[GLODEM] PREVENTING TERRORISM

[Hanayo Ozaki <hanayoamani at yahoo.co.jp>]

GLOBAL DEMILITARIZATION                                 July 26, 2005

Dear friends, I am sad to inform you that Marvin Clark, co-founder
of Global Demilitarization, died on July 1, 2005. Sue continues
their common work for peace.

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The Real Threat is Nuclear Terrorism

by Dietrich Fischer
Associate of the
Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research (TFF)
19. July 2005

The four terrorist bombs that exploded in London on July 7,
2005, caused immense suffering and grief. This crime rightly
received nearly universal condemnation. Violence does not solve
any problems, it only aggravates them.

Yet this tragedy only foreshadows much worse future
catastrophes if the world continues on its current course.

As long as the big powers insist on maintaining nuclear
weapons, claiming they need them to protect their security, they
cannot expect to prevent other countries and terrorist
organizations from acquiring such weapons--and some day using them.

The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed over 200,000
people. Today's nuclear bombs are vastly more powerful. If even
one nuclear device had been detonated in a parked car or a boat on
the Thames, the Center of London would be strewn with smoking,
radioactive rubble and over a million people might have been killed
outright, and scores more would die slowly from radiation disease.

The double standard, "Nuclear weapons are good for us, but bad
for you", is stupid and unconvincing. Believing that nuclear
weapons technology can be kept secret forever is naive.

Those who still believe in the fairy-tale of "deterrence
theory" better wake up to the age of suicide bombers. Anyone
convinced to go straight to paradise if blown up cannot be
"deterred" by the threat of horrendous retaliation.

Governments that order tons of bombs to be rained on Iraq and
Afghanistan should not be surprised if they plant ideas in the
minds of eager imitators. Osama bin Laden once benefitted from
support and training financed by the CIA.

Richard Falk, long a Professor of International Law at
Princeton University, rightly pointed out: "The greatest utopians
are those who call themselves 'realists,' because they falsely
believe that we can survive the nuclear age with politics as usual.

The true realists are those who recognize the need for change."

What changes must we make if we want humanity to survive?

[1] We must stop believing that problems can be solved by applying
offensive military force. That only encourages others to pay back
in kind. Policing to stop criminals, and defense against a foreign
attack, are justified, but not military interventions abroad,
except peacekeeping operations ordered by the UN security council
to stop genocide or humanitarian disasters.

[2] Thirty-seven years after signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty, it is time for the nuclear powers to fulfill their
commitment to nuclear disarmament.

We also need a vastly more open world, where all nuclear
weapons are verifiably destroyed, and the manufacturing of new ones
cannot be hidden. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
can now inspect only sites that member countries voluntarily place
under its supervision. If a suspected weapons smuggler could tell
a border guard, "You may check under my seat, but don't open the
trunk," such an "inspection" would be meaningless. The IAEA must
have the power to inspect any suspected nuclear facilities,
anywhere in the world, without advance warning, otherwise it is
impossible to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

The governments that now possess nuclear weapons object to
such intrusive inspections as a "violation of their sovereignty."
Yet many airline passengers also protested at first against having
their luggage searched for guns or explosives, when such searches
were introduced after a series of fatal hijackings. Today,
passengers realize that such inspections protect their own
security. Those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear.
Sooner or later, governments will reach the same conclusion. The
question is only whether this will happen before or after the first
terrorist nuclear bomb explodes.

[3] We need to address the root causes of terrorism: long
festering unresolved conflicts. Particularly in situations of
asymmetric power relations, the weaker side may be tempted to
resort to random attacks against vulnerable targets of the more
powerful antagonist, as in the 1970s the Red Brigades in Italy, the
Red Army Faction in West Germany and the Irish Republican Army in
Britain. More recently the Tamil Tigers have set off bombs in
public places in their fight against the militarily superior Sri
Lankan army and government. Today, car bombs explode almost daily
in Iraq. Of course, the killing of civilians with bombs dropped
from the air, instead of being transported in cars and backpacks,
also represents a form of "state terrorism" that stimulates violent
popular resistance, which is then used as justification for an
intensified hunt for terrorists, in a vicious cycle.

The meeting between President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and
King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia aboard the cruiser USS Quincy in
Egypt on 14 February 1945, in which Roosevelt committed the United
States to support the Saudi Royal Family against internal
opposition, in return for guaranteed access to oil, may partly
explain why 15 of the 19 suicide bombers of 11 September 2001 in
New York and Washington were Saudi citizens.

Arms exports to oppressive, dictatorial regimes produce
dissatisfaction among those who suffer as a result.

The Middle East conflict, where Palestinians have lived for
generations in refugee camps and suffer from high unemployment, is
a breeding ground for suicide bombers.

At a broader level, a world economic system in which every day
over 100,000 people, mostly children, die needlessly from hunger
and preventable diseases, while there is enormous luxury and waste
in wealthy countries, breeds discontent.

The fact that the United States has undertaken 67 foreign
military interventions since World War II, in which an estimated 12
million people have been killed (3 million in vietnam alone) has
not endeared it in many parts of the world.

Terrorism cannot be ended by killing terrorists. Doing so
only enrages their admirers and provokes them to seek revenge.

It is necessary to redress the sources of grievance and great
injustice that drives people to sacrifice their own life in order
to seek revenge. The West must enter into dialogue with those who
fight against it, to remove the motivation for resort to violence,
including random violence against innocent citizens. The violence
in the Northern Ireland conflict ended when the British government
agreed to talks, instead of relying exclusively on the army to
silence the grievances of the opposition.

It is also important to transform conflicts peacefully before
they erupt in violence. This is a skill that can be taught and
learned. For example, Johan Galtung, widely regarded as founder of
the field of peace research, was able to help end a longstanding
border conflict between Ecuador and Peru over which they had fought
four wars by suggesting to make the disputed territory into a
"binational zone with a natural park", jointly administered. This
peaceful intervention cost nearly nothing compared with a military
peacekeeping operation.

We need a UN Organization for Mediation, with several hundred
trained mediators who can help prevent conflicts from erupting into
violence. This is a very inexpensive, worthwhile investment in
human survival, compared with the trillion dollars the world spends
each year to arm millions of troops, which only make the world
collectively less secure.

If we cling to obsolete ways of thinking--that threatening
others will make us safe--we face extinction as a human species,
like other species that failed to adapt to new conditions.

Is it a realistic prospect to get rid of all nuclear weapons?
Certainly more realistic than waiting until they are used, whether
deliberately or by accident. Some have argued that we cannot
disinvent nuclear weapons and therefore will have to live with them
as long as civilization exists. But nobody has disinvented
cannibalism either, we have simply learned to abhor it. Can't we
learn to abhor equally the incineration of entire cities with
nuclear weapons?

__________________________________________________________________

Dietrich Fischer, a TFF Associate, is Academic Director of the
European University Center for Peace Studies in Stadtschlaining,
Austria, and co-director of TRANSCEND, a peace and development
network.

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Best regards,


Sue & Marvin Clark, Co-directors, Global Demilitarization


42 Maple Avenue, Troy, NY 12180, USA


Hanayo Ozaki, Hiroshima





Administrative Board Members:


Oscar Arias, Nobel Peace Laureate, honorary member


Jonathan Schell, Author


Mary Evelyn Jegen, SND, Pax Christi International


Bill Price, Director, World Peacemakers


Bill Hartung, Author


Dietrich Fischer, Author


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