A better world is possible - Global Commons Institute

Copyright Bruce Nixon 2010. All rights reserved. This electronic copy is provided free for personal, non-commercial use only.
www.brucenixon.com
Section E – Violence, war and the threat of nuclear annihilation
It is impossible to conceive of a world at peace when the poorest 60% of humans live on just 6% of the world’s
income. Mohammed Yonis, winner of 2006 Nobel Peace Prize
The 21 st century is the time for us to give up war and learn non-violent ways of resolving conflict. War
diverts us from the urgent need to focus all our collective efforts on tackling climate change and other
threats to the future of humanity. The dire consequences of war are greater than ever. Waging war
increases the risk of unleashing worldwide nuclear devastation and nuclear terrorism. A leaked Pentagon
report spoke of the dangers of nuclear conflict arising from climate change and pressures on dwindling
resources. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists expressed the same view.
The costs of war – lives
The 20th century accounted for 95% of over 120,000,000 war deaths since 1700, 40 million from 1945 to
year 2000. State violence far exceeds that committed by individuals. Nearly 20 million died in WW1. Total
WW2 deaths are estimated at 52 million. The Atomic bombs killed 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000
in Nagasaki by the end of 1945 but many more died later. There are indications that this outrage was
unnecessary. Japan was ready for peace. Mark Curtis estimates British foreign policy from the end of WW2
has been directly or indirectly responsible for around 10 million deaths worldwide. He adds that New Labour
continued to make claims about the morality of its foreign policies, wishing to be a “force for good in the
world.” Yet never in British history, had there been such a gap between government claims and reality.
In today’s wars over 80% of deaths are civilians. At the end of the century, despite “precision weapons”
demonstrated on TV, over 95% of these deaths were civilian compared with 52% in the 1960s. The Iraq and
Afghanistan wars created almost half of the world’s 11 million refugees by the end of 2007. In Iraq, in
addition to over 4,000 US military deaths, 100,000 to 650,000 civilians have died. 4 million people have been
uprooted from their homes, 2 million displaced inside their country and 2 million have fled to other
countries. A relatively advanced society has been reduced to poverty. Iraq’s infrastructure was partly
destroyed. A third of Iraqis are said to be in urgent need of aid. The children have been described as a
stunted generation. The more troops there are in Afghanistan, the more aerial attacks in Afghanistan and
Pakistan, the more civilians are killed and the more people are pushed into grief and anger, the more are
driven into the hands of extremists.
What if such so-called surgical strikes had been inflicted on London, Paris or New York or your home town,
destroying the infrastructure leaving people without water, heat or power and destroying their livings?
Imagine British people fleeing their homes, migrating to the North or across the Channel, Irish or North Seas.
Is it that we regard people in other lands, or of other races, as less important, less human than ourselves? Do
we fail to identify with others who are further away?
Many believe the Iraq war was illegal, its initiators guilty of a war crime.
The loss of over three hundred British soldiers in Afghanistan is tiny compared with the large numbers of
Afghan, Iraqi and Pakistani civilians killed, wounded, displaced from their homes or driven into exile. In
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