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The Ten Practices of Just Peacemaking THE ten practices of Just Peacemaking are divided into three groups: cooperative forces, justice, and peacemaking initiatives. C. Take Peacemaking Initiatives 5. Reduce offensive weapons and weapons trade. A key factor in the decrease of war between nations is that weapons have become so destructive that war is not worth the price. The offense cannot destroy the defense before it does huge retaliatory damage. Reducing offensive weapons and shifting toward defensive force structures strengthens that equation. For example, Gorbachev removed half the Soviet Union's tanks from Central Europe and all its river-crossing equipment. This freed NATO to agree to get rid of all medium-range and shorter-range nuclear weapons on both sides from Eastern and Western Europe--the first dramatic step in ending the Cold War peacefully. The war in Bosnia is the counter-example that proves the rule: Serbia controlled the former Yugoslavian army and its weapons. They had the offensive weapons to make war without expecting a destructive counterattack. As nations turn toward democracy and human rights, their governments no longer need large militaries to keep them in power. As the ten practices of peacemaking reduce the threat in their environment, nations feel less need for weapons. As they struggle with their deep indebtedness, they have less ability to buy weapons. The International Monetary Fund now requires big reductions in weapons expenditures before granting loans. For these reasons, arms imports by developing nations in 1995 dropped to one-quarter of their peak in 1988. But the power of money invested by arms manufacturers in politicians' campaigns is a major obstacle to reductions. So is the ideology of the national security state, as well as real or perceived security needs. Support for reductions requires sharp curtailment of campaign spending, and reductions in threats to security. 6. Support nonviolent direct action. Nonviolent Direct Action came to our attention primarily as the method used effectively by Gandhi in India and Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement in the United States. Now it is spreading widely, ending dictatorship in the Philippines, ending rule by the Shah in Iran, bringing about nonviolent revolutions in Poland, East Germany, and Central Europe, transforming injustice into democratic change in human rights movements in Guatemala, Argentina, and elsewhere in Latin America, in the nonviolent parts of the Intifadah campaign in Palestine and the freedom campaign in South Africa, and in many other countries. Contrast the failures of violent campaigns in Bosnia, Somalia, and Northern Ireland. Governments and people have the obligation to make room for and to support nonviolent direct action. 7. Take independent initiatives to reduce hostility. The recently developed strategy of independent initiatives successfully achieved: Austria's freeing from Soviet domination in the 1950s in exchange for Austrian neutrality and non-offensive military; the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty of 1963 after Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy halted atmospheric testing unilaterally; dramatic reductions in nuclear weapons via the series of initiatives by Gorbachev and the U.S. Congress, and then President Bush; and recent peacemaking breakthroughs via small initiatives taken by Israel and its Arab neighbors, and by adversaries in Northern Ireland. Independent initiatives: are independent of the slow process of negotiation are designed to decrease threat perception and distrust by the other side but not to leave the initiator weak are visible and verifiable actions have a timing announced in advance, and carried out regardless of the other side's bluster have their purpose clearly announced--to shift toward de-escalation and to invite reciprocation come in a series; if the other side refrains from reciprocating, small initiatives should continue in order to keep inviting reciprocation. The strategy was advocated in Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, and U.C.C. statements in the 1980s, but needs to be understood more widely so it can be noticed when it causes breakthroughs, and so citizens can press governments to take independent initiatives. 8. Use partnership conflict resolution. Conflict resolution is becoming a well-known practice, seen dramatically in the work of President Carter in the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, and more recently in Haiti and North Korea. A key test of the seriousness of governments' claims to be seeking peace is whether they develop imaginative solutions that show they understand their adversary's perspectives and needs. We prefer the term, partnership conflict resolution, taken from the concept of security partnership, which recognizes that in the real world of threat and potential destruction, our security depends on our adversary's sense of security, and theirs on ours. We mean active partnership in developing solutions, not merely passive cooperation. We seek to help adversaries listen to each other and experience each others' perspectives, including practicing cultural literacy to go beyond the surface positions and even the strategic interests of the adversaries in order to include aspects of culture, spirituality, story, history and emotion. We seek long-term solutions which help prevent future conflict, even as we work to heal and resolve immediate conflict. We seek justice as a core component for sustainable peace--echoing Dr. King, who said "Peace is not the absence of tension, but the presence of justice." 9. Acknowledge responsibility for conflict and injustice; seek repentance and forgiveness. Alan Geyer writes: The single most important initiative in German Chancellor Willy Brandt's postpolitik was the quest for reconciliation with then-Communist Poland. Poland, after all, was the first country to be blitzkrieged by the Nazi war machine and the country with the largest number of Holocaust victims (perhaps 3,000,000). In December 1970, Brandt courageously (with no sure guarantee of parliamentary approval) signed a treaty accepting the Oder-Neisse frontier and therewith the cession of 40,000 square miles of German territory (Silesia and parts of Pomerania and East Prussia--a decision personally dramatized by his kneeling silently at the Warsaw war memorial as an act of atonement for German offenses against the Polish people. That Brandt, of all people, should assume such a posture of repentance was especially remarkable in view of his own anti-Nazi credentials and his exile in Norway throughout the war. It was an extraordinarily winsome, powerful, long-lasting act of personal leadership. It made peace a human possibility. 10. Encourage grassroots peacemaking groups and voluntary associations. Just peacemaking requires associations of citizens organized independently of governments, and linked together across boundaries of nation, class, and race, to learn peacemaking practices and press governments to employ these practices; governments should protect such associations in law, and give them accurate information. The existence of a growing worldwide people's movement constitutes one more historical force that makes just peacemaking theory possible. A transnational network of groups, including faith groups, can partially transcend captivity by narrow national or ideological perspectives. Citizens' groups are not so committed to status-quo institutional maintenance as bureaucracies often are, nor so isolated and only temporarily engaged as individuals often are, and so can provide long-term perseverance in peacemaking. They can serve as voices for the voiceless, as they did in churches in East Germany and in women's groups in Guatemala. They can help to initiate, foster, or support transforming initiatives, where existing parties need support and courage to take risks to break out of the cycles which perpetuate violence and injustice. A citizens' network of NGO's and INGO's can often be a source of information and knowledge that persons in positions of governmental authority lack or resist acknowledging. They can criticize injustice and can initiate repentance and forgiveness. They can nurture a spirituality that sustains courage when just peacemaking is unpopular, hope when despair or cynicism is tempting, and grace and forgiveness when just peacemaking fails. | Strengthen Cooperative Forces | Advance Justice for All | The Ten Practices of Just Peacemaking main page | Larry Rasmussen's speech on "Just Peacemaking" | Peace Matters home |