Editorial: Beneath the surface

August-September 1995

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.

Marine militarism not limited to exotic locales

by Alan Wilson

Cover Photo: Down Under - New Zealand's Abel Tasman Park Photo by Whitney Potter

Recently the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was rammed and its crew arrested by the  French navy while the ship was attempting to peacefully protest French nuclear tests in the South Pacific.

Although much has changed in the world, apparently much remains the same.

We are reminded of the sinking a number of years ago of the former Greenpeace flagship (also named the Rainbow Warrior) by French agents, and the ongoing protests by residents of the South Pacific against nuclear testing and the siting of military bases among the islands there.

But the struggle against militarism is not isolated to exotic locales. Only a few weeks before the Rainbow Warrior was seized, a number of boats peacefully protesting US nuclear vessels in British Columbia were rammed by military craft and one was holed. For those of us present, it was a stark reminder of the past.

As many commentators have noted, even though "the peril of communism" and the Cold War have ended, the world is still spending hundreds of billions of dollars EVERY YEAR on the military-diverting scarce resources from vital human needs. Incredibly, we are still developing and testing machines for mass destruction.

Much of the world is ocean and much of the world's nuclear arsenal is located in and around the edges of the oceans of the world. There are hundreds of naval nuclear reactors and thousands of weapons of mass destruction floating around out there. A great many of these devices ply the waters of Washington, British Columbia, Alaska and California, and active testing goes on here.

If our environmental efforts to save trees, ozone, water, fish, bears, etc. are to have any integrity, we cannot overlook this other enormous environmental threat, a threat which exists largely unchallenged because it goes under the pseudonym "security".

We do have choices. As we work to achieve protected status for wild places, nurse endangered species back from extinction, practice recycling and waste reduction, eliminate environmental toxins, and generally curtail the industrial exploitation of nature, we must also recognize the nuclear militarism flourishing in our midst.

Each of us, directly or indirectly, is part of the system that ends up in the form of nuclear submarines armed with enough warheads to destroy millions of people, powered by reactors which can devastate entire ecosystems in the event of an accident. Despite incredible geopolitical change, these threats remain very real.

To achieve real security we need to stop making and brandishing weapons, and study ways for peacefully resolving conflict. We can begin by educating ourselves and our children about the rich human history of peaceful social change.

We also need to look at models of successful economic conversion of military facilities and re-employment of former military-contract personnel, in order to make the necessary shift to a peaceful, environmental sustainable, productive economy.

For information on the history of economic conversion and nonviolent social change, you can write to the Nanoose Conversion Campaign at #2-85 Commercial St., Nanaimo, BC V9R 5G3.