From a Pre-War to a Post-War World
Statement Issued by Peace Quest Cape Breton
United Nations International Day of Peace, September 21, 2024
We live in a time openly defined by our political and military masters as a ‘pre-war world’. Given that we already live in a war-torn world, with over 100 armed conflicts and 100 million refugees, the chilling phrase can only logically refer to a pre-world-war world: a world doomed to destruction on an unprecedented, unthinkable, unendurable scale.
The great war that is coming, we are told, will be waged between the armed forces of good – American-led NATO and its allies – and evil – Russia, China, and their allies: between the supposed champions and vandals of the ‘rules based international order’ established in 1945. In reality, the core mission of the United Nations, “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”, has long been sacrificed on the altar of nationalism, militarism, hatred and greed, producing a global disorder of staggering violence and inequity, a ‘disunited nations’ dominated by a small number of over-armed states now preparing to attack each other and destroy us all.
Even if such a war somehow remains conventional, tens of millions will suffer and die, in the process dealing our already sickened biosphere new and grievous blows. Yet in the nuclear age, such an outcome would be the best we could hope for, sparing us an infinitely worse fate.
The atomic-armed members of the UN Security Council – America, Britain, China, France and Russia – still pay lip-service to the worn-out formula that ‘a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought’. Yet they all now share a deeply-rooted strategic assumption that war between them will be fought and must be won, if ‘necessary’ by triggering the ‘locked and loaded’ weapons of genocidal, ecocidal, omnicidal destruction at their arbitrary disposal.
This terrible truth must sink in: the object of both Russia’s and NATO’s active, assiduous nuclear war planning – their remarkably similar, detailed and meticulous rehearsals for doomsday – is not to prevent through macho posturing what no one can ever prepare for, but precisely to prepare for a Cataclysm no longer considered preventable.
The long, sick age of ‘deterrence’ – that beguiling euphemism for dependence on nuclear terror – is over. Despite all the ‘pre-war’ propaganda, what comes next is not inevitable, but will inevitably either be nuclear war or nuclear disarmament, the abolition of human slavery to the Bomb as the critical move in an even grander emancipation: the general and complete disarmament of world affairs promised by the United Nations so long ago.
As either the finest hour or final failure of humanity – as the triumph of either Life or Death – a post-war world is coming. The final fork in the road is here: do we listen to the drumbeats, or our hearts?
To endorse this statement, please contact Sean Howard, PQCB Campaign Coordinator, sean@peacequestcapebreton.ca. For context and more information, please see Sean’s July 2 article in Rethinking Security (UK), ‘Pre-War, Post-War, Anti-War? Defence, Disarmament and Deliberative Democracy,’ https://rethinkingsecurity.org.uk/2024/07/02/defence-disarmament-and-deliberative-democracy/. Please see below for a selection of recent quotes by western military and political leaders about a ‘pre-war world’.
A ‘Pre-War World’? A Selection of Recent Quotes
UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, speech in London, January 15, 2024
“We find ourselves at the dawn of a new era. The Berlin Wall a distant memory. And we have come full circle. Moving from a post-war to a pre-war world.”
Admiral Rob Bauer (Netherlands Royal Navy), Chairman of NATO’s Military Committee, January 18, 2024
“[We] have the plans, we are preparing for a conflict with Russia. But the discussion is much wider. It is also the industrial base and also the people that have to understand they play a role. … [We need to be] war ready. We need public and private actors to change their mindset for an era in which everything was plannable, foreseeable, controllable and focused on efficiency to an era in which anything can happen at any time. … In order to be fully effective we need a warfighting transformation of NATO. You need to be able to fall back on an industrial base that is able to produce weapons and ammunition fast enough to be able to continue a conflict if you are in it.”
UK Chief of the General Staff Sir Patrick Sanders (Army), speech in London, January 24, 2024
“Last summer, I said that we should think of ourselves now as being a pre-war rather than a post-war generation. And last week the Secretary of State for Defense described a move from a post-war to a pre-war world, with the need to ready the entire defence ecosystem, with NATO as our preeminent partner. And I could not agree more. …
“Ukraine really matters. It is the principal pressure point on a fragile world order that our enemies wish to dismantle. This war is not merely about the black soil of the Donbass, nor the re-establishment of a Russian empire. It’s about defeating our system and our way of life politically, psychologically and symbolically. How we respond as that pre-war generation will reverberate through history. Ukrainian bravery and resilience is buying us time for now. So Ukraine really matters; I can’t overstate it.”
“Within the next three years it must be credible to talk of a British Army of 120,000, folding in our reserve and strategic reserve. But that’s not enough: our friends in Eastern and Northern Europe, who feel the proximity of the Russian threat, are already acting prudently, laying the foundations for national mobilisation. As the chairman of the NATO Military Committee warned just last week, and as the Swedish government has done over the last few months, preparing Sweden for entry into NATO, taking preparatory steps to enable us to place our societies on a war footing, when needed, are now not merely desirable but essential. Ukraine brutally reminds us that, while regular armies start wars, it is citizen armies that finish and win them.”
Military Analyst Simon Diggins, ‘Are We Heading for World War Three? Experts Give Their Verdicts,’ Sky News, January 29, 2004
“The last months have seen some loud rumblings, and the sense that the inevitable tensions of a complex world may only be resolvable by war. Nothing is inevitable, but the Ukraine invasion in particular has shown that Russia sees war as an instrument of policy, as a tool to change the world order in its favour, and not simply as a means of defence. China likewise seeks reunification with Taiwan, and Iran, in its region, wants its ‘place in the sun’. What this means, in short, is that the presumption against the use of force – which was the basis for the post-WWII world order, for anything other than defence – has been lost. … We are, most definitively, in a pre-war era.”
Polish Prime Minster Donald Tusk, March 29, 2024
“What is most worrying now is that literally any scenario is possible. We have not had a situation like this since 1945. I know it sounds devastating, especially to people of the younger generation, but we have to mentally get used to a new era. We are in a pre-war era. I don’t exaggerate. This is becoming more and more apparent every day.”
Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, April 25, 2024
“It is not us – the West – who should be afraid of a clash with Putin, but the other way around. It is worth reminding about it, not to increase the sense of threat in the Russians, because NATO is a defense pact, but to show that Russia's attack on any of the members of the Alliance would end in its inevitable defeat. If we do not lack will, Russia will lose. … [Russia has] just over 1,300,000 military personnel. NATO military personnel – without additional mobilization – is over three and a half million people, which is almost 3 times more. NATO aviation resources are three times higher than those of Russian aviation. The Alliance has four times as many ships and three times as many submarines at its disposal. The combined GDP of Russia and Belarus is only 2.2 trillion, which is 20 times less [than NATO] … In 2022, the fifteen NATO countries most actively supporting Ukraine spent more than $1.17 trillion on defense, while Russia spent barely $86.4 billion, or nearly 14 times less.”
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, June 5, 2024
“We must be ready for war by 2029. … In an emergency, we need strong young women and men who can defend this country.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, June 5, 2024
“Today, we see more clearly than ever how important it is to have a European and German defense industry that can continuously produce all major types of weapons and the necessary ammunition.”
