After some brief introductory remarks, Joshua Goldstein addressed the crowd by stating, “Peace has been the dream of humanity for thousands of years.” He acknowledged that all generations have known war, but that over time, the intensity of wars throughout the globe has decreased. Compared to the millions of soldier casualties in WWII, the number of people who were killed last year in war was less than the number of people who died from tumbling from their beds. However, there has been an increase in the number of civilians dying from wars throughout the globe. While some estimates state that ninety percent of all deaths in war now are from civilians, the true statistic is closer to a 50/50 ratio. Casualty rates vary greatly depending upon the war and the type of war.
Goldstein discussed how the contours of war have changed over the past few centuries — national armies are no longer seen fighting each other and nuclear arms reductions have reduced the number of nuclear warheads that could initiate a nuclear war. National armies typically have the highest number of casualties on the battlefield and nuclear arms provide one of the greatest threats of widespread destruction.
Goldstein’s talk in the SIS building directly related to the third chapter of the International Relations textbook that spoke about “the waning of war.” Liberalist theory explains why peace is more prevalent, but realist theory continues to explain why fighting has not entirely ceased. Liberals see that the current globalization has been contributing world peace by fostering mutually beneficial cooperation both politically and economically while realists see power via military strength and emphasis upon self-interest as a reason of why wars will never be entirely obsolete and why world peace is unachievable (Goldstein). Private organization, such as the NGOs Goldstein later mentioned, would play a greater role in this liberal theory compared to the realist point of view.
The idea that the the type of war has changed from national armies fighting each other across battlefields to guerilla war with no front lines has the potential to support both liberal and realist theories. Liberals would probably view this as an irrefutable decrease in war. In terms of casualties, this is true. Realists would argue that guerilla war, while having fewer casualties, has greater ability to terrorize the psyche of the people living within nations whose troops are at war. With more developed weapons and improved medical techniques, such wars can inflict incredible horrors upon soldiers and with quicker technologies and easy access to social media, reports about the horrors of war have a greater ability to be reported to citizens and have an impact.
Goldstein continued on to specifically talk about peace and achieving it, illustrating his point with the example of China’s peaceful rise to power that has occurred in the past few decades. He stated that China has been able to maintain its legitimacy by delivering prosperity to its citizens. In this century, China has provided an example of a great power climbing through peace and economic strength, not war.
Goldstein did not mention, however, the fact that China has emphasized building a large military force in the past few decades. Its strength is increasing and China’s massive military is irrefutable. In the 2010, the U.S. Department of Defense’s Report on China’s Military stated, “While remaining focused on Taiwan as a primary mission, China will, by 2020, lay the foundation for a force able to accomplish broader regional and global objectives. By the latter half of this decade, it is likely that China will be able to project and sustain a modest sized force—perhaps several battalions of ground forces or a naval flotilla of up to a dozen ships—in low-intensity operations far from China. It is unlikely, however, that China will be able to project and sustain large forces in high-intensity combat operations far from China until well into the following decade.” (Erickson) As nations experiencing catch-up economic growth rapidly become wealthier and internationally more powerful, they may create a challenge to the current hegemon in the international system: the United States. If states gain the military strength for wars, will they take advantage of this option and choose to become embroiled in wars across the globe? Goldstein failed to mention the idea that fewer wars may have partly resulted from what the hegemonic stability theory dictates as well.
Despite the fewer casualties and more peaceful ascensions to power and economic strength, Goldstein says, “It’s as if we all grew wings on our backs and then started complaining about the weight.” He returned to his thesis of how global peace is increasing but mentioned that no one wants to be the one to declare peace for our generation and then be proven incorrect. In the media, war reporters focus on and highly publicize the “worst” issues in places such as Afghanistan and Pakistan. Peace doesn’t create a sensationalized headline that sells newspapers. This is one reason that the news media is partly responsible for perpetuating the idea that the world is becoming a more war-torn and violent place, in Goldstein’s opinion. Overall, reporters don’t focus on whether war is decreasing or not — they focus on the horrors of war. This focus on the horrors of war may have resulted from the goal of media outlets to generate exciting, attention-grabbing stories in order to create a profit (Famine Media: The Politics of Representation, a Roundtable Discussion).
Determining if peace is increasing on a yearly basis is difficult because keeping statistics on the changes in war can be incredibly demanding. It is very easy for numbers to become inflated, as was the case with the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Direct battle deaths are the easiest to count, whereas civilian deaths rely heavily upon estimates.
In addition to fewer dead soldiers, the geographical areas covered by war have also drastically changed. Eastern European, South African, and Central American wars have ceased, as well as many conflicts in Western Africa, according to Goldstein. While fewer soldiers are dying and less of the world is directly entangled in conflict, Goldstein explained why peace is not directly around the corner and why there is a scale to determine the level of peace and war experienced in the world. War can range from global thermonuclear to civil war and peace can range from ceasefire to “world peace.” Peace goes from ceasefire to disarmament to a civil society to a stable peace to world peace in Goldstein’s opinion. The first step to peace is always ceasefire — peace will only come after people stop trying to kill each other, Goldstein stated. Ceasefires can be initiated by individuals, NGOs, and/or diplomats. In order to get the ceasefire to have some permanence, peacekeepers can help. Optimistically, Goldstein believes that war can be pushed down the scale in the next two decades, and that war will become less prevalent and less violent.
In prehistoric times, people were extremely violent, and, while there have been peaks and valleys over the century (such as the explosion of violence in the early 20th century), there has been much less war comparatively in modern day. A more peaceful global climate, Goldstein says, has been achieved, in part, through the reduction of nuclear weapons. Also, prosperity makes war less attractive. Generally, there has been economic growth in the recent years with the rapid increase in globalization and a reduction in poverty.
Democracies and peacekeepers also play an important role in the increase of peace worldwide. Traditionally, democracies don’t fight each other and there are a lot more democracies in the world today compared to one hundred or even fifty years ago. The United Nations and other peacekeeping organizations are intended to reduce war. Goldstein referenced statistics that stated that in 1990, “half of all the ceasefires broke down and returned to war.” In the past decade, however, only 12% of ceasefires returned to war. Simple improvements in peacekeeping, such as uniform changes, has helped peacekeepers to avoid being casualties of war.
However, the main problem for peacekeepers is that they are provided with limited research and that it is difficult for them to assess the situation on the ground. Goldstein emphasized that the central idea and challenge for peacekeepers is that they never have enough research to work with. Many failures in the field can be attributed to the fact that those in the field don’t have enough research because accurate statistics are difficult to determine in war.
Goldstein mentioned that, on average, Americans pay $700 every month to the military, whereas UN peacekeeping operations only receive $2 every month. Goldstein believes that the United States should double its peacekeeping budget. Peacekeepers can more effectively do what U.S. soldiers would be sent in to do. His final recommendation was that before peacekeeping, ceasefire, and war, diplomatic efforts should be made. Preventative peacekeeping measures tend to be a lot less expensive and a lot more effective. He warned that there is currently a bill in Congress, however, that threatens to eliminate all peacekeeping funding. To Goldstein, there is a lot of work left to do for the upcoming generations and that even if one war exists somewhere in the world, it is too much.
The fact that Congress is threatening to eliminate all peacekeeping funding is, from my point of view, quite shocking. It would seem as if there should be more media attention on this act of Congress, but it has been largely ignored. It begs the question of how to get people to care more about peace and effective preventative measures. Can the media spend more attention on “drier” subjects such as Congress passing a budget bill in order to garner attention in the public or is this fighting against human nature’s natural affinity for gripping, oftentimes violent, news stories? People often complain of the news being too violent, but increased support from advertisers and the willingness of viewers to continue to tune in to news shows seems to contradict this sentiment.
The question remains as to how future generations can continue to reduce war, as Goldstein’s thesis suggests. How much focus should the international system and individual states place upon peacekeeping as opposed to war? Last year alone almost 1.6 trillion dollars was spent on defense budgets around the world as opposed to the meagre 7.26 billion dollars that was the UN’s peacekeeping budget in 2010 (Shah, The UN Budget Process). In the United States, should funding be reduced from military expenditures and instead be spent on peacekeeping efforts? In 2010, the United States contributed 1.887 billion dollars to UN peacekeeping (The UN Budget Process). In addition to contributing more to UN peacekeeping efforts, where else can the United States send funding that will be used effectively? As a great power, the United States has the ability to set a precedent on how to reduce war and increase peace by not using force.
As Goldstein mentioned, keeping statistics on war and peace is challenging and is sometimes impossible. Reliable techniques of predicting the outbreaks of wars do not exist, which can make it equally as difficult to predict peace (Call). If Goldstein’s research on the increase of peace is dwarfed by the research being done at even the CDC, which he admitted, how can his listeners and readers be sure that this increase in peace is not just a random, unnatural occurrence and that the world will once more be engulfed in a period of intense war in the future? Determining whether or not this is true would involve studying intrastate and interstate relationships to see if a true positive peace is being achieved in our lifetime.
Call, Charles T., and Elizabeth M. Cousens. "Ending Wars and Building Peace." Columbia International Affairs Online. International Peace Academy, Mar. 2007. Web. 24 Oct. 2011. http://www.ciaonet.org/wps/ipa9895/ipa9895.pdf.
Erickson, Andrew S. "Key Quotes from 2010 U.S. Department of Defense Report on China’s Military." 17 Aug. 2010. Web. <http://www.andrewerickson.com/2010/08/key-quotes-from-2010-u-s-department-of-defense-report-on-china’s-military/>. Goldstein, Joshua S., and Jon C. Pevehouse. International Relations. New York: Longman, 2010. Print.
Hook, Steven W. Democratic Peace in Theory and Practice. Kent, OH: Kent State UP, 2010. Print.
Shah, Anup. "World Military Spending." Global Issues. 2 May 2011. Web. 25 Oct. 2011.http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world- military-spending.
"The UN Budget Process." Better World Campaign, 2010. Web. 25 Oct. 2011. http://www.betterworldcampaign.org/issues/funding/the-un-budget-process.html.
Rebecca,
ReplyDeleteGoldstein's talk sounded very interesting!
It seems like he focused on the actions of states. Did he give any type of information or opinion on the activities of NGOs? I'm just curious as to how the efforts of grassroots organizations would contribute to the statistics about war. I think that they would contribute to the decrease, especially when talking about ethnic violence. Do you think Goldstein was right in choosing to specify his analysis to state actions? Did it give you a full picture as an audience member?
Caroline,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your thoughtful comment! Goldstein mainly talked about the general idea of "peacekeeping" and only mentioned NGOs once or twice. He focused more on the peacekeeping abilities of governments and organizations such as the United Nations, although he did acknowledge the work being done by NGOs as being an integral part of contributions to stability and peace. I found this article that mentions the increasing importance of NGOs and how they are being depended upon as if they are state actors: http://www.ciaonet.org/conf/col01/. Interestingly, the article also mentions the difficulty associated with assessing NGO accountability, similar to how it is difficult to assess the effectiveness of peacekeeping. I think that Goldstein correctly chose to focus mainly upon state actions and those of international organizations such as the UN to emphasize his point of a global trend toward peace. While the contributions of NGOs are certainly important, it would probably have been difficult to him to provide the same focus to his research if he included the contributions of individual NGOs, regardless of their size, to his book. As an audience member, I was left wondering about the contributions of other organizations toward world peace but I think that since “peace” is such a broad, difficult-to-measure term, Goldstein was able to provide good examples that weren’t overly specific. While listening to him speak, it it was clear that he wanted to prove through larger examples how the theory of peace was being realized over the most recent generations. It was rare that he mentioned even specific countries or organizations other than the UN.
Rebecca,
ReplyDeleteJust curious, but were you convinced? Do you think that the world is becoming more peaceful and less war-like? I know I’d like to believe it, but I don’t know if I do or not. It still seems to me that the world is as full of conflict as it’s always been, but that might have much to do with media portrayals; as you mentioned, reporters tend to focus on the horrors of war, because big news like that sells better than do stories about peace.
It seems that Goldstein thinks more money should be spent on funding peacekeeping efforts. I tend to agree that preventative peacekeeping is more effective and less costly than conflict or peace efforts following conflict. Do you agree? Why do you think it is that the military budget is so high, but so little money is spent on actual peacekeeping? I know that in some circumstances soldiers have had to act as peacekeepers, but this is not what they’re trained to do, and they are therefore less effective at it. Wouldn’t it be better for actual peacekeeping forces to have funding and do these jobs?
Meg,
ReplyDeleteAfter being presented with Goldstein’s data and his examples of casualty rates and geographical locations of war, I do believe that war is decreasing, but not necessarily that the world is becoming more ‘peaceful,’ per say. What I mean is that wars on the scale of WWII and century-old European wars are no longer occurring. However, I do think that traits of war, such as violence and self-interest, still exist at high rates and are being channeled into different endeavors such as drug trade or human trafficking. Economically, large wars no longer make sense and I think wars with millions of casualties would not sustain public support for long in this era. I think that the media, by portraying the true gruesomeness seen in war, have sharpened peoples’ sensibilities for violence and have made it less bearable.
I also tend to believe that peacekeeping and the work being done by NGOs, as Goldstein briefly mentioned, are helping to limit conflict throughout the world. The funding of peacekeeping organizations should be increased because in the long-run, it would be more cost-effective and would help to eliminate unnecessary human casualties in war. I think that the military budget is so much higher is because people aren’t willing to spend money on a problem they don’t necessarily ‘see.’ If the threat of war is seen in a foreign country, the U.S. government doesn’t want to become unnecessarily entangled, but once a war breaks out and threatens the security of the U.S., troops inevitably will be sent in. It’s similar to the individual psychology behind taking a medicinal shot to prevent the flu as opposed to waiting to treat the flu once you are infected. Preventative measures aren’t seen as important because the ‘problem’ doesn’t yet fully exist. The mentality seems to be: why spend money on a nonexistent problem?
I do agree that it would be more effective for actual peacekeepers to do the job of ‘keeping the peace’ as opposed to soldiers. Despite their intentions, just the fact of soldiers wearing their uniforms and body armor while trying to do peacekeeping mission can provide mixed signals for the people with whom they’re interacting.