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International Journal on World Peace

Interdisciplinary Pursuit of Peace

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Institutional Resilience and Peace

International Journal on World Peace Posted on December 1, 2021 by Gordon AndersonMarch 7, 2022

Introduction to IJWP, December 2021

In this final issue of International Journal on World Peace, Don Trubshaw introduces the topic of institutional resilience and peace. Given the behavior of social institutions during the Covid pandemic, the social problems caused by dictators or single-party states, and the recent debates over “wokism” and free speech, this may be the most important topic of our time.

Social institutions permeate modern life: governments and their agencies, banks, manufacturers, hospitals, universities and schools, churches, and clubs. Institutions are founded for a purpose, guided by values, and evolve and change over time. Resilience refers to their ability for self-maintenance as they evolve and their environment changes.

Institutions are social systems, and systems theory helps in understanding them. Institutions require both elites and workers, members, or citizens. Performance and resilience relate to the proper relationship and feedback between the two.

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Corruption and Constructivism

International Journal on World Peace Posted on November 3, 2021 by Gordon AndersonNovember 3, 2021

Introduction to IJWP, September 2021

Taking or producing. These are two ways people can live. Wars result when people try to live by taking. Civilization is possible when people are productive. Corruption is a form of taking. In politics, corruption comes in two forms: bribery and the misuse of public funds. Bribery is when a public official or political party takes money from a moneyed interest to gain a legal or economic benefit at the expense of others. “Pay for play” and selling one’s office describes this. Misuse of public funds is when public officials, legislators, political parties, or states spend money from the treasury that is not approved by a consensus of the taxpayers. This is a form of embezzlement or theft.

In modern democracies, corruption has become systemic. Legislative practices like “pork” attached to bills make laws that circumvent the concept of a “consensus of the people.” In the United States, political parties, corporations, NGOs, and other groups with money and political influence hijack the treasury through such corrupted structural mechanisms. Individuals are given a “choice” between candidates political parties have endorsed and, once elected, the candidate generally represents the will of the party rather than the constituents. Such a government no longer derives its just power from the consent of the governed.

In our first article, “Societal Variables and National Corruption Effects on GDP,” the authors look at the impact of government corruption on GDP. GDP has been used as a traditional indicator of the standard of living, but only represents this accurately for middle-class societies, where ownership of businesses is spread out across the society. When production is owned by a few wealthy individuals and there is a huge wealth gap, GDP can increase while the mean standard of living decreases. However, since GDP indexes are the current data available the authors used these indexes as an indicator of national prosperity with caution.

Their research reveals some interesting results. They found that when corruption is low or mild, private charity and private initiatives increase to offset the effects of corrupt government spending. Productive people will voluntarily do for society what the government fails to do. “Charitable giving has been associated with entrepreneurship. In the U.S., the average donation for entrepreneurs is 50 percent higher than for non-entrepreneurs.” The authors speculate entrepreneurs are stimulated by personal interaction to help those around them with personally targeted assistance. Large corporations and governments, on the other hand, are impersonal, lacking the human relationships that efficient charity requires.

Ironically, low levels of corruption can have a stabilizing effect on society. The authors suggest societies with a low GDP can move to higher GDP when entrepreneurs bribe officials in order to get their production underway. I suspect that such “corruption” is related to small bribes to bureaucrats to get licenses to produce, and not government redistribution schemes to third parties.

The authors say that the “perception of corruption,” rather than actual corruption correlates with the level of peace. When the perception of corruption is low people tend to see the government as legitimate and there is more social peace. “Corruption feeds into beliefs about injustices and other grievances related to power and government, and corrupt practices may be interpreted as ethnic discrimination, particularly if tax revenues are distributed to social identity groups rather than individuals.” As the perception of corruption increases and people believe others are benefitting at their expense, social peace is reduced. “There is a threshold of corruption, that once breached, allows corruption to play a much larger role in the overall decrease of peace within a country.”

Our second article, by Purnima Sharma, is the “European Union’s Approaches to Peacebuilding in the Pre- and Post-Lisbon Reforms Period.” The article looks at the evolution of the European Union (EU) from a loose federation of sovereign states to the form of a state with a military capable of peacekeeping and peacebuilding in other countries. Initially, the EU acted under the umbrella of the United Nations, and later the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Then, it established its own European Security and Defence Policy in 1999. While its effectiveness as a security actor is debatable, there is no denying that it has become an international player after sending civilian and military missions and operations to Congo, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Myanmar, Palestine, and other regions.

Because it is not a centralized state, the EU does not yet have the means to create an empire. “Peace is the core value of the EU; and since its creation, it has three main goals: peace, democracy, and prosperity.” It has developed an “integrated” approach to peace by promoting political stability, normative values, and economic development. However, Sharma argues that this approach is more “vertical” than “horizontal” and suffers from a lack of communication between its various components. She believes that the EU needs to learn how to function better in complex social settings.

Our third article, “Examining the Islamic State through the Constructivist Lens,” argues that traditional realist and liberal approaches to foreign policy fail to provide an adequate understanding of the forces behind the creation of the Islamic State (IS). Constructivism focuses on the importance of ideas and norms in shaping national interests and identities. These factors remain “invisible” to traditional analyses of terrorism. Labeling acts as terrorism shows how they fit into the worldview of the analyst but does little to shed light on the motives of Islamic State actors.

“Constructivism sees the world as socially constructed. This is contrary to realist and liberal theories that focus on material factors like power, military, and economic capabilities.” Identity crisis was recognized as a major factor leading to the radicalization of IS members. Relative deprivation and grievances lead to disillusionment with their current life and attracted them to the promised caliphate on the territory captured by IS in Iraq and Syria.

Most of the people who traveled from Europe to Syria to join IS were English speaking, and from highly educated and economically strong backgrounds. Studies have debunked the idea that terrorists were mainly illiterate people. A 2015 World Bank Report report draws a causal link between lack of economic and social inclusion and the propensity to radicalization and extremism. This relates to systemic factors in the countries the recruits left. One issue is perceived socio-economic deprivation, or not getting a job with the value one expects. Normative factors like hedonism, corruption, and value relativism contribute to a sense of meaninglessness.

“Constructivism considers terrorist actors to be products of discourse and proposes a shift from an actor-centered to a discourse-centered perspective.” Using traditional force to shrink the territory of the Islamic State fails to address these issues and merely pushes “terrorists” underground. To counter such terrorism, strategies should (1) address the issue of identity and discredit the ideology that IS propagates, and (2) address the real or perceived socio-economic inequalities and injustices and cultural values that exist in the societies IS recruits abandoned.

Governments are not motivated to examine their own corruption and structural injustices. States (or political parties in power) tend to use their power to purge those who oppose them and they resist the transparency that would expose corruption or unethical legal structures that cause illegitimacy. This connects to analysis in our first article that links corruption and other social factors to the study of peace within societies. Like the IS, modern populist movements on both the left and the right, and the Brexit withdrawal from the EU, are protests against state or supra-state governments that fail to examine their own structures and use of power.

Constructivism is a form of building that follows the vacuity of the “deconstruction” of culture. Two forms of “constructivism” are being promoted. The first is a naive ideology based on the rejection of the entire past, ungrounded in the basic principles that undergird the world’s major civilizations. Marxism-Leninism and Critical Race Theory fall in this camp because they too refuse self-examination and open discussion. Our book review of Cynical Theories attempts to lay out the problems with such theories.

The second form of “constructivism” is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. It does not reject the entire past after critically deconstructing it, but eliminates falsified policies and reaffirms those policies that have increased knowledge, social cohesion, security, economic development, and sustainability. This would be a “progressive” approach that eliminates corruption without “throwing out the baby with the bathwater.” The idea of “cultural evolution” is outlined by Steve McIntosh in Developmental Politics. A real constructive discourse would integrate values learned through social evolution with the demands of new social realities. This would include open public discussion, consensus, transparency, and the scientific study of governance rather than the utopian assertion of power and the corruption and social dysfunction that follows from it, destroying entire societies or causing the deaths of millions.

Gordon L. Anderson, Editor

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Regional Peace and Nuclear Weapons

International Journal on World Peace Posted on May 27, 2021 by Gordon AndersonMay 27, 2021

Introduction to IJWP, June 2021

This issue has two themes: regional peace and stability, and China’s perspective on nuclear weapons. Peace and stability are examined in two regions: India and its neighbors to the east, and Nigeria and it neighbors to the northeast. Both these regional powers have neighbors who share ethnic and cultural backgrounds and are artificially divided by state administrative boundaries. These people want to freely associate. However, in both cases the surrounding states are less stable, more impoverished, and serve as harbors for terrorists.
In the first article, “India’s Foreign Policy Calculus: The Northeast Region as a Transformational Zone of Peace and Stability” by Dominic K. Khanyo, India’s eastern neighbors—Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam—are also China’s southern neighbors. The growing power competition between India and China makes these neighboring countries both important for trade and security. India’s northeast region, largely wedged between Bangladesh and Myanmar is of strategic importance in India’s foreign policy for the region. The countries in this region can be a buffer between the two rising powers of India and China, which would both benefit from transportation routes to South and Southeast Asian ports and peaceful and stable trading relations.

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The Environment and Peace

International Journal on World Peace Posted on January 29, 2021 by Gordon AndersonJune 10, 2021

Introduction to IJWP, March 2021

All human activity has environmental consequences. Some types of activity are highly destructive, while other activities can be sustainable. On the one extreme hunting animals to extinction, leveling forests, and disregard for the proliferation of toxic materials and industrial wastes is activity that makes the world inhabitable for human beings. At the other extreme is the call to depopulate the earth through forms of genocide so the environment is undisturbed by humans. Living in peace with the environment, and with each other, lies somewhere in the middle. A sustainable world requires both conscientiousness toward nature and other human beings, and continuous learning and adaptation with the help of science. Each of the articles in this issue touch upon some aspect of the environment and peace.

The first article, “Connecting Peaces: TBCAs and the Integration of International, Social, and Ecological Peace,” looks at the idea of transboundary conservation areas (TBCAs), which often serve as buffers between hostile nations. This is a concept that has been promoted in recent years, particularly after observing how natural life rebounded in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea. However the authors argue that TBCAs have been vulnerable to social, international, and environmental conflict, and the there is little evidence they have contributed to international peace.

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Deterrence, Diplomacy, and Refugees: Then and Now

International Journal on World Peace Posted on December 14, 2020 by Gordon AndersonDecember 14, 2020

Introduction to IJWP, December 2020

The world has changed a lot since World War II. Science gave us the nuclear bomb, the internet, and the means to more than triple the world’s population—from 2.3 billion to 7.9 billion. The articles in this issue address how these developments have changed deterrence, diplomacy, and refugees.

Our first article, “Southern Asia Strategic Triangle: Deterrence Then and Now,” by Muzammil Ahad Dar both describes the evolving nature of deterrence and its nuances and reminds us that there are regional strategic relations within the larger global system. In South Asia there is a strategic triangle between the nuclear states of China, India, and Pakistan, with China providing an umbrella for Pakistan as a deterrent against Indian aggression. With the changing configuration of power internationally, and the threat of terrorists getting hold of nuclear weapons, former deterrence strategies are less effective. Dar also raises the concept of the need to defend civilizations, not just states.

Our second article, “Resolving the Conflict on the Korean Peninsula by Preventive Diplomacy,” by Kitsuron Sangsuvan, focuses on “preventive diplomacy” a term introduced by UN Secretary General U Thant (1960) and further developed by his successors. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has focused on preventive diplomacy, highlighting conflict prevention as the basis for a modern peace architecture for the UN. Sangsuvan analyzes the conflict on the Korean peninsula and applies the principles of preventive diplomacy to the task of resolving it.

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Constructivism, Identity, and the “Religions” of Post-Modernism

International Journal on World Peace Posted on August 21, 2020 by Gordon AndersonMay 27, 2021
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Introduction to IJWP, September 2020

This issue of IJWP marks the first time that our authors have used a constructivist approach to international relations. Constructivism begins with the premise that international relations are socially constructed and that states behave more on the basis of the identity of other states than on their material resources. In an excerpt from International Relations Theory, Sarina Theys, citing Alexander Wendt, explained constructivism as follows:

Alexander Wendt (1995) offers an excellent example that illustrates the social construction of reality when he explains that 500 British nuclear weapons are less threatening to the United States than five North Korean nuclear weapons. These identifications are not caused by the nuclear weapons (the material structure) but rather by the meaning given to the material structure (the ideational structure). It is important to understand that the social relationship between the United States and Britain and the United States and North Korea is perceived in a similar way by these states, as this shared understanding (or intersubjectivity) forms the basis of their interactions. The example also shows that nuclear weapons by themselves do not have any meaning unless we understand the social context. It further demonstrates that constructivists go beyond the material reality by including the effect of ideas and beliefs on world politics.

Using the example of Bhutan, wedged between Tibet and India, Theys shows how constructivism better explains that country’s posture towards India and China than conventional IR theories. She concluded her article stating “it is not only the distribution of material power, wealth and geographical conditions that can explain state behavior but also ideas, identities, and norms. Furthermore, their focus on ideational factors shows that reality is not fixed, but rather subject to change.”

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The Roles of Power and Communication in Peacemaking and Peacekeeping

International Journal on World Peace Posted on June 9, 2020 by Gordon AndersonOctober 29, 2020

Introduction to IJWP, June 2020

This issue of International Journal on World Peace has three articles related to peacemaking and peacekeeping in Africa. The principles discussed apply to peacemaking and peacekeeping anywhere in the world. The first step is the creation of negative peace, the absence of fighting, and the second step involves positive peace, dialogue, negotiations, and a legal framework in which to work together for the common good.

There is first an important role in the use of military and police power in the creation of negative peace—the physical separation of warring parties to prevent bloodshed, and the creation of an environment in which dialogue and negotiations can take place. However, if the military force is not neutral, and sides with one party or uses excessive force, structural violence is created that impedes the possibility of dialogue and positive peace. This is a main difference between a peacemaker/peacekeeper and a conqueror who would impose their own kind of peace.

Secondly, there is an important role in fostering a consensus and higher cultural consciousness on common social goals. To develop positive peace, religions, the media, and schools have a role to play communication of knowledge for well-being of the entire society.

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Special Issue on the Rohingya Crisis

International Journal on World Peace Posted on March 2, 2020 by Gordon AndersonAugust 24, 2020

Guest Editor: Norman K. Swazo, North-South Universtiy, Dhaka, Bangladesh

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On 27-28 July, 2019, the Department of Political Science and Sociology and the South Asian Institute of Policy and Governance (SIPG) of North South University (NSU) in Dhaka Bangladesh, together with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), sponsored and convened an international academic conference—International Conference on Rohingya Crisis in Bangladesh: Challenges and Sustainable Solutions.

This special issue includes four papers that together provide background information on the history of the Rohingya “refugee” crisis, including perspectives accounting for bilateral relations and negotiations between the government of Bangladesh and the government of Myanmar, as well as recommendations related to multilateral engagements such as by UNHCR, regional organizations such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and by diplomatic missions from the USA and China in particular.

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Utopian Vision and Social Progress

International Journal on World Peace Posted on November 27, 2019 by Gordon AndersonMay 29, 2020

Introduction to IJWP, December 2019

This issue of International Journal on World Peace has three very different articles: one on utopianism and peace, one on the nature of “enlightenment,” and one on the history of power struggles and human rights in Colombia. All of these articles are, nevertheless, related to the idea of social progress. Some ideas of “progress” are based on group advancement, where power is used by one group to conquer a group who has something they want, while others are based on a vision of production and development in which all people live together peacefully with abundance.

In our lead article, “Places of Peace: Utopia and a World Without War,” Dennis Hardy states that “Few would dissent from a general thesis that the human condition can be improved.” Utopian writers speak of an alternative place where life is better for them than what exists at present. However, no two individuals have exactly the same idea of what utopia is. “Utopian writers approach their subject with different assumptions. Fundamental to these is how they view human nature.”

For some visionaries, utopian societies employ slaves to carry out menial work to make life comfortable. For others, utopia involves the glories of war, the destruction of traditions, museums, and anything opposing the utopian vision. Most people today, however, would hardly call such utopias “progress.” There are more utopian visions in favor of peace than war.

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Interreligious Foundations of a Peaceful State

International Journal on World Peace Posted on August 6, 2019 by Gordon AndersonAugust 6, 2019

Introduction to IJWP, September 2019

The relation of religion to governance is one of the most important yet disputed aspects of the modern state. Should a state merely administer services on a territory or should it use its force to impose a specific set of religious beliefs and values on all of its citizens and residents? And, if a specific set of values is imposed, should there be limits to what the state is allowed to impose? For example, should it merely define crimes as harmful to a citizen’s life or property, or should it be criminal to hurt someone’s feelings or express a view different than state policy? And, who determines state policy on religion: the ruling family, the will of the majority, or some constitutional process?

This issue of International Journal on World Peace contains three articles that relate to creating peaceful states in a world where many religions, belief systems, and schisms exist in almost every country. The first article on “The Syrian Conflict” by Nasreen Akhtar and Hala Nageen shows what can happen when the ruler, Bashar al Assad, favors government jobs and financial contracts for members of his own family and his minority religious group, the Alawi, who make up 11 percent of the population.

Religious favoritism always leads to the exclusion or second-class citizenship of others. Or, in a worst-case scenario, genocide. In the case of Syria, the Arab Spring created hope among these less-favored groups that a new system could emerge that either treated citizens of all religions equally, or reversed the tables and installed some other religious group, and their religious values, in power. This led first to civil war and secondly to foreign states and interest groups aligning with and supporting various factions. As in other historical wars, most contestants in Syria expect to impose their values on all citizens after their victory.

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