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Projecting Ideas on a Perpetual PeaceDavid Webb aa Leeds Metropolitan UniversityPublished online: 26 Feb 2013.

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Projecting Ideas on a Perpetual PeaceDAVID WEBB

The “Projecting Peace” project followed an international conference on“Imaging War,” sponsored by the European Science Foundation in 2008.It considered how the “imagers of war” can be viewed through a range ofdisciplinary lenses, and explored how organized knowledge systems, scenar-ios, and stories are used to legitimate war and its consequences. Some of themajor contributions to the conference were published in Peace Review in 2009and formed the basis for the thinking behind “Projecting Peace,” which wasestablished to investigate how academics, activists, and practitioners (workingas individuals or in groups or organizations) are researching, discussing, andworking on peace projects.

Advocates of peace are often accused of being out of touch with the harshrealities of political life and human nature and are often caricatured

as well-meaning visionaries who simplistically and ineffectually dream ofa return to a nonviolent Golden Age. “Projecting Peace” was therefore anattempt to provide an interdisciplinary forum for exploring the complexities,ambiguities, ambivalences, and varieties of peacemaking and peacethinkingwith the aim of addressing how these varied academic disciplines and schoolsof thought can address, in some practical way, perhaps the greatest challengesin history—anthropogenic climate change and nuclear proliferation.

The “scramble” for sustainable natural resources within a technologi-cally changed and technologically challenged climate is an increasingly im-portant source of global conflict. The self-interest of governments for nationalsurvival run counter to the evident necessity for collaboration and cooperationon an unprecedented scale. Therefore, our main focus in this interdisciplinaryresearch project was on the practicalities of applying and maintaining ethical,ecological, and humanitarian considerations beyond national boundaries inthe fragile economies of emergent cultures of peace and security. In so doingwe were also contributing to the current interest in “cosmopolitics,” for exam-ple, a politics that reaches beyond—or even supersedes—the nation-state andto whatever form—pacific or otherwise—this might take in the years ahead.

The future of our planet is threatened by two man-made dangers—nuclear proliferation and the effects of climate change. These self-inflicted

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problems have generated the necessity for an elaborated strategy of global co-operation. The question therefore becomes—how can academics and activistsjoin together to contribute to the debates and strategies that are developingaround these issues? Our future survival may indeed require us to better un-derstand the underlying human aspects of our past and current predicamentsin an attempt to achieve Immanuel Kant’s idea of “perpetual peace.”

The project itself consisted of a series of invited public talks and meetingsfrom October to December 2011. The talks were advertised widely throughacademic and activist networks, and concerned the fostering of dialogue andpooling of resources about past, present, and possible future forms of peace-making and cross-disciplinary thinking. This issue of Peace Review containsessays from many of those presenters and I will briefly introduce here theideas developed by five of the contributors (the others are discussed in DianeMorgan’s follow-up essay).

Diana Francis discusses how the principles of peacebuilding, which havebeen constructed since the founding of peace studies, might be deployed

to confront the enormous challenges that humankind faces. She addresses thenecessity for transforming societal values: the rather fatalistic acceptance ofviolence and the apparent attraction of global power, both have to be overcome.For this to happen, societies that are currently infused with direct, structural,and cultural violence would have to be changed into ones that nurture andpractice nonviolent methods of conflict resolution. She sets out to debunk the“deep rooted myth” of military violence as a means of enforcing people’ssafety and redressing wrongs.

As a practitioner, Carolyn Hayman from Peace Direct describes the im-portance of building peace from the bottom up and focusing on nurturing andempowering local communities, alongside carefully developed partnershipswith relevant and helpful external groups. She stresses the need for principledinvestment in local initiatives as well as a degree of responsible flexibilitywhen it comes to bringing in outside organizations. As she clearly states:“Local First does not mean local only.” She then provides some proceduralguidelines as to how one can contribute effectively, such as sustainably, tolocal peacebuilding initiatives.

Peace and development issues are, of course, closely linked—advancesin both are often hampered not only by involvement in wars, but also in thepreparation of them. In his essay, Colin Archer of the International PeaceBureau discusses how the chances of achieving the UN agreed MillenniumDevelopment Goals will be ultimately linked to the willingness of statesto commit themselves to reducing their investments in militarism. The UNrecognizes that the huge sums of money spent on arms by the governmentsof the world could instead be used to ensure global security by eliminating(or at least easing) poverty, providing education and welfare, and combating

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injustice around the world. A greater universal understanding and recognitionof these links can be seen to be of growing urgency as the effects of climatechange become more apparent. Archer also gives us an interesting analysisof how we somewhat passively accept the intervention of the military inseveral inappropriate situations as if their presence were natural and obvious,rather than incongruous. The examples he cites are public—sporting events,natural disasters, and peacekeeping operations. He highlights the danger ofthis unseeing habituation to militarism and how it prevents us having a clear-sighted and trenchant debate about the role of the military.

As Mark Levene suggests, peace campaigners often visualize a worldin which governments have agreed to abolish weapons of mass destructionand strive toward what the philosopher Immanuel Kant called, “perpetualpeace.” Levene points out, however, that the ability to destroy with weaponsof enormous power is not the only man-made threat to life on the planet. Theimpact of human activity on the environment, and particularly on the climate,highlights the importance of “projecting peace.” The importance of adoptingnew methods of resolving conflict is on par with the urgency of develop-ing cooperative methods for preventing further dramatic changes to weatherpatterns and inevitable catastrophe. Unfortunately, however, past experienceswith governments working together on a global scale are not encouraging.After the Second World War, attempts to regulate the international devel-opment of nuclear technology and prevent the use of the Bomb in futureconflicts failed because of their reliance on U.S.–Soviet cooperation. Neitherside trusted each other enough to agree on an independent body controllingsomething they thought they might use to their own advantage. Similarly,President George W. Bush did not sign up to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol becausehe considered the proposed reductions on greenhouse gas emissions to beunfair to the United States. A common feature between the climate changeand nuclear crises is that the associated problems are so large that it is difficultfor individuals (even in high places) to either comprehend or feel that theycan do much to prevent them.

Elsewhere, I have analyzed our inability to grasp (intellectually, morally,politically) the consequences of our actions:

The potential catastrophes of nuclear war and anthropogenic climate change operateon different timescales. The effects of a nuclear war would be felt relatively quicklyafter the initiating event, whereas in the case of climate change there is no singleinitiator and the effects occur over an extended period of time. However, bothpossible situations are ultimately due to a failure of humans to grasp the long termconsequences of our behaviour. In addition, both scenarios lie outside of the day today experience of most people. Even though we have been provided with evidencethat these dangers exist, the majority of us either choose not to believe it, or ignore it,or convince ourselves that it either it won’t be as bad as predicted, or that someone

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else will sort it out. In the case of climate change we are like a tanker moving slowlytowards the edge of a waterfall. It will take a great deal of energy and a long timebefore we can change direction and avert destruction. For nuclear weapons however,we are like someone standing on the top of a cliff—we could keep away from theedge relatively easily but we seem to be drawn inexorably towards it.

A sense of agency, a recognition of our capacity to change the course of“events,” events that we ourselves are causing, is evidently what is missing. Ihave also attempted to draw attention to the role ideological apparatuses, suchas the media, play in maintaining our sense of powerlessness.

A major feature of the threats posed by nuclear war and climate change is thatboth governments and people are either not aware or ignorant of the urgency of thesituation. In both cases, fear, greed, mistrust, as well as ignorance, are exploited bymajor forces with vested interests in the military industrial complex or the retentionof a petroleum based economy, pushing us ever closer to the edge.

Pulling us back from the edge of the cliff, in the scenario of the nuclearwar, has involved a proposal for a four-phase plan to make nuclear war moredifficult to initiate. This includes the de-targeting and de-alerting of missiles,the separation of warheads from missiles, and their removal from silos. Thesemeasures would give more time between thought and action—time to thinkover the options and find alternative ways of dealing with the situation. Eventhough climate change is already happening right now, there are also plansand ideas for preventing an extinction event by another route.

There is a further problem, however, which presents itself: nuclear pro-liferation. Recognized at the outset of the nuclear age the first major move totry and curb the spread of nuclear weapons was not made until 1968 when theNuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) opened for signature. Unfortunately,the treaty allowed—even encouraged—the spread of nuclear technology forthe production of energy while precluding states from joining if they devel-oped nuclear weapons at a later time (India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea).The major problem with the treaty, therefore, is that it is now seen by the morethan 180 non-nuclear weapons signatories who promised not to obtain nuclearweapons as merely preserving the special status of the P5—the United States,the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, and China—who already hadthe weapons in 1968. In other words, having not kept their side of the bargainto work “in good faith” toward nuclear disarmament, the treaty founders para-doxically set a poor example for other urgent international agreements suchas those for limiting global CO2 emissions.

This failing would suggest that it is not simply a matter of future treatiesand agreements of this kind being carefully worded or even of compliancebeing closely verified and monitored. If we are to avoid the extinction ofhistory we will need to develop global understanding, trust, and cooperation

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to unprecedented levels. Education and awareness-raising campaigns high-lighting the threats both of nuclear war and climate change aid each otherin this respect. Both these threats are forms of violence on our environment,and ultimately on ourselves. In this regard Crispin Hemson’s analysis of typesof violence we live with is most useful, especially as he concludes with aconvincing account of the importance of “concerted nonviolent action” inresisting them and the role education can play in bringing this change about.Most interestingly, he draws our attention to the importance of principles ofdeontology so as to bring home to us that responsibility is not just an indi-vidual issue of how we behave toward others, but also a professional issue;it concerns how our professions as a body behave—for these too we shouldfeel accountable. He concludes with the powerful suggestion that our un-derstanding of “nonviolent action” should be extended to include “ethicallyminded professionalism.” For Hemson principled professionalism should berecognized as a contribution to peacemaking.

Unfortunately, as a species we are very slow in realizing that radicalchanges in our thinking and doing are required, despite, paradoxically, a

growing sense that an accelerated response to the current situation is needed.As long ago as 1954, Albert Einstein had already recognized this humanweakness:

We need an essentially new way of thinking if mankind is to survive. Men mustradically change their attitudes towards each other and their views of the future.Force must no longer be an instrument of politics. . . . Today, we do not have muchtime left; it is up to our generation to succeed in thinking differently. If we fail, thedays of civilised humanity are numbered.

Back then he was concerned about the nuclear threat, but his words remaintrue today when we now have the power to destroy life on Earth in severaldifferent ways. Given this range of destructive options now available to us,we must in response find new ways to resolve conflicts, but also, more funda-mentally build our communities differently, lead our lives differently, manageinternational relations differently. Our willingness and ability to implementthese far-reaching, but also exciting and creative changes, could produce amore affirmative approach to life, so different in nature to today’s apparentaddiction to war and a high tech push-button lifestyle, which promises instantgratification, but defers long-time happiness. The fatal attraction to the edgeof annihilation and a belief that we can pull back at any moment may appearto have been confirmed partly through past experiences with weapons of massdestruction, but it is not clear how long this possibility will remain the case.It is also not applicable to climate change. For that to be acted-upon, we needto heed a different lesson learned from nuclear weapons: We need to use

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our intelligence and our ability to understand what the consequences of ouractions might be, and to ensure that history can continue by working togetherto make human security and global survival our top priorities.

We are all too often tempted to think that problems can be solved bysome kind of “technical fix.” For example, the United States has determinedthat the way to tackle the threat of nuclear attack is to develop a highlycomplex and extremely expensive missile defense system. It would be muchcheaper and more reliable to use diplomatic processes to bring about a NuclearWeapons Convention for global nuclear disarmament. In fact, the nongovern-mental organization (NGO) community has already drafted a model for sucha convention, which was presented to the UN by Costa Rica and Malaysiain 2007. I have discussed our paradoxical relationship to technology and theabsurd double-bind it produces elsewhere:

Although it has been a common perception among many in the ‘industrialised world’that science and technology can offer solutions to the problems that society or theworld faces, many others have grave doubts about the uses of technology for thispurpose. Evidence suggests that the use of technology in this way does not alwaysaddress the central core of the problem and often causes more problems than itsolves. The term ‘technological fix’ is often used to describe this situation.

In the introduction to The Technological Fix: How People Use Technology toCreate and Solve Problems, Lisa Rosner points out that the term “technolog-ical fix” may first have been used by Alvin Weinberg in 1967. In his book,Reflections on Big Science, he posed the following question:

In view of the simplicity of technological engineering and the complexity of socialengineering, to what extent can social problems be circumvented by reducing themto technological problems? Can we identify Quick Technological Fixes for profoundand almost infinitely complicated social problems, ‘fixes’ that are within the graspof modern technology, and which would either eliminate the original social problemwithout requiring a change in the individual’s social attitudes, or would so alter theproblem as to make its resolution more feasible?

Weinberg was a nuclear scientist working at a time when science, en-gineering, and technology were seen as extremely important ways of

determining progress and measuring global status. He was convinced that nu-clear energy would be a great boon to society. Even though later, in his 1994book, The First Nuclear Era: The Life and Times of a Technological Fixer,he admitted that the costs of nuclear energy were far more than he predicted,he remained a great champion of technology. He thought that the hydrogenbomb acted as a “stabilizer of relations between the US and USSR” and thus,

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a “technological fix” for preventing a Third World War. By the same token,television and air conditioning would keep people reasonably comfortableand off the streets, and so fix urban unrest. Others pointed out then and sincethat technological fixes deal with symptoms and not the underlying cause ofthe problem. They often have unforeseen and damaging side effects that aresometimes worse than the social problem they were supposed to deal with.As John Burke commented in 1969: “Although there is no doubt that some ofour problems can be solved by sophisticated engineering methods, I think iterroneous to insist that all problems are capable of a technological fix.” Somemight argue that the technological fixes—termed geoengineering—that arebeing suggested and developed in an attempt to lessen the effects of climatechange are a consequence of engineers and scientists feeling that they needto redress the image of science and technology, which has been somewhattarnished during the climate change debate.

The main group pushing for “technological fixes” to international prob-lems is the military–industrial complex. With contracts worth hundreds ofbillions of dollars being awarded for unproven projects, it is not surprisingperhaps that there is enormous pressure to continue along this path as long aspossible—even if it drives us to the edge of utter destruction and well off-trackfor anything that could resemble “perpetual peace.”

RECOMMENDED READINGS

Blair, B. 2008, February. “Increasing Warning and Decision Time (‘De-Alerting’),” pre-sented at Achieving the Vision of a World Free of Nuclear Weapons, International Con-ference on Nuclear Disarmament: Oslo. 26–27. Available at <http://disarmament.nrpa.no/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/Paper Blair.pdf>, last accessed January 20, 2013.

Cromwell, D. and Levene, M. (Eds). 2007. Surviving Climate Change: The Struggle to AvertGlobal Catastrophe. London: Pluto Press. 59–81.

Levene, M. 2009. “Predicting Genocide in an Age of Anthropogenic Climate Change:An Interim Report.” Available at <http://www.crisis-forum.org.uk/publications/Levenegenocide climate.doc>, last accessed January 20, 2013.

McIntosh, A. 2008. Hell and High Water: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition.Edinburgh: Birlinn.

Rosner, L. (Ed). 2004. The Technological Fix: How People Use Technology to Create andSolve Problem. London: Routledge.

United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1 Session 1. 1946 “Establishment of a Com-mission to Deal with the Problems Raised by the Discovery of Atomic Energy.” (24 Jan-uary). Available at <http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/032/52/IMG/NR003252.pdf>, last accessed January 20, 2013.

Volti, R. 2006. Society and Technological Change (3rd ed.) New York: Worth Publishers.Webb, D. 2010. “Dealing with Climate Change: The Drive to Technical Solutions,” in

M. Levene (ed.), Past Actions, Present Woes, Future Potential: Rethinking History inthe Light of Anthropogenic Climate Change. A Model University Syllabus for History

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and Related Subjects, The Higher Education Academy: History Subject Centre. Avail-able at <http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross fac/heahistory/elibrary/internal/co levenepastactions 20100731/>, last accessed January 20, 2013.

Webb, D. C. 2010. “On the Edge of History: The Nuclear Dimension,” in M. Levene R.Johnson, and P. Roberts (ed.), History at the End of the World?, Humanities-Ebooks, Penrith.Available at <http://www.humanities-ebooks.co.uk>, last accessed January 20, 2013.

Weinberg, A. 1969. Reflections on Big Science. Cambridge: MIT Press.

David Webb is Emeritus Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Leeds Metropolitan University, havingpreviously been Professor of Engineering there. He is also a long term peace and anti-nuclear activist.E-mail: D.Webb@leedsmet.ac.uk

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