"Peace! Peace!" they say, but there is no peace. They should be ashamed of their abominable deeds, but they are not." -- Jeremiah 6:14
Ever since Cain had it out with his younger brother, this has been the pattern: When push comes to shove, first we push, then we shove, then we punch, then we kick, then we bite, then we stab, then we shoot, then we bomb, then maybe, just maybe, we let the missiles fly.
When it comes to settling differences, violence has been humanity's preferred court of last — and ofttimes first — resort. Society discourages personal mayhem, but the collective violence of nations is another matter. No one really wants it, but we expect war to happen occasionally. It is, after all, how governments settle their grievances. So we practice war, and because practice makes perfect, we've gotten really good at it. Innovations like poison gas and nuclear weapons attest to that.
Our technical knowledge appears to have leapfrogged our wisdom. The question, then, is this: At the dawn of the Third Millennium are we any closer to peace today than when Jeremiah railed against the leaders of his time? Or, more succinctly: Will we ever learn?
Good question.
When it comes to peacemaking, these could be the best of times — or the worst of times. Without doubt, the doves have been flying higher since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. The major powers have all downsized their armed forces. With no East-West confrontation pumping up weapons sales, global military spending is way down. From 1989 to 1994, it took a $400 billion nosedive. Equally encouraging, despite predictions that sales to Third World countries would soar as defense industries scrambled for new markets, in five years military exports actually fell from $62 billion to $22 billion in 1992.
If you look at the numbers, you see a kinder, gentler world. If you look at your TV, you see Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia. Numbers may not lie, but clearly they don't tell the whole truth. Sales of expensive, high tech military hardware have been down for some time, explains Raimo Väyrynen, Regan director of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, but there's still plenty of traffic in small arms. A Kalashnikov rifle, the revolutionaries' firearm of choice, costs less than $200, so $22 billion still buys plenty of Third World destruction. In any event, the bottom line stays the same: The means and reasons for warfare remain abundant.
Paradoxically, the end of the Cold War made world peace both more likely and less likely. On the one hand, it diminished the threat of a U.S./Soviet Armageddon; on the other, the Soviet collapse assured a prairie fire of Third World hostilities.
Much of the Third World is unstable by definition, says Väyrynen. Ethnic groups, often with little in common except mutual hostility, were cobbled together into artificial states by the colonizing nations. When the Asian and African colonies finally achieved independence, they became pawns in the East-West confrontation. "As long as the U.S. and Soviet Union pumped money in to keep their friends in power, everything was fine," Väyrynen says. "But when Moscow and Washington lost interest and cut external support, the states fell apart."
At the end of the 20th century, this is how it is: The globe has evolved into a core zone of peace surrounded by a zone of chaos. The rule of law, Väyrynen says, prevails in the industrialized North where borders effectively dissolve as nations — mostly democracies — become more interdependent economically and culturally.
Such integration of interests makes it hard to imagine the United States invading Canada or France attacking Germany. When disagreements arise between nations in the zone of peace they are most likely to be settled through third party negotiation.
When Canada and Spain quarreled last year over fishing rights off Newfoundland no shots were fired. Instead, Canada reached a settlement with the European Union in which Spain agreed to reduce its catch and accept stronger Canadian enforcement. In the North, traditional conflict resolution techniques work as designed.
In the underdeveloped South, where 85 percent of the world's people live, it's another story. Nations in the zone of chaos frequently fail the basic tasks of government. Tangled ethnic and religious feuds with histories as long as time escalate into violence that displaces people. The resulting hunger and discontent creates more violence and culminates in a downward spiral of societal catastrophe. Even emergency food and medical aid from international relief agencies can become a weapon when those in power restrict distribution to their loyalists.
We're familiar with the more blatant examples, grist for the nightly news: Rwanda, Somalia, Afghanistan, and the northern exception, Bosnia. But they represent merely the tip of the sword. From 1989 to 1995, some 85 wars were fought from Azerbaijan to the former Zaire. From 1992 to ‘94 alone, an estimated 980,000 people were combat casualties in 22 conflicts.
War shows every sign of being a well-oiled machine still operating with deadly efficiency. But something is different. It's not your father's kind of war: mighty armies facing off against each other to secure territory as an extension of national foreign policy. With some notable exceptions, like the Gulf War, the New War is mostly civil strife in the artificial nations that were created in Africa and Asia, a symptom of the "failed state" syndrome.
With diminished foreign aid, these Third World governments are unable to maintain public order or guarantee property rights. Local strongholds develop with warlords controlling resources. Warfare becomes privatized, and violence acquires its own logic, divorced from politics. It shows its face in the urban strife of fragmented Third World societies. This "molecular violence" is perhaps the most troublesome form of 21st century war because it has no easy solution.
"How do you mediate a conflict between rival gangs in Karrachi, Pakistan?" asks Vayrynen. "You can send a well-meaning conflict resolution expert there and say to the leaders, ‘Why don't we sit around a table and see what our differences are and where we can compromise. But for those guys their power and wealth is based on the organization of violence. They won't give it up for the sake of pursuing the peace goals of a conflict mediator."
The long-term solution for all of this, of course, rests in the Pope Paul VI quote seen on thousands of Catholic bumper stickers: "If you want peace, work for justice."
"So we're back to basic questions," says Väyrynen. "What is the purpose of economic development? How do you build real community? How do you empower people so they can organize themselves and control social violence?"
Since war is most remote when the material needs of people are met, Notre Dame international relations professor Robert Johansen advocates a strategy of "preventive development." Trade and banking should be harnessed more effectively to serve the cause of peace, he argues. Since common economic interests forge cooperation, Johansen suggests the World Bank and International Monetary Fund should favor economic projects that link adversaries. He also suggest granting economic incentives to governments that cut military spending.
For one, there is a growing awareness among policy makers as well as the general public that military force has limited utility. It wasn't effective for the United States in Vietnam where 2.5 million Americans fought and 50,000 died, nor was it effective for the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
The military option may have been the automatic response to any difficult foreign policy problem once upon a time. But in a world where nuclear, chemical and biological weapons are readily available, policy makers think twice before committing force, Väyrynen says. Today, even military men are gun shy. Before the Gulf War, one of the strongest proponents of economic sanctions over military action was General Colin Powell, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.
Just as understanding is taking hold that military force may be less useful than it once was, there's an awareness that such nonmilitary "weapons" as economic sanctions may be more helpful than once believed.
The popular perception has been that economic sanctions are just so much saber rattling before sending in the troops, but George Lopez says evidence shows they really do work, although there's a two-year lag from implementation to measurable impact.
Lopez, a Notre Dame professor of government and director of graduate studies in the Kroc Institute, has conducted a major study of sanctions with David Cortright, president of the Fourth Freedom Foundation. To be effective, Lopez says, sanctions must be swift and comprehensive and must involve several nations withholding trade from a target nation that has violated a widely accepted norm. They work best, he says, when combined with economic incentives that reward changed behavior.
Not everyone is a fan of the strategy. The international aid community is especially ambivalent because sanctions can cause disastrous suffering. Lopez acknowledges the danger and says they must be closely monitored and distress relieved at the first sign of disaster.
A more acceptable strategy to many is the "smart sanction" of freezing international travel or financial assets. Proponents contend such measures place the most pressure on the ruling elite while sparing the general population. Critics argue that smart sanctions personalize diplomacy in a detrimental way.
"What you're saying to the foreign minister with whom you want to deal on a state-to- state level is, ‘You know your daughter at Harvard? Well, sorry, she's cut off now because we're locking up your bank account.' It's not polite, but it can work," says Lopez. "Smart sanctions proved to be the real wake-up call to the Cedras regime in Haiti and also had tremendous impact on Iraq."
Another hopeful trend is the growing consensus on international norms. The globalization of the world's economy with its transnational companies, worldwide web, interconnections and interdependence has spawned a greater sense of world unity. The international community today expects nations to live up to the standard expected of individuals: namely to refrain from beating up on their neighbors or their own. Not only that, Väyrynen says, there's a growing understanding that leaders (and their followers) are accountable to the world at large, not just the citizens of their own nation.
The establishment of the special war crimes tribunals on Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia offers a prime example of that yearning for accountability and enforcement.
Making the war crimes tribunal permanent, as the United States and others have proposed, would be a great help in "domesticating" international violence, Johansen says. "If leaders knew without doubt that the world community held all people personally accountable for refusing to plan or carry out atrocities, they would think twice before engaging in such misdeeds."
Although some nations have expressed reservations over aspects of the Gulf War, the world community was mostly elated with the action against Iraq. "This is a portent of what people desire and it could be brought within reach," Johansen notes. It is something on which to build.
Ultimately, the war/peace question reduces to an attitude problem. The biggest obstacle to peace is "inertia of thought," Johansen asserts. If we insist on thinking the same old way, we stay mired in the trenches. For world peace to move from dream to reality, global society must move from a "culture of combat" to a "culture of enforcement," he argues. The growing consensus on norms and enforcement suggests we may be moving in the right direction.
For all its faults, Johansen believes the United Nations remains the best hope for making that cultural leap. In its first 50 years, it has successfully implemented cease fires, monitored arms control agreements, disarmed military forces, observed troop withdrawals, trained and overseen police forces, provided safe havens for people displaced by war, and protected relief agency personnel in war zones.
What it has not done is live up to its full potential. And that, of course, is because its members haven't allowed it. Nations haven't trusted the United Nations to represent their self interest, so they've withheld power. But a United Nations with too little power can't be an effective arbiter and therefore offers no security. "Until this problem is acknowledged and faced, the [other] problems can't be solved," Johansen asserts.
The Kroc Institute director for undergraduate studies has some ideas for reforming the United Nations that could move the process along. First of all, to give the Security Council's decisions more legitimacy and moral authority, he suggests giving permanent seats to India, Brazil, Japan, Germany and South Africa. By adding these seats, half the world's population as well as the most productive economies would be represented for the first time.
Second, to solve the twin problems of slow deployment and impartiality of peacekeeping forces, Johansen advocates establishing a small standing U.N. force individually recruited from member nations. Such a force of between 10,000 to 100,000 peacekeepers could be deployed much more rapidly to trouble spots, would be unquestionably impartial and would solve the reluctance countries have of committing their troops to high-risk areas or serving under foreign command.
A swift response to an international flare-up is often vital, Johansen points out. "In the Rwandan case, many believe a modest U.N. force promptly deployed could have averted the genocide and saved hundreds of thousands of lives."
Finally, since beggars get no respect, he insists the United Nations must have adequate, secure funding. The fairest, least painful way to do that, Johansen argues would be to impose a minuscule .003 percent tax on all international currency exchange transactions. Economists estimate such a tax could raise $8.5 billion each year, enough to finance U.N. peacekeeping. operations and establish the permanent United Nations force.
Fixing the United Nations will help, but in the end two essential tasks must be accomplished if we're ever going to break the cycle begun with Cain: We must recognize the lie that rests at the heart of war and affirm a key Christian insight. Thomas Merton said it:
"Violence rests on the assumption that the enemy and I are entirely different: the enemy is evil and I am good. The enemy must be destroyed and I must be saved.
"But love sees things differently. It sees that even the enemy suffers from the same sorrows and limitations that I do. That we both have the same hopes, the same needs, the same aspirations for a peaceful and harmless human life.
"And that death is the same for both of us."