About
Carnegie Corporation
Preventing
Contemporary Intergroup Violence
President's
Essay - Reprinted from the 1993 Annual Report
David
A. Hamburg
The world
of the next century will be different in profound respects from any
that we have ever known before deeply interdependent economically,
closely linked technologically, and progressively more homogenized
through the movement of information, ideas, people, and capital around
the world at unprecedented speed. At the same time, it will be more
multicentric in the devolution of economic, political, and military
power to smaller adaptable units. Some nations will undergo a perilous
fragmentation, as the centralizing forces that once held people together
are pulled apart and traditional concepts of national sovereignty
and nationhood are contested, sometimes violently. How these tendencies
will be reconciled is far from clear.
One
of the most striking facts of our time is the way technology has
come to dominate and organize our lives, presenting unimaginable
benefits, opportunities, and choices within a matter of decades,
yet unleashing the destructive power of advanced weaponry that in
an instant of history can do immense damage, even destroy humanity.
While
the more complex and contradictory world that we have entered is
of our own making, we often approach its problems with the biological
orientations and emotional responses of our ancient ancestry, bringing
attitudes, customs, and institutions that were formed largely in
earlier times and that are perhaps no longer appropriate. Foremost
is our tendency as a species toward prejudice, egocentrism, and
ethnocentrism. In these times of rapid world transformation, as
people have flowed like floodwaters across the earth, families,
social support networks, old ways of forming group solidarity, and
other traditional patterns of living have been strained or broken
apart. Many individuals feel a heightened sense of uncertainty and
insecurity. Some react with exaggerated intolerance of the outside
world or with violence toward those who are seen as alien and threatening.
Political demagogues can readily inflame these feelings in a context
of severe vulnerability.
The
historical record is full of every sort of slaughter based on the
human capability to make invidious distinctions between in-groups
and out-groups often associated with the frustration of fundamental
drives, deeply felt beliefs about identity, or a sense of jeopardy
to group survival. In this century a period of the most rapid industrialization
and wrenching transition human slaughter far exceeds any that has
gone before. Just since the United Nations was formed in 1945, there
have been upwards of 150 small-scale wars resulting in more than
20 million dead and easily four times that many disabled or displaced.
Millions have perished at the hands of their own countrymen in Cambodia,
Indonesia, Burundi, Rwanda, Nigeria, Paraguay, Tibet, Uganda, Angola,
and the Sudan. Most recently the former Yugoslavia has generated
at least 150,000 dead and more than two million refugees.
Today
worldwide, fed by the powerful currents of aggressive ethnic nationalism,
there is a virtual epidemic of armed civil or intranational conflict
the kind often thought of as "internal" but that can readily
spill over the borders of nation-states. While international attention
has been on the savage fighting in Bosnia, long-simmering antagonisms
among deeply mingled ethnic groups have come to the surface in the
successor states to the Soviet Union exacerbated by the harsh economic
conditions that prevail there as well as by the erosion of social
norms. Hundreds of such nationality "hot spots" exist
in these vast territories. Sixty-five million people in the former
Soviet Union do not live in their primary areas of origin, and many
are fearful about their treatment as minorities in the new nations.
The international community is only just beginning to realize the
potential gravity of these various conflicts. Russia herself, with
her huge arsenal of nuclear weapons, has shown serious signs of
instability.
New Wine in Old Bottles
Intergroup
conflict is an ancient part of the human legacy, and tyrants have
long understood how to exploit for their own ends the human tendency
to attribute malevolence primarily or solely to other groups, deflecting
anger onto the hated others, who are blamed for all their troubles.
Many different political, social, economic, and pseudoscientific ideologies
have been mobilized to support hostile positions toward those who
are outside the primary community or who deviate from community norms.
All
that is very old and once upon a time may have been adaptive, but
these characteristics of our species have become exceedingly dangerous,
primarily because of the enormous destructive power of the advanced
weaponry we have created. Weapons themselves do not cause dangerous
conflicts, but their availability in large quantities can easily
intensify and prolong such conflicts. The use of sophisticated technology,
moreover, enhances the risk that the consequences of local wars
will become regional or global.
While
nuclear warheads, which can be carried by missiles with tremendous
accuracy over great distances, represent the ultimate in human violence,
the increased killing power of enhanced conventional, chemical,
and biological weapons also has the potential for making life everywhere
miserable and disastrous. In the past, no matter how ferocious the
conflict, humanity could not destroy itself even if it wanted to.
Now it can. One of the most serious problems the world will face
in the next decade is the proliferation throughout the world of
these modern deadly weapons or the knowledge and technical capability
for making them and the looming possibility that they will be used.
In
this post-Cold War environment of many small wars and potentially
large ones, a new approach to international problem solving may
be needed. The system of international diplomacy that evolved over
the past two centuries focused on power relations between nation-states.
Yet the risks, costs, casualties, and tragedies of the twentieth
century should tell us, if nothing else does, that this may be far
from an optimal system for dealing with conflict between peoples
of the same nation or the problem of weapons proliferation.
Attachments
and Aggression
The
capacity for attachment and the capacity for violence are fundamentally
connected in human beings. We fight with other people in the belief
that we are protecting ourselves, our loved ones, and the group
with which we identify most strongly. Altruism and aggression are
intimately linked in war and other conflicts. My lifetime has witnessed
terrible atrocities committed in the name of some putatively high
cause. Yet there have also been vivid examples of the reconstruction
of societies, major reconciliations, and real enlargement of opportunities
for substantial segments of a population. What are the conditions
under which the outcome can go one way or the other? If we could
understand such questions better, maybe we could learn to tilt the
balance in favor of a stable, enduring peace among human groups
in the twenty-first century.
Even
though in-group/ out-group distinctions are ubiquitous in human
societies, easy to learn and hard to forget, there is certainly
the possibility that we humans can learn to minimize these tendencies.
This may be one of the crucial roads we have to travel in order
to cope with conflict in the transformed world of the future. Can
we find a basis for common human identification across a diversity
of cultures and national groups?
Below,
I try to sketch some promising lines of inquiry and innovation that
bear strongly on the two-sided coin of human cooperation and conflict
and that suggest ways the world's institutions can cope with burgeoning
threats to international peace. It is worth considering how the
various approaches to the prevention of the deadliest conflicts
and the promotion of international cooperation might be strengthened,
particularly in light of superordinate goals essential for the future
of humanity and our habitat.
The
Search for Understanding
Given
the myriad possibilities for world conflagration, the nature and
sources of human conflict are deserving of the most careful and
searching attention. Yet, until quite recently they have not been
a major focus of systematic analysis and even today are rather marginalized
in the world's great research and educational institutions. The
scientists and scholars heavily engaged in such inquiry have been
largely lacking in support. The field of ethnic conflict resolution,
moreover, is relatively new and weakly institutionalized. The international
community has nothing like an effective system for preventing the
deadliest conflicts.
The
powerful sectors of society everywhere, for their part, have tended
to be complacent about such matters and to see them as someone else's
problem, far away. Avoidance often substitutes for foresight, authority
for evidence, and blaming for problem solving. The capacity for
wishful thinking, as it is for self-justification, seems boundless
in matters of human conflict.
All
this may be beginning to change now, stimulated by deep concerns
about the dangers of contemporary conflict and by the belated recognition
of the ubiquity of killing and maiming in human experience. Conflicts
have become everyone's business. The idea that states and peoples
are free to conduct their quarrels, no matter how deadly, is outdated
in the nuclear age and in a shrinking world where local hostilities
can rapidly become international ones with devastating consequences.
Similarly, the notion that tyrants are free to commit atrocities
on their own people is rapidly becoming obsolete.
A
substantial body of careful empirical research on conflict resolution
and international peacemaking, detailing the historical experience
with forms of negotiation, mediation, arbitration, recognition,
and power sharing is at last beginning to emerge, and the results
are providing new insights and guidelines useful to practitioners.
It is apparent that there is no single approach to conflict resolution
that offers overriding promise. Just as the sources and manifestations
of human conflict are immensely varied, so too are the approaches
to understanding, preventing, and resolving conflicts.
The
field can benefit from more dynamic interplay between theory and
practice. The great challenge is to move with a sense of urgency
to organize a broader and deeper effort to understand these issues
and, above all, to develop more effective ways in the real world
of preventing and resolving conflicts short of disaster.
Additionally,
there needs to be serious worldwide education about forms of nonviolent
problem solving that can generate public support. The price of resolving
international disputes by force of arms is becoming too high even
putative winners are beginning to recognize this unwelcome fact.
But finding workable alternatives that are broadly acceptable, particularly
in the realm of preventive systems, will challenge the international
community beyond any prior experience. While it is certainly not
beyond possibility to move this subject higher on the agenda of
this nation and others, it will require a much deeper grasp of the
dangers among leadership groups and the general public than now
exists.
Sovereignty
and Self Determination
Most
people everywhere live in multiethnic societies. Worldwide there
are several thousand ethnic groups versus fewer than two hundred
nation-states. In Europe, as in Africa, national borders were in
large part imposed by external powers without regard to geography
or shared ethnicity. Conditions were created in which members of
the same identity group were split apart, leaving open the possibility
that all groups could make territorial claims on each other. If
now every ethnic, religious, racial, linguistic, or cultural group
sought to establish its own nation, there would be no limit to fragmentation
precipitating violence, immense suffering, and a flow of refugees
on an unimaginable scale.
Sometimes
in the modern world it is possible to separate out ethnic groups
that wish to have their own nation-state and create a situation
in which borders essentially coincide with a living space of that
particular group; but this is unusual. Although secession may be
carried off democratically and peacefully, as in Czechoslovakia,
this is rare, and the quest to create a separate state or redraw
borders will usually prove to be a chimera.
The
attractive concept of self-determination was given an idealistic
boost after both world wars, but the conflict in Bosnia shows how
dangerous sudden secessions, rationalized on the basis of self-determination,
can be. The creation of new states by sudden secession may trigger
fierce fighting not only within a country but also across international
borders. There is ample evidence of this in the states of the former
Soviet Union, where the problem is complicated by an immense armory
of highly destructive weapons. So the concept of self-determination
will have to be reassessed in light of contemporary circumstances
and the conflicting values involved clarified and dealt with peacefully.
Beyond
this, there is an urgent need to create the conditions under which
various identity groups can sort out their differences and learn
to live in a state of harmonious interaction with their neighbors.
Ways must be found to foster self-esteem, meaningful group membership,
and internal cohesion without the necessity for harsh depreciation
of out-groups and without resort to violence in the event of a clash
of interests.
A
fundamental requisite of mutual accommodation is development of
a genuinely free civil society within a democratic framework, where
there is truly equal citizenship, respect for human rights, protection
against the abuse of power, freedom to express differences openly
and constructively, and a fair distribution of opportunities. Many
paths to mutual accommodation are possible: nonviolent agreed secession;
peaceful, negotiated territorial border revision; federation or
confederation; regional or functional autonomy; and respected cultural
pluralism, within each nation and across national boundaries. Each
case presents a particular set of opportunities and constraints,
and each solution will inevitably be reached only after painful
deliberation, taxing the patience and support of all. Whatever the
outcome, it must eventually satisfy the reasonable claims of most
citizens, though not necessarily the intolerant militants or extremists.
Shared
Goals of a Single Worldwide Species
To
an increasing extent, we will have to learn to broaden our social
identifications in light of shared interests and superordinate goals
across all of humanity. We must come to think of ourselves in a
fundamental sense as a single interdependent, meaningfully attached,
extended family. This is in fact what we are; but to state this
is not to assimilate it as a psychological reality.
Superordinate
goals have the potentially powerful effect of unifying disparate
groups in the search for the vital benefit that can be obtained
only by their cooperation. Such goals can override the differences
that people bring to the situation.
What
could constitute shared goals of this extraordinary significance?
The avoidance of nuclear destruction is one. Protection of the environment
is emerging as another, since it may well come to involve jeopardy
to the human habitat. The creation of new forms of community, social
cohesion, and solidarity in the face of the vast impersonal modern
society we have wrought is another. The threat of worldwide economic
deterioration might also become salient. At a regional level, the
desire to improve economic prospects can impel two or more nations
to cooperate in the development of agriculture, transportation,
electricity, and water resources, increasing confidence and mutually
beneficial interdependence.
These
are mainly survival goals, updated to the modern era, where the
reference for adaptation goes beyond the sense of belonging in the
immediate valued group to identification with a much larger unit
or ideal. The current, worldwide epidemic of severe ethnic conflict
should help us realize that we are all in this huge leaking boat
together in a gathering storm.
The
ancient propensity toward narrow identity, harsh intolerance, and
deadly intergroup conflict will confront us with new dangers in
the next century and challenge us as never before. By the same token
it will create a great opportunity to identify the fundamental properties
of superordinate goals and their myriad possibilities in the world
of small- and large-scale wars that have proven so contagious in
recent years. How can all of humanity benefit indeed survive by
adopting new attitudes, practices, and institutions?
Changing
Principles of International Diplomacy
In
the period following World War II, the international community put
all too little emphasis on the protection of minority rights. Concepts
of self-determination, sovereignty, and the sanctity of borders
prevented outsiders from mediating ethnic tensions within or between
states. International law on self-determination limited itself primarily
to anti-colonial movements.
When
international intervention did occur, it was usually associated
with partisan superpower support in the context of Cold-War rivalry.
In this environment and with its almost infinite respect for the
nation-state, the United Nations was virtually helpless to intervene
in most serious conflicts. Mediation by governments or nongovernmental
organizations in intergroup conflicts also tended to occur only
after fighting had erupted between opposing groups. This was the
case in the Arab-Israeli disputes, in Ngorno-Karabakh, in Yugoslavia,
and in the Sudan.
But
with the ending of the Cold War, the growth of a dynamic and interdependent
world economy, and the blurring of national boundaries by modern
communication and transportation, nations have an opportunity to
deal cooperatively with world problems unhampered by ideological
rivalries. In particular they can now address seriously the paradoxically
hostile separatism that is stirring up new conflicts around the
world. They can begin to deal with the severe ecological damage
and resource depletion, huge disparities between rich and poor,
and denial of aspiration that are at the heart of much of intergroup
violence.
Some
experts, drawing on years of study and diplomatic experience in
dealing with serious conflicts, envision a shift taking place in
the nature of international relations from the traditional power-oriented,
authoritarian, and controlling model toward one that is more complex
and multifaceted, in which mutually beneficial political and economic
relations are of growing importance.
The
older paradigm took it for granted that human beings were overwhelmingly
selfish and therefore would respond mainly to coercion. Interests
were defined narrowly in terms of power. This can now usefully be
enlarged to a broader view that is more sympathetic to basic human
needs for physical and economic security, social justice, and political
freedom. Such a view relies less on coercive measures and more on
the clarification of fundamental concerns and underlying common
interests and on ways to change political environments toward democracy.
An
indication of a shift in the paradigms of diplomacy is the recent
willingness of states to yield some historically sensitive sovereign
prerogatives in the interests of achieving larger political and
economic benefits. But progress here is hard-won and subject to
regression with little notice.
Still,
the remarkably peaceful ending of the Cold War might in due course
provide the basis for a new system of international, democratic,
nonviolent problem solving aimed ultimately at prevention of the
deadliest conflicts. This is an immense challenge to serious thinkers,
penetrating analysts, and innovative practitioners.
A
Post-cold War International System
If
aggrieved groups have recourse to a respected external authority
whether governments, multilateral institutions, nongovernmental
organizations, or other bridge-building or mediating links they
might be less likely to engage in secessionist activities or appeal
to their ethnic kin from outside to come to their rescue. Whatever
can nurture a more cosmopolitan identity rather than a parochial,
narrowly defined ethnic identity will be helpful in the long term.
To
this end, the international community can formulate general standards
for resolving disputes and for satisfying self-determination claims
to a reasonable extent, in the context of an existing state if feasible.
It can develop a preventive orientation, monitoring "hot spots,"
analyzing the potential sources of conflict, and becoming involved
early as conflicts emerge. It can analyze ways in which economic
access to and participation in the international economy can help
ensure adherence to standards of decent behavior in intergroup relations.
It can encourage ways of facilitating the growth of mutually beneficial
loose associations or confederations.
A
new international consensus toward conflict prevention and resolution
could support the provision of visible, respected forums for the
expression of grievances among the relevant parties and of organized
settings that foster empathy and restraint, in which culturally
accepted techniques for reconciliation are used to the maximum extent
possible. It could instill a process of joint problem solving in
which representatives of the different groups mutually explore their
respective interests, basic needs, and fervent aspirations. It could
have a means of identifying shared goals such as regional economic
development and aid in the building of inclusive democratic institutions.
Such
a consensus could lead to mechanisms for organizing an ongoing series
of reciprocal goodwill gestures; for drafting possible agreements
even modest next steps that show the possibility of finding common
ground in a mode of civil discourse; for building institutions where
parties can learn about negotiation and democratic ways of coping;
and for utilizing multilateral, regional, and nongovernmental resources
to create incentives and skills for negotiation, cooperation, and
help with economic development.
These
desiderata could apply to the resolution of a wide range of large,
intergroup conflicts, spanning traditional international relations
and contemporary ethnic tensions.
But
what entities could implement such an international system for preventing
the deadliest conflicts? The United Nations? The community of established
democracies? Some interplay between the two? Other international
mechanisms?
United
Nations
There
is a growing interest by the international community in the possibility
of broadening the role of the United Nations. With its legitimacy
as the most significant global institution striving for democratic
ideals oriented toward a peaceful world order, it might usefully intervene
in some "internal affairs" to prevent deadly conflict, render
humanitarian assistance, and aid transitions to more democratic systems
of governance.
In
January 1992, for the first time in the history of the institution,
a special meeting of the Security Council of the United Nations
was held at the level of heads of state. It was a summit meeting
called to examine the functions of the U.N., particularly with respect
to conflict resolution. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali
was asked to prepare a plan for strengthening the capacity of the
U.N. to engage in preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, and peacekeeping.
This was an unprecedented occasion and expressed a strong commitment
to the original purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter
drawn up a half century earlier.
The
Secretary-General responded some months later with a remarkable
document, "An Agenda for Peace," which drew upon many
ideas and proposals from member states, regional and nongovernmental
organizations, and individuals. Some aspects of the document are
groundbreaking. In it Boutros-Ghali took note of changes in the
concept of sovereignty: "The time of absolute and exclusive
sovereignty . . . has passed; its theory was never matched by reality.
It is the task of leaders of states today to understand this and
to find a balance between the needs of good internal governance
and the requirements of an ever more interdependent world."
The
Secretary-General put emphasis on fact-finding and analysis ™ to
identify at the earliest possible stage the circumstances that could
produce serious conflict ™ and on the need for preventive diplomacy
to resolve the most immediate problems, with attention to underlying
causes of conflict. While placing a high priority on the U.N.'s
having an early warning system and the means for early intervention,
he did not ignore the necessity for it to deal effectively at later
stages with its more familiar functions of peacemaking and peacekeeping.
Improvement in the former could include strengthening the role of
the International Court of Justice (the principal judicial organ
of the U.N.) and introducing confidence-building measures, economic
assistance, and, if necessary, sanctions and the use of military
force. Boutros-Ghali considered the increased demands on the U.N.
for peacekeeping and the complex organizational changes that will
be necessary if the U.N. is to be more effective in these domains.
He
also considered preventive deployment, which goes beyond earlier
U.N. practice. There may be circumstances that justify deploying
forces prior to the outbreak of fighting, if such help is requested
by governments or parties to the fighting. The aim is to limit or
control the violence, help ensure that security is maintained, assist
in conciliation efforts, even establish a demilitarized zone before
a conflict is well established, and provide humanitarian assistance.
To
the functions he was asked to comment on, the Secretary-General
added a fourth category ™ post-conflict peacebuilding ™ having the
aim of constructing a more durable foundation for peace. The creation
of a new environment after a conflict is the counterpart of preventive
diplomacy before conflict. While preventive diplomacy seeks to identify
at the earliest stage the circumstances that could produce a serious
conflict and remove the sources of danger, post-conflict peacebuilding
aims to prevent a crisis from recurring. It emphasizes, as does
preventive diplomacy, cooperative efforts to cope with underlying
economic, social, and humanitarian problems.
The
Secretary-General's report underscored the importance of joint efforts
to nurture democratic practices and, by implication, democratic
institutions, since so many countries in a state of conflict have
had little or no democratic experience. Similarly, in many arenas
there is a need for the U.N. to provide technical assistance in
the rebuilding phase and to place the conflicting parties on a sounder
economic basis for their own internal development. As a practical
matter, Boutros-Ghali cited the problem of how to get rid of the
millions of mines that now litter the lands where conflicts have
gone on. Doing so will restore not only agriculture and transportation
but hope and confidence so that citizens can participate fully in
the rebuilding. The Secretary-General recognized the importance
of working with regional organizations and the nongovernmental sector
in carrying out such functions.
Implementing
this agenda will necessarily be difficult and the obstacles formidable.
If the United Nations is to play these roles effectively, it will
require much more substantial and dependable financial and political
support than it has ever received before. For this to happen there
will need to be a much higher level of public understanding about
the U.N.'s current functions and its potential than now exists.And
there will need to be some changes in structure and function.
The
United Nations is not, and never will be, a world government. It
is an intergovernmental organization of sovereign states that seek
common ground for cooperation in their long-term self-interest.
It is perforce large and multifaceted, disparate in its composition
and in the outlook of its members, and emotionally charged from
its past history and from current difficulties in the world. As
such, it cannot be an optimal instrument for all efforts at preventive
diplomacy or conflict resolution. Nevertheless, if it did not exist,
something very much like it would have to be invented. There simply
has to be a comprehensive, worldwide forum for global issues. Surely
it is time to consider how some of its functions, and the components
and mechanisms within it, could be extended, and new ones created
if necessary, in order to strengthen the hand of the international
community in preventing highly lethal conflicts.
The
Established Democracies
The democracies
of Europe, North America, Japan, and Australia have shown that they
can live together peacefully even as they compete. On the other hand,
they have failed badly in certain situations, such as Bosnia. Increasingly
they are likely to take the lead in formulating international norms
of conduct with respect to intergroup relations, the proliferation
of highly lethal weaponry, economic development in poorer nations,
human rights, and the growth of democratic institutions. They have
the technological, economic, and political strength to establish such
norms even if tyrannical governments are offended.
The
established democracies may act on such issues with the approval
of or on behalf of the U.N., or they may cooperate with it informally.
Usually their actions will be political and economic in nature rather
than military. In almost all cases they will need to consult widely
with each other on a systematic basis.
The
North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a prime example of the ability
of established democracies to work together ™ initially to counteract
an aggressive Soviet Union, provide for European security, and foster
German recovery in a democratic mode. Could a similar alliance,
involving a wider coalition of democracies, be organized to ensure
security on a worldwide basis, fuel economic growth with fairness,
protect cultural diversity, and foster democratic values?
Who
Else Can Help?
As important
as the United Nations is, there are other organizations of the international
community that could be effective in preventing deadly conflicts.
The involvement of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council
may be crucial for some regional conflicts, as in Cambodia, but other
disputes may be handled at the regional level. The potential of regional
mechanisms for dispute resolution in intergroup conflicts deserves
serious attention in the next decade. The European Community, the
Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Council of Europe
and its European Court of Human Rights, the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations, the Organization of American States, the Organization
of African Unity, and the Arab League all need strengthening in this
regard.
Various
specialized international organizations, such as the General Agreement
on Tariffs and Trade and the Law of the Sea Tribunal, can play a
useful role in resolving disagreements surrounding a particular
set of issues. Bilateral arrangements can also be created to adjudicate
disputes between nations. The U.S.-Iran Claims Tribunal demonstrated
that two hostile nations with different languages, laws, and goals
were able to settle matters of considerable importance to both sides.
Nongovernmental
organizations can also play an important part in resolving disputes,
cooperating with the U.N. and with regional organizations. Former
President Jimmy Carter, for example, has established through the
Carter Center in Atlanta an international network for mediation
and conflict resolution.
The
Scientific Outlook
The scientific
community is probably the closest approximation we now have to a truly
international community, sharing certain basic interests, values,
and standards as well as a fundamental curiosity about the nature
of matter, life, behavior, and the universe. The shared quest for
understanding is one that has no inherent boundaries. In any situation
of potentially serious conflict, the scientific outlook can contribute
to the construction of a framework for conflict resolution and for
building a peaceful world. It takes a world view that embodies multiple
truths, not some simple ultimate truth; it seeks evidence, and it
is prepared to learn from experience. This same empirical spirit is
frequently helpful in defusing passions aroused by social conflict.
It provides one of the pathways toward a broader-than-conventional
perspective that can be learned by all peoples and that can build
bridges across cultures.
In
the realm of scientific research, the interactions of biological,
psychological, and social processes in the development of human
aggressiveness leading to violent conflict must constitute an important
frontier in the decades ahead. A shared commitment to the humane
uses of science and technology could offer a great vista of hope.
Bridge
Building
This
analysis suggests the importance of having cross-cutting or overlapping
group memberships in the modern world. Cross-cutting relations are
those that connect subgroups of society or connect nations in ways
that overcome in-group/out-group distinctions and prejudicial stereotypes.
They involve the opportunity for members of alien, suspicious, or
hostile groups to spend time together, to work together, to play together,
and even to live together for extended periods of time, gaining a
sense of shared humanity.
On
the international level, there must be concerted efforts to expand
favorable contact between people from different groups and nations.
Some measure of comprehension of a strange culture is vital. Educational,
cultural, and scientific exchanges can be helpful. At a deeper level,
joint projects involving sustained cooperation can provide, if only
on a small scale, an experience of working together toward a superordinate
goal. There are many ways to break down antagonisms between groups
or, preferably, prevent them from arising in the first place. International
organizations can do much to promote empathic personal contact and
overlapping loyalties that cut across in-group/out-group antagonisms.
Those
of us who have a deep sense of belonging in groups that cut across
ethnic or national lines may serve to bridge different groups and
help others move toward a wider sense of social identity. Building
such bridges will need many people interacting across traditional
barriers on a basis of mutual respect. Nothing in our history as
a species would suggest there is a readiness for such a wider sense
of personal identity; yet it must be possible to engender this in
the next century and to do so on a broader scale than ever before.
Social
Education
There
are other ways to create positive connections between groups. Families,
schools, community organizations, religious institutions, and the
media throughout the years of human growth and development are pivotal
institutions that can shape attitudes and interpersonal skills toward
either decent relations or hatred and violence. In the twenty-first
century it will be necessary in child raising to put deliberate, explicit
emphasis on developing prosocial orientations and a sense of worth
based not on depreciation of others but on the constructive attributes
of oneself and others. Taking turns, sharing, and cooperating, especially
in learning and problem solving ™ these norms, established on a simple
basis in the first few years of life, can open the way to beneficial
human relationships that can have significance throughout a person's
life.
A
secure attachment of infant to mother or other adult caregiver provides
a crucial foundation for the development of prosocial behavior.
It is important to focus on the nature of parental behavior that
can promote or retard these tendencies. Not only schools but religious
and community organizations should foster positive reciprocity,
cross-cutting relations, awareness of superordinate goals, and a
mutual aid ethic in children and adolescents. The largely unfulfilled
educational potential of the media can also be helpful in improving
intergroup relations, as "Sesame Street" has shown. These
same generic orientations and skills can be extended from childhood
all the way up through adulthood to membership in larger units,
possibly even including international relations in due course.
The
painfully difficult effort to achieve decent, fair, peaceful relations
among diverse human groups is an enterprise that must be renewed.
While weapons of mass destruction pose the greatest danger, economic
decline and environmental degradation will be a growing challenge
to survival for many in the years ahead. People of humane and democratic
inclination will need sustained cooperation throughout the world
to build effective systems for dealing with these great problems.
Ideas are emerging, analysis is proceeding, useful models exist.
The current turmoil could provide a constructive stimulus for practical
arrangements that help us learn to live together at last.
David
A. Hamburg
President
ue,
New York, NY 10022 USA
Tel: (212) 371-3200 Fax: (212) 754-4073
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