Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: militarism

  • Ten Ways that the Climate Crisis and Militarism Are Intertwined

    Ten Ways that the Climate Crisis and Militarism Are Intertwined

    Medea BenjaminThe environmental justice movement that is surging globally is intentionally intersectional, showing how global warming is connected to issues such as race, poverty, migration and public health. One area intimately linked to the climate crisis that gets little attention, however, is militarism. Here are some of the ways these issues—and their solutions—are intertwined.

    1. The US military protects Big Oil and other extractive industries. The US military has often been used to ensure that US companies have access to extractive industry materials, particularly oil, around the world.The 1991 Gulf War against Iraq was a blatant example of war for oil; today the US military support for Saudi Arabia is connected to the US fossil fuel industry’s determination to control access to the world’s oil. Hundreds of the  US military bases spread around the world are in resource-rich regions and near strategic shipping lanes. We can’t get off the fossil fuel treadmill until we stop our military from acting as the world’s protector of Big Oil.

    2.  The Pentagon is the single largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels in the world. If the Pentagon were a country, its fuel use alone would make it the 47th largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, greater than entire nations such as Sweden, Norway or Finland. US military emissions come mainly from fueling weapons and equipment, as well as lighting, heating and cooling more than 560,000 buildings around the world.

    3. The Pentagon monopolizes the funding we need to seriously address the climate crisis. We are now spending over half of the federal government’s annual discretionary budget on the military when the biggest threat to US national security is not Iran or China, but the climate crisis. We could cut the Pentagon’s current budget in half and still be left with a bigger military budget than China, Russia, Iran and North Korea combined. The $350 billion savings could then be funnelled into the Green New Deal. Just one percent of the 2019 military budget of $716 billion would be enough to fund 128,879 green infrastructure jobs instead.

    4. Military operations leave a toxic legacy in their wake. US military bases despoil the landscape, pollute the soil, and contaminate the drinking water. At the Kadena Base in Okinawa, the US Air Force has polluted local land and water with hazardous chemicals, including arsenic, lead, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), asbestos and dioxin.Here at home, the EPA has identified over 149 current or former military bases as SuperFund sites because Pentagon pollution has left local soil and groundwater highly dangerous to human, animal, and plant life. According to a 2017 government report, the Pentagon has already spent $11.5 billion on environmental cleanup of closed bases and estimates $3.4 billion more will be needed.

    5. Wars ravage fragile ecosystems that are crucial to sustaining human health and climate resiliency. Direct warfare inherently involves the destruction of the environment, through bombings and boots-on-the-ground invasions that destroy the land and infrastructure. In the Gaza Strip, an area that suffered three major Israeli military assaults between 2008 and 2014. Israel’s bombing campaigns targeted sewage treatment and power facilities, leaving 97% of Gaza’s freshwater contaminated by saline and sewage, and therefore unfit for human consumption. In Yemen, the Saudi-led bombing campaign has created a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe, with more than 2,000 cases of cholera now being reported each day. In Iraq, environmental toxins left behind by the Pentagon’s devastating 2003 invasion include depleted uranium, which has left children living near US bases with an increased risk of congenital heart disease, spinal deformities,  cancer, leukemia, cleft lip and missing or malformed and paralyzed limbs.

    6. Climate change is a “threat multiplier” that makes already dangerous social and political situations even worse. In Syria, the worst drought in 500 years led to crop failures that pushed farmers into cities, exacerbating the unemployment and political unrest that contributed to the uprising in 2011. Similar climate crises have triggered conflicts in other countries across the Middle East, from Yemen to Libya. As global temperatures continue to rise, there will be more ecological disasters, more mass migrations and more wars. There will also be more domestic armed clashes—including civil wars—that can spill beyond borders and destabilize entire regions. The areas most at risk are sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and South, Central and Southeast Asia.

    7. US sabotages international agreements addressing climate change and war. The US has deliberately and consistently undermined the world’s collective efforts to address the climate crisis by cutting greenhouse gas emissions and speeding the  transition to renewable energy. The US refused to join the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Climate Accord was the latest example of this flagrant disregard for nature, science, and the future. Similarly, the US refuses to join the International Criminal Court that investigates war crimes, violates international law with unilateral invasions and sanctions, and is withdrawing from nuclear agreements with Russia. By choosing to prioritize our military over diplomacy, the US sends the message that “might makes right” and makes it harder to find solutions to the climate crisis and military conflicts.

    8. Mass migration is fueled by both climate change and conflict, with migrants often facing militarized repression. A 2018 World Bank Group report estimates that the impacts of climate change in three of the world’s most densely populated developing regions—sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America—could result in the displacement and internal migration of more than 140 million people before 2050. Already, millions of migrants from Central America to Africa to the Middle East are fleeing environmental disasters and conflict. At the US border, migrants are locked in cages and stranded in camps. In the Mediterranean, thousands of refugees have  died while attempting dangerous sea voyages. Meanwhile, the arms dealers fuelling the conflicts in these regions are profiting handsomely from selling arms and building detention facilities to secure the borders against the refugees.

    9. Militarized state violence is leveled against communities resisting corporate-led environmental destruction. Communities that fight to protect their lands and villages from oil drills, mining companies, ranchers, agribusiness, etc. are often met with state and paramilitary violence. We see this in the Amazon today, where indigenous people are murdered for trying to stop clear-cutting and incineration of their forests. We see it in Honduras, where activists like Berta Caceres have been gunned down for trying to preserve their rivers. In 2018, there were 164 documented cases of environmentalists murdered around the world. In the US, the indigenous communities protesting plans to build the Keystone oil pipeline in South Dakota were met by police who targeted the unarmed demonstrators with tear gas, bean-bag rounds, and water cannons—intentionally deployed in below-freezing temperatures. Governments around the world are expanding their state-of-emergency laws to encompass climate-related upheavals, perversely facilitating the repression of environmental activists who have been branded as “eco-terrorists” and who are subjected to counterinsurgency operations.

    10. Climate change and nuclear war are both existential threats to the planet. Catastrophic climate change and nuclear war are unique in the existential threat they pose to the very survival of human civilization. The creation of nuclear weapons—and their proliferation—was spurred by global militarism, yet nuclear weapons are rarely recognized as a threat to the future of life on this planet. Even a very “limited” nuclear war, involving less than 0.5% of the world’s nuclear weapons, would be enough to cause catastrophic global climate disruption and a worldwide famine, putting up to 2 billion people at risk. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has set its iconic Doomsday Clock to 2 minutes to midnight, showing the grave need for the ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The environmental movement and the anti-nuke movement need to work hand-in-hand to stop these threats to planetary survival.

    To free up billions of Pentagon dollars for investing in critical environmental projects and to eliminate the environmental havoc of war, movements for a livable, peaceful planet need to put “ending war” at the top of the “must do” list.

    Medea Benjamin is co-founder of CODEPINK and a member of the NAPF Advisory Council.

    This article was originally published by Common Dreams and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

  • Why Green New Deal Advocates Must Address Militarism

    Why Green New Deal Advocates Must Address Militarism

    In the spirit of a new year and a new Congress, 2019 may well be our best and last opportunity to steer our ship of state away from the twin planetary perils of environmental chaos and militarism, charting a course towards an earth-affirming 21st century.   

    The environmental crisis was laid bare by the sobering December report of the UN Climate panel: If the world fails to mobilize within the next 12 years on the level of a moon shot, and gear up to change our energy usage from toxic fossil, nuclear and industrial biomass fuels to the already known solutions for employing solar, wind, hydro, geothermal energy and efficiency, we will destroy all life on earth as we know it. The existential question is whether our elected officials, with the reins of power, are going to sit by helplessly as our planet experiences more devastating fires, floods, droughts, and rising seas or will they seize this moment and take monumental action as we did when the United States abolished slavery, gave women the vote, ended the great depression, and eliminated legal segregation.

    Some members of Congress are already showing their historic mettle by supporting a Green New Deal. This would not only start to reverse the damage we have inflicted on our collective home, but it would create hundreds of thousands of good jobs that cannot be shipped overseas to low wage countries.

    Even those congresspeople who want to seriously address the climate crisis, however, fail to grapple with the simultaneous crisis of militarism. The war on terror unleashed in the wake of the 911 terrorist attack has led to almost two decades of unchecked militarism. We are spending more money on our military than at any time in history. Endless wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria and elsewhere are still raging, costing us trillions of dollars and creating humanitarian disasters. Old treaties to control nuclear arms are unraveling at the same time that conflicts with the major powers of Russia and China are heating up.

    Where is the call for the New Peace Deal that would free up hundreds of billions from the overblown military budget to invest in green infrastructure? Where is the call to close a majority of our nation’s over 800 military bases overseas, bases that are relics of World War II and are basically useless for military purposes? Where is the call for seriously addressing the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons?

    With the crumbling phenomenon of outdated nuclear arms control treaties, it is unconscionable not to support the recently negotiated UN treaty, signed by 122 nations, to prohibit and ban nuclear weapons just as the world has done for chemical and biological weapons. The US Congress should not be authorizing the expenditures of one trillion dollars for new nuclear weapons, bowing to corporate paymasters who seek a larger arms race with Russia and other nuclear-armed countries to the detriment of our own people and the rest of the world. Instead, Congress should take the lead in supporting this treaty and promoting it among the other nuclear weapons states.

    Environmentalists need to contest the Pentagon’s staggering global footprint. The US military is the world’s largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels and the largest source of greenhouse gasses, contributing about 5 percent of global warming emissions. Almost 900 of the EPA’s 1,300 Superfund sites are abandoned military bases, weapons-production facilities or weapons-testing sites. The former Hanford nuclear weapons facility in Washington state alone will cost over $100 billion to clean up.

    If climate change is not addressed rapidly by a Green New Deal, global militarism will ramp up in response to increases in climate refugees and civil destabilization, which will feed climate change and seal a vicious cycle fed by the twin evils militarism and climate disruption. That’s why a New Peace Deal and a Green New Deal should go hand in hand. We cannot afford to waste our time, resources and intellectual capital on weapons and war when climate change is barreling down on all of humankind.  If the nuclear weapons don’t destroy us than the pressing urgency of catastrophic climate will.

    Moving from an economic system that relies on fossil fuels and violence would enable us to make a just transition to a clean, green, life-supporting energy economy.  This would be the quickest and most positive way to deal a death knell to the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about so many years ago.

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

  • Swamp Infrastructure Construction Kinetics

    Swamp Infrastructure Construction Kinetics

    Now being planned and built in Washington, D.C., which is already just about coated in monuments to wars and particular warriors, are monuments to: World War I, the Gulf War, Native American fighters in wars, African Americans who fought in the U.S. war for independence, and the War on Terrorism, as well as one to Eisenhower the Warrior.

    That War on (make that “of” — an easy alteration) Terrorism monument is supposed to be built by 2024, and the war it glorifies is due to end sometime in the next millennium or, as war planners like to say, “imminently.”

    Most countries glorify their deeds, but many also mourn and regret and warn against repetition of their worst crimes. Not the good old USA, no sir. George Bush the elder said he’d never apologize and didn’t care what the facts were. That’s telling ’em.

    I’m glad to be involved in planning to protest and prevent a weapons parade on November 10th. But the wave of new war memorials in Washington, D.C., deserves all the opposition that Trump’s parade is receiving, 1,000-fold. The memorials will last much longer than the parade — assuming that the militarism they glorify doesn’t put an end to all of us.

    One year after the deadly rally in Charlottesville, the memorials denounced there as racist still stand. They stand because of a Virginia law forbidding taking down war memorials. Once any monstrosity is erected, if it’s for war, it’s here for eternity. That is sure to be true in Washington, D.C. as well. Can you imagine trying to get one of these desecrations of all that is decent removed after it’s up?

    If you’re wondering, Virginia does not have a law banning the removal of peace memorials. You can take one down if you can find one.

    How does Congress get away with dumping the majority of discretionary spending into militarism each year? How does  Trump get away with telling European nations to spend on war based on the size of their economies? Part of the answer is a culture of war. We ought to take a little more seriously the danger that lies in what we choose to glorify.

    These war monuments do not mourn the dead. They omit the vast majority of the dead entirely. The Vietnam Memorial alone would eat up the space being used by several others if it included the names of everyone killed in that war. The war “on terrorism” has been a one-sided slaughter, illegal, immoral, counter-productive, and environmentally and fiscally and culturally catastrophic. Of the tiny percentage of deaths you’re supposed to care about, the majority have come by suicide. The monument will mention nothing of any of that.

    That they are now building monuments to particular demographic groups’ participation in wars threatens all remaining trees and sidewalks left intact thus far in Washington, D.C. But that’s not the worst of it. They’re making a monument to the participation of the remnants of nations destroyed by genocidal U.S. wars — their participation in later wars against other victims. And they have yet to build a monument to the victims of the wars against the native peoples of the continent.

    They’re building a monument to black fighters in the U.S. war for wealthy white male independence that will not only not mention the role of that war in advancing continental genocide, but also omit its role in preserving slavery. The African Americans who fought on the British side for actual independence cannot be expected to show up in monumental glory. And where is the monument to slavery, whose lasting legacy is certainly what has spared us an enormous pro-union Civil War monument eating up half the National Mall?

    The tiny, hidden monument to the imprisonment of Japanese Americans is proving entirely insufficient to the task it takes on with its “never again” language. The absence of any serious peace monuments is killing us.

    Will the Gulf War monument include babies taken out of incubators? I know I say that at the risk of giving them ideas, but I’m sure they’ve already thought of worse. Slaughter of thousands of retreating troops maybe? Decades of brutal blowback perhaps?

    And World War I? What is that about? The total lack of World War I-justifying mythology in our culture, the surrender to its obvious insanity, makes WWI a weak link in the case for World War II’s status as the most glorious mass-killing in history, given the impossibility of World War II having happened without World War I. But now they want to remind us of World War I?

    Clearly the idea is that all war must be glorious regardless of what idiots started it for what nonsensical, sadistic, narcissistic, greedy, cowardly, dishonest reasons. That seems to me exactly the wrong message to be surrounding the White House windows with right now.

    This article was originally published by World Beyond War.

  • Why the “Merchants of Death” Survive and Prosper

    This article was originally published by History News Network.

    During the mid-1930s, a best-selling exposé of the international arms trade, combined with a U.S. Congressional investigation of munitions-makers led by Senator Gerald Nye, had a major impact on American public opinion. Convinced that military contractors were stirring up weapons sales and war for their own profit, many people grew critical of these “merchants of death.”

    Today, some eight decades later, their successors, now more politely called “defense contractors,” are alive and well. According to a study by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, sales of weapons and military services by the world’s largest 100 corporate military purveyors in 2016 (the latest year for which figures are available) rose to $375 billion. U.S. corporations increased their share of that total to almost 58 percent, supplying weapons to at least 100 nations around the world.

    The dominant role played by U.S. corporations in the international arms trade owes a great deal to the efforts of U.S. government officials. “Significant parts of the government,” notes military analyst William Hartung, “are intent on ensuring that American arms will flood the global market and companies like Lockheed and Boeing will live the good life. From the president on his trips abroad to visit allied world leaders to the secretaries of state and defense to the staffs of U.S. embassies, American officials regularly act as salespeople for the arms firms.” Furthermore, he notes, “the Pentagon is their enabler. From brokering, facilitating, and literally banking the money from arms deals to transferring weapons to favored allies on the taxpayers’ dime, it is in essence the world’s largest arms dealer.”

    In 2013, when Tom Kelly, the deputy assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Political Affairs was asked during a Congressional hearing about whether the Obama administration was doing enough to promote American weapons exports, he replied: “[We are] advocating on behalf of our companies and doing everything we can to make sure that these sales go through. . . and that is something we are doing every day, basically [on] every continent in the world . . . and we’re constantly thinking of how we can do better.” This proved a fair enough assessment, for during the first six years of the Obama administration, U.S. government officials secured agreements for U.S. weapons sales of more than $190 billion around the world, especially to the volatile Middle East. Determined to outshine his predecessor, President Donald Trump, on his first overseas trip, bragged about a $110 billion arms deal (totaling $350 billion over the next decade) with Saudi Arabia.

    The greatest single weapons market remains the United States, for this country ranks first among nations in military spending, with 36 percent of the global total. Trump is a keen military enthusiast, as is the Republican Congress, which is currently in the process of approving a 13 percent increase in the already astronomical U.S. military budget. Much of this future military spending will almost certainly be devoted to purchasing new and very expensive high-tech weapons, for the military contractors are adept at delivering millions of dollars in campaign contributions to needy politicians, employing 700 to 1,000 lobbyists to nudge them along, claiming that their military production facilities are necessary to create jobs, and mobilizing their corporate-funded think tanks to highlight ever-greater foreign “dangers.”

    They can also count upon a friendly reception from their former executives now holding high-level posts in the Trump administration, including: Secretary of Defense James Mattis (a former board member of General Dynamics); White House Chief of Staff John Kelly (previously employed by several military contractors); Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan (a former Boeing executive); Secretary of the Army Mark Esper (a former Raytheon vice president); Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson (a former consultant to Lockheed Martin); Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition Ellen Lord (a former CEO of an aerospace company); and National Security Council Chief of Staff Keith Kellogg (a former employee of a major military and intelligence contractor).

    This formula works very well for U.S. military contractors, as illustrated by the case of Lockheed Martin, the largest arms merchant in the world. In 2016, Lockheed’s weapons sales rose by almost 11 percent to $41 billion, and the company is well on its way to even greater affluence thanks to its production of the F-35 fighter jet. Lockheed began work on developing the technologically-advanced warplane in the 1980s and, since 2001, the U.S. government has expended over $100 billion for its production. Today, estimates by military analysts as to the total cost to taxpayers of the 2,440 F-35s desired by Pentagon officials range from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion, making it the most expensive procurement program in U.S. history.

    The F-35’s enthusiasts have justified the enormous expense of the warplane by emphasizing its projected ability to make a quick liftoff and a vertical landing, as well as its adaptability for use by three different branches of the U.S. military. And its popularity might also reflect their assumption that its raw destructive power will help them win future wars against Russia and China. “We can’t get into those aircraft fast enough,” Lieutenant General Jon Davis, the Marine Corps’ aviation chief, told a House Armed Services subcommittee in early 2017. “We have a game changer, a war winner, on our hands.”

    Even so, aircraft specialists point out that the F-35 continues to have severe structural problems and that its high-tech computer command system is vulnerable to cyberattack. “This plane has a long way to go before it’s combat-ready,” remarked a military analyst at the Project on Government Oversight. “Given how long it’s been in development, you have to wonder whether it’ll ever be ready.”

    Startled by the extraordinary expense of the F-35 project, Donald Trump initially derided the venture as “out of control.” But, after meeting with Pentagon officials and Lockheed CEO Marilynn Hewson, the new president reversed course, praising “the fantastic” F-35 as a “great plane” and authorizing a multi-billion dollar contract for 90 more of them.

    In retrospect, none of this is entirely surprising. After all, other giant military contractors―for example, Nazi Germany’s Krupp and I.G. Farben and fascist Japan’s Mitsubishi and Sumitomo ―prospered heavily by arming their nations for World War II and continued prospering in its aftermath. As long as people retain their faith in the supreme value of military might, we can probably also expect Lockheed Martin and other “merchants of death” to continue profiting from war at the public’s expense.

  • Peace Movement’s Common Vision – The Abolition of Militarism

    Mairead Maguire delivered this keynote address at a peace event in Sarajevo on June 6, 2014.

    Dear friends,

    mairead_maguireWe are all aware that this is the 100th anniversary of the assassination of  Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo which led to the start of the First World War in l9l4.

    What started here in Sarajevo was a century of two global wars, a Cold War, a century of immense, rapid explosion of death and destruction technology, all extremely costly, and extremely risky.

    A huge step in the history of war, but also a decisive turning point in the history of peace.  The peace movement has never been as strong politically as in the last three decades before the break-out of WWl.  It was a factor in political life, literature, organization, and planning, the Hague Peace Conferences, the Hague Peace Palace and the International Court of Arbitration, the bestseller of Bertha von Suttner, ‘Lay Down your Arms’.  The optimism was high as to what this ‘new science’ of peace could mean to humankind.  Parliaments, Kings, and Emperors, great cultural and business personalities involved themselves.  The great strength of the Movement was that it did not limit itself to civilizing and slowing down militarism, it demanded its total abolition.

    People were presented with an alternative, and they saw common interest in this alternative road forward for humankind.   What happened in Sarajevo  a hundred years ago was a devastating blow to these ideas, and we never really recovered.   Now, 100 years later, must be the time for a thorough reappraisal of what we had with this vision of disarmament, and what we have done without it, and the need for a recommitment, and a new ambitious start offering new hope to a humanity suffering under the scourge of militarism and wars.

    People are tired of armaments and war.  They have seen that they release uncontrollable forces of tribalism and nationalism.  These are dangerous and murderous forms of identity and above which we need to take steps to transcend, lest we unleash further dreadful violence upon the world.   To do this, we need to acknowledge that our common humanity and human dignity is more important than our different traditions.  We need to recognize our life and the lives of others are sacred and we can solve our problems without killing each other.   We need to accept and celebrate diversity and otherness.  We need to work to heal the ‘old’ divisions and misunderstandings, give and accept forgiveness, and choose nonkilling and nonviolence as ways to solve our problems.  So too as we disarm our hearts and minds, we can also disarm our countries and our world.

    We are also challenged to build structures through which we can co-operate and which reflect our interconnected and interdependent relationships.  The vision of the European Union founders to link countries together, economically in order to lessen the likelihood of war amongst the nations, is a worthy endeavour.  Unfortunately instead of putting more energy into providing help for EU citizens, we are witnessing the growing Militarization of Europe, its role as a driving force for armaments, and its dangerous path, under the leadership of the USA/NATO, towards a new ‘cold’ war and military aggression.  The European Union and many of its countries, who used to take initiatives in the UN for peaceful settlements of conflicts, particularly allegedly peaceful countries, like Norway and Sweden, are now one of the US/NATO most important war assets. The EU is a threat to the survival of neutrality. Many nations have been drawn into being complicit in breaking  international law  through US/UK/NATO wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc.,

    I believe NATO should be abolished. The United Nations should be reformed and strengthened and we should get rid of the veto in the Security Council so that it is a fair vote and we don’t have one power ruling over us.   The UN should actively take up its mandate to save the world from the scourge of war.

    But there is hope.  People are mobilizing and resisting non-violently.  They are saying no to militarism and war and insisting on disarmament.  Those of us in the Peace Movement can take inspiration from many who have gone before and worked to prevent war insisting on disarmament and peace.  Such a person was Bertha Von Suttner, who was the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in l905, for her activism in the Women’s rights and peace movement.  She died in June, l9l4, 100 years ago, just before WWl started. It was Bertha Von Suttner who moved Alfred Nobel to set up the Nobel Peace Prize Award and it was the ideas of the peace movement of the period that Alfred Nobel decided to support in his testament for the Champions of Peace, those who struggled for disarmament and replacing power with law and International relations.  That this was the purpose is clearly confirmed by three expressions in the will, creating the fraternity of nations, work for abolition of armies, holding Peace Congresses. It is important the Nobel Committee be faithful to his wishes and that prizes go to the true Champions of Peace that Nobel had in mind.

    This 100 year old Programme for Disarmament challenges those of us in the Peace Movement to confront militarism in a fundamental way.  We must not be satisfied with improvements and reforms, but rather offer an alternative to militarism, which is an aberration and a system of dysfunction, going completely against the true spirit of men and women, which is to love and be loved and solve our problems through co-operation, dialogue, nonviolence, and conflict resolution.

    Thanks to the organizers for bringing us together. In the coming days we shall feel the warmth and strength of being among thousands of friends and enriched by the variety of peace people, and ideas.  We shall be inspired and energized to pursue our different projects, be it arms trade, nuclear, nonviolence, culture of peace, drone warfare, etc. Together we can lift the world! But soon we shall be back home, on our own, and we know all too well how we all too often are being met with either indifference or a remote stare. Our problem is not that people do not like what we say, what they understand correctly is that they believe little can be done, as the world is so highly militarized.  There is an answer to this problem. We want a different world and people to believe that peace and disarmament is possible. Can we agree, that diverse as our work is, a common vision of a world without arms, militarism and war, is indispensable for success.  Does not our experience confirm that we will never achieve real change if we do not confront and reject militarism entirely, as the aberration/dysfunction it is in human history?  Can we agree to work that all countries come together in an Agreement to abolish all weapons and war and to commit to always sort out our differences through International Law and Institutions?

    We cannot here in Sarajevo make a common peace program, but we can commit to a common goal.  If out common dream is a world without weapons and militarism, why don’t we say so?  Why be silent about it?   It would make a world of difference if we refused to be ambivalent about the violence of militarism.  We should no longer be scattered attempts to modify the military, each one of us would do our thing as part of a global effort.  Across all divisions of national borders, religions, races.  We must be an alternative, insisting on an end to militarism and violence.  This would give us an entirely different chance to be listened to and taken seriously. We must be an alternative insisting on an end to militarism and violence.

    Let the Sarajevo where peace ended, be the starting point for the bold beginning of a universal call for peace through the wholesale abolition of militarism.

  • Review of Richard Falk’s and David Krieger’s The Path to Zero: Dialogues on Nuclear Dangers

    Lawrence WittnerAbout a third of the way through The Path to Zero, David Krieger, one of the authors, suggests a Zen koan — a mind-bending riddle designed to foster enlightenment — that runs as follows: “What casts a dark shadow when dormant and a fiery cloud of death when brought to life?” The answer is nuclear weapons, the subject of this book.

    It is certainly a crucial subject. The contradiction between the potential of nuclear weapons to destroy the world and the determination of nations to possess them is a central dilemma of modern times. More than sixty-seven years after U.S. atomic bombs killed much of the population of two Japanese cities, some 20,000 nuclear weapons — thousands of them on alert — remain housed in the arsenals of nine countries. The United States and Russia possess about 95 percent of them. Moreover, despite a rhetorical commitment to building a nuclear weapons-free world, some nations are undertaking multi-billion dollar programs to modernize their nuclear weapons production facilities, while others appear to be en route to becoming nuclear powers.

    Faced with this disastrous indifference by national governments to the fate of the earth, the people of the world would do well to study The Path to Zero, an extended conversation on the nuclear dilemma by two of its most brilliant, knowledgeable, and profound analysts. Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law and Practice Emeritus at Princeton University and currently a research professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara. Krieger is co-founder and president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Santa Barbara and a Councilor on the World Future Council.

    In this outstanding book, Falk and Krieger address with great eloquence a broad range of issues, including nuclear weapons dangers, nuclear power, international law, the strength of militarism, public apathy, nuclear proliferation, nuclear arms control, and nuclear disarmament.

    Falk rests his case against “nuclearism” on morality and law. He explains: “It is unacceptable to kill or threaten to kill innocent people on the basis of a weaponry and a strategic doctrine that is indiscriminate in targeting and would almost certainly result in inflicting mass destruction.” At a later point, he adds: “In a democracy, we should be able to insist that our elected government uphold the law and behave ethically in relation to an issue as important as the role of nuclear weaponry. And when that insistence is met with evasion and silence for decades, we are obliged to expose these deficiencies of national governance and, perhaps, extend the discussion to the deficiencies of a world order built on geopolitical premises of hard-power capabilities and the nonaccountability of nuclear weapon states to international law or the UN Charter.”

    Like Falk, Krieger makes a powerful case against nuclear weapons. It is not at all clear that nuclear deterrence is effective, he observes. Indeed, “missile defenses are, in effect, an admission that nuclear deterrence is insufficient to prevent a nuclear attack.” Furthermore, the deployment of such defenses by country A “is an incentive for country B to improve the quality and increase the quantity of its nuclear arsenal.” Opposition to preparations for nuclear war, Krieger argues, serves as “a voice of conscience … thereby awakening and engaging others in the struggle for a more decent world.”

    Falk and Krieger are not always in agreement. In general, Falk is more dismissive of past nuclear arms control and disarmament activities by governments and somewhat more pessimistic about progress in the future. Not surprisingly, then, while Krieger favors taking a more ameliorative path, Falk calls for a total break with past arms control and disarmament efforts. Indeed, he argues for what he calls “a politics of impossibility” — one focused on a “prudent and rationally desirable end” rather than its apparent political feasibility.

    Nonetheless, both individuals share the belief that a nuclear weapons-free world is essential for global survival and concur on specific steps that should be taken toward that goal. Krieger sums up their consensus nicely. “First, we agree that U.S. [government] leadership may be needed but … is unlikely to be forthcoming without considerable pressure from the people. Second, such pressure from below is not currently on the horizon, but we should not give up in our educational efforts to awaken the American people and engage them in a movement to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.” Third and fourth, observes Krieger, given the absence of U.S. government pressure for disarmament, “we will have to look elsewhere for leadership.” This leadership “could come from the non-nuclear weapon states that are parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.” In asserting such leadership, “they would have to band together and make strong demands on the nuclear weapon states” – demands that “might have to be in the form of … delivering an ultimatum to withdraw from the NPT” under the provisions of the treaty’s Article X — unless the nuclear weapon states finally agree to a concrete plan for full-scale nuclear disarmament. They recommend “an initial demand” on the nuclear nations of No First Use, but argue that “the strongest litmus test” of their sincerity would be convening negotiations on a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons.

    At the moment, as both men concede, this program does not seem likely to be implemented. Even so, Krieger notes, “the future is always undetermined and subject to change. The currents of history can be redirected by committed individuals and the formation of new institutions. … Creativity and persistence, rooted in hope, can change the world.”

    The Path to Zero — a work of great insight and wisdom — is an important part of that global transformation.

  • Occupy Peace

    David Krieger


    This article was originally published by Truthout.


    The Occupy Movement is demonstrating its durability and perseverance.  Like a Japanese Daruma doll, each time it is knocked off balance it serenely pops back up.  The movement has been seeking justice for the 99 percent, and justice is an essential element of peace. 


    For decades, our country has been in permanent preparation for war, spending over half of the total annual discretionary funds that Congress allocates on “defense,” our euphemism for war.  World military expenditures exceed $1.5 trillion annually, and the US spends more than half of this amount, more than the rest of the world combined.


    The US has been engaged in wars around the globe from Korea to Vietnam to El Salvador to Nicaragua to Serbia to Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya.  In all of these wars, many in the one percent reap financial gains.  Many large corporations, such as Halliburton, formerly led by Dick Cheney, are the beneficiaries of lucrative government contracts that support war, while it is mainly the poor who are enlisted to fight, kill and die in our wars.  War is a surefire way of transferring wealth up the social ladder. 


    It is time to wake up to being used as tools in warfare while others profit.  War is not an effective or reasonable way to settle disputes.  It uses up resources and destroys human lives.  In war, people are expendable.  Civilians all too easily become “collateral damage.”  In the Nuclear Age, civilization itself could become collateral damage.


    As President Eisenhower pointed out in 1953, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children…. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”  How little our politicians have responded to the deep concern of this former military leader.


    War is costly not only in dollars, but on our national psyche.  We slaughtered innocent men, women and children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and then celebrated our prowess.  We went to war in Vietnam based on lies, killing millions of Vietnamese and dropping Napalm and Agent Orange on them, while they struggled for their freedom and independence.  Ultimately, after the death of more than 58,000 Americans, we withdrew in defeat, declaring victory.  We seemingly learned little that is meaningful from the experience, as we continue to send our soldiers to fight and die in far-off lands, and still based on lies.  Enough is enough. 


    How do we occupy peace?  First, we change our modes of thinking and stop basing our self-worth as a nation on our military prowess.  Second, we bring our troops home from exploitative foreign wars.  Third, we seek peaceful solutions to conflicts.  Fourth, we make our priority justice, and peace will follow.  Fifth, we work to end deaths due to starvation and preventable diseases rather than inflicting deaths by high altitude bombing and drone attacks.  Sixth, we take the lead in abolishing nuclear weapons so no other cities or countries will suffer the fate of the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Seventh, we reallocate our resources to health, education and ending poverty rather than continuing to gorge the military beast until it is too fat to move.


    War is a place of fear and fear is a place of borders.  Fear requires us to dehumanize our enemies and, in the process, to dehumanize ourselves.  Borders should not provide a justification for dehumanization.  That is a trick of militarists, who are in need of enemies, real or imagined, to make the war system work for them.  But there is another way to deal with enemies, and that is to turn them into friends by our actions.


    We need to stop fearing each other and treat each other with kindness.  Consideration for the 99 percent does not stop at a country’s border.  We are all humans together and we need each other to be fully human.  We need to embrace our common humanity.  In the Nuclear Age, war is far too dangerous, having the potential to end civilization and most life on the planet.  Peace is an imperative.  We need to find a way to occupy peace, which begins in our hearts and must expand to encompass the world. 

  • The Chance for Peace

    This speech, commonly referred to as the “Cross of Iron” speech, was delivered by President Eisenhower to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16, 1953.


    In this spring of 1953 the free world weighs one question above all others: the chance for a just peace for all peoples.


    To weigh this chance is to summon instantly to mind another recent moment of great decision. It came with that yet more hopeful spring of 1945, bright with the promise of victory and of freedom. The hope of all just men in that moment too was a just and lasting peace.


    The 8 years that have passed have seen that hope waver, grow dim, and almost die. And the shadow of fear again has darkly lengthened across the world.


    Today the hope of free men remains stubborn and brave, but it is sternly disciplined by experience. It shuns not only all crude counsel of despair but also the self-deceit of easy illusion. It weighs the chance for peace with sure, clear knowledge of what happened to the vain hope of 1945.


    In that spring of victory the soldiers of the Western Allies met the soldiers of Russia in the center of Europe. They were triumphant comrades in arms. Their peoples shared the joyous prospect of building, in honor of their dead, the only fitting monument-an age of just peace. All these war-weary peoples shared too this concrete, decent purpose: to guard vigilantly against the domination ever again of any part of the world by a single, unbridled aggressive power.


    This common purpose lasted an instant and perished. The nations of the world divided to follow two distinct roads.


    The United States and our valued friends, the other free nations, chose one road.


    The leaders of the Soviet Union chose another.


    The way chosen by the United States was plainly marked by a few clear precepts, which govern its conduct in world affairs.


    First: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.


    Second: No nation’s security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only ineffective cooperation with fellow-nations.


    Third: Any nation’s right to form of government and an economic system of its own choosing isinalienable.


    Fourth: Any nation’s attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.


    And fifth: A nation’s hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.


    In the light of these principles the citizens of the United States defined the way they proposed to follow, through the aftermath of war, toward true peace.


    This way was faithful to the spirit that inspired the United Nations: to prohibit strife, to relieve tensions, to banish fears. This way was to control and to reduce armaments. This way was to allow all nations to devote their energies and resources to the great and good tasks of healing the war’s wounds, of clothing and feeding and housing the needy, of perfecting a just political life, of enjoying the fruits of their own free toil.


    The Soviet government held a vastly different vision of the future.


    In the world of its design, security was to be found, not in mutual trust and mutual aid but in force: huge armies, subversion, rule of neighbor nations. The goal was power superiority at all costs. Security was to be sought by denying it to all others.


    The result has been tragic for the world and, for the Soviet Union, it has also been ironic.


    The amassing of the Soviet power alerted free nations to a new danger of aggression. It compelled them in self-defense to spend unprecedented money and energy for armaments. It forced them to develop weapons of war now capable of inflicting instant and terrible punishment upon any aggressor.


    It instilled in the free nations-and let none doubt this-the unshakable conviction that, as long as there persists a threat to freedom, they must, at any cost, remain armed, strong, and ready for the risk of war.


    It inspired them-and let none doubt this-to attain a unity of purpose and will beyond the power of propaganda or pressure to break, now or ever.


    There remained, however, one thing essentially unchanged and unaffected by Soviet conduct: the readiness of the free nations to welcome sincerely any genuine evidence of peaceful purpose enabling all peoples again to resume their common quest of just peace.


    The free nations, most solemnly and repeatedly, have assured the Soviet Union that their firm association has never had any aggressive purpose whatsoever. Soviet leaders, however, have seemed to persuade themselves, or tried to persuade their people, otherwise.


    And so it has come to pass that the Soviet Union itself has shared and suffered the very fears it has fostered in the rest of the world.


    This has been the way of life forged by 8 years of fear and force.


    What can the world, or any nation in it, hope for if no turning is found on this dread road?


    The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated.


    The worst is atomic war.


    The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealthand the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.


    Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.


    This world in arms in not spending money alone.


    It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.


    The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.


    It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.


    It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.


    It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.


    We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.


    We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.


    This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.


    This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.


    These plain and cruel truths define the peril and point the hope that come with this spring of 1953.


    This is one of those times in the affairs of nations when the gravest choices must be made, if there is to be a turning toward a just and lasting peace.


    It is a moment that calls upon the governments of the world to speak their intentions with simplicity and with honest.


    It calls upon them to answer the questions that stirs the hearts of all sane men: is there no other way the world may live?


    The world knows that an era ended with the death of Joseph Stalin. The extraordinary 30-year span of his rule saw the Soviet Empire expand to reach from the Baltic Sea to the Sea of Japan, finally to dominate 800 million souls.


    The Soviet system shaped by Stalin and his predecessors was born of one World War. It survived the stubborn and often amazing courage of second World War. It has lived to threaten a third.


    Now, a new leadership has assumed power in the Soviet Union. It links to the past, however strong, cannot bind it completely. Its future is, in great part, its own to make.


    This new leadership confronts a free world aroused, as rarely in its history, by the will to stay free.


    This free world knows, out of bitter wisdom of experience, that vigilance and sacrifice are the price of liberty.


    It knows that the defense of Western Europe imperatively demands the unity of purpose and action made possible by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, embracing a European Defense Community.


    It knows that Western Germany deserves to be a free and equal partner in this community and that this, for Germany, is the only safe way to full, final unity.


    It knows that aggression in Korea and in southeast Asia are threats to the whole free community to be met by united action.


    This is the kind of free world which the new Soviet leadership confront. It is a world that demands and expects the fullest respect of its rights and interests. It is a world that will always accord the same respect to all others.


    So the new Soviet leadership now has a precious opportunity to awaken, with the rest of the world, to the point of peril reached and to help turn the tide of history.


    Will it do this?


    We do not yet know. Recent statements and gestures of Soviet leaders give some evidence that they may recognize this critical moment.


    We welcome every honest act of peace.


    We care nothing for mere rhetoric.


    We are only for sincerity of peaceful purpose attested by deeds. The opportunities for such deeds are many. The performance of a great number of them waits upon no complex protocol but upon the simple will to do them. Even a few such clear and specific acts, such as the Soviet Union’s signature upon the Austrian treaty or its release of thousands of prisoners still held from World War II, would be impressive signs of sincere intent. They would carry a power of persuasion not to be matched by any amount of oratory.


    This we do know: a world that begins to witness the rebirth of trust among nations can find its way to a peace that is neither partial nor punitive.


    With all who will work in good faith toward such a peace, we are ready, with renewed resolve, to strive to redeem the near-lost hopes of our day.


    The first great step along this way must be the conclusion of an honorable armistice in Korea.


    This means the immediate cessation of hostilities and the prompt initiation of political discussions leading to the holding of free elections in a united Korea.


    It should mean, no less importantly, an end to the direct and indirect attacks upon the security of Indochina and Malaya. For any armistice in Korea that merely released aggressive armies to attack elsewhere would be fraud.


    We seek, throughout Asia as throughout the world, a peace that is true and total.


    Out of this can grow a still wider task-the achieving of just political settlements for the otherserious and specific issues between the free world and the Soviet Union.


    None of these issues, great or small, is insoluble-given only the will to respect the rights of all nations.


    Again we say: the United States is ready to assume its just part.


    We have already done all within our power to speed conclusion of the treaty with Austria, which will free that country from economic exploitation and from occupation by foreign troops.


    We are ready not only to press forward with the present plans for closer unity of the nations of Western Europe by also, upon that foundation, to strive to foster a broader European community, conducive to the free movement of persons, of trade, and of ideas.


    This community would include a free and united Germany, with a government based upon free and secret elections.


    This free community and the full independence of the East European nations could mean the end of present unnatural division of Europe.


    As progress in all these areas strengthens world trust, we could proceed concurrently with the next great work-the reduction of the burden of armaments now weighing upon the world. To this end we would welcome and enter into the most solemn agreements. These could properly include:


    The limitation, by absolute numbers or by an agreed international ratio, of the sizes of the military and security forces of all nations.
    A commitment by all nations to set an agreed limit upon that proportion of total production of certain strategic materials to be devoted to military purposes.
    International control of atomic energy to promote its use for peaceful purposes only and to insure the prohibition of atomic weapons.
    A limitation or prohibition of other categories of weapons of great destructiveness.
    The enforcement of all these agreed limitations and prohibitions by adequate safe-guards, including a practical system of inspection under the United Nations.
    The details of such disarmament programs are manifestly critical and complex. Neither the United States nor any other nation can properly claim to possess a perfect, immutable formula. But the formula matters less than the faith-the good faith without which no formula can work justly and effectively.


    The fruit of success in all these tasks would present the world with the greatest task, and the greatest opportunity, of all. It is this: the dedication of the energies, the resources, and the imaginations of all peaceful nations to a new kind of war. This would be a declared total war, not upon any human enemy but upon the brute forces of poverty and need.


    The peace we seek, founded upon decent trust and cooperative effort among nations, can be fortified, not by weapons of war but by wheat and by cotton, by milk and by wool, by meat and by timber and by rice. These are words that translate into every language on earth. These are needs that challenge this world in arms.


    This idea of a just and peaceful world is not new or strange to us. It inspired the people of the United States to initiate the European Recovery Program in 1947. That program was prepared to treat, with like and equal concern, the needs of Eastern and Western Europe.


    We are prepared to reaffirm, with the most concrete evidence, our readiness to help build a world in which all peoples can be productive and prosperous.


    This Government is ready to ask its people to join with all nations in devoting a substantial percentage of the savings achieved by disarmament to a fund for world aid and reconstruction. The purposes of this great work would be to help other peoples to develop the underdeveloped areas of the world, to stimulate profitability and fair world trade, to assist all peoples to know the blessings of productive freedom.


    The monuments to this new kind of war would be these: roads and schools, hospitals and homes, food and health.


    We are ready, in short, to dedicate our strength to serving the needs, rather than the fears, of the world.


    We are ready, by these and all such actions, to make of the United Nations an institution that can effectively guard the peace and security of all peoples.


    I know of nothing I can add to make plainer the sincere purpose of the United States.


    I know of no course, other than that marked by these and similar actions, that can be called the highway of peace.


    I know of only one question upon which progress waits. It is this:


    What is the Soviet Union ready to do?


    Whatever the answer be, let it be plainly spoken.


    Again we say: the hunger for peace is too great, the hour in history too late, for any government to mock men’s hopes with mere words and promises and gestures.


    The test of truth is simple. There can be no persuasion but by deeds.


    Is the new leadership of Soviet Union prepared to use its decisive influence in the Communist world, including control of the flow of arms, to bring not merely an expedient truce in Korea but genuine peace in Asia?


    Is it prepared to allow other nations, including those of Eastern Europe, the free choice of their own forms of government?


    Is it prepared to act in concert with others upon serious disarmament proposals to be made firmly effective by stringent U.N. control and inspection?


    If not, where then is the concrete evidence of the Soviet Union’s concern for peace?


    The test is clear.


    There is, before all peoples, a precious chance to turn the black tide of events. If we failed to strive to seize this chance, the judgment of future ages would be harsh and just.


    If we strive but fail and the world remains armed against itself, it at least need be divided no longer in its clear knowledge of who has condemned humankind to this fate.


    The purpose of the United States, in stating these proposals, is simple and clear.


    These proposals spring, without ulterior purpose or political passion, from our calm conviction that the hunger for peace is in the hearts of all peoples–those of Russia and of China no less than of our own country.


    They conform to our firm faith that God created men to enjoy, not destroy, the fruits of the earth and of their own toil.


    They aspire to this: the lifting, from the backs and from the hearts of men, of their burden of arms and of fears, so that they may find before them a golden age of freedom and of peace.

  • Remembering Eisenhower’s Farewell Address

    President Eisenhower's farewell addressJanuary 17, 2011 marked the 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the nation in which he warned of the dangers of the unwarranted influence of the military-industrial complex.  I think he would be shocked to see how this influence has grown over the past half century and how it has manifested in the country’s immense military budgets, the nuclear arms race, our permanent war footing, the failure to achieve meaningful disarmament, and the illegal wars the US has initiated.  In addition to all of this, there is the influence of the military-industrial complex on the media, academia, the Congress and the citizenry.  It has also ensnared US allies, like those in NATO, in its net.  Eisenhower believed that the only way to assure that the military-industrial complex can be meshed “with our peaceful methods and goals” is through “an alert and knowledgeable citizenry.”


    Eisenhower was 70 years old when his term as president came to an end.  He had been a General of the Army and hero of World War II, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces Europe, and for eight years the president of the United States.  His Farewell Address was, above all else, a warning to his fellow Americans.  He stated, “The conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience.”  He worried about what this conjunction would mean in the future, famously stating, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.  The potential for misplaced power exists and will persist.”


    Eisenhower feared that this powerful complex would weaken democracy.  “We must never,” he said, “let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.”  He felt there was only one force that could control this powerful military-industrial complex, and that was the power of the people.  In Eisenhower’s view it was only “an alert and knowledgeable citizenry” that was capable of defending the republic “so that security and liberty prosper together.”


    What kind of report card would President Eisenhower give our country today if he could come back and observe what has transpired over the past 50 years?  For starters, I believe he would be appalled by the enormous increase in influence of the military-industrial complex.  Today the military receives over half of the discretionary funds that Congress allocates, over $500 billion a year for the Department of Defense, plus the special allocations for the two wars in which the country is currently engaged.  The Department of Defense budget does not take into account the interest on the national debt attributable to past wars, or the tens of billions of dollars in the Energy Department budget for nuclear arms, or the funds allocated for veterans benefits.  When it is totaled, the US is spending over a trillion dollars annually on “defense.”


    Surely Eisenhower would be dismayed to see how many national institutions have been drawn into and made subservient to the military-industrial complex, which some would now refer to as the military-industrial-Congressional-academic-media complex.  Every district in Congress seems to have links to the complex through jobs provided by defense contractors, putting pressure on Congressional representatives to assure that public funds flow to private defense contractors.  At the same time, academia and the mainstream media provide support and cover to keep public funds flowing for wars and their preparations.


    Near the end of his speech, Eisenhower lamented that he had not made greater progress toward disarmament during his time in office.  He said, “Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.”  It was true then, and remains so today.  He continued, “Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.  Because this need is so sharp and apparent, I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment.”  Indeed, there was reason for his disappointment, since the number of nuclear weapons in the US arsenal increased under his watch from approximately 1,400 in 1953 to over 20,000 in 1960.  I suspect that he would be even more disappointed today to find that the US has not been more proactive in leading the way toward disarmament and particularly nuclear disarmament since the end of the Cold War.


    Fifty years ago, Eisenhower feared the threat that nuclear war posed to the world and to our country, and expressed his desire for peace: “As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war – as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years – I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.”  He recognized that much remains to be done to “reach the goal of peace with justice.”  That was true when Eisenhower made his Farewell Address and it remains true today.


    We would do well to reflect upon the deeply felt concerns of this military and political leader as he retired from public service.  He prayed “that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.”  That was his vision, and he passed the baton to us to overcome the unwarranted influence of the military-industrial complex.   Our challenge is to exercise our power as citizens of a democracy and to use that power to attain a more peaceful and nuclear weapons-free world.

  • Poverty, Tax Breaks and Militarism

    David KriegerOne of the key lessons learned by the United States during the Vietnam War was that conscription leads to middle class discontent with war.  Middle class parents joined their college-age children in protesting an illegal and brutal war.  Ultimately, these protests made the continuation of the war untenable.  A popular protest chant among college students of the era was, “Hell No, we won’t go.”


    The political and military establishment in the country found a solution to the problem of middle class protest by doing away with conscription and moving to an all volunteer military force.  As long as there was high enough unemployment and lack of affordable higher education, the military would have a large pool of young people to draw upon for its force, and foreign wars could be pursued without fear of widespread protest.  Middle class children (and, of course, upper class children) could go to college and then into the workplace undisturbed, and their parents would not be concerned or frightened by the possibility of their children being conscripted into the military in a time of war. 


    The system has worked reasonably well to dampen protest of foreign wars, even a war as egregiously illegal and needless as the war against Iraq.  As volunteers, the soldiers are more pliable and less inclined to protest even the repeated deployments to war zones that they have endured.  With rare exceptions, the soldiers seem to believe they are acting patriotically in carrying out orders, without questioning whether the wars themselves are either beneficial or legal. 


    While the country spends a great amount of money on its military forces (about one-half of the discretionary funds that are allocated annually by the Congress), this does not necessarily extend to protecting the soldiers themselves.  There have been reports of inadequate body armor for the troops, prompting communities to hold fundraising events to secure the funds to provide such protection to individual soldiers. 


    Among the lures that the military uses to fill its recruiting quotas are the promises of job security and future educational benefits.  Thus, for poorer members of the society, both jobs and educational opportunities are available through enlistment in the military.  Of course, these are only attractive to those who cannot attain them by other means.


    Recently, Simon Johnson, a former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund, was interviewed about Obama’s proposed “compromise” with the Republicans to extend tax cuts for the top two percent of Americans.  Johnson said, as other economists have, that this deal, if enacted, would add substantially to the national debt while providing very little stimulus to the economy in return.  He recommended, as a far better alternative plan for stimulating the economy, to put the majority of the $900 billion it would cost, mostly for tax breaks for the very rich, into education.  On purely economic grounds, the funding for education, with its attendant job creation, is a far better investment in society than tax breaks for the very rich.


    But if education and job opportunities for the poorest elements of our society were available through non-military governmental incentives, perhaps impoverished young people would reject the education and job incentives offered through the military.  They would not have to risk their lives in war to get the educational and job opportunities that middle and upper class children have handed to them.  Don’t we owe all young members of our society equal access to education and the workplace, which in essence provides them with equal opportunity? 


    War should be a last resort for society.  By doing away with conscription, we have made it possible for it to be a first resort.  But we do so by structuring our society so that the poor must go through the gauntlet of the military (and in recent years also repeated tours of duty in war zones) in order to get their opportunity for higher education and gainful employment.


    If the current compromise legislation on the extension of the Bush-era tax breaks for the very rich goes through, it will be largely on the backs of the poor.  For the political class promoting this compromise, it will also have the side benefit of assuring enough poverty and unemployment so that the military will have no problem in recruiting soldiers for the ongoing wars of choice that continue to burden our society and our economy.