Arts & International Affairs: Volume 3, Issue 1, Spring 2018 | Page 23

ARTS & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
might exist before we have a word to express it. Like we have seen, the idea was there
even if the word was not, and thus the two cannot always be equated. Read against the
background of UNESCO’s constitutionally manifested principles, the catalogue project
demonstrates that UNESCO’ focus is not on what is or even what could be. Instead, the
organisation functions on the basis of what should or must be. What should be, is a world
order built on the solidarity of mankind, reminding us again of the overlapping nature
of the international and world senses of society in the English School conceptual triad.
Moral solidarity of mankind as a road to peace is to most of us an indefinitely distant,
unachievable dream. For UNESCO, however, it is a pragmatic goal, achievable through
addressing and eliminating not merely the acts of war, but its root causes. Bull, like UN-
ESCO, saw the goal of peace as one of the elementary, primary and universal goals of an
international society sustained by a pattern of international activity, forming the basis of
international order. Bull did not approach the goal of peace�in the sense of establishing
a permanent, universal peace�as a goal seriously pursued by the international society.
For UNESCO’s international society this, however, is a key priority.
The word peace itself does not appear in the introduction to the catalogue and the exact
nature of the term remains slightly hazy. While unarguably a significant line of inquiry,
a more detailed discussion of the conception of peace as the driving force behind the
catalogue project must remain beyond the scope of this article. However, a brief glance is
in order. Does it refer to the absence of violent conflict and war? This would make sense
considering that the intensifying Cold War ensured an ever-present threat of the situation
escalating into an armed conflict. But war and peace are not absolute antonyms.
This type of an understanding would lead to a situation where they are only definable
in relation to each other, peace meaning merely the absence of war and vice versa. For
everyday usage of the terms, this simplification may be useful, but for an organisation
aiming for sustainable peace, understanding the process of achieving it to be simply
eliminating war would not be a fertile starting point. Perhaps, the puzzle could be solved
by turning to the conceptual binary of peace propaganda. The goal of war propaganda is
not war as such, but creating a culture that legitimises and justifies the acts of war or violence�a
process of dehumanising the enemy “so they can be killed without guilt” (Zur
1991). To put Johan Galtung’s (1996:6, 96) terminology to good use, war propaganda
constructs and maintains a culture of violence. Likewise, the goal of peace propaganda
is not peace itself, but creating a culture of peace. This idea can be extended not only to
cover the idea of harmony of interest and ideology in the world implying an integrated
community or “the moral solidarity of mankind,” but also to address the integral issues
of cultural pluralism within the UNESCO system.
Good intentions or even common values are, however, perhaps not enough. The emergence
of an international society might require an additional shared motivation. Cynthia
Weber (2005:53) suggests that the actual uniting factor might be fear�be it humankind
uniting out of fear of an alien attack or, in this case, the fear of another great war.
However, following Bull, the possibility of war would not equal the emergence of an
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