Skills of Peace Today

Peace does not happen by magic. It is not the mere absense of war. This world is never without conflict. Waging peace requires at least as many skills as waging war does.

The kind of organization, dedication to service and discipline developed over too many centuries to wage war could in some ways be applied to waging peace. Some of those functions are in fact falling to the armed forces--the "peace-keeping" and humanitarian and "nation-building" missions.

When such missions became most prominent in Bosnia, military leaders looked around and noticed that they had no training for them, and nowhere to get that training. Presumably this has changed, because in his commencement address at the U.S. Naval Academy, President Obama said this:

"Marines, we need you to defeat the insurgent and the extremist. But we also need you to work with the tribal sheik and local leaders from Anbar to Kandahar who want to build a better future for their people.

Naval aviators and flight officers, we need you to dominate the airspace in times of conflict, but also to deliver food and medicine in times of humanitarian crisis. And surface warfare officers and submariners, we need you to project American power across the vast oceans, but also to protect American principles and values when you pull into that foreign port, because for so many people around the world, you are the face of America."

This only hints at the new roles that, sometimes by default, the U.S. military must undertake, and let's hope their training is adapting to those roles.

Someday the essence of military organization and the best ideals--of service, self-sacrifice, discipline, applying skills and attention to the greater good--may well result in an "army" that fights the effects of the Climate Crisis, feeds the hungry, brings medicine to the afflicted, helps to resolve conflicts and build community. This army--or indeed the existing military-- will need to learn from those who are right now working on perfecting and teaching the skills of peace--from large-scale peacekeeping and diplomatic efforts, to interpersonal conflict management, to the skills of individual inner peace that make all the rest easier and more fulfilling.

Remembering those who sacrificed their lives in war should not be only the occasion for picnics and TV war movie marathons. It is another moment to focus on the skills of peace, and their study, and the hope to study war no more.