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War and peace: has the distinction between the two collapsed? The globalised policing of dissent, opposition and difference, as well as terrorism, is creating a culture of perpetual war.

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We are moving towards a state where the distinction between war and peace is collapsing. On the one hand, we have the actions of the US government and its allies operating according to a framework geared towards perpetual war. On the other, within the West, we are experiencing a culture shift that is antithetical to peace. We are a culture that clings to security but in doing so militarises itself. The very democracy we are defending is being undermined from within. Witness the closing down of spaces for dissent, the creation of anti-terror laws appropriate perhaps only for wartime, the adoption of surveillance techniques within the general population, and the amplification of fear and resentment within mainstream media culture. All of this creates a set of circumstances where the possibility of peace--based upon recognition of and the need to come to terms with other cultures and other ways of life--is eroded. This is not to say that the possibility for long-term global peace has disappeared, but that this pervasive culture shift needs to be reckoned with.

This change in the culture is most immediately a result of the war on terror, but it's wider than that too. Our leaders tell us that our freedoms need to be secured. In fact some of our freedoms may well be making us more insecure. The freedoms enabled by the global market may give us more choices, but they also strip away much of what we took for granted--public health and education, sustainable ways of life and so on.

Such insecurity undermines any sustainable peace--that is, peace as a way of life where relatively stable cultures are able to co-exist. It is hard to generate the kind of openness necessary for peaceful co-existence with different cultures when everything you take for granted is being swept away. John Howard, Tony Blair and George W. Bush claim that the threat of terrorism makes us insecure. And to some extent it does. But their own market fundamentalism creates a...

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