An Open Letter to Peacebuilders
A response from Milt Lauenstein
Dear authors,
Your paper is quite interesting and potentially important. You are obviously very knowledgeable about this field and its ineffectiveness.
Here are some reactions. Knowing where they come from, might help put the comments below into perspective. My current activities are summarized in the attached progress report. Additional information appears on my web site, www.miltlau.com.
When you use the term “peacebuilding”, it appears that you mean any activity that promotes peace, whether it is before (prevention), during, or after violence has occurred. Some others use the term to refer only to activities after violence has occurred but then stopped. Clarifying what you mean by “peacebuilding” at the outset would be helpful.
The main thrust of your paper seems to be that mankind is not well organized to keep groups from undertaking to kill one another. I certainly agree with that proposition. But the operational question is what to do about it. The great majority of people do what they perceive to be in their best interest. You point out that many in this field fail to behave in ways that would be more effective in promoting peace. That is true. If you take NGOs or INGOs as examples, their primary motivation is usually to survive, for which they need to raise money. Therefore, they tend to do those things that appear to be most likely to attract financial support. Do you believe that pointing out how they might be more effective in promoting peace will motivate them to change their behavior, and to use effectiveness as a more important criterion in decision-making than what will attract more donors? I don’t.
As a refugee from the business world, I have been enormously impressed with the focus people in political science focus on exchanging ideas as opposed to acting to achieve results. They seem to follow Milton Friedman’s point (quoted on p. 41) that change only occurs in a crisis, and that in a crisis the powers that be will use the best ideas that are available. I don’t believe either of his propositions. Is there evidence to back them up?
Writing in this field makes great use of the passive voice. Authors say that this “should be done” or “could be done” with no attention given to what might motivate whom to make it happen. Similarly, there are many comments to the effect that this or that is important or necessary or crucial with the same failure to address what is likely to stimulate someone to act. There is a lot of that in your paper.
I am quite sympathetic to most of the views expressed and implied in your paper. However, the subject matter is so broad-ranging that you don’t really get deeply into the meat of much of it (which would take volumes). Much of what you describe relates to equity and human rights, which most of us believe are important to human well-being. But any attempt to deal with all the issues in your paper is bound to fail. The status quo is so ingrained in our culture, and so many powerful persons have a strong vested interest in it that trying to transform it all, even a little bit, has no chance of success, even if you could find people so foolish to attempt such a thing.
In the first paragraph under 2.2.2 on p. 13, you list elements of civil society that can be a source of innovation and social mediation. One such element that is omitted is individuals, or don’t you consider them as a part of civil society? Surely persons such as Gandhi, Mandela, Jimmy Carter and George Mitchell are possible sources of stimulating change. In Case Study 2 on p. 14, you mention what five individuals in Kenya initiated. Individuals aren’t faced with political or bureaucratic constraints and, I believe, can play important roles in the effort to promote peace. Of course, as an individual actor, I may be biased. But I believe the progress reported in the attachment also indicates that individuals can be effective in this field. I’m trying to get more individuals involved in funding effective work for preace.
In the paper, there are what appear to be allusions to US militarism. That seems to me to be an enormous problem. But there is not much in the paper to indicate who might be able to moderate that deeply ingrained American tendency, or how.
The projects described in the attachment don’t seem at all to fit either of the two “approaches to peacebuilding” in Table 1 on p. 21. Our purpose is more like what you term “technical”. In each situation, we are aiming to keep people from savaging one another (negative peace) and helping to achieve a stable condition in which mass violence is unlikely. We do not undertake to try to transform societies except to the extent that change is necessary for peace. For example, Mary Anderson has said to me that there is no evidence that poverty causes war, in spite of the fact that that notion is widely accepted. While we do try to help with economic development our objective is to help local leaders to prevent bloodshed. Our approach is a long-term, multi-faceted, collaborative effort to provide technical and modest financial assistance that local leaders identify as needed to help to prevent violence. I suspect that there are many other programs that do not conform to the dichotomy suggested in Table 1.
Incidentally, our experience in Guinea-Bissau suggests that empowerment of civil society leaders may have been the most important result of our engagement there.
The impression I got from your paper is that you believe that economic considerations are the most common causes of armed conflict. I believe that lust for power is a more common cause of violence. But as with other issues you address in the paper, I think you would do better either to back up what you suggest or to omit it.
The motivation for writing the paper seems to be to call attention to the paucity of results compared to the resources and talent being devoted to promoting peace. I salute you for that. Many of your points are well taken. If you presented hard facts about the extent of resources used as contrasted with results achieved, the paper would be stronger. But as you veer off into wishing for utopian ideals, the paper becomes a reflection of pining for a better world with no indication as to who may do what to bring it about.
On p. 31, you begin a paragraph, “If we acknowledge that for peace to be sustainable we need to incorporate some radical changes in the current world order”. I, for one, don’t believe that. Western Europe has apparently achieved sustainable peace without a drastic change in world order. On a much smaller, Guinea-Bissau has achieved 9 years of peace so far without a drastic change in world order. While I, too, would like to see big changes in the way our world is organized, I am committed to the proposition that our imperfect world can be made more peaceful bit by bit. As you surely know, the available data indicates that the world has become considerably less violent, and I believe that further progress can and will be made in this direction without a drastic change in world order.
I would like very much to see your obvious talents devoted to a paper focusing on the lack of effectiveness of much of the work that goes into promoting peace and who can do what to make the efforts more effective in the world as it is. How the world might be better organized for collaboration and equity, and how that might be brought about, is, I believe, a subject for another paper.
Cheers!
Milt Lauenstein
Your paper is quite interesting and potentially important. You are obviously very knowledgeable about this field and its ineffectiveness.
Here are some reactions. Knowing where they come from, might help put the comments below into perspective. My current activities are summarized in the attached progress report. Additional information appears on my web site, www.miltlau.com.
When you use the term “peacebuilding”, it appears that you mean any activity that promotes peace, whether it is before (prevention), during, or after violence has occurred. Some others use the term to refer only to activities after violence has occurred but then stopped. Clarifying what you mean by “peacebuilding” at the outset would be helpful.
The main thrust of your paper seems to be that mankind is not well organized to keep groups from undertaking to kill one another. I certainly agree with that proposition. But the operational question is what to do about it. The great majority of people do what they perceive to be in their best interest. You point out that many in this field fail to behave in ways that would be more effective in promoting peace. That is true. If you take NGOs or INGOs as examples, their primary motivation is usually to survive, for which they need to raise money. Therefore, they tend to do those things that appear to be most likely to attract financial support. Do you believe that pointing out how they might be more effective in promoting peace will motivate them to change their behavior, and to use effectiveness as a more important criterion in decision-making than what will attract more donors? I don’t.
As a refugee from the business world, I have been enormously impressed with the focus people in political science focus on exchanging ideas as opposed to acting to achieve results. They seem to follow Milton Friedman’s point (quoted on p. 41) that change only occurs in a crisis, and that in a crisis the powers that be will use the best ideas that are available. I don’t believe either of his propositions. Is there evidence to back them up?
Writing in this field makes great use of the passive voice. Authors say that this “should be done” or “could be done” with no attention given to what might motivate whom to make it happen. Similarly, there are many comments to the effect that this or that is important or necessary or crucial with the same failure to address what is likely to stimulate someone to act. There is a lot of that in your paper.
I am quite sympathetic to most of the views expressed and implied in your paper. However, the subject matter is so broad-ranging that you don’t really get deeply into the meat of much of it (which would take volumes). Much of what you describe relates to equity and human rights, which most of us believe are important to human well-being. But any attempt to deal with all the issues in your paper is bound to fail. The status quo is so ingrained in our culture, and so many powerful persons have a strong vested interest in it that trying to transform it all, even a little bit, has no chance of success, even if you could find people so foolish to attempt such a thing.
In the first paragraph under 2.2.2 on p. 13, you list elements of civil society that can be a source of innovation and social mediation. One such element that is omitted is individuals, or don’t you consider them as a part of civil society? Surely persons such as Gandhi, Mandela, Jimmy Carter and George Mitchell are possible sources of stimulating change. In Case Study 2 on p. 14, you mention what five individuals in Kenya initiated. Individuals aren’t faced with political or bureaucratic constraints and, I believe, can play important roles in the effort to promote peace. Of course, as an individual actor, I may be biased. But I believe the progress reported in the attachment also indicates that individuals can be effective in this field. I’m trying to get more individuals involved in funding effective work for preace.
In the paper, there are what appear to be allusions to US militarism. That seems to me to be an enormous problem. But there is not much in the paper to indicate who might be able to moderate that deeply ingrained American tendency, or how.
The projects described in the attachment don’t seem at all to fit either of the two “approaches to peacebuilding” in Table 1 on p. 21. Our purpose is more like what you term “technical”. In each situation, we are aiming to keep people from savaging one another (negative peace) and helping to achieve a stable condition in which mass violence is unlikely. We do not undertake to try to transform societies except to the extent that change is necessary for peace. For example, Mary Anderson has said to me that there is no evidence that poverty causes war, in spite of the fact that that notion is widely accepted. While we do try to help with economic development our objective is to help local leaders to prevent bloodshed. Our approach is a long-term, multi-faceted, collaborative effort to provide technical and modest financial assistance that local leaders identify as needed to help to prevent violence. I suspect that there are many other programs that do not conform to the dichotomy suggested in Table 1.
Incidentally, our experience in Guinea-Bissau suggests that empowerment of civil society leaders may have been the most important result of our engagement there.
The impression I got from your paper is that you believe that economic considerations are the most common causes of armed conflict. I believe that lust for power is a more common cause of violence. But as with other issues you address in the paper, I think you would do better either to back up what you suggest or to omit it.
The motivation for writing the paper seems to be to call attention to the paucity of results compared to the resources and talent being devoted to promoting peace. I salute you for that. Many of your points are well taken. If you presented hard facts about the extent of resources used as contrasted with results achieved, the paper would be stronger. But as you veer off into wishing for utopian ideals, the paper becomes a reflection of pining for a better world with no indication as to who may do what to bring it about.
On p. 31, you begin a paragraph, “If we acknowledge that for peace to be sustainable we need to incorporate some radical changes in the current world order”. I, for one, don’t believe that. Western Europe has apparently achieved sustainable peace without a drastic change in world order. On a much smaller, Guinea-Bissau has achieved 9 years of peace so far without a drastic change in world order. While I, too, would like to see big changes in the way our world is organized, I am committed to the proposition that our imperfect world can be made more peaceful bit by bit. As you surely know, the available data indicates that the world has become considerably less violent, and I believe that further progress can and will be made in this direction without a drastic change in world order.
I would like very much to see your obvious talents devoted to a paper focusing on the lack of effectiveness of much of the work that goes into promoting peace and who can do what to make the efforts more effective in the world as it is. How the world might be better organized for collaboration and equity, and how that might be brought about, is, I believe, a subject for another paper.
Cheers!
Milt Lauenstein
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