World Peace: Difference between peace and culture of peace-7

The culture of war has remained dominant throughout the 5,000 years of recorded history, through the rise and fall of empires, the period of history when Europe and Asia were over-run by warring herdsmen from Central Asia, the enslavement of Africans as the basis for a global economy, the period of colonialism and world wars, revolutionary wars and the Cold War, and the most recent neo-imperialism, so well described in the long description quoted from Kwame Nkrumah (1965) in Adams (2008).

Over the course of history, most aspects of the culture of war have remained as strong as ever. The description written above of the culture of war in the first empires of history applies to today's world with very little change, for example, substituting the word "workers" for "slaves."

The most important change in the culture of war in recent centuries has been the increased importance of the control of information through propaganda and secrecy, which serves to strengthen the culture of war in the face of the apparent decrease in authoritarian governance. This is best illustrated by consideration of the debate by many political scientists over the assertion that "democracies do not make war on other democracies."

Political scientists have made a case that democracy is increasing around the world, and that "democracies do not make war on other democracies." However, there is no evident decrease in the power of the culture of war throughout the world, or in the death and suffering that is caused by war and economic domination, or in the threat that new wars are on the horizon that could be even more terrible because of nuclear proliferation. How can this paradox be explained?

To some extent the paradox can be explained by the definitions used by political scientists. Hence, in their terms, if the US engages in war or the threat of war against Cuba, it doesn't count because Cuba is not considered democratic. And when the US engaged in the overthrow of the democratic government of Allende in Chile, it doesn't count because it was a secret war, not an overt public war. Perhaps their assertion should be rephrased as "democracies are not able to justify war against other democracies." After all, it is true that there is increasing democratic pressure against war. For example, when the US and its allies were mobilizing for the war in Iraq in 2003, there was an unprecedented outpouring of people onto the streets in anti-war demonstrations, over 10 million at least, and since then there are many cases where national elections see the defeat of candidates who have supported unpopular wars.

But the deep paradox is best understood in terms of the increasing role played by the combination of government secrecy and mass media propaganda that limit the effectiveness of democracy. Democracy cannot be effective if citizens do not have access to truthful information, and government secrecy in the name of "national security" is at an all-time high throughout the world. As we said in the draft culture of peace document sent by UNESCO to the General Assembly (United Nations, 1998):

"It is vital to promote transparency in governance and economic decision-making and to look into the proliferation of secrecy justified in terms of 'national security', 'financial security', and 'economic competitiveness'. The question is to what extent this secrecy is compatible with the access to information necessary for democratic practice and social justice and whether, in some cases, instead of contributing to long-term security, it may conceal information about processes (ecological, financial, military, etc.) which are a potential threat to everyone and which need therefore to be addressed collectively."

Not surprisingly, the preceding paragraph was removed from the final adopted version at the demands of the European Union and their allies.

At the same time, the mass media is filled with propaganda that favors the culture of war and it fails to disseminate the voices of a culture of peace. Candidates that represent the powerful forces of societies are able to buy hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising and consequent free publicity on the "news programs" for their political campaigns, while those who do not represent these forces are excluded and are not heard by the voters. Decisions that support enemy images as well as actual decisions for war are often supported in the mass media by elaborate information and misinformation, while dissenting information is swamped or not presented at all.

I experienced firsthand the media bias for the culture of war in 1987 when we tried to get press coverage for the endorsement of the Seville Statement on Violence by the 65,000 member American Psychological Association (APA). As described in the next chapter, the Seville Statement was an important international statement by scientists that war is not part of human nature. Here is a description of the media blackout, as recounted in the Journal of Peace Research (Adams 1989):

"a press conference was organized at the APA convention in New York City where the endorsement was finalized, and over 400 press releases were sent out. Despite these releases, telephone calls, and personal contact with reporters in the press room, only four reporters showed up. They were out-numbered by APA presidents and past-presidents, not to mention representatives of other endorsing organizations. The four reporters were hardly a random sample: the APA Monitor (house organ of the Association), TASS from Moscow, ADN from East Germany, and the People's Daily World of the U.S. Communist Party. All four gave us well-written publicity, but they did not reach the audience we sought. One major news service told me on the telephone: 'Your Statement is not newsworthy, but call us back when you find the gene for war.'"

Although Science magazine represents all of the major scientific organizations of the United States they refused to publish information on the Seville Statement after it been endorsed by two of its constituent organizations, the American Psychological Association and American Anthropological Association. They even refused to publish a letter to the editor signed by the presidents of these very organizations! As recounted in the Journal of Peace Research article (Adams 1989):

"As it became obvious that most of the press was not going to attend the press conference, we drafted a 'letter to the editor' which was sent to the New York Times, Nature, and Science. The news editor of Science had been personally invited to cover the press conference but said that it was 'not newsworthy'. The letter called attention to the Seville Statement and its message and was signed by the presidents of the APA, the American Anthropological Association (which had also endorsed), and representatives of the International Council of Psychologists, Psychologists for Social Responsibility, International Society for Research on Aggression, and Society for Psychological Study of Social Issues. In response, we never received acknowledgements from the New York Times or Nature, and only a form letter of rejection from Science. Contacted by telephone, the letters' editor at Science said that the letter was 'too political'."

At the same time as Science magazine refused to cover the Seville Statement because it was "too political", they gave headline publicity to those who claim a genetic component of war, such as Napoleon Chagnon's claims about the Yanomamo Indians of the Amazon basin. Later it turns out that Chagnon's data may have been falsified (see the Seville Statement Newsletter, March 2003 at http://www.culture-of-peace.info/SSOVnews303/page4.html ) although as far as I know this has never been acknowledged by Science magazine.

There are strong ties between the mass media, elected officials at the national level, and the arms industry. In the United States, one speaks not only of a "military-industrial complex," but also of a "military-industrial-congressional complex" and a "military-industrial-media complex." In addition to these overt relations, there are also covert relations between the arms trade and the lucrative trade in addictive drugs, relations which have often involved (secretly, of course) the highest levels of national governments. All of this is considered in detail in Adams (2008).

One also needs to ask even more profound questions about the nature of Western "democracy." This is being written during the euphoria following the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States. People are saying, "at last we have found a good leader". But this is troubling, because the American President is the commander-in-chief of the American empire. In fact, the "winner-take-all" structure of Western democracy plays into this concentration of power. Those who drafted the constitution after the American Revolution, realizing that "absolute power corrupts absolutely" and for this reason they wrote into the Constitution checks and balances between executive, legislative and judicial branches.

In sum, the culture of war is alive and well in today's world, even though the United Nations is forbidden to speak about it. But can we develop a culture of peace to replace it? This is the main question to be addressed in the succeeding chapters.

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