Abstract
The sudden appearance of the peace movements, in particular in Western Europe and the United States, has prompted a reconsideration of alternatives to the official security policy. While debates about security policy have filled libraries in recent decades, public attention has been very slight. Proposals put forward by individuals or groups have never been debated seriously and, despite their merits, they have always remained merely intellectual exercises. The peace movements changed all this almost overnight, not so much because their proposals had new and exciting merits, but because they seemed to embody political power. It is political power that counts; in politics power always dominates arguments or rationality.
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Notes
For example: Karl Deutsch, The analysis of international relations, Englewood Cliffs, NY, Prentice-Hall 2nd edn, 1978 (1st edn, 1968!), pp. 154–62;
Anatol Rapoport, Strategy and Conscience, first edition 1964, New York, Harper & Row;
Philip Green, Deadly Logic: the Theory of Nuclear Deterrence, Ohio State University, 1966;
Dieter Senghaas, Abschreckung and Frieden, Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Frankfurt a/Main, 1969.
An excellent history of the development of strategy is Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, London, Macmillan Press, 1981.
See President Reagan’s speech of 23 March 1983 on Ballistic Missile Defence commonly known as ‘Star Wars Speech’, Survival, May—June 1983, pp. 129–30.
In scientific circles, however, there is severe scepticism about the whole idea. For an introduction to the subject, see Herbert Scoville Jr. and Kosta Tsipis, Can Space Remain a Peaceful Environment?, Occasional Paper, Muscatine, Iowa, The Stanley Foundation, 1978.
Weapons have become symbols. See Wolfgang Panofsky, ‘La Science, la Technologie et l’Accumulation des Armements’ in Pierre Lellouche (ed.), La Science et le Désarmement, Paris, Institut Français des Relations Internationales, 1981, pp. 47–65.
Der Stern, no. 9, 19 Feb. 1981, p. 33, reprinted in Dieter S. Lutz, Weltkrieg wider Willen, Hamburg, Rowohlt-Aktuell, 1981, p. 334.
For example: George Kennan, ‘A proposal for international disarmament’ in H.W. Tromp and G. LaRocque (eds.), Nuclear War in Europe, Groningen, University Press, 1981;
Henry Kissinger, NATO, the Next Thirty Years: Remarks on the NATO-Conference, 1 Sept. 1979, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1979, as well as ‘A new Approach to Arms Control’, Time, 21 Mar., 1983, pp. 18–20;
Robert McNamara, ‘What the U.S. can do’ in Newsweek, 5 Dec., 1983.
Robert Scheer, With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush & Nuclear War, New York, Random House, 1982, p. 219.
Particularly relevant here is H.W. Tromp, Political Attitudes and Political Behaviour — Decision-Making In Crisis, Polemological Institute, Groningen, 1976 (in Dutch)
C.E. Osgood, An Alternative to War or Surrender, Urbana 1962
and Amitai Etzioni, ‘The Kennedy Experiment’, in Western Political Quarterly, 1967, pp. 161–380. Osgood’s ideas on Grit (abbreviation of Gradual Reciprocated Initiatives in Tension Reduction) have been republished several times;
see for example A. Newcombe (ed.), Peace Research Review, vol. 8 (1979), nos. 1, 2.
The extensive debate in the philosophy of science as well as the sociology of science is relevant here, and it has its extensions in the paradigm-discussion on international relations, Some significant references are: Thomas S, Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, 2nd edn., 1972;
Robert K. Merton, The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations, Chicago, 1973;
M.J. Mulkay, The Social Process of Innovation — a Study in the Sociology of Science, London, 1972;
A. Lijphart, ‘International Relations Theory: Grand Debates and Lesser Debates’, International Social Science Journal, vol. 26, no. 1, 1974;
Johan Galtung, Towards a definition of peace-research, UNESCO, Peace Research Trend Report and World Directory, Reports and Papers in the Social Sciences, no. 43, 1979;
Hylke Tromp, ‘Changing Perspectives in Peace Research’, in UNESCO Yearbook on Peace and Conflict Studies 1980, Paris, UNESCO, 1981.
There is however an increasing interest. For an introduction to the subject: J. Sassoon, ‘Interdependence in the international system: a survey of the literature’, in Lo Spettatore Internazionale, 1981, no. 1, pp. 29–55. The leading journal in this field is International Organisation, University of Wisconsin Press.
See Jozef Goldblat, Arms Control Agreements, London, Taylor & Francis, 1983, in particular pp. 282–4 about these reservations.
For an excellent review and summary of such proposals: Sverre Lodgaard and Marek Thee (eds), Nuclear Disengagement in Europe, SIPRI, London & New York, Taylor & Francis, 1983.
In addition, see Barry M. Blechman and Mark R. Moore, ‘A Nuclear Weapon Free Zone in Europe’, Scientific American, April, 1983, and Common Security — a Programme for Disarmament (The report of the so-called Palme Commission), London, Pan books, 1982.
C.F. von Weizsäcker (ed.), Kriegsfolgen und Kriegsverhütung, Carl Hanser Verlag, 3rd edn., 1971, and later books of the group who undertook this study
such as Horst Ahfeld, Verteidigung und Frieden — Politik mit militärischen Mitteln, and Emil Spannochi & Guy Brossolet, Verteidigung ohne Schlacht, Munich, Carl Hanser Verlag, 1976;
Horst Mendershausen, Inoffensive Deterrence, Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, 1974;
B.V.A. Rtiling ‘Defensieve afschrikkingsstellingen’, in Transaktie, 1978/2. See also his ‘Feasibility of Inoffensive Deterrence’, Bulletin of Peace Proposals, 1978/4. These titles are only examples: Riling has published extensively on the subject in Dutch. I mention these titles only to indicate that the idea is not as young and innovating as it sounds in current public debates.
The most famous article here is by Colin Gray and Keith Payne, ‘Victory is Possible’, Foreign Policy, no. 39 (Summer 1980).
A few titles from the extensive literature on the subject: Adam Roberts (ed.), The Strategy of Civilian Defence — Non-violent Resistance to Aggression, London, Faber & Faber, 1967;
Johan Galtung, ‘Non-military Defence’, in Essays in Peace Research, vol. II, Christian Ejlers, Copenhagen, 1976;
Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, Boston, Porter Sargent, 1973;
Hylke Tromp, Sociale Verdediging, XENO, Groningen, 1981.
Resulting in several studies by Adam Roberts for the Swedish Government, such as Total Defence and Civilian Resistance: Problems of Sweden’s Security Policy, Stockholm 1972;
in a study by Anders Boserup and Andrew Mack written for the Danish government: War without weapons, London, 1974; and finally in still continuing discussions and several ongoing research projects in the Netherlands, commissioned by the government since 1976.
According to several studies, the amount of conventional warfare is not to be underestimated: the average is ten to eleven wars every year, and since 1945, on each day almost three conventional wars were going on. The use of violence for political purposes is one of the facts of life: and the spectre of this type of violence ranges much further than ‘conventional war’ as defined by criteria as death-toll (usually at least 1000) and participation of regular armies. The real amount of political violence is, in fact, still a matter of guessing: studies dealing with this problem normally confine themselves to violence defined according to criteria as mentioned above. The consequences are sometimes confusing. In one of the most quoted studies on warfare since 1945, nothing is to be found on — for example — the mass-murder in Indonesia following the 1965 coup d’état (estimated death-toll 300 000–600 000) nor do the criteria permit to take into account serious political conflicts as the Warsaw-Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Francis Beer (1982) estimates 3500 known major wars in history; more than 1250 of these were fought in Europe. Moreover, he counts at least 14 000 ‘incidents of world major and minor violence’ since 3600 B.C., killing one billion people, 800 million of them in Europe. In 1983, at least 40 armed conflicts were being fought; according to a report of the Center for Defense Information (Washington) in the last three years, six new wars have started while only two have ended, more than 4 million people have been engaged in combat and 54 of the world’s nations are involved in these wars. Francis A. Beer, How much war in history: definitions, estimates, extrapolations and trends, Beverly Hills, Sage Professional Papers in International Studies, vol. 3, 1974;
Francis Beer, Peace Against War: The Ecology of International Violence, San Francisco, W.H. Freeman, 1981; Istvan Kende, ‘Wars of Ten Years: 1967–1976’, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 227–41;
John Keegan (ed.), War in Peace: an Analysis of Warfare Since 1945, London, Orbis, 1981.
The idea is not at all new of course, and was mentioned as a solution to the problem of war already before the World War I. For the same reason, it may be argued that it is a ‘great illusion’: there was increasing interdependence between the states who started and fought the World War I, and this interdependence increased further in the period before the World War II. Nevertheless, these wars took place. Still, the idea that increasing interdependence may finally change the methods of conflict resolution qualitatively, in the direction of nonviolence, may be a sound one. There are several reasons why increasing interdependence did not prevent the world wars, or even other wars. At first glance it may be that a certain, until now unknown, level of interdependence must be reached before such a qualitative change occurs, and this has probably happened now in western Europe, where the prospect of war has declined to zero since 1945 whilst interdependence and integration have grown. Moreover, increasing interdependence does not decrease conflicts: probably it results in even more conflicts, which may escalate to armed conflict. Finally, one has to take into account that there is always a difference between reality and the perception of reality. In reality, waging war to win a conflict may be a disastrous decision, but in the perception of the political decision-makers it may still be a worthwhile solution to their problems. Of the several studies which could be mentioned here I refer to only two: Robert O. Keohane & Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence — World Politics in Transition, Boston/Toronto, 1977;
James N. Rosenau, The Study of Global Interdependence. Essays on the Internationalisation of World Affairs, London, 1980.
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Tromp, H. (1985). Alternatives to Current Security Policy and the Peace Movements. In: van den Dungen, P. (eds) West European Pacifism and the Strategy for Peace. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07126-5_5
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