11. Peacemakers-and proud of it.
We need an essential new way of thinking
if mankind is to survive.
We no longer have a choice between non-violence and non existence.
Flexible response: attack us with conventional weapons and we’ll destroy the whole of Europe with nuclear ones. Very flexible. They sell us this under the theory known appropriately as MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. The theory is that no one will use nuclear weapons because they know that nuclear weapons would be used against them in return.
American perception of ‘flexible response’ allows for the destruction of Europe. There you have our nuclear defence policy.
NATO is an organisation run by America for America to ensure that any war involving America takes place in Europe and not America. All nuclear warheads in Western Europe are owned by America and the US President could order their use without even consulting other countries.
The Hiroshima bomb was of 13 kilotons. One missile today can be of 6,000 kilotons. Chernobyl was of one tenth of a kiloton! When you see how much radiation would be released by nuclear weapons, what can you say about people who sanction their use as part of a NATO ‘defence’ strategy? Who’s crazy? Both the attacker and attacked would reap the consequences, one from the explosion and the other from the radioactive fall-out that would make large areas of the world unable to sustain life. The entire nuclear deterrent argument is based on the belief that although there are many tens of thousands of these weapons of mass destruction, not one of them will ever be released by accident, mistake or for any other reason in the whole of the rest of time. Do you really believe that? The nuclear deterrence theory cannot afford to fail. Not once. Not ever. The biggest threat of nuclear devastation is not from war, but from an accident or mistake. To retaliate against an attack you will have to press the button when you think an attack is immanent. Any later and your own missiles could be taken out in large numbers before they could be released. At times of tension, even imaginary tension, the itchy finger on the button will become even itchier. Wit propaganda and misinformation the possession of weapons of mass destruction has been seen as sane, while anyone who wants to get rid of them is seen as unpatriotic and a threat to the state. Nuclear arms race has no military purpose. Wars cannot be fought with nuclear weapons. Their existence only adds to our perils because of the illusions which they have generated. It is a disastrous misconception to believe that by increasing the total uncertainty one increases one’s own certainty. It is up to man to save himself from himself. It has nothing to do with defence and everything to do with political status. NATO is a power bloc with a few at the centre having enormous power over the lives of everyone in Western Europe.
We have not had peace in Europe since the last war. We have had an armed truce, a balance of terror. That may by many things, but peace it is not. If you want real peace that will reduce tension and fear to a minimum then you don’t arm everybody with enormous weapons to kill every man, woman and child on the planet twelve times over. We are encouraged to fear. Uniting one people by the fear and hatred of another is an old political trick. Hitler did it with the Jewish people. It is going on constantly all over the world, to promote the ‘threat’. Defending your own country can be done with considerably fewer resources.
It is not nuclear weapons or enormous ‘defence’ spending that is changing the face of Eastern Europe , but mass protest and non-co-operation. Non-violent resistence is far more powerful in forcing change than the bomb or the gun.
We sell weapons to other countries to win influence for economic reasons. The United Kingdom is now one of the worlds biggest arms suppliers through an organisation paid for by the taxpayer called the Defence Sales Organisation. We have the nerve to say we stand up for human rights while at the same time supplying arms to despots and dictators. It has nothing to do with what’s right or wrong. Money and economic influence are the ruling criteria. It is a myth that arms spending is an effective way to create jobs. It is more profitable for companies to produce arms because they can’t lose. The government guarantees them cost, plus profit.
More than 50 per cent of Britain’s publicly-funded research goes on arms development. The real enemy of the West is ourselves and the economic monster we have created, the dragon.
The threat of war comes from the very policies we are pursuing at the expense of the planet. How can it be that the money needed to give everyone in the world enough to eat, an adequate education and adequate health care for a year is spent on arms every two weeks? How can it be that the cost on one missile is more than the combined annual income of 10,000 people in a poor country? How can it be that the cost of one nuclear submarine is more than the money spent in a year on the education of 160 million children in poor countries?