- The Guardian
- Issue #2134
There’s an understandable, but mistaken tendency to treat the subject of war and peace as optional extras, as not the main game. As a topic, peace is sometimes treated as if it’s a craze that belongs in the 1980s.
This approach is mistaken, but understandable. Military budgets don’t get anywhere near the detailed scrutiny that the rest of the budget gets. This country is not at war and because most of the media we consume goes along with the idea that questions of war and peace aren’t as real as questions about mortgage rates, the price of petrol, or social security payments.
There’s also a bias towards English-speaking countries, which is why a ‘respected commentator’ can declare that the US-dominated global order has led to sixty years of peace and stability – something which is true only if you’re prepared to overlook wars in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. That’s a lot of land to overlook, but not difficult for English-speaking people to do, because most of our media sees the non-English-speaking parts of the globe as somehow less important.
Recently, US President Donald Trump has been criticised for asking Ukraine and Nato countries to pay for protection. He’s asking Ukraine for a $500 billion US “payback deal,” in return for all the money that the US has piled into Ukraine’s military over the last three years. He’s made similar comments about Nato. As the UK’s Morning Star puts it, Trump “stated aloud motives that previous US presidents preferred to hide in the guise of counter-terror or humanitarian missions.”
Trump is, as the saying goes “saying the quiet part out loud.” He’s not making a dramatic departure from how the US conducts its foreign policy. The question “what’s in it for us?” has always hung over US relations with the rest of the planet. What Trump is really saying is that it’s all about resources.
If war and the threat of war is always about resources, so too is peace. The road to peace is through attention to those material realities. Peace isn’t just about being nice or even just about preventing massive loss of life. Peace is about resources.
Peace is about everything because of what’s called ‘opportunity cost.’ Our government is proposing to spend more than $368 billion on a nuclear-powered submarine deal we don’t need. If they scrapped the deal and reverted to previous submarine proposals costing a mere $50 billion, we’d have $318 billion over for adding dental to Medicare, or for education.
Peace is also about education. Children in South Australia are being softened up for war right now, through nuclear-submarine-related science material and the funding of ‘Defence schools.’ That’s another opportunity cost – what our children could be doing if they weren’t being educated towards working on those subs.
The next time you’re thinking about cost of living, education, or your conditions at work, remember the difference that over $300 billion could make to that part of your life.
The road to peace lies through attention to those daily material realities. We need governments that work for people. We need the people to own the resources now being used towards war. That’s why the Communist Party of Australia doesn’t just make pro-peace noises, but campaigns hard for a country where everything is owned and run by the people.
