**Preventing Contemporary Intergroup Violence**

**David A. Hamburg**

1993

The world of the next century will be different in profound respects
from any that we have ever known before \-- deeply interdependent
economically, closely linked technologically, and progressively more
homogenized through the movement of information, ideas, people, and
capital around the world at unprecedented speed. At the same time, it
will be more multicentric in the devolution of economic, political, and
military power to smaller adaptable units. Some nations will undergo a
perilous fragmentation, as the centralizing forces that once held people
together are pulled apart and traditional concepts of national
sovereignty and nationhood are contested, sometimes violently. How these
tendencies will be reconciled is far from clear.

One of the most striking facts of our time is the way technology has
come to dominate and organize our lives, presenting unimaginable
benefits, opportunities, and choices within a matter of decades, yet
unleashing the destructive power of advanced weaponry that in an instant
of history can do immense damage, even destroy humanity.

While the more complex and contradictory world that we have entered is
of our own making, we often approach its problems with the biological
orientations and emotional responses of our ancient ancestry, bringing
attitudes, customs, and institutions that were formed largely in earlier
times and that are perhaps no longer appropriate. Foremost is our
tendency as a species toward prejudice, egocentrism, and ethnocentrism.
In these times of rapid world transformation, as people have flowed like
floodwaters across the earth, families, social support networks, old
ways of forming group solidarity, and other traditional patterns of
living have been strained or broken apart. Many individuals feel a
heightened sense of uncertainty and insecurity. Some react with
exaggerated intolerance of the outside world or with violence toward
those who are seen as alien and threatening. Political demagogues can
readily inflame these feelings in a context of severe vulnerability.

The historical record is full of every sort of slaughter based on the
human capability to make invidious distinctions between in-groups and
out-groups \-- often associated with the frustration of fundamental
drives, deeply felt beliefs about identity, or a sense of jeopardy to
group survival. In this century \-- a period of the most rapid
industrialization and wrenching transition \-- human slaughter far
exceeds any that has gone before. Just since the United Nations was
formed in 1945, there have been upwards of 150 small-scale wars
resulting in more than 20 million dead and easily four times that many
disabled or displaced. Millions have perished at the hands of their own
countrymen in Cambodia, Indonesia, Burundi, Nigeria, Paraguay, Tibet,
Uganda, Angola, and the Sudan. Most recently the former Yugoslavia has
generated at least 150,000 dead and more than two million refugees.

Today worldwide, fed by the powerful currents of aggressive ethnic
nationalism, there is a virtual epidemic of armed civil or intranational
conflict \-- the kind often thought of as "internal" but that can
readily spill over the borders of nation-states. While international
attention has been on the savage fighting in Bosnia, long-simmering
antagonisms among deeply mingled ethnic groups have come to the surface
in the successor states to the Soviet Union \-- exacerbated by the harsh
economic conditions that prevail there as well as by the erosion of
social norms. Hundreds of such nationality "hot spots" exist in these
vast territories. Sixty-five million people in the former Soviet Union
do not live in their primary areas of origin, and many are fearful about
their treatment as minorities in the new nations. The international
community is only just beginning to realize the potential gravity of
these various conflicts. Russia herself, with her huge arsenal of
nuclear weapons, has shown serious signs of instability.

**New Wine in Old Bottles**

Intergroup conflict is an ancient part of the human legacy, and tyrants
have long understood how to exploit for their own ends the human
tendency to attribute malevolence primarily or solely to other groups,
deflecting anger onto the hated others, who are blamed for all their
troubles. Many different political, social, economic, and
pseudoscientific ideologies have been mobilized to support hostile
positions toward those who are outside the primary community or who
deviate from community norms.

All that is very old and once upon a time may have been adaptive, but
these characteristics of our species have become exceedingly dangerous,
primarily because of the enormous destructive power of the advanced
weaponry we have created. Weapons themselves do not cause dangerous
conflicts, but their availability in large quantities can easily
intensify and prolong such conflicts. The use of sophisticated
technology, moreover, enhances the risk that the consequences of local
wars will become regional or global.

While nuclear warheads, which can be carried by missiles with tremendous
accuracy over great distances, represent the ultimate in human violence,
the increased killing power of enhanced conventional, chemical, and
biological weapons also has the potential for making life everywhere
miserable and disastrous. In the past, no matter how ferocious the
conflict, humanity could not destroy itself even if it wanted to. Now it
can. One of the most serious problems the world will face in the next
decade is the proliferation throughout the world of these modern deadly
weapons \-- or the knowledge and technical capability for making them
\-- and the looming possibility that they will be used.

In this post-Cold War environment of many small wars and potentially
large ones, a new approach to international problem solving may be
needed. The system of international diplomacy that evolved over the past
two centuries focused on power relations between nation-states. Yet the
risks, costs, casualties, and tragedies of the twentieth century should
tell us, if nothing else does, that this may be far from an optimal
system for dealing with conflict between peoples of the same nation \--
or the problem of weapons proliferation.

**Attachment and Aggression**

The capacity for attachment and the capacity for violence are
fundamentally connected in human beings. We fight with other people in
the belief that we are protecting ourselves, our loved ones, and the
group with which we identify most strongly. Altruism and aggression are
intimately linked in war and other conflicts. My lifetime has witnessed
terrible atrocities committed in the name of some putatively high cause.
Yet there have also been vivid examples of the reconstruction of
societies, major reconciliations, and real enlargement of opportunities
for substantial segments of a population. What are the conditions under
which the outcome can go one way or the other? If we could understand
such questions better, maybe we could learn to tilt the balance in favor
of a stable, enduring peace among human groups in the twenty-first
century.

Even though in-group/out-group distinctions are ubiquitous in human
societies, easy to learn and hard to forget, there is certainly the
possibility that we humans can learn to minimize these tendencies. This
may be one of the crucial roads we have to travel in order to cope with
conflict in the transformed world of the future. Can we find a basis for
common human identification across a diversity of cultures and national
groups?

Below, I try to sketch some promising lines of inquiry and innovation
that bear strongly on the two-sided coin of human cooperation and
conflict and that suggest ways the world\'s institutions can cope with
burgeoning threats to international peace. It is worth considering how
the various approaches to the prevention of the deadliest conflicts and
the promotion of international cooperation might be strengthened,
particularly in light of superordinate goals essential for the future of
humanity and our habitat.

**The Search for Understanding**

Given the myriad possibilities for world conflagration, the nature and
sources of human conflict are deserving of the most careful and
searching attention. Yet, until quite recently they have not been a
major focus of systematic analysis and even today are rather
marginalized in the world\'s great research and educational
institutions. The scientists and scholars heavily engaged in such
inquiry have been largely lacking in support. The field of ethnic
conflict resolution, moreover, is relatively new and weakly
institutionalized. The international community has nothing like an
effective system for preventing the deadliest conflicts.

The powerful sectors of society everywhere, for their part, have tended
to be complacent about such matters and to see them as someone else\'s
problem, far away. Avoidance often substitutes for foresight, authority
for evidence, and blaming for problem solving. The capacity for wishful
thinking, as it is for self-justification, seems boundless in matters of
human conflict.

All this may be beginning to change now, stimulated by deep concerns
about the dangers of contemporary conflict and by the belated
recognition of the ubiquity of killing and maiming in human experience.
Conflicts have become everyone\'s business. The idea that states and
peoples are free to conduct their quarrels, no matter how deadly, is
outdated in the nuclear age and in a shrinking world where local
hostilities can rapidly become international ones with devastating
consequences. Similarly, the notion that tyrants are free to commit
atrocities on their own people is rapidly becoming obsolete.

A substantial body of careful empirical research on conflict resolution
and international peacemaking, detailing the historical experience with
forms of negotiation, mediation, arbitration, recognition, and power
sharing is at last beginning to emerge, and the results are providing
new insights and guidelines useful to practitioners. It is apparent that
there is no single approach to conflict resolution that offers
overriding promise. Just as the sources and manifestations of human
conflict are immensely varied, so too are the approaches to
understanding, preventing, and resolving conflicts.

The field can benefit from more dynamic interplay between theory and
practice. The great challenge is to move with a sense of urgency to
organize a broader and deeper effort to understand these issues and,
above all, to develop more effective ways in the real world of
preventing and resolving conflicts short of disaster.

Additionally, there needs to be serious worldwide education about forms
of nonviolent problem solving that can generate public support. The
price of resolving international disputes by force of arms is becoming
too high \-- even putative winners are beginning to recognize this
unwelcome fact. But finding workable alternatives that are broadly
acceptable, particularly in the realm of preventive systems, will
challenge the international community beyond any prior experience. While
it is certainly not beyond possibility to move this subject higher on
the agenda of this nation and others, it will require a much deeper
grasp of the dangers among leadership groups and the general public than
now exists.

**Sovereignty and Self-Determination**

Most people everywhere live in multiethnic societies. Worldwide there
are several thousand ethnic groups versus fewer than two hundred
nation-states. In Europe, as in Africa, national borders were in large
part imposed by external powers without regard to geography or shared
ethnicity. Conditions were created in which members of the same identity
group were split apart, leaving open the possibility that all groups
could make territorial claims on each other. If now every ethnic,
religious, racial, linguistic, or cultural group sought to establish its
own nation, there would be no limit to fragmentation \-- precipitating
violence, immense suffering, and a flow of refugees on an unimaginable
scale.

Sometimes in the modern world it is possible to separate out ethnic
groups that wish to have their own nation-state and create a situation
in which borders essentially coincide with a living space of that
particular group; but this is unusual. Although secession may be carried
off democratically and peacefully, as in Czechoslovakia, this is rare,
and the quest to create a separate state or redraw borders will usually
prove to be a chimera.

The attractive concept of self-determination was given an idealistic
boost after both world wars, but the conflict in Bosnia shows how
dangerous sudden secessions, rationalized on the basis of
self-determination, can be. The creation of new states by sudden
secession may trigger fierce fighting not only within a country but also
across international borders. There is ample evidence of this in the
states of the former Soviet Union, where the problem is complicated by
an immense armory of highly destructive weapons. So the concept of
self-determination will have to be reassessed in light of contemporary
circumstances and the conflicting values involved clarified and dealt
with peacefully.

Beyond this, there is an urgent need to create the conditions under
which various identity groups can sort out their differences and learn
to live in a state of harmonious interaction with their neighbors. Ways
must be found to foster self-esteem, meaningful group membership, and
internal cohesion without the necessity for harsh depreciation of
out-groups and without resort to violence in the event of a clash of
interests.

A fundamental requisite of mutual accommodation is development of a
genuinely free civil society within a democratic framework, where there
is truly equal citizenship, respect for human rights, protection against
the abuse of power, freedom to express differences openly and
constructively, and a fair distribution of opportunities. Many paths to
mutual accommodation are possible: nonviolent agreed secession;
peaceful, negotiated territorial border revision; federation or
confederation; regional or functional autonomy; and respected cultural
pluralism, within each nation and across national boundaries. Each case
presents a particular set of opportunities and constraints, and each
solution will inevitably be reached only after painful deliberation,
taxing the patience and support of all. Whatever the outcome, it must
eventually satisfy the reasonable claims of most citizens, though not
necessarily the intolerant militants or extremists.

**Shared Goals of a Single Worldwide Species**

To an increasing extent, we will have to learn to broaden our social
identifications in light of shared interests and superordinate goals
across all of humanity. We must come to think of ourselves in a
fundamental sense as a single interdependent, meaningfully attached,
extended family. This is in fact what we are; but to state this is not
to assimilate it as a psychological reality.

Superordinate goals have the potentially powerful effect of unifying
disparate groups in the search for the vital benefit that can be
obtained only by their cooperation. Such goals can override the
differences that people bring to the situation.

What could constitute shared goals of this extraordinary significance?
The avoidance of nuclear destruction is one. Protection of the
environment is emerging as another, since it may well come to involve
jeopardy to the human habitat. The creation of new forms of community,
social cohesion, and solidarity in the face of the vast impersonal
modern society we have wrought is another. The threat of worldwide
economic deterioration might also become salient. At a regional level,
the desire to improve economic prospects can impel two or more nations
to cooperate in the development of agriculture, transportation,
electricity, and water resources, increasing confidence and mutually
beneficial interdependence.

These are mainly survival goals, updated to the modern era, where the
reference for adaptation goes beyond the sense of belonging in the
immediate valued group to identification with a much larger unit or
ideal. The current, worldwide epidemic of severe ethnic conflict should
help us realize that we are all in this huge leaking boat together in a
gathering storm.

The ancient propensity toward narrow identity, harsh intolerance, and
deadly intergroup conflict will confront us with new dangers in the next
century and challenge us as never before. By the same token it will
create a great opportunity to identify the fundamental properties of
superordinate goals and their myriad possibilities in the world of
small- and large-scale wars that have proven so contagious in recent
years. How can all of humanity benefit \-- indeed survive \-- by
adopting new attitudes, practices, and institutions?

**Changing Principles of International Diplomacy**

In the period following World War II, the international community put
all too little emphasis on the protection of minority rights. Concepts
of self-determination, sovereignty, and the sanctity of borders
prevented outsiders from mediating ethnic tensions within or between
states. International law on self-determination limited itself primarily
to anti-colonial movements.

When international intervention did occur, it was usually associated
with partisan superpower support in the context of Cold War rivalry. In
this environment and with its almost infinite respect for the
nation-state, the United Nations was virtually helpless to intervene in
most serious conflicts. Mediation by governments or nongovernmental
organizations in intergroup conflicts also tended to occur only after
fighting had erupted between opposing groups. This was the case in the
Arab-Israeli disputes, in Ngorno-Karabakh, in Yugoslavia, and in the
Sudan.

But with the ending of the Cold War, the growth of a dynamic and
interdependent world economy, and the blurring of national boundaries by
modern communication and transportation, nations have an opportunity to
deal cooperatively with world problems unhampered by ideological
rivalries. In particular they can now address seriously the
paradoxically hostile separatism that is stirring up new conflicts
around the world. They can begin to deal with the severe ecological
damage and resource depletion, huge disparities between rich and poor,
and denial of aspiration that are at the heart of much of intergroup
violence.

Some experts, drawing on years of study and diplomatic experience in
dealing with serious conflicts, envision a shift taking place in the
nature of international relations \-- from the traditional
power-oriented, authoritarian, and controlling model toward one that is
more complex and multifaceted, in which mutually beneficial political
and economic relations are of growing importance.

The older paradigm took it for granted that human beings were
overwhelmingly selfish and therefore would respond mainly to coercion.
Interests were defined narrowly in terms of power.

This can now usefully be enlarged to a broader view that is more
sympathetic to basic human needs for physical and economic security,
social justice, and political freedom. Such a view relies less on
coercive measures and more on the clarification of fundamental concerns
and underlying common interests and on ways to change political
environments toward democracy.

An indication of a shift in the paradigms of diplomacy is the recent
willingness of states to yield some historically sensitive sovereign
prerogatives in the interests of achieving larger political and economic
benefits. But progress here is hard-won and subject to regression with
little notice.

Still, the remarkably peaceful ending of the Cold War might in due
course provide the basis for a new system of international, democratic,
nonviolent problem solving aimed ultimately at prevention of the
deadliest conflicts. This is an immense challenge to serious thinkers,
penetrating analysts, and innovative practitioners.

**A Post-Cold War International System**

If aggrieved groups have recourse to a respected external authority \--
whether governments, multilateral institutions, nongovernmental
organizations, or other bridge-building or mediating links \-- they
might be less likely to engage in secessionist activities or appeal to
their ethnic kin from outside to come to their rescue. Whatever can
nurture a more cosmopolitan identity rather than a parochial, narrowly
defined ethnic identity will be helpful in the long term.

To this end, the international community can formulate general standards
for resolving disputes and for satisfying self-determination claims to a
reasonable extent, in the context of an existing state if feasible. It
can develop a preventive orientation, monitoring \"hot spots\" analyzing
the potential sources of conflict, and becoming involved early as
conflicts emerge. It can analyze ways in which economic access to and
participation in the international economy can help ensure adherence to
standards of decent behavior in intergroup relations. It can encourage
ways of facilitating the growth of mutually beneficial loose
associations or confederations.

A new international consensus toward conflict prevention and resolution
could support the provision of visible, respected forums for the
expression of grievances among the relevant parties and of organized
settings that foster empathy and restraint, in which culturally accepted
techniques for reconciliation are used to the maximum extent possible.
It could instill a process of joint problem solving in which
representatives of the different groups mutually explore their
respective interests, basic needs, and fervent aspirations. It could
have a means of identifying shared goals such as regional economic
development and aid in the building of inclusive democratic
institutions.

Such a consensus could lead to mechanisms for organizing an ongoing
series of reciprocal goodwill gestures; for drafting possible agreements
\-- even modest next steps \-- that show the possibility of finding
common ground in a mode of civil discourse; for building institutions
where parties can learn about negotiation and democratic ways of coping;
and for utilizing multilateral, regional, and nongovernmental resources
to create incentives and skills for negotiation, cooperation, and help
with economic development.

These desiderata could apply to the resolution of a wide range of large,
intergroup conflicts, spanning traditional international relations and
contemporary ethnic tensions.

But what entities could implement such an international system for
preventing the deadliest conflicts? The United Nations? The community of
established democracies? Some interplay between the two? Other
international mechanisms?

**The United Nations**

There is a growing interest by the international community in the
possibility of broadening the role of the United Nations. With its
legitimacy as the most significant global institution striving for
democratic ideals oriented toward a peaceful world order, it might
usefully intervene in some "internal affairs" to prevent deadly
conflict, render humanitarian assistance, and aid transitions to more
democratic systems of governance.

In January 1992, for the first time in the history of the institution, a
special meeting of the Security Council of the United Nations was held
at the level of heads of state. It was a summit meeting called to
examine the functions of the U.N., particularly with respect to conflict
resolution. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali was asked to prepare
a plan for strengthening the capacity of the U.N. to engage in
preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, and peacekeeping. This was an
unprecedented occasion and expressed a strong commitment to the original
purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter drawn up a half
century earlier.

The Secretary-General responded some months later with a remarkable
document, "An Agenda for Peace," which drew upon many ideas and
proposals from member states, regional and nongovernmental
organizations, and individuals. Some aspects of the document are
groundbreaking. In it Boutros-Ghali took note of changes in the concept
of sovereignty: "The time of absolute and exclusive sovereignty . . .
has passed; its theory was never matched by reality. It is the task of
leaders of states today to understand this and to find a balance between
the needs of good internal governance and the requirements of an ever
more interdependent world."

The Secretary-General put emphasis on fact-finding and analysis \-- to
identify at the earliest possible stage the circumstances that could
produce serious conflict \-- and on the need for preventive diplomacy to
resolve the most immediate problems, with attention to underlying causes
of conflict. While placing a high priority on the U.N.\'s having an
early warning system and the means for early intervention, he did not
ignore the necessity for it to deal effectively at later stages with its
more familiar functions of peacemaking and peacekeeping. Improvement in
the former could include strengthening the role of the International
Court of Justice (the principal judicial organ of the U.N.) and
introducing confidence-building measures, economic assistance, and, if
necessary, sanctions and the use of military force. Boutros-Ghali
considered the increased demands on the U.N. for peacekeeping and the
complex organizational changes that will be necessary if the U.N. is to
be more effective in these domains.

He also considered preventive deployment, which goes beyond earlier U.N.
practice. There may be circumstances that justify deploying forces prior
to the outbreak of fighting, if such help is requested by governments or
parties to the fighting. The aim is to limit or control the violence,
help ensure that security is maintained, assist in conciliation efforts,
even establish a demilitarized zone before a conflict is well
established, and provide humanitarian assistance.

To the functions he was asked to comment on, the Secretary-General added
a fourth category \-- post-conflict peacebuilding \-- having the aim of
constructing a more durable foundation for peace. The creation of a new
environment after a conflict is the counterpart of preventive diplomacy
before conflict. While preventive diplomacy seeks to identify at the
earliest stage the circumstances that could produce a serious conflict
and remove the sources of danger, post-conflict peacebuilding aims to
prevent a crisis from recurring. It emphasizes, as does preventive
diplomacy, cooperative efforts to cope with underlying economic, social,
and humanitarian problems.

The Secretary-General\'s report underscored the importance of joint
efforts to nurture democratic practices and, by implication, democratic
institutions, since so many countries in a state of conflict have had
little or no democratic experience. Similarly, in many arenas there is a
need for the U.N. to provide technical assistance in the rebuilding
phase and to place the conflicting parties on a sounder economic basis
for their own internal development. As a practical matter, Boutros-Ghali
cited the problem of how to get rid of the millions of mines that now
litter the lands where conflicts have gone on. Doing so will restore not
only agriculture and transportation but hope and confidence so that
citizens can participate fully in the rebuilding. The Secretary-General
recognized the importance of working with regional organizations and the
nongovernmental sector in carrying out such functions.

Implementing this agenda will necessarily be difficult and the obstacles
formidable. If the United Nations is to play these roles effectively, it
will require much more substantial and dependable financial and
political support than it has ever received before. For this to happen
there will need to be a much higher level of public understanding about
the U.N.\'s current functions and its potential than now exists. And
there will need to be some changes in structure and function.

The United Nations is not, and never will be, a world government. It is
an intergovernmental organization of sovereign states that seek common
ground for cooperation in their long-term self-interest. It is perforce
large and multifaceted, disparate in its composition and in the outlook
of its members, and emotionally charged from its past history and from
current difficulties in the world. As such, it cannot be an optimal
instrument for all efforts at preventive diplomacy or conflict
resolution. Nevertheless, if it did not exist, something very much like
it would have to be invented. There simply has to be a comprehensive,
worldwide forum for global issues. Surely it is time to consider how
some of its functions, and the components and mechanisms within it,
could be extended, and new ones created if necessary, in order to
strengthen the hand of the international community in preventing highly
lethal conflicts.

**The Established Democracies**

The democracies of Europe, North America, Japan, and Australia have
shown that they can live together peacefully even as they compete. On
the other hand, they have failed badly in certain situations, such as
Bosnia. Increasingly they are likely to take the lead in formulating
international norms of conduct with respect to intergroup relations, the
proliferation of highly lethal weaponry, economic development in poorer
nations, human rights, and the growth of democratic institutions. They
have the technological, economic, and political strength to establish
such norms even if tyrannical governments are offended.

The established democracies may act on such issues with the approval of
or on behalf of the U.N., or they may cooperate with it informally.
Usually their actions will be political and economic in nature rather
than military. In almost all cases they will need to consult widely with
each other on a systematic basis.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a prime example of the ability
of established democracies to work together \-- initially to counteract
an aggressive Soviet Union, provide for European security, and foster
German recovery in a democratic mode. Could a similar alliance,
involving a wider coalition of democracies, be organized to ensure
security on a worldwide basis, fuel economic growth with fairness,
protect cultural diversity, and foster democratic values?

**Who Else Can Help?**

As important as the United Nations is, there are other organizations of
the international community that could be effective in preventing deadly
conflicts. The involvement of the permanent members of the U.N. Security
Council may be crucial for some regional conflicts, as in Cambodia, but
other disputes may be handled at the regional level. The potential of
regional mechanisms for dispute resolution in intergroup conflicts
deserves serious attention in the next decade. The European Community,
the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Council of
Europe and its European Court of Human Rights, the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations, the Organization of American States, the
Organization of African Unity, and the Arab League all need
strengthening in this regard.

Various specialized international organizations, such as the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the Law of the Sea Tribunal, can play
a useful role in resolving disagreements surrounding a particular set of
issues. Bilateral arrangements can also be created to adjudicate
disputes between nations. The U.S.--Iran Claims Tribunal demonstrated
that two hostile nations with different languages, laws, and goals were
able to settle matters of considerable importance to both sides.

Nongovernmental organizations can also play an important part in
resolving disputes, cooperating with the U.N. and with regional
organizations. Former President Jimmy Carter, for example, has
established through the Carter Center in Atlanta an international
network for mediation and conflict resolution.

**The Scientific Outlook**

The scientific community is probably the closest approximation we now
have to a truly international community, sharing certain basic
interests, values, and standards as well as a fundamental curiosity
about the nature of matter, life, behavior, and the universe. The shared
quest for understanding is one that has no inherent boundaries. In any
situation of potentially serious conflict, the scientific outlook can
contribute to the construction of a framework for conflict resolution
and for building a peaceful world. It takes a world view that embodies
multiple truths, not some simple ultimate truth; it seeks evidence, and
it is prepared to learn from experience. This same empirical spirit is
frequently helpful in defusing passions aroused by social conflict. It
provides one of the pathways toward a broader-than-conventional
perspective that can be learned by all peoples and that can build
bridges across cultures.

In the realm of scientific research, the interactions of biological,
psychological, and social processes in the development of human
aggressiveness leading to violent conflict must constitute an important
frontier in the decades ahead. A shared commitment to the humane uses of
science and technology could offer a great vista of hope.

**Bridge Building**

This analysis suggests the importance of having cross-cutting or
overlapping group memberships in the modern world. Cross-cutting
relations are those that connect subgroups of society or connect nations
in ways that overcome in-group/out-group distinctions and prejudicial
stereotypes. They involve the opportunity for members of alien,
suspicious, or hostile groups to spend time together, to work together,
to play together, and even to live together for extended periods of
time, gaining a sense of shared humanity.

On the international level, there must be concerted efforts to expand
favorable contact between people from different groups and nations. Some
measure of comprehension of a strange culture is vital. Educational,
cultural, and scientific exchanges can be helpful. At a deeper level,
joint projects involving sustained cooperation can provide, if only on a
small scale, an experience of working together toward a superordinate
goal. There are many ways to break down antagonisms between groups or,
preferably, prevent them from arising in the first place. International
organizations can do much to promote empathic personal contact and
overlapping loyalties that cut across in-group/out-group antagonisms.

Those of us who have a deep sense of belonging in groups that cut across
ethnic or national lines may serve to bridge different groups and help
others move toward a wider sense of social identity. Building such
bridges will need many people interacting across traditional barriers on
a basis of mutual respect. Nothing in our history as a species would
suggest there is a readiness for such a wider sense of personal
identity; yet it must be possible to engender this in the next century
and to do so on a broader scale than ever before.

**Social Education**

There are other ways to create positive connections between groups.
Families, schools, community organizations, religious institutions, and
the media throughout the years of human growth and development are
pivotal institutions that can shape attitudes and interpersonal skills
toward either decent relations or hatred and violence. In the
twenty-first century it will be necessary in child raising to put
deliberate, explicit emphasis on developing prosocial orientations and a
sense of worth based not on depreciation of others but on the
constructive attributes of oneself and others. Taking turns, sharing,
and cooperating, especially in learning and problem solving \-- these
norms, established on a simple basis in the first few years of life, can
open the way to beneficial human relationships that can have
significance throughout a person\'s life.

A secure attachment of infant to mother or other adult caregiver
provides a crucial foundation for the development of prosocial behavior.
It is important to focus on the nature of parental behavior that can
promote or retard these tendencies. Not only schools but religious and
community organizations should foster positive reciprocity,
cross-cutting relations, awareness of superordinate goals, and a mutual
aid ethic in children and adolescents. The largely unfulfilled
educational potential of the media can also be helpful in improving
intergroup relations, as "Sesame Street" has shown. These same generic
orientations and skills can be extended from childhood all the way up
through adulthood to membership in larger units, possibly even including
international relations in due course.

The painfully difficult effort to achieve decent, fair, peaceful
relations among diverse human groups is an enterprise that must be
renewed. While weapons of mass destruction pose the greatest danger,
economic decline and environmental degradation will be a growing
challenge to survival for many in the years ahead. People of humane and
democratic inclination will need sustained cooperation throughout the
world to build effective systems for dealing with these great problems.
Ideas are emerging, analysis is proceeding, useful models exist. The
current turmoil could provide a constructive stimulus for practical
arrangements that help us learn to live together at last.