الكاتب: Johan Galtung

Alfaz, Spain An optimistic prediction held by some; but what does it mean? Let us define that “middle” as thousand years, 250-1250, from the start of the West Roman Empire declining (completed in 476 – 500), to the rise of the Hanseatic League transalpina as another Europe (completed around 1500 with protestantisms, Luther-Zwingli-Calvin; Anglicans). Apart from the Crusades, 1095-1291, an early introduction to the “Modern Period”, this was a peaceful time in Europe due to the integrative forces of the “Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation”–not Holy, not Roman, not German they say–and the Vatican–Holy?-hm; Roman? Yes. 217 of…

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2014: there are conflicts old and new crying for solution and conciliation, not violence; with reasonable, realistic ways out. Take the South Sudan conflict between the Nuer and the Dinka. We know the story of the borders drawn by the colonial powers, confirmed in Berlin in 1884. Change a border by splitting a country–referendum or not–and what do you expect opening Pandora’s Box? More Pandora. There is a solution: not drawing borders, making them irrelevant. The former Sudan could have become a federation with much autonomy, keeping some apart and others together in confederations-communities, also across borders. Much to learn…

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From A Theory of Civilization, TRANSCEND University Press-TUP, forthcoming Spring 2014, followed by Deep Culture * Deep Structure * Deep Nature. Not one or a group of persons, not one or a group of countries. But they may serve as instruments for scripts engraved on the deeper recesses of their minds, not the conscious, easily retrievable ones. Scripts that are too trivial, obvious, too painful/shameful and hence repressed. Jung calls them archetypes; they often come in syndromes. Imagine that deep down an actor–person, gender-generation-race-class, state-nation, region-civilization–is programmed for two forces in the world, one good the other evil, and sooner…

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What a Christmas gift to all of us from that amazing Pope Francis, his first Message for the World Day of Peace, Fraternity, the Foundation and Pathway to Peace. A tightly reasoned statement in ten sections; here is an effort to summarize some key points: 1— An irrepressible wish for fraternity enables us to see others not as enemies or rivals, but as brothers and sisters. However, reference to a common Father is needed; otherwise it becomes “a mere do ut des /I give so that you give/ which is both pragmatic and selfish”. 2— The story of Cain and…

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Milano There it is, that fantastic duomo, the fourth in size in the Christian world, honoring their God, exuding self-confidence, and the beauty of the marble stones of the huge façade. Founded six hundred years ago, took five centuries to build, a marvel of engineering and architecture. A major concert with a choir does not manage to fill the inner space of the dome, but of the listeners, yes, with awe. Conceived in the “dark ages” as those masters of cultural violence, our historians, call them, the “middle ages”, presumably between two “shiny ages”, the Roman Empire and Western colonialism,…

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Washington-DC Charles Darwin, in The Voyage of the Beagle, has a passage where he condemns an egalitarian native people on the tip of South America to stay primitive. Development presupposes inequality, having chiefs–human, animals, races–to look up to and learn from; no word wasted on the humans, animals or races at the bottom. And the evolution theory emerging from a mind thus pre-programmed is obvious: competition, struggle for survival, not mutual aid, as the substitute narrative for Genesis 1:20-28, 4th to 6th day–but without God. However, a man of God, Pope Francis–if anyone is saving Western civilization from itself it…

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Bogotá, Direcccion de Inteligencia Policial, Ministerio de Defensa Generals, Colonels, Conference Participants, In June 1998 your President’s Office wanted proposals for peace, and I offered peace education, peace journalism and the guiding moral-ethical light, human rights, a holon of civil-political-socio-economic-cultural rights. Colombia is short on the latter, with flagrant injustices and a deep culture of violence. In this conference a highly counter-productive word is being used: postconflict, instead of post-violence. Do not confuse them: violence means hurting-harming; conflicts are incompatible goals. Conflict may lead to frustration-aggression-violence, but personal and social maturity lead to progress bridging goals, to conflict solution. “Postconflict”…

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Washington DC It’s anybody’s guess. But something is going on. Look at the two strongest actors: Israel and the USA. Israel autistically locked into becoming the region’s military champion, not only by its overwhelming military destructive power but by cutting all neighbors down to a size commensurable with Israel, and divided by their own conflicts. With the help of their instrument, US military might, Israel has had success of sorts with Iraq, Libya, maybe Syria; and Egypt back to normal as military dictatorship benefiting from most of the Camp David rewards. Goodbye, Arab Spring. What is left is Iran, too…

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Washington, DC The linchpin of an empire is the link between two elites, one in the imperial center and the other in the peripheries. Symmetric alliances exist, but not with a superpower in the center. The periphery elites do jobs for the center: killing, say, in Libya, Syria, when so wanted; securing the center economic interests in return for a substantial cut, serving as a bridgehead culturally–called americanization–delivering obedience against protection. For this to work the elites have to believe in the empire. They put words up front–like democracy, human rights, rule of law–serving as human shields. However, the costs…

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Keynote, International Confederation of Reserve Officers, Bucharest 9-13 Oct, 2013 60 years of peace theory and peace practice can be summarized in EQUITY X HARMONY PEACE = —————–———–——— TRAUMA X CONFLICT Four theory foci, four policy tasks, and four education topics. Any true education should prepare for practice, guided by general theory. Moving from denominator right to numerator left, this means: * mediating acceptable and sustainable conflict solutions; * conciliating parties locked in traumas from the past; * empathizing with all parties divided by social/world faultlines; * building cooperation for mutual and equal benefit. Mediation is verbal,…

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Manassas, VA, USA Political terrorism failed. The House Republicans used voting in one US chamber to put millions of people inside and outside the US at livelihood risk for their own political goals. And made the mistake of most terrorists, non-state or state: when people suffer they will join us, against our enemy; to find out that people turn against the terrorists instead. And they were not a small group of Tea Party extremists but a clear majority of the House Republicans: 144 voted NO in the end, only 87 YES. Obama has himself to thank for the general House…

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Two basic facts stand out in the world economic development, leaving aside military, political, cultural and social development: — The BRICS–an acronym becoming a social fact–are emerging; — The USA-EU are declining; not only as markets, also as producers. Another way of saying this is that the West has been outcompeted, not by the Rest but by–so far–a select part. The world market is not constant but increasing sum, but much demand may be met by domestic production, not by import-export. As part of the story. The West got the definition of development wrong, still clinging to economic development =…

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Nobody has brought this simple message to the world like the Perdana Global Peace Foundation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As the leader, Mahathir Mohammad, Malaysia’s fourth prime minister says: “Peace for us simply means the absence of war. We must never be deflected from this simple objective”. So they organize compelling exhibitions and conferences to highlight the atrocities and horrors of war, starting with World War I, often in cooperation with Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta University in Indonesia. A very clear message from the Southeastern part of the world to the Northwestern part: Stop It! All your rules of war add up…

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There seem to be three levels to the Syrian conundrum. On top is the conflict over who is to rule Syria, the Assad minority Shia, 13%, mainly Alawite–or Baath rather, more secular, socialist–dictatorship respecting other minorities–Christians, Armenians, Assyrians, Druze, Kurds, Turkoman, or a majority Sunni, 73% dictatorship with no such respect. Both groups fight with brutality, the list of crimes on both sides is long, and the world is watching the unbearable suffering of the Syrian people, even from nerve gases. Then, in the middle, is the usual geopolitical game of states and regions. In the background are huge alliances,…

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With Georgia (4.5 million) a client of the USA (314 million), fighting its war in Afghanistan; Armenia (3.3 million) leaning towards Russia (143 million); and Azerbaijan (9.2 million) in a bitter conflict over the Armenian enclave Karabagh on much of its territory (less so over the Azeri enclave Nakhichevan on Armenian soil), the stage is set. Add the Russian cultural enclaves in Georgia–Abkhazia and South Ossetia–recognized by few, but some, as states, and visits to Caucasus were a time machine trip back to the Cold War. But that is not all where Georgia is concerned. There is also the Muslim…

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The state, the power unit inside a country also called a state, has been the center of power in the anarchic state system: economic-financial power (state central bank, currency, choice of economic policy, for growth an-or distribution, social power); military power, armed forces, police; cultural power, the world view-religion of the dominant nation; and political power, the legislative, executive, judiciary. But the states, except for the biggest ones, China, India, USA, Indonesia, Russia are waning in salience. What happens then to the four powers? Answer: by and large they go upstairs. Take Norway as an example: a small country, only…

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Civilization: there are six sources of inspiration today, vying for the attention of a humanity looking for goals and means. Two of them are Western secular, liberal and Marxist, defining to a large extent the USA and the former Soviet Union, but not identical with them. Two of them are Oriental amalgams of civilizations, the Japanese Shinto-Confucian-Buddhist civilization, trying to be Western liberal, and the Chinese Daoist-Confucian-Buddhist civilization with strong elements of Western liberal and Western Marxist. And two of them are in-between: the Islamic and the Buddhist civilizations.[i] Dialogue: it simply has to happen. We cannot continue with the…

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[1] The leaks are not about “whistle-blowing, but a nonviolent, civil disobedient, fight against huge social evils. Whistle-blowing, warning, presupposes that somebody can be warned, in fact wants to be warned, and is in a position to do something. Obviously those who can do something about US foreign policy, who have the power–legislative, the Congress, particularly the Senate; executive, State Department-Pentagon-White House; judiciary the Supreme Court; economically the giant banks; culturally the mainstream media–know perfectly well what is going on: these are all efforts to hang on to imperial economic, military, political and cultural power. But they do not want…

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The TRANSCEND-Peace Development Environment Network started with geopolitical macro and mega conflicts; many well known and dramatic. But conflicts in daily life, at school, in couples-family, at work may be even more dramatic; at the micro level within the persons involved, between them, in the context, and at the meso level of social groups. Macro and mega, between states and regions, nations and civilizations, may also matter, like micro personal and meso social conflicts matter for macro and mega conflicts within and between negotiators-mediators. Any act of violence, like bullying at school, quarrels in the family or at work may…

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The Senate, Rome: Your Excellencies, Foreign Affairs, Defense, EU: SYSTEMS: A Reorientation [1] Transarmament: States use armies for defense, and for offense, for wars. Si vis pacem, para bellum, peace through security tries to cover both; but offensive military threatens, provokes arms races, even wars. Si vis pacem para pacem, security through peace is not disarmament leaving regions, states and local level defense-less; rather, it identifies conflicts and traumas underlying violence in order to solve them, builds peaceful state relations, and defensive defense “just in case”. [2] Nonalignment: Solidarity and help to victims of aggression should be based on the…

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“The Secrets to Finland’s Success with School—and Everything”, The Atlantic (11-Jul-2013), has many messages to a US readership from that particular welfare state. One of them is a school system which ranks as one of the world’s best with no standard testing or South-/and East!/Asian “cramming”; limiting student testing to a necessary minimum; there is less emphasis on competition. And another, closely related, Finns have an incredible equality and very little poverty; an extremely low child-poverty rate. The two points are related. The article wisely points to smallness and high homogeneity as two factors underlying the “success”, also known to…

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