Peaceful Evolution Research Articles

The evolution of democratic peace in animal societies

A major goal in evolutionary biology is to elucidate common principles that drive human and other animal societies to adopt either a warlike or peaceful nature. One proposed explanation for the variation in aggression between human societies is the democratic peace hypothesis. According to this theory, autocracies are more warlike than democracies because autocratic leaders can pursue fights for private gain. However, autocratic and democratic decision-making processes are not unique to humans and are widely observed across a diverse range of non-human animal societies. We use evolutionary game theory to evaluate whether the logic of democratic peace may apply across taxa; specifically adapting the classic Hawk-Dove model to consider conflict decisions made by groups rather than individuals. We find support for the democratic peace hypothesis without mechanisms involving complex human institutions and discuss how these findings might be relevant to non-human animal societies. We suggest that the degree to which collective decisions are shared may explain variation in the intensity of intergroup conflict in nature.

The evolution of peace (and war) is driven by an elementary social interaction mechanism.

Here we revise Glowacki's model by proposing a simple and empirically tested mechanism that is applicable to a comprehensive set of social interactions. This parsimonious mechanism accounts for the choice of both cooperative and peaceful alternatives and explains when each choice benefits the interacting parties. It is proposed that this mechanism is key to the evolution of both peace and conflict.

Students’ Awareness of Identifying and Preventing Plots and Tricks of Hostile Forces in “Peaceful Evolution” Strategy in Vietnam

In the current context of globalization and deep international integration, hostile forces continue to adjust their strategy of “peaceful evolution” in many aspects with increasing sophistication. So, correctly identifying and exposing the new face of this strategy has strategic orientation in the fight against “peaceful evolution” in Vietnam today. With the historical – logical research method, the synthesis – analysis research method applied in the article contributes to the general identification and analysis of plots and tricks of the “peaceful evolution” strategy ” of hostile forces in Vietnam. The research results have contributed to proposing practical solutions to raise awareness for students in identifying and fighting against plots and strategic tricks of “peaceful evolution” by political parties are attacking the current education environment.

The role of religion in the evolution of peace.

Glowacki's account overlooks the role of religion in the regulation of cooperation, tolerance, and peace values. We interrogate three premises of Glowacki's argument and suggest that approaching religion as an adaptive system reveals how religious commitments and practices likely had a more substantial impact on the evolution of peace and conflict than currently presumed.

A game of raids: Expanding on a game theoretical approach utilising the prisoner's dilemma and ethnography in situ.

In this commentary, we set out the specifics of how Glowacki's game theoretical framework for the evolution of peace could be incorporated within broader cultural evolutionary approaches. We outline a formal proposal for prisoner's dilemma games investigating raid-based conflict. We also centre an ethnographic lens to understand the norms surrounding war and peace in intergroup interactions in small-scale communities.

Order, Disorder, Reorder: Can The Liberal International Order “Survive” the Sino-American Competition?

The future of international politics today hinges on how the Sino-American rivalry unfolds. Views vary from expectations of peaceful evolution to hegemonic transition, but many fail to recognize the significant role the liberal international order (LIO) can play in shaping the course of events. Thanks to its structure and adaptability, the LIO is more than the mere environment surrounding this rivalry and may be the primary determinant of American and Chinese choices, steering relations toward cooperation. The success of the LIO during the post-WWII era is notably the product of the environment it has managed to create, characterized by mutual gains, as well as considerable costs in the event of a revisionist disruption. Moreover, the LIO has a structural character that enables it to exert influence on state behavior. This article, drawing on liberal internationalist theory, contends that the LIO demonstrates the substantial potential to emerge as the ultimate “victor” amidst the intensifying rivalry between the two major actors. By evaluating multiple arguments, the analysis concludes that a reformed version of the LIO, which accommodates both American and Chinese aspirations, includes a dual leadership mechanism in decision-making, and reflects the newly shaped power dynamics, offers a viable solution to the Sino-American competition.

Japan in the New Lunar Space Race

The United States and China draw the most attention in the new lunar space race. But other spacefaring countries are also important to its peaceful evolution. In this paper, we focus on the activities of one of the world's preeminent space powers, which remains underappreciated in academic and policy circles concerned with the lunar landscape—Japan. We provide an overview of Japan's changed law and policy context and illuminate the historical, international, and institutional trajectories that are positioning Japan's role in the unfolding competition over celestial bodies. We conclude with the broader significance of Japan's activities for prosperity, stability, and leadership in the international space order.

Strategic Vigilance: Mao's “Anti-Peaceful Evolution” Strategy and China's Policy toward the United States, 1959–1976

Abstract In late 1959, Mao Zedong publicly articulated his Anti-Peaceful Evolution strategy in response to U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles's promotion of the “peaceful evolution toward democracy” in a series of recent speeches. Mao's new strategy, which was heavily influenced by the internal and external pressures he faced, became the ideological foundation of his ultra-radical, uncompromising policy toward the United States. This article analyzes the influence of his anti-revisionist ideology and permanent revolution theory, as well as the distorting effects of incoming information. Mao was intent on countering Dulles and undercutting U.S. foreign policy more broadly.

The evolution of peace.

While some species have affiliative and even cooperative interactions between individuals of different social groups, humans are alone in having durable, positive-sum, interdependent relationships across unrelated social groups. Our capacity to have harmonious relationships that cross group boundaries is an important aspect of our species' success, allowing for the exchange of ideas, materials, and ultimately enabling cumulative cultural evolution. Knowledge about the conditions required for peaceful intergroup relationships is critical for understanding the success of our species and building a more peaceful world. How do humans create harmonious relationships across group boundaries and when did this capacity emerge in the human lineage? Answering these questions involves considering the costs and benefits of intergroup cooperation and aggression, for oneself, one's group, and one's neighbor. Taking a game theoretical perspective provides new insights into the difficulties of removing the threat of war and reveals an ironic logic to peace - the factors that enable peace also facilitate the increased scale and destructiveness of conflict. In what follows, I explore the conditions required for peace, why they are so difficult to achieve, and when we expect peace to have emerged in the human lineage. I argue that intergroup cooperation was an important component of human relationships and a selective force in our species history beginning at least 300 thousand years. But the preconditions for peace only emerged in the past 100 thousand years and likely coexisted with intermittent intergroup violence which would have also been an important and selective force in our species' history.

Inside the Global Drive for Cyber Peace

Too often, the international community is focused on responding to the latest cyber attack, disinformation campaign, or escalation. From ranswomware afflicting the City of Baltimore to state-sponsored campaigns targeting electrical grids in Ukraine and the United States, we seem to have relatively little bandwidth left over for asking the big questions, including: what is the best we can hope for in terms of “peace” on the Internet, and how might we be able to get there? More broadly, what are the long-term implications for such pervasive cyber insecurity across the public and private sectors, and how might they be curtailed? This Article dives into the history and evolution of cyber peace, including an analysis of lessons from analogous contexts such as U.N. peacekeeping efforts and the Digital Blue Helmets Initiative. These findings are then contextualized by reviewing recent efforts aimed at promoting cyber peace, including the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace, the Christ Church Call, U.N.-centered norm building efforts such as through the Group of Government Experts, Global Commission on Cyber Stability, and the Digital Geneva Convention. These efforts are conceptualized within a polycentric framework, emphasizing practical implications for practitioners and policymakers.

Spirituality in the global age: theory of religious cycles and its implications

In modern times there have been numerous at-tempts by scholars to theorize about religion. Most of those theories reduced religion to other spheres of social activity – social, economic, or psychological. Now, in the 21st century, those radical predictions about the “death of God” seem shortsighted. After a temporary retreat reli-gion came back with increased influence, power, and, unfortunately, violence. What are the pre-conditions for a peaceful evolution of religious institutions? Are religious systems simply power structures that inevitably involve violence and abuse, and to eradicate the war should we also get rid of religion? Those and many other related issues concerning religion’s role in society be-come especially important in our time of the increasing globalization. This paper looks at religion in the global age through the prism of the theory of religious cycles that is outlined by the author. According to his approach, in the course of its evolution, every historical religion goes through specific and almost identical stages of growth. Based on a distinct correlation be-tween sacred scriptures and traditions, the author distinguishes six such phases – formative, or-thodox, classical, reformist, critical, and postcritical. Also, in the course of its expansion reli-gious system undergoes two types of crises – structural and systemic. The author applies his theory of religious cycles to the analysis of such world spiritual traditions as Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. The study reveals astounding similarities in the evolution of those faiths, offers a different perspective on moderni-ty and predicts the rise of new religious move-ments with globalist teachings and institutions.

Peace data: Concept, measurement, patterns, and research agenda

This data article reviews the revised “peace data,” describing the motivations behind them and offering a general description of the different peace scale levels—severe rivalry, lesser rivalry, negative peace, warm peace, and security community respectively. A brief overview of the evolution of peace and rivalry for the 1900–2015 period is presented. Peace in the international system has increased over time, with a decline in rivalries and an increase in security communities being the most notable findings. The article concludes with a discussion of how the peace data might be used to address new questions in international relations research or reconfigure existing ones.

The evolution of intergroup tolerance in nonhuman primates and humans.

Primate individuals use a variety of strategies in intergroup encounters, from aggression to tolerance; however, recent focus on the evolution of either warfare or peace has come at the cost of characterizing this variability. We identify evolutionary advantages that may incentivize tolerance toward extra-group individuals in humans and nonhuman primates, including enhanced benefits in the domains of transfer, mating, and food acquisition. We highlight the role these factors play in the flexibility of gorilla, chimpanzee, bonobo, and human behavior. Given humans have an especially broad range of intergroup behavior, we explore how the human foraging ecology, especially large spatial and temporal fluctuations in resource availability, may have selected for a greater reliance on tolerant between-community relationships-relationships reinforced by status acquisition and cultural institutions. We conclude by urging careful, theoretically motivated study of behavioral flexibility in intergroup encounters in humans and the nonhuman great apes.

Geographies of peace and violence during conflict: The case of the Alavanyo-Nkonya boundary dispute in Ghana

Literature on the geographies of peace and violence suggest that the evolution of peace and violence during conflict can be traced as a process in distinct situated contexts. Based on the case of the almost-century-old boundary dispute between Alavanyo and Nkonya in Ghana, this study conducts a temporal analysis of primary and secondary data to demonstrate how incidents of violence and peace-building activities contribute to different peace(s) at different times. The study finds that processes such as encroachment, mediation, militarization, adjudication and tenancy atonement in the course of this conflict, have contributed to various manifestations of peace (‘peace-ful concepts’) such as reconciliation, resistance, hospitality, justice and solidarity. It also argues that the ‘geographic ambiguity’ that has attended the boundary (re)formation between the disputing communities creates uncertainties that have implications for peace-building. Based on this evidence, the study concludes that peace-ful concepts are differentiated by how much they accommodate ‘violence’ and the evolution of peace in times of conflict is shaped more through the informal choices of parties in or affected by conflict, than by the formal institutions regulating their interactions. It recommends therefore that an understanding of geographical implications of peace-building are necessary for success.

An Analysis of the Anti-socialist Nature of Neo-liberalism

ABSTRACTNeo-liberalism, the intellectual child of Friedrich von Hayek, has represented an anti-historical trend ever since its beginnings in the 1920s and 1930s. Espousing privatization, marketization and liberalization as their core ideas, the members of the Hayek group have consistently advocated against socialism. Since the 1980s, neo-liberalism has been transformed into a theoretical weapon of US and British international monopoly finance capital as the latter has sought to impose its global hegemony, stifling socialist movements in capitalist countries and promoting the peaceful evolution of the socialist countries toward capitalism. For more than 30 years, the Western countries have never stopped using neo-liberalism as they attempt to disrupt and misdirect China’s reform and opening up. We must continue to study and criticize neo-liberalism in depth, and must ensure the healthy development of China’s reform, opening up and modernization along the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

세계화 시대, 화평연변(和平演變)에 대한 중국의 인식 및 대응

세계화 시대, 화평연변(和平演變)에 대한 중국의 인식 및 대응

Book Review: Gary Goertz, Paul F Diehl and Alexandru Balas, The Puzzle of Peace: The Evolution of Peace in the International System

Book Review: Gary Goertz, Paul F Diehl and Alexandru Balas, <i>The Puzzle of Peace: The Evolution of Peace in the International System</i>

John William Graham and the Evolution of Peace: A Quaker View of Conflict before and during the First World War

John William Graham was the author of Conscription and Conscience (1922), the official history of the No-Conscription Fellowship. The commission to write it was based on his status as advocate and activist in the cause for peace, dating from well before the First World War, and continuing until his death in 1932. Yet he never committed himself to an absolute pacifism. This article attributes this stance mainly to his belief in social evolution: God was working within human beings to bring about universal peace, but this progress had to take place slowly and in stages. War had been necessary in the past to develop human character and political organisation, but now it was obsolescent. Quaker pacifism bore witness to an ideal of peace that was to be fulfilled hereafter. Quakers were to lead the way, but meanwhile the use of force could not be universally abjured. Relativism was built into the evolutionary outlook.

The Evolution of the Concept of International Peace and Security in light of UN Security Council Practice (End of the Cold War-Until Now)

With the start of globalization and the third millennium, international peace and security have gradually lost their traditional westphalian notion and have become complicated. The nature of threats against international peace and security has also spread to political, economical, social and environmental aspects as well as military ones. Therefore, it is not just governments who are responsible for establishing international peace and security; rather all the actors of the international system including individuals and major international bodies have their own share in bringing about peace and security. In this regard, UN Security Council, which is the most significant pillar of UN and guardian of international peace and security, has faced multiple challenges during its lifetime. During the Cold War and due to the competition between west and east superpowers, this council has proved principally impotent in encountering international crises. When the Cold War came to an end and the Soviet Union collapsed, there had been offered a great chance to the council to analyze international affairs with a new approach. The evolution of international peace and security notion and new interpretations of threats are the most manifested matters of the council in the post-Cold War era. This has proceeded to an extend that sometimes finding a legal status for the measures of the UN Security Council is difficult and the council has become sort of a legislator in the world. The most important issues that were addressed in the Council regarding international peace and security in post-Cold War era have been human rights violations, humanitarian law, terrorism, proliferation of mass destruction weapons and environmental problems. Expanding the Council’s authorities should be based on a clear and general interpretation of them in the framework of the principles of the UN Charter. Consequently, the Security Council is not legally capable of doing arbitrary and limitless actions.

How American Media Serves as a Transmission Belt for Wars of Choice

With the end of the U.S-Soviet Cold War in 1991 a fundamental shift occurred in global behavior of the United States with respect to “wars of choice” unconnected to vital national security interests. Parallel with that shift, American media increasingly have operated uncritically in conjunction with the bipartisan Washington political establishment to “sell” such wars to the American public. Among the key features of such cooperation discernable in successive conflicts are deficiency of geographic and historical knowledge as the American norm (the less people know the more likely they are to believe what they are told, with the least informed most persuaded of the need to “do something”); reliance on government sources, “ventriloquism,” and “information incest” (unknown to the public, much media “information” comes from government sources); centralized corporate ownership (official policy imperatives interface with ratings dollars for six giant corporate conglomerates); “para-journalism,” “infotainment,” and “atrocity porn” as a war trigger (atrocities appear seemingly on cue and then receive saturation coverage); demonization “Hitler” memes and “weaponization” of media (compromise and negotiation have no role in confronting absolute evil: war is the default option); America and the “international community,” the “Free World,” and American “exceptionalism” and “leadership”; disregarding “alternative” media, American samizdat (accurate information is available in “alternative” media, but the major still decide if it exists or not); “we never make mistakes,” “stay the course,” and “MoveOn-ism” (U.S. policy has no rearview mirror; authors of past blunders are not discredited, while those who said “tolya so” are ignored). In turn, media themselves are an integral part of a multifaceted, hybrid public-private entity with broad range and depth. Variously known as the Establishment, the Oligarchy, or the Deep State, this entity includes elements within all three branches of the U.S. government (especially in the military, intelligence, and financial sectors), private business (the financial industry, government contractors, information technology), think tanks, NGOs, the “Demintern,” both political parties and campaign operatives, and an army of lobbyists and PR professionals. Looking into the future in light of 2016 anti-Establishment challenges from Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, the shortcomings of Barack Obama’s policies in Libya, Syria, and Ukraine on top of those of George W. Bush in Iraq and Afghanistan, shrinkage of the American Middle Class, and increasing public skepticism of the “MSM” in favor of digital “alternative media,” both the Washington-based oligarchy and its media component show signs of losing their grip. The possibility exists for a peaceful evolution to a less warlike posture (impacting media as well) that would refocus on America’s domestic needs. Alternatively, the existing order could risk a major war in a desperate bid to save its wealth, power, and privileges – with unforeseeable consequences for America and the world.