INTRODUCTION TO PEACE STUDIES

Ken Blanchard, noted professor and author of the One Minute Manager and Situational Leadership series of training materials, suggests giving students the 'final exam' questions at the start of the course and then teaching how to arrive at the answers - his formula for win/win learning. That is what I wish to do here, by providing the highlights of what you will find in our web site and related materials.

Highlights:

"The Canadian Peace Initiative (“CPI”) is a process to simply provide the venues, support and guidance to ‘Open Space to Open Minds to Peace’. The CPI process is open, transparent, patient and committed, drawing people from all walks of life, freeing them from their stasis and mobilizing them. All members of the Culture of Peace movement have to be leaders in their own right, drawing on their own potential and inner strengths, galvanizing, inspiring and energizing the peace movement. Everyone is a peace leader and peace educator. Every day we must take ownership of ourselves and our relationships: we can do anything we set our minds and hearts to; we do no harm, expect and demand no harm be done to us or others; no one is better than another; we are critical thinkers, finding our own truths; education is our best investment and information our most important resource. Building a healthy culture is about building healthy relationships – we can do that. As we take ownership of peace others will follow – because it will be uplifting and empowering, it will be infectious, and lead to sudden, massive, cultural change." (As in all things peaceful, this enlightening statement is the result of many contributors and supporters. The CPI process has led to the Canadian Culture of Peace Program.)

we know what to do to prevent wars and deadly conflict, but often we do not do it ['The Carnegie Commission's 'Preventing Deadly Conflict' report http://www.ccpdc.org ; overview http://www.peace.ca/excerptspeople.htm ]
the main reason for wars and violence at the world level is greed for power and money - synonymous with Class Conflict, Resource wars, Global Economic Domination, Self-interest, etc. [ http://www.peace.ca/problemworld.htm ]
"the military-industrial complex promotes war preparation in order to profit from government orders which are free from the competition of a capitalist market" - David Adams, Psychology for Peace Activists http://www.culture-of-peace.info/ppa/title-page.html
governments will mislead their citizens, using psychological operations, propaganda, indoctrination on them, and the mass media supports it [Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent]
in fact, most governments, and many organizations, are not sincere in working for peace - that is why you do not see a Department of Peace http://www.peace.ca/legislationofpeace.htm , National Culture of Peace Program http://www.peace.ca/formula.htm , peace education integrated into the school curricula, or much money spent on building peace (as compared to militarism)
National Security is the questionable issue often used to 'mother' wars; to justify conflict; for fear-mongering; to build paranoia - when money and power is what it is really about - National Security clouds issues
the countries of the world spend $800 billion annually on "National Security", while next to nothing gets spent on building peace
globalization as it is currently unfolding does not lead to fair trade, fair competition and fair conditions ["Like communism, globalization may prove to be better in its philosophy than in practice" - Alice Arnott Oppen]
"The dream of capitalism is to co-opt people with higher living standards (and consumerism) without redistributing any wealth. Without co-optation, widespread repression is the only guarantor of gross inequality" - Holly Sklar, from her book Trilateralism
U.S. foreign policy deals in straight power concepts to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit the U.S. to maintain a position of economic disparity without detriment to U.S. national security... the U.S. "need not deceive ourselves that we can afford ... the luxury of altruism ... We should cease to talk about ... unreal objectives such as human rights, the rising of living standards and democratization" (also known as 'realpolitik' - politics based on practical and material factors rather than on theoretical or ethical objectives) - proposed shortly after World War II by an advisor to the U.S. government, George F. Kennan. He was also the first to formulate the so called containment strategy, which dominated U.S. foreign policy for almost a half century;
"... the United States has given frequent and enthusiastic support to the overthrow of democracy in favor of "investor friendly" regimes. The World Bank, IMF, and private banks have consistently lavished huge sums on terror regimes, following their displacement of democratic governments, and a number of quantitative studies have shown a systematic positive relationship between U.S. and IMF / World Bank aid to countries and their violations of human rights." - Edward S. Herman, economist, author, and US media and foreign policy critic
the United States is the greatest threat to Canadian (and world) security and sovereignty, ["the U.S. will treat Canada no differently from say Guatemala when reason of state requires it and circumstances permit" - Pierre E. Trudeau]
the United Nations is key to Canada's (and world) security, but current world powers make it impotent and are not willing to follow international law if it is not in their interest ["Empires have no interest in operating within an international system; they aspire to be the international system ..." - Henry Kissinger; http://www.peace.ca/un.htm ]
the United Nations "represents an obvious threat to U.S. national interests" - U.S. Senator Jesse Helms
"Unless the present law-based international order is respected in the years to come, the international community will face disintegration and international uncertainty that has not been seen since the 1930s." - Hon. Lloyd Axworthy, past Minister of Foreign Affairs Canada and Knut Vollebaek, past Foreign Minister of Norway
many key world and corporate leaders are sociopathic [ http://www.peace.ca/uninspiringquotes.htm ]
1 - 2% of the male population is homicidal, possessing of weapons, that make life hell for the rest of us ["Wars are caused by the 2% who are homicidal and the 8% who encourage them - cohomicidals" - Crandall R. Kline Jr. http://www.peace.ca/worldpeace.htm ]
"the control centers for sex, aggression, dominance and territoriality lie in the deep ancient part of the brain called the R complex. For world peace, the upper brain must be in control - and that is more difficult, it takes more self control". - Crandall R. Kline Jr. http://www.peace.ca/worldpeace.htm
there is a significant risk that Canada "will be sucked into the U.S. economy" by the end of the decade - Clayton Yeutter, U.S. chief trade negotiator October 3,1987 ... immediately after the Canada- U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA) was signed.
there are warnings that, "if we don't change, our species will not survive... Frankly, we may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse" - Maurice Strong; [As the World's Scientists have warned us, during our children's lifetime, "A great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it, is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated." ]
our governments are not expected to fix the problems and stop war
the killing of innocents has been justified as "acceptable collateral damage." [various NATO announcements starting with the Kosovo war]
if you are called up to fight in war, based on history, most of the time you are risking your life for a devious and/or incompetent government and someone else's money (and you also will be "acceptable collateral damage") [at best they "lack the creativity to come up with a nonviolent solution' - Ursula Franklin]
there have been a number of times when the world came close to exploding in nuclear war, and that nuclear, chemical and biological weapons are real and present threats to world survival [Alan F. Phillips, M.D. http://www.peace.ca/20mishaps.htm ]
nuclear deterrence is "the irrational hope that terrible fear (of the consequences of a nuclear assault) will somehow continuously promote wise decisions by fallible human beings operating under enormous pressure in conditions they can never fully control!" - Achin Vinaik, The Hindu, 1 July 1999 [and the same can be said for other weapons of mass destruction and their "deterrence" (and that we are now more at risk of nuclear war than during the cold war)]
"our obsessive yearning for significance, spirituality, and the supernatural has blinded us to these dangers" - Reg Morrison
"the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people" - Martin Luther King, Jr.
the most common response of the general public is "Surrender and abdication. The scale of these problems and speed of change is so great that people will give up any hope of trying to manage it. The impotence of government or any other human institution in the face of such change will undermine our already weakened faith in them, leading to further political disengagement and an even greater focus on individual goals, especially hedonistic ones. The result could be a period of chaotic change." Another likely response is a "fundamentalist backlash" - Richard Eckersley

The biggest delusions of our time are:

"that great governments (and corporations) have an ethical centre" - John Le Carre;
"Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all" - Economist John Maynard Keynes;
"The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology" - Michael Parenti, political scientist and author;
"Americans have been taught that their nation is civilized and humane, but, too often, U.S. actions have been uncivilized and inhumane" - Howard Zinn, historian and author;
"One of the great attractions of patriotism -- it fulfills our worst wishes... In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat... what's more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous" - Aldous Huxley, English author, 1894-1963, ["Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" - Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English author, literary scholar and social critic];
"It is no longer a question of controlling a military-industrial complex, but rather, of keeping the United States from becoming a totally military culture" - Jerome Weisner, president emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology;
"Americans cannot teach democracy to the world until they restore their own" - William Greider, journalist and author;
"Our (U.S.) government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency ... Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it" - US General Douglas MacArthur, 1957;
"As the mainstream media has become increasingly dependent on advertising revenues for support, it has become an anti-democratic force in society." - Robert McChesney, journalist and media critic
After going through this material (this web site generally, and the Frank Dorrel video http://www.peace.ca/infovideo.htm particularly, which are downloadable from this web site), there are a few truths that appear to me:
1. these stories are too good not to be addressed by the mainstream media in the proper course of the business of investigative journalism. Since they have not, then one would reasonably conclude that the mainstream media is in collusion with the government-military-industrial complex to hide this information from the public (silence is as good as hiding and complicity).
2. there is no effective opposition, including media, holding the government accountable for these atrocities. Accordingly, democracy (as intended) is not working properly in the U.S.
3. the government-military-industrial complex does not have a rational explanation to justify or disprove these claims of atrocities or they would be publicly available -- I could find no such response from the U.S. government (and it is not satisfactory to simply dismiss these claims of atrocities as preposterous).

Finally:

Among other saddening pictures of death and violence < http://www.peace.ca/basement.htm >, "35,615 children die each day of hunger", needlessly, due to systemic violence - with no awareness or action of much of the world. - statistic per UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimate; based on a posting at http://www.ainfos.ca
"One has probably learned in kindergarten the fundamentals of foreign policy: Don't cheat. Don't lie. Don't steal. Don't kill. Don't hate. Don't seek revenge. Be responsible. Treat others with respect. Seek friends who follow these rules." Crandall R. Kline Jr. http://www.peace.ca/worldpeace.htm
"This is the bitterest pain among men, to have much knowledge but no power." - Herodotus, Histories, book IX, ch 16

How You React is What is Important

Information, education and knowledge is of little importance if it is not used.

You may go through a number of emotional reactions to what you read on violence, war, and peace. I highly recommend that you read David Adams' Psychology for Peace Activists http://www.culture-of-peace.info/ppa/title-page.html (37 pages), at the beginning of your personal quest for peace knowledge, to learn about the transitions you may go through as a peacebuilder and how you might put them to a positive use.

"We need to adopt the mindset of most professional futurists and become systemic optimists - those who believe that life can get better, but only if we fundamentally alter the way we think and do things. We need to embrace whole-system change." - Richard Eckersley [ http://nceph.anu.edu.au/Staff/Staff_pdf_papers/Richard_Eckersley_papers/Richard_E_SMH-Age_spikes.pdf and updated in The Futurist Magazine, November-December 2001 http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/futurist/index.html?ts=1008368809 ]

Systemic change is not easy. Change is resisted - particularly by the elite who benefit from the current system (and have the money). Lack of public motivation to change the system is caused by 'surrender, abdication and fatalism' - people thinking that nothing can be done, that it is useless to try to change governments to prevent wars, or don't know what to do. This lack of public motivation allows this culture of violence to exist and perpetuate.

If we want a better life for our children, and not worse, then we must change. If we have empathy for other people in our own countries, and other countries, who are suffering and dying needlessly, then we should change. In working for change, you must have patience, you must be in for the long term - this is no quick fix. You must be determined, questioning, committed, thick skinned. But most of all - keep a positive perspective.

We must help remove peoples' blindness - help open their eyes to the dangers, the realities and the changes necessary to create a Culture of Peace and Non-violence http://www.peace.ca/un2000celebration.htm . As indicated by the motto of UNESCO, "Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed". The only thing that now stands in the way of eliminating wars is getting enough people to read, assimilate and actively support the ideas presented - this is a function of Peace Education [ http://www.peace.ca/educationpartnerships.htm ] . To prevent wars, the majority of "good people", those who follow the moral policies of equality, freedom, defense-only and peace defense, must speak out and take charge.

Alone, you and I are not going to stop war. But all of us together can help bring peace to the world. We do have numbers of people, and their resources and resourcefulness, on our side. Time is of the essence.

Robert Stewart, Director
Canadian Centres for Teaching Peace
stewartr[at]peace.ca

"No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come" -Victor Hugo(1802 - 1885). Please take a moment to read some inspiring quotes at http://www.peace.ca/inspiringquotations.htm .