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.

Paris I: Refugees in America

Posts are back this week, with each one exploring different aspects of the attacks in Paris for which ISIS has claimed credit.  I'm starting today with a discussion of the American conversation about Syrian refugees that has developed in light of the fact that one of the attackers apparently snuck into the EU in the guise of a Syrian refugee.

The American political reaction has been highly polarized and predictably xenophobic on the American Right.  As of this writing, the governors of twenty states, my own included, have made public statements that they would block any attempts to resettle Syrian Refugees in their states - their reasoning is simple.  There is no way to guarantee that none of these people won't be secret ISIS operatives.  The supporters of these policies range from the extreme, overt racists to apologists who insist that some sort of screening process is needed.  After all, they opine, we used to process immigrants through Ellis Island.

What these people fail to realize (because they're apparently incapable of spending 2 seconds on a relevant google search) is that the screening process for refugees is multi-layered, extensive, and incredibly intense.  In order to be resettled in the United States as a refugee, you must

1. Apply to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) for refugee status.  They consider your application, determine if according their vetting you meet the qualifications, and if so, select a suitable third country (like the US) for resettlement.
2. Spend one to two years in a "Refugee Resettlement Center" (i.e. refugee camp) outside of the United States while
3. multiple agencies, including the FBI, the DOD, the State Department, and the DHS, collect biometric and intelligence data on you, assess you as a security risk, and determine if you're safe for resettlement in the US.

If an ISIS operative decided today that they wanted to sneak into the United States as a refugee, it would be years before even under the most optimistic circumstances that person might arrive in the United States, assuming they could fool about five different intelligence gathering agencies.  If that's a reasonable fear, then we're probably all screwed anyway, because there are about a thousand easier ways to get into the country.  Getting refugee status is the most stringent, difficult process for entry into the United States.  An ISIS operative with no digital or security footprint would get into the country in A FRACTION OF THE TIME by posing as a tourist or a student.

Controlling borders and immigration has always been an intentional or subconscious veil for the manifestation of horrible racism, and it's particularly hypocritical given the immigrant history of the United States.

I could get into the complex web of political and security decisions that implicate the United States and its allies in the horrible humanitarian crisis that these refugees are fleeing from, but does it really matter?  If you're on the right, if you believe that the United States is a Christian nation, how on Earth can you justify that level of selfishness and cruelty towards others experiencing abject suffering?  Refer to Matthew 25:31-46 for all further questions.  It's pretty direct.

If you'd prefer to send these people back where they came from, you're resigning them to be collateral damage in NATO airstrikes or to become victims in the next ISIS atrocity.  Either way, ISIS wins - it gets to kill them or use them as anti-Western propaganda as we continue to stack up innocent bodies.  To see these people as disposable is NO DIFFERENT FROM THE LOGIC OF THE TERRORISTS THAT YOU SO FEAR AND REVILE.  ISIS is defined by its viciousness and refusal to consider the humanity of those that are different and therefore unacceptable to them.  The sleaze-bag governors and those that support them are perfectly happy apparently to act like jihadists themselves, as long as its brown bodies that get caught in the crosshairs.