Peace Culture And Society

Transnational Research And Dialogue

Elise Boulding, Clovis Brigagao, Kevin Clements

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000314038
• Subtopic: Peace & Global Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"1989 certainly represents one of those moments. yet, when IPRA held its
12th General Conference in August 1988, few of the participants imagined that
within the space of 13 months popular social movements would topple socialist
regimes in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the German Democratic
Republic.Nobody imagined the Berlin wall or the wire fence between Hungary and Austria being dismantled. Even fewer contemplated the overthrow of the
Ceaucescu regime in Rumania, pluralistic politics in Bulgaria, a single German
economy or a reunited Germany."

Part One
Common Security: General and Regional Approaches

Introduction to Part One

Elise Boulding

Although “common security” is a phrase widely used, as a concept it remains difficult to understand. Pamir highlights these difficulties for us by pointing out the contrast between the intellectual understanding of security, as global and indivisible, and the highly charged preoccupation of nation states with nuclear-based national security. By distinguishing between power as brute force (the use of which is a sign of weakness) and power as skill, confidence and the capacity to act, Pamir shifts the security argument from threat to confidence-building, from bluster to competence. Her emphasis on competence, patience, and the willingness to ride with ups and downs and take risks for peace instead of for war, sets the theme for this section.

Brock, in his application of the Palme Commission Report on Common Security and of the European experience in confidence-building to Central America, makes it very clear that there are many ups and downs in such processes. He likens the current deteriorating situation in Central America to an earlier deterioration in East-West relations in Europe. He also points out that patience, tactical adjustments during setbacks and the slow development of new competencies gradually drew the European process from purely symbolic to substantive problem-solving. Regionalization is the key, Brock believes. He sees the same process happening region by region around the world, however slowly.

When Phillips describes the same process for the Caribbean, the tone is more somber, the awareness of the downs after the ups and the role of the intervention-prone U.S. in those downs more intense. The concept of the zone of peace only seems viable on the basis of a longer time perspective than Phillips is dealing with. Okoh, looking at the struggles of the Organization of African Unity to declare Africa a Zone of Peace, inclines to Phillips’ view that regional efforts are at the mercy of outside intervention. Yet, Okoh also sees the slow development of increasing regional competence and autonomy in spite of the negative impact of the aims race on African development.

Osseiren, looking at the conflict-tom region of the Middle East, notes that most of the current developments are extremely negative; but that nevertheless, the resources for problem-solving are present in the traditional cultures of the region. The recovery of internal autonomy and competence in the face of outside pressures requires time, but will, Osseiren feels, eventually take place.

This theme of an underlying development of autonomy and competence in the face of violent ups and downs is documented by Clements with a detail that deserves careful reading, for the South West Pacific and South East and East Asia regions. The steady increase in problem-solving behavior over time takes place in spite of heavy interventions by the major powers. While there are many problems, and the integrative power of market forces brings its own dangers, the long-term future is promising.

Kenneth Boulding goes to the heart of the issue of how common security and its accompaniment, cooperative problem-solving behavior, develop, by asking: What are the conditions for social learning? While his examples are Eurocentric, his point that we need to study this kind of learning even as it is happening, in order to be able to extend that learning process, is an important message for peace researchers.

3
The Path to Common Security

Peri Pamir

Introduction

The concept of common security emerged in response to deepening anxiety over the perceived implications to world peace and security of continued reliance on the strategy of nuclear deterrence. The imperative for other forms of security¹ rests on the firm conviction that nuclear weapons have ceased to play any viable political or military role.² The so-called “threat of mutual destruction’ is regarded as having lost its ‘credibility’ as the ultimate guarantor of ‘nuclear peace,’ the main problem arising from the constant attempt to counter mutual vulnerability through offensive military build-ups suggesting first-strike postures. What these have done is to create a situation which has effectively moved beyond the generally presumed stage of a symmetric or stable balance of military power. Because of the mutually reinforcing link between the spiral of arms competition and the ensuing cycle of mutual insecurity, deterrence is increasingly being perceived by observers on both sides as an offensive and terrorizing strategy which poses inherent dangers of failure, instability and risk of predominantly inadvertent nuclear war. Magnified by the pace of technological military advancements, enhanced fear and mistrust, and a concomitant deterioration in political relations, these destabilizing elements have upset the delicate equilibrium of nuclear deterrence by rendering the attendant risk of mutual devastation unacceptably high.

There is also the obvious moral dimension associated with the policy of seeking security by resorting to nuclear terror. For peace and security, in their complete and desired sense, imply not only guarantees of permanent absence of conflict, but also freedom from the terror to which the constant threat of nuclear confrontation aspires, and on which nuclear deterrence is based. Given this aspiration, the threat to use nuclear weapons constitutes the purest form of terrorism. For in this case, not only does the nuclear menace hold the entire world hostage to the fear of total nuclear catastrophe, but it also denies people their fundamental right to choice in their future. Furthermore, in seeking to create fear by power and to coerce conduct by fear, which is tyranny, nuclear terrorism constitutes the most blatant instrument of the strategy of domination. A further liability is created by the dangerous precedent set for other countries in the world by the major powers’ continued reliance on nuclear arms as an essential instrument of national security. The pursuit of nuclear deterrence and the arms race thus makes a mockery of attempts to forestall global nuclear proliferation, by strengthening the perception among other potential contenders that nuclear weapons constitute a necessary and legitimate device for safeguarding national security interests.

In view of the dilemmas, uncertainties and risks connected with the present system of security, national consensus on nuclear defense policies in many countries has broken down. Public dissatisfaction on this issue has been particularly manifest in densely militarized Europe. Such reactions suggest a progressive erosion of public faith in the hypothetical claim, oft-invoked by Western governments to justify continued reliance on nuclear strategy, that the maintenance of post-war peace is largely attributable to the existence of nuclear weapons. This argument—or myth—rests on the assumption that the mutual threat of war has enabled the big powers to exercise great caution in avoiding direct military confrontation. The emergence of important and increasingly more powerful peace movements attests to the growing view that far from assuring survival, nuclear weapons in fact constitute a fundamental threat to it They also testify to the awareness that since nuclear war would not respect frontiers and would not be containable, questions of nuclear defense concern not only the nuclear powers or the governments, but all peoples. Domestic political pressure has consequently had an impact in obliging opposition parties and even elected governments in Europe and elsewhere to adopt postures favoring policies of nuclear disengagement Even though the vision of a nuclear-free world is still a remote one, the manifestation of widespread international concern about peace and security has necessitated serious consideration of alternative approaches to defense which offer a more viable and sound basis for both national and global security. Any attempt to seek solutions to the present problem will, however, have to be preceded by a fundamental reassessment of what exactly constitutes security in the contemporary nuclear age.

In this vein, the advocates of a new mode of political thinking on security policy rightly argue that if the present danger is to be reversed, it is above all imperative for the nuclear power states—and especially the two superpowers—to recognize that security in the nuclear age has become indivisible; that it can no longer be gained unilaterally, or on the basis of a zero-sum ordering of military power. Since conflicts can no longer be resolved on the basis of military force, it is widely admitted that the only possible means to assure security—indeed, survival-is to move away from confrontational postures towards greater political accommodation.

The philosophy of common security embraces this logic. The full meaning of the term as used here describes both an objective and a strategy. Ultimately, it seeks to ensure those conditions whereby nuclear-and, eventually, any kind of war-will not be started, and consists of a process which aims in the first instance at addressing both the military and political sources of conflict and insecurity. In terms of strategy, the underlying objective of common security is to establish a process of mutual restraint and cooperation between states based on a common perception of their mutual dependence and shared interest in reducing the threat of nuclear war. Such an approach would flow from the mutual appreciation that the consequences of nuclear deterrence have ultimately overridden and overtaken any justification it may have had at the outset.

Eliminating the threat of nuclear war would, however, represent the primary, not the ultimate aspiration of common security. Its longer-term and more comprehensive version would presumably envisage a global order where the threat of all types of violence and conflicting has receded and been replaced by stability and cooperation. Although the two meanings will clearly overlap in certain instances, in this paper the term ‘common security’ will more frequently than not be equated with the ‘primary’ goal. This is based on the reasoning that in order to attain global security, states initially have to reach a realization of their common interests which, in the first instance, involves the reduction and eventual elimination of the nuclear peril.

Although this conception of security yields easily enough to moral approbation, the question of translating it into political reality is a different matter altogether. This paper will limit its scope to a preliminary analysis of what such a policy would mean and imply in political and perceptual terms. The discussion on common security will be preceded by a closer look at some aspects of the ‘security dilemma’ engendered by continued dependence on the strategy of nuclear deterrence. We will then proceed by identifying certain situations which either help or hinder the development of a common security process. Specific reference to the situation in Europe will be made where appropriate.

Security Dilemma

One of the major flaws of the doctrine of nuclear deterrence is that it still operates on the basis of traditional concepts of power. This is generally understood as the ability to deal from a position of strength. Quite apart from the fact that this definition is no longer tenable in the era of relative ‘nuclear parity,’ it is also, more significantly, riddled with inherent weaknesses. ‘Power’ that must constantly be struggled for and aggressively backed by military prowess is not power, but rather brute coercive force. To make this correlation is in fact a contradiction in terms. Real power derives from a sense of inner strength and confidence which endows the bearer with the capacity to act and implement on the basis of natural and proven merits. “Insofar as one’s capacity to act must be supported by force, one is, to that degree, powerless, not powerful. One is relying on something other than power.”³ It is interesting to observe in this connection, that the ‘macho image,’ as characterized, for instance, by a sense of grandeur, arrogance, toughness or self-aggrandizement, whether in individual or nations, represents a conscious or unconscious response to the need to cover up or compensate for inner fears and insecurities through an inflated projection and assertion of self. Far from being a portrayal of strength or confidence therefore, such an attitude actually reflects a deep-rooted sense of impotence and a lack of self-confidence at a deeper level of consciousness.

Since myths generally tend to outlive reality, strength or power is still widely confused with force and offensive posturing. This is because we still live in an age where each state feels obliged to display its ability and willingness to wage war in defense of what it regards as its vital national interests. Military strength is seen as a symbol of this resolve, and lulls nations into a false sense of security. It also reflects the false premise that producing a consciousness of strength, the attempt to gain military advantage over the adversary creates a “consciousness of the strength of other nations and a sense of fear.” Fear begets suspicion and distrust which, in turn, feed the rationale for more rearmament.⁴ The psychological dynamics of the perceptual conflict which drives the arms race are thus nourished by reciprocal misperceptions of intent, which often lead to an overestimation of the other side’s hostility (worst-case assessment). Since both sides respond to the same imperatives, attempts to assure one’s own security by seeking damage-limiting or war-fighting capabilities for use ‘if deterrence fails’ thus becomes counterproductive and self-defeating mainly because the technological dimensions of the arms race heightens the dangers of a breakdown of deterrence. The end result is a constantly recurring cycle of self-induced insecurity, commonly known as the ‘security dilemma,’ and a dynamic arms race as states strive in vain to overcome their mutually perceived vulnerability.

Other consequences of the ‘security dilemma’ relevant to the discussion of a common security programme include the following:

1. The more the diversion of precious human and material sources from the urgent requirements of socio-economic development to military security, the more vulnerable a society becomes to threats of economic erosion and social disruption.⁵
2. An escalating arms race also changes the character of the societies within the participating countries. The emphasis placed on war preparations and high technology will have the effect of:
   • – endowing the technological revolution with a strong military bias by curtailing non-military industries and diverting scientific and engineering talent to military applications;
   • – increasing the power and influence of the military-industrial complex;
   • – subordinating politics to the interests of militarism;
   • – enhancing the power and authority of the state in matters related to defense and security, thereby inducing a corresponding reduction in the participation of the citizen in decisions affecting his/her destiny;
   • – creating a military culture or a militarized society which threatens to undermine the bases of the democratic governing process as well as the more humanitarian aspects of social and cultural life.
3. The perpetuation of a constant state of tension and hostility towards the adversary, administered through a process known as ‘de-humanization’ (i.e., where the human characteristics of the enemy are denied) postpones any real commitment to solving basic problems “because it automatically eliminates the expectation, and thus the possibility, of their being seen as capable of positive human responses.”⁶ Negative images of the adversary kept alive through government propaganda, the media, and to varying degrees, also through the educational system, seek to justify and reinforce existing attitudes in the public and international mind, and thus “reduce…pressures to undertake the more complex tasks that would be required for real understanding and reconciliation.”⁷
4. Another problem concerns the loss of sovereignty rights for allied states which shelter under the nuclear umbrella. The pe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• INTRODUCTION
• PART ONE Common Security: General and Regional Approaches
• PART TWO Cultures of Peace: From Violence to Nonviolence
• PART THREE Cultures of Peace: Voices from the Periphery
• PART FOUR The Agents of Peace Cultures
• Appendix on the International Peace Research Association
• About the Editors and Contributors