(Re) Imagine Our World: voices for peace
From END Info 25 | July/August 2021 | download pdf
Tom Unterrainer
This is an expanded version of a talk given to US peace activists on 12 June 2021.
The movements for peace, social and racial justice in the United States have set an example for the world. This is as true of the movements of the past as it is today. European activists and their organisations continue to be inspired by activism in the US, just as we carefully follow and analyse the political direction of the US government.
The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and our founder have a long association with the US. The British government imprisoned Russell for his active opposition to the First World War. He was fired by Trinity College, Cambridge, as a result and found that post-war England offered a less-than-hospitable environment for him. Meanwhile, appreciation for his efforts and opportunities for work arrived from the US. Although opposition to his work eventually manifested itself, Russell’s time in America was an important episode in his life. He continued to follow political developments – including the movements against the American war against the Vietnamese people – and worked closely with American activists until the end of his long life.
So it is a privilege to be with you today and to be speaking to a largely American audience.
You will no doubt have seen images of the beauty and splendour of the Cornish coastline, in the South West of England, over recent days. The images will have shown sun-drenched beaches, blue sea and skies. The place looks prosperous and idyllic. Much of the Cornish coast is all of these things. However, if you travel just a few minutes inland a different Cornwall is revealed. A place of widespread insecurity, joblessness, low wages and poverty. As of 2011, Cornwall’s measure of wealth was just 64% of the European per capita average making it not only one of the poorest regions of England but of Europe as a whole. This measure will not have improved following a decade or more of austerity measures in the British economy.
The arrival of the G7 leaders to this remote corner of the British Isles will not have done much to ameliorate these conditions. The contrast between the presence of leaders of the seven most powerful nations on the surface of this planet and the gross deficiencies in social justice evident a few miles inland is instructive.
What were the G7 leaders doing in Cornwall? Were they discussing a global ‘levelling up’ to lift the poorest and most insecure of us out of poverty? Or were they discussing something else?
With a new US President and multiple challenges facing the US dominated political order, this G7 summit can be understood as an effort to begin redrawing the map of Western influence and power. The aim is to ensure that the political footprint, economic fingerprints and military boot prints of the west continue to leave their mark.
The challenges to ensuring such a prospect range from the impact of Covid, the fractures in the economies of the G7 states and the reality that the political order is shifting from a unipolar to a multipolar configuration. One example of how the US President and UK Prime Minister plan to respond to such challenges can be found in the new version of the ‘Atlantic Charter’ signed by Biden and Johnson immediately before the G7 met.
The original Charter was agreed and signed by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill on 14 August 1941. The Charter set out joint US/UK goals for the world after World War II. Even though the US had not yet entered the war, these two leaders saw fit to make plans for the post-war landscape. The agreement was made in the context of the US as the rising global power and Britain as an imperial power – with substantial colonies around the world.
The New Atlantic Charter has been signed in quite different circumstances where a global power other than the US in on the rise and where the UK is a politically isolated, nuclear-armed island which retains a significant financial centre and which has lumbered itself with an unpredictable and thoroughly unpleasant Prime Minister.
The New Atlantic Charter is made up of eight brief points, the first of which resolves “to defend the principles, values, and institutions of democracy and open societies, which drive our national strength and our alliances.” The fifth point affirms “our shared responsibility for maintaining our collective security and international stability and resilience against the full spectrum of modern threats”.
It is well known that there have been tensions between Biden and Johnson on both the personal and political level. It is clear that between the two, Biden is the more rational and ‘mainstream’ character. Whatever the tensions, they have been put to one side because the issues at stake for both Biden and Johnson transcend personalities: they concern the imperatives of global politics.
The new US administration has yet to put its strategy with respect to defence, security and nuclear weaponry ‘on paper’, but comments from Biden himself and his Secretary of State indicate that Russia and China will be offered no respite. Conversely, Prime Minister Johnson has put his name to an ‘Integrated Review’ [see END Info 23 & 24 for extensive coverage]. Johnson’s ‘Integrated Review’ is clear that Russia and China are considered ‘strategic competitors’ to UK/Western interests and proposes containment. Not only that, but the nuclear doctrine contained within the ‘Integrated Review’ includes a reversal on warhead numbers and raises a significant question mark over the circumstances under which the UK would consider a nuclear strike.
What is Biden’s assessment of the ‘Integrated Review’? Does he support the breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty announced in its pages? The agreement of the New Atlantic Charter would suggest that nothing within the ‘Integrated Review’ troubles him or his administration to a great extent. Donald Trump has gone, but ‘British Trump’ endures.
Under Trump, many of us spoke and wrote about the dangers of a ‘Global Tinderbox’: a configuration of risks, tensions and capabilities – both military and technological – that put the world in great danger. It seems that the ‘Global Tinderbox’ is still with us where one mistake, misstep or misunderstanding could boil over into a situation of existential risk. According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and their Doomsday Clock, global risks from climate change to nuclear war are as sharply posed as they were under Trump. This is a world where tensions between the ‘West’, China and Russia continue to sharpen; where every nuclear armed state on the planet is not only renewing nuclear arsenals but developing new nuclear weapons; where the US and allies are still asserting themselves in an effort to maintain global influence and where ‘new technologies’ and the application of existing technologies to the battlefield accelerate the pace at which disaster could unfold.
If we are to find ways to de-escalate the risks, to move away from the ‘Global Tinderbox’, then we must not only talk of peace. We must identify the roadblocks to peace a develop a strategy to remove them. One example of this is the launch of the Nuke Free Europe network and their plans for a month of action (see pages 3-6). The network is calling for an end to nuclear sharing in Europe, a halt to the arms race and for European states to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Where the global powers have the G7, NATO and the rest the global peace movement have solidarity, internationalism and transnational cooperation. The Nuke Free Europe network is one example of many similar initiatives. All such initiatives will be coming together for the International Peace Bureau’s ‘World Congress’ in October this year. I hope to see many of you there in person, or online, to plan for a global, peaceful alternative.
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The Second World Peace Congress will bring together a wide variety of experts and advocates from all around the world. Speakers will come from all kinds of disciplines and backgrounds, including both high level representatives and grassroots level voices. It will equally involve diverse fields: peace organizations, feminist and civil rights groups, labor unions, environmentalists, educators, religious and spiritual leaders , development workers, human rights advocates, and more.
See the full programme at: