International-Security Criticisms of Peace Research

Abstract

The intellectual community that addresses arms control or international security has a number of criticisms to offer of its colleagues working on peace research or peace studies. The latter are seen as being too optimistic and unrealistic, tending to assume that good things must go together, that domestic and international improvements are always linked, and that disarmament serves all the purposes of humankind. Peace studies teachers are moreover seen as engaged too often in consciousness raising, on the mistaken assumption that many of us do not understand the desirability of peace. Finally, peace researchers are sometimes seen as redefining peace to include justice and social improvement and whatever other causes they favor, so that major confusions can result as to which particular problem we are trying to solve at any particular time.