Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Cold Peace

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Critical Peace Education

  • 1068 Accesses

Abstract

In this chapter, “The Cold Peace,” Michael A. Peters and James Thayer critique prevailing notions of “peace” and its application to issues of social justice and citizenship as it underlies peace education and peace studies emphasizing how issues of conflict and security for the twenty-first century are embedded within a post-national and post-liberal framework that shifts our understanding of peace, security, and risk toward a post-Cold War and post-Cold Peace context. This displacement of the liberal nation-state and citizen is more accurately articulated by the neoliberal state and mobilized through a disciplined citizen-subject. In this setting, transnational activity, corporations, and governance have reinstated a new highly centralized global form of governance and governmentality that has positioned the nation-state as one of the multiple governing actors. Moreover, this has placed issues of peace and security as issues of what can and cannot be governed. As such, our critical understanding of peace and conflict must be remade and reinstituted. Peters and Thayer examine the concept of “Crimes against Peace” and the way it was formulated after Nuremberg before discussing neoconservatism and the “new American century,” the globalization of violence, and the postmodernization of peace and the neoliberalization of security. These features constitute the new liberal montage that is recalibrating the concept of peace and peace education in the era of globalization.

There is no document of civilization that is not

simultaneously a document of barbarism.

– Walter Benjamin

All we are saying is give peace a chance.

– John Lennon

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Cold War and Cold Peace (Monday, October 20, 1952). Reference June 16, 2009: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,817112,00.html

  2. 2.

    See Aquinas “Of War,” The Summa Theologica (http://ethics.acusd.edu/Books/Texts/Aquinas/JustWar.html)

  3. 3.

    Earlier drafts were contained in Control Council Law No. 10, Punishment of Persons Guilty of War Crimes, Crimes Against Peace and Against Humanity, December 20, 1945, 3 Official Gazette Control Council for Germany 50–55 (1946) based on the so-called London Agreement of 8 August 1945, which served to establish a uniform legal basis in Germany for the prosecution of war criminals and other similar offenders, other than those dealt with by the International Military Tribunal.

  4. 4.

    See Death Tolls for the Man-made Megadeaths of the Twentieth Century at http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstatx.htm; see also Peiro Scaruffi’s “Wars and Genocides of the 20th Century” at http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/massacre.html

  5. 5.

    See http://pbpu.unlb.org/pbps/Library/Capstone_Doctrine_ENG.pdf

  6. 6.

    http://www.csis-scrs.gc.ca/prrts/index-eng.asp

  7. 7.

    The full list of signatories are Elliott Abrams, Gary Bauer, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Eliot A. Cohen, Midge Decter, Paula Dobriansky, Steve Forbes, Aaron Friedberg, Francis Fukuyama, Frank Gaffney, Fred C. Ikle, Donald Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis Libby, Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle, Peter W. Rodman, Stephen P. Rosen, Henry S. Rowen, Donald Rumsfeld, Vin Weber, George Weigel, and Paul Wolfowitz.

  8. 8.

    http://www.cfr.org/publication/16826/losing_the_cold_peace.html

References

  • Barnett, J. (2008). Peace and development: Towards a new synthesis. Journal of Peace Research, 45(1), 75–89.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Castells, M. (2001). Identity and change in the network society: Conversation with Manuel Castells’ at http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Castells/castells-con0.html

  • Cobbs, E. (1996). Decolonization, the cold war, and the foreign policy of the peace corps. Diplomatic History, 20(1), 79–105.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cobbs, E. (1998). All you need is love: The peace corps and the spirit of the 1960s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Danilovic, V., & Clare, J. (2007, April). The Kantian liberal peace (revisited). American Journal of Political Science, 51(2), 397–414.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davidson, A. I. (2003). “Introduction” to Foucault, M. Michel Foucault: “Society must be defended.” Lectures at the Collège de France 1975–1976. Trans. David Macey. Edited by Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana. General Editors, François Ewald and Alessandro Fontana; English Series Editor, Arnold I. Davidson (pp. xv–xxiii). New York: Picador.

    Google Scholar 

  • de Soysa, I. (2000). The resource curse: Are civil wars driven by rapacity or paucity? In M. Berdal & D. Malone (Eds.), Greed and grievance: Economic agendas and civil wars (pp. 113–136). Boulder: Lynne Rienner.

    Google Scholar 

  • Demenchonok, E. (2009). Philosophy after Horoshima. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Esty, D., Goldstone, J., Gurr, T., Harff, B., Levy, M., Dabelko, G., Surko, P., & Unger, A. (1999). State failure task force report: Phase II findings. Environmental Change and Security Project Report, 5, 49–72.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fearon, J., & Laitin, D. (2003). Ethnicity, insurgency, and civil war. American Political Science Review, 97(1), 75–90.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (2003). Michel Foucault: “Society must be defended.” Lectures at the Collège de France 1975–1976. Trans. David Macey. Edited by Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana. General Editors, François Ewald and Alessandro Fontana; English Series Editor, Arnold I. Davidson. New York: Picador.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fukuyama. (1992). The end of history and the last man. Harmonsworth: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, peace, and peace research. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), 167–191.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Galtung, J. (1989). Peace and development in the Pacific hemisphere. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Institute for Peace.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gartzke, E. (2007). The capitalist peace. American Journal of Political Science, 51(1), 166–191.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gartzke, E., & Li, Q. (2003). War, peace, and the invisible hand: Positive political externalities of economic globalization. International Studies Quarterly, 47(4), 561–586.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goldstein, A. (2008). On the internal border: Colonial difference, the cold war, and the locations of “underdevelopment”. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 50(1), 26–56.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hegre, H., Ellingsen, T., Gates, S., & Gleditsch, N. P. (2001). Toward a democratic civil peace? Democracy, political change, and civil war, 1816–1992. American Political Science Review, 95(1), 33–48.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hettne, B. (1983). Peace and development: Contradictions and compatibilities. Journal of Peace Research, 20(4), 329–342.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Höffe, O. (2006). Kant’s cosmopolitan theory of law and peace (A. Newton, Trans.). New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ICDSI (Independent Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues). (1982). Common security: A blueprint for survival. New York: Simon and Schuster.

    Google Scholar 

  • ICIDI (Independent Commission on International Development Issues). (1983). Common crisis north–south: Cooperation for world recovery. London: Pan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kvernbekk, T., Simpson, H., & Peters, M. A. (Eds.). (2008). Military pedagogies and why they matter. Rotterdam/Taipei: Sense Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Negri, A., & Hardt, M. (2000). Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peters, M. A. (2004). War as globalisation and globalisation as war: The ‘Education’ of the Iraqi people. In M. A. Peters (Ed.), Education, globalization and the state in the age of terrorism. Lanham/Oxford: Paradigm Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pugh, M. (2005). The political economy of peace building: A critical theory perspective. International Journal of Peace Studies, 10(2, Autumn-Winter), 23–42.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schiller, D. (2008) How to think about information. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sen, A. (1999). Development as freedom. New York: Anchor.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sørensen, G. (1985). Peace and development: Looking for the right track. Journal of Peace Research, 22(1), 69–77.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Surko, P. T., & Unger, Alan N. (1999). State failure task force report: Phase II findings. Environmental Change and Security Project Report, 5, 49–72.

    Google Scholar 

  • Trifonas, P., & Peters, M. A. (Eds.). (2005). Deconstructing Derrida: Tasks for the new humanities. New York: Palgrave.

    Google Scholar 

  • U.S. Government Accountability Office. (2006). Human trafficking. Report to the Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary and the Chairman, Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives at www.gao.gov/new.items/d06825.pdf

  • Weede, E. (1996). Economic development, social order, and world politics. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education, University of Illinois, Champaign, IL, USA

    Michael A. Peters

  2. Policy, Cultural and Social Studies in Education, University of Waikato, 3105, Hamilton, 3240, New Zealand

    Michael A. Peters

  3. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA

    James Thayer

Authors
  1. Michael A. Peters
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. James Thayer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael A. Peters .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ontario Institute for Studies in, Education (OISE), University of Toronto, Bloor Str. West 252, Toronto, M5S 1V6, Ontario, Canada

    Peter Pericles Trifonas

  2. Ontario Institute for Studies in, Education (OISE), University of Toronto, Bloor Str. West 252, Toronto, M5S 1V6, Ontario, Canada

    Bryan Wright

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Peters, M.A., Thayer, J. (2012). The Cold Peace. In: Trifonas, P., Wright, B. (eds) Critical Peace Education. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3945-3_2

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation