That observation and the vision behind it was not unique to our local group.
It remains widespread throughout the peace community. But however common
and understandable it might be, it strikes us as almost uniquely "First World" --
able to originate only from those who still think everyone will benefit from the
emerging international arrangement of economics and politics. However, the
complacency of "tending our own gardens" becomes ludicrous when the world is
revisioned from a Third World standpoint. ¹

Third World peace activists do not wonder "What's to resist now that the
Cold War has ended?" For them, the dawning of the "New World Order" is
fearful. In many ways it is less hopeful than the old world order. Its "free trade"
cornerstones like the North American Free Trade Agreement must be resisted at
every turn. As rebels in Chiapas, Mexico put it, the new trade pacts amount to
"World War III" against the planet's poor. Its advocacy of unrestrained,
untargeted "growth" wreaks the equivalent of nuclear devastation on the natural
environment. Stated more historically, the new order is like the return of a
much older, Dickensian economic arrangement that preceded the Cold War.

Members of our peace group have had trouble accepting these views.
Consequently, we have been immobilized. We lack a consistent stand on issues
of justice, peace, and war, be it a shooting war, or the New World Order
economic arrangements Susan George terms "financial low intensity conflict."
We have had trouble deciding, because unlike our Third World counterparts, we
lack a coherent vision of the world and how it works. Or rather, our vision tends
to be pragmatic. Its ideology tells us to decide issues on a case-by-case basis.
So each time a crisis arises, we must decide again which side we are on. In
Somalia we might stand with our president. In Iraq, we perhaps should oppose
him. Regarding the New World Order in general, we just do not know. In all
cases, it takes us a long time to decide.

First World complacency about the New World Order juxtaposed with Third
World alarm reminds us of Plato "Allegory of the Cave." As we will see in
Chapter 1, that image is central to our argument that peacemakers need
acquaintance with Third World political theory. Plato described the human
condition in terms of prisoners in a cave mistaking the shadows projected by
their keepers for reality. First World shadows tell us the unfolding New World
Order is beneficial. Unlimited economic growth can lead to U.S.-style prosperity
for everyone. Millions of deaths each year, as a result of lost jobs and the
consequent hunger from poverty are the price we (the poor among us) must pay
to arrive at the projected utopia. Meanwhile, fears about impending
environmental disaster reflect the timid concerns of paranoid extremists. A little
voluntary tinkering here and there is all that is required to "save the planet."

The vision is quite different once we step "outside the cave" and into the
Third World. There peace activists have a coherent understanding that enables
them to see the impossibility of the New World Order and its reliance on
"market" as the solution to virtually every human problem. Our thesis is that
effective peace activism in the First World is intimately connected with that
Third World vision. We have to exercise "moral imagination" by changing our
viewpoint (Chapter 1); we must sharpen our understanding of how the
international market works and why it necessarily excludes the cast well-off
(Chapter 2), this demands developing historical perspective revealing that the

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