As geopolitical tensions escalate in the Middle East and the world teeters on the brink of a new Cold War, it’s clear that the only way to eliminate the threat of nuclear warfare is for governments to fulfil their long-held commitment to the “general and complete disarmament” of nuclear weapons – permanently. A bold and essential step towards this crucial goal is to decommission Trident, the UK’s ineffective, unusable and costly nuclear deterrent submarines. Renewing Trident would not only undermine international disarmament efforts for years to come, it will reinforce the hazardous belief that maintaining a functional nuclear arsenal is essential for any nation seeking to wield power on the world stage.

Needless to say, modern nuclear bombs are many times more destructive than those dropped on Japan at the end of the Second World War, and would result in a host of immeasurably devastating impacts on the natural world and human life if they were deployed today. The extent to which nuclear weapons currently proliferate the globe is therefore alarming and underscores the need for radical action on this critical issue. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, nine countries (the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea) possess a total of 16,000 nuclear weapons, of which 4,300 are deployed with operational forces and 1,800 are “kept in a state of high operational alert” – which means they can be launched within a 5 to 15-minute timeframe if necessary.

However, these figures don’t tell the full story. According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, five other European nations host US nuclear weapons on their territory as part of a NATO agreement, and 23 additional countries rely on US nuclear capabilities for their national security. Furthermore, the spread of nuclear technology and the illicit trade in nuclear weapons means that any state can potentially develop or purchase nuclear-grade weapons, which confirms the widely held view that a number of other nations unofficially harbour nuclear warheads, and many more could do so in the years ahead.

Fading visions of nuclear disarmament

The abundance of nuclear weapons and related technology highlights the weakness of the international Non-Proliferation Treaty, which has only made limited progress on nuclear disarmament since its inception in 1968 despite near universal membership. With high levels of nuclear stockpiles still in existence, there is also a very real risk of unintended but deadly consequences. According to a report by The Royal Institute of International Affairs, there have been 13 instances of nuclear bombs being ‘accidently’ deployed since 1962 by Russia, the US and other countries – mainly due to technical malfunctions or breakdowns in communication. As international disarmament efforts diminish, such risks are set to increase alongside the growing likelihood of targeted terrorist attacks on existing nuclear facilities.

It’s clear that Trident, like every other nuclear weapons system, is a relic of a bygone age that simply cannot guarantee the safety of any nation at a time when global terrorism and climate change pose a far more urgent threat to national security than other states with nuclear weapons. As the columnist Simon Jenkins puts it, “All declared threats to Britain tend to come either from powers with no conceivable designs on conquering Britain or from forces immune to deterrence.” Indeed, most countries of the world (including 25 NATO states) don’t maintain their own nuclear stockpiles, and yet they have been just as successful in ‘deterring’ nuclear war as the UK.

Moreover, the International Court of Justice has ruled that the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be contrary to the rules of international law, which means that their use would be illegal in virtually any situation. Given that it is close to unimaginable that a so-called world leader would ever deploy nuclear weapons (on ethical and legal grounds, as well as for fear of retaliatory consequences) their value as an effective deterrent is unjustifiable and deeply flawed. The farcical arguments employed to rationalise building and maintaining such weapon systems are amusingly summarised in a Yes, Prime Minister comedy sketch from 1986, which aired soon after Margret Thatcher first inaugurated the Trident missile system in the UK:

Sir Humphrey: With Trident we could obliterate the whole of eastern Europe.

Hacker: I don’t want to obliterate the whole of eastern Europe.

Sir Humphrey: But it’s a deterrent.

Hacker: It’s a bluff. I probably wouldn’t use it.

Sir Humphrey: Yes, but they don’t know that you probably wouldn’t.

Hacker: They probably do.

Sir Humphrey: Yes, they probably know that you probably wouldn’t. But they can’t certainly know.

Hacker: They probably certainly know that I probably wouldn’t.

Sir Humphrey: Yes, but even though they probably certainly know that you probably wouldn’t, they don’t certainly know that, although you probably wouldn’t, there is no probability that you certainly would.

Redistributing vital public resources

Given that the nine nuclear-armed governments together spend an astounding $100bn a year on nuclear forces (mainly via private corporations), those who play a significant role in sustaining this appalling industry are also likely to be profiting handsomely from it. In the UK, for example, strong support for renewing Trident comes from the lucrative and influential defence industry as well as the many banks, insurance companies, pension funds and asset managers that invest heavily in companies producing nuclear weapon systems. According to some calculations, 15 percent of members in the UK’s House of Lords “have what can be deemed as ‘vested interests’ in either the corporations involved in the programme or the institutions that finance them”.

In both moral and economic terms, spending such vast amounts of public money on producing these weapons of mass destruction is tantamount to theft as long as austerity-driven governments profess to lack the funding needed to safeguard basic human needs and ensure that all people have sufficient access to essential public services. While estimates for the cost of renewing Trident vary considerably, it is likely that the initial outlay will be in the region of £30-40bn ($42-56bn), although this figure could rise to as much as £167bn ($234bn) over the course of its lifetime.

Rather than wasting these vast sums on the inhumane machinery of warfare, some of it could be used to provide emergency assistance to desperate refugees and asylum seekers that the Tory government has shamefully neglected, or to shore up overseas aid budgets that are being syphoned away to cover domestic refugee-related expenses. As the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) calculate, if £100bn ($140bn) from the Trident budget was spent bolstering vital public services instead, it would be enough to “fully fund A&E services for 40 years, employ 150,000 new nurses, build 1.5 million affordable homes, build 30,000 new primary schools, or cover tuition fees for 4 million students.”

In light of the pressing need to decommission nuclear stockpiles and redistribute public resources in a way that truly serves the (global) common good, the upcoming vote in the UK Parliament on renewing Trident presents an important opportunity for campaigners and concerned citizens to raise our voice for a just and peaceful future. Many thousands of protesters are expected to unite on the streets of London this Saturday 27th February in a joint demand to end the UK’s Trident program and share public resources more equitably. As CND point out in their scrap trident campaign, it’s high time the UK government complies with its obligation under international law to eliminate our nuclear arsenal: “By doing so we would send a message to the world that spending for peace and development and meeting people’s real needs is our priority, not spending on weapons of mass destruction.”

• Sign CND’s scrap Trident petition
• Watch the scrap trident campaign film

Image credit: Surian Soosay, Flickr create commons

The post Scrapping Trident and transitioning to a nuclear-free world appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The terrorist attacks in Paris compels us to acknowledge the deeper causes of the resentment that gave rise to ISIS, and to unite behind a far-reaching demand for sharing the world’s resources.

A week after the brutal terrorist attacks in Paris, the Western world is still coming to terms with the horrific violence that was perpetrated on large numbers of innocent civilians. Understandably, there is much fear among the people of Europe and other Western states that further atrocities will be committed in the near future – not least within the United States in light of the Obama administration’s air war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria since 2014. Endless news reports and articles continue to debate how the community of nations should further respond to this urgent threat of Islamic extremism. But what should be the collective response of ordinary people of goodwill in the face of these atrocities, and how can we truly affirm our common humanity in the immediate time ahead?

While France and other Western states clamour for a “pitiless” war against terrorism, only the relatively few progressive voices are calling for an alternative to increased military intervention. Among these anti-war and peace activists, one of the most radical propositions comes from Rabbi Michael Lerner who advocates for an entirely new approach to “homeland security” – one that firmly integrates the principle of sharing into world affairs through a “strategy of generosity” and massive redistribution of resources led by the popular will of America.

In his latest editorial for Tikkun Magazine, Rabbi Lerner reiterates the need for us to embrace a new worldview that understands “our mutual interdependence and oneness”. This calls for an informed understanding that militaristic solutions can never bring lasting peace and security, and that you can’t simply bomb an extremist ideology out of existence. It also means acknowledging the deeper causes of the resentment that gave rise to ISIS, which would include the past 14 years of failed Western interventions across the Middle East and north Africa – where close to 300,000 people have been killed, hundreds of thousands injured, and millions forced from their homes.

More than this, however, it means acknowledging the unequal distribution of global wealth and resulting extremes of poverty that inevitably fuels resentment against the West. Rabbi Lerner cites the official UN estimates that up to 9,000 children under five die each day from preventable poverty-related causes, while at least 2.8 billion people live on less than $2 a day. Such is the “structural violence” that everyone in advanced industrial societies is morally implicated in, caused in large part by the unjust structural arrangements of the global economy that benefit big corporations and a privileged minority of the world population, at the expense of the majority of the Global South.

Embracing this broader awareness of our divided world does not remotely vindicate the reactionary force of ISIS and similar groups, who represent a level of murderous brutality unparalleled in the twenty-first century. But the horror witnessed in Paris calls on us to reflect anew on the “cumulative effects of a world lacking generosity of spirit and generosity of action”, which – as Rabbi Lerner articulates – “plays an important role in shaping the psychological underpinning that leads people to act out in various ways, of which ISIS is only one manifestation”. Now more than ever, we are called upon to shift our sympathies and solidarity from solely “We are all France”, to “We are the whole world”.

So what can we do to translate our global empathy with the suffering of humanity as a whole into practical, constructive action? First of all, we can follow Rabbi Lerner’s instruction to play a role in resisting the dominant discourse that pushes for increased military interventions on the basis of fear and revenge, and we can try and convince others to adopt this “new consciousness”. This may compel us to support the campaigns and activism of the many progressive groups who oppose an escalation of the destructive bombing in Syria and Iraq, which will only intensify the chaos and suffering in these war-torn regions, leading to an even greater influx of refugees to Europe and increased bitterness against the West. The many alternative options for curtailing the threat of ISIS remain largely outside of mainstream public debate, such as an international arms embargo or the empowerment of the United Nations in negotiating real political and diplomatic solutions.

But if we wholly embrace the emerging new consciousness that Rabbi Lerner speaks of, then we may also see the necessity of uniting behind a demand for sharing global resources rather than “simply focusing on resisting the policies of the right”. In a newsletter accompanying the Tikkun editorial, Rabbi Lerner questions whether the events in Paris represent a wake-up call to help us see that the only real response is to build a massive, peaceful social movement that can “take back our country and our world”. He writes:

“Perhaps this moment is a call to action – not to create a false sense of safety or security or to turn more inward – for ordinary people to rise-up and lead because our leaders are failing us. They continue to promote and use the same strategies of violence, weapons and war to try to bomb the world to peace and impose global capitalism around the globe. And yet we know this strategy and approach has not worked for thousands of years and it will not work now.

… It is time for a sea change and it is we, the people, who are the only ones who can create it.

… We will not be safe until everyone on the planet is safe. Until all lives are valued. Until everyone has the resources they need to live peacefully, securely, eat healthy food, have drinking water, education, functioning communities, healthcare, etc. We need to stand-up in a loving, compassionate, powerful and nonviolent collective way and demand that our leaders do what is needed to build a safer world for ourselves and everyone else on the planet and to make it clear that more weapons and more violence is not the path.

… [We need to] mobilize people to take to the streets in massive nonviolent civil disobedience demanding that those who support continued wars and those who support weapons industries either withdraw their support or we will vote them out of office. To demand that we move from a homeland security policy of power over, domination and submission to a strategy of generosity and kindness. To demand that our leaders are actually beholden to the people they represent, not the wealthiest individuals and corporations. To demand that corporations be socially and environmentally responsible.

This is a crucial moment in history. Let’s capitalize on it ourselves rather than leave it to the warmongers to do so because we know what will happen if they do. With a massive movement, we can turn to the light and away from the darkness but to do so will require each and every one of us to get out of our offices, our houses, our schools, our communities and even our comfort zones and take to the streets.

What do you say?”

The post After the Paris attacks: affirming our common humanity through a global call for sharing appeared first on P2P Foundation.