Conflict and war

There has been serious confusion associated with the widespread embrace of ‘soft power’ as a preferred form of diplomacy for the 21st century. Joseph Nye introduced and popularized the concept, and later it was adopted and applied in a myriad of settings that are often contradictory from the perspective of international law and morality. I write in the belief that soft power as a force multiplier for imperial geopolitics is to be viewed with the greatest suspicion, but as an alternative to militarism and violence is to be valued and adopted as a potential political project that could turn out to be the first feasible utopia of the 21st century.

We are facing six conflicts, four current, one past and one future are shaping our present reality. Conflict is a relation of incompatibility between parties; not an attribute of one party. It spells danger of violence and opportunity to create new realities. Thus, to understand the shoa the narratives of unspeakable German atrocity and infinite Jewish suffering are indispensable. But so are the narratives of German-Jewish relations, Germans to others, Jews to others. Failure to do so blocks rationality: if conflict is in the relation, then the solution is in a new relation. This is not blaming the victim. What matters most is changing the relation. Are we able?

US politics has for a long time, since the 1970s, been the politics of inequality. Not only have the indicators of inequality, like the ratio in average income between the top and the bottom 20%, or the salary ratio between a CEO and the average employee in a corporation, increased (from 50 to 1100). But the top 10 or 1 or 0.1 percent, has acquired wealth so far unheard of. And the bottom 90, or 99 or 99.1 percent see the average family income in real terms decreasing; for the lowest down below the poverty line, way down into misery like worrying about where the next meal comes from (from the soup kitchen for very many).

IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE, APRIL 2012 © IPS and the author Editor’s note: The overall picture has turned much worse over the last few months. In particular, the Western demands to Iran made public prior to the Istanbul consultations on April 14, bodes ill for the next round of talks in Baghdad. Everyone has stated views, used rhetoric and taken concrete steps that bring us all closer to the a and the tightening of sanctions that already suffocate Iranian society. It is believed – ­falsely­ – that sanctions are somehow “soft weapons”. In Iraq, with one-third of the population of Iran, Western sanctions caused roughly one million Iraqi deaths. What is indicative of a will to promote future peace among the parties? Well, the following are not: pre-negotiation demands, threats to destroy, an oil embargo, sanctions directed at citizens, condescending rhetoric to and about a nation with one of the oldest...

Washington, DC One wonders what the US political leaders want. The incumbent lives in this world, playing an ultra-realist game: extra-judicial executions in maybe 70 countries, drone attacks; minimizing US losses, maximizing direct hits at what he sees as the problem, concrete identified individuals, not concrete unidentified conflicts. He has neither the moral nor the intellectual courage to do that. The challengers, with one exception, are focusing on one issue: down with the welfare state. Ron Paul, the libertarian, adds: down with the warfare state. He has registered Vietnam-Afghanistan-Iraq and the next in line, Iran-Syria, as unwinnable and unaffordable for a bankrupt economy. Young Republicans and others flock to him, but his discourse is too unusual. Warfare, not welfare makes sense. This has to do with the relation to conflict, a three-headed problem: attitude, behavior, contradiction. The USA wants an attitude of love for the USA, military response to evil...

Gareth Evans, a former attorney-general and foreign minister in Australia, threatened me because I raised the issue of his support for the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia. I have rarely ever come face to face – only inches in fact – with such anger. Certainly not at an academic conference. And certainly not from such a prominent figure: chancellor of Australian National University, former attorney-general and foreign minister, former head of the International Crisis Group, and one of the world’s most prominent global thinkers. Yet here I was with Gareth Evans, cursing at me, ripping my badge off, and threatening to punch me in the face.

A few days ago I was a participant in a well-attended academic panel on ‘the decline of violence and warfare’ at the International Studies Association’s Annual Meeting held this year in San Diego, California. The two-part panel featured appraisal of the common argument of two prominent recent publications: Steven Pinker’s best-selling The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has Declined and Joshua Goldstein’s well-researched, informative, and provocative Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide. Both books are disposed to rely upon quantitative data to back up their optimistic assessments of international and domestic political behavior, which if persuasive, offer humanity important reasons to be hopeful about the future. Much of their argument depends on an acceptance of their interpretation of battlefield deaths worldwide, which according to their assessments have declined dramatically in recent decades. But do battlefield deaths tell the whole story, or even the...

We all feel desperate watching the horrible killing, feeling the suffering of the bereaved, the whole people. But, what to do? Could it be that the UN, and governments in general, have a tendency to make the same mistake, again and again, of putting the cart before the horse? The formula they use is generally: [11 Get rid of No. 1 as key responsible, using sanctions; then [2] Cease-fire, appealing to the parties, or intervening, imposing; [3] Negotiation among all legitimate parties; and from that [4] A political solution as a compromise between the positions. It looks so logical. There is a key responsible, President Assad, ordering the killing; get rid of him by all means. Then the cease-fire, the fire ceasing; then negotiation, and then the solution emerges. Logical, yes; but maybe not very wise.

Alfàs Del Pi, Spain The clouds are dark. And we sense one on the horizon, black; a point so far. The description of the cloud: using a major war, even with Russia-China, to revive an economy in depression; destroying capital, rebuilding.

s. Walk the streets of New York and one will see- and feel- the crime rate is half of what it was a decade ago. Western Europe today is the safest place in all human history. We should go back to Biblical times to see how we’ve changed. On the way from Egypt to the “promised land” Moses said God was telling him to order his army when they fought the Midianites to kill all the women and children. When Joshua invaded Canaan and sacked Jericho, after the walls came tumbling down “both man and woman, young and old were destroyed with the edge of the sword”. Samson established his reputation by killing 30 men during his wedding feast. Then to avenge the killing of his wife and father he slaughtered a thousand Philistines. These examples and many more come from the scriptures themselves- the same scriptures that small children...