Peace Research and Politics within the Field of Societal Demands

In: Journal of peace research, Volume 20, Issue 3, p. 253-259

Abstract

Peace Research in the Federal Republic of Germany has been supported since 1970 by all political parties, employers' organizations, trade unions and churches, the background being international détente. At the end of the seventies the relative consensus of the social forces began to break down. Three political ten dencies emerged, each formulating different demands towards peace research: détente politicians, con servative opposition to détente, and the peace movement opposing the arms race. Peace research should avoid being a servant of one of these political trends; it should try to find an audience among the whole of society for the two purposes of peace research: the everlasting 'realpolitische' task of war prevention under the present intergovernmental conditions and the future oriented task of creating the conditions for positive peace and the abolition of the system of deterrence, military threat and structural violence. This article has been written for the tenth anniversary of the Frankfurt Peace Research Institute in 1981.