Category: Theories and concepts

Northern Ireland and the Israel/Palestine ‘Peace Process’

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By Richard Falk

Having visited Belfast the last few days during some negotiations about unresolved problems between Unionist and Republican (or Nationalist) political parties, I was struck by the absolute dependence for any kind of credibility of this process upon the unblemished perceived neutrality of the mediating third party. It would have been so totally unacceptable to rely on Ireland or Britain to play such a role, and the mere suggestion of such a partisan intermediary would have occasioned ridicule by the opposing, and confirmed suspicions that its intention must have been to scuttle the proposed negotiations.

In the background of such a reflection is the constructive role played by the United States more than a decade ago when it actively encouraged a process of reconciliation through a historic abandonment of violence by the antagonists. That peace process was based on the justly celebrated Good Friday Agreement that brought the people of Northern Ireland a welcome measure of relief from the so-called ‘Time of Troubles’ even if the underlying antagonisms remain poignantly alive in the everyday realities of Belfast, as well as some lingering inclination toward violence among those extremist remnants of the struggle on both sides that reject all moves toward accommodation.Read More »

Peace in Colombia?

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By Johan Galtung

Bogotá, Direcccion de Inteligencia Policial, Ministerio de Defensa

Generals, Colonels, Conference Participants,

In June 1998 your President’s Office wanted proposals for peace, and I offered peace education, peace journalism and the guiding moral-ethical light, human rights, a holon of civil-political-socio-economic-cultural rights. Colombia is short on the latter, with flagrant injustices and a deep culture of violence.

In this conference a highly counter-productive word is being used: postconflict, instead of post-violence. Do not confuse them: violence means hurting-harming; conflicts are incompatible goals. Conflict may lead to frustration-aggression-violence, but personal and social maturity lead to progress bridging goals, to conflict solution. “Postconflict” sounds like all is solved with the end of violence, oblivious to reducing flagrant inequality, to harmony through empathy, trauma reconciliation, and capacity for ongoing conflict resolution.

Prognosis: violence returns, with a vengeance. Like in Colombia.

In the 1960s major uprisings took place in many parts of the world. There was the anti-Confucian cultural revolution in China for the rights of women, the young, the uneducated, and Western China; the Naxalites uprising in India, low caste and casteless tribals against the sellout to multinationals; the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese in Phnom Penh, in opposition to the French used to colonize Cambodia, and against the capital-city exploiting landless peasants. All three against millennia of solid structural violence.

As also in Nepal with Maoists fighting huge injustices related to caste and nation; like in the Philippines, classes but also Moros vs Christians; and in Sri Lanka, not classes but nations, Tamils vs Sinhalese.

And in Latin America, classes, domestic and imperial–starting with Cuba–in Colombia as FARC-Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia and ELN-Ejército de Liberación Nacional against the poderes fácticos latifundista-military-clergy complex and the USA-Colombia military alliance.

What came out of these Zeitgeist revolts in six Asia countries?

Only one country, China, benefitted from conflict resolution; the others, under strong Western pressure, suffered postconflict treatment. The Cultural Revolution was denounced abroad and in China; yet today there are women, young and educated people all over China and West China is blossoming. There are some moves in the same direction in Cambodia.

In the other five: status quo. With foreign advisors democratic constitutions were drafted as the US enters the post-democratic stage with easily corruptible legislators accountable to banks and business, not to the people. The real focus was to restore the government’s army monopoly through the DDR formula Dissolution Disarmament Reintegration; in India and Sri Lanka through mass murder, in the Philippines on again-off-again conferences, in Nepal post-democracy with heavy corruption.Read More »

Should the UN go into battle?

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By Jonathan Power

This year the UN Security Council authorised the deployment of troops to the eastern Congo, armed with tanks and helicopter gun ships to defeat the one remaining dissident militia in the Congo. Two weeks ago UN officials declared that war in the Congo, which on and off has consumed the nation for over 50 years, seemed to be over. The UN, instead of using its blue helmets to keep the peace, used its soldiers to blast the enemy.

Rarely talked about is Article 42 of the UN Charter which says,“The Security Council ….may take such action by air, sea or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security.”Read More »

And yet it moves! – Education for peace in Mexico

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By Johan Galtung & Fernando Montiel


Mexico-DF

The indigenous rising in Chiapas, 1994 changed Mexico in several different ways. On the one hand it placed hidden historical –and yet massive and painful- topics just in the middle of the political debate: racism and indigenous rights among others came out of the closet to be discussed, addressed and -hopefully- solved.

Hard politics entered the scene after the romantic episode of the Zapatista rebellion -characterized by the masked men and women and their tale-writer and political leader- by means of counter insurgency policies, paramilitary groups and propaganda campaigns, among others. And it was exactly then, when more concern and attention and clarity and coverage was needed from the international community, that the eyes of the world started turning to some other crises elsewhere. The massacre of 45 woman and children in Acteal (Dec. 22, 1997) briefly placed Chiapas again in the headlines but after the atrocity silence ruled again.

Those past events in the 90s seeded and nurtured much of the cataclysm that would come later, which in recent past became known as the “war on drugs.” For these reasons it is quite surprising that specialists fail to make the connection between one crisis and the other notwithstanding the common ground. The special forces used now to fight drug dealers/producers were formed because of the 1994 uprising; the militarization –now rampant and nationwide- began with Chiapas; the abandon of the countryside –one of the Zapatista complaints- is fertile soil for drug trafficking and NAFTA –North American Free Trade Agreement- which was enacted the exact same day the rebellion started with three effects:Read More »

NSA and the fall of the U.S. Empire

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By Johan Galtung

The linchpin of an empire is the link between two elites, one in the imperial center and the other in the peripheries. Symmetric alliances exist, but not with a superpower in the center.

The periphery elites do jobs for the center: killing, say, in Libya, Syria, when so wanted; securing the center economic interests in return for a substantial cut, serving as a bridgehead culturally–called americanization–delivering obedience against protection.

For this to work the elites have to believe in the empire. They put words up front–like democracy, human rights, rule of law–serving as human shields. However, the costs may be heavy, the benefits decreasing; they may have difficulties with restless students, working classes, other countries. Or worse: they may sense that the empire is not working, heading for decline and fall, and want to get out.

And even if this is not the case, the US elites – the policy officials – may suspect it to be and spy on empire-alliance leaders:

[Director of the NSA] General Keith Alexander: “NSA–was asked by /US/ policy officials to discover the “leadership intentions” of foreign countries. If you want to know leadership intentions, these were the issues” (english@other-news.info 01-11-13).

Clear from the beginning, beyond “threats to privacy”, “they all do it”, “it was technically feasible”, and similar smoke screens. Spying on intentions of enemy leaders–the “humint” (HUMan INTelligence) to complement capabilities–is an obvious part of the state system. But on allies?

Even more so. There are allies and allies; empires may decline. Foreign leaders may not offer full obedience in return for protection. Or may not accept US views as accurate, but have their own. They may even explore options. Their real intentions are crucial, and nobody can spy and supervise better than their own secret agencies – coordinated by CIA-NSA–and in their own language. Alexander said the obvious: “policy officials” (ambassadors, etc.) and alliance agencies spying together on policy-makers. The real power elite inside the elite.

Look at this through Angela Merkel’s eyes. She hated the DDR-Deutsche Demokratische Republik Stasi surveillance. But they were amateurs; these people are professionals. A decade went unnoticed, till Snowden. Imagine her rage, comparing.

And imagine the non-rage over the same in Spain: beyond Franco, yes, but Rajoy’s party (Partido Popular) is the – highly corrupt –successor to Franco.Read More »

The geopolitics of education for peace *

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By Johan Galtung

60 years of peace theory and peace practice can be summarized in

EQUITY x HARMONY
PEACE = ________________________

TRAUMA x CONFLICT

Four theory foci, four policy tasks, and four education topics. Any true education should prepare for practice, guided by general theory.

Moving from denominator right to numerator left, this means:

* mediating acceptable and sustainable conflict solutions;

* conciliating parties locked in traumas from the past;

* empathizing with all parties divided by social/world faultlines;

* building cooperation for mutual and equal benefit.

Mediation is verbal, based on dialogues with the parties, but the four tasks are very concrete, practical. For doers not only talkers; for practical people like officers. Hence the Big Question: is peace theory-practice-education compatible with the military mind – however defined, and there are many military cultures in the world–or not?Read More »

A tale of two speeches: Rouhani and Netanyahu at UN General Assembly

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By Farhang Jahanpour*

With the progress of the talks in Geneva between Iran and the six world powers (the so-called P5+1) on 15 and 16 October, there is growing optimism about a lasting solution to Iran’s nuclear program and to the resumption of relations between Iran and the United States after 34 years of estrangement. After an hour-long power-point presentation by the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, which he called “closing unnecessary crisis, and opening new horizons”, Michael Mann, the spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton who is leading the talks for the P5+1 group, described the Iranian proposal as “very useful” and said: “For the first time, very detailed technical discussions took place.” (1)

The exact choice of words was also repeated by a senior US official taking part in the talks. After the formal talks between the two sides, there was another US-Iran bilateral meeting between the chief US representative in the talks, Ms. Wendy Sherman, and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi who led the Iranian delegation after the Iranian foreign minister’s original presentation. This was the second time after the meeting of Iranian and US foreign ministers in New York that senior officials from the two sides had had a bilateral meeting.Read More »

BRICS: The real “Global South” today

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By Johan Galtung

Keynote European Center for Peace and Development, Beograd, 12 Oct 2013

Two basic facts stand out in the world economic development, leaving aside military, political, cultural and social development:

* The BRICS – an acronym becoming a social fact–are emerging;

* The USA-EU are declining; not only as markets, also as producers.

Another way of saying this is that the West has been outcompeted, not by the Rest but by – so far – a select part. The world market is not constant but increasing sum, but much demand may be met by domestic production, not by import-export. As part of the story.

The West got the definition of development wrong, still clinging to economic development = economic growth (measured by annual GNP/capita increase). The BRICS understood development differently, adding economic distribution (measured by the ratio in acquisitive power between the top and bottom 20%, and between the CEO and average worker salary; at the macro and micro levels). No growth spells recession-depression, no distribution spells worse: death. For economic, like for geographic, positioning, at least two dimensions are needed. A professor in latitudes, or growth, only, is simply not good enough.

Development becomes increasing growth and increasing equality. Growth alone may lead to flagrant inequality at the expense of those at the bottom and nature–a system we know only too well–distribution alone may lead to the shared misery of some human past. We need both.

The map of the world was also wrong. Read More »

Balkan integration process in a global framework

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By Johan Galtung

Keynote, European Center for Peace and Development, Beograd, 11 Oct 2013

The Balkan integration process within, and the global framework without, are both parts of the story of empires that come, leave deep and bloody faultlines within and without, and then decline and fall.

Thus, the Balkans were doubly divided in the 11th century by the schism between the Catholics and the Orthodox in 1054, following the 395 split between the Western and Eastern Roman empires, Rome vs Constantinople; and the declaration of war on Islam by Pope Urban II on 27 Nov 1095.

The two dividing lines intersect in Sarajevo, the Bosnia and Herzegovina-BiH Ground Zero for Euro-quakes. The Hapsburgs from Northwest annexed BiH in 1908, and a shot followed in 1914. The Ottomans from Southeast defeated the Serbs in 1397 and were defeated in the 1912 Balkan war, leaving Slavic and Albanian Muslims. A little later, 1918, the Hapsburgs also went the way of Roman and Ottoman empires: Decline and Fall; over and out.

The Soviets came, and went the same way in 1991; the US Empire is following – by 30 years? – meeting their fates, not in the Balkans but in Afghanistan where empires are said to come to die. Today the Balkans are run from Brussels; by the deeply troubled European Union with “high” representatives, and by NATO, led by a bankrupt country, right now ridden by government shutdown and the threat of default.

A four factor formula for positive peace indicates four tasks:Read More »