The US Institute of Peace: A Critical History 9781626377509

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The US Institute of Peace

THE US INSTITUTE OF PEACE A Critical History

Michael D. English

FIRSTFORUM PRESS A D I V I S I O N O F L Y N N E R I E N N E R P U B L I S H E R S , I N C. • B O U L D E R & L O N D O N

Published in the United States of America in 2018 by FirstForumPress A division of Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.firstforumpress.com

and in the United Kingdom by FirstForumPress A division of Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. Gray’s Inn House, 127 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1 5DB

© 2018 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-1-62637-730-1 (hc. : alk paper)

British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992.

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Contents Acknowledgments

1 The US Institute of Peace in Crisis

2 Locating Peace in Colonial America 3 Early Plans for a Peace Office

4 5 6 7 8

Congress and Peace Legislation During the Cold War The Campaign for a National Peace Academy The Turbulent Beginnings of the US Institute of Peace New Wars, New Directions The Continuing Debate

Bibliography Index About the Book

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1 13 45 73 107 133 161 187

195 203 211

Acknowledgments

A supreme debt of gratitude is owed to Richard Rubenstein, whose wisdom, encouragement, and guidance were instrumental in the production of this book. I could not ask for a better mentor and friend during this process. Additional thanks are due to Leslie Dwyer and Jessica Srikantia; both provided support and valuable feedback on aspects of this research. My colleagues Derek Sweetman, Amanda Guidero, and Alexandra Schaerrer-Cumming suffered numerous drafts of my manuscript, and their astute criticism always inspired me to keep at it. George Mason University played an integral role in this project. First, University Libraries Special Collections and Archives provided me with assistance and access to the collected papers of James H. Laue. Second, the university’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution is the location from which the project emerged. I am indebted to the students, staff, and faculty members with whom I have had the privilege to work, teach, and learn from over the past eight years. Particular thanks are due to Dean Kevin Avruch and Professors Susan Hirsch, Sara Cobb, Agnieszka Paczynska, Karina Korostelina, and Thomas Flores for their insights and encouragement on various aspects of the project. Large portions of my manuscript were initially drafted during my residence in Malta. Dr. Stephen Calleya and Dr. Omar Grech of the University of Malta’s Mediterranean Academy for Diplomatic Studies are exceptional colleagues and friends. Thank you both for making Malta my home away from home. The completion of this book is due in large part to the love and inspiration I received from my family and friends, especially my partner, Sarah Martha, and my parents, Tom and Toni English. Finally, I am grateful to Lynne Rienner, Nicole Moore, and the staff at Lynne Rienner Publishers for their commitment and hard work on this project. A book is so much more than the whims of its author.

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1 The US Institute of Peace in Crisis

Just off the National Mall and across from the Department of State in Washington, D.C., stands one of the federal government’s newest office buildings, the $183 million headquarters of the United States Institute of Peace. The US Institute of Peace, also known in D.C. jargon by its acronym, USIP, has long been a source of contention and ambiguity in Washington. Some see the peace institute as a vital part of the US national security apparatus. Others argue that it exists as a counter to the influence of militarism over US policymaking. And for some within Congress, the institute is a vivid example of fiscal irresponsibility and bureaucratic redundancy, and its headquarters, described by the Washington Post as the “Valhalla of Think Tank Architecture,” the embodiment of this waste.1 These drastically different understandings of the institute became evident when members of the House of Representatives voted to defund the organization in 2011. On February 16, 2011, Representative Jason Chaffetz (Republican– Utah) and Representative Anthony Weiner (Democrat–New York) published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal explaining a bipartisan initiative that sought to strip all funding from the US Institute of Peace.2 The men identified the organization as a trivial, government-sponsored think tank and its mission to provide “analysis, training and tools that prevent and end conflicts, promotes stability and professionalizes the field of peacebuilding” redundant, given that these services were already managed by the nation’s primary and longstanding instruments of peace, the Departments of State and Defense.3 Representatives Chaffetz and Weiner concluded their assessment by ridiculing USIP’s new headquarters on the National Mall as “a case study in how government waste thrives.”4 By cutting funding for USIP, Congress could demonstrate to

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the US public its ability to compromise across party lines on budget expenditures that misused taxpayer dollars. The House voted in favor of the amendment 268 to 163. In response to the amendment’s passage, the peace institute’s leadership and supporters launched a public campaign aimed at saving the organization. Overall, these defenders of USIP framed their arguments as negations of the points raised by Chaffetz and Weiner, attacking the two representatives’ lack of specific knowledge about the institute’s history, mission, and goals. They charged that the representatives had grossly mischaracterized USIP in both their op-ed piece and their speeches to Congress. Yet, while all of the institute’s supporters argued in its favor, their responses often presented contradictory images of the organization’s history and purpose within the federal system. This range of interpretations variously described USIP as a government-sponsored think tank, a national security agency, and a nonviolence and conflictprevention institute. The coalition of USIP supporters split into two distinct camps, each offering its own interpretation of the institute. The first group portrayed USIP as a vital component of the US national security apparatus. Richard Solomon, then the institute’s president, and J. Robinson West, then its chairman of the board of directors, issued their own op-eds and took issue with Chaffetz and Weiner’s portrayal of USIP as a mere think tank. West maintained, “We are not a think tank. USIP operates on the ground in conflict zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan, where we train military and civilian personnel to meet the challenges of deadly conflict.”5 Solomon corroborated West’s assessment of this operational work by concluding, “Americans understand that our security is inextricably linked to what happens overseas. National security is personal security. We must get ahead of international conflicts before they break out—and we can. We must manage, in a more cost-effective way, how we train civilians to work with our military.”6 In Solomon and West’s view, USIP was a unique government agency; it provided the kind of analysis that one would expect of a think tank, but also intervened directly in conflict zones to support US policy objectives and military operations. To further strengthen this first group’s appeal, statements of support were collected and presented by notable political figures who attested to USIP’s vital role as part of the national security apparatus. These statements were posted on USIP’s website and submitted at various points in congressional testimony. Prominent among these voices were General David Petraeus, commander of the International Security Assistance Force and responsible for US operations in Afghanistan and

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Iraq; former secretary of state George P. Shultz; Admiral Gary Roughead, the Department of the Navy’s chief of naval operations; and Robert L. Caslen, Jr., commanding lieutenant general of the US Army. An accompanying press release issued by USIP highlighted quotes from members of Congress and former presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. In a piece featured in the New York Times, political commentator and retired general Anthony Zinni noted that USIP played a crucial behind the scenes role in “practically every American success in Iraq and Afghanistan,” as well as supporting US efforts in democracy promotion and conflict mediation in places such as the Balkans, the Philippines, Somalia, and Sudan.7 Reflecting on the current situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, we might speculate as to how Zinni determined his criteria for success in these countries. Still, his words were typical of the lofty praise offered by distinguished figures within Washington’s foreign-policy elite. Joining these high-profile figures were also scholars and practitioners from the field of peace and conflict studies. The Alliance for Peacebuilding, a nonprofit organization that promotes issues related to peacebuilding and conflict resolution, voiced their objection to the funding cut. They helped organize an online campaign, complete with talking points, in an effort to rally the field to the institute’s defense.8 A petition was started on the popular website Change.org to encourage supporters to demonstrate solidarity with USIP.9 The petition and the text of the Alliance’s letter to its members mirrored the language and examples articulated by Solomon and West. Again, USIP was branded a critical element of national security. But in addition, it was argued that its dissolution stood to undermine ongoing democracy promotion initiatives in regions affected by the Arab Spring. Alongside this first group of supporters emerged a second group that sought to defend the peace institute. But rather than bolstering the arguments depicting USIP as a dynamic component of the national security state, this second group of supporters presented the institute as an alternative to the current war efforts, particularly stressing its function as a counter to the Department of Defense. The institute, according to this group, existed to reduce the US global military footprint and to challenge the dominance of military interests in policymaking. Instead of stressing an association with national security, these supporters emphasized the term peace. They claimed that the institute’s mission was to promote nonviolent alternatives to war. Representative Dennis Kucinich (Democrat–Ohio) epitomized this second group of supporters. The congressman described USIP as one

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of the only federal programs devoted to the promotion of nonviolence and conflict prevention. Kucinich argued that the funding cut was “a wake-up call for all Americans who believe in the cause of peace. We must not permit the forces of war to annihilate any hope for peace in our society.”10 He contrasted the amount of funding for the institute, an estimated $54 million for the fiscal year 2011, with the $1.1 trillion spent by the United States on Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade.11 Chaffetz and Weiner were not only misguided in their facts, according to Kucinich; their aim was something more disquieting. Their effort was not about disciplining Congress over the misuse of taxpayer dollars, but rather an assault on a symbolic target—an assault that sought to destroy an institution that disputed the effectiveness and superiority of US militarism. Kucinich threatened to reintroduce legislation calling for the creation of a Department of Peace if the institute was defunded. This was an old idea that stressed the need for a cabinetlevel office within the executive branch that would be responsible for all of the US government’s peace instruments, including the Peace Corps, the delegation to the United Nations, the Agency for International Development (USAID), and USIP. Kucinich was joined by Representative Mike Honda (Democrat–California). Honda labored to generate the support of liberals on the Huffington Post website by publicly challenging his colleagues to restore USIP’s funding.12 Echoing the representatives’ analysis, Politico, a journal and website focused on insider perspectives of Washington, D.C., politics, published a political cartoon by one of their artists, Matt Wuerker, illustrating the funding disparity between the US Institute of Peace and the Department of Defense.13 The image features USIP and the Pentagon side-by-side, but with the Pentagon taking up the majority of the frame. Tanks, planes, satellite dishes, rockets, and assorted military hardware are piled on top of the Pentagon, filling the D.C. skyline. Uncle Sam, the top-hatted and bearded personification of the US government, leans down from the roof of the Pentagon toward a small building labeled the US Institute of Peace, proclaiming, “Sorry, but with all the wars we just can’t afford you.” Wuerker’s visualization placed the institute outside the national security conversation and, tellingly, did not conceive of it as a supporting organization in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A final perspective emerged during this period that took issue with all of the above interpretations. Colman McCarthy, a former columnist at the Washington Post and longtime peace educator, argued that both supporters and critics were deficient in their presentations. Misperceptions

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were rife. McCarthy disregarded Chaffetz and Weiner’s argument as little more than a guise for the promotion of neoliberal austerity measures. Nevertheless, he praised the representatives for dragging the institute back into the public eye. Though their reasons for wanting to defund USIP were wrongheaded, the funding cut might in actuality be a victory for those interested in the promotion of peace. McCarthy’s account offered a distinctive view of the institute’s history and role within the federal structure, one at odds with claims made by its supporters. He started by disputing the portrayal of President Reagan as a sympathetic proponent of the institute. Institute supporters typically lauded Reagan for his foresight—it was his signature that ultimately established USIP as part of the Defense Authorization Act in 1984. In contrast, McCarthy painted Reagan as a menacing character who forced the new agency to adopt his mantra of peace through strength. Further, McCarthy contended that since its founding USIP had “obediently followed those orders and avoided examination of the military policies of the U.S. government.” 14 McCarthy also rebuked Congress for its lack of commitment to peace, highlighting its failure to guarantee proper funding for USIP once it was signed into law. McCarthy praised the organization’s staff as well-intentioned and talented professionals, but described their talent as squandered and their insights as marginalized. Rather than speak truth to power, those affiliated with the institute were reduced to whispers in backrooms so as not to upset the Washington consensus, and the funding crisis was a reminder of Washington’s reluctance to take a public stand against militarism. In the end, the institute’s stay of execution came not as the result of the campaign organized on its behalf, but rather the political implosion of Anthony Weiner. Weiner found himself at the center of a growing political scandal, which soon engulfed and incinerated his career. His prominence as a rising star within the Democratic Party was abruptly halted due to allegations of sexual misconduct. The congressman’s tarnished image led to his resignation from Congress. Without Weiner to spearhead the effort, other Democrats withdrew their support for the bipartisan amendment, and Republicans were left without enough votes to permanently defund the institute.15 The funding crisis thrust USIP back into the public spotlight for the first time since the contentious debates surrounding its establishment in the early 1980s. The controversy raised crucial questions not only about the institute itself—just what exactly is it?—but also about how it was possible that such widely differing interpretations of a federal agency

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existed, especially among a group of policymakers, government officials, and public intellectuals. As presented above, there are multiple interpretations of the US Institute of Peace. It is represented as a governmentfunded think tank, a national security agency assisting in war operations, a peace institute dedicated to nonviolence and conflict prevention, and, as McCarthy scathingly described it, an innocuous dumping ground for presidential appointments and apologists for US wars. This lack of consensus is significant. First, it reveals that the peace institute suffers from what can best be described as a branding problem. Labels matter. A powerful and expressive name such as the United States Institute of Peace should come with instant recognition. An organization, particularly one backed by the power of the state, is in trouble when its supporters cannot agree on the same basic story concerning its history and function. Second, the crisis exposes tensions that still remain over the promotion of nonviolent alternatives as part of US foreign policy. While USIP showcases its interventions in conflict zones as proof of its importance to the national security mission, this appears to reveal more about the seemingly futile efforts of the United States to win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than it does about the organization’s legacy as a champion of nonviolence and conflict prevention. It remains unclear what USIP actually does to promote peace as something distinct from military interventions. To untangle these contradictory, yet intertwined perspectives, requires an exploration not only of the development of the institute, but also of the ideas and historical circumstances that gave rise to the demand for a national peace agency in the first place. Thus, this book is driven by a set of questions about the US Institute of Peace. First, how did this institution come to exist? Why did the United States need a peace agency? And then, what is USIP’s mission, especially as understood within the context of the public law that established it, and how has that mission changed over time? To answer these questions, I undertook a critical historical analysis of USIP, as reflected in the chapters that follow. Defining Terms

In this book, I use a particular set of criteria for evaluating USIP’s commitment to peace, based on shared assumptions by those in the field of peace and conflict studies. Peace, for instance, is understood as a more comprehensive state than simply not being engaged in war. Two sides

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may cease hostilities, but unless this termination leads the parties involved to address the causes that initiated the violence, the situation is likely to reflect what Carolyn Nordstrom describes as a state of “notwar-not-peace.”16 In these situations, there remains a high probability of a return to violence. Informed by the pioneering work of peace researcher Johan Galtung, the field generally describes peace as a situation beyond the mere cessation of fighting. Thus, a state of peace is characterized by efforts that underscore the necessity of justice, collaboration, and the development of alternatives to violence for resolving factors that cause or lead to the reemergence of hostilities.17 My work revolves around what I term the elite peace reform movement. This movement is composed of members of Congress and academia, policymakers, and other influential actors who prioritize the legislative process as fundamental to any successful strategy for achieving peace and changing attitudes and policies regarding the conduct of war. When I speak of elite peace reformers, I am referring to actors that stress the need to work within the existing political and economic systems to address social and political problems. Reformers rarely look to replace systems, and this is a central point of distinction between reformers and radicals. Reformers emphasize the gradual nature of change and are often willing to compromise with adversaries if the agreement offers incremental gains on a particular issue. Radicals, in their analysis, tend to find that the system itself is responsible for generating the problem. They argue that the system requires transformation for the underlying conditions to be fully resolved, and they critique their reform-minded allies by arguing that the gradual approach only strengthens the existing system. The tension between radicals and reformers divides those on both the political left and political right. It cannot be reduced to membership in either the Democratic or Republican party, though party membership in the United States does tend to reflect reformist orientation. I highlight this distinction to make clear that the group of actors covered in this study is made up of those seeking to work within the existing system. For the elite peace reform movement, Congress was the central site of activity, and the movement’s strategy involved building a wide coalition of supporters to encourage change within Washington. While radical antiwar and antinuclear activists struggled in the streets to demand an immediate end to the Vietnam War and nuclear proliferation, reformers in Congress and among the policy elite grappled to manufacture legislation capable of replacing the use of force as the preferred solution to all US foreign policy problems. This division

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between radical activism and democratic reform plays a critical part in understanding the composition, location, and strategy of the elite peace reform movement. Peace radicals and reformers supported aspects of each other’s practice, but the paths that they took to pursue their end goals ultimately varied, and they had differing, and at times opposing, views of what constituted success. Unlike their radical allies in the antiwar movement, the core of the peace reform movement was predominantly made up of influential actors with access to the realm of policymaking. I use the term elite, following in the scholarship of C. Wright Mills, as a way to distinguish those people whose position in society gives them access and influence in the policymaking sphere beyond that of the average citizen.18 In this instance we have members of Congress, but we also have those who represent business lobbies, think tanks, academia, the media, armed forces, and other government officials. The policy elite are those whose voices carry disproportionately more weight in crafting policy due to their specialized knowledge and proximity to the decisionmaking process. This distinction is made in part to argue that the campaign for a national peace academy was an elite-led movement, not one built from the grassroots. Though supported by sections of the public, the campaign was organized and led from above with its personnel drawn from the network of the policy elite. Thus, I focus in this book on members of the policy elite, not on radical antiwar or antinuclear activists, even though the efforts of those activists were essential in bringing public attention to these issues. Throughout the book, I use the terms elite peace reformers and peace reformers interchangeably. Those involved with the creation of the US Institute of Peace were of the belief that humanity was capable of and desired peace in the deeper sense of the term. When they began their work, clashes over the struggle for civil rights and the legitimacy of the Vietnam War divided the country. Elite peace reformers were profoundly unsettled by US policies, both at home and abroad. Many of them had witnessed firsthand the destruction wreaked by World War II. Their experiences left them with a permanent reminder of what the failure of diplomacy looked like. Inspired by the peace movement and by advances in the social sciences for understanding conflict behavior, they sought the creation of a federal institution to produce research and teach alternative strategies for addressing violence and waging peace. 19 They believed that the United States had the talent to lead the world in diplomacy, and they placed tremendous weight on education as the tool for overcoming militarism.

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The Structure of the Book

One of the more fascinating discoveries for me as I worked on this project was the length of time that the United States has wrestled with the issues of peace and militarism. The demand for a federal peace office dates back to the founding of the country and is preceded by contentious disputes over the place of pacifism in the British colonies of North America. Proponents of the creation of a national peace academy, the legislative precursor to the US Institute of Peace, rooted their campaign in the period of the American Revolution, and even today, USIP echoes this framing, presenting itself as the fulfillment of the wishes of the country’s founders. Thus, the next two chapters, Chapters 2 and 3, revisit the colonial period of US history to reexamine claims about the origins of a national peace office. Then, in Chapter 4, I examine peace legislation efforts that materialized during the Cold War. These efforts, driven largely by the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union and by the growing discontent over the US-led war in Vietnam, laid the foundation for the legislation that eventually resulted in the US Institute of Peace Act. Chapter 5 traces the development of the National Peace Academy Campaign (N-PAC), considering debates internal to the campaign, the structure of the institution that advocates hoped to create, and how the N-PAC proponents hoped to ultimately change US behavior regarding the conduct of war. In Chapter 6 I follow the development of USIP from its creation as part of the Defense Authorization Act of 1985 to the end of the Cold War. An important aspect of this period is the rift that emerged between the National Peace Academy Campaign and USIP’s leadership, as peace reformers gradually recognized that their vision for the academy was no longer shared by those running the institute. Chapter 7 explores the evolution of USIP since 1993, particularly as the institute morphed into a think tank and intervention agency under the presidency of Richard Solomon. Here I consider how the end of the Cold War and the rise of new wars forced the institute to reorient and redefine its mission and place within Washington. While the legislation regulating the institute remains largely unchanged, USIP has grown beyond its original mandate, controversially establishing two of its primary functions as policy analysis and intervention (notably, in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq), both of which were once considered outside its original scope. Chapter 8 returns the reader to the controversy with which I opened the book. For advocates of peace interested in working with the US

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government, the experience of the elite peace reform movement reveals the complications that arise with efforts that seek to transform policy from within the boundaries of state agencies. My own conclusion is that the institute’s name and its position within the federal system are unfortunate given the work the organization currently undertakes. The name reflects the aspirations of one particular group (the elite peace reformers), while the practices reflect that of a distinctly different group (war hawks and international relations scholars). The vision of the United States as the global hegemon contrasts significantly with the original vision of the peace reformers and with those today who feel that there is a pressing need for greater examination of how US policy contributes to violent conflict and global instability. The current organization is a reflection of the expansion of the national security state and the pervasive influence of militarism within many sectors of government. To evaluate the institute as such is not the same as concluding that the services it renders offer no value. USIP does provide funding to scholars and organizations working on matters of peacebuilding and conflict management. It also takes on important tasks that the military considers itself unable to perform, and it provides interagency coordination and policy analysis on matters related to international conflict and violent extremism. The problem is that many of these services fall far outside the institute’s original mandate, and some blatantly contradict it. The United States invests billions of dollars each year in warfare. At issue is the degree to which the organization charged with teaching peace and advocating for nonviolent alternatives should be held accountable to faithfully fulfilling that aim. Notes 1. Philip Kennicott, “Not at Peace with Building’s Style,” Washington Post, May 20, 2011. 2. Jason Chaffetz and Anthony Weiner, “Small Budget Cuts Add Up,” Wall Street Journal, February 16, 2011. 3. The authors cite the US Institute of Peace’s website as the source for this mission statement. Ibid. 4. Chaffetz and Weiner also link USIP to Senator Ted Stevens (Republican– Alaska). Stevens, one of the longest-serving Republicans in congressional history, lost his bid for reelection in part due to a corruption investigation and trial that embroiled his campaign. The institute is positioned as guilty by association, since it received the senator’s support. 5. J. Robinson West, “We Are Actively Engaged in Promoting Peace at USIP,” Wall Street Journal, February 18, 2011. 6. Solomon’s framing is interesting if only because he spent roughly two decades emphasizing that USIP was a think tank, more specifically a “think and do tank.” For

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an example, see Solomon, “The U.S. Institute of Peace: A Hands-On Approach to Resolving Conflict,” 26–28. Solomon’s comment on the budget amendment can be found in Richard Solomon, “Opinion: No Compromises on National Security,” Politico, February 17, 2011, http://www.politico.com. 7. Anthony Zinni, “Peace-Building That Pays Off,” New York Times, March 8, 2011, 27. 8. “Funding for Peacebuilding,” Alliance for Peacebuilding, 2011, accessed July 16, 2012, http://www.allianceforpeacebuilding.org. 9. “Petition: Save the United States Institute of Peace—House Voted to Cut All Funding!” Change.org, April 9, 2011, accessed September 1, 2015, https://www .change.org. 10. “Kucinich: Trillions for War and Now ZERO for Peace!” Common Dreams, February 17, 2011, accessed July 16, 2012, http://www.commondreams.org. 11. Chaffetz and Weiner present the $54 million sum in their analysis. For Kucinich’s remarks, see, Eric W. Dolan, “House Votes to Cut All Funding for US Institute of Peace,” The Raw Story, http://www.rawstory.com. 12. Mike Honda, “Republicans Keen to Kill America’s Only Peace Agency— Forever,” Huffington Post, May 25, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com. 13. Matt Wuerker, “Sorry, but with All the Wars We Just Can’t Afford You,” Politico, March 29, 2011; accessed July 16, 2012, http://www.politico.com. 14. Colman McCarthy, “A Peacemaker’s Case Against the U.S. Institute of Peace,” Washington Post, March 18, 2011. 15. Josh Rogin, “Weiner’s Resignation Is Good for USIP,” Foreign Policy Blogs, June 16, 2011, http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com. 16. Nordstrom, Shadows of War, 166–167. 17. Galtung, “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research,” 167–191. 18. Mills, The Power Elite. 19. My usage of the term elite peace reformers is meant to distinguish these actors from the peace reformers of the nineteenth century. There are certainly commonalities between the two groups, but earlier peace reformers were far more radical in their orientation and ultimate objective. See, for instance, DeBenedetti, The Peace Reform in American History.

2 Locating Peace in Colonial America

When Senator Vance Hartke (Democrat–Indiana) submitted a bill to Congress for the creation of the George Washington Peace Academy on June 18, 1975, the figure of George Washington became intertwined with the movement to establish a national peace academy in the United States. Elite peace reformers anchored their narrative in President Washington in an attempt to unite a country still divided over the US war in Vietnam. Washington, as imagined by the reformers, stood as a symbol that transcended polarization; he was a political and military leader, but he was also sympathetic to the cause of peace. Yet, this narrative of Washington is at odds with the historical record. In casting Washington as peace hero, the elite peace reform movement glossed over the origins of nonviolent practice in the United States and simplified the complicated relationship Americans have had with peace since the founding of the nation. Washington’s significance for peace advocacy does not rest with him as an extraordinary historical figure, which he no doubt is, but rather with what his life reveals about the United States’ intimate relationship with violence. In this chapter, I interrogate the elite peace reform movement’s narrative of George Washington and also explore how violence and peace were conceptualized within the British colonies of North America prior to and during the American Revolution. George Washington in the Narrative of the Elite Peace Reform

When elite peace reformers launched their campaign to establish a national peace academy, they framed their effort in the spirit of George

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Washington, the first president of the United States and the former commander of the Continental Army. Washington’s image as an advocate for peace was presented in the narrative of reformers by reference to three positions. It first appears in the George Washington Peace Academy Act and is expressed as Washington’s foresight about the need for a federally funded national university for the United States. The second position was delivered as part of Washington’s farewell address, where he urged caution against foreign entanglements. Finally, and the position most emphasized by reformers, was Washington’s proposal urging the creation of a “proper peace establishment.” An example comes from an editorial published by John T. Connor and Milton C. Mapes, Jr., early organizers of the National Peace Academy Campaign (N-PAC). Connor and Mapes write, “Is this a new idea? No. In 1783 George Washington listed ‘a proper peace establishment’ as one of the four requirements for the survival and well-being of the new nation. Now, at last, the Peace Academy is being called an idea whose time has come.”1 In the view of the peace reformers, Washington’s insights about peace, and more specifically his call for a national peace office, demonstrated his wisdom about the necessity for Americans to learn methods of peacemaking, as well as those of warfare. Washington’s presence permeates the narrative that developed around the peace academy campaign, as well as articles detailing the history of peace studies and conflict resolution programs in the United States. An interim report issued by the US Commission on Proposals for the National Academy of Peace and Conflict Resolution, a body appointed by President Carter to generate proposals for a national peace academy, describes Washington as “the first American President who saw the need for an institution to educate in methods of peace.”2 Conflict resolution pioneers Bryant Wedge and Dennis Sandole referred to “the proposal to establish a National Academy of Peace and Conflict Resolution, an idea which goes back to the time of George Washington.”3 Bryant Wedge’s role as a key figure in the conflict resolution movement and peace academy campaign helped give credence to this idea, which was later repeated by his colleagues Peter Black and Kevin Avruch. 4 Black and Avruch write, “This campaign [for the National Peace Academy], which lobbied vigorously on Capitol Hill and beyond, sought to have Congress make good on a commitment which dated from George Washington’s administration.”5 Washington’s sagacity is further praised in both Rhoda Miller and Mary Montgomery’s studies on the history of the US Institute of Peace. 6 It also appears recently in Joan Coolidge’s dissertation on James Laue, a key

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figure in the peace academy campaign. Coolidge writes, “The idea of a Peace Academy did not originate with Wedge, Spencer, Young and Laue. USIP credits the first attempt to secure a Peace Academy to George Washington.”7 Finally, even opponents skeptical of establishing a peace academy reiterated the claim. J. David Singer issued a critical response to proposals for the academy, but started his rebuttal by noting, “On several occasions since the American Revolution, thoughtful observers have called for the establishment, in one form or another, of a national peace academy. The first was President Washington himself, and the most recent is a coalition of concerned members of the House of Representatives.”8 Yet, Washington’s own words grant little support for the interpretation offered by peace reformers. Rather, Washington’s proper peace establishment was an idea he put forth to urge Congress to create a unified military force to defend the newly freed American colonies, an idea that certainly seems removed from his being an advocate for peace education. This historical mix up would deserve little scrutiny if it were not for the fact that these misrepresentations continue to exist as aspects of the narrative celebrating the creation of the US Institute of Peace. Even more surprising is that Washington appears in some of these accounts alongside another figure from the revolutionary era, Benjamin Rush, whose plan for a federal peace office actually did seek to counter the growth of militarist culture after the American Revolution. Rush was concerned about the degenerative effects the celebration of military culture had on republican values. He sought to institute a cabinet-level position responsible for the moral education of citizens and for telling the truth about the realities of war. Yet Rush, a physician, philosopher, and active participant in the American Revolution, is generally downplayed as providing a source of inspiration and vision for a national peace agency, and the same is true for Rush’s colleague, Benjamin Banneker.9 What explains the peace reformers’ insistence on extolling Washington as central to their efforts? In their literature and argumentation, advocates for a national peace academy invoked the country’s formative period to offer a counternarrative of US history. These advocates used figures of supreme historical significance to the national narrative as the basis for developing a contrasting view of the United States and its role in world affairs. The master narrative of the United States is one steeped in the glorification of violence, its founding mythology rooted in the necessity of force to secure liberty and home rule from the British Crown and Parliament. In an attempt to challenge the dominance of this narrative, the elite peace

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reform movement deployed new interpretations of figures such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Rush and extolled them as champions for the cause of peace. Not only should these men be remembered as patriots responsible for securing America’s freedom, reformers argued, they must also be celebrated as scholars and philosophers of the Enlightenment, republicans whose recourse to war was matched by an equal commitment championing the necessity of peace and education for the future of the united colonies. While such a reimagining creates a more dynamic understanding of these figures, the advocate counternarrative remains problematic for the ease with which it attempts to supplant the relationship of the state to war with a relationship to peace. This is in part because the development of such counternarratives linking peace to the development of the American project, intentionally or not, obfuscate the tensions that existed within the United States at the time of its formation, particularly with regard to the role of the military, the federal government’s place in public education, and the fulfillment of the social equality promised in the Declaration of Independence. These issues dogged the colonies prior to their separation from the British Empire and have remained with us ever since. As peace historian Merle Curti writes, “The American colonies were planted and grew to full stature in an age when few questioned the glory of physical prowess, the effectiveness of force, and the inevitability of war.”10 The British colonies of North America had an intimate relationship with violence and war-making, a legacy that remained an active part of the United States imaginary as the country developed over the past two centuries. I contend that three different, competing visions of peace existed during the revolutionary period, not the single, conflated version presented in the counternarrative of peace reformers. Each of these visions represented a particular understanding of the appropriate relationship of the Westphalian state to the use of force. The degree to which these visions resonate with challenges facing us today is striking, since they reveal conflicts embedded in American liberalism. Two of these visions are embodied in the persons of George Washington and Benjamin Rush. George Washington’s dual historical status as commander of the Continental Army and first president of the United States elevate him to a unique position. His name carries significance in a way that those of his fellow countrymen do not. Washington promoted a very specific concept of society, one reflective of his status as both a member of the Virginia gentry and as a military officer. His notion of peace is derived from his appreciation of social order and ideal future for the American

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empire under the federal system. I identify this vision of peace as republican order. Republican order is deeply tied to a commitment maintaining the central role of the militia and army within the state formation as core requirements for ensuring America’s liberty. In contrast to Washington stands the figure of Benjamin Rush. A physician by trade, Rush is remembered as the father of American psychiatry and one of the leading philosophers of the American Revolution.11 His views toward the conduct of warfare shifted drastically after his participation in the American Revolution, though he remained firmly committed to the cause of liberty and the promotion of republican values. Rush’s writings from this period support the creation of a federal governance structure, yet also seek to counter the prevailing attitude toward the glorification of war and the militia system, representing a view I term republican pacifism.12 This view shares with Washington an exultation of the virtues of republicanism toward the state, yet it also finds the militarist tendencies embedded in Washington’s outlook of maintaining social order a detriment to the moral character of the republic’s citizens. Instead of preparing for future wars and elevating previous ones to the category of the sacred, moral education based in Christian principles and supportive of nonlethal practices was necessary for the spread and reproduction of the republican spirit. Only a national commitment to peace might prevent the corruption (both moral and financial) that came along with the provincialism of the militia system. Rush and Washington’s views on a federal peace agency are mentioned here to give the reader an idea of their importance to this conversation, but are dealt with in detail in the following chapter. Finally, and unmentioned by peace advocates in documents and testimony supportive of the peace academy was the longstanding tradition of Christian pacifism. Christian pacifism in North America finds its earliest articulations in the Religious Society of Friends (or Quakers) and other peace churches such as the Anabaptist-Mennonites and the Church of the Brethren. Peace churches were founded in the colonies prior to independence and remain an influential part of contemporary peace movements. Their vision offered a radical brand of moral practice based in personal conscience and direct engagement with the teachings of Jesus Christ. Benjamin Rush’s articulation of pacifism was influenced by his contact with the Quakers in his home of Philadelphia. However, unlike Rush’s vision, Christian pacifist practice contested the state’s efforts to force individuals to betray their conscience through conscription into the war effort. During the American Revolution, the loyalty of the peace churches was a source of

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stress for the revolutionaries, particularly for George Washington, who found their position vexing to the cause of liberty and his view of social order. Washington’s interactions with the Quakers during the colonial and founding periods prove a fascinating example of how these competing visions of peace colored the character of the developing federal state. It is unknown whether this misreading of Washington’s words about a peace establishment was intentional on the part of the elite peace reformers. Yet the vagueness surrounding this choice makes for an excellent starting point in exploring the origins of the US Institute of Peace. Pacifism, peace advocacy, and nonviolent protest are all traditions present in the colonies prior to independence. Rarely, however, do Americans consider these beliefs and patterns of contestation crucial elements of the country’s founding narrative. Nevertheless, the formative years of colonial struggle for increased rights and autonomy from the Crown took place nonviolently, with the recourse to arms occurring only after an intolerable tipping point had been crossed. Peace churches, especially the Religious Society of Friends in Pennsylvania, were crucial in promoting ideals and practices that supported the democratic experiment about to unfold across the colonies. Quakers also offered an early, vocal, and consistent demand for the abolition of slavery. Their pacifism, however, raised considerable tension about the relationship of the state to both the colonial subject and republican citizen. The origins of a federal peace office, one committed to developing methods beyond warfare, rests not with Washington, but in the inspiration taken from these traditions, informed by the struggle for independence and alternate currents of republican thinking. Washington serves as a prism through which these attitudes are refracted. Colonial and Religious Violence

Two forms of violence dominated life in the colonies prior to independence, and both cast a long shadow forward into the present. First, there was the violence of the European colonial project itself. The British colonies, along with those under the control of Spain and France, were sites of massive violence against indigenous populations on the American continents and surrounding islands. Their violence extended to those African populations enslaved and forcibly resettled to expand the plantation economy. As Walter Hixson writes, the EuroAmerican type of colonialism, distinguished as settler colonialism, was

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particularly virulent since it aimed to eliminate and replace indigenous populations with settlers.13 Unlike conventional understandings of colonialism which describe a condition in which the colonizer is eventually forced to leave, Hixson identifies settler colonialism as marked by the permanent presence of the settler. The permanence of the colonizer establishes a structural relationship characterized by violence since the indigenous populations are marked for removal from land now assumed the rightful property (or potential property) of the settler. The United States stands as the ultimate example of settler colonialism, and the consequences of this process remain visible in the treatment of indigenous and African American peoples. The second major element of violence is found in the century of religious warfare that consumed Europe from 1550 to 1650. According to Benjamin Kaplan, the wars that followed the Protestant Reformation divided Europe along religious lines, and created a radical shift in relations between groups that occupied the same space but belonged to different faiths.14 Kingdoms were split not only between Catholics and Protestants, but also between various sects of Protestantism that formed in response to the writings of figures such as Martin Luther and John Calvin. Kaplan writes that European rulers tried to make their personal faith choices the basis for the official state religion, which “led both rulers and ordinary people to equate orthodoxy with loyalty and religious dissent with sedition. It gave national politics and even foreign affairs the power to spark waves of religious riots as well as official persecution.”15 Religious intolerance drove many dissidents across the Atlantic to the British colonies in North America. The years between 1620 and 1763 mark the arrival of the Puritan reform sects in the colonies. Charles DeBenedetti writes that these sects sought to place themselves at a greater distance from both the secular authority of the state and the persecution they faced either from the Church of England or the remnants of the Holy Roman Empire.16 Religious dissidents imagined the colonies as a blank space where they were free to script their vision of utopia based on the teachings of Christ. They were joined by other colonists whose motives for relocation were purely profit driven. Both groups carried in their imaginations a masculine image of migration as an opportunity for man to write his own destiny. As Richard Slotkin writes, “The first colonists saw in America an opportunity to regenerate their fortunes, their spirits, and the power of their church and nation”; and “the means to that regeneration ultimately became the means of violence, and the myth of regeneration through violence became the structuring metaphor of the

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American experience.”17 The emergence of a distinctly American mythology, Slotkin notes, creates numerous problems in confronting this period of early American history and its relationship to violence. One major concern is the need to wrestle with the contradictions contained within the history. Over time, various figures have tempted to craft a national narrative that eliminates those aspects that do not support its aims or that show the founding period in a negative light. Slotkin emphasizes this purging through the absence of Native American peoples in the myth of Western expansion, a story that is characterized as unfolding across an open and uninhabited frontier. Here, the rush to California is framed merely as a race against time and other competitors, not a violent project of dislocation and extermination of Indians. Such positioning is common across national narratives, especially in episodes of violent conflict, where the winner is portrayed as the legitimate authority and the loser is relegated to the status of unredeemable other. In the case of the American Revolution, a practice of narrative exclusion took place in relation to the British characteristics and origins of those in the colonies after liberation. The invention of the United States narrative required not only the removal of indigenous populations from the story, but also elimination of loyalist sympathies and aspects of English heritage deemed antagonistic to the values of colonial republicanism. Violence and support for armed struggle became pivotal to the story of independence, positioning those unwilling to participate in such acts as antagonists and apologists.18 In the context of the British colonies during the revolutionary period, the category of antagonist was filled not only by those loyal to and willing to fight for the Crown, but also those whose pacifist beliefs barred them from taking sides in the conflict. Their moral obligation to abstain from participation in war was equated to sympathy with the enemy. The Development of Christian Pacifism in Europe

The Anglo-American peace traditions did not arrive as fully formed modes of practice and being in the world. Indeed, most peace sects arrived at a pacifist position as a result of participation, persecution, and suffering in the European religious wars. The emergence of the tradition flows from the Protestant Reformation in 1517 in Germany and Switzerland, and the churches established through Protestant reformers such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Huldrych Zwingli. The start of the

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Restoration under King Charles II in 1660 marked the opening of what turned into over a century of bloody exchanges for control of Europe between those supportive of the fragmenting Catholic Holy Roman Empire and those seeking to establish Protestant control over their own states. Peter Brock describes Luther’s demand for a return to the apostolic church as one that initially argued for a radical break with the state and urged the practice of nonviolence as consistent with the teachings of Jesus Christ. Luther later abandoned both of these positions, issuing statements that recognized the lawful authority of the magistrate and made allowances for Christian involvement in war.19 Zwingli and Calvin rejected pacifist practice outright, accepting the use of force as a core element of Christian doctrine. Protestant attitudes held that the state was a divine institution. God created the state to ensure for the welfare of humankind; the state acted from God’s will in order to protect the weak, punish the wicked, and maintain order in society according to his vision.20 Christians had a duty to obey the state, even when under the rule of a bad or unjust magistrate. Rebellion against the state was synonymous with rebellion against the will of God, and God granted the state the use of force and arms to uphold order and defend against foreign invasion. God ordained the sword as a necessary tool for dealing with those unwilling to follow the example set by Christ since those persons could not be counted on to turn the other cheek.21 Therefore, a believer in this particular system held two positions toward the use of violence. On one hand, violence stood as something divinely ordained in the hands of the state and in those actors called on to do the state’s bidding.22 On the other, adherents were not to retaliate or use arms against the state. This instituted a policy of nonresistance among the general population and took violence off the table as a method of achieving political aims within the existing social order. The creation of Anabaptism (later recognized in a variety of forms, but specific to this case as the Mennonites) and the Religious Society of Friends prove exceptional to this view of the state.23 The Anabaptist position grew from the Protestant tradition as a continued critique of Catholicism, yet also found dissatisfaction with the corruption of the new churches and their willingness to submit to earthly authority. The Anabaptists did not reject the state, but they did reject the notion that the magistrate held any power to determine spiritual matters. Decisions were the subject of the individual Christian’s conscience; a Christian’s refusal to act against her conscience required that she face whatever consequences resulted from her adherence to faith.24 The Anabaptist tradition emphasized this most noticeably in the practice of adult baptism.

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Membership in the church was not a birthright and baptism was only performed when the individual undertook the initiative to proclaim their commitment to the community (and therefore, to being saved, since salvation still depended on the church). Anabaptists developed the position that political office (that is, to serve the state as its representative) was irreconcilable with the purity required to live according to the simple roots of Christian practice. As an agent of the state, Christians were called upon to participate in acts prohibited by Christ, including the swearing of oaths, conduct of war, and the enforcement of physical abuse against those whom violated the state’s laws. The Gospels contain vivid accounts of the unjust exercise of state power, culminating in the bureaucratic figure of Pontius Pilate, and to Anabaptists, these examples left little to the imagination when it came to identifying the pitfalls of trying to reconcile both a commitment to Christ and the duties of state service. The practice of Anabaptist nonresistance finds its clearest materialization in those later recognized as the Mennonites. Their radical separation from the state and the established churches led to a deep suspicion of Anabaptism as a destabilizing force and its followers as a potential internal enemy. Nonresistance was a prominent aspect of Mennonite practice for those who left Europe to escape persecution. Many settled in the Quaker established colony of Pennsylvania. 25 The Anabaptists were not alone in their rejection of violence or their desire to emigrate to distance themselves from harassment. One of the largest and most continually recognized of these Protestant reform sects to arrive in the colonies was The Religious Society of Friends, more commonly known as the Quakers. The development of Quakerism emerged in the period after the English Civil War (1642–1651) from the preaching of George Fox. Fox’s dissatisfaction with the Church of England led him to establish a following based on his own interpretation of Christian teachings. It was Fox’s position that the Gospels revealed the true practice of Jesus Christ and only through imitation of Christ’s practices could individuals truly come to know God. Christ, Fox argued, taught the people directly, not through the established modes proffered by religious authorities. The individual could have an unmediated experience with God and did not need the church (Anglican or Catholic) to interpret what was essentially a relationship between individual consciousness and the divine, communicating with the individual through the Inner Light or Truth.26 Originally, the proponents called themselves “Friends of the Truth” and were labeled by their enemies “Quakers” due to the perception that they shook from fear of the inner spirit they

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sought.27 Unsurprisingly, Fox and his followers were objects of persecution. According to Kaplan, Oliver Cromwell, the controversial military and political leader, and later Lord Protectorate of the English Commonwealth, described the Quakers and other new sects as “diabolical” and “the height of Satan’s wickedness.”28 After Cromwell’s death, and with the restoration of the Stuart monarchy, Quakers faced increased persecution for perceived heresy against the established Church of England. DeBenedetti writes that the Quaker faith had significant “appeal among the gentry and middle-class wholesalers,” and its members originally “accepted the necessity of force as a means of achieving Rule of the Saints.”29 A pacifist position, generally labelled the Quaker peace testimony, developed gradually, particularly as the Quakers, as with the Anabaptists, found themselves on the losing end of the religious wars. Early proponents of the tradition believed in an apocalyptic vision of the future and the coming of the “Lamb’s War,” a phrase used to designate a Quaker victory in the battle over sin.30 Unlike the Anabaptists, the Quakers believed the Holy Spirit would guide them in their quest to convert the peoples of the world to their belief. With the passage of the religious toleration acts by the English Parliament, the Lamb’s War fizzled, sapping the strength of the Quakers to gain adherents. Suffering war, violence, and persecution in Europe, the Quakers came to champion their position on peace. Whether for self-preservation or out of self-reflection, or perhaps some combination of the two, the turn to the peace testimony and the renunciation of violence took hold, remaining a core tenet to many within the faith today. Brock argues that initially the peace testimony served to maintain discipline within the community, since those that strayed from the position faced sanction or expulsion.31 Such discipline mirrored that of the Anabaptists. Quaker practice also elevated submission to divine authority, placing one’s relationship with God above that of the magistrate and the state. This in turn produced a definitive view within the faithful that war and violence resulted from lust for material possessions and wealth.32 As with the Anabaptists, the Quakers’ refusal to swear oaths or be willingly drafted into the service of the militia put them at odds with representatives of the state, whom they refused to treat according to custom as their social superiors.33 Yet unlike the Anabaptists, the Quakers did not hold an exclusionary attitude toward the state and its rulers. So long as a man was guided by the Spirit and acting in accord with Christian principles, he could also serve the state. To hold office was not a violation, though in Britain it was prohibited for Quakers to be functionaries of the government until the nineteenth century.34 For the

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early Quakers, the state was more than just a defense against the heretics and outsiders; it was a necessary force to uphold the Christian character of society. While the divination of a Lamb’s War receded, the drive to structure the world according to the Truth remained. To wage a righteous struggle against evil, only righteous weapons consistent with the values of the Spirit could be used. Nonviolent resistance emerged as the form through which Quakers contested in the material realm. Contrasted with the nonresistant refusal of the Anabaptists, the Quaker peace testimony appeared inward looking on the part of the individual worshiper, yet it also came with a demand to speak and act outwardly in confrontation with evil, be it in the form of war or slavery. It is therefore unsurprising that the Quakers, like the Anabaptists, were viewed as threats to the established social order. However, unlike the German and Swiss peasants and farmers that filled the membership of the Anabaptists, Quakerism pulled its followers in part from the nascent form of the British bourgeoisie. The attractiveness of Quakerism to merchants and members of the gentry places the tradition within what became the key class of the British Empire in the colonies. Indeed, the elite social position of the Quakers provided them with the means to both spread their message and find supporters (converts) willing to fund passage to North America. The most influential of those conversions came in the form of William Penn, a wealthy English real estate holder and businessman. DeBenedetti describes him as “the first authentic Anglo-American peace hero.”35 Owed a substantial debt by King Charles II, Penn settled for a vast chunk of land in the Delaware Valley where he envisioned people living according to Quaker principles, a “holy experiment” profitable to spirit and wallet. Penn foresaw the governance of his new territory as a model for Christian living, establishing a colony that allowed for freedom of religion, popular elections, and fair trials, while attempting to lessen the use of force and coercion to deal with the indigenous population. Penn’s acquisition of land in North America stands as a clear example of Hixson’s settler colonialism, since settlement required the removal and dispossession of native populations. Yet in context of the seventeenth century, Penn’s approach stands out as a liberal form of conflict management. The use of business practices, specifically those assumed to offer a fair deal to all the parties involved, established Penn’s legacy as a Quaker peacemaker. His treaties secured the settlement’s right to exist without the need of military fortifications to protect

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the settlers.36 Penn’s constitution for his colony, detailed in the Frame of Government of Pennsylvania, is considered one of the founding documents and philosophical inspirations for the religious freedoms and democratic process that guided the development of what became enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Quakers emigrated to the British colonies, settling primarily in the areas now recognized as Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. Their arrival did not pass without incident. In areas where the Anglican Church held sway, especially in New England, they met with persecution. They were prosecuted and sometimes killed for their refusal to conform to the demands of governance over matters of jury duty, payments of taxes directed toward war and religious ends, oath taking, and participation in militia drills and service. The great Pennsylvania experiment was for a time a testament to the ability of the Quaker settlers to offer a more peaceful alternative for coexistence with the native peoples and those of other faiths than territories governed by French or British authorities. Acts of violence were still committed in Penn’s pacific paradise by settlers and the various tribes; yet for a time, Pennsylvania endured as something unique. However, the continued influx of new arrivals to the colonies and the constant push for Western expansion put pressure on the Quaker style of governance. Non-Quakers did not support, nor understand why peaceable relations with native populations were necessary. Key among these persons arguing for a change in governance in Pennsylvania was Benjamin Franklin. Unable to enforce their policies and with Philadelphia a prominent site of revolutionary activity, the Pennsylvania legislator was forced to abandon the pacifist Quaker code of conduct, and these principles lost their position as the dominant framework for social behavior.37 Branded as loyalist sympathizers, Quakers struggled to define their place in relation to the independence movement. Those who followed their conscience faced harassment, jail, and physical punishment for their refusal to participate in the war. Robert Doyle provides an excellent discussion of the treatment of Quakers and loyalists during the Revolution, noting that the United States has a long history of treating internal enemies more severely than those classified as external fighters.38 Furthermore, the Quaker insistence on the abolition of slavery complicated the tense relationship between the northern and southern colonies. And to that end, both pacifism and slavery were ideas that the revolutionaries confronted both during and after the war as they sought to craft a system of governance to guide the liberated colonies.

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This foray into the history of the Quakers and Anabaptist-Mennonites is meant to offer a clear and firm reminder that the British colonies held a diverse set of opinions over the use of violence and the subject’s relationship to the state. The Mennonites held a position that largely placed them under the authority of the state, but not necessarily committed to it. The community remained insular and the practice of nonresistance individualized. Pennsylvania, by all accounts the center of the American Revolution, was awhirl with notions of liberty and democracy that had partially gained their inspiration from these attempts to establish social order based on respect for religious difference, representative governance, jury trials, and the rejection of war as the only method of solving problems. Quakers played a primary role in the state and the formation of policies based in pacifist principles. This is not to discount the violence of the colonial settlement on native populations, but it must be stressed that at the time of the American Revolution, Christian pacifism in the forms of conscientious objection, nonviolent action, and nonresistance were already established modes of peace practice in the colonies. In failing to acknowledge this, the elite peace reformers advocating for the creation of a national peace academy avoided association with what turns out to be a longstanding tradition on American soil. Moreover, they did so by elevating a man, George Washington, who had little regard for those that disputed the primacy of the social order and man’s subservience to it. Unraveling the Figure of George Washington

George Washington stands as a caricature of traits we typically associate with the men of the revolutionary period: a daring military leader, a reluctant politician pushed to accept power, a savvy businessman who recognized the potential for the independent colonies, a sympathetic slaveholder torn by the values of his time, and a self-cultivated man of the Enlightenment. He is portrayed as the hero of the Revolutionary War. He stands as the archetypal political figure, thrust into office not by the lure of power or status, but in response to the demands of the people and the nation. His departure from public service is remembered with astonishment. It was unfathomable that this Cincinnatus, the farmer turned soldier who could rule as king, should relinquish his power and return to the simple status of a common civilian and the pleasures of daily life on his plantation. Children’s tales depict a man so concerned with honesty and social custom that he materializes in American lore as the first saint

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of the new republic. “I cannot tell a lie” goes the story of the young George who unflinchingly proclaimed his deed when confronted by his father after chopping down a cherry tree. His father so respected the honesty of his son that he could not bear to punish him.39 Such tales have a way of becoming historical fact in the collective national memory, yet it remains essential to recognize how such memories are constructed and invoked over time to promote particular political agendas. As Barry Schwartz writes, it took significant effort on behalf of conservative forces to democratize the image of George Washington after the American Civil War.40 The democratization of Washington sought to strip him of his aristocratic Englishness and reinvent him as the common man of popular lore concerned with egalitarianism. Washington’s figure within the national narrative rests on an unblemished portrait of his reputation as father to the nation, yet prior to the Civil War Washington’s place among the great men of the period was contested. Popular historian David McCullough captures Washington in his best seller 1776 as a conflicted and bumbling military leader, his success resulted from perseverance and the efforts of his subordinates, who often rescued him from troubles caused by his own poor choice of tactics and planning.41 Ron Chernow’s biography paints the general as a complicated man quick to anger, investing the great majority of his time trying to keep his emotions in check.42 Washington’s decisiveness inspired confidence, but left little room for deliberation once he decided on a course of action. Washington’s discursive power rests largely on the perception of him as a man of the utmost integrity. His staunch moralism and zealous belief that politics be above self-interest are packaged as part of a broader image of proper social conduct produced by the European Enlightenment and representative of the elite values of the British and colonial Virginia gentry. Washington and his fellow revolutionaries, including Benjamin Rush, hoped that a commitment to personal liberty and political responsibility would take root in the imaginations of citizens. As Gordon Wood writes, Washington was emblematic of the revolutionary republican leaders and their concern for “the moral and social values necessary for public leadership.”43 In reality this moralism placed Washington in a quandary over his commitment to the Revolution’s principles, as his values were challenged by openness of the new social formation he helped usher in. By the end of his presidency, Washington showed little faith in the democratic process. William Appleman Williams writes, “Washington’s progressively negative view of the Revolution is not surprising, for he never wanted to overthrow

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the existing structure of society.”44 The status of women, slaves, and other not-quite-so-free men of lower social and economic standing remained a source of tension upsetting his strict sense of social order. The democratic system he helped to inaugurate went against many of his own tendencies and it still remains uncertain how much confidence he put in the ability of common people to make decisions above what he observed as their station in life. Washington came of age in a period before the dominance of finance capital and the modern nation-state. In the context of the eighteenth century Anglo-Virginian gentry, cultural capital held sway over matters of public recognition and social honors. Paul Longmore describes this situation as one where personal identity was intimately tied up with one’s personal reputation; one was therefore required to guard their personal honor and reputation in the eyes of the public as one would protect any other item of considerable value.45 This is not to suggest that economic capital was insignificant. Both Barrington Moore and R.H. Tawney demonstrate quite clearly that the gentry played an important role in the advance of capitalism and radical political change in England.46 The rise of the gentry underlines the conflicts between the old order of the feudal aristocracy and the new order of bourgeois private property. One’s business opportunities in the colonies and elsewhere in the Empire rested on a combination of status and financial resources. One could not enter the gentry as a person of little economic means; however, birth and social status also operated as significant factors in the distribution of opportunities. To be a member of the gentry, one was assumed financially secure and therefore distanced from the pressures associated with such common activities as earning money. Rarely was such financial stability ensured, but the aristocratic orientation of the gentry viewed laboring as an activity one reluctantly engaged in. The opinions of the gentry carried influence not only due to their status as economically independent, but also as a reflection of the quality of their moral judgment, which carried the Enlightenment promises of careful reasoning and impartial analysis. The appearance of disinterestedness set the gentry apart from their subordinates and gave legitimacy to their pursuits within the field of politics. According to Wood, as a young person, Washington developed a fixation with codes of conduct driven by the norms of the seventeenth century. Washington was trained, like other members of the elite, to recognize his superiors from his inferiors and to act accordingly in all given social situations. Wood writes, “He wanted desperately to know the proper rules of behavior for a liberal gentleman, and when he discovered

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those rules he stuck by them with an earnestness that awed his contemporaries.”47 This hyperobsession with decorum and order followed Washington throughout his life, especially in his career as a leader. The standards he strove to embody placed clear lines of demarcation between the realms of public and private conduct, displaying a Hobbesian view of society as a unified social organism that functions best when every member acts in accordance with their given social position. Washington was not a member of the rising bourgeoisie; he was an aristocrat, and it was these aristocratic ideals that fed the impression of his suitability for governance.48 He was a shrewd politician, and he positioned himself within the political field as the natural choice for office even if he tried to appear as a reluctant candidate, anxious about a career in public life.49 Most of George Washington’s existence revolved around the acquisition of land, military service, and preparation for war. Valor in combat was the basic mode by which members of the gentry distinguished themselves and Washington was keen to gain prominence as a military leader in order to secure his place among the elite. Washington established close personal relationships with older, powerful men in the Virginia colony, particularly with Lord Fairfax (Baron Cameron). Fairfax’s benevolence provided Washington an in to military honors, politics, and prestigious social standing. Washington desired to live like his mentor and other men of the Virginia gentry, such as his neighbor and friend George Mason. Yet, the elite he desired to share power with was also stratified and bound by the rules of capital accumulation that prioritized symbolic goods and social standing. Regardless of his wealth and noble connections, Washington was unable to secure for himself a royal commission above his provincial one in the Virginia militia. Washington’s birth in America and his father’s lack of noble lineage determined that he could only rise so high within the imperial system, signifying him as an inferior to his British born compatriots. His sensitivity toward what he felt as biased treatment against him based on his birth in the Americas, rather than on his personal merit, put him on the path toward rebellion. Washington the Soldier Confronts Quaker Refusal

The records of Washington’s personal writings dealing with the Quakers begin from his time in the service of the British Crown and conclude during his presidency. Paul Boller writes that Washington was “reared in a society that accepted the established Anglican Church as an essential prop of social order, regarded the Quakers as a vexatious sectarian

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group, and looked upon war and slavery as inseparable parts of the natural order of things.”50 It is in the context of these beliefs that we must situate his vision of social order, starting from his role as a military commander, the position in which Washington came most significantly into direct contact (and conflict) with the Quakers. He was no doubt aware of the sect given his father’s business dealt with Quakers in England and the colonies, yet the French and Indian War (1754–1763) provides the first written encounters between the young soldier and the Quakers. He was obligated by the duties of his position to take action against those willing to suffer physical torture and imprisonment as a consequence of their moral rejection of war. In 1756, the Virginia Assembly moved to pass legislation providing more support for the militia to counter, what the settlers argued, was the increasing threat posed by Indian attacks on the colony’s western border. The regulations sought to increase the number of conscripted men in the militia and to make the penalties more severe for those who tried to circumvent the law. Unable to fill the ranks with volunteers alone, the Assembly instituted a draft which would select the twentieth man from every single and able-bodied inhabitant of Virginia. An exemption could be secured through payment of ten pounds or by finding a replacement to serve in one’s place.51 The legislation went so far as to make desertion from the militia punishable by death. The measure clearly violated the Quaker commitments against war spending and military service, yet the Assembly granted no exceptions for matters of conscience. As Merle Curti writes: During the French and Indian War, Friends were forced to endure severe suffering because of their adherence to antiwar convictions. Although Anthony Benezet, an outspoken Philadelphia Friend, found it possible in the midst of the war to preach a sermon analyzing the cause of war and in uncompromising words portraying its evil effects, it was in general customary to force Quakers to hire substitutes, and many Friends were bound in chains for their refusal to fight. Washington, sorely troubled by their obstinate refusal to shoulder muskets, inflicted harsh penalties on recalcitrants.52

Washington’s first recorded encounter with the Quakers comes during this period and as a direct result of the newly instituted militia regulations. In 1753, Governor Dinwiddie appointed Washington a major in the Virginia militia. Dinwiddie was ordered by the Crown to protect British imperial interests from the French in the Ohio Valley. The competing claims to this area sparked a seven-year war between the two empires in North America.53 Washington’s rise through command during

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this period soon found him appointed Colonel of the Virginia Regiment. In 1756, Colonel Washington received seven Quakers who were forcibly drafted into his service under the new regulations.54 A letter to the Governor on June 25th captures Washington’s first interaction with the group: Two hundred and forty-six draughts are the total number brought in, out of which number several have deserted. Three were discharged, being quite unfit for service, (and indeed several more ought to be, if men were not so scarce,) and there remain now in confinement six Quakers, who will neither bear arms, work, receive provisions or pay, or do any thing that tends, in any respect, to self-defence. I should be glad of your Honor’s directions how to proceed with them.55

Washington is clearly exasperated by the situation he finds himself in and the quality of his conscripts. The Quakers and their refusal, even under confinement, to participate in the common defense is particularly aggravating. However, in framing the Quaker problem as one of conscience, Washington identifies it at this juncture as little more than a matter of regulation to be determined by someone of higher status, in this case the governor. Confinement and physical abuse are the punishments for breaking the established convention of forced participation in the militia. Washington shows neither compassion nor malice toward drafts, just a willingness to proceed along conventional disciplinary norms as outlined in the law. Dinwiddie’s reply arrived a week later. The governor wrote, “If the six Quakers will not fight you must compel them to work on the forts, to carry timber, &c; if this will not do confine them with short allowance of bread and water, till you bring them to reason.”56 Dinwiddie did not fathom the extent of the Quaker refusal, assuming that incarceration and a lack of food were pressure enough to change their disposition. In granting Washington permission to compel them to reason, Dinwiddie sanctioned the use of further state power against the Quakers. If the testimony recorded by the Quakers is accurate, Washington went so far as to order the execution of a deserter in front of them (and the other draftees) in the hopes of convincing all of the seriousness of his threats. The Quaker witnesses are recorded as reporting, “Among other Tryals they were oblig’d to stand close by a Deserter who was shot the Officer hoping that might shake their Constancy, but the Criminal behaving with an uncommon Degree of Fortitude & Resignation it had quite the contrary effect.”57 Participation in this context is understood by the state as a demand to labor on behalf of the war effort; it is not the compulsion to make the

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Quakers carry arms. Dinwiddie maintained a division between those actions that directly caused harm to another human and those nonviolent activities that did not, such as forced labor. Support for the militia was a duty that must be borne by all for the security of the empire and its subjects. Conscience is assumed to be respected by the state so long as one is not obligated to engage directly in war fighting. Preparation for the common defense of territory under which the population lives is categorized as a matter other than conscience. Quaker practice was interpreted as a denial of state authority, and a refusal to contribute to the collective security. Washington’s later republicanism retained this same view of state authority and the need for submission in matters of common security. On August 4th, Washington again wrote to Dinwiddie, his growing frustration apparent: I could by no means bring the Quakers to any terms. They chose rather to be whipped to death than bear arms, or lend us any assistance whatever upon the fort, or any thing of self-defence. Some of their friends have been security for their appearance, when they are called for; I have released them from the guard-house until I receive further orders from your Honor, which they have agreed to apply for.58

Colonel Washington reveals himself as willing to inflict physical punishment for the violation of social norms, but it is unknown whether he enforced such discipline against the Quakers. Washington’s disposition toward physical punishment reflects his location in the colonies, where the use of violence toward slaves and servants was common. Boller writes that attempts are often made to speculate from this episode that Washington can be understood as a leader “respectful of the rights of conscience,” yet no other evidence appears to support this claim.59 Brock, for example, presents a favorable interpretation of this episode, noting that an intervention led by Edward Stabler, a respected Quaker merchant living in Virginia and mentor of the imprisoned men, helped Washington realize the futility of continued physical punishment.60 Brock’s presentation of Stabler’s letter recounting the incident and the collected testimony of the men indicates a favorable attitude on the part of the Quakers toward the colonel even if the actions taken against them while in his custody are described as tests of their faith and of their commitment to pacifist practice. Still, Washington does not signal out the Quakers as unique in his own account of the events, nor does he indicate that their behavior weighed on his conscience in other writings from this period. In his response to Washington, Dinwiddie writes, “A great body of Quakers waited on me, in regard to their friends with you, praying they

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may not be whipped. Use them with lenity, but as they are at their own expense I would have them remain as long as the other Draughts.”61 The Quakers were shown mercy not after it became clear that they could not be compelled to violate their principles (they continued to experience deprivation and confinement), but only after appeals to Dinwiddie, whose leniency extended to a willingness to prohibit any further acts of coercion. The threat of physical punishment stopped, but the men were forced to remain at Washington’s call until other conscripts were discharged so as not to give the impression that violations of order would be tolerated. Washington’s actions appear guided only by considerations of military custom (he must punish those that violate norms in order to maintain discipline) and legal authority (he shows lenity because his superior, the governor, wishes it and the law requires it). Washington is himself far from an active subject; his moral agency does not compel him to step outside of his position to alleviate the suffering or take action that might be inconsistent with his office. We might be tempted to construe Washington’s treatment of the Quakers as religiously motivated. While their religious practice certainly marked them as other, religious differences were by no means as volatile in this period in North American life as they had been in Europe the century prior. Many Quakers were respected merchants and operated amongst the professional classes of the time. As a professed student of the Enlightenment, Washington found little purchase in sectarian bias. More deist than professed Christian, he did find the concept of the divine advantageous to society, especially for maintaining military order and morale. He cared little about how people prayed so long as they did and that their conduct reflected as much. Washington’s obsession with social norms and decorum reflected his concerns as a military commander, he held to strict obedience and training for his men and those pressed into his service. Nonparticipation was not an option. During times of war, such resistance could only be interpreted one way: as a threat to order. Given that most of the young colonel’s men were conscripts forced into his service and drawn from those who could not afford to pay to secure their release, were convicted criminals, or (as with the Quakers) refused to participate in the war effort by finding a substitute or paying their way out, it is unsurprising that Washington sought to enforce military discipline as essential for group cohesion. For Quaker historians, this first episode establishes Washington as someone inclined to sympathize with the group. Yet, such an assessment is premature, and Washington’s later dealings with the Quakers, during and after the Revolution, must also be considered. Following the war

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with the French, Washington built a civilian life for himself among the colonial elite. Though a renowned military officer even in Europe, his attempts to secure the rank he thought proper for himself within the king’s forces failed to materialize. Regardless of the accolades heaped on him by his supporters among the Virginia gentry, and by Lord Fairfax, Washington was unable to overcome his place of birth and lack of noble lineage. Rather than accept a position he felt beneath him, he retired from service and married the wealthy widow Martha Custis, building upon her fortunes to further his estate at Mount Vernon. Washington ran for and won public office, assisted in this endeavor again by the patronage of Lord Fairfax. He also undertook a series of business ventures. Due to his previous military exploits and current undertakings, Washington established himself as a noteworthy member of the Virginia gentry and used his position to advance his commercial interests. Within the Virginia colony, Washington, along with other leading plantation owners like George Mason, began to articulate their frustration with the British Parliament and later the king in terms of power (experienced as tyranny) and liberty.62 In glossing over a fair share of history, Washington’s dissatisfaction with the policies of the Parliament concerning the colonies, including his rejection of the Stamp Act, compelled him to join in protest and eventually, warfare against the Crown he had once swore to defend. His collected writings make no mention of the Quakers again until 1777. Now appointed general and commander in chief of the Continental Army, Washington found himself again at war and in need of supplies and fighting men to sustain the effort.63 The city of Philadelphia served as the primary site of interaction between Washington and the Quakers. The city and the territory of Pennsylvania were in upheaval, a condition that had persisted since the French and Indian War. Friends were themselves torn over participation in the struggle for independence. Quaker peace discipline was challenged during the previous war and the riots in the city, and now more young Quakers were joining militias and willing to take up arms in the fight against the king’s troops.64 Yet, the majority abstained from supporting the revolutionaries. British and American Quakers expressed concern over the fighting in their yearly meetings. As leading merchants in London and the colonies, matters of conscience were not only at stake, so were commercial interests.65 The peace witness of the Quakers remained in the colonies largely uniform and traditional, but unlike previous wars, few adherents spoke publically against the war or published antiwar pamphlets.66 The lack of vocal support for the war effort earned Quakers the reputation of being loyalists, their nonresistance and unwill-

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ingness to speak against the king viewed as support for the tyranny wrought on the colonies.67 Those who opposed the war, for reasons of conscience or business, found themselves outside the revolutionary discourse, and as a consequence endured harsh treatment at the hands of the combatants. Washington’s past experience with Quakers, and the presence of Nathanael Greene, a former Quaker and one of the general’s top advisors, appears to have granted him the insight that his energy would be better spent than in trying to press the group into servitude. On January 19, 1777, word was sent to the Pennsylvania Council of Safety calling on the council to commit as many men to the militia as possible for the protection of the city. The message states: As there is not the least doubt at present, that the principle Object of the Enemy is to get Possession of the City of Philadelphia, it is absolutely necessary, that every Person able to bear Arms (except such as are Conscientiously scrupulous against it in every Case), should give their personal Service, and whenever a part of the Militia is required only, either to join the Army or find a Man in their place.68

The “conscientiously scrupulous” is no doubt a reference to the large Quaker population living in the city and surrounding areas. Key to this passage is the provision that the person objected to every effort to conscript them, not only to the cause of liberty, but in all other circumstances past and present. Having learned about the difficulty of motivating Quakers to participate in the common defense, Washington issued an ultimatum that if a man should refuse, another man must be secured and sent in his place. Washington wrote the Council again on the 29th to emphasize his need of men, “But I wish to see every Man (who is not really conscientiously scrupulous) obliged to turn out, when the good of his Country demands it. For we now want Men more than Money.”69 DeBenedetti reveals that while some Quakers did pay to have men go in their place, there were also those that refused either on moral or economic grounds to comply with this request.70 Whether Washington ordered physical punishment of these persons is not discussed, but Washington’s patience with their opposition continued to deteriorate as the war raged on. In May, Washington wrote Governor William Livingston to complain that dissenters, particularly the Quakers, were harming the militia effort. Praising Livingston, Washington offered words of encouragement, “but I hope, if your Officers are active and Spirited, that they will defeat their evil intentions and bring their Men into the Field.”71 It is

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striking to note that actions formerly described as matters of conscience are now those of malice toward the revolutionaries and their cause. The Quakers were deemed enemy sympathizers and Washington ordered them to be treated as such. By October, supplies for the Continental Army were running thin. Congress granted Washington further powers to take the actions necessary to resupply the army, and he quickly issued orders for his subordinates to requisition supplies from local people. While he requested that every effort be made to issue receipts and take sparingly from the inhabitants of the country, Washington singled out the Quakers as a source for which such niceties were of little concern. The order was issued: “Obtaining these things from the Quakers and disaffected inhabitants is recommended, but at all events to get them.”72 His collected writings contain a blanket document disseminated by Washington to his officers granting them the power to collect materials as necessary. The document advises that officers take, “as the Inhabitants can spare without greatly distressing their Families. In doing this you are to take care, that, the unfriendly Quakers and others notoriously disaffected to the cause of American Liberty do not escape your Vigilance.”73 The break for Washington lies between the goal of liberty and what he interprets as the Quakers refusal to support the means necessary to secure it. He saw the Quakers as not simply an obstacle, but as a malignancy that strikes at the very heart of the values of liberty. One of the more revealing episodes occurs the following year in March, as Quakers from surrounding areas traveled to Philadelphia for their yearly meeting. The city was under siege by Washington and his troops, a blockade designed to prevent supplies from reaching those inside. Washington ordered his generals to confiscate any horses that might prove suitable for the army and to send all approaching Quakers back from where they came. “This is an intercourse that we should by all means endeavor to interrupt, as the plans settled at these meetings are of the most pernicious tendency.”74 It is not specified the evil to which the Quakers got up to in these gatherings, yet the tone of the letter suggests that confiscation of horses and supplies was one way Washington sought to penalize them for their transgressions. Still Washington would accommodate Quakers when compelled to do so by his superiors. On April 5, 1778, the General received a visit from Mrs. Mary Pemberton, the wife of a Quaker imprisoned in Winchester. Mrs. Pemberton requested that she and her companions be allowed to deliver basic supplies to her husband and other Friends detained at the prison. While Washington denied her appeal outright, he

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nevertheless forwarded a letter to President Thomas Wharton, Jr., of Pennsylvania asking him to make the final decision, since matters relating to prisoners of the state fell outside the scope of his jurisdiction and the granting of passports for travel outside of his mandated duties.75 In a response to Wharton sent the following day, Washington clearly indicates that he finds Mrs. Pemberton and her group of little concern, even going so far as to feel pity for them. The letter states, “From appearances, I imagine their request may be safely granted. As they seem much distressed, humanity pleases strongly in their behalf.”76 One might be quick to assume here that the concern shown is for the plight of the imprisoned Quakers, yet this is not the case. Washington’s pity is not aimed at the sect so much as it is in keeping with the gender norms of the time prescribed to him by gentry codes of conduct. Washington is compelled to act favorably toward Mrs. Pemberton because he is a gentleman; at no point is he troubled by the treatment of the prisoners or interested in working to secure their release. Washington the President Confronts Quaker Abolitionists

This sparse but illuminating correspondence encompasses what Washington wrote about the Quakers during his time in the military. Yet, it does not capture the other major issue that remained clouding the liberated union of states and the debates that soon raged over the establishment of a federal government: slavery. Many Quakers were fierce abolitionists and they would surface again to vex Washington in his capacity as a slave owner and president. By not dealing with the issue of slavery and establishing full equality for all persons in the Constitution, the seeds of perpetual conflict were sewn for the Civil War. Washington squirmed to articulate a clear position on slavery. As Boller states, “George Washington was born a slaveholder and he grew to maturity in a society that took slavery as much for granted as it did the rising of the sun in the east.”77 The American Revolution was a catalyst for him to revise some of his views on the issue, but it continued to weigh on him until his death. Regardless of intentions, Washington still owned more than 200 slaves and kept them in bondage after his own death until the passing of wife. On one hand, it appears that he grew sympathetic to the plight of slaves and free Negroes in the postwar period. Yet on the other, Washington believed that freedom for slaves was ultimately a matter for the legislators to decide. The law of the land allowed for slavery, and until the law changed, abolitionists and

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others advocating action that violated the law threatened to tear the new union of states apart. Again, Washington took issue with the Quakers. A letter from April 12, 1786, demonstrates the difficulties Washington had expressing a clear position on the matter.78 At the heart of the letter is anger with the Philadelphia Quaker abolitionists for their refusal to behave in accord with the law. He frames their activities as forms of tyranny and oppression imposed on free men (slaveholders) to achieve their desired ends. He writes: There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it; but there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished and that is by Legislative authority; and this, as far as my suffrage will go, shall never be wanting.79

It is unsurprising that Washington would take such a position given his deference to order. Surely, he found such commotion in the midst of trying to stabilize the now independent colonies distractions from the task of governance and providing for the common self-defense. Washington reaches his absolute low point in remarks made chastising the Quakers for not sympathizing with the “misfortune” of those who owned slaves and the efforts required to care for these “unhappy people” as a form of property requiring a particular type of tending in society. The comments do little to enhance the image of Washington as guided by liberal interpretations of the Enlightenment or in any way as a man compelled to intervene on issues of social reform. Yet, while unsuccessfully trying to justify his racism and support for the economic exploitation provided under slavery, Washington nevertheless recognized the deep economic and political implications of the practice for the southern states. He rightly feared from an analytic perspective that any effort to address the issue would jeopardize the fragile alliance between the North and the South. The situation was untenable. It would need to be resolved in the near future, he just wanted that future to come after his lifetime. Like other Enlightened slaveholders of his day, Washington’s conservative attitude toward maintaining social stability trumped the very ideals he aspired to live by at the cost of allowing the institution of slavery to cement its foothold in the politics of the newly united colonies. In this particular case, it is worth noting that the Pennsylvania Abolition Society was organized in 1775, but ceased its agitation for the cause of abolition during the war. As mentioned above, the view of Quakers during the war by the revolutionaries assumed them loyalist

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sympathizers and traitors due to their pacifist beliefs. When the Quaker abolitionists reformed the Pennsylvania Abolition Society in 1787 with Benjamin Franklin as the honorary president, they hoped to pressure state legislators to pass laws ending the slave trade.80 The Quakers that remained within the colonies were duty-bound to participate in politics and put at their head a man who both stood as a clear representative of the new America and a former critic of Quaker practice. Boller notes that in 1790, when the society sent a delegation to Congress to advocate for a petition that urged action on the slavery issue, heated debates arose in the House of Representatives dredging up stories highlighting the alleged Quaker deceit during the war.81 To the now President Washington, the abolitionists, particularly the Quakers, seemed intent on upsetting the delicate balance of the Union in the most public of settings, but in living up to his gentry standards, he refused to comment on the matter once the Congress had taken the petition to committee for discussion. Washington’s social code of conduct demanded a public performance on his part as the disinterested leader. Congress soon adopted an amended version of the committee report reaffirming that the body, as declared in the Constitution, would not intrude with the practice until the already agreed upon year of 1808. Washington’s view of the legislative process meant for him that the matter had been justly concluded, even if he remained at times personally distressed about the status of slaves in society. Public outcry against the institution of slavery tarnished the thing Washington cared most about, the public perception of him as a gentleman. As social values changed, slavery became increasingly viewed as something un-American and ungentlemanly. Washington felt pressured to change his views, but not because the treatment of slaves was of itself wrong in his opinion. Comments made after Congress’s decision showcase his disdain for public interference in the functioning of governance, finding such efforts as the Quaker petition “a great waste of time.” 82 He was not supportive of interest group politics, especially when those interests challenged the conventions of disinterestedness that distinguished the gentry and proper republicans from their inferiors. Nevertheless, Washington’s eventual denunciation of slavery came with the material consequences due to the significance of his image and moral standing. Quakers and other abolitionists celebrated the emancipation clause in Washington’s will as a victory for the promotion of freedom for all people in the United States when it was publically disclosed.83 In death, Washington became the antislavery advocate he never was in life.

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This chapter demonstrates the problem of using George Washington as an icon for peace within the elite peace reform narrative. Washington’s treatment of the Quakers and his overwhelming commitment to upholding social order reveal an irreconcilable tension between his life as part of the historical record and attempts to reimagine him as a political-military leader sympathetic to the cause of either peace or social justice. The next chapter will specifically address his call for a “proper peace establishment,” which further contrasts his vision with the aims of the peace reformers. What should be clear is that the peace reform movement, for reasons that remain undetermined, overlooked the role of nonviolence as a cornerstone of American political practice. The situation at the founding of the republic reflected tensions reminiscent of the Vietnam era, particularly the complexities over the state’s authority to conscript its citizens to fight in war. As such, the chance to develop a more powerful counternarrative inclusive of these lessons was missed (as I discuss in subsequent chapters), with profound consequences for the continued differences of opinion over the US Institute of Peace. Notes 1. John T. Connor, and Milton C. Mapes, Jr., “Campaign Underway for National Peace Academy” (Dec–Jan 1979), 31. James H. Laue papers, Box 31.15, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 2. US Commission on Proposals for the National Academy of Peace and Conflict Resolution, Interim Report of the U.S. Commission on Proposals for the National Academy of Peace and Conflict Resolution: Public Law 95–561 (Washington: US G.P.O., 1980), 4. 3. Wedge and Sandole, “Conflict Management: A New Venture into Professionalization,” 130. 4. What makes this a rather peculiar and deliberate statement on Wedge’s part is that in other cases he highlights Benjamin Rush as the person responsible for promoting a peace office. Wedge’s testimony is included in the George Washington Peace Academy Act and discussed further in Chapter 4. 5. Black and Avruch, “Anthropologists in Conflictland: The Role of Cultural Anthropology in an Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution,” 30. 6. Miller, Institutionalizing Peace; Montgomery, “Working for Peace While Preparing for War: The Creation of the United States Institute of Peace,” 479–496. 7. Joan Coolidge, “Towards a Just Peace: James H. Laue’s Applied Theory of Third Party Intervention” (PhD diss., George Mason University, 2009): 129. 8. J. David Singer, “Campaign for a U.S. Peace Academy,” The Bulletin, (March 1979), 84. James H. Laue papers, Box 31.14, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 9. Benjamin Banneker is generally recognized as the country’s first African American inventor and astronomer. He also published an almanac which included

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his friend Benjamin Rush’s plan for a federal peace office. See for instance: Cerami, Benjamin Banneker. 10. Curti, Peace or War: The American Struggle (1636–1936), 16. 11. See D’Elia, “Benjamin Rush: Philosopher of the American Revolution,” 1– 113; Goodman, Benjamin Rush: Physician and Citizen, (1746–1813); Hawke, Benjamin Rush: Revolutionary Gadfly. 12. Miller, Institutionalizing Peace, 20. 13. Hixson, American Settler Colonialism. 14. Kaplan, Divided by Faith. 15. Ibid., 103. 16. DeBenedetti, The Peace Reform in American History. 17. Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence, 5. 18. Preston presents a rich discussion on the role of faith and violence in colonial America in Part I of his excellent book on how religion has influenced America’s foreign relations. See Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith. Bunker’s text is worth consulting to appreciate the British perspective on colonial violence and how the rising tensions in the colonies appeared from across the ocean. See Bunker, An Empire on the Edge. 19. Brock, Pacifism in the United States. 20. Ibid. 21. Smolin, “A House Divided? Anabaptist and Lutheran Perspectives on the Sword,” 28–38. 22. A discussion of the Catholic position toward the state is left out due to the limited influence Catholicism had in the British colonies and over the development of pacifist tradition in the United States. This is not to say that Catholicism was not an important topic to those within the colonies. Indeed, the view that Parliament was willing to pass the Quebec Act was considered an act of hostility and one that pushed the Americans closer to war with England. See Bunker, An Empire on the Edge. 23. For a summary of Mennonite efforts in peacebuilding since World War I, see Sampson and Lederach, From the Ground up. 24. Brock, Pacifism in the United States. 25. Brock notes that nonresistance is now more strongly affiliated with the traditions in the United States than in Europe. Nonresistance was a key principle that was used by the Mennonites to enforce church discipline and membership in the community. The pressures of secularism, liberalism, and nationalism caused the European sects to abandon nonresistance over the course of the 19th Century, but it remains a key aspect of doctrine in the US. Brock, Pacifism in the United States. 26. Soderlund, William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania, 4. 27. DeBenedetti, The Peace Reform in American History, 8. 28. Kaplan, Divided by Faith, 35. 29. Ibid., 8. 30. Brock, Pacifism in the United States. 31. Brock, Pacifism in the United States, 22. 32. Curti, Peace or War. 33. Soderlund, William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania. 34. Brock, Pacifism in the United States, 9. 35. DeBenedetti, The Peace Reform in American History, 9. 36. Frost, “‘Wear the Sword as Long as Thou Canst’: William Penn in Myth and History,” 13–45. 37. For example, see Kozuskanich, “Pennsylvania, the Militia, and the Second Amendment,” 119–147.

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38. Doyle, The Enemy in Our Hands. 39. Longmore notes that despite the fables told about the relationship between the young Washington and his father, little evidence exists to support such narratives. Washington’s own writings rarely mention the man. Longmore, The Invention of George Washington. 40. Schwartz, “Social Change and Collective Memory: The Democratization of George Washington,” 221–236; and Schwartz, “The Character of Washington: A Study in Republican Culture,” 202–222. 41. McCullough, 1776. 42. Chernow, Washington. 43. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, 197. 44. Williams, America Confronts a Revolutionary World, 1. 45. Longmore, The Invention of George Washington, 2. 46. Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy; Tawney, “The Rise of the Gentry, 1558–1640,” 1–38. 47. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, 198. 48. Schwartz, “Social Change and Collective Memory.” 49. Longmore, The Invention of George Washington. 50. Boller, Jr., “George Washington and the Quakers,” 69. 51. Brock, “Colonel Washington and the Quaker Conscientious Objectors,” 12–26. 52. Curti, Peace or War, 19. 53. Longmore, The Invention of George Washington. 54. According to testimony recorded by the Quakers their original number was seven, but as the reader will notice below Washington mentions a number of six. This discrepancy is apparently due to illness. According to Brock, the ill prisoner was allowed to remain at the home of another sympathetic Quaker while he recovered. He was not, however, released and eventually rejoined the group under Washington’s confinement. Brock, “Colonel Washington and the Quaker Conscientious Objectors.” 55. George Washington, “To Robert Dinwiddie,” in The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799. Ed. by John Clement Fitzpatrick and David Maypole Matteson, vol. 1 (Washington: US G.P.O., 1931), 394. 56. “Dinwiddie to Washington,” in The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799. Ed. by John Clement Fitzpatrick and David Maypole Matteson, vol. 1 (Washington: US G.P.O., 1931), 394 n76. 57. Brock, “Colonel Washington and the Quaker Conscientious Objectors,” 26. 58. “To Robert Dinwiddie,” in The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799. Ed. by John Clement Fitzpatrick and David Maypole Matteson, vol. 1 (Washington: US G.P.O., 1931), 420. 59. Boller, Jr., “George Washington and the Quakers.” 60. Brock, “Colonel Washington and the Quaker Conscientious Objectors,” 16. 61. “Dinwiddie to Washington,” in The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799. Ed. by John Clement Fitzpatrick and David Maypole Matteson, vol. 1 (Washington: US G.P.O., 1931), p 420 n80. 62. Schwartz, “The Character of Washington.” 63. Washington’s “recruitment problem” is one that connects him deeply with the slave owning class of the Southern colonies. Slaves, Native Americans, and in many cases free black men were generally not considered eligible for arms training and participation in the militia due to fears that they might use this training to revolt against the very system that restricted their rights. Quakers suffered under no such restrictions due to the color of their skin and Washington did not order a prohibition on their recruitment since it was assumed that the war for independence would grant

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Quakers their full political rights. For a classic account see Hartgrove, “The Negro Soldier in the American Revolution,” 110–131. 64. Kozuskanich, “Pennsylvania, the Militia, and the Second Amendment.” 65. Mekeel, “The Relation of the Quakers to the American Revolution,” 3–18. 66. Brock, Pacifism in the United States. 67. The position of the Friends during the war tended to emphasize care for victims from both sides and not an explicit preference as to the victor. However, according to Brock, after the revolution ended in 1783 a migration of Quakers from the United States to British Canada occurred, signaling that, at least in part, some were unwilling to adjust to the change in regime. Ibid., 254–255. 68. George Washington, “To the Pennsylvania Council of Safety,” in The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799. Ed. by John Clement Fitzpatrick and David Maypole Matteson, vol. 7 (Washington: US G.P.O., 1931), 35. 69. Ibid., 79. 70. DeBenedetti, The Peace Reform in American History. 71. George Washington, “To Governor William Livingston,” in The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799. Ed. by John Clement Fitzpatrick and David Maypole Matteson, vol. 8 (Washington: US G.P.O., 1931), 46. 72. George Washington, “To Colonel John Siegfried,” in The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799. Ed. by John Clement Fitzpatrick and David Maypole Matteson, vol. 9 (Washington: US G.P.O., 1931), 318. 73. George Washington, “Powers to Officers to Collect Clothing, Etc.,” in The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799. Ed. by John Clement Fitzpatrick and David Maypole Matteson, vol. 10 (Washington: US G.P.O., 1931), 124. 74. George Washington, “To Brigadier General John Lacey, Junior,” in The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799. Ed. by John Clement Fitzpatrick and David Maypole Matteson, vol. 11 (Washington: US G.P.O., 1931), 114. 75. George Washington, “To President Thomas Wharton, Junior,” in The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799. Ed. by John Clement Fitzpatrick and David Maypole Matteson, vol. 11 (Washington: US G.P.O., 1931), 221. 76. George Washington, “To President Thomas Wharton, Junior,” in The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799. Ed. by John Clement Fitzpatrick and David Maypole Matteson, vol. 11 (Washington: US G.P.O., 1931), 224. 77. Paul F. Boller, Jr., “Washington, The Quakers, and Slavery,” Journal of Negro History 46, no. 2 (1961), 83. 78. George Washington, “To Robert Morris,” in The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799. Ed. by John Clement Fitzpatrick and David Maypole Matteson, vol. 28 (Washington: US G.P.O., 1931), 407–408. 79. Ibid., 408. 80. According to Nash, the practice of slavery was far more pervasive in the North than generally recognized by historians. An example of this is Benjamin Franklin and his Philadelphia neighbors. Franklin also owned slaves, initially supporting slavery and issuing advertisements in his newspaper. However, at some point during his travels in England and throughout Europe he began to reconsider

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the practice and the degree to which slavery was compatible with liberty. While he adopted a public attitude supportive of the abolitionist position, it was not until well after independence that Franklin truly became a public proponent. Nash, “Franklin and Slavery,” 618–635. 81. Boller, Jr., “Washington, The Quakers, and Slavery.” 82. Ibid., 87. 83. Ibid.

3 Early Plans for a Peace Office

Attitudes toward war and peace and, in particular, the federal government’s ability to conscript citizens and its glorification of warfare have divided Americans since the founding of the republic. This chapter builds from insights offered in the previous chapter to argue that while the inspiration for a national peace office does emerge in the period of the American Revolution, it does so in the figure of Benjamin Rush, not George Washington. Rush and Washington both championed the importance of republicanism for the new nation, but disagreed over the place of the militia in the new government. This chapter begins by examining the role of the militia in the colonies, specifically how the militia became normalized within the United States after the American Revolution. I then investigate Washington’s call for a proper peace establishment, which elite peace reformers framed as the first attempt to establish a national peace office. Disproving this claim, I show that it is Rush’s writings on the psychic damage caused by warfare and his plan for a peace office that serve as the origin point for a national office dedicated specifically to teaching Americans peace and counterbalancing the influence of the military. The chapter closes with a discussion of efforts to create a national university, an initiative that both Washington and Rush were passionate about, but one that was ultimately directed toward the formation of war colleges. The Place of the Militia in Colonial Life

If, as discussed in the previous chapter, George Washington’s limited interactions with the Quakers cast doubt over his image as a man of

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peace, it is perhaps because he spoke infrequently on the matter, embodying a Hobbesian view that peace was merely a period in between bouts of conflict. While his letters demonstrate him as capable of showing regret for the loss of life that occurred during war, war itself was understood as inevitable. Steps should be taken to lessen the frequency of wars, but citizens must always be prepared to defend themselves against the enemies of liberty. Preparation for war and violence were vital aspects of the colonial project, and they became embedded in the emerging republican tradition. Washington and his revolutionary confidants viewed republicanism as an obligation, one that required citizens to sacrifice for the common defense of their homes. This obligation was not new, and was a core aspect of the militia system implemented by the British throughout the colonies. However, with the rise of republicanism it became personified in the American national narrative in the figure of the citizen-soldier. Regular people, specifically men, shared the responsibility to take up arms to defend the Union when under threat. Over time this citizen-soldier narrative conflated two very separate concepts in relation to armed force and self-defense of the republic, the idea of a citizen militia and that of a professional fighting force (army) under the control of the state. Colonization is a process that requires violence and a willingness to use force. Those doing the colonizing expect to face hostile adversaries and defend territory once acquired. Therefore, settlers assumed a familiarity with military skills necessary for the purposes of survival in North America. The native populations were viewed as potential threats and settlers prepared to engage them as such, emphasizing the need for military men and knowledge as part of the settlement process. The transmission of military knowledge was usually passed from generation to generation through word of mouth and practical experience, rarely was it formalized in an institutional setting or learned through engagement with books. Key to this transmission of military knowledge was the militia system. In keeping with English common law, militias were established at the outset of the colonial project. “The local companies,” writes Forman, “provided a channel for at least the rudiments of a military science.”1 The training provided by the militia afforded the settlers a form of public education and civic bonding that became instrumental to the units that participated in the War of Independence. The militia system materialized in Europe as part of the state-making process. Its creation was driven by a pervasive sense of insecurity as a response to both external enemies and the prospect of internal power grabs. Cress writes, “The citizen militia, then, was not only an agent of

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national defense but also a deterrent to the ambitious nature of centralized political power.”2 While this role as potential defenders against political abuse developed over time, militias and professional armies originated as agents of the state. Tilly describes the militia as one organized around the geographic radius of the city, primarily for its defense.3 The citizen militia guarded walls, intervened in public disputes, and in rare circumstances, took an offensive position in war. Tilly contrasts the militia to royal armies, which were generally smaller forces comprised of professional soldiers. Royal armies were expensive to maintain and therefore their numbers were kept small. When necessary, citizen militias were drafted to support them. Unlike the citizen militia, royal armies commonly lived through means of plunder and requisition. Tilly notes that this distinction between militia and army rested on the king or queen’s desire to keep the citizen population less well armed, out of fear that the militia might resist authority if it were professionalized. Kaplan supports Tilly’s argument, noting that much early popular violence, especially during the religious wars, needed the approval of the governing authority, since fighting was generally a professional affair left to the designated agents of the ruling power.4 Rarely was the use of such force to the benefit of the public. As the British Empire grew, settler colonies understood that they could not rely on the Crown and its army to provide for their security needs. The great distance between England and the settlements in North America made immediate help impossible. Retaliation also proved problematic since any efforts to launch a counteroffensive stood to leave the settlement nearly empty of its defensive force. The settlers faced a limited series of choices to address their security needs. One was to hire a professional army for protection, but few colonies could afford such expenditures. If armies were expensive to maintain for kings, they clearly were beyond the means of those relocating. Another alternative was to establish peaceable relations with indigenous populations, but as history demonstrated, this rarely occurred due to the characteristics of settler colonialism and resource exploitation. Instead, the colonies were forced to provide security for themselves. This became framed as providing for the common defense. The formation of a militia was considered the only practical option for the settlers (until Penn later proved otherwise) and it was imported to North America with the arrival of the first settlements. According to military historians Millet, Maslowski, and Freedman, the colonists had few illusions about what they were getting themselves

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into; they “came to the New World armed and, anticipating conflict, gave prompt attention to defense. Professional soldiers accompanied the expeditions to Jamestown, Plymouth, and succeeding colonies.”5 These professionals took on dual roles within the colony. Not only did they provide security, they also organized and trained the settlers in military tactics and the construction of fortifications. Forts were common structures in the new settlements and remain historical markers of European expansion across the North American continent. Weaponry in the form of cannons and muskets also accompanied ships on their voyages across the Atlantic. These technologies proved formidable against the native populations, giving the settlers a decisive edge in securing the land they sought to appropriate. Military historians wishfully envision the militia system as creating a collective compulsion to serve among men in the colonies. Compulsion is framed as “the principle of universal military obligation for all ablebodied males,” neglecting to note the distinct role property ownership played in determining inclusion and rank within these organizations.6 The militias were not as exclusive in the colonies as they were in England due to the sheer shortage of able-bodied, propertied men residing in the Americas. However, the assumed commitment to a shared sense of duty rested on dubious footing. In theory, universal military obligation meant that all men ages sixteen to sixty were considered eligible and required for service. The age range might vary depending on particular circumstances, but it was always meant to be inclusive of all the adult males of the local population. Yet this inclusiveness prohibited those in bondage, such as slave labor or indentured servants, from participating unless the need was dire, and even in dire circumstances slaves and captured Native Americans were usually prohibited from being armed given the fear they might use those weapons against their captors. Quarles writes that while laws guiding the militia system in British America were heterogeneous, one policy was uniform across the colonies, “Slave or free, Negroes were excluded from the militia save as noncombatants or in unusual emergencies. This policy of semi exclusion became so prevalent as to constitute a basic tenet of the American military tradition.”7 From the start, eligible citizens sought ways to avoid universal service and an exemption system soon emerged in the colonies. Each colony decided how it would manage exemptions. What began as a relatively small number of occupational and age-related dispensations developed into a significant catalog, greatly weakening the underlying principle of universal obligation. Those with means and status found ways to avoid service, those without faced the possibility of conscription.

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Participation in the militia was generally short in duration. Unlike the standing army, militia commitments were invoked as needed for fighting purposes, requiring less time and travel away from home. Though less intense than the obligations of their army colleagues, the militia still required men to abandon their daily life’s work and take part in mandatory training days. Musters, or training days, were compulsory and occurred quarterly on average. Legal consequences faced men who did not partake. This placed a considerable burden on working men, especially small farmers, whose time away carried an immediate impact on their livelihood, unlike plantation owners, whose use of slave labor ensured that their absence caused only minor inconvenience to daily affairs. Militiamen were also required to furnish their own weapons. Weapons themselves were common and figured daily as part of the settlers’ lives for hunting and protection. Yet, the right to bear arms was not an individual right afforded to all within the colonies. It was deeply connected to matters of loyalty and participation in the common defense. Provisions were made to ensure that arms were available when needed for those without, and colonies often stockpiled arms, gunpowder, and other supplies in preparation for assumed inevitable conflict. During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress ordered confiscation of arms by those perceived as loyal to the king or unwilling to defend liberty.8 The militia system reflected the social divisions within the colonies. Class divisions reproduced themselves between those in command and those meant to follow orders. Officers were appointed from the elite (landed property owners and those with connections to nobility), and rank and file from local farmers, machinists, and tradesmen. Later, the ranks came to be filled with men of little means and criminals, often described in texts as the lower strata of society. The militias were not army units but self-defense forces, a distinction that became enshrined in the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. The predominantly local composition of the militia limited the meaning of shared duty and mutual aid amongst its participants. There was little compulsion to help a neighboring colony if it fell under attack, even though all settlers were technically subjects of the Crown. Abandoning one’s territory to assist another only increased the risk of leaving one’s own property and family vulnerable to assault. The militia system heavily oriented toward the local, yet after a time, “civilian control” of the militia came to reflect the will of colonial assemblies over that of the governors. Such concerns with local control

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reinforced distinctions already held by the emerging British liberal class that the centralization of power in the hands of a single leader, in this case the governor rather than the king, jeopardized the rights of property holders to defend their interests. As land became the means by which the bourgeoisie established their foundations as a class, the militia emerged as a civic responsibility for the preservation of land ownership, which was the primary means of economic and political independence. Liberty and property were intimately linked in early republican literature with the right to bear arms, which was understood as a communal obligation of propertied men to ensure the maintenance of a particular form of social order. As the eastern portion of North America increasingly came under the authority of the competing kingdoms of France, Spain, and England, the settler perception of threat of attack from Native Americans lessened. Without the threat of constant confrontation and with the increased presence of British regular forces, training days became infrequent and exemption requests increased. Herrera argues that westward expansion combined with infrequent Indian attacks helped to diminish the “importance of the militia as a form of communal military service.”9 Millet et al. support this assertion, noting that the idea of a universal militia began to deteriorate within certain areas, replaced by volunteer companies composed of men with the fondness, time, and money for military parading.10 The sense of universal duty that once accompanied service eroded, replaced by a growing sense of unease about the increasing presence of British regular troops. The erosion of the militia was generated, in part, by British imperial efforts to expand their territory in North America. Starting from King William’s War in 1689 and stretching through the French and Indian War (1754–1763), American militia units took on an expanded role under the command of British officers and their subordinates. The militia system was a core component of the Empire’s war machine, but it evolved into different forms of militia organizations. The creation of expeditionary militia units in addition to local militias to support the British Army appears to have complicated the relationship with the colonies more so than to strengthen the homeland’s control over its raucous satellites. As Rogers writes, the increasing power of British generals to interfere in the colonists’ affairs and the colonists’ inability to petition the Crown to address these grievances helped spread the dissatisfaction with the place of the army in daily life.11 The subordinate status of the militias to the British Army and the seeming difference in commitment to mission put the colonists and British regulars at odds. Distinctions in social rank and

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location of birth always marked the colonists as inferior to their British born counterparts. This difference carried over to those in possession of military knowledge, since for the most part, those in leadership positions in the British Army were trained in Europe and served their initial posts in the European wars before coming across the ocean. With the shift toward expeditionary roles for the militia, more and more men refused to volunteer for duty. Part of the growing disillusionment with universal service became concretized in the ever-permanent problem of recruitment. Even when payments (dubbed bounties) were offered for service, men declined to join up. Those that did tended to be poor. They were unable to buy their way out of service by hiring a substitute and few worked in occupations that allowed for an exemption.12 However, once “employed” by the militia these men viewed the terms of their service as a legal contract, an arrangement about as far from a universal sense of obligation as one could get. While not professional soldiers in the sense of the British Army, hired militiamen worked in a capacity different than that of the volunteer. When the hiring authority did not meet the terms of the contract, usually in regard to provision of food or shelter, troops felt no obligation to stay the course. Unlike British regulars whose claims of honor and discipline demanded sacrifice in times of scarcity and hardship, American militiamen abandoned campaigns en masse. Wood provides one such example in which New England militias were enticed by Lord Loudoun during the Seven Years’ War to fight under his authority. When Loudoun attempted to station the militias with his regular troops, the New Englanders refused, citing that such arrangements were not in their contract and therefore violated their agreement. Wood notes that prior to independence, “allegiance was becoming a mere business arrangement, a coincidence of interests,” and in Loudoun’s case it was a severe detriment to accomplishing his mission.13 The differences between the American militias and British Army also highlighted the rising tensions between the semi-autonomous modes of governance in the colonies and the rigid sense of hierarchy and order that characterized Great Britain. British officers demanded full subservience, their fighting practices based in strict discipline and respect for a rigid chain of command. Even in the face of new conditions such as the North American forests and non-European tactics of the Native American nations, the British drilled and maneuvered as if every potential enemy fought in the same style, informed by a uniform understanding of European codes of conduct. The colonists were viewed as lazy and self-centered, often unwilling to enlist with provincial units or provide

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the necessary supplies required in ample amounts and proper time. Recruitment remained a particularly volatile area, especially during the Seven Years’ War with British officers constantly in search of men to fill the ranks of the militias. Millet et al. write that British recruiters, “recruited heavily among indentured servants,” a practice that colonists considered “an unconstitutional and arbitrary Invasion of our Rights and Properties” that cast suspicion on all recruiting.14 Riots broke out against recruiters, which only furthered resentment between all parties concerned. For the colonists, however, the professional practices of the officers and the taxes levied by Parliament to support them amounted to little more than violations of liberty against loyal subjects of the king. One cannot understate the importance of these differences as agitation for redress from the Crown took hold in the 1760s. The majority of colonists did not conceive of themselves as an independent people, yet they greatly resented the presence of the British soldiers as a standing force, which they deemed unnecessary in times of peace. The conduct of the British soldiers embodied the hostility the colonists perceived Parliament held toward them, especially since agreements between Parliament and Native American nations soon prevented further Western expansion. The contradiction is striking. In years prior, it was the very experience of being forced to participate in imperialism and, in some cases, being treated as imperial subjects by the British Army that had provoked widespread anger among the colonists. Now, by prohibiting Western movement, the army again symbolized the tyranny of external control. To the colonists this was the very opposite of what the local militia epitomized. The actual interdependent relationship between these two forces did not matter. Colonists ignored that both the army and the militias were necessary to secure the Empire’s territory. What infuriated them was that immediately following the French and Indian War the army appeared ready to exercise Parliament’s authority and use force on the king’s free subjects. To British eyes, the colonists’ perception of their liberty was unimaginable. How could these subjects fail to see that their rights existed only as an extension of the king’s benevolence? Conflict was certain and the growing acceptance of a republican worldview within the colonies only helped clarify the course over which that conflict would develop. One outstanding issue that arises from military historians is that they often go too far in viewing colonists prior to the American Revolution as “citizen-soldiers.” While this designation suits the republican narrative, it fails to consider the status of those that actually did much

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of the soldiering. James Whisker’s work on the history of militias in the United States provides an excellent example of the way in which this designation becomes mythologized in the national narrative.15 First, the citizen-soldier is defined as either a volunteer or conscript, marked by his civilian profession first and his commitment to fight second. However, both conscription and volunteerism are discernable by a reluctance to go to war, as Whisker writes, the citizen-soldier is instead “spurred on by notions of patriotism and nationalism and duty.”16 This glorification of the reluctant soldier versus professional soldier is carried further to criticize the role of the professional soldier in committing atrocities during the Vietnam War. According to Whisker, the militiaman “fights only as a last recourse when his nation is threatened and not in imperialistic adventures.”17 We can certainly recognize the potential for antiimperialist action in the militia as it is generically understood, but such a blanket assertion, especially in the context of the emergence of the United States, is to ignore the legacy of settler colonialism. The desire of military historians to champion duty and honor in this period is questionable given that such sentiments are difficult to corroborate as a result of the lack of historical data attesting to such sympathies. It seems more accurate to describe those in the army and the militias as subject-conscripts. Prior to the American Revolution these men were subjects of the Empire and saw themselves as the Crown’s loyal subjects. They were not citizens in the sense of the term as it would come to be associated with the republic, nor were the majority conscious of such a political distinction at this juncture in American history. Most were reluctant conscripts at best and universal conscription only served to reinforce the inferior status of their relationship to the king or queen. Outside of the few peace traditions that refused military service, most men of lesser status accepted their role in the militia as an inescapable part of their social reality, required by fealty to God, Crown, and the force of law. Forced conscription did not change with the introduction of revolutionary consciousness among the American colonists, and as these historians will admit, cases of desertion were frequent and discipline within the ranks was poor. Arthur Alexander goes so far as to call recruitment and maintenance of an adequate fighting force the greatest military challenge faced by the revolutionaries; it took a considerable amount of effort to enlist men and keep them from deserting immediately afterward.18 Again, as Millett, Maslowski, and Freedman detail, conscripts were generally of poor means and class divisions carried over into General Washington’s efforts to build and expand the Continental Army, lest

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we not forget Washington’s treatment of the Quakers and others who refused service. While it might be fair to suggest that the citizen-soldier emerged as part of the revolutionary struggle, the concept itself remains deeply European in its origins. The lauded creation of Washington’s “dual army” composed of a lightly trained reserve (militia) to supplement a smaller army comprised of professional soldiers was identical in composition to the division between British land forces already existing in the colonies and the local militias.19 Though the Continental Army and local militias purged themselves of loyalist figures, they remained a mirror image of the very force they sought to do battle against. This tension over the dual army shaped America in fundamental ways and has carried forward through all debates about the role of the military and right to bear arms in American life, even if the country stands over two hundred years removed from the situation in which the militia mentality took hold. Perhaps this is due to the rooting of the militia in notions of self-defense and the continuation of a narrative that views the militia and professional army as two separate entities. Where a standing army always ran the risk of predatory behavior, the militia, at least on the surface, brought together men who might view each other as neighbors and have reasons for interacting outside of times of conflict. It put men in relationships bound by shared struggle to defend what they possessed in common, whereas service in the name of the army regularly sought to secure territory beyond the familiar and impose external governance. It made men occupiers and overseers rather than agents of liberty. However, in the wake of independence, it was precisely a unified army that Washington desired and that the Articles of Confederation sought to prevent, instead enshrining the place of the state militias. When peace academy advocates pick up Washington’s writings on peace, they invoke the very birth of the American imperial project and what were contentious debates among the states over the use of force for self-defense and its use to further the aims of empire. The Pragmatic Peace of George Washington

Washington’s pragmatic formulation of peace is captured most vividly in two particular texts. The primary source of Washington’s vision is derived from his widely lauded presidential farewell address. In the text, he cautions the new nation to avoid foreign entanglements, by which he meant keeping the Union out of European wars. Alliances, when necessary, should always be temporary and US interests a matter

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of priority. America’s distance from its European adversaries gave it the advantage to pursue its own destiny. “The duty of holding a neutral conduct may be inferred, without anything more, from the obligation which justice and humanity impose on every nation, in cases in which it is free to act, to maintain inviolate the relations of peace and amity towards other nations.”20 One could not exercise independence if one was trapped by obligations, and Washington cautioned his fellow citizens to be on guard against the influence of foreign concerns and interference in domestic issues. Washington’s policy advice was praised by his contemporaries but held little sway. The second source dealing with Washington’s peace legacy, and that peace reformers latched on to, emerges both prior to the passage of the Constitution and his time in the presidency. At the close of the war in 1783, it was clear that the Articles of Confederation did not provide a sufficient governance structure to address the challenges facing the liberated colonies. Far from uniting the various governments under one body, the Articles granted significant sovereignty to each colony to do as it pleased in the regulation of most matters, including providing for matters of territorial defense. This arrangement proved unsatisfactory to Washington given his struggles maintaining the Army and in a rare break of character, he took the opportunity to use his position as military commander to speak not only to Congress, but also to the general public. In June, Washington drafted a letter outlining his concerns, declaring the need for states to take collective action to maintain their independence by prioritizing arrangements to provide for the preservation of social order and ensure the common security of the states from aggression, be it from the empires that encircled them, potential slave revolts, or the native inhabitants. Washington articulated four major points in his letter: the need for a strong federal head; the need to regard public justice as sacred; the implementation of proper peace establishment; and finally, a need for a “pacific and friendly Disposition” which will guide people to overcome local bias and prejudice, and instill in them a willingness to “sacrifice their individual advantages to the interest of the Community.”21 Washington framed the overall problem as one of empire. If the states were to survive and prosper, a collective effort was needed. Washington shared the vision of his compatriots of America as a rising empire. According to Van Alstyne, Washington and his colleagues used the phrase “rising empire” to describe precisely the type of order they hoped to create, “an imperium—a dominion, state or sovereignty that would expand in population and territory and increase

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strength and power.”22 The United Colonies were destined to challenge the hegemony of the Old World and its tyrannical regimes. However, without unification under a collective authority, the states would face two substantial challenges. First, their credit would be denied by foreign nations. The perception of independence as a temporary arrangement for the colonies meant that foreign banks were unwilling to enter into lasting financial relationships. The states needed access to capital and foreign markets, which at the time were primarily located in Europe. Second, unification would demonstrate their power to the other empires and therefore, establish the United States as such. Only as an empire could the Union assert its permanence and demand the enforcement of treaties, an act that required the coordination and consolidation of resources. An empire needed an army and Washington worked to balance republican fears of the standing army with their admiration for the role of the militias. Any notion that the proper peace establishment aimed to promote education or prevent war is put to rest by Washington’s commentary. The peace establishment was necessary for the defense of the republic through the provision of a shared military force and recognition of the importance of the militia system for the cause of liberty. Washington writes, “As there can be little doubt but Congress will recommend a proper Peace Establishment for the United States, in which due attention will be paid to the importance of placing the Militia of the Union upon a regular and respectable footing.”23 Washington’s years at the head of the Continental Army led him to recognize that federal control of the militia system was necessary for effective command, and therefore the militia system needed to be regulated by Congress to ensure uniformity across states. Washington remarked again on the peace establishment in 1784. He wrote, “A peace establishment ought always to have two objects in view. The one present security of Posts, of Stores and the public tranquility. The other, to be prepared, if the latter is impracticable, to resist with efficacy, the sudden attempts of a foreign or domestic enemy.”24 Peace as a term used by Washington is unmistakably meant as periods in which the state is not at war, but preparing for future battles and upholding a condition of public order. The peace establishment under Washington’s republican notion of order is a means of preserving the place, rituals, and values of the militia and army as key aspects of republicanism; it has nothing to do with positive engagement with conflict through means of education or training in negotiation, third-party practices, or nonviolent resistance.

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Washington’s outlook on peace extended from a view that the greatest threat to the republic was tyranny. Yet after the war, Americans viewed the idea of a permanent army with trepidation. The experience of housing the king’s soldiers against their will was a key grievance of the colonists. Additionally, the perception of American and British troops as engaged in crude and antisocial behavior during the fighting created the worry that such behavior would continue indefinitely, especially if a standing army were established. Even attempts to show favoritism toward conservative minded military honor societies, like the Society of Cincinnati, faced push back. The Society, an organization that still exists today, was at the time a group composed of Revolutionary War veterans. These men advocated for greater influence over the new central government based on heredity claims. They also sought greater compensation and recognition for their service during the war. Such notable figures as Samuel Adams and Thomas Jefferson viewed the organization as a threat to the very principles of the revolution.25 To his credit, Washington, who had initially accepted membership in the Society as its first president, worked to change the perception of this group and to nullify it as the source of a potential counterrevolution seeking to restore the rule of monarchy over the states. His entry into the presidency at the head of a strong federal system under the Constitution also brought similar worry. Had a new king been crowned for a new empire? In an act that has defined notions of democratic power ever since, Washington only sat for two terms in the presidency, voluntarily giving up political power and returning to civilian life before his death. That Washington should present us with contradictory impulses and attitudes toward the experiment he helped usher in must be appreciated and critiqued, and one of his greatest critics appeared in his shadow in the figure of Benjamin Rush. The Republican Pacifism of Benjamin Rush

In addition to the republican order of Washington and the Christian pacifism of the Quakers, a third view toward peace existed in this period of American history, and it is embodied in the figure of Benjamin Rush. Rush was a zealous patriot once swayed to the cause of liberty and became a key voice in the colonies calling for permanent separation from British rule. Yet after the war he feared the growing sense of military fervor that accompanied republicanism, finding it problematic to the moral character of the Union. He identified “military mania” as a

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mental disorder expressed as a madness in which “it is impossible to understand a conversation with these gentlemen without the help of a military dictionary.”26 Military mania is punctuated by an incessant talk of battles waged and an opinion that men are only those who have shouldered a musket. Rush concluded that this mania “infected” all those “adventurers” that participated in war, including those who fought in the holy wars prior to the Reformation.27 Subsequently, he also feared the growing separation between church and state enshrined in the Bill of Rights. He argued against secularism, claiming that Christian practice united the states and provided the moral guidance necessary for the development of young republican minds.28 He supported the creation of a federal state, urging it to take a strong role in shaping the national conscience as a merger of both Christian and republican principles.29 To that end, Rush promoted both the idea of a peace office as part of the executive branch and the need for a national university to help overcome the provincial bias of the fragmented Union. Benjamin Rush is remembered as a second and sometimes third tier figure in American history, yet his presence extends far beyond this lack of recognition. The handful of books about his life pale in comparison to the volumes of scholarship crafted about Washington and the other founders. His appearance in texts is usually as a sidenote, offering praise or disdain toward some particular figure associated with the Revolution, such as the contempt he directed at George Washington, with whom he had a tumultuous relationship, or with Thomas Paine, the close friend Rush urged to publish a tract called Common Sense.30 Nevertheless, Rush’s achievements are noteworthy. A physician by trade, he is viewed as the father of American psychiatry, a trailblazer in the promotion of civic causes such as education for women, free public schooling, prison reform, and the abolition of slavery. Considered a leader of the American Enlightenment, he was a politician and signer of the Declaration of Independence. Donald J. D’Elia went so far as to label Rush the “Philosopher of the American Revolution” in his study of Rush’s contributions.31 Rush is identified by Noll as one of the leading and most eloquent advocates of a Christian republican synthesis, and to some degree blamed as responsible for fostering the conditions in which evangelicalism emerged in the United States prior to the Civil War.32 Rush was born of ample means to a prominent family of English lineage just outside of Philadelphia, the city he would call home for the majority of his life. His descendants converted to Quakerism before leaving England for Penn’s promised utopia, but once in the colony, family members started to dabble in the practices of other

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sects, eventually joining a small radical Quaker group. By the time Rush was born, religious preferences had shifted again and he was baptized in the Church of England. The young Rush found himself immersed in an environment filled with religious plurality due to the promise of religious tolerance offered by Penn. Though Quakers dominated political life in the city, they had started to lose their hegemony as Rush entered adulthood. As with Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin, Rush’s family owned slaves and he wrestled with his opinions on the matter. He initially condemned the practice in a widely publicized letter prior to the Revolution, yet at the time of its publication he was still a slave owner. Rush later joined Franklin in the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. While publicly boisterous about the injustice of the practice, Rush appears reluctant to have freed his own slave, only doing so in 1794.33 The paths by which Rush and Washington arrived at revolutionary activity varied greatly. If Washington embodied the plantation values of the gentry as a leading member of the Virginia dominated southern colonies, land speculator, and military officer, Rush was a product of the northern cities. Educated at what became Princeton University, and well-traveled, his family traced their lineage back to the English Civil War. According to family lore, his grandfather fought alongside Cromwell, and later converted to Quakerism, taking his family with him across the Atlantic. After graduation, Rush labored among the people of Philadelphia to establish his medical practice.34 His practice provided him with an income, but he continually struggled to find new patients to stabilize and deepen his revenue. During the first conventions in Philadelphia, Rush made common cause with Samuel and John Adams. He favored the confrontational attitude of the New Englanders over the reserved deliberations of the Southerners. Lambert writes that Rush shared Samuel Adams’s image of independence based on the principles of republicanism and religion, one Adams hoped would lead to the establishment of a Christian Sparta in North America.35 If Washington was coy and disinterested about his involvement in the political sphere, Rush was his exact opposite. He was a boastful public figure and made his opinions known on a wide range of social issues. Once committed to an idea, Rush put ink to paper. He spoke with whomever was willing to listen. Intoxicated by republicanism, Rush incorporated it into a dualistic philosophy with it as a central norm, the rightness of which was supported by his everchanging interpretations of Christianity, his adherence to which set him apart from his deist colleagues Washington and Jefferson.

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Rush’s history with the Quakers varied greatly from Washington’s, but both found the group problematic to the aims of ending British rule. Rush’s forbearers settled in Pennsylvania as part of the early wave of Quaker migration. While Rush is noted to have greatly admired his Quaker roots, that admiration did not extend to support their governance of colony. It turned to outright contempt during the American Revolution.36 Rush is described by his biographers as outraged by Quaker support of the Stamp Act (also a defining moment for Washington) and viewed favorably the shifting tides that pushed the Quakers from governance in Pennsylvania. During the fighting, Rush served as a doctor and was noted to never be far from combat. He was commissioned as surgeon general and, later, physician general of the middle colonies.37 That Rush was on the receiving end of battlefield casualties accounts for much in his change of attitude after the war. As he settled back into civilian life, Rush questioned the role war should play in the new society. He wrote letters advocating for a variety of reforms and became increasingly concerned about the problems war created in the minds of former soldiers. Rush also developed a softer tone toward the Quakers. In his writings, he praises the Quakers for their use of the Bible as a key text in the education of young people, noting, “The morality of this sect of Christians is universally acknowledged.”38 In the trials accusing the Quakers of treason and loyalist tendencies, Rush urged leniency and understanding of the Friends’ moral position as devout Christians. The war changed Rush; it did not lessen his republicanism, but the violence and attitudes associated with militiamen caused him to reconsider how Christian teachings fit within the larger scheme of liberty developing in the free colonies. Of pressing importance for the colonies was the need for robust governance. Rush supported the creation of the Constitution and the formation of a strong federal government. In one convention, with his flair for dramatics getting the better of him, he went so far as to declare, “I am happy, sir, to find that the convention hath not disgraced this Constitution with a bill of rights.”39 Rush found the issue of sovereignty cherished by the Articles of Confederation disastrous, and argued there should be only one sovereign state, not 13 separate ones. The election of representatives to Congress made it possible for a citizen to be, at least in spirit, a member of every state. It also established a precedent for the greater cooperation and security for property and trade. Ending individual state sovereignty would unite the territory, leading to “an increase of freedom, knowledge, and religion.”40

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Rush’s interpretation of the federal state placed tremendous responsibility in it as an institution, specifically its power to shape the minds of its citizens into proper republicans and Christians. It was the state’s duty to engage in activities that rose above the provincialism of the colonies, a position that placed him opposite his more libertarianminded colleagues. Rush championed the federal state’s ability to produce citizens of a particular mental disposition. This distinction, in part, captures the transition from the premodern form of the state to that modern form the American and French Revolutions ushered in. To maintain this new way of living required the dissemination of republican ideals and the reproduction of those ideals within subsequent generations. Otherwise, without changing existing attitudes, the potential remained for citizens to revert to their former orientation as subjects and advocate for reconciliation with the Crown. Rush saw a need to prevent such a regression. English habits and customs were a threat to the stability of the new order. He used fears of English backwardness as the reason to justify the establishment of free public education, training that required not only an indoctrination into the brotherhood of republicanism, but also the pacifist teachings of Christ. The plan for a peace office is perhaps Rush’s fullest articulation of the merger between the state, republicanism, education, and peace. It is worth exploring in some detail since elements of the peace office have remained in various proposals to create a national peace agency over the past two centuries. The specifics of the office are captured in a volume of his collected writings.41 While antifederalists were upset by the passage of the Constitution, Rush was one of the few who felt that the document did not go far enough in the area of promoting a lasting peace for the United States, both domestically and abroad. He drafted his plan for a peace office and, like other of his advocacy letters, initially circulated it anonymously. Rush’s plan appeared in the 1793 edition of Almanack and Ephemeris published by his friend, Benjamin Banneker, the African American astronomer and surveyor.42 It is difficult to say how the plan was received by his contemporaries given that it is not generally mentioned in historical sources or referenced in most biographies on Rush. Goodman’s 1934 biography stands out for this reason. He begins by calling it one of Rush’s more “impractical” ideas, noting that the plan did not bear fruit. Goodman reflects, “Strength of numbers is not necessarily evidence of the justness of a cause; the martyr for truth and liberty must fight a lone battle. As a pacifist Rush stood alone with the Quakers.”43 While the readership of the plan is unknown, Kaplan argues that Rush

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published the article with Banneker’s almanac due to their shared commitment to the abolitionist cause.44 For Banneker and Rush, the peace office and an end to slavery were part of the same effort to fulfill the Revolution’s ideals. The plan begins from the premise that establishing a peace office does not require the country to be in a period of peace. Rush writes that the War Office, which was currently engaged in battles against native populations, was created during a time of peace.45 At the heart of the proposal is the creation of a secretary of peace within the executive branch.46 Rush outlined the standards to which this person should be held, noting that they should be free from the prejudices of the Europeans, be both a republican and a good Christian. These three characteristics revealed the individual as committed to the cause of universal liberty and universal perpetual peace. The secretary was responsible for the moral and general education for all residing in the United States, with their primary task to establish free schools in every city, village, and township in the country.47 Unlike Washington’s leniency in terms of choice of spiritual worship, Rush argued that Christianity was the religion of republicanism since it taught children the way to peace. The specificity of Christianity was a contentious point among republicans, especially with Thomas Jefferson, who argued fiercely for the separation of church and state. While not cited as such, Rush mirrors aspects of Quaker interpretations, emphasizing Christ’s lessons on forgiveness and love of enemies as those qualities that make it essential for peace. He does not, however, mention nonresistance or conscientious objection, and we can only speculate as to his understanding of these activities as potentially counterproductive to service in the name of the republic. Yet Rush is willing to put limitations on the state, describing capital punishment along with any form of state-sponsored murder as a violation of morality. Only the Supreme Being had the power to take a life when humans rebelled against his laws. The need for spreading Christian pacifist morality did not stop at school, but extended into the home. The separation of church, state, and private life was indefensible to Rush. The three were to work in concert and reinforce each other to produce citizens committed to the republic. Rush declared that all homes should possess an American version of the Bible. The reasoning behind this measure was due to what Rush cited as the banning of religion from public schools. In an earlier essay, Rush highlighted the Bible’s usage throughout history as a teaching tool within the Christian tradition.48 Fearing that the Bible would be relegated

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to museum shelves, Rush wanted the public to pay the costs of printing and distributing American editions. By making the issue a tax matter, he hoped it would help keep the Bible at the center of public life. Rush continued that it was not enough to just introduce peace as a result of Christian morality, but that the state should be at the forefront of these changes. The state needed to visibly exhibit its commitment to peace, not idolize the instruments and heroes of war. To start, Rush wanted the phrase, “The son of man came into the world, not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them,” emblazed on every state building and courthouse in the colonies.49 Additionally, he wanted all laws repealed that allowed for the shedding of human blood. The state should play a conspicuous role in setting the example that human life is valued and this needed to be established through the law given its prominence over human affairs. Most of Rush’s scorn was saved for the place the militia had come to occupy in public life. Rush never regretted the American Revolution; nonetheless, his support for armed struggle diminished in the years following the war. Concrete steps were required to counter the influence of war-making in times of peace. The celebration of warrior culture was detrimental to republican minds. However, it is not merely just the representation of war that was problematic, there was a need to distance citizens from its very practices. This view came closest to those held by his Quaker ancestors. The proposal states, “To subdue that passion for war, which education, added to human depravity, have made universal, a familiarity with the instruments of death, as well as all military shows, should be carefully avoided.”50 Militia laws should be repealed since the laws generate conditions for the spread of “idleness and vice,” which in turn, led people astray from useful work. Rush saw the militia as an excuse for men to engage in excessive drinking, and more to the point, he worried that militia requirements were a class issue. They pulled men away from their families and from the necessary labor most required for survival. Rush wanted to put a stop to the parading of military symbols in public life. He was concerned that the constant engagement with the symbols of war kept people locked in the mentality of war. To that end, he argued that militia outfits and military titles be retired. Rush’s concern with symbols did not stop with the militia, but extended to the entire defense establishment. He closed his proposal by arguing that the War Office should engage truth in advertising about the “evils of war.” The office should greet its guests with a sign listing it by ten various names, including an office for the butchering of the human species, a widow-and-orphan-making office, and an office for creating

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a public debt.51 Additionally, a painting adorning the premises in the lobby should welcome visitors with the symbols of death. Examples he provided were a weeping widow and orphan child, skulls, bodies of decaying and dying soldiers, villages on fire, mothers eating the flesh of their children, all emblazoned with a banner underneath reading “National Glory,” a gnarly visualization for a federal office even by today’s standards. Doves, olive branches, and lambs were to adorn the door. Visitors were then to be welcomed by paintings of Indians and Kentuckians cooking from the same pot, and French and Austrian soldiers dancing together. Swords and spears made into ploughshares would be hung from the walls. For all of its directness, it is not difficult to appreciate the radical transformation he hoped to instill about the realities of war from within the executive branch. What remains unclear is the extent to which Rush imagined the peace office or secretary functions in regard to advising those within government. Would the secretary have any actual influence over the conduct of foreign policy? What would the office’s relationship to the president and the War Department look like? Rush does not appear to have written further commentary on his peace agency, perhaps because he assumed it a natural outgrowth of what he viewed as his more primary concerns, the need to abolish slavery and the necessity for the state to take a lead in public education.

To Create a National University

The point of convergence between Washington and Rush is not over the matter of peace, but rather a version of republicanism inspired by the Enlightenment and the American experience. Both men implored Congress to establish a national university to further the aims of the Constitution and a unified federal government. Rush was adamant that action be taken to transcend the provincialism of colonies, noting that while the war was over, the American Revolution continued. He aspired to instill republicanism so deeply within the consciousness of citizens that any trace of European sympathies might be expunged. Channeling the Enlightenment fascination with technology, Rush described the effort as one creating “republican machines,” stating: From the observations that have been made it is plain, that I consider it is possible to convert men into republican machines. This must be done, if we expect them to perform their parts properly, in the great machine of

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the government of the state. That republic is sophisticated with monarchy or aristocracy that does not revolve upon the wills of the people, and these must be fitted to each other by means of education before they can be made to produce regularity and unison in government.52

Rush wanted to embed the principles of the Revolution in a constitutional and material order, a whole new way of living superior to the past. The American people must be trained if they were to adopt this new form of governance. A national consciousness was required to overcome the biases of Englishness and the provincialism of colonial life in America. For Rush, Washington, and other likeminded republicans, Thomas writes, “The national university would help constitute the American mind in accord with civic aspirations of the constitution of 1787 and perpetuate the mind-set into the future.”53 Washington hoped to see the university established in his lifetime, occupying a place in the area Congress had authorized as the site for the new home of the federal government, the District of Columbia. Yet over the course of US history and during this key period, the idea for a national university failed to gain congressional support. Only in one key area did Congress agree that a specific form of technical education was necessary to support the new nation and that was in the military arts. The first national education institution established by the federal government was signed into law in 1802. President Jefferson signed the bill creating the United States Military Academy at West Point and in doing so, inaugurated the precedent of federal expenditures on education.54 Jefferson was a strong supporter of a national university and sympathetic to the cause of peace, yet he was also skeptical of placing too much power in the hands of the federal government. History is not without a sense of irony, since it was Jefferson that helped solidify the place of the national army and provide for its role in expanding America’s empire. The first knowledge institutionalized by the state was that of military science. The reasoning behind the creation of the military academy reveals much about the priorities of republicanism and the challenges peace advocates have faced in countering militarist tendencies within the state since. By the time fighting broke out between the aggrieved colonists and the Crown, the British Army retained a significant advantage over the American militia units in terms of military knowledge and experience. Forman argues that while the study of military science had grown in popularity prior to the Revolution, books themselves were limited and

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generally available to only those with means. Part-time militiamen were rarely acquainted with the latest in military techniques or weaponry. To supplement the knowledge and command gap, the Continental Congress relied heavily on foreign military assistance in the form of French officers to train the militiamen and execute operations in the field. The militia system proved ineffective in producing the type of leadership necessary to train men for a prolonged war. Reliance on outside assistance deeply bothered Washington and the revolutionaries even if it was vital to securing victory against the British. Washington assumed the French to be spies or mercenary adventurers, and therefore, untrustworthy due to their lack of commitment to the cause of liberty.55 Washington’s caution was reasonable, yet his need for military knowledge outweighed any reservations about the disposition of those whose expertise he required. The matter of training a body of republicans loyal to the state, particularly in the conduct of military affairs, remained a pressing matter of concern to the revolutionaries as the war drew to a close. Leaving this knowledge exclusively in the hands of foreigners would jeopardize the freedoms won if Congress did not act in some manner to institutionalize it. Washington’s writings indicate such concern in a letter sent to Gouverneur Morris of New Jersey where he states: There is an evil more extensive in its nature, and fatal in its consequences, to be apprehended, and that is, the driving of all our own officers, out of the service, and throwing, not only our army, but our military councils, entirely into the hands of foreigners.56

Henry Knox and John Adams supported Washington’s basic insight. The two men offered various ideas about the need for specialized training in military science for the American colonies, particularly in the areas of artillery and engineering. Knox was an avid reader of military literature, and promoted the collection and distribution of printed materials on military arts as a measure for sharing information. Adams shared Knox’s concern for the collection of military-related texts, but insisted that there was also a need for a place of instruction. An academy of some sort was required so that “native talent” might be developed from within the colonies, particularly easing the reliance on the untrustworthy French.57 Adams pursued the idea of a military academy, establishing a congressional committee to investigate the matter. Though he conducted research on its prospects, he apparently never offered a report on the subject due to a similar proposal that had previously met with failure.

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According to Edward Boynton, the first efforts at establishing a military academy came in September of 1776, when the Continental Congress appointed a committee to repair its headquarters in New York and investigate the current state of the army and the best ways of supplying it.58 The report was not favorable, highlighting: Some of the troops in Camp were badly officered, and not subject to the command which good troops ought ever to be. The Articles of War and General Orders were frequently transgressed, and the Commander-inchief had the mortification to see, that some of his officers, instead of suppressing disorderly behavior, encouraged the soldiers by their examples to plunder and commit other offences, or endeavored to screen them from just punishment by partial trials.59

The committee was so disturbed by what they experienced that they requested the creation of a military academy to provide the troops with a proper education, similar to that of commissioned officers. In consulting with Knox, the committee also felt it essential to train up a professional class of officers to help improve the artillery capacity of the American officers who needed to master their skills. The academy should provide a place where “the whole theory and practice of fortification and gunnery should be taught.”60 For reasons unrecorded, Congress did not act on the information contained in the report, but the leadership remained interested in the idea of a military academy. In the aftermath of the war, the future of the Continental Army was a major question for the colonies. Many were in favor of the weak central governance structure contained in the Articles of Confederation and therefore, were opposed to maintaining the army. Those favoring state’s rights, Jefferson among them, argued for the need to downsize Washington’s army and to reject further calls to build up a national army since such a standing force was always viewed as a threat to liberty. And yet, it was Jefferson and his faction of republicans that enshrined the place of the military in US political thought and policy. Jefferson broke with his previous state’s rights position once in the presidency to champion an expansion of powers for the national government, and he tied the federal state’s earliest education initiative to advancing the military. While we remain keenly aware of the investment placed in military academies, the United States still does not have a national university, considering education a matter largely to be dealt with by individual states and private institutions. In limiting the federal government’s role in education to the training of men exclusively in the arts of warfare, republicanism in the United

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States split from the values of the Enlightenment. Rather than promote the whole of mind and body of the citizenry, the republican tradition became exclusively focused on matters of security and the acquisition of territory, valuing military knowledge as essential to the aims of a rising empire. Reassessing the Elite Peace Reform Movement Narrative

When the elite peace reform movement began its campaign, its end goal was nothing short of a national peace academy, a place where students would learn the techniques of conflict resolution and peacemaking. In their desire to frame peace as a pressing priority, advocates sought to reimagine aspects of the national narrative as one inclusive of the peace desires of revolutionary actors. As these first two chapters demonstrate, while there are elements of truth in this claim, deconstructing the counternarrative reveals a number of issues. Of primary significance is how dominant the role of the military has become in the national narrative, particularly as it relates to our understanding of what peace means. The glorification of the militia and military took place over time; their status was not settled immediately after independence. Peace reformers made a logical choice to challenge the American disposition for war by returning to the country’s founding as the site of struggle. However, in their attempt to revise American history, they made an exaggerated claim about George Washington to support their political objective. As a consequence, they ignored how militarism became part of the structure of the republic and, particularly, how it helped establish the boundaries of what the federal government could support in matters of education. Rather than wrestle with the intensely complicated relationship between liberal democracy and issues of peace and social justice, the peace reformers sought to champion liberal democracy as the bearer of peace and social justice. Which is to say, the leaders of the revolutionary period promoted the idea of the United States as a rising empire and the importance of military education to achieving that objective, while at the same time they rejected the abolition of slavery, the creation of a national university, or the creation of a peace office. This is not to negate the many remarkable achievements of the founders, but rather to admit that they were both human and fallible. In mythologizing, rather than contextualizing their ideas, the peace reformers did not consider the constraints arising from the liberal democratic system inaugurated under the Constitution.

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Two consequences arise as a result of this approach toward framing the national peace academy. First, Washington sets a precedent for the peace reformers’ inflation of military figures as peace advocates. The support of military figures for the peace agenda is usually based on the perception of the willingness of these figures to admit that the United States is too bellicose in matters of force or their advocacy for nonlethal techniques as a compliment to American military power. This unification of peacemaking and restrained war fighting is sometimes referred to as “waging peace.” President Eisenhower, who will be discussed in the next chapter, is highlighted by the peace reform movement as a hero of similar standing to George Washington. The reason for noting military figures who experience a change of heart is not to discredit their support for peace reform efforts. Instead, it is to single out the disparity in attention given to those actors who do not appear in the national narrative, but who have provided consistent opposition to war. In emphasizing Washington as the locus for what emerges as the US Institute of Peace, advocates marginalized the role of actual peace actors during this period, specifically those of the peace churches and Benjamin Rush. The degree to which this was done intentionally remains without answer. It is difficult to say for certain why this choice was made, especially given the religious convictions of those involved, many of whom were themselves members of peace churches and/or vocal about their Christian faith. Regardless, the peace reformers’ invocation of the Revolutionary period sanitizes what was ultimately a contentious and turbulent point in the development of the federal state and the role of religion in public life. It depoliticizes American history rather than grappling with the contradictions and fractures embedded within it, especially those that pitted advocates for peace and social justice against proponents of the existing social order, which were the very forces those supportive of the peace academy confronted in the 1970s during the upheaval over the Vietnam War. The radical underpinnings of Christian pacifism toward matters of conscience make it difficult to situate it within a narrative that reserves the state’s right to dominate others through the use of force. Given the turbulent period in American history in which the peace academy was promoted, advocates might have sought to avoid any connection with stances that appeared too radical or distrustful of the state. Yet, in reducing the tensions over peace at the founding of the republic to matters that were just merely overlooked or unfulfilled, the reformers fell victim to their own simplicity. The American Revolution helped usher in the modern state, and a major element of that process relied on violence and the organization of society in preparation for war.

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However, there were those that rejected this call, refused to participate, and instead, advocated for peace and justice. They may have been mistaken in their interpretation of the necessary rupture that was the American Revolution, but this does not mean that their place in our history is void or without worth for understanding how the state has resisted attempts to counter militarism. Notes 1. Forman, “Why the United States Military Academy Was Established in 1802,” 16. 2. Cress, “An Armed Community: The Origins and Meaning of the Right to Bear Arms,” 24. 3. Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1992. 4. Kaplan, Divided by Faith. 5. Millett, Maslowski, and Freedman, For the Common Defense, 2. 6. Ibid., 3. 7. Quarles, “The Colonial Militia and Negro Manpower,” 1. 8. Cress, “An Armed Community.” 9. Herrera, “Self-Governance and the American Citizen as Soldier, 1775– 1861,” 21–52. 10. Millett, Maslowski, and Freedman, For the Common Defense, 5. 11. Rogers, Empire and Liberty. 12. Millett, Maslowski, and Freedman, For the Common Defense. 13. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution. 14. Millett, Maslowski, and Freedman, For the Common Defense, 42. 15. Whisker, The Rise and Decline of the American Militia System. 16. Ibid., 6. 17. Ibid. 18. Alexander, “Desertion and Its Punishment in Revolutionary Virginia,” 383–397. 19. Peter Maslowski, “Understanding the Creation of the U.S. Armed Forces,” Foreign Policy Research Institute, April 2007, accessed September 15, 2015, http:// www.fpri.org. 20. George Washington, “Washington’s Farewell Address 1796.” The Avalon Project, Yale Law School, 2008, accessed September 15, 2015, http://avalon.law.yale .edu. 21. George Washington, “Circular to the States,” in The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799. Ed. by John Clement Fitzpatrick and David Maypole Matteson, vol. 26 (Washington: US G.P.O., 1931), 487. 22. Van Alstyne, The Rising American Empire, 1. 23. Washington, “Circular to the States,” 494. 24. George Washington, “The Peace Establishment.” Letter, George Washington to Frederick Steuben, 15 March 1784, accessed December 9, 2014, http://www.history .army.mil/books/RevWar/ss/peacedoc.htm. 25. Williams, The Contours of American History. 26. Benjamin Rush, “On the Different Species of Mania,” in The Selected Writings of Benjamin Rush. Ed. Dagobert D. Runes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947), 214–215.

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27. Ibid. 28. Benjamin Rush, “Of the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic,” in The Selected Writings of Benjamin Rush. Ed. Dagobert D. Runes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947), 89. 29. DeBenedetti, The Peace Reform in American History. 30. Brodsky, Benjamin Rush: Patriot and Physician. 31. D’Elia, “Benjamin Rush: Philosopher of the American Revolution,” 113. 32. Noll, America’s God. 33. Rush’s slave ownership appears limited to one man held in bondage as a house servant. Hawke, Benjamin Rush. 34. Binger, Revolutionary Doctor. 35. Lambert, “Benjamin Rush and American Independence,” 443–454. 36. Brodsky, Benjamin Rush. 37. Washington and Rush are recorded as having a provocative relationship during the American Revolution, due largely to Rush’s unwillingness to nominate Washington as commander of the army. As Washington’s fortunes rose, Rush scaled back his personal criticisms, though he later argued against many of the causes Washington supported. The men bitterly disagreed over the abolition of slavery and the role of the militia. However, both stressed the importance of private property to the future of the state. 38. Benjamin Rush, “The Bible as a School Book,” in The Selected Writings of Benjamin Rush. Ed. Dagobert D. Runes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947), 122. 39. Hawke, Benjamin Rush, 351. 40. Ibid., 352. 41. Benjamin Rush, “A Plan for a Peace Office for the United States,” in The Selected Writings of Benjamin Rush, ed. Dagobert D. Runes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947). 42. It is worth noting that there are competing dates for publication of this letter. In Rush’s Selected Writings it is listed as 1799. Bryant Wedge echoes this date in his congressional testimony, as do Rhoda Miller and others. However, Kaplan locates the original letter as part of the Banneker Almanac. A later and more complete version of the letter was published as part of Rush’s collected writings, which is where the 1799 date comes from. See Rush, Kaplan, and Baskin, “A Plan of a Peace Office for the United States,” 269–284. 43. Goodman, Benjamin Rush, 285. 44. Rush, Kaplan, and Baskin, “A Plan of a Peace Office for the United States.” 45. The War Office or Department was the early precursor of what would eventually become the Department of Defense under President Truman after World War II. 46. This idea remains an occasional talking point among certain peace advocates who long for the creation of a Department of Peace to rival that of the Department of Defense. 47. The Department of Education as we know it today was not established until the Carter presidency. An attempt was made in the 1860s, but resulted in only a minor office within the Department of the Interior. Free schooling for all children in the United States would not become a reality until almost a century after Rush’s proposal. 48. Rush, “The Bible as a School Book.” 49. Rush, “A Plan for a Peace Office for the United States,” 20. 50. Ibid., 20–21. 51. Ibid., 22.

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52. Benjamin Rush. “On the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic,” in The Selected Writings of Benjamin Rush. Ed. Dagobert D. Runes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947). See also Terrell, “‘Republican Machines’: Franklin, Rush, and the Manufacture of Civic Virtue in the Early Republic,” 100–132; and Modern, Secularism in Antebellum America. 53. See Thomas, The Founders and the Idea of a National University, 4; Higginbotham, “Military Education Before West Point,” 23–53. 54. Forman, “Why the United States Military Academy Was Established in 1802.” 55. Ibid., 18. 56. George Washington, “To Gouverneur Morris,” in The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799. Ed. by John Clement Fitzpatrick and David Maypole Matteson, vol. 12 (Washington: US G.P.O., 1931), 226. 57. Forman, “Why the United States Military Academy Was Established in 1802,” 19. 58. Boynton, History of West Point, and Its Military Importance During the American Revolution. 59. Ibid., 176. 60. Ibid., 177.

4 Congress and Peace Legislation During the Cold War

Peace reformers sought inspiration for a national peace academy in the founding of the United States, yet their motivation for a peace office was decidedly interlinked with their lived experience, a period classified by the historian Eric Hobsbawm as “the age of extremes.”1 The first half of the twentieth century witnessed two devastating world wars. The second half was defined by a series of decolonization struggles and the constant specter of global nuclear war. The United States came to occupy a new position in the international arena as a global power, and in order to maintain this status, successive administrations adopted policies that spread troops, arms, and money across the world as part of a preventative strategy to contest what they viewed as the dangers of international communism. As the costs of the Cold War increased, both in terms of military spending and lives lost to proxy wars, elite peace reformers argued that coercive power alone was not enough to break the conflict cycle between East and West. A federal agency was needed to promote alternatives to realist policymaking and to lessen the influence of the Defense Department and intelligence services in determining national priorities. In this chapter, I discuss the development of the elite peace reform movement and the reformers’ calls for a national peace office as a response to the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War. I situate the calls for a peace office as a critique of the situation created by the adoption of militarist thinking within policymaking circles, particularly the emphasis given to theorizing how the United States might win a nuclear confrontation. The arms race between the Soviet East and the American West drastically shifted the paradigm through which conventional interstate warfare was understood. Next, I explore the

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role of President Dwight Eisenhower in the movement for nuclear disarmament and the creation of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA). The rise of the elite peace reform movement is deeply connected to the perception among peace advocates that ACDA was concerned less about promoting full disarmament and more with balancing power between the Soviet Union and the United States. In response to ACDA and growing US involvement in Indochina, members of Congress and their supporters, particularly those in the emerging academic fields of peace studies and conflict resolution, urged the creation of a federal peace agency. Arising from these efforts was the George Washington Peace Academy Act, which is explored in detail as it provided the inspiration for the National Peace Academy Campaign and the template for what eventually became the US Institute of Peace. Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence Theory

Yearnings for an alternative to war ran high in the aftermath of the World War II. The massive destruction caused by the fighting in Europe and the atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were powerful reminders of the failure of existing efforts at international relations. Following the announcement of the devastation in Hiroshima, Norman Cousins, the longstanding editor of the Saturday Review, remarked that modern man was now obsolete.2 The founding of the United Nations months later on October 24, 1945, renewed hopes in the potential for international cooperation, yet this accomplishment rested uneasily in the shadow of the greatest threat to human existence. The atomic age marked a new era in the capacity of states to unleash violence against entire populations. It was in this context that a renewed push to establish a national peace agency gained traction among elite peace reformers. Yet this group drew inspiration from efforts that had transpired prior to World War II. In the period between World Wars I and II, four bills were introduced in the Congress calling for the establishment of a Department of Peace or peace bureau. Senator Matthew Neely (Democrat–West Virginia) presented three bills proposing the creation of a Department of Peace between 1935 and 1939. Neely’s bills resonated with the public opinion, which sought to avoid entanglement in another European war. Yet, the debate within the policy elite was considerably more divided, especially given the triumphant position of the United States after 1917. Neely painted the Department of Peace as a bulwark against the growing tide of

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militarism, but his critics rejected the effort, describing it as a retreat from America’s newfound responsibility to act as world power. Even today authors differ over the significance they assign to Neely’s actions. Rhoda Miller, for instance, champions Neely’s bills as early attempts to counter the War Department’s dominance over matters of foreign policy.3 On the opposite side, former US Ambassador Dane Smith reproaches Neely as part of the last wave of American isolationists.4 The legislation never made it past the Senate. The US entrance into World War II stifled domestic peace activism. As the country mobilized for the war the effort, the term peace became equated with anti-Americanism and efforts at peace promotion remained limited until the onset of the Cold War. After the war, there were many reasons the cordial alliance between the United States and Soviet Union deteriorated, but no issue came to symbolize the dangers of this deteriorating relationship more than the potential of global nuclear war. Nuclear weapons exacerbated the already tense relationship between two former allies and quickly came to preoccupy the minds of all those concerned about the future of life on the planet. While hopes initially ran high that the newly formed United Nations might serve as the arena to peacefully resolve these differences, the organization failed to prove an effective venue. The superpowers split over the organization’s guiding principles. The divergent priorities of the United States and the Soviet Union epitomized a polarized set of positions. E.P. Thompson writes, “The cause of freedom and the cause of peace seemed to break apart. The ‘West’ claimed freedom; the ‘East’ claimed the cause of peace.”5 By 1947, US policymakers had grown preoccupied with communism. They feared its spread into Western Europe and beyond. David Caute writes, “American leaders of internationalist outlook now defined the policy of the United States in global terms: stability, peace and prosperity were America’s requirements. Soviet policy challenged America’s claim to offer itself, or impose itself, as the model on which the future of world civilization would be based.”6 The Truman Doctrine, as it developed under Secretary of State Dean Acheson, outlined what the United States considered to be its global responsibility. President Truman declared that wherever Soviet aggression threatened free people, “it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.”7 Congress supported Truman’s policy, approving projects such as the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Western Europe, the North Atlantic Pact (the treaty creating NATO), and the appropriation of military aid funding for Greece and Turkey.

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The inability of the American West and Soviet East to address their differences led to the rise of deterrence theory, the guiding principle behind Cold War international relations theory. To its supporters, deterrence theory was a natural outgrowth of a view that celebrated the aim of world peace, but framed peace in terms of military strength. Bernard Brodie, a military strategist, professor, and associate of the RAND Corporation established the foundation for nuclear deterrence theory. In 1946, Brodie edited and contributed to a volume on the problem of nuclear weapons and their implications for military policy.8 His analysis postulated that atomic weapons had fundamentally changed the nature and conduct of warfare due to the fact that it was impossible to create a reasonable defensive strategy against an atomic bomb once it was launched. His examination determined that most major cities were capable of being totally destroyed using a single nuclear warhead. The rapid pace of technological development ensured that the magnitude of each atomic bomb would continue to increase. Fewer bombs would be needed to destroy a target, increasing the overall costs of a nuclear exchange. Brodie concluded by arguing that a stalemate was the best possible outcome since any aggressor state engaged in war needed to consider the threat of retaliation. The victor in a confrontation won nothing if the destruction wrought by its adversary amounted to the victor’s own destruction. Winning a war was impossible, Brodie wrote, because war itself was impossible if both sides had the bomb. He argued that fear of retaliation should guide military policy in the atomic age. Brodie’s assessment was bleak and pragmatic. Yet paradoxically its pronouncements captured the imagination of other military strategists and game theorists who built from Brodie’s work to produce further studies aimed at quantifying the effects of nuclear war. No figure embodied this fascination with survivability more so than Herman Kahn, the inspiration behind Stanley Kubrick’s fictional mad scientist Dr. Strangelove. 9 Kahn also spent time with the RAND Corporation and his work, On Thermonuclear War, argued that deterrence strategists like Brodie were wrong.10 Nuclear war was certainly possible and above all, Kahn claimed, it was winnable. Kahn was not alone in his pronouncement, and these “favorable” views of nuclear exchange helped the Defense industry promote the necessity of increased spending on weapons development. By 1960, both the Soviet Union and United States had ample stockpiles of nuclear warheads. For critics at the time, the debates about the winability of atomic war were symptomatic of men completely disconnected from the concerns of the general population, let alone the vast

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majority of nonnuclear countries on the planet. The term mutually assured destruction (or MAD), what E.P. Thompson termed as “the Awful yet Sublime doctrine,” came to symbolize the folly of pursuing a hyperrationalized approach to policymaking.11 The scientific methods and techniques that guided US policy during the war had become detached from any ethical sense of responsibility to the preservation of humanity. Kahn’s scholarship became viewed within policy circles as too extreme, though his work and his organization, The Hudson Institute, remained influential. Kahn’s colleagues, Brodie and Thomas Schelling, offered more palatable analyses for policymakers. Shelling’s The Strategy of Conflict, also released in 1960, offered a more subdued view of deterrence theory.12 Building from game theory, Schelling argued for the need to distinguish between types of threats. Deterrents aimed to prevent an adversary from acting in a disagreeable way; they were a prohibition on action. The threat of punishment sought the inverse. Punishment used the possibility of overwhelming force to make an adversary take or refrain from taking a particular action. The punisher engaged in risky behavior because it could. Schelling’s theory argued that nuclear arms were acceptable to use if they encouraged belligerent actors to comply with the wishes of the United States. While we generally recognize the course of events that followed from the nuclear arms race, it is worth underscoring that this period also saw the renewal of efforts by peace reformers to address nuclear proliferation. The formation of groups like the United World Federalists and the Federation of Atomic Scientists (FAS) brought together government officials, business leaders, teachers, and scientists who shared a mutual concern over the threat nuclear weapons posed to civilization. These groups distinguished themselves from traditional grassroots antiwar organizations in that their membership featured persons of influence and prominence. The World Federalists counted among their numbers members of Congress and prominent journalists, while the FAS had equally strong pull among the scientific community, recruiting many of the scientists that had formerly worked on the creation of the atomic bomb.13 Bolstering the effort was the participation of high-profile public figures such as Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, both of whom spoke out against further weaponization of nuclear technologies. The overlap of these groups with other antiwar and peace organizations led to the creation of SANE (Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy), supporters of which later joined the National Peace Academy Campaign (N-PAC). While it is important to note the existence of these actors, it is

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also necessary to admit that any general semblance of an organized peace movement in the United States immediately after the war was fractured, ineffective, and well under the heel of the state. Nuclear Disarmament

It came then as a surprise when Dwight D. Eisenhower, one of the most recognized military commanders in US history, was elected president and declared nuclear disarmament a national priority. Unlike deterrence, disarmament was an old idea. Nuclear weapons now featured in state arsenals, but calls for limits on arms production date back to the observations of Thucydides in Ancient Greece. Disarmament was a central precept of earlier peace reform movements in the nineteenth century, which took inspiration from Tsar Alexander’s Holy Alliance and his calls for demobilization in Europe. In decommissioning the tools of war, it was hoped that governments might turn their attention from foreign problems to domestic ones. Detractors, on the other hand, viewed disarmament as a method for securing the existing power structure within the ruling royal families of Europe and opposed to the national self-determination offered by republicanism. Those critical of the tsar insisted that force of arms remained the only way to remove the grip of the monarchy from the state. Arms control debates emerged in the US after the War of 1812 with the Rush-Bagot Treaty of 1817. The treaty placed restrictions on the number of naval vessels and cannons allowed in the Great Lakes region between the US and British Canada. The treaty was premised on the concept that fewer ships in the waters would result in fewer potential confrontations. Woodrow Wilson later argued for a version of national disarmament at the end of World War I as part of his Fourteen Points plan for lasting peace. Wilson stated, “. . . that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.”14 The argument for disarmament in these cases was never total abandonment of arms, but reduction to a point deemed practical for maintenance of internal borders. In 1955, President Eisenhower created a cabinet-level position to work on disarmament. The special assistant to the president for disarmament was celebrated as the creation of a secretary of peace.15 Yet, Eisenhower’s commitment to disarmament was itself trapped in contradiction, his vision for peace both genuine and problematic. On one hand, he clearly desired to avoid another world war, and on the other, he worked

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tirelessly to expand US military power as a means to confront communism.16 Eisenhower’s war experience softened him to the human costs of mass violence. He sincerely cared that men died under his command and wanted to prevent further American bloodshed.17 His concern for the well-being of soldiers prompted his determination to develop new options for dealing with potential threats other than massive troop deployments. Under the influence of brothers Allen and John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower pursued his doctrine for national security. He based his approach in a defensive strategy that relied on modern weapons technologies over manpower, and small-scale covert actions over massive troop deployments. 18 Nuclear technologies captured the imaginations of the military and policy elite, the automation of mass death created a win-win scenario for the state and the private sector. The scale of destruction unleashed by these weapons reduced the need for troops, thereby allowing the government to reduce spending associated with the continuance of high troop levels. Troops needed to be fed, housed, and otherwise cared for, even during times of peace. Nevertheless, whatever savings came from trimming back on manpower were quickly repurposed for spending on armaments. Nuclear weapons are tremendous financial investments. Government funding for the development, refinement, and maintenance of these technologies saw enormous sums of money transferred to the Defense Department and private corporations, generally headed by ex-military men. Embodying the paradox of his twin commitments, President Eisenhower acknowledged that the growing relationship between the Defense Department and private sector was a major cause of concern. His famed military-industrial complex speech revealed the extent to which he understood that economic interests were having an unfavorable effect on the formation of policy. The perception of Eisenhower as a former military commander willing to speak publicly against militarism cultivated an image of him as a peace hero. Peace reformers such as Bryant Wedge, a psychologist and prominent peace academy supporter, cited Eisenhower’s presidency as inspirational to his work on the development of alternative approaches to addressing violent conflict.19 However, rather than tackle the issue of militarism head on, Eisenhower punted. The president shifted the responsibility to the American people, calling on an “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” to challenge Washington to address this problem.20 Eisenhower’s speech receives much popular credit for illuminating the nexus of the military-industrial complex. Yet, such admiration usually ignores the work of sociologist C. Wright Mills, whose scholarship

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had already revealed this network of public and private actors forming within Eisenhower’s own administration. Mills termed this network the power elite, a fusion of high-ranking political, military, and economic figures that commanded privileged positions in society.21 He characterized the Cold War ideology consuming Washington as driven by “military metaphysics,” by which all problems facing society are filtered by the elite through a lens clouded by military calculations and directed toward confronting the menace of an ever-present enemy.22 Joshua Freeman writes that during the Eisenhower administration, “A conservative, militarized Keynesianism emerged as the new fiscal orthodoxy; the government would spend freely on arming itself and building infrastructure, which kept up aggregate demand without threatening the power or profits of private enterprise.”23 The state, financial sector, and military interests all found common purpose in fighting communism. Eisenhower’s attentiveness to disarmament accomplished little in terms of slowing the development and total supply of nuclear armaments. Data compiled by the Brookings Institute illustrates that the stockpile of strategic and nonstrategic nuclear weapons produced by the United States soared during Truman’s last years in office and continued to increase during Eisenhower’s tenure.24 According to historian Andrew Bacivitch, “In 1952, when Ike was elected, that stockpile numbered some 1,000 warheads. By the time he passed the reins to John F. Kennedy in 1961, it consisted of more than 24,000 warheads, and it rapidly ascended later that decade to a peak of 31,000.”25 By contrast, the Soviet Union took almost fifteen years to catch up to the US totals of 1957–58. President Kennedy authorized the Arms Control and Disarmament Act in 1961. The Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, or ACDA, was an independent federal agency with a mission mirrored on the United Nations to address “the scourge of war and the dangers and burdens of armaments” through the development of policy.26 The agency was viewed as an expansion of President Eisenhower’s Disarmament Secretary. Independence meant that the agency was supposedly free from the oversight of the Departments of State and Defense. Yet, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency was granted little power to significantly enact its congressional mandate. The State Department frequently interfered with the agency, viewing it as infringing on its mission as the lead agency in all matters related to the execution of foreign policy. Similar charges would be leveled by State against proposals for a national peace academy. ACDA was also limited in its ability to negotiate due to provisions within the act itself, which required the

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agency remain consistent with the national security objectives outlined in existing US foreign policy. If those policies contradicted the mission of the agency, the agency was required to bend to the will of policy rather than challenge the effectiveness of that policy. The agency’s first director, William Chapman Foster, embodied the inconsistencies captured in the arrangement. Foster was a proponent of disarmament and still, he encouraged President Kennedy to resume atmospheric nuclear testing when it was discovered that the Soviet Union had restarted their own testing. Maintaining America’s global superiority remained the top policy priority. ACDA supported the view that any significant political or technical advantage gained by the USSR as a result of taking what might be interpreted as a “soft” position was unacceptable. It was of little consequence that the US already possessed a clear advantage in terms of its nuclear stockpile and military technologies. While the agency began as a bold attempt to deal with the arms race, it fell victim to the Cold War consensus. Rhoda Miller notes that peace reformers shared a common belief that the agency was coopted by the Washington bureaucracy and Mills’ power elite.27 This perception of the agency as susceptible to hawkish influences and, in particular, the hiring of key employees not supportive of its mission proved instrumental in motivating the peace activists to push for new peace legislation. Mary Montgomery writes that ACDA’s general charge to confront war became bogged down in a set of specific concerns; the agency was “primarily involved in disarmament negotiations, research, and policy recommendations,” and as such “operated unabashedly as an arm of the Department of State.”28 The infectiveness of ACDA and the increasing military commitment of US forces in Indochina became the basis for peace reformers’ resurgent effort to establish a Department of Peace. The Congressional Effort to Create a National Peace Academy

It was not until the end of the 1960s that renewed calls for a national peace office, specifically in the form of a Department of Peace, began to make their way back into congressional bills. As Gary Stone indicates, Congress was the site of significant debate over the expansion of the war in Vietnam from 1964 until 1968.29 In 1964, Congress gave President Johnson the power to conduct total warfare against North Vietnam without seeking congressional approval for a war authorization. There was

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unanimous support for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in the House. In the Senate, only Wayne Morse (Democrat–Oregon) and Ernest Gruening (Democrat–Alaska) stood opposed, arguing that it was wrong to engage American lives in a war we had no obvious business in. The American public initially supported Johnson’s effort, but grew concerned after he began deploying troops in 1965. The popular antiwar movement began shortly thereafter. The more involved in Vietnam the United States became, the more the antiwar movement grew, especially once a draft lottery was instituted in 1969 and 1970. As a result of increasing pressure from antiwar groups, those sympathetic within Congress began to speak out against the failure of American policy choices and regretting their earlier support for the Tokin Resolution. For some members of the Republican and Democratic parties, President Johnson’s Vietnam policies were “imprudent, illegal, or immoral (or some combination of these).”30 Johnson faced a steady stream of criticism, which he bequeathed to his successor Richard Nixon. Though antiwar members of Congress were unable to put an immediate end to the war, their repeated attempts to speak on behalf of peace proved instrumental in laying the foundation for the coalition that would emerge to support proposals for a national peace academy. In 1969, Representative Seymour Halpern (Republican–New York) and Senators Vance Hartke (Democrat–Indiana), Mark Hatfield (Republican–Oregon), Jennings Randolph (Democrat–West Virginia), and Ralph Yarborough (Democrat–Texas) introduced identical proposals calling for the creation of a Department of Peace. Members of Congress concluded that the best way to fix the problems associated with the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency was through the creation of a cabinet-level secretary of peace. The secretary would operate as a peace bureaucrat, overseeing a unified department comprised of various agencies involved in peace and humanitarian concerns: this included ACDA as well as President Kennedy’s newly established Peace Corps, the Agency for International Development (USAID), and all those functions related to the United Nations managed by the State Department.31 Outside of Congress, a citizens group comprised of intellectuals, public commentators, and retired military personnel joined together with members of Congress to form an advocacy organization, one designed to promote peace department bills. The Peace Act Advisory Council, later the Council for the Department of Peace (CODEP), emerged in 1969 and sought to use the notoriety of its members, such as Norman Cousins, feminist Gloria Steinem, and academics Kenneth Boulding and Hans Morgenthau, to publicly call on the US to pursue

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methods of peace with the same “pragmatic national genius” the country pursued weapons of mass destruction.32 The organization shared a consensus over the need to develop peace technologies, but the diverse inclinations of its membership meant that CODEP differed over the ultimate aim of the department it hoped to create. What role would a peace department play in relation to the Departments of State and Defense? Could a peace department transcend the national interest without jeopardizing national security? Would it be an effective instrument in the political sphere? These were serious questions. Unable to come to consensus and unwilling to lose members, CODEP split their energy. Miller reveals that three separate areas of focus emerged, each requiring a separate proposal for Congress: a Department of Peace, a national peace academy, and a Joint Congressional Committee on Peace and International Cooperation. 33 Achieving a Department of Peace remained the ultimate goal of peace reformers. However, only the proposal for a national peace academy drew significant interest from Congress. As such, the peace academy became the focal point of the efforts that followed, pursued with the support of the CODEP base and members of Congress. Unfortunately for the peace reformers, mass enthusiasm for popular movements against war had tempered by the time of the bill’s introduction. Charles DeBenedetti writes that the last mass antiwar action in Washington, D.C., occurred seven days before the Paris Peace Accords concluded in 1973.34 Activists urged continued mobilization against US military policy, arguing that while official violence may have stopped, it did not mean peace was won. Yet, the number and size of antiwar groups lessened significantly from 1973 onwards. Only the core organizations remained dedicated to the peace cause. The outrage over Vietnam was replaced with a growing sense of unease about the oil crises that had plagued the Nixon administration. Indignation over the conduct exposed in the Pentagon Papers served less as a commentary about the folly of war, but rather a further example of Nixon’s corruption and the dishonesty of the Washington establishment. Moreover, the country still wrestled with questions over the status of those men who had avoided the draft or deserted during the war. Peace reformers recognized that the window of opportunity to pass peace legislation was closing. Still, they remained optimistic that something significant in the way of a peace agency was still possible, but any attempt to create a Department of Peace needed to be scaled back. The political capital for such an effort required massive public support. Determined to make the most of what support remained, two of the

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most vocal antiwar senators introduced a modest piece of legislation in the George Washington Peace Academy Act. On June 18, 1975, Senators Vance Hartke (Democrat–Indiana) and Mark Hatfield (Republican–Oregon) introduced a bill calling for the creation of the George Washington Peace Academy. 35 The bill was modest in comparison to earlier proposals for a Department of Peace. The Department of Peace aimed to have a direct and immediate impact on US policy in all matters related to humanitarian assistance and peace activity. This desire to influence foreign policy was still crucial to the peace reformers, but the peace academy concept reimagined how influence would eventually be exerted. Instead of championing a powerful cabinet-level position, the bill’s sponsors offered the peace academy as the first piece of a larger project aimed at limiting the influence of militarism over policymaking. Peace reformers adopted a long-term view of institutional change. It was not rooted in the success or failings of an individual appointed to an office, but in an educated citizenry less inclined to war and capable of handling conflicts at the local, state, and international levels through rational, nonviolent means. State-of-the-art techniques would be used to uncover the sources of conflict and to train citizens with the necessary skills to address them without recourse to violence. The legislation was a bipartisan initiative, led by a small group of antiwar members of Congress. Hatfield served in the Senate from 1967 to 1997. Hartke also had a significant career in the Senate serving from 1959 until 1979. Prior to their political careers, both men served in the US Navy, and both claimed their wartime experience changed them in a significant way.36 They shared a vision of the United States and its foreign policy, one distinctly at odds with the Cold War consensus in Washington. Hatfield was a unique figure within the Senate and embodies the sometimes paradoxical impulses that define the state of Oregon. He carried a deep commitment to the environment and social welfare programs, today considered the markings of leftists and liberals, but this was matched with a deeply libertarian stance championing freedom and independence. Hatfield was unabashedly candid about the role Christianity played in his life, “We must exemplify in our lives the Christian gospel....We must act as lambs being sent into a world of wolves. On the surface, that seems like idiocy. But there is in this approach the power of God.” 37 His political disposition is described by Eells and Nyberg as a blend of radical Anabaptism and neo-Hooverism, after his icon, former Republican President Herbert Hoover. His commitment to

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pacifism was nurtured spiritually by his faith, and perhaps more significantly, his experience of the US bombing of Hiroshima where he witnessed firsthand the consequences of nuclear war.38 In his autobiography, Hatfield labels himself as a former imperialist who came to understand the costs of the United States’ desire to police the world.39 These costs were equated with the failure of US policy after World War II, particularly the manner in which political realism had come to dominate the country’s approach to the Cold War. Realist foreign policy was detrimental to the United States, not only because it ran against the country’s basis in Christian morality, but also due to its prioritization of anticommunism, military extravagance, and national selfinterest.40 Realism clouded America’s responsibility to behave humanly, in accordance with the doctrine of Christian love and out of concern for humanitarian purposes. Hatfield counseled amnesty for deserters of Vietnam. He even coauthored a book on the subject, arguing that there was a need for the public to acknowledge the reasons why men selected conscience over service.41 The choices these men faced were often desperate ones, reduced to three unsatisfactory options: going on the run, going to jail, or going off to war and killing in the name of a cause they felt unjust. For the United States to heal its war wounds, the country needed to address this outstanding issue. Hatfield’s colleagues in the Senate dubbed him “Saint Mark” for his commitment to pacifism, though one is unsure if the label was attached out of admiration or frustration. Emma Brown describes Hatfield’s record in Congress as one firmly committed to his ideals, stating, “Mr. Hatfield never voted for a military authorization bill. As head of appropriations from 1981 to 1987, he was one of the most powerful dissenters against President Ronald Reagan’s political agenda. He redirected money from Reagan’s Pentagon budget to social safety-net programs and urged Democrats to join him in fighting the ‘Star Wars’ program.”42 Hatfield became a staunch opponent of the Vietnam War and cosponsored legislation in 1970 with Senator George S. McGovern to pull troops out of Vietnam.43 In the 1980s, he worked with Senator Edward M. Kennedy to campaign for a mutual freeze on nuclear weapons between the United States and Soviet Union. In the 1990s, the senator criticized President George H.W. Bush’s war in the Gulf and President Bill Clinton’s plan to send troops to intervene in the war in Bosnia.44 Yet, neither Hatfield’s autobiography nor his biography make mention of his work on the campaign to establish a national peace academy. His legacy as a peace activist is championed, but reference

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to a national peace academy or the US Institute of Peace is not cited. We therefore can only speculate as to his opinion on this period of his legislative work. However, one story contained in his autobiography captures the essence of Hatfield’s view of the peace movement and its relationship to those in power. Hatfield recounts a tale of being stuck in traffic in Washington, D.C., during the Nixon years. The reason for the traffic jam is an antiwar protest. As someone who spoke regularly at these events, Hatfield was sympathetic to the protestors until he realized that they were blocking the car of the secretary of defense. He exited his car and, turning to the protesters, shouted that they should, “Let him go!” and “send him back to the Pentagon! The last thing we want are stories that say the secretary of defense has been attacked by anti-war protesters.” 45 Hatfield’s view of activism was typical of the peace reformers, which characterized radical activism as too disruptive and divisive. The management of perceptions and relationships proved vital to Hatfield’s mode of politics. He described politics as “fundamentally an exercise in human relations. And it’s an exercise which takes skill, strength, patience, and truckloads of hard, constant work.”46 This is clear both in principles underpinning of the peace academy legislation and the testimony he gave on its behalf. His partnership with Vance Hartke and other antiwar members of Congress reflected a desire to work across party lines on issues he felt of extreme importance. As Eells and Nyberg write, “Once the 1973 peace accords halted America’s direct military action in Vietnam, Senator Hatfield was anxious to tackle matters of global concern, particularly world hunger and poverty. But he realized that nagging problems at home must be solved before concerned leaders could kindle the interest of Americans in critical issues abroad.”47 The peace academy materialized as an effort to tackle two problems at once, nurturing American minds at home, while also preparing those minds to address international issues through the generation of nonviolent alternatives. Vance Hartke likewise served in the Navy and Coast Guard during World War II. His commitment to peace is not publicly marked by any one particular incident, but Hartke was nonetheless a vocal antiwar advocate. He is remembered as a firm opponent of the Vietnam War and one of the few Democrats to break with President Johnson over the issue, driving a sizable wedge between the two once-close associates.48 Hartke’s positions epitomized the standard ideals of the Democratic Party at the time, supporting programs on education, veteran’s benefits, and business leadership. Hartke’s commitment to basic liberal values

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made him the unremarkable figure in the duo, unlike Hatfield, whose pacifism and attitudes toward social welfare rubbed against the grain of the republican establishment. Hartke supported organized labor, championed both Kennedy and Johnson, and was a proponent of the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act.49 His credentials as an antiwar senator are consistent with the view he took toward politics as a representative of the State of Indiana, though his constituency did not share his antiwar opinions regarding US involvement in Vietnam, which nearly cost him reelection. Hartke’s philosophical development as an antiwar activist in Congress is not as documented as Hatfield’s. Hartke wrote two books during his lifetime, neither of which was an autobiography. The most pertinent in terms of his peace work was his 1968 book, The American Crisis in Vietnam, which offered a scathing critique of the United States’ war in Indochina and his public break with the Johnson administration.50 While the United States had obligations to uphold international law, Hartke argued that its commitments did not extend to imposing international law by force: “These commitments must serve as the guidelines for the conduct of our foreign policy. . . . These commitments do not comprise unilateral American responsibility to preserve world order.”51 By continuing to participate in military action at the expense of American lives and dollars, the war in Vietnam was eroding the democratic foundations of the republic. Hartke called for a rational reassessment of the situation in Vietnam. He challenged Congress to accept that the US policy of “total capitulation and surrender” by the North Vietnamese made negotiations untenable, and continued military action made improving the negotiating environment impossible. The United States, like France before it, stood little chance of total victory, and a shift in policy was needed. That Hartke and Hatfield found common cause serves as an example of how democratic governance should work, even if today such examples of bipartisanship are lacking. The George Washington Peace Academy Act

What did the senators propose in their legislation? It is worth looking at the George Washington Peace Academy Act in detail to understand how its supporters imagined the role and function of a national peace academy, especially because the legislation serves as the inspiration for the National Peace Academy Campaign and provided the framework for the US Institute of Peace. The legislation called on Congress:

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To establish an educational institution in the United States fulfilling the goal of the nation’s first President, George Washington, to further the understanding of the process and state of peace among nations and the cooperation between peoples; To consider the dimensions of peaceful resolution of the differences among nations; To train students in the process of peaceful resolution of differences; To inform governmental leaders of peaceful methods of conflict resolution; and for other purposes.52

As discussed previously, the framing adopted in the bill reimagines the figure of George Washington as a political visionary with a deep commitment to peace.53 Washington’s aspirations for a national university, in this case described as an educational institution, are the groundwork upon which the proposal builds. Insisting that the emphasis of the academy center on the peaceful resolution of conflict and cooperation across nations, Hartke and Hatfield stress their connection to what they frame as Washington’s political thought while simultaneously issuing a subtle judgment on the failure of US policy of the time. The senators invoked Washington hoping to anchor their proposal in a figure and time period that transcended their current political climate. Here was the personification of America’s twin commitments to freedom and peace. Washington avoided the trappings of other figures that might appear too sympathetic to the pacifist position or tainted by affiliation with the communist agenda. Furthermore, Washington’s legacy was significant in marking the country’s Bicentennial which was to occur the following year in 1976. As Senator Claiborne Pell (Democrat–Rhode Island), a longtime supporter of peace legislation and chair of the committee on the peace academy act later remarked during hearings, “It is fitting to turn our thoughts to this subject [peace] since it was the wish of our first President. His spirit is still with us, and no effort could be more applauded. More than that, this act is very appropriate in this Bicentennial year.”54 By initiating a project in the memory of Washington and the founding of the United States, the senators capitalized on the symbolic value of the American revolutionary tradition as a way to reunite the fractured country. On one hand, Washington spoke directly to conservatives and hawks. His stature as a military commander, his legacy as president, and his view of liberty were all aspects of the man that these Cold Warriors might support if given the opportunity to broaden their understanding of him as a man also committed to peace and restraint in the use of military force. On the other hand, while the symbol of Washington might not inspire committed pacifists in the antiwar crowd, the invocation of America’s revolutionary past sought to capture the spirit of the times.

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The senators reminded the country of its own history and struggles, particularly the fight for liberty from what the American colonists conceived of as the tyranny of the British Crown. While not named or discussed in the legislation, it is worth remembering that the American Revolution served as inspiration to a host of important left figures such as Lenin and Ho Chi Minh. Lenin viewed the American Revolution as an anticolonial struggle, writing in a letter to American workers a year after the Russian Revolution, “That was the war the American people waged against the British robbers who oppressed America and held her in colonial slavery, in the same way as these “civilised” bloodsuckers are still oppressing and holding in colonial slavery hundreds of millions of people in India, Egypt, and all parts of the world.”55 Ho’s pronouncements, including the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence, often invoked American inspired understandings of liberty and independence. The Vietnamese Declaration begins by quoting the American Declaration of Independence and goes on to interpret Thomas Jefferson’s words in a global context, “All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.”56 America once offered an alternative to tyranny. To support the liberty and independence of free peoples to choose their own future did not necessarily lead a country to communism. Those guiding US policy interpreted the war in Vietnam along communist lines when the astute observer should have recognized from the start that the Vietnamese cause was a war of independence, an anticolonial struggle begun under the French occupation. Citizens and soldiers from both countries paid dearly as a result of poor analysis. The bill put forth eleven points explaining why the creation of the peace academy was necessary and what its benefits were to the American people. Beginning from Washington’s insight that peace and cooperation among nations and peoples are essential to the United States, the text argues that such actions remain an unfulfilled, if not overriding national priority. American citizens are extolled as possessing three characteristics granting them the capacity to pursue methods other than violence for achieving their aims. As people born into liberty, committed to cherishing life, and anchored in the conviction that the pursuit of happiness is a fundamental right, citizens possess the capacity and interest to look for peaceful means to address conflict. Looking closely at the narrative, the “people” are invoked in the legislation in a manner reminiscent of the Declaration of Independence. Citizens are placed in an active role over managing the affairs of the state. As such, they are positioned with a capacity to act and, indeed,

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the dire warning that follows makes it apparent that they must act. The text warns that all nations now possess (or may soon possess) the means to destroy life on the planet at an unprecedented scale. Future wars, the result of intentional policies or accidental mechanical failure, have the potential to terminate the existence of everything on the planet. As a consequence of these technological developments, the legislation places priority in the need to produce new types of knowledge for addressing tensions between countries. In contrast to the description of the Arms Control and Disarmament Act, which aimed to eliminate the scourge of war, the peace academy took a more refined tone, and defined conflict between nations as a normal occurrence and dynamic process. The issue was not whether states would engage in conflict—they will— it was rather to provide decisionmakers with new pathways for resolving their differences other than war; “there is a need for a study of the dimensions of peace among nations of the world in order to inform decision makers of alternative resolutions to conflicts.”57 To mature beyond Realist international relations’ policy required the development of knowledge free from the provincialism of national self-interest; peace knowledge is universalistic and transcends national boundaries. The areas of inquiry determined most useful to students are rooted in historical and empirical examinations of peace processes that pull from a range of disciplinary traditions, including the social, psychological, and behavioral sciences, as well as the arts and humanities. It is essential that humanity understand the many and varied ways the species, not just the United States, has pursued peace over the course of its development. These interdisciplinary studies would provide the basis for new methodologies and hopefully, the creation of innovative, applied techniques for addressing conflict nonviolently. The knowledge produced must not be for its own sake. Instead, it must be information that translates into specific forms of practice or concrete modes of intervention in conflict settings. The academy will train individuals in methods “utilizing avenues of peaceful understanding and cooperation.”58 What distinguishes the peace academy bill from other attempts by Congress to pass national education legislation is that it singles out what at the time was the relatively new academic field of peace studies. Unlike more established academic disciplines and fields, notably in this case the field of international relations, peace studies was still struggling for recognition as a valid area of academic inquiry. While the proliferation of peace studies and conflict resolution programs today is a powerful indicator of how quickly a scholarly field can mature, at the time the George Washington Peace Academy was pro-

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posed the number of college- and university-level peace and conflict studies programs was minimal. Though peace reformers emphasized the long lineage of peace traditions in the United States and Europe in the civil sphere, the codification of peace studies and conflict resolution programs within the higher education system appears only in significant numbers starting in the 1980s. Harris, Fisk, and Rank write that the first peace studies program was started in Indiana at Manchester College in 1948, sponsored by the Church of the Brethren.59 Other peace studies programs were instituted at Manhattan College in 1968 and Colgate University in 1969, but more generally, the direct study of peace usually found itself limited to specific courses focused on the Vietnam War. In the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at the University of Colorado, Boulder, specific instructors taught courses on matters of war and peace, but it was only with the arrival of Elise and Kenneth Boulding and after the formation in 1971 of COPRED (Consortium of Peace Research, Education, and Development) that the program became institutionalized. 60 Across the ocean, the program at Bradford University in England was not formalized until 1973. Research institutes for the study of peace sprung up in Europe during the 1960s. The primary example is PRIO (the Peace Research Institute, Oslo), established in 1959 in part through the efforts of peace researcher Johan Galtung. Galtung also helped launch the Journal of Peace Research in 1964. Another notable institution, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI, was founded in 1966. Conflict resolution programs were also still in their infancy during this period. What Ramsbotham, Woodhouse, and Miall term as the second and third generations of conflict resolution research grew out of the post-1945 milieu.61 The authors identify the second generation with names such as Kenneth Boulding and John Burton. Prior to Kenneth Boulding’s arrival in Colorado, he was part of an influential group of scholars working at the University of Michigan. This group included his colleagues Anatol Rapoport and Herbert Kelman. Boulding’s work challenged the dominance of international relations assumptions about the primacy of the modern state. He focused his research on understanding the international system of sovereign states and its potentials for generating conflict. Rapoport’s work in the area of game theory proved foundational for theorists interested in applying rational choice to the realm of negotiation. In 1957, they helped launch the Journal of Conflict Resolution. In Europe, efforts crystalized around the International Peace Research Association (IPRA) and John Burton’s program at University

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College London, the Centre for the Analysis of Conflict, also formed in 1966. Burton, a former diplomat, turned away from international relations to focus on examining “conflict as intrinsic in human relationships so that the task became one of handling it better,” as opposed to viewing conflict as something purely dysfunctional within a society with aim of removing it or the people deemed its source.62 The senators and other supporters of the bill presented the field of peace studies as a unified area of inquiry. This, however, was a stretch given that the institutionalization of the field was in its nascent stages. At best, the academic pursuit of peace was made up of scholars that might better be described as fellow travelers, connected more so by their commitment to recapture the original aims of international relations than to create a new academic field or discipline. The formation of the Consortium of Peace Research, Education, and Development in 1971 helped unify this endeavor as something distinct from classic international relations, establishing a network of concerned peace educators and researchers at both the precollegiate and collegiate levels.63 In arguing that peace studies is a unique form of knowledge, the legislation championed the academy as innovative in its mission to pursue a fully interdisciplinary approach to peace. As a national academy, the peace academy was meant to be exceptional, especially when compared to other programs that offered peace studies only as a minor or certificate program. In making their case, the senators singled out the unwillingness of government officials to consider all the options available to them in matters of foreign and domestic policy. Officials should be aware of “the dimensions of peace” and that “alternatives should be available to resolve conflict situations.”64 While specific alternatives are not mentioned by name, the parameters in which they are set undoubtedly assume a commitment to nonviolent practices. At no point, however, does the legislation discard or attempt to prohibit the use of violence by the state. The legislation seeks only to increase the range of options available to decisionmakers, and urges an expansion in the number of tools for use by the government to achieve its desired ends. In the final point, the legislation moves off in a direction that is unanticipated. Rather than return to a more concrete point addressing how the academy will serve the American people, the text instead declares a need to examine international communication systems. The specificity of this particular item has certainly become more relevant over time. The legislation locates rapid changes in communication technology as something that speeds up the flow of information. While communication is not explicitly stated as a cause of conflict, the fram-

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ing suggests that the academy should concern itself with how developments in communication impact behavior and influence relations among nations. The conclusion is noteworthy in this regard, because it prioritizes the breakdown of communication or unequal access to information as possible triggers of conflict situations. It is difficult to deny the importance of communication in conflict given the rise of the Internet and mobile technologies associated with what Asef Bayat terms the “refolutions” across the North Africa and the Middle East during the Arab Spring.65 With the reasoning for the program laid out, the legislation details the specifics of the desired institution. The act proposed the creation of a two-year Master of Arts graduate degree program, which would be funded through taxes. Course instruction would focus on: The skills necessary to achieve national, regional, and international cooperation, the early identification and avoidance of possible areas of conflict, the ability to resolve conflicts in a peaceful way, and in the promotion of humane and just national policies with respect to international peace and intercultural understanding and the preparation of teachers in peace studies.66

Heavy emphasis is placed on preemptive efforts to detect symptoms that might indicate a coming outbreak of violence. Additionally, there is a strong normative commitment prioritizing intercultural understanding and international peace. However, unlike most graduate programs, the academy emphasizes the place of teacher training as a priority. This small but significant detail reveals the importance the bill placed not only on maintaining peace studies, but on expanding the field’s reach through a growing, skilled set of peace educators. Where these teachers would go or how they would enter the school system is not discussed. Nevertheless, the inclusion of teacher training reveals the extent to which the senators and academy advocates recognized the deep institutionalization of violence within the educational system, and targeted it as an obstacle to be overcome. This is a subtle but important insight. Most graduate programs do not focus on teacher training even though there is an expectation that graduate students will enter the university classrooms. For collegiate instructors, teacher training is generally ignored as a form of practice and it is assumed that if one knows the content they are able to teach it. By giving attention to the need for teachers to be trained, this aspect of the legislation appears forward-thinking even by today’s standards. If the peace deficit (the lack of alternatives for addressing conflict other

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than through direct violence or militarism) is embedded in the education system, then the existing education system is also part of the problem, since it restricts our thinking and reinforces status quo solutions. Addressing violence and conflict requires innovation. The document then considered the matter of who would attend the peace academy. The attendance issue remains interesting, if only because it harkened back to earlier visions of what figures like George Washington, Benjamin Rush, and Thomas Jefferson had proposed in terms of a national university. It is perhaps the closest element of the bill fitting of its namesake. Early republican plans for national education aimed to overcome the provincialism of the American colonies and the sectarianism of its existing educational institutions.67 To do this required a federal institution, not a private or state-based one, a plan mirrored on the selection process for the military academies. A diverse body of students pulled from across the United States and its territories would attend the peace academy. Two candidates were to be nominated by each senator, representative, and delegate in the Congress from all US states and territories. This process is similar to the ones established for entrance into the military academies; a student must petition a member of Congress and have them sponsor their application. 68 Nominated candidates vied for entry based on their scores in a national competitive examination upon which half of the test takers secured admission. As with other graduate programs, students were mandated to complete a baccalaureate degree from an accredited institution prior to entry. To help diversify the student population, an additional requirement mandated the student body composition include between ten and twenty percent of foreign citizens. Taxpayers would cover the cost of attendance with students receiving a stipend and travel allowances. The only requirement placed on the student for such a generous arrangement was the obligation of two years of service work after graduation in a government organization, a public or private nonprofit, or an international organization on a matter related to peace.69 The structure of the academy was typical of most educational programs. It included a chancellor, dean of faculty, and dean of students; ten to twenty senior faculty; a registrar; and a director of admissions. The chancellor headed the Executive Committee, which also included the deans of faculty and students, four senior professors, and four students, one of whom would be the president of the student body.70 Such an inclusive arrangement within the organization is no doubt a nod to the involvement of students in the social movements of the 1960s and

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1970s. Students were to play an active role on the Board of Admissions, with a 3/4 split between students and faculty members. Students held a minority position within the structure, but their inclusion reveals a level of concern rarely afforded to the student body in other graduate programs, especially in what is typically a very secretive selection process. One of the more peculiar items explicitly outlined for the chancellor regarded the appointment of a chaplain. No reason is given as to why a chaplain was compulsory, but to include such a requirement outright is to invite speculation. We should remember that it was Benjamin Rush that identified Christianity as the moral foundation for republicanism. Familiarity and practice of the religion was considered essential to the production of young people morally bound to the republic. Senator Hatfield also indicated that Christianity served as the base of his pacific vision. The insertion of the provision for a chaplain at this particular period in American history certainly appears as an attempt to emphasize the Christian or at the very least religious character of the country against more secular interpretations. The chaplain is a provocative figure in US history, particularly in matters of war and peace. Chaplains have featured in all of America’s wars, including the American Revolution. Charles Metzger describes the chaplain’s role as many-sided, noting that chaplains often acted as patriots and propagandists, recruiting men to fight and arousing enthusiasm for war.71 Chaplains are a standard item in American military units, present in the Continental Army and more recently, notable for their provocative commentary likening the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the Crusades.72 Though no specific reasoning is listed in the legislation, we might consider the chaplain’s inclusion here as revelatory of the fear that persisted within the peace circles of appearing soft on communism. If the supposed communist alternative was godlessness, the chaplain symbolized the continued importance of religion to the United States and its vision of global order. Oversight of the academy mirrored those structures established by the military academies. Primary guidance would fall on the board of trustees, listed as some of the country’s most powerful citizens. The president of the United States was listed as its chairman and thirty-three other members were recommended to join him, including the secretary of state, the ambassador to the United Nations, the secretary of health, education, and welfare, the chairman of the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations, the chairman of the House Committee on International Relations, the chairman of the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities, the chancellor of the Academy, and additional appointments from

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the Senate (four), the House of Representatives (four) and the president (eighteen). Further, the president was called upon to nominate “leaders in the academic community” that are recognized as pursuing “the advancement of international cooperation, peaceful conflict resolution, and world peace and understanding.”73 The board’s primary responsibility was to oversee the direction of the academy and to nominate a chancellor to serve as its head. After approval by the Senate, the chancellor serves a six-year term with the possibility of one reappointment allowing for a maximum of twelve years in leadership. Three insights emerge from this arrangement, two of which grant enormous favor to the promotion of peace studies. The first is the conscious exclusion of the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies from participation on the board. The legislation’s design provides no space for these figures in the oversight process. Second, the bulk of the board is characterized as academic experts in the fields of peace studies and conflict resolution. This move grants members significant access to key elements of the foreign policy apparatus of the government, in addition to helping establish the academy’s priorities. The downside of this arrangement is that the board’s composition totally disregards the role of partisan politics. The bill lacked any provision for maintaining the leadership’s consistency across administrations or for preventing an administration hostile to its aims from packing it with unfavorable members. Outside of listing the reasons why the peace academy should be established and providing an overview of its composition, the legislation said surprisingly little about what a core curriculum for the graduate program would look like. Instead, these insights were expounded upon in more detail when Congress held a hearing to discuss the bill on May 13, 1976, almost a year after its introduction. With the assistance of CODEP, Senators Hartke and Hatfield organized ten witnesses to provide oral testimony and another eighteen submitted written statements for inclusion in the Congressional Record. Positive remarks came from a diverse set of sources, including World Federalists, arbitrators, church organizations, writers, journalists, and educators. Most were supportive of the legislation not only for the program it would immediately create, but also for what it meant for the future of the country. Such an institution would send a signal to the world that the United States had learned its lesson from Vietnam. The bill’s sponsors were quick to point out that the peace academy was only the beginning of a much more ambitious project. Senator Hartke’s testimony stated, “What is envisioned here is the direction of a

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nation. We are talking about the direction of human conduct. . . . This is not just the establishment of another agency of government. This is the formulation of the direction this Nation should take as it begins the next 100 years.”74 The need for peace is connected to a total shift in the conception and conduct of US policy. A profound change must take place not only in the minds of citizens, but also those elected political leaders and those appointed to offices. The view was oriented toward the pragmatic; the knowledge produced within this institution must lead to practices that can be applied to the prevention of violence. In Hartke’s opinion, the State Department is singled out as a political instrument, which removes it from the realm of idealistic action. It is both a tool for war or peace depending on how an administration decides to use it. The peace academy should embody similar practicality, even if it is guided by a normative commitment to reduce violence. Hatfield echoed Hartke’s sentiment, yet he also warned against reducing the academy program to mere technical training. Peace was not, Hatfield argued following in the tradition of Spinoza and later Johan Galtung, just the absence or suspension of conflict. Students needed to look beyond merely stopping physical manifestations of violence. Too much attention on stopping violence might miss the underlying dynamics driving the conflict or create conditions for further violence down the road. “To me the greatest destabilizing force in the world today is famine and hunger, a far greater destabilizing than the armaments of the Soviet Union or mainland China,” Hatfield remarked, urging that the academy “be broad enough to deal with all these various problems that become causes of war and revolution.”75 One might quibble with Hatfield’s lack of inclusion of the economy in this analysis; specifically, he makes no mention of how the spread of capitalism contributes to global famine and hunger. Yet, his antimilitarist position is clear. His words reflected the values of pacifism and the social system he championed, and they also captured his perspective that the prospects of a direct hot war between the US and Soviet Union were inflated to mask the country’s record of valuing the interests of the arms manufacturers over those of people in need. The peace academy was an opportunity to challenge the military-industrial complex from within the heart of American power. One area where education and training could have an immediate impact in the area of diplomacy. Norman Cousins was adamant about the need to nurture leadership capacity and technical skills in young Americans. Cousins was one of the most vocal supporters of both the National Peace Academy Campaign and the National Committee for a SANE

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Nuclear Policy (SANE).76 In his statement to Congress he wrote, “Diplomacy is a particularized science. Making peace requires just as much specialized training as does making war.”77 Cousins’s stress on the “science of diplomacy” foreshadowed a distinction that became crucial to the peace academy campaign as it developed. Peace was the desired end state, and a scientific approach to training in specialized areas, such as diplomacy, negotiation, and conflict resolution, were the way to get there. Peace Reformers in the Academy

During the congressional hearing over the act, two figures emerged that would play vital parts in the campaign to follow. Bryant Wedge and James H. Laue were instrumental in framing what became the National Peace Academy Campaign (N-PAC), and they gave early statements in support of the peace academy. Moreover, the men played crucial roles in developing the contemporary field of conflict resolution, and founding what is now the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. Unlike the senators, Laue and Wedge traveled back and forth between the fields of education and governance. They were professional academics who at various times in their careers operated within the federal system as agents of and consultants to the federal government. They were some of the earliest advocates for institutionalizing peace and conflict studies, though at the outset their efforts were more narrowly focused on discovering interdisciplinary spaces for scholarly collaboration on these matters. Wedge was a social psychiatrist, noted for founding the Institute for the Study of National Behavior. Rhoda Miller identifies Wedge as the person responsible for getting Congress to accept the notion that peaceful modes of dispute settlement could be transitioned into an academic curriculum.78 Wedge gained national exposure for what at the time was considered his unorthodox views on the relationship between peace and psychotherapy. In an article appearing in the Los Angeles Times, Wedge is described as urging mass psychotherapy at the group and national levels to address conflict.79 The process, as Wedge explains it, is an early form of something close to group mediation or a problem-solving workshop. Wedge’s presence at the congressional hearing came not only from his promotion of peace, but also his prior working relationship with the state and his experiences abroad during the 1950s. Wedge’s discernment of the possibilities for settling international conflict through means other than military force came when he found

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himself pressed into national service. By coincidence, Wedge happened to be working in Guatemala when the Eisenhower administration executed an operation to overthrow the country’s democratically elected government. The scenario placed Wedge between the students he taught at the university and a deployment of US Marines. According to Chris Mitchell, Wedge: found himself literally “in the middle,” acting as a go-between for the students and for the United States Embassy in Guatemala, which—he was only later to find out—had been heavily involved in planning this US intervention, a Cold War success that set back the fortunes of most people in Guatemala by several decades. Thus, he was engaged in Track Two activity before that phrase had even been invented.80

During his testimony, Wedge portrays himself as a representative of a community of scientists and scholars whose wisdom was in demand by officials and ambassadors. Traveling across Europe as an Eisenhower exchange fellow, Wedge encountered numerous requests from these high-ranking figures for techniques on how to address conflict. International relations as it was conceived failed to understand the importance of communication, nor did it provide any practical advice for resolving conflicts outside of established government channels. In his capacity as a psychiatrist, Wedge was invited to participate in a number of state-sponsored activities related to foreign affairs. During the Kennedy administration, he was invited to partake in a conference to assess the mental health and personality of Nikita Khrushchev, then leader of the Soviet Union. Wedge revealed to the press some years later that the president had reviewed his study on Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis and his meeting with the premier earlier in Vienna, stating that Kennedy used sections of his report in his public remarks.81 Wedge’s analysis counseled the president to use straightforward talk with Khrushchev and “avoid generalizations or any appeal to the basic ideas of democracy because Khrushchev literally cannot grasp their meaning.”82 Although it is uncertain how much influence Wedge had on Kennedy, it is undeniable that Wedge’s access placed him within a powerful network of foreign policy actors. Wedge shared Hatfield’s perception that realist concerns with power balancing and threats of force undermined the stature of the United States, making it appear to other countries that the US engaged in negotiations only when it did so from a position of strength. Wedge noted that this perception, regardless of whether it was intended or not, undermined the ability of the US to negotiate. Officials were receptive

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to Wedge’s insights, and urged him to consider the role the communication process played in generating misunderstandings between countries during negotiations. While Wedge adopted a sociable tone during his oral witness, his full remarks revealed him as deeply cynical of the centralization of decision-making over foreign affairs within the National Security Council under Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. He writes, “In the end, we are in the awkward position of having to rely on the judgment of a small group of men who govern our military, diplomatic, and intelligence forces. We have, in effect, a foreign ministry arranging our international affairs as in the days of sovereigns, rather than an Administration consulting the will of Congress and the people.”83 Wedge concluded that the government’s reliance on power theory, the core of modern international relations studies, was not solving the country’s issues abroad. Instead, it was creating a situation of moral, political, and economic deterioration within the United States. The government no longer knew how to analyze or address conflicts other than through means guided by the use of military force. Another debacle like Vietnam was the likely outcome if things remained the same. This lack of vision was a result of the small number of decisionmakers monopolizing the policy process, which Wedge described as an isolated cadre. Their seclusion and unwillingness to consider alternatives only reinforced already held positions and beliefs. Wedge championed the alternative to Kissinger in the form of Eisenhower, whom he identified as a forward thinker. In Wedge’s estimation, Eisenhower desperately sought alternatives to the military-industrial complex. At times Wedge’s esteem for Eisenhower makes it sound as if he is channeling Ike through the spirit of C. Wright Mills. Wedge critiques the foreign policy establishment as the corrupting force behind ACDA’s legacy and the decision to invade Vietnam. His criticisms of the foreign policy elite and war culture appear progressive even today. Wedge closed his testimony by identifying Congress as the crucial actor capable of reclaiming power from the policy elite. Congressional support for the peace academy was needed now more than ever; since the executive was unwilling and professors unable, “Congress must lead the way.”84 The other central influence on the peace academy campaign came in the form of James Laue. Laue also delivered testimony and a statement as part of the hearings. As with Wedge, Laue blended the elements of scholar and practitioner. His connections to the federal government came as part of the Community Relations Service (CRS), an arm of the Department of Justice that was created as part of the Civil Rights Act of

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1964 to act as a peacemaker in community conflicts. His work with CRS placed him in the middle of the civil unrest that had torn across the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.85 His activities centered primarily on the struggles faced by African Americans to assert control over their communities and obtain equal treatment for the rights guaranteed to them under the law. Laue, along with Wedge and Congressman Andrew Young (Democrat–Georgia) were central to organizing the National Peace Academy Campaign (N-PAC). In 1978, President Jimmy Carter appointed Laue to the Commission to Study Proposals for Establishing a National Academy of Peace and Conflict Resolution. Laue was the only person to speak at all six of the congressional hearings on the peace academy during the eight-year campaign that resulted in the creation of the US Institute of Peace. Wedge’s remarks during the George Washington Peace Academy hearings targeted the failures of the existing policy apparatus. However, what made his testimony remarkable was that he did not limit his discussion to only international concerns. One area was noticeably absent from the educational aims of the academy and the vast amount of testimony delivered on its behalf, and that was a perspective encompassing a view of events occurring within the United States. Domestic conflict, while assumed important, was nowhere on the agenda even though it was on the minds of all involved. Nevertheless, a strict interpretation of peace studies is presented in the bill as one focused on conflict occurring at the federal level and above. It was silent on intrastate conflict and domestic issues. This critical absence did not go unnoticed and it was Laue who consistently offered dissent over its absence. He remarked during his testimony, “The level of community conflicts that are with us now and are likely to continue to be with us, provide an excellent training ground and a resource that we would very sorely miss and misuse, I think, if we did not have a heavy focus on community conflict as well as international conflict in the legislation.”86 For Laue, the international focus of the academy and of the congressional hearing were problematic. They ignored the contribution of research and practice focused on mediation, advocacy, and other modes of resolving community disputes. The hearing featured little input from communities of color or anyone outside of the moderate peace reform movement. Laue described the problem as “people like us” demanding peace and conflict resolution when minority communities and activists were “asking for a change and justice instead.”87 Captured so eloquently is a problem that remains within the peace and conflict studies field to this day: what is

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the relationship between the pursuit of peace and that of social justice? Were peace academy advocates interested in peace as a way of addressing social injustice or was their concern with figuring out ways to maintain social order at the expense of justice? Without considering domestic social and economic issues, the bill ignored the plight of working class people and communities of color. Laue shared Wedge’s commitment to the idea that education and training were the way forward. Yet his testimony anchored his practice in a fundamentally different location, not in the expert as problem solver, but in the community as the site of its own solutions. For Wedge, the issue of training and education was a matter of professionalization. The academy should focus on the preparation of peace experts. Once trained, these specialists could be deployed to conflict zones to help parties work through their issues using nonlethal techniques to resolve differences. Like a doctor (Wedge was after all a psychiatrist), the conflict practitioner is an objective outside party that enters the situation to diagnose the problem and offer treatments. As Kevin Avruch points out in his various writings on the history of the field, the first postgraduate program started in 1981 by Wedge at George Mason University (more on this in the next chapter) offered students a Master of Science in Conflict Management that emphasized “process-oriented technical skills.”88 Laue supported the skill focus on training and education, but located the ultimate end of such work in the ability of communities, not third parties, to address the conflict. His testimony frames community conflicts as matters of empowerment and justice, the failure to address these issues meant that peace merely served as a stand-in for the maintenance of injustice and exclusionary ruling practices. His seminal chapter cowritten with Gerald Cormick on the “Ethics of Intervention in Community Disputes” places the general impetus on conflict intervenors to side with the less powerful party—with the ultimate aims of empowerment, furthering access to the decisionmaking process, and establishing control over their own resources.89 It is an idea that remains contentious within peace and conflict studies, but is mentioned here to illustrate that from the start there was disagreement even among peace academy supporters over the aims and vision of the institution they hoped to create. Despite these efforts, the George Washington Peace Academy never materialized. Though it had advanced further than any other previous peace legislation effort, the bill stalled after the hearing, failing to garner enough support to push it to the floor for a vote.90 The senators urged peace academy supporters to continue to press for the legislation.

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Within a certain section of academic elites and policymakers, the significance of the legislation and its accompanying hearing provided the motivation from which to mount a national campaign. In 1976, building from contacts within CODEP and connections on Capitol Hill, the campaign for a national peace academy launched. It served as the center node in a network of actors dedicated to the peace academy’s realization and is discussed in detail in the following chapter.

Notes 1. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes. 2. As quoted in Katz, Ban the Bomb, 1. 3. Miller, Institutionalizing Peace. 4. Smith, U.S. Peacefare. 5. Thompson, Beyond the Cold War, 158. 6. Caute, The Great Fear, 29. 7. Harry Truman, “Truman Doctrine,” The Avalon Project, Yale Law School, March 12, 1947, accessed September 15, 2015, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century /trudoc.asp. 8. Brodie, The Absolute Weapon. 9. Ghamari-Tabrizi, The Worlds of Herman Kahn. 10. Kahn, On Thermonuclear War. 11. Thompson, Beyond the Cold War, 5. 12. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict. 13. Katz, Ban the Bomb. 14. Woodrow Wilson, “President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points.” Avalon Project—Yale Law School, January 8, 1918, accessed September 15, 2015, http:// avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/wilson14.asp. 15. Miller, Institutionalizing Peace. 16. A positive view of Eisenhower’s peace legacy can be found in Bowie and Immerman, Waging Peace. 17. Ambrose and Brinkley, Rise to Globalism. 18. Kinzer, The Brothers. 19. George Washington Peace Academy act, (S.1976): Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Education of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, United States Senate, Ninety-fourth Congress, second session, on S. 1976 . . . May 13, 1976 (Washington: US G.P.O., 1976), 68. 20. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Farewell Address,” American Experience, January 17, 1961, accessed September 15, 2015, http://www.pbs.org. 21. Mills, The Power Elite. 22. Mills, The Causes of World War Three; Novack, “The World of C. Wright Mills,” 84–90. 23. Freeman, American Empire, 118. 24. Stephen I. Schwartz, “Global Nuclear Stockpiles, 1945–1996,” The Brookings Institution, 1998, last accessed September 15, 2015, http://www.brookings.edu. 25. Andrew J. Bacevich, “The Tyranny of Defense Inc.,” The Atlantic, February 2011, http://www.theatlantic.com.

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26. Arms Control and Disarmament Act (September 26, 1961), Public Law 87– 297, 75 STAT 631, The National Archives Catalog, National Archives and Records Administration, accessed September 15, 2015, https://research.archives.gov/id/299875. 27. Miller, Institutionalizing Peace. 28. Montgomery, “Working for Peace While Preparing for War,” 480. 29. Stone, Elites for Peace. 30. Ibid., xxx. 31. Miller, Institutionalizing Peace. 32. Ibid., 25. 33. Ibid. 34. DeBenedetti, The Peace Reform in American History. 35. A matching bill (H. 10462) was introduced in the House of Representatives by Donald Fraser on October 30, 1975. 36. Other veterans such as Senator Spark Matsunaga (Democrat–Hawaii) and General Andrew Goodpaster, a former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, played an important part in the peace academy campaign. 37. Hatfield is quoted in Eells and Nyberg, Lonely Walk, 173–174. 38. Emma Brown, “Mark Hatfield Dies: Former Oregon Senator Was 89,” Washington Post, August 8, 2011, https://www.washingtonpost.com. 39. Hatfield and Solomon, Against the Grain. 40. Eells and Nyber, Lonely Walk, 128. 41. Schardt, Rusher, and Hatfield, Amnesty? 42. Brown, “Mark Hatfield Dies,” para. 7. 43. Adam Clymer, “Mark. O. Hatfield, Liberal G.O.P. Senator, Dies at 89,” New York Times, August 8, 2011. 44. Brown, “Mark Hatfield Dies.” 45. Hatfield and Solomon, Against the Grain, 143. 46. Ibid., 168. 47. Eells and Nyber, Lonely Walk, 123. 48. Martin Well, “Sen. Vance Hartke, 84, Dies; Early Foe of War in Vietnam,” Washington Post, July 29, 2003. 49. Wolfgang Saxon. “Vance Hartke, 84, Antiwar Senator From Indiana, Dies,” New York Times, July 29, 2003. 50. Hartke, The American Crisis in Vietnam. 51. Ibid., 4. 52. George Washington Peace Academy act (S. 1976), 1. 53. The accuracy of this particular claim about George Washington is dealt with in the previous chapter. In this section, my interpretation of the text is aimed at providing a reading sympathetic to the intentions of the authors. 54. George Washington Peace Academy act, (S.1976), 1. 55. Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, “Letter To American Workers,” Marxists.org, August 20, 1918, accessed September 15, 2015, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works /1918/aug/20.htm. 56. Ho Chi Minh, “Vietnamese Declaration of Independence,” Marxists.org, September 2, 1945, accessed September 15, 2015, https://www.marxists.org. 57. George Washington Peace Academy Act (S. 1976), 2. 58. Ibid., 3. 59. Harris, Fisk, and Rank, “A Portrait of University Peace Studies in North America and Western Europe at the End of the Millennium.” 60. “History.” Peace and Conflict Studies Program: University of Colorado Boulder, 2013, accessed September 15, 2015, http://peacestudies.colorado.edu.

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See also Alger and Boulding, “From Vietnam to El Salvador: Eleven Years of COPRED,” 35–43. 61. Ramsbotham, Woodhouse, and Miall, Contemporary Conflict Resolution, 39–54. 62. Ibid., 43. 63. Alger and Boulding, “From Vietnam to El Salvador.” 64. George Washington Peace Academy Act (S. 1976), 3. 65. “Refolutions” are characterized, in part, by their use of social media and information communication technologies (such as mobile phones) to facilitate/democratize communication in environments controlled by repressive regimes. Bayat, “Revolution in Bad Times,” 47–60. 66. George Washington Peace Academy Act (S. 1976), 12. 67. Thomas, The Founders and the Idea of a National University: Constituting the American Mind. 68. See for example “Steps to Admissions: The West Point Application Process,” United States Military Academy: West Point, accessed September 2, 2015, http:// www.usma.edu/admissions. 69. George Washington Peace Academy Act (S. 1976), 12. 70. George Washington Peace Academy Act (S. 1976), 6. 71. Metzger, “Chaplains in the American Revolution,” 31–79. 72. See Bergen, The Sword of the Lord; and Bergsma, Chaplains with Marines in Vietnam, 1962–1971. 73. George Washington Peace Academy Act (S. 1976), 5–6. 74. George Washington Peace Academy Act, (S.1976): Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Education of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, p. 28. 75. Ibid., 31. 76. Katz, Ban the Bomb. 77. George Washington Peace Academy Act, (S.1976), 150. 78. Miller, Institutionalizing Peace. 79. “Mass Psychotherapy to Seek Peace Urged,” Los Angeles Times, May 10, 1971. 80. C. R. Mitchell, “The Real Origins of ICAR: An Experiment in Conflict Resolution Archaeology,” ICAR Newsletter (Spring 1997), accessed September 15, 2015, http://scar.gmu.edu. 81. John Leo, “Khrushchev Study Made by C.I.A. Unit,” New York Times, September 8, 1968. 82. “Tells Advice to Kennedy on Khrushchev: Doctor Outlines Memo He Helped Prepare,” Chicago Tribune, September 8, 1968, 9. 83. George Washington Peace Academy Act (S.1976), 75. 84. Ibid., 96. 85. Laue’s life is chronicled in a detail in a recent dissertation. See Joan Coolidge, Towards a Just Peace: James H. Laue’s Applied Theory of Third Party Intervention (Dissertation, George Mason University, 2009), http://gradworks.umi.com. 86. George Washington Peace Academy Act (S.1976), 98. 87. Ibid., 99. 88. Avruch, “Does Our Field Have a Centre?,” 10–31. 89. Laue and Cormick, “The Ethics of Intervention in Community Disputes,” 205–232. 90. Montgomery, “Working for Peace While Preparing for War,” 481.

5 The Campaign for a National Peace Academy

Elite peace reformers were encouraged by the interest of the public and Congress in the George Washington Peace Academy Act. Interest alone, however, was not enough to move the bill through the legislative process. The act came before Congress without the support of a pressure organization or mass public support. The emergence of the National Peace Academy Campaign (N-PAC) played a vital role in coordinating the legislative struggle that created the US Institute of Peace Act. In this chapter, I focus on the story of N-PAC’s development and its relationship to President Carter’s national committee, which sought to study proposals and produce a recommendation for the creation of a national peace academy. I consider how N-PAC’s strategy of promoting the peace academy evolved, particularly as members of NPAC worked to influence the direction of the academy’s curriculum and focus. Finally, as the campaign solidified into a concrete policy proposal, I explore the challenges that arose to it, focusing on how leaders within the field of international relations and hawkish members of Congress found common cause in their opposition to the legislation. Building a Constituency

The creation of the National Peace Academy Campaign was spurred by the failure of the George Washington Peace Academy Act. Mary Montgomery writes that the early peace academy campaigners remained motivated to overcome the various obstacles thrown in their path, and they were especially determined after three legislative sessions on peace bills were derailed due to Vietnam, Watergate, and the US-led covert

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operations in Latin and South America.1 While those supportive of the peace academy were emboldened by the receptiveness of Congress to their insights, there appeared little public support for the initiative outside of those already closely involved. The act was not a core demand of the antiwar movement, nor did it seem to have broad-based support from any other sector of the US public. Senator Clairborne Pell (Democrat–Rhode Island) challenged backers of the peace academy to build a wide-ranging constituency of public and congressional support for the idea.2 Rather than “lead the way,” as Bryant Wedge had implored Congress, Congress required further pressure. A sizeable movement was needed to demonstrate public demand for a peace institution. Citizen actors such as Bryant Wedge, James Laue, Milton C. Mapes, Jr. and William J. Spencer began to coordinate with members of Congress Andrew Young (Democrat–Georgia), Spark Matsunaga (Democrat–Hawaii), and Mark Hatfield (Republican–Oregon). N-PAC formed under their leadership to serve as the public face of an impressive network of academy advocates pulled from Congress and the public. N-PAC temporarily relocated the struggle for the peace academy outside of Congress and into the hands of citizen actors. Spencer describes the campaign as having two goals: “First, get a commission established to study the proposal for a peace academy; second, get the academy.”3 N-PAC looked to the executive branch as a partner in peace, believing that the support of the president would go a long way in motivating Congress to pass legislation once it was reintroduced. Joan Coolidge describes the National Peace Academy Campaign as unfolding in three stages.4 First, in 1976–1979, N-PAC devoted itself to fundraising and lobbying. Initially under the directorship of Mapes and later Spencer, N-PAC worked within Capitol Hill circles to keep interest in the peace academy alive and generate broad public support. The election of President Jimmy Carter in 1976 held great promise for the peace reform movement given that Carter appeared sympathetic to its aims. Second, in 1980–1981, the organization was directly involved with the presidential commission to study proposals for the national peace academy. N-PAC helped the commission with its work organizing public hearings and soliciting input from business and academic leaders. It also worked with the commission to develop the final report for the Congress. Finally, after the report’s publication, N-PAC assisted in drafting the legislation for the peace academy and coordinating lobbying efforts in favor of its passage. Unfortunately for peace reformers, Ronald Reagan was elected to the presidency in 1980. Reagan’s victory rested on the perception of the Carter administration as deeply inept and Reagan

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did not share Carter’s enthusiasm for the creation of another government entity. Reagan’s election put academy proponents on a different trajectory and N-PAC spent the next four years battling the administration’s disdain for the bill. The campaign had its ups and downs. Yet, crucial to understanding what became the US Institute of Peace is not the day-to-day activities of the campaigners, but the degree to which changes in presidential administrations and world events influenced the purpose, function, and form of the peace academy legislation. Peace reformers were determined to succeed, but it remained unclear what would happen on the other side of a successful legislative victory. There appears to have been little discussion about what a compromise on their vision might mean for the peace academy in the face of hostile members of Congress and the Reagan administration. From the start of the campaign, N-PAC made a more conscious effort to stress the disparity in the United States between spending on military education and spending on peace education. In an interview from 1977, Bryant Wedge remarks, “We have four military academies and five war colleges in this country, but not a single institution to train people how to maintain peace.”5 This new narrative frame accentuated the discrepancy between funding for war at the expense of funding for peace, and became central to N-PAC’s campaign literature which sought to play on the American public’s war fatigue. Wedge’s words echoed comments made by Senator Matsunaga. Matsunaga questioned the excessive time and financial commitment the federal government placed in preparation for war when compared with the return on its investment. Nonviolent practice required an equally serious commitment, yet came without the exorbitant human and financial costs. Wedge moved to distance the campaign from an association with a specific political ideology. He portrays conflict intervention, particularly mediation, as a form of practice that resists interference in the political process. “I call it ‘zero power’ mediation, for one of the things a mediator can never do is threaten or use force to bring things about. All he can do is provide channels of communication. But the very weakness of his positions makes him more acceptable. He’s no threat, no bully. He’s only there to help.”6 Wedge presents “zero power” as a pragmatic challenge to the power politics he chastised during his congressional testimony on the George Washington Peace Academy Act. Power is defined as the ability to coerce parties to act based on the threat (real or perceived) of the use of force. Wedge insists that those skilled in mediation possess a clear understanding of their role in the process, which identifies them as neutral

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helpers to parties in need of their services. No one is coerced or threatened because the third party is only there to improve communication between the parties, or at the very least, create a window of opportunity for the possibility of communication. Anyone, regardless of their political preferences, could participate in a mediated process without feeling forced to accept a position or solution. In 1977, Representative Andrew Young and Senators Matsunaga, Hatfield, and Randolph sent identical bills to the House and Senate calling for the creation of a congressional commission. The commission’s purpose was to study the feasibility of establishing a national academy of peace and conflict resolution. Congress authorized the bill the following year, coming at a time during the Carter administration when diplomacy was at its peak.7 The Camp David Accords, Carter’s secret negotiations with Egyptian president Anwar El Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin provided a new model for diplomacy that eventually led to a peace treaty between Egypt and Isreal.8 Setting aside the limitations of the agreements reached at Camp David due to the exclusion of representation from the Palestinian community, the event was championed as a victory for negotiation that emphasized shared interests and joint gains for the parties. Roger Fisher, coauthor of the acclaimed negotiation text Getting to Yes, was a confidant of Carter’s secretary of state Cyrus Vance. According to his coauthor William Ury, Fisher, Ury, and their colleagues advised Vance during a dinner prior to the meetings at Camp David on developing a facilitation process to help Carter navigate the proceedings. 9 Fisher was the director of the Harvard Program on Negotiation and his scholarship on the negotiation processes concentrated on the use of rational, interest-based strategies as a tool for the development of mutually advantageous solutions to conflicts. His work aligned with Wedge’s against the power politics crowd, which viewed negotiation as a zero-sum game, where for one side to win, the other side has to lose everything. Interest-based (or principled) negotiation is problem focused, not position focused. Fisher’s approach stressed the importance of relationships, and if accounts are believed, the turning point in the discussions between Begin and Sadat resulted not from hard bargaining over specific issues, but rather Carter’s ability to facilitate a human connection between two people who viewed themselves as adversaries. The ability to address specific problems was only possible after each party became humanized. The willingness of Vance and Carter to present the United States as a “neutral” actor fit exactly within the vision Wedge had outlined for

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the peace academy. Here was a US president committed to using the latest in negotiation techniques to work toward the peaceful resolution of long-standing conflicts. The peace reformers also celebrated the fact that Carter was eager to continue the talks on arms limitations begun under Nixon between the US and Soviet Union. His advocacy of arms reduction and diplomacy helped establish the image of him as America’s peace president, an image he has solidified in the decades since leaving the White House. Carter’s support for diplomacy and peace did not necessarily extend to the majority of Congress, which remained critical of invoking the term “peace” on its own. In supporting the peace academy commission, Congress stamped what they felt was a necessary qualification of its focus, and included the term conflict resolution. “These last two words were added to the provision in order to add respectability to the enterprise,” Rhoda Miller explains.10 The addition of conflict resolution aimed to stave off stereotypical images of hippies and peaceniks by merging the peace academy with what was considered at the time a more scientific and respectable pursuit. Conflict resolution had gained currency in academic and administrative circles over the previous decade. In a paper delivered at the American Sociological Association’s Annual Meeting in 1978, James Laue stated, “The inclusion of ‘conflict resolution’ in the title of the proposed academy is itself a major breakthrough, and has proven to be an attractive and understandable way of thinking about peace and its etiology.”11 Spencer argues, following Wedge, that the key techniques were directed toward “attitudinal restructuring,” which required moving conflicts from “A vs. B because of their differences” to “A and B vs. their differences.”12 Conflict resolution was about helping parties work through their problems together in a structured manner in order to produce a peaceful end state. Yet the significance of attaching peace to the name of the academy remained a source of contention throughout the campaign, particularly, as Miller points out, because it was a word that still needed justification to those in power. Congress authorized $500,000 in 1979 for the commission to begin its yearlong study. The commission was to examine “nonviolent conflict resolution and its potential for incorporation into a national, institutional framework.”13 The president and Congress appointed nine members to serve. Senator Spark Matsunaga was appointed as chair, leading to the commission being referenced as the Matsunaga Commission. Matusnaga is himself a figure in the template of Hatfield and Hartke, another unique character within Congress. He was an enthusiastic supporter of peace legislation over his career and took a prominent role in

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the peace academy campaign. And like Hatfield and Hartke, one finds very little public commentary from Matsunaga about the US Institute of Peace after it was established. Matsunaga served in World War II, and the experience deeply transformed him. However, Matsunaga’s name reflects his non-Anglo origins and, indeed, his journey was very different compared with his colleagues Hatfield and Hartke. The senator was born Masayukiin Matsunaga in the US-held territory of Hawaii. His parents were Japanese American plantation workers on the island of Kauai.14 In July 1941, Matsunaga graduated from college and joined the US Army Reserve. Six months later Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. The attack provoked a wave of backlash against the Japanese American community. Unlike most German and Italian Americans, those of Japanese ancestry were assumed by the state to be sympathetic to the Japanese cause regardless of their citizenship status or the duration of their residence in the United States and its territories. Hawaii was a particularly tense area of concern for the government given the history of its forceful acquisition in 1898 and its predominantly non-Caucasian composition. As the panic around Pearl Harbor increased in Washington, some 110,000 people of Japanese origin were identified and forcibly relocated to internment camps under the pretense that they were threats to national security.15 The freshly enlisted Matsunaga found himself in a detention camp six months later. Flint writes, “After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Mr. Matsunaga, though a second lieutenant in the American Army, was detained in a Wisconsin camp. He and other internees, after petitioning President Franklin D. Roosevelt, were allowed to form the 100th Infantry Battalion, which became one of the most highly decorated in history.”16 The 100th Infantry Battalion, also called the Nisei Battalion, was made up primarily of men from the Hawaii National Guard. Nisei is a Japanese term used to describe the children or second generation of immigrants from Japan to the US, the significance of which should not be lost in this context. Matsunaga had a distinguished career in the Army. He was wounded twice while fighting in Italy. While his survival alone is remarkable, it was through sheer determination that Matsunaga was allowed to fight on behalf of the United States in the first place. He carried both his internment and his war experience with him throughout the remainder of his life and into his career in Congress. Matsunaga is remembered as being a tireless fighter in Congress in pursuit of justice and reparations for Japanese Americans interned during the war. He used his position in the Senate to hold hearings on the subject, and he urged Congress and the president to right what was

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clearly a national wrong. Kozen notes that such efforts to pursue justice on behalf of communities victimized by the state sets a needed example, especially given the current treatment of Arab and Muslim Americans.17 Matsunaga’s resolve paid off when the Senate formally agreed to issue an apology on behalf of the United States and compensate victims with a sum of $20,000 each.18 Senator Matsunaga died in 1990. He was remembered after his passing not only for his pursuit of justice, but also for his commitment to the environment, efforts at US-Soviet cooperation, and dedication to the peaceful resolution of disputes.19 Pearson writes, “In 1984, Congress approved another of the senator’s longtime goals, the establishment of the US Institute for Peace. . . . Sen. Matsunaga had introduced bills to establish the institute since 1963, arguing that “‘peacemaking is as much an art to be learned as war.’”20 Under Matsunaga’s chairmanship, the committee came together, a mix of participants from the overlapping fields of governance, business, and academia. Two other members of Congress, John Ashbrook (Republican–Ohio) and Dan Glickman (Democrat–Kansas) joined the committee along with John Dunfey, president of Dunfey Hotels Corporation and an associate of President Kennedy, Urban Coalition president Arthur Barnes, negotiator and educator William Lincoln, president of the Christian College Consortium and Coalition John Dellenback, and professors James Laue and Elise Boulding. Laue was appointed vice-chair providing the essential link to N-PAC. All committee members with the exception of John Ashbrook were affiliated with peace and conflict resolution related activities. Glickman and Matsunaga were regular advocates of peace legislation within Congress. Dunfey had served as a member of the National Committee of Americans for SALT II, a controversial arms limitation treaty proposed between the US and Soviet Union. Barnes was the former vice president of the New York City–based Institute for Mediation and Conflict, a community dispute resolution center. He was also the only African American in the group. Lincoln was a professional mediator and director of the National Center for Collaborative Planning and Community Services. Dellenback was a former congressman and had served as a director of the Peace Corps. Boulding, the only woman on the panel, was a distinguished academic and Quaker peace activist. She was an advisor to UNESCO and the United Nations University, as well as the wife of economist Kenneth Boulding. 21 A vocal anticommunist, Ashbrook served as a member of the House committee that oversaw the intelligence agencies. Unsurprisingly, Ashbrook was the lone dissenter when the commission report was finally published.

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The commission held eleven public hearings across the United States over the course of its work, including locations in Boston, Chicago, Portland, and Honolulu. In the executive summary of the commission’s findings, the commissioners recorded 250 hours of meetings in addition to 50 additional meetings with private and public agencies. Over 7,000 pages of written and oral testimony, meeting notes, and research findings resulted from the above.22 The National Peace Academy Campaign’s newsletter tracked the progress of the meetings and urged supporters to come to public events. For N-PAC the goal was clear: “The United States has four military academies and five war colleges devoted to maintaining peace by armed force. Isn’t it time we had at least one national institution dedicated to creating the conditions of peace by affirmative means?”23 When the commission report was published in 1981, it found that the public supported the formation of an academy. The academy should focus on three primary areas: training, research, and education. Each year it should award a medal of peace. Finally, the academy would help extend and strengthen current conflict resolution and peace studies programs. The report justified the need for the peace academy by highlighting the failure of the SALT I and II treaties. If the treaties were negotiated better, relations with Russia would be improved. The Camp David Accords stood as the model for successful negotiation, and it would be the peace academy that helped teach Americans the art and science of diplomacy. Laue and Wedge remained in contact during the peace academy campaign. Wedge wrote to Laue discussing the aims of the commission and its need to take seriously the challenge posed by doing peace work in isolation. For the peace academy to be successful, other peace academies needed to exist outside of the United States. It was essential to promote the simultaneous development of similar programs in other countries for this new knowledge to have significant impact. Wedge remarks, “I don’t know what the role of the Commission should be on international spread but at that level it is obvious that a lot of nations are going to have to start parallel development to effect the systems at that level—and all the levels are linked.”24 In another piece of personal correspondence, Wedge comments on the need to put together a curriculum to assist the commission in its work. Absent from the George Washington Peace Academy Act was a draft curriculum. Wedge wanted an irrefutable example of the potential for instruction on conflict analysis and third-party intervention, one that left little room for doubt in the mind of Congress. In January, Wedge sent Laue some “preliminary thoughts” on a draft curriculum. The pur-

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pose, he wrote, was to “develop and test a model curriculum and training program in the evolving profession of peace-making, impartial third-party intervention in social disputes, and to train a significant cadre of trained individuals who can assume direction of similar programs in other institutions.”25 Wedge’s draft curriculum for the peace academy focused on four elements. First, it prioritized study on cross-cultural communication and experience-based learning from those types of interactions. Reinforcing his earlier comments on “zero power,” language and communication were emphasized as key components in the skill set of this new professional practice.26 Second, the curriculum desired to build from a broad scope of academic fields and practices. In completing the program, students would learn “analysis of social conflict and methods of resolution, including adjudication, conciliation, mediation, arbitration, historic and theoretic aspects.”27 The inclusive range of practices in connection to the study of theory and history is exactly the type of program Wedge later helped establish at George Mason University. The curriculum would cover a range of alternative forms of dispute and conflict resolution practices, and would not limit itself to negotiation as the Harvard program did. Laue and Cormick had already hinted at the range of possibilities for third party actors in their earlier work, noting that intervention was not just limited to mediation.28 Various types of conflict specialists and conflict-related practices were required depending on the type and duration of the phenomenon being addressed. The curriculum was interdisciplinary to the core with a strong accent on the applied, but not to the neglect of the theoretical and historical. Third, the program should reflect a clinical model of medical training. Students should practice third-party intervention and conflict resolution in community settings. The classroom was important, but equally so was real world, clinical-style experience in the field. Laue and Wedge shared this notion of “real world experience” as fundamental to the development of the conflict intervenor. The desire for such in-depth and hands-on learning makes sense, yet surprisingly little is written about the feasibility of such a requirement in the academy curriculum, making it one of the more problematic aspects of the proposal. This might have to do with the clinical metaphor used by Wedge. To achieve this type of training requires an endless supply of patients (people or groups embroiled in conflict) and a hospital (access to a particular setting) for students to develop their trade. While the basics of the clinical model are carried out in the classroom in the form of simulations, roleplays, and analysis of videos, this should not be confused with what

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Wedge sought, which was the actual involvement of students in ongoing conflict situations. Wedge’s final, and least-articulated, point of the four dealt not with people, but with structures. While the three other areas stressed personto-person relationships, Wedge conceded that there was also a growing need to analyze larger institutional structures and mechanisms. The curriculum should include material on how societies are organized and how that organization influences or determines the management of conflicts within those particular settings. Wedge did not offer much commentary on this point. Rather, he provided a list of possible distinguished guest lecturers which included such notables as: John Burton, Karl Deutsch, Thomas Khun, Gene Sharp, Johan Galtung, Kenneth Boulding, Roger Fisher, Richard Falk, and others. Many of these names are today recognized as core early theorists of the field of conflict resolution. Wedge assumed some commonality amongst these diverse thinkers, identifying their scholarship as significant to the interdisciplinary backbone of this new academic field. A few months later, Wedge sent a separate letter to Senator Matsunaga. In it he shared the curriculum proposal discussed above, yet he also offered a series of remarks on the state of the peace academy project. His comments urged restraint, a refinement of his earlier stance championing immediacy. Wedge warned Matsunaga to refrain from jumping the gun on pursuing the academy as an independent entity. “There is as yet insufficient developing and testing of the parameters and relationships of such an institution to public policy to justify a full scale commitment to such an Academy at this point,” he wrote concluding, “We cannot ask Congress and [the] Administration to buy a pig in the poke, no matter how attractive this appears.”29 Instead, he urged the senator to extend the commission another two years to allow Congress and the administration to come to an explicit understanding of the costs and benefits associated with the academy. Wedge’s sudden skepticism at this juncture is surprising and no explicit rationale for the change of heart is given. Yet we might extrapolate from comments made toward the close of his letter as to his motivations, which appear both pragmatic and self-centered. Ronald Reagan’s victory in the election of 1980 was almost guaranteed and Reagan’s politics, at least as they were presented in his campaign pronouncements, did not align with the peace reformers. Wedge’s comments might initially be understood as concluding that it was better to keep interest in the academy alive, even if unrealized, than to suffer a total legislative defeat.

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However, Wedge also wanted to be a central player in the peace academy once it was established. To make sure the academy lived up to the vision of the campaign, it needed a home, preferably within a sympathetic institution aligned with his proposed curriculum. The problem was that no current program fully met his criteria. Only a few select existing programs were capable of becoming the immediate home of the peace academy if the legislation were passed. Wedge singles out Laue’s program in St. Louis and Roger Fisher’s program at Harvard as possible sites, but more candidly suggests that the program he is in the process of launching at George Mason University is the ideal home for the peace academy given George Mason’s proximity to Washington, D.C.30 If a single home proved too controversial, then these three programs might combine under the banner of the national peace academy, a decentralized network of institutions rather than a single structure. Reflecting on the history of the George Mason program, Dennis Sandole writes, “Its purpose was to design the ‘prototypical curriculum,’ if not also provide the initial home, for the National Academy of Peace and Conflict Resolution (were this academy ever to come into existence).”31 The shift to house the peace academy in an existing institution reflects the changing dynamics of the possible for peace reformers, and insight about what the process of institutionalization entails. Wedge and Sandole discuss the objective of such efforts, specifically the establishment of peace and conflict studies programs within universities and colleges, as that of institutionalization. They write, “By producing conflict managers with credentials, by creating an ever-expanding pool of skilled professionals, these programs are or would be contributing to the institutionalization of” peace and conflict studies.32 As with comments made during the George Washington Peace Academy hearings, Wedge and Sandole place primary importance on the ability of the academic programs to reproduce themselves through their graduates. If the goal of the peace academy was to develop a disposition toward peace among the general public, then it was necessary for the academy’s ideas to spread beyond its walls. For the institutionalization to take hold, the academy needed to produce graduates that not only shared its values, but who would also be willing to embed themselves and those values within new or existing programs at other institutions. The obvious but unstated assumption was that the more graduates one produces, the stronger the network of connections leading back to the peace academy as they enter other institutions; and that over time those institutions would begin to reflect the values of the academy, while also contributing to the purposeful development and dissemination of conflict resolution specialists.

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At the outset, there was tension among the commissioners over the peace academy’s scope of inquiry. The split occurred down two lines: those that argued for an inclusive scope of conflict as generic phenomena and those that argued exclusively for a concentration on the international level. Laue records this tension in his meeting minutes, writing that only he and Elise Boulding seemed in favor of a more inclusive and systematic understanding of conflict, while the rest of the commission members maintained that Congress would only back an internationally focused academy.33 Since becoming vice chair, Laue had already publicly declared that the work of academy would emphasize the value of peacemaking techniques at all levels: “The continuous development of techniques to resolve conflicts that come up every day, at home or in school, can help bring peace between nations.”34 Senator Matsunaga appears to have put the issue to rest, siding with Boulding and Laue that it was the “unanimous consensus of the Commission that a review of the theory and techniques of peaceful resolution between nations must necessarily involve the study of theory and techniques of peaceful resolution of conflicts within a nation as well.”35 Still, the academy’s focus remained an area of contestation after the commissioners produced their report. In November of 1981 the commission released the results of its work, delivering its report to Congress and President Reagan. Louis Kriesberg writes that after delivery of the report, Senator Matsunaga and Representative Glickman both introduced bills calling for the creation of the US Institute of Peace and that, shortly thereafter, “the USIP would focus on international affairs.”36 While Kriesberg is technically correct in the order of these events, the debates that led from the peace academy to USIP were anything but settled after the submission of the report, especially the concentration on international affairs. The report indicated strong popular support for the idea of a peace academy, but was far from conclusive in terms of the academy’s proposed focus on international issues. Much of the testimony argued in favor of the domestic. Miller summarizes the ten reasons the public gave for supporting institutionalization of the academy during testimony, but these are reducible to three major categories: symbolic reasons, security reasons, and legitimacy reasons. 37 The symbolic aspect of the academy sought to repair the US’s standing in the world. A peace academy would demonstrate that Americans were willing to put actions to their words and repair relationships damaged by years of militarist-influenced policy choices. Those emphasizing security argued that a peace academy would provide the government and its agents with more options to manage violence. They stressed the role of the academy in negotiation

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and mediation training for diplomats and public servants. Redefining the security paradigm would decrease the need for defense spending and reduce the sway of the military-industrial complex. Finally, in the third category, the academy would legitimize the field of peace education and research by providing much needed institutional support, funding, and recognition. Surprisingly, international affairs were the least supported of the public reasons for the new institution. Elise Boulding comments that the majority of individuals the committee heard testimony from during public meetings were excited about the possibility of learning skills to analyze and address conflict in their daily lives. The public wanted techniques to deal with a host of problems ranging from matters of domestic violence to community disputes to problems with the police. More importantly, Boulding qualifies: We were very struck by the extent to which, minority peoples, Chicanos and blacks, welfare mothers, were making the connection between the incapacity of the United States to deal with problems of violence and injustice in their own communities and its attitudes in dealing with the outside world. They’d say if the United States can’t handle violence and injustice and poverty in Atlanta, how is it going to handle it in the Soviet Union, in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq? It was clear that our own best ideals have to be cultivated first in our own local institutions.38

Comments recorded in the public testimony highlighted the disagreement over a direction for the institute. While many elite peace reformers generally pressed for a focus on international issues, sympathetic citizens wanted an institute that could help them deal with the problems of daily life. Before the commission report’s release, there were already details circulating in the press as to the commissioners’ end game. Colman McCarthy, a peace academy supporter and columnist at the Washington Post, wrote a year prior to the report’s publication, “Presumably, these recommendations will reflect the positive expressions of support for a peace academy that the commission has been receiving around the country.” 39 Brad Knickerbocker outlined specific details of the academy plan in the Christian Science Monitor, which were fairly close to what would be contained in the US Institute of Peace Act, noting that the organization would be a nonprofit, semiautonomous corporation funded by a mix of government and private donations.40 Knickerbocker repeats Wedge’s concept of a decentralized academy, but the idea had expanded to include a small administrative headquarters in Washington

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and regional campuses housed in academic institutions across the county. More significantly, Knickerbocker writes, “Some of the academy’s work would be in foreign relations, but most would focus on domestic problems including law enforcement, environment, business, and civil rights.”41 It came as no surprise that when the actual report was released, it found the commission in favor of establishing a peace academy. The report concluded that conflict resolution practices were capable of being implemented within the institutional framework of the federal government. However, correspondence between members of N-PAC, the commission, and academy supporters reveals that as the campaign began to consider the legislative process, they started to refine their vision to reflect the sensibilities of Congress. The process of drafting the report reflected a lack of consensus among these peace reformers, especially over what was a desirable format for the academy or how to approach those hostile to the idea. Laue’s personal notes suggest he played a major role in the first draft, specifically in the framing and language used, which gave equal footing to both domestic and international concerns. Yet this initial draft caused concern. Thomas C. Westropp, an NPAC supporter, sent a letter to William Spencer suggesting improvements. Westropp voices his concern with Laue’s use of terms like “underdogs” and “power figures” as language that might offend conservatives who envisioned the peace academy as little more than a haven for troublemakers.42 Westropp urged caution, stating that there was no reason to anger those on the right that might misinterpret Laue’s concern with social justice and its role in preventing class conflict. Perhaps the most noteworthy figure in the report-drafting drama appears in the figure of Charles Duryea Smith. Most traces of Smith’s name capture him in the capacity as editor of the book The Hundred Percent Challenge, an edited volume released shortly after the passage of the US Institute of Peace Act.43 His introduction to the text reveals little about his role, except for what is included in his biography. Smith was a special assistant to Senator Matsunaga on the commission. In his biography at USIP, where he later served as general counsel and head of the Rule of Law Program, he is credited with drafting the final commission report and the legislation for the US Institute of Peace Act.44 Given that Smith was not a commission member, it is fascinating that he nonetheless appears to have inserted himself or been inserted by Senator Matsunaga into the report drafting process at the later stages of the campaign. Moreover, he appears to have had a significant impact on the language and vision of the final commission report.

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In a letter to William Spencer, Smith chastises both Spencer and the commissioners for bungling the project. The draft report is eviscerated as totally disconnected from the priorities of Congress and the executive branch. Rather than squander money engaging the public in listening sessions, resources should have been prioritized on identifying places where the executive branch might allocate funds to promote peace. Smith sets about reframing the proposal according to three aims. First, “the principal concern of a Peace Academy should be transnational and international conflict. Domestic conflict resolution is pertinent only as it helps resolve or illuminate transnational and international conflict.”45 Second, the real work of the commission should be identifying how federal dollars are already spent concerning the promotion of international peace. Once analyzed, commissioners should propose how this funding might be put to better use. Third, the academy needs a source of secure funding to shield it from political influence. Smith also reprimands the commissioners for what he concluded as a number of other blunders. He rebukes them for using President Reagan’s words out of context, suggesting that the president’s supporters might find this act offensive. Furthermore, he derides the overall tone of the document. He argues that the point of the report is not to educate Congress on the value of conflict resolution, but to stimulate their imaginations to the possibilities it offers. Smith’s assessment was that N-PAC was out of touch with the realities of policymaking and the consequence was that no one in Congress would take the report seriously. Smith’s relationship with Matsunaga put him in a powerful position to sway the senator over the final direction of the report. Writing to Matsunaga, Smith encouraged him to ground the proposal in things that make the United States unique, such as the importance of the private sector and the “special nature and potential in democratic societies for nonviolent peacemaking.”46 These statements were a significant departure from remarks made earlier by Senators Hatfield and Hartke, and later Boulding and Laue, which emphasized the need for an inclusive understanding of peacemaking traditions, not the glorification of the United States as the shining city upon a hill. Spencer wrote to Smith in February of 1981 to explain to him that he did not appreciate the purpose of the peace academy and that adding the language of national security to the document only moved it further from its original intent.47 Smith was undeterred and forged ahead reworking the proposal to make it attractive to Congress and the Reagan administration. As a result, the earlier framing of the document urging the

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government to learn from its Vietnam experience and the domestic tensions of the Civil Rights period disappeared. Opposition and Transformation

Charles D. Smith is a significant factor in the bill that emerged as the US Institute of Peace Act, yet he was not the only source of transformation. Opposition came both from activists associated with grassroots antiwar movements and from those within the Washington policy establishment. Peace activists and internationalists portrayed peace reformers as delusional about the potential of changing Washington from within. Here the debate between the reformers and the radicals flared. Antiwar activists demanded that the public confront militarism and expose the dominance of the Defense Department in policymaking, not circumnavigate it by creating yet another federal institution. Daniel Berrigan, a Catholic priest, activist, and noted critic of the Vietnam War, is quoted in testimony to the commission as believing the academy as “unlikely a project, humanly speaking, as the transformation of the Pentagon into a center for human compassion.” Berrigan further chastised the commission, telling members to hand back the paltry sum offered for peace “with an announcement that we want nothing to do with an empty and unethical gesture while the Pentagonal crimes continue.”48 While Berrigan’s criticism epitomized the radical antiwar stance, the radical wing had little impact on the legislative process, and no real investment in the peace academy proposal. Their concerns were noted, but radicals were conspicuously absent from the peace academy campaign. Their ability to influence the direction of the peace academy and the legislation was significantly limited due to nonparticipation. The key debate that shaped the final bill was one between the peace academy supporters and a coalition of opponents. A vocal opposition had maintained a steady countercampaign against the peace academy since it was first proposed. The resistance came from members of Congress, the Department of State, and representatives from some of the country’s leading international relations programs. This opposition was ultimately not successful in blocking the passage of the United States Institute of Peace Act, but their criticisms and demands were fundamental in preventing the creation of the peace academy as imagined by supporters. In accommodating certain demands from this opposition, peace reformers opened the door for the establishment of a significantly altered institution.

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The State Department offered some of the earliest criticism of the peace academy proposals. The academy was interpreted by the State Department as a backdoor to creating a Department of Peace, a clear threat to the department’s own power over matters of foreign affairs. Opposing its establishment was a matter of defending political territory. As Harsch notes, the initial argument from the State Department painted the proposal as adding costly bureaucracy to the government and that “the present training methods for diplomats are adequate.”49 Surprisingly, and even after the founding of USIP, it remained the State Department, not the Department of Defense, that repeatedly called for the institute to be placed under its authority or done away with altogether. Formal opposition in Congress took root once the peace academy bill had 50 Senate sponsors. The leadership in this struggle began to “crystallize around Senator Jeremiah Denton (D–Alabama), the deans of several schools of diplomacy and international relations, the Heritage Foundation, and several federal officials.”50 Senator Denton sought to tank the legislation outright. When those attempts failed, he sought to substitute the academy’s functions within existing departments, thereby making it irrelevant. This move also failed. In a last-ditch effort, Denton tried to divert any funding that might be allocated to support the institute. This measure, which bombed at the time, would ultimately be successful under President Reagan as part of his own battle to undermine those that had forced him into signing the act. Other opponents were more sympathetic to the ideas behind the peace academy, but still refused to accept the need for a governmentsponsored physical institution. In Laue’s opinion, these actors sought “constructive cooptation” of the legislation. They wanted to reframe the academy as a grant-funding agency to support existing programs that supposedly mirrored the academy’s agenda. While opposition from hawks and fiscal conservatives within the Republican and Democratic parties was expected, the more noteworthy opposition emerged from international relations programs, particularly those with close ties to the federal government. Theodore Eliot of the Fletcher School at Tufts and Peter Krogh of Georgetown University took charge in organizing the challenge, speaking publicly against the academy. Along with Eliot and Krogh, Deans “John Funari (Pittsburgh) and Harvey Picker (Columbia), as well as [William] Zartman (Johns Hopkins) and Dean Steph Low of the Foreign Service Institute all testified of a need for more federal financial support but not the creation of new academy.”51 As the bills to establish a US Academy of Peace were introduced in the House and Senate, Jeffrey Sheehan, an associate dean at the Fletcher

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School of Law and Diplomacy, offered a lengthy rebuttal in the Christian Science Monitor on why the academy was a bad idea.52 Sheehan lists five reasons for rejecting the peace academy, though money appears as the central concern in three. The first argues that the academy would duplicate already existing work, taking away from the research conducted in departments across the country. This duplication amounted to a waste of money and increased stress on programs with limited financial resources. Other arguments dealing with financial aspects cite that the program will not be cost effective because it is a government agency and as such, only contributes to bureaucratic waste. Further, the proposed $66 million in funding, the operating costs for four years, would be squandered while the academy figured itself out. The fiscal arguments made by Sheehan matched nicely with the fiscal mindset of the Reagan administration and its mantra of smaller government. However generic the fiscal argument, Sheehan was more concrete about the charges he leveled at the field of peace and conflict studies. The field, Sheehan argued, mixes apples and oranges in assuming training for international conflict is anything like that for interpersonal conflicts. “This presumption is highly debatable at the very least and hardly forms a sound basis for the creation of such an academy,” Sheehan wrote, going further to state, “In fact, there is no such thing as ‘peace studies’ or ‘conflict resolution studies.’”53 Sheehan offered no proof for this assertion, but his intent was clear. There could be no more damning statement for an educational endeavor than to be described in terms of lacking academic legitimacy and having a basis in flawed assumptions. Both Sheehan and Eliot contended, in the direst of terms, that government intervention in higher education would threaten the tradition of American pluralism in education and research. In a move that harkened back to debates over the creation of a national university and the antifederalist rejection of the Constitution, international relations programs argued that government intrusion in education threatened individual liberty. Undoubtedly, international relations programs felt threatened by the emergence of peace studies and conflict resolution programs. Both could be seen as a direct response to the failure of the discipline of international relations to have a meaningful impact on world affairs beyond the promotion of power politics and national self-interest. As the peace academy proposal moved forward in Congress it faced two major sticking points. First, the absence of a degree-granting capability for the peace academy was nonnegotiable for the international relations programs; such a capability would be government intrusion

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into the education market. A second and related issue was the appearance that the act would lead to further expansion of government bureaucracy. To members of Congress, the use of the term academy equated to exorbitant spending on a “bricks and mortar” campus.54 While commission members had finally settled on a small, centralized administrative office and training center to support the regional programs, Congress foresaw a campus equal to that of a military academy every time academy was used. The term needed to go, and if possible, so did any potential for the creation of yet another permanent federal structure. In an effort to live up to the spirit of the practices they championed, peace reformers opted to compromise to achieve a legislative victory. Two groups needed to be satisfied to secure the legislation’s passage, and both required concessions. The first group came from those within Congress who feared a permanent campus for the academy. After the passage of the legislation, N-PAC sent a letter to its members acknowledging, “The change in name from ‘Academy’ to ‘Institute’ and the elimination of the $7.5 million capitalization fund reflect the committee’s concern that the Institute not become a burgeoning bureaucracy.”55 Calling the peace academy the peace institute felt like a minor trade-off, especially given how far peace reformers had come since the start of their campaign. While the change in name was easy enough, the abandonment of the “campus” has proven something of a farce. The current US Institute of Peace occupies land on the National Mall near the State Department in a new centralized headquarters, the cost of which is estimated at over $183 million dollars.56 The change from academy to institute also reflected pressure from the international relations programs. In order to bring the deans and their programs on-board, the degree-granting capacity of the academy was removed. The peace institute would not grant credentials, but instead would supply funding in the form of grants to existing programs. Laue describes this in his notes as a win/win outcome since in his meetings with the deans everyone found something that they could benefit from.57 For Laue, winning appears to have meant only that the legislation might continue forward with one less set of powerful opponents. Yet for the deans, victory translated into far more tangible benefits, including money, access, and the continued dominance of international relations over peace studies and conflict resolution within the federal system. As mandated in the final legislation, the US Institute of Peace is required to give away a portion of its yearly funding. For the collegiate system, this takes the form of research grants and fellowships, of which

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faculty and students at Tufts, Georgetown, Columbia, and Johns Hopkins have been some of the most well rewarded institutions. One program established to distribute these funds, the Jennings Randolph Peace Scholarship Dissertation Program, supported 251 dissertations since the program began in 1988 until its temporary suspension in 2013.58 These 251 opportunities were distributed among fifty-five colleges and universities in the United States. A tally shows that fifteen schools represent over half of the distribution of scholarship opportunities (161 of 251), with the top ten recipients accounting for over one third (119 of 251). The distribution for those top ten are as follows: the University of Chicago (19), Harvard (16), Columbia (14), Tufts (12), Yale (10), the University of Wisconsin (10), the University of California at Los Angeles (10), MIT (10), Georgetown (9), and the University of California at Berkeley (9). While not in the top ten, Johns Hopkins and the University of Pennsylvania are just outside with eight awards each. Programs within the field of peace and conflict studies are represented, but only the University of Maryland cracks the top fifteen. Notre Dame (6), George Mason (5), and American University (5) all find themselves clustered around the average distribution. While we cannot say that peace and conflict studies are not represented, it is worth acknowledging that the programs most hostile to the peace academy legislation have been some of the most frequent recipients of USIP’s funding. While the distribution of funding might be explained in terms of better quality students or proposals, nonstudents have also benefited from the arrangement. I. William Zartman of Johns Hopkins is quoted by Montgomery as warning of the dangers of the peace academy, describing it as a potential “federal monolith” that would be a “stifling and monopolizing presence of an expensive and uneconomic government giant, with a budget three times that of an existing school . . . but with neither the promise of productivity, nor the status of a university.”59 Yet, since the founding of USIP, Zartman has published numerous texts and edited volumes with the institute’s press, served as a Distinguished Fellow in 1993–1994, and remains a frequent featured participant at lectures and events hosted by the organization. Chester A. Crocker, the former chairman of USIP’s board of directors and a professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, has also published a number of texts through the institute’s press, most notably the edited volumes on conflict management and international affairs that the institute describes as core guides in the field of conflict management. The stress on conflict management, not conflict resolution, is significant since it enhances the connection to international relations.

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In comparison, those closest to the campaign, Bryant Wedge, Elise Boulding, and James Laue were involved in no such publications, fellowships, or appointments through USIP. Laue thought that, given his role as a commissioner and his repeated testimony during a decade of congressional hearings on the peace academy, he was sure to be appointed to its board of directors. Though favorable letters were sent on his behalf, no such nomination ever came.60 Laue’s handwritten notes and correspondence indicate that even into the Clinton administration he held out hope for an appointment. USIP’s second president, Samuel Lewis, acknowledged the debt owed to Laue at an event sponsored by the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, stating, “When I became president of our Institute in 1987, John Norton Moore, then our chairman, told me there was one person who could really educate me about the history of our unique institution, and sent me to Jim Laue. Had Jim not been around to give me some very sober, serious, and excellent advice in the early months of my tenure, I am sure that I would not be here tonight.”61 Laue, like the peace academy idea itself, did not fit the Reaganite vision of the United States in the 1980s. Lewis later commented, “President Reagan appointed a board as close to his own conservative views as possible, and the people like Jim Laue, who should have been on that board, were not appointed.”62 We should not assume that the peace reform movement was naive about the potential future of the US Institute of Peace after the legislation’s passage, even if the movement’s members did present an optimistic face to the public. James Laue remained the most optimistic, but his enthusiasm was tempered by a pragmatism that he rarely revealed in his public comments. Laue published an article soon after the USIP legislation’s passage, discussing the history of the legislation and analyzing a set of possible futures for the organization as it developed.63 Interestingly, he describes USIP as a dispute resolution agency representing the formal acceptance by the US government of negotiation, mediation, and other nonviolent forms of addressing conflict. Why Laue selected this particular language is unknown, but he openly situates USIP within the vision of those supportive of N-PAC and not the version shaped by Charles D. Smith. Laue describes the possibility of three types of institute emerging: weak, strong, or subverted. A weak institute was based on the fear that Reagan would not fund USIP or would stack the board of directors in his favor. To a degree, this reflects exactly what happened after the passage of the USIP Act. Option two, a strong institute, was Laue’s hope. Here the institute is properly funded and develops a strong relationship

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with the educational community. Laue stresses that the legislation should be amended to allow for private funding and that its work should eventually consider conflictual events still outstanding in the historical development of the United States. The third vision, a subverted institute, positions USIP as overrun by the military and intelligence services, using the guise of the organization to infiltrate the peace movement. It also views cooptation as teaching material that uses conflict resolution as a method for advancing US interests over all others. Unfortunately for Laue and others who hoped that the obstacles to institutionalization could be overcome, the strong institute along the lines they envisioned did not emerge. What Laue did not conceive was that the relationship between a weak and subverted institute were interlinked. The legislation by itself was not strong enough to resist the personalities put in charge of its oversight and its location within the heart of US power. The National Peace Academy Campaign was vital to the successful creation and passage of what became the US Institute of Peace. The institution would not exist today without their labor, and it is an injustice that the current USIP does not record this history in its publications or its online presence. Yet N-PAC does share some of the responsibility for trading away essential aspects of the peace academy in order to secure passage of the legislation. The consequences of this trade-off are discussed in more detail in the following chapter. Notes 1. Montgomery, “Working for Peace While Preparing for War: The Creation of the United States Institute of Peace,” 479–496. 2. Miller, Institutionalizing Peace. 3. “Effort Renewed for Peace Academy: 2-Century-Old Idea,” Washington Post, September 2, 1977, C11. 4. Joan Coolidge, “Towards a Just Peace: James H. Laue’s Applied Theory of Third Party Intervention” (PhD diss., George Mason University, 2009). 5. Seymour Shubin, “National Peace Academy: One Citizen’s View,” Today in Psychiatry 3, no. 6. (1977), 1. James H. Laue papers, Box 36.1, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 6. Ibid., 4. 7. US Commission on Proposals for the National Academy of Peace and Conflict Resolution, Interim Report of the U.S. Commission On Proposals for the National Academy of Peace And Conflict Resolution: Public Law 95–561, (Washington: US G.P.O., 1980). 8. Wright, Thirteen Days in September. 9. Ury, “The Five Ps of Persuasion: Roger Fisher’s Approach to Influence,” 133–140. 10. Miller, Institutionalizing Peace, 35.

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11. James H. Laue, “Development of a United States Academy of Peace and Conflict Resolution: Analysis and Forecast, 1976–1980,” Prepared for American Sociological Association Annual Meetings, Session 167: Developing Processes and Institutions for Nonviolent Regulation of Social Conflict, (1978), 8. James H. Laue papers, Box 41.13, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 12. Jonathan Harsch, “Mediation in Modern Attire,” Christian Science Monitor, January 26, 1978, 7. 13. US Commission on Proposals for the National Academy of Peace and Conflict Resolution, Interim Report of the U.S. Commission on Proposals for the National Academy of Peace and Conflict Resolution, 3. 14. “The Senator Spark M. Matsunaga Papers: Finding Aid,” University of Hawaii at Manona Library, January 2005, accessed September 15, 2015, 5. http:// libweb.hawaii.edu/libdept/archives/congressional. 15. Alan Taylor, “World War II: Internment of Japanese Americans,” The Atlantic, August 21, 2011. 16. Peter B. Flint, “Spark M. Matsunaga Dies at 73; Senator Led Fight for Reparations,” New York Times, April 16, 1990. 17. Kozen, “Redress as American-style Justice: Congressional Narratives of Japanese American Redress at the End of the Cold War,” 104–120. 18. Irvin Molotsky, “Senate Votes to Compensate Japanese-American Internees,” New York Times, April 21, 1988. 19. Flint, “Spark M. Matsunaga Dies at 73.” 20. Richard Pearson, “Sen. Spark Matsunaga, Hawaii Democrat, Dies.” Washington Post, April 16, 1990. 21. It should be noted that Kenneth Boulding spoke favorably in regard to the George Washington Peace Academy Act and was a supporter of the National Peace Academy. 22. “Executive Summary of Commission Findings” (1980). James H. Laue papers, Box 32.9, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 23. “National Peace Academy Campaign: Campaign Update” (Spring 1980). James H. Laue papers, Box 32.1, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 24. Bryant Wedge, “Wedge to Laue” (December 16, 1979), 1. James H. Laue papers, Box 32.3, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 25. Bryant Wedge, “Wedge to Laue” (January 9, 1980), 2. James H. Laue papers, Box 32.3, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 26. Culture itself is not theorized by Wedge, who reduces it to a synonym for language. The critique around the conflict resolution field’s lack of nuance to the “culture question” emerged from the anthropological insights of Kevin Avruch and Peter Black at a later phase in the development of the field. See Avruch and Black, “The Culture Question and Conflict Resolution,” 22–45. 27. Wedge, “Wedge to Laue” (January 9, 1980). 28. Laue and Cormick, “The Ethics of Intervention in Community Disputes,” 205–232. 29. Bryant Wedge, “Bryant Wedge to Spark Matsunaga” (May 12, 1980), 2. James H. Laue papers, Box 33.6, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries.

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30. The Center for Conflict Resolution at Mason started the following year in 1981. See Avruch, “Does Our Field Have a Centre?,” 10–31. 31. Sandole, “Developing Conflict Resolution in Transcaucasia: A UniversityBased Approach,” 126. 32. Wedge and Sandole, “Conflict Management: A New Venture into Professionalization,” 129–138. 33. James H. Laue, “Notes on Committee Meetings” (December 27, 1979). James H. Laue papers, Box 32.3, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 34. “U.S. Academy Proposed: School Would Wage Peace, Not War,” Los Angeles Times, March 29, 1979, C12. 35. “Minutes Summary” (December 27, 1979). James H. Laue papers, Box 32.3, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 36. Kriesberg, Realizing Peace, 95. 37. Miller, Institutionalizing Peace. 38. “Towards the Frontiers of Thought: Peace: An Active Skill,” Christian Science Monitor, December 30, 1980, 20. 39. Colman McCarthy, “Doing Battle for Peace,” Washington Post, June 15, 1980, H6. 40. Brad Knickerbocker, “‘Peace Academy’: An Antidote to US Violence?” Christian Science Monitor, April 7, 1981. 41. Ibid. 2 42. Westropp eventually became the head of the National Peace Institute Foundation, the organization that evolved out of N-PAC once the US Institute of Peace Act passed. “Thomas C. Westropp to William J. Spencer” (December 11, 1980). James H. Laue papers, Box 32.10, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 43. Smith, The Hundred Percent Challenge. 44. Biennial Report of the United States Institute of Peace, 1991 (Washington: United States Institute of Peace, 1992), 155. 45. Charles D. Smith, “Charles D. Smith to William Spencer” (December 10, 1980), 2. James H. Laue papers, Box 32.10, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 46. Charles D. Smith, “Charles D. Smith to Senator Matsunaga” (December 18, 1980). James H. Laue papers, Box 32.10, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 47. William J. Spencer, “William J. Spencer to Charles D. Smith” (February 3, 1981) James H. Laue papers, Box 32.11, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 48. “Appendix F Summary of Witness Testimony” (Dec. 1980–Feb. 1981), 3. James H. Laue papers, Box 32.11, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 49. Jonathan Harsch, “Mediation in Modern Attire,” Christian Science Monitor, January 26, 1978, 7. 50. James H. Laue. “Peace Academy” (November 1983), 15. James H. Laue papers, Box 42.10, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 51. Ibid., 17. 52. Jeffery A. Sheehan, “A Peace Academy: Costly and Needless,” Christian Science Monitor, January 19, 1982.

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53. Ibid., p. 22. 54. National Peace Academy Campaign, “Letter to Members” (October 4, 1984). James H. Laue papers, Box 42.10, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 55. Ibid. 56. Al Kamen, “Just Give Peace a Chance?” Washington Post, February 24, 2011. 57. Laue, “Peace Academy.” 58. The data on the scholarship program was collected from the institute’s website, where all winners are listed according to year, academic institution, and title of their project. “Jennings Randolph Peace Scholarship Dissertation Program,” United States Institute of Peace, last accessed February 23, 2014, http://www.usip.org/fellows /scholars.html. 59. Montgomery, “Working for Peace While Preparing for War,” 486. 60. NPIF Files (1991–1993). James H. Laue papers, Box 47.2, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 61. Lewis, “Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution,” 1. 62. Ibid., 17. 63. Laue, “The U.S. Institute of Peace: A Federal Commitment to Dispute Resolution,” 181–192.

6 The Turbulent Beginnings of the US Institute of Peace

The passage of the US Institute of Peace Act was the high note for the National Peace Academy Campaign (N-PAC) and members of the elite peace reform movement. The campaign marked a significant legislative victory, creating the first federal institution specifically mandated to study peace and conflict resolution. This chapter traces the development of the US Institute of Peace (USIP) from 1984 to 1992, covering its transformation from law into a physical institution. I begin by providing a close reading of the US Institute of Peace Act and offer a comparison with its predecessor, the George Washington Peace Academy Act. Next, I discuss the work of John Norton Moore and Robert Turner, respectively the first chair of USIP’s board of directors and its first president, and their efforts to build an institution the Reagan administration would support. The final part of this chapter covers the tenure of Samuel Lewis, USIP’s second president, and his determination to reimagine the peace institute as a valuable contributor to policymaking circles in Washington, D.C. At the outset, it is important to keep in mind that the elite peace reform movement wanted an educational academy to promote research related to the development of nonviolent alternatives for addressing violence and disputes, at both international and domestic levels. Their vision reflected a college postgraduate program. They understood the focus of the academy’s work to be unique from both military studies and international relations. While the language of the legislation kept to the spirt of the peace reformers’ vision, the adjustments to the bill and the anger of President Reagan at being forced to sign it created significant ambiguity over what was to follow. Peace reformers hoped for the best, but as will be shown, the changes in the legislation created the opportunity for a very different type of organization to materialize, one

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that reflected the political space of Washington, D.C., and had very little to offer in terms of countering militarism. Passing the US Institute of Peace Act

As discussed in the previous chapter, opposition to the peace academy came from a number of places, but the fate of the legislation rested on passage through the Senate. Opposition was sustained and according to Mary Montgomery’s excellent history of the legislative battle, the Reagan administration directed and supported efforts to kill the academy.1 Though debate on the peace academy started in the late 1960s, it was not until S. 564 received a favorable vote (11–6) by the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources on September 27, 1983, that the actuality of peace legislation becoming law seemed possible, even in the face of increased attacks by the opposition to prevent the measure from being debated on the Senate floor. It took until the following June for things to reach a tipping point. As Montgomery notes, the Senate was in discussion over the coming year’s defense authorization. The authorization had passed the House and was now making its way slowly in the Senate; it was projected to be the most expensive budget on record. Mark Hatfield introduced the peace academy as an amendment, framing education in peace and conflict resolution as essential to the national security of the country. Opponents quickly rehashed prior arguments about exorbitant costs and waste. Yet Senators Hatfield, Matsunaga, and Randolph persisted, with Hatfield and Matsunaga trying a new angle, framing the legislation as a tribute to Jennings Randolph’s four decades of service in the Senate. The Jennings Randolph Center for International Peace would be part of the new institution. A voice vote around 4:00 a.m. saw the amendment agreed to and eventually renamed the United States Institute of Peace Act. On October 19, 1984, the country’s first peace agency (Title XVIII of Public Law 98525) came into existence as a result of both pressure on Congress to honor one of its own and threats to President Regan’s defense budget. The Transformation from a Peace Academy to a Peace Institute

What follows is a close reading of the text of the US Institute of Peace Act in order to emphasize the differences and similarities between it and

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the plans for a national peace academy. To conflate the George Washington Peace Academy Act and the proposals to establish a National Academy of Peace and Conflict Resolution with the US Institute of Peace Act is to overlook crucial alterations in the legislation’s language once it became authorized by the Reagan administration. While such a close reading can be tedious, exploring the subtle shifts in the document’s framing reveals the spaces for interpretation that allowed for the institute to become structured along particular lines. The United States Institute of Peace Act, Title XVII of the Defense Authorization Act of 1985 (also known as the USIP Act), mirrored its predecessor, the George Washington Peace Academy Act, to a significant degree. Yet in form and tone the law took a significantly different outlook. As with earlier proposals, the USIP Act opens by affirming America’s commitment to peace as something timeless. However, in this instance Congress is positioned as acting on a “deep public need” to create a “living institution embodying the heritage, ideals, and concerns of the American people for peace.”2 The public is presented as having called on the nation “to develop fully a range of effective options, in addition to armed capacity, that can leash international violence and manage international conflict.”3 Rather striking in this framing is the association of the American people’s concern for peace with the need to cultivate all of the options for tackling international violence and conflict. The emphasis placed on the institute’s support for military options rather than replacing them or lessening the need for military force is a crucial deviation from the peace academy campaign literature. It reflects Charles D. Smith’s recommendations to the commission that Congress and the federal government no longer be held responsible in the text for their poor handling of Vietnam or the domestic struggles of the 1960s and 1970s. Instead, the United States stands at the ready, a global power responsible for intervening in world events committed to managing and leashing conflict. Significantly altered in this frame as well is the position of the American people. Unlike the peace academy proposals, where US citizens are portrayed as active subjects responsible for maintaining democratic practice, here the state is prominent. The people are situated as subservient to and also requiring the government to act on their behalf. The government is affirmed as the primary force in addressing conflict and violence, not the individual citizen. The text stresses two generalized fears that necessitate the creation of the institute. These are global fears, not exclusively American fears. The first fear is that brought on by the threat of conventional and nuclear

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war, considered to divide people by its very existence. The second finds that people everywhere “are experiencing social and cultural hostilities from rapid international change and real and perceived conflicts over interests.”4 Behind these fears is the realization that people are unable to make peace and this is attributed to a lack of problem-solving skills. The language here is more specific than in the peace academy legislation. It demonstrates the penetration of Roger Fisher and William Ury’s work on interest-based negotiation.5 The perceived or actual threat of war is situated in the text as masking the public’s attention toward matters of peace. Fear of war alienates us from recognizing our true common interests. While the text does not specify how this form of alienation is overcome, the answer to the threat of war is placed within the realm of rational decisionmaking processes. Resolving socio-cultural hostilities and the menace of global nuclear war hinges on the requisite development of problem-solving skills, skills that provide people with the ability to work across cultural and political differences. The stress on interests assumes that all parties can be motivated by incentives otherwise disconnected from values and positions. Thus, while the introduction starts by recasting the relationship between the people and the state, the solution still remains an increased engagement with the practices of negotiation and diplomacy. The cost-effective nature of the institute is championed, highlighting techniques such as negotiation, conciliation, arbitration, and mediation. The argument meshed well with the fiscal conservative thought of policymakers in the Reagan administration, particularly the belief that modern techniques of business management and science were the most resourceful way to administer government and prevent waste. The success of conflict intervention techniques and their economic efficiency made it a national imperative to investigate how they might assist in the promotion of “peaceful economic, political, social, and cultural relations in the world.”6 USIP, as with the academy, would be interdisciplinary in scope, pulling from the behavioral, social, and physical sciences, as well as the arts and humanities, and existed to “promote the peaceful resolution of international conflict.”7 Additionally, the legislation stressed the need for national leadership to support and expand “international peace and conflict resolution efforts.”8 This includes the creation of peace education and training programs, along with funding for research and assistance in the distribution of materials. The text underscores that the institute reflect suggestions developed by the Commission on Proposals for the National Academy of

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Peace and Conflict Resolution, which recommended the establishment of an academy as a worthy investment to support the “Nation’s interest in supporting international peace.”9 Removed from the bill are any mention of social or economic justice. This absence exempted (or prohibited depending on one’s view) the institute from focusing on domestic conflict in the United States, solidifying the international arena as the target of the organization’s work. This is further stressed when the organization is described as symbolizing the “fruitful relation between the world of learning and the world of public affairs,” and existing to enhance the capacity of the US to “promote the peaceful resolution of international conflict.”10 And again in the conclusion, where the institute is deemed a worthy investment by the people of the US to the advancement “of international peace and the resolution of conflicts among nations without the use of violence.”11 The USIP Act stated that the institution would be an “independent, nonprofit, national institute to serve the people and the Government through the widest possible range of education and training, basic and applied research opportunities, and peace information services on the means to promote international peace and the resolution of conflicts among the nations and peoples of the world without recourse to violence.”12 This is perhaps the most important statement contained in the legislation, since it defines the overall purpose behind the institution. The organization would concentrate on two interrelated goals: first, the promotion of international peace and second, the resolution of conflicts between both nations and peoples. The institute is positioned against the use of violence (read as the promotion of armed force or coercion) in developing nonviolent techniques. The sharing of information is championed as an essential element in the resolution of international conflict, since it is assumed that peace knowledge is not a matter of secrecy but of openness. The knowledge produced by the institute is intended for global consumption. Though the academy name was dropped, the final product largely reflects the objectives of an educational institution carried out through the auspices of a federally funded, nonprofit corporation. As with the academy, power to guide the institute is placed in the hands of the board of directors. The board is given the responsibility for coordinating the establishment of the institute and overseeing its development. Members are required to possess professional or academic experience related to “peace and conflict resolution efforts of the United States” to be considered for the position—nevertheless, President Reagan’s first nominees would demonstrate that lack of possession of such

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qualifications was hardly an obstacle to appointment.13 The board is comprised of fifteen voting members, including the secretary of state, secretary of defense, and the president of the national Defense University. Members may appoint alternates within their respective departments to represent them. Originally, an additional spot was held by the director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. However, with the restructuring of the agency at the end of the Cold War, the number of presidential appointments increased to twelve. The president of USIP is ex officio, a nonvoting member of the board. Of the fifteen members, no more than eight voting members are allowed from the same political party. This provision allows for majority party rule within the organization while giving the appearance of bipartisanship. The inclusion of members from the defense community on the board is a radical shift from prior academy proposals. Early plans aimed to shield the academy from any interference by the Department of Defense and the intelligence services. This revision represented a profound transformation, particularly by imposing a limit on the institute’s leadership to encourage practices and research that might run counter to the Cold War consensus. The new leadership structure underscored the provision that USIP would not take a position against the use of military force or have autonomy in its hiring choices. The inclusion of these figures was a blow to those clinging to the hope that the institute would serve as an independent counter to the military-industrial complex. The design of the board gave the president, not Congress, firm control over the development of the organization. The president was responsible for submitting the names of potential nominees, even though provisionally, these appointments were supposed to come with the advice and consent of the Senate. Those in doubt of the significance of this provision might refer to President Reagan’s only comments on the passage of the US Institute of Peace Act: “I have been advised by the Attorney General that section 1706(f), relating to the president’s power to remove members of the Board of Directors of the Institute, is neither intended to, nor has the effect of, restricting the president’s constitutional power to remove those officers.”14 Reagan delayed nominating members to the board for almost a full year after the passage of the legislation. When Congress finally forced him to submit the nominations, they came in the form of eight white males, only one of which had a loose affiliation to the National Peace Academy Campaign. The law stipulated the creation of a Jennings Randolph Program for International Peace in honor of the senator. The program would appoint “scholars and leaders in peace” from the US and abroad for a period of

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up to two years to work on scholarly issues or communication related to “international peace and conflict resolution.”15 Participants are supported financially through stipends, grants, and fellowships.16 This program was originally intended to be a center, but was adjusted to a program during the legislative bargaining that happened before the act was finalized. The Jennings Randolph Program has remained one of the more prominent activities of the institute. In the original legislation, the institute was granted the authority to conduct research and produce studies on peace. In 1987, the law was amended to name the program the Jeannette Rankin Research Program on Peace after the former congresswoman. Jeannette Rankin (Republican–Montana) was the first woman elected to Congress. She was a member of the Women’s Suffrage Movement and an avowed pacifist. As a member of the House, she voted against resolutions pushing the United States to enter World War I, and she holds the distinction of being the only member of Congress to vote against entry into World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor.17 Rankin’s name was later removed from the program and relegated to that of the institute’s library. The aims of the program are noteworthy and reflect compatibility with the peace reformers. Interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary studies which sought to understand the origins of international conflict and wars were prioritized, as well as studies exploring elements that made for peaceful societies or that demonstrated methods of “resolving conflicts with justice and dignity and without violence as they pertain to the advancement of international peace and conflict resolution.”18 However, the legislation stresses that these studies accentuate “realistic approaches to past successes and failures in the quest for peace and arms control and utilizing to the maximum extent possible United States Government documents and classified materials from the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the intelligence community.”19 As a peace information service, the institute is granted the right to publish and distribute materials to the public and government officials, and to share knowledge “from the field of peace learning” with interested persons seeking such information.20 USIP may appeal for the use of classified information in their research, which may be given to the institute when invited to perform a request by another federal agency on matters relating to its mission.21 While the president of USIP may request information from any federal agency or department if it furthers the purpose of the institute, a stipulation is made that this information may only be released if it is found to not “unduly interfere” with the

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functioning of the agency or department receiving the request, and that all recipients of this information at USIP (including board members and the staff) possess the required clearance to view it.22 Such restrictions on the use of classified information initially served to limit the research aims of USIP. Classified information was something N-PAC supporters were happy to avoid since it meant that all of the institute’s work was suitable for distribution. The possession of classified materials created numerous issues regarding the relationship of various agencies to USIP and the peace and conflict studies community. Researchers working on classified projects are required to obtain a security clearance to view the available materials. As a consequence, the public access to this information is restricted since anything produced using classified materials is subject to review and approval by all involved government agencies prior to release. The provision that USIP have access to classified materials makes sense in relation to providing government agencies with analysis. Yet it also underscores the degree to which the law framed USIP’s primary audience as agents of the state, not the American public. In the act, the institute is charged with developing research, training, and education programs on international peace and conflict resolution. These programs are to be made available to interested persons in government, private business, and voluntary associations in the form of handbooks and other types of printed material. In keeping with its educational agenda, the institute may also design, financially support, and/or provide programs in peace education and research for graduate and postgraduate levels. It can conduct programs for professionals in the field, policymakers, government officials, citizens, and noncitizens to develop skills in “international peace and conflict resolution.”23 While the Internet is not mentioned in the law, it has become a major conduit for engagement with the global public. USIP publishes a significant amount of free content (training materials, special reports, and briefing documents) on its website for general consumption. In the original authorization, a stipulation was made that USIP could recommend Congress establish a US Medal of Peace. This medal was established in 1990 as the Annual Spark M. Matsunaga Medal of Peace, along with the creation of the Spark M. Matsunaga Scholars Program. The award was to be presented to those remarkable persons that have contributed to peace, “giving special attention to contributions that advance society’s knowledge and skill in peacemaking and conflict management.”24 It might be assumed that this award is regularly given to noted peace actors. However, the medal appears to have only been

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given once, celebrating the contributions of former presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan to USIP’s creation. A major activity of USIP is its role as a funding source. A quarter of its budget is allocated for grants and fellowships to support colleges and universities, secondary schools, nongovernmental organizations, libraries and other nonprofit public and private agencies through its grant program. Only nonprofits or official public institutions are allowed to receive these funds, which must be directed toward basic and applied research, training, and education on international peace and conflict resolution. One of the more interesting specifications in the law is the directive that the institute assist in the study of conflict resolution between communist and free trade unions, particularly in the area of human rights. 25 The inclusion of working with unions, communist and noncommunist, is telling of the time in which the document was created, prior to the fall of the Soviet Union and the decline of union membership in the United States. According to Smith, by 2010 USIP had funded over 1,750 grants.26 A final injunction is placed on the institute in the form of a prohibition against influencing legislative activity. Like all federal agencies, the institute is barred from undertaking any activity in order to affect the passage of legislation by Congress, state or local legislative bodies, or the United Nations. The institute’s personnel are allowed to testify before committees and legislative bodies when requested to do so, but are prohibited from remarking on policy legislation. This passage makes clear that USIP is limited to activity in the areas of research, education, and training, staff may also serve as expert witnesses, yet the institute is barred from activities related to policy analysis and generation. Officers and employees of USIP are discussed in the legislation, but only one position is expanded upon. Primary responsibility for staffing the institute’s leadership and officers is placed on the board of directors. In keeping with its corporate structure, officers of USIP serve at the pleasure of the board.27 The board appoints the president for an unstated term, which as the institute’s third president Richard Solomon proved, can last upwards of two decades. The president, the only employee directly considered, may hire and fire employees as long as such activity is consistent with the bylaws of the institute and the polices of the board. One of the more curious subsections deals with the assignment of outside federal employees and officers to USIP. The president may request that federal officers and/or employees be assigned, including members of Congress. However, the secretary of state, secretary of defense, and director of the Central Intelligence Agency may also assign

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officers and employees to the institute.28 As with the placement of military and intelligence members on the board, the institute is again forced to relinquish some control to agencies that run counter to its mission, regardless of the concerns of the institute’s staff or supporters. Though Congress declares the institute under its protection, funding and its yearly budget remain a major source of contention. This is in part because the executive branch regularly contests Congress in determining the money allotted to the agency in the annual budget. One of President Reagan’s more straightforward tactics for trying to stall the implementation of the act after its passage was to zero out its budget. According to Montgomery, Reagan deferred the initial $16 million Congress appropriated for USIP for its first two years.29 Supplemental appropriations were eventually signed in August of 1985, but only $4 million was provided to cover the same two-year period. Funding for the institute has increased substantially since the initial request made by Congress. The budget allocations for 2010 were at $49.2 million and $39.5 million in 2011, though by 2017 the institute’s anticipated budget had dropped to an estimated $35 million.30 While these are still noteworthy sums of money, they are modest when compared with other programs and projects funded by the US Government, especially those sponsored by the Department of Defense. To put USIP’s budget in context, defense contractor Lockheed Martin’s newest (and still flawed) F-35 fighter jet model is projected to cost US taxpayers $137 million per jet.31 The plan is to purchase more than two thousand of the planes over the next fifteen years. As Senator Randolph expressed during the hearing on the peace academy, the United States could afford to invest in USIP given its total budget amounted to a fraction of the cost of a single fighter jet. Turbulent Beginnings (1984–1987)

It is difficult to read the wording of the US Institute of Peace Act without prematurely reading the end form of the organization as we know it today, a quasi-governmental think tank and intervention agency. Changes to the legislation and the question of the institute’s board and staff left reformers uncertain as to what came next. What would emerge from this legislation? Who would do the interpreting? Those involved with the National Peace Academy Campaign and the Matsunaga Commission assumed they would be the ones to fill the board of directors and staff positions at the new peace institute. This assumption proved incorrect.

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The law provided for a stripped-down educational institution, one that still firmly articulated support for peace studies and conflict resolution. Peace reformers interpreted the law as pointing in the direction of an academy, and they celebrated this accomplishment as a small step toward the eventual goal of one day having a Department of Peace. Yet now with victory achieved, advocates found themselves occupied in a new contest without the same level of support from the president and Congress, a fight that placed them external to the organization they were so determined to give life. Indeed, the first phase of USIP’s history, from the period of 1984 until 1992, reflects a continual struggle over the shaping of the institute and interpretations of its mandate. N-PAC members anticipated that regardless of who was put in charge, there would be steady progress toward the institute functioning as a quasi-peace academy. Those placed in charge of the institute grappled with a different problem, how to please the Reagan administration and create an organization that could thrive in the environment of the federal government. As mentioned above, President Reagan was initially determined to stall the formation of USIP as long as possible. First, he postponed funding for the first two years of the institute, a sum of $16 million that would have helped kick the project off with substantial financial backing. When he eventually relented, only $4 million was authorized to cover two years of operations. Second, Reagan withheld nominations to the board of directors. He eventually relented under pressure from Congress, sending them names for approval well over a year after the act’s passage. Yet this tactic proved successful in thwarting NPAC’s momentum and engagement after the legislative victory. NPAC’s newsletters reveal frustration from members with the delays. Reagan was not interested in being a partner for peace. This was his agency, and he would determine how it fit within his worldview by enlisting those supportive of his agenda to manage it. A professor was nominated as chair of the institute’s board, but it was not James Laue. John Norton Moore was selected by Reagan in October of 1985.32 Moore is technically the first person associated with USIP in the postlegislation phase, and his Republican affiliations solidified him as a person with the president’s confidence. Moore, an international lawyer, earned his LLM from the University of Illinois College of Law in 1965 and joined the faculty of the University of Virginia Law School shortly thereafter. Moore’s area of scholarship was on international law, and much of his early work aimed to assess and legitimize the legality of US actions in Vietnam and Cambodia.33 His

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career is marked by a continual crossing of boundaries between the fields of governance and education. From 1973 to 1976, he served as chair of National Security Council Interagency Task Force on the Law of the Sea under both the Nixon and Ford administrations. He remained chair of USIP’s board until 1991. Moore left his position to become the “principal legal adviser to the Ambassador of Kuwait to the United States and to the Kuwait delegation to the U.N. Iraq-Kuwait Boundary Demarcation Commission.”34 Moore was the only member appointed to the board of directors known to have any prior connection with the National Peace Academy Campaign. Though his advocacy appears extremely limited, Mall concedes that N-PAC recommended and supported Moore’s nomination.35 The Peace Institute Reporter, a newsletter launched by N-PAC’s successor organization the National Peace Institute Foundation (NPIF), spoke favorably of Moore’s appointment, noting that he and Charles D. Smith worked together on the Genocide Treaty.36 Moore’s qualifications in relation to the objectives of the original campaign are not discussed, yet his background marks him squarely within the boundaries Smith identified in the reworked draft of the peace academy proposal as someone who could keep the focus on international conflict and was a clear champion of the US position in global affairs. There was no mistaking him as an apologist for the war in Vietnam or someone who was soft on communism. The task fell to Moore to build the enterprise. Even while favorable to the Reagan administration, he was placed with the unenviable mission of creating a federal organization that the administration and hawkish members of Congress did not support. His life certainly was not made easier by the other members nominated to sit on the board, none of which had a prior connection to the peace academy campaign. In the words of Samuel Lewis, USIP’s second president, the other board members were skeptical of the endeavor and needed to be won over.37 Lewis is perhaps too generous in calling them merely skeptical. Aeppel notes that while party diversity was required by law among the selected nominations, all of those who wound up serving shared an “overwhelmingly ‘hawkish’” perspective on foreign policy. 38 These were not members of the peace movement, they were not sympathetic to nuclear disarmament, and they most certainly were also not expert practitioners or scholars of conflict resolution, peace studies or thirdparty intervention. They were white men aligned with the Reagan administration’s policies and they could be trusted, even if it was to do nothing, for that very reason.

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The government representatives joining Moore on the board were Richard Schifter from the State Department and Richard Perle for the Defense Department. Kenneth Adelman represented the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, while Lt. Gen. Bradley Hosmer served under his capacity as president of the National Defense University. Representing the public side, the board was filled with individuals with no connection to the fields of peace studies and conflict resolution. Three of the appointments represented affiliations with other think tanks: W. Bruce Weinrod of the Heritage Foundation; Dennis Bark of the Hoover Institution of War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University; and Evron M. Kirkpatrick of the American Enterprise Institute. Academia was represented by those specifically affiliated with an American-centric view of history and international affairs: international relations scholar W. Scott Thompson of the Fletcher School, and William R. Kintner, former ambassador to Thailand and professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. Additionally, two religious leaders were appointed: Sidney Lovett, a minister with the First Church of Christ Congregation, and Richard John Neuhaus, a minister and director of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, an organization started to weed out perceived Marxist sympathizers from within Protestant churches in the United States.39 Also selected was Morris I. Leibman, a lawyer and founder of the National Strategy Forum, an organization modeled after the Council on Foreign Relations.40 The final member was Allen Weinstein, a professor, strategist, and founder of the Center for Democracy. The center later merged with the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, which was initiated to promote President Reagan’s vision of democratic governance and fair elections in countries transitioning to democracy. The board did not hold its first meeting until February 25, 1986, and the first woman was nominated to the board in 1987: Elspeth Davies Rostow, professor of American studies at the University of Texas. While this gender disparity is important to note, the hawkish orientation of Rostow suggests that concerns over women’s participation were easy to placate while still maintaining ideological consensus. Rostow was the wife of Walt Rostow, former special assistant for national security affairs under President Johnson and an archetypal Cold Warrior. Although it is true that the majority of those appointed to the leadership of USIP did not share the vision of the peace academy campaign in their personal opinions, they nevertheless set about under Moore’s guidance to form an organization as mandated by the law. Moore remarked soon after the board’s formation, “The Institute of Peace will

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not immediately make the world a safer place, but it can enhance our understanding of conflict and conflict resolution.”41 Ever the optimist, former Mastunaga commissioner Elise Boulding celebrated the passage of the USIP Act and refused to be disappointed by the turn of events. She commented that the selections marked a crucial step in the institute’s development. Boulding cautioned peace advocates not to expect much from USIP during these formative years. What mattered was that a precedent had been set; just having the institute “establishes an important framework.”42 Nevertheless, it is not difficult to comprehend why some within the National Peace Academy Campaign fretted about the future of the US Institute of Peace. One could easily criticize Boulding’s optimism, and certain supporters of the peace academy quickly took issue with the hawkish composition of the board. Coleman McCarthy captured this in an op-ed for the Washington Post, writing, “The 12-member gathering was all male, all white, and all safe. The first order of homogenized business for the assembled neocons, hawks, and Reaganites should have been a call for a name change—from the Institute of Peace to the Institute of Passivity.”43 McCarthy’s assessment demonstrated the speed at which supporters began to divide on their interpretations of Reagan’s peace institute. The faithful, such as commission members Elise Boulding and Jim Laue held out hope until the end of their lives that USIP would eventually live up to its potential. For those like McCarthy, this initial criticism remained a valid one over three decades into the organization’s development. It is clear from Moore’s remarks at the first meeting of the board of directors in February 1986 that USIP would adopt a different attitude toward pursuing its objective, distinct from that of N-PAC. In the meeting minutes, Moore starts cordially enough. He reiterates the positions outlined in the law: USIP is a nonpartisan agency committed to interdisciplinary study and fostering a climate of intellectual freedom. 44 He stresses that the agency will not be involved in interventions, rather its energies will be exerted in the promotion of education, research, training, and intellectual exchanges. USIP will approach its mission with a broad outlook appreciating all the issues stressed in its mandate, as well as offer itself as a resource to other programs working on similar problems. Finally, and to once again reassure skeptics within Congress, Moore restates that USIP “was not opposed or divorced” from national security policy. Rather, the institute aimed to demonstrate how conflict resolution might support America’s national security priorities. In reassuring Congress, Moore also reveals his hes-

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itancy to criticize military power, distancing himself from the majority of peace academy supporters. Moore stresses that USIP “must not be misled by simplistic assumptions that foreign involvement or military strength are necessarily inconsistent with the pursuit of peace.” 45 Moore frames peace as inseparable from American values: “We must not forget that our Nation also holds fundamental commitments to freedom, self-determination and human dignity, values that must never be destroyed through aggressive attack.” 46 His view is unsurprising given his background, yet it is crucial to note that while supportive of US Cold War positions, the institution Moore outlines is not described in any way as connected to the policy process. The board selected Robert Turner as the first president of the US Institute of Peace. Turner agreed to serve for a year in the position while the board conducted a wider hiring search to find a permanent president. In an interview with James Laue, Moore describes Turner as ideal for the job, a person that rises above partisanship. In Moore’s words, Turner was “a person of great experience in the areas of diplomacy, conflict management, international affairs, international relations.”47 Turner’s credentials are in line with Moore’s interpretation of USIP’s mission, but his selection reveals something more. Turner, as with Moore, is emblematic of the way in which representatives from the overlapping fields of education, military, and governance quickly began to permeate the institute during its formation. Turner was himself a colleague of Moore’s at the University of Virginia’s Law School. Together, they founded the Center for National Security Law in 1981.48 Turner completed two tours in Vietnam with the US Army and spent five years as a research associate and public affairs fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. He transitioned from his work with Hoover to become national security adviser for Senator Robert P. Griffin (Republican–Michigan). According to his profile, Turner “has also served in the executive branch as a member of the Senior Executive Service, first in the Pentagon as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, then in the White House as Counsel to the president’s Intelligence Oversight Board, and at the State Department as acting Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs.”49 Turner was also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. What he was not was a member of N-PAC or a man particularly interested in peace studies or conflict resolution. Nor did he perceive the institute as aligned with peace activism: “We’re not here to oppose the contras, SDI or anything else. . . . Rather we are looking at broad theories, principles and ideas.”50

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Peace reformers were apprehensive about this initial choice in leadership. Moreover, they were concerned about the direction of USIP’s preliminary efforts, which centered largely on the distribution of grants. After the passage of the USIP Act in 1984, the National Peace Academy Campaign shifted its role to support and advocate on behalf of the new institution. In an effort to avoid public confusion over the relationship between the peace academy campaign and the peace institute, the organization amended its name and mission, rebranding itself as the National Peace Institute Foundation (NPIF).51 Largely comprised of the same membership, NPIF sought to use its base and influence to promote USIP, serving as its unofficial steering committee. Initially, NPIF helped to pressure President Reagan to nominate members to the board of directors. Later it sought to raise the public’s awareness of USIP’s existence, as well as hold the institute accountable to the original vision of the peace academy. Relations were amicable at first. Moore turned to NPIF for help with public relations, yet the two organizations began to diverge over disagreements concerning the direction of USIP. After a visit by Moore to NPIF’s board of directors, retired Vice Admiral Ralph Weymouth, a member of the NPIF, remarked that the fault for presidential selection and the current direction of the institute did not necessarily lay with Chairman Moore. Rather, Weymouth identified Moore as a “good bureaucrat” who did not have the support around him to make things happen.52 NPIF also levied an accusation that the grants program dominated the board’s attention; no real effort was being put toward other aspects of the institution’s mandate. In preparing for the meeting with Moore, Laue appears frustrated by the state of affairs, noting that USIP’s board members were handing out money to their friends before the organization even had bylaws, let alone a newsletter, permanent president, or a brochure.53 Another note scrawled by Laue on a list of grant recipients describes the grant winners as producing the “same old projects,” none of which lived up to the ideals of the peace academy and more so, reflected the work typically produced by international relations scholars. The meeting ended with a sense of frustration on NPIF’s part, leaving them to question both their purpose and the direction of the institute. Weymouth concluded that the two organizations were growing apart. USIP did not seem interested in hearing from those affiliated with the NPIF or the peace academy campaign. Under Laue’s chairmanship, NPIF republished a column from noted safety advocate Ralph Nader chastising the Reagan administration and the leaders of USIP. 54 Nader recapped the funding struggles

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and issues with the board, noting that none of the members had any expertise in the area of conflict resolution, a supposed prerequisite for consideration. Still, the focus of his scorn was saved for the appearance of corruption on behalf of the board’s distribution of grants. Nader writes that two-thirds of the distributed grants named at the end of 1986 went to larger federal organizations, such as the State Department whose officials sat on the board, while other funds found their way into the hands of hawkish, right-wing foundations. Additionally, Congress provided limited oversight, nor did it urge the board to live up to the spirit of the peace academy. Outrage by NPIF and members of the peace studies community led to Congressional action. In March of 1987, Senator Tom Harkin (Democrat–Iowa) held a hearing on the grants program and the slow progress of the institute. While his opening remarks sought to reassure USIP officials of his support, he nevertheless expressed his disappointment with the organization’s sluggish development. According to a memo sent to NPIF supporters, Harkin “deplored the fact that 69% of the dollar amount of the Institute’s first grants made in December 1986 went to organizations that had affiliations with the Institute’s Board of Directors.”55 The senator called on USIP to revise this process and avoid further conflicts of interest. A revision to the grant review process was later instituted in an effort to address issues of nepotism, but not in determining what content was eligible for funding under the banner of peace and conflict studies. Another cause for concern appeared the same year tucked inside an article in the Washington Post on Richard Perle. Perle is known to contemporary readers as a hawkish neoconservative, closely aligned with the presidency of George W. Bush and the US-led invasion of Iraq. Perle’s tenure in government dates back to the 1970s. A liberal democrat turned neoconservative who strongly opposed US talks on nuclear arms reduction with the Soviet Union, he was a strong critic of Carter and a key proponent of Reagan’s ballistic missile defense programs. Perle is described by another longstanding political figure, Sidney Blumenthal, as actively preventing the hiring of liberals at USIP to maintain ideological consistency within the organization, specifically in order to prevent any challenges to the administration’s position on arms control. 56 Given these initial circumstances, it is admirable the institute managed to survive its first years. Moore and Boulding both set a low bar for immediate results. This seemed to be the general consensus among peace reformers. They were disappointed with the pace of the peace institute’s growth, but unwilling

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to abandon the organization after such a hard-fought campaign. A sympathetic administration might turn things around. But in the meantime, peace reformers tried their best to keep an open and sustained dialogue with USIP’s leadership, which leaned more toward supporting work in international relations than conflict resolution. On November 10, 1987, the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources held an oversight hearing to discuss the institute’s progress. Senators Spark Matsunaga and Clairborne Pell opened the meeting by discussing the importance of the institute for promoting peace and training in conflict resolution. While encouraged that the institute was moving forward, they appear displeased by the lack of attention given to projects that reflected the overriding need to understand and prevent war. Moore placates their discomfort by addressing how far the institute has come given its challenges, and he lays out the guidelines created by the board to nurture its growth. Moore also introduces Ambassador Samuel Lewis as the incoming president and lauds Lewis’s accolades as making him the best possible fit for the job. In his testimony, Moore discusses the major projects undertaken by the institute to this point, which include a television series on USSoviet negotiations, a peace essay contest for high school students, and lists the recipients of the Jennings Randolph fellowships and institutional grants. Plans for a comprehensive mapping of the field of international conflict management to be undertaken by board member W. Scott Thompson are mentioned, as is the need to increase the focus on public outreach, negotiator training, and curriculum development. Moore’s remarks confirmed the fears of the peace reform; the three main areas were being pushed aside to focus on grant distribution. Nonetheless, Moore placated the senators by offering Ambassador Lewis as the person who would take the lead in correcting this deficiency, especially given his work on the Camp David Accords and background in diplomacy. One of the more interesting exchanges to emerge from this hearing was led by Senator Pell. Pell sought to clarify the institute’s position regarding domestic conflict and to the Nuclear Freeze Campaign. When asked if USIP should address domestic conflict, Moore argued that it would violate the law’s mandate. The institute might have an indirect effect through the publication and distribution of its materials, but it was an internationally focused organization. To the question of coming out against further nuclear development, Moore also retreated to the law, stating that board members were prohibited from engaging in political activity or commenting on policy. The institute resisted the notion

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that its work should be politicized, and therefore, would neither support nor oppose domestic political movements. From Education to Policy (1987–1992)

The end of Reagan’s presidency coincided with the appointment of Samuel Lewis as USIP’s second president. Those appointed to the board of directors remained largely the same, with the notable exception of trading one neoconservative for another. Dick Cheney’s appointment as secretary of defense by George H.W. Bush placed him as an ex officio member, a task that Cheney then delegated to his assistant secretary of defense for international security policy, Stephen Hadley. Hadley is another familiar name to today’s readers. He served on the National Security Council under the Ford administration and later as an assistant to President George W. Bush for national security affairs and deputy national security adviser under Condoleezza Rice. Hadley’s affiliation with USIP stretches to the present day, where he has served both as a senior adviser and now as chairman of the board of directors. Thus, the transition to Lewis as the president of USIP was not accompanied by any significant change in ideology at the senior leadership level of the board. Rather, such ideological consistency only further emphasized the initial movement of USIP away from the peace academy concept as it continued its development as a federal institution. While the board remained consistent, Lewis represented a far more attractive figure to those involved with the peace reformers. For the peace reform, the appointment of Samuel Lewis provided a flicker of hope that things might turn around, and the initial goals of the peace academy realized. Lewis was the closest incarnation of someone not affiliated with the campaign who might be sympathetic to the original academy vision. He was a diplomat, one selected by President Carter no less, who had worked on the Camp David Accords and had extensive experience in international diplomacy. Lewis graduated from Johns Hopkins in 1954 and joined the Foreign Service immediately afterward. He moved through the ranks, becoming assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs at the State Department in 1975. In 1977, President Carter appointed Lewis the US ambassador to Israel, a position he held until 1985. Lewis began his tenure with the US Institute of Peace in 1987, departing in 1992 to return to the State Department under President Clinton as director of policy planning. Surely, if anyone could challenge the hawkish leanings of the board, it was a president with his experience and political connections.

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And it seems Lewis did manage to bridge aspects of the ideological divide between the conservative leadership of the institute and the peace community, earning praise from both. Stephen Strickland, the president of NPIF, extolled Lewis and USIP’s work as “evolving in the right direction.” 57 Meanwhile, the board members extolled their own nonideological position toward funding projects ranging from Gene Sharp’s work on nonviolent struggle to Ted Robert Gurr’s Correlates of War dataset to an undefined project affiliated with the conservative James Madison Center at the University of Virginia. By 1988, USIP had moved beyond just grant making to the production of its own projects, specifically a video series on US-Soviet negotiations, as well as hosting various workshops and lectures on conflict management and international problems. All of this activity was in keeping with the educational mandate, and yet for Lewis, the educational mandate felt too limited. Lewis remarked, “I don’t want to have stuff just produced for the library. We need to make an impact.”58 Impact for Lewis meant getting at major players in Washington, not just academics. Conferences and books were significant in their own right, but they were rarely priorities to the policymaking set. With the encouragement of Lewis, the institute began to claw its way into the policy conversation. In moving toward policy, USIP shifted its thinking about the type of operations and projects it wanted to undertake. Indeed, it began to reform itself to reflect what was becoming the dominant form of organizations in the Washington policy conversation, that of a think tank. Think tanks, sometimes described as policy planning organizations, came to dominate policymaking during the 1980s and have played an increasingly important role ever since.59 USIP commenced sending four-page digests of its conference proceedings and studies to members of Congress, the State Department, and other policy leaders. While it remained barred from giving policymakers advice, the institute was not prevented from making those in Washington aware of its undertakings. Accompanying its outreach to policymakers and its continued educational endeavors, USIP also started to pursue a media strategy. At first, interviews with USIP staff and leadership generally reflected a curiosity about the state of the organization’s affairs. How was it managing under its constraints? What type of programs was it investing in? The most significant media coverage the institute received for years after overcoming President Reagan was for its most widely recognized program, the National Peace Essay Contest for high school students. To the general public, the institute’s presence in the media amounted to lit-

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tle more than a federal agency that sponsored a yearly essay competition. Winners of the competition received a trip to Washington, D.C., and, occasionally, a short feature in the local section of the newspaper celebrating their accomplishment. The arrival of Lewis helped change the media’s perception of USIP, in part because Lewis brought with him significant experience as the former ambassador to Israel. In March of 1990, Israel’s coalition government collapsed, creating a political crisis within the country. The crisis not only stood to affect people in Israel and Palestine, but it completely derailed the peace talks President Bush and his secretary of state, James Baker III, were trying to manage between the Israelis and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. While the event itself is just another of the numerous footnotes to this particular conflict, it was significant for the US Institute of Peace not only due to its mandate, but also because of Lewis. Lewis increasingly became a source of information and commentary for the media, while also delivering his own analysis of the situation in an op-ed issued as the president of the institute.60 Though USIP is only mentioned as part of his byline, Lewis gave the institute visibility in the national press. Norman Kempster, a journalist with the Los Angeles Times, continued to use Lewis as a source in further pieces on the Middle East peace process. The following year, other fellows and staff of USIP began to appear more frequently in the media. David Smock, then a program officer, and Eugene Rostow, a USIP fellow and brother-inlaw of the board member Elspeth Rostow, followed Lewis’s lead. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would see the media presence of USIP staff and fellows reach its thirty-year peak. The media reaching out for comment from experts and area specialists is in itself not uncommon. It is both typical and expected. Yet for those guiding the US Institute of Peace, such public exposure reflected increasing prestige in the political field. As think tank scholar James McGann writes, “the think tank and expert gain a wide forum for the opinion expressed—and sometimes even a certain renown as a result of the direct media exposure.”61 It may be tempting to dismiss media exposure as extraneous, but as McGann points out, media appearances are one of the major indicators by which think tanks judge their influence. These organizations invest enormous sums of money in both crafting their work and personnel for media consumption. While in most cases they cannot control which outlets contact them or use their data, it nevertheless indicates something, generally positive, when a media outlet interviews a think tank expert or discusses a think tank’s report. This is particularly true of elite media outlets such as the Washington Post and

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the New York Times given that these news organizations are significant actors in framing national policy debates. The appearance of Samuel Lewis in these outlets as an expert was an adjustment the US Institute of Peace made as it oriented itself to the rules of Washington. Surprisingly, these changes represented an institutional shift away from Robert Turner’s earlier statements that sought to anchor the institute in more traditional modes of academic production, enforcing a clear barrier between research and the policy sphere. USIP was adapting to its environment and that environment reflected its location at the heart of US power. In turn, the form of the organization began to imitate the types of activities and knowledge production guiding the dominant organizations existing within that milieu: think tanks. The institute began to skirt the uncertain boundary between activities constituted as the distribution of policy-relevant information (within the mandate) and those constituted as giving policy recommendations (outside of the mandate). Thus, to provide options to the executive branch and Congress were not endorsements of specific policies, they were rather, according to Lewis, “learning of the most inclusive sort on the causes of peace and war, and on the widest variety of methods to constrain violent conflict and achieve peaceful settlements.”62 Lewis appeared before Congress on a number of occasions to provide updates on the institute. “In a world where many violent international conflicts continue, the Institute aims to enlarge the peacemaking capacity of the United States and others who are also committed to the pursuit of a more peaceful world,” he informed them in the spring of 1989.63 His remarks to Congress were generally consistent over the course of his presidency: USIP was growing in order to reach its mandate, but growth remained slow due to the complexity of its mandate. USIP faced the challenge of having three different target audiences (scholars, practitioners, and the public), each came with its own special needs and requirements. The public remained the audience given the least amount of attention, as more effort was directed toward the distribution of materials to the policy crowd. There was also the constant battle for funds. Money was so tightly allocated that USIP staff had to pay for refreshments out of pocket for activities they hosted, since purchasing these supplies fell outside of its allowances. Lewis urged Congress to provide additional funding, or at the very least, amend the law to sanction the spending of USIP funds on events. Lewis remained optimistic about the institute’s prospects even if peace reformers grew tepid about the future. Given the Cold Warriors situated on the board of directors and the accommodating style of

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Lewis, the institute was proving it could engage with conflict related issues without challenging the status quo. The George H.W. Bush administration appeared supportive of the institute’s work, and in a change from the previous administration, recommended funding for USIP in its budgets and a five-year renewal authorization. Lewis informed Congress, “While the Institute is independent and nonpartisan, we are now fully recognized as an important new component in the Nation’s overall national security structure. . . .” How the institute contributed to national security outside of the distribution of information was left understated, but the answer seemed to satisfy members of the Senate committee. Still, when asked by Senator Harkin (Democrat–Iowa) about the future of USIP, Lewis found himself stating that he was unsure. Harkin pressed for more USIP involvement at the high school level and in the development of school curriculum. Lewis responded that this was not possible due to local control over such matters, an answer he had repeated a year earlier when pressed on the same issue. Also in keeping with comments made during a previous hearing, he reiterated that it was not his place to address the lack of diversity on the board of directors. This was the duty of the president and Congress. Lewis stated that he pushed for inclusive hiring within the institute as a corrective, but changing the composition of the board was not within his abilities. In a final comment, Lewis also brought to a close another vision of the peace reformers, that USIP would help facilitate the creation of regional peace centers across the US. Lewis declared that such work was well beyond the current mandate. The institute was now doing its own thing, and this was unique from whatever visions had preceded it. To complicate matters for the institute, the world was about to undergo a paradigmatic change. Analysts failed to anticipate the collapse of the Soviet Union, and in 1991, the Cold War between the superpowers fizzled out with a relatively bloodless whimper. The potential of nuclear war, at least between the US and Russia, became a nonissue, with the two governments eventually working together to secure aspects of the Soviet arsenal. The great enemy Other (at least for the moment) was suddenly gone, and with it, the institute set adrift. Its primary object no longer existed in the same form, and as such, a transformation was necessary. The end of the Soviet Union provided the organization with an opportunity to expand its educational outreach to the countries in Eastern Europe, and to focus its efforts in two specific areas, law and democratic governance, both of which were deemed essential in assisting these states in transition to a market-based economy.

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In a lecture delivered to the peace and conflict studies community just after his departure as president, Lewis stated: Let me just say, however, that as we have now completed our first six years of operations, we have demonstrated the capability to make a genuine intellectual contribution to the United States government’s peacemaking efforts, without overstepping our mandate to be objective, stay out of the policy process, and to avoid in any way impinging on the responsibilities of the State Department or other agencies of the United States government.64

Lewis imagined an expanded role for the institute in this new international climate. USIP had the potential to change the perception of those negotiating on behalf of the United States, specifically by assisting the State Department. Based on its location, USIP occupied a unique space, Lewis stated: it “has one foot in government and one foot in the world of scholarship. We have total freedom to do what we think can advance the cause of peace, so long as we do not interfere with official responsibilities of the executive branch.”65 Lewis did not clarify his comments further, but it is clear that he felt room to maneuver in his position as president that was not possible during the Reagan years. He foresaw the next stage of USIP’s development required it to become more relevant to policymakers; his successor Richard Solomon saw this transformation solidified. The relationship with NPIF and the academic community remained cordial, but both were forced to adjust to the institute as it was, not the institute as peace reformers hoped it would be. The Lewis years were not, however, without controversy. Diamond and Hatch conducted an analysis of USIP in an article for Z Magazine and they went straight for the jugular.66 The story presented by the authors reveals an organization permeated with Cold Warriors, intelligence agents, and rightwing operatives, most with a history of supporting US-led military campaigns across the globe. The board of directors received significant scorn for their hawkishness, and they specifically targeted Moore, along with William Kinter, W. Scott Thompson, and Morris Leibman as advocates of the doctrine of peace through strength. While the piece is critical of the board’s funding decisions and the decision to appoint former CIA operatives as distinguished experts in residence at the institute, the most significant revelation relates to a USIPsponsored article chastising the work and followers of noted peace researcher Johan Galtung. According to the authors, Galtung’s ideas and research were singled out for attack by Robert Rudney. Rudney argued in an edition of the

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USIP publication News Brief that Galtung and his disciples suffered from a “serious lack of scholarly discipline, confused methodology, impulse toward political activism and narrowmindedness with respect to developments in international relations and strategic studies.”67 Rather than contribute to studies focused on specific practical interventions, Rudney contended there was an overemphasis on analyzing structural violence and the promotion of left activism. Certainly, the criticism of Galtung as a peace partisan is accurate, but the institute was also supposed to be partisan in its approach toward the promotion of peace and conflict resolution. Galtung felt that Rudney’s article was an attack on his character and wrote to Lewis asking for the opportunity to issue a rebuttal or at the very least, for USIP to retract the article. Neither happened. Diamond and Hatch note that “Galtung is less disturbed by the USIP’s connections to intelligence agencies or right-wing think tanks than he is by the Institute’s unwillingness to ‘admit any peace research fundamentally critical of U.S. foreign policy.’”68 In hindsight, Diamond and Hatch’s treatment of Lewis appears overly critical, yet their concern with the direction of the institute was justified. Lewis was interested in negotiation training and policy relevance, he was not a militarist, especially when compared to Turner. Diamond and Hatch’s analysis of Lewis was off the mark, but their frustration that USIP was moving away from the peace academy concept allowed them to voice concerns those closest to N-PAC still refused to admit. Their instincts concerning the influence of stationing CIA and military personnel within USIP on a semipermanent basis proved significant, as the next two decades of USIP’s development reveal. The problem, as Galtung so pointedly analyzed the matter, was not the mere presence of these individuals, but rather how the organization continued to enforce the rule that USIP not investigate the US contribution to the production and escalation of global conflicts. It was not that intelligence or military personnel were unable to imagine peaceful alternatives for addressing violence, it was that they were prohibited by their positions from arguing for alternatives that ran against the Washington consensus, one that always placed the root causes of conflict as external to the actions of the United States. The end of the Cold War and the quick victory in the First Gulf War furthered the promotion of the United States as the solution to the world’s problems, and as such the institute drifted further away from its mission to understand the complexity of conflict and offer a range of alternatives. In the midst of mounting criticism over the direction of the organization by peace reformers, Elise Boulding offered a reflection on the aims of the peace academy campaign.69 Boulding highlighted the parallels

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between the academy proposals and the act establishing USIP. She wrote that the institute had taken up the academy’s mandate to “perform and assist research about international peace and peacemaking,” educate and train persons in government and across the country about international peace and peacemaking skills, and act as a clearing house for materials and information related to peace learning.70 These were three important features of the peace academy, and in Boudling’s estimation they remained three areas the US Institute of Peace was currently engaged in. However, Boulding also sought to clarify what the commission viewed as outside the scope of the academy and, by default, outside the scope of the institute as she understood its mandate. She writes: “Not an intervention agency: while the academy may study ongoing crises and disputes, neither as an institution nor through its personnel should it intervene directly or indirectly in such conflicts; Not a National Policy Setting Agency: other than establishing its own policies, the Academy should not participate in policy decisions of any federal or nonfederal body; Not an adversary to the Military or an Alternative to the Military Academies and War Colleges.”71 Against critics, Boulding argued that USIP’s activities fell within the bounds the commission had set for the academy. Yet in the decades to follow, the institute moved far beyond the boundaries imagined by peace reformers. Notes 1. Montgomery, “Working for Peace While Preparing for War,” 94. 2. “United States Code: Chapter 56: The United States Institute of Peace,” sec. 4601. a. 1. Document is available through Cornell University Law School, accessed September 15, 2015, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/22/chapter-56. 3. Ibid., sec. 4601. a. 1. 4. Ibid., sec. 4601. a. 2. 5. Fisher and Ury, Getting to Yes. 6. “United States Code: Chapter 56: The United States Institute of Peace,” sec. 4601. a. 4. 7. Ibid., sec. 4601. a. 5. 8. Ibid., sec. 4601. a. 6. 9. “United States Code: Chapter 56: The United States Institute of Peace,” sec. 4601. a. 7. 10. Ibid., sec. 4601. a. 8. 11. Ibid., sec. 4601. a. 9. 12. Ibid., sec. 4601. b. 13. Ibid., sec. 4605. d. 1. 14. Ronald Reagan, “Statement on Signing the Department of Defense Authorization Act, 1985.” Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, October 19, 1984, accessed September 15, 2015, http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives.

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15. “United States Code: Chapter 56: The United States Institute of Peace,” sec. 4604. b. 1. 16. The Randolph Program was one of the longest running activities of USIP and has provided hundreds of fellowship opportunities for students and professionals. It was currently suspended at the time of this research. 17. See Smith, Jeannette Rankin, America’s Conscience. 18. “United States Code: Chapter 56: The United States Institute of Peace,” sec. 4604. b. 3. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid., sec. 4604. b. 8. 21. Ibid., sec. 4604. e. 22. Ibid., sec. 4604. b. 9. 23. Ibid., sec. 4604. b. 6. 24. Ibid., sec. 4604. c. 1. A. 25. Ibid., sec. 4604. d. 26. Smith, U.S. Peacefare, 162. 27. “United States Code: Chapter 56: The United States Institute of Peace,” sec. 4606. a. 28. Ibid., sec. 4606. d. 2. 29. Montgomery, “Working for Peace While Preparing for War.” 30. “Statement on USIP Budget,” United States Institute of Peace, April 28, 2011, accessed September 15, 2015, http://www.usip.org/publications/statement -usip-budget; Morello, “Institute Dedicated to Forging Peace Is Targeted for Extinction,” https://www.washingtonpost.com. 31. Christopher Drew, “In Federal Budget Cutting, F-35 Fighter Jet Is at Risk,” New York Times, November 28, 2012. 32. Joel M. Woldman, U.S. Institute of Peace, Washington, D.C.: Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division, Congressional Reporting Service, 1986. 33. Moore, “The Lawfulness of Military Assistance to the Republic of Viet-Nam,” 1– 34; and Moore, “Legal Dimensions of the Decision to Intercede in Cambodia,” 38–75. 34. “John Norton Moore,” University of Virginia School of Law, accessed February 21, 2014, http://www.law.virginia.edu/lawweb/faculty.nsf/FHPbI/1192475. 35. Janice Mall, “Questioning the U.S. Agenda for Peace,” Los Angeles Times, January 26, 1986. 36. Smith is discussed in more detail in the previous chapter. “Charles D. Smith,” Peace Institute Reporter (June 1986), 6. James H. Laue papers, Box 47.9, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 37. Lewis, “Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution.” 38. Aeppel, “Controversial Peace Institute Finally Gets (Just) off the Ground.” 39. Peschek, “‘Free the Fortune 500!’ The American Enterprise Institute and the Politics of the Capitalist Class in the 1970s,” 165–180. 40. “Morris I. Leibman, 81, A Senior Law Partner,” New York Times, April 29, 1992. 41. Moore, “An Appropriate US Response: The Peace Institute,” 18. 42. Aeppel, “Controversial Peace Institute Finally Gets (Just) off the Ground.” Christian Science Monitor, December 23, 1986. 43. Colman McCarthy, “This Is Some Peace Institute,” Washington Post, March 8, 1986, A23. 44. John Norton Moore, “Opening Statement at the First Meeting of the Board of Directors of The United States Institute of Peace” (February 25, 1986). James H. Laue papers, Box 49.2, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries.

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45. Ibid., p. 5. 46. Ibid., p. 5. 47. “Interview with John Norton Moore and James Laue.” Peace Institute Reporter (July–October 1986), 2. James H. Laue papers, Box 38.15, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 48. “Robert F. Turner,” University of Virginia School of Law, accessed February 21, 2014, http://www.law.virginia.edu/lawweb/Faculty.nsf/PrFHPbW/rft3m. 49. Ibid. 50. Mark Lawrence, “A ‘Focal Point’ For Nation’s Peace Studies; Institute Poised to Begin Programs,” Washington Post, August 6, 1987, A19. 51. National Peace Institute Foundation, “Letter to Members” (September 1986). James H. Laue papers, Box 46.8, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 52. “Minutes - Planning, Program, and Policy Committee, Board of Directors, National Peace Institute Foundation” (Jan. 30–31, 1987). James H. Laue papers, Box 46.2, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 53. Ibid. 54. Ralph Nader, “Neglecting the Peace.” James H. Laue papers, Box 46.3, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 55. Robert J. Conlan, “Memorandum to Board Members” (March 6, 1987). James H. Laue papers, Box 46.2, Collection #C0055, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries. 56. Sidney Blumenthal, “Richard Perle, Disarmed but Undeterred; His Once Pervasive Power Waning, The Hard-Liner Awaits the Summit,” Washington Post, November 23, 1987. 57. Brooke A. Masters, “Peace Institute’s Course: A Balanced Approach; After Rocky Start, Research Unit Wins Praise,” Washington Post, July 12, 1989, A21. 58. Ibid. 59. Medvetz, Think Tanks in America. 60. Norman Kempster, “Israeli Cabinet Collapse Leaves U.S. Policy in Tatters: Diplomacy: The Administration Has No New Answers to Break the Peace Talks Deadlock,” Los Angeles Times, March 14, 1990; Samuel Lewis, “Mideast: Still Not Ready for Peace,” New York Times, March 22, 1990. 61. McGann, Think Tanks and Policy Advice in the United States: 38. 62. United States Congress, “Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Appropriations, Fiscal Year 1990, Part 1,” hrg.101-389/pt.1, Subcommittee on Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations, Committee on Appropriations, (1989), 560. 63. Ibid., 544. 64. Lewis, “Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution,” 11. 65. Ibid., 13. 66. Sarah Diamond and Richard Hatch, “Operation Peace Institute,” Z Magazine, 1990 and 2007, http://www.zcommunications.org/operation-peace-institute. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid. 69. Boulding, “Peace Research and the US Institute of Peace,” 46–50. 70. Ibid., 47. 71. Ibid.

7 New Wars, New Directions

The tenure of Samuel Lewis as president of the US Institute of Peace put the organization on a new trajectory, one unanticipated by the elite peace reform movement. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States assumed a dominant position in global affairs and as such, quickly asserted itself as the key actor in a growing number of intrastate conflicts, specifically in places such as Somalia and the former Yugoslavia. This chapter covers development of the US Institute of Peace from the years 1993 to 2013, exploring how changes in US policy, as well the appointment of the institute’s third president, Richard Solomon, furthered its transformation from an educational institution to a think tank and eventually a policy analysis and intervention agency. I begin by looking at the continued movement of USIP in the direction of policy analysis, and then at how the rise of intrastate wars provided the institute with an opportunity to become involved on the ground in conflict zones. The events of September 11, 2001, would create another shift in USIP’s paradigm. The United States launched a global crusade against terrorism and has spent the past decade mired in near permanent warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. In this context, I focus on how USIP served as a willing partner in US war operations and how it came to portray itself as a vital component of the national security apparatus. In the final portion of this chapter I consider how far USIP has transformed from the initial vision of the elite peace reform. New Presidents

It is tempting to assume that USIP went through dramatic changes as a result of Bill Clinton’s entry into the White House in 1993. After the 161

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election of the first Democratic Party candidate in twelve years, Clinton’s inauguration coincided with a leadership shuffle at the US Institute of Peace, including the president and members of the board of directors. If there was to be a major shift in ideological orientation, focus, and priorities of USIP, the hope among peace reformers was that it would occur during this period. Democrats, it was assumed, would be more inclined to fill the board with members supportive of the institute’s original mission. Nominations to the board did reflect a more moderate disposition compared with the hawks of the Reagan era, but two factors proved more important. The end of the Cold War was a time for celebration in the West, and yet it also left the US Institute of Peace without its primary object of analysis. The language contained in the law framed the organization as one focused on matters of international peace, a problem largely understood within Washington to mean relations between the US and Soviet Union, or at the very least, warfare between rival states. USIP’s initial leadership exercised significant influence over its areas of scholarly focus and pursuits. The institute pursued scholarship chiefly through an international relations lens informed by power politics and its publications generally dealt with understanding the behavior of states and state actors. The first major study produced by the institute, a conceptual mapping of the field of international conflict studies, stressed perspectives on realism and the state, staples of traditional international relations. W. Scott Thompson and Kenneth M. Jensen’s edited volume, Approaches to Peace: An Intellectual Map, stands as a snapshot of the key theories considered within the scope of importance to USIP during this period.1 The book is an indicator of how wedded to the Cold War those guiding USIP were in their vision of the field. Thompson and Jensen’s volume might prove valuable to those in international relations, but it offers little to those interested in conflict resolution or peace studies. The Soviet Union’s quick and relatively bloodless demise left the realists without a clear enemy and those at USIP searching to make sense of a world that could no longer be understood in terms competing superpowers. To the chagrin of the peace reformers, the institute hosted figures like Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama. Both scholars celebrated the Soviet Union’s collapse as a triumph for American capitalism and democracy. Huntington’s essay “The Clash of Civilizations?” was unique at the time—his thesis would gain more prominence after September 11th—but it was Fukuyama’s book The End of History that captured the imaginations of policymakers, championing a perception of

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liberal democratic capitalism as the final stage in societal development.2 If this was the case, then it was the duty of the United States to ensure that states transitioning from a Soviet command economy were aided in developing free markets and legal institutions reflective of the West. To that end, the institute merely followed the changing line in Washington that celebrated the Soviet collapse as a victory for all things American, yet it remained unclear what this bloodless victory meant for what was essentially a Cold War institution. As to the second factor, Samuel Lewis was an excellent choice as the face of USIP if the mission was to champion the possibility of diplomacy and to speak knowledgably about the US posture relating to particular global events. He epitomized many aspects of the peace reform movement, yet in his role as president, Lewis helped foster an organization distinct from that of the peace academy. Given the direction in which he pushed the institute, it is perhaps fortunate that Lewis left the organization at the moment he did, a time when USIP was shifting from a concern with meeting its educational mandate to redefining itself as a resource for policymakers. Lewis had spent much of his professional career working his way through the State Department. He was a creature of government and understood that one way to make the institute relevant was to make useful to those in power. Yet Lewis was not of the world of think tanks, though he certainly became so afterwards. Lewis and his staff may have straddled the fields of governance and education, but for USIP to develop as a policy analysis organization it needed a figure versed in that terrain, one with the ability to also integrate the fields of business and media. Richard Solomon was precisely that type of figure. Richard Solomon’s presidency at USIP lasted two decades. Solomon remained president until 2012, covering three different presidential administrations and numerous configurations of the board of directors. Solomon received a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and began his career as a professor of political science at the University of Michigan.3 He later became head of the political science department at the RAND Corporation, a prominent think tank started by ex-military officers after World War II. During the Reagan administration, he left RAND to serve with the State Department as director of policy planning, the very same position Lewis left USIP for under President Clinton. Solomon was a staff member on the National Security Council and, under George H.W. Bush, was chosen as the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs. He was later appointed US ambassador to the Philippines, where he spent the remainder of his

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tenure involved in negotiations.4 After Solomon’s departure from USIP he returned to work for the RAND Corporation. The arrival of Richard Solomon at USIP solidified the transition of the institute to the policy sphere set in motion before his arrival. Father Ted Hesburgh, a member of the board of directors and head of the Kroc Institute at Notre Dame University, described Solomon as exactly right for the institute’s future. Hesburgh states, “We were looking for someone who knew how to interrelate with a fairly complicated and lean organization that knew how to get maximum results. . . . We wanted someone who understood the other differences in government work—to reach for peace and still have to do it on a day-by-day almost fire department way, when the bell rings, he has to jump.”5 Solomon’s intimacy with the field of think tanks made practical the desires of Lewis. He also brought with him plenty of government experience, notably his participation in the ping-pong diplomacy that led to a shift in US-China relations during the Nixon administration.6 Solmon shared with Lewis an interest in negotiation, publishing frequently on his specialty area, China. His time at the RAND Corporation and in the State Department put him on both sides of policymaking process, thus he knew what members of government desired in the presentation of information, in addition to how to produce and market information to a government audience. In addition to Solomon, the institute’s leadership fell under the direction of Chester Crocker as chairman of the board of directors. Crocker graduated with a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He served a brief stint on President Nixon’s National Security Council before establishing himself at Georgetown University. In 1981, he joined the State Department and served as assistant secretary of state for African affairs as a member of both President Reagan’s and President George H.W. Bush’s administrations. Crocker operated as chairman of USIP until 2004 and remained affiliated as a director until 2011. Crocker reflected the classic hawkish leanings of early board members, and much of the work he pursued in his own scholarship asserted the primacy of the United States to act in its interests, especially to help stabilize what he portrayed as a volatile international system. Together, Crocker and Solomon picked up where Lewis and Moore left off, extending the reach of the US Institute of Peace into Washington. Both men published opinion pieces in major news outlets, in addition to contributing to scholarly materials through the auspices of USIP. The year of Solomon’s arrival also saw the institute rebrand itself to include policy analysis as a feature of its work. Prior to 1993, USIP

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presented itself in government documents and publications mirroring the wording articulated in the law. The 1988 edition of the United States Government Manual, an official handbook produced yearly to explain the numerous federal agencies and departments records: “The purpose of the Institute is to develop and disseminate knowledge about the peaceful resolution of international conflict.”7 This description remained consistent in the manual until 1993, at which point the entry was revised to read: “The United States Institute of Peace was established to promote research, policy analysis, education, and training on international peace and conflict resolution.”8 From the earlier inspection of the USIP Act and the discussions in previous chapters, it should be clear that in no way, shape, or form was the institute established to conduct policy analysis. Still, the institute’s leadership interpreted the law as providing enough flexibility to allow for such work without running afoul of the prohibition against advocating for or against a particular piece of legislation. After all, the think tanks the institute was now regularly partnering with (and competing with for influence in Washington) were held to the same provisions. Other think tanks might not be federally funded, but their nonprofit status as educational institutions prohibited them from interfering with the policy process. Interference rests on a rather thin line of interpretation; acts that appear as policy analysis are acceptable, those that cross into policy advocacy are not. No one has yet offered a firm line of distinction between a think tank that recommends a particular policy based on scholarly analysis and an organization that simply advocates for a particular policy choice due to their political orientation. The murkiness of this is apparent when USIP staff testify before Congress. Speakers confirm that they are indeed affiliated with the institute, yet preface their remarks by stating that their views do not represent the position of USIP. New Wars

The Clinton presidency inherited the complexities ushered in by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the prior Bush administration’s attempt to deal with growing global unrest. The challenges Clinton confronted were defined by the rise of intragroup conflicts and intrastate civil wars that became the symbol of violence in the 1990s. These conflicts often split along religious and ethnic lines and were underscored by vicious acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Mary

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Kaldor terms these conflicts new wars, also at times described as hybrid wars, since their impetus appeared rooted in the identity of the participants: groups were comprised of an amalgam of state and nonstate actors, which blended together on opposing sides.9 These new wars varied from old wars carried out under the umbrella of ideology, particularly between traditional state military actors. Here the quest was for group control of political power, rather than expansive territorial acquisition. The distinction is pertinent because, throughout the twentieth century, state powers invested their resources in the buildup of traditional military capacity in order to dominate other state actors by overwhelming means. These militaries were not designed to intervene in civil wars as peacekeepers, nor was the United States particularly committed to using its own resources to stop violence in war-torn regions. Conflicts that had been dormant or ignored during the Cold War, especially those on the African continent, came sharply into focus. Prior to leaving office, George H.W. Bush sent troops to Mogadishu, Somalia, to quell the violence between warring factions and the government. Their impact was minimal. Clinton sent more troops, only to pull them out a year later after losses fed the image that the United States was wasting its human and financial capital in a war it had no business in. Later that same year, massacres between Hutu and Tutsi groups bloodied Rwanda and displaced millions of people. Clinton did not intervene in Rwanda in 1994, and his failure to do so found him criticized yet again, only this time for not committing combat troops to end the bloodshed. Additionally, Clinton confronted a series of violent conflicts in Eastern Europe that emerged as a result of various groups struggling to assert the right of self-determination as ethnic nation-states. Ethnonationalism surged in the former Yugoslavia, dividing Serbs, Croats, and Muslims. Clinton would eventually commit military and diplomatic resources to the wars in the Balkans, and later be celebrated for his role in producing the Dayton Accords. Managing International Chaos

Congressional testimony indicates that the US Institute of Peace started to work on the issue of new wars under the first Bush administration, starting with the conflict in Somalia. The institute housed a special study group and produced a special report based on its findings in December of 1992. Major General Indar Jit Rikhye served as a senior adviser on United Nations Affairs to USIP, and offered his insights to

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Congress about actions the US might take to improve the peacekeeping capacity of the United Nations. 10 The UN had been involved in peacekeeping missions since 1956 where the primary objective was to separate the conflicting parties, thus keeping the peace by offering to serve as an impartial force.11 Peacekeeping was defined as a consensual relationship between the conflicting parties and the peacekeeping force, which was composed of a voluntary force provided by small unprejudiced countries. Peacekeeping forces were only allowed to use force in cases of self-defense, were to remain impartial for the duration of the mission, and were under the authority of the UN Secretary General. Until the mid-1980s, relatively few situations called for the deployment of peacekeepers, yet the wave of conflicts that accompanied the end of the Cold War produced an increased demand for peacekeeping interventions in civil wars. The violence in Somalia put peacekeepers on the defensive, and existing policy, it was argued, cost them their lives. Rikhye’s assessment largely faulted the UN for not having the command structure or troop capacity to handle peacekeeping missions. What was needed was a well-supplied and armed force in numbers that only the Americans could provide. A UN force could maintain the peace, but they could not fight off the opposing sides in order to achieve it, a larger force operating under relaxed rules of engagement was necessary. At issue was the professionalization of peacekeeping, specifically the need for UN member states to bring peacekeeping forces in line with a consistent set of standards and provision for ample necessary supplies to fulfill their mission. Rikhye’s analysis foreshadowed the transition to come, using the institute to support military forces by training peacekeepers to address underlying dynamics at play in new wars. The institute’s focus on new wars was articulated by Chester Crocker in an appearance before members of the House regarding proposals for the 1994 budget. Crocker describes the existing global situation as something far from peaceful, commenting that trends point in the direction of a more violent world. He states: There will be many localized conflicts. There are already some with international repercussions that could impact upon US interests, as in the former Yugoslavia. These conflicts have real direct and tangible impact on US interests and values. We cannot walk away from them, nor can our friends and allies and partners around the world. They have an impact on American interests, on American pocketbooks and taxpayers, so these are very important issues, these conflicts.12

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Still, the institute presented its mandate along similar lines, focusing on three basic approaches. First, USIP would continue to support the production of basic and applied knowledge on international conflict. Second, there would be an emphasis on getting that information into the hands of persons in policymaking, journalism, diplomatic circles, and citizen educators who can make the best use of it. Third, there remained a need to work on promoting public discussion about important issues. While these three reflected USIP’s mandate, a further point was added, which recast the unique role of the institute within the national security apparatus. Crocker told Congress, “We also use a fourth approach on occasion, by actually facilitating dialog and communication amongst warring parties, without necessarily the involvement of the executive branch but always with their support.”13 The institute was now publicly declaring that it served as an intervenor between conflicting parties. In addition to its new functions in policy analysis and third-party intervention, the institute added convening power to its resume, or what might be best described as the ability to act as an intermediary between government agencies. Republican pressure on Clinton to balance the federal budget meant that agencies faced repeated calls for them to shrink their costs, eliminate waste, and justify their utility. Solomon expressed to Congress in 1995 that USIP was part of the solution to making government more efficient, a trope that dates back to the founding mission of early think tanks.14 According to Solomon, “The Institute, because of its links to the Federal Government, I believe, effectively bridges the gap between the Congress and the administration on the one hand and the analytical world, the think tanks, and academic life on the other in mobilizing the best talent in our country to think about the challenges of post-Cold War foreign policy.”15 Managing global chaos became a dominant frame for apprehending the work of the institute within the federal apparatus, and its special ability was as that of a convener, both of belligerent parties and government agencies. USIP began to take a more active role in ongoing international conflicts. While it still supported the grants programs and essay contest, and hosted seminars, it also expanded its operations to address specific conflicts deemed a priority to the US government. The Somali working group mentioned above is one of the earliest examples, and this was followed by groups dedicated to North Korea’s nuclear program, India and Pakistan’s contestation over Kashmir, relations between China and the people of Tibet, and the growing violence in Sudan. The working groups followed a similar format, where panels of expert scholars, diplomats,

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State Department officials, local activists, and nongovernmental organizations were convened at USIP or in locations sponsored by the institute. These groups would meet over a series of days to identify key issues and actors. Highlights from the resultant discussion were published as special reports by USIP that detailed the working group’s findings and suggestions for managing the conflict. Solomon justified the institute’s transition as one based in the failures of traditional diplomacy and power balancing to successfully intervene in the new wars. He argued that states needed innovative tools to manage these challenges. The old rules of engagement no longer suited current dynamics, nor did they provide sufficient direction for addressing humanitarian crises. International organizations, particularly the United Nations and NATO, were still wed to Cold War processes focused on negotiation and military balance of power, when what was needed was the ability for peacekeepers and intervenors to tackle issues of religion, ethnicity, and cultural identity. The institute could offer policymakers alternatives beyond full-scale warfare or doing nothing. From a Think Tank to a “Think and Do Tank”

The institute continued to expand and began to operate outside of the United States. By 1996, it was deeply involved with the Clinton administration’s efforts to address the situation in the former Yugoslavia. The first of such active engagements outside the confines of Washington, D.C., is discussed in congressional hearings as the institute’s involvement with the Dayton Peace Accords and postconflict activities in the Balkans. According to USIP’s website, this work was initially aimed at promoting the rule of law, providing training in conflict management for members of the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe, and fostering dialogue on US and EU policies in the region.16 Smith writes that USIP’s intervention in the Balkans set the pattern for its later initiatives in other countries. 17 In Bosnia, the organization coordinated with the various political parties to assist them in drafting the country’s constitution. It also helped organize the creation of a truth commission and an interreligious council. In Serbia, the organization sponsored additional programs and worked with activists on democracy promotion. Smith credits Daniel Serwer with the transition of USIP from a think tank to a “think and do tank.” Serwer graduated from Princeton and worked for the US State Department, serving as deputy chief of

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mission at the US Embassy in Rome and eventually as director of the European Office of Intelligence and Research.18 In 1994, Serwer, now at the rank of mister-councilor in the Foreign Service, was appointed as a special envoy to the Bosnian Federation. Serwer helped negotiate the Dayton Accords under the direction of Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Richard Holbrooke. Smith indicates that Serwer’s desire to continue working on Kosovo after the conclusion of the negotiations in 1997 led to his transfer to the US Institute of Peace. Rather than retire or be reassigned to a different location, Serwer moved to USIP, becoming first a senior fellow and later director of the Balkans Initiative. He eventually became a vice president for peace and stability operations at USIP, overseeing its programs on peacebuilding and the rule of law. Smith writes that in 1999 Serwer along with some of his other colleagues promoted the idea that USIP needed to move beyond studying peacebuilding, involving itself in the actual process.19 Serwer’s perspective found traction with Crocker and Solomon, both of whom felt USIP might reimagine its training function to support peacekeeping and strengthen interagency cooperation. The desire to expand the functions of USIP gained momentum among its leadership. Yet, in comments made by Solomon in 1996, the institute’s leadership still held firm that it was not deviating into operations. Solomon declared, “We are trying to help the Government figure out ways to adapt its own operations—we are not an operational agency; we are an educational, training, and policy development outfit—to make such work more effective in support of the Government.” 20 To become involved in the process, as Serwer termed it, was to do something more than just serve as a host to study groups; it was to become fully involved with the parties in conflict. Solomon erects what appears to be a clear barrier between the institute’s work and operations, but his prepared statements reveal the institute stretching its interpretation of its congressional mandate yet again to play an active role as a facilitator of international disputes at the Track II level in both Sudan and Kashmir. This distinction between Track I and Track II diplomacy is critical in this regard. Track I diplomacy deals with officially recognized state actors, and is thus typically considered the role played by the State Department and its representatives. Track II diplomacy emphasizes unofficial or informal discussions with actors and groups considered influential within a given community. Track II diplomacy gained prominence in places such as Cyprus, South Africa, and Northern Ireland, where official channels to dialogue between the opposing parties

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were blocked. These informal gatherings, sponsored by third parties, were used to test the waters between members of adversarial communities and, if found promising, used to establish the groundwork for more formal Track I negotiations. From one perspective, it could be argued that Track II diplomacy is not operational, since it does not directly lead to specific policy changes. Still, such a proposition can be problematic if the claim is made that unofficial diplomacy is not considered active involvement in a conflict. USIP is still an entity of the US government, one that has consistently argued since its first president, Robert Turner, that the organization promotes US interests. It is not a neutral or disinterested third-party facilitator even if it chooses to engage in such activities. Additionally, the institute built inroads with the Departments of State and Defense as a training partner. The trials of peacekeeping in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Somalia were difficult lessons to endure, and they led both State and Defense to search for innovative techniques for dealing with new wars. USIP partnered with the US Army’s Peacekeeping Institute to assist personnel in adapting to their new roles and missions. USIP framed this effort as part of their work to professionalize the field of peacekeeping by training participants in conflict management techniques. Military fellows also became a regular part of those producing research within the institute, as did various members of foreign governments and influential individuals from conflict zones. The institute also partnered with the Inter-American Defense College to train foreign professionals in conflict management. This work was branded as furthering US policy interests. These and other various efforts showcased the institute’s ability to work across Washington agencies, contributing to both policy goals and national security objectives, which Solomon declared as essential for maintaining American leadership in the creation of a stable world. Solomon estimated that between 1997 and 2000, the institute would have trained over 5000 practitioners, chiefly from conflict zones, through programs offered by or funded through USIP’s grant programs.21 The expansion of the institute over the 1990s saw it increase its publishing opportunities and fellowships for scholars from a range of backgrounds. The institute’s press published John Paul Lederach’s Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies, as well as Kevin Avruch’s seminal text, Culture and Conflict Resolution. Additionally, Chester Crocker, Pamela Aall, and Fen Hampson released the first volume of their edited series, Managing Global Chaos: Sources and Responses to International Conflict. Crocker, Aall, and Hampson

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have released three edited volumes in this series that offer an insider’s guide to how the US pursues its interests and negotiating strategies in global conflict. These texts are singled out in part because of their continued use in conflict studies curriculum; they also capture the intellectual production deemed most relevant to the problematic of new wars, divided societies in the midst of or trying to recover from ethno-religious violence. The reward for the institute’s new status as a useful component of Washington’s field of power was that Solomon and his supporters were able to push through Congress a request to build permanent headquarters for USIP. Since its establishment, the institute had been relegated to leasing temporary spaces. Its first headquarters was a small office near the White House, though it quickly outgrew this space and went on to occupy parts of an office building near Dupont Circle on NW 17th Street. These accommodations served their purpose, but did nothing to set the institute apart from other think tanks and policy organizations in the District of Columbia. That would change when Congress authorized the transfer of a piece of land on the northwest corner of the National Mall in 1996. The headquarters project would span the next 15 years and raise significant controversy due to its $186 million price tag. The acquisition of land indicated the significance of USIP’s impact, so much so that Congress seems to have forgotten the controversy over the permanent brick and mortar campus that was removed from the initial peace academy legislation. As the decade came to a close, the relationship between the peace reform movement and the US Institute of Peace appeared largely nonexistent. Peace reformers were rarely openly critical of the institute, nor were they active champions of it. Those seeking money to support their work viewed the institute as a possible source of funding or as a place to publish their scholarship. Others participated in sponsored events. Yet there appears little convincing evidence that after James Laue’s death anyone involved with the peace reform movement tried with the same level of determination to make USIP reflect the original peace academy mission or continued to advocate for the institute to expand its focus to include domestic conflict. There appears no proof of a hostile takeover from within by peace academy supporters, nor has there been a slow march through the institution to transform it gradually from within. For the peace reformers, the dream of USIP becoming a national peace academy was lost to whatever it was the institute had become. Supporters of the peace academy in Congress would occasionally prod

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Richard Solomon on the issue of the academy, but Solomon’s answers expressed that there was neither the funding nor interest from USIP’s board to make the institute into a degree-granting academy. Solomon’s reports to Congress and his testimony were generally met with positive comments, especially with regard to USIP’s contributions to work on the issues of peacekeeping, rule of law, and support for the implementation of the Dayton Accords. The dominant position of the United States in global affairs and the onset of new wars framed the world according to a new set of rules, seemingly far removed from the specter of nuclear war that had dominated the Cold War. A triumphant United States did not need to be reminded of the mistakes of Vietnam and the strife of domestic civil rights conflicts that had rocked the country during the 1960s and 1970s. Rather, the peace institute served as a vehicle to spread American values, especially those of market liberalization, democratization, and respect for the rule of law. Peace reformers, in the meantime, were left to contemplate the need for new organizations and renewed efforts to realize the old dream of establishing a national peace academy and a Department of Peace. The Global War on Terror

Had the events of September 11, 2001, not occurred, the conclusions drawn about the progression of the US Institute of Peace might go something like this. While the elite peace reform movement succeeded in their campaign to salvage something of their dream to create a peace institution, USIP existed as a compromised vision. It was not what they had hoped for—it was certainly more attached to the military than they would have liked—but it was sponsoring various initiatives they could often support in regard to funding, publishing, and training. The board of directors became less hawkish and more liberal during the Clinton administration, embracing the institute’s attempts to clarify its direction. Indeed, many scholars and practitioners within the fields of peace studies and conflict resolution were directing their attention toward new wars and conflicts in the Balkans and on the African continent. A counter to militarism the institute was not, but it does seem that a wide range of work related to topics pertinent to peace research and conflict management were supported through this period, especially if they were focused on understanding group identity and culture in conflict. One need not go beyond the year 2000 to observe how the institute took its current shape and how this differs from the aspirations of those

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involved with the peace reform movement. If one were to stop here, the gap between desired goals and achieved goals remains significant. Peace reformers wanted an academy. They compromised on an educational institute, and as a result, members still held out hope that a peace academy might happen one day in the future. But taking over USIP to make this a reality was never in the cards. Those hired as staff and program directors were not peace reformers; they were largely professionals hired due to their regional area of specialty, not their understanding of conflict dynamics or resolution practices. It helped that most also had a history of working within Washington policy circles. These professionals may have possessed a personal interest in peace, but this was not at the same level as those within the peace reform movement, who viewed themselves as passionate advocates for changing American attitudes toward matters of war and peace. In the decade to follow, USIP continued its transformation, arriving in its current state beyond anything imagined by the peace reform movement. The government’s increased usage of the institute would make it a partner in the disastrous US-led interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Far from challenging militarism or operating as a disinterested facilitator, the institute collaborated with the military in active war zones to achieve US objectives. Prohibitions against intervention dissolved, replaced with an even more forceful argument by USIP about their place as part of the national security apparatus. One cannot understate what a fundamental departure these changes are from the intentions of the peace reformers, especially when much of the rhetoric around the peace academy saw war hawks attempt to sink the idea out of fears that it would contradict policy, increase the federal bureaucracy, and/or try to involve itself in operational work beyond its mandate. All of which USIP has done without any substantial revision to the law. This next section briefly captures the expansion of the institute over the period 2000–2015 in an effort to show the effects of the Global War on Terror on the institute. While still supporting a wide array of peaceand conflict-related projects through its grants program, the US Institute of Peace distinguished itself to the wider public through its association with the US-led efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Peace reformers might have hoped that the institute would serve as a voice of reason in the wake of September 11th, encouraging the Bush administration to pursue a strategy cognizant of the challenges of responding to terrorism, and without demonizing all followers of Islam. The institute had already taken an interest in questions of religion, interfaith diplomacy, and conflict under a program led by expert David Smock. Which is only to say

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that, as the United States geared up to fight terrorism anywhere and everywhere, peace reformers hoped that the US Institute of Peace might take a stand against war. This did not happen. There is no public record of the US Institute of Peace speaking out against or even urging caution about the wars. If any organization within the federal system should have offered alternatives or objections to the invasions of Afghanistan or Iraq, even superficially, it should have been the US Institute of Peace. Washington was swept up with war fever, and the majority of both parties assumed military operations would be relatively quick and bloodless affairs. USIP appears to have gone along for the ride. Many are guilty of sharing Bush’s neoconservative worldview, including those who came to the institute during his tenure, and especially the oversized role played by Stephen Hadley. Bush’s attempt to appoint Daniel Pipes, a vitriolic and divisive critic of Islam, to USIP’s board of directors demonstrated that he was not above modeling the institute to mirror his political agenda. In discussions during the preparation of this book, former employees of the institute recounted the dramatic shift in disposition that took place in the months after September 11, where disagreement with Bush’s policies was considered unacceptable by the institute’s leadership. While there appears to have been dissention among certain employees over the administration’s total misunderstanding of Islam and the threat posed by terrorism, the institute’s leadership brought the organization in line with new US policy objectives. Such a reaction on the leadership’s part is not surprising given that it mirrors charges made at other points about USIP, all of which can be justified by prohibitions in the law preventing the institute from dissenting against particular policy choices. The independence granted to the institute counts for very little if it is unable to produce for Congress and the executive branch unbiased factual analysis reflective of its reason for existence: the promotion of nonviolent alternatives to conflict. The Department of Defense is certainly capable of pitching plans for military action without the assistance of other agencies, and yet, the institute gained its current prestige by helping prepare for scenarios after a US invasion, rather than advocating for diplomacy in the face of war. It is disheartening, even to critics of USIP, to see the institute promote the fact that it was consulted by the Bush administration during 2002, a year prior to the invasion of Iraq, to help develop postconflict mechanisms to stabilize the country after an invasion.22 We know now that this was not just speculative thinking, but was part of the administration’s plan to launch an illegal war against Iraq.

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While the law prohibited the institute from speaking out against a policy, its leadership, nevertheless, sought to offer an analysis of the potential troubles that might undermine America’s war on terrorism. In September of 2002, Crocker and Solomon issued a joint editorial in the Christian Science Monitor. The article began by celebrating the achievements of the administration in their fight against terrorism, but quickly transitioned, urging the president to consider a long-term strategy for what might help stabilize not only Afghanistan, but also other problems facing the Islamic world.23 “There is no quick and dirty solution to the terrorism and turmoil in the Islamic world so violently brought home last Sept 11,” they wrote.24 Leaving aside their portrayal of the problems associated with the Islamic/Muslim world, the authors did attempt to bring a counterperspective to US policy. Crocker and Solomon argued that it was a mistake to view victory in strictly military terms or as a series of short-term achievements. Bringing the full weight of its domestic resources and global partners to bear on the situation was the only solution to the global war against terrorism. In 2003, the institute advised the Defense Policy Board on a $628 million proposal, based on their peacekeeping experience in Kosovo, to bring in police officers and civilians during the postwar period in Iraq—both to keep the peace and to supply lawyers, judges, and other administrators to help the country transition.25 This plan was ignored at the time, but would resurface in later years rechristened the Civilian Surge, which is discussed further below. Again, in placing this analysis in the context of what USIP was being asked to prepare for—a postinvasion Iraq—Solomon and Crocker’s comments read as a desperate attempt to convince President Bush and his staff to have some plan in place prior to invasion. Donald Rumsfeld, then secretary of defense, indicated that he had no wish to become bogged down in nation-building efforts, something candidate Bush had been adamant about during his election campaign.26 In the second debate in October of 2000 between the presidential candidates, Bush rather famously remarked that US troops should not be used for nationbuilding. Bush described the failed reconstruction efforts in Haiti as ineffective and a waste of billions of dollars. The US military was overcommitted and such action was outside of its obligation, which Bush bluntly described as limited to the fighting and winning of wars. 27 Bush’s comments on Afghanistan and Iraq mirrored this mentality. The task was to win and nothing more. Solomon later reflected on these discussions to the New York Times, saying, “The Pentagon doesn’t want the military to get bogged down in extensive peacekeeping operations, but

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at the same time they don’t want to make the classic American goof of winning the war and losing the peace.”28 The question at hand is whether at some level the president considered the information presented by USIP prior to the invasion. While an answer is impossible to validate without confirmation from Bush, a change in the president’s perspective might demonstrate USIP’s influence. President Bush delivered a speech at the American Enterprise Institute in the midst of preparing for the invasion of Iraq in February of 2003. The American Enterprise Institute is a prominent conservative think tank. Bush commended the organization for the vital role it had played in US governance over the past sixty years. His comments are remarkable to revisit given the current situation in the Middle East. Even more revealing is that they were made before a shot was fired, bomb dropped, or any proof of weapons of mass destruction verified: Rebuilding Iraq will require a sustained commitment from many nations, including our own: we will remain in Iraq as long as necessary, and not a day more. America has made and kept this kind of commitment before— in the peace that followed a world war. After defeating enemies, we did not leave behind occupying armies, we left constitutions and parliaments. We established an atmosphere of safety, in which responsible, reform minded local leaders could build lasting institutions of freedom. In societies that once bred fascism and militarism, liberty found a permanent home.29

History is a cruel reminder of US failures, and there sits no greater failure in our memory than the current state of Iraq. Still, Bush’s commitment to staying in a country the United States had yet to declare war on seems to indicate that he was willing to oppose Rumsfeld and reevaluate his position toward the use of US troops and resources in practices beyond war fighting. The president’s commitment to nationbuilding indicated a longer-term strategy, the significance of which Solomon, Crocker, and USIP appear to have had a hand in promoting. This is not to evaluate the Bush administration’s handling of affairs in these wars, but to acknowledge that within a little under two decades USIP went from being an organization with little support from the executive branch to one advising the president on matters of national policy. Unfortunately, the achievement is remarkable more for what it says about how actors with influence navigate Washington, D.C., than it does the persuasiveness of getting the state to adopt nonviolent methods of conflict resolution. The launch of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were a turning point in the involvement of USIP in the realm of intervention, specifically as

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the institute began to focus on the potential of peacebuilding strategies as components of the ongoing war effort. Peacebuilding was an expansion on the earlier aspects of the training programs devised to support peacekeepers. In 2003, the institute was granted $10 million as part of the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund, which was allocated by Congress to promote security, along with economic and political growth. USIP used these funds to establish a base within the International Zone, also known as the Green Zone, in Baghdad. From this base, USIP staff trained Iraqis in the areas of ethnic and religious conflict, offered grants to Iraqi NGOs working on violence reduction, brought Iraqi security professionals to the US for training on conflict management, and supported legal and educational reforms.30 However, while the institute took a more public role as part of the war efforts, its presentations to Congress declined. Solomon was not called as a witness to defend the institute’s budget; rather, Secretary of State Colin Powell and later Condoleezza Rice provided information on USIP budget requests. The institute, which once fought for every penny, was now lumped with other programs deemed a regular part of government operations. Iraq was not the only area of focus during this period. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was on nothing short of a crusade against the United Nations, particularly with regard to investigating charges of corruption in the UN’s Oil for Food Program in Iraq, and also with regard to the Human Rights Council, which he accused of being weak on authoritarian regimes that violated human rights. Gingrich used the US Institute of Peace to help him convene a task force, which he cochaired with former Senate majority leader George Mitchell. The task force released a report seeking reforms to the UN to make it more effective and more in line with US positions. The institute also continued its work on the Balkans, on North Korea, and on the conflicts continuing on the African continent. Still, as the war for Iraq turned into a civil war between Iraq’s Sunni and Shia populations, the country remained a primary concern for the institute and created the largest window for the US government to take an interest in the lessons of peace studies and conflict resolution. To make this claim is not say that the institute was singly responsible for the deployment of these activities in active war zones. Rather, it is to stress that thanks to USIP’s position in the field of power and the overlapping networks that intersect in its halls, key names with some of the wars’ most notable operations and programs came to be associated with USIP. At issue is not the use of these techniques by the government or a set of actors to establish peace in a postconflict context; rather, it is the use of these techniques as part of an active military campaign to

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assure a victory favorable to US interests. This distinction is important to the practice of conflict resolution, since resolution implies an outcome beyond that of a mere settlement between the warring sides. Lessons from Bosnia demonstrated the ease with which settlements could be broken. To end a civil war requires the establishment of a durable peace between the aggrieved groups, a situation that takes into consideration the needs and security concerns of all involved. Such practice is something a third-party state or organization can participate in when it is not a belligerent party to the conflict. To work as a third party while also a military aggressor in the conflict undercuts much of the foundational theory that supports conflict resolution. Examples from this period show the conflation between the institute’s support of conflict research and support for a US military victory. The inclusion of conflict resolution material is at its most visible in the revised counterinsurgency field manual (FM 3-24) issued in 2006, a document that walks a thin line between arguing for methods of war fighting and methods of nonviolent conflict resolution.31 The revised counterinsurgency manual was part of a multifaceted approach to integrate nonlethal tactics into military operations. Control of the battlespace was still the priority of all military units involved in the war effort, but by 2005 it was clear to a faction of those within the US leadership that the liberation of Iraq had transformed into an occupation, and the divided Iraqi peoples were split in their perception of US forces. Efforts shifted from control of territory to include a campaign to also win hearts and minds, military speak for swaying influence in the local population from support for insurgents to support for the US and its allies. This was reminiscent of similar campaigns that tried and failed during the Vietnam War. The turn to focus on the perception of the population and winning their trust required that the military supplement its efforts with specialists, generally trained as social scientists that understood local culture and custom, as well as civil society experts that could help craft a governance structure to fill the void left by the fall of Saddam Hussein’s authoritarian regime. One of the most controversial of these military and social science hybrids is credited to Montgomery McFate and Andrea Jackson. The authors proposed the creation of a Pentagon Office of Operational Cultural Knowledge, an idea that later became more widely recognized as the basis for the Human Terrain Systems program. 32 McFate joined USIP as a fellow the year following the publication of her article with Jackson. Human Terrain Systems (HTS) sought to embed civilian academics in military units. Academics, particularly those with expertise in

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anthropology or country-specific knowledge, were valued since the object of the HTS was to provide real-time human intelligence to the US military about communities and cultures in its operating environment, specifically in Afghanistan and Iraq.33 Support for the program was decidedly mixed within the anthropology community. Many anthropologists argued that scholarship conducted in the name of the state and positioned behind the barrel of a gun reanimated a host of ethical concerns dating back to the discipline’s colonial origins.34 Knowledge was power, and anthropological knowledge about how cultures operated was used by colonial administrators for decades to control and divide subjugated peoples. The collapse of colonialism did not, however, put an end to the state’s interest in developing cultural and social knowledge. Gusterson argues that the debate over the militarization of anthropology is an extension of a series of initiatives carried out over the twentieth century by the state to incorporate social scientists.35 The US developed similar programs to HTS during both the Cold War and the counterinsurgency efforts in Vietnam. One example, Project Camelot, was exposed by Johan Galtung. Project Camelot was described by its proponents as “a study whose objective is to determine the feasibility of developing a general social systems model which would make it possible to predict and influence politically significant aspects of social change in the developing nations of the world.” 36 Galtung’s disclosure of secret US military funding for the project raised concerns, specifically in Chile, where the scheme appeared as little more than vehicle for the collection of data and cultivation of human sources linked to protecting US interests, specifically from perceived threats arising from the political left. These programs were always controversial when revealed, and as of yet have little to show in terms of creating systems capable of predicting revolutions or undermining the ability of counterinsurgents to outlast occupying forces. Where they did succeed was in managing to cast doubt over the credibility of US funding for education programs abroad, especially in Central and South America. The concern with HTS in anthropology ran parallel to the unease within members of the peace and conflict studies community over efforts to train US soldiers as peacebuilders and include conflict specialists as part of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). PRTs developed as front-line units created by the US government that sought to stabilize and assist in the reconstruction of parts of Iraq and Afghanistan. They are comprised of military officers, diplomats, development specialists, and policy experts in areas such as the rule of law and economics, whose mission is to assist local populations and the central govern-

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ment in a country’s transition to democratic governance and a marketbased economy. Proponents argued that the use of conflict resolution techniques to deal with sectarian and ethnic hostilities in these regions reduced the costs of the war (human and financial) and hastened the transition to democracy.37 The growing effort to equate conflict resolution with US-led peacebuilding also converged with an ever-increasing conversation about the need to make conflict resolution a subset of the field of international development.38 Absent from this discussion was any consideration of the ethics of intervention. What did conflict resolution have to offer in the middle of a war zone, especially if such initiatives were under the auspices of what the local population was more and more coming to perceive as an occupying power? Behind the scenes, the US Institute of Peace again took on the role of a facilitating organization, this time for what became the Iraq Study Group.39 The bipartisan group, led by George H.W. Bush’s former secretary of state, James Baker, and former congressman Lee Hamilton, came together to provide the Bush administration with a frank assessment of the war effort. The group concluded that the US needed to reduce the number of troops in Iraq and place more emphasis on coordinating with influential regional actors such as Iran and Syria. While the report’s recommendations would go unheeded by Bush and his team, it did grant USIP another significant bout of media exposure, this time as a voice arguing for a new approach to a war that Americans were growing tired of. Though supportive of the Iraq Study Group, the institute was not dismayed when, counter to the group’s suggestion, Bush increased the number of US troops in Iraq in what became referred to as “the Surge.” The military escalation was eventually followed by a civilian one, which aimed to commit nonmilitary specialists to assisting Iraqis in rebuilding infrastructure and creating governing institutions. Daniel Serwer asserts that USIP was responsible for the creation of the Office of the Coordinator for Stability and Reconstruction (S/CRS). S/CRS was officially formed in 2008 to address the challenges of postconflict peacebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan. In particular, the agency sought to enhance the capacity of civilian personnel to work closely with the State and Defense departments to achieve US objectives in conflict zones. Sometimes referred to as the “civilian surge,” S/CRS sought to calibrate the technical aspects of what the military dubbed complex operations. 40 To achieve mission success in conflict zones, it was critical that conflict management and peacebuilding efforts understand and align with the objectives of state actors, thus deepening the relationship between conflict professionals and the military.

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The consequences of Al-Qaeda’s attack on the United States and, in turn, the US decision to launch two interstate wars and a global war against Islamic terrorism remain with us today. Yet, for think tanks and the US Institute of Peace, these events moored these organizations even more deeply within the structure of the state apparatus. For USIP, the wars resulted, at least for a time, in a secure influx of funding and an expansion of their programming as they became more and more involved in US priority areas. It also coincided with the relocation of USIP into its spacious new headquarters on the National Mall. The institute continued to support its original congressional mandate of grants and fellowship programs, but its primary focus was on assisting US missions abroad and in areas deemed potential sources of radicalism, which has been reframed today as countering violent extremism. USIP was now not only involved in the realm of policy, it was also actively engaged as an intervention agency, sending its employees throughout the world to intervene in conflict zones. While the laws guiding the institute remain unaltered, USIP developed yet another narrative of itself. Not only had its adoption of policy analysis gone unchallenged, but it now took the step of reasserting itself as a vital part of the US national security apparatus. What had started within the National Peace Academy Campaign as a way of describing how the development of peaceful alternatives to violence contributed to US security and safety now came to reflect the position of USIP as an active member of the national security apparatus akin to the military and intelligence agencies. To return to the United States Government Manual, by 2013 the institute described its mission as “to develop, apply, and foster cost-effective strategies and tools to prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent international conflicts, particularly those that threaten or harm America’s strategic and security interests.”41 The hawks had found a use for peace and the ability to frame it in language they found palatable. Focusing specifically on USIP and the US war efforts is not to ignore the other work that USIP continues to support through its grants and fellowship programs. Rather, this narrow scope of inquiry is emphasized to demonstrate the significance of the transformation that has taken place over USIP’s thirty-year history, from the profound fears that a peace academy would interfere in the conduct of US policymaking to the peace institute being championed by military leaders as a key element of the US mission. One could certainly go on to detail this other work, but for the purposes of this study it does not offer any further insight into understanding what USIP is and how it came to take its current form.

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For peace reformers, it is tempting to explain the development of USIP as the result of partisan politics. Such an explanation might conclude that the prominence of conservatives and hawks within its leadership acted as a determinant and that the final form was inevitable. Rather, what I attempt to demonstrate in this study is that the institute was shaped in the interplay between the constraints of structure and the movement of agents. Party affiliation appears to have little to do with a particular disposition toward war or peacemaking, since liberals appear equally supportive of including the institute as part of US war efforts. In this particular case, the final structure of the institute is reflective of two elements: the legislative process that determined its parameters, and the institute’s location within the heart of US power. Some speculation remains as to whether USIP would have been drastically different if those involved more directly with the peace academy campaign were put in charge of the operation. To assume that people were the only factor in the institute’s development is to also assume that these figures would have somehow overcome the same limitations put in place by the Reagan administration. Given the president’s words and actions, I believe it would have been more difficult for doves trying to operate in that particular climate. Reagan seemed unwilling to nominate anyone affiliated with the National Peace Academy Campaign to the board of directors; and it is doubtful that even if he had, his administration would have provided any more than the minimal support. While certainly not reflective of the elite peace reform movement, John Norton Moore deserves credit for building an organization under extremely hostile circumstances. Within the first eight years of operation, the US Institute of Peace began to function in accordance with its congressional mandate and conduct itself in a manner that earned it praise from those affiliated with the peace academy campaign. However, over time it has become apparent that, instead of changing the mindset in Washington, the inverse has occured. The transformation of the institute into a think tank, particularly starting from the Lewis period and, later, the turn to focusing on more policy relevance, drastically shifted USIP away from the vision of the National Peace Academy Campaign. Rather than trying to change Washington, the institute adapted to the context of the existing system, particularly to the rules defined by the field of power. Had USIP remained firmly committed to an educational agenda, it is doubtful it would have been granted the access and prominence it possesses today. In filling the organization with professionals that both shared and benefited from understanding the way Washington “works,” the organization and its

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limited resources were able to adapt and thrive. Instead of reforming how Washington addresses violent conflict, USIP acted in accordance with Washington’s agenda to promote conflict management and peacebuilding as components of an imperial strategy directed at furthering US interests. Notes 1. Thompson and Jensen, Approaches to Peace. 2. Huntington, “Clash of Civilizations?” 22–49; Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man. 3. “Richard H. Solomon,” RAND Corporation, accessed February 21, 2014, http://www.rand.org/about/people/s/solomon_richard_h.html. 4. Nadine Brozan, “Chronicle: A Diplomat Gives Peacemaking Another Chance for Yeshiva’s Chairman, It’s All in the Family Ali Fights for Iran-Iraq Prisoners,” New York Times, July 14, 1993. 5. United States Congress; House, “Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations for 1995 Part 6: Related Agencies,” Subcommittee on Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations, Committee on Appropriations, (1994), 954. 6. “Richard Solomon, Negotiating Peace by Other Means,” Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, 1998–2017, http://adst.org/oral-history/fascinating -figures/richard-solomon-negotiating-peace-by-other-means/. 7. “United States Institute of Peace,” in United States Government Manual (Washington: Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Service, General Services Administration, 1988), 767. 8. “United States Institute of Peace,” in United States Government Manual (Washington: Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Service, General Services Administration, 1993), 804. 9. Kaldor. New & Old Wars. 10. United States Congress; House, “Recent Developments in Somalia Hearing,” Subcommittee on Africa, Committee on Foreign Affairs, (1993), 84pp. 11. Hansen, Ramsbotham, and Woodhouse, “Hawks and Doves: Peacekeeping and Conflict Resolution,” 466. 12. United States Congress; House, “Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations for 1994 Part 6: Related Agencies,” Subcommittee on Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations, Committee on Appropriations, (1993), 446. 13. United States, Congress; Senate, “Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations, FY94, Part 2,” Subcommittee on Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations, Committee on Appropriations, (1993), 1046. 14. See Medvetz, Think Tanks in America, for an informative discussion about the rise and influence of think tanks in American policymaking. 15. United States Congress; House, “Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations for 1996 Part 6: Related Agencies,” Subcommittee on Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations, Committee on Appropriations, (1995), 107.

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16. “Balkans Initiative,” United States Institute of Peace, accessed September 28, 2015, http://www.usip.org. 17. Smith, U.S. Peacefare. 18. “Daniel Serwer,” Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, accessed September 28, 2015, https://www.sais-jhu.edu/daniel-serwer. 19. Smith, U.S. Peacefare. 20. United States Congress; House, “Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations for 1997 Part 6: Related Agencies,” Subcommittee on Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations, Committee on Appropriations., (1996), 1033. 21. United States Congress; House, “Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations for 2000 Part 6: Related Agencies,” Subcommittee on Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations, Committee on Appropriations., 2304 pp. (1999). 22. “Major USIP Activities and Contributions in Iraq: 2002–2003 | United States Institute of Peace,” United States Institute of Peace, accessed January 16, 2012, http:// www.usip.org. 23. Chester A. Crocker and Richard H. Solomon, “The US as Global Sheriff for Every Dodge City,” Christian Science Monitor, September 6, 2002. 24. Ibid., 11. 25. United States Congress; Senate, “Iraq Stabilization and Reconstruction: U.S. Policy and Plans,” Committee on Foreign Relations, 86pp. (2003). 26. See Rothkopf, National Insecurity. 27. “October 11, 2000 Debate Transcript,” Commission on Presidential Debates, 2015, accessed September 28, 2015, http://www.debates.org/?page=october-11-2000 -debate-transcript. 28. Elizabeth Becker, “U.S. Plans to Run Iraq Itself, and Is Assembling a Civilian Team: IN BRIEF Running Iraq After the War,” New York Times, March 25, 2003, B23. 29. George W. Bush, “President George W. Bush Speaks at AEI’s Annual Dinner,” American Enterprise Institute, February 28, 2003, accessed September 28, 2015, https://www.aei.org/publications. 30. United States Congress; House, “Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations for 2005. Part 5: Iraq Reconstruction Program,” Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations; Committee on Appropriations, 90pp. (2004). 31. United States Department of the Army, The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. 32. McFate and Jackson, “An Organizational Solution for DOD’s Cultural Knowledge Needs,” 18–21. 33. Gezari, The Tender Soldier. 34. See for example González, “Towards Mercenary Anthropology? The New US Army Counterinsurgency Manual FM 3–24 and the Military-Anthropology Complex,” 14–19; Besteman and Network of Concerned Anthropologists, The Counter-Counterinsurgency Manual. 35. Gusterson, “Project Minerva and the Militarization of Anthropology,” 4–16. 36. Galtung, “Scientific Colonialism,” 11. See also Horowitz, “The Life and Death of Project Camelot,” 445–454. 37. The US Institute of Peace took a special interest in PRTs, helping to conduct an analysis of participants’ experiences in these units in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Their “Oral Histories: Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Iraq and Afghanistan” is a fascinating collection of testimony. See http://www.usip.org/publications.

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38. See for example Duffield, Development, Security and Unending War; Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars; and Vivienne Jabri, “Human Rights Sovereign Rights, and the Potentials of Conflict Resolution,” Unrest Magazine, April 13, 2013. 39. “Iraq Study Group: USIP’s Role,” United States Institute of Peace, accessed November 15, 2014, http://www.usip.org. A copy of the full report is available at “Iraq Study Group,” United States Institute of Peace. 40. See, for example, United States Institute of Peace and Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, Guiding Principles for Stabilization and Reconstruction; Binnendijk and Cronin, Civilian Surge. 41. “United States Institute of Peace,” in The United States Government Manual, (Washington: Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Service, General Services Administration, 2013), 520.

8 The Continuing Debate

I set out in this book to address two related concerns. First, I wanted to understand the origins of the US Institute of Peace. Second, I wanted to understand how USIP has transformed over its thirty-year history, particularly in relation to its original mission to promote nonviolence and conflict resolution, to arrive at the form we find it in today. In the opening chapters, I analyzed the founding period of the United States, paying specific attention to the state’s relationship to peace and nonviolence through the figure of George Washington. By critiquing the elite peace reform narrative about the origins of a national peace office, I hope to pave the way for a more complex narrative to develop in its place, one inclusive of figures whose words and practices cut against the grain of stories that celebrate militarism as the cornerstone of American life. Pacifism, nonviolent activism, conscientious objection, and a persistent critique of military culture are American traditions, and it is essential that contemporary peace advocates do not repeat the mistakes of the peace reform movement by marginalizing these aspects in their narratives. There would, however, not be a US Institute of Peace without the work of the elite peace reformers and the National Peace Academy Campaign. It is tragic that their efforts are not remembered or celebrated by USIP as part of its history. The middle section of this book dealt with the Cold War issues that inspired these actors to set out on a mission to reshape how the United States approached violent conflict. For members of Congress, it was their wartime experience that provided the stimulus for change. They were determined that the future could be different. They had seen war firsthand, and they were motivated by the catastrophe that was US policy in Vietnam to prevent such mistakes from happening

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again in the future. Conflict resolution and peace studies offered stateof-the-art knowledge and techniques in problem solving and negotiation for addressing not only international issues, but domestic ones as well. The creation of a national peace academy would have championed these areas as priority investments in the future of the United States and its citizens. Yet, sustained opposition from the Washington status quo, specifically from war hawks and international relations programs, significantly altered the final legislation. After a decade of struggle, peace reformers succeeded in creating a peace institute, only to be relegated to the sidelines as a hostile Reagan administration determined its future. The final portion of this book explored the US Institute of Peace as an existing agency from the years 1984 to 2013 (I discuss the years 2013–2017 below). The difficulty the institute has had in finding its place within Washington, D.C., is apparent. In not conforming to the desires of the peace reform movement, those placed in charge of USIP generated their own vision of what the institute should be and how its mission should be interpreted. This vision was subject to constant refinement from those in leadership roles at the institute, as well as by successive changes in the presidency and Congress. Over time, USIP became a unique institution within the Beltway, but its exceptional qualities are precisely what make it the subject of continual debate and confusion. In its relatively short history, it has expanded from an educational institute into a policy analysis and intervention agency, facilitating interagency cooperation across the various sectors of government. What is for certain is that USIP is not an organization whose goal is to challenge the place of militarism in US policymaking. Richard Solomon, the institute’s longstanding president, stepped down in 2013 and returned to the RAND Corporation. The appointment of former congressman Jim Marshall as his successor was short lived. If accounts of his exodus are to be believed, Marshall treated his time with the organization as an appointment to a political office and did not see himself as the spokesperson for an often-misunderstood think and do tank. He did not understand the institute’s role within Washington, and he assumed his position carried more prestige than it did. In his place, the selection of Nancy Lindborg as the current president appears far more aligned with the vision of USIP as a policy analysis and intervention agency. Lindborg’s past affiliation with the US Agency for International Development and as the former president of Mercy Corps, a major humanitarian aid and assistance organization, strengthens the intervention aspects of USIP. It also deepens what some believe as the need to

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merge conflict practices and international development. Lindborg has been vocal in stressing the connections among global development, poverty, and conflict as long-term projects. Progress takes time, as does peace. In an op-ed published in the Tennessean, she stresses the success of US-assisted peace processes in Northern Ireland and Liberia, as well as the direct role USIP is playing in helping communities in Iraq “torn apart by the ISIL occupation.”1 As with Richard Solomon, Lindborg’s connections with other agencies and her particularly strong ties to NGOs help enforce the image of USIP as a vehicle for coordinating efforts across federal agencies. In this regard, the institute stands as a fully functioning part of the bureaucracy, something both advocates and opponents of the peace academy had sought to avoid. This has not gone unnoticed. Unfortunately for the US Institute of Peace, the organization sits in much the same position in 2017 as it did when the funding crisis hit in 2011. As I draft these words, Congress is debating yet again whether to strip the institute of its funding.2 This time the initiative is not bipartisan, but driven by a Republican majority in Congress and the administration of President Donald Trump. Republicans and the president are determined to cut federal spending; this includes funding for all tools of diplomacy and development, such as the State Department and USAID. Unsurprisingly, the only increases in the budget are promised to the Department of Defense. Support for the institute is still muddled in various contradictory explanations of its history and mission. Yet this time around, the emphasis is firmly placed on framing USIP as part of the national security conversation, with supporters returning to examples of USIP’s training of local facilitators to assist in Iraq and assistance with aspects of US military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.3 A visit to USIP’s website finds that it too has doubled down on this frame, describing its mission as to “promote national security and global stability by reducing violent conflicts abroad. Our staff guide peace talks and advise governments; train police and religious leaders; and support community groups opposing extremism—all to help troubled countries solve their own conflicts peacefully.”4 Under Lindborg, the organization has expanded its issue areas to cover a range of additional topics, including civilian-military relations, gender, human rights, electoral violence, state fragility and resilience, global policy, economics, and the environment, in addition to its more traditional work on peace processes, diplomacy, training, and conflict analysis and prevention. Longstanding concerns with the North Korean nuclear program, US relations with Iran, civil war in Somalia, and global terrorism (now reframed as violent extremism) remain priorities.

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Nevertheless, the US Institute of Peace has still not improved on selling its value to fiscal conservatives in Congress. To some degree, one can understand why fiscal conservatives carry such disdain for the institute. USIP has largely presented itself over the past decade as filling a unique role left open by the Departments of State and Defense, as the current description above demonstrates. Yet because USIP has aligned its mission so closely with the national security apparatus and the goal of projecting US power, critics in Congress feel their view is even further justified. Taxpayer money is being wasted on a redundant agency if this agency supplements what is supposed to be handled by these other, more conventional and better-funded, departments. Nothing about the scale of the institute’s work can justify its grandiose headquarters on the National Mall, for which it still struggles to raise money for upkeep.5 Even with its continued embrace of militarism and use of the violent extremism frame, USIP remains in danger from fiscal conservatives who care little for nuance. Peace reformers, on the other hand, are torn in their support of the current institute. Some continue to champion it outright as the best chance for peace scholars and practitioners to contribute to US policymaking in conflict-affected regions. Critics, however, remain dissatisfied with the organization’s inability to declare itself fully committed to peace. They share, to some extent, the view of fiscal conservatives that USIP has grown too big and expanded too far in scope. Echoing the view of Colman McCarthy, they argue that the institute remains crippled by its inability to criticize US policies as factors in the rise of international violent conflict, particularly in fostering the rise of violent extremism in the Middle East and across the African continent. They are sympathetic to Lindborg, who shares many of their interests, but fear that the institute is still under the thumb of those like Stephen Hadley, who now serves as the chairman of the board of directors. A significant change in personnel overseeing the institute might create the opportunity for a reformed USIP, but this would mean the removal of a substantial number of war hawks that operate out of the institute or as part of its leadership structure. Such demands for change ask the institute to partake in a type of behavior that would be unprecedented given its history. We have few examples of government agencies directly challenging the policies of Congress and the executive branch. Presidents do not select agency heads that might undermine their agendas or challenge the supremacy of the military. If not at the leadership level, then, change must come from employees within the institute. Yet, this also seems unlikely. When the

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legislation created a peace institute and not a peace academy, reformers lost something crucial, and that was federal sanctioning to teach Americans peace and challenge the control of militarism over US policymaking. They lost the ability to populate the institute with peace reformers. Getting a peace institute first, especially given how USIP developed within Washington, was to put the cart before the horse. In hindsight, the peace institute as a force for policymaking and coplanner of humanitarian interventions is a massive step forward for peace and conflict studies. Or that would be the case, if there had been a sizeable number of Americans trained in peaceful methods of conflict resolution to populate USIP when it opened its doors. The dream of the peace reform was that Americans would be educated in these techniques and theories first, and then, given time, a slow march through the institutions would take place. But the failure to establish the peace academy forstalled this plan out and a major consequence is that the desired shift toward peace that was supposed to take place throughout the consciousness of the US public and policymakers did not happen. The institute was created and staffed with people who generally represented international relations and law, not peace and conflict studies. Their interest in the latter academic subfields was minimal. Instead, they brought with them subject expertise on areas of concern to those running the institute, and they have expressed little interest in challenging the primacy of conflict management as the mode by which USIP understands intervention. There remain campaigns dedicated to the creation of both a national peace academy and a Department of Peace. Neither has generated anywhere near the same level of interest or discussion as the National Peace Academy Campaign. One can only speculate as to why Americans have lost their interest in this conversation. The peace academy campaign was born at a period when the US public was tired of war and feared imminent destruction by nuclear weapons. Those times appear to be upon us again, yet dissatisfaction with Washington on all sides makes it doubtful that a reformist solution is one that the public or members of Congress will support. Even on the remote chance that legislation is proposed and passed, the peace reform movement finds itself in the same hostile situation, with both chambers of Congress and the executive branch occupied by supporters of US military power. There is no reason to believe that the results would be different this time around, especially if the law was not better crafted to shield it from the influence of partisan political pressures. Before concluding, I want to address a few possible criticisms of this study. One charge might be that I have been too selective in my

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presentation of the institute’s work—that I have not given full consideration to the positive successes or total range of activities that the organization sponsors and participates in. I believe this is an accurate statement, yet it does not reflect the project I undertook. Each program or country the institute is involved with could be its own study. While this work is historical, it is not intended to be a comprehensive organizational history. The institute is in desperate need of someone to produce such a volume. It would be of immense value, not only to the public, but also for reminding Congress that USIP is the result of congressional legislation. Currently, the institute relies on its website to perform this function, and websites are generally not the best format for such tasks. Another possible criticism of this book rests in my use of archival sources rather than interviews. When I began this project in 2009, much of my initial research was conducted through informal interviews with employees, research fellows, and workshop participants at the institute. These conversations proved exciting and fascinating. However, the more people I met with, the more I found myself going down a rabbit hole into the world of investigative journalism and away from scholarly research. My training is as an academic and not a journalist. While I would love to have the talent and skill to corroborate the tantalizing rumors of CIA intrigue within USIP’s halls, these stories often revealed more about the insidious behavior of the national security state than they did about USIP. Rather, what surprised me most about my preliminary interviews was the absence of knowledge on the respondents’ part about the history of the institute and its mission. The institute operates in a semipermanent state of amnesia concerning its past. Archival sources proved the best way to explore that history, though I do fully encourage ex-employees to publish gossipy tell-alls. A final consideration is to imagine what advocates of the existing US Institute of Peace might take from this book. As a scholar and citizen, I find USIP’s unwillingness to engage with its own history extremely problematic. There needs to be a greater effort to recognize the members of Congress and the members of the National Peace Academy Campaign that made this institution a reality. I hope I have demonstrated the degree to which the actors involved in that campaign exemplified tremendous determination and political courage. For USIP to invest in its history is to create the opportunity to restart a conversation about the place of peace within the federal structure. It is also to acknowledge the political decay of sixteen years of war, decay that peace reformers warned was an inevitable consequence based on their own experience with the Vietnam War. In this context, one only need consider the profound scale of change

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Senators Hatfield and Hartke put forward during the campaign for a peace academy, compared to the simplistic budget-cut amendment offered by Representatives Chaffetz and Weiner. It is also hard to compare with the present discourse the self-reflection and doubt members of the peace reform movement shared about their wartime involvements, especially those veterans of World War II. It is unimaginable today that members of Congress might take to the floor of their respective chambers and argue that their military service in Iraq revealed to them the failures of US foreign policy and then spend the next decade of their careers pursuing peace legislation. Former Secretary of State John Kerry stands as a clear example of the way in which we currently treat those who express profound honesty about their wartime experience. His doubts over his service in Vietnam were used decades later to sink his campaign for the presidency in 2004. To question militarism continually places one at risk of being branded anti-American. It is therefore necessary to contend with the revelations made in response to the Chaffetz and Weiner amendment that introduced this book. If USIP is really little more than an appendage of the national security state, as its leadership contends, Chaffetz and Weiner were right to call for its cut or merger within the existing federal architecture. As a policy analysis and intervention agency, it unmistakably operates according to a very loose interpretation of its mandate, one it has constantly stretched to meet the needs of US policymakers. If US national priorities take precedent over local concerns in the areas where USIP works, especially if those zones are under the authority of US combat forces, there is little reason for the institute to exist as its own entity and no reason why it should not be subsumed as part of the National Defense University. At least then the institute’s commitment to the national security state would be self-evident. It would find itself in relatively safe waters regarding funding and still produce the same type of work. Such a merger would also clear the terrain for peace reformers, so that they might step out of the shadows once again to contest the scourge of militarism. Notes 1. Nancy Lindborg, “The Case for Waging Peace,” Tennessean, October 2, 2017, http://www.tennessean.com. 2. Carol Morello, “Institute Dedicated to Forging Peace Is Targeted for Extinction,” Washington Post, March 16, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com. 3. Ed Crego and Frank Islam, “The Trump Fuss Budget: Make War Not Peace,” Huffington Post, May 31, 2017, https://www.huffingtonpost.com.

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4. “United States Institute of Peace,” United States Institute of Peace, accessed November 12, 2017, https://www.usip.org. 5. Morello, “Institute Dedicated to Forging Peace Is Targeted for Extinction.”

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Index

abolition, 18, 25, 37–40, 43n80, 58–59, 62, 71n37 Acheson, Dean, 75 Adams, John, 59, 66 Adams, Samuel, 57, 59 Adelman, Kenneth, 145 Afghanistan, 2–4, 6, 95, 153, 161, 174 Alliance for Peacebuilding, 3 al-Qaeda, 182 American Enterprise Institute, 145, 177 American Revolution, 13, 17, 20, 26, 37, 45, 89; chaplains, 95; militias, 49, 52–53, National Peace Academy Campaign, 9, 15; Rush and, 61–65, 69–70 Anabaptism, 17, 21–24, 26, 84. See also Mennonites Anglican Church, 22, 25, 29. See also Church of England anticommunism, 85, 113 antiwar movement, 7–8, 77, 82–84, 86–88, 108, 122; Quakers, 30, 34 Arab Spring, 3, 93 Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACAD), 74, 80–82, 90, 138, 145 army, 17, 46, 53–57, 65–67; royal, 47. See also British Army; Continental Army Articles of Confederation, 54–55, 60, 67 Ashbrook, John, 113 Baker, James, III, 153, 181

Balkans, 3, 166, 169–170, 173, 178. See also Yugoslavia Banneker, Benjamin, 15, 40n4, 61–62 Bark, Dennis, 145 Barnes, Arthur, 113 Begin, Menachem, 110 Berrigan, Daniel, 122 Bible, 60, 62–63 Bill of Rights, 25, 58, 60. See also Constitution (US) Bosnia, 85, 169, 171, 179. See also Balkans Boulding, Elise, 91, 113, 118–119, 121, 127, 146; US Institute of Peace, 149, 157–158 Boulding, Kenneth, 82, 91, 116, 129n21 Bradford University, 91 British: Army, 49–51; common law, 46; Empire, 24, 47; North American colonies, 9, 16, 18–20, 25–26, 41n22 Brodie, Bernard, 76–77 Burton, John, 91–92, 116 Bush, George H.W., 85, 151, 153, 155, 163–166 Bush, George W., 3, 174–177, 181

Calvin, John, 19–21 Camp David Accords, 110, 114, 150–151 Campbell, John (4th Earl of Loudoun), 51 Carter, Jimmy, 3, 14, 151; Camp David Accords, 110–111; Department of Education, 71n47; Medal of Peace,

203

204

Index

141; National Peace Academy Campaign, 101, 107–111 Caslen, Robert L., Jr, 3 Catholic Church, 19, 21–22, 41n22, 122. See also Holy Roman Empire Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 141, 156–157, 192 Centre for the Analysis of Conflict, 92 Chaffetz, Jason, 1–5, 193 chaplains, 95 Charles II (King of England), 21, 25 Cheney, Dick, 151 China, 97, 164, 168 Christian pacifism, 17, 20–26, 57, 69 Church of England, 19, 23, 59. See also Anglican Church Church of the Brethren, 17, 91 citizen-soldier, 46, 52–54 Civil Rights Act, 87, 100–101 Civil War (English), 22, 59 Civil War (US), 27, 37, 58 civil wars, 179, 189 Civilian Surge, 176, 181 Clinton, Bill, 3, 85, 127, 161–163, 165–166, 168–169, 173 Cold War, 9, 73–76, 80, 84–85, 155, 173, 187; arms control, 78–81; US Institute of Peace, 138, 147, 157, 162–163, 166–169 Colgate University, 91 colonialism, 18–19, 46, 180. See also settler colonialism Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy (SANE), 77, 97–98 Committee on Foreign Relations, Senate, 95 Committee on International Relations, House, 95 Committee on Labor and Human Resources, Senate, 134, 150 communism, 73, 80, 88–89, 95, 141, 144 Community Relations Service (CRS), 100–101 conflict resolution, 14, 68, 74, 111, 173, 188, 191; George Washington Peace Academy and, 88, 90–92, 96, 98; national peace academy and; 111, 113–114, 116–117, 120–121, 124–128; US Institute of Peace and, 135–137, 139–141, 144–147, 149– 150, 157, 177–181

Congress (US), 36, 49, 55, 60, 65–67; elite peace reform movement and, 7–8, 13–15; George Washington Peace Academy and, 74–77, 81–87, 90, 94, 96, 100–103; National Peace Academy Campaign and, 107–108, 110–114, 116, 118, 120–125; slavery, 39; US Institute of Peace and, 1–5, 134–135, 138–144, 149–155, 165–168, 172–178, 187–193 conscription, 17, 48, 53–54; Quakers and, 31, 33, 34–35; Vietnam War and, 81–82 Consortium of Peace Research, Education, and Development (COPRED), 91 Constitution (Pennsylvania), 25 Constitution (US), 39, 55, 57, 60–61, 65, 68 Continental Army, 14, 34, 36, 53–54, 55–56, 67, 95 Council for the Department of Peace (CODEP), 82–83, 92, 96, 103 counterinsurgency, 179–181 counternarratives, 15–16, 40 Cousins, Norman, 74, 82, 97–98 Crocker, Chester, 126, 164, 167–168, 170–172, 175–177, Cromwell, Oliver, 23, 59 Cuba: Missile Crisis, 99 Custis, Martha, 34 Cyprus, 170

Dayton Accords, 166, 169–170, 173 Declaration of Independence (US), 16, 89 Declaration of Independence (Vietnamese), 89 Defense Authorization Act, 5, 9, 135 Dellenback, John, 113 Department of Defense, 3, 71n45; national peace academy and, 73, 96, 122–123; US Institute of Peace and, 138–139, 142, 145, 175, 189 Department of Education, 71n47 Department of Peace, 4, 71n46, 74, 81– 84, 123, 143, 173, 191 Department of State, US, 81–82; national peace academy and, 97, 122–123; US Institute of Peace and, 147, 149, 151, 156, 163–164, 169– 170, 189

Index desertion, 31, 53, 83, 85 deterrence, 74–78 Dinwiddie, Robert, 30–33 diplomacy, 8, 97–98, 136, 163–164, 169–171, 175, 189; interfaith, 174. See also Camp David Accords disarmament, 78–81 Dr. Strangelove, 76 Dulles, Allen, 79 Dulles, John Foster, 79 Dunfey, John, 113

education: public, 16, 70, 93–94. See also national university Einstein, Albert, 77 Eisenhower, Dwight, 69, 74, 78–80, 99–100 Eliot, Theodore, 123–124 elite peace reform movement, 7–10, 11n19, 78; Cold War and, 73–74; narrative of, 13–14, 40, 68–70; national peace academy and, 101, 108, 127; US Institute of Peace and, 133, 150–151, 161–163, 172–174, 183, 187–188, 191–193 Enlightenment, 16, 27–28, 33, 38, 64, 68; American, 58 evangelicalism, 58 extremism, 10, 182, 189–190

Fairfax, Bryan (8th Lord Fairfax of Cameron), 29, 34 Federal County on Arts and Humanities, 95 Federation of Atomic Scientists (FAS), 77 Fisher, Roger, 110, 116–117, 136 Foster, William Chapman, 81 Fox, George, 22–23 France, 87, 89 Franklin, Benjamin, 25, 39, 43n80, 59 French and Indian War, 30, 34, 50, 52 French Revolution, 61 Fukuyama, Francis, 162 Funari, John, 123

Galtung, Johan, 7, 91, 97, 116, 156–157, 180 gentry, 23–24, 27–29, 34, 59 George Mason University, 98, 102, 115–116

205

George Washington Peace Academy, 13, 84; Act, 74, 87, 90–97, 107; hearings on, 117; Washington and, 88–89 Gingrich, Newt, 178 Glickman, Dan, 113, 118 Global War on Terror, 173–176 Goodpaster, Andrew, 104n36 Greece, 75 Greene, Nathanael, 35 Gruening, Ernest, 82 Guatemala, 99 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, 82

Hadley, Stephen, 151, 175, 190 Haiti, 176 Halpern, Seymour, 82 Hamilton, Lee, 181 Harkin, Tom, 149, 155 Hartke, Vance, 13, 82, 84–88, 96–97, 111–112, 121, 193 Harvard Program on Negotiation, 110, 116 Hatfield, Mark, 82, 84–88, 96–99, 108, 110–112, 121, 193; US Institute of Peace and, 134 Hesburgh, Ted, 164 Hiroshima, 74, 84 Holbrooke, Richard, 170 Holy Alliance, 78 Holy Roman Empire, 19, 21. See also Catholic Church Honda, Mike, 4 Hoover, Herbert, 84 Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, 145, 147 Hosmer, Bradley, 145 Hudson Institute, 77 Human Terrain Systems (HTS), 179–181 Huntington, Samuel, 162

Institute for the Study of National Behavior, 98 Inter-American Defense College, 171 interest-based negotiation, 110, 136 International Peace Research Association (IPRA), 91 internment, 112–113 Iran, 119, 181, 189 Iraq: First Gulf War, 85, 157; Relief and Reconstruction Fund, 178; Second

206

Index

Gulf War, 2–4, 6, 95, 161, 174–178, 189, 193; Study Group, 181 Islam, 174–176, 182 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), 189 Israel, 110, 151, 153

Jefferson, Thomas, 59, 65, 67, 89, 94 Jennings Randolph Program, 126, 138– 139, 150, 159n16 Jensen, Kenneth, 162 Johnson, Lyndon, 81–82, 86–87, 145 Journal of Peace Research, 91 Journal of Conflict Resolution, 91

Kahn, Herman, 76–77 Kashmir, 168, 170 Kelman, Herbert, 91 Kennedy, Edward, 85 Kennedy, John, 80–82, 87, 99, 113 Kerry, John, 193 Khrushchev, Nikita, 99 King William’s War, 50 Kinter, William, 145, 156 Kirkpatrick, Evron, 145 Kissinger, Henry, 100 Knox, Henry, 66–67 Krogh, Peter, 123 Kubrick, Stanley, 76 Kucinich, Dennis, 3–4

Laue, James, 14–15; George Washington Peace Academy and, 98, 100– 103; National Peace Academy Campaign and, 108, 111, 113–115, 118, 121; National Peace Institute Foundation and, 148–149; US Institute of Peace and, 123, 125–128, 146, 172 Leibman, Morris, 145, 156 Lenin, Vladimir, 89 Lewis, Samuel, 127, 133, 144, 150, 152– 158, 163–164, 183 Liberia, 189 Lincoln, William, 113 Lindborg, Nancy, 188–190 Livingston, William, 35 Lovett, Sidney, 145 Low, Steph, 123 Luther, Martin, 19–21

Manchester College, 91

Manhattan College, 91 Mapes, Milton, Jr., 14, 108 Marshall, Jim, 188 Marshall Plan, 75 Mason, George, 29, 34 Matsunaga Commission. See US Commission on Proposals for the National Academy of Peace and Conflict Resolution Matsunaga, Spark, 104n36, 108–113; US Commission and; 113, 116, 118, 120–121; US Institute of Peace and, 134, 150 McCarthy, Colman, 4–6, 119, 146, 190 McFate, Montgomery, 179 McGovern, George, 85 Mennonites, 17, 21–23, 26, 41n25. See also Anabaptists militarism, 3–5, 8–10, 68, 70, 75, 79, 177; American Revolution and, 15; national peace academy and, 84, 94, 122; peace office and, 45; US Institute of Peace and, 134, 173–174, 187–188, 193 military academies, 65–68, 94, 158 military-industrial complex, 79–80, 97, 100, 119, 138 military mania, 57–58 militia: exemptions, 30; Quakers in the, 30–31, 34–35; Rush and, 63; system, 46–52 Mills, C. Wright, 8, 79–81, 100 Minh, Ho Chi, 89 Mitchell, George, 178 Moore, John Norton, 127, 133, 143– 150, 156, 164, 183 Morgenthau, Hans, 82 Morris, Gouverneur, 66 Morse, Wayne, 82 mutually assured destruction, 77

Nader, Ralph, 148–149 Nagasaki, 74 narrative: elite peace reform movement, 15–16, 40, 68–70, 109, 187; militia, 52–54; national, 20, 27, 46, 80–83, 85–57; Western expansion, 20, 25, 52 national peace academy, 8–9, 13–15, 26, 83; draft curriculum, 114–118 National Peace Academy Campaign (N–PAC), 9, 14, 74, 77; commission

Index report; 114, 118–122; draft curriculum for, 114–118; George Washington Peace Academy and, 87, 97–98, 100; opposition to, 122–128; public hearings on, 114, 119; stages of, 108–109; US Institute of Peace and, 139, 142–143, 146–147, 182–183, 187–188, 191–193 National Peace Institute Foundation (NPIF), 144, 148–149, 152, 156. See also National Peace Academy Campaign National Security Council, 100, 144, 151, 163–164 national university, 14, 45, 58, 64–68, 94, 124 Native Americans, 19–20, 46, 50–52, 64; militia and, 42n63, 48. See also French and Indian War Neely, Matthew, 74 Neuhaus, Richard, 145 new wars, 9, 165–167, 169, 171–173 Nisei Battalion, 112 Nixon, Richard, 82–83, 111, 144, 164 nonviolence, 40, 187; Protestantism, 21; US Institute of Peace, 2, 4, 6. See also pacifism North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 75, 169 North Korea, 168, 178, 189 Northern Ireland, 170, 189 nuclear: disarmament, 79–81, 144, 155; proliferation, 7, 73–79; stockpiles, 80 Nuclear Freeze Campaign, 85, 150

Office of the Coordinator for Stability and Reconstruction (S/CRS), 181 Oppenheimer, Robert, 77

pacifism, 9, 17–18, 20, 25, 187; Hatfield and, 85, 87, 97. See also Christian pacifism; republican pacifism Paine, Thomas, 58 Palestine, 110, 153 Palestinian Liberation Organization, 153 Paris Peace Accords, 83, 86 Parliament, 15, 23, 34, 41n22, 52 peace: activism, 75, 147; definition, 6–7 Peace Act Advisory Council, 82. See also Council for the Department of Peace

207

peacebuilding, 1, 10, 41n22, 170, 178, 181 peace churches, 17–18, 69. See also Anabaptists; Mennonites; Quakers Peace Corps, 4, 82, 113 peacekeeping, 167, 170–171,173, 176 peace office: 9, 14–15, 18, 58, 68, 81, 187; plan for, 61–64. See also proper peace establishment peace reform movement. See elite peace reform movement Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO), 91 peace studies, 14, 74, 90–93, 96; criticism of, 124–125; George Washington Peace Academy and, 101; National Peace Academy Campaign and, 114; US Institute of Peace and, 143–145, 147, 149, 162, 178, 188 Pearl Harbor, 112, 139 Pell, Claiborne, 88, 108, 150 Pemberton, Mary, 36–37 Penn, William, 24–25, 47, 58, 59 Pennsylvania, 18, 22, 25–26, 34–37, 60 Pennsylvania Abolition Society, 38–39, 59 Pennsylvania Council of Safety, 35 Pentagon Papers, 83 Perle, Richard, 145, 149 Petraeus, David, 2 Philippines, 3, 163 Picker, Harvey, 123 Pipes, Daniel, 175 policy elite, 3, 7–8, 74, 79, 100 power elite, 80 Project Camelot, 180 proper peace establishment, 14–15, 45, 55–56. See also peace office Protestant Reformation, 19–22, 58 Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), 180–181, 185n37

Quakers, 17, 21, 25; abolition; 18, 37– 40; imprisonment of, 30–35; influence on Rush, 57, 59–61; origins, 22–23; pacifism, 23–24, 26, 32, 54; yearly meeting, 34–37

radicalism, 7–8, 122 RAND Corporation, 76, 163–164, 188 Randolph, Jennings, 82, 110, 134, 142 Rankin, Jeannette, 139

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Index

Rapoport, Anatol, 91 Reagan, Ronald, 5, 108–109; Medal of Peace, 141; National Peace Academy Campaign and, 116, 118; Star Wars, 85; US Institute of Peace and, 133, 137–138, 142–143 realism, 73, 84–85, 90, 99, 139, 162 reform, 7–8; George Washington, 38. See also elite peace reform movement Religious Society of Friends. See Quakers religious wars: European, 19–20, 47 republicanism, 46, 67; Benjamin Rush, 56–57, 59–62, 64–65, 95; George Washington, 17, 32; 45–46, 56, 64–65 republican machines, 64–65 republican order, 17, 54–57 republican pacifism, 17, 57. See also Benjamin Rush Restoration, 21, 23 Rhode Island, 25 Rikhye, Indar Jit, 166–167 Rostow, Elspeth, 145, 153 Rostow, Eugene, 153 Roughead, Gary, 3 Rwanda, 166, 171 Rudney, Robert, 156–157 Rumsfeld, Donald, 176–177 Rush–Bagot Treaty, 78 Rush, Benjamin, 15, 17, 21, 71n37, 94; Christianity, 58–59; military mania, 57–58; militia, 57–58, 63; national university, 64–68; Quakers, 58–60; pacifism, 17, 57; peace office, 40n4, 45, 58; republicanism, 56–57, 59– 62, 64–65, 95; slavery and, 58–59, 62, 64, 71n37

Sadat, Anwar El, 110 Schelling, Thomas, 77 Schifter, Richard, 145 School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, 98 Second Amendment, 49 secretary of peace, 62, 64, 82 Serbia, 169 Serwer, Daniel, 169–170, 181 settler colonialism, 18–19, 24, 47, 53 Seven Years’ War, 51–52 Sheehan, Jeffery, 123–124 Shultz, George, 3

slavery, 68, 89; Franklin and, 43n80; Quakers and, 18, 24–25, 37–40; Rush and, 58, 62, 64, 71n37; Washington and, 30, 37–40, 42n63, 71n37 Smith, Charles Duryea, 120–122, 128, 135, 144 social reform. See reform Society of Cincinnati, 57 Solomon, Richard, 2–3, 9, 10n6, 161, 163–164; presidency, 169, 173, 175–177, 188 Somalia, 3, 161, 166–167, 171, 189 South Africa, 170 Soviet Union, 9, 73–76, 99, 119, 155, 161–163, 165; nuclear weapons, 80– 81, 85, 97, 111, 113, 149; trade unions, 141 Smock, David, 153, 174 Spencer, William, 15, 108, 111, 120–121 Stabler, Edward, 32 Stamp Act, 34, 60 Steinem, Gloria, 82 Strickland, Stephen, 152 Sudan, 3, 168, 170 Syria, 181

think tanks: 8, 152–154, 157, 182; media exposure, 153; US Institute of Peace and, 2, 9, 10n6, 142, 161, 163–169, 183. See also American Enterprise Institute Thompson, W. Scott, 145, 150, 156, 162 Tibet, 168 Truman Doctrine, 75 Truman, Harry, 71n45, 75, 80 Turkey, 75 Turner, Robert, 133, 147, 154, 171

UN. See United Nations United Nations, 4, 74–75, 80, 82; ambassador to, 95; Oil for Food Program, 178; peacekeeping, 166–167, 169 United States: empire, 54–57, 65, 68; foreign policy, 6–7, 9–10, 81, 87, 97, 168, 193 universal service, 48, 51. See also conscription; militia University College London, 92 University of Colorado, 91 University of Michigan, 91, 163

Index US Agency for International Development (USAID), 4, 82, 189 US Army Peacekeeping Institute, 171 US Commission on Proposals for the National Academy of Peace and Conflict Resolution, 14, 101, 108, 110–111, 113–114, 136–137, 142 US Institute of Peace: Act, 9, 120, 122, 134–142; Afghanistan and, 2, 153, 161; alternative to militarism, 3–4; Balkans and, 3, 169–170, 173, 178; board of directors, 127, 137–138, 141–147, 162; Cold War and, 162– 163; funding for, 1–5, 154; Global War on Terror and, 173–176; grants, 125–127, 141, 149, 171; headquarters, 1, 125, 172; Jeannette Rankin Program, 139; Jennings Randolph Program, 126, 138–139, 150, 159n16; Medal of Peace, 139–140; National Peace Essay Contest, 150, 152–153, 168; national security and, 2–3, 6; peacekeeping and, 167, 170– 171,173, 176; policy analysis, 164– 165; Rule of Law Program, 120, 169–170, 173, 180; Second Gulf War and, 2, 153, 161, 174–178, 181; support for, 2–4; working groups, 168–169 USIP. See US Institute of Peace

Vance, Cyrus, 110 Vietnam War, 7–9, 13, 53, 69, 73, 100, 192; counterinsurgency, 179–181; desertion, 85; peace office, 81–82; peace studies, 91 violence, 7–8, 32, 92–94, 178; alternatives to, 84, 89, 97, 118–119, 182; Cold War, 74, 79, 83; colonial, 18– 20, 23, 25–26, 46–47, 60, 69; new wars, 165–168; regenerative, 19–20; religious, 19, 21, 172; US Institute of Peace and, 135, 137, 139, 157 Virginia Assembly, 30 Voting Rights Act, 87

209

war colleges, 45, 109, 158 War Department. See War Office War of 1812, 78 War of Independence, 46. See also American Revolution War Office, 62–64, 71n45, 75 Washington, George, 26–29, 58–60, 94, 187; Continental Army, 34–37; elite peace reform narrative, 13–16, 68– 69, 88; farewell address, 14, 54–55; militia, 46; national university, 64– 68; Quakers and, 18, 29–40, 54; proper peace establishment, 14–15, 45, 55–56; religion, 33, 58; republicanism, 16–17, 56–58; slavery, 18, 37–40, 42n63, 71n37; Virginia Regiment, 31–34 Wedge, Bryant, 14, 79, 127; George Washington Peace Academy, 98–103, 109; National Peace Academy Campaign, 108–109, 114–117; Rush and, 40n4, 71n42 Weiner, Anthony, 1–5, 193 Weinrod, W. Bruce, 145 Weinstein, Allen, 145 West, J. Robinson, 2 West Point, 65 Western expansion, 20, 25, 52 Westropp, Thomas, 120, 130n42 Weymouth, Ralph, 148 Wharton, Thomas, Jr., 37 Wilson, Woodrow, 78 World Federalists, 77, 96 World War I, 78, 139 World War II, 8, 74–75, 84–86, 112, 139, 163, 193 Wuerker, Matt, 4

Yarborough, Ralph, 82 Young, Andrew, 101, 108, 110 Yugoslavia, 161, 166, 169–170

Zartman, William, 123, 126 Zinni, Anthony, 3 Zwingli, Huldrych, 20–21

About the Book

Long a source of contention and ambiguity in Washington, the US Institute of Peace (USIP) is seen by some as a vital part of the US national security apparatus, by others as a counter to the influence of militarism in US foreign policy, and by others still as an example of fiscal irresponsibility and bureaucratic redundancy—when it is noticed at all. Michael English traces the history of USIP to determine why and how it came into existence, how its mission has changed over time, its successes and its failures, and how it has come to take the shape that it has today. Michael D. English is adjunct professor in the School of Conflict Analy-

sis and Resolution at George Mason University.

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