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International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation |
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International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation |
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Tobias Damjanov 
Paper presented at the "No NATO" Conference of Alba Kör, Budapest, Hungary, Nov. 1997
Basically, NATO's understanding of what security means refers quite exclusively to a military definition. This, of course, is not surprising. Presumably, any military alliance does this because of the nature of military thinking, and because of the acceptance of establishing hierarchies and defending these structures by force. In NATO's case, it appears a bit different - at least at first glance: It is claimed that the very existence of this alliance has always been to defend the values of Western democracy. Historically, however, one might wonder what, for example, Portugal under Salazar's dictatorship, Greece under a military regime, or the war of the Turkish governments against the Kurds had, and have, to do with democracy. Much more confusing - and this is putting it very mildly indeed - is the question of how democracies - or any other societal structure - could possibly be defended by the threat of collectively committing suicide, which in NATO terms is called "nuclear deterrence". Even after the dissolution of NATO's only counterpart, the Warsaw Treaty Organisation, this has in a way continued. This leads me to a basic question: Is it really sufficient to define the security of a given social system only in military terms? If not, I'd like to go on to ask how other definitions of security, i.e. non-military, are taken into account, let alone defended - and which role would then the military defence of security play?
Let me first identify what I mean by referring to "other definitions of security": Security of a given society consists of multifarious elements. Social security, and by that I mean in the widest sense the security of the basic rights and means of existence, is one of the major aspects which is usually very much intertwined with economic security. Security of economy, as well as of that of the standard of living depends to a large extent on development. Development in general, however, is a crossroads: as we have witnessed in the past, it is an unreflected development of industrial structures. For example, it does not lead automatically to everybody's welfare and social security - on the contrary: the gap between the poor and the rich is dramatically increasing, which means that it benefits the seemingly stable security of one part of the population, while the other part is losing their security in terms of humane standards of living. And I haven't even mentioned yet the consequences for the environment over the past few decades which are another major factor destroying the security of societies. This simplified example shows that development needs clarification: What are the targets of development? And who exactly benefits from which type of development - and who doesn't? Is it a short-term development or a long-term development? And finally in summary: does development produce more overall security or less?
NATO: In defense of interests
Now you may guess what my point is. Actually, it is two-fold. One part is that the military can defend only one type of development - and it goes almost without saying that this is a type favoured and promoted by those political forces who themselves govern the military. You might consider, however, at least one major exception which is the military forces of liberation movements, but we are talking here about NATO - well, I must admit that I heard that some NATO politicians are considering NATO as a liberation force. Years ago, the army in my country even ran a propaganda campaign saying that NATO was the biggest peace movement. Now, NATO presents itself as an institution aiming at saving human rights - of course, the whole world over. What I mean is that you cannot expect that the military - in our case NATO - would defend anything else but the security of its governments, including - and this is essential - the governments' model of development.
It is, of course, not by chance that I am highlighting this particular aspect here. NATO's expansion policy towards former member states of the Warsaw Pact is an extraordinary example of what kind of security the political forces ruling NATO have in mind. Study the official documents which give reason for the policy of expansion, and you will find out the following: On the one hand, it is stated that Eastern European countries are in the process of becoming democratic societies, but their development appears to be unstable to a certain extent. This is where NATO fits in: it is claimed that cooperation with NATO or membership would help to stabilize the process of democratisation. On the other hand, it is also stated that only stabilized societies are worth becoming a member of NATO - and here I add: understandably, NATO would not like to voluntarily include instabilities in its "community": they have enough difficulties among themselves, regarding, for example, the Euro-Atlantic partnership, the role of the Western European Union and so on. As far as security patterns in a broader sense and in the longer term are concerned, it is quite clear that the political aim of NATO expansion is simply to insure that the countries concerned follow a model of development which is in line of the developmental model of the Western countries - or rather: in line with the developmental approach of their ruling forces. The philosophy and the political understanding of what the development of a given society means is almost solely based on the governments of NATO's nuclear weapons states, on a world order defined and implemented by the US, and on determining societies and international relations by (military) force and by the political power of elites.
Green Helmets ?
The second part of my point is that NATO has been criticized as long as it has existed. The more constructive criticism has introduced models of alternative, collective and comprehensive systems of security; and more recently, this has been highlighted by drawing attention to the role of the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) as a political alternative for cooperation and non-military conflict resolution. Proposals have been made as to how to establish a non-offensive defence approach in order to get rid at least of weapons of mass destruction and other offensive weaponry. In fact, arms control has taken place, although only to a small extent, and ideas have been considered whether it could be useful to deploy NATO forces only for humanitarian issues or even as "Green Helmets", that is for ecological reasons.
All this and more is well-known I suppose, and I shall not go into further details to that point. Still, the military definition of security appears to be widely accepted even by those who criticize the military. What I mean is that demands for disarmament, for instance, are certainly justified. Usually, however, they were based on various criticisms of the military, of particular weapon systems, of increasing tensions, and so on. So, the starting points of demands for disarmament have mostly been one-dimensional. They have not taken into account that you need to address other dimensions of society as well, in order to achieve long-term and sustainable disarmament. Only the issue of arms conversion is a significant exception because of the necessity to view another dimension than the military alone. I am referring, of course, to the entire economic subsystems of societies.
Multidimensional security
Since a few years, the awareness about the global dimension of fundamental developmental problems of human societies is growing and broadening. From my point of view, this started at two levels: the worldwide concern about ecological misdevelopments and the nuclear issue. Stating that I don't intend to neglect other misdevelopments such as neo-colonialism and the politico-economic North-South balance. These are obviously global problems as well. But so far the missing link is that you don't find a comprehensive approach as how to address the complexity of the future of humankind in terms of the global context of both the multifarious aspects of security of living and the sustainability of humankind's development.
Sustainable development has been introduced only recently, i.e. by the Report of the Brundtland Commission, and later (and more specifically) by the 1992 UNCED Rio Summit. Subsequently, the demand for sustainable development initiated multifarious programmes - such as the AGENDA 21 - and scientific research mainly in the field of natural sciences and ecology.
Although the common understanding of sustainability provides for an overall view of all aspects concerning nature and human beings in a global and comprehensive context, including all kinds of interrelation between human beings, their welfare and their needs, social and political sciences have so far somewhat neglected the question of sustainability, to say the least. In particular, the social dimensions of sustainability do not seem to be of major interest as compared, for example, to the corresponding efforts in the field of ecology, environmental protection and local sustainable development. Considering the various aspects of security as being part of the social dimensions, there is obviously a remarkable lack as far as the linkage between security patterns and sustainable development is concerned. Especially discussions about and analyses of different (international) systems of security politics and means of security are badly missing taking into account the relevance of sustainable development.
Military linkage to society
If you want to implement sustainable development, the question of security is certainly on the agenda. Focussing more specifically on the traditional understanding of security __ that is the military definition __it has to be examined whether or not the military complies with sustainability. First of all, you have to identify that "the military" as a section of society is not simply only the apparatus, the institution or the armed forces as such. According to the philosophy of sustainability, it includes all military relations, linkages and influences concerning all other sections of society:
Once you have identified the elements not compatible to sustainable development, you have to realize that you cannot simply replace or abandon them, because the process of replacing or abandoning could turn out as being unsustainable in itself. So you need to develop alternatives which have been checked upon their sustainable qualities, i.e. how they would contribute to the overall sustainable development of society. Furthermore, you need to know beforehand, how the process of introducing them would affect all other sectors of society which should be developed and structured towards sustainability.
After this more theoretical example, let's have a look to the example of NATOs extension policy twards Central and Eastern Europe: the first question should not be: is this extension needed or not, but how to develop the societies concerned in a sustainable way? Then you might ask how would NATO´s exention fit in? The wide-spread believe that NATO integration would help developing the nations in Central and Eastern Europe appears to me very much shortsighted. You might rather promote the idea that instead, these countries should better consider cooperating with or joining the European Union. In fact, there are many hints that NATO is seen as a way to become acceptable as a possible future EU partner. I wonder what the expectations are. It has already been mentioned that joining or cooperating closely with NATO is definitely a state-finances consuming business. Whatever the real costs are, one thing is for sure: the budgeting will be so excessive that the countries concerned will most likely not be capable of meeting the standards of EU membership. Talking about sustainable development, it should also be emphazised that EU membership is by large no guarantee for a healthy and comprehensive development of societies. So what to do?
The subject of this conference was NATO´s policy. My suggestion is to put all NATO-related questions and problems in the broader context of developmental issues. To be very clear, I am certainly in favour of radical disarmament, including the dissolution of military alliances such as NATO and the Western European Union. What I have tried to stress here, however, is that demands for disarmament need to be considered multi-dimensional. In other words: Peace is not the mere absence of war. Thus, to achieve sustainable peace you need to change not only military structures and military politics but also to establish alternatives which refer to the development of peaceful structures in society. Sustainable development is not a magic word: you have to define what sustainability means to you and how it should become a political tool. Don't leave it to the power elites who are already playing around with the term of sustainability trying to misuse it for their own purposes. One first step could be to initiate development from below in terms of grassroots movements. There is already an interesting and promising example which is the "Local Agenda 21". This is the attempt to establish sustainable development in the communities and for the communities.
Tobias Damjanov, International Network of Scientists and Engineers for Global Responsibility (INES); home address: Am Beckerkamp 12/app.26, D-21031 Hamburg, Germany; tel +49-40 726 923 94
email: damjanov@math.uni-hamburg.de
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