There are between 108 and 182, depending on counting methodologies, ongoing armed conflicts in the world today, the most since the end of the Cold War. Between around 200,000 and 350,000 people died as a result of those wars in 2023 alone, the most since 1994 (when Hutus killed around 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda).
In the last 15 years, global peace has deteriorated by 2% and the world average rank has deteriorated for over two thirds of that time, with the gap between the most peaceful and last peaceful countries having increased by eight percentage points to 1.41 and 2.94, respectively, on a five point scale, according to Vision of Humanity’s Global Peace Index.
Countries are picking sides between the United States and China in what seems eerily reminiscent of the early stages of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union; violent non-state actors have not been defeated but perhaps have mutated and are still very present; serious flare-ups in the Middle East, very reminiscent of the pre-1914 Balkans, are increasing in complexity, duration, and seriousness.
Despite an International Day for Multilateralism and Diplomacy for Peace, there seems to be less peace – the key outcome of multilateralism and diplomacy – than ever before in my lifetime. Yet, there is no complex web of treaties that would slow walk the world into war or an abhorrent ideology fetishizing war to galvanize the democratic world to deem the sacrifices of war worth bearing to defeat.
World war, however, is still a possibility and, even if not, all eight billion of us intrinsically deserve, yet chronically lack and manifestly unevenly, the original four freedoms (of speech, of worship, from want, and from fear). This downtick of world peace, either despite multilateralism and diplomacy or as a result of a lack of multilateralism and diplomacy, can be remedied by greater academic engagement.
The Dual Role of Academia in Shaping International Affairs
Thus far, academia has been a key pillar of efforts to achieve world peace or, failing that, increase world peacefulness. We have learned how to build peace, we have explained why democratic countries don’t fight each other, we have learned when to go to war and when not to go to war, as well as how to construct solid multilateral institutional and engage in effective diplomacy.
Even before initial research was conducted into these lines of inquiry, universities have educated the hearts and minds of countless states(wo)men as well as millions upon millions of civil servants and diplomats, shaping their frames of mind, influencing their outlooks on the world, and connecting them with fellow (wo)man from across the world, thereby contributing to an era of prolonged and stable relative peace.
Universities have also hosted speakers of international and historical significance, such as Czech president Václav Havel in 1995 on dangers to enlightenment values at Harvard University, South African president Nelson Mandela in 2000 on the role of Africa in the 21st century at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and U.S. president Barack Obama in 2009 on US-Muslim world relations at Cairo University.
Academia, however, hasn’t necessarily always had such a positive, or even benign, influence on international affairs and peace. After all, Henry Kissinger was a Harvard professor who went on to mastermind the enlargement and prolonging of the Vietnam War and George Kennan set the U.S. on a confrontational course with the USSR to go into academia after retirement from the diplomatic service.
Some university professors even contemporaneously supported the Iraq War, although many more didn’t; other scholars advance(d) largely nonsensical and jingoistic theories about the world order; some changed university classrooms for prison cells with brief hiatuses as separatist leaders or propagandists; and, lastly, virtually all contemporary leaders have attended Western universities and have had liberal values instilled in them, yet fail to consistently live up to them.
Beyond Academia: Empowering Future Leaders
Universities, therefore, have a special place in fostering multilateralism and diplomacy in the 21st century but need to step up efforts, both individual and collective, to educate both hearts and minds, of leaders and followers but also of scholars and practioners. To do so best, universities need to innovate using new methods and opportunities but also go back to (some) basics.
The centrality of knowledge-based coursework should shift to foundational coursework, going wide instead of deep in order to provide students with a wide berth of knowledge which they can draw upon in order to inform their opinions. After all, virtually all knowledge is easily accessible today to virtually everyone – the key is in being able to identify it quickly and vet it for reliability even quicker.
Students, upon graduating, need to know the actors in a given field, the resources available to those actors, and the avenues which can be used to effect change within the niche field students will, alone, undoubtedly have to specialize in and master. The university here needs to provide students with a basis from which to learn about resources, experience avenues, and meet actors.
To be able to leverage their knowledge, both hard and soft, students need to have a set of values. Many people develop or refine their value systems while studying and the university needs to provide students with the experiences and sources of knowledge – scientific knowledge – from which they will have to develop their own worldviews and value systems, to build off of in later stages of their careers.
The university, ultimately, needs to make students ambitious and cognizant of their individual, as well as collective, capacity to effect change. The most effective way to do so has been demonstrated, albeit anecdotally and less than systematically, through service learning, integrating activities that benefit both the community with a service provided and the student with new knowledge.
A Call to Action: From Tradition to Innovation
These postulates can be applied in virtually every field, particularly in the social sciences and humanities, but are uniquely important in the field of international relations, the former students of which may at some point in the future hold the fate of the world (including our own) in their hands as has been the case for times immemorial.
Although multilateralism and diplomacy have preceded university studies in those fields, this need not be the case forever. Universities can, and should, innovate their teaching – as well as applied research and advocacy – in order to be ahead of the curve and genuinely teach students as future diplomats how to conduct multilateralism and diplomacy, instead of adjusting their courses to reflect what is happening in the field.
Let’s use this International Day of Multilateralism and Diplomacy for Peace to remind ourselves of those who have come before – both good and bad – and remain aware of those who are here now, but also to prepare ourselves for tomorrow, in order to develop a generation of states(wo)men, diplomats, and activists as advocates for multilateralism and diplomacy for peace.
