It is time for a real debate on War. There is one group that profits from wars and rumours of war and that is the arms companies. War is their business. They say, “The prevention of War is our business” while selling arms to everyone, and then look surprised when it breaks out. But arms lead to wars – Saddam’s arms, Gaddafi’s arms, Bush’s arms, Putin’s arms and Al-Assad’s arms. Of course, greed, vanity, military dictators and hatred play their part, but most of the serious hatred in the world comes from previous wars. The Culprits Of War have been hiding for a hundred years and it is time to flush them out, as Article 8 of the Treaty of Versailles nearly did in June 1919 at the end of the War To End All Wars. Let’s recall it.
THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES, ARTICLE 8
“The Members of the League recognise that the maintenance of peace requires the reduction of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the enforcement by common action of international obligations. The Council, taking account of the geographical situation and circumstances of each State, shall formulate plans for such reduction for the consideration and action of the several Governments. Such plans shall be subject to reconsideration and revision at least every ten years. After these plans shall have been adopted by the several Governments, the limits of armaments therein fixed shall not be exceeded without the concurrence of the Council. The Members of the League agree that the manufacture by private enterprise of munitions and implements of war is open to grave objections. The Council shall advise how the evil effects attendant upon such manufacture can be prevented, due regard being had to the necessities of those Members of the League which are not able to manufacture the munitions and implements of war necessary for their safety. The Members of the League undertake to interchange full and frank information as to the scale of their armaments, their military, naval and air programmes and the condition of such of their industries as are adaptable to war-like purposes.”
You will notice a number of things. First, it is quite strong. Making weapons causes and results in evil. Preventing these effects is absolutely necessary, and peace requires reducing them to the lowest point consistent with national safety. They knew tens of millions who had been horribly slain and injured by weapons. They knew, too, that arms companies ran four arms races spreading distrust, hate (the Hun), the superiority of their wares and militarism to promote the threat and possibility of War. They knew that the War was not just Germany, but France encouraged by Schneider, Britain by Armstrong, Vickers, Mulliner and the Dreadnought Scare, Austro-Hungary and Skoda, the Kaiser and Krupp, Nobel, Du Pont and many others in what was now the biggest industry in the world. The merchants of death had sold war and pumped up armies and navies. Lloyd George knew that. He knew Germany was squeezed from two sides. President Wilson knew that he had entered the War because the British and French debts to the US from purchasing weapons were so great that the US had to be on our side. He probably also knew that his peace proposals back home would be savaged by a munitions/Republican cabal as his life drew to a close. The arms companies and the weapons were the problem of war – these statesmen saw this truth, and said it.
But you will also notice the bargained compromises already there. “The lowest point consistent with national safety” it says. If all are disarmed, all are safe. If disarmament is firm and staged, there is no discretion needed. But the arms companies have their foot in the door. And then there is the “due regard” for those who don’t make their own weapons. Why? So that arms companies can resume selling around the world, of course. And the “information interchange” opens the door to fudge and sliding away from real disarmament. There were quite a few military men at Versailles, some of them in uniform as you see in the picture above, and they were not going to allow their abolition. So real disarmament was compromised at the beginning.
THE USSR.
When the Russian Revolution took place, and the USSR withdrew from the War, it also repudiated War. The Statement is interesting. It includes the following.
The Workers’ and Peasants’ Government, created by the revolution of 24–25 October, and drawing its strength from the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies, proposes to all warring peoples and their governments to begin at once negotiations leading to a just democratic peace.
A just and democratic peace for which the great majority of wearied, tormented and war-exhausted toilers and labouring classes of all belligerent countries are thirsting, a peace which the Russian workers and peasants have so loudly and insistently demanded since the overthrow of the Tsar’s monarchy, such a peace the government considers to be an immediate peace without annexations (i.e., without the seizure of foreign territory and the forcible annexation of foreign nationalities) and without indemnities.
The Russian Government proposes to all warring peoples that this kind of peace be concluded at once; it also expresses its readiness to take immediately, without the least delay, all decisive steps pending the final confirmation of all the terms of such a peace by the plenipotentiary assemblies of all countries and all nations.
Invited ‘All belligerents to open negotiation without delay for a just and democratic peace […] a peace without annexations and amenities.
This was ignored by the other belligerents, but it posed deep issues for them. First, it was accompanied by a repudiation of the “Tsarist debt”; vast amounts borrowed from the United States, Britain and France to fund Russia’s military build-up was wiped off the slate. These countries were angry. It partly explains the Anti-Communism. Churchill famously led an attack on the Red Government to “strangle the baby in the cradle” and so War was being practised against the USSR even as the Versailles Treaty was being signed. But the USSR also pinpointed the link between capitalism and weapons, capital and colonialism and capital and War, as many other Socialists and Christians did. So, the military people were defensive. Because the USSR represented disarmament and anti-capitalism, disarmament could not be allowed to flourish. They would kill it.
THE POST-WAR MILITARY RECESSION AND DELAY.
The Great War was the biggest military bonanza in world history. Arms Companies became rich, expanded, opened up new products – especially tanks, submarines and warplanes – and received government money hand over fist in all the belligerent countries. At the end of the War, as after all wars, there was oversupply. Churchill helped address that by carrying on against the USSR across a wide front, and weapons were sold on to a whole load of dubious regimes across the world, but what were the arms companies to do? First, for a few years they kept their heads down. They learned to disappear. In the mid 1930s they were flushed out again by the “Merchants of Death” book and the Nye Commission in the States, but then it was too late. Second, they could sell around the world to places outside Europe to dubious regimes in the hope that conflict might break out sooner or later. The most promising area was China, Japan and the Far East, where China was breaking into rival warlords and Japan was dominated by the military. Third, with their allies in the military, the arms companies and their agents could sabotage all attempts at disarmament, and, fourth, they could work with all Fascist Parties and Governments which linked the military and the state tightly together (usually against Socialism and Communism) to promote their business. We have to remember that all states had Fascist, or proto-Fascist parties usually linked to wealth, the business of war and also to traumatized soldiers consumed with PTSD and hatred after the War. So, the arms companies went about recreating their business. In 1932 with the defeat of the Great Geneva Disarmament Conference and the later rise of Hitler to power, they were successful in Italy, Germany, Britain, Japan, the United States, France and the USSR. The United States funded and armed both Germany and the USSR in preparation for the Second World War. At the end of that War the military-industrial establishments both West and East, but especially in the West, moved into the Cold War to make sure that the permanently armed world emerged, as it has, dangerous, destructive, living with fear, threats, arms races and wars to validate the business of the arms companies. They and not the politicians have run the show and you and I have ignored them, because they are usually hidden or focussing on some supposed external threat.
THE VERSAILLES PEACE PROPOSALS WERE DEFEATED.
So, a hundred years later we could understand that the Versailles Disarmament and Peace Proposals were not tried. They were sabotaged by the arms companies, and they have been ever since, because turkeys do not vote for Christmas. Whenever disarmament is discussed, the military insist on being in charge, and strangle it. Mussolini and Hitler were funded by arms companies. They were, in substantial part, a product of this system, not its cause. Still we do not understand this basic point. Wars and rumours of War are mainly caused by those who profit from it, the military-industrial establishment, usually deep inside government.
WE CAN DISARM THE WORLD.
A hundred years later we need to realise why Versailles failed. We need to see that wars, refugees, the work of tens of millions of military personnel, a vast CO2 hungry, high tech manufacturer of destruction, a military costing trillions, the threatened destruction of the planet, terrorism and this industry of death are unnecessary, if the arms companies and their output are addressed. World disarmament is easier than armament and war. It enriches all of us. It is time for several billions of us to wise up and change the world.