Читать книгу A Melody Called Peace - Scott Johnson - Страница 9

Trace Peace!ss

Ellias Aghili Dehnavi, il presidente e fondatore dell'Accademia M.O.P.

At a historical point, Andrew Carnegie shifted his endeavors to the cause of international peace. The global economy was transformed by the last great flow of the Industrial Revolution at the beginning of the last century, which brought remarkable ease in international trade, traveling, as well as communication. It was concretely sensed that a more peaceful, interconnected future would be possible. Others also agree with Carnegie in his opinion that “international war abolishment, the most disgusting blemish on our civilization,” could set out within grasp of humanity. For progressing this goal, he empowered the institutions, inspiring a global peace movement, and they still are among the leading voices nowadays.

However, into the deeper aspects, the international order’s foundations that were dominant in the 19th century were cracked. By the emergence of new major powers, the geopolitical supremacy of wellknown players was challenged. The same technological progress as the cause of this optimism revolutionized the capacity of humanity for conflict. By 1919, when Carnegie died, a destructive world war with vast devastation occurred, burring his optimism under the competition of violent great powers and humanity’s failure of imagination.

After a century, another inflection point emerged, which was full of hope and hazards. The optimism waves elevating at the end of Cold War had declined, and misgiving currents in its wake had been left behind. When the Soviet Union collapsed, it appeared that history was directing toward free markets and democracy, and it seemed that the “end of history” had reached and could cause the risk of conflict among the great powers. It seemed that emergence of a nascent Pax Americana transformed the bipolar world. Ultimately, in that euphoric moment, aspirations of Andrew Carnegie early in the last century proved, with disturbing trends again for foretelling a tsunami of disruption.

The contemporary world is in its most populous, competitive, and complex state. We again are witnessing competition among the great powers. The way of our living, working, and fighting is again shaped by technological revolution. We observe shifting the global political and economic center of gravity from West to East.

The pace of change is veiling responses at every level. There are signs of erosion of the incredible prosperity and peace that we were experiencing during the last seventy years since the displacements of globalization gets more evident and emerging or revived powers return to the international arena. The erosion of faith between leaders and their citizens also exacerbates these challenges. Authoritarianism and Populism are increasing; the pace of the global march of democracy has reduced, and even it has been reversed because of fading the cooperation framed by international law. Again, it seems that trend lines are directing toward profoundly destabilizing collisions.

It is a horrifying task in this new era to advance the cause of international peace against these resistances, and this requires the renewal of diplomacy, which is one of the oldest, and at the same time, the most misunderstood professions of the world. It is believed that no country can handle tricky global currents alone, or just by force. It is particularly true for the USA. USA is not anymore the only big power on the geopolitical block.

Dismissing diplomacy in today’s world is sometimes trendy: non-state actors control rising international influence; state headmen and senior officials are able to have easy and direct interactions; and the traditional monopoly of embassies and diplomats on access and information in foreign capitals have been lost. Diplomats sometimes seem as watchmakers of villages that live in a smartwatch world. However, if we want to solve our encountered challenge, diplomacy should be the first tool that we resort.

The task of diplomats is translating the world to capitals and translating capitals to the world. Diplomats are the first agents that warn about the problems and opportunities and can build and fix the relationships. The importance of these tasks is not more than ever. All of these tasks require a subtle understanding of culture and history, a non-compromising skill in negotiations, and the ability of translating national interests in such a way that are consistent with interests of other governments. These characteristics have always been necessary for success of diplomats.

Diplomacy needs adaptation and modernization for being effective. Timeless skills should take higher priority, and the focus of countries should be mostly on the issues with the highest significance in 21th century, including climate change and technological revolution. It is expected that the progress in machine learning, synthetic biology, and artificial intelligence will be accelerated in the near future and these advances have already surpassed the ability of governments for maximizing their advantages, minimizing their disadvantages, and developing practical international rules. Climate change is altering communities around the world and creating new conflicts over resources. In order to deal with these increasingly insecurities, the need for diplomacy is more urgent.

Prior to the First World War, Carnegie had imagined the world as a “neighborhood in instantaneous and constant communication” and now it has come to true. However, it is not such a peaceful world as he envisioned. In order to realize this imagination, diplomacy can be an important tool. However, it would be an effective tool when the communities can also cope with the cut-offs and disruptions that drive the globe toward crisis. In the USA, it means that the gap between the U.S. public and a Washington, DC, foreign policy establishment should be bridged that has been far too headstrong in how it consumes American treasure and blood. Internationally, it means that the losses and disruption associated with globalization should be softened, and its benefits should be harnessed so that more broad-based prosperity can be created. Moreover, it means the international order of the past half-century should be adjusted so that emerging powers, as well as the new players, can also take a position on the scene and have a contribution to renewal and preservation of its institutions.

One may look at these tasks pessimistically, and consider them as impossible obstacles. We are a hundred years on, and should still remove that “foulest blot.” However, although those hundred years saw awful horrors, at the same time, they have also witnessed exceptional progress in human welfare and peace. Given the peaceful end of the Cold War, we found that leadership and diplomacy are yet important concepts and human agency is still influential. There always will be limits for this human agency, and we will all the time be vulnerable to powerful forces of history. However, it is possible to bend trend lines, and it is possible to overcome even the most durable resistance.

There are essays that indicate this effort; Some of the hardest questions of the world today are addressed in such essays and they attempt for a more peaceful world when the future of that project is again uncertain. It is known that four out of five violence victims around the globe are victims of criminal or state-supported violence rather than victim of formal conflicts. In this situation, wrestling with the governance issues is vital- and the political, economic, and social deficiencies result in instability and grow extremism and alienation. We live in an era that there are cyber conflict threats to alter traditional notions of war. Thus, devising rules of the road with the capacity of capturing technology’s promise and confining its risks is vital. It is an era that the bloom of international justice and law is withering. Thus, we have to keep survive and show the hope of norms and processes that are able handle conflicts and blame those committing abuses. We also should take lessons from our efforts for promoting peace during the past century. There have been scholars who attempted to deal with these questions and they show that importance and relevance of (figures like) Andrew Carnegie’s charge persists.

Even idealists such as Carnegie were aware of the fact that stability and peace are not static concepts. With the continuous shift of the international outlook, our action and thinking should also change. I hope that one day the poison of the past will be drained, as envisioned by Carnegie, and I believe that for this journey, we require revitalization of diplomacy.

The term “peace” has lost its meaning in the political discourse of today’s world. Politicians are more interested in invoking the somehow more uncompromising concept of “security” to cope with threats and encounter conflicts. The great philanthropists tend to have an investment in issues like global health rather than in peace-related projects. In 17 Sustainable Development Goals mentioned by the United Nations, “Peace” is mentioned in just one goal, and just in the context of the aspiration for promoting inclusive and peaceful communities for sustainable development.

Albeit the term peace is perceived in negative meaning- as absence of conflict, it is an essential determining factor to cure or prevent all the challenges and threats delineated in these objectives, from chronic diseases to children poverty and environmental degradation. As estimated by the World Bank, the cause of 80% of all humanitarian demands is conflicts, and conflicts decrease GDP growth by 2% points annually, on average.

In a higher aspiration, we can regard peace as the harmonious condition and the supreme human right, underpinning everything in a robust world. In different periods, public thinkers in the modern era attempted to make clear this more positive notion. Martin Luther King Jr. in his Nobel Lecture of 1964 stated:

We should establish our vision not only on the banishment of war but also on the positive assertion of peace. It should be found that peace offers nicer music, a cosmic melody, which surpasses the disharmonies of war.

These were not usual words. Why the instinctive caution in talking peace? This word was excessively used, misused, and hurt in the 20th century. Maybe we can blame Leonid Brezhnev and Neville Chamberlain. In 1938, the British prime minister used the term “peace for our time” when he came from a meeting with Adolf Hitler. It was one of the cloudiest points in the history of Europe, which this invocation is still a bad feeling and memory in minds. The term peace was appropriated by the leaders of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and they overused this word so much that it became annoying. In 1981, Brezhnev, the person crushing Czechoslovakia’s Prague Spring in 1968, declared the Soviet Union and its allies as the major supporters of world peace.”5 It is not wondering that Václav Havel, Czech rebel, explained that he and his fellow citizens had an allergy to this word for 40 years, and he wanted to overcome this allergy.

In 1900, a different air flew in the world. A global movement appeared with international peace as its goal. The great powers of the world attended in two Hague Peace Conferences during 1899 and 1907, which built a new international frame, prohibiting conflict and winning triumph in officially forbidding certain warfare types.

Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-American philanthropist and industrialist, is known as the greatest inventor and one of the primary advocates of the above-mentioned peace movement. His death was in August 1919, when the slaughter of the First World War had disappointed him. However, he left some institutions with the goal of achievement of international peace.

These essays came out after a century, when the world witnessed global turbulence- although it was not as severe as 1919. The collection of “Peace Conversations” of Carnegie in The Hague was published, assisted by the Carnegie UK Trust and funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published them. Hence, this is a collective work, reflecting on the heritage of Carnegie’s vision, the international peace meaning now and one century ago, and the new context where conflict continues in the globe.

Putting their hopes in the realm of reason, Carnegie and his fellow peace activists believed that the European Enlightenment project was about to win and war could be abrogated. Mankind had disallowed fighting and disputes among people. Thus, in 1905, Carnegie at St. Andrews University told the move of progress could turnover conflict between nations to history. Following conferences on the peace, he developed the “temple of peace,” which is known as the elegant Hague Peace Palace. It was opened in 1913 and yet hosts the Carnegie Foundation, the International Court of Justice, and the Permanent Court of Arbitration. A note was sent to the trustees of the newly established Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in December 1910 by Carnegie. In this letter, he asked trustees to spend revenue of this center for hastening the war abolition, the foulest blot upon our civilization. After achievement of this goal, the board should make a decision on “the subsequent most humiliating remaining evils” that have to fight against.

The catastrophe of the Great War of 1914–1918 crushed optimism of peacemakers. The fumble peace of 1919 once again crushed their optimism. Jay Winter in his essay, elaborated painful details of the drawbacks in the Versailles Treaty of 1919, its failure in establishing it a peaceful order in Europe. It just paved to way to a new war two decades later. Versailles omitted the defeated and the desires of non-Europeans were ignored. As the German economy crippled, Europe was doomed to economic recession. The 1919 settlement was like a building that had been constructed on fragile foundations, being built under the pressure of the global economic depression in 1929 and the entry of the Nazis in 1933.

In the turbulent conditions of the 1920s and 1930s, the Carnegie institutions were struggling to resist the nationalism, economic crisis, and protectionism. The liberal internationalists, James Brown Scott, James Shotwell, and Nicholas Butler, known as Carnegie men, won a better opportunity in 1945 for promoting their vision. These men had been distracted in the craft of the 1919 treaty. However, they again gained a profound involvement in the development of a new postwar settlement and the United Nations. According to record of Frédéric Mégret, the Nuremberg Trials were a short moment when international justice was respected and there was a prosecution for crimes against peace. However, this internationalist time mostly known as postwar period. With starting the Cold War, peace again, became an evasive goal.

What lead us all into such a chaos?

By ending the Cold War in 1991, a new brilliant postwar point appeared. However, after a quarter of a century again we saw dark clouds coming. New types of disorders are characteristics of the contemporary world. It seems that the brutal world of the First World War time is returning.

There are three main trends that drive violence and conflicts in the contemporary world which I have described in this preface. The first trend is determination of national leaders for defending the supremacy of state sovereignty against multilateral international organizations. The second one is the elevated capability of non-state actors in the modern era, like drug barons, such as warlords, money-launderers, and terrorists, which create instability and conflict. The third trend reduction of the human agency by technology specifically advanced IT, and accordingly, the smaller size of the world and facilitation of asymmetrical warfare, where a small group of people can create significant disruption.

Andrew Carnegie and the generation of 1900 identified the first trend, although the international organizations dreamed by Carnegie did not still emerge. This story indicates that the power in the world is possessed by nation-states. They have competition with each other for lands and the resources of the world. For this purpose, these nation-states have an insistence on the absolute right or fetishization of state supremacy. One of the most threatening consequence of this phenomenon is deployment of nuclear weapons by the states in defiance of each another, though it might not be the most salient outcome.

This was not 1914 revisited. Robert Muggah and Rachel Kleinfeld noted that state-to-state conflict levels in the world are currently at historical lows. The way of confrontation of the big powers of the world with each other has changed in the form of proxy war in third countries, digital destruction, or punishing trade tariffs. In addition, the strength of nationstates of the early 21th century is likely less than at any time in modern history, and they are taking their last stand against a long global integration process (consider quixotic isolationist politics of Brexit?). However, the voice of states is getting louder in the meantime. In recent years, governments of such countries as China, Brazil, Turkey, Russia, Pakistan, India, and the USA have fed global disruption for their “national interest.”

Look at some cases from 2019. In August 2019, government of India stated that making decision on abolishment of the Indian-administered Kashmir autonomy is an internal affair, although it could have international consequences and could flame conflicts with Pakistan. Again in August 2019, we witnessed insistence of Jair Bolsonaro, president of Brazil on the Amazon forest fires as a domestic affair of Brazil and the countries of Amazon, despite the fact that these fires accelerated global warming and provoked resistance of local residents. The government of China claimed that those who criticize China’s surveillance operation for monitoring and controlling the Uyghur tribes in Xinjiang Province are interfering in internal affairs of China.

There were severe international reactions to the first two examples, which indicates multilateral diplomacy is still alive. Bernard Bot, former head of The Hague Peace Palace, and William Burns, head of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, are recognized as two esteemed and noble diplomats and Carnegie men, which skillfully showed the necessity of diplomacy. Diplomacy demands crafty and astute and innovative individuals now. Besides, diplomacy requires profound international institutions. Bernard Bot noted that if we want to implement a peace process successfully, longlasting commitment and planning are needed that only can be provided by a mature and experienced international body.

The second trend is more contemporary. The wars in the globe have always been waged by non-state actors-from Vikings in 8th century to the warriors of the Thirty Years’ War. However, their outcome has not ever been very considerable. According to Mary Kaldor, contemporary conflict is described as a social situation or a mutual enterprise where the interests of a large number of armed groups from violence itself are more than from victory. It seems that there is not any end for the conflicts in Democratic Republic of Congo or in Syria where small gangs are supported by remote sponsors or liberated local resources and are operating in regions where regular statehood has vanished.

In other countries, a more robust state constructs similar consequences as the government conspires with or hires out enforcement to offensive actors, and consequently, systematic violence is engendered. Muggah and Kleinfeld depicted a shocking image of the situation in such countries as Mexico and Brazil. Apparently, there is no war in these countries. However, the number of deaths from violence is equal or even higher than death rates in Syria or Afghanistan. They used the term “privilege violence” for describing a cruel circle where security forces and politicians are allowed to have cartels, mafias, and gang impunity, bribes, campaign contributions, and help escape the vote or repress electorates.

There is a third trend that enhances the devastating power of non-state actors. This trend is the increasing democratization and sophistication of technology. Currently, the primary handguns of the world include a smartphone and a laptop. The opportunities that these devices provide for some global citizens have been unimaginable a generation ago. At the same time, if a single laptop is used by the wrong individuals, it has the capability of disabling the electricity grid if a country.

The most frightening indication of this trend is cyberwarfare. Wyatt Hoffman and George Perkovich explained this novel phenomenon and what peacemaking could create if it is to be stopped. They warned about exaggeration of cyberwarfare: all and all, no one has still died from it. This is conflict with no violence (a mirror image of the phenomenon described by

Muggah and Kleinfeld, as violence without conflict). However, its worst-case could still be expected. According to these authors, the cyber peacemaking challenge is something beyond the capacity of governments alone. Wherever cyber starts, other kinds of warfare, where humankind has the reliance on intelligent technology, will indeed pursuit.

Tell us if there is peace in our modern life?

Complicated solutions are needed for global problems. Given the increasing global disorder in its different forms, it is necessary to reimagine an international peace project, although it should be totally different from the project in a century ago.

If we want to revive the term “peace” as a political notion, we obviously should handle it carefully. Even Brendan McAllister, the notable peace activist, ascertains to being delicate concerning this term, admitting to call it “an exhausted platitude, which has been used and misused by all sides of conflict and, subsequently, long past its sell-by date and best avoided.”

Nevertheless, according to McAllister as the first to volunteer, if there is a correct enabling context, this notion can be reestablished-with an eye on the “spaces between the words.” At different periods some endeavors have been made for positing this notion as something beyond just the absence of war, or as McAllister puts it, shalom instead of pax. Johan Galtung, who is generally recognized as the father of peace research essays in 1960s, devised the term “positive peace” in this regard.

John F. Kennedy in June 1963 tried to boost the same notion in a popular lecture at American University in Washington, DC. Kennedy, who reached out to the Soviet Union aiming at de-escalating the nuclear arms race, asked rhetorically,

Do you know the kind of peace that I mean? What type of peace do we look for? It is not a Pax Americana imposed on the world by American war weapons. It is not the slave security or peace of the grave. I mean pure peace, it is such a peace that makes the earth worth to live, the kind of peace enabling growth and hope of individuals, and building a better life for their children-not just peace for Americans but for all women and men-not just peace in our time but for all time.12

The kind of peace intended by Kennedy is a more attainable and practical peace, which is not based on a sudden revolution in human nature, rather it is based on a gradual evolution in human institutions. The notion of “a continuous development in human institutions, which supports a rule-based order, is what we try to achieve through our works and efforts, although it seems that most global trends work in the opposite direction. When the nations with less power, particularly those in the Global South, would be pessimistic to a novel rules-based order when they witness making and breaking the rules by the big powers of the world.

First of all, a novel set of rules requires stronger endorsement of international law institutions than many of the big powers of the world, including USA, Russian, and China, have been willing to give. This is the story that Frédéric Mégret narrates in his work; it is an unfinished story that aptly interweaves the law and history. It narrates endeavors for building an international justice system in the contemporary era for dealing with conflicts of the world, it is story of the resistance of big powers against the project. They agreed the project only if it was aligned with their interests. Besides, it recounts the internal contradictions faced by the project, like in cases that there was incompatibility in pursuit of peace and justice.

Andrew Carnegie passionately believed that international justice is the remedy of world conflict. He had pursued the modern chapters of this story with interestingly. He would feel refuted in some respects. Nevertheless, The Hague Peace Palace endowed by him yet hosts two international courts that work as arbitrators on very quarrelsome global conflicts. As already mentioned, based on the judgment of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2009, the dilemma in the conflict about the boundary of Abyei, a province in Sudan, was resolved.

The authors reached a convergence in description of a more hopeful phenomenon. They described a type of global civil community that is currently alive in the form of civil groups and NGOs. It is a much greater movement compared to the small groups of citizens funded by Carnegie in European countries and the USA in the 1900s. We can describe it as the other side of the coin of the evil non-state actors we already talked about. Using this global civil society, we can start to look for peace drivers, instead of conflict agents.

Brendan McAllister made a warning. He is a veteran of the Northern Ireland peace settlement. In the case of absence of persistent collaboration and inclusivity, peace processes would be limited. When the peace process is merely a legal and technical process, it would be chiefly negotiated based on interests, needs, and positions and agreements would be designed mainly based on structures instead of attempting to strengthen relations between opponents who should eliminate enmities and cooperate for suit inability of the peace. The chemistry of a peace settlement is as significant as the physics.

This reminds the lessons of a century ago. A civil movement that advocates a wider scope of peace would be achieved just if it gets across marginalized groups in the world outside North America and Europe. A “democratic drive” should also give a chance to less powerful nations and minority groups. When a commitment to handle global economic inequalities is absent, the liberal internationalism is empty. We can see faulty peace of 1919 as a warning of lost opportunity and the devaluation of international peace.

An urgent necessity is being felt that the unheard voices of the youths shall be heard and welcomed;

We, the messengers of peace and civilization, from Iran, have a message for the whole universe and we are determined to deliver that message to the ears and eyes of the peace seekers like ourselves.

tutto l'amore e la pace!