Peace by Antony Adolf Read Free Book Online

back as deterrence, from survival of the peaceful as a complement to survival of the fittest, to reciprocal tributary systems and non-military alliances, and to a certain extent the Monroe Doctrine and Open Door. Economic and political sanctions imposed bilaterally or multilaterally for policy change such as those imposed on Apartheid South Africa and Iran today, as well as food-forpeace programs, combine incentives and non-violent deterrents in ways that have yet to be fully explored. But the effectiveness of incentives and deterrents depends entirely on the capaciousness of the inflictors and inflicted, so that jeopardies of peace in sanctions may lie in self-deceitful self-defeat.
    Ongoing Investigation and Critical Dialogue
    The Pyramid’s two topmost items are in some ways only practical when those below are met and in other ways need to be practiced for them to be met. Finding food is an investigation of some kind, and debating where to eat it is a form of critical dialogue, but these are only partial senses of how these items are taken here. Innovation, adaptation and perpetuation are the goals of ongoing investigation into, and critical dialogue about, what peaces are and how they are to be made, maintained and combined. The Socratic Method still stands as a model for investigation and critical dialogue, whether in impromptu teach-ins, diplomatic gatherings, court proceedings, parliamentary debates or around dinner tables. The complaints of Erasmus’ personification of peace circle around replacing weapons with and expediting reconciliation through persuasion, and even bona fide Enlightenment thinkers such as Kant confirmed that criticism is the only way to prevent conflicting rationalities from going to war. Although the shadow of the figure of barbarians as a cultural other has with whom no peace is possible has loomed large, ongoing contact consistently fostered intercultural convergences permitting investigation and critical dialogue. Language as a barrier to peace is a pretext rather than an acceptable apology, and peace in all its senses can only be grasped multilingually in addition to its non-linguistic experiences.
    Epilogue: The Puzzle of World Peace
    Principles and practices of “one world, one peace” are fatally flawed because if the world history of peace teaches us anything it is that peace and peacemaking are contingent on conditions and participants that are perpetually evolving. If the world history of peace should teach us only one thing, it is this: like putting together a puzzle the design of which cannot be known because it is always already changing, actualizing world peace lies in continually configuring and reconfiguring the world’s peaces into a dynamic whole rather than forcing all of them to fit into a static one. I undertook this book in the belief that coming closer to terms with how and why the world’s peaces came or ceased to be what they are is a first, necessary step in renewed directions towards world peace – only to discover that, of necessity, there is no last.

Selected Bibliography

    A list of peace-related journals is available at the Peace and Justice Studies Association’s website: http://www.peacejusticestudies.org/membership/journals.php.
    Abrams, I. et al ., eds, Nobel Lectures: Peace (London: World Scientific, 1999).
    Adams, R. The Better Part of Valor: More, Erasmus, Colet, and Vives, on Humanism, War, and Peace, 1496–1535 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962).
    Alfred, T. Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
    Alger, C. and M. Stohl, eds, A Just Peace Through Transformation : Cultural, Economic and Political Foundations for Change (Boulder: Westview,1988).
    Angell, N. The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage (NY: McClelland and Goodchild, 1913).
    Armstrong, H. Peace