Remembering and shaping the future: for a policy of common security

by Reiner Braun and Peter Brandt

More and more people have the feeling that we are living in a time of escalating confrontation and even the possibility of a great war again presents itself. Uncertainty shapes our daily life more and more. The statement of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that their ‘Doomsday Clock’ remains at ‘100 seconds to Midnight’, is a concise expression of these dangers threatening us all, especially - in the long term - the climate disaster, and directly the 14,000 nuclear weapons on earth.

Is there an alternative that a social and political majority - nationally and internationally – will support? An alternative that helps to ensure survival and ensure a better life? A strategy that combines historical experiences with answers to current challenges? As Willy Brandt, among others, put it: “Peace is not everything, but everything is nothing without peace”!

The political alternative is a policy of “common security” – a policy that is conservative and revolutionary at the same time. Conservative because it does not aim to change the social systems and political orders of the individual countries; it accepts socialism and capitalism, or whatever the rulers characterize their system. It recognizes the variants of an authoritarian, liberal and welfare state-regulated capitalism as well as a democratic or authoritarian constitution of non-capitalist states as systems that exist and which can only be legitimately changed only from within. In this way, it creates the prerequisites for peaceful competition between these systems in the first place.

It is revolutionary because it excludes war as the continuation of ‘politics by other means’, because it no longer allows this murderous method of ‘conflict resolution’, which has cost hundreds of millions of deaths over millennia and has raised the question of the very existence of humanity for more than 60 years. In other words, it raises humanity and the planet to a new level of coexistence based on elementary humanism.

The policy of common security can bring us closer to one of the great aims of humanity: a world without war!

Almost 40 years ago, common security was formulated as a concept in Olaf Palme’s report Common Security a Blueprint for Survival, written by an international group of experts. Next year it is to be updated with the participation of the International Peace Bureau and International TUC.

What are the basic principles of this still current concept?

- In the atomic age, security cannot be created by an individual state or in opposition to other states, but only together and in partnership

- War is no longer a political tool in the atomic age; all conflicts and controversies must be resolved peacefully, through dialogue and negotiation. Violent changes of borders, the appropriation of territory are excluded and state sovereignty and supranational unions remain untouched.

- Cooperation is the basis for peaceful coexistence, this must develop in steps and includes the development of trust. Cooperation encompasses all levels: economy, ecology, science, culture, sport. Consultations at all levels and joint crisis responses are part of this.

- Human rights are respected and their realization is repeatedly urged in negotiations and discussions - from all sides and in relation to all human rights: civic and social. However, human rights are not a fighting instrument in interstate disputes in order to label the other as “bad guys”.

- Armaments limitation and disarmament are indispensable. This always includes small first steps to demilitarization, equalization of troops and other confidence-building measures such as contacts between the military. Openness and verifiability of measures are essential. In the long term, exclusive military alliances like NATO should either be demilitarized into existing inclusive networks and completely redesigned (like the OSCE in Europe) or dissolved.

If the policy of common security was originally a Euro-Atlantic concept, it is now a global one and precisely for this reason it must be regionalized more intensively.

Very specific concepts are necessary for common security strategies for different regions of the world, not only for Europe.

The détente policy of the 21st century is unthinkable - this is also a further development compared to approaches from the 70s and 80s of the last century - without the peace movement as one of the large, cross-border social movements and without an international civil society. They are the engine for a new policy of détente, drive these developments forward and secure them against crises through comprehensive diplomacy from below.

The basic idea of the Palme Report is very simple: My safety is only guaranteed if the safety of my counterpart is also guaranteed. There is only security if it is reciprocal.

Disarmament - also a lesson from the 1970s and 1980s - is the indispensable “materialization” of détente policy. That is why disarmament is absolutely crucial. It could be decisively advanced through unilateral calculated steps, especially by those in the stronger position. In the northern hemisphere, that's NATO.