SHAPING A PEACETIME ECONOMY
Cortright, David
What Next for the Peace Movement Shaping a Peacetime Economy BY DAVID CORTRJGHT The American peace movement faces a dilemma—a dilemma of success. Because of changes we helped bring about-the INF...
...These activists hold to the simple but radical belief that all war is wrong, and that armies everywhere must be dismantled...
...But, like nuclear war and intervention in Central America, the crises in the Middle East and South Africa do not offer the organizing potential for building a mass peace movement...
...It is important to remember that the U.S.-Soviet arms race and the stockpiling of nuclear arms in Europe and elsewhere began precisely as a result of perceived imbalances in conventional forces...
...The U.S...
...As a result, the hundreds of thousands of people who flocked to our ranks in the early 1980s are now drifting away...
...It is the fear of this conventional imbalance that also underlies the NATO military doctrine allowing for first use of nuclear weapons on the tactical battlefield...
...Because of changes we helped bring about-the INF Treaty, U.S.-Soviet summits, the peace process in Central America—public concerns about nuclear weapons and the threat of war have diminished...
...policy in the Middle East and South Africa have received little attention in the mainstream peace movement...
...The policy of military withdrawal should be accompanied by an absolute pledge of nonintervention...
...reminded us, peace is not merely the absence of war...
...Nuclear weapons are, of course, the most dangerous and frightening form of weaponry...
...This commitment has no political or military justification, and it is enormously costly...
...More than 500,000 U.S soldiers are now stationed abroad...
...Issues relating to U.S...
...forces is in NATO...
...rected to solving the urgent social, environmental, and economic challenges of the modern world...
...The peace movement must become more active in these efforts, joining the struggles to bring peace to the Middle East and freedom to South Africa...
...The campaigns to cut off aid for the contras and halt intervention in El Salvador have sparked widespread public concern...
...aggression in Central America, anti-inter-ventionism has assumed greater importance in the peace movement...
...None of these forces is necessary for the legitimate national-defense needs of the United States...
...Nuclear and nonnuclear arms are inseparably linked as part of a seamless web of arms competition...
...These two aspects of an economic program—emphasizing the huge costs of the arms race and pressing for alternative-use planning of military facilities—must be presented together...
...In recent years, in response to U.S...
...it is the presence of justice...
...Herein lies the key to rebuilding the peace movement: We must emphasize the economic costs of the arms race...
...The process of eliminating nuclear weapons should begin with shelving the most destabilizing first-strike weapons...
...The INF Treaty affected just 4 per cent of the superpower arsenal...
...How can the peace movement maintain the necessary pressure for change in the face of today's changing political conditions...
...Peace can only exist where there is genuine security and justice for all people, where the resources now squandered on armaments are rediDavid Cortright is a senior associate of SANE/FREEZE...
...We haven't been able to go beyond these single issues to develop a blueprint for the future...
...some 350,000 American soldiers are on duty in Europe...
...military remains in place, as evidenced by the continuing development of such systems as GWEN, the Ground Wave Emergency Network, designed to enable military commanders to keep fighting after a nuclear attack...
...Then, to prevent any escalation in the arms race, a comprehensive nuclear test ban is essential...
...Randall Forsberg has called this goal "confining the military to defense...
...How do we get from here to there...
...In this century of world wars, nuclear bombs, and endless military intervention, how can we speak convincingly of an unarmed world...
...We should reach out to workers, especially those in arms industries and on military bases, to develop a joint program for guaranteeing continued employment as the country and the world move toward disarmament...
...This is a serious omission...
...As Jobs with Peace, SANE, and other groups have done, we must develop and distribute "trade-off' literature that compares the price of such major weapons systems as the MX with the price of new hospitals and schools...
...The Arias peace plan and discussions between the contras and Sandinistas have dampened activism...
...Obviously, we can and must continue to advance the moral and policy arguments against nuclear war and military intervention...
...Whether it be in Afghanistan or Central America, no nation should unilaterally send troops abroad...
...If Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan could discuss the elimination of all nuclear weapons within ten years, as they did at Reykjavik, certainly the peace movement can do no less...
...Peace organizations everywhere are suffering a drain of members and money...
...All armed forces must be reduced together...
...Along with this program of education on the costs of the military must come a campaign for planned economic conversion...
...The time has come to launch a new political drive to transfer the vast economic resources from the arms race and toward human needs here at home...
...Only then will we truly be able to beat our swords into plowshares and assure a safe and secure world...
...For the future, this approach is unlikely to succeed...
...Here, too, however, circumstances are changing...
...The armed forces should be stripped of their ability to act aggressively...
...Similarly, the peace movement should organize for a ban on the production of fissile materials so that nations can no longer develop the means to manufacture nuclear weapons...
...A new approach will have to be based on positive images and hope for the future...
...The War Re-sisters League provides the most obvious example, but similar perspectives may be found among Quakers, Mennonites, Brethren, and other religious groups...
...It is a mistake to embrace one without the other...
...They should be brought home and demobilized at once...
...Such reductions need to be multilateral, with the withdrawal of American troops from Western Europe matched by equivalent Soviet withdrawals from Eastern Europe...
...Because public anxieties about nuclear war have subsided, an organizing program focused exclusively on nuclear issues is unlikely to succeed...
...The United States and the Soviet Union together still possess some 50,000 nuclear warheads...
...The United States, the Soviet Union, and other nations must mutually commit themselves to support the self-determination of developing nations and refrain from intervening in the affairs of other countries...
...Few would argue with the moral rectitude of this pacifist position, but it is widely seen as "unrealistic" in political terms...
...Confining the military to defense will require a radical reduction in the size and capabilities of America's armed forces, most of which are structured not for the defense of U.S...
...Gorbachev addresses these questions in his book, Perestroika, agreeing that there should be "such a structure of armed forces of a state that they would he sufficient to repulse a possible aggression but would not be sufficient for conduct of offensive actions...
...In so doing, the peace movement can transform itself into an authentic majority coalition for alternative security...
...But by pressing the economic case, we will reach a wider audience with more immediate concerns...
...And both sides continue to build destabilizing new first-strike weapons— MX, Trident, cruise missiles, the SS-24, and the SS-25...
...More than 100,000 American troops are deployed in the Pacific, more than 20,000 are stationed in and around the Persian Gulf, and an equal number are based in Panama and elsewhere in Central America...
...This approach can broaden the appeal of the peace movement beyond its traditionally narrow middle-class base...
...Many in the peace movement, especially its veteran activists, subscribe to a radical pacifist philosophy...
...In any genuine alternative-security program, there can be no trade-off between conventional and nuclear arms...
...commitment to NATO should be sharply curtailed...
...But the arms race has not waned, and there is greater need than ever for a strong peace movement...
...Our goal need not be the total elimination of all conventional forces, but rather the reduction and restructuring of armed forces to the point where they are incapable of conducting offensive missions...
...We must sponsor organizing and education campaigns that contrast the costs of unnecessary military systems—particularly nuclear weapons and interventionist forces—with the funds needed for human services and civilian development...
...We have been too busy putting out the fires of immediate danger—whether they be the contra war against Nicaragua or the latest first-strike weapon in the Pentagon's arsenal...
...For the United States, a policy of nonintervention would require nothing less than abolishing the operations branch of the CIA and all other agencies of covert action and secret war...
...We should support legislation to mandate alternative-use planning at every major military plant and base in the country...
...Nuclear and conventional weapons are all part of the same military policy, and they must be reduced together in any genuine peace program...
...This should include not only a ban on testing warheads but also an end to all ballistic-missile flight tests (as recently included in the platform of the Democratic Party...
...And we should make these arguments locally, explaining to average taxpayers in a given community precisely how much of their taxes go for nuclear weapons and other military expenditures...
...While the conflicts in Central America are by no means resolved and the situation in El Salvador remains particularly explosive, anti-intervention-ism is less likely now than it was a few years ago to revitalize the peace movement...
...territory but for the projection of power overseas...
...Under such legislation, military contractors would be required to develop conversion plans as a condition of doing business with the Government...
...By focusing on pocketbook issues and promoting a vision of jobs and economic prosperity, the peace movement can widen its popular appeal among sectors of the population that have remained beyond its reach...
...The nuclear-war-fighting doctrine of the U.S...
...The underlying structures of the war system remain unchallenged...
...The largest overseas commitment of U.S...
...Perhaps humankind will reach that pinnacle someday, but for now and any foreseeable future, we need a more realistic goal...
...As Martin Luther King Jr...
...Until now, the movement has relied primarily on fear and the threat of war to attract public support...
...Within the peace movement, such Utopian visions have rarely been considered...
...An essential step in this process would be the withdrawal of troops from foreign bases...
...We must not only talk about what we are against but about what we are for...
...reducing—and eventually eliminating—them must remain the first goal of the peace movement...
...Where these efforts have only a limited appeal, there is one issue that has broad drawing power—the economy...
Vol. 53 • January 1989 • No. 1
