PEACE & DISARMAMENT
Note by Paul Olson:
Anthony T. Fiscella was a friend of recently deceased NFP board member, Leo Yankton, and worked with him in Sweden on the Intertribal Spiritual Lodges movement that brought indigenous people from several countries together to work for freedom. Fiscella has a doctoral degree in the history of religion from the University of Lund in Sweden and has published in the book, Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume III.
In the search for social justice, he favors “[A] very long-term strategy of forming thousands of tight-knit collectives based on defending and celebrating life (via detox, degrowth, and decolonial lifestyles), lo-tech self-sufficiency, and mutual aid combined with outward mobilization for total liberation (animal liberation, Earth liberation, and liberation from the state, capital, white tyranny, patriarchy, substance addiction, tech dependency, and oppressive norms).”
Fiscella sent this essay to Susan Alleman, Leo’s partner, in the hours immediately following the invasion of Ukraine. It is a proposal for going beyond the usual sporadic anti-war protests.)
by Anthony T. Fiscella
The Russian invasion of Ukraine marks the biggest act of war since the U.S. gathered 175,000 troops to invade Iraq. While we can see differences in many respects, one detail seems to stick out: popular response. This year, February 15th marked 19 years since the biggest peace protests the world has ever seen. On that day in 2003, millions of people in cities across the world mobilized to oppose the planned U.S. invasion of Iraq (see, for example, the 2014 documentary film entitled “We Are Many”). The U.S. had presented a case for invasion based on false claims of “weapons of mass destruction.” Then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell laid out so-called “evidence” before the UN (which later, of course, proved false). Yet, even before people knew what General Wesley Clark later revealed as a Pentagon plan to “take out seven countries in five years” (including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran), U.S.-corporate imperialism seemed quite apparent. Millions of people saw through the deception and, including many who had already organized through the Global Justice Movement, they rose up in opposition.
That day in 2003 marked a tremendous transition from how the U.S. (and global) public responded to previous wars. Opposition to the devastating U.S.-led wars in Southeast Asia seemed non-existent in the early 1960s. It only grew gradually until, by the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, protests shook the world. Yet, if we look at the speed and scale of resistance to militarism and war, the record seems spotty. Massive anti-nuclear protests took place in the 1980s; yet, the end of the Cold War seemed to dampen calls for disarmament—perhaps partially because, to some extent, actual disarmament took place and partially because the United States quickly consolidated global dominance.
During the period of the fall of the Soviet Union, the first Bush administration unilaterally invaded Panama in 1989-1990, directly or indirectly killing 2,000-5,000 civilians. The UN General Assembly condemned the U.S. invasion as a “flagrant violation of international law,” but the brief war met with minimal popular opposition. No U.S. official ever faced criminal prosecution for either the invasion or its many civilian deaths and injuries. Less than a year after U.S. attacks ended in Panama, the U.S. followed up with another invasion, this time in Iraq in January 1991. The invasion killed tens of thousands of Iraqis (roughly 10 percent of them civilian). In blatant violation of the Geneva Convention, U.S. forces killed retreating Iraqi soldiers in what journalists labeled “The Highway of Death”. Throughout the 90s, the U.S. military engaged in attacks in Somalia, Sudan, former Yugoslavia, and then, in 2001, invaded and occupied Afghanistan. So, in some sense, the massive opposition of 2003 resulted from a sense of opposition to U.S. military hegemony and largely arbitrary assaults against people in other countries.
Yet, despite the “biggest peace protest in history”, the mass mobilization failed to prevent the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Since then, U.S. militarism expanded from the ongoing occupation of Afghanistan to the invasion of Libya, renewed occupation of Iraq, and military attacks in Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere. Instead of growing (as the peace movement did in the 1960s and ‘70s), the post-February 15th peace movement quickly deflated.
Perhaps we still live under the shadow of that sense of resignation. If we looked around the world on February 15, 2022, we could see no global uprising of people opposing obvious preparations for war. We heard no mass-mobilized voice condemning imperialism on both sides of the conflict. We did not even see people power pressuring Ukraine to adhere to the Minsk-2 agreement which all relevant parties had signed (including Ukraine, Russia, and Ukrainian-Russian separatist leaders).
Instead, Western media generally portrayed Putin as solely responsible for any upcoming war. We heard little to nothing in Western media about European and U.S. support for Ukrainian neo-Nazis and extreme nationalists who came to power in 2014. We heard nothing about ultra-rightwing Elliot Abrams, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State who backed the terrorist Contras in Nicaragua and the brutal dictatorships in El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s, more recently having supported the nationalists in Ukraine via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). We heard no mention, much less protest, that the Ukrainian government integrated the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion into the Ukrainian National Guard.
Western media generally did not seem to perceive NATO expansionism as made up of aggressive or hostile moves that consolidated U.S./EU power. Even when they broached the topic, as the New York Times did regarding a U.S. military facility in Poland, they might qualify NATO expansionism with terms such as “what [Putin] sees as the threat” and what “the Kremlin believes” rather than simply stating the facts: the U.S. agreed not to expand NATO and later retracted that commitment.
On February 9, 1990, then-U.S. Secretary of State James Baker stated that, in exchange for Soviets relinquishing of East Germany, “there will be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction or NATO’s forces one inch to the East.” Baker and the U.S. later retracted that commitment. NATO forces now occupy nearly the entirety of Eastern Europe, including Poland, Romania, and Slovenia —as well as Latvia and Estonia, both of which border Russia. We hear few calls in the West questioning that encroachment and no opposition to NATO activities in Eastern Europe (such as operation “DEFENDER Europe” which has annually engaged in massive war exercises including U.S. troops in Eastern Europe and on Russia’s border). So, by February 2022, when Russia had amassed approximately 150,000 troops along various borders surrounding Ukraine, Western media had already fabricated a misleading framework of accountability. Everyone could see the increasing likelihood of war on the horizon even if no one knew if or precisely when it would occur. Yet, what happened to the potentially millions of people demonstrating in streets across the world to prevent this likely invasion? They did not materialize.
The root of the problem seems to run far deeper than a deep-seated disappointment of the 2003 mass-mobilization’s failure to prevent war. I suggest that the problem runs to the very core of peace organizing and to the concept of “peace” itself. If gun control advocates had adopted the same strategy as peace activists, they would label their activity “peace work” and they would call on the approximately 80 million gun-owners across the United States to use their 350 million guns peacefully and responsibly. In effect, the gun control movement would not exist, much as the global disarmament movement does not exist. While we currently see momentum through important work by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), if we genuinely wanted an end to war, we would need to abolish all mechanisms of war, the constant preparation and training for war, the profiteering industries of war, and the very factories which produce the capabilities for war. The merchants of war and their clients may control the arsenal of material weapons but we need not relinquish control over our understanding and framing of the social dynamics that produce war.
NATO and Putin share a common appreciation of using military might to sustain systemic inequality. We can expose that and oppose that. As the old slogan from the streets goes, first popularized in the 1980s by Robert “Sonny” Carson (aka Mwlina Imiri Abubadika): “No Justice, No Peace.” Peace through justice. If we emphasize peace before justice, we sustain an unjust and unequal system. Similarly: no disarmament, no justice. Yet, if we work for and focus on disarmament, justice, and social equality, then we might not even need to ever speak of peace again.
Anthony T. Fiscella was a friend of recently deceased NFP board member, Leo Yankton, and worked with him in Sweden on the Intertribal Spiritual Lodges movement that brought indigenous people from several countries together to work for freedom. Fiscella has a doctoral degree in the history of religion from the University of Lund in Sweden and has published in the book, Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume III.
In the search for social justice, he favors “[A] very long-term strategy of forming thousands of tight-knit collectives based on defending and celebrating life (via detox, degrowth, and decolonial lifestyles), lo-tech self-sufficiency, and mutual aid combined with outward mobilization for total liberation (animal liberation, Earth liberation, and liberation from the state, capital, white tyranny, patriarchy, substance addiction, tech dependency, and oppressive norms).”
Fiscella sent this essay to Susan Alleman, Leo’s partner, in the hours immediately following the invasion of Ukraine. It is a proposal for going beyond the usual sporadic anti-war protests.)
by Anthony T. Fiscella
The Russian invasion of Ukraine marks the biggest act of war since the U.S. gathered 175,000 troops to invade Iraq. While we can see differences in many respects, one detail seems to stick out: popular response. This year, February 15th marked 19 years since the biggest peace protests the world has ever seen. On that day in 2003, millions of people in cities across the world mobilized to oppose the planned U.S. invasion of Iraq (see, for example, the 2014 documentary film entitled “We Are Many”). The U.S. had presented a case for invasion based on false claims of “weapons of mass destruction.” Then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell laid out so-called “evidence” before the UN (which later, of course, proved false). Yet, even before people knew what General Wesley Clark later revealed as a Pentagon plan to “take out seven countries in five years” (including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran), U.S.-corporate imperialism seemed quite apparent. Millions of people saw through the deception and, including many who had already organized through the Global Justice Movement, they rose up in opposition.
That day in 2003 marked a tremendous transition from how the U.S. (and global) public responded to previous wars. Opposition to the devastating U.S.-led wars in Southeast Asia seemed non-existent in the early 1960s. It only grew gradually until, by the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, protests shook the world. Yet, if we look at the speed and scale of resistance to militarism and war, the record seems spotty. Massive anti-nuclear protests took place in the 1980s; yet, the end of the Cold War seemed to dampen calls for disarmament—perhaps partially because, to some extent, actual disarmament took place and partially because the United States quickly consolidated global dominance.
During the period of the fall of the Soviet Union, the first Bush administration unilaterally invaded Panama in 1989-1990, directly or indirectly killing 2,000-5,000 civilians. The UN General Assembly condemned the U.S. invasion as a “flagrant violation of international law,” but the brief war met with minimal popular opposition. No U.S. official ever faced criminal prosecution for either the invasion or its many civilian deaths and injuries. Less than a year after U.S. attacks ended in Panama, the U.S. followed up with another invasion, this time in Iraq in January 1991. The invasion killed tens of thousands of Iraqis (roughly 10 percent of them civilian). In blatant violation of the Geneva Convention, U.S. forces killed retreating Iraqi soldiers in what journalists labeled “The Highway of Death”. Throughout the 90s, the U.S. military engaged in attacks in Somalia, Sudan, former Yugoslavia, and then, in 2001, invaded and occupied Afghanistan. So, in some sense, the massive opposition of 2003 resulted from a sense of opposition to U.S. military hegemony and largely arbitrary assaults against people in other countries.
Yet, despite the “biggest peace protest in history”, the mass mobilization failed to prevent the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Since then, U.S. militarism expanded from the ongoing occupation of Afghanistan to the invasion of Libya, renewed occupation of Iraq, and military attacks in Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere. Instead of growing (as the peace movement did in the 1960s and ‘70s), the post-February 15th peace movement quickly deflated.
Perhaps we still live under the shadow of that sense of resignation. If we looked around the world on February 15, 2022, we could see no global uprising of people opposing obvious preparations for war. We heard no mass-mobilized voice condemning imperialism on both sides of the conflict. We did not even see people power pressuring Ukraine to adhere to the Minsk-2 agreement which all relevant parties had signed (including Ukraine, Russia, and Ukrainian-Russian separatist leaders).
Instead, Western media generally portrayed Putin as solely responsible for any upcoming war. We heard little to nothing in Western media about European and U.S. support for Ukrainian neo-Nazis and extreme nationalists who came to power in 2014. We heard nothing about ultra-rightwing Elliot Abrams, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State who backed the terrorist Contras in Nicaragua and the brutal dictatorships in El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s, more recently having supported the nationalists in Ukraine via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). We heard no mention, much less protest, that the Ukrainian government integrated the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion into the Ukrainian National Guard.
Western media generally did not seem to perceive NATO expansionism as made up of aggressive or hostile moves that consolidated U.S./EU power. Even when they broached the topic, as the New York Times did regarding a U.S. military facility in Poland, they might qualify NATO expansionism with terms such as “what [Putin] sees as the threat” and what “the Kremlin believes” rather than simply stating the facts: the U.S. agreed not to expand NATO and later retracted that commitment.
On February 9, 1990, then-U.S. Secretary of State James Baker stated that, in exchange for Soviets relinquishing of East Germany, “there will be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction or NATO’s forces one inch to the East.” Baker and the U.S. later retracted that commitment. NATO forces now occupy nearly the entirety of Eastern Europe, including Poland, Romania, and Slovenia —as well as Latvia and Estonia, both of which border Russia. We hear few calls in the West questioning that encroachment and no opposition to NATO activities in Eastern Europe (such as operation “DEFENDER Europe” which has annually engaged in massive war exercises including U.S. troops in Eastern Europe and on Russia’s border). So, by February 2022, when Russia had amassed approximately 150,000 troops along various borders surrounding Ukraine, Western media had already fabricated a misleading framework of accountability. Everyone could see the increasing likelihood of war on the horizon even if no one knew if or precisely when it would occur. Yet, what happened to the potentially millions of people demonstrating in streets across the world to prevent this likely invasion? They did not materialize.
The root of the problem seems to run far deeper than a deep-seated disappointment of the 2003 mass-mobilization’s failure to prevent war. I suggest that the problem runs to the very core of peace organizing and to the concept of “peace” itself. If gun control advocates had adopted the same strategy as peace activists, they would label their activity “peace work” and they would call on the approximately 80 million gun-owners across the United States to use their 350 million guns peacefully and responsibly. In effect, the gun control movement would not exist, much as the global disarmament movement does not exist. While we currently see momentum through important work by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), if we genuinely wanted an end to war, we would need to abolish all mechanisms of war, the constant preparation and training for war, the profiteering industries of war, and the very factories which produce the capabilities for war. The merchants of war and their clients may control the arsenal of material weapons but we need not relinquish control over our understanding and framing of the social dynamics that produce war.
NATO and Putin share a common appreciation of using military might to sustain systemic inequality. We can expose that and oppose that. As the old slogan from the streets goes, first popularized in the 1980s by Robert “Sonny” Carson (aka Mwlina Imiri Abubadika): “No Justice, No Peace.” Peace through justice. If we emphasize peace before justice, we sustain an unjust and unequal system. Similarly: no disarmament, no justice. Yet, if we work for and focus on disarmament, justice, and social equality, then we might not even need to ever speak of peace again.
