The quick and the good: building a peace that lasts
Oliver Robertson reflects on the necessary conditions for building true peace in the world.
For those who care about peace in the world and the equal worth of all people, these are troubling times. As one Quaker put it recently, the constant barrage of attacks on our testimonies creates a spiritual as well as political crisis.
The world is imperfect and sometimes we need to take incomplete steps towards our ultimate goal. Quakers are famous for opposing war, but many have supported the Geneva Conventions, which limit the inhumanity of war, and the United Nations, which permits war in certain circumstances but also creates a framework of international law that applies to all nations and peoples equally. They are better than the alternative, where might is right, and "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must".
The world we find today is going in the wrong direction in many ways. Quakers in Britain have rightly spoken out against rising military spending in the UK funded by cuts in international development – which means weapons being paid for, in effect, by the world's poorest. (Looking at policies from a different perspective can be revelatory – I was stopped in my tracks some years back when told that the EU's migrant deal with Libya to reduce Mediterranean boat crossings in effect meant paying to trap people in a warzone.)
Challenging narratives
There is an art to knowing when to speak loudly and when to preserve your energy. Shout about everything and you'll make yourself hoarse, as well as risk people not listening to you. But as Quakers know well, being silent doesn't mean not caring, and it doesn't mean doing nothing.
Clearly, increased defence spending is coming, whatever I think about it. But it is, at least in part, a symptom. Countries are spending more on the military because they feel insecure. Build better relationships between nations and the pressure for rearmament will reduce. That may be easier said than done, but it's important not to let a narrative take hold that conflict is inevitable and that times of relative peace were "a holiday from history". I see them instead as being a taste of the kind of world we are called to create, and could do so again.
Building true peace
What, then, will build true peace? It is not hard power, the use and threats of military attack and economic sanctions. That kind of victory is always temporary, because it relies on others continuing to be cowed by your might, and sooner or later every nation, like every person, loses their power. Building relations among peoples and nations, through diplomacy, trade, connections between ordinary people: these make for a peace that lasts.
The greatest victory in any war is to make your enemy your friend, because then they will not want to attack you. We have seen this happen: if I'd said in early 1945 that within ten years Britain and Germany would be close allies and trading partners, pledged to defend each other if the other were attacked, you might have laughed. But it came to pass and remains so to this day. World War II was an outstanding example of winning the peace, putting in place the support and bonds so that the belligerents did not return to fighting in the years after the guns had stopped.
Early Quaker William Penn said much the same, in the language of the 17th century:
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And yet we could hurt no man that we believe loves us. Let us then try what Love will do: for if men did once see we love them, we should soon find they would not harm us. Force may subdue, but love gains: and he that forgives first, wins the laurel.
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