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Ideas about how to deal with the term "peace"
Ideas about how to deal with the term "peace"
"There is no way to peace. Peace is the way" - this perception of peace by Mahatma Gandhi represents a pragmatic understanding of peace. The following quote makes it a little more clear: "Concentrate on the means and the purpose will take care of itself." As far as Gandhi was concerned, it's the means, or rather, non-violent actions that are important rather than concentrating on the purpose, that is, searching for a (utopian) peace that might be reached sometime in the distant future.
Our much-used illustration in this basic course also makes violence the dividing point in our continuum between war and peace. Peace starts where violence ends and cooperation begins. There are a number of cooperation and integration steps on the way to "maximum" peace, which cannot be defined in terms of a firm physical state, but rather in terms of a regulative idea or (positive) utopia.
The point at which peace begins is contested. Or to phrase it in another way: What does it actually mean when (as described above) somebody says that there has been "an end to violence?" Within this framework, basic course 2 deals with questions concerning direct, structural and cultural violence. As far as a more precise definition of peace is concerned, it's become common practice to make a distinction between "positive" and "negative" peace. The following text passage by Ernst-Otto Czempiel addresses this distinction: section on violence
"Peace shares the fate of those problems in society, which are not suppressed or forgotten, but which are not seen for what they are. Peace is always being talked about, be it in politics, the media, in public and in the peace movement. It is sworn to and then revoked. All this gives the impression that peace is a familiar set of circumstances that can be created. A disarmament agreement and political talks can bring peace closer, while armament and a breakdown in talks can push peace further away. (...)
Achieving peace in the international system means achieving a situation in which existing conflicts are continually resolved or at least dealt with without the need for organized military force.
In some ways this definition is closest to the "negative" understanding of peace, which describes peace as non-war. This set of circumstances is content that a state of war does not exist. This does not only mean the absence of war but also the absence of other non-violent means of waging war. The logical consequences of this, then, is that the negative definition of peace, if it had ever taken itself seriously, actually demands a large number of steps to be taken, which would otherwise have been attributed to the positive definition of war in a purely nominalistic discussion. Preventing war over the long-term means replacing it with non-warlike conflict solution methods. When this has been achieved, there's peace.
This definition does not discriminate against all forms of violence, rather just organized military damage to the physical existence of people. This definition of peace has never - and still hasn't - set out to achieve "a non-violent world society or, to put it in theological terms, the end of man's suffering" (...). All it does is give a more precise definition of that which is generally recognized as a component part of peace, namely non-war. Indeed, what is non-war if it is not the permanent absence of organized military use of force? It is not identical with the avoidance of war over certain periods, but actually excludes its preparation, or rather, the readiness for war. This is also what Hobbes had in mind when he said that (...) peace was a period of time in which there was neither war nor the readiness for war. The political consequences for this uncompromising definition of non-war are considerable. (...)
Peace in this sense is used to describe a process in the international system that is characterized by the non-violent discharging of the conflicts arising within it. Indeed, this definition of peace would even be satisfied if the overwhelming trend was in this direction: Peace exists when conflicts in the international system are being resolved in a way that is overwhelmingly free from military force. (...)
Under closer examination, however, the things that are presented as opposing alternatives for the "negative" and "positive" definitions of peace actually turn out to be a sequence of stages. This sequence begins, as conditio sine qua non, with the elimination of the use of organized military force. It then progresses as a process of decreasing force and increasing distributive justice."
[Taken from: Ernst-Otto Czempiel: Friedensstrategien, Systemwandel durch Internationale Organisationen, Demokratisierung und Wirtschaft, Paderborn 1986, p. 11, 35-37, 51]
Ernst-Otto Czempiel also thought it made sense to talk about a continuum rather than war and peace as certain fixed states. As is shown below this continuum is slightly different from the one already shown above:
The starting point is the so-called "negative definition of peace": Peace is the absence of war, and war can be defined rather exactly as "the use of organized military force." A distinction has to be made between a number of (consecutive) phases and different degrees of peace, with physical states such as the Cold War being defined as peace, albeit as the lowest degree of peace.
Another difference between this continuum and the one previously discussed is "increasing justice." In addition to measuring the degree of violence (non-violence), justice provides a further criteria for making a distinction between the different phases of peace. This points to the close relationship between peace and justice.
There has never been a good war or a bad peace – Benjamin Franklin
[Author: Ragnar Müller]
Further ideas on how to deal with the term peace: