JAPAN – THE CHANGING RELATIONSHIP WITH THE USA.
Contribution to a workshop 5/8/2001

Many of the issues raised this morning sound very familiar to me. For example:
• the change of port status. We saw this in the British base at Gibraltar, where the base status was changed from rest only in order to accommodate repairs to a nuclear-powered submarine;
• the tensions between private and public. We privatised the base which deals with the repairs to nuclear-powered submarines, so to whom is that company mainly responsible? Its shareholders, the Government, the public?
• the danger to shipping from submarines. We have seen many unexplained deaths and sinkings of fishing boats. We have a choice of culprits – the Russians, USA or the British.

You should resist all efforts to make Japan the UK of the so-called “Pacific NATO”.

You are quite right when you describe the threats to democracy of such a relationship. As militarisation develops, transparency disappears.

The European Union of 15 member states is currently developing a Common Foreign and Security Policy. The Union’s Ombudsman, responsible for overseeing good governance and the implementation of the rules, has said that the CFSP is “poisoning freedom of access to information”. That is a very strong statement.

When we look at the UK Government, we see there power concentrated in the hands of the Executive. Parliament does not even have to be consulted on whether we embark upon any military intervention, as we have no modern written constitution to ensure that. We find that questions tabled by Members of Parliament are not always answered if they touch upon matters of national security and we have a Freedom of Information Act which is badly named. We could not have the crucial debate you are having about Article 9 of your constitution. For us, the Executive decides.

I would also add a warning about how such a relationship will poison your dealings with your neighbours. They will not know whether to trust you or not. You may think you are creating friends everywhere – you may end up with not having friends anywhere!

As the British equivalent, you will be expected to be the first to support any military intervention as the USA wants – as we were in the Gulf and in Kosovo. DU weapons were used in both those missions.

At the moment, the European Parliament has a temporary Committee of Enquiry underway which is looking at the operation of the intelligence gathering system known as ECHELON. The UK has been using its facilities (as has New Zealand) to gather information in a number of areas, which has then been passed to the USA. This information covers both military and commercial information. There is some evidence that suggests that commercial information, provided by the UK, has been used against our Treaty partners in the EU by America. So what are our partners supposed to make of this? Why should they trust us? In many instances, it would appear that the UK may not even know what it has passed on, so this is an equal relationship and it never is if the USA is involved.

Resistance to the USA using those same intelligence-gathering facilities for the Missile Defence System is now a key campaign for the British Campaign against Nuclear Weapons.

You should also remember that when the Bush administration walked out of the negotiations on the Chemical Weapons Verification Treaty, one of the reasons it gave was that it could compromise intellectual property rights and commercial secrecy.

This link between the military and the commercial is a growing one. What will it mean for Japan?

I know that this workshop is focussing on the USA but I would urge you not to forget that others are also increasing their nuclear capability – in China, Russia and –to my shame – the UK. We also need to consider what we should make of the Russia/China friendship agreement and the implications of that.

American actions provide both a reason and an alibi for nuclear expansion. We have to develop our contacts in those other countries too, so that we have as strong an international movement as possible.

The post Speech 2: World Conference Against Atomic & Hydrogen Bombs appeared first on Jean Lambert MEP.

Thank you for inviting me to the 2001 International Conference Against A and H Bombs. I bring greetings from all anti-nuclear activists and peace workers in Britain and the European Parliament.

It is now 56 years since the US dropped the nuclear bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sad to say, we still have not reached even the setting up of a UN committee to negotiate a Global Ban on Nuclear Weapons. Despite last year’s UN statement where an ‘unequivocal’ undertaking to achieve the elimination of nuclear weapons was given, little positive progress has been made.

Despite some progress on arms limitation treaties the world is still bristling with nuclear weapons. Each US Trident nuclear armed submarine, of which the US has 18 and the UK 4, carries enough killing power on board to blow the world up several times. NATO, the Nuclear Armed Military Alliance, still has not abandoned its policy of ‘first use’ of nuclear weapons. The US is actively developing ‘mini nukes’, which US spokespeople claim ‘could be used’ and the US administration is now studying how quickly the Nevada nuclear test sites could be brought back in to use.

Above all of this, the USA now wants to impose its Ballistic Missile, so-called, Defence systems in defiance of opposition from nations and peoples across the world. The publicly declared aim is for ‘full spectrum dominance’ which will lead to the militarisation of space or ‘Star Wars.’ Other states and alliances such as NATO are colluding with the US by developing regional missile defence, Theatre Missile Defence or TMD, both on this side of the globe and in Europe.

It is clear for all to see that Ballistic Missile Defence is provoking a new arms race and seriously affecting global stability.

By pushing ahead with Ballistic Missile Defence, the US is arrogantly breaking the 1972 ABM Treaty, which is the corner stone of all later disarmament treaties and we all know that if you remove the cornerstone you threaten the whole structure. They are also threatening the Outer Space Treat and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Bush administration has made it clear it will not ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

The US now views the ABM Treaty as an outdated relic of the Cold War. Russia, however, had made it clear that it would not renegotiate the Treaty and would not go ful1her in nuclear arms reduction negotiations. It is not yet clear what the apparent “new deal” between the USA and Russia brokered at the recent G8 Summit means. I feel that the UK peace movement was probably not alone in wolrying about the implications of the recently signed “friendship agreement” between Russia and China. I am also deeply concerned at the signals being sent to the new nuclear states of India and Pakistan. How can they be persuaded to sign up to the Non-Proliferation Treat when international agreements are being treated with such apparent disdain?

In addition the whole BMD scheme will eventually cost hundreds of billions of dollars: Bush has asked Congress for over $8 billion for 2002 for missile defence research and testing. Yet the President tells us that he is worried about cost for the United States of combating climate change and we are supposed to see the recent Health Package for Africa as a breakthrough: the G7 (the world’s richest nations) are putting up just over $1 billion. Consider this cost, too, in a world where over 1.5 billion people do not have access to clean drinking water. We do not need to develop the systems for clean drinking water, that technology is known and proven to work and will do more for global security than BMD. The only people who will benefit from this will be the, mainly US, huge corporate defence contractors.

We must all work together to say “No” to this new threat. The European Parliament has just made a declaration stating that the ‘American plans for a Missile Defence System are a threat to European and global security.’ They urge member states to start a thorough public debate on this issue. The German and French governments have rejected the USA proposals, unfortunately the British Government has not. Indeed, it may well support it through providing our intelligence gatllering stations to participate. Thus, we become a potential target and will be viewed as part of the escalation process.

Friends, we must now all cooperate to say ‘no’ to nuclear weapons, ‘no’ to weapons in space. This madness must be stopped. I welcome the chance to meet you and offer the hand of friendship to work together for a nuclear free world and to keep space for peace.

The post Speech1 : World Conference Against Atomic & Hydrogen Bombs appeared first on Jean Lambert MEP.