Cultures of Peace
The images of war coming from Ukraine are all too familiar. People, mostly women and children, fleeing their homes in search of safety. Young people holding guns, in the hope of defending against fire power deadlier than they could have imagined just a few weeks ago. Bodies left in streets filled with the rubble of bombed out buildings. The reality of war has been with us somewhere in the world my entire life of more than 75 years.
Often this brutality has been at the hands of my own government, surrounded by a hypocrisy that was impossible to ignore. As a young person opposing the war in Viet Nam, I was moved to act in response to the fire-bombing of villages and towns, knowing people were burned alive by a government claiming it was creating peace.
Over and over again, the US have reached for bombs to advance our interests in lands far away. Over and over again, we have killed people who wanted only to live their lives. In most recent memory the US brought “Shock and Awe” to the world. This is a military doctrine justifying the use of overwhelming power to destroy the “enemy’s will” to defend themselves by inflicting massive, destructive power. This doctrine justifies civilian casualties and the bombing of infrastructure. Articulated as an official tactic at the US National Defense University, it was the centerpiece of US military strategy in the Iraq war in 2003. Of course, its historic legacy goes back to the settler colonial assaults on indigenous people, including the wanton killing of women and children and the destruction of food supplies and the essentials of life to force people into submission. It was the essence of the Russian attacks against the Chechen Republic from 1994 to 1996. It is the guiding principle of the assault on Ukraine.
Recognizing hypocrisy does little to help us sort out how to respond to the pain of this moment. Most of us realize that the Russian invasion into Ukraine is a war crime, as Noam Chomsky recently observed, “ranking alongside the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the Hitler-Stalin invasion of Poland in September 1939, to take only two salient examples.”
Naming it as such is important, but it does little to alter the realities facing people in Ukraine. We who believe in freedom and peace have an obligation to try and understand how the world got to this place, in the belief there will be a time after war, a time to rebuild, when we can find the wisdom to make choices that move us forward with a sense of our common humanity.
Among the many articles I have read this week, one that stays with me is a short article in Truthout about the choices Ukrainian Leftists are making. Some are taking up arms, some arguing for non-violent resistance, some are creating aid and support while resisting the military. Such choices forced on people are as ever present as war. Across Ukraine people are organizing spontaneously to help each other and provide resistance to Russian aggression. On activists explained, “The more important thing is that a lot of people organized spontaneously to help each other, to guard their neighborhoods and towns and villages and to confront the occupiers with Molotov [cocktails],”
Pacifists, opposing conscription, are also providing direct aid, helping people evacuate, providing food and assisting in medical help. At the moment, choices are seen as complementing each other, not in contradiction.
One peace activist concluded, “Underdeveloped peace culture, militarized education training rather obedient conscripts than creative citizens and responsible voters is a common problem in Ukraine, Russia and all post-Soviet countries. Without investments in development of peace culture and peace education for citizenship, we will not achieve genuine peace.” Cultures of peace are underdeveloped everywhere. This is perhaps one of the most important lessons for all of us.