Please note: currently TUP does not take any new orders.
50 Years - 100 Peace & Conflict Perspectives
ISBN: 978-82-300-0439-5
Year: 2008

Price: 20 €
(+ 10 € postage)







50 Years - 100 Peace & Conflict Perspectives

Fifty years ago, in 1958, Galtung was for the first time in a mediation situation. The conflict was between black and white over desegregation of the schools in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA. Since then there have been many and one hundred of them are reported in this book; most of them macro conflicts, some personal and social.

The reader can read the densely written book in many ways:

  • Scan the Table of Contents for a conflict of special interest.
  • Read the Diagnosis sections for analysis of current affairs.
  • Read the Prognosis sections for forecasts, future studies.
  • Read the Therapy sections for remedies, beyond critical commentary, constructive, concrete and creative, the 3 C's.
  • Read the whole book as a text in Peace Studies, much beyond conventional security and international studies, and ask yourself, what can I do for peace, including the many proposals?

This book is the first publication from TRANSCEND UNIVERSITY PRESS.

Author
Johan Galtung, born 1930 in Oslo, Norway, lives in Spain, France, Japan and the USA and is mainly engaged in mediation and research. He founded TRANSCEND: A network for Peace and Development, in 1993, and was a rector of TRANSCEND Peace University 2003-2007.

X

[1] PEACE RESEARCH: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[2] PEACE SERVICE: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[3] PEACEFUL DEFENSE: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[4] PEACE BRIGADES-CORPS: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[5] PEACE JOURNALISM: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[6] PEACE MINISTRIES: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[7] PEACE EDUCATION: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[8] RECIPROCAL DEVELOPMENT AID: A Peace & Development Perspective
[9] NORTH/SOUTH CONFLICT: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[10] EAST/WEST COLD WAR I: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[11] COMMUNITY RACE RELATIONS: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[12] CUBA: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[13] A NORWAY-POLAND AXIS: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[14] CHILE/PERU-BOLIVIA: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[15] CYPRUS: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[16a] ISRAEL/PALESTINE: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[16b] ISRAEL/PALESTINE-MIDDLE EAST: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[16c] ISRAEL/PALESTINE-MIDDLE EAST: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[16d] ISRAEL/PALESTINE-MIDDLE EAST: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[17] INDEPENDENCE (ZIMBABWE): A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[18] KOREA: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[19] THE MEDITERRANEAN REGION: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[20] THE MALVINAS/FALKLANDS: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[21] PAX PACIFICA: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[22a] THE GULF CONFLICT 1990-91: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[22b] THE GULF CONFLICT 1998: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[23] THE KURDS: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[24] JAPAN/RUSSIA/AINU: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[25] JAPAN/USA/RYUKYU: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[26] SOMALIA: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[27] CONFLICT IN-OVER YUGOSLAVIA: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[27a] YUGOSLAVIA NW CONFLICT 1991-95: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[27b] YUGOSLAVIA SE CONFLICT 1998: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[27c] CONFLICT IN-AROUND KOSOVO/A: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[27d] A FEDERATION FOR KOSOVO/A: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[28] HINDU/MUSLIM RELATIONS: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[29] ANOMIE-ATOMIE AND "SECTS": A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[30a] SRI LANKA: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[30b] SRI LANKA: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[31] HAWAI'I: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[32] ECUADOR/PERU: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[33] THE MAYAS: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[34] HEALING THE CRUSADES: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[35] CONCILIATION (ARGENTINA): A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[36] TRIPARTITE EUROPE: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[37] THE SIX CHINAS: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[38a] ULSTER: A Peace & Conflict Outcome Perspective
[38b] ULSTER: A Peace & Conflict Process Perspective
[39a] CAUCASUS: A Peace & Conflict Outcome Perspective
[39b] CAUCASUS: A Peace & Conflict Process Perspective
[39c] CAUCASUS: A Peace & Conflict Outcome Perspective
[40] "COMFORT WOMEN": A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[41] EAST-WEST COLD WAR II: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[42] OKINAWA: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[43] HOSTAGE CRISES (PERU): A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[44] RWANDA-THE GREAT LAKES: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[45] ALBANIA: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[46] LEBANON: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[47] EUSKADI: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[48] GIBRALTAR AND CEUTA MELILLA: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[49] KASHMIR: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[50] COLOMBIA: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[51] CLASS AND GLOBALIZATION: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[52] GENERATION AND SUSTAINABILITY: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[53] PEACE MUSEUMS: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[54] CHRISTIAN/PAGAN RELATIONS 1493: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[55] AFGHANISTAN: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[56] ANGOLA CIVIL WAR: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[57] THE SAMI NATION: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[58] THE USA, THE WEST AND THE REST: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[59] BULLYING: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[60] MEN, WOMEN, MARRIAGE, CULTURE: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[61] USA-UK vs IRAQ: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[62a] NEPAL: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[62b] NEPAL: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[63] INDONESIA vs TIMOR LESTE: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[64] NAGORNO-KARABAGH: A Peace & Conflict Outcome Perspective
[65] A MAN, A WOMAN, A MARRIAGE: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[66] CHIAPAS: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[67] ADJUDICATION VS MEDIATION: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[68] LANGUAGE CONFLICTS: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[69] INTER-MUNICIPAL BORDERS: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[70] HUMAN-APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[71] CAPITALISM vs HUMANITY: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[72] STATE TERRORISM vs TERRORISM: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[73] 2000 NATIONS vs 200 STATES: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[74] ALLIANCE/CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[75] PATRIARCHY: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[76] ENGAGING THE US EMPIRE: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[77] IMMIGRANTS/HOST SOCIETY: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[78] EUROPEAN UNION-DEMOCRACY-PEACE: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[79] PATTANI-ACEH/BANGKOK-JAKARTA: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[80] ZIMBABWE: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[81] CONCILIATION USA-UK/IRAQ: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[82] CONCILIATION USA-UK/ARABIA: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[83] CONCILIATION USA-UK/IRAN: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[84] CONCILIATION MYANMAR: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[85] CONCILIATION JAPAN/CHINA-KOREA: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[86] CONCILIATION GERMANY/HERERO: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[87] CONCILIATION DENMARK/ISLAM: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[88] CONCILIATION THE WEST/ISLAM: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[89] CONCILIATION TURKEY/ARMENIA: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[90] CONCILIATION CAMBODIA: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[91] ALTERNATIVE YASUKUNI SHRINE: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[92] ALTERNATIVE JAPANESE POLICY: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[93] THE NORTH KOREAN BOMB: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[94] MOROS/CHRISTIANS IN MINDANAO: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[95] ORTSTAFELN IN ALPE-ADRIA: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[96] SABONA-DAILY LIFE CONFLICTS: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[97] ENERGY CONVERSION: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[98] GLOBAL WARMING: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[99] INTER-REGIONAL CONFLICTS: A Peace & Conflict Perspective
[100] UNITED NATIONS: A Peace & Conflict Perspective

X

50 YEARS - 100 PEACE & CONFLICT PERSPECTIVES

Chapter 60 and 61 of the book

[60] MEN, WOMEN, MARRIAGE, CULTURE: A PEACE & CONFLICT PERSPECTIVE

[1] Diagnosis.

There is usually a combination of culture and structure at work. Imagine on the one hand a family logic based on collectivism and verticality, with the family as a very tight group filled with mutual rights and obligations and at the same time very hierarchical along generation-gender-age lines, from an elderly grand-father down to some little girl. And then imagine, on the other hand, a family logic based on individualism and horizontality with very much emphasis on self-realization, also outside the family Self, and little attention to norms flowing along family generation-gender-age lines.

In the first logic a high proportion of life would be lived inside the (extended) family; in the second a much smaller proportion and a much higher proportion outside, together with others in the same generation, gender and age group.

In the first logic a new marriage is decided by the older generation, in the second generation the older generation is informed. There is the in-between of the boy asking the coming father-in-law for his daughter's "hand".

[2] Prognosis.

Imagine a marriage with a husband from one logic and the wife from the other, settling in a country with one or the other logics dominating. This produces eight cases. What will happen? The bond of love-sex-marriage is strong, but so are the social forces as witnessed the major case of Muslim immigrants to Western countries.

Take one of the eight cases: a collectivist-vertical wife, with an individualist-horizontal husband, in the husband's country. The wife's life would be centered on the family, having problems creating collectivist verticality in other groups, the host society being weak in that regard. Given school and work outside logic will penetrate into the family and children will see what to the mother is love as control. The husband will easily relate to other women, share work projects, be infatuated, maybe have an affair, maybe all three, totally at odds with the wife's logic of family first, children having the mother as primary authority and the mother reproducing herself in the children -- particularly daughters. As a result the wife may become lonely socially, have problems with children and an unfaithful husband who all see themselves as normal.

Take one of the other cases: they settle in the wife's country, where her logic is normal logic. The children are close to the mother. Control is now also seen as love. The husband is the odd man out. Family interaction overfills his time budget and the emotions.

In an extended family somebody will always have a problem or something to celebrate, he is supposed to be in on all of that. Loyalty and faithfulness is not only to the wife but to the whole "system". Unfaithfulness with body, mind or spirit takes on another tonality when it is inside the wife's system and might evoke much more jealousy. The husband may travel a lot.

[3] Therapy.

Some possible therapies would include:
- awareness of the social logics operating on them, seeing the Other less as controlling, difficult, unfaithful and more as enacting a logic without being fully aware of what happens;
- clarifying before marrying the "rules of the game", which might imply calling on some outside expertise as such insight is rare;
- mutual respect for the logic of the others - simply learning to live with the difference, "she is like that", "he is like that";
- either of them changing to the logic of the other or the society;
- settling in a third country, speaking a third language;
- creating their own niche with an individualist-vertical or collectivist-hoizontal logic;
- separating, divorcing or not marrying. (02X)


-------------------------------

[61] USA-UK vs IRAQ: A PEACE & CONFLICT PERSPECTIVE

[1] Diagnosis.

Let us assume that the only motive behind the US-UK war on Iraq that started March 20 2003 (Baghdad time) was human security against the Hussein-secular-Ba'ath-Sunni regime. By May 1 the state-capitalist regime was demolished and the power was in the hands of the USA-CPA ( Coalition Provisional Authority). Nine months after the war started Saddam Hussein was a POW. Success story?

Within the simplistic logic of Hussein-in-power vs Hussein-not-in-power, yes. But that logic hides two important questions:

A: What were the total cost-benefits of the regime change? and,
B: Were there less costly, alternative, methods of regime change?


The argument is not against regime change, nor against regime change from the outside with intervention. The basic assumption of human security through humanitarian intervention is accepted. States are not sovereign. Humans are. Not only states need security; humans do.

To assess the cost-benefits we use basic human needs, BHN, as benchmark. Justification of intervention then depends on comparing:

Benefits: BHN level with intervention-BHN level without intervention
Costs: BHN costs of the intervention.

This comparison could be on an annual basis after March 20 2003 as some BHN benefits might be long term, adjusting upwards for the benefits without intervention, the costs of deep UN inspection of weapons of mass destruction, a human rights regime, and the benefits of sanctions lifted. Most Saddam regime atrocities were in the past.

The following is only indicative of ways of thinking, using the four BHN classes survival, well-being, freedom and identity.

[1] Survival. Evidently decreasing. There is talk of 10-15,000 killed so far, high for an intervention even in our era. The US casualties have passed 500. The ratio is indicative of the strategy of terrorism, state or privatized: keep the victims/perpetrators ratio high by making the perpetrators unavailable for retaliation. Ratios in the 20-30 range are low relative to 3,000-3,100:19=158-163 for the 9/11 terrorist atrocity. If we expand the definition of the "war in Iraq" to cover the US-UK air raids in the periods after the First Iraq war in 1991, the number of victims, but not perpetrators, would increase, making for higher ratios. And the war continues.

[2] Well-being. Destruction of housing and infrastructure brought about by battle, of orchards and farmland as reprisals against farmers suspected of cooperation with the resistance, unemployment rates cited as 70% in some regions, and overcrowded hospitals, are indicative of serious declines in meeting such basic needs as food, clothes, shelter, health care and education. That decline, relative to the high level of basic needs satisfaction in the oil-rich Ba'ath welfare state, had a pre-history in the 1980-88 war with Iran, the First Gulf war, and the economic sanctions and air raids thereafter. There are some benefits from the lifting of sanctions, however.

[3] Freedom. September 19 2003, Bremer enacted Order 39, announcing that 200 Iraqi state companies would be privatized; decreeing that foreign firms can retain 100% ownership of Iraqi banks, mines and factories; and allowing them to move 100% of their profits out of Iraq. The Economist declared the rules a "capitalist dream".

The Geneva conventions stipulate that this decision can only be taken by the Iraqis themselves, not be imposed. It was well-prepared autocracy, not freedom. And the same tendency is seen in the postponement of direct elections, using the loya jirga Afghanistan model of handpicked delegates to an assembly or to the cabinet.

[4] Identity. Muslim Iraq was attacked by two Protestant permanent Security Council members opposed by the other three, one secular-Catholic, one secular-Orthodox and one Confucian. The attack started on one of the holiest sites of shia Islam, Karbala, even on the day, spring solstice 2003, when Hussein ibn Ali, Mohammed's grandson, was decapitated in the Sunni-Shia battle and became shia Islam's martyr. The US command referred to their attack as "decapitation", based on a hint as to where Saddam Hussein, the head of Iraq, might be hiding.

In the wake of the US military came Christian fundamentalist missionaries to convert, and political missionaries to impose a separation between church and state, the sacred and the secular, contrary to the Islamic faith that they are inseparable. There may be a road to democracy via the mosque and the ulema, but that was not the road traveled by the USA or Saddam Hussein. So far intervention brought no identity benefits, only heavy costs.

General conclusion: neither security, nor basic human needs.

[2] Prognosis.
And thus it will continue, under occupation.

[3] Therapy.
Solving the conflicts in and around Iraq, using an 11 parties model of the conflict in and around Iraq, with 3 parties inside and 8 outside, they can be subdivided, and more can be added:

I. CONFLICT PARTIES INSIDE IRAQ: Kurds, wanting independence, or very high level autonomy; Turkmen, wanting security, autonomy from Kurds; Sunni, wanting to rule Iraq from Baghdad with secular, socialist, welfare state features (ba'athism); Shia, wanting Islamic Republic for Iraq or at least for themselves;

II. CONFLICT PARTIES OUTSIDE IRAQ: USA, wanting control of Iraq from Baghdad for geopolitical control of Gulf region and for Eurasia control, corporate economic control of oil, also for geopolitics, Judeo-Christian fundamentalism, and to protect Israel; UK, wanting to settle old imperial accounts with Iraq and the special relation of being chosen by the country chosen by God; Japan, wanting to "normalize Japan" by legitimizing Japanese military (SDF) and the special relation of being chosen by the world No. 1; Australia, Spain etc., wanting US anti-terrorist help in return for participation; France, Germany, wanting EU independent of USA in foreign-security affairs; Turkey, wanting no Kurdish autonomy as a precedent for Kurds in Turkey and protection for Turkmen; Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, Iran, wanting not to be attacked by USA and good relations with the next Iraq; Saudi Arabia, wanting to survive between Wahhabism and the USA.

11 parties, 19 goals is a simplification, but better than "the world against Saddam Hussein". The solution is neither a unitary state imposed by colonialism, based on the Mosul, Baghdad and Basra parts of the Ottoman Empire (with a 61% Shia majority dictatorship), nor fragmentation in 18 provinces, nor a division into three states. The solution might be a (con)federation with high autonomy for the Kurdish, Sunni and Shia parts, with a con-federal capital, but not in Baghdad. Kuwait, the 19th province before it was detached in 1899 as a protectorate under the British Empire, might in the longer run like to be an independent, associated member, with a status like Liechtenstein relative to Switzerland. Alternative: Basic needs+soft intervention+conflict resolution.

SOLUTION:

Aggressor pull-out, Iraq as confederation, open borders to other Kurds and Shia-Arabs, USA-UK and the Coalition of the Willing in general apologizing and compensating, a Conference for Security and Cooperation in the Middle East, CSCME. (031, 03y)
>
TRANSCEND | TMS | TUP | TPU | TPC | TRI

© 2024 TRANSCEND International