Dr Keith Suter

The New Era of Warfare

Opening address at the Dalai Lama event

Robert Blackwood Hall, Monash University

Friday 8 June 2007

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,

My job this afternoon is to set the broader context for where we are up to in terms of the long struggle for peace. I want to make three points. One, I want to look at the good news relating to warfare, secondly I want to give some of the bad news, and then thirdly, to look at what I call the triangle of peace, about how we can move forward the global peace process.

First of all the good news. The good news is that war is a dying business. We are coming now to the end of the Cold War era which was the central defining event for the second half of the twentieth century and there was no World War III. The last time I was at Monash was twenty years ago and I was discussing the issue of World War III. Luckily, we have got away from that risk. Also it is worth bearing in mind the broader context. During the twentieth century the majority of people who were killed in war died in the first half of the twentieth century, and so we see, therefore, over the decades, that bit by bit, warfare is gradually dying out in terms of the number of people killed.

And in fact some people say that this is what is called ‘The Golden Arches’ theory of world peace. No two countries that sell McDonalds have gone to war against each other. It’s not a reflection of the fact that you eat McDonalds and lose your ability to fight, but the fact underpinning that is a theory underpinning political science that says democracies do not go to war against each other. Nowadays the nature of citizenship has changed, and citizens no longer expect from governments the delivery of military glory. If you go around Melbourne you will see these marvellous statues of military leaders, for example, like General Gordon near Parliament House. That era is on the way out. If we look for national glory now, we look to sporting personalities to deliver us national glory.

Instead what citizens want in an increasing number of countries is economic progress. We are increasingly consumers and that has good and bad aspects to it. Certainly in the context of today’s presentation, the good news is that people are less and less willing to fight and we have fewer and fewer people killed in warfare. And so we now see therefore, a new warfare state emerging. The good news is a reduction in the total number of international wars, a reduction in the total number of people being killed in wars, and we are moving away from the era of the mass slaughter that we saw in World Wars I and II. And instead we see the importance, if you like, of international trade drawing countries together.

For example, look at France and Germany. For a thousand years the Franks and the Huns - or more recently the French and the Germans - have fought each other. On two occasions in last century the wars involved people from Victoria. Now it is inconceivable that France and Germany would ever go to war with each other. “Why kill those people? They’re our customers!” And so we see therefore, that trade knits the world together. And although there are some transnational corporations that make money out of war, most of them prefer to have peace, because that’s how you can sell your products and your services. You can have people travelling overseas, etc. So we see therefore the importance of trade in knitting the world together, the importance of democracies that don’t go to war against each other, and overall a reduction in international conflict. So my first point is that war is a dying business.

The bad news is the rise of what I call the ‘warfare state’. Warfare is now increasingly internal, not international; it is guerrilla, not conventional. And so we are seeing therefore that wars are now much more difficult to fight because of the way in which we no longer have those clear battle fronts. The soldiers are no longer wearing their uniforms and carrying their arms openly. Warfare is a lot more messy than it has been in previous eras.

Meanwhile we also have a growing gap between the rich and the poor. And for the first time in history people now know they are poor. In previous eras they would have been born in poverty, raised in poverty, died in poverty, because they would have known no other way of life. Now people have access to radio and television programs. And so they can see, if you are living in a squalid slum somewhere, how people can live in Australia. You watch “Sylvania Waters”. To know how Americans live, you watch “Dallas”. We don’t take those programs seriously, but others do. And there is a growing resentment at the growing gap between the rich and the poor in many societies. In previous eras, people probably would have supported communist individuals, promising revolution and utopia. Now sometimes they are inclined to support extremist religious leaders. So we are seeing therefore, a change in the nature of warfare. The old ideas relating to warfare – large conventional forces, large bombing raids - those ideas don’t work. Increasingly you arehaving to win the hearts and minds of people and that is a much more difficult task.

So my second point is simply to identify that there is some bad news in the way in which the new era in warfare is more complicated, fewer people being killed, but wars being much more complicated to deal with.

Of course there are some people who will say, ‘What about the risk of terrorism?’ And I agree, there is a real problem with terrorism as a form of, if you like, guerrilla warfare. But you’ve got to keep the terrorist threat in perspective. The total number of people who were killed on 9/11 came to about 3000, including about 21 Australians and New Zealanders, so 3000 people killed on 9/11 in the United States, but 5000 Americans die each year through food poisoning. Last year more Americans died in their bath than the total number of people killed by terrorism world wide. So you need to keep in perspective the number of people who can be killed in terrorist attacks. And of course in a broader context, 30,000 Americans die through guns each year – either murder or suicide. That is ten times the number of Americans and others killed on 9/11. The Northern Ireland conflict has run now for about 30 years and it may well be that it is drawing to a close now. With the exception of 1972, more people were killed on the roads of Northern Ireland than were killed in the violence – but you would never get that impression from the media. Because the media obviously focus so much on people being killed through acts of terrorism and violence in Northern Ireland.

So in summary, yes, terrorism is a problem, yes, it is part of this new complexity of warfare, but let us keep in perspective the total threat of terrorism. You are still safer flying than driving out to a university campus. Keep the threat of terrorism in perspective.

So what I have tried to do then this afternoon then is one, to give you an overview of the good news relating to the declining number of people being killed in conflict; the way in which trade is now knitting the world together; and the way that democracies don’t go to war against each other. The other side, the bad news, the new warfare state of guerrilla warfare, of terrorism, etc., a new complicated era of warfare. And I will conclude with what I call the triangle of peace.

Basically there seems to me to be three ways in which simultaneously we have to work for peace. First of all there is disarmament. We have to work through the United Nations and bilateral bodies for nuclear disarmament, chemical and biological disarmament and also the total reduction in small arms. Small arms, by the way, are the weapons of mass destruction. Each day people are being killed with small arms in localised conflicts around the world. As I say, you have got many people who are alienated through their poverty. We are militarising despair; they are using those small arms. Indeed, it is worth bearing in mind that a Kalashnikov rifle in Eastern Africa is as cheap as the price of a chicken. Weapons are one of humankind’s most durable and most sustainable inventions. They have a long life.

So on the one side we have to work for disarmament, get rid of the weaponry, the nuclear weapons which are actually, by the way, slowly being reduced; chemical weapons, biological weapons – largely not used at all now in warfare - as well as getting rid of small arms. That’s one side of the triangle. The second side of the triangle is conflict resolution – the peaceful settlement of international disputes. Too often we write the histories as though they were the biographies of generals and battles. But there is also a story of peace which doesn’t get adequate recognition. There is all sorts of progress being made in the peaceful settlement of international disputes. The standard test that I give when I am speaking on this subject is to say, we have had two sets of disagreements over islands in the south Atlantic. And when I ask audiences what were those disagreements, everybody can guess the Falklands/Malvinas dispute, 25 years ago almost exactly, between Argentina and Great Britain. Everybody knows that war because we publicise wars.

But there is another set of islands over which there has been an even longer dispute, and it is interesting to note that during the war in 1982 between Great Britain and Argentina, Chile supported Britain, why, because Chile expected it to be invaded, not the Falklands. They have a dispute with Argentina over Tierra del Fuego – the end of the world. Four hundred years ago, when the Pope divided the world between the two superpowers of the day, Spain and Portugal, it was very unclear as to where his quill pen went through the bottom of Latin America. So for four hundred years, Spain and Portugal, Chile and Argentina, have quarrelled over Tierra del Fuego. In 1982, with the war between Britain and Argentina in the Falkland Islands, the previous Pope, the one who passed away recently, decided to send in a team of negotiators to deal with the other dispute, created by his predecessor, almost half a millennium earlier. And they settled the negotiations. No fuss, no war, a peace treaty was signed. This was such great news that some of us encouraged the Australian Foreign Minister of the time, Bill Hayden, who is an atheist, to issue a statement congratulating the Pope. We thought that might be newsworthy, again, no publicity.

Quite coincidentally I was in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a decade on exactly to the signing of that peace treaty, and not even in Argentina did they publicise that peace treaty, instead they were concentrating on their dispute over the Falkland Islands/Malvinas. The tragedy in history is that people grow up assuming that war is an inevitable, natural way to solve their disputes. We know that is not the case.

Some years ago the Seville Statement on Violence was drawn up, which argued that warfare is not a natural human activity - people need to be trained to do it. Many people, I am sure, in this room, have never been directly involved in fighting a war, and pretty well most people in this room have never actually killed anybody else in a war. Don’t blame it on your animals, to say that we inherited warfare from our animals, that’s insulting to the animals. They don’t want to be compared with human beings. No animal fights warfare. It is a human made invention. If humans have invented it, humans can also disinvent it, and forego it, in much the same way as we have now stopped duelling between people. If you think back 200 years ago an American Vice-President was involved in a duel. We have now stopped duelling.

If we can change the behaviour at the individual level, surely we can also change the nature of warfare and give more attention to the peaceful settlement of international disputes.

So the second side of that triangle is conflict resolution, the peaceful settlement of international disputes and domestic disputes and other disputes. You get rid of weaponry, but you also create another way of settling disputes.

And then thirdly, the base of the triangle is the struggle for justice. The tree of peace has its roots in justice. We therefore need to give attention to economic justice, human rights, the environment, social development and the conversion of military facilities to civilian use. My second doctorate, as you heard, is on the economic cost of the arms race. As part of my doctoral research I had to try to work out how I would spend the current level of high level international expenditure on economic and social development. You can get clean water and sanitation in Africa in 80 days. And I’m talking about year after year of military expenditure. The tragedy is that we can find money for war and we can’t find it for peace. And yet the answers to many of our problems are within our own grasp, because the money is there if we can convert all that high level of military facilities to civilian uses. It’s interesting to note that the annual budget of the International Committee of the Red Cross is less than one week’s expenditure by the Americans in the current Iraq conflict. We can find money for war but we can’t find it for peace.

So to summarise what I have tried to argue, therefore, is that war is a dying business and we are gradually seeing a reduction in the total number of people being killed in war. Secondly however, we are seeing a new warfare state emerging which is involving internal fighting of a guerrilla nature. I have argued that the long search for peace means that we have to proceed along three sides of a triangle simultaneously. Negotiating disarmament, to get rid of the existing weapons; secondly, to find alternative ways of settling disputes, and there are many techniques already there – it’s just that we are not publicising them. It’s interesting to note that when the Iran crisis, involving the Carter Administration, got underway, the Carter Administration in 1979-1980, sent in a group of Americans to try to rescue the diplomats trapped in Teheran, where they were to stay for 444 days. That raid by the US military failed. President Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in his memoirs said, ‘Now that the military option had failed, we had no choice but to negotiate’. And Libya and the Bank of England worked together to sort out that dispute and liberate those Americans. But isn’t it a tragedy that we could get round to negotiating only after the violence has not worked? Rather than making recourse to war the first way, we have got to give peace a chance.

So by way of conclusion let me just make two comments. First of all, I agree there is a problem with terrorism, but I do urge people to live by their hopes and not their fears. We need to live in an era when we are inspired to do better and to expect more. Let’s not focus on the negative all the time. My colleague on another radio station in Sydney - with whom I debate every Monday for an hour - is someone who lives by his fears, and sure enough, everything in his life seems to go wrong! I live by my hopes and I have a much easier way of living. So be optimistic about the world. And finally there is a Jewish saying, that the strongest person in the world is the person who can make their enemy their friend.

Thanks very much.