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T. Ward: Address to World Summit 2020
Written by Dr. Thomas Ward, President and Professor of Peace and Development Studies, Unification Theological Seminary, USA
Tuesday, February 4, 2020
Address to World Summit 2020, Seoul, Korea, February 3-8, 2020
Rev. Sun Myung Moon lived until the age of 92; he spent the last days of his life in Cheongpyeong, Korea, which participants of this World Summit, commemorating the one-hundredth anniversary of his birth, will visit in the coming days. He and his wife Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon spent some 40 years of their lives together in the West, primarily in the United States. They came to the United States, not because they wished to establish permanent residency and live their version of the “American Dream.” They came to the United States because they saw it as a country that had been prepared by God to impact positively upon world culture and governance, while also serving as the best place from which to launch what Rev. Moon referred to on July 1, 1973 as “the March to Moscow.”
Misunderstood and frequently characterized by the Western media as a right-wing “Korean industrialist” and a “religious charlatan,” Rev. Moon left behind a legacy that those who review it carefully have to be spellbound by because of the unrivaled number of achievements he realized during his nine-plus decades on the earth.
Early on, less than a year after the end of World War II, Rev. Moon, safe in the U.S.-protected area of Korea, did what few others dared to do. When he felt called by God to return to travel to the North and to its capital city of Pyongyang, not far from his birthplace, to begin missionary activity there, he did not hesitate to do so, even though a communist regime with draconian levels of control had been installed with the help of Stalin and his Soviet proxies.
Japan, in its ambitious drive to become an imperial power, annexed the Korean peninsula into its empire in 1910, some 15 years after Taiwan had become a colony of Japan. Following the war, in exchange for the Soviet Union having agreed to declare war on Japan in the final 10 days of World War II, the United States rewarded the U.S.S.R. not with control of a part of Japan as it had done in the case of Germany. But, ironically, it allowed the Soviets to take control of the fate of the northern area of Korea, Japan’s former colony. Korea, which had already endured four decades of colonial control, found itself once again a pawn in the maneuvering of the world’s new “ruling powers.”
Rev. Moon, at the time only 26 years of age, traveled to the North. He arrived on June 6, 1946. Within fourteen months of his arrival, he was arrested and tortured for his evangelical activities. On September 18, 1947, he was badly beaten by North Korean interrogators for his “subversive” religious activity in a country whose leader Kim Il Sung, in spite of his Presbyterian roots, embraced the Marxist critical view of religion serving as a means to preserve and justify capitalism’s oppressive structures rather than religion’s asserted intent to free humankind of the burden of sin, guilt and spiritual confusion.
In February 1948, Rev. Moon was sentenced to five years in prison. As a prisoner of conscience, he endured beatings, near starvation, disease and a seemingly unending regime of hard labor. He escaped in October 1950 when Heung Nam Prison, where he had been confined, was liberated by United Nations forces that arrived approximately one month after Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s remarkable landing of UN military forces at Incheon, South Korea over a four-day period in mid-September 1950.
Following his release, Rev. Moon returned to Pyongyang to attempt to gather those followers whom he had left behind at the time of his imprisonment. Given the disarray and havoc resulting from the war, he had difficulty relocating most of the members of his Pyongyang congregation, some of whom had been imprisoned, others who had been tortured and killed and still others who either escaped to the South or hide for protection, and Rev. Moon left the North with only two of his followers. He traveled by foot to Pusan, the southernmost city on the Korean peninsula, arriving at the end of December 1950. His future wife Hak Ja Han, just a young girl, escaped from the North at about the same time.
From Pusan, Rev. Moon began his ministry, spending most of the next 21 years in Korea, and then moving on to the United States where he would spend an additional 40 years.
He would create what Swiss writer Jean-Francois Boyer would refer to disparagingly as the “Moon Empire.”[1] A part of the empire everyone seems to be aware of is the media “empire,” including The Washington Times in the United States, Sekai Nippon in Japan and Segye Ilbo in Korea. Another part that gathered significant attention was CAUSA International, an organization that first developed in Latin America and then reached out to other parts of the world, highlighting the threat that communism posed to the world because of the sanguinary implications of the application of Marxism-Leninism in any of the societies, which embraced and implemented it.
Unheralded Dimensions of Rev. Moon’s and Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon’s Work
While the focus of this paper is the role that Rev. Moon played in the ending of the Cold War, I do want to note before entering into that topic that Rev. Moon and Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon were about improving the well-being of all of humanity. Again, it would not be appropriate to divert too far from the central topic here, but I want to recognize a few, certainly not all, of the humanitarian projects initiated by Rev. and Mrs. Moon. These include the humanitarian work of organizations founded by Rev. and Mrs. Moon that are especially tasked in the humanitarian domain, including the Women’s Federation for World Peace (WFWP), the International Relief Friendship Foundation (IRFF), CAUSA World Services (CWS) and the Religious Youth Service (RYS). These organizations, and WFWP, in particular, literally poured millions of dollars into supporting the building of schools for primary and secondary education in Africa and Latin America. WFWP offered scholarship opportunities for students in developing countries to pursue university-level study in the United States, Europe and Asia. IRFF, WFWP and CWS facilitated the distribution of food to victims of war and natural disasters in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Bolivia, Japan, Burma, Nicaragua and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. IRFF medical teams from Japan and the United States have provided free medical care for years to those afflicted by war and natural disasters in Southeast Asia, Africa and Central America.
Rev. and Mrs. Moon established accredited institutions of higher education in Asia[2] and the Americas that have provided full scholarships for undergraduate and graduate students from the developing world. Following the Cold War, Rev. And Mrs. Moon salvaged the University of Bridgeport in the United States just as it was about to close. In the decade that followed, they brought young, promising leaders from Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia to Bridgeport, providing them with full scholarships to study there, when the majority of these students would never have been able to do so otherwise.
Rev. and Mrs. Moons sponsored conferences through the Professors World Peace Academy beginning in 1973 to further dialogue among feuding parts of the world. Long before it was permitted in those countries, he promoted and created venues for dialogue between those who supported and those who endured Apartheid, and between Palestinians and Israelis at a time when such exchanges were forbidden, as well as other feuding parties.[3]
Rev. Moon constantly reminded us that he felt personally responsible to find a way to feed a world constantly grappling with hunger, with the reality that 21,000 people, many of them infants and young children, still die of hunger every day.[4] He initiated vast efforts to raise cattle, develop fish farming and protect the land through reforestation and initiated other projects aimed at educating people from less developed countries about how to increase and stabilize food production while insuring sustainable development and protecting South American waterways and wetlands, notably in Brazil and in Paraguay through what is known as the Pantanal Leda Settlement.[5] He sponsored youth leaders from Africa to learn the techniques that were being developed. Recently, Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon also invited African leaders to study and adapt the techniques that had been developed in Hawaii to build a highly successful coffee industry there, which can be implemented in African countries with the appropriate climate for coffee.
Rev. and Mrs. Moon have also long been concerned by the potential of an eventual conflict between the followers of Christianity and Islam. They have encouraged others to recognize the positives and the ways in which the Creator has worked through every major faith. They themselves have dedicated their large-scale outreach efforts through organizations that they have created such as the Inter Religious Federation for World Peace[6] to foster understanding among faiths and support reconciliation over past divides. They continue to sponsor an annual dialogue among women leaders of the region through the Women’s Federation for World Peace International. The 24th annual conference took place in November 2019.[7] The Universal Peace Federation[8], a key partner in the World Summit, also remains keenly involved in Middle East initiatives through the work of Dr. Thomas Walsh, Dr. Michael Jenkins and Dr. Taj Hamad.
In 1972, Rev. Moon initiated the International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences to study “science and absolute values.” By “absolute values” Rev. Moon was referring to those values which, rooted in longstanding religious and cultural traditions, further the purpose of all human beings, each of whom, as a Creation of God, is understood to be a being with Divinely endowed value and potential. Many scientists from communist countries and scholars attended these global gatherings of scientists around the world.
Yes, Rev. and Mrs. Moon, as this particular session punctuates, have worked based on a vision for peace. Did they claim that theirs alone was a complete vision? No, they did not.
It is a developing vision. Indeed, the teachings and public lectures of Rev. Moon and Mrs. Moon promote the view that each human being is what is referred to in Unification teachings as an “individual truth body.”[9] What this means is that each of us carries something within us that separates us from everyone else and indeed is what is referred to in Unification Thought as our particular “genius.”
On this occasion that marks the centennial of Rev. Moon’s birth, we are invited to reflect on and develop a greater understanding of his vision for peace and our speakers are encouraged to share their own based on their experiences. I would like to devote the remainder of this article to share what I understand as Rev. and Mrs. Moon’s vision for peace, having worked in this movement for almost half a century and having had the good fortune to have worked closely with Rev. and Mrs. Moon during a quarter of a century. I also welcome the visions and perspectives that each of you bring to the table during these sessions that we are fortunate enough to be able to share together.
1946-1972 Rev. Moon’s Initial Efforts in Korea and His Approach to Peace There and Internationally
Following the end of World War II, Rev. Moon began what has been described as his “public ministry.” During that period, he understood that he was not meant to create a new church or a new religion. Instead, he felt called to build on what was already in place and support the established churches and religions. With his efforts to reach out to the Christian world, he faced rejection. In some ways, this was understandable because of his challenging assertion that he had not only had a spiritual encounter with Jesus but also that he had been charged to complete the task that Jesus had begun some 1,900 years before.
When he could not find safe harbor for his message within the Christian world, and after seven years of attempting to do so, he did finally, and with reluctance, begin his own Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity less than a year after the armistice agreement concluding the Korean War.
Shortly after this, he also began a movement aimed at educating the Korean public about the ideological limitations and false assumptions within the Marxist worldview, the pervasive ideology of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, South Korea’s neighbor to the immediate North. Rev. Moon began his work with one of his early followers, Mr. Yong Seok Choi. A few years later, he began what would be a four decade-long collaboration with Dr. Sang Hun Lee. Based on his own experience with Marxism-Leninism during his imprisonment in North Korea, Rev. Moon had identified crucial limitations within the Marxist worldview. One of those remains as a personal learning experience for me until this day.
When I met Rev. Sun Myung Moon for the first time in March 1972, I was thrilled by the prospect of having a chance to listen to him over three days in a very intimate setting of only some 40 people. I looked forward to him addressing a variety of topics. However, I had reservations about what I understood as his decidedly negative view towards Marxism-Leninism.
When I came to hear him at that time, I anticipated that he would inform us, as Stephane Courtois did decades later in “The Black Book of Communism,” of the ways in which the population of the U.S.S.R. had been decimated under Stalin’s dehumanizing rule or of how Mao Zedong’s megalomaniacal pursuit of “revolutionary immortality” had allowed him to brutalize tens of millions during his delusional Great Leap Forward followed by his senseless annihilation of at least an additional one to two million more during the Cultural Revolution.
I had little sympathy for an argument that focused on the “cost” of communism. I was painfully aware of the damage caused by so-called anticommunist governments such as South Africa, which enforced Apartheid, and the Dominican Republic, which had destroyed the lives of so many Haitians under the regime of Rafael Trujillo. I was also aware that the dictatorships of Gen. Park Chung Hee of South Korea, President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek in East Asia had each suppressed and annihilated tens of thousands who had dared to challenge their authority.
My concern had been that Rev. Moon might list all of the wrongdoings of the communist Left while maintaining silence regarding the atrocities and the wrongdoings committed in hardline, rightist, so-called anticommunist regimes. However, he mentioned neither of these matters in his talk to us.
He uttered not a single word about Josef Stalin or Mao but instead he went to the very crux of the matter, to the metaphysical underpinnings of communism, or what Russians referred to as the “Diamat,” that is dialectical materialism. He demonstrated that this dynamic in which conflict was defining and unity was ephemeral was not the way in which the universe functioned. He simply observed a principle from his religious teaching, clarifying that the relationship, for example, between a proton and an electron, as argued by Engels and even by the Soviet ideologue Victor Afanasyev, still at that time in the Soviet Union, was not a conflicting, subject-subject, adversarial relationship as Engels had indicated, but instead a cooperative, reciprocal relationship. What Engels had depicted in the “Dialectics of Nature” as a conflict in a seed between the covering or seed coat and the developing embryo within was not one where the seed coat hardened and became more resistant as the embryo grew. In fact, it become suppler as the embryo advanced towards maturity, facilitating the emergence of the sprout at the proper moment. This, he made clear, represents a reciprocal rather than a confrontational dynamic.
When I heard Rev. Moon’s explanation of this dynamic, my fear of communism being “true” but wrongly implemented dissipated. I recognized, like the socialist reformer Eduard Bernstein did in the late 19th century, that although Marx may have had good intentions in his effort at addressing injustice, his formula that rationalized change was untenable. As Bernstein put it, Marx was not great because of the dialectic but in spite of it.[10]
Yet, it was that very dialectic that inspired Vladimir Lenin, Stalin and Mao and justified their revolutionary, genocidal zeal and led them all to elaborate further on dialectical materialism. Through Rev. Moon’s analysis, I understood that they were misguided and that communism had misinterpreted the underlying dynamic of nature, and was thus destined to fail in its efforts to create a new, just society.
Living in France and a student at the University of Paris at the time when I met Rev. Moon, I had numerous encounters with French Marxists both before and after that, my first meeting with Rev. Moon. Prior to that meeting, I had the impression that Marxism was true but that it had been poorly applied. Following that meeting, when I challenged Marxists regarding the veracity of the materialist dialectic as the underlying dynamic for progress in nature and in society, I found that they were unable to refute the explanation of cooperation and give-and-receive reciprocal relations as the main dynamic through which multiplication of living beings and the maintenance of order in atoms, ions and matter were established and preserved.
A few years later, I was exposed to the entire body of Rev. Moon’s and Dr. Sang Hun Lee’s work on communism. I realized that his work had covered every aspect of communism: Marxist political economy including the labor theory of value, the theory of surplus value, and Marx’s laws of economic movement. It also pointed to the falsehood of Marx’s view of history and Marx’s interpretation of alienation. I found each of those critiques as satisfying as the initial critique of dialectical materialism that Rev. Moon had introduced me to in Paris in that early spring of 1972.
A Few Comments on Rev. Moon’s Critique of the Theory of Surplus Value
In this paper, I will not attempt to elaborate on all of the work that Rev. Moon did in this field but I will take a moment to comment on Marx’s theory of surplus value, which was described by Lenin as the “cornerstone”[11] of all of his work. Marx maintained that in the production of any commodity, there were three contributors to the transformation of raw or semi-raw material into a commodity: raw or unfinished materials, machinery and labor. Marx argued that the profit derived from the production process could not originate from raw materials because the cost of such materials remained unchanged or only varied slightly from one purchase season to another. Secondly, Marx argued that machinery wears out and thus monies have to be put aside in a depreciation account to replace such machinery. Marx thus concluded that the only source of profit was derived from laborers. In his view, capitalists put aside a portion of the just wages that laborers should receive for their profit. Laborers thus only received necessary or survival wages so that they could stay alive, reproduce and assure a new generation of working people for the next generation.[12]
The Unification critique of the labor theory of value observes that there is no magic principle whereby, once the funds in the depreciation account have reached the sum necessary for a new machine, the machine ceases to function. Many times, particularly in modern practice, the depreciation of the machine is covered in accounting ledgers in as little as one year after their purchase. That allows such machines to contribute to profit for the remainder of their shelf-life and not just laborers.
More importantly, however, Unificationism points out that the essence of value is found not in labor alone. Labor is one form of creativity but numerous other types of creativity also exist including the creativity of the inventor, the designer, the entrepreneur, the marketing director, the sales person, the advertising agent, even the investor who decides that a given product is worth dedicating a portion of his capital.
The labor theory of value also assumes that profit is automatic; it is not. Oftentimes, ventures collapse and owners can lose “their shirts.” To assume that labor is the pivotal force for all profit was at the least naïve, and at worse calculating, provocative and cynical. Success or failure in enterprise resides also in human creativity not just labor. Human creativity is inherited from God, and propelled by the human drive to succeed and produce something of value.
In place of the labor theory of value that Marx adapted from David Ricardo, Unification teachings speak of what is referred to as “the effect theory of value.” According to the effect theory of value where the inventor or designer or the entrepreneur who acquires them should produce good that brings joy and inspiration to the consumer, first and foremost. Earning a profit is only the secondary goal of such initiatives.[13]
According to the effect theory of value, the consumer for his or her part should want to recognize and appreciate the efforts of the creator or distributor of a product that he or she chooses to acquire through a transaction. Secondly, it is the goal of the consumer to acquire a product at a reasonable price. I could resonate with this because of the developments which I had seen in the automobile industry during my early years of growing up in the United States. Most people my age in the United States can easily distinguish between a 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958 and 1959 Chevrolet or Ford. The changes in the model from one year to another were so dramatic that one soon felt uncomfortable traveling in a certain car that was a few years old. One would have to endure the jests of those reminding you that we were living in 1958 and the 1954 model of Ford hardly matched that.
When the Japanese automobile industry came onto the scene in the 1970s, they were soon well on their way to surpassing American automakers’ sales. Their approach to business was not motivated just by an immediate short-term profit but by their intention to build long-term service relations with those who purchased their automobiles. They did not do a “makeover” of their automobiles every year. They learned to build their automobiles to last and they also emphasized quality customer service and confidence-building customer relations. These dimensions of the Japanese automakers, in many ways, explained why they could advance beyond their favored American competitors. Buyers of Japanese automobiles felt cared for, appreciated and connected to the Toyota or the Subaru family. This approach to sales and customer relations, in my view, approximate what Unification Theory describes as the effect theory of value. Indeed, by the 1990s, the American automaker and auto sales culture had been drastically transformed and had largely adopted the Japanese paradigm, building cars to last with significant changes in automobiles design occurring only once every few years.
More can be said regarding the critique and counterproposal to Marxism-Leninism, but this article will not delve further than we have gone until now. Interested parties can certainly consult original texts that are available that describe and also do a critical view of alienation and Marx’s view of history from the years when these topics were covered in international conferences and review such matters including in the “CAUSA Lecture Manual” (1985).[14]
The On-the-Ground Trajectory of Addressing Ideological Issues
Once he had established a foundation for his church in South Korea, Rev. Moon collaborated extensively with Dr. Sang Hun Lee, a trained medical doctor and a former communist who had become one of his earliest followers. This research was largely completed in the 1960s and, from the 1960s through the 1980s, Rev. Moon’s refutation of Marxism was taught extensively in Korea, Japan, the United States, Latin America, Southeast Asia, Africa, Australia and Micronesia.
As already illustrated from my personal experience with him in 1972, Rev. Moon was not interested in distorting or presenting a caricature of Marxism’s tenets. Rather, he was interested in real solutions to human problems that Marxism and Leninism had only made worse. Unification writings and presentations on communism consisted of an accurate articulation of each of the Marxist pillars of thought (the concept of alienation, Marxist political economy, dialectical materialism, and Marx’s view of history), followed by the introduction of a critique and counterproposal based on Rev. Moon’s analysis of the underpinnings of Marxism, and his conclusion that, regardless of the setting, Marxism-Leninism could not bring about a just society or elevate human dignity. Those materials from the 1960s and 1970s supplemented by the later elaboration known as the “CAUSA Lecture Manual” was taught throughout the world in the 1980s. It reached the highest echelons of the governments of the Philippines (during the Aquino administration), Thailand, Honduras, El Salvador, Uruguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Colombia and many other countries that had been affected. In the United States, at one point, more than 50 percent of all four star generals and admirals (active and retired) had attended a CAUSA seminar. Speakers at CAUSA programs included Geraldine Ferraro, Jack Kemp, John McCain, Maureen Reagan, Dr. Ralph Abernathy and scores of other luminaries.
Rev. and Dr. Moon’s Related Efforts in Other Parts of the World
At the same time, Rev. Moon founded the Professors World Peace Academy (PWPA) in Korea and then Japan. The PWPA mission reads as follows: “The Professors World Peace Academy (PWPA) is an educational organization founded to support the academic community’s role in the pursuit of world peace.”[15] Many of the scientists who attended International Conference on the Unity of Science (ICUS) conferences joined PWPA, which established its international headquarters in the United States and chapters in 70 countries in 1983. It has become an important resource and information center for dialogue and exchange among academics around the world.
Early academic critiques of communism took both the ideological and the human rights dimensions of the struggle into consideration. Among the most notable writers and scholars who had come to the forefront were Alexander Solzhentisyn, Andrei Sakharov, Natan Scharansky, Sidney Hook, Alain Besancon, Bernard Henri Levy, Leszek Kolokowski, Robert Conquest and Richard Pipes. Any response to Marxism needed to recognize and build on the important contributions of such individuals and be cognizant and appreciative of the many other areas of academic pursuit that contribute to the furtherance of peace and development.
PWPA members like renowned University of Chicago political scientist Dr. Morton A. Kaplan and Alexander Shtromas built on their work and integrated the more moral and spiritual dimensions of Rev. Moon’s thought into their critique. Shtromas, a lawyer trained at Moscow State University, considered himself to be one of the last “true believers” of Marxism in Russia in 1957 and he had a clear understanding of the inner workings of the dysfunctional system that it had created. After leaving the Soviet Union, Shtromas worked with Sidney Hook at the Hoover Institution, and later became a professor of political science at Hillsdale College.
In 1985, while imprisoned in the United States, Rev. Moon provided the PWPA with funding for an international conference in Geneva, Switzerland, where 90 of the top world experts on communism discussed the iconoclastic “‘Fall of the Soviet Empire’: Prospects for Transition to a Post-Soviet World.”[16] PWPA chapter presidents from 90 countries were invited to attend so they could explain the fallacies, dysfunction and real goals of communism, as its evangelists and activists were still very active promoting revolution and social turmoil. The conference resulted in a four-volume work entitled “The Soviet Union and the Challenge of the Future” (1989), and PWPA was recognized by The National Interest in Spring 1993, along with Zbigniew Brezinski, as being one of the two academic sources that rightly anticipated the demise of the Soviet Union.[17]
As already suggested, the critique of and counterproposal to Marxism-Leninism developed by Rev. Moon’s organizations concerned with Marxism were comprehensive and based on the original writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin. Successors to these three such as Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, were downplayed. CAUSA, for its part, did not want to have its views dismissed because of citing figures whom mainstream communists might view as guilty of a new heterodoxy. The critique concentrated on four areas: Marx’s views on alienation (the Young Marx); Marxist metaphysics or dialectical materialism; Marx’s view of history; and Marxist political economy, including the labor theory of value that Marx had borrowed and built upon as well as his unique theory of surplus value, the consequent laws of economic movement and Lenin’s theory of imperialism. In his explanation of imperialism, Lenin pointed out that the West’s colonies provided new markets where imperialist powers such as the United Kingdom and France could export not only financial capital but also use that capital as leverage to pressure the recipients of it to purchase specific export products, and benefit both from the higher interest rates on capital exported overseas and profits resulting from the sale of finished products to what Lenin described as the “backward countries.” Imperialism, “the highest stage of capitalism,” thus played a salvific role, prolonging capitalism’s existence in Europe and allowing capitalism to spread “its net over all countries of the world.”[18] Lenin thus emphasized the need for communists to foment revolution in “backward countries” as a precondition for revolution in the developed world or, as Lenin explained it, “The Road to Paris lies through Peking.”[19]
The “CAUSA Lecture Manual,” based on Rev. Moon’s pioneering work with the International Federation for Victory over Communism (IFVOC) and Dr. Sang Hun Lee, points out that Marxism’s metaphysics and belief system, not just a wrong application of Marxism-Leninism, had devastating social implications. Communism’s militant denial of God obviated the human identity as a child of God, and therefore a being of infinite value. Its advocacy of the dialectic served as an apologia for violence. Its dehumanizing views of capitalists and socialist revisionists justified, in their minds, purges of huge sectors of the human population. The suffering perpetrated under Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il Sung, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Nicolae Ceaușescu and other communist “epic heroes” was thus not due to an “abuse” of Marxism-Leninism; it was a logical consequence of Marxism-Leninism.
In his book “Jesuitas, Iglesia y Marxismo 1965-1985,” Dr. Ricardo de la Cierva, a respected historian and the former minister of culture of Spain, wrote, “the CAUSA International Movement has published a lecture manual (1985) that seems to me to be the best generic study of Marxism from within the anti-Marxist camp.”[20] William Rusher an American conservative thinker and editor of the National Review described CAUSA’s work in this way:
“I have enormous respect for the work CAUSA does, for the analysis, which is clear, accurate and honest and looks in the round at these questions. These conferences are organized and conducted all over the United States to call to the attention of leadership personalities like yourselves the rather intricate aspects of communism that get overlooked in our daily debates.”[21]
CAUSA developed its new generation of instructional resources for the audiences that it targeted, largely state legislators and municipal leaders in the United States who eventually aspired to seek federal office and thus needed a better understanding of world affairs. Because of the interest that state legislators expressed in CAUSA’s educational programs, this led first to three successful conferences that were co-sponsored by CAUSA and Dr. Cleon Skousen’s National Center for Constitutional Studies. This in turn led to the creation of the American Leadership Conference (ALC), where Dr. Cleon Skousen was a frequent featured speaker. ALC conducted scores of major educational programs for legislators between 1986 and 1992, most of which took place in Washington, D.C. The ALC conferences focused on comparing the political systems of the communist and democratic spheres but also provided a substantive background on the underpinnings of Marxism-Leninism. It offered a critique of the Marxist worldview and contrasted Marxism’s underpinnings with those found in American constitutional government and in the institutions associated with it. Follow-up field work for the ALC conferences in Washington, D.C. was done through the American Freedom Coalition (AFC), which, in the tradition of Christian Voice, also developed scorecards comparing the political values and voting records of the competing candidates for public office in targeted voter districts. Dr. Robert Grant, president of Christian Voice, served as president of the AFC and the respected civil rights leader Dr. Ralph Abernathy who worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for many years in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) served as the vice president.
In Latin America, where Rev. Moon’s education efforts had focused in the early to mid-1980s, Rev. Moon developed the Association for the Unity of Latin America (AULA). AULA’s outreach centered on former heads of state. Some of the more notable heads of state who were involved with AULA included Peruvian President Belaunde Terry, Costa Rican President Mario Echandi and former Mexican President Luis Echeverria Alvarez. Presided over by Ambassador Jose Maria Chaves, a seasoned Colombian diplomat and academic, AULA, in conjunction with a Pan-American board of legal scholars, researched and proposed a constitutional framework to deepen inter-state collaboration among Latin American states. AULA highlighted the value of an economic union among Latin American nations to enhance leverage in trade and political dealings with the major powers of the time, including the United States, Japan and the European Union. The more than 20 Latin American heads of states closely involved with AULA also served as founding members of a broader expansion of activity through the Summit Council for World Peace (SCWP). SCWP brought together former statesmen from around the world to offer proposals and strategies on issues meriting international attention. The Summit Council, along with PWPA and the World Media Conference, which we will discuss next, added the leverage needed to “seal the deal” and facilitate the meeting between Rev. Moon and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in April 1990.
Media Outreach
Rev. Moon also developed an international media network and started newspapers in Seoul, Tokyo, New York, Washington, D.C., Cairo, Buenos Aires and elsewhere. An underlying editorial theme of all these papers was values-based reporting, world peace and the human family. Ultimately, The Washington Times became important for Rev. Moon’s “March to Moscow.”
The Washington Times, the World Media Association and Inroads to Moscow
Following his speech to an audience of 300,000 at the Washington Monument on September 18, 1976, Rev. Moon held a celebration on October 4 at which he declared his intention to have his next rally in Moscow. Within three months, Rev. Moon initiated a newspaper in New York, Newsworld, which later became the New York City Tribune. This daily newspaper was published from December 1976 until August 1985. Many of the reporters of the Tribune, including Bill Gertz and Josette Sheeran, joined The Washington Times in 1983, which Rev. Moon had resurrected on the location of the defunct Washington Star. The Washington Times soon garnered a major readership in Washington, D.C. Within the first three years it became recognized as one of America’s most quoted newspapers.[22] The three issues that appear below help to illustrate the Times’ role in the Cold War.
Washington Times Support for the Nicaraguan Resistance or Contras
The Washington Times’ investigations and reportage lent credence to U.S. executive and legislative efforts to support the Nicaraguan Resistance forces or Contras, as they were known, in their efforts to derail that country’s move into the Soviet‑Cuban sphere of influence. When, on April 24, 1985, the U.S. Congress voted down a bill to provide $14 million in humanitarian aid to the Nicaraguan resistance, The Washington Times took the U.S. Congress to task, announcing on May 6, 1985 its intention to seek private humanitarian funding for the Nicaraguan contras[23]. The Times also provided the first $100,000 seed money for the project. In its news coverage, the Times revealed a trip to Moscow immediately following the vote by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega Saavedra to secure additional Soviet aid. It also reported on new shipments of Soviet military supplies to Nicaragua[24]. The Times’ attention to this story continued until the Congress reversed its position in June 1985, resulting in a new $27 million commitment of humanitarian assistance to the Nicaraguan resistance[25], a decisive factor in the eventual wearing down of the Sandinistas, allowing for the 1990 elections that brought Violeta Chamorro to the presidency.
Washington Times Support for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)
On November 1, 1983, The Washington Times produced a high profile, full‑color article on the space‑based anti‑missile system known as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). In its editorial policy, the Times rigorously advocated in favor of the system’s development.[26] Indeed, when President Reagan unveiled SDI in a March 23, 1983 TV address, the Times editorialized that this address was “maybe President Reagan’s best ever,” adding that the idea of a space‑based shield has “had our interest and support for months” and cited its potential leverage in future arms negotiations.[27] This advocacy by The Washington Times can be contrasted with the position taken by The New York Times.[28] The New York Times derided the program as “a pipe dream, a projection of fantasy into politics,” “science fiction,” and “dangerous folly,” and described SDI as “a harebrained adventure that will induce a ruinous race in both offensive and defensive arms.”[29] President Reagan’s commitment to SDI, buoyed by The Washington Times editorial support led to a shift in the Soviet Union’s policy. Whereas they originally demanded that the United States abandon SDI efforts in exchange for a reduction in the Soviet nuclear arsenal, President Gorbachev reversed this position. The Soviet Union accepted the United States’ intention to have not parity with the Soviet military but superiority.[30] This was a crucial change in Soviet policy and opened the way to the end of nuclear blackmail by Soviet leaders for the first time since Stalin.
Washington Times Role in the Cancellation of Plans for President Mikhail Gorbachev to Address a Joint Session of Congress in Washington, D.C.
In November of 1987, The Washington Times ignited a nationwide controversy, which resulted in the United States Congress rescinding an invitation for Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to be the first communist leader to address a joint session of Congress. This privilege had previously only been accorded to foreign dignitaries who were strong allies of the United States such as Lafayette, Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and François Mitterand. Nonetheless, the White House and Democratic congressional leaders had negotiated behind the scenes to afford this honor to President Gorbachev on December 9, 1987 during the Reagan‑Gorbachev Summit in Washington, D.C. The Washington Times’ broke this story on November 13, 1987 and headlined it on November 17. Its follow‑up coverage and editorials helped to generate furor among conservative lawmakers, given that Soviet troops continued to occupy Afghanistan.[31] The swelling chorus of opposition led the White House and the congressional supporters of the invitation to begin backpedaling by November 20 and to totally abandon these plans by November 22. In the months following this public embarrassment, President Gorbachev took a number of steps, including his announcement two and a half months later on February 8, 1988 to withdraw Soviet troops from Afghanistan, which clearly established glasnost as more than a political ploy and represented a major shift in Soviet foreign policy.
The Washington Times’ Impact on Other World Media
The impact of Rev. Moon’s Washington Times extended to the news disseminated in other parts of the world, including in communist and frontline countries. In 1988, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oscar Sanchez Arias, then president of Costa Rica, a country bordering on Nicaragua, told the American Society of Newspaper Editors that Costa Rican newspapers depended on The Washington Times for news of the world. He went on to say that the only American newspaper Costa Rican citizens know exists is The Washington Times, and that if Costa Rican newspapers published something from the U.S. it was from the Times.[32] In 1990, future Nicaraguan President Violeta Chamorro Barrios, owner of La Prensa, the only daily newspaper which dared to defy Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, confided to The New York Times’ editorial board that the Sandinistas themselves regarded The Washington Times as “the newspaper of the Nicaraguan opposition.”[33]
Rev. Moon’s 1990 Rally in Moscow
During much of the 1980s the World Media Association (WMA), a media organization for journalists that was founded by Rev. Moon and headquartered at The Washington Times, provided opportunities for journalists from numerous publications to participate in fact-finding tours abroad and acquire first‑hand exposure to numerous vortices of the Cold War. In 1982 Rev. Moon charged Mr. Larry Moffitt, executive director of the WMA to begin to bring journalists from the West to the Soviet Union. These fact-finding tours eventually led to breakthroughs in ties between the organization and the Soviet leadership beginning with leaders of the Novosti Press Agency. It was with the help of Novosti that in Spring 1990 Rev. Moon was able to visit Moscow and hold a conference or “rally” there.
After The Washington Times had played an important role in reversing efforts to have President Gorbachev address a joint session of the United States Congress in 1987, Novosti officials paid a visit to The Washington Times editorial offices in December 1987. The World Media Conference and Novosti began to explore ways to collaborate. These efforts led to Novosti co-sponsoring a Washington, D.C. conference with the WMA in 1989. In 1990, Novosti reciprocated and the WMA was invited to co-sponsor a conference with the press agency in Moscow. Through that conference it finally became possible for Rev. Moon to realize his intent of hosting a rally in Moscow.
The program took place before a large audience in the Convention Center of the Mezhdunarodnaya Hotel in Moscow in April 1990. Local organizing staff included Russian followers of Rev. Moon who had been met by underground missionaries. A PWPA conference and founding meeting for the Russian chapter of the organization was held concurrently at a Ukrainian hotel across the river, and international PWPA leaders also participated in the World Media Conference.
While in Moscow, Rev. and Mrs. Moon met with U.S.S.R. President Mikhail Gorbachev, on April 11, 1990. In their meeting, Rev. Moon urged President Gorbachev to allow full religious freedom inside the U.S.S.R. The two leaders explored possible ways for future cooperation in the areas of business and education.
On the closing evening of a highly successful cultural program that featured the Little Angels, a renowned Korean children’s folk dance troupe, also founded by Rev. Moon, he spoke to a blue-ribbon delegation of Soviet officials that included Soviet First Lady Raisa Gorbachev. Rev. Moon addressed the participants warmly but frankly, choosing to reflect publicly on his private meeting with Gorbachev:
“Yesterday, I had a remarkable meeting with President Gorbachev. I respect and admire his courage and leadership. I assured him that I would cooperate in every way I can to support his program of peace. I told President Gorbachev that the secret for the success of the Soviet Union is to place God at the very center of every endeavor.”[34]
The American journalist Georgie Anne Geyer wrote an article commenting on the April 1990 Moscow Novosti-World Media Conference meetings. In her editorial, entitled “Most Unlikely Conference Meeting,” Ms. Geyer commented as follows:
“Of all the impossible events that have occurred in the Soviet Union in the last five years, probably none has been as unlikely as the happy meeting in recent days between Mikhail Gorbachev and the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. The Moscow News called Rev. Moon “the most brilliant anti-communist and the No. 1 enemy of the state”—and then added, please, that it was ‘time to reconcile.’”[35]
Ms. Geyer went on to write that “this was after Rev. Moon, the head of the Unification Church, had lectured the Soviet people on Adam and Eve.” Ms. Geyer added that “the highest level Soviet officials present—atheists all—listened impassively.” Among those in attendance were Albert Vlasov, chairman of the Novosti Press Agency, and Yuri Ossipian, a key advisor to President Gorbachev.[36]
The historic encounter between Rev. Moon and President Gorbachev in April 1990 led to the Soviet government supporting an effort to bring Soviet legislators to Washington, D.C., where they participated in American Leadership Conferences, and then to New York. In December of 1990 and February of 1991, the ALC sponsored seminars for more than 100 Soviet legislators (federal, republic and municipal levels) as well as delegations of cabinet ministers and members of parliament from Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia. Soviet attendees included former KGB General Oleg Kalugin, Izvestia editor Lev Kornishev and U.S.S.R. Minister of Justice Sergei Lushchikov. Some 3,000 Soviet young people were sponsored by Rev. Moon to visit the United States and participate in an exchange program under the auspices of the International Educational Foundation (IEF), an organization founded by Rev. Moon to promote education, reconciliation and dialogue among the young people of the free and the communist worlds.
From April 30 to May 2, 1991, the ALC sponsored a second American Leadership Conference and fact-finding tour for Soviet officials in the United States. This program included approximately 200 high-ranking government officials and political leaders from all 15 republics of the Soviet Union. This was the only time during this very intense period of Soviet history that any person, government or private organization brought together representatives from all 15 Soviet republics. In attendance were 26 deputies of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet and some 75 deputies of the Supreme Soviets of various republics, as well as Republic vice presidents, cabinet ministers and ambassadors. The officials who visited the United States received an introduction to the work and views of CAUSA as well as briefings on American government, business and trade. While in the United States, the participants met with federal officials in Washington, D.C. as well as with city and state officials and business leaders in New York City. CAUSA sponsored a reception for them with New York business leaders at the New York Hilton. This led to lasting commercial ties being established, in some cases, between American corporations and governments and industries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
A Few Reflections for Skeptics
When Rev. Moon arrived in the United States in 1971, skepticism towards anti-communism ran high. Since the “witch hunts” of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, those who expressed concern about the spread of communism were routinely portrayed as McCarthy clones. The Liberal Left seemed to attack anti-communism with religious fervor, unable to distinguish between reactionary and constructive criticism of Marxism-Leninism. The American Left also seemed to have a deep-seated, kneejerk disdain for authoritarian Asian allies to the United States such as Ferdinand Marcos, Chiang Kai-Shek, Nguyen Cao Ky and Park Chung Hee. Their disdain for these leaders far outweighed their reservations towards the far more brutal and dehumanizing acts of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot or Ho Chi Minh. I am tempted to attribute it to an unreasoned racial and ideological stereotyping. Asian authoritarian figures who fit on the right side of the political spectrum were depicted by the establishment media as spineless pro-American sycophants who, to maintain power and enrich themselves, curried favor from the United States, and opposed progress. Rev. Moon, a Korean, was placed in that same “box” as the Asian rightist authoritarians despised by the American media; and thus he and his followers were fair game for calumny. As noted, Rev. Moon was often portrayed by major American publications not as a religious leader but disrespectfully as a “Korean industrialist” who swindled Americans under the guise of Bible thumping religion and flag-waving anti-communism.
But Rev. Moon was not just the object of disdain in the Western media. The official Soviet daily Izvestia in its August 25, 1984 edition described CAUSA as a “pseudo-religious organization” that “took upon itself a significant share of the expense in the battle against national liberation movements of Central America.”[37] On March 23, 1987 Pravda “revealed” that “CAUSA was used by the CIA not only as a channel for collecting and transferring funds to the Nicaraguans as well as other ‘contras’ but also to subsidize anti-Soviet émigrés within the context of Moon’s proclaimed ‘strategy of encirclement of the U.S.S.R.”[38]
Regardless of how the Soviet media and the mainstream U.S. media portrayed him, there is no doubt that Rev. Moon’s work and the CAUSA message struck a chord in Latin America, which was the center of the Cold War struggle in the 1980s. Honduran Minister of International Information Ambassador Amilcar Santamaria expressed it this way:
“I am convinced that Rev. Moon and this movement offer genuine hope to the people of Central America. Surrounded by underdevelopment, filled with corruption, destroyed by violence and attacked by Soviet totalitarianism, our countries urgently need a worldview capable of mobilizing their moral resources to support liberty, justice and peace. The vision of CAUSA offers such a worldview.”[39]
In short, reflecting back on all the different labels people used to describe Rev. Moon—cult leader, Korean industrialist, rightwing extremist, McCarthyist, charlatan, media mogul—turned out to be projections of those delivering the accusations. By being a person genuinely seeking to improve the world—something most people find hard to believe—Rev. Moon was like a mirror reflecting the fears and prejudices of persons and groups. I discovered that people who had a genuine interest to study CAUSA or other of Rev. Moon’s activities, often ended up impressed by them.
“Blood is Thicker” than Water: From Moscow to Pyongyang
In April 1988, Yu Kikimura, an operative of the Japanese Red Army (JRA)—an organization with established ties to North Korea—was arrested on the New Jersey Turnpike for arms possession and was detained. At the time of his apprehension, Kikimura’s car was filled with high-powered weapons and explosives. His terrorist activities in the United States were meant to coincide with the JRA’s bombing of a United Services Organization (USO) club in Naples, Italy, which took the lives of five persons, including an American servicewoman. The FBI confiscated Kikimura’s notebook which indicated his targets in America; Rev. Moon was informed by the FBI that he figured prominently on the list.
Regardless of ostensible hostilities, Rev. Moon had determined that it was time to return to Pyongyang. He began to reach out through back channels to North Korea. In April 1990, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) officials turned down a request from Rev. Moon’s World Media Conference that North Korea permit some of the attendees of the spring 1990 World Media Conference program in Moscow to travel on from there to Pyongyang.
Later in 1990, Soviet journalists joined a World Media Conference fact-finding tour that included South Korea. During their stay in Seoul, the Soviet journalists met personally with Rev. Moon, who requested that they visit Pyongyang on his behalf. He asked them to convey to the North Koreans that Rev. Moon was not their enemy, and that he wished to meet with President Kim Il Sung. The journalists complied with this request and met with government officials in North Korea.
After several unsuccessful attempts, Rev. Moon finally received an official invitation to travel to Pyongyang in November 1991. He was both affable and frank during his visit there. He was, in fact, so frank that some of those who accompanied him wondered whether they would ever see Seoul or Washington again. In a meeting with top DPRK officials, Rev. Moon stated unequivocally that neither Kim Il Sung’s brand of communism (known as Juche thought) nor the guiding political philosophy of South Korea could bring about Korea’s reunification. He emphasized that his teachings of “headwing” (as opposed to right or left) were meant to play a central role in facilitating reconciliation between the North and South. Rev. Moon’s bold pronouncement that Juche could not bring the Koreas together shocked Kim Il Sung’s followers as well as his own.[40]
Apparently over the protest of some of his subordinates, Kim Il Sung, decided to meet with Rev. and Mrs. Moon on the last full day of their visit to the North. In spite of their marked philosophical differences, their encounter proved to be positive.[41] Rev. Moon was soon publicly recognized by North Korea as one of the “heroes” promoting North-South reconciliation. Collaboration soon followed on a number of projects including an automobile factory.
In May 1992, a delegation of former U.S. government officials traveled to Pyongyang under Rev. Moon’s sponsorship, and I was a part of that delegation. Our delegation was chaired by former Missouri Congressman Richard Ichord, president of the American Freedom Coalition (AFC). On the occasion of our visit to Pyongyang, Congressman Ichord hand-delivered a letter from the White House for President Kim Il Sung. The delegation members included two-time Olympic Decathlon Gold medalist and former Congressman Bob Mathias; former CIA Deputy Director Max Hugel; and Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II, former U.S. ambassador to Japan and Iran and the nephew and namesake of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who had served as the supreme commander of the United Nations troops that had repulsed the 1950 aggression against the South by North Korean leader Kim Il Sung.
Congressman Ichord briefed U.S. President George H.W. Bush’s National Security Advisor Brent Scrowcroft prior to his departure for Pyongyang, and met with President Bush on his return. That visit was the third significant goodwill gesture spearheaded by Rev. and Mrs. Moon to improve relations with Pyongyang over a seven-month period beginning in late 1991. The first was Rev. and Mrs. Moons’ own December 1991 visit to Pyongyang and their meeting at that time with President Kim Il Sung. This was followed by The Washington Times reporter Josette Sheeran’s interview with President Kim that then appeared in the Times.
The delegation headed by Congressman Ichord decided in consultation with the White House to target the cooling of abusive language (toward the U.S. and South Korea) by DPRK officials and government media as the principal diplomatic objective of the visit. The delegation addressed this and other topics with high-ranking party officials, including Kim Young Sun, the DPRK’s highest official on foreign affairs, and President Kim Il Sung himself, who hosted the delegation at a luncheon and in a private meeting. Kim spent more than three hours with the AFC group.
Congressman Ichord requested that I remain in Pyongyang after the AFC visit. I spent seven additional days, during which I time I crafted a statement that called for restraint in communications between the two countries that would include avoiding demeaning language. In a meeting with Kim Young Sun, the key architect of foreign policy under President Kim Il Sung, I was informed that the DPRK foreign ministry officials did not have consensus on a statement that I had drafted but would make a gesture of reconciliation that I would be informed of at a later date. I departed from Pyongyang on June 6, 1992.
Three weeks later, on June 23, I received a telephone call at my New York office from a North Korean diplomat at the United Nations who was requesting a meeting with Congressman Ichord, AFC leader Gary Jarmin and myself. We met at a restaurant on New York’s Upper East Side, where the DPRK official informed us that, as a gesture of appreciation for our visit to Pyongyang, the DPRK had made a unilateral decision to cancel its annual month of anti-American demonstrations, which took place every year since the end of the Korean War during the period between June 25 (the date of the start of the Korean War in 1950) to July 27 (the date of the truce ending the war in 1953). The official asked Congressman Ichord to convey this officially to the Bush administration, which he did on June 24, 1992, both by telephone and by facsimile. Congressman Ichord and I also drafted a commentary piece announcing the Pyongyang policy decision, which appeared in The Washington Times.
We were informed by DPRK officials that this step had been taken as a gesture of recognition for the efforts made by Rev. and Mrs. Moon and as an expression of goodwill to the former U.S. government officials who had visited Pyongyang in June 1992. The DPRK official asked Congressman Ichord to report directly to the White House, noting that such a communication normally would be conveyed through the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. He explained that the decision to communicate with Congressman Ichord rather than to go through normal channels was due to the DPRK’s desire to highlight to the U.S. government the importance that they attributed to Rev. and Mrs. Moon’s role in this dramatic policy change.
Epilogue
Channels of communication between Pyongyang and the Unification Church have remained in place since that time, and this has proven of use for U.S.-DPRK exchanges on some occasions. The high profile of Rev. and Mrs. Moon’s organization in North Korea was highlighted in a February 7, 2012 article in The Daily Beast entitled, “The Bush Administration’s Secret Link to North Korea.” The Daily Beast article pointed out that, in addition to working with former U.S. President Bill Clinton, the Bush Administration, between 2003 and 2008, had utilized Mr. Dong Moon Joo, the former president of The Washington Times and a Rev. Moon confidant, as a Track II emissary between the U.S. and Pyongyang. Indeed, individuals and organizations associated with Rev. Moon have played a liaison role with Pyongyang since 1991 when Rev. Moon first visited the capital city.
On August 15, 2012, Charles K. Armstrong, a professor of Korean Studies at Columbia University, described in a New York Times opinion piece how posters and billboards in North Korea are almost exclusively devoted to promoting the views of the ruling party and its leadership. He did note that there was one exception:
“In recent years, however, one company has been allowed to advertise its products: Pyonghwa Motors, a joint venture between the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s South Korea-based Unification Church and North Korea’s state-run Ryonbong General Corporation. A few signs promoting the company’s Whistle sedan can be seen in Pyongyang and surrounding areas. Essentially a Hyundai, the Whistle is an increasingly common sight on Pyongyang streets.”[42]
Immediately following his passing on September 3, 2012 numerous tributes were paid to Rev. Moon. Perhaps one of the most significant ones was the bestowal of the "National Reunification Prize" on Rev. Moon by the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). Rev. Moon’s youngest son, Hyung Jin Moon, received the award. In reporting on Rev. Moon’s passing and on the bestowal of this award, the DPRK commended Rev. Moon because he had “positively contributed to realizing the nation's reconciliation and unity and the country's peaceful reunification and achieving the prosperity common to the nation."[43]
Peace scholar John Paul Lederach is the first scholar to distinguish between “conflict resolution” and “conflict transformation.” Lederach defines “conflict transformation” as follows:
“Conflict transformation is to envision and respond to the ebb and flow of social conflict as life-giving opportunities for creating constructive change processes that reduce violence, increase justice in direct interaction and social structures, and respond to real-life problems in human relationships.”[44]
“Conflict transformation” recognizes that problems cannot be “resolved” without having addressed the deeper, invisible roots that lie at the heart of any given conflict. By viewing conflict through this lens, it helps us to address conflict in a way that allows for widening levels of partnership and cooperation between those who once perceived each other as enemies.
The positive outcomes that Rev. Moon experienced in Pyongyang in 1991 and in Moscow in 1990 represented the culmination of a process that he had initiated in June 1946 when he traveled north to Pyongyang from Seoul. Rev. Moon’s efforts in the years that followed his 1990-1991 visits confirm that, from the very beginning, the enemy of Rev. Moon was never the communists but the ideology that restrained them from achieving the ideals of peace, justice and prosperity. He wanted individuals, in the free world and the communist world alike, to recognize the tragic implications of implementing a worldview that decrees the non-existence of a transcendent source of nature and the universe and thus delimits humanity’s quest for meaning and realization by imposing a flawed ideology with hubris that makes enemies expendable. I believe Rev. Moon’s accomplishments in Russia and North Korea can be viewed as “conflict transformation.” Since his meetings with Soviet President Gorbachev, and Kim Il Sung in North Korea, the world has become complicated, exacerbated by new forms of violence and conflict. New ideological absolutisms must be met with new initiatives. Nevertheless, there is value in studying and reflecting on the extraordinary efforts that Rev. Moon made both to address communism constructively and to seek peace and reconciliation with those who had seen him as their enemy.
[1] Jean Francois Boyer, L’Empire Moon, (Paris: Editions La Découverte, 1986).
[2] Hyo Jeong Universal Peace Academy Graduate School in Korea, Sun Moon University also in Korea, International Peace College in the Philippines and Unification Theological Seminary in the United States.
[3] Partial listing of several hundred PWPA Conferences that took place from 1974 until 1999 can be found at https://www.pwpa.org/pwpa-conference-list. A record of more recent PWPA activity is available at https://www.pwpa.international.
[4] “World Hunger Day,” Voice of America, May 28, 2019, accessed January 20, 2020, https://editorials.voa.gov/a/world-hunger-day-2019/4935420.html.
[5] Pantanal Leda Settlement, last accessed on January 16, 2020, https://www.ledaproject.com/history-and-motivation.
[6] Inter Religious Federation for World Peace, accessed January 20, 2019, https://www.irfwp.org/wp.
[7] Women’s Federation for World Peace International, 24th Annual Women’s Conference for Peace, November 15, 2019, accessed January 16, 2020, https://www.wfwp.org/news/24th-annual-womens-conference-for-peace-in-the-middle-east.
[8] Universal Peace Federation, accessed January 20, 2020, http://www.upf.org.
[9] Essentials of Unification Thought—The Head Wing Thought, “1.The Universal Image of the Individual Truth Body,” accessed January 20, 2020, http://tparents.org/Library/Unification/Books/Euth/Euth02-01.htm.
[10] John Rees, The Algebra of Revolution, p. 127 (London: Routledge, 2005), accessed January 20, 2020, https://books.google.com/books?id=05iEAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA127&lpg=PA127&dq=Bernstein+not+great+because+of+the+dialectic+but+in+spite+of+it.&source=bl&ots=Yn8aZXLLxU&sig=ACfU3U0G-RS9D07Wb0ryN8sDBbCcdvNqkQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjzta2xxpPnAhXIMd8KHWrjDeUQ6AEwAHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=Bernstein%20not%20great%20because%20of%20the%20dialectic%20but%20in%20spite%20of%20it.&f=false.
[11] Great Soviet Encylopedia, “Surplus Value,” by Vitaly Vygodsy, accessed January 20, 2020, https://www.marxists.org/archive/vygodsky/unknown/surplus_value.htm.
[12] Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, “Chapter Eight: Constant Capital and Variable Capital,” accessed January 20, 2020, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch08.htm.
[13] Communism: A New Critique and Counterproposal, Questions and Answers, V. Economic Theories of Capitalism (Washington DC: The Freedom Leadership Foundation, 1975), accessed January 20, 2020, http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Books/cncc/cncc-05.htm.
[14] CAUSA Lecture Manual (New York: CAUSA Institute, 1985), accessed January 17, 2020, http://tparents.org/Library/Unification/Books/CausaLM/0-Toc.htm.
[15] Professors World Peace Academy, “Overview,” http://www.pwpa.org/about-2, accessed May 10, 2017.
[16] Professors’ World Peace Academy, “Second International Conference: ’The Fall of the Soviet Empire’: Prospects for the Transition to a Post-Soviet World,” August 20, 1985; http://www.pwpa.org/events/second-international-congress-the-fall-of-the-soviet-empire-prospects-for-transition-to-a-post-soviet-world, accessed May 21, 2017.
[17] Peter Rutland, “Sovietology: Notes for a Post-Mortem,” The National Interest, No. 31, Spring 1993, p. 111. .
[18] Vladimir Lenin, Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism, (NSW, Australia: Resistance Books, 1999), p. 71-73.
[19] Robert V. Daniels, Russia: The Roots of Confrontation, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 146.
[20] Ed. Thomas J. Ward, An Idea Whose Time Has Come, (New York: CAUSA Institute, 1989), p. 22.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Alex Jones of The New York Times reported in 1985 that officials of The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, AP and UPI say that “they regularly review The Washington Times for news leads and pick up important news items.” He called the Times the “third most-quoted newspaper in America,” after only The Washington Post and The New York Times, and reported that AP alone cited the Times in more than 80 major dispatches from D.C. in 1985. The New York Times, May 26, 1985, p. 44.
[23] Arnaud de Borchgrave, “Editorial,” The Washington Times, (May 6, 1985): A1.
[24] “Our Times: The Life of an American Newspaper,” A Tribute (Washington, D.C.: The Washington Times, 1990).
[25] The U.S. House reversed its April 24 position and passed on June 12, 1985, a bill for Contra nonlethal aid. The U.S. Senate reaffirmed on June 6 and June 20, 1985 its prior support for Contra humanitarian aid. A compromise between the chambers, allowing $27 million in nonmilitary aid to the Contras, was reached on July 26, 1985 with final approval and submission to the White House on August 1, 1985.
[26] “Editorial: Let’s Defend America,” The Washington Times, (March 25, 1983): A11; Tom Carhart, “Time for High Frontier,” The Washington Times, (March 25, 1983): A11; “Editorial: ABM: Security vs. Serenity,” The Washington Times, (October 21, 1985): A9; “Editorial: Hanging Tough,” The Washington Times, (October 13, 1986): A11; “Editorial: Budget Essentials,” The Washington Times, (October 14, 1986): A9; “Editorial: Not Dead, Only Sleeping,” The Washington Times, (October 15, 1986): A9; “Editorial: SDI in the near term,” The Washington Times, (October 16, 1986): A11.
[27] “Editorial: Let’s Defend America,” The Washington Times, (March 25, 1983): A11.
[28] “Editorial: Nuclear Facts, Science Fictions,” The New York Times, (March 27, 1983): E18; “Editorial: The War Over Star Wars,” The New York Times, (October 15, 1986): A26; “Editorial: In the Reagan World, With No Missiles,” The New York Times, (October 19, 1986): 22; “Editorial: In the Real World, With the Bomb,” The New York Times, (October 19, 1986): 22.
[29] “Editorial: Nuclear Facts, Science Fictions,” The New York Times, (March 27, 1983): E18; “Editorial: In the Reagan World, With No Missiles,” The New York Times, (October 19, 1986): 22.
[30] McGeorge Bundy, George Kennan, Robert McNamara, and Gerald Smith, “Reykjavik’s Grounds for Hope,” The New York Times, (October 19, 1985): 23.
[31] Jeremiah O’Leary, “Gorbachev Arrival Set for December 7,” The Washington Times, (November 13, 1987): A5; Jeremiah O’Leary and Gene Grabowski, “Gorbachev May Address Congress,” The Washington Times, (November 17, 1987): A4. The role of The Washington Times in leading the editorial campaign and stopping the planned address was encapsulated by The Times’ editor‑in chief, Arnaud de Borchgrave, in a December 4, 1987 speech before the American Leadership Conference.
[32] Oscar Arias, address before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, J.W. Marriott Hotel, Washington, D.C., April 14, 1988. Cited in A Tribute (Washington, D.C.: The Washington Times, 1990).
[33] Cited in A Tribute.
[34] Thomas J. Ward, March to Moscow—The Role of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon in the Collapse of Communism, (St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2005) p. 97.
[35] Ibid. p. 98.
[36] Bo Hi Pak, The Truth is My Sword, Vol. II, (New York: HSA-UWA, 1999), p. 594.
[37] Ed. Thomas J. Ward, An Idea Whose Time Has Come—The History of CAUSA International, (New York: CAUSA Institute, 1990), pp. 58-59.
[38] Ibid., p. 59.
[39] Ibid., p. 17.
[40] MBCNet Special Report on Rev. Sun Myung Moon English, YouTube video, August 22, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N-HlC4q_tc, accessed May 1, 2017.
[41] Ibid.
[42] Charles K. Armstrong, “The View from Pyongyang,” The New York Times, (August 15, 2012), accessed October 11, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/16/opinion/the-view-from-pyongyang-north-korea.html.
[43] Rev. Moon Awarded National Reunification Prize, YouTube video, September 7, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BZQBXETwK8, accessed January 14, 2017.
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