Culture as an engine of peace and development
Published on Monday, December 29, 2008
.By Jean H Charles
My own empirical survey has indicated there are three soft engines of peace and welfare that a nation can build its development upon. They are: ideology, religion and culture. To end poverty in our time, the major stakeholders must agree to play together a partition that includes taking into context those variables that will lead to a better world. The United Nations, the United States, Canada, Japan, the European Union, Russia, China, India and Brazil should help to create nations out of the countries of the world with creativity and engagement using culture as a strategic tool.
Peace and prosperity in the underdeveloped world is above all a cultural demarche before it can be processed into a political reality. The fact that the Kurds, the Shiites and the Sunnis are fighting each other in Iraq constitutes the major detriment to that country’s economic development. There are enough resources for each Iraqi to lead a prosperous life, yet each clan is postponing the advent of prosperity through infighting and self destruction. Afghanistan offers the same macabre spectacle of self destruction because of the ill apprehension of its cultural assets and impediments. Peace will not happen until the cultural barrier that impedes the integration of all the sectors is broken down to create a united front.
Northern Ireland’s former arch rivals Ian Paisley and Sinn Fein embracing each other at the Good Friday agreement is the ultimate example that democracy is first a cultural process. As soon as the Protestants and the Catholics have understood they are the sons and the daughters of the same nation, sharing the same cultural values, peace and prosperity have became the lot of the entire country. The same concept will be true for Afghanistan, Pakistan, Algeria, Nigeria, Somalia and the Sudan.
My novel advocacy centered on the concept that the culture of nationhood should be the first building block, even before you lay down the notion of free and fair election as the panacea for democracy building. A nation is a country that is willing to unite all the composites of its population to enjoy the glory of its past and forge a future together where no one will be left behind. The few countries that have taken the steps to use that tool as an ingredient of peace and development have achieved great success in very little time: Singapore, Malaysia (Muslim), Ireland (Christian) are model nations to emulate. In Haiti, eighty years ago, an icon of cultural renaissance, Dr Jean Price Mars, in a seminal book, “Ainsi parla l’oncle” (As told by the uncle), galvanized the Haitian people in particular, and all the black people in general, into looking into themselves to find the courage to find the beauty within, to build the indigenous movement that should have led to the renaissance of their respective countries. He was the precursor of the notion in America that Black is Beautiful as well as the father of the cultural self revaluation that produced Senghor of Senegal, Sekou Toure of Guinea, Martin Luther King of America and even later Nelson Mandela of South Africa. This cultural revival has also been, alas, prostituted by self serving and venal black politicians, to produce also Duvalier and Mugabe who contributed and contribute encore to abort the emancipation of the left behind in Haiti or in Africa. The United Nations peacekeeping missions, in spite of their role of preponderance in alleviating the world problems, have been a disconcerting factor in bringing about world peace. The UN missions around the globe have been bureaucratic machines, busy seeking a major role and a bigger mandate in each conflict, yet unable to satisfy the most minimal goal. It reminds me squarely of the position of the child who keeps asking for a bigger toy while leaving aside the ones already at hand. The UN missions have not been using the tools of cultural integration to produce nations out of the countries at war. East Timor (10 years of UN engagement), Haiti (20 years) and Congo Brazzaville (40 years) are excellent examples of the arrogance and the ineptitude of those missions. Those three states are plunging deeper and deeper into the failed state status while they have been under the watch of the UN Missions for decades. Creating nations out of the countries in conflict should have been the primary goal of the UN peacekeeping missions. This task requires specialists with knowledge and skills beyond the handling of an AK100. The UN will have to recruit entire army of young specialists in conflict resolution, coalition building, cultural anthropology and community organization if it wants to have a positive impact on war and peace on poverty and wealth on ecologic degradation and nature rehabilitation in this damaged world. On the other side, the major global nations cannot continue to play at best a flawed note, at worst a discordant one. Now is the time for the United Sates and Europe to help China and India make a quantum leap towards a green and sustainable development module towards their industrialization process. This step alone will contribute to create a better world for everybody. The engine of the green revolution retooled in China and India will facilitate the propulsion of the entire globe. The universe cannot afford for those countries (each with one billion plus population) to follow the old model of the West in reaping the raw material of Africa and of the rest of the underdeveloped world to satisfy the needs of their growing middle class population. There are not enough resources for the bandit’s culture of tabula rasa of the past. Damn the Americans and the Europeans as long as we the Chinese and the Indians can put our hand unto the oil and the ore of Africa and the rest of the underdeveloped world! In this time of peace on earth, a paradigm shift must be found to seek out the best angels out of the souls of the warring sectors so they themselves can turn into agents of peace and development. Cultural traits and indigenous values can also be an impediment to development. My own empirical observation has indicated that the countries formerly colonized by France and by Belgium have a much more difficult time achieving indices of democracy and prosperity than those that were colonized by England or other colonizing empires. The seeds of cultural dissension planted by the French or the Belgians are strong and deep into the ethos of the former colonized citizens. They are still haunting the people in places as diverse as Haiti and Louisiana in the Western Hemisphere, Congo Brazzaville, Guinea, Chad, Algeria, Senegal, and Niger in Africa and Cambodia in Asia. The French people should look into their own soul to find the roots of this destructive cultural trait and share that knowledge and the remedy with their former colonized entities. Nicholas Sarkorzy may have an inkling. He is trying to change the French people, malgré eux… but, this is the topic of another essay!
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