I have in front of me the 120 members of the SwissZ ulassungs-kommision who decide whether a young man who refuses military service should be accepted as conscientious objector and be transferred to Zivildienst, civil service.\u00a0 Criteria: is their conscience, not necessarily religious, compelling, and is the young man’s construction of reality, from inner conscience-intentions to the outer actions-consequences contradiction-free? \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Their work is now coming to an end: the Swiss parliament is about to operationalize the Gesinnungs-Pr\u00fcfung, conscience-testing, down to a simple figure, 1.5: is the young man willing to accept 50% longer service?\u00a0\u00a0 And – if the new system works to the disfavor of recruitment to the army, does he take even 1.8?<\/p>\n
Workshop themes: what are the findings of peace studies, and what are the experiences from peace work?\u00a0 So I present my conclusions: violence is in general a monument over unresolved conflict.\u00a0 Hence, [1] solve the conflict, nonviolently, with empathy and creativity and [2] have a purely defensive, non-provocative defense where people can choose between conventional military, militia and non-military defense, and we should be in reasonably good shape.\u00a0 To do this be attentive not only to direct but also to structural and cultural violence, and not only to the intentions behind warfare but to the consequences.<\/p>\n
Most of the two-day seminar was dedicated to conflict resolution and the TRANSCEND method, using the book 50 Years: 100 Peace & Conflict Perspectives (TRANSCEND University Press, 2008).<\/p>\n
Peace Service is No. 2 of those perspectives (No. 1, as one may guess, is peace research).\u00a0 Permit me to quote:<\/p>\n
\u201cWith military service came conscientious objection to that service.For objection to prevail over the duty to the state the reason would have to be rooted above the state, like in God, in a super-state like the UN, or in Reason itself. For the duty to be compelling the reasoning would have to be made public, like in applications for COstatus in some countries.\u00a0 And the reasoning would have to be universalizable (Kant), applicable to all on the same situation.\u00a0 If compelling and universalizable to most, then in a democracy conscription is dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
Let us look backward, recovering a narrative well known to those of uswho have lived parts of it, less known to others.<\/p>\n
Phase 1:\u00a0 Obligatory military service means exactly that.\u00a0 The alternative is death by execution as traitor to the national cause and\/or as deserter\/coward.\u00a0 A non-man.\u00a0 The milder version would be social death, expulsion, loss of citizen rights.<\/p>\n
Phase 2:\u00a0 Objection is criminalized, handed over to civilian courts,and the punishment is imprisonment in times of war and in times of peace.\u00a0 Repeated objection is seen as recidivism and the reaction is repeated imprisonment.<\/p>\n
Phase 3:\u00a0 The absurdity of Phase 2 becomes increasingly clear to increasingly many and stimulates a search for transfer to an alternative service for those who felt Thou shalt not kill as generally valid, not only an in-group morality, like as non-combatant in the armed forces (like ambulance service, keeping the risks at about the same level as for the combatants).<\/p>\n
Phase 4:\u00a0 However, it soon becomes clear that the objection for most was not only to the combatant role where they might have to kill, but to the military institution as such.\u00a0 The conscience testing remained. The search for an alternative service was on, if not with the same risks as military service at least with the same costs: away from normal civilian life in the family, at school, at work, heavy like logging and drainage of swamps, or menial social work, and 1.X longer duration that military service; X to be debated and adjusted.<\/p>\n
Phase 5: The absurdity of phase 4 became obvious.\u00a0 More and more objectors requested peace service, were willing to refuse non-peace alternative service and to suffer imprisonment for that second order objection.\u00a0 The content changed, like toward research assistance in peace research institutes and development service abroad, similar to the (a misnomer) Peace Corps.<\/p>\n
And that is about where we are today.\u00a0 So, let us now look forward and extend the narrative into the future:<\/p>\n
Phase 6:\u00a0 The peace service becomes ever more attractive, not as an act of omission (non-killing), but to accommodate countless acts of commission: peace-building between parties in conflict, nonviolent inter-positioning, mediation, conciliation. With the opening of military service to young women comes peace service for young women. The whole service may not always do that much good, but at the very least it does no harm.<\/p>\n
Phase 7:\u00a0 The absurdity of war and the military becomes ever more clear to ever more people.\u00a0 At the very least those who choose the military option will have to have good reasons for killing, maiming and destroying.\u00a0 Justification for joining the military will have to be rooted in higher purposes and be presented publicly for a commission. “I enjoy killing” is for individual benefit, and so is “killing an Iraqi for Green Card,” “killing two Iraqis for college education.\u201d They learn correct answers: kill Iraqis-Afghans for freedom-democracy-human rights.<\/p>\n
Phase 8:\u00a0 The German word Gewissen means conscience, the word Wissen means knowledge.\u00a0 Gradually the commission testing the would-be soldiers includes actions and their consequences, good intentions being insufficient.\u00a0 Please tell us in detail about the consequences of the last wars – – -, but also of the last non-resistances, including non-nonviolencies.<\/p>\n
Phase 9:\u00a0 War service looks more and more dubious.\u00a0 To deter people from choosing that option they have to serve 1.Y peace service, now X+Y more than the original military service.<\/p>\n
Phase 10:\u00a0 War as a social institution no longer has democratic legitimacy, young men and women have voted with their choices. Majoritarian pro-military sentiment can be located in older niches of the population, say 65 and above. Fighting is made more compatible with more advanced age.<\/p>\n
And with them war as a legitimate social institution follows slavery and colonialism to the garbage heap of history.\u00a0 Resquiat in pacem. There will still be violence.\u00a0 But not massive violence supported by massive legitimacy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have in front of me the 120 members of the SwissZ ulassungs-kommision who decide whether a young man who refuses military service should be accepted as conscientious objector and be transferred to Zivildienst, civil service.\u00a0 Criteria: is their conscience, not necessarily religious, compelling, and is the young man’s construction of reality, from inner conscience-intentions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1196"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":319516,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1196\/revisions\/319516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}