Impidiendo un Conflicto Mortal

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ARCHIVES OF GENERAL PSYCHIATRY Preventing Deadly Conflict The Critical Role of Leadership David A. Hamburg, MD; Alexander George, PhD; Karen Ballentine, MPhil Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1999;56:971- 976. ABSTRACT This article emerged from the work of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, Washington, DC. The commission addressed several fundamental questions: (1) What are the problems posed by deadly conflict, and why is outside help often necessary to deal with these problems? (2) How can disputes be resolved peaceably? (3) Which strategies work best? (4) Who can do what to implement these preventive strategies? Borrowing from the model of preventive medicine, the commission detailed a repertoire of the most promising political, economic, military, and social tools and strategies that can be mobilized by the international community to assist vulnerable societies in the development of sustainable and equitable arrangements for managing diversity and resolving disputes peacefully. From a comparative examination of intransigent and destructive intergroup conflicts, the commission found that the failure to prevent conflict is most often not a failure of foreknowledge or capacity but of political will. Effective political leadership is often the critical variable for successful prevention. This article seeks to illustrate how the social and behavioral sciences may be usefully applied to the problems encountered by leaders when confronted by the challenges of preventing deadly conflict. FOR WORSE AND FOR BETTER: LEADERSHIP MATTERS In an essay1 for the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict (CCPDC), Mikhail S. Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union, reflected on his rich experience with political leaders from all over the world. He was deeply struck by the considerable extent to which these leaders see "brute force" as the ultimate validation of their authority. His observation underscores the historical tendency of many kinds of leaders from many places to interpret their mandate as being strong, aggressive, even violent. For all too many, this is indeed the essence of leadership. They have massive killing power at their disposal, a power that threatens to increase in the coming century. This is true not only of national leaders but also of subnational group leaders. Large- scale conflict between groups—like conflict between states—requires the deliberate mobilization efforts of determined political leaders. Without such leadership, members of ethnic, communal, or religious groups who find themselves in adverse circumstances—for example, profound socioeconomic inequality, political oppression, and even deep intergroup animosity—do not spontaneously resort to warfare to retain redress. They tend instead to seek out nonviolent means for improving their condition and resolving disputes, yet incendiary leaders can readily subvert such efforts and mobilize their followers for violence and hatred.


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