Peace - CReality

Sustainable peace is achievable if we want it and we all work for it

[deutscher Text hier...]

Our thoughts, sympathy and love are with all those in Ukraine and elsewhere who are suffering from bombings, who are being shelled and who fear for their lives in air raid shelters and basements - and also with all those who are fleeing and have had to leave their homes. We think of you!

Theses on the current problems
1. The Russian invasion of Ukraine from 24.2.2022 and the simultaneous UN Security Council meeting have changed everything: Major states of the UN - in addition to Russia, China and India, both of which abstained from voting - no longer consider the territorial integrity of member states sacrosanct. As the American ambassador to the UN rightly pointed out, these countries were thus calling into question the foundation of the UN and the UN Charter.
2. Intra-state and inter-state conflicts have increased in the last 20 years.
3. intra-state conflicts are often perceived as an expression of terrorism and are fought with military anti-terror measures.
4. The global political situation is increasingly perceived as a bipolar conflict between the USA (+allies) and China (+ Russia).
5. The international peace architecture is fragile and vulnerable to hegemonic ambitions.
6. In some regions of the world-particularly in the Middle East and Africa-middle powers pursue a policy of military intervention.
7. The central military-political conflict is and remains the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Ideas for possible solutions
- A strong global peace architecture and sustainable institutions at the world level are needed [here more...]
- Human rights are to be enforced everywhere and must be guaranteed in the form of basic rights that can be included [here more...]
- Peace education is central content of education and must be built in as an integral part of primary and secondary schools at all levels [here more...].

Discussion
Otfried Höffe (2009:29ff.) has distinguished, with respect to the future-readiness of actions, between reactive behavior directed toward the future, which is oriented toward risk avoidance (1) and assumes a worst-case scenario ("insurance mentality"), risk-seeking behavior, which maximizes the possible expectation of benefit and compensates for ignorance of the future with a high willingness to take risks (2) ("gambler's mentality"), and behavior that neither simply wants to avoid every risk and every change with a backward-looking view nor takes every risk without regard to losses. Höffe called this third behavior "Gestaltungskreativität" (3). The third behavior tries to change the framework conditions with a view to the future effects (so-called "re-framing"). All three approaches have their specific risk: the insurance mentality acts purely defensively or reactively, the gambling mentality underestimates the risks, and the shaping creativity can easily lose touch with reality. But all in all, the third approach, namely the design mentality, seems to be the best way to deal with future opportunities and threats, especially if it both incorporates past experience and is also willing to take certain but calculable risks. This is essentially also true for the construction of a future peace order.
The solution or at least the handling of current issues such as relations with other states, migration and flight, rights of minorities, political justice, security and peace depend on the willingness to reconcile and also on the existence of de-escalating and power-sharing institutions.

Forum

Cited Literature
Höffe, Otfried
2009:   Ist die Demokratie zukunftsfähig? Über moderne Politik. München: C.H. Beck