Asia Europe Peace Forum (AEPF) Peace and Security Cluster and
International Peace Bureau (IPB)
 24-25 September 2019 

Common Security and South East Asia
by Tina Ebro

Discussions on the idea of common security by peace groups in Asia and Europe who have been working untiringly for peace, demilitarization and a nuclear-free world through the years is an important step.

I live in the Philippines, one of the nations with claims to the South China Sea in the Asia/Pacific region. It is a region identified as the geopolitical center of the struggle for world power, where its people are caught between the strategic competition between the US and China. Hence their peace, human security and livelihoods are imperiled.

In 2005, at the first AEPF Peace and Security Conference in Malaysia, scholars already warned about the definite plans of the US to contain China and the tectonic implications to countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia in the aftermath of a nuclear war. Thereafter, when the United States perceived China as a threat to its imperial dominance, two-thirds of US naval forces were transferred to Asia and the Pacific. Since then, 400 American bases surround China, from Australia to Japan, Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India, including a 1.7 trillion US dollars commitment to rebuild its entire nuclear arsenal.

In the meantime, China has 200 nuclear weapon warheads, 3 fleets of nuclear submarines with underground tunnels and military airstrips in the South China Sea. Although China has reiterated its “no first use” doctrine, its latest military budget is 170 billion US dollars, and is reinforcing its second-strike arsenal in the face of rising US challenge.

In addition, Korea, Taiwan and the South China Sea remain as the region’s most likely flash points for catastrophic war. Further, we have Kashmir in the frozen India-Pakistan conflict.

Is it therefore not surprising that Noam Chomsky and other scholars are posing this compelling question today: With a climate emergency and a severe threat of nuclear war, can organized life on earth survive in this millennium ?

At this crucial moment, Dr. Walden Bello advocated that our first imperative is to revitalize our efforts to demilitarize and denuclearize the Asia Pacific region in the immediate future.

But what does this imperative entail and require?

• Do we launch a call and campaign for a Common Security in the 21st Century that will enable us to wage vigorous advocacies? As a first step, should this call include the carbon emissions of the military and the impact of the military-industrial complex into the Climate Agreements which is greater than the emissions of 140 countries all together?
• Is a Common Security Manifesto needed that will be disseminated massively through social media and mainstream media? Should popular language be used to redefine security?
• Is effective lobby and networking work needed to cultivate more champions among legislators and policy-makers? Also among key civil society networks for multi-sectoral and inter-faith dialogues? Transform through their security specialist? Katerina Anastasiou proposed to include activating scientists and engineers with a network of scientists refusing to research and develop weapons is thus strategic.
• How do we link this campaign to demilitarize and denuclearize with other movements like the climate, social justice, labour and anti-rasctist movements? Closely related to this is the on-going advocacy to slash military expenditures critical to fund people’s vital needs like renewable energy programmes and green jobs, public services like decent housing for all, universal health care and living pensions.
• Do we need to build more mass movements and broad coalitions at the national level, regional and global level?

It has been encouraging to note that 122 states, more than half of the U.N. member states, have promulgated the Treaty to abolish nuclear weapons and this provides much hope to those working for nuclear disarmament. Nonetheless our fellow activist, Dr. Joseph Gerson, has these significant recommendations which I summarize: Winning nuclear weapons abolition still requires building mass movements, in alliance with other social movements, within the nuclear weapons and “umbrella” states like the NATO nations, Japan, South Korea, and Australia. These nations and their disarmament movements lie at the center of the struggle. If just one or two of these NATO governments are led by their people and reject the strictures of their nuclear alliances, the world’s nuclear architecture will be weakened and eroded.

He also stressed that we need to engage China and Russia, and to reach out to influential and sympathetic civil society networks, academicians, parliamentarians and policy -makers in these countries.

Friends, the AEPF critically engages the ASEM (Asia Europe Meeting), whose countries in Asia and the Pacific are the ASEAN countries, Australia, China, Japan, India and Pakistan, among others. In Europe, the members of ASEM are the NATO and nuclear power countries and Russia, among others. ASEM has members, too, that have declared their nuclear-free zone status: New Zealand and Mongolia.

A cornerstone of AEPF’s work is holding People’s Forums every 2 years and advancing the People’s Agenda at ASEM Summits. Further, its work is about providing spaces for dynamic movements in Asia and Europe, including progressive scholars and parliamentarians to caucusing and reflecting on urgent advocacies and alternatives, and on how these could be widely disseminated through the social and mainstream media to generate broad public awareness raising and support.

So that big mobilizations of people, south and north, can happen in the near future. So that that we can generate and exercise the power of collective action, in various forms at the local, national and global level. Since we know that there will be changes in national and global policies — only when we have strong social movements that embrace the fight for peace, the fight for social, economic and climate justice, and for system change across countries and across continents.