Peaceful dispute resolution works

The New York Times
February 14, 2007
Editorial
The Lesson of North Korea

It is welcome news that North Korea has agreed to move toward dismantling its nuclear weapons program in exchange for fuel oil and international acceptance — including the hope of eventual recognition by the United States. When dealing with Pyongyang (and for that matter, the Bush administration), a lot can slip betwixt the cup and the lip. But if all goes as agreed, the world will be safer.

The obvious question to ask is: What took so long? And even more important: Will President Bush learn from this belated success? Will he finally allow his diplomats to try negotiation and even compromise with other bad and undeniably dangerous governments?

Mr. Bush could probably have gotten this deal years ago, except that he decided he didn’t have to talk to anyone he didn’t like. So long as the White House refused to talk, North Korea churned out plutonium. And once American negotiators were finally allowed to mix their sanctions with sanity and seriously negotiate, they struck a deal.

What took so long you ask? It took so long because our country hasn't established a cabinet-level Department of Peace, a department whose mission would enhance national security by finding alternatives to violent conflict in the world, alternatives such as those created and utilized in convincing North Korea to move forward with dismantling its nuclear weapons. It took so long because we Americans haven't made peace a priority.

But, you say, it looks like we're securing a peaceful resolution to a contentious issue in North Korea without a formal U.S. Department of Peace, so why do we need to go to the trouble and expense of formally establishing one when its proposed mission can be accomplished with other resources?

Because it is simply too dangerous and irresponsible to human life to leave peaceful resolution of conflict to what amounts to hit-and-miss chance. Think about it. There is no overall systematic and pro-active approach by our government that is responsible for researching, analyzing, developing and advocating peaceful solutions to domestic and international problems that we face. At the same time as that failure we've somehow as a nation (mis)managed to have small-minded men predisposed to shoot first and ask questions later serve as leaders of our Executive Branch. That dangerous-to-humanity combination has resulted in Iraq, a bigger U.S.-sanctioned folly, I believe, than Vietnam. Talking about President Bush's Iraq escalation plan at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing earlier this month, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel declared Bush's 2007 State of the Union speech "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam.” Not so. The escalation isn't the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam, our country's decision to attack Iraq in the first place is.

I believe that had a U.S. Department of Peace been already established at the time Bush and Cheney took office, tens of thousands of American military men and women might not have lost their lives or had their limbs blown from their bodies, and the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children killed or horribly maimed in this war might not have suffered that fate either. There was not a single U.S. Government voice for peace; only official, and misleading, voices for bombs and bullets.

Under a cabinet-level U.S. Department of Peace (as proposed in HR 808) the Secretaries of Defense and State would be required to consult with the Secretary of Peace concerning nonviolent means of conflict resolution in any case in which a conflict between the United States and any other government or entity is imminent or occurring. There isn't any such mandate now, of course, because there isn't any department or agency within our federal government charged with the responsibility for taking a pro-active search for non-violent solutions. And the reason there isn't an official voice for peace is that not enough of us know enough about that choice to force its creation. As I see it, whether you're talking about workers organizing unions, or about eradicating the scourge in this country of capital punishment, or about choosing peace methods over violent ones, education is key to choosing change. Plus, we're fortunate enough in this country to have a system that allows us the freedom to choose change.

The Preamble of our U.S. Constitution provides us with the fundamental reasons for organizing ourselves into a union of states in the first place, and one of the principle reasons is to insure peace:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

That our government is, therefore, responsible for establishing a national priority on peace is inassailable. We organized ourselves and our government to establish justice, to insure domestic tranquility, to provide for our common defense, to promote our general welfare, and all for the purpose of our securing and enjoying liberty, that is, the freedom of choice.

We the People of the United States are free to create and employ, if we so choose, non-violent strategies and techniques in an effort to resolving disputes peacefully. And We the People of the United States, with an authority superior to presidents, legislatures and judges, owe it to ourselves, to one another, to our posterity, and not unimportantly to our past, to prioritize peace with a U.S. Department of Peace.

--

There is no time left for anything but to make peacework a dimension of our every waking activity.
—Elise Boulding, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Dartmouth College and
Former Secretary General of the International Peace Research Association