In celebration of February 15th 2003, and the continuing struggle of people world-wide to build peace and work for the abolition of war.
WE CAN HELP CREATE A BETTER WORLD
Two years ago, millions of people throughout the world demonstrated against the impending US/UK led war against Iraq. It did not stop that war, but it will help stop future wars, and hopefully soon contribute to the abolition of war itself as an accepted institution, in the same way as slavery was officially abolished in 1833 in the British empire, 1865 in the United States, 1888 in Brazil and serfdom was abolished in Russia in 1861. Slavery still exists in some forms, including human trafficking, but it is driven underground and no longer officially approved. More efforts are needed to eliminate it completely, but great progress has been made since the first half of the 19th century. Even if success is not immediate, we must persist, and will ultimately prevail. War is still widely accepted as a tool of foreign policy today, but it is an evil as great as slavery and must be abolished.
Here are a number of examples of successful initiatives, individual and joint, which have helped improve the human condition.
THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY
In 1835, Lloyd Garrison, the publisher of the anti-slavery gazette "The Liberator", spoke on the Boston Commons against slavery. He was arrested by the police “to protect his life” because an angry mob was ready to lynch him. He was secretly moved out of the city at night in an enclosed horse coach. But he continued to fight against slavery, and 30 years later, it was abolished in the United States by President Lincoln.
The Quakers played a leading role in the movement to abolish slavery. Groups of Quakers traveled from town to town in the United States to preach against slavery, and they did not leave a town until at least one person had converted to their cause. In the end, their patience paid off.
When we see the billions spent for weapons today and the pittance available to work for peace, it is easy to despair. But the people who fought for the abolition of slavery in the 19th century did not even have any foundations to apply to. They made personal sacrifices and took risks, while the slave traders and slave owners accumulated huge fortunes. Yet the anti-slavery movement prevailed in the end, because it had a just cause. For the same reason, the global peace movement will prevail over those who profit from war.
THE POWER OF IDEAS
Our actions and ideas can have a real impact in helping create a better world. The economist John Maynard Keynes emphasized the power of ideas. He said that most people vastly overestimate the control exerted by vested interests and by military and economic power, and underestimate the influence of great ideas. Most people's lives are shaped far more decisively by past thinkers' ideas than by people whom most consider to be powerful.
Let us not be deterred by people who ridicule us as idealists. Richard Falk, a professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, once said, "The greatest utopians are those who call themselves 'realists', because they falsely believe that we can survive the nuclear age with politics as usual. The true realists are those who recognize the need for new thinking."
Here are some more examples of how people have been able to contribute to peace and justice.
HOW HAITI ABOLISHED ITS MILITARY
A soft-spoken, retired Quaker couple from Troy, New York, took a crucial step that led to the complete abolition of Haiti's army, which in 1991 had violently overthrown the democratically elected government of President Aristide and arbitrarily arrested, tortured and murdered many Haitian citizens.
In 1994, Sue and Marvin Clark founded a small NGO, "Global Demilitarization." In February 1995 they were able to meet in New York with Oscar Arias Sanchez, the former President of Costa Rica, who won the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending the war in Nicaragua. They asked him what country he thought might be the next to follow Costa Rica's example, which had abolished its military in 1949.
Arias suggested Haiti, since most Haitians saw their army threatening their personal security rather than protecting them from aggression. From informal conversations with many ordinary Haitians, he estimated that about 80 percent wished the army were abolished. He was disappointed that nobody seemed to pay attention to his observations, but was convinced that if an internationally recognized polling firm could confirm his impressions, the world would notice. But that would cost about $20,000, and he did not have that money.
When Sue and Marvin Clark heard this, they wrote to all their friends and friends of friends, sending out about thousand letters, explaining this opportunity and asking for donations. Within a few weeks, they raised $27,000 and sent it to the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress, and soon the poll was conducted.
At a news conference in Port-au-Prince on April 28, 1995, Oscar Arias could announce that 62 percent of the Haitian people wished to abolish the army, and only 12 percent wished to keep it, with the rest expressing no opinion. When President Aristide heard this, he stepped to the microphone and spontaneously announced, in front of the assembled military leadership, that given the clear wish of the majority of his people, he herewith declared the army abolished!
The international media almost totally ignored this important event. But when President Aristide was asked on a nationally televised interview in the United States after the election of his successor what he considered his greatest achievement during his term in office, he said abolishing the Haitian military.
It is impressive how much difference the efforts of individuals can make. Not even the U.S. Navy was able to abolish Haiti's army. When President Clinton sent the navy in 1994 to land in Port-au-Prince and help restore the democratically elected government, it turned around in the face of a violent demonstration on the landing peer by a small group of backers of the military dictatorship. Who would have thought that two individuals, without power or wealth, would succeed in helping abolish the Haitian military, simply by talking to the right people and taking the right action at the right time. We can all take courage and hope from this. If we have a dream and pursue it step by step, never giving up, we can ultimately reach it.
A BINATIONAL ZONE
In 1995, Johan Galtung had an opportunity to meet with the former President of Ecuador who was involved in border negotiations with Peru. In the peace treaty of Rio de Janeiro of 1941, it was agreed that the border should run along the watershed in the upper Amazon basin. But depending on rainfall, the watershed has shifted back and forth. Each country insisted that the true border is where the watershed once was closest to its neighbor. Since 1941, Ecuador and Peru have fought four wars over this sparsely populated 500 square kilometer territory.
Galtung patiently listened to the Ex-President complain about Peru's inflexibility. But he also always carefully listens to what people do not say. The Ex-President never said that each square meter of territory must belong to one and only one country, because he assumed that was obvious. That was the principle adopted at the peace treaty of Westphalia in 1648. So Galtung asked him what he thought of the idea of making the disputed border territory into a jointly administered "binational zone with a natural park", attracting tourists to benefit both countries. The Ex-President said, "This is very creative, but it is too creative, it will take at least 30 years to get used to such an entirely new idea, and another 30 years to implement it." But out of curiosity he did propose it to Peru in the next round of peace negotiations, and to his surprise, Peru accepted it with minor modifications. This led to the Peace treaty signed in Brasilia on October 27, 1998.
Galtung pointed out that this initiative cost only $250 for an extra stopover in Quito, a night in a hotel, and a very lavish meal for the Ex?President and his wife. By comparison, the Gulf War cost $100 billion, not counting the destruction it caused. Most of all, peaceful conflict transformation can save many lives.
Most governments wait until a conflict erupts in war and then intervene with military force, instead of seeking to find a peaceful solution long before it leads to violence. Such a policy is comparable to driving a car with closed eyes, waiting until we hit an obstacle and then calling an ambulance, instead of anticipating dangers and avoiding them.
We need a UN Agency for Mediation, with several thousand professionals, who can detect emerging conflicts and help transform them peacefully before they lead to war. That would be an excellent investment for a more peaceful world.
THE BLACK HOLE
When Johan Galtung, who is widely regarded as the founder of peace research, founded the first International Peace Research Institute in Oslo in 1959, he and his colleagues sent copies of their working papers regularly to about 400 institutes around the world, including the Institute for World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) in Moscow. They received acknowledgements from many quarters, but never heard anything from IMEMO. It was as if the papers disappeared in a black hole, leaving no trace. Despite of this lack of feedback, the members of the Oslo team persistently kept sending their papers on alternative approaches to peace, security and development to IMEMO throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1979, Johan Galtung attended a conference at IMEMO. During a break, the librarian took him to the basement in the library, opened a locked room, opened a locked cabinet inside the room, and showed him a pile of papers. Here was the entire collection of papers that he and his friends had been sending over the years. This was the "black hole". Surprisingly, the papers were worn out from having passed through many hands, edges bent and torn, with portions underlined and numerous notes in the margins.
In 1991, Vladimir Petrovsky, the Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister, came to see Johan Galtung in Oslo and said, "I really wanted to tell you once how grateful we were for all your papers that you kept sending us. During the Brezhnev era, I was part of a group of young scholars at IMEMO who met frequently to discuss new ideas, and we studied your books and papers intensively, among others. We knew that our system needed reform, and that the time for change was coming. You provided us with valuable new concepts and concrete ideas how to proceed."
The end of the Cold War has many sources, but new ideas developed by Western peace movements??on human rights, economic and political participation, nonviolent conflict resolution, security based on mutual cooperation instead of threats and confrontation, conversion of military industries to civilian use, and nonoffensive defense??which seeped into the former Soviet Union through various discrete channels and apparently found receptive ears, have played an important role.
Can individuals make a difference for the course of history, or are their efforts insignificant compared to major trends, like the movement of a single molecule in the wind? It is clear that if a situation is not ripe for change, if nobody wants to hear new proposals, one individual can make little difference. But if people are unhappy with their present conditions and search for new ways, a good idea, persuasively argued, can go a long way. Yet even when an opportunity for major change arises, someone must seize it or it may be missed. Similarly, if one plants a fruit tree in the desert, it will die. But even in the most fertile soil, under the best climatic conditions, only weeds may grow unless we plant something better. And we never know for sure whether an apparent desert may not hide fertile ground just below the surface, in which one seed can over time give rise to a whole forest. Even if we do not see the results of our efforts for peace immediately, we should not give up, because they may bear fruit some day in unexpected ways.
A SNOWFLAKE
Randy Kehler, who later became national coordinator of the Nuclear Freeze movement in the United States, was drafted into the Army in the early 1970s to go fight in Vietnam. Like many others, he refused to serve and was sentenced to jail. But unlike many others, he did more than that. Before beginning his jail sentence, he toured the United States, speaking out against the war on university campuses, in churches and to peace organizations. He had no idea whether this would make any difference, but his conscience demanded that he try to do whatever he could.
In one of his audiences was Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon analyst and co?author of the "Pentagon Papers,"the secret history of the Vietnam war. He had become increasingly disillusioned with the way the United States fought the war, and had begun to doubt its justification. But he said that what finally persuaded him to do something was hearing Randy Kehler speak. Here was a young man willing to go to jail for his conviction that the war was immoral. So Ellsberg secretly made four sets of photocopies of the 7,000 page report, and left them anonymously in boxes in front of the offices of the New York Times, the Washington Post and two other major national newspapers. When editors read the reports, they realized that they contain so many accurate facts that they could not have been forgeries by someone outside of the government, and they began to publish them. President Nixon ordered them to halt publication, but the US Supreme Court ruled that prior restraint violated the first amendment of the US constitution guaranteeing free speech. When people read that they had been deceived all these years by their own government, and that the United States was not winning the war, they began to oppose it in large numbers. That forced President Nixon to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam in 1973, and led to an end of the war in 1975.
At the right moment, one more snowflake can break the branch of a tree. Even if our efforts don't show any immediate result, whatever we do makes it easier for others who follow to complete our work.
Alone we can do little, but together we can make a difference, as the following metaphor suggests. A boy walked along the beach and picked up starfish in the sand and threw them back into the sea. A wise old man watched him for a while, and then asked him, "What are you doing?" The boy said, "I am throwing these starfish into the water to save them, because otherwise they would dry out and die". The wise old man laughed and said, "My dear boy, there are millions of starfish, you can never save them all". The boy replied, "I know I cannot save all of them, but it surely makes a difference for this one, and that one. They feel much better in the water". The old man agreed and began to help pick up starfish and throw them into the water. Other people saw them, and began to join. This way, the starfish were indeed saved.
As the anthropologist Margaret Mead has said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
Let us all do our best to help create a more peaceful and more just world.
by Dietrich Fischer
Academic Director, European University Center for Peace Studies(EPU), Stadtschlaining, Austria, and Co-Director, TRANSCEND
Peace by Peaceful Means
February 16, 2005
www.transcend.org
