‘Peace’: freedom from war, disturbance, or dissension (entered the English Language in the 12th century); quiet, stillness, concord (13th century); peacemaker (15th century)
Oxford Concise Dictionary of Etymology
The story of peace is as old as the story of humanity itself, and certainly as old as war. It is a story of progress, often in very difficult circumstances, as this volume will illustrate. Historically, peace has often been taken, as with the Oxford EnglishDictionary’s definition, to imply an absence of overt violence or war between or sometimes within states. War is often thought to be the natural state of humanity, peace of any sort being fragile and fleeting. This book challenges this view. Peace in its various forms has been by far humanity’s more common experience—as the archaeological, ethnographic, and historic records indicate. Much of history has been relatively peaceful and orderly, while frameworks for security, law, redistribution of resources, and justice have constantly been advancing. Peace has been at the centre of the human experience, and a sophisticated version of peace has now become widely accepted.
Peace can be organized domestically within the state, internationally through global organizations and institutions, or transnationally through actors whose ambit covers all of these levels. Peace can be public or private. Peace has often been a hidden phenomenon, subservient to power and interests. Many analysts prefer to imagine that public power (of domestic politicians, the military, or international officials) is responsible for order rather than social, economic, political, or cultural harmony. Furthermore, in the political economy of war and violence policymakers and media distribute information around the world, often making violence appear to be a more significant and profitable media event than peace. This perspective tends to dominate the understandings of politicians, bureaucrats, and international policymakers whose role is one of problem solving and crisis management. Due to material and time constraints, such mitigations tend to be limited and pragmatic. The longer-term aspiration for a self-sustaining peace via a process aimed at a comprehensive outcome has rarely been attained, even with the combined assistance—in recent times—of international donors, the UN, World Bank, military forces, or international NGOs.
Peace practices and theories have made huge advances throughout history. However, the fact that the story of peace is so rarely told—despite its ubiquity—is beneficial for powerful elites who see violence as a political or economic tool. It does not help that peace is a rather ambiguous concept. Authoritarian governments and powerful states have, throughout history, had a tendency to impose their version of peace on their own citizens as well as those of other states, as with the Soviet Union’s suppression of dissent amongst its own population and those of its satellite states, such as East Germany or Czechoslovakia. Peace and war may be closely connected, such as when military force is deployed to make peace, as with North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) airstrikes in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995 and in Yugoslavia in 1999. The former ended the Serb siege of Sarajevo, which had continued for three years, leading to the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995, and then later stopped the war in Kosovo in 1999, in which Serbs attempted to suppress ethnic Kosovar Albanian opposition to their rule, leading to the establishment of a UN mission in Kosovo. On the other hand, both George Orwell (1903–50), in his novel 1984, and the French social theorist Michel Foucault (1926–84) noted the dangers of the relationship between war and peace in their well-known aphorisms: ‘peace is war’, ‘war is peace’.
A wide range of sources indicate that the emergence of peace is closely associated with a variety of political, social, economic, and cultural struggles against the horrors of war and oppression. Peace activism has normally been based on campaigns for individual and group rights and needs, for material and legal equality between groups, genders, races, and religions, disarmament, and to build international institutions. This has required the construction of local, and international associations, networks, and institutions, which coalesced around widely accepted agendas. Peace activism supported internationally organized civil society campaigns against slavery in the 18th century, and for basic human dignity and rights ever since. Various peace movements have struggled for independence and self-determination, or for voting rights and disarmament (most famously perhaps, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament). Ordinary people can, and have often, mobilized for peace in societal terms using peaceful methods of resistance (as with Indian non-violent opposition to British rule in the 1920s until Independence in 1947).
There is controversy over whether peace or war is humanity’s ‘natural condition’. The political left claims there is a constant struggle against oppression to achieve justice and peace, but that only a broad version of peace is acceptable. Conversely, the right claims that violence is endemic and inherent in human society and so a narrow version is the only pragmatic choice for the state. However, there is a wealth of evidence that supports a popular desire for a broad form of peace. It may also be that society is often more sensitized to peace issues than elites, states, institutions, politicians, policymakers, and bureaucrats. The latter tend to focus on a narrower set of interests driven by demands for security and profit whereas society requires an everyday peace to prosper and, lacking direct forms of power, experiences the vicissitudes of war and conflict most acutely.
This short book outlines the positive, though controversial, story of the evolution of peace in practice and theory (and mainly from the perspective of the global north). It should be noted that non-Western peace traditions, spanning the major historical civilizations, religions, and identities, have also provided important contributions. The West has been the loudest and most influential voice—for better or worse—in defining the politics and economics of peace since the Enlightenment at least. It has led the development of what is now known as the ‘liberal peace’, upon which the post-World War II and post-Cold War international architecture has been based. Since the early 2000s, a neoliberal peace has gradually taken over. Increasingly, more critical and/or non-Western voices are having their say on the debate about peace, however. The search continues for refinements of these models or for better, perhaps hybrid, alternatives in an increasingly post-colonial and post-liberal world.