Towards a new peace and security thinking for the multipolar, cooperative and peaceful world实现多极、合作、和平世界的新和平与安全构想

Points of departure

This article – also a serious invitation to brainstorming and dialogue – is based on these assumption that I do not discuss per se:

The West, led by the US and its Empire, is declining on a series of important indicators. When that happens, like the Soviet Union about 30 years ago, NATO will disappear too. It cannot be excluded that the EU will then seek to develop its own security system, but it has so far not been able to move itself or the world towards peace – as it should according to its Lisbon Treaty –  and its security philosophy is outdated, essentially the same as NATO (which I explain below).

Since the post-Western world will be multi-cultural and multi-polar – I believe no one will be driven by hubris to the extent the West is try to convert other societies to be like them and then follow the divide-and-conquer philosophy. No one will feel a God-given mission to propagate one system in which there can only unity in diversity. In that future system, a new thinking about defence, security and peace will have to build on many and diverse elements, not just one country’s or culture’s way of thinking. And, thus, my approach – although alternative within the Western paradigm – is only one part of the story to be told.

This is an article with a vision – about a new global system security not only survival but also making militarism and arms races things of the past and, therefore, the whole system much more peaceful. In the political world of today – in contrast to, say, the art and the science world – there is a fundamental lack of vision, imagination, experimental attitudes, creative thinking about alternatives and new ideas to whatever is.

In my view, it is impossible to think up and ’design’ a future world order by employing only the tools we know from today’s ”Realpolitik.” It’s necessary to think out of the box, as they say, and not kill any idea with the argument that it is not ’realistic.’ We know today that what once may have been considered ’unrealistic’ suddenly became utterly prevalent. And we know – why else is the old Western, uni-polar order in such decline? – that the old thinking about security, development and peace in reality has brought little of all three and threatens the demise of humankind – either slowly in a ’whimper’ because of the destruction of global nature or with a ’bang’ in a major war, particularly one in which nuclear weapons are used. In other words, Realpolitik is anything but realistic.  

As I have argued over the years, the intellectual disarmament in this particular field over the last few decades – particularly since the end of the First Cold War and reinforced by September 11, 2001 and not the war in Ukraine – is a basic reason for the Western wars and militarism, its intense arms-addiction and the expansion of NATO (1).

There is, therefore, no time to waste. The global humanity-inclusive dialogue about a fundamentally new way of thinking about conflicts and how to solve them must begin today.

And we must do it in accordance with the UN’s Charter Article 1 – which states that peace shall be established by peaceful means. There simply is no better normative-intellectual framework than this Charter signed by virtually all the existing states – which doesn’t mean that it too must be updated and adapted to the future.

Finally, this article does not offer some models, diagrams of institutions and anything concrete on how to organise the future world, outline big strategies and political action plans. It does not think in linear but more circular terms. That is because the author believes that good ideas coupled with some conceptual-theoretical consistency is eminently practical starters. Thoughts and visions are essentially important for successful change action and policy-making. Too much policy-making at least in the West has become (fast) action rather than well-thought, consistent action – and it lacks vision.

Violence, peace and security – differences and connections

DTo discuss matters like these in a framework of vision and imagination – it is absolutely necessary to clarify the basic concepts we are going to use throughout this exposé. They are not set in stone and everyone may criticise or improve on them, but they indicate with some precision the author’s intellectual world and explains how the vision is developed.

Again, all here is an invitation to global dialogue – constructive thinking about a better future and not a criticism only of the present (of which there is more than enough).

1. The complexities of violence, evil and good
It obvious, but just to have it stated: the overarching goal of all security and defence measures and policies must be to reduce the likelihood/risk that violence will be used by one or more parties against others. Since the risk is greater when there are many violent measures at hand for decision-makers to use – and very little non-violent, civilian means – we must extend it to say that the sheer mass or amount of violent means should be reduced to a minimum needed for purposes we shall later define. Or as a wise person once said – if you have only hammers in your toolbox, you’re likely to use a hammer to repair anything in the house – and it isn’t rational when, for instance, your wallpaper is coming off.

Why is that so – at least philosophically? Because, in general, violent means that kill and wound – and destroy property and nature – are incompatible with peace. Toxic, killing substances inserted into the human body are also incompatible with health, with few  specific exceptions such as cytotoxics against cancer.

How to define violence
Secondly, what is violence?

One of the absolute authorities on peace research and peace-making is Johan Galtung (born 1930). He defines it as the difference between potential human and societal realisation and the level of de facto human potential realisation – i.e. the difference between what human and their society could achieve and what they actually achieve.

So, it is violence if a father tells his young son who is extremely passionate and clever at playing the piano that he must become an engineer or dentist. The technical and artistic potentials of the boy are reduced virtually to zero – and he may well live a life in boredom and unhappiness thanks to his father’s violent demand (not advice). Or, when everybody on earth could go well-fed to bed every night but millions are starving, it is clearly violence: the realisation of the potentials of the earth to feed everybody are under-utilised and creates suffering and eventually death. Gandhi expressed is more poetically: ”There is enough on this earth for everybody’s need, but not for everyone’s greed.”

A world that legitimises greed, personal profit and maximising individual utility is a society that is likely to become greed-oriented and cause violence to the disadvantaged because it is not needs-oriented.

So, violence can be seen as the difference between imagined or full potentials of society and individuals and their actual realisation. Spending billions of dollars on warfare in a society where the basic needs of millions of people are not satisfied is a tragic example of violence.

Are humans evil and good – and what role does the answer play?
One often hears people say that we have wars because humans are evil or aggressive – indeed born with a capacity for violence. There may be some truth to that – humans are the only creatures that have developed weapons that can kill all of their own species – and threaten to do so regularly. And when we see what humans can do to each other in wars, we wonder with the deepest of concerns: How can some of our own kin be so cruel to other human beings? How can they also sometimes destroy what is humankind’s common (UNESCO) cultural heritage – as, say, in Eastern Aleppo some years ago?

It is quite typical that this argument is advanced by people who a) want to promote certain wars to fight ’evil’ as they say; b) do not have much creativity and knowledge, or c) may be generally pessimistic about the fate of humanity.

First of all, it is absolutely obvious that human beings, if evil, also have a capacity for doing good – loving their children, helping each other, care for the ill and weak, give humanitarian aid – and loving their family members. So why this frequent argument about people being evil – and only that? When giving lectures, I have often been asked: But, Jan, don’t you think there is so much violence in the world because we humans are evil? My answer, with a smile, has always been: Are you yourself evil? And no one ever said: Yes, I know I am!

So my hunch is that ’those evil guys’ are always ’the others,’ not us, not humanity as such.

The question is where this evil nature is rooted? The argument would be that we know this from psychology – for instance, Milgram’s Experiment, from studying personalities like, say, Adolf Hitler – or that we have instinct and operate on them, basically like animals (ethology, animal psychology). One central concepts in all these theories is aggression – hostile, violent behaviour and attitudes that, if inner tension builds up, can explode in attack. Aggression is a concept we find not only in psychology but also in international politics and law. There, aggression is not an explainer, it’s a crime.  

I think a more fruitful approach is to say that human behaviour has at least as much to do with the system in which they operate as with human nature as such – which I believe fits also Galtung’s definition of violence above.

If we organise a military and bring young men into an extended period of education and training to follow the orders of their superiors and kill when told to, it is quite likely that these young men will be able to kill if they fight in a war zone. But does it mean that, by their nature – by human nature – they are evil?

Could it be that systems can be good and evil too – depending on what purposes they serve, how they socialise people into functioning and perform duties in them? In my view, there is far too much talk about the evil of people and too little about the goodness of people – and there is far too much talk of evil being rooted in individual human nature and far too little about the role of good and evil system and what mechanisms they use to cultivate good and evil behaviour.

We are touching here upon something most enigmatic – existentially enigmatic – about humankind and its existence. Regrettably, there is much too little peace research and other research devoted to these issues – and thousands of times more research funding available to produce new doctrines and weapons that stimulate even more cruelty to more fellow human beings. And they are all backed up by assumptions about the inherently evil, or destructive, nature of us all.

That could well be call fake – because it is always other people who are evil and, thus, it is not a genuine theory about all human beings. Secondly it is based on omission – omission of all mention of the good dimensions of human nature.

Types of violence
Finally, what types of violence can we think of?

There is the physical, direct person-to-person violence: A punches B’s face or kills his family. But there are also psychological violence – humiliating, smearing, deceiving, lying to and about, threatening, uses of psychological warfare among states, demonisation, calling someone evil and using bad names, accusations, projections of one’s own dark sides onto others, etc.

Two things characterise both of them: a) there is a clear sender and a receiver, 2) both the physical and the psychological violence tend to create traumas, and traumas may either become permanent and distort the traumatised person’s life forever or lead to hatred and wishes of revenge – often worse than the first perpetrator’s violence: You made me a victim by killing three in my family, I want to get even by killing ten on your side.
There is a theory about the urge to repeat: I/we must – or have a right to – do to others what was done to us.  

As an aside, while perhaps understandable, victim violence often has a particularly nasty and complex character because being a victim offers a kind of license to do evil/violence while also demanding sympathy with the perpetrator because of s/he being a victim.

Can anything stop such vicious circles? Yes, a determination to forgive the perpetrator – which is a one-sided action not dependent on the perpetrator’s admission. Secondly, both parties can move in the direction of reconciliation, truth commissions and other healing initiatives; that is a two-sided process, reaching out to each other.

So much for direct actor-to-actor violence – physical as well as psychological.

But there is another fundamentally important, general types of violence – often overlooked in the Western individualist cultural setting – name that of system or ’structural’ violence – again a term developed by Johan Galtung.

Here we face violence that is built into the modes of operation of a whole system – where the system is the perpetrator of violence, not some identifiable individual actor – human being or state. If one man regularly beats his wife, we would probably say that it is individual physical or psychological violence. But if a system – ’systematically’ – gives all men all the rights over women, we’d say that it is structurally violent, namely what is built into patriarchy – a social system in which positions of dominance and privilege are primarily decided and held by men.

The same would apply to social phenomenons like global maldevelopment, militarism and warfare, imperialism, etc. They are structures in which, of course, individuals do their job and perform their roles in producing violence, but the sum-total of these actions is violence to others – people, cultures, countries or the world – that cannot be stopped by, say, arresting a few individual perpetrators. There is not a single individual who, if punished, would cause the violence to go away.

The Cold War idea supported by armament and operated by the MIMAC – the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex – can be seen as such a fundamentally violent structure. It remains more or less permanently violent because, even if the foundation, or raison d’etre of it disappears, it will quickly find another reason to exist. That’s what happened, for instance, when the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact disappeared about 30 years ago; NATO’s militarism continued unabated – rapidly finding some other threats or ’challenges’ to legitimate its ongoing system violence – at the moment of course Russia, North Korea, Iran and China.

So, while one soldier killing another soldier or killing some civilians on the battlefield is definitely individual violence, they are part of a war and militarism system that is infinitely larger and operating through system characteristic that are not dependent on individual but on the group/larger systems functions in which we cannot point to one or a few people being responsible. The system kills, is meant to and operates accordingly.

Before we end this discussion of types of violence, let’s state two classical dimensions of them all: first, the is  both visible and less visible aspects of violence and there is latent and manifest violence. We should learn how to detect the less visible manifestations and catch violence already when it is latent and not when it has broken out. Again, like a flue is more easy to combat at the early stage than when it has settle more seriously into our bodies.

The other dimension is that if invisible conflicts and violence explodes, it will tend to take people with greater surprise and make them react to it less cautiously. That is why ’early warning’ and violence-prevention must be an integral part of a future security and peace system: What will be the consequences of this and that decision and how do we prevent its implementation from creating new violence-prone conflicts?

Finally, it is often meaningless to talk about reforming a system by educating individuals to act differently. You’ve got to address, instead, the violent characteristics of the system mode itself. Global poverty or illiteracy cannot be addressed by individual justice because there is not one or a few individuals who commit those crimes. The global economic system continues the crimes and to change it, we shall have to think up a more peaceful system and not think of punishing some individuals.

That is, there is a need not only for problem definition, diagnosis and prognosis. To change, there has to also be a vision – a vision about fundamentally different ways of thinking and organising a n effective system that is oriented towards human, global and environmental betterment.

2. Necessary elements of positive peace: Securing development and developing security

Everybody say the want peace but we know very very little about what it is and how to achieve it. Since it is perceived as a positive value, some organisations will claim as a standard that whatever they do it is for peace. NATO, for instance, was set up to serve peace, peace is essential in its treaty and no matter what policy NATO decides to pursue it is done with the accompanying mantra that it is for ’security, stability and peace.’ Tragically, having promoted peace this way since 1949 and consumed trillions of taxpayers’ dollars has ended us all in this world with the prospect of global, perhaps even nuclear, war. **

It’s a common belief that peace can be defined by a system in which no violence and no warfare can be discerned. In the media and policy world they say that there is peace somewhere because a military struggle somewhere has come to an end and a negotiated solution was found. In most cases, that is just non-war, it is not peace and peace negotiations are often little more than ceasefire agreements – lacking an element of genuine, sustainable conflict resolution – for which reason the same conflict blows up again a little down the road.

Probably, the general public would associate the word ’peace’ with some kind of harmony, inner peace, a dove, a sign, John Lennon’s ”Imagine,” wellbeing, meditation, feeling one with the universe, love, some inner spirituality, etc – or the absence of differences and conflicts in a society. Some think it is a composite of other positive values or concepts such as justice, respect for human rights, freedom, democracy, etc. And yet others associate peace with death and dying – RIP, Rest In Peace, they say.

That’s all wrong – and a sign that our world still suffers from a certain peace illiteracy.

Of course, there is not one single correct definition. Like many other societal qualities, peace is what philosophers have called an ’essentially contested concepts’ and there will always be debates around both their definition and their implementation. And that is desirable.

A first approximation to what peace is: It is not just the absence of something else and it is not an amalgamation of other good values. It is also not passivity or a situation where nothing happens – like seeing the sun going down while holding the hand of a loved one. That may of course be nice – but peace is something rather different.

It is something in and of itself, something that is dynamic, activity-based and never-ending.

In a culture of militarism, peace tends to be considered a phenomenon deprived of inherent., manifest value – a residual, or even a void.

What we are trying to get across is that peace is not merely the opposite of war, it’s the never-ending search for ways to reduce all types of violence. Since violence is always related to some kind of conflict – but there are conflicts that are not violent – we must learn to handle conflicts in intelligent, non-violent ways and not by threatening, demonisation and warfare.

If a basic defining element of peace is reduction of violence, there is no way the maximisation of the means of violence can ever lead to peace, true peace. Therefore the dominant means of conflict resolution must be peaceful – exactly as embodied in the entire underlying philosophy and values embedded in the UN Charter. Only as a last resort, when everything peaceful has been tried and found in vain shall the world community – the UN – come together and use violence under the command of the UN.

It’s the most Gandhian document governments have ever signed – implementing, whether knowingly or not, Gandhis’ famous dictum that the means are ”the goals in the making.”

That said, Galtung coined the terms negative and positive peace. Negative peace is the absence of various types of violence – in the same way that negative health means that I am not ill, don’t feel any pains or have a high temperature.

Positive peace is the presence of some qualities that care for the realisation of potentials and opportunities, the satisfaction of not only basic but also higher needs and constantly seeks improvement, a never-ending process. It can be seen as parallel to positive health – feeling energetic, taking on new challenges, exuding conviviality, open for cooperation and helpful to others – everything that is beyond the ”0” on the scale at which we are not only not ill but in full dynamic human – and societal – development.

And the word ’development’ signals the next element of a definition of peace – one I have created over the years, and the title of one of my books: ”Peace is to develop security and secure development for the whole human being and for all human beings in their interaction with each other and the global environment based on an ethics of care.”

This, I have come to believe, is a fundamentally important approach to peace – and more than a definition, rather a conceptualisation that will never be finish – like the change towards ever more peaceful lives around the world will never end. Always a space and a time for improvement!

Here a few explanation around that – broader and deeper – conceptualisation:

All human being and all societies seek at least two basic things: To develop – realising their potentials and expanding them through, say, education, culture and production and living a better and better life over time. And, secondly, to secure that their development will continue in the future and is not threatened from the inside or outside.

To put it crudely: If we do not feel secure that we are alive tomorrow or next week, why should we invest in our own and society’s development? And for society to secure its future, it needs a lot of different human and other resources – and they will not be available if there is no development in a broad sense of ’development.’

The whole human being means exactly that – not just the physical body or the citizen identity but the whole – the inner, the non-material, spiritual, ethical and convivial human being. And for all human beings implies that there is no peace where development and security is only for the few, or classes that ruthlessly exploit others – internally in each society as well as globally.

No matter how we define them, colonialism’s and imperialism’s mode of operation – fragmentation/splitting, exploitation, marginalisation and racism – as well as the militarism that, among other functions, serve to uphold them – represent fundamental negations of any concept of peace.

Global ethics of care
Finally, what could an ethics of care mean? Is there a new global ethics of care? (2)

First of all, in our thinking, we must leave behind two things by now:

First, the Christianity-based neighbourhood ethics and most of the individualised Ten Commandments. Why? Because, the world is now one society, the consequences of many of our actions are, measured over time, are global. We know that from the holistic thinking in ecology and global/ism studies. Everything is related to everything else if not immediately, then as time goes by – catchword, Gaia.

Secondly, we must leave behind the anthropocentric world view, namely that Man is the centre of every and should control every other living creature. We must recognise that we are not above Mother Nature. Instead, we are partners – the only way to conceive of peace with the Creation, with the global environment.

These are of course bits and pieces of global ethics philosophy about which books have been written. One philosopher among many who have inspired me is German-American, Hans Jonas (1903-1993), who in his seminal book, ”The Imperative of Responsibility. In Search of An Ethics for the Technological Age,” (1984) advanced a global ethics around the following formulation:

”Act so that the effects of your actions are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life… In your present choices, include the future wholeness of humanity among the objects of your will. We may risk ur own lives, but never the survival of humanity.” (3)

Having come this far, let me cut through it all and say that my own reflections over the years have come to emphasise these elements of a new global ethics of care:

· Care for the permanence of existence of present lives: Be humble!
· Care for biodiversity: Abstain, appreciate, preserve!
· Care for the yet unborn: Empathise, love!

These principles apply whether we talk about environmental destruction (slower) or global war with or without nuclear weapons (faster).

Human beings can take other species into account. Precisely because of our immense technological power, we must be humble and also accept duties – human duties and not only human rights. We have duties vis-a-vis the non-human world, too. The non-human world, the animals, plants, micro organisms etc have right but they cannot voice them, only humans can. Therefore it is our duty to use imagination and empathy in defining the right these non-human fellow creatures have. Gandhi’s dictum that there are no rights without duties is so much deeper than just demanding one’s individual and collective rights, not to speak of weaponising them politically.

A particularly important object of our ethics is, of course, those not yet born. For too many generations, humanity everywhere have acted as if no one would come after us. We have, by and large, brought the global environment to a a point where future generations will have huge problems if sat all surviving.

And we have introduced, kept and increased – not abolished – nuclear weapons which are incompatible with every kind of global ethics and true peace. Nobody has the right to decide to end project humankind but everybody has a duty to reduce that risk to zero.

While these issues deserve much more elaboration and dialogue beyond these pages, woefully little attention is paid to ethics – and certainly not for a nano second in today’s political decision-making circles. Imagine a prime minister tell media people at a press conference that her government abstains from this or that project because it believes in empathising, loving, the needs and welfare of generations of the yet unborn! Imagine that someone responsible would say that I care for the presence of everything living under the blue sky and that care is incompatible with more wars, offensive conventional weapons in general and weapons of mass destruction in particular. How come we believe we care for anything if we plan to destroy everything once and for ever?

In summary, a serious and comprehensive approach to peace – like the one we have only hinted at above – hardly exists anywhere. One, most people are unaware. Two, philosophy and research about true peace across cultures is close to non-existing. Three, politics is devoid of ethical considerations. Four, people in general including, sadly, the peace movement, seem to believe that peace is only what we have called negative peace and do not focus on the substance of positive peace and strategies toward its achievement. Five, in times of decline and rampant militarism – possible militarism to death – peace thinking belongs to a tiny group of dissidents. The discourse has, as I have argued, been disappeared in research, politics and the media. (5)

3. The global short circuit : Offensive deterrence and permanent insecurity

In today’s world, military security dominate. People in all cultures and countries associate the word ’security’ with ’national security’ and what countries’ military can do. Other countries are demonised and called challenges or threats – against which ’we’ need to secure ourselves.

That in itself is a gross mistake, but natural to a militarism culture. It resembles if we thought that our human health was all about pills and injections.

As a matter of fact and philosophy, the entire sector of security has become what is called an iatrogenic disease. According to Wikipedia. ”Iatrogenesis is the causation of a disease, a harmful complication, or other ill effect by any medical activity, including diagnosis, intervention, error, or negligence. First used in this sense in 1924, the term was introduced to sociology in 1976 by Ivan Illic, alleging that industrialised societies impair quality of life by overmedicalising life.

In path-breaking books such as Tools for Conviviality, Ivan Illich (1926-2002) – an Austrian philosopher, sociologist, historian and Roman Catholic priest – actually did much more than that (2). He criticised the way contemporary society created more or less high-tech, elite-run ’radical monopolies’ that – in the name of serving them – deprive people of their own genuinely human activity, rights and independence and turn society into passive mass consumerism – actually a war by elites on citizens in the name of healing and protecting them. While done in the name of delivering something good, these monopolies over time come to do more harm than good. (4)

Let’s apply that to the field of security politics. The state/governments argue that if citizens just pay their taxes, they can take what is needed and create ’security’ to protect these citizens. These same governments then manufacture threats and confrontation – and run offensive defence policies – which are bound to create tension and make others feel threatened. These others then arms against ’us’ and our governments then require even more money from their citizens.

A concrete argument run by NATO is that all members must pay 2% of their GNP to the national military security. This is of course splendid anti-intellectual nonsense but it serves its purpose with people who have particular interests. The size of a national military budget shall never be decided by the performance of the country’s overall economic performance; it shall always be based on a seriously professional, multi-facetted analysis of the possible civilian and military threats a country is likely to face within a certain time period. NATO’s Secretary-General recently announced that 2% was no longer a ceiling but a floor. It must go higher given the threats Russia and China represent to the West.

To put it crudely: NATO exists to protect its citizens against the armament of others that stems from their feeling of insecurity because of NATO’s own offensive, expansive and militarist policies. What is this if not the perfect iatrogenic disease, a perpetuum mobile? All that is needed is for the stronger to create insecurity in others who then arm themselves and can be designated as enemies of NATO-countries.

One basic reason this works can be found in the concept of fearology. It works in two ways: a) tell your citizens that there are evil forces out there that threatens us, and they gladly pay to be protected. It does not matter whether in reality there is a threat, it is enough to make them believe there is; b) make your competitors or adversaries feel that you are strong and can harm them – while simultaneously arguing that you are defensive and have no bad intentions or designs on them.

The main tool to cause such a perpetuum mobile is deterrence – that is, offensive deterrence. Here is how deterrence is defined by ChatGPT, perfectly correctly:

”Deterrence is the use of threats or punishment as a means of preventing or discouraging someone from taking a certain action or engaging in certain behaviour. The purpose of deterrence is to create an expectation of negative consequences for a particular behaviour, which can then dissuade someone from engaging in that behaviour.

Deterrence can take many forms, including the threat of legal consequences, the use of force, economic sanctions, or even social pressure. It is often used in the context of international relations to discourage countries from engaging in hostile actions against one another. Overall, the concept of deterrence is based on the idea that fear of punishment or negative consequences can be a powerful motivator for behaviour change.”

You see the problem immediately: Deterrence is the use of threats and the promise of punishment: if you do not do as we tell you to do or don’t abstain from doing what we do not want you to do.

Deterrence, by definition, can not promote things like confidence, friendship, cooperation, stability, security or peace for both/all sides. When you deter someone, you signal to that someone that ’we see you as a potential enemy, not as a friend.’ And it is, therefore, unavoidable that the other feel targeted, insecure, misunderstood or provoked.

Such is the – simple – psychology of deterrence. Tragically, it has been and remains the foundational concepts of all contemporary security policies and – whether or not it is meant to or just a foolish philosophical short circuit – it will, by definition, never bring mutual or common security, stability, friendship or bring about the UN-stated global goal of general and complete disarmament. It will also never bring about anything that could meaningfully be called peace.

Adversaries in deterrence mode are like scorpions in a bottle – to borrow pioneering, distinguished US scholar, Richard Barnet’s (1929-2004) characterisation of the US and the Soviet Union caught in the First Cold War – a great deal of tension and hostility between the two that are anyhow forced to work together or the stronger finally saying to the weaker: I will now destroy you once and for all since you did not respect my deterrence.

So much for deterrence – now to its offensiveness. It simply signifies that ’I can kill or harm you on your territory, thousands of kilometres away and with great precision. My security lies in being able to destroy you on your turf.’

Here is Chat GPT’s AI answer, again very correctly informs us: ”Offensive weapons can be defined as any object or device that is designed or adapted to cause harm or injury to a person or property. These weapons are often used in an aggressive or violent manner…(and) are often associated with criminal activity or intent.”

This of course excludes empathy with the object of offensive deterrence. Party A declares that it is defensive but has doctrines and weapons, such as intercontinental missiles, that can only be perceived as offensive, threatening and provocative by B – who then increases his long-range arsenals.

Once again, this is intellectually poor but it serves a purpose – the ongoing armament, arms production profits, supra-power politics, being ’second to none’ – in short the MIMAC mentioned above. It was never meant to serve security and peace.

If a concept of deterrence shall survive at all in the future world order, it must become purely defensive instead. More about that below.

4. Components of a new thinking towards a future peaceful world order

I believe that, if the reader has accepted at least some of the criticism of contemporary security politics and its foundations above, it will be considerably more easy to understand how we must change our thinking and what should – and can – be built into the future world system.

But of course, that system cannot just be built on negations of the old. It has to encompass something radically new that will fit the future and not the past.

It’s overarching goal is to create a more peaceful world which means a world with much less systemic violence and also much less direct, psychological, gender and cultural violence than today’s system. Like it is the goal of the science of medicine to reduce diseases, it is the goal of peace research to reduce violence and increase potentials for human and societal – indeed global – self-realization and happiness.

However, we need to be pragmatic: there may probably always be some diseases somewhere and new ones appearing we do not know today – and some kinds of violence here and there – and new types emerging.

So, the catchwords for the future is violence-prevention and violence-reduction through intelligent civilian conflict resolution methods. But it is not to abolish conflict!

Conflict – early warning, management and resolution
A conflict is an incompatibility of, say, values, visions, goals and positioning in ranking systems. There will always be conflicts, differences, disagreement in any human, social system. A society without conflict would be a society of brainwashed people, who had no capacity or freedom to think and feel, a dictatorship and an extremely boring and inhuman phenomenon.

As a matter of fact, although we may feel it unpleasant with some inner tension when conflicts appear, conflicts can be seen as something positive: they make us think and re-think on what we do, how we see the other and how the other sees us and how we have seen ourselves (perhaps wrongly). They force us to prioritise among our choices and if we somehow solve the conflict with the other, we may have learned something important about the issue, the other and ourselves. In addition, conflicts – which are nothing but problems that stand between the parties – require creativity to be solved. And they demand humanity and empathy also in case the best solution for the conflicting parties turns out to be that they split or divorce and live, instead, as respectful neighbours.

So we can now add a new dimension to the definition of peace: Peace is not to abolish conflict, it is to be aware of them as soon as possible (address them when latent) and deal constructively with them so that the end result incurs as little violence and dissatisfaction among all the parties as possible.

Violence, in contrast, often appears because conflicts – and the concerns of one or more parties – have been ignored, because the resolution once found was wrong and unsustainable or because one or more parties deliberately cheated – which can easily happen in a-symmetrical conflicts – and led to new conflicts.

So a new world system with its tremendous multi-dimensional and multi-polar diversity must have a completely different attitude to conflicts and their management – one that aims at dealing with them early when they are not so serious or have festered – again, like we know very well from medicine. It’s a natural law that the earlier we address a problem, the easier it is to solve.

The comparatively best global conflict-resolution institution we have today is the United Nations – not for its operations or bureaucracy but mainly for its Charter. Until the world come together and reforms the UN, the Charter is by far the best violence-reducing and conflict-resolving normative framework. It doesn’t mean that it is perfect.

As regional and other organisations grow stronger – BRICS, ASEAN, SCO, AU etc – they must be geared to become conflict-managers among their own members and thereby relieve the world community from handling all disputes.

It is not easy to outline the system of violence prevention and conflict resolution in any details. But the future is not a world government, it is a dynamic, diverse, networking global governance, early warning about risks of violence and war and early intervention by mediating institutions equipped with the best intellectual and professional conflict-management methods and tools.

It means ministries of peace, peace education at different educational levels, it means the use of peace-making expertise and peace- and not only war-oriented journalism. It means a change towards a globally nurturing peace culture – in other words peace built from the top-down and bottom-up as well as into all kinds of interactions criss-crossing the global human community. And it means the struggle to constantly reduce various kind of violence – and the end of militarism and prevention of its return.

All this is possible – if we make the right diagnosis of the present malaise and are willing to begin an honest exploration and global dialogue instead of killing all constructive ideas and thoughts with the manifestly narrow-minded and visionless words: ’But that is not realistic.’

Peace first – through common security
What is lacking in the present – peace-immature and therefore peace-preventing – system is the mature value of community or communality: Common security. Today’s security, as we have illustrated, is built on zero-sum thinking and on the deterrence idea that country A feels secure by being able to harm or destroy country B. And on the – perverse – idea that military security has priority – must be satisfied first – and then peace will follow more or less automatically. We now know that it won’t, indeed why theoretically it can’t.

The solution to that problem is logically simple: Make peace first and then back it up by intelligent security measures that genuinely support and preserve the peace – the conflict-resolution – achieved. Do not build military-dominated ’security’ even with the good intention that it will lead to peace and stability.

So what is common security?
It’s very simple: It means to only do such things and have such goals, tools and doctrines that makes both, or all, sides better off. It’s win-win security. When ’we’ get more secure, the basic reason is that ’they’ feel more secure with us and we do not have to fear that they plot an attack on us: ’Our’ policies do not provide ’them’ with any pretexts or motives.

In operative terms, it means that in the future, each and all actors shall do only such things that do not increase the risks and threat level to ’the others or adversaries’ and therefore also not to ’us.’ That is a positive-sum philosophy – the exact opposite of today’s zero-sum.

No one in a system can feel secure when someone feels insecure. Security and peace is indivisible in the global community, simply because everybody is related to everybody else, everything to everything else.

Defensive deterrence and defence opens new opportunities
Here comes the essential contrast: While offensive deterrence prevents peace, defensive deterrence and defence can promote peace. Of course, the great example is China’s wall – it threatens no one far away but it was intended to give an aggressor so big problems that he would think twice and abstain from the attack.

Defensiveness also precludes arms races. Since our defence is no threat to you back home where you live – but only if you come to attack and conquer – our defensive means cannot cause you fear and gives you no motives or pretext to attack us – that is, unless you really have evil motives.

If this new defensive thinking is applied to the military, a defensive military would invest only in a) short-range military means with b) high fast mobility, and c) limited destructive capacity since it shall be use only on or very near our own territory and society. Foreign bases, inter-continental and other long-range weapons, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, etc would be a thing of the past.

But all that is only applicable to the situation where war actually breaks out. The whole point of this alternative global defensive thinking is that it is about a) preventing violence way before it breaks out and b) that it done to 95% by civilian means.

Civilian means are academic, philosophical, diplomatic, economic, political, etc. We do various things to reduce the risk that we shall fall ill, such as eat and healthily and drink modestly, exercise our bodies and brains, keep challenging ourselves when getting older, and being passionate about something that gives us joy. We aim to not only live longer but also better.

Regrettably, the same thinking cannot be found in the field of security politics. There we seem to do all the wrong things to our society’s body and psyche as if we want to cut life short, even commit suicide – through the addiction to weapons as the all-dominant tool. Militarism is already a cancer that eats into our economy, happiness and also steals resources so strongly needed to solve humanity’s real and urgent problems. Just think of the so-called opportunity costs – all the good humanity could do for the present and future generation with just a fraction of the resources now squandered on warfare and other militarism…

5. Towards the “Eutopia” of peace

Imagine how much better the world would be with much less military ’security’ investments and much more civilian peace investment.

The latter would be about building in layer upon layer of peace-oriented strategies and components in all spheres of society – history books describing the history of peace and not mainly that of wars. War memorials and museums – OK, part of reality too – but why not peace memorials and museums? We need journalism that would have not only war reporters but peace reporters too – and peace perspectives on ongoing wars.

Why not ministries of peace and reconciliation not only of military defence? Every country that wants to continue with military forces – armies, airforces etc – should also have peace forces, men and women educated and practically trained to work as conflict analysts and mediators – and suggest peaceful solutions.

Furthermore, it would be about teaching students from primary school to university level the dimensions of peace, how the subjects taught are – or could be – related to violence reduction and positive peace – and have constant inter-cultural dialogue across the globe about it. Imagine the economics of peace – conversion studies, how to define economic and other development in ways that would reduce violence – and how to convert military industries to alternative products needed by people worldwide. There exists a whole science branch focusing on nonviolent economics.

All this would – again for a fraction of the funds devoted to the global military – enable us to easily meet the 17 United Nations goals of sustainable development. And by creating a more humane and just world, there would be less subjective motives and objective reasons to fight each other for resources – we would preserve some and create new ones through win-win cooperation and synergy between the poles in the emerging multi-polar world.

To build peace, it is not enough to look at the troubled world and only diagnose it and tell each other how everything is coming ever closer to catastrophe in this or that or all fields. It is at least as important to outline what a better world could look like, dialogue and brainstorm about it and then make informed decisions on how to move forward to realise a chosen vision and do so with unwavering determination.

Doomsday can be avoided – and no one has a moral right to promote doomsday or call it inevitable. Causing other to lose hope is also to do violence. We have a duty to not only look at problems but focus much more than we do today on possible solutions. That is the duty also of scholars who abdicate that duty when they just hand over their reports to politicians and tell them to solve the problems they’ve pointed out.

If a doctor has made a solid diagnosis and prognosis, s/he does not let the terminally ill patient or the family choose the cure.

It’s one of humanity’s existential enigmas that we keep on being obsessed with violence and dystopia when we always had – and still have – opportunities to think constructively. Which are the real forces that keep on dragging us in the wrong direction even to make us believe that the dystopian world we created and which now threatens to end humanity with a ”bang” or with a ”whimper” is the best and therefore the only possible one? How have so many citizens worldwide come to believe that it is not ’realistic’ to think radically new thoughts together, discuss them and make fundamental changes to the benefit of peace for us all?

The day we give up on that, society, democracy and peace will decay. Or to quote Martin Luther King, Jr., “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” And what matters more than the past and the present is – the future. Because that is the only thing we can influence.

I believe there exists no rational, satisfying solution to the enigma I just posed. But how much closer to the abyss must humankind come before we recognise the necessity and benefit-for-all by pulling together about the big issues and put away our smaller quarrels?

I also believe that creative ideas and dialogue across cultures – in a macro perspective in time and space – is much more effective than piecemeal reforms chosen by elites oon behalf of the people without consulting them and within a short-term micro economy paradigm.

The West could learn a lot from the Rest – China, India, Africa, the BRICS if you will – and the global south. Their horizontal collective mutual-reliance is promising compared with the vertical, colonial-imperial-racist other-reliance practised the last several hundred years under Western leadership. That system is now suffering very heavily from societal ’fatigue’ and needs to come to terms with itself and the Rest in new benign, cooperative and peaceful ways.

From a peace point of view, this means to avoid tit-for-tat thinking: Never do to the provocative other what he does to us, do something else. If for instance we go for huge re-armament because he does so, we multiply the problem of militarism and, over time, we shall become a mirror image of him – that is, part of the problem, not the solution.

Instead, we go for self-defence, defensive deterrence and conversion of military resources to an optimal level necessary and then do everything else to promote peace. Such creativity also win sympathy in the eyes of others.

What I have said in this section is not the thinking of utopia. It lays out how to avoid dystopia, but neither utopia nor dystopia thinking can help humankind safely into a better future. For that, we need the thinking of ”eutopia” – a term used to describe an imaginary society that is characterised by the absence of the negative aspects of both utopias and dystopias. It is a society that is ideal, but not in a way that is oppressive or unrealistic. Eutopias are often portrayed as societies in which individuals are free to pursue their own goals and desires, but in which there is also a sense of community and cooperation that allows everyone to live harmoniously. Eutopias are often seen as more realistic and achievable than utopias, while also avoiding the negative aspects of dystopias” – to once again quote ChatGPT.

We can learn to conflict and peace intelligently for humanity’s common good
I am in no doubt that peace is something we can learn. If society can teach young people to defend their country by joining the army and learning to kill, it certainly can also teach its young people to conflict intelligently and to peace with a vision and an ethics of care – i.e. to promote peaceful behaviour and relations worldwide.

Even if we believe that humans have evil impulses, let’s build structures and societies that channel and maximise their good and compassionate impulses more than or instead of the evil ones. Military systems tend to emphasise the evil ones – demonising adversaries instead of seeing them as potential friends and also to cultivate violent impulses by teaching how to kill fellow human beings.

The world needs an entirely new balancing point: less military and militarism and more real peace and security that increases the chances of global self-realisation of all the potentials that Humankind and Nature represent. If violence begets violence, it is equally true that peace begets peace. If there are vicious circles, there are also virtuous circles or positive feedback loop, where positive events or circumstances reinforce each other in a self-perpetuating cycle.

Sources of inspiration
I have mentioned some in this article – my apology for most of them being Western when we address global multi-cultural issues. We must seek inspiration eclectically and in the multi-cultural realms. All cultures have inspiring thinkers and practitioners of peace – academic people, people of cultural creation, political people, philosophers and activists. We study them too little or not at all. So, there is a reservoir to be researched and revived, not the least in dark times.

The West has produced many inspiring people – some leaders, some dissidents in systems of militarism. It’s not my intention to list them, there are good books about most of them.

One American thinker on these matters who deserves to be mentioned is Charles Osgood who developed the GRIT theory in 1962. GRIT stand for Graduated Reciprocation in Tension Reduction. In a few words: when one side offers a unilateral concession, the other side should feel responsible for making a concession in return, and this exchange encourages more action-reaction concessions until tension has come down to a level that permits dialogue about solutions. Each side makes only such concessions that are a) not too ’dangerous’ to itself or diminishes its security and b) are not signs of fear or weakness. And before making a concession, each sides states clearly to the world: I take this unilateral tension-reducing step to invite you to make a concession that reduces tension for both of us!

In short, the GRIT theory – developed during the First Cold War and in a way implemented in the Cuban Missile Crisis – is about de-escalation, safe de-escalation. It is extremely important because, today, everybody can blindly take escalatory step and increase tension until it gets out of control. The world desperately needs constructive de-escalating ideas and strategies like GRIT. But who does research on such things today? Certainly not the state financed, military security institutions.

There is of course much more to say about Western peace thinking and theories. However, I believe it is extremely important that we study and learn about other cultures’s peace thinkers and activist – simply because they are keys to fruitful and respectful global dialogue about issues such as the ones this analysis focus on. Many conflicts become intractable simply because we do not understand how the other side thinks across cultures. And more and more of the future conflict landscape will be populated by actors who do not belong to the same culture and share the understanding of words, concepts and ways of thinking.

Mohandas K. Gandhi of course is a sine qua non of peace inspiration. One does not have to try to be a Gandhian or live like he did, but everyone can learn something important from his life and his writings. He was multi-cultural and multi-religious, an intellectual eclecticist of God’s grace. Pakistan’s Abdul Ghaffar Khan must be mentioned in the same breath.

It goes without saying that very important peace inspiration comes from e.g. Chinese philosophers such as Mo-tzu, Sun Tzu, Confucius, Lao Tse – contributing to thinking about coexistence, diversity, harmony but not uniformity, noninterference, perceptions of all as equal to be treated with respect, mutuality, win-win non-extremism and non-mission.

And there is the immensely important ”Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” – mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty; mutual nonaggression; noninterference in each other’s internal affairs; equality and mutual benefit; and peaceful coexistence. It’s not only a brilliant recipe international relations and diplomacy; if practised by all, there would be more peace in this world.

The Belt and Road Initiative, BRI, was initiated by President Xi Jinping’s speech in Astana, Kazakhstan in 2013. While such a huge project – perhaps the largest in human history with now 140 participating countries – there are bound to be problems but is should not be difficult to see that the BRI also embodies a built-in peace philosophy: Share a common vision, seek win/win, cooperate on many dimensions and while do so seek mutual learning through inter-cultural dialogue. The longer the participants experience that, the less likely it will be that they start wars against each other – conflict yes, there will always be some, but they’ll be solvable by peaceful means – creating virtuous circles over time.

China’s Global Security Initiative, its 12-point principles concerning the NATO-Russia conflict in Ukraine, the building blocks for a safer world presented by the director of the Party’s Central Committee’s Foreign Affairs Office, Dr Wang Yi, to the 2023 Munich Security Conference as well as its Global Development Initiative are urgently needed attempts at  integrative and principled thinking adapted to the future world – one in which peace is to secure development and develop security and, thus, permit the reduction of violent means to a minimum in accordance with the right to self-defence and an ethics of global care.

So, humanity has lots of positive thoughts and tools rooted in different cultures with which to build a better future. Let’s accelerate the global constructive dialogue – today rather than tomorrow.

Note：
A number of theoretical and conceptual points in this analysis build upon Dietrich Fischer, Wilhelm Nolte and Jan Oberg, ”Winning Peace. Strategies and Ethics for a Nuclear-Free World,” Crane Russak, 1989. Those were the days when the First Cold War structure began to crack and the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact was destined to decline and fall. It was the time when millions believed in a ’peace dividend’ and a more peaceful and just world. Perhaps it was at least for a time? But trends and events such as September 11, 2001, the Global War On Terror, permanent imperial interventionism, warfare and dominance as well as NATO’s expansion – instead of its abolition followed by a new Western common security system – crushed those realistic hopes.

The world of today is now yet a totally different one burdened by a new type of double Cold War that I thought I should never experience: the Russia-NATO Cold war and the US Cold War on China and other non-Western actors. Also different is that the Western West – the NATO/EU world and the US Empire is in both decline and denial and will fall like its Eastern ’brother’ did back then. A new multi-polar, multi-cultural and cooperatively peaceful world is emerging as one scenario.

I work for that scenario but with the painful awareness that there are also darker, even cataclysmic, scenarios for humankind at this particular juncture of its existence.

References：
① Jan Oberg, The TFF Abolish NATO Catalogue, 2022

问题的提出

这篇文章——也是一次对集思广益和对话的严肃邀请——基于这些假设，但我并不打算从本质上讨论它们：

● 以美国及其帝国为首的西方在一系列重要标志上正在走向衰落。如果出现这种情况，就如同大约30年前的苏联一样，北约也将消失。不能排除的是，欧盟将寻求发展自己的安全体系，但到目前为止，它还无法推动自己或世界走向和平——虽然根据里斯本条约，它应该这样做——而且它的安全理念已经过时，基本上与北约相同（我会在下面解释）。

● 由于后西方世界将是多元文化和多极的，我相信没有西方国家会在狂妄的驱使下，试图让其他国家变得像它们一样，然后遵循分而治之的哲学。没有国家会认为上帝赋予的使命是宣传一种多样性必须实现统一的体系。在未来的体系中，关于国防、安全与和平的新思维必须建立在许多且不同的因素之上，而不仅仅是一个国家或文化的思维方式。因此，我的方法——尽管它在西方范式中属于另类的选择——只是对事情叙述的一部分。

● 这是一篇有远见的文章——关于一个新的全球体系——安全不仅是生存，还要使军国主义和军备竞赛成为过去，从而使整个体系变得更加和平。但是与艺术和科学世界相比，当今的政治世界根本缺乏远见、想象力、实验态度、对替代方案的创造性思考以及对任何事物的新想法。

● 在我看来，仅仅使用我们从今天的“现实政治”中掌握的工具，是不可能思考和“设计”出未来世界秩序的。正如人们所说，跳出思维的框框是必要的，不要用不“现实”的观点扼杀任何想法。我们现在知道，那些曾经被认为“不切实际”的做法突然变得非常普遍。我们还知道——为什么古老的西方单极秩序会如此衰落？——关于安全、发展与和平的旧思维在现实中几乎没有给这三个方面带来任何好处，而且还威胁着人类的灭亡——或者是由于全球自然被破坏而在“啜泣”中慢慢消失，或者是在一场重大战争中，特别是在使用核武器的战争中“砰”的一声瓦解。换句话讲，现实政治绝不是现实的。

● 正如我多年来所认为的那样，过去几十年里，这一特定领域的知识裁军——特别是自冷战结束以来，并在2001年9月11日得到加强，而不是乌克兰战争——是西方战争和军国主义以及其严重的武器成瘾和北约扩张的基本原因。

● 因此，没有时间可以浪费。全球关于用一种全新的方式思考冲突以及如何解决冲突的包容性对话必须从现在开始。
对此，我们必须遵循联合国宪章的第一条，它明确规定，和平应通过和平的手段建立。因为确实没有比几乎所有现有国家都签署的联合国宪章更好的规范性知识框架了——虽然这并不意味着它就不需要更新和适应未来。

● 最后，这篇文章并没有提供一些模式、机构图以及任何关于如何架构未来世界的具体内容，也没有对重大战略和政治行动计划给出概述。它不是用线性、而是以循环的方式展开思考。这是因为笔者认为，好的想法加上一些概念理论的一致性与之配合，是非常实用的起点。思想和愿景对于成功的变革行动和政策制定来说至关重要。可是至少在西方，太多的政策制定已经变成了快速行动，而非经过深思熟虑后的一致行动，而且它们往往缺乏远见。

暴力、和平与安全——差异与联系   

要在愿景和想象力的框架内讨论这些问题，绝对有必要首先澄清我们将在整篇文章中使用的基本概念。它们不是一成不变的，每个人都可以批评或完善它们，但它们在一定程度上准确地体现了笔者的知识领域，并解释了愿景是如何发展的。

同样，这里的一切也都是对全球对话的邀请——对更美好未来的建设性思考，而不仅仅是对现状的批评（它已经让人听够了）。

1. 暴力、邪恶和善良的复杂性
虽然显而易见，但仍需指出：所有安全和国防措施和政策的首要目标必须是降低一方或多方对他方使用暴力的可能性或风险。如果决策者可以使用许多暴力措施，而较少使用非暴力的民间手段，风险会更大，因此我们必须扩大范围指出，暴力手段的绝对性质和数量都应该减少到我们稍后定义的目的所需的最低限度。

为什么这么说——至少在哲学层面这么说？因为总的来说，杀戮和伤害以及破坏财产和自然的暴力手段与和平是不相容的。进入人体的有毒的、致命物质对健康也是有害的，除了少数特殊的例外情况，比如对抗癌症的毒性物质。

如何定义暴力
暴力是什么？

约翰·加尔东（1930年出生）是研究和平与建立和平的绝对权威之一。他将暴力定义为潜在的人类和社会实现与事实上人类潜在能实现水平之间的差异，即人类和社会能够实现的目标与实际实现的目标之间的差异。

因此，如果一个父亲命令他年轻的酷爱弹钢琴、并且非常擅长的儿子必须成为一名工程师或牙医，这就是暴力。这个男孩在技术或医术方面的潜力几乎为零，但由于父亲的暴力要求（而不是建议），他很可能将过着无聊且不快乐的生活。或者，如果地球上的其他人每晚都可以在上床睡觉前吃饱饭，但同时却有数百万人正在挨饿，这显然也是暴力：地球养活每个人的潜力的实现被低估了，造成了痛苦，甚至导致了死亡。甘地的表达更具诗意：“这个世界上有足够的东西可以满足每个人的需要，但不能满足每个人的贪婪。”

一个使贪婪、个人利益以及个人效用最大化合法化的世界，很可能变成趋向贪婪并对弱势群体形成暴力的社会，因为它不是以需求为导向的。

因此，暴力可以被看作是社会和个人的想象或全部潜力与其实际实现之间的差异、在一个数百万人的基本需求得不到满足的社会里，花费数十亿美元用于作战是暴力的一个悲剧性例子。

人类是邪恶还是善良的？答案扮演了什么角色？

人们经常听到这样的说法，我们之所以发动战争，是因为人类邪恶和具有侵略性——事实上，人类天生就有暴力的潜能。这样的说法可能有一定的道理——人类是唯一开发出可以杀死所有物种的武器的生物——并威胁要定期这么做。当我们看到人类在战争中对彼此所做的一切时，我们会怀着最深切的担忧想知道：我们自己的一些亲人怎么会对其他人如此残忍？他们怎么有时还会破坏人类共同的文化遗产（联合国教科文组织确定的）——比如几年前在阿勒颇东部所发生的？

具有典型性的是，持这样说法的主要是这几类人：1.正如他们所言，他们想通过发起战争来对抗“邪恶”；2.没有太多的创造力和知识；3.通常对人类的命运持悲观态度。

首先，很显然，人类即使是邪恶的，也有行善的能力——爱他们的孩子，互相帮助，照顾病人和弱者，提供人道主义援助——以及爱他们的家人。那么，为什么要经常争论人们是邪恶的——而且只是邪恶的呢？我在演讲时经常被问到：但是，扬，你不认为世界上有这么多的暴力是因为我们人类是邪恶的吗？我会笑着回答：你自己是邪恶的吗？从来没有人承认：是的，我知道我是邪恶的！

所以我的直觉是，“那些邪恶的家伙”总是“其他人”，而不是我们，也不是人类。

问题是这种邪恶本性的根源来自哪里？答案是我们从心理学中知道了这一点——例如，米尔格拉姆的实验，从研究诸如阿道夫·希特勒等人的性格中知道——或者我们有这样的本能，并且能对其实施操作，基本上就像动物一样（行为学，动物心理学）。所有这些理论中的一个核心概念是侵略——敌对、暴力行为和态度。当内心紧张加剧的时候，它们就可能在攻击中爆发。侵略不仅是我们在心理学中发现的一个概念，在国际政治和法律中也有。不过，在它们的范畴中，侵略不是一个解释，而是一种犯罪。

我认为一个更富有成效的方法是认为，人类行为与他们运作的系统和人性至少有同样多的关系——我认为这也符合前面加尔东对暴力的定义。

如果我们组织一支军队，让年轻人接受长期的教育和训练，听从上级的旨意，并在接到命令时杀人，那么这些年轻人很可能会在战区作战时杀人。可是这是否意味着，从他们的本性来看——或者说从人性来看——他们是邪恶的？

系统可能是好的，也可能是坏的吗？这取决于它们服务的目的，它们如何将人们社会化，并使其发挥作用和履行职责。在我看来，人们对人的邪恶谈论得太多，对人的善良谈论得太少——对植根于个体人性中的邪恶谈论得更多，而对善与恶系统的作用以及它们用来培养善与恶行为的机制谈论得更小。

我们在这里触及了一些关于人类及其存在的最神秘的东西——存在的神秘。令人遗憾的是，致力于这些问题的和平研究和其他研究太少了，可用于产生新学说和武器的研究资金增加了数千倍，而这些学说和武器导致了对更多人类同胞的更多残酷行为。它们都得到认为我们所有人内在具有邪恶或破坏性的假设的支持。

这完全可以称得上是一个伪假设，因为邪恶的总是一些人，因此，这不是一个关于所有人的真实理论。其次，它还忽略了所有对人性美好维度的提及。

暴力的类型
最后，我们认为暴力有哪些类型？

一种暴力是身体上的、直接的人与人之间的：A打B的脸或杀死他的家人。另一种暴力是心理暴力——羞辱、诽谤、欺骗、撒谎、威胁、在国家之间使用心理战、妖魔化、称某人邪恶和使用恶名、指控、将自己的阴暗面投射到他人身上等等。

这两种暴力都具有两个特点：1.有明确的发起者和接受者；2.身体和心理暴力往往都会造成创伤，而且创伤可能会成为永久性的，永远扭曲受创伤者的生活，或者导致其产生仇恨和复仇的愿望——通常比第一个施暴者的暴力行为更加严重：你杀死了我家三口，让我成为受害者，我要通过杀死你身边的十个人来报复你。

有一种理论是关于重复的冲动：我/我们必须——或者有权利——对别人做其对我们做过的事。

顺便说一句，虽然或许可以理解，但受害者暴力往往具有特别恶劣和复杂的特征，因为一方面受害者拥有了一种实施邪恶或暴力的许可证，另一方面施暴者也被要求予以同情，因为他/她现在成了受害者。

有什么能阻止这种恶性循环吗？有的，首先是饶恕施暴者的决心——这是一种单方面的行动，不取决于施暴者的介入。其次，双方都可以朝着和解、委托了解真相和其他积极治愈的方向迈进，这是一个双向的过程，双方需要相互接触。

对于直接的个体间的暴力，无论是身体上的还是心理上的，都可采取如此这样的方法。

但是还有另一种至关重要的、普遍的暴力类型——在西方个人主义文化背景下经常被忽视——即系统或“结构性”暴力——这也是约翰·加尔东提出的一个术语。

在这里，我们面临的暴力是建立在整个系统的运作模式中的——系统是暴力的实施者，而不是一些可识别的个体行为者——人或国家。如果一个男人经常殴打他的妻子，我们可能会说这属于个体的身体或心理暴力。但是，如果一个系统——“系统地”赋予所有男性对女性的所有权利，我们会说它属于结构性暴力，即父权制——一个主导地位和特权地位主要由男性决定和掌握的社会制度。

这同样也适用于全球发展不良、军国主义和战争、帝国主义等社会现象。在这样的结构中，个体当然在制造暴力的过程中发挥了自己的作用，但其行为的总和是对他者——人民、文化、国家或世界——的暴力，而这无法通过逮捕少数施暴者被阻止。因为，即使受到惩罚，也没有任何个体能让暴力消失。

冷战理念得到军备的支持，并且由军事、工业、媒体、学术综合体运作，它可以被看作是一个从根本上讲的暴力结构。而且它差不多已成为永久性的暴力，因为即使它曾经的基础或存在理由已消失，但它会很快找到另一个存在的理由。比如，大约30年前苏联和华约消失时就是这样；北约的军国主义有增无减——因为它很快就发现了一些其他威胁或“挑战”，使其正在进行的系统暴力合法化——当然，目前的威胁来自俄罗斯、朝鲜、伊朗和中国。

因此，虽然一名士兵在战场上杀害另一名士兵或杀害一些平民绝对是个人暴力，但它们是一个无限大的战争和军国主义系统的一部分，并通过不依赖于个人而依赖于群体或更大系统功能的特征运行。在这种系统中，我们无法让一个人或几个人对此负责。杀人的是系统，是它授意并安排了相应的操作。

在我们结束对暴力类型的讨论之前，让我们陈述一下其中的两个经典维度：首先，暴力既有可见的方面，也有不太明显的方面；既有隐藏的也有清晰显现的暴力。我们应该学会如何发现其不太明显的表现形式，并在暴力潜伏尚未爆发时就对其进行拦截。就像流感一样，在其早期阶段对付它比等它严重入侵我们的身体后再对抗要容易得多。

另一个维度是，如果看不见的冲突或暴力爆发了，人们往往会感到更惊愕，并会对其做出不那么谨慎的反应。这就是为什么“预警”和预防暴力必须成为未来安全与和平体系的一个组成部分：这样或那样的决定会产生什么后果？我们应该如何防止其演变成新的暴力冲突？

最后，试图通过教育个体采取不同的行动来改革系统往往是没有意义的。相反，你必须解决系统模式本身的暴力特征。全球贫困或文盲问题无法通过个人公正得到解决，因为犯下这些罪行的不是一个人或少数几个人。全球经济体系仍在继续犯罪，要改变它，我们必须想出一个更和平的体系，而不是惩罚一些个人。

也就是说，我们不仅需要对问题做出定义、诊断和预后。要改变，还必须有一个愿景——这个愿景涉及到一个完全不同的思维方式，并组织一个以改善人类、全球和环境为导向的有效系统。

2. 积极和平的必要要素：确保发展和发展安全
每个人都说希望和平，但我们对和平是什么以及如何实现和平却知之甚少。由于和平被认为是一种积极的价值观，因此，一些组织会声称，无论它们做什么，都是为了和平。比方说，北约的成立是为了服务和平，和平在其条约中至关重要。无论北约决定执行什么政策，都会伴随着“安全、稳定与和平”的口号。可悲的是，自1949年以来，它一直以这种方式宣扬和平，并消耗了数万亿纳税人的美元，其结果却是这个世界的所有人都面临着全球战争，甚至可能是核战争的前景。

人们普遍认为，和平可以由一个没有暴力和战争的系统来定义。在媒体和政策界，它们认为某个地方是和平的，只是因为这个地方的军事斗争已经结束，并通过谈判找到了解决方案。在大多数情况下，这只是非战争，并不是和平，而且和平谈判往往不过是停火协议——缺乏真正、可持续的解决冲突的要素——因此，同样的冲突用不了多久很可能再次爆发。

也许，公众会把“和平”这个词与某种和谐、内心的平静、鸽子、一种标志、约翰·列侬的“想象”、幸福、冥想、与宇宙融为一体、爱、一些内在的灵性等联系在一起，或者与社会中没有差异和冲突联系在一起。一些人认为它是其他积极价值观或观念的组合，比如正义、尊重人权、自由、民主等。还有一些人把和平与死亡联系在一起——他们会说，安息吧。

这些都是错误的，它表明我们的世界仍然存在某种程度的和平文盲。

当然，对和平不可能只有一种唯一正确的定义。与许多其他社会品质一样，和平是哲学家们所说的“本质上有争议的概念”，围绕其定义和实施，总会有争论。这是正常合理的。

和平是什么的一个最近似说法：它不仅仅是没有某些东西，也不是其他良好价值观的融合。它不是被动的，或者什么也没有发生的情况——比如一对恋人挽着手看夕阳西下。这样的场景当然很好，但和平是与之完全不同的。

它本身就是一种事物，一种动态的、以活动为基础的、永无止境的事。

在军国主义文化中，和平通常被认为是一种被剥夺了固有和显性价值的现象——一种残余物，甚至是一种空无。

我们试图传递的是，和平不仅仅是战争的反面，它是对减少各种暴力类型的方法无止境的寻求。虽然暴力总是与某种类型的冲突有关，但也有非暴力的冲突，因此我们必须学会用智慧、非暴力的方式处理冲突，而不是通过威胁、妖魔化和战争。

如果和平的一个基本定义要素是减少暴力，那么暴力手段的最大化就不可能带来和平，真正的和平。因此，解决冲突的主要手段必须是和平的——正如联合国宪章的整个基本哲学和价值观所体现的那样。只有在万不得已的情况下，当一切和平的努力都被发现和证明是徒劳的时候，国际社会——联合国——才可以团结起来，在联合国的指挥下使用暴力。

各国政府签署的联合国宪章是最能体现甘地精神的文件——无论它们是否知情，都执行了甘地的著名格言，即手段是“正在形成的目标”。

也就是说，加尔东创造了消极和平和积极和平这两个术语。消极和平是指没有各种类型的暴力——就如同消极的健康意味着我没有生病，没有感到任何疼痛或高温一样。

积极和平是指一些品质的存在，这些品质关注潜在性和机会的实现，而且不仅满足基本需求，还要满足更高的需求，并不断寻求改进，它是一个永无止境的过程。它可以被视为与积极的健康相类似——感觉精力充沛，接受新的挑战，洋溢着快乐，乐于合作和帮助他人——一切都超出了“0”的范围。在其范围内，我们不仅没有生病，而且处于充满活力的人类和社会发展中。

“发展”一词标志着和平定义的下一个要素——它是我多年来创造的，我的一本书的标题就是：“和平是在关爱伦理的基础上，为全人类以及全人类在相互交往和全球环境中发展安全和有保障的发展。”

我开始相信，对和平而言，发展是一种极其重要的方法——它不仅是一种定义，而且是一种永远不会结束的概念化——就像世界各地朝着更加和平的生活改变永远不会结束一样。总是有改进的空间和时间！

这里有一些对此更广泛、更深入的概念化解释：

所有人类和所有社会都在寻求至少两个基本的东西：首先，发展——通过教育、文化和生产等方式实现他们的潜力并且扩大他们的潜力，从而随着时间的推移过上越来越好的生活。其次，确保其发展在未来能够继续下去，不会受到来自内部或外部的威胁。

简单地说：如果我们对明天或者下周是否还能活着感到不安全，我们为什么要投资于我们自己和社会的发展？为了确保社会未来的安全，它需要大量不同的人力和其他资源——可是如果没有广义的“发展”，这些资源将无法获得。

整个人类确切地说意味着——不仅仅是身体或公民身份，而是整体——内在的、非物质的、精神的、道德的和友好的人类。对所有人来说，这意味着，在每个社会内部以及全球范围内，发展和安全如果只为少数人或阶层服务，而他们却可以无情地剥削他人，那就不存在和平。

无论我们如何定义它们，殖民主义和帝国主义的运作模式——分裂/分裂、剥削、边缘化和种族主义——以及维护它们的军国主义——都是对任何和平概念的根本否定。

全球关爱伦理
关爱伦理究竟意味着什么？有新的全球关爱伦理吗？

首先，在我们的思想中，我们必须保留两样东西：

其一，基于基督教的邻里伦理和大多数个性化的十诫。为什么？因为，世界现在就是一个社会，随着时间的推移，我们许多行动的后果将是全球性的。这是我们从生态学和全球主义研究的整体思维中知道的。一切事物都与其他事物有关，即使没有立即发生的话，但是久而久之也会发生——这是盖亚的流行说法。

其二，我们必须抛弃以人类为中心的世界观，即人是每一种生物的中心，应该控制所有其他生物。我们必须认识到，我们不能凌驾于大自然之上。相反，我们与其是合作伙伴——这是构想与自然和全球环境和平相处的唯一途径。

这些当然都是关于全球伦理哲学所出版的书籍中的片言只语。在众多令我颇受启发的哲学家中，有一位是德国裔美国人汉斯·乔纳斯（1903-1993）。他在其开创性的著作《责任的必要性，寻找技术时代的伦理学》（1984）一书中，围绕以下构想阐述了全球伦理学：

“行动起来，使你行动的效果与人类真正生命的永恒相融合……在你现在的选择中，请将人类未来的完整性纳入你的意志目标。我们可以冒自己生命的危险，但决不能冒人类生存的风险。”

至此，让我穿过他人的思想，说说我自己这些年来的反思，它们开始强调新的全球关爱伦理的下列要素：

●  关心当下生活的永久性。保持谦卑！
●  关爱生物多样性：节制、欣赏、保护！
●  关心尚未出生的后代：同理心、爱心！

在我们谈论环境破坏（较慢）还是有无核武器的全球战争（较快）时，这些原则都适用。

人类还应当考虑其他物种。正因为我们拥有巨大的技术力量，我们必须谦卑，也必须承担责任——人类的责任，而不仅仅是人类的权利。面对非人类世界，我们同样有责任。非人类世界，包括动物、植物、微生物等都有权利，但它们自己不能发声，只有人类才能替它们发声。因此，我们有责任使用想象力和同理心来定义这些非人类同胞所拥有的权利。甘地的格言——没有义务就没有权利——比仅仅要求个人和集体的权利要深刻得多，更不用说在政治上将其武器化了。

当然，我们伦理关注的一个特别重要的对象是那些尚未出生的人。世界各地的太多代人都表现得好像我们之后就没有他人了。总的来说，我们已经将全球环境带到了这样一个地步，如果子孙后代都想要生存下来，他们将面临巨大的问题。

我们已经引进、保留和增加——而不是废除——核武器，这些武器与任何一种全球伦理和真正的和平都是不能相容的。没有人有权力决定结束人类的计划，但每个人都有责任将此类风险降至零。

尽管这些问题值得在这篇文章之外进行更多的阐述和对话，但令人遗憾的是，人们对伦理的关注却少得可怜——在当今的政治决策圈子里，自然也没有一秒钟的关注。想象一下，一位首相在新闻发布会上告诉媒体人，他的政府之所以放弃这个或那个项目，是因为它同情、关爱尚未出生的几代人的需求和健康！想象一下，一位负责任的人说，我关心生活在蓝天下的一切，这种关心与更多的战争、进攻性常规武器，特别是大规模杀伤性武器是不相容的。如果我们计划彻底摧毁一切，我们又怎么能相信我们会关心所有东西？

总之，任何地方都几乎不存在认真且全面的和平方法——就像我们在上面刚刚暗示的那样。第一，大多数人都没有意识到。第二，在各种文化中，关于真正和平的哲学和研究几乎不存在。第三，政治缺乏伦理考量。第四，令人遗憾的是，整体上人们，包括参与和平运动的人士，似乎都认为和平只是我们所称的消极和平，他们并不关注积极和平的实质以及实现积极和平的战略。第五，无论是在军国主义衰落或猖獗的时代——甚至可能是军国主义致死的时代——和平思想仅属于少数持不同政见者。正如我所言，这种话语体系已经在研究、政治和媒体中消失了。

3. 全球短路：进攻性威慑和永久不安全
在当今世界，军事安全占据主导地位。所有文化和国家的人们都将“安全”一词与“国家安全”以及国家军队的能力联系在一起。其他国家被妖魔化，被称为挑战或威胁——因为“我们”需要保护自己。

这本身就是一个严重的错误，但对于军国主义文化来说是很自然的。它就像我们认为我们的健康需要靠吃药和打针才能实现。

事实上和从哲学上讲，整个安全部门已经成为所谓的医源性疾病。根据维基百科提供的解释，医源性是任何医疗活动（包括诊断、干预、失误或疏忽）所导致的疾病、有害并发症或其他不良影响的原因。这个词于1924年首次被用于这个意思，1976年由伊万·伊里奇引入社会学，他断言工业化社会的过度医疗化生活损害了人们的生活质量。

实际上，在诸如《欢乐工具》等开创性的书籍中，奥地利哲学家、社会学家、历史学家和罗马天主教牧师伊万·伊里奇（1926-2002）做得远不止这些。他批评了当代社会创造的依靠高科技并由精英经营的“激进垄断”的方式，这样的垄断以服务他人的名义剥夺了其属于自己的真正的人类活动、权利和独立，并且将社会变成被动的大众消费主义——实际上是精英借着治愈和保护这些人的名义对公民发动的战争。虽然这些垄断是以提供好的东西的名义进行的，但随着时间的推移，其结果是弊大于利。

让我们将其应用到安全政治领域。国家或政府声称，只要公民纳税，他们就可以得到所需的东西，政府也会创造“安全”来保护这些公民。可是这些政府随后就制造威胁和对抗，并实施进攻性防御政策，这势必会造成紧张局势，令他人感到威胁。结果这些“他人”会武装起来反对“我们”，而我们的政府则会要求其公民提供更多的资金。

北约提出的一个具体要求就是，所有成员国都必须为国家军事安全支付其国民生产总值的2%。这显然是典型的反智胡言，但它对有特殊利益的人来说是有目的的。国家军事预算的规模从来都不能由国家整体经济的表现决定；它应当始终基于对一个国家在一定时间内可能面临的民事和军事威胁所做出的认真专业且多方面的分析。北约秘书长最近宣布，2%已不再是上限，而是下限。考虑到俄罗斯和中国对西方构成的威胁，它必须要求更多。
简单说，北约的存在是为了保护其公民免受其他人的武装威胁，而它的不安全感恰恰是因为北约自己的进攻性、扩张性和军国主义政策所导致的。这如果不是典型的医源性疾病，又是什么？其所做的就是让强者在其他人身上制造不安全感，迫使后者武装自己，然后再将其指定为北约国家的敌人。

这种做法能够奏效的一个基本原因可以从恐惧学的概念中找到。它能产生两种作用：

1.让你的公民知道，有邪恶势力威胁着他们，这样他们就会乐意花钱得到保护。事实上是否存在威胁并不重要，只要让他们相信存在威胁就足够了。

2.让你的竞争对手或敌手感到你很强大，可能会伤害他们，但同时又声称你是防御性的，对他们没有恶意或算计。

造成这种永久循环的主要工具是威慑——也就是进攻性威慑。这里是ChatGPT对威慑给出的定义，非常正确：

“威慑是指使用威胁或惩罚来阻止或劝阻某人采取某种行动或做出某种行为。威慑的目的是对特定行为会产生负面后果的预期，从而劝阻某人参与该行为。

威慑可以采取多种形式，包括法律后果的威胁、使用武力、经济制裁，甚至社会压力。它经常被用于国际关系中，以阻止各国对彼此采取敌对行动。总的来说，威慑的概念是基于这样一种观点，即对惩罚或负面后果的恐惧可以成为改变行为的强大动力。”

你会立即看到这里的问题：威慑是使用威胁和惩罚的告诫：如果你不按照我们告诉你的去做，或者不放弃做我们不希望你做的事。

根据定义，威慑不能促进双方或多方的信心、友谊、合作、稳定、安全或和平。当你威慑某人时，你会向他发出这样的信号，“我们把你视为潜在的敌人，而不是朋友。”因此，不可避免的是，对方会感到被针对、不安全、遭误解或被激怒。

这就是简单的威慑心理学。可悲的是，它一直并仍然是当代所有安全政策的基本概念，无论它是否有意义或只是一个愚蠢的哲学短路——根据定义，威慑永远不会产生相互或共同的安全、稳定、友谊，不可能实现联合国提出的全面彻底裁军的全球目标。而且，它也绝不会创造出任何有意义的所谓和平。

威慑模式下的敌人就像瓶子里的蝎子——借用美国杰出学者理查德·巴内特（1929-2004）对陷入第一次冷战中的美国和苏联的描述——两者之间充满巨大的紧张和敌意，但无论如何它们都要么被迫合作，要么最终强者对弱者说：我现在要彻底摧毁你，因为你不尊重我的威慑。

威慑就到此为止——现在来说说它的进攻性。很简单，它意味着“我可以在数千公里外的你的领土上非常精确地干掉你或伤害你。我的安全在于能够在你的地盘上毁灭你”。

这里是ChatGPT给出的答案，又一次非常准确地告诉我们：“攻击性武器可以定义为任何设计或改装为对人身或财产造成损伤或伤害的物体或装置。这些武器经常被以侵略性或暴力的方式使用……并且经常与犯罪活动或意图有关。”

这当然排除了对进攻性威慑对象的同情。甲方宣称自己是防御性的，但拥有诸如洲际导弹等作战理论和武器，而乙方肯定视这些理论和武器具有攻击性、威胁性和挑衅性，于是乙方会随之增加其远程武装。

再一次，这是极其不智慧的做法，但它是有目的的——持续的军备、武器生产利润、超级大国政治，“首屈一指”——简而言之，就是上述军事、工业、媒体、学术综合体的意图。

如果威慑概念要在未来的世界秩序中存在下来，它就必须成为纯粹的防御性概念。下面将详细介绍。

4. 对未来和平世界秩序的新思维的组成部分
我相信，如果读者至少接受了上面对当代安全政治及其基础的一些批评，那么我们将更容易理解我们必须如何改变我们的思维，以及应该——也可以——在未来的世界体系中构建什么。

但是当然，这个体系不能仅仅建立在对旧体制的否定之上。它必须包含一些全新的东西，它们能够适应未来，而不是过去。

它的首要目标是创造一个更和平的世界，这意味着相比当今世界，系统性暴力要少得多，直接、心理、性别和文化暴力也要少得多。就像减少疾病是医学的目标一样，减少暴力和增加人类的和社会的——实际上是全球——自我实现和幸福的潜力则是和平研究的目标。

然而，我们需要务实：可能总有一些疾病会在某处出现，或者新的疾病会出现在今天我们不知道的地方，一些类型的暴力也会在这里或那里出现，而且还有新的类型正在出现。

因此，针对未来的流行语是通过明智的民间冲突解决方法预防暴力和减少暴力。但这并不能够消除冲突！

冲突——预警、管理和解决
是在价值观、愿景、目标和排名系统中的定位等方面存在矛盾。在任何人类社会体系中，总会有冲突、分歧和争论。一个没有冲突的社会是一个人们被洗脑了的社会，他们没有思考和感受的能力或自由，这属于独裁政权，是一种极其无聊和不人道的现象。

事实上，尽管当冲突出现时，我们可能会因为一些内心的紧张而感到不快，但冲突也可以被视为积极的东西：它们能够让我们思考和重新思考我们所做的事情，我们如何看待他人，他人如何看待我们，以及我们如何看待自己（也许是错误的）。它们可以迫使我们在选择中做出优先考虑，如果我们以某种方式解决了与对方的冲突，我们可以从中了解到关于这个问题、对方和我们自己的一些重要信息。此外，冲突只不过是双方之间存在的问题，只要发挥创造性就能解决。它还要求人性和同理心，因为假设冲突各方的最佳解决方案是分手或离婚，那还要让他们能像彼此尊重的邻居那样生活。

因此，我们现在可以在和平的定义中增加一个新的维度：和平不是要消灭冲突，而是要尽快意识到冲突（在潜伏期就能解决冲突），并建设性地处理冲突，旨在最终结果能尽量减少各方之间的暴力和不满。

相反，暴力的出现往往是因为冲突，比如一方或多方的关切被忽视了，因为发现曾经制定的决议是错误的和不可持续的，或者因为一方或多方故意作弊，这很容易发生在不对称冲突中，并导致新的冲突。

因此，一个具有巨大多维性和多极多样性的新世界体系必须对冲突及其管理采取完全不同的态度——一种旨在在冲突还没有那么严重或恶化时尽早处理冲突的态度——就像我们从医学中已经很清楚地了解到的那样。自然规律就是我们越早解决问题，就越容易解决。

我们今天拥有的相对最好的全球冲突解决机构就是联合国——不是因为它的行动或机构，而主要是因为它的宪章。在世界团结起来对联合国进行改革之前，宪章是迄今为止减少暴力和解决冲突的最佳规范框架，虽然这并不意味着它是完美的。

随着金砖国家、上合组织、东盟、非盟等地区和其他组织的发展壮大，它们必须做好准备，成为自己成员国之间的冲突管理者，从而减轻国际社会处理所有争端的压力。

要详细概述预防暴力和解决冲突的制度并不容易。但未来不是一个世界的政府，而是充满活力、多样化、网络化的全球治理，对暴力和战争风险进行预警需要通过配备有最佳智力和专业冲突管理方法和工具的调解机构进行早期干预。

这意味着需要和平部门的参与并展开不同教育层级的和平教育，这还意味着需要使用缔造和平的专业知识——而不仅仅是以战争为导向的新闻。同时这也意味着要向一种在全球范围培育的和平文化转变——换句话说，和平是自上而下和自下而上建立起来的，也是在全球人类社会纵横交错的各种互动中建立起来的。这是不断减少各种暴力，以及结束军国主义并防止其卷土重来的斗争。

所有这些都是可能的——如果我们能对当前的问题做出正确的诊断，并愿意开始诚实地探索和展开全球对话，而不是用明显狭隘和缺乏远见的论断“但这是不现实的”来扼杀所有建设性的观点和想法。

和平第一——通过共同安全
当前，不成熟的和平以及和平预防系统所缺乏的是社区或共同体的成熟价值观：共同安全。正如我们已阐述的，今天的安全建立在零和思维和威慑思想的基础上，即A国如果能够伤害或摧毁B国，就会感到安全。军事安全优先的反常想法必须首先得到满足，然后和平才会或多或少地自动到来。我们现在知道它是不可行的，以及从理论上讲它为什么也是不可能的。

这个问题的解决方案从逻辑上讲很简单：首先实现和平，然后通过真正赞同和维护和平的明智的安全措施来支持和平，这样冲突的解决就能实现。不要建立军事主导的“安全”，即使它有实现和平与稳定的良好意图。
那么，什么是共同安全呢？

答案很简单：只做让双方或所有方都过得更好的事情，并且始终拥有这样的目标、工具和声明。这才是双赢的安全。当“我们”感到更加安全时，基本原因是“他们”让我们感到更加安全。我们不必担心他们会策划袭击我们，因为“我们”的政策没有为“他们”提供任何借口或动机。

从实际意义上讲，这意味着在未来，每一个和所有行动者都只能做一些不会增加“其他人或对手”的风险或威胁水平的事情，这样也就不会增加“我们”的风险或威胁。这是一种正和哲学，与当下的零和哲学正好相反。

当有人感到不安全时，系统中没有人会感到安全。安全与和平在国际社会中是不可分割的，因为每个人都与其他人有关，每件事情都与其他事情有关。

防御性威慑和防御开启新机遇
这里出来了一个关键性的对比：一方面进攻性威慑阻碍和平，另一方面防御性威慑和防御可以促进和平。中国的城墙就是一个很好的例子——它不会威胁到远处的任何人，但它的目的是给侵略者造成很大的顾虑，以至于他会三思而后行，然后放弃进攻。

防御性也排除了军备竞赛。因为我们的防御对你的居住地没有威胁，也不会给你攻击我们的动机或借口——只有当你来攻击和征服时，我们的防御手段才会让你感到恐惧，也就是说，除非你真的有邪恶的动机。

如果将这种新的防御思想运用于军队，防御性军队将只需投资于1.短程军事手段，2.高快速机动性，以及3.有限的破坏能力，因为它们将只在我们自己的领土或非常靠近我们的领域使用。这样外国基地、洲际和其他远程武器、核武器、化学武器和生物武器等就可以成为过去。

但所有这些都只适用于战争真正爆发的情形下。这种替代性全球防御思维的全部意义在于，它是1.在暴力爆发之前预防暴力，2.通过民事手段可以解决达到95%的冲突。

民事手段包括学术、哲学、外交、经济、政治等。我们做各种各样的事情来降低生病的风险，比如健康饮食、适量饮酒、锻炼身体和大脑、在变老的过程中不断挑战自己，以及对给我们带来快乐的事情充满热情。我们的目的不仅是要活得更长，还要活得更好。

令人遗憾的是，在安全政治领域却找不到同样的想法。在这一领域，我们似乎对我们社会的身体和心理做了所有错误的事情，就好像我们想缩短生命，甚至自杀——通过沉迷于武器这一占主导地位的工具。军国主义已经成为一种癌症，它侵蚀着我们的经济、幸福，也偷走了解决人类现实和紧迫问题所急需的资源。想想所谓的机会成本吧——人类用现在浪费在战争和其他军国主义上的资源的一小部分，就可以为现在和未来一代做的所有好事……

5. 走向和平的“优托邦”
想象一下，如果军事“安全”方面的投资减少，民用和平的投资增加，世界会变得多么美好。

民用和平的投资是在社会各个领域建立一层又一层以和平为导向的战略和组成部分——历史书描述的是和平的历史，其中主要涉及的并不是战争的历史。战争纪念馆和博物馆可以有——毕竟这也是现实的一部分——但为什么不建立和平纪念馆和博物馆呢？我们不仅需要战地记者、也需要和平记者的新闻报道，以及对正在进行的战争发表的和平观点。

为什么没有和平与和解部而只有军事国防部呢？每一个想要继续拥有军事力量的国家——军队、空军等——也应该拥有受过教育和实际训练的和平部队，担任冲突分析人员和调解人，并提出和平解决方案。

此外，应该向从小学到大学的学生传授有关和平的各种知识，这类科目的设立要与减少暴力和积极和平有关，并在全球范围内就此进行持续的文化间对话。想象一下和平经济学——转化研究方向，思考如何以减少暴力的方式定义经济和其他发展——以及如何将军事工业转化为世界各地人民需要的替代产品。还应该有一个完整的科学分支专注于非暴力经济学。

所有这些——同样只占全球军事的一小部分资金——将使我们能够轻松实现联合国可持续发展的17个目标。通过创造一个更人道、更公正的世界，我们将减少为争夺资源而相互争斗的主观动机和客观原因——我们将通过新兴多极世界中两极之间的双赢合作和协同作用节省一些资源并创造新的资源。

要想建设和平，仅仅观察这个动荡的世界，并对其进行诊断，告诉彼此在这个或那个或所有领域的一切都离灾难越来越近是不够的。至少同样重要的是，要描绘出一个更美好的世界会是什么样子，就此进行对话和集思广益，然后就如何向前迈进以实现选定的愿景做出明智的决定，并以坚定不移的决心做下去。

世界末日是可以避免的，没有人有道德权利宣扬世界末日或称之为不可避免。导致他人失去希望也是为了实施暴力。我们不仅有责任关注问题，而且要比现在更多地关注可能的解决方案。这也是学者们的责任，如果他们只是把报告交到政治家的手里，并让这些政治家去解决他们提出的问题，他们就放弃了这一责任。

如果医生做出了可靠的诊断和预后，他/她是不会让绝症患者或家人选择治疗方法的。

当我们始终有——现在仍然有——建设性思考的机会时，我们却一直痴迷于暴力和反乌托邦，这是人类生存的一个谜。究竟是什么力量一直把我们拖向错误的方向，甚至让我们相信我们创造的反乌托邦世界是最好的，因此也是唯一可能的，而且现在还威胁着用“砰”的一声或“呜咽”来终结人类？为什么全世界那么多公民都认为，为了我们所有人的和平，一起思考、讨论并做出根本性的改变是不“现实的”？

在我们放弃的那一天，社会、民主与和平就会朽坏。或者引用马丁·路德·金的话：“当我们对重要的事情保持沉默的那一天，我们的生活就开始结束了。”比过去和现在更重要的是未来，因为这是我们唯一可以影响的事情。

我相信，对于我在上面提出的这个谜，没有合理、令人满意的解决方案。但是，在我们认识到在重大问题上齐心协力和平息小争执的必要性和对所有人的益处之前，人类还要向深渊多靠近？

我还认为，从时间和空间的宏观角度看，创造性的想法和跨文化的对话比精英们代表人民却在并没有咨询他们意见的情况下，在短期微观经济模式下选择的零碎改革要有效得多。

西方可以从其他国家——中国、印度、非洲、金砖国家以及全球南方——学到很多东西。与过去几百年在西方统治下实行的纵向殖民帝国种族主义的依赖他人相比，它们的横向集体相互依赖是有希望的。西方体系现在正遭受着社会“疲劳”的严重折磨，需要以新的良性、合作与和平的方式来接受自己和其他国家。

从和平的角度看，这意味着要避免针锋相对的想法：永远不要对挑衅的对方做他对我们做过的事，采取其他做法。比如，如果我们因为他这样做而进行大规模的重新武装，我们就会使军国主义问题成倍增加。随着时间的推移，我们将成为他的镜像——也就是说，我们的做法也已成为问题的一部分，而不是解决方案。

相反，我们应当采取自卫、防御性威慑和将军事资源转换到必要的最佳水平，然后采取一切其他措施促进和平。这样的创造力也会赢得他人的同情。

我在这一部分所说的并不是乌托邦的思想（the thinking of utopia）。它只是阐述了如何避免反乌托邦(to avoid dystopia)，但无论是乌托邦还是反乌托邦思想都无法帮助人类安全地走向更美好的未来。

为此，我们需要展开对“优托邦”(Eutopia)的思考——这个词用来描述一个想象中的社会，其特征是没有乌托邦和反乌托邦的负面影响。它是一个理想的社会，但不是以压迫或不切实际的方式。优托邦通常被描绘成一个社会，在这个社会中，个人可以自由地追求自己的目标和欲望，但同样也有一种社区感和合作感，让每个人都能在其中和谐地生活。优托邦通常被视为比乌托邦更现实、更可实现，同时也避免了反乌托邦的负面影响——这里再次引用了ChatGPT的解释。

为了人类的共同利益，我们可以明智地学会面对冲突与和平
我毫不怀疑，和平是我们可以学习的东西。如果社会能够通过参军和学习杀戮来教会年轻人保卫自己的国家，那么它当然也可以教会年轻人明智地应对冲突，并以远见和谨慎的道德观实现和平，即促进世界各地的和平行为和关系。

即使我们相信人类有邪恶的冲动，我们仍可以建立结构和社会，引导和最大限度地利用他们善良和同情的冲动，而不是邪恶的冲动。军事制度倾向于强调邪恶的敌人——妖魔化对手，而不是将他们视为潜在的朋友，还通过教授如何杀死人类同胞来培养暴力冲动。

世界需要一个全新的平衡点：减少军事和军国主义，增加真正的和平与安全，从而提升全球自我实现人类和自然所赋予的所有潜力的机会。如果说暴力会导致暴力，那么和平同样可以带来和平。如果存在恶性循环，那就同样存在良性循环或正反馈循环，在后者中，积极的事件或情况会在自我延续的循环中得到相互加强。

灵感来源
我在这篇文章中提到了一些哲学家——当我们处理全球多元文化问题时，我为他们中的大多数是西方人而道歉。我们必须兼收并蓄，在多元文化领域寻求灵感。所有文化中都有鼓舞人心的思想家和和平实践者——学术界人士、文化创造界人士、政治界人士、哲学家和活动家。我们对他们的研究太少或根本没有。因此，这个宝库需要研究和复兴，尤其是在黑暗时期。

西方产生了许多鼓舞人心的人——一些领导人，一些军国主义体系中的持不同政见者。我不打算把他们一一列出，他们中的大多数都有介绍他们的好书。

在这些问题上值得一提的是一位美国思想家查尔斯·奥斯古德，他在1962年提出了GRIT理论。GRIT代表张力降低中的分级互惠原则。意思是：当一方单方面做出让步时，另一方应该感到也有责任做出相应的让步作为回报，这种交流鼓励更多的反应让步的行动，直到紧张局势降至可以就解决方案进行对话的水平。每一方只需做出这样的让步：1.对自己不会构成“危险”，也不会危及自己的安全，2.没有恐惧或软弱的迹象。在做出让步之前，双方都要向世界明确表示：我采取这一单方面的缓和紧张局势的步骤，旨在邀请你也做出让步，从而逐渐缓和我们之间的紧张局势！

简言之，GRIT理论——在第一次冷战期间发展起来，并在古巴导弹危机中以某种方式实施——是关于减低战争的强度和缓和安全的。这一点非常重要，因为今天，每个人都可以盲目地采取升级措施，加剧紧张局势，直至局势失控。世界迫切需要像GRIT这样的建设性的缓和思想和战略。但今天谁在研究这些事情呢？肯定不是国家资助的军事安全机构。

当然，关于西方的和平思想和理论还有很多话要说。不过，我认为，我们研究和了解其他文化的和平思想家和活动家也是极其重要的,这是因为他们是本文分析中所关注的问题能否进行富有成效和相互尊重的全球对话的关键。许多冲突之所以变得棘手，只是因为我们不了解对方是如何跨文化思考的。在未来的冲突格局中，越来越多的行动者将不属于同一文化，他们对语言、概念和思维方式有着不同的理解。

莫罕达斯·K·甘地当然是激发和平灵感绕不开的人物。我们不必试图成为甘地，也不必像他那样生活，但我们都可以从他的生活和作品中学到一些重要的东西。他是一个多元文化、多元宗教的人，是上帝恩典的知识折衷主义者。同时还必须提到的是巴基斯坦的阿卜杜勒·加法尔·汗。

毫无疑问，非常重要的和平灵感还来自墨子、孙子、孔子、老子等中国哲学家，他们致力于思考共存、多样性、和谐而非统一、不干涉、人人平等、相互尊重、共赢、非极端主义和非使命。

还有极其重要的“和平共处五项原则”——相互尊重领土完整和主权、互不侵犯、互不干涉内政、平等互利、和平共处。这是一个极佳的国际关系和外交的解决方案，如果所有人都能这样做，这个世界将会变得更加和平。

“一带一路”倡议是2013年习近平主席在哈萨克斯坦阿斯塔纳的讲话中提出的。虽然如此庞大的项目——可能是人类历史上最大的项目，目前有140个参与国——肯定会存在问题，但不难看出，“一带一路”倡议体现了一种内在的和平哲学：分享共同愿景，寻求双赢，在多个方面进行合作，同时通过文化间对话寻求相互学习。参与者参与的时间越长，它们之间发动战争的可能性就越小——当然，总会有一些冲突，但它们可以通过和平手段解决——并且随着时间的推移，创造出良性循环。

中国的全球安全倡议、关于北约-俄罗斯在乌克兰冲突问题上的12点原则，以及中共中央外事办公室主任王毅在2023年慕尼黑安全会议及其全球发展倡议上提出的为建设一个更安全世界的基石，迫切需要尝试适应未来世界的综合性和原则性思维——在未来世界中，和平就是确保发展和发展安全，进而根据自卫权和全球关爱道德将暴力手段降至最低。

因此，人类有很多积极的思想和工具扎根在不同的文化中，它们可以用来建设一个更美好的未来。让我们加快全球建设性对话——今天而不是明天。

注释：
这篇分析文章中的一些理论和概念来自Dietrich Fischer、Wilhelm Nolte和Jan Oberg的《赢得和平，无核世界的战略与伦理》（Crane Russak，1989年）。当时第一次冷战结构开始瓦解，苏联和华约组织也注定要走向衰落。数以百万计的人们相信“和平红利”和一个更加和平公正的世界正在到来。或者至少在一段时间里会这样。但是后来的趋势和发生的事件，诸如2001年的9.11事件、全球反恐战争、永久性帝国干预主义、战争和控制以及北约的扩张——而不是废除北约，然后建立新的西方共同安全体系等粉碎了这些现实的希望。

今天的世界已经变得完全不同了，出现了我认为我永远不会再经历的一场新型的双重冷战：俄罗斯与北约冷战和美国对中国和其他非西方行为者的冷战。同样不同的是，西方国家——北约/欧盟世界和美国帝国——也都正在走向衰落和被排斥，就像当年的东方“兄弟”一样。一个新的多极、多元文化和合作的和平世界正在作为一种现象显现出来。

我在为这一现象工作，但我痛苦地意识到，在人类生存的这个特殊时刻，还有更黑暗、甚至灾难性的情况。

参考文献：
① 扬·奥伯格，跨国和平与未来研究基金会废除北约目录，2022https://transnational.live/2022/08/18/the-tff-abolish-nato-catalogue/

② 参见扬·奥伯格，“20世纪90年代世界混乱的替代方案，可持续性、非暴力、全球道德与民主”，国际基督教大学亚洲文化研究所通识教育系列，东京，1991年。

③  这里有乔纳斯思想的简短总结https://philosophia-bg.com/archive/philosophia-17-2017/on-hans-jonas-the-imperative-of-responsibility/

④ 关于伊凡·伊里奇https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich

⑤ 消失的和平话语：带着激情和公正继续https://transnational.live/2020/12/28/the-peace-discourse-that-disappeared-go-on-with-passion-and-detachment/