A universal appeal for humanity to end militarism and stop war
On March 15, 1950, the World Peace Council sent out the Stockholm Appeal, a
short text that called for a ban on nuclear weapons and that would eventually
be signed by almost 2 million people. The appeal was made up of three elegant
sentences:
- We demand the outlawing of atomic weapons
as instruments of intimidation and mass murder of peoples. We demand
strict international control to enforce this measure.
- We believe that any government which first
uses atomic weapons against any other country whatsoever will be
committing a crime against humanity and should be dealt with as a war
criminal.
- We call on all men and women of good will
throughout the world to sign this appeal.
Now, 70 years later,
the nuclear arsenal is far more lethal, and the conventional weapons themselves
dwarf the atom bomb that was dropped by the United States on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in 1945. In 1950, there were 304 nuclear warheads (299 in the United
States), while now there are 13,355 warheads; and each of the 2020 warheads is
far more destructive than those from the early years of this terrible
technology. Something like the Stockholm Appeal is imperative now.
To call for a ban on
weapons of mass destruction is not an abstract issue; it is one that points
directly toward a bloc of countries, led by the United States of America, that
is stubbornly persisting in using force to maintain and extend their global
dominance. In the midst of this global pandemic, the United States threatens to
deepen conflicts with China, Iran, and Venezuela, including moving a naval
carrier group to effectively embargo Venezuelan ports and moving ships into the
Persian Gulf to challenge the right of Iranian boats to inter-national waters;
meanwhile, the United States has said it will position aggressive missile
batteries and anti-missile radar arrays in a ring around China.
None of these
countries—China, Iran, and Venezuela—have made any aggressive move against the
United States; it is the United States that has imposed a conflict on these
countries. If an appeal is to be drafted now, it cannot be made in an anemic,
universal fashion. Any call for peace in our time must specifically be a call
against the imperialist warmongering that emanates from—but is not only
authored by—Washington, D.C.
Our assessment of the
imposition of a state of a war by the United States relies upon four points:
- The United States already has the largest
military arsenal and the widest military footprint in the world. According
to the most recent data, the U.S. government spent at least
$732 billion in 2019 on its military; we say “at least” because there are
secret disbursements of funds to the massive intelligence wings that are
not publicly available. From 2018 to 2019, the United States increased its
military budget by 5.3 percent, the amount of which is the same as the
total German military budget. Almost 40 percent of global military
spending is done by the United States. The United States has a combined
total of more than 500 military bases in almost every country on the
planet. The United States Navy has 20 of the world’s 44 active aircraft carriers, while other U.S. allies have
21 of them; this means that the U.S. and its allied states have 41 of the
44 aircraft carriers (China has two and Russia has one). There is no
question about the overwhelming superiority of U.S. military force.
- Yet, the United States is now using its
full ability to expand its nuclear and conventional domination into space
and into cyber-warfare with its Space Command (re-established in 2019) and Cyber Command (created
in 2009). The United States has developed an interceptor ballistic missile
(SM-3) that it has tested in space, and it is testing such fanciful
weapons as particle-beam weaponry, plasma-based weaponry, and kinetic
bombardment. In 2017, Trump announced his government’s commitment to such
new weaponry. The U.S. government will spend at least $481 billion between 2018 and 2024
to develop new advanced weapons systems, including autonomous vehicles,
counter-drones, cyber-weapons, and robotics. The U.S. Army has
already tested its Advanced Hypersonic Weapon that can
travel at Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound), so that it can reach any
place on earth within an hour; this weapon is part of the U.S. military’s
Conventional Prompt Global Strike program.
- The U.S. military complex has advanced
its hybrid war program that includes a range of
techniques to undermine governments and political projects. These
techniques include the mobilization of United States power over
international institutions (such as the International Monetary Fund and
the World Bank, and the SWIFT wire service) to prevent governments from
managing basic economic activity, the use of U.S. diplomatic power to
isolate governments, the use of sanctions methods to prevent private
companies from doing business with certain governments, the use of
information warfare to render governments and political forces to be
criminals or terrorists, and so on. This powerful complex of instruments
is able—in the plain light of day—to destabilize governments and to
justify regime change.
- Finally, the U.S. government along with
its NATO partners as well as U.S. and European weapons manufacturers
continue to flood the world with the deadliest weapons. The top five arms
exporters (Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and
General Dynamics) are located in the United States. These five firms
alone account for 35 percent of the top 100 of the
world’s arms dealer sales in 2018 (the most recent figures); the total
U.S. arms sales account for 59 percent of all arms sales that year. This
was an increase of 7.2 percent over the U.S. sales in 2017. These weapons
are sold to countries that should instead spend their precious surplus on
education, on health, and on food programs. For example, in West Asia and
North Africa, the greatest threat to the people is not only the terrorist
in his Toyota Hilux, but it is also the arms dealer in the
air-conditioned hotel room.
The Stockholm Appeal
is now obsolete. A new appeal is needed. We developed it while we were
discussing it in Bouficha, Tunisia; let’s call it the Bouficha Appeal.
We, the peoples of the
world:
- Stand against the warmongering of U.S.
imperialism, which seeks to impose dangerous wars on an already fragile
planet.
- Stand against the saturation of the world
with weapons of all kinds, which inflame conflicts and often drive
political processes toward endless wars.
- Stand against the use of military power to prevent the social development of the peoples of the world, to allow countries to build their sovereignty and their dignity.
