April 30, 2018 | Jordi Calvo Rufanges

The military lobbies develop much of their activity in the field of military budgets and discourse. This is because this cycle is in the hands of states and is dependent on budgets approbation for military spending base in identified needs for defence and security. The Ministries of Defense, which mainly includes the maintenance of the armed forces, plays a huge role in this process. Yet the real beginning of the cycle to decide the militarization level of a country starts in the arguments and discourses that legitimize the need for arms and armies depending on the identification of threats to a country’s security and defense to justify high levels of militarization and armaments.

Thus, security doctrines developed by governments are directly influenced by research defense, security, conflict, and peace centers that often have close relations to military-industrial complexes. Numerous think tanks are related to the arms industry, as we can see in the European case, popularly known as think tanks, establish a certain level of armaments and militarization development of a given society.

European Defence Fund is a good example of this. It will channel to the military industry a total of 590 million euro from 2017 to 2020, and 1.5 billion per year from 2021 to 2027, plus the amount given by member states from their national budgets: 2 billion in 2017-2020 and 28 billion in 2021-2017 as it is stated by European Network Against Arms Trade (ENAAT):

“On 7 June 2017, the European Commission officially launched the European Defence Fund. This Fund will be made of different public funding tools in order to finance Research and Development (R&D) projects in technologies and goods for military purposes. The main recipients will be companies and applied research groups active in this domain. The main priorities will relate to “cutting-edge” technologies like autonomous systems (including drones), intelligence-surveillance, cybersecurity and maritime security.”

The objective of the European Defence Fund is supposed to be strengthening the military capabilities of the EU member states and the EU strategic autonomy, and on the other hand to contribute to growth and jobs in Europe by supporting the competitiveness and innovation of this industrial sector.

There is no big controversy, neither in EU Parliament or political parties nor in society. Besides the lack of knowledge and capacity to follow up military issues coming from EU, the acceptance of such a new approach of military in EU that will foster its capacities and increases notably its Defence budget is not casual.

Threats to security and military responses

Military industrial complex lobbies, including NATO as one of the most relevant and influential in its member states and in some kind in the rest of world deciding the path for peace, Defence and all aspects of security from a military point of view, have written the main threats in their strategies for Defence and security. Paying attention to the ones from EU, NATO, USA and Spain, we can identify that all of them have in common as main threat and risks to security:

Terrorism and violent extremism

• Proliferation of weapons of massive destruction
• Cybersecurity
• Energy security
• Organized crime
• Climate change
• Irregular migration flow
• Economic crisis

All threats and risks included in Defence and military analysis offer serious doubts about the capacity of traditional military response to be the best way to face them. Terrorism used to have police and political responses, proliferation of weapons of massive destruction are managed through international treaties and diplomacy, cybersecurity doesn’t need strictly military structures to be managed, energy security and climate change has environmental policies response of reduction of energy consumption or use of renewables and sustainable sources, organized crime is in hands of police, or militaries with police functions, irregular migration and the management of the external borders, that is a key aspect in EU security and Defence strategy, is obviously a humanitarian and social related issue; finally economic crisis, that incorporates financial crisis in NATO Defence strategy, and economic slowdown in the case of USA, need social and economical policies as we saw in the last economic crisis.

We live in an era where there are many threats and risks to security but many of them do not need military structures as a response but political, diplomatic, social, environmental or humanitarian, among others. This fact is acknowledged by both military and arms industry. Military sector and arms –military business in particular are, thus, threatened by their lacks of capacity to be chosen by countries as the main way to deal with security and peace.

Nevertheless, reality shows how military budgets, arms trade and military industry business are growing year after year. It is result of the influence and lobby of all think tanks and organizations related to them to incorporate military discourses in all security and peace analysis, pushing peace culture and human security approaches into the background, when they should be the main answer to all identified threats in the world nowadays.

Peace culture and human security need lots of resources that are now used for militarization. More militarization has been the answer to security challenges up to know. The result and consequences are dramatic, more than thirty armed conflicts are active every year, extreme violence and terrorism is more likely than ever in any place of the world.

A more violent and insecure world is the result of militaries managing peace and security. Their capacity starts with Defence budgets and all military expenditure that fosters a sector conformed by more than 20 million personnel of militaries all around the world, thousands of arms industries that get from public money 1,7 billion dollars every year. It’s time to reverse the cycle. War starts when governments decide military expenditure. Let’s stop financing miltarization and war and transfer them to peace culture and human security activities.

*** Jordi Calvo RufangesGlobal, Campaign on Military Spending, International Peace Bureau, Delàs Center for Peace Studies

June 1, 2016

CONCEPT NOTE
Peace Building and Human Security:
Responses to Migration and Fundamentalism and Terrorism
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia 4-6 July 2016

Background and Introduction

In 2014, within the framework of the tenth Asia-Europe People Forum, the “Peace and Security” Circle, in coordination with peace movements in Asia and Europe, organized a series of activities which discussed a variety of issues including military spending and arms transfer/arms trade, nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction; killer drones, killer robots, other secret weapons and infrastructures; disarmament policies and conflict prevention in Asia and Europe, etc.

At the Milan forum, various recommendations were made and submitted to ASEM leaders in order to maintain peace and security in the two continents and the world as a whole.

Two years later, it can be seen that some countries said they would cut programs and military weapons to reduce the defense budget deficit; meanwhile the defense budget has been increased continuously in other countries for decades. Besides the conflicts and disputes in hot spots including South China Sea and East China Sea, the long-running crisis in the Korean Peninsula has continued to evolve in complex and dangerous ways.

The development of the terror group calling itself the Islamic State (IS) and other terrorist movements continue killing innocent people, using violence as a way of threatening the world’s security. The Russian plane crash in Egypt on 1st November, killing 224 people and the terrorist attacks on the street in Paris claiming the lives of at least 153 people on 13 November are just two of many cases in point. There are many other episodes of such wanton killings that we could cite.

The current refugee crisis in Europe, constantly in the headlines, is said to be the result of conflicts, tensions and human insecurity in the Middle East and elsewhere (such as the long conflicts and other oppressions in Africa and Afghanistan and many other regions).

In such a context, peace movements and people’s organizations in Asia and Europe have organised various activities to contribute to suggest solutions to these problems. However, there have not been adequate cooperation and connection between movements and movements and states, to create effective synergies in the struggle for peace.

In this context, the Vietnam Peace and Development Foundation (VPDF), in coordination with the AEPF’s International Organization Committee, recently organized a Workshop on “Peace and Security in Asia and Europe” in Hanoi, Vietnam as a step forward and help prepare for AEPF 11.

The Peace and Security Circle will be working with peace movements in Asia and Europe to organize a variety of activities at the AEPF 11 in Mongolia under the theme “Peace Building and Human Security – Responses to Migration and Fundamentalism and Terrorism”.

Objectives:

• To have an overview of the Peace and Security situation in Asia and Europe (Providing context, status, perspectives and challenges);
• To learn from shared experiences and examine perspectives challenges for appropriate and meaningful peoples’ responses to Migration, Fundamentalism, Terrorism;
• To look at alternative visions and strategies for Peoples Action for Peace and Security in Asia and Europe;
• To strengthen the network of peace movements and people’s organizations in Asia and Europe;
• To make recommendations to ASEM leaders.

The Call for Participation in the AEPF11 recently issued by the AEPF International Organizing Committee and the Mongolia National Organizing Committee articulated the focus on:

• A European perspective
• An Asian perspective
• The Asia-Europe dimensions of the issue

PROPOSED WORKSHOPS

Workshop 1

Peace and Security in Asia and Europe: Context, Status, Perspectives and Challenges

Focus of the Workshop: Overview of Peace and Security Situation in Asia and Europe: perspectives on major powers’ relations, on China’s global strategy and its implications on global peace and security. Issues of nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction, foreign military bases, arms trade and military spending will also be taken up as they relate to the overall peace and security situation in Asia and Europe.

Presentations:

1. Overview of Peace and Security in Asia and Europe
2. China’s Global Strategy and its Implications on Global Peace and Security
3. Peaceful Resolution of Disputes and Conflicts
4. Military Spending, Arms Trade, Foreign Military Bases
5. Nuclear Weapons &Weapons of Mass Destruction

Output: Concrete proposals and Workshop report. Full report for documentation and 1 page report summary for the AEPF People’s Vision Group.

Workshop 2

Responses to Migration, Fundamentalism and Terrorism

Focus of the Workshop: Perspectives, Challenges and Responses: Migration, Fundamentalism and Terrorism in Asia and Europe including NATO

Presentations:

1. Alternative Visions and Strategies for Peoples Action for Peace and Security in Asia and Europe
2. Peace Building and Dialogue Process on Northeast Asia
3. Networking Among Peace Movements and People’s Organizations in Asia and Europe – ow to create Synergies for the Struggle for Peace and Justice
4. What should the EU do?
5. People’s recommendations for the solutions of Peace and Security issues

Output: Concrete proposals and Workshop report. Full report for documentation and 1 page report summary for the AEPF People’s Vision Group.

Workshop 3

Strategies for People’s Vision of Peace and Security in Asia and Europe

Focus of the Workshop: Recommendations for future directions and cooperation (concrete proposals, joint projects, and strategies for action); Networking among Peace Movements; What EU Does and Should Do.

1. Alternative Visions and Strategies for Peoples Action for Peace and Security in Asia and Europe
2. Peace Building and Dialogue Process on Northeast Asia
3. Networking Among Peace Movements and People’s Organizations in Asia and Europe – ow to create Synergies for the Struggle for Peace and Justice
4. What should the EU do?
5. People’s recommendations for the solutions of Peace and Security issues

Output: Concrete proposals and Workshop report. Full report for documentation and 1 page report summary for the AEPF People’s Vision Group.

Note: The Thematic Cluster ‘Peace Building and Human Security’ is being coordinated by Transparency International (Mongolia), Vietnam Peace and Development Foundation/Stop the War Coalition, and the Finnish AEPF Committee

November 6, 2012

Introduction:

The 9th Asia-Europe People’s Forum (AEPF9) Final Declaration calls the ASEM governments to build a nuclear free world. On “Sustainable Energy Production and Use”, the 5th “Key Recommendation” states: “Commit to progressing, with urgency, to a nuclear power free world. This will require decommissioning existing nuclear power stations, stopping the development of planned power stations and taking forward alternatives.”

During Vientiane AEPF9, an “AEPF No-Nuke Circle” was launched to act on this issue. Workshop participants came from nine Asian and European countries. Representatives of networks from other countries supported this initiative, even if they could not be present at the workshop because of simultaneously held meetings.

The following statement – the « Call for Action » – explains why we engage ourselves in the fight for a nuclear free word.

This statement can be endorsed by organizations, networks and individuals.

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At a time when the some of the advanced industrialized countries of North America, Europe and Japan have decided to phase out completely their nuclear energy programmes or reduce their dependence on nuclear energy for electricity production, the main markets for North American, European, Russian and Japanese suppliers of nuclear equipment are in Asia. China and India are the two countries with the most ambitious plans for expanding nuclear power generation. Many other countries are reconsidering or abandoning their plans to start nuclear power production. To bring about an end to nuclear energy programmes in Asia and Europe more than ever do we need a coordinated campaign among civil society activists and groups not only in the different countries of Asia but also similar alliances with civil society counterparts in Europe where popular disillusionment and opposition to nuclear energy has sometimes been successful in making governments change their nuclear power policies.

The AEPF therefore is an ideal venue for developing such a coordinated campaign. What follows is a statement of basic arguments for opposing nuclear energy in favour of environmentally appropriate use of renewable energy sources.

Our Stand

The promise’’ of nuclear energy in the 1950s which led to the development of civilian nuclear programmes for electricity generation in numerous countries around the world has been completely belied. Indeed, in the eyes of one expert Amory Lovins, the performance worldwide of civilian nuclear energy programmes has revealed it to be perhaps the single greatest failure of the industrial age! After over 60 years of experience the case against nuclear energy especially given its safety record is now overwhelming. The main arguments can be summed up under six basic categories – too little, too late, too secretive, too centralised, too expensive, too dangerous.

Too Little

Nuclear energy constitutes an ever declining proportion of world electricity generation whether measured in terms of capacity or output. It now accounts for less than 12% of world output. Of the world’s 430 odd existing reactors, even as some old reactors are having their life spans dangerously extended, considerably more reactors will be shut down over the next two decades than will be built. The proportion of electricity generated by nuclear power will go down even further. In 2009 the installed capacity in energy generation with “new” renewable sources (excluding large hydropower) worldwide surpassed nuclear power capacity for the first time. Since then the gap has got increasingly wider. Nuclear power is not the energy of the future! The claims made of a nuclear renaissance are false.

Too Late

The most recent and popular argument being made to promote the nuclear power industry is that it is a clean energy source and crucial for addressing the problem of global warming. However, nuclear power is not and cannot be clean given the long lasting and highly dangerous radioactive wastes it generates for which there is no long term safe storage process and for which short term storage processes cannot but carry some level of risk of unforeseeable and possible leakages due to circumstances/events/developments beyond control.

While it is true that nuclear reactors do not directly generate carbon emissions, the whole “nuclear fuel cycle”—from uranium mining to fuel fabrication to building, running and maintaining reactors, and managing and storing/reprocessing their wastes — produces a substantial amount of carbon dioxide. Therefore the eventual saving or carbon abatement from nuclear power is much less than from most renewable sources although it is more than from fossil fuel burning. However, even such a saving does not make it worthwhile to go in for nuclear power plants since the opportunity costs are so huge and the period of construction (usually 10 to 13 years) is so long that if the same amount of money was spent for establishing renewable energy sources, the amount of carbon emissions saved would not only be much greater but – and this is very important – the savings would take place much more quickly. Some expert studies conclude that for nuclear energy to make a significant dent in carbon emissions we would need to build close to one plant every fortnight for the next ten years!

Too Secretive

Given both its inherent dual-use character, i.e., its military potential in terms of generating fissile materials for bomb-making and the risks of leakages at various points in the construction and running of plants and in waste disposal, all civilian nuclear programmes are unavoidably far more secretive than is the case in other industries. All industries are subject to what organisation theorist Charles Perrow calls “normal accidents”. The nuclear industry is no exception. Full transparency about such events would undoubtedly raise great concerns and opposition among the population at large and be highly detrimental to the credibility of all those involved in preserving the nuclear programme – suppliers, operators, governments. The very nature of the industry demands that it must institutionalise deeply undemocratic mechanisms of non-transparency and non-accountability with respect to the wider public.

Too Centralised

Nuclear power only makes some sense if its role is connected to a highly centralised system of electricity generation and distribution and use which also means significant distribution and transmission losses, i.e accepted inefficiencies. For most developing and developed countries the only sensible approach is to develop a strongly decentralised system of energy production and use alongside existing grid systems since such a decentralised approach is both cheaper and far more compatible with the use of renewable energy sources and local surpluses in electricity generation can be fed into a network of local and regional grids and even into the national grid. Thus, renewable energies are creating many more jobs than nuclear.

Too Expensive

The full costs of nuclear power generation and distribution from the beginning of the fuel cycle to the end of waste disposal and storage are never properly calculated. Indeed, governments from France to Japan to others have always provided open or hidden subsidies of one kind or the other. Among the costs usually excluded in part or full from “levellised costs” or the cost per kilowatt hour produced by nuclear power plants, are the following: a) the cost of decommissioning the plant when its life span is over which is maybe one-third to one-half of the cost of construction itself. b) Not adding the costs, howsoever discounted over a prolonged period, of waste management and storage. c) The ‘real’ financing cost including interest payments made on borrowed capital and other charges associated with long construction periods. d) Costs are fast rising with new security requirements – and if they were not, it would mean that security is traded off against profits. c) The cost of insurance against accidents (including huge premium costs) if liability is absolute (as it should be) and of creating contingency funds for accidents causing economic, ecological and health damage.

Yet despite the partial or total exclusion of these elements, the costs stated by industry and publicised by the media are everywhere still higher than all other forms of energy production by fossil fuels and with most renewables. Even the most expensive of alternative energy sources today, namely solar energy, is already lower than the levellised costs of nuclear power in many scenarios and steady technical and scientific improvements are making solar energy progressively cheaper over time compared to nuclear power. The opportunity costs of nuclear energy are prohibitively uneconomical. This is the single most important reason why the private sector will not go in for nuclear power without assured subsidies and liability caps guaranteed by governments.

Too Dangerous

There are five kinds of dangers actual or potential.

1. The release of ionising radiation and dangerous isotopes bound up with each step of the nuclear fuel cycle, endangering people in various countries from uranium mining to waste storage. These are invisible poisons, which produce cancers and genetic damage and against which there is no defence or cure.
2. There is the insoluble problem of waste disposal. Present problems and dangers of waste disposal are partly rationalised by the pro-nuclear lobby as the other side of the coin of present benefits and services. But for future generations there are only the problems and dangers and no presumed benefits and services. Nuclear power is poisoning the earth.
3. Accidents are normal in all industries. Consequences small or big always follow. But nuclear power is the sole mode of energy generation in the world, which is vulnerable to catastrophic accidents with enormous and unacceptable consequences. The health and environmental effects of nuclear accidents are of such a nature that they must be deemed unacceptable, although the scale of incidence can vary from small to big. Even if as claimed the probability of a major accident is low it is never zero and no one can give a precise measure of how low. But the consequences of a major accident are beyond measure and simply incalculable. Even absolute liability only means that the culprits behind the accidents will lose money while the actual victims of such accidents are innocent others who have to pay with their health and lives!
4. Nuclear plants are potential targets for conventional assaults by state or non-state actors, and vulnerable to sabotage with huge consequences.
5. The actual or potential military-related dual-use possibilities of civilian programmes means that if the world is serious about wanting to move towards complete disarmament of nuclear weapons then this must require the complete elimination of all civilian nuclear power programmes as well. As long as civilian nuclear power programmes exist, the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation exists.

The countries of Asia and Europe must give up on all or any civilian nuclear power programmes. Where such plants and fuel cycle activities exist, they should be phased out as quickly as possible never to be revived. Nuclear plants can be reconverted wherever possible into other environmentally friendly facilities for productive and employment generating activities.

AEPF initiative on nuclear industry will be articulated with ongoing campaigns for nuclear disarmament and for an overall socially and environmentally appropriate policy on energy.

AEPF “No-Nuke” Circle

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