"In a time of peace which is no peace": security and development--fifty years after Dag Hammarskjold.

Melber, Henning

It is when we all play safe that we create a world of the utmost insecurity.

--Dag Hammarskjold

On 5 June 1958, the UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold was awarded an honorary doctorate by Cambridge University. In his address, with reference to the work of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber programmatically entitled "The Walls of Distrust," he stated, "We meet in a time of peace which is no peace, in a time of technical achievement which threatens its own masters with destruction. We meet in a time when the ideas evoked in our minds by the term 'humanity' have switched to a turbulent political reality from the hopeful dreams of our predecessors." (1)

Since then, the arms race has continued and nuclear weapons remain a threat. The volume of international transfers of major conventional weapons is on the rise, 24 percent higher between 2006 and 2010 than for the preceding five years. (2) We produce ever more sophisticated and efficient weapons for mass violence and destruction, which absorb massive investments into the further promotion of technology that serves the purpose to protect through posing a threat. Military-industrial elites nurture a global economics of killing. (3) While it is suggested that military encounters and the number of victims might in overall trends have decreased throughout human history, (4) the language of power has not changed. We remain captives of a mindset that bases a pseudosecurity on the ability to create insecurity, danger, and destruction.

Dominant thinking in our age of modernity is guided by an obsession with technological-industrial innovation considered to protect by being able to destroy. Our knowledge and the applied instruments are at best a double-edged sword. Hammarskjold reminds us of this when stating in his Cambridge speech that,

  through these achievements, doors that were locked have been broken
  open, to new prosperity or to new holocausts. Warning words about how
  the development of social organization, and how the growth of moral
  maturity in the emerging mass civilizations, has lagged behind the
  technical and scientific progress, have been repeated so often as to
  sound hackneyed and to make us forget that, they are true. ...
  Deep-rooted conflicts which have run their course all through
  history and seemed to reach a new culmination before and during the
  Second World War continue. And destructive forces which have always
  been with us make themselves felt in new foams. They represent, now
  as before, the greatest challenge man has to face. (5)

But ever more sophisticated armament does not help us to come effectively to terms with the real challenges humanity faces. All arms in the world can be directed to the melting ice caps in the Arctic circles and the melting nonetheless continues unabated. There is no weaponry that can protect us from the effects of climate change or compel nature to halt the environmental degradation that threatens the survival of not only the human species as a result of man-made forces. Ultimately, the most devastating and far-reaching weapon of mass destruction is our so-called modern civilization with its reproduction patterns in the industrialized world and its way of life, which is nowadays a habitual privilege among elites across the globe. Our notion of "development" is a root cause of a track eliminating forms and varieties of life and bringing us every day closer to extinction. Human and collective security is, in our current world, less threatened by conventional arms than by the effects of an excessively opulent consumerism among the relatively privileged who share the latest communication gadgets and designer brands to be purchased in airport shopping malls from Adelaide to Addis Ababa, from Bangkok to Buenos Aires, and from Copenhagen to Chicago, as the ABC of global jet-set trends could randomly read.

This way of life is the flip side to mass poverty, hunger, and destitution. As Sir Richard Jolly stated in the 2010 Erskine Childers Memorial Lecture, "The levels of inequality in the world today are a scandal. ... In mainstream thinking and policy making, inequality has been ignored in recent decades, nationally and internationally." (6) Instead, the greed culture and a form of unscrupulous Social Darwinism disrespects and erodes further fundamental principles of human well-being. The new trends to redefine human well-being in more than merely socioecomonic terms of relative security draw our attention to the fact that we need more than food and housing for a better life. (7) But we cannot be well without food, clean water, shelter, and other basic necessities. It should therefore not come as a surprise that well-being corresponds to some extent with material prerequisites while, at the same time, huge inequality in the distribution of national income is another factor obstructing happiness.

Poverty and destitution are root causes for despair. Poverty prevents us from living in peace, as peace is supposed to be more than the absence of war. Long before the World Summit Outcome document, finalized and adopted on 16 September 2005 by the UN General Assembly, (8) Hammarskjold was aware of the dialectics and interrelationship among peace, security, and human rights, as his address to the American Jewish Committee in New York on 10 April 1957 testifies: "We know that the question of peace and the question of human rights are closely related. Without recognition of human rights we shall never have peace, and it is only within the framework of peace that human rights can be fully developed." (9)

He was also aware that the notion of human rights has an explicit socioeconomic dimension, which requires measures to redistribute wealth, when he stressed

  that the main trouble with the Economic and Social Council at present
  is that, in public opinion and in practice, the Council has not been
  given the place it should have in the hierarchy of the main organs of
  the United Nations. I guess that we are all agreed that economic and
  social problems should rank equal with political problems. In fact,
  sometimes I feel that they should, if anything, have priority. While
  the Security Council exists primarily for settling conflicts which
  have arisen, the Economic and Social Council exists primarily to
  eliminate the causes of conflicts by working to change these
  conditions in which the emotional, economic, and social background
  for conflicts develop. (10)

Hammarskjold would most likely have agreed with the passionate appeal by Erskine Barton Childers to give more weight and influence to the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Childers combined his emphatic plea with the challenge of the inherent flaws when it comes to the execution of the so-called power of definition, which distorts the decisionmaking processes within what is euphemistically called the family of nations. As he diagnosed in his fierce criticism of realpolitik, which he labeled the "school of realism":

  Its adherents argue that the only "sensible" approach to
  international relations is that the economically mighty and the
  militarily most powerful will always determine the conduct of world
  affairs and the conditions of our United Nations. Not ethics, not
  norms of international law; not the principles of democracy; not the
  wishes and views of the other 180 or so nations and of the huge
  majority of humankind ... "realism" dismisses such references as the
  irrelevancies of "idealists" and "starry-eyed utopianists" and
  insists that traditionally measured power is the arbiter of our
  destinies. And all the ordinary rest of us might as well accept this.
  I refuse to. (11)

Though in a rhetorically different way, Hammarskjold could have articulated a similar concern and sentiment. At the core of both his and Childers's convictions was the notion and true meaning of solidarity. Hammarskjold clearly dismissed any superiority claims based on a kind of naturalist concept of dominance rooted in one biological advancement over others and questioned the legitimacy sought by dominant classes to justify their privileges:

  The health and strength of a community depend on every citizen's
  feeling of solidarity with the other citizens, and on his
  willingness, in the name of this solidarity, to shoulder his part
  of the burdens and responsibilities of the community. The same is
  of course true of humanity as a whole. And just that it cannot be
  argued that within a community an economic upper class holds its
  favored position by virtue of greater ability, as a quality which is,
  as it were, vested in the group by nature, so it is, of course,
  impossible to maintain this in regard to nations in their mutual
  relationships.... We thus live in a world where, no more
  internationally than nationally, any distinct group can claim
  superiority in mental gifts and potentialities of development. (12)

For the United Nations Hammarskjold confidently claimed that, "the Organization I represent ... is based on a philosophy of solidarity." (13) In what became his last address to ECOSOC, he reiterated this conviction when he linked the principles of national sovereignty with the belief that international solidarity and social consciousness have to go hand in hand by "accepting as a basic postulate the existence of a world community for which all nations share a common responsibility ... to reduce the disparities in levels of living between nations, a responsibility parallel to that accepted earlier for greater economic and social equality within nations. " (14)

The measured words of the Swedish diplomat and highest international civil servant seem to have little in common with the passionate polemics of the Irish activist and firebrand Childers. But both, in their very individual own way's, shared with similarly soft voices a fundamentally common, dedicated mission and commitment. This was a true belief in the necessity of a world organization like the United Nations, which should be much more than the convenient facade if not pawn for some superpowers: a regulatory body enhancing peace and security as well as human rights and a better life for humanity, a body guided by the notion of global solidarity. As for Childers, for Hammarskjold we are confronted with choices to make:

  The conflict to different approaches to the liberty of man and mind
  or between different views of human dignity and the right of the
  individual is continuous. The dividing line goes within ourselves,
  within our own peoples, and also within other nations. It does not
  coincide with any political or geographical boundaries. The ultimate
  fight is one between the human and the subhuman. We are on dangerous
  ground if we believe that any individual, any nation, or any ideology
  has a monopoly on rightness, liberty, and human dignity. (15)

Thus, Hammarskjold and Childers were birds of the same feather. The outspoken and stubborn Irishman and the polite and diplomatic, but resilient and persevering and thereby similarly strong-headed, Swede shared--despite the striking contrast in their appearances--the very same ideals with devotion and uncompromising passion.

We owe it to the generations to come that we remain loyal to the values they relentlessly promoted and lived. The notion of a Responsibility to Protect (as it emerged since the turn of the century) links directly to the advocacy Hammarskjold personified since the intervention in the Congo, when he justified the need for a UN presence to prevent further massacres among a local ethnic group. The rule of law, as promoted in the preparatory input of the Secretary-General to the high-level meeting of the General Assembly in September 2012, (16) is another focus resembling the spirit and convictions of Hammarskjold and disciples such as Childers. Not least the Rio+20 debate and the concepts of a green economy and sustainability similarly relate to efforts in search of solutions to the pressing problems and challenges that the future of humankind faces. Like so many others, both Hammarskjold and Childers in different but complementing ways pioneered a debate, which is as urgent and relevant today as it was during their times. Looked at it in this context, the new insights are old ones.

Notes

(1.) Dag Hammarskjold, "The Walls of Distrust," address at Cambridge University, 5 June 1958. See Andrew W. Cordier and Wilder Foote, eds., Public Papers of the Secretaries-General of the United Nations, vol. 4: Dag Hammarskjold 1958-1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), pp. 90f.

(2.) See, for further details, Paul Holtom, Lucie Beraud-Sudreau, Mark Bromley, Pieter D. Wezeman, and Siemon T. Wezeman, Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2010, SIPRI Fact Sheet (Stockholm: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, March 2011); Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2011, SIPRI Fact Sheet (Stockholm: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, March 2012).

(3.) See Vijay Mehta, The Economics of Killing (London: Pluto Press, 2012).

(4.) Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (London: Penguin Books, 2011). For a critical appraisal pointing to some methodological flaws, see the review by Benjamin Ziemann in H-Soz-u-Kult, 30 March 2012, http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/rezensionen/2012-1-235.

(5.) Hammarskjold, "The Walls of Distrust," pp. 92 and 94.

(6.) Sir Richard Jolly, "Inequality and the MDGs," the 2010 Erskine Childers Memorial Lecture, unpublished manuscript, p. 1.

(7.) See the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development initiative for a "Better Life Index" on occasion of the organization's fiftieth anniversary, which compliments and reinforces other similar initiatives taken in recent years. www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org.

(8.) See the 2011 Dag Hammarskjold Lecture by Jan Eliasson, "Peace, Development and Human Rights: The Indispensable Connection," Uppsala, Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, 2011.

(9.) Quoted in Kaj Falkman, ed., To Speak for the World: Speeches and Statements by Dag Hammarskjold (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2005), p. 154.

(10.) Dag Hammarskjold, "The UN: Its Ideology and Activities." address before the Indian Council of World Affairs. New Delhi, India, 3 February 1956. See Andrew W. Cordier and Wilder Foote, eds., Public Papers of the Secretaries-General of the United Nations, vol. 2: Dug Hammarskjold/953-1956 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), p. 668.

(11.) Erskine Barton Childers, "An Agenda for Peace and an Agenda for Development: The Security Council and the Economic and Social Council on the From Line," remarks presented to the colloquium "The United Nations at Fifty: Whither the Next Fifty Years?" at the European Parliament, Brussels, 8 September 1995. See Marjolijn Snippe, Vijay Mehta, and Henning Melber, eds., Erskine Barton Childers: For a Democratic United Nations and the Rule of Law, Development Dialogue No. 56 (Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, June 2011), p. 79.

(12.) Dag Hammarskjold, "Asia, Africa, and the West," address before the Academic Association of the University of Lund, Sweden, 4 May 1959. See Andrew W. Cordier and Wilder Foote, eds., Public Papers of the Secretaries-General of the United Nations, vol. 4: Dag Hammarskjold 1953-1956 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), pp. 3831

(13.) Ibid.

(14.) Quoted in Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, "Poverty and Inequality: Challenges in the Era of Globalisation," in Sten Ask and Anna Mark-Jungkvist, eds., The Adventure of Peace: Dag Hammarskjold and the Future of the UN (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 222.

(15.) Hammarskjold, "The Walls of Distrust," pp. 91f.

(16.) "Delivering Justice: A Programme of Action to Strengthen the Rule of Law at the National and International Levels: Report of the Secretary-General," UN General Assembly, sixty-sixth session, agenda item 83, distributed 16 March 2012.

Henning Melber is executive director of the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation in Uppsala, Sweden, and Extraordinary Professor at the Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria. This is a revised, shortened version of the Annual Erskine Childers Lecture 2011, organized by the Action for UN Renewal and the World Disarmament Campaign, presented at Central Hall Westminster, London, on 6 June 2011.