- Chapter 2: What is Peace?
- 2.1. Introduction
- 2.2. Peace as a Social Contract:
- The Conflict Principle
- The Cooperation Principle
- The Gap Principle
- The Helix Principle
- The Second and Fourth Master Principles
- 2.3. The Nature of a Social Contract:
- Status Quo
- Non-Status Quo
- Theoretical Dimensions
- In Sum
- 2.4. Conceptual Levels and Dimensions of Peace:
- Conceptual Levels
- A Threshold
- Social Levels
- Crosscutting Levels)
- Conceptual Dimensions
- The Metalevel
- Empirical Concept
- Abstract Concept
- 2.5. Qualities of Peace:
- 2.6. Advantages of this Conceptualization
PART II. THE JUST PEACE
- Chapter 3: Alternative Concepts of Peace
- 3.1. Introduction
- 3.2. Concepts and Underlying Principles
- 3.3. As a State of Nonconflict, Nonviolence, or Nonwar:
- As an Absence of . . .
- Historical and Contemporary Usage
- For Irenologists
- For Pacifists
- For Students of International Relations
- E. In Sum
- As "Negative Peace"
- 3.4. As a State of Order:
- 3.5. As a State of Mind:
- 3.6. As a State of Law:
- 3.7. As a State of Coercive Power:
- 3.8. Peace as a Divine State
- 3.9. Peace as a State of Goodness:
- As a Good
- As Justice
- "Positive Peace"
- Johan Galtung
- His Idea of Violence
- His Structure of Violence
- His-Concept of "Positive Peace"
- His Political Theory
- 3.10. And Peace as a Social Contract:
- Chapter 4: Metajustice
- 4.1. The Question
- 4.2. Metaethics
- Metaethical Theories
- Relativism and Other Theories
- Types of Statements
- Analytic Statements
- Contradictory Statements
- Synthetic Statements
- Empirical Statements
- Exclamations and Commands
- Ethical Statements
- The Is/Ought Dichotomy
- The Nature of Ethical Statements
- 4.3. The Planes of Reality and Morality
- 4.4. The Region of Justice
- 4.5. Method for Determining a Just Peace
- Chapter 5: The Social Contract Model
- 5.1. The Purpose and Approach
- 5.2. The Model
- The Message
- The Model and Requirements of a Just Peace
- The Convention Voting Rules
- 5.3. The Underlying Psychological Principles
- Subjectivity Principle: Perception is Subjective
- Intentionality Principle: We Behave to Achieve
- Self-Esteem Principle: We Strive for Self-Esteem
- Expectations Principle: Expectations Guide Behavior
- Responsibility Principle: We are Responsible for Our Behavior
- The Individuality Master Principle: We are Individuals
- Chapter 7: The Just Peace Principles
- 7.1. A Middle Solution?
- 7.2. A Metasolution: The Just Principles
- 7.3. The Constitutional Principles
- The Need
- The Sovereign Equality Principle
- The Restricted Purposes Principle
- The Representative Government Principle
- The Limited Government Principle
- 7.4. The Just Package
Part III. IMPLEMENTATION
- Chapter 8: The Just Peace
- 8.1. Order, Justice, and Power
- 8.2. Peace Versus Justice
- 8.3. Convergent Arguments for the Just Peace
- A Trial-and-Error Process
- An Ethical Method
- A Metautopia
- Rawls' First Principle
- From History
- Human Equality and Welfare
- Poverty and Hunger
- 8.4. Conclusion
- Chapter 10: Principles of Conflict Resolution
- 10.1. The Peacemaking Principle
- Clarify the Conflict Situation
- Define a "Yesable" Interest
- Invoke Overriding Interests
- Focus on an Exchange
- Emphasize Legitimacy
- Keep Issue and Power Proportional
- Display Commitment
- Consider Creating Distance
- Resist Aggression
- Conclusion and Qualifications
- 10.2. The Peacekeeping Principle
- Start from the Existing Balance of Powers
- Guard the Balance of Powers
- Reduce Any Gap Between Expectations and Power
- Accept Some Conflict Now
- Reduce the Probability of Successful Violence
- 10.3. The Peacefostering Principle
More specifically, whether between individuals or groups, within or between states, conflict manifests a trial-and-error adaptation among subjective, individual worlds. It establishes a balance of powers--an interlocking equilibrium--between what we want, can get, and will pursue. The result is an associated structure of expectations, a definition of what each of us can reliably predict about others, what we can anticipate as the outcome of his behavior. Such reliable expectations are essential for social cooperation and the division of labor. And such expectations are built on a balance of powers--a complex of threats, promises, legitimacy, persuasion, and love. There is, therefore, a social bond between cooperation and conflict. Through disagreements, arguments, confrontations, fights, clashes, struggles, violence, and war, we build our social balances and assure cooperation.
Expectations tend to remain constant, like habits and routines. While, unfortunately, our desires and wants will shift, our abilities, resources, and skills, our preparedness, fitness, and conditions, will change. And our resolution and commitment will alter. As a result, the balance of powers underlying a structure of expectations will in time diverge from expectations and an increasing gap will form: what people or groups expect of each other, their rewards, benefits, and understandings, their rights and obligations, will no longer realistically accord with their interests, capabilities, and will. Tension and hostility may develop; uneasiness may be felt. In any case, the social atmosphere is ripe for some event to trigger conflict behavior.
Such behavior then serves to restructure expectations more in line with the changes that have taken place in the balance of powers, to recreate the conditions essential for cooperation. Conflict and cooperation are then complementary phases in the progress of social life. However, these phases are not cyclical. If the conditions or environment of a social relationship remain fairly constant, then the progression of conflict and cooperation forms a helix: conflict gets shorter and less intense, cooperation more durable and deeper, as people learn from previous conflict, expectations, and interaction. As a couple surviving the fights of their early married years and growing old together.
Such is the reality of social conflict in general. But what about violence? Conflict between groups and classes will not turn into collective violence unless the status quo is disrupted. This means that expectations governing rights and duties, benefits and obligations--our core social interests--have collapsed. Even then, such violence may not become widespread or turn into large-scale, collective violence or internal war unless the society is polarized along class lines. Pluralistic societies, in which interests are segmented by overlapping group memberships and roles, social mobility is free and positions open, and people may be in one class or another depending on their group membership, localize and contain collective violence. For this reason, exchange societies--the most diverse and pluralistic type--have the least violence; coercive societies, which create an overall we-they, command-obey class, have the most.
As a form of violence, war at the international level should be similarly understood. Its occurrence presupposes a breakdown of the international status quo, particularly territorially defined rights and interests. In turn, this presupposes that the balance of powers has shifted significantly: what states want, can get, and are resolved to fight for or defend has altered. But war may still not break out. For a status quo dispute may be between libertarian (liberal democratic) states, which, by virtue of their liberal cultures and diverse but also shared and cross-pressured interests, do not make war on each other. Or, if involving authoritarian or totalitarian states, there may be no ambiguity as to who is more powerful and can win. It is a breakdown in the status quo between totalitarian or authoritarian states, where both sides are roughly equal in power, that makes war most likely.
Concerning the international system, presently an international exchange society of libertarian, totalitarian, and authoritarian states, with a confederal form of government (the United Nations), the possibility of more general and intense wars increases as the system becomes polarized along class lines. In other words, as international rights and benefits, as spheres of territorial influence and control, become increasingly preempted by a small group of the most powerful states or elite, as the world becomes divided into command and obey classes of states, this division becomes the storm front of global war.
In very general terms, such is the reality of conflict, violence, and war. What is peace? Much will be said about peace in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3. Here I need say only that peace is a structure of expectations based on a specific balance of powers. It is thus a social contract--an agreement or understanding that enables social cooperation and coexistence. Peace is therefore bound into the social process. Social order, and thus peace, is a phase in the process of social adjustment between individual psychological worlds.
Obviously. All this is but a charcoal sketch of conflict and war. Much detail is needed, colors must be added, a dynamic balance between details and impressions and masses and colors created. More directly, the social forces involved must be described; the role of situation, perceptions, interests, expectations, dispositions, given more detail; the precise linkages indicated; the underlying theoretical and philosophical assumptions made explicit. And of course, all must be empirically confirmed. Such was done in previous volumes, and, where relevant to my normative enterprise, such now will be done here.
These five volumes thus form a gestalt, a oneness. Each chapter, each part, and each volume contributes to this whole, but each also acquires more meaning and value from its participation in this whole--this picture of our conflict, war, and peace. Although each volume has been unveiled separately and each was meant to stand on its own as a contribution to understanding, now that all five are published they form one picture--a single landscape painting. I offer them to the scholarly-scientific world as such.
I pick this metaphor of a painting carefully, for it captures my view of this work and truth in general. The real social world is an infinite complex of potentials and dispositions, of constantly shifting sense impressions.
Thus I present my painting of conflict and war. And peace. It forms an artistic totality, with a certain fidelity to reality, I trust, but also with a simplification necessary to convey an impression, to give unity, to make a point. Others, of course, will paint this reality differently. Different views, different skills, different techniques will be brought to bear. Therefore, I submit this painting in no belief that it is the only one, or the best of all, or without possible improvement. I do believe, however, that it presents a new and useful picture of conflict and peace to be hung alongside others in the gallery of our attempts to understand conflict and war and create a better, more peaceful world.
Chapter 3 then compares this idea of peace with other conceptualizations. Historically, peace has been seen as:
Then, by comparison to these other concepts, peace as a social contract:
With this in mind Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 construct and use a social contract model to determine the principles of justice for organizing a peaceful society--that is, for a just peace. The basic idea is that the institutions of society should be those that people, each voting as one, without foreknowledge of their resulting status, position, or resources, would impartially and fairly select to live under. The model sets up a Global Convention of Minds in which all people will participate, debate, and vote on the principles for a new society, while in ignorance of their resulting advantages and disadvantages. Chapter 5 presents this model; Chapter 6 considers the bargaining within the Convention. The latter concludes:
Given this probable division in the bargaining among all the world's people, Chapter 7 considers possible solutions. It argues that:
The problem of a new society based on such principles, however, is that there is no guarantee that people or communities will observe them. As rights, free choice and free exit would be insecure. Therefore, Chapter 7 also considers how people in the Convention would guarantee the two principles of justice, concluding that
Chapter 8, the last in this part, then proposes a number of arguments independently supporting the idea of a just peace given above. Along with the social contract model these arguments provide a rational, empirical, and humanistic basis for a just peace. A just peace would:
However, if the status quo in society has or is breaking down, as in revolution or war, then incremental changes toward a just peace are not feasible. The question is then how to make a peace suitable to incrementalism, and then how to keep and foster this peace. Therefore, Chapter 10 considers three principles of conflict resolution toward this end:
Assuming now a stable status quo, what incrementally should be done to create a just peace? This is the question of Chapter 11, which essentially answers it through:
For contemporary national societies this involves reducing the powers of their governments; for the global society it means increasing the power of the United Nations. Specifically, this principle entails five "vectors of action" to create, incrementally, a just peace within national societies:
For the international system there are also five "vectors of action" toward a global just peace:
Chapter 13 refers this conclusion to the original questions that focused Understanding Conflict and War, and concludes that:
* Scanned from Chapter 1. Typographical errors have been corrected, clarifications added, and style updated.
1. See Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace (Chapter 19 and Chapter 20) for the overall propositions and principles. All references to "Volume" here and in subsequent chapters are to the volumes of Rummel (Understanding Conflict and War).
2. Regarding the inevitability of violence, see Vol. 3: Conflict In Perspective (Chapter 9). Exchange societies with libertarian governments preclude intense violence (Vol. 2: The Conflict Helix, Section 32.5 of Chapter 32). At the international level, libertarian states have not, and for theoretical reasons would not, make war on each other (Vol. 4: War, Power, Peace, Proposition 16.11). An international exchange society of libertarian states would therefore avoid intense violence and war. See Section 7.4.2.