Alternative Editorial: The Alternative To War Is Not Peace
How many of us reading are feeling distressed at the signs that history is repeating itself on the world stage? That the conflict we are currently witnessing in the Middle East is all too familiar and that we are collectively doomed to grieve a war in which there can be no winners?
On our team at The Alternative Global, none of us are historians. We are not qualified to accurately describe the details and dynamics of the conflict between the state of Israel and the military wing of Hamas - although we can point at one or two sources that properly acknowledge the problems of bias.
Nevertheless, we have reacted and responded throughout our lives to the phenomenon of conflict, becoming violent, and escalating to war.
History Never Repeats Itself
What we have observed, over that time, is that while there are elements of commonality between certain wars - such as the government presiding over the war - there are also always distinct contexts that make one war quite different from another. The Six Day War (1967) in Israel was very different from the Yom Kippur War (1973).
On our own territory the war in Iraq - its origin, how it was nurtured and eventually how it erupted as an atrocity - has similarities to the Falklands war but important differences too, mostly in how the Westminster government was supported by the international community. Even so, between them, they generated a deep disillusion amongst a significant section of the British public about the probity of war itself.
UN Peace keeping forces
In other words, war is not simply a fight breaking out between two parties in which one has a clear moral right over the other. The depiction in our media of the current eruption in the Middle East as a fight between Jews and Palestinians - and then all the arguments in favour of one or the other - is so far off the truth that we can barely repeat it here. There are always multiple parties: multiple factions within parties, multiple interests within and without the conflict, multiple identities within communities and so on, ad infinitum. In addition, there are multiple historic traumas and associated behaviours, shaping reactions and decisions.
Also, war does not happen only outside of ourselves, in some distant and delimited territory. The way that we take part in the conversation about war is reflected internally. The conflict we experience between different parts of our psyche - the part that seeks justice, the part that seeks peace, the part that feels strong and the part that feels powerless - are always playing out as we engage in the war-debate.
Few of us can find a clear settlement between those different voices in our minds or in the wider community. For a moving demonstration of this interplay between internal and external conflict, see novelist Ori Hanan Weisberg on his experience of being trapped in the field of conflict. All he feels about what he is witnessing now - the brutal slaughter of innocent people – is mirrored by the anger he feels about his own stances, decisions, and failures to act. All leading to the lives he has condemned his children to live. So much present regret arising from so much earlier conviction.
Our own journey has taken us - the co-initiators of AG - on different paths towards understanding the nature of war. Indra Adnan trained with Johan Galtung, the 'father' of peace studies, who taught her the difference between conflict resolution and conflict transformation. Indra identified the importance of narrative in her ten-year project on Peace Journalism. She grappled with the difference between hard power and soft powerthrough the works of, and connections with, Joseph Nye: how 'The American Dream' is responsible for so much damage, both individually and collectively.
Pat Kane, through the multidisciplinary lens of play, has been grasping the individual neurology of disconnection, trauma and the desire for homeostasis (calm and balance) in organisms. Play deprivation makes for more aggressive, reactive personalities: a lack of rough-and-tumble play, free and creative play, at a formative life-stage is damaging for social skills, and thus to our social peace.
What we've learnt is that violence erupts when a system cannot make sense of itself. A group of actors from within that system seeks to make a defining action, one capable of eclipsing the fear and helplessness prevalent. At that point those actors lose all connection with the environment - and the people - they are acting upon. This is what terrorism looks like.
The enemy they nominate is dehumanised and mere collateral to the cause of domination. Worse, that action triggers a response in their opponents that mirrors the initial anger and hate. The responders believe themselves to be righteous, but they are equally disconnected from their victims. From this description we can see that terrorism can exist at all levels of the system, from murderers to invading nations.
Violence once unleashed is difficult to draw into engagement, as we are seeing in Eastern Europe and the Middle East (amongst others) today. Just like a psychotic individual cannot be told to calm down, an aggressor - often a leader - bent on violence is rarely appeased by objections. As often as not they are acting out of a desire for justice: a righting of a wrong committed in the past. They believe in what they are doing.
Furthermore, any act of punishment only creates the conditions for further war down the line, as grievances are not understood or processed. Even conflict resolution, when it brings the opponents to the negotiating table too soon, will easily sow the seeds of future conflict in their attempt to settle (as the Middle East continues to demonstrate).
The only way to plan for a future without violence is not to suppress that desire to control - suppression only aggravates - but to integrate the many parts of the body politic, individual or collective, that is in conflict. This may sound glib - as if integration could be easily achieved, which it cannot.
But at the same time, we have a much better history of success than our politicians and media seem prepared to acknowledge. For example, Suella Braverman stating categorically that multiculturalism has failed in Britain beggar’s beliefs—when she herself, and PM Rishi Sunak, are the living proof.
Some would say this pre-emptive work of integration is peacebuilding and for the many who are working in this field that is as clear as day. They point at how the Northern Ireland Peace Agreement finally got over the line after many failed attempts, due to the work of the women who worked tirelessly in the local communities, crossing the divides to create a demand for it. Without these citizen networks guaranteeing that a settlement could be held within the Irish communities, the politicians could not have taken the risks they did.
Lifelong peace builder Scilla Elworthy (thrice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize) extends this work into business (A Business Plan For Peace), tracing the line between the human psyche, the community and material flourishing. Peace, she proves, is good for business.
Yet beyond those actively working in the peace-building field, peace presents itself more as the absence of war - something passive. War and Peace are two sides of one coin, held in tension by governments and the military-industrial complex. The majority of people welcome peace but cannot relate their daily lives to the international sphere where violence controls outcomes. Most importantly, they fear conflict between nations because our media quickly links that to the possibility of war (see relations with China).
Yet in our families, friendship circles and communities, conflict is a vital form of expressing difference. Whether we are talking about the process of individuation in children – not just in the scuffles of play, but also when you need to contradict your parents, or other forms of authority, in order to gain autonomy. Or in age, culture or gender differences: without conflict there would be no development of self-sovereignty within identity. In a capacious society, conflict does not lead to violence: it's the very energy of growth and development.
Yet such a capacious society cannot be taken for granted. For diversity to become valuable, we need containers within which safe interaction can occur. Space and time for people to listen to each other. Minimal resources to make meetings pleasurable. Conscious community agency networks (CANs) with open hubs for gathering are ideal. Any regular reader of The Daily Alternative will know this kind of social architecture is growing by the day.
Party politics in the Northern Hemisphere has not, until now, been the sphere in which cosmolocal social integration has been seen as the alternative to war. Instead, war has been presented as unavoidable. This is sourced in the bad faith of 'the others' and the failure of governments to get beyond taking sides, assigning to citizens the role of collateral damage.
A rare exception was heard at the start of the Scottish National Party conference on Sunday, when Holyrood’s First Minister and leader of the SNP Humza Yousaf made an unequivocal statement: that an Israeli life and a Palestinian one had equal value (see here at 34.40) Earlier that week he had also argued for the necessity of therapy and mindfulness to help integrate the human brain and create resilience.
Yousaf espouses a political case for a Scottish nation-state. But perhaps he is “a man o’ independent mind”, as Scotland’s national bard Robert Burns put it, who determines himself in deeper ways. Maybe all that's needed for the future is more politicians to take on such an “independent” line.