Peace in the Face of War

peace. War bears some resemblance to revolution. Revolution is destructive
and fatal. At the same time, new creative forces can rise up in revolutions, and
new life can emerge. What we must wish for are not destructive and fateful
wars and revolutions, but a creative, free transfiguration of life. And if war is a
matter of fate, embodied in the enigmatic, sinister figure of a German dictator,
then may the life, which springs up after the war, be a matter of freedom.
Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948) was a religious and political philosopher with a prodigious output
of nearly 500 books and articles. He remained a fiercely independent thinker even while a Marxist,
which he later renounced, and subsequently as a practising Christian in the Russian Orthodox
Church. He would take the Church to task on institutional policies that interfered with the
freedom and creativity lying at the heart of his thought: such as departing from tradition in favour
of nationalism, refusing to disdain anti-Semitism, or perpetuating the drive to become the Third
Rome.
We are hugely indebted to Mike Whitton in the preparation of this essay for publication. Mike
translated the first draft from the original Russian. His other translations include the first and last
theological works by Sergei Bulgakov, The Unfading Light (Kindle) and A Commentary on the Book
of Reve- lation (soon to be published).
GIVING PEACE A CHANCE
ANDREW WHITE
ALMOST EVERY DAY I AM contacted by people who want to talk to me about
peace-making. Often they have good ideas – they want to develop intercommunity
relations, perhaps to host some sports activity that would bring
together young people of different religions, races or tribes. Initiatives like
these are important, but I have to confess I have very little experience in this
area. In Iraq, to be honest, I have learned that the established strategies for
resolving conflict – working through political issues, restoring civil society,
supporting the moderates, involving women – are mostly ineffectual. What
is more productive, I have found, is to gain an understanding specifically
of the people who are responsible for the violence and of their culture,
religion, traditions and everything that shapes their expectations. These
are the influences that propel people into conflict; these are the factors that
complicate its resolution.
In the early days after the liberation of Iraq, so much of what we did was aimed
at finding political solutions that we thought would engineer change and
generate hope. It would have been wonderful if those initiatives had worked,
but most of them did not. Of the six working parties set up by the Iraqi Centre
for Dialogue, Reconciliation and Peace in early 2004, for example, only the
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