Read the following article about Syria and answer the questions.

SL STUDENTS: ​Each question is a link to one of the core units of the subject. You can
use all GloPo books to help you. Before answering the question, point out the core unit it
is is related to.
HL STUDENTS:​ Each question is a link to one of the core units of the subject. You can
use all GloPo books to help you. Before answering the question, point out the core unit it
is related to. You also have to point out the ​Global Political Challenge​ it is related to.

You can read the article online by clicking the link, or you can find it below.

https://medium.com/political-arenas/thinking-positive-peace-in-syria-9417938aae40

1. Identify what kind of process of democratization Johan Galtung would defend in Syria,
according to the author. You can list it with bullet points.

2. Why it can be said, following Heikki Patomaki and Teivo Teivanen, that the international
system is ​“conservative-feudal”​? Answer the question having in mind the UN structure and
its main characteristics.

3. By the end of the first paragraph, the author says that ​“the causality between democracy
and peace is still a harsh issue of debate”​. Do you agree with this statement? Explain your
answer providing one concret case to support your argument.

4. When talking about interventions, the author shows a critical point of view of the actual
ones, stating that peacekeeping operations are based on military skills. Briefly, provide an
argument based on concrete political evidence (from 1990 until today) to support this view.

5. According to the author, Galtung considered that ​“development is not economic growth,
but the progressive satisfaction of the needs of human and non-human nature”​, meaning
that we should also consider the ​“ecological degradation” and the ​“human degradation”​. In
your words, how can development be measured?

6. In the author’s fourth point, he states that throughout the last centuries, Western powers
have imposed their values as ​“manifest destiny” and imposed their ​“civilizing mission”​. This
has legitimized bellicose attitudes in Middle East. Do you think human rights are universal?
Answer the question using the UDHR and taking into account the cultural relativism theory.
 Thinking positive peace in Syria?
By Bastien G. Political and International Relations Scientist.
Intern for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Sydney

[This article follows and completes our

Realist​, ​Liberal ​and S
​ ocialist ​studies of the Syrian conflict]

At the end of the XXth century, several authors recognized the limits of the previous
theoretical models and have tried to go beyond to better understand the dichotomy “peace
and war”. The main argument which was used by these new “Peace Researches” was that
the previous theories in International Relations had always defined peace negatively, as the
absence of war, without describing what peace would be. In this part, we will introduce
Johan Galtung’s research to think about positive peace in Syria. Johan Galtung defined
peace as a totality. He advised to consider it through a multiscalar approach, crossing the
micro level (the inner person and the family), the ​meso level (society) and the ​macro level
(inter-society, inter-region). He also reminded to think peace not only with the elites, but with
people, in a democratic approach. In his research, peace is defined in both negative and
positive perspectives. “Peace is the absence/reduction of violence of all kinds.” “Peace work

1
is work to reduce violence by peaceful means”. Each definition bears a particular approach
of peace and therefore, a different therapy. The negative conception requires a curative
therapy, but participates to a more unstable peace which can collapse in front of a “minor
insult”. The positive conception requires a preventive therapy in order to establish a stable
peace. However, Johan Galtung emphasized that both are needed for peace. Within these
approaches, he insisted on the multi-dimension of peace, such as political, military,
economic and cultural. This last is his main concern as, according to him, cultural violence
implies structural violence (indirect violence through repression and exploitation) and then,
direct violence (intention to harm).

First, Johan Galtung proposed a political therapy to cure and to prevent violence. On the one
hand, the negative peace would require to democratize States and to implement human
rights less centered on the Western values. To achieve this cure, he defended a direct
democracy and a decentralized state. In the Syrian case, it would mean a lot of political
changes just to avoid war, and let us insist, not even build stable peace. The Syrian regime
is a presidential republic, “highly authoritarian”, according to the CIA​[1]​. The Alaouites have
controlled the country since 1963 and after Hafez el-Assad’s coup d’etat in 1970, the power
has always been concentrated in el-Assad’s family. Until 2012, the Constitution had only
authorized his party, the party Baas, to govern​[2]​. In 2014, it was re-elected for seven years
by 80% of voters, with a participation of 57.5%, only in the territories controlled by the
regime​[3]​. In this continuity, in the 2016 ballot, only the West side of Aleppo controlled by the
government voted in the elections​[4]​. Johan Galtung would defend a process of
democratization where power would escape from the hands of Bashar el-Assad. First, it
would mean to create a real representative democracy, with free civic elections, no
discrimination based on political and social identities. It would suppose a high participation in
all Syria and a proportional ballot more than a majority system. It would mean to continue the
efforts to go toward pluralism, as it began in 2012 with the authorization of several parties to
participate to the elections. It would mean to suppress the dependence of representatives of
el-Hassad’s family, banning corruption and clientelistic practices​[5]​. It could also mean to
challenge the “iron law of oligarchy”​[6] within the parties, to give more power to voters in the
designation of the candidates and their programs. ​Only then, ​it would mean direct
democracy mechanisms, with more popular initiative, more referendums (and, why not
lottery?[7]) and more power given to provinces. Damascus would give power to the forteen
mahafazat (provinces) of Syria. In this logic, we should also give more political
independence to the regions of Kurdish majority in the north of Syria. On the other hand, the

2
positive peace would require to democratize the United-Nations. Johan Galtung, followed by
Heikki Patomaki and Teivo Teivanen​[8]​, described the international system as
”conservative-feudal”. He claimed for a system where all the States would really be equals
according to the principle ”one country, one vote”. For instance, it would mean to remove the
veto system and the permanent seats in the UN-Security Council. It would also mean to
reform the Bretton Wood institutions to diminish the power over world econommy of the
West, and especially of the United States. In this case, the Syrian regime would have as
power as any other State to decide about the international interventions in Middle-East. It
may have refrained the ease of foreign interference in a country qualified of ”collapse State”.
It would also give more legitimation to the intervention, implying more efficency. However,
Johan Galtung mostly focused on a second UN Assembly, where there would not be the
representatives of the governments but of the people of the World. In this UN People’s
Assembly, there would be one sit for one million citizens, not selected by the States. In the
case of Syria, it would allowe to voice the people and the minorities hiden by the regime in
the international councils. Expressing peoples who do not want war for war, it would
influence the form of the interventions in the country, particularly in the relations with the
regime and the groups of insurrection. It may supporte a strategic way to implement durable
peace in Syria. However, even Galtung was not sure about the peaceful effect of
democratization, as peoples are not always peaceful.The causality between democracy and
peace is still a harsh issue of debate, as we have not seen very convincing arguments, yet.

Secondly, Johan Galtung proposed a military therapy to cure and prevent war. Opposed to
the idea of suppressing the armies, defended by many pacifist movements​[9]​, he claimed for
a new way to use the armies. Stopping from attacking other countries, nations and classes,
and stopping from following warlike elits, the army and its virtues would remain. By the
virtues of the army, Johan Galtung meant ”good organization, courage, willingness to
sacrifice”. In the negative peace, he supported a ”defensive defense”, with an army whose
aim would not be, in any case, to attack. In Syria, it would mean the regime’s army would not
be trained, physically and morally, to invade territories and to enslave populations, even
inside the country. The army would be trained in the aim to keep a peaceful order,
minimizing the violence described so far. Johan Galtung advocated the delegitimization of
arms, to avoid the normalization of violence and to avoid the recurrent use of weapons to
resolve conflicts. If the use of arms had been delegitimize in Syria, the ”conventional and
military components” would have been reduced, and much less Syrians would have the will
to keep the civic order, or to contest the regime, or to create an Islamic country, by the arms.

3
They would be reluctant to use violence, avoiding the civil war. Johan Galtung also
supported a non-military defense, involving the citizens in the defense of their country more
than a professionnal army. According to the Syrian Constitution, “Compulsory military service
is a sacred duty governed by law” (Art. 46)​[10]​. However, the ways to avoid the military
service are multiple (familial and social status, paying)​[11]​, so there would need to go toward
a higher participation and to keep citizens mobilizable after their military service. Then,
Johan Galtung thought about the positive peace by developing the international
peace-keeping forces in areas concerned by tensions. The peace-keeping operation would
not be based on military skills, but diplomacy and negociations, advice in Law, governement
and development. If Syria had accepted this kind of foreign interference, even only the
humanitarian aid, it could have pacified the country by avoiding the use of arms. Moreover,
Johan Galtung defended the creation of real international peace brigades. In the UN
intervention in Syria, it would mean that the intervention would not just be decided by the
fifteen members of the Security Council with the necessary agreement of the five
permanents, but that all of the countries (such as in the General Assembly) would decide the
intervention. Furthermore, it would mean to create real international forces, and not only
national forces mandated by the United Nations. The UN would be less dependent of the
States which contribute militarily according to their own interests. For instance, the
contradictory interventions of the American and Russian would be avoid.

Firdly, Johan Galtung proposed an economic therapy for peace. To cure the war, he
defended a first structural model of self-reliance where the externalities of the economic
theories would be internalize. Indeed, according to him, the current mainstream theory
(internality) is wrong to consider that investment leads to economical growth that leads to
modernism. It only focuses on quantities, prices, producst and services without considering
other effects (externalities), such as the ”working hours needed”. Indeed, Johan Galtung
considered that development is not economic growth but ”the progressive satisfaction of the
needs of human and non-human nature”. Johan Galtung did not reject all the externalities,
such as the “challenge” which could be positive, but thought about considering also the
“ecological degradation” and the “human degradation”. When the externalities are not taken
into account in the economic exchange, it leads to higher exploitation and tensions, between
the North and the South, between entrepreneurs and employees, which could lead to direct
violence. The cure of the Syrian conflict would go through these social and environmental
considerations within the economic system. He also tried to draw the ideal economic system
which would be stable and avoid violence. He called it the eclectic school, the sixth

4
economic school defined in his book, which interconnects elements of capitalist and socialist
systems, but with a huge attention given to “civil society” and local economic cycles. Then,
Johan Galtung would propose to trade less to reduce the impact of the negative
externalities. He would advise Syria to be more self-reliant on its own resources and means
of productions, to conserve the positive externalities in the country. Also, the prevention of
violence begins with the share of the externalities in horizontal exchange and south-south
cooperation. To not produce countries locked on themselves, Galtung would support
regional associations where States would build affinities. They would share their positive
externalities and support together the burdens of the economic structure. Johan Galtung
would have sustained the Arab League formed in Cairo in 1945 and the Council of Arab
Economic Unit created in 1957, but giving them a more ecological and social dimension.

Fourthly and finally, Johan Galtung focused on the cultural dimension which determines
structural and direct violence. To cure violence until the cosmology, Galtung revealed the
challenge to ban the singularist and the universalist conceptions of religions (Islam,
Christianity) and ideologies (Liberalism, Marxism), and especially of their hard (violent)
varieties. He also emphasized the danger of defining a “chosen people” according to
“gender, generation, race, class, nation” which is always a breed of violence. In Syria, it
concerns first of all the ISIS where the jihadists are convinced to be the elect and fighters of
Allah on Earth, against the kouffar (disbelievers)​[12]​. It can also help to focus on the violence
exacerbated by the foreign countries. The idea of “manifest destiny”​[13] at the basis of
United-States or the “civilizing mission”​[14] deeply spread in the history of France have
legitimized bellicose attitudes in Middle-East for centuries. However, distinguishing hard and
soft varieties of religion and ideologies, Johan Galtung wanted us to focus on their dialogue
within a faith, more than “ecumenical dialogues across faiths” to cure violence from the
culture. For instance, it would mean to implement space of democratic dialogue within an
authoritarian system, gathering all varieties of Islam in Syria. The most fundamentalists
would not need to use violence to express their opinion as they currently do​[15]​. Trying to
think about a preventive therapy of culture, Johan Galtung advised to build a world not
organized with a center and peripheries, as it has always been done by the Europeans and
the Americans, but a world where “each place is a center”. This way to not consider the
foreigner with pretentiousness and “orientalism”​[16]​has been experimented in global history
or connected history​[17]​, but is still deeply attached to the cultures mobilized for political
decisions. In Syria and in Middle-East, Western politics do not understand the particularity of

5
the area and of the processes, leading to very counter-productive interventions, as it was in
Afghanistan in 2001​[18]​.

Therefore, Johan Galtung advised us to focus on the framework of analysis rather than his
concrete proposals. When we analyze the civil war in Syria and think about its resolution, we
must think the four dimensions described so far, and consider both negative and positive
peace. In 1994, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) produced a report
entitled “The New Dimensions of Human Security”​[19]​. It introduced within the United
Nations Ken Booth’s idea that emancipation would lead to security and order​[20]​. It was a
real theoretical revolution because security was always understood in the classical sense: a
situation of non-war. And then, the UNCED imposed the idea that peace was made by the
human more than the State. The report defined seven areas of human security: the
economic (no poverty and no economic threat), the food security, the sanitary (access to
care and prevention of diseases), the individual (physical and psychological integrity), the
collective (protection of cultures), the environmental and the politics (access to civil rights).
Inspired by Galtung’s positive peace, this report could be strictly followed to bring back
durable peace in Syria.

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[1]​ ​https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sy.html

[2]
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2012/02/15/01003-20120215ARTFIG00439-syrie-la-nouve
lle-constitution-basee-sur-le-pluralisme.php

[3]
http://www.lemonde.fr/proche-orient/article/2016/04/17/syrie-le-parti-d-assad-remporte-sans-
surprise-ses-elections-legislatives_4903798_3218.html

6
[4]
http://www.lemonde.fr/proche-orient/article/2016/04/13/en-syrie-des-elections-en-trompe-l-il_
4901408_3218.html

[5] BRIQUET Jean-Louis. Les pratiques politiques «officieuses». Clientélisme et dualisme

politique en Corse et en Italie du Sud. In: Genèses, 20, 1995.

[6] MICHELS Robert, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of
Modern Democracy, 1915.

[7]​ MANIN Bernard, The Principles of Representative Government, Cambridge, 1997.

[8] PATOMAKI Heikki, TEIVAINEN Teivo, A possible World: Democratic Transformation of

Global Institutions, 2004.

[9] MILZA Pierre, Les mouvements pacifistes et les guerres froides depuis 1947. In: Les
Internationales et le problème de la guerre au XXe siècle. Actes du colloque de Rome
(22–24 novembre 1984) Rome : École Française de Rome, 1987. pp. 265–283.

[10]​ ​http://www.voltairenet.org/article173036.html

[11]​ ​http://www.refworld.org/docid/540422b04.html

[12] THOMSON David, Les revenants : Ils étaient partis faire le jihad. Ils sont de retour en
France, Le Seuil, 2016.

[13] LACOSTE Yves, « Les États-Unis et le reste du monde », Hérodote, 2/2003 (N°109), p.
3–16.

[14]​ COSTANTINI Dino, Mission civilisatrice, Paris, 2008.

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[15] BURGAT François, Comprendre l’islam politique : une trajectoire de recherche sur
l’altérité islamiste 1973–2016, Paris, La Découverte, 2016.

[16]​ ​http://www.counterpunch.org/2003/08/05/orientalism/

[17] DOUKI Caroline, MINARD Philippe, “ Histoire globale, histoires connectées : un

changement d’échelle historiographique ? ”, Revue d’histoire moderne et
contemporaine5/2007 (n° 54–4bis) , p. 7–21

[18]​ DORRONSORO Gilles, “Yes, the afghans hate Us”, Carnegie, 2011.

[19]​http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/reports/255/hdr_1994_en_complete_nostats.pdf

[20]​ BOOTH Ken, Theory of World Security, Cambridge, 2007.