The New Faces of War, The New Faces of Peace
Hello students, parents, teachers and other honored guests. I'm going to talk
about war and peace--but only for about 15 minutes! Tolstoy would not have
recognized war or peace today. Soldiers around the world direct their weapons
at civilians, and some of the most important peacemaking efforts today are
the result of citizen diplomacy. In the future, the Internet will continue
to change the faces of war and peace in astounding new ways.
I for one am glad to say goodbye to the waning twentieth century. Ah, yes,
it has seen many wonders: the birth of new technology; the mixed blessing of
global capitalism; the rise and collapse of communism; and the emergence of
democracy as the universal basis for civil societies that legitimate and stabilize
their governments.
The century that is passing has also known a frequency and intensity of war
unlike any other in human history, even though warfare is as old as mankind.
Every one of the states we live in today was wrenched out of violence and conquest.
In the nineteenth century, the European regimental culture of a highly disciplined
officer class--courageous, honorable, self-sacrificing, obedient to command--was
a model for that century which was the most peaceful in European history. World
War I ended all that.
World War I, a war of attrition in which 20,000,000 people died, the first
war that many believe was about war for war's sake with commanding officers
losing their purpose, was the beginning of our twentieth century nightmare
in the West. Politics and shame and boundaries unresolved made World War II
inevitable. In that war 50,000,000 people died! And by the war's end in 1945
a monstrous new dimension of warfare had entered our culture: shifting war
against enemy soldiers, to war against enemy civilians. And lest we think only
of Rwanda and Yugoslavia, I am reminded that horrific revelations of the massacre
of South Korean women and children pinned under a railway bridge and mowed
down with automatic weapons fire by American soldiers, under the command of
their superiors, is just now coming to light in the U.S. forty years later.
The twin horrors of genocide and nuclear deterrence (which implies that if
push comes to shove their will necessarily be unimaginable civilian casualties
on all sides) has, I believe, caused us to recoil in terror from honest confrontation
with the new faces of war. I have been forced to confront in my work as a mediator,
and I am compelled to give witness.
THIS IS THE NEW FACE OF WAR.
From my Field Notebook, November 19, 1994. On the Ferry Jadrolinja from Split
to Rijeka, Croatia. I wrote, "Oh, the horror and beauty of Mostar, Hercegovina.
The city is destroyed now. We are having our negotiation meetings on the
West Bank, the Croat side, but I crossed the front line last night to the
Muslim East Bank to find Nadia. There is no electricity on the Muslim side.
I found Nadia in her house. There was only one candle on the dining room
table. Six other women were there. They are so very close to the surface
with their emotions, and tears and weeping break out at the most unexpected
moments. The situation is grim. There are many refugees from the Croat side,
which is now completely "cleansed" of Serbs and Muslims.
"
We walked outside and looked up at the fires of the Serb gun emplacements positioned
high in a ring on the surrounding hillsides enabling the Serbs to shell the
East Bank at random and at will. A few days ago a big shell hit a playground
where there were 70 children. Two were killed, seven wounded. I wandered onto
a side street where a patrol of Muslim children in gray police uniforms carrying
automatic weapons almost as large as they stopped to give me a warning about
a tank barrier they had set up at the front line. I talked my way through,
determined to make my pilgrimage down to the river the historic bridge, the
soul of the city that once was. The famous bridge is ironically more famous
now that it has been destroyed after 500 years. The bridge and the skeletal
mosque were eerie and achingly beautiful in the dark of the city. The night
was perfectly clear and dry, and there was a full yellow moon blazing over
the river. I knelt down on the river bank and cried and cried, witness to the
destruction of a people and a culture."
THIS IS THE NEW FACE OF WAR.
An e-mail to me from Belgrade, July 12, 1999. I quote without editing: "Dear
Merle, I feel joy at your letter and thank you because I know all American
people are not aggressors. During the war I didn't work and therefore I didn't
write you. In the beginning of the war, my brother and me have been going to
my friends, in other town, for one month. The war was terrible! NATO bombed
Pancevo Chemical industry and oil industry, what is a cause of ecology catastrophe.
The ground, the water, the air are cancerous polluted. This widened until Sweden.
"Yugoslavia is destroyed, become poor, and people are become to know
what has happen here. Karma works mercilessly, so Serbian people must bear
responsibility for the wars in Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and for support to
authoritative leader. NGOs actions didn't teach people here, but bombs maybe
will. People in Serbia are rising up now. Also, I think NATO is as destructive
and bad as Serbian war machine.
"
I am thankful that we (family, friends) are still living. I told Dud and Julia
about your letter. They send regards to you. I hear Meli and Aferdita have
escaped Pristina and are safe in Macedonia, and it is good. You gave us seeds
of vegetables and flowers when we were in New Mexico. It is many blossoms in
my garden. With love, Marija."
Among the new faces of war in the twentieth century are civilian victims of
genocide. They are Tutsis, Armenians, Jews, Roma, Cambodians, Bosnians, and
East Timorese. They are NOT soldiers, and many--many, many--are women and children.
And so the new faces of peace must deal with that reality.
THIS IS THE NEW FACE OF PEACE.
The International Committee of the Red Cross was founded in 1863 to treat wounded
soldiers on the battlefield regardless--and this is important--regardless
of what side they had fought on. Today, this NGO, or non-governmental organization,
the oldest and perhaps most respected humanitarian organization in the world,
treats women and children in refugee camps. Because they are "first
in, and last out" in the world's hot spots (they are at work in 50 locations
today), Red Cross workers are sometimes witness to and have intimate knowledge
of war crimes as defined in the Geneva Conventions. If they give testimony
at war crimes tribunals, they risk compromising their important neutrality,
which will hinder their ability to give aid and comfort to victims in war
zones. But they must respond to requests from international courts. What
do they do? Do they give witness and risk their neutrality? The new face
of peace is perplexity and moral dilemma.
THIS IS THE NEW FACE OF PEACE.
War Crimes Tribunals are laboring to bring the most evil faces of war to justice,
which is the assignment of blame and punishment. Truth and Reconciliation
Commissions are laboring not only to expose the perpetrators of civilian
murder, but to enshrine the truth of what happened and seek forgiveness.
In both of these processes there is an unbearable regurgitation of eyewitness
and victim accounts of atrocities. I have come to believe that part of the
healing process for the victims of war, the beginning point of new possibilities
for peace and membership in civil society, is unflinching acknowledgement
and confrontation as soon as possible, whether by truth telling or trial.
THIS IS THE NEW FACE OF PEACE.
There is a "New Diplomacy." Likely to be a United Nations peace keeper
from Africa, or an American police chief teaching former soldiers how to be
civilian police officers in the service of rebuilding their communities, or
a young Dutchman who oversees hundreds of volunteers her personally recruits
and trains to work in refugee camps to help people reenter a more peaceful
future, or a Kosovar Albanian woman who started the Organization for Protection
of Women and Children and who old-line diplomats are forced to include at the
negotiating table as conditions for a civil society in Kosovo are hammered
out. The too-often bloated, self-satisfied, and moribund institutions of formal
diplomacy have embarrassed us in the past few years with their inability to
prevent war. And so "citizen diplomacy" has taken on profound new
meaning and real power as never before. And the training ground for the new
diplomats is the NGO.
When Kofi Anan signed the Treaty that resulted from the International Campaign
to Ban Land mines he referred to, and I quote, "the remarkable expression
of the new diplomacy" that the land mine campaign expressed. Charles Clements,
who led the organizing for the campaign and the Treaty and is a Nobel Peace
Prize winner for his efforts, said recently, "The Campaign and the Treaty
which resulted are suggestive of one of the profound shifts in modern human
history...the concept of "human rights" has begun to transcend the
concepts of nationhood and sovereignty that have dominated (in the past)....There
is a vast sharing of power with NGOs today that has previously been at the
core of sovereignty. In international fora, as with governments at home, NGOs
were until recently relegated to hallways....NGOS worked through governments.
All of that is rapidly changing. One thing that has made this shift in power
from nation-states to NGOs possible is the information revolution."
And so it is with excitement and wonder that I introduce another new face
of peace that is very young and infused with an idealism uncorrupted by the
brutality of the past and not yet encumbered by cynicism. Young people have
not in the past had the ability to empower themselves to be a force for peace,
even as tens of thousands of little boys have been pressed into service as
child soldiers around the world.
THIS IS THE NEW FACE OF PEACE.
A young man born in America, with a rich multi-cultural heritage, raised in
India and passionate about world peace. And because of the power of the Internet,
combined with the rising power of the New Diplomacy, this young man is not
only making a difference now, but will continue to make a difference in the
world struggles to come. A group of students from ACS Cobham have linked
themselves to their friends in Namibia through the Internet to assure sustainability
for their project. Charles Clements, who I quoted earlier, was of course
talking about how the traditional power of sovereignty was rapidly becoming
displace by the power of new networks, or "countries" of peace,
built around the universal principles of human rights. And he was talking
about our Peace Prize winners today.
One of the leaders of a global youth empowerment project, Nation1, Terah Ulrich
deJong exemplified a future we can barely imagine. As we enter the twentyfirst
century, he and his young colleagues, building new personal relationships through
the Internet, will be leading our transition from one historical system to
another.
I am hopeful that the terror of war and violence will be contained, as young
women and men leaders gain access and power in the global dialogue on egalitarianism
and democracy.
I am hopeful that the glorious attempt to live with differences will have
more possibility for success as young women and men leaders gain access and
power in the global dialogue on coexistence.
I am hopeful that the conscience and creativity needed to effect a more peaceful
world be assured as young women and men leaders gain access and power in the
global dialogue on humankind's freedom and God's will.
You have given me your respectful attention, and I thank you for that. I'd
like to close with a quote from my favorite playwright turned politician, Vaclav
Havel, because what we are facing in the next millennium is high drama to be
sure. Havel was certainly in concert with the philosophy of the ACS International
Schools when he wrote, "The main task in the coming era is...a radical
renewal of our sense of responsibility. Our conscience must catch up to our
reason; otherwise we are lost. It is my profound belief that there is only
one way to achieve this: We must divest ourselves of...our habit of seeing
ourselves as masters of the universe who can do whatever occurs to us....Our
respect for other people, for other nations, and for other cultures, can only
grow from an humble respect for the cosmic order and from and awareness that
we are part of it."
Thank you all very much.
