A resposta violenta é um mau caminho para a Paz ainda que em situações limite pouco mais reste. Mas não estaremos a banalizá-la? Não estaremos a forçar as situações limite antes de tempo? Olhar um pouco para a história costuma ajudar. Amartya Sen lança-nos esse desafio neste seu artigo recente no The Guardian:"We can best stop terror by civil, not military, means" (obrigado Claudia!). Um excerto:
"(…) The focus on the civil paths to peace does not ignore, in any way, the basic fact that terrorism and homicide, no matter how generated, are criminal activities that call for effective security measures. No serious analysis of group violence can fail to begin with that basic understanding. But the analysis cannot end there, since many social, economic and political initiatives can be undertaken to confront and defeat the appeal on which the fomenters of violence and terrorism draw to recruit active foot soldiers and passive sympathisers.
The Commonwealth has survived and flourished, despite the hostilities associated with our colonial history. There has been no absence of problems, but we must not underestimate the successes we have had, particularly through replacing the bitter confrontation of the ruler and the rebel with widespread cooperation between independent people.
That success has been possible through the use of a number of far-sighted guiding principles, centred particularly on a multilateral approach. The commission argues that those principles have continuing relevance today for the future of the Commonwealth – and also for the world as a whole. In this sense, Civil Paths to Peace is a modest attempt to present a Commonwealth-based understanding of the civil demands for world peace."