The IPB & Peacemomo Launch New Brochure: 11 Things We Should Consider about Global Military Spending

On the occasion of the 2021 Global Day of Action for Military Spending,
the International Peace Bureau and PEACEMOMO present a few interesting questions and possible responses around Global Military Spending.

The brochure “11 Things We Should Consider about Global Military Spending” is a guide for educators dedicated to peace in order to address questions around climate change and common security challenges.

This booklet is a didactic tool for people who wants to understand the implications of the military as a threat to peace.

You can download the brochure directly here.

Remembering and Shaping the Future – for a Policy of Common Security

Article by IPB Executive Director Reiner Braun and Prof. Peter Brandt for the German Newsletter „abrüsten statt aufrüsten“

More and more people have the feeling that we are living in a time of intensified confrontations and even the possibility of a major war again. Uncertainty is increasingly shaping our daily lives as well. The statement of the scientific Nobel Prize winners: the clock is at 100 seconds to 12, is the concise expression of these dangers threatening us all, above all – in the longer term – the climate disaster, and directly the 14,000 nuclear weapons present on earth.

Is there an alternative to this that is socially and politically – nationally and internationally – capable of winning a majority, that helps to ensure survival and a better life? A strategy that combines historical experience with answers to current challenges? In the nuclear age, the sentence literally applies, as formulated by Willy Brandt, among others: “Peace is not everything, but everything without peace everything is nothing”!

This political concept is the policy of “common security” – it is conservative and revolutionary at the same time.

Conservative because it does not aim at changing the social systems and political orders of individual countries; it accepts socialism and capitalism, or however those in power characterize their system. It is recognized as existing and legitimately changeable only from within the different variants of authoritarian, liberal and welfare-state regulated capitalism as well as a democratic or authoritarian constitution of non-capitalist states. In this way, it creates the prerequisite for a peaceful competition between these systems in the first place.

It is revolutionary because it excludes war as the continuation of politics by other means, because it thus no longer permits this murderous method of conflict resolution, which has cost hundreds of millions of lives over millennia and has called into question the very existence of humanity for over 60 years, or, in other words, raises humanity and the planet to a new level of coexistence that would have elementary humanism as its basis.

The policy of common security can bring us closer to one of the great spaces of humanity: a world without war! How many generations have fought and suffered for it again and again courageously, often in vain and with great sacrifices.

Almost 40 years ago, common security was formulated as a concept by an international group of experts in the Olaf Palme Report “Common Security Blueprint for Survivals”; next year it will be updated with the participation of IPB and ITUC (World Trade Union Confederation).

What are the basic principles of this still current concept?

In the nuclear age, security cannot be created alone or against each other, but only together and in partnership.

War is no longer a means of politics in the nuclear age; all conflicts and controversies must be resolved peacefully, through dialogue and negotiation. Violent changes of borders, appropriation of territories are excluded; state sovereignty and supranational unions remain untouched.

Cooperation is the basis for peaceful coexistence; this must develop in steps and involve the development of trust. Cooperation encompasses all levels: Economy, ecology, science, culture and sport. Consultations at all levels and also joint crisis responses are part of it.

Human rights are respected, and their realization is also repeatedly called for in dialogical discussions – from all sides and in relation to all aspects of human rights. Civil and social. However, human rights are not an instrument for struggle in interstate disputes in order to label the other party as the “bad guy”.

Arms limitation and disarmament are indispensable. This always includes small initial steps of demilitarization, disarmament of troops and other confidence-building measures such as contacts between militaries. Openness and verifiability of measures are indispensable. Exclusive military alliances such as NATO must in the longer term either be demilitarized into existing inclusive networks and completely redesigned (as the OSCE was in Europe) or dissolved.

While the policy of common security was originally a Euro-Atlantic concept, it is now a global one and for this very reason must be increasingly regionalized. What is needed are very specific concepts for common security strategies for different regions of the world, not only for Europe but also, for example, for the Korean peninsula, for the Pacific and for the South China Sea.

The policy of détente of the 21st century is inconceivable – this is also a further development compared to approaches from the 1970s and 1980s – without the peace movement as one of the large, cross-border social movements and without an international civil society. They are the motor for a new policy of détente, driving these developments forward and safeguarding them against crises through comprehensive diplomacy from below.

The basic idea of the Olaf Palme Report is quite simple: My security is only guaranteed if the security of my counterpart is also guaranteed. There is security only in the “double pack”.

Disarmament – another lesson from the 1970s and 1980s – is the indispensable “materialization” of the policy of détente. That is why disarmament is absolutely central. It could be decisively advanced by unilateral calculated steps, especially by those in the stronger position. In the northern hemisphere, this would be NATO.

Reiner Braun and Peter Brandt

GCOMS Book ‘Military Spending and Global Security’ is Now Available

GCOMS’ book ‘Military Spending and Global Security: Humanitarian and Environmental Perspectives‘ is now available at Routledge.

Routledge has launched today the book “Military Spending and Global Security: Humanitarian and Environmental Perspectives”, edited by GCOMS Coordinator and International Peace Bureau (IPB) vice-president Jordi Calvo Rufanges. The book is part of a joint project of the International Peace Bureau and Centre Delàs of Peace Studies, carried out within the framework of the Global Campaign of Military Spending, which has the support of Barcelona’s City Council.

Continue reading “GCOMS Book ‘Military Spending and Global Security’ is Now Available”

Disarmament, Peace and Development Vol: 27

Edited by: Reiner Braun (International Peace Bureau, Germany), Colin Archer (International Peace Bureau, UK), Ingeborg Breines (International Peace Bureau, Norway), Manas Chatterji (Binghamton University – State University of New York, USA), Amela Skiljan (International Peace Bureau, Germany)

December 2018, 188 pp

Series: Contributions to Conflict Management, Peace Economics and Development

Continue reading “Disarmament, Peace and Development Vol: 27”

Demilitarization for Deep Decarbonization: Reducing Militarism and Military Expenditures…

by Tamara Lorincz, Senior IPB Researcher, September 2014, 80pp

To help countries chart a path to low-carbon energy systems and economies, the UN launched the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project (DDPP). However most of the military sector’s fuel consumption and emissions are excluded from national greenhouse gas inventories. In Demilitarization for Deep Decarbonization: Reducing Militarism and Military Expenditures to Invest in the UN Green Climate Fund and to Create Low-Carbon Economies and Resilient Communities, IPB argues that war must stop for global warming to slow down. Military expenditures must be reduced and re-directed for climate finance to create low carbon economies and climate-resilient communities. Disarmament must take place alongside mitigation and adaptation.

Opportunity Costs: Military Spending and the UN Development Agenda

By Colin Archer and Annette Willi, 2012

IPB wrote a Position Paper entitled Opportunity Costs: Military Spending and the UN’s Development Agenda. It makes the case that military spending should be taken into consideration in the debate now under way on the UN’s Post-2015 Development Agenda (following on from the Millennium Development Goals). In IPB’s view, militarization is a significant factor in the sustainable development equation, often undermining the security of citizens. At the same time, the massive resources devoted to the military sector could – if even a small portion were reallocated – make a major contribution to meeting the challenges of mass poverty, unemployment and climate change.

Nuclear Weapons: at what cost?

Ben Cramer, 2009, 150pp

Nuclear weapons not only threaten massive destruction, but they also incur enormous costs. Apart from the damage caused by blast, fire and radioactive fallout from actual use in warfare, the weapons impose major financial, moral and political costs on nuclear weapons states and countries that host the weapons. The US alone spends annually over US$ 50 billion on its nuclear arsenal, and the global annual total is around  $90 billion. At a time of global economic crisis, when the international community is also struggling to come up with ways to respond to climate challenge and dwindling energy resources, can this be the right use of public money? Nuclear Weapons: At What Cost? offers a survey of the costs of the nuclear weapons programmes of all the relevant states