Category: Johan Galtung

Humankind 2050: Making peace with our futures

JOLeave a comment

By Johan Galtung

Keynote Speech, World Futures Studies Federation 40th anniversary – Bucuresti, România

Future studies, like peace-development-environment studies, is an inter-disciplinary, inter-national effort to get a grip on key issues; divided into preferred futures–utopias–whose?; predicted futures–forecasting–who does it for whom?; and future practice–scenarios bending the predicted toward the preferred–by and for whom?

The title of Ravi Morey’s Looking Backward: 2050-2013 catches future studies in a nutshell: exploring intermediate stages between a fully democratic world government and our 2013 present. The road may pass through a bankrupt USA bailed out by a democratic China in 2025. Some may argue that is already happening, with China – more democratic than the West knows – being creditor No. 1, and the USA – more bankrupt than the USA admits – debtor No. 1; Nos. 1 and 190 among 190 countries.

Like in 1967, in Oslo, for the predecessor organization Mankind 2000 this keynote is on international futures. Preferred futures:Read More »

Think and act – locally and globally

JOLeave a comment

By Johan Galtung

Alfaz del Pi, located between Mediterranean beaches and a couple of majestic mountains, Campana-Aitana (Man and Woman) 1500 meters high. Today this small town generously accommodates 21,500; surrounded by fertile soil, orange and olive trees, vines. Benidorm – the famous tourist resort – and Altea, more for artists, are at hand stretching distance; on the Costa Blanca – white seen from the sea – in Spain.

So far nothing special. But that little town is home to close to one hundred different nations; 57% are foreigners. The English and the Norwegians are the most frequent; the Norwegians arriving already some 45 years ago. Close to half a century of peaceful coexistence; and not only absence of violence but also positive, cooperative peace.

We, a Japanese-Norwegian couple, arrived June 1969. First time in Spain was in 1951, hitchhiking to understand fascism better. Franco had evolved from dictadura, dictatorship, after a brutal civil war, to dictablanda, the softer version. But the basic aspect of dictatorship was there like a nightmare draped over the country: fear, fear, fear; so many listening, so few talking. But some said, if you only come for the beach, stay at home. Bring books; we are isolated, not knowing what happens. Franco will not last forever, we must be prepared.

Books were brought. Customs people hardly knew how to read but quickly identifying more copies than one; hence, one of each. Books were handed over, to the right – in this case left – people, for instance at a conference in Madrid in June 1969. And the books were read.

The summer heat was unbearable. We drove to the coast to visit a friend, officer in the Norwegian army, with years of dialogues behind us. They lived in an “urbanización” that looked like a Scandinavian ghetto, making us exclaim: Never for us! In the evening we had made the downpayment for a house. How come? The beach, the mountains, the roof terrace, a depository for books in transit: Yes!Read More »

Reinventing Fascism

JOLeave a comment

By Johan Galtung

The atrocious Second World War left behind lasting damage by lowering our standards for what is marginally acceptable. War is bad; but if it is not nuclear, the limit has not yet been reached. Fascism is bad; but if it does not come with dictatorship and the elimination of a category of people, the limit has not yet been reached. Hiroshima, Hitler, Auschwitz are deeply rooted in our minds, distorting them.

Hiroshima makes us disregard the state terrorism against German and Japanese cities, killing citizens of any age and gender. And Hitler and Auschwitz make us disregard fascism as the pursuit of political goals by means of violence and the threats of violence. It takes two to make a war, by whatever means. But it takes only one to make fascism, against one’s own people, and/or against others.

What is the essence of fascism? Read More »

Turkey getting stuck again?

JOLeave a comment

By Johan Galtung

From Istanbul

Turkey did the impossible, moving almost without violence from a military secular dictatorship to a civilian Sunni majority democracy. Turkey got unstuck. Sarkar’s circulation of elites at work: military elites, then religious-intellectuals, then business, then ordinary people–and once again the military. Second cycle.

Big Business would knock at the door, as it did in the Thatcher-Reagan revolution of the mid-1980s. Hence, not surprising that a big mall was one of the projects, together with an opera, a mosque and a monument from the Ottoman period for the Taksim Square-Gezi Park project. Every element a gift for Istanbul’s 14 million inhabitants. But, at the expense of a park, green nature, lungs, in that part of Istanbul.

Whether it escalated from this point to an extra-parliamentary confrontation between the winners (Justice and Development Party-AKP) and losers (Republican People’s Party-CHP) of the last two elections – the losers carrying much of the infelicitous past – or the other way round, or both, can be and is debated here.

Other processes are going on. Syria. Read More »

EU Commission supports manipulative research for post-democracy

JOLeave a comment

By Johan Galtung

How do the elites of declining empires react? One answer is demoralization. Like 26,000 annual acts of sexual harassment in the US Army leaving little time for killing; and one US soldier on active duty committing suicide every 18 hours–higher than combat deaths–the figures for veterans being one every 80 minutes. Or else, simply giving up empires–like the colonial powers did before and after the official abolition of colonialism (UN Charter Art. 73). Like Moscow outside and inside the Soviet Union, copying England with a Commonwealth of Independent States. Like the USA is partly doing, and partly not, hanging on to the last countries willing to kill for them, like Canada, Norway, Japan, Georgia. And partly not, working on imperial strongholds in Africa and the Pacific; doing the long distance killing themselves.

But what do such dubious elites do with their own peoples? Wise elites wash their hands off imperialism, declare it passé, a mistake, retool their economies for less dependence on resources and markets from and in their peripheries that now process the resources themselves for themselves and others. Read More »

The Americas: Columbia and the U.S.

JOLeave a comment

By Johan Galtung

A few years ago the two countries were the leaders in mental anxiety in the Americas. Both had good reasons: the longest lasting violence in any contemporary country; in Colombia from 1949 with some interruption, then on again from 1964 with FARC, the famous guerilla. And for the USA the conviction that Evil is around every corner, domestic and global; better have the arms to handle those bad guys.

In both, structural violence as unequal distribution of economic wealth and control of economic assets are among the world’s highest.

There is a difference, though: one country submits its problem to third party mediation, Read More »

Mono-, multi-, inter-, cross-, and transdisciplinary research

JOLeave a comment

By Johan Galtung

Firenze, European University Institute

Five ways of doing research, re-search, for insight, knowledge, solutions. How it is done matters.

The world does not come to us sorted out according to university faculties – natural, human, social sciences – and disciplines, in social sciences from micro (psychology) via meso (sociology, politology, anthropology, economics) to macro-mega, inter-state, -inter-nation, inter-region, inter-civilization studies. Rather, the world comes to us as a set of messy, chaotic problems: some goal we want to obtain like health – or at least absence of disease–functional, be good-looking, having affordable housing, taming nature and making it serve us; or a clash of goals, known as conflicts we want to solve to avoid violence.

So, why are universities not organized according to problems? Read More »

Meanwhile, Manchester United…

JOLeave a comment

By Johan Galtung

It usually came at the end of BBC broadcasts: now Sir Alex Ferguson is up front, main headline on the International Herald Tribune, first page. Truly impressive, 27 years as Man U coach and manager, sorry CEO; this is now a business enterprise owned by the Glazer family in Florida and the news of his retirement shock its shares at the New York Stock Exchange. Where have all the sports gone?

Up comes the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, with mainstream press harking back to years of greatness centered on strong personalities. She was with Ronald Reagan part of the mid 1980s counter-revolution, breathing short term life in stagnant economies through privatization, busting trade unions, de-industralizing, laying regions of their countries waste, crippling welfare states – ”Rust in Peace” they say. When accused of selling the family silver by privatizing, she said: Yes, back to the family!
Where has all the silver gone?

But she kept the Kingdom United by letting a hunger striking Irish freedom fighter die in prison, and, like Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher showed the colors and sent the army for some islands, Malvinas-Falklands for Thatcher (over Reagan’s mild protest, Monroe territory), Grenada for Reagan.
Where have all the empires gone?Read More »

An octogonal world

JOLeave a comment

By Johan Galtung

Let us try a look at the world from above, right now. There is so much drama unfolding. Is there a Big Picture? Of course there is, we all have one, so here is one effort, imgaine it as The Octagon, consisting of these eight big states or regions:

1) USA, 2) Russia, 3) India, 4) China, 5) OIC (the Organization of Islamic Conference, the 57 Muslim countries), 6) EU (27), 7) Africa (AU, African Union, 54 countries) and 8 ) CELAC, Latin America and the Caribbean, 33 countries). We might add Israel and Japan to the USA if the criterion is willingness to go to war with and for the USA – but Israel wants the USA to fight its wars, and Japan, even with Japanese hawks more than willing to join the nuclear club, is still bound by the constitution depriving Japan of the right to war. So they work for a new constitution with an emergency article that could justify a military take-over. Ominous. Hopefully Germany does not follow suit.Read More »

Syria – toward a Swiss solution?

JOLeave a comment

By Johan Galtung

We all feel desperate watching the horrible killing, feeling the suffering of the bereaved, the whole people. But, what to do?

Could it be that the UN, and governments in general, have a tendency to make the same mistake, again and again, of putting the cart before the horse? The formula they use is generally:

1. Get rid of No. 1 as key responsible, using sanctions; then
2. Cease-fire, appealing to the parties, or intervening, imposing;
3. Negotiation among all legitimate parties; and from that
4. A political solution as a compromise between the positions.

It looks so logical. There is a key responsible, President Assad, ordering the killing; get rid of him by all means. Then the cease-fire, the fire ceasing; then negotiation, and then the solution emerges. Logical, yes; but maybe not very wise.Read More »