The Nuclear Nightmare - Do Something!

by Wayne Hall

"The point is not which Americans are against neoliberalism or racism but which Americans are against NATO." argues Wayne Hall. This article is based on a talk given recently by the author at the Kareas Citizens' Centre in Athens.

Panos Trigazis, head of the international relations section of the Synaspismos (a Greek left party with parliamentary representation * Ed.), has just written a book called "To Their European Excellencies". One of the chapters in it is called 'The Return of the Nuclear Nightmare'. In my opinion it should be called 'The Return of Attention to the Nuclear Nightmare', because the nuclear nightmare has never gone away.

It is just that, during the 90s, other tasks were assigned to the political and social forces that previously supported nuclear disarmament. Their task in recent years has been to get the public involved in questions of human rights, nationalism, racism, etc. so that at the appropriate moment NATO could offer us the solution that it has prepared for such contingencies.

This incoherence and lack of consistency in relation to nuclear weapons is not a purely Greek phenomenon. When some of us, organised in a party whose name translates as the Ecologists-Alternatives, at the time when we were represented in the Greek parliament, tried to maintain the movement against nuclear weapons, we received absolutely no support from abroad. Despite the monstrous problem of the disintegrating Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal, when (in September 1991, immediately after the coup against Gorbachev), we briefed the secretariat of the Ecologists-Alternatives on the necessity for launching a campaign to help the Russians to get rid of their bombs, our proposal was rejected. After that, Greek ecologists essentially lost interest in nuclear weapons.

INF Treaty

When was it that we started to lose our bearings in relation to nuclear weapons? In my opinion the decisive moment was in December 1987, when Reagan and Gorbachev, amid delirious popular celebrations, signed the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The first European Nuclear Disarmament Appeal, issued under the auspices of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, had in April 1980 proposed a nuclear-weapons-free Europe. The INF Treaty took not the smallest step in that direction. It concerned merely one category of American and Soviet missiles, making no reference at all to other nuclear systems in Europe. The anti-nuclear movements were vigorous, though overwhelmingly naive, participants in the mass celebrations of that time, clearly unaware of their own lack of consistency. This was an inconsistency evident not only in relation to Moscow but above all in relation to themselves, since what was signed in the INF Treaty had nothing whatsoever to do with the demands of the April 1980 Appeal for European Nuclear Disarmament.

European Left and NATO

The confused stance of the European centre-left and Greens on nuclear disarmament reflects a more general confusion over NATO as a whole. Those who for the last fifteen years have been promoting the strengthening of the European pillar of NATO cannot today simply go back to the old anti-NATO slogans, as if inthe meantime nothing has happened. In the same way, those who for the last decade have been saying that Milosevic is responsible for everything that has gone wrong in the Balkans, cannot today simply admit that they were mistaken. Nor do they.

Just as the European centre-left lost its autonomy when it rallied to the support of NATO, in the same way NATO lost its autonomy when it started to patronise European social democracy. Today, some of the harshest critics of NATO are to be found on the political right. They are the Americans, known traditionally as isolationists, who take the line that the United States should not have permanent allies. On both sides of the Atlantic, but particularly in America, NATO's course is nowadays largely determined by the political support it receives from 'Third Way' social democrats and Democrats.

Today, many of the European supporters of the 'Third Way' want to utilise the victims of depleted uranium to strengthen their own bargaining position inside NATO against the Americans. In other words, they want to play their geopolitical games over the corpses of our children. In other words, the time has come for us to get a few things straight. It is not in the interests of the European left in the second Bush era to maintain exclusive alliances with the Democrats in the United States, if that means supporting NATO.

Instead, we should upgrade our relations with Americans, whether on the right or on the left, who want NATO to be dissolved. To me it seems better strategy to have this demand coming from the other side of the Atlantic than from Europe, where it is so easy to get it confused with the old Moscow-line perspective. And what could be better calculated to get Americans of all shades of opinion calling for the dissolution of NATO than to have Europeans demanding that the United States be asked to leave NATO? That would at once pose a threat to the Monroe Doctrine, with Canada potentially a member of a security alliance not including the United States. f the US wanted to get Canada back on side, they would have to start cleaning up their act.

We have to transcend ideology when it comes to making political alliances with American citizens. The point is not which Americans are against neoliberalism or racism but which Americans are against NATO. In the past we pursued a similar non-ideological approach with the Soviet Union. Now it's time to do the same with the Americans.

Wayne Hall is a long-term Australian expatriate, a citizen of Athens, Greece, and convenor of the Hellenic Direct Democratic Forum.

Find out more about the Forum at this website.