Galtung's theoretical work proposes that there are four ways in which conflict can emerge: conflicts within a person or between persons; conflicts between races, sexes, generations, or classes; conflicts between states; and conflicts between civilizations or multi-state regions, such as the Cold War.
Galtung has held several significant positions in international research councils and has been an advisor to several international organisations. Since 2004 he has been a member of the Advisory Council of the Committee for a Democratic UN.
He has also written many empirical and theoretical articles, dealing most frequently with issues of peace and conflict research. His work is distinguished by his unique perspective as well as the importance he attributes to innovation and interdisciplinarity.
He is one of the authors of an influential account of news values which are the factors which determine what coverage is given to what stories in the news. Galtung also originated the concept of Peace Journalism, which is increasingly influential in communications and media studies.
Galtung is frequently referenced with regard to concepts with which he is strongly associated:
- Structural violence - widely defined as the systematic ways in which a regime prevents individuals from achieving their full potential. Institutionalized racism and sexism are examples of this.
- Negative vs. Positive Peace - introduced the concept that peace may be more than just the absence of overt violent conflict (negative peace), and will likely include a range of relationships up to a state where nations (or any groupings in conflict) might have collaborative and supportive relationships (positive peace).
He has also distinguished himself in public debates concerning, among other things, less-developed countries, defence issues, and the Norwegian EU-debate. In 1987 he was given the Right Livelihood Award. He developed the TRANSCEND Method described above.
Predictions
Since the fall of the Soviet Union he has made several predictions of when the USA will no longer be a functioning superpower, a stance that has attracted some controversy. After the beginning of the Iraq War, he revised his prediction of the "downfall of the US-Empire" seeing it as more imminent. He claims the U.S. will go through a phase as a fascist dictatorship on its path down, and that the Patriot Act is a symptom of this. He claims the election of George W. Bush cost the U.S. empire five years - although he also says this estimate was set a bit arbitrarily. He now sets the date for the end of the American Empire at 2020, but not the American Republic. Like Great Britain, Russia and France, he says the American Republic will be better off without the Empire.
Galtung has made predictions which have failed to materialize. For example,
City Journal claims that in 1953, Galtung predicted that the Soviet Union's economy would soon overtake the West.
Criticism and Controversy
Conservatives have criticized many of Galtung's statements and views. In a 2007 article in the City Journal magazine and a subsequent article in February 2009 by Barbara Kay in the National Post, a number of criticisms were made of Galtung and Peace Studies. Specific allegations included:
- His opposition to Hungarian resistance against the Soviet invasion in 1956.
- His praise in 1972 for Fidel Castro’s Cuba for “break[ing] free of imperialism’s iron grip”
- His statement in 1973 that “our time’s grotesque reality” is the West’s “structural fascism.”
- His description in 1973 of the United States and Western Europe as “rich, Western, Christian countries” that make war to secure materials and markets: “Such an economic system is called capitalism, and when it’s spread in this way to other countries it’s called imperialism.”
- His description in 1974 of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov as “persecuted elite personages”;
- His description of the United States as a “killer country” that is guilty of “neo-fascist state terrorism” and his prediction that it will soon follow Britain “into the graveyard of empires.”
- His comparison of the U. S. to Nazi Germany for bombing Kosovo during the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.
- His statement that while China was “repressive in a certain liberal sense,” Mao Zedong was “endlessly liberating when seen from many other perspectives that liberal theory has never understood” because China showed that “the whole theory about what an ‘open society’ is must be rewritten, probably also the theory of ‘democracy’...and it will take a long time before the West will be willing to view China as a master teacher in such subjects.”
- Two articles have alleged that he has suggested that the annihilation of Washington, D.C., would be a fair punishment for America’s arrogant view of itself as “a model for everyone else.” However, neither article provided any sources, e.g. to the claim that the peace mediator Galtung thinks the annihilation of Washington, D. C. would be a "fair punishment". In fact, Galtung has called the September 11 attacks "criminal political violence".
