Militarism a Facilitator for Globalization

By Barbara Lochbihler

1. Militarism and human rights

At this panel we look at human rights from different angels. If we think about militarism and human rights immediately different pictures come into our mind. For those congress participants who have survived a war, or are from current conflict areas like Colombia, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, the Middle East and the Caucasus the cruelties experienced and witnesses are deep and existential.

Others experience human rights violations caused by militarism in a less direct, but nevertheless persistent way:

The list can be prolonged endlessly. It shows the many ugly faces in which militarism appears and that the right to peace understood as a human right is far from being known to politicians, decision makers and wider public.

2. How relates militarism to globalization?

In our working paper on globalization we have tried to show the interdependence between different areas and globalization, including militarism and globalization. While there is an enormous amount of thinking and publications in other areas, not so much is found on the link of militarism and globalization. As a peace organization it is essential that we bring into the globalization discussion the role of militarism.

In order to develop their investment strategies, TNC's, the main actors of globalization, need the assurance of political stability and security. It is an old story that military force, either from abroad or within the country, is one of the instruments for TNC's. National armies and military alliances have to assure that the interest of TNC's, the recolonialization of the world, are met first.

We have heard yesterday in the panel discussion that the negative consequences of globalization are deepening the worldwide gap between rich and poor and threaten so in addition peace.

The growing polarization between the rich and poor, has forced people to migrate and politicians and nation states, unlike with the factors capital or finance, are limiting the free flow of people and labour force. We are witnessing an enormous increase in the militarization of the police and border forces around the rich countries, like Western Europe and the US. We have an increase of human rights violations and the toleration of use of violence to keep foreigners without economic power, outside rich countries, and more police brutality and overcrowded prisons against poor people within a country. Racist propaganda is used increasingly to divide people, to scapegoat some and to sidetrack from the causes of the economic misery. In Aotearoa/New Zealand the majority of the prison population is Maori, the indigenous peoples, while Maori constitute only 15% of the population of the country. And you know better than I do, who forms the majority in the prisons in the United States.

There is de facto no coherent formed global political framework facing the main motors of globalization: the economy, finance and technology. But it is important to make clear and point out, that the global trends are not natural events, but wanted results of a net of economic-political interest.

Global security strategies have to adjust to these developments and to react on the different appearances of conflicts. The problems of transformation in Eastern Europe and no "development" in many countries of the South, have created a power vacuum or led to the erosion of state structures. The drive for autonomy and session by different ethno-political groups has lead to new inner-state conflicts.

But despite the many good UN documents from the different world conferences on a new understanding of security and the different security needs of people, we do not see a fundamental shift away of the concept of military superiority in those institutions who are powerful.

Lets stay for a moment with NATO. What happened that NATO can promote itself nowadays as the peace organization we all were waiting for so long? This collective defense alliance has added new functions of cooperative security, like the crisis management in Bosnia, and the NATO Cooperation Council. By being upgraded in this way, NATO has become responsible overall for security issues, while the UN and the OSCE, as regional security organization, have been weakened. More and more classical UN tasks of peace keeping and peace consolidation is directed away from the UN towards NATO, under the leading power of the United States. NATO is developing more and more as the worlds police and leaves other institutions with a role to play as 'soft' institutions, dealing with arms control, cooperation and security building initiatives.

And it is clear, as Tony Clark from Canada pointed it out, "If NAFTA, MAI etc. are designed to make the world safe for the TNC's, than surely military alliances, like NATO, and armies, big and small, march in tandem to make these structures stick."

Worldwide we see a decrease of the arms race, but we don't see a 'peace dividend' which would be used for civil society development.

When we look closer at the military-industrial-complex we see some trends in the arms industry and globalization Two technical trends have an impact on the changes within the arms industry: first the increased importance of dual-use technology, that means, that the way of production and products can be used for civil and military production. Second the use of new means of communication and information in order to reach a "revolutionization of warfare". Which brought the arms industry in competition with more experienced companies in the civil sector.

There are new possibilities for arms production. If those in the gulf war 1990/91 newly tested technologies can gain ground on the market, than traditional arms industries have a big comparative advantage facing companies who produce communication technology and computer hard and software.

There is still a national orientation of arms production, which comes increasingly in contradiction with the globalization of civil markets. There is an increase in arms production-cooperation, in license production and international capital sharing, but the arms markets are still protected from foreign competitors, the question is how long this will be so?

We will see an increase in the internationalization to buy products for the arms industry on the international market. This raises the additional question, on how this will effect the control regimes for arms technology transfers and arms.

What happened to our long-time demand for Conversion? In 1996 WILPF held a seminar in Geneva exploring the complexity of these issues and observed that the challenge to shift the military mindset begins with the task of dealing with the world wide militarism and the material reality of this militarism.

Lets look at the two huge military-industrial-complexes in Russia and the US build up during the Cold War.

Russia had three national conversion plans and none of them have been followed through. A systematic implementation was difficult against the strong influence of the arms industry and government itself to keep the status quo and to protect the structures of the old military-industrial-complex. Investment is needed in many ways if you want to have successful conversion, which the government does not have. Remember the last week news on the IMF loan given to Russia and 40% of the people in Russia are currently living under the poverty line.

In the USA the government has announced in 1993 the worlds biggest conversion programme of nearly 20 billion US$ in the 90th. It was also a very thoughtful programme, including training and qualification for staff and special advisory centers for small and medium size enterprises. There are many successful examples how smaller and medium size companies in the US benefited from the programme. But already in 1994 the government started cutting the programme and today you need to show the primary military value of a product of dual use, in order to get subsidies.

Parallel the Clinton administration speeded up the concentration within the arms industry, with measures like repayment of fusion expenses and an increase in the promotion of arms exports. The financial institutions at Wall Street supported this process of concentration, which has demanded thousands of work places. But from the point of view of the share holders this strategy was most successful. As result, three mega-arms companies are dominating the market, each of them has more arms turnover than what is being bought by Germany and France together. In West Europe there is still a lot of national competition, we see mergers and acquisitions as well, but this process has not found its end yet.

What happened to Employees in the Arms Industry? We have a reduction in arms sales and a decrease of people working in the arms industry. In 1996 we had less than 9,3 Million working places in the arms industry, the lowest rate since the 40th. The strongest decline have been in East* and West Europe and in the US, with only a small decline in Asia. It is difficult to say how many of those fired, have found work in the civil sector. A statistic done by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) amongst the 100 biggest arms industries states: between 1990-95 those companies reduced their personnel for half a million people and enlarged at the same time their civil production for nearly 100 billion US dollar. Theoretically this would have meant an increase in employment for half a million people. This need for more workers was however compensated by higher productivity, not with hiring people.

We see that conversion from military to civil production within a company has been possible in many cases. Leading to an increase in profit, but not to an increase in workplaces. The same statistic states that within the USA 2/3 of those fired, have found a new job within the following two years, but often with a lower salary. (source: Conversion Survey 1998, Bonn International Center for Conversion) What is needed in addition to a conversion policy for individual companies, is to have an overall national labour market policy to accompany conversion processes.

Exploring new markets The ongoing need to find new markets is essential if you want to have a successful business. Even the arms industry can count on the orders form the national war ministries, the amount of money available in national budgets is shrinking.

The promotion and coordination of arms exports to all regions of the word, to be equipped for upcoming wars or for directly using them in hot conflicts is an ongoing trend barely controlled by the few instruments we have on arms transfers control. The opening of an arms export promotion office in Brussels is showing no political will in ending the arms export, the contrary. The work for an European Code of Conduct adopted by the European Council, looks with its week wording like a 'Fig-leave' barely covering the political will of most governments to help the arms industry to make profit.

And while military contractors are looking for new markets, war ministries are seeking a new mission. The military-industrial-complex needs to justify its continuing need for public subsidies and for example the NATO enlargement was a good occasion for providing the mission.

The enlargement paved the way for the creation of a huge new subsidized outlet for arms exports. It is estimated that for US companies it brings sales of 8-10 billion US$ in fighter planes alone and a total weapons market of $35 billion over the next decade.

In the US: the arms industry lobby was already hard at work, pressing Congress and the Pentagon for billions of dollars in federal subsidies for the arming of potential NATO members, even before the first three candidates for NATO expansion were selected. This is a very lucrative business, let compare some of the investments and the output for the arms industry in 1995/96: Boeing/McDonnel Douglas spent $1.3 billion on campaigning Congress to support NATO enlargement, they got $7.8 billions in foreign military sales contracts.

The result of all this furious marketing activity will be a new arms race in East and Central Europe. And as we pointed out so many time, the NATO enlargement has catastrophic results on the budget of the week economies of the new member states. It means militarizing the economies of countries who have already terrible economic difficulties.

TNC's (of all kinds, not only arms industry) and the privatization of the war business

There is a growing influence of TNC's in international institutions like the UN, via supporting national foreign policy, which fit their interest. In addition the UN Secretary General himself has extended the invitation to the business sector to take a more active role within the UN. And in our future work we have to follow these developments with great care, particularly if and in which form the UN and its policies and programmes benefit from these 'joint ventures'.

We are witnessing an increase in desolvement of state structures, which also means an erosion of the monopoly of violence by the state. The absence of a state monopoly has concrete effects on the peace work on the spot: distribution for humanitarian aid, practical conflict resolution is impossible, if there is no-one in the disarranged society.

As I said in the beginning, the main interest of TNC's is a stable environment for their investments. In some cases they do conflict prevention work, or even educational work in order to meet their interest. But they don't hesitate as well to use and instrumentalize the military, paramilitary groups and private armies to maximize their profit and domination. A prominent example is Shells involvement in Nigeria, but there are many more.

The weakening of state authority or even the implosion of states, gives space to a new market. Paid security experts and mercenaries are not a new phenomena, but we see an increasing global trend in the "new security industry", which are of service to whom ever can pay.

An example for such a successful business is Defense System Limited based in London. The company has staff with different qualifications, like Alan Golacinski, former White House Security Advisor, and now head of the private US Defense System. Or Mr. Golovatov, former KGB member of the famous Alpha team. Asked in an interview who are the sorts of people that would be the clients of DSL, the answer war: "Petrochemical companies, mining or mineral extraction companies and their subsidiaries, multinationals, banks, embassies, non-governmental organizations, national and international organizations. Those people who operate in a very dodgy, hostile type of environment." There is a mushrooming of private security companies and high competition, but DSL is one of the leading businesses. DSL is also working for the UN, which is engaged in providing security in situations of conflict, and the World Bank, which arrives afterwards to provide reconstruction services. Their tasks are manifold. From 92-96 DSL was the largest private sector provider to the UN operations in former Yugoslavia.

And the 'rose' in this story is that there are NGO's like the 'Multinational Monitor' in Minnesota, who research and analyze the work of such organizations. Providing us with solid information to gain more insight on the myths about the actors benefiting from globalization. In the above mentioned examples of the two former security advisers, they say: "... emerging evidence gleaned from recent reports appears to indicate that today, the past experience of these men in the violent promotion of the colonial interests of ColdWar rivals has been transformed into similar services for the extractive interests of multinational corporations, which are afraid of local communities protesting against the environmental and social devastation left behind by their operations."

In his book the "Transformation of War' (1991) Martin van Crefeld, a war theoretician, comments "As used to be the case until at least 1648, military and economic functions will be reunited. Much of the day to day burden of defending society against the threat of low intensity conflict will be transferred to the booming security business, and indeed the time may come when the organizations that comprise that business will ... take over the state. In future 'War-making entities' could look a lot like they did in the feudal past * tribes, city-states, religious associations, private mercenary bands and commercial organizations such as the East India Company in the time of the British empire."

We need to be alarmed and informed about the developments in the privatization of this so-called security business and bring it to the attention of the public.

3. Finally I want to give some thoughts on how can we realistically build a global peace order vis-a-vis the ruling neo-liberalism?

A peace organization like WILPF has to renew its commitment to the principles of anti-militarism and at the same time develop further concrete proposals for the establishment of an international peace order. To get involved in the expansion of instruments of peaceful conflict resolution and collective security, so conflicts can be dealt with on an international level in a civil way.

The search and demand for a constructive peace, as an integral structure of a sustainable international order, becomes more and more important. It is essential to think about the conditions for peaceful settlements of conflicts within states and on international level. Some key elements, borrowed from the national level, are also relevant for finding criteria's for the international level:

Only if all these elements play together on the international level as well a political culture for constructive conflict resolution can be developed.

This leads to a series of questions on how we look at the UN? How do we push for a genuine reform of the worlds peace institution? States are far from being disarmed on international level. Even UN Charter outlaws the use of violence and the security council has a kind of violence monopoly based on international law.

What does constitutional control mean on international level? Who controls the Security Council? We need to discuss if and how we cant to continue with our Security Council campaign. The Security Council must be able to do more in conflict resolution and termination than provide a seal of approval on the decisions of a few major powers, if war is to be truly displaced from its current role in politics.

The UN and the regional associations already provide a framework for dealing with international conflict; the scope of "state sovereignty" in protecting actions within state borders has been shrinking over the last several decades. But further changes in these institutions are required, and what they should be and how they can be brought about are large subjects that require much discussion.

The central question on international level is, why have been existing norms and agreements not been implemented consequently and who and what hinders the rule of law on the international level.

What are the inherent blockages within the UN system to build structures to build peace? There is a need for political control how peace keeping and peace building is done within the UN structures, with a special focus on democratic legitimating, and participation of non-governmental organization.

A global peace order cannot be created in isolation on international level. A world peace order needs to have regional elements as well. The OSCE is meanwhile taking a leading role in showing a possible way for promoting minority protection, human rights and building democratic structures. The OAU has established a new mechanism for conflict solving, and monitored more than 60 elections and is discussing to intensify African capacities for peace keeping.

What does democracy mean on international level, how would a representative-democratic constitution on a global level look like in order to avoid violent conflict potentials?

The very summary list indicates the magnitude of the political changes needed in the relations of the major powers to the UN and the regional organizations, in the US above all, but in within other major powers as well. To bring about such change is the most challenging task that lies before those who seek the end of war.

Approaches to reach peaceful conflict resolution will not be taken serious without even a trend in attempting to distribute the global wealth in a just way and with this understanding the UN needs to change its current developments and to take back economic issues, which they have been "outsourcing".