Interview of Johan Galtung by Jamouli Ouzidane 1- What is you definition of conflict and violence, can you say something about your innovative new concept of peace in your book with your Conflict triangle of violence (direct-culutral-structural) and peace (keeping-making-building) ? Is it not a way to reduce the complexity of the subject ? You did't talk to my knowledge about the specific violence by means of Wealth (Capital) and Knowledge (cybernetics, psychology) and how to deal with them. You said ; "By peace we mean the capacity to transform conflicts with empathy, without violence, and creatively- a never-ending process." is it not an idealism and reductionism posture ? 2- Truly, you are a know intellectual man of peace, it seems to me that this is a naïve ideology of goodness while reality, history and actual event prove that human condition is a condition of eternal war; of predators and preys and the dilemma of prisoners is solved only in mathematical game simulation but never in reality. I will not go through history and actual wars and human tragedy. This is why I would call you a man of idealism fighting men of ideologies; a continual war on ideas; still in Pato's cavern. Are you aware of the failure of peace ideologies though history, So, What really keeps you on fighting knowing the non existing impact of your ideals? 3- You talk In RT about the fall of Empire and the end of wars, I mean any historian would tell you that empire falls to only make way to a new Empire. War is an invariant in human history. The USSR Empire has fallen to leave us with a unique US empire. It's great of you to project 2020 as its fall (we see it these days with Trump), but you have China coming. Ibn Khaldoun talk about an never ending 4 cycles history going straight to chaos. The French and Soviet revolutions are cycles where the Capital is regenerated under another name to perpetuate the state which must not collapse. 4- There is a significant confusion when you talk about Power but never really pointing you focus on State who is the real power with his grip on all the resources and institutions: Natural and human resources, Finance, culture, education, Science-tec ... Authority is in our institution (Foucault). Marxism made a big mistake is destroying state but putting a authoritarian socialist state in its place and so never going to their third stage; destroying the socialist state. The anarchists have better vision. So where is the deficiency in all those revolutions 5- People have an internal predator in their own states, we can see it in arab spring revolution against dictators but also in democratic states like in France (gilets jaunes) and the US (the insurrection in Washington these days). Are you with reforming states or destroying theme and proposing another alternative of living together in natural harmony 6- we are in true dialectical dilemma to respond to states and power; violent revolution and the state will respond by violence or peaceful demonstration and state will respond with cynical legal actions; he has the politicians and the media to portray the peaceful march asviolent mobs. Is there a third path apart from violence and peace to resolve this dilemma? 7- What are your thoughts in the arab spring? Why did they finish in terror? Why the democratic West did'nt supported they and was happy of the military against revolution like the one of Sissy 8- What are your thoughs about the Algerian fight for democratic government never succeeding? What is the cause of failure and how to gain freedom? 9- what is your thought oh the greatest of all the conflits ; the clash of civilisation between West and Islam? Is Islam really a threat to Western civilisation or is it just a manufacting threat to hide the hegemony and in the same time the moral failure of the West in their endless wars starting from crusades to colonisation and ending in the middle east wars ? Please come back for the answers soon !
