Nuclear free defence?
Socialist Action1980sPaul LawsonTranscribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.
AS THE PEACE MOVEMENT has grown concern to present a credible alternative defence policy has also grown.
Last week *Defence without the Bomb* was published by the Alternative Defence Commission, which proposes 'de-coupling' NATO from the US nuclear deterrent — making NATO a non-nuclear defence alliance based on conventional weaponary.
The coming book 'Nuclear Free Defence' (Heretic Books) collects numerous individual contributions around the same theme. How can Britain be defended without the bomb?
Paul Lawson
The problem with the 'alternative defence' theorists is that they start to give ground to CND's opponents. To get involved in the discussion about 'alternative defence' means making an assumption about *who* we have to defend ourselves against. The argument in *Defence Without the Bomb* starts from 'common sense' ideas accepted by the Tories, the SDP and the Labour right wing — that we have to defend ourselves against the 'Russian' threat.
Warriors
Once that is accepted, and it is admitted that the Soviet Union does have a big nuclear arsenal, then plans for 'non-nuclear defence' start to look threadbare. What's wrong is the assumption that we have to have 'collective security' against the alleged Russian threat.
The idea that the Soviet leadership is planning to invade and occupy Western Europe is a myth invented by the cold war warriors. With the stability of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe in question, and its having problems with its economy, the last thing the Soviet Union is going to do is invade Western Europe. The USSR would gain nothing by such a crazy action.
The practical proposals produced by the Alternative Defence Commission are utopian. NATO is an alliance dominated by the United States and based on the *first* use of nuclear weapons. An attempt to 'de-couple' NATO from the American nuclear 'deterrent' would be bitterly opposed not just by the United States, but by the establishments in all Western countries.
NATO is not an instrument for 'the defence of freedom' against Soviet aggression. It is an aggressive alliance. The Soviet Union is surrounded by US military bases from Norway to Turkey and from Pakistan to Japan. Turkey, one of the most repressive countries in the world, is a member of NATO.
On 12 March 1947 President Truman came out with the 'Truman doctrine' in which the United
Moscow
States would aid 'free peoples who are resisting subjugation by armed minorities'. This meant the preservation of the 'free world' against the 'advance of communism'. From then on, revolutionary or national liberation movements were labelled 'tools of Moscow'.
The United States and Britain helped to put down left wing movements in Greece and Turkey. The 'Moscow aggression' theory was used during the Korean war, and again in 1953 when the CIA helped overthrow the Mossadegh government in Iran and put back the Shah. The 'Truman doctrine' was updated in the 'Eisenhower doctrine' in 1957, in which he pledged to help any right wing government which needed help against 'armed aggression'.
This resulted in the invasion of the Lebanon in 1958, and was followed by the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and the invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965. The NATO alliance is aimed at the containment of progressive and revolutionary social movements.
The aggressive intentions of the NATO alliance can be seen in what happened in Germany in the post war period. When Germany was divided into US, French, British and Soviet occupation zones, the Soviet Union proposed the reunification of Germany as a neutral state.
But the Western powers were determined to keep part of Germany as a bulwark against the 'red menace'. In 1948 the British, US and French zones were merged, and the construction of the West German state set in train. The idea of neutralised states in Europe was thrown out in favour of a ring of steel around the Soviet Union. When talking about 'alternative defence' we have to understand that the forces of NATO and Britain are there to defend the capitalist social system. The British army since the second world war has played a reactionary role everywhere it has been used — in Cyprus, Korea, Aden, Ireland, Malaya — and the Falklands. Today it is one of the best trained 'counter-insurgency' forces in the world.
But surely even a socialist Britain would need to defend itself? Of course, but a socialist Britain could not use a capitalist army for this purpose. To defend a socialist Britain against foreign aggression — and the only people interested in overthrowing a socialist Britain would be our present NATO allies — we could only rely on working people.
Army
Faced with a foreign threat, or with internal capitalist-backed subversion, only the armed workers could be relied on. Workers' militias would be the very opposite of the present army — the last thing that capitalism wants is for the people to be armed.
Workers' militias could ensure effective and mass resistance to any foreign aggression. But advocating mass civilian defence in a socialist Britain is very different to any scheme to 'reform' NATO or to make the army more powerful through conscription, or relying on conventional weaponry — wielded by the best trained anti-'subversion' force in the world.