Peace and Conflict Studies

An Introduction

Ho-Won Jeong

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351912433
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique

Ho-Won Jeong explains and assesses major approaches to dealing with ethnic conflict, communal violence, inter-state war and social injustice. The book analyses not only the sources of violence and conflict, but also how to manage and prevent them. As peace is relevant to improvement in human well-being and the future survival of humanity, the volume encompasses a variety of themes, ranging from alternative security policies, methods of peaceful settlement, human rights, self-determination, environmental politics, global governance and non-violence. Reflecting on the current thinking and drawing lessons from the past, the book can be considered as the most authoritative introduction to the field since the end of the Cold War.

PART I

MEANINGS, CONCEPTS AND DISCOURSE

In addition to the prevention of warfare among states, peace ought to be based on justice within and between societies, a guarantee of basic individual and group rights and the non-use of violence to resolve conflict. Peace is not something alien to our everyday life. Peace is achieved, in essence, through a social process. To a certain extent, neighbourhood violence can be understood in the same logic as nations prepare for war. Family violence is tolerated by the maintenance of patriarchal social and political systems. An adversarial process may well be found in labour disputes as well as international conflict. The accepted values of hierarchy help sustain the very system that generates repression. The cessation of violence has to be accompanied by social and cultural transformations.

After examining both historical and contemporary contexts of struggle for peace, this first part defines the concept of peace and examines various meanings of security and violence. It is generally agreed that peace must be understood as more than just the absence of war. It has to be based on economic and social conditions that eliminate injustice and human misery. The holistic phenomenon of peace is contrasted with the existence of both manifest and latent violence. The new conceptualisation of peace derives from the theoretical examination of structural and behavioural conditions that reduce violent conflict.

1 Challenges for Peace

In the real world, there are only a few examples that satisfy all the elements of peace. What we usually find is the negation of peace: war and other forms of violence. The understanding of a peaceful world is also juxtaposed against the experiences of marginalisation and alienation in history. The ideals of peace are influenced by value systems of a particular society. Continuation of violence suggests that humans have not achieved the political, emotional and spiritual maturity needed for the realisation of peace.

Visions of Peace

In our age, many people still conceive of peace as equivalent to the absence of manifest violence, largely major wars between states. Preventing a nuclear war between superpowers was, in particular, a dominant concern in the second half of the twentieth century. However, the concepts of peace have been rich in content across various religious and philosophical traditions. The search for inner and communal peace derives from the ideal sought in the spiritual life. From the early period of human thinking, there has been a clear understanding that war is neither a natural phenomenon nor the irreversible will of the gods. A peaceful world belongs to a society where people can work and live together in harmony and friendship. The domination of one group over another is a major obstacle to peace.

In Eastern religions, there is a strong emphasis on links between a spiritual life and action for social justice (Smoker and Groff, 1996, p. 105). The Buddhist traditions emphasise justice, equity, nonviolence, concern for the well-being of others and compassion among living beings. They also reflect a well-ordered state of mind, inner peace and harmony within a culture. Tranquillity in the inner state of mind and harmonious interpersonal relationships contribute to universal peace.

The practice of non-exploitation of nature exists in Native American and African tribal cultures. Peace with the planet represents the need for humans to live in harmony with nature rather than conquer it. The notion of ecological peace from indigenous tribal traditions enables us to understand that the earth, too, is the object of violence. The earth constitutes a web in which humans are part, and by destroying living and non-living forms of existence on the planet humans threaten even their own survival.

The messages of mutual good will, unconditional love, wholeness and individual well-being as well as cessation of hostilities have been delivered in many Western religious traditions. The passages of the Old Testament of the Bible state that swords shall be beaten into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. In early Christian social Utopia, there was a strong emphasis on a community of love. Harmony and fullness of joy can be achieved by spiritual enlightenment.

Greek philosophers conceptualised a peaceful world in terms of a lack of civil disturbances (Nussbaum, 1997, p. 32). These philosophical traditions are also linked to unity based on the moral substance of humanity in each person and the principle of world citizenship. The vision of a world without war was embraced as the core approach to peace in the Hellenic civilisation (Chatfield and Ilukhina, 1994, p. 5). In the Roman and Medieval periods, peace implied stable relationships among units of society that lead to the control of organised violence. Peace can be brought about by order that may be imposed by a powerful coalition or even an empire.

In Enlightenment thinking, violence and conflict, seen as the greatest evil in history, are ascribed to a disorderly world. Political philosophers such as John Locke in the 17th century and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century viewed war as unnecessary and believed that social contracts could prevent violence. Liberal reformists in the 19th century proposed institutionalised mechanisms that are necessary for the conquest of organised violence, namely inter-state war.

The idea of creating a large array of international agreements and institutions was supported by the assumption that achieving peace would be easy by defining the rights of sovereign states in an international system and preventing one state from intervening with the government of another state (Kant, 1970). Conflict should be handled through negotiation rather than resorting to war, and broadening popular influence is critical to stopping war. Educating political leaders to transform international systems was believed to be an important initial step in outlawing war and enhancing international cooperation.

Peace understood in terms of maintaining social order does not reside in the dimensions of social and political justice. The notion of an order within and between sovereign states relegates peace to conditions of the status quo. According to the nineteenth century Russian thinker Tolstoy and other pacifist anarchists who considered peace as a cherished human value, the state power apparatus is responsible for the organisation of both oppression and violence. War can be abolished with the elimination of a political structure attributed to social oppression and exploitation. Given their focus on individual autonomy and freedom, ideas in anarchist Utopias oppose government and legal institutions that impose an artificial order (Smoker, 1972, p. 63).

In response to the realisation that purposeful changes have to be made in improving human conditions, socialist movements in the 19th and early 20th century stipulated that peace could be obtained in a classless society. The primary causes of human misery are economic inequality and a repressive political system associated with social injustice. Monopoly of economic resources and power held by a few helps maintain a social system that exploits underprivileged people. Building solidarities among the human race is important in the fight for liberation from exploitation and war. Peace has a firm social dimension in which equity and consideration of others’ well-being are crucial for a harmonious community life. People from different cultural and political traditions would be united by the achievement of equal society.

The ideal of equality among humans played a decisive role from old religious traditions to early socialism. For thousands of years, this vision of peace from religious traditions to modern philosophical ideas encouraged a lifestyle based on nonviolence and communal living. In modern thinking peace is no longer simply a Utopia to be realised by abstract religious moral codes or principles. Rather it is a goal that can be obtained by conscious efforts to build a harmonious social order. Since warfare is considered as a means to promote the interests of the powerful, challenges to the dominant power are necessary to put a definite end to human suffering. If there were no dominant groups of people associated with oppressive states, then conflict and war would disappear. Though the visions of peace remained scarcely more than a vague hope in reality, the ideals have played an important role in maintaining hopes of establishing peace for the future generations.

Historical Experiences

Contrary to the visions of peace, human history is full of many examples of violent conflict and oppression along with the rise and fall of civilisations. Before weapons became sophisticated, the scale of violence was manageable. Faced with hostile natural environments, human ancestors had to learn how to live together to meet their survival needs. In a hunting and gathering society, one person did not exercise control over the community wealth. Few dominant patterns existed in egalitarian band society.

The construct of social domination is based on a set of behavioural norms and political structures supporting exploitative relations. In a stratified society, status coincides with the ability for social control over wealth produced by others (Boulding, 1976, p. 37). The history of organised violence and domination started with the replacement of simple subsistence farming communities by hierarchical social structures based on the concentration of power in the hands of patriarchal rulers.

In the early European civilisations, Greek city states were engaged in hegemonic rivalry, and it was a major form of violence. In addition, the alliance of Greek city states fought Persia for control of the Mediterranean. Stable order was eventually imposed by the emergence of the hegemonic power of the Macedonian and Roman empires following numerous military conquests. In the medieval period, both the Roman Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire maintained order within Europe. However, religious zeal along with power and profit motives led to the Crusades; military expeditions were directed against Muslim control of Jerusalem. The Thirty Years’ War, fought several centuries later, resulted from the attempt of three Christian religious doctrines to vie for dominance on the European continent.

Competition between states in the modern international system was fuelled by the attempts of absolute monarchies to expand their territory and economic bases. Inter-state conflict was often related to part of the process resulting in the creation of a dominant social, political structure. Bureaucracies and armies were needed in completing the project of establishing an efficient modern state system. Populations under its sovereign jurisdictions were oppressed to satisfy the ambitions of a newly emerging state. Events in eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe reflect the surge of nationalism and efforts to consolidate the power and symbols of a nation-state. Aspirations for new national identities culminated in the French Revolution and the Napoleonic War.

The modern form of organising political space is characterised by the system of territorial states and concentration of power in specific classes. Sharp division of class relations resulted from a capitalist mode of development. Economic exploitation and miserable living conditions for the marginalised class in a capitalist system inevitably brought about a struggle to achieve equality in a modern industrial society. The nature of conflict in a modern society has become more complex with the establishment of highly stratified social systems.

The forms of interaction between different cultural systems were significantly changed by the industrial revolution and scientific and technological advances. The spatial and temporal implosion of the globe since the Renaissance extended a dominant social order to the global arena. Before the arrival of technological revolution, each civilisation enjoyed a relatively autonomous social facticity and operated under its own laws of historicity. However, the subjugation of non-European civilisations through conquest created a singular post-Colombian world (Wolf, 1997). The integration of separate and coexisting cultural systems was completed by the early 20th century.

The two world wars, which left long lasting memories of genocide and atrocities, reflect the structural characteristics of conflicts between dominant colonial powers. The hierarchical international order represented by a bipolar world system during the Cold War period coincided with threats of nuclear weapons. The characteristics of post-Cold War order are not radically different from previous ones in terms of the maintenance of relations of subordination and domination through threats and violence.

The current transformation in a world order affected by globalisation is merely one specific expression of a reconfiguration in social space and time. In structural changes of the global political economy, new material conditions have awakened both a need and a desire for broad transformation in the prevailing social epistemology and spatial forms. Global capitalism today internalises relationships and values that previously did not exist in many parts of the world. The collapse of former socialist countries in Eastern Europe can be ascribed to the powerful appeal of the symbols of affluence of Western capitalist society.

Interpretation In the legacies of human history filled with war and oppression, the desires and ambitions of political elites have always outweighed the prospect for peace. Violence has been part of an historical process that created a dominant social order. In this context, the absence of war associated with the extension of hegemonic power is simply a reflection of imposition of a hierarchical order by the use of arms and an elite-dominated political structure.

Historical conditions for peace, which can be more easily found in egalitarian social relations, would remain a dream to be realised within the existing political and economic structure. Long struggles have been waged to achieve basic rights to freedom, autonomy and equity. Domination and exploitation have been more systematic and endemic in hierarchical societies with concentration of wealth and power. Social ideology reflects basic value judgements about political and economic order. Lower-status social groups are put in disadvantageous positions by birth, skill, education or occupations (Boulding, 1976, p. 38).

While now weapons have the capability of destroying the entire population on the earth, knowledge and skills were not sufficiently developed to cope with the means of mass destruction and the level of poverty in many parts of the world. The survival of the human species is further threatened by newly emerging concerns with environmental pollution and resource depletion.

Culture and Social Values

Peace is interpreted differently across cultures and social values with varying degrees of priority given to individual and communal well-being. In most industrialised societies, providing fair political and legal procedures for competition is seen as an important condition for individual achievement, thus contributing to social progress. On the other hand, indigenous people’s culture with primordial ties and face-to-face interaction is closely attached to nature, and there is more emphasis on a community’s well-being than individual pursuit of wealth. Within indigenous societies inheriting a holistic vision of peace, we would be more likely to observe the-preservation of communal traditions of sharing and interconnectedness. Many tribal groups living on a small island in the South Pacific, the aboriginal tribes of Australia, Northern African desert, Himalayan hillside or Amazon jungles isolated from any modern technology are found maintaining a more egalitarian social structure than those who live in Western industrialised societies.

There are certainly places on the planet where social values oriented toward enhancing opportunities for fulfilling human needs and solidarity still prevail. On the other hand, transformation of traditional decentralised societies into a homogeneous life style has occurred in many parts of the world, with modernisation replacing the community norms and networks of collective responsibility and concerns with the disadvantaged. In a modern economic system that stresses free market mechanisms, income gaps are inevitable along with the emergence of new social hierarchies resulting from concentration of wealth. It generates conditions for communal conflicts in combination with a struggle between different forces that advocate opposing value systems and social structures. To provide a stable environment for rapid economic growth, governments in countries like China maintain a tight control over society. Sovereignty rights are often claimed for justifying the oppression of minority groups as well as limiting the freedom of association and expression.

Scandinavia and other European countries, influenced by the social democratic traditions of the early 20th century, have achieved progress by guaranteeing a reliable welfare system based on free education, Medicare, job training and other programmes. The principles of equity are supported by mechanisms to enhance social and economic opportunities for low income groups. Externally, welfare-oriented societies such as Switzerland and Sweden opted not to participate in any kind of international conflict. Instead, they became involved in peacemaking activities while remaining neutral in major wars. The experiences of these countries demonstrate that the commitment to human welfare is incompatible with allowing economic disparities and expensive military build-up.

T...