Edited by Wendy Stocker

The Hon. Douglas Roche, O.C., is a Canadian author, parliamentarian, and diplomat. He has served Canada as Senator, Member of Parliament, and Ambassador for Disarmament. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada and the recipient of major awards for his work for peace and nonviolence, including the Mahatma Gandhi Foundation for World Peace Award (Canada), the United Nations Association’s Medal of Honour, and the Sean MacBride Peace Prize.

Cesar Jaramillo: Who is Doug Roche? How would you characterize him?

Douglas Roche: Cesar, if you’re trying to find Doug Roche, I think two words would apply – the two words I used in my memoirs, which I published when I was 80. Now I’m 93, I still hold to the two words: creative dissent.

I have dissented virtually all my public life. This year happens to be the 50th anniversary of my first election to Parliament in 1972.

I’ve been in public life for 50 years as a Member of Parliament, an Ambassador, and a Senator. It’s a rare privilege for a single Canadian to have occupied those three high positions in our society. In all positions, I have dissented.

I’ve dissented from the perpetuation of the arms race. I’ve dissented from the militarization of our society and our culture. I’ve dissented from the gross disparities of humanity, in which billionaires, who are multiplying at a rapid rate, syphon off –dare I use the word “steal” – from the poor. I’ve dissented from despoilation of the planet. I’ve dissented from the hypocrisy of politicians that puts policies for their own good ahead of policies for the public good.

But dissent by itself is negative and corroding, leading to paralysis. Therefore, I have conjoined to my dissent creativity, working in various ways to build up organizations, add some strength to change policies. In the early 1980s, I was a founding President of Parliamentarians for Global Action, which tried to influence public policies for disarmament and development. We believed in what Swedish diplomat Inga Thorsson defined as the dynamic triangular relationship between disarmament, development, and security, in which, the more you do disarmament and transfer that money over to development, the more security you get. We pushed that very hard, in creative ways: seminars and meetings, delegations to governments.

I also started the Middle Powers Initiative to help middle powers recognize that they could influence the major powers, particularly on nuclear disarmament. I had a good model, because in 1983, Pierre Trudeau, the prime minister of a middle power, went to the capitals of the five permanent members of the United Nations (UN) Security Council (P5) to get them to slow down the nuclear arms race.

In later years, I’ve tried to express my dissent in various civil society efforts. I dissent from policies today that feed more arms into Ukraine and dismiss negotiations. Creative dissent has marked my life.

CJ: I want to go back to creative dissent and ask you a very basic question: why? What is it in Doug Roche that has led to all the roles that you have held? Is it a personality trait? Growing up, were you a counter-power, a rebel? Are you personally offended by the many injustices that we see every day, by the nuclear threat, by the inability of policymakers to make better decisions? Are you motivated by a sense of hope that your work will yield benefits, however incremental they might be?

DR: You’ve touched on several things that would certainly apply to me.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, I was a journalist. I worked for a religious magazine that sent me to Africa and Asia and Latin America. I interviewed a Communist labour leader in Venezuela, an Ibo teacher in Nigeria before the Biafra war, a farmer in Kerala in India. I saw a lot of humanity.

One day I woke up to a great discovery: most of the world is non-white, non-Western, and non-Christian. In other words, I’m a real minority in the world as a white, Western Christian. I learned then that we’ve got to get along with one another.

I was motivated strongly by economic disparities. When I first became an MP, I focused on development. In 1976, I was one of the first Westerners to travel around China. I also went to Indonesia and Bangladesh. Then I wrote a book about development models in those countries.

In Bangladesh, a Catholic sister took me around the rural areas. In a village, she took me to a home, a hut, with a woman and her six kids; her husband was out in the farm. They had hardly anything. When the interview was over, I left and headed back to the car. I looked back and this woman was running after me. She had in her hand a glass of warm palm date juice. While we were talking in her dwelling, she had been heating this to give to me, a strange white Western man whom she’d never see again. This woman who had nothing wanted to give Doug Roche something. I was overwhelmed and this became a turning point in my life.

I got into nuclear disarmament in the 1980s. I’d gone to Hiroshima by that time, and I saw what human beings can do to others. I interviewed the hibakusha. I saw all the museums. That, too, was a turning point in my life.

CJ: I’ve been to Hiroshima myself and it is transformational. But to wrap up who is Doug Roche: your faith. Does being a Roman Catholic give you strength, a sense of purpose; does it sustain you in some way?

DR: The answer to that is yes. I went to the Second Vatican Council as a journalist 60 years ago. I wrote a couple of books about the Second Vatican Council. I was immersed in it. The essence of the Second Vatican Council was that the Church is not just this institution on a hill; the Church is the people of God.

I was taken by that, but also by the social teaching of the Church, by Pope John XXIII, who wrote Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth). You can’t get a better political philosophy than what is found in there, that we need strong institutions to guarantee peace and security.

Pope Francis has this great document, Laudato Si‘ (Praise Be to You), which was addressed to the world, not just Catholics. And he’s followed that up with subsequent documents. I would have to say that my faith has influenced me as I work in the secular arena.

CJ: In today’s world, do you think that faith groups have a role to play in policy conversations and in crafting solutions?

DR: Yes, I do. Ecumenism has come a long way and interfaith work has come a long way. The Conferences on Religion and Peace, with which I’ve been involved for a number of years – now the Parliament of the World’s Religions – have made a great contribution in bringing out the best side of religion, which is interactive, respectful, and reconciliatory. However, it’s not strong enough to determine government policies.

CJ: Can you comment on the state of global affairs today? The crisis created by the invasion of Russia into Ukraine has people nervous, stressed, unnerved. Are those sentiments warranted?

DR: Yes. I was 16 when the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki took place and World War II concluded. Then the United Nations started and that was a turning point for humanity. The outflow of the United Nations to many agencies, and the adoption of the UN Charter and the international rule of law provided a framework on which I built my life. And now that framework is being challenged and undermined. So, I regard the crisis that we’re going through now as the gravest crisis in my active lifetime.

Someone suggested to me that the period of the United Nations was an aberration and now we’re getting back to normal confrontation. I vigorously dissent. I believe that humanity, over the past 1,000 years – particularly the past 100 years – is ascending in its knowledge of itself and the planet, and that we have become more creative and built law. Thus, I would argue that the current attack on multilateralism is the aberration, and that we need to return to confidence in the United Nations.

CJ: You express a great deal of faith in the United Nations as an institution and in the figure of the Secretary-General as a voice of reason and moderation. Might the solution to this current crisis lie there?

DR: I just wrote a piece that compares the Cuban missile crisis with the Ukraine war crisis. The Cuban missile crisis was solved by negotiations between U.S. President Kennedy and Soviet President Khrushchev, spurred on by UN Secretary-General U Thant, who engaged in back-channel diplomacy. And he never got proper credit, as I pointed out in this piece.

The United Nations today is being bypassed, which I oppose. If we give up on the UN Charter and the Security Council as legal guardians of peace and security in the world, then we’re just going to float. We may luck out, we may not. We need an institutional framework that is guided by dynamic people. Today that framework is being undermined and dynamic leaders are scarce.

On several occasions, the UN Security Council has headed off war or successfully dealt with smaller wars. When the direct interests of the P5 that have the veto are at stake, then paralysis sets in. It’s easy enough to say we should get rid of the veto, but these states would never have come into the United Nations had they not received the veto. Even though the veto has been exercised more often than it should have been, it has not eviscerated the strength and the need for the Security Council.

Now the UN General Assembly has adopted a resolution that requires any state in the Security Council that casts a veto to come before the General Assembly to explain itself. That is a step forward.

I’m not certain what will come out of the Ukraine crisis. But perhaps some years down the line, the evaluation of the Ukraine war might lead to the implementation of a reform of the Security Council. I don’t want to give up on this.

I just noticed that President Obrador of Mexico, in calling for an international commission to conduct negotiations for the end of the Ukraine war, included in his international team the UN Secretary-General, as well as Pope Francis and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India.

CJ: Many observers are commenting that the risk of nuclear weapons use in the war in Ukraine is intolerably high, even civilization-altering. Does this dimension of the Ukraine conflict keep you up at night?

DR: Sleep is not easy. I consider the possible use of nuclear weapons by Russia in Ukraine to be a greater crisis for humanity than the Cuban missile crisis, as great as that was. In the Cuban missile crisis, there was a framework that was adhered to – a recognition that there needed to be contact. Both sides accepted UN Secretary-General U Thant as intermediary.

The West needs to cooperate with China for our mutual survival, particularly in climate policies. We all need to have mutual survival as an operative goal, which we implement with respectful policies.

Today, the multilateral system has been weakened because not enough good leaders put money and energy into it. The West is not free of guilt in causing the conditions of acrimony and militarization that have led to wars. But let me be clear: I am not offering a defence of Russian policy.

Down through the ages, philosophers and theologians have told us that we must love one another. Now we are faced with a pragmatic choice: we get along with each other or we all die. We’ve got to find a way, and to find that way, we’ve got to sublimate ourselves and translate that sublimation into practical politics.

China is also emerging as a strong force after a century of being silent. The West needs to cooperate with China for our mutual survival, particularly in climate policies. We all need to have mutual survival as an operative goal, which we implement with respectful policies.

If that sounds like too high a reach, let me translate it into a UN emergency peace force that is capable of being deployed to stamp out crises as they develop. Or let’s have an annual meeting of the Security Council at the summit level. In 1992, the Security Council summit resulted in Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s An Agenda for Peace. I’m making a plea for respect that leads to realistic political policies that can reconcile the needs of people while protecting the planet.

Part II in Autumn Issue