September 2002

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize:
Long-Range Strategies for Peace

Mary E. Lord, on loan from Friends Committe on National Legislation, heads the AFSC National Peace Building Unit.

And The World Changed © 1994 Syracuse Cultural Workers/Karen Kerney, tiedye and stencil on fabric (for information on SCW, see p. 44) The paraphrased Albert Einstein quote commemorates and mourns the world's entry into the atomic age.

Over the past century peace movements have come and gone. The peace movement tends to come in waves in response to unpopular wars, and drift away when the immediate crisis is past. In the United States and western Europe a wave of revulsion followed the meaningless carnage of World War I, and advocates of peace pushed for a treaty (the Kellogg-Briand Pact) in which the nations promised never to go to war again. But the arms race was accelerating even as the signatures were affixed to the document. Too soon the vengeful spirit of the Versailles Treaty had led toward another, more terrible World War. A harsh peace followed by a policy of appeasing Hitler's aggression had given pacifism and peace a bad name. Nonetheless, lessons were learned from World War I, and the decade following WWII saw a generous peace and the formation of the United Nations. In later years in the United States, protest against the brutality of the Vietnam War succeeded, after a period of years, in ending first the draft, and then the war. A major protest movement surfaced also in response to the nuclear arms race in the 1960s but dissipated when the ban on atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons was concluded. The escalation of the nuclear arms race of the 1980s led to the Freeze Movement, but this too dissipated when the Soviet Union collapsed, and new arms treaties were signed. The achievements are real and important, but too often we leave the job half done.

We respond to a particular crisis, a particular war, a particular set of policies. The long-term task of addressing the structures of militarism (the belief in the power of military might to fix problems between peoples) is left unchallenged. The popular belief in the importance of an extensive military structure and sophisticated weaponry is unshaken. Despite our efforts, we have succeeded only in addressing a particular war or policy. Predictably, another war arises; another horror is visited on the world; the suffering and devastation of war visits new victims. In the current climate, I find many US citizens even forgetting that war-fighting rarely achieves its aims.

The United States, at this point in its history, believes in the value of militarism and warfare, as long as it is fought on someone else's territory, destroying someone else's cities. Like seats of past empires, we are only now learning that wars of dominance fought abroad come home in myriad ways--in the wounded veterans and traumatized refugees, in the economic corruption of corporate reliance on empire-building to spread its markets and find resources, in the political and spiritual corruption of power cruelly used, in the failure to recognize the humanity of the enemy, and eventually in the horror of warfare or terror brought home to us. We may succeed as people of peace in thwarting the planned invasion of Iraq, or turning back the dangerous new nuclear weapons policies, or even in reducing in some small way the fantastic growth in military spending which now makes the US military budget account for half of the world's military spending. But until and unless the fundamental system of belief, economy, and political will toward war is addressed, some new war or incursion will arise.

How then can we build a lasting constituency for peace that not only challenges but begins to dismantle the structures of military dominance? How do we not only begin to dismantle these structures, but also find the will and resources and stamina to continue until the task is done? Empires indeed will fall of their own weight, but too often with vast suffering and loss. We live in an age of weapons of mass destruction that threaten life itself. We see a global ecosystem straining under the weight of human habitation and excess. We cannot stand by smugly waiting for the inevitable rise and decline of the American empire.

There are, in my opinion, three or four key elements to create and sustain a lasting strategy for peace and disarmament.

First, it has been many years since there was a concerted effort to unmask what former President Eisenhower called the "military-industrial complex." In the fifty years since he warned Americans of the danger of a permanent war economy and mentality, individuals, companies, communities, and politicians have become ever more dependent on the continuation of research, development, and production of conventional and exotic weapons. The United States is now the world's largest exporter of weaponry, and the principal source of weapons going into some of the most deadly conflict regions. War of course is incredibly destructive of human life, communities, and civic infrastructure. Military production has a low economic multiplier and produces materials we hope not to need or use. Military facilities and bases are among the worst polluters. Yet we have become blind as peoples to the destructiveness of the consequences of militarism, and believe that it is beneficial. It has become unfashionable in many circles to address the military-industrial complex, but it is past time to unmask it. War does not work as a solution to human group interactions, and military production is a wasteful and destructive response to economic problems. It is time to bring the realities into the light of day.

Second, we need to tell the stories and describe the peaceful solutions that do work. Even difficult and long-standing problems between peoples and nations can and have been solved peacefully, while warfare only perpetuates the conflicts. There is probably no better example than the centuries of warfare in Europe that have finally been replaced by the European Union. In the past twenty years the field of peace research and conflict management and prevention have grown significantly. As we study peace, we are learning how to resolve the inevitable conflicts that arise between human beings before they become deadly. For the most part this work is unknown in the US. Few of our political leaders or journalists know about or understand conflict prevention. The wars that don't happen because they are successfully negotiated are not news. The stories of the communities where people live peaceably together, dealing creatively with the situations that arise, are not often told. We must collect and tell them. To dismantle militarism we must offer a vision that a different future is possible.

Third, to achieve these goals we need to build not just a movement for peace but a well-organized, articulate constituency for peace. Popular movements are important, but they tend of be responsive, coming together when the war has started and the options all are bad. We need to work together to prepare for and organize constantly for peace. An immediate concern in the US is that a broader-based and younger peace movement is needed. It is important to listen to the voices of young people and to the voices of people of color here and abroad. Listening will teach the more established peace organizations how to change and how to include new people. Only a broad-based and well-organized constituency for peace can advocate for peace funding, training of peace workers, and policies that promote a social and economic environment in which peacefulness can flourish. Only a broad-based constituency can respond with the numbers of people, organized and articulate for peace, in the early stages of crisis. Those who work for military spending and more weapons production organize in a sophisticated way for their ends. Let us come together to form and sustain a lasting voice for peace.

The long-range tasks I have suggested are not easy to sustain, and inability to sustain our work has plagued peace work for decades. We in the peace movement--with our fierce ideological divisions, our tiny organizations with complex decision-making structures, and our ambivalent attitudes toward good management and good stewardship of human and financial resources--are often our own worst enemies. I remember leaving one long and contentious peace coalition meeting in the early 1980s. The older Quaker woman who was taking me home shook her head in frustration: "No one can fight like the peace groups." It is still true. If we are to build a genuine, broad-based, global constituency for peace, we must learn to "keep our eyes on the prize," and be kind and forgiving to ourselves and to one another.

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