Category: Johan Galtung

Criminalize war!

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By Johan Galtung

Nobody has brought this simple message to the world like the Perdana Global Peace Foundation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As the leader, Mahathir Mohammad, Malaysia’s fourth prime minister says:

“Peace for us simply means the absence of war. We must never be deflected from this simple objective”.

So they organize compelling exhibitions and conferences to highlight the atrocities and horrors of war, starting with World War I, often in cooperation with Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta University in Indonesia. A very clear message from the Southeastern part of the world to the Northwestern part: Stop It! All your rules of war add up to its legitimation; wars get ever worse as measured by the percentage of non-combatant, civilian casualties; from about 10 percent in World War I to 90 percent in the Vietnam and other wars at the end of the 20th century. They dare refer to crimes as “unintended consequences”, “collateral damage”.

Take Norway, a “peace nation”, as example; not the USA an Israel with their gods, the idea of being chosen, and exceptionalism. See what Norway does against the spirit of UNSC-United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 to protect civilians, promote cease-fire and mediate a political solution in Libya. And against the UN Charter Article 2 outlawing war.

According to testimony by pilots on the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation “Brennpunkt” (In Focus), 25 percent of the bombing was planned with goals selected in advance. Read More »

Bravo, Pope Francis

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By Johan Galtung

The Catholic–meaning universal–Church matters to all of us as a major part of Western civilization. And the Pope lives up to both his Jesuit heritage and that of his great namesake St Francis–see this column six months ago, 18 Mar 2013, when he was elected.

We shall permit ourselves to extrapolate a little from what he told in an interview to the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica (IHT, 20 Sep 13). The Roman Catholic Church had become “obsessed” with abortion, gay marriage and contraception. The church should become a home for all and not a small chapel. “We have to find a new balance”, the Pope says, “otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the gospel”.

Turn the page of that issue of the International Herald Tribune and on p. 2 Muslim Salma Yacoob, a former Birmingham Council woman, raises the same type of question: “Is this (the veil) the biggest issue we face in the U.K. right now?” Read More »

Syria: Three conflict levels – and the solutions?

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By Johan Galtung

There seem to be three levels to the Syrian conundrum.

On top is the conflict over who is to rule Syria, the Assad minority Shia, 13%, mainly Alawite – or Baath rather, more secular, socialist–dictatorship respecting other minorities – Christians, Armenians, Assyrians, Druze, Kurds, Turkoman, or a majority Sunni, 73% dictatorship with no such respect. Both groups fight with brutality, the list of crimes on both sides is long, and the world is watching the unbearable suffering of the Syrian people, even from nerve gases.

Then, in the middle, is the usual geopolitical game of states and regions. In the background are huge alliances, the 28 mainly small NATO countries against the 6+ SCO-Shanghai Cooperation Organization countries with two enormous members. The five veto powers of the UN Security Council are openly involved – USA, UK, France, Russia and China, and Turkey, for their economic, military and political interests, paralyzing the UN Security Council (like the USA blocking a UNSC resolution after the February 2013 Damascus bombing).

And then, at the bottom, feeding into it all, two cultural, religious fundamentalisms. Read More »

Caucasus leaving the Cold War

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By Johan Galtung
Writing from Tbilisi, Georgia

With Georgia (4.5 million) a client of the USA (314 million), fighting its war in Afghanistan; Armenia (3.3 million) leaning towards Russia (143 million); and Azerbaijan (9.2 million) in a bitter conflict over the Armenian enclave Karabagh on much of its territory (less so over the Azeri enclave Nakhichevan on Armenian soil), the stage is set. Add the Russian cultural enclaves in Georgia–Abkhazia and South Ossetia–recognized by few, but some, as states, and visits to Caucasus were a time machine trip back to the Cold War.

But that is not all where Georgia is concerned. There is also the Muslim Adjara enclave bordering on Turkey, and Azeris, Armenians and others, living in the very multinational Georgia, some with strong territorial attachments. People of at least 28 nations live among and around each other in the Caucasus. But modernity demanded clear state borders, also in what became in 1922 the Soviet Union. The state system did not fit the nation system, but states there must be, all over, subjecting dozens of minorities to dominant nations that create illusions by imprinting the three states with their names.

Same as in Europe. Read More »

Good peace proposals quite often works!

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By Johan Galtung

Kuala Lumpur: Perdana Global Peace Foundation, 25 August 2013: “Global Peace Efforts: What Went Wrong & What Next?”

The TRANSCEND NGO Mediation Network just turned 20, and our experience is clear: a good peace proposal quite often works.

To mention some out of 30 positive experiences: we have had a hand in launching peace studies and peace journalism; improving race relations in Charlottesville, VA; in ending the Cold War through bridge-building between Norway and Poland, the idea of a Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe and nonviolence; in improving North-South relations through South-South cooperation and then relinking with North on a basis of equity–this from the early 1960s.

Later on there have been contributions to peace on the Korean peninsula (first unify the nation, then perhaps the countries), the Kurdish issue (a Kurdistan as a confederation of human rights-based autonomies in the four countries), ending the longest war in Latin America, Ecuador/Peru (a two-state condominium up in the Andes with a natural park, later a joint economic zone); in tripartite peace in the Caucasus; in solutions for bullying in schools; in judicial mediation; in the problem of settlers in Zimbabwe; conciliation Germany/Herero, Turkey/Armenians, Denmark/Islam; and so on and so forth, up till now.

Our conspicuous failures include Read More »

Civilization dialogue as a way of life

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By Johan Galtung

Civilization: there are six sources of inspiration today, vying for the attention of a humanity looking for goals and means. Two of them are Western secular, liberal and Marxist, defining to a large extent the USA and the former Soviet Union, but not identical with them. Two of them are Oriental amalgams of civilizations, the Japanese Shinto-Confucian-Buddhist civilization, trying to be Western liberal, and the Chinese Daoist-Confucian-Buddhist civilization with strong elements of Western liberal and Western Marxist. And two of them are in-between: the Islamic and the Buddhist civilizations.[i]

Dialogue: it simply has to happen. Read More »

Five theses about Assange-Manning-Snowden

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By Johan Galtung

[1] The leaks are not about “whistle-blowing”, but a nonviolent, civil disobedient, fight against huge social evils.

Whistle-blowing, warning, presupposes that somebody can be warned, in fact wants to be warned, and is in a position to do something. Obviously those who can do something about US foreign policy, who have the power–legislative, the Congress, particularly the Senate; executive, State Department-Pentagon-White House; judiciary the Supreme Court; economically the giant banks; culturally the mainstream media – know perfectly well what is going on: these are all efforts to hang on to imperial economic, military, political and cultural power. But they do not want change. And those who want a change, a major part of the US population, allied populations and most of the rest of the world have been warned, but are to a large extent powerless. So they believe; but see thesis [5].

The whistle-blowing discourse is much too optimistic. Read More »

Alternative defence for states – transarmament

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By Johan Galtung

Speech held in the Senate, Rome, July 23, 2013

Your Excellencies, Foreign Affairs, Defense, EU…

SYSTEMS: A Reorientation

[1] Transarmament: States use armies for defense, and for offense, for wars. Si vis pacem, para bellum, peace through security tries to cover both; but offensive military threatens, provokes arms races, even wars. Si vis pacem para pacem, security through peace is not disarmament leaving regions, states and local level defense-less; rather, it identifies conflicts and traumas underlying violence in order to solve them, builds peaceful state relations, and defensive defense “just in case”.

[2] Nonalignment: Solidarity and help to victims of aggression should be based on the merits of the case, not by alliance membership. This implies NATO and EU transarmament to regional defensive defense, and UN world collective defense under representative military command.

[3] Being useful to other countries: having developed positive relations such that others want to enhance, not destroy the country. There are many ways: through mutually beneficial trade, tourism for nature or culture, through support when suffering attacks, or social and natural catastrophes, by serving as experts in peace-building.

[4] Being less vulnerable: political-military decentralization so that aggression against any sector-part does not paralyze the whole country; resistance, and much normal life, can be continued.

Economic self-reliance, especially energy/food–self-sufficiency only as a possibility in emergencies–not to be tempted into attacking others if trade fails, keeping economic sectors–primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary for reproduction–intact; producing for basic needs at home as much as possible, getting the rest through trade.

Defense against spying by not having secrets; transarmament works openly, to prevent and deter. A more cooperative, less competitive economy (more cooperatives, less companies); inviting others to join.

ALTERNATIVE: Building Peace

[5] Conflict resolution. Read More »

Competition and cooperation: Finland’s school system

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By Johan Galtung

“The Secrets to Finland’s Success with School—and Everything”, The Atlantic (11-Jul-2013), has many messages to a US readership from that particular welfare state. One of them is a school system which ranks as one of the world’s best with no standard testing or South-/and East!/Asian “cramming”; limiting student testing to a necessary minimum; there is less emphasis on competition. And another, closely related, Finns have an incredible equality and very little poverty; an extremely low child-poverty rate. The two points are related.

The article, written by Olga Khazan, wisely points to smallness and high homogeneity as two factors underlying the “success”, also known to the other Nordic countries. However, as pointed out, there are “sizeable Swedish and Russian-speaking communities – the former ruling the country till 1809, the latter on till the Russian 1917 revolution–took time to even it out. What the article has not picked up is the closeness to that revolution, and its impact on the labor movements: lifting the bottom up for more equality is possible; education and health are basic tools; it is the task of the government; it requires planning; and, what USSR failed to pick up: it works better with democracy.Read More »

The U.S. micro-managing the world

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By Johan Galtung

There is a simple way of judging the adequacy of media: the focus is on Snowden’s revelations – PRISM, TEMPORA etc. – or on Snowden himself? He is but one in a great chain of revealers driven by conscience rather than money or oaths; there will be more revelations given the enormity of the US spying machine on the world. But, what does it do?

The issue is not the “freedom of expression” of the revealers, the “whistle-blowers”. If they reveal the systematic subversion – and “superversion” from above – of all civil-political and socio-economic human rights, then the denial of the freedom of expression to machine operators is an obvious and rather small part. The focus is naive.

Nor is the intrusion into the privacy of potentially any human being on earth the issue. Recording all traces, verbal and otherwise, left behind by all of us, putting them together for a more holistic image and filing it for its predictive and interventionist value is certainly an “intrusion”. But the basic problem is, for what?Read More »