How can we argue for peace when the talk is all of war? There is a widespread feeling among peace activists today of despair mixed with perplexity. Despair because the world is moving away from what was already a fragile state of imperfect and partial peace into an even more hazardous state of uncertainty and disaster. Perplexity because the arguments that we have been using which always struggled to cut through conventional wisdom now have even less power against a tide running strongly in the opposite direction. We are also caught up in compelling but pointless efforts to figure out what is going to happen next, whom we might regard as temporary allies and which alternatives to advocate with any chance of convincing anyone. And every day brings a new horror, shock, absurdity or all three together so that we feel compelled to try to form a judgment or make a prediction.
My response to this has been one which is probably shared by many others: we must not allow ourselves to be trolled by Trump, so after reading the headlines, just pick out one or two to keep well informed on the essential narrative, but otherwise don’t keep reading any further. Trump’s tactics are designed to stop us thinking at all, by piling on one grotesquerie after another so fast that we cannot keep up (Boris Johnson had much the same idea). And don’t waste time listening to talking-heads. Switching off from their chatter not only helps preserve our sanity, but it makes space for creative thinking, because that is what is desperately needed.
We have to stand back and view the world from a distance – a distance of time. Imagine that we are a historian viewing the 21st century from the 22nd — if a living world still exists by then: how would they describe the current state of affairs? They would see the present time as a period of maximum danger when international values, already shaky, are being trashed, just when a multitude of existential risks (nuclear, climate, pandemic, AI) requires more not less international cooperation. They would label this as the era of “global multi-crisis” that led to a “global turning-point” — though in which direction the world would turn we today cannot yet know. Gordon Brown (much more sensitive to the issues that really matter out of office than in it, a not infrequent phenomenon) explored this territory perceptively in his Guardian article of 12 April: “The old order is gone. Now we must build a new one”. The world, he wrote, needs a new “global charter” for its common future, building on the UN Charter but in a different century, a new multilateral cooperation to confront concerns that nation states cannot tackle on their own: “global security, climate, health and humanitarian needs as well as the flow of trade”.
This, I suggest, is the framework in which we should frame the argument for peace. It is not sufficient to argue by itself that nuclear weapons are immoral, are costly, or may lead to war by accident or design without situating these valid cases within the wider context of the multiple threats to our existence. If we are arguing solely against the proposition that more “defence” is needed for Europe, including more nuclear “defence”, we shall never win. When there is routine discussion in the media of our “pre-war” situation, of the chances of a “new world war”, of the phenomenon of “forever wars”, peace advocates will not even get two minutes on the Today programme.
Our case has to be that in a new era of global multi-crisis, all the old strategic assumptions are out of date, and so are the arguments over them. We need to define this crisis – and here we must do some hard homework ourselves to establish its contours – and the international effort that will be required to turn it round. Confronting the nuclear threat, which now includes the danger of new proliferation, is only one part of the “global charter” that is required. Let us pool our resources, moral but also practical, to write the text of that charter.
John Gittings
May 2025