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The Art Of Peace
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The Art Of Peace
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by Sean Gonsalves
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Today is United Nations Day. If you had to make a list of the most popular commemorations of  the year, it would rank right up there with Secretary's Day - somewhere near the bottom of the list.
But imagine the world without the United Nations (or secretaries)! Conspiracy theories aside, without the United Nations - even with its many internal flaws - planet Earth would be a much scarier and chaotic place. We'd have an intricately woven "global community" without a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an essential ingredient for any just social order.
Some of my friends have difficulty seeing the connection between their lives and international relations. Recall the front-page newspaper photos of those American soldiers (ordinary Americans, some that looked like me) who were killed in an apparent attack on the USS Cole. Those pictures alone go a long way in illustrating how world affairs can "hit home."
And the unrest in the Middle East is hitting home in a big way. It's a situation full of opportunities - opportunities for immense destruction or incredible creativity. If we are wise and take the creative path, we'll have to abandon the popular idea that international conflicts are about the good guys (that's us) beating the bad guys.
Such a John Wayne view of the world, where the United States defends freedom and peace, is a dangerous half-truth that veils two crucial questions. Freedom for whom? Peace under what conditions?
Internationally, America is becoming more and more isolated, roaming the earth seeking whom she may devour. Iraqi civilians. Colombian peasants. And while "scholars" debate whether the United Nations has too much influence on U.S. foreign
policy, America's foreign policy planners act multi-laterally if convenient and unilaterally if necessary.
On the one hand, the peace movement has been an important check on U.S. aggression, but in its striving for peace, the need to preserve and broaden freedom has not been given due consideration. Peaceniks are full of exhortations about what shouldn't be done in international politics. "Abolish war." Yes, but how?
On the other hand, the libertarian obsession with freedom (as it is commonly conceived), cannot achieve a genuine peace as long as a perilous premise goes unchallenged; namely the notion that liberty can only be defended or expanded with violence.
A question posed by political theorist Gene Sharp in 1979 is still relevant. "Why is it that when most of the people in the literate world at least agree that war must be abolished and know that another world war may end everything does almost everybody continue to support preparations for war?"
It's tempting to think that no realistic alternative has been put forward. But it's a temptation to those who have not been exposed to the idea and history of nonviolent political action - an extraordinarily effective means to achieve political objectives through organized and assorted acts of civil disobedience.
Theology professor and activist Walter Wink points out the error in thinking that nonviolent tactics are merely a utopian fantasy. In 1989, 13 nations, comprised of 1.7 billion people - 32 percent of all humanity - went through nonviolent social transformations that succeeded beyond even the most optimistic predictions.
The nations involved were Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Yugoslavia, Mongolia, the Soviet Union, Brazil and Chile. After 1989, there was Nepal, Palau, Madagascar and South Africa. Going back to 1986 we would have to add the Philippines, South Korea, Burma, New Caledonia and New Zealand to the list.
Now, if you throw in "the independence movements of India and Ghana, the overthrow of the Shah in Iran, the struggle against authoritarian governments and landowners in Argentina and Mexico, and the civil rights, United Farm Worker, anti-Vietnam and anti-nuclear movements in the United States - the figure reaches 3.4 billion: a staggering 64 percent of humanity! All this in the teeth of the assertion, endlessly repeated, that nonviolence does not work in the 'real' world." (See Wink's "Engaging the Powers").
The United States, being the world's only superpower, should pay its delinquent dues to the United Nations and help set up a division within it dedicated to the development of nonviolent methods in defending freedom and waging peace; not only because it's morally right but because it's practically effective.
It's an undertaking that would require brave and disciplined nonviolent warriors and an army of military thinkers, all working to create the spiritual technology and political methods necessary to sustain both peace and freedom. It may be that those who have mastered the art of war would be the most effective implementers of nonviolent tactics.
Happy United Nations Day!
Sean Gonsalves is a Cape Cod Times staff writer and syndicated columinist.
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