Establishing Priorities That Cut Across National Interests

Establishing Priorities That Cut Across National Interests

An Interview with David Atwood, Director of the Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva

What do you see as the present situation surrounding disarmament in terms of positive and negative aspects?

I gave a little speech recently to the World Federalist Movement, and basically they asked me to talk about current disarmament and peacebuilding. I was trying to say that it depends on the angle you take, or the perspective you take. In English, we say, "Is the glass half full or half empty?"--you know that expression. I think that the nuclear-weapon situation is very worrying at the moment because we don't see any substantial progress on the nuclear disarmament side and we see a lot of threats on the nonproliferation side. Therefore, I think that if we were to get a kind of breakout from the nonproliferation treaty, we could suddenly have a situation in which we have a lot of nuclear powers.

On the other hand, I think there have been a number of areas in which things have improved a little bit. I even think that though the convention concerning biological weapons is unable to actually keep up with technological developments, the atmosphere inside that mechanism has become more positive, and so we have seen some positive steps there. And we have a number of other multilateral processes that are actually moving along without receiving much attention, such as the Chemical Weapons Convention and things of that nature, so you see, some things are improving; I don't feel totally negative at the moment.

How do you respond to questions, such as What roles do NGOs play in disarmament? or How can disarmament activities by NGOs support those by national governments and the United Nations?

I think that NGOs play a lot of different roles. They get the government's attention about issues, so they act as a kind of alarm system on worrying trends. They play a very important role in raising awareness and help to develop agendas for action. They provide a lot of the expertise about particular issues. They can be very important in helping in the implementation of agreements. We can see this in a number of ways, particularly around dealing with conventional weapon systems. They are part of the monitoring system, so they help keep track of what governments are or are not doing.

This is very useful for governments because they can accept it or reject it, and it's not official. So there is a growing recognition that there are NGOs or civil-society organizations or independent research institutes or whatever that provide this very important expertise in advising and monitoring governments, in helping in the development and implementation of policy, and in raising awareness, as well as in keeping the public involved. So there are a lot of key roles that they play. This is precisely the message that I am always trying to put forward to the conference on disarmament on how to include NGOs.

So those are some of the roles that I see NGOs playing. This means that I see this as a kind of three-legged table, to make a simple analogy. You have the NGOs or civil society, governments, and the UN agencies.

Sometimes there is still, from my point of view, too much of an adversarial nature to the relationship. NGOs are not always going to agree with governments, and governments sometimes do not like that. NGOs are going to be difficult and they are going to be pushy and they are going to be assertive with their views and their beliefs, but if you can learn how to harness that energy, then everybody is working together.

I think that NGOs are becoming more and more sophisticated at understanding what to do, and some governments can now accept that they must work in more sophisticated ways than they used to, coming to realize that they cannot effectively do their job without the support of the civil-society people.

What are some of the potentials of NGOs in overriding national boundaries to promote disarmament?

This is where I came in, in terms of my own view of the role of NGOs. How much have governments recognized that there are things that must be done in a transnational or a multilateral or a global way because we simply do not live in a world in which states can live in isolation from one another or control everything that we do? Autarky is impossible. If it ever was possible, it certainly is not possible now. We have to deal with the world, and we have issues that do not respect national boundaries, human issues that require solutions that need to transcend national boundaries.

What we need to do is figure out how to put some parameters around it, so that the interests of the people are put first and not just the interests of private corporations or governments. And this is a real challenge; we see it in so many areas, particularly in the environmental area at the moment. Part of the NGOs' responsibility, I think, is to act globally and to establish priorities that cut across national interests or to put those priorities above national interest. I think that the essential step in global cooperation is to get individual national governments to recognize that their own interests can best be served by collaborating rather than resisting collaboration, that by doing so they are going to be able to look after what they perceive to be their responsibilities as governments to their own people.

Could you describe the religious principles that are at the basis of QUNO's activities?

I think I have to qualify what I am going to say by adding that this is my own particular point of view. We do not wear our religion on our sleeve, because we feel that the way we work and the way we behave in our work actually says a lot in itself. We are always prepared to talk to people about our beliefs if they are curious enough to ask, but that's not our main purpose. However, the work here is very much based on attitudes and approaches and a long historical way of thinking about the world and also some basic philosophical or spiritual or religious principles, basically what we call the peace testimony. We have a lot of discussion in the Quakers about our "testimonies," but basically what we mean--and there is always a lot of debate--is that there are some texts that one can refer to, but it's not something that's carved in stone forever; it's something that is lived.

The testimony is about living out some basic things and how you demonstrate that. And in essence this is based fundamentally on the Quaker view of what we call "that of God in each person." In other words, each human being has something of the sacred within, and what we have to do is try to reach that sacred essence--and that effort in itself will help to transform situations. This is, of course, a very basic understanding. It is also the foundation for the peace testimony, which actually says that if we believe it, then we must live it out in our work. This is where our pacifist way of working and thinking comes from. We are all God's creatures and we are all manifestations of that kind of understanding, and therefore our obligation is to try to stop the things that cost people their lives or their dignity or whatever. But we also recognize that therefore it is not just a question of saying no to war; it's also a question of saying yes to a whole lot of other things that have to be in place in order to make it possible for the elimination of war, the elimination of militarism, or the elimination of all things that inhibit people's ability to be their own selves, to reach their own potential.

Each issue that we work on has to be completely grounded in something that grows from the basic Quaker sense of right and wrong. It's almost an intuitive thing after a while. As Quakers we find it hard to explain exactly why are we doing a particular piece of work unless we can base in this fundamental way of belief. It's only when we have an almost physical sense that this is the right thing to do that we proceed. We talk it through, we don't just suddenly come up with new ideas, and we have to test them with our committees and have a sense that there are other Quakers in other places who also think that these are important questions.

The pacifism of the Japanese Constitution is attracting interest among the world's NGOs working for peace, who evaluate it as a practical means to prevent war. One such example is the Ten Fundamental Principles for a Just World Order adopted in the Hague Appeal for Peace in May 1999, the first principle of which urges every national parliament to adopt a resolution prohibiting its government from going to war, such as Japan's Article 9. How do you evaluate the principle of nonviolence that sustains Article 9?

What would be interesting to me is to know to what extent this Article 9 is a fundamental belief of the Japanese people as the only way that they want to see their state, their country in the world, because there are so many forces that are at work causing fear, causing threat, causing a sense that we have to protect ourselves, bringing traditional, old-fashioned ways of understanding national interest back into play. And in this era of fear, manufactured or real in terms of terrorism and things of that nature, there is much tension on the part of the people responsible for looking after the public interest, needing to determine whether we are doing what we need to do to look after our own people.

What I have always felt is that, as witnesses to nonviolence, we have got to develop credible, feasible, realistic, believable alternatives. So Article 9 has to come with a whole lot of other things that are alternative ways of understanding national interests, alternative ways of constructing defense, alternative ways of helping to assist the nation to feel protected.

So I think it is incredibly important that people in the rest of the world be helping to preserve this element in your national Constitution and to resist the forces that are trying to erode it, the main one being the U.S. government it would seem, despite having had its own reasons for having written this into the Japanese Constitution.

At a certain point, it has to be asked if Japan is actually living up to its Constitution. Is Article 9 still actually working? I mean, what Japan did in its economic miracle was to prove that because it wasn't spending giant amounts of its national wealth on nuclear weapons and various other defense costs, it was actually able to put it into its economy. And I think sometimes, given its history as the only nation to have suffered atomic attack, its history with Article 9, its proof positive that you can actually pursue your national interest otherwise, develop your society, and move into a major prominent place in the world without what I call the virility symbols of nationhood--that is, nuclear weapons or massive military forces--that Japan doesn't do enough with that. Japan is on the right track here; now I wish that you would take it a little further.

But it has been interesting for me to observe that you have these things, and in that respect, on the question of the Constitution, you have a moral viewpoint to use the historical experience of having been the only country to have suffered the destruction caused by nuclear weapons.

Having experienced two world wars, human beings have created transnational bodies such as the United Nations and the European Union in the pursuit of creating a world system that emphasizes international cooperation and enables the resolution of international disputes without the use of military force. We believe that Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution is an asset that has been obtained at an immense cost of human lives and destruction but expresses the common wish of human beings for a world without war. What do you think of the present movement in Japan to revise Article 9?

The world cannot have double standards in approaching humanitarian crises; every diplomatic means possible must be exhausted before resorting to force under UN authority.

I think that there are probably situations in which we must have the capacity under the UN to be able to say, "Yes, we must act." This is where Quakers are not of one mind in terms of the role of the UN, not only in the question of peacekeeping, but also in the question of the so-called "responsibility to protect." But if, for example, there is to be a global capacity to have that kind of armed force available for what I consider basically policing actions, then somebody has got to do it, somebody has got to come up with the willingness to put their own people in harm's way, somebody has got to come up with the money, with the infrastructure, the planning, the people. So that has to come from somewhere, and if we believe that this is important, then there has to be that capacity. But similarly, there are all kinds of global capacities that are needed. Japan does not have to contribute.

It does seem to me, however, that revising Article 9 is not the solution. Article 9 is in itself a very important message to the world. Somehow we have to grow up, and I think that's the opportunity here that would be missed if you change the Constitution. Basically, if you got rid of that principle, then I think it would be a terrible loss for the future, because it seems to me that this is one country that has actually demonstrated that there are other ways to do things and that we can grow past these things and that we can give our support and our leadership in other ways.

Therefore, I think that you should look at a whole gamut of other things beyond peacekeeping that would allow you to play a role that could be undertaken within the present definition and without stretching that definition very far. But I think that the minute you move to heavy weapons and an offensive capacity, that's when you cross the boundary--and it seems to me that that's not necessary for Japan, whose resources should be spent much more on looking at its capacity to help in the neighborhood, including developing its diplomatic "muscle."


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