Peace   

The West needs a fundamental rethinking of what stategies lead to peace. Our approach emphasizes the need to replace Domination with a strategy focused on Generosity and Caring for Others.

Foreign policy discussions in the past year have too often centered on what ruler is in power, on military strength, and infamously on WMD. American persuasiveness is measured in terms of army units or GNP (we can shoot ‘em out or buy ‘em out or both). Yet what really creates peace or war is not winning places or things, but winning the hearts and minds of people. Peace only comes through trust. The best foreign policy is not driven by Defense Departments or even by State Departments but by a vision of love and generosity — and the policies that follow through to build a world based on mutual caring and mutual respect!!!

The United States has a long way to go to win the world’s trust back. We are the richest nation in a world in which one out of every three people lives on less than $2 a day, and 1.3 billion live on less than $1 a day. Many of these people are near starvation. Yet, the United States has organized global trade agreements that work to enrich the rich and to further impoverish the poor. Millions of people around the world have demonstrated against these global pacts, but they do not have the power to effectively challenge the impact of American corporations backed by the U.S. army.

International trade arrangements destroy the market for many locally produced agricultural goods or handcrafted products, international companies come in and buy up or enclose land making it impossible to move animals to traditional grazing and water lands, and multinational corporations start to privatize essential natural resources such as water and sell them back to the people of the country at rates that are prohibitive for those who live at subsistence levels. All of this contributes to the collapse of the subsistence farming and village life in which people had been living for thousands of years. Some villages are literally uprooted physically to accommodate corporate projects.  But for most, the integration into the global marketplace destroys the market for their products, making village life impossible to sustain economically, so people are forced off their lands and into the huge slums surrounding major cities, where they live in horrific conditions, often witnessing their children choosing between starvation, crime, and prostitution.

The increasingly global resentment at what the West is bringing is not only an economic resentment, but a cultural and spiritual resentment. And for good reason. This resentment is evident nowhere more strikingly than in the rising fundamentalist response to the ills created by capitalist globalization.

Western societies are rightly proud of having created democratic institutions. And the institutionalization of human rights stands as a contribution that will remain a major advance in the history of humanity. We who live in the West have good reason to rejoice in these aspects of our society -- and to want to do all we can to preserve and extend these accomplishments, and to offer them to the rest of the world as well, because they rest upon universal values that are appropriate for the entire human race. We spiritual Democrats who rightly critique George Bush’s militarist methods for advancing democracy must nevertheless agree with him that the ideal of global democracy is one important component of the advance of human rights and should be championed and applauded.

Yet we should also notice that Western societies have developed a particular kind of market society based on competition, individualism, materialism, and selfishness, and that these values, which are not good for the United States itself, are not good for the rest of the world either.

Market economies have championed a narrow notion of rationality: institutions are judged efficient, rational and productive when they produce lots of money and power for those at the top. Anyone working in these institutions quickly learns that the most important thing they can do is to focus on "the bottom line" (that is, the amount of money or power being generated). People quickly learn to see others primarily through the frame of whether these others are "useful" in advancing our own individual goals, and using others to maximize our own advantage, or what is called "looking out for number one," becomes the frame through which all human relationships are measured. In the first part of this book I detailed many of the societal dysfunctions and personal human suffering created by this “old bottom line.”

In advanced industrial societies, some of that individual suffering is buffered by the reality that global economic arrangements allow for an expanding wealth in the West that gets divided, albeit unequally, in ways that provide material satisfactions that can momentarily distract from spiritual crisis. But there is no such buffer in much of the Third World. The entrance of global capital into those societies provides a set of opportunities for a small domestic elite, who are able to convince themselves that everyone in their society will be better off if they can make deals with international capital to bring the marvels of Western corporate life to the underdeveloped. In fact, small middle classes emerge that benefit mightily from the infusion of Western capital, and this can produce a rise in the income level or wealth of the society as a whole -- though it is a rise that is never seen by and does not work for the benefit of many people in those countries. For many third-worlders, the impact is quite different: "bottom line" consciousness erodes the traditional tribal, communal, and familial sources of support that have kept these societies functioning. Increasingly, people are left to fend for themselves, and there is no "safety net" funded by the third world, because they are the third world.

It’s quite true that dictators and oligarchic leaders have sometimes manipulated the anger at global capital as a way to preserve their own undemocratic rule. Under the auspices of the United National Development Program, a group of Arab social scientists have released a series of Arab Human Development Reports which focus on the poor state of education, science, and good governance in the Arab world. With political parties, courts, police and media centralized in the hands of Arab leaders, and power concentrated at the top, the 2005 Report goes on, “the margin of freedom permitted (which can be swiftly reduced) has no effect on the state’s firm and absolute grip on power.” The resulting state of submission to power by many Arab citizens, “fed by fear and marked by denial of their subjugation,” characterizes the political reality for many people in third-world countries around the globe.

In this context, those who do not wish to engage directly in political struggle may be attracted by various forms of romanticization of the past. One such approach has been to lionize the simplicity and goodness of village life and its pervasive sense of community and a value system that reaches past materialism to a sense of larger purpose and meaning. Such societies usually embraced an ethos of caring and mutual responsibility articulated in religious and spiritual systems and lived out in daily life.  Too often what is forgotten is that life in village subsistence societies is often patriarchal, hierarchical, and oppressive, with a real scarcity of food, fuel and shelter. However, faced with the ruthless impoverishment of many in the third world that has accompanied modernity, it is no surprise to see a nostalgia for village life and the old-time religious systems that they embraced.

One reason many traditional societies turn to fundamentalism after contact with corporate “modernization” is that fundamentalism promises its followers a caring community based on higher values than the materialism of the globalization of capital. In fact, fundamentalism often creates a community of caring only at the expense of some “other” who is then demonized (fundamentalist societies are often patriarchal and homophobic). Fundamentalists also take the emphasis on anti-materialism to an extreme, denying scientific inquiry, the value of bodily pleasure, and any attempt of individuals to control their own lives.


Yet the appeal of fundamentalisms cannot be dismissed as simply and solely a rejection of democracy and a fear of freedom — or a resentment or jealousy of Western material success. First of all, the experience that many third world people have of the West is that it has sent military aid to their dictators or oligarchs (as we continue to do in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Pakistan, and many other countries), loaned money to their dictators or oligarchs which was siphoned into their personal wealth while sticking their countrymen with the burden of paying back those loans, and pushed Western corporations and Western economic arrangements which had little benefit for many. So how could this be resentment about democracy, when they’ve never seen much democracy being exported by the U.S.?

Second, we must recognize that at least part of fundamentalism’s appeal is based on the hunger that people have for a framework of meaning and purpose that transcends the thinking of the competitive marketplace, affirms community and affirms love and caring for each other, social solidarity, and a non-utilitarian orientation to the universe. All of this comes together in the way that fundamentalism in the third world (and even, to a lesser extent, in the advanced industrial societies) becomes a form of resistance to the worst aspects of the globalization of selfishness that has been the public face of the international capitalist marketplace. The hunger for meaning  is ignored by Western liberals, but it is the central need which gets fulfilled, albeit in a distorted fashion, when people find a fundamentalist community.

All of these concerns are particularly obvious in the way that Islamic fundamentalism has fought to protect "its" women from the scourge of marketplace exploitation. Of course, much of this concern is motivated by the desire of many men to keep women safely within the bounds of patriarchal relationships. But that is not the whole picture. When I lived in Israel in the late 1980s and early 1990s I remember many instances in which fundamentalists burned down bus stop ads that featured scantily clothed women in sexually provocative poses attempting to sell a product by associating it with that sexual allure. An antipathy to the Western commodification of women's bodies led many women (including a small but significant number of former feminists) to be attracted to communities in which women were embedded in large families less concerned about immediate sexual pleasure than about long-term caring and commitment. Though Islamic societies have often imposed restrictive activities and dress on women, it is also true that in the past thirty years many women in both Jewish and Islamic fundamentalist communities have voluntarily put on the veil and covered their bodies as a way of saying: "No, I am not available to be commodified or turned into an object for the sexual pleasure or fantasies of random men."

If we understand this larger framework, we can understand (though totally reject as barbarous) why at least some people would be attracted to Al Queda or other violent forms of resistance to the globalization of capital, and why, though at first their anger would primarily be directed against domestic elites who are local proxies and prostitutes for international capital (as Al Queda did when it focused against Arab elites), they will eventually turn to the international sponsors of capital themselves (symbolized most powerfully by the World Trade Center and the Pentagon).

To explain the anger at Western imperialism, globalized capital is not to suggest that the actions of the terrorists are therefore "understandable" or acceptable. They are not. But the only way to develop a strategy to counter them is to understand the basis of their appeal, and then find a more effective way to address the legitimate part of their appeal and separate that from its hateful manifestation in terrorist activities.

And that is exactly the core of a spiritual approach to homeland and global security. There is one and only one way to provide lasting security: let the U.S. be and be perceived to be:
A.    The world’s leading force supporting an end to global poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education, and inadequate health care.
B.    The world’s leading force for repairing the damage done to the global environment (as opposed to now when it is perceived to be the world’s leading obstacle to global cooperation to reduce environmental damage.
C.    The articulator and embodiment of The New Bottom Line that is an important component of The Left Hand of God.

Accomplishing these goals will take dramatic action on the part of the U.S.

Here are some first steps

1. Let the United States initiate and take the leadership in getting all the advanced industrial societies to participate in a Global Marshall Plan that would dedicate hundreds of billions of dollars each year for the next thirty years to the cause of eliminating hunger, homelessness, inadequate education, and inadequate health care in under-developed countries. Let the United States set up an international body of internationally recognized spiritual leaders, academics, health care workers, educators, and community organizers to supervise the expenditures and guarantee that they are used in ways that are not siphoned off by selfish national leaders but instead are used in creative ways to achieve the goals cited. Meanwhile, as this is getting in place, let the United States take steps immediately to eliminate the multilateral debt of the world’s poorest countries. Currently the world’s poorest countries spend more on debt repayments than they do on health care.

2. Let the United States initiate a program of global ecological repair to undo the damage done by 150 years of environmental irresponsibility by the advanced industrial societies (including both capitalist and socialist societies).

3. Let the United States require that every citizen give at least two years of national service to be spent in delivering services, providing training, education or otherwise assisting in the implementation of the Global Marshall plan.

4. Let the United States use the full weight of its resources and power to push Israel to end the Occupation of the West Bank and to then fund the development of a Palestinian state that is economically and politically viable, while providing leadership in the creation of an international cartel committed to providing compensation to Palestinian refugees for their years of refugee-hood (on a sliding fee scale according to current need), and providing military security for Israel.

5. Let the United States demonstrate in word and deed that it is not trying to "buy influence" but to genuinely respond to a new set of priorities, embodying a New Bottom Line of generosity and kindness.

6. Let the United States develop a new set of guidelines for international trade which promote and reward ecological safety and sustainability, workers' rights, respect for indigenous peoples and for the world's multicultural realities, and a clear commitment to promote the well-being of the least powerful people on the planet.

7. Let the United States adopt the Social Responsibiity Amendment as described above in chapter five, and extend its concerns to supervise the impact of US corporations on all other countries in which they operate, sell goods or services, or otherwise impact life and the environment. Meanwhile, let communities around the world develop the questions and categories for an Ethical Impact Report which could be used by juries in focusing attention on what issues to assess and how to assess them when engaged in their deliberations about whether a given company should be allowed to continue to operate.

8. Let the United States implement this strategy in a new spirit, with a willingness to atone for past misdeeds, to approach other countries in a spirit of cooperation and repentance, and to commit to learning from the histories and traditions of these countries lessons that might be valuable for us as we attempt to build a society based on generosity and open-heartedness. Without this kind of a spirit, all the rest will be perceived as little more than bribery and will not work.

Sounds visionary? Well, yes. But it often turns out that the visionary approach is far more practical than the approaches of the pragmatists who led us into the world in which terrorists struck on 9/11 .  If you are satisfied with the level of homeland and global security brought to us by trillions of dollars of defense spending and support of dictators around the world, you won’t find this approach attractive. But if you realize how ineffective it has been, then give the idea of approaching the world with kindness and generosity a chance.

Approaching the world with a sense of respect for the values of others does not mean that we have to unilaterally dismantle our armed services (though some disarmament of a unilateral sort would be an important step). We should continue to have searches at airports, and we can continue to have a strong army. But let’s get real: none of that is going to protect us! The military approach is a dead end or worse -- it simply generates more and more terrorists. We could have learned that from Israel's failed strategy of Occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. Instead, we copied a failed strategy, and as a result have managed to create alienation and anger at us from an Iraqi population that might plausibly, had we acted with a strategy based on generosity, rejoiced in having been liberated from Saddam Hussein by the United States in association with an international coalition led by the United Nations.

The United States can not  succeed in “internationalizing” its foreign policy by making a few changes in tone or a few overtures to the United Nations (though that would help). We need to make a sea change in our orientation to the world. That's what we did when we transcended the isolationism of the early twentieth century in order to fight the war against Hitler, and that is what is needed if we are to effectively fight the war on terror. This sea change is a change toward taking seriously our highest values, and seeking to embody them in our actual activities in the world.

The first and most major element of that sea change is to approach the world with a true spirit of generosity, love and caring -- and a deep (not just rhetorical) recognition of the inter-relationship between our well-being in the Western World and the well-being of every other human being on the planet, and between the well-being of human beings and the well-being of the planet itself. And here is the secret that Americans often have not allowed themselves to know: you don't have to be an intellectual genius to be able to detect the difference between programs, policies, and cultural artifacts that come from a place of selfishness and materialism and those that come from a place of generosity, love, genuine caring for others and for the well-being of the planet.

So let’s be clear on this: nothing that is suggested here will work to defeat terror if it is done solely or even primarily from the standpoint of American self-interest, unless it is deeply understood that American self-interest lies with the well-being of the entire human race and the planet. That is the key transformation of values that must take place: in order to protect ourselves from terror we need to actually get and deeply internalize and successfully teach ourselves in our schools, in our media and in our politics the following lesson: the best self-interest program is a program that gives equal attention to providing for the best interests of the other.

To get that message to be taken seriously by others, it must be taken seriously by us. Which is why the call for A New Bottom Line in American is actually the key to our foreign policy.

In practice, this means that Americans going to third world countries must be selected for their humility, their capacities to recognize that we not only have much to teach but also much to learn from other cultures, and their openness to becoming stewards of the well-being of the other rather than dictators or imposers of our cultural traditions. At the same time, and admittedly this is a difficult balance, we don't approach the rest of the world with an ethical relativism: we know and insist upon the fact that people are better off when they have basic human rights (both economic and political) respected, and when they have religious and spiritual traditions that do not demean others. Yet we also know that we do not necessarily have the best answers for how best to implement those insights, and must be willing to learn from others how those insights can be institutionalized in the cultures that have existed elsewhere for thousands of years.

Learning from the other also means that we be open to questioning and challenging the individualism and materialism that have been so centrally institutionalized as part of Western culture. The higher premium put on community, solidarity with others, and a spiritual orientation toward the world already finds articulation in some of the West's spiritual and religious traditions, but it has been marginalized out of the public sphere. In our encounters with the rest of the world, we need to develop a new openness to learning from them about the best methods for incorporating into our own thinking and social institutions approaches that reflect the wisdom on issues of community, solidarity, and spirituality that can come to us from the East and South, just as we offer wisdom about institutionalizing practices around human rights and political democracy.

It would be wonderful if we could with good conscience call upon the United States to embrace the United Nations as the vehicle for this new global approach, but unfortunately the U.N. today embodies and reflects the ethos of selfishness and materialism that emanates from the West but which is also embodied in the ethos of the elites of many third world countries as well. The U.N. requires a moral transformation, so that instead of seeming to the world to be the institution to adjudicate between the various self-interests of ruling elites of the world, it instead becomes a body committed to the common interests of humanity. Instead of focusing on how to expand the Security Council to incorporate a few more major powers, we should look to a much broader transformation of the U.N.

If the General Assembly today resembles the U.S. Senate (each state gets an equal vote regardless of size or population) we should envision two new branches of the U.N.: one an elected legislature of the world with each state having one representative per 10 million people of population, plus a second new branch of the U.N. would be an international assembly of spiritual, religious, ethical, and communal visionaries chosen to represent the highest aspirations of each nation on earth. The Security Council should have an equal number of representatives from each of these bodies, chosen by the membership of the respective bodies, but with at least three seats reserved for the smallest countries in the world.

An important element in changing our approach to the world would be to require as a condition for receiving public funding or using publicly funded elements of interstate commerce or the airwaves that our high schools and colleges, our television news programs and newspapers, our movies and publishing industries must convey to Americans the perspectives of others around the world, with sufficient detail so that Americans could understand what was reasonable in these alternative perspectives, as well as a deep education about the interrelationship between everyone on the planet and our collective impact on the well-being of the environment.

Ultimately, we are calling for a fundamental change of culture and a change of heart. That can happen just as quickly as America changed from a society oriented toward isolationism in the 1920s and 1930s to a society oriented toward internationalism in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, or just as quickly as we changed from a society with predominantly male-dominated assumptions and institutions in the 1950s and 60s to a society open to and welcoming to the contributions and leadership of women in the 1980s and 1990s. Fundamental cultural transformations of this sort are possible. And they are the primary strategy to combat international terror.

To the extent that the United States is perceived as seriously attempting this new orientation toward the rest of the world, it will grow dramatically harder for those how preach hate to receive a receptive audience. When clinics, schools, housing, and food are being provided by the West, and when that is being done in a respectful way and services delivered by people who approach this task with humility and a sense of repentance for the mistakes that American arrogance has made in the past, most people will find it hard to resonate to the normal strands of anti-Americanism. To be sure, there will continue to be a need for an American army and an American border patrol, for searches when entering planes, and for screening of people who have shown a willingness to work with terrorist groups. Those programs and others should be retained and refined. Yet in implementing those programs we must be vigilant to not give the impression that we believe that most people in different societies or different religious communities are suspect or that we see their cultures as fundamentally evil, destructive, or terrorist-prone.

If we can approach the world with this new spirit of love, generosity and humility, we will achieve precisely what the anti-terror warriors have not been able to achieve -- genuine homeland security that is sustainable and effective.
    
In traditional spiritual language, what we are reaching for is the consciousness of the Unity of All Being. To the extent that Americans can truly understand that our well-being is intrinsically tied to the well-being of every other human being and to the well-being of the planet Earth, we will act in ways that manifest this higher understanding. Instead of imagining that we can work out a “private” solution for ourselves or for our country, we will understand that our destiny is the same as the destiny of all others on the planet. When we get to that consciousness, we would no more dream of turning our back on  the poverty or suffering of people in third-world countries than we would turn our backs on the suffering of our own left hand — we’d feel it as our pain and our suffering. This is the direction that a spiritual politics takes spiritual Democrats and anyone else who wishes to heal our world.

Our major focus is to spread these ideas, using our Campaign for a Global Marshall Plan as the vehicle through which we can raise these deeper questions that provoke a fundamental rethinking. Please join the NSP and join that campaign.