Since serving as press secretary in Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign, Swanson has fought against the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and tried to alert Americans to the fact that U.S. military spending is the source of most of our economic problems. In his book Vita ni Uongo, Swanson alitoa kesi ya kukomesha vita kama chombo cha sera ya kitaifa. Wakati Vita vya Ulimwenguni Potolewa inatoa mfano wa kihistoria wa jinsi uondoaji wa vita unavyoweza kuwa na nguvu.
Levine: Katika mhadhara wa hivi majuzi wa chuo kikuu, uliuliza ikiwa kuna mtu yeyote aliamini kuwa vita ni haramu na ikiwa wamewahi kusikia juu ya Mkataba wa Kellogg-Briand. Ni asilimia 2 au 3 tu ya kundi kubwa waliinua mikono yao. Ulipouliza ikiwa vita vinapaswa kuwa haramu, ni asilimia 5 tu walifikiri kwamba inapaswa kuwa hivyo.
Swanson: Both responses bothered me somewhat. I knew people in the United States did not believe war was illegal. I knew that only the most serious peace activists had heard of the Kellogg-Briand Pact and that even they didn’t recognize its value, including the degree to which it is stronger than the UN Charter in its prohibition of all wars, not just certain kinds of wars.
But why wouldn’t people want war to be made illegal? To my ear that sounds like not wanting slavery or rape or torture to be illegal. At the end of the 19th century, when the United States snatched up Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, Panama, etc., there was a popular love for war in the air. By the end of World War I, war was widely viewed as an evil disease to be eradicated. From World War II forward there has been an ever-increasing tendency to view war as ordinary, necessary, and patriotic—if not a war in Vietnam or Iraq, then certainly some other war.
Kwa wale wanaojua vita kupitia televisheni pekee, wazo la kuifanya kuwa uhalifu linasikika kama kupendekeza kuifanya serikali kuwa ya uhalifu. Hali hiyo ndiyo inayonisumbua, utambuzi wa jinsi ilivyo kawaida kufikiria kuwa serikali ndiyo inayohusika na mauaji makubwa. Hii ni maili moja kutoka kwa Warren Harding kurudi kwenye "kawaida" baada ya WWI. Tangu Vita vya Pili vya Ulimwengu, hatujawahi kurudi katika hali ya kawaida.
Watu wana wakati mgumu wa kutosha leo wakiamini kwamba wana uwezo wa kutosha kukomesha vita moja isiyo na maana. Je, harakati za amani katika miaka ya 1920 ziliamini kweli kwamba zinaweza kukomesha vita?
Katika miaka ya 1920, kama unavyoonyesha, amani kwa kweli ilikuwa ya "kizalendo" na harakati za amani hazikuwa zikipingana na mahali popote karibu na aina ya tata ya kijeshi-viwanda tuliyo nayo leo. Katika kutafiti historia, je, ni akili yako kwamba Wamarekani leo-licha ya upinzani wao mkubwa kwa vita vinavyoendelea-wamekuwa wasio na msaada zaidi, wasio na tumaini, na kushindwa kwa kuzingatia kufikia taifa la amani?
Back then, war could be seen as something that backward Europeans had dragged the United States into, albeit with help from greatly resented propaganda that had been produced by President Wilson’s PR team. If you ask someone in the United States if they are for peace today, they may tell you that they like peace, but wouldn’t want to oppose war. Even in the 1920s, the United States was making war in Nicaragua and threatening it in Mexico, but peace was still considered the norm. Then wars were imperialistic or humanitarian or racist and, conceivably, avoidable. Now wars are necessary to protect us from evil. In other words, they are defensive.
Pro-war attitudes today are not insurmountable. Popular opinion turned against the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars fairly quickly and never got behind the Libyan War or our various drone wars. But there is a more important difference between the 1920s and today.
Kuongezeka kwa tata ya kijeshi-viwanda kumekuwepo tangu Vita vya wenyewe kwa wenyewe. Jeshi la Wanamaji lilikuwa linaundwa wakati huo huo Seneti ya Merika ilikuwa ikiidhinisha Kellogg-Briand. Lakini makampuni ya silaha hayakuwa yakivuta kamba za Congress katika miaka ya 1920. Wakulima, ambao walitaka Wazungu kununua mahindi mengi na silaha kidogo, walikuwa na ushawishi zaidi kuliko wafanyabiashara wa silaha. Kwa kuongezea, wilaya za bunge zilikuwa ndogo, hongo ilikuwa haramu, magazeti yalikuwa tofauti na ya kuaminika, televisheni hazikuwepo, ujasusi haujakamilika, na ilikuwa kawaida kwa wajumbe wa Baraza na Seneti kupinga misimamo ya vyama vyao vya kisiasa. . Vigogo hao wa majambazi hawakuendesha onyesho zima-baadhi yao waliwekeza sana katika harakati za amani.
Staha imepangwa dhidi yetu leo na tunaijua. Wanaharakati waliamini kuwa mafanikio yangekuja katika kizazi kijacho, hatua kwa hatua, kwa hivyo walifanya kazi kwa furaha kwa kile walichoamini kuwa sababu ya haki, kwa kile William James alichoita "sawa na maadili ya vita."
Hii ilikuja mkono kwa mkono, nadhani, na imani yao katika demokrasia. Frank Kellogg, Katibu wa Jimbo la Republican mwenye hasira kali ambaye Mkataba wa Kellogg-Briand unatajwa kuwa wanaharakati wa amani wanaochukiwa na kulaaniwa. Mnamo 1928, alifanya kazi usiku na mchana kujibu madai yao. Kwa nini? Kwa sehemu kwa sababu wanaharakati wa amani hawakujipanga nyuma ya viongozi wa kisiasa, rais, chama au Kellogg. Walihamisha utamaduni mzima, vyama vyote na wanasiasa wote, katika mwelekeo wao. Kellogg alijipanga nyuma yao.
Mkataba huo unalaani vita kwa uwazi kama chombo cha sera ya kitaifa na unasuluhisha kwamba mizozo yote inapaswa kutatuliwa kwa njia za amani. Lakini je, inasema kwamba vita ni haramu?
No reservations were made to the treaty, but the Senate did pass an interpretive statement. Kellogg had also published his interpretations of the treaty and communicated them to the other national signatories prior to the treaty’s creation. The negotiations were very public, having begun with a statement to the Associated Press from Aristide Briand, the Foreign Minister of France, a statement illegally drafted for him by an American peace activist lobbying France to lobby the United States for peace. The public discussion of the treaty and the U.S. Senate’s view of its meaning suggest that the answer to your first question is yes.
The big looming question for people today is, of course, “What about self-defense?” Levinson’s response was to point to the example of dueling. No nation had banned “aggressive dueling” and yet people could still defend themselves. They did so without making use of “defensive dueling.” It takes two to tango, to duel, or to make war. Nazi Germany did not attack the United States before the United States put its economic muscle into a war against Germany and, indeed, its assistance into attacking German submarines. Japan attacked a U.S. territory stolen from the people of Hawaii, but only after long and deliberate provocation, including U.S. support for and participation in a war against Japan on behalf of China.
More than self-defense, the big concern in 1928-1929 was to make clear—as Kellogg and the Senate made very clear—that the Peace Pact would not place on the United States any obligation to go to war against another nation that violated the pact, or any obligation to join an international alliance to “keep the peace” through the use of war. The League of Nations was voted down in the Senate and the Kellogg-Briand Pact up, not purely out of irrational “isolationism,” but also because the idea of making alliances of war did not seem a wise way to eliminate war. In fact, it looked to many people in the United States all too similar to how World War I had begun. We now have further examples, of course, of the United Nations and NATO launching wars.
Wanahistoria wengi wanasema kwamba sababu kuu ya kushindwa kwa Mkataba wa Kellogg-Briand kuzuia vita ni kwamba mkataba huo haukutoa njia yoyote ya kutekeleza au vikwazo dhidi ya vyama vilivyokiuka masharti yake na haukuziba vyema mianya ya wakati jinsi ya kujilinda inaweza. kudaiwa kisheria. Je, huo ni mtazamo wako juu ya kushindwa kwa Kellog-Briand?
The UN Charter leaves a giant loophole for defensive war, as well as one for any war authorized by the UN. The Kellogg-Briand Pact does not. This is why Kellogg-Briand is stronger. A court to resolve disputes by pacific means and to prosecute war makers was never established and still needs to be. The World Court of the League of Nations, like today’s International Criminal Court of the United Nations, did not fit the bill. Joining the League of Nations without transforming it radically would have brought the United States into World War II more quickly, but would not have prevented it. What might have prevented it would have been punishing war makers after World War I instead of punishing the entire nation of Germany, promoting and funding peaceful parties in Germany rather than Nazis, negotiating arms reductions rather than launching an arms race, and investing in the study of nonviolent dispute resolution instead of in eugenics and chemical warfare.
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Bruce E. Levine ni mwanasaikolojia wa kimatibabu na mwandishi wa Simama, Simama: Kuunganisha Wanaharakati, Kuwatia Nguvu Walioshindwa, na Kupambana na Wasomi wa Biashara (Chelsea Green, 2011). Makala haya yalichapishwa kwa mara ya kwanza na Alternet.org.
Picha ya Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, na Frank Kellogg.
