Northern Friends Peace Board
“Disarming Realities”
19th February 2000 Newcastle upon Tyne
Notes of speakers’ contributions
David Atwood (Quaker UN Office, Geneva)
David began by sharing general views from his perspective of working at the Quaker UN office in Geneva. DA is Associate Representative on Disarmament and Peace. Information is available from QUNO office (see contact details in the Appendix). He’s been doing the work for the past five years, with a broad mandate to work on disarmament and peace. DA hoped to give a few perspectives, giving participants some places to "plug our energies in" It’s important that the grass- roots peace work can connect with what’s going on internationally.
There are some important contextual points. The UN is to a large extent a reflection of the state of affairs between the member states. Poor relations will be reflected by a lack of progress in the larger international setting. But the very existence of a variety of multilateral fora can help bring pressure to bear, to move things forward, to build consensus and to set directions. The very fact that the institutions exist can help to unstick problems.
Progress globally is not determined simply by what is agreed globally. Unilateral, regional or thematic agreements can, for example, help to move things along at the multilateral level. They can help to develop global efforts. A current example is that of the Organisation of American States agreeing a convention on the trafficking of fire-arms and explosives; the fact that this agreement exists is now providing a useful model for a new convention on similar things at the international level. The role of civil society, in putting pressure on national governments and also in working trans-nationally, is particularly important. Our efforts today, in conjunction with all sorts of other efforts, are all part of the ‘grease to the system’ which keeps things moving along.
A few comments on the broad spectrum of disarmament related activities at the moment: If it were judged by the amount of activity, we might conclude that we were surely making progress - wall-to- wall meetings. But this doesn’t necessarily add up to real progress. There are not only many official meetings, but also an increasing number of ad-hoc meetings: the disarmament conference, negotiations on biological weapons and all sorts of efforts on matters such as small arms. In there, you can see some progress, some hopeful signs as well as reasons to be very concerned.
There are a number of mechanisms to be aware of:
• In extreme situations you have the security council, which might consider disarmament matters in some peace-keeping type of activity. It has also been considering specific topics, just to make itself more aware of the issues - eg. on small arms.
• The UN General Assembly is the place where the broad spectrum of issues get looked at. DA used to just look at documents from these bodies as just good words but now sees them as important measures of the state of international opinion around a particular issue; you can see where things seem to be stuck or shifting. Eg. on nuclear weapons we have seen the New Agenda Coalition bringing resolutions which have begun to bring a bit of fresh impetus to discussions and thus become an important indication of the state of play, they keep the issues alive.
• Another body is the Disarmament Commission; a deliberative body which aims to further peoples’ understanding. It gives an opportunity to learn about a particular issue. Eg. looking at consolidating peace in post-conflict situations.
• The Conference on Disarmament. This body gives DA the excuse for doing disarmament work in Geneva. The CD is not a UN body but operates on directions from the General Assembly. Now has 66 member nations and is the principal multilateral body on disarmament affairs, covering such things as the Biological Weapons treaty, the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty - a very significant forum. This is the place where things are very stuck at the moment. Progress is frustrated by the rules of consensus - a lowest-common-denominator version of this. It only takes one person/country to be upset about something for everything to be blocked. Eg. currently China because of the Ballistic Missile Defence issue. This way of working, coupled with a deteriorating atmosphere - particular amongst the nuclear powers - has meant that this conference has not done anything substantive for three years. The frustration level is high, but not so much that people have felt moved to abandon it. Whilst the CD has a very broad mandate, it has in fact never managed to work on anything other than weapons of mass destruction. There are a lot of people of people with a lot of interests to see that conventional weapons are not considered at the CD.
• Another mechanism is the role of review conferences of existing conventions. The nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) review conference is coming up at the end of April. It is by such review conferences that the international community is able to measure its progress on what was agreed. These are also important places for organising, for focus and for the press. Another example of a review conference is that on certain conventional weapons that cause unnecessary suffering - such as landmines. It was the lack of progress at this conference that helped to create the momentum for a total ban on landmines; it was in the failure of the one that lead to the other - had it been marginally more successful we might not have got the ban!
• Special Sessions of the UN general Assembly have been a mixed blessing. There’s no consensus when there is to be another one and what it will consider. There is, however, a big conference next year on small arms. Not clear how much one should hope from such an event; could be a valuable focal point for action, or empty rhetoric which could be more deflating. Need to make sure that there is some prospect for positive action out of this.
• Reports and studies by the UN system are very important in indicating where thinking is on a particular issue. Eg. reference within 1993 “Agenda for Peace” to micro-disarmament, which sowed the seed and gave the mandate for work on small arms. Not clear how much use diplomats and UN system actually make of these, but they and we can all benefit from them.
Reasons to be gloomy or cheerful
We have two tracks of thinking:
a) The old track that has driven our thinking on disarmament and arms control: this has basically been about weapons of mass-destruction etc. After the end of the cold war we thought we might be able to do without that sort of business, but in many ways it seems as though we haven’t made very much progress to nuclear disarmament at all. The CD is a reflection of the old realities that have always made things so difficult. We are in a very worrying moment in relation to nuclear weapons. There’s an erosion of the basic concept of non-proliferation. (though the New Agenda Coalition is one of the many moves that are more encouraging, getting people talking and thinking about nuclear weapons issues.) On biological weapons: over the past 4 years there have been a series of negotiations to give the BW treaty some teeth. We are now entering the end game, and if it is achieved this might have an impact on some of the more gloomy situations. Conventional weapons have not been dealt with in any substantive way multi-laterally; the arms register is very limited in its scope.
b) The new track of thinking, with work on landmines etc. other considerations than national security are entering into the equation. As we look at what weapons do to people and bring in other criteria, this gives us another angle on things. DA sees in the mine-ban mechanism a positive and significant change of role for NGOs. Whereas NGOs are normally kept out of official meetings, in this case they were involved in a really effective partnership.
From DA’s perspective in Geneva, he tries to work to get NGO’s voices heard. It is only when governments feel the heat of public opinion on their necks that they start to move. We need to do this on nuclear weapons. It is largely silent in Geneva on this; governments don’t feel the concern of civil society at the UN level.
In responding to a question about the NPT, DA thought that the danger was that if there was no sense of ‘give’ of the Nuclear Weapons States, this really will be a bad sign. How do we encourage the NWS to go into the review conference with some recognition that they’ll have to give something? There is a shortage of ideas about how to turn this around. The big concern is the US, if they go ahead with the National Missile Defence Programme (NMD). DA doesn’t think any governments will pull out of the NPT, but there may be threats to do so.
DA feels that it would be good for more NGOs to be visible at, for instance, the CD in Geneva. He is the only NGO person in Geneva with a disarmament job specifically focused on the UN. It will be important, in relation to the small arms conference next year that NGOs encourage their governments to attend with a positive attitude and maybe also attend the conference.
Paul Dunne (Middlesex University Business School)
Gave the first annual Campaign Against Arms Trade lecture last year, and is also national co- ordinator for Economists Allied for Arms Reduction (ECAAR), a group which is mainly based in the US but also has a good range of international activities.
PD talked widely. He’s been working for about 20 years in this area, and feels that it’s important that the arguments should be won. He feels that a lot of the arguments about the benefits of the arms trade to the UK economy need to be challenged on economic grounds.
PD began by giving an idea of what’s going on in the UK. Since the end of the cold war, there has been a huge decline in real terms of military spending, followed by a bottoming out. There are now pressures for an increase, although the threat is no longer there. There are wide regional variations to this. We are now at a crossroads. Some of these possible changes are coming about because of the arguments which are creating threats and needs which are not really there.
Taking super-powers out of conflicts has reduced their scale, but at the same time we have seen a resurgence of NATO, which has given itself a new purpose and encouraged new members from Central and Eastern Europe to increase their military spending. This is worrying. Future threats to the UK or to Europe are likely to be different and are going to require non-traditional responses. This means that the activities of armed forces are going to be different and their needs are going to be different. We can expect, for example, larger involvement in peace-keeping/peace enforcement rather than of the usual roles we had before.
It is going to be impossible for any country to maintain a national defence industrial base (DIB). The internationalisation of defence industries has contributed to removing this possibility. The likelihood that the UK will be involved in a war requiring it to produce its own weapons is, PD believed, remote. Defence Industries have moved from using strategic justifications to using economic justifications, and have taken a lot of pride in increasing their share of the arms export market. PD felt that to be increasing its share of a declining market was somewhat misplaced and questionable.
The arms industry has hugely restructured with four major companies now in the US, and in the UK BAE Systems now the biggest company. There is also a huge concentration of production within a very few countries. This rationalisation now seems to have stopped. In Western Europe there are still companies which exist as national companies. There are a lot of cross-border integration efforts, but no real conversion to civil production. PD feels that we have missed the opportunity for benefiting from the peace dividend.
The cold war defence industry was historically specific. This was in some ways a very strange industry, with a rather modernist style and technocratic culture. There was a lot of money going into research and development; it was argued that you were creating innovations with benefits to the civil economy. It no longer has a positive impact on the economy - if indeed it ever did. Arms’ spending is, as already noted, bottoming out, but still at extremely high levels.
The expected globalisation hasn’t happened. We are seeing, rather, an internationalisation of the supply chain, with companies being more ‘systems integrators’ than manufacturing all the materials themselves. A term for this is ‘hollowing out’. Partly as a consequence of this they have less of an impact on local communities.
Companies have become extremely effective lobbyists and their profits are significantly helped by money from government. There is a big drive for exports.
Overall, we can say that the Defence Industrial Base is operating at an international and informal level and as a result of this is much less visible. It has been successful at recreating a set of vested interests.
An alternative view would be use cuts in military spending as an opportunity for local communities to develop genuinely productive businesses.
Some conclusions:
Ian Goudie (North East Defence Diversification Project - NEDDP, and Arms Conversion Project -ACP)
Although there are still significant numbers employed in defence related work, there have been massive cuts in spending since 1980, of 385,000 down to 335,000 now. There has also been a move from direct to indirect employment, making the defence sector harder to identify. Defence exports are currently reckoned to support 140,000 jobs and becoming increasingly important. The lack of additional investment to compensate for the cuts has effectively meant that there has in effect a peace-penalty (as opposed to a peace dividend) in the north of Britain.
The Arms Conversion Project has identified 630 companies in the region that are in some way defence dependent. Most of these are very small businesses, with fewer than 20 people. And the majority are around the Newcastle area. They have very little Research and Development capacity. A small downturn in defence spending will have a very significant impact on their security. The sector still tends to be relatively skilled, even in the supplier chain. It is also a sector which is predominantly male, with most people being in the 25-49 year age band. This has implications for possible consequences of any downturn.
We need to find a positive response to restructuring. The majority of companies are looking for information on Defence Diversification, and we are now getting a good number of companies on board. The North East Defence Diversification Project recently held a conference in Gateshead. The NEDDP is made up of Trades Unions, Trades Union studies, University of Newcastle, Local Authorities, and TECs. The conference was primarily aimed at companies, which is one of the main differences in work on diversification issues now. Whereas in the past most of the discussion was going on amongst Trades Unions, peace groups etc. Companies now want to find out how they can diversify. Local Authorities and TECs can provide companies with information that hopefully will help companies to create and maintain jobs.
It is important to recognise the global aspects of the restructuring that’s taking place and the impact it’ll have here. BAE has plants in many parts of the country, but is a global company. Local jobs can be affected by global restructuring. Currently BAE Systems has: 70,000 people in the UK, 18,300 in the USA, 5,400 in Saudi Arabia, 4,500 in France, 4,000 in Italy, 2,500 in Germany 3,000 in Sweden, 2,500 in Australia and massive order books and sales. They are the number one UK manufacturer and exporter, the number one European Aerospace and Defence company, the number three aerospace company and the number six US Defence company (as it’s now classified as such). They are a major player, but have said that they want to make £275 million saving over the next four years. This is starting to raise concerns about what might happen in the north east and other places.
Another major local company has been Vickers which now employs 637 people, compared with the thousands it used to. In November Rolls Royce bought up Vickers, and there is real concern about what the implications of this will be. There are redundancies being announced at Vickers as we speak. (February 2000)
The NEDDP believes that Defence Diversification is one important way of dealing with the problems. The government promised in its Manifesto to set up a Defence Diversification Agency. This DDA has now been established, and is based within the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency - this is itself the biggest research agency in the Western world. IG and others are arguing that since the DDA is located withing DERA, with its massive levels of expertise, this does allow to work for the spin out of technology into the private sector. Companies in the North East are saying that they want assistance, product development etc. NEDDP is urging that some of the government funded R&D be focused on the north. It is expected that a Technology Transfer Officer will shortly be appointed to work on that specific issue. What we (the Arms Conversion Project) have to do is make sure that its a success.
There are good examples of companies diversifying, with concerns about the ethics of working on arms sometimes contributing to the pressures to do so. Perhaps the anticipated increase in spending on the railways might be provide an opportunity for a reducing defence sector?
Disarmament is possible, but only if there is a political decision. The political establishment in Britain is fed up with defence spending constantly being put under the spotlight by people like us. One of their responses is to make it less visible by moving it to the European level, through OCCAR. In the future some of the major defence procurement decisions will be taking place at the European level. This makes it harder to work for disarmament.
Group Reports
Workshop with Paul Dunne
Two positive things: a) Campaigns can have an effect but b) pressure must be maintained.
These notes reduce a lot of very intense points to a few
key points:
1. Threats: What is the threat? Why do we need arms? We should work for
economic security.
2. Economics: Britain cannot profitably make arms, so why are we doing
it?
3. Power: The power of the UK government resides in its seat on the UN
security council
4. Fear: Fear is very debilitating, for us if we fear we can’t do anything,
and for governments if they fear a loss of power.
5. Debate: Need to be good in debate, which barely exists at the moment.
It is our job to ensure that it does exist. To do this we have got to be
informed; sometimes using economic instead of ethical arguments. The peace
movement has got to get to grips with the issues.
6. Defence: Maybe a way through is to decide what we need and then commit
resources to this in a more explicit way.
7. Export Credit Guarantee: There are £900 million worth of arms
which were supplied to Iraq which have not been paid for, having been effectively
underwritten by the ECGD.
Workshop with David Atwood
Firstly looked at the weakening of commitment to non-proliferation. Ä It is important that we put pressure on our government to show leadership on this, which in turn would put pressure on other states. Ä Could we get public figures to give their support to the New Agenda Coalition, which has identified coherent steps to nuclear disarmament? Ä Put pressure on US government to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. How do we deal with fear? China is currently very frightened by the US’s development of the National Missile Defence policy. If China’s weapons are thus ineffective, will the US use its weapons against China?
The group considered the role of the media and the role of women in peace campaigns.
Do recent treaties reflect the more complex realities since the end of the cold war? Outside of the US system, independent monitoring can be quite effective, eg. with the Land Mines Monitor.
New weapons are incredibly destructive and inhumane. There is a need for international standards to be draw up.
Is disarmament possible? Yes, if we are creative about thinking about imaginative alternative uses of weapons. We need to look at symptoms and causes in a whole range of ways as well as campaigning on particular weapons systems.
Workshop with Ian Goudie
What can I / we do? If we’d had this workshop ten years ago we might have been envisioning a wonderful world of conversion etc. We have moved on from there, to a more gritty reality where companies are interested in diversification, and there’s lobbying of TECs, etc.
Appendix
Arms Conversion Project
Chief Executive's Dept City Chambers Glasgow G2 1DU
Tel 44+(0)141-287 0392 Fax 44+ (0)141 287 0433
E-mail: ian.goudie@drs.glasgow.gov.uk
http://www.gn.apc.org/acp
(use the above address also for North East Defence Diversification Project)
Campaign Against Arms Trade
11 Goodwin Street Finsbury Park London N4 3HQ
Tel: 020 7281 0297
email: enquiries@caat.demon.co.uk
http://www.caat.demon.co.uk
Economist Allied for Arms Reduction (ECAAR) Middlesex University
Business School The Burroughs London NW4 4BT
Tel: 020 8362 5981
http://bobbins.mdx.ac.uk/~david33/ecaar.html
Quaker UN Office (QUNO) Geneva
Avenue du Mervelet, 13 1209 Geneva Switzerland
Tel: +41 22 748 48 00 Fax: +41 22 748 48 19
Email: quno@mbox.unicc.org
http://www.diplomacy.edu/quaker/
NPT Review Conference If you are interest in finding about non-governmental organisation (NGO) involvement at the NPT Review Conference in April / May the following two web sites are worth visiting:
NGO Committee on Disarmamament http://www.igc.apc.org/disarm/
Reaching Critical Will (site developed by WILPF, Womens International
League for Peace and Freedom)
http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org
Home | News & action | Calendar | Resources | Articles | Peace is Growing days | Workshops | Links