How to face the new international conflicts? That’s the question. How to manage them? How to contain their threat? How to try to solve them? These questions are very tough and the present political actors nor the diplomats are really able to bring very serious and new answers to these questions, and this is probably why we are not really able to rule our new world. If there are new conflicts, it’s because there is a new kind of international violence, it’s no more a political, a classical interstate violence, but an international violence which is coming from societies, which is produced by social actors. If we want to take into account these new international conflicts, to have a new vision and a more efficient vision to these conflicts, we have to give priority to the social parameters, and to leave aside the classical interstate parameters. We have to go back to the main factor of these new conflicts, that’s to say the lack of social integration. This new violence takes place where social integration is weak, takes place where the human development indicators are particularly low. If you compare the map of conflicts, of new conflicts and the map of human development integration, you will see the coincidence; you will see that the same zones are at stake. So we have to focus on this lack of social integration, we have to understand why there is such a poor social integration, why the traditional social links are no more working. The main point is to consider these new conflicts as leading to war societies, as I briefly mentioned in my previous lecture. What is a war society? A war society is first of all a society in which war is lasting. If you look at the present conflicts, could you imagine that the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo is 55 years old? The Somalia conflict is 30 years old. The Afghanistan conflict is 40 years old? That’s to say we are facing a new kind of conflict in which people, the major part of the population, don’t have never lived in a peaceful situation, in which people were born during war, grew up during war, and died during war, that’s to say war is getting the trivial situation of their daily life. This is the first characteristic of the new conflicts and of the war society. War society is also a society in which the institutional integration is low, that’s to say a society in which state doesn’t work, a society in which social contract doesn’t work, in a society which is deprived of state authority and which is deprived of social contract has to find other kinds of authority. In a war society, warlords and militias are providing the minimal authority, which is needed for a working and an efficient society. The third and the most important point is a war society, is a society in which the human needs are satisfied by war, that’s to say: food security, health security, education, socialization, respect, dignity are provided by war. This seems to be a paradox, it’s a terrible paradox, but how can we explain the success of mobilizing child soldiers if we don’t take these factors not into account? That’s to say if so many children go to militia, go to army in these new international conflicts, it’s because they know they will be able to find food, to find shelters, to find dignity and respect in participating into the militias, that is an awful and dreadful situation, but however it’s now a common situation. That’s to say this war society is reorganizing the social links around the world, war is providing economy, war is providing social security, social solidarity, war is providing social status, what the current and traditional society is not able to do. That’s why now containing the new international conflicts implies to substitute to these war societies a real civil society. The question is simple: How to move from a war society to a civil society? How to contain these transformations of societies into war societies? Is it by using military instrument? The experience has shown that military instrument is powerless for containing these transformations, and even, military instrument is worsening the situation. If you mobilize, if you use military instrument against war societies, you fuel the war society, you reinforce the war society. War societies need to be fought through the military instrument for reinforcing its own legitimacy and its own authority structure. So the ways are double. First of all: reinventing diplomacy. Diplomacy has to invent new instruments, new visions, new visions, which would be able to include the social parameters instead of ignoring them, and a new diplomacy which would be able to bridge with non-state actors, instead of deciding that there is no way for talking with non-state actors. It’s exactly the contrary, as we are facing new kinds of conflicts, our first priority must be to find a way for bridging relations with these non-state actors, for creating, initiating a new kind of negotiation, and of transaction with them. And the second way is to consider that new international conflicts imply social treatment. If the new factor of war is to be found in the social reality, the solution is also to be found in the social reality. That’s to say, it’s through a transformation of those pathologic societies that we have a chance to find a solution, or a beginning of solution. If the lack of social integration is the real factor of the new international conflicts, we have to work on the conditions of social integration and to find a way to the new conditions of reinventing social links, reinventing social civil society. It is through this reinvention of civil society that we will be able to solve this very dreadful sequence of our history.
