A Self-Inflicted Wound; or, The Burden of Scholarship

I once spent a year studying all the violent international conflicts between 1945 and 1995. Fifty years of people killing, raping, torturing, terrorising and brutalising each other. It was research for an encyclopaedia of international conflict. It was a great opportunity for a grad student to co-publish a book with a well-known professor, a real boost to my academic career. I had to carefully catalogue who attacked who, how many people died, where all the refugees fled to, when they finally stopped killing each other, which countries sent arms to the protagonists, what was done to try and stop it. All the gory details of organised political murder.

To this day I can remember reading a story about the Korean War in Keeings Contemporary Archives. I was sitting in the university library. It was a bright Autumn day. There were students all around me. I could hear them writing, turning pages, gossiping, munching on snacks. I started reading newspaper summaries of the conflict. After outlining the current state of fighting, one report mentioned a new kind of flame thrower developed by the American forces. It fired flaming liquid a hundred yards. The sticky, flaming substance would cling to human flesh while it crackled and burned. The report described in unusual detail the horror of setting a dozen Chinese soldiers on fire, and how impressed the senior officers were with their new weapon. I was utterly unprepared for the visceral description. The details were so vivid. I was appalled. I could almost smell the burning flesh, see the bright flames. Sitting at that library table, amongst the ordinariness of student’s studying, I must have covered my mouth with one hand as I read, although I don’t remember such a gesture. However, the fact that I can remember that day so vividly speaks to the horror I felt – and still feel – reading about how some young men, of a similar age to me, were turned into human torches, burned alive, no doubt screaming pitiously for mercy that never came.

I’ve since done similarly horrific research for subsequent academic publications on internal war, torture, state terrorism. There are many other such painful moments burned into my memory.

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Monday: I go to a lunchtime lecture by a visiting professor. It’s about how victims of physical, psychological and sexual violence in state-run care homes try to get a little justice and recognition for their state-sanctioned, society-condoned suffering. It seems that no one in authority or the media wants to believe them or to accept responsibility. So they engage in various forms of self-harm. Some try to take the government to court. None of them is undamaged by their experiences; they carry the trauma around with them like little backpacks of acid. The personal stories read out by the professor are seriously heart-rending. I feel a little weepy by the end. It’s hard to go back to my office like nothing ever happened, but I have other work to get on with.

Tuesday: We watch a documentary about Sierra Leone in my security studies class. It is pretty brutal: mutilated corpses, piles of severed hands, people being executed, beatings, terrifed refugees, children with stumps instead of feet. I show it because my students have no real idea of the reality of war. The television networks won’t show that stuff anymore, and the course readings are all so abstract and detached. So they only ever see cinematic violence in cool, stylised, slow motion. I’ve seen this video four or five times already. I can’t watch it anymore. It disturbs me too much, especially when they start to beat a little mentally ill boy they think is a sniper. The terror in his screams cuts right through me these days. It tears at my spirit and crushes my chest until it’s hard to breath. I go out of the room and come back at the end to lead the discussion.

Wednesday: I go along to a seminar on gender violence. I sit in the audience and listen to the horrific statistics – hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands – on mass rape in war, honour killings, domestic homocide, female circumcism, and lots of other equally traumatic violences enacted against women and girls. At least there aren’t any personal stories or photographs of dead or mutilated women on this occasion. Still, it’s very hard to listen to. I’m glad when it’s over, but feel ashamed of my sense of relief. It’s a really important issue. I know that. Someone needs to research this more deeply. But I can’t face any more today.

Thursday: In my terrorism course we discuss state terrorism, especially the use of torture as a way of intimidating whole populations. We talk about how some of the democratic countries innovated so-called ‘clean torture’ – torture which leaves no obvious physical marks, like sleep deprivation, stress positions, water-boarding, use of chemicals. I explain that these torture victims suffer a double torture when no one believes their accounts. I tell them stories about people I’ve met who were tortured in the war on terror. I show them some of the Abu Ghraib pictures and we discuss the deep hatred and racism that created almost identical photographs in the American South and the Holocaust. After the class, I feel drained. I sit for a long time in my office trying to gather the pieces of my self together. I need to get back to work.

Friday: I stay at home and read a PhD thesis. I am the external examiner. It is about how we might better understand why ordinary people would take machetes and systematically hack their former neighbours to death. There are stories of unbelievable horror leaking out between the pages. I have to make a real effort to be detached, objective. I try to remain focused on whether the thesis meets sufficient research standards, whether it reaches the required level of scholarship. But the stories haunt my thoughts as I cycle home. I look at the spectacular scenery. It’s impossible to think about death and torture when you’re really looking at beauty. I know the stories will slink back into my mind later, when I’m lying in the dark.

Sunday: I work on a piece I’m writing about how a regular person becomes a militant, willing to kill and die for their cause. I like to work on a Sunday sometimes. It’s quiet. I find I can think a little more clearly. It’s based on real-life stories of militants, some of whom killed children, elderly people, innocent people. Many of them experienced shocking violence themselves, or their relatives, friends, colleagues did. Or they read about horrific violence in the newspaper, came to the conclusion they had to fight back. Fire with fire. Atrocity with atrocity. I’m immersed in their pain and anger; I feel it pour out of me onto the pages.

Monday: Another week starts…

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Some days I feel like I’m being slowly crushed under the weight of this unholy knowledge. It constricts the breath out of me, squeezes my heart in a vice. No matter what I do, the stories creep back into the crevices of my mind, leaping out on me like a great toad, piercing my calm, snarling and snapping. I can’t stop thinking about the man who wouldn’t let go of the severed head of his three-year daughter in a filthy refugee camp in Eastern Zaire, even when he was taking a shit. Or, the two frightened young conscripts who had their throats cut after surrendering, writhing to death in a ditch while their captors laughed. Or the young girl who was gang raped and then had her face cut off by her abusers. They had to tranform her into the faceless victim to erase their crime. So many stories, peeking through the cracks of my work, whispering through the pages I read every day.

I don’t really understand how I do it, study this horror day after day, year after year. I’ve thought long and hard about it, but I honestly can’t say for sure how I maintain my sense of self in this daily sea of blood. It’s a miracle I don’t sink below the depths, that I’m not a depressive, an alcoholic, suicidal – or worse, an IR scholar, writing and speaking about human suffering like it’s a balance sheet, a simple tally of abstract values. I think it’s the love and kindness so freely given to me every day by my wife, my friends, my family, my colleagues, my students, sometimes complete strangers, which keeps me going. Those moments of warmth and fellowship, of being in the moment with others. And maybe the fishing, out in the mountains, or the music, jamming on guitar with mates.

Despite this burden, which is no burden at all compared to those who actually do suffer these horrors, I know this is the right path for me. It’s the right thing to do right now. Somebody needs to study this, to try to make sense of it so that we can perhaps begin to find ways of transforming all the hate and the unnecessary violence. I’m thankful to have such courageous fellow travellers, this cloud of peace scholars who share this painful road. My hope is that one day we will no longer be needed. Our work will be finished, over. We can all go for a drink. I can go fishing.

As I head away to another academic conference, this is the hope I need to sustain me.

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Stupid Questions for Pacifists

One of the stupidest questions I often get asked when I openly question the utility and morality of organized violence for settling political conflict is: if an evil man came into your house and tried to kill your wife, would you do nothing?

Well of course I wouldn’t do nothing – unless maybe he had a gun or a large axe and it would be suicidal to try and stop him! Even then, I wouldn’t do nothing; I’d try and stop him from killing my wife any way I could, or we’d hide and I’d call the police! But just because I would try and do something in this situation does not mean I support organized, industrial-scale killing, nor does it mean that I would not do anything in the case of an invasion of my country by a foreign army. Pacifism is an objection to organized political violence; it does not having much to do with ‘doing nothing’ when someone physically attacks you in your home! In fact, pacifism, when it combines with nonviolence, is actually about working actively for peace through a range of direct actions; doing nothing is not an option! In an invasion, for example, nonviolence means a range of non-cooperative and protest actions designed to make the invader withdraw because it becomes too costly for them, morally and materially.

Without getting into the immense problems we face when we take an individual ethical analogy and try to apply it to relations between nations and groups, or the problems with the Hollywood caricature of ‘Dr Evil’-type people who can only be stopped by violent death, my other problem with this question is that it is asked in an unfair and stupid way. Moreover, its implications are not actually acknowledged or thought through by the questioner. The valid and more accurate form of this question should really be: if an evil man came into your house and tried to kill your wife, would you get a group of your friends together, arm them with shotguns and grenades, and then go the evil man’s neighborhood, blow up his house, kill him and most of his family and friends, and burn down his neighborhood? After all, it is this organized and overwhelming military response which is implied in the initial question.

I actually think that this question works in favour of the pacifist position: If such a person attacked my house, I would of course respond by trying to restrain him, call the police and then testify against him in a court of law – as would most reasonable people. I wouldn’t get a gang together and try to kill him and all his children in a massive revenge attack a week or two later! That’s vigilantism and everyone knows it would be wrong. These days, society responds to acts of violence with law and restraint in the greater interests of creating and preserving a norm-based, peaceful society; it does not promote a violent jungle where force and violence is used by individuals to settle disputes and mete out ‘justice’ between them. The fact is the domestic sphere with its rules and its commitment to non-violent conflict settlement is exactly what we should be trying to create at the international level. This means trying harder to find alternatives to war (and vigilantism) – and ending the use of stupid analogies to justify immoral and counter-productive methods of solving conflicts or punishing law-breakers.

Another stupid question I get on this topic is: But what if there was genocide like the one in Rwanda or the Holocaust going on right now, wouldn’t you agree to send in the military to stop it? This is a stupid question because it is designed to force a pre-determined answer. I could equally ask: If there was a genocide going on right now and the only way to stop it was through nonviolence by trained peace activists, wouldn’t you agree to it? Or, if the Holocaust could have been prevented by universal disarmament and the ending of all national militaries, wouldn’t you agree to it? Of course, such questions are unfair and stupid because they have inbuilt assumptions which are not necessarily verifiable or falsifiable. It is not necessarily the case that sending in the military would stop the genocide, for example: it must just as easily accelerate the genocide, or inflame the war, draw in other nations, and cause more people to die than if no military intervention had occurred. It is only an assumption that military force is the best option for ending genocide, rather than nonviolent methods.

I also object to this question because it is devoid of history and context. I mean, what happened to get to this point where a regime is committing genocide, and could we have done something to stop it long ago? Why did everyone just sit around and watch while this particular regime or group organized a genocide and did nothing to stop it? Why were the peace activists who warned that our violent societies and violent politics would probably lead to this situation ignored? Is it really fair to blame them once genocide breaks out, when they have been the main ones working to try and stop such things from happening? In other words, the point is not to sit around waiting until violence gets really bad and then try and think of a solution. The point is to think about what causes violence and try and prevent it from happening in the first place. I think we could do this, but it would require new thinking about violence and war, and not constantly trying to justify holding onto violent methods with stupid, unfair questions directed against pacifists.

This leads to my other objection to this question: it is simply not an honest question and it just reproduces common ways of thinking and acting. Actually, in my view, it’s just an attempt to harangue pacifists. The people who ask this question are not seriously interested in hearing what pacifists have to say about alternatives to violence, how to build cultures of peace or how to resolve certain situations peacefully. The fact is, the people who ask me these questions have ignored every suggestion and warning I and other peace activists ever made for decades. They don’t really care what we think anyway; they prefer to keep the world the way it is. Peace activists said there were signs of a coming genocide in Rwanda and action needed to be taken; they said that there were more effective responses to terrorism than a war on terror; they said that invading Iraq would be a disaster; they said that selling arms to every dictator in the world was not conducive to peace; and so on, and so on. But every time, they were dismissed as naïve and unrealistic, and their practical suggestions were ignored.

Thus, my ultimate question in response to these stupid questions is: How many wars, genocides, bombings, tortures and killings – how many absolute disasters like the one in Afghanistan – will it take until you have sufficient evidence to prove that political violence has failed as a response to conflict, and you give peaceful and nonviolent policies serious consideration? You’ve given war and intervention a chance for hundreds of years without much success. When will you give nonviolence a chance?

[Thanks to Helen Dexter; her clarity and commitment on this subject has greatly influenced me over the past few years.]

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Amputations and Crocodiles: Counter-Analogies of Political Violence

It is common for politicians and commentators to use analogies and metaphors to describe and explain acts of political violence. Medical analogies are particularly common, such as the notion that terrorism is a ‘cancer’ or that aerial bombing can be ‘surgical’. The problem is that these analogies can influence the way we think; for example, they can make us believe that a massive bombing campaign against a country – a series of ‘surgical strikes’ or military ‘operations’ – can destroy the ‘cancer’ of terrorism or cure a lack of democracy; they can make us think that violence can sometimes be an instrument of healing. Particularly when the analogy or metaphor is inaccurate or misleading, it can obscure the reality of political violence and cause us to accept its legitimacy without really questioning its real-world effects or true nature. It can, in other words, lead to destructive policy choices.

Although no analogy is perfect and will contain its own distortions of the thing being described, I want to suggest two analogies which will help us to think more clearly and realistically about contemporary political violence. First, following the popularity of medical analogies, I want to suggest that we should always think about political violence as amputation rather than as general surgical operations or medical intervention. Adopting this analogy can help us to face some important truths about violence, such as that while amputation (violence) may sometimes be necessary in an extreme emergency to save a person’s life, it is always disfiguring and it will leave the patient (victim) a less than whole person who will suffer forever afterwards, even if prosthetics and other therapies make their life easier. In other words, violence can never be good or noble or positive in itself; it will always be destructive and cause suffering to its victims, even if it is viewed as necessary. Violence is permanently damaging and disfiguring by its very nature, as anyone who has ever been victimized will testify.

Another principle to take from this analogy is that amputation (violence) should always be the very last option and viewed as an extreme measure that we must first take every possible step to avoid. Accepting this analogy would limit the frequency with which our leaders go to war or intervene militarily in other countries, and encourage them to try a great deal harder to find non-violent alternatives to the policy of political violence. If the leaders of the world’s nations accepted that violent military intervention would be analogous to doctors chopping off a patient’s legs or arms, they might be more cautious and not necessarily advocate it as an almost automatic policy response to the lack of democracy, acts of terrorism, or humanitarian crisis. If we’re lucky, it might also convince the leaders of social movements to reconsider the decision to escalate their campaign to include violent strategies and tactics when they feel frustrated by the lack of progress on social justice.

A second analogy is to think of political violence as a crocodile, rather than as a dog or a horse (as in unleashing the ‘dogs of war’ or ‘war horse’). The fact is that, unlike dogs or horses, crocodiles can never be tamed or controlled. This is because crocodiles have very small, primitive brains which can only respond to instinctual survival needs. In other words, no matter how often someone feeds and cares for a crocodile, the crocodile will fail to recognize that person as anything more than a potential meal and a moment of carelessness will see the crocodile try to eat them, even after twenty years of loving care. It also means that even if the crocodile owner were to take it for a walk through town and it was not to try and eat every small child it came across, this would not be proof of the tameness of the crocodile; it would just be luck on that particular occasion.

The importance of this analogy lies in its application to humanitarian intervention and the application of military force as a policy option. The fact is that military force (like the crocodile) will always be an untamed beast that will try and devour its owner if it senses the opportunity. It cannot be tamed or controlled like a dog on a leash. This is because war and violence has its own inbuilt tendencies towards extreme action and unpredictable consequences, as Clausewitz explained a long time ago. Sometimes the application of violence will provoke violent resistance and further escalation; other times it will result in capitulation. Most often, it leads to the distortion of our thinking and impedes learning, and in every case, it has incalculable opportunity costs. There is no way to predict which way the crocodile will go, except that it will be painful and damaging for someone. Therefore, any politician who says that military success is assured is only expressing the hope that the crocodile won’t eat any small children on this particular occasion.

The emerging quagmire in Libya, with its thousands of civilian victims (the very ones the crocodile was deployed to protect), the growing prospects of civil war between rebel factions, and the lack of any measureable success, is testament to the crocodile nature of applying military force – as is the ten years of war so far in Afghanistan, the seven years of war so far in Iraq, and the inglorious record of military intervention in places like Lebanon, Gaza, Somalia, DRC, the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Kashmir, Colombia, and a hundred other conveniently forgotten places.

In sum, the lessons to take from these analogies are: if you take your crocodile for a walk, don’t ever forget that it can never be tamed and it will usually try to eat the little children who cross its path; also, it is not advisable to use a crocodile in an operation of surgical amputation, even when it’s for democracy or human rights or some other noble ideal. Try to find another approach instead. After all, there are plenty of tried and tested non-violent alternatives to resolving conflict, just as there are usually medical alternatives to amputation.

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In Memorium: Jacob Bercovitch (1946-2011)

Professor Jacob Bercovitch of the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, passed away recently. He was an outstanding scholar who has left a tremendous legacy in the wider field of peace and conflict studies. Through his teaching and research, he influenced a whole generation of scholars, of which I count myself one. I first met Jacob in 1987 when I began studying political science at the University of Canterbury. Inspired by his research and teaching from the very first day, I went on to study with him through both undergraduate and honours levels, and then later for my PhD in international conflict resolution. During this period, I also worked closely with him as research assistant for his internationally recognized and hugely influential project on the Correlates of Mediation. In time, we became colleagues and worked together on a number of publications. More importantly, he also became my good friend.

The impact and legacy he left was, in many ways, immeasurable, as it included all aspects of the academic life, including his teaching approach, his relationships with his students and colleagues, and his research and scholarship. In this respect, Jacob did not just study conflict resolution, but he embodied and practiced the ethos and values of peace which were his life’s study.

In terms of his scholarship, there two aspects in particular which have left a lasting impression on me. First, Jacob always sought to apply theory and practice in such a way that each would inform the other. His empirical research always flowed first from the application of theoretical reasoning, while empirical findings were allowed to speak back to theoretical formulation. In this way, I believe he found a balance between the often de-contextualised empirical research which sometimes seems to revel in the employment of complex statistics for its own sake, and the overly abstract theoretical reasoning which equally seems to ignore the real world of people and communities in conflict. The necessity of applying theory to practice has remained with me, and as a contribution, I believe its effect has been to strengthen the broader field of peace studies which was often viewed as theoretically naïve and lacking in empirical rigour.

A second contribution lies in Jacob’s development and application of the Contingency Approach to the study of conflict resolution. This was a way of thinking about the operation of human agency within, but not determined by, structural constraints. It is, I believe, a major contribution to both peace studies and international relations. Not only does it provide an analytical framework for reintegrating historically-visible human action and choices into structurally-oriented accounts of political processes, but it reminds us that social processes like war and peace are made through human action and choice; they are not the result of impersonal forces or structures. Crucially, the effect of this is to return ethical responsibility to the individual and to make each of us a potential actor for peace with all the expectations this entails.

In short, through the theoretical development of the Contingency Model and its application to the systematic empirical study of conflict resolution processes such as mediation and negotiation, Jacob Bercovitch has left an indelible mark on the wider study of peace and conflict. His insights and understanding have inspired a generation of both scholars and practitioners, and he stands proudly alongside other great scholars of peace studies and international conflict resolution. We can only hope that scholars new and old will continue and expand his research, and thus, try to fill the immense gap left by his passing.

I feel privileged and immensely grateful to have worked with him, to have known him, and to have called him my friend. He will be missed.

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