Opinion Archive

Agustin Barrios Gomez, president of SolutionsAbroad.com, has been commissioned by the newly-relaunched English-language daily The News to produce a weekly opinion column on Mexican current affairs. The column is published every Wednesday in the paper and also here online. Our president is a member of the Mexican Council on Foreign Affairs and is an analyst of politics in North America with a degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.

What to Make of Peaceniks and Warmongers

August 27, 2008

In the study of international relations the conventional wisdom is Hobbesian. Countries pursue their ends in a selfish and brutish manner, in line with what their politicians consider is their "national interest". Given that there is no universally effective international conflict resolution mechanism (the UN is often ignored), we are left with the irony that countries commit acts of violence on a macro-scale (war) that would be unacceptable at the micro level (murder). The Cold War took this human tendency to its absurd conclusion when it reached the level of "MAD", or "Mutually Assured Destruction". Peace was maintained thanks to the effective threat of guaranteed annihilation. So, the US and the USSR vented their anger through much less apocalyptic wars, via "proxy" Third World nations. Not very edifying, but at least we're still here.

Fortunately, the citizens of the three North American countries have, in general, been lucky. Our countries harbor no territorial ambitions against one another and all three are mostly sincerely friendly with each other. Two of the three, Canada and Mexico, have foresworn nuclear weapons completely and the neighborhood's superpower generally respects the sovereignty of even its weakest neighbor, Mexico. While this could change if an openly anti-American administration were to inhabit Los Pinos, Mexicans seem surprisingly content to be über-pacifist on the international stage. We should not take this fortunate state of affairs for granted: the norm is for powerful countries to bully the small (Russia-Georgia, China-Taiwan, etc.) and for weak countries to make a nuisance of themselves (North Korea, Afghanistan, etc.)

The current crisis in Georgia puts the gains of the post-Cold War era into stark contrast. Despite having surpassed competing ideologies (communist dictatorship versus liberal democracy), the West and Russia still see the world in a very different way. As was recently highlighted in The Economist, Russia only seems to feel safe when its neighbors are insecure and fearful. The West, including several of the aforementioned neighbors, believes that security is attained through mutually reinforcing mechanisms of security and prosperity. New ground rules were not agreed upon to mitigate this, so conflict became unavoidable.

Peace is not a destination; it is a journey.

At the other extreme, many countries have eschewed international violence altogether. Mexico found its pacifist consensus through the hard-knocks school of American 19th century territorial expansionism and 20th century interventionism. Neutral Sweden seems to have arrived at peace mongering through prosperity and intellectual analysis (of course, it is surrounded by equally rich neighbors who have no designs on its territory). Switzerland, which has not fought anyone since 1815, found its peaceful international stance after witnessing the endless horror of European wars engulf its pretty little cantons. Interestingly, they put teeth on their pacifism by recruiting and arming all able-bodied males as a ubiquitous militia, to be activated in case of an invasion. Hitler was supposedly deterred by this fact. Meanwhile, in the Americas, December 1st is "Military Abolition Day" in Costa Rica; a testament to that country's distaste for violence after its civil war.

But these are the exceptions. In the rest of the world, military spending is at an all-time high. Countries still feel they have the right to unleash Hell whenever they consider their national interest is at stake. And their people generally back them up. During the recent dialogue at pastor Rick Warren's church, it was telling that both candidates to the US presidency felt it necessary to espouse a Manichean worldview by proclaiming that "evil" did exist and that it should be confronted. The problem is that black and white lenses often impede your ability to see slippery slopes.

Waking up from history?

It has been 19 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. That's within 6 years of an entire generation. Already we are starting to see some of our hardest-learned lessons fade.

In this era of renewed Russian imperialism and cavalier European attitudes towards the benefits of European integration, recall three lessons from the 20th century. First, the rise of Hitler, in what was considered to be the world's most highly-educated country, proved that we are all, potentially, just one messianic sociopathic leader away from genocide. Second, peace is often like riding a bicycle; it requires forward movement, constant confidence building, in order to avoid our falling off or backtracking; we should never underestimate the need for these efforts. Third, for all practical purposes, those bullet-shaped ICBMs are still aimed at our children's heads, so beware of politicians pandering to their "base" (or base instincts), or we'll be left singing along with 1980s Sting: "I hope the Russians love their children, too".

For the latest thought-provoking article by Agustin Barrios Gomez please go to our Opinion Column page

Return to top