Author Archives: Simon Reed

Jus ad bellum

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When is a war a just war?  That debate has raged for millennia and I think it is time to stop buggering about pretending it is OK to kill people and pack it in.

Umpteen societies, cultures and philosophical standpoints have said since forever that murder is wrong.  It is naughty for one person to kill another.

More recently, many people have come to the view that it is no longer acceptable for the state to kill its own citizens.  Thus capital punishment is being phased out around the world.

But if it is wrong for the state to kill its own citizens, and citizenship is merely an accident of birth, how an it be OK for a state to kill the citizens of another state?  That is, to declare war.  It is hypocritical.

Also, if murder is wrong, how can it be OK for a state to send its citizens off to go and kill another state’s citizens?  If capital punishment is wrong, so is sending soldiers (or drones or warbots) to go and commit murder.  It is hypocritical.

There is no jus ad bellum for any offensive reason.  I can understand violence being used in defence, but can see no reasonable argument for starting a war.

Bombing for Peace. This time: Syria.

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1.  Cameron loses Commons vote on Syria action

“It is clear to me that the British parliament…does not want to see British military action”

“”David Cameron, Prime Minister, 20th August 2013

BBC: “MPs have rejected possible UK military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government to deter the use of chemical weapons.  David Cameron said he would respect the defeat of a government motion by 285-272, ruling out joining US-led strikes.”

Had that very close vote gone the other way, we would be attacking Syria’s government, troops, infrastructure and, inevitably, civilians as “collateral damage”.

2.  MPs support UK air strikes against IS in Iraq

Intervention at the request of the Iraqi government was “morally justified” to combat a “brutal terrorist organisation” and was clearly lawful.  Britain has a clear “duty” to join the campaign, and IS is a direct threat to the UK and I am not prepared to “subcontract” the protection of British streets from terrorism to other countries’ air forces.

Paraphrasing of David Cameron, Prime Minister, 26th September 2014

BBC: “The UK Parliament has backed British participation in air strikes against Islamic State extremists in Iraq.  After a seven-hour debate, MPs voted for military action by 524 votes to 43.  Some MPs expressed concerns about the prospect of future engagement in Syria.”

3.   David Cameron believes ‘there ​i​s a case to do more’ in Syria

“British MPs need to think again about what else British forces can do to help moderate forces in Syria.”

David Cameron, Prime Minister, 2nd July 2015 via Downing Street

Guardian: “No 10 stressed it would be better if military action, likely to be air strikes, only went ahead if there was a consensus in the Commons.  Michael Fallon, defence secretary, said Isis was directed and led from northern Syria.  He vowed that if there was any decision to include air strikes in Syria as part of a full spectrum response (spot the weasel words), the government would seek the approval of parliament. “Our position remains that we would return to this house for approval before air strikes in Syria.  We are clear any action we take must not provide any succour to Assad’s regime.”  The prime minister’s spokeswoman stressed that British military assets were already flying over Syria, and British forces were helping to train members of the Syrian Free Army outside Syria itself.”

So we’re training ‘freedom fighters’ / ‘insurgents’ / future terrorists?  Isn’t that the classic mistake the CIA has been making for decades?

4.   Syria air strikes conducted by UK military pilots

” ”  ← (i.e. nothing so far)

David Cameron, Prime Minister, 17th July 2015

BBC: “UK pilots embedded with coalition allies’ forces have been conducting air strikes over Syria against the Islamic State group, it has emerged.  Crispin Blunt, Conservative MP and Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, said the 2013 vote on action in Syria was a “totally different decision” to the question of strikes on IS and that that decision had not been undermined.  Labour has indicated it would not oppose military action in Syria. Acting leader Harriet Harman has said the case for air strikes was now different to the situation in 2013, when Labour voted against UK military action in Syria.”

When was this discussed and arranged?  Apparently a couple of days ago when the Greece crisis was all over the news.  What a good day that was to bury bad news.

Both sides of the Commons are all for this.  Politicians are odd creatures: opposition in everything, everything, as a matter of principal, regardless of the logic, yet unity in wanting to extend violence.  There is something about the desire for power that results in a mind-set of wanting to see others hurt.  [ note to self – there’s a psychology essay to be written based on that last sentence. ]

It seems there are three sides in Syria:

  1. Assad’s regime which is being attacked by the US and allies.  UK troops may or may not be embedded and supporting these attacks.
  2. The revolutionaries trying to bring down Assad’s regime (sorry, who are these people exactly?) who are being trained by the UK.
  3. IS / ISIS / ISIL / whatever we are to call-them this week are being attacked by the US and allies and (covertly) the UK.

This is like the proxy wars of the Cold War in the1900s where NATO and the Warsaw Pact tested and demonstrated their weapons’ capabilities in other countries by supporting opposing sides.  At least then the West and East could pretend we/they were on opposite sides.  Now the West seems to be supporting the fighting on all sides.

Had the 2013 vote gone the other way (requiring a difference of just 7 MPs’ votes), we would be openly bombing all of Syria.  No wonder Moslems think there is a Holy War going on.

As for training the rebels (the next generation of elite mercenaries and terrorists) trying to bring down and take over Assad’s government, how many of them are now fighting for, leading, arming or training the IS / ISIS / ISIL forces?

Presumably, if and when IS / ISIS / ISIL have been defeated, the airstrikes will continue but against the Syrian government.  Therein lies the inevitable argument of the next few days: “We may as well start bombing Assad now to prevent his resources falling into IS / ISIS / ISIL hands“.  Yep, I predict a scorched earth policy, although it will not be called that.

Here we are in 2015, still bringing peace with bombs.  And how well has that been working since 2003?

Hanging on to the big dreams

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I started out with this big dream about three years ago of finding some way to convince my own government to use methods other than war. Of the people I have spoken to, very few have said “war is inevitable” or “you can’t have society without war”. This has not just been because of the people I have started to mix with, not do I think it is people just being polite. It feels like an idea whose time has come. Those who do pooh-pooh what I say I find are easily countered, despite my lack of knowledge.

But sometimes I think I have bitten off more than I can chew, especially when I see what others have achieved, or what large or long-standing organisations have not achieved. I start thinking I should wind back a bit on my ambitions. And then I’ll see something like this quote, which I just read when trying to go to sleep:

The biggest things are always the easiest to do because there is no competition.

William van Horne

It is nice, the number of the random strangers I have met this past few years whose attitude has been “go for it”. There’s a lot of hope out there.

There is no pax Americana

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Bringing down stable governments of countries and failing to put something in its place is the principal cause of the terrorism and conflict going on in the world at the moment.

When the Romans invaded, they took control, dictating foreign policy, providing defence in exchange for a promise to not rebel and pay tribune.  In so doing peace reigned over the Roman Empire at the cost of freedoms at a national level. This was the pax Romana.

The Islamic Golden Age, inspired by the philosophy that “the ink of a scholar is more holy than the blood of a martyr“, in which huge advances were made in medicine, mathematics, culture and science, was also a period of peace, sometimes called the pax Islamica.

A thousand years later the Mongols conquered much of Asia and held it to produce the Pax Mongolica.

The Ottoman Empire in turn provided peace to its citizens in the pax Ottomana.

A similar arrangement to the Roman Empire was achieved by the British Empire to produce the pax Britanicca.

Chinese empires have come and gone and provided their own periods of internal peace, as have many other cultures.

The concept of “empire” has come to be seen as purely a bad thing since the mid 20th century as countries gained their independence, partly through economic consequences of the World War 2, partly through improved communication and education and partly through the disruptive influences of the Cold War.  In place of an imposed external governing body, freedom for those of a territory has been granted, often with disastrous consequences.  The lesson that could and should have been learned from those experiences are that independence should be done slowly, replacing institutions and structures with new ones, a part at a time.  It is frustrating, but far more stable. [Note to self: specific examples needed.]  A clean break leaves a county with no stable government and civil war and decades of turmoil is the usual result.

But the desire to ignore the beneficial benefits of a benign empire has resulted in much chaos, death, suffering and desire for revenge of late years.  The removal of stable governments from countries like Iraq and Libya without replacing it with something else that works has been far worse than what most empires have done in the past.

It would have been cheaper and less destructive (but probably no more productive in the long term) to simply assassinate those leaders that were considered undesirable.  At least there would not be hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed civilians and a world-wide problem with revenge terrorism.

The idea the USA has been the global policeman producing a pax Americana is a fallacy.  They are not spreading peace: just fear and hate, chaos and disorder.

Instead of toppling a regime, take it over and change it from within, fools.  Learn from thousands of years of history.

Bradford University Peace Studies MA

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Bradford University has a reputation for being the university for peace studies in the UK.  They also claim to be the first and largest university Peace Studies Department in the world.  Hence I visited their Bradford University’s open day on Saturday 4th July 2015 to investigate them as a possibility for doing my master’s degree in a peace-related subject.

The Peace Studies department was formed 40 years ago.

There is no cap on the number of entries; they currently get around 100 MA students per year.  One does not have to choose a specific MA in advance—admission is to the department.  I was told “the Peace Studies MA is for people who do not know what to do with themselves”.  I know exactly what I want to do and a Peace Studies MA is core to that.

Part of their claim to fame is that Margaret Thatcher tried to get the peace studies department closed down because of their links with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) organisation.  (I checked this out and, according to The Struggle Against the Bomb Volume 3):

As early as 1981, the British Secretary of State had publicly attacked peace studies as “appeasement” education and, thereafter, public officials issued dire warnings about peace and antinuclear bias in the nation’s schools . Thatcher herself, convinced of pro-CND bias at the nation’s only university level peace studies department, located at the University of Bradford, sought to have it shut down, and repeatedly asked officials: “Has that department been dealt with yet?”

I was also told about an organisation one of their staff is involved in (the Oxford Research Group) but that organisation is independent so it is a bit glory-by-association.  Ditto for SaferWorld and OpenDemocracy.  We were also told one of their professors is always jetting round the world and contacting him results in “I’m in such-and-such airport” responses.  Not much use as a campus lecturer, then.  They also said they are influential in government, but not how.  Lots of words, little evidence.

I was taken around the library by their Head of Library Services.  It is a fantastic university library; I was very impressed.

For some of my questions the PostGraduate stand sent me to the Peace Studies stand who sent me to the PostGraduate stand.

It seems very pro-gender-divisive which came across in the old, tired, “you’re male so you’re wrong and need educating” mantra.

Intake is in September.  Class sizes are 30-40 and no less than 15.I asked why they are relatively inexpensive (£5,400) and told “Just be glad  it is so cheap“.  Contact hours about 10 per week with attendance being on up to 3 days per week.

I managed to have a chat with one Peace Studies undergraduate student.  She is enjoying the course but not intending to use it in her career.

Conclusion.  It felt too big; I felt I would be more raw material for their sausage machine.  I was not inspired by the modules they do: too region-specific and contemporary and not theoretical or practical enough ni my areas of interest.  They seem to be geared up for training people to do grounds-roots work in the field overseas as opposed to changing the policies of governments to prevent war, which is my area of interest.

Hacked again

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Another of my sites has been hacked and the home page replaced.  Much less damage this time and it was easier to repair, remove and make the site secure again.  (The cause was an old Drupal installation which I tried and abandoned but did not delete.  It had some bug in it that gave people more access rights to the site than it should.)

Unfortunately for the numpty children doing this, they don’t realise that putting graffiti on walls does not endear people to their cause.  Assuming it really is them and not someone else trying to discredit them.

Image of the hacked home page that replaced my personal web site.

Image of the home page that hackers uploaded to replace my personal web site.

 

Swarthmoor Hall, Cumbria. A completely random happenstance.

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On Monday 29th June 2015 I had a day to myself in Barrow-in-Furness.  As I travelled further and further afield in search of something interesting to see or do, I came across Swarthmoor Hall as somewhere to visit.  I was going to give up because a coach was blocking the narrow road, but I was (unusually for me) patient, and after 15 minutes I finally got into their car park.  Where I had to move the car because of construction work.

I am glad I persevered.  I knew nothing about the place but it turns out it is relevant to my peace studies: the birthplace of Quakerism, and the Quakers are a recurring theme in the peace movement.  [Note to self: there’s a number of posts I need to write expanding on that last statement.]

I have been dragged round country houses and gardens and they bore me to tears.  However, this relatively small site kept me amused for over two hours.  It is quiet, charming, interesting, friendly, comfortable and welcoming.

Synergy and synchronicity have been recurring themes in my exploration into war prevention.  Stumbling across this building just as I am getting involved with Conscience seems strangely coincidental.  There have been so many such instances this past three years, of being in the right place at the right time.

I enjoyed my visit, and bought a copy of Preparing for Peace while I was there.  The descriptions and reviews of others will be better written than my own could be:

Liverpool Hope University – MA Peace Studies

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On 26th June 2015 I attended the Liverpool Hope University open day as part of my investigation into where to do my Peace Studies master’s degree.

It is a small university which started as a teacher training college; apparently it has an excellent reputation for all its teaching as a consequence of this.  I was concerned this means a small number of teaching staff for the MA or a limited range of knowledge.  Also, whether it means less resources, e.g. books and journals, relating to peace studies.  Since it is part of the SCONUL Access scheme and interlibrary loans are only £2, any limitations to the collection should not be an issue.

It has a Christian background / origin which I think explains their peace studies department.

It is just outside the centre of Liverpool and so has an atmosphere of being populated by students focused in study and learning rather than the city’s night-life and uni social opportunities.

It is the cheapest peace-related MA I have found in the UK at £4,500.  When I asked about why this was I was told there is no desire for growth and so none of the funds are needed for building new buildings or buying land as other universities are doing.  Also, it is university policy to keep MA costs down as students have already paid to do a first degree.

We were spoiled by the staff and students who took us round and showed us the facilities.  The free bus to Liverpool Lime Street was a nice touch.

I spent some time talking to Dr Stefanie Kappler, Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Director of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Centre for War and Peace Studies.  (She did her PhD at St Andrews in Edinburgh which is also on my list of universities to investigate.)

The MAs have 4 contact hours per week on various days.  Class sizes vary between 25 and 8 students.

As for peace-related events outside the curriculum, they have said I can subscribe to their Archbishop Desmond Tutu Centre for War and Peace Studies‘ mailing list.

The campus is quiet and peaceful.  It has an air of contemplation.  Their library is very professional, would be a pleasure to use and has a good size collection on peace.  [Note to self: the class mark in their library for peace-related material is 327.17]

The modules for the MA Peace Studies is relevant to what I want to learn.

The atmosphere felt right; I left the open day feeling that was where I want to do my master’s degree.

Coventry University – Peace and Conflict Studies MA

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Since I know I need to get a master’s degree in peace studies to work in the sector—an MA is the entry level qualification—I have booked onto various university open days to shop around for where to do one.  My undergraduate degree will be with the Open University but they have nothing like a Peace Studies MA so they cannot help me.

I know about Coventry’s link to peace firstly because of knowing the history of the city in World War 2 and how it was bombed and the stories surrounding that, code breaking and whether Winston Churchill knew it was coming or not.  Secondly, through being in Coventry House (properly, The House of the Resurgent City and Cathedral Church of St Michael and all Angels at Coventry) at school, we knew the history of the city’s reaction to the bombing, how it became a city of peace and reconciliation, twinned with the likes of Stalingrad, Dresden, Warsaw and Arnhem and other war-ravaged cities.

Hence I expected Coventry University’s peace studies department to be large, very active, extensive, impressive and prestigious.

The open day for postgraduates (13th June 2015) began with a presentation where they went on about being a “modern university” which I realised is code for “we were a polytechnic”.  They were spinning that into a good thing, but it did not work.  Much of this talk was waffle, bullshit and FUD.  The campus is a building site and they were at lengths to say this was a good thing and it would continue for some years.  Not a good thing for students during those years, however.

They boasted they were aware of the need for, but do not have, a post-graduate centre.  Not a clever thing to say on post-graduate open day.

They did say they do have a—note the singular ‘a’—research expert.  Just the one.

Attendance at a second lecture entitled “funding” later in the day was a waste of an hour.  It was exactly the same welcome presentation I saw in the morning.  Putting on the same presentation twice under two different names does not count as two different presentations.  That was really annoying since it was necessary to hang around to wait for the second one.  And it was of no use, just saying “See the gov.uk web site”.

There was a table for the Peace Studies department.  They packed up at lunchtime so when I went back with more questions for them… they had gone.  Since my discussion with them in the morning about their two (just the two) peace-related MAs told me little more than one of them was being dropped, I can only conclude Coventry University has ceased to be interested in peace studies.

The two MAs they do are focussed on people working in the field on the ground, and for one of them you have to have significant work experience.  So, neither are suitable for what I want.

It would have been nice to see the library.  It was closed.  On an Open Day.  On a Saturday.  In exam season (mid-June).

I was left with the feeling that Coventry University is focussed on growth, remodelling streets, putting up buildings and not at all interested in students.

Such a shame.  I had such high hopes.

Quote

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“…the bodies of strong, young men were being poured ruthlessly into the 500 mile long gutter that was the Western Front.” (BBC, 2015, 14:55)

That came, quite unexpectedly, from the mouth of a young student about half-way through a Sherlock Holmes / Mary Russell story on BBC Radio 7.

BBC, (2015) ‘The Beekeeper’s Apprentice’, episode 1 of 4 of The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, London, BBC, [online].  Available from: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0075z3b (accessed 9 June 2015).