ends in themselves, but vehicles for promoting change at the policy level. To this end, the second purpose of workshops is to maximize the likelihood that the new insights and ideas developed by workshop participants will be fed back into the political debate and decision-making procedures in their respective societies. What is interesting, both theoretically and practically, is that these two purposes may be and often are contradictory to each other. The requirements for maximizing change in the workshop itself may be contrary to the requirements for maximizing the transfer of that change into the political process. The best example of these dialectics is the selection of participants. To maximize transfer into the political process, we would look for participants who are officials as close as possible to the decision-making process and thus in a position to apply immediately what they have learned. But to maximize change, we would look for participants who are removed from

Interactive Problem Solving

Table 18.5.

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Change in individual workshop participants: development of new insights, new ideas for conflict resolution Transfer of these changes into the political debate and the decision-making processes in their societies

the decision-making process and therefore less constrained in their interactions and freer to play with ideas and explore hypothetical possibilities. To balance these contradictory requirements, we look for participants who are not officials but politically influential. They are thus freer to engage in the process, but at the same time, their positions within their societies are such that any new ideas that they develop can have an impact on the thinking of decision makers and the society at large. Another example of the dialectics of workshops is the degree of cohesiveness that we try to engender in the group of participants. An adequate level of group cohesiveness is important to the effective interaction among the participants. But if the workshop group becomes too cohesive—if the Israeli and Palestinian participants form too close a coalition across the conflict lines—they may lose credibility and political effectiveness in their own communities.5 To balance these two contradictory requirements, we recognize that the coalition formed by the two groups of participants must remain an uneasy coalition. By the same token, we aim for the development of working trust—of trust in the participants on the other side based not so much on interpersonal closeness, but on the conviction that they are sincerely committed, out of their own interests, to the search for a peaceful solution. Let me conclude with a brief summary of our Israeli-Palestinian work over the past four decades. Our earliest work, in the 1970s and 1980s, clearly corresponds to the pre-negotiation phase of the conflict. Our workshops and related activities during those years contributed to the development of a sense of possibility, of new ideas for resolving the conflict, and of relationships among members of the political elites across the conflict lines. By 1989, in the wake of the resolution of the 1988 Palestine National Council that in effect endorsed a two-state solution, the atmosphere for negotiations had greatly improved. The time seemed ripe in 1990 for Nadim Rouhana and me to convene, for the first time, a continuing workshop with a group of high-level, politically influential Israelis and Palestinians.6 A year later, in 1991, official negotiations began with the Madrid conference. As it happened, four of the six Palestinian members of the continuing workshop were appointed to the official negotiating team. A year later, a Labor Party

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government took over in Israel and several of the Israeli members of the continuing workshop were appointed to high positions in the new administration. The political relevance of the continuing workshop was enhanced by these developments, but they also created some ambiguities and role conflicts. Several members left the group in light of their official appointments and were replaced by new members. At our meeting in the summer of 1993, some of the discussion focused on the role of a group like ours at a time when official negotiations were in progress. Within days of that meeting, the Oslo agreement was announced and, in close consultation with the members of the group, we decided to close the continuing workshop and to initiate a new project in keeping with the new political requirements. Our work up to that point, along with many other track-two efforts, played a modest but not insignificant role, directly or indirectly, in laying the groundwork for the Oslo agreement. In my own assessment, three kinds of contributions can be identified:7 1. Workshops helped to develop cadres experienced in communicating with the other side and prepared to carry out productive negotiations. 2. Workshops helped to produce substantive inputs into the political thinking and debate in the two societies. Through the communications of workshop members—and to some degree of members of the third party—ideas on which productive negotiations could be based were injected into the two political cultures and became the building stones of the Oslo agreement. These ideas, as summarized in Table 18.6, focused in particular on what was both necessary and possible in negotiating a mutually satisfactory agreement.8 3. Workshops, along with many other efforts, helped to create a political atmosphere favorable to negotiations and open to a new relationship between the parties.

Table 18.6. Evolving Ideas for Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (1967–1993): The Building Stones of the Oslo Agreement Target of the Ideas Focus of the Ideas

Negotiation Process

Negotiation Outcome

What is necessary

Negotiations between legitimate national representatives

Mutual recognition of national identity and rights

What is possible

Availability of a negotiating partner

The two-state solution

Source: Kelman, 2005, p. 53. Reprinted by permission of the editor, R.J. Fisher, and the publisher, Lexington Books.

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The major new project that we initiated after the signing of the Oslo Accords corresponded to the new phase of the conflict, which focused on implementation of a partial, interim agreement and movement to finalstatus negotiations. The project was the Joint Working Group on IsraeliPalestinian Relations, which was co-chaired with Nadim Rouhana, and which met between 1994 and 1999. The purpose of the group—for the first time in our work—was to produce and disseminate joint concept papers on some of the issues that the Oslo Accords left for final-status negotiations, placed within the context of the desired future relationship between the two societies. We published three joint papers: one on general principles for the final agreement,9 a second on the Palestinian refugee problem,10 and a third on the future Israeli-Palestinian relationship.11 Each was translated into Arabic and Hebrew and widely disseminated in all three versions. A fourth paper, on the settlements issue, was close to completion, but overtaken by events. This brings us to the current phase of our work, which began with the failure of the Camp David summit in the summer of 2000 and the onset of the second intifada. It corresponds to a phase of the conflict characterized by the breakdown of once-promising negotiations. My major effort during this period—in partnership with Shibley Telhami—has been the formation of a new joint Israeli-Palestinian working group, focusing on the theme of rebuilding trust in the availability of a credible negotiating partner and of a mutually acceptable formula for a two-state solution. The effort started with two planning meetings in 2001 but, for a number of reasons beyond our control, the group’s substantive work did not begin until 2004. Over the course of four productive sessions between 2004 and 2006, the group seemed ready to work on a joint concept paper on how to frame a final peace agreement in a way that would reassure the two publics and elicit their full support. At subsequent meetings, however, the members of the group felt that—in light of the significant changes in the political landscape due to elections on both sides, the wars of 2006, and the Hamas takeover of Gaza—the time was not ripe for a paper focusing on a final agreement. They were very eager, however, to exchange information and ideas, to discuss new obstacles and possibilities, and to explore the growing role of Hamas in the equation. They made it very clear that they wanted to continue the group and that they considered track-two efforts, if anything, more critical than ever at this juncture. The group has continued to meet in this spirit and to engage in productive exchange of information, analysis of events, and joint thinking. At a meeting in 2009, the discussions yielded some concrete suggestions for statements by the leadership on each side that might help overcome the profound distrust of the public on the other side. At their most

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recent meeting, in June 2010, the participants developed ideas for actions on the part of the U.S. administration that might advance negotiations, and asked the third party to convey these ideas to relevant U.S. officials on behalf of the working group. As for the larger picture, what is required, in my view, to break through the profound mutual distrust in the ultimate intentions of the other side and energize public support for peace negotiations, is a visionary approach that transcends the balance of power and the calculus of bargaining concessions. Paradoxically, perhaps, this calls for a step toward reconciliation—which is generally viewed as a post-negotiation process—to move negotiations forward. In this spirit, a final agreement would have to be framed as a principled peace, based on a historic compromise that meets the fundamental needs of both peoples, validates their national identities, and declares an end to the conflict and to the occupation consistent with the requirements of fairness and attainable justice. The framework I propose would start with the recognition that both peoples have historic roots in the land and are deeply attached to it, that each people’s pursuit of its national aspirations by military means may well lead to mutual destruction, and that the only solution lies in a historic compromise that allows each people to express its right to national self-determination, fulfill its national aspirations, and express its national identity in a state of its own within the shared land, in peaceful coexistence with the neighboring state of the other. The framework would proceed to spell out what the logic of a historic compromise implies for the key final-status issues (including borders, Jerusalem, settlements, and refugees); and offer a positive vision of a common future for the two peoples in the land they have agreed to share—and of the future of the shared land itself. If such a framework is constructed through a joint Israeli-Palestinian process, it can reassure the two publics that the agreement is not jeopardizing their national existence and promises mutual benefits that far outweigh the risks it entails. The framework I propose requires visionary leadership on both sides. Until such leadership emerges, the primary initiative for constructing and disseminating such a framework rests with civil society in the two communities. A track-two approach like interactive problem solving can contribute to such efforts by providing a joint process of ‘‘negotiating identity,’’ in which each side can acknowledge and accommodate the other’s identity—at least to the extent of eliminating negation of the other and the claim of exclusivity from its own identity—in a context in which the core of its identity and its associated narrative are affirmed by the other.12 Ideas that emerge from such an interactive process can then be injected into the political debate and the political culture of each society.

Interactive Problem Solving

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Burton, 1969, 1979, 1984, 1990. Kelman, 2002. Kelman, 1997: 212–220. Kelman, 1996: 99–123. Kelman, 1993. Rouhana and Kelman, 1994, 157–178. Kelman, 1995, 19–27; Kelman, 2005. Kelman, 2005. Joint Working Group on Israeli-Palestinian Relations, 1999, 170–175. Alpher and Shikaki, 1999, 167–189. Joint Working Group on Israeli-Palestinian Relations, 2000, 90–112. Kelman, 2001.

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19

FRO M YOUNG S OL DIERS TO YOUNG PEACE BUILDERS: BUILDING PEACE IN SIERRA LEONE Michael Wessells

Although the number of armed conflicts under way has declined recently,1 large numbers of societies—about 25 to 40 in any particular year—are just emerging from wars, many of which have raged for a decade or more.2 In some of these societies, there are no peace movements as such since the wars had shattered civil societies, militarized large numbers of people, and made ‘‘peace’’ a taboo subject. In addition, many presumably post-conflict societies remain ripe for further violence. Not uncommonly, large numbers of former combatants, including many children, remain under arms and lack the livelihoods and life options needed to transition into civilian life.3 Also, many armed conflicts leave in their wake deeply divided societies that contain the seeds of future violence. In such transitional contexts, it is unrealistic to expect a full blown peace movement to emerge, particularly if levels of social cohesion are very low and people are desperate to meet basic survival needs such as those for food, water, shelter, and health care. Nevertheless, it may be possible to organize peace building activities that limit the impulse to fight and lay a foundation on which subsequent peace movements can stand. Although many post-conflict peace building activities have focused on adults, it is equally important to focus on young people, defined in this

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chapter as including children (people 0 to 18 years) and also those between 18 and 24 years of age. In many war zones, young people such as teenagers are highly sought after as soldiers since their physical strength, cognitive capacities, and political consciousness, not to mention their limited sense of their own mortality and the ease with which they can be manipulated, make them valuable members of fighting forces and armed groups.4 Even those under 18 years of age may be regarded not as children but as adults since they may have completed cultural rites of passage or do work regarded as the work of adults. Not only boys but also girls are recruited and used as fighters, porters, spies, or sex slaves.5 Having been socialized into systems of violence, these young men and women are at risk, even following the signing of a ceasefire, of engaging in crime and banditry, being recruited into local ‘‘security forces,’’ or becoming mercenaries in neighboring countries. A highly significant task, then, is to help young people transition out of their soldier roles and identities, enabling them to integrate into civilian life. This chapter shows how it is possible for youth to transition from life as soldiers to life as civilians and peace builders at community and societal levels. It focuses on Sierra Leone, where the conflict engaged large numbers of young people and where the conflict raged for over a decade, leaving behind a society that was widely regarded as highly prone to further conflict. During the 1990s, there had been considerable pessimism internationally regarding the prospects for the integration of former child and youth soldiers into civilian life in Sierra Leone owing to the nature of the fighting and roles that youth played. These challenges to integration are outlined below together with a description and analysis of the programmatic steps needed to gain community acceptance of former young soldiers and to enable formerly recruited young people to become local peace builders.

CHALLENGES OF REINTEGRATION The challenges of young people’s reintegration were linked closely with the roles of young soldiers. Many young people performed roles such as combatants, porters, cooks, spies, and bodyguards, and these roles were often performed in the same time period. Some individuals, however, had specialized roles such as torturers or sex slaves, with girls serving mostly in the latter. Most young recruits lived lives that were thoroughly militarized and either witnessed or caused deaths. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF), the opposition group that was the main recruiter of young people, regularly recruited young people via abductions, which began a brutal process of indoctrination. The RUF abducted many

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children at gunpoint and then forced them to kill members of their villages or families.6 This horrific practice aimed to terrorize people and destroy the bonds between the young person and the village, thereby decreasing the motivation to escape and return home. Typically, girls were taken as sex slaves whose refusals to provide sex on demand led to brutal beatings or death. Many girls served also as porters, carrying heavy loads long distances with little to eat or drink. They and male porters avoided death by continuing to carry their loads, as anyone who lagged behind or complained was usually killed. Both girls and boys served as combatants, though the majority of young combatants were boys. To prepare them for combat, commanders often plied them with drugs such as alcohol, marijuana, and amphetamines. As a result, many young people said they entered combat very high and feeling neither fear nor pain. To increase even further their willingness to fight, traditional healers often administered ritual treatments believed to make the young soldiers bulletproof. To promote obedience, commanders controlled young recruits through a mixture of terror tactics and positive incentives for fearless behavior and enthusiasm in combat. The best fighters often got promoted and received privileged access to coveted items such as medicines. Young people also played a role in some of the worst atrocities. Small Boys Units that consisted entirely of soldiers less than 12 years of age often committed amputations.7 Also, young soldiers demonstrated considerable machismo, taking names such as ‘‘Rambo’’ or ‘‘Cock and Fire’’ to trumpet their ferocity and combat deeds. Because of the bad things that young soldiers had done, many people regarded them as bloodthirsty predators and animals. Former girl soldiers faced particularly severe challenges to integration due to the heavy burden of stigma toward formerly recruited girls. Many girls were regarded as ‘‘bad’’ not only because of their unruly behavior but also because they had been sexually violated out of wedlock. Also, many girls were HIV-positive and had babies who carried the double stigma of having been born out of wedlock and being ‘‘rebel children.’’ In rural areas of Sierra Leone, rape in the bush brands one as damaged goods and is believed to cause contamination by angry spirits, which can harm a girl’s family or community members. These spiritual challenges underscore the importance of local cosmologies and indigenous understandings.8

REINTEGRATION AND PEACE BUILDING Following the conflict, high priorities were to integrate former young soldiers into civilian life and enable them to contribute to peace building at the community level. These priorities were closely linked since reintegration into civilian life would have been impossible without steps to reconcile

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young returning soldiers with their communities. In addition, the process of reintegration entails a transformation of young people’s military identities together with a shift in community perceptions away from the ‘‘youth as troublemakers’’ stereotype toward a view of young people as valued, peaceful members of communities.9 The two projects described below sought to enable community reconciliation of formerly recruited young males and females, respectively. A distinctive feature of the men’s project was that it engaged young people as peace builders who conduct community service projects and work to improve their relations with former adversaries.

Reconciliation, Employment, and Community Service for Male Youths At the end of the war, the Northern Province was the RUF stronghold and a site of significant tension since former soldiers from different sides were returning to the same village. Many of the male former soldiers identified jobs and income as their greatest needs and stated bluntly that they would not disarm and return to villages without proper clothing or a means of earning an income. To address these needs, Christian Children’s Fund (CCF)/Sierra Leone worked in the Northern Province to defuse tensions and improve intergroup relations using a superordinate goals approach10 wherein previously competing groups of youth cooperated on the achievement of common goals, earning an income as they worked. The common goal was to improve the well-being of children, who comprised half the population, had suffered greatly during the war, and had few supports. The CCF staff, who were Sierra Leonean and understood the local language, culture, and situation, met first with the paramount chiefs and local chiefs, explaining their purpose and requesting the chiefs’ approval, which was enthusiastically granted. To enable inter-village cooperation, CCF staff facilitated community dialogues that involved four or five elected representatives from neighboring villages and focused on children’s needs and how to support them. This strategy was designed to reduce inter-village tensions and restore the norms of neighborliness that the war had shattered. CCF worked with a total of 26 communities, thereby reaching a relatively large number of children and helping to rebuild the torn social fabric in the North. The focus on children served to deemphasize political differences and to create a common goal that bound everyone together. The planning discussions considered multiple ideas about community projects to support children and then selected one project as the top priority. Projects included building a health post, rebuilding schools, or repairing bridges that improved access to markets, thereby boosting local incomes. To promote

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reconciliation, the projects were built by community work teams consisting of formerly recruited youth, including former soldiers who had fought on different sides, and other village youth. CCF played a facilitative role and purchased the local construction materials for the projects. To enable acceptance of formerly recruited youth, CCF staff conducted community dialogues to build empathy, which is typically among war’s first casualties.11 To break the negative stereotypes of young former soldiers, CCF staff emphasized that all children and young people had suffered and that many young people had been abducted by the RUF and forced to commit horrible acts. As people told how they and their families had suffered, people communalized their suffering, overcame their sense of isolation, and experienced empathy and a sense of unity. To prepare the youth who formed the work teams, CCF staff organized a two-day workshop on reconciliation, in which they emphasized the need to put the war behind them and to work in unity to build a better future. Village elders and healers promoted reconciliation using traditional proverbs, songs, and dances and also by rekindling collective memories of how the communities had overcome adversity together in the past. The elders and CCF staff set ground rules such as no name calling or use of threatening gestures that might escalate tensions on the work teams. Extensive discussion also focused on the importance of working together as a team to help support vulnerable children. Next the work teams built the designed projects, with each worker contributing 20 days’ labor and earning US$27, which was sufficient to purchase necessities such as food and clothing. During the construction, youth received vocational counseling about which sources of livelihood they might want to pursue. Subsequently, selected youth participated in vocational training and income-generating activities under the guidance of artisans who taught marketable skills to the mentored youth, who used loans to work and then repaid their loans. Triangulated, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with youth, elders, and other community members indicated that the project had supported reconciliation and reintegration. Many formerly recruited youth said that when they left the armed groups they had feared rejection and stigmatization by the community, particularly by the youths they had attacked. Many had doubted their ability to earn a living and find a place in civilian life. However, the formerly recruited youth reported that they had learned how to get along with other youth. The youth who had not been recruited said that they had cast off their images of former youth soldiers as demons and had come to see them as citizens who gave back to their communities. Community members, too, said that they saw and appreciated the

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former youth soldiers’ contributions to the community and no longer feared the former soldiers but accepted them as civilians. This shift in the role of the former soldiers enabled the desired shift in social identity. Indeed, many former soldiers stopped speaking of themselves in military terms and took pride describing themselves as husbands, fathers, and community members. Many reported feeling pride in helping to build peaceful relations at a community level. A valuable lesson from this project is that former youth soldiers can become peace builders when they are provided with the appropriate space and support for giving back to their communities. The shift from soldier to peace builder is not only an individual process but also a communal process in which communities learn to see former recruits in a different role and manner, thereby enabling the transformation of the former soldiers’ social identities. Another lesson is that some of the same skills of communication and mobilization for hard physical labor that had been useful inside the armed group can be harnessed for peaceful means. Too often, reintegration programs have failed to build on the skills of formerly recruited youth.12 Of course, this project was only a first step in a much longer process of reintegration, which is measured in years. Still, it succeeded in engaging youth as agents of communal reconciliation and peace building, thereby providing a foundation for the longer-term work of reintegration.

Young Women’s Reintegration Although the situation of young men at the end of the Sierra Leone war was very serious, the situation of young women who had been recruited was arguably worse. The official Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) process had discriminated against women, as has occurred in other countries as well.13 Of the estimated 12,000 formerly recruited girls, only 4 percent had received official DDR benefits.14 The magnitude of young girls’ needs was illuminated by the results of a preliminary assessment conducted in 2002 by CCF/Sierra Leone in the Northern Province Districts of Bombali, Portloko, and Tonkolili. The main finding was that in some villages, nearly every household had at least one girl who had been abducted by the RUF. The girls reported (and health workers confirmed) the wide prevalence of reproductive health problems such as sexually transmitted infections, genital damage, and pelvic inflammatory disease. Having carried heavy loads sometimes for long distances without food or health care, many girls had head and neck pains, stomach pains, other somatic issues, and skin diseases. Over half the former girl soldiers had become mothers as a result of having been violated in the bush.

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Among the greatest stresses reported by the girls was their lack of community acceptance.15 Many girls said they had been stigmatized as ‘‘rebel girls’’ or ‘‘kolonkos’’ (prostitutes) following their return home. Girls also reported being harassed sexually and physically by community members. Few if any former girl soldiers had received health support, and their high disease prevalence made them unacceptable. Some said their ‘‘heads were not clear,’’ which in the local idiom meant they were spiritually impure. Saying they could not work because their ‘‘minds were not steady,’’ the girls suggested they could be helped by local healers who could conduct traditional cleansing ceremonies to rid them of their spiritual impurity. Lacking a means of earning a living, most girls expressed strong desire for skills training and loans to conduct a small business. Girl mothers particularly sought livelihoods as support since they had no means of providing food or medicines for their babies. Girls reported that out of desperation, some girls had turned to sex work as their only means of survival. A high priority for the girls was education, which was seen as a source of hope. The girls’ concerns resonated with the narratives of their families and communities. Family members said they had initially feared and rejected the girls, who demonstrated little respect for others, were unwilling to help the families, and engaged in highly aggressive, unruly behavior. Community members also feared and rejected the girls, many of whom spent significant time idling, fighting, and engaging in promiscuous behavior. In general, the girls were viewed as undesirable marriage prospects. Those who were married were often rejected by their husbands or had their ‘‘rebel’’ children from the bush rejected by their husbands. To enable young women’s reintegration, CCF/Sierra Leone organized in 2001 to 2005 a community-based program called Sealing the Past, Facing the Future (SEFAFU) to assist 600 sexually abused girl mothers and their families. The joint focus on the girls and their families reflects an ecological view asserting that children’s well-being is inextricably interconnected with that of their families16 and also an understanding of the harm caused in collectivist societies by the use of highly individualized supports.17 The project objectives were: (1) to increase the girls’ access to Western health care and, where appropriate, traditional cleansing, (2) to develop the girls’ livelihood skills and income, reducing their risk of sexual exploitation and enabling them to achieve a positive social role, (3) to increase the girls’ successful participation in education, and (4) to strengthen community mechanisms for protection and reconciliation. A key program strategy was to avoid helping only formerly recruited girls—a widely used practice that often produces jealousies—by supporting a mixture of formerly recruited young women and other highly vulnerable

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girls such as those separated from their families. The vast majority of the girls were former soldiers between 10 and 18 years of age. Of the 600 girls who were directly supported, 57 percent were mothers who had borne children as a result of sexual exploitation inside an armed group. Additional strategic elements were reliance on narrative methods and an empowerment approach; the building on existing community resources such as chiefs, elders, health workers, and women’s groups; the activation and support of cultural resources such as traditional healers and appropriate cleansing rituals; a multi-sectoral approach designed to address the holistic nature of the girls’ needs; efforts to rebuild civil society, a key condition for peace through steps toward community reconciliation and mobilization; and use of a multi-year approach that recognized the impossibility of resolving in the span of year-long funding allocations problems that had been decades in the making. Following the pilot phase, the project was taken to scale first in Bombali and Koinadugu Districts in 2003 to 2004 and subsequently in Kaihalun District. Broadly, there were four main foci of the program activities, the first of which was community engagement and mobilization to support the young women. Having met with the Paramount and local chiefs, the CCF staff organized community dialogues to raise awareness about the girls’ situation, their suffering during the war, and the need for girls’ reconciliation with their families and communities as part of the process of building peace. In addition, the staff mapped community resources such as women’s groups, healers, religious leaders, health workers, social workers, and youth groups. These were subsequently mobilized by a community selected by the community and the girls. Mobilization was also catalyzed from within the communities. For example, local women and men in one community organized a Girls’ Welfare Committee that limited sexual harassment and violence toward the young women. With the support of the wider community, the Committee established clear rules of appropriate behavior (for example, no name calling, no harassment) and imposed fines for infractions of the rules. This process, which rapidly eliminated the harassment and violence toward the girls, was soon copied by other villages. Second, the program supported the girls’ health by enabling health screening at the local health clinic. Although resource shortages made it impossible to cover the costs of the girls’ medical treatment, the program’s livelihood elements, described below, enabled some girls to pay their health care costs. The health work built linkages with the Ministry of Health and Sanitation and also with UNICEF, both of which helped to define basic health messages and were part of an emerging network that promoted sustainable health service access.

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Third, the program worked with traditional healers, where it was appropriate to do so, to cleanse the girls of spiritual impurities. In many rural areas of Sierra Leone, as in other parts of Africa,18 people view spiritual harmony with the ancestors as central to well-being. Particularly in Koinadugu District, girls said they needed to see a local healer for cleansing of bad spirits taken in during their stay in the bush. They and their villages saw their pollution as a communal affliction since, left untreated, the girls would bring into the community the evil spirits, which were believed to cause problems such as crop failure, poor health, and even additional fighting. In communities that held these traditional beliefs, CCF worked with healers to provide the necessary materials for a group cleansing. Typical elements of cleansing ceremonies included ritual washing with black ash soap, fumigation with boiled herbs believed to have purgative properties, the sacrifice of goats or chickens, and the subsequent conduct of a feast at which the girls were dressed in white and presented to the community as clean and acceptable.19 Considerable regional differences existed; in the North, some communities used a mixture of traditional methods and Islamic methods such as writing sacred Koranic verses on a slate which was then wiped clean by the imam. This diversity is a useful reminder that socalled ‘‘traditional’’ methods are, like culture itself, fluid and dynamic. Fourth, the program organized livelihood supports since the young women identified their lack of income as a significant source of distress and also a barrier to engaging effectively in civilian social roles such as mother or wife. Since the girls lived in predominantly rural areas, they received training in crop production and advice from the Ministry of Agriculture and Marine Resources. To support income generation, the girls also participated in training on skills that a preliminary market analysis had indicated were sustainable. Over several months, paid community artisans trained groups of girls in skills such as sewing, tailoring, soap making, and weaving. CCF provided the necessary materials and sewing machines and organized a workshop in which the girls learned basic business skills. Following this training, the girls formed solidarity groups consisting of 10 girls each. Each girl received a loan of 150,000 leones (US$50) that could be used to start a business, with the loan repaid over a year together with a 10 percent service fee. When one girl had repaid her loan, the loan rotated to another girl, and this loan rotation continued even following the end of the funded period of the program. Although a full evaluation was not undertaken by the program, comparisons were made between the program villages in Kaihalun and two similar villages in Kaihalun that had not participated in the project. The two nonprogram villages were inside the same chiefdom targeted by the program. It was

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decided to bring to these villages the same supports girls had received in the other villages, making the interviews conducted in the two villages a baseline assessment as well as a source of comparison with the project communities. Overall, 200 young women in 10 project communities participated, as did over 100 elders and parents in those communities. The data were triangulated with data from key informant interviews conducted with traditional healers, local chiefs, elders, social workers, and health workers. The project yielded significant benefits in regard to health, social acceptance, and education. Nearly 80 percent of the former girl soldiers in the project villages received health screening, in contrast with only 10 percent of the former girl soldiers in the comparison villages. Particularly in the Northern Province, both girls and their families reported that their access to health screening and care, including traditional cleansing, had contributed to their physical, spiritual, and social well-being. Reported physical improvements, which included reductions in skin diseases, sexually transmitted infections, and physical ailments such as stomach problems, had marked psychosocial impact since they reflected the girls taking charge of their health situation. Also, the girls felt increased self-esteem and were less likely to be viewed as diseased or somehow untouchable. The girls who had participated in traditional cleansing ceremonies said their minds had become steady, their somatic issues had been reduced, and they felt ready to participate in skills training, business, or education. The program significantly improved girls’ ability to achieve their top priority of gaining acceptance by family and community. Compared to girls in the comparison villages, former girl soldiers in the program villages showed higher rates of marriage and family acceptance, lower rates of stigma and isolation, and increased likelihood of being seen as contributing, self-reliant citizens. Marriage was important because marriage is the norm for older Sierra Leonean girls, who regard being unmarried as a form of social death. Marriage is essential to the girls’ role as wife, mother, and member of an extended family. Also, to be married is to be sought after and viewed as a contributing member of one’s family and community. Adults in the project communities said that they had seen the young women’s behavior change from unruly and aggressive to becoming more prosocial and aligned with local norms. The conduct of the cleansing ceremonies was viewed as having cleansed the girls and made them acceptable for full interaction with families and communities. Speaking the local idiom, adults said that following the conduct of the cleansing ceremonies, the girls were free to ‘‘eat off the same plate as us.’’ In regard to livelihoods, the girls in the program villages reported that before the program, they had had only 2 to 3 cups of rice per day, whereas after the program implementation, they had 5 to 6 cups of rice per day. In the

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nonprogram villages, girls reported no significant increase in rice availability and said currently they had access to 2 to 3 cups per day. The girls’ increased earning ability and income boosted their self-esteem since they were selfreliant, contributed to their families, and had the money needed to go to school. In most cases, the girls reported improved family relations since they shared their loans or small businesses with other family members, making businesses a family operation. Many girls said they were sought after as marriage partners because they had an income and higher status. Similarly, community members often said they saw the girls differently. Whereas previously they had seen the girls as unruly and even as animals, they now saw the girls as productive family members and mothers who contributed as community citizens. Also, key informants reported that the girls’ access to income had successfully deterred their involvement in sex work. The program also had educational benefits. Whereas only 10 percent of formerly recruited girls in the comparison villages attended school, nearly half the former girl soldiers in the program villages attended school regularly. For the latter girls, their income earning ability enabled them to pay the school fees and purchase necessary school materials. Often, they attended school half the day and conducted business the other half. In some communities, their children also attended school and reportedly faced little discrimination. Given appropriate supports, then, formerly recruited girls, including girl mothers, are reintegrated with their communities and play positive social roles within their families and communities. Although this girls’ project did not focus on peace building, it laid a foundation of community acceptance and role-appropriate behavior that could subsequently enable young women to become community peace builders.

YOUNG PEACE BUILDERS AT SOCIETAL LEVELS Although the work described above focused on the community level, youth in post-conflict environments have also been influential peace builders at wider, societal levels. Two examples concern the role of young people in the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission and in using public media to address the issues situation of formerly recruited young people.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission The Sierra Leone Parliament established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Sierra Leone to give people the opportunity to disclose the truth of what happened, to record a full and impartial history of

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the war, and to recommend steps that would enable people to recover. Using methods such as public hearings, expert submissions, and research, the TRC collected many children’s testimonies in a confidential, ethical manner. In addition, thematic hearings on children were conducted in 2003, enabling representatives of child protection agencies to speak directly to the Commission. Through drawings and reports, children and youth in Sierra Leone helped to tell accurately the horrors of the war and its impact on children. As a 12-year-old girl said, At about 2:00 A.M. the rebels attacked our town. . . . They lined up a number of people, sent for a mortar, and asked each of us to put our hand out and they cut them off. . . . I placed my right hand and it was chopped off.20

Similarly, a 12-year-old boy described the attack on his village: Everyone was running helter-skelter. It was as if the world was coming to an end. I only heard my parents shouting my name but could not see them and neither could they see me. We went our different ways and that was the last time I ever heard the sweet voices of Mama and Pappa.21

These testimonies helped to tell the story of war-affected children and put the atrocities committed by children in a different perspective. Other testimonies captured young people’s hopes for peace. As one youth put it, Peace Love and Unity This is what we want in Sierra Leone With Love and Unity Join hands together Let’s join our hands For Peace today22

Although there was much that the TRC did not accomplish,23 the inclusion of young people gave voice to vulnerable youth and helped to empower them for building peace. After all, peace cannot be built following such a brutal war without enabling children’s voices and participation.

Talking Drums Studio Throughout Africa, large numbers of people listen to radio daily. Using radio as one of its main media, Search for Common Ground (a U.S.-based NGO) has worked with diverse groups in Sierra Leone, including youth, to mobilize various groups to address issues such as the reintegration of

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young former soldiers, HIV/AIDS, poverty, and corruption. The process facilitated the formation of alliances between groups at different levels, ranging from community groups to national coalitions and government agencies. These alliances become primary actors in deciding which issues to address and how to address them via radio; they formed independent radio stations that actively developed programs and community actions to address the issues. An example is Talking Drums Studio, which distributed programs to seven national and 18 district-level radio stations throughout Sierra Leone and other West African countries. A soap opera called Atunda Ayenda (Lost and Found) addressed issues of concern to youth. Because the shows featured the perspectives of youth, often presented in contrast to the perspectives of adults, the programs engaged young people and stimulated peer discussion. Another program, Golden Kids News, enabled young people to serve as producers, reporters, and actors who presented issues of concern to young people and also advocated on behalf of young people. Unity Boat is a drama series that addresses issues of nonviolence and reconciliation and that also includes young people’s perspectives. The Talking Drums Studio is listened to by over 85 percent of people living in broadcast areas.24 In Sierra Leone, the inclusion of youth perspectives and youth actors raised awareness of young people’s situation and stimulated empathy with them. In addition, the participation of young people as reporters and advocates presented them as positive role models who can change adult perceptions of young people as trouble makers and who invite positive behavior on the part of other youth. The radio programs have been combined with other activities in ways that have engaged young people as peace builders. In Bo and Makeni, the broadcast of peace festivals stimulated the formation of coalitions of youth groups that subsequently undertook projects such as peace carnivals and the various community projects.25

CONCLUSION Collectively, these results contradict the dire forecasts heard frequently that formerly recruited youth are a ‘‘Lost Generation’’ who will never be able to reintegrate or that they are damaged goods who are traumatized and incapacitated. They give strength to the view that young people are active agents who, given the appropriate support and opportunities, can be effective peace builders at multiple levels. The fact that some formerly recruited young Sierra Leoneans have not transitioned into civilian life should not obscure the reality that most have reintegrated and become peace builders against formidable odds. Their resilience testifies to the fact

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that war-affected young people are precious societal resources who ought to be supported as citizens who can help their families and societies turn the corner toward peace. Our task is to support them and to learn from their resilience.

NOTES 1. Human Security Report, 2005. 2. Smith, 2003. 3. Brett and Specht, 2004; Wessells, 1997, 2006. 4. Brett and Specht, 2004; Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, 2008; Wessells, 2006. 5. McKay and Mazurana, 2004; Stavrou, 2005; Wessells, 2006. 6. Human Rights Watch, 1998. 7. Human Rights Watch, 1998. 8. Honwana, 2006; Wessells, 2006; Wessells and Monteiro, 2004. 9. Wessells, 2006. 10. Deutsch, 2000; Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, and Sherif, 1961. 11. White, 1984 12. Wessells, 2006; Wessells and Kostelny, 2009. 13. Wessells, 2006. 14. McKay and Mazurana, 2004. 15. Kostelny, 2004. 16. Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Dawes and Donald, 2000. 17. cf. Bracken and Petty, 1998. 18. Honwana, 2006; Wessells, 2006; Wessells and Monteiro, 2004. 19. Kostelny, 2004; Stark, 2005. 20. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone, 2004, 19. 21. Ibid., 19. 22. Ibid., 21. 23. Shaw, 2005. 24. Everett, Williams, and Myers, 2004. 25. Everett et al, 2004.

CHAPTER

20

M O D E R N - D AY S L AV E R Y Melissa Anderson-Hinn

I barely notice the breathtaking views of the sunset over San Francisco as I focus intently on the parlor door. After a week of investigation, still no signs of the girls pictured in the ads and evaluated on social sites. Numerous men, and a few women, enter and exit all day as we watch. We talk with people discreetly so as not to put the girls in greater danger. We know what is going on behind the security cameras, iron gates, and darkened windows. This is our third massage parlor to investigate this month. It seems all we can do is wait and watch and hope for the opportunity of rescue and justice. The story does not end with massage parlors. In popular restaurants there are fear and submission on expressionless faces as they take orders, cook, serve, and clean. Trafficked thousands of miles from home, they arrive with great expectation for the opportunities of work and education they are promised. Beaten into submission and held in bondage, slaves work constantly for the profit and pleasure of their owners. Picked up before the sun rises and dropped off when the city is already asleep, they rarely see the light of day. They have no control. Even worse, they sign contracts in languages they cannot read, trusting the oppressors who promise them everything. Throughout the city I observe storefront warehouses that are seemingly abandoned. The doors rarely open and the windows are darkened and painted shut. Inside are sweatshops, operated by hundreds of slaves. On the streets and social sites, baby girls are being pimped around the city. They work for ‘‘Daddy’’ now, beaten severely and addicted to the stench of violent

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love. A 15-year-old girl sits and waits in a hotel room to turn her next trick while five others wait in neighboring rooms. The next john will be the eighth for today, and it already seemed slow. She is exhausted, malnourished, suffering, and 22 weeks pregnant with no idea what the future holds or whether she has one. I walk the streets realizing we live in a consumer paradise. We are inundated with bargains, new products, anything and everything that brings short-lived pleasure. I read labels. I imagine all the hands and lives that are involved along the way from the harvest to the mines to open waters and quarries, through manufacturing, production, and retail. It is the story of stuff. We only see the finished product enticing us from the shelf or menu. Look into the products and the stories can be found, the countless stories of abused bodies, invisible identities, oppressed souls, and lost lives. Cautiously gathered statistics show that in the world today, there are approximately 27 million slaves, more than twice the number involved in the entire 350-year history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.1 Modern-day slavery is an industry built on profit and vulnerability. Those who acquire, sell, buy, and control slaves do so to get rich by means of violent domination and exploitation of others. Slavery is the essence of dehumanization. It is more than oppressive working conditions, labor violations, poorly paid workers, or people who face poverty and disease. Other than the fact they are still alive, slaves are stripped of their humanity. In the history of colonization, slavery consisted of legal ownership, and slaves were not cheap. In the 19th century, a slave in the American South cost an average of $40,000, a substantial amount of money at the time.2 Slaves were a significant investment that required protection and carrying costs. Slaves were not usually considered disposable. Today, the average cost of a slave is only about $90 with few additional carrying costs. Real people have become disposable commodities with a bargain price tag. Despite being a crime, slavery lives and breathes as a lucrative and growing industry. In fact, the cautious 27 million count may drastically underestimate the number of lives enslaved around the world.3 Behind the illegal trade of drugs and weapons, slavery is the third largest and most profitable criminal industry. The countless stories of lives already lost and the millions currently held in violent bondage should be enough to bring the world to a state of desperate action; yet, the industry continues to thrive as an ominous threat to the human narrative. In places like Northern Thailand, the depth of poverty forces children to leave school and pursue work to help their families. Without an education or marketable skills they are easily driven into the commercial sex trade. Walking the streets, in and out of bars in Bangkok or Chiang Mai, little

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girls are seen approaching and seducing men, offering themselves for sexual favors. In other parts of Southeast Asia, India, and Pakistan, people are sold into slavery deceptively as a measure to make ends meet for the family. Any family member may enter a contract that leads to debt bondage for generations to come. In places like Uganda, Kenya, Nepal, and Peru, locals are abducted, forced, and born into enslavement of all kinds. Their bodies and souls are exploited in a variety of dangerous and demeaning jobs. Children become collateral for loans that are impossible to repay. Some are even forced to kill family members to erase memories of home and the desire to escape and return. Other slaves are trafficked across borders. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), slaves are found in and from every country in the world. Individuals at higher risk of slavery often exist in vulnerable and impoverished communities facing scarce resources, growing populations, displacement, political instability, severe health problems, and limited education opportunities. With the effects of globalization, impoverished communities are more cognizant than ever of what they lack, increasing their willingness to take risks to progress. Perpetrators find ways to manipulate and corrupt law enforcement to foster the exploitation of these communities. Local officials can be bribed or threatened for support. They often fear for their own personal, job, and family security as oppressors use power and violence to intimidate. Some local officials may participate in beating victims who try to escape, return them to their holders, incarcerate them without cause, or simply dispose of them for extra profit. As systems of justice and government remain corrupted, impoverished communities become more disempowered and increasingly vulnerable. Slavery also thrives on the choices of everyday consumers. Slaves are found along the supply chain in just about every industry. Slaves lose their freedom and often their lives so we can have bananas, chocolate, coffee, refined sugar, fruits and vegetables, and manufactured goods. Slaves may be held captive in restaurants, businesses, and homes in our own neighborhoods. Child slaves in Uzbekistan pick the world’s largest supply of cotton for our clothes made by slaves elsewhere. The accessories we buy, toys for our children, and the electronic equipment we use every day are often the product of slave labor. Companies aware of their use of slaves may be part of our investment portfolios or mutual fund pensions. The work slaves are forced to do impacts everyone and it is difficult to know precisely when and where without significantly investing in that particular pursuit of awareness. It is also difficult to precisely define its role in the global economy. Slavery generates an estimated $32 billion in profits; however, due to the nature and complexity of the industry, the total profit margin is difficult to track

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and could be much larger.4 One certainty is that the majority of the profits are generated by the global sex industry.5 The UN, UNICEF, and U.S. Department of Justice have spent significant time working to understand this phenomenon. According to the UN, statistics suggest that more than 2 million women and children enter or are forced into the commercial sex industry every year, though any age and gender can be at risk.6 The same set of statistics estimates that more than 10 million sex slaves exist in the world at any given time. Sex slavery is incredibly lucrative, generating high profits with few expenses. A young girl in Thailand, Peru, or India may enter forced prostitution as young as 6 years old. She may be tricked, abducted, or purchased for a one-time fee of less than $150 by a brothel owner and sold up to 10 or 12 times a day for sex, bringing in $10,000 or more per month until she is ‘‘worn out.’’7 Because virgins generate higher profit, some girls are forced into procedures that ‘‘restore their virginity’’ until their vaginas are destroyed. A slave who becomes a troublemaker or liability (due to sickness, disease, pregnancy, or exhaustive condition) is easily disposable and conveniently replaceable. The worst part is that supply and profit continue to increase because there is increasing demand. It boils down to a simple economic equation. The two concepts, slavery and human trafficking, are often used synonymously but they are not exactly the same. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime defines human trafficking in its Trafficking Protocol as ‘‘the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of a person by such means as threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, or deception for the purpose of exploitation.’’8 Human trafficking is the major conduit for the slave industry, and it proves that within the context of globalization even human beings are easily bought, sold, and transported in substantial numbers without detection. Most victims of trafficking have not been moved across borders. In Thailand, young girls are commonly forced into prostitution in nearby cities, held captive in basements and dark rooms, disconnected from the world outside sex slavery. Traffickers have a keen sense of where to look for the human property that is most vulnerable, that will generate the highest profit with the lowest expenses, and how to easily acquire and/or move this property. Traffickers are known to work with ruthless efficiency toward a bottom line of profit and invisibility.

WHEN DID IT ALL START? It is hard to pinpoint an exact time for the origins of modern slavery. As far back as ancient civilizations, slavery was an integral part of society. According to Milton Meltzer, ‘‘Slavery is not and has never been a peculiar

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institution, but one that is deeply rooted in the history and economy of most countries.’’9 It persisted through the years and across continents until it was supposedly eradicated almost 200 years ago. In ancient times, conflicts were usually about land and resources. A stronger group would take over an area and enslave those captured. Groups in power held all the wealth and ‘‘delegated’’ the labor; thus, slaves were necessary to make economies flourish and build labor-intensive monuments. More technologically developed castes attained wealth and status using violence and intimidation as means to exert power and authority, managing massive numbers of slaves. Slaves were a vital part of socioeconomic life. People still fight over land, resources, status, and power, but wealth and status have become entitlements to many. Slavery is not vital to the global economy, but the aspects of human nature that created the oppressive values that made slavery work throughout history still exist. Understanding modern slavery starts with recognizing the same underlying concepts of old as well as its distinct nuances today. Once considered an economic necessity, slavery is now a social obscenity. Once justified by principles for an orderly and progressive society, slavery is now held in place by the insatiable hunger for power and wealth at the expense of others. What makes people capable of owning, trafficking, and exploiting others for any purpose? Slavery as an economic reality is replaceable with practical solutions that foster a stronger and better economy. What solutions quench the deep strivings of those who seek to control and exploit the lives of others for personal gain? What solutions can prevent adult men from sexually exploiting 6-year-old girls? What solutions can lessen and even eliminate the risk of slavery among vulnerable communities? These questions require more than economic answers.

MAPPING SLAVERY The largest number of slaves in the world today is found in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal.10 This form of captivity is called debt bondage or bonded labor. This means that people are sold into slavery as security against a loan, or they inherit the debt from ancestors. The length and nature of service are never defined and the labor fails to reduce the amount of the loan. In fact, debt tends to increase based on miscellaneous, fraudulent costs. The debt is passed down the generations in a family; thus, justifying the seizure and enslavement of children. The second largest and fastest growing method of trafficking is contract slavery. It often looks like a legitimate business relationship. Slaveholders have contracts, cover stories, and corroborating witnesses. Often, victims

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are promised advanced education opportunities, job training, health care benefits, and money for their families. They are given contracts in a foreign language that they anxiously sign. Slaveholders become masters of their disguise. Even in cases where investigations are active, they bribe and intimidate others to receive tips and can quickly dispose of all evidence, flee to set up elsewhere, or just avoid prosecution for lack of evidence and reliable testimony. This type of slavery is rapidly spreading and can be found anywhere. However, it heavily affects parts of Southeast Asia, South America, some Arab nations, and parts of the Indian subcontinent. The third form of slavery is called ‘‘chattel slavery.’’ It comprises the smallest percentage of slaves in the modern world and is found predominantly in parts of Africa and Arab nations. This type most closely resembles the traditional understanding of slavery where the slave is purchased, or acquired, as property. A growing type, ‘‘war slavery,’’ is related to the geography or politics of an area. This often includes slavery sponsored by the government, military, or rebel groups. War produces slaves because it creates political instability and vulnerable refugees. War also requires human resources. A well-known example is found in East Africa where a guerrilla group called the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) formed in an effort to create a theocratic government in Northern Uganda. Since 1987, tens of thousands of Ugandan children have been abducted by the LRA from their home villages and forced into slavery as child soldiers and objects of abuse. The girls usually become sex slaves and the boys are trained to be killers. Hearing the stories of children who somehow escape or get rescued is powerful and heartbreaking. Their physical freedom is a strange first step on a treacherous journey of recovery, many without families to return to. They must re-story their existence and build sustainable lives. The U.S. State Department, other humanitarian task forces, and numerous human rights organizations are increasingly pouring resources into mapping all types of slavery. One open source movement, instigated by the organization Not For Sale in San Francisco, is www.slaverymap.org to get more people involved in telling the stories of slavery. Storytelling is powerful tool, one that gives presence and voice to those who have been invisible and voiceless for so long. Mapping slavery is a job accomplished by the process of thorough and sometimes dangerous investigation. Though slavery is well hidden in most places, it is not impossible to discover. It does not matter what the laws are or that a place is well developed. In fact, it is in the backyard of respectable communities and businesses that slavery may be more effectively hidden and more violent. In 2005, I met a girl11 from Latin America whose drug-addicted mother began to prostitute her at age 3 along with her two older sisters (ages 5 and

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7). After six years of this life, the oldest sister ran away and the other two were abducted by a local pimp and trafficked to foreign cities in the United States. Before leaving their home, they were forced to watch the pimp kill their mother. I met the youngest sister at age 15 shortly after her escape. One evening, she managed to talk a john into sneaking her out of the parlor. Once they exited, he tossed her into an alley and ran away. She managed to crawl into the street, was arrested, and taken to a hospital. Terrified, with no advocate, and no ability to speak English, she was intimidated by authorities and mistreated by hospital staff. If anyone tried to get close enough to touch her, she nearly had a nervous breakdown. The local police and hospital staff on the scene deemed her ‘‘uncooperative’’ and assumed that she voluntarily chose prostitution. They restrained her with handcuffs and sedated her for examination. She was actively losing blood, dehydrated, with a collapsed lung, and needed surgery to repair broken bones that healed incorrectly. She had bruises on 90 percent of her frail, 5-foot-5inch, 80-pound body. By the time a translator arrived, the young girl was barely conscious. The translator chose to sit by her bedside comforting her until she regained the strength to speak. Her story finally began to come out. She was placed in protective custody and shuffled through a variety of social and legal services, including group homes and investigative hearings. Though she described all the men and women who abducted and enslaved her, no one was ever caught. She learned that her oldest sister was never found and her middle sister, after becoming diseased, was found dead nearly 300 miles from the massage parlor in which she ‘‘worked.’’ After five years of addiction, voluntary prostitution, intense therapy, and chronic health problems, the 20-year-old fought her way to a GED and plans to attend college to become a nurse who works with survivors of global exploitation. This young girl’s story is not dissimilar from other trafficking survivors. Though slaves face various vulnerabilities to put them at risk and differing slave conditions, all are oppressed against their will, and those who survive face significant challenges to overcome in their reintegration to society. It is crucial for health care providers, legal officials, and even neighbors to become educated to the issue and help in the reintegration process. Working together as a community from within our own community roles allows survivors a chance to heal and successfully reintegrate.

LIBERATING SLAVES One of the foremost researchers in modern-day slavery, Kevin Bales, suggests that slavery represents an insignificant portion of the global economy. Assuming this is true, Bales suggests that the world’s slaves could simply

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be purchased out of slavery, that the same motivation (money) for holding and trafficking slaves can be used to free them. The problem is what happens when the severance package runs out and the cycle of oppression repeats itself. As long as the global economy accentuates widespread oppressive conditions for much of the world’s population, slavery is likely to continue. These oppressive conditions are compounded by deficiencies in resources for rescue and legal action, lack of public awareness, the problem of apathy, and the interconnection with poverty, overpopulation, and war. The complex needs of survivors for healing and reintegration are expansive and complex. Efforts must be made not only to rescue slaves but also to create sustainable solutions for its ultimate eradication. Deficiency in justice systems is a significant deterrent to sustainable freedom. In June 2007, the UNDP released a report acknowledging that more than 4 billion people live in places where the justice system is corrupt and/or dysfunctional.12 Deficiencies in law enforcement and political leadership easily reinforce the acts of criminals both directly and indirectly. Gary Haugen, of the International Justice Mission (IJM), has worked since 1997 to address this problem. IJM makes strides to free those who are oppressed by this corruption and offers solutions through supporting local law enforcement, retraining public authorities/officials, prosecuting criminals, providing legal advocacy for survivors of injustice, and offering resources for grassroots efforts to stay involved with aftercare and reintegration. Haugen understands the significance of due process as well as the importance for citizens to feel protected by their own justice system. If survivors of trafficking experience justice as corrupt or inadequate, they are less likely to participate in prosecution and may be labeled as uncooperative, leading to further oppression and even fear for their own lives and families. Another major deterrent is the lack of public awareness and interest. A responsibility falls on those who are indirectly affected by trafficking, consumers who benefit from the products of slave labor. On Christmas day 2008, tens of thousands of children and families were slaughtered and enslaved in the war in Uganda. On the same day, millions of others were forced to do whatever demeaning job they were enslaved to do. Still others found themselves abducted, abused, and trafficked. Every year, for much of the world, Christmas simply serves as a chilling reminder of what little they are worth. At the same time, Americans spend approximately $450 billion every year for Christmas alone to overindulge in food, gifts, and events.13 Consumerism is a reality of everyday life. It fluctuates with the seasons of life and the condition of the economy. It is possible to be a socially conscious consumer. One way is to choose not to spend money on goods and services that involve slave labor. Another way is to intentionally spend money on

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goods and services that foster freedom and sustainable solutions through fair and direct trade methods or purchase from second-hand stores. To be a socially conscious consumer requires sacrifices, significant effort, and often a willingness to spend more on certified slave-free goods or go without something we want. It is impossible to be perfect, but as more people choose to be aware and responsible, making sacrifices that uphold transformative values and priorities, it will reflect an increased demand for social accountability among corporations, marketing experts, and perpetrators. Being actively engaged in the movement to end slavery is a step we need to take. Imagine the difference we could make by simply spending half of what we spend on Christmas and using the money we save to give toward efforts to rescue and care for survivors of global exploitation. To listen carefully to the stories of slavery and become engaged with the issue means that some customary practices have to change, expectations have to shift, values have to evolve, and sacrifices have to be made. Reality is that one person’s actions may not make a difference in the bigger picture but it affects that person’s community and the impact will grow. It is about participating in a global movement, but it starts with personal transformation. We are all part of the same human narrative and it will change only as more of us become socially conscious and actively engaged. As long as there are demand and profit, traffickers will generate supply, slaveholders will escape accountability, and the slave trade will continue. The world is not running low on vulnerable people so supply is not a problem. Much of the world’s population lives on only a few dollars a day, lacking access to clean water, food, health care, education, and housing. Further, over the course of 50 years, the population has more than tripled, reaching more than 6.5 billion people.14 When a species reproduces faster than the natural resources it depends on, a tremendous strain is placed on everyone, our resources, and the ecosystem in which we exist. A large percentage of the world’s poor live in rural settings, dependent on the land for survival; however, in many areas the carrying capacity of the land is exceeded, forcing people into the vulnerable context of migration, engaging in desperate measures for survival. Desperation breeds vulnerability. To achieve a truly sustainable end means it is necessary to address the complex systems of global poverty as well as environmental degradation, war, technology, and other aspects of the global economy. If slaves can be set free, where do they go? With freedom comes the process of reintegration. How would they remain free? Without sustainable solutions to integrate with freedom, a world without slavery seems like an unlikely ideal. Freedom for slaves also means freedom for oppressors. It is important to focus on prosecution, prevention, and aftercare; however, when slavery

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comes to an end, what happens to the predators and perpetrators? Can they all be apprehended, redirected, and rehabilitated as part of the effort needed for restorative justice? In the same way that we are all connected to victims of human trafficking, in the reality of our humanity, we are also connected to those who prey on the vulnerable and profit (or find pleasure) from slavery. The same humanity that is capable of goodness and compassion and justice is also capable of violence, intimidation, and evil. Almost as important as liberating slaves is to liberate their oppressors from the bondage that allows them to make others suffer. Imagine the world as one large system composed of numerous subsystems woven together to give it structural integrity. Slavery is one of those systems within which exist slaves, traffickers, slave owners, consumers, families, and communities. Buying all slaves out of the system, though a great ideal, would still leave the rest of the problematic system intact and integrated. Freedom can only be short-lived in this scenario. Ending slavery means addressing all of the issues at the same time. Efforts to free slaves without sustainable solutions for a post-slavery world could risk making the slave problem worse in the long term. I am not suggesting that we avoid measures to liberate slaves but rather that we acknowledge more is needed. One particular organization, the Sold Project, began work in Northern Thailand a couple years ago as an effort to inspire and empower individuals to stop sex slavery among children before it begins. In their research, they discovered that the best solution was to generate access to quality, ‘‘holistic education’’ beyond primary school, especially for girls. In that area, all children can access free public education from ages 6 to 11, which takes them through sixth grade. At that point, more than 50 percent are forced to drop out and seek employment.15 Being under-qualified for any job, they easily fall prey to sex traffickers. Sold has a vision to partner with locals to create models for holistic education and raise support for children to receive scholarships and continue being educated beyond what they normally can afford. The purpose is to give them every opportunity to learn the concepts and skills they need to build sustainable lives rather than remain vulnerable to forced labor. Equally important is holistic intervention with survivors. Slavery is undeniably traumatic. Slaves suffer from severe and potentially irreversible physical, emotional, and spiritual damage. After minimal time in slavery, complex aftercare efforts are necessary not only for treating psychological issues but also meeting basic physical needs, emotional support, and rehabilitative services for addiction or disabilities. Holistic aftercare also includes job training and sustainable community development. Effective aftercare strategies often take years, involving whole communities. Currently, significant gaps exist in the realm of aftercare because of its complexity and the time and energy

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commitments it requires. Because of this reality, the recidivism rate for survivors to some form of exploitation after release is rather high and often voluntary. A component of slavery that seldom gets attention and relates directly to recidivism is addiction. Whether it is addiction to substances, power, violence, sex, love, or money, it has powerful influence over behavior. Addiction can make people do unimaginable things and cause people to be incapable of making reasonable decisions. Addictions alter the essence of one’s being, making someone more capable of violence and abuse as well as more vulnerable to exploitation. The purpose of mentioning this is not to excuse the behavior of criminals but to become more aware of why and how slavery continues and what we need to address to end it. Addiction not only is a reason that people act with blatant disregard for human life but also a reason slaves become and remain victims.

MODERN-DAY ABOLITIONISTS As people become more vulnerable, they easily lose their sense of belonging and identity that once gave their lives meaning. In a post-slavery world it is easy to force survivors to assimilate with the wider global culture and hope for the best. As long as life is not sustainable, people will not have the choice to lead lives that they value even in their freedom. The global abolition movement is not only about liberating slaves but also about giving survivors the opportunity to re-story their lives, rediscovering meaning and purpose. The movement starts with political leadership. On October 28, 2000, U.S. Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), the first legislation combating modern slavery. The original legislation, renewed and improved every 3 years, is focused on the following: prevention of domestic and global slavery; protection of victims after rescue or escape; and prosecution of traffickers and oppressors under stringent criminal penalties. It is easy to access each version of the TVPA (called the TVPRA in subsequent years).16 Each version improves on its predecessor by addressing unintended barriers, unforeseen limitations, systems that are affected, and processes/ policies that are cumbersome or ineffective. Included in the evolution of this legislation, the United States. created a temporary visa for survivors to avoid deportation before receiving aftercare services. They created an extensive global watch system as an attempt to hold other governments accountable to participation and collaboration in abolition efforts. Some countries have followed suit, hosting conferences, establishing task forces and/or national action plans to create and implement goals for antislavery efforts. The U.S. State Department continues to make efforts to be a

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leader in the abolition movement worldwide, establishing diplomatic tools and cooperative strategies to use to engage various governments abroad. The Trafficking Protocol under the jurisdiction of the UNODC, known as the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, is the only international legal means for addressing the issue of human trafficking as a global crime.17 It is designed as a supplement to the UN Convention Against Transnational Crime and also serves to supplement and encourage other national efforts of preventing the crime, protecting survivors, and prosecuting criminals. The UNODC strives to provide the most accurate and helpful information possible to the public-at-large, easily accessible in its Global Reports on Trafficking in Persons. Another crucial component to the abolition movement is support and leadership from key corporate representatives and social responsibility officers. A number of large corporations across the world are choosing to accept this responsibility and make the changes in policy and regulation as well as demands on licensees that are necessary to end slavery. At the 2009 Global Forum on Human Trafficking, sponsored by the Not For Sale campaign, several corporations were present to discuss the role of corporate leadership and social responsibility, such as Disney; Manpower, Inc.; International Labor Rights Forum; and the Corporate Social Responsibilities Program. The rising popularity of fair trade organizations like Global Exchange and Trade as One is helping support conscious consumerism. Fair trade and direct trade are organized social movements and market-based approaches to promoting socioeconomic sustainability among vulnerable communities. Consumers can look for the fair trade or direct trade labels on goods and know that stringent social and environmental standards were met throughout the process of production and retail. At this point, only a limited number of goods are available with fair trade labels. The best tool is still consumer responsibility. Consumers need to show their concern by speaking up and increasing demand for mainstream availability of fair and direct trade products. Emerging over the years is a growing network of individuals and organizations working to end slavery. Every organization has its niche and its own specialized skills, functioning in specific aspects of the abolition movement from raising awareness to training advocates, rescuing victims, providing aftercare, rebuilding communities, hosting political advocacy campaigns, and addressing justice issues. It is global efforts like those led by Kevin Bales at Free the Slaves, David Batstone with the Not For Sale campaign, Justin Dillon with SlaveFree and CallþResponse, and Gary Haugen at IJM that generate tremendous energy for abolition. The emerging grassroots efforts such as She Dances in Birmingham, AL, and the SAGE Project in San

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Francisco are equally crucial in their respective contexts. The use of social media through such film efforts as CallþResponse, Invisible Children, and Slumdog Millionaire is a powerful tool as well as propaganda through the new media technology of Facebook, Twitter, blogging, and other social/ online networking tools. Journalists and authors like Ben Skinner are making a significant impact on the work of abolition. Publishing A Crime So Monstrous in early 2009, Skinner shared his shocking and dangerously inspiring experience of investigating the global slave trade for himself. Skinner was able to infiltrate all sorts of trafficking networks both at the source and destination, to come face-to-face with the horrifying reality of slavery. According to his biography, Skinner became the first person in history to see firsthand the trafficking of human beings on four different continents. He did not do it to satisfy a curiosity or become famous but rather to understand reality and do his part to tell the stories that he discovered, sharing his own personal story of transformation in the process. His work, and his willingness to sacrifice his own safety at times, along with so many other abolitionists, is awe-inspiring. On April 25, 2009, more than 10,000 individuals in 100 cities around the world gathered for the Rescue, a sociopolitical campaign to walk in solidarity with child soldiers in Uganda and remain ‘‘captured’’ until rescued by a prominent societal figure.18 This activist movement was sponsored by Invisible Children (IC) and had profound impacts on participating communities. My 9-month-old daughter participated in the event, a story she will hear about for the rest of her life. On July 26, 2009, we dedicated my daughter’s first birthday to participating in the San Francisco marathon in an effort to raise more than $1,000 for the work of IC on the ground in Uganda. Everyone has a role to play and the opportunities to participate are endless. It is going to require some people to be more actively engaged, traveling abroad, and taking necessary risks on the ground. However, the groundwork is impossible without supportive fundraising efforts, propaganda campaigns, and the response of the public acknowledging how our choices, actions, and lifestyles can affect the movement.

SUMMARY Modern-day slavery is a horrifying reality. Though some try to ignore this reality, it is one of the world’s most significant issues because it destroys the very essence of humanity for millions of the world’s people. Today’s slaves are disposable commodities, cheap to buy, cheap to maintain, and convenient to replace. They also generate high profits. Modern-day abolitionists are working hard in the field to liberate slaves, care for them,

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and help to transform systems and rebuild communities to break the vicious cycle. What is clear is that survivors are deeply wounded physically, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually when they are held in this type of bondage even for short periods of time. It is hard enough to restore someone’s dignity and health but to restore someone’s humanity is possibly one of the most complex and challenging tasks. In some aspects it is like bringing dead people back to life. Then, once they are back to life, they have to rebuild an identity, to understand who they are, what they are worth, and how to live in freedom. Even if all of this can happen, the tools for sustainability have to be in place. It is a goal of aftercare and restoration that has no textbook answer or universal strategy. It is truly important for all organizations, governments, individual leaders, and everyday consumers to share information and resources with one another and work as collaboratively as possible to bring an end to slavery. Partially, it is about money. Partially, it is about sustainability. But mostly, it is about compassion and justice and whether the world is ready to say that enough is enough.

NOTES 1. Kevin Bales, 2004, 2007. His statistics are widely used by most new abolitionist organizations around the world and more information can be obtained from www.freetheslaves.net. 2. Ibid. Based on his study of the historic slave trade. 3. Arkless, 2009. 4. As presented in the social media piece CallþResponse, a rockumentary, released worldwide in 2008 directed by Justin Dillon and produced by Fair Trade Pictures. 5. UNODC on their Web site: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human -trafficking/faqs.html determines that the most widespread statistics show sex slavery as the most common form of human trafficking; however, I agree that this could be the result of statistical bias. Most nonprofit abolitionist organizations and NGOs believe that forced labor is still more common and frequently slaves subjected to forced labor also endure sexual exploitation. 6. UNODC. 7. Bales, 2004. References to conditions of sex slavery also provided in Dillon, 2008. 8. UNODC, ‘‘Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons.’’. 9. Meltzer, 1993. 10. Most organizations in the new abolitionist movement cite the four main categories for slavery as follows (listed respectively by estimation of largest number to the least number affected): bonded labor, contract slavery, chattel slavery, and all other categories such as war slavery. Sex slavery is most often associated with contract slavery though it can happen on its own without contracts (such as bonded labor) as well as within any and every other category of slavery.

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11. Name and identifying information withheld to protect the confidentiality and anonymity of survivor’s story and treatment. 12. UNDP Human Development Report, 2007. 13. www.adventconspiracy.com 14. Numbers and statistics as determined by thorough research of reports by United Nations Population Division: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/ publications.htm. 15. The Sold Project. www.thesoldproject.com statistics provided in their participatory action research reports and local organizations with which they build coalitions. 16. Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA 2000, TVPRA 2003, TVPRA 2005, TVPRA 2009. 17. UNODC, Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish. 18. www.therescue.invisiblechildren.com—A Web site dedicated to the event held worldwide, sponsored by Invisible Children: www.invisiblechildren.com

CHAPTER

21

P E R P E T R AT I O N - I N D U C E D T R A U M AT I C S T R E S S Rachel M. MacNair

When wars and other forms of violence are over, there is more to do than to send people home and hope they stay there. Although it is obvious that there are therapeutic needs for those who have been unjustly traumatized, there is also evidence that those who caused the traumatic events—or aggressively responded with violence within those events—can also be traumatized. Whether such actions were seen as justified or not is a separate question. Healing needs to occur for those who commit violence, both for their own benefit and to prevent further violence against others.

HISTORICAL INDICATIONS THAT KILLING IS TRAUMATIC ‘‘I am King Kong,’’ screamed the headline of the added material to the DVD of the original 1933 King Kong movie. This sentiment was expressed by its director, Merian C. Cooper. The sense of identification becomes all the more interesting when we consider that Cooper put himself in the final scene as the pilot of one of the airplanes that shot King Kong down. He was shooting himself. His biography showed how this could work psychologically. A bomber pilot in World War I, he had become a post-war Soviet prisoner of war and killed people on his escape. He got himself into dangerous situations frequently after

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that—he filmed a tiger in the process of trying to pounce on him. In several ways, he was showing signs of the symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). King Kong represented the beast that was out in the killing jungle. When coming back to civilization and beauty, the beast that was within him had to die. As the last line of the movie said, it was beauty that killed the beast. Nevertheless, he later volunteered to fight in World War II, reviving the beast. How does it work that being traumatized by killing can lead to more killing? People normally try to avoid that which traumatized them. Perpetration-induced traumatic stress (PITS), that form of PTSD in which committing violence is the stressor that causes the symptoms, does have some distinctive features as compared to PTSD caused by being a victim. That and the associated consequences of the act of killing can help explain this. It was with combat veterans that the concept of PTSD originated. In the U.S. Civil War, it was called ‘‘soldier’s heart,’’ and could lead to being executed. In World War I, the term ‘‘shell shock’’ was used to describe the phenomenon, and it was essentially thought to be a physical problem. The Germans regarded it as something that should be discouraged and, to avoid coddling those who got it, sent them immediately back to the front lines—a strategy that may be one of the factors to help explain the rise of Nazism. In World War II, it was called ‘‘battle fatigue’’ or ‘‘combat fatigue,’’ and it was finally admitted to be psychological in origin. Though the terms sound euphemistic, the conceptual development was focused on understanding that this was not an insult to the soldier, a disparagement of courage or patriotism, but rather a common reaction to the situation into which these human beings were placed. Peace activist and innovative social worker Jane Addams interviewed hospitalized soldiers during World War I and thereby became a pioneer in describing PTSD symptoms as the concept was forming. She was also a pioneer in understanding that the symptoms could come from the act of killing. Using the terminology of the time, she talked of insanity among the soldiers in various places, and of their being dazed after participating in attacks. She talked of hearing ‘‘from hospital nurses who said that delirious soldiers are again and again possessed by the same hallucination—that they are in the act of pulling their bayonets out of the bodies of men they have killed.’’1 This is clearly symptom B(3) from the definition of the American Psychiatric Association, which will be covered below. Combat veterans throughout history have also noted in their poems this particularly strong symptom of intrusive imagery that cannot be shaken. George Gascoigne participated in war in the 1500s and writes in his Dulce Bellem Inexpertis, ‘‘The broken sleepes, the dreadfull dreames, the woe, Which wonne with warre and cannot from him goe.’’ M. Grover was British, and after fighting in the Anglo-Boer war, wrote (about 1899): ‘‘I killed a man at

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Graspan/I killed him fair in fight;/And the Empires’ poets and the Empire’s priests/Swear blind I acted right/But they can’t stop the eyes of the man I killed/From starin’ into mine.’’ Yuliya Drunina, a Russian who witnessed World War II, translated from the Russian says: ‘‘So many times I’ve seen hand-to-hand combat/Once for real, and a thousand times in dreams.’’ Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Lady Macbeth show signs of PTSD symptoms arising from their assassinations. Signs of this psychological phenomenon can be found across many cultures throughout history. The U.S. war in Vietnam had a higher percentage of soldiers actually engaged in killing compared to previous wars. Several studies of different wars show that throughout history, only 15 to 25 percent of soldiers have worked against the natural inclination against killing.2 Vietnam was different because the U.S. military was aware of this problem and solved it by ‘‘better’’ training. For one thing, the military used more realistic humanshaped targets that went down when they were hit. With this and other forms of operant conditioning, the firing rate in soldiers rose dramatically. If the act of killing is not only traumatic, but according to many observations more traumatic than just being a victim of trauma, then it would make sense that the PTSD rate among American veterans of the war in Vietnam would be much higher than in previous wars. Although the concept of PTSD was originally castigated by such groups as Veterans of Foreign Wars as an anti-war propaganda ploy, the evidence became strong enough that it was defined in the 1980s as a psychiatric disorder. Since then, it has been applied to large numbers of groups in addition to combat veterans, ranging from concentration-camp inhabitants and crime victims to victims of car accidents and hurricanes. Recent evidence also suggests it can also be caused by other forms of killing, such as carrying out executions or police shooting in the line of duty, as well as criminal homicide.3 This understanding about how trauma impacts the human mind is exceedingly important and useful for knowing what kinds of therapeutic needs there are after violent conflicts or with refugees or concentration camp survivors. There is additionally such a thing as vicarious trauma, also called second-hand trauma, whereby the people who are helping the people who were traumatized find the exercise of hearing about the traumatic circumstances to be difficult. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, for example, had commissioners showing signs of post-trauma symptoms who had listened to the tales day after day.4 Because of this, there has been an upsurge of thousands of studies on PTSD and several scholarly associations devoted to the subject. However, the idea that the act of killing can be inherently traumatic has been scant. Though commented on occasionally, it is primarily a blind spot.

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After all, the main people doing therapy for combat veterans are with various countries’ governmental veterans administrations. Considering that a task such as carrying out executions might be traumatizing to those assigned to do it will be contentious—any socially approved killing tends by its nature to be controversial. Killing that is not socially approved— criminal homicide—brings with it such a lack of sympathy for the perpetrator that suggestions that they are human enough to have been traumatized by their act are often met with disdain. Therefore, while the information for helping those who everyone understands to have been victims or to have been helping victims is freely discussed, the assertion that killing is traumatic has suffered from a lack of appropriate attention. The need for attention to this is obvious for those who care about the mental health needs of human beings, and whose commitment to nonviolence is such as to pursue meeting those needs even for (or especially for) those people to whose actions they so strenuously object to. But there is far more to it than helping those individuals. The symptoms of PTSD can themselves be causes of further violence. Therefore, those who want to help establish peace by trying to nip further violence in the bud before it brings about yet more tragedies will want to pay attention to the psychological aftermath of past violence.

VIOLENCE BEGETS VIOLENCE The National Vietnam Veteran Readjustment Study found that combat veterans with PTSD reported an average of 13.3 acts of violence for the preceding year compared to 3.5 acts for those without PTSD.5 Several features of the symptoms of PTSD can help account for how it might exacerbate the likelihood of future acts of violence. There are two official definitions of those PTSD symptoms: one by the American Psychiatric Association6 and the other from the World Health Organization.7 First, there must be an actual traumatic event or events; if the events are imaginary, or if they are ones that most people would not think were traumatic, then the condition is something else. For the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, that is criterion A. They then group the symptoms into clusters, which are summarized below with their symptom numbers, with additional notes. Cluster B: Re-experiencing the trauma: 1. Recurrent, intrusive recollections 2. Dreams

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3. Sudden acting or feeling the event is recurring 4. Intense distress at cues resembling the trauma 5. Physical stress reactions to trauma cues (rapidly beating heart, blood pressure rise, and so on).

This is the cluster that gives the best indication that the symptoms are actually the result of having participated in killing (or other horrific violence, such as torture) rather than merely being from other forms of trauma that might have been happening at around the same time. Unlike the rest of the symptoms, these have content to them. Studies of the U.S. government data on its veterans of the war in Vietnam have shown that this cluster of symptoms is especially strong in those who killed as compared to those in combat who did not kill.8 Cluster C: Numbing 1. Avoiding anything associated with the trauma 2. Avoiding things that remind about the trauma 3. Inability to recall something important about the trauma 4. Markedly diminished interest in significant activities 5. Feeling detached or estranged from others.

Note especially that fifth symptom, because feeling estranged from other people can feed into mental strategies that lead to violence: dehumanizing others,9 blaming the victim, minimizing the damage done to victims, scapegoating, euphemisms, and other mental mechanisms of moral disengagement.10 It can also facilitate the destructive obedience to authority made famous in the Milgram electric-shock experiments.11 Cluster D: Increased arousal 1. Sleep problems 2. Irritability, outbursts of anger 3. Trouble concentrating 4. Hypervigilance 5. Exaggerated startle response

It takes little imagination to ascertain how outbursts of anger can lead to more violence, especially in situations of domestic abuse and street violence. One article classifying violent behavior as a consequence of PTSD symptoms calls it ‘‘Mood Lability Associated Violence.’’12 Again, as with intrusive thoughts, the symptom patterns showed that the outbursts of anger were especially strong as a symptom for those who had killed among American veterans of the war in Vietnam.13 For a literary

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portrayal of hypervigilance resulting from assassination activities, see Steven Spielberg’s movie, Munich. A more detailed discussion of applying psychological theories of violence causation to the exacerbation of violence by PTSD symptoms can be found in the book Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress: The Psychological Consequences of Killing.14 Alcoholism, drug abuse, and workaholism are all methods that have been used to drown out and push away the symptoms—this is called ‘‘selfmedication.’’ Substance abuse is associated with causing violence in domestic abuse and street crime. Workaholism is the most functional of these, but there have been cases where the intrusive symptoms that have been held at bay for many years come flooding in at retirement.15 Nor is the workaholism much good for society if the work involves maintaining organizations of structural violence, which on occasion might become more likely with the symptom of detachment and estrangement from others. There is another even more sinister possibility of the psychological consequences of violence leading to more violence: the concept of addiction to trauma.16 The physical stress reaction of opioids in the brain is a sensible biological arrangement for those in danger, as it relieves pain at a point when pain can impede the actions needed for survival. Yet the artificial forms of this are cocaine, morphine, and heroin, well known for their addictive nature. This includes a sense of euphoria at the time, but also a problem of withdrawal afterward. This is why the ‘‘thrill of the kill’’ can still be understood as traumatic. The euphoria is not happiness, but a physical reaction that leads to a let down, which then leads to needs for greater and greater ‘‘fixes.’’ This helps to account for mercenaries and other people who volunteer in future wars even though they have been traumatized by past wars. In some cases, this may be entirely ideological. Yet in some cases, that need for a ‘‘fix’’ may be a component of their motivation.

CONCLUSION How to go about healing is still being explored as a matter of psychological research. Techniques such as prolonged exposure, a practice of continually gradually exposing people to reminders of the trauma to desensitize them to it, appear to be a bad idea for this kind of trauma. Group therapy has been rather successful, and so has Eye-Movement Desensitization and Retraining (EMDR), which uses simple eye movements as a physiological way of adjusting the brain while the subject is talking through a problem. Whether pharmacy drugs that help in other cases would help here has not been studied.

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Knowing about the universality of this kind of experience can help substantially. Those who have committed violence have often found friends and family, and sometimes even therapists, not wanting to hear the details of what they did, in sharp contrast to the victims. An inability to express these feelings may be one of the reasons symptoms are more severe. When people do not talk about it, and others around them also do not talk about it, they never come to understand that their experience is due to the situation in which they were put and the symptoms are actually a rather normal reaction. This knowledge can help them work through the trauma. More understanding of PITS may have a role to play in prevention of cycles of violence, because it is one of the mechanisms that continues those cycles. Further research can offer a variety of options for interventions to prevent the cycle or the escalation of violence. If we understand this phenomenon better, we may be able to evaluate various methods of intervention, including therapy, public policy, national reconciliation efforts, and education. Public policy can take PITS into account and not treat those who are expected to carry out killing as unfeeling automata or as people simply doing unpleasant jobs. Part of the ideology of genocide, torture, or massacres is that those who carry them out benefit from the activity. Efforts at arranging punishment through political means have been used to counter this idea. It may help to add education on how perpetrators do not escape with impunity even if political arrangements are inadequate; there are natural consequences. Beyond the practical implications that show us one of the many methods to intervene in cycles of violence, it is also important to understand this to counter part of the ideological justifications for violence: it is not inevitable due to human nature. Killing is not merely something that is not in our nature, as the field of psychology has ascertained for some time (although early forays suggested otherwise). Killing as a stressor that can cause PTSD symptoms shows that killing can be understood as being against our nature; it tends to make us sick.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Addams, 1960, 273. Grossman, 1995. MacNair, 2002. Tutu, 1999. Kulka, Schlenger, Fairbank, Hough, Jordan, Marmar, and Weiss, 1990. American Psychiatric Association, 1994. World Health Organization, 1992. MacNair, 2002, chap. 2.

270 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Players and Practices in Resistance to War Brennan, 1995. Bandura, 1996. Blass, 2000. Silva, Derecho, Leong, Weinstock and Ferrari, 2001. MacNair, 2002, chap. 2. Ibid., 100–106. Sleek, 1998. MacNair, 2002, 140–142.

PART IV

P E A C E M OV E M E N T S W O R L D W I D E

The U.S. Peace Registry is an online database of individuals and organizations in the U.S. who are in one way or another working on peace. In existence only for a few years now, the names still scroll by page after page. The Peace Resource Book of 1986 was 426 pages long. Most of those pages were simple listings, in three columns, of the names and addresses of organizations working one way or another on peace primarily in the United States. Our back-of-the-envelope calculation says that there were more than ten thousand known groups in the United States at time of that writing. Obviously, the following section is a mere geographical sampling, offering insights by peace practitioners from West Germany, Korea, India, Asia, Iran (with a comparison to a similar group in the U.S.) and the Middle East, with one chapter by Hildegard Goss-Mayr that briefly recounts highpoints from Colombia, Burundi, Southern France, and the Philippines to bring out the unexpected power of nonviolence and individual courage, which we have come to regard as the infrastructure of peace movements, and hence of peace. Other peace movements around the world are of course touched on under different headings elsewhere in these three volumes. Andreas Buro approaches the post-1945 peace movement in what was then West Germany from the perspective of history and of social movement theory, bringing out the ways that the peace movement can be analyzed and understood as any social movement despite its acute focus on the peace issue. He brings us into the politics of the time and the various ways the German peace movement adjusted its positions to take advantage of them.

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He brings out the relationship between immediate goals (questioning missile deployment) and long-term goals (stable peace in Europe), and also points out that the idea of a peace movement may be a misnomer, as one German directory listed about 250 groups in 2004 alone. The next three studies take us to the East. With Jujin Chung we have another insider’s view, and again from a divided country where peace action is relatively new, (much more so in Korea than Germany), and where reunification has been a movement goal. Her chapter furnishes an arresting example of the balance that has to be struck, particularly by would-be interveners from outside a given country, between the eternal principles of peacekeeping (and the next and deeper stages of peacemaking and peace building) that contact human universals and the indigenous strengths and weaknesses of a given culture and region—an awareness that the peaceteam movement, for example, has learned well in the last twenty or so years. It was a surprise to us, for example, to learn that the South Korean peace movement has mainly arisen from Christian and not Buddhist centers. As one would expect, the peace movement (loosely defined) in modern India has, by contrast, roots that are historically and philosophically deep. Ramu Manivannan, a political scientist active with the Nonviolent Peaceforce, gives us masterful insight into the complex traditions that are more often than not unfolding in areas that are indirectly related to anti-militarism and peace—areas like the environment, the expulsion of corporate exploitation in one quarter or another—but which, since Gandhi, many participants would indeed consciously connect with that overriding goal. In the interests of time, we single out the article of another political scientist, Cynthia Boaz, because it is a comparative study of two roughly parallel women’s movements in, respectively, Iran and the United States. Boaz goes a long way (as does Zunes, and of course Abu-Nimer and Badawi in Volume 1, Chapter 12) toward dispelling the current stereotypes that are so damaging to peace. She is particularly well grounded in the principles of nonviolence, which inform her analysis and lend it cogency throughout. And like many other contributors whose focus is a given region—this may emerge as a unifying lesson of this book—she is well aware that it is somewhat imprecise to talk about the Iranian Women’s Movement as there is in reality a unity-in-diversity of such movements that are now underway and will no doubt always be. We are particularly pleased that Prof. Boaz was able to interview Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi for the Iran part of her chapter. Collectively, these studies raise a fascinating question: when will there be a world peace movement? Not the ‘movement toward peace’ only, but a

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concerted (we do not say, hierarchically organized) single effort to put down decisively whatever wave of war-frenzy is happening at the time and put definitively in its place a regime of peace? We came a step closer to that millennium when, in 2002, popular resistance to the impending invasion of Iraq began to take on momentum and climaxed on February 15, 2003 in the largest planetary protest of all time, counting on the order of twelve million active participants in sixty countries. The protest in Rome involved around 3 million people, and is listed in the 2004 Guinness Book of World Records as the largest anti-war rally in history. But that is the limitation: it was an anti-war rally, and not, as several writers in these volumes have pointed out, a rally for peace, not to mention something even more enduring and constructive than a rally. Nonetheless, it was a start: people in sixty countries became aware that they were indeed the collective body of what Jonathan Schell calls ‘‘The Unconquerable World.’’ This may just have been the first warning to the war system that indeed it is progressing by its own logic into the dustbin of history. In the short term, of course, it failed. And few participants had much notion of a longer viability for their efforts. Few realized that Gandhi had chalked out years before a line of escalation between those low-level conflicts in which appeals to reason are still likely to be heard and the more entrenched hostilities in which, as he put it, ‘‘things of fundamental importance to the people are not secured by reason alone but have to be purchased with their suffering . . . If you want something really important to be done you must not merely satisfy the reason, you must move the heart also’’. When then-President Bush dismissed the huge protest as a ‘focus group’ he was signaling that that line from the efficacy of argument to the need for Satyagraha (nonviolent resistance) had been crossed: but neither he nor most of the protestors were aware of it. It seems at times as if everything in the world, good or bad, but mostly bad, has been globalized. Espionage, crime, especially the reborn horror of human trafficking (see Anderson-Hinn, Chapter 20 in this volume), of course the most exploitive aspects of the economy (Volume 3, Chapter 27)—in short, everything but peace has been globalized. Note that most of the destructive examples just mentioned are global but not centralized and hierarchical: in other words they are informal arrangements like what the peace movement or any civil society movement would naturally be like. Perhaps it will be only a matter of time before the peace movement goes global and everyone will see that day when, as President Eisenhower said, ‘people want peace so badly that governments will have to give it to them.’ —Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler

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NOTES 1. US Peace Registry, http://www.uspeacememorial.org/registry. 2. Bernstein et al., 1986. 3. Schell, 2003. 4. Gandhi, 1931, 48. 5. Some were, however: a ‘‘Declaration of Peace’’ campaign was duly launched in the United States, including the vast umbrella organization United for Peace and Justice, which coordinated civil disobedience actions.

CHAPTER

22

THE WEST GERMAN PEACE M OV E M E N T Andreas Buro Habil Translated by Matthias Zeumer and Michael N. Nagler

According to Joachim Raschke1 there were three phases of civil-society movements in the capitalist states: the early bourgeois movements, the labor movement, and the new social movements. The peace movement after 1945 is the first new social movement (NSM). It involves people from almost all social and religious backgrounds. The core theme of the peace movement is the overcoming of war and the enabling of peace. Both topics are two sides of the same coin, though they use different strategies and forms of action. The first side’s focus is on protesting the military and armaments; the second aims to develop and implement new forms of conflict resolution that do not involve military force and violence. Many peace groups hold a concept of peace that embeds social justice. Time and again one encounters the slogan: ‘‘no peace without social justice.’’ Of course, the meaning is not to fight for social justice by using violence; rather, this statement is meant to point to a cause of conflict that has to be overcome. In overcoming war, the German peace movement has one significant difference from some others. In the anti-militaristic traditions, primarily originated in the labor movement, it had been considered permissible to use

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militaristic means to free the people from social or colonial oppression. Those struggles are often based on the expectation that this will be ‘‘the last battle,’’ after which peace and justice will have been achieved. The true development of those struggles, however, tells a different story. The ‘‘last battle’’ remains always the penultimate battle. War and armament are perpetuated. The pacifistic outlook, therefore, insists on a nonmilitaristic and civic resolution of problems. The assumption here is that the means ascertain the goals, so that no permanent peace can be achieved through war. The new social peace movement has much common ground with other social movements, since the concept of peace is connected to many facets of societal life and international structures that are the cause of wars or the preconditions for peace. In the past, during times of acute threat of war and armament races, this often led many people from other social movements to join the protests of the peace movement; however, this collaboration would last only for a period of time and they would then focus once again on their previous issues.

AFTER 1945 The political peace process for Germany after 1945 had the following characteristics: • Germany was militarily entirely defeated and occupied. The Germans were confronted with their own history of brutal warfare and genocide. A public glorification of the German warfare was impossible. The Nuremberg Trials were an unambiguous signal. This was an important social-psychological premise for the engagement of citizens in the political peace process. • The occupying powers assumed governance. With the unfolding of the East–West conflict the country was increasingly divided into East and West. This led inevitably to the question of Germany’s reunification. This question was, due to its entanglement with militaristic confrontations, strongly related to the question of peace. This consequently led to the emergence of the so-called Nationalen Frage, the national question, the neutrality and permanent disarmament of Germany, and the development of the atomic arms-free zone in Middle Europe.

Up until the founding of the two German states in 1949, Germany was ruled entirely by the occupying powers and under absolute subordination. Even after 1949 the influences of the occupying powers, especially that of the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), dominated. Consequently, demands for peace were primarily directed toward those two powers. They, however, escalated military confrontations against each other.

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With existing ambitions to make the two German states military partners of East and West, the political peace opposition also focused on the governments of East and West. In their own domains the occupying powers made every effort to establish their visions of the ideal social system. For that purpose they cooperated in the West with the bourgeois-capitalist forces and in the East with the socialist-communist elites. These German ‘‘partners’’ heavily combined their interests and destinies with the political, military, and economic interests of the respective occupying power. Peace-political approaches that infringed on the politics of the occupying powers were consequently rejected, even though they drew the right political and moral conclusions from both world wars. The basic approaches for peace movements in the West were, therefore, in direct opposition to the ruling powers. In the East they were extensively exploited for the politics of the USSR. Whoever did not integrate defaulted into the opposition. World War II ended with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, introducing a new era of warfare and weaponry of mass destruction. War became an existential threat for people on all continents and revealed its irrational and inhumane character. Traditional thought structures of heroic battles could hardly be maintained, yet exactly these new means of mass destruction were used in the emerging arms race between East and West through doctrines of deterrence. This constellation gave the peace movement a fundamental, moral, ethical, and religious character. Wherever there was freedom to do so, the arms-racing powers, especially the militarily leading United States, were heavily criticized. During the Cold War, which evolved exponentially after 1947, any criticism of them was represented as anti-American, freedom-opposing, and ‘‘communist’’ to publicly defame and isolate whatever parties were in opposition to the prevailing military course. Thus, within the German society a strong psychological barrier against participation in any peace work was created. This tendency was amplified as both power blocs tried to present themselves ideologically as powers of peace. The peace movement, which criticized the peace-threatening reality of the arms race, was, when it could not be exploited, antagonized on its own territory, and praised and supported on the opposing side. As a consequence, the peace movement was undercut by statesupported forces. It also had to carry on a constant quarrel with such forces as depicted politics in East or West as politically motivated on the opposing side, and attempted to coerce the independent peace movement to their struggle. The motivation in post-war society to work for peace came from very diverse traditions. This type of work after 1945 was connected to the goals

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of parties that operated under umbrella organizations—such as unions or churches—or organized through what we today would call civil society. Therefore, these were all heterogeneous forces that relied on very different societal environments. ‘‘The’’ peace movement, therefore, never existed. At the most, there were some relatively broad commonalities, especially where threats affected everyone in the same way. The reciprocal menace of atomic warfare, for example, the rearmament of West Germany, and inversely that of East Germany, stood at the beginning of the development of the peace movement in Germany.

THE PEACE MOVEMENT IN THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY IN ITS HISTORICAL STAGES—OBJECTIVES, STRATEGIES, AND ACTIONS More than half a century of peace movement in the Federal Republic of Germany cannot be described as a unity. The differences in the political situation, the objectives, organizational structures, and modes of action and participation, are simply too great. It is, therefore, necessary to describe the peace movement in its various historical stages. As follows, eight of these stages can be usefully identified: 1. Resistance against the rearmament 2. Kampf dem Atomtod or ‘‘Fight Atomic Death’’ during the second half of the 1950s 3. Easter March Movement/Campaign for Democracy and Disarmament 4. Campaign against the NATO Double-Track Decision 5. Period after the East–West conflict 6. Period during the Gulf and Balkan wars 7. The interventionist orientation of NATO states and Germany 8. Imperial wars and armament in the name of the war against suicideterrorism (war on terrorism)

The Resistance against the Rearmament West Germany’s entry into NATO (1954) ended the ‘‘Without-Me Movement’’ against the rearmament.2 It represented anti-military arguments from 1949 until 1955, ranged from conservative to liberal and religious members of society, and as far as the Left. The Federal Minister of the Interior of the Federal Republic of Germany reported in 1952, 175 organizations, research groups, and so on. Their motivational structures were exceedingly heterogeneous and ranged from aggrieved national pride, the desire for neutrality to

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anti-militaristic positions. Pacifist credos were represented only by a small minority. This phase proceeds in four substeps: the Without-Me Movement, the referendum campaign, the neutrality efforts, and the St. Paul’s Church movement.3 The dominant protagonists were political parties and big organizations such as the Confederation of German Trade Unions and churches under whose roof action groups organized. Autonomous protagonists could be found in the category ‘‘endeavor for neutrality.’’ Independent peace groupings were far away from determining the debate. Neither goals nor subgoals were reached. The Cold War escalated and the rearmament prevailed, although, according to polls, 80 percent of the population—though driven by very different motives—militated against it. For this reason, a broad discussion was held in society about the military and armament, for the first time since the war had ended.

The ‘‘Fight the Atomic Death’’ Campaign The protest against atomic weapons was organized by the Social Party of Germany (SPD), the unions, the protestant church, and several individuals within the campaign ‘‘Fight Atomic Death’’ in the second half of the 1950s.4 The concentration was on the atomic threat and a broad and significant debate was achieved. The larger organizations, mainly the SPD, determined the campaign to a large extent politically, financially, and organizationally. Certainly, other independent neutrality and peace groups existed. The SPD made an about-face after the conclusion of a policy statement stemming from the party convention in Bad Godesberg in 1959, becoming a catch-all party, moving to the middle and being open to form a coalition with the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Fight Atomic Death did not fit into this new strategy and was stalled organizationally and financially by the SPD and the Confederation of German Trade Unions. The discussion over nuclear weapons led large parts of society into a confrontation about the monstrosity of military thinking and military practice (Hiroshima/ Nagasaki). This caused a considerable mobilization for nuclear disarmament.

The Easter March Movement/Campaign for Democracy and Disarmament Pacifist groups in Northern Germany organized the first Easter March in 1960, marching form Hamburg, Bremen, Hannover, and Braunschweig to the missile drill-ground Bergen-Hohne, out of which emerged the nationwide, independent, extra-parliamentary opposition.5 At first they operated

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under the name ‘‘Easter March of Atomic Weapon Opponents against Atomic Weapons in East and West,’’ which they changed in the late 1960s— the result of a social learning process—to ‘‘Campaign for Democracy and Disarmament.’’ This campaign became a broad alliance among diverse social milieus and political camps, operated year round, was financially selfsufficient, and was independent of any political party or big organization.6 A solid network of local groups formed. This is the first long-term new social movement (1960 to 1969) working on a broad social basis. At first, the campaign largely picked up the rallying cry of ‘‘Fight Atomic Death,’’ but it changed over time to an anti-militaristic and pacifistic movement that would continuously incorporate more problematic areas of democratization. Since the mid-1960s Vietnam played an increasing role at public protests. It was picked up later by various student movements and intensively pursued until the withdrawal of the United States from Vietnam in 1973. In 1968 East-Bloc states marched into the Czecho-Slovak Socialist Republic (CSSR), which placed a great strain on the collaboration of the heterogeneous parts of the campaign. By the end of the 1960s the campaign was polarized in such a way—even the student movements contributed—that it dissolved itself to all intents and purposes into a pursuit of many reform projects. This ushered in the policy of d
etente during Willy Brandt’s chancellorship. Ecological, social, developmental, and women’s rights problems preoccupied people at that time more than an allegedly deactivated menace of atomic weapons and war.

The Campaign against the NATO Double-Track Decision During the 1970s, reform-oriented social movements and citizens’ initiatives formed while the topic of peace moved to the background, due to the new Ostpolitik and the hopes that it roused. The situation changed rapidly, however, when NATO decided on the Double-Track to station intermediate-range missiles with minimal lead notice. People of the versatile social movement formed peace groups all over the country and the biggest peace mobilization ever seen in Germany emerged. Civil disobedience (Committee for Basic Rights and Democracy) and nonviolent forms of action gained much currency. Moreover, during this phase an intensive discussion evolved about alternatives (1981), including alternative forms of defense that were supposed to bring an end to the policy of deterrence and disarmament.7 The massive protest and the nonviolent blockades in Mutlangen and other places, however, made ‘‘politics’’ a catchword for the apprehensions of the population. The rejection of the additional armament was supported by two-thirds of the surveyed population. The German Federal Parliament nevertheless enacted the deployment of the intermediate-range missiles.

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Many forms of civil protest and nonviolent resistance were tried and developed further.8 These types of actions led to a stronger emphasis on the antimilitaristic components9 and advanced the comprehension for pacifistic behavior patterns. The numerous litigations that arose became a forum of political disputes. Gorbachev’s policy of d
etente and disarmament heralded a new surge of the peace movement until the end of the 1980s.

The End of the East-West Conflict The collapse of the Soviet empire also changed the security and political landscape for the peace movement fundamentally.10 The immediate threat was gone, and with that, alongside the fight for disarmament, the second big topic was put on the agenda: the fundamental idea that peace in Europe is not based on weapons, but rather on communication about the forms of cohabitation in the ‘‘common house.’’11 Accordingly, what was called for was to pursue reconciliation between the Federal Republic, or its society, and the eastern European and former Soviet societies. The conditions for a collective pan-European peaceful future were to be nurtured. In a discussion that had already been started in 1987 the main focus evolved around the concepts of—and an accordant policy of—‘‘positive peace’’ for Europe and a ‘‘pan-European general peace framework.’’ With this re-orientation came widespread hope that a new era of equitable cooperation between East and West would arise, in which the expected peace dividend would be established to promote peace and to boost development.

THE GULF AND THE BALKAN WARS The first Gulf War in 199112 destroyed such hopes and directed attention increasingly to conflicts and wars in other countries. Although the Germans were not directly threatened, the main point of focus became to support peace in former Yugoslavia.13 The new era after the East-West conflict brought new demands on the legal instruments of the peace movement. Although it was still possible in Germany to react with protests and mass rallies with the provocative motto ‘‘No Blood for Oil’’ during the Gulf War, it was not possible during the wars in former Yugoslavia. That called for transborder measures, for which hardly any experience existed. Besides, the traditional structures of the peace movement, as well as its modest financial endowment and organizational capacities made possible only a limited effectiveness. The international as well as the German peace movement, nonetheless, took on this challenge. A large and multifaceted task in the sense of this newly emerging term of ‘‘civilian-based conflict’’ was carried out. It was

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barely noticed by the media, however, because they were still fixated on the old forms of protests. The war in Croatia and Bosnia moved the people in the peace movement more than all other previous armed conflicts with the compassion and the desire to help build a great community of peace activists. The desire for a rapid end to a geographically very close inferno also divided the people of peace movements internally. The so-called warmonger/pacifist debate between the advocates and the opponents of a Western military operation in Bosnia reflected this conflict.14 This discussion can only be understood against the background of the new unipolar global world order under the leadership of the United States, whose readiness to intervene drew Germany herself into a more aggressive ‘‘out-of-area-policy.’’15 The grand policies of the United States, the states of the European Union (EU), and NATO were not verifiably influenced by the versatile responses and transborder actions of the German and the international peace groups. In various subareas, however, they were very effective. One example is the refugee operation, provided by the Survive the War organization, which smuggled especially endangered people from Serbianoccupied regions, and housed them with families in Germany. Another effect on politics came from the systematic support of peace, human rights, and democracy groups within former Yugoslavia; groups that attempted to uphold their work under extreme political pressure and considerable danger.

The Interventionist Orientation of the NATO States and Germany The roots of this development reach far back to the Gulf War of the 1990s and to the NATO Eastward Enlargement. The United States rested its foreign politics largely on their military potential. The Armament-Monitoring policy came rapidly to be seen as cumbersome by the United States and was damaged also by the Anti-Ballistic Missile contract. NATO took over the function of an interventionist ‘‘regulatory force’’ and the European NATO states, including Germany, aligned themselves with this model. This stage is significant for Germany due to its involvement in the NATO–Yugoslavia War (Kosovo War) in 1999, which was conducted without a UN mandate. The red-green government (the Social Party of Germany and the Green Party) in Berlin, which carried along the Kosovo War, instigated the ‘‘interventionist course’’ in its military and armament politics, unimpressed by protests of the peace movement, even though the NATO–Yugoslavia War was rejected by a large part of the population (up to 60 percent in the new and up to 40 percent in the old Federal States in reunified Germany).

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Partial successes were achieved through a worldwide campaign against landmines. Time and again, successes were recorded to publicly broach the issue of arms exports such as those to Turkey. The actual limitations of arms exports were not great. The global framework, in which the German foreign as well as security politics moved, was increasingly incorporated in the analyses. The global, unipolar military system with the United States as its leading power was identified with the process of ‘‘globalization’’ and criticized for its ‘‘organized peacelessness’’16 and military violence. The EU increasingly tried to build an independent military intervention capability and in addition to concentrate the European arms industry. To justify this, and in order to win the populace for this form of politics, legitimizing ideologies of a ‘‘humanitarian, military intervention’’ and of a ‘‘just war’’ were put forward, a fact that was understood by the peace movement as a dangerous fight for the minds and hearts of the population. It worked in at least three areas: the critique of militarily supported politics, the presentation of alternatives to the civil conflict-treatment, and the critique of the legitimizing ideologies.

Imperial Wars and Armament in the Name of the War on Suicide Terrorism (War on Terrorism) The last stage to be named began in the public conscience with the attacks by suicide terrorists who flew passenger planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. The United States received avowals of solidarity from many countries around the world. They began a war against Afghanistan to destroy training camps and structures of suicide terrorism. Many European states participated in this war as well, albeit no explicit authorization to attack Afghanistan was given by the resolutions of the UN Security Council.17 Germany is involved through military, political, as well as economic support. September 11 and the following military interventions, which allegedly were turned against terrorism, prompted the peace movement to increasingly deal with this term. The term terrorism is predominantly being applied to attacks by suicide bombers and in a criminal context, whereas warfare of the technically advanced military powers is presented as ‘‘normal’’ conduct. The peace movement contrasts this unilateral allocation of terrorism with ‘‘war is terror.’’ With that it means assassination as well as state terrorism. The Bush administration declared a global war against evil. As the only military superpower, the United States claimed for themselves the right to preemptively strike worldwide, and even to use atomic weapons against countries that do not possess such weapons themselves. International law and the charter of the UN were thus heavily damaged. In favor of the

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gigantic U.S. armament, arms control treaties were set aside and strategic military bases were built in key strategic parts of the world. The U.S.- and British-led war against Iraq in 2003 took place without a UN mandate and against the will of many of the EU states and states of other continents. It was not possible to legitimize this war as a fight against terrorism. At that stage the peace movement turned its attention to resisting the Afghanistan campaign; however, it was not able to attain mass mobilization. A mobilization of great magnitude did not succeed until this U.S.-British war of aggression against Iraq in 2003. The long negotiations of the UN Security Council, the false justifications for a war of aggression, and above all, the refusal of Germany, France, and other EU states to join a military intervention caused a huge motivation for protest in the population. In addition, there was a large international mobilization of protests in many parts of the world. The New York Times spoke of the public opinion, which mobilized against the war, as the second greatest world power. Beyond the Iraq problem the peace movement focused on the critique of the EU armament and the EU constitution, as well as alternative means of prevention and civilian-based conflict management. Alongside this focus, a variety of topics were treated and campaigns advanced. An incrementally tighter collaboration developed with groups that were critical of globalization.

ORGANIZATIONS AND NETWORKS The peace movement, as a new social movement, is composed of people and groupings of almost all segments of society with the exception of the military Right. Socialist, protestant, Catholic, atheist, pacifistic, anti-militaristic, liberal, and conservative forces work in their respective frames. The peace movement is, thus, very heterogeneous and defies efforts at unification. Its advantage lies in the multiplicity of its relationships and approaches. Commonalities have to be negotiated in each case. Cooperation and dialogue—sometimes even vigorous and controversial—instead of unification are its continuous attribute. It is open to members of political parties, unions, churches, and other large organizations; however, since 1960 it does not form alliances with such organizations, and instead is jealous of its independence, especially in relation to political parties. The popular idea of ‘‘the’’ peace movement thus barely finds a counterpart on the level of organizational structures. The directory of the Network Peace Cooperative counted about 250 groups in 2004 alone. Those can be classified as local groups, organizations of different range that are affiliated with different traditions in topic-specific or campaign-oriented groups, networks/umbrella organizations, and international associations.

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International cooperation always played a significant role for the peace movement, at a minimum to show that peace efforts are not only a German concern, but rather concern for many other Western countries. Moreover, the German peace movement gained much stimulus from other countries, such as the reference to Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., the technique of the Easter Marches, or of nonviolent resistance. In this regard, the Committee of One Hundred in England inspired much imagination. Admittedly, the demands of international cooperation oftentimes exceeded the resources of the groups. War Resisters International had a large influence on the unfolding of the conscientious objection in Germany, as did the International Fellowship of Reconciliation. The Quakers led the San Francisco–Moscow March in 1961, in which German citizens participated. Many umbrella organizations or campaigns from European countries joined forces in the European Federation against Nuclear Arms. Peace Brigades International was launched with German cooperation in Beirut in 1962 and is working on many tasks to this day. As an answer to the World Peace Council, which was dominated by Russia, the Western European and North American peace organizations founded the International Confederation for Disarmament and Peace in Oxford in 1963. Another source of international connection was that international organizations supported various sections in Germany. That was true, for example, for the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and War Resisters International.

OVERALL CONCLUSION FROM THE HISTORICAL STAGES Throughout, one has to note that governmental policy was hardly influenced by the activities of the peace movement, not even when it achieved a remarkably high mobilization. A noticeable exception is the worldwide campaign against the Vietnam War, though to be sure even to the bitter end it was not possible to change Bonn’s vassalage. A second exception has to do with the Iraq intervention of 2003. If Schroeder’s government had not expected a considerable antiwar attitude from the public, they would not have announced Germany’s refusal to participate during the election campaign. Furthermore, we can also note some partial successes here and there, though they become questionable in the face of rapid military innovations. Clemens Ronnefeldt18 lists the following campaigns: For the Abolition and Halt in Production of All Land Mines; Stopping of Small Arms Proliferation and of Child Soldiers; Outer Space Without Weapons and Nuclear Energy; Abolition of Atomic Weapons; Stop All Atomic Tests; Produce for Life—Stop Armament Exports. Realizing the movement’s marginal effectiveness in the area of policy brings up the whole question of the relationship between society and state. It points

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up a significant deficit of democratization in Germany and the autocratic tendency on the governmental and parliamentary level vis-a-vis the public. The peace movement, however, often succeeded in making peace policy a topic in society for extended periods. Social learning processes, which were also expressed through the increasing acceptance of conscientious objection, were thus made possible. The fact that a nationalistic-militaristic social development was avoided after 1945 until the present is arguably due, in large part, to the peace movement. The movement was also able to make a fundamental contribution to the fact that military policies were not perceived as ‘‘natural’’ and ‘‘without an alternative,’’ but rather questioned critically. Furthermore, it often succeeded in thwarting and revealing to the public eye the magnitude of the menace involved in playing down and covering up various attempts at arms developments and military strategies (for example, Fulda gap). A major accomplishment, finally, is the continuous calling into question of violence as a way of dealing with conflict, with all its extensive consequences. An important achievement of the peace movement lay in its ability to point out alternatives for peaceful solutions of conflicts and the reciprocal threats of deterrence. Although they were generally ignored by the government, they demonstrated to the public that military policies are not indispensable: peaceful alternatives do exist.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Raschke, 1991. Otto, 1981. Rupp, 1970. Ibid. Buro, 1977. Otto, 1977. B€oge and Wilke, 1984. Komitee f€ ur Grundrechte und Demokratie, 1981. Buro, 1997, 195. Ibid. Senghaas, 1992. Komitee f€ ur Grundrechte und Demokratie, 1981. Buro, 1997, 119. Ibid., 143; Pax Christi, 1993; 1996. Buro, 1997. Senghaas, 1992. Paech, 2001. Ronnefeldt, 2004.

CHAPTER

23

PEACE IN TRANSITION: THE PEACE M OV E M E N T I N S O U T H K O R E A Jujin Chung

In South Korea the peace movement has a short history. Concepts such as positive peace, nonviolence, peace building, and a culture of peace that are widely shared among organizations and people involved in peace movements around the world are not fully recognized yet by the peace movement in South Korea. There are differing ideas about the inception of the peace movement among activists; likewise, there is no shared definition of the term peace movement. Every year peace activists hold a workshop to share ideas and build working relationships. This open workshop brings together many people who are interested in peace issues, but they are not necessarily committed to peace. Participants’ personal and organizational backgrounds show that there are different approaches to peace and diverse understandings of what constitutes a peace movement. Their interests range from reunification of the two Koreas and security in Northeast Asia, to peace education and community building. They are interested in reconfiguring their issues in terms of peace and then applying the idea of peace to their programs and activities. This practice indicates that the word ‘‘peace’’ has penetrated South Korean society and appealed to different actors, although many of them understand peace in abstract terms. Some of the participants admit The author expresses special thanks to Daniel Adamski for editorial assistance.

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they are involved in the peace movement, while others are less willing to acknowledge their participation in the movement. In South Korea peace is often conflated with the reunification and security of the Korean peninsula. In this context, peace becomes political and peace activities are misunderstood as political statements connected to progressive ideas about reunification and security. The peace movement is, on the one hand, narrowly understood as a program of political campaigns aimed at confronting the government and pursuing political goals to win public support and media attention. On the other hand, the idea of peace has become popular and partly been contaminated with the change of political environment from authoritarianism to democracy, and with the disappearance of negative responses to the word ‘‘peace.’’ Many organizations and groups—including political parties—now tend to overuse the word ‘‘peace’’ to appeal to the public, although they neither have programs to reflect the conceptual meaning of peace nor design activities to build peace. Peace and its conceptual meaning have become more abstract and ambiguous. In spite of the confusing and vague ideas about peace, the peace movement has gained ground in South Korea. The issues that the peace movement deals with have been diversified and the means that the peace movement utilizes to address its concerns and appeal to the public more closely reflect the ideas of positive peace, nonviolence, peace building, and the culture of peace. The peace movement is, however, struggling with a lack of strategic approaches to long-term visions and a lack of public support that is required to sustain the movement.

INCEPTION AND SPREAD OF THE PEACE MOVEMENT There are different ideas about the beginning of the peace movement in South Korea. Some people consider the anti-nuclear campaign in the mid1990s (following the revelation of North Korea’s nuclear program) as the beginning of the movement. Others believe the widespread anti-war campaign (before and after the South Korean government’s decision to deploy troops to Iraq in 2003) contributed to the formation of the peace movement. The two campaigns are similar in terms of raising public awareness of peace and encouraging people to consider peace in relation to their daily lives. It is clear, however, that both of the campaigns challenged South Korean society and contributed to educating the people. There are also differences between the two. The anti-nuclear campaign was more inclined to pursue negative (nonwar) peace and nationalistic interests relating to the imminent danger in the Korean peninsula. By contrast, the anti–Iraq War campaign

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showed a more developed idea of peace, implying the meanings of positive peace and just peace building in the larger world. It is argued that the appearance of peace movements in South Korea was mainly due to the end of the Cold War and democratization in South Korea.1 The change of political environments inside and outside South Korea with the end of the Cold War allowed South Korean society to consider building a new relationship and seeking collaboration and reconciliation with North Korea. The democratization after 1987 encouraged and allowed civil society organizations that had focused on confronting unjust government policies to find new agendas. These organizations and social activists tried to renew social movements through bringing new agendas to the front such as human rights, the right to life, environmental concerns, and peace. The peace movement was formed as one of several social movements responding to this changed political and social environment. The peace movement in South Korea, as with many social movements, did not appear overnight. It was built on accumulative social reflections, experiences, and resources. A variety of social movements focused on accomplishing democratization and addressing human rights violations under authoritarian governments and they contributed to training many social activists and building a strong culture of activism. The reunification movement was one of the most active social groups challenging South Korea’s aggressive policies toward North Korea; it also focused on the security and military power discourses current at that time. Significantly, progressive churches tried to take a different approach and made efforts to interpret reunification issues in terms of peace. These churches, affiliated with the NCC-Korea (National Council of Churches in Korea), made clear in the early 1980s that reunification of the Korean peninsula must be peaceful. They dared to use the word ‘‘peace’’ in the statements on reunification under consecutive authoritarian governments. Their peace discourses started with only emphasizing peaceful reunification, but later developed by encouraging dialogues with North Korea, dealing with structural injustice in South Korea, and seeking a just peace and reconciliation between the two Koreas.2 Their efforts to reinterpret reunification issues and emphasize the necessity of preventing war, while at the same time building just peace, were not fully absorbed by society; however, these efforts did succeed in educating many progressive church members and in training them as peace activists.3 It will be noteworthy to those not familiar with Korea today that while Buddhism is one of the largest religions in the country, Buddhists’ involvement in social movements is not significant at all. Buddhism in South Korea, unlike many Buddhist traditions in other Asian countries, has been more of a contemplative tradition, remote from the lives of the people.

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Most, if not all, Buddhist temples are located in mountainous regions and monks are trained to maintain a distance from the secular world. It was not long ago that some Buddhists, whether lay people or monks, began expressing interests in reunification and social issues, and even actively participating in social activities. But, unlike the ‘‘engaged Buddhism’’ of other South and East Asian traditions, their activities have been individual efforts and there has been no noticeable effort or commitment at the institutional level to engage in social issues in an active way. By contrast, Protestant and Catholic churches have been active in organizing social movements and working together with the Korean people during the rule of the authoritarian government. The public recognizes their efforts, and the church groups very often play a leading role when the country faces significant problems and challenges. The anti–Iraq War campaign has a special meaning in the peace movement. This war provided South Korean society with an opportunity to overcome the nationalistic discourse of peace. Previously, most, if not all, peace issues were related to South Korea’s political instability and the activists sought world support. In addition, peace issues were formulated in terms of the reunification and peaceful co-existence of the two Koreas. The anti–Iraq War campaign encouraged peace activists and ordinary citizens to consider world peace and review South Korea’s ethical responsibility as a member of the world community. An activist who has been involved in this campaign since its beginning states that the anti–Iraq War campaign showed that peace issues beyond the Korean peninsula could appeal to citizens in South Korea.4 This nationwide campaign against the Iraq War and South Korea’s deployment of troops to Iraq was strengthened with the participation of 351 civil society organizations and the support of many ordinary citizens.5 The nationwide anti-war campaign contributed to the spread of the peace movement. This campaign began with opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and gained momentum with the South Korean government’s decision to deploy troops to Iraq. Activists emphasized that life without war and violence was one of the most fundamental human needs for everyone in the world and the effort to make and build peace was one of the most fundamental ethical responsibilities of every human being in the world. This discourse, based on a widely held understanding of peace, contributed to formulating a conception of peace that is based on a just and sustainable world for everybody. It also appealed to ordinary citizens who desire peaceful living conditions and the collective well-being of the world community. In this context, the peace movement was considered not as a radical social movement, but as a universal effort for making and building peace. One activist recalls that the anti–Iraq War campaign provided him with an opportunity to review the

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meanings of peace and war, and the personal and social responsibilities for waging war and making peace.6 Peace activists have been holding annual workshops since 2004; consequently, the peace movement has gained ground in South Korea as an important social movement. The wide spectrum of participating organizations and activists and the issues and interests they bring to the workshops show that the peace movement has broadened its scope in terms of the subjects it deals with and the approaches it takes to reach out to people. Indeed, its aims are not limited to security and reunification issues in the Korean peninsula but extend to regional peace in Northeast Asia; world peace; nonviolent resistance; and education to build a just, sustainable, and peaceful society. The approaches that peace organizations and activists take range from traditional advocacies and campaigns to street performances and peace camps in postconflict societies. The energy and creativity of the activists are the driving forces for the spread and improvement of the peace movement.

TRANSITION OF PEACE ISSUES The peace movement has shown a remarkable change in terms of the issues it deals with. As noted above, the peace movement was initially preoccupied with reunification, security, and anti-war issues. In dealing with these issues the peace movement was more inclined to focus on negative peace rather than on positive peace. Peace activists were not able to overcome the narrow concept of peace without war and violence, and South Korea was not stable enough politically and economically to encourage them to broaden the movement’s scope. In the mid-2000s, peace issues were diversified, and the number of groups and organizations dealing with peace issues increased. One of the most significant changes was the emergence of the concept of positive peace and the enhanced understanding of nonviolence and a culture of peace. Peace activists began to differentiate negative peace from positive peace and emphasized the importance of peaceful means for building peace. They relied more on the wider understanding of peace and peace movements. Peace organizations and activists developed an enhanced understanding of peace and their interest in nonviolence and a culture of peace brought two main changes to the movement: new interpretations of conventional reunification and security issues in terms of positive peace and new discussions on the practice of nonviolence and the use of peaceful means to achieve their goals. One of the leading civil society organizations initiated a new interpretation of peace and security, and also of South Korea’s role in building peace in the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia. This organization’s new approach

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to peace and security argues that South Korea must be a ‘‘peace state’’ to overcome security dilemmas escalated by the vicious cycle of the arms race in the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia. The proposed ‘‘peace state’’ is an effort to replace security discourses with peace discourses, including long-term visions to build a just and sustainable peace in the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia. This idea presents three principles to transform South Korea into a peace state: (1) the initiation of arms cuts, allowing a minimum level of military defense, (2) peaceful and ethical diplomacy, and (3) the pursuit of sustainable development and the transformation of unjust political and economic conditions.7 Unfortunately, many specialists in conventional studies of security and international relations have criticized this idea as too idealistic. But this idea of a ‘‘peace state’’ is meaningful in terms of challenging the conventional understanding of peace and security at the national level and at the same time, is realistic in terms of addressing the challenges South Korea is facing, while also presenting the strategies this politically unstable, small country can consider for survival. There is also an effort to reinterpret humanitarian assistance to North Korea based on the idea of positive peace. This effort creates links between humanitarian assistance to and development of North Korea and peace building in the Korean peninsula. Paying careful attention to conflict between the two Koreas and conflict inside South Korea over the assistance to North Korea, it views humanitarian assistance to North Korea as an essential component of any effort to build a sustainable peace in the Korean peninsula and seeks substantial ways to change attitudes toward North Korea and the understanding of peace. In this context, this effort puts a special emphasis on building people’s capacity through designing training programs and discussions on conflict resolution and peace education to equip people with the knowledge and tools to understand peace and deal with conflict.8 With the spread of the peace movement some groups became more interested in nonviolent resistance and peace education. South Korea has a long history of activism. Activists often used violent tactics to counter violence or to employ violence strategically. Political resistance was not necessarily nonviolent, and violence was justified as a means to confront illegitimate authoritarian governments. But with the progress of democracy, violence can be neither supported by the public nor justified as a necessary means any longer. People’s understanding of nonviolent resistance has been improved and at the same time, the number of groups and organizations relying on pacifism or nonviolence has increased. These groups and organizations provide training workshops on nonviolent resistance and programs on peace education to encourage activists and citizens to develop principles and strategies of nonviolence in their daily lives and social movements.

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Theories and skills of conflict resolution were introduced to South Korea in the early 2000s. A small group of people who had participated in training or degree programs of conflict resolution organized workshops. Their programs emphasized win-win solutions, dialogues, and communication skills for the peaceful resolution of conflict. Although their number is small, there are now more groups conducting project-based conflict resolution programs and facilitating training programs and workshops. There is now an effort to deepen the understanding of conflict resolution and overcome its technical and instrumental role. This effort emphasizes transformative approaches to conflict resolution and practical applications of peace building ideas to educate citizens. In general, however, South Korea’s social movements have been independent since its beginnings. In the past, under authoritarian governments, social movements focusing on democratization and human rights relied significantly on outside financial support, but their activities were not influenced by that outside support. South Koreans had total ownership of their activities. Now, every organization is independent, mostly relying on membership fees and donations, and sometimes on government support for projects. In terms of formulating their principles and issues, South Korea’s social movements have been independent as well. There may be exchanges of ideas with outsiders and outsiders may inspire activists. But outsider influence is not noticeable because outsiders’ input is regarded as simple information sharing. Activists in South Korea are very knowledgeable, strong, and professional because of their tradition of formulating activism to protest dictatorships and constant ideological attacks by dictators. As to the peace movement, there has not been any one person of note who has had a great influence on it. Peace organizations invite some international figures to speak to them but activists do not rely on outsiders’ ideas. Outsiders’ input is regarded as the introduction to useful information and knowledge. In fact, one of the reasons the peace movement is still struggling with theoretical concepts and action principles is partly because of activists’ prudent attitudes to outside interpretations of peace issues, activities, and cognitive approaches to issues. The anti-war campaign against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan played an important role in forming and spreading the peace movement. In fact, there were similar anti-war discussions relating to peace and reunification in the Korean peninsula in the 1980s and 1990s, but these discussions were limited to opposing armed conflict in the Korean peninsula and did not reflect the idea of positive peace. The anti-war campaign against the unjust wars in Iraq and Afghanistan provided South Koreans with an opportunity to consider their responsibility and role as world citizens. This campaign considered the universal value of positive peace, nonviolent resistance, and

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peace building in formulating discourses, designing activities, and understanding the survival issues of people in Iraq and Afghanistan. This campaign has been monitoring the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan and working to raise awareness of just peace and unjust war, and the importance of long-term peace building efforts. Conscientious objection became part of social movements and at the same time, part of the peace movement in the early 2000s. Until the late 1990s, conscientious objection was considered an individual matter based on religious beliefs in most cases and as political protest in some cases. In the early 2000s, with the progress of democracy, conscientious objection was reviewed in terms of human rights and state violence against citizens. Some peace activists considered conscientious objection an important subject for the peace movement. They raised questions about state violence against conscientious objectors and interpreted the issue in terms of the problem of militarism.9 The conscientious objection movement continually questions the problem of state violence and militarism in terms of the human rights of the objectors. This movement relies on nonviolent resistance in advocating its issues with deep insights into the ideas of positive peace. One of the issues shaping the picture of the peace movement is the peaceful life. People who are interested in practicing and maintaining peace in their daily lives have transformed their individual interests into a social movement. They are interested in healthy and peaceful living with others through building communities, enhancing mutual understanding, respect for other creatures, and respect for nature. Their concerns are not limited to their local communities and South Korea but extend to all suffering creatures in the world.10 They have been taking active nonviolent actions to protest against large development projects and wars. In particular, they marched across the country using their nonviolent resistance program of ‘‘three steps and one kneeling bow’’ to show an extreme form of nonviolent resistance and to appeal to citizens and activists. There are many groups and organizations that are interested in the new approaches and resources that the peace movement provides. They are involved in the issues of reunification, relief and development, education, the environment, and human rights. Strictly speaking, they do not belong to the peace movement. They do not deal with peace issues or design peace programs. And they do not necessarily support nonviolent resistance, nor are they familiar with the concept of positive peace. But they want to gain inspiration and find resources from the peace movement to renew or reform their own approaches to social issues. These groups want to learn to use the tools and skills of peaceful actions for the purpose of developing their own activities. They also want to build working relationships with peace

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organizations and activists, and use them as resources. They neither want to change their political positions and worldviews, nor fully support the ideas and approaches that the peace movement emphasizes. They are casually associated with or dissociated from the peace movement according to the issues they currently work on. However, their interest in and tacit support for the peace movement and its peaceful means to accomplish particular goals show the penetration of the peace movement and its ideas into South Korean society. This clearly indicates the growth of the movement’s influence on diverse social movements and actors.

Transition of Approaches With the change of issues that the peace movement deals with there have also been methodological changes in advocating for peace issues, reaching out to the public, and building working relationships among groups and individuals involved in the peace movement. The movement has developed its sensitivity to violence and improved peaceful means of advocating peace issues. In appealing to and working with the public, the peace movement has become more open and inclusive. Peace groups and activists have built collaborative relationships among themselves. These changes have enabled the peace movement to strengthen its foundation and cultivate human resources. One of the most significant changes in campaigning for peace causes is the reliance on nonviolent action. South Koreans had to confront authoritarian governments for a long time. Oppressive political environments contributed to the growth of social movements and the formation of a strong activist culture. Activists would rely on violent means of protesting to achieve strategic ends, although those violent means were always vulnerable to government manipulation of public opinion and, as a result, the setback of campaigns. However, these violent means were justified by most activists as effective, strategic choices showing their determination to fight against unjust, oppressive governments. But with the introduction of democracy and the progress that followed, the strategic use of violence has lost its public appeal. Furthermore, the spread of the peace movement and the increasing interest of peace activists in nonviolent action contributed to discouraging some activists’ consideration of violent means. Education programs on conflict resolution, the culture of peace, and nonviolent direct action have helped activists deepen their understanding of violence and contributed to developing peaceful ways of protesting against political, social, and economic injustice. These activists do not target the underdogs of unjust structures and institutions at the front but try to help them become inspired by nonviolent action that peace activists take to counter violence. They believe that using

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violence to confront violence, whether it is physical or structural, cannot be justified. One of the most symbolic nonviolent actions was a lying-down action organized by more than 100 activists to confront the suppression of peaceful demonstrators by the police in June 2008. Citizens were holding nationwide candlelit vigils every night for more than two months to protest against the government’s decision to import U.S. beef that was considered unsafe due to the potential of contamination from BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy), or mad cow disease. The activists organized a lying-down campaign to protest the brutal suppression by the police that occurred during previous vigils. They prostrated themselves on the street when the riot police started to arrest citizens and bore all the police footsteps on their bodies. Their campaign could not block the police operation of arresting citizens, but it made a great impression on citizens and peace activists. More peace campaigns rely on nonviolent actions now. Anti-war campaigns organize nonviolent actions and conscientious objectors design nonviolent campaigns to appeal to the public with their causes. Some peace activists joined the vigils against the import of U.S. beef last year; they intervened in confrontations between citizens and the police, checking violent actions of both citizens and the police. Some activists actively advocated the strategic superiority of nonviolence over violence through reaching out to the media and the public. These efforts have accumulated as social capital and contributed to enhancing people’s understanding of peace and violence, and the spread of a culture of peace. The movement for peace now seeks more open and inclusive ways to encourage citizens to participate in peace campaigns and activities. Social movements and civil society organizations in South Korea have been criticized for a lack of inclusiveness in designing action plans and carrying out campaigns. Peace activists make efforts to interpret peace issues in nonpolitical and nonideological ways, and design activities that can easily appeal to ordinary citizens. They are sensitive to the rights of citizens to know the issues related to their peaceful living, while at the same time, they strive to be open to citizen feedback and input. They organize campaigns, performances, and activities on the street with citizens. In particular, many young activists who are familiar with inclusive activities design participatory programs using their individual creativity and skills. Peace activists also make efforts to know and listen to people in war zones through reaching out to them or inviting them to South Korea. This open and inclusive approach appeals to the public and encourages greater public participation. One of the most significant characteristics of the peace movement is the development of collaborative working relationships among organizations

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and activists. This collaboration cannot be easily found in other social movements. The peace movement has built networks of organizations and activists, as well as collaborative working relationships. Civil society organizations working in the same sectors often compete with one another in South Korea. They collaborate with one another when there are strategic needs, yet the collaboration is often superficial and limited to announcements, expressing political positions, and organizing joint campaigns. The collaboration of peace activists is more concrete and active. They build and utilize networks to gather ideas, share information, design activities, and encourage the contribution of all organizations and activists to programs and activities under way. Their inclusiveness and collaboration have contributed to building a culture of peace within the peace movement that respects diversity and creativeness. The collaborative and inclusive way of designing and implementing programs and actions provides many activists with opportunities of mutual teaching, learning, inspiring, and respecting. It also allows them to have new experiences of working together with equal and full participation regardless of age, position, or professionalized knowledge. This kind of working culture—based on openness, respect, and equality that are still not widespread in South Korea—draws many people to the peace movement. As one activist says, ‘‘The peace movement does not have the hierarchical culture that is commonly found in other sectors of society and restricts the free participation and contribution of all members.’’11 This atmosphere plays a crucial role in building the capacity of activists to spread the peace movement. Many social activists joining the annual workshops organized by peace activists are impressed by the workshops’ open and inclusive atmosphere. They have opportunities to interact with activists and to learn ways of practicing peace in daily life. This provides a more powerful message about the peace movement and its commitment to peace and effectively contributes to spreading the peace movement.

CHALLENGES The peace movement has many issues and challenges to deal with and overcome if it is to establish a firm, sustainable foundation. The peace movement has gained ground in South Korea in spite of its short history; however, most, if not all, citizens do not yet find much difference between the peace movement and other social movements. The international peace movement generally finds its inspiration in the ideas of positive peace, nonviolence, peace building, and the culture of peace. This conceptual foundation provides the peace movement with the rationale for setting practical,

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desirable goals and finding realistically ideal means. However, the peace movement in South Korea is still confused with those ideas and not yet fully determined to take them as its philosophical guidelines. This ambiguity and lack of determination project the impression that the foundation of the peace movement in South Korea is not strong enough. Consequently, a major task of the peace movement is to establish a conceptual foundation that can differentiate the peace movement from other social movements. Another serious challenge the peace movement is facing is South Korea’s political environment. This country occupies half of the divided Korean peninsula and faces its major enemy in the north. Unfortunately, it is still preoccupied with ideological debates. It is not easy in South Korea to neutralize controversial social issues such as the division and security of the Korean peninsula, humanitarian assistance to North Korea, conscientious objection, peace education, and peaceful conflict resolution, or to reinterpret them in terms of positive peace and holistic peace building. Social issues are easily changed to political debates and often misunderstood as ideological struggles. The peace movement has not yet developed a legitimate conceptual framework that can transform such destructive political and ideological debates into constructive, collective discussions. Peace and reunification issues are still framed within the boundary of security debates and the peace movement is not yet able to redirect the issues to building a just, sustainable peace for all Koreans. The peace movement must, therefore, develop new methods to address South Korea’s issues, and to reframe them in terms of the ideas of positive peace and sustainable peace building. The peace movement in South Korea is based on the activism culture that definitely contributed to democratization and the progress of democracy, as well as the development of strategic social movements. But this activism culture has been criticized for lacking direct interaction with citizens and openness to citizen participation and input. This closed pattern of activism grew out of the intolerant political environment and the constant manipulation of public opinion under authoritarian governments. Everchanging and complicated political situations made activists become analytical, strategic, and prudent in dealing with social issues and advocating their causes. Social movements have become professionalized and more distant from ordinary citizens due to their insensitivity to public sentiment and concerns. The peace movement built on this activism culture also lacks direct interaction with citizens, although it understands the essential need of public participation and support. Most peace organizations, like other civil society organizations, still employ unilateral strategies and campaigns rather than participatory programs to interact with citizens and, as a result, empower them.

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A lack of human resources is not easily recognized but is a significant challenge that must not be ignored if the peace movement is to be sustained. This shortage of human resources is partly attributed to a lack of educational programs for peace activists. One activist points out that there are needs for education programs on theories and practices of peace movements and peace studies for activists.12 As mentioned above, a peace movement based on the concepts of positive peace, peace building, nonviolence, and a culture of peace is new in South Korea. Activists find resources in studies of violence in Western cultures. But there are not many educated academics and trained activists in South Korea who are familiar with those sources, nor do they have direct access to those who can share their knowledge and experience with Korean activists. And so, peace activists are left struggling to find resources and educate themselves. The unmet needs for education and training therefore challenge the sustainability of the peace movement. The spread of the peace movement is attributed to activists’ enthusiasm. Activists have been working hard to formulate peace issues in relation to the South Korean situation, reinterpret peace issues to appeal to citizens, develop peaceful campaigns, build networks and working relationships, and find resources for the peace movement inside and outside South Korea. Their working conditions are poor and most of them receive minimum wages. They have to work long hours and do not have enough time to take care of themselves. What keeps them going is their commitment to peace. The movement is built on their sacrifices. But the peace movement must seriously consider the activists’ poor working and living conditions and find ways to meet their basic needs so that activists have the time, energy, and resources to secure the present and future of the peace movement.

CONCLUSION: HEADING FORWARD Social movements in South Korea have been mostly dealing with political agendas, and have been interested in changing society through transforming systems and institutions. Activists have been confronting unjust governments, policies, and actors benefiting from the corrupt systems and institutions. Their strategies mostly focus on fighting against those at the top rather than on communicating with those at the bottom and conceptualizing structural problems through the eyes of the stakeholders. Their ultimate goal is to establish a society where the rights of no one are violated and where Koreans pay more attention to decision makers than to ordinary citizens. They are somehow accustomed to this contradiction, although this does not mean that they are indifferent to the issues ordinary citizens have to deal with every day.

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The peace movement is sensitive to the inclusiveness and openness of programs. Peace activists have been utilizing this sensitivity within the peace movement to change working relationships from competition to collaboration, and to design inclusive processes that invite greater participation in the peace movement. However, this sensitivity has not yet been fully activated to reach out to ordinary citizens and consider them not as objects of but as resources for the peace movement. This is an important matter that can determine the future of the movement and whether it remains a typical social movement focusing on advocacies and campaigns, or one that works closely with citizens and develops programs and activities that can empower and cultivate citizens. Peace activists have been evaluating the peace movement and addressing its challenges and visions at their annual workshops. According to the workshop reports, activists’ passion, devotion, beliefs, and willingness are some of the most significant resources of the movement. In addition, the reports indicate communication problems among peace organizations and activists and between the peace movement and citizens are challenges they have to overcome to sustain the peace movement.13 In spite of all the problems and challenges they face, peace activists hold on to their hopes. They believe that they can pluck their hopes from their frustrations and draw solutions from their problems. They make efforts to overcome communication problems through increasing opportunities to interact with other activists and by developing programs to work together with citizens at the grassroots level. They design peace education programs to provide both activists and citizens with opportunities to conceptualize peace and violence, and to view and analyze political and social issues on the basis of positive peace. They consider that building networks of organizations and activists is important to respect diversity, build capacity, and sustain the peace movement. However their efforts to build networks have not yet been extended to other sectors of society, especially those sectors that do not share the movement’s ideas and philosophies about social changes. The peace movement has a lot of potential to contribute to changing South Korean society, a society that is still struggling with political and ideological divides, and being challenged by an ever-changing political environment and instability. South Korea is still technically at war with North Korea and ideological discourses still have a great influence on many issues. This country does not provide an ideal environment for the growth of the peace movement. The ideas and approaches that the peace movement presents are often questioned and considered as na€ve and unrealistic. On the other hand, this environment inevitably needs a peace movement that can help citizens develop visions for a desirable society where political

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divides and ideological confrontations can be transformed into resources for peaceful co-existence. There are two main things the peace movement has to consider to change society and at the same time realize its ideas. First, the peace movement that understands the importance and power of networking and relationship building has to engage in web-making efforts. Author John Paul Lederach suggests that web-making helps groups discover resources and sustain efforts for peace building. This web-making is an effort to overcome vertical and horizontal divisions in society and build capacities to change society holistically.14 The peace movement can engage in a web-making that covers the entire society to overcome political and ideological divisions and build a strong social foundation for change. Secondly, the peace movement has to develop long-term visions that can be shared with citizens and other social movements to build a desirable future for all. As one activist notes: ‘‘Ever-changing environments inside and outside South Korea make the peace movement frustrated from time to time.’’15 This observation provides the peace movement with a rationale to develop long-term visions that can achieve resilience and flexibility, and hold on to hopes while facing ever-changing conditions.

NOTES 1. Koo, 2007, 195–209. 2. See National Council of Churches in Korea, 2000. This publication compiles all the statements on peace and reunification of the Korean peninsula announced by the National Council of Churches in Korea (NCC–Korea) and world churches in the 1980s and 1990s. NCC-Korea played a leading role in the peace and reunification movement in the 1980s and 1990s. 3. It is not deniable that many peace activists have a religious background. In particular, Christians are in the majority in the peace movement. This fact does not necessarily mean that the peace movement is inclined to reflect particular religions or their ideas. 4. One of the activists the writer met for this chapter mentions this. This activist says that South Korean society is interested in peace issues now and it is a big change. She also points out that it is still not easy to draw citizens’ attention to world peace issues because those issues are not directly related to South Korea. 5. Park, 2008, 293–306. 6. An activist who has been involved in conscientious objection movement mentions that the anti–Iraq War campaign gave him an opportunity to think about the meaning of peace and violence, the unjust deployment of troops, and the killing of innocent people. According to him, the campaign was one of the important events that encouraged him to be involved in the peace movement. 7. Koo, 2008,13–28. 8. A person involved in humanitarian assistance to North Korea and policy development related to North Korea explains the reason why his organization is

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interested in conflict resolution. He mentions that citizens’ capacity must be built to deal with conflict between the two Koreas and also conflict over ideologies in South Korea. Also see Korean Sharing Movement Center for Peace and Sharing, 2007. 9. Lim, 2009. 10. Dobup, 2007. 11. An activist mentions that the absence of a hierarchical culture in the peace movement is one of its distinctions. She says that it makes her continue working with peace activists and engaging in the peace movement. 12. This activist mentions that the peace movement does not have a strong theoretical foundation and this lack of foundation makes it difficult for the peace movement to overcome ideological debates over peace issues and to develop new agendas. 13. See the Peace Activists Workshop Preparation Committee, 2006 and 2008. 14. Lederach, 2003. 15. This activist involved in humanitarian assistance to North Korea mentions the overwhelming political situation that rapidly changes and discourages organizations to develop long-term plans and agendas for improving the working relationship with North Korea and building peace in the Korean peninsula.

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LIFE

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PEACE: THE EMERGENCE OF I N D I A N P E A C E M OV E M E N T

IN

THE

Ramu Manivannan

Peace movements represent the highest ethical and humanist struggle to establish a humane world. The role and objectives of peace movements can no longer be restricted to the problems of wars, the arms race, and nuclear weapons. They are, in fact, equally concerned about the problems of direct and indirect violence caused within the state and social systems. In the process they are also redefining the traditional notion of peace and security. The basic challenge facing peace movements today is not about war or weapons but the system. The challenge cannot simply be dealt with by the withdrawal of consent of the civil society to the state or dissolution of the nation-state system. The institution of the state is indispensable at least for the foreseeable future. Then how do we achieve this fundamental transformation of the state and also society? The search for a solution has to be sought in the peace movements. They represent a new hope for the civil society because they are beginning to redefine what politics is. The peace movement in India represents an integral or holistic approach to the concept of peace. The meaning of peace in this context can be viewed as a basic condition of life. The peace movement is, in fact, an integral response to the nature of threats faced by the state and society. There is a growing linkage between the various social movements in India. The interconnections are still emerging. Some questions can be pertinent here. How

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does one explain the sources of interaction between the various social movements and examine their contribution to the emergence of a peace movement in India? And, how can the peace movement be mobilized to a role of gradual nonviolent transformation of the state and society? There are four basic issues involved in the rise and role of the peace movement in India. They are as follows: 1. Creation of a humane society involving nonviolent struggle against militarization (involving both military and nonmilitary threats to peace). 2. Emphasis on political, social, cultural, economic, and other survival issues involved in the development policies of the government. 3. Struggle of the victims to take positive and constructive steps to resist the state and system and to develop an alternative perspective of development and defense. 4. Ushering in of a nonexploitative, decentralized economic and political system based on Gandhian model of state, society, and development.

MEANING OF PEACE The peace movement in India arises from an entirely different perspective from movements elsewhere, particularly in the West. The problems that confront the Indian people have been quite different from those (the fear of nuclear war) that gave rise to peace movements in the northern hemisphere. Peace for the common people of India includes far more than the mere absence of war. To be meaningful in the everyday life of people, peace must mean freedom from social, economic, and political oppression, access to resources for survival, cultural autonomy, and freedom from violence by the state as well as the powerful. Security for them is not so much security of the state as people’s security. Of course, none of the movements (anti-nuclear; human rights; ecological; cultural survival; movements of the landless, tribal people, and the diverse working classes; women’s movements; and movements against inappropriate development) focuses on all these issues at once as well as on peace. But they are gradually realizing that these issues are interlinked and the issue of peace gets reflected as part of this linkage. In fact, they do not even describe themselves as peace movements. But all these seemingly diverse issues add up to a ‘‘life in peace’’ and the search for peace emanates from the characteristics of the new social movements. This classification is based on the fact that in recent years, many people’s movements in India have started emphasizing the sociopolitical and economic aspects of militarization.

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NEW SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND THE SEARCH FOR PEACE AS A CONDITION OF LIFE In India multiple forms of social movements have been the agents of social resistance and transformation throughout history. The struggle for freedom was accompanied by the integration of movements with a common objective. They were, however, struggling in response to economic, social, cultural, environmental, and political conditions. These struggles had converged around one very basic purpose, namely, India’s independence. Since 1947 there have been a number of social movements. There has been a renewed resurgence of social movements in the country for over a period of three decades. They may be recognized as new social movements since they qualitatively differ from the old movements. They are considered to be new because they have a participatory, nonhierarchical pattern of organization. More importantly, their activities are in the process of developing a far-reaching critique of the existing political, economic, and social order. They also strive to change social values as well as public policy. The new social movements collectively focus on the quality of human life, that is, life in peace. More crucially it is this framework, which locates these movements as part of the process of social transformation, that is new.1 They are anti-war, anti-nuclear movements, ecological movements, human rights movements, movements of indigenous peoples, and other survival-related movements. The main issue in the fight against militarization is not that it is directly linked to armaments but rather to the central aspect of the survival of people and the societies. It can be appropriate only in the sense that militarization is analyzed in a broader context of underlying conflicts. The prime issues are of people and ecosphere, displacement and degradation of social groups, abuse of human rights, and ultimately the displacement and reduction of socioeconomic persons from native cultivation and production processes to the conditions of degraded human labor in the urban development process.2 There has been a growing concern among people regarding the issues of militarization, cost and consequences of nuclear energy, displacement and dismemberment of the social groups, dislocation and reduction of human capital, and the steady expropriation of cultivable land. Ramachandra Guha writes that these movements work simultaneously at two levels. He states: At one [level], they are defensive, seeking to protect civil society from the tentacles of the centralizing state; at another, they are assertive, seeking to change civil society from within and in the process putting forward a conception of the good life somewhat different from that articulated by any of

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the established political parties. Considered individually, these movements are small and scattered; taken collectively, and keeping in mind the convergence of interests and ideologies and the growing networks of coordination and co-operation, they are an increasingly visible part of the Indian social scene. These are then the new social movements.3

They may remain, in physical and organizational sense, fragmented and scattered. But they are no longer restricted to specific situations or particular places. They provide, in fact, continuity over time and connection from region to region. They are beginning to share and learn from the experiences of other situations. The growing integration of diverse movements struggling in response to political, economic, ecological, social, and military conditions is derived from the common concern for a future that is seen as threatening. Though seemingly diverse, the issues raised by these movements add up to the meaning of peace, and together defined in wholly indigenous and holistic terms, they constitute a people’s movement for peace.

PEACE TRADITIONS IN INDIA There is a clear sense of history of peace traditions in India as well as the conscious beginning of the Indian peace movement that can be attributed to India’s nonviolent movement for freedom itself. Gandhi, who successfully guided India in his nonviolent struggle against the British, firmly believed in the possibility of the abolition of war through establishing nonviolent, unarmed relations between peoples and groups as well as individuals. In Gandhi’s view, this is not a mere utopian vision based on nonviolence or nonresistance as an ethical principle but as an ultimately practical basis of order.4 A crucial element in this belief is the need for social and structural change. Gandhi responded by saying that the idea of nonviolence is as old as the hills when asked whether the principle of nonviolence was his contribution to the means of the Indian freedom struggle. There are a number of peace traditions (ethical, religious, and social) that continue to influence social thought in India. The religious and other social movements that have appeared in the Indian social arena, have had concepts of peace as part of their doctrines, but they were not recognized as part of an active peace movement. In India there is no such thing as a single peace movement, but a variety of peace traditions: religious pacifism, the Gandhian nonviolent movement for freedom, unilateral nuclear pacifism or parts of the nuclear disarmament movement, the ecologically inspired movements of the 1970s, the tribal movements and the issues of cultural

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survival, the civil liberties movement, and the women’s movement. Each one of them has made a contribution, sometimes as separate entities or subgroups. The peace movement that has arisen in India is more than the sum total of these traditions or the organizations that represent them. In 1939, Gandhi proposed that nonviolent means of political struggle should be used as a defense policy of free India instead of military means. Gandhi believed that war is the natural expression of the spirit of violence. He was convinced that the only way of avoiding disaster was extension of Satyagraha (truth force) to the field of national defense. He had long believed that India had a special responsibility and duty in the development of a nonviolent alternative means of struggle that would make possible the abolition of war.5 Gandhi said: I am not pleading for India to practice nonviolence because she is weak. I want her to practice nonviolence being conscious of her strength and power. No training in arms is required for realization of her strength. We seem to need it, because we seem to think that we are but a lump of flesh. I want India to recognize that she has a soul that cannot perish and that can rise triumphant above every physical weakness and defy the physical combination of whole world. . . . I believe absolutely that she has a mission for the world.6

Three major dimensions have prominently influenced different social groups in India. First, the nonviolent struggle for freedom; second, peace and anti-nuclear movements beginning in the late 1970s (these groups attached greater significance to problems of nuclear energy than to the threat of mass destruction); and, third, the crisis in the relationship between human beings and nature—the nature of development and its consequences to the survival of sociocultural groups. These three dimensions foster an intimate relationship that allows productive alliance and coalitions among them. The high point of the Indian peace movement in terms of mass base occurred only during the late 1980s, when the movement against the Narmada Sagar River Project and the Sardar Sarovar Dam Project became a mass movement. It also took more than a decade for the anti-nuclear groups and peace activists in the country to come together and draw up a common program and strategy for the future. The Harsud Rally held on September 28, 1989, brought together for the first time the organizational skills of the peace and survival network within the country. It was a culmination of activists and others to oppose the various ‘‘destructive development’’ plans all over the country, like the Narmada Valley River Project, the Kaiga Nuclear Plant, the Baliapal Missile Test Range, and so on.7

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SOCIAL BASE OF THE PEACE MOVEMENT The new social movements in India are essentially results of mobilization by the people and, in fact, the synthesis emerges from below. The most dominant feature of the new social movements in India is their social and grassroots impulses. These movements share a very broad and diverse ‘‘constituency,’’ autonomy vis-a-vis political parties, and a certain mode of action and organization.8 The new social movements also enjoy practical neutrality with an activist and nongovernmental base. Their plans can be linked to a grassroots upsurge of protest and pressure. There is a considerable sympathy enjoyed by these movements among the public in India. The social composition of the peace movement cannot be taken as that of a middle class. The issues taken up by it have gone beyond the narrow confines of a class boundary. The most realistic assessment of the social composition of the peace movement must include both the victims themselves (fearing for physical, economic, and cultural survival) and the urban-based, middle-class activists who articulate the demands of the former and lend logistical support for the cause. These activists are now increasingly shifting to the sites of struggle leaving the tasks of coordination and networking to be accomplished through their urban centers. Therefore, the social base of the peace movement includes the agricultural population living in Narora, Baliapal, and Bhogarai, Koodankulam, and the Narmada River Valley; the tribals and the dispossessed in Chotanagpur, Bastar, Kakrapar, and Gandhamardhan hills; the role and participation of women activists in the Chipko Movement in the Garhwal region of the Himalayas, Baliapal, Chotanagpur, and Santhal Parganas; the role of civil rights activists in providing legal and logistical support to the various struggles including the anti-Narmada Dam movement, the Tehri Dam, Doon Valley, Kaiga, and Baliapal; and the role and active participation of students, teachers, lawyers, journalists, and doctors (especially on nuclear issues and other survival-related concerns), which is common in all the struggles of the peace and ecological movements in the country. In the lengthy struggles such as the anti-Narmada Dam movement, antiTehri Dam Project, Chipko movement in the Garhwal region, and antinuclear movements in the country (Kaiga, Kakrapar, and Narora), there has grown a special interest among the university students and the younger generation. They are beginning to spend their summer vacation in these camps/ sites trying to understand the cause and nature of the movement. They soon become informal spokespersons for the movement in the urban areas. In the past two decades, these social movements have shown their capacity to resist the model of Indian development. They question the ultimate aim of the development strategy that dispossesses people of their sociocultural identities,

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leads to economic exploitation, and causes disruption of the ecological stability, and the delicate balance between people, nature, and social needs. In the past few years, their mobilization has taken an undeniable national dimension in their effects (social, political, and economic impact), and particularly in giving rise to a new mode of thinking on development nationwide.

MOBILIZATIONAL APPROACH The new social movements in India combine two types of action. The first is aimed at informing people and mobilizing public opinion on issues such as ecological degradation, displacement of people, survival of indigenous people, and problems of nuclear energy and human rights. This is achieved through multiple-issue campaigns aimed at maximizing the impact of the movement. The purpose of this action is to gain, on the one hand, the support of the maximum number of people and, on the other, to create pressure on the government through massive and well-timed protests. There is a close interaction between the visionary approach of the intelligentsia and the down- to-earth pragmatism of the grassroots. This is achieved through the second type of action that seeks to involve informed people through a ‘‘basic’’ and nonhierarchical mode of organization, although the diversified, yet related, segment of this expert knowledge is crucial in coordinating the flow of information and actions at the grassroots. These struggles are seemingly local but their reverberations have national and global significance. Their mass protests are accompanied by a central coordinating committee, a diverse citizens’ forum, and activist groups. There are many activist groups (on environmental protection, ecological stability, nuclear energy, women, and civil liberties) that have come up in the social arena since the beginning of the 1970s. They are coordinated through an immense and informal system of multiple and multiform networks, both nonhierarchical and diversified. These groups share knowledge and the experience of their respective struggles, both at the level of organization and at the level of action and collective reflection. Though their struggles are organized around precise and limited objectives, they reflect collectively on the longterm vision of fundamental transformation of state and society. A more basic and immediate challenge is the nature and model of development and its consequences impinging on the future generations and on the survival of cultures and societies. Their indispensable precondition for any development policy is that it must be responsible to both the present and the future generations. The rise of new social movements since the beginning of the 1970s can be linked with the emerging concern for a strongly felt situation of injustice or deprivation caused by the nature of development in India. The people

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were beginning to feel that this model of development had only raised false hopes of improvement and in fact led to the deterioration of the actual situation. They were soon deeply concerned with the excessive threat to their own lives (health and occupational hazards, the fear of displacement, the loss of forests and traditional sustenance to life, threats to sociocultural identities, and the blatant disruption of ecological balance) for the sake of development and national security. The effects of this, clearly felt, motivated the new movements (anti-nuclear, tribal, ecological, and anti-dams). The emergence of these movements can be related to the demands that correspond to the most strongly felt grievances and needs of the local people. The Indian state, instead of responding positively to these demands, tried to block the growing movements through its coercive mechanism, as, for example, the Baliapal movement against an anti-missile test range; tribal movements in the Bastar, Chotanagpur, and Santhal Pargana areas; antidam movements in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, and Tehri (UP); and ecological and other survival-related movements. The successive governments have virtually remained indifferent to the struggles of these people that are strongly felt as representing justified demands. The state has also lost its legitimacy in the eyes of these movements by violently oppressing them. The people and the activists involved in these struggles are not discouraged because of the lack of positive results from the government. They are deeply aware that such struggles take considerable time and energy, especially in a condition of violence and indifference demonstrated by the state. They strongly believe that they can more or less successfully resist against the state and its development policies that threaten their survival. The new social movements have started emphasizing their focus beyond the symptoms to tracing the causes in the nature and model of development. These movements are also deeply aware that there are no global solutions to global problems. The only redemption that may still be available to resolution is local solution to global problems, which requires a far more intense and determined struggle at the grassroots.

THE IDEOLOGICAL BACKGROUND The success of the Indian peace movement is dependent on the type of struggle it will forge ahead, its capacity for mass mobilization, and more importantly, of its insight into social and political power. The ideological inspiration for the peace movement comes chiefly from the nonviolent approach toward an alternative notion of peace and development belonging to the Gandhian school of thought and action.

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Another important source of ideological inspiration comes from the autonomous peace initiatives. The roots of this movement lie in different but overlapping areas: students, teachers, lawyers, journalists, artists, environmental activists, women’s groups, and civil rights activists. They reflect Gandhian, liberal, and radical political orientations. But they all show preparedness to talk to, and learn from, each other. They identify their common purpose and cause that draws them closer to the struggle of the victims. In overall terms, the entire movement is based on the general technique of ‘‘nonviolent action.’’ The peace movement in India is influenced by the Gandhian philosophy of nonviolent resistance. Gandhi, in fact, avowedly based his philosophy of nonviolent action on a theory of social power. He believed that the principle of nonviolent action is itself an instrument in the struggle for justice. It is a permanent revolution and therefore it is dynamic.9 This nonviolent movement consists of people determined to devote their lives to the most fundamental issues of peace and survival. The method of protest in anti-nuclear movements (Kothamangalam, Narora, Kakrapar, Kaiga, Baliapal, Koodankulam, Alwaye, and Kuthiraimozhi), in ecological and anti-dam movements (Chipko, Appiko, the Tehri Dam Project, the Narmada River Valley Development Project, and the Inchampalli-Bhopalpatnam Dams), and in tribal movements (Jharkhand and Bastar) range between nonviolent demonstrations to militant nonviolence. These movements also show great inclination for direct action. This has increasingly been demonstrated in the antiNarmada Dam Project, anti-Tehri Dam Project, Chipko and Appiko movements, and Kaiga and the Kakrapar anti-nuclear movements. The application of nonviolent techniques has significantly increased the strength of the new social movements and that of their supporters. These movements are now gaining support and active involvement of people other than the victims and activists. They have also been successful in convincing the government of their purpose and even among the third parties, as, for example, the proposal for the withdrawal of the World Bank from the Narmada River Valley Development Project. This has enabled the movements to influence the government and at times regulate its activities. The National Debate on nuclear energy (December 10 and 11, 1988) in Bangalore sponsored by the government of Karnataka brought together for the first time the nuclear scientists and the anti-nuclear advocates. This was no mean achievement in view of the extent of secrecy under which the nuclear establishment functions in all countries. The success can be attributed to the continuous persuasion and protests organized by the anti-nuclear activists in the country insisting on an open dialogue with the country’s nuclear scientists. The anti-Narmada Dam activists continue in their struggle

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to persuade the government to develop an appropriate policy on rehabilitation and to reduce the height of dam.

EMERGENCE OF PEACE POLITICS There are major sociopolitical developments taking place in India today. They promise to hold long-term implications for the Indian polity. A more crucial aspect of this development is that it is taking place from the base of the political structure, that is, at the grassroots.10 In other words, this is happening at the level of the common people. This development is directly related to the rise of new social movements as a response to the nature of state, society, and development in the post-independence period. In a deeper political sense, they are the voices of the civil society. The activists are deeply committed to the fundamental transformation of the state and society. The process of transition has already begun. The rise and role of new social movements since 1970s signify the beginning of this transition. They are deeply aware that their struggle is a permanent one. At the outset, it may seem that they are working on specific issues and are confined to specific geographical situations. In a real sense, many of them share a common perspective of the future. Each one of them can be understood in relation to other movements and in relation to the holistic notion of peace. They are, in fact, different manifestations of the same concern, that is, peace. Each one of them is an integral and interacting part of the peace movement and can be understood in relation to the meaning of peace in which they are embedded. In view of the Indian situation, the meaning of peace can best be understood as a basic condition of life. Therefore, the rise and role of the peace movement in India can themselves be seen as responses to the problems of peace, such as military and nonmilitary threats to peace. There is indeed a close relationship between peace and development, peace and ecology, peace and social policy, peace and human rights, and peace and survival-related issues such as wars, weapons, and threat to indigenous people and cultures. The problems of poverty, underdevelopment, income inequity, regional disparity, and social injustice are as important as other concerns of the peace movement such as wars, arms race, nuclear weapons, ecological degradation, abuse of human rights, and dignity. The new social movements have not only recognized the linkages between the military and nonmilitary threats to peace but have also identified the causes and consequences of the problems mentioned above that are mainly due to the state-centered notion of society, security, development, and politics. The new social movements have at least been successful in giving a new thrust/dimension to politics. They are more concerned about the challenge

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of conscientization and people’s empowerment than capturing state power, because they consider that the capturing of state power is not a precondition for the fundamental transformation of the state and society. The foremost challenge today is the empowerment of people. Though the new social movements are nonparty political entities, there is something deeply political about them. They are raising their concerns about issues and/or problems that have long been neglected by the political parties. The traditional political parties continue to believe that it will result in a major predicament for the state if they talk about the exploitation of the poor, tribal people, natural resources, and other negative consequences of the development strategy, let alone the performance and consequences of nuclear power plants in the country. The debate on nuclear weapons policy is almost nonexistent among the political parties. If any, it is mainly state-centric and covered with ambiguity. The rise of new social movements reflects gradual transitions that have been taking place at the grassroots level. In other words, this development can be described as the growth of a new kind of politics—the politics of social action. In the process they have given rise to a new political consciousness and attention given to the local and national levels. They are gradually beginning to occupy the new political space at the local level in areas and/or regions that are now widely known as movement areas. This development directly corresponds to the steady transition in the nature of the party system in India: The gradual transition from a single-party dominant system to a multi-party system is taking place at the national level. More importantly, the plural basis of the Indian political system has slowly gained eminence due to the rise of regional entities as a major determinant in national politics. There are changes taking place at the regional and local levels, too. The traditional political parties, including the left, have shown little concern with the demands raised by the new social movements. Though they have not yet organized themselves as an alternative partyoriented front, they are certainly emerging as a common (alternative) political front. The emergence of the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) in 1992 was another clear indication of the efforts toward building a common platform and (political) formation, with a minimum common ideological unity and common strategy that will give rise to a strong sociopolitical force and a national peoples’ movement for peace and just development. The logical end of the political transition at the level of the party system is likely to touch the grassroots. But the response to the transition is unlikely to be the same at the local level as it is at the regional and national levels since the people and the movement groups at the local level are more concerned about the fundamental transition of the state and

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society. At present they are more anxious about giving rise to a new politics in India than a new party. This development, however, is very likely to give rise to a creative conflict situation challenging the traditional political constellation and the nature of the party system itself. One of the most outstanding characteristics of the peace movement in India is its social and grassroots impulses and orientations. It believes in the transformation of power from below. It seeks nonviolent transformation of state and society and the establishment of direct grassroots democracy. It shares with the global Green Movement the need to act locally and think globally. In a traditional sense the new social movements are nonparty political formations. The sociocultural economic aspects of development are crucial considerations for the role, nature, and mobilization strategies of the new social movements in India. Although it may seem that these struggles are fought with an immediate objective of policy change, the movements are deeply aware that their struggle is in fact a part of a larger transitional process.

CONCLUSION Can the peace movement in India emerge as an alternative to the traditional parties like the Green parties in the West? Those parties grew out of a coalition of alternative groups and movements. Though the signs of emergence of the Green movement in India can now be seen, its potential to transform itself as an alternative to the traditional political party is not yet clear. It is most unlikely that the peace movement in India under the present circumstances can become institutionalized as a political party in the near future. The main reason is the demands and expectations that are associated with the traditional party system. It would require considerable time and skill for political mobilization. It would also require exploring new options, if any. Given the political environment and mobilization strategies involved in the politics of India, the movement interests may be represented by the concerned political parties that are prepared to modify their political and economic agenda. It is necessary to examine in the case of India why the traditional political parties including the Left have remained more or less indifferent to the issues and demands raised by the new social movements. The concerns raised by the local politicians in the case of a few movements were not even reflected at the state and central levels of the party structure. In the light of the developments that have taken place over the past decade or so, there is little reason to believe that the new social movements will disappear from the social scene. If the political parties continue to remain silent or indifferent to the demands raised by the new social movements, there could be more direct pressure on these parties. This may come true in

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the Uttarkhand and the Jharkhand areas, and also in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Maharashtra, involving people opposed to the Sardar Sarovar Dam Project. This may also develop in areas where the anti-nuclear movements are active. The potential role and influence of the Chipko movement in the Garhwal region of the Himalayas and the anti-nuclear movement in north Karnataka and Koodankulam in Tamil Nadu cannot be underestimated. It is well within the interest of the political parties to respond to the demands of the new social movements. If the established parties do not show adequate response in the near future, this would result in a decline of their electoral appeal and support at least in the movement areas. Besides, this would gradually lead to the issue-based political mobilization by the new social movements. This development is most likely to bring about greater cohesiveness among the movements and their various entities. The inevitable question that arises at this stage is related to the future of the peace movement itself. The basic dilemma facing the peace movements in the world today is related to the task of achieving compatibility between the aspirations for a broad social change and the achievement—mass mobilization for a specific goal. The pressing problem is the choice between being pragmatically successful (in broadening the popular base through adjustment and compromises) and being true to their fundamental beliefs. This is an insoluble predicament. Green parties that have been successful for a long time, including the Greens in Germany, are facing several existential choices and changes. The struggle to preserve the Green identity is continuing. There are also circumstances that the Greens, originally intending to transform power from below, have meanwhile become victims of power from above. The biggest challenge that the Green movement faces in the course of its transition into a movement party is the very survival of its utopia. It also must continue to remain an active movement, since a political organization that lacks ideological and sociocultural identity is most unlikely to survive into the future. A movement bereft of its ideological content and parties delinked from its movement character are not likely to succeed as political entities for long. This is a real challenge. This not only requires greater cohesion and coordination among the various social movements but also the development of a more comprehensive philosophy of peace politics.

NOTES 1. On the issue of convergence of objectives of the social movements, see Walker and Mendlovitz, 1987; Dalton and Kuechler, 1990; Wignaraja, 1993. 2. For understanding the specific Indian situation with reference to the rise of new social movements, see ‘‘New Social Movements: A Symposium on a Growing Response to the Crisis in Society,’’ Seminar no. 355 (March 1989).

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3. Guha, 1989, 12–15. 4. Young, 1987, 1. 5. For a detailed discussion, see Sharp, 1979, 131–169. 6. Young India, August 11, 1920, cited in Sharp, 1979, 160. 7. For a detailed discussion on the rise of new social movements, see The Great Concern (Special Issue on People’s Movements) (1990): Vol. I. 8. Sheth, 1993, 275–287. 9. On Gandhi’s view of social power, see Mathur and Sharma, 1977. 10. For a detailed discussion on the grassroots movements in India, see Kothari, 1989, Vol. II.

CHAPTER

25

P E AC E P S YC H O LO G Y

IN

ASIA

Cristina Jayme Montiel

ASIAN CONTEXT OF VIOLENCE AND PEACE Johan Galtung provides a useful lens for a broad understanding of violence and peace through the concepts of direct and structural violence.1 Direct violence refers to observable harmfulness, traceable to persons who carry out the damaging acts. On the other hand, structural violence means harmful conditions traceable to unequal social systems that prevent a group of people from satisfying their basic human needs. In real situations, direct and structural violence intertwine with each other. Systemic inequalities erupt into armed social conflicts and vice versa. Foreign invasions, authoritarian regimes, and colonial occupations mark the histories of Asia in the past 500 years.2 Except for the Maldives in South Asia, all other Asian countries have been occupied by at least one foreign country. Most Asian societies have had multicolonial invasions. For example, the Philippines was subjugated by Spain for almost 400 years, then colonized by the United States for around 50 years, and then ruled by Japan for three years. Up until the past 100 years, anti-foreign wars, mostly against colonial rule, were waged in Asia, killing a high number of local freedom fighters and traumatizing civilian populations.

A longer version of this article appeared in Cristina Jayme Montiel, ‘‘Peace Psychology in Asia,’’ Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 9, no. 3 (2003): 195–218.

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After World War II, Asian societies gained independence from their colonial rulers. However, the rise of Cold War politics brought about Asian authoritarian regimes, many of which were supported by either the United States or the Communist Bloc. Today, most of Asia lies in a state of chronic poverty. Economic data show chronic Asian poverty and suggest that political and social inequality is a source of Asian structural violence. However, the question of economic inequality may point more to differences between Asia and developed nations, rather than internal wealth inequalities within Asian societies. Although within-country wealth inequalities need to be addressed by Asian peace advocates, the larger global issue lies in the disparities of wealth between Asia and developed societies represented by the G-9. Asia plays host to diverse cultures that have flourished in their respective territories over centuries. Nonmigrant cultural groups and asymmetric power relations mark cultural heterogeneity in the region. The cultural diversity in Asia is unlike multiculturalism in melting-pot countries in North America, Europe, and Australia–New Zealand. Migrant cultures in developed societies tend to assimilate with the dominant host culture over time. In Asia, however, the cultural fabric is nonmigratory. The most widespread religions in Asia are Islam and Buddhism, plus Hinduism in highly populated India. Intra-country language or dialect variations are strikingly high. Except for the Maldives, all other Asian countries claim multiple mother tongues, with India having 93, China with 49, and the Philippines with 40 languages or dialects. Intergroup cultural variations in Asia are not only different but also unequal. There is usually one dominant ethnic group and a number of minority groups that are significantly smaller in comparison to the dominant group.3 For example, China has around 20 ethnic groups, but the Hans comprise 92 percent of the population. Afghanistan is composed of five major groups, with the Pashtuns claiming 38 percent of the population, and the Tajiks claiming 25 percent. Vietnam has 87 percent Vietnamese, plus seven other ethnic groups. Because cultural differences date back to centuries-old family lineages, aggressive territorial contestations emerge in conditions of cultural heterogeneity. Such intercultural antagonisms tend to be asymmetric in power structure, with one ethnic group having access to more material and natural resources, and imposing cultural scripts on marginalized groups.

PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF VIOLENCE AND PEACE IN ASIA Asian peace psychology is the study of human behaviors and processes involved in eradicating direct and structural violence, and strengthening social

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peace in Asia. The study and application of Asian peace psychology are embedded in regional conditions of colonial histories, authoritarian regimes, chronic poverty, and intergroup cultural variations. Although I use a structural view, I do not take the traditional Marxist stance that economic structures determine political and cultural arrangements. I assume that economics, politics, and culture are equally important, and interact with each other. Framing peace psychology in a structural context juxtaposes psychology with social structure, and shows how psychological knowledge and skills can contribute to structural peace building. I make a few claims. First, unjust social configurations produce large-scale social violence in Asia. Second, social structures, rigid as they are, can be transformed by human agency. Third, human agency falls in the realm of psychology. Hence, psychological interventions can have a direct and multiplicative impact on widescale structural transformation. As a response to Asian politico-historical conditions, psychologists can contribute to peace building by (1) examining the meaning of peace in Asian contexts, (2) building democratic space through active nonviolence, and (3) healing traumas caused by protracted wars. To counter chronic poverty in Asian economic systems, psychologists can seek ways to build beliefs and value systems for economic democratization. To mitigate structural violence arising from unequal or unjust cultural heterogeneity, peace psychologists can attend to (1) claiming social identity and voice, (2) culture-sensitive peacemaking, and (3) peace building by crafting new political arrangements with increased intergroup fairness. Revisiting the meanings of ‘‘peace’’ is important in the development of Asian peace psychology. Embedded in politico-historical contexts of foreign occupations and local dictatorships, the term peace takes on negative meanings associated with the imposition of colonial and authoritarian regimes. One historical view sees colonial governments dominating Asia by pacifying the natives. The Philippine experience elucidates this point. At the start of the 16th century, in the name of peace, the Spanish colonial forces promised to bring the natives’ souls to heaven through Christian baptisms. The Spanish embarked on a colonization program to pacify the natives by a crafty combination of the cross and sword. Authoritarian rulers likewise abused notions of peace to maintain their state apparatus. For example, during the Philippines’ martial rule from 1972 to 1986, the military used its armed force to eradicate opposition and restore peace and order. Widespread tortures, massacres, political kidnapping, and intelligence surveillance became instruments of peace and order. At that time, a whispered joke among us pro-democracy workers was, ‘‘Yes we have peace in the Philippines. We are as peaceful as a cemetery.’’ Building peace psychology in Asia may involve probing the subjective meanings of social peace among Asians. Peace psychologists should examine

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social discourses and representations in different Asian settings, recognizing the possibility that the meaning of peace is context sensitive, may take on different meanings from those that have emerged in Western settings, and may not always denote a positive evaluation.

CRAFTING A PSYCHOLOGY OF ACTIVE NONVIOLENCE IN POLITICAL DEMOCRATIZATION Active Nonviolence (ANV) refers to strategies for changing systemic violence in a manner that refrains from using direct violence. ANV strategies can be used to dismantle politically repressive conditions and economically exploitative systems. The challenge of active nonviolence lies in its simultaneous requirements to be forceful enough to change embedded social structures, without the conventional confrontational tools of social force that rely on heavy capital and militarized aggressions using bullets, bombs, torture, and imprisonment. ANV takes on characteristics seldom associated with conventional notions of peace. For example, ANV actions produce tensions and awareness, as social movements challenge the political status quo. Second, ANV is partisan instead of neutral, taking the side of the oppressed and exploited sectors in the social system. Third, ANV relies on collective action and is rarely an individualistic act. Its social force emanates from huge numbers of people gathered together with a shared goal of dismantling one social system and building an alternative one. Effective ANV requires streetwise skills such as networking, mobilizing, and conscientizing—psycho-organizational abilities that produce a singularly powerful yet peaceful social force. In the past 20 years, ANV phenomena transformed the political configuration of societies that have carried the yoke of oppression and exploitation. In the Asian region, ANV forces jolted the political terrains of the Philippines in 1986 and 2001, China in 1989, Burma in the 1990s, Taiwan in 1986, South Korea in 1980, Indonesia in 1998 to 1999, and East Timor in 1999.4 The ongoing struggle for Tibet’s autonomy from China likewise demonstrates ANV at work.5 Religions play a major role in Asian ANV. In the Philippines’ People Power and East Timor’s independence struggle, the Catholic Church led and called on the local population to continue the peaceful struggle for liberation against ruthlessly oppressive conditions. Spirituality has likewise fused with pragmatic social movements, injecting Asian ANV with a particularly Buddhist orientation. Along the lines of what is referred to as engaged Buddhism, contemporary ANV movements have been inspired and led by Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, Cambodian monk Maha Gosananda, Thai activist-intellectual

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Sulak Sivaraksa,6 and Tibetan monk His Holiness the Dalai Lama.7 Asian ANV demonstrates how religions can play a public and positive role in the struggle for structural peace. Student uprisings also have contributed to the transformation of political systems in Asia. For example, in South Korea from 1980 to 1988, widespread student demonstrations against martial law virtually shut down the country, and eventually produced a more open democratic system in this country.8 Although the 1989 Tian An’men Square uprising in China did not bring about a new form of government, it nevertheless focused world attention on dedicated attempts of Chinese dissidents to create sweeping social transformation through peaceful force.9 Unfortunately, ANV has rarely dented the discourses of social sciences in general and psychology in particular. However, peace psychologists can contribute to ANV in Asia and other parts of the world. On theoretical and practical levels, social psychologists can attend to subjective dimensions of forceful collective action, such as the spiritual inspirations of ANV, emotional stages of an ANV build-up, psychological aspects of confronting the militarized enemy without hitting or running away, and organizational dynamics and leadership styles of ANV. Psychologists may likewise offer emotional, intellectual, and material support to ANV participants. For example, clinical help may come in the form of healing burned-out activists and providing shelter and therapy for those who may have been tortured or physically harmed during the ANV struggle. Organizational psychologists could address internal organizational systems, impromptu street operations, and inter-organizational conflicts that arise in the course of mobilizing large numbers of people for mass actions.

HEALING TRAUMAS IN ASYMMETRIC PROTRACTED CONFLICTS UNDER UNSAFE AND IMPOVERISHED CONDITIONS Political trauma refers to the shattering and extremely stressful effects of state-sponsored or military violence on individuals. In relation to political trauma, psychologists have studied the effects of war on children,10 psychological effects of torture,11 and the harmful effects of war on American combat soldiers related to posttraumatic stress disorders.12 A number of idiosyncratic contextual conditions influence the nature of political trauma in Asia. First, because social conflicts in Asia are usually intergroup and asymmetric, one group in the violent contestation holds more power over the other group. Although individuals on both sides of a conflict turn simultaneous victims and transgressors, members of the less

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powerful group may suffer more trauma because they tend to be politically less potent, militarily weaker, and economically poorer. Consequently, I believe psychological healing efforts should prioritize trauma treatment to the less powerful group in the conflict. Second, Asian violent conflicts are usually protracted in nature. A protracted conflict extends over long time periods, waxing and waning through the years.13 A number of such wars in developing regions like Asia can be traced back to colonial periods and Cold War power plays.14 Due to the prolonged nature of conflicts, traumas such as torture and combat duties are not only highly intense but also episodic. Psychological duress likewise results from low-intensity but longer-lasting systemic conditions of fear and powerlessness. Subtle yet powerful distress seeps into the psychological structures of civilian communities that have lived under protracted-war conditions for decades. Peace psychologists should explore trauma-healing therapies that address mental harmfulness of a low-intensity, long-duration conflict. Unlike posttraumatic healings that take place in Western contexts, trauma survivors in Asia deal with recovery under conditions that are politically unsafe and impoverished. Even as individuals and entire communities grapple with trauma healing, they continue to live in unpredictably volatile conditions where violence may erupt again. Furthermore, survivors need to contend with their daily physical survival under impoverished conditions. The viability of trauma-healing projects in Asia will increase if steps are taken to address the contextual sources of violence and provisions of material needs to survivors.

CREATING BELIEFS AND VALUE SYSTEMS THAT SUPPORT ECONOMIC DEMOCRATIZATION How one views the causes of poverty may relate to one’s behaviors vis-avis social change. Hine and Montiel showed that people explain poverty in at least five ways: exploitation, characterological weaknesses of the poor, instability and conflicts, nature-related causes, and Third World governments.15 Individuals who blame exploitation engage in more activist endeavors, whereas persons who attribute poverty to the character of the poor and internal conflicts participate less in social change actions. Christie and Montiel pointed out that dominant culture could be used to rigidify economic structural violence.16 Dominant cultural scripts that make economic inequalities look and feel right elucidate culture-structure interaction. Examples of widely unquestioned narratives are the capitalist ethos,17 Protestant ethic,18 just-world thinking,19 meritocratic ideology,20 and victim blaming.21

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Peace psychology in Asia can examine alternative cultural scripts that support systemic equalities in economic systems. For example, attributing poverty to exploitation encourages a closer look at global structural inequities. Furthermore, peace psychologists may want to look at Asian beliefs about communal life and shared resources. Among indigenous highland communities in the Philippines, for example, the concept of land ownership is communal and not individual. Can peace psychology in Asia help identify and strengthen mental scripts favoring wealth sharing? Pushing the question further, can these alternative scripts counter the onslaught of dominant global scripts that rigidify the international and local economic structures related to Asian poverty?

CLAIMING SOCIAL IDENTITY AND VOICE Galtung warned against the structural violence of cultural oppression. The power of culture lies in its ability to provide the symbolic, subjective basis for saying what is right and what is wrong in matters of direct violence and politicoeconomic configurations.22 Cultural violence arises when dominant cultures provide popularly accepted scripts that support the righteousness of direct and structural violence. Cultural domination and the imposition of nonlocal cultural scripts create collective resentments over the loss of social identity. In Asia, peace and violence issues arise over variations in cultural scripts, whether such scripts are related to religion,23 language,24 or deeply held symbolisms.25 Cultural heterogeneity is likewise linked to territorial conflicts, with different cultural groups contesting legitimized boundaries constituted during colonial periods. In addition to identity issues, a second cultural concern relates to issues of voice. Cultural inequalities may propagate cultures of silence among minority ethnic groups. Freire described a culture of silence as cultural conditions that arise when alienated and oppressed people are not heard by dominant members of society.26 The low-power groups internalize negative images of themselves created by the dominant group. A culture of silence does not imply nonresponse, but rather a response that remains muted and uncritical of the cultural scripts that legitimize political and economic domination. On theoretical and practical levels, Asian peace psychologists should build social identity and voice, especially among the culturally marginalized vis-a-vis the more dominant cultural groups.27 Psychology’s contribution to the mitigation of cultural violence in Asia is vital, not only because of the psychological factors involved in cultural empowerment, but also because the very nature of culture is subjective.28 This places cultural issues smack

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in the realm of psychology and cultural violence as an issue of direct importance to peace psychologists.

IDENTIFYING CULTURE-EMBEDDED ASIAN WAYS OF POLITICAL PEACEMAKING Peacemaking pertains to methods employed to handle direct political violence.29 Non-Asian intermediaries from developed nations frequently manage peacemaking efforts in Asia. For example, one can cite the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping troops in Cambodia’s 1993 strife;30 East Timor’s post-independence government;31 the U.S. and Russian participation attempts to diffuse tension during the North Korean nuclear pile-up;32 and peacemaking attempts of China, Britain, United States, and Russia during the India–Pakistan conflict over Kashmir in 2002.33 The intrusion of non-Asians, even in the name of peace, mirror the centuries-old patterns of Western colonization over Asia. I propose intrastate or regional peacemaking instead. Asia-based peacemaking endeavors will not only break historical patterns of foreign intrusions but will also bring to the conflict arena peacemakers culturally attuned to local sensitivities. Two cultural characteristics of Asian-style political peacemaking are worth pointing out: (1) personalized trustworthiness of the intermediary and (2) monarchic or spiritual political authority. Perceived trustworthiness between conflicting parties increases the probability of successful negotiations.34 When antagonists mistrust each other, intermediaries can step into the picture as the mutually trusted third party. The nature of trustworthiness differs between Asians and Westerners. In Western societies, the notion is associated with a universalistic, abstract trust, which is contingent on social attributes of the perceived.35 In most Asian societies, however, trust is particularistic and based on personal knowledge of and affection toward the other person. Descriptions of political cultures in Thailand, India, Malaysia, and the Philippines assert that social interactions and loyalties are based primarily on family ties, physical proximity in a village, and personal patronage.36 In Asian militaries, particularistic trust thrives among members of the same graduating class. Intense trust and loyalty among classmates from military academies in Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines can partly explain cooperation during militarized political interventions such as coup attempts.37 Among American troops, similar patterns of intense personal loyalties thrive within one’s unit and in relation to the commander. However, the symbol of the American flag, and not family ties, glues troop loyalties together. In addition to personalized trust, Asian-style spiritual or monarchic

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authority may come into play during peacemaking. Asians tend to bow to authority and power,38 and Asian political peacemaking is marked by a fusion of spiritual and secular power. In Thai political language, the term greng jai (deference) portrays an attitude that produces passive receptivity to direction from above.39 In a study of Indonesia’s Javanese mythology, Anderson noted how secular authority anchors on a god-king concept, as temporal rulers represent incarnations of divine power.40 A Malay worldview recognizes hierarchical relationships not only among individuals but, more important, between a person and the supernatural.41 India’s Mohandas K. Gandhi, guru of active-nonviolence proponents, exemplified how spirituality fuses with pragmatic political strategies to produce social transformation.42 He showed how a powerful colonial force like Britain can be outmaneuvered by himself and ascetically disciplined masses of people ready to sacrifice themselves nonviolently to obtain political goals. Gandhi’s anticolonial struggle was guided by the spiritual principles of satya (truth), ahimsa (nonviolence), and tapasya (self-suffering).43 In more recent times, spiritual leaders have led peacemaking efforts in Southeast Asian internal conflicts. For example, Cambodian Buddhist monk Venerable Maha Ghosananda guided the Dhammayietra (Buddhist walk of peace) during his country’s May 1993 elections.44 During Philippine coup attempts, catholic priests and nuns negotiated for the release of captured civilians caught in the crossfire. In one failed antistate rebellion, paramilitary coup forces refused to yield until a priest joined the government’s negotiating party.45 In Thailand politics, the monarchy is the repository of charismatic political power. The King has the most barami (charisma); he is associated with Buddha. The monarch’s power emanates from his being well loved and respected by most Thai people.46 King Bhumipol Adulyadev’s intervention in the October 1973 Thammasat University student protests protected hundreds of thousands of young rallyists from military onslaught.47 Again, in May 1992, King Bhumipol halted street violence by calling to his palace antagonistic military leaders Suchinda and Noonpakdi on the one hand against the popular Chamlong on the other side.48

CRAFTING NEW POLITICO-PSYCHOLOGICAL SYSTEMS THAT ADDRESS INTERGROUP FAIRNESS AMONG ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS GROUPS The Armed Conflict Dataset Codebook49 classifies contested incompatible issues into two types: governmental and territorial. Incompatibilities over governmental issues are usually ideological and are about the political

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system, government legitimacy, and change in the composition of state administration. Government issues pertain to intrastate conflicts covering an entire country. In East Asia, geopolitical conflicts about government have resulted in new political systems and pragmatic administrative agreements between contending societies. The two Koreas formed separate states with contrary political systems. China, on the other hand, created special administrative arrangements with Hong Kong to maintain economic stability in the region and to demonstrate to Taiwan the feasibility of peaceful reunification between societies with contrasting sociopolitical systems.50 Territorial incompatibility concerns a geographical segment of a country and includes interstate issues of territorial control (for example, the India– Pakistan conflict over Kashmir from 1947 to present); secession (for example, the Philippine government versus the Moro Islamic Liberation Front); and autonomy (such as East Timor against Indonesia, 1975 to 1999). A few leaders in Asian countries plagued by intrastate territorial armed conflicts are considering federalizing as a structural approach to long-term conflict transformation. Federalism, as a decentralized social structure, is a political system of government founded on a territorial distribution of authority. It recognizes geographically defined authority to manage matters of territorial importance. Duchacek posited the viability of federalism as a resolution to conflicts that are expressed in territorial terms, and may hence be resolved with new distributions of geographical powers satisfactory to the conflicting groups.51 In the Philippines, the ongoing drive for federalizing is posited on a peace agenda that aims to address the centuries-old Mindanao war.52 A Bangsamoro federal state will enable the autonomous region of Muslim Mindanao to promote its own identity and culture and to dictate its own pace of development without seceding from the republic. As a Filipino peace advocate, I have looked into the political psychology of transitioning from a unitary form to a federalized form of government. My tentative findings include the following politico-psychological insights, in the context of the Mindanao territorial conflict: 1. A federal constitution provides the ‘‘script’’ of power distribution. But in developing societies, formal legislative scripts rarely create the ‘‘play’’ in everyday political life. To prevent post-federation uprisings, there has to be widespread local political and cultural support for the political restructuring. What is important are the conditions of national and local leadership, political culture, interplay of personal and group interests and fears, and informal diplomacies.

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2. Contemporary global and regional geopolitical configurations and collective memories of past colonial abuses will influence the Philippine federation process in Mindanao. As of this writing, U.S. troops are currently deployed in Mindanao allegedly to aid in fighting the Abu Sayyaf, a Muslim group associated with Al Qaeda. Mindanaoans have raised public protests against U.S. troops, citing their collective memories of anti-Muslim massacres during the American colonial era in the Philippines. 3. Institutionalized religion and religious power—both Christian and Islam—can play a positive role in the transition stage to a Philippine federal state.

Sri Lanka is a second Asian country that is considering federalizing to resolve intrastate territorial conflict. Antagonistic parties in the bloody Sri Lankan conflict are looking at federalism as a structural solution to power sharing between Tamils and Sinhalese. Since 1983, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have been fighting for a separate state for the 3.2 million minority Tamils. The Sri Lankan conflict took center stage when Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991, allegedly by a Tamil suicide bomber.53 At peace talks in Norway held in December 2002, the government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE agreed to explore a solution based on Tamil self-determination in areas of historical habitation of Tamilspeaking peoples, and based also on a federal structure within a united Sri Lanka.54 Although federalism is a political concept, the process of federalizing includes social and psychological overtones as well.

CONCLUDING REMARKS The kind of peace psychology that will emerge in Asia will be substantively and methodologically different from variants of the discipline developing in North America and Europe. Because Asian armed conflicts are intrastate and intermediate-sized, I suggest that future researchers discover new conceptual and pragmatic handles for peace psychology, in a discipline that has traditionally attended to interstate clashes of global giants. I also recommend that a peace psychology embedded in Asia recognize the pivotal role unjust global structures play in Asian scripts of peace and violence. The nature of peace in Asia involves not only the cessation of intrastatearmed conflicts but also more fundamentally, a steady restructuring of unjust political, economic, and cultural structural arrangements. To find relevance in this tumultuous region that holds half of the world’s population, peace psychology in Asia should be sensitized to domestic and global social-justice thrusts. Ideas generated by peace psychologists in Asia should

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avoid inaccurate and individualistic notions of peace that support new forms of foreign intrusions, authoritarian rules, insensitivities to chronic poverty, and cultural dominations. My suggestions point to the development of Asian peace psychology along the lines of (1) re-examining the social meaning of peace, (2) active nonviolent political transformations, (3) trauma healing in protracted conflicts, (4) belief and value systems supporting economic democratization, (5) strengthening social identity and voice among the culturally marginalized, (6) cultural ways of political peacemaking, and (7) psychological requirements of federalizing political structures for inter-group fairness. Allow me to end by echoing prayers borrowed from Cambodian villagers in the 1993 Buddhist peace march.55 Together with them, other Filipinos, Asians, and citizens of the world, I ask that one day soon, may we sleep above the ground, may we just stop fearing the night.

NOTES 1. Galtung, 1996. 2. Microsoft Encarta, 1995, 95; Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia, 2000. 3. Hoiberg, 2002. 4. Deats, 2001; Remarks, 2001; The Unknown, n.d. 5. Herzer, 2009. 6. Deats, 2001. 7. Herzer, 2009. 8. South Korea, n.d. 9. Nathan, 2001. 10. Cairns, 1996; Wessells and Monteiro, 2000; Westermeyer and Wahmanholm, 1996. 11. Agger and Jensen, 1996; Lavik, Nygard, Sveaass, and Fannemel, 1994; Suedfeld, 1990. 12. Kelly, 1985; Kulka et al, 1990; Sonnenberg, Blank, and Talbott, 1985. 13. Azar, 1990; Fisher, 1990; Mao, 1938; 1960. 14. Godement, 1997; Hale and Kienle, 1997; Iriye, 1974; Sturgill, 1994; Szayna et al, 1995; Winnefeld et al, 1995. 15. Hine and Montiel, 1999. 16. Christie and Montiel, 1997. 17. Falk, 1979. 18. Weber, 1948. 19. Lerner, 1980. 20. Deutsch, 1985. 21. Ryan, 1971. 22. Galtung 1996. 23. ‘‘Religious violence,’’ 2002. 24. Andaya and Andaya, 2001.

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25. Konglang, 2003. 26. Freire, 1970. 27. Heaney, 1995. 28. Triandis, 1994. 29. Wagner, 2001. 30. Um, 1994. 31. Strohmeyer, 2001. 32. Mazarr, 1995; Chronology, 2000. 33. Tomar, 2002. 34. Deutsch, 1973; Pruitt, 1981. 35. Deutsch, 1973. 36. Mabbett, 1985; Montiel, 1995b; Morell and Samudavanija, 1981; Osman, 1985; Pye, 1985. 37. Handley, 1992; The Fact Finding Commission, 1990. 38. Mabbett, 1985; Montiel, 1995b. 39. Morell and Samudavanija, 1981. 40. Anderson, 1996. 41. Osman, 1985. 42. Sharp, 1979. 43. Mayton, 2001. 44. Appleby, n.d. 45. Nebres, 1990. 46. Morell and Samudavanija, 1981. 47. Kambhu, 1973. 48. Handley, 1992. 49. Gleditsch et al, 2002. 50. Leung and Stephan, 2000. 51. Duchacek, 1970. 52. Pimentel, 2002. 53. Jeffrey, 2002. 54. Chandrasekharan, 2002. 55. Maat, 1993.

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A C T I V E N O N V I O L E N C E : A C R E AT I V E P OW E R F O R P E A C E M A K I N G A N D HEALING Hildegard Goss-Mayr

To respect more authentically human life and the whole of creation, we need to remind ourselves of the inspiration and driving force of this commitment: the power of nonviolence as it is revealed to us in the Bible and particularly in Jesus Christ. We see it in action as a liberating, healing, and peacemaking force in the life of people and nations. We are living in the age of globalization. The process of globalization contains both negative and positive aspects.

NEGATIVE CHALLENGES Since the end of communism in the early 1990s, liberal capitalism, a materialistic economic system, has gained global influence and domination. Many millions of people suffer from the consequences of this ideology and economic system. Its aim is profit and power. Mankind must serve it. In the hard competition the small ones fall by the wayside. The weak and underqualified are marginalized, subsisting in poverty or even misery. Worldwide Remarks at Peace Day, Catholic University, Leuven, Belgium (February 20, 2003), printed in Richard Deats, Marked for Life, The Story of Hildegard Goss-Mayr (New City Press, 2009): 123–34.

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economic domination is also secured by military force. This holds particularly true for the developing countries. To point out just one example: the Democratic Republic of Congo suffered the loss of over 2 million people in the recent war over its resources of gold, diamonds, and coltan, needed for space engines and cellphones. This war was supported by seven African nations and transnational enterprises of the North. Or we should remind ourselves of the recent wars over the access to reserves of oil in the Sudan, in Afghanistan or Iraq? The resources of the earth and its environment are exploited to the point of provoking a global ecological collapse (for example, the pollution of water and air, dramatic climatic changes, deforestation, advance of the deserts, etc.). Hunger, illiteracy, mass unemployment, migration, and also terrorism are consequences of this situation. This dramatic reality forces us to search for a new vision of the relationship between humankind, God, and all of creation, that is to say, a Shalom vision.

POSITIVE CHALLENGES OF GLOBALIZATION To me it is fundamental to recognize and welcome this development toward global unity. Never before have there existed technical instruments like the Internet that permit people all over the world to establish contacts, communicate information, exchange discoveries, and provide knowledge and insights. Relief programs in case of accidents and catastrophes can be quickly organized. Sports, art, and particularly music from all continents and cultures converge and can help to build a global human family. The increasing importance of international nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and of organizations of the United Nations like UNESCO, WHO, and UNICEF provides powerful support to regions in need, and there has been progress made in the development and application of international law. Also the peace movement is profiting from modern means of communication to build global networks and give support to endangered groups. It is the project of God, the Creator, for humanity to move toward what Teilhard de Chardin calls the Omega point—the point when the whole creation will be united in love. There is a deep desire for this unity in mankind: it finds expression in the concepts of Shalom (Judaism), of Umma (Islam), of Harmony (Asian religions and philosophies), of a world society without classes and poverty (Marxism), in the concept of self-giving love and brotherhood (Christianity). We are called on to work actively for this end.

UNIVERSAL ETHICS PROMOTED BY WORLD RELIGIONS World religions can help to lead the way to the acceptance of ethics based on universally affirmed values, in spite of the fact of their being

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presently abused in a scandalous way by fundamentalist concepts for power politics, violence, terrorism, and war in all of the world religions. In order to fulfill this task, however, world religions have to return to their deepest roots to rediscover and affirm those values that are required for humane togetherness. These values include, in particular, the absolute respect for human life; commitment for justice and human rights; the use of nonviolent means of overcoming injustices and violence; forgiveness; and the search for reconciliation. Let me quote from the experience of a seminar on nonviolence in Bangladesh organized by the nonviolent movement Dipshika with Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians: Our Muslim friends pointed out: When God created humanity to be vice-regents on earth, his Spirit entered every man, woman and child, for He says: ‘‘When I have fashioned him and breathed into him My Spirit, fall you down in obeisance to him’’ (Surate 15/29). In this sense humanity is one. Human life is sacred. ‘‘And if anyone saves a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people’’ (5/35). Our Hindu friends pointed out: Swami Vivekananda said: ‘‘In this world the human body is the supreme body and man is the highest creature. Nobody is beyond man.’’ He reminded us of their offerings to the Supreme and of the renunciation of the will to destroy or to hurt others. Gandhi’s Ahimsa seeks not only to overcome the practice of violence but even the intention to do harm to others. Buddhist participants explained that they are deeply committed to liberation of the powers that cause suffering and deprive people of their value; that their faith is based on unconditioned respect for any living being and insisted on these words from the Buddha: ‘‘In those who harbour thoughts of vengeance toward others, hatred will never cease. . . . For hatred is never appeased by hatred. It is appeased by love. This is an eternal law. . . . Let one’s thoughts of boundless love pervade the whole world . . . without any obstruction, without any hatred or enmity.’’ Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel would add: ‘‘What is hateful to you, do not do to others’’ (Hillel); ‘‘When a stranger resides with you in your land he shall be to you as one of your citizens’’ (Lev. 19:33)—‘‘We beat our swords into plows’’ (Isaiah 2).

But those of us who are Christians are challenged in particular to be pathfinders for these convictions and this commitment. If we do not return to the Sermon on the Mount and place ourselves clearly and consistently on the side of the poor and if we do not demand their rights to be respected in

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politics and economy, if we do not become bearers of nonviolent attitudes and conflict resolution, if we do not stand up for disarmament, strengthen trust, practice love of the enemy, and commit ourselves to forgiveness, reconciliation, and peace, we shall decline into insignificance.

NONVIOLENT PEACEMAKING IN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS In the Bible we can discover a pedagogy of peace building that reveals, step-by-step, a growing insight into the way to deal with and overcome violence through the power of truth, justice, and love. It leads up to the revelation of universal love through self-giving nonviolence in Jesus. Let us look at the most important steps of this pedagogy.

Roots in the Old Testament The human being is created in the image of God. It is important to remember the vision of humanity that is given us in Genesis 1:27: We have been created in the image of God, in the image of the Holy Trinity. To say God-in-Trinity is to say God-in-community: three divine persons, equal in dignity, who are in permanent relation with truth, justice, creativity, joy, and peace, united in an infinite love which gives itself. To be created in His image therefore means to be created as a community of men and women, tribes, nations, peoples in perfect equality. God wants to share with us all the aspects of his being God-in-community; He wants the human family to live in this very relationship of Love: human beings among themselves, in relation to creation and to God. However, we have broken and are constantly breaking this relationship of love, replacing it by the desire to possess the qualities and values of others, to dominate. This rupture with the relationship of love leads to all forms of injustice, sin, exploitation, violence, greed, and killing that dominate our societies. The response of God, however, to this revolt by humanity is not counterviolence. On the contrary, He replies with an act of nonviolence and love: with his project of liberation and reconciliation. This project shows for us the way toward the original vision of unity in love.

Israel, a Small People Chosen to Witness in Its History the Way of Liberation and Peacemaking Israel is called to introduce into human history a substantially new vision, a new social concept and project, differing from the surrounding

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great nations. This was a demanding task for a small migrant people. To be able to assume this mission, God sends witnesses and prophets to guide the people and He reveals himself as Emmanuel (meaning God with the people). He promises his strength and unshakable fidelity. A profound relationship of confidence is established between Israel and Yahweh.

Violence in Israel In contrast to the surrounding big nations, violence is no longer considered as mythical or blind destiny, but it becomes part of human responsibility. It is considered as a destructive force, but there is not yet a clear answer of how to conquer it in its roots. It is important to understand, however, that the law of Talion, ‘‘an eye for an eye’’ (Lev. 24:20), means progress of civilization over the prevailing attitude of revenge. It permits retaliation, but limits it to the same kind and degree as the injury, forbidding destruction of the adversary. To achieve Shalom inside the people of Israel, several demands have to be fulfilled. The most important of these are: • You must adore only the unique God, the God of Justice and Love. This contrasts to the attitude of the powerful neighbouring nations who adored gods of power, of riches, of military strength, and attributed divine adoration to their political leaders. There should be no submission to kings and dictators. Who are the gods WE adore? • Life is sacred: You shall not kill: to shed human blood is the gravest sin. While the surrounding pagan nations sacrificed infants to win the favour of their gods, David, for example, was not allowed to build the temple because he had shed blood. When God renews the Covenant with Noah, he stresses only this command: life is sacred. But, as we have seen before, this law is limited to the people of Israel. We can, however, find examples in the Old Testament that go beyond the law of Talion in the direction of universal love, for example, the four chants of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, who resists oppression by taking on himself all the violence to liberate both the people of Israel and the oppressor. • Respect of human rights: a firm and permanent commitment to human rights is required. God manifests himself as God of the weak, the poor, of widows, orphans, strangers, and slaves. They must be cared for and be able to live in dignity. This is also a precondition for peace in our own societies! • Economic and social justice: the earth is the Lord’s and He wishes it to serve all, not just a few. The Year of Jubilee, to be celebrated once in a generation (every 50 years), was meant to give thanks to God through reciprocal pardon, reconciliation, and redistribution of the goods so that

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everyone can live in dignity. To jubilate signifies to thank God through the acceptance of economic and social justice and reconciliation.

We find these commands in the books of Exodus and Leviticus. To sum up, we can say that life in the spirit of Shalom requires that the nation lives truly the love of the neighbor: It is the first level of the revelation of the Love of God. In Jesus further dimensions of the pedagogy of peacebuilding will be revealed.

Jesus’s Message of Peace Jesus enters into human history at a moment of great violence and intense suffering for the people of Israel: Roman occupation (taxes, clashes for religious reasons, etc.); a politico-religious leadership, partly compromised with the Romans, exploiting the people with taxes and oppressive rules; an armed resistance movement, mainly in Galilee. It is in this context Jesus will implant the liberating, saving, healing force of universal love of the Father and reveal through his teaching, life, death, and resurrection how to overcome violence, injustice; all evil at its root in the conscience and heart of humans as well as in the structures of society. • He insists on the absolute respect of every human person for being created by God (Jesus’s parable of the good Samaritan). • He takes the side of the downtrodden, the suffering, invigorating their own faith in order to be healed. • He breaks through taboos: speaks to women in public, makes them the messengers of the good news; he puts the care for the human person above laws (healing on the Sabbath). • He speaks the Truth and confronts injustice freely and accepts fully the consequences of doing so (encounters with Pharisees and Sadducees; the question of the purity of the temple). He faithfully gives witness to the divine love of the Father to the very last, to the gift of his life.

The Sermon on the Mount (see Matthew 5) sums up the essence of Jesus’s teaching. Going beyond the love of the neighbor, extending the pedagogy of peacemaking, Jesus reveals two further dimensions of love required for reconciling humanity in brotherhood: 1. The love of enemies (Mt. 5. 44): ‘‘Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you’’ has two radical, revolutionary implications: —Humanity is ONE: the division between the good ones and the evil ones is over; all human life is sacred, has to be respected.

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—Use nonviolent combat to overcome evil: Jesus cuts the spiral of violence by resisting aggression and by overcoming evil with the power of truth, justice, and love. He illustrates this by taking scenes out of the life of the people: when you are slapped in the face, turn the other cheek; if they take your shirt, let them have your coat as well. This means that you should not reply to violence with violence, but resist; do not accept injustice; do not remain passive; take a position and stand up and fight with the power of truth and justice by attacking the roots of evil in the conscience of the aggressor nonviolently with respect and love. Believe and affirm that the adversary has a conscience that can be reached, can open, can be changed. This nonviolent combat aims at overcoming the injustice and liberating the aggressor as well as the victim. Such combat can obtain greater justice and opens the possibility of reconciliation. 2. Self-giving love of God. Resistance with the power of truth and love has consequences: Jesus takes freely on himself the violence of his adversaries, all the violence of humanity to absorb it, to overcome it with the power of Love. This leads to his gift of life on the cross, but also to resurrection. He reveals to us the only way to overcome evil at its source is in the conscience of humans and humanity by taking on us the consequences of nonviolent actions. Thus we can create a new, reconciled relationship.

Nonviolent combat is the realistic transforming and liberating power in human history. In the resurrection of Jesus, the Shalom, the renewed human person, the seed of the Kingdom of God has been implanted in our world and it continues to transform, to heal, to avoid hatred and bloodshed, to forgive, and reconcile. People baptized in the name of Jesus Christ have the responsibility to work out of this perspective in their own life and in society.

ACTIVE NONVIOLENCE APPLIED BY CHRISTIANS IN OUR TIMES: METHODS AND STRATEGIES We shall now, by way of examples, see how Christians apply this peace building and liberating power of nonviolence in the present time:

Empowering the Weak and Oppressed The Women of Medellin In a poverty-stricken barrio of Medellin, Colombia, poor people adhering to Christian-based communities by reading the Bible discover their

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own dignity and their responsibility to struggle against the inhumane conditions. God wants life in fullness for all. Through seminars in nonviolence they discover for themselves this power of transformation, revealed by Jesus. This helps them to overcome fear that paralyzed their energies. A process of inner and outward liberation can start. In a nonviolent campaign to obtain drinking water necessary to save the lives of their children, a group of illiterate women succeeds in touching the conscience of well-to-do women, even building solidarity with them. With this experience of their power of justice and truth, they continue the process of urbanization, liberation, and empowerment among rich and poor.

The Peasant Women of the Larzac, France A military base in the French Larzac region is to be enlarged and 110 farmers will have to give up their land. The nonviolent leader Lanza del Vasto makes a two weeks’ fast and analyzes the situation with the peasants: should they sell their land for the military preparation of wars or resist nonviolently to preserve the soil for its original destination to produce food, to nourish people? The peasants unite and decide for nonviolent resistance, developing slowly their strategy that makes them change from conservative, politically noncommitted persons to persevering, peaceworkers, who defend their soil successfully during 10 years of hard nonviolent combat (1972 to 1981). In 1973 the first mass demonstration with 60,000 participants from trade unions, peasant movements, intellectuals, church people, and students takes place in the Larzac to say NO to militarization, YES to the production of food for the hungry of the world. A peasant woman, mother of six children, with little formal education gives the main speech. The nonviolent combat has freed her from fear, liberated her hidden force of Truth, and helped her to fully develop her human and spiritual potential.

Defying Dictatorship Madagascar 1991 and 2001 The Philippine people power movement of 1986 had considerable impact on countries with similar situations of oppression, such as Madagascar where the 12 years’ reign of the dictator Didier Ratsiraka pushed the country into utmost poverty. In 1990, inspired by the example of the Philippines and helped by the ecumenical Justice and Peace Commission with training in nonviolence, the opposition opted for nonviolent resistance. Very

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well-organized weekly mass demonstrations accompanied a six months’ general strike that was very costly for the poverty-stricken population. FFKM, the Council of Churches, comprising all Christian Churches of the island, was accepted as mediator. It obtained a transition government, a new Constitution, and elections. However, after a few years the dictator returned. When he was defeated by the elections of 2001, he refused to resign. Several months of hard, costly nonviolent resistance and, finally, international support succeeded in bringing about the definite victory of the democratic forces. The dictator went into exile. Now the poverty-stricken country needs many years of moral and material rebuilding.

Nonviolence: Force of Healing and Pardoning Burundi: Emphatic Listening between Hutus and Tutsis In regions of civil war or ethnic strife, such as in Burundi, Church organizations are promoting emphatic listening—deep listening with mind and heart—between small groups of Hutus and Tutsis, who have been in war over so many years. The objective is: • • • • • •

to become able to express one’s suffering to listen to the suffering of the adversary to overcome a one-sided view to find common ground in the same experience of suffering to become able to accept, to pardon, the other to begin to act together to overcome the origin of existing violence and injustice.

Inter-Religious Witness to the Sacredness of Life Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo Lubumbashi is the center of the copper-mining region of Katanga. Because of possibilities for work there was a considerable influx from surrounding provinces with differing ethnic populations. In the 1990s, under the dictatorship of President Mobutu, the mining industry broke down. The governor decided to get rid of the immigrants. Ethnic hatred followed and, after unrest at the university, ethnic massacres were threatening. The nonviolent movement GANVE (founded in 1989 by Jean Goss) approached Christian and Muslim religious leaders. A public inter-religious peace prayer with thousands of participants was organized during which the religious authorities affirmed together: God, Allah, is the

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creator of all human beings, He protects all of them and demands safeguard and dignity for each person. Encouraged by this moral support, a nonviolent action was started. People of both ethnic groups, suffering from starvation because of the unemployment, began together to plant vegetables in empty spaces near the city. Through this life-supporting work they discovered their common needs as human beings. Hatred was overcome through solidarity and new reconciled relationships could evolve. Similar large-scale public prayer and fasting of Christians and Muslims with their leaders recently took place in Ivory Coast to avoid the atrocities of a civil war. The efforts for a peaceful solution of the Iraq crisis are presently strongly supported by Christians, their Churches, and religious bodies in particular in the United States, Europe, and the Vatican, the Orthodox, and the World Council of Churches. Finally all depends on our own conversion to believe in the transforming power of nonviolence as God’s way to peace and that we apply it in our own life and acting. Whether or not we see an immediate result, we should remember that nothing is ever lost that is done out of the power of love. It will bear fruit one day.

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NONVIOLENT SKILLS VERSUS REPRESSIVE CONDITIONS: THE I R A N I A N W O M E N ’ S M OV E M E N T A N D C O D E P I N K : WO M E N F O R P E AC E Cynthia Boaz

Woman is more fitted than man to make exploration and take bolder action in nonviolence. —Gandhi1 A victory for women paves the way for democracy in Iran. —Shirin Ebadi

Since the beginning of the 20th century, nonviolent social movements have played a key role in helping to establish more peaceful and more democratic societies in places as diverse as India, Chile, and South Africa. As students of social justice, if peace and justice are the objectives we seek, then we—as scholars, citizens, and human beings—have an obligation to pay close The author would like to acknowledge the following individuals for their valuable insights into the Iranian Women’s Movement and the dynamics of nonviolent action in the Iranian context: Elham Gheytanchi, Shaazka Beyerle, Nazanin Afshin-Jam, Ivan Marovic, Sam Sedaei, Jack DuVall, and Stephen Zunes.

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attention to the means by which transitions from unjust systems or regimes take place. In any given society, the manner in which conflicts over rights and freedoms are waged has everything to do with the civic culture that subsequently emerges. Put another way, the strategically skilled activist understands that the context in which a battle takes place cannot be separated from its results. Since there is no distinction between means and ends in a society that attempts to promote or create peace and justice, it follows that a peaceful, just society can only emerge from civil resistance to the underlying oppression. Democracy can only emerge through democratic means. Because of this, whenever mass nonviolent resistance confronts injustice anywhere around the world, proponents of peace cultures have a responsibility to take an interest. As observers relying on others’ accounts of nonviolent struggles, we face a number of challenges in obtaining a nuanced understanding of the dynamics underlying resistance. This is largely because most nonviolent democracy or rights movements are frequently confronted by a tenacious conventional wisdom that can hinder an audience’s perception of a movement’s salience. In the field of nonviolent action (a natural home for peace scholars and advocates), it is frequently assumed that although nonviolent movements are capable of extraordinary things, there are also a number of structural conditions that must be met in order for a movement to succeed. Factors such as favorable economic conditions, ethnic and/or religious homogeneity, a history of democratic institutions, and a thriving civic culture with a good degree of political space are all widely considered by most observers of nonviolent movements to be key, if not necessary, to success. Additionally, there is another unfortunate but equally well-established assumption regarding the repressiveness of the opponent (usually a regime) arguing for a tipping point of violence beyond which a movement can no longer be effective. This prevailing mythology—which we might appropriately call ‘‘The Tiananmen Principle’’ because of the extent to which it is still being used to explain the failure of the uprising in China in 1989—presumes that there is a corresponding and inverse relationship between the degree of repression used by the opponent and the ability of a movement to achieve its objectives. It’s a very simple equation: as violent repression increases during a struggle, a movement’s likelihood of success decreases accordingly. Typically, media coverage of a struggle at this stage will reinforce the conventional wisdom by reporting on the use of violence as an effort by the repressor to ‘‘establish normalcy’’ or ‘‘generate stability,’’ as opposed to widening the lens and acknowledging both the underlying reasons for resistance and that resistance perseveres despite the violence. Together, these phenomena run the risk of undermining the morale of members of a movement and diminishing the enthusiasm behind shows of

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solidarity. In other words, misconceptions about the effectiveness of violence can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy in the context of a struggle. Correspondingly, the role of nonviolent skills—the ability of a movement and its activists to organize, create, and disseminate a message; strategize, train, and promote nonviolent discipline; and select and implement tactics— is frequently downplayed in our collective understanding of nonviolent resistance. Even today, half a century after the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, the roles that strategy and discipline played in that struggle are generally regarded as less significant than the contributions of key U.S. opinion leaders and institutions that helped usher in political change. Most American history books emphasize the roles of Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) and the Civil Rights Acts as the key turning points in the struggle, rather than focusing on the significant contributions of skilled, disciplined students and activists from Nashville to Montgomery to Selma. Perhaps the biggest danger of this conventional wisdom is that it presupposes that power (and therefore change) comes from the top down. But if any wisdom can be gleaned from the cases of India, Poland, South Africa, Serbia, the Philippines, and other 20th-century examples, it is that power is most accurately understood as a bottom-up phenomenon and that even in the most repressive circumstances, a nonviolent victory is possible. In every one of the cases mentioned above, observers of the struggle from both the inside and outside initially predicted failure due to unfavorable conditions. For example, conditions of extreme structural racism in South Africa and a lack of civil society in Poland prompted many to proclaim: ‘‘It could never happen here.’’ Their reasoning is understandable. Every group of people living under a repressive and violent set of conditions believes their situation to be unique, and in many respects they are correct. However, opponents and victims of repressive regimes also have one important thing in common, which can (and this author would argue, should) be used by movements against their opponents: Violence, as an instrument of control, has a very simple and predictable dynamic. Violence, according to Hannah Arendt, is simply a tool of control (not a force in itself) and thus only works when people obey: when security forces—or those whose job it is to carry out the orders of a repressive regime—agree to use violence against other human beings. However, as Arendt argued: ‘‘where commands are no longer obeyed, the means of violence are of no use.’’2 Therefore, if a movement is skilled enough to both reduce fear on the part of its members and simultaneously transform the perspective of those responsible for using the violence against the people, the opponent will quickly discover that violence is no longer an effective means of control. The cases above, as well as the cases that are the focus of this essay, tell us that if structural conditions were the only—or even the most

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important—variables in a movement’s ability to achieve its goals, we would have no way to explain the success of many contemporaneous movements other than to consider those successes (as media often do) to be ‘‘accidents of history.’’ To frame those victories as such, however, is not only inaccurate, it is irresponsible to the larger goal of advancing knowledge. A sophisticated understanding of strategy is critical to a movement’s success. Unfortunately, without some understanding of the explicit links between nonviolent skills and outcomes, this knowledge is likely to be underappreciated by everyone from activists to journalists to academics. An important counter-example to the conventional wisdom regarding this question is the case of the Iranian Women’s Movement generally, and the One Million Signatures campaign specifically. If repressive structural conditions were the determining factor, the Iranian Women’s Movement would never have been formed, much less have celebrated any victories. Although the movement is operating in conditions of extreme repression and a very limited amount of political space, its relative success, in comparison to other contemporary and former movements in more democratic societies, is both remarkable and instructive. In this chapter, I will give background information on both the women’s movement in Iran and the U.S.-based group Codepink: Women for Peace and describe the parameters of the ‘‘skills versus conditions’’ debate on nonviolent action. I will then compare the strategic and tactical successes and failures of the Iranian Women’s Movement to Codepink to assess whether structural conditions or nonviolent skills are the bigger contributors to the success or failure of a movement struggling for freedom or rights.

DOES REPRESSION ‘‘WORK’’ IN IRAN? Over the past decade, Iran is one of several Islamic countries that has been the subject of a persistent stream of cultural stereotyping and media attention from the West.3 Hence, it is necessary to identify and dismantle the specific misconceptions about nonviolent action in Iran to understand the movement’s pervasiveness. First, a widely held belief exists regarding tyrannies in general, and Iran in particular, that violent repression on the part of the regime is indicative of strength. However, in Iran, as with other regimes engaged in ongoing conflict with a widespread civil resistance, the use of violence should be taken as a sign of desperation.4 When an oppressor finds itself resorting to draconian measures to suppress the voice of its own people, even as an international audience watches in horror, it is a sign that the regime believes it is facing an opponent of potentially enormous power. Violence is a last resort, even for a

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tyrant, because the cost of using it can be devastating to a regime’s legitimacy. Hannah Arendt wrote: ‘‘In a head-on clash between violence (a statesponsored military) and power (mass civil resistance), the outcome is hardly in doubt.’’ But, she continues, although violence can temporarily disable the momentum of power, ‘‘it is utterly incapable of creating it.’’5 Since violence is purely a destructive force, while mass civil resistance has the potential to be a creative force, each use of violence by the Islamic regime against the movement erodes the political authority of the regime, thereby strengthening the case for an alternative source of power. When martyrs are created (for example, ‘‘Neda,’’ whose death transformed her into the face of the Green Revolution and the significance of women to that struggle), internal or external parties, previously on the sidelines, are often galvanized to action. Potentially, each time the regime represses, it undermines its own power while it simultaneously helps to recruit new members to the resistance. A related misconception is that because we can’t see the movement, it is presumed the movement no longer exists. However, to the contrary, the leadership of a strategic movement understands that mass protests and rallies are only one, albeit the most visible, tactic among a menu of options available to a nonviolent civil resistance campaign. Successful movements are able to anticipate and prepare for the inevitable brutality of a regime like the Iranian Islamic Republic. These skilled leaders adopt lower-risk actions that take individuals out of harm’s way but still allow the movement to sustain both their morale and momentum. Violence itself becomes a victim of the rule of diminishing marginal returns.

NONVIOLENT SKILLS VERSUS STRUCTURAL CONDITIONS: WHICH FACTORS DETERMINE SUCCESS? As mentioned above, an emerging theme in the literature on nonviolent action is the identification of the factors most helpful for the long-term success of a movement. These factors are typically divided into two categories: structural conditions and nonviolent skills. Structural conditions are those that potentially hinder a movement’s traction (for example, ethnic divisions, cultural passivity, economic hardship) and those that promote it (such as existence of a civil society, economic stability, recent history of democracy). According to Peter Ackerman, there are three categories of ‘‘skills’’ common to nonviolent movements: those that contribute to the creation and maintenance of a sustained resistance to oppressive rule, those that contribute to the movement’s ability to marshal resources to engage in the widest possible menu of nonviolent tactics, and those that maximize disruption of an unjust order while maintaining nonviolent discipline.6 In a paper for the

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Oxford Conference on Civil Resistance in 2007, Ackerman emphasized the importance of understanding the role of nonviolent skills to the success or failure of a struggle. He wrote: I come out clearly but not exclusively in favor of the importance of skills over conditions. While this violates the conventional wisdom, I hold this view more strongly today than at any previous time during my 30 years of studying civil resistance. As the pace of change accelerates in a world with fewer boundaries on the movement of people and ideas, every form of human endeavor must adapt or falter. Those waging civil resistance are not exempt from the necessity of mastering the best practices in the form of conflict they have chosen. And regimes do not get a free pass: they too must improve their game, or they will lose.7

Although an emphasis on skills demands more from the observer, not to mention the activist, it also, as Ackerman noted, has the potential to shift the balance of power, actual and perceived, in a nonviolent struggle, both from the lens of the movement and the opponent. Focusing on the characteristics and ‘‘best practices’’ of a movement rather than exogenous conditions that cannot be altered by the movement also provides a more nuanced and precise understanding of the dynamics involved in the interactions between those doing the repressing and those resisting it.

BACKGROUND ON THE IRANIAN WOMEN’S MOVEMENT AND CODEPINK: WOMEN FOR PEACE These two cases were chosen for their comparability in that they are both large-scale movements by women against the unjust policies of their own governments. Both groups attempt to mobilize and gain the sympathy of the general population in their societies and both claim to use only nonviolent means to achieve their ends.8 It is somewhat imprecise to talk about ‘‘the’’ Iranian Women’s Movement because in fact women’s rights activists and Iranian women who are human or civil rights activists are found across a number of groups and organizations that vary in their objectives, tactics, and ideology. For example, there are women-led groups in Iran that exclusively work to promote workers’ rights and others that focus solely on repealing the law that calls for compulsory veiling. But although some variance is characteristic of their objectives, the groups and activists are united by one overarching goal: to achieve greater gender equality in Iran. There is some disagreement as to the specific genesis of the contemporary Women’s Movement, but it is widely understood that demands for gender

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equality in Iran have a rich history that stretches back at least to the Constitutional Revolution of 1910. Conventional wisdom now seems to accept that the 1979 Revolution marked a turning point in the mobilization of women for equal rights in Iran. On March 8, 1979,9 there was a violent crackdown against nonviolent protests against both the compulsory wearing of the hajib and other facets of Islamic law that were widely viewed as intolerably oppressive to women, namely, the practices of polygamy and stoning. It was in the early 1980s that martyrs’ wives began vocally demanding equal rights from the Islamic state. After a relative quiet among women’s rights activists in the 1990s, there was a rebirth of activism in the early 2000s that was animated by several simultaneous forces: the return of international human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi to the country (a moment that was widely seen by activists and reformers as a catalyst for potential change), growing frustration of several years of ‘‘reform’’ without genuine results, a widespread crackdown against student activists during which women were largely ignored, increasing contact with the international community that allowed for the emergence of a transnational dimension to the women’s rights movement, and a surge of nonviolent activities and tactics being implemented by eager members of the movement that subsequently helped to embolden others on the sidelines. Between 2005 and 2007, in response to the recent surge of activism, the women’s movement came under attack by the regime. Many activists were arrested, a number were reportedly tortured, and rumors of rape by security forces were widespread. Independent media outlets were shut down for their complicity with the movement. Within the official institutions, 121 defenders of women’s rights (including one male MP) were arrested and received a combined sentence of nine years for their role in supporting the movement. Additionally, more than 16,000 women were arrested by the regime for ‘‘immodest’’ dressing, and a new quota program was instituted to reduce the ratio of female university students to male students (women currently make up more than 60% of university students in Iran). The result of this wave of repression targeted at women and women’s rights defenders was the birth of the One Million Signatures campaign. The campaign stands out among other women-led campaigns for several reasons, including the breadth of its appeal and its longevity. One Million Signatures was started in mid-2006 as an effort to acquire a million signatures on a petition to the Iranian Islamic Republic demanding that it acknowledge the equal status of women under the law. In the more than three years since its birth, numerous activists linked, or in some cases, simply rumored to be linked, to the One Million Signatures campaign, including Esha Momeni, a graduate student at the University of Southern California, have been arrested, detained,

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jailed, lashed, and otherwise persecuted for their connection to the campaign. The campaign is known to be active in at least 16 of Iran’s 30 provinces. Its advocates include Iranians from all demographics including men and, in a few cases, prominent clerics such as reformist Ayatollah Yousaf Sanei. The campaign’s demands are very straightforward. Although activists have parsed the message into more specific aims such as ‘‘identifying women’s needs and priorities’’ and ‘‘promoting democratic action,’’ the overriding demand is gender equality for women.10 In the context of the Iranian Islamic Republic, this demand resonates across virtually all of the social demographics because of the inherent implication that fiqh and Shia law struggle with internal contradictions over the issue of women’s rights. Those sources of law make public claims to promote the rights and needs of women, yet engage in policies and practices that diminish the equality and quality of life under the law in Iran. The One Million Signatures campaign is explicitly clear that their demands are not in opposition to Islam but, to the contrary, are an attempt to force the regime to close the gap between the Islamic ideal and the reality. On the other side of the world exists another women-initiated and womenled social justice organization named Codepink: Women for Peace. Codepink was formed in the United States in late 2002 in response to the Bush/Cheney administration’s War on Terrorism and resulting policies. The original objective of the group was to stop the invasion of Iraq. When that goal was not manifested, the group reorganized its mission from a relatively specific antiwar message to a much broader spectrum of social justice issues. The name ‘‘Codepink’’ is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek reference to the Bush administration’s color-coded terror alert system, and members of the organization often reference the group’s desire to ‘‘wage pink for peace.’’ Codepink activists are well known for the implementation of creative, high-visibility, and occasionally outrageous tactics, many of which draw on the sexuality of the dominant membership.11 Although Codepink has chapters in approximately a dozen countries, the bulk of its activities are concentrated in the United States. As of this writing, the group’s national Web site is listing 15 priority campaigns that include a diverse array of issue areas such as Gaza, women’s rights in Afghanistan, economic recovery and health care, and environmental concerns. Additionally at the local level, chapters are encouraged to create campaigns around community issues, which means that the actual number of Codepink campaigns being implemented at any given time is virtually unknowable. A glance at the regimes and larger cultural contexts in which these two movements in Iran and the United States respectively operate is instructive in understanding the assumptions made by the structural conditions argument. Because of the relative degree of political space, economic stability,

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and overall wealth; secularism (a reasonable proxy for ethnic/religious homogeneity); a thriving civil society; and a long history of experience with democracy in the United States, reliance on the predictive capacity of structural conditions would produce an expectation of few, if any, victories for the women’s movement in Iran on the one hand and significant potential for victories by Codepink in the United States on the other. This hypothesis deserves closer examination.

CONDITIONS AND SKILLS IN IRAN AND THE UNITED STATES To effectively evaluate the relative successes of the One Million Signatures campaign versus Codepink: Women for Peace, I will consider the two areas of analysis—structural conditions and nonviolent skills—as collections of variables. The structural conditions category is comprised of several factors including a society’s economic situation, the degree of the society’s ethnic, racial, and religious homogeneity, the prevalent cultural norms, and to what degree there exists a healthy, vibrant civil society allowing political space for individuals and groups. The repressiveness of the opponent is also considered a structural condition. The nonviolent skills category is likewise comprised of several factors, including the degree of unity among both the movement’s leadership and of its stated goals, the capacity of the movement to marshal resources, the ability of the movement to identify and target its opponent’s weaknesses, and the degree to which the movement is able to maintain nonviolent discipline. On the question of cultural conditions, in Iran, there are a number of political, social, economic, and legal constraints on the ability of citizens to engage openly in civil society activities. These constraints apply to women particularly. For example, women are prohibited from engaging in social activities such as attending soccer games and singing in public. In courts of law, women’s testimony is valued as half of men’s. For example, it takes two women witnesses to counter the testimony of one male witness. Additionally, women are compelled to seek and receive permission from males (husbands, fathers, or brothers) for a number of activities, including marriage. There is also structural inequality in that there is no sanction prohibiting institutional gender discrimination. Chillingly, some still tolerate honor killings, domestic violence, and even the occasional stoning of women who’ve been accused of crimes such as adultery. And politically, while Iran appears to be relatively progressive among Islamic theocracies, in that women have the right to vote, a reasonably high literacy rate at 70 percent, and make up the majority of university students at more than 60 percent, it is forbidden for women to

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serve as regime president, as Supreme Leader, on the assembly of experts, or even as a judge. In contrast, the structural conditions in the United States are closer to the ideal. There is an open, thriving civil society with a significant degree of political space in which groups may operate. Cultural norms (in spirit, if not always in practice) reflect a strong emphasis on values such as participation, dialogue, and political tolerance. Also, the relative wealth and economic stability of the United States and the presence of a rule of law12 help moderate public passion and opinion and make the act of engaging in nonviolent resistance against authorities less risky. In principle, democratic society generally, and American democracy specifically, is characterized by a series of institutional mechanisms through which citizens can process grievances and actualize the notion of democracy as people power. Additionally, from the lens of a women’s rights organization, Codepink also has the advantage of functioning in an environment where there is legal and political equality between the sexes. One could argue that there is no place where systemic changes are potentially more responsive to the strategies of nonviolent struggle than the United States. In terms of results, however, Codepink in the United States has seen far fewer successes (in both the relative and absolute senses) than the Iranian Women’s Movement. Although they have been in existence for nearly seven years, there are very few campaigns over which Codepink has been able to claim victory. One explanation for the difference is tactical. The women’s movement in Iran has been clever about using ‘‘dilemma actions’’ against the regime. A dilemma action puts the opponent in the unwelcome position of having to choose between two bad options, either of which the movement can claim as a victory. For example, during a 2006 World Cup qualifying match at Tehran University, a large group of women staged a sit-in at the stadium (recall that women are forbidden under fiqh law from attending public events). A few of the women actually managed to break through the stadium barricades and get into the bleachers, where they were captured on film by the BBC and other international media. This put the regime into the position of having to choose between forcibly removing the women, which would diminish the regime’s political legitimacy in the eyes of the international audience, or allowing them to stay, which would diminish the regime’s moral authority in the eyes of its own more devout citizens. Ultimately, Ahmadinejad had the women removed, but also subsequently had the policy changed. Although his public justification was sexist, as he argued that the presence of women at the stadiums would keep the matches cleaner and more civil, it was also a clear-cut victory for the women of Iran.13

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Additionally, the movement has shown skill and tactical innovation in its use of blogging, international coalition-building, and their ability to come up with low-risk, low-visibility, but high-impact actions such as asking women to push the hajib a few inches back on their head as a statement against the regime’s policy. The tactic is effective because it is very low-risk in that it comes with a high degree of plausible deniability, but when applied en masse, has a powerful symbolic effect, especially in emboldening members of the movement itself. The movement has also been strategic in publicly claiming each victory and keeping their Web site and network updated with stories of those successes. Repression and violence are only effective when people fear them. As the events of the Green Revolution and since have demonstrated, the Iranian regime should no longer assume that the threat of violence will permit them to ‘‘restore normalcy’’ in a context where people have collectively withdrawn their consent for the ruling elite and where resistance goes on despite the threat of brutal repression. In fact, Iranian Nobel Laureate and international human rights advocate Shirin Ebadi asserts, each act of repression now serves as a recruitment tool for the movement in Iran. ‘‘I do not agree that repression can lead to the death of the movement,’’ says Ebadi. ‘‘For every woman arrested, 10 more replace them. If the foundations [of a strategic movement] are laid correctly,’’ argues Ebadi, ‘‘repression makes a movement stronger.’’14 In contrast, the leadership of Codepink has been arguably less strategic in their choice of tactics. Although they generally implement high-visibility actions (such as staging a loud protest during a congressional hearing in the hope of disrupting the proceedings), the tactics of Codepink tend to alienate, rather than win the sympathy of, the larger audience. Even the most politically progressive public officials have reached their saturation point with Codepink’s tactics. The following is excerpted from an article that appeared on Salon.com in March 2009 in reference to the events at the congressional hearings for AIG, which at the time was under investigation for fraud and misuse of stockholder funds: By now, the anti-war group’s ritual appearances [at congressional hearings] have evolved into a fairly predictable—and, frankly, fairly boring—cycle. They show up (dressed in pink, natch), make some noise for a bit, then get kicked out. There are sitcoms that are more spontaneous. [Rep. Barney Frank, arguably the most liberal member of the House of Representatives] was forced to stop Geithner’s opening statement to address the protesters, and he made it clear how he felt. ‘‘Will you please act your age back there? Stop playing with that sign. If you have no greater powers of concentration, then you leave the room,’’ the congressman said. ‘‘We’re trying to have a serious discussion which will

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include, as you understand, a lot of criticism. We really need people to grow up.’’ Finally, the congressman offered Codepink members a solid bit of political wisdom: ‘‘I do not know how you think you advance any cause to which you might be attached by this kind of silliness.’’15

Representative Frank’s comments seem to reflect a larger reality about the inability of Codepink’s leadership to strategically adapt their tactics to maximize the structural conditions in which they operate. In contrast to the relative successes in Iran, where the One Million Signatures campaign has achieved transnational status and the Women’s Movement has effectively forced the hand of the regime on many issues (and who was—not insignificantly—a major component of the Green Revolution uprising in the summer of 2009), Codepink appears strategically and tactically unimpressive. In terms of specific strategic and tactical weaknesses that reflect a less refined set of skills, Codepink is relatively incoherent in their messaging and demands. With dozens of campaigns ongoing, it is not clear to the membership where to focus their energy and attention. Additionally, while the actions are provocative, they appear to be short-term and mostly ad hoc, rather than systematic parts of a long-term strategic plan. There is also arguably a failure to adapt by Codepink. After the 2006 congressional elections in which the Democratic Party won back the majorities in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, there was an opportunity for social justice groups like Codepink to engage in a more strategic targeting of Democrats in power; however, the overwhelming majority of their actions continued to focus on the Bush/Cheney presidential administration.16 Most significantly perhaps is Codepink’s general lack of unity over multiple areas of organization and content. For example, regarding membership, there is still disagreement between key members of the group’s leadership as to whether and to what degree men are permitted to participate in the group. On the questions of objectives and vision, there is no set of clear, precise demands, but rather a long list of somewhat vague goals embedded in broad symbolic messages. Taking the view of a policy maker, it is unclear precisely what Codepink would like to see happen on any particular issue or policy. In terms of media and communications, there is (in stark contrast to the One Million Signatures campaign, which has demonstrated exceptional adeptness in this category) a lack of message coordination between the various chapters’ leadership and the national leadership as to the group’s major priorities. From the lens of media messaging, the group’s messages appear to be often disjointed and even inconsistent. And perhaps most disturbingly, Codepink has been unable (or perhaps unwilling) to maintain strict nonviolent discipline in

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the implementation of its tactics. The use of psychologically violent images and slogans and frequent use of intimidating tactics is concerning from both a principled and pragmatic nonviolence standpoint. Strategically, it would seem that the women of Codepink have some things to learn from the women of the One Million Signatures campaign.

CONCLUSIONS In Iran, although there has been significant repression and backlash against the Women’s Movement since 2005, there is also evidence of its efficacy. The movement’s strategy of responding to repression by adapting a more defensive and strength-building approach has resulted in more legitimacy for the movement and its objectives. For Codepink, in the United States, the structural conditions could hardly be more ideal, but these conditions do not guarantee the success of a movement or its campaigns. Codepink’s tactics are creative, and the group has shown enormous cleverness in coming up with symbols and slogans (and by extension, a recognizable brand), but there are simply too many campaigns going on simultaneously. Furthermore, Codepink lacks a unifying message and unity among the leadership on several organizational issues, including of whom the membership demographic should consist. The preceding shortcomings have resulted in fatigue on the part of the members and redundancy in the campaigns and tactics, which has the consequence of undermining the legitimacy of both the group and its objectives. These two cases highlight the critical nature of long-term strategy and planning and the cultivation of nonviolent skills and capacities to the success of a movement, and demonstrate that, even under ideal conditions, failure is still an option. Seen side by side, the cases of Iran and Codepink provide support for the hypothesis that there are no structural conditions that themselves are sufficient to produce success, and conversely, that even under conditions of severe repression, there can be successes. This suggests support for the corollary hypothesis that there are no structural conditions—even severe repression—that are themselves prohibitive to the success of a nonviolent movement. Recently, Stephan and Chenoweth produced a study that provided powerful empirical support for the argument that violent movements are significantly less likely to achieve their objectives than strategic nonviolent movements.17 So not only is the continued under-emphasis on nonviolent skills by scholars, activists, and journalists less precise and more likely to produce erroneous conclusions, but in practice—as scholars and advocates of nonviolence and peace cultures—we have a demonstrated incentive to

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refine and evolve our knowledge of strategic nonviolent action and the skills that accompany it.

NOTES 1. Joshi, 1998. 2. Arendt, 1969. 3. Although this unfortunate trend did not begin with George W. Bush’s identification of Iran as a member of the ‘‘axis of evil’’ in his State of the Union address in 2002, that speech undoubtedly served to consolidate the already pervasive misconceptions held by Western publics. 4. For an earlier version of these observations, see Boaz, 2009. 5. Arendt. 6. Ackerman, 2007. 7. Ackerman, 3. 8. This author has some reservations about the claim that Codepink is strictly a nonviolent movement. Several of the commonly used actions, including what is known as a ‘‘die-in,’’ are intended to apply a form of psychological violence to the target (and by extension, the general audience) in the hopes of provoking a response. Of course, Codepink is hardly the only social justice group to use psychologically violent tactics, and the approach (and assumption that this category of violence is somehow less violent) is also frequently seen on the right. Anti-abortion protestors who force images of aborted fetuses on passers-by is another example. 9. March 8th is now celebrated globally as International Women’s Day. 10. Change for Equality. 11. For example, it was common to see Codepink members at anti-war rallies between 2003 and 2006 wearing a provocative women’s garment (such as a slip) with phrases written across them in bold lettering. One seen at the September 2005 rally and march in Washington, D.C., pronounced ‘‘NO PEACE, NO PU**Y!’’ 12. I recognize that this is a contentious statement in the context of the postBush/Cheney environment and in the era of the Patriot Act and other policies that both restricted individual rights in the United States and created new and more profound political divisions. That being said, despite the arguably profound regression of democracy during the presidency of George W. Bush, the United States is still significantly more free and open than Iran in every category where structural conditions are thought to matter. 13. Unsurprisingly, the Guardian Council later overruled this decision, but it is still considered a victory by the movement. 14. Personal communication. Author’s interview with Shirin Ebadi, Naropa University, Boulder, CO, October 9, 2009. 15. Koppelman, 2009. 16. Codepink did target a few individual Democrats, namely, Senator Hillary Clinton, during this time, but it was not part of a coordinated strategy. 17. Stephan and Chenoweth, 2008.

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T H E 1 9 9 1 G U L F WA R A F T E R M AT H

AND

Stephen Zunes

A little more than a decade prior to the massive mobilization against the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an anti-war movement struggled to prevent the first war against Iraq. This relatively brief and decisive war, launched in January 1991, was far more popular among the American public than the invasion and occupation begun in 2003, and it seemed to marginalize the anti-war movement, thereby making it difficult during the subsequent years to stop the United States from launching two wars in the greater Middle East in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy. There were a number of factors that made the peace movement appear weak and lacking popular support at the time of the Gulf War—a highly effective propaganda barrage by the first Bush administration, the censorship of the press at the war front, the deliberate falsification of reports from the battlefield to exaggerate military successes and underestimate civilian casualties, the low number of American casualties, the short duration of the war, and the nefarious nature of the Iraqi regime. Many Americans were uncomfortable opposing the government in wartime. In addition, the media

This article is an updated revision of an earlier article by the same author that appeared in Arab Studies Quarterly.

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played largely a cheerleading role, with opponents of the war—including Middle Eastern experts—largely ignored as analysts and notably absent from network talk shows. Pro-war sentiment was stage-managed from the highest level and was no match for an underfunded grassroots movement.

WEAKNESSES OF THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT There were also some serious errors that cost the peace movement some support: One was the fact that peace activists largely shared with most Americans a profound ignorance of the Middle East, Islam, and the Arab world. For example, during the months preceding the outbreak of hostilities, Time observed that ‘‘The public response resembles a massive cram session, as earnest people try to understand the complex forces at work and calculate the potential costs, human and material, of going to war.’’1 One result was a series of tactical errors: for example, many anti-war activists focused on the precedent of Vietnam, despite great differences in the two situations. As with the old adage about generals, anti-war activists also tend to fight the last war, often ignoring the unique aspects of an unfolding crisis. For example, Vietnam did not have the capability of threatening large populations beyond their borders, as did Iraq; thereby the Bush Administration could raise a more credible—though still questionable—specter of further aggression.2 In Vietnam, the United States fought a popular nationalist struggle utilizing guerrilla warfare in a mountainous jungle terrain. The ground offensive by U.S. forces in the Gulf War was in a flat desert area against a conventional army in a territory that was either uninhabited or inhabited by an occupied population supportive of their liberation by U.S. forces. Another error came in emphasizing the potential of large American casualties in an era when the high-tech equipment of American forces allowed for ‘‘kill ratios’’ so favorable to allied forces. Indeed, the lack of American casualties proved the movement’s undoing. Historically, what has traditionally turned Americans against wars have been high U.S. casualties, particularly with no victory in sight. Total U.S. combat deaths in the Gulf War were less than 150 and there was little question that the war would be over within weeks. Still another problem came with the peace movement’s late start in opposing the preparation for war. The initial deployment of troops to Saudi Arabia, which began in August 1990 soon after the Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait, involved the pre-positioning of hundreds of thousands of U.S. forces in preparation for an offensive military operation. However, this deployment—labeled Operation Desert Shield—was portrayed as a defensive operation against possible further Iraqi aggression. Though some critics raised questions regarding the apparent absence of any real Iraqi threat to

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Saudi Arabia, and how the buildup of foreign troops on Iraq’s border resulted in hardening the position of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the deployment received near-universal support from the Democratic-controlled Congress as well as from such progressive political figures as the Reverends Jesse Jackson and William Sloane Coffin, leftist intellectual Todd Gitlin, and socialist Congressman Bernie Sanders. Outside of some traditional pacifist groups, such as the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the anti-war movement did not respond, in large part, until November, when the Bush Administration went public with its intention to launch a war. Many peace activists also fell into unfairly stereotyping the Kuwaitis as primarily a group of oil-rich sheiks not worthy of concern. Actually, most rich Kuwaitis fled south the day of the invasion. Those who suffered the most under the Iraqi occupation were the less well-off Kuwaitis who stayed behind as well as the large numbers of Palestinian and other foreign workers. Peace activists also tended to ignore the fact that, though the Sabah dynasty had many faults, Kuwait had made more advances toward political pluralism than any other country in the Gulf region and that the human rights situation under the Iraqi occupation was qualitatively worse than what was experienced under the monarchy. Some peace activists blithely accepted the Baghdad government’s myth that Kuwait was historically part of Iraq. Indeed, given the propensity of the U.S. government in the preceding years to mislead the American public regarding the nature of the Sandinista government of Nicaragua and other Third World adversaries of the U.S. government, many peace activists were understandably skeptical about the reports of atrocities by the Iraqi government or of its totalitarian nature. In this case, however, despite occasional hyperbole,3 most of these reports were true. There were also some cases of Israel-bashing, with some war opponents even going as far as insisting that Israel was the cause of the conflict and that it was the pro-Israel lobby that led to the U.S. decision to launch the war. Though many criticisms of Israeli government policies and U.S. support for the Israeli occupation were and are valid, the United States had its own reasons for fighting the Gulf War, regardless of what Israel’s rightwing leadership saw as being to their benefit. American interests in the region’s oil and the establishment of a permanent military presence predate the establishment of modern Israel. And the decision to go to war in this case was far beyond the reach of any single lobbying group, no matter how influential. The U.S. refusal to consider Iraqi demands to link Kuwait’s freedom from Iraqi occupation to Palestine’s freedom from Israeli occupation came not as a result of Israeli pressure, but because the United States has traditionally supported allies such as Morocco, Indonesia, or Israel in their occupation and suppression of weaker neighbors if they feared

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independence by the captive nation could be potentially destabilizing to the region. The U.S. refusal to consider Iraq’s offer for the establishment of a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East was not because of Israel’s unwillingness to eliminate its nuclear arsenal and thereby forfeit its nuclear monopoly, but because the United States has generally opposed the establishment of nuclear-free zones anywhere. It is also noteworthy that the majority of Jewish members of Congress voted against the war, which is more than can be said for its Christian members. Some far-right groups, including the Liberty Lobby, the John Birch Society, followers of Lyndon LaRouche, and independent rightists known for paranoid conspiracy theories joined in with anti-war efforts, and were at times allowed into coalition efforts by those unaware of their anti-Semitic and far-right ideologies. (The LaRouche Movement had actually developed close ties with the Iraq’s Ba’ath party, with which it shares an essentially fascist ideology.)4 Not surprisingly, such alliances harmed the credibility of the peace movement. There were also serious divisions within the left. Some prominent figures of the American left actually supported the war.5 More seriously, however, were divisions within the anti-war movement itself. Two coalitions organized separate national demonstrations in Washington, D.C., on two separate dates in late January 1991, after the war was under way. The primary differences revolved around the preferred date of the rally as well as on the question as to whether to condemn Iraq’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait along with the U.S-led war. Arguing that Iraqi aggression was not the cause, but the excuse, for U.S. intervention, the more radical of the two coalitions, which organized the January 19 rally, argued that any denunciation of Iraq would confuse the issue. Supporters of the January 26 rally, led by a coalition of over 400 more moderate progressive organizations, pacifist and other peace groups, and church-related organizations stressed the importance of taking a principled—as well as more politically acceptable— position condemning both Iraqi and American actions. Despite these problems, however, the anti-war movement showed some real strengths as well.

STRENGTHS OF THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT One interesting aspect of the anti-war movement was its popular appeal in areas not usually known as strongholds of dissident politics in recent decades.6 Some of the most widespread opposition was in the West and Midwest, where anti-war sentiment was strongest prior to the Cold War in the first half of the 20th century. Unlike during the Vietnam War, it was not

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hippies versus hardhats or one generation against another; indeed, the strongest anti-war sentiment was among the elderly and a far lesser proportion of the movement was made up of students. In addition, intellectuals were behind, rather than ahead, of public opinion regarding opposition to the war. Since the armed forces had a disproportionate number of people from lower-income backgrounds, students at the less prestigious universities were more likely to know someone at risk and thus more likely to oppose the conflict. One reason that the national media coverage understated the strength of anti-war sentiment was that they tended to look primarily at elite campuses and leftist white male intellectuals, and concluded that opposition was weak. Yet a decentralized populist movement organized at the grassroots, often spontaneous and improvised without sophisticated media outreach efforts, was in evidence throughout the country. Despite President George Bush’s claim that there was ‘‘no anti-war movement’’ opposing the Gulf War, hundreds of thousands of people mobilized across the country in the three months before and during the war in opposition, more than during the first three years of major U.S. combat in Vietnam. The movement was overwhelmingly nonviolent and practiced an impressive degree of internal democracy. Unlike a tiny and irresponsible fringe of the anti-Vietnam War movement, anger was reserved for the policy makers, not the individual soldiers. Unlike any previous American wars, large-scale opposition began prior to the first shot being fired. The movement was inter-generational, with new activists on the campuses joining those who had fought for peace and social justice for decades. The large gap in attitudes toward the war between men and women detected in public opinion polls stimulated a growing understanding of the role of patriarchy in war making and encouraged more leadership by women in the movement. Although it was less visible in the national demonstrations, there was impressive anti-war organizing among minority communities in both urban areas and in the rural South. Virtually all African American denominations came out against the war, in contrast to the noted lack of support among much of the black leadership of Martin Luther King’s outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War. A weak economy meant that the economic consequences of the war were more apparent to those who bore the brunt of its effects, leading to greater participation and leadership by people of color, who were particularly disturbed at the disproportionate representation of minorities on the front lines. Unlike movements concerned with Central America and Vietnam— where there was some sympathy for the other side among many peace activists—there was no sympathy for Saddam Hussein or his aggression against Kuwait. This resulted in perhaps the most genuinely anti-war movement the country had seen up to that time; there was no ideological agenda

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inspiring the protests. There was no draft, so people did not oppose the war out of concern over the prospects of being forced to participate in the fighting. There was a lot of popular support for the war, so it was certainly not fashionable to oppose it. The movement represented a very deep sense that, on both pragmatic and moral grounds, there were reasons to question war as the answer. In a dramatic shift from the 1960s, the peace movement had support immediately prior to the war from key segments of organized labor. Nine major unions, representing 6 million workers, announced their opposition in early January, prior to the outbreak of the war, a major departure from the widespread support by union leaders of the war in Vietnam.7 Hundreds of district offices from other unions also announced their opposition, often citing the disproportionate number of children of the working class in uniform.8 The opposition to the war by the majority of major Christian denominations was significant. Citing ‘‘just war’’ teachings, religious leaders observed how the Gulf War did not meet the criteria of ‘‘last resort’’ or ‘‘proportionality.’’ Every major mainline religious denomination in the country went on record opposing the war as morally unjustifiable and supported continuing sanctions. An overwhelming majority of the 300 bishops at the National Conference of Catholic Bishops supported a resolution against the war as morally wrong; by contrast, the Catholic leadership did not publicly oppose the Vietnam War until 1971.9 Eighteen prominent church leaders issued an anti-war statement that appeared in the New York Times in early January.10 Churches in several cities declared themselves sanctuaries for war resisters. The great division in public opinion prior to the war was all the more remarkable given that, while there were certainly strong arguments against the use of massive military force against Iraq, the case for the war was stronger than any U.S. intervention since World War II (the U.S. government was responding to a clear-cut case of aggression by a ruthless dictator in a region where the United States had vital interests, the United States had the support of the United Nations Security Council to use force in liberating Kuwait, the president had received an effective declaration of war by Congress, and there was little risk of a nuclear exchange). The censorship of media reports from the battle area, the threats and harassment against activists, and the enormous propaganda machinery mobilized to support U.S. policy were all predictable responses to a serious popular challenge to the war-making power of the U.S. government. If the peace movement had not posed a serious challenge to U.S. policy, the Bush Administration and its supporters would not have gone to such extraordinary efforts to counter it. As a result, there are many reasons to believe that anti-war sentiment was seen by those in positions of political power as a force with which to be reckoned.

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THE DEFEAT OF THE PEACE MOVEMENT Public opinion polls indicated that support of the war was ‘‘a mile wide and an inch deep’’—people wanted to believe the government was right, even if on further reflection of the facts, many came out in opposition. Such further reflection was difficult, however, since they received only heavily censored news from the war front and a propaganda barrage from the government and media. Meanwhile, in Washington, even liberal Democrats went along with the policy once the war started, showing the same moral cowardice they did during much of the Vietnam War and would subsequently in supporting the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The fact that the war was successful militarily made it all the more difficult to question whether it was right. Todd Gitlin, a University of California sociologist and former leader of Students for a Democratic Society, has observed that there are three conditions necessary for dissent to have an effective impact: Number 1, the elites have to divide. Number 2, people have to feel there’s a politically convincing alternative. Number 3, people have to feel the war is going badly on its own terms. Because Americans love a winner. And, by the same token, are squeamish about a loser.

The first two conditions existed between President Bush’s November 8 announcement of a buildup for offensive military action and the start of the bombing on January 16. But once the war began, Gitlin observed, ‘‘these two conditions evaporated overnight. The choice wasn’t no war or war anymore. . . . The elites lined up for the war.’’11 Americans tend to be notoriously impatient with U.S. military intervention. Wars that drag on with no end in sight, such as Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, or the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, become unpopular. Those that are quick and decisive, such as the 1989 invasion of Panama, the 1983 invasion of Grenada, the bombings of Libya during the intervening years, and the Gulf War, receive overwhelming popular support. After the large demonstrations in Washington, the anti-war movement focused on teach-ins and other community education efforts. However, by this time, most Americans were either enthused at or resigned to the fact that the U.S. government would prosecute the war as it saw fit regardless of public opinion. The February 21 campus days of protests were widespread but sparsely attended, reflecting the burn-out and frustration of war opponents. The widespread civil disobedience in the initial days of the war became seen increasingly as excessive and inappropriate. Saddam Hussein’s public announcements praising the anti-war movement further harmed its credibility. By the end of the second week of the war, a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll

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asked respondents ‘‘Have you gained respect for anti-war demonstrators, lost respect, or is your opinion unchanged?’’ Sixty percent said they had lost respect, while only 11 percent said they had gained respect.12

POST-WAR ISSUES Though the traditional pacifist groups, such as the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the American Friends Service Committee, continued to address the situation in Iraq—particularly the devastating humanitarian crises resulting from the war and the ongoing sanctions—such efforts failed to mobilize much popular support. The leftist group International ANSWER also played a major leadership role opposing U.S. policy during the interwar period, but the effective control of the organization by the Trotskyist Workers World Party limited the scope of its appeal. While the initial popular outcry against the slaughter of Iraqi Kurds by the Baghdad regime in response to the post-war uprising in March of 1991 resulted in the U.S.-led humanitarian effort known as Operation Provide Comfort and the establishment of UN-sponsored safe areas, there was little opposition to the open U.S. backing of subsequent Turkish repression of its own Kurdish minority or incursions into the UN safe areas. Similarly, periodic bombing raids by the U.S. air force in Iraq in the dozen years leading up to the 2003 invasion met with little organized opposition. Opposition to the Clinton administration’s preparation for a major bombing campaign against Iraq in 1998 did lead to some protests, such as the nationally televised disruption of a ‘‘town hall meeting’’ at Ohio State University in which Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and other administration officials tried to make the case for resuming military action. Despite this, there was widespread congressional support for the four-day bombing campaign in December of that year known as Operation Desert Fox. With a Democratic president facing off against impeachment efforts of dubious merit by right-wing Republicans, many liberal activists were reluctant to denounce President Bill Clinton for this illegal and counterproductive act of aggression. The Gulf War highlighted other problems with U.S. Middle East policy and the failure of the peace movement to address them. Although peace and human rights activists had made U.S. support of undemocratic governments in Latin America and Southeast Asia more difficult politically, there had been little domestic opposition to U.S. support of similar rulers in the Middle East outside of concern over these countries’ (often exaggerated) potential threat to Israel. The United States has provided well over $120 billion in arms to the Middle East since the Gulf War, a full 80 percent of the arms going into the region, and virtually all of it

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going to regimes that engaged in gross and systematic human rights violations. Public opinion polls in the United States have long indicated widespread and growing opposition to the high levels of arms transfers to the Middle East, yet this continued to be a low priority for peace activists. The Clinton administration, which came into office less than two years after the Gulf War, continued pursuing the militaristic policies of previous administrations, including arms transfers and other support to repressive Arab regimes and unconditional support for the Israeli occupation. Such policies, along with the egregious humanitarian consequences of ongoing sanctions against Iraq and the permanent stationing of U.S. forces in the Gulf region, were among the grievances cited by Osama bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda leaders at the time of the 9/11 attacks. Despite the moral bankruptcy and counterproductive strategic value of such policies in the aftermath of the Gulf War, there were no demonstrations with tens of thousands of people in Washington, no major sit-ins at congressional offices, few folk singers and other cultural workers who addressed the issue, and few other activities indicative of a popular mobilization. There was nothing comparable to protests waged against the U.S. policies toward Central America or Southern Africa during the previous decade. Had the peace movement continued to be engaged in the months and years following the Gulf War addressing these issues to a sufficient degree to change U.S. policy, the 9/11 tragedy and subsequent wars might have been prevented. The failure to do so was not just a reflection of the moribund state of the peace movement in the post–Gulf War and post–Cold War period. Even during peak periods of the peace movement in the 1980s, when the Reagan administration was supporting such controversial Israeli actions as the invasion of Lebanon and suppression of the first intifada, the peace movement failed to launch major mobilizations. Nor was there much activity in opposition to U.S. support of Morocco’s conquest and occupation of Western Sahara and the dramatic increase in military aid to the autocratic Gulf monarchies. Such a reaction, or lack thereof, was indicative of some larger problems that the American peace movement has had historically in addressing Middle Eastern issues. At the root of the confusion of the American peace movement on the Middle East has been the issue of Israel and Palestine.

ADDRESSING ISRAEL/PALESTINE Though the Israeli-Palestinian conflict never affected American peace activists with the same sense of urgency that came with direct large-scale U.S. military involvement as in the Gulf War, it has long been recognized that the

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United States has played a direct role in exacerbating the conflict though its contradictory role as chief mediator and the principal military, economic, and diplomatic supporter of the occupying power. Despite this, up through the 1990s, the peace movement had done little to challenge U.S. policy. As with the major peace issues of the 1980s—the nuclear freeze and U.S. intervention in Central America—the peace movement’s support of an end of the Israeli occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel has been backed by a majority of Americans, including most American Jews. Opinion polls showed considerable support for a two-state solution long before the U.S. government formally adopted such a position in 2004. Sizable majorities also supported linking U.S. military and economic aid to both Israel and Arab states to human rights concerns. Very few prominent American political figures supported such progressive positions at the time of the Gulf War, however. The first major peace group to directly address the Arab-Israeli conflict was the American Friends Service Committee, beginning in the early 1970s, which emphasized the need for an end to the Israeli occupation and the recognition of both Israeli and Palestinian national rights, a position soon embraced by other pacifist groups, such as the War Resisters League and the Fellowship of Reconciliation. By the 1980s, a wider array of peace groups, such as SANE/Freeze and the Mobilization for Survival, were adopting similar positions, though the AFSC was the only organization to make the Middle East a major focus of its program work. A number of smaller organizations, focused specifically on the Middle East but allied in their approach with the broader peace movement, came into being during this period. Several liberal Christian, Jewish, and Arab-American groups also began to advocate positions that similarly supported the national rights of both Palestinians and Israelis to self-determination and for direct negotiations between the major parties to the conflict. During the late 1980s, activist groups placed popular referenda on the ballot in several jurisdictions calling for the recognition of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. These were part of the use of voter initiatives during this period to mobilize support for other progressive causes, such as the nuclear freeze, reductions in military spending, an end to U.S. intervention in Central America, and sanctions against South Africa. To a greater degree than these other efforts, however, the organized opposition was stronger, better financed, and received the backing of a broad spectrum of elected officials. As a result, most of these initiatives failed, even in progressive urban areas as San Francisco. Across the bay in the university town of Berkeley— which had established sister city relationships with a black South African township, a Nicaraguan city, and a town in a guerrilla-controlled section of

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El Salvador—an initiative to establish a similar relationship with a Palestinian refugee camp was soundly defeated. Another effort involved efforts to influence the Democratic Party platform. At the 1988 Democratic convention, a minority plank was proposed calling for a two-state solution, with the language taken directly from a 1985 New York Times ad by dozens of prominent liberal Jews, but Democratic party leaders refused to allow it to even come for a vote. There were a series of battles at several state conventions in subsequent years, some of which were successful, but all of which were eventually overturned as a result of efforts by party leaders and powerful special interest groups. Despite this increased concern over Middle Eastern issues, some peace groups, particularly those involved in the electoral arena, continued to refuse to support pro-peace positions. For example, from its founding in 1973 until its demise in 1988, the Coalition for a New Foreign Policy was the peace movement’s leading lobbying group on Capitol Hill. However, they consistently refused to address the issues of Palestinian rights or U.S. aid to Israel. A 1981 Coalition statement re-affirmed the group’s support of the ‘‘sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence’’ of Middle Eastern states, but explicitly stated that this principle ‘‘does not necessarily apply’’ to lands seized by Israel in the 1967 war. The Coalition also refused to include Israel in their normally strict standards of linking human rights and nuclear non-proliferation issues with U.S. military aid.13 Similarly, Gretchen Eick, a former Coalition leader who became leader of National Impact, a progressive lobbying coalition that claimed to provide ‘‘leadership of peace and justice issues,’’ declared soon after the group’s founding that they also considered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ‘‘off limits.’’14 The Human Rights Political Action Committee, which raised funds for candidates based on their support of a human rights agenda in U.S. foreign policy, also made an exception regarding Israel. A number of former peace activists who subsequently held electoral office became outspoken defenders of Israeli militarism, even supporting Israel’s devastating 1982 invasion of Lebanon. As hundreds of thousands of Israelis demonstrated against the war, California State Assemblyman and former anti-Vietnam War leader Tom Hayden toured Israeli-occupied sections of Lebanon with his wife, actress/activist Jane Fonda, and both praised the massive Israeli assault.15 Similarly, Washington Mayor Marion Barry, a former leader in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, spoke at a rally sponsored by the city’s right-wing Jewish groups in support of the invasion. In return for getting Arab support for the Gulf War, President Bush organized a peace conference in Madrid in the fall of 1991, yet opposition to Palestinian statehood and the refusal to demand a withdrawal of Israeli

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occupation forces from Arab lands continued. Separate talks in Norway led to the signing of the Oslo Accords two years later, but the United States, as guarantor of the talks, was still unwilling to push Israel to make the necessary compromises for peace, and the peace movement was not strong enough or focused enough on this issue to press for a change in U.S. policy. Indeed, in the 1992 Democratic presidential primaries, much of the peace movement supported the campaign of Iowa Senator Tom Harkin who, while one of the more progressive challengers on many issues, was the most right wing on Israel and Palestine, even to the point of criticizing the Bush administration for not being anti-Palestine enough. In subsequent years, the peace movement has been challenged not just by anti-Arab sentiments among its erstwhile supporters, but from anti-Israel elements as well. Many on the left wing of the peace movement adopted a strong anti-Zionist position, calling for the dissolution of Israel as a Jewish state. Others went as far as adopting anti-Semitic positions that included grossly exaggerating alleged Jewish political and economic control of the United States. Although American peace activists have had no trouble attributing U.S. support of Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor or Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara to the exigencies of American imperialism, U.S. support of Israeli occupation forces, by contrast, has often attributed to the ‘‘Jewish lobby,’’ effectively blaming a small and historically oppressed minority group—rather than the powerful vested interests that normally dictate the direction of U.S. foreign policy— for the policies of Congress, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the president. This created a reluctance on the part of many peace activists to address U.S. policy toward Israel/Palestine for fear that it might unwittingly encourage anti-Semitism or that they themselves would be so accused. This polarization between these two extremes in the peace movement created problems: in popular movements concerned with Central America, Southern Africa, and the arms race, there was general agreement from across the broadly progressive political spectrum on what was wrong with U.S. policy and how it needed to change. On the Middle East, however, such unity was hard to find. Indeed, many peace groups demonstrated a profound reluctance to address the Middle East at all for fear of the divisiveness that could result from taking even a highly principled position. With the exception of the period surrounding the Gulf War, it was progressive Jewish and Arab-American groups that provided the most visible peace activism on the Middle East, not the mainstream peace groups, which resulted in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remaining on the fringes of popular consciousness within the peace movement. One problem facing peace activists was the perception that—because U.S. policy has always been perceived to be pro-Israel—criticism of U.S.

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policy was made to appear as criticism of Israel itself. Many on the Israeli left, however, have argued that U.S. policy is ultimately anti-Israel, since it discourages the Israeli government from making necessary compromises that would ensure peace, isolates Israel further from its Arab neighbors and the international community, and increasingly militarizes its economy at the expense of sustainable economic development. Just as the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq served to remobilize the American peace movement overall, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has finally become a major focus as well. The recognition is dawning that just as one can oppose the U.S. occupation of Iraq and not be anti-American, one can oppose the Israeli occupation and not be anti-Israel. Though the peace movement has yet to have a major impact in changing U.S. policy toward Israel and Palestine, it is indicative that in now being willing to address the conflict as a peace issue, the American peace activists movement is finally at a place where U.S. policy throughout the region can be challenged, allowing for a consistent anti-war message that had eluded the movement in previous decades.

NOTES 1. Gibbs et al., 1990. 2. Vietnam did invade Cambodia in 1979, but this move was largely supported by the Cambodians suffering under the brutally repressive Khmer Rouge regime. While this initial welcoming eventually faded, Iraq’s neighbors have never welcomed Baghdad’s military intervention. 3. One prominent case of exaggerating the perfidy of the Iraqi regime was the false testimony before Congress of Iraqi soldiers throwing babies out of cribs in the intensive care unit of a Kuwaiti hospital. 4. Chip Bertlet, Political Research Associates, Dec. 23, 1990, unpublished manuscript ‘‘Right Woos Left Over War Issue.’’ 5. These included Patrick Lacefield, a former staff member of the radical pacifist magazine Win, a leader in the Democratic Socialists of America, and editor of a popular anti-war anthology on Central America; Fred Halliday, a Marxist scholar of the Middle East and an editor of New Left Review; and, John Judis, a senior writer and editor of Socialist Revolution and In These Times. 6. For example, in late November, more than 1,000 people rallied in Missoula, Montana. In Kannapolis, N.C., a company town, a group called the Piedmont Peace Project was organized consisting of more than 500 mill workers, farmers, truck drivers, and others. There were 59 vigils seven days a week in New Hampshire, a conservative state. Organized opposition to the war was nothing like that during Vietnam. 7. The statement was issued by nine union presidents that appeared in the Washington Post. Two others added their names after the ad appeared in the January 10 edition. 8. Hinds, 1991.

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9. Ibid. 10. It is rather noteworthy that with the presiding bishop of his own denomination, Episcopal Bishop Edmond Browning, advising him against war, Bush turned to fundamentalist Southern Baptist preacher Billy Graham, a supporter of the Vietnam War and confidant of President Nixon. 11. Harris, 1991. 12. Cited in Shirbman, 1991. 13. Middle East Policy Statement, Coalition for a New Foreign Policy, Spring 1981. 14. Interview, May 1989. 15. Both Hayden and Fonda have subsequently adopted more progressive positions regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more consistent with that of American and Israeli peace groups.

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A F I NA L WO R D Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler

Like the surface of the earth itself, the prevailing war system is a relatively thin and unstable layer that effectively conceals intense energies of greater fluidity beneath its surface—energies that occasionally burst forth. Our journey through the manifold energies and projects that are represented in the chapters of these three volumes did not reveal a single, unified world peace movement but it certainly did reveal wellsprings of activity, more intense, more creative, and more widespread than one would imagine. The bubbling energies appear as contributions to a gigantic wave surging against the barriers that societies have entrenched into laws and ideologies that make inequality, exploitation, and violence appear inevitable. Slowly but with increasing likelihood, individuals and groups of individuals, facing incredibly diverse manifestations of that age-old inhumanity, are finding courage, as people have done through history, to rise up against it. But in this generation many more of us are also identifying the existing exploitative system underlying diverse violence and recognizing that this system is failing. And some are daring to view the movements toward peace, justice, and sustainability as a yet unrealized but potentially unstoppable movement. This emergence is all the more amazing as it comes on the heels of a century in which control over human identity has become all-pervasive and quite often malicious; when the war propaganda is based, ironically enough, on adaptations of Sigmund

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Freud’s theories about the power of appealing to basic needs and fears; when such propaganda hurled masses of humanity into paroxysms of anti-Semitic hatred, among other examples of targeted dehumanization; and when the self-image of human beings as ‘‘happiness machines that have become the key to economic progress’’ (to paraphrase President Hoover) came to predominate.1 The power of such manipulation and control is slowly yielding to a culture in which the better natures of people can assert themselves. One cannot review the efforts described in these volumes, and the many more that we could not include, without realizing that the wave is powerful and has not yet reached its crest. The power and impact of these healthier alternatives are evident and they are springing up everywhere. They remain seriously under-reported by the mainstream media that instead deliver a constant stream of tragedies, local and national, as though they were singular occurrences rather than looking deeply into the failures of unfettered corporate expansion and the war system. It is an ironically hopeful sign that the failures of that system are becoming apparent to people the world over, despite the impressive capacity of a powerful elite to ‘‘spin’’ the coverage. Some former powerful players of that system, some of whom appear in these pages, have recognized the failure of an unbridled quest for development and an unending search for enemies. A more heartening sign is that the activists described in the final chapter of Volume 3 do not wait for powerful officials to lead them. In ways small and large, people are devoting their creativity, their energy, their dreams, and their quest for a meaningful life to make peace a reality. One cannot come away from the story of these efforts without being heartened by the fact that so many others have stepped forward. We are resourceful and caring custodians of the force of life. The peace movement worldwide is an inchoate but irresistible force. It grows because it must prevail. And if we nurture it, it will.

NOTE 1. See the BBC documentary, Happiness Machines.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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INDEX

abolitionists: modern-day, 258–260 A-bombs, 44–45 Abrams, Herbert, 29 Abu-Nimer, Mohammed, 172 Abu Sayyaf, 327 Acheson, Dean, 46 Ackerman, Peter, 344–345, 353 active nonviolence (ANV), 318–321, 330, 331, 333, 335–335, 339; Christian methods, contemporary, 336–339; dictatorship, defying, 335–338; healing and pardoning, 338; sacredness of life, 338–339; weak and oppressed, empowering, 336–335; globalization, positive challenges of, 331; negative challenges, 330–331; in Old/New Testaments, 333–336; Israel, violence in, 334–335; peace message, Jesus, 335–336; in political democratization, 320–321; universal ethics promoted by world religions, 331–333 activism, 39, 44, 74, 86–87, 149, 289, 292–293, 298, 346, 365 Adamski, Daniel, 287 Afghanistan, 65, 69, 104, 124, 127, 133, 157, 183, 283–284, 293–294, 316, 331, 347, 360

Africa, 27, 55, 72, 79, 83–85, 89, 185, 242, 245, 253, 340, 342, 362–363, 365 agency: narrative of, 180–181 Alinsky, Saul, 79 Alpirez, Julio Roberto, 143 America Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 123 American Medical Association, 127 American Psychiatric Association, 264, 266, 269 American Psychological Association (APA), 92, 122–123, 127–136 Americas, 24, 32, 42, 60, 65, 75, 92–93, 95, 105, 137–147, 150–153, 159, 182–183, 253, 361–363, 365–366 Amnesty International, 13, 18 Anderson-Hinn, Melissa, 173, 248 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, 16, 23, 25, 28, 282 anti-Iraq War campaign, 288, 290, 301 anti-Israel policy, 365–366 anti-militaristic elements, 277, 279–281, 284 anti-Narmada dam movement, 308, 311 anti-nuclear movements, 44, 61, 288, 304–305, 307–308, 310–311, 315 anti-torture advocacy, 122, 124, 127–128, 132, 134

404

Index

anti-war, 93, 161, 265, 285, 288, 290–291, 293, 296, 305, 347, 348, 354–361, 366 anti-war movement, 93, 161, 265, 285, 290–291, 354–358, 360 apartheid, 84–85, 217 Arab, 11, 31, 69, 85, 157, 253, 354–337, 362–366 Arendt, Hannah, 342, 344 Aristiz
abal, Hector, 93, 171, 175 Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), 6 Arnold, Martin, 116, 119 Arrigo, Jean Mario, 128 Asia, 11, 68, 72, 250, 253, 287, 291–292, 317–318, 321–327, 329, 361; active nonviolence in political democratization, 320–321; beliefs and value systems for economic democratization, 322–323; context of violence and peace, 317–316; intergroup fairness, ethnic and religion, 325–327; political peacemaking, culture-embedded ways of, 324–325; psychological aspects of, 316–320; social identity and voice, claiming, 323–324; traumas, healing, 321–322 atomic bombs, 21, 37, 40, 42, 46–47 Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), 43–46, 66, 72 atomic weapons, 10, 41, 285; protest against, 279 Atunda Ayenda, 246 Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), 12 Baghdad, 95, 97–99 Balkan Peace Team (BPT), 114–115, 119 Bauer, Jack, 126 Baxter, Bob, 73 Bechtel, Riley, 72 Bechtel, Stephen D., 72–73 Bechtel Corporation, 67–69, 76–77; in Bolivia, 70–71; involvement in war, 69–70 Begg, Moazzam, 127 Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs), 133

beliefs and value systems: for economic democratization, 322–323 Bernstein, Laura, 172 Beyerle, Shaazka, 340 Bhumipol, King, 325 Black, J. Cofer, 121 Blake, Francis S., 71 Blake, Michael, 160 Bolivia, 75, 138–139, 151; Bechtel Corporation in, 70–71 bombing, 23, 37, 40, 85, 95–99, 103–104, 125, 167, 277, 360–361 Bourgeois, Roy, 92, 137–139, 141, 152 Bout, Victor, 12 Brandt, Willy, 280 Brinson, Thomas, 162 Buddhism, 289–290, 316, 320 bullying, 164, 192, 194–195 Buncombe, Andrew, 101 Burma, 9, 83, 86–87, 320; in socially responsible investing (SRI), 86–87 Burton, John, 219 Burundi, 338 Bush, George, Sr., 101 Bush, George W., 71, 121, 184, 353, 360, 364 Butler, Major Smedly, 63 California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), 86 campaigning, 51, 53–54, 56, 58, 61, 73–74, 160, 295 Canada, 7, 55, 58, 167 Carter, Jimmy, 31, 43 Casey, Jody, 161 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 29, 72, 121–123, 130, 133 Chavez, Hugo, 151 chemical weapons (CW), 9 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), 9 Chemical Weapons Treaty, 11 Cheney, Dick, 121, 124 China, 10–11, 15–17, 21, 25–26, 28, 33, 68, 82, 85, 316, 320–321, 324, 326, 341 Chipko Movement, 308, 315 Christian Children’s Fund (CCF), 237–238, 241–242

Index Christian Democratic Union (CDU), 279 Christians, 6, 301, 332, 336, 339 citizen diplomacy, 150–152; in banning landmines, 50 civil society, 26–27, 50, 54–55, 59–61, 232, 241, 278, 303, 305, 312, 342, 344, 348–349 cleansing ceremonies, 242–243 Cliburn, Justin, 93 Clinton, Bill, 361 Clinton, Hillary, 353 Codepink: Women For Peace, 340; background, 345–348; conditions and skills in, 348–352 Cohen, Sam, 43 Cold War, 5, 10, 13–14, 16–17, 20, 23–24, 54, 277, 279, 289, 316, 322, 357 Colombia, 12, 151, 175, 177, 336 combat veterans, 264–266 Commoner, Barry, 23 Community-Based Organizations (CBOs), 111 community leaders: working with, 213–214 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), 13, 23, 25–28 conflict resolution process: components of, 220 Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW), 58–59 Corporate Information Center (CIC), 80 corporate role: in global violence, 63; General Electric (GE), 64–67; Bechtel Corporation, 67–69; in Bolivia, 70–71; involvement in war, 69–70; on government and war, 73–76 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), 79, 88–89 Cortright, David, 167 Council of Europe, 133 crimes, 74, 104, 109, 126, 132, 142, 158, 171, 188, 235, 249–251, 259–260, 265, 268, 348 Croatia, 114–115, 119, 282 Cuba, 23, 120–121, 127, 133

405

Cuban Missile Crisis, 23 Czecho-Slovak Socialist Republic (CSSR), 280 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), 103–104, 107 Defense Threat Reduction Agency, 68 democracy, 7, 14, 20, 39, 42, 128–129, 138, 278–280, 282, 288, 292, 294–295, 298, 314, 340–341, 348–349 Democratic Republic of Congo, 12, 331, 338 democratization, 280, 286, 289, 293, 298, 318–320, 322, 328; economic, 322–323; political, 320–321 Desert Slaughter, 99 Desert Storm bombardment, 96, 99, 102–103 detainee interrogations, 134 detainees, 120–121, 126, 129, 133 Deutsch, Ana, 183 dictators, 95, 138–139, 152, 184, 293, 334, 335–338, 337, 359 dictatorship: defying, 335–338 diplomacy, 2, 49–51, 53–57, 59, 61, 150–151, 219, 292, 326 diplomatic model, 54–55 diplomats, 55, 57, 61, 207, 223 disarmament, 5, 279–280; bans on selected categories, of weapons, 9–10; after Cold War, 10–12; controlling and limiting, of weapons, 6–7; nuclear weapons, control over, 10; pursuit of, 7–9 and United States, 14–15; war expenditures, 16–18; weapons, sale of, 12–13; with weapons of mass destruction, 13–14 Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) process, 239 Domini Social Investments, 81 Dougherty, Kelly, 168 Easter-March Movement, 279–280 East-West conflict: end of, 281 Ebadi, Shirin, 340 Ebert, Theodor, 117 economic democratization: beliefs and value systems for, 322–323

406

Index

educational radio projects, 214–215 Eick, Gretchen, 364 Einstein, Albert, 22, 34 Eisenhower, Dwight, 63 El Baradei, Mohammed, 30 Ellsberg, Daniel, 2, 36 Ellsberg, Harry, 42 El Salvador, 138–142, 147, 183, 185, 364 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 67–68, 72 ethics, 78–79, 121–123, 126–132, 245, 277, 290, 292, 303, 306, 322, 331; universal, 331–333 ethnic groups: Asia, intergroup fairness among, 325–327; Europe, 6, 8, 33, 43, 72, 80–81, 118, 133, 136, 276, 281, 316, 327, 339 European Union (EU), 7, 12, 115, 202, 282–284 Eye-Movement Desensitization and Retraining (EMDR), 268 Faircloth, Mallon, 149 Fallenbaum, Ruth, 133 federalism, 326–327 Felix, Ples, 193 Fernando, Juan, 175–177, 180–181 FFKM, 338 Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), 216 former Yugoslavia, 115, 281–282 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 142–143 Friends Provident Stewardship Unit Trust, 80 Furnari, Ellen, 112 Galtung, Johan, 317 Gandhi, M. K., 98, 115, 137, 187, 285, 306–307, 311, 316, 325, 327, 332 Gandhi, Rajiv, 327 Gascoigne, George, 264 Gates, Robert, 21 Gates, Thomas, 71 General Advisory Committee (GAC), 44–45 General Electric (GE), 43, 64–67, 71, 73, 75–76, 83, 277

genocide, 46, 172, 200–207, 209–213, 215–216, 218, 269, 276 geopolitical conflicts, 326–327 Germany, 6, 9, 15, 23, 32–33, 40, 47, 60, 73, 119, 128, 278–286, 315; peace process after 1945, 276–278 Giacalone, Sal, 192 Gilmore, Inigo, 93, 159 Ginsberg, Allen, 44 Girls’ Welfare Committee, 241 Gitlin, Todd, 360 globalization, 250–251, 283–284, 330; positive challenges of, 331 Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), 31 Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), 88–89 Goodman, Amy, 128 Goose, Stephen, 2, 49, 61 Green Revolution, 344, 348–349 Greenwood, Lee, 154 Grey, Sir Edward, 8 Grossman, Dave, 156 Groves, Leslie, 41 Guha, Ramachandra, 305 Gulf Peace Team, 95–97, 99 Gulf War (1991), 95–96, 281–282, 354–356, 358–365; anti-war movement strengths of, 357–359; weaknesses of, 337–357; Israel/ Palestine, addressing, 362–366; peace movement, defeat of, 360–361; postwar issues, 361–362 Hague Conference, 6 Hanford Nuclear Reservation, 65, 68 Hanh, Thich Nhat, 320 Hartigan, Jeremy, 98 Hash, Tom, 69 Hatcher, Joe, 161 Haugen, Gary, 255, 259 H-bombs, 22, 40, 43–45 healing, 171–173, 182–186, 338 helplessness: narrative of, 175–180 Hicks, Tony, 187–188, 199 Hindus, 207, 332 Hinzman, Jeremy, 167 Hiroshima, 38, 39–41, 42, 44–46, 48, 277, 279

Index homicide, 188 hopes, 198–199 humanitarian, 49, 53–54, 59, 62, 69, 81–82, 86, 99, 101–102, 110, 113, 253, 283, 292, 302, 361–362 human rights, 83–87 Human Rights Political Action Committee, 364 human security, 109; nonviolent deterrence, theory of, 109–110; nonviolent escalation, 116–118; Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP), in Sri Lanka, 111–114; unarmed approaches to, 110–111; with Balkan Peace Team (BPT), 114–115 human trafficking, 251, 257, 259, 261 Hussein, Saddam, 47, 72, 95, 101–103, 157, 160, 337, 358, 360 Hutus/Tutsis: emphatic listening between, 338 Illueca, Jorge, 151 Imerman, Vicky, 142 imperial wars, 283–284 India, 9, 15, 21, 26–27, 31, 33, 68, 85–86, 115, 250–252, 303–309, 311–314, 316, 316, 324–325, 340 Indian Peace Movement, 305, 307, 309, 311, 313, 315; ideological background, 310–312 mobilizational approach, 309–310; new social movements, 305– 306; peace meaning of, 304 traditions, 306–307; peace politics, emergence of, 312–314; social base of, 308–309 Infant Formula Action Coalition (INFACT), 65, 74–77 interactive problem solving, 219; dual purpose of, 229; and negotiations, relationship, 222 Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), 80, 82–83, 87, 90 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF), 10 International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), 57, 61 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 30, 32 International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), 49–57, 60–61

407

International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), 71 International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 50, 54, 58, 120, 127, 133, 136 International Court of Justice (ICJ), 7, 27 International Criminal Court (ICC), 56–57 International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), 201 International Justice Mission (IJM), 255, 259 International Non-Governmental Organization (INGOs), 112–113 International Organizations (IOs), 50, 60, 112, 114–115, 285 International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), 32, 285 International Renewable Energy Agency, 32 International Sustainable Energy Agency, 26 International Women’s Day, 353 Invisible Children, 260, 262 Iran, 15–16, 28, 31, 33, 73, 101, 157, 340, 343, 345–353 Iranian Women’s Movement, 340; background, 345–348; conditions and skills in, 348–352; repression work, 343–344 Iraq, 11, 15–16, 23, 28, 65, 69, 72, 91, 95–97, 99–106, 158–164, 166–169, 284–285, 290, 354–357, 361–362; invasion of, 104, 167, 290, 347, 354, 360, 366; reconstruction of, 69 Iraqi Kurds, 361 Iraq Peace Team, 104 Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), 159–160, 162, 165, 168 Ireland, 12, 27 Israel, 11, 21, 26, 33, 157, 172, 199, 230, 332–335, 356–357, 361–366; and Gulf War, 362–366 violence in, 334–335 Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 219, 222, 224, 229–231, 362, 364, 366–367; ideas for resolving, 230

408

Index

Jackson, Michael, 131 Jackson, Reverend Jesse, 356 Japan, 6, 8, 31, 38–42, 317 Jesus, 333, 335–335; peace message of, 335–336 Jews, 129, 363–362 John Templeton Foundation, 202 Jones, David C., 71 Jordan, 97 journalists: working with, 213–214 Kahn, Albert, 42–43 Kelly, Kathy, 91, 95 Kelman, Herbert, 172 Kennedy, John F., 17, 23, 72 Kennedy, Joseph II, 141 killing as traumatic event, 263–266 King, Martin Luther, 22, 98, 106, 137, 285, 358 Kissinger, Henry, 21 Koocher, Gerald, 122 Korea, 11, 16, 21, 26, 28, 33, 199, 287–294, 296–302, 320–321, 326, 328 Kosovo, 109–110, 114–115, 118, 282 Kosovo Verification Mission, 118 Kriesberg, Louis, 203 Kuwait, 11, 95–96, 101, 103, 337–359 labor movement, 277 La Escuela de Asesinos (the school of assassins); efforts to close, 137 Lakey, George, 112 landmines, 2, 9, 12, 49, 53, 55–56, 60, 80–81, 83, 283 LaRouche Movement, 357 Larzac, France, 335 Latin America, 95, 137, 139, 141, 143, 146, 150–151, 183, 253 Latonick-Flores, Jill, 92–93, 120, 137, 152–153 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 68 Leaders Conference of Women Religious, 142 League of Nations, 7 Lebanon, 101, 360, 362, 364 Lederach, John Paul, 117 Lefer, Diane, 171, 175

Leso, Major John, 132 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), 327 Lifton, Robert Jay, 42 light weapons and small arms: growth of, 57–58 lobbying, 2, 27, 73, 82, 146, 356, 364 Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), 253 Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo, 338–339 Lydenberg, Steven, 3 MacNair, Rachel, 173, 204 Madagascar, 335–338 Manhattan, 24, 36–37, 39–41, 47, 64 Manivannan, Ramu, 303 marines, 33, 154–156, 158, 167 mass destruction, 8, 10, 12–13, 26, 28, 40, 47, 101, 103, 277, 307 mass violence, 3, 201, 204, 206, 209, 212; roots of, 209, 211 Mayer, Jane, 133 McCone, John A., 72 McElroy, Neil, 71 McGovern, Ray, 126, 135 Medellin, 336–335 media: working with, 213–214 Meltzer, Milton, 251 memories, 37–38, 96, 132, 147, 182, 184, 187, 192, 198, 208, 212, 238, 250, 327 Meyer, Kenneth V., 71 Middle East, 26, 65, 69, 72, 157, 164, 223, 354–337, 357, 361–363, 365–366 militarism, 88, 106, 146, 294, 364 militarization, 33, 123, 131, 304–305, 335 mines, 9, 15–16, 50–51, 53, 58, 60, 62, 249, 285 Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, 16 Mitchell, Greg, 42 mobilization, 2, 110, 117, 239, 241, 279–280, 284–285, 308–310, 314–315, 346, 354, 362–363 Mobutu, President, 215, 338 modern-day abolitionists, 258–260 modern-day slavery, 248; liberation of slaves, 254–258; mapping, 252–254;

Index modern-day; abolitionists, 258–260; origins of, 251–252 momentum, 55, 60, 222, 290, 344 Mood Lability Associated Violence, 267 Moore, John L, 73 Morales, Evo, 151 Mugabe, Robert Gabriel, 186 Muslims, 157, 172, 207, 326–327, 332, 338–339 Nader, Ralph, 79 Nagasaki, 21, 32, 39–41, 44, 277, 279 Narmada, 307–308, 311 Narmada Sagar River Project, 307 Narmada Valley River Project, 307, 311 National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), 313 National Conference of Catholic Bishops, 359 National Council of Churches, 80 National Defense Authorization Act, 143 national leaders: working with, 211–213 National Missile Defense (NMD), 16, 25 National Public Radio, 168 National Research Council (NRC), 29–30 National Resources Defense Council, 16 National Security Administration (NSA), 68 National Unity and Reconciliation Commission, 211 National Vietnam Veteran Readjustment Study, 266 nation-state, 303 NATO, 10, 17, 21, 23, 27–28, 33, 110, 118, 278, 280, 282; states, interventionist orientation of, 282–283 NATO Double-Track Decision: campaign against, 280–281; navy, 6–7, 65–66, 68, 133, 160, 168 Nazis, 38–39, 47, 129 NBC, 74, 100 NCC-Korea, 289, 301 negotiations: and interactive problem solving, relationship, 222 Nevada, 24, 28, 33, 68 New Agenda Coalition (NAC), 27 New Orleans, 159, 161–162

409

New Testament, 333–336 NGOs, 15, 26, 29, 49–58, 60–61, 79, 92, 110–112, 114–115, 119, 202, 214, 245, 261, 331 Nicholas, Tsar, II, 6 Nixon, Richard, 72, 367 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), 26–28, 31–32 nonviolence, 8, 98, 109, 112, 116–119, 144, 146–149, 189–192, 197, 199, 287–288, 291–292, 296–297, 306–307, 318–320, 330–333, 335–341, 345, 349, 352 nonviolent deterrence: theory of, 109–110 nonviolent escalation, 116–118 Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP), 111–116; in Sri Lanka, 111–114; nonviolent skills vs. structural conditions, 344–345 North Korea, 11, 16, 21, 26, 33, 199, 288–289, 292, 298, 300, 302 NP in Sri Lanka (NPSL), 111–112 Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, 2 nuclear disarmament: background of, 21–26; bargain in NPT for civilian nuclear power, 28–30 legal basis for, 26–28; nuclear age, end of, 32–33; nuclear fuel cycle, control of, 30–32; steps for U.S. leadership for, 33 nuclear power plants, 67–68, 82, 313 Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, 11 Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 68 nuclear weapons, 27–28, 32, 47 Nunn, Sam, 21 Nuremberg Trials, 56, 276 Obama, Barack, 20–21, 24–26, 34 Ogburn, William F., 36 Old Testament, 333–336 Olson, Brad, 133–134 Operation Shock and Awe, 104 Oppenheimer, Robert, 44 Oslo agreement, 230 Ottawa Process, 2, 49–55, 57–61; applicability of models, 55–59; in banning landmines, 49; campaigning

410

Index

model, 51–54; Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW), 58–59; diplomatic model, 54–55; International Criminal Court (ICC), 56–57; small arms and light weapons, growth of, 57–58 Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), 73 Paine, Thomas, 71 Pakistan, 9, 15, 21, 26–27, 33, 104, 250, 252 Palestine: and Gulf War, 362–366 Palestinian, 102, 164, 172, 223–224, 229, 231, 356, 363–362 Panama, 12, 95, 140, 151, 360 Panama Canal Treaty, 140 pardoning, 338 Partial Test Ban Treaty, 20, 23 Partnership America Latina (PAL), 150 Patterson, Bradley, 36 Pax World Fund, 79 peace: Asian context of, 317–316; as a condition of life, 305–306; meaning of, 304; psychological aspects of, 316–320 peaceforce, 110–111, 116 peacekeepers, 9, 111, 113, 116–117 peacekeeping, 14, 108–109, 111–118, 324 peacemaker pledge, 197 peacemakers, 92, 96, 111, 147, 150, 189, 197, 324 peacemaking, 92, 104, 199, 318, 324–325, 328, 330, 333, 335 Pearlman, Laurie, 202, 209, 214 pedagogy, 155, 333, 335 Pentagon, 2, 15–16, 39, 41, 45, 47, 71–72, 99, 142–143, 283, 365 People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL), 113 perpetration-induced traumatic stress (PITS), 263; killing as traumatic event, 263–266; violence, 266–268 Perry, William, 21 Philippines, 115–116, 119, 166, 317–320, 323–327, 335, 342 Physicians for Human Rights, 60, 127 pipeline, 67, 69, 85, 87

plutonium, 22, 24, 29–30, 40, 43–44, 64–65, 67–68 Poland, 21, 26, 128, 342 police, 7, 14, 84, 87, 92–93, 128, 140, 147, 151, 161, 168, 193, 254, 265, 296 political democratization: active nonviolence in, 320–321 political peacemaking: Asia, cultureembedded ways of, 324–325 political trauma, 321 positive peace, 281, 287–289, 291–294, 297–300 poverty, 56, 105, 139, 183, 246, 249, 255–256, 312, 316–318, 322–323, 328, 330–331, 336–338 Powell, Colin, 102 PRI (Principles for Responsible Investment), 81, 218 Prisoners of Conscience (POCs), 148 Program for Torture Victims. See PTV psychological healing: and understanding, 209 psychology: post–9/11, 120; dark side, 124–126; dehumanizing, torture by, 126–127; misuse of, 123; moral, 127–129; psychology and social structure, combined role of, 208; resolutions on, 129–132 PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), 173, 264–269 PTV (Program for Torture Victims), 183–186 Putin, Vladimir, 25 Quakers, 79, 285 Quaker UN Office (QUNO), 49 Rabinowitch, Eugene, 41 Racial discrimination, 137 Raging Grannies, 130 Rapid City, 167 Rapid Deployment Peace Brigade of Sarvodaya, 112 Reagan, Ronald, 72, 362 rearmament: resistance against, 278–279 rebellion, 166–167, 325

Index reconciliation, steps toward, 200; definition and general principles of, 203; genocide in Rwanda, 202–203; overview of concepts and practices to, 205–208 Red Crescent, 100 Red Cross, 120, 132, 135 Redman, Charles, 73 reintegration: challenges, 235–236; and peace building, 236–244 Reisner, Steven J., 128 religious groups: Asia, intergroup fairness among, 325–327 Revolutionary War, 166 Rhode Island, 68 Roman Catholic Church, 144 Rosebaugh, Larry, 141 RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front), 200– 201, 214, 216 Rumsfeld, Donald, 72 Rush-Bagot Agreement, 7 Russert, Tim, 124 Russia, 6, 10, 15–17, 21, 23, 25–26, 28, 30, 32–33, 47, 128, 276–277, 285, 324 Rutherford, Kenneth, 61 Rwanda, 172, 200–202, 204, 206, 208–210, 212–216, 218 Rwandan society, 209–210; understanding and healing of, 209–210 Ryono, Angel, 200 Sabah dynasty, 356 Sabbath, 335 sacredness of life, 338–339 SAGE Project, 259 SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks), 10, 23 SALW, 57 San Francisco Bay Bridge, 68 San Francisco-Moscow March, 285 Saudi Arabia, 31, 72, 337 Schmidt, Otto, 219 School of Americas Watch (SOA Watch) movement: citizen diplomacy, 150– 152; closes and re-opens as WHINSEC, 141–143; closing of,

411

146–147; first nonviolent direct action, 140–141; funding of, 150; legislative action used by, 148–149; origin of, 138–139; SOA watch vigil, 141; solidarity in, 145–146; strategies of, 146; structure of, 144–145; torture and murder, in United States, 139–140 Schweitzer, Albert, 22 Schweitzer, Christine, 92, 108 Sedaei, Sam, 340 Selz, Henry, 101 Seoul, 302 Serbia, 114–115, 342 sex slavery, 251, 261 Shackleton, Alan, 160 Shanti Sena, 111, 117, 119, 207 shareholders, 79–80, 82–88 Shultz, George P., 21, 72 Sierra Leone, 12, 235, 237, 239, 244–246; male youths, reconciliation, employment, and community service for, 237–239; reintegration challenges, 235–236; and peace building, 236–244; of young women, 239–244; young peace builders, 244–246; Talking Drums Studio, 245–246; Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), 244–245 Skinner, Ben, 260 Slater, Alice, 2, 18, 20 slaveholders, 252–253, 256 slavery, 173, 206, 249–261 slaves, 61, 91, 235–236, 248–261, 334 Slovenia, 27; small arms and light weapons, growth of, 57–58 Smith, Martin, 154 Smith, Teresa, 93, 159 SOA/WHINSEC, 139, 145–146, 148–151 SOA violence, 139 SOAW, 144, 150 SOA Watch, 137–138, 142, 144–146, 148–150 social activists, 108, 121, 289, 297 social identity, 323–324 Socialist Revolution, 366

412

Index

social justice, 78–83, 85, 87, 89, 127, 176, 209, 277, 327, 334–335, 340, 358 socially responsible investing (SRI): Burma, role of, 86–87; context of, 88–90; engagement and military issues, 82–83; on human rights and social justice, 83–87; labor standards, 87–88; and military screens, 81–82; origin of, 79–80; peace and social justice, 78; at present, 80–81; South Africa, role of, 84–85; Sudan, role of, 85–86 Social Party of Germany, 279, 282 social structure and psychology, 208 Society of Friends, 79 Sold Project, 257, 262 Somalia, 360 South Africa, 27, 55, 79, 83–85, 89, 340, 342, 363 Southeast Asia, 250, 253 South Korea, 287–294, 296–302, 320–321, 328; inception and spread of, 288–291; transition of peace issues, 291–297; challenges, 297–299 Spanish, 142, 144, 185, 318 Sri Lanka, 92, 111–115, 119, 185, 327 Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), 132 Staub, Ervin, 172, 200, 206, 208, 218 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), 10, 23 Strategic Arms Reduction Talks, 10, 23 structural conditions vs. nonviolent skills, 344–345 structural violence, 268, 317–318, 323 structured cruelty, 154–158 Suarez, Hugo Banzer, 139 Sudan, 12, 83, 85–86, 89, 331 suicide, 283, 327 Sukhtian, Nidal, 100 Sullivan, Lisa, 144 Sullivan, Reverend Leon, 84 Superfund site, 67 superpowers, 10, 13, 15, 283 Swami Vivekananda, 332 Switzerland, 119 Taiwan, 320, 326 Talking Drums Studio, 245–246

Tanzania, 124 Tarapur reactor, 68 Tariq Khamisa Foundation (TKF), 187, 199; cycle of violence, 190–191; hopes, 198–199; mission and core values, 189–190; peacemaker pledge, 197; power of choice, 191; six key messages of, 191; Violence Impact Forum Assembly (VIF), 191–198 Taylor, Stuart, Jr, 121 Technical Military Planning Operation (TEMPO), 71 Tehri Dam, 308 Telhami, Shibley, 231 Tenet, George, 29 terrorism, 40, 59, 74, 81, 110, 218, 278, 283–284, 331–332, 347 Test Ban Treaty, 24 testimonies, 23, 34, 96, 102, 104, 168, 213–214, 245, 253, 348, 366 Thailand, 249, 251, 257, 324–325 Thatcher, Margaret, 101 Third World, 164, 322, 356 Tian An’men Square, 321 Tibet, 320 Tokyo, 40 Tooth Fairy Project, 34 Toronto, 167 Toxic Weapons Convention, 15 trafficking, 251–252, 254–255, 257–262 Trafficking Protocol, 251, 259 Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), 258, 262 transition: peace in, 287 Trident Submarines, 71 Truman, Harry, 38, 41, 44, 38, 45 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), 244–245 Turkey, 15, 206–207, 283 Tutsis. See Hutus/Tutsis U-235 bombs, 37 Uganda, 200, 202, 250, 253, 255, 260 Ukraine, 12, 30 UN (United Nations), 11, 15, 17, 25–26, 32, 57–58, 62, 74, 95, 100, 103, 111, 200–201, 251, 282–284, 324

Index understanding–healing approach: changes created by, 210–211; of Rwandan society, 209–210 UNESCO, 331 UN General Assembly, 9, 11, 27 UNICEF, 241, 251 UNIDC, 18 UNIDIR, 62 United States: and disarmament, 14–15; torture and murder in, 139–140 universal ethics promoted by world religions, 331–333 UN Security Council, 283–284 uranium, 22, 29–31, 33–34, 37, 40 Uruguay, 151 USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development), 68, 202 U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), 103–104, 107 U.S. House of Representatives, 143, 348–349 USIP (United States Institute of Peace), 202 U.S. Marine Corps (USMC), 155 Uttarkhand, 315 Uzbekistan, 250 Vatican, 146, 339 Venezuela, 144, 150–151 Ventimiglia, Linda, 141 victimization, 204, 206, 210 Vietnam, 2, 15, 41, 44, 60, 74, 78–80, 93, 157, 162, 166–169, 265–267, 280, 337, 357–360, 366–367 Vietnam War, 2, 44, 78–80, 93, 139, 157, 285, 357–360, 367 violence, 266–268; Asian context of, 317–316; psychological aspects of, 316–320; resistance of, 91–93 Violence Impact Forum Assembly (VIF), 191–198 Volkan, Vamik, 218 war crimes, 126, 132, 158 Wareham, Mary, 49 war on terrorism, 283–284 War Resisters International, 119, 285

413

War Resisters League, 363 weak and oppressed: empowering, 336–335 weaponization, 25 weapon of mass destruction (WMD), 47 weapons: bans on selected categories of, 9–10; controlling and limiting of, 6–7; nuclear, control over, 10; sale of, 12–13 web-making, 301 Weiss, George, 202, 214 Wessells, Michael, 172, 234 Wessels, David, 128 Western Hemisphere Institute of Security Cooperation. See WHINSEC Western Sahara, 362, 365 West German Peace Movement, The, 277; atomic weapons, protest against, 279; Balkan War, 281–284; EasterMarch Movement, 279–280; EastWest conflict, end of, 281; Gulf War, 281–284; NATO Double-Track Decision, campaign against, 280–281; NATO states, interventionist orientation of, 282–283; organizations and networks, 284–285; rearmament, resistance against, 278–279; war on terrorism, 283–284 West Germany, 278 WHINSEC (Western Hemisphere Institute of Security Cooperation), 92, 137, 141–143, 150 Williams, Jody, 2, 49–50, 61 Wilson, Woodrow, 8 Without-Me Movement, 278–279; women young, reintegration of, 239–244 Women Religious, 147 women’s movement, 304, 307, 343, 346, 348–349, 349–352 workaholism, 268 Workshop Ground Rules, 225 World Bank, 70–71, 311 World Council of Churches, 339

414

Index

World Health Organization, 30, 75, 266, 269 World Peace Council, 285 World Trade Center, 283 young peace builders: in Sierra Leone, 244–246; women, 239–244 Yugoslavia, 23, 73, 114–115

Zambia, 68 Zimbabwe, 184–185 Zinn, Howard, 166 Zone of War, 97, 99–101, 103, 105–107, 235, 296 Zorbas, Eugenia, 203 Zunes, Stephen, 340, 354

ABOUT THE EDITORS CONTRIBUTORS

AND

Co-editor Marc Pilisuk got his PhD in clinical and social psychology from the University of Michigan in 1961 and went on to teach, research, and write at several colleges, ending at the University of California and Saybrook University. His various departmental affiliations, psychology, nursing, administrative sciences, social welfare, public health, community mental health, human and community development, city and regional planning, peace and conflict studies, and human sciences, convinced him that academic disciplines could be blinders and should be crossed. He was a founder of the first Teach-in on a University Campus (Michigan) and the Psychologists for Social Responsibility, helped start SANE (now Peace Action), and is a past president of the Society for the Study of Peace Conflict and Violence. He has received several lifetime contribution awards for work for peace. Marc’s books cover topics of underlying social issues, poverty, international conflict, and the nature of human interdependence. His most recent book, Who Benefits from Global Violence and War, uncovered information that was sufficiently shocking to motivate this new undertaking on Peace Movements Worldwide. Co-editor Michael N. Nagler was sensitized to issues of peace and justice (the usual term is ‘‘radicalized’’) through folk music and various influences

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About the Editors and Contributors

by the time he left his New York birthplace. After attending Cornell University and finishing his BA at New York University, he arrived in Berkeley, CA, in 1960, in time to finish a PhD in Comparative Literature before the advent of the Free Speech Movement. The successes and failures of that movement broadened his outlook such that after meeting a meditation teacher, Eknath Easwaran, late in 1966 he launched a parallel career—inward. Nonviolence, and Gandhi in particular, became a way to carve out a meaningful niche for himself within academia. At Berkeley, he went on to found the Peace and Conflict Studies Program (PACS; now probably the largest in terms of student majors in the United States) and off campus co-founded the Metta Center for Nonviolence (www.mettacenter.org). He also became chair of Peaceworkers (www.peaceworkers.org) and eventually co-chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Association (www.peacejusticestudies.org). He stopped teaching at the university in 2007 to devote his time to Metta and the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation. A frequent speaker on nonviolence and related themes around the world, his most recent recognition is the Jamnalal Bajaj International Award for Promoting Gandhian Values Outside India. His books include The Upanishads (with Eknath Easwaran, 1987), Our Spiritual Crisis (2004), and The Search for a Nonviolent Future, which won a 2002 American Book Award and has been translated into six languages, most recently Arabic. Daniel J. Adamski, a native of Toledo, Ohio, and graduate of the University of Toledo, went on to earn an MA and PhD in English language and literature at the University of London. His research focused on early 20th-century periodicals and his dissertation, ‘‘Thickening the Thirties: The New English Weekly and the Discourse of Dissent,’’ examined the literary, political, and economic networks of little magazines in Britain and America in the 1930s. Living and studying in London for nearly 10 years, he worked with homeless charities and organized student groups in efforts to combat homelessness. After teaching college English for 10 years, Daniel is now a freelance researcher. He is actively engaged in improving literacy in his local community, as well as being an ardent anti-war activist. Melissa Anderson-Hinn is a passionate advocate and activist for all causes related to human rights and environmental protection. Her work is rooted in her belief that every human life has value, dignity, and purpose; that every story deserves to be told; and that a large part of protecting human health is protecting the health of the environment. She is particularly committed to the global efforts to end modern-day slavery and generate the social change necessary to ensure that it is no longer tolerated or perpetrated by the people of the world or the sociopolitical systems and

About the Editors and Contributors

417

environmental realities that exist. Balancing her roles as mother, wife, dual-doctorate student, and social entrepreneur, Melissa finds that the key to success is a fully integrated lifestyle, cultivated in community, and founded in a personal and communal commitment to the subversive values that she believes can build a sustainable, more compassionate world. Hector Aristiz
abal is a native of Colombia. His commitment to the human rights work forced him to leave his country in 1989 due to death threats. Hector holds an MA in psychology from Antioquia University in Medellin, Colombia, and a degree as a marriage family therapist from Pacific Oaks College in Pasadena. Based on his own experience with torture, Hector developed a play based on his story that he uses as a springboard to invite audiences into transformative action. In recent years, Hector has developed his own techniques to awaken the imagination. These techniques are inspired by Theatre of the Oppressed and include storytelling and council circles. His work nationally and internationally has created significant changes in the lives of the different communities ranging from at risk youth centers, prisons, universities, churches, homeless shelters, health organizations combating HIV/AIDS, sex workers, and teachers. Currently, Hector is the creative director and co-founder of Imaginaction, an organization that aims to provide this kind of work globally. Cynthia Boaz is assistant professor of political science at Sonoma State University. She is also an analyst and consultant on nonviolent action and a regular contributor to several news and commentary media outlets. Her areas of expertise include nonviolence, strategic nonviolent action, civil resistance, political development, and political communication with an emphasis on media coverage of war. Dr. Boaz is a frequent contributor to many online news and commentary sites, including Truthout, the HuffingtonPost, and Common Dreams. She is an affiliated scholar at the UNESCO Chair of Philosophy MA Program in Peace, Conflict, and Development Studies in Castellon de la Plana, Spain. Boaz also serves on the academic advisory board for the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, and is on the board of directors of the Metta Center for Nonviolence Education and also Project Censored/Media Freedom Foundation. She also works closely with the U.S. Campaign for Burma. Her work has appeared in numerous venues including Comparative Political Studies, Sojourners Magazine, Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, and Feminist Media Studies. Fr. Roy Bourgeois served as a Naval Officer for two years before entering the seminary of the Maryknoll Missionary Order. Ordained a Catholic priest in 1972, Roy went on to work with the poor of Bolivia for five years

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About the Editors and Contributors

before being arrested and forced to leave the country, then under the repressive rule of dictator and School of the Americas (SOA) graduate General Hugo Banzer. In 1980 Fr. Roy became involved in issues surrounding U.S. policy in El Salvador after four U.S. churchwomen—two of them friends of his—were raped and killed by Salvadoran soldiers. Roy became an outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. Since then, he has spent over four years in U.S. federal prisons for nonviolent protests against the training of Latin American soldiers at Ft. Benning, Georgia. In 1990, Roy founded the School of the Americas Watch. Andreas Buro Habil was born in Berlin in 1928 and is a retired professor of political science and international relations at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main. Cofounder of the German Easter March Movement/Campaign for Democracy and Disarmament and its longtime spokesperson for the socialist office and the Committee for Basic Rights and Democracy. Recent emphases on content include Criticism of the new military policy, concepts to support the evolvement of ‘‘civil conflict-adaptation’’—in this sense political work, especially, related to the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Israel/ Palestine. He received the Aachener Peace Price in 2008. His most recent book publication was Stories from the Peace Movement—Personal and Political, Committee for Basic Rights and Democracy (2005). Jujin Chung is a researcher, consultant, educator, and trainer working on conflict transformation and peace building issues. Dr. Chung has been engaged in building a foundation for collaborative conflict resolution and sustainable peace building programs in South Korea. She has been working with different groups of people, in particular, civil society organizations and their workers, to design programs and activities relating to peace and conflict issues to educate and empower them. She earned an MA in conflict transformation at the Eastern Mennonite University (Harrisonburg, VA) and a PhD in peace studies at the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom. Justin C. Cliburn went to Iraq as a member of the Oklahoma Army National Guard in December 2005. During his tour, he experienced every facet of the war (socially, politically, militarily) as he and his comrades patrolled supply routes, trained Iraqi police, dealt with the political nuances of working with the Iraqis, and befriended Iraqi children. Cliburn is now a senior political science major at Cameron University and works part-time in management for a major shipping company. He hopes to go to law school.

About the Editors and Contributors

419

Daniel Ellsberg spent three years (1954 to 1957) in the U.S. Marine Corps, serving as rifle platoon leader, operations officer, and rifle company commander. He earned his PhD in economics at Harvard University in 1962. His work on what has become known as the ‘‘Ellsberg Paradox,’’ published in an article titled ‘‘Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms’’ is considered a landmark in decision theory and behavioral economics. In 1959, Ellsberg became a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation and consultant to the Defense Department and the White House, specializing in problems of the command and control of nuclear weapons, nuclear war plans, and crisis decision making. Ellsberg joined the Defense Department in 1964 as Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs) John McNaughton, working on the escalation of the war in Vietnam. He transferred to the State Department in 1965 to serve two years at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, evaluating pacification in the field. On return to the RAND Corporation in 1967, Ellsberg worked on the top secret McNamara study of U.S. Decision-Making in Vietnam, 1945 to 1968, which later came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000-page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; in 1971 he gave it to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and 17 other newspapers. His trial, on 12 felony counts posing a possible sentence of 115 years, was dismissed in 1973 on grounds of governmental misconduct against him, which led to the convictions of several White House aides and figured in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon. Ellsberg is the author of three books including Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. In December 2006 he was awarded the 2006 Right Livelihood Award, known as the ‘‘Alternative Nobel Prize,’’ in Stockholm. Since the end of the Vietnam War, Ellsberg has been a lecturer, writer, and activist on the dangers of the nuclear era, wrongful U.S. interventions, and the urgent need for patriotic whistleblowing. He is a Senior Fellow of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Inigo Gilmore is an award-winning filmmaker and journalist who has worked in more than 100 countries around the globe. He has reported from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia for the Times of London, the Sunday Times, the Telegraph, Sky Television, BBC, Channel 4, CNN, and PBS. Documentaries include Nkosi’s Story (BBC 2, Correspondent, May 2001), the story of 12-year-old Nkosi Johnson, a South African child infected with HIV/AIDS; Searching for Saddam (BBC2 and BBC3, June 2003); Behind the Fence (BBC2, 2003 Correspondent). Shot over one year, Behind the Fence told the story of Israel’s construction of its controversial security fence; it was nominated for best documentary, Amnesty International Media

420

About the Editors and Contributors

Awards, 2004. In 2007 he won a Royal Television Society award for his work covering the Israel/Lebanon war. Stephen D. Goose is executive director of the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch. He has played critical roles in securing the 1997 treaty banning antipersonnel mines, the 1995 protocol banning blinding laser weapons, and the 2003 protocol on explosive remnants of war. Goose has served as the head of delegation for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) to every Mine Ban Treaty meeting since 1998, and he helped create ICBL’s civil society monitoring initiative, Landmine Monitor. Hildegard Goss-Mayr is an Austrian Catholic pioneer in teaching the philosophy and practice of nonviolence amid great historical events of the past half century. During childhood and as a young person she experienced Nazism, the persecution of her family, and World War II. After graduation with a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Vienna she worked, together with her husband Jean Goss, as a staff person of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation for East-West Dialogue during the Cold War. She supported nonviolent struggles to overcome colonialism and racism (Angola, Mozambique, South Africa) and helped to build up ‘‘People Power’’ in the Philippines to overthrow the dictatorship of President Marcos. During the Second Vatican Council the Goss-Mayrs set up a peace lobby in Rome to promote the out-ruling of the just war concepts and the development of a theology of peacemaking built on the nonviolence of Jesus. During recent years she helped to build up nonviolent movements in francophone African countries. She published several books and numerous articles and interviews. She has been awarded several Peace prizes. Kathy Kelly co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv .org), a campaign to end U.S. military and economic warfare. As a co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness, she helped form 70 delegations from 1996 to 2003 that openly defied economic sanctions by bringing medicines to children and families in Iraq. Kathy and her companions lived in Baghdad throughout the 2003 ‘‘Shock and Awe’’ bombing. More recently, she has visited Gaza and Pakistan, writing eyewitness accounts of war’s impact on civilians. Kathy was sentenced to one year in federal prison for planting corn on nuclear missile silo sites (1988 to 1989) and served three months in 2004, for crossing the line at Fort Benning’s military training school. She and her companions at the Voices home office in

About the Editors and Contributors

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Chicago believe that nonviolence necessarily involves simplicity, service, sharing of resources, and nonviolent direct action in resistance to war and oppression. Kathy hasn’t paid federal income taxes since 1980. Herbert C. Kelman is Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics, Emeritus, and co-chair of the Middle East Seminar at Harvard University. He was the founding Director (1993 to 2003) of the Program on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. A pioneer in the development of interactive problem solving—an unofficial third-party approach to the resolution of international and intercommunal conflict—he has been engaged for nearly 40 years in efforts toward the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His writings on interactive problem solving received the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order in 1997. Other awards include the Socio-Psychological Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1956), the Kurt Lewin Memorial Award (1973), the American Psychological Association’s Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology in the Public Interest (1981), the Austrian Medal of Honor for Science and Art First Class (1998), and the Socrates Prize for Mediation (2009). His major publications include International Behavior: A Social-Psychological Analysis (editor and co-author, 1965), A Time to Speak: On Human Values and Social Research (1968), and Crimes of Obedience: Toward a Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility (with V. Lee Hamilton, 1989). Azim N. Khamisa lost his only son, Tariq, to a gang-related murder. He is a rare individual who not only speaks of powerful and life-changing concepts, but also walks his talk, having created a foundation in his son’s name, the Tariq Khamisa Foundation, which is dedicated to breaking the cycle of youth violence by empowering children, saving lives, and teaching peace. Azim is also the author of three best-selling books, Azim’s Bardo— From Murder to Forgiveness: A Father’s Journey, From Forgiveness to Fulfillment, and The Secrets of the Bulletproof Spirit. Jill Latonick-Flores, an advocate for peace and social justice, has supported the goals of the School of the Americas Watch for much of the past decade. Jill is a member of the Steering Committee of Psychologists for Social Responsibility. She received her Ph.D from Saybrook University in 2005. Her award winning dissertation was entitled, Awakening to the Eco-Tragedy: An Ideological and Epistemological Inquiry into the Hidden Mental Demands of Christian Environmentalism. She lives in Austin, Texas.

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About the Editors and Contributors

Diane Lefer has collaborated with Hector Aristiz
abal for years on such works as the stage play Nightwind and their book, The Blessing Next to the Wound. Her most recent book, California Transit, received the Mary McCarthy Award in Short Fiction and includes a novella that exposes abuse in immigration detention. She has volunteered with the Program for Torture Victims and teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Steven D. Lydenberg is Chief Investment Officer of Domini Social Investments and Vice President of the Domini Funds. He has been active in social research since 1975. Mr. Lydenberg was a founder of KLD Research & Analytics, Inc., and served as its research director from 1990 to 2001. From 1987 to 1989, he was an associate with Franklin Research and Development Corporation (now known as Trillium Asset Management). For 12 years he worked with the Council on Economic Priorities, ultimately as director of corporate accountability research. Mr. Lydenberg has written numerous publications on issues of corporate social responsibility. He is the author of Corporations and the Public Interest (2005), coauthor of Investing for Good (1993), coeditor of The Social Investment Almanac (1992), and coauthor of Rating America’s Corporate Conscience (1986). He has published articles including ‘‘Trust Building and Trust Busting: Corporations, Government, and Responsibilities’’ (Journal of Corporate Citizenship, Autumn 2003) and ‘‘Envisioning Socially Responsible Investing: A Model for 2006’’ (Journal of Corporate Citizenship, Autumn 2002). Mr. Lydenberg is a fellow with the Institute for Responsible Investment and is a member of the Boston Security Analysts Society. Mr. Lydenberg holds a BA in English from Columbia College and an MFA in theater arts from Cornell University, and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation. Rachel M. MacNair is the author of the textbook The Psychology of Peace: An Introduction and the monograph Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress: The Psychological Consequences of Killing. She edited for an activist audience Working for Peace: A Handbook of Practical Psychology. She is Director of the Institute for Integrated Social Analysis, research arm of the nonprofit organization Consistent Life; she also coaches dissertation students on statistics. She graduated from Earlham College, a Quaker school, with a BA in peace and conflict studies, and got her PhD in psychology and sociology from the University of Missouri at Kansas City. Ramu Manivannan was a former Fellow of the United Nations University. He was also a Co-Convener for the Nonviolence Commission of the

About the Editors and Contributors

423

International Peace Researchers Association (IPRA) and a former Executive Member of the Nonviolent Peaceforce. He teaches political science at the University of Madras, India. He combines peace research and social activism to promote peace, democracy, and justice in South and Southeast Asia. He is an advocate for the Pro-Democracy Movement in Burma, the Free Tibet Movement, and the Just Rights of Eelam Tamils. He works among the refugee communities from Burma, Tibet, and Sri Lanka. He is a radical Gandhian who moved to the path of Non-Party Political Process following Jayaprakash Narayan. He is a trainer in nonviolence and holistic education and is socially engaged with experiments in community-based holistic education and sustainable development. He has founded the ‘‘Gandhi-King-Mandela Farm’’ and established within it an alternative school for the rural poor children near Vellore in Tamil Nadu. He is one of the founding members of the Nonviolent Peaceforce. He is the coordinator for the Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution, University of Madras. He is an inter-faith practitioner and has led spiritual walks in the Himalayas for more than 18 years. Cristina Jayme Montiel is a professor of peace/political psychology and has been teaching at the Ateneo de Manila University for more than 30 years. During the Marcos dictatorship, she chaired Lingap Bilanggo (Care for Prisoners), a social movement for the general amnesty of all Filipino political prisoners. She likewise coordinated nationwide grassroots seminars on Structural Change, for the PDP-LABAN (President Cory Aquino’s political party). Montiel serves as editorial board member of the Peace Psychology Book Series by Springer Publications, and was associate editor of Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology. Montiel’s international experiences cover academic visits to Xiamen University (China), National University of Malaysia, University of Hawaii, Ohio State University, Georgetown University, Whitman College, Technical University of Chemnitz (Germany), and the Australian National University. Her recent journal publications include ‘‘Effects of Political Framing and Perceiver’s Dominant-Group Position on Trait Attributions of a Terrorist/Freedom-Fighter’’ (2008) and ‘‘Social Representations of Democratic Transition: Was the Philippine People Power One a Nonviolent Power-Shift or a Military Coup?’’ (2010). She recently published a book on Peace Psychology in Asia, co-edited with Noraini Noor. Gianina Pellegrini is a doctoral student at Saybrook University, pursuing a degree in psychology with a concentration in social transformation and certification in international peace and conflict resolution. While obtaining

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About the Editors and Contributors

a master’s degree in psychology, Gianina researched how spiritual, religious, and traditional customs in sub-Saharan Africa influenced the care and treatment of HIV-positive children. Her primary areas of interest include issues pertaining to human rights, public health, and social justice. Tessie Petion is the lead research analyst responsible for the application of the Funds’ social and environmental standards to European equities. Ms. Petion worked as an analyst and associate in Deutsche Bank’s Global Institutional Services department from 2000 to 2002, and in international sales for the New York Stock Exchange from 2003 to 2004. In 2006, she worked in the Dominican Republic as a consultant for the Consejo Nacional de Competitividad and in India as a consultant for the microfinance institution Basix. Ms. Petion holds a BS in business administration and management information systems from the University at Albany, SUNY; an MA in psychology from Tufts University; and an MA in international business and development from the Fletcher School of Tufts University. Angel Ryono is a master’s degree student in the human sciences at Saybrook University. She was inspired to pursue graduate studies after working as a researcher and associate editor for Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research in Honolulu, Hawaii. Currently, Angel is affiliated with the War Crimes Studies Center at University of California, Berkeley, particularly in working to support transitional justice projects in Southeast Asia. Her research focuses on the historical and structural challenges to peace building in Cambodia. Christine Schweitzer is a social anthropologist by training and lives and works in Hamburg, Germany. She is currently working as Program Director for the international NGO Nonviolent Peaceforce (www.nonviolent peaceforce.org), an international NGO that has been founded to carry out and promote civilian peacekeeping, and a member of the German Institute for Peace Work and Nonviolent Conflict Transformation (www.ifgk.de). In the 1990s she co-founded and for some time coordinated the international Balkan Peace Team. She has published on subjects such as civilian-based defense, nonviolent conflict intervention, and peace work in general. Alice Slater is the New York Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. She is a member of the Global Council of Abolition 2000, a global network working for a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons, and directs the network’s Sustainable Energy Working Group that produced a model statute for an International Renewable Energy Agency. She is on the

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Board of the Lawyer’s Committee for Nuclear Policy, is a member of the International Security Committee of the New York City Bar Association, and serves on the Executive Committee of the Middle Powers Initiative, working to create pressure on nuclear weapons states for swifter nuclear disarmament. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, and serves on the Steering Committee of the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition. Ms. Slater is a UN NGO Representative and has organized numerous conferences, panels, and roundtables at the UN. She speaks frequently at meetings and conferences in the United States and abroad, contributes to the Codepink blog, Pink Tank, has written numerous articles and op-eds, and appears frequently on local and national media. Martin Smith is a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and has contributed to Counterpunch and the International Socialist Review. He is finishing his dissertation at the University of Illinois on troop dissent and the breakdown of the military during the Vietnam War. Teresa Smith is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist who has worked for BBC Television, the Guardian newspaper, GuardianFilms for www.guardian.co.uk, Channel 4 (UK), Al Jazeera International, ITN, and CNN International. She has worked extensively in the Middle East. Documentaries include Baghdad: City of Walls (AJI 2009); 9/11: Through Muslim Eyes (Channel 4); Reflections of Ground Zero (Channel 4); Playing to Survive (BBC), the story of a women who played in the orchestra at Auschwitz-Birkenau; and Cutting Up Rough (BBC2), a profile of the British fashion designer, Alexander MacQueen. Her work has won awards from the Royal Television Society, Amnesty International, the Foreign Press Association, the Rory Peck Trust, and Mental Health in the Media (UK) Ervin Staub is Professor Emeritus and Founding Director of the PhD program in the psychology of peace and the prevention of violence at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has studied the roots of altruism, the origins of violence including genocide and mass killing, as well as prevention, and psychological recovery and reconciliation. His books include Positive Social Behavior and Morality (vols. 1 and 2, 1978, 1979), The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence (1989), The Psychology of Good and Evil: Why Children, Adults and Groups Help and Harm Others (2003), and a number of edited volumes. A new book, Overcoming Evil: Genocide, Violent Conflict and Terrorism, and a collection of his

426

About the Editors and Contributors

past writings, The Panorama of Mass Violence: Origins, Prevention, Reconciliation, will be published in 2010. He is past President of the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence and of the International Society for Political Psychology. He has worked in schools to promote altruism and active bystandership to reduce aggression, with police to reduce the use of unnecessary force, in the Netherlands on Dutch Muslim relations, in New Orleans to promote reconciliation after Katrina, and since 1998 in Rwanda, in Burundi, and the Congo to promote psychological recovery and reconciliation and help prevent new violence through seminars, workshops, and educational radio programs. For his awards and downloads of selected articles, see his Web site (www.ervinstaub.com). Michael Wessells, PhD, is a professor at Columbia University in the Program on Forced Migration and Health and a professor of psychology at Randolph-Macon College. He has served as President of the Division of Peace Psychology of the American Psychological Association and of Psychologists for Social Responsibility and as Co-Chair of the InterAction Protection Working Group. He is former Co-Chair of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) (UN-NGO) Task Force on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings that developed the first inter-agency consensus guidelines for the field of mental health and psychosocial support in humanitarian crises. Currently, he is co-focal point on mental health and psychosocial support for the revision of the Sphere humanitarian standards. He has conducted extensive research on the holistic impacts of war and political violence on children, and he is author of Child Soldiers: From Violence to Protection (2006). He regularly advises UN agencies, governments, and donors on issues of psychosocial support. Throughout Africa and Asia he helps to develop community-based, culturally grounded programs that assist people affected by armed conflict. Jody Williams is a Nobel Peace laureate and a founder and chair of the Nobel Women’s Initiative. A distinguished visiting professor at the University of Houston’s Graduate College of Social Work since 2003, she currently holds the Cele and Sam Keeper endowed professorship in peace and social justice. Williams was the founding coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), and she has served as an ICBL ambassador since 1998. Howard Zinn was a historian, playwright, and peace activist, who grew up in the immigrant slums of Brooklyn where he worked in shipyards in his late teens. Eager to fight fascism, he participated in combat duty as a

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427

U.S. Air Force bombardier in World War II. Afterward, under the G.I. Bill, he received his PhD in history from Columbia University and was a postdoctoral fellow in East Asian Studies at Harvard University. As a professor at Spelman College in Atlanta, a school for African American women, he became involved in the Civil Rights Movement, where he was an adviser to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He is the author of numerous books, including his epic masterpiece, A People’s History of the United States, ‘‘a brilliant and moving history of American people from the point of view of those who have been exploited politically and economically and whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories’’ (Library Journal). He has received the Thomas Merton Award, the Eugene V. Debs Award, the Upton Sinclair Award, and the Lannan Literary Award. He was a professor emeritus of political science at Boston University and lived in Auburndale, Massachusetts, near his children and grandchildren. He died on January 27, 2010, shortly after granting permission to use his chapter in this volume. Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco. He serves as a senior analyst for the Foreign Policy in Focus project of the Institute for Policy Studies, an associate editor of Peace Review, and chair of the committee of academic advisors for the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. Dr. Zunes is the author of scores of articles for scholarly and general readership on Middle Eastern politics, U.S. foreign policy, international terrorism, social movements, strategic nonviolent action, and human rights. He is the co-editor of Nonviolent Social Movements (1999) and Consistently Opposing Killing (2008), the author of the highly acclaimed Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (2003), and the co-author, with Jacob Mundy, of Western Sahara: Nationalism, Conflict, and International Accountability (2009).

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ABOUT

SERIES EDITOR A D V I S O R Y B OA R D THE

AND

SERIES EDITOR Chris E. Stout, PsyD, MBA, is a licensed clinical psychologist and is a Clinical Full Professor at the University of Illinois College of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry. He served as an NGO Special Representative to the United Nations. He was appointed to the World Economic Forum’s Global Leaders of Tomorrow and he has served as an Invited Faculty at the Annual Meeting in Davos. He is the Founding Director of the Center for Global Initiatives. Stout is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, former President of the Illinois Psychological Association, and a Distinguished Practitioner in the National Academies of Practice. Stout has published or presented over 300 papers and 30 books and manuals on various topics in psychology. His works have been translated into six languages. He has lectured across the nation and internationally in 19 countries and has, visited 6 continents and almost 70 countries. He was noted as being ‘‘one of the most frequently cited psychologists in the scientific literature’’ in a study by Hartwick College. He is the recipient of the American Psychological Association’s International Humanitarian Award.

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About the Series Editor and Advisory Board

ADVISORY BOARD Bruce Bonecutter, PhD, is Director of Behavioral Services at the Elgin Community Mental Health Center, the Illinois Department of Human Services state hospital serving adults in greater Chicago. He is also a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. A clinical psychologist specializing in health, consulting, and forensic psychology, Bonecutter is also a longtime member of the American Psychological Association Taskforce on Children and the Family. He is a member of organizations including the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, International, the Alliance for the Mentally Ill, and the Mental Health Association of Illinois. Joseph Flaherty, MD, is Chief of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois Hospital, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois College (UIC) of Medicine and a Professor of Community Health Science at the UIC College of Public Health. He is a Founding Member of the Society for the Study of Culture and Psychiatry. Dr. Flaherty has been a consultant to the World Health Organization, the National Institute of Mental Health, and also the Falk Institute in Jerusalem. He is the former Director of Undergraduate Education and Graduate Education in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois. Dr. Flaherty has also been Staff Psychiatrist and Chief of Psychiatry at Veterans Administration West Side Hospital in Chicago. Michael Horowitz, PhD, is President and Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, one of the nation’s leading not-for-profit graduate schools of psychology. Earlier, he served as Dean and Professor of the Arizona School of Professional Psychology. A clinical psychologist practicing independently since 1987, his work has focused on psychoanalysis, intensive individual therapy, and couples therapy. He has provided Disaster Mental Health Services to the American Red Cross. Horowitz’s special interests include the study of fatherhood. Sheldon I. Miller, MD, is a Professor of Psychiatry at Northwestern University, and Director of the Stone Institute of Psychiatry at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. He is also Director of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, Director of the American Board of Emergency Medicine, and Director of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Dr. Miller is also an Examiner for the American Board of Psychiatry and

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Neurology. He is Founding Editor of the American Journal of Addictions, and Founding Chairman of the American Psychiatric Association’s Committee on Alcoholism. Dr. Miller has also been a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Public Health Service, serving as psychiatric consultant to the Navajo Area Indian Health Service at Window Rock, Arizona. He is a member and Past President of the Executive Committee for the American Academy of Psychiatrists in Alcoholism and Addictions. Dennis P. Morrison, PhD, is Chief Executive Officer at the Center for Behavioral Health in Indiana, the first behavioral health company ever to win the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) Codman Award for excellence in the use of outcomes management to achieve health care quality improvement. He is President of the Board of Directors for the Community Healthcare Foundation in Bloomington, and has been a member of the Board of Directors for the American College of Sports Psychology. He has served as a consultant to agencies including the Ohio Department of Mental Health, Tennessee Association of Mental Health Organizations, Oklahoma Psychological Association, the North Carolina Council of Community Mental Health Centers, and the National Center for Heath Promotion in Michigan. Morrison served across 10 years as a Medical Service Corp Officer in the U.S. Navy. William H. Reid, MD, is a clinical and forensic psychiatrist, and consultant to attorneys and courts throughout the United States. He is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Health Science Center. Dr. Miller is also an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at Texas A&M College of Medicine and Texas Tech University School of Medicine, as well as a Clinical Faculty member at the Austin Psychiatry Residency Program. He is Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board and Medical Advisor to the Texas Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association, as well as an Examiner for the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He has served as President of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, as Chairman of the Research Section for an International Conference on the Psychiatric Aspects of Terrorism, and as Medical Director for the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation. Dr. Reid earned an Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. He has been cited on the Best Doctors in America listing since 1998.

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ABOUT

THE

SERIES

THE PRAEGER SERIES IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY In this series, experts from various disciplines peer through the lens of psychology, telling us answers they see for questions of human behavior. Their topics may range from humanity’s psychological ills—addictions, abuse, suicide, murder, and terrorism among them—to works focused on positive subjects, including intelligence, creativity, athleticism, and resilience. Regardless of the topic, the goal of this series remains constant—to offer innovative ideas, provocative considerations, and useful beginnings to better understand human behavior. Series Editor Chris E. Stout, Psy.D., MBA Northwestern University Medical School Illinois Chief of Psychological Services Advisory Board Bruce E. Bonecutter, Ph.D. University of Illinois at Chicago Director, Behavioral Services, Elgin Community Mental Health Center

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About the Series

Joseph A. Flaherty, M.D. University of Illinois College of Medicine and College of Public Health Chief of Psychiatry, University of Illinois Hospital Michael Horowitz, Ph.D. Chicago School of Professional Psychology President, Chicago School of Professional Psychology Sheldon I. Miller, M.D. Northwestern University Director, Stone Institute of Psychiatry, Northwestern Memorial Hospital Dennis P. Morrison, Ph.D. Chief Executive Officer, Center for Behavioral Health, Indiana President, Board of Directors, Community Healthcare Foundation, Indiana William H. Reid, M.D. University of Texas Health Sciences Center Chair, Scientific Advisory Board, Texas Depressive and Manic Depressive Association

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P E A C E M OV E M E N T S W O R L DW I D E

Recent Titles in Contemporary Psychology Preventing Teen Violence: A Guide for Parents and Professionals Sherri N. McCarthy and Claudio Simon Hutz Making Enemies: Humiliation and International Conflict Evelin Lindner Collateral Damage: The Psychological Consequences of America’s War on Terrorism Paul R. Kimmel and Chris E. Stout, editors Terror in the Promised Land: Inside the Anguish of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Judy Kuriansky, editor Trauma Psychology, Volumes 1 and 2 Elizabeth Carll, editor Beyond Bullets and Bombs: Grassroots Peace Building between Israelis and Palestinians Judy Kuriansky, editor Who Benefits from Global Violence and War: Uncovering a Destructive System Marc Pilisuk with Jennifer Achord Rountree Right Brain/Left Brain Leadership: Shifting Style for Maximum Impact Mary Lou D
e costerd Creating Young Martyrs: Conditions That Make Dying in a Terrorist Attack Seem Like a Good Idea Alice LoCicero and Samuel J. Sinclair Emotion and Conflict: How Human Rights Can Dignify Emotion and Help Us Wage Good Conflict Evelin Lindner Emotional Exorcism: Expelling the Psychological Demons That Make Us Relapse Holly A. Hunt, Ph.D. Gender, Humiliation, and Global Security: Dignifying Relationships from Love, Sex, and Parenthood to World Affairs Evelin Lindner

P E AC E M OV E M E N T S W O R L DW I D E Volume 3: Peace Efforts That Work and Why

Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler, Editors

CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY

Chris E. Stout, Series Editor

Copyright 2011 by Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Peace movements worldwide / Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler, editors. p. cm. — (Contemporary psychology) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-313-36478-5 (hard copy : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-36479-2 (e-book) — ISBN 978-0-313-36480-8 (vol. 1 hard copy : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0313-36481-5 (vol. 1 e-book) — ISBN 978-0-313-36482-2 (vol. 2 hard copy : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-36483-9 (vol. 2 e-book) — ISBN 978-0-313-36484-6 (vol. 3 hard copy : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-36485-3 (vol. 3 e-book) 1. Peace movements 2. Peace movements — History. I. Pilisuk, Marc. II. Nagler, Michael N. JZ5574.P44 2011 303.60 6—dc22 2010037446 ISBN: 978-0-313-36478-5 EISBN: 978-0-313-36479-2 15 14

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This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. Praeger An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

ix

Set Introduction

xi

Introduction to Volume 3

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P E AC E CHAPTER

1

CHAPTER

2

CHAPTER

3

CHAPTER

4

CHAPTER

5

PA R T I F RO M A B OV E

New Understandings of Citizenship: Path to a Peaceful Future? Elise Boulding Peace Building: Twelve Dynamics Kai Brand-Jacobsen Our Water Commons: Toward a New Freshwater Narrative Maude Barlow Beyond Leviathan? The Historical Relationship between Peace Plans, International Law, and the Early Anglo-American Peace Movement Cris Toffolo The Good News: The ICC and the R2P Principle Ronald J. Glossop

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Toward a Necessary Utopianism: Democratic Global Governance Richard Falk PA R T I I P E AC E F R O M B E L O W

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CHAPTER

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I Am the Leader, You Are the Leader: Nonviolent Resistance in the Peace Community of San Jos
e de Apartad
o, Colombia Elizabeth Lozano Peace Building Education: Responding to Contexts Candice C. Carter Inside the Military Media Industrial Complex: Impacts on Movements for Peace and Social Justice Peter Phillips and Mickey S. Huff Renaissance 2.0: The Web’s Potential for the Peaceful Transformation of Modern Society Deva Temple Building the Peace by Examples of Civil Courage during the War Svetlana Broz Peace Can Be Taught Colman McCarthy When Violence ‘‘Works’’ for 30 Years: The Late Return of Satyagraha to the Northern Irish Peace Process Marcel M. Baumann Hands of Peace: From Epiphany to Reality Laura Bernstein The Movement Toward Peace in Crisis— and Opportunity Michael N. Nagler To Remake the World Paul Hawken Search for Common Ground John Marks and Susan Collin Marks

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Setting the Stage for Peace: Participatory Theater for Conflict Transformation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Lena Slachmuijlder The Pledge of Resistance: Lessons from a Movement of Solidarity and Nonviolent Direct Action Ken Butigan Money Cannot Be Eaten: Nonviolent Resistance in Struggles over Land and Economic Survival Rev. Jos
e M. Tirado Searching for Development with Human Dignity in Guatemala Jennifer Achord Rountree PA R T I I I P E AC E F RO M W I T H I N

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On Meditation Michael N. Nagler Despair Work Joanna Macy Experimenting with Nonviolence: From West Texas to South Korea Richard L. Deats Trained to Hate: Confessions of a Convert to Humanity Claude AnShin Thomas Searching for Peace in the Peace Movement: A Lover’s Quarrel Rabbi Michael Lerner Breaking Out of the Culture of Violence: An Oral History with Former Economic Hit Man, John Perkins Nikolas Larrow-Roberts and John Perkins Inspiring Peace Workers Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler

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A Final Word Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler

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Bibliography

355

Index

379

About the Editors and Contributors

393

About the Series Editor and Advisory Board

407

About the Series

411

A C K N OW L E D G M E N T S

The three volumes of this book were invited by our publisher, who saw, as we do, the value in an overview, as far as it was possible to take one, of the peace movement as a whole. First Debora Carvalko and then Lindsay Claire and Denise Stanley have been immensely supportive throughout. We soon found that the task of inviting, identifying, and editing selections from academics, officials, and activists from the varied aspects of the search for peace was a challenge to our time and organizational talents. To all of our contributors, some world renowned, all busy, we extend our thanks and appreciation for working with us, sometimes on short notice, to include their chapters. We remain amazed and grateful for the work for peace described in their contributions and the courage and persistence of the people they write about. The Metta Center for Nonviolence receives a special thanks for providing us with a welcoming place to meet. This collection could never have seen the light of day without the dedicated involvement of a number of people. Gianina Pellegrini spent long hours beyond the few for which she was compensated to keep us on task, to communicate respectfully to hundreds of people through thousands of messages. She edited manuscripts, recruited other graduate students from Saybrook University to help, organized tasks and meetings, volunteered to write two chapters on her own that we truly needed, and fell behind in her own studies but never despaired or lost a chance to encourage others. Chris Johnnidis of the Metta Center provided initial help in setting up an interactive filing

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Acknowledgments

system. The project got a boost when Gianina spread the word at Saybrook University. Saybrook deserves thanks for finding some of the most talented and dedicated students anywhere. Rebecca Norlander provided endless hours of editing, evaluating, and reformatting chapters and is a co-author of an chapter. Angel Ryono likewise helped write, edit, and find authors to fill gaps, and is a co-author of two chapters. Other students whose generous help included becoming chapter authors. They are: Nikolas Larrow-Roberts, Rev. Jose M. Tirado, Ellen Gaddy, and Melissa Anderson-Hinn. Two other colleagues, Mitch Hall and Daniel J. Adamski, saw enough in the project to pitch in with major editing tasks and went on to be co-authors of chapters. Many others whom we were not able to include in the anthology helped us tremendously, sharing their specific expert knowledge and contacts to help us frame the task. These include Donna Nassor, Sandy Olleges, Kevin Bales, Curt Wand, Glen Martin, Byron Belitsos, Ethel Tobach, Douglas Fry, Ahmed Afzaal, Susan McKay, Joel Federman, Gail Ervin, Dan Christie, Jeff Pilisuk, and Josanne Korkinen. Marc wants to express appreciation for the inspiration of two mentors, Anatol Rapaport and Kenneth Boulding; of his parents, who always valued peace and justice; and to his wife Phyllis who tolerated his sleep-deprived state for close to a year, understanding what he was trying to do. He thanks Michael Nagler for being a partner whose knowledge and belief in the peace movement is just amazing. Michael wants to thank the staff at the Metta Center for giving him the space and the encouragement to see this task through; his friends and colleagues in the peace movement for stepping up with translation (especially Matthias Zeumer), ideas, and other contributions; Marc Pilisuk for inviting him on board in the first place; and above all his mentor and guide, Sri Eknath Easwaran of the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation, for showing him his life’s path and never losing faith that he would follow it to the end.

S E T I NTRODUCTION

The only thing we can, and therefore must control, is the imagery in our own mind. —Epictetus

We humans have great abilities to create images, and with them, to build a significant part of our reality, and therefore to nurture or to destroy our species and its surroundings. We have used these abilities creatively but not always kindly, or wisely. As our science and technologies have made it possible to appreciate how our lives are part of one global world, they have also provided us with the means to destroy Earth’s capacity to support life. The peace movement that is growing throughout the world gives recognition and power to the first side of the balance, reacting against violence and war, raising aloft a higher vision of harmony and peace. It provides us with a living history of the strength of people, communities, and tribes—and sometimes governments—to create social institutions and ideas that give peace its chance to grow. It is in the search for peace, for a way to live in harmony with each other and with the natural order, that we seem to come most alive and closest to the meaning of our existence on this earth. The peace movement is likely the only undertaking that holds out a promise that the remarkable experiment of life can go on. We consider peace to include both the absence of unnecessary violence and the pursuit of a world that offers deep contentment with the process of

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life. We feel some dismay as we look at paths taken by humans toward large-scale violence. But the destruction and suffering we find is not the whole story. There is another and far more hopeful story, partly old, partly new, and partly yet to be written. Peace connotes a world with harmony among people and between people and their environment. It is surely not a world without anger or one without conflict. But it is a world in which the fulfillment of human needs can occur without inflicting preventable violence and human beings can grow closer to one another in spirit, which, as Augustine said, is the ultimate purpose and underlying desire of our very nature (see Volume 1, Chapter 2). Like science, which has a capacity for change as new evidence emerges, the pursuit of peace is an ongoing process in which its adherents can and do learn from the past and continually make new discoveries. Like democracy, the pursuit of peace does not always produce a better world right away, but that pursuit unquestionably has the capacity to bring correctives into the directions of our evolution as a species. The peace movement is an exciting and empowering wave of worldwide change that can harness the power of each of us, individually and collectively, for love and for life. There are many books about peace. In the three volumes of this anthology we have chosen not to be an encyclopedia of the efforts for peace,1 or a history of worldwide efforts to realize it2—nor, for that matter, a celebration of a hopeful future. Rather, we have tried to present a mosaic that gives due recognition to the obstacles to be overcome while sampling the amazing creativity of what has been and is being done to overcome them. The doers are scientists and poets, professors and peasant women, intergovernmental agencies and community art projects, soldiers and pacifists, and environmentalists and defenders of human rights. Rather than force a rigid analysis on how all their efforts combine, we have tried mainly to let the voices be heard. Volume 1 focuses on different ways people have looked at peace—to construct a theory of its nature and possibilities. We present a framework for peace studies set forth by Johan Galtung, who more than anyone living deserves to be considered the founder of the field (peace entered academic discourse as a discrete subject only very recently), and we go on to writings that examine the deeper meanings of peace. The ubiquity of human aggression and violence leads some to the despairing conclusion that we are inherently warlike. We report on the new perspectives in biology, anthropology, and psychology that paint a different picture of what humans are or are not constrained to do by our nature, and take issue with the prevalent concept that we are ‘‘wired’’ to fight—or even to cooperate—which implies a determinism that is denied by science and common experience. Because world peace will require some transformative changes in the way we view

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ourselves and our world, a section is devoted to the issue of human identity and the culture of peace. We look at the contribution of organized religion to the quest for peace. (Spirituality, as somewhat distinct from organized religion, and other broad topics are handled in Volume 3.) Volume 1 ends with chapters taking a hard look at the magnitude of change required for peace and the institutional, particularly economic and monetary, forces that need to be transformed if peace is to reign. Volume 2 looks at what is being done in response to war and other forms of violent conflict. Moving along the chain of causality, we cite efforts to prevent mass killing by monitoring and controlling weapons that in some cases are capable not only of ending lives needlessly but of obliterating life as we know it, as well as the ongoing efforts to expose corporate beneficiaries of war and to invest instead in enterprises that promote human and environmental health. Then we examine the aftermath of violence—the trauma, the scars, and the all-important processes of reconciliation and healing. We end Volume 2 with accounts of select national and regional movements, the world over, that have grown in opposition to war. Volume 3 is the proactive and constructive complement to the anti-war movements described in Volume 2. Here we illustrate efforts at building a peaceful world and its cultural infrastructure through peace education and reform of a media that at present does little to counter those powerful forces that promote a culture of violence and even instigate incidents of mass violence. We sample some highly creative ways that peace is being built at levels from courageous individuals to developing villages and on to international treaties and institutions. Then we examine, with examples, the process by which people can experience transformative change on a personal level that empowers participation in building a peaceful world. When ‘‘peace’’ is taken in its full meaning, when one backs out from the simple cessation of one armed conflict or another to begin to sense the preconditions, the ‘‘dispositions’’ (as Erasmus says) that produced the outcome of conflict and its cessation, one begins to realize that the search for peace is almost coterminous with the evolution of human consciousness, of our destiny. Such a discussion obviously cannot be covered even in an anthology of this size. What one can do, and what we have tried to do, is sketch out a picture reasonably faithful to the variety, the intensity, and the unquenchable audacity of the men and women who have taken up this struggle from above (through law and policy), from below (from grassroots to civil society), and most characteristic of the present, from within (through personal transformation). For this goal, many have lain down their very lives. We come away from our survey of all this activity, dedication, and sacrifice with a combined sense of awe and inspiration.

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At the end of the day, it is this inspiration that we wish to share with you. For as various writers in all three volumes have noted, all the ingredients for an evolutionary step forward toward this as-yet unrealized world are in place—some of them have been for some time. What is missing is the overview, the sense of the big picture, and the confidence in the heart of each one of us that we can make a difference. This we can do even in face of the apparently never-to-be-dislodged juggernaut of war: the mindset, the dehumanizing training, the institutions, the frightening technology. In face of that enormity, a countering awareness has arisen of the unquenchable drive for peace and what it has brought into being. The art, science, and practice of peace are having impacts on human understanding, institutions, and behaviors that are indispensable—if not for the courage to get engaged, at least for our sanity. But we hope for more; we hope you will come away from this set of books with re-fired determination to join this struggle, and a slightly sharper sense of where to make your best contribution. Nothing would please us more.

NOTES 1. Lazlo and Yoo, 1986; Kurtz and Turpin, 1999; Powers and Vogele, 1997. 2. Among many examples, see Chatfield and Kleidman, 1992; Chatfield, 1973; Beales 1971; and http://www.peacehistorysociety.org/. For conscientious objection worldwide, see the works of historian Peter Brock.

INTRODUCTION

TO

VO LU M E 3

In this volume we take up proactive and constructive, often nonconfrontational activities aimed at the creation of peace and its institutions. These were, for Gandhi at least, the privileged ‘‘wing’’ of peace creation without which the direct resistance to injustice (essential activities to be sure) could at times dislodge regimes but would be unlikely by themselves to lead to lasting peace. This volume is thus about peace building, about making real the changes in our institutions—and our thinking—that will build an enduring peace. It is work that sets in place the conditions that make peace our normal expectation. At the same time, peace building does not remove the continuing need to resist injustice, to prevent outbreaks or spread of violence, or to heal the wounds of past violence. Each of these efforts, illustrated in Volume 2, repairs the fabric of life. As we pointed out in Volume 1, there is a great deal of this type of constructive activity going on, but some of its busy practitioners are by and large out of touch with the big picture that includes peace building at many levels; very often they also lack a sense of when it might be necessary to complement this constructive work with direct resistance. It might be useful to think of this work in three categories: remedial, restorative, and radical. In remedial work we take care of victims of the system who are not going to be looked after (or even looked at) by the regime that has victimized them—displaced refugees, welfare mothers, illegal immigrants, the health uninsured, the homeless. All good work. And it has an implicit message that goes far beyond the help and comfort of those

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immediate victims: ‘‘these are human beings, precious of value; we care for them.’’ This itself can be extremely important: think of Mother Teresa and her well-deserved Nobel Peace Prize. Yet on the other hand, it can actually facilitate the injustices of the regime. The aim of victimizers, remember, is not victimization per se: it is theft, exploitation of resources, and of people. When a financial boondoggle bankrupts a community (or a country: see the interview with John Perkins in Part III: Chapter 27 in this volume), for example, the manipulators walk off with their spoils and the existence of the ‘‘collaterally damaged’’ human beings is only an embarrassment to them. (This is not to say that on some level they could or would have a concern when they think as people and not as financiers or strategic gamesters.) Remove the embarrassment and you facilitate their work—and ease their conscience (which we believe they must have, on some level). This is why even those more exploitive and uncaring regimes, like the Bush/ Cheney administration through which the United States has just passed, promote charitable work and nonprofit relief organizations. They’ll look after the profits, thank you; and remedial work is too ‘‘downstream’’ to interfere with their exploitive systems. Restorative work pushes further into the discomfort zone. A classic example, and one that we barely touched on in this book, is restorative justice. The overcrowded, dehumanizing prisons here in the United States, for example, are veritable madrasas (schools inculcating hostility and revenge) of future crime that entrap over 2 million Americans today. They both spring from and exacerbate a general culture of greed and dehumanization. The restorative justice movement and its various institutions—victim-offender reconciliation projects (VORP), Alternatives to Violence, meditation programs, and so on—are growing, but slowly in comparison to the retributive juggernaut that someday they hope to supplant. Here the counter-cultural message is a little louder, because it rehumanizes those whom society has not just victimized and ignored but condemned and rejected. I believe it was prison activist Bo Lozoff who pointed out that when society says to a lawbreaker, ‘‘Hey, get out of here,’’ what we should be saying is more like, ‘‘get back in here.’’ Finally, what kind of activity could bring about deep, lasting, in other words, radical, change? We believe we can get at this question by asking, what do people in the exploiting class feel their identity, if not their very existence, depends on? And that the answer elaborated in Volume 1 is, profits and war.1 Think of the rueful confession of General Smedley Butler that he fought wars to defend the likes of United Fruit Company and Standard Oil,2 or the orchestrated downfall of leaders like Arbenz in Guatemala or Mosadegh in Iran when they sought to reclaim resources in their own countries for public benefit. The power of this exploitive elite can strike at leaders

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xvii

within their own country as well as in developing nations. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated (according to evidence that has not been refuted) not because he was advocating ‘‘mixing races’’—not because of anything racial at all. He was assassinated, as was President Kennedy before him (again based on evidence not yet refuted), because he was threatening the war system.3 We would like to believe that such allegations, usually dismissed as conspiracy theories, are unfounded. But the absence of answers is disquieting, and in any case the extent of power that rests in the system of war and exploitation is real. Surely the most effective way to threaten the war system is not to rely solely on protesting it—we have seen to our dismay how that can be ignored—but by building an alternative. Precisely because peace building is nonconfrontational, and because it soothes rather than arouses fears, this approach just might get far enough that we could finally say to the world, ‘‘Look, we don’t need to wage war; we can defend our country and accomplish anything we think war accomplishes by other means. And they work.’’ Joanna Macy, whose chapter on despair work appears in this volume, has proposed that shifting to a world peace paradigm (what she calls ‘‘the Great Turning’’) will call for work on three levels: 1. Stopping the worst of the damage. 2. Building new institutions. 3. Changing the culture.

Building institutions like Unarmed Civil Resistance (see Christine Schweitzer in Volume 2) answers to her second point; Macy further divides the third into cognitive and spiritual changes. All three of these volumes bring cognitive changes into play—how do we understand the potential, the challenges of peace, and the power of war? This volume also touches on the depth of change, whose power has only begun to be explored: replacing the emptiness of material life with the challenge of spiritual awareness, the chill of alienation with the sense of unity. While these efforts bubble up from the ground in locally inspired efforts, as transformative change for peace inhabits more hearts and as more people find ways to be heard, then a new set of more democratically responsive institutions for global governance gains a foothold and carves into stone some universal standards of decency. Then, starting with the most personal and local emergence of empowerment, the rules that have legalized predation also start to change. We must be forgiven for believing that here we touch on the way to change that may be the most difficult, or at least the most misunderstood, but is quite possibly the most effective.

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NOTES 1. Butler, 2003. 2. Pilisuk and Rountree, 2008. 3. Douglass, 2008 and forthcoming volumes on the assassinations of King and Gandhi.

PART I

PEACE

FROM

A B OV E

We have created a very complex world with institutions that often appear to have lives of their own. Massive organizational structures called corporations or government departments or military establishments are the bookends that often frame limits of what we can accomplish. There are too many of us humans on the planet and too many dangerous methods of killing and of exploiting resources for us to live without some form of large institutions and without enforceable universal standards. We no longer have the option to live in a simpler world without any such institutions, so we must instead restructure existing institutions and create new ones that are better designed to allow all people to enjoy freedom, meaningful security, and peace. Nation states with standing militaries (sometimes called ‘‘national security states’’) and corporate giants that can expand and exploit with minimal accountability are institutions that, for whatever good they may have served, are not able to step up quickly enough to prevent the unending wars and equally unending poverty that have beset our world. In Volume 1 David Korten made the case for why corporate domination must change if sustainability and peace are to be realized. In Volume 2 we included efforts through international treaties to prevent nations from continuing reliance on the weapons of war. Here we examine the emergence of institutions that are more responsive to real human needs. Elise Boulding, who believed deeply that human institutions could grow to permit a healthier world died while this book was coming to fruition. Her life has been a testimony to the building of peacetime institutions. Here

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Peace Efforts That Work and Why

she writes of how much has been achieved, with very little notice or appreciation, in the many programs of the United Nations. Next, Kai BrandJacobsen describes the gradual process by which the institutional machinery of peace is coming of age and developing its place among other highly institutionalized forms of human endeavor, such as health care, agriculture, education, or the military. In Volume 2 Jody Williams and Stephen Goose described a remarkable process used by the Coalition to Ban Landmines to engage separate citizenbased NGO efforts on the issue into a collaborative effort with nations and international bodies to push forward an agreement—an example of what can be achieved when forces from ‘‘below’’ and ‘‘above’’ collaborate. In this section, Maude Barlow deals with another issue that requires international regulation. It is the right to clean water, a fundamental human need and a gift of nature that is increasingly being treated as a commodity and becoming a major determinant of structural violence and of war. Here also, the structure of controls from above are coming largely as a result of actions by local groups seeking to preserve clean water, resisting its contamination and the attempt to have its availability determined by an unfair and often unfeeling marketplace. Her work reaffirms the association needed between local advocacy and international policies that protect the natural world that permits us to survive. The effort to bring order and standards to the world of nation states is not new. Cris Toffolo offers an extremely useful and cautiously optimistic historical perspective on the evolution of international law. Ron Glossop then describes two of the milestones toward holding nations accountable and keeping the sovereignty of nations within boundaries consistent with the real demands of humanity. He describes the International Criminal Court (ICC) that has been approved by the United Nations General Assembly and the ‘‘Responsibility to Protect’’ principle that the General Assembly has approved, establishing that governments must protect the people within their borders from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. Finally, Richard Falk introduces us to the concept of a world federal government. In the current political climate the image seems as illusory as the prospect of ending all violence. But the current political climate may not be compatible with human survival and peace movements are changing that climate. Falk looks at the practical possibilities for moving beyond sovereign nation states vying for power under the law of the jungle, into an ‘‘international community’’ worthy of the name under a universal rule of law. The practicality of a world federal government must be weighed against the dangers of the current system. One hundred and ninety-two

Peace from Above

3

autonomous sovereign nation states is a model for a war system. Real peace is established internally in countries when separate regions legislate their own rules and maintain autonomy over local matters but disputes between them are settled under rules by a central governmental authority. In such matters as the use of military violence, protecting universally recognized human rights, and issues of global climate collapse that affect all people, states relinquish the right to decide unilaterally to settle differences by force. Instead, they abide by the regulations of a federation. In this way, countries no longer go to war or attack neighbors but rather take their differences to court. Sometimes the people involved may apply conscious values of respect, forgiveness, and caring, making legal sanction unnecessary. At other times police actions may be needed to bring parties to judicial settlement. This may not be utopia, but it surely beats the mass killing associated with the present system. —Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler

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CHAPTER

1

N E W U N D E R S TA N D I N G S O F C I T I Z E N S H I P : P AT H T O A P E A C E F U L FUTURE? Elise Boulding

The world needs loving! Gaia herself, the Commonwealth of Life on the planet, needs loving. So do all 6 billion human beings, in our 10,000 societies1 spread across 189 countries, with our 2,000 languages. The peoples of those 10,000 societies, remarkably enough, gathered together through their representatives well over 50 years ago to declare, We the Peoples of the United Nations, Determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and To reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and To establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and This chapter originally appeared in Hope in a Dark Time, edited by David Krieger (Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 2003). The editors would like this brief chapter to stand as our loving tribute to Prof. Boulding, whose passing in June of 2010 was mourned by many others around the world.

6

Peace Efforts That Work and Why

To promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom, . . . Have Resolved to Combine Our Efforts to Accomplish These Aims . . .

The result was the formation of the United Nations, and yes, the United Nations is part of this world’s incredible diversity and needs loving, too. The overlay of 190 sets of national boundaries on this world’s diversity has left many ethnic, racial, and cultural identity groups, each with their own history, stripped of access to their traditional resources and excluded from opportunities to participate in the new life-ways of the new states in which they find themselves. Such identity groups include also the diasporas of immigrant communities and victims of past centuries of slave trade. The resulting struggles, fueled by a military technology that multiplies the availability of small arms to angry people and of high-level bombing power to a few major powers, almost makes the dream of putting an end to war seem obsolete. Yet the capacity to envision a world at peace has been part of humankind’s heritage over the millennia, and is with us still. So are the practical peacemaking skills of the 10,000 societies, present in memory and tradition but missing in practice because of fast-moving developments that outstripped possible strategies of adaptation. So is the capacity for developing and learning new peacemaking practices suited to the complexities of this rapidly changing world. The 20th century was a century of research and development of such practices, stimulated by The Hague Peace Conference of 1899. Today there are peace teams, the contemporary equivalent of Gandhi’s Shanti Sena (peace army), at work in many conflict-torn areas. But too few and with too few resources. Military technology has outraced peace technology. This outracing is the result of another type of heritage: recent centuries of colonial invasion of many of the territories of 10,000 societies and a large-scale drawing of maps that ignored their own traditional lands. Suddenly there were sovereign states with a ruling group that excluded other ethnic groups within their borders from economic and social opportunities in a world in which everything was changing. Diversity was deplored. Political modernization was all about assimilation and melting pots, but reality was about oppression and exclusion. Only now, with the 21st century threatening ecological, economic, and social catastrophes, is there a dawning realization that diversity is valuable, that every language and every life-way includes some valuable knowledge and skills (as well as undesirable practices, such as clitoridectomy, which are certainly not to be cherished). UNESCO has played an important role in this realization, especially through its activity in declaring the World Cultural Development Decade (1988 to 1997),2 which called the attention of all states

New Understandings of Citizenship

7

to the riches of each other’s many cultures. Ethnic groups are finding their voices again, and an increasing number of states, especially in Europe, are following the once-unique Swiss model of a federation of semi-autonomous provinces, each with their own language and culture but also a shared confederal system of governance. Africa, Asia, and the Americas all offer examples. On the European continent, the Council of Europe is encouraging this process through the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities adopted in 1995. Scotland and Wales now have their own parliaments in the United Kingdom (the situation in Northern Ireland is still in process), with similar developments in Belgium, Spain, Italy, and Scandinavia.

A NEW MODEL OF CITIZENSHIP In fact, a new model of citizenship is emerging for the states of the contemporary international community. This citizenship is rooted in love of one’s own community, one’s own culture, with a deep sense of civic responsibility for its well-being, but extends the feelings of community and civic responsibility to all those who live within the borders of one’s country. It resonates to the symbols of citizenship—the flag, the constitutions, and the institutions and processes of governance of that country. This is different from the assimilation model of citizenship because it values and respects the sister identity groups within the borders of the country. However, citizenship that limits its loyalties to those within its borders leaves us with 189 states each focused on maintaining sovereignty in relation to the other 188 states. This passion for sovereignty curbs the willingness of states to sign treaties limiting their freedom of action. And yet behavior-limiting treaties are essential if states are to deal with conflicting interests without going to war. How do we create a responsible system of mutually limited governance among sovereign states? The new model of citizenship that hovers on the horizon is not only multicultural, involving respect for all groups of fellow citizens within the state, but is multinational and multidimensional: a three-fold citizenship. The first dimension, one’s local community, has already been emphasized as a part of one’s citizenship in the state, which in turn is the second dimension of citizenship. The third dimension of citizenship has yet to be recognized and explored: citizenship in the United Nations itself. The United Nations was formed as an association of ‘‘we, the peoples,’’ as quoted at the beginning of this chapter, not as ‘‘we, the states.’’ I do not mean to make this simply a play on words but, rather, to suggest that all 6 billion of us humans (and our fellow creatures in the biosphere) have a direct stake in the survival of the United Nations. The willingness of our national representatives to sign

8

Peace Efforts That Work and Why

treaties to protect the security of all life is dependent on our civic activity in promotion of such treaties. What weaves the local, national, and United Nations dimensions of our citizenship together in a common fabric is the existence of 25,000 international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs). These INGOs bring concerns for peace, justice, human rights, and the environment from our local chapters to the national and on the United Nations’ level, with specific access points at the United Nations, including especially the UN conferences and commission hearings on critical world issues. These INGOs are new developments of the 20th century and are still in a learning mode, particularly in terms of learning how to relate international INGO offices to local situations, to learn from locals, and to learn from and cooperate with each other in this still new action sphere of international nongovernmental bodies. This is all part of a wider learning process as the new concept of citizenship evolves. An important aspect of learning how to exercise that citizenship involves overcoming the vast public ignorance about the United Nations that exists in every country. The concept of national citizenship as encompassing active awareness of the diversity of peoples and needs within our own country already requires a major new educational effort, and the added challenge of learning how to work within the United Nations is daunting, to say the least. But if we want to enable the development of a workable United Nations system of governance to solve the many types of economic, cultural, and environmental conflicts already being faced within the international community of states, we have no alternative. The body of existing conventions and treaties that binds the states of the United Nations together is the product of thousands of hours of citizens’ time (in their role as representatives of INGOs) put into continuing dialogue with diplomats and representatives of Member States and United Nations officials over the nature of the problem to be solved, and what can be agreed to in the way of solutions that are in the common interest of states with different needs. This process, slow and frustrating as it is, brings into being new norms in the common human interest. The United Nations treaties on the law of the sea, the banning of landmines, and the establishment of the International Criminal Court are all recent achievements of this process.3

U.S. RESISTANCE TO INTERNATIONAL TREATIES The United States, one of the original funding states of the United Nations itself, has in recent years been notably resistant to signing and ratifying many of these treaties, especially regarding arms limitations and the environment. It also withdrew from the United Nations Education, Science, and Culture

New Understandings of Citizenship

9

Organization (UNESCO) in the 1980s, in protest over the report of UNESCO’s MacBride Commission on the New World Information Order (1980), which emphasized two-way information flows between countries of the North and the South to replace a one-way flow from North to South. All citizens of the United States must share the blame for this withdrawal because we have not activated our citizenship in the United Nations itself to prevent the withdrawal. How could this be done? A specific opportunity at this time is to become involved in the United Nations Culture of Peace Decade, 2001 to 2010. Activities associated with this decade are strongly recommended to us by the collective voice of Nobel Peace Laureates. Since the theme is education for peace and nonviolence for the children of the world, educational materials have been developed for kindergarten through high school, for faith groups and community social action groups of all kinds.4 Peace studies programs to support learning about peace building already exist in many colleges and universities in the United States and around the world and will contribute to the decade’s work. This focus on peace education will help develop not only the skills of listening and dialogue but the skills of civic participation through grassroots organizations and INGOs. Educational materials about the United Nations itself are available directly from the United Nations Association of the United States (UNA–USA)5(or from the UNA of any Member State). Imagine how different the world would be if everyone read the quarterly UN Chronicle,6 which reports on United Nations activities! Invisible as the United Nations is to the general public, there is a lot going on, on any particular day, in the United Nations system. Few realize what that system consists of: six major United Nations operating organs, 13 associated bodies, 16 specialized agencies, five regional commissions, and fluctuating numbers of peacekeeping and observer missions, as well as 20 research institutes, other divisions and special programs that continually evolve to meet new needs in various parts of the world, two United Nations Universities (one in Japan, one in Costa Rica), and about 50 worldwide information centers, plus special offices where new field programs are located. The research institutes publish their own newsletters and research reports. What a difference it could make if all disarmament activists read the reports of the United Nations Institute of Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), or development activists read the reports of the United Nations Research Institute on Social Development (UNRISD), to name just two valuable United Nations research bodies.7 It is a tragedy that all the creativity and problem-solving activity that goes on in the United Nations, side by side with the more publicized bureaucratic inefficiency, is unknown to most civic activists. So many missed opportunities for support of important peace, human rights, development, and environment initiatives that, if carried out, would make the United Nations a more effective body!

10

Peace Efforts That Work and Why

RESTORATIVE JUSTICE In activating the United Nations component of our citizenship, we are supporting principles of restorative justice that have been badly eroded by the evolution of punitive criminal justice systems in recent centuries of state-building. It is a very simplistic system: find the wrongdoers and punish them. The much older system of restorative justice, still practiced in many tribal groups, though outlawed by colonial occupiers, is far more complex. It involves identifying the wrongdoer, uncovering the circumstances of the wrongdoing and the full extent of the harm done, helping the wrongdoer take responsibility for the harm done, undertaking some form of restitution for the victim, and to the extent possible, restoring relationships, not only between the wrongdoer and the victim but between the wrongdoer and the community. When well-trained United Nations Peacekeepers are stationed in an area recovering from civil war, this is the kind of work that their special cadre of trained conflict mediators will undertake. Soldiers without special training can only rely on force in areas of unrest. It is a sad fact that United Nations peacekeeping is severely handicapped by a great shortage of soldiers with special peacekeeping and peace building training and an equally severe shortage of civilian police officers for UNCIVPOL, the United Nations Civilian Police Force. The good news is that the United Nations Security Council has recently mandated that women be present in significant numbers in all United Nations peacekeeping missions.8 Here are new career opportunities for the growing number of women entering into professional conflict mediation and conflict transformation work. But funding to support the missions is sadly lacking. The Culture of Peace Decade could well be a decade of developing understandings of the meaning and possibility of United Nations citizenship for young people. Service in the United Nations Volunteers program gives young people and mid-career people the opportunity to participate in United Nations peacekeeping and development projects around the world (as well as in the national peace corps of Member States). Here is a way for young people to learn about the rich diversity of life-ways and languages around the planet, to explore the poetry and music and dance of human life, to thrill to the biodiversity of the rivers, mountains, valleys, and oceans, the deserts, and the plains—in short, to fall in love with the world that so badly needs loving. The process that began with The Hague Peace Conference in 1899, when nations assembled to declare that war should no longer be used as a means to settle conflicts between states, is still alive. The 20th century saw the establishment of the World Court, the League of Nations, and finally the United Nations. The peace research movement brought social scientists together from

New Understandings of Citizenship

11

every discipline to study the processes involved in conflicts and their resolution, and institutes to research and develop peace diplomacy were established on every continent. New professions of mediators and conflict transformation specialists developed. Social movements to end violence in all its forms arose, including the restorative justice movement to end the use of prisons for wrongdoing, and social movements to end all forms of economic and racial/ethnic oppression. The United Nations began a long process of slowly crafting treaties that would limit the types of weapons used in war and move toward, first nuclear disarmament, and then, general and complete disarmament. Most of all, the treaties have aimed to protect civilians, who are increasingly becoming casualties of new military technologies used in war and of economic catastrophes in the form of slave-type sweatshops. But treaty-crafting is a slow process—states resist having their options limited. And the arms race never stopped—even more lethal military technologies are being developed, and World War II established the practice that it is okay to bomb cities; civilian casualties are just ‘‘collateral damage.’’

MORAL NUMBING Who can say when the current process of moral numbing—a condition of moral and emotional unresponsiveness to human slaughter—first began? Did it begin with the bombing of Dresden? With the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? With the Gulf War? Or more recently with the bombing of Kosovo? Or has it, in fact, been an unnoticed byproduct of Western colonialism, the destruction of native peoples’ life-ways and habitat, and the transatlantic slave trade? Is it not strange that a century noted for a growing awareness of human rights marked by the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights should not have brought that moral numbing process to a halt? The horrified responses in the United States to the September 11 acts of terrorism gave a different kind of witness to that moral numbing. Yes, there were intense feelings of fear and vulnerability, deep sadness over the deaths, but a very rapid translation of those feelings into willingness to fight a vicious war against innocent civilians in the name of stamping out terrorism. The voices calling out in protest, ‘‘not in our name,’’ are hard to hear. The media ignores them. Yet the peace building initiatives of the previous century have not been in vain. There has been a steadily growing realization that cycles of vengeance and counter-vengeance can destroy the societies involved and must be stopped.

12

Peace Efforts That Work and Why

It is possible to create a social space between vengeance and forgiveness, so that those who have been enemies can learn to live together again. The first step was creating international criminal tribunals with justice as the primary objective. But gradually the concepts of the restorative justice movement have gained relevance as people consider how conflicting parties, whether tribal, clan-based, different ethnicities, faith communities, or primarily political groups, would be able to give each other room to get on with their lives after fighting stopped. The need to deal with feelings of injury, anger, and the desire for compensation was strong. And so it happened that the governments of some conflict-fractured states, working with grassroots organizations and national as well as transnational NGOs and the United Nations, worked to develop a new type of institution related to older concepts of folk law: the truth commission.

TRUTH COMMISSIONS The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission is the best known. The commission process is a long and tortuous one, but there are now between 15 and 20 states that have established some form of truth commission. A 1995 study9 lists truth commission processes in Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, Uganda, Philippines, Chile, South Africa, Chad, Rwanda, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Brazil, Colombia, and Peru. They are sparse in Asia, with truth commission initiatives taking place in Sri Lanka and Cambodia, and certainly under consideration elsewhere. The truth commission process involves an intensive examination of the meanings of citizenship and responsibility of conflicting groups for each other within a given country. How much forgiveness is possible? How much restitution can be made? By whom? How will healing take place? The United Nations has made important contributions to the truth commission process in a number of countries. Many trained helpers are needed in countries where there has been widespread killing and torture. Those involved in the violence must relearn their humanity. UNESCO’s Culture of Peace program has worked with local peace centers to help reintegrate into local communities the former soldiers and guerillas who have engaged in widespread torture in countries such as Nicaragua. Germany is the only European country that has had a commission to assess the consequences of war—in this case, focusing on the period of separation of East and West Germany. There has never been serious public discussion of a truth commission for the United States. The nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, resulting in massive civilian deaths, has never been dealt with. Much of the information about the fate of the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remains classified to this day. The bombing is rationalized as having speeded the end of the war, although a 1998 study10 indicates that capitulation was

New Understandings of Citizenship

13

already under way. Government pressure stopped an effort by the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, to hold a 50th anniversary exhibit about the bombing. Failure to grieve over its own shortcomings is a serious problem for the United States and contributes to anti-American attitudes in the rest of the world. A new movement for United States reparations to African Americans for the harm done by slavery, and to Native Americans for harm done by driving them off their lands, may well link with the anti-bombing lobby and peace and disarmament groups to create a demand for a United States truth and reconciliation commission that could lead to public dialogue about the historical process of development in a country justly proud of its democracy, but not well enough aware of its history, and of the diversity of peoples who proudly call themselves Americans. This could give new meaning to American citizenship, as such truth and reconciliation commissions have given new meanings to citizenship in the countries that have worked through that healing process.

A MORE INCLUSIVE UNDERSTANDING OF CITIZENSHIP I have been suggesting that a more multidimensional and inclusive understanding of citizenship, one that could make a peaceful world possible, has strong emotional components of involvement in one’s own local community, in one’s own country, and in the United Nations itself. Both the national and the United Nations components of citizenship involve respect for an empathy with the highly diverse Others with whom we share that citizenship, and a sense of identification with the world family, composed of identity groups and ethnicities scattered across 190 states. The United Nations represents us all. Can we love the United Nations flag as much as we love our country’s flag? This is the only planet we have, and the planet itself needs loving if the life it now supports is to continue into the future. And so I will close with a Sonnet by Kenneth Boulding, whose last words before he died in 1993 were, ‘‘I love the world.’’ Sonnet for the Turning Earth11 January 24, 1993 How good it is to live on Earth that turns, That endlessly repeats the simple play That gives us the great plot of night and day, Sunrise, noontide, and sunset, and so earns For us the precious skill that learns To see the patterns in time’s brave display And so prevents our plans from going astray, So we don’t dash into a fire that burns.

14

Peace Efforts That Work and Why Good it is too that Earth goes round the sun In annual cycles, giving blessed seasons So that we search successfully for reasons Even though in some patterns we may see none. So it is clear that what makes human worth At least in part is learned from Mother Earth.

NOTES 1. The 10,000 societies is a term referring to the existence of thousands of ethnicities, and appears in UNESCO’s 1996 report on ‘‘Our Creative Diversity’’. See also Ankerl, 2000. 2. See UNESCO, 1987. 3. A vivid description of citizen’s involvement in the development of the law of the sea is found in Levering and Levering, 1999. 4. For more information about current developments with regard to peace culture and the involvement of INGOs in peace development work see Boulding, 2000. Also see David Adams, Vol. 1, Chapter 8 of this anthology. 5. The UN Association of the United States (UNA-USA) is located at 801 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10017–4706. 6. The United Nations Chronicle is published quarterly by the United Nations Department of Public Information, United Nations, Room DC20853, New York, NY 10017. 7. UNDIR and UNRISD are both located in the Palais des Nations, CH 1211, Geneva, Switzerland. 8. The resolution on the importance of women in peace building is Resolution 1325, adopted by the Security Council at its 4213 meeting, on October 31, 2000. Copies are available from International Alert, One Glyn St., London SE11, 5HT, England. 9. Kritz, 1995; Minow, 1998. 10. Bird and Lifschutz, 1998. 11. Boulding, 1994.

CHAPTER

2

P E A C E B U I L D I N G : T W E LV E D Y N A M I C S Kai Brand-Jacobsen

After the global demonstrations against war on February 15, 2003—said to be the largest internationally coordinated demonstrations by human beings in history—many went home and asked themselves ‘‘What next?’’ ‘‘What else can I do?’’ After the war began some weeks later on March 20, many more felt as if we had failed, as if those working for peace and to prevent the war from taking place had been defeated. Around the world, many of us, when faced with conflicts—whether in our own personal lives or conflicts, violence and wars in our communities, countries and globally—continue to feel powerless. Confronted by what we see presented to us in the media, some feel overwhelmed, sad, angry, frustrated, and often, disempowered. Despite a rise in the number of peace studies programs at universities across the world, and despite organizations, networks, and institutions engaged in peace building, conflict transformation, alternative dispute resolution, nonviolence, social justice, sustainable community development and peace education, many, perhaps the majority of us, are often left with the feeling that conflicts and violence, global military and economic/political systems, are things over which we have little power and little say. It is clearly a time to reassess. For thousands of years humanity has evolved its capacity for armed conflict and violence, to the point where today we have armies and weapons systems able to wreak extraordinary devastation and destruction. Yet as long as there have been conflicts, human communities have sought ways to

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deal with these conflicts constructively, and effectively, through peaceful means. In the last 20 years, peace building as a field has developed substantially. Today, more than ever before, from the local to the global level, we are systematically investing in and developing our capacities—as individuals, communities, countries, and globally—to deal with conflicts without violence. We should not belittle or undermine what is actually happening. One of the challenges we often face is that people frequently do not see the wide range of activities and initiatives taking place, or their own power and ability to act. The number of organizations engaged in peace building and conflict transformation worldwide, for example, has increased significantly over the past 14 years. While many of those focused on by researchers and writers are larger institutions and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) engaged in peace building and conflict transformation in war-affected countries, there are also organizations, networks, and groups within each of our communities and on every continent that are working to address and transform problems and challenges to a peaceful world. Often the larger government agencies and donor-funded organizations that are extending help from afar, may be part of the challenge, sometimes negating local strengths and sometimes serving to re-enforce institutions that are at the root causes of war and violence. Some are unable or unwilling to challenge deeper roots and dynamics of war and the geo-political and strategic interests of their donors. They may be working to bring an end to ‘‘direct violence,’’ but not touching deep structural or cultural violence and injustices, or their own home countries’ contributions to wars. Just as often, however, the ties and networks we are forming across borders are helping us to better understand and learn from each other, and within our communities to deal with the contradictions and issues we face. Linking together we do more than we can apart. In this way we are going to both the root causes and the effects and impacts of war—direct, social, economic, cultural, and political—analyzing them and working to transcend them. These links are helping us to build networks and dialogues, exchanging experiences, and enriching ourselves through learning of each others’ methods, the challenges and difficulties we face, and the many different ways in which we are addressing them. Together with these networks, peace studies, development organizations, UN agencies, and researchers have—systematically over the past 10 years but with roots even before that—begun gathering together best practices and lessons learned on everything from strengthening and supporting local capacities for peace, empowering communities to address and transcend violence, war to peace transitions, postwar reconciliation, recovery, healing, and economic viability.

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We gain perspective and hope by examining 12 dynamics shaping the frontiers of peace building today. They do not tell the whole story, but they make visible a dimension of our work often not seen. Practitioners and policy makers most often work in-depth in particular areas of the field. The purpose here is to make visible a glance of the overall picture created as a result of that work. When a bird’s-eye view of the broad dynamics of the field is combined with a frog’s-eye view looking at concrete, specific details, we see a field that is developing rapidly in necessary ways, enhancing our capacities to deal with conflicts effectively, and improving our abilities to prevent large-scale violence and armed conflicts. This chapter is both a presentation of some of those dynamics and an invitation to work together on developing them further.

TWELVE DYNAMICS

One: Growing, Broadening, Expanding Peace building as a field has grown significantly over the past 20 years. There are more organizations involved. It is now a global field, replacing an earlier preponderance toward institutions and initiatives based in Western Europe and North America. A broader range of actors: governments, intergovernmental organizations, NGOs, local authorities, think tanks, media, and artists—each brings important contributions. Engagement is on a broader range of issues: mediation, early warning and prevention, civilian peacekeeping, post-war recovery, reconciliation and healing, gender and peace building, peace journalism, restorative justice, peace education, and building peace infrastructure. The field is continuing to expand.

Two: Improving Methodologies Expansion is combined with gradually improving methods. It would take more space than we have here to list all the groundbreaking innovations of the last few years, in all corners of the world. A few institutions—Organization for Economic-Development Cooperation Directorate (OECD-DAC),1 Collaborative for Development Action (CDA),2 the Department of Peace Operations of the Romanian Peace Institute (PATRIR),3 the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC)4—are in the forefront for describing them, but many local and regional networks of practitioners and organizations, working in their communities, nationally and internationally, are contributing. Such groups have been drawing together lessons from practitioners and organizations in the field and reflecting on how such information can help with future

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planning.5 Current developments focus on cumulative impact assessments and are showing that peace building is not the result of any single engagement or intervention but comes about as a result of the cumulative impact of work done at many levels.6 Mediation as a method for resolving conflicts has been studied extensively and refined in important ways. We now have extensive study of the social psychological mechanisms that make it effective under diverse circumstances7 and detailed examination of real cases providing guidelines for its use in rather difficult circumstances, some prepared by the U.S. Institute for Peace (USIP).8 The UN Peace Building Portal9 and Peacemaking Data Bank10 Web sites are early steps toward online portals for knowledge, lessons identified, and experiences gained in the field. An increasing number of quality programs are being implemented by organizations, agencies, and governments in the field at every level. Again, OECD-DAC is doing vital and pioneering work in conceptualizing a paradigm for policy development. Significant gaps remain, but the review of experiences is leading to improved methodologies and policies and contributing to the maturation of peace building.

Three: Development of Peace Building Policies The third major dynamic is the creation of coherent government policies for peace building, crisis prevention, and post-war recovery, as well as the integrating of peace building into other related policy fields, including development, human rights, democratization, and gender equality. In reality there is often a major gap between policy and implementation. Yet overemphasis on what is missing can sometimes make us miss what is developing. Over the past 10 years, some governments have developed clear policies, practical proposals, and doctrines showing deep understanding of how governments can engage in peace building as well as how they can support regional and international organizations and civil society. Some good examples have been developed in the United Kingdom.11 Many more could be listed. The three cases cited are pioneering because they linked their proposals with the governments’ significant operational and financial support for peace building. At the regional and global level, the United Nations, European Union, African Union, Organization of American States, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Commonwealth Secretariat, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and OECD are all developing or have developed policy and strategy papers, guidance notes, and operational toolkits for violence prevention, peace building and working with conflict.

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Four: Peace Infrastructure Policy needs to be linked with the institutional capacities and resources to enable effective implementation. Infrastructure refers to physical and organizational structures needed for the functioning of a societal function. In every field of human activity we have developed infrastructure to enhance operational capacity and effectiveness. Health care provides a useful illustration. Medical systems, ambulances, and cardiac intensive care units are not built the moment someone is having a heart attack. In the field of medicine and health, infrastructure and health systems include: 1. Health education in schools 2. Specialized training for nurses, doctors, psychotherapists, pharmacists, and other health professionals, as well as hospital administrators and researchers, with doctors on average receiving five to eight years of specialized training and one to three years of practice as residents 3. The physical buildings of hospitals and pharmacies and all they need to function 4. Government infrastructure, from local authorities to national level departments and ministries of health to ensure that services are accessible and affordable 5. Global infrastructure including the World Health Organization 6. National and international civil society organizations, health clinics, community-based health care services, the Red Cross/Red Crescent and M
edecins sans Frontieres 7. Infrastructure for rapid response, including ambulances, airlifts, and specifically trained personnel permanently available and ready to respond 8. Research and investment 9. Monitoring practices to improve service 10. Centers for disease control and prevention 11. Local, national, and international medical conferences and professional journals 12. Knowledge management systems that link what is learned and developed in medical practice with training and professional development of medical practitioners

Efforts to prevent illness include relationships with other areas of society: building codes, waste disposal, and design of cities, all influenced by what we have learned in health and medicine. The infrastructure for war is similarly extensive. The military sector has extensive permanent resources, trained personnel, and support. Infrastructure

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for resolving conflicts and peace building is, by contrast, more similar to the approach to medicine taken in 14th-century Europe. Becoming sick and dying were considered unalterable parts of the human condition. The health care structures we have created mean that we now live longer, prevent some major epidemics, and cure diseases once viewed as incurable. The same can be true for treating the disease of war. Violent conflict is still viewed by many as an inevitable part of the human condition. To move from aspiration for peace to realization, we need vision, policies, instruments, trained personnel, and a culture and practice of peace building. In comparison to other social functions, violence prevention, peacemaking, peacekeeping, peace education, and peace building are in an early stage of development. Developing these tools is beginning to happen—and is essential—if we want to move from small-scale, ad hoc, sporadic, and often unsuccessful interventions and engagements, to effective peace building and to more enduring transformation of how conflicts are resolved. The good news is that the infrastructure for peace is developing rapidly. Policy makers and practitioners, previously focused on responding to crises and dealing with the continual outbreak of different conflicts, are increasingly recognizing the need to enhance and improve systematic, standing, and effective capacities for peace building. Examples at the UN include the Peacebuilding Commission, Peace Support Office, Mediation Support Unit, Joint UNDP-DPA (Development Program-Department of Political Affairs) program for strengthening government capacities for conflict resolution, and UNDP’s Bureau for Conflict Prevention and Recovery. A European Peace building Liaison Office has been created and the European Union and other regional organizations have set up programs. Many governments now have ministries or departments of peace. The Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Germany now have peace secretariats and commissioners and a Global Alliance for Ministries and Departments of Peace has been established.

Five: Conflict Intelligence For policy, infrastructure, and operations to be effective in implementation, good conflict intelligence is an essential component. This means the link between understanding of conflict dynamics, root causes, proximate environment, drivers, and the full spectrum of operational conflict analysis; understanding, design, and development of appropriate and effective policy options; engagement strategies; and operational implementation. Coined by the Department of Peace Operations (PATRIR), conflict intelligence is the linking of conflict analysis and understanding with strategic and operational response and implementation of interventions/engagement to address the conflict.

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In the last 10 years tools and methodologies for conflict analysis have developed substantially.12 Some of these include the Department for International Development (DFID)’s Conflict Assessments,13 USAID’s Conflict Vulnerability Index,14 the UNDESA’s Developing Capacity for Conflict Analysis and Early Response,15 Working with Conflict: Skills and Strategies for Action, compiled by the organization Responding to Conflict,16 Clingendael’s Conflict and Policy Assessment Framework,17 the World Bank’s Conflict Analysis Framework,18 the Conflict Prevention and Post-Conflict Reconstruction (CPR) Network’s19 Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment (PCIA) Handbook and Early Warning and Early Response Handbook,20 the Collaborative for Development Action’s ‘‘Do No Harm’’ methodology,21 and Swiss Peace’s FAST Methodology for Early Warning.22 Far too little has been done to review and compare these different methodologies, to identify strengths and gaps, and connect their methodologies with actual needs of policy makers and practitioners in conflict situations. In practice today there is little linking between effective knowledge, understanding, and analysis of conflicts and planning and design of actual intervention and policies. Most governments, agencies, and organizations lack appropriate methodologies and processes for conflict intelligence. Improving conflict intelligence is essential to improving the effectiveness and relevance. The Department of Peace Operations’ Quick Reference Guides,23 the Clingendael Institute’s Conflict Policy Analysis Frameworks,24 DFID’s Guidance Note on Strategic Conflict Analysis,25 and the UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit’s Investing in Prevention26 are all steps to link conflict analysis more effectively with development and design of policies and operational implementation. They are new, and have not yet had a significant impact, but they show an important direction of the field. Policies that were adopted, for example for Kosovo, Somalia, Rwanda, or Afghanistan, in many cases showed an absence of effective understanding of the conflict situation and dynamics in those areas, resulting in operations that had negative impacts. The impact of poorly designed interventions and strategies based on poor conflict analysis and understanding can be significant and often severe. Poor conflict intelligence hampers the work of almost all organizations and practitioners working in the field. Although it is one of the weakest areas of peace building today, the rapid and significant improvement in the quality of conflict analysis, mapping incipient incidents, and their potential spread, is one of the most dynamic areas of development in the field. It serves for peace building the absolutely vital function that epidemiology serves for combating disease. And like epidemiology, the link of this research and analysis to the work of practitioners on the ground is a key next step.

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Six: Early Warning and Effective Prevention A major development in the last 20 years has been the rise and improvement of early warning capacity, and the gradual linking of this with effective responses and prevention. We have some very well developed tools and systems. We know how to monitor conflicts to be able to know where and how they gradually escalate over time toward violence. A standard model for an early warning system is presented in David Nyheim’s brilliant report for the OECD-DAC, Can Violence, War, and State Collapse Be Prevented? 27 The very real possibility of the war in Georgia in August 2008 was obvious for several months in advance. Its roots were evident even before that. The very probable and real possibility of the breakdown of the peace process in Sri Lanka could have been seen at least four years ahead of the renewed outbreak of fighting. In 2004 and again in 2007, discussions were held in Nairobi on the clear potential for violence around elections based on what was already clearly evident in the country at that time. Nyheim’s report shows current and early initiatives for early warning systems in Africa, Asia, and Europe, to be poorly developed and not linked directly with existing response and prevention capacities. The link between prevention and the institutions and capacity to address conflicts effectively is essential. It was often the missing component of earlier early warning systems. You can be warned that you’re about to have a heart attack with a pacemaker, but we need people trained in how you respond to cardiac arrest and hospitals that can help if we want to transform ‘‘helping that person’’ to ‘‘saving their life.’’ Standing institutional capacity, human resources, and a culture of prevention and peace building are essential components of effective early warning and prevention. The Nyheim report shows that knowledge and capacity to develop effective early warning and prevention systems has begun. We have placed human beings on the moon and cured diseases once thought to be incurable. Early warning and prevention is possible, but investment and commitment are needed to make it operational and effective.

Seven: Improved Training and Professional Development More localized infrastructure, some NGO based, is clearly evident in training. Training for community-based mediation units and peace teams has expanded. In the last 15 years, the number of training organizations internationally and the number of training programs taking place has been increasing steeply. Notably, the number and variety of people taking these programs is also increasing: senior government officials, civil servants, aid

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and development practitioners and policy makers, UN staff and staff of national and international organizations, journalists and media professionals, teachers, current and former combatants and military personnel, mediators, and students. Programs range from the generic to highly specialized and advanced. The growth in training is happening among college-and universitybased peace studies and the number of degree programs, available today on all continents, has grown. Peace journals are flourishing and peace media have taken root, often electronically. An essential ingredient of good educational programs is a close link with practical experience and operations in the field, and with the development of thinking at the operational and policy levels. Many peace studies programs still do not have this. Those who graduate should have knowledge, skills, and capacities to do peace building in practice much as we would expect from a graduating doctor or airplane pilot. Working with conflicts and preventing, stopping, or assisting in recovering from the visible and invisible impacts of war and violence are immeasurably more complicated than any disciplinary set of academic principles would suggest. Increasingly, training academies, such as that of International Alert,28 forumZFD,29 and the International Peace and Development Training Centre (IPDTC),30 are linking together, and working with organizations and agencies—state and non-state—that are deploying people to the field to improve the depth and quality of their preparation of adult professionals. An important aspect of this is mapping the competencies that people actually need when they carry out this work and seeing how to prepare them effectively and to assess them. The European Group on Training (EGT)31 was also an important initiative to consolidate knowledge and experience of academies providing training for government officials in peace building, conflict transformation, and crisis management and prevention. As the quality of these programs improves, and as more people go through them, this will increasingly impact the quality and skills of those working in the field—leading to improved peace building in policy and practice. Realism is needed, though. Two-day, five-day, or one-month trainings are not enough. Surgeons, architects, or scientists do not learn their fields in two-day, five-day, or one-month programs and practitioners overly reliant on limited methodologies may not be able to address effectively the range of settings they find. Learning the art of active listening is probably central to most programs. This has been fundamental for many of the best practitioners who have not actually gone through training programs, but have found other ways to train and to develop their knowledge, including constant practice, in-depth reflection, and assessment. Yet much has been

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learned and training can contribute to a more respectful, serious, and realistic approach to skills and professional development.

Eight: Improved Funding While every experienced practitioner and policy maker has recognized a need for much more funding, the last 20 years have seen a marked improvement for the field. Still, many peacekeeping and peace building organizations face potential bankruptcy and constantly need to raise minimal resources to do essential work. Governments, the European Union, and the UN, however, together with private donors and foundations, are giving considerably more support than in the past 20 years. A key task now is to assess lessons learned from donor support for peace building to improve quality and effectiveness. The Utstein Report of the British, German, Norwegian, and Dutch governments32 was an important step. Extensive evaluations have been done on country-by-country basis and of individual donor programs. What has not yet been carried out, is a more thorough, cross-country, crossdonor comparative assessment, engaging donors, practitioners, and policy makers in identifying how funding can be done more effectively to support peace building in practice. In the Progress Report of the Secretary-General of the United Nations on the Prevention of Armed Conflict,33 then Secretary-General of the UN Kofi Annan importantly called on all member states to improve infrastructure and architecture for peace building, to improve coordination and cooperation among the different agencies and actors in the field, and to improve the scale of funding for peace building.

Nine: Improved Networking and Cooperation There are considerable improvements in networking and cooperation. The Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC),34 along with its regional platforms, has played a major role. Across Asia, practitioners are linking together in the Asian Peace Builders Forums.35 In many countries, national platforms linking organizations have been established. The European Network of Civil Peace Services36 effectively links both existing peace services and national initiatives to establish professionally trained civil peace services across Europe, helping the organizations involved learn from each others’ work. There are also specific associations for trainers, mediators, DDR experts, those working on gender and UN Resolution 1325, and organizations working to affect government policies on peace building. Researchers, academics, and others working anywhere in the world with access to the Internet can link together on the Peace and

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Collaborative Development Network established by Craig Zelizer.37 Those working in the broad field of peace building are also improving collaboration and cross-fertilization with people from other fields. Increasingly, cooperation is also happening across sectors—state and non-state, UN, governments, and NGOs.

Ten: A Collaborative Field Peace building is becoming a collaborative field. Organizations, agencies, practitioners, scholars, and the broad spectrum of those involved are often working together. From the 1950s until today, there were many geniuses, ‘‘giants,’’ and gurus, who did incredible pioneering work, and a lot of people looked at them like gods on mountains. They were seen as the sources of all knowledge for anything to do with peace work. Today we are building on their pioneering work by learning from and with each other. An increasingly creative, committed, collaborative field is developing, with perhaps greater respect and humility for the scale of the challenges we face, and a deeper willingness and commitment to build and work together authentically.

Eleven: Lessons Identified/Learned At the heart of the field today is learning from experience. This is a complex and challenging task. So much is being carried out around the world that a great deal of experience is never reflected on. Thousands of medical operations are conducted, and even though a great deal of experience is lost, an awesome amount is gathered and transferred back into reflection in the field and training and education of existing and new practitioners. Peace building needs to do the same. The field as a whole is too sporadic, ad hoc, and does not systematically learn from what has been done elsewhere. Even the shortcomings of modern medicine’s over-reliance on technological fixes and failures to recognize strengths and wisdom of patients and communities can ideally provide one of the lessons for the field of peace building The last 10 years, however, have seen the most significant advance of the field. The studies and publications cited earlier are examples of efforts to gather and learn from experiences. Governments, policy makers, and practitioners all need to understand the importance of committing space, time, and resources to the task.

Twelve: Streamlining and Coherence: Intrinsic Peace Building A twelfth dynamic represents one of the most important developments in the field. This is the transition from intervention-based/dependent peace

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building and conflict transformation to intrinsic and systemic, or streamlined peace building. Examples of intervention-based approaches are local, national, or external NGOs carrying out specific programs for peace education in schools; training teachers for peace education; facilitating interventions for justice or policing reform; or advocating for governments to adopt more peace building-based approaches to conflicts. These are time-bound (often framed as projects) and carried out by agents external to a sector trying to have an impact. The importance and need for this will remain. Intrinsic or streamlined peace building, however, is when the sectors and/or systems have integrated and included peace building approaches and capacities into their basic knowledge, doctrine, and operating cultures, systems, and practices; for example, when all teachers are trained in peace education as part of the teacher training system; when courts, legal, and police systems have peace building, restorative justice, and effective, constructive approaches to addressing conflicts built into them; and when governments have standing, institutionalized peace building capacities and clear, coherent peace building strategies, policies, and the political commitment and practice to use them.

Plus One A final dynamic is the growing rejection of war and violence as an acceptable and/or legitimate means of addressing conflicts. Opposition comes from local communities in war and violence-affected settings around the world and was visible during the global demonstrations of millions of people against the war in Iraq. Politicians, policy and decision makers, doctors, academics, military officers and soldiers, journalists, students, artists: people from all backgrounds and walks of life are increasingly recognizing that violence—and the massive investment in military and war systems—produces incredible devastation, destruction, and misuse of human resources, intelligence, capacities, and life. This chapter has tried to highlight some key dynamics happening in the field today. It has also shown how some of the essential building blocks for peace building, steps we have taken in many other fields of human endeavor, have not yet advanced far enough into the complex tasks of peace building, violence prevention, and post-war recovery. A paradigm shift is taking place. The doctrine that ‘‘If we wish for peace, prepare for war’’ is increasingly recognized for what it is: a doctrine that leads to increasing war and violence. It is being replaced, with a more realistic understanding that ‘‘If we wish for peace, prepare for peace.’’ Gaps and challenges remain, but the preparations already begun are truly impressive. With all that is being done, how is it that wars such as

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those in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, Darfur, and the Congo continue? What have been identified are dynamics and/or trends—work that has been pioneered and that is beginning to reach new levels. They are some of the frontiers of peace building. The answer to the question of whether they develop to the point where they can become truly effective— to the point where wars such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, Darfur, and the Congo can be ended and, better still, prevented—depends on the choices we make.

NOTES 1. Development Co-operation Directorate. 2. CDA Collaborative Learning Project. 3. Patrir, Devastating Development – Costing Lives: The True Impacts of Armed Violence and the Cost of Not Investing in Prevention.’’ 4. Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict. 5. Reychler and Paffenholz, 2001; Lederach and Jenner, 2002. 6. ‘‘Reflecting on Peace Practice’’ (CDA); Anderson and Olsen, 2003; Lederach, 2005; Collaborative for Development Action’s Theories of Change. 7. Deutch and Marcus, 2006. 8. Crocker, et al., 2001, 2004. 9. See ‘‘Peacebuilding Portal.’’ 10. See United Nations Peacemaker. 11. See the UK Department for International Development (DFID), 2006; UK Government, 2007; ‘‘Investing in Prevention – A Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit Report to the UK Government,’’ 2005; In Germany see German Development Cooperation: Strategy for Peace-Building, 2005; In Sweden see Government Offices of Sweden. 2001. 12. For a listing of major conflict analysis tools and methodologies developed by a range of organizations and agencies in the field today see the Department of Peace Operations Quick Reference Guide, 8. 13. UK Department for International Development, 2002. 14. Stanley Samarasinghe, et al., 2001. 15. UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, n,d. 16. Responding to Conflict. 17. Conflict Sensitivity Consortium, 2000. 18. Wam and Sardesai, 2005. 19. Conflict Prevention and Post-conflict Restoration Network. 20. Conflict Prevention and Post-conflict Restoration Network, 2005. 21. Collaborative for Development Action, n.d. 22. Anderson, 1999. 23. International Peace and Development Training Center (IPDTC). 24. Conflict Sensitivity Consortium, 2000. 25. Department for International Development, n,d. 26. Governance and Social Development Resource Centre, 2005.

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Peace Efforts That Work and Why 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

Nyheim, 2008. International Alert. The European Network for Civil Peace Services (ENCPS). Peace Action Training and Research Institute of Romania (PATRIR). European Group on Training (EGT). Smith, 2004. UN General Assembly, 2006. Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict. Action Asia. The European Network for Civil Peace Services (ENCPS). Peace and Collaborative Development Network.

CHAPTER

3

O U R W AT E R C O M M O N S : T OWA R D A N E W F R E S H WAT E R N A R R AT I V E Maude Barlow

The world’s water crisis due to pollution, climate change and a surging population growth is of such magnitude that close to 2 billion people now live in water-stressed regions of the planet. By the year 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population will face water scarcity. The global population tripled in the 20th century, but water consumption went up sevenfold. By 2050, after we add another three billion to the population, humans will need an 80 percent increase in water supplies just to feed ourselves. No one knows where this water is going to come from. —Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water, 20071

There are two competing narratives about the Earth’s freshwater resources being played out in the 21st century. On one side is a powerful clique of decision makers, heads of some powerful states, international trade and financial institutions and transnational corporations who do not view water as part of the global Commons or a public trust, but as a commodity, to be bought and sold on the open market. On the other is a global grassroots A longer version of this article was first published by the Council of Canadians and The Commons in 2008.

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movement of local communities, the poor and slum dwellers, women, indigenous peoples, peasants and small farmers working with environmentalists, human rights activists, progressive water managers, and experts in both the global North and the global South who see water as a Commons and seek to provide water for all of nature and all humans. In recent years, some very important work has been done to create a renewed awareness of an ancient concept known as ‘‘the Commons.’’ In most traditional societies, it was assumed that what belonged to one belonged to all. Many indigenous societies to this day cannot conceive of denying a person or a family basic access to food, air, land, water, and livelihood. Many modern societies extended the same concept of universal access to the notion of a social Commons, creating education, health care, and social security for all members of the community. Since adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, governments are obliged to protect the human rights, cultural diversity, and food security of their citizens. When governments do not adequately protect the Commons on our behalf, they fail us, the Commons, and future generations. Business exists to perform in the market and will do so until constrained by governments. The market and its values dominate over all sectors of society and the environment. This domination weakens communities and local economies, harnesses scientific inquiry for the advancement of private industry, undermines democracy, and proliferates an unsustainable global economy. The Commons need not result in tragedy if the right structures are put in place. There is no better example of a runaway market engine than the corporate cartel now being created to own and profit from water. Private-sector interest in the world’s dwindling water resources has been building for two decades, and has dramatically increased in recent years. Transnational corporations view water as a saleable and tradable commodity, not a Commons, and are set to create a cartel resembling the one that now controls every facet of energy, from exploration to production to distribution. Private, for– profit water companies now provide municipal water services in many parts of the world; put massive amounts of fresh water in bottles for sale; control vast quantities of water used in industrial farming, mining, energy production, computers, cars, and other water-intensive industries; own and operate many of the dams, pipelines, nanotechnology, water purification systems, and desalination plants government are looking to for the technological panacea to water shortages; provide infrastructure technologies to replace old municipal water systems; control the virtual trade in water; buy up groundwater rights and whole watersheds to own large quantities of water

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stock; and trade in shares in an industry set to increase its profits dramatically in the coming years. The notion of water as a commodity did not happen in a vacuum. It was deliberately imposed on the global South by global institutions and water companies (and their governments) in an open attempt to capitalize on the desperate water crisis in poor countries. There was more than a little hypocrisy in foisting private water services on the South by countries that had been well served by public systems. In Europe and North America, public delivery of water helped to create the political stability and financial equity necessary for the great advances of the industrial age. As well, it was understood that public water and sanitation services protected public health and advanced national economic development. With few exceptions, these countries still understand the benefit of water as a Commons and continue to provide water as a public service. However, the World Bank and the big water companies set out to promote a major shift in water policy in the global South (a model they have gone on to try to sell in the North) by actively seeking the buy-in of nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, state agencies, the media, and the private sector to manufacture consent for the commodification of water. When the carrot of persuasion failed, the World Bank used the stick of financial compliance. The privatization of water services has been a terrible failure in almost every community where it has been tried, and it is far from certain that privatization of the water Commons will accelerate at the same rate. Water commodification has left a legacy of corruption, sky-high water rates, cutoffs of water to millions of people, reduced water quality, nepotism, pollution, worker lay-offs, and broken promises. A multitude of studies has shown that private water companies have not brought new investments into the global South.2 In fact, because both the lending banks and the development agencies of many wealthy countries assumed that privatization would bring in new water services investment, they pulled back on their own investments, resulting in a net loss in funding to provide water to the global South over the last 15 years—the very time when demand was exploding. Studies have also found that the big water transnationals have so much power with the World Bank and other regional development banks, that they actually often decide which countries and communities will receive bank aid, ensuring that poor countries with no possibility of profit for the companies are left behind.3 The story is now repeating itself in municipalities in the global North that have opted for a for-profit water system. Perhaps there is no better example of the enclosure of the water Commons than bottled water. Humans take free-flowing water from its natural state, put it in plastic bottles, and sell it to one another at exorbitant prices.

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In the early 1970s, about 1 billion liters of bottled water were sold globally. In 2007, more than 200 billion liters (50 billion gallons) were consumed, and the bottled water industry is growing at over 10 percent a year. Because bottled water costs anywhere from 240 to 10,000 times more than tap water, depending on the brand, profits are very high in this sector. The bottled water industry is conservatively estimated to bring in $100 billion annually. There is a growing backlash against this form of enclosure of the water Commons. The bottled water industry is now understood to be one of the most polluting on Earth as well as one of the least regulated. Plastic water bottles are made up of chemicals and fossil fuels that leach into groundwater and human bodies. Nearly one-quarter of all bottled water crosses national borders to reach consumers, using enormous amounts of energy to transport. One million bottles of exported bottled water cause the emission of 18.2 tons of carbon dioxide. Fewer than 5 percent of bottled water containers are recycled. Water extraction for bottled water is draining communities all over the world, from the Great Lakes of North America to the rural villages of India. In most places, bottled water corporations pay little or no extraction fees, openly profiting from the local water Commons, and favored by governments over the needs of local communities. A more recent form of water Commons enclosure is the practice of relying on high-technology solutions to the global water crisis instead of protecting the source waters of the water Commons. Far more attention is being paid (and billions of dollars annually invested) to cleaning up dirty water using expensive high water-reuse technology, than in stopping pollution and the destruction of the water Commons itself. The water industry’s technology sector is growing at twice the rate of its utility sector and already accounts for more than one-quarter of all revenues. Desalination is one of the key technologies being touted. Global demand is expected to grow by 25 percent every year for decades, with capital investments of at least $60 billion in the next decade. There are 30 plants planned for the coast of California alone.4 Due to the high-energy requirements of desalination, there are plans to build nuclear-powered desalination plants in several countries.5 There are three major problems with the abandonment of water as a Commons and the adoption of water as a commodity. The first problem is that there is no profit in conservation. In fact, it is to the distinct advantage of the private water industry that the world’s freshwater Commons are being polluted and destroyed. Even if individual corporate leaders do not take pleasure in the global water crisis, it is exactly this crisis that is driving profits in their industry. The market will favor those companies that maximize profit and, in the water business, that means taking advantage of a dwindling supply that cannot meet a growing demand.

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Further, with governments, industries, and universities investing so heavily in the burgeoning water clean-up technology industry, there is less and less incentive at every level to emphasize source protection and conservation. The second major concern around the commodification of water is that with no regulatory oversight or government control, there will be no protections for the natural world, and a need to safeguard integrated ecosystems from water plundering. As it is now in most parts of the world, governments have little knowledge of where their groundwater sources are located, or how much water they contain. Consequently, they have no idea how much pumping they can maintain or if current water mining operations are sustainable. The more private interests control water supplies, the less government and public interests have to say about them. The commodification of water is really the commodification of nature. If water in the future will only be accessible to those who can pay for it, who will buy it for nature? The third problem with the commodification of water is that water, and water infrastructure—from drinking water and sanitation utilities services, to bottled water, clean-up technologies, and nuclear-powered desalination plants—will flow where the money is, not where it is needed. No corporation is in business to deliver water to the poor. That, say corporate leaders, is the job of governments. People who cannot pay do not get served. Already, wealthy countries like Saudi Arabia and Israel are dependent on expensive water purification technologies for their day-to-day living, while equally water-starved countries such as Namibia and Pakistan cannot afford such technology, and so their citizens suffer from severe water shortages. Bottled water is the exclusive prerogative of those who can pay for it, as is clean water from the tap in many parts of the world. From thousands of local struggles for the basic right to water, galvanized through international resistance to the denial of rights, a highly organized and mature global water justice movement has been forged and is shaping the future of the world’s water Commons. To the question, ‘‘who owns water?’’ they say, ‘‘no one—it belongs to the Earth, all species and future generations.’’ The demands of the movement are simple but powerful: keep water public; keep it clean; keep it accessible to all. In other words, keep it in the Commons. The reclamation of the water Commons converges around three struggles.

THE COMMONS SOLUTION This unparalleled environmental crisis can only be met and reversed through the lived affirmation that water is a Commons that belongs to everyone and therefore, any harm to water is a harm to the whole—Earth

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and humans alike. All over the world, groups and communities are confronting the twin engines of water pollution: industrial agriculture and industrial production for a global economy. The move to local, sustainable agriculture is growing everywhere as people question the wisdom of using fossil fuels to move food grown with chemicals and irradiated to prevent decay, over long distances to their dinner tables. The sales of organic food are soaring at about 20 percent a year, well ahead of the regular food industry, and the Slow Food Movement now claims 100,000 members in more than 100 countries. A survey done for the University of Surrey in Great Britain found that organic food consumers share the common (Commons) values of protection of their own health and the health of others, as well as of the environment at large. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), where local families and communities support local farms, are growing daily. (One of the key goals of the network Our World Is Not For Sale in fighting the power of the World Trade Organization is to prevent the ability of transnational corporations to use trade rules to challenge local regulations and practices that favor the local, sustainable production of food, and therefore the protection of the local water Commons.) One of the definitions of a Commons is that it is accessible to all without discrimination. The greatest indictment of our collective abandonment of the notion that water is a Commons is the water apartheid now suffered by the poor and disenfranchised of the global South.6 Almost 2 billion people live in water-stressed regions of the planet; of those, 1.4 billion have little or no access to clean drinking water every day. Not surprisingly, most of these 1.4 billion live in poor countries in the global South and suffer unbearable hardships at the loss of their water Commons. Two-fifths of the world’s people lack access to basic sanitation, leading to a return of communicable diseases like cholera and the plague, once thought extinct. Half the world’s hospital beds are occupied by people with an easily preventable water-borne disease and the World Health Organization reports that contaminated water is implicated in 80 percent of all sickness and disease worldwide.7 More children die every year from dirty water than war, malaria, HIV/AIDS, and traffic accidents together. In the last decade, the number of children killed by diarrhea exceeded the number of people killed in all armed conflicts since World War II. Every eight seconds, a child dies from water-borne disease. The average North American uses almost 600 liters (150 gallons) of water a day. The average African uses just six. A newborn baby in the global North consumes between 40 and 70 times more water than a baby in the global South. Water apartheid will not end until we declare water to be a public Commons accessible to all. The global water justice movement is of one voice

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that water must be seen as a basic human right and must not be denied to anyone because of the inability to pay. In communities all around the world, local groups have resisted the privatization of their water services and won. For these tireless campaigners, the right to water and the concept of water as a Commons are one and the same. In response to intense public pressure under the leadership of a grassroots group called FEJUVE, the Bolivian government of Evo Morales recently ousted the private water company Suez from the capital, La Paz, after a disastrous 10-year contract to manage the city’s water. In a ceremony marking the return of Bolivia’s water to public ownership, President Morales said that water must remain a basic service so that everyone can have the water they need for life. As well, citizens are not waiting for their governments in taking the lead on asserting the human right to water. On October 31, 2004, the citizens of Uruguay became the first in the world to vote for the right to water. Led by Friends of the Earth Uruguay and the National Commission in Defense of Water and Life, the groups first had to obtain almost 300,000 signatures on a plebiscite (which they delivered to Parliament as a ‘‘human river’’) to get a referendum placed on the ballot of the national election calling for a constitutional amendment on the right to water. Several other countries have also passed right to water legislation. South Africa, Ecuador, Ethiopia, and Kenya also have references in their constitutions that describe water as a human right (but do not specify the need for public delivery). The Belgian Parliament passed a resolution in April 2005 seeking a constitutional amendment to recognize water as a human right and in September 2006, the French Senate adopted an amendment to its water bill that says each person has the right to access to clean water, but neither country makes reference to delivery. The only other country besides Uruguay to specify in its constitution that water must be publicly delivered is the Netherlands, which passed a law in 2003 restricting the delivery of drinking water to utilities that are entirely public and, in March 2008, announced its full support for a right-to-water constitutional amendment. Other exciting initiatives are under way. In August 2006, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that protection of natural lakes and ponds is akin to honoring the right to life—the most fundamental right of all according to the Court. Activists in Nepal are going before their Supreme Court arguing that hiring a private firm to manage the drinking water system in Kathmandu violates the right to health guaranteed in the country’s constitution. The Coalition Against Water Privatization in South Africa is challenging the practice of water metering before the Johannesburg High Court on the basis that it violates the human rights of Soweto’s poor. Bolivian President Evo Morales has called for a ‘‘South American convention for human rights

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and access for all living beings to water’’ that would reject the market model imposed in trade agreements. At least a dozen countries have reacted positively to this call. Civil society groups are hard at work in many other countries to introduce constitutional amendments similar to that of Uruguay. Colombia’s Ecofondo has launched a plebiscite toward a constitutional amendment similar to the Uruguayan amendment. They need at least 1.5 million signatures and face several court cases and a dangerous and hostile opposition. Dozens of groups in Mexico have joined COMDA, the Mexican Coalition for the Right to Water, in a national campaign for a Uruguayantype constitutional guarantee to the right to water. While these and countless other initiatives are taking place within a framework of the Commons, they are not yet seen by either all the groups themselves, or society at large, in a Commons context. Although most are using language that Commons pioneers cited in this chapter would identify as fully compatible with the notion of the Commons, the concept is still new for many in our world. A reframing of this work from a Commons perspective could help the work of the whole movement and act as a unifying force. It is time for a new language of the Commons, one that claims water for people and nature for all time. A new water narrative could be based on the following 10 principles.

1. Declare Water to Be a Commons Who owns water? That is the key question. A new water narrative must assert that no one owns water; rather, it belongs to the Earth and all species alike. As Vandana Shiva explains, because it is a flow resource necessary for life and ecosystem health, and because there is no substitute for it, water must be regarded as a public Commons and a public good and preserved as such for all time in law and practice.8 The creation of a worldwide water cartel is wrong, ethically, environmentally, and socially and ensures that the decisions regarding the allocation of water are made based on commercial, not environmental or social, concerns. Private ownership of water cannot address itself to the issues of conservation, justice, or democracy—the underpinnings of a solution to the world’s water crisis. Only citizens and their governments, acting on their behalf, can operate on these principles. Water companies thrive on pollution and scarcity and on the growing desperation for water in many parts of the world. Water must be understood to be part of the global Commons, but clearly subject to local, democratic, and public management. No one has the right to appropriate water for personal profit while others are being denied access because of an inability to pay for it. Water

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should not be privatized, traded for profit, stored for future sale, or exported for commercial purposes. Governments must declare their domestic water Commons a public good and take responsibility for delivering clean, safe water as a public service to all their citizens. All decisions regarding the water Commons must be made transparently and with democratic oversight. This is not to say there is no place for the private sector in alleviating the global water crisis, as long as corporations are not running the water services directly. For instance, there is and will be a place for the private sector in providing water re-use technology and the building of water infrastructure. But all private sector activity must come under strict public oversight and government accountability, and would have to operate within a mandate where the goals are conservation and water justice. The high-tech water companies, in particular, need public oversight to ensure the wastewater returning to the water supply has met high quality assurance standards.

2. Adopt an Earth Democracy Narrative Modern society has lost its reverence for water’s sacred place in the cycle of life, as well as its centrality in the realm of the spirit. This loss of reverence for water has allowed humans to abuse the water Commons. Over time, we have come to believe that humanity, not nature, is at the center of the universe; whatever we run out of can be imported, replaced with something else, or fixed with sophisticated technology. We have forgotten that we are also a species of animal that needs water for life. Only by redefining our relationship to water and recognizing its essential and sacred place in nature can we begin to rectify the wrongs we have done. Only by considering the full impact of our decisions on the ecosystem can we ever hope to replenish depleted water systems and protect those that are still unharmed. Albert Einstein said that no crisis can be solved with the same thinking that created it. It is likely impossible to assert a new water Commons narrative within the current global economic model. A system driven by the imperatives of market expansion, export competition, unlimited growth, and corporate power will not easily accommodate to a definition of water as a common good. To truly adopt the notion of water as a Commons requires a challenge to the tenets of economic globalization and the adoption of a new set of assumptions, values, and models for trade, commerce, development, and production. All systems now in place must be judged against their impact on the world’s water resources. Growth in and of itself is anathema to the protection of the Earth’s dwindling water supplies, and unregulated capitalism places far too much power in the hands of chief executive officers (CEOs) whose sole mandate is to generate profits. This

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system must be abandoned in favor of one based on the notions of cooperation, sustainability, equity, democratic control, and subsidiarity (if something can be grown, produced, or managed locally, it should be favored over a regional, national, or international solution). In this model, the private sector would be held to high standards and public scrutiny.

3. Protect Water through Conservation and Law The most important demonstration of a new water narrative would be a commitment to protect and conserve the water Commons for all time. Water Commons sustainability means protecting source water at every level, reclaiming polluted water, and conserving water for the future. As American water pioneer Sandra Postel explains, we must learn to use very drop of water twice. Each generation must ensure that the abundance and quality of water is not diminished as a result of its activities. This will mean radically changing our habits, especially those of us who live in the global North. If we do not change our ways, any reluctance to share our water—even for sound environmental reasons—will rightly be called into question. The key is to stop polluting surface waters to allow local communities to return to the use of their rivers, lakes, and streams for the majority of their water needs, lifting the burden off groundwater supplies. Primary sewage treatment must be an international aid priority for the global South and infrastructure repair of leaking urban water systems everywhere must be implemented. The rule of law must be brought to bear on polluting industries at home and abroad. (Legislation would include penalties for domestic corporations that pollute on foreign soil. Such penalties could form part of a fund to pay for infrastructure repair.) Rigorous laws must be passed to control water pollution from industrial agriculture, municipal discharge, and industrial contaminants. Flood irrigation, which wastes massive amounts of water, must be replaced by drip irrigation and more sustainable water use. The rush to adopt waterguzzling industrial biofuels as an alternative to fossil fuels must be halted. Water abuse in oil and methane gas production must stop, requiring conservation of energy supplies and the adoption of alternative renewable energy sources. Water conservation practices must be adopted everywhere. Examples in the industrialized world include water-saving washing machines, low-flow shower faucets, and low-flush or composting toilets.

4. Treat Watersheds as a Commons The mass transfer of water from wilderness and ecosystems, combined with the loss of water-retentive landscape, has displaced much habitat for

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the water Commons. Perhaps there is no greater right than the right of a drop of water to come back to the watersheds and water systems that nourish all life and maintain the integrity of the water Commons. Without this habitat, water cannot fulfill its ecosystem function and is lost as a nature Commons. Unless we protect water and its right to flow freely in nature, water will never be seen as a Commons, but rather a commodity to be moved around to serve industrialized humanity and our modern ‘‘needs.’’ Nature put water where it belongs. Tampering with nature by moving large-scale water supplies from an ecosystem by pipeline or through virtual water exports has the potential to destroy whole watersheds and all that depend on watershed health, including indigenous peoples. By practicing bioregionalism—living within and adapting to the ecological constraints of a watershed—we honor the narrative of water as a Commons not only for humans, but also for nature and other species. One powerful example is the clear-cutting of mountains for timber or to build ski resorts and adult sports playgrounds. Mountains are the ‘‘water towers’’ of our world. They hold and retain water, snow, and ice that often provide the only water sources in a region. When their capacity to store water is reduced by the stripmining of their trees and shrubs, people and nature alike suffer severe consequences. To protect watersheds and water sustainability, every human activity will have to be measured against its impact on the water Commons and water’s natural habitat.

5. Assert Community Control over Local Water Sources Another defining feature of water as a Commons is that its sustainable and equitable allocation depends on cooperation among community members. As a common good, water is managed with the community’s solidarity and full democratic participation. This is very different from a corporate model of water distribution, which is based on individual ability to pay, not need. Local stewardship, not private business, expensive technology, or even government, is the best guardian of the water Commons. Local citizens and communities are the front-line ‘‘keepers’’ of the rivers, lakes, and groundwater supplies on which they depend for life. If reclamation projects or water delivery systems are not guided by the common sense and lived experience of the local community, they will not be sustained. The management models of indigenous populations and rural communities must be enhanced, as they have proved to be the real preserver of the water Commons. States must not only recognize these local rights, but also protect them in law, and provide the authority to local communities to exercise their stewardship effectively.

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6. Maintain Water Sovereignty for Both Communities and Nation Adopting (or re-adopting) the notion of a water Commons does not mean a free-for–all, or that anyone can help themselves to the water in others’ territories. A basic principle of the water Commons (that is compatible with both watershed protection and local control) is that water is a sovereign good and cannot be taken from another country or community by force or by using economic dominance. Many countries are running out of water and the race is on to secure new water supplies. Before the new government of Evo Morales put a stop to it, the former government of Bolivia was planning to sell water to the foreign-based mining companies in Chile, a move strongly opposed by the majority of Bolivians. Israelis, who are supposed to share water resources with Palestinians, have access to five times as much water. Libya used its regional super-power status to build the biggest pipeline in the world to date to remove water from an aquifer under the Sahara Desert, water that should equally belong to Chad, Sudan, and Egypt. A plan to build a water pipeline from southern Nevada in the United States to Las Vegas has people in Nevada up in arms.

7. Adopt a Model of Water Justice, Not Charity The water Commons narrative is based on a belief in justice, not charity. Although it is admirable that many people and groups from the global North assist the poor of the global South by building wells to link them up to groundwater sources, this is only a stop-gap measure. Billions of people live in countries that cannot provide clean water to their citizens not only because they are water poor, but because they are burdened by their debts to the North through loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. As a result, poor countries are forced to exploit both their people and their water resources. At least 62 countries currently need deep debt relief if the daily deaths of thousands of children are to end. Further, foreign aid in many wealthy countries is well below the recommended 0.7 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). If the World Bank, the United Nations, and northern countries were serious about providing clean water for all, they would cancel or deeply cut the global South debt; substantively increase foreign aid; fund public, instead of private, services; tell their big bottling companies to stop draining poor countries dry; and invest in water reclamation programs to protect source water. Special mention must be made of two groups feeling the brunt of water inequity: women and indigenous people. Women carry out 80 percent of water-related work throughout the world and therefore carry the greatest burden of water inequity. Ensuring water for all is a critical component of

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gender equality and women’s empowerment, along with environmental security and poverty eradication. The more policy making about water is moved from local communities to a global level (the World Bank for instance), the less power women have to determine who gets it and under what circumstances. As the primary collectors of water throughout the world, women must be recognized as major stakeholders in the decisionmaking process. Indigenous people are particularly vulnerable to water theft and appropriation, and their proprietary rights to their land and water must be protected by governments.

8. Restore Public Delivery and Fair Pricing A new water narrative must establish once and for all that water is a public Commons to be delivered as a public service by governments at a fair and accessible price. This means that the international financial agencies responsible for providing aid to poor countries for water development must shift their focus from public/private/partnerships (PPPs), which promote the big, private water utilities, to public/public/partnerships (PUPs), which transfer funding and expertise from successful public systems in the global North to provide local management and workers in the global South with the necessary funds and skills to deliver water on a not-for-profit basis to all their citizens. PUPs are a mechanism for providing capacity building for these countries, either through Water Operator Partnerships, whereby established public systems transfer expertise and skills to those in need, or through projects whereby public institutions such as public sector unions or public pension fund boards use their resources to support public water services in developing countries. The objective is to provide local management and workers with the necessary skills to deliver water and provide wastewater services to the public. Examples of successful PUPs include partnerships between Stockholm and Helsinki water authorities and the former Soviet Union countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania and between Amsterdam Water and cities in Indonesia and Egypt. Public Services International asserts that if each effectively functioning public water utility in the world were to ‘‘adopt’’ just three cities in need, public/public/partnerships could operate on a global basis, and provide water to all those in need at a fraction of the cost now encountered supporting the private companies. This would also become a concrete example of how cooperation over water could be a uniting force for humanity. Financing public water in poor countries will need a combination of progressive central government taxation, micro-financing, and cooperatives to run the systems on a day-to-day basis.

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9. Enshrine the Right to Water in Nation-State Constitutions and a UN Covenant The new water narrative described here must be codified in law. It is finally time for the world to agree that water is not a ‘‘need,’’ but a ‘‘right,’’ codified at every level of government, from local municipal bylaws and nation-state constitutions, to a binding United Nations Covenant. The global water crisis cries out for good governance, and good governance needs a legal basis that rests on universally applicable human rights. A UN Covenant would set the framework for water as a social and cultural asset, not an economic commodity. It would establish the indispensable legal groundwork for a just system of distribution of the water Commons. It would serve as a common, coherent body of rules for all nations, rich and poor, and clarify that it is the role of the state to provide clean affordable water to all of its citizens. Such a Covenant would also safeguard already accepted human rights and environmental principles in other UN treaties and conventions. A UN Covenant would bind nations to an agreement not only to refrain from any action or policy that interferes with the right to water, but also would obligate them to prevent third parties, such as corporations, from interfering in that right. It would give ordinary citizens a powerful tool with which to argue their right to clean affordable water and put the spotlight on governments refusing to fulfill their obligations. There are those in the water Commons community who question the value of working on the right to water, particularly at the level of the UN. One concern is that the UN, like the powerful governments that control it, has adopted a Western-style, individualist approach to rights that is contrary to the notion of collective rights embodied in the Commons. A second is that it is too human-centered and not rooted in an ecosystem framework. While both of these concerns are valid (and apparent in the reflections of some countries’ UN delegations), a right-to-water Covenant does not have to reflect this worldview, but could be written to promote a more holistic one. Well constructed, it could enshrine the sovereignty of local communities over their natural heritage and therefore the management of their water Commons, including watersheds and aquifers. As Friends of the Earth Paraguay explains, ‘‘The very mention of the supposed conflict, water for human use versus water for nature, reflects a lack of consciousness of the essential fact that the very existence of water depends on the sustainable management and conservation of ecosystems.’’ A third concern is that the right to water is not practical on a day-to-day basis for communities, particularly in the global South, struggling for water survival. But the citizen movements in many communities and countries in the South have already

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adopted, or are working to adopt, constitutional amendments to guarantee water as a right, with specific and immediately noticeable ramifications. The definition of the right to water need not belong to the same people who created economic globalization, but could be integral to the struggle of local people everywhere fighting for their water Commons.

10. Use and Expand the Public Trust Doctrine to Protect Water Finally, the notion of a water Commons could be profoundly advanced if we had a body of law that recognized the inherent rights of the environment, other species, and water itself outside of their usefulness to humans. The move to create ‘‘wild law’’ comes to some extent out of the Public Trust Doctrine, first codified in 529 A.D. as Codex Justinianus, after the emperor of that period, who said, ‘‘By the laws of nature, these things are common to all mankind: the air, running water, the sea, and consequently the shores of the sea.’’ This ‘‘common law’’ was repeated many ways and in many jurisdictions, including the Magna Carta, and has been a powerful legislative tool in the United States to provide for public access to seashores, lakeshores, and fisheries. If the world is to save its freshwater resources, it is clearly necessary to create a counter-narrative to the dominant narrative currently governing water management thinking in powerful circles. Increasingly in the halls of government, business and international financial, and trade institutions, water is seen as a commodity to be put on the open market and sold and traded to the highest bidder. The right to water must be understood as a fundamental right. Let us commit to a water-secure future based on the principles of water protection and watershed renewal, equity, and justice, and the right of all living things to water for life. A Commons approach and analysis could improve the quality of our research, communication, campaigning, and collaboration as well as promote alliance building with other Commons movements. To adopt and use the language of the Commons would give activists and writers a way of asserting common cause with allies in adjacent fields of action. The world is crying out for new vision and hope. This lens of the Commons, with its ancient beginnings and its infinite possibilities, could provide that vision and hope, as well as a way forward in these precarious times.

NOTES 1. Barlow, 2007. 2. Hall and Lobina, 2006.

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Marsden, 2003. Cook, 2009. World Nuclear Association, 2008. United Nations Development Program. World Health Organization, 2000. Shiva, 2002.

CHAPTER

4

B E Y O N D L E V I AT H A N ? T H E H I S T O R I C A L R E L AT I O N S H I P B E T W E E N P E A C E P L A N S , I N T E R N AT I O N A L L AW, A N D T H E E A R LY A N G L O - A M E R I C A N P E A C E M OV E M E N T Cris Toffolo

As was indicated in the introduction, the editors hope this collection will explore not only movements that are working for a more peaceful world (that is, ‘‘the peace movement’’) but also strategies that embody ‘‘movement toward peace,’’ in the sense of new attitudes, practices, policies, and institutions that have been created to prevent or resolve conflict in nonbelligerent ways. This chapter explores a central dialectic between these poles by examining the relationship between the development of early peace proposals, the development of international law, and the development of peace movements in the United States and Great Britain. It is hoped this information will inform contemporary thinking about strategies and tactics to advance the agenda of promoting peace, and ultimately ending war as a legitimate and very costly institution. Long before there were social movements in the modern sense, pacifistoriented thinkers were envisioning how to end war, either through outlawing its most barbaric features and/or by creating alternative methods of conflict resolution. Although these ideas did influence the development of

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international law early on, to some degree, more ambitious plans awaited the development of modern social movements. As social movement theorists point out, one of the most important aspects of popular movements is that they open up existing political spaces to new actors, and sometimes they create new political terrain. The development of international law and alternative conflict resolution organizations at the international level are cases in point, with the result that today social movements can engage not only the nation state, corporations, and the institutions of organized religion, but also international courts, international bureaucracies, and international conferences. In other words, social movements were instrumental in creating new institutions that now provide them with new avenues through which to pressure states to further other peace movement goals. International law organizations and other international organizations also provide alternative venues and methods of resolving interstate conflict. In this way the development of international law (with its corresponding machinery) is now part of ‘‘positive peace’’ that is helping to create a more transparent and accountable political dynamic. The impact of peace movements is thus greatly enhanced beyond their more noticed work on ‘‘negative peace’’ (that is, crises-driven work to stop a particular ‘‘hot’’ conflict). Additionally these sites, perhaps, are harder for national political and economic elites to capture (than the state and domestic economy). Therefore, power is more fluid and this can help keep pressure on domestic elites in a way that forces them to act more democratically and humanely. In this chapter I review the early development of international law and peace plans, and show how the early peace movements were instrumental in setting up this new terrain that today is a main field in which social movements now operate.

EARLY VISIONS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AND PEACE As early as 3100 BCE, arbitration was used to settle a boundary dispute between two Mesopotamian cities. However, the modern international law regime within which peace movements today operate developed only a few hundred years ago within Europe, a context once so violent that nations were assumed to be at war unless they specifically entered into peace agreements, often guaranteed by hostage exchanges. Only during periods when operative systems of states exist is interstate law needed: it had no place in the Roman Empire (which was governed by its own internal law), or in Europe’s anarchic ‘‘dark ages,’’ when raw force

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operated largely unchecked. However, gradually the disaggregated parts of the Roman Empire came to see themselves as discrete political communities, and eventually a minimum standard of conduct developed, understood in terms of rights and obligations. These ideas derived from that part of Roman law known as jus gentium (law based on universal ideals that originally covered controversies with non-Romans). During Europe’s Middle Ages, jus gentium was reinterpreted by the church using the Stoic concept jus naturale, something God implanted in all humans so they could comprehend the unchangeable nature of justice and the universe. Another contribution of the church was canon law that included the conclusion of treaties, authority over territory, regulation of warfare, right of conquest, and papal arbitration as a desirable method of dispute resolution. The legal implications of Europe’s conquest of the Americas were theorized by a Spanish Dominican, Francisco De Vitoria, in De Indis and The Law of War Made by the Spaniards on the Barbarians (ca. 1539). These texts attempt to determine what makes a war just, the basis of Spanish authority in the Americas, and the relationship between Spaniards and the original inhabitants. In this same era the Pope, in the Treaty of Tordesillas, mediated a major dispute between Spain and Portugal over their respective ‘‘rights’’ to rule various portions of the ‘‘New World,’’ thus averting a war between the two superpowers of that era.1 For precisely that reason, this era also demonstrates the limitations and weakness of international law as a method of attempting to establish a just peace. The very framework used to arbitrate the dominant conflict of that day created the legal grounds for the massive holocaust against native peoples around the globe who lost their lands, freedom, cultures, and right to be recognized as equally human based on the legal principles of ‘‘discovery’’ and terra nullius. It also, indirectly, led to the enslavement of Africans. These remain the basis of national laws that even today continue the ongoing disinheritance of native people around the world.2 This is also the era in which the pacifist humanist, Erasmus, worked in the arena of international law and wrote Querela pacis (The Complaint of Peace) in 1517, condemning war as an instrument of tyranny. His thesis: war and desire for empire had so degraded humanity that this most superior of all animals now routinely kills its own kind, and the only way to change this would be to henceforth use only reason, persuasion, and arbitration instead of war to settle disputes. Despite being one of the people whose ideas inspired the Protestant Reformation, Erasmus, likely due to his measured approach to conflict resolution, refused to engage directly in this religio-political movement that culminated in the devastating Thirty Years War.

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This conflict was actually a series of wars that raged between 1618 and 1648 in which the Habsburgs of Spain and Austria were opposed by various states, including France, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden. It was also a German civil war complicated by the fact that Germany was the epicenter of the still-raging Protestant Reformation and thus various German groups supported either the Habsburgs or one of their opponents, at times switching allegiances. Although the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 had provided Lutheranism with official recognition, and allowed German princes to impose their religion on their subjects, this treaty did not settle all of the issues, because subsequently many German princes converted to Calvinism and thus were outside that peace agreement. This conflict was finally brought to a close by the Peace (treaty) of Westphalia. It rendered governmental institutions religiously neutral and effectively ended papal authority over German princes as well as the common use of papal arbitration. And it led to the emergence of territorial ‘‘nation states’’ grounded on the principle of absolute, reciprocally recognized sovereignty, which remains a central tenet of international relations. For all of these reasons this treaty marks the beginning of the modern international system and law. One document written in the midst of this horrendous conflict was Em
eric Cruc
e’s The New Cineas (a.k.a. Cyneas) (1623). It is considered to be the first peace proposal to include a general assembly. According to Cruc
e the four main causes of war are honor, profit, righting wrongs, and exercise. Religion that might seem like a main cause is only a pretext. Like Erasmus, Cruc
e addressed himself to rulers with the power to create peace from above, arguing states would be more secure if there was a universal peace, so rulers should strive to maintain justice and peace, rather than seek to aggrandize themselves through conquest. To that end sovereigns should shrink the size of their armies and not let militarists dominate decision making. Games and hunting should be used to release the tensions of aggressive men, who also should be put to work in agriculture and the trades.3 In the place of armies, well-paid police and peace officers should be commissioned. Pirates and other rogues could be suppressed more economically by giving them land or the opportunity to work and it is the responsibility of the state to care for and feed the poor.4 To overcome religious conflict princes should teach their subjects that human nature is universal, all religions have the same goal, and true piety does not incite hostility.5 Cruc
e went on to propose an assembly of ambassadors from every country (including Persia, China, Ethiopia, and the East and West Indies) that would pass laws by majority vote and have the power to enforce peace using arms if necessary. Established boundaries would not be violated for any reason and all complaints would be presented to this assembly for decision.6

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At the same time as Cruc
e was arguing for the creation of an international assembly as the alternative to war, Hugo Grotius elaborated rules to govern warfare. In his greatest work, De Jure Belli ac Pacis (The Law of War and Peace), published in 1625, this ‘‘father of international law,’’ drew on De Vitoria and other scholastics to argue that jus gentium is deliberately created by humans to serve their needs. Grotius theorized about both jus ad bellu (the beginnings of war), which he argues must be formally declared, and jus in bello (how to act during a war), delineating codes to protect noncombatants, as well as prohibitions against destroying property and certain types of indiscriminant weapons. He argued for the humane treatment of hostages and prisoners, as well as for moderation when dealing with the religions of defeated peoples. The work also provides advice for making truces and peace treaties to end war.7

EMERGENT LIBERALISM PROVIDES TERRAIN FOR MODERN PEACE MOVEMENTS The Protestant Reformation gave rise to a new theory of the state, the earliest articulation of which is Thomas Hobbes’s 1651 Leviathan, which argues the ‘‘state of nature’’ is equivalent to a ‘‘state of war’’ and the only way to leave such a dismal condition is to form a ‘‘social contract.’’8 John Locke developed Hobbes’s ideas in such a way that he provided the philosophical grounds to argue absolutist rule should be replaced by constitutional monarchy, which makes the rule of law paramount. Locke’s argument is that a nation without a sovereign does not dissolve into a state of war (as Hobbes thought), rather the basic bonds among the populace remain, and hence regime change is possible, in fact advisable, in the face of tyranny, for all governments should rest on the will of the people. This idea of a ‘‘nation,’’ plus the Treaty of Westphalia, created the nation states that today populate the international arena. This liberal framework, which puts law at the center of government, then became the vision for imagining an international order based on law instead of war. In 1693, during the War of the League of Augsburg, the Quaker William Penn published a peace plan that was linked to the new ideas about international law. In An Essay Towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe by the Establishment of a European Diet, Parliament, or Estate, Penn argued individual states should disarm and create a European parliament that should include Russia and the Ottoman Empire. It should decide disputes collectively and unite in strength to enforce its decisions. In an argument that appears to owe something to Hobbes, Penn argues such an entity is necessary because there must be a sovereign authority greater than the

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conflicting parties to settle disputes; for just like individuals, states have difficulty objectively resolving their own disagreements.9 Two years later Abb
e Saint-Pierre published his famous Paix Perpetuelle, which also advocates the creation of a European federation as a means to end war.10 Following Hobbes, he believed the fear of violence must be used to enforce law and justice. Among the 12 main articles of this complex international treaty was one advocating that all of Europe’s Christian princes unite to form a permanent union for peace and security, and together endeavor to make treaties with Muslim sovereigns. Second, the union should not interfere with the affairs of its members, except to preserve them from rebellions. Third, the union should have commissioners investigate revolts, and based on their reports, decide whether to send troops. Other critical articles stipulate no sovereign shall take up arms except against a declared enemy of the union, and a three-fourths majority should be needed to make all decisions, with unanimity needed to alter the treaty. Even though he was writing when states typically were governed by absolute sovereigns, and he argued the union should support existing regimes, Saint-Pierre believed different types of regimes could function together in this federation, and even included provisions for the union to deal with regime transitions.11 In 1761 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a year before publishing his most famous works (that is, The Social Contract and Emile), published a loose translation of Saint-Pierre’s essay that more clearly linked it to liberal political theory. Just as national governments have been instituted to control private wars, an international federation must unite nations under the authority of law to stop national wars that are so much worse than the private hostilities that occur within nations. A federation would be much more reliable than treaties to promote peace because the latter are temporary. Such a federation would need several conditions to be successful: (1) all existing boundaries must be permanent; (2) all important powers must be members of the federation and none may quit; (3) the laws it creates must be binding and enforceable by coercive power; and (4) all conflicts should be settled by arbitration or judicial pronouncement. Defending this plan Rousseau argues that it addressed the six major causes of war (desire for conquest, fear of attack, attacking to weaken a powerful neighbor, attacking to maintain rights against an attacker, resolving a major conflict, or fulfilling a treaty obligation). The federation makes every purpose easier to accomplish except the first (that is, conquest), which it deters most effectively because it combines the powers of all other nations against an aggressor. Not only would security improve, and thus commerce flourish, but this arrangement would likely save each state half of its military budget.12

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Of course it should not be forgotten that even as liberal ideals were transforming the terrain on which international relations was conducted in Europe, the nation states at the center of this theory were in the heyday of operating vast empires not governed by liberal principles. This fact was not lost on those interested in developing a peaceful alternative to international warfare (and was noted by Saint Pierre). Jeremy Bentham’s13 1789 A Plan for a Universal and Perpetual Peace argues the achievement of perpetual peace must rest on two fundamental grounds: (1) the reduction of troops; and (2) the ‘‘emancipation of the colonial dependencies of each state.’’ Without colonies to protect, countries could reduce the size of their militaries, as all they would need would be a small navy to deter piracy. The plan’s other major proposal was to create an international code of conduct (grounded on the ‘‘laws of peace’’), and a Common Court of Judicature for deciding differences between states. Its proceedings should be public, and, in general, secrecy in international affairs should be curtailed, then people would learn the awful truth about war and naturally end their support for it. This court would not need a military to enforce its decisions but instead would rely on the power of public opinion.14 In 1795 Kant expanded on Bentham’s critique of colonies, and deepened Rousseau’s liberal reworking of Saint-Pierre, in his own plan for Perpetual Peace, arguing that in order for an international federation to work, its members must be free republics. For only this regime type is based on the will of the people and the rule of law, which are prerequisites to ending war, because only in such regimes is the consent of citizens required to declare war and they would ‘‘weigh the matter well before undertaking such a bad business.’’ For in decreeing war, they would be resolving to bring all the miseries of war on themselves, as they would do the fighting themselves, pay for the war, and live with the devastation it leaves behind.15 In a contemporary-sounding passage, Kant argues that any successful plan must forbid rapacious international lending that encourages countries to take on massive debt (beyond what is required to develop infrastructure), for by this ingenious invention commercial states like England generated their great ability to make war, as the wealth that such a system generates the permits these countries to develop overwhelming military might. Not only do innocent states get entangled in their conflicts but it also causes them to go bankrupt.16 Kant goes on to condemn ‘‘the inhospitable actions of Western countries that have conquered other lands and people with impunity,’’ which has resulted in their oppression as well as widespread warfare, famine, and a whole litany of other evils.17 The solution to international warfare is analogues to the remedy for domestic conflict: just as the people form a national government to solve

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the problem of violence in a state of nature, so too states have an obligation to establish peace by creating a ‘‘league of nations’’ (‘‘league of peace’’) because peace treaties are merely temporary truces that don’t permanently solve the problem of war. Only a federation that unites all free republics can end ‘‘all wars forever.’’ It does this by grounding itself strictly on existing state boundaries, which it is designed to defend, and devoting itself to maintaining the freedom and security of all members. Further, following William Penn, Kant proposes all states should abolish their standing armies, for armies menace other states by their constant readiness for war, and there ultimately is no limit to this.18 Once this league is seen to work, all states will eventually join and this will create perpetual peace. If an enlightened people can make a republic, which by nature is inclined toward peace, this becomes the building block of a federation run by similar rules.19 This faith in the power of ordinary people, which is part of the spirit that animated the Enlightenment and Liberalism, is a precursor to faith in the power of public opinion, which becomes an essential component in the development of modern social movements.

ABOLITION AND THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN PEACE MOVEMENTS It was in the ‘‘Age of Revolution’’ that public opinion first became a real force in politics. It was part of the French Revolution and of the wars for independence in North and South America. But it was in the fight against the slave trade that an understanding of its importance became a catalyst to the development of modern peace movements. To understand how this occurred, it is important to know that Grotius’s distinction between natural and customary law gave rise to different legal philosophies that in turn spawned public action. The natural-law tradition of Vitoria, Gentili, and Grotius emphasizes the moral imperatives of law. In the 17th century positivist legal philosophy became ascendant, as scholars such as Zouche, Bynkershoek, and Vattel searched for the basis of international obligation. They argued that international law originates in actual state practices—in customs and treaties, and hence in the consent of states. Only positive law so assented to is true law. Vis-a-vis the slave trade, natural-law theorists saw it as an obvious violation of natural, and hence international, law. However, for positivists, who embraced state sovereignty and the necessity of ascertaining states’ consent for rules, the issue was more complex. In a series of cases before American and British courts, where positivism dominated, the verdict was that the slave trade could only be suppressed if states agreed to do so.20

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What arose to counter that position was the first modern social movement devoted to abolishing the international slave trade. It was led by committed Christians in England and the United States, and by ex-slaves. Although slavery had already been attacked by various enlightenment writers such as Montesquieu and Hume,21 organized protests only started later, in Quaker communities. In response to severe persecution during the Seven Years War (1756 to 1763), which was interpreted as divine chastisement, Quakers sought self-purification. Part of that effort was to renounce slavery.22 In 1758 the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting excluded members who were involved in the slave trade and began to pressure all its members to emancipate their slaves. In 1761 the London Yearly Meeting ruled all Quakers who owned slaves should be disowned.23 Quakers also were instrumental in the founding of the London Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787.24 In that same year William Wilberforce’s diary records his pledge to devote his life to abolition and social reform. From then on, as a member of parliament, Wilberforce led the fight to change the law.25 He also worked with Quakers (who could not hold public office due to their refusal to swear oaths) to convince the public that slavery was an obstacle to Christian morality, human progress, and modern economics.26 Another key player, Thomas Clarkson, established local abolition groups across England, which were joined by Quakers, Baptists, Methodists, industrial workers, and women (who previously had been unpoliticized and had to hold separate meetings). African former slaves also participated, and the autobiography of a freed slave, Olaudah Equiano, which went through nine editions, was a key text that convinced people that ending slavery was a moral and political imperative, a message that was driven home by anti-slavery newspapers, other forms of mass propaganda, petitions, public meetings, lawsuits, and boycotts.27 This strategy of changing public opinion resulted in the passage of the 1807 Slave Trade Act in the British parliament that not only made it illegal to transport slaves, but also led to a shift in British naval policy, as the UK became the main force interdicting slave ships, a policy it pursued to level competition between its own domestic free-labor produced goods, and goods produced more cheaply using slave labor.28 The success of the abolitionist movement was a watershed for work toward international peace, for several reasons. First, once the battle against the slave trade was won, the same people who had worked on this project formed the first peace societies. Second, it led to a new understanding of the power of public opinion. Third, the international nature of the slave trade immediately raised awareness that although this battle had to be fought

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only in the British parliament, enforcement needed to be global. It was a short step to see that ending interstate wars would need a more audacious legal strategy, of international treaties, and/or entirely new venues of international law and organization. If we frame this history using Johan Galtung’s theory about the threefold nature of violence, we see that the fight against direct violence (that is, war) was spawned by the fight against slavery, which though heavily reliant on direct violence, was primarily a system of structural and cultural violence. Even without the benefit of this theory, at the time the multifold character of violence led to debates about the best way to end the violence of slavery. This was especially true in the United States where a nascent anti-war movement, which was linked to the anti-slavery movement, was divided over this issue. One side argued the Civil War was a singular example of a just war; the other argued slavery was better ended by payment to slave holders (as Britain had done), which in the long run would be cheaper and less problematic. Interestingly, 19th-century socialist and communist movements shared with liberals an anti-war agenda and a belief that elites, not the people, were the main cause of war. However, whereas the Liberal anti-war movement focused its ire at nondemocratic rulers and saw the solution in the development of democratically run international organizations and free trade, the former viewed the central cause of war as capitalistic exploitation of the working class, which must be ended first, as the means to ending war. In that view combating structural violence should take precedence over confronting direct violence, which is seen only as a symptom of a structurally exploitative capitalistic order. This debate is still with us today, reflected in contemporary discussions within the peace movement over whether to concentrate primarily on justice or peace (that is, structural/cultural or direct violence). Interestingly both ideological camps in the 1800s regularly held international congresses to develop common principles and strategies to use back in their home countries. This is the first international coordination of national movements and also the first time those engaged in practical politics began to demand the creation of supra-national organizations to regulate national behavior of the kind theorized by the scholars noted above. Kant summed up the vision of that era by arguing that the ‘‘intercourse . . . which has been everywhere steadily increasing between the nations of the Earth, has now extended so enormously that a violation of rights in one part of the world is felt all over it. Hence the idea of a cosmopolitan right is no fantastical, high-flown notion . . . but a complement of the unwritten code of law—constitutional as well as international.’’29

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FRUITS OF THE PEACE MOVEMENTS FROM THE LATE 1800S TO WWII During the 19th century, liberal peace efforts focused on developing international law and creating new international institutions. In terms of law, the focus was on limiting its increasing destructiveness, which was a result in part of the development, in the 18th century, of permanent professional military organizations. One of the first such efforts in this regard was the creation of domestic military courts empowered to try violations committed by soldiers during wartime. Particularly relevant here is Lincoln’s promulgation, during the Civil War, of Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field, which is the first codified law forbidding the killing of prisoners of war. Also known as the Lieber Code, it is the basis of U.S. army manuals and subsequent Hague and Geneva conventions, which are the foundations of modern humanitarian law (as the laws of war are called and denoting that such law is grounded in the ‘‘principle of humanity,’’ which focuses on people as victims of war).30 This point of view was first developed by Swiss businessman Henry Dunant, who organized the International Committee of the Red Cross and convinced the Swiss government to convene the 1864 conference that issued the First Geneva Convention, which was the first in a series of international laws focused on banning particular weapons and practices of war. For its part the first Hague Peace Conference was focused on establishing an institutional alternative to warfare as a means of settling disputes, and as such the First (1899) Hague Convention established the still-existing Permanent Court of Arbitration, which, while not well known now, was an approach to ending war that was a major focus, especially of the early American peace movement. Also signed at the end of the First Hague Convention were three ‘‘Declarations’’ prohibiting the use of certain weapons. In 1907 a Second Hague Convention addressed warfare at sea, an issue addressed further, in 1929, by the Second Geneva Convention. In 1925 the Geneva Protocol was added to the Second Hague Convention: it bans the use of all forms of chemical and biological warfare.31 In 1929 a Third Geneva Convention addressed the treatment of war prisoners.32 Since World War I, the trend has been toward setting aside the original principle governing war, which stipulated that states have the right to use force. Specific statements of this trend began with the 1923 Treaty of Mutual Assistance and include the 1928 Pact of Paris, which renounced war as an instrument of national policy. While not successful in their own right, these documents formed the basis of the Nuremberg Tribunal’s claim that aggressive war (a crime against peace) is illegal under general international

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law, and therefore its perpetrators can be tried for war crimes and other atrocities. This Tribunal informs Article 2 of the UN Charter that prohibits resorting to force, or even the threat of force. Partly responsible for ushering in new international norms are the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and the 1920 Covenant of the League of Nations. For the first time since the end of the Holy Roman Empire, these treaties established bodies with arbitration powers that, at least theoretically, were above those of the nation state, thus bringing into being the institutions long argued for in the peace plans discussed above. These included not only the League, but also the Permanent Court of International Justice, formed in 1922.33 The principle governing the League was that of collective security, which presupposed nations were at peace unless they declared war. This idea challenged traditional assumptions that war was a legitimate way to expand national power. With the creation of the UN in 1945 the traditional principle was further challenged by the UN’s development of an ‘‘internationally organized collective defense,’’ directed by the UN’s Security Council (UNSC) and its Military Staff Committee. Thus, some argue that war and the use of force are illegal except in self-defense. Even this right is circumscribed once the UNSC establishes a dispute resolution mechanism, or takes collective security measures.34 Another development of the interbellum period was the incorporation into international law issues that affect ordinary people. This trend became much more pronounced after the Holocaust because the publicizing of that atrocity by the Allied powers shifted international law away from positivism and toward natural law. This trend was first expressed in the Nuremburg Tribunal and was confirmed in the Charter of the United Nations. Today the UN delves into all aspects of human cooperation, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) places the protection of individual dignity alongside and equal to the principle of state sovereignty.

CONCLUSION This chapter has highlighted several aspects of peace movements that are at the heart of social movement theory. The first is the power of movements to open up new political terrain (by creating a new realm of law and new international organizations). The second is the importance of reframing issues. Often anti-war movements are reactive national mobilizations against particular wars. The real question today, however, is whether we can reframe war in a way analogous to the reframing of slavery, as something immoral that retards progress and is against rational economics. Part of this task will be to articulate that war essentially is a (violent) method of

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conflict resolution, and demand that other more effective, less costly, and more righteous methods be used in the future. The third, making reference to Charles Tilly’s concept, is that from the beginning the peace movement’s ‘‘repertoire of contention’’35 has been aimed at developing international law and organizations because early activists understood that ending war is a function of creating a new and more peaceful international architecture. Today it is also understood that this new terrain can be effectively used to further other peace movement goals. This will remain important, for no matter how much more international law and organizations are developed, a need will always remain for an active peace movement. This is perhaps best understood by reflecting on a line of poetry quoted by Heidegger about the dangers posed by technology: ‘‘where danger is grows the saving power also’’ (34). Following a tactic employed so brilliantly by Karl Marx, consider the inversion of this line: ‘‘where saving power is also lies the danger.’’ Looking at international law in light of both lines, we can see that it can be used in the service of oppression, as was done historically to legitimize the slave trade and disinherit native peoples (and today in terms of undermining human rights in the service of a harsh national security doctrine after 9/11, and against immigrants, who increasingly are defined legally as criminals). This is to say, that in all institutional regimes, there is an inevitable gap between justice and law, such that law is not capable of fully articulating justice.36 Nevertheless law is a necessary tool of all modern regimes, and is the central alternative to raw force. So it will always exist, and it will always be the work of social movements to keep an eye on this powerful tool (even as they also promote it as a means to create more peace and justice). Precisely because social movements are not routinized they provide a necessary corrective to the deadening effects of the very institutions they help to create.37 Their genius is to articulate the conflicts that are generated by the injustices and contradictions within any established order in an extra-legal way so that these become issues that must be addressed. Social movements are the alternative to violent extra-legal ways to expose the contradictions and injustices of a given regime and/or legal order. Thus, as we think about the further development of the international law regime and institutions, it is clear that a vital place will always remain for international movements as a logical, if irregular, component.

NOTES 1. Amjad-Ali, 2007: 26. 2. Capeheart and Milovanovic, 2007: 108—124. 3. Cruc
e, 1972: 26–33.

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4. Ibid., 155, 174. 5. Ibid., 50–51 6. Ibid., 78–79. 7. Other Grotian principles widely held today include the notion that subjects are responsible for the crimes of their sovereign if they consented to his acts or acted illegally under his command; therefore, ‘‘following orders’’ is not a valid defense, and treaties should bind successive regimes (thus debts incurred by one regime must be repaid by its successor). 8. In that text Hobbes also articulates a distinction between ‘‘natural rights’’ and ‘‘natural law’’ that became part of the basis for the modern notion of human rights. 9. Penn, 1693: 12. 10. In his original plan he included all the nations of the world but to get serious attention, in later versions he limited his plan to a confederation of European states. Saint-Pierre argued the existing confederations of the German and Helvetian states, as well as the United Provinces of the Netherlands could serve as models to demonstrate the practicality of his plan. He also argued no sovereign should keep more than 6,000 soldiers. 11. Abb
e de Saint-Pierre, 1695: 411–414. 12. Rousseau, 1756: 95–131. 13. Bentham coined the term ‘‘international’’ in the 1780s, to discuss what then was called the ‘‘law of nations.’’ See Van der Linden, 1987: 40. 14. Bentham; James Mill in his 1822 article ‘‘Law of Nations’’ argued for an international law code and court and rejected violent sanctions as the enforcement mechanism favoring instead ‘‘enforcement by public opinion.’’ This argument was also made by William Ladd in 1827 when he argued ‘‘A peace extorted by force is no peace at all.’’ See Van der Linden, 1987. 15. Kant, 1795: 186. 16. Ibid., 183. 17. Thus China and Japan wisely refused entry to western commercial states. See Kant, 1795. 18. Kant, 1795: 182. 19. Ibid., 189–191. 20. Interestingly, a British court in 1772 ruled slavery did not exist in England due to a lack of positive law on the subject, a ruling that was reconfirmed by other cases brought in that era. 21. Davis, 1984: 107. 22. Around the same time Quakers became involved in Granville Sharp’s work to elevate the poverty of a growing community of American ex-slaves in London, which given the enormity of the need evolved into the Sierra Leone scheme. See Walvin, 1980: 149–162. 23. This was followed in 1773 by a Quaker request to the Lord of Trade to allow Virginia to levy taxes to stop further slave important. See Davis 1984: 108. 24. Davis, 1984: 108. 25. Walvin, 1980: 149–162. 26. Davis, 1984: 109.

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27. Drescher, 1980: 43. 28. The United States outlawed the slave trade on January 1, 1808, but did not end slavery until 1865, with the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. constitution. The British had already outlawed slavery in 1832 through passage of the Abolition of Slavery Act that provided for the compensated emancipated of 780,000 colonial slaves by a payment of £20 million to slave owners. See Davis 1984. 29. Kant, 1795. 30. Today humanitarian law is mandatory on nations that have signed these treaties. There also is unwritten customary law that binds all nations, as was evident at the Nuremberg War Trials. Although the treaties that create positive humanitarian law are statements of general principles, lacking means of enforcement and penalties, much of their substance has been incorporated into military law in many countries. 31. This protocol was further augmented by the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, and the 1997 Ottawa AntiPersonnel Mine Ban Treaty and Conventions. 32. In 1949, a Fourth Geneva Convention was created to protect civilians in wartime. In 1977 ‘‘Protocols’’ were added. These documents also stipulate ‘‘rules of occupation;’’ these require an occupier to respect the rights, family honor, property, and religion of the population. Based on these rules the United Nations has repeatedly condemned Israel’s conduct in the ‘‘Occupied Territories.’’ 33. The International Labor Organization, established in 1919, also develops international law by promulgating international labor conventions. 34. Although these developments have made warfare largely illegal in principle, it continues to be a reality. This is important because international law is a fluid phenomenon, based always in part on current states’ practices, which if sustained, create new customary law. In this regard actions taken by the United States since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, may be seen as undermining aspects of international law. Most relevant in this regard are the United States’ invasion of Iraq and its use of: preemptive strikes against ‘‘terrorists’’ in allied and neutral states; interrogation techniques that may constitute torture; extraordinary rendition; and holding uncharged ‘‘enemy combatants’’ offshore. The key issue now is whether other states will challenge, or mimic, these decisions. Future humanitarian and human-rights laws depend in part on those choices. 35. A repertoire of contention defines the ways people act together in pursuit of shared interests using a ‘‘limited set of routines that are learned, shared, and acted out through a relatively deliberate process of choice.’’ See Tilly, 1995. 36. Capeheart and Milovanovic, 2007. 37. This, not incidentally, is related to an understanding of power that resides in consent not force or weapons. As societies become increasingly complex, as Durkheim theorized, solidarity comes to be grounded in a division of labor that makes social cohesion more a function of organization than force.

CHAPTER

5

T H E G O O D N E W S : T H E ICC A N D T H E R2P P R I N C I P L E Ronald J. Glossop

I want to discuss two movements of the last decade that are very promising in terms both of the ideals that motivate them and the progress they have been making in realizing their goals. That is, I want to direct our attention to the ‘‘good news’’; that related to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle. I will conclude by noting why these developments are so important for the future of our global community.

THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT

The Establishment, Structure, and Personnel of the ICC Less than 10 years ago, on July 17, 1998, an international conference in Rome approved by a vote of 120 to 7 (with 21 abstentions) a treaty to create a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) as an alternative to relying on the ad hoc tribunals established by the UN Security Council after the crimes were committed in places such as the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Unlike the International Court of Justice (ICJ) or ‘‘World Court’’ This chapter was originally a presentation for International Philosophers for Peace, Radford Univ., May 24–27, 2007.

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that deals with disputes between national governments, the ICC can try and prosecute individuals for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Support for the treaty was led by the like-minded group that included countries such as Canada, Australia, Britain, Norway, Germany, and South Africa, cheered on by an 800-member international coalition of citizen groups. Opposition was led by the United States, even though up to the time of the Rome Conference it had supported the effort because it had assumed that the ICC would deal only with cases referred to it by the Security Council. With such an arrangement it would have been able to veto any cases involving Americans. The seven countries voting against the ICC treaty were China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar, Yemen, and the United States. This treaty, known as the Rome Statute, stipulated that the jurisdiction of the ICC would begin on the first of the month 60 days after the 60th ratification. Enemies of the treaty were confident that it would be 10 to 25 years before that many ratifications would be acquired. But largely because of the efforts of a coalition of international nongovernment organizations (NGOs) called the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC), the required 60th ratification of the Rome Statute was registered on April 11, 2002, only 45 months after the treaty was adopted. As a result the jurisdiction of the ICC began on July 1, 2002. The CICC can also take a lot of credit for the fact that as of March 21, 2007, the Rome Statute had already been ratified by 104 countries out of the 193 countries in the world. The most recent was Chad, now the home of many refugees from Darfur, Sudan. On March 24, the Yemeni House of Representatives voted to ratify the treaty, so it will soon become the 105th country. That activitist coalition, whose office is in New York City, now includes over 2,000 civil society organizations. Its Web site1 is very useful. It also publishes an informative newspaper, The International Criminal Court Monitor. The national coalition of NGOs for the ICC in the United States is the American NGO Coalition for the International Criminal Court (AMICC).2 Representatives of countries that have ratified the treaty make up the Assembly of States Parties (ASP). The first meeting of this governing body for the ICC was held at UN Headquarters in New York, September 3 to 10, 2002. It called for nominations for the Prosecutor and the 18 judges of the Court before the first of December. The 18 judges were elected in February 2003, and they were sworn in on March 11 in The Hague, where the ICC will be located. Each judge must have established competence in criminal law and procedure or in relevant areas of international law. The judges are divided into three divisions, a Pre-Trial Division, a Trial Division, and an Appeals Division. The rules for electing judges ensure that they will come from different parts of the world and that a fair proportion of them will be

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women. Of the 18 judges selected in the first election, 7 were women. Their normal term of office is nine years, but after this first election they drew lots so that one-third had 3-year terms and one-third had 6-year terms. Judge Philippe Kirsch of Canada was elected president of the ICC. In April 2003 the Assembly of States Parties elected Luis Moreno-Ocampo of Argentina to be the first Prosecutor, and he was sworn in on June 16, 2003. In June the ASP elected Bruno Cathala of France to be the first Registrar of the Court. His swearing in on July 3, 2003, marked the successful appointment of all the senior officers of the Court, just over a year after its jurisdiction began. In January 2006, elections were held for the six judges who had 3-year terms. Five of the six were re-elected and the sixth was a woman, so for a time there were eight women judges. But in December 2006, Judge Maureen Harding Clark of Ireland resigned to serve on the High Court of Ireland. Her replacement will be elected at the Fifth Assembly of States Parties to be held in December 2007. In September 2003 the second Assembly of States Parties met in New York and elected five distinguished persons (two of them Nobel Peace Laureates) for 3-year terms to the Board of Directors for the Victims Trust Fund of the ICC. This fund ensures that the ICC will not only prosecute those guilty of committing crimes but will also assist those who have been injured. The five original members were Her Majesty Queen Rania AlAbdullah of Jordan, former President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica, former Prime Minister Tadekusz Mazowiecki of Poland, former President of the European Parliament Simone Veil of France, and Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. The first two have resigned and have been replaced by Bulgaa Altangerel of Mongolia and Arthur Napoleon Raymond Robinson of Trinidad and Tobago. In July 2004 a new supplemental treaty, the Agreement on the Privileges and Immunities of the ICC (APIC), entered into force. This treaty, which is essential for carrying out the work of the tribunal, gives employees of the ICC the same immunities and privileges granted to employees of the UN and other international organizations. As of February 1, 2007, this treaty providing immunity for ICC employees had been signed by 62 countries and ratified by 48. One great value of the Rome Statute generally overlooked is the fact that nations that ratify the Statute are committed to bringing their own national laws into conformity with the international norms set up in the treaty. Consequently, many national legal systems are being modified to establish jurisdiction over the crimes of genocide, torture, ethnic cleansing, and rape. An issue that everyone knew would require attention right from the time of the adoption of the Rome Statute is the matter of defining the crime of

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aggression as it applies to individuals. The Rome Statute gives the ICC jurisdiction over four kinds of crimes: (1) genocide, (2) war crimes, (3) crimes against humanity (which are clearly described in the statute itself), and (4) aggression. But it was decided in Rome that having jurisdiction on aggression would require a clear delineation of that crime. Discussion of this issue is being carried out by the Special Working Group of the Crime of Aggression (SWGCA), which held its third session June 8 to 11, 2006, at Princeton University. The aim is to have a proposal ready for action by the Review Council for the Rome Statute to be held in 2009. Issues involve not only defining aggression but also deciding whether jurisdiction of the Court should be restricted to the most clear-cut cases of aggression and determining the extent to which decisions of the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly, and the International Court of Justice need to be taken into account.

The ICC and the UN in Africa and in the Rest of the World On January 29, 2004, the ICC got its first case when the government of Uganda referred the situation in its northern region to the ICC. On April 19, 2004, the Court got its second case when the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo called on the ICC to investigate crimes committed in that country since the Court’s jurisdiction began July 1, 2002. Two months later Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo announced the beginning of formal investigations in both these countries. One of the most important events in the young history of the ICC occurred on March 31, 2005, when the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1593 on the situation in the Darfur region of Sudan by a vote of 14 to 0, with one abstention, that of the United States. It was widely assumed that the United States would veto this measure because it included a section calling on the ICC to investigate the alleged crimes being committed in Sudan. Just over two months later, Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo concluded that the requirements for initiating a formal investigation had been satisfied. The Prosecutor has reported to the Security Council on this matter four times, in June and December of 2005 and June and December of 2006. In the last two reports he called for more cooperation from national governments and other organizations. One of the few times that the mainstream media has really focused attention on the ICC is related to its activity in Darfur. On Sunday, April 2, 2006, the cover story of the New York Times was ‘‘The Prosecutor of the World’s Worst’’ by Elizabeth Rubin. The cover boldly presented this message: The UN is not going to stop the genocide in Darfur. The African Union is not going to stop the genocide in Darfur. The United States is not

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going to stop the genocide in Darfur. NATO is not going to stop the genocide in Darfur. The European Union is not going to stop the genocide in Darfur. But someday, Luis Moreno-Ocampo is going to bring those who committed the genocide to justice.

This article provides a great deal of detail about how the leaders in Sudan are well aware of the work of the ICC and are actively doing all they can to prevent it from carrying on its work. One reason the Sudanese government leaders don’t want UN peacekeepers from countries that have ratified the Rome Statute is they might be arrested by them, especially now that as of April 27, 2007 (with the news being made public on May 2, 2007), warrants have been issued for the arrest of the former Minister of State for the Interior of the Government of Sudan Ahmad Muhammad Harun and Janjaweed militia leader Ali Kushbayd (real name: Ali Muhammad Al Abd-Al-Rahman). Nevertheless, the statement issued by the Office of the Prosecutor for the ICC notes that the government of Sudan itself has a legal duty to arrest these defendants. The Sudanese government has refused to accept these judgments of the ICC on grounds that it has not signed or ratified the Rome Statute, but that is irrelevant in this case because the UN Security Council has authorized the ICC to be involved. The question now is whether the UN or some countries in the UN will take action to back up the ICC judgments. ICC President Kirsch has given reports to the UN General Assembly in November 2005 and October 2006. The ICC is a separate organization from the UN, but it reports annually to the General Assembly. This gives national representatives at the UN a chance to comment on the work of the ICC, and most of them have praised its work. A major theme of both the report itself and the responses from the General Assembly have focused on the need of national governments to assist the ICC, especially in the arresting of those indicted by the ICC such as Joseph Kony and four other leaders of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. They were indicted on October 13, 2005, but have still not been arrested. A ticklish issue at present is whether these indicted leaders are going to be given amnesty as part of a peace agreement being negotiated at Juba, the capital of the regional government of southern Sudan. This possibility has evoked a loud cry of outrage from many human rights leaders. On March 17, 2006, the ICC announced its first arrest. The defendant was Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, leader of a Congolese militia responsible for ethnic massacres, exploitation of child soldiers, rapes, and torture in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He was turned over to the ICC by Congolese authorities aided by the French government and

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the UN Mission in the Congo (MONUC). The public hearing with Lubanga present was held on March 20, 2006, in The Hague. The arrest of Lubanga along with investigations by the ICC resulted in an October 12, 2006, editorial in the New York Times. The editorial reads as follows:3 Much good can come from the court’s focus on child soldiers. The decision by the international tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia to treat rape as one of the most serious international crimes has changed legal attitudes and practice worldwide. The International Criminal Court is now drawing attention to another widespread, yet widely ignored, horror. Guerrilla leaders in Colombia, Sri Lanka, West Africa and elsewhere, and government officials in Myanmar, should pay close attention.4

In fact, at least one has. Elizabeth Rubin, in her April 2 article mentioned earlier, notes that Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo ‘‘holds up Carlos Casta~ no, one of Colombia’s top paramilitary commanders, as an example of the court’s potential reach’’ (p. 34). After Colombia ratified the ICC treaty, Casta~ no laid down his weapons because, according to his brother, he realized that he might become vulnerable to ICC prosecution.

Opposition of the Bush Administration to the ICC The ICC has been progressing despite the efforts of the Bush administration to undermine it. President Clinton signed the treaty on December 31, 2000, the last day when a government could sign the treaty and not ratify it at the same time, something that would have been impossible in the United States. On May 6, 2002, the Bush administration announced that it had ‘‘nullified’’ the U.S. signature of the treaty, something not permitted by international law. It also launched a campaign against the ICC. A policy was adopted of trying to get other countries to sign Bilateral Immunity Agreements (BIAs) that indicated that no U.S. citizens would ever be sent to the ICC either for prosecution or even to testify. Economic assistance was to be cut off to any country that did not sign such an agreement. According to the U.S. administration, 101 nations have signed BIAs, but many of these cases are just executive agreements. Less than 40 percent have been ratified by parliaments. In addition 53 governments have publicly announced that they refuse to sign BIAs with the U.S. government. Several national governments in Eastern Europe have been squeezed by a U.S. policy threatening to cut off financial assistance to countries that won’t sign a BIA while the European Union has indicated that any country that does sign a BIA can forget about becoming part of the European Union.

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Another part of the U.S. campaign against the ICC is the legislation adopted by the U.S. Congress in August 2002 known as the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act (ASPA). Its enemies refer to it as ‘‘The Hague Invasion Act’’ since it authorizes ‘‘any means necessary’’ to keep U.S. citizens from ICC custody in The Hague. A third U.S. effort against the ICC is the Nethercutt Amendment to the U.S. Foreign Appropriations Bill of December 2004. This measure goes further than the ASPA because it authorizes the end of Economic Support Funds to any country, including many key allies, that ratifies the Rome Statute but does not sign a BIA. The Nethercutt Amendment was reauthorized in the Joint Appropriations Bill for 2006. A fourth element of the campaign against the ICC was to try to work through the UN to get immunity for all U.S. personnel involved in international peacekeeping efforts. The first effort in July 2002 succeeded. UN Security Council Resolution 1422 was adopted, granting immunity from the ICC during a one-year period for all personnel participating in missions authorized by the United Nations from countries who had not ratified the Rome Statute. Since that resolution stipulated only a one-year period, it came up for renewal the next year as UNSC Resolution 1487. It was passed again but with less support. In 2004 the U.S. wanted to renew this provision again, but withdrew it realizing that it would not be passed again. On July 23, 2006, the New York Times published an op-ed piece by Mark Mazzetti entitled ‘‘U.S. Cuts in Africa Aid Said to Hurt War on Terror.’’ He noted how the ASPA has led to the cutting off of millions of dollars in assistance to countries such as Kenya, Mali, Niger, and Tanzania, who had been assisting in efforts against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. He also mentioned the situation in Latin America where, as in Africa, the Chinese are moving in as the United States is cutting back on its economic assistance. He quoted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s comment in March 2006 that cutting military assistance because of ASPA is ‘‘sort of the same as shooting ourselves in the foot.’’ He noted that the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review issued in February 2006 called for the government to separate military funding from that anti-ICC law. He cited the opposition to the ASPA voiced by General Bantz J. Craddock of the U.S. Southern Command when testifying before the Senate in March 2006. Such arguments may be having some effect. In October 2006, President Bush directed Secretary of State Rice to waive the prohibitions in the ASPA with respect to 21 countries. But the anti-ICC Nethercutt Amendment has not been revoked, and any changes in U.S. policy are motivated by concerns about the expanding influence of China, not by any readiness to support international law. What would be helpful would be a ‘‘sense of Congress’’

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resolution saying that the policy of the U.S. government should be to support the ICC, including ratifying the Rome Statute so that this country can become a member of the Assembly of States Parties and so that U.S. citizens would be eligible to become judges on the Court.

THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT (R2P) PRINCIPLE

The Origins of the R2P Principle The second part of the good news is the ‘‘Responsibility to Protect’’ movement (abbreviated as R2P). This movement has its origins in the report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty published in December 2001 by the International Development Research Center in Ottawa, Canada.5 Establishment of this commission was initiated by Lloyd Axworthy, former Foreign Affairs Minister of Canada, as a response to concerns about NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1999 without authorization by the UN Security Council on the one hand and the lack of international action to prevent the genocide in Rwanda on the other. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for the international community to ‘‘forge unity’’ on the issue of how to deal with gross violations of human rights when international intervention seems to violate the principle of national sovereignty. The commission was appointed by the government of Canada and a group of major foundations, and its composition was announced to the UN General Assembly in September 2000. The co-chairs were Gareth Evans of Australia and Mohamed Sahnoun of Algeria while the other members were Gis
ele Cot
e-Harper of Canada, Lee Hamilton of the United States, Michael Ignatieff of Canada, Vladimir Lukin of Russia, Klaus Naumann of Germany, Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, Fidel Ramos of the Philippines, Cornelio Sommaruga of Switzerland, Eduardo Stein Barillas of Guatemala, and Ramesh Thakur of India. The issues to be addressed by the Commission were: Does the international community ever have the right to intervene within the borders of a sovereign nation state? If so, under what conditions? What theoretical base could possibly justify such outside intervention? The Commission’s answer in the report calls attention to the need of governments to preserve the ‘‘personal security’’ of their citizens as well as their ‘‘national security’’ in relations with other countries. It is argued that the notion of ‘‘state sovereignty implies a dual responsibility.’’6 Each state not only has the responsibility ‘‘to respect the sovereignty of other states’’ but also has a responsibility ‘‘to respect the dignity and basic rights of people within the state.’’7 The Commission says, ‘‘We prefer to talk not of a ‘right to intervene’ but of a ‘responsibility to

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protect.’ ’’8 The key point is to shift focus from ‘‘sovereignty as control’’ to ‘‘sovereignty as responsibility.’’9 The Commission’s report notes that the term intervention can be used to refer not only to military intervention but also to other coercive measures such as sanctions and criminal prosecutions of individuals.10 At the same time the Commission deliberately refrains from using the term humanitarian intervention in deference to humanitarian groups who object to using that expression in any situation where military action is being employed.11 Sovereignty as responsibility means that leaders of national governments: (1) must protect their citizens and promote their welfare, (2) are responsible to their citizens and to the international community through the UN, and (3) can be held accountable for their acts of commission and omission.12 Thus, not only do international criminal tribunals have a right to exert jurisdiction, but with regard to crimes like genocide where treaties provide for universal jurisdiction even other national governments can act. But the Commission cautions that ‘‘It is only when national systems of justice either cannot or will not act to judge crimes against humanity that universal jurisdiction and other international options should come into play.’’13 Furthermore, the responsibility to protect includes (both for national governments and for the international community) not only the responsibility to react to human catastrophes but also to prevent them and to rebuild the community afterward.14 A great deal of the Commission’s 85-page report deals with very specific and detailed commentary about specific situations organized in accord with specific topics such as the responsibility to protect individual citizens,15 the responsibility to prevent catastrophes16 (including how to deal with root causes to avoid the need for interventions), the responsibility to react to catastrophes,17 the responsibility to rebuild the community after interventions,18 the various roles of the UN in interventions,19 the issue of how military interventions are to be carried out,20 and what needs to be done in the future,21 all with many references to specific past incidents such as Kosovo, Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cambodia, and East Timor. This report by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty aims ‘‘to strengthen, not weaken, the sovereignty of states’’ while also improving ‘‘the capacity of the international community to react decisively when states are either unable or unwilling to protect their own people.’’22 It does this by proposing a re-interpretation of the notion of ‘‘national sovereignty’’ so that it includes the responsibility of a state to protect the security of its own citizens.

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Official Adoption of the R2P Principle Three years later, in December 2004, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change fully embraced and called for implementation of the Responsibility to Protect principle. The following year the Secretary-General’s own report In Larger Freedom: Toward Development, Security, and Human Rights for All presented recommendations for action to the 60th session of the General Assembly including a reference to the ‘‘emerging norm of the Responsibility to Protect.’’ In September 2005, the UN General Assembly incorporated the Responsibility to Protect principle into the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document. Paragraph 138 reads: Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. We accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it. The international community should, as appropriate, encourage and help States to exercise this responsibility and support the United Nations in establishing an early warning capability.23

Paragraph 139 of that document, addressing the issue of international intervention, says: The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian, and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. In this context, we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. We stress the need for the General Assembly to continue consideration of the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity and its implications, bearing in mind the principles of the Charter and international law. We also intend to commit ourselves, as necessary and appropriate, to helping States build capacity to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity and to assisting those which are under stress before crises and conflicts break out.24

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On April 28, 2006, these two key paragraphs of the World Summit Outcome Document were affirmed unanimously by the UN Security Council when it adopted Resolution 1674 on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict. It says: ‘‘The Security Council reaffirms the provisions of paragraphs 138 and 139 of the World Summit Outcome Document regarding the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity.’’ In March 2007, a report by the UN High-Level Mission of the Human Rights Commission concerning the situation in Darfur, led by Nobel Prize winner Jody Williams, disturbed by the failure of the May 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement to do much to improve the situation, called on the international community to take action, noting that the Responsibility to Protect principle required it. But the government of Sudan refused to allow the Mission to enter Sudan to carry on its investigation and objected to the use of the R2P framework in the report. The Human Rights Commission then appointed a new working group to work with the African Union and the Sudanese government on this issue. As in the case of the ICC, civil society is pushing the national governments to act responsibly. In fact, the coordination of the NGOs in this effort is again in the hands of the World Federalist Movement-Institute for Global Policy (WFM-IGP) in New York. On this occasion they were asked to fulfill that task by the Canadian government that had sponsored the original report on the Responsibility to Protect. This coordination is being carried out under the name ‘‘Responsibility to Protect-Engaging Civil Society’’ or simply ‘‘r2pcs’’ (‘‘cs’’ is for ‘‘civil society’’).25 One success for this civil society effort was the March 14, 2007, adoption by the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco of a ‘‘Resolution Endorsing the United Nations Principle of the Responsibility to Protect.’’26 The results of a global public opinion poll released on April 5, 2007, by WorldPublicOpinion.org27 and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs showed worldwide support for applying the R2P principle to the Darfur tragedy. Referring to that poll Andrew Stroehlein and Gareth Evans noted: On the . . . question of whether the UN Security Council has the ‘responsibility to authorize the use of military force to prevent severe human rights violations such as genocide, even against the will of their own government,’ strong majorities in many countries replied favorably: 74 percent of Americans agreed, along with 69 percent of Palestinians, 66 percent of Armenians, 64 percent of Israelis, 54 percent of French and Poles, and 51 percent of Indians. And all populations polled were more in favor than opposed. . . . [T]he most surprising result emerged from China. Though its government has long been considered a staunch

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defender of state sovereignty under just about all circumstances, a full 76 percent of Chinese citizens agreed the Security Council had a responsibility to intervene when such mass crimes were taking place.28

Speaking on April 9, 2007, on the 13th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said: ‘‘All the world’s governments have agreed in principle to the responsibility to protect. Our challenge now is to give real meaning to the concept, by taking steps to make it operational.’’29 The Secretary-General then indicated that he was making his special adviser for the prevention of genocide (Juan Mendez of Argentina) a full-time post and that he was upgrading the UN Advisory Committee on Genocide Prevention.30 The situation is that there is plenty of theoretical support for the Responsibility to Protect principle both among national governments and the public, but how to implement it in particular circumstances has yet to be worked out. One relevant proposal is to establish a UN Emergency Peace Force made up of individuals employed directly by the UN that could be quickly moved into difficult situations like those in Darfur until the typical peacekeeping forces can be assembled and put in place.31

WHY THESE TWO DEVELOPMENTS ARE SO IMPORTANT Let me conclude by noting why the creation and development of the ICC and the adoption of the Responsibility to Protect principle are so important. Both of them eliminate the notion of the unlimited sovereignty of national governments, a principle that has been used by ruthless national rulers to justify campaigns of violence against both other nations and those labeled ‘‘enemies’’ in their own country. The International Criminal Court establishes a permanent international institution to prosecute those individual high-ranking government officials and military officers responsible for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity no matter where these are committed, while the Responsibility to Protect principle makes it clear that those committing these crimes can’t hide behind the old notion of national sovereignty, the now-rejected view that national governments can do whatever they want within their own borders. The creation of the ICC is a giant step forward in spreading the rule of law in the world. Professor Robert Johansen of Notre Dame University has noted that the creation of the ICC ‘‘could well be the most important institutional innovation [for the world] since the founding of the United Nations.’’32 The adoption of the Responsibility to Protect principle is a gigantic step forward in protecting people from the murderous inhuman actions of their own national governments, something that in the last century

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has caused as many deaths as wars.33 Human history shows that establishing judicial institutions and principles of law is an effective way of promoting peace and justice in the human community, just as important as repeated appeals to individuals to be more loving and less violent. We can be grateful that during our lifetimes the institutions and principles of law are being extended beyond the national level to the international level.

NOTES 1. Coalition for the International Criminal Court. 2. The American Non-Governmental Organization Coalition for the International Criminal Court. 3. Rubin, 2006: 42. 4. "Armies of Children," 2006. 5. The International Development Research Centre, 2001. 6. Ibid., 8. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., 11. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid., 8. 11. Ibid., 9. 12. Ibid., 13. 13. Ibid., 14. 14. Ibid., 17. 15. Ibid., 11–18. 16. Ibid., 19–27. 17. Ibid., 29–37. 18. Ibid., 34–46. 19. Ibid., 47–55. 20. Ibid., 57–67. 21. Ibid., 69–75. 22. Ibid., 75. 23. World Summit Outcome Document, 2005. 24. Ibid. 25. International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect (ICR2P) 26. Responsibility to Protect, 2007. 27. World Public Opinion, 2007. 28. Stroehlein and Evans, 2007. 29. UN Secretary General, 2007. 30. United Nations, 2007. 31. Johansen, 2006. 32. Joan B. Kroc Institute, 1997. 33. Rummel, 1994.

CHAPTER

6

T OWA R D A N E C E S S A R Y U T O P I A N I S M : D E M O C R AT I C G L O B A L G OV E R N A N C E Richard Falk

URGENT REQUIREMENTS FOR A PEACEFUL WORLD ORDER Not only the U.S. Department of Defense but practically every planning council among the developed nations and beyond is scurrying to plan for anticipated consequences of clearly visible trends producing hunger, environmental degradation, and violent conflict. Often the frameworks proposed fail to support institutions of international governance perceived as fair internationally. Too often the planning excludes the voices of those who are the first casualties. Unless the emergence of an effective form of global governance is adequately democratized it will not only reproduce existing acute inequities and exploitative patterns of present world order, but will almost certainly intensify these malevolent features. Such forebodings are based on the assessment of present global trends that document increasing disparities among peoples, races, and classes, but also call to our attention the growing struggle over dwindling oil supplies and the overall harmful effects of global warming and various associated forms of environmental

An earlier version of the ideas expressed in this chapter appeared in Richard A. Falk, Achieving Human Rights. New York: Routledge, 2009: 13–24.

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deterioration.1 Without drastic normative adjustments in the interaction of states and regions, as well as an accompanying social regulation of the world economy, global governance is almost certain to adopt highly coercive methods of stifling resistance from disadvantaged societies and social forces. The presidency of George W. Bush in the United States brought to the fore an extremist leadership marked by preemptive military incursions and low respect for international law. This was subsequently repudiated by the American electorate, indicating some changes in the short run. But the tenets of the George W. Bush years may still be a crude forerunner of future hegemonic efforts by the United States to stabilize the unjust global status quo to the extent possible.2 There are no indications that President Obama, or any plausible new political leader on the horizon in the United States, will draw back the American militarization of the planet under its sovereign control, including oceans, space, the world network of military bases, global intelligence, and special forces presence.3 Global governance under any such auspices, even if less manifestly dysfunctional than the failing neoconservative experiment to provide security for the world as administered from Washington, is almost certain to falter without ambitious moves to establish an inclusive consensual, cooperative, multilateral, and constitutional framework built around a truly operational global rule of law.4 At present, there seems to be grossly insufficient political agency available to support mounting a credible challenge along such transformative lines to existing world order arrangements. That is, the neoconservative American vision of global governance has been defeated by resistance, but as matters now stand there is no alternative, and signs indicate that this vision will be altered only to accommodate a more liberal style of promotion. It is due to this inability to depict a plausible path leading from the present reality of dysfunctional Westphalianism to a more democratically constituted and institutionally centralized global governance that makes any current call appear ‘‘utopian,’’ that is, not attainable except imaginatively. Against such a background the advocacy of world government seems constructive and responsive, yet I would argue that to push for world government at this time is dangerously premature. Such a post-Westphalian governmental restructuring of global authority, particularly in relation to war making, in the unlikely event that it were to become capable of enactment, would almost certainly produce a tyrannical world polity. Such a result seems almost certain unless the realization of world government was preceded by economic, social, and cultural developments that reduced dramatically current levels of material unevenness, poverty, and inter-civilizational antagonisms. So long as this unevenness persists, any centralization of political authority is certain to be coercive, exploitative, and oppressive. Perhaps, in the

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decades ahead, the raw struggle for human survival may yield this kind of outcome misleadingly described as ‘‘world government,’’ and may make it seem an acceptable or even the best attainable world order solution for the peoples of the world. This survival scenario is a rather realistic expectation, given the likelihood that pressures in relation to global warming and energy supplies and prices will soon reach emergency levels. What is politically possible in a circumstance of imminent catastrophe or at the early stages of an unfolding catastrophe cannot be foretold, but given our best understanding of present political realities, the present advocacy of world government is both utopian (unattainable) and dystopian (undesirable). If this is correct, then the contemplation of a benevolent world government is an idle daydream that we as humans concerned for the future can currently ill afford. An alternative approach, suggested by a similar understanding of the same set of planetary circumstances, involves a focus on the preconditions for achieving a humane form of global governance. An early attempt to depict a post-Westphalian benevolent world order was made by Falk.5 From this perspective the major premise of analysis is that without the emergence and eventual flourishing of global democracy the world seems assuredly heading for dystopia, if not irreversible catastrophe. Any reasonable approach to the future must exhibit an awareness of the probable relevance of crucial unanticipated developments.6 Given this outlook, it seems useful to distinguish among several horizons of possibility when contemplating the shape and viability of global governance in the relatively near-term future. Current policy debate, including mainstream reformist proposals and projections, takes place in a political space that seems consistent with horizons of feasibility (that is, policy goals attainable without substantial modification of structures of power, privilege, authority, and societal belief patterns); such horizons can shift abruptly during moments of crisis and emergency. In a negative manner, horizons of feasibility receded dramatically after the 9/11 attacks, making recourse to aggressive wars by the U.S. government much easier to justify, generating strong political backing at home. A more positive illustration involved the establishment of the International Criminal Court in the aftermath of the Cold War despite the opposition of several leading governments. If such a project had been launched in the 1970s or 1980s it would have been quickly dismissed as utopian, yet in the late 1990s it became a realized goal of a group of moderate governments working in tandem with a coalition of transnational civil society actors. Horizons of feasibility shift and evolve, and not necessarily in a linear and incremental rhythm, but by jumps, discontinuities replete with contradictions.

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It is not enough to ponder the future through calculations and assessments made by reference to horizons of feasibility. We also require some sense of preferred alternative ways of sustaining life on the planet along lines that accord with scientific and professional judgments as to how to improve the material and social quality of human life for all persons. To do this is not just a technical matter. It is also ethical, calling for special efforts on behalf of those now poor, excluded, subordinated, and otherwise disadvantaged. It also presupposes that far longer term perspectives inform public policy at levels of social integration than are now associated with domestic electoral cycles. As well, the shaping of a democratic form of global governance cannot be effectively or beneficially managed on the basis of either a world constituted almost exclusively by territorial political communities enjoying sovereign rights or a world that is controlled by either single or multiple hegemonic centers of territorial power of global and regional scope or by market-based global business and banking elites.7 To devise what will work to ensure a sustainable human future that does not rest on naked force and entail grossly exploitative distributions of wealth and income requires a scientifically and ethically informed vision of what is needed, treated here as horizons of necessity. It is the gap between feasibility and necessity, as well as the fragility and complexity of current world order, which largely explains what is appropriately described as the deepening crisis of global governance. In this regard, the petroleum-based technologies of the 21st century, military and otherwise, make the consequences of failure and breakdown so much more consequential than earlier. This observation is particularly obvious with regard to any assessment of the destructive impacts of major wars fought with nuclear weapons as distinct from wars fought with bows and arrows or machetes. But the same condition exists in many other domains of international life, including, of course, the use of the global commons as a dump for greenhouse gas emissions, as for various other kinds of waste disposal. By itself this polarization of perspectives may not do more than help us understand the gathering gloom about the future of humanity by focusing our attention on what is needed, yet seemingly unattainable, rather than to be content with what is feasible. With this consideration in mind, it seems useful to look closely at what is desired and desirable with respect to the multi-dimensional challenge of global governance. In this respect, reflecting on horizons of desire is not entirely impractical, but rather provides an inspirational foundation for the mobilizing energy that will be required if horizons of necessity are to motivate action without adding to human suffering. The emphasis on democracy as the ground on

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which global governance must unfold, if it is to be successful and benevolent, is an acknowledgement, with risks attached, of the political significance of desire and the desirable.8 As suggested, tyrannical forms of global governance might, although at great human costs, could more easily satisfy the imperatives of necessity, at least for some decades, but dystopicly. The preferred alternative is to embrace the utopian possibility of conflating horizons of necessity and horizons of desire, which seems only imaginable if global governance is radically democratized in the near future. Whether that conflation would help fashion the political agency required to establish a credible political project of global democratic governance cannot be foretold. There is also some support, especially in American neoliberal and neoconservative circles, for embracing benevolent hegemony, even empire, as the most attainable form of effective global governance.9 As with world government, hegemonic or imperial solutions, even if arguably responsive to horizons of necessity, should be rejected because they do not appear on the horizons of desire.10 Global democracy seems necessary and desirable, although its realization, assuming obstacles can be overcome, may turn out to be not altogether positive. Much can go wrong by way of implementation: corruption, militarism, even repression and exploitation could easily occur along the way, if the mechanisms of governance are not constrained by a robust regime of law that is itself responsive to the values and implementing procedures of a human rights culture and to demands for global justice. This regime of global law is particularly needed to offset to some extent the effects of gross inequality and disparity that currently exists, and seems built into the operational workings of the world economy.11 The final test of social justice globally conceived, recalling Gandhi ’s criterion of ‘‘the last man’’ and John Rawls’s emphasis on the most disadvantaged elements in society, will be how those at the margins of human vulnerability are treated, including the impoverished, the unborn, the indigenous, and the deviant. Procedural benchmarks will also be indicative of a more inclusive democracy that is not yet: progress toward accountability for wrongdoing by political actors, regulation of economic regimes to ensure the material and human well-being of all persons and groups, implementation of prohibitions on recourse to war as a political option, a dynamic of demilitarization, and behind everything, a rule of law as administered by an independent and available judiciary so that there is a growing impression that legal equals (for example, governments of sovereign states) are being treated equally. In contrast, the present world order shocks the moral conscience by the extent to which powerful political actors are being given an exemption from criminal accountability while weaker figures are increasingly prosecuted

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and punished. Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic are prosecuted but George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and Vladimir Putin are de facto exempt from even indictment. More broadly, hegemonic actors enjoy an informal, yet fully effective, right of exception with respect to adherence to international law, expressed both by the veto given to permanent members of the UN Security Council and by the operational freedom of maneuver enjoyed by major states. This chapter will not attempt to look at this entire global canvas of democratizing initiatives but limits itself to an inquiry that highlights the place of the individual as ‘‘citizen’’ of this unborn global polity and the creation of an institutional arena that can give meaningful expression to democratizing sentiments and express grievances that come from below. In this rendering, the spirit of democracy is derived from respect for the authority of the grassroots, giving some sort of preliminary outlet for legitimizing processes of popular sovereignty.12 More concretely, attention will be given to a futuristic conception of citizenship—the citizen pilgrim—and to the establishment of a political forum for collective deliberation—a global peoples assembly or global peoples parliament. It needs to be understood that both structural aspects of Westphalian world order, the horizontal juridical order encompassing the interplay of formally equal sovereign states and the vertical order exhibiting the geopolitical structure of grossly unequal states, now exhibit almost none of the characteristics of democratic governance. The clearest embodiment of the horizontal juridical order may be seen in the functioning of the UN General Assembly. Governments are somewhat equal with respect to one another, but this body is denied the authority to decide or the power to enforce and there are no opportunities given for meaningful and direct participation by representatives of global civil society. The clearest expression of the vertical geopolitical order can be observed in the UN Security Council, where many sessions on crucial issues of peace and security are held in secret so that even transparency is absent in the context of debate. The UN is a quintessential Westphalian institution with respect to membership and operational responsibilities, although these realities are to some extent hidden behind the normative architecture of the UN Charter, which at least purports to impose major behavioral constraints on all states, including geopolitical actors. A slightly deeper scrutiny discloses a veto power that almost completely nullifies the Charter constraints, and looking still deeper reveals an operational code in which the main hegemonic actor(s) overrides in almost all circumstances the autonomy of ordinary sovereign states, despite their formal rights of equality based on membership.

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This presentation of current world order does not take account of the rise of non-state actors both as participants and challengers.13 These postWestphalian elements of world order are arrayed around market forces, humanitarian voluntary associations, and mobilized social forces. Characteristic arenas of activity for such actors included the World Economic Forum, conflict zones, and the World Social Forum. These actors, although outside the formal framework of interacting governments representing sovereign states, are also not subject to any consistent criteria of democratic governance. Their current main roles as gadflies or adjuncts to states make their absence of democratic practices of less present concern, but if their future contribution to the shaping of democratic global governance is to retain credibility, then appropriate forms of democratization of civil society actors need to be established.

CITIZENSHIP Discussions of citizenship in the modern era focused mainly on the evolving relations of citizen and state in liberal democracies. This concept of citizenship in the last half of the 20th century became increasingly associated with a normative model of legitimate national governance, incorporating both the rise of international human rights and reliance on private sector economic growth. The authoritative character of this model was universalized, at least rhetorically, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the entry of China into the World Trade Organization, and the emergence of a consensus among governments in support of neoliberalism as the foundation of national economic policy. George W. Bush endorsed such an understanding of governance when he started his cover letter introducing the important document National Security Strategy 2002 of the United States of America with the following sentence: ‘‘The great struggles of the 20th century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom—and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise.’’14 What is striking here is the regressive and revealing failure to mention any duty to protect those materially deprived by providing for basic human needs, as well as the arrogance associated with claiming to be the embodiment of the single model of societal success. To show respect for social and economic rights of individuals and groups was deliberately avoided in the Bush approach, presumably because it would be regarded as an acceptance of the welfare state, and might attract conservative criticism as a backdoor acceptance of socialism.15 Although this American retreat from a

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conception of citizenship that includes the responsibility of the state for the material well-being of its citizenry has taken an extreme form, it does reflect a wider trend that is partly responsive to the supposed imperative of a neoliberal global economy, partly a reaction to the failures of state socialism as embodied in the Soviet Union, partly a consequence of a weakening labor movement in post-industrial societies, and partly reflective of a rightward swing throughout the industrial world in relation to state responsibility for the welfare of their citizenry. Traditional forms of citizenship, then, at their best involved meaningful participation (rights and duties) within national political space, especially the enjoyment of civil and political rights (freedom), the opportunity to participate in an open political process that is framed by a constitutional document (rule of law), subsidized opportunities for education and health, the assured protection of private property and national and transnational entrepreneurial rights (trade and investment), and some measure of support in circumstances of material need. Such a view of what might be called Westphalian citizenship included a reciprocal series of duties; the most onerous involved obligations of loyalty and service to the state. The crime of treason, continues to be punished everywhere with great severity, legalizes a radical denial of a globalized moral conscience, presupposing that even if the state acts in defiance of international law, universal standards of morality, and self-destructive imprudence, it is a crime to lend aid and comfort to its enemy. In this respect, there exists an unresolved tension between accountability of even government officials to international criminal law and the continuing claims made by governments to the unwavering, and essentially unchallengeable, allegiance of citizens. From the perspective of moral and legal globalization it seems like an opportune moment to advocate the abolition of ‘‘treason’’ as a crime. A serious debate on treason and conscience would serve the purpose of rethinking the proper vector of citizenship with respect to changing values, beliefs, and conditions, as well as to acknowledge the global and species context of human action. As matters now stand, the absolutizing of allegiance to the state that confers nationality and citizenship undermines both human solidarity and respect for norms claiming global applicability. Such an allegiance inculcates a tribalist ethos that anachronistically privileges the part over the whole at a historic moment when the parts that make up the whole increasingly depend on the wellbeing of the latter. The Nuremberg ethos that held German and later Japanese leaders legally responsible for their official crimes almost obligates citizens of state embarked on a course of international criminality to advocate treason, and

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certainly requires a rejection of blind obedience to the orders and policies of a state. Of course, this Nuremberg legacy is ambiguous, starting out as victors’ justice and persisting as a normative framework that effectively exempts geopolitical actors and their servants from all efforts to impose criminal responsibility on those who act on behalf of the state. The unsuccessful pursuit of the former American Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, for his role in authorizing torture, illustrates the de facto immunity of those who act on behalf of hegemonic states. Beyond this, there is the question of citizenship that is not tied to the national space of the sovereign state. To some extent this has been formally recognized by the conferral of a secondary layer of European citizenship on persons living permanently within the countries belonging to the European Union.16 This formal acknowledgement has a rudimentary corresponding structure of regional governance as especially embodied in such institutions as the European Court of Human Rights and the European Parliament. More challenging, however, is the failure to take account of the partial disenfranchisement that has occurred globally both by the operations of the world economy and by the emergence of the United States as a global state, that is, exercising its authority as an override of both the sovereign rights of other states and through a self-decreed exemption from either the authority of the United Nations or of international law, especially in the areas of war and peace. This disenfranchisement has the effect of precluding the meaningful exercise of democracy on the level of the state for many countries, particularly in the ex-colonial countries. If we could imagine an adjustment by way of allowing persons outside the United States to challenge policy affecting their well-being by way of binding referenda or even by casting votes in national elections held within the United States, the leadership role of the United States in shaping global governance would likely be altered for the better (as measured by the principles of the UN Charter or by most accounts of global justice) in fundamental respects, and there would be a far better fit between the ideals of democracy and the benefits of citizenship. The Westphalian territorial grip on the political imagination remains so tight that such a recasting of electoral arrangements is almost unthinkable, conveying sentiments that have the ring of ultrautopianism. The ageing of the Westphalian structure of world order is exhibited by the emergence of new arenas of global policy formation that are more responsive to the influence of non-state actors.17 For instance, the World Economic Forum (WEF), especially during the 1990s, provided global market forces, and their most important representatives, with an influential arena. The WEF was established after the Trilateral Commission, which was an

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elite-oriented private sector initiative that was supposed to offset the intergovernmental influence on world economic policy attributed to the NonAligned Movement, and its efforts in the early 1970s to achieve a new international economic order. In many respects the WEF shaped a policy climate that conditioned the behavior of governments and international financial institutions. In reaction to this post-colonial West-centric nongovernmental continuing effort to steer the world economy in a manner that widened disparities between rich and poor within and among countries, civil society actors in the South formed the World Social Forum (WSF). The respective ideological and geographical centers of gravity of these opposing initiatives were expressed by the WEF meeting annually in Davos, Switzerland, and the WSF meeting initially for several years in Puerto Allegre, Brazil. In a certain sense, these opposed initiatives represented forms of self-created ‘‘global citizenship,’’ established without the formal blessings of states or international institutions, and yet producing meaningful forms of participation by non-state global actors. Such participation is quite likely more meaningful than what was possible through either individual or group participation in many national political processes. Of course, these two types of arenas are not necessarily contradictory when it comes to policy, and could be partially understood as complementary undertakings to overcome the limitations of a purely statist world order. Kofi Annan, while serving as UN Secretary-General, told the WEF at one of its annual gatherings that the UN would only remain relevant in the new century if it found ways to incorporate both market forces and civil society actors significantly into its activities. Whether intended or not, the former UN Secretary-General was signaling the somewhat subversive opinion that the Westphalian era was over, or at least coming to an end, unless the purely statist structure of authority was modified at the UN, and presumably elsewhere in global policy arenas, to make room for certain non-state actors to take part in meaningful ways. Of course, these demands for access are not symmetrical. It is far easier for statist structures including the UN to accommodate private sector market forces, which already exert a huge influence thorough their strong representation in the upper echelons of officialdom in many governments. To varying degrees national governments have even been instrumentalized by domestic and global market forces. This reality is accentuated by the fact that civil society actors are unrepresented in governmental circles. It remains a rarity for activist representatives of civil society to exert any direct influence on governmental policy formation or operations. Such a generalization is particularly true with

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respect to peace, security, and foreign economic policy. In the humanitarian domain of conflict management, civil society actors often collaborate with governments. This structural challenge to Westphalian conceptions of world order remains unmet, and has unleashed a statist backlash.18 Annan’s rather mild efforts to implement his views on the future of the UN, especially with regard to the role of civil society representatives were effectively rebuffed by statist forces, a story largely untold. For instance, Annan proposed having an assembly of representatives of NGOs hold a meeting, intended as perhaps the first of an annual event, at the UN as part of the millennium celebrations in the year 2000. Even this largely symbolic gesture to civil society was opposed to such an extent behind the scenes by leading governments that the gathering had to be held in a diluted form outside UN premises and on the assurance that this meeting was a one-time event. This same Westphalian backlash has led the UN to abandon the format of highly visible world meetings on global policy issues, which became in the 1990s important opportunities for transnational social forces to organize and network globally, gain access to the world media, and to help shape the policy outcomes by influencing Third World governments.19 The rise of non-state actors and the formation of non-state arenas seem to be reshaping the nature of citizenship in the 21st century as concept, as behavior, and as aspiration.20 If modes of participation and psycho-political identities are shifting to take account of the realities of globalization, it is misleading to continue to reduce citizenship to a formal status granted by territorial governments of sovereign states, or even by such inter-governmental entities as the European Union. Such an opinion is not meant to deny that citizenship of the traditional variety continues to provide most individuals with their most vibrant and useful sense of connection to a political community, especially in determining entitlements and rights and duties, as well as accounting for dominant political identities. What is being claimed, however, is that additionally informal modes of belonging and participating should begin to be acknowledged, encouraged, and evaluated as integral aspects of ‘‘citizenship.’’ There is also an emerging new outlook on citizenship identity, and community. It reflects a growing preoccupation with the unsustainability of present civilizational lifestyle, and petroleum-based modernities. Putting this preoccupation more positively emphasizes the relevance of time to an adequate contemporary conception of citizenship. This acknowledges that discourses on citizenship, even if visionary, were essentially related to space, including those that articulated the ideal of ‘‘citizen of the world.’’

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If concerns for unsustainability and of responsibilities to the unborn are added to the desirable, and possibly necessary, adoption of a pacifist geopolitics are the substantive facets of this future-oriented perspectives on citizenship, it would be useful to signal this enlargement of outlook by adopting the terminology of ‘‘citizen pilgrim.’’21 The pilgrim, although it has some misleading religious connotations associated with holy journeys, conveys the overriding sense that normative citizenship in the early 21st century involves a pilgrimage to a sustainable, equitable, humane, and peaceable future. The citizen pilgrim is on a journey through time, dedicated to what is being called here ‘‘a necessary utopianism.’’ In contrast the traditional citizen is bound to her territorial space, and at most can call on her government to be sensitive to long-range considerations. The calling of the citizen pilgrim is to act without regard to territorial boundaries or the priorities of national interest when these conflict with the human interest in a sustainable future. As well, the citizen pilgrim is engaged in the project of global democratization in any of a multitude of ways, including establishing positive connections of affection and appreciation based on human solidarity and shared destiny. Sustained by an ecumenical spirit, the citizen pilgrim rejects the secular/religious binary that supposedly separates the modern from the traditional, and finds spiritual as well as mundane wisdom and visionary hope embodied in all of the great world religions.22

GLOBAL PARLIAMENT Democratizing global governance raises a variety of issues, including greater degrees of accountability, transparency, and equity throughout the United Nations System, as well as establishing spaces for non-state participation. The most promising and practical way to acknowledge the challenge and organize a response is to establish in some form a global parliament with the mandate to incorporate transnational and futurist non-state civil societal priorities.23 I have collaborated for some years with Andrew Strauss in the development of support for this initiative.24 Such an innovative step has been prefigured by the existence for several decades of the European Parliament, as well as the far newer African Parliament. Although a bold challenge to Westphalian notions of world order based on exclusive international representation by the governments of sovereign states, a global parliament is a flexible format that can be initiated modestly. In conception, the establishment of such an institution is a less radical innovation than was the International Criminal Court that proposes a capacity to hold leaders of sovereign states accountable for certain

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enumerated crimes. Whether this mission will be fulfilled, especially with respect to leading states, seems doubtful at present, but the existence of the institution is a recognition of a principled approach to the uniform imposition of a global rule of law on all who act in the name of the state. A global parliament is capable of evolving into a lawmaking institution, but its initial phase of operations would be primarily to give the peoples of the world a direct ‘‘voice’’ at the global level, with a strong networking potential of benefit to the strengthening of global civil society and an institutional embodiment of populist concerns. There are many organizational mechanisms that could be used to establish such a global parliament.25 Undoubtedly, the easiest approach would be to rely on national parliaments to designate a given number of representatives proportionate to the size of their population or reflective of some formula for civilizational distribution. But such a starting point, although likely the most manageable, would seem likely to reproduce Westphalian attitudes in such a way as to defeat the main purposes of the global parliament. More promising, although potentially cumbersome, would involve the voluntary decision by a given number of governments, say, 30, to agree by treaty to the establishment of a global parliament via direct elections arranged either nationally or regionally. It has been encouraging to experience reactions of growing receptivity around the world to the whole project of establishing a global parliament. I believe this represents both a gradual globalization of political consciousness and the spread of the idea that global governance needs to avoid hegemonic solutions, which requires a variety of moves in the direction of global democracy. The disappointing and alienating results of the American use of its unipolar geopolitical position has also contributed to this receptive atmosphere, as has the halting, yet cumulative progress toward the establishment of a European polity based on consent and an ethos of democracy. These developments suggest a slow merger of horizons of necessity and desire, as well as less remoteness from the horizon of feasibility. As a thought experiment the emergence of a global parliament seems in 2008 less unlikely than did the establishment of an International Criminal Court a decade before its establishment in 2002. Of course, what happens to such an institution to make it live up to the hopes of its sponsors involves an equally difficult struggle. There now exists much support for the global parliament idea throughout global civil society whenever world order reform is at issue. What is needed is a campaign, perhaps modeled on the collaborative efforts between coalitions of moderate governments and civil society actors that were so successful in relation to the treaties banning anti-personnel landmines and establishing the International Criminal Court.

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The campaign for a global parliament could initially aim to achieve support for convening a treaty-making negotiating session that might itself break ground by combining governments of states with transnational civil society actors as negotiating partners. What would hopefully emerge from such a process would be a treaty that would not come into force until ratified by national constitutional processes and by referenda in participating societies, which need not necessarily be configured as ‘‘states.’’ As with the idea of citizen pilgrim so with the global parliament, much of the benefit would flow from the process itself. This process would shape a consensus as to organizational format, including membership, funding and constitutional status. A big issue is whether the global parliament would be formed as a subsidiary organ of the UN General Assembly or take some more autonomous character within the UN System. It might also turn out to be impossible to gain agreement for situating the global parliament within the UN, in which case it might be established for a trial period as a free-standing international institution, which is the case, for instance, for the World Trade Organization.

CONCLUSION This chapter, and its recommendations, proceed from the belief that politics as the art of the possible cannot hope to cope with the multi-dimensional, intensifying crisis of global governance. At the same time, it seeks to root its analysis and prescriptions as coherently and responsively as the imagination allows with respect to what has been called horizons of desire and necessity. Its main utopian element is to encourage a radical revisioning of citizenship that currently continues to serve mainly nationalist and even tribalist values. To be a citizen pilgrim in such a global setting is to be a lonely voice in the wilderness, yet representing an ethically driven commitment to truthfulness, human and natural well-being, and an overall quest for sustainability and equity. Similarly, to advocate a global parliament, given the structure of the United Nations and the resilience of statist geopolitics, is to whistle in the wind, but yet the wind can shift, allowing the impossible to become abruptly feasible. Again, the rationale for establishing a global parliament rests on desire and necessity, not feasibility. This leaves the question as to whether such a framework for advocacy can ground the struggle for global democracy, and ultimately hope in the human future, under present world conditions of denial, strife, oppression, exploitation, and alienation.

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NOTES 1. Kunstler, 2005. 2. For continuity of recent American hegemonic behavior see Neil Smith, 2005. 3. Johnson, 2004, 2006. 4. National Security Strategy of the United States of America, 2002, 2006; Muravchik, 2007. 5. Falk, 1995. 6. Taleb, 2007. 7. Knutsen, 1999; Falk, 1999. 8. For comprehensive treatment see Archibugi, 2008. 9. Furguson, 2004; Bacevich, 2002. 10. This position is most elaborately argued by Mandelbaum, 2002. 11. Harvey, 2003. 12. Kaldor, 2007. 13. Andreopoulos et al., 2006. 14. National Security Strategy of the United States of America, 2002. 15. See Marshall, 1950, on the evolution of Westphalian citizen rights. 16. Maastricht Treaty, 1992; Balibar, 2004. 17. Falk, 2004. 18. Ibid. 19. Pianta, 2003. 20. Keck, 1998; Andreopoulos, 2006. 21. Falk, 1995. 22. Hurd, 2008. 23. For range of views see Widener Symposium, 2007. 24. Strauss, 2007; Falk and Strauss, 2000, 2001, 2003; Falk, 2007. 25. Falk and Strauss, 2001, 2003.

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PART II

PEACE

FROM

B E L OW

Virtually every existing means of preventing and constraining war originated with the peace movement. International law, arbitration and mediation, the creation of international organizations, disarmament, decolonization, economic development, democratization, human rights, the protection of civilians—all were proposed by peace advocates well before they were adopted by governments. —Charles Chatfield

When the newly elected President Obama took office and began a dialogue with his supporters in a new vein, he harkened back to a well-known remark President Roosevelt is said to have made to someone who had just urged him to pass an important piece of legislation. The President replied, ‘‘That’s a great idea. Now go out and force me to do it.’’ Similarly, it is not apocryphal that when President Johnson told Martin Luther King Jr. that it was not possible for him to grant King’s urgent request for a voting rights act, the latter went out to the streets; and after some more months of nonviolent protest he found himself back in the White House as the President signed the bill into law. Although it has always been true that ‘‘when the people lead, the leaders will follow,’’ the truth has a special cogency today, for the characteristic of our times, as Paul Hawken and many others have pointed out, is that major institutions—financial, governmental, educational, media—are losing their grip and new forms of popular action are coming together. Many feel that this is a result of new technologies, especially the new ‘‘social media.’’ We

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tend to believe, however, that causality is going the other way around—that humanity is impatient with the old forms of association and the cumbersome, formal, often top-down institutions our industrial culture has produced and yearns to rediscover itself in different terms. To give that new mode of association its voice, or, if you will, its nervous system, new technologies have been developed, or adapted. ‘‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.’’ These words of Margaret Mead are among the most widely quoted today, particularly in these electronic media. We should never doubt, either, that an unsuspected power of self-organization exists in people or groups that can emerge even under the darkest or most dangerous conditions (see, for example, Broz’s chapter). A young doctor in New Orleans noticed this when he was stranded in a hospital with no power and water rising and had to evacuate several hundred elderly and infirm patients. As the Army trucks sloshed up to take them to safer ground, volunteers came ‘‘from nowhere’’ and without anyone to give orders organized themselves to save those patients, in some cases carrying them down six flights of stairs in a building without air conditioning (the Fahrenheit temperatures were in the low hundreds) or light.1 It is not a coincidence, then, that ‘‘Peace from Below’’ is the most populated part in these three volumes. That reflects the importance of this dimension of change toward a more peaceful order, and its newness: when you are on the edge of a new paradigm it is typically difficult to sort out and summarize its characteristics synoptically. Also typical is that the new understanding toward which we are moving is at present somewhat contradictory, in that we are reaching for a more global, but at the same time less centralized, kind of order. Because of this fullness, we will not try to summarize here each of the chapters in this important section. Rather, we point out several dimensions of civil society or peace from below that represent them collectively. In no particular order, there are attempts to see the emerging big picture (Nagler, Hawken), the role of individual courage (Broz), glimpses of new civil society institutions (Lozano, McCarthy, Bernstein, Marks and Marks, and Slachmuijlder), particular peace movement campaigns (Baumann, Butigan), efforts to make knowledge about peace and information about activities favoring it a part of the media, the classroom, and the Internet (Phillips and Huff, Carter, and Temple), and finally three studies of the situation on the ground for indigenous people and some heartening successes in their severe struggles for dignity and justice (Lozano again, Tirado, and Rountree). What is particularly striking is that some of these efforts occur with minimal resources and with the leadership coming from the ground rather than

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from experts. Moreover, the variety and creativity of local approaches leaves a difficult target for those who would like to suppress them. Third, as small, personal, or local as these efforts may be, they are now able to communicate through new outlets so they can be protected—and copied (think, for example, of the worldwide organizations of indigenous peoples and the global social forum in which many of them participate). Taken together, the efforts sampled here contribute a sense of hope and innovation that is much needed in the present discourse on peace. —Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler

NOTE 1. This account was widely circulated on the Internet.

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CHAPTER

I AM

7

LEADER, YOU ARE THE L E A D E R : N O N V I O L E N T R E S I S TA N C E I N
THE PEACE COMMUNITY OF SAN JOSE
, C O L O M B I A D E A PA R TA D O THE

Elizabeth Lozano

This chapter examines practices of nonviolent resistance of the Peace Community of San Jos
e de Apartad
o in Colombia and the context of structural violence in which these practices occur. To do so, I draw on data derived from fieldwork and witness accounts, as well as from published and unpublished documents, including the database of the Colombian Center for Research and Popular Education (CINEP), a Jesuit-run Colombian think tank; and scholarly work by Colombian and U.S. experts. San Jos
e de Apartad
o (SJA) is a small town located in the Urab
a region of northwest Colombia, a highly desirable stretch of land for many of those engaged in Colombia’s 50-year-old armed conflict. A fertile zone rich in water, coal, wood, agriculture, and oil, Urab
a has been a theater not only of ‘‘crushing violence’’ since the late 1970s but also of ‘‘powerful civil organization and resistance.’’1 Examples of such resistance are the Afro-Colombian Community of Self-Determination of Cacarica, whose inhabitants were forced to flee in 1997 and returned in 2001, as well as the peasant Peace Community of San Jos
e de Apartad
o (CDP-SJA).2 There are more than 50 peace

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communities around the country that have declared themselves neutral in the Colombian war.3 Aside from the Urab
a initiatives, these peace communities include the Indigenous Guard of Northern Cauca in the Colombian southwest, the sovereign town of Mogotes in northeast Colombia, the Medell
ın Youth Network, the Women’s Path of Peace, and the Children’s Movement for Peace.4

OCTOBER 2003. 5:00 P.M. AT THE TOWN OF

DE APARTADO SAN JOSE On the road between San Jos
e de Apartad
o and La Linda hamlet, an army unit detains three youths on their way back from work. The news spreads quickly. A group of about 80 peasants led by Patricio,5 one of the members of the CDP’s community council, catches up with the army unit and demands the liberation of the youths. The soldiers deny having any youths in their possession. The peasants state that they are not moving until the youths are returned. The officer in charge demands to speak with the leader of the group. The officer asks, ‘‘Who is your leader?’’ ‘‘I am,’’ responds Patricio. ‘‘He is lying,’’ responds an elderly woman, stepping forward, ‘‘I am the leader.’’ ‘‘Not true,’’ says a teenage boy, ‘‘I am the leader.’’ ‘‘You are lying,’’ yells another man, approaching, ‘‘I am the leader.’’ The officer interrupts impatiently, saying, ‘‘You are wasting my time!’’ He agrees to return the youths, if a form is signed stating that no damage has been inflicted. It has started to rain, so the officer needs to go inside a house to sign the form, but Patricio stops him and says, ‘‘You cannot go inside one of our houses holding a weapon.’’ The officer is astonished. ‘‘No civilian speaks to me this way,’’ he says. He has never left his weapon unattended, particularly while on duty. Patricio insists, however, that he must do so. Baffled, the officer disarms and enters the house under the watchful eye of his subordinates and 80 peasants. The form is signed and the youth are returned.

This story was told to me by two people and, as often happens with witness accounts of what has become a legend, several versions of the story circulate. Gimena thinks the last person to speak was a little girl, whereas Patricio remembers a man. There is some disagreement as to what were the exact words of the officer. The written, legal account of the event mentions

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the detention and its outcome, but gives no details of the exchange,6 which makes sense, for a legal account of abuse is a complaint, not a celebration of resourcefulness. In spite of the differences, however, some aspects of the story do not vary. The army detained three youths, CDP members demanded their freedom, and the community group refused to have one person represent it and hide behind a single individual’s fate or eloquence. In doing so, the group also refused to follow the rules of engagement being proposed by the army and, thereby, broke the principles of the power game being enacted. The group’s action produced great disconcert among the soldiers and for the army officer, who, in this instance, gave into another kind of power. To use Boulding’s terms,7 the social actors involved in this situation did not follow the logic of ‘‘threat’’ power used by legal and illegal armed actors, and appealed, instead, to ‘‘integrative’’ power, a power born of a decade-old organized and conscious resistance against decades-old organized terror dissemination.8 The officer could see in the eyes of this ‘‘leaderless’’ group an absolute willingness to face even death in the name of principles it held sacred.

AN ARCHIPELAGO OF CONFLICTS To make sense of the situation in San Jos
e de Apartad
o, one must understand the larger Colombian context in which that situation takes place, for Colombia has been engaged in an armed conflict that has lasted almost 50 years. Such conflict has been complex enough to generate its own academic subfield, ‘‘violentology’’; its own manifestations in language and daily life; and its multifaceted expressions in the arts, from literature to film. First, some scholars argue that Colombia is not one country but many countries, for it is characterized by disseminated power centers and deep class, regional, and social divisions. In 1999, the poorest 10 percent of the population controlled less than a 0.4 percent of the total wealth, whereas the richest 10 percent had access to 45 percent of the national wealth.9 The Colombian upper class has more in common with the values and dreams of the Miami upper class than it has with the values and dreams of the Colombian peasants who grow cacao and bananas. For most Colombians, the ‘‘state’’ is an alien and puzzling entity, and ‘‘citizenship,’’ at best, is a quaint concept, and at worst, a cynical proposition. Santos’s concept of an ‘‘intimate’’ and ‘‘foreign’’ society illuminates this situation.10 Specifically, the Colombian bourgeoisie has an ‘‘intimate’’ relationship with the state, whereas wide segments of the population have little to no access to the state. Most Colombians live, therefore, in a ‘‘foreign society,’’ whose functioning principles are fundamentally unknown to them.

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In addition to the complexity of the social panorama, oftentimes, ‘‘feudal’’ rhythms overlap with ‘‘modern’’ routines and ‘‘postmodern’’ aesthetics, creating a fusion of diverse cultural times lived simultaneously. San Jos
e de Apartad
o is a case in point. Although horses and mules are its citizens’ main mode of transportation, the CDP peasants also own televisions and cell phones, and have a community Web page and e-mail account. Hence, although the means of transportation have not changed radically in centuries, the means of communication have been revolutionized. A member of the Peace Community may have never finished primary school or visited the Atlantic coast, but she or he has access to information from around the world and directly or indirectly provides information to the world, as a participant in a local project of resistance that resonates internationally. In ways that seem paradoxical, the CDP may be better known in the progressive sectors of Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, the United States, and Israel, than it is known in the upper-class neighborhoods of Bogot
a and Cali. Such resonance is evidenced in the awards and recognitions the community has been given, including a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007; the articles, Web sites, and news that circulate about the CDP; and the frequent visit of international delegations to its small and troubled territory. Though this dynamic seems paradoxical—why is a small Colombian town better known in San Francisco than in Bogot
a?—it is, on the other hand, a very clear outcome of ‘‘people’s’’ globalization. Virtual communities and postmodern nets of solidarity are emerging, which are not based on geographic proximity, or common cultural heritage, but on ideological, political, and existential affinity. Finally, Colombia does not face an armed conflict but an ‘‘archipelago’’ of conflicts.11 A 50-year-old protracted war between army and insurgency is reinforced by an armed conflict between paramilitaries and guerrillas. That confrontation exists side by side with a ‘‘social cleansing’’ project by paramilitaries, a ‘‘dirty war’’ against human rights advocates, a U.S.-supported ‘‘war on drugs’’ against narcotraffickers, and a ‘‘war on terrorism’’ apparently directed against all of the above. These manifestations of violence, in turn, produce a war on civilians caught between the army, guerrillas, warlords, paramilitaries, police, petty criminals, and their multiple hybrid combinations. Additionally, and as stated by Garc
ıa Villegas and Santos,12 the United States contributes constantly to the ‘‘reproduction’’ of the Colombian drug problem, not only because of its governmental prohibitions, but also because of its high share in the illegal market of cocaine and heroine. Given this situation, these authors argue that the United States is ‘‘the financial source of the main actors of the war in Colombia.’’13 U.S. legal aid finances the army and the police; and U.S. illegal monies support the drug trade directly and the guerrillas indirectly.14

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According to Alther et al. and other human rights observers, the farright paramilitaries are responsible for 80 percent of the political killings in Colombia.15 The army also has been found guilty of abuses, with the June 2009 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions expressing great concern about the army’s handling of civilian deaths.16 Of specific concern is the increased phenomenon of falsos positivos (‘‘false positives’’), a civilian murdered by the armed forces who is claimed to be a guerrilla killed in combat. There is some evidence that suggests soldiers are rewarded and earn points for guerrillas killed, a practice that encourages tampering with evidence to earn rewards by disguising acts of personal revenge, political silencing, or simple abuse of humble civilians (the most common victims are working-class men). The Colombia guerrillas, particularly the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), also have been responsible for what can justifiably be called despicable crimes against humanity, including the kidnapping of hundreds of people of various political, economic, and social backgrounds; and the massacres of AfroColombian and indigenous communities, such as the Bojay
a massacre of 2002 and the 2009 killing of 17 Aw
a indigenous people.17 San Jos
e de Apartad
o has been no exception, often being a target of abuse by the FARC. Given the situation in Colombia, specific locales within that country, such as San Jos
e de Apartad
o, thus are profoundly revelatory of ways in which conflict and resistance unfold locally but may resonate globally.



DE APARTADO LA COMUNIDAD DE PAZ DE SAN JOSE San Jos
e de Apartad
o declared itself a ‘‘Peace Community’’ in March 1997 for as long as ‘‘the internal conflict and war continue’’ in Colombia and in response to the human rights abuses of armed actors and the forced displacements that often happened as a consequence. Such displacements came ‘‘as a result of executions of peasants outside combat zones, the destruction and looting of their goods, and threats of renewed actions if they do not abandon their territories.’’18 In addition, becoming a peace community was a mechanism by which the civil population could protect itself by appealing to the principles of international humanitarian law. Currently, the peace community is located in three hamlets that are a few miles away from one another and in eight ‘‘humanitarian zones.’’19 At one point, the center of the peace community was the town of San Jos
e de Apartad
o, but the government-mandated installation of a police post in 2005 forced the group to relocate to a much smaller settlement, San Josesito de la Dignidad. Located 15 minutes away from San Jos
e, San Josesito is a refugee camp for 300 people, but knowing this did not prepare me well for what I saw

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when I visited in March 2009. ‘‘Refugee camp’’ conjures up images of disease, despair, chaos, dirt, hopeless suffering, and destitute poverty. What I found, instead, is beautifully implied in the name of the settlement: Little Saint Joseph of Dignity. The small camp holds tremendous dignity, pride, and upliftedness. The poverty is evident in every way, as there is no running water, paved streets, phone landlines, or sewage system. However, the public spaces are clean, the houses are lovingly decorated with lush flowers and plants, and the common spaces vibrate with children’s activities, men playing pool, youth playing soccer, and dogs, pigs, and horses wandering around. Four public houses and a ceremonial ground constitute the heart of the settlement. These are the communal kitchen, the primary school, the children’s library, which has one of the two computers in town, and the open-air hut where the community’s meetings take place. In the middle of the settlement, and constituting its symbolic and emotional center, stands a tall tree surrounded by painted stones, carefully positioned around the roots, and arranged in concentric circles. Every stone has a name on it, the name of a CDP victim of violence by the armed actors. Even in a situation of displacement, the community has carried with it its dead and made sure no one fades away from memory. These public spaces represent, in material ways, the principles of the community, which include alternative education, horizontal leadership, economic autonomy, solidarity, unity, transparency, plurality, and celebration of each member’s contribution, whether dead or alive. In short, SJA and its sister communities embody a key principle of nonviolent change that Gandhi established at the very beginning of his campaign,20 Constructive Programme. In this it parallels the somewhat similar but much larger Landless Worker Movement in Brazil. Unlike in that movement, however, the people of SJA have, as we have seen, a more highly developed set of creative responses to the inevitable conflict that arises in response to, if not prior to, attempts by people to create positive, long-lasting change within their own communities, whether or not these attempts are explicitly part of a campaign of resistance as they were in Gandhi’s India.

A Peace Declaration Becoming a peace community entailed the signing of a ‘‘declaration’’ on December 23, 1997, which explicitly identified rules the members of the community vowed to live by, as well as the community’s principles and goals. The declaration described the Comunidad de Paz de San Jos
e de Apartad
o as ‘‘a peasant, noncombatant civil community intent in protecting

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itself from hostilities no matter their intensity.’’ The declaration stated (my translation) the community’s decision to: 1. Not partake of any activity related directly or indirectly to the military actions of any of the armed actors in the Colombian conflict, or support them strategically or tactically. 2. Abstain from having arms, munitions, or explosive materials. 3. Abstain from giving logistic support to the actors in the conflict and from seeking help in any personal matters from anyone related to the conflict. Accordingly, the community takes the necessary measures to control the transit of any persons who do not have permission to stay in the places of settlement of the community. 4. Work and make decisions collectively. 5. Create an internal council conformed by seven elected delegates from the community, and a prosecutor. The council makes autonomous decisions, but may search the advisory of one delegate from a national NGO. 6. Say no to injustice.

The October 2003 collective confrontation with the army, mentioned previously, is an appropriate exemplar of the way these six rules are practiced. The community derives its moral authority from its members’ refusal to bear weapons of any kind or to use violent retaliation against violent action. The community also refuses to collaborate in any way with Colombian illegal and legal armed actors, including providing information to warring parties or acting in any way that may be seen as complicit. This rule is complemented by, and held in precarious balance with, a commitment to ‘‘support transparent dialogue’’ and to tell ‘‘the truth to the armed actors.’’ This seemingly straightforward commitment is one of the most difficult principles chosen by the community, for a condition of widespread terror demands the constant disguise of ‘‘reality,’’ be it people’s opinions, actions, or whereabouts. However, the only way to gain a space of autonomy is to be true to the community’s principles and, therefore, be willing to state the ‘‘truth’’ of neutrality and noncooperation in any situation, regardless of how unsavory it is. Not collaborating with any of those involved in the armed conflict has led the community to take some extreme measures, including not having stores in town, so that no one can unwillingly or unknowingly sell goods to uniformed men or civilians connected to the armed actors. Finally, the encounter between the CDP and the army highlights the very communitarian nature of the CDP. The community owns the land collectively, there is very little private property, and the pronoun ‘‘we’’ far outweighs ‘‘I’’ in decision-making processes. As stated in the Principles, ‘‘Morally and

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ethically, the members of the community must think in terms of ‘us’ rather than ‘you’ or ‘me.’ ’’21 These communitarian practices have emerged over time and as responses to the specific challenges of the context.22 Working in the fields, for example, is done in groups of four people, so that no one is caught alone coming or going. Being accompanied is one of the most important ways for community members to ensure that they are not murdered, kidnapped, disappeared, injured, or framed without witnesses. Being or becoming a witness is a cornerstone of the community’s survival strategy. Willingly witnessing and naming abuse or insult is an act of solidarity and resistance. It is also a Christian and a Buddhist concept associated with peacemaking, compassion, and reconciliation.23

Practices of Violence and Nonviolent Responses Choosing to resist, itself, is an act of provocation; a courageous (or deranged) decision to stand up and fight without deadly weapons. The Colombian armed actors were prompted to respond to such provocation. Between the years 1996 and 2009, the CDP has been the object of more than 700 ‘‘acts of terror,’’ as defined by international law, including more than 180 assassinations, 20 of which were perpetrated by guerrillas and the rest by ‘‘direct’’ or ‘‘indirect’’ agents of the state.24 To understand the practices of nonviolent resistance, one needs to understand the nature of the violence enacted against those who resist it. The following pages examine some exemplars of both violence and resistance that loom particularly large in the collective imaginary of this one community in Colombia. February 21, 2005. 8:00 A.M. at the Mulatos hamlet Luis Eduardo Guerra Guerra, a beloved leader of the Peace Community, his new spouse, Bellanira (age 17), and his 11-year-old son, Andr
es, are stopped by the army on their way to their cacao farm. They are clubbed to death, their bodies left on the field. February 21, 2005, five hours later at the La Resbalosa hamlet (located one walking hour from Mulatos; five hours away from San Jos
e ) The army arrives at the house of Alfonso Bol
ıvar Tuberquia, where he is having lunch with his wife, Sandra Milena (age 24); his children, Natalia Andrea (age 5) and Santiago (age 18 months); and four workers. The soldiers surround the house and start shooting, but Alfonso and the workers escape, leaving behind his wife and children. Alfonso returns an hour later, despite the pledges of others, stating

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that he would rather die than leave behind his family. Alfonso and his family are killed, dismembered, and disemboweled. Their remains are thrown in two improvised graves.25 February 25, 2005, La Resbalosa and Mulatos A delegation of 110 people from San Jos
e de Apartad
o arrives at La Resbalosa hamlet to recover the cadavers of Tuberquia and his family, and to search for the yet-to-be-found remains of Guerra and his family. A religious funeral takes place three days later, with the presence of national and international observers. An international outcry ensues and, as a consequence, the U.S. budget for the local 17th Brigade is reduced (information based on personal interviews). In 2007, Captain Guillermo Armando Gordillo S
anchez is arrested for the crime, and, in 2008, he confesses that 100 militaries and 50 paramilitaries took part in the operation (Capit
an del ej
ercito), the strongest legal evidence thus far of the close tie between the army and paramilitaries—a connection that has been systematically denied by the government. March 20, 2005 at the 17th Brigade headquarters in Urab
a While visiting the headquarters of the 17th Brigade in the Urab
a region, President Alvaro Uribe V
elez makes the following declaration: Peace communities have a right to install themselves in Colombia, thanks to our regimen of liberties. But they cannot, as San Jos
e de Apartad
o does, obstruct justice, reject the Public Force, prohibit the trade of legal goods, and restrict the freedom of its residents [. . .]. There are good people in the community of San Jos
e de Apartad
o. But some of its leaders, supporters, and defenders have been seriously accused, by people who reside there, of helping the FARC and of wanting to use the community to protect this terrorist organization.26

Uribe’s declaration affirms that the CDP and the national and international organizations that accompany it engage in illicit activities (Nueva arremetida). The CDP has the support of Colombian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), such as the Corporaci
on Jur
ıdica ‘‘Libertad,’’ and the support of international NGOs, such as the Dutch Paix Christi, the Portuguese Tamera, the Italian Colomba, and the U.S. Fellowship of Reconciliation and Peace Brigades International. By being allies of the CDP, these NGOs become accomplices in a radical display of disobedience. On these grounds, President Uribe accused the CDP leadership of collaborating with the guerrillas, and threatened to deport international peace observers. Rhetorically speaking, Uribe’s statements intend to show how the Peace

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Community is not particularly peaceful and, therefore, attempt to dismantle the very grounds of the community’s existence. This situation is congruent with what Tate27 described in her book, Counting the Dead. The widespread view of the Colombian military, according to Tate, is that human rights abuses denounced internationally are a guerrilla conspiracy. The NGO human rights are ‘‘simply the facade of the armed Communist left, cloaking the political war of the guerrillas in the acceptable language of international law.’’28 In fact, some human rights advocates whose support has been crucial to the survival of the CDP are systematically accused of ties to the guerrillas. These people include the Jesuit and human rights advocate Javier Giraldo, and the former mayor of Apartad
o, Gloria Cuartas. Giraldo and Cuartas have been acompa~nantes of the community from its inception, and both receive periodic and, by now, almost routine, death threats.29 The latest public attack against Cuartas and Giraldo happened in May 2009, when a former commandant of the fifth Front of the FARC (aka SAMIR) accused them on a radio interview of, among others, keeping the peace community as a summer vacation spot for FARC guerrillas.30 The decision to become a peace community is, indeed, an act of civil disobedience and collective conscientious objection. Doing so highlights the rights of groups to actively dissent in the face of institutionalized injustice, simultaneously appealing to an arguably ‘‘larger power’’—an international court of human rights. A peace declaration also transforms a community into a potential foe of the state and a transgressor of law and order, for it questions the legal power of the army and police to protect citizens and to uphold the law. By not allowing soldiers or police in its midst, the CDP is challenging the legitimate right of the state to monopolize force.

RESPONDING TO VIOLENCE The instances presented above represent in a vivid manner the variety of practices of violence exercised to contain, disperse, and neutralize resistance. In the case of the CDP, these practices have included torture, illegal detentions, disappearances, massacres, forced displacements, judicializaciones (‘‘judicializations’’), falsos positivos, economic blockages, and propaganda. In some ways propaganda may be the more lethal form of attack, for by leaving no material traces of abuse, the public discrediting of the peace community may create enough confusion to discourage national and international support, and encourage the penalization of human rights advocates (judicializaciones). To these practices of intimidation the community has responded with several methods of nonviolent resistance, which correspond to many of

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those listed by Sharp,31 and which include noncooperation; alternative means of communication; and appeals to supporters, to the general public, and to attackers. These methods engage the community in actions that include a bodily dimension, as well as symbolic and discursive ones. These three dimensions of engagement were at play in the exemplars presented in this chapter and are particularly highlighted in the instances below:

Jesus Has Not Called in Sick When I ask Patricio how he manages to keep fighting such an uphill battle against multiple sources of violence, he responds with a grin: ‘‘Jesus has not called in sick. Why should I?’’ In other words, his struggle for justice is based on a moral, ethical ground. There is no justification for giving up when one knows one’s struggle is based on a fundamentally good and just cause, which is sought for in numerous places throughout the world. He is not alone; they are not alone. The appeal to Jesus, in other words, emphasizes the universal quality of the struggle and the ‘‘catholic’’ nature of its goodness (one may recall that originally ‘‘catholic’’ means ‘‘universal’’ and ‘‘open-minded’’).

We Laughed ‘‘Ignacio del Mar,’’ a longtime Council member, was once ambushed by 200 men, a mix of paramilitaries and army, and threatened with death if he did not confess that he was a guerrilla member. With a machete caressing his neck, he was asked to take the armed actors to a guerrilla’s compound. He refused to confess to an alliance he did not have. He also refused to run, even though he was encouraged to do so. He argued that if they wanted to kill him, they needed to do it right there and not with a shot in the back (which would most probably transform him into a ‘‘false positive’’). He was ordered to strip off his clothes. Threats were increased and renewed but Ignacio remained firm. The armed men finally left confused by their inability to intimidate Ignacio. He ran naked for a while, until he was found by Patricio and a community rescue party. ‘‘Why do you think they did not kill you?’’ I asked. ‘‘I do not know,’’ he said, and stops rather pensive. ‘‘Maybe it was a miracle.’’ ‘‘How did you celebrate such an incredible outcome?’’ I asked, already imagining a ceremonial acknowledgment of divine intervention. ‘‘We laughed.’’

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‘‘You laughed?’’ ‘‘Yes, Patricio and the rest just kept laughing at how skinny and silly I looked running naked.’’

Instances like this highlight the ways in which systematic aggression and its resistance directly engage the body. Ignacio’s body is displayed in front of a large group of camouflaged and armed men. Within this particular cultural context, one can see how this is an emasculating act that elicits shame, powerlessness, and increased fear. But Ignacio responds with just the same arrogance and righteousness he had while fully clothed. When Ignacio is found by a group of his buddies and safely walked home, his shame becomes collective and is transformed into a communal permission to laugh at his very exposed and fragile masculinity. His nakedness is not emasculating any more but just plain funny. In other words, Ignacio’s shame has been ‘‘witnessed’’ collectively and transformed into an opportunity to laugh, unifying the sacred and the profane; the sacrality of a body that could have been mutilated and the profane impulse to laugh at dangling masculinity, so to speak.

You Cannot Kill Me: It’s Up to Him. Patricio is ambushed by 40 armed men. He is asked to provide information about guerrillas (by now the reader will be very acutely aware of the repetitive pattern of these episodes). Patricio responds to the man who has approached him with a machete threatening to kill him, ‘‘You cannot kill me.’’ ‘‘What?’’ ‘‘It’s not up to you,’’ says Patricio. ‘‘If He needs me, He will call me. You cannot kill me.’’ ‘‘I do not believe that,’’ says the armed man. ‘‘Well, I do. We do. He does not care if you believe or not. It’s just how it is.’’ Grunting, the man with the machete withdraws.

It does not matter if there is, literally, a Divine Being overlooking the scene. What does matter is that this appeal to a Divine Will takes the power away from the man using threat, for it makes him a tool in somebody else’s plan, ‘‘God’s plan.’’ ‘‘God gave you life and only God can take it away,’’ states the principle to which Patricio is appealing. Most of the power of

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threat resides in its ability to control somebody else’s actions. But when that someone refuses to grant that control, the threat loses its power and needs to be either executed or withdrawn. Evidently, killing Patricio was not the aim of the ambush. Extracting information was the goal, and the threat was, therefore, completely ineffective. Patricio has effectively, and probably unconsciously, appealed rhetorically to a common ground between him and his attackers. Regardless of whether the attacker ‘‘believes,’’ he participates of the same catholic semantic universe and cultural context, and thus, the appeal to the divine has worked and disempowered his threat. As such, the religious appeal is an appropriate tool in an arsenal of resistance, for it empowers those who choose to fight with no weapons, while it disarms those who choose to act ‘‘like God.’’ One can say that the CDP is ‘‘not religious at all,’’ as a former U.S. Fellowship of Reconciliation (U.S. FOR) acompa~nante told me. There is, however, a fundamental ‘‘faith’’ in a threefold source of power, which resides neither in the individual nor in the collective, but in their interconnection.32 This threefold power is constituted by (1) the community, as a body larger than the individual but nonexistent without the individual body; (2) the community’s written principles and rules of resistance, which become a unifying discourse and a text which is observed, memorized, and cited; and (3) the ethical and moral grounds on which these principles rest. In the words of the CDP, the group ‘‘seeks to generate relations and attitudes based on new values: liberty, equality, respect, solidarity, and dialogue. This is a response to a form of thinking that has generated dehumanization, manifested, among others, in a lust for power that disregards everything else.’’

CONCLUDING REMARKS: METHODS OF RESISTANCE Gene Sharp proposes a very helpful and detailed list of methods of nonviolent resistance.33 The CDP employs several of these methods, including, 1. Formal declarations, such as the ‘‘Declaraci
on’’ and ‘‘Los Principios’’ that have been amply discussed in this chapter. 2. Communication with the larger public, through the group’s symbols, such as a flag, an icon, and welcoming billboards; several Web sites; and books by organizations such as Colombian CINEP and Italian ‘‘Colombia vive!’’ (for example, San Josesito de Apartad
o; Sembrando vida y dignidad). 3. Tributes to the dead. As mentioned earlier, every single person who has been killed in the CDP is memorialized in San Josesito. At times, symbolic funerals are carried out, to remember those whose bodies

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4. 5.

6.

7.

8.

Peace Efforts That Work and Why

have not been found; and commemorative masses are celebrated at the places of massacres. Personal noncooperation, as evidenced in the actions of the CDP members recounted in this chapter. Economic noncooperation. The community grows organic products (cacao and bananas) and seeks to find an alternative, non-state sanctioned market for them. Additionally, the community is seeking food sovereignty and eco-sustainability. Political noncooperation, expressed in a refusal to help the armed forces; obey official authority; accept being drafted; or follow traditional education. Very importantly, the CDP, in cooperation with other communities, is working on the creation of a Peasant University. Creation of an alternative system of communication. This is particularly evidenced on the Internet, where the curious or concerned reader can find the community’s Web site, as well as those of Gloria Cuartas and Javier Giraldo, SJ. Aside from these, the reader can find relevant information posted or produced by NGOs such as Amnesty International, FOR, PBI, Colombia Support Network, Chicagoans for a Peaceful Colombia, Tamera, Colombia Indymedia, and other Web sites dedicated to peace and nonviolence news and action. Creation of new patterns of social engagement, as evidenced on a horizontal style of leadership; a commitment to use dialogue instead of force; and a moral rejection of state oppression and coercion.

Refusing to Cooperate . . . An act of terror has a magnifying threatening effect such that it can weaken and disperse a population that knows itself to be fragile and unprotected (which was the outcome of attacks prior to the peace declaration). But terror can also strengthen resistance, if the group, in strong alliance with others—locally, regionally, and internationally—can challenge, name, and make visible its logic and patterns. Even the bloodiest dictatorship requires the cooperation of its citizens.34 Even the grossest form of threat requires some sort communication common ground. Thus, a cornerstone of the CDP resistance resides in responding publicly to every single act of intimidation, and refusing to accept terror as a viable form of conversation. Therefore, when in 2005 the CDP lost a charismatic leader, faced the atrocious dismemberment of three children (accused of being guerrillas, nonetheless), and was directly attacked by the head of state, all within weeks, the community still refused to be intimidated into silence. By not lowering its profile or disbanding, the community may prove terror a very cost-ineffective strategy.

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. . . And Multiplying Being able to hold its ground would not be possible if the community did not have international accompaniment, such as that provided by the U.S. FOR. An international presence makes the casual exercise of violence a more difficult affair and challenges, in its role as witness, its public justification. That was the case with the massacre of 2005, which FOR helped bring to the attention of the international community and of U.S. Congress in particular. The outcome was an international outcry and the subsequent U.S. budget cut for the local 17th brigade, which was found complicit in the crime. To date35 there have been no more massacres, probably because the army and paramilitaries have found them too costly. There is no guarantee that a massacre will not happen again. But we must join in the celebration of its temporal cessation and do what we can to continue making them expensive, impractical, and inefficient, not to mention, of course, criminal. We must, in the words of the community, become multiplicadores, outsiders who, by our willingness to listen, understand, and speak up, become ‘‘multipliers’’ of a peace effort and spread it well beyond its geographic confines. In the very evocative words of activist Gloria Cuartas, the CDP is creating an ‘‘acupuncture of peace.’’36 Acupuncture works by touching nodes in the body and activating, transforming, and redirecting energy throughout the body. It does not need to penetrate the entire body with needles to induce transformation. In the same manner, the CDP appeals to an international net of support whose ‘‘nodes’’ include places as varied as Chicago, Quito, Pisa, Madison, Chiapas, Palestine, and Nantes (Spain), and whose needles are every single individual who chooses to bear witness, speak, and act, whether as members of the CDP or as members of international peacemaking initiatives.37 Therefore, the ‘‘needle’’ of this peace activism is infinitely small, but its outcomes are large and reverberating. Cuartas seems to be alluding to a practice of power that is neither vertical nor horizontal, but web-like, and capable of extending and expanding in ways not directly connected to material or even symbolic might. This understanding is shared by other peace initiatives in Colombia, such as that of Feminine Grassroots Organization and of the indigenous Nasa.38 For the Nasa, strategies of resistance are profoundly connected to strategies of communication, and both are done with the logic of an organic tejido: a woven material or fabric. Needling unites an infinite number of threads into a visible fabric. In the weaving of solidarity every single individual thread counts. To the multiplicity of methods discussed and identified by Sharp, one may add, therefore, the crucial importance of grassroots solidarity across

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nations.39 If both the Colombian and the U.S. states are profoundly complicit in the oppression of the Colombian peasants, both Colombian and U.S. grassroots are responsible for sustaining their resistance and imagining a more just and eco-sustainable future.

Acknowledgments: To the memory of Mildrey Dayana, Deiner Andr
es, Santiago, Natalia Andrea, Duvalier, Felix Antonio, Luciano, Arturo, and all the children who have been assassinated by armed actors in the Peace Community of San Jos
e de Apartad
o. To their parents, grandparents, and friends, who continue to resist in the name of dignity, self-determination, and life.

NOTES 1. Alther et al., 2004: 16–17. 2. For the remainder of this chapter, I refer to the peace community of San Jos
e de Apartad
o by its Spanish acronym CDP. 3. FOR-Colombia, 2009. 4. Alther et al., 2004. 5. All names have been changed to protect the identity of the people involved. 6. Cronolog
ıa, 2008: 26. 7. Boulding, 1989. 8. Ibid.; Nagler, 2004. 9. Garc
ıa-Villegas and Santos, 2004: 35. 10. Santos, 1995; Garc
ıa-Villegas and Santos, 2004. 11. Garc
ıa Villegas and Santos, 2004. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. Alther et al., 2004. 16. Alston, 2009. 17. ‘‘Chain of Extermination,’’ 2009; ‘‘The Bojay
a Massacre,’’ 2002. On May 2, 2002, the FARC guerrillas threw a mortar on the roof of a church where 300 people from the Bojay
a town had sought refuge from outside combat between paramilitaries and guerrillas, with 119 people dying as a result. According to a joint report by Witness for Peace and JUSTAPAZ, this was a ‘‘foretold,’’ preventable tragedy, as warring guerillas and paramilitaries had been moving in closer to the town for about two weeks and were fighting for control of the zone (‘‘The Bojay
a Massacre’’). The Indian Law Resource Center called the 2009 Aw
a tragedy a ‘‘foretold massacre’’ as well. 18. ‘‘Declaraci
on’’; my translation. 19. ‘‘Humanitarian zones’’ are hamlets that are not of the Peace Community but have sought its protection.

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20. Nagler, 2004: 162. 21. Nuestros principios, 2009. 22. Uribe, 2004. 23. Glassman, 1998; Tate, 2007. 24. Comunidad de Paz de San Jos
e de Apartad
o; See Giraldo, 2003, 2009. 25. Cronolog
ıa, 2008: 84–85. 26. El Colombiano; My translation. 27. Tate. 28. Ibid, 266. 29. Viera, 2005. 30. Radio Interview with Fernando Londo~ no, May 28, 2009. 31. Sharp, 2005. 32. I would like to thank Larry Frye for his suggestion to consider the relationship between collective and individual dynamics in the life of this community. 33. Sharp, 2005: 201–210. 34. Ibid. 35. As of July 2009. 36. Personal interview, March 2009. 37. According to the Zen Peacemaking Order, peacemaking requires three principles: (1) Not knowing; (2) Bearing witness, and (3) Skillful action (which results from careful and multi-perspectival understanding). See Glassman, 1998. 38. Lozano, 2008. 39. Nagler, 2004.

CHAPTER

8

P E A C E B U I L D I N G E D U C AT I O N : RESPONDING TO CONTEXTS Candice C. Carter

Education for peace is like a trek in the wilderness. Anticipation of peace includes thoughts about beauty and realities of violence. The trek involves observation of wonderful beings that sometimes do harmful things in fulfillment of their needs. Observation of the harm reveals opportunities for conflict analysis. Understanding of situated conflicts uncovers paths through them. Learning about the good in the world and how to preserve it, while calling attention to problems and needs, is a trek through education for peace. A collective foray for pools of peace where everyone can drink is a powerful transformer of conflict and a crucial lesson for nonviolence novices. Peace movements, including education, have been responsive to the problems of people and the places they affect. Awareness of and sensitivity to harm, recognized as violence, has prompted responses from educators throughout time and across regions. The responses have had a wide range with a core goal of transforming current circumstances to bring about or increase peace. Often born of political strife between and in societies, education for peace identifies injustice in addition to other sources of structural conflict and violent responses to it. Like a walk in dark woods, peace educators identify past and potential sources of danger during their pursuit of coexistence without violence. This chapter briefly reviews the sources of education for peace, its domains, and contexts of activating those learning

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domains. It provides a few examples of instruction and programs before it summarizes current needs in the field of peace education. The contextual responsiveness of education for peace renders it a dynamic field. Illustrative cases illuminate this characteristic. Government mandates in the United States ostensibly created for educational improvement proliferated sets of prescriptive instructional standards that did not include competencies of peace. Subsequently, researchers of peace education developed Voluntary Standards for Peace Education.1 From different regions of the world, researchers of peace education have been contributing to that dynamic set of standards they created to legitimate this field and describe competencies of peace pedagogy. The continual use of those suggestions by organizations and teachers is evidence of the value of proactively responding to the omission of peace education in government mandates. Another related example occurred decades earlier, when educators throughout the United States developed guidelines for nuclear education. During that last decade of the Cold War, a plethora of educational efforts in school districts, universities, and nongovernmental organizations of the United States reflected the sentiment of their comrades, the citizens of the former Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (USSR), to find peaceful solutions to political conflicts, without construction of nuclear arsenals. Although the nuclear age curricula provided skills for analysis of political conflict, they variably included several other peace topics that their developers recognized as factors of peace building. Although peace researchers have clarified the contextual responsiveness of peace education,2 its universality is evident in its philosophical foundation.

DIMENSIONS OF PEACE BUILDING EDUCATION The dimensions of peace building education reflect the light of humanity’s common hope for a good life. While the breadth and depth dimensions differ, the ideal of teaching about and for peace can be discerned in the theories that support peace pedagogy. The philosophical foundation of education for peace exists in spiritual notions across cultures that reject violence as well as in secular ideologies. Whereas this anthology elaborates philosophies that promote the pursuit of peace, briefly mentioned here are pedagogical theories that enable that pursuit.

Theoretical Markers In the last century, peace pedagogy has been evident in secular schools as well as in faith-based education. Motivated by observations of social strife

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and inter-group tensions, a call resulted for education to ameliorate the situation. For example, Nobel Laureate Jane Addams advocated the full inclusion of immigrants in the public school system. In response to wars, Maria Montessori wrote extensively about the role of education in peace and she created an early form of global education. Additionally, she promoted the education of everyone, regardless of their disability characteristics that caused society to hide and ignore them. Her background as a physician and her extensive writing about human development legitimated an inclusion model of education. Unfortunately, the movements of global and inclusion education were slow to appear in U.S. schools and other nations outside of Eurasia. Subsequently, Elise Boulding, a Quaker sociologist, carried the call for intercultural education and advanced the notion of a global civic culture.3 She posited the notion of global interdependence as a core concept for education and with her husband Kenneth, she demonstrated the importance of vision in pedagogy.4 Additionally, she highlighted the developments of women and cultures of peace, both of which have been commonly omitted from published curriculum.5 Betty Reardon6 underscored the importance of teaching about female as well as male roles in change and development while she underscored the importance of including education for human rights. She emphasized the need for peace education to facilitate instruction about systemic violence and she emphasized the importance of teacher preparation for facilitating lessons about violence and peace. In Brazil, the work of lawyer Paulo Freire7 demonstrated in adult education how instruction for literacy could include analysis of structural violence. He advanced a pedagogy that infused critical analysis of power during lessons of sanctioned subjects. Critical theorists demonstrated the role in education of power analysis to help teachers and their students identify antecedents of structural violence, for the purpose of its transformation.8 Critical pedagogy and peace education share the concept of agency, which describes the knowledge and ability to act for collective as well as individual betterment.9 The notion of communication code10 supports discursive methods of transformation while awareness of habitus11 facilitates understanding of interaction during conflict communication. Drawn from Buddhist traditions, the concept of mindfulness as a process aids awareness—a precursor of violence avoidance.12 Theories of nonviolence have supported pedagogies that promote conflict transformation through cooperative learning, conflict analysis, conflict mediation, and other forms of violence prevention.13 Techniques developed for psychological analysis have enabled education not only about injustice, but also the processes of identity development.14 In peace-oriented education, teachers learn these techniques for enhancement of their self-awareness and

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the development of their students. For example, Milton Bennett’s theory of intercultural sensitivity provides a continuum that is useful for self-evaluation of one’s ability to cognitively and behaviorally engage with other cultures.15 Beyond cultural border crossing, theories about the influence of dispositions are core to peace building education. The roles of empathy and concern in an ethic of care are crucial.16 Johan Galtung17 theorized peace form as well as content in education, whereby teachers model peace processes for cultivation of their students’ knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Theories of holistic education highlight the multidimensional nature of education for peace.18

Depth and Breadth Depth Two important dimensions in peace education are depth and breadth. The depth dimension ranges from violence or peace within the self to such interactions with others. Depth has three domains that are foci for analysis of conflict: intrapersonal, interpersonal, and systemic.19 These constant domains have relational influences.20 Peace, or the lack of it, in one domain affects the others—a ripple effect. Needed is instruction about all three of these domains. The one that has been most evident in secular education is interpersonal peace, involving interactions between people. Educators have primarily been teaching about human relations and how they can be improved through a range of contextually responsive strategies.21 For example, students learn that cultural border crossing, with a disposition of acceptance and skills for successful interaction in another culture, can contribute to peace building. Lessons about interpersonal conflict and peace range from superficial approaches, such as learning about other cultures, to deep work in which students engage in problem-solving communication during their sustained cross-cultural interactions. The second most common domain in peace building education is intrapersonal. Lessons that teach students analysis and management of their emotions, identification of their unmet needs, and monitoring of their inner voice advance competencies of intrapersonal peace. Also construed as mindfulness, intrapersonal peace education ranges from awareness of personal responsibility to regular student practice with the associated skills. The third domain of peace building education is structural, also knows as systemic. It has been least present in schools’ lessons. Education about structural peace involves recognition and understanding of widespread conflict throughout society. Lessons supporting structural peace building range from examination of a conflict across one society to its global evidence. For example, students identify, describe,

114 Table 8.1.

Peace Efforts That Work and Why

Components of Peace Education

Competencies

Components

Knowledge

Inclusive history, sources of conflict, human rights, peace history, and strategies

Pluralistic acceptance

Multicultural participation and cooperation

Ethno relativism

Accommodation of and adaptation to different cultural norms

Self-management

Awareness and control of personal reactions to conflict

Peaceful discourse

Analysis of language for characteristics of violence or compassion

Proactive involvement

Participation in local to global conflict transformation

Restoration

Engagement in restorative human interactions

Stewardship

Responsibility for environmental preservation and reconstruction

Visioning

Picturing a peaceful society in the present and the future

 C 2009 Candice C. Carter

and analyze institutional discrimination that is the root of social injustice, which causes interpersonal strife and intrapersonal conflict. The very limited facilitation of this instruction about structural conflict results from several factors, such as a lack of teacher preparation for this type of education and a lack of curricula provided for lessons about structural violence and peace.22 Highly motivated teachers who facilitate such instruction have to develop or find resources for it. Educators often purchase from organizations the materials they need for such instruction. Organizations typically specialize in particular aspects of education. The types of instructional materials they offer evidence the problem to which they are responding. The lack of a comprehensive organization that provides curricula for the many strands of peace education is related to a problem with breadth in this field. Table 8.1 provides a succinct overview of strands that are currently evident in peace building education.

Breadth The dimension of breadth includes a range of peace education components. Breadth fluctuates in peace building education with some components included for short durations while others are either sustained or missing. The reactionary nature of schools affects what is taught. When

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direct violence in schools erupted in predominately white U.S. middle-class neighborhoods, districts throughout the nation reacted with violenceprevention techniques. However, those techniques lacked depth, a theoretical foundation, and more often than not they failed to include peace as an instructional goal. Beyond reactionary trends in education, research and corresponding development is another influential factor in breadth variability. Research findings that report success with instructional methods catalyze adoption of those techniques. For example, social-emotional learning became a cogent topic after presentation of research about it and formation of an organization with that mission.23 Additionally influential in breadth of peace building education is transdisciplinarity. Adapted from peace building lessons in one discipline are techniques that school participants use for its possible instructional value. Recently, restorative justice techniques used in victim-offender programs have been brought into schools as restorative discipline. Another example of transdisciplinarity is the recent incorporation of yoga in U.S. primary and secondary schools. The aspirations of educators who bring into the schools peace-promoting techniques that other fields and cultures use are as inspiring as the goals of organizations whose mission statements have peace foci. Examples of nongovernmental organizations in the United States that have been recently contributing to peace building through education include the Anti-Defamation League, Teachers Without Borders, Educators for Social Responsibility, the Human Rights Education Association, the National Association for Multicultural Education, as well as the Collaborative for Social and Emotional Learning. Such institutions advance informal as well as formal learning for, and work in, peace development.

Informal and Formal Education Even as peace education moves forward as a field, its enactment occurs in two types of contexts: informal and formal. While informal contexts are as omnipresent as conflict, formal ones exist in explicit instruction. Peace building actions people observe or join provide informal learning that has been crucial for self-efficacy as well as for collective success. Another source of informal peace education is in the everyday interactions of people with each other and their environment. Children and youth learn from their many observations of conflict responses in their families and societies.24 Media observation has a strong role as an informal educator, which evidences the importance of discernment in selection of any visual and auditory programs.25 Additionally, the interactions of youth with each other and with their activity facilitators in organizations are ‘‘pockets of peace’’ for

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tacit instruction.26 Hence, there are ample opportunities for indirect instruction about and for peace.27 Adults who remain mindful of the instructional influence of their decisions and actions in the face of conflict are important facilitators of peace education. When they think aloud for others to hear their management of their inner voice, the rationale for their actions, and their enthusiasm for peace building, their modeling is an optimal lesson for observers. Writing about their thinking is a further aid of informal education. Indeed, the writings of peace workers have been crucial in moving peace education forward. Literature about how peace has happened is valuable for informal education.28 It appeals to humanity as a source of inspiration and solace during difficult times and as affirmation following resolution of conflicts. Such literature is also valuable in formal education.29 Formal instruction for peace building has become a desired path in the field of education. Whereas some schools have infused it as a reaction to direct internal or local violence, others established peace building foci in their mission statements. Additionally, faculty and students who were motivated to include peace as a topic of study cleared the way for that pursuit. Writers in this series, as well as this author, who established those opportunities in public universities that were funded with government money climbed political and economic mountains during their treks through bureaucracy. The tasks of rationalizing and facilitating development support for peace studies in publicly funded colleges and universities are less daunting with extant programs operating. During the current economic downturn, when nonlicensure programs are being eliminated, the value of formal education for peace has remained evident. The retention of peace studies reveals its importance even without government sanctioning through licensure. It remains to be seen if governments that have developed peace departments or programs will recognize the value of peace competencies. Formal education that offers certification in peace building techniques such as conflict transformation and degrees in fields such as comprehensive law may be precursors to that thrust forward.30 However, skeptics are dubious of a government managing its peace programs, for several reasons including conflict of interest. When a government descends into the darkness of violence and sends its youth there, it leaves bomb craters in its peace building path. Orienting youth in school toward violent futures is counterproductive in peace building. More than ever, youth today turn to violence even without their service in war initiatives, due to their lack of long-term expectations for personal and societal peace. Hence, a crucial component of peace building education is the cultivation of their expectations for a long life in which people work through their conflicts without resorting to violence. Peace building contributions of formal education wax and wane, and occasionally eclipse. Mandates and funding for such education sustain it as

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well as ideological foundations in schools with clear missions. For example, in Northern Ireland, the government endorsement of Education for Mutual Understanding opened a peace building path in primary and secondary as well as teacher education.31 However, its subsequent replacement with the focus of ‘‘citizenship education’’ did not emphasize peace, especially to those whose republican interests were in liberation from membership in the United Kingdom. During the time that Education for Mutual Understanding was promoted and implemented, the lack of directives for it evidenced a wide range of approaches and different dimensions of motivation for accomplishing it. As with other peace building initiatives, teachers and their educators in Northern Ireland grappled with how to fit it into an exam-focused curriculum that did not include peace competencies.

COMPREHENSIVENESS Where peace building education has been endorsed by government and facilitated with support of time and funding, it has been more comprehensive. For example, the unity focused program Education for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina garnered government support that enabled its use across primary and secondary schools for changing worldviews that affect perceptions and conflict management.32 The widespread implementation of Education for Peace illuminated the interest of bureaucrats who recognized the value of a peace building program.33 Unfortunately, such support is rarely sustained across a school district after the initial training and facilitation. Too often, that support for peace building programs, whether they have limited or comprehensive implementations, is limited to post-conflict zones that are healing from political upheaval or high levels of direct violence. In such cases, governments’ mandates for integration of previously or currently contending populations occur, without prior preparation of teachers. In those situations, teacher educators are responsible for enacting peace education. Observations in post-apartheid South Africa, where university faculty prepare teacher candidates for instruction of populations with whom they lack prior experience due to continued social segregation, have highlighted the importance of peace building competence in higher education. The challenges teacher educators experience with their students who resist social-integration work evidences the need for preparation of university instructors for success in their crucial peace building roles.34 Accreditation mandates for institutions that provide teacher certification programs have been crucial to the inclusion of at least the diversity strand of peace building education. To renew their accreditation, the institutions must evidence how teacher candidates experience the mandated preparation. Potentially more

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effective than accreditation mandates that have limited strands of peace building through universities are current government recommendations for instruction oriented to peace. For example, the National Council of Educational Research under the Ministry of Human Resource Development in India declared the importance of peace education that resulted with its inclusion in a curriculum framework that ensured corresponding teacher preparation.35 Research on peace building education has the greatest potential for positively influencing government recommendations to provide that instruction. For that reason among others, there is a great need now for studies of current and new programs. Needed to expand the research base of this field are studies that examine contextually responsive programs as well as sustained instruction. For instance, research could describe and analyze how students with different cultural and psychological characteristics and various types of conflicts experience restorative discipline and other techniques.36 Studies could identify the effect-ranges of stewardship and sustainability instruction for children.37 Case studies of arts-based peace education in different regions can show student and teacher needs as well as illustrate their perceptions of conflicts, especially those that may not be addressed in their schools.38 There are many other research foci for studies of peace building education. All of the investigations should include information about contextual responsiveness, which is the foundation of peace construction. Rigorous research and its findings provide this field with a crucial compass for trekkers in search of peace building possibilities. Advancement of their pursuits may have ramifications for everyone.

ADVANCEMENT OPPORTUNITIES Forging and extending paths of peace building education may have profound effects in human relations and all other elements of humanity’s reach. Accordingly, it could be fortuitous to forecast its forward routes. Palpable projections of this field include substantial research, expanded scope, and responsive instruction. While describing the need for more research, Monisha Bajaj39 emphasizes the importance of refocusing on ‘‘critical’’ peace education that identifies power imbalances. By naming the sites and sources of power disparities, educators will be better equipped for lessons that help students see and respond to structural conflicts. This is a needed turn for education that has been increasingly focused on interpersonal conflicts while decreasing analysis of their systemic antecedents. Researchers as well as educators in this field are responsible for advancing and protecting,

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especially in classrooms, inclusive conversations about power—who has it and who needs it. While looking from the peaks of power to the valleys of violence, several domains of peace building need to be noticed.

EXPANDED SCOPE Although scholarship identifies components of peace building education, and programs variably provide education about and experience in different realms, opportunities abound for their expansion. Nonfiction literature and research have evidenced areas that need investigation and consideration in particular contexts. Outside of realms that have been more frequently seen, such as norms of communication, there are less-focused elements of conflict in other circumstances.40 Another rationale for broadening the realms of peace building is stimulation of perspective diversity that aids analysis of problems and stimulates creativity for solving them. Informal peace building documented in true stories evidence strategies that have been useful in multiple realms that many programs do not include. For example, the role of persistence in transforming conflicts has been crucial, yet it is underemphasized in formal education.41 Regular inclusion of identity domains in this field can uncover otherwise obscure paths to peace. Writings by under-represented or marginalized peoples offer insights about distinct cultural practices that positively respond to conflicts or promote the notion of peace.42 For instance, Sharra43 describes the importance of indigenous concepts for peace building, such as uMunthu, as well as the value of autobiography that illuminates and documents peace processes. Instruction that incorporates local concepts and includes all voices shows evidence of needed responsiveness.

RESPONSIVE INSTRUCTION An open pedagogy that leaves room for students’ ideas and time for incorporation of them, with development of their peace building skills, is crucial in this field. The form of instruction has importance that is too often overlooked with a focus on content. Although educators should expect content to vary due to changing circumstances that need consideration, such as current events as well as new revelations that generate new topics, the form of optimal instruction is less variable. It evidences compassionate concern, acceptance of differences, and mutual respect that results from honesty through considerate communication.44 It is not linear or hierarchical. The latter quality is challenging within most educational institutions, because they reify authoritarian norms in teaching and prescribe requisite course contents. Maintenance of unresponsive instruction is a form of structural

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violence through oppression.45 Educators who maintain status quo in such contexts counter, instead of contribute, to peace building. Hence, the importance of teacher reflection about their agency as peace developers. As role models, teachers contribute to peace building through demonstration of their awareness of and responsiveness to self, others, and nature. One approach to this pedagogical volcano in ‘‘traditional’’ school environments is the notion of partnership education46 that includes voices and participation of all members in a school and its community. In that facilitation, the worldview of ‘‘unity in diversity’’ reveals the value of differences for collective success.47

CONCLUSION Peace building education is a maturing field that evidences vigor in its responsiveness to contexts and research. It ranges from informal education that occurs through observations of and experiences with peace work to formal instruction that organizations and institutions provide. While its breadth varies, its depth uncovers unvarying domains of peacemaking and peace building. Whereas circumstances of conflict change, sources of peace with each of them are steadfast. Peace building education enables students to see how the capacities they develop can have positive effects in analysis of problems and creation of solutions, now and in their future. Their heightened awareness of conflict and antecedents of violence, along with opportunities for preventing harm, are relevant to all aspects of their lives. On the streets of reconstruction as well as in open classroom discussions, students experience peace building form even as they contribute to and encounter contextually relevant curriculum. Their educational trek can seem wild, characterized by unpredictability and affect, which stimulate interest in a cyclical process of learning.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Carter 2008. Haavelsrud, 1996; Salomon and Nevo, 2002. Boulding, 1988. Boulding and Boulding, 1995. Boulding, 1976, 2000. Reardon, 2001. Freire, 1998. Apple, 1995. Giroux, 1988; Vongalis-Macrow, 2006. Bernstein, 2000.

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11. Bourdieu, 1977. 12. Greene, 1988. 13. Johnson and Johnson, 1995; Prothrow-Smith, 2005; Raider, Coleman, and Gerson, 2006. 14. Cross, 1993. 15. Bennett, 1996. 16. Noddings, 2008. 17. Galtung, 2008. 18. Eisler and Miller, 2004. 19. Galtung, 2004. 20. Carter, 2010. 21. Harris and Morrison, 2003. 22. Carter April, 2009; Jenkins, 2007. 23. Collaborative for Academic, Social Emotional and Learning, 2009. 24. Carter, 2003. 25. Cortes, 2000. 26. Carter, 2004. 27. Carter, 2003. 28. Canfield et al., 2005. 29. Carter and Clay-Robison, 2009. 30. Carter, 2010. 31. Carter, ‘‘Teacher Preparation for Peacebuilding,’’ 2007. 32. Clarke-Habibi, 2005. 33. Education for Peace, 2009. 34. Carter and Vandeyar, 2009; Jansen, 2004. 35. De Paul, 2010. 36. International Institute for Restorative Practices, 2009. 37. Wenden, 2004. 38. Brunson, et al., 2002; Carter, 2007. 39. Bajaj, 2009. 40. Oetzel and Ting-Toomey, 2006. 41. Journal of Peace Education, 2007. 42. Hoppers, 2000. 43. Sharra, 2006. 44. Whang and Nash, 2005; Rosenberg, 2003. 45. Finley, 2004. 46. Eisler, 2000; Pierce, 2004. 47. Danesh and Clarke-Habibi, 2007.

CHAPTER

INSIDE

9

M I L I TA R Y M E D I A I N D U S T R I A L C O M P L E X : I M PA C T S O N M OV E M E N T S F O R P E A C E A N D SOCIAL JUSTICE THE

Peter Phillips and Mickey S. Huff

Among the most important corporate media censored news stories of the past decade, one must be that over 1 million people have died because of the United States military invasion and occupation of Iraq. This, of course, does not include the number of deaths from the first Gulf War nor the ensuing sanctions placed on the country of Iraq that, combined, caused close to an additional 2 million Iraqi deaths. In the Iraq War, which began in March 2003, over 1 million people died violently primarily from U.S. bombings and neighborhood patrols. These were deaths in excess of the normal civilian death rate under the prior government. Among U.S. military leaders and policy elites, the issue of counting the dead was dismissed before the Iraqi invasion even began. In an interview with reporters in late March 2002, U.S. General Tommy Franks stated, ‘‘You know we don’t do body counts.’’1 Fortunately, for those concerned about humanitarian costs of war and empire, others do. In a January 2008 report, the British polling group Opinion Research Business (ORB) reported that, ‘‘survey work confirms our earlier estimate Appreciation is expressed for editing assistance by Rebecca Norlander and Ellen Gaddy.

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that over 1 million Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003. We now estimate that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been of the order of 1,033,000. If one takes into account the margin of error associated with survey data of this nature then the estimated range is between 946,000 and 1,120,000.’’2 The ORB report came on the heels of two earlier studies conducted by Dr. Les Roberts and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University and published in the medical journal Lancet. The first study from January 1, 2002, to March 18, 2003, confirmed civilian deaths at that time at over 100,000. The second study published in October 2006 documented over 650,000 civilian deaths in Iraq since the start of the U.S. invasion and confirmed that U.S. aerial bombing in civilian neighborhoods caused over a third of these deaths. Over half of the deaths were directly attributable to U.S. forces. The estimated 1.2 million dead six years into the war/occupation, included children, parents, grandparents, cab drivers, clerics, and schoolteachers. All manner of ordinary Iraqis have died because the United States decided to invade their country under false pretences of undiscovered weapons of mass destruction and in violation of international law. An additional 4 to 5 million Iraqi refugees have fled. The corporate mainstream news would have the public believe many refugees are returning to Iraq, but independent journalist Dahr Jamail, reporting from the region, tells the opposite story.3 The magnitude of these million-plus deaths and creation of such a vast refugee crisis is undeniable. The continuing occupation by U.S. forces has guaranteed a monthly mass death rate of thousands of people—a carnage that ranks among the most heinous mass killings in world history. More tons of bombs have been dropped in Iraq than in all of World War II.4 Six years later the casualties continue but the story, barely reported from the start, has vanished. The American people face a serious moral dilemma. Murder and war crimes have been conducted in their name. Yet most Americans have no idea of the magnitude of deaths and tend to believe that they number in the thousands and are primarily Iraqis killing Iraqis. Corporate mainstream media are in large part to blame. The question then becomes how can this mass ignorance and corporate media deception exist in the United States and what impact does this have on peace and social justice movements in the country?5

TRUTH EMERGENCY AND MEDIA REFORM In the United States today, the rift between reality and reporting has peaked. There is no longer a mere credibility gap, but rather a literal truth emergency in which the most important information affecting people is

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concealed from view. Many Americans, relying on the mainstream corporate media, have serious difficulty accessing the truth while still believing that the information they receive is the reality. A truth emergency reflects cumulative failures of the fourth estate to act as a truly free press. This truth emergency is seen in inadequate coverage of fraudulent elections, pseudo 9/11 investigations, illegal preemptive wars, torture camps, and doctored intelligence, but also in issues like domestic surveillance that intimately impact everyday lives. Reliable information on these issues is systematically missing in corporate media outlets, where the majority of the American people continue to turn for news and information. Consider these items of noteworthy conditions. U.S. workers have been faced with a 35-year decline in real wages while the top few percent enjoy unparalleled wealth with strikingly low tax burdens. The United States has the highest infant mortality rate among industrialized nations, is falling behind in scientific research and education, leads the world as a debtor nation, and is seriously lacking in health care quality and coverage, which results in the deaths of 18,000 people a year. America has entered another Gilded Age. Someone should alert the media.6 The free press or media reform movement is a national effort to address mainstream media failures and the government policies that sanction them. During the 2008 National Conference for Media Reform (NCMR) in Minneapolis, Project Censored interns and faculty conducted a survey, completed by 376 randomly selected NCMR attendees out of the 3,500 people registered for the conference. This survey was designed to gauge participants’ views on the state of the corporate news media and the effectiveness of the media reform movement. The survey also sought to determine the level of belief in a truth emergency, a systematic hiding of critical information in the United States. Not surprisingly, for a sample of independent media reform activists, majorities in the 90 percent-plus range agreed on most criticisms of mainstream media, that corporate media failed to keep the American people informed on important issues facing the nation and that a truth emergency does indeed exist in the United States. Regarding the reasons, 87 percent of the participants believed that a military-industrial-media complex exists in the United States for the promotion of the U.S. military domination of the world, and most agreed with research conclusions by Project Censored and others that a continuing powerful global dominance group inside the U.S. government, the U.S. media, and the national policy structure is responsible. What was clear from our survey is that media democracy activists strongly support not only aggressive reform efforts and policy changes but also the continuing development of independent, grassroots media as part of an overall media democracy movement.

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While most progressive media activists do not believe in some omnipotent conspiracy, an overwhelming portion of NCMR participants believe the leadership class in the United States is dominated by a neo-conservative group of some several hundred people who share a goal of asserting U.S. military power worldwide. This Global Dominance Group continues under both Republican and Democratic rule. In cooperation with major military contractors, the corporate media, and conservative foundations, the GDM has become a powerful long-term force in military unilateralism and U.S. political processes.

THE GLOBAL DOMINANCE GROUP AND INFORMATION CONTROL A long thread of sociological research documents the existence of a dominant ruling class in the United States, which sets policy and determines national political priorities. C. Wright Mills, in his 1956 book The Power Elite, documented how World War II solidified a trinity of power in the United States that comprised corporate, military, and government elites in a centralized power structure working in unison through ‘‘higher circles’’ of contact and agreement.7 This power has grown through the Cold War and, after 9/11, the global War on Terrorism. At present, the global dominance agenda includes penetration into the boardrooms of the corporate media in the United States. Only 118 people comprise the membership on the boards of directors of the 10 big media giants. These 118 individuals in turn sit on the corporate boards of 288 national and international corporations. Four of the top 10 media corporations share board director positions with the major defense contractors including: William Kennard: New York Times, Carlyle Group Douglas Warner III: GE (NBC), Bechtel John Bryson: Disney (ABC), Boeing Alwyn Lewis: Disney (ABC), Halliburton Douglas McCorkindale: Gannett, Lockheed-Martin

Given an interlocked media network of connections with defense and other economic sectors, big media in the United States effectively represent the interests of corporate America. Media critic and historian Norman Solomon described the close financial and social links between the boards of large media-related corporations and Washington’s foreign-policy establishment: ‘‘One way or another, a military-industrial complex now extends to much of corporate media.’’8 The Homeland Security Act Title II Section 201(d)(5) provides an example of the interlocked military-industrial-media complex.

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This Act specifically asks the directorate to ‘‘develop a comprehensive plan for securing the key resources and critical infrastructure of the United States including information technology and telecommunications systems (including satellites) emergency preparedness communications systems.’’ The media elite, a key component of the Higher Circle Policy Elite in the United States, are the watchdogs of acceptable ideological messages, the controllers of news and information content, and the decision makers regarding media resources. Their goal is to create symbiotic global news distribution in a deliberate attempt to control the news and information available to society. The two most prominent methods used to accomplish this task are censorship and propaganda. Sometimes the sensationalist and narrow media coverage of news is blamed on the need to meet a low level of public taste and thereby capture the eyes of a sufficient market to lure advertisers and to make a profit. But another goal of cornering the marketplace on what news and views will be aired is also prominent. Billionaire Rupert Murdoch loses $50 million a year on the New York Post, billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife loses $2 to $3 million a year on the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, billionaire Philip Anschutz loses around $5 million a year on the Weekly Standard, and billionaire Sun Myung Moon has lost $2 to $3 billion on the Washington Times. The losses in supporting conservative media are part of a strategy. They also buy bulk quantities of ultra-conservative books, bringing them to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, and then give away copies to ‘‘subscribers’’ to their Web sites and publications. They fund conservative ‘‘think tanks’’ like Heritage and Cato with hundreds of millions of dollars a year. All this buys them respectability and a megaphone. Even though William Kristol’s publication, the Standard, is a money-loser, his association with it has often gotten him on TV talk shows and a column with the New York Times. Sponsorships of groups like Norquist’s anti-tax ‘‘Americans for Tax Reform’’ regularly get people like him front and center in any debate on taxation in the United States. This has contributed to extensive tax cuts for the wealthy and the most unfair tax laws of any industrialized country—all found acceptable by a public relying on sound bites about ‘‘big government.’’ Hence, media corporation officials and others in the health care, energy, and weapons industries remain wealthier than ordinary people can imagine. Their expenditures for molding opinion are better understood as investments9

MODERN MEDIA CENSORSHIP AND PROPAGANDA A broader definition of contemporary censorship needs to include any interference, deliberate or not, with the free flow of vital news information to

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the public. Modern censorship can be seen as the subtle yet constant and sophisticated manipulation of reality in our mass media outlets. On a daily basis, censorship refers to the intentional noninclusion of a news story—or piece of a news story—based on anything other than a desire to tell the truth. Such manipulation can take the form of political pressure (from government officials and powerful individuals), economic pressure (from advertisers and funders), and legal pressure (the threat of lawsuits from deeppocket individuals, corporations, and institutions), or threats to reduce future access by a reporter. The following are a few examples of censorship and propaganda.

Omitted or Undercovered Stories The failure of the corporate media to cover human consequences, like 1 million, mostly civilian deaths of Iraqis, reduces public response to the wars being conducted by the United States. Even when activists mobilize, the media coverage of anti-war demonstrations has been negligible and denigrating from the start. When journalists of the so-called ‘‘free press’’ ignore the anti-war movement, they serve the interests of their masters in the military media industrial complex.10 Further, the corporate mainstream press continues to ignore the human cost of the U.S. war in Iraq with America’s own veterans. Veteran care, wounded rates, mental disabilities, Veterans Administration claims, firsthand accounts of soldier experiences, and pictures of dead or limbless soldiers are rare. One of the most important stories missed by the corporate press concerned the Winter Soldier Congressional hearings in Washington, D.C. The hearings, with eyewitness testimony of U.S. soldiers relating their experiences on the battlefield and beyond, were only covered by a scant number of major media, and then only in passing. In contrast to the virtual corporate media blackout concerning U.S. soldiers’ views of the war, the independent, listener-sponsored, community Pacifica Radio network covered the hearings at length.11 A common theme among the most censored stories over the past few years has been the systemic erosion of human rights and civil liberties in both the United States and the world at large. The corporate media has ignored the fact that habeas corpus can now be suspended for anyone by order of the President. With the approval of Congress, the Military Commissions Act (MCA) of 2006, signed by President Bush on October 17, 2006, allows for the suspension of habeas corpus for U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike. While media, including a lead editorial in the New York Times (October 19, 2006), have offered false comfort that American citizens will not be the victims, the Act is quite clear that ‘‘any person’’ can be targeted.12

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Additionally, under the code-name Operation FALCON (Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally), federally coordinated mass arrests have been occurring since April 2005 and netted over 54,000 arrests, a majority of whom were not violent criminals as was initially suggested. This unprecedented move of arresting tens of thousands of ‘‘fugitives’’ is the largest dragnet-style operation in the nation’s history. The raids, coordinated by the Justice Department and Homeland Security, directly involved over 960 agencies (state, local, and federal) and mark the first time in U.S. history that all domestic police agencies have been put under the direct control of the federal government.13 All these events are significant in a democratic society that claims to cherish individual rights and due process of law. To have them occur is a tragedy. To have a ‘‘free’’ press not report them or pretend these issues do not matter to the populace is the foundation of censorship today.

Repetition of Slogans and Sound Bites The corporate media in the United States present themselves as unbiased and accurate. The New York Times motto of ‘‘all the news that’s fit to print’’ is a clear example, as is CNN’s authoritative ‘‘most trusted name in news,’’ and Fox’s mantra of ‘‘fair and balanced.’’ The slogans are examples of what linguist George Lakoff has referred to as framing. Through constant repetition, the metaphors and symbols that pervade our media turn into unquestioned beliefs. ‘‘Liberal media,’’ ‘‘welfare cheaters,’’ ‘‘war on terror,’’ ‘‘illegal aliens,’’ ‘‘tax burden,’’ ‘‘support our troops,’’ are all distorted images serving to conceal a transfer of wealth from people needing a safety net to corporations seeking military expansion.

Embedded Journalism The media are increasingly dependent on governmental and corporate sources of news. Maintenance of continuous news shows requires a constant feed and an ever-entertaining supply of stimulating events and breaking news bites. The 24-hour news shows on MSNBC, Fox, and CNN maintain constant contact with the White House, Pentagon, and public relations companies representing both government and private corporations. By the time of the Gulf War in 1991, retired colonels, generals, and admirals had become mainstays in network TV studios during wartime. Language such as ‘‘collateral damage’’ and ‘‘smart bombs’’ flowed effortlessly between journalists and military men, who shared perspectives on the occasionally mentioned but more rarely seen civilians killed by U.S.

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firepower. This clearly foreshadowed the structure of ‘‘embedded’’ reporting in the second Iraq war, where mainstream corporate journalists literally lived with the troops and had to submit all reports to military censors.14 A related militarization of news studies by Diane Farsetta at the Center for Media Democracy documented a related introduction of bias. These investigations showed Pentagon propaganda penetration on mainstream corporate news in the guise of retired Generals as ‘‘experts’’ or pundits who turned out to be nothing more than paid shills for government war policy.15 The problem then becomes more complex. What happens to a society that begins to believe such lies as truth? The run up to the 2003 war in Iraq concerning weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is a case in point. It not only illustrates the power of propaganda in creating public support for an ill-begotten war, but also reduces the possibility of a peace movement, even when fueled by the truth, to stop a war based on falsehoods. The current war in Iraq was the most globally protested war in recorded history. This did nothing to stop it and has done little to end it even under a Democratic president who promised such on the campaign trail. The candidate of ‘‘hope and change,’’ with peace groups in tow, has proven to be dependent on the same interests in foreign policy that got the United States into war in the first place.16

THE PROGRESSIVE PRESS Where the left progressive press may have covered some of the Winter Soldier issues, most did not cover the major story of Iraqi deaths. In Manufacturing Consent, Wharton School of Business Professor of Political Economy Edward Herman and MIT Institute Professor of Linguistics Noam Chomsky claim that because media are firmly embedded in the market system, they reflect the class values and concerns of their owners and advertisers. The corporate media maintain a class bias through five systemic filters: concentrated private ownership; a strict bottom-line profit orientation; over-reliance on governmental and corporate sources for news; a primary tendency to avoid offending the powerful; and an almost religious worship of the market economy. These filters limit what will become news in society and set parameters on acceptable coverage of daily events.17 The danger of these filters is that they make subtle and indirect censorship more difficult to combat. Owners and managers share class identity with the powerful and are motivated economically to please advertisers and viewers. Social backgrounds influence their conceptions of what is ‘‘newsworthy,’’ and their views and values seem only ‘‘common sense.’’ Journalists and editors are not immune to the influence of owners and managers.

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Reporters want to see their stories approved for print or broadcast, and editors come to know the limits of their freedom to diverge from the ‘‘common sense’’ worldview of owners and managers. The self-discipline that this structure induces in journalists and editors comes to seem only ‘‘common sense’’ to them as well. Self-discipline becomes self-censorship—independence is restricted, the filtering process hidden, denied, or rationalized away. Project Censored’s analysis on the top 10 progressive left publications’ and Web sites’ coverage of key post-9/11 issues found considerable limitations on reporting of specific stories. The evidence supports the Chomsky and Herman understanding that the media barrage may well contribute to the news story selection process inside the left liberal media as well.18 Even the left progressive media showed limited coverage of the human costs of the 9/11 wars. The figure reported in summer 2007 documenting 1 million dead appeared in progressive Web sites and radio including After Downing Street, Huffington Post, Counter Punch, Alternet Democracy Now! and the Nation, but several took months to get to it. This lack of timely reporting on such a critical story on the humanitarian crisis of the U.S. occupation by the alternative press does not bode well for a strong, public peace movement. The United States is in dire need of a media democracy movement to address truth emergency concerns. In response, the Truth Emergency Movement held its first national strategy summit in Santa Cruz, California, January 25 to 27, 2008. Organizers gathered key media constituencies to devise coherent decentralized models for distribution of suppressed news, synergistic truth-telling, and collaborative strategies to disclose, legitimize, and popularize deeper historical narratives on power and inequality in the United States. In sum, this truth movement is seeking to discover in this moment of constitutional crisis, ecological peril, and widening war, ways in which top investigative journalists, whistleblowers, and independent media activists can transform how Americans perceive and defend their world. We learn from grassroots actions in the United States but also from experiences of other countries. This requires us to transcend the stereotypes of other countries hammered by the corporate media. It is not by chance that two Latin American nations, both targets of U.S. efforts to remove their popular leaders by force, have been vilified by mainstream media. Both Cuba and Venezuela, however, have been experiments in local democratic participation in which voices of communities weigh heavily on social policy.

International Models of Media Democracy in Action: Venezuela Democracy from the bottom is evolving as a 10-year social revolution in Venezuela. Led by President Hugo Chavez, the United Socialist Party of

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Venezuela (PSUV) gained over 1.5 million voters in the November 2008 elections. ‘‘It was a wonderful victory,’’ said Professor Carmen Carrero with the communications studies department of the Bolivarian University in Caracas. ‘‘We won 81 percent of the city mayor positions and 17 of 23 of the state governors,’’ Carrero reported. The Bolivarian University is housed in the former oil ministry building and now serves 8,000 students throughout Venezuela. The university (Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela) is symbolic of the democratic socialist changes occurring throughout the country. Before the election of Hugo Chavez as president in 1998, college attendance was primarily for the rich in Venezuela. Today over 1,800,000 students attend college, three times the rate 10 years ago. ‘‘Our university was established to resist domination and imperialism,’’ reported Principal (president) Marlene Yadira Cordova in an interview on November 10, 2008, ‘‘We are a university where we have a vision of life that the oppressed people have a place on this planet.’’ The enthusiasm for learning and serious-thoughtful questions asked by students were certainly representative of a belief in the potential of positive social change for human betterment. The university offers a fully-staffed free health care clinic, free tuition, and basic no-cost food for students in the cafeteria, all paid for by the oil revenues now being democratically shared by the people. Bottom-up democracy in Venezuela starts with the 25,000 community councils elected in every neighborhood in the country. ‘‘We establish the priority needs of our area,’’ reported community council spokesperson Carmon Aponte, with the neighborhood council in the barrio Bombilla area of western Caracas. Community radio, TV, and newspapers are the voice of the people, where they describe the viewers/listeners as the ‘‘users’’ of media instead of the passive audiences.19 Democratic socialism has meant health care, jobs, food, and security, in neighborhoods where in many cases nothing but poverty existed 10 years ago. With unemployment down to a U.S. level, sharing the wealth has taken real meaning in Venezuela. Despite a 50 percent increase in the price of food last year, local Mercals offer government-subsidized cooking oil, corn meal, meat, and powdered milk at 30 to 50 percent off market price. Additionally, there are now 3,500 local communal banks with a $1.6 billion dollar budget offering neighborhood-based micro-financing loans for home improvements, small businesses, and personal emergencies. ‘‘We have moved from a time of disdain [pre-revolution—when the upper classes saw working people as less than human] to a time of adjustment,’’ proclaimed Ecuador’s minister of Culture, Gallo Mora Witt, at the opening ceremonies of the Fourth International Book Fair in Caracas in

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November 2007. Venezuela’s Minister of Culture, Hector Soto, added, ‘‘We try not to leave anyone out . . . before the revolution the elites published only 60 to 80 books a year; we will publish 1,200 Venezuelan authors this year . . . the book will never stop being the important tool for cultural feelings.’’ In fact, some 25 million books—classics by Victor Hugo and Miguel de Cervantes along with Cindy Sheehan’s Letter to George Bush—were published in 2008 and are being distributed to the community councils nationwide. The theme of the International Book Fair was books as cultural support to the construction of the Bolivarian revolution and building socialism for the 21st century. In Venezuela the corporate media are still owned by the elites. The five major TV networks and nine of 10 of the major newspapers maintain a continuing media effort to undermine Chavez and the socialist revolution. But despite the corporate media and $20 million annual support to the antiChavez opposition institutions from USAID and National Endowment for Democracy, two-thirds of the people in Venezuela continue to support President Hugo Chavez and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. The democracies of South America are realizing that the neo-liberal formulas for capitalism are not working and that new forms of resource allocation are necessary for human betterment. It is a learning process for all involved and certainly a democratic effort from the bottom up.

International Models of Media Democracy in Action: Cuba ‘‘You cannot kill truth by murdering journalists,’’ said Tubal P
aez, president of the Journalist Union of Cuba. In May 2008, 150 Cuban and South American journalists, ambassadors, politicians, and foreign guests gathered at the Jos
e Mart
ı International Journalist Institute to honor the 50th anniversary of the death of Carlos Bastidas Arguello—the last journalist killed in Cuba. Carlos Bastidas was 23 years old when he was assassinated by Fulgencia Batista’s secret police after having visited Fidel Castro’s forces in the Sierra Maestra Mountains. Edmundo Bastidas, Carlos’s brother, told about how a river of change flowed from the Maestra (teacher) mountains, symbolized by his brother’s efforts to help secure a new future for Cuba. The celebration in Havana was held in honor of World Press Freedom Day, which is observed every year in May. The UN first declared this day in 1993 to honor journalists who lost their lives reporting the news and to defend media freedom worldwide. Cuban journalists share a common sense of a continuing counterrevolutionary threat by U.S.-financed Cuban Americans living in Miami. This is not an entirely unwarranted feeling in that many hundreds of terrorist

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actions against Cuba have occurred with U.S. backing over the past 50 years. In addition to the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, these attacks include the blowing up of a Cuban airlines plane in 1976 killing 73 people, the starting in 1981 of an epidemic of dengue fever that killed 158 people, and several hotel bombings in the 1990s, one of which resulted in the death of an Italian tourist. In the context of this external threat, Cuban journalists quietly acknowledge that some self-censorship will undoubtedly occur regarding news stories that could be used by the ‘‘enemy’’ against the Cuban people. Nonetheless, Cuban journalists strongly value freedom of the press and there was no evidence of overt government control. Ricardo Alarcon, President of the National Assembly, noted that Cuba allows CNN, AP, and Chicago Tribune to maintain offices in Cuba, although the United States refuses to allow Cuban journalists to work in the United States.20 Cuban journalists complain that the U.S. corporate media is biased and refuses to cover the positive aspects of socialism in Cuba. Unknown to most Americans are the facts that Cuba is the number one country in percentage of organic foods produced in the world, has an impressive health care system with a lower infant mortality rate than the United States, trains doctors from all over the world, and has enjoyed a 43 percent increase in gross domestic product (GDP) between 2005 and 2008. Neither Cuba nor Venezuela is a utopian society. Developing countries subject to continuing pressure by the United States may be cautious and suspicious of provocateurs who would incite violence or provoke U.S. military intervention. But in these countries, the ability of local media expressing voices of local communities is something from which media reformers can learn.

GRASSROOTS ANTIDOTES TO CORPORATE MEDIA PROPAGANDA Tens of thousands in the United States engaged in various social justice issues constantly witness how corporate media marginalize, denigrate, or simply ignore their concerns. Activist groups working on issues like 9/11 truth, election fraud, impeachment in the Bush era, war propaganda, civil liberties abridgments, torture, the Wall Street meltdown, and corporate-caused environmental crises have been systematically excluded from mainstream news and the national conversation, leading to a genuine truth emergency in the country as a whole. Now, however, a growing number of activists are finally saying ‘‘enough!’’ and joining forces to address this truth emergency by developing new journalistic systems and practices of their own. They are working to

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reveal the common corporate denominators behind the diverse crises we face and to develop networks of trustworthy news sources that tell people what is really going on. These activists know we need a journalism that moves beyond inquiries into particular crimes and atrocities, and exposes wider patterns of corruption, propaganda, and illicit political control by the military and corporate elite. Recent efforts at national media reform through micro-power community radio—similar to the 400 people’s radio stations in Venezuela—and campaign finance changes that would mandate access for all candidates on national media have been strongly resisted by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). NAB, considered one of the most powerful corporate lobby groups in Washington, works hard to protect over $200 billion dollars of annual advertising and the several hundred million dollars that political candidates spend in each election cycle. The Truth Emergency movement now recognizes that corporate media’s political power and failure to meet its First Amendment obligation to keep the public informed represents a huge task. Citizens must mobilize resources to redevelop news and information systems from the bottom up. Citizen journalists can expand distribution of news via small independent newspapers, local magazines, independent radio, and cable access TV. Using the Internet, the public can interconnect with like-minded grassroots news organizations to share important stories. These changes are already in progress.

BECOMING THE MEDIA: MEDIA FREEDOM INTERNATIONAL AND PROJECT CENSORED In response to Truth Emergency conference, the Media Freedom Foundation and Project Censored launched an effort to both become a repository of independent news and information as well as a producer of content in validated independent news stories vetted by college and university professors and students around the world. As corporate media continue their entertainment agenda and the public relations (PR) industry—working for governments and corporations—increasingly dominates news content, there exists a socio-cultural opening to transform how the public receives and actually participates in the validation and creation of their own news. Corporate media are increasingly irrelevant to working people and to democracy. People need to tell their own news stories from real experiences and perspectives, as an alternative to the hierarchically imposed and ‘‘official’’ top-down narrative. What better project in support of media democracy than for universities and colleges worldwide to support truth telling and validate news stories and independent news sources.

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Only 5 percent of college students under the age of 30 read a daily newspaper. Most get their news from corporate television and increasingly on the Internet. One of the biggest problems with independent media sources on the Internet is a perception of inconsistent reliability. The public is often suspicious of the truthfulness and accuracy of news postings from noncorporate media sources. Over the past 10 years, in hundreds of presentations all over the United States, Project Censored staff has frequently been asked, ‘‘what are the best sources for news and whom can we trust?’’ The goal of this effort is to encourage young people to use independent media as their primary sources of news and information and to learn about trustworthy news sources through the Media Freedom International News Research Affiliate Program. By the end of 2008, there were over 30 affiliate colleges and universities with plans to expand that participation several fold this. Through these institutions, validated independent news stories can be researched by students and scholars, then written, produced, and disseminated via the Web. In addition, on any given day at the Media Freedom Foundation Web site, one can view enough independent news stories from RSS (really simple syndication) feeds to fill nearly 50 written pages, more than even the largest U.S. newspapers. An informed electorate cannot remain passive consumers of corporate news. As aforementioned activist David Mathison suggested in his how-to manual, Be the Media, where he argues and instructs not only about how to build community media but how to build community through media.21 Part of building community is developing an awareness about the type of world we want to participate in creating, and developing strategies for achieving change. New forms of media that promote widespread responsibility for both creating and disseminating information do not remove the need for people to protest, to demonstrate, to march, to boycott, and to demand entry into corporate offices. Rather it ensures that voices can be heard and, as shown in Howard Rheingold’s Smartmobbing Democracy,22 the power of new Internet communication technologies can be harnessed to mobilize more effectively. Contrasted with previous more limited technologies, Rheingold points out that now, ‘‘[m]obile and deskbound media such as blogs, listserves, and social networking sites allow for many-to-many communication.’’ Technology has helped even the playing field by creating a virtual sphere where people can exchange ideas and instigate activism. Grassroots, bottom-up, peer-to-peer efforts have increased in influence and effectiveness due to the speed and breadth of new communication technologies. We are currently experiencing a potential for collective activism on a scale never before seen. The continued expansion of independent Internet news sources allows for the mass political awareness of key issues and truth emergencies in the world.

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The involvement of university and college professors and their students in validating news stories will be an important component of reliability verification of these sources. As we learn who we can trust in the independent news world, we will be in a stronger position for the continued development and expansion of democratic social movement/anti-war efforts in the future. It is up to the people to unite and oppose the common oppressors manifested in a militarist and unresponsive government along with their corporate media courtiers and PR propagandists. Only then, when the public forms and controls its own information resources, will it be armed with the power that knowledge gives to move beyond the media-induced mindsets that limit change to modest reform. Grassroots media providing voice to those who would challenge elite domination are our best hope to create a truly vibrant democratic society that promises as well as delivers liberty, peace, and economic justice to all.

NOTES 1. U.S. General Tommy Franks as quoted in Epstein, 2002. 2. Phillips and Roth, 2008. 3. Holland, 2008. 4. Ibid. 5. Shenkman, 2008; Frank, 2004; Vidal, 2005; Kolb and Swords, 2003. 6. Mills, 2000; Habermas, 1962, 1981; Popper, 1945. 7. Habermas, 1991. 8. Solomon, 2005. 9. Uygur, 2009. 10. Milazzo, 2007. 11. Phillips and Roth, 2009. 12. Phillips, 2008. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. See Farsetta, 2009 and the Center for Media and Democracy. 16. Stauber and Rampton, 2003; DiMaggio, 2008; Abele, 2009. 17. Herman and Chomsky, 1988, 2002; Chomsky, 2002. 18. Phillips, 2008. 19. Co-author Peter Phillips interviewed Carmon Aponte while visiting the Patare Community TV and radio station on a trip to Venezuela for a book fair in 2008. The station was one of 34 locally controlled community television stations and 400 radio stations now in the barrios throughout Venezuela. 20. Co-author Peter Phillips attended the major journalism conference in Cuba in 2008. About his experiences there, Phillips remarked, During my five days in Havana, I met with dozens of journalists, communication studies faculty and students, union representatives, and politicians. The underlying

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theme of my visit was to determine the state of media freedom in Cuba and to build a better understanding between media democracy activists in the United States and those in Cuba. I toured the two main radio stations in Havana, Radio Rebelde and Radio Havana. Both have Internet access to multiple global news sources including CNN, Reuters, Associated Press, and BBC with several newscasters pulling stories for public broadcast. Over 90 municipalities in Cuba have their own locally run radio stations, and journalists report local news from every province. During the course of several hours in each station I was interviewed on the air about media consolidation and censorship in the United States and was able to ask journalists about censorship in Cuba as well. Of the dozens I interviewed all said that they have complete freedom to write or broadcast any stories they choose. This was a far cry from the Stalinist media system so often depicted by U.S. interests.

21. Phillips, 2008; Mathison, 2009. 22. Rheingold, 2008.

CHAPTER

10

R E NA I S S A N C E 2 . 0 : T H E W E B ’ S POTENTIAL FOR THE P E A C E F U L T R A N S F O R M AT I O N OF MODERN SOCIETY Deva Temple

Throughout history new forms of mass media have transformed society by disseminating information and successfully enabling social movements to spread. Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press eventually gave rise to the Renaissance and brought an end to the pervasive control of European society by the Church and kings who ruled by Divine Right.1 The printing press would eventually contribute to the educational and infromational foundation for Habermas’s bourgeoise public sphere,2 further transforming global society through the spread of the Enlightenment, modernity, and the scientific method. Later technologies also contributed to the transformation of society. Families gathered around the radio to listen to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats, creating support for New Deal legislation, transforming the relationship between American citizens and government, and building legal, economic, and environmental infrastructures that have served the United States for more than 75 years.3 Television images coming out of Vietnam sparked the anti-war movement4 and the civil rights movement was fueled when television images of marchers being attacked by police dogs and sprayed with fire hoses flooded into American living rooms.5

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Telecommunications technologies have provided two-way communication while mass media provided a one-way medium for reaching large audiences. Both forms of communication technology brought people together in new ways and both were limited in their ability to move information from one person to another. Telecommunications, such as the telegraph and telephone, allowed for two-way communication and early forms of mass media provided for rapid information transfer to large audiences; however, because content creation remains centralized and expensive, mass media is easily used by powerful elites to promote their interests through the manipulation of information.6 The power of the Internet is a result of synergies created by combining the preexisting mass media and telecommunications technologies. The Internet is, however, the first mass media technology that allows for more than one-way communication. Early Internet technology, retrospectively called Web 1.0, was limited to informational Web sites and e-commerce sites. By comparison, second generation Web applications, also known as Web 2.0, are allowing users to connect and share in ways that mimic face-to-face social interactions. Web sites such as Twitter, MySpace, Tribe, Facebook and Meetup, among others, are allowing Internet users to interact with and expand entire social networks. Users who are interacting in virtual social networks are currently deciding the canon of a new religion, the fastest growing religion in New Zealand, the Jedi Church, fashioned after the peacekeeping Jedi heroes in the Star Wars movies.7 If Gutenberg’s printing press could be likened to Web 1.0, then Web 2.0 is the formation of Habermas’s public sphere. The Internet has been said to possess a great capacity for the promotion of peace and democracy worldwide8 but this capacity will not be fulfilled without the conscious effort of dedicated individuals and organizations.9,10 Web 2.0 provides a platform for the promotion of peace but it does not ensure that people will utilize it, or that they do so in a way that is nonviolent and leads to peace, democracy, or positive social transformation. The Internet can be used to organize violent terrorist activities, as well as to organize peace-focused, progressive political movements. What determines the difference in outcome is largely a result of differences in human inputs. Using a framework termed Technorganic Approaches to Peace, this chapter looks at ways that human agency can complement Web 2.0’s potential to transform modern society, and to create a more peaceful world.

TECHNORGANIC APPROACHES TO PEACE The Internet is a technological invention that has been said to mimic natural systems, particularly the brain.11 The study of neural networks was integral to the development of computers and the Internet.12 To be accurate,

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however, the Internet is not a true neural network because it remains incapable of synthesizing the information it possesses to solve problems. This task remains the domain and responsibility of human beings. The term Technorganic is used here to describe the melding of Internet technology with human agency to solve complex social problems. Contextually the term describes the ways in which humans can interface with Internet technology to promote peace, democracy, and social justice. Technorganic approaches to peace rest on the theory of biomimicry, defined as ‘‘the science and art of emulating Nature’s best biological ideas to solve human problems.’’13 In much the same way that healthy, natural ecosystems are a result of diverse species engaging in symbiotic activities that work together to create dynamic states of health and resiliency, human social systems can be made healthy through the promotion of diversity and, in particular, the application of diverse approaches to solving complex human problems. By creating synergies between Internet technology and various types of human online and real-world activities, peace advocates, organizers, and political activists can multiply the power of individual human efforts. What follows is a brief exploration of technorganic approaches to peace, a three-part model that includes: personal transformation through education and interaction, communicating in 3D, and solidarity through online organizing.

PERSONAL TRANSFORMATION THROUGH EDUCATION AND INTERACTION Personal transformation involves the transformation of the self so that one becomes more peaceful inwardly and in interpersonal interactions. Some say that peace cannot be achieved unless individuals transform themselves to become more peaceful, that peace cannot be achieved outwardly unless it is achieved first inwardly.14,15 The Internet can facilitate personal transformation through two broad pathways: facilitating transformational learning through information dissemination, and facilitating interactions between individuals that lead to healing and personal transformation for the individuals involved. The first pathway could be accomplished using Web 1.0, but the second pathway is greatly enhanced by the advent of Web 2.0’s social networking and interpersonal communications technologies. Both pathways depend, however, on the synergistic function of 3D communication and solidarity through online organizing, discussed in greater detail below. The dissemination of information capable of contributing to personal transformation requires organized efforts among scholars, nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, businesses, communities, and

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governments. Healing and transformational interpersonal interactions require that participants engage in nonviolent, or 3D, communication. Web 2.0 makes it much easier for individuals and institutions to collaborate and share information and, as social networks grow, users have increased opportunities for the kind of human interaction that can lead to transformative experiences.

COMMUNICATING IN 3D: DIALOGUE, DISCOURSE, AND DEBATE Communicating in 3D is a way of promoting peace from the bottom up through the use of nonviolent communication. The three patterns of communication included in 3D are: dialogue; discourse; and debate. Dialogue is defined as ‘‘a discussion between representatives of parties to a conflict that is aimed at resolution.’’16 Discourse is defined as ‘‘formal and orderly and usually extended expression of thought on a subject, [or] a verbal exchange of ideas,’’17 often taking place in academic settings and applying a critical analysis to specific concepts and paradigms. Debate is a verbal communication pattern that involves carefully structured conflict, or ‘‘a regulated discussion of a proposition between two matched sides.’’18 Dialogue is usually engaged in with the goal of furthering understanding among participants, whereas in discourse and debate there are increasing levels of conflict and the goal is often to convince others. As one moves from dialogue, to discourse, to debate, one encounters greater levels of conflict. Movements and online structures that promote education in 3D communication techniques require concerted effort that is best accomplished when individuals, groups, and institutions work together. Online organizing can contribute to creating movements and institutions prepared to engage in such educational activities. Additionally, individuals who have engaged in personal transformation work are better prepared to engage in nonviolent communication.

SOLIDARITY THROUGH ONLINE ORGANIZING The power of Web 2.0 technology provides a robust platform for the promotion of peace because of its power to assist coalition building and social justice activism through the enhanced sense of solidarity that arises from social networking. The Internet places the power of education, persuasion, and organizing in the hands of a wider segment of society than ever before in human history.19 This empowers millions of people across the globe to impact the world in extraordinary ways. Many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)

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have arisen and flourished as a result of the organizing power of the Internet. Individuals can be rallied to engage in letter-writing campaigns; to promote, attend, and participate in protests; to join in consumer boycotts; and to participate in various other acts of solidarity. Web 2.0 allows organizers of social justice movements to educate the public on the importance of key issues and to raise funds that help to further organizing activities in a more organic, selfassembling way. Political campaigns are able to draw together wider coalitions than with earlier Internet applications, in the process rewriting the rules of the game. Such online organizing benefits when individuals have done personal transformation work and are able to engage in nonviolent communication. These three technorganic approaches to peace work synergistically with Web 2.0 technology to promote peace by organizing, empowering, and activating vast social networks. When the technorganic model is integrated successfully with Web 2.0, all three approaches work interdependently to produce synergistic results. Just as Habermas’s public sphere could not have functioned properly without both the printed word and the gathering places, salons and coffee houses, The Internet fails to manifest its transformational potential if either component is missing. All of this requires, of course, intentional and well-informed action on the part of individuals and institutions.

ONLINE ORGANIZING The Internet has provided a platform for several interesting political and social justice movements to emerge in recent years. This section considers the effectiveness of several high-profile online movements, assessing how well they were able to utilize the power of Web 2.0 technology by implementing the three technorganic approaches to peace.

THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE The virtual space created by the Internet has been termed virtual public spheres20 in reference to Habermas’s theory concerning the role that previous, place-based public spheres played in the Enlightenment.21 In the 1970s feminist consciousness-raising groups worked to create spaces for women to connect and share the stories of their experiences that led them to realize that they shared common systemic challenges. Only this time the spheres were not public but private. This process played a critical role in helping women to realize that many of the struggles they faced in their daily lives were not isolated, nor were they simply personal failings, but rather these systemic struggles became recognized as patriarchy.22

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Modern feminists continue to utilize the technique of consciousness-raising but now place the practice into virtual public spheres. Sites such as Feministing and various public forums on popular social networking Web sites, such as Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook, among others, all serve as places of dialogue, discourse, and—more frequently—debate. The practice of nonviolent, 3D communication is sometimes absent from forums that are so large that they are difficult for moderators to police. However, many of these virtual public spheres provide a location in which critical discussions can take place and 3D communication could be implemented, but they do not all equally support the other two technorganic approaches to peace. According to Godin, what leads to cohesive groups, or tribes as he calls them, are shared vision, a set of tools, and opportunities to work together toward common goals.23 Unfortunately, creating opportunities for communicators to work together toward common goals is not often the main focus on many of these Web sites. They do, however, serve a vital function as virtual public spheres where opportunities for personal transformation exist, where awareness can be raised, and beliefs deepened, transformed, or discarded. CodePink is one very notable exception and provides a good example of an Internet-based movement that has successfully utilized technorganic approaches to Web 2.0 and mobilized followers to participate in direct democracy both in virtual space and on the streets. A communication analysis of CodePink Internet communications found that five main functions were accomplished: ‘‘the development of intrapublic consensus; improvements in group cohesion; the provision of a group medium for interaction; the mobilization of group action; and facilitation of broader access to the public sphere.’’24 CodePink’s successful accomplishment of these five functions is an example of what is possible when synergies between technorganic approaches to peace and Web 2.0 are achieved. The peaceful goals of CodePink, coupled with the provision of a virtual public sphere, serve to facilitate nonviolent communication that leads to consensus, group cohesion, and mobilization. The fact that CodePink is able to translate online communication and Web 2.0 networking tools into direct action often attracts media attention and thus reaches the consciousness of the general public and lawmakers. Had CodePink failed to capture these synergies, their consciousness-raising activities would have remained limited to group members and never have reached a wider audience.

THE ELECTION OF BARACK OBAMA The historic election of Barack Obama could not have happened without the skillful use of Web 2.0 applications. Lessons learned from Howard Dean’s

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2003 primary campaign contributed to the design of Obama’s successful Internet strategy, which included both the use of existing social networking sites and the creation of MyBarackObama.com, a Web 2.0 site that allowed the Obama campaign to quickly mobilize local campaign organizers, individual donors, and most importantly, voters. In addition, supporters were empowered by MyBarackObama.com to create their own campaign events, set their own fundraising goals, and quickly push information and fundraising requests out through their personal networks.25 They were able to meet other supporters in cyberspace and to share ideas for successful campaign events and information on local fundraisers and caucus planning meetings, and to create a sense of camaraderie that continued after the election.26 Web 2.0 also played a role in creating transformative experiences, especially surrounding the Reverend Wright debacle, during which Candidate Obama made his historic speech on race that was featured on YouTube and widely circulated among users of social networking sites, which led many people to engage in online discussions around race issues in their own lives.27 Because the overall tone of the Obama campaign was notably cool and and his rhetoric was designed to be constructive and dialogical more than critical or combative.28 By setting a calm, respectful tone, Obama helped guide his supporters to do the same. Obama supporters were encouraged to engage in respectful dialogues with friends, family, and with political opponents with this same spirit of respect and reconciliation.29 In these ways, the Obama campaign utilized Web 2.0 coupled with thoughtful, conscious intent to achieve the synergy of technorganic approaches to peace. By utilizing virtual public forums and creating new, networked opportunities for social activism and political engagement, the Obama campaign provided a best-case example of the marriage between Web 2.0 and technorganic approaches to peace. The number of young, progressive citizens pulled into the political process will continue to influence elections for years to come and the personal transformation, 3D communication, and online organizing skills acquired by Obama supporters as a result of their involvement with Obama’s Web 2.0 campaign will allow them to be effective organizers of future politcal action.

THE IRANIAN INTERNET REVOLUTION Protestors who gathered in Iran to challenge the results of the 2008 presidential elections engaged in the heavy use of social networking Web sites to organize protests and to disseminate information and images of the protests worldwide.30 The locations of protests spread through sites like

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Twitter and the streets of Iran soon filled with protesters, wearing green to show their solidarity in support of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the candidate challenging incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iranian government resorted to violence to quell the dissent and mainstream mass media outlets became dependent on online reports coming out of Iran as traditional journalists were forced to leave the country. Photos showing government violence were shown on a Facebook page dedicated to Mousavi, while a YouTube video of the death of 26-year-old philosophy student Neda Agha Sultan (who was not protesting but was nonetheless shot through the heart) made its way around the Internet and fostered worldwide empathy and support.31 The transformative impact of the widespread Web 2.0 reporting on the Iranian protests has served to transform the U.S. image of Iran and of the Iranian people. They have become human beings, struggling and dying in the streets to safeguard their democracy.32 Because of Web 2.0, they have done this before our very eyes. Whether the Iranian people had opportunities to become more personally peaceful or to learn nonviolent communication, it is clear that they have managed to utilize Web 2.0 applications to organize political movements. The fact that they have accomplished this much in a country where Internet access is so highly controlled, is an amazing feat in itself. It would be hard to imagine that the sense of solidarity and purpose created during the postelection unrest will soon fade.

CONCLUSION The Internet is arguably the most powerful technology humans have ever created. The ability of Web 2.0 to provide information and multi-directional communication channels among the masses of the world’s people is unparalleled. The ability of social networking to foster and assist social justice movements allows people to engage in acts of solidarity and direct democracy that have already made history and have the potential to change the course of the future. These capacities are ever-present in Web 2.0 technology, but their potential for creating peaceful, just, and democratic human societies must be fostered by the conscious intent of individuals and groups. Without human agency, grounded in peaceful, competent, and organized solidarity, the Internet’s capacity to promote peace is limited. Without a holistic, synergistic approach, the full potential of Web 2.0 remains to be manifested. Individual human beings must actively engage in personal transformation so that their capacity to engage in nonviolent problem solving is increased. People must also choose to engage in communication that

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is nonviolent and to join in movements that promote peace through social justice. All of these technorganic approaches to peace work together to achieve more than any of them would alone. In fact, they may all be essential elements of each other, just as we are all essential to each other—all a part of one shared solution that depends on the realization of our common humanity.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

Kreis, 2009. Habermas, 1991. National Archives, 2009. Hallin, 2008. Everet, 2009. Chomsky, 2002. Church, 2009. Newmark, 2008. Boyte, 2008. Rheingold, 2008. Stibel, 2008. Naughton, 2000. The Biomimicry Institute, 2009. Kraft, 1992. Toda Institute, 2008. Merriam Webster Dictionary, 2009. Ibid. Ibid. Rheingold, 2008. Langman, 2005. Habermas, 1991. Kennedy, 2007. Godin, 2008. Simone, 2004. Hill, 2009. Ambi, 2009. Ibid. Powell, 2008. Ambi, 2009. Scola, 2009. Kennedy, 2009. Boal, 2009.

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BUILDING THE PEACE BY EXAMPLES OF C I V I L C O U R A G E D U R I N G T H E WA R Svetlana Broz

When war broke out in Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, the only words spoken in conversations and read in newspapers in the capital, Belgrade, were words of the evil. The city where I had grown up, where I had completed my medical studies, and which I loved as a cosmopolitan and open city, had turned into a beehive in which each bee was building its own cell, carefully filling it with hatred. The worldwide coverage of the war was black-andwhite. Even my friends who did not follow the news participated in those unremittingly crude conversations and I found that many relationships faltered on the question about whose contribution to evil was greater. The hive was not full of honey, but hatred, blame, and evil. Refusing to believe that nothing human existed amid all the madness of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I searched for humanity behind the headlines. I started going to the war zones in January 1993, as a cardiologist, determined to help at least one human being denied normal medical care because of the war. While providing care for the people of all three ethno-national backgrounds (Catholic Croats, Muslim Bosnians and Eastern Orthodox Christian Serbs), I felt their need to open their souls and talk without being questioned The author expresses special thanks to Daniel Adamski for editorial assistance.

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about their roles in the war. From their short, spontaneous confessions in the cardiology ward, I understood their need for truth, which in places where grenades were actually falling, was surprisingly subtle and refined compared to Belgrade’s, and indeed the world’s much more simplistic, black-and-white depictions of the Bosnian war zone. I was told stories of people in Bosnia and Herzegovina who had the courage to stand up to crimes being committed against the innocent, even when they had no weapons to help them. These individuals served as genuine examples of the goodness, compassion, humanity and civil courage that continued to exist in these times of evil. They broke free from the identity of bystander, that person who chooses to look away, to ignore and to silently accept the suffering of others. Instead, these human beings provide compelling examples of what I call upstanders: people who stick to their moral convictions and norms and demonstrate great civil courage through their actions, even in a situation as horrific as the Bosnian war. My book, Good People in an Evil Time, is a collection of firsthand testimonies from people who survived the war: it illustrates the ways in which anonymous people were upstanders. Some people may dismiss these stories, believing that wartime examples of violent behavior reveal far more about human nature. I disagree. Because they hold up a mirror and require us to examine our own acts and behavior, we must pay careful attention to these narratives. They clearly demonstrate the possibility of choice. When shared, these stories can, therefore, encourage more people to stand up and speak up against evil, and to act in accordance with their moral principles. The hundreds of interviews I’ve conducted, and the tens of thousands of people with whom I have shared these stories of humanity, repeatedly confirm this. Indeed, I’ve found that imparting evidence of upstanders’ actions can have the very real and enduring effect of inspiring others to follow their example.

UPSTANDERS Learning about upstanders and their motivations is not an easy, prescribed recipe that allows others to simply follow their traces. What defines the upstander cannot, for example, be captured in just a few words. His or her reasons for acting righteously are often personal and will depend on the circumstances, and finding what motivations upstanders might have in common is a question, unfortunately not for a cardiologist, but for psychologists, to debate. But we do not need to pin down general, abstract motivations to understand the function of these stories. These stories stir us. They appeal to us. They reach out and make us, readers and listeners, contemplate our own values and actions.

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The upstander, thus, actively confronts the choice of whether to stand up against immorality and the degeneration of humanity, or keep quiet and accept things the way they are, as bystanders. The civil courage that characterizes the upstander is, in the words of Uwe Kitzinger, the courage of the rebel: it is the capacity to resist by thinking critically with one’s own mind and the will to take part in life, instead of being a silent observer. When so many other people chose to compromise their morals to survive, the upstander’s actions suggest that we must not allow ourselves to be debased by circumstance: it is exactly to retain our dignity that we must sometimes refuse to live life at any cost. Hannah Arendt said: ‘‘It is always possible to say YES or NO.’’ Upstanders are exactly those who want to make decisions about when to say ‘‘no’’ to evil. Based on the anecdotal evidence of goodness I collected, I have found that upstanders are not extraordinary people. In fact, they are very often ordinary individuals. And regardless of their differences in age, gender, literacy, religious affiliation, ethnic identity, or wartime roles, what they shared was the bravery to sacrifice their lives rather than commit or be complicit in a crime. I had the opportunity to ask dozens of those who showed their civil courage during the war what motivated them to behave as they did and why they didn’t follow the majority, who as bystanders either observed silently or participated actively in crimes. Their precise answers varied, but many spoke about the exemplary roles of their parents and forefathers and how they could not have acted differently, but only in accordance with their high moral norms. There is no predetermination that makes some upstanders and others not. It is a choice. It is the choice to refuse to live life at any cost. It is the choice to retain dignity and to value humanity when surrounded by evil. Unfortunately, however, too often we only learn about upstanders through the stories told by others. This truth is brought to life in a story that a factory director from Central Bosnia told me. Armed soldiers who were part of the Croatian Defense Council and men from paramilitary units took people, including me and my family, Muslim by nationality, from their apartments and houses and brought them to the elementary school that they had made over into a prison camp. After several days, they took 40 of the prisoners, including my wife, our five-year-old twin boys, and me and lined us up in a row. Then they brought over a civilian, a man who was Croatian like they were, but who was also my closest friend. They ordered him to choose a dozen of us from the lines and to decide how we would be killed. I was horrified—he knew all of us so well. Without a second thought he turned to the armed murderers and said, ‘‘You should be ashamed of yourselves! These people are innocent. Release them. Let them go home.’’ Then he

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turned to us and looking right into our eyes, said, ‘‘I’m so sorry. This is all I can do. I know they will kill me tonight. I wish all of you the best.’’ His soldiers dragged him off somewhere and took us back to the prison camp. My best friend was right. The criminal soldiers, his own people, killed him that night. We were luckier. After several months we were saved through an exchange of prisoners.

THE LEGACY OF THE UPSTANDER I believe that the notion of the upstander has universal value and as their incidence is universal, so, too, is their significance. Stories like these about real, often anonymous, people whose selfless acts have influenced so many, make people everywhere from all backgrounds aware that they too have choices in life, and it is just this awareness of choice that enables them to stand up for the good. For instance, a few years ago at a conference I attended, I heard Sami Adwan, a Palestinian psychologist, explain why he had chosen to dedicate his life to work for peaceful co-existence between Palestinians and Jews. As a young man he was held in an Israeli military prison. He suffered for three days with several other prisoners in a cell with no water because the commanding officer had ordered the soldiers guarding them not to give them any. On the fourth day, a soldier came into the cell, and after checking that none of his superiors was watching, he pulled out a canteen and gave it, without a word, to the prisoners. Several days later, the commanding officer beat Adwan for refusing to sign a document written in a language he didn’t understand. After several blows he could hear the voice of the soldier guarding the officer, asking, ‘‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself for hitting this man just because he wouldn’t sign something he couldn’t read? I would never sign if I were in his place.’’ A man who lost most of his family during the Rwandan genocide, who survived only because he was studying abroad at the time, testified about the mother of one of the murderers. Every morning for four months, while her son went off to kill members of the other tribe, she brought into her home the entire family of the witness’s aunt. The murderer’s mother fed them, looked after their needs, and hid them, knowing no one would look for members of the enemy tribe at her house. Every evening, when her son returned from his bloody work, she hid the family in the bush near her home, where they slept. That family is the only remnant of the student’s large clan thanks to this woman who found a way to oppose the actions of her own son. All wars, everywhere in the world, contain this often-forgotten category of people: brave souls who say ‘‘No’’ in the face of a totalitarian regime, to

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nationalist doctrine, to ethnic cleansing, to persecution. Examples of goodness that know no ethnic, religious, racial, or political bounds are important documentary material from the wars, and they also represent an axis around which it is possible to build a healthy future once the atrocities have halted. As such, they are of enormous social, cultural, and religious value. The effects of an upstander’s behavior can also extend well beyond a single heroic act and across geographical boundaries, as the people who benefit from such acts try to emulate them. And as these individuals tell their own stories, the effects grow.

EDUCATION TOWARD CIVIL COURAGE In the last three years, I have worked with more than 40,000 students from the Western Balkans who have heard me lecture on kindness, moral norms and civil courage. The process of listening and discussing, of engaging with these stories, seems to awake them from a deep sleep. They come to the lecture convinced that they cannot change anything, that they are not important as individuals, and that they are without influence over the societies in which they live. They feel completely on the margins of their worlds. They dream only about finishing their education and moving out of their country; according to statistics, 75 percent of the youth want to leave Bosnia and Herzegovina. But hearing about those who displayed kindness and civil courage, they suddenly wake up and want to become actively involved in the events around them. Loudly and clearly, they show that they are able to recognize negative authorities, and they often confront them. After one lecture, for example, students from Tuzla, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, were inspired to form a movement demanding the introduction of sex education into secondary schools—an important but neglected public health issue. They collected signatures and sent a petition to the conservative regional Minister of Education, announced their actions in the media, and were ready for demonstrations if their request was not met. The decision is pending. Throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, school directors who obstructed their students from attending my lecture on civil courage have been confronted afterward by these students, who demanded an explanation for this limitation of their freedom. Cases of corruption and even pedophilia in schools have been openly identified during public lectures at which media were present, thus finally bringing the problem into the public realm. And even in the very peaceful Swedish city of Gothenburg, whose citizens can hardly remember when they last had a war, the topic of civil courage became very important for one student from the University of Gothenburg.

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He sent me an e-mail in 2001 about an experience he had three days after hearing my lecture on civil courage: I was on the bus in Gothenburg (Sweden) and saw three enraged men physically abusing the bus driver who wanted them to leave the bus because they had lit cigarettes in their hands. He was covered in blood. I was turning to see the reactions of other passengers: all of them were looking out of the windows. I turned and looked through a window myself, but at that moment I saw your face and thought: what would you say if you could see me? What would all those who sacrificed their lives to protect someone who was unjustly persecuted do? So, I threw myself on those three attackers who broke my nose with the first blow, but I managed to enable the driver to call the police on his mobile phone.

This story demonstrates the young man’s courage, as it also shows the impact of good education about civil courage. I believe, given the determination of this youth, such education can induce a critical mass of responsible individuals to practice civil courage until they make the world a better, more peaceful place. By learning about examples of unselfish human kindness and of those who acted in accordance with their deepest moral norms, young people become aware of the possibility of choice in their own lives. They ask themselves whether they will remain bystanders or upstanders in the world around them.

DOCUMENTING THE GOOD Stories of goodness in the face of evil encourage tolerance. Because of their intrinsic moral value and because of their strong educational importance, they deserve to be archived and cherished. Documenting these personal narratives, in the form of books, in museums, and in other public spaces (which my NGO GARIWO is working on), offers important ethical resources for teachers and others to give both children and adults the chance to reflect on individual and group responsibility in the face of repressive regimes. Any place dedicated to civil courage can serve as a significant model for the implementation of restorative justice and the prevention of future conflicts. Stories of civil courage and kindness restore faith in humanity; they remind citizens that there are seeds of goodness in each of us, and that even if we have been unkind or unethical at one point, in the next moment we may find the strength to turn around. Goodness allows for the redemption of the individual and the collective self. It creates a sense of dignity and allows us to act from a more mature perspective. From this perspective peace can be achieved.

CHAPTER

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P E A C E C A N B E TAU G H T Colman McCarthy

As a journalist in Washington, D.C., since the mid-1960s, I’ve had lucky breaks landing interviews with some of the world’s enduring peacemakers. Among them were Desmond Tutu from South Africa, Mairead Corrigan from Belfast, Adolfo Perez Esquivel from Buenos Aires, Mother Teresa from Calcutta, and Muhammad Yunus from Bangladesh: all Nobel Peace Prize winners. There were also those who deserved Nobel Prizes: Sargent and Eunice Shriver, Dorothy Day, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, Joan Baez, Jeannette Rankin, Philip Hart, Mark Hatfield, Mubarak Awad, and a long list of others. And let’s include one of my heroes, Frank Kelly, a genuine peacemaker. Toward the end of the interviews, which is often when you get the most candid answers, I would ask a pair of basic questions: What is peace? And how can each of us increase it while decreasing violence? On the definitional question, agreement was reached. Peace is the result of love, and if love were easy we’d all be good at it. The second question almost always had the same answer: go where people are. All that’s happening is people and nations having conflicts—and solving them knowingly and morally with nonviolent force or unknowingly and immorally with violent force. No third way exists. I heeded the peacemakers’ advice: The sure place to find large numbers of people is in America’s 78,000 elementary schools, 32,000 high schools, and more than 4,000 universities, colleges, and community colleges. In the

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early 1980s, I went to a public high school near my office at the Washington Post to ask the principal if I could teach a course on alternatives to violence. Give it a try, she said: but there’s a problem, the school is poor and can’t afford to pay you. I didn’t come for money, I said. I’ll volunteer. That semester, 25 juniors and seniors at the School Without Walls enrolled in my course, ‘‘Alternatives to Violence.’’ It wasn’t difficult to teach. We started with the literature of peace, reading Gandhi, Tolstoy, Einstein, Thomas Merton, Jane Addams, Gene Sharp, A.J. Muste, Jesus, Francis, Amos, Isaiah, Buddha, Sojourner Truth, Addin Ballou, George Fox, Barbara Deming, Dorothy Day, John Woolman, and a long list of others. And that was on the first day! Then we really got into it! After rattling off those names, unfailingly and often bafflingly, a student would call out, ‘‘How’d you ever hear of all those people? How come we haven’t heard of them?’’ They hadn’t heard because they had gone to conventional schools where everything except peace is taught. To drive home the point, and drive it visually, I pulled out a $100 bill. I held it high and announced a spot quiz. Identify the following six people and you get the $100. Teenagers focus rather quickly when a try for easy money is offered. I began the quiz: Who is Robert E. Lee? Most hands rose. Then Ulysses S. Grant. Most hands again. The same for Paul Revere. By now, capitalistic fantasies of an afterschool spending spree were rising. Just three to go for the $100, I said. Who is Emily Balch? No hands go up. Who is Jeannette Rankin? Blanks on that one. Who is Ginetta Sagan. Silence. I’ve given the $100-bill quiz before hundreds of high school and college audiences. I’ve done it before large audiences of teachers. No one has ever won the $100. I never worry about losing it. I can always count on American education and how it ensures that the young are well-informed about militarists who break the peace and ill-informed on those who make the peace. The course went well that first year. Teaching peace was as easy as breathing. I went to another school, Bethesda-Chevy Chase High in suburban Washington, and then to Wilson High in the District of Columbia, again volunteering. Within a few years I found the time and energy to teach peace courses at Georgetown University Law Center, American University, the University of Maryland, and the Washington Center for Internships. Since 1982, I’ve had more than 7,000 students in my classes. Since leaving The Post in 1997, I teach at seven schools in the fall, six in the spring, and two in the summer. That first school, by the way, was perhaps the poorest in America: it had no cafeteria, no gym, no auditorium, no athletic fields, no lockers, poor heating,

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and in recent years no clean drinking water. Something else was noteworthy: the poorest school in America was also the closest school to the White House. Five blocks away. We keep inviting presidents to come by. None has. George W. Bush was especially busy, traveling the land giving speeches on school reform, as in Leave No Child Untested. My students don’t feel slighted. They aren’t into big shots. They favor long shots, because they know that’s what they are. So they work twice as hard to make it in life. Peace education is in its infancy. In 1970, only one American college was offering a degree in Peace Studies: Manchester College, a Church of the Brethren school in Indiana. More than 70 colleges and universities currently offer undergraduate and graduate degrees in conflict resolution, with more than 300 offering minors and concentrations. Although the message is getting through that unless we teach our children peace someone else will teach them violence, no one should be deluded. The day is far away when the teaching of peace is given the academic attention that goes to conventional subjects. My high school students will graduate with only that one course in peace studies. Counting elementary school, they will have been in classrooms for 12 years. Would we ever let students go through 12 years of school with only one math course? Or only one science course? And yet, we keep telling the young that nothing is more important than peace. It’s natural for them to be disbelieving, otherwise school boards would see that the study of peace was given as primary a place in the curriculum as any other essential subject. Even muscling one course into one school takes some extraordinary flexing. A while back I was invited by a school board to speak about peace education. After 20 minutes, I thought I was making progress. Board members listened politely and asked relevant questions. My goal was to move the board to get one peace studies class into each of the county’s 22 high schools. Just one course. One period a day. An elective for seniors. Nothing grandiose. I was already a volunteer peace teacher at one of the county’s high schools, so I wasn’t whizzing in as a theorist with a lofty idea who lets someone else do the work. At the end of my talk, a board member confessed to having a problem. Peace studies, he said. Is there another phrase? The word studies was okay, but peace? It might raise concerns in the community. I envisioned a newspaper headline: ‘‘Peace Studies Proposal Threatens Stability in the County,’’ with a sub-head, ‘‘School Board Nixes Bizarre Proposal.’’ And this was in an allegedly liberal bluer than blue county. Unable to rouse the school board, I tried the school system’s curriculum office. It was an end-run, and there’s always an end to run around if you look hard enough. I had edited a textbook, ‘‘Solutions to Violence,’’ a

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16-chapter collection of 90 essays that ranged from Gene Sharp’s ‘‘The Technique of Nonviolent Action’’ to Dorothy Day’s ‘‘Love Is the Measure.’’ After some half-dozen meetings with assorted bureaucrats, papercrats, and educrats, as well as meetings with principals and social studies teachers at several high schools, I began to realize that public schools are government schools. Teachers are government workers. Caution prevails. It took six years to get the book approved. I’d already been using it in my own course all that time, slipping it in like contraband. Fittingly, I’d start each semester by reading and discussing Thoreau’s essay ‘‘On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.’’ Dutiful me. Whether in the high school, college, or law school classes, students would usually divide into two groups. One would bond intellectually, and often quickly, with Gandhi’s belief that ‘‘nonviolence is the weapon of the strong’’ and agree with Hannah Arendt that ‘‘violence, like all action, changes the world but the most probable change is to a more violent world.’’ Another group came in loaded with doubts, which I encouraged them to express. Nonviolence and pacifism are beautiful theories, they said, but in the real world there are muggers on the streets and international despots on the prowl. So let’s keep our fists cocked and our bomb bays opened. All I asked of the skeptics was that they think about this: do you depend on violent force or nonviolent force to create peace not merely peace in some vague ‘‘out there,’’ but, first off, in our homes. I had a student pull me aside on leaving class after we’d spent a week on Gandhi’s essay ‘‘The Doctrine of the Sword.’’ It’s good to learn about that, she said, but what about the war zone in her home, where her mother and father regularly battle each other emotionally, verbally, and often physically. How do we stop that war? It’s a valid question. Perhaps if her parents had gone to schools where nonviolent conflict resolution skills and methods were systematically taught, the living room wars might never have erupted. The leading cause of physical injury to American women is being beaten by a man they are living with—husband or boyfriend, ex-husband or ex-boyfriend. The emotional violence between couples can only be imagined. I’m convinced much of it could be prevented if our schools taught the basic skills of mediation and nonviolent conflict resolution. It’s easier to build a peaceful child than to repair a violent adult. Peace teachers have no illusions that exposing students to the literature of peace and the methods of nonviolence will cause governments to start stockpiling plowshares, not swords, or that the young will instantly convert to Franciscan pacifism. But what isn’t illusory is that effectively organized nonviolent force is far more powerful than the gun or bomb.

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Where has it worked? In only the past quarter-century, at least six brutal regimes have been overthrown by people who had no weapons of steel but only what Einstein called ‘‘weapons of the spirit.’’ On February 26, 1986, a frightened Ferdinand Marcos, once a ruthless and U.S.-supported ruler of the Philippines but now just another powerless rogue, fled to exile in Hawaii. As staged by nuns, students, and human rights workers—many of them trained in Boston by Gene Sharp—a three-year nonviolent revolt brought him down. On October 5, 1988, Chile’s despot and another U.S. favorite, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, was driven from office after five years of strikes, boycotts, and other forms of nonviolent resistance. A Chilean organizer who led the demand for free elections said, ‘‘We didn’t protest with arms. That gave us more power.’’ On August 24, 1989, in Poland, the Soviet puppet regime of Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski fell. On that day it peacefully ceded power to a coalition government created by the Solidarity labor union that for a decade used nonviolent strategies to overthrow the communist dictator. Few resisters were killed in the nine-year struggle. The example of Poland’s successful nonviolence spread, with the Soviet Union’s collapse coming soon after. It wasn’t oratory by Ronald Reagan or the Pope that first stoked the end of the Cold War. It was the heroic deeds of Lech Walesa and the nonviolent Poles he and others organized. They didn’t bring the Soviets to their knees, they brought them to their senses. On May 10, 1994, former prisoner Nelson Mandela became the president of South Africa. It was not armed combat that ended white supremacy. It was the moral force of organized nonviolent resistance that made it impossible for the racist government to control the justice-demanding population. On April 1, 2001, in Yugoslavia, Serbian police arrested Slobodan Milosevic for his crimes while in office. In the two years that a student-led protest rallied citizens to defy the dictator, not one resister was killed by the government. The tyrant was put on trial in The Hague, but died before a verdict was reached. On November 23, 2003, the bloodless ‘‘revolution of roses’’ toppled Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze. Unlike during the country’s civil war that marked the power struggles in the 1990s, no deaths or injuries occurred when tens of thousands of Georgians took to the streets of Tbilisi in the final surge to oust the government. In the mid-1980s, who would have thought this possible? Yet it happened. Ruthless regimes, backed by torture chambers, were driven from power by citizens who had no guns, tanks, bombs, or armies. They had a

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superior arsenal: the moral power of justice, the strength of will, and the toughness of patience. Yet we still see these victories as flukes. Theodore Roszak explains: ‘‘The usual pattern seems to be that people give nonviolence two weeks to solve their problems and then decide it has ‘failed.’ Then they go on with violence for the next hundred years and it seems never to fail or be rejected.’’ During these years of nonviolent successes, the failures of violence were rampant. The United States government, which Martin Luther King Jr., in his prophetic sermon on April 4, 1967, in Riverside Church in New York City, called the ‘‘world’s greatest purveyor of violence,’’ prowled the world trying to heal it with bullets and bullying. The pattern of dominance and intervention was set after World War II. As compiled by historian William Blum, these are the countries—and men, women, and children living in them—that American pilots have bombed since 1945: China (1945 to 1946), Korea (1950 to 1953), China (1950 to 1953), Guatemala (1954), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959 to 1960), Guatemala (1960), Congo (1964), Peru (1965), Laos (1964 to 1973), Vietnam (1961 to 1974), Cambodia (1969 to 1970), Guatemala (1967 to 1969), Libya (1986), Grenada (1983), El Salvador (1980s), Nicaragua (1980s), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991 to 2008), Sudan (1998), Afghanistan (1998 to 2008), and Yugoslavia (1999). After discussing that list in my peace classes, I give the students a multiple choice quiz. In how many of those countries did a democratic government, respectful of human rights, occur as a direct result of the U.S. killing spree? Choose one: (a) none, (b) zero, (c) not a one, (d) naught, (e) a whole number between -1 and +1. No one has ever flunked the quiz! Pick a, b, c, d, or e and it’s a guaranteed A! That’s one way to give a lesson on the failures of violent conflict resolution. Another is to read the essay by Daniel Berrigan from his autobiography To Dwell in Peace:1 Blood and iron, nukes, and rifles. The leftists kill the rightists, the rightists kill the leftists, both, given time and occasion, kill the children, the aged, the ill, the suspects. Given time and occasion, both torture prisoners. Always, you understand, inadvertently, regretfully. Both sides, moreover, have excellent intentions, and call on God to witness them. And some god or other does witness them, if we can take the word of whatever bewitched church. And of course, nothing changes. Nothing changes in Beirut, in Belfast, or in Galilee, as I have seen. Except that the living die. And that old, revered distinction between combatant and noncombatant, which was supposed to protect the innocent and helpless, goes down the nearest drain, along with the indistinguishable blood of any and all.

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Alas, I have never seen anyone morally improved by killing—neither the one who aimed the bullet, nor the one who received it in his or her flesh.

A crucial part of peace education is to combine ideas with action. Conventional teachers, either through inertia or fear of not producing students who score well on the latest exam dreamed up by testocrats, keep pumping theories into the minds of students. The result? People who are theory-rich but experience-poor. They are unbalanced ones, and too often, grade mongers who have forgotten Walker Percy’s line, ‘‘that you can make all A’s in school and go out and flunk life.’’ One solution is service learning, the growing movement to move students out of classrooms and into the scenes of poverty and despair. I’ve taken my high school, college, and law classes into prisons, impoverished schools, shelters, and soup kitchens—sometimes to be of real service, other times merely to see, smell, and feel what it’s like to be broke and broken. Those are the places to understand the truth of Sargent Shriver’s call:2 ‘‘The cure is care. Caring for others is the practice of peace. Caring becomes as important as curing. Caring produces the cure, not the reverse. Caring about nuclear war and its victims is the beginning of a cure for our obsession with war. Peace does not come through strength. Quite the opposite. Strength comes through peace.’’ I took my Georgetown law students recently to a women’s shelter, about a mile from the school but economically a universe away. Some Carmelite nuns, skilled in the works of mercy and rescue, serve about 40 homeless women. I take my classes there often to see a sermon, rather than hear a sermon. When we arrived late one afternoon, we went to the dining room where the women were hunched over their soup and saltines. The class looked on in wonder. Who are these women? How did they fall to the streets? The law students, some quicker than others, got the picture. These are people outside the law. These are people for whom the law represents only one thing: the failure of love. While speaking with one of the Carmelite nuns, I said that I’d like to help out: I’ll go back to my neighborhood to collect some food and clothing for the homeless women, and bring it in next Saturday. ‘‘Oh, how wonderful,’’ said the nun. ‘‘I can’t tell you how deeply touched I am. I love it when you NPR and C-SPAN liberals come around with your Volvos filled up with food and clothing. It moves my heart. It’s indescribable.’’ The good nun, I fear, had a cynical side, which occasionally flared. It was the beginning of Lent, so she was probably doing penance by eating lemons for dinner that put her in a foul mood right about then. But she recovered: ‘‘If you’d really like to help, just go talk to that lady in the corner.’’ She pointed

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to a bedraggled, wrinkled-skinned woman, sitting alone. She had the misery of the Earth in her sunken eyes. ‘‘Just talk to her?’’ I asked. ‘‘That’s all?’’ ‘‘Yes,’’ the nun said. ‘‘You’ll be doing plenty. We are doing fine with food and clothing but we don’t have enough people who will just come in and talk with the women. The hardest thing about street life, especially for women, is the loneliness.’’ Many of the law students sat with the women that day, just to talk. Many went back on their own for regular visits, to learn these were human beings, not bag ladies. When I catch up with my law students 5, 10, or 20 years later, I ask them what they remember from my class. I expect they’ll tell me about that brain-stretching day when we all discussed the nuances of the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments. For some reason, they forget that. Instead, they talk about the time we went to the homeless shelter. It woke them up and shook them up. Many went into poverty law, or public interest law, or welfare reform law, or lady-in-the-corner law. The lesson that day goes to the core of peacemaking, as told to me once by Mother Teresa: ‘‘Few of us will . . . [ever] be called on to great things, but all of us can do small things in a great way.’’ I work with a girls’ boarding school that is blessed with an enlightened headmistress who cancels classes every Wednesday and sends her students into Washington for internships. This is experiential, not theoretical, learning, not to be flushed away after the last exam. For the past few years, I have had two or three girls from the Madeira School help teach my classes in one of my public high schools—Wilson High which has six police stationed in the halls, each officer carrying a high-powered weapon and wearing a bullet-proof vest. High school administrators tend to see nonclassroom learning as unproductive. Keep teenagers, especially seniors and juniors who need to be prepped for college, cooped in sterile idea-driven classrooms, especially the advanced placement classrooms that will secure them room and board in Ivy League colleges. Too often we process students as if they were slabs of cheese—enrolled in Velveeta High, on their way to Cheddar University and Mozzarella graduate school. Serving food to homeless people, tutoring illiterate prisoners, or mentoring a Special Olympics athlete is useful but it can remain idle charity unless twinned with an awareness of politics. At a basic level, and well away from party platforms, focus groups, and candidates’ promises, politics is about one reality: who decides where the money goes. Which policy decisions keep more money flowing to military contractors to build weapons and less to building contractors to build affordable housing for the working poor? Which politicians sanction packing our prisons with people who are drug

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addicted or mentally ill and who need to be treated, not punished? Which lobbies allow tax laws to be written so loopholes get widened for corporations, while rules for home foreclosures get tightened? Which policies allow the Peace Corps and Americorps budgets to languish and let the military budget flourish? Which politicians allowed military spending to rise more than 60 percent since 2001, while every day in the Third World more than 35,000 people die from hunger or preventable diseases? Why does all that keep happening? Finding answers is the tough part of peace education, learning the connections between the inequities and the structural violence behind them. A full semester, not a few days in a peace class, could be devoted to the politics of money. The current military budget, according to the Center for Defense Information, a Washington nonprofit staffed mostly by former military officers and Pentagon workers, is $878 billion. Unless you are an astronomer, the number is too large to grasp. Breaking it down, the spending comes to about $2.5 billion a day—a sum that is 10 times more than the Peace Corps budget for a full year. $2.5 billion is still ungraspable. It totes to $28,000 a second. $28,000 . . . $28,000 . . . The seconds tick . . . $28,000 . . . $28,000. Even that number can remain abstract. It’s the government’s money, we think, forgetting from whom the government collects it. Depending on your tax brackets, an American family can pay $5,000, $10,000, or often more, in annual federal taxes that is directed by Congress to the military. Martin Luther King Jr., in that same Riverside Church sermon, saw it clearly: ‘‘A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.’’ Every year some 10,000 citizens break free and refuse to pay federal taxes that go to war. They are not tax cheats or tax evaders. They are acting out of conscience, a kind based on the idea that if killing people is not the way to solve conflicts then so also is paying soldiers to do the killing. Conscientious tax refusers are more than willing to pay their full share for any federal program, except ones that sanction killing in the name of national security. No conscientious tax refuser has ever taken a case to the Supreme Court and won. It’s rare that a case gets past a lower court. The reason? Nowhere in the Constitution can the word conscience be found. It’s not there, even though you’d think Jefferson or Madison might have slipped in it when the Founders were nodding off after a long day. After 9/11 peace teachers found ourselves challenged by students who asked, foremost, how should we have responded? Congress had three options—military, political, and moral—to resolve the conflict. Predictably, the military prevailed. Got a problem? An enemy? Go

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bomb somebody. The House and Senate both approved bombing the people of Afghanistan, presumably to wipe out the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Out of 535 members of Congress, only one voted no: Barbara Lee of Oakland, California. Her stand brought to mind Jeannette Rankin. On December 8, 1941, the Montanan was the only member of Congress to oppose U.S. entry into World War II, saying as she did in 1917 when voting against entering World War I: ‘‘You can no more win a war than win an earthquake.’’ The political solution was to follow our own nonviolent conflict resolution advice, as when we tell Israelis and Palestinians, or Shiites and Sunnis, or factions in Kenya, or differing sides anywhere: talk, compromise, negotiate, reconcile, and stop killing each other. Sound advice, so why didn’t we follow it ourselves and talk to Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein? Such a notion is dismissed as surreal or hideously na€ve: you can’t talk to evil doers, especially satanic ones like bin Laden. That was the U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War when the evildoing Chinese Communist government was demonized for its plans of world conquest. But then Richard Nixon went to China. He talked, compromised, negotiated, and reconciled. Today China is not only a major trading partner with the United States but is loaning money to us. Ronald Reagan, who in 1986 called the Soviet Union ‘‘the evil empire,’’ went to Moscow soon after. He talked, compromised, negotiated, and reconciled. Russia is no longer an enemy. Putting aside for a moment their regressive record on other issues, two Republican presidents did indeed provide a model for nonviolent conflict resolution. A moral solution could have come three days after 9/11 when President Bush, his war council, and members of Congress assembled in the National Cathedral in Washington. Not a pew was empty. Assorted reverends, including Billy Graham and a Catholic cardinal, took to the pulpit to offer prayerful succor to a president who believes that ‘‘Our nation is chosen by God and commissioned by history to be a model for the world.’’ At the service’s end, the Lord’s Prayer was recited, including the most ignored words in history: ‘‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.’’ Three days before, some people did trespass. Were they forgiven? It was the opposite: let’s go kill. The moral solution would have moved us to forgive those behind 9/11, and then ask them to forgive America its long history of invasions that have been far more systematic and violent than the September one-day crime spree. Had Desmond Tutu been invited to speak that day, he might have suggested—as he did five months later in a sermon at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Boston—that violent solutions to conflicts are doomed: ‘‘The war against

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terrorism will not be won as long as there are people desperate with disease and living in poverty and squalor. Sharing our prosperity is the best weapon against terrorism.’’3 Much the same thinking has been long advanced by the War Resisters League: ‘‘We shall live in a state of fear and terror, or we shall move toward a future in which we seek peaceful alternatives to conflict and a more just distribution of the world’s resources.’’ In 1985, my wife and I founded the Center for Teaching Peace. Supported by foundation grants and a growing membership, our work is to persuade and assist schools at all levels either to begin or expand academic-based programs in peace education. If you want to give peace a chance, first give it a place in the curriculum. Progress is happening. At one East Coast high school that uses our textbooks, all juniors are required to take a peace studies course. This was once a Catholic military school. In Philadelphia, a publicly funded peace school opened its doors two years ago. ‘‘In a city in which too many of our young people and families feel threatened by violence, it’s time to study and practice peace,’’ a school official told the Philadelphia Inquirer. In Davis, California, the three-year-old Teach Peace Foundation is getting traction. I heard recently from an English teacher at Niles West High School, in Skokie, Illinois: ‘‘I’m writing to let you know that our district, somewhat miraculously, approved a peace studies course . . . I ordered your two collections of peace essays several years ago, and you wrote back an encouraging letter. It took a long time to get a course started here, with many institutional hoops to go through. Two other teachers and I put a proposal together, which was at first rejected. It was too ‘social studies’ oriented. We are all, incidentally, English teachers. Our second proposal, titled ‘The Literature of Peace,’ was accepted by the school board. This was the miraculous part.’’ One of my former Georgetown Law students resigned from the Washington, D.C., bar five years ago to become a high school peace teacher. For several years, Leah Wells, a Georgetown University graduate, was my teaching assistant in two Washington schools and a prison. Then she went to the big leagues, joining the staff here at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. She also taught peace courses at a Ventura high school and then put together a widely used 70-page teachers manual. Leah is now going for her doctorate in peace education. I’m proud, too, that my three grown children are involved in social justice work. My son John teaches a peace studies course at Wilson High School, from which he graduated. Over the years, I’ve visited hundreds of schools to lecture on peace education, pacifism, and nonviolence. I can report that the hunger to find

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alternatives to violence is strong and waiting to be satisfied. If members of the peace community don’t make it happen, who will? There’s an old Irish saying: The trouble with a good idea is that it soon degenerates into hard work (and it usually is). So let’s all become degenerates and get going.

NOTES 1. Berrigan, 1988. 2. McCarthy, 2001. 3. McCarthy, 2010.

CHAPTER

13

W H E N V I O L E N C E ‘ ‘ WO R K S ’ ’ F O R 30 Y E A R S : T H E L AT E R E T U R N O F S AT YA G R A H A T O T H E N O R T H E R N IRISH PEACE PROCESS Marcel M. Baumann

NORTHERN IRELAND AS A GLOBAL FASCINATION No doubt about it: Too much has been written about the Northern Ireland conflict. There are hundreds and thousands of books, articles, and papers— almost too many to read in a lifetime. The big contradiction of the Northern Ireland conflict, however, is that Northern Ireland is not only one of the most researched conflicts in the whole world, but it is also one of the most misunderstood. This misunderstanding can be described as ‘‘peace through demonization’’:1 international opinion is dominated by the ‘‘Republican interpretation’’ of the Northern Ireland conflict. If we would believe all the reports of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and countless other groups, those ‘‘guilty’’ and responsible for the Northern Ireland conflict seem undisputed: namely, the Protestant community, the British government, and the Protestant paramilitary organization, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA). Whereas the UVF and the UDA are characterized as ‘‘death squads’’ and even compared with fascist movements, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) is ‘‘understood’’ and characterized as a ‘‘movement.’’

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What is usually ignored is the fact that the IRA—the self-styled ‘‘defense force’’ of the Catholic community—has murdered more Catholics than the police and the British army taken together.2 Sadly, this analytical ignorance and political bias can also be found within ‘‘scholarly’’ work. I therefore do not intend to add to the quantity of research on Northern Ireland which shows ‘‘understanding’’ and ‘‘sympathy’’ with the IRA—and with their political arm called ‘‘Sinn Fein’’—as well as with the Catholic community at the expense of any understanding for the Protestant perspective. Rather, I want to focus on the dynamics of nonviolence, the violent responses, and the causes of the outbreak of the so-called ‘‘Troubles’’ in 1968. In this chapter I want to examine the specific scenarios leading to the outbreak of the civil war in Northern Ireland. I will argue that these scenarios are indeed comparable to other cases. I will, thus, try to elaborate on some similarities to South Africa. After analyzing the outbreak of the ‘‘Troubles’’—and the disappearance of Satyagraha for 30 years—I will explain how it was possible for Satyagraha to ‘‘return’’ to Northern Ireland. This was made possible through the hunger strikes of republican prisoners in 1980 and 1981. For the analysis of the dynamics and effects of nonviolence and violence the distinction by Michael Nagler between works versus ‘‘works’’ becomes important: Nonviolence sometimes ‘‘works’’ and always works while violence sometimes ‘‘works’’ but never works.3

Thus, the specific circumstances in which violence seemed to work and, in fact, ‘‘worked’’ because a civil war raged for 30 years, need to be analyzed. But, the analysis becomes complicated by the fact that, at the same time, nonviolence worked, too; that is, it succeeded in creating the conditions for a process of peaceful conflict resolution.

THE END OF SATYAGRAHA: THE WAY TOWARD ‘‘BLOODY SUNDAY’’ AND THE REVIVAL OF THE IRA

The Paradox of Repression The specific effects of violence on the consciousness, thinking, or ideology of groups or communities can be explained by the concept of the ‘‘paradox of repression.’’ This concept goes back to Smithey and Kurtz;4 it states that in ethno-political conflicts with an asymmetrical structure, in which the state or regime is ‘‘threatened’’ by non-state groups, overt and repressive violent actions by the state against the non-state groups creates a counterproductive

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effect: Acts of violence don’t weaken or destroy the non-state groups but strengthen them. They become more committed to their cause in the wake of violent repression. However, even more relevant than the impact on the non-state groups is the impact repressive state violence has on the wider public, namely on those people who are not yet supporters of the non-state movement. In an ideal situation, the ‘‘undecided’’ sections of society are deeply impressed by watching the state employing overt acts of repression against the non-state groups, which are ‘‘civilians’’ in most cases. Thus, the ‘‘undecided’’ feel more and more compelled to show sympathy or solidarity for the ‘‘oppressed’’ non-state group. As a final result, repressive violence by the state neither ‘‘works’’ nor works in those situations. ‘‘Paradoxically, the more the regime applies force, the more citizens and third parties are likely to become disaffected, sometimes to such an extreme that the regime disintegrates from internal dissent.’’5

For these effects to happen, there must be an asymmetrical structure of conflict, that is, an imbalance of force and power between the state and the nonstate movement. This imbalance must be clearly visible for the undecided public to increase their sympathy and solidarity.6 From an analytical perspective it is essential to note that the positive effect of the paradox of repression is not automatic.7 According to Sharp, similar effects can occur if the non-state groups don’t use nonviolent tactics, but violence. Therefore, the paradox of repression can also lead to a strengthening of the violent non-state groups. In addition, it can destabilize an existent nonviolent movement and strengthen those groups advocating violent resistance. And this is what happened as a result of measures like Internment in Northern Ireland where the repression culminated in the peak violent experience of ‘‘Bloody Sunday’’—the same was the case in the South African example of ‘‘Sharpeville’’: overt state repression led to the end of nonviolence against the state or regime.

NV + V = V The equation NV + V = V was coined by Michael Nagler. It tries to explain the dynamics of escalation leading to the transformation of a nonviolent movement into a ‘‘campaign of violence’’: If violence (V) occurs in the context of an overall nonviolent protest (NV), the protest as a whole ends up being perceived as a purely violent conflict. Within the process of violent escalation even a low level of violence may be enough to sabotage the nonviolent movement and transform it into a campaign of violence or ‘‘armed

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resistance.’’ If the input of violence (the variable V) is of a massive scale, the ‘‘sabotage effect’’ is that much greater. These effects can be observed if mass violence occurs—what we might call ‘‘man-made disasters.’’ Therefore, the equation NV + V = V can be applied as a methodological tool for the following thesis: Mass-scale events of violence have the potential to unleash a ‘‘smoldering’’ or ‘‘sleeping’’ conflict. They usually become crucial turning points, decisive for the outbreak of war. In the words of Friedrich Glasl, we can say that the equation NV + V = V marks the highest level of escalation that he called ‘‘together into the abyss.’’8 At this highest level of escalation, destructive processes assume a purely negative dynamic: The mutual perceptions of the conflicting parties have hardened, stereotypical views of the ‘‘other’’ dominate, and ‘‘win-lose’’ attitudes evolve.9 The Northern Irish conflict erupted violently on October 5, 1968, in Londonderry, when the first violent incidents between the police and demonstrators occurred. Prior to this outbreak of violence the human rights movement Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) had articulated its demand for equal rights for the Catholic community through nonviolent protests and adopted a moderate political ideology. Since the 1950s the Catholic community became more inclined to accept the principle of equality within Northern Ireland than to focus exclusively on the goal of a united Ireland.10 Thus, the core demands of NICRA were liberal reforms, such as the abolition of discrimination in the allocation of jobs and houses, emergency legislation, and electoral abuses.11 NICRA’s main message was framed as a human rights agenda: it was not about a territorial change for Northern Ireland, that is, to achieve a united Ireland by force, but it was about equal human rights for the Catholic minority within the existing boundaries of the Northern Irish state. Since the partition of the island in 1921, Northern Ireland was ruled by a regional government in which the pro-British Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) governed with an absolute majority until the suspension of the local government in 1972, which means that the Catholic minority was systematically discriminated for almost five decades. But it took until the 1960s for an evolving Catholic middle class to establish a civil rights movement under the leadership of NICRA. The prevailing mood of the Catholic community in the 1960s was most accurately described by David Trimble in his Nobel Peace Prize-winning lecture in 1998: ‘‘Ulster Unionists, fearful of being isolated on the island, built a solid house, but it was a cold house for Catholics.’’12 But in the 1960s Trimble and his party did not have any understanding of or empathy with the Catholic minority’s situation.13 Even more, no Unionist politician would have acknowledged that the Unionist majority rule was indeed a cold house for Catholics.14 Nor did the Unionist establishment recognize how serious the whole situation was, that is, the potential of a long-lasting civil war.

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Even by March 1972 Brian Faulkner, the last prime minister of Northern Ireland, still believed that ‘‘the whole spook’’ of the IRA could be over in just a few weeks.15 In stark contrast to the repentance expressed by Trimble, Faulkner denied that any discrimination against Catholics existed: Never, never during the 50-year-rule of the Protestant government, and this I want to emphasize quite clearly, has the Catholic minority been subject to discrimination.16 This ignorance toward the legitimate demands of NICRA was accompanied by a hostile reaction of the state toward the civil rights movement because it was perceived as a forefront of the IRA. This argument was repeated by William Craig in a documentary by the famous British journalist Peter Taylor.17 Since it was inspired by similar events in the United States and elsewhere, the ‘‘Protestant state’’ saw the civil rights movement as part of a worldwide, communist-led conspiracy.18 Put simply, NICRA was a threat to the existence of Northern Ireland.19 In this crisis situation of the late 1960s, the British government did not relax the tensions, but made some serious mistakes that further escalated the situation. Harold Wilson’s government was under severe pressure because of domestic issues and, therefore, not only showed almost no interest in Northern Ireland,20 but reacted in a very short-sighted manner because after the deployment of the British Army on August 14, 1969, the British government and the Northern Ireland Assembly thought that the soldiers would have to stay just for two weeks.21 However, the British troops stayed for the next 38 years and only left Northern Ireland in 2007. Equally short-sighted was the assessment that the problems in Northern Ireland could be solved very quickly by large-scale military repression. These misconceptions led to the launching of ‘‘Internment’’ (also called ‘‘Operation Demetrius’’) in Republican and Loyalist areas of Belfast and Londonderry on August 9, 1971. In this operation people were arrested and detained without trial because they were suspected of being members of illegal armed groups.22 Internment caused massive outbreaks of violence in all Republican areas. After the first two days of Internment, 17 persons had died in the disturbances, among them 10 Catholics killed by the British Army. Finally, Internment ended on December 5, 1975. During the whole period a total of almost 2,000 persons had been detained without trial. The mass protest against Internment organized by NICRA to take place in Londonderry on October 5, 1968, would become the ‘‘historic trigger’’ that started the violent phase of the Northern Ireland conflict. For fear of violent actions and reactions, the then Northern Irish Home Secretary, William Craig, banned parts of the route of the march: within the city walls and within the so-called ‘‘Waterside’’ residential area that was predominantly inhabited by Protestants.23 To enforce Craig’s decision, the police built barriers

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and sealed off the banned route. This made the confrontation of the marchers with police forces almost unavoidable. When the march was prevented from proceeding at the police barriers, street battles between protesters and police broke out. Seventy civilians and 11 policemen were wounded in the escalating street battles. After these incidents, violence quickly spread to other areas of Londonderry and continued well into the night. The ‘‘troubles’’ had erupted.

‘‘THIS IS OUR SHARPEVILLE’’: ‘‘BLOODY SUNDAY’’ AND THE END OF SATYAGRAHA IN NORTHERN IRELAND This afternoon 27 people were shot in this city. 13 of them lay dead. They were innocent, we were there. This is our Sharpeville. A moment of truth and a moment of shame. And I just want to say this to the British government: You know what you have just done, don’t you? You have destroyed the civil rights movement and you have given the IRA its biggest victory it will ever have. All over this city tonight, young men, boys will be joining the IRA.24

This statement was made by Ivan Cooper, who was one of the leaders of NICRA and also a member of the British House of Commons. Cooper’s reference to ‘‘Sharpeville’’ exemplifies the comparable nature of ‘‘man-made disasters.’’ On March 21, 1960, at least 180 Black South Africans were injured and 69 killed when South African police opened fire on a peaceful demonstration by school children who were protesting against the apartheid pass laws in the township of Sharpeville, in the province of Transvaal. Similar to Bloody Sunday the events of Sharpeville led to the destruction of the nonviolent resistance against apartheid. Although Sharpeville took place 11 years before Bloody Sunday, the repercussions were still evident, since it became a turning point for the struggle against apartheid.25 Ronnie Kasrils, a White South African Jew from a rich family and one of the key ANC supporters in his London exile and later Deputy Secretary of State for Defence in the first ANC government, reflects on the impact ‘‘Sharpeville’’ had on him. His personal recollections can be seen as a fairly representative account of the feelings within the generation of South Africans at that time that would later be called the Sharpeville generation: I was extremely angry in the days after the Sharpeville massacre. It was a time when one dispute was followed by another one: with my family, with my friends, with my colleagues. . . . Outside my immediate environment there were not many Whites that show any feelings of sorry—the most common sentiment was by contrast: ‘‘We should shoot all of them.’’26

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Similar to the effects of Bloody Sunday, Sharpeville meant the end of the nonviolent resistance against apartheid. In his autobiography, Kasrils illustrates the changing mood of a whole generation from nonviolence to an acceptance of violence: The willingness of the state to use violence, which has been shown, gave the freedom movement an important lecture. All activists in the country asked themselves whether it can really be possible to continue to struggle with nonviolent.27

However, the immediate response of the ANC to Sharpeville was to adopt the same traditional nonviolent methods as it had employed since the 1950s. Looking back at the history of nonviolence in South Africa as a whole, it can be traced back to long before the 1950s, as far back as to Mahatma Gandhi’s campaign in Natal at the end of the 19th century.28 Since its foundation in 1912, the ANC was embedded in this tradition of nonviolence. It was the basis for the so-called ‘‘defiance campaign’’ of the 1950s modeled on Gandhi’s methods. An essential part of the defiance campaign was the strategy of civil disobedience, that is, to willingly break apartheid laws at the risk of being jailed.29 A very significant document that substantiated the nonviolent attitude of the ANC was the so-called ‘‘Freedom Charter.’’ It employed a very moderate language with the aim of reaching political compromise and reconciliation to achieve a way of peaceful co-existence between the Black and White communities: And therefore, we, the people of South Africa, black and white together equals, countrymen and brothers adopt this Freedom Charter. . . . All people shall have equal right to use their own languages, and to develop their own folk culture and customs.30

In keeping with the nonviolent tradition, the ANC’s immediate reaction to Sharpeville was a national strike that paralyzed the country for several weeks. The apartheid government reacted by calling a state of emergency and also banned the ANC as well as all other anti-apartheid movements.31 It is highly disputed whether Sharpeville did in fact mean the turning point in the anti-apartheid struggle as a whole, or in other words, that the ANC’s transformation from nonviolence to violence can be interpreted as the first step toward the end of apartheid. The important analytical question is therefore: Did violence ‘‘work’’ or work in South Africa? In the aftermath of Sharpeville it was Nelson Mandela, the major ANC figure critical of the nonviolent strategies in the 1950s, who made the case for the transformation of the ANC strategy into an ‘‘armed guerilla campaign.’’

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In June 1961 he gave his famous speech at the historic meeting of the ANC Working Committees saying, ‘‘The attacks of the wild beast cannot be averted with only bare hands.’’32 Mandela won the argument within the ANC and as a consequence, the party founded an armed wing called Umkhonto we Sizwe (‘‘the spear of the nation’’), which on December 16, 1961, declared war against the apartheid state.33 In return, the apartheid regime reacted with even more repressive measures so that Mandela and several other ANC leaders were arrested at the end of 1964. Those who escaped arrest went into exile or underground. Because of these developments, scholars like Ackerman and Duvall are quite skeptical whether the renunciation of nonviolence in fact brought the ANC any closer toward liberation saying, ‘‘Armed struggle had not brought black people any closer to liberation than the nonviolent campaigns of the 1950s.’’34 More than just skeptical is the analysis of Stephen Zunes, who argues that the abandonment of nonviolence after Sharpeville was indeed counterproductive to the cause of liberation: Evidence suggests that the armed struggle may have actually harmed the anti-apartheid movement: the bombing campaign by the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto We Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), in the early 1960s seriously weakened simultaneous nonviolent campaigns, since the government was able to link them to each other in the eyes of the public and thus justify their repression.35

Zunes’s central argument is that the ‘‘success’’ of the nonviolent campaign was not ‘‘limited’’ because it was a nonviolent campaign but because of the ‘‘limited violence’’ that occurred within the nonviolent resistance.36 As already mentioned in the case of Northern Ireland, the ‘‘Irish Sharpeville’’ happened 11 years later. The events on January 30, 1972, which became known as Bloody Sunday, marked the ‘‘point of no return,’’ which prevented any peaceful settlement of the conflict. On that historic day a demonstration against Internment was planned in Londonderry. As on October 5, 1968, parts of the march were declared illegal by the Northern Irish Home Office. And yet again the result was a violent confrontation with the police. The paratroopers of the British army (the so-called ‘‘Parachute regiment’’) were present and opened fire: 13 civilians were killed and another injured person died a few days afterward. Until today the exact circumstances that led the paratroopers to open fire are unclear and disputed.37 The British DVD version of the movie Bloody Sunday includes a detailed and impressive commentary by Don Mullan, the author of the book Eyewitness Bloody Sunday. Mullan was also the co-producer of the movie. At the

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age of 15 he became an eyewitness of the events. In his personal assessment Bloody Sunday marked the end of the nonviolent resistance because, as a consequence, the nonviolent civil rights movement was destroyed. In Mullan’s words, the human rights agenda was violently ‘‘suspended’’ for almost 30 years and was brought back by the peace process in the 1990s. Bloody Sunday allowed the IRA and Sinn Fein to divert attention from the politically moderate attitude of NICRA and put the focus on the armed struggle. Suddenly, the ‘‘Northern Ireland problem’’ was no longer about political and socioeconomic equality for Catholics. After Bloody Sunday the territorial goal of a united Ireland became predominant and never left the agenda. Because of the positive implications Bloody Sunday had unfolded for the IRA, it can be seen as a ‘‘pleasing trauma’’ for the IRA’s ‘‘campaign of violence.’’ The term pleasing trauma is used here as a modification of Volkan’s concept of ‘‘chosen trauma.’’ According to Volkan, large-scale events of violence can either be enhanced or devalued in a deliberate and arbitrary way.38 The fact that Bloody Sunday can be seen as a ‘‘pleasing trauma’’ for the IRA was made evident at the annual Bloody Sunday Memorial Lecture in 2000, given by Martin McGuinness, a Sinn Fein politician and former senior member of the IRA at the time of Bloody Sunday. In his lecture, he referred to the 14 people killed on Bloody Sunday as follows: ‘‘They are not victims. They are heroes.’’39 At the end of the 1960s the IRA had no more than a few weapons, only a hundred members, and limited support within the Catholic community. But as Ivan Cooper had predicted in his press statement, Bloody Sunday caused a massive increase in recruitment for the IRA. It became the paradox of repression, since it radicalized the Catholic community. What is important to recognize is that prior to Bloody Sunday there were quite obvious prospects for peaceful conflict resolution. This was shown when Richard Rose conducted a representative survey of attitudes during the spring and summer of 1968. The results of the survey showed that in 1968 a total of 33 percent of the Catholic community supported the constitution of Northern Ireland, that is, Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom. Only 34 percent totally opposed the constitution.40 So, at that time there was no conclusive evidence of a tendency exclusively toward an armed struggle within the Catholic community. Most of them did not completely reject Northern Ireland as a ‘‘British state.’’ This attitude within the wider Catholic community changed radically in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday. It became ‘‘Northern Ireland’s Sharpeville’’: After Bloody Sunday the British government abolished the Northern Ireland government in March 1972. For the next three decades Northern Ireland was to be governed from London with a British Secretary of State responsible for Northern Ireland affairs.41

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WHEN NONVIOLENCE ‘‘WORKS’’ AND WORKS: THE IRA HUNGER STRIKES AND THE ‘‘CAUTIOUS’’ RETURN OF SATYAGRAHA TO NORTHERN IRELAND In addition to the two effects the paradox of repression can unfold— either strengthening or sabotaging a nonviolent movement—a third effect can be observed: An armed group may recognize that the strategy of violence does not work although it had ‘‘worked’’ for some considerable time. Instead, this group realizes that a nonviolent option needs to be developed. Hence, the paradox of repression can also demonstrate chances for ahimsa. A prime example is the hunger strike of 10 Republican prisoners,42 who starved themselves to death in the Maze prison between 1980 and 1981. Throughout history, hunger strikes were a common nonviolent method. In the tradition of Gandhi, fasting became the nonviolent action par excellence, as it was the ‘‘pure weapon’’ of a nonviolent struggle. This can be said because fasting is totally nonviolent and inflicts no damage on the enemy in physical or material terms. For Gandhi, politically motivated fasting was the ‘‘strongest and most effective weapon’’ of all nonviolent methods.43 Directed at the wider and concerned public, the impact of politically motivated fasting can be seen as a sort of propaganda, that is, a nonviolent communication strategy. Ideally, through politically motivated fasting the public is informed, critical awareness is raised and, as a result, a direct effect on the state is achieved.44 The hunger strikes of Republican prisoners can be seen as an instrument exerting political pressure, which became a ‘‘paradox of repression’’ that raised the whole Northern Ireland conflict to a completely different level. The immediate trigger to the hunger strikes had nothing to do with the Northern Ireland conflict as such: since the introduction of Internment the status of the prisoners of the paramilitary organizations was highly disputed. The Republican prisoners insisted that they were not just ‘‘ordinary criminals’’ and should therefore not be treated as such. The situation escalated when on March 1, 1976, the prisoners were denied the ‘‘special category status’’ by the British government. The British government adopted a strategy of criminalization by denying them the right and status of ‘‘prisoners of war’’ and labeling and treating them as ‘‘ordinary criminals’’ instead. The prisoners reacted with a ‘‘dirty protest’’ in 1978. They refused to wear the prisoners’ clothing, covered themselves in blankets and smeared their excrements on the walls of their cells. After they did not reach any positive reaction from the British government they started their first hunger strike on October 27, 1980.45 They ended it when they thought that the government had met their demands. However, on March 1, 1981, the second

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hunger strike was started when the prisoners realized that the government had not met their demands and that they had been cheated. This hunger strike finally ended on October 3, 1981, after the British government had given in and 10 hunger strikers had starved themselves to death.46 In the political circumstances of 1981, it was clear that the strategy of the hunger strikers could only succeed because the tactics and circumstances were embedded within a certain religious and spiritual set of rules, so that the meaning and ‘‘message’’ could be perceived and understood as legitimate by the Catholic community. One of the most important aspects was the timing to follow the religious and spiritual rules: the first hunger strike was planned to lead to starvation during Christmas, the second during Easter.47 In West Belfast wall paintings emerged that showed the Virgin Mary holding one of the strikers in her arms. The text below said: ‘‘Blessed are those who hunger for justice.’’48 During the numerous protests in Republican areas, the hunger strikers were displayed on posters and pictures as crucified persons with a wreath of thorns on their heads, made out of barbed wire from the Maze prison.49 The most important consequence of the hunger strikes for the Northern Ireland conflict in general was the politicization of the Republican movement. This process was initiated when the immediate relatives of the hunger strikers founded the so-called Relatives’ Action Committee (RAC). RAC quickly grew to a mass movement and established itself as a viable alternative to the ‘‘campaign of violence.’’50 So the leadership of Sinn Fein watched the development of this alternative movement with great unease; it even led to existential fears because it provoked a deflection from the military war against the British government. In the view of the IRA and of Sinn Fein, the hunger strikes for political status were a dangerous distraction from the ‘‘armed campaign’’ for a united Ireland. The institutionalization of the RAC showed the Catholic community that there was a functioning alternative option to the IRA’s ‘‘campaign of violence.’’ That’s why the IRA was opposed to the hunger strike of its prisoners from the very start. This had serious consequences for the strategy of Sinn Fein. It forced Sinn Fein to organize a conference involving the whole membership in detailed consideration of the prisoners’ question. This was when Sinn Fein moved out of its conspirational mode and began to embrace the political process.51 The hunger strikes marked the entrance of Sinn Fein into the political process, which started with participation in the elections. The opportunity for politicization was opened by what can be called ‘‘fortuna’’ according to Machiavelli. During the IRA hunger strike, the Unionist representative of the constituency Fermanagh and South Tyrone in the British House of Commons died. Sinn Fein nominated Bobby Sands, one of the strikers, as a candidate against the well-known Unionist hardliner Harry West, who was a

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former leader of the UUP. On April 9, 1981, Bobby Sands, already in a comatose condition, gained 30,492 votes, whereas Harry West received 29,046 votes. The turnout was almost 90 percent. Sands died 26 days after his election. The support of Sinn Fein dramatically grew thereafter so that in the general election of June 1983, the party received 13.4 percent of the vote.

CONCLUSION: SATYAGRAHA CAME BACK LATE TO NORTHERN IRELAND . . . BUT NOT TOO LATE In retrospect, the politicization of Sinn Fein can be regarded as the result of the paradox of repression. The huge importance of the hunger strikes for the peace process in Northern Ireland became evident when both the British and the Irish government afterward tried to encourage political conciliation. In the 1970s, all attempts to approach each other had failed, as had any effort of the two governments to jointly solve the Northern Ireland conflict. However, it was the electoral rise of Sinn Fein and the international reactions to the hunger strikes (which were mostly critical of the hard-line stance of the British government) that made possible the so-called AngloIrish Agreement that was signed by Thatcher and Fitzgerald on November 15, 1985. In general terms, this agreement was a compromise between both governments whereby, in return for the official recognition by Dublin of the legitimacy of Northern Ireland, London agreed to consult with the Irish government on all matters that affected the rights of the Catholic minority. Subsequently, the Anglo-Irish Agreement led to such dynamics within the political process that it became a milestone in Northern Ireland’s peace process. Ever since this agreement, it was clear that the conflict was as much a problem for the British as it was for the Irish government, that is, a problem that could only be solved collectively.52 Therefore, the Anglo-Irish Agreement is seen as the starting point of the peace process that culminated in the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998. It formally ended the civil war in which over 3,600 people were killed. The Good Friday Agreement enshrined the so-called ‘‘consent principle,’’ meaning that any change to the constitutional status of Northern Ireland could be only made by the majority vote of its citizens. It further established a Northern Ireland Assembly with devolved legislative powers on a crosscommunity basis.

NOTES 1. Baumann, 2008. 2. Fay et al., 1999. 3. Nagler, 2004.

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4. Smithey and Kurtz, 1999. 5. Ibid. 6. Sharp, 1973. 7. Ibid. 8. Glasl, 2002. 9. Ibid. 10. Darby, 1995. 11. Darby, 1995; Smith and Chambers, 1991; Eversley, 1989. 12. Trimble, 2001. 13. Hennessey, 1996. 14. Alcock, 1994. 15. ‘‘Der Spiegel,’’ 1972. 16. Ibid. 17. Taylor, 2000. 18. Purdie, 1988. 19. Fitzduff and O’Hagan, 2000. 20. Rose, 1971. 21. Dixon, 2001. 22. Coogan, 1995. 23. Rose, 2001. 24. Greengrass, 2002. 25. Ackerman and Duvall, 2000. 26. Kasrils, 1997. 27. Ibid. 28. Zunes, 1999. 29. Ackerman and Duvall, 2000. 30. African National Congress, 1955. 31. Price, 1991. 32. Ackerman and Duvall, 2000. 33. Meli, 1988. 34. Ackerman and Duvall, 2000. 35. Zunes, 1999. 36. Ibid. 37. Taylor, 2001. 38. Volkan, 1997. 39. The author was present when he made that speech. 40. Rose, 1971; Bew and Patterson, 1985. 41. Darby, 2003. 42. What is very important to recognize is that the hunger strikes cannot be qualified as ‘‘IRA hunger strikes’’ because the role of the INLA prisoners should not be ignored: 3 of the 10 prisoners who starved themselves to death were members of the INLA: Patsy O’Hara, Kevin Lynch, and Michael Devine. Indeed, it was often brought to my attention by concerned partiesthat the IRSP expressed its anger on a number of occasions, claiming that the Sinn Fein leadership does not recognize the ‘‘sacrifice’’ of INLA volunteers. 43. Ebert, 1970.

178 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

Peace Efforts That Work and Why Ibid. Arthur, 1997. Coogan, 1995. Arthur, 1997. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Gillespie, 2000.

CHAPTER

HANDS

OF

14

P EACE : F RO M EPIPHANY TO REALITY Laura Bernstein

THE EPIPHANY It was April 2002—six months after the events of 9/11—and Gretchen Grad could not sleep. She saw the United States in mourning over the staggering losses. She saw the country angry and confused. She was deeply disturbed by the way religious faiths were being driven further apart by ignorance and animosity. In that insomniac moment, the basic outline of Hands of Peace (HOP) was born. Gretchen had never been to Israel. She had never met a Palestinian, nor could she recall ever having met an Israeli. She had no personal ties to the Middle East. But the nighttime epiphany was clear: the Israeli-Palestinian crisis was the one she was being called to address. She envisioned an organization that would bring together young people from the Middle East—to meet, to dialogue, to learn to listen to one another, and to build relationships with one another. Americans would be involved as well, to broaden their understanding of the conflict. Such intimacy would put a human face on ‘‘the enemy’’ and open up a space for new possibilities to emerge. It would be a means of making peace, one relationship at a time. Gretchen had left her prestigious, well-paid career in finance in 1997 when her second daughter was born. She tried out various combinations of

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being a stay-at-home mom, and working part-time for an investment firm. None of the options had felt completely satisfying. She wanted to use her abilities to do something more fulfilling. The world of high finance had been heady; the trading floor had provided excitement, accomplishment, and a good income, but did not satisfy the deeper longings she was now experiencing. An expanding involvement with the Glenview Community Church (GCC, a denomination of the United Church of Christ) was pivotal to discovering the joy and soul nourishment of serving others. Gretchen’s faith in something larger was deepening. Rather than being a cause of all this violence and extremism, she felt that faith, in its best form, could be used as a solution to conflict. If she could bring the three monotheistic religions together to work on a small, hands-on approach to healing, then, she believed, bridges could be built and walls taken down. Her home community was fairly multicultural, with churches, synagogues, and a mosque nearby. When her close friend and neighbor, Deanna Jacobson (who is Jewish), agreed to be a partner, this epiphany felt doable.

MAKING IT HAPPEN Representing Islam was a necessity in this venture. The two women found a Muslim counterpart (Nuha Dabbouseh) through a mosque in a nearby community, who joined them in planning the first summer program. They scraped together funding from friends and relatives, the GCC mailing list, and a few larger donors. They enlisted the support of Bill Taylor, a political science professor from Oakton College who had experience working for Seeds of Peace (SOP), an organization begun in 1993 that brings young people (many are Israelis and Palestinians) from conflict-laden areas to a summer camp in Maine for dialogue. Gretchen had not known about SOP initially, but came on it fairly quickly while researching and networking her own idea. Through Bill and SOP they found an essential ingredient for starting the program: teenage participants. In July 2003, Hands of Peace brought 12 teenagers to the United States from the Middle East—five Jewish-Israelis, five Palestinians, and two Arab-Israelis. Nine Americans participated as well, largely drawn from the sponsoring congregations—four Jews, three Muslims, and two Christians. That interfaith mix (among both American teens and those from the region) has remained a core value throughout the subsequent years of the organization. The presence of Americans is another central ingredient to Gretchen’s vision of the program: ‘‘That came with the epiphany. Part of my frustration was with American adults who seemed so unaware of history, of international

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relations, of America’s role in the world. It was a founding principle that Americans had to be engaged with this; that bringing kids over here and having them live with American families was a way to open up Americans’ consciousness—to find out, what goes on in the head of an Israeli? What is it like to be a Palestinian?’’

CRISES AND OPPORTUNITIES As might be expected from a program attempting to effect peacemaking in the volatile Middle East, all has not been smooth sailing. Hands of Peace has been beset with one crisis after another, each an important learning experience and an opportunity for growth. About six months after the first summer program, the Muslim member of the founding trio pulled out, and the sponsoring mosque left with her. Two years later, the original sponsoring synagogue pulled out of the program as well (unrelated to the synagogue’s departure, Deanna also stepped down, needing to devote more time to her family). Accusations that Hands of Peace was insensitive to the Islamic voice and sensibility were followed by Jewish accusations that HOP was pro-Palestinian. When several Palestinians resigned from the organization, the complaint was that HOP had a pro-Israeli bias. As Bill (who became the first executive director of HOP) put it, ‘‘If both sides complain, you’re doing the right thing. It’s inevitable that both sides will see you as biased against them, because they want you to be biased for them.’’ Nonetheless, these upheavals led to some serious introspection as the organization strove to understand the factors that contributed to the ruptures. One critical factor was a need for more sensitivity to minorities in American culture. Gretchen explains, ‘‘As part of the Christian majority, my radar was not well-developed enough to have an appreciation for what people in a minority position in America go through, whether it’s American Jews or American Muslims. I think I have a better appreciation for that now.’’ She described how slights can be magnified and mistakes misunderstood in this context: Even an oversight that has no basis whatsoever in faith (issues of dress code, for example) can be perceived through a faith lens and cause considerable trouble. HOP has sought mightily to maintain its role of neutrality in a conflict that predisposes each group to think that its side is being given short shrift. Political sensitivities are as fraught with tension as are religious and cultural concerns. Gretchen characterizes the dilemma: ‘‘We walk such a razor’s edge in this organization, trying not to be partial to one side or the other, trying to provide an open forum for all voices to be heard.’’ She described the futility of being ‘‘teeter-tottered’’ by whichever voice was screaming the loudest, and

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how ultimately, it was necessary to stop running from one end of the teeter totter to the other to mollify those voices: ‘‘Our job is to attract the people who are willing to walk with us along the razor’s edge.’’ Over time, HOP has found enough dedicated people and organizations willing to walk that razor’s edge. A new sponsoring mosque and synagogue stepped up and offered their support. Other volunteers replaced those who found the tensions to be unbearable, and a Palestinian who was born in Jerusalem has joined the Board. The Middle East and American staff continues to grow and thrive. And the number of applicants and participants both from the region and the United States has increased yearly with 37 teenagers (referred to as ‘‘Hands’’) participating in the summer of 2008 and 40 participating in the summer of 2009.

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND CHALLENGES HOP is composed of dedicated volunteers in the United States alongside a small, paid staff both in the Middle East and the United States. The organization is frugal, operating on a bare-bones budget, and requiring sacrifice of time and energy from all who are committed to it. Every resource is carefully considered. No one is in this for the money; everyone who is paid could be making substantially higher salaries elsewhere. Given the explosive realities in the Middle East, tough challenges confront the organization with some regularity. The violent crisis that occurred in Gaza and Israel in December 2008 and January 2009 is a recent example. As current Executive Director Julie Kanak explained, ‘‘We had just come off of an exceptionally successful summer program and we were looking to broaden and expand the follow-up programs in the Middle East. And then the violence erupted. . . . This really rocked many of the participants. The regional coordinators had to spend a lot of time responding to the kids—to their anger, grief, and fear, to all of the questions that this brought back to the surface.’’ The HOP List Serve was another important vehicle for the Hands to express their intense feelings. While the List Serve does not replace face-to-face dialogue with a trained facilitator (and e-mails can become heated and unruly, despite efforts to regulate them), it does allow the Hands to keep communication going. Facilitators and chaperones also got involved during the crisis, contacting individuals when necessary, and older Hands provided support as well. Trying to keep the conversation from spiraling out of control during this crisis required use of every skill and tool the Hands had learned during the two weeks of the summer program. As Julie described it, ‘‘Some of them would refer back to a particular remark a facilitator made or an experience

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they had, or to the more general feeling of hope they all had on leaving the summer program. They used that as a reminder that when conflict erupts again, you do have a choice. You can choose your behavior—not necessarily your feelings, but what you do with those feelings. Some of the Hands tried to encourage the others to choose to deal with those feelings in a more constructive way.’’ Adding to the anger and hatred that has long been part of the Middle East dynamic or transforming those ingredients and seeking another way to respond is part of that choice: ‘‘What keeps me going is seeing and hearing the Hands take this challenge to heart and implement the hard lessons they’ve learned, even in a most difficult situation.’’ Other key players in the organization’s structure are the summer program director and assistant director, who together manage the multifaceted, twoweek summer program, and the four facilitators who run the two morning dialogue groups that are the core of this co-existence endeavor. There are generally 12 to 15 participants in each dialogue group, with two facilitators, one Palestinian and one Jewish. The participants from the region fall into three categories: Jewish-Israelis; Arab Citizens of Israel, who may be either Muslim or Christian; and Palestinians (who are largely Muslim). The American Hands who join them are also a mixture of the three faith traditions. Then there are the XLs, which stands for ‘‘Extraordinary Leaders.’’ These are Hands who have been chosen to return for a second year of participation in HOP, and provide leadership and support to the first-year participants. The XLs (the number varies from about 6 to 10) are both from the United States and the Middle East, and include the above ethnic and religious traditions. They form their own dialogue group with two additional facilitators. Balancing the numbers (and genders) of each constituency and keeping the national and religious identities even enough is an ongoing challenge. Finding host families to house, feed, and chauffeur all these Middle East participants and staff members to their meeting places (even some of the Americans who are not from the immediate area need housing) is another strenuous effort. Talented host family recruiters (all volunteers) have been responsible for this task, and the result has been a wide variety of Americans who have opened their doors and their hearts to this program, to the mutual benefit of all concerned. Often two Hands of different backgrounds will stay with one family, so the intercultural exchange is broadened further.

THE SUMMER PROGRAM The two-week summer program is a mix of the serious work that dialogue entails, activities that are educational or intercultural in their bent, and those that are just plain fun. The emotional intensity of the morning dialogue

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sessions is balanced with trips to downtown Chicago, museums, parks, or an outing to a local amusement park. A team-building course helps to create unity and solidarity among these diverse teenagers. A visit to a courthouse where immigrants are sworn in as new American citizens provides a glimpse into the melting pot that is America. Visits to a mosque, a synagogue, and a church are an important interfaith component of the program (and often the first time any of the participants have set foot in a religious setting other than their own). A boat tour and a play, a bowling outing or a pizza party, a night of intercultural cooking and skits—these are examples of some of the enrichment and relaxation that make up the summer’s co-existence menu. Down time is woven into the schedule as well, so the Hands and XLs have the opportunity to simply ‘‘hang out’’ with their host families and one another. Mornings are spent in dialogue sessions with trained facilitators, and these two-and-a-half-hour encounters are the heart of the co-existence program. Here the Hands have the opportunity to explore the conflict in a setting that is safe and allows them the freedom to express their views and explore their identity. They start with less controversial material, getting to know each other and developing some trust and good will. Then they move on to more conflictual topics. Ground rules are set by each group: everyone speaks in English; respect is shown by listening, by not interrupting, by observing confidentiality. However, as Bill Taylor points out, ‘‘As soon as somebody’s button gets pushed, that’s all out the window. You say something that I don’t like, I interrupt, I start yelling at you. You’re in the middle of what you’re saying, so you yell back.’’ Then the facilitators step in and ask, ‘‘What did you gain by this? Or, ‘‘why don’t you repeat what Ahmad or Shira was just saying?’’ This serves to help the Hands realize that they weren’t listening at all because they were so caught up in trying to make their own point. By the end of the two weeks, many of them have learned to listen and respond differently. Why are these opportunities for dialogue so important? Phil Hammack, former head of facilitation and former program director, speaks to that point on the HOP promotional video, revealing his surprise when traveling to the Middle East and discovering how segregated Israel is from the Palestinian Territories: ‘‘There are very few opportunities for Jews and Arabs to come together and have discussions about co-existence because they’re not really coexisting. . . . They’re living in two separate realities.’’ Unfortunately, the only contact most Palestinians have with Israelis is at security checkpoints where they find themselves on the other side of an Israeli soldier’s gun—hardly an opportune time to socialize or to engage in dialogue about the conflict. Similarly, most Israelis only know what they learn about Palestinians from accounts of terrorist attacks, which are not conducive to good will or understanding.

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Israeli facilitator Avigail Jacobson comments, ‘‘I don’t think this conflict can be resolved without the opportunity for Palestinians and Israelis to speak to each other, to listen to each other, to understand each other’s narrative.’’ She is pointing to a core dilemma in the conflict: each group has a very different account of what happened historically in the region—of who did what to whom, of who is at fault, of who has suffered most. These conflicting narratives need to be heard and empathized with if there is to be any meeting of hearts and minds, if there is ever to be a new, shared narrative. Dialogue sessions are conducted with strict confidentiality, but on the promotional video (available on the Web site) we witness an example of the response to a ‘‘hot button issue’’ as the kids discuss whether Israel should rightly be a Jewish state with a Jewish majority, or whether that current reality should be altered to accommodate a Palestinian majority. Tensions rise, passions flair, and you can feel the anguish that infuses both sides of the question. No one side or individual is allowed to dominate, but the complexity of the question of what is fair or possible or desirable lingers. Underneath the anger, there is pain on both sides, and that pain is felt by everyone in the room. The Hands bare their souls in these sessions, and that nakedness and rawness need to be countered by some light heartedness during the rest of the day. Individuals who may have been totally at odds during the morning dialogue encounters join together in the afternoon activities: handshake games, sightseeing, cultural enrichment programs, and informal gatherings give them a chance to relax and unwind from the morning’s tensions and upheavals. A level of intimacy is established during those morning sessions that carries over into the afternoon and evening group activities. That’s when they have an opportunity to be teenagers, to explore other parts of themselves and one another, to socialize and enjoy each other. Assistant Program Director Adam Heffez (who has also been a participant in HOP) sat outside the dialogue sessions in the summer of 2008 to be available to Hands who might walk out of a session for a time-out, if it became too emotional (this role of support person is also available from the chaperones and regional coordinators). When one girl did walk out and reported, ‘‘I’m confused!’’ Adam’s response was: ‘‘I think ‘confused’ is the most rewarding and sought-after state of mind we can experience in this type of co-existence. Because ‘confused’ shows that your long-held truths are being challenged, that you are really thinking about the other side.’’

THE FOLLOW-UP PROGRAM As has been observed with many programs of this kind (see the film Promises), ongoing contact is essential if there is to be lasting change. The HOP

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process of dialogue and building relationships therefore continues in the Middle East, where a small but dedicated staff works to bring the Hands together for monthly meetings, usually in Jerusalem. There is also a follow-up program in the U.S. so that participants in both regions have the vital opportunity to join together in their own communities and engage in activities that they find meaningful as they work toward creating a more peaceful world. But challenges abound—logistical, political, and emotional. Following the crisis in Gaza, tensions were so high that the Middle East regional coordinators chose to hold uninational meetings instead of bringing everyone together immediately. This was helpful in allowing the Hands to process their anger and grief with their own identity group before meeting as a whole. By all accounts, the follow-up meetings are valuable and sometimes quite powerful. They include Hands from all previous years, so the mix of people is varied. A meeting that occurred just before the 2008 summer program had as its topic the Israeli army, which is a very sensitive matter for all concerned. The young Israeli participants are required to spend two or three years in the army after high school, which can be a source of both pride and conflict for them. The Arab-Israeli and Palestinian Hands generally view the military with mistrust, anger, and fear. Emotions run high on all sides when discussing the army (see the first vignette below).

THE IMPACT OF HOP ON ITS PARTICIPANTS AND STAFF The following selections from the participants, staff, and host families interviewed for this chapter give a deeper glimpse of the lived realities of HOP. For 2008 Arab-Israeli XL Nadine Abboud, this potentially inflammatory discussion about the army turned into a source of hope. She described how the session included a Palestinian participant whose family member had set off a suicide bomb in Israel, and an Israeli participant currently serving in an army combat unit. Despite their differences and the heavy emotional load each carried, these two participants ‘‘had an incredible dialogue together and respected each other to the end.’’ Nadine was deeply touched by the encounter: ‘‘This made me feel that what we are doing is not hopeless at all. I think both of these people, if they didn’t have the chance to be in Hands of Peace, could never have reached this level of dealing with the other.’’ Continued involvement with HOP over a period of years through a variety of modalities helps to strengthen the program’s core ingredient of respect for differences. Whether through personal e-mails, the List Serve, face-to-face follow-up, or unstructured meetings between those who have become friends, the HOP community is one that nurtures caring, respectful relationships

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across cultural divides and among those who otherwise would never have met. As 2008 Jewish-Israeli XL Netta Shalev put it (speaking of her bond with Nadine): ‘‘Hands of Peace changed my belief in the power of friendships.’’ Although they disagree on many political issues, they remain close friends: ‘‘I realized that arguing between friends and having different opinions doesn’t really have anything to do with the friendship, with the relationship that we’ve built.’’ Rana Hadad has been a participant, an XL, and most recently joined the staff as a chaperone for the Arab Citizens of Israel (she is a Christian Arab who lives in Haifa). She described how discrimination against Arabs in Israel leads to limited opportunities for jobs and education, as well as hassles with the police (her brother was beaten for no understandable reason). The unspoken quotas in universities and other discriminatory rules make it harder for Arabs to pursue more desirable careers. Prior to HOP, Rana would watch the news with her parents and feel hatred for Israelis whom she saw as the cause of so much suffering. She had no desire to co-exist with them or get to know them (and despite living in a mixed city of Jews and Arabs, there was no real contact between them). But her parents encouraged her to be in the program because they felt it would make her a more mature, responsible person. At age 14, Rana was the youngest Hand in the first year of HOP’s summer program in 2003. And she found herself sharing a bed with a Jewish-Israeli girl: ‘‘The first day, we didn’t even look at each other. We slept back to back, and we didn’t talk; nothing.’’ Neither of them got much sleep that night. Later in the program, as part of a group activity, they sat face to face, closed their eyes, and put their hands on each other’s hearts. That experience of feeling one another’s heartbeat, alongside everything else that was happening in the program, was transformative: ‘‘I got tears in my eyes. Just feeling that the person in front of you is the same as you, just different language, different nationality maybe, or different ID, but she’s the same and she’s feeling your pain and she’s suffering the same way you’re suffering . . . I understood now Israelis are not only bad, Israelis are not only soldiers, Israelis are not only in the government. These are people who are exactly the same as me.’’ She invited Jewish friends to her home to help decorate her Christmas tree, and has sleepovers and social outings that include both Jewish and Arab friends. This is all occurring in an atmosphere where she sees hatred and despair increasing: ‘‘Because they’re bombing here, killing over there, and people are growing so much hate in their lives . . . people are losing hope.’’ But HOP gave her a different outlook: ‘‘I started to believe much more in making change. For the conflict itself, it took on much more meaning for me. I don’t want my grandchildren to read about the conflict in newspaper headlines. I want them to read about it in history books.’’

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Rana’s sense of hope was sorely tested after a Palestinian suicide bomber destroyed the restaurant co-owned by her cousin and a Jewish partner, a potent symbol of co-existence in Haifa. More than 20 people were killed in the incident. Rana witnessed the carnage immediately afterward, and was struck by the ‘‘blood mixed everywhere. You cannot see which blood is Israeli and which is Arab.’’ At the same time, ‘‘You could see the Arabs pulling Jews from the restaurant and helping them to go out, and the same exactly for the Jews helping Arabs.’’ This occurred just after Rana’s summer as a participant in Hands of Peace, and she initially felt uncertain of what the response would be. She experienced an intense outpouring of support from all her HOP colleagues, Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian alike, all wanting to help in any way they could: ‘‘They stood up for me—all of the e-mails, all of the phone calls; they messaged me. Some of them came afterward to see the restaurant where it happened. You could see that they really cared about me and that they hurt with me.’’ Rather than sinking into bitterness and despair, Rana is hopeful that the Arab Citizens of Israel ‘‘can be the bridge between both sides’’ because they are in a unique position, belonging neither to one side or the other: ‘‘For a Palestinian, I’m an Israeli; for an Israeli, I’m a Palestinian. No one recognizes me. For them I don’t exist.’’ But for Rana, being ‘‘stuck in the middle’’ has led to a determined resolve to be part of the solution rather than add to the problem. As for her cousin’s restaurant, it has been rebuilt and, still co-owned by his Jewish partner, is thriving. Netta Shalev spoke of HOP’s considerable impact on her as a JewishIsraeli (who has been both a participant and an XL). She came to the program having just had her final history test in school, feeling confident that she knew the facts. Hearing conflicting narratives about those facts was both shocking and broadening: ‘‘In the first few dialogue sessions, we had arguments about history issues. And then I discovered the big difference between what we are taught and what they [the Palestinians] are taught about history. . . . It was a shock to see the difference. Then you realize that maybe not everything that you know is right, and probably not everything that they know is right. So you understand that the history is not really all fact; it’s stories. And it could be told by many points of view.’’ This deepened her empathy for the Palestinian narrative. In relation to each side wanting to influence the more neutral American participants to support its view of the conflict, she moved from thinking ‘‘How is it possible that you not see that we are right, that what we are saying is the truth, that we are suffering?’’ to ‘‘If I was Palestinian, I would probably think, how can you not see that I am right, that my side of the story is the truth? And after that, I realized that there are two sides of the coin.’’

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Netta gradually began to question some hard-and-fast beliefs that she had held, and to see the danger of stereotypes. She cited an experience during the group visit to the synagogue that opened her mind to some new possibilities. During a discussion with the rabbi, a Palestinian Hand raised a question about something that would apply only to an extremely radical religious group in Israel, a group that Netta considered unimportant because it represents such a small minority of religious Jews. But he asked the question as though it applied to all religious Jews. This opened a door in her consciousness: ‘‘Then I realized, if he thinks like that, somebody’s probably teaching that the extreme side of the Jews applies to all Jews. So maybe I was taught the extreme side of the Muslims.’’ This process of questioning, opening, softening ‘‘does not mean that you discover that everything that you touch is wrong, and I don’t want to be Israeli anymore . . . you come to understand that it’s not necessarily bad to be connected [to your identity in a positive way]. While the two sides think differently, we can also be friends, and we can come to compromise.’’ She felt that while she came out of HOP with many questions still unanswered, she also emerged feeling more pride in her Israeli and Jewish heritage. Jewish-Israeli Bat-Or Hoffman felt that she returned home from HOP ‘‘less to the left’’ politically and more nationalistic in her leanings. Such ‘‘identity accentuation,’’ to use the term of social psychologist (and former HOP head of facilitation) Phil Hammack, is not uncommon for participants of coexistence programs who then return to the harsh reality of intractable conflict. This increased identification with one’s own group of origin may even be a necessary psychological adaptation for some. However Bat-Or subsequently became involved in a number of very liberal organizations in Israel that are striving for human rights and justice for the Palestinians. She sees HOP as promoting dialogue without imposing a particular ideology on anyone, but feels concern about those participants who do become ‘‘more right wing.’’ Thus, she finds herself in the uncomfortable position of both wanting to protect the Jewish-Israelis in the program from feeling attacked as she did, and wanting them to recognize the mistakes of the Israeli government alongside the realities of Palestinian suffering: ‘‘I’m not looking for an easy position. I don’t think in the situation we have in Israel and Palestine that there are easy positions.’’ Bat-Or spoke of her ambivalence toward the state of Israel. She understands why her Hungarian grandfather, fleeing the aftermath of the Holocaust at age 19 after his parents and most of his family were murdered, settled in Israel. He was recruited by a Zionist youth movement: ‘‘I don’t blame my grandfather for coming here. . . . He wasn’t aware of the consequences. Someone else was living in his house [in Hungary]. He had nothing

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to do, nowhere to go . . . I don’t think at that time he thought it [the land of Israel] was his land.’’ At the same time as she feels Israel has the right to exist, she also understands and wants to mitigate the harm done to Palestinians by the occupation: ‘‘I see both sides. And it would be easier for me not to see my side because it’s the occupier side, it’s the oppressor side. But I do see it.’’ Palestinian Regional Coordinator Hoda Barakat points to the primacy of relationship in describing the impact HOP has had on her. Her attitude toward Israelis prior to involvement in the program was decidedly negative: ‘‘I had never been able to communicate with Israeli people before . . . I never had the will to do it . . . because I thought of them as the enemy . . . I couldn’t view them as humans.’’ Her views about the conflict have not changed, and her disagreement with the Israeli government remains strong. However, her attitude toward Israelis themselves has altered: ‘‘I understand that they see it [the conflict] from a very different perspective, that they have another story that they believe is true. This is where it gets confusing, and you really need to have an open mind. And I see that some people are bad, some people are good, in every culture. So they’re not all bad . . . I didn’t see it this way before . . . I view Israelis in a new perspective because I worked with great people who really believe in peace.’’ This powerful shift of perspective began back in Ramallah, when Hoda (whose sister had been both a participant and an XL in the program) agreed to help organize follow-ups for HOP in Jerusalem. There she worked with the Israeli staff and observed the Hands in dialogue sessions. But the change was strengthened when she agreed to become regional coordinator, which involved recruiting Palestinian teens for the summer program, and accompanying them to the United States in the summer of 2008. Being in such close contact with Israelis on a daily basis intensified the process of transformation: ‘‘It’s a really great staff. Now I understand that there are some very good people in Israel—not all of them, not the government. But I never would have believed that was possible a year ago.’’

THE FACILITATORS: ALLOWING DIALOGUE TO UNFOLD Palestinian facilitator Manal Al-Tamimi, who has been on the staff of HOP for three years, has her own perspective on relationship building in the program, which she sees as a series of phases. In the first phase, the teens ‘‘learn to look in the eyes of each other’’ as they become acquainted on a personal level. Then they move little by little toward a group identity. She points to the challenge the Hands face in becoming friends individually when collectively, in relation to the Middle East conflict, they are enemies: ‘‘The whole goal is not to create friendship in the first phases. It’s even problematic to

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speak about it in terms of friendship. Real friendship only happens when you manage to go from the personal to the collective to dealing with the fact that you are enemies; then you can reach the point of healthy friendship.’’ The contradictions inherent in realizing ‘‘that the friend I have is also my enemy’’ makes the process difficult but rewarding: ‘‘Once we deal with the conflicts, once we deal with these contradictions we are living, this is the moment we can have an authentic friendship.’’ Jewish-Israeli facilitator Tal Dor works together with Manal and agrees that ‘‘one goal of the process is to admit that I see the other as my enemy,’’ which is not something the teens often say aloud in the beginning. But another point of the dialogue is to understand the different roles in the power structure of the region. Tal maintains, ‘‘Israel is a state that is occupying Palestine, and this creates an unequal power dynamic. . . . This concept of ‘enemy’ is not an equal concept. This is something the Palestinians come with a need to say and a need to get the Israelis to recognize. . . . While the Israelis come with the need that the Palestinians will recognize their suffering, even if it’s not equal.’’ In Tal’s view, a successful dialogue ‘‘is for the Israeli group to acknowledge their responsibility in the conflict, to see that the power dynamic is not equal, and to understand that we can change.’’ Manal cites a different task for the Palestinians: ‘‘Meeting the Israelis and hearing them speak about their suffering alters the feeling that they [the Palestinians] are the only ones suffering. Being the weak side in the power dynamic does not mean that they are not to empathize, and this is the big challenge for the Palestinians.’’

THE AMERICAN HOST FAMILIES IN THE PROGRAM The Andersen-O’Brien family has hosted participants every year since the inception of HOP in 2003. Wayne and Sheila (who are both lawyers and judges) have three daughters, Noreen, Maureen, and Mary (ages 12, 13, and 14, respectively). By their account, all have been enormously broadened by the experience. As Wayne puts it, ‘‘I don’t regard us as givers to the program. We’re receivers from the program.’’ And Sheila: ‘‘You get an international experience without leaving home.’’ They feel their home has been a refuge from the political struggle for the Hands they host, and make an effort to keep politics out of the mix. The intercultural enrichment has had many dimensions: they’ve attended services at the mosque and synagogue (they are members of the Glenview Community Church), gone shopping with the teens (Maureen: ‘‘Shopping is the international language’’), dealt with religious dietary restrictions (Wayne, laughingly: ‘‘We suspect the only dietary problems we’ve run into are an excuse when they don’t like what’s being served’’), and embraced the Hands in their home as surrogate daughters and sisters.

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They even agreed to take a male participant one year because they were eager to host a Muslim (prior they had housed Jewish-Israelis and Christian Arabs) and Ihab (declared ‘‘darling’’ by all of them) needed a host family. Sheila described their opening encounter: ‘‘He came to our house that day from across the world. And he fell asleep, exhausted, in the La-Z-Boy. So I said, ‘Wake up, you have to make sure you sleep tonight; you have a big day tomorrow!’ He got up out of his chair, went to the window, faced east, and said his prayers. . . . It was very moving.’’ The family has stayed in touch with their Middle East ‘‘children’’ through the Internet, and as the girls have grown, the participants they host feel like friends as well as big sisters. Noreen was only six the first year they hosted, and Mary hopes to be a Hand in the summer she turns 15. By attending HOP parties and picnics, they’ve had exposure to a wide variety of other participants and their host families. But the greatest impact is the affection they develop for all those they have met and hosted. When the conflict flares (as it did in Gaza), they are very attuned and concerned for the safety of those they’ve grown to love. Their faith is part of the equation as well: ‘‘We’re people of God who want peace . . . and want life to be good for others’’ (Sheila). And Wayne points to the unity underlying the diverse religious traditions in the region: ‘‘Looking to the same God in an open way, we think is the key to solving problems.’’

PROSPECTS FOR PEACE While there is considerable diversity of opinion regarding the prospects for long-term peaceful co-existence in the region, virtually everyone interviewed regarded the work of Hands of Peace (and other similar organizations) as a small but significant step in that direction. The importance of the approach is only emphasized by the fact that since the second Intifada (which began in 2000), political restrictions have tightened and the social reality has worsened. As Jewish-Israeli Regional Coordinator Jasmine Tamuz states, ‘‘It’s a cycle. Israelis make the security, the checkpoints, harder to cross. They put more restrictions on the Palestinians. The Palestinians get more frustrated and more religious and more radical, and they create more hatred with Israelis. Then in return, Israel does all this [increases oppressive security measures]. . . . Before the second Intifada started, there wasn’t so much hate. I think it’s deteriorating. It’s not getting better.’’ Yet many hold on to the hope that leaders will emerge out of programs like HOP, leaders whose personal experience with co-existence will actively change the political landscape.

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Ismail Hummos is a Muslim Palestinian Board member of HOP (born in a small village outside of Jerusalem) who believes that the collective consciousness in the Middle East must shift in order for peace to be possible. But he also regards the organization as ‘‘a candle in a very dark world’’ that may contribute to creating that critical mass of enlarged consciousness: ‘‘Call me na€ve, but I’m still hoping that out of this little oasis of Hands of Peace, future leaders will be called, men or women who can draw on that personal experience with one another. . . . Because that’s really what makes a huge difference. Do you trust the person in front of you, that he’s a good person, that she’s a human being? Or are you so paranoid and traumatized that you can never invest any faith? That is the crux of the matter here.’’ Ismail maintains that just as violence and hatred are contagious, so are love, compassion, and good will: ‘‘This na€ve idea of Hands of Peace is the salvation for the world. Every child that is born in this world is an affirmation that God has not given up on us as human beings. We keep repeating all these mistakes, over and over. But God is the most optimistic Being in the universe. . . . Every time I see a new child smiling at me, innocently, I think, there’s God smiling. I think, we’ve got to get it better with this one. . . . For me, taking part in Hands of Peace is a form of prayer.’’

CHAPTER

15

T H E M OV E M E N T T OWA R D P E A C E CRISIS—AND OPPORTUNITY

IN

Michael N. Nagler

Is it possible for a grown person to entertain the hope that we may be able to tilt the balance toward peace in this era of endless wars? I argue that it is not only possible, but necessary. ‘‘Not to believe in the possibility of permanent peace,’’ Gandhi said, ‘‘is to disbelieve the godliness of human nature’’ (or, if you prefer, the possibility that we can lead a meaningful, healthy existence). And he goes on to add, ‘‘methods hitherto adopted have failed because rock-bottom sincerity on the part of those who have striven has been lacking.’’1 Nothing fails like no hope of success. Yet, as Norman Cousins used to say, ‘‘Nobody knows enough to be a pessimist’’; and Rebecca Solnit pointed out in an article entitled ‘‘Acts of Hope,’’ ‘‘Who 20 years ago would have pictured a world without the USSR [Union of Soviet Socialist Republics] and with the Internet?’’2 Norman Cousins’s aphorism has very specific applications in the area of war and peace. While there are cases on record of societies that have destroyed themselves by war fighting, there are also some that testify to a mysterious process of recovery by which societies and nations have pulled themselves back from the brink. The Japanese Samurai class as a body threw away the firearms Captain Cook had thoughtfully introduced into feudal Japan when they realized it was overturning their culture and making their life a meaningless bloodbath.3 Around the turn of the 20th century, the Scandinavian

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countries simply stopped fighting each other when they spontaneously seemed to have realized there was no reason to continue (which had been true all along); as Boulding puts it, one day they just said ‘‘the hell with it.’’4 Nobody knows enough to say ‘‘it couldn’t happen here.’’ It is not mysterious why societies and nations want peace, given the fact that peace is grounded in, if not identical with, reality itself in the way that St. Augustine was the first to describe in the West (see Volume 1, Chapter 1 of this collection). Nor is it particularly mysterious that nations get so frequently and addictively caught up in wars, given our ignorance of this reality. What is mysterious—and possibly most useful to understand—is how some people suddenly snap out of a symbolic miasma of war and hatred. Sometimes it helps when they can give themselves a reason; the Japanese are said to have believed that the atomic bomb was a more-than-human intervention, which made it psychologically possible for them to surrender. Whether we can actively enable such a conversion or not it is always there, and there is no reason not to believe that such a fit of rationality could happen today on a planetary scale. Bodies heal themselves with a little help from health providers; the Earth itself has scarcely understood restorative processes that we could greatly assist by seeking happiness in ways that do not ravish her resources. Similarly, the drive for ‘‘loving community’’ must be able to assert itself even when, or especially when, it is most suppressed by egotism and unreasoning hatreds. In Gandhi’s view Satyagraha (‘‘clinging to truth, soul force’’) would be the midwife, for that technique does not suppress reason but can ‘‘compel reason to be free.’’5 The enormous costs and the pathetic results of modern wars cannot be counted on to break the war-fighting spell by themselves. People who deny global warming can deny anything; but they are a symptom that a deep change is going on that is eroding the underpinnings of the entire war system as a phase of human evolution. In Stable Peace, Boulding documented some time ago the dramatic collapse of war’s legitimacy, not to mention its penumbra of glory that took place between World Wars I and II; a collapse that was seen in, for example, popular music. There is no doubt now that on one level war has become a creed outworn. But three closely interrelated factors are propping it up: (1) the hard work of dehumanization that the military has learned to add to its training methods since they discovered that a natural inhibition against killing was keeping the majority of combat troops from actually firing their weapons (see Volume 2, Chapter 21), (2) the general level of dehumanization that is, again, artificially propped up by the commercial and materialistic forces in modern culture, and finally (3) the lack of meaning to modern life that makes war an easy substitute, as Chris Hedges has pointed out.6 None of these factors—at least in their present extreme

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form—has a long history. We must see to it that they do not have a long future either. In the case of the most intractable of these three factors or levels—the lack of purpose or meaning sensed by millions of people—a remarkably simple solution suggests itself: to help them understand that, to paraphrase A.J. Muste, we do not need to find a meaning to life to experience peace: peace itself is that meaning. At some point people are going to look at the appalling rates of defection and suicide among modern combat personnel and realize that, as a current slogan has it, ‘‘war is not the answer.’’ Then they will be ready to hear that peace is. We can find hope if we know where to look. In the early phase of modern man’s search for peace here in the West—the ‘‘Perpetual Peace’’ tradition that began in the 12th century and counts thinkers like Grotius, Rousseau, Kant, L’Abb
e de Saint Pierre, and William Penn in its ranks—the gaze was directed up to princes and then governments. Today, the failure of these ‘‘top’’ institutions to give peace any reality has shifted the attention to what Orville Schell calls the ‘‘other superpower:’’ civil society and even less formally organized embodiments of popular will.7 It is here that we see a great deal of encouraging change. For one thing, there is the astonishing wave of nonviolent movements set in motion by the campaigns of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, which according to some estimates (and some definitions of nonviolence) have involved more than half the world’s population. ‘‘In 1989 alone,’’ writes Richard Deats, ‘‘thirteen nations comprising 1,695,100,000 people, almost 30 percent of humanity, experienced nonviolent revolutions that succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest expectations in every case but China, and were completely nonviolent (on the part of the participants) in every case but Romania and parts of the southern USSR. The nations involved were Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Yugoslavia, Mongolia, the Soviet Union, Brazil, Chile, and China.’’8 Perhaps of even greater significance for the future than these numbers (and the fact that the mainstream media have begun—only begun—to take note and accord some understanding to this phenomenon) are the new institutions that, although based on older models to be sure, lend qualitatively greater traction to the great groundswell. Among others can be listed: • Peace communities have sprung up in highly conflicted areas, particularly Colombia. Some 50 communities, the best known being San Jos
e de Apartad
o (see Chapter 7 in this volume), which like most of the others was created by refugees from nearby violence, disallow armed actors from entering their premises and refuse to align themselves with

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any party to the armed struggles around them. Although they have not always been inviolate, as John Lindsay-Poland of the Fellowship of Reconciliation pointed out to me in a recent conversation, they ‘‘have become AN institution’’ that can represent itself with some weight in legal and policy discussions even at the state level. These ‘‘islands of peace,’’ as they are sometimes called, intersect with another new peacekeeping and peace building institution referenced several times in this collection: • Peace teams or nonviolent third-party intervention teams are now referred to usually as Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping (UCP; see Volume 2, Chapter 8). Places like San Jos
e are under constant threat and at times the presence of even a few internationals from a UCP organization can make the difference between their success or failure—to mention but one peacekeeping activity these organizations are carrying out: as the motto of Nonviolent Peaceforce has it, UCP is ‘‘what you can say yes to when you say no to war.’’ • Until quite recently peace movements had to ‘‘reinvent the wheel’’ every time they started. Now systematic and not-so-systematic efforts have begun to communicate lessons learned from the mistakes and successes of earlier, sometimes distant struggles. Largely unknown to the public, a large number of satyagrahis (participants in a Satyagraha, in this case the Indian freedom struggle) came to the United States and a number of Americans went to India to facilitate the Civil Rights movement.9 In at least one case, the Center for Advanced Nonviolent Actions and Strategies (CANVAS), a formal institution was created (by the Washingtonbased International Center on Nonviolent Conflict) specifically to coach and assist liberation struggles like those of the ‘‘color revolutions’’ of Eastern Europe.

Not all of this peace innovation has come up from the grassroots. Although ‘‘peace law’’ is increasingly invoked by activists within societies to, for example, protect their right to protest against and even obstruct violence of the state itself, international law has also been advancing, as Professors Cris Toffolo and Ronald Glossop ably describe in Chapters 4 and 5 of this volume. The globalization of justice, while it is far from keeping pace with the globalization of greed and its attendant violence, is happening. If one were to identify by a single word the reason that these hopeful developments have not coalesced into a revolution in human consciousness and behavior, that word would be culture. As a young friend of mine said of the United States in 2001, ‘‘we live in a war culture, with a war President, and a war economy.’’ Responding to the growing recognition of culture as the determinant of war or peace, the United Nations dedicated the opening decade of this century to ‘‘a culture of peace and nonviolence for the children

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of the world,’’ and the phrase ‘‘culture of peace’’ is being carried forward in Web sites, online journals, and other formats. Culture here means, in the words of a UN declaration, a ‘‘set of values, attitudes, modes of behavior, and ways of life that reject violence and prevent conflicts.’’10 Therefore, it is potentially of great importance that science, which futurist Willis Harman once called the ‘‘knowledge validating system’’ of modern civilization, has thrown open its lens on human nature and behavior, indeed on those of all forms of life, to take in the attitudes and behavior that constitute a state of peace (see the brief discussion by Ryono and Nagler in Volume 1, Chapter 4). In 2010, the American Sociological Association inaugurated an Altruism and Social Solidarity Section, to cite only one of many examples of the trend. It is doubly unfortunate that, in our culture’s retreat from truth, science is far less heeded now than at any time in the modern period. Still, as part of a whole that is struggling to define itself, the discoveries in the realms of altruism, the neuroscience of empathy (especially ‘‘mirror neurons,’’ or what one scientist calls ‘‘Gandhi neurons’’ that detect and reflect another’s state or intentions), and the mere logic of game theory describing from its formalistic vantage point the robustness of cooperative systems will carry their weight.

THE LAY OF THE LAND In the academic world of the late 1970s, there was a kind of samizdat literature around the exciting concept of the ‘‘paradigm shift’’ that Thomas Kuhn had introduced some 15 years earlier.11 Discussions of the ‘‘prevailing paradigm’’ versus the ‘‘emerging paradigm’’ circulated widely, though in these discussions peace was, and still is to some extent, a secondary concern at best, prompting me to publish an article called ‘‘Peace as a Paradigm Shift’’ in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1981.12 Since then our understanding of such tectonic cultural shifts and ‘‘tipping points’’ has greatly improved. This is yet another component, potentially, of such a shift itself since, as many have recognized, we cannot wait for or rely entirely on the kind of spontaneous awakening that happened in Scandinavia, or the kind that science itself has recently experienced in opening its lens to the pacific power in nature. We need the huge power of such a groundswell; however, we need to invoke and direct it to some degree by conscious decisions. Too much has to happen too fast for a change of this magnitude to come into play just in the natural course of things. Therefore, let us conclude by looking at some recent studies that help clarify what the strengths and weaknesses of our current situation are with regard to the all-important tipping point from war to a peace economy, a peace culture, and—possibly—a peace president.

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One such study was done by social scientists Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson, whose book The Cultural Creatives (2001) appeared at a time when military fervor was at high tide and electoral politics in the United States seemed dangerously out of control.13 They showed that despite appearances there were no less than 50 million Americans—more than enough to change the political balance—who did not want the dangerous, demoralizing world into which we were moving. They were ineffective only for one reason: they did not know about each other. The mainstream discourse was so suffocating that even a majority can be rendered powerless. But they are there, Ray and Andersen showed, and that was dramatically proven when Junior Senator Barack Obama found a way to mobilize their aspirations.

AN UNPRECEDENTED . . . WHAT? The work of Ray and Anderson was taken a step further by economist and futurist Paul Hawken, who showed in his book Blessed Unrest (2007), that in fact there is a greater social upheaval going on in the world today than at almost any time in history—but it is not (or not yet) a movement: ‘‘Movements have leaders and ideologies,’’ Hawken writes; ‘‘People join movements study these tracts, and identify themselves with a group. . . . This movement, however, doesn’t fit the standard model. It is dispersed, inchoate, and fiercely independent. It has no manifesto or doctrine, no overriding authority to check with.’’14 And, I would add, no name. Surely ‘‘something earth-changing is afoot.’’ Even the informal, serendipitous nature of Hawken’s research is a sign of the new character of things. But in terms of the public’s awareness so far it is not even under foot. For better or for worse—certainly for worse in terms of political effectiveness right now, but possibly necessary for proper incubation before going public—this commotion, or pre-movement, has been very much ‘‘under the radar’’ of the public discourse. As Arundhati Roy famously said of the new world, it portends, ‘‘on a quiet day you can almost hear her breathing.’’ But on most any other day, very few indeed seem to hear her speaking. A succinct version of Hawken’s classic statement is reproduced in the following chapter. What we must do to make his observations work for our purposes is to focus them on the critical issue of war and peace, and if possible, suggest a way that the pre-movement could pull itself together and could gain coherence without losing its diversity. Like most writers, Hawken focuses almost entirely on the environment. Yet, as environmentalist and physicist Vandana Shiva herself said in a public lecture in 2007, ‘‘If you stop the pollution in people’s minds, they will stop their pollution of the environment.’’ That inner pollution has as much to do with anger and the lust for power as it does with greed and the lust for possessions.

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At any rate, I am among those (we are a minority even in progressive circles) who believe that, if anything, war and peace should be prioritized over environmental concerns—not because they are more important but because they are the most direct contributor to environmental problems. To be perfectly clear, this is not to deny that economic (or ecological) and peace issues are intimately connected. Over two centuries ago, John Woolman made his famous observation, ‘‘May we look upon our treasures, and the furniture of our houses, and the garments in which we array ourselves, and try whether the seeds of war have nourishment in these our possessions, or not.’’15 My point is, however, that we can solve ecological and economic problems through a focus on war and peace faster than the other way around. The real revolution for which the world is pining, for which, in my opinion, the political revolutions of 20th century were a misguided attempt, has another yet-undeveloped resource: Gandhi. He was not an ideological anarchist or an ideological conservative; he was, in his own terms, a ‘‘practical idealist’’ who had learned to maintain an attitude of complete impartiality toward every institution of India, whether indigenous or imposed by the Raj, and judged it solely on its merits. Even the most pernicious of institutions that he was faced with—the caste system, he did not feel was necessary or possible to abolish. Rather, it should be purged of the associated value judgment of ‘‘high’’ and ‘‘low,’’ so that the unavoidable diversity of people, including their diverse capacities to earn or preserve wealth, could be allowed to go on, indeed appreciated, while the pernicious sense of superiority or inferiority that we often attach to such differences was purged. A tall order. But not nearly as tall, or as unnatural, he felt, as trying to level human beings in terms of external characteristics like wealth or position. People are all of the same value, to be sure: namely, priceless; but we do not have to have the same standard of living, positions of authority, religion, etc., to realize this unity. Even if such a thing were achievable, who would want it? As biologists are aware, the characteristic feature of life, as opposed to insentient matter, is its diversity—or more accurately, when we add a spiritual viewpoint, unity in diversity. Gandhi’s goal, therefore, was heart unity, which locates unity at a deep, nonphysical level while preserving diversity of almost any characteristics on the surface. Several writers today have approximated this approach. As the world’s large organizations (governmental, corporate, and even educational) collapse, the people of the world who make up the forefront of the change we are discussing tend simply to walk away from them and look for entirely different types of association, such as the ‘‘affinity groups’’ that sprang up during the Spanish Civil War and are now a common format for all manner of protest movements.

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The institutions that embodied the old paradigm, the standard corporate model—hierarchical, centralized, and ultimately dehumanizing—are part of the problem. A widely read book by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom, called The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations, shows that the most successful recent businesses today (Wikipedia, Google, and others) have not been traditional top-down organizations.16 These new forms have sprung up more or less from the grass roots, experimentally. Professor and author Clay Shirky has recently shown dramatically that more creative energy arises from loosely coordinated groups, from cooperative frameworks that are based on loose-knit, overhead-free, volunteer-driven collective action and what he calls ‘‘mass amateurization’’ than from the classical institutional frameworks.17 To use the old terminology of Ferdinand T€onnies, it is a case of rediscovering Gemeinschaft (informal connections) in the interstices of an exaggerated, and therefore failed, world of Gesellschaft (formal stuctures). Some writers, like Janine Benyus and the group around Irvin Laszlo, go a step further and believe that the new organizational forms will even be organic, be ‘‘biomimetic’’ rather than anything designed by our limited intelligence. The fact that this progressive/spiritual renaissance of ours has to invent its own forms of organization is part of the reason that its progress has been slow, or at any rate invisible: we are inventing a ‘‘language’’ as we go along, while others only have to continue their conversation. Yet this fact also explains the revolutionary potential of the shift. If we really want deep change—and how could we not?—nothing less than an entirely new framework for our thoughts, activity, and our relationships can pry the death grip of war from the collective throat of humanity. But in all this we should not lose sight of the fact that no organizational format, while it may be more or less suitable for a given worldview, can be by itself the leading image or mechanism of the desired change. The revolution that’s really trying to happen today is not just wide but deep—it is nothing short of a spiritual revolution. Capitalism, as Karl Marx famously complained, leaves societies mired in the icy water of egotistical calculation, but to reduce egotism in any of its manifestations we need a revolution much deeper than economic. And this brings us once again to the one person in the modern period who figured out and—remarkably enough—actually put into practice the new paradigm in virtually all its dimensions, including spirituality. Although he did not often speak about the environment, for example, his utter material simplicity and closeness to nature (until the end of his life he enjoyed sleeping outdoors) embodied a life of harmony with the environment that most of us can only dream of. Even though he did not work directly on the war system,

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the shanti sena (‘‘peace army’’) he invented to keep the peace between communities unfolded into today’s UCP. And he did more: his flexible combination of Constructive Programme and Satyagraha (active nonviolent resistance) showed how even the most ruthless and entrenched regimes could be dislodged without perpetuating their violence. I believe that because we have only partially learned the lessons he so painstakingly chalked out over 50 years of intense activity, our own resistance movements have not been anything like as effective. Almost all nonviolent movements since his time—and yes, there have been many—have been either constructive or obstructive, but not both. Finally—and here again so far ahead of his time—he was able to give his titanic struggles strategic direction without inhibiting their diverse, person-centered, and grass roots character. As he said of his glorious successes of the early 1920s, ‘‘Mass awakening came no one knows how. Even remote villages were stirred . . . it was true swaraj (‘‘freedom, self rule’’) of the masses attained by the masses.’’18 In their excellent study of the state of the movement (or movement-to-be) Nordhaus and Schellenberger furnish many insights drawn from the recent history of successful social movements in, particularly, the United States. For example the movements all were birthed in preexisting communities of some kind—labor, church, students, or other—that have recently been there only for conservatives and not for those who would move culture and policy toward peace.19 However, it takes on more importance, if anything, because it explains why the peace movement and the environmental movement have had so little traction with the general public. It is the observation that people have become so demoralized today, mainly by the relentless negative images of the mass media, that the ‘‘gloom and doom’’ that is so characteristic of the rhetoric of the left and the environmentalists only further alienates and disempowers them. People can be roused, as Gandhi showed much earlier, only by positive messages (such as Barack Obama’s ‘‘hope’’ campaign), and by being challenged to reach higher than they think possible. That may seem counterintuitive, but the lower the image of the human being sinks (and that’s the specialty of the mass media today), the more we need to challenge ourselves with higher aspirations to overcome that negativity and empower ourselves. For this reason we need—and deserve—the signs of hope briefly identified in this chapter.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4.

Gandhi, 1999. Solnit, 2004. Perrin, 1979. Boulding, 1978.

The Movement Toward Peace in Crisis 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

Gandhi, 1999. Hedges, 2002. Schell, 2003. Wink and Deats, 1992; Deats, 2002. Kapur, 1992. UNESCO, 1987. Kuhn, 1962–1970. Nagler, 1981. Ray and Anderson, 2001. Hawken, 2007. Woolman and Gummere, 1922. Brafman and Bergstrom, 2006. Shirky, 2008. Gandhi, 1999. Nordhaus and Schellenberger, 2007.

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CHAPTER

TO REMAKE

16

THE

WO R L D

Paul Hawken

Over the past 15 years I have given nearly 1,000 talks about the environment, and every time I have done so I have felt like a tightrope performer struggling to maintain perfect balance. To be sure, people are curious to know what is happening in their world, but no speaker wants to leave an auditorium depressed, however dark and frightening tomorrow is predicted by the scientific studies of the rate of environmental loss. To be sanguine about the future, however, requires a plausible basis for constructive action: you cannot describe possibilities for that future unless the present problem is accurately defined. Bridging the chasm between the two was always a challenge, but audiences kindly ignored my intellectual vertigo, and over time, provided a rare perspective instead. After every speech a smaller crowd would gather to talk, ask questions, and exchange business cards. These people were typically working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, and human rights. They came from the nonprofit and nongovernmental world, also known as civil society; they looked after rivers and bays, educated consumers about sustainable agriculture, retrofitted houses with solar panels, lobbied state legislatures about pollutions, fought against corporate-weighted trade policies, worked to green inner cities, and taught children about the environment. Quite This is an excerpt from chapter 1 in Paul Hawken’s book Blessed Unrest. New York: Penguin, 2007: 1–6. Reprinted with permission from Penguin.

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simply, they had dedicated themselves to trying to safeguard nature and ensure justice. Although this was the 1990s, and the media largely ignored them, in those small meetings I had a chance to listen to their concerns. They were students, grandmothers, teenagers, tribe members, businesspeople, architects, teachers, retired professors, and worried mothers and fathers. Because I was itinerant, and the organizations they represented were rooted in their communities, over the years I began to grasp the diversity of these groups and their cumulative number. My interlocutors had a lot to say. They were informed, imaginative, and vital, and offered ideas, information, and insights. To a great extent Blessed Unrest is their gift to me. My new friends would thrust articles and books into my hands, tuck small gifts into my knapsack, or pass along proposals for green companies. A Native American taught me that the division between ecology and human rights was an artificial one, that the environmental and social justice movements addressed two sides of a single larger dilemma. The way we harm the Earth affects all people, and how we treat one another is reflected in how we treat the Earth. As my talks began to mirror my deeper understanding, the hands offering business cards grew more diverse. I would get from 5 to 30 such cards per speech, and after being on the road for a week or two would return home with a few hundred of them stuffed into various pockets. I would lay them on the table in my kitchen, read the names, look at the logos, envisage the missions, and marvel at the scope and diversity of what groups were doing on behalf of others. Later, I would store them in drawers or paper bags as keepsakes of the journey. Over the course of years the number of cards mounted into the thousands, and whenever I glanced at them, I came back to one question: Did anyone truly appreciate how many groups and organizations were engaged in progressive causes? At first, this was a matter of curiosity on my part, but it slowly grew into a hunch that something larger was afoot, a significant social movement that was eluding the radar of mainstream cultures. So, curious, I began to count. I looked at government records for different countries and, using various methods to approximate the number of environmental and social justice groups from tax census data, I initially estimated a total of 30,000 environmental organizations around the globe; when I added social justice and indigenous peoples’ rights organizations, the number exceeded 100,000. I then researched to see if there had ever been any equals to this movement in scale or scope, but I couldn’t find anything, past or present. The more I probed, the more I unearthed; the numbers continued to climb as I discovered lists, indexes, and small databases specific to certain sectors or geographic areas. In trying to pick up a stone, I found the exposed tip of a much larger geological formation. I soon realized that my initial estimate of 100,000 organizations was off by at least a factor of 10, and I now believe

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number between 1 to 2 million or more organizations working toward ecological sustainability and social justice. By any conventional definition, this vast collection of committed individuals does not constitute a movement. Movements have leaders and ideologies. People join movements, study their tracts, and identify themselves with a group. They read the biography of the founder(s) or listen to them perorate on tape or in person. Movements, in short, have followers. This movement, however, doesn’t fit the standard model. It is dispersed, inchoate, and fiercely independent. It has no manifesto or doctrine, no overriding authority to check with. It is taking shape in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, companies, deserts, fisheries, slums—and yes, even fancy New York hotels. One of its distinctive features is that it is tentatively emerging as a global humanitarian movement arising from the bottom up. Historically social movements have arisen primarily in response to injustice, inequities, and corruption. Those woes still remain legion, joined by a new condition that has no precedent: the planet has a life-threatening disease, marked by massive ecological degradation and rapid climate change. As I counted the vast number of organizations it crossed my mind that perhaps I was witnessing the growth of something organic, if not biologic. Rather than a movement in the conventional sense, could it be an instinctive, collective response to threat? Is it atomized for reasons that are innate to its purpose? How does it function? How fast is it growing? How is it connected? Why is it largely ignored? Does it have a history? Can it successfully address the issues that governments are failing to: energy, jobs, conservation, poverty, and global warming? Will it become centralized, or will it continue to be dispersed and cede its power to ideologies and fundamentalism? I sought a name for the movement, but none exists. I met people who wanted to structure or organize it—a difficult task, since it would easily be the most complex association of human beings ever assembled. Many outside the movement critique it as powerless, but that assessment does not stop its growth. When describing it to politicians, academics, and businesspeople, I found that many believe they are already familiar with this movement, how it works, what it consists of, and its approximate size. They base their conclusion on media reports about Amnesty International, the Sierra Club, Oxfam, or other venerable institutions. They may be directly acquainted with a few smaller organizations and may even sit on the board of a local group. For them and others the movement is small, known, and circumscribed; a new type of charity, with a sprinkling of ragtag activities that occasionally give it a bad name. People inside the movement can also underestimate it, basing their judgment on only the organizations they are linked to, even though their networks can only encompass a fraction of the whole. But after

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spending years researching this phenomenon, including creating with my colleagues a global database of its constituent organizations, I have come to these conclusions: this is the largest social movement in all of human history. No one knows its scope, and how it functions is more mysterious than what meets the eye. What does meet the eye is compelling: coherent, organic, self-organized congregations involving tens of millions of people dedicated to change. When asked at a college if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science that describes what is happening on Earth today and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t have the correct data. If you meet the people in this unnamed movement and aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a heart. What I see are ordinary and some not-so-ordinary individuals willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in an attempt to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. In the not-so-ordinary category, contrast former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.1 While I was writing this, Bush was snarled in a skein of untruths as he tried to keep the lid on a nightmarish war fed by inept and misguided ambition; simultaneously the Clinton Global Initiative (which is a nongovernmental organization) met in New York and raised $7.3 billion in three days to combat global warming, injustice, intolerance, and poverty. Of the two initiatives, war and peace, which addresses root causes? Which has momentum? Which does not offend the world? Which is open to new ideas? The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, ‘‘My heart is moved by all I cannot save. So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.’’2 There could be no better description of the audiences I met in my lectures. This is the story without apologies of what is going right on this planet, narratives of imagination and conviction, not defeatist accounts about the limits. Wrong is an addictive, repetitive story; Right is where the movement is. There is a rabbinical teaching that holds that if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, you first plant a tree and then see if the story is true. Islam has a similar teaching that tells adherents that if they have a palm cutting in their hand on Judgment Day, plant the cutting. Inspiration is not garnered from the recitation of what is flawed; it resides, rather, in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. ‘‘Consider’’ (con sidere) means ‘‘with the stars’’; reconsider means to rejoin the movement and cycle of heaven and life. The emphasis here is on humanity’s intention, because humans are frail and imperfect. People are not always literate or educated. Most families in the world are impoverished and may suffer from chronic illnesses. The poor cannot always get the right foods for proper nutrition, and must struggle to feed and educate their young. If

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citizens with such burdens can rise above their quotidian difficulties and act with the clear intent to confront exploitation and bring about restoration, then something powerful is afoot. And it is not just the poor, but people of all races and classes everywhere in the world. ‘‘One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice’’3 is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world. Although the six o-clock news is usually concerned with the death of strangers, millions of people work on behalf of strangers. This altruism has religious, even mythic origins and very practical 18th-century roots. Abolitionists were the first group to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no citizen group had ever filed a grievance except as it related to itself.4 Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists then, just as conservatives taunt liberals, progressives, do-gooders, and activists today by making those four terms pejoratives. Healing the wounds of the Earth and its people does not require saintliness or a political party, only gumption and persistence. It is not a liberal or conservative activity; it is a sacred act. It is a massive enterprise undertaken by ordinary citizens everywhere, not by self-appointed governments or oligarchies. Blessed Unrest is an exploration of this movement—its participants, its aims, and its ideals. I have been a part of it for decades, so I cannot claim to be the detached journalist skeptically prodding my subjects. I hope what follows is the expression of a deep listening, the subtitle of the book, How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being, cannot be answered by one person. Like anyone, I have a perspective based on biases accumulated over time and a network of friends and peers who color my judgment. However, I wrote the book primarily to discover what I don’t know. Part of what I learned concerns an older quiescent history that is reemerging, what poet Gary Snyder calls the great underground, a current of humanity that dates back to the Paleolithic. Its lineage can be traced back to healers, priestesses, philosophers, monks, rabbis, poets, and artists ‘‘who speak for the planet, for other species, for interdependence, a life that courses under and through and around empires.’’5 At the same time, much of what I learned is new. Groups are intertwingling—there are no words to exactly describe the complexity of relationships.6 The Internet and other communication technologies have revolutionized what is possible for small groups to accomplish and are accordingly changing the loci of power. There have always been networks of powerful people, but until recently it has never been possible for the entire world to be connected. Blessed Unrest is an overview that describes how this movement differs from pervious social movements, particularly with respect to ideology. The

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organizations in the movement arise one by one, generally with no predetermined vision for the world, and craft their goals without reference to orthodoxy. For some historians and analysts, movements only exist when they have an ideological or religious core of beliefs. And movements certainly don’t exist in a vacuum: a strong leader(s) is an earmark of a movement and often its intellectual pivot point, even if deceased. The movement I describe here has neither, and so represents a completely different form of social phenomenon. Editors’ Note—Hawken concludes his inspiring account of this new and unprecedented social movement with the claim that it represents a complex social phenomenon that cannot be easily explained or predicted using the scientific language and practices that have been used in the past. The individuals whose work stands out in this potentially transformative movement all try to do good as may have been true in other social movements. But it does not stop there. The people he met who convinced him of something new occurring are people who consider the entire planet, with all its amazing diversity, as sacred, and they want to save it. Hawken concludes, ‘‘In total, the movement as I see it results in an inadvertent sense of optimism, an odd thing in these bleak times. I didn’t intend it; optimism discovered me.’’7

NOTES 1. At the time this piece was written, George W. Bush was sitting President and the Iraq war had recently begun. 2. Rich, 1993. 3. Oliver, 1986. 4. Hochschild, 2005. 5. Steinman, 1998. 6. Morville, 2005. 7. Hawken, 2007.

CHAPTER

S EARCH

FOR

17

C OMMON G RO UN D

John Marks and Susan Collin Marks

OUT OF MAD: THE RISE OF A PEACEMAKING INSTITUTION In 1982, the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) were involved in an arms race framed by a nuclear doctrine of mutually assured destruction, or MAD. This deadlock led John Marks to look for a paradigm shift. His defining metaphor was of two boys standing knee deep in a room full of gasoline, arguing over who had the most matches. While most of the world focused on rearranging the mix—on arms control—Marks knew that for the world to be truly safe, the gasoline would have to be drained from the room. This meant transforming the very framework in which the United States and the USSR related to each other. Marks thus became an advocate of common security. Convinced that confrontational, win-lose techniques were not only dangerous, but also ultimately ineffective, he founded Search for Common Ground (Search), a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C. Search’s mission is to find concrete ways to change how the world resolves conflict from adversarial, you-or-me confrontations to you-and-me solutions. It was a daring vision for that time. The organization was definitely not in line with President Ronald Reagan’s characterization of the Soviet Union An extended version of this article originally appeared in Chris E. Stout, ed., The New Humanitarian: Inspiration, Innovations, and Blueprints for Visionaries, Volume 3 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008).

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as the ‘‘evil empire.’’ But in 1989, as the Cold War faded, Search hit the mainstream. It formed a partnership with the Moscow publication Literaturnaya Gazeta to establish the Soviet-American Task Force on Terrorism. The results included an unofficial agreement between a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director and the ex-head of counterterrorism for the KGB that outlined how U.S. and Soviet intelligence organizations might work together to combat terrorism. The key recommendation (later published in the task force’s book Common Ground on Terrorism, 1991) was that the United States and the USSR should ‘‘treat terrorism as a problem shared by both superpowers and cooperate wherever possible to eliminate the threat.’’ Although the USSR’s KGB accepted the recommendation, the CIA initially rebuffed the effort because it rejected the premise of equivalence with the KGB. As the Gulf War became imminent, the U.S. government needed intelligence on Iraq, and the CIA had little choice but to establish a cooperative relationship with the KGB. The counterterrorism project was a success, and brought Search credibility. The RAND Corporation, a key Pentagon think tank, became the cosponsor. The project attracted front-page attention and was the subject of an ABC-TV Nightline program. Ted Koppel may have rolled his eyes when he mentioned the name Search for Common Ground, but Marks received an interview, and the Nightline host made clear Search’s pivotal role in organizing the project.

INTO THE MIDDLE EAST As Soviets and Americans were finding common ground, the Cold War was ending and Marks realized that the organization needed to expand or it would not survive. Soon an unplanned opportunity presented itself. Two people who were involved in the terrorism project proposed that Search organize a similar project on Lebanon. Marks agreed. He now had the contacts and a model. So, in 1989, he set up the U.S.-Soviet Task Force on Lebanon, recruited a high-level team of American participants, and flew off to Moscow for the first meeting. Two major lessons emerged from Search’s international work. First, violence in Lebanon could not be dealt with without considering the larger Middle East context. Second, rather than pursue a bilateral, U.S.-Soviet strategy, a multilateral, regional approach was needed. Often in Search’s work the original concept could be flawed, but Search’s receptiveness to adjustments led to success. Marks incorporated these lessons and proposed a multi-track effort to replicate in the Middle East region what the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (now OSCE) had done.

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The proposal was not funded until after the first Gulf War. With armed violence raging, liberal American foundations such as Ford, MacArthur, and W. Alton Jones sought a peace plan, and Search’s proposal called for a regional structure that would bring together Arabs, Israelis, Iranians, and Turks. Within months, these foundations provided Search with significant funding. Although seeking common ground in the Middle East was exactly what Search had been doing with the United States and the USSR, the world had changed. Promoting Middle East peace was clearly a mainstream activity. Marks knew Search was operating under new conditions when he received an unsolicited phone call from former Assistant Secretary of State Alfred ‘‘Roy’’ Atherton, asking if he could join the effort. Soon Marks and his colleagues were meeting Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat, Hosni Mubarak, and Prince Hassan of Jordan. Search needed—and received—official permission to sponsor unofficial meetings, which were often quite successful. In 1993 to 1994, before official peace talks had started, Search sponsored back-channel meetings between former Jordanian and Israeli generals. The generals worked out a series of unofficial agreements that became the basis of the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty.

BACKING UP A STEP Marks clearly had come a long way from his arrival in Washington, D.C., in 1966 at age 22. He had hoped for a meaningful Foreign Service career that would end with an appointment as an ambassador. He saw himself working out of an office in the U.S. Embassy building on the Place de la Concorde in Paris. He dreamed about negotiating treaties and driving a sports car around Europe. However, as with so many of his generation, the Vietnam War stood in the way of dreams. Marks was 23 when his draft board refused his deferment to take a diplomatic assignment in London. Intent on staying out of the military, Marks became one of the few members of his generation to go to Vietnam to avoid the draft. He worked as a civilian official in the pacification program in the region east of Saigon. Then, in 1970, he resigned from the State Department in protest over the U.S. invasion of Cambodia and went to work as executive assistant for foreign policy to U.S. Senator Clifford Case. His main task was to secure passage of the Case-Church Amendment, which in 1973 cut off funding for U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War. He left the senator’s staff in 1973 and co-authored The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, a best-selling expos
e about U.S. intelligence abuses. Next, he wrote The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, an award-winning book about the CIA’s use and misuse of LSD and other experimental behavioral science techniques.

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Marks became a minor culture hero, but he was troubled by the adversarial quality of his work—which was mostly defined by what he was against. Instead of throwing monkey wrenches into the old system, he wanted to build a new one. While Marks was making important life changes, the woman who would become his wife, Susan Collin Marks, was coming of age in South Africa. Susan’s mother was one of the first members of Black Sash, a women’s human rights organization set up in 1955 to protest the ‘‘death of the constitution’’ under apartheid laws. At age five, she accompanied her mother into black townships, where she witnessed the impact of racism and discrimination. Her mother’s activism—of being a white South African— shaped Susan’s life. After 1990, when South Africa began its transition from apartheid to democracy, Susan channeled her passion for justice and dignity through peacemaking, peace building, and conflict transformation under the auspices of South Africa’s National Peace Accord. She mediated conflicts, intervened in bloody street clashes, took a bullet in the leg while trying to calm a confrontation, facilitated multiple dialogues and policy forums, and helped formulate new policies on community policing. The guiding principle in Susan’s work is a profound compassion inspired by the African principle of Ubuntu, the interconnectedness of all human beings. She believes that when people are provided with the space to be their best, generally they will step into it. Susan would later write a book about the South African peace process titled Watching the Wind: Conflict Resolution during South Africa’s Transition to Democracy.1

COMING TOGETHER In 1993, Marks traveled to South Africa to produce a TV series called South Africa’s Search for Common Ground. His co-producer, Hannes Siebert, would later introduce Susan and John to each other. Within 26 hours of meeting, the couple bonded and recognized that they shared a vision. Indeed, the first time John told Susan that he no longer wanted to tear down the old system, but rather to build the new, Susan jokingly accused him of having peeked into her notebooks and stolen her ideas. By 1994, Susan moved to Washington, married John, and joined Search. They became an effective team, and Search started to grow at the rate of about 20 percent each year. John and Susan became each other’s principal advisor, and took to describing their work with the first person plural ‘‘we’’ (which form will be used for the rest of this chapter).

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KEEPING HOPE ALIVE: OUR BEST PRACTICES At Search, we respond to ‘‘crisis’’ by looking for the ‘‘opportunity’’ that lies between the old relationship that is breaking down and the new relationship that is being born. We see the space between as a place for breakthroughs and transformation. As Buckminster Fuller said, ‘‘You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.’’ One of our core principles is that conflict is a normal part of human interaction, but violence is only one possible response, and not an inevitable one. Indeed, most people, most of the time, find ways to resolve their differences peacefully—within families, at work, and in communities. Even internationally, among states, most disputes are settled amicably. Every day, the world whirrs with cooperation—from telephone and postal services, to shared scientific data, to high-wire diplomacy. Despite awful exceptions, the world is almost always much more at peace than at war. Unfortunately, however, tens of millions of people are caught up in armed struggles, and millions are still dying every year. We believe that current problems—whether economic, ethnic, or environmental—are simply too complex and interconnected to be settled on a violent, adversarial basis. The Earth is running out of space, resources, and recuperative capacity to deal with wasteful conflict. We continue to search for and often find new ways to empower large numbers of people to make a shift in attitudes and behaviors; but inevitably, our organization has had its share of setbacks. In Liberia, looters sacked our radio studio. The Iraq war diverted much of our African funding. In the United States, both the Left and the Right attacked our Network for Life and Choice on the issue of abortion. Still, we do not give up. In Liberia, we rebuilt our Talking Drum Studio and resumed making radio programs to encourage peace building. We diversified our funding in Africa and looked for new sources. Sadly, however, we had to shut down the Network for Life and Choice. This is the story of how an abstract idea became a concrete reality, with multiple forms of expression—how it was built, expanded, and sustained; how it lives vibrantly in the hearts and minds of a multi-cultural staff scattered across the planet; and how it continues to reach into societies caught in deadly conflict, bringing inspiration and hope that the violence can and will end.

INSTITUTION BUILDING Historically, conflict resolution has been the work of committed individuals who sometimes work together in networks or ad hoc partnerships, but

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for reasons of both temperament and economics, largely avoid organizations. This is the consultant or sole practitioner model. We have developed an alternative. Instead of paying our staff consulting fees by the day, we employ them by the year. In the process, we have made long-term conflict prevention much more affordable. We believe that the most effective way to deal with complex conflicts is for professional peace builders to be engaged on the ground on a full-time, long-term basis. As Jean Monnet, chief architect of what became the European Union, said, ‘‘Nothing changes without individuals. Nothing lasts without institutions.’’ In our view, the principal reason Search has flourished is that we have brought social entrepreneurial skills to the field of conflict resolution, and built an organization with sufficient resources and personnel to tackle multi-layered conflicts that extend across entire countries and regions. We try to maintain a creative operating environment that is consistent with our vision and the new world we seek to build. We try to avoid a highly centralized system. We want the organization to be a haven for subentrepreneurs, who operate autonomously, but within a common ground framework. At the same time, we require strong financial management from headquarters. This model is full of challenges and contradictions. It requires both innovation and effective administrative and financial systems. We recognize that there is a core tension between flexibility and stability. And we have learned through experience—sometimes the hard way—that an organization like Search requires both. The passionate, talented people who are drawn to our work are usually stretched to their limits. Violence can flare up and wipe out years of work. Funding often falls through for reasons that have no connection with our work or the conflict at hand, but have to do with the donor’s bureaucratic needs. The question of funding is always an issue. The field of conflict resolution is relatively new. Until 2006, only one American foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, provided substantial funding to this area of work and recognized it as a field. However, Hewlett decided to close its program. Through perseverance and ingenuity, we have been able to find funding from governments—European and American—and from multi-lateral agencies such as the European Union and various UN agencies.

BASIC OPERATING PRINCIPLES Searchers, 350 of them, representing 30 nationalities, come to work at our offices in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and the United States. They put their ethnic and religious identities aside and work together to find

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peaceful ways to deal with differences. They are Israeli and Palestinian, Hutu and Tutsi, Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, and Christian. They heroically stand for peace—often in the midst of fear and hatred. One of our basic operating principles is to employ people from all sides of the conflict. This is crucial to our work of reconciling warring parties, since we believe that in order for reconciliation to take place externally, it also must occur internally. We know that peace is a process, not an event. Although we certainly appreciate those glorious moments when agreements are signed, we recognize that real peace usually occurs after a long, arduous process of reducing fear, building trust, dealing with concerns, and chipping away at stereotypes. Instead of confronting the other side as the enemy, we help people find solutions that benefit all the parties involved. We avoid parachuting into a conflict, as we believe that real peace building requires a long-term commitment. We use our presence on the ground to develop knowledge and build a network of relationships on all sides. We try to be inclusive and to involve as many partners and allies as practical— including national governments, opposition groups, civil society, security forces, diplomats, international organizations (such as the UN, the World Bank, and the European Union), and—increasingly—the business sector. We become immersed in the local culture. We believe it is very important to have a profound understanding of where we are. Conflicts are complex, and it takes deep engagement to understand them. In any given country, we try to combine what we have learned elsewhere with native and unique qualities. We work to support and expand indigenous wisdom and creativity. We partner with local peace builders to strengthen their ability to transform their own conflicts, adopting a multipronged, multi-project strategy. We recognize that each country is different, with a unique history and culture. A standardized, ‘‘off-the-shelf ’’ approach simply does not work, and we have no single operating model. Still, we find similarities: everywhere there is a storytelling tradition, and everywhere people in conflict see themselves as victims. In our view, about 50 percent of our toolbox works when we enter a new place, and 50 percent does not—and we never know which 50 percent it will be. The keys are creativity and nimbleness. Our methodology is rooted in a simple idea stated by South African ANC (African National Congress) leader Andrew Masondo: understand the differences and act on the commonalities. Within that framework, we developed a diverse toolbox, which includes such traditional techniques as mediation, training, facilitation, and back-channel negotiations. Because violent conflict is fed by stereotyping, demonizing, and dehumanizing, we also use the tools of popular culture to help reverse this process—what is now called peace

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building. Thus, we produce soap operas that communicate win-win messages of mutual respect, tolerance, nonviolence, and problem solving. We make music videos that have turned into theme songs for entire peace processes. We produce reality TV—with good values. Our toolbox also includes street theater, sport, art, community organizing, and film festivals. In sum, we are weavers who knit together multiple strands to help mend societies that are torn and broken. We encourage moderate voices, to reduce polarization. We work both top down and bottom up. We promote societal healing across whole countries.

FIELD OFFICES Our second field office opened in Burundi following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. In November of that year, Lionel Rosenblatt, then head of Refugees International, challenged us with a question: if we could not take action to help prevent violence in Burundi, which has the same ethnic composition as Rwanda, from becoming a killing field, how could we, in good conscience, call ourselves a conflict prevention organization? We addressed the challenge and traveled to Bujumbura. We talked to everyone we could—Hutus and Tutsis, politicians, civil society leaders, the diplomatic community, religious and business figures, women, youth, teachers, and donors. Because of the escalating violence, development agencies and other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) were pulling out of Burundi. Recognizing an immediate need to defuse tension, we identified a key figure to preventing disaster was Ahmedou Ould-Abdullah, the UN secretary-general’s special representative. At the time, he worked tirelessly to negotiate, mediate, and cajole to keep the conflict from sliding toward the abyss. Ahmedou became our patron and future board member. He urged that our work be funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Within months, we launched our first activities in Burundi with a budget of more than $1 million a year. Timing is critical to our work and we employ a mix of instinct, common sense, and good problem solving. In every part of our work, we make careful considerations about where we can bring and/or add value, and how to gain entry. We are dedicated to bringing a compassionate response to the events in our world, and a deep listening ear to the inner voice that draws us closer to understanding.

A CASE IN POINT: BURUNDI In Bujumbura, we set up a radio production facility, called Studio Ijambo, which means wise words in Kirundi, to produce balanced, noninflammatory

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programming. In Rwanda, hate radio had incited the killers. In neighboring Burundi, which has the same ethnic mix, we hoped to use radio to do the opposite: to defuse violence and build bridges. We recruited a team of journalists— both Tutsis and Hutus. They were often considered traitors to their ethnic group because they were working for what we saw as the common good. Although we wanted Studio Ijambo to disseminate programming widely and be a resource to the community, we feared that if the studio became a radio station, we would be considered competition to other stations and susceptible to government interference. Thus, we became a production studio, and all the radio stations in the country broadcast our programs. We replicated this studio model in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Angola, Guinea, Congo, and C^ote d’Ivoire. The idea was to provide local stations and networks with free, high-quality programming that contained messages of peace and reconciliation. In our peak years in Burundi, we were producing as much as 15 hours a week of original programming. Our programs were produced by mixed Hutu/Tutsi teams. Acting on their own, these reporters would not have had the same access and protection as they had together. This phenomenon demonstrated both the reality and perception of balanced reporting. In the mid-1990s, when the government and rebel groups cut off contact, we initiated a series of parallel interviews, which allowed the various factions to hear each other’s perspectives over the airwaves. We invited rebel leaders to participate in telephone interviews, and we convened roundtable discussions of government, political party, and civil society leaders. Our journalists made a point of traveling to remote corners of the country so that all Burundians felt included in on-air conversations. The studio set new standards in Burundi for unbiased journalism, and influenced the local radio stations’ programming style. The head of Burundi National Radio has credited Studio Ijambo with greatly improving reporting standards throughout the country. Ted Koppel of ABC Nightline called the studio ‘‘the voice of hope.’’ Eighteen years after its inception, the studio is still going strong. Our most popular programming was a twice-weekly radio soap opera series called ‘‘Our Neighbors, Ourselves.’’ It started in 1996 and led to similar dramatic programming in nine other countries. The series, written by a Burundian playwright, told the story of a Hutu family and a Tutsi family that, during 616 episodes, succeeded in peacefully resolving their disputes. Burundi is a small media market and the series was heard by 87 percent of the population. Indeed, the impact reached the point where our fictional characters became part of national folklore, and we were, in effect, contributing to redefining Burundi archetypes. USAID official Roger Conrad said ‘‘You have introduced the

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vocabulary of peace and reconciliation to the national conversation at all levels, where previously only words of hate and mistrust were heard.’’

Burundi: Women’s Peace Center Another effective part of our strategy in Burundi was our Women’s Peace Center, also established in 1996. The center sought to mobilize women as peacemakers. It worked with thousands of women’s associations in organizing, training, and facilitating inter-ethnic dialogue, providing information about women’s rights, and helping resettle internally displaced people. It was a venue for societal healing. Here is one story: Two women, L
eonie Barakomeza and Yvonne Ryakiye, were born near each other, but did not know each other. When the fighting broke out in 1993, their community was destroyed. L
eonie and her fellow Tutsis fled to one side of the river; Yvonne and the Hutus went to the other. The two met in 1996 through our center and began working together. Unlike most of their neighbors, they were willing to cross the river that separated them. They persisted despite accusations of treason from their respective groups. Eventually, other women followed their example and links grew. With meager means, these women created a women’s association and urged people to return home by building 40 brick houses for both Tutsi and Hutu families. Their efforts were recognized when they were nominated, along with eight other Burundian women, for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.

Burundi: Youth Young militia members, paid a few dollars a day by military and political leaders, carried out most of the actual violence in Burundi. In 1999 we started an initiative to provide alternatives for these youths. Originally known as the Working with Killers project, it began when an Italian TV crew asked to use Studio Ijambo to interview two cousins, a Hutu rebel and a Tutsi gang member. They had been enemies for years. Contrary to expectations, the two agreed to stop fighting and team up with a local youth group, Jamaa (Unity). With our support, they began to build an ethnically mixed youth movement called Gardons Contact (Let’s Stay in Touch). Bringing the youth together was not easy. One of the first events we sponsored was a workshop for 30 ethnically mixed youth who gathered on a Saturday afternoon. Participants talked, played cards, and made music. As the evening wore on, no one wanted go to sleep. When the adult staff finally declared that it was time for bed, the youth fell silent. We learned from working with the youth that they did not feel safe sleeping near their

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enemies. Assurances from the adults, plus fatigue, in the end, won out, and the youth went to bed. In the morning, the Hutu and Tutsi youth woke to look at each other with fresh eyes. They began to talk more deeply, and they discovered a common ground: both felt exploited by political leaders. This group became the core of our youth activities. The youth organized ethnically mixed soccer tournaments and began to tell their stories through publishing comic books. They communicated the horrors they had seen— for example, watching victims die horrible deaths. The comic books were so compelling that the Burundian Ministry of Education added them to the curriculum material for the country’s schools.

Burundi: Domestic Shuttle Diplomacy We realized that conflict resolution in Burundi would benefit greatly from continuing mediation and facilitation. In 1995 we brought in the late Jan van Eck, a former South African ANC member of parliament, to promote dialogue and help solve problems among leaders of conflicting parties outside of the official peace talks. He worked directly for us for two years, and independently for another 10. During this whole period, Jan spent about half his time in Burundi. He became a widely trusted intermediary, who was in contact with virtually every party to the conflict, including rebel groups with whom almost no one else was talking, and he facilitated many agreements—small and large.

Burundi: Culture Violent conflict is not purely an intellectual exercise. Therefore, we want to reach people on the emotional level and we make wide use of popular culture. In Burundi, this meant drumming and dancing. We organized national competitions and held giant festivals in Bujumbura. Studio Ijambo employed a full-time disk jockey, and we produced music for peace radio programs. We even enlisted Jamaican reggae star Ziggy Marley, who has a huge following in Burundi, to record public service announcements (PSAs).

CONTINUED EXPANSION By 1997, we had also established field offices in Ukraine and Angola. Jan Pronk, then the Dutch minister of development cooperation, requested that we launch a Liberian radio studio similar to Studio Ijambo, and the Dutch government offered start-up funding. This offer posed a dilemma for us. We had taken as an article of faith that the availability of funding would not be allowed to drive our programming. After long discussions we came to see

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that our organizational integrity does not depend on where we work or on whose idea it is to get started. To produce programming with messages of peace—in Liberia or anywhere else—is totally consistent with our vision. So, we accepted the Dutch grant and established Talking Drum Studio in Liberia. This, in turn, led to more expansion, which occurred because several of our Liberian staff members turned out to be refugees from the war in neighboring Sierra Leone, and from there, once we saw the importance of acting regionally (because African conflicts tend to cross national borders), into C^ote d’Ivoire and then Guinea. This chain of events, in fact, illustrates our methodology: we reacted to an opportunity, learned from experience, and discovered—or stumbled on—a new insight.

MIDDLE EAST In 1991, we started work in the Middle East with a regional approach. But after the second Palestinian intifada broke out in 2000, there was a need for major changes. As the bloodshed spread, neither Arabs nor Israelis were particularly interested in joint action programs. We went into a period of intense reflection, and we realized that we needed more bilateral programs, aimed at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This seemed particularly true after 9/11 when we sensed that the Palestinian-Israeli struggle was at the heart of what was tearing up the Earth. We (Susan and John) decided to move to Jerusalem for two years to contribute to resolving the conflict. We lived just 70 yards from the Green Line that split the city, and we opened our office in a spare bedroom of our house. In addition to running the Jerusalem office, we were still president and executive vice president of the whole organization. At first, we shuttled between Jerusalem and Washington, D.C., every six weeks, but we could not sustain the pace—nor did we want to be away so often from Jerusalem. In Washington, we had a strong leader, Shamil Idriss, who had started with us as an intern, become head of our Burundi project, and at 27 moved up to be our chief operating officer. We rebuilt the Jerusalem program to meet the changed reality. Producing media seemed to represent one of the few activities where we felt we could make a difference. So we did what is described in the following paragraphs.

CGNews We built up the Common Ground News Service (CGNews), which offers a selection of solution-oriented, bridge-building articles to newspapers and Web sites around the world and to more than 20,000 individual subscribers every

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week. We negotiated rights to reproduce articles from leading publications and commissioned original articles from a network of prominent contributors. Our news service now appears in Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia, English, French, Hebrew, and Urdu. Altogether, more than 16,000 of our articles have been reprinted in such places as Al Hayat (London), Ha’aretz (Tel Aviv), Christian Science Monitor (Boston), Al Quds (Jerusalem), Washington Post/Newsweek Online, Jakarta Post, Frontier Post (Peshawar), Kuwait Times, Jordan Times, Arab News (Jeddah), and Al-Jazeera.com (Doha).

NONVIOLENCE Like many people, we felt that if only the Palestinians would practice Gandhian nonviolence, their conflict with Israel would be much more likely to be resolved. So, we commissioned polls among both Israelis and Palestinians—and released them to considerable publicity—showing that the clear majorities of both peoples favored a nonviolent approach but believed that the other side would react with deadly force. We also arranged for the independent Palestinian TV network, called Ma’an and consisting of nine local TV stations, to broadcast a subtitled version of the PBS documentary series A Force More Powerful. Our goal was to demonstrate the success of nonviolence in places such as India, South Africa, and the American civil rights movement. Also with Ma’an, we co-produced talk shows in which Palestinians discussed the documentaries.

The Ma’an Network Ma’an soon became a major partner. Under the leadership of an extraordinary entrepreneur, Raed Othman, we co-produced many additional discussion shows, three multiple-episode soap opera series, and a regular TV news magazine. Also, we collaborated in developing local news shows, originating at member stations. We introduced Raed to international funders, including the Dutch government, which funded the Ma’an News Service, which has grown into Palestine’s most-visited Web site.

Television Documentary During our time in Jerusalem, John conceived, wrote, and produced a four-part TV documentary series portraying what an eventual PalestinianIsraeli peace settlement could look like. The core idea was to examine, in an even-handed way, the aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians and to show that negotiated settlements are possible. Called Shape of the Future, it aired in 2005 and was the first-ever program broadcast simultaneously on

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Israeli, Palestinian, and Arab satellite TV. Former President Jimmy Carter commented favorably on the project.

Common Ground Productions Shape of the Future was one of many TV and radio series produced by Common Ground Productions (CGP), the media production division of Search for Common Ground. CGP was John’s vision. From the beginning, he realized that if we were going to be successful in changing how the world deals with conflict, we would need to reach tens of millions of people through media. He was inspired in two different ways: First, in 1979, ABC-TV had turned his book, The Search for the ‘‘Manchurian Candidate,’’ into a documentary. John noticed that about 8 million viewers had watched it—which was about 7,970,000 more than had read it! Second, he was struck by a remark attributed to the late New Yorker writer A. J. Liebling, who said, ‘‘Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.’’ In 1988, John produced a 10-part Search for Common Ground series, hosted by NPR’s Scott Simon, which aired on over 100 U.S. public television stations. Additional TV series followed in Russia, Sri Lanka, Angola, and South Africa (which led to John meeting Susan). Nevertheless, in many of the places we work, particularly in Africa, television is seen by only a very small part of the population. Radio is the principal means of communication, so we have made a retro move into radio— in Burundi, Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo, C^ote d’Ivoire, and Guinea (as well as in Indonesia, Ukraine, Palestine, and Nepal). In all, we have produced thousands of hours of TV drama, radio soap opera, documentaries, call-in shows, and music videos. In recent years, a term has come into vogue that is now used to describe people like us: social entrepreneurs. Just as a Moliere character declared that he had not realized he had been speaking prose his whole life, in our early years, we did not have this term to describe ourselves. Then in 2006, we were named as Skoll Foundation Fellows in Social Entrepreneurship, and we now have a plaque on the wall certifying our profession. We have, however, developed our own principles of social entrepreneurship: • Start from vision: Our vision is to transform the way the world deals with conflict—away from adversarial, win-lose approaches to nonadversarial, win-win solutions. Everything we do must be consistent— or at least not inconsistent—with our vision. • Be an applied visionary: In order to change the world, it is necessary to break down complicated projects into finite pieces—and to make things happen. We strive to be incrementally transformational.

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• Be prepared to deal with high levels of complexity: When you intervene in complex systems, such as international conflicts, you can be sure that there will be unexpected results. • ‘‘On s’engage; et puis on voit’’: As Napoleon said, you become engaged, and then you see new possibilities. In our work, this translates into recognizing you cannot plan in advance the various steps to be followed or the results to be achieved. • Practice aikido: In the Japanese martial art of aikido, when you are attacked, you do not try to reverse your assailant’s energy flow by 180 degrees, as you would in boxing. You accept the attacker’s energy, blend with it, and divert it by 10 or 20 degrees in order to make you both safe. In our work, this means accepting a conflict as it is—while transforming it one step at a time. • Make ‘‘yes-able’’ propositions. • Enroll credible supporters: Social entrepreneurs, who usually operate on the cutting edge, are often seen as marginal—or even crazy. Having prominent supporters can be very helpful. • Apply fingerspitzengef€ u hl: This is a German word meaning to have an intuitive sense of knowing—at the tip of your finger. Either you have it or you do not. • Demonstrate chutzpah: Chutzpah is a Yiddish word for nerve or effrontery. In our view, a social entrepreneur needs this characteristic—without being overly pushy or culturally inappropriate. • Develop good metaphors and models: Most people will not shift their attitudes and behaviors if they do not have a good idea of where they are headed. Metaphors and models—compelling stories—are crucial to the reframing process. • Have a high tolerance for ambiguity: If you are uncomfortable with not knowing where you are going and cannot deal well with the unexpected, you probably will not be a successful social entrepreneur. • Find trimtab points: On ships and airplanes, the trimtab, a tiny rudder at the leverage point, can turn the craft with a minimum of effort. Similarly, social entrepreneurs should find the places where their initiatives will have a large impact from a comparatively small input. • Be persistent.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: THE CASE OF THE UNITED STATES AND IRAN In 1996, we made a long-term commitment to improving Iranian-American relations, and we have stayed engaged ever since. Although space does not allow us to describe in detail our important work between the United States and Iran, we would like to mention that in February 1998, John and the U.S. national wrestling team flew to Tehran. The American wrestlers marched into

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the arena, proudly—but without chauvinism—carrying the American flag. The media beamed the scene around the world and contrasted it with the last time the American flag had appeared in Tehran, during the hostage crisis, when it had been burned on a daily basis. We helped to create a vivid, new global image. When we returned home, President Clinton invited the wrestlers and John to the Oval Office. The president wanted to send a positive signal to Iran, so our visit was filmed and then transmitted to Iran by satellite. We had a vision that ‘‘wrestling diplomacy’’ would end in a breakthrough in relations, but for various reasons involving national egos and not paying enough attention to the needs of the other, the new day never dawned. It has been a heady ride, but we won’t give up. About our efforts, a professor at Tehran University put it, ‘‘What [Search for Common Ground] has been doing has had a profound effect on the psyche of both the [Iranian] public and the elite. . . . No other activities have had such an effect.’’ In addition, here is what a key Iranian ambassador said in 2005 about our role in looking for constructive solutions in the nuclear domain: I believe you saved our negotiations. Your ideas kept the negotiations going. . . . If there is any outcome of the negotiations that is to the satisfaction of both sides, it will be a derivative of the discussions of this group— with conditions that will make it possible for both sides to accept.

In closing, we would like to describe our mission as it stands today: To transform the way the world deals with conflict: away from adversarial approaches, toward cooperative solutions. Although the world is overly polarized and violence is much too prevalent, those associated with Search remain essentially optimistic. Their view is that, on the whole, history is moving in positive directions. Although some of the conflicts currently being dealt with may seem intractable, there are successful examples of cooperative conflict resolution that can be looked to for inspiration—such as in South Africa, where an unjust system was transformed through negotiations and an inclusive peace process.

NOTE 1. Marks, 2000.

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S E T T I N G T H E S TA G E F O R P E A C E : P A R T I C I PAT O R Y T H E AT E R F O R C O N F L I C T T R A N S F O R M AT I O N I N T H E D E M O C R AT I C R E P U B L I C O F T H E C O N G O Lena Slachmuijlder

Ongo Benga fled from his home in chaos and confusion. On the front line between opposing armies and local self-defense militias, no safe space remained for ordinary people. Either you joined the war, or you were at constant risk of death. Along with tens of thousands of compatriots, Ongo left behind his house and his land. He fled with the clothes on his back, leaving behind all other possessions. For 10 years he sat in a refugee camp, remembering the horror of the flight, and wondering if he would ever go back and live in peace again in his house, cultivating his land. When Ongo came back home, he found another family living in his house. Anger welled up inside him, and he thought of whom he could rally around him to chase out these illegal occupants. He would ‘‘show them’’ that even though the residents often called the returnees ‘‘cowards,’’ as though they had fled the war rather than fighting it, that he was no coward. ‘‘But thanks to the theater performances by Search for Common Ground, I realized that I should rather talk to the people living there. If I used violence, it would only create more problems. I found out that they had bought this land from the local authority. They didn’t mean to do me any harm. And so we went

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together to this local authority to find a solution together. In the end, the local authority recognized what he did, and he gave me another land, where I now live peacefully with my family.’’ Onga’s testimony of choosing dialogue rather than violence echoes many more from the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. It is in this war-torn zone where Search for Common Ground (known as Centre Lokole locally) has been using the tool of participatory theater for conflict transformation to enable people in conflict to find nonviolent ways of addressing the conflicts in their lives. With support from the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) since 2005, Search for Common Ground has become a pioneer in the area of participatory theater for conflict transformation in the DRC.

CONFLICTS ABUNDANT There is no short supply of conflicts in the zones where Search for Common Ground works. Ten years of war caused nearly 1 million Congolese to flee their homes to neighboring countries, while another 2.5 million became displaced within the DRC. Vast areas of land became abandoned as entire villages fled the violence between local and foreign armies, local self-defense militias, and the minefields they left in their wake. Now, 10 years later, some of these Congolese are deciding to return home. After a decade in refugee camps in Tanzania, Zambia, Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda, they return home to a myriad of conflicts. Often, their home was destroyed, and their land either taken over or sold in their absence. Nontangible conflicts are equally important, as issues such as jealousy toward returnees, minimally assisted by the UN High Commission for Refugees or non-governmental organizations, can lead to outright violence. Rumors, stereotypes, and the lack of trust between former neighbors aggravate the situation, complicating the reintegration process of the returnees. As this takes place in a return zone where there is a shortage of schools, water supplies, roads, and livelihood opportunities, the scramble for resources and opportunities pitches residents against returnees and foments a climate of mistrust that easily deteriorates into violence. As well, state-sponsored mechanisms for addressing conflict and injustice are nearly absent: rule of law is absent with impunity prevailing, the DRC does not yet have a professional police force or army, and judiciary mechanisms are corrupt, inadequate, and inaccessible.

UNIQUE, RELEVANT SPIN ON THEATER It is in this context that Search for Common Ground has developed the tool of participatory theater for conflict transformation. Building on one of

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the DRC’s best known ‘‘natural resources’’—its creative talent—Search for Common Ground has crafted an appropriate theatrical tool that helps people to live together in peace. The technique combines various theatrical techniques, including Forum Theater, Playback Theater, and Image Theater, with conflict transformation tools. Actors are trained how to analyze a conflict, how to determine the positions and interests of those in conflict, and what it means to transform a conflict. They are encouraged to analyze the common interests of those in conflict, as it is often by understanding the commonalities of the parties in conflict that one can imagine a way forward. Using active listening, the first step of this technique is for the actors to enter into a community, talk to diverse members of the population, as well as local authorities, traditional chiefs, and members of the security forces, and begin to understand the conflict dynamics of this community. Based on what they learn, they come back as a group of actors, and share their information. Taking into account the most salient points, the actors begin to develop characters that can tell the stories of what they have heard, as well as a scenario broken up into distinct scenes that will structure the performance. The actors then perform in public, presenting the reality of the community to the audience. At this point the reaction is already dramatic. ‘‘You have presented our lives in your performance,’’ commented a person from Kazimia. ‘‘You were able to give us a mirror to look at our lives. I don’t know how you could understand all that in such a short time.’’ After the first presentation of the performance, which goes on for approximately 20 minutes, the actors will then bring the participatory techniques into play. They ask for initial comments on the performance, and then rewind the performance back to the beginning. Now, as each scene is replayed, the audience is invited to present alternative reactions by the characters on stage. The conductor, or joker, is one of the actors who plays this role to invite audience participation. ‘‘Who can show us how the military commander could have acted when faced with the angry returnee? ’’ ‘‘Who can come up and show us the way this returnee could have responded differently when accused of having stolen the food in her host family?’’ The word ‘‘show’’ is the key. Rather than a conference or seminar, the participatory theater technique enables people from the audience to literally act out a new future. They live through the change from violence to peace for a few short moments; their neighbors and friends watch intently as a new solution to the everyday conflicts is being acted out in front of their eyes. The performance, even with the integration of audience members, keeps its focus, its emotions, its intensity. The message of choosing peace comes through with local expression, from community members themselves, direct to the head and the heart of the audience.

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SNOWBALLING IMPACT Since 2005, Search for Common Ground’s participatory theater troupes have performed more than 100 shows, reaching more than 150,000 people in South Kivu province alone. In other provinces, troupes that have been trained in this technique have used it around various conflicts, particularly related to the demobilization and reintegration of former combatants. In the refugee return zones, Search works closely with local Mediation and Conciliation Committees, run by the local NGO Arche d’Alliance and supported by the UN High Commission for Refugees. ‘‘I can see progress since Search for Common Ground has started its work. People are coming to us so that we can help them to mediate, rather than using violence. People who had occupied others’ land are finding solutions with the original owners, through dialogue,’’ commented Mayuto Swedi, a member of one such committee in the Katanga village of South Kivu. In some cases, the ability to mirror the conflicts in the community, and enable a safe space for people to interact and dialogue freely, awakens the conscience of local authorities and security forces. ‘‘It’s only today that I have understood the problems of Kazimia,’’ testified the military commander of Kazimia, a coastal village in South Kivu province. ‘‘You’ve showed us their problems, and the conflicts they have with the military. It’s as though you are from here. I can see how we need to work more closely with the civilians to help them.’’

REPLICATING SUCCESS Sharing the experience of this technique in the eastern DRC around the country, the region, and the world is one of Search for Common Ground’s goals. With support from SIDA, Search for Common Ground has been able to have the resources to conduct ongoing training of its theater practitioners around the country, in theater techniques and conflict transformation. Approximately 30 theater troupes have been trained in this technique in the DRC. In September 2006, Search organized a 9-day participatory theater for conflict transformation festival, bringing together actors from Rwanda, Burundi, and around the DRC. A training manual in English and French and an accompanying 30-minute training video was produced and launched in 2007. In 2007, Search for Common Ground’s participatory theater work won the Ashoka-Changemaker ‘‘Entrepreneuring Peace’’ Award for ‘‘On-theGround Innovations for Managing Conflict,’’ selected from 158 entries from 42 countries. Day by day, performing artists around the DRC are being skilled to build peace. Alphonse Yi-Yegi explains: ‘‘I am helping the population to find solutions

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to their problems, and to avoid using violence against each other. I didn’t really think as an actor that I could really bring people together to understand each other. I am so happy to be doing a work that people appreciate so much that they apply it in their daily lives.’’ Transforming these natural human resources into agents of social change is a giant step toward the consolidation of peace and restoration of social cohesion in the DRC. It enables communities to have a technique that enables open and safe dialogue and collective search for solutions without violence. We are all born onto the stage of life without a rehearsal. Search for Common Ground’s participatory theater for conflict transformation enables us to see ourselves in conflict and practice working out ways of responding without resorting to violence. That way, when such a situation actually arises, we’ll be better prepared to respond to these conflicts with peace.

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T H E P L E D G E O F R E S I S TA N C E : L E S S O N S F R O M A M OV E M E N T O F S O L I DA R I T Y AND NONVIOLENT DIRECT ACTION Ken Butigan

Virtually every meaningful social transformation in the history of the United States has resulted from nonviolent movements that have mobilized grassroots ‘‘people power.’’ Women’s suffrage, the eight-hour work day, steps to curb racial segregation, environmental safeguards, stopping the Vietnam War, limiting nuclear testing—these and many other changes were not made by unprompted power-holders from on high. Instead, they were the direct consequence of broadly based networks of ordinary citizens systematically clamoring for a better world and translating that longing into embodied moral and political action. As we enter the 21st century, we face widespread economic and social injustice. How are we to build the next great social movement to address these challenges? One important resource that we have at our disposal is the history of past progressive nonviolent movements. We need to tell the story of these movements, to analyze how they developed and were nurtured, to weigh their strengths and weaknesses, and to celebrate and defend their accomplishments. By embracing this history as our own, we often discover that the wheel we are so arduously trying to invent was crafted and deployed years before by our movement predecessors.

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The Pledge of Resistance is a recent example of the power and possibilities of nonviolence in action. Rooted in the vision and techniques of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., the Pledge functioned as the directaction arm of the U.S. Central America movement in the 1980s and the early 1990s. This chapter will explore the vision, strategy, and nonviolent activities of this initially religious-based grassroots effort that emerged to challenge U.S. intervention in Nicaragua and El Salvador and throughout the region. Then it will suggest a series of lessons that this movement may hold for us as we enter the new millennium.1

THE PLEDGE BEGINS Beginning in the late 1970s, the U.S. Central America movement emerged to respond to U.S. intervention in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The U.S. government backed the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua and then launched a military and economic campaign against the revolutionary Sandinista government that came to power in 1979. It supported a death squad regime in El Salvador. Thousands were killed, including Archbishop Oscar Romero. U.S.-backed counter-insurgency campaigns were carried out in Guatemala, and U.S. bases in Honduras dominated that country. With the inauguration of Ronald Reagan as president in 1981, the war on each of these fronts escalated. Yet with every increase in hostilities, people across the United States increased their opposition. Such widely diverse organizations and efforts as the Sanctuary movement, the Nicaragua Network, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), and the Presbyterian Church USA struggled for an end to the bloodbath in Central America. In the wake of the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983, the Pledge of Resistance was born. The Pledge was a commitment that people took to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience or legal protest if the U.S. government invaded Nicaragua or carried out escalations of military action throughout the region. Mobilized in part by Sojourner magazine (a progressive Christian periodical and community in Washington, D.C.), the Pledge was launched at a national meeting in Washington in October 1984 attended by representatives of many large peace and justice organizations, many of whom signed on to the project. Within months 42,000 people took the Pledge. By 1987, 100,000 women and men across the United States—organized in 400 local groups—had made this commitment to take nonviolent action. The civil disobedience pledge read: If the United States invades, bombs, sends combat troops, or otherwise significantly escalates its intervention in Central America, I pledge to

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join with others to engage in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience as conscience leads me at U.S. federal facilities . . . I pledge to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience in order to prevent or halt the death and destruction which such U.S. military action causes the people of Central America.

There was a similar pledge for those committed to engaging in organized ‘‘legal protest.’’

THE ROOTS OF THE PLEDGE Both the symbolic and tactical elements of the Pledge of Resistance were rooted in a wide variety of antecedents. Its fundamental impetus can be traced, as so many 20th-century experiments in nonviolent action can, to the vision and tireless activity of Gandhi. Inheriting and consciously affirming Gandhi’s philosophy of Satyagraha— a Sanskrit neologism meaning ‘‘Soul-Force’’ or ‘‘Truth-Force,’’ this term literally also means ‘‘holding firmly to the truth’’ or ‘‘holding firmly to reality’’—Pledge organizers called on people throughout the United States to publicly withdraw their consent from U.S. Central America policy. In the spirit of Gandhi, they invited people to demonstrate this opposition in a deeply nonviolent way, including: • Dramatically vowing to take coordinated and disciplined action together at key moments. • Willingly facing the consequences of nonviolent action, including potential jail sentences and bodily injury. • Conducting themselves in a way that respects the sacredness of the opponent, even as they resist the opponent’s actions.

The first organizers of the Pledge were deeply steeped in this Gandhian vision, as this definition of nonviolence from one of the movement’s founders, Richard K. Taylor, indicates: ‘‘Nonviolence is a powerful, active way of working for human liberation that firmly and clearly resists and refuses to cooperate with evil and injustice, while attempting to show goodwill toward all and taking suffering on itself rather than inflicting suffering or violence on others.’’2 Like Gandhi, Pledge activists sought to create a condition in which all parties—the wider public as well as power-holders—would come to see both the truth and the untruth of U.S. actions in Central America and would then fashion a new and more just policy.

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The vision and tactics of the Pledge were also rooted in and shaped by the Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-Vietnam War Movement, the Farm Workers Movement, the Anti-Nuclear Movement and the Women’s Movement. Many of its organizers had actively participated in these and other nonviolent struggles. They brought to this new effort a conviction of the moral strength and political efficacy of civil disobedience. They drew on tools created in the crucible of these past efforts, including a public commitment (the Anti-Vietnam War Movement’s ‘‘Pledge to Resist Illegitimate Government,’’ as well as the Oxford Pledge of the 1930s, and even Gandhi’s ‘‘pledge of resistance’’ that he describes in Non-Violent Resistance3), organization (a model using affinity groups and consensus process that grew out of the Women’s Movement and the tradition of the Quakers), and training (echoing the Civil Rights Movement’s nonviolence training program carried out by Jim Lawson of the Fellowship of Reconciliation for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference). The Pledge of Resistance wove these and other elements developed by past efforts for change into a movement that sought to create a consensus for a new policy in Central America. Underlying these tactics and processes was a specific strategy to achieve the goal of a ‘‘just and lasting peace.’’

STRATEGY The Pledge of Resistance was organized to meet two objectives. First, it sought to deter military action, including a full-scale invasion. To this end, it worked to create a climate in which tens of thousands of people would publicly withdraw their consent from this policy, thus eroding the political foundation for it. Second, it sought to create an ‘‘emergency response network’’ to react publicly and visibly to military escalations with nationally coordinated acts of civil disobedience, interfaith services, vigils, marches, and organized communication with policy makers (via phone calls, faxes, telegrams, etc.). These actions were designed to convey to the U.S. government and to the wider public the growing opposition to this policy and the deepening support for a political alternative.

HOW THE PLEDGE WAS ORGANIZED In seeking to meet these goals, the Pledge was organized on the two mutually reinforcing tracks of national and local work. At a national level, a group of analysts regularly monitored the situation in Central America. When it determined that the United States was about to escalate militarily— or that it had already done so, often in a subtle and covert way—it alerted the

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Pledge Signal Group, which then met and decided whether or not to recommend coordinated nonviolent action across the country in response to this increased war-making. (Members of the Signal Group were located throughout the nation; these discussions often took place on conference calls.) If the Pledge Signal Group decided to issue a call for action, this ‘‘signal’’ was routed through 10 regional coordinators to 400 local chapters. Primed ahead of time to respond when such a signal was received, local groups could mount nonviolent demonstrations and make phone calls to the U.S. State Department and Congress in a matter of hours or days. At particularly critical times—for example, when Ronald Reagan dispatched 1,800 troops to the Nicaragua-Honduras border in March 1988 or when six Jesuit priests and their two co-workers were assassinated in San Salvador in November 1989— plans for massive nonviolent civil disobedience were put into action. Nationwide coordination, supported by a small national office and a national board consisting, at the beginning, of large organizations such as the American Friends Service Committee and, later, Pledge organizers from across the nation, helped sharpen the impact of this protest for government officials and the mainstream press. It also deepened local activists’ awareness that they were part of a nationwide movement. At the same time, this national impact—on the wider public or on the policy itself—was not possible without strong local chapters that, in the long run, proved to be the heart and soul of this movement. Whether they were large organizations (in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, St. Louis) or small groups (Fox Valley, IL; Olympia, WA; Burlington, VT; Richmond, VA; Juneau, AK), each found its own way to dramatize the crisis at hand and to urge the wider community to take a stand for a just and lasting peace in Central America. Locally, groups held nonviolence trainings (in the early months of the Pledge, the San Francisco group sponsored five trainings a week), organized Pledge-signers into affinity groups, staged demonstrations to practice for ‘‘the emergency,’’ and sat down with policy makers to explain what they were prepared to do if the United States escalated in the region. Moreover, they put in place the infrastructure to sustain their organizations: offices, mailing lists, phone trees, action logistics, media contacts, and contingency plans. They prepared for nonviolent action and, when the moments for action came, they generally carried it out with a sense of dedication and organization. In short, they had transformed unorganized concern into organized and empowered activity.

WHO TOOK PART? The Pledge was begun by members of the progressive Christian community, and throughout the life cycle of this movement religious organizations

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continued to play an important role in organizing and deepening this effort. Over the years, however, the Pledge broadened its base, embracing secular organizations and individuals. Though not without its occasional tensions, this bridge-building was one of the reasons the Pledge was able to mount its large and broadly based campaigns and nonviolent actions. Others who played a key role were people who had participated in previous movements, including those listed above. Finally, a key percentage of those who took part included those who had lived in Central America or who had developed bonds with Central Americans, for example, in the Sanctuary Movement. A common commitment spanning each of these communities was accompaniment. That is, the task was not to ‘‘lead’’ the people of Central America, but to walk side by side with them. This generation learned in a new way what labor organizers in the 1930s had known; the importance of solidarity. At the same time, the Pledge saw itself largely as an ‘‘anti-intervention’’ organization. Its job was to resist and transform U.S. foreign policy rather than to either dictate or uncritically support a particular program emerging from the region. The Pledge sought to end U.S. military intervention in Central America so that the people there could make their own choices about their lives and about the future direction of their societies.

KEY PHASES OF THE PLEDGE MOVEMENT There is no room in this chapter for an exhaustive chronology of the Pledge’s effort to transform U.S. policy in Central America. Here, however, is a broad overview of the movement’s phases:

The Beginning: 1984–1985 Building on the growing depth and breadth of the larger Central America movement, the Pledge began with unexpected vigor. The San Francisco Pledge, for example, was launched with a ‘‘public pledge signing’’ on the steps of that city’s federal building, where 700 people committed themselves to take nonviolent direct action to resist future U.S. intervention. Across the United States, people signed the pledge, took nonviolence trainings, and devised contingency plans—scenarios that pledge-signers would enact if the U.S. government escalated its military action in the region. Pledge organizers, in spite of this prolonged burst of energy stretching over several months, felt increasingly hamstrung by one of the most significant elements of the Pledge itself: its focus on the future. In the days when the Pledge was first crafted, an invasion of Nicaragua seemed imminent. The power of the Pledge was centered in its proactive and reactive capabilities. However, in that first year, it was unclear which emergency, beyond an outright military landing

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force storming Nicaragua, would warrant the movement’s activation and mobilization. It was a painful irony that, devised to respond to the suffering in Central America, the Pledge could be activated only when the ‘‘misery index’’ (as the authors of the Pentagon Papers, an account of another case of U.S. intervention, phrased such things) went up, and went up dramatically. This was acutely difficult for organizers who, almost daily, received reports of new atrocities in Nicaragua and El Salvador. The dilemma was solved by making the movement’s preparation a very active one, including the staging of a series of nonviolent demonstrations deemed ‘‘peace maneuvers’’ (a conscious counter to the Pentagon’s almost continual war maneuvers in Honduras and off the coast of Nicaragua) that became giant role-plays and rehearsals for the future mobilization. Finally, the Pledge was fully mobilized around two issues: the U.S. economic embargo that the government slapped on Nicaragua in May 1985; and U.S. military and economic aid to the U.S-trained contra rebels who were killing thousands of civilians in the Nicaraguan countryside to destabilize the Sandinista government. In May 1985, Pledge groups across the United States protested the embargo on Nicaragua. Believing this to be a test by the administration to gauge whether or not the American people would countenance new escalations against Nicaragua, nearly 1,000 people allowed themselves to be arrested from coast to coast in Pledge-sponsored events at local federal buildings. An ongoing campaign to break the embargo was launched.

The Major Contra Aid Battles: 1985--1988 For nearly three years, the Pledge joined with many other organizations to oppose assistance to the Nicaraguan contras. The first major mobilization on this policy took place in June 1985, with relentless activity focused on it at key moments in the Congressional funding cycle in 1985, 1986, and 1987. This effort culminated in the final defeat of military aid on February 2, 1988—when the U.S. House of Representatives narrowly turned it down by two votes—and in skirmishes the following two years over increasingly smaller packages of so-called ‘‘humanitarian contra aid.’’

Iran-Contra and the Maddening Lull: 1987--1988 In November 1986, the White House, maneuvering to control what could have potentially sunk the Reagan presidency, revealed that operatives within the government had been carrying out an illegal covert policy of supplying weapons to the contras using profits from arms sales to Iran. The Iran-Contra scandal

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confirmed what activists had long suspected: that in spite of the Boland Amendment, which prohibited the United States from making war on Nicaragua, the United States was thoroughly behind this activity. It also confirmed something else: the importance of the Central America movement. Its role in demonstrating the unpopularity of U.S. Central America policy had forced the government to illegally carry on that war clandestinely. Had there been no visible opposition to the policy, there would have been no need for it to go underground. Ironically, the enormous media exposure that focused on the Iran-Contra policy led many people in the Central America movement to draw the conclusion that this would spell the end of U.S. military adventurism in the region. Participation in nonviolent protests began to fall off. In response, the Pledge organized new campaigns focused on stateside military sites with connections to the war (for example, Fort Bragg in South Carolina; an Army Psychological Operations center in Arlington Heights, Illinois; the Concord Naval Weapons Station in Concord, California) and joined in a large demonstration at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. Furthermore, it flexed its capacity to respond virtually instantly to U.S. escalations. In March 1988, after the congressional defeat of military aid to the contras, President Reagan deployed 1,800 troops to Honduras in an apparent attempt to provoke a Nicaraguan border skirmish and a wider war. In response, the Pledge organized emergency demonstrations across the United States. For three days, these nonviolent protests were the lead story on the national television networks, and the president decided to bring the troops home sooner than previously announced.

El Salvador Redux: 1988--1990 Armed violence in El Salvador had first awakened North Americans to growing U.S. intervention in Central America, with the assassination in March 1980 of Archbishop Oscar Romero and, later that year, of four North American church women working in a barrio of San Salvador. Although tens of thousands of people were being killed in a country the size of the state of Massachusetts—with Salvadoran soldiers using U.S. weapons under the direction of U.S. advisors—the focus on the Central America movement largely shifted to Nicaragua as the Reagan administration escalated its rhetoric and action toward its government. Seeking to redress this situation, the Pledge joined with CISPES to mount a national campaign focused on El Salvador in 1988. Seventy nonviolent actions were staged in October, culminating in a large nonviolent civil disobedience action at the Pentagon, where 240 people were arrested. From then on, the Pledge focused equally on El Salvador and Nicaragua.

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During a military offensive launched by the FMLN (Salvadoran national liberation front) guerrillas in November 1989, the Salvadoran military assassinated six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter in San Salvador. Within 10 days, over 1,000 nonviolent demonstrations were held in response to these horrifying killings, with 2,440 people risking arrest (1,100 people succeeded in actually being arrested) by nonviolently occupying local congressional offices, military bases, and the White House.4 This prolonged response transformed U.S. policy in El Salvador. A conservative member of Congress from Texas, whose office had been jammed with concerned citizens engaging in civil disobedience following the killings, vowed never to vote another penny for the Salvadoran government, and his sentiment was shared by many on Capitol Hill who had heard from their constituencies that U.S. policy toward that country must end. The logjam was broken in Congress. This led to an accelerated peace process which, in turn, produced United Nations-sponsored accords ending the war. Under any circumstances, these heinous crimes would quite likely have provoked outrage, especially among the U.S. Roman Catholic population. But because the Central America movement existed (a movement which, with nine years of experience, had the capacity to field almost instantaneous nonviolent protest in an organized and coherent way), it was able to magnify and dramatize the meaning of these deaths. Structures long in place, including communities of nonviolent direct action located in every part of the country, contributed to the process of transforming disbelief, anger, and grief into means for clarifying and changing U.S. policy in El Salvador.

The Beginning of the End: 1990--1993 On March 24, 1990, the 10th anniversary of the assassination of Oscar Romero, 15,000 people braved a cold and snowy day in Washington to march from the Capitol to the White House to pay respects to the archbishop, to call for an end to U.S. military presence in his war-torn country, and to mourn the Nicaraguan elections which, one month before, had turned the Sandinista Party out of office. As a Central American village was built on Pennsylvania Avenue, an enormous papier-m^ach
e bust of Romero was stationed there, as if the prelate who staked his life on justice and peace was silently contemplating the source of much of the misery of his people— as if a decade later he was gently reminding the policy makers of this world that love is more powerful than death. More than 620 people were arrested that day. It was the largest single civil disobedience action ever held protesting U.S. Central America policy. It was also the beginning of a new era. The Pledge would continue to maintain a

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national office for another three years, and would work on a variety of issues, including Haiti, the Gulf War, and a campaign seeking to close the U.S. School of the Americas (which trains soldiers from throughout Latin America). Its life cycle as a movement, however, had begun to change direction, with people beginning to put increasing attention on domestic issues of economic, racial, and sexual justice. The doors of the Pledge’s national office closed shortly after a final national gathering of past and present Pledge organizers in August 1993 at a retreat center in rural Virginia.

EVALUATING THE PLEDGE How are we to assess the impact of the U.S. Central America movement, and its nonviolent direct-action arm, the Pledge of Resistance? From the outset, it is important to state what the Pledge did not accomplish. Most significantly, it did not prevent years of suffering and destruction. The U.S. government’s so-called ‘‘low-intensity conflict’’ in Central America—a war relentlessly carried out year after year on political, economic, and military fronts—ground on through the 1980s. Many died and many others were the victims of unspeakable horrors, which they will carry with them all their days. There is sorrow and anguish in knowing that this movement permitted such suffering and destruction to continue as long as it did. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that this carnage would have been much worse if the U.S. Central America movement had not existed. There are indications that the U.S. government was preparing to invade Nicaragua during this period, but was checked from doing so by a very vocal and active Central America peace movement at home.5 The firepower that was vented against Panama and Iraq would likely have been used against the Nicaraguan people. If it is true that domestic opposition played a role in hampering these plans, the Pledge, with approximately 15,000 acts of nonviolent civil disobedience and innumerable other public activities, played a key role in strengthening this restraint. At the same time, it seems to have had an impact on other key dimensions of the war, including the March 1988 troop deployment to Honduras; the government’s decision to launch a covert war that led to the Iran-Contra scandal; and policy shifts in the aftermath of the assassination of the Jesuits in El Salvador. Besides these concrete ways that the movement may have directly modified U.S. policy, there are a number of lessons to learn from the history of the Pledge. First, it is possible to build and sustain over the course of six to nine years a nonviolent social movement made up of people who are not the direct victims of the policy being challenged. Like other movements, the Pledge of Resistance required of

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its participants a high level of motivation. It involved constructing and maintaining communities across the country that were prepared to take nonviolent direct action on an emergency basis. This necessitated nonviolence training, regular meetings, and the creation of a culture that would sustain such activity, including facing the spiritual and logistical rigors of serving jail sentences for acts of nonviolent civil disobedience while attempting to carry on with the demands of one’s everyday life. Yet unlike other movements, Pledge-signers were not the direct recipients of the wars in Central America; even the Anti-Vietnam War Movement was motivated, in part, by concerns about the draft. While this suggests an element of self-interest, the phenomenon of the Pledge of Resistance more accurately reflects a case of citizens taking the responsibility to change what they perceive to be their government’s onerous policies. The experience of the Pledge indicates that deeply rooted movements for social change can be built on the basis of good citizenship and not simply on the grounds of self-interest. Second, it is possible to organize both emergency response activities and proactive, long-term campaigns and events. The history of the Pledge of Resistance demonstrates that movements can institutionalize mechanisms that give it flexibility in responding creatively to events as they occur. This was rooted in the concept of the ‘‘pledge’’ itself, which represented a commitment to engage in future nonviolent action. Since this activity might take place literally at a moment’s notice, it required Pledge-signers to acquire nonviolence training and to concoct response plans proactively. The life cycle of the Pledge indicates that it was able to achieve an effective balance between ‘‘emergency response actions’’ and fixed-date events. In retrospect, it seems that these two basic approaches—‘‘emergency alerts’’ with their heightened adrenaline, and long-term campaigns and events with their stability and lead time—tended to reinforce and rejuvenate one another. Third, it is possible to craft a movement that holds in tension a series of bipolar oppositions. The Pledge was home to a variety of political and religious tendencies that were held in creative tension: religious symbols and political ideology; centralization and local autonomy; emergency response and planned actions; civil disobedience and legal protest; solidarity commitments and anti-intervention stances; provocative protest and nonviolent discipline. One of the strengths of this experiment was its ability to draw together a diversity of organizations and passions, welded together by the conviction that nonviolent direct action was a key tool in creating the conditions for a social and political transformation of U.S. interventionary policies in Central America. Fourth, the Pledge, like many other movements, demonstrates that such phenomena are spiritual journeys as much as political projects. At bottom, the

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Pledge of Resistance was a commitment to human persons: North Americans to accompany—but not re-colonize—Central Americans, and North Americans to work with one another to encourage U.S. society to live up to its stated values of democracy, justice, equality, fairness, and the right to life, liberty, and happiness. Like other spiritual journeys, there were moments of initiation, exhilaration, desolation, and the profound awareness of both the mystery of evil and, at the same time, the mystery of good in the face of the mystery of evil. These experiences were shared in a community that sustained itself by acting together and interpreting the meaning of that action for one another and for the larger world. In retrospect, it is possible to speak of the Pledge as a promise people took to become increasingly human together. A social movement is a kind of language constructed to engender a conversation with its wider society about fundamental issues of injustice and violence. Standing in the traditions of Gandhi and King of active nonviolence, the Pledge of Resistance, as a part of the larger U.S. Central America movement, contributed to this conversation by using the most powerful symbols that human beings have at their disposal: their own vulnerable, achy, resilient, and beautiful bodies. The Pledge was an experiment in active nonviolence that offers both a vision and concrete tools for such future ‘‘embodied conversations.’’

NOTES 1. Smith, 1996. 2. Taylor, 1994. 3. Gandhi, 1951. 4. This is a report prepared by Ken Butigan quantifying hundreds of demonstrations in the wake of these assassinations. See Butigan, 1989. 5. In the first week of June 1985, the New York Times ran, on two successive days, stories detailing how every piece was in place for an invasion of Nicaragua. One anonymous source reported that such a military operation would be like ‘‘falling off a log.’’ That summer, Pledge organizers were told by Central America policy analysts that they had indications from within the Reagan administration that its invasion plans had been stymied by widespread protests in the wake of the imposition of the embargo and in response to administration efforts to win congressional approval of a package of $37 million in so-called humanitarian aid for the contras.

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M O N E Y C A N N O T B E E AT E N : N O N V I O L E N T R E S I S TA N C E I N S T R U G G L E S OV E R L A N D A N D E C O N O M I C S U RV I VA L Rev. Jos
e M. Tirado

Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then you will find that money cannot be eaten. —Cree Indian Proverb

Land struggles and resistance to privatization of the commons by indigenous peoples, poor workers, and the disenfranchised, are not historical anomalies. To this day, conflicts over land and resources, and attempts to defend or reclaim the commons continue to be waged.1 These include struggles in India, Thailand, Brazil, and Papua New Guinea. Within our own culture, Native American resistance to European colonization began shortly after the arrival of Columbus in 1492. Although innumerable treaties were signed with Native tribes ceding control of traditionally used land, these agreements were often constructed unethically, with deceptive intent and, in the end, were abrogated by the insatiable drive for more land for the ever-increasing numbers of European settlers. This struggle did not end until the near complete extinction

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of Native peoples and, more than 400 years later, the subjugation of their remainders onto reservations by the late 1800s, culminating with the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890.2 African resistance to European colonization and its use of slave labor fared little better, with the forced removal of millions of people due to the slave trade, a period roughly contiguous with the Indian wars in North America, with slavery per se beginning in the 1660s.3 By 1800, 10 to 15 million Africans were forcibly taken out of Africa as slaves to the Americas, and an incredible 50 million were estimated lost during slavery’s several hundred year era.4 Yet during the period of American slavery before the Civil War, small-scale armed rebellions and conspiracies in 1800, 1811, 1822, and 1831 occurred that threatened the system.5 Acts of resistance included ‘‘stealing property, sabotage and slowness, killing overseers and masters, burning down plantation buildings, running away.’’6 Just how potentially threatening the situation was can be seen in an 1822 attempt that was foiled before it achieved its incredibly ambitious end: the burning down of Charlestown, South Carolina.7 Thus, resistance was a constant given even then. But it is not only indigenous resistance that exemplifies the struggle for land and its enormous economic benefits. Resistance carried out by free workers also has played an important role in the history of the West. Indentured servitude in the early history of the United States represented such an important part of the economy that, according to one historian, ‘‘Probably half the immigrants to Colonial America were indentured servants,’’8 many working someone else’s land for periods of up to seven years. Because of poor working conditions and widespread maltreatment, desertion from their work, strikes, suicide, and occasional conspiracy to outright rebellion characterized much of the period in which indentured servitude existed.9 This pattern of resistance, often violent, is quite common. The relationship of such resistance to historical issues of land and its control will follow.

RESISTING CONTROL OF THE COMMONS For more than 9,000 years after the advent of agriculturally settled societies, the lands in which people were born, lived, and died was seen as a commons and remained unenclosed. Land, water, and other resources belonged to no one person or group, but to all, and all made use of its supply. According to Schock ‘‘for most of human’s social history the Earth’s resources were used cooperatively and sustainably.’’10 He adds that, in fact, ‘‘the enclosure of the commons, that is, the taking of common land for private commercial use, can

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be traced back to 13th century England.’’11 That is, despite a 1.5 million year presence of humanoids on Earth, the concept of private land ownership is barely 700 years old. Before then, most humans lived in a system whereby the ‘‘land and resources [were] held in common and collectively managed by a local community.’’12 During the mid-13th to 18th centuries in England, there were vigorous debates and civil conflicts over the appropriate nature and extent of property rights and resistance to the increasingly concentrated holdings of wealth and property into ever-dwindling numbers of people. By the mid-17th century, there was ‘‘open rebellion against enclosures in large areas of the countryside.’’13 One group, calling themselves the Diggers, led by Gerrard Winstanley, made impassioned appeals against the idea of property rights: [S]o long as . . . rulers call the land theirs, upholding this particular property of mine and thine, the common people shall never have their liberty.14

According to Winstanley, there would be no need to expropriate land from those who already had it because he believed that the poor should simply ‘‘settle the commons and waste land . . . and work them together . . . the Earth become a ‘common treasury’ providing plenty in freedom for all.’’15 Even as late as the 18th century, parts of this system remained as, [f]or the most part, people had adequate food, shelter, and clothing. . . . Most farming was done on open fields, with families holding the rights to farm small and scattered strips of land. Even those without such rights were able to provide for themselves from the common lands, which provided grazing for their animals, rabbits to eat, and wood for their fires.16

Although the Diggers movement was short-lived (vigorously opposed by large landowners, unsurprisingly), Winstanley’s ideas were influential to other groups, most notably the anarchist traditions of Peter Kropotkin and those seeking to claim a lineage from the past to their own formalized libertarian ideals.17 In the mid-18th century, there was also the rise of pacifistic Christian groups like the Russian Doukhobors and the Quakers. The latter group, in addition to their principled stands against the taking of oaths, and resistance to war, also lived lives close to the land in small communities with little or no mechanisms for rule by one group over another and a fairly egalitarian ethos pervading social life. Some referred to and modeled themselves after the earliest Christian communities, where property was ‘‘held in common’’ and ‘‘a general distribution as the need of each required’’ was the practice.18

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NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE IN RETAINING THE LAND AND IN 20TH- CENTURY CONFLICTS Others besides Quakers have recommended alternatives to violence, in addition to their cherishing of minimal interference in the free conduct of all members of society—Leo Tolstoy in Russia and Henry David Thoreau in the United States, for example. And in fact, ‘‘there is a more global tendency toward using methods of nonviolent action in struggles over land and resources.’’19 Thus, there is a fairly long history of Western resistance to land expropriation and forced landlessness, by those who were displaced by laws made by and for ruling elites. These groups were motivated by different concerns, but all shared a deep attachment to the land they lived on and resisted passionately the encroaching system of private ownership of huge swaths of land previously understood as belonging to everyone. (We should note that even Amerindian resistance began nonviolently in the good faith signing of treaties and other accommodationist actions toward their new EuropeanAmerican neighbors.) It is only when we come to the 20th century that we see a formal theory of nonviolence constructed and specially organized. Later, tactical use was made of nonviolent resistance in struggles over land, and with the economic plight of poor and disenfranchised workers. The first was most dramatically exemplified by the Gandhian Satyagraha campaigns for Indian independence and the second, the American Civil Rights struggle after World War II. These two struggles have come to represent the qualitative differences between violent and nonviolent resistance, highlighting the moral questions that arise when violent responses to violent actions are rejected and attempts are made to reconcile differences in a wholly different manner. Struggles over land resources utilizing nonviolent means became a later and most interesting innovation. Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869 to 1948), an Indian lawyer, became known as the champion of nonviolent resistance and one of the main leaders in India’s movement for independence. Gandhi’s theories about nonviolence were formulated during his early years in South Africa and centered on the concept of Satyagraha, or roughly translated, ‘‘truth force.’’ This word combines two Sanskrit words, satya, meaning ‘‘truth’’ and agraha, meaning ‘‘insisting on’’ or ‘‘obstinacy.’’20 Satyagraha is not passive resistance as it has sometimes been referred to. (Although Gandhi himself used this phrase in South Africa, he soon gave it up for this neologism of his.) It is instead a defiant opposition to perceived injustice through an unbending refusal to cooperate, demonstrating the unethicality of the opponent’s position, while stressing the human dignity of one’s adversary in an attempt to convert them to one’s side, and, if that is not

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possible, to at least persuade them of one’s own humanity. All this was done in the spirit of friendship and common humanity to transform the entire relationship from one of opposition to mutual respect. Satyagraha seeks to resolve conflict by persuading the adversary . . . that he—we—have much more to gain in harmony than in discord . . . it tries to transform the opponent [regarding them] as a participant in the search for a truthful solution to the conflict.21 Gandhi came to believe that passive resistance, as nonviolent expressions of resistance were usually understood and referred to, was wholly inadequate. For Gandhi, the practitioner of Satyagraha (a satyagrahi) engaged in nothing passive at all, in fact, he spoke emphatically about the revolutionarily transformative power a satyagrahi must adhere to and how much more powerful a weapon it was in comparison to violent reaction. This is because the satyagrahi must actively overcome all anger and desire for retribution within their own heart, as well as desiring earnestly to assist the opponent to become one’s friend and thus end the cycle of violence. Gandhi’s ideas had a widespread influence in the 20th century, the most well-known example being on the teachings and activities of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Thrust into the spotlight during the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 to 1956,22 Dr. King combined compellingly prophetic speeches and a canny sense of pushing the political envelopes of his day. Thus, while he focused most directly on the struggle for equal civil rights for African Americans, he ‘‘[i]ncreasingly . . . came to see himself as advocate for the poor and the oppressed wherever they were.’’23 His last major effort, a Poor People’s March on Washington, D.C., sadly took place after he was assassinated, indicating what direction he was moving toward and perhaps, where establishment tolerance of his aims would advance no further. The path of nonviolent resistance is therefore one with dual ideological parents, Eastern and Western. As pacifist David McReynolds put it, ‘‘Henry David Thoreau’s essay on civil disobedience had been read by Tolstoy, Tolstoy had been read by Gandhi, and Gandhi had been read by Martin Luther King Jr.’’24 These two great struggles concentrated on transforming the dominant political structures of their respective countries: independence for India, full equal rights for African Americans in the United States. There were significant social effects of both struggles as well. And while both newly independent Indians and African Americans received some economic benefits, it was the wider political freedom that was the driving spirit. It is an oversimplification of Gandhi’s campaigns to suggest a secondary or tertiary place for economic objectives. He hoped satyagrahis would work for all levels of freedom and this included freedom from de facto serfdom for many. He helped form unions and advocated tirelessly for workers’ rights. But the broader framework of his activities remained in seeking independence from Britain.

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Likewise, in King’s case, the struggles for political equality could not long be separated from economic justice: in his later years the Poor People’s Campaign and with it, a passionate desire for the ‘‘radical redistribution of economic and political power,’’ dominated his thinking.25

CURRENT NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE TO RECLAIM THE LAND In light of the above historical analysis, what is the relationship between nonviolent resistance and present-day struggles over land? If there is just one emblematic and, for this writer, chillingly poignant example of the plight of farmers in the world’s land struggles today, it is this single statistic: between 1997 and 2007, over 182,000 farmers committed suicide in India.26 This figure becomes even more revealing when we look at it as one suicide every 32 minutes from 1997 to 2005, and since 2005, this figure is one suicide every 30 minutes.27 This dramatic figure is still, however, a ‘‘huge underestimate’’28 because women farmers, who actually do most of the agricultural work and who are not included since land titles are rarely in their name, are simply regarded as ‘‘farmers’ wives’’ and thus excluded from the total. We are looking at what one Indian journalist has described as ‘‘the largest sustained wave of such deaths in recorded history.’’29 One group that addresses some of the underlying causes of farmers’ woes is Ekta Parishad. Begun in 1990, Ekta Parishad (United Forum) is ‘‘a Gandhian land rights organization concerned with issues that impact small farmers, landless rural workers, and adivasis (tribal peoples).’’30 They work to redress grievances brought about by the lack of implementation of land distribution laws, governmental agricultural policies, and unequal access of indigenous people to land resources. By organizing and creating solidarity among marginalized peoples, Ekta Parishad then conducts campaigns to put pressure on the government. One of their most important activities is the yatra, ‘‘an extended journey through the countryside that may last in duration from a few weeks to many months.’’31 A ‘‘Declaration of Satyagraha’’ that announces the intents and goals of the trek precedes the yatra, a variant of the spiritual pilgrimages Hindus take. This document summarizes the problems that have prompted the action and the fact that ordinary means have failed to resolve it. A major rally then begins the campaign with speeches given as the main activists and supporters begin the journey. Making repeated stops in different villages, villagers are encouraged to present their grievances while petitions are signed and collected. Finally, reaching the prearranged destination, another rally is held where the thousands of collected petitions are presented to the authorities. Media are contacted along the way, acts of civil disobedience

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are carried out, and the entire event may take many months, taking participants through hundreds of villages.32 The yatra campaigns have had their successes—in one yatra from 1999 to 2000 more than 150,000 plots of land were given to landless peasants. They are also significant in part because they are reviving a government co-opted Gandhian tradition as they focus on ‘‘organizing and promoting the rights and citizenship of people who have been the most marginalized in Indian society.’’33 In 1984, liberation theology-influenced progressive Catholics and Marxist activists began the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil. Their concerns were the enormous disparities in land ownership and distribution that highlights Brazil as having ‘‘one of the highest levels of land inequality in the world.’’34 For example, ‘‘1.6 percent of the landowners control roughly half (46.8 percent) of the land.’’35 Huge dam building projects, the expulsion of people from the land for industrial farms, and the indebtedness of small farmers (a major cause of Indian farmer suicides) caused the rates of the landless and rural workers to increase beginning in the 1970s. For the MST, occupying unused land is their strategy of choice. This land must fulfill two conditions: it ‘‘must be classified as not in productive use and therefore eligible for redistribution, and the land must be suitable for sustaining a community.’’36 Once a particular piece of land is chosen, landless people are solicited and mobilized. After a series of meetings are conducted, a large enough group is assembled to begin the next phase, which is the actual occupation. According to Schock,37 anywhere from 30 to 300 families are typically assembled to journey to and begin the process of first occupying, then living together on, the land. This last phase is conducted in secret, the selection of land, in particular, and when the land is settled, usually after dark, they must have enough resources to actually begin the process of living on the land since police may block access to the site once they are discovered to prevent additional settlers from journeying there. The community then visibly posts an MST flag, permanent housing is built, and the legal proceedings begin to have the land transferred legally to the new community. Although violence in opposing MST settlers occurs, ‘‘[t]he MST employs nonviolent action as a pragmatic means for promoting agrarian reform. Given the monopoly on violence held by landowners and the state, it would be suicidal for the movement to respond with violence.’’38 Occupations like this—230,000 of them—have taken place totaling 20 million acres and land for 350,000 families. In addition, ‘‘the MST encourages families to work the land cooperatively and to engage in organic farming for local markets.’’39 As well, 20 percent of the land is separated out as an ecological reserve. The MST tactics both enshrine nonviolence into their process and act as a counterweight to industrial, export-oriented farming.

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In Thailand, the Assembly of the Poor (Samatcha khon chon) is made of many different groups of people displaced by large dam building projects that have been erected to ‘‘increase industrialization, promote export-oriented agriculture, and to clear forests of people for commercial forestation.’’ It is a ‘‘horizontal network of grassroots organizations and supporting NGOs [nongovernmental organizations].’’40 The main technique of the Assembly is creation of an ‘‘encampment’’ whereby a temporary ‘‘rural village’’ is constructed, near where the official government ministers live and work. Speeches, rallies, and publicity events are staged as the activists live on site for the duration of the encampment. In 1996, 12,000 activists conducted the first encampment that resulted in a stalemate when the government refused to agree to their part of an agreement originally struck. From January 24 to May 2, 1997, a second encampment took place when ‘‘25,000 people from 35 provinces . . . demanded that the government adhere to its promises and take action on their grievances.’’41 This second encampment succeeded in forcing the government to give compensation to 7,000 families for the loss of their land, cancel one and review five other dam projects, and adopt resolutions ending evictions of forest people from their land. Although the next government reneged on previous agreements, the subsequent elections in 2001 elected the more favorable government of Thaksin Shinawatra; the Assembly once again placed pressure on the government.42 (It should be noted that a 2006 military coup, supported by urban and middle-class rebellions that opposed Assembly policies, forced Prime Minister Thaksin out of office. A subsequent encampment that ended in April 2009 raised hopes of his return to power.) Where the Assembly has proved successful is in its decentralized style, a diffuse leadership, and its flexible ability to address local issues. It also advocates local, rural control of resources and remains committed to empowering the country’s landless and rural poor. In Africa a similar pattern of resistance to economic deprivation and land issues exists. As women often bear the largest burdens in the raising of children while participating in the work of the family and community, they are most vulnerable to changes in land ownership and land use. In Nigeria, women have become activists fighting oppression for years. ‘‘Realizing the futility of violent action, women of the region have extensively employed nonviolent action.’’43 There were many uprisings, including the 1929 Aba women’s revolt, the 1984 Ogharefe women’s uprising, the 1986 Ekpan women’s uprising, and several other movements in the 1990s. In July 2002, a group of Ugborodo women occupied the ChevronTexaco oil platform in Escravos to protest the contamination of both native farmland and the Warri River due to pollution. Subsistence farming and fishing were the main livelihoods in the region and, as both were now ruined, the women felt they had

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little choice. In addition, oil industry jobs were often given to members of other communities, causing job losses among their husbands, fathers, and sons, adding to the deprivation. On July 8, 2002, more than 700 women took over the oil platform after having been denied a redress of their grievances that they had sought repeatedly. When the occupation began, they were only 150, but as the protest continued more than 2,000 women took part. They later took over the ChevronTexaco airstrip, docks, and stores and ‘‘disrupt[ed] the production of about 450,000 barrels of crude oil each day the protest lasted.’’44 The company eventually relented and the action was seen as a success. Because these protests united women from various communities and ethnicities, it also had the effect of strengthening opposition to an oppression that had benefitted from their prior disunity. In Papua New Guinea (PNG), 97 percent of the land in a vast area, which includes 800 different languages and dozens of different cultural and ethnic groups, is regarded as ‘‘customary tenured land,’’ that is, land held as a commons. It is land whose ‘‘economic aspects’’ are ‘‘to ensure survival of the clan, traditionally through a high level of self-sufficiency,’’ and its ‘‘economic aspects’’ are described as ‘‘land [that] is held, securely and in the long term, by the group for the benefit of the group.’’45 One can see that in such a system, the people are placed above profit and such a system has reliable staying power in that the long term is considered more important than any shortterm commercial gain. Yet it is also true that Papua New Guinea faces increasing pressures to adopt policies that turn the commons into more conventional land distribution. The very government report cited above openly describes the unique and beneficial aspects of the traditional system and declares that ‘‘[d]espite the length of tradition, the capitalist system is inexorably infiltrating the traditional economic and social mores of the country.’’46 This pattern is apparently spreading. While [a]lmost half of the people in the world are peasants and small farmers . . . [t]he violation of the rights of peasants have risen dramatically with the liberalization of agriculture that forced farmers to produce for export and to engage in industrial modes of production.47

Between international trade agreements such as General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, there has been a steadily increasing trend among nations to move toward export-oriented farming and land privatization. Because of this, ‘‘peasants have disappeared massively all over the world, and a handful of transnational corporations (TNCs) have taken over food production and trade.’’48 According to Brecher and Costello, ‘‘[b]etween 1968

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and 1982, lending by the World Bank increased sixfold. [As a result] huge dam, road, forestry, agriculture, and other development projects . . . displaced millions of poor people and destroyed environments and traditional lifeways for millions more.’’49 Several examples of the complex, interrelated, and inexorably debilitating effects of newer development on traditional peoples prove instructive. In India, for example, an increase in shrimp farming, used primarily for export to Western countries, has proven incredibly destructive. For example, the use of modern, industrial aquaculture to ‘‘grow’’ shrimp consumes inordinate amounts of fish meal. The fish meal itself is taken from destructive to native fish patterns by offshore trawling. In turn, development of ‘‘shrimp ponds’’ has resulted in the destruction of mangroves that have traditionally protected coasts against storm erosion and are a protective ecosystem for other forms of aquatic life.50 In addition, pesticides and antibiotics that are used to increase production are fed back into the sea or nearby mangroves and farmlands in the form of waste material, adding an unhealthy pollution problem to already struggling areas. Lastly, sea water, used to maintain optimum salinity for the shrimp farms, ends up seeping into farm areas and the water table, causing pollution of drinking water sources, and increasing the salinity of the soil, destroying homes, and causing the displacement of families. All of this is a result of increased shrimp consumption needs in the West and the transformation of more traditional farm practices.51 Another example involves the substitution of farm products such as mustard seeds for soybeans, used primarily to make foodstuffs for the West, threatening traditional dietary regimens in India.52 Adapting the Gandhian concept, a group of women began Sarson Satyagraha, or ‘‘mustard Satyagraha’’ to protest new laws protecting the genetically modified soybean industries that have displaced mustard oil production.53

BUILDING NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE BEYOND NATIONAL BORDERS Although most of the world’s small farmers and traditional land owners struggle against the overwhelming odds within their own countries, this is not a sustainable strategy for the longer perspective. Resistance to aspects of globalization that displace traditional farmers and those who have lived on community land cannot remain within national borders if it is to be ultimately effective. ‘‘An excessive focus on national sovereignty undermines efforts to impose better rules on the global economy’’ write Brecher and Costello54 and their words are perhaps more true today than when they wrote them in 1994. Worldwide publicity adds focus and pressure to national states that acts both as a tempering factor in decision-making processes and

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as a potential recruitment device for allies. The work of Amnesty International is an example of such an organization, and the international attention given to save the Amazon rainforest an example of one issue that transcends national borders and is responsive to international pressure. It should be noted that resistance patterns have also changed, not necessarily in the success of the struggles but that, ‘‘armed guerilla insurgencies . . . declined, while nonviolent strategies for successfully challenging regimes increased.’’55 For example, in Bolivia, expansion of privatized ownership of resources, in this case water—and unbelievably enough, rainwater—led to a popular, nonviolent rebellion against the laws passed by the government and the Bechtel corporation. After about a dozen deaths and huge public demonstrations, the government relented, allowing villagers access to and ownership of water resources. But a mentality remains that unless private control (meaning private ownership by people who can profit over what was once free) is accepted, natural resources are ‘‘wasted.’’ This is dramatically exemplified by what John Wolfensohn (head of the World Bank at that time) said on April 12, 2000, after the Cochabamba struggle ended, ‘‘free or subsidized delivery of a public service like water leads to abuse of the resource . . . [t]he biggest problem with water is the waste of water through lack of charging ’’56 [emphasis added]. For the billions of people who have lived in natural environments for millennia, such a sentiment would be regarded as absurd and indefensible. Yet it apparently remains a continuing rationale for accumulating control over resources otherwise available freely since the dawn of recorded history. The use of nonviolence is not limited to societies of democratic governance. Indeed, there are clear examples of its utility in nondemocracies such as Iran, Eastern Europe, and the Philippines.57 However, there remains the often unspoken suspicion that a fully totalitarian society would not be an efficacious place to engage in such a struggle. Indeed, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, himself a 1984 Nobel Laureate, said, ‘‘[N]onviolence requires that there is a minimum moral standard which is accepted by all the players, as it were, in the game.’’58 However, even when movements begin in violent opposition to state or corporate land displacement, there is a tendency to move toward a nonviolent approach as these movements age. The Zapatista uprising in Mexico, inaugurated the day NAFTA took effect, is a clear example of this.

CONCLUSION What each of the above conflicts shared was a determination to resist private encroachment on their lands, state-sponsored displacement, and rapacious economic dealings that split communities and neighboring peoples. In

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the face of often overwhelming odds, they resisted and, in many cases, won their struggles. But they shared something else as well: a commitment to nonviolent resistance that provided an effective means of gaining or enforcing a sense of community cohesiveness. In addition to the personal benefits this latter quality is crucial to the maintenance of group identity and a sense of shared community ties necessary for unified action in the future. This writer makes no claims to fully understanding the enormous sacrifices involved in making decisions to turn to violence, or those painstakingly to avoid it, yet nor do I believe that violence must be abjured 100 percent of the time in all cases, everywhere. Even Gandhi said that, ‘‘He who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honor by nonviolently facing death, may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor.’’59 For example, the resistance of such movements as the Guatemalan URNG (national revolutionary unit) involved the reluctant taking up of arms to fight back against U.S.-supported terror campaigns that, had they not done so, most likely would have achieved a near genocidal result. As it is, hundreds of thousands were still killed and sickeningly brutalized by a people who ‘‘could comfortably have rubbed shoulders with Himmler and Mengele,’’ as author and activist Noam Chomsky has written.60 Whether they could have succeeded without a civil society in tune with the moral pressure a nonviolent approach might have engendered, is impossible to say. Without the choices they did make, however, many thousands more would most certainly have died. By resisting nonviolently, others have avoided what conceivably could have become mass slaughters and the possibility of even more violence in a future of recrimination after recrimination. As one author put it, ‘‘when challengers employ armed violence in their conflicts with modern states, they tend to become trapped in an escalating spiral of violence that they are unlikely to win.’’61 Thus, the use of nonviolence achieves the short-term goal of redressing the particular grievance, and a long-term goal of changing the terms of the struggle itself. It is this component that I regard as the most significant in the resistance to oppression, whether social, political, or economic. That such resistance is confined to the more underdeveloped nations would belie a recent and inspiring example of the power of nonviolence in other settings. It should be noted that in a roughly contiguous period,62 two examples of modern society’s rebellion against their governments occurred. Between October 2008 and January 2009, as Athens exploded in a rage of violence over the killing of a young protestor, Iceland’s economy collapsed. Both societies reacted to this new sense of anger in different ways. Both engaged in resistance to a government whose malfeasance they regarded as eroding its legitimacy. However, while the violence in Greece continued

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with no significant changes in governance, Icelanders completely withdrew their support and in an unprecedented result, brought about the resignation of their entire government. They then selected a caretaker government until new elections and voted into office a reformist coalition committed to the investigation and punishment of those responsible for Iceland’s financial collapse. It may be concluded that even in developed countries there are occasions when, as the systems of greed and misconduct are revealed, the people will ‘‘rise in forceful nonviolence to wrest back control of their government.’’63 The struggles against the last remaining possession of a people, the very land they live on, against those who would cavalierly remove them from it replacing a millennia-old lifestyle with mining operations, strip malls, or factories, are emblematic of a world that faces its own moral ruin. No amount of material compensation can replace the contribution of an entire culture to the world’s body of ‘‘living human documents’’ as Anton Boisen described individuals.64 And by removing them from traditional homes and lifestyles, we contribute to the death of spirit, an often debilitating maladjustment to the new world they have been thrust into. For many of those resisting, dying to remain on their land is considered an appropriate sacrifice; killing, however, is not. The notion of the commons, clearly understood by the indigenous peoples of the Third World resisting the growing privatization of nearly everything around them into commodities they are then forced to purchase, has also been known to those of us in the West. It forms an incredibly rich human heritage, one that has actually been the dominant one during our time on the planet. (One fascinating perspective divides the time humans have been on Earth into an equivalent 24-hour period, noting that agriculture has only been part of that for a pitiful five minutes—before then humans lived as hunter gatherers in small-knit communities.65) This heritage is part of the longest-lasting form of human organization, beginning with earliest humans down to the agricultural revolutions of the past 8,000 years or so. When Westerners rediscover their own egalitarian, communalistic past, they may see that native peoples who resist the expropriation of their own land are fighting the same fight our ancestors often fought. Although names such as the Diggers receive scarcely more than footnoted mention in most histories of Western civilization, they represent not only failed rebellions against inequalities in land ownership, but also a memory of a different path we used to take together. This is a path that is still taken by millions of people around the world who are shrinking in strength and numbers daily. Uniting these two strands, therefore, seems to me to be a noble and necessary effort. If ‘‘[s]eparating people from food is violence,’’ as one writer has said,66 then the continuing displacement of people from their lands that have borne them for millennia represents a form of violence against which we may have

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no defense. It is a violence against our own common human heritage of mutual benefit and aid, as one philosopher described it.67 In such a condition, the need of money for food would be considered an abominable anomaly. For as the Cree proverb quoted at the beginning of this chapter relates: money, unlike the produce of the Earth, cannot be eaten.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

Schock, 2007. Brown, 1970. Foner, 1947. Zinn, 1980, 1995. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Foner, 1947. Zinn, 1980, 1995. Schock, 2007. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Woodcock, 1962. Ibid. Korten, 1995. Woodcock, 1962. The New English Bible, 1976. Schock, 2007. Flinders, 1978. Ibid. Buhle et al., 1990. Harding, 1996. McReynolds, 2009. Harding, 1996. Sainath, 2009. Sainath, 2007. Sainath, 2009. Ibid. Schock, 2007. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, 2009. Schock, 2007. Ibid.

Money Cannot Be Eaten 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Schock, 2005. Schock, 2007. George-Williams, 2006. Ibid. Armitage, 2009. Ibid. La Via Campesina, 2009. Ibid. Brecher and Costello, 1994. Shiva, 2000. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Brecher and Costello, 1994. Schock, 2005. Andino, 2009. Schock, 2005. Ingram, 1990. Merton, 1965. Harbury, 1994. Schock, 2005. Tirado, 2009. Pilisuk, 2009. Hemenway, 1996. Pilisuk and Rountree, 2008. Ibid. Woodcock, 1962.

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S EARCHING FOR DEVELOPMENT WITH H U M A N D I G N I T Y I N G UAT E M A L A Jennifer Achord Rountree

I am riding in the back of a small pickup truck, which serves as taxi service over the mountain from San Lucas Toliman to the neighboring Maya village of Atitlan in the highlands of Guatemala. This rural route takes us through the heart of the coffee-growing region. Along the roadside gather men, women, and children with bags full of the day’s pickings. I see a young boy, barefoot, carrying a large bag of coffee on his back. The 125-pound bag surely weighs twice as much as he does. It is an image I will not forget.

THE MAYA Along with the Olmec, Aztec, and Toltec cultures, the ancient Maya were one of the original Mesoamerican civilizations. For more than 3,000 years they flourished throughout the Yucatan peninsula, Guatemala, and the northern regions of El Salvador and Honduras, and developed advanced methods of engineering, astronomy, mathematics, and stone carving that far surpassed their contemporaries in Europe. An elaborate writing system featured the Maya Long Count Calendar, which the modern Maya observe to this day. The resilience and pride of the present-day Maya, comprised of 21 distinct ethnic groups, is evident in the activism they have shown toward rightfully reclaiming their communal and familial lands, the proliferation of their

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languages, the celebration of their cultural and spiritual traditions, and in demanding social justice in the face of impunity. Since colonial times, the Maya have retained their identity as indigenous peoples and have resisted assimilation to ladino culture although they have suffered tremendous exploitation and oppression. Beginning with the colonization of the Spanish, and exacerbated by the production of coffee in the late 19th century, the Maya have been enslaved and exploited for their labor and dispossessed of their communal lands. During the 36-year civil war, the Guatemalan government’s policy of genocide toward the Maya resulted in more than 200,000 deaths and millions displaced. During a short intense period of violence in the 1980s, over 400 highland villages were burned to the ground. The Pan-Maya movement that emerged from the Peace Accords in 1996 represented a first step toward a formal recognition of the sovereignty of the Maya people and the gratification of basic human rights; however, the realization of social and economic justice has mostly been thwarted by a corrupt government and a weak judicial system and undermined by foreign interests. In 2005, the Guatemalan Congress passed the Dominican RepublicCentral America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) in spite of massive public protest and without a national referendum.1 DR-CAFTA has effectively eliminated protective tariffs and trade barriers, making 80 percent of U. S. imports duty-free. Since its inception in 2006, it has had detrimental effects in a country where agriculture is the foundation of the economy— nearly one-fourth of its gross domestic product (GDP), two-thirds of its exports, and half of the country’s employment.2 Nearly 70 percent of the people in Guatemala live in poverty; chronic malnutrition affects more than half of all children under 5 years of age, the highest level of malnutrition in Latin America.3 Centuries of resource extraction and industrial agriculture have ravaged local ecosystems, making them more susceptible to hurricanes and other natural disasters. In October 2005, Hurricane Stan set off flash floods and mudslides that destroyed entire villages around Lake Atitlan in the Guatemalan highlands. The experience of sociopolitical, economic, and environmental devastation is not unique to the Maya of Guatemala. Land-based populations around the globe are now being plunged into deeper levels of poverty due to the decrease in arable lands through the globalized system of agricultural production and distribution and environmental devastation. Since the United Nations defined the term Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in the 1970s to signify severe deprivation of economic and human resources, the number of LDCs has more than doubled, from 24 to 50.4 LDCs are identified by the criteria of low income (based on a 3-year average of gross national income per capita at or below $900), weak human assets or resources (indicators such as health,

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nutrition, education, and adult literacy), and economic vulnerabilities (including a dependence on imports and a narrow range of exports and susceptibility to exogenous market conditions). For the men and women with whom I lived and worked in San Lucas Tolim
an, Guatemala, development is about more than increasing their standard of living. The mission statement for Association Ija’tz, a community organization comprised of 62 Maya families, speaks to their desire ‘‘to promote democratic participation in the communities of the municipality of San Lucas Tolim
an, to foster sustainable development, and to work against the destruction of the ecosystem of Lake Atitlan.’’5 Their integrated development is one that reclaims their identities as Maya people, their approach being grounded in the ‘‘principles of the Maya cosmovision.’’6 Through organic coffee production, agroecological interventions, and other sustainable projects, Ija’tz seeks to bring economic, ecological, and relational well-being to their community.

FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN NEEDS, FREEDOM, AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT Economic development alone is not the answer in community development. On a national scale, Fisher and Hendrickson7 point out that Guatemala is not a poor country; it consistently shows more economic growth than neighboring Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Yet 87 percent of the population lives in poverty, and 67 percent in extreme poverty, which is defined by the United Nations Development Program as income that is below what is needed for minimal subsistence and caloric intake. Rather, ‘‘the problem of poverty in Guatemala is not so much one of wealth as of inequality.’’8 It is for lack of substantive freedoms for most Guatemalans—particularly the 5 million indigenous Mayans—that so many live in poverty. Centuries of colonization were followed by decades of authoritarian regimes, a 36-year civil war, and a slow-to-develop post-war democratic process have severely limited civil rights, access to health care, and opportunities for education for the majority of Guatemalan people. Ija’tz (which means seed in Kaqchikel) began as a seed-saving cooperative and restorative project to redress the local ecology. A few years later, the organization grew into an organic coffee cooperative, a likely economic strategy for development in a highland town that has revolved around the coffee industry for more than a century. However, the Ija’tz community effectively split over the issue of coffee production; several core Ija’tz members left the group to form another community association (Instituto Mesoamericana de Permacultura, or IMAP) to maintain the original focus on restorative agriculture and native seed promulgation. This conflict over economic

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development versus ecological and cultural restoration represents different understandings of what constitutes freedom and basic (or immediate) and long-term needs. Coffee production, in Guatemala’s history, has been associated with colonialism and foreign development. IMAP’s rejection of coffee production as a means of economic development underscores their desire to separate themselves from the legacy of colonialism and free themselves of dependence on global markets. IMAP focuses on restorative agriculture as a means of ecological and cultural revitalization. They emphasize education—training local and nonlocal farmers and groups, women’s groups, school children, and foreign students—in permaculture methods, integrating Maya stories along the way. IMAP does not directly promote a specific program for economic development; improved subsistence agriculture is emphasized rather than market production. At that time the Ija’tz community made the decision to implement the coffee program, most community members were already working as coffee growers and harvesters. Their decision to produce coffee through Association Ija’tz was less about creating a new economic development scheme, and more about coming together as a community, pooling their resources, and creating measures to protect themselves both economically (through the cooperative system and fair trade) and ecologically (by growing organically). While the coffee program is now the predominant program, Ija’tz has also initiated various health programs in recent years; one program utilizes banana trees to treat disease-carrying grey water, another builds medicinal plant spirals featuring local medicinal plants in the homes of community members and offers workshops on Kaqchikel herbal medicine. A rabbit-breeding program has succeeded in providing new opportunities for income as well as a reliable food source for many San Lucas families. Ija’tz pursued organic practices for their coffee program after the realization that much of the agrochemical run-off was going into the lake, where several native species of fish and birds have already perished, and where men catch fish to bring to market, and women and young girls bathe, wash their clothes, and collect water for cooking. One of the community’s health clinics noted that many people had complained of chronic headaches, and stomach and respiratory problems.9 When I was there, however, the community was in the process of changing their organic certification to a less rigorous ‘‘sustainable’’ certification, in response to the declining price and demand for organic coffee in combination with declining yields. This decision was the outcome of many months of research and dialogue between community members. Their deliberation emphasizes their attempt to balance economic development with their mission of ecological and human health. The families of

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Ija’tz seek to improve their lives through increasing their incomes, but also through protecting and promoting human and ecological health through new (and old) agroecological practices.

PROCESS OF CHANGE AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT For the Maya and many other land-based peoples, positive change requires the recognition of cultural sovereignty and the peoples’ interdependence with the land. The work of two prominent organizations, the Comit
e de Unidad Campesina and ADIVIMA (the Association for the Integral Development of the Victims of Violence in Maya Ach
ı Verapaz), is noted.

Comit
e de Unidad Campesina In Guatemala, community development began during the civil war. The 36-year war began with the U.S.-sponsored overthrow of the democratically elected Arbenz. The overthrow of nationalist president Arbenz occurred in response to his agrarian reform program, which claimed over 550,000 acres of land owned by the U. S.-owned United Fruit Company and redistributed land to more than 100,000 peasants. In the spirit of democracy and freedom from communism, the United States trained and funded the Guatemalan military in a counterinsurgency campaign—a scorched Earth campaign that did not discriminate between guerillas and the indigenous campesinos. By the end of the war, more than 200,000 people were killed and millions displaced. In the 1970s, liberation theology sparked a popular movement that took several organizational forms. In the highlands, catechists and missionaries organized grassroots ‘‘Christian Base Communities’’ that began to form a network linking different parts of the highlands. Catholic Action leaders organized peasant leagues. By the late 1970s, these groups merged into a national peasant organization called the Comit
e de Unidad Campesina (CUC). The CUC was formed in 1978 with 20,000 members, becoming the first official organization of peasants and landless Guatemalans. For the next 20 years, the CUC worked for rights to land tenure and organized labor. The group has survived in spite of violent opposition, including the 1980 peaceful occupation of the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City, when police forces locked the building and burned the activists alive. At the end of the civil war in 1996, the CUC played a critical role in the development of agrarian reform for the Peace Accord. Their most radical proposal was to redefine land ownership and use on the basis of the social function of property, thus directly challenging the government’s definition of land ownership since the fall of

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Arbenz’s government in 1954. Agrarian reform—as well as the economic and social reforms put forward in the Peace Accords—have largely been
unrealized; with the 2007 democratic election of Alvaro Colom, it was hoped that more progress would be made toward these major reforms. Land reform continues to be a major issue to this day: an estimated 2 percent of the population own 72 percent of agricultural land.10 This distribution of land tenure is exactly the same as existed in the country before Arbenz’s reforms in the 1940s. The CUC continues to be active, not only in pushing for land reform, but for protecting and advocating for indigenous communities who continue to be threatened by elite interests—including the interests of the United Fruit Company’s successor, Del Monte, which since the 1970s has continued to buy up Guatemalan land. Bandegua, the largest banana exporter in Guatemala (a subsidiary of Del Monte), has a long history of the illegal eviction of Maya communities and is responsible for the killing and intimidation of CUC members representing peasant rights to land and labor.11 More recently, the development of the biofuels industry has negatively impacted the Maya Keqchi communities of Alta Verapaz. In July 2008, peasants attempted to rebuild and replant their rightful land in an area known as Finca Los Recuerdos, a region that in years past had become overrun by Ingenio Guadelupe, a biofuel company, which began cutting down trees and replanting sugar cane. The peasants were killed by the company’s paramilitary security forces; several CUC members were kidnapped or killed when they demanded the prosecution of those responsible and the clarification of the land title situation.12 The extreme hardship that the CUC has endured, however, has not been without success. A community of 135 families in the village of Tzan Siwan, in the state of El Quiche, is celebrating the one year anniversary of the legal communal entitlement to their land. More than a century ago, their land was illegally sold to the wealthy Botr
an family, who forced the villagers to work on their farm and to lease their own land. In 1990, the community began their struggle to regain their land. Refusing to pay their lease, and suffering threats of death and displacement in return, the community saw the need to organize with other farmers and to defend themselves. In 2002, community members, now CUC participants, began the process of seeking legal entitlement.13

ADIVIMA ADIVIMA (Asociaci
on para el Desarrollo Integral de las V
ıctimas de la Violencia en las Verapaces, Maya Ach
ı/Association for the Integral

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Development of the Victims of Violence in Maya Ach
ı Verapaz) is a grassroots community development organization spearheaded by three survivors of the massacres of Maya Ach
ı communities of R
ıo Negro in the early 1980s, when paramilitary forces killed hundreds and displaced thousands during the Guatemalan government’s construction of the Chixoy hydroelectric dam, an economic development program sponsored by the World Bank and InterAmerican Development Bank. Encouraged by the potential of the Peace Accords, ADIVIMA quickly grew to 800 members who filed requests for exhumations, pressed charges against war criminals, and erected monuments for those who lost their lives.14 ADIVIMA has partnered with a number of social justice organizations to strengthen their efforts and to bring their message of peace and justice to an international audience. In 1999, Rights Action, a nongovernmental organization (NGO) based in Washington, D.C., assisted in the creation of a legal clinic to facilitate members’ legal issues, including pressing criminal charges, collecting oral testimony, and organizing a resettlement plan. The Advocacy Project, also based in Washington, has helped bring ADIVIMA’s experience and needs to an international audience. In addition to fighting for human rights, ADIVIMA has also created economic development projects that utilize the craftsmanship of its participants, including a carpentry shop that builds and sells furniture and an agricultural cooperative that distributes supplies to communities throughout the region. The organization is also investing in its future through the education of its youth. In 2007, the organization initiated a scholarship program for girls, who are less likely than male children to attend school. ADIVIMA’s hope for these students is that they will acquire professional skills and return to help their communities. Many of the female participants, as survivors of the massacres of R
ıo Negro, are in the process of forming a women’s weaving cooperative. The cooperative is intended not only as a means of economic development but also as an integral part of the healing process. The women are holding weaving workshops in resettlement communities and in the process are telling their personal stories, honoring their lost loved ones, and reviving the lost art of Maya weaving. A commemorative quilt was completed in the summer of 2008, nearly 30 years after the massacres at R
ıo Negro. The quilt is currently being presented in ADIVIMA’s call for reparations. In 2008, Guatemalan president Alvaro Colom signed a breakthrough accord with members of ADIVIMA who lost family members. In this accord, the government acknowledges for the first time that ‘‘damages and violations’’ occurred during the dam’s construction and accepts the obligation to offer reparations.15

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AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CONSCIENTIZACION

Coffee and Conscientizaci
on Several core members of Ija’tz left the association when the community voted to initiate a coffee cooperative. The majority of Ija’tz’ members were already involved in the growing and harvesting of coffee, in a town that has centered on coffee production since the early 20th century. The members who left Ija’tz formed another organization, IMAP, which aims to follow the original vision of ecological and cultural revitalization through agroecological methods. The split over the coffee issue is a significant one; at the heart of the matter is the history of coffee production in San Lucas Tolim
an, and the Guatemala highlands in general. The refusal to support coffee production is a rejection of the legacy of oppression. Lacking the mineral resources of Mexico or the Andes, the Spanish colonists quickly came to concentrate on agricultural resources for export, including cacao, cotton, indigo, tobacco, and cochineal dye, all of which were produced by the enforced wage labor of the Maya population. The end of Spanish colonial rule was the beginning of a succession of republican dictatorships that opened the doors to foreign development, forging new alliances with British, German, and North American interests. Their economic program stressed the promotion of exports—particularly agricultural exports. By 1870, coffee was Guatemala’s leading export. To meet the laborintensive demands of coffee production, the state formalized and extended labor laws. As McCreery explains, coffee production did not invent forced wage labor in Guatemala, but ‘‘the onset of large-scale coffee production prompted the codification of coercive systems, increased the level and efficiency of these extractions, and generalized forced wage labor to regions of the country and parts of the indigenous population that previously had been little affected.’’16 Coffee also had an increasingly detrimental effect on land tenure. Coffee production, which required far larger tracts of land than previous export crops and favored the highland mountain climates of the indigenous population, had a tremendous impact on land ownership. By the mid1920s, only 7.3 percent of the Guatemalan people owned Guatemalan land.17 At the turn of 20th century, San Lucas had a communal land tenure system; there were no land titles, but each family had publicly recognized rights over certain plots of land that could be passed on to heirs but could not be sold. It was during this period that indigenous farmers began to experiment with the production of coffee. The sharp decrease in the corn supply and other subsistence crops provoked a major conflict between subsistence farmers and coffee growers. This conflict was eventually settled by the municipal government, which was still under the traditional control of cofradia,

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which forbade the production of coffee on communal lands. The coffee growers looked for support outside the municipal government, and returned with a lawyer and an engineer. A compromise was made: San Lucas was redesigned on the colonial grid-pattern; titles to traditional family lands were drawn; and a section of the town’s land was set aside for milpa (corn, beans, squash) agriculture only.18 By the mid-1970s, 10 fincas existed in the municipality of San Lucas. Like most fincas throughout the country, these were primarily owned by wealthy landowners and managed by an administrator in charge of directing the indigenous people who lived on the property and constituted the labor force. Many of these workers were from surrounding municipalities who came to San Lucas for work in the fincas. To this day, the economy of San Lucas depends of the exportation of coffee; the land continues to be dominated by a handful of large coffee fincas, with smatterings of private and cooperatively held lands for coffee production as well as small parcels for subsistence agriculture. The conflict between subsistence farming and coffee production in San Lucas Tolim
an has been ongoing for nearly a century. IMAP’s rejection of coffee production represents a conscious rejection of the legacy of oppression and dependence on a foreign market. IMAP’s emphasis on the subsistenceproduction of native crops and other plants aims to improve ecological health and promote Maya cultural identity. For the members of Associacion Ija’tz, however, conscious action regarding the legacy of coffee and other nontraditional agriculture in Guatemala does not lead them to the rejection of coffee, but to define and control their own production. Ija’tz members explain that they are insulated from the worst effects of the foreign marketplace through the protections of Fair Trade and other economic and social opportunities provided through their cooperative system. The production of coffee allows them to live year-round to work their land (and the communal land Ija’tz shares)—and not be forced to migrate to the coast to work in the fincas of industrialized agriculture or to the city to work in the maquiladoras (not to mention the United States). Ija’tz members take pride in their sustainable coffee production, and the equipment they have purchased to depulp their own coffee. At the time I was there, they were also researching how to sidestep local coffee coyotes and become direct traders of their own coffee. Researchers Fisher and Benson show how Maya farmers have turned to the production of nontraditional agriculture through a desire to improve their lives not only in economic terms but also along cultural and moral lines, including community organization and political mobilization, and values associated with family life.19 In spite of an often declining market price for broccoli, Maya farmers report that broccoli cultivation (a popular crop of ‘‘contract’’ agriculture) has improved their quality of life. Fisher and Benson

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believe this response is due to farmers’ desires to control their means of production and to stay home with their families to work their own land, and to contribute and engage in community and political organizations in addition to their desires to increase their income.

LINKING INNER AND OUTER AWARENESS AND HEALING: ORAL TESTIMONY AND NARRATIVE METHODS The Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) describes the nature and brutality of the violence waged by the military against Maya civilians: The massacres, scorched Earth operations, forced disappearances and executions of Maya authorities, leaders, and spiritual guides, were not only an attempt to destroy the social base of the guerillas, but above all, to destroy the cultural values that ensured cohesion and collective action in Maya communities.20

In addition to the CEH document referenced above, Guatemala: Never Again, was based on more than 5,000 testimonies of victims and witnesses of political violence.21 The study analyzed the collective impact of these many years of violence on the emotional climate and cohesion in Maya communities, showing how the complete lack of institutional structures to protect victims and particularly state-sanctioned violence intensifies the impact of violence on the emotional climate and collective behavior.22 The group massacres and the public torture of victims in Maya communities by the Guatemalan military were designed to rupture interpersonal relations, fracture communities, and instill a state of fear and terror. The climate of fear and silence resonates through village communities to this day. Victims and perpetrators exist side by side. As a result of the civil patrols, a method of psychological warfare instituted by the military in which civilians were coerced into policing positions, neighbors and close family members are confronted every day with painful memories as both victims and transgressors. Fear of retaliation prohibits discussion of the past and the expression of past and present suffering.

Testimonio Throughout Latin America, testimonio, urgent narrative accounts of political and social violence, has been an influential medium in bringing awareness of such injustices to international audiences. Nora Strejilevich in Argentina, Mar
ıa Teresa Tula in El Salvador, and particularly Rigoberta Mench
u in Guatemala have shared their personal experiences of suffering

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and emancipation and have spoken out against oppressive forces, becoming international advocates for social justice. The original Spanish title of Mench
u’s testimony, My Name is Rigoberta Mench
u and This Is How My Consciousness Was Born has been translated into 12 languages and has received numerous international awards.23 The well-known English translation is entitled I, Rigoberta Mench
u , an Indian Woman in Guatemala.24 In her testimony, Mench
u describes her childhood spent migrating to the coffee fincas on the Pacific coast with her family to work. As a teenager she became influenced by the liberation theology movement within the Catholic Church, becoming active in a burgeoning women’s movement and later, in the newly formed Committee for Peasant Unity, the Comit
e de Unidad Campesina (CUC). Her father and brother were also active members of the CUC; her father died in the famous fire at the Spanish Embassy in 1980, when the Guatemalan military locked CUC activists inside the building and set it on fire. Her brother was later tortured and killed. Within a few years, Mench
u lost her parents, two brothers, her sister-in-law, and three nieces and nephews to military forces. After the death of her family, Mench
u became more involved with the CUC, organizing for workers’ rights in the plantations of the Pacific coast where she had worked as a child. She also became active in educating the Maya in resistance to massive military oppression. In 1981, Mench
u was forced to flee to Mexico, and then to Europe, where she told her story to Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, an anthropologist, who arranged the transcripts. Mench
u’s testimony brought immediate international attention to the Guatemalan military’s clandestine operation and the plight of the Maya. In 1992, Mench
u received the Nobel Peace Prize for her work for social justice and human rights for the Maya. She has lobbied the United Nations to recognize the struggle of indigenous peoples facing discrimination, displacement, and genocide, has served as ambassador of UNESCO, and has created the Rigoberta Mench
u Tum Foundation to assist indigenous refugees in their return to Guatemala. In 2004 under the Berger Administration, Mench
u served as Goodwill Ambassador to the Peace Accords. Through this appointment, she urged the Spanish court to examine cases of genocide, which has resulted in international warrants for several individuals involved in the abuses of the 1970s and 1980s, including General R
ıos Montt.

PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH: ORAL TESTIMONY AND COMMUNITY NARRATIVE A number of projects in Guatemala are healing the deep psychological wounds of war through therapies that engage the entire community, combined with civic and political action. These participatory interventions seek

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to help communities recover by sharing their experiences through oral testimony, creating the opportunity for victims to reclaim their voice and experience and contribute to the collective process of speaking out against impunity. As these examples will show, individual testimony is integrated with methods aimed at healing relationships between community members and reasserting cultural identity.

Equipo de Estudios Comunitarios y Acci
on Psicosocial (Community Studies and Psychosocial Action Team) Extending the individual testimony model to the community, Equipo de Estudios Comunitarios y Acci
on Psicosocial (ECAP) created social spaces for communities to share their experiences, emotions, and conflicts. At times the program concurred with truth commission exhumations of the mass graves. ECAP created support groups for widows, widowers, and orphans. ECAP describes the group focus of their treatment model: In groups, members can express their feelings and what bothers them the most. In groups, they can reconstruct their history, express and listen, understand, share and receive/give support and affection. Their testimony, after a long process, is converted into a repairing device. In the case of torture victims, methods range from responsible listening to accompaniment [to trial] and social support. Overcoming the imposed silence through a testimony of what happened allows the victim to gradually register his/her history in an official way. Recognition of the facts returns dignity and selfesteem to the victim.25

An important aspect of ECAP’s program is its training of participants in listening, communication, conflict resolution, and providing low-level literacy training publications and educational tools. By doing so, ECAP’s goal is for communities to sustain collective healing practices and develop their capacity to work together toward common goals. Between 1995 and 2003, ECAP assisted in the first series of criminal and civil trials in the country’s history in which an indigenous community initiated criminal proceedings, and appeals resulted in the eventual condemnation of soldiers directly responsible for the massacre (but absolved their leader).26 Through their assistance to indigenous communities, they continue to contribute to the slow process against impunity in Guatemala.

Voices and Images: Maya Ixil Women of Chajul In this PhotoVoice project, 20 Maya women in Chajul interviewed one another, sharing their personal stories that often involved the murder of

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loved ones, and spoke of the collective experiences they had in their community—the public hanging of a village woman, the destruction of their communal and family fields, and the desecration of their sacred spaces. The iterative process of interview, narrative, and creating and analyzing photographs provided the opportunity to document the atrocities of the past, to grieve, to reclaim their voices, and to regain their sense of place and community. Through group role-play and reflection-action processes the women examined their fears and challenges related to violence, gender, and social oppression that they continue to face. Facilitator M. Brinton Lykes explains: For the women, these processes ultimately helped them to problem-solve ways to overcome the barriers that they faced in completing the task, as well as to confront their losses and to develop the self-confidence and interpersonal skills necessary for taking up their new roles in their community.27

This project culminated in a publication of their stories and photographs, Voices and Images: The Maya Ixil Women of Chajul.28 On the completion of the project, the women coordinated a new educational program for the children of Chajul in addition to their ongoing participation in a number of local organizational and economic programs.29

RESPONSIBILITY AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT For Ija’tz and many other communities, the Guatemalan government’s lack of accountability for the military’s abuses during la violencia has created a vacuum of responsibility and fomented a lawless environment where perpetrators roam freely and victims and advocates who dare to speak out face intimidation, torture, and death. The Guatemalan Commission for Historical Clarification, the truth commission that examined and reported the impact of the 36-year civil conflict in Guatemala, determined more than 90 percent of the humans rights violations and acts of violence during the conflict were attributable to actions by the state, with 85 percent attributable to the Guatemalan military.30 The Peace Accords of 1996 represent an official but primarily symbolic ending to such violence.31 For the last 13 years, the Guatemalan Army, paramilitary groups, and organized crime have continued to act with impunity in a seemingly lawless environment. The rate of impunity in Guatemala is 98 percent; only 2 out of 100 cases ever go to trial.32 For decades, Guatemalan civil organizations like the CUC, professional organizations such as ECAP, and a number of international human rights

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organizations have pressed for the incarceration of R
ıos Montt and other members of the military, and have been met with intimidation—many have even lost their lives. Even before the 1996 Peace Accords, these organizations have reported how the military groups that carried out Montt’s program of genocide were transitioning into clandestine squads with criminal agendas that included kidnapping, extortion, and assassination of personal enemies, business rivals, and the media and human rights advocates who reported their activities.33 In 2007, after many years of pressure by these human rights groups, the Guatemalan Congress granted the United Nations the authority to investigate and assist in the persecution of current and past state-related abuses. Unfortunately, the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), much like the UNbrokered Peace Accords, has thus far been largely ineffective in combating impunity.34 Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom, as the first left-leaning president in Guatemala’s history since Arbenz in the 1950s, is offering some hope with the establishment of a presidential anti-impunity committee, a panel to review and declassify military archives from the civil war, and an elite, U.S.-trained anti-drug force. As social justice advocates note, committees and panels within the government structure seem unlikely to be able to investigate themselves, and the establishment of an elite, U.S.-trained paramilitary vehicle to combat narcotics trafficking could tempt history to repeat itself. The dilemma for Guatemala is that the military is now being confronted with a more powerful force than itself as drug cartels move southward from Mexico.35 The hope is that these government-appointed panels and projects will work in conjunction with the CICIG, with the former providing action and the latter maintaining accountability and oversight. The culture of impunity in Guatemala has fomented a lawless society where the homicide rate is at one of the highest per capita in the world. In 2008, there were 6,200 registered homicides, which translates to 17 deaths per day; only 382 individuals were detained on murder charges.36 The worsening of homicide statistics in recent years is attributed to the increase in drug-related activity. Drug enforcement analysts believe that traffickers perceive Guatemala as a safe haven for the narcotics trade. Social justice organizations noted that leaders at the recent Summit of the Americas failed to discuss human rights issues.37 Impunity was not discussed, yet drug enforcement was; the failure to acknowledge the link between lack of government accountability and responsibility and the inability to protect its citizens is a reflection of the current state of affairs in the United States, where the Obama Administration has failed to identify and charge its own human rights abusers.

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Impunity in San Lucas Tolim
an According to popular media sources in Guatemala, the dramatic increases in crime are linked to increased gang activity. During the weeks I spent in San Lucas, not a day passed without a newspaper displaying a photograph of a severed limb or mutilated body. The greater threat to highland Maya communities, however, continues to be the activity of underground paramilitary groups that continue to this day—‘‘social cleansing units’’ as they are called, which aim to eliminate the so claimed undesirables of society. I had a brief discussion with one member of Ija’tz regarding the activity of Limpieza Sociale, the local social cleansing regime, who informed me that the undesirables targeted by the group include homeless street children, prostitutes, drug users, drug traffickers, brujas (witches), and other marginalized individuals. This member also explained that the local group of Limpieza Sociale extorted money from many of the coffee cooperatives in the region (it was unclear whether Ija’tz was one of those cooperatives). The abuses of paramilitary groups such as Limpieza Sociale reinforce and perpetuate the climate of terror that originated in counterinsurgency tactics during the civil war. The photographs of mutilated and decapitated bodies are more likely the work of such groups, who utilize the media to convey their message.38 Guatemala’s transition from the worst days of military and paramilitary atrocities is painfully slow and uneven. Entrenched military power prevents a full accounting of the atrocities and blocks reforms that might right the decades of severe poverty. The dearth of economic opportunity enhances the growth of drug trafficking gangs. In light of this reality the amazing courage and ingenuity of the people of Ija’tz and similar communities must be recognized and their efforts assisted.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

Barreda, 2006. Foster, 2006. United Nations World Food Program, 2009. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2007. Asociaci
on Ija’tz, 2007. Ibid. Fisher and Hendrickson, 2003. Ibid. Dudenhoefer, 2004. Krznaric, 2006. Institute for the Study of International Migration, 2002. Rights Action, 2008. Entrepueblos, 2009.

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14. The Advocacy Project, 2009. 15. Ibid. 16. McCreery, 1994. 17. Pearcy, 2006. 18. Farrell, 1977. 19. Fisher and Benson, 2006. 20. Guatemalan Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), 1999. 21. Official Report of the Human Rights Office, 1999. 22. Lykes, et al., 2007. 23. Abram, 1999. 24. Mench
u, 1984. 25. Equipo de Estudios Comunitarios y Acci
on Psicosocial (ECAP), 2009. 26. Lykes et al., 2007. 27. Ibid. 28. Women of ADMI and Lykes, 2000. 29. Lykes, et al., 1999. 30. Guatemalan Commission for Historical Clarification, 1999. 31. The accords consisted of a series of agreements dealing with human rights with particular attention to rights for indigenous peoples, the establishment of a truth commission, the land tenure system, the role of the armed forces, the terms of a ceasefire, the constitutional and electoral regime, the integration of guerrilla forces, and mechanisms for verifying compliance with the agreements. See UNHCR, 2009. 32. United Nations Department of Public Information, 2009. 33. Washington Office on Latin America, 2008. 34. Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 2009. 35. Ibid. 36. Wilson, 2009. 37. Amnesty International, 2009. 38. North American Congress on Latin America, 2008.

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PART III

PEACE

FROM

WITHIN

It is fitting that we conclude these volumes with writings on the area of peace work that is, as many believe, the sine qua non for establishing real peace in the world and at the same time the most difficult to describe in words. Plato, when he set out to describe the constitution of the human soul, used first the model of the ideally constituted state because it was so much easier to see what is outside us. Without wishing to compare ourselves with the author of the Republic, we have done something similar in treating the institutions and organizations of peace in the outside world throughout this collection. Now we are attempting to direct the searchlight inward to the mind and perhaps deeper energies that, according to both the wisdom tradition and some aspects of modern science, actually bring those institutions, arrangements, and organizations into existence. ‘‘A human being is his or her deep, driving desire,’’ states a famous passage in one of the Upanishads, ‘‘for as our deep desire is, so is our will; as is our will, so is our deed; and as is our deed, so is our destiny.’’1 We begin the section with a personal account of meditation by Michael Nagler, who has spent most of his adult life following that practice and drawing on the energy and insight it releases for peace building work without. So has Joanna Macy, our next contributor, who describes how she uses imagery, ritual, and other techniques to encourage people in her many workshops to contact emotionally, but not be overcome by, the despair within themselves that is a natural response to the seemingly hopeless state of the peaceless world. It is a process that leads, when successful, to the availability of positive

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energy that can be put to work to resolve the problem in whatever way one can. (Several studies have shown that people who work on a problem come to have greater hope in its solvability, and vice versa.) The remaining four chapters recount the stories of four rather different people, starting from rather different and representative life experiences, who woke up to the reality of what they were doing, and what they could be doing instead, and had a kind of conversion to peace work. (The same trajectory is touched on by other writers in these three volumes, most notably by Daniel Ellsberg [Volume 2, Chapter 3].) Rabbi Michael Lerner also gives an insider’s account of another ‘‘within’’—the peacelessness that sometimes deeply compromises peace movements anywhere when their members lose tolerance and understanding of one another. Our deepest hope is that many others like Richard Deats, Claude AnShin Thomas, and John Perkins, will provide examples of a similar awakening and that a ‘‘tipping point’’ will be reached so that culture as a whole—the militaristic elements of our national culture in the United States as well as the war culture that has tentacles around the world—will be past history. —Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler

NOTE 1. Chhandogya Upanishad, iv.5.5, tr. by Michael Nagler.

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O N M E D I TAT I O N Michael N. Nagler

There never was a war that was not inward; I must fight till I have conquered in myself what causes war. —Marianne Moore

As mentioned in the first chapter of Volume 1, there has been an increasing feeling in many quarters that peace must first come from within, that is, from the consciousness of a person, before it can be established with any stability in the outside world. With that awareness, naturally, comes an increasing interest in getting ‘‘in’’ there to find it. According to Diana Eck, Buddhist centers in the thousands are now spread across the landscape of the United States, partly because their ‘‘traditions of meditation appeal to frank, practical Americans’’;1 and much the same would go for nominally Hindu schools of meditation (meditation is meditation, after all) and the rediscovery of lectio divina and other strands of the practice within Christianity. Here, though, a word of caution may be in order: not everyone who sits still with eyes closed is necessarily meditating, even with the best of intentions. I hold with the classical definition of meditation as ‘‘stilling the thought-waves in the mind.’’2 Without doing this systematically, and usually on a daily basis for years together, one cannot reliably experience the impressive benefits—and the equally impressive difficulty—of meditation in the meaningful sense of the word. For full disclosure, I have been doing such

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a practice for most of my adult life under guidance of a well-known teacher who came to Berkeley from South India in the 1960s.3 Another good translation for ‘‘thought waves’’ (cittavritti) in the definition just cited from Pata~ njali is ‘‘mental perturbation’’ (vritti), which points up the direct connection between meditation and peace at the most fundamental level. Several things happen at once when perturbation rises in the mind (and unfortunately under ‘‘normal’’ circumstances there is almost no time when they do not). First, our own inner peace is disturbed to that extent. Even when the perturbations are ‘‘pleasant,’’ the sages discovered, they disturb peace, and inner peace is more than pleasant when we can reach it. Second, this perturbation, or activity, throws up a smoke screen between us and others; we identify with the mind when it is active. If a wave of anger, for example, arises in the mind, we do not say to ourselves, ‘‘Ah. Interesting. A wave of anger rising in the mind.’’ If we are normal human beings we say, ‘‘I’m angry.’’ One can only stop identifying with the mind—and we do want to do that—when its turmoil subsides.4 As far as peace goes, the main drawback of such identification is that to identify with our mind gets between us and our inherent identification with the minds, the reality, of others. Anyone who understands conflict will recognize at once how this spells trouble. Third, as the unanimous testimony of the wisdom tradition assures us, we are not our minds, but an even higher reality that is all bliss, the source of love and wisdom. By distracting us from our real self (in Hindu tradition, the Self), which is not separated from the real self of others (are they really ‘‘other,’’ in the end?), the restless activity of the mind—well stimulated by modern mass media and advertising—locks us into an identification with the transitory reality of the phenomenal world. This, in turn, causes a vague anxiety. We sense, perhaps not quite consciously, that we are cut off from the source of satisfaction, happiness and peace within us. And this anxiety, in turn, is another source of conflict. We rarely stop to ask, ‘‘why am I getting agitated?’’ The conditioned response is to project our problems outward and chafe, ‘‘he or she is agitating me.’’ Affirmations and other kinds of practice that calm the mind can be of some help here, but meditation does more than calm the mind, it trains the mind to rest in its native calmness as a permanent condition. This would be argument enough for the importance of meditation in bringing us to a state of inner peace (the sages would say, bringing us back to that native state). Intuition itself would tell us that this is the first step toward peace in interpersonal relationships and eventually the world. But there is more.

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Let me here enlist an astute observation of William James that seems way ahead of his time (1890): The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again is the very root of judgment, character and will. No one is compos sui if he have it not. An education which would improve this faculty would be the education par excellence. But it is easier to define this ideal than to give practical directions for bringing it about.5

It is also, I would add, the very foundation of peace. Here is why. Everyone who meditates in the sense used here will inevitably notice that the dreary practice of bringing the mind back to the designated object of attention, in my case the words of a previously memorized inspirational passage (James’s ‘‘over and over’’ is no exaggeration) in some way translates directly into our ability outside meditation to bring ourselves back to a state of security and balance when we have been challenged by anger or fear. The Bhagavad Gita gives another classic description of the practice: Wherever the mind wanders, restless and diffuse in its search for satisfaction without, lead it within; train it to rest in the Self. Abiding joy comes to those who still the mind.6

In meditation, this means returning our attention to whatever we are meditating on; and this digs a track, so to speak, in consciousness so that outside meditation it facilitates bringing it back to the calm, concentrated energy of peace whenever outside circumstances, such as hostile persons, try to jostle us from that state. It is the same process, so that every time we bring our mind back from a distraction—from whatever we don’t want it to be meditating on—we are creating peace. Or contacting it. Peace is our native state; anger and fear are distractions. That is the eye-opening implication of this experience. This is why mystics, teachers of wisdom, urge meditation on those who would behave nonviolently when faced with agitation; Thich Nhat Hanh explains, ‘‘at that crucial moment, even if you know that nonviolence is better than violence, if your understanding is only intellectual and not in your whole being, you will not act nonviolently. The fear and anger in you will prevent you.’’7 Other contributors to this book have stressed the importance of the sense of identity in peace and war outcomes (see Kimmel [Chapter 6] and Norlander and Marsella [Chapter 7] in Volume 1). With meditation this question takes on a profound significance and one even more pertinent to the question of peace. The question here is not, what label fits on this or that person, but what is a person. Let us take an answer supplied by the hierarchical

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Figure 22.1 Levels of Being The Supreme Reality (Brahman) Undifferentiated Consciousness Intuitive Awareness (Buddhi) Mind Senses Body Objects

model of the human being offered (Figure 22.1), with minor variations, in the Upanishads, texts that are considered the purest source of the mystical tradition in India (I offer my own translation for some of the terms). It is interesting that the person in this vision ‘‘smears out,’’ as a quantum theorist might say, into realities that are respectively lower (at the bottom) and much greater at the top than what we consider a person, separated by his or her physical boundaries from the rest of creation. More to the point, implicit in the model is an exponential expansion of consciousness as our sense of identity goes upward from stage to stage toward Brahman in the process of meditation. The process even has a direct impact on health; many studies have shown that a robust network of human relationships (or relationships with any living thing, for that matter), confers advantages in almost every parameter of well-being.8 Objects are radically separate from one another; on the other end of the hierarchy, Brahman is by definition advaita—the state where there is no division, no separateness whatever. In practical terms, then, as we ascend by shifting our sense of identity from level to level we become exponentially more aware of our identity with the life around us. And as the Bhagavad Gita says, ‘‘When the seeker sees the divine in all beings he cannot possibly harm another, for [it would be] the Self harming the Self.’’9 As our inner vision improves, violence becomes more and more impossible. This is the core significance of meditation for peace; but another consideration is also worth emphasizing. When one tries to understand a figure like Gandhi—particularly useful because he lived in an era shared with many of us—we can appreciate the power of this practice. Gandhi’s thoughts and doings were documented

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pretty thoroughly from his earliest days, and one quickly gathers from this record and some of his own statements that there is a startling (and as yet largely unused) power for peace creation within every individual. Gandhi was the first to affirm that anyone could do what he had. He was a bit cagey about how he cultivated that power and released it into our world. That reticence was likely for the strategic reason that he did not want people to pedestalize and thus dismiss him, as they very largely have nonetheless done in India. But it is not difficult to glean from some of his sparse statements about his inner life (and from at least one famous photograph10) that he practiced meditation, and very deeply, often calling it ‘‘prayer.’’ That kind of energy—working 15 hours a day, every day, for 50 years—and the ability to use it (or let oneself be used by it) without fatigue, feeling, as he said to an American journalist, that he was ‘‘always on vacation,’’ is often seen in those who carry meditation to a deep level, East or West (see the description of Peace Pilgrim in this volume, Chapter 28).

THE EFFECT ON OTHERS There are studies carried out by one meditation organization that show, apparently with scientific rigor, that in cities where a certain percentage of the population is practicing their kind of meditation (and not a large percentage, at that) the crime rate drops. Though I personally do not know how to evaluate these studies, they certainly seem to follow an intuitive connection between meditation and the ‘‘social field,’’ between inner and outer peace. The text of Pata~ njali we started from states in another forthright sutra (my translation): ‘‘When nonviolence is established (in a person), in his or her (mere) presence hostility falls away.’’11 To sense this connection between meditation and outer peace helps to explain why, per contra, in this most unmeditative of cultures, where we are bombarded by something like 3,000 commercial messages every day,12 where there is an extremely low image of the human being held before us in print, television, and other media, where violence and self-will are portrayed as normative and exciting, there should be such a dedication to violence and war. Unfortunately, it’s a bit hard to know what to do with this insight. Broadcasting encouragements to meditate would not work very well. Even those who took the crude hint would be meditating for the wrong reason. To meditate because someone else told you to, or to meditate to bring about some external result, would be to meditate for a less than perfect motive and in meditation motive and intention are everything. (Though that said, it has often been the case that when one gets a taste of the experience by whatever means, he or she becomes well motivated to pursue it further.)

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But there are practical things we can do. Individuals can disengage mentally and in their buying habits from the agitating culture with which we have been so obsessively surrounding ourselves. Then we can take steps to create a supportive environment for anyone intrigued enough to practice meditation and express the great inner resources they contact by that practice in their outward life.

CONCLUSION That meditation, done reasonably well, can bring a sense of inner peace is not controversial: it is one of the few things about meditation that is generally understood. The argument of this chapter is much more challenging: that at the inner peace that we thereby possess can be translated outwardly into a peace culture, a peace system, and that this is the sovereign way, arguably the only way peace can become a stable possession of the human race. It may be fiendishly difficult to practice meditation well—to wrestle down the random impulses of the mind when, as Arjuna bemoans in the Bhagavad Gita (vi.34), you may as well ask us to control the wind. It may demand a special posture, daily practice, a reliable technique, even—a sticking point for many Westerners—a competent teacher. But the benefits are stunning, even if we focus on those that relate most directly to the goal of peace. As we progress along this path the perceived barrier between ourselves and others steadily falls, until we could no more do them injury than we could ourselves. The sense of security correspondingly rises. The drive to get satisfaction from the outside world—with overburdening of the environment, competition, and ultimately violence among its inevitable consequences— subsides as we come in touch with the source of satisfaction within us. The whole ‘‘story’’ of the person as a separate, material fragment doomed to compete for diminishing resources in a meaningless world steadily evaporates. And, finally, our ability to influence others positively rises exponentially— witness Gandhi. It is not for nothing that in ancient India meditation was called Brahmavidya ‘‘the supreme knowledge.’’ We will be on a secure road to peace when it is so recognized today as well.

NOTES 1. Eck, 2001. 2. Yoga Sutras of Pata~ njali, I.2. Another translation would be, ‘‘suppressing perturbations in consciousness.’’ 3. Easwaran, 1908. 4. Pata~ njali I.4. 5. James, 1952.

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6. Easwaran, 1985. 7. Hanh, 1993. 8. Cobb, 1976; Cassel, 1976; Pilisuk and Parks, 1986. 9. Pata~ njali, XIII.28 (my translation). The word for ‘harm’ is hinaste, from the same root as h imsa and its opposite, ahimsa. 10. Easwaran, 1972. 11. Pata~ njali, II.35 (my translation). 12. Kilbourne, 2004.

CHAPTER

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D E S PA I R W O R K Joanna Macy

We are bombarded by signals of distress—ecological destruction, social breakdown, and uncontrolled nuclear proliferation. Not surprisingly, we are feeling despair—a despair well merited by the machinery of mass death that we continue to create and serve. What is surprising is the extent to which we continue to hide this despair from ourselves and each other. If this is, as Arthur Koestler suggested, an age of anxiety, it is also an age in which we are adept at sweeping our anxieties under the rug. As a society we are caught between a sense of impending apocalypse and an inability to acknowledge it. Activists who try to arouse us to the fact that our survival is at stake decry public apathy, and rightly so, as apathy, trivialization, and despair itself are encouraged by regimes like our own as tools of oppression. When thenPresident George W. Bush urged Americans to ‘‘go shopping, take the kids to Disney World’’ in the wake of 9/11 he was in effect disenfranchising us, urging us to stay out of the political system. This is frighteningly reminiscent of Hannah Arendt’s characterization of a totalitarian state as one that does not seek to dominate people so much as render them irrelevant. The cause of our apathy, however, is not mere indifference. It stems from a fear of confronting the despair that lurks subliminally beneath the tenor of life-as-usual. A This chapter originally appeared in Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self. Fitchburg, MA: Parallax, 1991; Abridged from the booklet ‘‘Despair Work.’’ New Society Publishers, Philadelphia, 1981.

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dread of what is happening to our future stays on the fringes of awareness, too deep to name and too fearsome to face. Sometimes it manifests in dreams of mass destruction, and is exorcised in the morning jog and shower or in the public fantasies of disaster movies. Because of social taboos against despair and because of fear of pain, it is rarely acknowledged or expressed directly. It is kept at bay. The suppression of despair, like that of any deep recurrent response, produces a partial numbing of the psyche. Expressions of anger or terror are muted, deadened as if a nerve had been cut. The refusal to feel takes a heavy toll. Not only is there an impoverishment of our emotional and sensory life—flowers are dimmer and less fragrant, our loves less ecstatic—but this psychic numbing also impedes our capacity to process and respond to information. The energy expended in pushing down despair is diverted from more creative uses, depleting the resilience and imagination needed for fresh visions and strategies. Furthermore, the fear of despair can erect an invisible screen, selectively filtering out anxiety-provoking data. In a world where organisms require feedback to adapt and survive, this is suicidal. Now, when we urgently need to measure the effects of our acts, our attention and curiosity slacken as if we are already preparing for the Big Sleep. Many of us doggedly attend to business-as-usual, denying both our despair and our inability to cope with it. Despair cannot be banished by injections of optimism or sermons on ‘‘positive thinking.’’ Like grief, it must be acknowledged and worked through. This means it must be named and validated as a healthy, normal human response to the situation we find ourselves in. Faced and experienced, its power can be used, as the frozen defenses of the psyche thaw and new energies are released. Something analogous to grief work is in order. ‘‘Despair work’’ is different from grief work in that its aim is not acceptance of loss— indeed, the ‘‘loss’’ has not yet occurred and is hardly to be ‘‘accepted.’’ But it is similar in the dynamics unleashed by the willingness to acknowledge, feel, and express inner pain. From my own work and that of others, I know that we can come to terms with apocalyptic anxieties in ways that are integrative and liberating, opening awareness not only to planetary distress, but also to the hope inherent in our own capacity to change.

INGREDIENTS OF DESPAIR Whether or not we choose to accord them serious attention, we are barraged by data that render questionable the survival of our culture, our species, and even our planet as a viable home for conscious life. These warning signals prefigure, to those who do take them seriously, probabilities of apocalypse that are mind-boggling in scope. While varied, each scenario presents

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its own relentless logic. Poisoned by oil spills, sludge, and plutonium, the seas are dying; when the plankton disappear (by the year 2010 at present pollution rates, according to Jacques Yves Cousteau), we will suffocate from lack of oxygen. Or carbon dioxide from industrial and automotive combustion will saturate the atmosphere, creating a greenhouse effect that will melt the polar icecaps. Or radioactive poisoning from nuclear reactors and their wastes will accelerate plagues of cancer and genetic mutations. Or deforestation and desertification of the planet, now rapidly advancing, will produce giant dustbowls, and famines beyond imagining. The probability of each of these perils is amply and soberly documented by scientific studies. The list of such scenarios could continue, including use of nuclear bombs by terrorists or nation states—a prospect presenting vistas of such horror that, as former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev said, ‘‘The survivors will envy the dead.’’ Despair, in this context, is not a macabre certainty of doom or a pathological condition of depression and futility. It is not a nihilism denying meaning or efficacy to human effort. Rather, as it is being experienced by increasing numbers of people across a broad spectrum of society, despair is the loss of the assumption that the species will inevitably pull through. It represents a genuine accession to the possibility that this planetary experiment will end—the curtain down, the show over.

SYMPTOMS AND SUPPRESSIONS In India, at a leprosarium, I met a young mother of four. Her leprosy was advanced, the doctor pointed out, because for so long she had hidden its signs. Fearing ostracism and banishment, she had covered her sores with her sari, pulled the shoulder drape around so no one would see. In a similar fashion did I later hide despair for our world, cloaking it like a shameful disease—and so, I have learned, do others. At the prospect of the extinction of a civilization, feelings of grief and horror are natural. We tend to hide them, though, from ourselves and each other. Why? The reasons, I think, are both social and psychological. When the sensations aroused by the contemplation of a likely and avoidable end to human existence break through the censorship we tend to impose on them, they can be intense and physical. A friend who left her career to work as a full-time anti-nuclear organizer, says her onslaughts of grief come as a cold, heavy weight on the chest and a sense of her body breaking. Mine, which began years ago after an all-day symposium on threats to our biosphere, were sudden and wrenching. I would be at my desk, alone in my study translating a Buddhist text, and the next moment I would find myself on the floor, curled like a fetus and shaking. In company I was

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more controlled; but even then, in those early months when I was unused to despair, I would be caught off guard. A line from Shakespeare or a Bach phrase would pierce me with pain as I found myself wondering how much longer it would be heard, before fading out forever in the galactic silences. In a culture committed to the American dream, it is hard to own up to despair. This is still the land of Dale Carnegie and Norman Vincent Peale, where an unflagging optimism is taken as the means and measure of success. As commercials for products and campaigns of politicians attest, the healthy and admirable person smiles a lot. The feelings of depression, loneliness, and anxiety, to which this thinking animal has always been heir, carry here an added burden: one feels bad about feeling bad. One can even feel guilty about it. The failure to hope, in a country built and nurtured on Utopian expectations, can seem downright un-American. In a religious context, despair can appear as a lapse of faith. At a vigil before a peace demonstration at the Pentagon, a noted religious leader spoke of the necessity of hope to carry us through. Others chimed in, affirming their belief in the vision of a ‘‘new Jerusalem’’ and their gratitude for having that hope. After a pause, a young man, who planned to participate in the week’s civil disobedience actions, spoke up falteringly. He questioned whether hope was really a prerequisite, because—and he admitted this with difficulty—he was not feeling it. Even among friends committed to the same goal, it was hard for him (and brave of him, I thought) to admit despair. Evidently, he feared he would be misunderstood, taken as cowardly or cynical— a fear confirmed by the response of some present. Despair is tenaciously resisted because it represents a loss of control, an admission of powerlessness. Our culture dodges it by demanding instant solutions when problems are raised. My political science colleagues in France ridiculed this, I recall, as an endemic trait of the American personality. ‘‘You people prescribe before you finish the diagnosis,’’ they would say. ‘‘Let the difficulties reveal themselves first before rushing for a ready-made solution or else you will not understand them.’’ To do this would require that one view a stressful situation without the psychic security of knowing if and how it can be solved—in other words, a readiness to suffer a little. ‘‘Don’t come to me with a problem unless you have a solution,’’ Lyndon B. Johnson is quoted as saying during the Vietnam War. That tacit injunction, operative even in public policy making, rings like the words my mother said to me as a child, ‘‘If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.’’ In our culture the acknowledgment of despair for the future is a kind of social taboo and those who break it are considered ‘‘crazy,’’ or at least ‘‘depressed and depressing.’’ No one wants a Cassandra around or welcomes a Banquo at the feast. Nor are such roles enjoyable to play. When the

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prospect of our collective suicide first hit me as a serious possibility—and I know well the day and hour my defenses against this despair suddenly collapsed—I felt that there was no one to whom I could turn in my grief. If there were—and indeed there was, for I have loving, intelligent friends and family—what is there to say? Do I want them to feel this horror too? What can be said without casting a pall, or without seeming to ask for unacceptable words of comfort and cheer? To feel despair in such a cultural setting brings a sense of isolation. The psychic dissonance can be so acute as to seem to border on madness. The distance between our inklings of apocalypse and the tenor of business-as-usual is so great that, though we may respect our own cognitive reading of the signs, we tend to imagine that it is we, not the society, who are insane. Psychotherapy, by and large, has offered little help for coping with these feelings, and indeed has often compounded the problem. Many therapists have difficulty crediting the notion that concerns for the general welfare might be acute enough to cause distress. Assuming that all our drives are ego-centered, they tend to treat expressions of this distress reductionistically, as manifestations of private neurosis. In my own case, deep dismay over destruction of the wilderness was diagnosed by a counselor as fear of my own libido (which the bulldozers were taken to symbolize), and my painful preoccupation with U.S. bombings of Vietnam was interpreted as an unwholesome hangover of Puritan guilt. Such ‘‘therapy,’’ of course, only intensifies the sense of isolation and craziness that despair can bring, while inhibiting its recognition and expression. Some of the biggest money-makers in the film industry, as Andr
ee Conrad points out in Disaster and the American Imagination, are movies that feature cataclysmic events and violent mass death. Earthquakes, rampaging sharks, and killer bees, blazing skyscrapers and doomed craft in air and sea, loaded with panicked passengers, vie in imageries of terror. Contrived with technical brilliance, these films draw large crowds and large profits. Their appeal, indeed their fascination, stems from an inchoate but pervasive sense of doom in the American public. The scenarios they present give structure and outlet to unformulated fears of apocalypse, and in so doing provide catharsis. But it is a dangerous catharsis, Conrad observes. Hooking our anxieties onto isolated and unlikely emergencies, frequently handled with technological heroics, these entertainments give their audience, sitting safely in a comfortable theater, the illusion of having dealt with what is bothering them. On fictitious, improbable themes they air and exercise our dread, while habituating us to prospects of mass death and raising our horror threshold another notch. They blur the boundaries between fantasy and reality, making the next day’s news seem like more of the same—alarms to be

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passively watched until the credits appear and we can stop for a beer on our way to bed. These entertainments constitute a new version of what Geoffrey Gorer in the 1950s called our ‘‘pornography of death.’’ He pointed out that, just as the repression of sex in our puritanically conditioned culture produces debased expressions of it, so is our repression of the reality of personal death released in fascination with sadistic violence. By analogous reasoning, disaster films can be seen as pornographies of despair. In the same way that X-rated ‘‘adult’’ flicks cheapen the sexual hungers they trade on, the towering infernos and devouring jaws dull and divert us from the true dimensions of our despair. Until we get in touch with them, our powers of creative response to planetary crisis will be crippled. Until we can grieve for our planet and its future inhabitants, we cannot fully feel or enact our love for them. Such grief is frequently suppressed, not only because it is socially awkward. It is also denied because it is both painful and hard to believe. At the root of both inhibitions lies a dysfunctional notion of the self. It is the notion of the self as an isolated and fragile entity. Such a self has no reason to weep for the unseen and the unborn, and such a self, if it did, might shatter with pain and futility. So long as we see ourselves as essentially separate, competitive, and egoidentified beings, it is difficult to respect the validity of our social despair, deriving as it does from interconnectedness. Both our capacity to grieve for others and our power to cope with this grief spring from the great matrix of relationships in which we take our being. We are, as open systems, sustained by flows of energy and information that extend beyond the reach of conscious ego.

VALIDATING DESPAIR You can hold yourself back from the suffering of the world: this is something you are free to do, . . . but perhaps precisely this holding back is the only suffering you might be able to avoid. —Franz Kafka

The first step in despair work is to disabuse ourselves of the notion that grief for our world is morbid. To experience anguish and anxiety in the face of the perils that threaten us is a healthy reaction. Far from being crazy, this pain is a testimony to the unity of life, the deep interconnections that relate us to all beings. Such pain for the world becomes masochistic only when we assume personal guilt for its plight or personal responsibility for its solution. No individual is that powerful. Certainly by participation in society each shares

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in collective accountability; but the acknowledgment of despair, like faith, is a letting go of the manipulative assumption that conscious ego can or should control all events. Each of us is but one little nexus in a vast web. As the recognition of that interdependence breaches our sense of isolation, so does it also free our despair of self-loathing. Our religious heritages can also serve to validate despair and attest to the creative role of this kind of distress. The Biblical concept of the suffering servant, as well as an array of Old Testament prophets, speaks to the power inherent in opening ourselves to the griefs of others. In Christianity the paramount symbol of such power is the cross. The cross where Jesus died teaches us that it is precisely through openness to the pain of our world that redemption and renewal are found. The heroes and heroines of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition are the bodhisattvas, who vow to forswear nirvana until all beings are enlightened. As the Lotus Sutra tells us, their compassion endows them with supranormal senses: they can hear the music of the spheres and understand the language of the birds. By the same token, they hear as well all cries of distress, even to the moaning of beings in the lowest hells. All griefs are registered and owned in the bodhisattva’s deep knowledge that we are not separate from each other.

POSITIVE DISINTEGRATION The process of internalizing the possibility of planetary demise is bound to bring some psychic disarray. How to confront what we scarcely dare to think? How to think it without going to pieces? It is helpful in despair work to realize that going to pieces or falling apart is not such a bad thing. Indeed it is as essential to evolutionary and psychic transformations as the cracking of outgrown shells. Polish psychiatrist Kazimierz Dabrowski calls it ‘‘positive disintegration.’’ It is operative in every global development of humanity, especially during periods of accelerated change, and, he argues, permits the emergence of ‘‘higher psychic structures and awareness.’’ For the individual who, in confronting current anomalies of experience, allows positive disintegration to happen, it can bring a dark night of the soul, a time of spiritual void and turbulence. But the anxieties and doubts are, Dabrowski maintains, ‘‘essentially healthy and creative.’’ They are creative not only for the person but for society, because they permit new and original approaches to reality. What ‘‘disintegrates’’ in periods of rapid transformation is not the self, of course, but its defenses and ideas. We are not objects that can break. As open systems, we are, cyberneticist Norbert Wiener said, ‘‘but whirlpools in

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a river of everflowing water. We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves.’’ We do not need to protect ourselves from change, for our very nature is change. Defensive self-protection, restricting vision and movement like a suit of armor, makes it harder to adapt. It not only reduces flexibility, but blocks the flow of information we need to survive. Our ‘‘going to pieces,’’ however uncomfortable a process, can open us up to new perceptions, new data, new responses.

ALLOWING OURSELVES TO FEEL The second requirement in despair work is to permit ourselves to feel. Within us are deep responses to what is happening to our world, responses of fear and sorrow and anger. Given the flows of information circling our globe, they inhere in us already by virtue of our nature as open systems, interdependent with the rest of life. We need only to open our consciousness to these profound apprehensions. We cannot experience them without pain, but it is a healthy pain—like the kind we feel when we walk on a leg that has gone asleep and the circulation starts to move again. It gives evidence that the tissue is still alive. As with a cramped limb, exercises can help. I have found meditational exercises useful, particularly ones from the Buddhist tradition. Practices designed to increase the capacity for loving-kindness and compassion, for example, are effective in getting us in touch with those concerns in us that extend beyond ego. In one workshop I led, titled ‘‘Being Bodhisattvas,’’ we did a meditation on compassion, adapted from a Tibetan bodhicitta practice. It involved giving oneself permission to experience the sufferings of others (in as concrete a fashion as possible), and then taking these sufferings in with the breath, visualizing them as dark granules in the stream of air drawn in with each inhalation, into and through the heart, and out again. Afterward one participant, Marianna, described her experience in this meditation. She had been resistant, and her resistance had localized as a pain in her back. In encouraging the participants to open themselves to their inner awareness of the sufferings of others, I primed the pump with some brief verbal cues, mentioned our fellow beings in hospitals and prisons, mentioned a mother with dried breasts holding a hungry infant. . . . That awoke in Marianna an episode she had buried. Three years earlier she had listened to a recording by Harry Chapin with a song about a starving child; she had, as she put it, ‘‘trouble’’ with it. She put away the record never to play it again, and the ‘‘trouble’’ remained undigested. With her recollection of her experience with the song, the pain in her back moved into her chest. It intensified

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and hardened, piercing her heart. It seemed for a moment excruciating; but as she continued the exercise, accepting and breathing in the pain, it suddenly, inexplicably, felt right, felt even good. It turned into a golden cone or funnel, aimed point downward into the depths of her heart. Through it poured the despair she had refused, griefs reconnecting her with the rest of humanity. Marianna emerged from this with a sense of release and belonging. She felt empowered, she said, not to do so much as to be—open, attentive, poised for action. She also said that she believed she permitted this to happen because I had not asked her to ‘‘do’’ something about the griefs of others, or to come up with any answers, but simply to experience them. What good does it do to let go and allow ourselves to feel the pain of our planet’s people? For all the discomfort, there is healing in such openness, for ourselves and for our world. To accept the collective pain reconnects us with our fellow beings and our deep collective energies.

ALLOWING IMAGES TO ARISE To acknowledge our pain for the world and tap its energy, we need symbols and images for its expression. Images, more than arguments, tap the springs of consciousness, the creative powers by which we make meaning of experience. In the challenge to survival that we face now, a strong imagination is especially necessary because existing verbal constructs seem inadequate to what many of us are sensing. At a week-long meeting of college teachers and administrators, I chaired a working group on issues of planetary survival, and began to explore ways we could share our concerns on an affective as well as cognitive level. I asked the participants to offer, as they introduced themselves, a personal experience or image of how in the past year the global crisis had impinged on their consciousness. Those brief introductions were potent. Some offered a vignette from work on world hunger or arms. A young physicist simply said, very quietly, ‘‘My child was born.’’ A social worker recalled a day her small daughter talked about growing up and having babies; with dull shock she encountered her own doubt that the world would last that long. Some offered images: fish kill washed up at a summer cottage, strip mines leaching like open wounds. Most encompassing in its simplicity was John’s image: the view from space of planet Earth, so small as it glittered there that it could be covered by the astronaut’s raised thumb. That vision of our home, so finite it can be blotted out by a single human gesture, functioned as a symbol in our week’s work. It helped us cut through the verbiage of reports and the temptations of academic one-upmanship, to the raw nerve in us all—desperate concern.

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In the sharing of despair that our imagery had permitted, energy was released. As pent-up feelings were expressed and compared, there came laughter, solidarity, and resurgence of commitment to our common human project. In that same working group on planetary survival, John showed slides of a trek up Mount Katahdin with some of his Yale students. On a ridge between two peaks was a narrow, knife-edge trail they had to cross. It was scary and dangerous because fog had rolled up, blanketing out the destination and everything but the foot-wide path itself. That picture of the trail cutting through the clouds into the unknown became a strong symbol for us, expressing the existential situation in which we find ourselves, and helping us proceed with dogged patience, even though we cannot see more than a step at a time. Recognizing the creative powers of imagery, many call us today to come up with visions of a benign future—visions that can beckon and inspire. Images of hope are potent, necessary: they shape our goals and give us impetus for reaching them. Often they are invoked too soon, however. Like the demand for instant solutions, such expectations can stultify—providing us with an escape from the despair we may feel, while burdening us with the task of aridly designing a new Eden. Genuine visioning happens from the roots up, and these roots for many are shriveled by unacknowledged despair. Many of us are in an in-between time, groping in the dark with shattered beliefs and faltering hopes, and we need images for that in-between time if we are to work through it. The first despair work I can recognize as such occurred on a spring weekend toward the end of our military actions in Vietnam. Although I had been active in anti-war protests, I felt sapped that day by a deep sense of futility. To give form to feeling, and tired of words, I worked with clay. As I descended into the sorrow within me, I shaped that descent in the block of clay—cliffs and escarpments plunging into abysses, dropping off into downward-twisting gullies, down, down. Though I wept as I pushed at the clay with fingers and fists, it felt good to have my sense of hopelessness become palpable, visible. The twisted, plummeting clay landscape was like a silent scream, and also like a dare accepted in bitter defiance, the dare to descend into nothingness. Feeling spent and empty, the work done, my mind turned to go, but then noted what my fingers had, of themselves, begun to explore. Snaking and pushing up the clay cliffs were roots. As they came in focus, I saw how they joined, tough and tenacious, feeding each other in an upsurge of ascent. The very journey downward into my despair had shaped these roots, which now thrust upward, unbidden and resilient. For long moments I traced them, wonderingly, with eyes and fingers. Quaker-style meetings, where a group sits and shares out of open silence, can let images appear and interact. In one I remember Humpty Dumpty was

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evoked. Poor old Humpty Dumpty, falling and breaking and all the king’s men cannot put him together again. So it is with our outmoded paradigms, our egos and self-concepts: it felt good to give imaginative form to the sense of fragmentation in our time. As we ruminated on that, a voice among us slowly spoke, adding what she saw: From the shattered shell, a bird rose into the air. Eggshells break to reveal new life; I had forgotten that. The very imagery that expressed our pain pointed to the possibility of hope. Sometimes it takes a while, in the slow alchemy of the soul, for hope to signal, and longer for it to take form in concrete plans and projects. That is all right.

WAITING So we wait; even in our work, we wait. Only out of that open expectancy can images and visions arise that strike deep enough to summon our faith in them. ‘‘The ability to wait,’’ wrote William Lynch, ‘‘is central to hope.’’ Waiting does not mean inaction, but means staying in touch with our pain and confusion as we act, not banishing them to grab for sedatives, ideologies, or final solutions. It is, as a student of mine quoted, ‘‘staying in the dark until the darkness becomes full and clear.’’ The butterfly, I am told, eats its way out of the cocoon. In despair, if we digest it, is authenticity and energy to fuel our dreams. Jacob Needleman suggests that part of the great danger in this time of crisis is that we may short-circuit despair, and thereby lose the revelations that can open to us. For there is nothing to guarantee that we will be able to remain long enough or deeply enough in front of the unknown, a psychological state which the traditional paths have always recognized as sacred. In that fleeting state between dreams, which is called ‘‘despair’’ in some Western teachings and ‘‘self-questioning’’ in Eastern traditions, a man is said to be able to receive the truth, both about nature and his own possible role in the universal order. In my own feelings of despair, I was haunted by the question, ‘‘What do you substitute for hope?’’ I had always assumed that a sanguine confidence in the future was as essential as oxygen. Without it, I had thought, one would collapse into apathy and nihilism. It puzzled me that, when I owned my despair, the hours I spent working for peace and environmental causes did not lessen, but rather increased. One day I talked with Jim Douglass, the theologian and writer who had left his university post to resist nuclear weapons; jailed repeatedly for civil disobedience in this effort, he was leading the citizens’ campaign against the Trident submarine base. He had said he believed we had five years left before

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it was too late—too late to avert the use of our nuclear arsenal in a first strike strategy. I reflected on the implications of that remark and watched his face, as he squinted in the sun with an air of presence and serenity I could not fathom. ‘‘What do you substitute for hope?’’ I asked. He looked at me and smiled. ‘‘Possibilities,’’ he said. ‘‘Possibilities . . . you can’t predict, just make space for them. There are so many.’’ That, too, is waiting, active waiting— moving out on the fog-bound trail, though you cannot see the way ahead.

COMMUNITY Despair work is not a solo venture, no matter how alone one may feel. It is a process undertaken within the context of community, even if a community of like-minded others is not physically present. Just knowing that one’s feelings are shared gives a measure of validation and support. Many kinds of community can provide the environment for the kind of sharing that despair work involves. The necessary openness and trust can be found in groups devoted to personal or spiritual growth, and also in groups organized for social action. The ‘‘affinity groups’’ that have emerged in the peace and safe-energy movements, and that are based on strategies of nonviolence, set a high priority on mutual support. My son had a dream one night about the affinity group he belonged to in the anti-nuclear movement in New England. It conveys something of the sense of strength generated in such community. In the dream he and his affinity group are standing together looking out over a darkened city. All is black and cold. Through their linked hands he feels the current of the group’s energy. They chant and the current grows stronger; lights begin to appear and soon the city is aglow, empowered by the energy of their trust and commitment. That, in and of itself, seems a fulfillment. When we face the darkness of our time, openly and together, we tap deep reserves of strength within us. Many of us fear that confrontation with despair will bring loneliness and isolation, but—on the contrary—in the letting go of old defenses, we can find truer community. In the synergy of sharing comes power. In community, we can find our power and learn to trust our inner responses to our world.

CHAPTER

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EXPERIMENTING WITH NONVIOLENCE: FROM WEST TEXAS TO SOUTH KOREA Richard L. Deats

I grew up in Big Spring, Texas, a small city in the western part of the state—halfway between El Paso and Dallas, on the route of the Texas and Pacific Railroad and territory that was once Comanche country. One of our neighbors was featured in national ads of ‘‘the Marlboro man.’’ I was taught to love God and neighbor, to follow Jesus, to help those in need, to be a good citizen, to save for a rainy day, and not spend more than one has. I vividly remember Pearl Harbor and can still recall the family sitting in front of the big radio in the living room, listening to President Roosevelt tell us that ‘‘yesterday, December 7, 1941, a day which will live in infamy, the United States was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the naval and armed forces of the Empire of Japan.’’ We were at war and all were expected to enter the war effort. At school we collected scrap metal to be used in the rapid shift to a war economy. We collected and made huge balls of tin foil to contribute. Every week I went with my mother to fold bandages for the Red Cross and on Memorial Day I sold red ‘‘buddy poppies’’ for wounded veterans. I was immersed in church life and heard a lot about love and goodwill, charity and neighborliness. I don’t recall ever thinking about the morality of war and the idea of conscientious objection was totally unknown until I was in high school in the late 1940s. Our church was visited by a Methodist Youth Caravan and these older youth challenged us to explore war—and

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racism—in the light of Jesus’s teachings about, as we said in those days, ‘‘the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.’’ As a boy I had lived through the Depression and World War II. After the war, the Cold War, anti-communism, and McCarthyism were overarching national issues. I went with my father once to the Lion’s Club luncheon to hear Senator Strom Thurmond, Dixiecrat candidate for president. My father accepted segregation as part of ‘‘the southern way of life’’ but he didn’t like the extreme racist sentiments expressed by Thurmond. He worried when I later became involved in civil rights efforts. Afraid I would get hurt, he said, ‘‘You don’t know how mean these southern racists can be.’’ When I went away to college, I brought home for weekend visits classmates from Mexico and India and of other races from Texas. My parents were gracious hosts though in retrospect I sensed their discomfort. I began to struggle with the meaning of all humanity as God’s family. Yet my parents and relatives—and most church-going people for that matter—didn’t seem to object to a ‘‘good’’ war or take issue with segregation and Jim Crow laws. These were just a part of our way of life. But the Methodist Youth Fellowship, with the motto ‘‘Christ Above All’’ and the teachings of some of my church-school teachers led me to struggle with these kinds of ethical issues. My dad and brother, patriotic veterans, couldn’t understand what troubled me so. But for me, ‘‘Love your enemy,’’ ‘‘Overcome evil with good,’’ ‘‘Turn the other cheek,’’ ‘‘Go the second mile,’’ and ‘‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’’ only underscored what is meant when we call Jesus ‘‘the Prince of Peace.’’ My father kept a loaded revolver in his sock drawer. One evening, when I was about 10, I was alone at home with my cousin Peggy. We thought we heard a prowler outside. I got my father’s gun and went to the front door and quickly threw it open as I pointed the loaded gun toward the door. Luckily there was no one there but I’ve often wondered how that might have ended in murder: I was fully prepared to shoot. In time, my attitudes started changing. I began to have qualms about hunting. We were a big hunting family. We had a gun cabinet and I had my own .22 rifle, 30.06 rifle, and 20-gauge shotgun. Every fall and winter were times of hunting: doves, quail, ducks, and deer. Game was plentiful in parts of South and West Texas. I loved camping out, cooking our meals, sleeping in bedrolls in the tent we pitched the first day. We spent all day walking in the hills hunting deer—whitetail deer in South Texas, blacktail deer in West Texas. My father always insisted we only kill legal game that we would take home and eat. But in time it began to bother me to kill the deer and birds. A turning point came one fall when shooting a doe was legal (ordinarily only male deer with antlers—bucks—could be legally shot). I shot a doe but she was still alive when I reached her. She raised her head and

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looked at me as she was dying. I cut her throat to end her misery and dragged her back to camp but that was the last time I hunted. It just was no longer a sport to me and the idea of reverence for life was something I would long struggle with. I was to discover that Erfurcht fur das Leben, reverence for life, was central to the philosophy of Albert Schweitzer, Alsatian medical doctor in Africa. His writing deeply influenced me. I entered college with the idea of becoming a doctor, or perhaps a dentist, like my father. However, a growing religious sensibility took place in me and I began to think of studying to be a minister. I went to McMurry College in Abilene, Texas, a Methodist school that had frequent religious services— weekly chapel, religious emphasis week, outdoor early morning services (when the weather permitted), visits to area churches, courses in religion. They all made an impact on me with Jesus becoming the One whom I would follow the rest of my life.

THE FELLOWSHIP OF RECONCILIATION A turning point occurred when Muriel Lester came to our campus. An English social worker, founder of Kingsley Hall in London’s East End, Lester was a ‘‘traveling secretary’’ for the International Fellowship of Reconciliation. A dynamic speaker who had worked with Gandhi in India’s freedom struggle and visited many war-ravaged areas in World War II, she talked about the Cold War, McCarthyism, and racism in the light of the Sermon on the Mount. Some on the campus outrageously thought she must be a communist, but I found her nonviolent message challenging, and in the end, transforming. Along with her concern for a just and peaceful world, in her second message she began by saying, ‘‘Every breath you take, you take in the spirit of God.’’ She said the outer journey needed to be combined with the inward journey so that there is harmony between our outer and inner lives. The active life is fueled by the inner practice of prayer and meditation. God is nearer than breathing, closer than hands and feet, and God is found in the other, even the stranger and the enemy. Lester summed up her message with these words: The job of the peacemaker is to stop war. To purify the world. To get it saved from poverty and riches. To heal the sick. To comfort the sad. To wake up those who have not yet found God. To create joy and beauty wherever you go. To find God in everything and in everyone.

Lester helped me move beyond the false dilemma that focuses either on spirituality that is inner directed, even other worldly, or spirituality that is basically activist. She modeled this in her life, her witness for peace that was rooted in a strong spiritual life.

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This led me in 1952 to join the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR). The FOR was founded in 1914 in Europe at an ecumenical conference at Lake Constance in southern Germany that was seeking to find ways that Christians, and the European churches they represented, could prevent the war that, as Barbara Tuchman said, everyone knew was coming and no one knew how to stop. During the conference, however, the war started and everyone had to return home in a continent that was now at war. Two of the delegates, Friederich Sigmund Schultze, Lutheran pacifist and chaplain to the Kaiser, and Henry Hodgkin, Quaker from England, as they parted at the Cologne train station, shook hands and said, ‘‘Our nations are at war but we are not. We are one in Christ and we will work for peace.’’ Out of this pledge a conference was held at Cambridge University in December 1914 that led to the founding of the Fellowship of Reconciliation with five convictions: 1. That Love, as revealed and interpreted in the life and death of Jesus Christ, involves more than we have yet seen, that it is the only power by which evil can be overcome, and the only sufficient basis of human society. 2. That, in order to establish a world-order based on Love, it is incumbent on those who believe in the principle to accept it fully, both for themselves and in their relation to others, and to take the risks involved in doing so in a world that does not as yet accept it. 3. That, therefore, as Christians, we are forbidden to wage war, and that our loyalty to our country, to humanity, to the Church Universal, and to Jesus Christ, our Lord and Master, calls us instead to a life service for the enthronement of Love in personal, social, commercial, and national life. 4. That the Power, Wisdom and Love of God stretch far beyond the limits of our present experiences, and that Jesus is ever waiting to break forth into human life to new and larger ways. 5. That since God manifests himself in the world through men and women, we offer ourselves to Him for His redemptive purpose, to be used by Him, in whatever way He may reveal to us.1

Refusing to sanction war and killing and transcending the nation state, FOR members sought to sow the seeds of peace throughout that bloody war. Later, influenced by Gandhi, as well as by the teachings of Jewish and Buddhist pacifists, FOR became an interfaith fellowship that honored the nonviolence in all of the world’s great religious traditions. It had programs to minister to the victims of war, including conscientious objectors who were treated as traitors, imprisoned, and in certain cases, executed. FOR, with members from a broad cross-section of the churches, both Protestant

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and Catholic, represented pacifist ecumenism. Pierre Ceresole of the Swiss FOR founded the work camp movement that brought together volunteers from former enemy nations to help heal the broken societies left by the war. When I joined the FOR decades later, I was led to go to Europe to work with refugees, building houses in Nuremberg, Germany, in a project run by the Quaker International Voluntary Service. This was my first trip to Europe. Even though my heritage was part German, I found that being in Germany and hearing the language spoken at first stirred wartime fears and prejudices. In working side by side with German refugees in building houses, I began to outgrow those feelings when I recalled what a McMurry professor said one day in class, challenging our narrow provincialism: ‘‘You don’t know what you like. You like what you know.’’ Race, class, ethnicity, language, nationality: there are so many differences that initially at least can create suspicion, caution, and division. The FOR branch in the United States was begun in 1915 and its efforts included campaigning for the release of imprisoned conscientious objectors (COs) and working for legislation that would recognize the right of COs’ beliefs. This effort, carried on by a number of churches and organizations, won the right by a series of incremental benchmarks, from COs in the historic peace churches, to religious COs, to conscientious objectors of particular wars. With the changes in the Soviet nations in the time of Gorbachev, the communists dropped their former opposition to the CO position and the United Nations finally recognized the right of conscientious objection. This development furthered the concept of conscientious objection without specific religious grounding but, instead, from a nonreligious perspective of reverence for life. The International FOR tried to prevent the advent of World War II with statements, marches, and peace rallies. It sent emissaries of peace such as Anne Seescholz, Muriel Lester, and George Lansbury to world leaders such as Roosevelt, Mussolini, Lloyd George, and even Hitler. It sought to arouse the opposition of nations and churches to the manufacture, sale, and use of weapons of mass destruction. When the war began, FOR members joined in the nonviolent opposition. In the United States, they formed a project to prevent harsh measures being carried out against American Japanese and ministered to them when they were forcibly relocated to internment camps. FOR members protected Japanese property, businesses, and belongings wherever possible. Widespread, vicious, anti-Japanese prejudice made this work both difficult and absolutely necessary. The International FOR (IFOR) opposed the development of nuclear weapons and the Cold War that started after the end of World War II.

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The U.S. FOR particularly worked in helping support and develop the civil rights movement, with education and direct action—sit-ins, marches, rallies, civil disobedience. Jim Lawson and Glenn Smiley held workshops across the South and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. during the Montgomery bus boycott. Jim Lawson, FOR field staffer, led the Nashville movement that helped end Jim Crow laws there. The Journey of Reconciliation, sponsored by FOR and CORE (the Congress of Racial Equality, founded by James Farmer and George Houser) challenged interstate segregation from the North to the Deep South. Houser, the only member of that journey still living, was to become a close friend many years later. Bayard Rustin, another member of the Journey of Reconciliation, was a brilliant black Quaker pacifist who was a popular public speaker and campaign strategist. An open homosexual, he ran afoul of public sentiment and much of the movement, including the FOR, distanced themselves from him—a hurt that was not healed for many years. The U.S. FOR’s motto (attributed to A. J. Muste) is, ‘‘There is no way to peace, Peace is the way.’’ This stresses the unity of means and ends for which Gandhi was so famous, and he helped FOR grow in its understanding of nonviolence and of working with its proponents in all the world’s faiths. Peaceful means must be used to achieve peaceful ends. Waging war to promote justice and peace contradicts this understanding. Successive wars—in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the wider war on terrorism—have all been opposed by FOR, as each war sows the seeds of future conflicts in the killing and destruction of the present. As Dr. King pointed out, violent conditions are bred in a swamp of misery, poverty, illiteracy, and disease. Bombing those conditions deepens the suffering. The first step should be to drain the swamp and plant seeds of peace for the future. In 1953, the year after my refugee work in Germany, I spent the summer in a building project at a Methodist Rural Center in Mexico, not far from Mexico City. Having grown up in Texas and taken two years of Texas history as required by our schools (I had one year of U.S. history, two of Texas history, and no other history courses!), I had given little thought to understanding the Mexican perspective on Texas. Texas was originally a part of Mexico, as had been much of the western part of what is today the United States. Seeing a Mexican portrayal of its history in Chapultepec Castle was really the first time I had been exposed to something other than an uncritical history of Texas and the southwestern United States. I was surprised to learn that Abraham Lincoln had opposed the war against Mexico, and I was surprised to see powerful paintings in Cuernavaca by Diego Rivera, a Communist, who was not popular in Texas during the Cold War. The extraordinary art, mosaics, and murals in Mexico gave evidence of a rich culture that

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I had not anticipated. Discovering Mexico was full of rich surprises. Gogol’s advice was right: see the world; you’ll never regret it. Coming home, I decided to go to seminary rather than to medical or dental school. I wanted to immerse myself in biblical and theological study and to draw on that in working for a just and peaceful world. My call to the ministry was leading me step by step into the conviction that I should follow Jesus, the Prince of Peace, wherever that might take me. I was glad that I had a strong education in science, gaining much from both scientific and religious insights and perspectives. At that time the Methodist Church had a strong, prophetic program for world peace. It worked to develop an effective United Nations and its agencies such as the World Health Organization, the UN Children’s Emergency Fund, and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). It was a strong supporter of the work of Eleanor Roosevelt and others who produced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the many efforts of the post-war world to move beyond narrow nationalism and to promote efforts to construct a peaceful world. Methodist women built the Church Center for the United Nations that has been used to the present day as headquarters for many peace and justice organizations and a center for related projects, meetings, and conferences. As a seminary student, I was chosen to participate in the UN-New York Christian Citizenship Seminar sponsored by the student program of the Methodist Board of Missions, edited by Dorothy Nyland. I was introduced to the peace perspective at the United Nations and in the U.S. government; I returned the next year as the student leader of the seminar. The participants met with such leaders as Senators Hubert Humphrey and Wayne Morse. We met with our own senators so I had the privilege of meeting with the then majority leader of the Senate, Texas Senator Lyndon Johnson. I had first seen him when he was campaigning for the Senate by helicopter. There was great excitement as his helicopter landed on the grounds of Big Spring High School. At the end of the meeting in his Senate office, he telephoned his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, to take me to lunch in the Senate Dining Room. In New York the seminar participants visited various UN agencies and I was especially struck by our meeting with Eduardo Mondlane, great African educator and nationalist leader from Mozambique (tragically, Mondlane was killed in 1969 when he opened a letter bomb in his office). Eleanor Roosevelt met with us in the Methodist offices on Fifth Avenue and gave us her personal perspective on her wide-ranging efforts for peace and world understanding. Her work as one of the writers of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a monumental achievement that continues to influence humanity’s aspiration for a truly humane world order. The Declaration’s

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focus on individual rights was later complemented by the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. The two together move us beyond the individualism of capitalism and the collectivism of communism toward what Walter Muelder of Boston University School of Theology called the ‘‘goal of personalistic communitarianism.’’

NONVIOLENCE: A WAY OF LIFE, A STRATEGY FOR CHANGE Beginning in the 1920s the Fellowship of Reconciliation began studying and applying the life and example of Gandhi and the Indian freedom struggle in its efforts for racial justice, world peace, and FOR’s various efforts to live out the implications of nonviolence for the whole of life. Having lived and worked in Southeast Asia for 13 years before joining the staff of the FOR, I was particularly involved in peace concerns and in situations involving human rights, liberation, oppression, and dictatorship. It meant being prepared to respond to invitations that would come from religious, peace, and human rights organizations, nonviolent underground groups, emerging movements, etc. I was part of an FOR team that went to Wounded Knee at the time of the occupation of Indian land by Native Americans to highlight the injustices the United States perpetrated on their tribe; the Native Americans met with us, but representatives of the U.S. government would not. I led a team to Tunis to meet with Yassir Arafat and leaders of the PLO in response to their request to explore nonviolence in the Palestinian-Israeli struggle. I was asked to be a speaker at a conference on democracy in Bangladesh sponsored by the International FOR branch there. I had extended meetings near the Thai/Burma border with Burmese soldiers fighting the central government; in 2007, I trained Burmese preparing to join the nonviolent monks opposing their oppressive government. With the initial invitation coming from the Little Sisters of Jesus who were working with the poor in metropolitan Manila, I became part of the People Power movement in the Philippines challenging the Marcos dictatorship. As Lithuania became the first Soviet Republic to seek independence, I organized an FOR team to respond to a request from the volunteer militia that was being formed to protect the parliament building from the Soviet Army. The Justice and Reconciliation Committee of the South African Council of Churches invited Walter Wink and me to lead workshops on the gospel and active nonviolence with the anti-apartheid movement. Not allowed to do this in South Africa, we had to meet in an isolated seminary in Lesoto, a tiny, selfgoverning black republic within South Africa. Hildegard Goss-Mayr and I were asked by the Maryknoll Sisters in Hong Kong to assist them in examining the impact and long-term result of the movement at Tiananmen

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Square. In South Korea, in response to the oppression by the Park Dictatorship, a group of missionaries began quietly meeting on Monday nights to examine what was happening and finding ways to support the victims of the dictatorship and get censored news to the outside world. FOR was invited to send a resource person to meet with this group to explore efforts of nonviolent resistance. I would like to describe the South Korean situation at this point as a representative example of these far-flung efforts. In 1977, ‘‘the Monday Night Group,’’ as it came to be known, invited me to visit South Korea as an outside resource person to contribute to their work. At the time, South Korea was under the brutal military dictatorship of Park Chung-Hee. It was a time of dangerous, ongoing confrontation with the Communist Korean regime in the North. Human rights and other freedoms were being flagrantly violated in the name of national security. The unsettled end of the Korean War left the peninsula bitterly divided, heavily militarized, and under constant provocations from the North and from the South. Public defense of human rights and social justice, a profound matter of conscience for at least a prophetic minority in the churches, schools, and labor unions, met with swift response by the government. Arrest, imprisonment, torture, and even execution, all in the name of national security and anti-communism, became all too common martial law practices. The Korean national intelligence service (KCIA) extended its intrigue and terror throughout the country as well as into the overseas Korean community in Japan, the United States, and other countries. Throughout my stay in the country, I was often followed by KCIA agents so my entire schedule had to be carefully planned. The Monday Night Group began meeting as a way of sharing information at a time of maximum censorship. They needed a place to hear what was going on. They produced ‘‘Fact Sheets’’ to share with others. They wrote letters abroad to agencies and news services, as well as to local officials. They went with Korean family members to visit prisoners and helped raise funds as needed. They mobilized for action, joining protesters, hiding fugitives, standing with the oppressed as they were able. They prayed together and helped set up prayer services. Much to the consternation of the government, they became a reliable and speedy source of getting information out of the country. The Korean Student Christian Federation, though having experienced staff arrests and the ransacking of their offices, was making efforts to hold occasional public events. It used my visit to schedule a public lecture on ‘‘The Way of Nonviolence.’’ The event was held in the Christian Building, a large office building in Seoul. Even though government agents at the door checked everyone’s identification, the hall was packed. In the middle of my

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address, a woman got up and loudly scolded a man in the audience whom she knew to be a KCIA agent, ordering him to leave the hall. Which he did! I was able to finish my address and be part of a lively question and answer session afterward. I never ceased to be impressed by the strong faith of Korean Christians. One Sunday I preached at Galilee Church, a congregation that included many family members of imprisoned persons. My translator, the distinguished church leader and ethics professor Lee Oo Jong, spoke in a friendly way to the KCIA agents waiting outside the church. Her genuine goodwill even to the enemy put them to shame. Many of the women in the church service were part of the project of knitting purple ‘‘victory shawls.’’ The shawls were sold, with the proceeds used to buy blankets and warm underwear for prisoners of conscience who suffered greatly in the infamous unheated prison cells. When I left the country, the women gave me a huge box of the shawls to take home and sell on behalf of the prisoners. The luggage examiner at the airport was so amazed at the fluent Korean of my host, Randy Rice, that he just routinely checked my incriminating luggage when my flight was called, much to our surprise and relief. Although it was a grave crime to criticize the government or the constitution, criticism of government policies could not be stopped. A dramatic example was seen at Seoul’s Catholic Myung Dong Cathedral on March 1, 1976, the anniversary of Korea’s March 1, 1919, nonviolent movement for independence from Japan. The three-hour mass/prayer service included the proclamation of the ‘‘Declaration for Democracy and National Salvation’’ signed by 18 of South Korea’s leading citizens (including Lee Oo Jong, president of Church Women United; Stephen and Timothy Moon, brothers and seminary professors; Ham Suk Hon, the great Quaker patriot who was called the Korean Gandhi; and leading opposition figure and future president Kim Dae Jung). Despite their eminence, all were arrested and brought to trial, accused of plotting to overthrow the government. Their four-month-long trials were not open to the public. Wives stood outside the court wearing black tape crossed over their mouths, symbolic of democracy’s death. Another day each woman wore her husband’s prison number. And they wore purple, the color of suffering and victory. The Monday Night Group planned an unpublicized retreat with me in the mountains outside of Seoul at a Christian conference center. We were able to meet free of surveillance so there was a relaxed, open mood to the retreat. We talked about the strong nonviolence tradition in Korean culture and societal practices. We examined the teachings of Jesus, Gandhi, and King and their relevance to a situation of harsh dictatorship. We learned

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about other nonviolent movements around the world, their struggles and difficulties as well as their achievements and victories among a diverse and growing number of groups. The greatest emotional outpouring came during the powerful role plays where the group discussed and enacted some of their most difficult experiences, how they had responded and, if they had it to do over again, how they might respond differently. They talked about plans for the future and were buoyed by fervent singing and prayer. They spoke of their hopes for what was to come and wished for wisdom, faith, and endurance to continue their witness. The Monday Night Group met regularly over a period of many years, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. As a center of resistance, they demonstrated the power of truth, especially in a society where public information was widely censored with only the government’s official point of view allowed. Foreign passports from the various nations represented in the group served as a protective shield that Korean citizens did not have. However, the police, the army, and the KCIA found ways to intimidate the government’s critics such as George Ogle, who worked with the Urban Industrial Mission and was deported for his ministry with workers and the poor. During the harsh and lengthy time of his interrogation, Gene Matthews, an American Methodist missionary, and Didier Terstevens, a Belgian priest, maintained a vigil on George’s behalf. They subsequently faced their own interrogation for such public actions. The government learned ways of acting that would not stir up as much public sentiment as expulsion. For example, they began refusing to renew Alien Residence Permits on expiration. This happened to Fr. Jim Sinnot, Jean and Bill Bassinger, and Steve Lavender. Others had their status changed from ‘‘missionary’’ to ‘‘teacher,’’ enabling the government to apply both subtle and direct pressure on the schools to control critics. A huge scandal was the government’s anti-communist concocted charge of a ‘‘Peoples’ Revolutionary Party’’ plot to overthrow the South Korean government. Eight men were singled out as leaders of the party and a climate of hysteria resulted in the eight being picked up, tortured, interrogated, and executed. Demonstrations at the U.S. Embassy over the issue brought strong media attention to the scandal, although it was not enough to save the lives of those charged. Efforts on behalf of the men and their families were undertaken, resulting in further moves against human rights advocates. Gene Matthews was interrogated for two days by the police and another Methodist colleague, Butch Durst, was interrogated by the KCIA. Thirty-two years later, the so-called Peoples’ Revolutionary Party and the charges against the eight were officially and publicly declared to have

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been based on false information. This was a vindication of their families and their allies. Although it remains true that ‘‘Justice delayed is justice denied.’’ The Brazilians have a term, firmeza permanente (persistent firmness), to describe the necessity of holding on to the truth and not giving up, whatever the cost. As Hildegard Goss-Mayr, the Austrian nonviolence scholar points out, this permanent firmness gives power to the powerless and weakens the authority and strength of the repressive forces in a society. Members of the Monday Night Group stress that whatever they went through was nothing compared to the experiences of the Korean victims of cruel policies during the long struggle for democracy.

POSTSCRIPT Many years later, in April 2009, I was able to meet with a reunion of the Monday Night Group at the Stony Point Conference Center in New York. All were now retired, though still active in their advocacy for a just and peaceful South Korea. Although the country had moved from dictatorship to democracy, there were still many, many challenges to a fair and just social order. With a grant from the Korea Democracy Foundation, the Monday Night Group was able to publish a book, More Than Witnesses: How a Small Group of Missionaries Aided Korea’s Democratic Stentzel et. al., 2006. With essays from most members of the group they told the story of how they chose not silence and neutrality but witnessing in concrete ways for and with the Koreans who were struggling for a just and free society. I consider it a rare privilege to have been a part of such struggles all over the world. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from a jail in Birmingham, Alabama, ‘‘We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.’’ These reflections of my life’s experience have borne out Dr. King’s insight again and again. Embracing the world, I experience a renewed calling and determined hope in my faith journey.

NOTE 1. Brittain, 1964.

CHAPTER

25

T R A I N E D T O H AT E : C O N F E S S I O N S A C ONVERT TO HUMANITY

OF

Claude AnShin Thomas

For my first 17 years almost all my experiences watered the seeds of violence in me. War was everywhere. I was raised in a small farming community, Waterford, in the northwestern part of Pennsylvania. My father, like most of the men in my town, had served in World War II. When that generation talked about war, they didn’t speak truthfully. Unable to touch the deep and profound wounds that war had left inside them, they talked about war like a great adventure. So when I turned 17 and my father suggested that I go into the military, I didn’t question him. I also didn’t know much about politics; it wasn’t part of my life. Now I understand how important it is to know what is going on in the world. Though no long-term solutions to our world’s problems are achieved through political ideologies, I am impacted by them, as is each of us, and we pay a dear price for this ignorance. Today I understand that my father and the men and women of his generation were filled with illusions and denial about how deeply they were affected by their military service and war experiences. Having come home as the victors, they were thrust into a role: They became the protectors of our culture’s denial about the profound and far-reaching impact of war—not just on those who fought, but on all of us. This cultural myth obliged my father’s generation not to talk openly or directly about the reality of the individual

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war experience, and in a sense, for many of them, their inner lives had to be abandoned. Speaking truthfully wasn’t encouraged in them or in me. But something unusual happened during and after the war in Vietnam: Many of us could no longer deny reality. My father was an emotionally hidden person. Most of the time alcohol, tobacco, and other intoxicants provided the bonding agent that held his walls of repression in place. But, as is always the case, repression does not really work as a strategy for dealing with strong emotions. Some of what’s hidden squeezes out. In my town, there was a lake, and in the springtime the water level would rise because of the snowmelt. One day when I was around eight I went out to play. I had been given a new pair of tennis shoes with a clean and distinctive tread. That day I was supposed to be home at four o’clock. But what does a child know about time? When I didn’t come home at four, my father got concerned and went looking for me. He went down near the lake and found small footprints going into the water but not coming back. The footprints resembled the tread of my new pair of tennis shoes. He became terrified with the thought that I had fallen into the lake and drowned. He came rushing back, and when he got home, I was already there. He immediately took me into the bathroom, pulled down my pants, took off his leather belt, and beat me until I was black and blue and bleeding from the middle of my neck to my ankles. In the middle of what he was doing he realized that he was really hurting me, and he stopped beating me and started to doctor the wounds with Mercurochrome. As he was doing this, he said that he had beaten me because he loved me. All the time he was dressing my wounds, he kept repeating that he had done this to me because he loved me. That was the beginning of a long-term association: Love equals violence. I don’t believe that my father’s intention was to hurt me. He just could not be afraid, could not stand to feel the reality of his powerlessness, so he expressed his fear through the only feeling he had access to: his rage. Unable to understand or tolerate the intensity of his emotions, he chose to see his problem as external. Then all he needed to do was control the perceived source of his distress. He was violent because he was not able to touch his own suffering. And therefore his suffering was acted out on me in this way. My father’s denial and repression ultimately destroyed him: He died at the age of 53 from a lifestyle that was dominated by his alcoholism, his addiction to cigarettes (50 nonfiltered cigarettes a day), and his general tendencies toward self-destruction. My father did not so much die as was unable to live. I believe that the culture of denial destroyed him, as it destroyed his father, and almost destroyed me. Yet this kind of denial is required to support the myth that war and violence are effective and lasting solutions to conflict.

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My father’s violence was not the only training ground for war that I experienced growing up. At the age of five, living with my parents in an apartment in Waterford, one day I wanted to ride my bicycle, and my mother didn’t want me to. I was excited, and being a kid, I was persistent. My mother’s response to this persistence was to push me and my bicycle down a flight of stairs—20 steps. Why I wasn’t seriously injured, I don’t know. Kids are flexible, perhaps. And they learn quickly. This wasn’t a one-time event. My mother often reacted with violence. One day, for no apparent reason, she placed her hand on the back of my neck, pulled me around, and smashed my face into a wall. Then she said to me that if only I were a better person, she wouldn’t have to do that to me. I was being taught through these experiences to block out pain and to trust no one, especially those in authority. My mother was also unable to have honest access to her feelings, to look at her suffering, and her pain. Like my father her unaddressed feelings turned into violence toward me. I was being taught the tools necessary to be an effective soldier. I became the carrier of the trans-generational effects of war. I graduated from high school and I directly joined the military because I didn’t know what else to do. My father suggested it, and he was my father. Even an absent father remains a powerful figure in a family’s life, particularly in a son’s. He and his friends who fought in World War II would all sit around and get drunk and tell stories that made war seem glamorous, exciting, and romantic. I not only listened to these stories, I drank them in, longing to be a part of them. So I believed the stories, without question, listened to my father, without question, and joined the army. But one doesn’t need to grow up with a father who is an ex-soldier to hear romantic and misleading stories about war. Popular culture produces endless movies that romanticize and glorify war. They almost never portray the reality of this experience. And war, whether real or in the movies, is not the only place where a warrior mentality is cultivated. It is also nurtured through sports. I was very talented in all the sports that were offered in school. I actively competed in baseball, football, and wrestling. In fact, the only thing that kept me in school was my athletic ability. And in every sport and on every team, I found this warrior mentality. I developed a romantic vision of what competition, fighting, and battle were like. I envisioned war as just another game. At the same time, I was extremely insecure, shy, withdrawn, and untrusting. I had the notion that if I went into the military, fought in a war, and received a lot of medals, I would come home a hero, and I would be loved, admired, and cared for. That is how the stories that I read, watched on TV, or saw in the movies went. It would just happen like that, and I wouldn’t

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have to think about anything. ‘‘Go into the military,’’ my father said, ‘‘it will help make a man out of you.’’ And becoming a man, I thought, would mean being respected and being loved. I remember the day I left for my military service. My father drove me to the bus station in Erie, Pennsylvania, a distance of about 25 miles from home. I had a little brown Boy Scout suitcase. My name was written on it in black Magic Marker. My father took me to the station, bought me a ticket, and left me. There was no good-bye hug, no handshake, no parting words. He just left me there to wait for the bus, and I went numb. During basic training I was taught to hate. On the firing range we were shooting at targets that resembled people. We were learning to kill human beings. We had to be taught how to do that—that is the work of the military. This work is done in a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle ways. When we were done on the firing range, we were supposed to stack our weapons in a particular way. One day, as I was preparing to place my rifle on the stack, I dropped it. The drill instructor, a sergeant first class, screamed and cursed that I wasn’t looking after my rifle properly, that my rifle was the most important thing in my life, because whether I lived or died depended on it. He was six feet, three inches to my five feet, eight-and-a-half inches. He stood in front of me, his chest jammed up against my face, stabbing me with his finger and screaming obscenities down at me. Then he pulled out his penis and urinated on me, in front of everyone. I wasn’t allowed to wash for two days. I felt shame at such a deep level, I couldn’t begin to handle it. Instead, all I felt was rage. I couldn’t act it out on him because I would have gone to jail. So I focused my rage on the enemy. The enemy was everyone unlike me, everyone who was not an American soldier. This conditioning is an essential ingredient in the creation of a good soldier. Soldiers are trained to see others as dangerous, threatening, and potentially deadly. You dehumanize the enemy. You dehumanize yourself. My military training ultimately taught me to dehumanize a whole race of people. There was no distinction between the Vietcong, the regular Vietnamese army, and the Vietnamese general population. But if I hadn’t been prepared for this military training by the rest of my life, that kind of teaching might not have taken hold. As a young man I was encouraged to fight, to be prejudiced, and be nationalistic. I was taught that the way to solve problems was through violence. If there was a conflict, the strongest person won. I learned this from my mother, my father, my teachers, and my friends. I volunteered to go to Vietnam because I thought it was the right thing to do. I didn’t understand the nature of war or the nature of violence. Three days after I was in-country I began to understand. It was insane. It’s difficult to

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describe what I saw. I could and can still taste and smell it and see the emptiness in everyone’s eyes. It was like being in a surreal horror movie. I was sent to Vietnam ‘‘unattached,’’ which meant that I did not have a specific unit assignment. My orders sent me to the Ninetieth Replacement Battalion in Long Binh. Each morning we would get up, make our beds, eat breakfast, and then stand in formation for roll call. We’d then count off by fives or threes or something like that. Some days all the ‘‘ones’’ would get an assignment and ship out, some days the ‘‘twos,’’ and so on. For those of us who did not get a unit assignment, there were details such as cleaning latrines, which entailed hauling a cut-down 50-gallon drum from under the toilet seat and then burning the human waste that it contained, or working in the kitchen preparing meals, scrubbing pots, that sort of thing. One of these details was to clean up some of the huge warehouses full of products for the PX (post exchange) system. The PX is the military version of a Wal-Mart, where soldiers can go to buy food, cigarettes, and so forth. As I had not yet received a unit assignment, I was put on this detail and, bizarrely, spent my first three days in Vietnam destroying thousands of pounds of Milky Way candy bars (which were melting and rotting in the tropical conditions). With the encouragement of a noncommissioned officer in charge, I also ‘‘confiscated’’ (military language for stole) a necklace of cultured Mikimoto pearls, a purchase item that was far beyond my wallet. Two days later I brought them back because I knew that stealing was just wrong. But this confused, corrupt, surreal world of the war was just an extension of my experiences in basic training, where I was formally schooled in the absurd and grotesque reality of violence. There was no ‘‘after the war’’ for me. My life, as a survivor of Vietnam, was an ongoing war. I isolated myself more and more from other people, took more and more drugs, and lived more and more on the fringes of society. During all this time, however, I kept looking outside myself for some salvation, for some kind of answer. If I could do the right combination of drugs, the feelings would go away. Or if I could have the right job, I would be okay. As a result of injuries suffered in a helicopter crash in Vietnam, I required reconstructive surgeries and then physical therapy in a United States army hospital. After I was released from the hospital, in August 1968, I returned to Pennsylvania, started college, and married my high school sweetheart. But I was incapable of intimacy, and the marriage did not last. While attending college, I had many relationships, none of which lasted. I don’t know if I had any real intention that they last, but somewhere in my mind I kept telling myself before each encounter that this was the one. I felt what I interpreted as a powerful connection, and that could only mean that physical

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union was the answer to my problems. We would have sex, then my deadness would return, and I would abandon that woman in search of the next. I had a son with one of the women that I met in college. When he was a small baby, he slept in a bassinet in the bedroom with his mother and me. When my baby son cried, I became intensely agitated, so much so that I would have to get high or leave the house. I didn’t understand why, I just had to get away. I thought I was insane, crazy, that there was something wrong with me. Whenever he cried, I would feel the need to leave, to run. I realize now that there were multiple reasons for my intense reactions to his crying. For one thing, crying, my own or anyone else’s, terrified me, was intolerable to me. Sadness had always been a forbidden emotion. But there were also other reasons why his crying caused me to panic, reasons that I wasn’t yet ready to acknowledge and wouldn’t confront for years to come. But by the time my son was three years old, I felt I couldn’t stay there any longer. I left him and his mother. I was completely controlled by my suffering and unaware of how deeply afraid I was of facing what was inside me. I just knew that I couldn’t stay still. At some point, maybe six months into my service in Vietnam, we landed outside a village and shut down the engines of our helicopters. Often when we shut down near a village the children would rush up and flock around the helicopter, begging for food, trying to sell us bananas, pineapples, or CocaCola, or attempting to prostitute their mothers or sisters. On this particular day there was a large group, maybe 25 children. They were mostly gathered around the helicopter. As the number of children grew, the situation became less and less safe because often the Vietcong would use children as weapons against us. So someone chased them off by firing a burst from an M60 machine gun over their heads. As they ran away, a baby was left lying on the ground, crying, maybe two feet from the helicopter in the middle of the group. I started to approach the baby along with three or four other soldiers. That is what my nonwar conditioning told me to do. But in this instance, for some reason, something felt wrong to me. And just as the thought began to rise in my head to yell at the others to stop, just before that thought could be passed by synapse to speech, one of them reached out and picked up the baby, and it blew up. Perhaps the baby had been a booby trap, a bomb. Perhaps there had been a grenade attack or a mortar attack at just this moment. Whatever the cause, there was an explosion that killed three soldiers and knocked me down, covering me with blood and body parts. This incident had been so overwhelming that my conscious mind could not hold it. And so this memory had remained inaccessible to me until that evening in 1990. As I sat there looking at this monk, Vietnam just came rushing back to me—all the unaddressed, repressed thoughts, feelings, and

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perceptions. I understood for the first time how the war had taken away my ability to have relationships. How the effects of war had prevented me, like my father before me, from having an intimate relationship with my son, or with anyone. I had left my three-year-old son and his mother not because I couldn’t stand to be with them, which is what my suffering was telling me, but because I couldn’t stand to be in my own skin. From the time I came home from Vietnam until about a month before I went into a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program in 1983, I carried a gun everywhere. I couldn’t feel safe without a gun. I slept with one; I ate with one; I went to school with one; I had one in my car. My sense of safety was completely dependent on this gun. I didn’t yet understand that security and safety don’t actually come from controlling the world around us (or within us). Later, from my study of the Buddhist teachings, I would learn that true and lasting security can come only from learning to live in harmony with our suffering. One night in 1978 I found myself sitting on the steps of my house with an unloaded shotgun under my chin, pulling the trigger—click, click, click—screaming and crying, because my pain was so overwhelming. All I wanted was to die—but at the same time, I didn’t really want to die, I just didn’t know how to live with all this pain. I kept looking outside myself for something to help me, to fix me, to make it better. But nothing was working. Many times I felt that the men who died in Vietnam were the lucky ones. Those of us who didn’t die, who have had to live with the trauma and reality of this experience, continued to pay the price. We were the scapegoats for an entire country, for an entire culture that didn’t want to take responsibility for its decisions and actions. War does not begin with a declaration or end with an armistice. The seeds of war are constantly planted and the harvest is never ending. I experienced the war before the war in my family, then the Vietnam War, and then the war after the war. The military teaches you to dehumanize, but much in our society also teaches us to dehumanize. And once you dehumanize, once that becomes a habit, it doesn’t change easily. When we dehumanize others, we lose our own humanity. This doesn’t happen just in the military: It happens through television, in the movies, and in magazines; it happens on the street; it happens in stores and in the workplace. Those who haven’t served in the military are confronted with very similar kinds of issues. Think of the shootings in schoolyards, people beating someone to death because the person is gay or road rage. Even just shouting at someone in a checkout line because we can’t tolerate the uncomfortable feelings that can arise when we have to wait. In many life experiences, we are dehumanizing others and being dehumanized.

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The war in Vietnam, the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the war on the streets of Los Angeles, Hartford, Denver, Cleveland, or any town, the wars that take place in our homes—what are the seeds of those wars? Vietnam is only an expression of something that begins inside each and every one of us, male or female. We all possess the seeds of violence, the seeds of war. When I entered a rehabilitation center for drug addiction in 1983, I was able to stop using drugs, stop drinking. After I stopped using drugs including alcohol, the obvious intoxicants, I began to learn what the other intoxicants were that were preventing me from looking at myself. And I began to stop those things also. I stopped using caffeine and nicotine; I stopped eating processed sugar and meat; I stopped going from one relationship to another. I kept coming more and more back to myself, in my commitment to heal, even though I did not understand (in any intellectual way) what it was I was doing. In 1990 it became impossible for me to hide from the reality of my Vietnam experience any longer. Vietnam was not just in my head; it was all through me. I had talked intellectually about Vietnam, but I had never fully opened myself to the totality of this experience. Now the pain reached a point where it was so great that I wanted only to hide from it, to run from it yet again. My first thought, of course, was to get drunk. When I drink, it covers the pain like a blanket. But under the blanket, inside me, I am full of barbed wire; every time I move, it cuts at me, tears my skin. When I drink, I have the illusion that I have put a buffer between my skin and the barbed wire, but this is not the truth; when I am anesthetized, I am just not so aware of the ripping and tearing. Well, this time I didn’t have that drink. By 1990 I had abstained from drugs and alcohol for seven years. Now there were fewer places to hide from the reality of Vietnam. All my feelings about the war had been tightly repressed until then, and now they were coming to the surface. I couldn’t push them away any longer. At this time I was living in Concord, Massachusetts, and I was in counseling with a social worker, a wonderful, generous woman. When I got to the point where I felt totally overwhelmed by my emotions and wanted to die, she supported me, and in a spiritual way, she held me. I was trapped in the prison of self, confined by guilt, remorse, anxiety, and fear. I became so tormented that I was unable to leave my house. Physically and emotionally, I was under siege, bunkered in. My counselor continued to phone me and gently yet persistently invite me to come to her office. She continued to support the reality that I had not gone completely mad and helped me to understand that what was happening to me was the result of getting in touch with my feelings about the war, perhaps for the first time. At a certain point she told me about a Buddhist monk who had worked with Vietnam veterans and had some success in helping them become more

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at peace with themselves. She suggested I read some of his books. It was only later that she told me he was Vietnamese. Because I had committed myself to healing, I said: ‘‘Sure, okay, I’ll read the books,’’ but I wasn’t able to, because they were written by a Vietnamese man—the enemy. Every time I would envision reading them, I would think about the monks who opened fire on us. Six months later someone else, a woman in a therapy group I had joined which was facilitated by this social worker, gave me a catalog from the Omega Institute, a holistic education center in Rhinebeck, New York. One of the pages of this catalog was bookmarked for me. When I opened it I saw a photo of that very same Vietnamese Buddhist monk, and an announcement that he was leading a meditation retreat for Vietnam veterans. Up to that point I had an excellent excuse for not going to see him: He lived in France and I didn’t have the money to travel because I was unable to work; I was unemployable. There was, however, a note in the catalog, highlighted for me in yellow, saying that scholarships were available for those in need. I couldn’t use the excuse of not having any money. I had made the commitment that I was willing to go to any length to heal, so I had to take this step. I called to make arrangements to go to the retreat. I explained to the person on the phone that I had a very difficult time being around people. I became anxious and uncomfortable in ordinary social circumstances and needed to be by myself. I also informed the person that I was talking with that I had a very hard time sleeping at night, a polite way of indicating my intensely disturbed sleep pattern. The people at the Omega Institute were nervous about having me, an unstable Vietnam vet, attend this retreat; they called the organizers and asked if it was all right for me to participate. The sponsors said, ‘‘We don’t turn anyone away.’’ This was the response of the Vietnamese—my enemy. They said: ‘‘We don’t turn anybody away.’’ My countrymen, the people I fought for, wanted to reject me, yet again. I committed to go and I drove to the retreat on my motorcycle. At that time I was riding a black Harley Davidson. I was dressed in a typical fashion for me: black leather jacket, black boots, black helmet, gold mirror glasses, and a red bandanna tied around my neck. My style of dress was not exactly warm and welcoming. The way I presented myself was intended to keep people away, because I was frightened, really scared. As I’ve mentioned before, I suffer from a disturbed sleep pattern that has been a part of my life since a nighttime attack in Vietnam in 1967. Since that time, I haven’t slept for more than two consecutive hours in any one night. For years I fought against this fact. You see, my inability to sleep became a symbol to me of how I was no longer ‘‘normal,’’ a constant reminder of the war that wouldn’t leave me alone. I so much wanted my life to be different from the way it was. My sleeplessness became the central

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symbol of my not-all-rightness, of my deepest fears that I would never be all right. In my efforts to live up to my ideas of normal, I held many jobs. On the rare occasions when I could get work, I was not able to hold the job because I just couldn’t function as well as people who sleep at night. I was usually tired and distracted, and sometimes I simply couldn’t get myself to work on time, because the early hours of the morning had become the only time that I was able to fall asleep. Part of the reason I had difficulty sleeping was because of my night terrors: the sounds (that aren’t there) of artillery firing in the distance, of helicopters on assault, that special look of everything illuminated by artificial light, the sounds of small arms fire, of the wounded screaming for a medic. For me, this is what rises up out of the silence that is special to night. I hated the sun going down. I fought and struggled with my inability to sleep, and the more I fought, the more difficult the nights became. So I turned to alcohol and other drugs (legal and illegal) for relief, but my suffering just got worse. After I went through drug and alcohol rehabilitation in 1983, I stopped turning to intoxicants (the obvious forms). Looking back, this is probably the single most important event in my life, because it gave me the opportunity to experience my own life and to experience it directly—the only place from which healing and transformation can begin to take place. Some years after getting sober, I was standing at the kitchen sink in my cottage in Concord, washing dishes. Above the sink was a window through which I could see a row of 50-foot-tall pine trees that lined the driveway. That day as I did the dishes, I was watching a squirrel busy doing whatever it is that squirrels do, when I had a powerful experience. A voice inside me—the voice of awareness—said to me, ‘‘You can’t sleep, so now what?’’ I began to laugh. It was a moment of complete acceptance. I finally understood that I just was how I was. To resist, to fight, to attempt to alter the essential nature of my life, was in fact making matters worse, and now I understood that I simply needed to learn how to live with the reality of who I was. In this moment I discovered that it was here, in the midst of suffering and confusion, that healing and transformation can take place, if I can stop trying to escape. But I’m not special, you know. You can do this, too. You can face your own sorrow, your own wounds. You can stop wanting some other life, some other past, some other reality. You can stop fighting against the truth of yourself and, breathing in and breathing out, open to your own experience. You can just feel whatever is there, exploring it, until you also discover the liberation that comes with stopping the struggle and becoming fully present in your own life. This is the real path to peace and freedom. You could do this for yourself; you could do this for your family. Our whole world will benefit.

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SEARCHING FOR PEACE IN THE PEACE M OV E M E N T : A L OV E R ’ S Q UA R R E L Rabbi Michael Lerner

I became an activist for peace in 1965 when I helped organize a teach-in at the University of California, Berkeley, against the Vietnam War, organized demonstrations against the war for the next seven years, served as chair of Berkeley’s chapter of the militant Students for a Democratic Society, and was indicted by the Nixon/Mitchell Justice Department as one of the Seattle Seven for ‘‘using the facilities of interstate commerce with the intent of inciting to riot’’ and ‘‘conspiracy to destroy federal property.’’ In a gross violation of legal procedures, I was sent to prison at Terminal Island Federal Penitentiary for ‘‘contempt of court’’ and J. Edgar Hoover described me to the media as ‘‘one of the most dangerous criminals in America.’’ Through much of this time I was engaged in a heated debate against those who said, ‘‘First we must change ourselves inwardly before we try to change the world.’’ I said then, and still believe now, that the kind of changes that are needed on the inside cannot be fully accomplished as long as we live in a world that rewards selfishness, materialism, and ‘‘looking out for number one’’ while ridiculing and marginalizing any who believe that the world could be based on caring, generosity, and love. In fact, as I was later to observe in the years that I served as a psychotherapist for the labor movement at the Institute for Labor and Mental Health, the daily experience that most people have in

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the world of work teaches them that everyone is out for themselves, that they must maximize their own advantage without regard to the consequences for others (if they don’t someone else will maximize their advantage at your expense), and that these messages are inevitably brought home into personal life where people increasingly act as maximizers of their own advantage to the detriment of loving and caring relationships and families. I’ve documented all these dynamics in great detail in my books The Politics of Meaning, Spirit Matters, and The Left Hand of God. I remain committed to the view that challenging the global military industrial complex, democratizing the economy, requiring the media to present the views of the peace movement with equal time to that given to the glorifiers of war, and the elimination of the role of money in elections are necessary components of any strategy to bring peace to our planet. But there was something importantly right about what those who focused on inward change were trying to say, and I discovered that as well in my work in the peace movement. I’m well aware of the various explanations that contributed to the declining influence of the peace movement in the 1970s, and I won’t belittle, for example, the cumulative impact of the killings of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, dozens of Black Panthers, and demonstrators at Kent State; the impact of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), National Security Agency (NSA), and local police undercover agents who worked with the Cointelpro campaign to disrupt the peace movement by themselves engaging in and encouraging others to engage in violence, spreading lies about the leaders that sought to show them as racist, sexist, homophobic, or egotistical (to degrees wildly beyond the reality to which everyone in the society already was); and the systematic loss of jobs and careers for those who were most courageous in opposing the Vietnam War (even while some academics who had themselves avoided playing leadership roles or risking their own lives in demonstrations eventually were able to get positions in universities and get their books published). Nor do I underestimate the powerful way in which 9/11 was turned into a ‘‘war against terrorism’’ and played an important role in disempowering a new generation who might have wished to oppose violence of all sorts but who could not deny the reality of the deaths of thousands on American soil. Yet in my experience there were other self-imposed limitations on our success as a movement that required and still require inner healing and transformation. And it is about those that I have been invited to write this chapter. The first element of the peace movement’s self-disempowerment that I discovered in the 1960s and which still plagues many activists is a persistent disconnect between our call for peace in the world and the way that we treated each other both in our movement and in our personal lives. Our

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meetings were sometimes characterized by strife that went far beyond the necessary and often helpful clash of ideas; at times there were ruthless attacks on those with whom we disagreed. We labeled others as imperialists, racists, sexists, homophobes, egotists, narcissists, power-hungry, screwed up, neurotic, psychotic, or having the basest of motives when in fact they simply disagreed with our perspective or maybe had not even heard it presented in a plausible manner. Not surprisingly, then, we attacked those who were not yet part of our movement with disparaging rhetoric. We sometimes even split families and marriages apart on the basis of our political disagreements without adequately weighing in factors like love and caring and generosity of spirit. We tolerated violent discourse and we often were so filled with rage at the immense injustices and the violence in the world—in itself a natural reaction—that we gave too little attention to developing our own capacities to be peaceful and loving human beings. In short, we had missed the first and most important injunction of the spiritual world: to build peace in others, we must be at peace in ourselves. In our idealism, we overlooked our underdeveloped capacity for compassion. This showed itself in the demand that peace and justice activists made of each other to be the fullest embodiment of our own highest ideals. Over and over again, peace activists who suddenly discover the depths of perversion built into the global capitalist order (with its structural violence that leads to the death through diseases related to malnutrition or inadequate health care of millions of children around the world every year, the sale into sexual slavery or prostitution of millions of children and teenagers seeking a way to feed themselves or their families, and the living in conditions of extreme poverty of at least one-third of the people of the planet, and the death in senseless wars generated by this global system of millions in each of the past several decades) become so outraged at the world they have come to understand that they want to overthrow it immediately. Frustrated in their attempts to do that, they at times turn on themselves and each other, seeing a failure to overcome the very materialism, self-interest, hurtful or aggressive forms of communication and action that they rightly perceive to be making possible the triumph of war on a global scale. This response, of course, tends to create an atmosphere of mutual accusation and self-blaming that makes the peace movement an unpleasant place to be. So here is what is dangerous about the demand to be the peace in ourselves that we seek in the world or to be the values that we publicly proclaim: if we approach this very correct goal in a way that lacks compassion and a spirit of generosity. As a goal, embodying our highest ideals is absolutely essential. As a demand for immediate change, I’ve witnessed these

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goals turned into sledge hammers by which people manage to beat up themselves or each other, creating an atmosphere that makes many people feel defensive and scared. Part of the problem here is that the global culture of capitalism fosters an ethos of immediate gratification: we want what we want when we want it, and the advertising of commodities tends to inculcate in us the feeling that we can have everything and have it now. So if we know that we want ourselves and others to be different, then that should be immediately accomplished, too. Unfortunately, human beings don’t work that way. Changing ourselves is an ongoing process that may often require the assistance of psychotherapy, support groups, spiritual communities, meditation, and a variety of growth practices that sometimes take years to sink in deeply. What I came to understand in my years as a peace movement activist, social change theorist, psychotherapist, and rabbi is this: if we want to build a new society, we are going to have to start with people who are somewhat less than perfect, maybe quite deficient, and don’t fully embody the values they articulate. And the reason for this is simple: there’s nothing else on the planet besides people of that caliber, like you and me. So, if we want to build a peace movement that is actually going to work we need to develop in ourselves and each other a massive amount of compassion for the ways that we are not totally together, and that compassion has to manifest in our organizing, our movement meetings, our demonstrations, and the messages that we put out to the world. This is no easy task, given that the capitalist order fosters exactly the opposite. Getting to compassion requires challenging that tendency toward self-blaming or other-blaming. Ultimately, it requires seeing everyone from the standpoint of the totality of the human experience through history; the way we and others have been formed by the social and economic and cultural assumptions of the era in which we were born; the way that our parents and teachers fostered in us a conception of ourselves and our possibilities that has shaped many of our choices and limited our horizons in various ways; and how chance circumstances may have led some of us to new conceptions and new possibilities for growth while leading others to circumstances in which the same options were not given to them. Or as Phil Ochs beautifully put it, ‘‘There but for fortune go you and I.’’ Really getting this and really being able to apply it to everyone, including those who continue to act in hurtful ways, is essential. Compassion does not mean that we stop our struggle for peace and justice in the name of compassion for those who have chosen militarism and siding with the system that generates global inequalities from which they benefit. Militant but nonviolent demonstrations are not incompatible with compassion. Recognizing the humanity of, say George Bush, Dick Cheney, or Henry

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Kissinger, and the way that their lives set the stage for their militarist path does not interfere with me believing that it would be best for the world (and in a way even for them) if they were put in prison for the rest of their lives; nor does it keep me from wishing to close down the weapons’ makers and the corporations that are destroying the environment of planet Earth. But it does mean talking about the people involved with a deep understanding and sadness for the ways that their life situations pushed them in hurtful ways. Similarly, recognizing the ways that we ourselves or others in the movement have been limited by our own conditioning should not be an excuse to avoid the process of self-examination and supporting each other to grow toward our highest selves. But there is a way of doing this that manifests love and caring and compassion, rather than hurtful judgment or public shaming. So developing an ethos of compassion could be a powerful tool for growing a humane and hence more successful peace movement. Every public demonstration, every public meeting, every conference developed by the peace movement should have a dimension in which the value of compassion is not only articulated, but taught. Nonviolent communication, the ethos of nonviolence, the value of love toward others must become as prominent in our self-presentation and in the actuality of the movement as our analyses of the latest ways in which we expose the perfidies of those who claimed to be for peace and then, after getting power, defaulted toward war, militarism, and power over others. And this leads to another way in which we need to reconfigure our social change movements, particularly the peace movement. Our peace movement talks a good game when it comes to describing the suffering of people in other parts of the world. I believe that for the most part the caring being expressed is genuine. But the feel of the movement internally is not one of much caring. I got this most fully after reflecting on my own experience praying at orthodox synagogues, and visiting many evangelical churches that supported right wing politics. Whenever I’d go to more progressive synagogues or churches, I’d hear very enlightened sermons, often articulating peace and social justice messages that resonated with my heart. But after the services, I rarely felt personally engaged by others, and when I was, it was about ideas. Nobody actually seemed to want to know about me and my life and the problems and challenges I was facing. On the other hand, when I went to the orthodox synagogues or to the evangelical churches, I hated much of what was said in the sermons, but afterward I found the people warm and caring about me, asking me if I had a place to go for lunch, if there was anyone in my family or friendship circles who was sick and needed a visit in the hospital, was I single and did I want to meet someone to whom they might be able to introduce me, was I employed, etc. It was a kind of caring I never experienced in the anti-war movement. In fact, had I expressed any of these kinds

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of personal needs, I might have found myself being denounced for ‘‘using’’ the movement for ‘‘merely’’ personal needs. A successful peace movement has to give much more attention to these dimensions of human need. We have to show that we not only care about people a few continents away, but also genuinely care about the people who come to our meetings or to our demonstrations. There are ways to do this even with our limited resources, but we first have to have an unambiguous and unambivalent commitment to being a movement that manifests love and caring, and not just good ideas. And then there’s another problem with our movement that I heard over and over again from the middle class and working people I met in my years at the Institute for Labor and Mental Health: the elitism that they perceived as a central reality in the peace movement. I’ve described many of the aspects of this in my book The Left Hand of God, and I only have space here to mention one of those—the condescending and sometimes even overtly hostile attitudes shown by people in the movement toward religious or spiritual practice. Yes, these people had seen the ways that the peace movement invited priests, ministers, rabbis (and more recently imams) to give greetings at peace gatherings. But the culture of the peace movement, they explained to me, is filled with an elitist consciousness toward religious or spiritual people. The Left, they told me (and their primary experience of the Left was through the peace movement), communicates the following message: Yes, we need you religious or spiritual people to come to our demonstrations or to vote for peace-oriented candidates. But essentially we believe that you are on a lower level of intellectual or psychological development than those of us who have overcome those kind of irrational ideas and we hope that through hanging out with us more developed types you will eventually be able to transcend your dependency on these irrational beliefs and come to the same high consciousness that we hold.

This is a message that manifests in a thousand different ways. It leads people in the peace movement to explain why they lose elections or why more people haven’t joined them yet by reference to the stupidity of the American public or to their fundamental irrationality. And it leads many people who might otherwise want to align themselves with us to feel put-down, disrespected, and hence unwilling to be part of whatever we have to offer. This impression of elitism has developed over several decades and it will take quite a lot to undo. It doesn’t happen simply by having presidential candidates profess their religious commitments, particularly if, once in office, they don’t act on the highest loving commands of the religious traditions of which they are part. It requires a whole new attitude among the

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masses of people who are part of the movement. The religio-phobia that permeates much of the peace movement and other social change movements must be treated the way we’ve treated sexism, racism, homophobia, antiSemitism, and Islamo-phobia, namely as an attitude and practice that is destructive to our movement and has no legitimate place within it. Of course, I don’t mean that everyone should become religious. I mean that a full-blooded tolerance of differences between those who are religious and those who are not must permeate our movement so that people no longer feel one-down for being religious, and those who adopt a spiritual practice don’t feel that they’d better ‘‘keep it to themselves.’’ And whereas we don’t want to impose religion, a peace movement would be wise to actively encourage people to develop some kind of spiritual practice in which they took time each day to develop their capacities to be loving and generous, kind and nurturing to others, ethically and ecologically sensitive, and to respond to the universe with awe, wonder and radical amazement at the grandeur of all that is. I call this a New Bottom Line—and I believe that to the extent that our peace movement becomes a champion for this New Bottom Line that we can become a much more powerful force in challenging the militarism and the military-industrial-educational-media complex in all its various forms. It would strengthen our movement if some time were given at meetings, for example, to meditation or to guided visualizations about the people who are in need of peace on our planet, or even to a focus on our own resistances to being more fully engaged in the peace struggles, or simply in learning techniques of relaxation, stress reduction, and ways to manifest more loving in our lives. Far from distracting attention from what was supposedly more important, giving 15 minutes to this kind of activity would have a pronounced positive impact in attracting people and sustaining their commitments. I know that there is much more to be explored here than can happen in this chapter. That’s why I helped create Tikkun Magazine as a location for this kind of exploration, and also created the interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives that I co-chair with Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister. Our organization and our magazine are meant to provide a way for people who recognize that this spiritual dimension of human need must become an element in the work of the movements for social change, particularly those focused on peace, environmental sanity, and social justice. It is through that spiritual focus that I eventually came to understand that one of the great problems facing the peace movement in the 21st century is that it is still perceived by people as a movement that is fundamentally negative—it has a clear idea of what it is against but not so much what it is for. It was through my own spiritual reading of history that I eventually

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came to recognize that the current peace movement is part of a larger struggle that has been going on for several thousand years, a struggle between two conflicting paradigms about the nature of human reality. The first paradigm suggests that we are thrown into this universe by ourselves and find ourselves surrounded by hostile others who are seeking their own advantage and will dominate and control us to advance their own self-interest unless we dominate and control them first. We can sometimes make alliances within families, communities, or nations, as long as we understand that we can’t really trust other people not to hurt us if that turns out to be in their interests, and the only way we can achieve security is through domination over others who want what we have. I call this paranoid perspective the worldview of fear, domination, and control. The other contending paradigm argues that we really don’t enter the world by being thrown into it, but rather through a mother who provided us with love and good-enough nurturing to make it possible for us to survive when we could not have done that on our own. From that early experience of love emerges a different view of human beings—that they are capable of genuine caring and love, and that we can provide ourselves and each other with security by building mutually caring relationships on the family, local, national, and global levels. I call this the worldview of hope, generosity, and love. It is my contention that a successful peace movement will be one that makes explicit and embraces this second worldview and explicitly articulates the values of hope, generosity, and love as the foundations for building a world in which peace becomes possible. Such a movement would explicitly challenge the worldview that currently dominates in the Republican and much of the Democratic political parties—that security requires domination. For the Republican and centrist Democrats that domination must be primarily military. For the more moderate and some of the liberal Democrats that domination is meant to take the form of economic and cultural penetration of the world, and diplomatic means, to achieve the domination as well. But the goal is the same: that we get our way in the world and that others let our needs take precedence over theirs. In contrast, the peace movement needs to articulate a Strategy of Generosity. We must help popularize the notion that our own well-being depends on the well-being of everyone else on earth and the well-being of the planet itself. Our security will best be achieved, we should be arguing, when people around the world can recognize that we really care about them and not just about ourselves. It was for this reason that we at the Network of Spiritual Progressives developed a campaign for a Global Marshall Plan. The idea is to have the United States and the other G-20 countries dedicate between 2 to 5 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) each year for the next 20 years to

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once and for all eliminate global poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education and inadequate health care, and to repair the global environment. Such a program, if implemented in a sophisticated and caring way1 could do more to defeat ‘‘the terrorists’’ than any war on terrorism will ever accomplish, by drying up the cesspools of hatred that our global system has helped generate. This is one example of what I mean by a Strategy of Generosity. But here, too, we must balance the inner and the outer. No such strategy can ever work if it is perceived as just another strategy of self-interest on our part. Our caring for others cannot be merely instrumental or it will be a failure—to actually serve our interests, it cannot be pursued solely or even primarily for self-interest reasons. People are too smart for that—they know when they are being condescended to, and they know when they are being manipulated. It will take a huge change in consciousness in our country to achieve what needs to be achieved—namely, that the Strategy of Generosity is implemented because of a genuine spirit of caring, love, and generosity. That change of consciousness cannot happen without it first being exemplified in our own movement. And that is just one of the many reasons why a focus on inward change must be given serious respect, attention, time, and energy in building the peace movement if we want it to succeed. That’s a big ‘‘if ’’ at the end of my last sentence. I’ve been aware for several decades that one of the disadvantages of being part of the peace movement is that it often attracts people who unconsciously believe that they don’t deserve to win, and hence are comfortable building a movement that will attract others who prefer to be part of a group that can righteously critique what is wrong in the world without any hope that they can change it. In fact, their unconscious certainty that they will not ever win leads them to build a movement and public presentations of themselves that guarantee that their unconscious defeatism is confirmed. I know that there is a huge disproportion of power in favor of the elites of this society who favor militarism—I call this real powerlessness. But there is also among many in the peace movement what I call ‘‘surplus powerlessness’’—a tendency to hold ideas about ourselves, others, and the world that make us believe we are even more powerless than we actually are. To uproot this powerlessness will require a great deal of inner change; and this is just one more reason why peace movement participants need to attend to the inner life if they want to change the economic and political structures of our global society.

NOTE 1. Please read about it at www.spiritualprogressives.org.

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B R E A K I N G O U T O F T H E C U LT U R E O F V I O L E N C E : A N O R A L H I S T O RY WITH FORMER ECONOMIC HIT MAN JOHN PERKINS Nikolas Larrow-Roberts and John Perkins

NLR: For the record, this is Nikolas Larrow-Roberts [NLR] interviewing Mr. John Perkins [JP]. We are being recorded at California University of Pennsylvania in California, Pennsylvania on February 24, 2009. Mr. John Perkins has lived many lives. He is well known for his bestselling expos
e, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man [2004]. In it, he details his past covert role as an Economic Hit Man (EHM), while officially working as a Chief Economist in private industry [specifically, at the engineering firm Charles T. Main, where he was employed from 1971 to 1981]. Recruited by the National Security Agency [NSA], Perkins covertly advanced the economic policies of the ‘‘U.S. Corporatocracy,’’ which he described in his book as ‘‘a coalition of government, banks, and corporations’’ that are committed— by any means necessary—to ensuring that U.S. hegemony prevails.’’ Opposed to the Vietnam War, he joined the Peace Corps after college, partly to avoid the draft and partly due to his fascination with Latin America. He had previously been profiled by the NSA, finding out that he had the perfect skill set of an EHM. With a cover as a highly paid economist in private industry, Perkins carried out far more clandestine duties,

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becoming part of a business class who had built the largest empire in world history. Paradoxically, the devastating economic policies that Perkins brought to countries around the globe were marketed under a humanitarian rubric, such as alleviating poverty. As his conscience grew, so did the inducements—including massive bribes. Eventually, despite financial success, Perkins’s disillusionment and shifting values reached a tipping point, causing him to abandon everything he had known. He has gone on to make major changes, becoming an advocate for the oppressed and issues regarding peace, justice, and sustainability. NLR: Let’s start off with some life history. What can you tell me about your upbringing? JP: I grew up in rural New Hampshire, the son of a teacher in a boy’s private boarding school. We never had very much money and lived in a house that was owned by the school. They took very good care of us. From the time I was about four years old, we always ate in the dining room with 200-and-some-odd boys. And yet, I was surrounded by boys who came from very wealthy families from all over the world. Quite a few were from Latin America, as well as from the United States, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and various places. And so, I grew up with this tremendous desire to travel. I ended up going to that all-boys school, so I had very little contact with women. During Christmas vacation, spring vacation—times like that—I would be stuck in rural New Hampshire shooting baskets by myself in the school gym. All these others kids would go off and would come back with all these very wild stories about parties, orgies—things they had done in New York, Buenos Aries, Paris, and all over the world. I felt so left out of it. That just really spurred my interest and determination to do some of the things that they had done. It had a major impact on me. NLR: What is the political and religious background of your family? JP: Politically, my family was Republican, and extremely conservative. Since then, I’ve often wondered how my dad constantly voted for candidates who threatened to take his pension away—a great benefit of his job. I was raised as a congregational Calvinist. We were sort of the original puritans. NLR: It’s interesting that you use the word ‘‘confessions’’ for the title of your book. It sounds like penance, as if you’re seeking some sort of salvation. JP: Well, that may sound that way, but I didn’t look at it like that. I do not seek salvation; I don’t think there is any salvation for what I did, or redemption if you want to call it that. I have to live with what I did and I’m not proud of it. NLR:

Do you believe in redemption?

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JP: I don’t believe in the idea of redemption, but I do believe that we can learn from our past experiences and use those to go forward in doing much better things. That’s my determination now; I’m committed to spending the rest of my life to create a sustainable, just, and peaceful world. NLR: Considering your childhood, your current direction is quite a shift. It’s even more dramatic in consideration of your professional role as an EHM, in which you essentially worked under the radar for the U.S. Corporatocracy. I’m sure readers will be curious as to what you are not proud of. How would you, then, describe how imperial power and social control is maintained, and what the role of the EHM is in that? JP: The way we did it—well, there are many different ways—but typically, we identified a country that we wanted to have control over, usually a country with resources our corporations coveted, like oil. Then we would arrange a huge loan to that country through the World Bank or one of its sisters. But the money doesn’t go to the country; it goes to our own companies to build infrastructure projects in that country. These projects could include power plants, industrial parks, or highways—things that will benefit a few very wealthy families, but don’t help the poor people who can’t afford electricity, and don’t have the skills to get jobs in industrial parks, and don’t own cars to drive on the highway. And they’re left holding a huge debt to the United States—the whole country is and they can’t repay it. Then we go back to the country and say, ‘‘Listen, you’re in debt to us, so vote with us on the next critical United Nations vote,’’ ‘‘Sell your oil to us very cheaply,’’ ‘‘Let us destroy the rain forests to take out your oil, then pass laws to make it easy for our oil companies to be profitable,’’ or, ‘‘Send troops in support of ours to someplace in the world like Iraq today.’’ That’s how we maintain control. In the few cases where heads of state wouldn’t accept these deals—like Omar Torrijos in Panama and Jaime Rold
os in Ecuador—those leaders are very often taken out by ‘‘jackals,’’ either through coups or assassinations. [Perkins defines ‘‘jackals’’ as Central Intelligence Agency [CIA]-sponsored mercenaries.] In the few cases where the jackals fail, such as in Iraq, where neither the EHM nor the jackals could succeed with Saddam, we send in the military. There’s this whole process that goes on. The first part of it, which is usually successful—the EHM side of it—is very subtle, and it gets less subtle as you go on. The jackals are less subtle than the EHM and certainly the military is the least subtle of all. NLR: You’ve mentioned that your determination now is to create a peaceful world. Did this personal transformation happen in one moment— a sort of epiphany—or was it a piecemeal transition over a period of time?

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JP: It’s fair to say both. When I first got into being an EHM, I just came out of three years of service in the Peace Corps in South America, in the Amazon and the Andes with indigenous people. And before that I had been to business school and I studied macroeconomics. I thought that the things that we were going to do as EHM—for example, building big infrastructure projects—were good for the economies of these countries; macroeconomics teaches you that they are. If you invest hundreds of millions of dollars—or billions of dollars these days—into big infrastructure projects, it usually results in economic growth, and econometrics shows this. And I thought that would be the case. NLR: What was the case? JP: Well, Claudine, my mentor and teacher, warned me that I would be in a ‘‘dirty business,’’ but a side of me didn’t quite believe that. I also figured that I would be different. In fact, the projects that I promoted did increase economic growth. What I didn’t realize, and what was never taught in school, is that you can have tremendous economic growth in places like Indonesia—or today China—and yet you’re not helping the poor; in fact, they are getting poorer. So the economic ‘‘growth’’ often, in many of these countries, benefits only a relatively few, very wealthy families, and it creates a larger gap between rich and poor and makes more people more poor. I didn’t get that for a while. So, at the beginning at least, I thought that we were going to be doing good things, despite what Claudine had told me. I was young, but as time went on, I began to see the fallacy of this and the lies. NLR: Can you give an example? JP: The World Bank has a motto of alleviating poverty, and what I saw more and more is that that wasn’t the reality at all. The World Bank was helping the rich become richer. Over time, I saw this more and more and became disillusioned. Toward the very end of my [EHM] career, I really came to understand that we were about to exert tremendous pressure on presidents who didn’t go along, who I was not able to ‘‘bring around,’’ like Rold
os and Torrijos. In fact, ultimately, we assassinated them. And when I say ‘‘we’’ I don’t mean ‘‘me’’; I was not the person involved in that, I had no prior knowledge that it would happen. But I realized that if these presidents didn’t give in to me that they are going to have to face the jackals. After 10 years, I really began to ‘‘see the light.’’ And then, I did have one very tremendous moment of epiphany; it came after all the rest of the soul searching that had gone on for 10 years. NLR: Would you tell that story? JP: I was in the Virgin Islands, sailing on vacation, and I anchored my little sailboat off Saint John Island and climbed up to the top of this hill

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where there were the ruins of an old sugar cane plantation. As I sat there in this very idyllic setting, watching the sun set over the Caribbean, I suddenly realized that the plantation had been built on the bones of thousands of slaves, and then it struck me that the whole hemisphere was built on the bones of millions of slaves. Then I had to admit to myself that I was an enslaver, that what EHM were doing was a distinct form of modern slavery. At that moment, I decided never to do it again. I went back to my bosses and quit. NLR: Did your family approve of you working for Main? JP: Yes, very much; they thought that was great. They didn’t see the dark side of it until many years later. NLR: What about when you quit. What did you tell them? JP: Well, I was not very close to my mother and my father up to that point. I had some pretty strong disagreements with them. When I quit, I just quit; I told them about it afterward. They didn’t have much say in it. Later in life we got back together and became very close, but at that point in my life, I think that they were very shocked. They didn’t have any influence over me at all in that part of my life. NLR: Why do you think that you didn’t remain desensitized to sociopolitical issues like other EHM did? JP: Mainly because of my time in Ecuador while serving in the Peace Corps, where I saw the other side. NLR: I’ve read that, while in the Peace Corps, you recognized the devastation being caused by oil companies. Is it fair to say that you did not yet have an understanding of imperialism and how it subjects everyone, in some way, to its rule? JP: I think that’s fair to say. There’s a natural inclination in many of us not to believe that our country and our corporations would do the horrendous things that they’re doing. I run into this all the time today. As an EHM, I had a very good life, traveling first-class around the world and staying in great hotels. There’s a side to me that really enjoyed that and was in denial. Looking back, I see that there was an inkling that things were wrong. I had been opposed to the war in Vietnam, so I wasn’t totally na€ve. People continually come up to me when I’m speaking and signing books and say, ‘‘before I read your book, I knew we were doing these things, but I really didn’t want to admit it—even to myself—and if I ever talked about it to other people, they told me that I was crazy. And now that I’ve read your book, I know that it’s true and I want to get out there and do something about it.’’ I think that I was in that same frame. NLR: Did your family see your enlistment in the Peace Corps as an odd choice? After all, here’s a Kennedy program . . .

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JP: I was determined not to go to Vietnam. My dad was very upset about that. He served in the Navy during World War II, and like so many people, he saw Vietnam as an extension of World War II. I didn’t see it that way at all—it was a totally different experience. So my dad was very upset with me for not joining the military. However, he was a Spanish teacher who had a great fascination with Latin America; once he accepted the decision that I wasn’t joining the military, he was quite happy that I got a Peace Corps tour in Latin America. NLR: I’m sure readers will be interested in how your career has transitioned. Can you take us from business school to getting profiled by the NSA, and then later working for Main as an EHM? JP: During my last year in business school, I was looking for ways to avoid the draft, and I was married to a woman whose father was very high up in the Navy. One of his best friends was very high up in the NSA . . . NLR: ‘‘Uncle Frank?’’ JP: Yes. And at that time, NSA employment was draft deferrable—not automatic but likely, at the discretion of your draft board. ‘‘Uncle Frank’’ arranged for me to interview with the NSA. It was an extensive series of interviews, including lie detector tests. They offered me a job as a trainee. At about that same time, I went and heard a Peace Corps recruiter speak. I joined them. NLR: Why the Peace Corps? JP: I had always been fascinated with the Amazon and with indigenous people. I had grown up reading a great deal about the Abnakis [who are First Nations, Native North Americans] and the indigenous people of where I had came from, in New England. I knew I had some—although very distant—indigenous blood in me. I also knew that my forefathers had killed Indians and made love with Indians. And I was aware that there was one place in the world where people still lived like that—the Amazon. I talked to the recruiter and he made me think that I had a good chance of going there. ‘‘Uncle Frank’’ encouraged me to do it. I realize now that that was a very good training ground for what I would later do in life. While I was in the Peace Corps, a senior vice president from Charles T. Main came down and spent time with me and ultimately offered me a job. NLR: Were you ever made aware of what type of personality or character traits made you a good fit for the NSA? JP: Well, at the time, I thought I failed. I had been involved in this knife fight at Middlebury College where this Iranian fellow had protected me from this farmer who was trying to beat me up in this bar. The Iranian fellow had pulled a knife on the farmer, and as a result I ended up lying to the police—not telling them what I knew about the Iranian and his knife.

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Under a lie detector test at the NSA, I realized that I was probably not going to get away with lying, so I admitted that I was opposed to the war in Vietnam and figured that that would be held against me. Yet, what I later understood was that the opposite was true; they were sort of indifferent whether I was for or against the Vietnam War, but they saw the fact that I was willing to lie to a police officer to protect an associate as very positive. I had no idea, but the Iranian fellow’s father was very high up in the Shah’s military—he was a General in the Iranian Air Force and a corroborator with our intelligence agencies—namely the NSA and the CIA. They saw the fact that I had befriended him and lied to protect him as something that might come in handy. In fact, it did. Ten years later, he sort of pulled me out of Iran just at the time that it was going to explode. NLR: Organizationally, I’m curious how EHM would collaborate, if at all, with other government agencies, such as the State Department. Would plausible deniability keep you at a distance? Would the legal and subtle nature of your work bring you together? JP: When I did encounter U.S. government officials, it was more like the Treasury Department, for instance, on the Saudi Arabia deal. Overseas, it was more likely to be USAID [United States Agency for International Development] people rather than State Department people. When I did come in contact with these people, they were usually pretty highlevel, and they were not doing the jobs that I was doing. They were often overseeing policy. For example, the Treasury Department person who came and really got us involved with the Saudi Arabia deal was overseeing this very large amount of money to be paid to consultants like me to basically make the job happen. They weren’t actually going to do it. That was typically my experience. The people that were doing that, in every case that I personally know of, were people like me who worked for private corporations; they were not government officials doing it. NLR: And, the reason for that? JP: That put a barrier between being able to accuse the government of corrupting officials in other countries. So it was a safety net in a way, and a pretty clever one. NLR: I’d like to ask about your approach in dealing with presidents and foreign leaders as an EHM at Main. To recapitulate, you were convinced, at first, that what you doing as an EHM was good for some time. But gradually, you were led into accepting the latent inklings that you had. Did you ever try to convince them that the economic policies were truly good for them, or were you more honest in your approach regarding the consequences? JP: It was a combination, and it would depend on the leaders too. A guy like Omar Torrijos was very savvy, and there wasn’t any point in playing games with him. He knew what was going on and he’d call you on it. On

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the other hand, I met with a lot of government people in Indonesia and in Columbia, where you could sit down and say, ‘‘This is really going to be good for your country.’’ And they would say, ‘‘Oh, of course it is. We’re all doing the right thing here.’’ I used different approaches for different people. If the person across the table from you is going to go along with it, that made my job easier. With Torrijos, it was pretty tough, and he never did come around, and he was very clear on that from the beginning. NLR: Can you tell me a story of a time when one of the officials who knew what you were up to either accepted or turned you down? JP: Well, sure. Torrijos was the prime example. I remember one time when we were on a big sailing yacht, maybe 100 feet long. It was lent to him by a very wealthy person and it was docked on Contadora Island off the coast of Panama—an island where we would take diplomats and corporate executives. Basically anything goes on Contadora and it never leaves Contadora. So, it was whatever you wanted: drugs, booze, women, whatever. Well, I remember being there on this yacht with Omar in a cockpit full of some of his advisors, and there were gorgeous young women in bikinis or less, and lots of rum and cigars being passed around. Well, I’m there specifically to keep working on Omar to ‘‘bring him around.’’ And at the same time, he’s kind of laughing at me and saying, ‘‘Oh, I’m not coming around, I don’t need anything else. Look, I’ve got this, you know? I’ve got a great life, I’ve got a good house, I’ve got a good wife, and I’ve also got this’’ . . . and he waves his hands around at this cockpit filled with these beautiful women and rum and cigars and he says, ‘‘The only thing I don’t have is what I need for my people,’’ and he said ‘‘those people over there,’’ and he pointed beyond Contadora Island toward Panama, and he says, ‘‘They need to be treated justly. You gringos have taken our country away from us, you built this canal and I want my people to get this canal back, and I want your country to pay for the damages you’ve done here. I want to set an example for all the other people in Latin America and around the world that have been exploited by you— that’s what I want. I don’t need your money, and why don’t you come work for me?’’ Because—and again he points around this cockpit, and says—‘‘You’ll have a lot more fun and you won’t make nearly as much money, but who needs the money? You get what money buys and you’ll feel that you’re doing something good for the poor people of the world.’’ NLR: Did you think about it? JP: No, no, I really didn’t. I mean that was not an option at that point in my life. Well, I suppose that I sat on this boat and I looked around and I’m thinking about it, but up in the hotel in Contadora there was a young woman who worked for me who was waiting for me there and she was pretty good, too, so I had it good anyway.

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NLR: Did you ever reveal any of this to your wife? I mean, I know that your wife got you into some of these arrangements as you said earlier, through ‘‘Uncle Frank.’’ JP: No. No. I had to be very careful about that. She couldn’t know about Claudine. She couldn’t know about any of this. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about it and I didn’t tell anyone about it. NLR: On a professional level, what would happen to you when you could not get Torrojos, for example, to accept these economic arrangements? Would you describe that as failing in your mission? JP: First, my job was to bring him around, and so I was failing at my job; and, secondly, I was afraid that if I didn’t bring him around, something worse might happen to him. I knew what happened to [President Salvador] Allende in Chile. I knew what had happened to [President Jacobo]
Arbenz [Guzm
an] in Guatemala and [Prime Minister] Lumumba in the Congo. Torrijos often reminded me of these things. NLR: Did you learn about the consequences of failure from someone? Was it as if Claudine would say, ‘‘You know, John, you are aware of what happens if you fail’’ or something like that? JP: At the end, I became very aware. I was actually privy to discussions around a plot to assassinate a leader of an African country. This is part of a book I’m writing now so I can’t go into much detail. In the last year or so, I became very aware that Torrijos and Rold
os were really at danger. They were not assassinated until I had left, but I became aware that these sorts of things were very likely to happen, and that’s when I knew that I had to get the hell out. NLR: Was the decision to quit being an EHM strictly due to your moral opposition to it, or was there also a professional dimension at play? As you said, you were ‘‘failing at your job’’ in certain respects. JP: No. I had a staff of several dozen people working for me. They were highly skilled, much more skilled than me—PhDs and MBAs. I was their boss, and our department was doing very well. I was on a course to becoming very rich in the company as everything indicated. As it turned out, the company went bankrupt because of some lousy decisions that were made by Main’s president, but that didn’t happen till a couple years after I got out. When I left, I had every reason to believe that if I stayed in there, I would do extremely well financially. So, I was failing with Torrijos in Panama, but my department was doing very well all over the world and we had struck this incredible deal in Saudi Arabia. We had projects all over the place. NLR: You’ve written about how government essentially serves the interests of business. In terms of social control, what we see today is undeniably a top-down structure. Now, regarding intentional and peaceful

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social change, do you see peace happening the same way, from the top down? Can you comment about that, namely the top-down versus bottom-up trajectory to positive change? JP: It has got to come from us, the people, it always has. Slavery didn’t end because Abraham Lincoln got in the White House; Lincoln was put in the White House because enough people wanted to end slavery. The Vietnam War didn’t end because Nixon was an anti-war person; Nixon ended the war because of pressure put on him—and corporations—to end the war. Apartheid ended because of pressure put on corporations supporting apartheid, and so on and so forth. We force corporations to clean up terribly polluted rivers in this country and to get rid of trans-fats in foods. It’s always ‘‘we the people’’ the government follows to make the laws that supervise and regulate it. NLR: How does that translate into an actionable plan today in bringing about peace? JP: We have to take the stand. We truly have the first global empire in the history of the world. It’s an empire that for the first time hasn’t been created by the military for the most part. Unlike every other empire before it, this one has been created through EHM and corporations. That means that it doesn’t get changed by military action; it gets changed by the way we vote in the marketplace. That’s because every one of these corporations is dependent on you and me and everybody else buying their goods and services. If a critical mass of us let Nike know we’re not buying their products because they’re made in sweatshops, and we let Patagonia know we’re buying their products because they’re not, then the sweatshops will go away or get transformed into legitimate factories where people get fair wages. So the marketplace is really very democratic if we choose to make it democratic, and for the most part we haven’t done that up till now, although we have done it in certain instances. If we want to create a world our children will be proud to inherit, if we want to create a truly sustainable, just, and peaceful world, then we’ve got to pressure the corporations to have that as part of their goal. Right now, their goal is to maximize profits regardless of the social and environmental costs; that is their goal across the board. That’s something that Milton Friedman and the Chicago School advocated. NLR:

Can they serve two goals, two gods?

JP: Yeah, we just need to turn that goal around and say, ‘‘Listen, it’s fine to make profits, but only within the context of creating a sustainable, just, and peaceful world.’’ We don’t expect perfection, but I’m only going to buy from companies that are headed in that direction. And when we do that, we have tremendous power; we just need to recognize that. Right

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now we’re seeing how incredibly vulnerable these corporations are. This economic crisis that we’re going through now has pointed it out like it’s never been pointed out before; it pointed out how the regulatory process is important. I’m sure there is an economist out there who would disagree with me, but it’s pretty hard to defend Friedman these days and that whole idea that the sole social responsibility of a corporation is to increase its profits. NLR: And why is that? JP: Because we’ve seen a lot of corporations increase their profits tremendously, but they did so in a way that was incredibly disastrous in the long run. NLR: And what are your thoughts regarding the ethics of capitalism from the other side of the corporate coin—government? JP: Starvation, deprivation, and desperation force people sometimes to follow fanatics like Bin Laden. The lack of regulations and the adulation of materialism and overblown salaries cause others to go the route of Bernard Madoff and the many Wall Street executives we read about these days. NLR: I’d like to ask you about some of the work that you are doing today. JP: Well yes, very soon after I stopped being an EHM, I formed a company—Independent Power Systems—to develop environmentally good energy projects and we were pretty successful at doing that. This was back in the 1980s. Later on in the 1990s, I founded and co-founded several nonprofit organizations that are dedicated to a sustainable, just, and peaceful world—Dream Change Alliances, for example. And I’m still serving some with some of these nonprofits and getting involved in those activities. But more than anything else, I’m devoting myself to writing and speaking, especially at high schools, colleges, and universities. I’m trying to help young people get a better grasp of what’s really going on in the world, how important it is to change it, and how much power we all have in changing it. This Friday night, I’m speaking at Boston University; I’m the keynote opening speaker for the model UN program for 1,300 high school students. This is my life now. It’s really working as much as possible with young people to inspire and empower them. The only way my grandson—who is 16 months old—is going to inherit a sustainable, just, and peaceful world, is if every child on the planet inherits the same world. We’ve recently become a very small planet. This just happened in the last couple of decades that we’ve become so tiny. It used to be that nations were very important; today they are not as important. Every one of us on this whole planet faces the same crises: global warming, diminishing resources, species extinction, increasing prices of fuel and foods,

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the violence that comes out of depravation and starvation, and now this economic crisis. It used to be that Florida had hurricanes, Indonesia had tsunamis, and California had earthquakes, but today we are all facing the same crises and we all are communicating with each other through the Internet and telephones. Everybody knows this, and so we’re in a situation that human beings have never ever been in before. NLR: What does this mean for tomorrow’s leaders and visionaries? JP: Well, it’s very exciting. Today’s young people have an opportunity like we’ve never had before, to really create a whole new paradigm and a new philosophy to really look at this world as being a place that we must make peaceful. We essentially have no alternative besides more and more collapse. NLR: You’ve noted how you were bothered by a guilty conscience as an EHM, after the epiphany at St. John Island. Psychologically, that realization must bear significant weight. JP: At Wharton recently, during the Q&A period of one of my talks, a man raised his hand. I called on him and he said, ‘‘I’m an economics professor here and I told my students that we’re going to hear from an EHM tomorrow. One of my students asked yesterday in class: ‘This guy [John Perkins] lived a great life, traveled around the world, living first class, had a wonderful time, and now he’s writing books and talking about all the bad things he did. . . . Well, can you tell me why we shouldn’t all go out and have a great life and then do that?’’’ The professor replied, ‘‘I couldn’t answer him, so I’m asking you, what do you say?’’ I said, ‘‘Well, I didn’t have a great life; it may look good on paper, but once I understood what I was doing, my conscience was really bothering me. I couldn’t sleep at night, I was popping Valium like there was no tomorrow and drinking a lot of alcohol. So, I did not have a great life. I have a great life now, now that I’m out trying to really create a better world.’’ So I look at this audience of MBA students and say, ‘‘So don’t make the same mistake I did when you graduate. Dig right in and do the right thing to begin with, and then you’ll have a great life.’’ NLR: What a message for an audience of MBAs! What are they going to do now with their lives? JP: Well, it’s interesting. I spoke at Wharton again three years later. And I’ve seen a huge change. Each time I was there, my agent set up a dinner with 20 or 30 students beforehand. And I said to them, ‘‘I want to hear from you—each of you.’’ Well, three years ago, they were all still talking about power and money. Now, almost every one of them talks about social and environmental responsibility. NLR: It sounds like you found an end to the suffering in living the life that you do now.

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JP: I have to live with what I did; however, I feel that having those experiences gives me an advantage toward my personal commitment today. NLR: Well, John Perkins, even though you’re not looking for it, thanks to free will, I think you’ve done enough to earn your redemption, even as a Calvinist. JP: Well, I’m glad to hear it. Thank you and good luck. NLR: You know, if it’s possible for an EHM to come to peace and justice, then I’m not sure who that leaves exempt. I thank you very much for your participation with this anthology. JP: You’re welcome. Follow your heart and realize your dreams.

CHAPTER

28

I N S P I R I N G P E AC E WO R K E R S Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler

The successful nonviolent overthrow of President Ferdinand Marcos’s dictatorship in the Philippines, culminating in February 1986, gave the world a new name for a very old phenomenon: ‘‘people power.’’1 Whether or not the name helped, the phenomenon has certainly been spreading widely as governments and other ‘‘top-down’’ institutions lose their grip on an increasingly complex reality with which they can only deal in a way that is cumbersome at best and violently oppressive at worst. It could be argued, however, that real peacemaking, especially if it is to be lasting in its effects, comes from an even less formalized ‘‘institution,’’ if you will: from ‘‘person power.’’ All real contributions to the Peace Movement originate with and are sustained by individuals, sometimes acting in concert but always drawing on their individual energy. As Cardinal Jaime Sin observed of the vast numbers who interposed themselves between the ‘‘rebel’’ soldiers who had defected to the revolution and the contingents Marcos had sent to attack them, ‘‘It was amazing. It was 2 million independent decisions. Each one said, in his heart, ‘I will do this,’ and they went out.’’2 Some personal actions are small, but have a ‘‘trim-tab’’ effect like that of Rosa Parks’s refusal to vacate her seat on a Montgomery bus; others remain private and hidden, but nonetheless, as we believe, have their invisible bearing on the overall climate of peace or war. Some are the result of a specific transformative experience, while others arise in the course of a long-term dedication to a life of caring (Rosa Parks had recently gone through a

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course in justice and resistance at the Highlander Folk School). Some endure deep sacrifice, like the final example in this chapter; but impressive to us are the numbers who find their work for peace the most satisfying and meaningful way to spend their lives. Because there are obviously so many more of these contributors, sung and unsung, than we could possibly include in even these three volumes, we conclude the set with a few more representative cases, hoping to emphasize the importance of each one of them and ultimately each one of us as a strand of something much larger that, taken together, blends into a strong tapestry that enfolds and shelters the experiment of life.

BERTHA VON SUTTNER (COUNTESS KINSKY VON WCHINITZ UND TETTAU, 1843--1914) Baroness von Suttner was born in Prague, into a family of the declining Austrian nobility and went to work as a governess for the wealthy von Suttner family from 1873 to 1876, during which time she became engaged to engineer and novelist Arthur Gundaccar Freiherr von Suttner. His family, however, opposed the match, and she answered an advertisement from Alfred Nobel in 1876 to become his secretary-housekeeper at his Paris residence. She only remained a week before returning to Vienna and secretly marrying Arthur on June 12, 1876. The couple lived in the Caucasus, where they read, wrote, and studied until they were reconciled to the family and returned to Vienna. Though staying with Nobel for less than a week, the two met occasionally and wrote much, and it was she who encouraged the inventor of dynamite to found the Nobel Peace Prize at the turn of the century. In the meantime she had become an ardent pacifist, committed to what she called ‘‘the greatest of all causes’’ for the rest of her life; most notably, in terms of her influence on Nobel and millions of others down the years, she wrote perhaps the most successful anti-war novel of all time, Die Waffen Nieder! (Lay Down Your Arms!, 1889). Tolstoy compared it to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (and we might place it alongside Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in terms of its consciousness-raising effect). The novel appeared just when the modern peace movement was taking shape as an international entity, and it catapulted von Suttner into fame within and beyond those circles. A tireless worker for peace in a Europe that had grown apathetic because it was experiencing a brief reprieve from major war, she founded many societies and was a prominent hostess of statesmen and intellectuals at the first Hague Peace Conference in 1899. This conference, called by the Czar to promote disarmament, basically failed at that goal but succeeded in taking steps toward establishing the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague.3

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This vindicated von Suttner’s emphasis on institutions for arbitration rather than relying on disarmament agreements. We may note that 100 years later, when The Hague Conference was reconvened, Americans Mel Duncan and David Hartsough met and vowed to create what is now the Nonviolent Peaceforce (see Christine Schweitzer, Volume 2, Chapter 8). Among relatively minor accomplishments by this central figure at the origins of the modern peace movement, von Suttner became the first woman political journalist in the German language. During her lifetime, von Suttner received many awards, culminating, of course, with the Nobel Peace Prize of 1905 that had been founded at her instance five years earlier (Nobel himself had not anticipated that it would take that long for her to receive it). She was, needless to say, the first woman to be so honored. An important peace journal was named in her honor and today there are postage stamps, coins, and other memorials to her tireless dedication, while a film entitled Die Waffen Nieder by Holger Madsen and Carl Theodor Dreyer was released in Norway in 1914. She died in Vienna a few months before the carnage she had worked so hard to avert.

PEACE PILGRIM (MILDRED NORMAN, 1908--1981) Sometime in the early 1800s a pious Russian went into his local church to pray the liturgy, heard the words ‘‘pray without ceasing’’ being read from the pulpit (Thes. 5:17) and spent the rest of his life wandering the byways of Old Russia with the Jesus Prayer constantly on his lips. Sometime in the 1920s, a young farm girl from Egg Harbor City, New Jersey, read the Golden Rule in a history book and, like the Russian pilgrim before her, unaccountably took it seriously. This was Mildred Norman, later known to the world as Peace Pilgrim, who was to cross the United States on foot seven times before her death, ironically, in an auto accident on her way to a speaking engagement in Knox, Indiana. She carried her mission on a sheet of paper stuffed into her signature blue tunic that was, with the other clothes on her back, all she possessed: I shall remain a wanderer until mankind has learned the way of peace. She was what we would call today an ‘‘inspirational speaker,’’ but she was far more than that: a wandering sadhu, a parivrajaka of a type that is familiar in India, was not too uncommon in Old Russia, but unheard of in the United States. And on top of that she was a sadhu with a mission: world peace. Her writings and some scraps of her talks are now given away free by the Friends of Peace Pilgrim, and over 400,000 copies of the book Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words and over 1,500,000 copies of the booklet Steps toward Inner Peace. Books and booklets have been sent to over 100 countries. The book has been translated into 12 languages and the

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booklet into over 20. They are an amazing journey of wisdom. It is impossible to document in any other terms how this wise, compassionate woman touched the lives of so many who were fortunate enough to meet and hear from her; but it is impossible not to believe that those encounters have had a profound impact on our lives today.

PETRA KELLY (1947--1992) Petra Karin Kelly was a woman of great compassion and intensity, a woman whose work continues to be an inspiration to those who strive for the peace, ecological protection, and human solidarity that she worked tirelessly to achieve. Her work arose from a combination of three principles of peace activism. First, issues of peace, social justice, and environmental protection were inseparable. Second was her uncompromising stance on issues of deep principle. She could not accept even a ‘‘mild’’ form of torture or a ‘‘safe’’ level of radioactivity. Third was her belief that these issues came with a mandate to make the political process responsive to them. Kelly was inspired by the life of Martin Luther King Jr. Her most notable achievement came in 1979, when she was instrumental in founding the German Green Party, called die Gr€ unen, the most influential and politically successful of the Green Parties. Formally founded in 1979, it came out of a coalition called ‘‘Alliance 90,’’ developed in the 1970s, and came to power in 1983 with the state elections, during which Kelly was elected to the German Bundestag (parliament). The focus of die Gr€ unen in its origins was on four main principles as follows: ecology, social justice, grassroots democracy, and nonviolence making it, possibly the only seated party outside India to adopt nonviolence as a leading principle. Her years in Parliament (1983 to 1991) were packed full of activity and accomplishment for herself and her partner, former General Gert Bastian, who left the Army in protest over the stationing of nuclear weapons on European soil in the 1980s. Kelly recognized controversy between the political and spiritual/political wings of the Green movement and was distressed by it. She believed that both wings belong together, complement each other, and are part of each other, that we cannot solve any political problems without also addressing our spiritual ones. For her that meant, above all, respecting all living things and the interrelatedness and interconnectedness of life. Her intense personal compassion set a pattern for her life as a social activist who created or worked through institutions with lasting impact on sociopolitical culture. She worked with the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium, for 12 years (1971 to 1983), with which she participated in a number of campaigns for peace and environmental justice throughout Germany and surrounding countries. Anti-nuclear issues, feminism, research on childhood

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cancer, and Tibet (she adopted a Tibetan refugee child) were among her marked concerns. Kelly’s book, Nonviolence Speaks to Power, based on five influential speeches, was published by the Center for Global Nonviolence in Hawaii in 1992.4 In 1982 she was honored with the ‘‘alternative Nobel Prize,’’ called the Right Livelihood Award, and was listed as one of the 1,000 most influential women in Europe. She wrote and spoke consistently on the key issues of ecology, justice, and peace throughout the world. In October 1992, Kelly was found dead along with Gert Bastian in what was apparently a murder-suicide. The pair had by then lost some political influence but Kelly’s death was mourned throughout the peace movement worldwide, and to continue her legacy the Petra Kelly Foundation was founded five years later as part of the Heinrich B€oll Foundation. Since 1998, the foundation has presented an annual Petra Kelly Prize for Human Rights, Ecology, and Nonviolence.

THICH NHAT HANH (1926-- ) Thich Nhat Hanh is one of the best-known and most highly respected Zen masters in the world today. He is also a brilliant poet, a teacher an author, and an activist for peace and human rights. He was only 16 when he joined the Zen monastery, Tu Hieu Temple, to study Buddhism and was fully ordained as a monk in 1949. Seven years later, he became editor-in-chief of Vietnamese Buddhism and later founded the La´ B
^oi Press. In the 1960s, Thay (as he is popularly and affectionately called) worked tirelessly on behalf of those who were affected by the Vietnam War. His main focus on urging the United States government to withdraw from Vietnam was captured in his moving book, Lotus in a Sea of Fire. During this time he founded the School of Youth for Social Services (SYSS) in Saigon, a grassroots organization established to provide relief for institutions, communities, and families that were injured, damaged, or left homeless during the Vietnam War. He also founded the Van Hanh Buddhist University in Saigon. He travelled to the United States to attend Princeton University and spent time as an educator at Cornell and Columbia Universities. He had a significant influence on Martin Luther King Jr., who nominated Thay for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. Some of Thay’s most notable achievements have to do with his work in developing Western Buddhism, particularly founding the practice of Engaged Buddhism and coining the term ‘‘Interbeing’’—all inspired by the integration of traditional meditative practices, dharma teachings, and an active nonviolent civil disobedience. Hanh believes that Buddhist principles reveal the ultimate inter-connectedness of all things and, inspired by the reform movement of Humanistic Buddhism in China, created Engaged

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Buddhism as a way to practice this type of integration within his own spiritual community. As he often says, ‘‘engaged Buddhism is just Buddhism.’’ After his peace mission to the United States and Europe in 1966, Thay was exiled from his native Vietnam. It is believed that he significantly influenced U.S. politics and history when he encouraged Martin Luther King Jr. to publicly oppose the Vietnam War. After being exiled by his own government for his efforts to end the violence happening to his own people and to spread Buddhist values of peace, harmony, and diversity around the world, he has continued to live in exile from his home country to this day. In 1982, he founded Plum Village, a Buddhist community in the South of France. He continues to engage with nonviolent civil disobedience efforts to alleviate suffering of the oppressed. He also teaches, writes, spends time in nature, and leads global retreats on ‘‘the art of mindful living.’’ According to Thay, Everyday we do things, we are things that have to do with peace. If we are aware of our life . . . our way of looking at things, we will know how to make peace right in the moment, we are alive.5

KENNETH E. BOULDING (1910--1993) Kenneth Boulding was an economist, educator, peace activist, poet, devout Quaker, who had an influential role founding both modern peace research and systems science. He was married to Elise Boulding, herself an icon of the peace movement. Boulding was a founder of the Peace Research Movement, an attempt to mobilize all of the social sciences for peace. In 1955, he set up the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University where he met with a small group of scholars asking how to address the fundamental problems of war and peace. As he observed, ‘‘The bomb had been dropped. The whole world had changed, as Einstein noted; it’s just that we haven’t changed.’’6 From 1949 to 1967, he was a faculty member of the University of Michigan where he joined Anatol Rapaport and Robert Angell to create The Center for Conflict Resolution and initiated the interdisciplinary Journal of Conflict Resolution. That was the beginning of the peace research movement. Boulding helped then to create the International Peace Research Association and the International Christian University in Japan. Boulding was also a cofounder of General Systems Theory and the spearhead of an evolutionary approach to economics. His broad scholarship brought recognition as an integrator of knowledge and an academician of world stature. He was a president of the American Economic Association, the Society for General Systems Research, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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His remarkable creativity and wit were applied to understanding war, peace, and social systems in some extraordinary ways, among them his tongueand-cheek formulation of Boulding’s First Law, that ‘‘if something has happened it is possible.’’7 The following selection from an interview he gave in 1987 gives something of the flavor of his mind: War is a public health problem. The invention of the cannon destroyed the castle and the feudal system. When the weapons were spears and arrows, it made some sense to have a castle or even a city wall. But cannons came about 1500. The feudal system just crumbled. If you stayed in your castle, you got blown up with it. That’s what’s happened with the nuclear weapons. The United States has lost our ‘‘moats.’’ You could summarize human history in a single sentence: wealth creates power and power destroys wealth. Every empire has been an example of this. About 85 percent to 95 percent of human activity is peaceful. Peace is plowing and sowing and reaping and making things and being on television and getting married and raising a family and dancing and singing and opera, you know. It is a very large part of human activity, and war is a kind of interruption of this.8 And finally: Anyone who thinks that development can expand infinitely in a planet with finite resources must be either insane or an economist.

AUNG SAN SUU KYI (1945-- ) Followers of the ‘‘Monk’s Uprising’’ in Burma may recall a poignant episode that appeared on news channels showing a crowd of demonstrators stopping at the gate of a mansion, where there soon appears a slender, beautiful woman who looks at the demonstrators without speaking and is soon in tears. Aung San Suu Kyi was born in Rangoon, Burma (we avoid the name Myanmar). Her father, Aung San, had founded the Burmese army and negotiated the country’s liberation from colonialism in 1947. He was assassinated the same year, when his daughter was only two, along with his entire cabinet (the assassins, sent by political rivals, have never been identified, much less brought to justice). Daw (‘‘madam’’) Suu Kyi’s mother went on to hold diplomatic positions, including in India, where she took Suu Kyi with her and secured an education for her at Lady Shri Ram College, where she graduated in 1964. She went on to get degrees at Oxford five years later, where she met her future husband, Michael Aris. From there she spent some years at the UN headquarters in New York, but returned to Burma where her

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mother had fallen ill and decided, courageously, to stay to help the people when the ill-fated student uprising broke out in 1988. In a general election of 1990 she became the General Secretary of the National League for Democracy, which she had helped found and which was voted into power, only to find that the then (and still) ruling military junta would not allow them to form a government. At this point Suu Kyi was placed for the second time under house arrest, where she has remained most of the time until this writing. She was offered freedom if she left the country, but she refused, even to visit her husband Michael (who was terminally ill with cancer) and two sons whom she had seen only five times in the previous five years. In 1991 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her courageous, nonviolent opposition to the military rule that still prevails in Burma, one of many peace prizes she has received. Her two sons accepted the prize on her behalf. Aung San Suu Kyi is regularly described as a leader of the democratic opposition to the extremely oppressive regime in Burma, which of course is true. More to the point, however, she is an extremely courageous nonviolent person whose beliefs and vision come from Mahatma Gandhi and (not unlike Sri Lanka’s Dr. A. T. Ariyaratne, founder of Sarvodaya) from her native tradition of Theravada Buddhism. On more than one occasion (again like Dr. Ariyaratne), she has defied what seemed almost certain death to carry out her mission, without a trace of hatred for her opponents; one of these episodes is dramatically rendered in the film Beyond Rangoon. Worldwide protest against her detention coming from the UN itself and other Nobel Prize winners has to this date not prevailed against the regime. She has written several books, one of them Freedom from Fear and Other Writings (1995) with Va´clav Havel, Desmond M. Tutu, and Michael Aris. One of her most famous speeches entitled ‘‘Freedom from Fear’’ begins, ‘‘It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.’’ Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who, like Mahatma Gandhi, has influenced the world and inspired seekers after freedom in her own country and abroad even from behind bars, is a living testimony to that insight. It is a great relief and pleasure to report that on November 13, 2010, Daw Suu Kyi was released from house arrest on the expiry of her latest sentence.

KHAN ABDUL GHAFFAR KHAN (1890--1988) Badshah (‘‘King’’) Khan was born in Charsadda, near Peshawar, in what was then the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) of colonial India. His father, Bagram, was a village leader among that Pashtu (Pakhtun, earlier Pathan) community and Abdul Ghaffar received a good education at a Britishrun school, something unusual at that time because the Mullahs were opposed

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to it. Indeed, throughout his long life Khan ‘‘King’’ faced opposition from many quarters: hidebound religious authorities, the British, and finally the government of Pakistan that distrusted him because he and his Pashtuns had been opposed to the partition of India and, when it came, voted overwhelmingly to go with India rather than Pakistan. His relations with his fellow freedom fighters in India, except Gandhi himself, turned tragic when they abandoned the Pashtuns to Pakistan—as he said, he was ‘‘thrown to the wolves’’ after going through untold suffering to help their common struggle against British rule. On graduation from high school he was offered a prestigious commission in The Guides, within the British-run military, but rebuffed the offer when he witnessed a British officer insulting a Pashtun who had just become one. When his mother did not give him permission to follow his older brother to England for higher education, he devoted himself to social uplift, primarily by founding a series of successful schools, beginning with one in Utmanzai, where he was to live much of his later life. He thus anticipated Gandhi’s Constructive Program. Khan finally met Gandhi at the All India Congress Party meeting in Calcutta in December 1928. He was, of course, drawn to the man and deeply impressed with his handling of a would-be heckler. Their loving association was to last until the Partition in 1947, with Khan often supporting Gandhi even when other Congress Party members lacked the vision to do so. He soon earned the sobriquet ‘‘the Frontier Gandhi,’’ which he refused to own, saying that there was only one Gandhi. As his engagement with the freedom struggle deepened, he had the stroke of genius to form an ‘‘army’’ of nonviolent Pashtuns—an unheard of concept referring to such a warlike, vengeance-prone people. Perhaps building on Gandhi’s idea of the Shanti Sena, or ‘‘Peace Army,’’ these Khudai Khidmatgars, or ‘‘Servants of God,’’ were uniformed, disciplined and devoted unswervingly to their leader because of his spiritual stature—and vowed to follow nonviolence. In April 1930, Khan was arrested in connection with the famous Salt Satyagraha and, on April 23, a large crowd gathered at the Kissa Khahani Bazaar in Peshawar to protest. What followed was nothing short of a miracle, as British troops and armored cars ordered them to disperse and then, when they refused, commenced firing on the unarmed crowd and running over the living and the dead on and off (mostly on) for six hours. Yet the Khudai Khidmatgars, who were more used to giving blows than taking them, held to their nonviolent discipline throughout the horrendous ordeal. After this atrocity their numbers swelled to more than 80,000, making it the largest peace army ever seen before or since. Khan spent a third of his life imprisoned by one authority or another. When he died at the age of 98, there was a cessation of hostilities on both

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sides in the Afghan war that was raging at the time so that his funeral procession could go to Jalalabad. He left behind a political party, the Awani League, headed by his son and then his grandson. But his enduring legacy is beyond this or any institution. His life and work served to dispel four damaging myths about nonviolence: 1. Only cowards or ‘‘nice’’ people take to nonviolence. At one point Khan asked Gandhi why his own Pashtuns were still nonviolent while many Hindus had faltered from the faith; Gandhi explained, ‘‘we Hindus have always been nonviolent, but we have not always been brave, like you.’’ 2. Nonviolence only works against mild resistance. The British were uncommonly brutal in the NWFP, fearing the nonviolent Khudai Khidmatgars even more than they had the normally violent Pashtuns. 3. Nonviolence cannot be used on a scale that would make it useful in war. 4. Nonviolence cannot find a home in Islam. Khan, like most of his tribesmen, was a devout Muslim to the end of his life, and convinced that the ‘‘weapon’’ of nonviolence had been given by the Prophet himself. A documentary film, Badshah Khan, a Torch for Peace, has been released by Teri McLuhan and is based on Eknath Easwaran’s biography, Nonviolent Soldier of Islam,9 and a feature film is in progress at this time in India.

KENULE BEESON SARO-WIWA (1941--.1995) Ken Saro-Wiwa was a Nigerian author, television producer, businessman, and environmental activist. His satirical TV series Basi & Co was said to be the most watched soap opera in Africa. During the Biafran war (1967 to 1970), he was an administrator for the Port of Bonny near Ogoni in the Niger Delta, and his horror over the violence was reflected in his novels. On a Darkling Plain is a diary of his wartime experiences and Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English is the tale of a naive village boy recruited into the army. Saro-Wiwa was a member of the Ogoni people, a Nigerian ethnic minority group whose homeland in the Niger Delta suffered extreme environmental damage from crude oil extraction and indiscriminate oil waste dumping. The exploitation of the area by Shell Oil and other multi-national companies was protected by the Nigerian government, which did not enforce environmental laws. The dumping began in the 1950s and exploitation of Ogoni land continues to this day. Saro-Wiwa began reporting the destruction and was critical of Shell, other multi-national corporations, and the Nigerian government. His concern

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about the treatment of Ogoni within the Nigerian Federation and his advocacy for greater Ogoni autonomy resulted in his dismissal in 1973 as Regional Commissioner for Education in the Rivers State cabinet. Saro-Wiwa went on to become a spokesperson, and then president, of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People. In this role he led a nonviolent campaign against the degradation of the land and the contamination of the natural waters of Ogoniland. When this nonviolent campaign gained momentum, Saro-Wiwa was arrested in 1992 and routinely tortured. Amnesty International issued a statement that Saro-Wiwa’s arrest was ‘‘part of the continuing suppression by the Nigerian authorities of the Ogoni people’s campaign against the oil companies’’ and declared Saro-Wiwa a ‘‘prisoner of conscience.’’10 Saro-Wiwa was a vice president of Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) General Assembly from 1993 to 1995. UNPO is an international, nonviolent, and democratic organization. Its members are indigenous peoples, minorities, and residents of unrecognized or occupied territories who have joined together to protect and promote their human and cultural rights, to preserve their environments, and to find nonviolent solutions to conflicts that affect them. In 1995, he was again arrested, charged with murdering public officials, tried in great haste by a special tribunal of the Nigerian military government of General Sani Abacha, and hanged. The charges were unfounded and politically motivated and his execution provoked international condemnation and resulted in Nigeria’s suspension from the Commonwealth of Nations for 3–1/2 years. He was a winner of both the Goldman Environmental Prize and the Right Livelihood Award. His memory lives and as of this writing the case of the Nigerian village farmers against Shell Oil company is being heard in the World Court in The Hague. Ken Saro-Wiwa’s compassion and his frustration were reflected in his book of stories, Forest of Flowers (1986). An old woman had hobbled up to him. My son, they arrived this morning and dug up my entire farm, my only farm. They mowed down the toil of my brows, the pride of the waiting months. They say they will pay me compensation. Can they compensate me for my labors? The joy I receive when I see the vegetables sprouting, God’s revelation to me in my old age? Oh my son, what can I do? What answer now could he give her? I’ll look into it later, he had replied tamely. Look into it later. He could almost hate himself for telling that lie. He cursed the earth for spouting oil, black gold, they called it. And he cursed

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the gods for not drying the oil wells. What did it matter that millions of barrels of oil were mined and exported daily, so long as this poor woman wept those tears of despair? What could he look into later? Could he make alternate land available? And would the lawmakers revise the laws just to bring a bit more happiness to these unhappy wretches whom the search for oil had reduced to an animal existence? They ought to send the oil royalties to the men whose farms and land were despoiled and ruined. But the lawyers were in the pay of the oil companies and the government people in the pay of the lawyers and the companies.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Schell, 2003; Ash, 2009. Zunes, 1999. See Ron Glossop, Chapter 5 in this volume. Kelly, Paige, and Gilliatt, 1992. Planet Carbon. Boulding, 1987. Ibid. See http://carbontrades.co.uk. Easwaran, 1999. Saro-Wiwa, 1986.

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A F I NA L WO R D Marc Pilisuk and Michael N. Nagler

Like the surface of the earth, the prevailing war system is a relatively thin and unstable layer that conceals intense energies of greater fluidity beneath its surface-energies that occasionally burst forth. Our journey through the manifold energies and projects that are represented in the chapters of these three volumes did not reveal a single, unified world peace movement but it certainly did reveal wellsprings of activity, more intense, more creative, and more widespread than one would imagine. The bubbling energies appear as contributions to a gigantic wave surging against the barriers that societies have entrenched into laws and ideologies that make inequality, exploitation, and violence appear inevitable. Slowly but with increasing likelihood, individuals and groups of individuals, facing the varied manifestations of that age-old inhumanity, are finding courage, as people have done through history, to rise up against it. But in this generation many more of us are also identifying the existing exploitive system underlying diverse violence and recognizing that this system is failing. And some are daring to view the movements toward peace, justice, and sustainability as a yet-unrealized but potentially unstoppable movement. This emergence is all the more amazing as it comes on the heels of a century in which control over human identity has become all-pervasive and quite often malicious; when the war-propaganda is based, ironically enough, on adaptations of Sigmund Freud’s theories about

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the power of appealing to basic needs and fears; when such propaganda hurled masses of humanity into paroxysms of anti-Semitic hatred, among other examples of targeted dehumanization; and when the self-image of human beings was reduced to ‘‘happiness machines that have become the key to economic progress’’ (to paraphrase President Hoover) came to predominate.1 The power of such manipulation and control is slowly yielding to a culture in which the better natures of people can assert themselves. One cannot review the efforts described in these volumes, and the many more that we could not include, without realizing that the wave is powerful and has not yet reached its crest. The power and impact of these healthier alternatives are evident and they are springing up everywhere. They remain seriously under-reported by the mainstream media that instead deliver a constant stream of tragedies, local and national, as though they were singular occurrences rather than looking deeply into the failures of unfettered corporate expansion and the war system. It is an ironically hopeful sign that the failures of that system are becoming apparent to people the world over, despite the impressive capacity of a powerful elite to ‘‘spin’’ the coverage. Some former players of that system, some of whom appear in these pages, have recognized the failure of an unbridled quest for development and unending search for enemies. A more heartening sign is that the activists described in the final chapter of Volume 3 do not wait for powerful officials to lead them. In ways small and large, people are devoting their creativity, their energy, their dreams, and their quest for a meaningful life to make peace a reality. One cannot come away from the story of these efforts without being heartened by the fact that so many others have stepped forward. We are resourceful and caring custodians of the force of life. The peace movement worldwide is an inchoate but irresitable force. It grows because it must prevail. And if we nurture it, it will.

NOTE 1. See the BBC documentary Happiness Machines (2002), available at http:// freedocumentaries.org/theatre_med.php?filmID=140.

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INDEX

Abboud, Nadine, 186 ABC-TV, 223 Al-Abdullah, Rania, 62 ‘‘acts of terror,’’ 100 acupuncture of peace, 107 Addams, Jane, 112, 154 ADIVIMA, 262, 263–264 advaita, 280 Adwan, Sami, 150 affinity groups, 200 African Americans, 247 After Downing Street, 130 Age of Revolution, 52 Agreement on the Privileges and Immunities of the ICC (APIC), 62 Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, 145 Alarcon, Ricardo, 133 Alliance 90, 343 All India Congress Party, 348 Altangerel, Bulgaa, 62 American Association for the Advancement of Science, 345 American Economic Association, 345 American NGO Coalition for the International Criminal Court (AMICC), 61

American Servicemembers’ Protection Act (ASPA), 66 Amnesty International, 165, 253, 350 Andersen-O’Brien family, 191 Anderson, Sherry, 199 Angell, Robert, 345 Anglo-Irish Agreement, 176 Annan, Kofi, 24, 82 Anschutz, Philip, 126 anti-intervention, 236 Aponte, Carmon, 131 Arafat, Yasser, 212, 303 ‘‘archipelago’’ of conflicts, 95, 96 Arendt, Hannah, 149, 156, 284 Arguello, Carlos Bastidas, 132 ‘‘armed guerilla campaigns,’’ 171 Ashoka-Changemaker, 229 Assembly of States Parties (ASP), 61 Association Ija’tz, 260, 261, 262, 265, 266, 270, 272 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 18 Awad, Mubarak, 153 Awani League, 349 awareness, and healing, 267–268 Axworthy, Lloyd, 67

380 Badshah, 347, 348 Badshah Khan, a Torch for Peace, 349 Baez, Joan, 153 Bajaj, Monisha, 118 Balch, Emily, 154 Ballou, Addin, 154 Barakat, Hoda, 190 Barakomeza, Leonie, 219 Barillas, Eduardo Stein, 67 Bassinger, Bill, 306 Bassinger, Jean, 306 Bastian, Gert, 343, 344 Bastidas, Carlos, 132 Bastidas, Edmundo, 132 Beckstrom, Rod, 201 ‘‘Being Bodhisattvas,’’ 291 Benga, Ongo, 226, 227 Bennett, Milton, 113 Bentham, Jeremy, 51 Benyus, Janine, 201 Berrigan, Daniel, 153, 158 Berrigan, Philip, 153 Be the Media, 135 Beyond Rangoon, 347 Bhagavad Gita, 279, 280, 282 ‘‘big government,’’ 126 Bilateral Immunity Agreements (BIAs), 65 bin Laden, Osama, 162 biomimicry, 140 Blair, Tony, 78 Blessed Unrest, 208 Bloody Sunday, 167, 172 Blum, William, 158 bodhisattvas, 290 Boisen, Anton, 255 ‘‘Bojay
a Massacre, The,’’ 110n16 Boulding, Elise, 112 Boulding, Kenneth, 13, 345 Boulding’s First Law, 346 Brafman, Ori, 201 Brahmavidya, 282 Bryson, John, 125 Burgos-Debray, Elisabeth, 268 Burundi, 217; culture, 220; domestic shuttle diplomacy, 220; Women’s Peace Center, 219; youth, 219 Burundi National Radio, 218

Index Burundi project, 221 Bush, George, 65, 66, 74, 78, 79, 127, 132, 133, 155, 162, 207, 284, 321; opposition administration to ICC, 65 ‘‘campaign of violence,’’ 173, 175 Carrero, Carmen, 131 Carta, Magna, 43 Carter, Jimmy, 223 Castro, Fidel, 132 censorship, media, 126–129 Center for Advanced Nonviolent Actions and Strategies (CANVAS), 197 Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences, 345 Center for Global Nonviolence, 344 Center for Media Democracy, 129 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 211, 238 Centre Lokole, 227 Ceresole, Pierre, 300 Cervantes, Miguel de, 132 ‘‘Chain of Extermination,’’ 110n16 ‘‘champion of nonviolent resistance,’’ 246 Chapin, Harry, 291 Chatfield, Charles, 89 Chavez, Hugo, 130, 132 Cheney, Dick, 321 Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 70 chief executive officers (CEOs), 37 Chittister, Joan, 324 Chomsky, Noam, 129, 130, 254 ‘‘chosen trauma,’’ 173 Christian Base Communities, 262 citizen pilgrim, 84 citizenship, 5–14, 83; education, 117; multidimensional understanding of, 13–14; new model of, 7–8; restorative justice, 10–11; moral numbing process, 11–12; truth commission process, 12–13; in United States, 8–9 cittavritti, 278 civil courage, 147; goodness, 152; upstanders, 148–150 Clark, Maureen Harding, 62 Clarkson, Thomas, 53 Clinton, Bill, 65, 207, 225 Clinton Global Initiative, 207

Index Coalition Against Water Privatization in South Africa, The, 35 Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC), 61 CodePink, 143 Coffee, 265–267 Cold War, 75, 111, 211 Collaborative for Development Action (CDA), 17, 27n6, 28n22 collateral damage, xvi, 11, 128 Colom, Alvaro, 263, 271 Colombian Center for Research and Popular Education (CINEP), 93 color revolutions, 197 Comit
e de Unidad Campesina(CUC), 262–263, 268 Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), 267, 279n20 Committee for Peasant Unity, 268 Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), 232 common ground, 210–225; in Democratic Republic of Congo, 227 Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 221–222 Common Ground Productions (CGP), 223–224 ‘‘common law,’’ 43 commons, privatization of, 243; resistance for, 244–245 ‘‘common sense,’’ 129, 130 commons solution, 33–36 community development, 260–262; conscientizaci
on and, 265–267; process of change and, 262–264; and responsibility, 270–271 Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), 34 ‘‘Conducting Conflict Assessments,’’ 28n13 Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, 327 Conflict Prevention and Post-Conflict Reconstruction (CPR), 21 conflict transformation: participatory theatre for, 226 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), 301 Conrad, Andr
ee, 288 conscientious objectors (COs), 300

381

Conscientizaci
on: and coffee, 265–267; and community development, 265–267 ‘‘consent principle,’’ 176 Cooper, Ivan, 170 Cordova, Marlene Yadira, 131 Corrigan, Mairead, 153 Cote-Harper, Gisele, 67 Counter Punch, 130 Craddock, Bantz J, 66 Craig, William, 169 Cruc
e, Em
eric, 48, 49 ‘‘crushing violence,’’ 93 Cuartas, Gloria, 102, 106, 107 Cuba: media in, 132–133 ‘‘culture of peace,’’ 198 Dabbouseh, Nuha, 180 Dabrowski, Kazimierz, 290 Day, Dorothy, 153, 154, 156 Dean, Howard, 143 death squads, 165 Deats, Richard, 196 debate: definition of, 141 ‘‘Declaration of Satyagraha,’’ 248 ‘‘defiance campaign,’’ 171 del Mar, Ignacio, 103 Del Monte, 263 Deming, Barbara, 154 democratic global governance, 73; citizenship, 79–84; global parliament, 84–86 Democratic Republic of Congo, 226; common grounds in, 227 Department for International Development (DFID), 21, 27n11 Department of Peace Operations of the Romanian Peace Institute (PATRIR), 17 despair, 284; community, 295; feeling, 291–292; images arousal, 292–294; ingredients of, 285–286; positive disintegration, 290–291; symptoms and suppression, 286–289; validation of, 289–290; waiting, 294–295 Development Program-Department of Political Affairs (UNDP-DPA), 20 De Vitoria, Francisco, 47, 52 dialogue: definition of, 141 die Gr€ u nen, 343

382

Index

Die Waffen Nieder!, 341, 342 Diggers, 255 direct violence, 16 Disaster and the American Imagination, 288 discourse: definition of, 141 distress, 284 ‘‘Doctrine of the Sword, The,’’ 156 Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA), 259 ‘‘Do No Harm’’ methodology, 21 Dor, Tal, 191 Douglass, Jim, 294 DRC, 227, 229, 230 Dream Change Alliances, 337 Dunant, Henry, 55 Duncan, Mel, 342 Dyilo, Thomas Lubanga, 64 Eck, Diana, 277 Economic Hit Man (EHM), 327 education, 151–157. See also peace building education Einstein, Albert, 37, 154 Ekta Parishad, 248 El Salvador Redux, 238–239 emergent liberalism: for modern peace movements, 49–52 ‘‘emerging paradigm,’’ 198 ‘‘encampment,’’ 250 ‘‘enemy combatants,’’ 60n34 Equiano, Olaudah, 53 Equipo de Estudios Comunitarios y Acci
on Psicosocial (ECAP), 269, 279n25 Erasmus, Desiderius, 47, 48 Erfurcht fur das Leben, 298 Esquivel, Adolfo Perez, 153 Estudios Comunitarios y Acci
on Psicosocial (ECAP), 269 European Court of Human Rights, 81 European Group on Training (EGT), 23, 29n31 European Network for Civil Peace Services (ENCPS), 29n36 European Parliament, 81 Evans, Gareth, 70

‘‘evil empire,’’ 162 ‘‘Extraordinary Leader,’’ 183 Eyewitness Bloody Sunday, 172 ‘‘fact sheets,’’ 304 Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), 139n8 faith, 105 false positives, 97, 103 Farmer, James, 301 Farsetta, Diane, 129 Faulkner, Brian, 169 Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally (FALCON), 128 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 319 FEJUVE, 35 Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), 298–303 ‘‘feudal’’ rhythms, 96 field offices, 217; expansion of, 220–221 Finca Los Recuerdos, 263 Fireside Chats, 138 follow-up program: in United States, 185–186 Forest of Flowers, 350 formal education, 115–117 ‘‘fortuna,’’ 175 Forum Theater, Playback Theater and Image Theater, 228 Fox, George, 154 Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, 7 Franks, Tommy, 122 freedom, 260–262 Freedom Charter, 171 Freedom from Fear and Other Writings, 347 Freedom International News Research Affiliate Program, 135 Freire, Paulo, 112 Friends of Peace Pilgrim, 342 ‘‘Frontier Gandhi,’’ 348 ‘‘fugitives,’’ 128 Fuller, Buckminster, 214 fundamental human needs, 260–262 Gaia, 5 Galtung, Johan, 54, 113

Index Gandhi, Mahatma, 6, 77, 98, 154, 156, 171, 194, 195, 196, 198, 200, 232, 246, 247, 254, 280, 281, 282, 347 ‘‘Gandhi neurons,’’ 198 Gardons Contact, 219 General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 251 General Systems Theory, 345 German Green Party, 343 Ghaffar, Abdul, 347 Giraldo, Javier, 102, 106 Glasl, Friedrich, 168 Glenview Community Church (GCC), 180, 191 global dominance agenda, 125–126 Global Dominance Group, 125 Global Marshall Plan, 325 Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC), 17, 24 Glossop, Ronald, 197 goal of personalistic communitarianism, 303 Godin, 143 Good Friday Agreement, 176 Gorer, Geoffrey, 289 Goss-Mayr, Hildegard, 303 Grad, Gretchen, 179, 180, 181 Graham, Billy, 162 Grant, Ulysses S., 154 ‘‘Great Turning,’’ xvii gross domestic product (GDP), 40, 133, 259, 325 Grotius, Hugo, 49, 52, 196 Guatemala, 258; ADIVIMA, 263–264; awareness and healing, 267–268; Comit
e de Unidad Campesina, 262–263; community development, 260–262; Conscientizaci
on, 265–267; freedom, 260–262; fundamental human needs, 260–262; Maya, 258–260; participatoryaction research, 268–270; San Lucas Tolim
an, 272 Guatemalan Commission for Historical Clarification, 270 Gutenberg, Johannes, 138, 139 Habermas, J€ urgen, 138, 139, 142 Hadad, Rana, 187

383

‘‘Hague Invasion Act,’’ 66 Hague Peace Conference, 6, 10, 55, 341 Hammack, Phil, 184, 189 Hands of Peace (HOP), 179, 188; American host families in, 191–192; creation, 180–181; crises and opportunities, 181–182; facilitator, 190–191; follow-up program, 185–186; impact of, 186–190; organizational structure and challenges, 182–183; prospects for peace, 192–193; summer program, 183–185 Hanh, Thich Nhat, 279, 344 Harman, Willis, 198 Hart, Philip, 153 Hartsough, David, 342 Harun, Ahmad Muhammad, 64 Hatfield, Mark, 153 Hawken, Paul, 89, 199 healing: and awareness, 267–268 Hedges, Chris, 195 Heffez, Adam, 185 Heidegger, Martin, 57 Heinrich B€oll Foundation, 344 Herman, Edward, 129, 130 Higher Circle Policy Elite in the United States, 126 Hobbes, Thomas, 49, 50 Hodgkin, Henry, 299 Hoffman, Bat-Or, 189 Homeland Security Act, The, 125 Hoover, J. Edgar, 318 ‘‘hot button issue,’’ 185 Houser, George, 301 Huffington Post, 130 Hugo, Victor, 132 humanitarian intervention, 68 humanity: convert to, 308 Human Rights Commission, 70 Human Rights Watch, 165 Hume, David, 53 Hummos, Ismail, 193 Humphrey, Hubert, 302 Hussein, Saddam, 78, 162

384 identity, 279 Ignatieff, Michael, 67 ‘‘illegal aliens,’’ 128 IMAP, 265 India, 252, 348 informal education, 115–117 Institute for Labor and Mental Health, 318, 323 institutions: building, 214–215 Instituto Mesoamericana de Permacultura (IMAP), 260 ‘‘integrative’’ power, 95 ‘‘interbeing,’’ 344 International Book Fair, 132 International Christian University, 345 International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), 271 International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, 67, 68 International Court of Justice (ICJ), 60 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, 303 international criminal court (ICC) and the R2P principle, 61; in Africa, 63; Bush administration, opposition to, 65; establishment of, 60–63; importance of, 71–72; R2P principle, 67; structure of, 60–63 International Criminal Court Monitor, The, 61 International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR), 300 international law and peace, 46–49 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 251 international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), 8 International Peace and Development Training Centre (IPDTC), 23, 28n23 International Peace Research Association, 345 Internet, 139 ‘‘Internment,’’ 169 intervention: terminology, 68 intrinsic peace building, 26 Iran, and United States relations, 224–225

Index Iran-Contra, 237–238 Iranian Internet Revolution, 144–145 ‘‘Irish Republican Army’’ (IRA), 165; hunger strikes,’’ 182n41 ‘‘Irish Sharpeville,’’ 172 Jacobson, Avigail, 185 Jacobson, Deanna, 180, 181 Jamail, Dahr, 123 James, William, 279 Janjaweed, 64 Japan, 296 Jaruzelski, Wojciech, 157 Jesus, 297, 302 Johansen, Robert, 71 Johnson, Lyndon, 89, 302, 287 Jones, W. Alton, 212 journalism, 128–129 Journal of Conflict Resolution, 345 Journey of Reconciliation, 301 ‘‘judicializations,’’ 102 jus gentium, 47 justice: women’s movement for, 142–143 Justinianus, Codex, 43 Kanak, Julie, 182 Kant, Immanuel, 51, 52, 54, 196 Kasrils, Ronnie, 170, 171 Kazimia, 228, 229 Kelly, Frank, 153 Kelly, Petra Karin, 343 Kennard, William, 125 Kennedy, Robert F., 319 Khrushchev, Nikita, 286 Khudai Khidmatgars, 348 Ki-Moon, Ban, 71 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 247, 319, 343, 344, 345, 301 Kirsch, Philippe, 62, 64 Kissinger, Henry, 321–322 Kitzinger, Uwe, 149 ‘‘knowledge validating system,’’ 198 Koestler, Arthur, 284 Kony, Joseph, 64 Koppel, Ted, 211, 218 Korean national intelligence service (KCIA), 304, 305, 306

Index Korean Student Christian Federation, 304 Kristol, William, 126 Kropotkin, Peter, 245 Kuhn, Thomas, 198 Kushbayd, Ali, 64 Lakoff, George, 128 Lancet, 123 Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), 249 land struggles, 243; nonviolent resistance and, 246–252 Lansbury, George, 300 Laszlo, Irvin, 201 Lavender, Steve, 306 ‘‘law of nations,’’ 59n13, 59n14 laws of war, 55 Lawson, Jim, 234, 301 League of Nations, 10, 52 least developed countries (LDCs), 259 lectio divina, 277 Lee, Barbara, 162 Lee, Robert E., 154 Lester, Muriel, 298, 300 Letter to George Bush, 132 Lewis, Alwyn, 125 ‘‘liberal media,’’ 128 Lieber Code, 55 Limpieza Sociale, 272 Lincoln, Abraham, 301, 336 Lindsay, John, 197 Literaturnaya Gazeta, 211 Locke, John, 49 Lotus in a Sea of Fire, 344 Lotus Sutra, 290 ‘‘low-intensity conflict,’’ 240 Lukin, Vladimir, 67 Luther, Martin, 89, 158, 161, 196, 232 Lykes, M. Brinton, 270 Lynch, William, 294 Ma’an, 222 Madoff, Bernard, 337 Madsen, Holger, 342 Mahafyana Buddhism, 290 Mandela, Nelson, 157, 171 Marcos, Ferdinand, 157, 340

385

Marks, John, 210 Marks, Susan Collin, 213 Marley, Ziggy, 220 Marx, Karl, 57, 201 Masondo, Andrew, 216 ‘‘mass amateurization,’’ 201 Mathison, David, 135 Matthews, Gene, 306 Maya, 258–260 Maya Ixil Women of Chajul, 269–270 Maya Long Count Calendar, 258 Maze prison, 175 Mazowiecki, Tadekusz, 62 Mazzetti, Mark, 66 McCorkindale, Douglas, 125 McGuinness, Martin, 173 McReynolds, David, 247 Mead, Margaret, 90 media: censorship and propaganda, 126; corporate, antidotes, 133–134; Cuba, 132–133; embedded journalism, 128–129; global dominance group, 125–126; omitted stories, 127–128; press, 129–133; reform movement, 123–125; slogans and sound bites, 128; undercovered stories, 127–128; Venezuela, 130–132 Media Freedom Foundation and Project Censored, 134–136 Meditation, 277; effects on others, 281–282 Mediation and Conciliation Committees, 229 Mendez, Juan, 71 ‘‘mental perturbation,’’ 278 Merton, Thomas, 154 Methodist Youth Fellowship, 297 Middle East, 211–212, 221 Military Commissions Act (MCA), 127 Mills, C. Wright, 125 Milosevic, Slobodan, 78, 157 Ministry of Human Resource Development, 118 ‘‘misery index,’’ 237 ‘‘mixing races,’’ xvii ‘‘modern’’ routines, 96

386

Index

‘‘Modern Media Censorship Lecture Series,’’ 138n3 modern peace movements, 49; abolition and the emergence of, 52–54 Monday Night Group, 304, 305, 306, 307 Mondlane, Eduardo, 302 ‘‘Monk’s Uprising,’’ 346 Monnet, Jean, 215 Montesquieu, Baron de, 53 Montessori, Maria, 112 Montt, Rıos, 268 Moon, Sun Myung, 126 Morales, Evo, 35, 40 moral numbing process, 11–12 More Than Witnesses: How a Small Group of Missionaries Aided Korea’s Democratic Revolution, 307 Morse, Wayne, 302 Mother Teresa, 153, 160 Mousavi, Mir Hossein, 145 MSNBC, 128 Mubarak, Hosni, 212 Mullan, Don, 172 Murdoch, Rupert, 126 ‘‘mustard Satyagraha,’’ 252 Muste, A. J., 154, 196 mutually assured destruction (MAD), 210–211 Nagler, Michael, 166 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), 134 National Commission in Defense of Water and Life, The, 35 National Conference for Media Reform (NCMR), 124 National Council of Educational Research, 118 national security, 67 National Security Agency (NSA), 319 ‘‘national security states,’’ 1 National Security Strategy, 79 national sovereignty, 68 ‘‘nation states,’’ 48, 49, 51 ‘‘natural law,’’ 59n8 ‘‘natural rights,’’ 59n8 Naumann, Klaus, 67 Needleman, Jacob, 294

‘‘negative peace,’’ 46 New Bottom Line, 324 ‘‘new Jerusalem,’’ 287 New York Post, 126 New York Times, 63, 65, 66, 125, 126, 127, 128 Nixon, Richard, 162 Nobel, Alfred, 341 Non-Aligned Movement, 82 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 16, 61, 101, 141, 217, 227, 264 nonviolence, 222–224, 303–307; Common Ground Productions, 223–224; Ma’an, 222; television documentary, 222–223 Nonviolence Speaks to Power, 344 Nonviolent Peaceforce, 342 nonviolent protest (NV), 167 nonviolent resistance, 93; building, beyond national borders, 252–253; and land struggles, 246–252; practices of, 100–102; methods of, 105–106 Nordhaus, William, 202 Norman, Mildred, 342 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 251 Northern Ireland: as global fascination, 165–166; hunger strikes, 174–176 Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), 168 NorthWest Frontier Province (NWFP), 347 Nyheim, David, 22 Obama, Barack, 74, 89, 199, 202; election, 143–144 ‘‘Occupied Territories,’’ 60n32 Ochs, Phil, 321 Ogle, George, 306 Oliver, Mary, 208 On a Darkling Plain, 349 online organizing, 141–142 ‘‘Operation Demetrius,’’ 169 Opinion Research Business (ORB), 122 Organization for Economic-Development Cooperation Directorate (OECDDAC), 17

Index Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), 1 Othman, Raed, 222 Paez, Tubal, 132 Papua New Guinea (PNG), 251 ‘‘Parachute regiment,’’ 172 ‘‘paradigm shift,’’ 198 paradox of repression, 166, 174 Parks, Rosa, 340 participatory theatre, for conflict transformation, 226 peace, technorganic approaches to, 139–140 Peace Accords of 1996, 259, 263, 264, 268, 270, 271 Peace Action, Training and Research Institute of Romania (PATRIR), 20, 28n23 Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment (PCIA), 21, 28n20 Peace Army, 6, 202, 348 peace building, 217; broader range of, 17; collaborative field, 25; conflict intelligence, 20–21; fund, 24; government policies for, 18–19; growth of, 17; infrastructure, 19–20; intrinsic/streamlined, 26; methodologies of, 17–18; networking cooperation in, 24–25; rejection of war and violence, 26–27; training and professional development of, 22–24; twelve dynamics of, 15; warning and prevention, 22 peace building education, dimensions of, 111; breadth dimension, 114–115; depth dimension of, 113–114; extending paths of, 118–119; formal education, 115–117; informal education, 115–117; responsive instruction, 119–120; scope of, 119; theoretical markers, 111–113 ‘‘Peacebuilding Portal,’’ 27n9 peace declaration, 98–100 ‘‘peace law,’’ 197 ‘‘peace maneuvers,’’ 237 peace movements, 110; from 1800s to WWII, 55–56

387

Peace of Augsburg, 48 Peace Pilgrim, 342–343 Peace Research Movement, 345 peace workers, 340–351 Peale, Norman Vincent, 287 Pearl Harbor, 296 Penn, William, 49, 52, 196 ‘‘people power,’’ 340 Peoples’ Revolutionary Party, 306 Percy, Walker, 159 Perkins, John, 327 ‘‘perpetual peace’’ tradition, 196 personal security, 67 Philippines, 340 Pinochet, Augusto, 157 Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 126 ‘‘pleasing trauma,’’ 173 Pledge of Resistance, 231; beginning of, 232–233, 236–237; El Salvador Redux, 238–239; end of, 239–240; evaluation of, 240–242; Iran-Contra, 237–238; key phases of, 236; Major Contra Aid Battles, 237; organization of, 234–235; origins of, 233–234; participators in, 235–236; strategy, 234 pockets of peace,’’ 115 Poor People’s March, 247, 248 ‘‘pornography of death,’’ 289 positive disintegration, 290–291 ‘‘positive peace,’’ 46 ‘‘positive thinking,’’ 285 Postel, Sandra, 38 ‘‘postmodern’’ aesthetics, 96 Power Elite, The, 125 ‘‘prayer,’’ 281 press, 129–133 ‘‘prevailing paradigm,’’ 198 ‘‘Prince of Peace, The,’’ 297 ‘‘principle of humanity,’’ 55 ‘‘principles of the Maya cosmovision,’’ 260 prisoners of war, 174 propaganda: corporate, antidotes, 133–134; media, 126–129 Protestant Reformation, 49 psychotherapy, 288 public/private/partnerships (PPPs), 41

388 public/public/partnerships (PUPs), 41 public delivery and fair pricing, of water commons, 41 ‘‘public pledge signing,’’ 236 public relations (PR) industry, 134 public service announcements (PSAs), 220 Public Trust Doctrine, 43 ‘‘pure weapon,’’ 174 Putin, Vladimir, 78 PX (post exchange) system, 312 Quakers, 245 R2P principle: importance of, 71–72; official adoption of, 69–71; origin of, 67–68 Rabin, Yitzhak, 212 Ramaphosa, Cyril, 67 Ramos, Fidel, 67 Rankin, Jeannette, 153, 154, 162 Rapaport, Anatol, 345 Rawls, John, 77 Ray, Paul, 199 Reagan, Ronald, 157, 162, 210 ‘‘reality,’’ 99 ‘‘Reflecting on Peace Practice, The’’ project, 27n6 really simple syndication (RSS), 135 Reardon, Betty, 112 ‘‘refugee camp,’’ 98 Relatives’ Action Committee (RAC), 175 renaissance, 138; communicating in 3D, 141; Iranian Internet Revolution, 144–145; online organizing, 141–142; peace, technorganic approaches to, 139–140; personal transformation, 140–141; women’s movement, for peace and justice, 142–143 ‘‘repertoire of contention,’’ 57, 60n35 repression: paradox of, 166–167 ‘‘Republican interpretation,’’ 165 ‘‘Responding to Conflict,’’ 28n16 Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle, 60, 67 restorative justice, 10–11 Revere, Paul, 154

Index Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), 97 ‘‘revolution of roses,’’ 157 Rhein-gold, Howard, 135 Rice, Condoleezza, 66 Rich, Adrienne, 207 Right Livelihood Award, 344 ‘‘Rights Action,’’ 264 Right to water: in Nation-State Constitutions, 42 Rigoberta Menchu Tum Foundation, 268 Rivera, Diego, 301 Roberts, Les, 123 Robinson, Arthur Napoleon Raymond, 62 Rome Conference, 61 Rome Statute, 61 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 302 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 89, 138, 296 Rose, Richard, 173 Rosenblatt, Lionel, 217 Roszak, Theodore, 158 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 50, 196 Roy, Arundhati, 199 Rubin, Elizabeth, 63, 65 ‘‘rules of occupation,’’ 60n32 Rumsfeld, Donald, 81 Russian Doukhobors, 245 Ryakiye, Yvonne, 219 ‘‘sabotage effect,’’ 168 Sagan, Ginetta, 154 Sahara Desert, 40 Sahnoun, Mohamed, 67 Samatcha khon chon (Assembly of the Poor), 250 Sanchez, Oscar Arias, 62 Sands, Bobby, 175 San Jos
e de Apartad
o (SJA), 93–108; archipelago of conflicts, 95–97; la comunidad de paz de, 97–102 San Lucas Tolim
an, impunity in, 272 Saro-Wiwa, Ken, 349 sarson Satyagraha, 252 satyagraha, 165; end, 166–170; in northern Ireland, 170–173; repression, 166–167; return of, 174–176

Index Satyagraha, 246 Scaife, Richard Mellon, 126 Schell, Orville, 196 Schellenberger, Michael, 202 School of Youth for Social Services (SYSS), 344 Schultze, Friederich Sigmund, 299 Search for Common Ground, 226–230 Seeds of Peace (SOP), 180 Seescholz, Anne, 300 ‘‘self-questioning,’’ 294 ‘‘sense of Congress,’’ 66 ‘‘Servants of God,’’ 348 Shalev, Haifa, 188 Shalev, Netta, 187 Shanti Sena, 6, 202, 348 Shape of the Future, 223 Sharp, Gene, 154, 156, 157 ‘‘Sharpeville,’’ 167, 170–171 Sharpeville generation, 175 Sheehan, Cindy, 132 Sheila, 191 Shevardnadze, Eduard, 157 Shinawatra, Thaksin, 250 Shirky, Clay, 201 Shiva, Vandana, 36, 199 Shriver, Eunice, 153 Shriver, Sargent, 153, 159 SIDA, 229 Siebert, Hannes, 213 Sin, Jaime, 340 Sinn Fein, 166, 173, 176 Sinnot, Jim, 306 ‘‘sleeping’’ conflict, 168 slogans, 128 Slow Food Movement, 34 ‘‘smart bombs,’’ 128 Smartmobbing Democracy, 135 Smiley, Glenn, 301 Smithey, Lee, 166 ‘‘smoldering’’ conflict, 168 Snyder, Gary, 208 ‘‘social cleansing,’’ 96, 272 ‘‘social contract,’’ 49 ‘‘social media,’’ 89 Society for General Systems Research, 345 Solomon, Norman, 125

389

Sommaruga, Cornelio, 67 Soto, Hector, 132 ‘‘Soul-Force,’’ 233 sound bites, 128 South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, The, 12 sovereignty, 68 Sozaboy: Novel in Rotten English, A, 349 Special Working Group of the Crime of Aggression (SWGCA), 63 Standard, 126 ‘‘state of nature,’’ 49 ‘‘state of war,’’ 49 Steps toward Inner Peace, 342 Strategy of Generosity, 325, 326 Strauss, Andrew, 84 streamlined peace building, 26 Stroehlein, Andrew, 70 Studio Ijambo, 217 Sultan, Neda Agha, 145 ‘‘support transparent dialogue,’’ 99 Suu Kyi, Aung San, 346 Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), 227 Talking Drum Studio, 221 Al-Tamimi, Manal, 190 Tamuz, Jasmine, 192 ‘‘tax burden,’’ 128 Taylor, Bill, 180, 181, 184 Taylor, Richard K., 233 Technorganic approaches to peace, 140 telecommunications, 139 Terstevens, Didier, 306 testimonio, 267–268 Thakur, Ramesh, 67 Theodor, Carl, 342 theoretical markers, 111–113 ‘‘think tanks,’’ 126 Thoreau, Henry David, 246 ‘‘thought waves,’’ 278 3D: communicating in, 141 Thurmond, Strom, 297 Tikkun Magazine, 324 Tilly, Charles, 57 Toffolo, Cris, 197 ‘‘together into the abyss,’’ 168 Tolstoy, Leo, 154, 246

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transnational corporations (TNCs), 251 truth, 99, 246 Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, 13 Truth Commission for the United States, 12 truth commissions, 12–13 truth emergency, 123–125 Truth Emergency conference, 134 Truth Emergency Movement, 130, 134 ‘‘Truth-Force,’’ 233, 246 Tutu, Desmond, 153, 162, 253 Twentieth century: land conflicts, nonviolent resistance in, 246–248 Ulster Defence Association (UDA), 165 Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), 168 Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), 165 Umkhonto we Sizwe, 172 Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping (UCP), 197 Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 341 Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (USSR), 111, 210 United Church of Christ, 180 United Fruit Company, 263 United Nations, 7, 8; in Africa, 63; Emergency Peace Force, 71; General Assembly, 78; High Commission for Refugees, 227 United Nations Association of the United States (UNA–USA), 9 United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund, 302 United Nations Civilian Police Force (UNCIVPOL), 10 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, 11 United Nations Education, Science, and Culture Organization (UNESCO), 8, 9 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 6, 302 United Nations Institute of Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), 9 United Nations Research Institute on Social Development (UNRISD), 9 United Nations System, 84

United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), 131 United States, and Iran relations, 224–225 U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), 132, 217 U.S. Fellowship of Reconciliation, 301 U.S. Institute for Peace (USIP), 18 U.S.-Soviet Task Force, 211 United States Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 13 ‘‘unity in diversity,’’ 120 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), 30, 56, 302 University of Surrey in Great Britain, 34 UN Mission in the Congo (MONUC), 65 Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), 350 UN Security Council (UNSC), 56 Upanishads, 275, 280 upstanders, 148–150; education, 151–152; legacy of, 150–151 utopianism, 73, 74 Veil, Simone, 62 Venezuela, media in, 130–132 ‘‘victory shawls,’’ 305 Vietnamese Buddhism, 344 Vietnam War, 212, 336 violence responses, 102–105; practices of, 100–102 ‘‘violentology,’’ 95 Voluntary Standards for Peace Education, 111 von Suttner, Arthur Gundaccar Freiherr, 341 von Suttner, Baroness, 341 vritti, 278 ‘‘war against terrorism,’’ 319 Warner, Douglas, 125 war on drugs, 96 war on terror, 96, 128, 140n16 Washington Times, 126 water commons, 29, 36–37; community control, 39; loss of reverence for, 37–38; principles of, 36–43; public

Index delivery and fair pricing of, 41; Public Trust Doctrine, 43; right to water, 42; water conservation, 38; water justice, 40–41; water sovereignty, 40; watersheds as Commons, 38–39 water justice, 40–41 Waterside, 169 water sovereignty, 40 water towers, 39 ‘‘Way of Nonviolence, The,’’ 304 weapons of mass destruction (WMD), 129 ‘‘weapons of the spirit,’’ 157 Web 1.0, 139 Web 2.0, 139 Weekly Standard, 126 ‘‘welfare cheaters,’’ 128 Wells, Leah, 163 West, Harry, 175 Westphalian citizenship, 80 Wiener, Norbert, 290 Wilberforce, William, 53 wild law, 43 William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, 215 Williams, Jody, 70 Wilson, Harold, 169 Wink, Walter, 303 ‘‘win-lose’’ attitudes, 168

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Winstanley, Gerrard, 245 Witt, Gallo Mora, 131 Wolfensohn, John, 253 Women’s Peace Center, Burundi, 219–220 Woolman, John, 154, 200 Working with Killers project, 219 World Bank, 40, 252, 330 World Court, 60 World Cultural Development Decade, 6 World Economic Forum (WEF), 79, 81 World Federalist Movement-Institute for Global Policy (WFM-IGP), 70 world government, 75 World Health Organization, 34, 302 World Press Freedom Day, 132 World Social Forum (WSF), 79, 82 World Trade Organization, 34, 79, 86 wrestling diplomacy, 225 Wright, Reverend, 144 yatra, 248 Yi-Yegi, Alphonse, 229 Yunus, Muhammad, 153 Zelizer, Craig, 25 Zionist youth movement, 189 Zunes, Stephen, 172

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ABOUT THE EDITORS CONTRIBUTORS

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Co-editor Marc Pilisuk got his PhD in clinical and social psychology from the University of Michigan in 1961 and went on to teach, research, and write at several colleges, ending up at the University of California and Saybrook University. His various departmental affiliations, psychology, nursing, administrative sciences, social welfare, public health, community mental health, human and community development, city and regional planning, peace and conflict studies, and human sciences, convinced him that academic disciplines could be blinders and should be crossed. He was a founder of the first Teach-in on a University Campus (Michigan) and the Psychologists for Social Responsibility, helped start SANE (now Peace Action), and is a past president of the Society for the Study of Peace Conflict and Violence. He has received several lifetime contribution awards for work for peace. Marc’s books cover topics of underlying social issues, poverty, international conflict, and the nature of human interdependence. His most recent, Who Benefits from Global Violence and War, uncovered information that was sufficiently shocking to motivate this new undertaking on Peace Movements Worldwide. Co-editor Michael N. Nagler was sensitized to issues of peace and justice (the usual term is ‘‘radicalized’’) through folk music and various influences

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About the Editors and Contributors

by the time he left his New York birthplace. After attending Cornell University and finishing his BA at New York University, he arrived in Berkeley, CA, in 1960, in time to finish a PhD in Comparative Literature before the advent of the Free Speech Movement. The successes and failures of that movement broadened his outlook such that after meeting a meditation teacher, Eknath Easwaran, late in 1966, he launched a parallel career—inward. Nonviolence, and Gandhi in particular, became a way to carve out a meaningful niche for himself within academia. At Berkeley, he went on to found the Peace and Conflict Studies Program (PACS; now probably the largest in terms of student majors in the United States) and off campus co-founded the Metta Center for Nonviolence (www.mettacenter.org). He also became chair of Peaceworkers (www.peaceworkers.org) and eventually co-chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Association (www.peacejusticestudies.org). He stopped teaching at the university in 2007 to devote his time to Metta and the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation. A frequent speaker on nonviolence and related themes around the world, his most recent recognition is the Jamnalal Bajaj International Award for Promoting Gandhian Values Outside India. His books include The Upanishads (with Eknath Easwaran, 1987), Our Spiritual Crisis (2004), and The Search for a Nonviolent Future, which won a 2002 American Book Award and has been translated into six languages, most recently Arabic. Maude Barlow is the National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians and Senior Advisor on Water to the President of the United Nations General Assembly. She also chairs the board of Washington-based Food and Water Watch and is a Counselor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council. Maude is the recipient of eight honorary doctorates as well as many awards, including the 2005 Right Livelihood Award (known as the ‘‘Alternative Nobel’’) and the 2008 Canadian Environment Award. She is also the best-selling author or co-author of 16 books, including the recently released Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and The Coming Battle for the Right to Water. Marcel M. Baumann is Lecturer at the Department of Political Science, University of Freiburg, and Senior Researcher at the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute for Socio-Cultural Research in Freiburg. His scholarly work is concerned with peace processes and conflict transformation and the topic of political violence. Dr. Baumann has made several research trips to Northern Ireland, South Africa, Macedonia, and Lebanon. In 2004 he was a Visiting Scholar at the University of California at Berkeley.

About the Editors and Contributors

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Laura Bernstein has a BA from Barnard College and an MA from the University of Chicago. She completed post-graduate studies at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis and worked as a child psychotherapist for 10 years. Subsequently, she engaged in rabbinical studies at the Hebrew Seminary of the Deaf (Skokie, Illinois). She is the leader and composer of interfaith chants, the author of poetry and articles on spirituality, and the co-author (with Ron Miller) of Healing the Jewish-Christian Rift. She has taught at Common Ground (an interfaith study center in Deerfield, Illinois), where she currently facilitates an ongoing meditation group. For the past three years, she has been an enthusiastic board member of Hands of Peace. Elise Boulding until her death in 2010 was Professor Emerita of sociology at Dartmouth College. She was born in Oslo, Norway, and earned a PhD at the University of Michigan. A former member of the International Jury of UNESCO (1981 to 1987), she led the move to establish the U.S. Peace Institute in 1984. She was also a founder of the International Peace Research Association and a distinguished member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Dr. Boulding received numerous honors for her achievements as a scholar and activist in the areas of peace and world order, democracy, and women in society. In 1973, she received the Douglass College Distinguished Achievement Award. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, and authored 19 books and hundreds of chapters and articles. Kai Brand-Jacobsen is a co-founder and Director of the Peace Action, Training, and Research Institute of Romania (PATRIR). He is an expert in mediation; early warning and comprehensive prevention; and reconciliation after violence, post-war recovery, and systemic peace building. He consults widely for governments, foreign ministries, and international and national organizations including the UN and the All Party Parliamentary Working Group (APPG) on Conflict Issues of the British Parliament. His work contributes to governmental, inter-governmental, and nongovernmental organization (NGO) policies and capacities for peace building, humanitarian aid, international development cooperation, and deployment of civil peace services. In cooperation with the International Peace and Development Training Center, Kai works at the invitation of governments, UN agencies, and organizations that have requested training support to design specialized programs customized to meet their specific needs. He has provided more than 260 training programs in 36 countries and has been invited to present more than 600 public talks in 28 countries. From

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About the Editors and Contributors

2005 to 2007 he served on the International Governing Council of Nonviolent Peaceforce and in 2007 became a member of the Steering Committee of the European Network of Civil Peace Services. Brand-Jacobsen has taught and lectured at universities across Europe, North America, Latin America, and Asia. He’s co-author, with Johan Galtung and Carl Jacobsen, of Searching for Peace: The Road to TRANSCEND (2000 and 2002). He is on the executive board of the Journal of Peace and Development and an editor of Oxford University Press’s Peace Encyclopedia. Brand-Jacobsen has worked in Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, southern Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Aceh-Indonesia, Russia, Moldova, South Eastern Europe, Mexico, Colombia, Somalia, North America, and the Middle East. Svetlana Broz, MD, has been a physician since 1992 and volunteered as a cardiologist at the outbreak of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She has continued to work on peace building in the Balkans. In January 1993, she began interviewing for the book Good People in an Evil Time (2003). She is the founder and director of NGO Gariwo Sarajevo, president of the Sarajevo city government’s Steering Committee for the Garden of the Righteous, honorary president of European Movement in Bosnia and Herzegovina, member of the editorial board of the magazine Spirit of Bosnia, adviser at the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University and honorary member of the board of Eastern European Service Agency (EESA), San Jose, California. She served as International Advisor of Conflict Management Group, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Center for Macro Projects and Diplomacy, Roger Williams University, Rhode Island. She is the author of two books and many papers and essays, and editor of 10 books about peace building, civil courage, and nonviolence. As a professional lecturer, she delivered more than 1,000 public lectures and media events at over 70 U.S. and European universities. Ken Butigan, PhD, is a member of the adjunct faculty at DePaul University, Chicago, where he teaches in the Peace, Justice and Conflict Resolution Program, and Loyola University, Chicago. He has published five books, including Pilgrimage through a Burning World: Spiritual Practice and Nonviolent Protest at the Nevada Test Site (2003). Since the early 1980s he has been an organizer with a variety of social movements, including those working for a nuclear-free future, freedom for East Timor, and an end to homelessness. From 1987 to 1990 he served as the national coordinator of the Pledge of Resistance, a network of 100,000 people in 400 local groups that organized coordinated nonviolent action for peace in Central America.

About the Editors and Contributors

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In 2006, he was a founder of the Declaration of Peace, a grassroots campaign working for a just and lasting peace in Iraq. Since 1990 Dr. Butigan has been on the staff of Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service, a nonprofit organization promoting nonviolent change in the United States and around the world through education, resources, and action. He created the training project From Violence to Wholeness and collaborated in the development of Engage: Exploring Nonviolent Living, Pace e Bene’s comprehensive nonviolence education program. Dr. Butigan was the national coordinator of the Pledge of Resistance from 1987 to 1990. He is currently an adjunct professor at DePaul University and Loyola University, Chicago and on the staff of Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service. Candice C. Carter, PhD, is an associate professor at the University of North Florida. Her research and scholarship topics include conflict transformation, peace policy, multicultural education, history and social studies instruction, citizenship education, peace education, peace through arts, peace literature, and teacher preparation. She serves in many international and national peace, education, and policy organizations, as well as local ones such as the Florida Center for Public and International Policy. Professor Carter designs and facilitates peace education programs in all levels of education, including the interdisciplinary Conflict Transformation Program at the University of North Florida. Dr. Carter’s publications in journals and books include a multitude of topics related to peace and human relations. Her book Conflict Resolution and Peace Education: Transformations across Disciplines discusses cases in multiple fields as well as adult education. The books she has co-edited include Chicken Soup for the Soul: Stories for a Better World (http://chickensoup.peacestories.info) and Peace Philosophy in Action, which present peace actions in many different contexts of the world. Dr. Carter edits the Journal of Stellar Peacemaking (www.jsp.st) that incorporates nonfiction, research, and the arts to illustrate peace processes, and she also provides the Peacemaker Site (www.peacemaker.st) with many peace building resources. Rev. Richard L. Deats, PhD, served as executive director and editor of Fellowship magazine at the Fellowship of Reconciliation, where he worked from 1972 to mid-2005. A native of Texas, he taught social ethics in the Philippines at Union Theological Seminary from 1959 to 1972. Long active in the fields of civil rights and peace, he has lectured and led workshops on nonviolence in many countries. He is author of a number of books, including biographies of Martin Luther King Jr., Hildegard Goss-Mayr, and Mahatma Gandhi; he also edited a volume of Muriel Lester’s

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About the Editors and Contributors

writings and authored a book of humor. He went to Iraq in 2000 with an interfaith delegation and co-led a Friendship Delegation to Iran in May 2006. He taught nonviolence in Burma in 2007 He was a member of the Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Holiday Commission through which the Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday was established. In 2009 he was named to the Rockland Hall of Fame for Human Rights and Civil Rights and Distinguished Alumnus of the Boston University School of Theology. Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of international law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in global and international studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is chair of the board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, on the editorial board of The Nation, and an honorary editor of American Journal of International Law. His most recent books are The Costs of War: International Law, the UN, and World Order after Iraq (2008) and Achieving Human Rights (2009). He is currently serving as Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories for the UN Human Rights Council. Ronald J. Glossop, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of philosophical studies at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville (SIUE). His PhD in philosophy is from Washington University-St. Louis and his BA (summa cum laude) is from Carthage College. He has also taught at Boise State University (Idaho) and Portland State University (Oregon). He is the author of three books: Philosophy: An Introduction to Its Problems and Vocabulary (Dell, 1974); Confronting War: An Examination of Humanity’s Most Pressing Problem (McFarland, 1983, 4th ed. 2001); and World Federation? A Critical Analysis of Federal World Government (McFarland, 1993; Esperanto translation Monda Federacio? by J. Rapley, 2001). Over 60 of his articles have been published in scholarly publications. He has given lectures in over 10 countries in English and in Esperanto. He is Chair of the St. Louis chapter of Citizens for Global Solutions and a member of its national board of directors and its Political Action Committee. He is president of the American Association of Teachers of Esperanto and Director of the Esperanto organization ‘‘Children around the World.’’ Dr. Glossop is an honorary member of Rotary International and a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi. Paul Hawken is an author of seven books including The Next Economy (1983), Growing a Business (1987), The Ecology of Commerce (1993) and Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (co-authored with Amory Lovins, 1999). His most recent book, Blessed Unrest: How the

About the Editors and Contributors

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Largest Movement in the World Came into Being, and Why No One Saw It Coming (2007) is the culmination of over a decade of research exploring humanity’s extraordinary capacity to address the social and environmental issues of our time. He is the executive director of the Natural Capital Institute, chief executive officer of the Pax Engineering Group, co-founder of Highwater Global Fund, and chairman of Biomimicry Ventures Group. He has served on the board of several environmental organizations including Point Foundation (publisher of the Whole Earth Catalogs), Center for Plant Conservation, Conservation International, Trust for Public Land, and National Audubon Society. Mickey S. Huff is an associate professor of history at Diablo Valley College and associate director of the Media Freedom Foundation and Project Censored (projectcensored.org), which was the recipient of the 2008 PEN Oakland National Literary Censorship Award. He is Media Freedom International’s College and University Affiliates Coordinator, working in conjunction with Project Censored, a former adjunct lecturer in sociology at Sonoma State University, and the previous co-director of the alternative public opinion research agency Retropoll (retropoll.org), in Berkeley, California. Huff has been interviewed by many radio stations and news sources throughout the country and has been published on numerous media and news Web sites and even a few corporate media outlets (that he routinely critiques). He has co-organized and presented at numerous national academic conferences on media and recent historical events on truth emergency and media reform issues in 2008 (see truthemergency.us). He has also given many public addresses at colleges, community halls, and bookstores across the United States on media censorship and American history. Huff was the host of the Modern Media Censorship Lecture Series at Sonoma State University (fall 2008). In spring 2009, he was the Visiting Scholar for the Academic Library at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, where he sat on a panel and gave a keynote address on media censorship and democracy. His recent publications include co-authoring ‘‘Media Reform Meets Truth Emergency’’ and ‘‘Deconstructing Deceit: 9/11, the Media, and Myth Information’’ in Censored 2009 (Seven Stories Press); he wrote and edited Censored 2010 with Dr. Peter Phillips and is working on several articles on the truth emergency, post-9/11 propaganda studies, and collective memory. When he has time, he blogs at mythinfo.blogspot.com and dailycensored.com. Nikolas Larrow-Roberts grew up in the 1990’s punk scene surrounding Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He blindly followed his high school guidance

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About the Editors and Contributors

counselor’s advice to pursue military service rather than higher education. That path led to a transformation in consciousness and the end of his military record. After a few years in the political punk band Despite Best Intentions, he embarked on a journey to become an educator. Nik is pursuing his PhD at Saybrook University and provides faculty professional development at California University (Pennsylvania), where he also serves as an interviewer for the Veterans Oral Histories Project. Currently an adjunct instructor, Nik teaches courses in sociology, criminal justice, and government. Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun magazine: a Jewish and interfaith critique of politics, culture, and society (Web edition at www.tikkun .org) and chair of the interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives (www .spiritualprogressives.org). He is the author of 11 books including the 1994 national best-seller Jewish Renewal: A Path of Healing and Transformation; a book co-written with Cornel West, Jews and Blacks: Let the Healing Begin; The Politics of Meaning: Restoring Hope and Possibility in an Age of Cynicism; Surplus Powerlessness: The Psychodynamics of Everyday Life and the Psychology of Individual and Social Transformation; Spirit Matters: Global Healing and the Wisdom of the Soul; Healing Israel/Palestine; A Path to Peace and Reconciliation; and the 2006 national best-seller The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right. He welcomes feedback at [email protected]. Elizabeth Lozano, PhD, is an associate professor in the School of Communication at Loyola University, Chicago, and the Director of the Latin American Studies Program at that institution. She came to the United States in 1987 as a Fulbright scholar and received her PhD in philosophy of communication from Ohio University. Dr. Lozano’s areas of expertise are media studies and cultural studies. Her research has focused on the textual analysis of national and international television systems; and the ethnographic study of public comportment in urban settings. Accordingly, Lozano’s academic courses range from intercultural communication to new Latin American cinema and global feminisms. From the start of her experience as an ‘‘international’’ researcher in the United States, Lozano has been equally intrigued by pop culture as well as by the quotidian ways in which we construct gender and ethnic identity through communication. In recent years that curiosity has turned into a passion for uncovering the ways in which we collectively ‘‘practice violence’’ or alternatively create ways of nonviolent conflict resolution. Specifically, Lozano is currently studying the ways in which Colombian communities struggle to resist war

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by means other than war, and the possible relationship between nonviolent resistance and community-enhancing communication practices. Joanna Macy, PhD, is an eco-philosopher and scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. She is also a leading voice in movements for peace, justice, and a safe environment. Interweaving her scholarship and four decades of activism, she has created both a groundbreaking theoretical framework for a new paradigm of personal and social change, and a powerful workshop methodology for its application. Her wide-ranging work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness, and the fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and contemporary science. Over the past 30 years many thousands of people around the world have participated in Joanna’s workshops and trainings, while her methods have been adopted and adapted yet more widely in classrooms, churches, and grassroots organizing. Her work helps people transform despair and apathy in the face of overwhelming social and ecological crises into constructive, collaborative action. It brings a new way of seeing the world, as our larger living body, freeing us from the assumptions and attitudes that now threaten the continuity of life on Earth. Her books include Coming Back to Life; Widening Circles, and World as Lover, World as Self. John Marks is president and founder of Search for Common Ground, a nonprofit conflict resolution organization with offices in 18 countries. He also founded and heads Common Ground Productions and has produced or executive-produced numerous TV series around the world. With his wife, Susan Collin Marks, he is a Skoll Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship, and, additionally, he is an Ashoka Senior Fellow. A best-selling, award-winning author, he has been a U.S. Foreign Service Officer, Executive Assistant to the late U.S. Senator Clifford Case, a Fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School. Susan Collin Marks is the senior vice president of Search for Common Ground. She is a South African who served as a peacemaker and peace builder during South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy. See her book, Watching the Wind: Conflict Resolution during South Africa’s Transition to Democracy (U.S. Institute of Peace, Washington, DC, 2000.) She serves on numerous boards, including the Advisory Council of the Woodrow Wilson International Center’s Project on Africa, and the Abraham Path Initiative. She is the founding editor of Track Two, a quarterly publication on community and political conflict resolution. She was portrayed

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About the Editors and Contributors

in the PBS documentary Women on the Frontlines. In 2006, she launched the Leadership Wisdom Initiative to offer leadership development and oneon-one support and coaching to political, institutional, and civil society leaders. Honors include a Jennings Randolph Peace Fellowship (1994 to 1995) at the United States Institute for Peace, the Institute of Noetic Sciences’ Creative Altruism award in 2005, and a Skoll Fellowship for Social Entrepreneurship in 2006. She speaks, teaches, coaches, mentors, writes, facilitates, and supports peace processes and conflict resolution programs internationally. Colman McCarthy entered his first career as a columnist for The Washington Post in 1969, a position that he held until 1997, being one of the few journalists in the nation to write on nonviolence, pacifism, and peace. He also began teaching nonviolence and peace in 1982, and now in his early seventies continues to teach tirelessly in Washington, D.C., metro area schools and colleges. In 1985 he founded the Center for Teaching Peace, a nonprofit that primarily assists educational institutions seeking to develop peace studies programs, while still writing regularly for the National Catholic Reporter. He has received many honorary degrees and awards and is the author of I’d Rather Teach Peace, several other books, and countless articles expressing his views as an ethical vegetarian, anarchist, and pacifist, and has become famous for one-liners, like ‘‘Unless we teach our children peace, someone will teach them violence,’’ and ‘‘Peace is the result of love, and if love were easy we’d all be good at it.’’ John Perkins, as chief economist at a major international consulting firm, advised the World Bank, United Nations, International Monetary Fund (IMF), U.S. Treasury Department, Fortune 500 corporations, and countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. He worked directly with heads of state and chief executive officers of major companies. His latest book, Hoodwinked (2009), is a blueprint for a new form of global economics. The solutions are not ‘‘return to normal’’ ones. Instead, Perkins challenges us to soar to new heights, away from predatory capitalism and into an era more transformative than the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. Hoodwinked details specific steps each of us can take to create a sustainable, just, and peaceful world. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, which spent nearly a year and a half on the New York Times best-seller lists and has been published in more than 30 languages, is a startling expos
e of international corruption. The Secret History of the American Empire, also a New York Times best-seller, details the clandestine operations that created the world’s first truly global empire. John is founder

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and board member of Dream Change and The Pachamama Alliance, nonprofit organizations devoted to establishing a world our children will want to inherit; has lectured at universities on four continents; and is the author of books on indigenous cultures and transformation, including Shapeshifting, The World Is as You Dream It, Psychonavigation, Spirit of the Shuar, and The Stress-Free Habit. Peter Phillips, PhD, is professor of sociology at Sonoma State University and director of Project Censored. He has published 13 editions of Censored: Media Democracy in Action (Seven Stories Press). Also from Seven Stories Press are Impeach the President: The Case against Bush and Cheney (2006) and Project Censored Guide to Independent Media and Activism (2003). In 2009, Phillips received the Dallas Smythe Award from the Union for Democratic Communications. Phillips writes op-ed pieces for independent media nationwide and has published articles in dozens of publications, newspapers, and Web sites. He frequently speaks on media censorship and various socio-political issues on radio and TV talk shows. Phillips has completed several investigative research studies that are available at Projectcensored.org. Phillips earned a BA degree in social science from Santa Clara University and an MA degree in social science from California State University at Sacramento. He earned a second MA in sociology and a PhD in sociology. His doctoral dissertation was entitled ‘‘A Relative Advantage: Sociology of the San Francisco Bohemian Club.’’ Phillips is a fifth-generation Californian, who grew up on a family-owned farm west of the Central Valley town of Lodi. Jennifer Achord Rountree, PhD, is a recent graduate of Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center in San Francisco. Her doctoral research focused on the participatory development project of a Maya community in San Lucas Tolim
an, Guatemala. With Dr. Marc Pilisuk, she has co-authored a number of articles and assisted in the writing and research of Who Benefits from Global Violence: Uncovering a Destructive System (2008). Lena Slachmuijlder is the Director of Search for Common Ground (SFCG) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). A graduate of Stanford University, she has worked and lived in Africa for the last 20 years as a journalist, human rights defender, media producer, performing artist, and conflict transformation trainer. As director of SFCG’s largest program, Lena heads a staff of 75 people in six offices around the country. SFCG in DRC is a multidisciplinary conflict transformation program, involving radio and television production; training; mobile cinema to

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About the Editors and Contributors

combat sexual violence; participatory theater; dialogue between youth, civil society, and elected leaders; work with the Congolese army to respect human rights; and joint activities to renew relationships broken by war and conflict. Under Lena’s leadership, SFCG programs in Burundi and the DRC have won numerous international awards, including the Ashoka Changemakers Award for innovative on the ground approaches to conflict, and the UNICEF Children’s Voices award for children-produced media. She was an international fellow at the Brandeis University Alan B. Slifka Program in Intercommunal Coexistence, ‘‘Recasting Reconciliation through Arts and Culture.’’ Lena was born in Katonah, New York, of American-Belgian parents. Deva Temple is co-founder and director of MUSE: Make Us a Sustainable Earth!, a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating a more sustainable Earth by empowering the public through educational programs that integrate the arts and sciences. She also serves as a researcher and assistant editor of Peace & Policy with the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research. She has worked with several other nonprofits as an organizational development and sustainability consultant. She holds an MA in global leadership and sustainable development, and a graduate certificate in environmental policy, from Hawaii Pacific University, and a BA in psychology from Lewis and Clark College. Her master’s thesis focused on the development of values and beliefs among sustainability leaders. Her interests lie in the areas of ethical transformation, feminism, philosophy, systems science, and sustainable development. Claude AnShin Thomas went to Vietnam at the age of 18, where he received numerous awards and decorations, including 27 Air Medals, a Distinguished Flying Cross, and the Purple Heart. Today he is a monk in the Soto Zen tradition and an active peace maker, speaker, and Zen teacher worldwide. He is also the founder of the Zaltho Foundation, a nonprofit organization that promotes peace and nonviolence. Rev. Jos
e M. Tirado is a poet, priest, and writer completing a PhD in psychology from Saybrook University. His poetry and articles have appeared in such places as Cyrano’s Online Showcase, CounterPunch, The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, Dissident Voice, and Gurdjieff Internet Guide. His research interests include politics, Eastern mysticism, Western esotericism, and comparative religious studies. He currently lives in Iceland.

About the Editors and Contributors

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Cris Toffolo, PhD, has been professor and chair of the Justice Studies Department at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago since 2008. Prior to that, she was an associate professor of political science and director of the Justice and Peace Studies Program at the University of St. Thomas (UST) in Minnesota. Her publications include The Arab League (Chelsea House, 2007), Emancipating Cultural Pluralism (SUNY Press, 2003), and numerous articles. Dr. Toffolo developed, evaluated, and taught study-abroad programs in Guatemala, Ghana, Bangladesh, and Northern Ireland. In 1997 she received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to work on ethnicity at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. While on sabbatical in South Africa (2005 to 2006) she was a senior researcher at CARRAS, a human rights nongovernmental organization, for which she conducted research on anti-racism training programs and economic policy. She has won UST’s Students of Color Ally Award three times for her work to combat racism, which included founding Teaching Against Racism, a faculty group that explored how to address race issues in the curriculum. Twice she received a UST Bush grant, to work on service learning and inquiry-based education. Other service includes membership on the executive board of the national Peace and Justice Studies Association, and acting as board chair of Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs (HECUA). Since 1991 she has been Amnesty International’s Pakistan Country Specialist and has provided court testimony in various immigration cases. She received a PhD and MA from Notre Dame; an MA from George Washington University; and a BS from Alma College, cum laude.

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ABOUT

SERIES EDITOR A D V I S O R Y B OA R D THE

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SERIES EDITOR Chris E. Stout, PsyD, MBA, is a licensed clinical psychologist and is a Clinical Full Professor at the University of Illinois College of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry. He served as an NGO Special Representative to the United Nations. He was appointed to the World Economic Forum’s Global Leaders of Tomorrow and he has served as an Invited Faculty at the Annual Meeting in Davos. He is the Founding Director of the Center for Global Initiatives. Stout is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, former President of the Illinois Psychological Association, and a Distinguished Practitioner in the National Academies of Practice. Stout has published or presented over 300 papers and 30 books and manuals on various topics in psychology. His works have been translated into six languages. He has lectured across the nation and internationally in 19 countries and has, visited 6 continents and almost 70 countries. He was noted as being ‘‘one of the most frequently cited psychologists in the scientific literature’’ in a study by Hartwick College. He is the recipient of the American Psychological Association’s International Humanitarian Award.

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About the Series Editor and Advisory Board

ADVISORY BOARD Bruce Bonecutter, PhD, is Director of Behavioral Services at the Elgin Community Mental Health Center, the Illinois Department of Human Services state hospital serving adults in greater Chicago. He is also a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. A clinical psychologist specializing in health, consulting, and forensic psychology, Bonecutter is also a longtime member of the American Psychological Association Taskforce on Children and the Family. He is a member of organizations including the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, International, the Alliance for the Mentally Ill, and the Mental Health Association of Illinois. Joseph Flaherty, MD, is Chief of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois Hospital, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois College (UIC) of Medicine and a Professor of Community Health Science at the UIC College of Public Health. He is a Founding Member of the Society for the Study of Culture and Psychiatry. Dr. Flaherty has been a consultant to the World Health Organization, the National Institute of Mental Health, and also the Falk Institute in Jerusalem. He is the former Director of Undergraduate Education and Graduate Education in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois. Dr. Flaherty has also been Staff Psychiatrist and Chief of Psychiatry at Veterans Administration West Side Hospital in Chicago. Michael Horowitz, PhD, is President and Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, one of the nation’s leading not-for-profit graduate schools of psychology. Earlier, he served as Dean and Professor of the Arizona School of Professional Psychology. A clinical psychologist practicing independently since 1987, his work has focused on psychoanalysis, intensive individual therapy, and couples therapy. He has provided Disaster Mental Health Services to the American Red Cross. Horowitz’s special interests include the study of fatherhood. Sheldon I. Miller, MD, is a Professor of Psychiatry at Northwestern University, and Director of the Stone Institute of Psychiatry at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. He is also Director of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, Director of the American Board of Emergency Medicine, and Director of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Dr. Miller is also an Examiner for the American Board of Psychiatry and

About the Series Editor and Advisory Board

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Neurology. He is Founding Editor of the American Journal of Addictions, and Founding Chairman of the American Psychiatric Association’s Committee on Alcoholism. Dr. Miller has also been a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Public Health Service, serving as psychiatric consultant to the Navajo Area Indian Health Service at Window Rock, Arizona. He is a member and Past President of the Executive Committee for the American Academy of Psychiatrists in Alcoholism and Addictions. Dennis P. Morrison, PhD, is Chief Executive Officer at the Center for Behavioral Health in Indiana, the first behavioral health company ever to win the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) Codman Award for excellence in the use of outcomes management to achieve health care quality improvement. He is President of the Board of Directors for the Community Healthcare Foundation in Bloomington, and has been a member of the Board of Directors for the American College of Sports Psychology. He has served as a consultant to agencies including the Ohio Department of Mental Health, Tennessee Association of Mental Health Organizations, Oklahoma Psychological Association, the North Carolina Council of Community Mental Health Centers, and the National Center for Heath Promotion in Michigan. Morrison served across 10 years as a Medical Service Corp Officer in the U.S. Navy. William H. Reid, MD, is a clinical and forensic psychiatrist, and consultant to attorneys and courts throughout the United States. He is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Health Science Center. Dr. Miller is also an Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at Texas A&M College of Medicine and Texas Tech University School of Medicine, as well as a Clinical Faculty member at the Austin Psychiatry Residency Program. He is Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board and Medical Advisor to the Texas Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association, as well as an Examiner for the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He has served as President of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, as Chairman of the Research Section for an International Conference on the Psychiatric Aspects of Terrorism, and as Medical Director for the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation. Dr. Reid earned an Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. He has been cited on the Best Doctors in America listing since 1998.

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ABOUT

THE

SERIES

THE PRAEGER SERIES IN CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOLOGY In this series, experts from various disciplines peer through the lens of psychology, telling us answers they see for questions of human behavior. Their topics may range from humanity’s psychological ills—addictions, abuse, suicide, murder, and terrorism among them—to works focused on positive subjects, including intelligence, creativity, athleticism, and resilience. Regardless of the topic, the goal of this series remains constant—to offer innovative ideas, provocative considerations, and useful beginnings to better understand human behavior. Series Editor Chris E. Stout, Psy.D., MBA Northwestern University Medical School Illinois Chief of Psychological Services Advisory Board Bruce E. Bonecutter, Ph.D. University of Illinois at Chicago Director, Behavioral Services, Elgin Community Mental Health Center

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About the Series

Joseph A. Flaherty, M.D. University of Illinois College of Medicine and College of Public Health Chief of Psychiatry, University of Illinois Hospital Michael Horowitz, Ph.D. Chicago School of Professional Psychology President, Chicago School of Professional Psychology Sheldon I. Miller, M.D. Northwestern University Director, Stone Institute of Psychiatry, Northwestern Memorial Hospital Dennis P. Morrison, Ph.D. Chief Executive Officer, Center for Behavioral Health, Indiana President, Board of Directors, Community Healthcare Foundation, Indiana William H. Reid, M.D. University of Texas Health Sciences Center Chair, Scientific Advisory Board, Texas Depressive and Manic Depressive Association