Peace (45 page)

Today's terrorist groups are more easily categorized, broadly falling into two sets, and peace prospects easier to identify though historically not to implement. Again, these groups are heroic to some, but violence does not depend on perspective. A first set is political, one of the largest being the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which began in 1975. They attacked rival groups in addition to government officials seeking to secede from Sri Lanka, and the state's army fought back. India intervened in the late 1980s, a federal state structure was proposed and a ceasefire agreed to. Suspicions mounted and both peace projects fell through. Attacks continued as the state waged a War for Peace; in 2001 the LTTE announced that autonomy would do and another ceasefire was called. When a Sri Lankan president was elected on a crackdown platform, it was broken and remains so. Politically motivated groups like the LTTE, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) have tended to use violence as means to an end, not as an end in itself. They are not terrorist
movements
, but find it necessary or expedient
to use terrorist
tactics
, opening up the possibility of negotiation and compromise, of course easier said than done as these tactics have also been used to shape or call off peace efforts and in retaliation for peaces deemed unfair. Conducting a worldwide “war on terror,” especially when what “winning” it means has not yet been concretely set out, escalates rather than diffuses tensions and conflicts that lead to political terrorism. As a result, peacemakers and keepers are targeted not for what they are or are not doing, but for who they do or do not represent.

A second set is religiously based, giving rise to the sense that an “Age of Sacred Terror” is upon us.
²³
The international fundamentalist Islamic Al Qaeda, operating in semi-autonomous cells wherever its leaders believe Muslim interest are threatened, hence Osama bin Laden's Jihad, is best-known. But fundamentalist Christians in the US have used terrorist tactics against abortion clinics and Aum Shinrikyo, which released nerve gas in Tokyo's subway and claims a Buddhist basis, have acted violently on religious convictions. The means these groups use are often coterminous with their ends, putting the feasibility of negotiation and compromise on both their and their victims' side in peril. Counter-terrorism measures based on bolstered surveillance, investigative agencies and police forces may prevent religious acts of terror but they cannot in themselves eliminate their motives. A recent, unprecedented conciliatory initiative by Muslim to Christian leaders gives both reason for hope and sets a precedent for future practices. In 2007, 138 potentates from across the Islamic spectrum presented their Christian counterparts with a letter entitled “A Common Word Between Us and You,” urging closer and collaborative ties by building on common interests and traditions and warmly received. “Given that there's no simple one-off solution to terrorism,” noted Cambridge University's Interfaith Program director, “this letter does have all the elements necessary to move in that direction.”
²⁴

In addition to these drivers of terrorism's threats to peace, state-sponsored and state-run terrorist programs, by which governments support, protect or use terrorists to further their aims, have been recognized. In conjunction with these phenomena the notion of rogue states willing to use violence in disregard of established international forums and procedures has emerged. Along these lines President Bush declared in 2001 that the nuclear ambitions and terrorist links of Iraq, Iran and North Korea formed an “Axis of Evil,” and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Sean McBride stated at a conference on terrorism: “The terrorist who holds a hostage for ransom is not very different from the head of a government who threatens to use nuclear weapons to force another State to yield to its demands.”
²⁵
By the same token, a majority in Britain (2005), currently the US' closest ally, saw the US as “a greater threat to global peace than Al Qaeda;” so more than just terrorists believe it to be a rogue state
itself.
²⁶
Economic and diplomatic sanctions on UN or bilateral levels have been and are widely used to punish and prevent state-related terrorism and oppression that breeds terrorism on smaller – but not superpower states – to varying degrees of success. Most notably, North Korea has agreed to end its nuclear program and has entered into permanent peace talks with the South in 2006–7 after its economy was crippled – at its citizens more than its leaders' expense, and with outcomes all but certain.

In 1999, after a string of terrorist attacks on US embassies, the UN Security Council called for international cooperation to “fight” terrorism, as if it were an enemy in itself rather than a tactic enemies use against each other. After 9/11, it adopted a resolution calling on states to criminalize assistance for terrorist activities, deny financial support and safe haven to terrorists and share information about groups planning terrorist attacks. Important steps as these are, they are also an extension of the pattern by which the US made unilateral into multilateral policy, as with the Monroe Doctrine and Open Door. In the case of terrorism, the unilateral policy is called the Shultz Doctrine, put forth in 1984, which instituted counterterrorist tactics of pre-emptive attacks, forceful retributions and antiterrorist military aid; its world correlative today is the “war on terror.” National and global counter-terrorism measures remain directionless unless endgames of peace are predefined and prepared for, and retrogressive until coordinated with proven peace principles and practices on ground and high levels, among them:

  1.  Recognizing and addressing terrorist motives as well as acts;

  2.  Meeting the needs of victims of terrorism to avoid its perpetuation;

  3.  Incentivizing the replacement of violence with negotiation;

  4.  Pre-determining interests in and purposes of negotiation, not outcomes;

  5.  Negotiating with those who have the authority to end violence on all sides;

  6.  Planning for and implementing post-negotiation peace scenarios;

  7.  Inducing weapon handovers and cessation of incitement to violence;

  8.  Reconciliation-based trial and punishmentof terrorists, including reintegration;

  9.  Transforming (counter-) terrorist infrastructures into productive nonviolent ones;

10.  Preventing terrorism through rather than around legal systems.
²⁷

Terrorism's chief challenge to peace may be one identified in the Cold War, and which applies to terrorist and counter-terrorist forces alike: “The infrastructure knows no boundaries and observes no borders: the battlefields are virtually everywhere. Scores of nations are linked. . . all
of them are on the front lines. Just as the distinction between war and peace is blurred, so is the distinction between military and civilian.”
²⁸
As an extension of Adorno's definition of peace, the most effective response to terrorism may prove to be one based on a “new universalism, both recognising and promoting plurality. . . based on a relational ontology, in which universalistic principles dominate procedures.”
²⁹
Thinking about it and actually doing so requires a “dialogic ethic, in which procedures allow for the possibility of developing a common discourse between different and unequal partners.” Among the greatest vehicles and inhibitors of this kind of discourse are technological innovations in peace and peacemaking.

Vital to understanding and maximizing recent technological innovations in peace and peacemaking are metaphors and methods put forth by media theorist Marshall McLuhan in
War and Peace in the Global Village
(1968) and two previous works. “Electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village,” that is, new media, in his day television, cinema and radio, in ours, satellite communication and the internet, are able to reflect, shape and integrate cultures on scales and with speeds compared to which print pales.
³⁰
Coining “the medium is the message,” he argued further that these media shape not only the messages they convey, but the societies in which they do.
³¹
But in
War and Peace
he tempered positive connotations many began to ascribe to these notions early on, just as many do today to the point of triteness, by drawing attention to the fact that the mobilizations and integrations new media vs. old allow can be military- as well as peace-oriented. Other critics have argued that disparities in technologies, communicative or otherwise, are in themselves obstacles to peace.

New media may be the sharpest double-edged swords regarding peace and peacemaking in our times. Magnitudes and targets of terrorist attacks are correlated to the media attention they get because they assure higher viewer ratings, which in turn brings in more advertising revenue for media outlets. To symbiotic relationships between merchants, manufacturers and mercantilist governments have been added those of terrorists, counter-terrorist operations and the media. At the same time, however, the ability to nearly instantaneously become aware of threats and breaches of peace around the planet allow for reaction times and dimensions aimed at peace-maintenance and against war previously unimaginable, let alone implementable. United for Peace and Justice, a US anti-war umbrella group, reported that its webpage listing hundreds of planned local demonstrations even before the Iraq War was declared received over 1.5 million hits daily in March 2003. MoveOn.org, an internet-based anti-war campaign, has carried out non-violent “virtual protests,” bombarding government offices with e-mails, faxes and phone calls urging
peace, and raising $400,000 in 48 hours through online fundraising. A Canadian backpacker in Myanamr who witnessed the Buddhist-led protest for democracy began a blog, and in days had over 100,000 signatories to his petition, causing the autocratic regime to shut down national internet access. New media's hazards to and opportunities for peace and peacemaking are just starting to be documented, analyzed and employed. But there can be no doubt that “Cyberspace subverts spatial boundaries, including those of territorial political communities at all levels. It empowers affinity groups that cut across jurisdictions, and vastly increases the possibilities of forming temporary or longer-lasting collectivities,” peaceful and not.
³²

Other technological innovations that cannot be overlooked or over emphasized in relation to the presents of peace and peacemaking are developments in means of transportation. Like long-range ships forever transformed peace in the colonial-imperial eras, trains since the nineteenth century, automobiles since the first half of the twentieth century and airplanes since the second have not only made modern peacekeeping possible, but have allowed for persistence and deepening of personal interactions between policymakers as well as peace activists otherwise impossible. Even outside these small circles and despite their use in warfare, these new transportation means are
sine qua non
of globalization's commercial and cultural networks, and any alternatives however peaceful that do not take equally full advantage of them will probably not prevail. But the boons of modern transportation to peace and peacemaking cannot be accurately assessed without considering their banes in the overconsumption of natural resources as well as the detriments to the environment. As tensions related to control over energy resources mount between nations, so has the awareness that the ecological harm their exploitation is causing may parallel that which specters of nuclear war do only potentially, thus similarly putting not only the survival of peace at risk, but also the survival of humanity itself. This parallel partially explains why sustainability organizations today are recognized as being intrinsically and increasingly explicitly aligned with contemporary peace organizations, to which we now turn in closing.

There are thousands of peace-related organizations in the world today, and no complete, up-to-date register and analysis of all of them or their precursors exists. Such a project would be invaluable to understanding and making the most of the human and material resources globally devoted to peace and is vital to the purposes of this book but far beyond its scope. Instead, what follows is a summary of three major types of peace organizations today. The first is research-based and activities include funding peace-related studies by individual and groups of scholars, organizing forums to present their research to each other and the public,
otherwise disseminating results and serving as advisors to policymakers. Usually structured as foundations, institutes or centers, they include think tanks which tend to be highly partisan, university departments which tend to pretend that they are not partisan, and
a priori
partisan government bodies. The second type of peace organization fulfils peace advocacy functions, serving as watchdogs of threats to peace, promoting particular approaches to peace, popularizing the results of research-based organizations, sometimes collaborating with them or conducting research themselves. The main difference between the first and second type is that experts and knowledge are the bases of the one while actual or aspiring political or other kinds of leaders and causes are the driving forces of the other, though distinctions are often blurred. The third and last type of organization to be discussed here continues the tradition of peace activism, i.e., doing things for peace in addition to or aside from thinking and talking about what can or should be done, specialties of the first two. Demonstrations, grassroots and door-to-door campaigns, ploughshares, coordinated publicity and mobilization, voter initiatives, non-violent direct action, civil disobedience, non-cooperation, providing for needs which if unmet could threaten peace, are just a few of their purposes and tactics, most of which is done on a voluntary basis by their members.