Strategies for Peace before Nuclear Aggression
REVIEWS, 29 Aug 2016
Dr. Leo Semashko – TRANSCEND Media Service
Strategies for Peace by Bruce L. Cook and Maria Cristina Azcona (eds), 2016, 254 pp. http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/cookcomm
This book (hereinafter: Strategies) was published in July 2016, six months after the publication of Global Peace Science (GPS) by 174 co-authors from 34 countries in January 2016. GPS includes 309 articles on 616 pages (http://peacefromharmony.org/docs/global-peace-science-2016.pdf). Between these two books there is a direct link in content, form and coauthors: the 8 from Strategies are coauthors of GPS. It determines its first and most important advantage: Strategies repeat the attempt and experience of the collective awareness of one of the most important problems of global peace.
Another advantage of Strategies is consideration of a number of positive strategies that are useful for the peacebuilding process: leadership, bilingualism, interspirituality, world citizenship, family, women, education, medicine, art, and conflict resolution. Of course, this is only a small part of similar strategies, the number of which is calculated by tens. All of them are integrated into GPS as its organic parts (GPS, Chapter 8, see 25 strategies).
In the critical part of our review, we should note that this work has not freed itself from a main disadvantage of traditional peacemaking. It, as the others similar it, does not make the key issue of peacemaking about elimination of all wars, before which it is powerless throughout history. Especially revealing is the last century with its two world wars (100 and 75 years ago), and thousands of local conflicts, a bad trend of which increases in the new age by the impending threat of nuclear war. Traditional peacemaking is powerless to oppose this dangerous trend any effective strategy capable to overcome the growing militaristic threats.
The cause of inborn weakness of traditional peacemaking is its internal ideological fragmentation, its subjectivism and psychologism lacking a uniting objective fundamental basis, generally expressed as common acceptable science. In short, this reason is the lack of science of global peace, which cannot be replaced by the partial, subjective and broken peace studies and researches, which are similar to countless attempts of the blinds to know an elephant. The most critical thinkers oppose to insuperable fragmentation of traditional peacemaking a task “the search for common paradigms of peace thinking beyond the paranoias of competing world-views” (IPRA, Peace Theories Commission: http://ipra2016.org/index.php/9-uncategorised/114-peace-theories-commission) and without “deaf choir”, in which everyone sings its tune ignoring the others and persisting in its originality.
The Strategies authors could be to avoid the blemish of fragmentation “paranoia” if they would take the GPS holistic power. But paradoxically that even its co-authors, highly appreciating its, such as Bruce Cook and Maria Azcona, did not even mention it in their book, even in the bibliography as though it does not exist in reality.
Their remarkable qualifications of GPS worthy of multiple repetitions are below:
Bruce Cook: “SPHERONS can do to achieve a fairly stable world peace, although this theory gives rise many questions because of its novelty and originality. All peace workers need to work together in harmony with this scientific theory… that can save the world before it’s too late… [GPS] is a unique and prodigious accomplishment… [that] introduces a new concept in peace efforts based on global demographics of harmonious classes, with SPHERONS making the deep social structure. It offers an alternative to more than two centuries where global conflicts were solved by military science, which still does not have an alternative. It further presents more than 300 articles from 174 peace workers who are distinguished leaders in the global harmony movement in 13 chapters. They cover a startling variety of considerations including social, philosophical, historical, structural, functional, political, economic, personal, educational, psychological, legal and other areas. GPS is first in history to offer a science of world peace, after more than two centuries of the birth of military science in the Adam Bülow’s book in 1799. The GPS cognitive result is the first scientific extremely laconic formula of peace: “peace comes from harmony of SPHERONS through science”, which determines a source, social actors and main way of global peace. The objective grounds and numerous details of this formula are disclosed in the book’s 13 chapters in different dimensions:… The 622-page volume is available on www.reservebook.com” (http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=544).
Maria Azcona: “Writers of this unprecedented “Global Peace Science” (GPS) book are trying to create for global community a powerful and more effective scientific paradigm capable be an alternative to military science and all wars on Earth. … [This paradigm] embraces diversity of all main cultures in GPS. The similar love to all in the world is a love to literature, to knowledge as equal for all humanity passion. A unique scientific flower of this literature is GPS, in which the Chapter 11 is dedicated to Peace Poetry and Art. The results are born in this nest of harmony where the child is Global Peace as Peace from Harmony via Science in a common denominator. Literature is Beauty through harmony in words/knowledge and Peace Literature is an ode to Beauty because incarnates it in a new reality…. Is it possible to live in peace? Surely yes, since we are able to see civilized societies grow peacefully leaving the other to live peacefully too as this unfolded in the unique GPS in its wide scientific picture of global peace….So don’t let to afterwards reading the GPS book. The book needs to be studied at all universities worldwide to be a basis of new humankind able to build a conscious peaceful life by the universal peacemaking actors – SPHERONS – disclosed in GPS. This paradigm is harmonic revolution of peacebuilding thinking and consciousness for new humanity”( http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=36).
As we can see, both give excellent characteristics of GPS as a new way and effective peace-building strategy! But they do not go on this way in their Strategies. Why? This question is open for this book, which can be finding an honest answer in its new reissue in the following year.
The authors of this book cannot understand and recognize that every peace strategy is a useful peacebuilding brick but scattered and unrelated by scientific unity and general architectural plan of global peace, they form only a pile of bricks useless for it and helpless to resist any war. Therefore, the Strategies book is a mirror of fragmentation into peacemaking and its impotence before the war. The critique of traditional peacemaking more detail see in GPS Chapter 4.6: “One Hundred Years of Defeats and Degradation” (http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=595).
Comparison of the two peacemaking books is not in favor of Strategies. Its strategies could be the worthy parts and development of GPS if they would unite around its fundamental scientific idea of SPHERONS – harmonious classes of the population, who make a deep social structure of humanity and are constant actors of global peace, which first disclosed in this science. Strategies offer the positive but ineffective strategies for peace beyond scientific unity. GPS offers SPHERONS as an effective strategy and scientific, integral architecture of global peace for all its private strategies.
Unfortunately, the Strategies authors, on the unknown reasons, ignored this great peacemaking opportunity that demonstrates once again the crisis and degeneration of traditional peacemaking with all its numerous but useless private achievements. But this possibility is preserved for them in the future after a deeper acquaintance with the GPS foundations, primarily with the scientific theory of SPHERONS most briefly (20 pages) generalized here: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=423.
SPHERONS – this is a common paradigm of peacebuilding thinking and one holistic scientific fundamental peacemaking strategy, which includes all other its private strategies. It ensures that it is not able to provide the traditional peacemaking: the achievement of global peace and the victory of peace over war. We hope that our review will encourage the authors Strategies in direction of this holistic and effective strategy for world peace that is critical in our time.
Today, the US/NATO deploy the nuclear weapons at the western borders of Russia and establish for itself by unilateral barbarous right of “first nuclear strike” launched the US still in Hiroshima-1945. They created a situation of “Barbarossa” aggressive Nazi Plan 1941, which was the center of WWII. Peacemakers of 2016 are powerless against the threat of nuclear aggression as well as peacemakers of 1941 were powerless against Hitler’s aggression. What is a strategy from the ten listed in Strategies, which is able to withstand nuclear aggression fatal for humanity? The answer is clear – none of them are capable on it like 75 years ago. Unfortunately, this question as the most actual for modern peacemaking, even not arises on the Strategies pages that characterizes the abstraction of modern peacekeepers from the real problems of global peace protection and neglect of these problems. How the world nations, put before the deadly threat of nuclear annihilation, can appreciate such peacemaking? The question is rhetorical. None evaluation, except for the extremely negative, cannot be. This is a fair and only true evaluation, requiring a radical, revolutionary change in peacemaking, which promises only GPS integrating all peacebuilding constructive ideas and giving them practical force by their scientific association. In more details this situation is considered in GPS.
Today the world remains in peacemaking as defenseless before the war, especially nuclear, as well as 100 and 75 years ago. Only GPS, as a scientific and radically new peacemaking, gives humanity fundamentally solid hope for its protection and salvation from nuclear war. Could the Strategies authors admit it? Or offer an alternative scientific paradigm and get out from the figure of silence? This is necessary in order to jointly develop GPS further as the most effective strategy for global peace before impending nuclear aggression.
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In Russian: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=617
Leo Semashko, Ph.D. (Philosophy), Founding President, Global Harmony Association (GHA) since 2005; GHA Honorary President since 2016; State Councilor of St. Petersburg; Philosopher, Sociologist and Peacemaker from Harmony; Author of more than 400 scientific publications, including 18 books in 1-12 languages; Author of Tetrism as the unity of Tetraphilosophy and Tetrasociology – science of social harmony, global peace and harmonious civilization; Director: Tetrasociology Public Institute, Russia; Director, GHA Website “Peace from Harmony”: http://peacefromharmony.org; Initiator, Manager and Editor in Chief of the book project “Global Peace Science” (GPS).
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 29 Aug 2016.
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