Pondering the tangibility of mass death in recent history, I wrote, in a conclusion to one of my recent books, that genocide could be prevented if specific long and short term steps were taken. I still believe that is true and will briefly review those arguments.

Short Term Strategies
I argued that in the short term it was most important to end the violence in order to create the conditions under which steps might be taken to bring about reconciliation and peaceful coexistence. To accomplish this I said that three interrelated steps were necessary:

(1) develop a policy bringing together the international laws of war, crimes against humanity, and the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and provide the political and military means to enforce these in order to stop the violence and provide an environment of stability;

(2) develop an "Early warning System” and instruments of humanitarian intervention to recognize and curtail future genocides and political massacres; and (3) formulate mechanisms to capture and punish instigators of genocide and political massacres demonstrating to the world that violence is not an acceptable means to achieve political ends. The success, or perhaps more importantly, the beginning of implementation of any long term process assumes that the above mentioned short term mechanisms are in place. Assuming that is the case, one may then proceed to consideration of the long term mechanisms to break the cycle of hatred and violence.

Long Term Strategies
In the long term, I continued, if human life was to be preserved, world views had to change from chauvinistic nationalism to cooperative internationalism. Throughout history, with increasing ferocity and deadliness in the Twentieth Century, genocide was perpetrated by the modern nation state which collectively made few if any moves to prevent or punish that crime. Since nationalism had been the political and psychological foundation upon which international perceptions were currently constructed, it must be modified by instituting a process of political re-socialization from one which emphasizes nationalism to one which emphasizes internationalism. The mechanism to inculcate this new perspective, I argued, will be to change the orientation of political education so that it emphasizes international human rights and what I call "covenanted internationalism.”

Political Socialization as a Means to Break the Cycle of Violence and Hatred
People are not born with political ideas. Everything we know about politics, and this includes genocide and/or human rights, ethics or morality, is learned or taught to us either formally, as, for example, through the process of education, or informally, through the process of cultural transmission. Political scientists refer to this as the process of political socialization. The process operates something like the following:
Born into a particular political culture, the agents of socialization, generally speaking these include family, educational systems, media, peers, and other influences such as religion, transmit the norms of that culture to young people. These norms are taught to every person in order to try to convince individuals to accept them as "natural” and to exhibit "approved of” or "desirable” forms of behavior.

By extension, if this process is successful, it operates to control what is regarded as "deviant” ideas or behavior. One of the most important aspects of this process is to create an agreed to, or collective memory so that all or mmost individuals in a nation or society will value positively the same set of symbols and will share a view of what is and is not legitimate. This is how cultures and societies define deviance. Behavior in the political realm, which is defined as not legitimate, invokes sanctions and the populations are, consequently, controlled.

All societies, all cultures, all states do this, or try to, by inculcating new members into the ongoing set of living arrangements. The most pervasive mechanism to accomplish this has been for the modern state to set up statesanctioned systems of public education. Since nationalism is the psychological foundation upon whichinternational perceptions are currently constructed, it must be modified by instituting a process of political re-socialization from one which emphasizes nationalism to one which emphasizes internationalism and human rights as an over arching ethic. The mechanism suggested to accomplish this goal is to focus on the socialization of what I call "covenanted internationalism” which, in turn, emphasizes the first universal ideology– international human rights.

Whether future generations will live together peacefully or continue the outrage of mass murder depends to a very large extent upon how future generations learn to perceive not only the state, but each other and how educators and political decision makers act with regard to increasing people's awareness of human interdependence.

Children are taught politically constructed boundaries of the international nation state system. International politics is viewed through the lens of the nation state.
Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that national identity is learned early in life along with some of the more basic socialization experiences. An individual's identity becomes intertwined with the nation state and we use leaders and patriotic figures and patriotic rituals as guidelines to place ourselves within the international political community.What this means is that when children internalize nationalistic identifications and international orientations they formulate a world view based upon the reconstructed account of their nation's history and its affiliation with or hostility to other nations.

All cultures and every nation state construct political myths which usually involve glorification and romanticization of the nation state. Whether in war or peace the state is correct and the enemies of the state, any other state, are wrong. What is needed is a new way of looking at the relationship between the individual and the international community.
Young people need points of positive identification and since there is little positive attention focused on international identity young people now find their identity in virulent forms of hatred, patriotism and nationalism.

Replacing this with "covenanted internationalism” means that international identity would be guided by and directed toward the international mission established in international human rights covenants. In addition to all the United Nations documents, covenanted internationalism would also be based on teaching the common human history of human rights. Thus, the historical basis of human rights as espoused in the classic and modern documents would all be included as the foundation from which people in general, and children in particular, would begin to form their international identity.

Socialization would be built upon an invocation of these documents as the common frame of human identity and as the common hope for a better life for all people.
In addition, the process must examine the similar problems experienced by all human beings and personify them with specific examples representing experiences of everyday life as lived by people of diverse cultures and nations. This would provide a point of identification for young children. In addition, these examples would provide a balance between showing history the way it was lived as well as how it was made by selected leaders. Following this, attention should be devoted to the international political institutions and, in particular, to the human rights documents. The emphasis would be on pointing out how we are all entitled to protection offered by these documents and must all work together to establish these protections throughout the world community. These common protections and the identification of common problems may then provide the basis for building a sense of international community based on covenanted internationalism. This community sense becomes the base for the spreading of the life preserving ethic which begins to break the cycle of hatred and violence…