Learning the lessons of history - building global peace

Bangalow

7 October 2009

I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and pay tribute to their history, their culture and the ongoing contribution to our communities.

War is the enemy of humanity.

So I am very pleased to participate in tonight's discussion on world peace and congratulate the organisers of tonight's forum.

War robs humanity through death and destruction and robs our communities of billions of dollars; money that is urgently needed to meet the challenges our planet faces – reducing greenhouse gas emissions, providing clean water and food security to all peoples, ensuring free education and health services in all countries.

Military expenditure is obscene. Today it stands at $1.464 trillion a year. In just the past ten years this amount has increased by 45 per cent. Military spending now represents 2.4 per cent of GDP and is equal to $217 per person per year.

The USA is the driver of the global arms race. 41.5 per cent of the $1.4 trillion world arms budget is spent by the US on the military industrial complex.  

An increasing amount of this money is going on the US war in Afghanistan.

It is worth remembering what was the catalyst for the latest western war against the people of Afghanistan.

Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the USA we have been subjected to a propaganda bombardment such as no other that I can recall.

Remember the former prime minister John Howard was in the US when the attack occurred. Howard and the then US president George Bush milked this crime in ways that have contributed to crimes of similar magnitude.

We were told that our governments had incontrovertible evidence that Osama bin Laden, holed up in an Afghanistan cave, had ordered the attacks. But no such evidence was produced. What the public have been subjected to is a patchwork of a few facts, propaganda, prejudice and conjecture.

Howard was the first national leader to commit Australian troops to join the US contingent in the invasion of Afghanistan. And a few weeks after committing Australia to this war the Prime Minister announced the 2001 federal election.

These events unfolded just a few weeks after the notorious Tampa incident that saw 438 asylum seekers victimised. Now we can view these episodes as part of a Coalition election strategy that has moulded Australia's recent history. But these electoral tactics continue to play out for the Afghan people who have endured centuries of foreign invaders attempting to take over their country.

I have revisited the background to Australia's involvement in this war as it reminds us that so often wars are waged for very different reasons than those that are presened to the public.

While John Howard is now two years out of office the people of Afghanistan are still dieing as a result of the war now being waged by NATO powers and their allies. Yes we need to work to dismantle terrorism but the war in Afghanistan will not achieve that.

It is worth remembering that controversy still surrounds how Australian troops were committed to this war. The federal parliament never debated the decision to send troops to this overseas war.

Many commentators have suggested that the former prime minister stepped around the constitution usurping the role and function of the federal parliament.

The Australian Greens are calling for a constitutional change so future governments are required to submit any plans for foreign military operations to the federal parliament to determine.

But right now we are involved in this foreign war and our government is under pressure to commit more troops. We need a nationwide debate about this war. The Greens position is that our troops should be withdrawn. We recognise that this is not about to happen. What we need to work on is raising the debate on the Afghan war to help build support for the withdrawal of our troops..

And that debate needs to cover two critical and little known aspects of modern warfare – the increasing privatisation of war operations and the use of unmanned military machines. These trends are well advanced and are changing the face of war and are very relevant to the much needed public dialogue on Australian's involvement in Afghanistan.

Pilotless warplanes are coming to an army near you. At a fraction of the cost they appear to be the must have item for modern armies. The irony needs to be noted that as with other weapons of war the drones as these planes with no pilots are called could also quite quickly become the favoured weapon of terrorists.

These weapons are already used extensively in the air space over Pakistan and Afghanistan by US forces. A quick search of the web reveals many examples where civilians as well as armed militia have been killed by drones.

The best-known US military drone is the Predator, capable of carrying two laser guided missiles and it can stay in the air for 40 hours. Where this becomes highly relevant to the debate on the Afghan war is when it comes to the proposed future troop build up.

We need to widen this debate to cover the use of these unmanned war machines. Right now we could be subject to the pretence that the US and NATO authorities make out that the war is being contained by limiting the increase in troop numbers while the real escalation is occurring with the new generation of killing machines, unmanned aircraft.

An examination of expansion plans for US military hardware suggests that Afghanistan and Pakistan and for that matter any country that finds itself at odds with the USA could have drones silently operating high above its land.

We need to understand how these weapons operate to assess this troubling trend of modern warfare. A drone operator is under no threat of death from any terrorist operating outside the US or anyone fighting against the occupation of their country.

US Drone operators in the main live in Nevada and Arizona where the bases that operate these weapons are located. These people would live fairly regular lives - drop the kids at school in the morning, maybe go for a jog; go to work; fire a few missiles from a drone parked over western Pakistan; and then go home to help the kids with their homework.

Meantime the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan struggle to survive. Two-thirds of Afghanis live on fewer than two US dollars a day.

The US Independent Institute estimates that in 2009 the US administration will spend between $925 billion and $1.14 trillion on the military. That is so obscene. That is what we need to object to. This is an easy message to take to our communities as we work to lift debate on the Afghan war. No one could justify such an extreme level of war spending.

And the unmanned aircraft will receive a sizeable allocation from this budget. The names of these drones are straight out of Hollywood. The current pilotless planes are known as Predators and they will shortly be replaced by Reapers.

Reapers will carry 14 missiles and there are plans to keep them in the air for months at a time if not years by in-air refuelling and as the aircraft can be programed to conduct self repairs.

These weapons are also attractive to politicians because the price is so much lower than piloted war planes. The new Reaper drone will cost $15 million compared with $351m for a Raptor jet fighter.

Just a quick comment on the big picture here. So many aspects of warfare are deeply disturbing – the loss of life, the obsecene waste of public money and also the misuse of human talent.

Human beings are ingenious. Look at the great developments our planet has seen and so urgently needs and here we have scientists and engineers developing such complex killing machines. It is a tragic waste of expertise on weapons that kill people. For someone clever enough to build a pilotless plane image what beneficial achievements they could work on.

But back to the drones – many are operated and maitained by non-military personnel working for private companies.

Which is the appropriate lead in for the second point I wanted to make about the Afghan war and the nature of modern warfare.

Today there are more private military contractors involved in the Afghan war than there are US uniformed personnel. In March this year the numbers were just over 68,000 for the private operators compared with just over 52,000 for the regular soldiers. It is likely that many of these contractors will face combat situations, particularly in outposts, distant from populated areas.

A Guardian investigation has found that private corporations are now the second biggest contributor to coalition forces in Iraq. The 10,000 private military contractors just outnumber the 9,900 troops that make up the British contingent.

This is a critical shift. For those committed to global peace the challenge is now more complex. If we thought we had it tough promoting disarmament and an end to warfare to elected governments we now have to factor in the rise of military corporations. The private sector is so entwined with western military operations and peacekeeping duties that many question if the US could undertake overseas wars without it.

Of the $US87 billion allocated by the US adminstration for the war in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, one third of that, nearly $US30 billion, will go to contracts with private companies.

Peter Warren Singer's book Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry describes the unsettling reality of modern warfare: "When America launched its invasion (of Iraq) in March, the battleships in the Gulf were manned by US navy personnel. But alongside them sat civilians from four companies operating some of the world's most sophisticated weapons systems."

And today the unmanned Predator drones that I spoke about earlier along with the Global Hawks and the B-2 stealth bombers operating over Afghanistan and Pakistan are operated and maintained by non-military personnel working for private companies.

Although there are no front page headlines, few indepth articles or documentaries on this trend, at the start of the 21st century a massive shift in the nature of warfare is occurring. The partial privatisation of war has started. We need to be aware of this and resist this trend.

In Iraq private companies pick up lucrative contracts as the US scales back its front line operations. One US company is responsible for training the new Iraqi army while another trains the Iraqi police force. British companies also dominate in this area, with the biggest opertor, Global Risk International, supplying personnel from a range countries, whose military background could have been with Fiji peace keeping forces, former apartheid South African milita, or disbanded sections of the Russian Red Army. The end of the cold war meant that many soldiers from both sides were looking for work.

But what law do these private soldiers and related personnel operate under. The law of the country they have invaded is usually inadequate to deal with any abuses. Private contractors are not legally seen as mercenaries so they are not covered by international law.

What happens if a person involved with the military rapes a woman in Afghanistan. If he is a US GI he would be handled by the US judicial military code. If he works for a private company who is he answerable to – an Afghani legal system? Will employees literally get away with murder?

Peter Singer argues that we are witnessing the first stage of modern nation states surrendering the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of force.

For the peace movement these are troubling times. Our task of working for disarmament and the non-violent resolution of conflict has always been massive. But with the entry of the private contractor into modern warfare our campaign objectives for global peace are changing.

What are we calling for and who are we targetting needs to be reassesed?

For the Greens these are challenges we need to meet. Although our international policy was written before we had become aware of the degree of military privatisation it is still useful in that it sets out a series of measures that apply irrespective of who is firing the missiles.

We support developing foreign affairs and defence policies that promote Australia's independent role in our region; peacemaking capabilities in new regional institutions and through a reformed UN; an increase in the share of GDP allocated to overseas aid; and support for a constitutional amendment that requires federal parliamentary endorsement for the deployment of the Australian military personnel overseas.

We also need to call on all countries to sign, ratify and implement outstanding human rights and disarmament agreements and to strengthen nuclear non-proliferation treaties.

And now we also need to oppose the privatisation of the military.

Thankyou and I look forward to the discussion.