Comments on Our Webinar with Ashok Panikkar on "Whither Peacebuilding"
Newsletter 360 - June 13, 2025
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We received three responses to our webinar with Ashok Panikkar on the future of peacebuilding after the closure of the U.S. Institute for Peace (USIP) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from Meagan Fisher, Sanda Kaufman, and Mike Buck. We are sharing those below, with some return comments of our own.
Meagan Fisher:
I found the point that understanding the world's complexity is a key aspect of peacebuilding work validating, as someone with many varied interests. I learn as a hobby, including taking community college classes for pleasure and personal edification. I have been pleased this semester to discover the ways that seemingly unrelated classes like Music Appreciation and Introduction to Literature have enhanced my understanding of myself and the world in ways that help me play my role(s) in Massively Parallel Peacebuilding.
This might be taken as a lesson in surviving and even thriving in these trying times. For me, learning is a pleasurable activity, and I can experience insecurity about learning (or doing anything) for pleasure when "there's so much to be done." But perhaps that pleasure is in the service of the good, in ways that are often not predictable. I'm connecting this to Audre Lorde's arguments in her essay "The Uses of the Erotic," which, hey, I re-read for a class this term! (And understood more deeply with some AI-assisted conversation.) This also lines up with Marshall Rosenberg's human needs framework - by attending to my own needs, I make life more wonderful for myself and others. I have seen some meaningful fruits of this approach start to emerge in the past year since I left a conventional job to refocus on "what my life wants to do with me" (a quote from the minister at the Unitarian Universalist service I attend).
It can be scary to orient this way, as it involves letting go of what is beyond me and not taking the entire world on my shoulders, but I speak to this a bit in my next point.
Regarding the principle that every conflict is an opportunity, I agree the potential is there, but many of us involved in peace work might respond, "There are too many opportunities!" And in this field, "opportunities" not taken have a high cost, both materially and on the psyches of those who care. To manage this gap well, I find personal "spiritual" practices, including around grieving, helpful. This may or may not draw on spirituality (defined broadly). I heard Starhawk make a comment at a fundraising speech in 2008: to sustain ourselves as activists, we need a strong spiritual practice or some good cocktail recipes. She focused on the
former, and as a Pagan, suggested time for connection with nature each day. Regardless of our faith tradition or secular orientation, I would like to see more visibility around personal resiliency practices and the need for/benefit of drawing on them while engaging these issues.
Along that line, I have a once-every-four-week column, and try to use my platform to advocate perspective taking and nuance. In my latest column I wrote about some in-person dialogue activities we have recently started. They are small, and for background we actually started networking via Braver Angels, but one of their coordinators suggested we start with Living Room Conversation Guides, given our size and the capacity of the people involved. Since these are copyrighted by my local newspaper, I cannot share this in full, but here is the link.
Heidi's Response
Self-care, balance, and resiliency are key issues that we haven't written much about, but certainly struggle with ourselves. Meagan's suggestion of spending time in nature is our personal answer too. It is hard to be depressed when surrounded by newly-blooming flowers, greenery, and bird song. Many of those creatures have much harder lives than we (can you imagine having to hunt and catch all your food while being hunted yourself, and having no shelter from the wind, snow, and minus-zero degree temperatures in winter and 100+ temperatures in summer? Yet here are the chickadees and nuthatches, robins and geese singing and calling out to each other (seemingly in joy, though who knows what they are thinking?) Seeking them out, spending time with them (Meagan has another article about communing with her local geese) — and for me, seeking rarer kinds (such as the stilt sandpiper and the sharp-tailed grouse that I recently saw for the first time ever (birders call this a "lifer" or "life-lister") — is a wonderful distraction from the agonies of our human world.
I also very much appreciated the article that Meagan shared about her local dialogue experiences. I'll just pull out a few quotes to perhaps tweak your interest:
"The first time we did this, in a populated coffee shop, it felt transgressive and exciting. Who might overhear us and be intrigued or inspired by our conversation? How might this help our community and nation break out of our siloes of entrenched belief systems and find new ways forward, together? I wanted to write about the potential I feel in these acts of dialogue."
I (Heidi) haven't heard of others engaging in difficult conversations, as these tend to be, in public spaces. Is that a good idea, I wonder, or does it prevent people from opening up? Meagan goes on to say:
"Yet I also feel scared to write about this, and the people I’m scared of are not just those with extremely different voting habits than me. Dialogue across divides is risky business."
She goes on to tell the story of a nonviolent Peruvian activist who was killed because her efforts to help her local community were seen by the Shining Path as supporting the existing political system. She tells her own story of being challenged for not being far enough left. She noted that, in her activist network in the mid-to-late 2010s
Violent rhetoric about punching (neo)Nazis and guillotining the rich cropped up more and more. ... I had a reckoning with the reality that authoritarianism is not by any means unique to right-wing politics, though it certainly shows up there with regularity, from Franco to Pinochet to Bolsonaro. I gained more empathy for those who are scared of these trends coming from the left — while also becoming increasingly disappointed with anyone overlooking that authoritarianism is not the province of one end of the political spectrum.
Is dialogue an answer to authoritarianism? Not alone, Guy and I would say, but it certainly is one piece of the "massively parallel action puzzle."
Sanda Kaufman
Sanda is a friend who participated in the webinar we did with Ashok. She sent the following comments afterwards.
Although this may not be apparent, these are reactions to “Whither Peacebuilding.” I pretty much agree with all, but I have a few remarks. Remember that I don't know a huge lot about peacebuilding [Sanda is an urban planner with extensive experience in consensus building.]
We say conflicts are complex but tend to revert to simple, context-free, general statements that often apply to nowhere specific. But frequently, we actually do have some specific conflict in mind. So let's surface it (credit: you often do!) Readers (who also have some specific situation in mind) will understand better what we mean instead of responding "no, that's not true!" as in their minds they apply things to their [different] conflicts.
People who feel safe and eat regularly (in the US, and in much of the West) see the world differently than those who, for generations, have not had that. Our peacebuilders have to recognize that, especially as they tend to come from the full-tummy group, and often get it wrong. One example that actually happens in several conflicts is that tummy-full people, having a great aversion to violence (because they have much to lose), insist on "first stop the killing, and then we'll see what else." Working with my French colleague who was paid by Norwegians to build peace in Mali (pretty hopeless) I heard him argue convincingly (for me) that sometimes you have to let “them” fight it out, let one side win, instead of quickly reaching a ceasefire. If you let one side win, then some problems might go away, instead of cropping up the following week (as they do in Mali, because the grievances have not gone away)
Sri Lanka is an example where they got rid of a terrorist Tamil faction. It wasn't pretty, but now they have quiet; same for WWII. As I say this, it occurs to me that if they let Israel get rid of Hamas for good early on or even now, there would be quiet there too instead of going from broken ceasefire to broken ceasefire (on October 6, 2023 a ceasefire was in place, which Hamas broke with its October 7 attack.) Mali and Israel are also good examples of the importance of context, which I mentioned above and will more so below. So is Ukraine: why is everyone willing to fight until the last Ukrainian (1 million deaths so far) while trying to stop the Gaza war?
We need to keep in mind something that we used to believe: peace is not the absence of conflict, but rather conflict dealt with in peaceful (non zero-sum, non-destructive or non-risky, non-controlling) ways.
Although we tend to think that conflicts are more or less generic (e.g. "we too do the same bad things"), I think this is a mistake. Rather, even when they look mildly the same (over territory, resources, ideology etc.) conflicts are quite unique and we have to fight our minds' tendency to look for averages and "best practices" (e.g., “look how they made peace in Ireland, let's send Mitchell to do the same for Israelis and Palestinians," which of course failed for so many reasons it’s hard to know where to begin). Conflicts are complex in antecedents, time, culture, history etc. so if we want to help, we have to understand each conflict on its own terms. This observation is valid (I think) even within one country, especially when it is as big as the U.S.. You can't use statistics... we don't have nearly enough "similar conflicts, all else being equal," to draw meaningful conclusions.
We tend to forget context. Even the same conflicts in the same place among the same parties would—and do—unfold differently at a different time. Back to Mali and Israel, in the background of both are powerful interests of the countries "helping out," which shift continuously. The helpers rarely hesitate to do things that harm the peace they are supposedly promoting. (Look at what a beautiful plane from Qatar can wreak...) And whether we like the argument or not, some conflicts don't even break out unless one of the aggressors (Russia, Iran, China) feel weakness in the others or in their backers.
Many of the intractable conflicts are intractable because they don't stand still, are affected in multiple ways by their contexts, and by short- and long-run incentives. Again, a call for specificity.
Individuals and their differences matter too. In the Mali example, the peacemakers kept organizing peacemaking conferences and offering participants (who could speak French or English) good food and other benefits. The guests took it all, agreed with everything, but represented only themselves (they were the ones who could be found and spoke English or French). The others went back to fighting.
We don't evaluate results much, because of how hard it is to document them and to admit failure. Had there been amazing or even moderate successes, we’d have heard of them. Which brings me to the loss of USAID and USIP, which we are supposed to deplore. However, I am not aware of any of their successes (that may show my ignorance). One argument was that USAID was creating warm and fuzzy feelings toward the US, but I haven't seen any proof that this actually happened. It would have helped both USAID and USIP to be able to show that their work brought peace somewhere. Sure, people everywhere will take the money and run and even say thank you, but what have we got for it?! I know I didn’t like that generosity going to Hamas , as it did for no benefit I can discern.
We probably need to treat value conflicts (and the ensuing polarization) with more care than we do. (A long conversation...)
Weren't we against seeing everything in black and white?! We need to convince ourselves of that, and then speak as if we believe that each of those we name are gray. It is rather unlikely that Trump is the devil, no matter whether we like him or not, and some of those we consider worthy of a pedestal are not either.
If we want to reach "the other side," we have to quit the impulse of a dig at them just to signal we are the good guys... we are signaling to the choir and gaining no converts (yes, it’s a bind alright but still…). Those on the other side who might be listening would immediately cover their ears.
Guy and Heidi's Response to Sanda
These are good points, and I am sure we weren't as specific about context in the webinar as we might have been. We agree, specifics are very important. At the same time, however, I think there are some dynamics that tend to happen over and over again, and appear, in much the same way, in different times and different places, because conflict dynamics tend to work like that.
One example is that people whose human needs are denied tend to fight back. They may define their human needs differently, and they might fight back differently, but they usually fight back. For instance, many people of color and LGBTQ+ people in the United States are angry and fighting because they don't feel their identities are accepted and/or they feel insecure. (John Burton labeled security and identity as two of the most fundamental human needs.) At the same time, many of the white, heterosexual, cisgender people who are being accused of being "oppressors" are angry for much the same reasons. The same also seems to me to be true for Israeli Jews and Palestinians, both of whom have good reason to feal insecure. Their very identities are widely seen as making them legitimate targets for violent attack.
The same is especially true now for Jews in my own hometown of Boulder, Colorado, where a group of Jews (including a close friend of mine) was attacked by a flame-throwing Palestinian sympathizer. Our security and our identities are under attack here too.
So yes, nothing is like the Israel/Palestine conflict. And anti-Semitism in the United States is different from homophobia in the United States, which is different from white-black racism in the United States. But there are similarities, including hatred and dehumanization, which tend to lead to violent outcomes all over the world. Can we build true peace in any of those situations? I don't know. But seeing the suffering that results when we don't, we continue to try. At the very least, we can encourage people to NOT DO many of the things that clearly drive the cycles of escalation and violence.
That said, we agree with Ashok and you above, when you suggest that maybe some conflicts just need to play themselves out. That's a hard pill for a peacebuilder to swallow. But if you have a group of people (such as Hamas and their allies) who believe that martyrdom is their highest calling, and their ultimate goal is to wipe out a country and a culture as it appears around the world, and they are such accomplished propagandists that much of the world supports their goals, peacebuilding cannot work. That worldview just simply has to be defeated. If it can't be defeated through generosity (as Israel tried to do for years), then it has to be defeated militarily. Then, and only then, might there, perhaps, be a role for what we conventionally think of as peacebuilding.
The sad truth is that those who seek a world based on peaceful coexistence need to be willing and able to defend that ideal when it comes under direct attack. If we are not willing to militarily oppose aggressive, violent, authoritarianism, then we should expect to live in a world that these authoritarians will create for us.
Mike Buck
Thank you for providing me this discussion for thoughtful dissemination. I appreciated the conceptual lens, metaphors and analogies to just encompass the peacebuilding challenge in such a polarized, conflictual world reality where we struggle for universalism when we lack a common metaphysics (understanding reality) along with shared ethics.
What I objected to were your reductions when it came to Israel-Palestinian assessment. You never said this but a reader would conclude that Netanyahu's government has total political justification for what they are doing in combating Hamas. Gaza looks like a modern image of World War II Hiroshima. There are probably just as many killed and wounded. I do not believe any political justification can assuage the moral repugnance of such devastation in this 19 month savagery. You put total blame on Palestinians though those in the West Bank they are being forcibly removed by Israel's power structure and settlers though they have not adopted Hamas' nihilistic philosophy. How do you come to these conclusions without integrating historical criticism that created the Gaza condition in the first place? This would be like total condemnation of the militant Black Panthers' tactics threatening war on basically all whites as enemies without taking into account their own witness and experience of gross injustices and prejudices. We have to see that people at a given time may say revolting things when they live in revolting conditions. I know you believe this but you certainly apply it differently in this case.
My challenge is comprehending the challenge you offer at the end: "understanding" the world which to me means (echoes of Hannah Arendt on education) loving the world so much you feel obligated to respond. This takes self-gift and mining so many resources of positive (even if later disposable) contributions of thoughtful people who have wrestled and digested philosophical grammars and heart stories of truth deposits. I trust "detective" and "journalist" endeavors more than plumbers--but they each have skills to exemplify. We would do well to bridge conceptually and practically the divide between peace and justice, person and dignity, freedom and responsibility, individual and communal, nation and world citizenship.
Heidi and Guy's Response:
Many people, including you, we know, disagree with our views about Israel. We certainly do not think that Israel or Netanyahu are blameless; they have clearly made a lot of mistakes (and history may ultimately judge Israel's tactics in the ongoing war as a catastrophic failure). But this webinar, and the newsletter you write about, were not about Israel, but rather about the future of peacebuilding in the current world.
Guy brought up Israel in the context of laying out four domains where peacebuilding might or might not be effective. As I said above, while responding to Sanda, peacebuilding cannot work when one party seeks the total destruction of another.
Though I find this conclusion very depressing, I think Sanda and Ashok are probably right. There are some conflicts that just have to play themselves out. The parties will stop fighting when they, themselves, decide the fight isn't worth it anymore. We can't help them come to that conclusion, except, perhaps by altering their BATNAs. (That's a conflict resolution term meaning "best alternative to a negotiated agreement.") If a party thinks it can do better by continuing to fight, than by negotiating to end the fight, it will continue to fight. Powerful outside parties can sometimes provide incentives or disincentives (sanctions/threats) which alter the disputants' calculations of their BATNAs, but often this backfires. (Sanctions, for example, seldom work — they hurt the civilian population, but not the leadership which is making the decisions about when and how to conduct the war.)
There is, unfortunately, an even more depressing corollary of this observation. In the absence of a strong military force willing to fight for a just peace, we are powerless to prevent a great many conflicts from being decided in favor of the most ruthless and violent faction. This is why we are not pacifists. Being unwilling to engage in the disagreeable business of fighting (and the painful compromises that that entails) leaves the world at the mercy of violent oppressive regimes.
We call the situations we write about "intractable conflicts" for a reason — they tend to go on for a long time, and they are very, very hard to resolve in fair and equitable ways. But as I always told students in my classes, "intractable doesn't mean impossible. It just means very difficult." So we keep on trying to learn more about the nature of these conflicts, and what can be done to address them more effectively. That is what this newsletter, and Beyond Intractability, more generally, are about.
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