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 [F] New York Times on the Web Forums  / Science  /

    Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.


Earliest Messages Previous Messages Recent Messages Outline (8914 previous messages)

lchic - 04:01am Feb 15, 2003 EST (# 8915 of 8916)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

childhood, but when I started working on it these childhood memories did start to come back.

So what is the key to predicting which communities will turn violent and which will remain peaceful in times of ethnic unrest?

It comes down to how the cities or villages are structured, and the networks that people form across religious or ethnic divides. In India I have identified two types of civic network, which I call the associational and the everyday. The everyday type covers things such as Hindu and Muslim children playing together and their families and friends visiting each other or eating with each other, or taking part in festivals together. The associational type involves the two groups being members of the same trade unions, sports clubs, student unions, reading clubs, political parties or business organisations. Associational structures go beyond neighbourhood warmth, and in times of unrest they are much more robust. They can be a serious constraint on the polarising strategies of political elites. Places with strong networks of this kind are very likely to remain peaceful.

Why are trade unions, political parties or business associations more likely to result in a stable community?

Because they bring together a solid common interest or ideology, rather than being simply social. They are more than just a way for people to entertain themselves or understand each other. Everyday interactions can easily be ruptured by criminals and gangs, but associations represent shared interests, and there is more incentive to preserve them.

It is partly to do with self-interest, but it is more than that. Sometimes it has to do with a shared ideology. When a trade union or a political party fights for its cause, they are not always fighting for electoral dividends, they are fighting for a vision of the kind of India they want to build. People will go to great lengths, and will sometimes sacrifice their own lives, to protect a certain vision that they have built for their organisation or their society. Those shared ideologies are important enough for the people to fight to preserve them, whatever ethnic group they belong to. And that is what keeps the peace.

Some researchers have suggested that a mixed community is more likely to stay peaceful if the people from the different ethnic groups know each other well. Does your work back this up?

Yes, but it is not the whole truth, because sometimes it goes the other way. Although I have not properly tested that hypothesis, I found that in the three most unstable, highly segregated towns I studied in India, the children have such awful views about the other communities. Muslim boys in those towns never interacted with Hindu boys and they believed the worst about each other. But I also found that interaction itself can lead to enmity. For example, where there is intermarriage between Sikhs and Hindus or Muslims and Christians some people see it as threatening the ethnic or religious purity of the community and have hit back. That would be a very interesting question to ask: under what conditions does knowing each other actually promote bitterness?

How can strong community networks prevent politicians from exploiting ethnic differences to further their own ends, in the way Slobodan Milosevic did in the Balkans?

There is no doubt that large-scale ethnic violence cannot take place unless politicians protect criminal gangs. The gangs need political support so that the police don't arrest them. When a politician finds not only that the neighbourhoods are integrated but also that whole organisations are, he knows it is a lost cause to try to exploit the differences. Violence is always sparked by something, and the key with integrated organisations is that they prevent the spark from becoming a fire. They work together to kill rumours, cooperate with the state, or identify those making mischief. It is in their interests to maintain the peace because th

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