CIAO DATE: 3/00

Peace in the New Millennium: Combating Poverty, Inequality, and Militarism

Oscar Arias

Working Paper
April 16, 1999

The Kroc Institute For International Peace Studies

I want to thank all of those at the University of Notre Dame who have made this visit possible, especially those at the Kroc Institute for Peace Studies. It is indeed an honor to come this afternoon and to exchange ideas with such a distinguished audience of students, educators, and community members.

Today I want to discuss with you some of the recent changes in our political economy that have greatly affected our struggle for peace and human development. In the past fifty years, U.S. corporations have expanded and, with the assistance of the State Department, have opened markets around the world. Technological advances have made it possible to interact with foreign peoples on a daily basis, expanding the bounds of our knowledge. Southern countries have engaged a process of development, and seen widely varying outcomes.

But sadly, the actions of the United States often have not been guided by a humanistic concern for the well-being of others, nor for their right to self-determination, but too regularly have reflected a calculating self-interest. Early on, Martin Luther King issued a profound warning. He reminded us of the words of President John F. Kennedy, who said, those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. And then Martin Luther King commented that, I quote: "Increasingly, by choice or by accident...our nation has taken...the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. 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." End of quote.

As we enter the new world economy of globalization, I believe that we face the very same moral and economic challenge. Now, 1.5 trillion dollars race around the globe every day, and yet are largely unaccountable to any accepted form of public oversight. For some, the new economic system means being able to make investments with a worldly perspective, minimizing labor costs and maximizing profits. For many others, it means facing the end of job security, and at the same time witnessing the reappearance of sweatshops. The frantic quest for quick riches has created a hollow, speculative economy, unattached to human labor and unaccountable to human need. Investments are not made over the long term, designed to help small businesses get started and help people improve the infrastructure of their communities. Instead, bankers pit foreign currencies against one another, investing for days or even just a few hours. They create immense profits for the most privileged, but leave a devastating trail of destabilization and misery in their wake.

Recently, we have seen that the global economic order is subject to panic and rapid fluctuation. As wealthy financiers lost money in weakened East-Asian economies, in Indonesia, or in Brazil, pundits and bank officials began to speak of a crisis. But even now, only months after traumatic devaluations have begun, there seems to be a consensus that this downturn was only a small setback in a well-functioning system.

But I tell you today that there is a much deeper crisis underlying the financial panic, one that this consensus of experts overlooks. I say that it is an economic crisis when nearly a billion and a half people have no access to clean water, and a billion live in miserably substandard housing. I say that it is a leadership crisis when we allow wealth to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, so that the world’s three richest individuals have assets that exceed the combined gross domestic product of the poorest forty-eight countries. I say it is a spiritual crisis when -- as Gandhi said -- many people are so poor that they can only see God in the form of bread, and when other individuals seem only to have faith in a capricious God whose invisible hand guides the free market. I say it is a moral crisis when 40,000 children die each day from malnutrition and disease. And I say it is a democratic crisis when 1.3 billion people live on incomes of less than one dollar a day, and in their unrelenting poverty are totally excluded from public decision-making.

We know that in times of crisis many falter; they think only in terms of the individual and fail to accept their human obligations. But this cowardice is a choice. It is our choice, and we have another option. Instead of permitting the dominant values of selfishness, military build-up, and a love of money to prevail, we can choose to reclaim our most noble aspirations. This means affirming some of the ethical maxims that guide virtuous communities, but that have been too quickly overlooked in recent times: that all people have a right to work for a living wage. That all have a responsibility to think sustainably, to live in harmony with the natural environment. And that all people should have equal opportunity to access educational, cultural, and financial resources.

At that same time that we look back to these established principles, we must seek to broaden the scope of our moral concern more than ever before. In recent years, as the world has emerged from the painful experiences of colonialism, genocide, and superpower tensions, the nascent structures of an international humanism have appeared. The challenge of the current generation is to embrace this global citizenship -- to think about security, democracy, and justice on a world-wide scale.

The first step toward global thinking requires that we adopt a definition of peace that goes beyond the short-sighted demands of national security. To this end, the United Nations Human Development Program stresses the need for us instead to think of peace in terms of human security. This distinction bears frequent repetition. Human security is not just a concern with weapons -- it is a concern with human life and dignity. The martyred Salvadoran Archbishop, Oscar Romero, eloquently expressed this idea. He told his people that, the only peace that God wants is a peace based in justice.

Indeed, how can we say that there is peace when thousands are made to work in dehumanizing conditions? How can we say that there is peace when the United States builds more prisons and fewer schools? How can we say that there is peace when millions go hungry? In the age of globalization, those who make peaceful changes in our economy, politics, and morality impossible, will make inevitable the future conflicts arising from the unacceptable inequalities that I described earlier.

The second step in global thinking is to expand our understanding of democracy. Too often, democracy is discussed only in its most formal mode. People are satisfied that democracy has a place in the constitution of the state, but make no room for democracy in the constitution of their own soul. They do not let it affect their daily interactions, their personal relationships, or their professional ambitions.

For this reason, some of our greatest leaders have called for profound change our values. But a democratic revolution is not merely sentimental and individualistic. Yes, it demands changes in the way we live and the way we understand ourselves, but it also promises to change the structures that govern our society. For, at its core, democracy is a radical philosophy of civic participation. It is the faith that through public dialogue and inclusive deliberation, ordinary individuals can build ever-better systems for living together. Democracy rests on the need for all citizens, not only the most powerful, to be able to influence meaningfully the political and economic institutions that affect their lives.

As you begin to renew your faith in democracy, each of you must reconsider the privileges you enjoy as citizens in a prosperous country and as beneficiaries of this fine university. And you must embrace the responsibility that comes with this privilege. In this democracy there is no room for guilt, but only for compassion: the point is not to feel guilty about the gifts you have received, but to feel always committed to the struggle to guarantee that all people may live such dignified lives. There is no place for resignation, but only determination: though world problems may seem overwhelming, you must be determined to make your mark against poverty and inequality. And there is no stopping at simple charity, but instead you must expand your solidarity: your concern for the health and well-being of others must spread through all lands.

While we must reclaim the democratic values that inspired the Enlightenment revolutions in France and the United States, we must also go beyond the comfortable limits of traditional civics and grapple with the international challenges of the day. We have already seen that the United States, while claiming to protect democracy in the developing world, has too often protected only a narrow, nationalistic self-interest. We can no longer afford to think in terms of a simple nationalism. In the global era true democrats must also be humanists. For when you believe that people controlling their own lives is a truly sound basis for this nation, you begin to recognize the inherent dignity and worth of people in other lands as well -- people struggling to exercise their right of self-determination and to forge their own models for development.

Indeed, this leads us to a third crucial component of global thinking, and that is reformulating our views of economic justice. We must remember that true democracy is not merely the distribution of political power, but also the distribution of economic power. Sadly, in this age of huge corporate mergers this fact is too often overlooked. It is overlooked by many policy makers and business people who quietly solidify a global economic order based on cynicism and individual profit. But for many poor and working people throughout the world, it is an obvious fact.

On his recent trip to Mexico, Pope John Paul II addressed this situation, and spoke out against a capitalist system so far removed from religious and democratic values. He argued that the human race is facing forms of slavery which are new and more subtle than those of the past, . . . and for far too many people, freedom remains a word without meaning.

Perhaps what makes the economic exploitation and hardship of our day more insidious is the fact that it exists alongside tremendous wealth and abundance. U.S. citizens spend eight billion dollars a year on cosmetics -- two billion more than it would cost to provide basic education for everyone in the world if these funds were redirected. Europeans spend eleven billion dollars a year purchasing ice cream, yet we know that only nine billion dollars a year would be adequate to assure water and sanitation for all people.

To change these unacceptable trends, our society must begin viewing global systems from the perspective of society’s most downtrodden populations: the culturally subjugated and the economically dispossessed. In our democratic faith we must reject condescending or trickle-down solutions to world problems, and instead highlight movements that allow ignored and depreciated populations to become political actors. We must allow communities to decide which forms of development are appropriate for their lives, and which forms of materialism they need not support. And we must see to it that these communities, and not an elite few, are empowered to enact economic plans.

I have told you that a renewed focus on human security, thorough-going democracy, and economic justice will be the basis for a profound shift in our ethical thinking. To say that a fundamental change in values is necessary, however, is not to avoid concrete policy proposals. Rather, by putting our values up front, we are able to turn to the problems of the day with new vitality and insight. Truly, we must allow our public policy to grow out of our ethical conviction.

A main focus of my work has been challenging a world military-industrial complex removed from democratic controls and humanitarian standards. Without a doubt, military spending represents the single most significant perversion of worldwide priorities known today. The $780 billion dollars spent on weapons and soldiers in 1997 constitutes a global tragedy.

In India and Pakistan, in Indonesia and sub-Saharan Africa, in the former Yugoslavia and many other nations, bloated military budgets have led to profound deprivation and human suffering. Unfortunately, half of the world’s governments dedicate more resources to defense than to health programs. Such distortions in national budgets contribute to poverty and retard human development. War, and the preparation for war, is one of the greatest obstacles to human progress, fostering a vicious cycle of arms buildups, violence, and poverty.

The United States, which spends two hundred and eighty billion dollars on its military, stands as an extreme example of moral irresponsibility. Recently, I have been very critical of President Clinton’s plans to create the largest increase in defense spending since the Reagan era -- a proposed addition of $110 billion over the next six years. By maintaining a massive military-industrial complex, the United States sends the wrong signal to other countries whose national budgets desperately need to be directed toward human development.

Although the Clinton Administration has insisted that domestic necessities will still be accommodated within the budget, these assurances mask dramatic flaws in the moral and political emphasis of U.S. policy. While military officials are given virtually anything they request, approximately one in every five children in this country grows up in poverty, and over 40 million U.S. citizens lack any health insurance.

The impact of military spending worldwide is even more dramatic, and the progress that could be realized if military spending were redirected is tremendous. If we channeled just $40 billion dollars each year away from armies and into anti-poverty programs, in ten years all of the world’s population would enjoy basic social services -- education, health care and nutrition, potable water, and sanitation. Another $40 billion dollars each year over ten years would provide each person on this planet with an income level above the poverty line for their country. Shockingly, this life-giving $80 billion dollars in annual funds would represent only ten percent of world defense expenditures. With the new money that Clinton intends to invest in costly defense initiatives alone, the U.S. could champion an immediate international effort at redirection. Truly, increased military spending represents a missed opportunity for momentous human advancement.

Unfortunately, the U.S. government has failed to provide leadership for true international security. Many times, Congress has refused to participate in initiatives to establish a cooperative framework for global security. Even while preaching the necessity of controlling weapons of mass destruction, these lawmakers have refused to ratify major agreements on chemical and biological weapons, on the use of landmines, on nuclear testing, and on international courts which could hold war criminals responsible for their actions.

Perhaps most significantly the United States, which is currently responsible for 43 percent of all weapons exports, has been unwilling to strengthen humanitarian restraints on these transfers. The sale of arms is big business. As a whole, military spending in industrialized nations is down from its peak of ten years ago. But weapons contractors in these countries have continued to produce billions of dollars worth of armaments, and in fact have increased their weapons sales abroad. Their new clients are the impoverished countries of the developing world, places where the majority of conflicts now take place. Indeed, from 1993 to 1996, 85 percent of U.S. arms sales to the developing world went to non-democratic governments.

At the end of 1997, weapons manufactured in the United States were being used in thirty-nine of the world’s forty-two ethnic and territorial conflicts. It is unconscionable for a country that believes in democracy and justice to continue allowing arms merchants to reap profits stained in blood. But ironically, vast amounts of taxpayer money go to support this immoral trade. In 1995 the arms industry received seven point six billion dollars in federal subsidies -- this amounts to a huge welfare payment to wealthy profiteers.

In pursuing true solutions to contemporary defense concerns, and in creating policies that will allow us to focus on human security, we urgently need to work together as an international community to limit the availability and spread of deadly weaponry. For this reason, I have advocated an International Code of Conduct on Arms Transfers. This agreement demands that any decision to export arms should take into account several characteristics pertaining to the country of final destination. The recipient country must endorse democracy, defined in terms of free and fair elections, the rule of law, civilian control over the military and security forces, and abide by accepted conventions on torture, civil rights, and international aggression. In addition, all nations would be required to report their arms purchases to the United Nations.

Many say that such a Code is impractical -- impractical because it puts concern for human life before a free market drive for profits; impractical because it listens to the poor who are crying out for schools and doctors, rather than the dictators who demand guns and fighters. Yes, in an age of cynicism and greed, all just ideas are considered impractical. You are discouraged if you say that we can live in peace. You are mocked for insisting that we can be more humane.

But I am not alone in denouncing this cowardly status quo and in supporting an International Code of Conduct on Arms Transfers. Nobel Peace Laureates Elie Wiesel, Betty Williams, and the Dalai Lama stood with me in presenting the Code last year. So did José Ramos-Horta, Amnesty International, the American Friends Service Committee, and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Since then, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Rigoberta Menchú have joined this impractical group. As have Lech Walesa, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Mairead Maguire, Norman Borlaug, Joseph Rotblat, Jody Williams, and one of last year’s laureates, John Hume. In all, seventeen winners of the Nobel Peace prize have endorsed the Code. But more importantly, thousands of individuals, groups, and community leaders have expressed their belief that a Code of Conduct is not only a morally sound idea, but also a politically necessary agreement. It is these people, and the force of their convictions, that turn possibility into progress, and turn impractical ideas into reality.

The International Code of Conduct on Arms Transfers builds on local efforts to regulate sales, such as the measures adopted by the European Union last year. Currently, the U.S. Congress is fashioning a bipartisan plan for participation in a Code of Conduct effort. The deal will give President Clinton one hundred and twenty days to begin negotiating a multilateral agreement. We know that arms industry lobbyists will be working to see that the policies pursued during this period are weak and full of loopholes. Thus, those here today, and many others like you, must generate the kind of popular pressure that will force strong and resolute action.

 

My friends:

When Voltaire wrote Candide over two hundred years ago, he was acutely aware of the moral obligations created by an integrating world. In this book, Candide meets a slave from the Americas who is missing both a hand and a leg. The slave’s hand was cut off by dangerous machinery in a sugarcane mill; his leg was cut off by cruel masters to prevent him from escaping. As Candide looks on, the miserable slave tells him: this is the true price of the sugar you eat in Europe.

If ethics required global thinking in Voltaire’s time, think of how relevant this powerful anecdote is in the age of globalization. As Americans, you have only to look at the label on your clothes, and wonder if foreign garment workers labored for a just wage, to see that you already participate in the global system that brings great wealth to some and great misery to many others. The question is not whether you will be involved in the ethical challenges of globalization, but what your contribution will be. Will you, in your apathy, be complicit in the injustices I have described? Or will you, with your action and your example, bolster the ranks of those fighting for human security?

In our age, the Cold War has ended. Its oversimplified dichotomies are now obsolete. Today, the likes of Stalin and Pol Pot, Suharto and Pinochet cannot be defended by any government. What is more, the new global era offers unique potentials for human unity. Thinking globally, we are able to draw from the best of the world’s ethical and religious insights -- to emerge with a thorough-going defense of the importance of human rights, the sacredness of the Earth’s ecosystems, and the dignity of meaningful work. A program for human development must recognize the opportunity that this globalization brings; it must draw strength and inspiration from the ethical victories of the day. For while the last decade had witnessed distressing levels of poverty, militarism, and consumption, it has also provided us with some exemplary scenes of human integrity -- we have seen women rally for their rights in Beijing; we have seen a new era of peace come to Central America; and we have seen Nelson Mandela lead the South African people away from the horror of apartheid. Rather than allowing globalization to be defined by rampant speculation and persistent inequality, humanists demand that these victories, and the moral victories yet to come, must characterize our current era.

You will recall that at the beginning of the speech I quoted Martin Luther King, who warned us that the path we are on would only lead to racism, materialism, and militarism. I want to tell you, however, that King did not believe the situation was hopeless. He told us that, with courage and determination, we could change course. "Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable, he said. We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late.... This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action."

My friends, I tell you today that human advances do not come when we wait to see if others will act. Human security will not be guaranteed if we always hope that someone else will step forward. Instead, progress begins when each of us starts to think globally, and when each of us contributes to ending poverty and inequality. The struggle can only begin with a personal commitment from each of us. But it will not end there. The whispered resolve of the individual becomes the roar of collective action. Its righteous sound reverberates in the structures and institutions of a new society. Its voice is steady and its message is clear: we can act with compassion; we can be more humane; we can live in peace.