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50th PUGWASH CONFERENCE ELIMINATING THE CAUSES OF WAR - PLENARY
LECTURE By David A. Hamburg I am deeply honored to be a part of this landmark, 50th anniversary meeting of Pugwash. I am especially delighted to be invited by my long-standing and highly valued friend Robert Hinde, one of the great scientists of our time and a major contributor to our understanding of war and peace; and to be introduced by Joseph Rotblat, a truly inspired leader of the scientific community in our quest for just peace. A superb example of international scientific cooperation during the Cold War was the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, recognized in 1995 by the Nobel Peace Prize. Stemming from the initial meeting in 1957 was a continuing series of informal discussions among the world’s scientists and the availability of resulting recommendations to governments. Pugwash surely played a valuable role in facilitating the negotiation of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction; and the Anti Ballistic Missile Agreement. I was personally involved in one of Pugwash’s lesser known but nevertheless fascinating accomplishments. I will return to that later. Within only a moment of evolutionary time, human ingenuity has produced a huge increase in destructive power available to our species – in the twenty-first century to almost all countries everywhere and to many sub-national groups. In a few decades, there will be no part of the earth so remote that it cannot do immense damage to itself and to others far away. Like it or not, conflicts have become everyone’s business. The idea that states and people are free to conduct their quarrels, no matter how deadly, is outdated in the nuclear age and in a shrinking world where local hostilities can rapidly become international ones with devastating consequences. Similarly, the notion that tyrants are free to commit atrocities on their own people is becoming obsolete, albeit with plenty of resistance. In the 1990s, Cyrus Vance was asked by the UN Secretary General to play a peace-making role in Yugoslavia – first in Croatia, later in Bosnia. As he and I reflected on these problems, we were increasingly drawn to thinking in preventive terms. What might have been done earlier and more fundamentally to avert this vast human tragedy? What preventive principles, strategies and tactics might be useful throughout the world? Could the bitter lessons of Yugoslavia (and other similar horrors elsewhere) be turned to the long-run benefit of humanity? We set out to address the haunting questions of worldwide mass violence in 1994 by establishing the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict. It consisted of sixteen international leaders and scholars long experienced in conflict prevention and conflict resolution. Cyrus Vance and I were its co-chairmen, with Jane Holl as executive director. It had a global advisory council consisting of thirty-six scholars and distinguished practitioners.
The Commission approached its tasks by asking several fundamental questions:
The commission published 75 reports and books on subjects related to its core agenda during the five years of its existence. In addition, it sponsored international meetings drawing together independent experts and policy makers from around the world to consider these issues carefully. A synthesis of these activities was published under the title "Preventing Deadly Conflict." Taken together, this body of work constitutes a unique resource on prevention. The recommendations of these 75 reports are addressed to many elements of the international community, among them governments, the United Nations, regional organizations, the business community, the global scientific community, educational and religious institutions, the media, and nongovernmental organizations. What we seek is a way of thinking that becomes pervasive in many institutions and in public understanding. The Carnegie Commission formulates two broad strategies for prevention. The first is operational prevention, or measures to respond in the face of an impending crisis. The second is structural prevention, or long-term measures to keep a crisis from arising in the first place or to keep it from recurring. The primary example of operational prevention is preventive diplomacy. The primary example of structural prevention is the fostering of democratic socioeconomic development. Let me say a few words about each in turn. Key Concepts of Operational Prevention Preventive diplomacy is the prime example of operational prevention – oriented to coping with serious conflicts and imminent crises before they cross the threshold to mass violence. It has shown great promise despite the fact that the world is poorly organized to take advantage of its potential. Several major new studies sponsored by the commission converge on key points of preventive diplomacy. They combine established knowledge and skill with new insights. They send a strong message to the international community: to governments, inter-governmental organizations, non-govermental organizations of many kinds, and leaders in different sectors. Here are some key messages for Preventive Diplomacy at the turn of the century.
governments, intergovernmental organizations, or by nongovernmental organizations. It is less threatening to the adversaries than most other interventions. It can occur early in the course of an evolving dispute. The adversaries can learn a good deal about conflict resolution and violence prevention, sometime in a brief period. They can become intrigued with new possibilities for mutual accommodation. They can be helped to reformulate the problem in ways that involve mutual benefits. As guidelines of this sort come to be incorporated into the thinking of governments, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations – and indeed in public understanding – the risk of drifting into disasters can be greatly diminished. Key Concepts of Structural Prevention There are many factors conducive to long-term peaceful living – structural prevention. Among these, none is more important than democratic development. Here we refer to the value of democratic attitudes, practices and institutions in both political and economic spheres. Although there are many other elements that are important in structural prevention – e.g. major limitations on highly destructive weapons via international agreements and internal restraints as Pugwash has done so well – I focus here on democratic development because it tends to pull the other factors along. The many, inter-related socio-economic facets of democratic development come together in ways that foster security, well-being and justice even for large and diverse populations – not perfectly, not comprehensively, yet generally in constructive directions with a realistic basis for hopeful lives. Democratic traditions evolve in ways that build ongoing mechanisms for dealing with the ubiquitous conflicts that arise in the course of human experience. Democracy seeks ways to deal fairly with conflicts and to resolve them below the threshold of mass violence. This is a difficult process, there are failures, and the transition from a closed authoritarian society to a fully viable, open democratic society can be stormy, but this is the best chance for dealing justly and peacefully with the tensions of humanity. The attitudes, beliefs and procedures of democratic societies are useful in inter-group conflict within and beyond state borders. In government and civil society, processes of negotiation and mediation are common. There is encouragement for seeing the perspective of other people and learning mutual accommodation – starting in childhood. Most people get used to a pluralistic society. They learn to compromise, seeking something satisfactory for all elements of the society. All this is not a panacea, but it is helpful. There are effective means for promoting democracy internationally. For new, emerging and fragile democracies, it is valuable to strengthen the political and civic infrastructure of democracy through international cooperation. This involves technical assistance, financial aid and social exchanges to build the requisite processes and institutions, including widespread education of publics about the actual working of democracy. Toward these ends, it is desirable that the democratic community establish special funds to strengthen democracies. Such funds may be administered through non-governmental organizations as well as government agencies and international multilateral organizations. Funding, technical assistance and human solidarity must be sustained over a period of many years to support the complicated processes of democracy building. There is much more to it than one successful election. A recent sophisticated assessment shows that, despite many obstacles, much can be accomplished. In the 1990s, the established democracies began to get organized and committed to helping the emergence of new and necessarily fragile democracies throughout the world. Such international, cooperative efforts to build democracy on this scale are recent. The worldwide movement toward democracy is not simple or linear, but it is powerful and encouraging to those who value human dignity, opportunity, creativity – and, yes, survival. Building democratic societies with market economies in a technically competent and ethically sound way is a clear path to structural prevention of deadly conflict. Democratic Development: Economic Aspects The establishment of new democracies requires decades or even generations, so we must be persistent and resourceful in working with democratic reformers all over the world. The gradual emergence of democratic and prosperous countries will reduce the likelihood of catastrophic wars. This requires special attention to the Southern Hemisphere and the post-communist countries. We have learned important lessons from successes and failures of socioeconomic development in Asia, Africa, and Latin America during the past half-century. Yet much of the world’s population still cannot rely upon food, water, shelter, and other necessities of life. Why are there still widely prevalent threats to survival when modern science and technology have made such powerful contributions to human well being? What can we do to diminish the kind of vulnerability that leads to desperation? The slippery slope of degradation so vividly exemplified in several areas of abject poverty in Africa and Asia leads to great danger of infectious disease pandemics, civil war, terrorism, mass migration and humanitarian catastrophe. Many nations in the global south have been late in getting access to the unprecedented opportunities now available for economic and social development. They are seeking ways to modernize in keeping with their own cultural traditions and distinctive settings. They need help in finding ways to adapt useful tools from the world’s experience for their own development. It is surely in the interest of countries near and far away to facilitate the development of knowledge, skill and freedom in these countries so they can become contributing, responsible members of the international community rather than breeding grounds for social pathology, disease and violence. An avoidable excess of human suffering generates resentment that can become the seedbed for hatred, violence and terrorism. In this context, the Carnegie Commission emphasized that economic growth without widespread sharing in the benefits of that growth will not reduce prospects for violent conflict. Indeed, intense resentment and unrest can be induced by drastically inequitable economic opportunity. This reinforces the desirability of helping poor countries to foster political as well as economic development. During the 1990s a substantial effort has been made by individuals and institutions to understand the development experience of the second half of the 20th Century and to learn from it – both its successes and failures. One major feature of this effort has been to take a broader view of the development process, recognizing the crucial importance of human development, linking social and economic considerations. One influential source of analysis has come from the human development reports of UNDP. The approach is carried further in a new book by Amartya Sen, who received the 1998 Nobel Prize in economic science. He views development fundamentally as a process of expanding the real freedoms that people enjoy. Therefore, development requires removal of major obstacles to freedom: poverty, poor economic opportunities linked with systematic social deprivation, neglect of public facilities, social intolerance, tyranny and repressive states. To liberate this unfilled human potential, it is essential to enhance political participation, to receive basic education and health care, and to live in a context of respect for human rights. These circumstances are not only of value to the individual, but they contribute powerfully to economic progress of the society. Like the UNDP reports, he advocates public policy to foster human capabilities and substantive freedoms There is great preventive value in initiatives that focus on children and women, not least because they make up the greatest proportion of victims of conflict and because women represent a large and neglected potential for economic, intellectual, and political as well as social contributions. A growing body of evidence shows that the education of females is a highly valuable investment for developing countries. It enhances women’s skills and choices, improves their health and nutrition. Health studies show that the more educated the mothers, the less likely that their children will die, regardless of differences in family income. Education helps delay marriage for women, partly by increasing their chances for employment, and educated women are more likely to know about and use contraceptives. With education and modest borrowing opportunities, women contribute significantly to economic growth. The judicious use of science and technology is a key element in development, yet curiously neglected in many countries as if it were a luxury for rich countries. On the contrary, participation in the world economy now requires a modicum of technical competence everywhere. This must be fostered by international cooperation of scientists and educators. Altogether, the essential ingredients for development center around knowledge, skill and freedom. Knowledge is mainly generated by research and development; skills are mainly generated by education and training; freedom is mainly generated by democratic institutions. The UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, linked equitable economic development with conflict prevention in an address at the World Bank in 1999. He endorsed President Wolfensohn’s call for the Bank and its partners to start asking hard questions about ways to integrate a concern for conflict prevention into development operations. Annan said "If war is the worst enemy of development, healthy and balanced development is the best form of conflict prevention." International Cooperation to Implement the Tasks of Prevention These great tasks of operational and structural prevention require substantial international cooperation. This is because the problems they address are formidable and widely scattered around the world. Predisposing and precipitating factors for human conflict are ubiquitous. Homo sapiens is a highly contentious species with a dramatically destructive track record. Moreover, the tasks of prevention are complex, demanding, sometimes expensive, often dangerous. Thus, the effective pursuit of these tasks requires pooling strengths, sharing burdens, and dividing labor. At present, it is not obvious how this is to be done. Individual states, groups of states, the United Nations, regional organizations, non-governmental organizations, and eminent individuals typically approach preventive actions in a groping, uncoordinated way. This reflects the lack of any agreed international violence prevention system. While no single integrated system is feasible at present, more widely accepted and regularized arrangements are necessary and possible. An ongoing, vital aspect of all efforts to prevent deadly conflict must be education of publics throughout the world. From scientists and professional educators to the UN to grassroots NGOs to international university networks and religious institutions, there is a profound need to address the ascending dangers of violence, constructive ways of dealing with ubiquitous human conflicts, respect for universal human dignity, and paths to peace with justice. The profound threat of prejudicial ethnocentrism as a precursor to hatred, violence and mass killing has to emerge as one of the major educational thrusts of this century: through the media and community organizations as well as educational, scientific and religious institutions. International Scientific Community We face the problem of intergroup violence—within or between states—in the twenty-first century in a world increasingly saturated with highly destructive weapons. We see in all parts of the world abundant prejudice, hatred and threats of mass violence. The historical record is full of every sort of slaughter based on invidious distinctions pertaining to religion, ethnicity, nationality, and other group characteristics. In this kind of world, the scientific community has a great responsibility to work in a reasonably unified way so that the physical, biological, behavioral, and social sciences can address these profound and pervasive problems. Crucial world problems do not come in neat packages that match traditional disciplines. The scientific community first and foremost provides understanding, insight, and stimulating ways of viewing important problems—and can do so with regard to deadly conflict. It can generate new knowledge and explore the application of such knowledge to urgent problems in contemporary society. In a world so full of hatred and violence, past and present, human conflict and its resolution is a subject that deserves major research efforts. High standards of inquiry must be applied to this field, involving many sciences functioning in collaborative ways. The scientific community can also apply the best available knowledge to conflict situations as Pugwash has done so well. Let me sketch one example. In 1978, Pugwash convened a workshop on crisis management and crisis prevention under my chairmanship, involving scientists and scholars from a variety of countries, but principally the United States and the Soviet Union. By 1978, there was cumulative record of analytical studies sufficient to derive some tentative but useful principles of crisis management. How is it possible to emerge from a crisis without a disastrous war, let alone a nuclear war? Scholars sought a consensus on principles of crisis management and then to convey this consensus as clearly and meaningfully as possible to policy makers and policy advisors in a variety of nations, but especially in the superpowers. If crises were to arise again, it would be valuable for leaders to grasp these principles and follow them as well as they could in order to avoid catastrophe. As the evidence of various crises was considered, scholars were deeply impressed with the difficulty of adhering to such guidelines in the event. The immense strains of international crisis and above all, nuclear crisis test the limits of human capacity to adapt. Therefore, the focus was widened to consider crisis prevention. Whatever the level of armaments, and whatever the animosity of the superpowers, it was simply a matter of prudent self-interest to remain a step or two from the brink of nuclear crisis because the tasks of crisis management are so exceedingly difficult. These concerns in both countries led to a joint US-Soviet study group on crisis prevention. For several years, the pattern was to meet about twice a year, with substantial preparation between meetings, including visits of younger scholars back and forth to pave the way. These meetings were characterized by civil discourse, mutual respect, and analysis of ways to reduce the nuclear danger. When Gorbachev came to power, the group began to explore the "new thinking," going beyond crisis prevention to the possibility of basic improvement of U.S.-Soviet relations. The Soviet participants and the American participants both became more significant advisors to government leadership as the years went by. So the work exemplified the increasingly useful dynamic interplay between scholars and policymakers in leading countries throughout the world. Two recent penetrating studies of Cold War history show clearly that the momentous reformulation of Soviet policy growing out of Gorbachev’s new thinking was strongly influenced by his contacts with the scientific and scholarly community. This occurred primarily through his interactions with leading Soviet physical and social scientists. The contribution of the international scientific community is also clear, primarily through its impact on these Soviet scientists but also through direct encounters with Gorbachev himself as I experienced on several occasions. Gorbechev confirms these observations in a newly published book. The Cold War experience makes clear that there is a useful role for the scientific and scholarly community in international conflict resolution – usually acting through non-governmental organizations yet often maintaining open lines of communication with governments. There are a few singular advantages: 1) drawing on the science base for accurate information in search of principles and objective analysis. 2) acting flexibly, exploring novel or neglected paths toward conflict resolution; and 3) building relationships among well informed people who can make a difference in attitudes and in problem-solving at home and abroad. Overall, it is one of the great challenges for science policy and practice to organize a much broader and deeper effort to understand the nature and sources of human conflict, and above all to develop effective ways of resolving conflict without recourse to violence. The scientific and scholarly community is the closest approximation we now have to a truly international community, sharing certain fundamental interests, values, standards, and curiosities about the nature of matter, life, behavior and the universe. The shared quest for understanding is one that knows no national boundaries, has no inherent prejudices, no necessary ethnocentrism, and no barriers to the free play of information and ideas. This quest is drawn together internationally more than ever by recent advances in telecommunications. To some extent, the scientific community can provide a model for human relations that might transcend some of the biases and dogmas that have torn the species apart throughout history, and have recently become so much more dangerous than ever before. Science can contribute to a better future by its ideals and its processes, as well as by the specific content of its research, and all these must to be brought to bear on preventing deadly conflict. Governments and inter-governmental organizations can do much more than they are now doing to engage the scientific community in this great mission. We humans are indeed a single, interdependent, worldwide species with unprecedented powers both for better and for worse. The benefits we enjoy and anticipate, going far beyond anything our ancestors might have imagined, are largely those flowing from advances in science and technology. The other side of the coin is that the truly unprecedented dangers we face are also the creation of science and technology. In a clear and vivid sense, the modern world is the creation of science and technology in all of its aspects—those which we relish and those which we fear. The fundamental paradox of success must now be seen whole. Science and technology got us here. Can science and technology keep us going, playing a crucial role in diverting the ultimate calamity of nuclear or bacteriological war and fostering for the first time in history a truly common humanity in which decent human relations and a decent respect for our environment may prevail worldwide? On this fiftieth anniversary of Pugwash, in the eternal spirit of Albert Einstein, this is our greatest challenge. |