Paris II: Positive Peace

In the immediate aftermath of the Paris attacks, French president Francois Hollande addressed his nation and promised that the response would be swift and ruthless.  He's promised repeatedly to seek out and destroy the enemies of the French Republic.  It's understandable.  The nation is reeling.  One has to wonder what admixture of motivations will drive the French response, however - what is the balance between a desire for security and lust for revenge that will guide French security politics?

Importantly, Hollande construed the attacks as "an act of war", and framed the entire event as a battle in a broader conflict between the forces of Western liberalism and jihadi terrorists.  While I'm sure most agree with this sentiment, I think there's some critical context that's needed here.  The use of the language of war around specific acts of violence creates a dialectic implication - that all the other things that happen outside those acts of violence represent the state of "peace."  A scholar from the University of Georgia named Chris Cuomo gained some notoriety for critiquing this construction, and I think her lens on these issues is extremely enlightening.  It boils down to this:

When we focus our analysis of violence on large dramatic acts, like military conflicts and acts of terrorism, and in particular when we contextualize these events within the framework of "war", it normalizes the rest of our lives into a state of "negative peace."  We understand the idea of peace only as the absence of war.  Cuomo argues that we would all be much better off if we started aspiring to achieve positive peace - an alleviation of all the structural violence inflicted on the least fortunate and most vulnerable.  Some of you might be feeling very skeptical at the moment, but just hang with me here.

Imagine using this analysis to dissect the politics of Syria since the Arab Spring.  Unrest and agitation against the Assad regime intensified in the aftermath of the first Arab Spring uprisings (compounded by a significant drought) because of suffering, starvation, economic deprivation being experienced by normal Syrians.  When protests exceeded the regime's comfort level, they reacted violently, initiating a chain reaction that has brought us to the present day.  In conventional terms, Syria was at peace until groups started picking up arms and firing back at the Syrian regime.  Viewed through the lens of positive peace, Syria was never in a state of peace - even before the commencement of armed conflict, there was massive structural violence being experienced by millions of people.

Now consider the opposite political question - how do constructions of negative and positive peace interact with the French military response to ISIS?  Simply put, the French are focused almost entirely on achieving a negative peace - the "neutralization" of enemy combatants that might commit specific acts of violence.  In pursuing this aim, they will likely significantly decrease the likelihood of any kind of positive peace; ongoing military conflict will kill civilians, radicalize normal people on the sidelines, and obviously compound poverty, famine, and so on.

That is the principle issue: we tend to ignore positive peace altogether, or frame it as a secondary concern, which can only be achieved once negative peace has been secured.  This move numbs us to horrific suffering (which in many cases we are at least somewhat responsible for), and it leads us to make decisions that makes the world worse, over and over again.

In the fantasy world inhabited by the security strategists of various developed nations, if they can simply kill all the terrorists, the problem will be finished.  As they chase this bloody chimera, they will kill many people whom they did not intend to kill, inspire tremendous hatred against their own regimes, and exacerbate all of the structural violence issues that drove many people to embrace radical violence in the first place.  The only ethical choice, the only logical choice is to reach out with love.  Negative Peace is built around a framework of competition - you destroy those who oppose you.  Positive Peace is built around a framework of love and empathy - when one operates in a framework driven and prioritized by reducing human suffering, rather than stopping others from attacking you, the possibility for connection and the growth of communities emerge.