Reflections on War
There are conflicts all over the world, but the war in Ukraine is receiving much more attention than others in the media I’ve been watching. So many wars are given no prominence, because they are not being perpetrated on white people by white people.
I have also noticed that only a tiny percentage of women have participated in any of the official peace negotiations. My screens have been entirely male dominated. Yet analysis of forty peace processes since the end of the Cold War shows that where women were able to exercise a strong influence on the negotiations, an agreement was much more likely to be reached.
In Northern Ireland the women’s peace movement forced the men to the negotiating table, and the initial leader of the negotiations was a passionate working-class woman. But she became ill and was replaced by a man, and her massive contribution was erased.
War is largely a male enterprise—a hideous and heartbreaking manifestation of the distress patterns that men have been loaded up with. It is largely an enterprise of terribly hurt rich white men. I have watched many interviews with these men. They are incessantly on television now. I have noticed in the body language and tone of voice of some of the owning-class English men how excited they are about this war. They have been “talking it up” for weeks. (They are unlikely to be required to risk their lives in combat.)
The legacy of empire is in English minds and even more so in the minds of the owning-class males. They are brought up [raised] with the idea that they were born to rule. The “the good old days when Britain ruled the world” is their (unasked-for) inheritance, leading to arrogance and belligerence.
I’ve been discharging about the war toys most boys are given—to prepare them for war.
Olney, Buckinghamshire, England
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders of women
(Present Time 207, April 2022)