Report Card on President Obama’s Just Peacemaking Policy

Now after the first four years of Obama foreign policies, is it time for a report card from the perspective of just peacemaking practices? He has opened himself to such a report card by endorsing all ten practices of just peacemaking in his Nobel Peace Award Address.

Just Peacemaking: the New Paradigm for the Ethics of Peace and War was not directed for or against any particular U.S. administration. It was developed in response to the call in the 1980s for a positive theology of peacemaking in book-length official statements by Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, and United Church of Christ leaders.[1]

It responds to the need for a positive theology of peacemaking practices that actually work to make peace, and that respond to Jesus’ call for peacemaking practices. Jesus wept over Jerusalem because they did not know the practices that make for peace (Luke 19:41-44). He prophesied that the result of not knowing the practices that make for peace would be the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem, and we know that history.

Most people favor peace, but lack clarity about what practices actually do make for peace, what practices we should be urging our governments to be taking and supporting. We need an ethic that helps us assess a government’s policies on peacemaking, and helps us advocate more effective policies.

Now that president Obama cannot seek reelection, it should be a less partisan time to use the ten practices to assess the policies of his administration thus far, and to encourage just peacemaking practices for the next four years. We have long needed an ethical framework for assessing governments’ peacemaking practices. Now we have that framework in Just Peacemaking. This can help followers of the paradigm of just peacemaking envision how just peacemaking works to make specific assessments. We write as advocates of just peacemaking practices, and not as representatives of our own educational institutions.

Nobel Prize: President Barack Obama looks at the Nobel Peace Prize medal at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway, Dec. 10, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

In his Nobel Peace Award Address, December 2009, president Obama began by apologizing for still being involved in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and therefore mentioned Just War Theory three times. That is what the press noticed.

But he mentioned “Just Peace” four times, and endorsed all ten practices of just peacemaking.

Susan Thistlethwaite and I both noticed that, and blogged about it. We were surprised and energized that just peacemaking practices had already reached to the White House. President Obama did not title his address, “Two Just Wars.” He titled it “A Just and Lasting Peace.”

The thirty interdenominational scholars who created Just Peacemaking were providing an ethic for churches, so we could have ethical criteria for assessing how governments do, and not be mesmerized by their rhetoric while we lacked criteria for assessing what they actually do. We also advocated just peacemaking as a public ethic that makes sense in our pluralistic culture. President Obama has now opened the door by endorsing the ten practices of Just Peacemaking. How have his policies respected or not respected the ten practices?

Peacemaking Initiatives

1. Support Nonviolent Direct Action.

The Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya worked to topple dictatorial governments by the practices of nonviolent direct action. This was surely one of the biggest developments in international relations during the first four years of the Obama administration. How did the administration do?

It supported the nonviolent action in all three countries.

In Egypt, the threat was that the military would quash the nonviolent movement and maintain control by a successor to the Mubarak administration. The U.S. military used its many connections with the Egyptian military to urge the Egyptian military to support the nonviolent people’s movement. It worked. The military allowed the movement of the people and the democratic elections to proceed. Of course it is now up to the Morsi government to govern wisely; the just peacemaking practice of supporting nonviolent direct action does not claim to guarantee wisdom in the resulting government. But now the people can take responsibility for their government, and not blame the U.S. for how it develops.

Nonviolent direct action works like this: any government needs the consent of the people. The people see the demonstrators are nonviolent, and pay attention to their moral case for human rights and democracy.

• Either the government responds with nonviolence so as not to turn the people against itself, and then the moral appeal has a chance to spread. In Iran in 1979, in the Revolution of the Candles in East Germany in 1989, in Tunisia and Egypt, the army did not shoot at the demonstrators, but supported them. Each revolution was peaceful.
• Or the government responds with violence, as did Sheriff Bull Connor in Selma, Alabama, during the U.S. civil rights movement, and Kadafi in Libya and Assad in Syria. Then the people turn against the government. The LA Times said early in the struggle in Syria: “No arms could be seen in the hands of these people. The use of live fire is a sign that the regime has lost control on the ground.” Quoting a witness: “This is a war. The regime has declared a war on the Syrian people.”  And: “Hundreds of people have been killed by Syrian security forces answering to Assad…. The people’s simple calls for reform have mushroomed into a roar demanding a government change…. The chasm of mistrust between the government and protesters has become so wide that activists now sit vigil outside hospital morgues to ensure that the authorities don’t snatch protesters’ corpses to prevent politically charged funeral marches Saturday.”

The U.S. needs to be clear: this is an Arab citizen movement; it is not a U.S. movement; the U.S. supports all nonviolent movements for human rights and democracy. Basically this is what the U.S. government did.

2. Take Independent Initiatives to Reduce Threat.

The way the Cold War ended illustrates the way independent initiatives can improve political relations, generate a pattern of positive reciprocity, and bring about sharp reductions and enhanced security.[2]

Israel needs to take the independent initiative to halt the expansion of settlements that are blocking negotiations with the Palestinians and are unjustly removing the human right to a home, to economic trade, to one’s own state, and to water for Palestinians. President Obama has pressed Israel to take this initiative. Increasing numbers of church groups have joined in pressing for a halt to the expansion of settlements, and the U.S. media are paying increased attention.

But this urging has been repeatedly rejected by Prime Minister Netanyahu. As The New York Times said on November 30^th, 2012, “In March 2010, Israel approved plans for new housing during a visit by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. That November, it announced 1,000 units of housing just as Mr. Obama was trying to restart talks between Israel and the Palestinians. In April 2011, it approved housing on the eve of a meeting between Mr. Obama and President Shimon Peres. This time, Israel’s latest construction announcement came a day after the Palestinian victory in obtaining enhanced status from the United Nations General Assembly.”

The Palestinians in the West Bank, from the Palestinian Authority to grass-roots Palestinians, have

1. taken the independent initiative to halt suicide attacks and to recognize the right of Israel to exist—prior to Israel’s building the Separation Fence
2. adopted the strategy of nonviolent resistance
3. turned their energy to constructive economic building and education
4. taken initiative for a vote by the General Assembly to admit them to nonmember observer status.

On the last point, 138 countries voted for the resolution, nine voted against, and 41 countries abstained. The Obama administration was in the small minority that voted against, thinking it had a commitment from the Israeli government to avoid settlement expansion, but this expectation was immediately dashed.

Now, with president Obama not dependent on a further election, is the time for strong U.S. pressure for the initiative of halting settlement expansion and negotiating peace in a way that takes the interests of both sides seriously. Secretary of State John Kerry is applying that pressure.

3. Use Cooperative Conflict Resolution.

Western interest in negotiating with Iran about its nuclear program was sparked by the revelation in 2002 that Iran had been secretly building uranium enrichment plants. Iran rightly insisted that enriching uranium to non-weapon levels is guaranteed by the Nonproliferation Treaty, but the secrecy of their program raised concerns. In the ensuing years, Iran’s temporary cessation of uranium enrichment and temporary adoption of enhanced inspections did not change Western insistence on immediate and indefinite cessation of enrichment. Because of a long history of Western imperial and domineering behavior, Iranians strongly backed their government’s refusal to stop enrichment, despite the severe privations imposed by sanctions. More recently, President Obama has acknowledged that at some future time, Iran would have the right to enrich to the electricity-producing level (3.5%) but not to weapons-grade (85%).

On its side, Iran in the past has stated its willingness to accept enhanced nuclear inspections and transparency in return for substantial easing of sanctions and uninterrupted allowance of low-level uranium enrichment. Unfortunately, the American domestic pressures will not permit Obama to make this kind of major breakthrough in the direction of just peacemaking, even though both sides have much to gain. We observe that Ayatollah Khameni’s statements often emphasize the importance of recognizing Iran’s dignity, as opposed to insulting that dignity. We propose that that the United States explicitly state its recognition for Iran’s dignity, and explicitly speak of our wish for full and dignified relations between Iran and the United States, and welcome into international participation for Iran, if we can solve the nuclear question even though strong differences with respect to Israel will persist until Israel and Palestine reach a just peace.  However, the US and Iran could productively pursue other areas of mutual interest, such as stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan, and interdicting drug traffic from Afghanistan. We sense that Iran can be significantly more flexible if it senses respect for its dignity and can envision not only a solution on nuclear enrichment, but also a more respectful and normal international relationship, in broad terms.

The Obama administration has also combined economic sanctions with initiating direct conflict resolution discussions with the authoritarian military (SLORC) government of Burma, and Burma has now adopted a constitution and a partly non-military, partly elected government, and has allowed the party of Aung San Suu Kyi to participate in elections to parliament. Though steps toward democracy and human rights are painfully slow, and the government is making war on the Kachins in the hill country of eastern Burma, this is a major breakthrough after the policy of engaging in cooperative conflict resolution negotiations.

4. Acknowledge responsibility for conflict and injustice; seek repentance and forgiveness.

President Obama’s Cairo address January 4, 2009, said:

The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of coexistence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars.  More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations.  Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam. . . .

I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition.  Instead, they overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

His words and actions toward Muslim and Arab nations have indeed been more respectful, humble, more seeking mutual cooperation. He has been pulling out of war against Iraq and Afghanistan, though increasing controversial attacks by drones. He has urged Israel to stop expanding settlements, though not strongly enough to get results—if results are even possible. These changes at least begin to open the door to more peaceful relations, as he explicitly called for in his Cairo address.

Working for Justice

5. Advance Human Rights, Religious liberty, and Democracy.

Just Peacemaking shows that no democratic nation with human rights made war against another democracy with human rights in the whole twentieth century. Spreading human rights, and thus spreading democracy peacefully—not by war—significantly reduces war.

The Obama administration supported movements for human rights and democracy by the people of the Arab nations; the U. S. was not supporting the status-quo, dictatorial governments as it had too often in the past. Arab and Muslim people increasingly support the drive for the Arab Spring, and oppose the violence of Al Qaeda. As the U. S. Muslim Public Affairs Council has said, “Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims” and a violator of human rights to life of women, children, and civilians.

Activists in Syria “demanded the Syrian state implement broad democratic reforms; stop torturing, killing, and arresting peaceful demonstrators. . . . People are asking for civil rights and freedom and they are peaceful,” according to one activist. In Homs, Syria, demonstrators chanted: “We’re not from the Muslim Brotherhood or Salafi. We want freedom!” But Assad turned it into a civil war, and what kind of Syria will emerge is unknown. It is important that the U.S. government work to encourage a future with human rights for minority groups, including Alawites, Shiites, Christians, and Druze.

The Arab spring is an uprising across the Mideast for democracy and human rights. It is a remarkable spread of the worldwide demand for democracy and human rights. The Obama administration has been wise to see it as clearly a movement of the people, to give it support, but not to try to make it an America-led movement.

By contrast, the previous administration began the War against Iraq in 2003, and this led to enormous anti-American anger and recruitment of terrorists. Many Muslims are angry about what extremist Muslims claim is an American war against Islam. The official report of the United States Department of State on international terrorism[3] shows the astounding increase in terrorist incidents since the Iraq War and the torture of prisoners:

• 208 terrorist attacks caused 625 deaths in 2003;
• 3,168 attacks caused 1,907 deaths in 2004.
• 11,111 attacks caused 14,602 deaths in 2005.
• 14,371 attacks caused 13,186 deaths in 2006.
• 14,414 attacks caused 22,719 deaths in 2007.
• 11,662 attacks caused 15,708 deaths in 2008.
• 10,969 attacks caused 15,310 deaths in 2009.
• 11,604 attacks caused 13,186 deaths in 2010.
• 10,283 attacks caused 12,533 deaths in 2011.

The agreed assessment by the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies in 2006 said U.S. actions against Arab Muslims were increasing anger and increasing terrorist incidents and training for terrorism. Torture works: it works to cause widespread anger and to create increasing numbers of terrorists.

Our challenge is to undermine the claims that recruit people to terrorism. We do that by standing for our true identity: human rights, and liberty and justice for all, under God. The Obama administration has moved somewhat in that direction, has not initiated war in the Middle East, and has not defended torture or the euphemism of “enhanced interrogation.” The National Religious Campaign Against Torture is now urging President Obama to sign the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT) and similar actions, but is not claiming the administration is engaging in torture.[4]

The detention center for prisoners from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars was located in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, so prisoners would not be under the protection of the U.S. Constitution, and the administration claimed prisoners were not entitled to any of the protections of the Geneva Conventions. This made it a black hole in which prisoners had no human rights protections except what their guards gave them. The U.S. Supreme Court has since determined that the prisoners must be protected by the Geneva Convention against torture. Some have been imprisoned there for ten years, without the habeus corpus right to a trial.

“President Obama has not been able to overcome congressional opposition to his promise to close the Guantanamo prison, but his policy is not to bring new detainees there. Instead, when suspects are captured, the administration facilitates their detention by sympathetic governments and, when possible, charges them in U.S. criminal courts” (L. A. Times, March 26, 2013).

6. Economic development that is sustainable and just.

Ted Gurr’s Why Men Rebel received the award for best book of the year from the American Political Science Association. It demonstrates that when people expect that their economies will continue trends of making jobs available, but instead experience “relative deprivation”—by comparison with what they had expected—this is the most frequent cause of civil wars, rebellions, and, by extension, terrorism. The cause of such rebellions is not the poorest of the poor, but relative deprivation. Therefore economic development that is sustainable and just is crucial for just peacemaking.

Most Arab countries have large numbers of young adults who see concentration of oil wealth in the hands of the few, and very high unemployment rates. When Palestinian economies were blocked and unemployment rates increased to 30%, then the Palestinian intifadas broke forth.[5]

President Bush increased aid to Africa, and this has continued during the Obama administration. The United States is giving some support to the economy of Palestinians on the West Bank, and this has helped the consistent support for nonviolence by Palestinians on the West Bank, but Gaza is severely blocked from trade or jobs, and has not committed itself to nonviolence.

The economy of most all nations is threatened not only by the climate crisis, with its record droughts, record storms, record ice cap melting, and record temperatures, but also by the fact that the earth is running out of oil and natural gas. Wars from relative economic deprivation, and wars over increasingly scarce natural resources, may be in our future because we will have exhausted most nonrenewable energy sources. Thus actions for energy conservation and for switching to renewable energy resources are hugely important for just peacemaking. President Obama has taken decisive actions to make automobiles more efficient, and to increase reliance on renewable energy. Organizations like the Sierra Club are giving him comparably high marks.

Include Enemies in the Community of Neighbors

7. Work with networks in the international system. AND 8. Support the United Nations and international organizations.

Following Jesus requires seeing enemies as members of the community of neighbors to whom God gives sunshine and rain, and whom we are to love. Love does not need to mean “like”; it means realistically trying to understand their interests and loyalties, affirming those interests and loyalties that can be affirmed as part of our common security (our dependence on others’ security for our own security), and including them in mutually respectful relations in community.

“International relations research has produced solid empirical evidence that peace is most effectively promoted by a cluster of democratic practices, economic interdependence, and commitment to international norms and institutions.” Nations more engaged in UN and regional organizations more often avoid getting entangled in war.[6] Unilateral policies cause more wars.

Furthermore, sometimes governments err, or are motivated by narrow interests or passions, so like individuals, they need checking and balancing by others. Taking seriously the assessments by other nations, by regional organizations, and by the United Nations can provide needed checks and balances.

For example, president George W. Bush promised he would not initiate the War Against Iraq before getting support from the UN Security Council. But when he realized the vote there would be 9 to 3 against the war, he initiated the war against the advice of other nations and the UN. The UN inspectors had reported they could find no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, though they had investigated all likely locations suggested by the U.S. government. Now most Americans have concluded that war was a serious error. He rationalized the war by saying he would not go to the UN for permission to make a war defending the United States. But the War on Iraq was not a war of defense; it was U.S.-initiated intervention. And UN Charter article 51 allows a war of defense without UN Security Council permission.

The Obama administration has been careful with international checks and balances. When Libyan dictator Kadafi turned the nonviolent struggle against his rulership into a military attack that was threatening to kill large numbers of Libyans in Benghazi and eastern Libya, the Arab League, NATO, and the United Nations encouraged the U.S. to defend Benghazi from the air. The U.S. did take that military action. (It actually extended or exceeded the mandate to bombing Kadafi troops beyond the Benghazi area.) But it did not introduce U.S. troops on the ground, and very clearly avoided turning what was a home-grown Libyan struggle against their dictator into a U.S. colonialist takeover. Libyans are now grateful, and Arabs do not blame the U.S. for unilateral intervention.

Many of Obama’s advisors have urged that the U.S arm the rebels in the Syrian civil war, as Russia and Iran have been helping arm the dictatorial Assad regime in this long and bloody civil war. But Russia and China would veto this in the UN Security Council, and the Arab League has not asked for U.S. intervention. Shiite Muslims tend to support Assad, and Sunnis tend to support the rebels. President Obama has avoided having the U.S. be seen as forcing a victory by one group of Muslims against other Muslims. The U.S. has successfully urged the rebels to form a coordinating council, hoping to encourage a future Syria that would be led by an administration that would show some respect for minority religious groups. But it cannot control this outcome, as we also see in Egypt. At this time of writing, the U. S. administration has decided to give $60 million in nonlethal aid to the rebels. And Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and others are helping arm the rebels. The hope is that whatever the outcome, it will be seen by Arabs and Muslims as their own struggle, and not as a U.S.-imposed semi-colonialist takeover. This plus care in the Libyan struggle can help decrease Muslim resentment against the United States that so escalated during the declaration of The War On Terror, the War on Afghanistan, and the War on Iraq.

Just Peacemaking supports humanitarian intervention or the Responsibility to Protect, as in Bangladesh, Uganda, Rwanda, and Libya. But the chapter of Just Peacemaking on the United Nations, as well as the chapter on human rights, clearly say that this must not be unilateralist, but rather supported by the United Nations or by international opinion. It must guard against unilateralist domination or colonialism.

9. Reduce offensive weapons and weapons trade.

During the previous administration, the U.S. military budget soared from approximately $350 billion to $550 billion, in constant dollars. This does not include the additional costs of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars (about $300 billion per year), or the cost of nuclear weapons. During this period, the accumulated national indebtedness more than doubled from about $5.5 trillion to about $11.5 trillion. President Obama is slightly reducing the base military budget to $530 billion, and under sequestration, to $450 billion. But far larger savings are being achieved by getting out of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

George Shultz, Sam Nunn, James Goodby, Henry Kissinger, and other conservative former National Security officials urge specific steps toward abolishing nuclear weapons. They are saying that the threat now is not the Cold War, but terrorists getting nuclear weapons. We are more secure if we reduce and then abolish nuclear weapons worldwide.[7]

They are proposing this be done in stages, each of which increases security for the United States and the world:

• By international treaty, halt all production of nuclear fissile materials.
• The Senate should ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
• By negotiations, agree with Russia to cut numbers of nuclear weapons in half, and then with other nations to cut further.

Twenty-two nations have abandoned their programs to develop nuclear weapons. Not one of them did so because some other nation refused to negotiate with them, as the U.S. did with North Korea and Iran for extended periods of time. Rather, other nations practiced cooperative conflict resolution with them in the form of negotiations and diplomacy, and helped them feel secure from attack. “Security concerns are the primary factors explaining why states choose to acquire or relinquish nuclear weapons.” Therefore, the conflict resolution discussions must prioritize nations’ security concerns.[8] We need to promise an independent initiative strategy toward North Korea and Iran so they can see a way they would be free from the threat that the United States might attack them if they do not have nuclear weapons.

The question is whether the Obama administration is offering some respect for North Korea’s concerns for its own national security. We need a shift from not only coercive pressures to positive inducements, independent initiatives.[9] We need to promise an independent initiative strategy toward North Korea and Iran so they can see a way they would be free from the threat that the United States might attack them if they do not have nuclear weapons.

The Obama administration negotiated the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) agreement, which re-established mutual, on-the-ground verification of American and Russian nuclear arsenals, and cut the deployed strategic weapons on each side by about 1/3. The U.S. Senate voted in strong bipartisan fashion (71-26) to ratify the new START treaty. President Obama has supported eventual abolition of nuclear weapons orally, but has not implemented other steps. He may feel blocked by the partisan opposition in the Senate, but we urge that negotiating a worldwide halt of all production of nuclear fissile materials, with inspections, will make the world safer in itself, and will also offer a face-saving way for Iran to become more flexible on limiting its own nuclear enrichment with thorough IAEA inspections.

But the increasing use of offensive drone attacks against terrorists in several nations, over objections by those nations, illustrates what just peacemaking diagnoses as the temptation to make offensive war when a nation calculates the enemy lacks the capacity to counter-attack. This now merits serious debate, and such debate is increasing. Drone attacks are different because the American people do not become informed about who is being killed in these attacks. Nor do those who direct the drone attacks experience the pain and suffering of war the way ground troops do. This removes some of the checks and balances that just war theory requires. At this time, the administration’s case that these attacks obey the Constitution is not open to the people.

10. Grassroots peacemaking groups and voluntary associations.

This practice is the responsibility of the people, not the government. But it does require that the administration not mislead the people with untruths, such as the previous administration’s claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and that the War Against Iraq was a war defending America. Thus far, the Obama administration has been fairly truthful in explaining its policies. The present controversy concerns its statements after the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, but this is not about falsehoods in advocating a war.

In sum:  is there a name for the Obama policy?

Pundits have noted that polls show very high approval ratings by Americans for Obama foreign policy thus far. But they have puzzled over what to name the Obama policy.

Could it be that president Obama actually did recognize much of what he wanted to guide U.S. policy in the ten practices of just peacemaking? Could he have truly meant what he declared in his Nobel Peace Award Address? Could his policies be named Semi-Just-Peacemaking?

In the final presidential debate, which focused on foreign policy, Mitt Romney shifted to supporting almost all Obama foreign policies. If this also means basically widespread support for Just Peacemaking practices, then the paradigm of Just Peacemaking is receiving more rapid support than we had expected. But we do not want to identify just peacemaking with any particular administration.

Whatever our answer, as with all foreign policy, it would have to pay significant attention to the influence of forces of realism on Obama policies, not only the ethic of just peacemaking. The wars of intervention in the previous administration caused increased hostility by Arab and Muslim countries, especially in the Middle East and Pakistan. President Obama had reasons of realism to seek to reset policy toward Muslim nations. Those wars also caused looming budget deficits and strong criticisms by the people, both in the United States and internationally. Not only the ethics of just peacemaking, which he probably does support to a considerable extent in his heart, but reasons of realism cause him to seek better relations with Muslim nations and to seek to avoid another war. This could also cause him to be more imaginative about showing respect to Iran’s need for face-saving during negotiations about Iran’s nuclear enrichment. It could help seek a peaceful breakthrough rather than a mutually destructive war with Iran.

There has already been something of a breakthrough with Burma. Secretary of State John Kerry is reported to be serious about seeking a breakthrough for justice for Palestinians and security for Israel, and peace for both. Could there also be a breakthrough in this almost impossible-seeming context? It would make a major difference for relations with Muslim nations, who are strongly critical of Israeli settlement expansions and other violations of human rights in Palestine.

Any of these breakthroughs would be a major victory for Just Peacemaking. Certainly for the world and its people, who suffer too much from the lack of just peacemaking practices.