Peace

6. Civic Knowledge and Skills

"Peace" is the end state that most peacemakers, peacekeepers, and peacebuilders would likely say they are working toward, but what, exactly "peace" means is not at all clear. As Milton Rinehart made clear in his BI essay, "peace" is defined in many different ways. Of all the alternatives that he listed, he didn't even note the distinction that is most often used now: the difference between "negative peace," which is simply the absence of violence or war, and "positive peace," which is much broader than that. This distinction was first proposed by Norwegian peace scholar Johang Galtung.

Negative peace is defined by the absence of war and violence, and positive peace, is defined by a more lasting peace, built on sustainable investments in economic development and institutions as well as the societal attitudes that foster peace.

Kenneth Boulding, a contemporary of Galtung's added the concept of "stable peace," which he defined as "a situation in which the probability of war is so small that it does not really enter into the calculations of any of the people involved." Although he used this term, most often, to refer to international relations, he pointed out that it can be used at any level of social organization, from families on up.

As Maire Dugan explained in her BI essay Stable Peace

On an international level, Alexander George offers a slightly more specific definition: "Stable peace is a relationship between two states in which neither side considers employing force or even making a threat of force, in any dispute between them. Deterrence and compellence backed by threats of military force are simply excluded as instruments of policy."[4] George contrasts stable peace with his two other categories of peace. "Precarious peace" is a state of acute conflict which means "little more than a temporary absence of armed conflict."[5] "Conditional peace" is a relationship in which general deterrence plays a key role, although the possibility of stronger threats or even actual violence is maintained for crisis situations.

Unfortunately, the confusion over what the word means has led many, particularly diplomats and policy makers, to abandon the concept, arguing that it is too ephemeral or "touchy-feelie" to be a concept of value. Others, such as Emma Addams, Co-Director of Mormon Women for Ethical Government argues that the word is too valuable to dismiss, though it must be explained (or as she puts, "rehabilitated."

I think it's one of those things that, when you're doing this work, you kind of have to put a stake in the ground on words sometimes because words change as different people interpret them, or sometimes they become words that you can no longer use. And "peace" is one that we've kind of put a stake in the ground on. But I think at the same time, we've also done the work to rehabilitate the word a bit within our community, within our membership. I think sometimes there's an initial reaction that since we're peacemakers, that must mean that we're all soft and quiet, and that we are nice, that we just let people do what they want to do, and that's being nice. And so we've really done the hard work of defining what peacemaking is in a much more robust and real way. And then we hold ourselves to those standards as we do our work.

So when I say "rehabilitate", it's not just being nice. It's not just being sweet. In fact, it is oftentimes seeing a conflict, whether it be one that you actually see or one that you can see on the Internet, and actually going directly into that conflict and then doing the hard work of helping to resolve it or mitigate harm. That's the opposite of soft. That requires a stiff spine and requires a commitment that once developed and practiced, it becomes a muscle that you can use. I would argue that that's exactly what we need our citizens to be doing right now. So it's much more beyond the soft.