The Peace Department

a federal legislator proposes the creation of a cabinet-level secretariat dedicated to international amity and nonviolence

In August of 1914, as all of Europe fell into deadly conflict following the collapse of diplomacy and reason, the chancellor of Imperial Germany inquired of a member of the high command, "How did it all happen?" and received the reply, "Ah, if one only knew!" That answer exemplifies the historic futility that defeats man's intentions. The irrationality of war is universally acknowledged, but man seems helpless to alter the pattern of destruction. It is left to the survivors who survey the ashes of victory and defeat to resolve that it shall not happen again. But it always does.

In this century, more than in any other, man has sought to contain the devil in himself. Pacifism became a movement of international proportions and a favorite leitmotiv of literature and art. Statesmen spoke of eternal peace and their nations declared war illegal. But for all the peace conferences, international treaties, conscientious objectors and antiwar novels, history will describe this as an age of total brutality.

We are a generation of survivors who sometimes wonder whether it is possible to defy the darker impulses that seem to predestine us to disaster. There are some who would argue that the answer to the question is obvious. They point out that there have been only about 230 years of peace during more than 3000 years of recorded civilization, that aggression and violence are the natural outlets for the pressures placed by society upon the individual, that man is the only mammal except the rat that commonly kills members of his own species, that war is the way of the world. Sigmund Freud advised us to "Say not that a good cause justifies any war. Say, rather, that a good war justifies any cause.... War affords the joys of cold-blooded murder with a good conscience.... Whenever in our time a war breaks out, there also breaks out, and especially among the most noble members of the people, a secret desire. They throw themselves with delight against the new danger of death, because in the sacrifice for the fatherland they believe they have found at last the permission they have been seeking: the permission to evade their human purpose. War is for them a short cut to suicide. It enables them to commit suicide with a good conscience."

Certainly, the example of the past offers little encouragement for the future. One can justify the viewpoint that the story of man's existence is a narrative of perpetual warfare and define peace as merely a time of frantic preparation for more terrible conflicts. But because man's actions are not preordained and because the future is still ours to create, it is incumbent upon us to resist the insanity to which our ancestors submitted.

A poster that has won popularity throughout the country has it that War is not Healthy for Children and other Living things. As this is an irrefutable proposition, I would like to address myself to the problem of finding a way to avoid its miseries. For the United States, this is a particularly compelling concern; it is a somber fact of history that since the war with Spain in 1898, every generation of American men has seen combat in some part of the world.

The chauvinist will argue that the issue of war and peace is beyond our control. Arguing that some nations are born warlike and that others have wars thrust upon them, he declares that the United States rests benignly in the latter category and is, therefore, innocent of any guilt for international disorders. However, the chauvinist expresses a simplistic view, because wars are rarely confrontations between good and evil. Only a few of history's cataclysms were caused by the type of naked viciousness that motivated the Assyrian king who wrote, 3000 years ago, "I covered the lands of Saranit and Ammanit with ruins.... I chastised them, pursued their warriors like wild beasts, conquered their cities, took their gods with me. I made prisoners, seized their property, abandoned their cities to fire, laid them waste, destroyed them, made ruins and rubble of them, imposed on them the harshest yoke of my reign; and in their presence I made thank offerings to the God Assur, my Lord."

Wars are more often the product of the conflicting intentions of decent men who have lost the patience to negotiate their differences peacefully, or who have concluded that the battlefield offers the best opportunity to fulfill the national interest. According to Von Clausewitz, war is merely politics by other means. Of course, the reality of thermonuclear war has forced the superpowers to content themselves with diplomacy when dealing with one another. But in their relationships with weaker nations, the Clausewitz doctrine remains relevant to our times.

Because the United States is a democracy, we like to think that we are immune from the selfish instincts that lead dictatorships and oligarchies to war. But the confidence of millions of Americans in the pacific intentions of their country has been shaken by its participation in the war in Vietnam. We hear our leaders proclaim daily that international tranquillity is the primary objective of American foreign policy; however, we have witnessed for most of the past decade the massive application of the military might of the United States against a small agrarian country that could never threaten the security of this nation. Clearly, there is a gap between the United States' idealistic pronouncements and the reality of its actions. This war shattered the illusions of many who believed that this nation would accept the use of force as an effective arbiter of political differences only under extreme pressure. Now, those who have been awakened to the disturbing truth by the war in Vietnam realize that the conflict is the culmination of policies that motivated our use of force in Laos, Lebanon and the Dominican Republic.

We have transformed the quest for peace into a martial exercise. Claiming that tranquillity will come only when the intentions of the Communist forces of darkness have been subdued, the United States has committed itself to policing large areas of the world. The American concept of waging peace argues that the most effective way to enforce peace is to make war on those we consider to be potential aggressors. Bombing, napalming and defoliating in behalf of peace are considered virtuous exercises that enhance a nation's sense of moral rectitude. But Vietnam, great educator of American public opinion that it is, has taught us that the cause of peace is often little more than a cosmetic cynically applied to disguise the ugly reasons for war.

It is not only our muddled understanding of foreign affairs that has been responsible for the American participation in the war in Vietnam. There are internal factors that have made this society increasingly militaristic. During this and the past decade, violence has again shown itself to be a dangerous constituent of the national character and threatens the health of the republic. The martial spirit has insinuated itself not only into American foreign policy but also into the fabric of our domestic life. I find that the militant behavior that is conspicuous in our international relations is but a projection of the violence that we perpetrate within our own borders. The degeneration of restraint eventually colors all aspects of national behavior. It is more than a coincidence that the war in Vietnam is accompanied by a degree of domestic lawlessness that is without parallel in the history of the United States.

Another factor of American life that has been responsible for violence has been the unfortunate assumption of many citizens that xenophobia is the highest form of patriotism. Fifty-one years ago, in his essay Imperialism, the brilliant economist Joseph Schumpeter wrote: "Driven out everywhere else, the irrational seeks refuge in nationalism--the irrational which consists of belligerence, the need to hate, a goodly quota of inchoate idealism, the most naïve (and hence also the most unrestrained) egotism.... It satisfies the need for surrender to a concrete and familiar superpersonal cause, the need for self-glorification and violent self-assertion." Schumpeter went on to warn that "Whenever a vacuum arises in the mind of a people--as happens especially after exhausting social agitation, or after a war--the nationalist element comes to the fore."

There is always a hysterical segment of the population that believes that nuclearizing one's adversaries is the best way to achieve peace, and there is reason to assume that such an action would end the bickering on this planet once and for all. But these forces of ignorance have been encouraged rather than countervailed by the example that has been set by our leaders. It was not long ago that Barry Goldwater suggested that the United States "ought to lob one into the men's room of the Kremlin"; and it was not long ago that President Johnson responded to a minor provocation in the Gulf of Tonkin with the bombardment of North Vietnam.

The existence of the military-industrial complex is one of the main reasons for the militance of American foreign policy; and Robert Sherrill clearly (continued on page 230)Peace Department(continued from page 136) describes how this juggernaut maneuvers in the preceding article. Let me just say here that the M. I. C.'s influence is so pervasive that our society seems to be guided by the monster that it has created. An awesome amount of money and manpower is devoted to what social scientist Harold Lasswell of Yale once termed "the management of violence." The development of new weaponry appears to find justifications that are independent of strategic considerations. The forces that sponsor and encourage the creation of expensive and often unworkable war machines are so powerful that they can resist even the most reasoned opposition. Many members of the 91st Congress challenged the voracious appetite of the military for bigger and more sophisticated weapons. During the debate over the ABM and the Navy's proposed new fighter, the F-14--to cite only two examples--the senselessness of the new systems was exposed. Nevertheless, the tradition of Congressional acquiescence saved the day for the Pentagon and defense contractors. There seems to be no way to control defense contractors. There seems to be no way to control defense spending, which has grown from 11.8 billion dollars in 1948 to about 75 billion dollars during the past year. And those who believe that the end of the Vietnam war will release millions of dollars from the defense complex to the urban disaster areas of the United States will be gravely disappointed. As experts such as former Director of the Budget Charles Schultze point out, the savings gained by the end of the war would inevitably find their way into the defense pocketbook.

If we are to find a way to avoid the horrors of war, there must be a complete re-evaluation of the basic tenets of American foreign policy. More than a century ago, Lord Palmerston declared that "With every British minister, the interests of England ought to be the shibboleths of his policy." In contemporary America, we have seen the perversion of that idea, so that it is the shibboleths that determine the national interests and policies. The foreign policy of the United States is based upon the incantation of slogans that were robustly pertinent a generation ago but find scant application to the situations that prevail today. This country has dedicated itself to fighting an illusion called the international Communist monolith. And we are currently pursuing that phantom in the bloody rice paddies and highlands of Vietnam and Laos.

The dogma of anticommunism is a poor substitute for policy. We should consider the words of economist William Graham Sumner, who declared in 1934: "If you want a war, nourish a doctrine. Doctrines are the most frightful tyrants to which men are ever subject, because doctrines get inside of a man's reason and betray him against himself." Another great error of those who design our foreign policy has been their belief that history instructs us with parallels. The United States has tended to view all the crises that it has confronted since 1945 as exact replays of the Munich crisis of 1938. I think that it is about time that this country understand that the story of Munich does not discredit negotiation for all time. It teaches us little more than the simple lesson that if you should ever meet a man with a Charlie Chaplin mustache who calls himself Adolf Hitler and demands half of Czechoslovakia, you should not give in--if your name is Neville Chamberlain.

The vital signs for peace in our time are growing more feeble as the years pass. The tide of events indicates that we, too, shall be the victims of history. But I do not believe that the United States should submit docilely to a tragic destiny. We must take extraordinary steps to assert our control over the future.

And it is for this reason that I have proposed in the United States Senate the creation of a Department of Peace.

• • •

In this age of cynicism, there is a tendency to assume that idealism is an attitude that ignores the bitter realities of life. This is why many view the creation of a Department of Peace as a noble idea--perhaps vital for the health of the nation--but too visionary to escape the realm of imagination. I recently received a letter from a constituent who suggested facetiously that my Department of Peace be located next to a Ministry of Utopia.

As men have long dreamed of universal peace, it should not come as a surprise to learn that the idea of a Department of Peace is not original with its most recent advocate but is nearly as old as the republic itself. In the fall of 1792, the first edition of the almanac published by the well-known and versatile black American Benjamin Banneker featured an essay that began as follows:

Among the many defects that have been pointed out in the Federal Constitution by its antifederal enemies, it is much to be lamented that no person had taken notice of its total silence upon the subject of an office of the utmost importance to the welfare of the United States, that is, an office for promoting and preserving perpetual peace in our country.

It is hoped that no objection will be made to the establishment of such an office, while we are engaged in a war with the Indians, for as the War Office of the United States was established in the time of peace, it is equally reasonable that a Peace Office should be established in the time of war. ...

Let a Secretary of Peace be appointed to preside in this office, who shall be perfectly free from all the present absurd and vulgar European prejudices upon the subject of government; let him be a genuine republican and a sincere Christian, for the principles of republicanism and Christianity are no less friendly to universal and perpetual peace than they are to universal and equal liberty.

In 1799, this article was apparently plagiarized by Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence (the possibility exists that Rush did write the article in 1792 as a contribution to Banneker's almanac), and was titled A Plan of a Peace Office for the United States. During the course of American history, variations of this plan have been presented and endorsed by Congressmen and private citizens. In 1927, Kirby Page, the popular peace evangelist, presented a detailed argument for a Department of Peace that would operate with a budget of $100,000,000. Between 1935 and the time I introduced my Department of Peace Bill (in September of 1968), many similar proposals were made in the Congress. "Needed: A Department of Peace" was the title of an address delivered on the Senate floor by Karl Mundt in 1945. Representative Everett Dirksen of Illinois introduced a bill for "A Peace Division in the State Department" in 1947. Between 1955 and 1968, no fewer than 85 bills were introduced in the House or Senate in behalf of a Department of Peace. So my proposal is not something that has taken everybody by surprise. Rather, if I may paraphrase Victor Hugo, it is an idea whose time is long overdue.

Let me briefly describe the major functions of the Department of Peace as they are outlined in the bill I cosponsored with Representative Seymour Halpern of New York in February 1969.

First: The department is to "develop and recommend to the President appropriate plans, policies and programs designed to foster peace." Up to now, there has been no such broad assignment to any Federal agency.

Second: The department will "exercise leadership in coordinating all activities of the U. S. Government affecting the preservation or promotion of peace." This would centralize and enhance the effectiveness of the various peace plans, peace policies and peace programs that we currently have.

Third: The department will "cooperate with the governments of other nations in research and planning for the peaceful resolution of international conflict and encourage similar action by private institutions."

Fourth: The department will be responsible for aiding "the interchange of ideas and persons between private institutions and groups in the United States and those in other countries."

The department, under the direction of the Secretary of Peace, who will be a member of the President's Cabinet, will be given jurisdiction over the Agency for International Development, the Peace Corps, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and the functions of the International Agricultural Development Service (now in the Department of Agriculture).

The bill also provides that there shall be established under the Secretary of Peace an International Peace Institute. Its purpose will be to "prepare citizens of the United States for service in positions or programs relating to the field of promoting international understanding and peace."

Within the text of the bill is the recommendation that there be established within Congress a Joint Committee on Peace. Seven members of the committee will be appointed from the Senate by its president and seven House members will be chosen by the speaker. The joint committee will be able to hold hearings, to hire experts and consultants and to draw on the resources of both private and Government establishments.

The arguments that are heard most often in opposition to the proposal for a Department of Peace are that there is no need for it, because its equivalent is found in the Department of State; and that it would infringe on the unquestioned prerogative of the President to speak for the nation in matters dealing with the international relations of the United States. In my opinion, the former argument cannot withstand a critical examination of the facts of foreign affairs and the latter argument represents a misunderstanding of the purpose of the Department of Peace.

The United States needs a Department of Peace for many of the same reasons that it needs a Department of Justice. Most Americans are decent citizens who would obey the laws of the land even if they were not rigorously enforced. But because there exist forces and conditions within our society that motivate criminal activities, the people realize that the cause of justice cannot be like an unarmed prophet. If there is to be justice, the energies of society must be mobilized in its behalf. The same is true for the cause of peace.

At this time in our history, the cause of peace is like an unarmed prophet, because the sincerity of its appeal does not mitigate the fact that the forces in our Government concerned with the "management of violence" have grown enormously during this century. Since the foundation of the great republic, the pacific elements in the Government have steadily lost influence. In the 1790s, it was the expressed aim of the Government to avoid entanglement in the political affairs of foreign nations. There existed hardly the fragments of a standing army; there was no draft; there was no Pentagon; there was no military-industrial complex.

The Department of State does not countervail the influence of the bellicose tendencies within the Government; rather, it often tends to stimulate it. One must understand that the Department of State is entrusted with the formulation of policies that will maintain the worldwide interests of the United States. This does not mean that it is devoted to keeping the country out of war. In the crucial days of March 1968, when President Johnson had to decide whether to send an additional 260,000 troops to Vietnam, the State Department assumed a "hawkish" stance in urging the President to accede to General Westmoreland's request, while the Defense Department, under the leadership of Secretary Clark Clifford, advised him not to.

Considering the many advocates of force in the Government, it would be in the nation's best interest to redress the balance by establishing a Department of Peace. The idea of a balance of power is certainly an essential part of the American political system, and it can find a useful application in an issue as great as war and peace. The founding fathers did not institute a system of checks and balances because they believed that the Executive would necessarily contemplate the institution of a dictatorship nor because the Legislative would always be in the hands of irresponsible men. Rather, they appreciated the fact that power is used more judiciously when it must consider the sanctions of an inhibiting influence.

The Secretary of Peace would not compete with the President for primacy in the field of foreign relations. Actually, he could be of vital assistance as the devil's advocate of the Administration. As a truly independent voice within the Cabinet, he could offer the President the type of perspective that is not shackled by strategic considerations or short-term national interests. At the time when policy is formulated, the Secretary of Peace would address himself to the questions: Is the proposed action influenced unduly by military planning that should be subordinate to political considerations? and is the proposed action free of elements that might undermine the peaceful intentions of the United States and lead it--against its will--to war?

Earlier in this article, I suggested that war is the product of the violent and irrational component in the character of human beings. If we accept this thesis to be partially true (and many classic studies in the field of psychoanalysis have argued in its favor), then one of man's concerns should be not to provoke himself. What I mean by this is that a nation should not pursue policies that are likely to narrow the possibility of man's containing his anger. Our leaders have often expressed the fear that a thermonuclear holocaust is likely to be more the result of miscalculation than of design. During the Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy agonized over the way he might offer Premier Khrushchev a dignified retreat from total war. It is with this problem that the Department of Peace will concern itself: the problem of helping man avoid the "inevitable."

When we speak of a Department of Peace, we are discussing the means by which the idealism of the United States can be reconciled--not compromised--with the exigencies of political life. We are asking how a nation can fulfill its obligation to civilization through the power of its example, rather than the force of its arms. A nation must defend those interests that are essential to its survival; but the creation of a Department of Peace will symbolize our realization that first among those interests is the preservation of the nation's sense of moral responsibility. For the American people know that through their actions, they must fulfill the vision of their purpose that inspired Edmund Burke to declare, nearly two centuries ago: "When the empire of America shall fall, the subject of contemplative sorrow will be infinitely greater than crumbling brass and marble can inspire. It will not then be said, here stood a temple of vast antiquity, here rose a Babel of invisible height, or there a palace of sumptuous extravagance, but there, a painful thought, the noblest work of human wisdom, the grand scene of human glory, the fair cause of freedom, rose and fell."