Lockdown for the Military

"Lockdown for the military!"
By Reiner Brown
[This article published on April 6, 2021 is translated from the German on the Internet, „Lockdown für das Militär!“ (nachdenkseiten.de).]

In his speech at various Easter marches Reiner Braun has opposed the current opinion mongering: With the claim that high and nuclear armament, military interventions and deterrence would bring "security", militarization is being promoted. Accordingly, the forces of peace have to deal with a strong opponent who is pushing in the direction of a big war. We reproduce the speech here. From Editor.

Dear friends of peace,
The fact that we are standing here today and demonstrating for peace and disarmament is something we have fought for, against a federal government that increasingly sees basic democratic rights as a privilege rather than a historically fought-for right of the people.
A storm of protest has thwarted these plans! We have defended democracy and will do so again and again, because we need democracy like the air we breathe in our struggle for peace. Basic rights are not a larifari for good times (Heribert Prantl). Freedom is not a privilege, it is a right, and I would add: a hard-won right, if we look at German history.

If there is so much talk about lockdowns, let's start with one: Lockdown for the military and armaments and that means stop the unspeakable maneuver Defender 2021. Lockdown for the armament, for the agitation against Russia and China. That would be good for the health of the world, for the climate and for all people.

I add: health is more than the absence of viruses! As dangerous as they are.
Peace
Yes, this peace is in great danger!

When the U.S. President calls the Russian President a murderer and, by the way, has agreed to all U.S. war operations in the last 49 years that violate international law.

When the Prime Minister of Great Britain wants to increase the number of British nuclear weapons from 180 to 240.
When our country's defense minister states at the Maritime Leadership Conference in March: "On average, the Bundeswehr gets a new tank every week, a new aircraft every month and a new ship every year."
When defensive missiles and new nuclear weapons are deployed around China, explaining this is to take out China's second-strike capabilities.

Defender maneuvers toward the East, namely the Middle East and the entire Far East.
NATO planning 2030 and the strategies of aggression.
Last but not least, armed drones: Assault Weapons
It stinks enormously of war, of big war! It threatens wars, which we cannot imagine and do not want!
This is the real danger in which these Easter marches take place.
And so it remains true and right, as it says in the most famous Easter march song:

"Are we marching against the East? No! Are we marching against the West? No! We march for the world that no longer thinks of weapons, because that is best for us."
We know:
Again the forces of peace stand once more against the opinion-mongering that promotes militarization with the claim that high and nuclear armament, military interventions and deterrence bring 'security' and that Nato with its wars, armaments and threatening backdrops is a peace power.

The forces of peace and the future are up against a strong adversary pushing in the direction of a major war:
In May 2020, for example, the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (German Institute for International and Security Affairs), which advises the German government, recommended that NATO states should be able to wage a 'limited nuclear war' (SWP Study 11, p.8).
And former U.S. National Defense Strategy Commission security officials warned in late 2018 that the U.S. could lose the next war (CBS,11/14/18). They stated, "America's ability to defend ... its vital interests is increasingly in question, ... It may have difficulty winning a war against China or Russia ...The return of great power competition from authoritarian powers like Russia and China is returning."

The plan to spend over €80 billion annually in the federal budget on the military is also linked by military officials to preparations for such a war with nuclear powers. (2022 46.9, 2021 NATO criteria 53 billion).
The digitalization of war technology, the development of new types of systems, including nuclear ones, and the expansion of armies and their infrastructure follow the concept of networked warfare.

At 100 seconds to midnight, the doomsdale clock is set.
The core and crystallization point is NATO. This preparation for war has a name: NATO. And already the name is a lie - much more: the worldwide military alliance.

NATO
NATO, which spends 1100 billion US dollars, more than half of the world's arms expenditure, generates billions in profits for the arms industry, and with its CO2 emissions, resource consumption and destruction of nature, it contributes more to the dangers to humanity than any other institution on earth. It is incompatible with the vital interests of people in our country and worldwide. Life can only be saved with a consistent policy of social justice, of cooperation instead of capitalist competition for profit and supremacy. Peace is the basis of sustainable politics.

The world is too small, too vulnerable, nature too endangered for wars and military. Climate justice requires no to war and yes to disarmament.

The USA uses NATO for its imperial policy of global intervention to secure its supremacy and its access to resources in the global competition for strategic advantages and for its frontline position against China and Russia. Germany's policy supports this policy with transatlantic vassalage and even with the attempt to contain China with its navy (Kramp-Karrenbauer: "...we stand against...").

Peace policy, on the other hand, is directed toward social-ecological justice, both internally and externally. NATO and the EU hide imperial interests not only in resources and influence, but also in trade routes, and glorify their power politics as the defense of democratic values.

NATO - the global aggressive war alliance.
We know: NATO thereby undermines the UN and other alliances of states for the peaceful resolution of conflicts.
NATO imposes devastating military expenditures on member states: $1.1 billion in 2020. The social and environmental impacts of military and armament actions destroy livelihoods of billions of people.
NATO manipulates thinking through double standard propaganda and trivialization of the military with terms like 'defense', 'security'. Its advertising to minors violates the Convention on the Rights of the Child. NATO lies about war.

NATO falsifies numbers and produces the enemy image, especially Russia and China. But the balance of power figures reveal: NATO military spending is currently well over 15 times what Russia invests in the military.

NATO, with Germany's active support, is waging war all over the world - wars of intervention with devastating consequences in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Mediterranean, North and Central Africa. Germany is involved. The NATO concept under the title "NATO 2030" envisages that the boundaries between war and peace will become increasingly blurred and the confrontation with Russia and China will be taken to extremes. We demand an end to all foreign deployments. Bring our troops home immediately. NATO wars are also a major cause of the flight of millions. Aid yes, Frontex no. Those who talk about human rights must talk about refugees and Frontex operations at the borders must end immediately.

EU militarization, in which the U.S. also wants to actively participate, is aimed, among other things, at providing an infrastructure that the military demands for a war against Russia. No to the madness of a new aircraft with swarms of drones that will cost 500 billion euros, no to a new tank and the Eurodrone. We don't need war drones, they are offensive weapons - we need disarmament and civil conflict resolution.
Democracy in Europe yes - militarism no.
We reject the acquisition of combat drones planned by several EU states, among them Germany, with currently more than 7 billion Euros, like the arming of the Heron TP stationed in Israel - they are leap innovations on the way to the autonomization of digital war and they violate international law by war operations without declaration of war - with calculated collateral consequences for non-combatants. Drones are offensive weapons!

NATO and the German government talk so much about rules-based foreign policy: them making and determining the rules. Mr. Maas: it is about the recognition of international law! And about an end to the breaches of international law: Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and so on.

Rearmament
When people talk about war and unrestrained rearmament, we have to talk about our country. A quote from our defense minister makes the unrestraint clear:
"On average, the Bundeswehr gets a new tank every week, a new aircraft every month and a new ship every year" (figures 46.9 and 53 billion).

Let's not forget, however, that NATO is working on ever more perfect networking of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Internet cyber capabilities, high-tech weaponry, space weaponry - and space control to attack enemy installations and counter Internet malware - expensive and dangerous. We say no to the military bases needed for these attack strategies. Ramstein belongs closed.

Nuclear weapons
It remains, a life with 14,000 nuclear weapons is playing with nuclear doom - Hiroshima admonishes, but politics and the powerful do not want to understand.

A great, even historic success has been achieved: The treaty to ban all nuclear weapons is in force:
Over 50 states
Massive resistance of all nuclear powers
A first step toward sanity must be Germany's signature on the UN
Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons. This should be the first government action of the new German government after September 26.
But we also know that this treaty is binding under international law for those who have ratified it. No nuclear weapon has yet been scrapped, making it less on the planet.

No, it is just going in the other direction: more and new nuclear weapons everywhere:
Downplayedly called "modernization," this "modernization" is costing a trillion dollars in the U.S. alone.

Who's brain child the policy is, shows again GB Prime Minister Johnson: Increase of the British nuclear weapons from 180 to 240. What a provocation. Solidarity with the British peace movement.
We also reaffirm this Easter: The stationing of new types of nuclear arsenals (B 61-12) in Büchel, planned for 2024 at the latest, which burden NATO budgets with immense production costs, must not come to Germany or any other country. The thermonuclear bombs (B 61) stored in Büchel must be dismantled; Germany's 'nuclear sharing' must be ended accordingly, and nuclear war maneuvers must be banned. Consequently, the purchase of 30 U.S. F 18 nuclear bombers and 90 Eurofighters, as sought by NATO and the Air Force, must not be allowed. According to current planning, these systems alone will cost more than 30 billion euros for their planned duration of deployment.
Our vision remains: World without nuclear weapons, Russel Einstein Manifesto: Fight for humanity or perish! This is the challenge also and especially of these Easter marches.

Policy of common security and great transformation
A foreign policy that instead of tensions and militarization is directed towards negotiations, international law and cooperation, as was the Ostpolitik of Egon Bahr and Willy Brandt with the Ostverträgen and as the Palme Commission wanted with the goal of overcoming the bloc confrontation. A policy of common security is a peace policy - the basic principle of sustainable politics. The prevailing disorder of injustice, group-related misanthropy and violence, armaments, wars and arms exports is to be overcome by a peace policy for social-ecological justice. The capitalist and colonialist economy has led societies to the edge of the abyss. There can be no solution by the means that have led to this situation. A transformation of the capitalist system of competition to a society of social-ecological peace-justice means peace and justice is the vision! Social-ecological peace transformation the challenge.

An active peace policy is at the same time directed towards the relaxation of tension in Germany's relations with all European states, including Russia. There is no peace against Russia, but only with Russia. Without peace with Russia there can be no peace in Europe. You don't have to love Putin, but friendship with Russia shapes peace policy.

Without disarmament we achieve neither cooperation nor the provision of financial means for global justice worldwide. The world is too small for military and armaments. Disarmament also means giving way to civil conflict management, conflict prevention, dialogue and diplomacy.
Environment and peace are inseparable - climate justice without peace is not possible, not only because of the insane emissions of the armies.

Where are the refugees supposed to go and this is supposed to happen peacefully?
Therefore, let us continue to be active together for peace and climate justice.
It depends on the mobilization of people, of everyone for peace, whether the movements for the future can build the pressure needed for a great peaceful, social and ecological transformation.

Dear friends of peace,
as I was writing all this down and thinking about it, I remembered another song that turns 50 this year. It states:
Imagine all people,
live their lives in peace.
You may say I'm a dreamer,
but, I'm not the only one who dreams it.
I hope one day you will think so too,
and the whole world will be as one.

"Imagine" by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, one of the most famous anti-war songs against the Vietnam War, among others.
Yes, we will never give up the dream, the vision of a world without war and nuclear weapons, a world of global justice without exploitation and at peace with nature.

For this we go under these difficult conditions of the pandemic Easter 2021 on the streets, everywhere in this republic! We do not give up! We will come again!