OPINION_ Shackle the dogs of war

Opinion / Readers' Letters

Time to shackle the war profiteers
Published on Tue Jul 22 2014
TheStar.com

Re: Shackle the dogs of war, Editorial July 19

Shackle the dogs of war, Editorial July 19

The real long-term solution to the problems in the Ukraine, Syria, Iraq and conflicts around the world is not in controlling the overt violence per se; it is in controlling the underlying problem of the increasingly efficient and destructive methods of violence that are available to both sides.

The real underlying questions to be answered are not who is fighting but who is manufacturing, supplying and profiting handsomely from the sale of the weapons that fuel all these conflicts around the world and in our communities. We don’t need nuclear arms control or gun control. We need broad spectrum weapons control. Comprehensive production-to-destruction arms control and management would be a realistic and concrete global harm reduction strategy that all nations could embark upon immediately. Despite the protestations of the NRA and other gun-happy neocons around the world, more weapons obviously do not make people or the world safer – quite the contrary.

Instead of helpless geopolitical diplomacy in an armageddon world we need uncompromising arms control from the smallest instrument of death to the largest if we are to survive as a species – and we need it now. We need de-escalation not geopolitical confrontation and brinksmanship. None of the dozens of global conflicts would even be noticed if not for the carnage caused by weapons supplied indiscriminately by arms manufacturers from around the world including and most significantly the G8. From the handgun to the computer guided missile we are living in an increasingly dangerous, fear-filled and weaponized world.

Weapons manufacturing is arguably the single most profitable and culpable global business venture ever spawned by the industrial revolution and the greatest risk to future society. Every day global weapons manufacturers arm both sides in conflicts around the world to ostensibly make them safer while making astronomical profits in the process. They have a vested financial interest in the continuation of fear, competition and conflict around the world which they covertly encourage by freely supplying weapons to the global marketplace.

These are the huge multinational businesses that make up the large part of the economies of G8 countries. There is also a shadowy underground network of arms dealers and purchasers who profit from death and should be prosecuted as the real war criminals in global conflict. It was former U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961 who warned against the growing power of “the military-industrial complex” itself as a threat to democracy and global security going forward.

It is the arms industry, not rebel extremists, that needs to be brought to heel to manage global instability. It we take care of the former, the latter will take care of itself. Weapons manufacturing should be stringently controlled from source production to sale and only provided for nation state defense and public safety to police at modest levels that are agreed upon by all nations. All other weapons production should be eliminated and made illegal and the billions of weapons held around the world gradually confiscated and destroyed.

If we eliminate the weapons we eliminate the power of extremists and governments alike to destabilize the world. If all the trillions of dollars spent annually and historically had been directed instead to social development we would today be living in paradise rather than hell.

Robert Bahlieda, Newmarket 

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