Editorial
New Labour: New barbarism!
In a stark reminder of the long-term choice for society – between a move forward to socialism or a lurch backwards into barbarism – Blairite Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon has nailed his colours firmly to the mast of barbarism.
Hoon’s repeated insistence that New Labour – going far further than any previous Labour or Tory government – would be prepared to use nuclear weapons in a preemptive nuclear strike, even on a country which does not itself have nuclear weapons, will bring warm smiles among George Bush’s warmongering US cabinet, and a chill sense of foreboding to thinking people everywhere.
Hoon’s first warning that a new policy was emerging on what appeared to be a largely forgotten and almost academic question of the use of weapons originally designed during the Cold War to counter an alleged Soviet nuclear "threat", came back in March.
Questioned by the commons Defence Committee, Hoon expressed fears that in four "states of concern" (Iraq, Iran, Libya and North Korea) the regime may not be deterred from mounting a chemical or biological weapons attack on Britain by the UK’s stock of 185 nuclear missiles.
"In those kinds of states, the wishes and needs and interests of citizens are clearly much less regarded, and we cannot rule out the possibility that such states would be willing to sacrifice their own people to make such a gesture."
Hoon made it clear that in such circumstances Britain’s New Labour government would be willing to sacrifice those innocent lives on their behalf:
"They can be absolutely confident that in the right conditions we would be willing to use our nuclear weapons."
Hoon’s promise to match and exceed the disregard for human life displayed by Saddam Hussein followed obediently after the announcement from the State Department that the US will now consider using nuclear strikes pre-emptively against non-nuclear states which are claimed to be contemplating the use of weapons of mass destruction.
But just a few days after MPs heard the new British policy, the shaky and unreliable basis on which such attacks might be justified was exposed. The alleged "biological and chemical weapons laboratory" which Downing Street briefings claimed had been found in Afghan caves, and which were used as the pretext for the dispatch of 1,700 Royal Marines, supposedly to fight al-Qaeda, turned out to be a figment of ministers’ imagination.
Even Washington denied any knowledge of such a laboratory, and soon afterwards British intelligence, the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office were denying it too.
But by then the decision had been made to dispatch the troops – who have since returned having fired not a single shot in anger, after seeing neither hid not hair of a Taliban or al-Qaeda fighter in their tour of Afghan mountain scenery.
However if ministers had decided to respond to this alleged "threat" by dispatching not troops but nuclear missiles, countless innocent lives could have been lost, and untold damage done to the planet for generations to come.
Hoon, however, is unrepentant and utterly committed to the new policy of threatening nuclear destruction.
Asked in the Commons on April 29 if the government had abandoned the long-standing policy of successive governments that nuclear weapons should be regarded as "weapons of last resort", Hoon stressed that while the form of words remained, the policy had indeed changed:
"For that to be a deterrent, a British Government must be able to express their view that, ultimately, and in conditions of extreme self defence, nuclear weapons would have to be used."
So what, asked Diane Abbott, was "extreme self defence"? Hoon’s reply again restated the willingness to push the nuclear button:
"I accept that there are those – some of whom may well be sitting on the Labour Benches – who do not believe in the use of nuclear weapons in any circumstances, but this is not the position of the Government or of the Labour Party.
"It is therefore important to point out that the Government have nuclear weapons available to them and that – in certain specified conditions to which I have referred – we would be prepared to use them."
Given yet another chance by Tony Lloyd in the Commons on June 17 to make clear that he was not talking about a pre-emptive strike, Hoon again refused to do so:
"I have made it clear before how important it is to recognise that they would be used only in what are described as extreme conditions of self defence. I want to emphasise that it does not help the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons to spell out precisely what those circumstances might be."
Worse, Hoon went on to claim that "nuclear weapons would be used proportionately and consistently with our obligations in international law."
Exactly how Hoon imagines that the mass slaughter of a nuclear strike can be carried out "proportionately" is of course not explained.
The legality of the threat is also in doubt: under the UN Charter, both pre-emptive action and even retaliatory action to isolated attacks are illegal. The nuclear non-proliferation treaty also hinges on the joint pledge made in 1978 by the US, Britain and the Soviet Union never to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.
But George Bush is into tearing up treaties that stand in the way of the new, fearsome US war-drive that has followed on the September 11 events. The ABM treaty has been scrapped to make war for the "star wars" project, which in turn would (if successful) enable the US with impunity to threaten any other country with nuclear annihilation.
Washington has openly threatened war and possible nuclear attacks on a growing list of supposedly rogue states in is "axis of evil", while US nuclear scientists are hard at work on a new generation of smaller "tactical" nuclear weapons for more casual use against "hardened" targets like Afghan caves or Saddam’s bunkers.
Trailing behind the US offensive comes Tony Blair’s fawning team of lap-dogs, eager for an invitation to be part of any military action.
Some of today’s Labour ministers have in recent memory been members of CND: some like foreign office minister Peter Hain, still are. As they allow themselves to be pulled by Hoon and Blair into an indefensible policy, can they all have forgotten the gruesome facts about nuclear weapons that every CND activist used to know?
Can they be unaware that even a one megaton blast would vaporise every living being for a six mile radius? That the light from the blast would blind people and animals for ten miles around? The huge firestorm that will follow the explosion, the radiation burns and subsequent sickness that will spread and kill tens of thousands under the fallout zone, carried by the wind for hundreds of square miles around the explosion? The electro-magnetic pulse that will wipe out electric power supplies, equipment and the whole communications infrastructure over an even wider radius?
To use nuclear weapons is to unleash genocide – and wreak indescribably environmental damage for generations to come.
A nuclear strike can never be a "proportionate" response to anything. There can be no justification for using such weapons either pre-emptively or as a retaliation.
How does Hoon imagine British and other ministers can hope to convince the governments of India and Pakistan to set aside the threat to use these instruments of barbarism while the leading western powers are openly threatening the same themselves?
Socialists can’t sit idly by in the vague hope that good sense will prevail, or that hitherto spineless Blairite ministers will return to their CND past and challenge this latest switch of policy.
Labour Party members need to fight this hijacking of the Party to embrace a crazy, irresponsible policy that nobody has ever been asked to vote for.
We need to raise now, within the trade unions, wider and in anti-war campaign work, the demand that ministers renounce any threat to use nuclear weapons.
Far from stoking the fires of the US war drive, the international labour movement should be seeking to build links with US workers to oppose the star wars programme, nuclear weapons research and Bush’s massive military build-up.
Hoon’s line shows that if this fight is not stepped up, New Labour really could unleash unspeakable horrors on the world.