There shall be no new cold war
By Mikael on Monday 18 August 2008, 02:31 - Permalink
(This article is dedicated to the Russian political scientist Alla Glinchikova, who asked, recently, on the mailing list of the European Social Forum: what was done to break this tendency by all of us? Was it estimated as high priority not in words, but in actions? Is there a strategy of developing of civil diplomacy to enhance civil trust in Eastern Europe?)
Are the great powers returning to Cold War politics? If that is the case, "the war against terrorism" will perhaps be tuned down, which is good. The bad news is the return of the balance of terror. The US missile shield in Poland and the Czhech Republic is a clear reminder of the basic nuclear structure of the cold war, which has remained in place, as well as of the sad fact that the parties are seeking first strike capability.
NATO's expansion continues. A similar Eastern pact is probably underway. In 2001, Russia and China, plus Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The military dimension of the SCO-cooperation might soon become its prime purpose. Other Eastern countries may also want to join the pact.
Therefore, a new division of the world into two antagonistic military blocs is again a possible scenario, in spite of the globalization of production, trade and finances. Unfortunately, the general economic development and the security policies of the states are still dominated by corporate and/or Nationalist military-industrial interests.
Much talk is heard in these days about the need for a re-assessment of the security policy. Do we need to increase the military budget and to modernize the existing systems for mass destruction on earth, in the seas and in outer space? In what sense will we be more secure if we decide to tie ourselves to military pacts between states, which threaten each other with weapons of mass destruction?
Judge for yourself what the gibberish of the security political parrots is worth and where it leads us.
Who is capable of breaking this situation, which in many ways resembles the period before the outbreak of the first world war in 1914?
Presidents, foreign ministers and diplomats should of course continue to do their best, but they hardly have the power to stop the alarming trend. They stand for an obsolete political world system, which is based on sovereign states, we are told, but can only regenerate hierarchically ordered military blocs.
The peoples of Europe, including the Russians, should therefore turn their backs to the security policies of their governments. And that is precisely what will happen. The peoples of the whole world already cooperate through, for instance, the social forum and the internet, in order to create a security, which is worth its name.
By the way, we have an excellent example of citizens' diplomacy from the last Cold War, namely, the European Nuclear Disarmament movement of the 1980s, which joined together millions of people from the Atlantic to the Urals. Independent peace groups and movements grew like mushrooms not only in Western Europe, but also in Czhechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, GDR and the Soviet Union. And they managed to cooperate over the bloc borders against the insane nuclear militarism of the Russian (Soviet), Eastern European, Western European and American governments.
The people power generated by the END-movement caused Reagan and Gorbachev to sign the agreement on intermediate nuclear forces in 1987, whereafter a detente in the Cold War followed. However, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the END-movement's vision of a denuclearized Europe faded as quickly as if somebody had given the signal for "danger over"!
But the danger was not over, and it is time now as ever to continue the END-movement. There shall be no new Cold War but a non-militant federation called "The European Union", which includes Russia, Ukraine and Georgia, and bans all weapons of mass destruction from its territory, starting with the nukes of the present EU - the French and British ones.
Looking at the program of the next European Social Forum (17-21 September), the European Peace Action seems to be particularly well prepared for doing what needs to be done. ("The European Peace Action wants to create a Europe working together in peaceful solidarity through nonviolent direct action and popular mobilisation."). You may all want to sign the appeal for a nuclear-free EU, which was launched at the conference organized by the Action des Citoyens pour le Désarmement nucléaire at Saintes on 11 May, 2008 (The Saintes Appeal; http://www.acdn.net/). See you at the ESF in Malmö!
Mikael Böök
Comments
As a fellow-signatory with Mikael Book of the Saintes Appeal for a Nuclear-Free Europe I naturally agree with Mikael's proposal for the banning of all nuclear weapons from Europe, starting with the French and British ones.
But my vision of the territorial boundaries is different from the vision Mikael has outlined above of a Europe including Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, etc.
In Greece, where I live, the policy of the previous Socialist government was for inclusion of Turkey in the European Union. It is a policy that has been continued by the present conservative government and in my view it is a good policy.
There are many advantages to the existing polity of Turkey, and even moreso the polity that could be developed there. Turkey offers an alternative model for secularization of society to the "Western" model that has now been diverted into anti-Islamism.
Turkey's present government is the equivalent of a Western European Christian Democrat government of the more socially responsible, pre-neoliberal kind. Or it least it has tendencies in that direction which could and should be strengthened.
I would even say that it would be appropriate for Istanbul to become the PERMANENT seat of the European Social Forum and the centre of European Civil Society, a move paralleling Constantine's embrace of Christianity and shifting of the centre of the Roman Empire to the East.
There is an alternative, basically French, conception of European integration which embraces the Arab-speaking states of North Africa (also, of course, once part of the Roman Empire [and the Ottoman Empire]). This is an idea that has been instrumentalized by Sarkozy so as to fill the whole area up with French nuclear power stations, but it is shared by people in France and perhaps in North Africa who do not share Sarkozy's politics and priorities.
Another good aspect of this vision of European expansion into some of the Arab world is that it includes Israel.
How marvellous it would be if the denuclearization of Europe could also include the denuclearization of Israel.
So what about expansion to the East?? What about Russia and its former satellites?
Perhaps Russia has a different historical mission: to expand westward, "reconquering" Alaska (the Orthodox Church is strong among the indigenous peoples of Alaska, having successfully withstood the proselytzing of Protestant - and to a lesser extent Catholic - missionaries.
Perhaps Russia's mission is to help overcome the residual barbarism of the United States, to help bring a civilization there which can also embrace the ordinary people and not just an elite.
Georgia, and hopefully also Ukraine, should go in that direction too, along with the Russia to which they have had such strong historical links. That would be the preferable future in my opinion.
Already there are links between Russia and the American left that have no counterpart in Western Europe. Look at these recent article from Pravda, for example:
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/co...
Could you imagine anything like that coming out of the European Social Forum??
Europe and Russia are moving in different directions. That has been the process ever since the eighties, when both Mikael and I participated in a movement, the European Nuclear Disarmament movement, whose effect was to get Russia OUT of Europe. We must take responsibility for our own actions and what they achieved, and persist in the same logic today, so that we can finish what we started.
Later this year, all things being equal, Mikael and I will be collaborating in an initiative to take place in Aigina, Greece, that will highlight the contribution made to European integration by two great statesmen, Ioannis Capodistrias and Altiero Spinelli. Both of these historical figures started their careers in collaboration with Russia and both broke with Russia.
No, Wayne, I could not imagine anything like that coming out of the European Social Forum.
Europe already surrounds the planet. Therefore, it can no longer move in any particular direction.
Henceforward, all the conflicts of the world are inter-European conflicts.
But Europe is a myth.
Indeed, Europe is the myth.
And truth is elsewhere.
'You are not in the place. The place is in you.'
Very interesting post. Might be old news, but it was new news to me.