Ottawa Peace Calendar* March 1989
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Ottawa Peace Calendar * March 1989 |
by Robert L. Hale Jr.
Dr. George Ignatieff, the only Canadian who, in a diplomatic career dating back to 1940, has been our Ambassador to NATO and to the UN as well as being Ambassador for Disarmament, delivered the 1989 Holtom Lecture at the Ottawa Unitarian Church on February 6. He spoke on Giving Peace a Chance.
While one might expect that someone with such a rich historical perspective might be unduly tied to looking to the past for solutions, Dr. Ignatieff declared that we are moving too fast, today, to be able to devise remedies for the future by applying lessons from the past.
The basic flaw in the strategy of nuclear deterrence is that one cannot use nuclear weapons without committing suicide. This realization, he stated, entered the minds of Soviet military leaders about five years ago—before Gorbachev, who, in turn, has stated that the Soviet Union cannot spend some 60% of their budget on military expenditures and still have enough for other needs. Further, military power is no longer translatable into political power. The Afghanistan, Vietnam and Iran-Iraq wars are all evidence of this reality.
If we really want to avoid the spread of communism, Dr. Ignatieff declared, we must address poverty and hunger in the Third World. Moreover, security involves protecting our environment. We must move away from polluting technologies.
Dr. Ignatieff emphasized that, "Any war in the nuclear age is liable to escalate to nuclear war, and it is for this reason that, in order to give peace a chance, we must address the triangle of complex and inter-related threats to mankind: the threat of war, the threat to our environment, and the need for economic development in the North-South relationship as well as in the Arctic." He proposed a program which would put "restraints on the linked problems of militarism, pollution of the environment and undevelopment," and would create "a Framework... of international... interaction and cooperation within which war becomes unthinkable... and the UN is used as it was intended to be under the Charter."
This means we must, first, work for the full demilitarization of international relations. This was the approach advocated by Olaf Palme in his report on Common—or Comprehensive—Security and endorsed last December by Gorbachev.
Secondly, "We must seek a valid transition from pollution-creating technologies to technologies of energy supply, agriculture and industrial production that are both environmentally sustainable and resource-efficient."
Third, he stated that "alleviation of poverty and hunger must remain a central issue." In this connection, Canada has special responsibilities for the Arctic, which "suffers from overexposure to military exploitation."
Dr. Ignatieff concluded by declaring that, "we owe it to the present generation and those who come afterwards, to seize this historic turn of events to Give Peace a Chance. Let's not lose this opportunity by over-caution, cynicism or following the example of cold-war zealots."
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