Stop the Next War Now (27 page)

A permanent halt in the production of fissile material
. The production of nuclear weapons requires the use of fissile material, either uranium or plutonium. All countries that have nuclear weapons have offered to negotiate a global ban on any further production of fissile material, by any country. Along with a comprehensive nuclear-test ban, this would make the spread of nuclear weapons far more difficult than it is today. The United States, with many times more fissile material than any other country, has supported this ban. China, however, concerned that U.S. antimissile and space weapon programs would compromise its defenses, has made talks on a fissile material cutoff contingent on simultaneous talks about banning weapons in space. Instead of agreeing to discuss both issues, the United States has chosen to discuss neither.

The nonproliferation treaty
. Last but not least, the Bush administration has violated and weakened the main international treaty intended to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction, the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty (NPT). Since 1970, under the NPT, non-nuclear nations have agreed not to acquire nuclear weapons, while nuclear nations agreed to negotiate in good faith to reduce and eventually eliminate the weapons they have. The Bush administration’s actions have demonstrated beyond any doubt that the United States is not negotiating in good faith to move toward nuclear disarmament. Moreover, as a condition for agreeing to the NPT, many non-nuclear states demanded that the nuclear-weapon states never threaten them with the use of nuclear weapons. When the treaty was signed, the United States, the USSR, Britain, France, and China all made unilateral declarations that non-nuclear states would not be threatened as long as they were not engaged in a war in alliance with a nuclear state. However, the Bush administration’s nuclear-posture review, leaked in 2002, threatened the use of nuclear weapons against a number of countries, including non-nuclear nations such as Cuba, Syria, and Iran. Under George W. Bush, the United States also violated a separate agreement it had made with North Korea in 1994 not to threaten the use of nuclear weapons against that country.

In addition to blocking, undermining, and violating treaties to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, the Bush administration has requested funds to beef up the U.S. nuclear-weapons program, including funding to shorten the time needed to resume underground nuclear weapons tests (eighteen months instead of twenty-four to thirty-six months), and money for a modern pit facility so that we can produce twice as many plutonium cores for nuclear weapons.

It is hard to imagine a set of policy initiatives that could do more than the Bush administration has done to foster the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Clearly, putting all of our eggs in the military basket—renouncing international law, multilateral diplomacy, and arms-control protocols—has not helped to stop or reverse the proliferation of WMD. The very methods of arms control and disarmament that George W. has trashed constitute our best agenda for working to abolish weapons of mass destruction and to end international terrorism.

“Terrorism has no location or boundaries, it does not reside in a

geography of its own; its homeland is disillusionment and despair.The

best weapon to eradicate terrorism from the soul lies in the solidarity of

the international world, in respecting the rights of all peoples of this

globe to live in harmony and by reducing the ever-increasing gap

between north and south.And the most effective way to defend freedom

is through fully realizing the meaning of justice.”

—Mahmoud Darwish

COLONIZING THE GLOBE,

ONE BASE AT A TIME

JOSEPH GERSON

Joseph Gerson is the director of programs of the American Friends Service Committee in New England. His books include
The Sun Never Sets
, about U.S. military bases abroad,
With Hiroshima Eyes
, and
The Deadly Connection
, which analyzes nuclear war and U.S. intervention.This essay is based on a talk delivered at the 2004 Japan Peace Conference in Sasebo, Japan.

When I first traveled to Japan for an antinuclear conference, I was amazed to learn that the United States still had more than a hundred military bases and installations across Japan. I was shocked as I listened to Okinawans describe what it meant to live in communities routinely terrorized by the shattering sounds of low-altitude flights and night-landing exercises, by unpunished crimes committed by GIs, and by the pervasiveness of prostitution and sexual harassment of local women near those bases. The Japanese shared their painful memories of deadly military accidents: planes and helicopters falling into people’s homes and schools, drunken military drivers careening into civilian cars.

Their anguished words brought back memories from elementary school. My fourth-grade teacher had taught us that the U.S. Declaration of Independence proclaimed the necessity of fighting the War of Independence against Britain because King George III had “kept among us in times of peace… standing armies,” which committed intolerable “abuses and usurpations.” In subsequent years, it has been my privilege to learn from people who have been victims of similar “abuses and usurpations” by U.S. military bases in Korea, Okinawa, the Philippines, Britain, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Iceland, Spain, Turkey, Puerto Rico, Honduras, and other countries. Each base brings terrible consequences, including the loss of self-determination, human rights, and sovereignty. Military bases degrade the culture, values, health, and environment of host nations.

Why does the United States maintain more than seven hundred foreign military bases and installations in at least forty nations? Because the entire system makes imperial domination possible. These bases ensure access to key resources such as oil; they encircle enemies; they serve as training grounds for U.S. forces; they are jumping-off points for U.S. military interventions in foreign countries; they maintain American influence over the governments of host nations. Not even Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, or Benjamin Disraeli could lay claim to such an array of mighty fortresses.

The Bush administration came to power with the commitment to make this infrastructure even stronger. Vice president Dick Cheney, secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, and their neocon allies let it be known that they modeled themselves after Teddy Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Admiral Alfred T. Mahan—the men who, in the 1880s and 1890s, envisioned the United States replacing Britain as the world’s dominant power and then built the military needed to do it.

Some bases will be closed in the administration’s latest reconfiguration, and some will be merged, but only to augment U.S. military power. In Asia, the plan is for “diversification”: moving the concentration of U.S. bases from northeast Asia farther south. Why? To better encircle China, to fight the so-called war on terrorism across Southeast Asia, and to more completely control the sea-lanes over which Persian Gulf oil—the jugular vein of East Asia’s economies—must travel. Troops will also be relocated to reinforce the power of Washington’s “unsinkable aircraft carrier,” Japan.

The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq began the long-planned rearrangement of U.S. military bases abroad. Dictatorships in Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan were forced to surrender sovereignty and to invite the Pentagon to establish what will likely become permanent U.S. military bases. With Germany balking at joining the invasion of Iraq, Washington began “diversifying” its European military infrastructure, first threatening to punish Germany by withdrawing all U.S. bases from the country. Indeed, many troops—seventy thousand—are to be redeployed to the United States and other nations, including new bases in Romania and Bulgaria.

In the Middle East, under cover of preparations for war, Bush and company removed the vast majority of U.S. troops and bases in Saudi Arabia. One of the precipitating causes of the 9/11 attacks, these bases had been a constant affront to many Muslims, who felt that they sullied Islam’s holiest land. While the troops in Saudi Arabia were transferred to Qatar and Kuwait, bases in Djibouti and Bahrain were expanded. And now U.S. military planners look forward to making Iraq a bastion of U.S. military power in the Middle East for decades to come.

In Africa, too, the Bush administration has been negotiating the creation of a “family” of military bases across the continent. The hosts for this new family include Algeria, Mali, and Guinea (which has also been targeted as a source of oil), with Senegal and Uganda providing refueling installations for the air force.

And Washington hasn’t forgotten its own backyard: Latin America and South America. Although the Puerto Rican people’s fifty-year struggle to close the base at Vieques finally prevailed, new military bases are sprouting across the Andean nations, and the United States is increasingly militarizing the Caribbean.

Two tactical military goals are driving Rumsfeld’s reconfiguration of this infrastructure of global military power: flexibility and speed. If Germany, for example, is reluctant to permit U.S. military bases to launch missions against Iraq or Iran from its airspace, the Pentagon wants to be sure that it can launch those attacks from bases in other countries as quickly as possible. And new “lily pad” installations in countries like Lithuania and Tajikistan—jumping-off points for military interventions—are designed to allow U.S. troops to strike before their target can prepare its defenses.

As the people of Japan, Okinawa, South Korea, and other nations that already “host” U.S. military bases know all too well, these new bases will come with intolerable “abuses and usurpations” that must be resisted and overcome. I won’t pretend that there are easy solutions to liberating people around the world from the daily intrusions and the dangers of war that accompany military bases. But there are several promising new initiatives, including a worldwide explosion of education and organizing against U.S. military bases. In Europe, a new network of activists is protesting at various U.S. bases across the continent, including the nuclear-weapons base in Belgium. In Asia, the Listserv initiated by Focus on Global South provides an important forum for people across the globe to exchange information and explore common actions. The annual meetings of the World Social Forum have also offered opportunities for anti-bases activists to collaborate.

The U.S. peace movement, if it is indeed going to try to stop future wars, must learn more about these issues and then join these international efforts to close overseas bases and repatriate U.S. troops.

“War is elective. It is not an inevitable state of affairs.

War is not the weather.”

—Susan Sontag

ARMIES

FOR PEACE

GAR SMITH

Gar Smith, is editor emeritus of
Earth Island Journal
, cofounder of Environmentalists Against War,and associate editor of
Common Ground
magazine, where this story originally appeared.

As the father of eight adopted children, Mel Duncan clearly has a stake in the future. This veteran community organizer from St. Paul, Minnesota, doesn’t come across as a firebrand. Instead, the cherubic, puckish Duncan is blessed with a jokester’s genial mien and the easy smile of a born salesman.

Duncan first conceived his vision of a global peace force during a stay at the Buddhist monastery where Thich Nhat Hanh teaches. It was one of Duncan’s Sufi teachers who gave him his nonviolent marching orders: “Your job is to enlighten the heart of the enemy.”

In 1999, Duncan attended the Hague Peace Conference in hopes of promoting his vision. But before Duncan could commandeer a microphone, a stranger stepped up to the podium to propose the same thing. The speaker was San Francisco’s David Hartsough. Duncan raced to his side, introduced himself, and forged a life-altering friendship.

David Hartsough’s Quaker parents set him on his spiritual path when they introduced him to the writings of Mahatma Gandhi at an early age. When Hartsough was in his twenties, he participated in a sit-in to desegregate a Southern restaurant. When an enraged racist threatened to kill him with a switchblade, Hartsough told the man, “Do what you think is right and I’ll try to love you no matter what.” The man’s knife and jaw both dropped, and he walked away dumbfounded.

Ten thousand women march for peace on International Women’s Day, March 8, 2003, in Washington, D.C.

Photo by Gael Murphy

A decade later, Hartsough was with Vietnam veteran and antiwar activist Brian S. Willson when a Bay Area peace protest went horribly wrong. Willson was sitting cross-legged on the tracks just outside the navy weapons station at Port Chicago, hoping to block a train carrying explosives to El Salvador. Unbeknownst to the protesters, the military had ordered the train operator not to stop. The locomotive barreled over Willson, severing both his legs.

Willson went on to become an iconic figure of the antiwar movement, and Hartsough went on to found San Francisco’s Peaceworkers organization, which has sent nonviolent volunteers to intervene in Chiapas, Mexico, and Kosovo. During the nato bombing campaign in the Balkans, Hartsough and five other Peaceworkers were thrown into a Serbian jail for several days, causing an international incident. Hartsough emerged from that Serbian cell determined to build a global peace army.

Within three years of its founding, the Nonviolent Peaceforce (NPF) had won the support of the Dalai Lama and seven Nobel Peace laureates. The NPF now has home offices in St. Paul and San Francisco and, as Duncan proudly notes, “ninety-two groups on every continent but Antarctica.”

Their goal is to recruit two thousand paid professionals, four thousand reservists, and five thousand volunteers—all backed by an administrative organization and a research and training staff. Professional peace soldiers would enlist for a two-year tour of duty. Hartsough estimates that it will cost $1.6 million a year to finance the NPF. This seems like a lot until he points out that this is less money than the Pentagon will spend in the next two minutes. “With one-tenth of 1 percent of the U.S. military budget,” Hartsough argues, “we could have a full-scale Nonviolent Peaceforce able to intervene in conflict areas in many parts of the world.” And, he adds, this force would be able to respond more quickly than UN peacekeeping forces.