VIOLENCE, WAR, AND THEIR IMPACT

[Héctor]

Violence has occurred, in the collective form of a war, with one or more governments participating, or in the family, or in the streets. Material and somatic, visible damage is accumulating, deplored by parties and outsiders. But then the violence is abating: the parties may have run out of material and nonmaterial resources; the parties converge in their predictions of the final outcome and more violence is seen as wanton, wasted; or outside parties intervene to stop the violence, keep the peace, for whatever reason, like preventing the victory of the party they disfavour. A truce, cease-fire (armistice, Waffenstillstand, cese al fuego) is initiated, an agreement is drawn up, signed. The word »peace« is used both by the naive who confuse absence of direct violence with peace and do not understand that the work to make and build peace is now just about to start, and by the less naive who know this and do not want that work to get started. Thus the word »peace« becomes a very effective peace-blocker. Our purpose is to contribute to the worldwide effort to unblock that process toward a peace beyond cease-fire so that »after violence« does not so easily become »before violence«. The first task after violence is to map its formation, to understand better how the meta-conflict has run its diabolic course, wreaking havoc within and between humans, groups, societies, producing war-torn people, war-torn societies, a war-torn world. War is man-made disaster. (JOHAN GALTUNG)

Johan Galtung (*1930 in Oslo, Norway) is one of the founders of peace and conflict research. He holds advanced degrees in both mathematics and sociology. In 1959 he established the first peace research institute, the International Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and served as its director for ten years.His prodigious output includes 50 books and more than 1000 published articles. He has had an immense impact on peace research as a thinker, writer, lecturer, consultant, and activist.

[mehran]

Realists will typically hold that systems of morals and ethics which guide individuals within societies cannot realistically be applied to societies as a whole to govern the way they, as societies, interact with other societies. Hence, a state's purposes in war is simply to preserve its national interest. This kind of thinking is similar to Machiavelli's philosophy, and Thucydides and Hobbes may also fall under this category.
Pacifists, however, maintain that a moral evaluation of war is possible, and that war is always found to be immoral. Gandhi and Tolstoy were both famous advocates of pacifistic nonviolent resistance methods instead of war.
Just War Theory, along with pacifism, holds that morals do apply to war. However, unlike pacifism, according to Just War Theory it is possible for a war to be morally justified. The concept of a morally justified war underlies much of the concept International Law, such as the Geneva Conventions. Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Aquinas, and Hugo Grotius are among the philosophers who have espoused some form of a just war philosophy. One common Just War Theory evaluation of war is that war is only justified if 1.) waged in a state or nation's self-defense, or 2.) waged in order to end gross violations of human rights. Political philosopher John Rawls advocated these criteria as justification for war.

[mehran]

i am against pacifism.i am pro realism.

[Shelagh]

If you kill one person, it's murder. If you kill 100,000, it's foreign policy.

[SYED]

yes i agree with u

[Héctor]

If you kill 100.000 humans, it´s a collective murder. Or not?

[SYED]

my dear friend if u kill one or ten thousands the punishment is same but the thinking behind that prevails always

[Héctor]

If you kill, Syed, 100.000 humans, it isn´t foreign policy.

[Roberta]

Oh, I don't know, Hector. That sort of thing seems to be (if not foreign) then at least *government* policy in places like Darfur.

[Héctor]

I believe, Roberta, that the central problem is the identity (of groups, peoples, nations). We must find a form to include all the humanity.

[Roberta]

Wisely spoken.