Professors World Peace Academy

Intro­duc­tion to Decem­ber 2009 IJWP

Realpoli­tik is a term derived from Ger­man. It refers to a pol­i­tics based on prac­ti­cal and mate­r­ial fac­tors rather than on the­o­ret­i­cal or eth­i­cal objec­tives (Merriam-Webster dic­tio­nary). His­tor­i­cally, many polit­i­cal plat­forms have been based on the­o­ret­i­cal, reli­gious, ide­o­log­i­cal, or moral arguments.

Most visions of ideal soci­eties, as dis­parate as Plato, Con­fu­cius, Jesus, and Marx, all rely on chang­ing basic human behav­ior. If we can only learn to love one another, to share with one another, to accept a Chris­t­ian, Mus­lim, or social­ist the­ory of jus­tice, or change our self­ish and exploita­tive behav­ior in some way, then we can cre­ate an ideal world. As we recently learned from the efforts of the Soviet Union to cre­ate a “new man,” one that is ratio­nal and sci­en­tific, the laws of nature are not eas­ily trumped. Instead of get­ting a “new man” who gives accord­ing to his abil­i­ties and receives accord­ing to his needs, the Soviet Union got the Nomen­klatura, the“old man” in a new bureau­cratic class, who used posi­tion and power in the Soviet polit­i­cal sys­tem for per­sonal and self­ish desires.
Con­tinue read­ing Realpoli­tik and World Peace

Intro­duc­tion to Sep­tem­ber 2009 IJWP

The mod­ern desire for democ­racy and self-rule is largely a reac­tion against a his­tory of oppres­sion and exploita­tion fol­low­ing mil­i­tary con­quest and imposed rule. World his­tory is pre­dom­i­nantly shaped by con­querors, yet most peo­ple desire to live their own lives and not serve as a means to some­one else’s ends. While self-rule requires the over­throw of imposed rule, it is more dif­fi­cult than the mere over­throw of a régime and the dec­la­ra­tion of free­dom and of rule of law. Self-rule requires self-discipline and the will­ing­ness to use force, when nec­es­sary, against for­eign aggres­sion and civil vio­lence. Con­tinue read­ing Anar­chy in Unse­cured Territories

Intro­duc­tion to June 2009 IJWP

Our lead arti­cle by James Yunker sug­gests ways in which global gov­er­nance could be improved, ways that could cre­ate a “more per­fect union” than the League of Nations, or the United Nations, which he com­pares to the Arti­cles of Con­fed­er­a­tion of the United States. This more per­fect union would involve three prin­ci­ples not present in the world gov­ern­ment pro­pos­als of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury. First, vot­ing prin­ci­ples must be changed so that an invol­un­tary redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth could not occur. Sec­ond, there should be an inalien­able right to with­draw from the Union. Third, each nation should be allowed to keep what­ever mil­i­tary power they desire. Con­tinue read­ing A More Per­fect Union

Intro­duc­tion to March 2009 IJWP

This issue con­tains a vari­ety of arti­cles that do not eas­ily coa­lesce around a par­tic­u­lar theme, but all refer to con­tain­ing the vio­lence wreaked by those with power in the pur­suit of self-interested goals, whether they be polit­i­cal, eco­nomic, or reli­gious. This vio­lence might appear in the form of a ruth­less war­lord rap­ing the econ­omy and nat­ural resources, the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of NGO work­ers try­ing to serve the rav­aged and oppressed in such coun­tries, or the uni­lat­eral actions of a state to impose its will on oth­ers or threaten them with weapons of mass destruction.

Our first arti­cle, by George Kieh, exam­ines the roots of civil war in Liberia. He notes that the peace imposed after the first civil war laid the seeds of a sec­ond civil war. Too often peace set­tle­ments aimed at end­ing fight­ing do not con­tain a process for the res­o­lu­tion of under­ly­ing social prob­lems. Thus, they become a tem­po­rary ces­sa­tion of vio­lence rather than a real peace. In Liberia there was scarcely two years between the end of the first civil war and the onset of a sec­ond. The lack of  an ade­quate national secu­rity régime led to the com­pe­ti­tion for state power among war­lords. Con­tinue read­ing Secu­rity for the Innocent

Intro­duc­tion to Decem­ber 2008 IJWP

The arti­cles in this issue all relate to the Mid­dle East region from Pales­tine to Pak­istan. This region is per­haps the most resis­tant to reli­gious plu­ral­ism in the world. War and vio­lence are often the result of the attempt by a reli­gious or eth­nic group to lay claim on an entire state. A group may want to use the power of the state to redis­trib­ute all of the wealth and resources to its own mem­bers, or it may fear mis­treat­ment or geno­cide if another group con­trols the power of the state.

When a reli­gious group, an eth­nic group, or a state claims to have the true under­stand­ing of peace and jus­tice, or some monop­oly on knowl­edge, they run into direct con­flict with oth­ers who make sim­i­lar claims based on dif­fer­ent sacred truths. Con­tinue read­ing Liv­ing Peace­fully with One Another in the Mid­dle East