Mediating Evil

If we listen attentively, we shall hear amid the uproar of empires
and nations, the faint fluttering of wings, the gentle stirring of life and
hope. Some say this hope lies in a nation, others in a man. I believe,
rather, that it is awakened, revived, nourished by millions of solitary
individuals whose deeds and words every day negate frontiers and the
crudest implications of history.

Albert Camus

Politics are among the most ancient, enduring, and consequential
sources of conflict, as they determine how power will be distributed
among people, including over life and death, wealth and poverty,
independence and obedience. Conflicts concerning these issues have
shaped the ways we have interacted as a species over the course of
centuries. At their core, as Hannah Arendt wrote, is the conflict that,
"from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence
of politics: the cause of freedom versus tyranny."

Freedom and tyranny are factors not only in conflicts between
minorities and nation states, but in small, everyday conflicts between
parents and teenagers, managers and employees, governments and
citizens, and wherever power is distributed unequally. If we define
political conflicts as those arising out of or challenging an uneven
distribution of power, including relational, religious, and cultural
power, it is clear that politics happens everywhere.

In this sense, “the personal is political,” yet the political is also
personal, due to globalization, the reach and speed of communication,
reduced travel barriers, and increasing environmental
interdependency. We can even identify an ecology of conflict, in which
rapidly evolving international conflicts have the ability to overwhelm
safety and security everywhere. Conflicts in Afghanistan, Sudan,
Brazil, and East Timor can no longer be ignored, as they touch our
lives in increasingly significant ways.

We therefore require improved understanding, not only of the
conflict in politics, but the politics in conflict. As our world shrinks and
our problems can no longer be solved except internationally, we need
ways of revealing, even in seemingly ordinary, interpersonal conflicts,
the larger issues that connect us across boundaries, and methods for
resolving political conflicts that are sweeping, strategic, interest-based,
and transformational. A clear, unambiguous reason for doing so
occurred on September 11, 2001.

The Response to September 11

As a nation, we need to re-examine how we responded to the
conflicts that occurred, and are still occurring, as a result of that
tragedy. In the aftermath, we began searching, as individuals,
nations, and human beings, for some ritual of release, completion, and
closure; some acknowledgement of the horror, grief, fear, and
confusion we experienced. This search led many, unfortunately in my
opinion, to seek release for their grief and anger through blind
patriotism, constriction of civil liberties, and “preventative” unilateral
war, directed not against those responsible for the tragedy, but a
nation and people who had nothing to do with it.

This response has led to increased suffering, including grief, fear,
divisiveness, and confusion -- not only for us, but those whose lives
we have similarly shattered by violence. While it is clear to me as a
mediator that dozens of alternatives to war in Iraq were readily
available, these were largely ignored. This failure to pursue peaceful
alternatives contributed to the rise of aggressive, adversarial attitudes
toward those who opposed the war, a refusal to listen or cooperate
with other nations, a reduction in our personal freedoms, and a
division in national and international consensus, sapping our spirits,
closing our hearts, and dissipating the unity and desire for peace that
spontaneously arose after September 11.

By responding to violence with violence, we not only lost a unique
opportunity to unite people and governments around the world in
opposition to terror, we helped strengthen a culture of war rather
than peace, bullying rather than compassion, revenge rather than
forgiveness, and isolation rather than collaboration. By our aggressive
statements and unilateral actions, we have deprecated the importance
and prestige of peace-making, conflict resolution, international
partnership, and public dialogue, thereby contributing to future
conflicts, making them more serious, and constricting opportunities for
settlement and resolution.

To have acted differently would have required us to recognize
and respond with compassion -- not only to the pain we experienced
in the U.S., or in Israel, but no less equally to the pain Iraqis and
Palestinians have experienced for decades. This would have required
us to see ourselves as partners in a world community of nations and
peoples, to cease using our superior military and economic power to
coerce compliance, and to seek dialogue, negotiation, and mediation
before reacting with violence, even against those we have defined as
evil. Sometimes, as poet May Sarton wrote, “[o]ne must think like a
hero to behave like a merely decent human being.”

September 11 challenges us to take the lead in developing dispute
resolution skills and applying them pro-actively, preventively, and
strategically to the full range of international disputes – not to
augment our power, wealth, or status, but to create the conditions
under which conflicts can be resolved without war or terror.
September 11 challenges us to understand that we cannot separate
peace from justice, but must link interest-based conflict resolution
skills with an unwavering commitment to political, economic, and social
justice, without which it will prove impossible to build a global
community that can resolve its differences without terrorism and war.