I’d prefer to wake up in a world where the US is the sole provider
of the one hundred percent of world weapons.
(Lincoln Bloomfield, US State Department official)
I
When
our ancestors descended from the trees and started to walk in the erect posture
on two legs two millions and a half years ago, they manufactured for the first
time an object, an element which transcended nature. That beginning for mankind
was given, no more and no less than by the obtention of a sharpened stone; in
other words: a weapon. Is it then
that our history is marked by such beginnings? Are weapons embedded in the very
same origins of the human phenomenon?
Undoubtedly.
Violence is human, not an alien body in our constitution. How is it that we
moved from necessary aggression, in terms of survival, to the present day
industry of death? Organization as to power is equally human; animals, beyond
their instinctive survival mechanisms, do not exert forms of power. We do. In
that dialectic (whoever said that "white" is better than
"black" or that a woman is "less" than a male... but that
sort of dialectic marks our relations), the use of something which increases
our capacities for attack is vital. It was vital back then, as a necessary
means in the struggle for survival (the sharpened stone, the stick, the spear)
and it is still nowadays. Yet, modern weapons are not in the least at the
service of biological survival: from the moment where our history ceased to be
about pure survival in a cave and constant struggling with the environment, weapons in class societies have
been at the service of the powers that be, from the most rustic sword to the
hydrogen bomb.
In
his old age, based on a wisdom acquired through lifelong meditation and more as
a philosophical reflection than as a formulation for clinical practice, Sigmund
Freud spoke about the death impulse: a return to the inanimate. That is why
psychoanalysis can talk about an intrinsic uneasiness in every cultural
formation or society: why do we make war? Shall it be possible to say that
social organization structured as to classes inevitably leads to wars (and thus
to weapon production)? Then, we should ask why the human being decided to build
stratified and warmongering societies instead of horizontal solidarity-based
organizations. Socialism is the proposal which aims to the construction of such
alternatives. Will we be able to reach it? Is it feasible to carry out what
sub-commander Marcos proposed in Chiapas as he said that "we take weapons
to build a world where armies are no longer necessary", or will the death
impulse drag us before to self-destruction as a species?
Except
for an insignificantly small amount of weapons produced for hunting, the
weaponry we humans count upon nowadays is destined to the conservation of class
differences. That is to say that human beings kill each other in order to
maintain their power and, basically, to defend private property or loot upon
others in the name of private appropriation. As well as to "solve" everyday
conflicts. Those psychos who, every now and then, weapons in hand kill their
peers, as it frequently happens in the US, are not the dominating trend.
Weapons are there to be used differently: is a war tank or an anti-personal
mine manufactured in order to hunt that which we are going to eat later?
Obviously not.
Contrary to the delusional idea which - out of a misconception or simply bad intentions - presents weapons as a guarantee to safety, their function in the social dynamics is quite evident: they are the artificial extension of our violence. What are we protected from by having weapons? Weapons are, in fact, those who kill us, mutilate us, terrorize us, leaving negative psychological traces and hindering more harmonic social developments. Or, to put it otherwise, it is us, human beings who do all that by using those instruments we call weapons, from a gun to a nuclear submarine.
Weapons,
clearly enough, do not have a life of their own. They are the deadly expression
of the unjust differences which characterize human life and the conflictual
nature defining our condition. It is human beings who invented them, improved
them and conceive them, with the market logics working as social axis, as just
another merchandise, and what a merchandise!
And
it is us, human beings organized in classist societies deeply marked by the
individual desire for profit which capitalism has imposed throughout the last
centuries who have transformed the weapons business (which is to say: the business of death) in the most
lucrative one in the modern world, more than oil, steel or communications.
II
When
we say “weapons” nowadays we refer
to the ample domain of fire weapons (those which use powder to provoke the
shooting of a projectile), which comprehends a huge variety: small weapons
(revolvers and pistols – the most common ones -, rifles, carbines, sub-machine
guns, assault rifles), light weapons (heavy machine guns, hand grenades,
grenade throwers, portable antiaircraft missiles, portable antitank missiles,
portable non-receding cannons, bazookas, mortars of less than 100 mm.), heavy
weapons (an enormous variety of cannons with their respective projectiles,
bombs, various explosives, aerial darts, impoverished uranium projectiles),
and those means designed for their transport and operation maneuvers
(airplanes, ships, submarines, war tanks, missiles) to which we’ d have to add
anti-personal mines, anti-tank mines, all of which constitutes the so-called
conventional weaponry. Then we must add weapons of mass destruction with ever
increasing lethal power: chemical weapons (neurotoxic agents, irritating
agents, suffocating agents, blood-attacking agents, toxins, tear gas,
psychochemical products), biological weapons (loaded with pest, anthrax and
other diseases), nuclear weapons (with the capacity to erase all life on the
planet).
In
a broader definition, if today’s war theoreticians can speak about a “fourth
generation war” with no bloodshed but with even more promising results for the
winner than all the weaponry which is cause of death and destruction, we would
have to include all the instrumental battery of the current “mind war”, fought
in the media and psychological terrains. Are these communicational means also
part of the arsenal? To some extent they are: computers, internet, T.V. sets
and intelligent telephones are weapons destined no to kill but to neutralize
the enemy. It is a complex subject so let us, at least, put in in words as a
question: how did we arrive to the point of a “no bloodshed” war which is, at
the same time, more effective than any military invasion?
The
whole complex of death machinery does not favor human safety at all; it is, on
the contrary, a risk to it. The myth of the personal pistol, useful to avoid
assaults and to confer a feeling of safety is only that: a myth. In the hands
of civilians it rarely helps avoiding any attack but only causes home
accidents. Whereas in the hands of those state corps which hold the monopoly of
armed violence, the ever growing arsenals – always bigger and deadlier - do not
guarantee a safer world but, quite in the contrary, make the possible extinction
of mankind more visible still: if the whole atomic potential with which the
military counts upon were to be liberated the expansive wave would reach
Pluto’s orbit completely fragmenting the planet Earth). Why would US missiles
be necessarily “good” (peaceful?) and those of North Korea and Iran not?
Notwithstanding
the amount of terminated lives and the immense pain caused by such infernal
devices invented by the human kind, there is a growing tendency in their
production and improvement of their destructive capacity. Thus we must accept
the fact that the business of death is growing and growing a lot because it is
profitable. Can we now understand the Freudian thesis?
III
The
weapons’ business is like no other. Due to its relationship with the national security
and the foreign policy of every country it works at high secrecy levels beyond
the control of the World Trade Organization and only in governmental hands. In
general –and that is even more worrying- those governments are not always
willing to responsibly control the weapons sale. Similarly, more often than
not, national legislations on the matter tend to be inadequate and plagued with
legal vacuums. Besides, existing mechanism are not compulsory and seldom
applied. Who, among those who now may be reading this text, knows in detail how
many and which weapons are stored in the country where he or she lives? Was he
or she ever informed about it? Or, less probable still, was he or she ever
consulted about it?
The
weapons business is not transparent. Since it is not part of the public domain
it is very cautiously handled and almost free of fiscal examination. That is
why several post-Cold War international initiatives to control this kind of
transactions have been useless. Economic, political and security interest have
made this mysterious and dangerous sector practically untouchable.
Since
1998 weapons expenses have started a rising trend after reaching its lowest
point in the post-Cold War era. In 2000 expenses were of about 798.000 million
dollars (25. 000 dollars per second); from then on, they started to climb in
acceleration and the anti-terrorist fever provoked by Sept. 11 has
spectacularly catapulted them over the billion dollars a year, by far the most
profitable commercial field of them all, the one which moves higher money
volumes and the one which grows faster in terms of scientific-technical
research.
In the field of weapons everything is about business,
whether a nuclear submarine or a pistol. Even small weapons, with a fire power
smaller than many of the weapons reaching the market, are especially
profitable. More than 70 countries in the world manufacture small weapons and
their ammunitions and buyers are never lacking, either government or
individuals (mainly males). Direct sales of small weapons to other governments
or private entities correspond to the 12 % of total sales of weapons in the
planet. The rest is provided – trickeries of reason or mockeries of history,
Hegel would say - by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council,
those supposedly in charge of keeping peace and safety in the planet: United
States, Great Britain, France, Russia and China. The US is currently the
main producer and seller of weapons of all kinds in the world, with 50% of
general sales (though the dream of many a Washington official, as it comes out
clear in the epigraph, is to increase that percentage).
In
face of all this, what to do? To buy a gun in order to protect ourselves? To
resort to campaigns for disarmament and no use of weapons, at least small ones,
is praiseworthy. But we can see that it is not enough to stop a powerful
business from growing. To appeal to good conscience and the fostering of
non-violence is good in intention but insufficient as to the goal of
eradicating weapons. Will that stop such multinationals like Lockheed Martin,
Raytheon, IBM, General Motors? Or those governments which base their national
development strategies on weapon commercialization? Each new war (and there is
always a new one) responds to market strategies based on dispassionate
commercial terms. Death impulse or not?
IV
The
struggle against the proliferation of weapons is mainly political: it is about
changing relations of power. It is inacceptable that those merchants of death
control human destinies…but it still happens. That is what characterizes the
international dynamics and, given the fact that it so is and hoping that a
better world is possible, that utopias are possible, we must think of
alternatives. Obviously enough, a wingless human being cannot fly, yet thanks
to our immeasurable desire to do so, we have reached Mars! With no wings of our
own we manage to fly farther each time. To present ourselves with a utopia is
what makes us go forward (or fly forward…for that matter). As put in a memorable
graffiti from May ’68 in France: “Let us be realists. Let us ask for the impossible.”
Nowadays the
production of weapons is no marginal business, linked to criminal circuits
moving in the shadows: it is the main economic sector of humanity. As a result, every minute two people die in
the world due to the use of some kind of weapon (almost 3000 a day, while the
always ill-defined and vague international “terrorism” kills 11, if we are to
talk in statistical terms). To dismantle this human tendency towards the use of
weapons appears like a titanic effort: it means to eradicate violence and
injustice. And there the Freudian reflection acquires some meaning inasmuch as
it lets us see the dimension of whatever is at stake. Is it about struggling
against our own nature? How to go against this primary, original energy?
That death is an inevitable fate, naturally rooted, is
a conjecture. Maybe it is so and, as a theoretical hypothesis it can help us
interpret the world. Or maybe not and it has to be discarded; if the
destruction of the whole planet awaits us, so to say, at the turn of a corner,
due to a possible thermonuclear catastrophe (because, rational though we are,
the possibility of a “crazy” or just mistaken decision is always at hand in our
species), then it is absolutely vital to take on this titanic task as a
requisite for survival and a more dignified existence. It is maybe impossible
to eradicate violence as a human condition even if we go on educating ourselves
for a tolerant coexistence (it is a fact that more “educated” countries are the
most warmongering and possess the most lethal weapons), but it is inescapable
to keep on fighting against injustices and aiming at living in solidarity;
otherwise we would sanction social Darwinism and the survival of the fittest.
To say that “a different world is possible” does not
mean that the tendency towards conflict will be over, that we shall live in a
bucolic paradise free of contradictions and that limitless love will spread
itself over all the planet’s inhabitants; what it means is that it is necessary
to aim at a society capable to experience shame before the business of death
and react accordingly. The cause of justice cannot accept death as business,
can it? Will the impulse towards death be finally triumphant? Let us firmly
believe in the possibility of changing history’ course; if we have been able to
reach Mars and free the atom’s energy or domesticate ourselves and stop being
animals will it be impossible to determine ourselves not to kill each other?
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