In Melbourne, the Spring Racing Cup season is renowned for random wagering. Bets on unlikely doubles and trifectas disappear into the bookmaker’s bag or multinationals’ craw. This week, the United Nations contributes to the optimistic spirit of the season by promoting its own double: World Disarmament Week from October 24-30 and United Nations Day on October 24. It would be hard to find two horses with worse form, facing stronger opposition, and more unfairly handicapped. If they lose their race, however, the racing game and many other games may be over.
Initiatives both for an international body that could help maintain peace and for disarmament have arisen from the experience and fear of increasingly destructive wars. In 1909 the establishment of an International Court and concern about the consequences of armament by the major powers preceded the 1914 world war. The destruction and disruption caused by that war led to the formation of the League of Nations as a guarantor of peace and to some limitations on armament. Disregard for its authority by the great powers and the pursuit of their own interests, however, led to rearmament and eventually to the Second World War with its massive civilian deaths and unveiling of the unimaginably destructive power of nuclear weapons.
The United Nations arose out of the determination of the eventually victorious nations, led by President Roosevelt, to form an international body with administrative and legal arms to resolve dispute between nations. One of its aims was to encourage disarmament. The reality of the Cold War with its focus on the rival interests of each side led to gaming of the United Nations by the great powers and to the development of even more destructive weapons as a means of deterrence. It also resulted in constant proxy and undeclared military action supported by the great powers without putting at risk their own territories and citizens.
This logic has led to nuclear proliferation and increased military budgets across the world and to the neutering of the United Nations. Shortly before United Nations Day we have seen the advisory opinion of the International Court on Israel’s presence in Gaza universally disregarded, a member nation shooting at the United Nations peacekeepers in Lebanon and the massive arming of that nation by the United States. World Disarmament Day coincides with nations contemplating the use of nuclear weapons in conflicts, and the international competition to develop the weapons industry as a source of national economic prosperity. If Disarmament and the United Nations were racehorses in the Peace Stakes, we would have to say that they have been knackered and nobbled by their opponents. In this race, Self-Interest and Damn the Consequences would start as unbackable favourites.
The stakes, however, are high. They are human wellbeing and with it, the future of the earth as an environment in which human beings can thrive. If narrow self-interest governs human relationships and those between nations, we can expect the outbreak and proliferation of ever more destructive wars with catastrophic consequences for human beings and the world.
The first consequence will be to the massive killing of civilians that we now see in Gaza and in Sudan and the destruction of their civil institutions of housing, medicine, farming and self-governance. All this will be inflicted with minimal cost to the powers that inflict the destruction and to those who support them with armaments. The sadness of war will inevitably lead to resentment, expanding yet more proxy wars and more destruction.
The consequence of accepting costless war as an acceptable part of statecraft will be a competitive view of trade. Nations will penalise trade with nations that they see as enemies or as rivals. This will be reflected in shortages and rising costs, borne disproportionately by the least wealthy nations. Both the proxy wars and the poverty that they intensify lead in turn to the flight of civilian populations from impoverished and war-torn societies to seek shelter in more developed nations.
In developed nations, the economic pressures will be borne unequally, with the wealthy doing what they wish and the poor suffering what they must. This leads to a divided and self-preoccupied society with no commitment to a national or international common good. It will consequently erode the commitments to the rule of law and to the equality of all citizens that lie at the heart of democracy. A conflictual, fragmented and authoritarian society will be the natural result.
'We are stakeholders in this race. We should have our say. Like the major world religions, the United Nations and its work for disarmament a stubborn hope that people who are different from one another, even hostile to one another, can be reconciled and can work together for peace and a shared prosperity.'
Under such rigged race rules, Disarmament and United Nations would seem to have no chance of competing in the international Peace Stakes. Even more important, however, Humanity will be crippled in a race it most desperately needs to win in order to survive. When willful destruction of the environment and of human living dominate international relationships, Individual interest controls economies, and resentment shapes politics, the concerted action necessary to leave to human beings of the future a world in which they can thrive becomes impossible.
We are stakeholders in this race. We should have our say. Like the major world religions, the United Nations and its work for disarmament a stubborn hope that people who are different from one another, even hostile to one another, can be reconciled and can work together for peace and a shared prosperity. That hope is often obscured in the life of the United Nations, just as it does in the messy reality of religions. But we should celebrate it as we do every initiative that works for peace in the midst of conflict, harmony in the midst of difference, and life in the midst of necrophilia. Even in racing, lost causes sometimes come home.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street, and writer at Jesuit Social Services.