Mountaintop Politics: The Seventh Beatitude as Direction for Modern Foreign Policy [27th May 2008]

[27th May 2008]

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God - Matthew 5:9, KJV

Though the entirety of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount remains as relevant and practical in the current world as it did during the First Century, the seventh Beatitude, the blessing of peacemakers, represents at once the clearest and yet most demanding challenge for the Christian leader in this discordant age. While Jesus surely intended to direct the Sermon’s lessons towards all fora of human interaction—personal, communal, international—this examination seeks to focus upon the last and highest level—the impersonal and regimented interchange between nations. In this arena peace on a grand scale may be striven for or against with the lives of countless sons and daughters of God in the balance. The understanding of Christ’s direction in the Beatitude is then imperative to the Christian statesman who must consider all peoples of the world as neighbours, to whom he or she is mandated by God to show love. This limited treatment aims to communicate the mission of the Beatitude and also address the practical obstacles which hinder the easy attainment of the mantle of the peacemaker.

To begin an analysis of Matthew 5:9’s relevance to modernity and the current state of international relations, a brief examination of the passage’s diction must be undertaken so as to elucidate the intended meaning with greatest possible clarity. The concept which backs the word “blessed”, or markarios in Greek, denotes an interior and personal joy unthreatened by external forces. The blessing is almost a secret gift of God—divine fuel which may allow the possessor to persevere despite the flurry of aspersions and anathema guaranteed during the pilgrim’s progress. Blessing is granted to a specified group whose behaviour honours God: the peacemakers. Peace, the Greek word eirene, means a tranquility and concordance. The peacemaker then is one who actively pursues the creation of this state. For this work they are blessed and ‘shall be called the children of God’ as they are behaving in such a way as to reflect the tutelage and elicit the praise of their Father. Building upon this engagement with the composition of the seventh Beatitude, an assessment of the practical ramifications of Christ’s words may commence.

Having illuminated the individual components of the verse, what does the amalgamated whole seek to convey? From understanding what a peacemaker is leads to the more difficult task of learning how to actually be a peacemaker. One of the first and most obvious elements of the concept is the rejection of passivity and pacifism. By definition, to make peace is to act. In this, Christ demands of us attention and energy and responsiveness. We must be waiting for God’s direction and willing to say “Here I am” when called. We must be willing to stand up and tell God to have His will with our lives. This is not an easy thing for it requires leaving the comfort of the normal; it is a throwing down of the nets and a taking up the name Disciple. For a political actor this is not safe, but it is good and necessary.

Once a decision and willingness to act is reached, the composition of peacemaking becomes of greatest primacy. Firstly, the statesman must seek to stem violence through peaceful measures. Negotiation and diplomacy are necessary tools toward peacemaking, though the responsible leader must have the perceptive ability to recognize when an aggressor will not be appeased or is stalling to inflict greater harm. As has been seen in the numerous humanitarian crises of the 90s, or even the months preceding WWII, holding out for peace may actually be harmful. We must be willing to get up from the negotiating table and draw our swords. A courage is required to realize that to make peace one must, at times, make war. If our neighbour is being assaulted, real peace is not achieved though inaction, only injustice and death. If the only recipient of peace in such a situation is oneself; it is a selfish peace. We must be willing to sacrifice our relative safety in order to bring about a larger, complete accord.

In opting for force, we risk great sin and judgment if our actions are not carried out with a great intentionality towards fighting to end the fighting, or if due to misperception, ignorance, or poor planning, greater destruction results from peace-minded intrusion. Solomonic wisdom and perception are compulsory for the peacemaking leader. He or she must be versed in the deep causes which fuel a conflict. A mission of force rushed into a nation without proper understanding of the conflict only ignites greater strife and possibility for more violence. American involvement in Vietnam suffered from this folly as war planners incorrectly assessed the motivations of their enemies and in turn bred only greater suffering. The peacemaker, if at war, has a duty to make war effective—minimize the destruction created. Forceful peacemaking must be seen as a drastic, surgical procedure. The lowest cost to reach the end must be sought, but, importantly, an unwillingness to commit necessary resources will only create and prolong failure.

Peacemaking must be unconstrained. And here is one of its greatest difficulties because constraint, especially within a democracy is virtually guaranteed. Operations will not always be clean, low cost endeavours, though rightly begun and rightly aimed. The vagaries of war ensure that even the best planned missions may go awry. To abandon such an enterprise due to encountered difficulty is cowardice and selfish grasping from God what is already His. If we go towards justice we must be willing to see it out, for to quit is to abort hope and desert peace.

In the practical world, the peacemaking politician must be able to rally the nation to altruism so as to ensure a public commitment. If no such support can be garnered, the Christian leader must resist the temptation to deploy forces which will be pulled back before mission success can be achieved. A certain parental strength is necessary to resist immediate succour, though pain may be great, in the knowledge that assistance may actually be frighteningly detrimental. Peacemaking undertaken without adequate preparation or judgment easily transforms in peacebreaking. The line is thin. And the leader must always risk creating what they had hoped so earnestly to destroy. The wise peacemaker will know when the political capital exists to intervene and when intervention will be inappropriately supported and thus possibly more injurious than inaction.

This dampening force of practicality seems to douse the peacemaking fire, but in reality it only further stresses the immense importance of the peacemaking leader invigorating the citizenry. Sending in the soldiers of the state is obviously of prime importance but so too is ensuring that those soldiers remain supported and supplied to the completion of their given task.
Beyond concerns of support, and amongst a preponderance of unresolved issues which surround peacemaking, are questions of application such as: what do we classify as a target for peacemaking? And, which method of peacemaking is appropriate? Human rights abuses exist all over the globe and peace is a stranger to many if not most countries. How should candidates be selected for peacemaking missions?

As a practical example of these questions: Iran is widely considered a potential threat to world peace, but as it lacks clear and present aggressions the most useful peacemaking tools may be pre-conflict negotiation mixed with the resolute command which properly communicates a willingness to try to understand motivations but a total inflexibility to hostility and megalomaniacal tendencies. A similar response would work best with North Korea as well. Darfur on the other hand represents one of those hot conflicts requiring the immediate attention and zealous but educated reaction of a peacemaking leader and government. The convolutions of the situation are too numerous to discuss here but a supported military presence would be able to, if given the proper mandates, stave of the gross violence which has ravaged that region. The conflicts listed above represent only a fraction of the maelstrom of violence which haunts the world, but all can and should be addressed utilizing the vantage point of the seventh Beatitude.