From Individual Peace to Global Peace: A Conversation with Dr. Farah Dustdar

In this edition of Peace Dialogues in Luxembourg, Omid Attar speaks with Dr. Farah Dustdar about the philosophical, social, and practical foundations of peace. Drawing on Kantian pluralism, democracy, education, culture, art, and the participation of women, the conversation asks how peace can develop from everyday human relations into a stable international order.

1. From individual peace to global peace

Question

Your doctoral research explored Kantian pluralism and a model that moves from individual plurality and peaceful interpersonal relations, through democracy and social peace, toward peace between nations and cultures. How do you understand this connection today? Can global peace truly be built without first cultivating peaceful and pluralistic relations at the individual and societal levels?

Dr. Dustdar’s answer

Accepting plurality and cultivating peaceful relations among individuals are certainly necessary conditions for creating a culture of peace in society, but they are not sufficient. Achieving peace at the international level also requires organizations and structures capable of regulating relations between states through democratic laws. In other words, we need a form of global federal order in which countries can pursue their interests without allowing national interests to lead to war and armed conflict. This would mean creating an institution similar to today’s United Nations, while overcoming its present weaknesses and shortcomings. Of course, establishing such an order—and ensuring its stability—depends on the moral development of people around the world and on a shared recognition of the need for peace and nonviolence. Although most people desire peace, the current international political situation shows that humanity has not yet reached this level of moral development.

2. Ethics, politics, and peace

Question

Kant believed that politics and morality do not necessarily have to stand in opposition to one another. At a time when political decisions are often driven by power, security, and national interests, is it still realistic to speak of an ethical politics? What would it mean in practice for peacebuilding?

Dr. Dustdar’s answer

Kant argued that politics could be ethical because his entire philosophical system was founded on the idea that morality should be formulated as law, and he proposed a method for expressing moral principles in legal form. Toward the end of his life, however, he concluded that this project was not possible without acknowledging God and religion. One of his later books, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, examines the kind of religion suitable for an open and free society. In relation to your question, if politics is not compatible with morality, it can never truly restrain war, because war itself violates moral principles. Without restraining war and violence, peace has no meaning.

3. Education and culture as infrastructures of peace

Question

Peace is often treated as a matter for governments, diplomats, and international institutions. But if peace also begins at the level of the individual and society, what role should education and culture play? Can we consciously educate future generations in pluralism, dialogue, critical thinking, empathy, and civic responsibility as foundations of peace?

Dr. Dustdar’s answer

A culture of peace is certainly created through education. But the prerequisite for such education is agreement on the moral principles that should guide and regulate peace. Education is shaped by the values that prevail within a society. Therefore, the starting point of any education for peace must be the acceptance of the ethical principles on which that education is based.

4. New pathways to peace: art, sport, technology, and economic relations

Question

If we move beyond traditional diplomacy, fields such as art, sport, technology, and economic cooperation can bring people together across political and cultural boundaries. Which of these non-traditional pathways do you believe has the greatest potential for building trust and peace, and what conditions are necessary to prevent them from becoming new sources of competition, inequality, or division?

Dr. Dustdar’s answer

Among the fields you mention, art has the greatest potential to bring people closer together. Sport, technology, and economic relations can certainly create positive connections, but these connections are generally based on individual, group, or national economic interests. The economic relationship between the United States and China, whose principal architect was Henry Kissinger, was built on this assumption. It was believed that economic and technological relations would also bring intellectual and political change in China. Today, we can see that economic interdependence has developed between the two countries, but it has not produced the intellectual transformation or the kind of relationship that leads to lasting peace. Art is different. Although it may also have an economic or professional basis, its effects are spiritual and reach the hearts and minds of people. Art can create profound human solidarity, provided that artists draw their inspiration from the values of peace and humanism.

5. Democracy, pluralism, and social peace

Question

In the model you have studied, democracy and social peace form an important bridge between peace at the individual level and peace at the international level. Does sustainable international peace therefore depend on the quality of democracy, pluralism, and civic ethics within societies? And what happens when democratic institutions exist formally, but a culture of pluralism is weak?

Dr. Dustdar’s answer

It is remarkable that in the eighteenth century, when none of today’s democracies yet existed, the German philosopher Kant believed that war would not occur between democratic countries. In Europe, the Western European states that based their constitutions on democracy after the Second World War have maintained peaceful relations with one another to this day. Democracy, however, is a process and exists in different degrees. Countries that have begun a transition to democracy but retain internal weaknesses are always at risk of disintegration or of turning into authoritarian governments. Legal transformation alone is not enough; a culture of democracy must also be created. Democratic principles—such as belief in the equality of all human beings and respect for the rights of others—must begin within the family and then extend into society and politics.

6. Women and a new imagination of peace

Question

You have written extensively about women, politics, and peace. Looking beyond the question of equal representation, can women’s experiences and perspectives contribute to different models of leadership, dialogue, conflict prevention, and peacebuilding? In other words, can greater participation by women change not only who participates in peace processes, but also how we understand and build peace itself?

Dr. Dustdar’s answer

The patterns of care often associated with women’s roles in the family—caring for others, serving family members, and making sacrifices—could help create positive change toward a more peaceful world if these principles entered professional and political life. But we must remember that the decisive issue is not simply a person’s gender; it is the values that person follows. Men, too, can internalize these values in their thinking and conduct. This will become possible when preserving human life, caring for others, and serving society are given priority, and when a social structure currently based on material interests, greater profit, competition, and individual comfort is rebuilt on humanism and concern for the common good. At first, this may appear idealistic. Yet we should remember that every major advance in human history once seemed like an unattainable ideal. Through the effort, struggle, and perseverance of people who believed in those ideals, they eventually became reality.