ISSUE 46: JUNE-AUGUST 2007
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COMMENT
The war in Iraq and the culture of peace
By Rodrigo Tavares
In his singular subtlety, the existentialist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche observed that “every extension of knowledge arises from making the unconscious the conscious”. The current era is typified by the preponderance of the unconscious in what the real extension of armed conflicts is.
In a world dominated by information wars, the conflict in Iraq has been prioritized by policy-makers and exhaustingly disseminated in the media. It is a fact that the figures are unequivocally impressive. Since the invasion in March 2003, the number of deaths caused by the conflict has risen above 600,000 according to the British journal The Lancet. Additionally, according to official Pentagon statistics, the number of American soldiers killed is approximately 3,300. The death toll among private soldiers (the second largest army after the USA) remains strategically confidential. Recently, a bold report released by the International Committee of the Red Cross, termed the suffering inflicted on the Iraqis as “unbearable” and “unacceptable”.
These facts are remarkable and should be underscored. However, it is important to transcend the tragedy of this war and take notice of a fundamental feature: the number of armed conflicts has been decreasing steadily since the end of the Cold War.
According to new data from Uppsala University in Sweden (to be released soon), in 1991, there were 51 armed conflicts; last year the number decreased to 32. Following this pattern, over the last three years no inter-state armed conflict has been waged, and, in 2006, the number of wars (defined as armed conflicts with over 1,000 battle-related deaths/year) was five, the lowest ever (compared to 18 wars in 1991).
Before his farewell as UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan underlined that the international community should replace the culture of reaction by a culture of prevention of armed conflicts and put forward a fairly inventive strategy to attain that goal (Progress Report on the Prevention of Armed Conflict, 2006). With the same goal, the majority of international governmental organizations – the European Union, the Organization of American States, all African regional and sub-regional organizations – are equipping themselves with organizational, financial and legal mechanisms to prevent the outbreak of armed conflicts.
Donor countries, led by Sweden and Norway, are adopting strategic plans to prevent conflicts through development aid. The aim is to overcome the hiatus between rhetoric and reality by reinforcing the instruments available to the international community in this area (early warning mechanisms, negotiation, inquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, cooperation aid, democratization, economic welfare, etc.).
The culture of peace should become a commanding principle in politics and media. To do otherwise would be an unconscious act. As Nietzsche has pointed out “since everything is subject to interpretation, what prevails in a certain moment is a consequence of power and not necessarily of truth.”
Rodrigo Tavares is a research fellow at UNU Centre for Comparative Regional Integration Studies (UNU-CRIS). This commentary was first published in the Portuguese newsmagazine Visão. These are his personal views.
© 2007 United Nations University