NEW YORK, Jan 6 (IPS) – The United Nations has published a year-end fact sheet: Rising global military spending, clearly illustrating last year’s record high of $2.7 trillion in military spending, has caused a cascade of devastating consequences for human well-being, the environment, the ability to prevent climate collapse, as well as blows to employment, ending hunger and poverty, the provision of health care, education and other ills, due to a lack of adequate financial support.
The Fact Sheet admirably illustrates the shocking maldistribution of states’ massive military spending and what that money could deliver in many cases, such as ending hunger and malnutrition, providing clean water and sanitation, education, environmental restoration, and much more.
But isn’t it time for the UN to issue a fact sheet: lost opportunities to halt rising military spending and heal the planet? Finally, this summer, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Second World War, Russia and China have… Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on Global Strategic Security in which they urged that in recognizing that anniversary and the establishment of the United Nations, States and their associations “should not attempt to secure their own security at the expense and detriment of the security of other States.” adding that “the fate of the peoples of all countries is linked.”
Even a cursory examination of the sorry history of the United States and its nuclear alliance, in its efforts to secure military dominance at the expense of Russia and China, reveals a sad list of missed opportunities to accept Russia and China’s offers to negotiate peace and disarmament, which would have freed up trillions of dollars over the years to address the crisis we now face for the preservation of all life on Earth.
The most recent opportunity that should have been on the list (met with a deafening silence by the corrupt Western media, working under the heavy thumb of their military sponsors, who revel in the billions lining their pockets to produce the burgeoning war machine) was the joint statement of China and Russia, which criticized the US misguided Golden Dome space project and opposed the use of space by countries for armed confrontations.
They pushed for negotiations based on the Russian-Chinese draft Treaty on the Prevention of Arms and Use of Force in Outer Space, proposed by the UN Committee on Disarmament in 2008 and 2014, where consensus is required to negotiate a treaty and the United States vetoed it each time, preventing any discussion. Amazingly, they further pledged that to prevent an arms race in space and promote peace in space, they “should agree to advance on a global scale the international initiative/political commitment not to be the first to deploy weapons in space.” In other words: no first use.
While peace in space is the most recent lost opportunity, the first lost opportunity occurred in 1946 when President Truman rejected Stalin’s proposal that the US transfer the bomb to international control at the newly formed UN, leaving Russia with the bomb.
President Reagan rejected Gorbachev’s plea to give up Star Wars as a condition for both countries to eliminate all their nuclear weapons when the wall fell and Gorbachev liberated all of Eastern Europe from Soviet occupation, losing the opportunity to abolish our nuclear arsenals.
More lost opportunities: the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to the Russian border, despite promises made at the fall of the wall that NATO would not expand east of a reunited Germany:
President Clinton’s refusal to reduce Putin’s offer to a thousand bombs each, and then call on all nuclear weapon states to negotiate their elimination, on the condition that the US stop developing missile sites in Romania.
President Bush withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and established the new base in Romania; President Trump placed one in Poland.
President Obama Rejected Putin’s Offer to Negotiate a Treaty to Ban Cyber War! [i]
If the US had been more open to cooperation over the years, instead of losing so many opportunities to make peace, we would be so much better able to deal with the urgency of preserving a livable planet for all and avoiding the dire consequences listed in the new UN fact sheet on global military spending. It is still not too late to take up the Russian-Chinese proposal for peace in space. May wiser heads prevail.
[i] https://pirm.medium.com/why-no-international-treaty-for-cybersecurity-to-ban-cyber-attacks-5a53d8b3fdd1
Alice Slater serves on the boards of World BEYOND War and the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, and is a UN NGO representative for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
IPS UN Office
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