Giuliano Carlini
in Peuples/Popoli/Peoples/Pueblos, n. 2 (september 1983)
A confrontation arose, and developed, involving political and social forces, traditional mass organisations and new forms of mobilisation mainly in the most highly industrialised countries, but also in the countries of the South.
The League, which has always been committed to the issues of the nature and causes of dependency, to the liberation processes of emerging peoples, but also to those of the levels and modes of development of democracy and freedom everywhere, and to the relationship between peace and the possibility of development, has set itself the task of discussing, understanding and intervening in this situation from the outset.
There are two specific areas of interest: the overall problem of the accelerating process of military arsenal build-up, the heightened danger of a nuclear conflict, and the impact of the reappearance of the ‘balance of terror’ in exclusive terms on the North-South relationship.
The first direction was already an effort to rethink in up-to-date terms the existing relationship between the war industry and the production system (1) and thus the arms trade, the relationship of the latter with the problem of dependency, peripheral wars etc.
In the second, the underlining of the reciprocal relations between East-West confrontation/clash and North-South confrontation/clash, the influence of the radicalisation of relations between the leading powers on the liberation process of the peoples of the ‘south’ (but also that of democratisation and transformation taking place in many countries of the ‘north’).
Along these lines of reflection and internal confrontation, the League has also developed ways of relating to other protagonists. Essentially with political and social forces, with other similar international organisations (NGOs for human rights, development and peace) and with the autonomous peace movements that have developed in Europe (in the West as well as in the East) but also in the United States (the ‘freeze’ movement) and Japan.
The presence of the League (of its local sections, of its militants) at debates and events promoted by and with political and trade union forces on the subject of peace belongs to the daily routine of our intervention and is essentially measured in the effort to bring the debate on the causes of the persistence and increase of international tension and on the close interconnection between the peace project (for all) and the development project (for all).
The confrontation with other international organisations has taken us to Geneva in recent days to participate in the NGO conference on the ‘Global Campaign for Disarmament’ with proposals of our own, some of which are included in the final documents.
Adhering to the Russell Foundation’s call for peace allows us an ongoing relationship (2) with European and non-European peace movements characterised by a commitment to oppose a Eurocentric view of the problem and an effort to go beyond the discourse of missile balance to pose that of the right of peoples to decide on their own security and how to achieve it.
The unifying theme of the League’s modes of intervention (as it at least appears at this stage of the internal debate in the international arena as in the national leagues) is the accentuation of the emerging will on the part of the peoples, not called upon to negotiate or to “consult”, to assert their right to non-alignment. This latter theme proposed to the League’s internal and external confrontation and whose first references can be found in the “Algiers Charter” and, more recently, in the New Delhi message (3).
Some of the issues being debated in the League are contained in the document prepared for the aforementioned NGO conference on the ‘Global Campaign for Disarmament’ that we reproduce below.
Notes for a common document with NGOs for peace
The following considerations consider the positions taken on several occasions by NGOs committed to the problem of peace and development to be well-known and shared. In particular, they refer to the ’70 Proposals for Action’ formulated at the conclusion of the International NGO Conference on Disarmament and Development held in Brussels in April 1982.
The endemic worldwide crisis of international relations and the permanent tension between the world’s major powers induce the constant growth of the world’s military arsenal and at the same time, its strengthening.
Any attempt to identify ways of action that would lead towards the development of a disarmament policy must measure itself against the causes and nature of the situation that characterises the state of preparedness for war today.
It seems to us that among the determining causes two, interrelated, take on special importance. First of all, the production of weapons with a high level of technological sophistication is a highly remunerative activity and such as to constitute a ‘driving force’ within the overall production system. In other words, the weapons (better: weapons systems) that are today the focus of interest in the major countries of the world constitute (insofar as they are likely to produce high rates of profit in any way beyond their actual use) a privileged sector of production capable of sustaining and enhancing the manufacture of similar goods regardless of the utility they may have for the real progress of humanity.
Secondly, but at the same level of importance, it should be noted that the very nature, quantity and quality of the knowledge and technical know-how embedded in the ‘weapon systems’ that constitute today’s ‘advanced level’ of armaments, and the modalities of their eventual use, lead to a reversal of the relationship between means and ends that invert the very meaning of strategy. More clearly, the very concept of strategy entails a relationship between ends to be achieved (e.g. security, hegemony over an area of the world) and means (nuclear and conventional weapons) where the latter should always be determined by the former.
Today, the complexity of the ‘weapon systems’ that have been or are being set up tends to increasingly condition the economic and social policy of the states that produce those weapon systems, so that the original aims themselves become irrelevant to the endless development of armaments in the world.
The measure of ‘overkill’ concretely characterising the world’s major powers renders the very concept of security against possible adversaries meaningless. On the contrary, the immense potential for destruction already in the hands of the world’s major states should convince us that each leading state no longer has the ability to guarantee the maintenance and strengthening of one economic, political and social system against another, but the responsibility for the very existence of the planet’s entire population.
So in reality, the deterrent has reached such thresholds that its effectiveness is nullified.
Serious consequences for all the peoples of the world derive from these conditions. Consequences that affect in perspective, of course, the very possibility of humanity’s survival as such, but also consequences that act today and immediately, that is, before the threat of war becomes a tragic reality. The first of these consequences is that the choice of unlimited growth in military potential, effectively predetermining the direction of what and how to produce today and in the years to come, reduces the possibility for all the peoples of the world (of the first and second as well as the third world) to choose in fact what kind of existence they want to build and what kind of political economic system they wish to pursue. That is, the type, mode and quantity of the current weapons system effectively limits (or nullifies) the possibility of most of humanity to choose their preferred mode of existence (and even the very possibility of existing).
In addition, the nature of the knowledge required to understand the ways in which ‘weapon systems’ are produced and deployed in the field effectively excludes, for peoples everywhere, the possibility of intervening in the choices and exercising democratic control over decisions that involve the right to life and the type of life.
In general, there are no institutional mechanisms that allow the peoples, including those of the leading states, to intervene in decisions concerning not only peace and war (i.e. life and death) but also the future way of life according to freely and democratically chosen goals and plans.
In reality, the current state of world armament is managed under a practically uncontrolled and uncontrollable ‘technocracy’ (if no new facts come to light), and not only as far as ‘security’ is concerned, but also as far as facts concerning every other important decision for the life ‘of peoples’ are concerned.
All this poses the problem for NGOs, for each NGO, of what to do about these aspects of world reality, how to do it and what kind of common strategy they can identify to act according to the very foundations of their raison d’être.
We believe that, with respect to these things, the primary task of NGOs is to vindicate the right of peoples to exercise the power of co-decision and control over everything that affects their existence. To say this means that NGOs must promote initiatives aimed at affirming and claiming the right of peoples to non-alignment on imaginary alignments made without their participation. More explicitly to claim the rejection of a logic, that of opposing blocs, which is proving increasingly pernicious to the destiny of all. It seems to us that NGOs can agree on at least three lines of common action:
1) Use their capacity and influence to produce a vast information campaign on ‘weapon systems’ (and the consequences of their use) and on the relationship between armament policy and the production system (in all its implications);
2) directly exert every possible form of pressure in the existing institutional fora (but also find avenues to intervene in those fora from which NGOs and even the representations of most peoples are normally excluded) aimed at affirming the right of participation in every decision that affects the existence and mode of existence of peoples;
3) To develop and assist the process of mass mobilisation already present in various parts of the world so that peoples regain the right to decide what strategy should be implemented to truly guarantee their security.
The realisation of these points entails the implementation of permanent forms of coordination between NGOs and the development of a coordinated action of non-manipulated information in the countries of the first world, but also the use of the channels already in the possession of the NGOs for the strengthening of counter-information processes in the same countries of the so-called third world whose governments prefer to implement a policy of systematic disinformation.
Notes:
1 The topic was addressed at the conference organised by the League in Milan, February 1981.
2 Thus, we participated in the Brussels Convention of 1982 and the Berlin Convention of 1983, and most recently in the Liaison Committee meeting held in Brussels last September.
3 7th Summit Conference of Non-Aligned Countries, 7-12 March 1983.
in: Peuples/Popoli/Peoples/Pueblos, n. 2 (september 1983)