Show notes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8npPSB90ZU&t=15s
The founder of peace and conflict studies, Dr. Johan Galtung, discusses his predictions of the US Empire collapsing and becoming a dictatorship, before eventually rebuilding its democracy.
Show Notes
USA–Where Are You Heading?
Pentagon Study Declares American Empire Is Collapsing
DOD Risk Assessment in a Post-Primacy World
US Power Will Decline Under Trump Says Futurist Who Predicted Soviet Collapse
Websites
https://www.transcend.org
https://www.galtung-institut.de
Books
https://www.transcend.org/tup/index.php?book=5
About Johan Galtung
Johan Galtung, dr, dr hc mult, a professor of peace studies, was born in 1930 in Oslo, Norway. He is a mathematician, sociologist, political scientist and the founder of the discipline of peace studies. He founded the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (1959), the world's first academic research center focused on peace studies, as well as the influential Journal of Peace Research (1964). He has helped found dozens of other peace centers around the world. He is currently the president of the Galtung-Institut for Peace Theory & Peace Practice.
He has served as a professor for peace studies at universities all over the world, including Columbia (New York), Oslo, Berlin, Belgrade, Paris, Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Sichuan, Ritsumeikan (Japan), Princeton, Hawai'i, Tromsoe, Bern, Alicante (Spain) and dozens of others on all continents. He has taught thousands of individuals and motivated them to dedicate their lives to the promotion of peace and the satisfaction of basic human needs.
He has mediated in over 150 conflicts between states, nations, religions, civilizations, communities, and persons since 1957. His contributions to peace theory and practice include conceptualization of peace-building, conflict mediation, reconciliation, nonviolence, theory of structural violence, theorizing about negative vs. positive peace, peace education and peace journalism. Prof. Galtung's unique imprint on the study of conflict and peace stems from a combination of systematic scientific inquiry and a Gandhian ethics of peaceful means and harmony. [spoiler]
Johan Galtung has conducted a great deal of research in many fields and made original contributions not only to peace studies but also, among others, human rights, basic needs, development strategies, a world economy that sustains life, macro-history, theory of civilizations, federalism, globalization, theory of discourse, social pathologies, deep culture, peace and religions, social science methodology, sociology, ecology, future studies.
He is author or co-author of more than 1600 articles and over 160 books on peace and related issues, including Peace By Peaceful Means (1996), Macrohistory and Macrohistorians (with Sohail Inayatullah, 1997), Conflict Transformation By Peaceful Means (1998), Johan uten land (autobiography, 2000), Transcend & Transform: An Introduction to Conflict Work (2004, in 25 languages), 50 Years - 100 Peace and Conflict Perspectives (2008), Democracy - Peace - Development (with Paul Scott, 2008), 50 Years - 25 Intellectual Landscapes Explored (2008), Globalizing God (with Graeme MacQueen, 2008), The Fall of the US Empire - And Then What (2009), Peace Business (with Jack Santa Barbara and Fred Dubee, 2009), A Theory of Conflict (2010), A Theory of Development (2010), Reporting Conflict: New Directions in Peace Journalism (with Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick, 2010), Korea: The Twisting Roads to Unification (with Jae-Bong Lee, 2011), Reconciliation (with Joanna Santa Barbara and Diane Perlman, 2012), Peace Mathematics (with Dietrich Fischer, 2012), Peace Economics (2012), A Theory of Civilization (forthcoming 2013), and A Theory of Peace (forthcoming 2013). In 2008, he founded the TRANSCEND University Press. 36 of his books have been translated into 33 languages, for a total of 134 book translations.
He is the weekly editorialist for TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS, which features solutions-oriented peace journalism.
He is founder (in 2000) and rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University, the world's first online Peace Studies University. He is also the founder and director of TRANSCEND International, a global non‑profit network for Peace, Development and the Environment, founded in 1993, with over 500 members in more than 70 countries around the world. As a testimony to his legacy, peace studies are now taught and researched at over 500 universities across the globe and some are contributing to peacemaking efforts in conflicts around the world wihtout buying into the securitization sell out.
He was jailed in Norway for six months at age 24 as a Conscientious Objector to serving in the military, after having done 12 months of civilian service, the same time as those doing military service. He agreed to serve an extra 6 months if he could work for peace, but that was refused. In jail he wrote his first book, Gandhi's Political Ethics, together with his mentor, Arne Naess.
As a recipient of over a dozen honorary doctorates and professorships and many other distinctions, including a Right Livelihood Award (also known as Alternative Nobel Peace Prize), Johan Galtung remains committed to the study and promotion of peace. [/spoiler]
Transcript
Interviewer:
We are speaking with the renowned founder of Peace and Conflict Studies, Dr. Johan Galtung, author of countless publications, conflict mediator, founder of Transcend International, and the Galtung Institute, consultant to governments, the UN, and so much more.
I'd like to cover two central themes today. First, the fall of the US empire and its consequences, either a blossoming republic or a catastrophe as you say, and second, what global issues you consider the most pressing today and what suggestions you have to resolve these conflicts.
In 1980, you successfully predicted the fall of the Soviet Union, which you said would happen in 1990. You used six indicators to do this, and then in recent years, you doubled those indicators to twelve and applied them in analyzing the fall of the other superpower, the USA. You brought up the subject in an article recently on Transcend Media, citing an essay by Nafeez Ahmed and a new Pentagon study which seemed to further confirm your findings that Empire America is approaching its final death throes. Even renowned researcher Alfred McCoy has published a book that will be out soon on the same theme. He has set 2030 as the Empire's time marker for passing. You recently revised your prediction for the collapse, from 2025 to 2020. Is this the most important event of our time, and can you unpack the key points and implications of the empires and for us and help us understand what is about to happen? [spoiler]
Johan Galtung:
Well, let us first be very clear about the terms here. You see, the other person you quoted, I think he gets it wrong. An "empire" means that you have a client state that does the job for you, and when I predicted the decline and fall of the US empire, I did not predict the decline and fall of US violence. I did not predict the decline and fall of the United States of America. I predicted that we would do the killing for the United States, because the empire would collapse.
Now, the situation is the following. You may have noticed that in Bratislava, November 6th last year, they had a big discussion about this in the European Union countries. What they said, again and again and again, was, "We are no longer going to fight the wars of the United States." That was a very clear statement, and that is the kind of thing I'm looking for.
However, there are some countries that are still, and still have been fighting wars of the United States, more particularly three countries. United Kingdom, Denmark, and Norway. Denmark and Norway were rewarded by the United States for fighting in Libya by being appointed Secretary General of NATO one after the other. The present one is a former Norwegian Prime Minister.
Why United Kingdom, Denmark and Norway? Well you see here you have to look into history. I could say immediately, because they're Evangelical Protestant countries like the United States, but I'm not saying that these are religious wars. I'm just saying that being Evangelical Protestants, the United States, England, with the famous Anglican Church from which very many people came to United States, Norway and Denmark, being that they have something in common, some kind of loyalty, solidarity, and the countries that refuse to fight US wars, the Catholic countries, and Orthodox countries. You see, we are not saying that this is religious. I'm only saying that old ties of solidarity play an enormous role.
If I then predicted a decline and fall of the United States Empire by 2020, one might say, "We are today 2017 and we are into the month of September, so Johan Galtung, about your prediction. You said before 2020." Yes, I stand by that one, but I think the three countries I mentioned, United Kingdom, Denmark, and Norway, will distance themselves from United States killing, and that it's already happening, and of course it's particularly easy to distance oneself when the president of the United States is a clinically insane person, Donald Trump.
Clinically insane, suffering from throughout his autism, living in his own little bubble and deriding this so-called foreign policy from his bubble. In other words, I stand by my prediction, but it's a little bit more complicated than the person you quoted. I think he got almost everything wrong, and I prefer to forget about it.
Interviewer:
In your research, you say you were inspired by analyzing the fall of the Roman Empire. Could we say that Trump is not a cause, but a symptom of the end, a degenerating face of the empirical cycle?
Johan Galtung:
He's a part of it. He's a part of it, but what is collapsing now is more than the United States empire. What is collapsing right now is the United States
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