Theories of Peace

Theories of Peace

Goal: to use the concept of the enemy to construct a theoretical framework for analyzing peace

Peace: Creation and maintenance of relationship of proven value and worth

Types of Peace • Separate: Disentangle; Co-Existence • Associate: Entangle; Partnerships • Goal of Peace • Restore: reestablish trust, value • Build: create trust, value

Tractable Conflicts • Peace: mediated, resolved conflicts • Opponent: an adversary, rival • Type of Conflict: conflict of interests • Peaceful Outcome: win-win resolution • Peace: fair, just, & cooperative relationships • Opponent: an oppressor • Type of Conflict: unbalanced relationships • Peaceful Outcome: mutuallybeneficial relationships • Intractable Conflicts • Peace: defeat of the enemy • Enemy: antithesis of peace • Type of Conflict: protracted, intractable differences • Outcome: irreconcilable differences

Chantal Mouffe: 1. The constitutive other and the impossibility of a world without antagonisms 2. Difference vs. Negating Identity 3. We/them -- Friend/enemy 4. Displacement of the enemy with the adversary.

Tractable Conflicts • Peace: mediated, resolved conflicts • Opponent: an adversary, rival • Type of Conflict: conflict of interests • Peaceful Outcome: win-win resolution • Peace: fair, just, & cooperative relationships • Opponent: an oppressor • Type of Conflict: unbalanced relationships • Peaceful Outcome: mutually beneficial relationships • Intractable Conflicts • Peace: defeat of the enemy • Enemy: antithesis of peace • Type of Conflict: protracted, intractable differences • Outcome: irreconcilable differences

Transcenders: If the enemy is someone who was potentially one of us and from whom we have been separated by violence, then the first task is to reestablish the human bonds that once connected us. Transformers: By definition, intractable conflicts cannot be resolved. Still, they can be transformed into tractable ones that are, in principle, capable of resolution. The only way to do this is to construct a context that includes the sacrificially expelled other.

Boulding’s Definition of Peace: • Peace as Not War: a setting in which conflict and excitement, debate and dialogue, drama and confrontation do not get out of hand and become destructive • Positive Aspects: • Condition of good management • Orderly resolution of conflict • Harmony associated with mature relationships • Negative Aspects: • Absence of turmoil • Absence of tension • Absence of conflict • Absence of war

Boulding’s Approach 1. The goal is to make peace more probable and war less likely. 2. The concept of the “causes of war” is rejected because war and peace are multi-causal, subject to quite strong random influences, and sharp discontinuities at the breaking points. 3. The variable of war-peace system, particular the international system, can be classified roughly by the way in which they contribute either to the strain or to the strength of the system. 4. Conflict activities are those in which we are conscious that an increase in our welfare may diminish the welfare of others or an increase in the welfare of others may diminish our welfare. 5. The difference between peace and war is mainly defined in terms of the taboo line – the line that defines what we can do but refrain from doing from what we can do and do.

Boulding’s Paradigm All Human Activity Non-conflict Peace Conflict War

Peace and War • War and Peace are not merely the absence of the other, but positively definable states of a system. • Example: awake and asleep; neither is simply the opposite of the other. • Peace and war can be represented as differing phases in a system. • A different system of acting and thinking characterizes the war and peace phases.

Perception of Reality in War & Peace Peacetime 1. Good and Evil have many shades of gray. 2. The present is pretty much like other times. 3. Great forces (nature, God, civilization) are not particularly involved in our disputes. 4. After the present period, things will go on pretty much as they always have. 5. Life is complex with many problems to be solved that have varying importance from day to day. 6. All people act pretty much the same and act from the same motives. 7. We can talk with those we disagree with. Wartime 1. Good and Evil are reduced to us and them with no bystanders. 2. The present has a special quality—a final battle of good and evil. 3. The great forces of the cosmos are for us against them. 4. When the war is over things will be vastly different. 5. There is only one problem with ultimate importance that must be solved 6. "We" and "They" are qualitatively different. They wish for power. We act in self defense and with respect for common decency. 7. They lie and are so evil that only force can settle the issues

Boulding’s Paradigm All Human Activity Non-conflict Peace Conflict War

Approaches to Conflict Reduction/De-escalation

Approaches to Conflict Reduction/De-escalation • Conflict Management • Conflict Resolution • Conflict Transformation

Conflict Management • Good news: At the end of the day, you are alive. • Bad news: Whether you live through tomorrow is uncertain. • Goal: To prevent conflicts from escalating into total conflict. • Assumptions: • It is better to aim low and succeed than to aim high and fail. • Many of the most achievable improvements in the situation accomplish little and put prior advancements in jeopardy.

Method • Create a hiatus in which neither side tries to destroy the other: Create “live and let live attitude in the places where people interact by removing or managing the factors that cause threat (coexistence) • Degree of integration • Degree of imposition or coercion

Strategy • Appeal to self-interest: one’s own existence is dependent upon the existence of the other. • Create moral anchors that allow both sides to see the human face of the other. • Encourage alignment based upon interests other than sectarian identity. • Contain issues that could increase polarization.

Conflict Resolution Good news: Many conflicts are non-zero sum. Bad news: Not all problems are non-zero sum. Assumption: The gap between the parties can be transverse with small steps Goal: Remove the resistances or obstacles to an overall resolution or settlement.

Method • Fractionating the conflict into resolvable issues by based the various interests involved. • Shared interests • Different interests Different valuations • Different expectations • Different attitudes about risk • Different time preferences • Different capabilities • Opposing Interests

Strategy: • Logrolling: • Creating a package linking less valued concessions to more valued gains. • Concessions that avoid losses are more effective than concession improve upon gains. • Entrapment: Once people made a concession or agreement, they tend to act and think in ways that justify this move. • Constructive ambiguity: If a conflict is likely to become less important in the future, then leave its resolution ambiguous.

Conflict Transformation Good News: It produces the best (most rewarding and most enduring) solutions. Bad News: It is problem-solving in a reconciliation framework (we-ness). Goal: Create new solutions that go beyond the scope of what seems immediately possible. Assumption: We agree about where we want to go.

Method: Turn the conflict into political (economic, social) problem that we acting together can solve. • Why is the conflict irresolvable? • There are incompatible interests – real or perceived. • Parties are too angry to talk constructively. • There exist fundamental differences in values about the subject of the conflict or about process for resolving it. • The parties hold different versions of the “truth” about what already has or will happen in the future and about the facts involved. • The parties have differing views of what their relationship is or should be. • There exist misunderstandings that are hard to sort out.

Method (continued) • The conflict becomes a complex riddle or puzzle that has to be solved mutually or cooperatively. • Diagnosing the conflict: sorting out the various: various interests, values, preferences, realities, emotional investments, and so on .

Strategy: • Expanding the pie • Claiming vs. creating value • Creating new compensation frameworks • Finding new ways to compensate a party for yielding on a issue • Bridging • Identifying interests that can be satisfied by redesigning the framework or context

Peace/War System Stable War Unstable War Strain Unstable Peace Stable Peace Strength

Peace/War System • Strain • Structural Variables: • 1. Images of the past • 2. Professionalization of conflict • Dynamic Variables: • 1. Arms Race • 2. Differential Growth • a. Population • b. Economic • Strength: • Structural Variables: • 1. Memories of the past • 2. Professionalization: mediators, etc. • Dynamic Variables: • 1. Travel and communication • 2. Web of economic interdependence—cross-cutting

European Union • European Coal and Steel Community • Treaty of Paris, April 18, 1951 • Coal and steel were the fundamental building blocks of industry. • The heavy industries of the Ruhr had been the traditional basis for German power. Three times in the previous seventy years, France and Germany had fought over the coal reserves of Alsace-Lorraine. • Integrating the coal and steel industry would ensure that Germany and France developed common interests that would help prevent military and economy rivalry.

Vision of Jean Monnet & Robert Schuman To sneak up on peace • Functionalism: upgrading common interests • Functional spillover • Technical spillover • Political spillover

Principal Objectives: • Establish European citizenship • Ensure freedom, security, and justice • Promote economic and social progress • Assert Europe’s role in the world Three Pillars: Pillar 1: primarily economic (EC & EMU) Pillar 2: joint action in foreign and security affairs Pillar 3: justice and home affairs

Original Six Countries: France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands Today: 15 member states; 13 candidate countries Institutions: The European Commission The Council of the Union The European Parliament The Court of Justice The Court of Auditors

Tractable Conflicts • Peace: mediated, resolved conflicts • Opponent: an adversary, rival • Type of Conflict: conflict of interests • Peaceful Outcome: win-win resolution • Peace: fair, just, & cooperative relationships • Opponent: an oppressor • Type of Conflict: unbalanced relationships • Peaceful Outcome: mutually beneficial relationships • Intractable Conflicts • Peace: defeat of the enemy • Enemy: antithesis of peace • Type of Conflict: protracted, intractabledifferences • Outcome: irreconcilable differences

Curle’s Approach 1. The most useful categories for thinking about peace are peaceful and unpeaceful relationships. 2. The goal is to transform unpeaceful relationship into peaceful relationship. 3. Conflict occurs when one side desires something that can be obtained only at the expense of what another side desires. His view is objectivist and concerns incompatible interests. 4. The key variables are (1) balanced and unbalanced and (2) high and low levels of awareness. 5. Exploitative imbalance is a particular prevalent form of unpeaceful relationship and is his principal concern.

Curle’s Paradigm Unbalanced, low awareness Unbalanced, high awareness Education Balanced, high awareness Confrontation Conciliation Bargaining No conflict Development

Paulo Freire: Pedagogy of the Oppressed • The purpose of education is to empower people to be the creators of their own history. • The method is dialogical. No one is absolutely ignorant. • Identification of generative themes that give rise to “limit situations.” • Exploration of “untested feasibility.” • Dialogue is the exercise of freedom.

Curle’s Paradigm Unbalanced, low awareness Unbalanced, high awareness Education Balanced, high awareness Confrontation Conciliation Bargaining No conflict Development

Confrontation • I. Non-Violence—A Response to Violence • Criteria for Effectiveness • 1. Active force against force • 2. Effective against violence • II. Source of Power: Role of Consent • How do you think about your power? • III. Methods of Struggle • A. Non-Violence Protest & Persuasion • B. Non-Cooperation • 1. Social • 2. Economic • 3. Political • C. Non-Violent Intervention • IV. Mechanism of Change • A. Conversion • B. Accommodation • C. Coercion

Components of Peace • Justice • Just War Theory, International Law, Arms Control • Security • Realist Political Theory • Non-violence • Pacifism

Basic Human Rights • Physical security • Subsistence • Effective participation • Free physical movement

Theories of Peace