Carnegie Wateler Peace Prize – 2024 Award Ceremony
Speech “The Moral Complexities of Fighting For Peace” – Dr. Tine Molendijk
26 November 2024

Some people may feel uneasy about the military receiving a peace prize. Here in the Netherlands, civilisation and military intervention are often seen as fundamentally at odds with one another. Perhaps this is why, when we do show appreciation for the military, we may choose to limit our praise to their peacekeeping efforts – as is the case today.

I recently spoke with a young woman from Ukraine, her name is Mila. She fled to the Netherlands, and now she spends her afternoons building drones to help the soldiers fighting in Ukraine. She’s incredibly grateful to these soldiers, and because of that, she struggles to understand why here in the Netherlands, the military is often met with such discomfort and criticism.

Now, I don’t bring this up to suggest that it’s naïve to feel tension when connecting the military to peace. Actually, I would say  that it’s crucial to acknowledge that while fighting for peace can be necessary, we also need to recognise just how morally complex that is. And in fact, I would argue that dealing with this moral complexity is exactly what it means to be a soldier.

Behind me is a UN flag. It‘s a gift I got from my friend Jozef to celebrate the completion of my PhD research. He brought it back from Mali, where it had been attached to his unit’s vehicle. The mud and grease still cling to the fabric, and it now hangs in my office, serving as a reminder –  that peace doesn’t just happen on its own. Fighting for peace doesn’t mean there’s no struggle. It’s quite the opposite — it means standing in the mud, facing dilemmas and getting your hands dirty, both literally and metaphorically.

In philosophy, a tragic dilemma is defined as a situation where you have to choose between two awful options, where avoiding one evil means committing another. And the concept of “dirty hands” refers to having to make morally troubling decisions to achieve a greater good, or to prevent greater suffering. For soldiers, these issues aren’t just abstract puzzles — they are real, lived challenges with real impact.

In my research, I focus on that impact. For some soldiers, their experiences leave them with a sense of pride and important memories. And for others, they result in moral injuries, in feelings of guilt, shame, and anger. These soldiers still struggle with questions like:  Should we have given more medical help, even though it might have fuelled the conflict by favouring one group over another? Or: Should we have used more force to protect civilians being threatened by militias, even though it went against the rules? Did we make the right choices? Should I have acted differently? And could I?

These are the challenges of peace missions. Because, being on a peace mission doesn’t mean you’re in a peaceful area.  In reality, you will find yourself in a place where there’s no peace to keep — only war to witness.

That’s why you’re there.

So, being a soldier for peace brings moral tension, and it should.  It’s only by facing this tension that you can adequately confront the challenges before you.

Mila, the Ukrainian woman I mentioned earlier, she recommended a documentary to me called 20 Days in Mariupol. In it, a Ukrainian doctor says: “War is like an X-ray. All human insides become visible. Good people become better, bad people become worse.”  It reminded me of the many stories that veterans have shared with me. And actually, their stories show that war can be morally compromising for bad people, good people, for everyone.

Take Bob’s story, for example. He served as a peacekeeper in the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica when it was attacked by Serb forces. They overtook the area and went on to kill more than 8,000 Bosnian boys and men.  Bob has never been able to shake the profound guilt he carries; his hands still feel dirty.  Shortly after he returned home, he ran into someone who bluntly said, “You let people die over there.” That comment made him decide to keep quiet about his experiences forever.

There’s nothing worse you could say to him. Accusing him of just letting people die fills him with a deep anger towards civilians, who have no idea what really happened. But it’s also the worst thing you can say to him because, deep down, it’s the very thought that keeps him awake at night. To this day, he asks himself:  Did he really just let people die?

At the same time, Bob knows he did his utmost. He walked countless patrols, reporting any developments they came across. And even though it was against the rules, he gave away shoes and T-shirts he’d bought on the black market. When Srebrenica was attacked, the Dutch soldiers withdrew to a nearby compound alongside thousands of refugees. They were outnumbered—just a few hundred soldiers against thousands of advancing forces. In all that chaos, Bob saw injured men and elderly people stranded by the roadside, and he did his best to drag some of them along in a cart.

At one point, a young man approached him. Like Bob, he looked to be about 20 years old. He handed Bob a pack of cigarettes— and that was a rare and precious commodity in Srebrenica at that time. Bob was perplexed. Why would this young man give him this when he and his colleagues couldn’t help him, when they were abandoning him? The young man told him: “If those bastards catch me, they won’t have the pleasure of smoking my cigarettes.” Then he waved goodbye and walked away. They never saw each other again.

As a society, we ask soldiers to make difficult choices in difficult circumstances, to acknowledge and engage with the moral complexities involved in fighting for peace.  We expect soldiers to get their hands dirty and, moreover, to feel the weight of those dirty hands –  this, in order to preserve both their own humanity, and ours.  That’s an immense responsibility.

But, this responsibility isn’t theirs alone; it’s one we all share.

We often talk about current wars as proxy wars, fought by other countries.  But, fundamentally, all military operations are proxy operations—they are all carried out by soldiers on behalf of society.

This means we have a collective duty to acknowledge and engage with the moral complexities, and discomfort, that come with reflecting honestly on what it means to fight for peace. We can’t pretend that there isn’t a moral challenge in using violence in the name of peace. But at the same time, simply rejecting military violence doesn’t solve the challenge either. If we try to wish away the moral dilemmas of military intervention, all we do is shift the burden onto the shoulders of individual soldiers on the ground.  If we deny the dilemmas, we leave it up to them to get their hands dirty so we can keep our own hands clean.

So, I hope that awarding the armed forces this peace prize can serve as a call for moral courage for us all: a call to genuinely confront the dilemma of what it means to fight for peace.