International Journal on World Peace

Introduction to IJWP, December 2015

The articles in this issue of IJWP are related to the cultural consciousness that influences group-on-group violence. The pursuit of group interest with disregard to the interests of other groups can either be the willful result of selfishness or actions based on ignorance of the situation of other groups.
The photos of the body of the three-year-old son of Syrian Abdullah Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach helped fuel a campaign for global sympathy for refugees fleeing war-torn areas in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. This sympathy increased pressure on states to receive more refugees and for reform of bureaucratic practices. Refugees make dangerous illegal trips in which the death rate is high because red tape can make legal immigrants wait for years. This news promoted by global media raised global consciousness of the plight of others who are suffering an undeserved fate, and helped to encourage compassion for members of other groups. The result was increased quotas for refugees adopted by many countries, although few solutions to solve the systemic violence causing the refugees to flee were promoted by the media. It is clear that the media and globalization have a major impact on the fate of people who a century ago would never have been known to the larger world. However, the media often promote elite interests that lead to group conflict. Continue reading →

Introduction to IJWP, June 2015

This issue of IJWP looks at the relationship of violence to what might be called “maturity of truth,” or personal and cultural wisdom. “Truth” is both individual and social. It is individual when it refers to a person’s attainment of an awareness of others as equally valuable and worthy of life in a shared world, and the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve a happy and fulfilling life through productive activities that do not harm others. Truth is social when it is embodied in civilization. By civilization, I mean a culture whose language, norms, institutions, and behavior patterns reflect a collective awareness of the worth of all human beings, human rights that apply to all people, and a level of knowledge and social organization that allows all people an equal opportunity to prosper.

The first article is an essay by sociologist Tom Kando that argues “Demography is Destiny,” a statement attributed to Auguste Comte, the father of sociology. In his analysis, Kando concludes that the single variable that correlates most with violence is age. Statistics show that more homicides per capita occur in places where the median age is lower. Further breaking it down, the most violence occurs where there are a high number of unemployed young males. This pattern occurs in data comparing countries where, for example, the homicide rate is higher in Venezuela with a median age of 25.8 than the United States with a median age of 36.9. It is even lower in Japan, where the median age is 44.6. This correlation also occurs within countries where, for example, the homicide rate is higher in Chicago, with a median age of 31.5, than in Plano, Texas, which has a median age of 38. Some commonly discussed factors, like the number of handguns per capita, much higher in Plano than Chicago, do not correspond so directly to the homicide rate. More homicides occur where youth are idle, frustrated, and unemployed.
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Introduction to IJWP, December 2014

The year 2014 marks the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I (WWI), the beginning of modern mechanized war at the global level. WWI represented a watershed in which war fought between traditional kings and their armies was transformed into wars among states whose policies are determined by political parties and bureaucrats. It also represented a huge technological shift, beginning with rifles, bayonets, pistols and calvaries, and ending with mustard gas, tanks, submarine torpedoes, and airplane bombs. Modern weapons of mass destruction do not easily distinguish between soldier and civilian, or confine themselves to traditional geographical borders. Traditional armies were decimeated by new weaponry, and the collateral damage on civilians escalated as well. Nearly 20 million people died in WWI; half were civilians.

The article, “Greece and the Road to World War I” by George Kaloudis, focuses on the nature of nation-state alliances and the configuration of great powers vs. smaller powers. It discusses the impact World War I had on a smaller state. Smaller states were lured into alliances with larger powers both for promises of protection and promises of a share of victory spoils. In the case of Greece, the war divided the nation internally as the king sided with the Central Powers while the democratically elected leader sided with the Allied Powers. The goals of modern democratic states are often determined by large institutional interests, rather than the head of state, as described by outgoing U.S. President Eisenhower’s famous warning about the “military-industrial complex.” Continue reading →

Introduction to IJWP, June 2014

From Kant’s influential Perpetual Peace to the social scientific studies of society in the twentieth century many writers argued that cultural values and economic interests needed to be satisfied to achieve a lasting peace. However, Hans Morgenthau, a highly influential professor of international politics disagreed. He wrote in 1948:

The main signpost that helps political realism to find its way through the landscape of international politics is the concept of interest defined in terms of power.¹

This issue of IJWP challenges this political realism in several ways, arguing that it fails to hold state actors within the bounds of legitimate and moral use of power, that it fails to integrate economic and cultural “soft power” interests in its simplistic, black and white analyses, and that it fails to address levels of governance other than the state that are integrally tied to subsystems and international systems.

It is more important than ever to advance a more integral understanding of international relations that sees human society in terms of a set of interconnected social systems, beginning at the level of individuals, and moving through family systems and face-to-face community systems to state political economies, and finally to international organization.

There are three major spheres of influence, the political, economic, and cultural. Of these three, the political, which is the sphere of legal power and force, should be the servant of the economic and cultural spheres, rather than their master. But, power corrupts, and elites in any sphere whose powers are unchecked, will abuse that power and, like a cancer, feed off of those they are in a position to serve, creating unhappiness, inequality, and violence. This reversal of dominion is often cited as the difference between a “politician” and a “statesman.” It is what distinguishes a Nelson Mandela from the average power broker.

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Introduction to IJWP, December 2013

This issue of IJWP has two articles related to the Boko Haram group in Northern Nigeria and an article on child labor in Uzbekistan. Boko Haram is a northern Nigerian Islamist group that has killed thousands in campaigns of terror against Christians and others. It has sought the implementation of Shari’ah law in Nigeria and it is part of a growing alliance of international Islamist groups, spreading its influence beyond Nigeria and providing safe harbor for others, like Al Queda, in Nigeria.

Our first article, “Nigeria’s Terrorist Threat: Present Contexts and the Future of sub-Saharan Africa,” looks at the reasons for the rise and expansion of Boko Haram in poorly governed states in Northern Nigeria. It explains why military attempts to eliminate such groups often have the reverse effect of stimulating their growth, because they do nothing to eliminate the threat to traditional values and ways of life associated with secular states and the United Nations. These groups, uniting against this generalized common enemy, are in fact disparate groups and often bitterly divided among themselves and do not share common local objectives.
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