Looking Forward to 2023
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 9 Jan 2023
David Adams | Transition to a Culture of Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service
1 Jan 2023 – Before looking forward to 2023, let’s look back at 2022 from the perspective of the culture of peace.
In general, we must admit that the culture of war was more dominant than ever. The trap set by the American Empire, including NATO, in the Ukraine was a “success” for the Neocons. They drew Putin’s Russia into the trap and began a covert war with Russia, using the poor Ukraine as bait. And now they are fighting Russia “to the last Ukrainian.”
I realize that this analysis is the opposite of what you will find in the American and European mass media, so I recommend, if you have not done so, to recall the following blogs that I wrote last year providing the historical background necessary to understand the Ukraine War.
HOW THE UNITED STATES CREATED VLADIMIR PUTIN
THE UKRAINE WAR COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED
WE CAN FIND THE TRUTH, BUT WHERE CAN WE FIND HOPE?
While being fixed on the Ukraine War, we should not forget the more than one hundred armed conflicts elsewhere in the world, many of which are armed by the American Empire and NATO.
In general, it seems that the culture of peace was losing last year.
But let us not ignore the peace movement. Last year the North American and European peace movements mobilized against the war in the Ukraine and other wars, as we described in the December bulletin of CPNN.
In Latin America and Africa the culture of peace continued to be promoted as we describe in this month’s CPNN bulletin. While the peace movements of North America and Europe are minority movements in opposition to the state’s culture of war, the culture of peace in Latin Ameica is promoted by cities, towns and regions and and in Africa by the African Union. In these continents, it is a movement that represents the majority of citizens, often in harmony with the politics of the state.
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And we should not ignore the few eloquent voices for peace in the Ukraine, and the miliions of Russians who publicly opposed the Ukraine War before they were suppressed by the Putin administration.
Under the present circumstances, it does not seem likely that the peace movements, North or South, can succeed in the task of transformation from the culture of war to the culture of peace in 2023. The movements of Europe and North America remain a small minority. And as for Latin America and Africa, these continents are more victims than actors on the world stage.
But the present circumstances are not permanent, and 2023 could mark a turning point in world history. One thing is sure: history proceeds by surprising and abrupt changes, even revolutionary changes.
As I insisted in last month’s blog, PREPARE FOR A NEW WORLD ORDER, the engine of historical change is economic. Since the economy becomes more globalized every year, that means that an economic crash can no longer be localized. If there is an economic crash, it will effect all the economies of the world.
2023 could be the year that we see the COLLAPSE OF THE US DOLLAR? The fact that the Americans continue to pour most of their government money into military instead of civilian production makes it more and more likely. In this regard, nothing has changed since I wrote BAD NEWS FOR 2021
When there is an economic crash, its is followed by a political crash. That is how Marx described the dynamics of history, and that is what I witnessed in the old Soviet Union at the end of the 1980’s.
Already, we see political cracks developing in the American Empire: from the inside, as I described here last year in the blog, WAR ABROAD, WAR AT HOME.
If we are to profit from a global economic and political crash to move from the culture of war to a culture of peace, we must prepare in advance. Otherwise, the opportunity may be lost!
Of course, there is another possible crash, one that is so terrible that we usually avoid thinking about it: the possibility of a World War III that involves nuclear weapons, a possibility that has been threatened more than ever by the war in the Ukraine. Such a war could even mark the end of human civilization. For this reason, it is ever more important to arrive at peace in the Ukraine (see my blog, LET THE CHILDREN MAKE PEACE) and to develop a GLOBAL MOVEMENT FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT.
Whether or not 2023 is the year of the crash of the dollar, we have much work to do!
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Dr. David Adams is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment and coordinator of the Culture of Peace News Network. He retired in 2001 from UNESCO where he was the Director of the Unit for the UN International Year for the Culture of Peace. Previously, at Yale and Wesleyan Universities, he was a specialist on the brain mechanisms of aggressive behavior, the history of the culture of war, and the psychology of peace activists, and he helped to develop and publicize the Seville Statement on Violence. Send him an email.
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Tags: Culture of Peace, Peace Studies
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