PREFACE
Much has been written about WAR too little research has been made about creating PEACE. On Amazon.com you will find over 3 Million results when searching for “war”, less than half when searching for “peace”. Most political and business leaders around the world know about “Art Of War” little is known how to actually create and maintain peace. The question on how to create peace fascinated me for many years and motivated me to collect my learning and thinking. The first time I was confronted with the war was around 1957 walking at the age of 5 with my parents through post war ruins in Stuttgart, questioning why so many buildings have been destroyed and wondering the time it may take to re-build an entire nation. At the age of 9, I was again seriously confronted with war and peace during the Cuba crisis. I have no idea why this interested my so much more than my friends – it just went that way. And so this book is the result of about a life time of all kinds of levels of research and wondering.
DEFINITION
Peace exists when different kind of people consent to not harm each other and respect each others different opinion and action. It requires that people do not dominate others or enforce actions against their will unless it is regulated in the law of the society they live in. A peaceful government lets citizens go if they no longer agree with the government’s action and rule settings.
STRUCTURE
Thinking about how to “create” but more importantly maintain and sustain peace, I iterated through countless ideas, models and possibilities. But as a business person that I have grown into, I was never even moderately excited about possible solutions I came up with or what I learned from others about making peace. As an entrepreneur, turning an idea into a large and global business, I learned that if what I offer has no immediate benefit, or no positive long term impact it would be hard to sell it. And more importantly that even if I give such a product away for free, it would not fly if request my audience to make massive changes to their behavior. And exactly that – is what all peace suggestions do: “Ask us to change our behavior with no immediate benefit and no long term impact, assuming we will not go to war anymore anyway.” So how on earth do we go about something that roughly 99% of the population wants, but is not finding a way to make it happen. However the 1% or less that actually enjoy creating war, either to satisfy their ill minded power thirst, or a psychic idea of world domination, or yet another war to end all wars or what ever, have it much easier. They create fear by telling people some nation will take everything away, or start a war, or whatever and in no time a conflict was created. Since over 2,000 years this mechanism of creating a purpose for war works brilliantly. And whether it was the war at the Teutoburg Forrest in the year 9 A.D. during the era of the Roman Empire or the Vietnam War or almost whiping out Irac in recent years in the name of world piece – the patterns remains the same. The other concept of destabilization is another and even more subtle technique of psychic political and military strategists to let “others” do the war for them. Terrorists are super easy to hire and in particular when the come from a different country and a different religion, it is much harder to figure out who is actually behind those organizations. However igniting a war and then let those who hate the war still go to war because they hate to loose what they have achieved even more is easy. Creating a purpose for a war is still today a piece of cake – while creating a purpose for peace as probably not even been tried.
Creating a purpose for a war is still today a piece of cake – while creating a purpose for peace as probably not even been tried.
1) Motivation, Purpose & Risks
While we all seem to want peace without even thinking about a reason – it sounds like it comes from a greedy mind, when saying we need a robust purpose for ‘creating’ a long term peaceful state. Again, 99% or more do want peace. But for a reason they do fall for war when 1% or most likely much less stimulate a war,
No nation ever won by creating or stimulating war – they always lost throughout documented history. The current state, the US is in, is a result not from officially making war, but their countless involvements in wars all over the world and disengagement from putting their capital in education, research and development.
In my book I will explore more profound details about motivation, a sustainable purpose and the risks that go along with peace and war,
2) Foreign Engagement & World Domination
After all I see a need for radical disengagement of foreign involvement and relinquishing from world domination. What is right for us maybe wrong for others. One of the biggest problems is the time differences in which our respective cultures have involved. We would absolutely not agree with things our ancestors did just a few hundred years ago. But do we have the right to manipulate and shortcut the evolution of a different society by telling them what we experienced and force them how they should change their behavior immediately?
We will explore many different options and eye opening scenarios.
The most excessive form of foreign engagement is obviously world domination. And also here some people believe because they have good experience how their society works, that everybody should live that way and even hope that would create world piece. Obviously it is simply another model of dictatorship – but we are going to learn that most dictators are wholeheartedly believe that what they do and how they do it is best for all.
3) Relentless Weapon Export Restrictions
Most of the recent wars have been “built up” by delivering the weapons, weapon components or even just the know how to build those weapons by other nations. This is so far the most perverse form of war as the country in war has not even developed their weapon themselves but use weapons from a different society, possibly whipping out an enemy in no time and making the delivering country famous for their weapons. The number of lives that cost seem to make no difference to the delivering country. And the most advanced countries today are obviously the ones that deliver to most other countries. Would we stop that export without any exceptions – many of the countries at war today would not even have the guts to start a war.
4) Destabilization & Conspiracy
Destabilizing a region or foreign country is today’s most used technique to conduct war among developed countries. Those actions may even be directed to otherwise alliances just to keep the economic advantage of a country in balance. Even though it doesn’t seem like a war – it must be considered unethical aggression and therefor war.
There are many real life scenarios right now that demonstrates this newer version of war – even though there has been wars like that for at least 1,600 years by organizations which many consider untouchable.
5) Complete Country Transparency
This is probably by far the hardest but also the most strategic request to create peace. If a country would be completely transparent about their actions – but most important their financials it would become extremely hard to setup a war whether it is a direct regression or an indirectly stimulated aggression through destabilization actions or all kind of other propaganda – which always cost money.
A little less than 100 years ago a company did what they thought is right. Sometimes more sometimes less at the borderline of legal actions. Most of the time hard to tell and almost never clearly identifiable. After the big crash – the idea was born, that public companies have to transparently report what they are doing, how they make money and what they do with the money. Imagine we do the same with the Governments that take our money like an investor – trusting that the government does what they say the do and what they are supposed to do with that money.
Billions of Euro could no longer be pumped in dubious connections to foreign groups in order to help them fight a war the “investor” would never allow to support. The in-transparency of a country is the real root cause for war. Here is the place where a war gets instigated. If truly 99.x % of humans want peace, there is absolutely no reason that there can be a war – what so ever, if they could intervene the dark side of an ill minded part of a government.
6) Political Education
All the previous goals cannot be achieved with a population that is kept politically not educated. The degree of education is obviously something that can be debated and also the way to educate the population. Today, in almost every country political education is made right from the beginning at school something that is dry, very boring and in the end the growing kids can’t change anyway. The rest is history – a population that has no big interest in politics not knowing that in the end they are the people who execute any given war on earth.
Donovan’s song “Universal Soldier” couldn’t explain better who actually does the war and will kill tomorrow again in the name of whatever you want.
7) Autonomy & Dependency
An interesting conflict countries get into is when they thrive for independence. A very natural behavior – yet all too often seen as a sign of getting ready for war and whenever a study about war is read, independence is seen one of the key signals. Interestingly enough Switzerland is thriving for independence for over 100 years and now the country with one of the longest peace cycles.
However if countries are so interwoven with others and dependent of each other’s friendship, trade, resources and so forth it is very obvious that ware is much less likely. Assuming all countries on earth would one way or the other be completely dependent on others, the risk of war would indeed be significantly lower. Yet there comes another risk in – and that is either: again seeking a way out of the dependency – or flipping it on its head and go for world domination.
8) Transition & Defense Strategies
While a completely peaceful world does not need any defense strategy anymore, at least for now we need to allow one. So we will need a peaceful defense strategy – like it exists in most European countries and yet a transition strategy to get off of the major risks of war which include (1) lack of a purpose (2) too much foreign engagement, (3) stooping the weapons export, (4) refraining from destabilization acts and most importantly (5) shift from a rather in transparent government to a completely open country leadership, in parallel with a significant improvement of political education.
SUMMARY
the 99.X percent of humans are in the drivers seat. At least in more or less democratic nations they chose the government. And only and exclusively that government is the group that is empowered to make war or indirectly instigate war. All others are called criminals. If the population does not feel educated enough to weigh in – they at least need to understand that the lack of education and the lack of intervention is causing the war – not the ‘opinion’ of a government. The Brexit has clearly demonstrated how powerful the vice of a nation is. The UK population decided to disengage from Europe and it happens. If that decision however was stimulated by underground opinions and opinion makers that infiltrated the country – the learning is even more so: Get educated before you make a decision.
My new book “Peace By Purpose” is not ready yet – keep visiting and see when we will publish it.