[The following is the transcription of Johan Galtung's Dialogue. It remains unedited at present, but will be updated shortly]
I have already 25 questions, and I'll try to deal with as many of them as
possible. And I'm extremely grateful to the organisers for getting the
dialogue open this way. In other words I'm not giving a talk.
What is a conflict? Do not confuse the concept of conflict with violence.
Conflict is not the same as violence. Conflict is parties which have
incompatible goals. Parties which stand in each others way, they think,
because they are presuming things that they think are incompatible. I
disagree with Edith Hanson about her emphasis on differences. I don't think
difference is the point at all. The point is that the concrete people with
their different religious beliefs, with different skin colours, may have
different goals. And those goals may be economic, political, military,
cultural, whatever. And it is when these goals are incompatible that the
problem comes. Difference is a very minor point. The conflict between the
Germans and the Jews in Nazi Germany was not because the Jews were
different, but it was because both Jews and Germans were of the opinion
that they were chosen by God. And Hitler's idea was that there was space
for only one chosen group. The way he went about it was one of the most
atrocious in humankind, but you will never get a handle on that conflict
unless you understand what it was about. You can say that the first thing
is not to suffer from delusions. Try to find out what the conflict is, and
then try to transcend it by being creative.
So let me go to one of your questions. What are the elements in
globalisation that increase conflict? Can they be transformed? An excellent
question! I would say there are three elements in globalisation that So, how do we transcend this? Let me start with "class." let us think in
terms of global citizenship, global human rights and (omission) fair world.
We can afford paying all those people much more than two dollars a day to
live. The only thing we have to get rid of is the idea that you don't
deserve money unless you work. But in order to work you have to have a job.
That is today impossible for one single reason. it does not have to do with
globalisation. It does not have to do with privatisation, but it has to do
with increasing productivity. That is one way of transcending it. The
(omission) fair world, global human rights, the right to a life in dignity,
and the duty to pay global taxes, on international speculation, on
international travel, on international telephone calls, on your e-mail. It
could be one per (omission).And it would compensate sufficiently.
How do we handle the problem of nations? By having one global human right,
which is the right to live, in the world, inside your own language and your
own religion, and a duty, not to tolerate others, but to respect them, and
have dialogue. The duty of dialogue. The duty to think and to say "You are
different from me, how fantastic! What can I learn from you? And what would
you like to learn from me?" Now globalisation of human rights, is a typical
example of transcendence of a problem. How do we handle the United States
Is equality in theory and practice consistent with globalisation? Yes it
is. But it is not consistent with perverse globalisation, and the
globalisation that we have today, is economically led by one country,
militarily by one country, politically by one country, and culturally by
one country. That particular country, the United States, defeated two
countries, during the Second World War, and they were countries that also
were chosen, be that by the Sun Goddess, or by the Nordic Gods. That meant
they had the mental structure which was compatible with this particular way
of thinking. They became the most faithful servants of the United States of
America - Japan and Germany. I'm emphasising this so much because so many
of the questions deal with globalisation.
In your own experience what are the signs that tell you when conflicts are
revealing their creative sides? Similarly, what alerts you to the fact that
conflicts are shifting back from creativity to violence? When I'm sitting
with a Prime Minister, or a President in dialogue. The model is a
conversation, the model is a good seminar. The voices are controlled. There
is a Ping-Pong process of ideas going back and forth. So what is my sign
that the moment for creativity has come? I'll tell you what my sign is -
silence. There will be silence on the other side. Because if the other side
has a good argument against, they would say it. Silence means there is work
going on. At that point you never push .You change too much.
One of you asks: "What is the right timing, what is a good time to do
something in a conflict?" With due respect the question is wrong. It is a
military question. You see the military approach is to find out when can
you take the other party by surprise, or when is he so fatigued that he
will capitulate? You wait for the right moment. It's a linear approach. Any
military leader knows this extremely well. That is not the approach to get
peace. Peace is a permanent ongoing process. You can win with non-violence
in southern parts of the United States, and you lose because you don't
continue with non-violence. It is not, to use a military expression, a
single shot effect.
In international relations at what level, national, regional or global,
should conflict transformation begin? In a very basic guide to conflict
transformation there is no linearity. If you think that you should start
with one factor and then it will somehow go from there, you are on the
wrong track. Think holistically. If you have a conflict, identify 24 points
where you can do something. And better to do a little bit with all 24, than
one giant step with one of them. it maybe the wrong approach. And the world
doesn't hang together that way. That is not a military model but a
mechanical model. When you are driving a car, and you are coming to a curb,
it's a good idea to turn the wheel - I'd recommend that. And it's a good
idea in that case, not to start pumping up the tyres, checking the paint,
and things of that kind. That's because the car is a strongly coupled
system, whereas the social systems are linked. In other words very mulitple
approaches. And individual citizens play a role. In 1918 there was a group
of Swedish women in a little town south of Gottenburg in Sweden. They had a
meeting about how Europe and the world should look after the end of the One of you asks "What is the bright, creative side of conflict in Kosovo?"
I would say absolutely none. It was mishandled from the very beginning. It
would even have been easy to solve Yugoslavia. Self-determination for the
Croats, and for the Serbs in Croatia. Self-determination for the Bosnians,
and for the Serbs and Croats in Bosnia. Self-determination for the
Albanians, and for the Serbs in Kosovo. You end up with about 12 republics.
You do not end up with a federation but possibly a confederation. All the
Yugoslav politicians that I had occasion to dialogue with had no problem
with that solution, with the possible exception of some right-wing Croats.
What was the problem? The problem was not in Yugoslavia. The problem was
not in the United States of America. The problem was in the Vatican, in
Vienna, in Bonn and in Brussels. The most naive thing you can do in
conflict is to confuse the conflict formation with the conflict arena.
That's what Germans did. The conflict arena is where the action is,
that's where the violence is, and of course it is fascinating. The conflict
formation are all those who have a stake in the conflict, and who are
pulling the levers behind. This unfortunately is the usual construction.
(omission)
Can you ever make peace by making war? I would say no. And the reason why
is very simple. If war generates, as Arden [??]said yesterday, a genealogy
of hatred, that goes through time. It was fantastic the civil war solved
the problem of slavery? Well the first war was fought not because of
slavery, it was fought mainly because of conflict over
federation/confederation. What came out of it? Out of it came a giant
United States as an alliance between the chosen ones in the north and the
soldiers in the south. Maybe you solve one conflict at the expense of
another. Maybe the lust for revenge of the south was channeled into the
U.S. imperialism that exploded at the end of the 1890's. How about the
Second World War, they defeated Japan, didn't they? The fascist military
dictatorship. Well we don't know the end of the story. We don't know the
end of the story. Could it be that this Japanese inclination to hang onto
the U.S. in a military alliance, is an effort to get even, with their Asian
neighbours? That of course is what the Asian neighbours think. Could it be
that there is something to it? In that case what did you solve? Wars
happen, don't confuse them with methods, or with peace. What you win is a
ceasefire, which is not the same as peace. It may be changed into a peace,
but that requires very hard work.
And at this point, I've taken some of your excellent questions. My wife
will give a very brief summary. I'll only wish the 30 of you who have
signed up for my workshop, welcome to my room. There will be two and a half
hours workshop and we will start a little bit early, a little bit before
one o'clock. There is much to go through. You will have half an hour
discussion, and I'm sorry to say you will be trained, and you may even risk
learning something. I apologise, but such is life at times. Thank you!
[This was followed by several questions from the audience and delegates. Click here to continue]
I'll start with a definition of peace. When I say that peace is the
opposite of violence and not of war, that's a very incomplete definition.
That it is not the opposite of war seems to me to be obvious. The most
important violence in the 80's was men against women. If you take the
number of women projected from the 1980's census data a hundred million
women disappeared - through abortion, and infanticide and other methods. To
call a world where that is happening, even if there should happen to be no
war, to call that peace, is nonsense. This is negation of violence. So my
definition of peace is the following - peace is the ability to handle
conflict constructively and without violence. When I say constructively, I
mean driving history forward, finding new solutions.
increase conflict. We have 2000 nations and 8000 additional cultures in the
world. Some of them are of the opinion that they are exceptional and they
are chosen by God, or somebody else, and for that reason they believe they
deserve a particularly high position. The second basic problem with
globalisation is class. We are now in a situation where fifty per-cent of
humanity live on less than two dollars a day. That's 210 yen, why don't you
try it tomorrow, and see how you like it. 1.7 billion people live on less
than one dollar a day. The numbers are increasing more than the population
growth. The whole thing called economic growth and development is a scam.
The third problem with globalisation is that there is one country in the
world that thinks it is extraordinarily exceptional. And directly under
God. So directly under God that there is space for nothing between God and
that country. No space for the United Nations, no space for international
law. The name of the country is of course the United States of America. I'm
just back from a meeting with the former Secretary of Defence of the
U.S.A., Robert MacNamara. There were about 40 people in the room, and he
said to us "in all likelihood the United States of America will lead the
world into a nuclear holocaust in the 21st century". And my question to all
of you is "what have you done to stop the United States, what have you done
you from Japan done to stop the United States, what have you, the professor
from Norway [Galtung] done to stop the United States? That's all! So
everybody says "we're trying, we're trying." You're not good enough!! Do it
better!!
of America? The former joint chiefs of staff, the top military men said
that "America was created by divine providence, in order to bring order to
the world." That was Colin Powell. He successor, John (omission) said, "the
United States is a global nation, with global interests." Now if you find a
private person talking like that you would say that the guy is probably
psychiatrically off. If people high up in the United States talk like that
it's called patriotism. We have a problem. Any one of us can sit quietly,
softly with an American friend, take his hand, feel the pulse, and say:
"Will you repeat after me - The United States is a nation and a country
like all the others, and we're going to join the human race, not at the
top, but like all the others." In the meantime it may be necessary not to
follow the United States. I think what will happen fairly quickly now,
within five years time, is that the number of countries who have turned
around, and said that United States has been leading them down the wrong
alley [will increase]. Is that violent or non-violent? No it is not - it
depends on the spirit in which you do it. It depends on what you do to help
your fellow Americans. I would say it's a collective disease. And there
will be only one sufferer. There was once a country called the Soviet
Union, which was convinced that they had been selected, chosen, not by god,
because they didn't believe in God. So who chose them? History! History one
day came to Lenin, and said "Lenin, Vladimir Illyich, stand up! You have
been given the task of leading your country into socialism, and from there
to this one more country called "communism." They believed in it. They
stopped believing in it around Spring 1956, three years after the death of
Stalin. One day the same process will happen to some other chosen peoples.
If we wish to live in one world together, we don't have space at the top
for particularly chosen people. We are all chosen - six billion chosen
human beings. And we have no right to see ourselves above nature. We live
within nature. But I will not develop that theme - Satish and others will
develop it.
How do I know that violence is probably coming up? That's because they
think they have exhausted all possibilities without violence. You can take
the simplest little example, which I have used very, very often, training
people in creativity. How can two children, kids, sitting at a table, with
an orange on the table, handle that situation. I have sixteen different
answers for that question. One of them is that they fight it out. Another
one is an answer I heard at a school in India: "You don't have to do
anything - you just watch the orange - it's so beautiful." That's not the
western answer, because the western answer is "Do something, for heaven's
sake! It cannot just sit there." Now you have one violent possibility, and
fifteen non-violent ones. Imagine that you know only two non-violent and
one is to sit looking at it, but you get bored of this. And the other one
is to throw a coin. And for some reason they don't work, then the only left
is to fight. You see working for peace is to expand the spectrum of
non-violent possibilities. So I said to the president of a Latin American
country. His country has been at war with a neighbouring country four times
over a piece of territory of 500 square kilometres. The name of the two
countries is Equador and Peru. He asks me "Professor Galtung, you are a
conflict specialist, what is your advice? We haven't been able to agree on
a border." So knowing Latin America I suggested how about owning that
territory together - as a bi-national territory, with a natural park?" Then
he said, "nobody has ever said that - the idea is excellent but it's too
new. It will take at least thirty years to get used to it." Three years
they has a peace treaty, with a bi-national territory, and a natural park.
The point about it is that in that territory, new things can grow. Don't
think it is solved by that. One of you asks:" Could it be that solving a
conflict opens for a new conflict?" Yes it does. This goes on and on and
on, and after that it goes on and on and on. They could start quarreling
about how to administer that territory.
First World War. And they issued a manifesto with 20 points. The United
States had a bright consul, in Gottenburg, who travelled 50 kilometres to
that little town and got the manifesto and sent it to Washington. President
Wilson took 14 points. That's President Wilson's 14 points. Unfortunately
he forgot to quote. I don't understand why. Why? You see this is basic. It
has to do with archetypes. We have, unfortunately, two archetypes of peace.
The archetype is that basic figure in your thought. Deep down in you. So
one archetype is that peace comes from the man. From President
Wilson, from Lloyd George, from Churchill. And you should be grateful.
There may be a couple of them, and they usually have a meeting through the
night, and at five o'clock in the morning they open the doors, to be
admired. And they come out with a sheet of paper, with signatures on it.
That's one archetype. The second archetype is the saint working at the
bottom of society. That was Gandhi, that was Martin Luther King. These are
the two archetypes. This is not what happens in the world today. What
happens in the world today is that you find thousands, literally speaking,
millions of common citizens inspired by the peace movement during the cold
war, organised right now in 475 different organisations, working on peace
problems all over the world. It is neither one single person at the top,
nor one single person at the bottom, nor was Gandhi a single person, but
the journalists made him into one, by the western fascination with the
single person, steered by their archetypes.
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