International Peace Day caused me to discover something very interesting that I will share with you in this article.
I tried more than usual that day to think about the things that create peace. I am not the only one who struggles with this issue, of course. There are some wonderful people and organizations making contributions, organizations I need to know about. So I noticed immediately in an article out of Lebanon a reference to The Institute of Economics and Peace. The author, Rubina AbuZeinab Chahine pointed out that without understanding the factors that support peace and having means to measure these, it is not possible to know what policies work or what programs we might implement to nudge society toward peace. In recognition of this truth, the Institute of Economics and Peace produces annually the Global Peace Index. The reason for the very existence of such an institute and such a study is the obvious relationship between peace and economics. Nothing will produce poverty and homelessness quicker than civil war, and countries struggling with the expenses of large military machines will be forced to spend less on the well-being of their citizens. The inability to pay for housing and food will by itself create refugees, if fear of death is not enough. And the more money a nation spends to support armies and conflicts, the more likely the people are to suffer economically, and the more the government may become indebted.
At the same time countries that live by the manufacture of implements of war may develop an attraction for war and welcome the prosperity it appears to bring. Seeing this, Dwight Eisenhower, army general and president of the U.S. warned us about becoming a military-industrial complex, so trapped by an economic necessity that we are unable to make honest moral judgements.
I am reminded of the very sad day in 1942, not long after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when my best friend in junior high school suddenly moved away, because her father saw job opportunities in California. He found a job and worked in ship-building, I believe, until the factory city was reported to be a target of the enemy, and then they suddenly showed up back in Arkansas. In my adolescence I puzzled over his desire for the benefit of the war together with his unwillingness to risk anything. We were, in fact, living with two conflicting factors in war: the jobs and prosperity created on one hand, the possible loss of it all on the other.
In Lebanon I witnessed the latter. Numerous times in my book I mention money, with every reference a mere reciting of the reduced value of the Lebanese lira. In the 1970s and even for numerous years of the civil war that began in 1975 the Lebanese lira stood firmly in its relationship to the American dollar. One dollar would bring us approximately three lira at the money changer. This varied by only a few piasters in one direction or the other. And then the lira began to slide. At the publishing house, we paid our employees in Lebanese lira. This meant that each month their salaries were worth less in the market. In an effort to be fair, I began giving “bonuses” at the end of the month, amounts calculated to maintain the same dollar amount. This was not easy, because our income was partially in dollars and partially in lira. Most companies made some kind of adjustments to take care of their employees, but those who were totally dependent on the local economy to keep going were disadvantaged.
At the same there were companies with so much business that their problem was just how to produce enough of their product to meet the demand. For instance, the glass manufacturers. In a city in which people live in apartment buildings, there are millions of windows, and windows will break from concussion, without receiving a direct hit. I knew people who lost their windows and waited months for their orders for new glass to be filled. This caused us to joke that the war was sponsored by the glass manufacturers.
By the time the war ended, the economy of Lebanon was in shambles, and our mission was distributing food. But certain people and companies had become enormously rich. Providers of window glass surely had fun when peace came, providing for all those repairs and new buildings. Because of very frequent power outages, created by bombing during the war, manufacturers of home generators had not only prospered but become very powerful. Without knowing these people personally but knowing a few other things, I strongly suspect that their political pressure, hand-in-hand with corruption such as the acceptance of bribes, has kept Lebanon from rebuilding its energy system. I know that the power plants were destroyed again in 2006 by the Israeli air force, but that has been nine years and until now there are daily power cuts and many families consider their generator a necessity.
The economic prosperity of a country is affected in both the short and the long-term by civil or international conflict, so economic factors are an integral part of the studies done by the Institute of Economics and Peace. Their Global Peace Index is based on 23 qualitative indicators that gauge the level of peace in 162 countries. As I understand it, this is about the peace they are enjoying and the level of their cooperation in creating peace for others. These indicators are grouped into three broad themes:
Level of safety and security in a society
The number of international and domestic conflicts the country is involved in
Degree of militarization
Each country is given a score, based on these factors, and then a standing with the lowest score earning the best rank.
I googled the report and read the list. I am sharing just a few of the rankings.
Iceland…1
Denmark…2
Austria…3
Canada…7
Japan…8
USA…94
Saudi Arabia…95
Mexico…144
Lebanon….145
Yemen….147
Israel….148
Afghanistan…160
Iraq…161
Syria…162 (the country with the least peace)
Included in their global report for 2015 is this information: “The total economic import of violence last year reached 14.3 trillion U.S $, or 13.4% of global GDP. That’s equivalent to the combined economies of Canada, France, Germany, Spain and the UK.”
I wonder how much of this money came out of our American pockets? And I raise a question to think about: how much peace has it bought us? Perhaps the better question is: what has it bought for the world?