How to Prevent — or Stop — a War | Gabrielle Rifkind | TED

I have worked in international conflict resolution

for the past two decades.

I am not a pacifist,

but in the end, war is the greatest human rights abuse

and does not make the world safer.

We think we go to war for good moral reasons.

We're fighting for good to triumph over evil.

Instead, we unleash a cascade

of chaos and misery.

In the 21st century,

the United States,

along with its allies and my country, the United Kingdom,

have been involved in four major wars:

Afghanistan, Iraq,

Libya, Islamic State.

And we have provided funding

and supplied military equipment to Ukraine and Israel.

So let's consider the outcome of some of these wars.

The Afghan war was a 20-year war,

and we left the Taliban in power.

The war in Iraq,

we had an immediate military victory,

which was short-lived, civil war

and contributed to the war in Syria.

The war in Libya unleashed chaos and violence in the Sahel region.

The war against Islamic State weakened it militarily,

but none of the root causes were dealt with.

All of you in the audience

know war is horrendous,

but maybe many of you believe that it is inevitable.

I would like to persuade you today

that there are many things that we can do.

Even if we commit to arming countries militarily like porcupines.

We can commit ourselves to war prevention,

early mediation

and getting into the mind of the enemy.

I direct the Oxford Process.

It's a conflict resolution organization,

and what we try and do is create back channels

to the political leadership at the highest levels

of those who are in positions of power

and can decide the future of the outcome of the war.

I come from a group psychoanalytic background,

but I'm passionately committed to putting together the human mind

and geopolitics, its power relationships

and what does and doesn’t lead to war.

We know marginalization,

humiliation and exclusion are some of the key drivers of war.

We also know that war dehumanizes people.

Some of the conflicts I've worked on are the Palestine-Israel,

the Iranian nuclear issue and now the Russia-Ukraine war.

So what can we do to prevent war?

We need to address the security concerns of all sides,

not just our own security.

Russia invaded Crimea in 2014

and then all of Ukraine in 2022.

It was morally justified for us to support a country

whose sovereignty had been breached.

But now, hundreds of thousands of people are dead and wounded.

And we do have to ask,

what else could we have done?

President Putin warned that if NATO edged up on the Russian border,

war would be the result.

In 2008,

President Bush stated Ukraine would join NATO.

Germany and France pushed back

as they knew it would create a new crisis between Russia and the West.

Would the US have tolerated a hostile military presence on its border

in Mexico and Canada?

We might have avoided this war

if we'd addressed the security concerns both of Russia and Europe,

and established a common European security architecture

before the war,

and it will need to happen afterwards.

Western governments

could have played more of a mediating role

supporting Ukraine to be a bridge between east and west,

not just encouraging Ukraine into our zone of interest.

Ukraine has difficult geography.

It will always need to find a way to coexist with its Russian neighbor.

What else could we do?

We need to come off our moral pedestal

and stop deciding what is good and evil.

We need to talk to the bad guys,

the men of violence, if we are to end war.

We understood we had to talk to the IRA in Northern Ireland,

FARC in Colombia and ETA in the Basque Country.

But usually we want to speak to the good guys, the people like us,

the people in gray suits.

Back in 2001, after the Afghan war,

and as part of the Bonn peace process,

if we had brought the Taliban in when they were weaker,

things may have looked different.

Western governments, including the US and the UK,

refused to talk to President Assad.

They said it was talking to evil.

By not talking to him,

we created a greater evil

as thousands and thousands more people died.

Today, many of you will have the Ukraine-Russia war

and Hamas-Israel on your minds, and what can be done.

This is the work Oxford Process does quietly behind the scenes

to explore where there are opportunities to end war.

But it requires the blessings of Western governments,

and they often don't have an exit plan.

To end the war in Ukraine,

we will need to talk to President Putin.

We will need to understand his red lines, what his endgame is,

what opportunities there are for a ceasefire.

After the heinous massacre of 7 October,

engaging with Hamas is unthinkable

to many Israelis.

Following the terrible carnage in Gaza,

Hamas has even more support

and will need to be included in some kind of future process.

Now both sides have dehumanized each other.

One way through is the release of Marwan Barghouti,

a Palestinian leader who has spent the last two decades in an Israeli prison.

He supports a future Palestinian state sitting side by side with Israel,

and he has the leadership qualities to unite the Palestinian people,

which will be essential.

For some, he's the new Mandela.

For others, he has blood on his hands.

In war, everybody has blood on their hands.

(Applause)

The Americans are now talking about a two-state solution,

which would involve normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

And yet again,

we cannot just speak to our friends and exclude our enemies.

And Iran and its allies will only sabotage the process.

Each one of you here today wants to make a difference.

But we can feel small

and impotent in the face of war.

But how we behave individually

is a microcosm of how we behave in war.

None of us like to engage with people who think differently to us.

We all divide the world into good and evil.

People we want to talk to and people we don't.

But we need to engage with everybody

and understand the radical differences

that exist between us.

And we need to start today.

What else can we do?

We need to act early

and put in place early mediating processes.

In war, there's an opportunity for mediation.

In some wars, when the parties are on the precipice

and they're more open to compromise.

Then there's a second opportunity

when they've tested their battlefield strength

and realized they have not achieved their original objectives.

When these opportunities are missed,

the parties become hardened by the horrors and trauma of war.

They believe they have sacrificed too much

to compromise and make peace.

So what can we do to make these ideas real?

Today, the UN is a weakened institution,

and many have lost faith in it.

But if we're to be serious about peacemaking,

we will need to strengthen it again.

One way through is to empower the UN

to have statutory early mediation

when countries are on the edge of tipping to war.

And then three months later,

when they've tested their battlefield strength.

The UN would also appoint permanent war prevention teams

embedded in the countries at risk of going to war,

high-level mediators and permanent peace tables.

We would establish them in such areas as Sudan,

Pakistan-India, Taiwan-China,

Palestine-Israel, the US-China.

We would be committed to prevention and early intervention.

(Applause)

So in conclusion,

liberal democracies should see themselves

first and foremost as mediators and bridge builders

and help countries manage their radical differences.

Not the world's self-appointed policeman or supplier of weapons.

Instead of providing drones and missiles,

we could contribute more resources and expertise to mediation

and peacemaking.

We would put all our passions and pragmatism

into avoiding war.

War is like a cancer.

It spreads quickly.

Once it has progressed far enough,

nobody knows how to stop it.

Treat it quickly, even prevent it,

millions of lives can be saved.

We behave as if war is inevitable.

It is not.

Thank you, my friends.

(Applause)