The Cherry Orchard

In the popular imagination, the United Nations is an international joke. If you mention this organization in a political debate, you are sure to hear snorts of derision in response. Well, okay, they probably deserve it. The organization was formed by the victorious nations in the aftermath of World War II, and while they have helped to prevent a third World War (so far) and have promoted economic development around the world, they have also failed to prevent a depressing number of damaging wars, genocidal campaigns and humanitarian disasters. Most people consider the United Nations a bloated and ineffective mess, and it’s hard to say whether they’re completely wrong or not.

But four United Nations peacekeepers were killed in Lebanon today, and that adds some perspective. As bad as the U. N.’s record has been, it seems unfair to expect them to succeed so easily. Humans have been waging war and oppressing each other for a long time. The U. N. has had sixty years. Most importantly, the United Nations is all we’ve got. We’re better off with them than without them, and maybe every once in a while they’ll even manage to do something (okay, probably not, but we can hope).

Given its makeup, it’s unlikely that the United Nations will break the bounds of bureaucratic inertia and begin to act decisively any time soon. One would think, though, that this organization would manage to inspire greater worldwide discussion and debate. This has been one of the U.N.’s great unspoken failures. How often have you heard of a useful international debate taking place inside these lush walls? A book of “Famous Speeches Made at the U.N.” would be surprisingly thin. In a world that badly needs global understanding, it’s incomprehensible that the United Nations does not manage to present any useful public dialogue at all.

Overall, the United Nations scores a lot higher on the peacemaker report card than either the politicians or the religious leaders of the world. They earn a C+, easily, which is the first passing grade we’ve seen this week. Tomorrow I’ll talk about a few other groups: non-profit organizations like Amnesty International and the Red Cross, writers and artists and musicians, bloggers and journalists.

Now that we’ve determined that we can’t sit around and wait for politicians to find the path to peace, who are we going to entrust this important job to? I’ll be examining this question in the next few posts, and today I’d like to introduce another candidate: religious leaders from the major faiths of the world.

It’s truly sad how badly the current leaders of the world’s religions are faring as peacemakers. Their legacy is great. We don’t need to go as far back as Jesus of Nazareth, whose sharp words should be endlessly inspiring to people of any religion. Many great peacemakers of our recent past were religious figures: Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mother Teresa. The first two of these names are notable for their strict adherence to the doctrine of non-violence, and if anybody doubts the effectiveness of non-violence, they need only look at the success of the democratic, free, multi-cultural nation of India (which has weathered many crises but remains the brave nation Gandhi and his partners imagined into being) or the great progress made towards racial equality in America during the period when the innovative Martin Luther King was on television news every night. Here’s the surprising truth: non-violent protest works.

Unfortunately, no well-known religious leader of today compares to Mohatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King in either character or talent. I think I’ll refrain from naming names at this point (I’d rather buttress up my research before I start slinging any actual mud on this site, so please be patient and return soon). Today I’m just going to speak collectively about the whole set of Western religious leaders who are vocal about political issues today, including well-known representatives of various sects of Protestant Christianity, Catholicism, Sunni Islam, Shiite Islam, Orthodox Judaism, Hasidic Judaism, Reform Judaism. Yesterday I gave the politicans of the world a D+ for positive action towards peace. The religious leaders of the world, hmmm, well … is there an F-?

They are a disappointing lot. The Dalai Lama of Tibet is one exception — he’s a wonderful speaker and a humble Buddhist — but as wars rage and rockets fly and bombs fall I sometimes wish the Dalai Lama would meditate less and talk more.

Some mention Pope John Paul II as a peacemaker, and he was certainly inspiring in many ways. But in 1994 the Catholic nation of Rwanda burst into a orchestrated and politically motivated genocide, and the Vatican failed to find any way to influence events in this churchgoing nation. A million Catholics were killed by their fellow Catholics over the course of one scary month, often with the complicity of priests who allowed church grounds to be turned into slaughterhouses.  (When I discussed this with a Catholic friend, he angrily asked what I expected the Pope to do: “Did you expect him to deploy the Vatican army to Rwanda?”  Funny line, but what I expected the Pope to do was exercise his leadership to improve the situation.  There is a direct line of communication and accountability from the Vatican to the parish priests, and I would have expected a remarkable effort to influence events, using the powerful weapons known as words.)

Other than the Dalai Lama, the field of religious leaders who work for peace is pretty empty. If I’m forgetting somebody, please do post a comment and let me know.

I plan to be observing the words of some of the world’s well-known religious figures more closely on this site in the future. Tomorrow I’ll continue this series with another party that might be considered a productive contributor towards the cause of world peace: the United Nations. (Now stop laughing. Yes, I’m going to talk about the United Nations as a positive force for peace.)

When we complain about the wars that rage around us, we often ask why the politicians and military leaders of the world can’t discover the path to peace. In fact, it’s our mistake to assume that politicians and military leaders are suited to this task.

Why do we sit and wait for them to do everything? The problem with this approach is obvious: they are the ones at war. Since when do peacemakers sit back and wait for the warring parties to create peace? We’d have to wait a long time. A person engaged in leading a nation must think strategically. This is why there’s such a vile sense of gameplaying when the top leaders of the world meet to shake hands and kiss and discuss “the world’s problems”.

The real problem becomes clearer when you think of the fact that all of these politicians and national leaders must satisfy their own constituencies and prove to their supporters that they are capable of tough military action. This explains much of what we see from both Israel and Iran — in Israel, Olmert’s aggressive response to Hezbollah and Hamas is helping to establish his credibility as a successor to Ariel Sharon, and in Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is using the battle with Israel as a national call to unity. War is an essential political tool, and most political leaders are only capable of using it as such.

If peace is hard work (it is) and if we can’t trust our favorite politicians to do this work, who can we trust? Religious leaders? The United Nations? Independent organizations like Amnesty International? Artists and writers and musicians?  Theoreticians and academics? Journalists and bloggers? I’d like to spend the next few posts on this site examining this question in some detail.

In the past, political leaders have sometimes proved capable of working for peace. Jimmy Carter, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat come to mind (though Sadat sadly sacrificed his life for his actions, and Carter’s hard work failed to earn him re-election in 1980), as do Nelson Mandela and F. W. de Klerk in South Africa and Albert Reynolds, Gerry Adams and John Major in Northern Ireland and England. But if I had to grade the work of our current crop of world politicians in promoting world peace, I’d give the whole class a D+. And that’s just because I’m feeling generous. How do the other parties I mentioned above stack up? I’ll be writing more on this soon.