Conflict

James Carter February 25, 2020 In popular understanding, the Qianlong Emperor’s rejection of Lord Macartney and King George III was an act of hubris, a failure to recognize the military might of Britain and the West, the last prideful act of a waning empire before a “century of humiliation.” But what if our understanding is all wrong? Originally posted on SupChina on September 9, 2020 “Our Celestial Empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no product within its borders. There was therefore no need to import the manufactures of outside barbarians in exchange for our own produce.” This was the Qianlong Emperor’s response, in part, to British Lord Macartney in September 1793. For a century, the British, like other seafaring Europeans, had been restricted by the “Canton System” that permitted commerce only at the port of Guangzhou (Canton), through official government monopolies, and during a certain season. Industrialists...

Dr. Gary G. Kohls February 9, 2021 A half-century ago, The New York Times accused Martin Luther King Jr. of “slander” for decrying the Vietnam War and The Washington Post detected “unsupported fantasies” in his speech, recalled more favourably by Gary G. Kohls. Originally published on Jan. 19, 2014; slightly edited for the time element. Originally posted on Consortium News on January 19, 2021 Martin Luther King Jr.’s Riverside Church speech was titled “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.” It was delivered exactly one year before his April 4, 1968 assassination in Memphis. In the speech, King declared, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” The people who heard that speech recognized it as one of the most powerful speeches ever given articulating the immorality of the Vietnam War and its destructive impact...

Cooperation would be much better for all, more desirable and perfectly possible. But some want confrontation. Roberto Savio February 2, 2020 It will be quite different from the Cold War with the Soviet Union… While the Coronavirus has rightly taken much of our attention, a fundamental geopolitical realignment has been taking shape in the world, and it will become clearer in 2021. The realignment is the start of a Second Cold War, which hopefully will not become a ‘hot’ war. The new Cold War will be between China and the West, but it will be quite different from the one with the Soviet Union. The world has changed significantly since 1989, the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Originally posted on Wall Street International, December 29, 2020 The gap between the two opposing camps is now much smaller. The Soviet Union, a military giant with little industrial development,...

Albert Györgi’s sculpture, “Emptiness,” at Lake Geneva TFF Associate In war, there are no unwounded soldiers. —José Narosky War is hell, and today more than ever. Although high-tech weapons make it a videogame for some, those same weapons make it unbelievably destructive for everyone else. Whatever valor was once associated with hand-to-hand combat has long since disappeared due to gunpowder, and the massive slaughters of the twentieth century have made it increasingly difficult to romanticize the death and misery war causes. Nonetheless it continues and we have learned, if not to accept it, to take it for granted. Obviously, not everyone loathes it. The U.S. economy would collapse without the obscene amount spent on the military-industrial complex, now well over $600 billion a year according to some calculations. It’s hard to rationalize such a sum without a war once in a while. That’s why the end of the Cold War...

Photo credit: Poster art courtesy paceebene.org John Dear January 20, 2021 It was early 1968. Since the previous spring Martin Luther King, Jr. had been pursuing a course that for many was unthinkable. He had deliberately connected the dots between the movement for civil rights and the struggle to end the war in Vietnam, and had paid the price. He was roundly criticized by the Johnson administration and the media, as well as by people in his own movement. From the right he was attacked for having the gall to question US foreign policy. From the left he was lambasted for losing focus and not keeping his eyes on the prize. Originally published at Satyagrahafoundation He even got it from a childhood friend who stopped by the house one afternoon to vent. “Why are you speaking out against the Vietnam War?” he carped. King put aside his customary oratory. “When I speak about nonviolence,” he patiently explained, “I mean nonviolent all the way.” As David Garrow’s classic biography of King reports, [Bearing the Cross, New York: Harper Collins, 1986], King went on...

There is no security without food security. Geoff Tansey argues that meeting the real security needs of humanity necessitates the progressive redistribution of military budgets toward ending hunger and achieving sustainable development. Geoff Tansey December 13, 2020 As Covid-19 exacerbates inequalities nationally and globally, more and more people are becoming food insecure in both richer and poorer countries. According to the UN’s 2020 report on the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World almost 690 million people went hungry in 2019. And the number of hungry people has been rising since 2014, well before the pandemic hit. COVID-19 could push over 130 million more people into chronic hunger, it says. That means one in every nine humans going hungry most of the time. Originally posted on Rethinking Securityon November 5th, 2020 here This matters for both human security and physical security. Last month saw the 75th anniversary of the founding of...

November 23 and 24, 2020, marks an important event in the international academic/university history of peace and conflict research. The reason is that the Faculty of World Studies at Tehran University holds a large – online – conference – “International Conference on Peace and Conflict Resolution (ICPCR)”. My colleague and friend there, associate professor Ali Akbar Alikhani, is the dynamic pioneer of this important endeavour which includes an international Master’s program in peace and conflict studies. It comes in the wake of a lecture I gave at the Faculty 6 years ago about peace and conflict research. As far as I’m informed, Iran is the second country in the Muslim world to establish a fill program of academic peace and conflict studies (Malaysia the first), and this conference marks the opening of this new academic field. Iran’s bustling capital also hosts an interesting, very lively, Tehran Peace Museum – but...

By Bhikhu Parekh November 5, 2020 If he were alive today, how might Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest apostle of non-violence, challenge Osama Bin Laden’s worldview? Bhikhu Parekh is Vice-President of The Gandhi Foundation, a professor of political philosophy, a Labour peer, and the author of three books on Gandhi. This article first appeared in Prospect Magazine in April 2004. Originally published at Gandhifoundation.org Bhikhu Parekh’s preface Like millions around the world, I found the atrocities of 9/11 abhorrent and utterly condemn such acts of terror. Despite the war against terror, we continue to see more horrors such as that in Madrid. What drives the bombers? How do they live with their deeds? Is there no alternative to the cycle of violence? No one is better qualified to advise on this than Mahatma Gandhi, the great apostle of non-violence. My imaginary exchange between him and Bin Laden tries to do two things: to comprehend...

On November 7, 2020, I wrote a comment on my Facebook Profile that stirred some comments: “Led by CNN and other US media, including Fox News, most Western media now declare Biden the next US president. Is there not some kind of institution in a democracy that shall officially declare who is the winner?It seems they want to appear ignorant about the serious constitutional crisis that is around the corner as Donald Trump is not going to accept this result.We are in for very interesting times…” As you see, there are three elements in this comment. Let me go through them: Here is how the final results of the elections should be announced: “Since the mid-20th century, on January 6 at 1:00 pm before a Joint Session of Congress, the Vice President opens the votes from each state in alphabetical order. He passes the votes to four tellers—two from the...

Jan Øberg 23. oktober 2020 Den norske arkitekt og fredsforkæmper, Susanne Urban har forfattet en righoldig bog, som netop er udkommet for at markere at en af verdens absolut ledende samfundsforskere, Johan Galtung, fylder 90 den 24. oktober 2020. Han er matematiker, sociolog, freds- og fremtidsforsker med en utrolig produktion af foredrag, artikler, gæsteprofessorater og hederdoktorater bag sig – f.eks. medvirket i 170 bøger heraf som eneforfatter af 96. Her mere om ham på Norsk Biografisk Leksikon. Den hedder Galtungs Metode For Fred. Fredsforsker Johan Galtungs liv, teorier og innflytelse – som du kan bladre i hér og købe hér. Bogen er det 7. skrift fra Hardangerakademiet for fred, utvikling og miljø. Den er på 115 sider og har tre hovedkapitler – de som udtrykkes i undertitlen – og den er fyldt med forklarende tekster, figurer, tegninger og fotografier – så man drives videre i denne forskers univers på en...

This paper was written in 2015. Republished here on the occasion of Galtung’s 90th birthday, October 24, 2020. It was originally published at TMS, Transcend Media Service 1.  Definitions and Hypotheses: An Overview Definition: An empire is a transborder Center-Periphery system, in macro-space and in macro-time, with a culture legitimizing a structure of unequal exchange between center and periphery: Empires have different profiles. The US Empire has a complete configuration, articulated in a statement by a Pentagon planner: “The de facto role of the United States Armed Forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing”. (1) In other words, direct violence to protect structural violence legitimized by cultural violence. (2) The Center is the continental USA and the Periphery much of the world.  Like any system it has a life-cycle reminiscent of an organism, with...

Louis Kriesberg October 21, 2020 Louis Kriesberg This post also appears on the  Beyond Intractability website.  The blog is the Constructive Conflict Initiative / COVID-19 Blog and Lou’s essay is here.   We Americans are beset by many awful circumstances in our country and in the world. As analysts and sometimes as activists we examine such developments, analyzing why they are bad and how they have happened. So many bad things are occurring every day, it is hard to fight against any one of them, as new ones distract us. Below, I sketch out an approach to taking actions that have a good chance to be effective and satisfying in overcoming objectionable circumstances. First, we should select three or four matters that we believe should be bettered. We can each choose those matters that particularly concern us. The matters may or may not be connected and they will vary in...