War and peace

30 January 2011Blog

<p>A paper submitted to the Movement for the Abolition of War</p>

It turns out that it is quite hard to train soldiers to kill.

Former US army ranger, and later professor of military science at Arkansas State University, lieutenant colonel Dave Grossman has written two books dealing with the psychology of inflicting lethal violence: On Killing – The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (1995); and (with Loren Christensen) On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and in Peace (2004).

Grossman…

30 January 2011Blog

<p>A paper submitted to the Movement for the Abolition of War</p>

The argument of this paper is that for a long time we in the peace movement have been looking in the wrong places when we’ve been looking for the deepest roots of war. This has led to misdirection in creating strategies for abolishing war.

The common argument against the effort to get rid of war is that violence is innate in human nature, and that therefore there will always be war.

I would like to suggest that arguing against this position is the wrong move.

If we as…

1 May 2009Review

Simon & Schuster, 2009; ISBN 978 1 847393 18 0; 576pp; £9.99

In popular myth, the Second World War has been cast as the last just war. Since Hitler was an evil tyrant who murdered millions of Jewish people, Britain and America had no option but to fight him. Churchill and Roosevelt were towering heroes, who did everything they could to minimise the effects of war on civilians, in order to rescue Europe from oppression.

Human Smoke is a welcome debunking of this legend. In it, Nicholson Baker has put together an impressive account of the origins…

1 December 2006Review

Fourth Estate, 2005; ISBN 1 8411 5007 X; £25

“Peggy [his mother] became a flame of optimism in my young life [during WW2]. And when I once asked what was the point of struggling with my homework when we were all going to die, she replied: “By the time you grow up, they may have found a cure for that ...” “She asked me repeatedly [during the Israeli siege of Lebanon in 1982] why governments spend so much money on guns.” (p793.)

For nearly thirty years, Fisk has been a journalist in the Middle East - through peace, war…

1 December 2006Review

Blackwell, 2006; ISBN 1405123788; 750 pp

The main aim of this book, as its editors make clear at the outset, is to provide a collection of readings on the ethics of war that will “prove useful to many students, teachers and researchers”. What they have produced is likely to prove an invaluable resource for many readers for years to come.

The book has a variety of strengths. First, there is its sheer size, with nearly 700 pages of readings. The editors have not stinted on the index, which itself runs to nearly 40 pages, and…

1 October 2006News

A quiet revolution took place at the Avery Hill campus of Greenwich University from 7 to 12 September, as the UK section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) hosted their International Meetings and seminars. There were more than one hundred women from 25 countries, covering all five continents.

Go Y-Wilpfers!

One vital part of the gathering was the Gertrud Baer Seminar: “Peace, Power and Participation”, organised by the new dynamic, international network…

1 June 2006Feature

Wilson David, who visited London in May, is a member of the Council of the Peace Community of San Jose' de Apartado', in Uraba, Colombia. Founded by displaced people, the Community itself was displaced last year when the government installed a police post inside Community grounds - against the Community's wishes and its internal rules that prohibit the carrying of weapons or cooperation with any armed actor.

The Peace Community of San Jose' de Apartado' consists of around 1,200 people - men, women, youths and above all children. We demand respect from the armed actors in the region of Uraba.

In our founding declaration, made on 23 March 1997, we laid down various important internal rules for the Community, such as: that nobody should bear arms, that nobody should give information to any side of the conflict, and that nobody should supply food to any side of the conflict. This remains our…

1 June 2006Review

Hawthorn Press 2004. Includes 48pp of teaching notes. ISBN 1 903458 54 4 / 978 1 903458 54 9

Peace Journalism should give a fair and balanced report on conflict without forgetting to set the context in which the fighting takes place.

This is what News from the Holy Land, an educational video for media students, civil society groups and NGOs, tells us. Using the example of the Israel-Palestine conflict, Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick seek to show that in focusing on bloodshed and violence, standard news reports give British audiences the impression that the two…

3 May 2006Comment

Last month's Peace News carried an article by Eddy Canfor-Dumas in which he argued the case for the establishment of a "Ministry for Peace". This month we invited an opposing view. Andreas Speck makes his pitch for why a Ministry for Peace would merely be.

In last month's issue of Peace News (PN2472) Eddy Canfor-Dumas made the case for a Ministry for Peace as part of the government. However, it seems he is so deeply rooted in government thinking that he didn't even feel the need to explain why a ministry should be a good idea.

We have ministries for everything that we (we? Or the government?) think is important, and obviously, peace is important, so we need a ministry as “part of government dedicated to pursuing and…

1 May 2006Review

Edinburgh University Press, 2005; ISBN 0 7486 2075 3; 250 pp; £16.99

For a number of reasons, and this book explores some of them, “just war” theory has come under various kinds of strain in recent years.

As a result, some would seek to jettison it altogether, arguing that it is no longer relevant because the world has changed in too many ways since the theory was developed and formulated. Some try to patch it up on the basis that having something is better than having nothing, but without any real commitment to it. Some, however, continue to insist…

16 April 2006Feature

Norman Kember, the British pacifist released after being imprisoned in Iraq for almost four months, has returned home to face a predictable lack of understanding of his pacifist stance - just as his captors in Iraq themselves showed little sympathy towards his pacifism.

He had been one of four activists from the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) network who were abducted in Iraq on 26 November (see the cover story in December/January's PN), whilst there to support human rights for…

3 April 2006Comment

Established in 2003, the Ministry for Peace (MfP) is "an organisation working for the creation of a Ministry for Peace within government". The case for this controversial - and to some minds positively counter-revolutionary - initiative is made here by the Chair of MfP, Eddy Canfor-Dumas.

In the UK we think education is important -- so we have a ministry for education. We think health and the environment are important -- so we have ministries for them. If we think peace is important, shouldn't we have a Ministry for Peace? A part of government dedicated to pursuing and promoting peace?

But what exactly would a Ministry for Peace do? Because isn't “peace” a woolly concept that can mean almost anything?

For many peace workers,though, its meaning is clear. To work…

3 April 2006Comment

Anti-war activists have always pondered the irony of boxing champion Muhammad Ali having claimed conscientious objector status when he was drafted for the Vietnam War.

As one of the world's best and most highly paid-fighters, it was boldly hypocritical for Ali to simultaneously declare qualms of conscience about the government's brand of sanctioned, bloody violence but not about his personally favourite sort. The irony was not lost on Ali's draft board, which rejected his CO claim…

1 April 2006Review

Edinburgh University Press, 2005; ISBN 0 7486 1525 3; 173pp; £15.99

This book is a useful introduction to some of the philosophical issues and theories relating to war and peace. It begins with an account of three basic approaches to the morality of war; political realism, internationalism and cosmopolitanism.

Political realism argues that moral values have no leverage in international politics, while internationalism looks to give those values some international status, primarily through the medium of international law. Cosmopolitanism, on the other…

1 April 2006Review

New Internationalist Publications, 2005; £7 each

The New Internationalist's mini books are packed with quotes, cartoons, photographs and nuggets of information, which makes them ideal for dipping into. These three titles pursue pacifist, environmental and animal rights agendas as one would expect from this magazine group, run by a co-op. The New Internationalist was originally sponsored by Oxfam, Christian Aid and the Cadbury and Rowntree Trusts, and still focuses on poverty and inequality.

Although most of the quotes support an…