Quakers - Religious Society of Friends

Advices and Queries No 1 see another?
Take heed, dear Friends, to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts. Trust them as the leadings of God whose Light shows us our darkness and brings us to new life.

Preparing for Peace - MM October 2006

Introduction
The central argument of the Preparing for Peace project is simply stated: war does not work as a tool of politics in the 21st C. War only occurs when sufficient people are organised in armed combat and believe that it will solve the current perceived problem which is usually couched in terms of a threat to survival and identity. It no longer works because it fails to produce the results that political and military leaders hope to gain from it. Rather, it carries a disproportionate level of risk to social stability and human security, and it is fundamentally incompatible with our transformation into a stable, global community. The peace project asks our leaders to reject war as a means of resolving disputes and to shift the idea of using war onto a similar trajectory as the one currently occupied by slavery and segregation.

The arguments…..
First, war is blunt and unpredictable, often with no prospect of success and has to be seen to be succeeding if political reputations are to remain intact. Second, the idea that war can be used with strictly defined humanitarian objectives remains a convincing idea, however, war now contains the threat of human extinction. The root cause of our problem today lies in the growing mis-match between technological progress and ethical and spiritual evolution. Third, war now carries new political and legal risks for leaders, who now operate in a context of domestic and global pressures. It is increasingly obvious that live news reporting and global information networks are diminishing the power and usefulness of war because they are changing the way in which it is observed. One problem contemporary leaders have is that they cannot predict how legal sensibilities will change in the future, reclassifying actions committed today as war crimes tomorrow. It is a risk that leaders are going to be increasingly unwilling to take as international humanitarian law develops in sophistication and reach. Fourth, it is likely that all future wars will be followed by claims for death and injury of individuals and large-scale claims for structural, environmental and economic damages suffered in war. Finally, modern war is incompatible with human security and social stability. 160 million people were slaughtered in the 20th C. Other ‘human’ collateral damage includes; displacement both within country and across national borders. Psycho-social trauma ensuing from exposure to war is largely uncounted because it is impossible to measure. Environmental costs include long term contamination and harm as a result of land mines, radio active materials and munitions, damaged infrastructure such as oil installations, chemical factories and dams. Further, war consumes limited natural resources in the form of fuels and materials. The true collateral of war is what we think of as security. Human security rests on safe, sustainable and healthy livelihoods, factors which in turn depend on multilateral efforts towards sustainable development and peaceful processes of change. War, undermines all efforts undertaken to improve people’s lives within their own countries. It diverts vast political, economic and scientific resources away from the core problem of global survival towards contrary processes of damage and destruction.

What are the issues that drive war today?
First we have seen unprecedented unilateral action in the shape of ‘preventative war’ initiated by the US when the UN refused to back its desire to invade Iraq. Second, we have ‘terrorism’ and the ‘war on terrorism’ which entails attacks on random and symbolic targets in order to create a climate of extreme fear in a wider group. Third, there are civil wars and low intensity conflict, for example wars within nations as in the former Yugoslavia. Also ‘asymmetrical warfare’ where state owned forces are trying to oust insurgents, for example in some African states. Fourth, we have deteriorating environments and increasing competition for natural resources, for example, oil, (most definitely not carrots!). Fifth, the combination of wealth disparities and the limits to current forms of economic growth are likely to lead to a crisis of unsatisfied expectations within an increasingly informed global majority of the disempowered. The existence of ‘Horizontal inequalities’, for example economic (inequalities in access to incomes, employment,) political (inequalities in access to political power) and social (inequalities in access to services including education, healthcare and housing) create a co-existence of unsustainable lifestyles on the part of a billion members of the human family and unacceptable poverty on the part of another billion. Finally, the availability of weapons, from small arms to weapons of mass destruction and people to use them!

ALTERNATIVE RESPONSES TO THE THREAT OF WAR
The Preparing for Peace project advocates the following programme under three main headings:-

First, the proscription of war under international law. Here the group proposes that war be made illegal for any reason. Any country which threatened or made war would be prosecuted using international law, which would include a set of reformulated crimes against humanity. This would ensure that leader’s who prosecute war and violence in response to perceived disputes within or between nation states, should be subjected automatically to the full rigor of international humanitarian law administered through the UN. Such law will need to be developed and refined during the forthcoming decades. In the meantime the UN would require internal reform in order to make it a truly representative body. This would build upon the current proposals by the Secretary General, with one objective being a Security Council which gives fair representation to all nations, and the commencement of a programme to democratise the UN with a globally elected parliament.

Second, the creation of new institutions to transform conflict. The proposal here is the establishment of an international civil peace service. This would build upon the existing components of the civilian peace service, be answerable to the UN and be composed of civil peacemaking and peacekeeping units, some of which would be recruited and trained as multi national services, including an international police service. There would also need to be the development of supra national regional bodies which had the power to uphold a democratically functioning UN. Further there would be required a body to control the production and trade in arms and the decommissioning of weapons of mass destruction. Again this would be in the form of international law maintained by the UN.

Third, sustained and effective action to eliminate the causes of war. This would be based upon sustainable development, the protection of the environment and trade justice. It would require all nations to evolve social institutions that promote equal social and economic opportunities for their citizens, protect vulnerable people, tackle threats to the environment, conserve resources, and act as a global community to discharge our responsibilities to one another.

Finally, LEADERSHIP. War is made in the minds of those who are leaders. They promote war as a social institution when in actual fact they construct conflict to serve their own ends. We have to educate our leaders, alongside our children, about their responsibilities as world citizens, and invite them to implement the above policy suggestions……so that humanity ceases to behave with such astonishing irrationality.

Jade Smith
Marie Charnley
September 2006

Sense of a Goose

In autumn, when you see geese flying in formation as they head South for the winter, you might consider what science has discovered as to why they fly that way.

As each bird flaps its wings, it creates uplift for the bird immediately following. The whole flock has a seventy percent greater flying range than if each bird flew on its own.

People who have a common direction, and a sense of community, can get where they are going much more easily if they are travelling on the thrust of one another.

When a goose falls out of formation it feels the drag and resistance of trying to go it alone and quickly gets back into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird in front. When the lead goose gets tired it rotates back to the wing and another flies point.

It makes sense to take turns doing demanding jobs. Geese at the rear honk to encourage those in front to keep up their speed. What messages do we honk from behind?

When a goose gets sick, or wounded by gunshot, and falls out of formation, two other geese fall out with it, following it down to lend help and protection.

They stay with the fallen goose until it is able to fly, or until it dies. Only then do they launch out on their own to catch up with their group, or to fly with another formation.

If we have the sense of a goose, we'll stand by each other like this.

Clerk of Monthly Meeting
Susan Robson
Tel: 01484 845330
Email: smr@fish.co.uk