First Committee Monitor, Vol. 20, No. 2
Editorial: The Urgent Imperative of De-escalation and Disarmament
8 October 2022
Ray Acheson
The reality of life outside the halls of the United Nations is bleak and getting worse. Many First Committee delegations clearly recognise this, warning that the world is facing unprecedented crises that have put the world in peril. Yet, while many governments issued passionate appeals for action, those perpetuating and profiting from the horror outside issued their bog-standard rhetoric, refusing to accept any responsibility for the situation or to do anything to change it.
“Myopic interests appear to have superseded the knowledge that the ramifications of conflicts and other drivers of insecurity go beyond the borders of the points of origin and the fact that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” warned Ghana, noting, “The current situation portrays grave inconsistencies between declarations by some States during pertinent disarmament negotiations and discourse and their track record and eventual actions on the ground.” In the context of the First Committee, Ghana called on states “to be mindful of immersing others in an avalanche of proposed resolutions, while their actions give course to doubt their commitment to international peace.” In the context of global affairs, this appeal goes far beyond resolutions. Real actions for de-escalation and disarmament are needed, now.
The inevitable outcome of militarism
“We are confronted with unprecedented, interlinked crises, the ramifications of which profoundly affect all aspects of our lives,” said the President of the General Assembly in his opening remarks to the First Committee. “As these impacts keep testing the crisis management capabilities of our societies, we feel that business-as-usual approach and postponing responses to strengthen international security is becoming extremely dangerous.”
The business-as-usual approach includes an unprecedented 2.1 trillion USD in military spending in 2021—an astronomical figure during any time, but unconscionable during a global pandemic that has catapulted millions into precarity and poverty. As Lichtenstein noted, “All military spending has an opportunity cost, for example for pandemic prevention or climate change mitigation, which are highly alarming human security threats of our times.”
Now, in response to Russia’s war in Ukraine, European and North American governments are sending billions worth of weapons to Ukraine. Weapons producers are frothing at the mouth at the profit margins offered by this conflict, building on what they were already making by arming other conflicts around the globe. The amount some of these governments spend on weapons and war eclipses all other investments for human and planetary well-being, such as health care, housing, education, sustainable energy, poverty reduction, and more.
“The arms race is on the surge as if there is no tomorrow,” Nepal warned. The money spent on modernising nuclear weapons, producing ever-more conventional weapons and ammunition, and creating new technologies of violence such as autonomous weapons, cyber weapons, and space weapons, dominate the economies of the global north and decimate those of the global south. While many states argue “that they are compelled to invest in defense now because war and annexing the land of one’s neighbor have apparently returned to the toolbox of settling disputes,” said the President of the General Assembly, “In the long run, arming ourselves with new, even more devastating and even more expensive weapons is a path, quite frankly, to self-destruction.”
We appear to possibly be on the precipice of a nuclear war, a position that the nuclear-armed states have patronisingly promised would never happen. Pretending for decades that their weapons of genocide are not meant to be used, they proliferated deterrence theory to allies, produced misery through the production and testing of their bombs, and planned for the potential use of these weapons in wargaming and military exercises. Now that we are in a moment with a nuclear-armed state threatening to use these weapons in conflict, the bald lie of nuclear weapons is on full display.
Hypocrisy in equal measure
While tensions are rising, there are some things that all the parties to this current conflict share in equal measure, including a tenacious dedication to militarism and dangerous levels of hypocrisy.
Blaming the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for the war it started and continues to escalate, the Russian delegation said that “these circumstances” have been “brought about by a group of countries that claim to be exceptional, and that, having failed to cope with its phantom pains of the colonial past, still continues to aggressively press for their selfish goals in defiance of the principle of undivided security and fundamental interests of other States and peoples.” Refusing to accept any responsibility for the grave harms it has caused in Ukraine or in the wider world in terms of food insecurity and the threat of nuclear war, Russia lamented that the destructive approach of its opponents “escalated the risks in the area of strategic stability and instigated the evolvement of crises in numerous directions having dire consequences for the international world community, first and foremost the developing countries.”
Speaking to one of these crises, Russia said the scenario of military confrontation of the “nuclear powers” should be prevented and that the nuclear dimension of this conflict should not be “artificially inflated.” It reiterated the joint statement from the leaders of the five permanent UN Security Council members from January 2022 that nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. Yet it simultaneously warned that “the current turbulent environment poses rather significant nuclear risks that cannot be underestimated.” In effect, this statement seems to suggest that Russia not only blames the United States and NATO for “making” Russia make nuclear threats, but that it is also warning that even if Russia does use nuclear weapons, everyone else has a responsibility not to respond, in order to not start a nuclear war.
The context of the ongoing war is non-binary and complex. But Russia’s assertion that only the behaviour of NATO states has led to the brink of nuclear war abdicates its responsibility as the state that has repeatedly, in various ways, threated to use nuclear weapons during this conflict. A government threatening to unleash radioactive hell on Earth if it does not get its way can’t simply brush off the blame for the precipice on which we currently stand.
Meanwhile, the United States seems determined to avoid any responsibility for its own breaches of international law or its militarism. While condemning Russia’s war in Ukraine, the US delegation said, “The rules-based international order that is at the core of the U.N. Charter is under attack. The structures we created to maintain security and stability are under attack.” It further argued that “Moscow has acted without regard for international law, the principle of sovereign equality, or the risks posed by weapons of mass destruction.”
Such hypocrisy plays into the hands of those who see the rules-based order as being whatever the United States says it is. The US invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, its military and political support for Israeli apartheid, its countless coups against foreign governments to ensure their economic and political alignment with US interests, its nuclear weapon modernisation, sharing, and war planning, are all attacks against the UN Charter as well as international peace and security.
Further, while the US delegation claimed that it will “emphasize the need for strategic stability, seek to avoid costly arms races, and facilitate risk reduction and arms control arrangements wherever possible,” it added it usual caveat: “while maintaining asafe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent and strong and credibleextended deterrent commitments.”
This statement ignores the fact that the United States is actively engaged in a nuclear arms race and has been for years. It is also profiting from the arms trade and has the highest military spending in the world many times over. This statement also overlooks the inherent contradictions between disarmament and deterrence, between risk reduction and nuclear war planning. Not only do nuclear deterrence policies and postures prevent disarmament, but they also actively facilitate proliferation and the potential use of nuclear weapons.
Deterrence is fatally dangerous; the current conflict should dispel any doubt of that. “In the absence of progress on the implementation of the NPT, nuclear powers have continued to modernize and enhance their capabilities—ostensibly in the name of deterrence,” commented Liechtenstein. “But the Russian aggression committed against Ukraine has demonstrated another kind of deterrence—one aimed at preventing Ukraine, a State that gave up its nuclear capabilities with the promise of Russian protection—from defending its own territorial integrity.” This situation, said Liechtenstein, has “brought home in stark terms that the risk of the use of nuclear weapons is indeed real, and reminds us that so long as they exist, such weapons will never make the world a safer place.”
The United States, NATO, and Russia are playing a dangerous game with each other. Their own populations, and the rest of the world, are suffering for it. While binary narratives insist that one or the other is responsible for the current war and the shockwaves it has sent worldwide in relation to the global economy, food and energy stability, and nuclear war anxiety, all these self-declared “major powers” are responsible for these harms and for the potential radioactive nightmare of the use of nuclear weapons or the destruction of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. All countries that possess nuclear weapons or include them in their security doctrines should be held accountable for the current dangers we are facing. They have together built a militarised world in which weapons and war are the common language; we are now wallowing in the inevitable outcome of that choice.
Demanding de-escalation, de-militarisation, and disarmament
In its statement, Russia called for “a respectful and motivated dialoge … on the mutually acceptable rules of conflict-free co-existence to reduce tension, prevent dangerous escalation and arms race, including through arms control.” Such a dialogue is indeed imperative. But starting a war and threatening an apocalypse if one’s terms are not met is neither respectful, nor tension-reducing, nor de-escalating.
Costa Rica rightly noted that we are here, in this moment, “due to a patriarchal mindset that is frequently expressed in a need for dominance and in masculine posturing.” Demilitarising our world is imperative, but it will not happen from those governments we often call onto lead. Instead, it must come from what Austria described as a “paradigm shift” and a “new momentum”. For Costa Rica, this includes a feminist approach. “Violence is a gendered phenomenon,” explained the Ambassador of Costa Rica in what is the first ever statement in a disarmament forum to fully incorporate a gender perspective from start to finish. She urged states to “embrace a feminist perspective on the consequences of ever-increasing military spending. We must embrace this mindset shift to decrease military spending and make progress towards worldwide disarmament.”
Demilitarisation and disarmament are key to the process to achieving sustainable peace. This is a process that we clearly cannot leave to the nuclear-armed states and their nuclear-supportive allies. As Lesotho said, “The time has come for the international community to demonstrate resolve and commitment to ensure the issue of arms control and disarmament is done on a multilateral basis in order to secure global peace and security.”
The current war is impacting everyone; just as the impacts are collective, so much be the solutions. “We have a collective responsibility to build bridges of peace that can bring us closer together, despite our differences,” said Namibia. While this will not be an easy endeavour, it is imperative that those participating in this year’s First Committee take the opportunity to work towards this goal. Among others, Switzerland suggested some steps states can take right now, including addressing immediate nuclear risks, strictly complying with international law, joining the political declaration against the use of explosive weapons in populated areas, implementing existing commitments and obligations, strengthening disarmament treaties and regimes, and developing new norms and mechanisms for peace and human rights.
The United Nations was created to bring governments together; the First Committee is a unique forum in which all countries of the world can forge a path out of the mess that its most militarised members have created. There is no question, Aotearoa New Zealand noted, quoting its Prime Minister, that this is an enormous challenge. “But if given the choice, and we are being given a choice, surely we would choose the challenge of disarmament than the consequence of a failed strategy of weapons-based deterrence.”
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