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Regehr/Roche: What Canada needs now is more robust, visionary diplomacy, not more military spending

Ernie Regehr and Douglas Roche are members of Canadian Pugwash Group
This article was published in The Hill Times, April 2, 2025

PDF version here: RegehrRocheHT_April7.2025

As the present front-runner in the election race, Mark Carney has a special responsibility to straightforwardly pledge support for a global recommitment to international cooperation based on respect for international law as the urgent security imperative for our time.

EDMONTON—In their election campaigns, Canadian political leaders are sidestepping the real issue of this country’s security by insisting that more military spending will guarantee our safety. But more arms have rarely—if ever—advanced durable peace. What we urgently need is more robust and visionary diplomacy.

According to the polls, Mark Carney could well be prime minister for the next four years. He needs to prepare Canadians now for what he would do in what he has called a “new economic and security relationship” with the United States. His economic agenda is coming into focus on the tariffs question. But, aside from promising to boost Canada’s military spending to two per cent of GDP by 2030, he has not spoken about the wide agenda for peace that sweeps far beyond military measures.

All the leading contenders in this election keep referring to increased military spending as a primary response to threats to our sovereignty and changing security conditions in the Arctic. As an effort to placate a mercurial American president, this is a fool’s errand and, more importantly, it ignores the true foundations on which durable global peace and security are built.

The call on Canada to rally around the old shibboleth “if you want peace, prepare for war” is persuasive only if you ignore what contemporary war most often produces. The Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Ukraine, and Gaza tell the story. The one thing these wars have not brought is peace. In all those devastating conflicts, it is when the fighting finally stops that peace can begin to be built.

Of course, it should be acknowledged that the Canadian Armed Forces do face some equipment deficiencies and recruitment challenges, which is leading to important corrective measures. Reconsidering the F-35 fighter aircraft purchase and improvements to Arctic patrols and situation awareness in all domains, as well as emergency response capacity, make eminent sense to the extent they respond to Canadian-defined needs. But concentrating only on increased military spending ignores the funds and initiatives needed for equitable human development and peace-building at home and abroad.

Sadly, Canada has now abandoned peacekeeping. Furthermore, the diplomacy, peacebuilding, development, and climate action side of this country’s security ledger continues to be woefully under-funded. And the new calls for increased military spending, with no specific commitment to restoring peacekeeping, will further reduce our ability to be a significant player in the much wider agenda for peace.

The UN Agenda for Peace, the Canadian-inspired institution of UN peacekeeping, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, peacebuilding programs around the world, and the UN’s 2024 Pact for the Future all point a constructive way forward, and to the truth that if you want peace, you have to build it. But without exception, all those initiatives are grievously underfunded while global military arsenals are lavished at the rate of over $2.5-trillion each year.

When the Cold War ended, the major powers explored ways of meeting mutual security interests. Canada played key roles in fostering peacekeeping, the Landmines Treaty, the International Criminal Court, the Responsibility to Protect, disarmament diplomacy, and by staying out of the Iraq war and declining to join the unworkable Strategic Defence Initiative of then-U.S. president Ronald Reagan.

Those Canadian initiatives and actions were concrete achievements that helped to build peace and a stronger world security order, and thus a stronger Canada—but all that has faded from our collective memory. At this hinge moment in world affairs, leaders need to detail their visions for our country once again becoming a strong diplomatic player in building the conditions for peace.

These four pillars of a reconstructed peace architecture need Canada’s support:

  • Equitable economic and social development built through more public and private financial support for the UN Sustainable Development Goals;
  • Measures to cut carbon emissions and drive investment towards sustainable energy to defend against catastrophic climate change and mitigate consequences;
  • Arms control to rehabilitate a failing infrastructure, challenge the U.S., Russia, and China to pursue mutual restraint, promote the“denuclearization” that U.S. President Donald Trump has advocated, and renew disarmament diplomacy and sign on to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons; and
  • Human rights protection—notably of the peoples of Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, and other war-torn places—through international peace forces operating under international law and vigorous multilateral peace-building.

In the Pact for the Future, endorsed by virtually all world leaders, states have agreed to address the root causes of conflicts, and to accelerate commitments to human rights. This is where Canada needs to invest its diplomatic and soft-power strength. In doing the right thing, our nation will also be strengthened to meet the challenges coming our way from our erstwhile continental partner.

As the present front-runner in the election race, Carney has a special responsibility to straightforwardly pledge support for a global recommitment to international cooperation based on respect for international law as the urgent security imperative for our time.

___________

Ernie Regehr is the founding executive director of Project Ploughshares, and author of The Simons Foundation’s Arctic Security Briefing Papers.  Former Senator Douglas Roche is the author of Keep Hope Alive: Essays for a War-free World (Amazon).

The Hill Times

Meyer: Dueling Diplomacy on Outer Space Security

Paul Meyer is a board member and former Chair of Canadian Pugwash Group.
Dueling Diplomacy on Outer Space Security; Centre for International Policy Studies

At first glance outer space security appears to command universal support at the UN General Assembly. Each year since 1981 the General Assembly adopts a resolution with near universal support on the “Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space” (PAROS). The resolution warns of the dire threat to international security any such arms race would pose, and calls for the negotiation of “further measures” to consolidate and reinforce the existing legal regime of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and to enhance its effectiveness.

 

Regehr: The Imperative to Talk With Adversaries Includes the Arctic

The Imperative to Talk With Adversaries Includes the Arctic

Among its strengths, Canada’s new Arctic Foreign Policy (AFP) upholds diplomacy as “a first line of defence for Canada’s national security.” For now, however, it seems this “line of defence” is to remain somewhat idle when it comes to dealing with the adversary identified as a prime threat to our security. The insistence that a return to political engagement and cooperation with Russia, including in the Arctic, must await the end of its war on Ukraine is a sharp departure from past practice. In the face of similarly egregious transgressions, direct engagement with the Soviet Union persisted throughout the Cold War, in the interests of both accountability and strategic stability. The AFP rightly rejects “business as usual” with Russia, but that should not translate into ignoring critically important business at hand in the Arctic – especially the recovery of strategic stability and addressing the gathering climate catastrophe at the regional level.

Read on: here

Arctic Security Briefing Paper
By Ernie Regehr, O.C.
Senior Fellow in Arctic Security and DefenceThe Simons Foundation Canada
January 14, 2025

Ramana: Nuclear Weapons Create and Exacerbate Human Insecurity

This article by CPG member M.V. Ramana was originally published as part of the Human Security Dossier of the Heinrich Boell Foundation.

Nuclear Weapons Create and Exacerbate Human Insecurity | Heinrich Böll Stiftung .

Nuclear Weapons Create and Exacerbate Human Insecurity

Nuclear weapons and the development of other means of destroying people are a matter of justice and human security. They reflect the priorities of governments and powerful institutions that control decisions on spending.

The relationship between nuclear weapons and human security is similar to that of the relationship between economic inequalities and social justice: if you have the first, the second is very difficult to obtain. Jacqueline Cabasso and Ray Acheson

For the vast majority of the world’s people, the most important impact of the possession of nuclear arsenals by some of the most powerful countries has been the danger of instant and painful death. In the words of psychologist Robert Jay Lifton: “The central existential fact of the nuclear age is vulnerability.”

This vulnerability has become more apparent in recent years. In the last 16 months, the world has witnessed government officials from Russia (Dmitry Medvedev) and Israel (Amihai Eliyahuthreatening to use, or calling for the use of, nuclear weapons against the people of Ukraine and Gaza respectively. The rulers of these countries have already shown the willingness to kill tens of thousands of civilians. 

The ‘uses’ of nuclear weapons

What these recent invocations of nuclear threats illustrate is that nuclear weapons are most ‘useful’ to nuclear-armed aggressors to intimidate those they attack and all who might aid them. All countries possessing nuclear weapons make plans for using nuclear weapons under some contingency or the other. As British historian E. P. Thompson once noted, “It has never been true that nuclear war is ‘unthinkable’. It has been thought and the thought has been put into effect.”

There are other uses for nuclear weapons. In his book, The Doomsday Machine, Daniel Ellsberg, best known for sharing the secret study of the U.S. Department of Defense on the Vietnam War – the Pentagon Papers – with the media, documents twenty-five instances when U.S. presidents have repeatedly used their nuclear weapons to coerce other governments into acting in ways they do not want to. This, Ellsberg argued, was also use of nuclear weapons in the same way “that a gun is used when you point it at someone’s head … whether or not the trigger is pulled.” 

Despite countries trying to justify their nuclear weapons by claiming that they are for deterrence, the beneficiaries of any such property are not the people. When the World Court was deliberating on the question of the legality of nuclear weapons in the 1990s, India – before it declared itself to be a nuclear weapon state in 1998 – described the practice of nuclear deterrence as being “abhorrent to human sentiment since it implies that a state if required to defend its own existence will act with pitiless disregard for the consequences to its own and adversary’s people.” 

This statement, besides stating how India once upon a time viewed nuclear deterrence, also points to a deeper reality: It is not threats to the people of a country that may result in the use of nuclear weapons; it is threats to the State. And the statement makes it clear that the interests of the State are not the same as that of the people; people can be sacrificed for the State.

Justifications for nuclear weapons often invoke the idea that these are necessary for national security. This ill-defined concept allows those in power to pass on their interests as the interests of the people living in the country.

Nuclear weapons are inimical not just to security but also to democracy. They are deeply implicated in the processes that perpetuate inequalities of power, both among and within states. Nuclear weapons are inherently undemocratic, with layers of secrecy surrounding activities. Decisions – be they about development of nuclear weapons capability, or about how many and what kinds of nuclear weapons to develop, or about how to plan for their utilization, or about their actual use – are never made in consultation with the public. Entities like the scientific and technical laboratories and the military involved in their development and deployment benefit from seemingly unlimited financial resources and overwhelming political power. Any society that desires to be open, or liberal, or progressive will find those values being undermined – or more accurately, further undermined – if it acquires nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons and the two freedoms

Nuclear weapons, and all of the multiple layers of violence underlying these means of mass destruction, are clearly inimical to people being free of fear. The rational response to the fact that countries possess these sophisticated means of killing and maiming is to be afraid.

At the same time, merely the absence of fear will not result in real peace or security. In 1945, when the United Nations was being founded, the American secretary of state, Edward R. Stettinius, wrote: “The battle of peace has to be fought on two fronts. The first is the security front where victory spells freedom from fear. The second is the economic and social front where victory means freedom from want. Only victory on both fronts can assure the world of an enduring peace.”

This dual basis of peace is reflected in the concept of human security, as laid out in the 1994 Human Development Report that calls for both ‘freedom from fear’ and ‘freedom from want’. How do nuclear weapons and the many other technologies used to carry out widespread killing affect the latter? 

In any country or society that invests heavily in armaments, individuals and communities will necessarily suffer from wants of all kinds. That large amounts of money are spent on such pursuits makes it less likely that there will be resources to meet the basic needs of people so that they can enjoy ‘freedom from want’.

According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the nine nuclear-armed states spent a combined total of over 91 billion US dollar in 2023 on nuclear weapons. The spending has been increasing over the years, with an increase of over 10 billion US dollar just in 2023. The United States alone spent over 51 billion US dollar. The cost is expected to go up in the coming years and the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the United States will spend 756 billion US dollar over the next ten years (2023-2032). 

These large amounts of money are being used for developing the most destructive of weapons even as there are pressing human needs around the world. For example, the United Nations World Food Program estimate of the yearly cost “to feed all of the world’s hungry people and end global hunger by 2030” is 40 billion US dollar – just over half of the average annual expenditure of 75.6 billion US dollar projected for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. 

Expenditure on nuclear arsenals is not the whole story. Nuclear weapons are not developed or deployed in a vacuum. Countries that possess nuclear weapons, and those that want to possess them, all have bloated militaries too. Although nuclear weapons might be the most destructive in their military arsenals, countries that possess nuclear weapons have far more often used other weapons to kill and maim people. Both of the countries mentioned earlier engaged in active wars, Russia and Israel, have used multiple ways to slaughter Ukrainians and Palestinians (not to mention the Lebanese), while nuclear weapons have only been invoked verbally, at least so far. 

Yet again, the amounts of money spent on these weapons is obscenely large. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), world military expenditures reached over 2,443 billion US dollar in 2023 – the highest it has ever been since the institute began recording data in the last 1980s. Four of the five countries with the largest military budgets, and six of the ten countries with the largest budgets, possess nuclear weapons. The other countries in that obscene list are in military alliances or negotiating one with nuclear weapon states. 

These figures only focus on direct military equipment and operations. But today’s wars involve much more. While bombs and missiles are often the proximate cause of death and destruction, their use is guided by sophisticated forms of information technology. For example, artificial intelligence programs like Lavender and Where’s Daddy and Habsora (The Gospel) have been used by Israel to decide which individuals and buildings in Gaza are to be targeted for killing. And the U.S. Department of Defense is spending billions (for example) in having companies apply AI to other aspects of warfare.

What countries and private corporations spend on developing such sophisticated technologies does not contribute to people’s freedom from want either. Because research and development on these technologies cut across government and corporate lines, and because companies and governments rely on claims about civilian applications of these technologies, there are no reliable estimates on how much is spent on such efforts. But without a doubt, there are tremendous opportunity costs resulting from this kind of spending.

Weapons as a reflection of priorities

Notwithstanding these monetary comparisons, the problem of military spending cannot and should not be reduced to a ‘guns versus butter’ question as disarmament activist Andrew Lichterman has emphasized. These reflect much deeper societal and political forces – which are also at the base of the rise of power of authoritarian nationalists in many countries around the world. 

The connections between governments developing the means to kill large numbers of people and the drying up of resources for human development remains a subject to be explored more deeply. Pakistani scholar Sadia Tasleem has argued that it is the responsibility of intellectuals “to investigate and bring forth the myriad ways in which nuclear policies are connected to various aspects of social and political life and to uncover the dynamics that perpetuate the already existing grave inequalities of power and wealth undermining human security at multiple levels.” Even among those interested in disarmament, the intellectual effort invested in uncovering these connections, especially at the deeper level of underlying social and political forces, has remained far more meagre than the intellectual effort invested in documenting the real or hypothetical destructive effects of weapons.

Ultimately, nuclear weapons and the development of other means of destroying people is a matter of justice and human security, and a reflection of the priorities of governments and powerful institutions that control decisions on spending. These misplaced priorities are what Martin Luther King warned about in his 1967 Beyond Vietnam speech: “When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” Those giant triplets are yet to be conquered, because capital, profit, and property continue to be valued more than people are by governments, which prioritize the security of the state above the security of individuals and communities. 

Figuring out how to realign priorities is a critical question for our times, dealing as we are with vast social inequalities and multiple cascading ecological crises. Not to mention the possibility of the use of the large nuclear arsenals that are growing in size and destructiveness.

Canadian Pugwashites Discussing War

From the Project Save the World’s podcast,  Members of CPG (Paul Meyer, Adele Buckley, Metta Spencer and Robin Collins) dicuss war and peace.

This conversation is a friendly chat among four members of the Canadian Pugwash Group. They discuss several complex and sensitive geopolitical issues, particularly the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza. The Pugwash Group is a network of scientists and experts dedicated to reducing global threats, including nuclear weapons, climate change, and armed conflict. In this forum, three members of the Canadian Pugwash group reflect on the current state of affairs and the responsibilities of world powers.

Substack post and summary: HERE
Audio: HERE

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