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Posted
on 30-Mar-02 07:50 AM
Sent by Arnico:
Below you will find the speech delivered by Dr. Oscar Arias, former president of Costa Rica and 1987 Nobel Peace Laureate at final dinner of the annual meeting of the Alliance for Global Sustainability (An international collaboration among four universities conducting research about the environment and sustainable development).
At some point in the next few weeks I hope to get a chance of sharing more details about some observations while visiting Costa Rica -- a country that abolished its army in 1948 and invested the money in education and health care (today it has life expectancy and literacy rates exceeding many developing countries'). Costa Rica was also the only country that remained peaceful during the cold war unrest in Central America during the 1980s. The president then, Dr. Oscar Arias, was able to bring peace to the surrounding countries: Nicaragua where the US funded rebels fighting a leftist government, and El Salvador, where the US funded a brutal government that was fighting leftist rebels. In the past decade, the country has seen remarkable economic growth, centered upon ecotourism and high tech manufacturing overshadowing coffee and banana exports as the main sources of income. I was especially impressed by the country's elected politicians. A total of three current and former presidents, and three ministers attended the AGS meetings. ALL are highly educated, most were university professors before entering politics, and it shows! They deliver excellent speeches, and go arounds with laptops giving powerpoint presentations about why Costa Rica is THE place to invest in...
Below is the speech delivered by Dr. Arias at dinner time. I hope we can have some discussion on kurakani about its relevance to the current unrest in Nepal.
Cheers,
Arnico.
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Speech by Dr. Oscar Arias
Alliance for Global Sustainability/INCAE gala dinner
San Antonio de Belen, Costa Rica
March 22, 2002
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Good evening. It is a pleasure to be here with you tonight to discuss the prospects for the sustainable development of our planet. You have been hard at work in panel discussions and working groups tackling various aspects of this problem, and I am not altogether confident that I will have anything unique to add to your musings. Nevertheless, I have twenty minutes to fill, so I shall try to say something original.
The cynics in our world often tell us that there is nothing we can do to combat poverty and destruction or to achieve lasting peace and development. They tell us that inequality and poverty are inevitable, that cancer will never be cured, that somehow evil will always get a better of good, so why fight it? Part of the tragedy is that these cynics paint themselves as realists, and then argue that anyone who is willing to fight for the underdog, to work for peace, to commit to ending human suffering, is really just a dreamer.
I was labeled a naïve utopian back in the 1980s for believing that the self-declared Marxist-Leninist government in Nicaragua would hold free elections, as they commited to doing when they signed my peace plan. Those who called themselves realists claimed that military victory was the only way to end the conflict in Central America. That time the realists were wrong. There is a first time for everything.
When we look to the future, we can only look with optimism. Francois Guizot once said that the world belongs to the optimists; pessimists are only spectators. However, being an optimist does not mean closing your eyes to the world’s problems. As we dine here in this elegant setting, we must remind ourselves that 1.3 billion people live on less than one dollar per day. We should pause from time to time in our routine of reading the morning newspaper to remember that more than 850 million adults in the developing world are illiterate. In the midst of our peaceful pool-side relaxation, let us not forget that insurgent and paramilitary groups continue to take up arms and batter their countries in turf wars that they attempt to disguise as ideological battles. Truly, my friends, when we take the time to ponder the ongoing deprivation of the poor and the acts of brutality that are committed on a daily basis, it is indeed very easy to become discouraged about the prospects for lasting peace and development in our world.
Unfortunately, human instinct seems to tell us to focus on the negative. Perhaps this is a result of our built-in instinct for survival; we must be aware of the dangers around us in order to defend ourselves from them. But for every source of danger that captures our attention, we miss a vision of beauty, an act of kindness, a moment of peaceful coexistince. Such pieces of life fade into the background, and the dark spots loom up, causing fear and pessimism. But those who have been able to change the world for the better are more likely to have been like the Man of La Mancha, who charged every windmill he could find, and never lost sight of the beauty in the ordinary things of life.
This is why your organization, my friends, is so remarkable. As members of elite research institutions, you could easily put your talents at the service of whoever is willing to pay you most, for your work has a very high value in the market place. Yet you choose instead to grapple with the question of how to put your intellectual, social, and scientific gifts to work for the benefit of the world’s most vulnerable populations and ecosystems. There must be some Spanish ancestry in among you, because you are living the legacy of Don Quijote, charging at the towering windmills of persistent poverty and environmental degradation that loom over the landscape of so many developing countries indeed, or the entire planet. Never let the Sancho Panzas of the world convince you that your mission is unrealistic or that any project that has the potential to make some improvement in the health of a community, however small, is not worth undertaking.
In the wake of the events of September 11, the issue of national security has once again overshadowed the need to protect human security in the developing world. Work such as yours, which seeks to alleviate poverty and promote sustainable and ecologically responsible growth in the developing world, has begun to be overlooked in the rush to build better defenses and, make no mistake, better offenses against the evils of terrorism. Today, when President Bush and members of his administration speak of aid to developing countries, they are most often talking about military training, tanks and fighter jets, and not hospital supplies, school books or technical cooperation for the development of life-sustaining agriculture.
It is true that President Bush recently announced an increase in U.S. aid for development, so that he would not be arriving in Monterrey empty-handed for the United Nations Conference on Financing for Development. This increase is certainly welcome and is a step in the right direction; however, it does not go nearly far enough. Prior to President Bush’s recently announced increase, the only industrialized countries that gave less aid per capita than the U.S. were Portugal and Greece, two of the poorest countries in the European Union. With the new aid, which will amount to an additional five billion dollars over three years, and which comes with a myriad of strings attached, the United States will still continue to be among the stingiest donors of foreign aid in the world. Compare this five billion dollars to the additional 48 billion that President Bush is requesting for the Pentagon, for this year alone, and I think you will have a fair idea of what the priorities of his administration are. This government believes in bombs over books, and helicopters over hospitals, and it is prepared to fight Congress for every penny of military spending, while it delays the disbursement of aid for development until 2003.
I do not know whether this is due to the sinister influence of defense contractors within the U.S. government, or simply to the the zeal for military solutions that has always been a part of that country’s response to perceived threats, and which has only grown stronger over the past six months. In either case, what I do know is that this faith in military means of ensuring security is misplaces. In 1905 George Bernard Shaw wrote these words, and they continue to be true to this day: “Security, the chief pretense of civilization, cannot exist where the worst of dangers, the danger of poverty, hangs over everyone’s head.” Though some traditional security measures are obviously needed, I believe that if the estimated 120 billion dollars it would take to create a missile defense system were instead invested in nutritional security, health security, and employment security, they would go a lot further towards securing the lasting peace that we all long for.
My friends, I believe that we all have a vision for the world that motivates us to act in our varied capacities to achieve sustainability as we see it. My motivating vision of the world a hundred years from now is a planet Earth in which each government is democratically elected, is able to fulfill its people’s basic needs, remains at peace with both its neighbors and its internal opposition, and uses the tools of economics and science to the benefit of all its people. This, in brief, is my idea of sustainable development, and though simply stated, these goals will require prolonged and complex efforts in order to be achieved.
Despite the heavy obstacles that remain in the path, there are also reasons for hope. Today there are more countries in the world that democratically elect their leaders than there have ever been in the past. An optimist can see winds of change blowing over Cuba and China, though we must remain vigilant and not be lulled into complacency with regard to such regimes. The possibilities for real change should rather strengthen our resolve to do everything necessary to end the repression that is still practiced in these and other countries.
Free and fair elections are only the first step in achieving effective democratic governance. If democracies do not deliver the goods, that is , if they do not provide for their people’s basic needs, then they will prove themselves no better than the totalitarian regimes they have replaced. It is absolutely essential that our governments begin to place a greater priority on the health and education of their children and adults, than on the purchase of tanks and missiles to defend territory that has become unproductive and uninhabitable. What the children of the world want and need are schools and health clinics, not F-16s and rocket launchers.
Costa Rica is the only Central American country to rank in the “high human development” category, and this is a direct result of the fact that, having no army, we are free to invest a large amount of resources in health and education. As visitors to our nation, you are witnesses to the benefits we have realized by pursuing these priorities. Abolishing our army has given us a moral force that has become our best defense, and our experience inspires us to try to share this message with other developing countries. In 1994 we were able to convince the people and legislators of Panama to constitutionally abolish the armed forces of that country, making the border between Costa Rica and Panama the safest in the world. We have also been successful in Haiti, the poorest country in this hemisphere, where our work with President Aristide and the Haitian Senate led to the removal of 100% of the budget of the armed forces, amounting to a de facto abolition of the army. Although every country is certainly not ready to abolish its armed forces completely, we believe that reducing the size, budget and influence of the armed forces is a crucial step for every highly militarized poor country to take, because there is no better way to perpetuate poverty than spending on arms. When governments begin to emphasize human security over national security, they will find that the strength of their country only increases. It is not weapons, but full bellies and decent work that make fear and violence subside.
Peace is an important aspect of our vision for the world. Some think this is a utopian idea, but in reality there is nothing glamorous, naïve, or idealistic about peace. Peace is not a dream, it is hard work. It is a path that we must all choose and then persevere in. This means resolving even our small daily conflicts with those around us in peaceful ways. For peace begins not “out there”, but with each one of us.
It is therefore up to us to ensure that this new century we are beginning is less bloody than the last. We have advanced so much in the science and the art of making peace through peaceful means, that we cannot afford to go back to the old ways of thinking. Current events in the Middle East are testimony to the futility and senselessness of the military path to resolving conflicts. Such a path simply does not exist. Peace will always be achieved by its own methods, which are dialogue and understanding, tolerance and forgiveness. No amount of mortars, tanks, or bombs can ever achieve true peace; the most they can do is wreak devastation and perhaps achieve quiet for a time, but we know that peace based on fear and humiliation is not peace at all, and it does not last. True peace is based on justice, which is something that can only be achieved when adversaries have the courage to sit down and face other human beings.
As we work for an end to the conflicts that shame and destroy us, I believe that this work must be carried out on both the material and spiritual fronts. This means dealing with both the weapons of war and the militarism in our hearths. We must work to put limits on the international arms trade, a forty-billion-dollar-a-year commerce in death, while at the same time working to teach peaceful methods of conflict resolution, and to eradicate the thirst for revenge that is motivating so many in our time.
What is most disturbing to me these days, especially in the United States, is the way that war is being glorified and used as a patriotic rallying cry. It is not that I believe that military action is never justified; sometimes, unfortunately, it is still necessary. However, when people begin to embrace a simplistic good-versus-evil mentality and the ideas of the “Old West” about shoot-outs between the good guys and the bad guys, they are falling prey to a dangerous delusion. Wars seldom have winners, but there are always many losers. Every day that a war continues, more people lose their lives, people lose their sense of security and their freedom, and violence becomes more deeply rooted in people’s hearts. None of this is victory; it is only a diminishing of the human soul.
I want to share with you something written more than thirty years ago by Martin Luther King, which reminds us of the dangers in believing that through violence we can triumph over evil. He wrote:
“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannon murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate… Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
My friends, I do not believe that it is unrealistic or foolish to bring love back into the political discourse. The term may make some uncomfortable, but when you really think about it, our best leaders have been motivated by love and have acted according to its hard demands: Gandhi, Lincoln, George Marshall, Bolivar, Kennedy, and King himself. In Western thought we separate the mind from the heart, but in Eastern philosophy these concepts often blend into one. In Chinese there is a single word meaning heart-and-mind. If more of us joined our reason to the principles and values we hold in our hearts, and acted with the integrity demanded of responsible leaders, then this vision I have described would have a much better chance of becoming a reality.
We may be accused of being dreamers with our heads in the clouds, but a line from one of Shaw’s plays comes to mind: “You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ but I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?’” As people with the talents and the resources to make a difference in the world, we all have the duty to be dreamers. We cannot allow this century to be like the last. We must put our whole beings into creating a world with more solidarity and less individualism; more honesty and less hypocrisy; more transparency and less corruption; more faith and less cynicism; more compassion and less selfishness. In short, a world with more love.
You are doing this through your deliberations here this week, and I am proud that you have chosen Costa Rica as the context for this important meeting. Together let us move forward one step at a time, along the different path towards creating the world we dream of. Let us never give in to the cynics, who sell humanity short with their lack of faith in human goodness. Rather, let us be witnesses to the light that can be created by the strength of persistence, and let us share this flame with our students and colleagues to, as Dr. King put it, drive out darkness with light, and drive out hatred with love. This is the way to the future, and there can be no turning back.
My friends, I don’t know how your shopping here has gone. You may have noticed that there is not much in the way of interesting keepsakes to buy. I suggest that you take back the best souvenir this country has to offer the air of peace that is breathed by all, from our oldest to our youngest. Take this precious gift with you back to the United States, to Europe and to Asia, and share it with your families and your governments. Tell them that you have seen with your own eyes the country with no army that so many cynics would claim is unsustainable. Perhaps one day we will see a world in which no country needs an army, because we are protected by our respect and concern for each other.
All of us have a contribution to make towards bringing this world into existence. Each of us must act in our own capacity, beginning in our local environment, to As Gandhi put it be the change that we wish to see in the world. The planet we are inhabiting today is full of darkness. I ask you to make it your personal mission to light a candle. The world needs all the illumination it can get, and you, my friends, are the sparks that will light our way to a better future.
Thank you.
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