It is obvious that militarism undermines democracy. States where the ruler looks to the army are different from states where governments are formed by democratic support. Either might is right, or the people should have a say, and boot out the government and their views by voting the other way. In 1939 we had a World War against the aggressive militarism of Fascism in Germany, Italy, Japan and other countries, and thankfully Democracy won. Except it was never quite that simple. It did for decades in a lot of countries. But, Fascist militarism had had support at various levels in most countries of the world in the 1930s. It tended to go underground and hide in 1945 but it did not disappear. Moreover, in 1945 the United States became the dominant military, and arms producing, power in the world and has continued in that vein to the present, when it funds nearly half of all world military expenditure. In 1945 we though Democracy had won and Militarism had lost for ever, and now Democracy seems much more fragile and is disappearing fast, even in established democratic states, while militarism spreads everywhere. The obvious thesis is that MILITARISM IS STRANGLING DEMOCRACY. The old threat of do what I say or I’ll kill you is back in government around the world. Everyone should be thinking about it, but few are, because the military weave their webs of necessity by frightening us.

UGANDA AND CHINA

Let us take two examples. In Uganda at present an election is underway.  It is a wonderful country with great, friendly people. President Musevene is seeking re-election, even though he had said he would stand down. He was a General, sorting out the mess of General Amin, but democracy in this election is shadowed by the gun, and threats. It is controlled to produce the result the controller of the army wants. It will not be an open democratic election. The second example is China. Any understanding of Chinese history makes one aware of how much it has been sinned against by the West. The Opium Wars of the 19^th century and the annexation of Hong Kong and other territories for the West was naked colonialism. Last century the West, especially Britain, arming Japan, allowed Japan to invade and dominate China through the 1930s and then horrifically in WW2. Western post-war aggression in Korea and Vietnam and later made China legitimately defensive. It then emerged as not only the world’s most populous country, but also as the workplace of the world, exporting goods and equipment, as part of an integrated world economy. Yet, now, it relies heavily on selling and having arms, and has hostility to open democracy in Hong Kong and among other populations. It is threatened and threatens. The leader has entrenched himself in power around a military base, and China has become both militarised and a big seller of weapons.

AT LEAST HALF THE WORLD’S POPULATION IS UNDER NEAR MILITARY DICTATORSHIPS.

If we revue the big picture, there is a common pattern. Judgements may vary a bit, but the following states are military/autocratic dictatorships or near military dictatorships (in brackets) around the world. They are shown alongside their populations in millions. Of course, many states hold elections, but make sure they control them, as in Putin’s Russia. The military subdue the population and opposition. In the case of Saudi Arabia they carry bodies out of embassies in a suitcase. A tentative list includes: –  (China) 1439m, Russia 146m, Egypt 102m, (Pakistan) 221m (Brazil) 213m, (DRCongo) 90m, Iran 84m, Iraq 40m, Saudi Arabia 35m, Afghanistan39m, Algeria 44m, Angola33m, Azerbaijan 10m, Belarus 9m, Uzbekistan 33m, Burundi 12m, Cambodia 17m, Cameroon 27, Sudan44, South Sudan 11m, Somalia 16, (Nigeria) 206m, (Bangladesh) 165m, Vietnam 97m, Turkey 84m, Yemen 30m, Syria 18m, Venezuela 28m, Uganda 46m Thailand 70m. There are other countries that should be included. This is merely indicative that half the world’s population live more or less under military control.  But this is not the most disturbing part of the picture.

THE WEST HAS WEAPONISED THE WORLD..

The “West” sees itself as those who fight for Democracy or Freedom against Militarism. We are the Good Guys fighting against militarism. That message is pumped at us most days. Actually, a detached examination concludes that we, the “West”, have dominated militarism since 1945 and have sold weapons around the world on a vast scale to nearly everybody. It was a pro-active role; in the 50s the US military exaggerated the number of USSR bombers and missiles sometimes a hundred times in order to get the military growing. It also linked sales to aid in the post WW2 era to get its arms selling round the world. Similarly, Britain and France plied their colonies and ex colonies with weapons. During the Cold War both sides used the other to leverage their importance, until military costs brought down the USSR. Around 2000 two thirds of arms sales came from the democratic west and it is near that figure now. The US has 36% of world arms exports and Russia 21%.  China exports less than France or Germany. (2014-18 figures) More than this, the “Democratic” West now includes those to whom we sell weapons. We are pro Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Argentina, Libya, Egypt and other states to whom we sell weapons, but against them – perhaps – if they use them. Weapons, not democracy, dominates international politics and the effectiveness of the United Nations.

But it is worse even that this. Western “democratic states” have primed and started wars around weapons. Blair and Berlusconi did a deal with Gaddafi in Libya to sell weapons;  soon he was in a civil war and we were bombing him. Saddam bought weapons from the West, which was playing both sides in the Iran-Iraq War. When he could not pay the French for his weapons, he asked Kuwait for money and then invaded them. The US, who had lost its Cold War rival, gratefully undertook a big blitz war against Iraq.  Then in 2003 when there was ample evidence that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, the US military, which needed a war, led Bush and Blair to invade a disarmed Iraq on the basis of a lie about WMD, against UN law, and destroy the Iraq state. Since then it has been a failed state with destroyed infrastructure. generating billions of military expenditures for the United States arms industry, including very expensive loo seats, but benefitting no-one else. Recently, the US and UK  weapons sold to Saudi Arabia have continued to fuel the Yemen catastrophe. So, we have been and are the world’s main militarists, sometimes selling weapons in breach of our own guidelines, to continue the trend. This is, substantially, our doing.

MILITARISM UNDERMINES TRUTH, LAW, JUSTICE AND DEMOCRACY.

We ignore what it does to our democracy. The Iraq War involved Bush and Blair and their Cabinets lying to their nations. There was an overwhelming  propaganda attack worldwide which disseminated falsehoods successfully against the long term evidence of the United Nations.. Fake evidence was manufactured, undermining the overwhelming evidence that there were no weapons of mass destruction. There was an attack by the Blair Government on the BBC which destroyed its independence and ability to present what is the case. Truth suffers in wars, but this was the 21^st century with a vast raft of electronic media.

International law was ignored. Those who wanted a reason for their actions talked about regime change as though that justified what has been done. It is, of course, completely outside the framework of the United Nations and undemocratic. The United States has in fact worked at regime change in Cuba, Argentina, Chile, the Dominican Republic and elsewhere, against democratic elections, on the grounds that it does not like the regimes.

Though the unjustified invasion of Iraq should have led to reparations for a vast scale of damage, that justice has been ignored, because the bully was in charge.

Of course, after war, military occupations, dictatorships, the outcomes are always destruction, states which are ungovernable, patterns of corruption, revenge, dominant juntas, bribery and other patterns which destroy stable government. That has been happening throughout modern history yet still the narrative of the militarists is allowed to dominate.  The Trump administration has produced a reversal from the United States working through international agreements to bullying on the basis of its greater power. That was no accident, but part of the long march of militarism.

THE ARMS GAME:  LET’S WISE UP – THE MILITARISTS ARE ON THE SAME SIDE.

The arms companies know what they are doing. The militaries, including the arms companies, the armed forces and the secret services know that they need enemies and need to be inside government to get their contracts. They do both and are practiced, efficient businessmen. We are warned about Russia, China, Terrorists, Iran, North Korea and any other potential enemy in a sustained media and political campaign, so that the military-industrial complex can be kept in business, a business involving trillions of dollars and vast technologies of destruction – nuclear weapons, missiles, subs, tanks, aircraft carriers, fighters, bombers, drones, guns of all sizes. Both sides keep the pressure up and both sides carry on with the same business plan. The Pentagon and Kremlin brief on the new weapons needed and how this is the primary defence of the State and compel the politicians to adopt them. Both sides are keeping this show on the road and acting out adversarial militarism and promoting autocratic rule. It is senseless, wasteful and destructive, but the people who run the system are never injured or killed; they just get rich. The sad thing is that we are taken in. It is not as if we have not had time to wake up.

There were four arm races before WW1. One of them sparked with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the horrific war followed. In the twenties and thirties the world woke up to “the merchants of death” and in the great 1932 Geneva Disarmament Conference nearly did start to disarm the world under the Hoover Plan, but the militarists thwarted it and let in Hitler. We do not hear about the arms companies happy to sell to Hitler in the 30s, but Berlin was crawling with them. Another military crescendo followed to WW2.  The same happened after WW2. The militarists made sure that weapons, including nuclear weapons, were not closed down and soon the arms trade was up and running again with the Cold War. The model is clear. Eisenhower and Khrushchev discuss it in the following interchange.

Eisenhower: “My military leaders come to me and say, “Mr President, we need such and such a sum for such and such a program.” I say, “Sorry we don’t have the funds.” They say, “We have reliable information that the Soviet Union has already allocated funds for their own such program. Therefore, if we do not get the funds we need, we’ll fall behind the Soviet Union.” So I give in. That’s how they wring money out of me. They keep grabbing for more and I keep giving it to them. Now tell me, how is it with you?”

Khrushchev: “It’s just the same. Some people from our military department come and say, “Comrade Khrushchev, look at this! The Americans are developing such and such a system. We could develop the same system, but it would cost such and such.” I tell them there is no money; it’s all been allocated already. So they say, “If we don’t get the money we need and if there is a war, then the enemy will have superiority over us.” So we discuss it some more, and I end up by giving them the money they ask for”[i]

Here are the two big dogs talking while their tails are being wagged. There is every reason to believe that this accurately represented the process both in the US and USSR throughout the Cold War. Of course, it was more complex than this, involving lobbying, groups in government, scares, pressure, research, international deals, but the weapon’s people have run the politicians all our lifetimes. Reagan was even persuaded to pump tens of billions of dollars into a “Star Wars” project which experts agreed could never work. The show is still unchallenged in the US and UK and elsewhere across all the national divides. It happens behind the scenes. Big contracts pop out without warning. We allow the militarists to bring governments into line and create the divisions in which weapons thrive. We were told the USSR did weapons because it was Communist. Now it still does weapons when it is Capitalist. The real problem is not national tensions, but the business of arms and the military industrial complex on both sides. They need one another and play the game.

WE ARE LOSING DEMOCRACY.

The result is that we are losing Democracy. The peace people are eliminated behind the scenes. Corbyn was trashed in the 2019 election as a traitor, unsafe and antisemitic partly by the establishment military system. Autocracy is justified by external threats. Around the world the militarists eliminate their enemies. Protests are put down today in Thailand which has had 20 military coups in modern times. Each country postures against its enemies and good international co-operation breaks down. Nationalist parties, often discussing and saying little about detailed policy issues, are returned to power. Loyalty trumps debate. Laws can be suspended. The old, old ploy of an unsuccessful leader finding an external threat to rekindle popularity is brought out again. And elections were probably fixed, but nobody can be held to account. Decisions are made, but really irrespective of people. Slowly, the democratic tide is going out and the main reason, alongside the power of money to swing the media, is militarism. If we cannot see that, we have been blinded.

MILITARISM OUT IN THE OPEN

So, if militarism is slowly stranglist democracy around the world, we can still address it through democratic politics. We will have to drag what is hidden out into the open and discuss it. Militarism can be discussed. We will have to question the necessity of “defence”. We will need to look at why wars do not work, at why the destruction of weapons and war is not a good thing, at how enemies are created, at the gravy trains which run military systems round the world, and we will have to re-evaluate western military history and see we are a big part of the problem. We will have to look at the whole propaganda system of scares which keep us in hoc to “defence” . Then we may see that mutual world disarmament is possible, that the UN Treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons will open the door, that world multilateral disarmament is practical, saves trillions, is the greenest thing for the planet, saves lives, trauma, refugees, poverty, more wars, warped science and technology and allows democracy to open up again around the world. We may see that disarmament, reducing threats everywhere, is far easier than competitive arming. But there is one more thing that we must realise, one mistake that has been made every time disarmament has been an issue in world politics, and there have been quite a few.

TURKEYS DO NOT VOTE FOR CHRISTMAS.

Every time world disarmament is discussed, starting in 1899, in 1919, in 1932 and several times in the sixties and seventies, when the discussions get underway, the military put themselves in charge, especially of the detailed arrangements which might happen. They then mire the discussions in disagreement. Would USSR and US militarist bargain themselves out of existence? Of course not, for turkeys do not vote for Christmas. So, militarists must NOT be put in charge of disarmament discussion and policy. It needs clear big rules – cut military spending by 20% a year until it is all gone – firm policing, open inspection, big penalties, detailed surveillance and the world can be disarmed, just as most cities function without arms all round the world. Finally, the primitivism of tribal war can be banished and nation can speak peace unto nation.

But first we must see the problem..

[i]               Nikita S. Khrushchev Khrushchev Remembers trans and edited by Strobe Talbott (Boston: Little,Brown,      1970)  518

Each year we honour the dead, those who were slain in war for us. Often they were young men taken from life. We remember them. We think how many. We recall the horrors of gas, of submarine warfare, of being hit and dying and what each could have become. We are in debt, and the debt can never be repaid by us.

But there is more to remember. There are war memorials all over Britain, and we have mostly stood at several. They are usually World War One memorials with World War Two names added. At Coton and elsewhere there are often several names from a family, but fewer in World War Two. For Churchill, after the Gallipoli failure in WW1, was parsimonious of British soldiers lives and long delayed the Second Front while the Russians ground down the German army. We lost half a million men and Russia lost twenty five million. So we also remember the dead Russians.

Then there is the battle of Britain. Here Spitfires still fly over most weeks from Duxford, do a few amazing moves in the clouds, and fly back. Wars hang on machines, pilots, tanks and we remember them. We all know the Battle of Britain, the fight for Britain’s survival in 1940, and we remember it with unqualified gratitude, whether we mow the lawn or hear Vera Lynn. We think of the women workers who helped win that War. We think of our family members eighty years ago.

We remember through poppies, because the fields of Flanders, with churned up mud from exploding shells, became fields of poppies through the seeds that germinated in the process, and that beauty covered the barbed wire and body parts. The poppies as remembrance are not quite to be trusted. They are too beautiful, beside weeping widows and shell shocked men.

We remember war memorials in Cambridge Colleges – a vast long list of young men in Trinity, thinking and learning, and then killed. Rupert Brooke, on the list in Grantchester Village Hall Board, did not even get to Gallipoli. His poems were overtaken by the real war after he died. For loss is loss and it cannot be without mourning, and fathers should not mourn their sons. And we remember inadequate politicians left in the twenties and thirties.

Then we remember that all military history is not like the Battle of Britain. We have invaded and conquered like the Nazis tried to do. In fact, we have had a go at half the countries round the world. And now we know we were often despicable, using them for our gain and purposes. We confiscated Hong Kong because the Chinese did not want us to make them into opium addicts. We used the vast Indian economy during and after the East Indian Company, and we did not help properly in the Bengal Famine. Even in 1952-60 we practiced appalling torture on a massive scale in the “Mau Mau uprising”, but kept it quiet. We did Concentration Camps in the Second Boer War, and Blair did WMD to back up an illegal war with a lie. We, our State, is not the righteous one, and we have often been not glorious, even wicked. We are like the others and not exceptional.

We remember empires, but how? Perhaps a rich Anglo-Saxon English Christian culture was destroyed by the Normans. The Romans built roads here, but at what cost? Who worked and who supervised? And was England really good for Scotland, Ireland and Wales? And were the Spanish Empire, the Dutch Empire, the British Empire, the French Empire justified in their self-importance, their slavery, their quest for gold and their distain of those they conquered? We have to re-remember empires.

We remember the Bible’s treatment of military empires. Pharoah and the Egyptian Empire are forced to Let My People Go. The Children of Israel are little people and God set them up with good laws, to respect the alien, without armies, and to live good holy lives. They fail, but God is patient and guides them on and on. Their rulers also fail, like all do. They do self-importance, but God introduces the Servant-king. The What? The One they and we would not understand, the gentle ruler for the people, for all people who are created for God’s glory, the One who served the people and did not need soldiers.  So Isaiah’s not-understood Servant king is there to serve, heal and bring peace. Nation shall speak peace unto nation, and they will not learn war any more. He will settle disputes among the nations and they will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. First they will disarm first and then, obviously, nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war any more.

We remember the great reversal. The mighty are brought down. Hitler in the bunker. Caesar “Et Tu Brute”. Why do the mighty fall? Israel faces Babylon as captives, but Nebuchadnezzar finishes on his knees, eating grass and acknowledging the Lord God Almighty rules. God has them, and later rulers intoxicated in their own power in derision because of their pretentiousness. Those who self-promote with weapons, only destroy. They will fall. He will lift up the lowly. The mighty must come down from their thrones. Why do we not see that? The Superpowers will fall because they serve themselves. They are already falling.

Then I remember, nearly only I, because it has been obliterated from British national history, the Geneva Disarmament Conference of 1932, supported by tens of millions of people around the world to make the Great War the War to End All Wars. I have studied the German delegation confident that an agreement would see Hitler’s gang off into oblivion. President Hoover’s proposal to cut all aggressive weapons completely and all other weapons by a third with the US ones on the table was deliriously welcomed around the world – the USSR, Germany, China, Italy and most of the other states, because disarmament would mean peace. Yes. But then the British Cabinet, jealous of the US new superpower, holding on to its navy to control the Empire, squeezes the Conference into doing nothing with a little help from Fascist Japan. We stopped disarmament in 1932, and soon the arms traders were back in business, Hitler came to power and was funded and armed by the US and others into World War Two. We do not remember that history. It is covered up by the word “appeasement” and hidden from view.  We nearly did world multilateral disarmament in 1932 

And I remember a likeable former student, back from the Gulf, now strange, talking of depleted uranium, in physical distress before the label PTSD was available to me. There was another Northern Ireland student whom we held down all night when he flipped after the Troubles resurfaced in his life. We now know there are tens of millions of traumatized soldiers and civilians suiciding, or fighting, or angry, or withdrawn through the evils they have known. We each probably remember one or more of those suicides. Secondary PTSD among those who suffer from the main victims is another massive problem. WW1 shell shock was horror taken to the grave. War scars humanity. This, we now learn, is normal history in the USSR, China, Germany and now throughout the Middle East and after all wars. Terrorism is PTSD when your home has been trashed by the West. How dare we believe that war leaves us normal?

We remember soldiers showing bravery beyond thought out of concern for others, those who die, those who are honest and care for the enemy and for their comrades. We remember not the films, but the unseen goodness shown in war. We remember the honesty of soldiers who face death at our behest.

Then there is the antinomy, the great contradiction. The people we remember and honour were themselves shooting to kill. We honour the sanctity of their lives, but command them to kill – machine gun, howitzer, landmine, bomb, even nuclear bomb to destroy others. We remember the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the report of a little girl with her eyeballs in her hands. We remember the First US Secretary of Defence, James Forrestal went mad, partly because he had seen the bombs at Bikini Atoll. We command to kill, in principle to defend, but then in practice, to protect life and people die. The military train to kill to preserve the sanctity of life.

 Then we remember that they tell us this. The militarists sell the threat to kill as the route to peace. We have lived within this propaganda though our lifetimes from the Cold War to renewing Trident as if there were no alternative. They would say this, wouldn’t they? The business of militarism needs its advertising. We keep you safe. Give us more missiles, guns, nuclear weapons, fighters. We must spend a trillion dollars on this fighter. And we remember Corbyn and others who question this militarism are trashed, and are slightly uneasy. We remember Eisenhower warned us about the Military-Industrial Complex. This message rules the world – superpowers, military dictators and ordinary states who must have a military and pay for it, thoug their neighbours are all nice. The message always gets through and the arms companies flourish.

We remember the peace people as nice gentle folk who withdraw from war, and really do not pull their weight for the nation except as hospital porters of something. But some of us remember the real peace people. Tolstoy, the world’s greatest novelist, moves on from War and Peace to only peace. He lambasts the Kaiser. He backs the Doukabours who burn their weapons. Gladstone sees why WW1 will happen. Keir Hardie follows Jesus to try to stop the Great War and Pope Benedict XV organises the first Christmas truce and tries to make it permanent, because all will lose and civilisation will be destroyed. The real pacifists need to be heard again, because we do not remember them.

There is the pacifism which ridicules the whole military show and sees through it. Weapons only destroy. Individual murder is the greatest wrong, but mass murder validated by the State is “glorious”. What a waste. In the playground we know that kids get on much better without weapons, why not among states? Autocratic rulers needs weapons, but why run democracies on weapons? Militarism is often a 2-10% drag on the economy; disarmed peace costs nothing. Can’t you work it out: No weapons – No wars. One war leads to another. Weapons breed distrust. Peace works in Sawbridgeworth or Goolagong. Why have we idiots been persuaded that weapons are the way to live?

Then we remember Jesus  – he is always right and we have had two thousand years to hear him.  “Those who use the sword, will die by the sword” Yes, Japan, Germany and the USA should understand that. Pearl Harbour- Hiroshima. Nuremburg and the Bunker. The CIA train and arm Al Qaida to attack the USSR and finish up with the Twin Towers. Those who go for weapons suffer from them. Americans with guns under their pillows more often get shot. Militarism does not work. It is the biggest failed experiment in history. Jesus is right. Jesus is always right.

We remember that Jesus does the other. He laughs at us, because we are so thick. He does peace; he switches the war horse entrance to Jerusalem for the donkey, the parody of L’Arc De Triomphe. Sort all quarrels early, he says. Forgive wrongs. I rule by truth, not military power, he says to the representative of the Roman Empire, and tells the truth: “I am King of the Jews” even when the truth will automatically lead to his death. Turn the other cheek; break the causal chain of retaliation. Love your enemies and understand them; they will disappear. Make peace and you will be blessed – you have to manufacture peace; it will not just happen. Pass on peace to others. No threats. We can be friends. God’s gentle rule can come among us. I am the Lamb on the Throne. I use words not weapons. I do the Servant King and that is the God-given structure of government. I insist on it, and the first will be last and the last will be first. When we remember Jesus, the friend of all us sinners, war is powerless. Do NOT fear those who kill the body, he says, and after the resurrection, “My peace I leave with you.” So what will we do with it?

Then we remember that the United Nations passed the Treaty Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons with a substantial sane majority, and it is now ratified and will pass into Law next January. We sadly understand that the “Superpowers” who have not used nuclear weapons for seventy five years because they are unusable, but have spent tens of trillions on them, cannot lose face by abandoning them. But we can. We can quit nuclear weapons and all weapons in about six years, if we have a mind to it, and we ordinary people have to have a mind to it, together, democratically, around the world. The militarists will not do it, because turkeys do not vote for Christmas. But it can be done, and then we will honour those who have died. Then we will close down the war machine by truly remembering and bringing about the healing of the nations. “Blessed,” said Jesus, “are the peace makers, for they (we) will be called children of God.” “My peace I leave with you”, and we can do His peace, ordinary High Street peace that works for everybody and against no-one.

OVER 30 BISHOPS INCLUDING BOTH ARCHBISHOPS HAVE URGED THE UK GOVERNMENT TO COMPLY WITH THIS TREATY TO HELP MOVE TOWARDS A NUCLEAR FREE WORLD. AT PRESENT THE UK GOVERNMENT IS TRYING TO HIDE AWAY FROM THIS LEGAL COMMITMENT TO THE UN, BUT THIS STATEMENT BRINGS IT OUT INTO THE OPEN AS OBVIOUS MORAL AND COMMON SENSE.

THE GOVERNMENT CANNOT EVEN DISCUSS THE ARGUMENTS, BECAUSE THEY ARE SO BAD. IT WILL MUTTER SCARES TO COVER THIS POLICY VACUUM. SO LET US GO THROUGH THE ARGUMENTS THAT BORIS, AND THE OTHER NUCLEAR POWER POSSESSORS, WILL NOT ADDRESS.

ASIDE THE NUCLEAR POWER MILITARY LOBBY, (AND THIS HAS BEEN A GRAVY TRAIN THROUGHOUT OUR LIFETIMES) THE CRUCIAL PROBLEM IS THAT THE SUPERPOWER LEADERS CANNOT ADMIT THEY HAVE BEEN WRONG FOR SEVENTY FIVE YEARS. “OH WE GOOFED AND WASTED TENS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS AND JUST WENT AROUND SCARING ONE ANOTHER” WILL NOT BE SAID. WE HAVE TO BE THEIR COMMON SENSE, AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND HAS GOT IT MOVING. WE WORK WITH THE UNITED NATIONS TO GET THIS TREATY FULLY IMPLEMENTED..

FIRST, WE RECONSIDER WHY NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE NOT A GOOD IDEA.

1. THEY ARE UNUSABLE. Nuclear weapons have not been used for seventy five years, really because they are unusable. No person or state can plan to wipe out ten or a hundred million people merely because they cannot sort out a quarrel.
2. NUCLEAR WEAPONS ONLY DESTROY. Nuclear weapons only destroy – people, cities, nations, animals and even the planet. We talk about nuclear states as powerful, but the power to destroy is an illusion. Only the power to do good counts. Destruction is useless tantrum power. It is the other side of useless. Superficially, we learn that “if a single nuclear weapon “designed to emit EMP were detonated 250 to 300 miles up over the middle of the country it would disable the electronics in the entire United States.” That might be inconvenient, but one nuclear explosion can wipe out a conurbation of several millions and make life unliveable well beyond that. They destroy trillions of property and infrastructure. The only destroy – ridiculously that is their purpose. The nuclear people are toying with the destruction of the planet, the dark winter, the end of civilisation, what will make coronavirus seem a picnic. They hide the evil outcome, but this evil destruction needs to be prevented now.
3. CONTINUED PRODUCTION IS NONSENSE. Around the world over a hundred thousand nuclear weapons have been produced since 1945, none of which has been used and most of which have been scrapped at great cost. If we produced a hundred thousand flying saucers which were never used, we would stop making them and close the industry down.
4. THEY COST THE EARTH. The cost of these unused weapons is vast; it cannot really be calculated. It involves the bombs, missiles, submarines, planes, command systems, bases and manufacturing centres all spending money flat out. The US has spent well over $10 trillion on them. Other nuclear powers – at least another $10 trillion on these useless things. Wasting far more than $20 trillion is criminal and should cease. This vast cost has ruled out good spending which would help people, end poverty and be useful. By contrast, peace is free and costs nothing.
5. THE SYSTEM RUNS ON BUILT-UP FEAR AND MOST OF THE FEAR SURROUNDS NUCLEAR WEAPONS. The nuclear powers fear one another. The US feared the USSR but not before the USSR feared the US. China Fears the West. India fears Pakistan. We did not fear Russia after the Cold War, but now Russia fears us and we fear them. France does not know whom it should fear. Most of the fear is of nuclear weapons, but the weapons purport to address the problem they have created. Those with the most weapons fear the most.
6. FEAR IS CONTINUALLY STOKED BY THE MILTARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. Most of the fear is generated by those who depend and profit from the nuclear defence system. In the 50s the US military greatly exaggerated the USSR forces to get more bombers. Since then the nuclear sector and its paid political spokespeople continually talk up the external nuclear threat. We are taught to fear tinpot North Korea, Russia, China and so on SO THAT THE DEFENCE MONEY KEEPS FLOWING. They profit from our fear and explain why the policy is continued.
7. NUCLEAR ACCIDENTS ARE A POSSIBILITY. There have been a string of accidents and near strike backs. In early 1961 two nuclear bombs came down at Faro, West Virginia, about 300 miles from Washington. On one three out of four of the safety devices failed and one held. On the other the firing device was on after it broke from the bomb. In September 1983 Stanislav Petrov saw five incoming missiles on his screen and should have notified the Soviet retaliatory counter-strike people. He concluded that because it was only five missiles it was a screen error. At the time the US was flying bombers straight towards USSR targets veering off at the last moment to scare the USSR operatives. There have been dozens of US and USSR nuclear bombs lost at sea, ablaze in aircraft or in other dangers. PROBABLY NUCLEAR WEAPONS HAVE BEEN A GREATER INTERNAL THREAT THAN AN EXTERNAL THREAT.
8. NUCLEAR WEAPONS GIVE A UN SECURITY COUNCIL PLACE.  The US, Russia and China are the world’s most heavily armed states and permanent members of the Security Council. France and the UK believe they retain permanent places partly because they have nuclear weapons. Actually, this gives a power base to five militarist and arms exporting states which locks the UN into the status quo, but it is a dumb playground bully way of thinking. So, although the UN is committed to peace, its five most powerful members are militarists. This structure has headlocked the UN since 1945. The smaller nations, talking sense, rightly challenge this.
9.  NUCLEAR WEAPONS HASTEN GLOBAL WARMING. Nuclear weapons are intense energy users. The bombs are obviously are the biggest potential energy wasters on the planet, but tests, missiles, bombers, nuclear submarines, bases, weapon development all use lots of energy and the most intense energy materials on the planet. A missile not only costs a lot of money, it costs a lot of energy before it is fired. Cutting this vast waste out is the biggest green win we could have bar one. Even nuclear energy is now more costly and less efficient than wind, solar, tidal and others. It has nothing going for it.
10. THE UNDERLYING STANCE OF NUCLEAR DEFENCE IS FLAWED. All the nuclear states say they would never use them first, but only in reprisal, but they teeter on the edge of first strike, because there is no defence. A missile will always get through. Reagan was talked into “Star Wars” as a defence shield. It made many arms firms very rich, but it could not work. It was not just the problem of “hitting a bullet with a bullet”, or of nuclear fireworks over Britain between the USSR and the US, but the fact that stopping one missile was many times more expensive than making one. There is no defence against nuclear weapons, except to get rid of them all.
11. MISSILE DETECTION IS DODGY. Nuclear defence involves spotting incoming missiles, so that one can respond. But it is a dodgy process. We all toast Mr Petrov because he worked out the five incoming missiles weren’t. But the nuclear missile detection systems are paranoid. You have minutes to decide whether to blow up the planet in accordance with your threats of retaliation. Are they missiles, geese, mistakes or what? Here we could get catatonic laughter. “Ballistic Missile Threat Inbound to Hawaii. Seek Immediate Shelter. This is not a drill.” Oh, he pressed the wrong button. “Ministers have been accused of covering up the failed test which saw the launch of an unarmed Trident II D5 missile from a British submarine off the coast of Florida in June.” Oh, Sorry, yes we are your ally and very glad you sold us the missiles in the first place, but it went the wrong way – yours, Theresa May. The whole system is dangerous and flawed, because there is no time for corrections in this counterstrike culture. The knock out counter punch does not work;  not getting in the ring in the first place is far more effective.
12. NATIONAL CONQUEST WAR IS OVER. Though many have not realised, national conquest war no longer works. The US failed in Vietnam and Iraq. 9/11 showed that the cost of subduing those you attack rises and rises. You cannot occupy, tax or exploit. Countries are full up and too complex to control. War is a failed enterprise and nuclear weapons belong to that failed enterprise – a useless weapon in a failed enterprise.  
13. NATIONAL MILITARY RIVALRY IS SILLY. As Europe has shown, national military rivalry is unnecessary and it is far better to get on with one another. Time and again, nationalism, patriotism, mutual blame, self-promotion, leading the world, imperialism have led to destructive useless wars, including several hundred in European history. Now Europe knows that Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Poland, Portugal and the other countries living together is the better way. Some of the nuclear rivalries are tragic. India and Pakistan need their resources for their people. Now they are buying vast quantities of nuclear related weapons to feed a rivalry which can only destroy. Expressing National Rivalry through Nuclear Weapons is a dumb response. When you meet friends and neighbours, you do not put a bomb on the table, let alone a bigger one.  
14. NUCLEAR WEAPONS DO NOT DETER CONVENTIONAL WARS. One argument for nuclear weapons used to be that nuclear weapons deterred conventional weapons, because they were obviously more powerful. This is not the case. Conventional wars have gone on in the last seventy years, often against nuclear powers, and the nuclear weapons have not deterred anything. Vietnam was not deterred from beating the US. Egypt was not deterred from evicting Britain from Suez. Afghanistan got rid of the USSR in a long war and Saddam did not give up in Iraq or Assad in Syria. It would be difficult to suggest one war which has been deterred by the possession of nuclear weapons.
15. NUCLEAR POLICY IS NOT DEFENDED STRAIGHT. Nuclear weapons are sold to the public through fear – “We will protect you”. Actually, the fear is unnecessary. No state has threatened the UK for the last seventy years. The threats are talked up. In the Renewing Trident debate Teresa May could only come up with North Korea as a country to fear. Second, those who are against Nuclear Weapons are presented as traitors. I remember chatting with Bruce Kent, of CND, one evening on an empty Finsbury Park Underground Station.  The media had claimed he was receiving money from the USSR. He laughed, and I asked how he tackled it. “I just told them to come and have a look at my office.” The disarmers are demonised, lied about, singled out, as Corbyn recently experienced. The rhetoric has the underlying form of  “WE” are fighting the Battle of Britain again and so, of course, we are in the right. The nuclear policy makers do not explain why a never used, unusable, expensive weapon should be retained.
16. NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE USELESS AGAINST TERRORISM. We are told terrorism is the main threat. Obviously nuclear weapons are useless in addressing this kind of conflict, because it is micro militarism, personally carried.
17. THE POLITICAL RHETORIC HAS BEEN FALSE. Between 1945 and 1990 we were told that the nuclear problem was Communism. When the USSR collapsed in 1990 under the weight of its military expenditure and the Cold War finished, Western/Russian relations were fine for a while. Now with Russia governed by a Capitalist oligarchy, we have reverted to a Cold war stance, because the military regimes in the US, Russia, NATO and the UK needed mutual enemies. The problem was not Communism at all. It was militarism.
18. BECAUSE WE ARE AN ECONOMICALLY INTERDEPENDENT WORLD, NATIONALIST NUCLEAR WEAPON STATES ARE OUT OF DATE.  We import and export around the world, travel, share technologies, food and education. We have an interdependent world economy at many levels. This old nationalistic nuclear weapons culture and distrust doesn’t fit the world economy. It is merely foisted on us by national self-interested militaries and the arms manufacturers, the merchants of death, because it means attacking those who help us and trade with us…
19. NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY. The Non Proliferation Treaty required the Nuclear Powers to disarm and they agreed to do so. They have failed to honour that commitment. The nuclear powers should do that now.
20. NUCLEAR WEAPONS DO NOT UNITE NATIONS, BUT DIVIDE THEM. The UK ignored the United Nations over the Iraq War and with the United States, it has created chaos in the Middle East. We should abide by UN Treaties like this one.  This is a Treaty passed by over two thirds of UN members and ratified by over fifty. Treaties require members to comply. We have signed up to “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state” which fits this Nuclear Weapons Ban. We should be promoting peace. Obviously nuclear weapons are a threat. It is time to practice peace and honour the collective democracy of the United Nations and the meaning of its title.
21. CONVENTIONAL WORLD MULTILATERAL DISARMAMENT CAN FOLLOW.  It is sometimes said that removing nuclear weapons makes conventional weapons more dangerous. We have seen that does not seem to be so. Conventional wars have taken place frequently with and without nuclear powers, with nuclear weapons not damping their occurrence. Nevertheless, the multilateral acceptance of nuclear disarmament could be swiftly followed by multilateral conventional disarmament. If conventional weapons were cut by 20% a year for five years with full scrutiny, open inspection, policing, the required closure of all terrorist groups by disarmament or force,  we could close down all militarism in five years. It is actually easier than competitive arming, far cheaper and allows military tensions to ease away.  Disarmament works.
22. JESUS SUMMED IT UP. Jesus’ words, “Those who take the sword perish by the sword” identify the problem. Aggression, threats, weapons always bring reprisal and later self-destruction. It has been so throughout history. Weapons do not work. We need to close down the process, which now enslaves world leaders. Surely, we should realise that now after two thousand years. Tit for Tat, and keeping ahead in weapons race, reveals a certain lack of intelligence. I will blow you up before you can blow me up is not a good relational attitude. We can do better.

ALL THESE ARGUMENTS POINT TO THE UNDERLYING FAILURE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS. THEY ARE NOT FOR THE GOOD OF THE NATIONS, BUT KEEP MILITARY ESTABLISHMENTS GOING AND THE CONTRACTS FLOWING. POLITICIANS DO NOT EVEN OFFER A RATIONALE FOR THEM ANY MORE, BUT EVADE ALL DISCUSSION, BECAUSE THE CASE FOR NUCLEAR WEAPONS IS SO BAD.  THE NUCLEAR EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES AND IT IS TIME TO TELL HIM THAT HE IS FAT AND USELESS. THE POLITICIANS HAVE PROBLEMS SAYING THEY HAVE BEEN WRONG, BUT MILLIONS AND THEN BILLIONS CAN HELP THEM CHANGE THEIR MINDS. THE POLITICS OF THIS TRANSITION WILL EMERGE. FIRST WE NEED ACKNOWLEDGEMENT THAT NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE USELESS AND MUST GO. THEN, AS JESUS SAID, WE MAKE PEACE, PASS IT ON, UNDO THREATS AND CONSTRUCTED ENEMIES AND MAKE SURE THAT NATIONS ONLY SPEAK PEACE TO ONE ANOTHER AND DO NOT LEARN WAR ANY MORE.

THE AGE OF SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL WARFARE.

Science is seen as benign, but around the world the military and the arms industry does much of the world’s most advanced scientific and technical work. Probably a million scientists and technicians are a highly funded elite running the world’s most sophisticated R and D programme. Military science does space, nuclear, ballistics, explosions, ‘intelligence’, materials, flight, metals, propaganda, information, speed, chemical and biological warfare, communications, encryption, logistics and a large number of other specialities where it is at the “edge” of science. Universities, research institutes and special units often receive money directly from governments to “spearhead” much of world science and technology in military directions.

Of course, many scientists see their research as neutral and impartial in relation to the subject matter. That is an important principle, but it does not address the shape of scientific research. For science travels. One discovery leads to another. Money is put into areas of research. It is like a tree which is cut back or has overladen branches. And technology makes demands of science. It creates  direction. Ballistics is science and weaponry. Fritz Haber, poison gas, WW1 Gas and the gas chambers are direction. The Atom Bomb led to the H Bomb. WW1 biplanes led through to the F35 costing more than a trillion dollars with a lot of practical science involved.

Overall, Militarism may be the main direction of world science and technology. This is not surprising. WW1 saw about seven years of frenetic build up to war and WW2 ten years of fairly total preoccupation with it. We focus on Alan Turing, the person and mathematician, but he was merely one of a vast number sucked into the military machine. In these periods weapons and war was the fierce focus of almost all scientific research. That continued through the Cold War to 1990 with heavy expenditure and the competitive technical development of weapons which bankrupted the USSR. So, for 60 years of the last century, weapons were heavy drivers of science and technology. We should feel little surprise if it is still dominant.

THE IGNORED BIAS

Of course, this is camouflaged. We see science as neutral, investigating everything openly, and so it partly is in schools and some universities. Scientists look away from this military focus, and pretend it does not exist. But money talks. Research funds, the recruitment of scientists, the technical work where the money is, the companies and webs of military related developments channel recruits into their domain. Both in democracies and dictatorships the weapons’ people find “good” careers and the direction of research is turned towards the required ends and away from normal useful humane science.

We do not easily see this bias. Rockets were sophisticated; bikes were ignored. Explosives were developed; house insulation was slow. Poison gas was opened up, solar energy was unthought. Nuclear bombs were tested round the world; its dangers were slowly investigated. Aircraft carriers were developed, but fresh water carriers were not. Star Wars technology was developed, although it could not work, while the science of trees was underfunded. The pre-occupation with military science and technology had to be right, because we were under threat from someone else’s weapons. The obvious conclusion that threatening science and technology is dumb for all of us was drowned in Cold War propaganda, which carried on even when the Cold War bathwater had drained away. Some scientists protested, but they were drowned out by the System. This great bias was unaddressed and is unaddressed in West and East. Budgets of trillions keep the military science and technology juggernaught expanding.

THE BY-PRODUCT MYTH.

Of course, we were all taught that Teflon, used on rockets, was also great on non-stick frying pans. Military scientific research produced good by-products and was therefore part of useful science. Nuclear weapons research led to useful nuclear power. Most of these arguments are special pleading. Aside the decommissioning problems, we now find that good old windmills do the job better than nuclear power and copper bottomed frying pan does quite well. The big by-product story is space exploration arising from military rockets, which of course it did. The formation of NASA is interesting. Partly, it resulted from the Cold War competition with the USSR’s Spitnuk launch. Partly, it was Werner van Braun’s tortured conscience, but more widely the military rocket people realised that space exploration was a PR coup because space rockets might be useful rather than just destructive. So, the landing on the Moon was related to military research, and has helped astronomical knowledge, but it was also PR for an industry that otherwise had a load of killer rockets in silos and subs which were at best going nowhere. Meanwhile rush hour traffic is unbelievably slow and telescopes tell us a great deal. By-products are usually less important than products, and we should therefore focus not on military technology by-products, but on the central focus of the products which is to kill.

THE TECHNOLOGIES OF KILLING, MAIMING AND DESTROYING.

Really, military scientific and technical research has been directed towards killing and destruction; that is indisputable. It has been successful with 200 million dying through war and weapons. The gas used in WW1 was horrific, and developed by all sides. One and a half billion shells were used in WW1, killing millions and producing PTSD, or shell shock, in tens of millions.  Planes were developed where you could push bombs over the side, then bombers, then carpet bombers. Machine guns allowed a hundred to be killed in one spray of firing. In WW2 we had the horrific concentration camp gassing of Jews and other minorities, and finally nuclear weapons arrived where the lucky children who had not been killed held their eyeballs in their hands and tried to put their flesh back. Now we can destroy the human race many times over. They have not yet been used but their purpose is killing. One nuclear bomb wipes out the people in Greater Manchester well into the Pennines.

This death and destruction go right up to the present. The 21^st century has seen Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen and other territories bombed with large loss of life, destruction, tens of millions of refugees, and failed states. The US and UK played a large part in these calamities. Trillions has been spent on these wars and trillions of damage has been done. So, this investment in the advanced technologies of death and destruction has produced its straight line outcome. Now drones will fight instead of soldiers, at vast costs, and conflict in space will add to potential tensions. Improved military technologies are merely more destructive. Technologies of death are what it says on the tin.

THE GREAT COVER-UP.

Except it does not say it on the tin. This vast scientific and technological investment is for death and destruction. It has done what it was for, yet we have the myth. Weapons of death and destruction produce peace and security through “defence”. The weapons people and the scientists would say that wouldn’t they. But let us examine what they say. Since the time of Hannibal or earlier weapons on one side produce weapons on another. A new technology on one side is soon picked up by the other, whether it be chariots, lances, crossbow, longbow, cannon, armour, muskets, rifles, bayonets, radar, dynamite, gun turrets, barrel rifling, explosive shells, gas, mines, torpedoes, nuclear weapons and so on. Whatever one side develops, another side develops. We have had two hundred years of the modern era to work out that wars do not work. All sides lost World War One and World War Two. America  was winning in Vietnam and then lost in Vietnam. They won in Iraq and then lost in Iraq.  The CIA won in Afghanistan and then faced 9/11 by way of reprisal. What is the point of two sides fighting to death and destruction without learning the lesson? WW1 was the War To End All Wars for obvious reasons, but then it was not. The Great Geneva Disarmament Conference in 1932 which could have prevented Hitler coming to power was defeated by the militarists, including those who wanted to work on new planes and ships. Since then the wars have gone on. It requires the intellect of someone banging their head against the wall to see the whole enterprise of competitive military technology is dumb for everyone. But it is not challenged, because at present scientists and technologists compromise with the military establishment and do not challenge the lie.

ENDING THE LIE. THE SCIENTIFIC/TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLT.

The lie is that the next bit of technological development and its supporting science will win the next war. Always the hope is dangled there. Usually, it is unspoken, because explicit it is so silly. Satellites in space will win us the next war, or prevent a war with a power who has also put satellites in space. All the moves have the same character as giving two boys who are quarrelling a bigger gun each to help sort out their quarrel. Even thick aristocrats quit duels a couple of centuries back.  Wars do not work, but the arms companies keep persuading us that it is the “way forward”., simply because they make the money and they have the technologies. They would say that wouldn’t they, backed by the militaries. They tame politicians, demanding loyalty through blind patriotism and we do weapons, war, weapons, war, decade after decade, destroying the planet, messing up the lives of hundreds of millions and wasting science and technology on death and destruction. This oh so dumb ritual of scientific genocide scientists must address. They should, and can, close it down. They cannot take the militarists’ dollar and abjectly do death and destruction, and redesign national budgets. There is no military technological breakthrough. We are trillions better off without fighting. World Multilateral Disarmament is easier than WMD. Scientists and technicians should revolt, en masse, against this prostitution of their purposes and do good.   

It is time for the scientific rebellion. Military science and technology is destroying the planet through global warming, war, threats and mega military technology. It is time to stop and disown this direction simply because it kills people and offers a false hope. Some will have split loyalties, but those can be resolved. The detailed stance against this scientific/technical power needs some thought, and here is not the place to do it, but scientists can fight, without weapons, and develop strategies to win. The glorious truth is that winning this one harms no-one and benefits us all.