Bringing peoples together through dialogue –reality or illusion?

“Bringing peoples together through dialogue – reality or illusion?”. Such is the title of my contribution to the present discussions. It is a twenty-page draft produced in a very short period of time and which needs, of course, to be improved. Nevertheless, I am convinced that it contains comprehensive data on the question of international dialogue, a key issue at this conference. If, in the end of my presentation, it attracts the attention of some of you and helps in raising the level of the debate, then, my goal will have been achieved.
  My presentation is organised as follows:

• An introduction in which I outline the basis for my reflection,
• the main part, my expositions on failed dialogues at the local and global levels in three sections,
• my personal assessment on the crucial issue of dialogue,
• a conclusion in which I indicate that dialogue as a means of bringing peoples together is possible and achievable, only at small-scale levels or in local conflict settlement, but an illusion at global levels or in complex regional and international conflicts.

Introduction

My starting point is that some individuals, people, states or nations choose violence and wars to advance their interests or solve any problem, conflict against others. Instead, others favor dialogue. In this regard, nothing is new today; the history of mankind has a lot of examples from which we can draw insights.
  But, even, the best case of the post-World War II peace settlement in Western Europe that you know better than myself is not free from criticism. For example, the defeated Germany: Its wounds are still there: it was humiliated and put under the control of the United States and the European Union’s machine, at least in military matters.
  In addition, Adolf Hitler didn’t fall into our lap. He was the product of the European racism that started early before him (see the spread of racial superiority, inferiority and eugenics in the 18^th and 19^th centuries), and continues until now. Can we frankly say that he is unique when considering:

1. What Great Britain and other Western powers did to indigenous peoples on different continents; as well as the Belgian King Leopold II and Germany in the former “Congo Free State” and Namibia (German South-West Africa), how African Americans were treated during and after the period of slavery;
2. what the Western leaders did in Africa during the 16^th–18^th centuries with the slave trade, and what – out of similar sentiments – has happened in our time, for example, in Serbia, Iraq and Afghanistan;
3. and what they are doing in Middle East, and in the Africa Great Lakes Region?

For details, one may read the studies below:

Kuljit Kooj Chuhan, “The development of racist theories and idea”, http://revealinghistories.org.uk/legacies-stereotypes-racism-and-the-civil-rights-movement/articles/the-development-of-racist-theories-and-ideas.html

David Olusoga, “The roots of European racism lie in the slave trade, colonialism”, in: The Guardian of 8 September 2015

Alex Ross quoted by Jason Kottke in How American Racism Influenced AdolfHitler, 18 June 2020

Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost. A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa,1998

Joël Kotek, “Le génocide des Herero, symptôme d’un Sonderweg allemand ?”, in: Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah 2008/2 (N° 189), pp. 177–219; “Le premier génocide du XXe siècle fut perpétré à partir de 1904 dans la colonie allemande du Sud-Ouest africain. Il entraîna la mort d’environ 75 000 personnes”, cited in Pierre Ancery, “Le génocide des Héréros”, in: Echo de Presse of 8 September 2020

“Serbian Genocide Hidden History. The Yugoslav Wars: Story of Serbian Genocide Still Remains Untold”, in: Genocide/Hololcaust/Hidden History of 17 August 2015

Keith Snow, The Plunder and Depopulation of Central Africa: The Politics of Genocide, White Supremacy, Ideology and Political Control, 4 March 2012

Ian Douglas, Abdul Ilah Albayaty, Hana Al Bayaty, “US Genocide in Iraq”

The Story of Genocide in Afghanistan, https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft7b69p12h&chunk

The Genocide of the Palestinian People: An International Law and Human Rights Perspective, 25 August 2016

Syria: Timeline of War and Genocide – The TRUTH SOURCE, 6 April 2017

Finally, the collusion between the Nazi regime and some Zionist leaders from 1933 to 1945 is often hidden or underscored. The official narratives about the Holocaust give the impression that there are some individuals who hold the monopoly of truth on the complexity of World War II, while others are muzzled or being forced to constantly self-censor. Why such intellectual intolerance or narrative control? This is the big question.
  Even if his article refers to the manipulative character of reports on the Iraq war, “What If There Were No Official Narratives?” (media, 2018), Caitlin Johnson points to a situation which also has a meaningful significance in this specific case: “After the mass media’s complicity in selling the Iraq invasion to the Western world, we should have seen scores of people fired and changes put in place to prevent such unforgivable complicity from ever occurring again. Instead, no changes whatsoever were made to ensure that news media outlets never facilitate another disaster at the hands of secretive government agencies, and now these same outlets are allowed to promote world-shaping narratives on no evidentiary basis beyond ‘It’s true because we said so’. There’s a consensus, agreed-upon narrative about what’s going on in the world that is advanced by all mass media outlets regardless of what political sector those outlets market themselves to. Exactly what should be done about individual events and situations might vary a bit from pundit to pundit and outlet to outlet, but the overall "how it is" narrative about what’s happening is the same across the board. This is the official narrative, and the plutocrat-owned media/political class has full control over it. We all know the official narratives, right? The US and its allies are good, (those on the other side of spectrum) are bad guys”.
  In such conditions, dark sides remain in the official narratives on World War II. The title of Eddy Bauer’s book, “Histoire controversée de la deuxieme guerre mondiale, 1939-1945” is a case to the point.¹
  The problem of the countries of the South lies elsewhere. They became [during the Cold War] the battleground of the Western powers’ wars [which were often run “hot” and not “cold” there]; as it was the case in the DRC in the early 1960’s and in the wake of the 1989 dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the 1991 Operation Desert Storm and revival of the New World Order by President George Bush father under the flag of the Twenty First American Century (PNAC), project of worldwide hegemonic wars. The following documentations are worth mentioning:

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC);

Patrick J. Buchanan, Where the Right Went Wrong. How the Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency. Macmillan Audio, 8 September 2004

Pierre Hillard, La marche irrésistible du nouvel ordre mondial. L'oeil F.x. De Guibert, May 2015.

The PNAC, a so-called non-profit organisation, stated that “American leadership is good both for America and for the world”, and sought to build support for “a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity”. What kind of arrogance and self-proclaimed mission in world affairs! One says that the evil lies in the details, and this is not different.
  These are some reasons which lead me to be cautious or, even, skeptical about automatically praising dialogue among the unequal.

Local, regional and international failed dialogues

I selected six compelling cases to support my assertion. The first three cases are presented separately while the last three ones are combined because they have key common elements.

Case 1:
The failure of the North-South dialogue
“The North-South dialogue refers to the process through which the developing and newly independent nations of the ‘third world’, predominantly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, engaged the industrialised countries of North America and Western Europe in negotiations over changes to the international economic system during the 1970s”. The professed objective of such a dialogue was to find common grounds in understanding the economic gap between the North and the South and the ways of closing it. This objective was epitomised in these words: “partnership in their co-operation” (Céline Lemme and Franck Signoret, “Partenariat Nord-Sud à l’épreuve au quotidien. Une dynamique riche, complexe, aux multiples facettes”, in: Site Acodev, February 2016.)
  But, the results were not encouraging: the gap remained unchanged. Writing in 1984, Robert L. Rothstein already underlined the North- South dialogue’s failure to establish a New Economic Order as they have intended to do in the early 1970s; instead, he adds, they succeeded only in reaching a few cosmetic agreements (as with the Common Fund), while simultaneously wasting scarce resources and increasing cynicism and indifferences among many of the participants.
  Later studies by Alexander Nnnaemeka Aegbaenyi and Michael Chedebe Oddih (2012), Richard Sokolsky and Daniel R. Depetris (2019) and Dick Uduma (2019) didn’t contradict him. Their studies pointed to the persistence of the North-South divide because of strong ideological, political, economic and cultural barriers. This keeps the system of dependence alive, instead of establishing a partnership of mutual advantages for both the North and the South; in other words, the global environment is a great burden for the countries in the South. In today’s “Françafrique” and the deadly competition between the West/USA and Russia/China in Africa are the yardstick of this iniquitous system
  Even worse is the global poverty in the South, centre of raw materials without which the Western industries would drastically suffer. In order to keep them running, the developed powers keep the control over the South through unequal agreements on cooperation, unending violences and wars. In other words, the South’s poverty or underdevelopment feeds the North’s development. The documentary “Coltan du Sang” [it shows the Situation in Eastern DRC] is a textbook case. Thus, I do believe that the word “unequal development”, key concept in the dependency school of thought doesn’t express well this sad reality.

Case 2:
The failure of the socialist/communist-capitalist dialogue
In the West, the “Russophobia” and the “Chinaphobia” is a reality; the anti-West resentment is also too strong in Russia and China. The end of the Cold War that we have been told since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 is an empty rhetoric. Hate and the war between the two camps continue in many ways. And the US struggle for a “full spectrum dominance” (title of William Engdahl’s 2009 book) in the so-called New World Order or new wave of globalisation (Pierre Hillard, 2014). In this fierce competition for world hegemony and the control of the South’s resources, war is a priority; peace, stability, freedom and democracy are sacrificed or meaningless.
  Karl-Jürgen Müller (2021) recently stresses this unfortunate move from another perspective when he writes: “The past decades have shown, however, that in particular the binding force of law in international relations has suffered greatly. And one must add that those states which have committed substantial breaches of law in the process were the USA and other member states of NATO, states that today supposedly have stepped up to defend freedom and to protect democracy. In addition, breaking the law in international relations, for example waging a war of aggression in violation of international law, also has negative consequences for the freedom and democracy within a state. A policy of confrontation shuns freedom and democracy.” (Current Concerns No 16 of 21 July 2021)
  The different discussions on the disarmament, the promotion of rule of law and democracy in the world are the so-called détente achieved little things as the arms race continues (the annual increase in weaponry budget in US, China and Russia is a good example), the global security is daily threatened, totalitarian democracies are growing and most of societies within some powerful countries are being militarised (the war on the so-called global terrorism, domestic terrorism and the censorship of speech and information by the big tech, for example, are undermining the US traditional values). And yet, the mantra of American ideologues and militarists is to fight for democracy, a safe world, a world freedom. In fact, most of American elites constantly repeat it like robots and following the 1845 famous “Manifest Destiny Doctrine”. What a joke! What a lie! In this framework, a handful faction of American leaders is reviving the old “big stick policy”, even within the United States.
  However, despite these rivalries and frequent open conflicts, there is a common denominator between both camps: they are run by criminal globalists who share interests and they resort to assassinations to subdue leaders in the South who refuse to comply with the North’s diktats. More than 30 African heads of states and political leaders have been assassinated in this process since the 1960s and their killers, the Western leaders continue to enjoy impunity. So, there is a strong feeling that the International Criminal Court at the Hague was established only for the leaders of the South. The domination and the exploitation of the peoples of the South is another common denominator between the two camps. We often hear the slogan of protecting Western common interest when wars break up in different regions of world. What does this mean to the South? Sufferings!

Case 3
The failure of the Israel-Palestinian dialogue
The 2 November 1917 Balfour Declaration, the 1933 transfer agreement, the Nazi-Zionist collusion between 1933 and 1945, the 29 November 1947 United Nations’ Partition of Palestine into Separate Jewish and Palestinian States, and 1948 US decisions on Palestine are both the prelude to and the proof of the responsibility of the West (Great Britain, Germany, the United States, and the United Nations mainly) in fuelling the drama of Middle East. Put it differently, the process which led to the establishment of the state of Israel and this establishment itself drew the whole Middle East into unending violence and armed conflicts; the Palestinian issue being at the heart for this drama. The fact that the Western powers side unconditionally behind the post-1948 governments of Israel doesn’t help at all.
  Failing to recognise the Israel and the West factors in this drama and to take them into account in search for peace and stability simply means to manage the status quo. The failure of the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue stems mainly from this omission.

Jewish immigration to historical Palestine, https://www.cjpme.org/fs_181

“Historical Timeline: 1900-Present.History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”, https://israelipalestinian.procon.org/historical-timeline-1900-present; retrieved 15 October 2021

“Zionist and Palestinian Arab attitudes before 1948”, https://religion.wikia.org/wiki/Zionist_and_Palestinian_Arab_attitudes

“The Nakba didn’t end in 1948”, in: Al Jazeera’s Weekly News, 23, 2017

Let me go straight to key facts supporting such an argument. Despite all the talks sponsored by the West (Camp David Accord in 1978; Madrid Conference in 1991, Oslo Accord I 1993, Hebron Accord in 1997; Wye River Memorandum in 1998; Camp David Summit in 2000; Taba Summit in 2001; Beirut Summit in 2002; The Road Map for peace in 2003; Geneva accord in 2003; Annapolis Conference in 2007; Proximity talks in 2010; and the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks continue up to now, always under the supervision of Israel’s best ally, the  United States), the deadlock is total and hope of a two states solution is severely compromised. In other words, 43 years of peace talks (1978–2021) led nowhere. A few years ago, the Fatah was considered as the big problem in the peace talks; today, it is the Hamas which, by the way, was initially supported by Israel against the Fatah and is a small threat in front of the Israeli military might. Where lies the truth? The truth of matter is that the zionist project of making Israel a Jewish state, establishing a Great Israel reaching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Tigris-Euphrates rivers or the borders of Iran, and working to be and remain the unique superpower in Middle East as the United States is trying to do in the world is, in my view; the biggest obstacle to peace and reconciliation.

Cases 4, 5 and 6
The failure of dialogues in Rwanda, DRC and Ivory Coast
Although having historical roots, the crises of the three countries took a dramatic step following recent wars sponsored by foreign forces, namely the United States, Great Britain, Israel, Tanzania, Uganda and Burundi in Rwanda between 1990 and 1994 in Rwanda, the same foreign powers and Rwanda in Zaire between 1996 and 2002, France, the United States and Burkina Faso in Ivory Coast between 2002 and 2011. In the three cases, the United Nations, respectively the MINUAR/UNAMIR, MONUC/MONUC and ONUCI) sided with these foreigner powers.
  These foreign powers used the Tutsi in both Rwanda and Zaire and the Burkinabe in Ivory Coast to advance their imperial interests. But, domestically these wars of external origin set the Tutsi (nilotics) against the Hutu (bantu) in Rwanda, and against the Congolese (bantu) in Zaire and the Burkinabe against the autochthons in Ivory Coast.
  The same foreign powers which fuelled the ethnic conflicts came in as peace makers; they imposed peace talks and agreements which, in the end, put their mercenaries in dominant position in the so-called post-conflict context. This is how the reconciliation was trapped in the three cases.
  In post-1994 Rwanda referred to often as a Tutsi/RPF² Rwanda, the New Israel in central Africa established an apartheid rule in which the Hutu have no say at all. Even the Tutsi who escaped genocide in 1994 are being harassed, killed. One way out in the view of some Hutu and Tutsi who were inside Rwanda before the 1990 invasion is to topple by any means the RPF from power and keep them out in any future government. Most of the RPF’s members came from Uganda and are composed of foreigners. The general feeling among honest Rwandans is that these invaders and occupiers have no love for Rwanda and the Rwandan people; they only came in with the intent to kill and loot. They went too far in their crimes so that it is too hard for them to change for the good. In the end, their criminal behavior is bringing some Hutu and Tutsi³ more close together again, an unexpected or unintended outcome of the war in Rwanda.
  In post 2002 Zaire (renamed DRC in July 1997), the implementation of the July 1999 Lusaka Peace Agreement, the April 2002 Sun-City, and the December 2002 Pretoria peace agreements consolidated Rwanda and Tutsi positions of the tutsisation of the DRC’s institutions. The February 2015 document of Honoré Ngbanda, “Enquête sur le fonctionnement de l’infilration et du fonctionnement du système d’occuption de la RDC par le Rwanda”⁴ is so clear that it requires no comment. As I clearly demonstrated in my 2009 study, the so-called “Prevention of Tutsi genocide by the International Community in the DRC” is both dangerous and a humanitarian hypocrisy. How can it protect the gang of criminals, here the Tutsi occupiers of the country? Let me recall that before 1990, the Tutsi enjoyed more privileges than other ethnic groups (with the exception of the Ngbandi, President Mobutu’s own ethnic group). Even after 1990, the Tutsi suffered less that any other ethnic group in the country. In short, as a result of war and false peace talks, the Congolese were driven into a new era of recolonisation by the “Tutsi Without Borders”, the first one having started with the assassination of Prime-Minister Lumumba and the nationalist leaders in 1961. All these events fuelled an anti-Tutsi hatred which will last long or may lead, in the near or later future, to an unpredictable drama.
  In post-2011 Ivory Coast, the implementation of the January 2002 Marcousis, the April 2005 Pretoria and the March 2007 Ouagadougou peace talks and agreements consolidated the positions of the Burkinabe around Alassane Dramane Ouattara (the man of the World Bank and the puppet of French oligarchs). Today, President Ouattara has no chance in bringing peace and stability in the country. The persecution of President Gbagbo’s followers and the ones of Guillaume Soro, his former key ally in the anti-President Gbagbo war continues. Instead, he is struggling to hang on power by any means, specially using massive corruption and assassination; his humiliating attempt to play France’s game in the crisis of Mali has also earned him wrath and hatred of the Panafricanists. As a leader, he has no credibility in Ivory Coast and in many other African counties; his ability to reconcile the people of Ivory Coast is in question. In reality, his shine is crumbling in the eyes of many; he is increasingly becoming a problem for France’s role in West African countries. In the end, both Ouattara and his godfather France, are on the edge of paying the cost of their bad deeds as nationalist feelings are growing in Ivory Coast and in the whole region.

The crucial issue of dialogue

For a confident or a genuine dialogue to succeed, it requires, at least, the following conditions:

• honesty and sincerity
• transparency: the diplomacy which is always put forward works against it.
• spirit of good will among all the parties to any conflict settlement or expression of goodness for the other
• need to put humanity or human rights at the centre of concerns,
• understanding of others’ sufferings, feelings, emotions
• listening to one another, search for understanding one another
• spirit of openness and reconciliation
• political good will
• avoiding to replace an evil by another

All the peace talks exposed above failed because they didn’t meet such conditions. Their objectives were not to solve conflicts, rather to have an upper hand one party over another and vice-versa through misleading agreements. This is the reason why, a safe world in which democracy grows, freedom, human rights are protected elsewhere is undermined, “thanks” to the globalists’ agenda, even within the so-called the Western democracies. the “totalitarian democracy” (words of William Engdahl), is not taking place only in the United States. Only a few countries like Switzerland still escape this dangerous trend. For how long they will remain so? Can they sale their model to the rest of the world? These are two big and unanswered questions today.

Conclusion

It is clear that some people are not willing to or will never relinquish their dominance. So, others are designed to continue to suffer from the latter’s subjugation.
  The motto of the globalists and/or great powers is to promote prosperity for them, and misery for others (the weak). Who, in this room, can forget the crimes committed by the US in Iraq? President George Bush, Jr decided to invade this country knowing that there were no weapons of mass destruction as it was claimed in official narratives and corporate medias. Worse, Iraq’s President, Saddam Hussein who served the US for long was hanged and the United Nations and its Secretary General, Kofi Annan who gave the green light to this invasion were awarded with the Nobel Peace Price. Here is how today’s world goes!
  Because of unbalance of power, the powerful always impose the agenda of peace talks on the weak and ultimately shape their outcome. So, the weak continue to play the game of dupe.
  Dialogue can pay off for all parties to the conflicts only at small scale or local level conflicts. This is the unquestionable reality.
  But, it cannot at global levels because the weak are always the losers and the powerful always the beneficiaries. The illusion is to believe that it can.
  Thank you for your attention. •

* Lecture “Mut zur Ethik” – Annual Conference: “The bonum commune in relations between people, nations and states: Solving problems and conflicts with dignity – with one another rather than against one another” 3–5 September 2021 in Sirnach (TG).

¹ The author mentioned is the Swiss historian Eddy Bauer, 1902-1972, professor of history at the University of Neuchâtel and the École polytechnique Fédérale, Lausanne. His work on the Second World War, published in 1966-1967, is a comprehensive seven-volume account.
² RPF: Rwandian Patriotic Front, French FPR, political wing of the guerilla formation of the Rwandan Tutsi exiles (RPA), led by the current President Paul Kagame, which reclaimed its lost supremacy in Rwanda from Uganda in the 1990-1994 war of intervention and has maintained its ethnic minority and one-party political regime in Rwanda ever since. (editor’s note)
³ This is often the name given to those Tutsis who remained in the country after Juvénal Habyarimana’s (Hutu) coup d'état in 1973, while mainly formerly influential Tutsi circles emigrated, a large part to Uganda, where many of them militarily supported Yoweri Museveni in his guerilla war against Obote. This then facilitated for the revanchist Rwandan Tutsi exiles in Uganda the establishment of the RPF, its exclusive arming as well as its military field of operation (all supported by the USA. (editor’s note)
⁴ engl. “Enquête sur le fonctionnement de l’infilration et du fonctionnement du système d’occuption de la RDC par le Rwanda” (Investigation into the operation of the infiltration and functioning of the system of occupation of the DRC by Rwanda); http://www.info-apareco.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Dossier-Enqute-sur-le-fonctionnement-du-rseau-dinfiltration-et-du-systme-doccupation.pdf