Condition(s) of Peace

Abstract

‘Ladies and gentlemen, the time for peace has come.’ The late Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister of Israel

The conditions in which peace can exist are now just what they have always been (even if time and place make them appear different): a higher expected utility from peace than from war; a ‘civic culture’; a commitment to the peaceful resolution of disputes; strong institutions; an ethical code; mutual legitimization; peacemakers (because peace is socially constructed); a social-communicative process; material and normative resources; social learning (to take us from here to there); shared trust; and, most important, a collective purpose and social identity. As I will explain below, these are not ‘necessary’ conditions in any formal sense. Nor are there really sufficient conditions of peace, other, perhaps, than lobotomy and the total elimination of weapons, including fingernails.