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Reclaiming the Transcendence of Positive Peace Against the Violence of Post-Liberal Peace International Journal on World Peace, 35(2): 27-52

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Reclaiming the Transcendence of Positive Peace Against the Violence of Post-Liberal Peace International Journal on World Peace, 35(2): 27-52 http://www.diva-portal.org This is the published version of a paper published in . Citation for the original published paper (version of record): Gelot, L. (2018) Reclaiming the Transcendence of Positive Peace Against the Violence of Post-Liberal Peace International Journal on World Peace, 35(2): 27-52 Access to the published version may require subscription. N.B. When citing this work, cite the original published paper. Permanent link to this version: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-81820 RECLAIMING THE TRANSCENDENCE OF POSITIVE PEACE AGAINST THE VIOLENCE OF POST-LIBERAL PEACE Ludwig Mikaël Gelot Senior Lecturer in Peace and Development Studies Faculty of Social Sciences Linnaeus University, 351 95 Växjö Sweden Ludwig Gelot is Senior Lecturer in Peace and Development Studies at Linnaeus University, Sweden. Previous publications addressed the theological origins and roots of International Relations as well as the effects of secularisation on the Western political imagination. Dr. Gelot regularly works for the United Nations, the Swedish Armed Forces and the Folke Bernadotte Academy to support the training of civilian, police and military peace operation personnel. He participates in the planning and delivery of UN and NATO-led peace operation exercises involving up to 2,500 individuals from more than 60 countries. At Linnaeus University, he uses similar pedagogies to build the skills and knowledge of young peacebuilders. Peace research has abandoned the In a recent article published in the pursuit of positive peace because International Studies Quarterly, Paul of a profound commitment to an ontology of violence. By assuming Diehl explains that the scholarly study that the world is shaped by arbitrary of peace has been primarily focusing on power relations, scholars working negative peace as the absence of war.1 on the liberal and post-liberal peace end up focusing their research on The focus of much research is rarely negative peace. The article develops peace in itself but rather the decrease a critique of this ontology of in battle-related deaths, the absence violence assumed by the Realist, Liberal and Critical traditions which of conflicts between democracies or conceals the possibility of positive the lower risk of violence between peace. Following the lead of Charles capitalist economies. Diehl argues that Taylor, it locates the philosophical shackles that stifle peace research in this one-sided approach leads to blind the immanent frame that underpins spots and absurd categorizations. But the political work of Hobbes and his more importantly, since peace is not contemporaries. The article outlines simply the absence of war, the study of the contours of an ontology of peace and revisits the concept of eirenism the concept remains incomplete. Many to conceptualise positive peace. scholars lament this reductive focus on negative peace and call for new research on positive peace. Some like Diehl INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON WORLD PEACE VOL. XXXV NO. 2 JUNE 2018 27 gelot.indd 27 5/4/2018 10:42:41 AM RECLAIMING THE TRANSCENDENCE OF POSITIVE PEACE point to the need for a normative agenda to move beyond negative peace. Others like John-Paul Lederach point to the need for an alternative moral imagination to capture the “soul” of peace.2 In his attempt to re-energize Johan Galtung’s concept of positive peace, Diehl provides useful guidelines and principles to guide peace research. In particular, Diehl argues that it is necessary to move beyond Political Science to draw important conceptual and normative insights from the humanities and social sciences. He argues that this would facilitate the development of a normative agenda to define values and priorities beyond negative peace. This insight seems to echo the call of John-Paul Lederach in The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace, in which he declares that: We must face the fact that much of our current system for responding to deadly local and international conflict is incapable of overcoming cycles of violent patterns precisely because our imagination has been corraled and shackled by the very parameters and sources that create and perpetrate violence… if we are to survive as a global community, we must understand the imperative nature of giving birth and space to the moral imagination in human affairs.3 Lederach identifies the solution at the level of “moral imagination,” that is, the human capacity to creatively imagine and establish constructive processes that transcend violent patterns not so much through the standard application of agreed techniques as by exploring “the art and soul of social change.”4 The two authors concur, from different perspectives, that the limits we face are conceptual and normative and that standard approaches are insufficient. The study of peace and conflict is broadly constrained by philosophical shackles that reduce its ability to think about peace beyond the absence of violence. But normative insights taken from the humani- ties can be harnessed to save the “soul” of peace. Recent developments in the social sciences and humanities provide solid support for this initiative. In this article, I demonstrate that peace research remains focused on the study of violence because the approaches and theories that are widely used assume an ontology of violence that depicts the world as intrinsically shaped by violent power relations. If reality is the work of arbitrary power relations vying for dominance, peace can only be conceived as the temporary management of power. This ontology of violence pervades Realist, Liberal INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON WORLD PEACE 28 VOL. XXXV NO. 2 JUNE 2018 gelot.indd 28 5/4/2018 10:42:41 AM AGAINST THE VIOLENCE OF POST-LIBERAL PEACE and Critical approaches alike. Despite their wish to work towards peace, many scholars in fact perpetuate partial assumptions that make positive peace unthinkable. However, by reconsidering the grounds upon which this ontology of violence is founded we may begin to develop an alternative ontology of peace, and with it, revive research on positive peace. The current debate over the liberal/post-liberal peace is our starting point to illustrate how the alternatives they present are essentially established on an ontology of violence that prevents the emergence of positive peace. Mainstream approaches to peace have come under critique for enforcing a securitized limbo where neither peace nor war prevails.5 Yet, efforts to outline a post-liberal form of peace seem to have reached a dead-end with high profile scholars seemingly giving up on the possibility of a better future altogether.6 But the deadlock in the search for positive peace has been the subject of ground-breaking work in the humanities. Philosophers This article outlines the and theologians have developed radical contours of the ontology of critiques of the Liberal straightjacket violence and makes a case but contrary to the post-liberal peace agenda, they do not embrace an ontol- to recover transcendence ogy of violence and thus provide a as a necessary dimension space to think about positive peace. of an ontology of peace. Following Charles Taylor and John Milbank, this article outlines the contours of the ontology of violence and makes a case to recover transcendence as a necessary dimension of an ontol- ogy of peace. Drawing on the work of Adam Curle, the paper concludes with a profound revision of Oliver Richmond’s concept of eirenism to outline the contours of a positive peace inspired by a “transcendent vision” that restores the spiritual nature of peacemaking. THE LIBERAL PEACE AND ITS ALTERNATIVES The “liberal peace” has been the subject of much debate in recent years and efforts have been made to move towards a post-liberal peace. The concept of liberal peace is a loose framework of liberal and neo-liberal strategies and techniques emanating from successful Western experiences of development and statebuilding and used in conflict and post-conflict societies to restore INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON WORLD PEACE VOL. XXXV NO. 2 JUNE 2018 29 gelot.indd 29 5/4/2018 10:42:41 AM RECLAIMING THE TRANSCENDENCE OF POSITIVE PEACE order and peace.7 It is based on a hodgepodge of activities such as market liberalization, democratization, gender-mainstreaming and legal reforms that are designed and implemented under the leadership of international actors.8 These activities draw on the invocation of core liberal values including “the primacy of the individual, the belief in the reformability of individuals and institutions, pluralism and toleration, the rule of law, and the protection of property.”9 The liberal peace consensus has become the primary framework to assist post-conflict societies in building sustainable peace. However, besides its limited success record, the liberal peace has come under criticism for its purported violence. The scholarly critique of the liberal peace is essentially two-fold with on the one hand “problem solvers” who aim to improve the efficiency of peace efforts through the timing and sequencing of activities or increases in resources and capacities. In the most recent review The liberal peace consensus of UN peace operations conducted has become the primary by the High-Level Independent Panel framework to assist on Peace Operations (HIPPO), it is post-conflict societies clearly stated that the organization in building sustainable faces major challenges to maintain and peace. However, besides achieve peace: “The Panel has received its limited success record, clear messages of the imperative for the liberal peace has come change from governments and grass- under criticism for its roots organizations from East to West, purported violence. from the global South to the global North.”10 The challenges are consid- ered to be so important that the very “credibility, legitimacy and relevance of the United Nations in the coming years” is believed to be at stake.11 On the other hand, many “Critical scholars” question the philosophical and ideological assumptions of the liberal peace and strive for emancipation from a system that inevitably reproduces the very conditions for conflict.
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