Welcome to the World Without War Council website.

Here we are in our 41st year, still breaking the rules for an American peace group, especially one with a Berkeley address. Still challenging many peace organization stereotypes even as we seek alternatives to Pentagon orthodoxies.

WWWC is an initiating and planning center for an American peace effort sounder in its analysis and strategy of work than militarist, isolationist or simplistically anti-military movements. It focuses on the multiple arenas in which nongovernmental organizations shape American long-term purposes in ways that directly impact world affairs.

We differ from many peace and world affairs NGOs. How?:

By addressing both world power realities and the need for progress toward peace, defined as the non-violent resolution and prosecution of poltical conflict in world affairs;

By requiring that proposals for such progress also serve the well-being of our society and the security of our nation;

By relating a conscientious witness against war to the development of alternative approaches to political conflict that, like war, that settle the argument, but do so without mass violence;

By developing a strategy of work that emphasizes:

a) continuing consulting relationships with mainstream independent sector NGOs and agencies

b) leadership recruitment and training in such leverage arenas of our society

c) organizing coordinating centers for key sectors of the field

d) relating local and regional work to a national public effort for peace

e) maintaining an overview of organizations, policy centers, perspectives and work strategies in the field;

 

WWC focuses on requisites for world peace that can come into being only in the long term; identifying those centers in American life that can help make them realities and acting to catalyze their engagement.

We work to build a committed, thoughtful peace cadre, worthy, at last, of the name. One, connected to a much broader independent sector public effort for peace, that is an expression of, not an attack on, our political community; one that is aware of both the dangers and past errors of work in America for world peace and of the need to persist in pursuing that goal.

One instrument in this effort to build a wiser, richer, more effective, better linked and led peace effort in America is on view in Nexus, a searchable guide to 450 peace and world affairs groups in Northern California. The printed Guide to World Affairs Organizations in Northern California, from which Nexus derives, profiles leading organizations' history, ideas, strategy of work and offers a typology of the field, a cross-reference index to issues, audiences, and programs as well as an assessment of the problems and possibilities of present practice and future hopes. Similar Guides are available in Houston, Kansas City, Seattle, Chicago and under development in number of other communities aided by the Improving American Competence in World Affairs Project, a joint effort of five national world affairs organizations.

The ideas above inform our current work; descriptions of which you will find in the pages that comprise our website.

Tell us if you want to help.

Or Argue.

 

Robert Pickus

President

STRATEGY OF WORK

WWWC conceives of the programs, relationships and structures essential for wise American leadership in progress toward a world that resolves political conflict without violence and then works with our government and independent sector agencies to bring them into being.

Its strategy of work emphasizes strengthening regional and independent sector work in American affairs, developing leadership thru consultant and training relationships with much larger mainstream organizations, and demonstrating in specific arenas (e.g., pre-collegiate education, policy research centers, world affairs organizations) how long-term peace goals may best be served. We appreciate the contribution of radical cadres that are committed to peace, well in advance of mainstream organizations, but knows how often they become obstacles rather than aides to wise policy development..

PERSPECTIVE ON WORLD POLITICS (EXCERPTS)

War is a problem, not a fate to be suffered

• We acknowledge the inescapable reality of human conflict, but believe it is possible to develop — even in international relations — nonviolent forms of conflict resolution and prosecution.
• Ending war requires strengthened legal and political institutions through which political communities can resolve their conflicts and defend their values as they act on their contending conceptions of justice, security, and rightly ordered society.
• The long-term task is to secure agreement across differing civilizational currents, now thoroughly interdependent. That common ground, once achieved, can sustain steady progress toward law, police as the alternative to armies, and economic and political development in which the values and principles of governments, rooted in belief in human dignity, may be established.
• One requirement of progress toward peace is the growth of free societies. Our perspective differs radically from those that see America as the global villain and from those that counsel American withdrawal from world politics

It will take a long time for the agreements necessary to such progress to form. The economic, communication, and transportation requisites are rapidly coming into being. The beliefs, allegiances, and political structures are developing, but at a much slower pace, and often in counter-productive directions, damaging both to America's well-being and to the world's future. What must happen in America before we accept that responsibility for dealing constructively with those realities?

WWWC works in many American arenas to develop the leadership, relationships, and programs that forge answers to that question.
HISTORY

The Council began its work in Northern California in 1958, when twelve national peace organizations cooperated in establishing Acts for Peace. The project, founded by Robert Pickus, developed in 1961 into Turn Toward Peace (TTP), a cooperative national effort of some 60 peace and liberal internationalist organizations. In 1969, TTP split between those who opposed "America's war" in Vietnam and those who sought an end to the killing by Hanoi as well. The latter group formed WWWC, whose strategy of work shifted from a focus on the peace movement to an engagement with the whole spectrum of organizations interested in America's role in world affairs and the nonviolent resolution of political conflict. Independently incorporated, WWWC regional offices were opened in Seattle, Chicago, and New York City. The Seattle Council was reorganized as the Center for Civil Society, International. The Center focuses its work on aiding democratic development in Eastern Europe and the ex-USSR. The Midwest WWWC (Chicago office) is still at work. In New York and Washington, WWWC works through cooperating organizations there. The James Madison Foundation, independently incorporated in Washington, D.C., is our sister organization guiding our new efforts to strengthen a common American identity, one that will help assure an American constructive engagement in world affairs.

PROGRAMMING

• In conjunction with the James Madison Foundation, our sister civic education organization, the Council guides the Common Good/Immigrants and Citizenship project which aims to strengthen America's common civic culture which makes peaceful diversity possible.
• Six national world affairs organizations work in partnership with WWWC to chart and initiate efforts to improve independent sector work in 20 key metropolitan areas as part of the American Competence in World Affairs Project.
• WWWC and cooperating organizations will foster improved professional and public discussion of problems of global governance as they confront American nongovernmental organizations, policy study centers, educators and our Government in our Governance in World Politics Project.
• Other ongoing programs include: Assessing the Public Effort for Peace in America; Speaking Truth to Power: New Currents in Pacifist Thought; Department of State/Independent Sector Relationships; Northern California Consultative Group; Americans & World Affairs Fellowship Training Program; Community Colleges and sound Global Education programs.