Introduction.

Mao Zedong and his theorists used to talk about “The People’s War” as being a new variety of warfare, in which people matter more than technology. It was part of the ideology of the new China, which had plenty of people, but had a lot of catching up to do on technology. The theory was not entirely followed in Mao’s China, which did acquire nuclear weapons and joined the nuclear powers; but there remained an emphasis on guerrilla warfare, in which the people fighting in their own homeland can defeat a foreign invader wielding modern weapons. Vietnam was an example of it, as was Afghanistan. Strategic thinkers have always stressed that home defenders have an advantage over outside invaders, both for logistics-supply reasons and for morale reasons. So maybe this emphasis was not so new with Mao, but it certainly remains relevant even in our high technology age.

I will argue in this paper that the emphasis on people over technology is just as applicable to peace as it is to war. In the light of the recent examples of massive People Power, starting in the Philippines, running into a brick wall (hopefully temporary) in Tiananmen Square, and then rapidly transforming Central and Eastern Europe in a country-to-country chain reaction, we certainly have to believe in its reality and vigour. If people power can be successfully applied to political transformation, how can it be similarly applied to promoting and securing peace, in the narrower sense of preventing war?

Four ways of doing this will be described below. These four do not necessarily exhaust all the possibilities, but they will indicate the type of activity or institution that is needed. There is already a large literature available on some of these possibilities; all that is done in this brief paper is to tie them together under a common heading.

Citizen Exchanges — for reducing enemy images and building friendship across national borders.

The threat of war has two components: capability and intent. To lower the capability to make war, we want to promote disarmament; to lower hostile intent, we have to remove or transform enemy images. While disarmament is partly a technical problem, the lowering of hostility is primarily a psychological problem. (Both are to a large extent political problems as well.)

Contacts between citizens of two hostile countries can have a beneficial effect in decreasing hostility perceptions. It does not, of course, resolve any substantive conflicts that may exist between the two countries, but it improves the climate in which such conflict resolution can be carried out, whether by direct negotiations or a third-party process.

Tourism provides superficial contacts, but has marginal benefits if visitors are confined to hotels and other enclaves, without really entering the host-country culture. It might even be harmful if the visitors behave badly toward the local environment or culture, or are contemptuous of it or condescending. Home-stays have long been recommended as much to be preferred for cultivating deeper contacts. There are excellent organizations of long standing which promote home-stays; among them Servas and Experiment for International Living.

Even better might be collaboration on common projects, as promoted, for example, by Canada World Youth. Cooperating toward common goals is known to reverse enemy images, especially if superordinate goals are involved (goals which each side cannot reach alone, and which are of vital importance to both). This proposition is supported by sociological experiments in boys’ camps, performed by Muzafer Sherif et al. (Robber’s Cave experiment.)

Other variations on this theme are student exchanges, now widely practiced in many parts of the world. Sometimes there are difficulties: there have been incidents of racist riots against African students in the Soviet Union many years ago, and more recently in China. It all depends on how the contacts are managed. Contact alone is not a panacea: the idea that if we get to know someone better, we will like them more, is not always true; we may get to like them less if we get to know them better. That happens in social contacts in our own localities; we do not automatically like everyone we meet. There is no reason why this would not also apply in cross-cultural contacts. Also, real rivalries and competition may arise; e.g. over foreign male students going out with local women. Yet, the hope is that, in most cases, we will recognize the common humanity of visitor and host across the cultural and/or ideological barriers, and at least refrain from seeing each other as devils or subhumans.

Cross-cultural contact is actually so common now that it extends naturally far beyond these deliberate attempts. Transnational business firms send experts abroad, and exchange personnel freely over their far-flung subsidiaries. The U.S. Peace Corps, Canada’s CUSO, and the equivalents in other countries send young people to developing countries, partly to help the host countries and partly for the young people’s own education, to acquire knowledge which they can then spread by speaking to groups at home after they return. Many people travel, for many reasons. Some have family members abroad. The point is that nations are no longer isolated boxes with impermeable walls, if they ever were. Those walls are very leaky now, as travel opportunities increase. The world is in an active process of unification, whether we like it or not. I would argue that for peace purposes this is beneficial on the whole, even if some of the contacts are exploitative. For the oppressed are uniting across frontiers as well as the oppressors.

Perhaps we now need to improve the quality of the contacts more than their quantity. Allport stipulated that four conditions should be satisfied if cultural exchange is to be successful: Equal status (no patronizing attitude of “we will teach you better ways”), positive sanction (official approval, not necessarily by government, but by some authority like the church or a university), common goals (on which comment has already been made), and interdependence (mutual need of each other). Careful attention to these simple requirements would improve the effectiveness of cultural exchanges in promoting international peace.

The Hostage Plan — for confidence building and reassurance of peaceful intentions.

This plan has been proposed several times by different writers, most recently by Kenneth Smail. The basic idea is to place the children or relatives of national political and military leaders in the cities of the opposite country. This would presumably decrease the likelihood of the leaders ordering their military forces to bomb each other’s cities. The plan was designed for the prevention of nuclear war between the superpowers, but could be adapted to other conflict situations, such as regional conflicts in which conventional air raids or land or naval bombardment may be threatening. The presence of the “hostages” in the cities should be on a rotating basis, not permanent, so that they would remain vividly valuable to their country of origin.

The hostages could be simultaneously good-will ambassadors, thus overlapping with the functions of cultural exchanges. However, they should never act as spies; provisions should be made specifically to prevent this. If spying must take place, it must be done by other persons, so as not to confuse the roles. After they have stayed abroad for perhaps 5 years, the hostages would be replaced by others of similar status (i.e. close relatives of leaders).

It might be said that the city populations as a whole are already hostages to each other in the nuclear deterrence situation, especially in its MAD variant (Assured Mutual Destruction). However, a specific hostage exchange might dramatize the situation sufficiently to reinforce the inhibitions. It is a psychologically based plan, not one deriving from military logic.

Citizen Reporting – for arms control verification.

Arms control verification is normally a highly technological subject. Locations of missile silos are pin-pointed by satellites equipped with sensors; underground nuclear explosions are monitored by seismographic arrays; manufacture of chemical weapons might be detected by downstream or downwind microanalysis of chemical effluents or gas emissions. In no way would I want to devalue such methods, or the mixed (people plus machine) methods used in on-site inspection, which is now coming into operation under several new treaties. However, some weapons detection or identification (either their deployment or their manufacture) presents technical problems, and it would be useful to be able to supplement the current methods by something new.

This new addition I call “citizen reporting”; it used to be called “inspection by the people”; it might also be called “whistle-blowing”. As the names indicate, it depends on the people, and therefore forms part of the “people’s peace” system that is being described here. I have described this method in a recent 8-page article, which was presented as a paper to the Canadian Peace Research and Education Association in June 1988, and therefore I can afford to be brief here. (Copies of the previous paper are available.)

The inspection agency would benefit from information provided by at least a few of the many people who would have to be employed in any large-scale illegal weapons production or deployment. Reporting would be encouraged by (a) making it legitimate rather than treasonable to report violations by one’s own government, and (b) protecting the anonymity of the whistleblower in case the offending government threatened retaliation.

The first aim (legitimacy) would be provided by requiring the national leader of every state acceding to the arms control treaty to proclaim publicly and solemnly that it is the duty of every citizen to report any suspected violation to the inspectors. If their own leader said so, citizens would be much more willing to report.

The second aim (protection) could be provided by procedures such as all employees of sensitive plants being required periodically to deposit a piece of paper in ballot boxes; most would be blank, but some might contain messages pointing out irregularities and suspicions. The inspectors would follow up messages that seemed serious, discarding the crank messages. A second level of protection to informers could be provided by U.N. embassies in every major centre offering asylum to persons persecuted by their company or government for reporting, if their action had somehow been disclosed.

Civil Disobedience — for resistance against militarism and injustice.

There is already a vast literature on non-violent civil disobedience by Gandhian or related methods; I will mention only Gene Sharp as a prominent writer in the field. The instances of “people power” that we have seen recently fall mainly in this category.

If conflicts (about injustice or otherwise) are to be resolved without violence, they may nevertheless still require struggle. The ideal situation would exist if conflicts could always be decided on the merits of the case, by some impartial judge or arbitrator. This is not always possible, either because no authoritative third party is available (no one has come forward to serve in this capacity, or those who have offered their services are not accepted as impartial by one of the parties), or because no laws or precedents exist to decide the case, and “justice” seems elusive. Under such circumstances, the conflict would still have to be decided by a power struggle between the parties, but the rule must be that all violent methods be avoided.

Even under an enlightened and benevolent government, cases will arise where a perceived injustice has occurred, and no legal redress is forthcoming. There must be the possibility, as a last resort, for the aggrieved group to resist, by refusing obedience to the authority which normally citizens give without question. This can be done by sit-ins, strikes, boycotts and the like.

This certainly seems relevant to justice, but is it relevant to peace in the narrow sense of war avoidance? Its relevance to peace concerns is easily shown. A simple example is that of citizens refusing to pay the part of their income tax that would go toward military expenditures. The classic case, of course, is refusal of military service (conscientious objection). In addition, the sit-in or blockade or fence-jumping can be used to protest against military installations. People tried to stop the “white train” carrying U.S. nuclear warheads, and others jumped the fence at Littons in Toronto. Even sabotage can be judged non-violent: such as hammering weapons to damage them after illegal entry into a plant (as in King of Prussia, USA).

Not every peace activist will want to carry out such actions and go to jail. (They might risk more: Brian Wilson lost both his legs while trying to block a train carrying weapons when the train did not stop.) It is a method of last resort – if violence is ruled out. But no list of “people’s peace” activities would be complete without it.

Conclusion.

If war is too important to be left to the generals, so also peace is too important to be left to the governments. War prevention is everybody’s business, if for no other reason than that we would all suffer in war. This article has outlined some roles that ordinary citizens can play in preserving peace: as cultural ambassador, as voluntary hostage, as reporter of disarmament treaty violations, as refuser of cooperation with militaristic activities.

But beyond all this is the well-accepted role of citizen advocacy, a role in influencing political decisions toward establishing a peace system. We did not enlarge on this here, because it has been said many times. The peace movement deserves part of the credit for the improved situation since 1980, but our efforts must not flag, because we are not home safe yet. Governments will carry out policies that are acceptable to the people, if the people will VOCALLY AND INSISTENTLY make their wishes known. But we have to know not only what we oppose, but also what future we want to build in a positive way. Some of these parts of a peace system are outlined here, and more exists in the literature. (I have elsewhere collected over 60 peace plans.) So let us talk about these alternatives at every opportunity we get.

References.

Allport, Gordon, “The Nature of Prejudice”, Doubleday, Garden City, NJ. 1958.

Newcombe, Hanna, “Citizen Reporting As a Method of Arms Control Verification”, Paper for Canadian Peace Research and Education Association, University of Windsor, June 1988.

Newcombe, Hanna, “Survey of Non-Official Peace and Disarmament Proposals”, Peace Research Reviews, Vol. X, No. 1, December 1984, pp. 49-76.

Sharp, Gene, “The Politics of Nonviolent Action”, Pilgrim, Philadelphia, 1969, 896 pp.

Sherif, Muzafer et al. “In Common Predicament”, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1966, 192 pp.

Smail, Kenneth, “Reciprocal Hostage Exchange”, Peace Research Reviews, Vol. X, No. 1, December 1984, pp. 3-48.