The proclaimed end of the Cold War in 1991 created expectations that its demise would naturally progress to an era of Hot Peace, and eventually culminate in a universal political system based on Western Liberal Democracy. Political philosophers like Francis Fukuyama even postulated the idea of the end of history and the last man. Yet, 31 long years after symbols of the Cold War came crashing down, the number of active conflicts persists and the plague of war continues to hinder the birth of Hot Peace. The current Russia-Ukraine war once again reveals all the usual suspects which demonstrate how cold war real politik did not end in 1991.
The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) has recorded and classified armed conflicts around the world for the period 1945 to 2020, which makes a distinction between wars and minor conflicts. Battle-related deaths in excess of 1,000 per year are classified as a war. Minor conflicts are determined when the battle-related deaths are between 25 and 1,000 annually. With this index, the UCDP reported 56 active conflicts and 8 wars in 2020. This shows an increase in both wars and active conflicts in the world. In fact, the number of active conflicts recorded in 2020 reached a record high for the period 1945 to 2020. It is vital to point out that many of these are recurring conflicts, which were present 32 years ago.
According to the UCDP the conflict trends showed a rising number of conflicts from 1989 to 2020. It pointed out that a number of the conflicts were traced to the demise of the Soviet Union. Another set of enduring conflicts were found across Africa and the Islamic State (IS) that involved in 16 conflicts in 2020. Meanwhile, 11 conflicts that were active in 2019 did not cross the 25 battle-related deaths threshold and considered to be inactive.
These trends in armed conflict emphasize the need for a long-term approach to effective and relevant resolutions because many of today’s intractable conflicts have deep roots that are at least 30 years old and more. The relentless number of wars and conflicts around the world provides empirical evidence that resolving conflicts and peacebuilding in conflict zones are a long-term venture. The tendency of peace processes to bypass the deep-rooted core issues that led to the conflict in the first place is one of the primary reasons why conflicts keep recurring time and again. Furthermore, the practice of powerful governments to approach political negotiations as a tool of state building, rather than peacebuilding is detrimental to peace. An agreement by itself does not lead to peace and very often is limited to ending the violence without resolving the problem. The global experience shows the urgency to review existing models of Westphalia peace processes and creatively seek alternative models that will lead to genuine and dignified peace.
Today, we live in an extraordinary moment. Joanna Macy tells us, “We possess more technical prowess and knowledge than our ancestors could have dreamt of. Our telescopes let us see through time to the beginnings of the universe; our microscopes pry open the codes at the core of organic life; our satellites reveal global weather patterns and hidden behaviors of remote nations. And our electronic surveillance capacity leaves no aspect of anyone’s life safe from corporate and governmental scrutiny.”
And yet, Macy is quick to point out, “We witness destruction of life in dimensions that confronted no previous generation in recorded history. Certainly, our ancestors knew wars, plagues and famine, but today… entire species are dying, and whole cultures, and ecosystems on a global scale...” She laments, that while humanity has survived so many millennia of trials and evolved through so many challenges, and there is so much promise still to unfold – yet, we can lose it all as the web of living systems unravels.
The question of peace must be linked with the forces of humanization. The struggle to attain this destiny of humanization is relentlessly challenged by equality and inequality, justice and injustice, violence and nonviolence, right and wrong, peace and unpeace.
In the midst of our unraveling world, we need to ask, how our generation can learn to make peace through peaceful means and choose a life-sustaining socio-political ecosystem. In this, it is critical that we know how we can meet our needs without destroying our life-support system and our social relations. But, most of all we need the collective will to create a culture of Humanization and JustPeace, which is the heart of transformation.
In other words, justice is at the center of peace and living in harmony. It is persuading us to liberate the self, to confront the structures of domination using a multi-cultural approach with a bottom-up pedagogy in the context of right relationships, shared respect and shared responsibilities. This includes dialoguing with neighbors and deconstructing the structures of violence. It is about enabling a dialogue of civilizations and consciously creating a system that upholds the relational web of interdependence. It is by inter-weaving these many different strands that the values of humanization are expressed and strengthen the web of life.
