Johan Galtung, 2015: "Abolishing War", "The Art of Peace" and "Clash of Civilizations". Excerpts

Preface............................................................................... 3

Introduction....................................................................... 7

Chapter [1] Israel vs Palestine;
Israel-USA vs the Arab-Muslim Worlds.......................... 11

Chapter [2] Protestantism vs Catholicism;
Sunni vs Shiva: Similarities?............................................ 25

Chapter [3] Christianity vs Islam:
The Counter-cyclicity Thesis: And Then?........................ 35

Chapter [4] Abraham ism vs Buddhism,
Occident vs Orient: And Then?....................................... 55

Chapter [5] The Octagon World:
The West vs the Rest, BRICS, Prognosis........................ 69

Endnotes.......................................................................... 99

Preface

These lectures were given fall 2014 as holder of the Tun Mahathir Chair of Global Peace Studies, International Islamic University of Malaysia, in Kuala Lumpur.

There is indeed something going on, by Bernard Lewis called "clash of civilizations", used by Samuel Huntington's publisher as title of a 1996 book about clash of regions with civilization names but no cultural analysis.Culture is basic, defining what is true, good, right, beautiful, sacred, valid, and what not.A primacy of cultural power thesis makes sense.Economic-military-political power matter, but culture shapes the economy, who is friend and foe, about right and wrong decisions.

The problem with Lewis-Huntington was that they forgot the major clash: missionary Abraham ism – Christianity and Islam – vs the Rest, all over the world, including the indigenous. They basically focused on the reactions, repercussions, today, on Islam.

The cultural-racist contempt for the indigenous in a "land without a people" was a reason for starting with Israel-Palestine, as a regional macro clash between nations and mega clash between civilizations.

The second lecture is inside religions--two Christianities, two Islams, two Buddhisms--for clashes not of but inside civilizations, seen in their economic-military-political contexts.

The third lecture broadens that to Christianity vs Islam in a historical perspective--when one goes up the other goes down, and vice versa--for a view of the present clash with ISIS.

The fourth lecture broadens that perspective still further, to Abrahamic space--the Occident spanned by those three religions--vs the Buddhist space, the Orient of pure Buddhism, or amalgamated with other cultures--in-between is the Hindu space--in power context.

The final lecture brings all together in a global perspective, using the Octagon representation of the world as Russia-India-China-OIC-EU-USA-Latin America-Africa surrounded by BRICS.Civilizations, and economic-political-military power.For prognosis, for therapies.

The second theme can be simply formulated: what to do about it.There are general points like holistic understanding, large spacetime in geography and history, and dialectics, forces and counter-forces.But simple conflict analysis with two parties also carries a far way, from either-or clashes to neither-nor, compromise, both-and solutions.Nobody believes solutions are around the corner, but the lectures try to indicate in what directions they may be located, where to look.Some visions may dampen the huge violence potentials in all of them.

The reader will permit some overlaps as some basic points and history had to be repeated in the lectures..

In gratitude for the invitationfor dialogues, and to Mohamad Kotob from Syria and AmelMohammed Al-Ariki from Yemen for helpful advice,

Introduction

When I went to school in Oslo in the 1930s-40s we were taught religion--actually "Christianity"--and it went roughly like this:

According to Article 2 of the Norwegian Constitution of 1814 the religion of Norway (now for the holy King).The points gave us a good feeling of being at the top.

I revolted when getting no answers to my why-why-why-why-why-why and my grades in religion headed downward.My adolescent revolt turned that hierarchy upside-down, 180 degrees.My position today is more 90 degrees, horizontal: religions as depositories of human experience defining civilizations.But, does religion have a monopoly onthat?How about gender, male-female civilizations?Generation, young-middle-old?Class, lower-middle-upper?Habitat, urban vs rural?Geography, polar-temperate-tropical?All of the above, also religion?

This should not be confused with moral relativism. They are not equally good, that depends on the criterion.If technical, height of buildings, level of material construction-destruction, then Judeo-Christianity; for economic growth perhaps Protestantism.If the criterion is handling conflict and trauma Polynesian alo'ha culture, with the ho'o pono pono approach, is light-years ahead of others.Human civilization is incredibly rich, but comes to us subdivided.

But rather than this competitive approach find the best they can offer humanity, and what can they can learn from each other. Look at them from many angles, using dialogue, mutual learning.Clashes do exist, and we start with Israel vs Palestine, Judaism-West vs Islam.As late as Camp David 1978 Palestinians did not exist, only Bedouins, primitives.The land was empty, for a people without a land.Today?

Preface......................................................................................... 3

Prologue: Peace as Love......................................................... 6

[10] Capital: Peace Business................................................. 91

[13] History: War, Peace...................................................... 112

Preface

As the first holder of the Tun Mahathir Chair in Global Peace at the International Islamic University Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur I gave two courses: one focused on "peace", peace theory and one on "global", peace practice around the world.Peace studies have to cover both to be worthy of the name so here they join in on book, Parts one and Two.

My wife Fumiko Nishimura: make the book a comprehensive overview of the field of Global Peace Studies."101", then, does not stand for an easy read, but for a view from above; not of critical war studies but of peace studies.The reader has a right to know how the author's peace practice, how theory translates into practice, to know the tree by its fruits.And that is where "The Art of Peace" enters.

Neither from theory nor from practice alone; from combining them.Think of what artists do.A form takes shape in the mind, Aristotle's causa formalis.But it has to materialize as sound, paint on canvas, etched in steel, chiseled in stone, printed, spoken as words, enacted, or any combination, as causa materialis.The art, causa finalis, lies in combining the two (and the causa efficiens is the hard work).

The 2x14=28 chapters cover two courses over a semester of 14 weeks, two hours a week , averaging 7 pages per chapter.

The chapters come in four batches in both parts, as seen from the Table of Contents.The first four are introductions spanning the field; the next four elaborate key factors; the next three do the same from another perspective; and the last three are overviews.

Part one says, "Think me, and think beyond"; Part Two says, "Do me, and do beyond".Though related they are written so that they can be read independently of each other--but preferably together.

Part one:PEACE THEORY

Prologue: Peace as Love

This book does not start with endless politics of peace and war, nor with the (justified) complaints about violence and war.

Basic concepts-definitions-new concepts; basic axioms-deductions-theorems.Or the other way round: ideas decomposed into basic concepts--also known as "hairsplitting"--theses about how things hang together traced back to basic assumptions.So also for the love idea.

Obvious, but with deep implications: love is a relation, between,two or more, not an attribute of one person.One person may be lovely like a state nay be peaceful, but love and peace are in-between, "in the air", even if anchored in some attributes.That in-between relation for love is so deep and broad as to become a union.

Love is the union of bodies, minds and spirits: sex in a broad sense (the whole body as erogenous zone), emotional resonance sharing joys and sorrows, joint projects beyond sums of individual projects.

Shared physiology, psychology, politics.And economy, sociology: sharing of resources for mutual benefit, and mutual support of Other.The household, oikos, is economy-ecology for the joint project of begetting and raising children, in a context of social togetherness.That gives us five ways of being faithful: sexually, emotionally, spiritually, economically, socially.A theory of love.

And five forms of infidelity: doing it with some other Other, feeling more with others, acting with others, resources for others, breaking social bonding to Other.Of the five there is too much focus on sexual infidelity (but, linked to offspring, inheritance, disease). All five relations matter.A practice of love, of broken love.

This author has been mediating a score or so of marriages around the world, and some theses about broken love have emerged.Thus, if three, four fidelities work the couple can overcome some infidelity if conscious about the problem and working on it.If three, four, five do not work--sexual infidelity, delight in the sorrows of Other and sorrow at the joys, no joint project, economic resources withheld, kept secret, they talk badly about each other--time may have cometo break up, separate, divorce.There may also be that other Other.

Something is dead.Not the parties--divorces are usually non-lethal--but the relation.Love is broken.Humanity moves through history with dead love relations littering the wayside and zillions of good relations, overcoming crises, with the parties becoming a we in partnership adding to two I's co-existing, coupled into one, a couple.

Prior to mediating a marriage on the rocks is usually a crisis, the root of a crisis is often the absence of joint projects; and that may happens when the relation is about 20 years old (and the partners in their 40s).Why?Because begetting, raising children is done, the children have left the nest, and the lack of joint projects may empty some of the other unions, possibly emptying love itself.

So, what does a mediator do?Obviously helping them define and start new projects together.But before that probing the ground, in both parties, for something that works, and then building on that.Usually something they have to be reminded of, become conscious of, like of their early love and what was good in the past, and then reviving it.Consciousness and much work are indispensable.

Another experience thesis: mediate 1-on-1, one party at the time, not the two together.They should talk freely, also about solutions without enacting their crisis, also without acting to get the mediator on their side.

With that, however, we have already proceeded from love studies to general peace studies.

[1]Peace: Positive, Negative,
Violence; and a Formula.

Peace is a relation.Peace is not an attribute of one party or actor.Two are needed to dance tango, so also for peace.True, there is "inner peace", but between two or more parties, in one person, like between drives-needs and morality; Freud's Id vs Super-Ego.

At the micro level the focus is on intra- and inter-person peace; at the macro level on inter-state and inter-nation peace.Inner and outer peace.At the meso level on intra-social peace: on genders, generations, races, classes, nations, lands; at the mega level on inter-region, inter-civilization peace.Intra-world.But even with groups involved the ultimate actors are individuals, humans.

Positive peace is a relation with something good flowing between the parties; they are good to each other[i].Violence is a relation with something bad flowing--hurt, harm; they are bad to each other.

Negative peace is neither positive peace, nor violence.Nothing is flowing or it is neutral, neither good, nor bad.The Golden Rule, negative, holds for negative peace: Do not do to Other what you do not want Other to do to Self.Passive peaceful co-existence.

But few relations are that simple, only good-positive, or only bad-negative.There is usually a mix, ambiguity.Two tasks follow for peace: reducing the negative flows, enhancing the positive flows.

From the neither-nor of negative peace two tasks follow: moving forward to positive peace--but what is it?--not backward to violence.

At all levels the ultimate actors are individuals, so we can talk about what happens as good and bad to the body, mind and spirit.The body is soma, corporal, material; the mind is psyche--a depository of cognitions, emotions and volitions, of memories and will[ii]. And the spirit?That great human capacity, more or less developed, to reflect on it all, on our body, on our mind, on our relations--and to change.

So much in the world is good; we start there, not with violence.And I have found it useful to work with 5 levels of positive peace.They have names: cooperation, harmony, institution, fusion, afterlife.The first level is behavioral: cooperation for mutual and equal benefit--clearly unequal is structural violence--aka equity.The Golden Rule, positive, holds for positive peace: Do to Other what you want Other to do to Self. Active peaceful co-existence; friendship.

But, the rules are not that golden but ego-centric, egoistic: the idea is "for my benefit, better do no bad, do good".And, as George Bernard Shaw points out: be careful, Other's taste may be different.

The second level is attitudinal: harmony.Emotional resonance, swinging in tact.Empathy in the feelings of Other is needed, even across fault-lines like gender, generation and race, class and nation, states and regions.There is a daoist[iii] we-culture rule: Share in the suffering of others. Delight in the joys of others.Love.

A basic step has been taken from two egos toward one we; a move from two I-cultures to one we-culture."You matter so much to me that you are in me, your feelings have become mine.Am I in you?"It reminds us of the Zulu greeting, Sabona[iv], "I take you in, into me".

The third level is structural: institution preserving cooperation and harmony.Marriage is an institution to preserve friendship and love between persons; a Council, a Commission for states in Europe.

Something new has entered to eternalize positive togetherness. But we sense a problem: that "something" may take on its own life and even kill the direct flow of "good to each other" between parties.

The fourth level is fusion: of its own kind, sui generis.Out of two married persons an integrated couple is born; often coming with their age and the age of their marriage.Out of European states a Europe of no borders is born; different nations, but no states.

The fifth level is in the after-life: thereafter or hereafter. For the religiously minded this is the ultimate fusion, with God in the Abrahamic religions, in Nirvana for Hinduism-Buddhism.For the secular the rebirth could be in the offspring, or anywhere in time and space, by sparks of inspiration.Life is a flow of good and bad, merits and demerits; our human task is to leave a positive balance behind, dedicated to something beyond ourselves like peace, love.

The Nordics said that one thing never dies, the verdict over the dead.Make it positive, for own salvation in paradise, or for this world to come closer to a paradise on earth (but not only for own glory).

Level 1 is business-like--willing sellers meeting willing buyers--kith and kin, neighbors, colleagues.Call it friendship.

With level 2 an emotional we-ness, however simple and rudimentary, entersCall it love (or the beginning thereof).

With level 3 something beyond the parties has emerged: an institution, a "way of doing things", a marriage, a commission.

With level 4 a new actor is born: the couple; in geopolitics a region; ultimately the whole world may come together one day, as one state for one nation, humanity.

With level 5 our finiteness enters--birth-maturity-death--and the afterlife.As sparks of inspiration, like in the zillions inspired by the lives of Jesus the Christ, Mohammed the Prophet, Lord Buddha.Or by the golden ages of Pericles Athens or Tang dynasty China.Or in the offspring by two loving parents in a good marriage.Or in other regions inspired by the EU?Learning from the merits, and demerits.

We may refer to levels 1-2 as friendship-love, to levels 3-4 as integration, shallow and deep, and to level 5 as linking across space and time, in spacetime, Einsteinian; geography and history melting into one, and beyond, in the hereafter and in the thereafter.

Are the levels linear, building on each other?Not necessarily; for peace studies to explore.A time arrow has been built into them, as also into the inter-person and inter-state examples.The levels may slide into each other by their own logic; 1->2->3->4->5.But the start may not be at level 1[v] and sliding may be backward[vi]. Rule: do not aim at more peace than can be handled.Marriage and EU message: the level attained also has to be maintained.By hard work.We know what we have, not what we get at higher levels; be careful.

Five levels of positive peace have now been identified, can we identify five levels of violence?Certainly, and by the same logic.

At level 1, behavior, physical and-or symbolic harm-hurt flows; doing to Other what you do no want done to Self; asymmetrically, with Other hurt and Self unhurt (domination, two classes), or symmetrically, reciprocity, an eye for an eye, with tacit cooperation."Symbolic" includes verbal, oral or written, words, other symbols (like caricatures!), and body language, like smiling, or shrugging.

At level 2, attitude, hatred adds to harm-hurt in polarization (two blocs).There may be a perverse we-ness in reciprocated hatred.The basic rule is joy at Other's sorrow, and sorrow at Other's joy.Like for peace, levels 1 and 2 may also come in the opposite order.

At level 3, institution, harm-hurt-hatred becomes war.One way out: do not reciprocate, bad meeting bad.Gandhi used non-cooperation against direct violence, war, not only against violent structures.

At level 4, fusion, that institution becomes all-encompassing, violence flows in all directions, total war of all against all, bellum omnium contra omnes.Like for peace, something good flowing in all directions, total peace of all with all, pax omnium cum omnibus[vii].

At level 5, afterlife, there is a metaphor: Hell.War is hell, we often hear.Like for the afterlife for peace: Heaven.

There is a Cold War acronym combining levels 4 and 5: MAD, mutual assured destruction, the doomsday metaphor.Correspondingly, we might construct a peace levels 4 and 5 acronym: MAB, mutual assured bliss.

Humans are capable of the whole MAD-MAB range but DNA-programmed neither for violence, nor negative, nor positive peace.Had one beeninnate, like eating and sexing, then that one would have been all over all the time.Instead we find huge variations in time and space, in history and geography.Something also huge conditions the variations: culture inside us, structure around us, nature inside and around us.

The task of peace studies is to explore in theory and practice how to move from violence through negative peace to positive peace.Victor Hugo: "Social philosophy is essentially the science of peace".We are not forced by DNA; but conditioned by culture, structure and nature.

What makes us cross borders from friendship-love to integration; from harm-hurt-hatred to war?Solidify, organize, institutionalize topreserve forever the blessings of friendship-love?Fine--but we also want to preserve the right and duty to harm-hurt-hate in wars.The institutions[viii], for good and for bad, are ready, strong; legitimated by custom, often by law.The small and sporadic is suddenly big forever.

Couples in friendship-love may prefer just that, living together, to institutionalized marriage[ix]; countries may prefer equity-harmony to community and union.The gains from institutionalization are deep, broad, long-lasting; but binding.It is difficult to abolish marriage, the EU, and war as institution like it was for slavery and colonialism, in addition to working on ways to reduce violence and war[x].

In the same vein: if we want to preserve friendship-love, we may have to work on integration as institution and fusion.

Hypothesis: we are conditioned by culture-structure-nature, shallow and deep.The next three chapters explore that point.

To conclude: a Summary, valid for all four spaces: micro within-between persons; meso between social groups, across fault lines; macro between states, nations; mega between regions, civilizations.

European countries cooperating; feeling for their neighbors; then Community-Council-Commission; then Europe; then inspiring other regions

Friendship from cooperation; love from shared concerns; sealed in marriage; over age partners fusing into one; living on in the progeny.

Negative peace: neither violence nor positive peace; coexistence.From there to harm-hurt-hatred or to friendship-love; to institutions for friendship-love and harm-hurt-hatred, peace and war, generalized to total peace, total war.Then heaven-hell, MAB-MAD.What a range![xi]

For traumas from past violence: conciliation; to prevent violence from present and future conflicts: solution (depolarization, dedomination).

Why is peace important?To reduce human suffering and increase human fulfillment, dukkha-sukha in Buddhism.Like for health: Health for the body, happiness for the mind, and peace between us[xii].

[i] Marie Jahoda, Current Concepts of Positive Mental Health, 1958.

[ii] Mind and body arebrought together in the more holistic psychosomatic or psycho-somatic, a hyphen for a double arrow, causality flowing in both directions.Missing is spiritual.

[iii] From Religions in Singapore, Inter-Religious Organization, Raffles City PO Box 712, Singapore 911724; from the chapter on Taoism (one of the nine religions-world views), p. 81.

[iv] Title chosen for the Transcend University Press Popular (TUPP) book 2011 about the Transcend approach to daily life; to family, school, work.

[v] Take love, the Prologue metaphor: cooperation (with sex), harmony (with love), institution (marriage).Many argue the order L-S-M, the fact may be S-L-M.Not long ago in the West, today in Islam, it was-is M-S-L: sex inside marriage, love as a fruit of both. Marriage was between two families informing the parties; today the parties decide, informing the families.Simple combinatorics actually gives us three more time orders.

[vi] Like in Love's Labour's Lost, Shakespeare's comedy?

[vii] Typically "bellum" is classic, "pax" we had to construct.

[viii] The word is ambiguous, covering clinics, asylums, prisons, schools; Michel Foucault The Birth of the Clinic (1963) and Madness and Civilization (1961), Vintage books, are classics. But "institution" alsostands for "ways of doing things", patterns of interaction steered by norms internalized inside us (knife in the right hand!) and institutionalized outside us (parents scolding if not).Better want to do what we have to do anyhow with good conscience inside and some outside reward.

[ix] And that becomes a new institution with its rules and laws about how to divide property if they split up.

[x] The approach in Johan Galtung et al, Abolishing War: Criminalizing Removing War Causes Removing War as Institution, IIUM Press and Transcend University Press (TUP), 2015.

[xi] Given the dangers of violence we might institutionalize, freeze, normalize the non-relation negative peace; but then we might forego the blessings of positive peace.A Swiss dilemma?

[xii] Four of seven roads to happiness--the author's Syv veier til lykke, Oslo: Kolofon 2014, Aase Marie Faldalen photos--are from the peace formula at the micro level.

Preface.................................................................................................. 5

Part I: Criminalizing War.................................................................... 20

Part II: A Jus cogens Approach.......................................................... 79

The right to life under national constitutions.................................. 84

[1] Sources...................................................................................... 84

[3] Exceptions................................................................................. 91

The right to life under international conventions............................ 94

[1] Sources...................................................................................... 94

[1] Sources.................................................................................... 103

Part III: Removing War Causes........................................................ 115

Part IV: Removing War as Institution.............................................. 127

Introduction...................................................................................... 127

[1] Removing the state war mandate............................................. 128

[2] Removing the glorification...................................................... 131

[4] Removing the arms: Disarmament........................................... 133

[6] Removing violence: Nonviolence............................................ 136

Epilogue: Abolishing War: All three approaches.............................. 161

[1] What is War?........................................................................... 164

[3] The Abolition of Slavery......................................................... 180

Two case studies: Italy and Malaysia............................................... 205

Index................................................................................................. 228

Endnotes........................................................................................... 234

This study is a research report from the Tun Mahathir Chair for Global Peace Studies at the International Islamic University Malaysia.

As the first holder of the chair one year from 1 March 2014 I am honored and challenged to dedicate teaching and research to the lofty goal of global peace studies; abolition of warfare being a major part.

The research team includes Irene Galtung on mandatory jus cogens law of war as crime against the right to life, like torture-genocide (Part II); Erika Degortes on the history of intellectuals-politicians fighting institutionalized social evils (Summary and Conclusion); Naakow Grant-Hayford (text) and Malvin Gattinger (data) on the geography, geo-politics of Power Resources in the Octagon World; and participants in the Transcend Peace University course Summer term 2014 "Criminalizing War" on problems of the mainstream criminology of war (Part I, [5]).

Not being a lawyer I have consulted with specialists in public international law, including judges, in Norway, Netherlands and Spain, for dialogues on these issues. Their experiences, particularly with concrete cases, and their views, have played a major role; deep gratitude to them all. Very useful was also the October 18-19 2014 Hague Round Table by Canadian Voice of Women for Peace, bringing together NGOs and legal-academic experts on key institutions like the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.

A special vote of thanks to Paul Rynning, head of Dialogue Lawyers in Norway, for his role organizing this international project, to Mitra Forouhar for providing overviews and major documents.

The responsibility, however, for the analysis, prognoses and recommendations rests with me alone.

Few, if anybody, today argues criminalization of war so forcefully as Mahathir Mohammed, Malaysia's fourth prime minister, for 22 years¹. He compares what we do when one person kills another to what we do not do when millions kill millions in aggressive wars.

For the first case we have clear laws, apprehend the suspect, weigh evidence for or against in court; if found guilty, the murderer is punished. There may even be compensation for the bereaved.

But in wars among states the murderers get medals and honors², if victors relishing a "post glory exuberance disorder" that may fuel new aggression. And the bereaved are left with their grief and a "post-trauma stress disorder", fueling the idea of revenge.

Mahathir says: "Peace for us simply means the absence of war. We must never be deflected from this simple objective". An important reminder: broaden the concepts, but remember the essence.

One approach is criminalization. To define crimes clear laws are needed, trying to eliminate loop-holes. The UN Charter (Articles 1.1, 2.4) is an effort, prohibiting war and the threat of war among (member) states. The two explicit exceptions are the use of force mandated by the UN Security Council, and for individual or collective self-defense (Articles 42, 51); giving rise to libraries of comments.

But, when people feel that their legitimate interests, even human rights are trampled upon, they may resort to violence. An example in today's world is the case of non-dominant nations in a state. Most UN member states, except about 20, are multi-national. But only 4 have managed equality among their nations relatively well, by federalizing: Switzerland and Belgium (without the German part) in Europe, India (not in Assam) and Malaysia (territorially, not socially) in Asia.

With an average of 10 nations per state, one dominant, there are potentially 1500 wars for intra-state national equality, or secession. We have had and have some of them recently; no doubt more are coming.

The obvious solution is to learn from those four: a federation inside the state with equal levels of autonomy for all nations, and a community-confederation with neighbors when the nations cross borders. But diplomats often work for dominant nations-who pays the piper calls the tune- and the UN is a trade union of governments, i.e., dominant nations. Result: wars against rebel armies; political status quo,

The road to less warfare passes through conflict solution, trauma conciliation, and cooperation. In our present octagonal world³:

there are 28 bilateral relations with potentials for conflict and for cooperation. We have to identify the traumas of the past, conflicts of the present, and constructive ideas for future cooperation⁴.

Professor Liu Cheng of Nanjing University points out in a coming book on peace studies that in a world with so many shared values and so much interaction wars simply do not belong. Wars become even more absurd—a disconnect between values and facts, cultures and structures —against a background of all that can be done for peace⁵.

Here the past comes to our assistance. We have not managed to abolish war—in fact, major wars happen and more major wars threaten. But we have had some success with two other major social evils, slavery and colonialism. Neo-slavery and neo-colonialism exist, but they are at least criminalized, not institutionalized. And humanity is working hard on such social evils as patriarchy and eco-crisis.

There are things to be learned from all four for good hypotheses to be applied to abolition of war, also through criminalization.

Mahathir actually also sees war as a lack of civilization; and it certainly is, for any reasonable interpretation of being civilized.

How about terrorism⁶? It is already criminalized; what is not criminalized is state terrorism, killing many more; maybe 99:1. And, there is an International Criminal Court, but the USA is exempted.

And that brings us back from a focus on the geography of the present and the history of the past, from alternatives to war and to what we can learn from struggles against other social evils, to the criminalization itself. We are talking about a broad legal approach.

In that approach jus cogens—compelling law—plays a key role in the protection of the right to life against crimes like torture and genocide. But many, many more die from starvation, yet that is not recognized as jus cogens, possibly because it may be due more to acts of omission than to acts of commission. But aggressive wars, mandated by the UN Security Council or not, attempted justified as self-defense or not, are at least clear acts of commission. There are problems of definition and of drawing borders; but there is today also a process making the space for "legitimate, necessary war" ever smaller. The question is how to speed up that process.

One approach might be through universal jurisdiction, making all crimes against the right to life punishable everywhere. Aggressive wars presuppose decisions at the top of states that make them acts of commission, potentially punishable in any country. The Pinochet case comes to mind and the path-breaking role of the Spanish judge Bal-tasar Garzon. There are ambiguities, but also possibilities, all over.

These are the approaches to be explored on the road to Mahathir's vision of a civilized world: juridical, geographical and historical.

War—collective, organized violence between groups—can usually be traced back to group conflicts⁷. Parties see no alternatives, no acceptable solution including surrender, or do not want to see any. War became a social institution, a pattern of behavior, a legitimate way of doing such things as fighting to handle conflict; as part of a social formation. Many wars focused and focus on (re)production, over slaves, women, cattle, land, capital, technology, information:

Primitive warfare as a simple conflict resolution-termination mechanism: whoever suffered the first casualty or shed the first drop of blood had lost the encounter, and hence the underlying conflict.

Traditional warfare was fought by warrior castes—aristocrats, kshatriyahs, samurais—fed by the agricultural surplus, free to focus on war. Elaborate codes of honor were added to the display of courage; the enemy provided the occasion for the enactment of these codes. The right to take life had as a condition putting one's own life at risk.

Modern warfare was fought by military professionals against each other, exercising means-end rationality. The end is the imposition of political will on the other, "by all necessary means" including wars (Clausewitz) that serve that end. Courage still played some role.

Postmodern warfare is the logical answer when modern warfare becomes too dangerous for the military. Rather than killing each other they kill defenseless civilians by bombing-droning-sniping⁹ or making military defenseless by destroying logistics: Gulf-Bosnia Wars. Courage has no role; mass killing moves from the ground to the office.

Primitive warfare is linked to nomadism as a form of hunting-gathering on, and from, the enemy; using arms in the sense of fists, stones etc., and courage, to get the booty directly, in the process.

Traditional warfare is linked to agriculture and city-states, adding swords-arrows-spears-lances-horses-carts-ships to get booty indirectly, after winning violent encounters on a battle-field.

Modern warfare is linked to industry and state-formation. The Treaty of Westphalia (1648) defines warfare as a right of the state, if properly declared, rooted in the feudalism of the Middle Ages. Conflicts were not to be "solved", but to be "settled" by war. But the warfare became technically so destructive that it destroyed assets like factories, ports, airports, whole cities, i.e., self-destructive.

Postmodern warfare is linked to information and dissolution of the state under globalization, with regional super-states in-between. Under global governance it takes the form of "world police" with UNSC legitimacy, meaning that Other will be treated as criminals without any right of self-defense. The destruction focuses on less valuable assets like people, their houses and livelihood.

From primitive warfare limited in human and material destruction to postmodern warfare unlimited in both. From grabbing disputed assets to getting them, destroying them to saving them. WMD, "weapons of mass destruction", are one war formation behind, "destroying more of your lives, property and nature than you of mine, bombing you back to the stone ages". But in doing so WMD becomes self-destructive of war, destroying assets rather than saving them for the winner; something to be eliminated. For pragmatic rather than moral reasons.

A macro-history from bellum omnium contra omnes, all against all, via military against military, military against non-military, and now back to all against all. Including NSA spying on all. A sad story.

Under traditional and modern warfare warriors and military were uniformly distinguishable, wearing uniforms.

As the modern formation became more lethal, defensive warfare took the form of mini-wars, guerrillas (Madrid: 2 May 1808), with non-uniformed combatants fighting the military in uniform.

Under post-modern warfare state terrorism, in uniform or not, killed those without, and non-uniformed killed each other, terrorism.

But, the postmodern social formation also comes closer to one nation-humanity; one state-the world; one government-world government. A solution—indicated in the subtitle of this book—is much overdue. We are also moving in that direction; some regions may have arrived.

Macro-history can learn much from micro level history. For fighting and violence between persons traditional society had an institution similar to warfare evolving from tournaments: the duel¹⁰. By sword or by pistol, under controlled conditions, the underlying conflict was terminated by being "settled". A privilege for the top estates—clergy and aristocrats—like wars for the Big Boys, leaving to the smaller fry to have no armies, be neutral, settle peacefully etc. as they have little or no prowess to show off and prove anyhow.

Duels were often lethal, and that was the problem. Too many aristocrats perished; worse, lower levels could duel themselves up. The cost to lives and the social formation were too high. Duels went down, were criminalized as murder if lethal, and verbal duels, aka court processes, came up; also more easily controlled by elites.

The parallel is obvious: the costs of state terrorism to lives, livelihood, property and nature are very high, but mainly born by the victims. Terrorism changes that, states and people high up are hit, hence the efforts to criminalize and uproot, including destructive WMD.

Terrorism would be like duels with people lower down, even lowest in the feudal order, having the right to challenge those on top to duels over real or imagined insults--and to kill them. Of insults there were many, of people lower down there were very many.

Terrorists may argue that their basic needs are insulted; that they act in self-defense against military power taking their lives, economic power taking their livelihood, political power taking their freedom and cultural power taking their identity away from them. They may argue their right to survival, wellness, freedom and identity against killing, misery, repression and alienation. And they do.

The system has a clear answer to this threat: of all social groups only one has the right to exercise collective violence: state armies. The states have monopoly—Weber added to Clausewitz--only one army in any state. Wars are for legitimate state armies only, like duels for the upper castes. They and only they have access to the legitimate, institutionalized violence of wars and duels. What others do are fights, rebellion, violence, terrorism; not dignified as "war".

In an encounter between state and non-state terrorism the primary task of the states is to restore that monopoly by "war on terrorism", routing, dismantling and demobilizing it through incentives. Maybe at the same time strengthening the one legitimate army, like in Nepal.

For this the state needs a legitimacy above all others, also with feudal roots: the state as successor to rex gratia dei, the sacred, divine King, by the grace of God. Terrorism is common people out to do evil; state terrorism does not even exist, state violence is legitimate.

The state system at the top of world society, and the Anglo-American top of that top—with allies and use of UNSC--is threatened not only by violence, but by challenge to their monopoly on violence. And that at the same time as BRICS outcompete those states economically.

That their reaction to this is macro-violence is shown daily. But terrorism, to use a medical analogy, is like the contagious diseases of the past based on micro-organisms. Targeted bullets or small bombs (IED, improvised explosive device) are as deadly as a well targeted virus.

Terrorism is up against not only the direct violence of state terrorism protected by a presumed monopoly, but also state structural violence, as mentioned: exploitative economic, repressive political, alienating cultural power, within and between states.

Feudalism did the same, extracting economic surplus, eliminating freedoms even to move, imposing its own culture as a divine mandate from God, via the Pope in the Vatican and the Patriarch in Moscow to the whole feudal system in Europe.

Up came the French revolution and some political, economic and cultural distribution—as expressed in the human rights—later came even social-economic-cultural rights.

But what happened to military power distribution? A dilemma: distribution of arms to all is not the way, nor the states monopoly.

Ways out of the dilemma were explored seriously after the two world wars: criminalization, and violence monopoly above the states. First by the League of Nations, then by the UN Security Council, as explored in Parts I-II.

But the net to capture the evils of war, defined as inter-state violence, was not wide enough to capture other forms of violence. Consequently the fight between state and non-state terrorism continues, hence Parts III and IV of the book¹¹.

With the state system in general, and its top in particular being seriously challenged from below, the top will rule out less war, and others will rule out more war as criminal, identifying and removing root war causes, ultimately including the institution of war itself.

•Solution = make goals compatible, acceptably and sustainably And then work it the other way:

According to this mini-theory the root cause of war is not military, economic, political, cultural-- a useful typology for the identification of arenas of violence-war--but the absence of solution. Including for conflicts in the past leaving wounds known as traumas: the absence of conciliation. Thus, people may fall ill because of excessive heat, cold, wind, rain and sunshine; but the catch-all negative cause is absence of adequate clothing-housing.

The root of conflict is incompatibility; solution=compatibility. An acceptable and sustainable solution may come about by one or more parties giving up the goal(s)--those who govern tend to prefer that, from other governments and the people. Or to compromise, the solution conservatives prefer since no basic change is needed. Or to a both-and in a new reality; more creative, progressive, less conservative. Like Germany and France coming together in a coal and steel union.

"Win-Win" only means that both parties obtain the goals they pursue. That is better than violence, but the "new reality" should offer something on top of that, opening for ever higher levels of positive peace. The goal is not only something acceptable, but something self-sustaining by a positive peace rewarding in itself.

The 20th century is often seen as the worst in history, possibly because warfare, intra- and inter-state, hit Christian, White people. Moreover, two devastating wars hit all the states at the top of the system—except for USA with only minor wounds—and some neutrals.

That leaves out that Red people were reduced from 20% of the world (1492 estimate) to 1.4% 500 years later—Black people from 20% to 11%—by Iberian, English, US state terrorism when "hostile" Reds fought for the lands and livelihood stolen from them. The result was an apartheid of reservations paved with corpses.

That leaves out the 20th century as a major continuation of the First World War (not the European collective suicide with that name): the Western colonization of most of the world. The liberation, the decolonization, the war in the Third world is still going on.

Clearly, the state system is a threat to itself, not only to the smaller states but to the states on top. Something had to be done. The space for legitimate warfare is shrinking, but not enough. But much will also be done [1] to keep war as an institution, [2] monopolized by states, [3] legitimized by big states. Why? Also because that twisted logic is supported by mainstream Western intellectuals¹²:

In short: war is a law of nature; politics is by fear; violence is inherent in humans; rational wars OK. An intellectual capitulation. True, there are Western intellectual counter-trends¹³,¹⁴:

With that counter-trend as mainstream and the mainstream as a dwindling counter-trend the West might do well, and do better for the world.

In times of peace everything is as if a spring is shining on the world of humans: the fields are tilled, gardens are greening—cities arise, buildings are beautified and grow, the civic spirit is flourishing—justice prevails—the poor live better lives, the opulence of the rich is more splendid."

(but) Release the savage storm of war—and all evils inundate and overflow the world, cattle robbed, harvests left on the ground, peasants are massacred, storages put on fire, cities it has taken centuries to build destroyed, beaten by the tempest (for sure, it is more easy to do evil than good)."

"Christians are worse than Xerxes and Alexander the Great—pagans were never at war with each other with so much persistence and cruelty as the Christians among themselves."

Simple, obvious? There is much more, subtle arguments equally valid today, against war. We need to be reminded of our shortcomings by somebody around year 1500 (1467/69-1536).

Then, more Rousseau. He wanted a society based on volonte generale, a unifying essence linking humans harmoniously together.

How to identify it? Elections, majority vote? Dialogues, to consensus? Both? This author would opt for the higher levels of positive peace where actors/parties start fusing together in we-cultures inspired by a spirituality uniting them for a higher goal: peace, as absence of suffering, presence of fulfillment.

Rousseau observes that "they considered any violence they were liable to as an evil that could be easily repaired, and not as an injury at deserved punishment". More like an accident, then? Be more careful, not more lawful? But it disregards institutionalized violence like duels and wars, also based on volonte generale.

But the West, the Occident, is not alone; there is for instance Chinese philosophy in the Orient. What is their mainstream message?

Chinese dynasties¹⁵ knew warfare in-between dynasties, with problematic overlaps. But not outside "the Chinese pocket" Himalaya-Gobi-Tundra-Sea; maybe being barbarian they were not worthy of war.

Take Sun Tzu (544-486BC?), the master strategist. The Art of War is not "by all necessary means¹⁶", but by mental means; "out-psyching" being a Western, useful, vulgarization. Some sample quotes:

"If you know the enemy and know yourself you may not fear the result of a hundred battles.—If you know neither you will succumb in all"¹⁷.

"When you surround an enemy, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard".

He identifies five basic rules to be combined creatively, using as metaphors five musical notes, five colors, five cardinal tastes—that can give rise to an infinity of melodies, colors and dishes.

The last quote is basic: surrounding¹⁸, but with an outlet to avoid total defeat. Gandhi: "do not exploit your enemy's weaknesses".

Take Mo-Tzu¹⁹ (479-372 BC), of the 100 philosophers 551-233BC. His "Universal Love" thesis²⁰, love everybody, against polarization because "love and mutual benefit are both profitable and easy. The only trouble—is that no ruler takes any delight in them²¹." For pragmatic rather than moral reasons; like also in his "Against Offensive Warfare"²²—but a very clear thesis.

Take Mencius (370-296BC) who sees the ruler's Mandate of Heaven as the mandate of the people, "Heaven sees with the eyes of its people. Heaven hears with the ears of its people"; aka democracy. Benevolence is innate in human nature, so the ruler should show benevolence, both to his subjects and to other rulers and states, again for both pragmatic and moral reasons. Just the opposite of Machi-avelli and close to Erasmus and Rousseau, releasing, playing up to, the innate good in humans. There is much to draw upon and not only from the West.

In conclusion a mini-theory of peace in four spaces: micro within-between persons; meso between social groups across fault lines; macro between states, nations; mega between regions, civilizations.

After all the violence with parties hurting each other, here five come levels of positive peace with parties being good to each other:

European countries cooperating; feeling for their neighbors; then Community-Council-Commission; then Europe; then inspiring others.

Friendship from cooperation, love from shared concerns, sealed in marriage, over age partners fuse into one, living on in the progeny.

What a range from MAD to MAB, and humans are capable of it all! From negative peace down to violence-hatred, or up to friendship-love. Then institutionalized friendship-love, peace, and institutionalized violence-hatred, war.Then they generalize. Then heaven-hell, MAB-MAD.

Wanted: moving from violence-negative peace to positive peace. Criminalizing war and violence is one approach, removing war causes and war as institution are others. We need all three. A formula with four tasks summarizes much of this:

For traumas: conciliation, for conflicts: solution. All four can be done also during war-violence; with depolarization, de-domination.

Galtung's personal page: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=599Johan Galtung, 2015: "Abolishing War", "The Art of Peace" and "Clash of Civilizations". Excerpts

Preface

Introduction

Preface

Part o­ne:PEACE THEORY

Prologue: Peace as Love

[1]Peace: Positive, Negative,Violence; and a Formula.

Galtung's personal page:
http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=599

Johan Galtung, 2015: "Abolishing War", "The Art of Peace" and "Clash of Civilizations". Excerpts

Part one:PEACE THEORY

[1]Peace: Positive, Negative,
Violence; and a Formula.