Peace Economy Project | Cut Military Spending. Fund Human Needs.

Time 2020-12-29 21:08:51

Web Name: Peace Economy Project | Cut Military Spending. Fund Human Needs.

WebSite: http://peaceeconomyproject.org

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Nine doctors from around the world explain why they work to rid the world of nuclear weapons - in the midst of a global pandemic.The year is 2025. The entire world is in disarray. In some parts of the world, medical facilities are overwhelmed; doctors and nurses are exhausted, and the rest of the world is struggling to help. The economy is crashing. No one knows how long it will last because no one has lived through something like this before. It happened in a couple of countries but it didn’t take long before the effects spread to every country on earth.No, we’re not talking about another pandemic. We’re describing the aftermath of a very limited nuclear war.  A full scale nuclear war would kill hundreds of millions the first day and plunge the world into a human-made nuclear ice age within a week, ending the world as we know it.We’ve been living under the threat of a global health crisis triggered by nuclear war for decades. But nuclear weapons are not a virus: we have the solution to get rid of them and we need to act before it’s too late.Health professionals have continuously warned the public and governments about nuclear weapons. They helped mobilize millions of people around the world to call for an end to the arms race in the 1970s and 1980s because of the catastrophic medical consequences of nuclear war – a final epidemic for which there can be no cure and prevention is the only option. Today, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985, is a network of doctors and other health professionals with chapters in 63 countries.“Nuclear weapons constitute the greatest immediate threat to the health and welfare of mankind,” wrote the World Health Organization in a 1984 report. “It is obvious that no health service in any area of the world would be capable of dealing adequately with the hundreds of thousands of people seriously injured by blast, heat or radiation from even a single one-megaton bomb. Whatever remained of the medical services in the world could not alleviate the disaster in any significant way.”The strain on health facilities and professionals to respond to a nuclear war would last generations. Japanese Red Cross hospitals today continue to treat many thousands of victims of cancers and chronic disease caused by radiation exposure from the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.Like a pandemic, the medical impacts of a nuclear explosion would not be contained in the country where the explosion took place. Radiation knows no borders. Radioactive isotopes produced from nuclear tests have spread throughout the world, into the atmosphere, ocean and all our bodies.Climate studies have demonstrated that even a limited regional nuclear war with a few hundred nuclear weapons (less than one percent of global nuclear arsenals) would have dramatic and lasting global impacts on climate and food supply. A recent study modeling the use of 100 Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons between India and Pakistan could cause a decrease in sunlight and precipitation, severely disrupting net primary production of the world’s staple grains, destabilizing the worldwide food chain and the global economy – and triggering a global famine that would likely end billions of lives.There is a critical difference between a pandemic and a nuclear war. We already have the tool to stop nuclear weapons. It’s called the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and it was adopted in 2017 at the United Nations by 122 countries. Today 81 countries have signed it and 36 have ratified. The World Medical Association in 2018 welcomed the TPNW and called on all states, “as a mission of physicians” to promptly join and implement it. The World Federation of Public Health Associations, International Council of Nurses, and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement did the same.Health professionals are clear: there is no way for us to adequately respond to a nuclear war. Our only solution is to work together as a global community to prevent one. Any nuclear weapons in any country drives others to acquire them and threatens us all. The choice of nine countries to keep nuclear weapons puts us all at risk.Doctors and nurses are overwhelmed responding to the global health crisis we are already facing. We cannot afford to take on another one, not least one that we have the power to prevent. Responsible nations must join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, taking collective global action for the health of our people and our planet.https://www.icanw.org/global_doctors_on_covid_19_and_nuclear_war?utm_campaign=covid19_news_to_do_from_home_2 utm_medium=email utm_source=ican 3% Of U.S. Military Spending Could End Starvation On EarthIn 2008, the United Nations said that $30 billion per year could end hunger on earth, as reported in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and many other outlets. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations tells us that number is still up to date.As of 2019, the annual Pentagon base budget, plus war budget, plus nuclear weapons in the Department of Energy, plus the Department of Homeland Security, and other military spending totaled well over $1 trillion, in fact $1.25 trillion. Three percent of a trillion is 30 billion.Global military spending is $1.8 trillion, as calculated by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which only includes $649 billion of U.S. military spending as of 2018, making the actual global total well over $2 trillion. One-and-a-half percent of 2 trillion is 30 billion. Every nation on earth that has a military can be asked to move its share to alleviate hunger.The Math3% x $1 trillion = $30 billion1.5% x $2 trillion = $30 billionDoesn’t the UN FAO say that $265 billion is needed to end hunger, not $30 billion?No, it does not. In a 2015 report, the UN FAO estimated that $265 billion per year for 15 years would be necessary to permanently eliminate extreme poverty — a much broader project than just preventing starvation one year at a time. The FAO’s spokesperson explained in an email to World BEYOND War: “It would be incorrect to compare the two figures as the 265 billion has been calculated taking into consideration a number of initiatives including social protection cash transfers aimed at extracting people from extreme poverty and not just hunger.”The U.S. government already spends $42 billion per year on aid. Why should it spend another $30 billion?As a percentage of gross national income or per capita, the U.S. gives much less aid than other countries do. Plus, 40 percent of current U.S. “aid” is not actually aid in any ordinary sense; it’s deadly weapons (or money with which to buy deadly weapons from U.S. companies). In addition, U.S. aid is not targeted based purely on need but based largely on military interests. The biggest recipients are Afghanistan, Israel, Egypt, and Iraq, places the United States deems most in need of weapons, not places an independent institution deems most in need of food or other aid.Individuals in the U.S. already give private charitable donations at high rates. Why do we need the U.S. government to provide aid?Because children are starving to death in a world awash in wealth. There is no evidence that private charity decreases when public charity increases, but there is lots of evidence that private charity is not all it’s cracked up to be. Most U.S. charity goes to religious and educational institutions within the United States, and only a third goes to the poor. Only a small fraction goes abroad, only 5% to assist the poor abroad, only a fraction of that toward ending starvation, and much of that lost to overhead. The tax deduction for charitable giving in the United States appears to enrich the rich. Some choose to count “remittances,” that is money sent home by migrants living and working in the United States, or the investment of any U.S. money abroad for any purpose, as foreign aid. But there is simply no reason that private charity, no matter what you believe it to consist of, could not remain the same or increase if U.S. public aid were brought closer to the level of international norms.Our thanks to:World Beyond Warhttps://worldbeyondwar.org/explained/Among fighter jets in the seemingly endless nuclear arms race against developed powers, hypersonic missiles are creating issues within defense structures all across the world. China, Russia, and the U.S. are in the lead in the hypersonic arms race, but others including Britain, France, Germany, India, and Japan have joined. Undoubtedly, more will follow.There are two variants of hypersonic weapons, both equipped with conventional or nuclear warheads, and they destroy their targets through speed and force of impact. HGV’s (boost-glide missiles) are lofted on ballistic missiles or aircraft, launched through the atmosphere, and pulled to their target by gravity. These stay low and don’t travel above 62 miles in the air. The lower altitude helps their speed, and makes their journey shorter, while also deterring radars and defenses designed to track and intercept ballistic missile warheads.HCM’s (hypersonic cruise missiles) are like pilotless aircraft, propelled by an on-board engine. They’re lighter than standard cruise missiles since they don’t carry liquid oxygen tanks. They “breathe” in the air that passes through it at supersonic speed, combining the oxygen with its hydrogen fuel. The end combustion generates extreme heat and propels the missile towards its target. These fly even lower than HGV’s, which makes identifying and destroying them even more difficult. These weapons can close in on their targets at a minimum of Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound, or 3,836.4 miles an hour).Both of these weapons can also maneuver towards their targets, which makes them harder to track and intercept. The Trump Administration’s plan for a new Space Force plans to put sensors and interceptors into space to better pinpoint the threat of hypersonic missiles, but many critics have slammed this idea for being poorly funded.In late 2017, China tested its DF-17, a new low-range missile, and specifically used an HGV to launch it. The following year, they tested the Xing-Kong-2 (Starry Sky 2), a “wave rider,” that gains momentum by surfacing shock waves. Russia successfully tested its Avangard HGV in 2018, and their Tsirkon (a hypersonic cruise missile) has been tested several times since 2015. The U.S. has been far from behind when it comes to HGV’s -- Boeing, Pratt, and Whitney Rocketdyne received a contract from the U.S. Air Force to develop the hypersonic X-51A WaveRider scramjet on 2004. Its first flight test was in 2010 and failed -- a pattern that was soon to form.In more recent times, the Air Force has launched its ARRW from a B-52 bomber as part of its Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon (HCSW) this past June, while the Navy tested an HGV in 2017. These two military branches, along with the U.S Army, all had their own hypersonic weapons programs, but in 2018, the Pentagon decided to combine them into one big program: the Conventional Prompt Global Strike Program (CPGS), which seeks to build the capability to hit targets worldwide in under 60 minutes.The Center for Public Integrity’s R. Jeffrey Sith also reports that Congress passed a bill last year requiring the US to have operational hypersonic weapons by late 2022. President’s Trump’s 2020 Pentagon budget request included $2.6 billion to support their development. Smith expects the annual investment to reach $5 billion by the mid-2020s. Within the military-industrial complex, companies, Washington-based think tanks, the Defense Department, and certain legislators will insist that building these hypersonic weapons is of utmost importance when it comes to protecting ourselves from countries that successfully finish their weapons first.However, these prices do matter in terms of a nationwide budget, no matter how hard the defense companies will insist they do not. Consider the fact that worker productivity has increased since 1979, but the minimum wage has not increased to the same degree. Many workers struggle to find jobs that cover basic life expenses even though unemployment is low. The gap in wage inequality has steadily grown over the decades, with 90 percent of the population’s household wealth dropping from 33 percent to 23 percent between 1989 and 2016. Forty-four percent of families would be unable to cover emergency-related expenses surpassing 400 dollars without borrowing money or selling their belongings. Periods of unemployment or illness, even with unemployment benefits factored in, can’t be covered adequately by the majority of Americans because of the stark increase of out-of-pocket medical expenses, which have increased fourfold since 2007. The U.S. has had 400,000 opioid-related deaths since 1999 and 47,173 suicides in 2017 alone. Over 14,000 people have died from firearms in that same year, and the U.S. was ranked higher than 32 out of 36 developed countries for child poverty. These issues are never covered as terms of national security by politicians, and hardly at all by conservative politicians.The logic behind an arms race is littered with holes. Rajan Menon, professor of International Relations at the Powell School of New York and Senior Research Fellow at Columbia University’s Saltzman’s Institute of War and Peace Studies, compares an arms race to any other race in sports (i.e. a bike or a foot race). There’s always a beginning, a set distance, and a goal. Normally, the goal is to cross the finish line before all of your rivals. As history will point out, arms races are not always easy to pin when they started, and cause long disputes over who was the real initiator. Historians today are still researching (and arguing) about what started the arms race that culminated back in World War I. Apart from a constant perpetuation to keep the competition alive (where the money will stay flowing between legislation and weapons companies and suspicions are sustained) and reactionary decisions, arms races lack a steady purpose. Due to the constant need to keep up (or outdo) the others, the finish line is never clearly in sight.While the whole purpose of keeping arms races alive is to foster security, it normally does the opposite. Without fluid communication and transparency about the others, each side will just continuously build weapons. President Trump’s decision to leave treaties that tried to maintain trust only deepens uncertainties shared on all sides. Pulling out of the INF has definitely influenced Russia’s decision to develop hypersonic weapons, and also continues to ensure that their nuclear forces will serve as a credible deterrent against a first strike on their country. Not only does this get expensive (the U.S. has consistently exceeded China and Russia’s spending combined since 1991), but threats are more plausible since uncertainties keep rising. Sprouting from this paranoia, money flows like a revolving door between the military, defense companies, and politicians. The “experts” in these fields, and big supporters of pouring money into defense are rarely challenged for fear of looking unpatriotic. Without any kind of pushback, this line of thinking only gets more powerful and takes less heed as to how much they spend. In turn, this leaves less funding for other crucial areas of well-being for American citizens. With no specific end in sight for this weaponized foot race, the end could ultimately be nuclear agitation, with the potential to doom us all. The revolving financial door between defense and legislation needs to see crucial readjustment, transparency, and diplomacy. It’s the only way for us to truly remain safe.Kira Webster is a college intern at Peace Economy Project.When trying to achieve grand political goals such as secession, independence, or greater freedoms, a movement faces the question of how to accomplish such an endeavor. Do they pursue a violent insurgency like Che Guvera or a civil resistance akin to Gandhi's? Throughout history, both violent and non-violent campaigns have been successful.  Robert Mugabe and ZANU successfully overthrew the government of Rhodesia. Similarly, the non-violent Otpor movement in Serbia managed to remove Slobodan Milosevic from power at the turn of the millennium. The question remains, however, which will be more effective? Which will lead to a better state? Professor Erica Chenoweth set out to answer these questions in her book, “Why Civil Resistance Works.”Professor Chenoweth examined and analyzed 323 intrastate conflicts from the 1940s through the mid-2000s and found that non-violent campaigns were more successful at realizing their goals.  Compared to violent insurgencies, civil resistance campaigns benefit from the ability to mobilize larger masses of people. Groups who violently counter the state are inherently limited in participation. The barriers of entry are much higher for insurgent groups than non-violent organizations. Recruits to an insurgent group must be willing and physically able to brandish weapons, live and fight in often hostile and remote areas of a nation; these barriers often preclude women, the elderly, and children from joining ranks. Non-violent campaigns, however, have no such barrier issue and are therefore able to mobilize a larger percentage of the population. By nature of having more participants, the greater people power lends increased legitimacy to the resistance movement.Non-violent campaigns also benefit from having more numerous and more effective "weapons" at their disposal than violent insurgencies. Civil resistance campaigns can make use of boycotts, strikes, sit-ins, protests, and a variety of other non-violent non-compliant tools to achieve political change. What makes these methods more effective compared to those of an insurgency is that they cause less moral outrage among the populace, contributing further to mass mobilization.  Professor Chenoweth found that not a single non-violent movement failed in its stated goals that successfully mobilized 3.5% of the population.Additionally, violence against the state has shown to increase support of the state among the bureaucratic and state police forces.  Non-violent actions, however, have shown the ability to both pull away at the state's pillars of support and cause police forces to actively not suppress the movements. A final point that professor Chenoweth makes is that if a movement wins by the sword, it governs by the sword as well; non-violent campaigns are far more likely than violent ones to result in peaceful and democratic rule.We can view the efficacy of non-violent civil resistance in our current age. In Hong Kong, an estimated 1.7 million people mobilized in protests of an extradition bill with mainland China. After weeks of mass demonstrations, class boycotts, and disruptions at the Hong Kong international airport, Carrie Lam, the executive of Hong Kong shelved the extradition bill. Hong Kong isn't the only recent example. In December 2018, protestors in Sudan started demanding the removal of Sudan's long-time dictator Omar al-Bashir. After months of increasingly larger and larger demonstrations, even in the face of violence and persecution, the Sudanese military stepped in on behalf of the citizens of Sudan and ousted al-Bashir from power. The resolve and dedication of these protestors show that even in an age of increasing authoritarianism and civil suppression, non-violent resistance is an effective way of achieving great political change.Connor Worley is an Arms Control Fellow at Peace Economy Project.

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