DISARMAMENT: WHAT'S THE AGENDA?
By Chris Ney

WHEN I TOLD an old friend who works as a community organizer in the Bronx that I had just gotten a job at WRL, she asked, "Do you think the peace movement really has an agenda?"

Taken aback, I struggled to respond, knowing her real concern was about the relevance of the peace movement. "I don't see a unifying agenda," I said finally, "but there is a real need to make sense of the world after the Cold War and to find new ways to challenge militarism."

Since then, working on "A Day Without the Pentagon," I have been in touch with many current efforts to end war-making; this article is a quick look at several of them,not a comprehensive analysis, but a highlight of some of the peace movement's disarmament work today.

Contacts Abolition 2000, U.S. Network, c/o Peace Action, 1819 H. St. #420, Washington, DC 20006; (202)862-9740. Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice, PO Box 90035, Gainesville, FL 32607; (352)468-3295. Nuclear Weapons Abolition Days, c/o For Mother Earth, Lange Steenstraat 161d, 9000 Gent, Belgium; +32-9-233-8439. SOA Watch, PO Box 3330, Columbus, GA 31903; (706)682-5369. U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines, c/o Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, 2001 S St. NW, Washington, DC 20009; (202)483-9222.

Abolish Bombs
Two of the broadest organizing efforts are WRL's fledgling "A Day Without the Pentagon" and Abolition 2000, an international campaign that has made stunningly successful use of the world's newest organizing medium, the Internet. Every day activists around the world receive news from their colleagues in the Abolition 2000 coalition. Now more than 700 members strong, the project was established by movement groups and non-governmental organizations to move beyond non-proliferation of nuclear weapons to disarmament and abolition. Building on the 1996 World Court ruling on the illegality of nuclear weapons and taking cues from international conventions banning chemical and biological weapons, the campaign seeks a ban on nuclear weapons that would eliminate the last class of weapons of mass destruction by the year 2000. With dozens of city councils around the world voting to support this goal, Abolition 2000 is one of the most important disarmament efforts today.

Beyond its international meeting last year in Tahiti and its continuing work to influence the United Nations, Abolition 2000 has given rise to a smaller activist arm that has launched a creative direct action operation called Nuclear Weapons Abolition Days. With it, international activists are putting legs (and bodies) to the 1996 World Court ruling that the use and possession of nuclear weapons violates internatinal humanitarian law. On July 8, the ruling's one-year anniversary, 35 activists supported by 60 organizations presented a Citizen's Summons to the NATO heads of state gathered in Madrid. Notarized and delivered by a Spanish bailiff, the summons urged NATO members to comply with international law by eliminating their nuclear arsenals or face a citizens' campaign of nonviolent direct action. On the assumption that the NATO countries would be unmoved by the summons, actions were scheduled around the world for Aug. 6-9, the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Activists arrested during these actions will use the World Court ruling and the Citizens' Summons as legal support for their acts.

In addition, the Clinton Administration's decision to resume nuclear testing in the guise of socalled subcritical tests has threatened one of the longsought accomplishments of the disarmament community, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, provoking protests around the country. Administration claims that the tests do not violate the treaty because they do not produce fusion sound like hollow reassurances; early this summer, Greenpeace and other groups conducted a campaign of scathing satire against the tests.

Ban Landmines
In this time of diminished resources and energy, however, most disarmament campaigns are more specifically focused. Although some have won mainstream support, influencing both legislation and public opinion, their narrow focus may fail to promote a broader anti-militarist agenda.

For some organizers this is a successful organizing strategy. Says Mary Wareham, coordinator of the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines, "When people form a new local peace group, they are looking for an issue that is concrete and that will be an easy first victory. They choose anti-personnel mines, write letters to the editor, maybe publish an op-ed piece, and support a city council resolution. When they win they go on to other issues."

The Campaign to Ban Landmines has won significant support from groups like the International Red Cross, CARE, Save the Children, and the U.N. Association,and from 14 retired generals, including Norman Schwarzkopf. In all, 230 U.S. organizations support the campaign, along with another 1,000 groups in 55 countries around the world.

The campaign was founded in 1991 by non-governmental organizations working to rebuild war-ravaged countries (NVA, May-June 1994). The groups discovered that the mines continue to kill long after peace treaties are signed, making development impossible and overwhelming poor countries' healthcare and support systems . Because de-mining operations cannot keep pace with new mine production, six NGOs issued a call in 1992 to stop the production, use, export and stockpiling of antipersonnel mines. Support from the retired generals put the Pentagon on the defensive, forcing it to develop its own list of retired generals who believe the use of mines should continue indefinitely. Wareham notes that the Pentagon's list includes William Westmoreland and Alexander Haig.

A ban on antipersonnel mines called the Ottawa initiative awaits consideration by the international community. While President Clinton says he supports a ban, he wants technological and geographical exceptions, seeking to maintain mines deployed in Korea and retain U.S. production of so-called "smart" mines that self-destruct after a given period of time. Wareham responds "All mines, whether smart or stupid, kill and maim indiscriminately. They don't know the difference between a soldier, a civilian or a child. Korea is simply the fig leaf used to cover the U.S. desire to maintain its stockpile and production of mines. But no [other] nation will agree to eliminate a class of weapons while the U.S. still holds its arms."

While Wareham acknowledges that the campaign has not generated lots of U.S. grassroots support, it has had great impact in countries suffering the effects of mines. "People are protesting in the streets of Cambodia, Mozambique, even Kabul as it was under attack,all to say _No' to landmines. This is civil society in action where there had been no civil society, only civil war."

Close the School of the Americas
Another anti-militarism campaign is School of the Americas Watch (NVA, Jan.-Feb.). Challenging the role of the U.S. military in Latin America, SOA Watch was founded by Maryknoll priest Roy Bourgeois following the 1989] massacre of six Jesuits, their cook and her daughter in El Salvador. According to a congressional task force investigating the murders, many of the soldiers involved in the attack had been trained at the U.S. Army-run School of the Americas housed in Fort Benning, GA. Bourgeois remembers, "After that report, we set up our watch in front of the base to gather detailed information about the school, and to report what we learned. We discovered that it is a School of the Assassins."

Bourgeois had seen the impact of U.S. foreign policy firsthand through religious work in Bolivia and El Salvador. "This school is in our backyard, financed by our tax dollars. The campaign unites people who have worked in El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, and it is a good way to teach people about U.S. foreign policy in Latin America."

With strong support from religious organizations and groups like Veterans for Peace, the campaign has created many good resources, including a video narrated by Susan Sarandon and a book by Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer. The New York Times and Washington Post have written editorials supporting the campaign, which has also been covered by Newsweek, GQ, and other magazines. When SOA Watch began seven years ago they were viewed with suspicion and hostility in Ft. Benning. Bourgeois even recalls being tear-gassed while on a hunger strike. Today the Watch is having an impact not only on the editorial pages, but also in Congress.

As I interviewed Fr. Bourgeois by phone, he and his staff were watching C-SPAN. The House was considering HR611, a bill to close the school, sponsored by Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-MA). Similar legislation is pending in the Senate as S908.

The Watch's direct actions have also been an irritant to the Pentagon: 17 activists were arrested recently as they dug mock graves in the Pentagon's grounds, re-enacting a Central American peasant massacre. In court, the prosecutor told the judge that he had been instructed to drop all charges by unnamed parties to the case. Presumably, the military did not want the publicity associated with a trial and prison term.

Like Wareham, Bourgeois sees the links between a narrowly crafted campaign and a broader peace agenda. "Our struggle (to close the school) is very focused, but it is connected to militarism an all the money spent on weapons, which is always a theft from the poor, both here and abroad."

Cancel Cassini
Besides diminished resources, another reason for the lack of a unified peace movement agenda is the need to respond to militarism on new and different fronts. For example, the military's efforts to project itself into space have generated new resistance. A major focus is the Cassini space probe, which will carry 72 pounds of plutonium into space (NVA, July-Aug.). The Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice has led the national movement against Cassini, highlighting the environmental and public health concerns it raises: Plutonium is a carcinogen and any accident that sprayed the substance into the atmosphere could sicken kill thousands.

Mary Beth Sullivan of the coalition's steering committee comments, "Missions like Cassini and [earlier plutonium-bearing probes] Galileo and Ulysses are the icebreakers for plutonium in space",a first step, she thinks, toward U.S.-dominated militarization of space and a precursor to the commercial exploitation of the moon and other parts of the solar system.

The ideology that informs NASA plans is chilling: A recent government publication bolsters coalition concerns. "Vision for 2020: U.S. Space Command" is filled with the uninhibited language of empire: "Space forces will emerge to protect military and commercial national interests and investments in the space medium." According to the coalition and other Cassini opponents, this rationale violates a 1967 international treaty that prohibits claims of national sovereignty in space. Moreover, it rationalizes the militarization of the heavens, adding weight to the anti-Cassini movement. Says Sullivan, "If we can stop Cassini, we can stop the militarization of space."

A Unified Agenda
Reflecting on my friend's question again, and thinking about the many important campaigns that disarmament activists1 are pursuing, the common threads are clear. In different ways, they indict the Pentagon and its related military-industrial structures. So it is a short leap, as we enter a new century in a world, to questioning the very need for a military,a question that could provide the basis for a unified peace agenda working for complete disarmament.

[Nonviolent Activist Index]

September-October 1997: Indonesia Unraveling Disarmament: What's the Agenda? "When the T-Rex Ate the Guy" Severed Body Parts and Buckets of Blood Activist News Activist Review: Pushy Priests

[War Resisters League Website]
The Nonviolent Activist is published bi-monthly by:
WAR RESISTERS LEAGUE
339 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10012. (212) 228-0450, fax (212) 228-6193, e-mail:wrl@warresisters.org.