Defense Department needs a partner

Published on Tuesday, March 13, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Defense Department Needs a Partner
by Sean Gonsalves

They used to call it the War Department. Now it’s the “Defense Department,” which is kinda ironic considering that our current SecDef is presiding over a pre-emptive war launched under false pretenses against a nation that had nothing to do with 9/11.

It was one big neo-con job, with Scooter being the latest “friendly-fire” casualty of Bush hawks out-of-balance worldview. All yin. No yang.

And no Department of Peace (DOP), as Thomas Jefferson’s homies, Benjamin Banneker and Benjamin Rush, were calling for way back in 1782, while the first GW talked about the need to establish a West Point-like Peace Academy.

Thankfully, there’s organizations like The Peace Alliance, made up – not of mere idealists – but forward-thinking realists who support Congressman (and presidential candidate) Dennis Kucinich’s legislation to establish a DOP. See http://www.thepeacealliance.org/ for more information.

The basic idea is to “establish nonviolence as an organizing principle of American society, providing the U.S. president with an array of peace-building policy options for domestic and international use,” explains Matthew Albracht, managing director of The Peace Alliance.

If you’re not familiar with the long and successful history of nonviolent methods or just love chugging down gallons of Hater-ade, you’ll be rolling your eyes and asking questions like: Aren’t there existing agencies whose duties include components of the DOP legislation? – as if that weren’t true of the Department of Homeland Security before Bush created it.

The Peace Alliance short answer to these ahistorical inquiries is: “The establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency by Richard Nixon did not begin our commitment to the environment, yet it raised it to a much higher level of national priority. And so should it be with the interests of peace.”

Another red herring is the claim that the DOP is really a ruse to replace the military with peaceniks.

Congressman John Conyers, a DOP bill co-sponsor, points out that “sometimes force is needed to protect our vital interest…a Peace Department would be a partner, not an alternative, to the Pentagon.”

In fact, a DOP would train peacekeepers to deal with the aftermath should war be necessary, “creating teams on the ground to help rebuild an emotional and psychological foundation to create a stable system in the war-torn region.”

Military strategists are talking about the same things, though they use different jargon.

In Thomas P.M. Barnett’s “Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating” – a far cry from pie-in-the-sky pacifism and well-received among wonks and military officers – he analyzes the “Core” states, like the U.S., and “failing” states who fill “the Gap.”

“When a military intervention does occur, these adversaries simply do their best to lie low and wait out our mighty blow, knowing that they can do little about its impact…In this way, they conserve their resources for the real fight ahead: our subsequent half-hearted attempts to impose peace and civil order.”

Though I have deep disagreements with Barnett, he does offer some important observations. “As we take on new nation-building challenges with regularity, our manpower requirements for waging peace will skyrocket.”

If folks are serious about “shrinking the Gap” and winning this global war on terrorism, Barnett argues, then what he envisions as “our SysAdmin force” (peace-waging force) will have to “dwarf our Leviathan (traditional military) force.”

Check out the question Barnett is raising: “Where will we find the civilians to join this SysAdmin force – this pistol-packin’ Peace Corps?…I seriously doubt that, absent a dedicated cabinet-level department, America’s effort to shrink the Gap will succeed over time.”

This “waging peace” talk also has striking parallels with Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen’s 1999 book arguing for the need to see “development as freedom” in dealing with nations filling Barnett’s “Gap.”

Connect the dots. Shrink the Gap. Development as Freedom. Department of Peace.