Internationalist or pacifist, you can't be both

I'm thinking USA. Trident missiles are made in US and leased from them.
What's to stop trump using them as first choice. He has said he will launch first strike against North Korea.

Think North Korea.

Trident is American, roses. Nutcase as ruler thinking he can do anything he pleases?

Of course it won't stop 'rogue' terrorists blowing themselves and other people up,
But that isn't what Trident is for.
It's to stop 'rogue' countries with nutcases as rulers, thinking they can do anything they please.

The Green Party will cancel the Trident replacement, saving £110 billion over the next 30 years. Quite sensible in my opinion.

Trident wont stop rogue terrorists like the Manchester guy,thats what we're up against now ,you cant stop terrorists by bombing them never mind nuking them .Where do we stop ,when we've destroyed the whole world.

Well said Monica
norose Trident is a deterrent, that doesn't mean that it can't be used in retaliation, because it can ( that's the deterrent bit!) Of course, if all countries know in advance,as Corbyn has already forewarned them,that he would never in any circumstances use it, then it loses all deterrent power.That is one ( of many) reasons he should never be PM.

I don't think any party is saying we don't keep what we have norose, I think the question is whether and what we renew it with.

One of the issues is the huge cost. Someone may have a more up to date one than I have but a quick search brought up a 2015 Independent article saying that new figures had brought it up to £167bn although the base figure seems to be £40bn.

The first argument against would be on ethical grounds which comes from those whose argument would be as described by Andrea Berger of the Royal United Services Institute that the UK should never be a country that is willing to threaten or use nuclear weapons against an adversary, even in the most extreme circumstances and that the humanitarian consequences of doing that would be so grotesque as to be unfathomable.

The second would be from those who object that the UK should not be spending possibly £40bn on a programme that is designed for uncertainty and indeed that an "uncertain future threat environment" may mean no threats arise and so £40bn would have been spent unnecessarily.

The third would be that actually it is not so uncertain and the prospect of a significant threat arising to the UK in the timeline of the successor submarines is so remote as not to be worth taking significant action now.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13442735

I am genuinely interested to know what sort of defences we as a country think are acceptable in this day & age &given the unrest &the inequalities &extremism in the world at this present time ?

At what cost -and something that we have no control over. It is ridiculous.

Moving forwards from what each country has or hasn't been involved with in the past, in today's climate surely it is prudent to keep Trident

M0nica How far do you want to go back? The installation of the Shah of Iran as a puppet leader, (removed by the Iranians and replaced with the Ayatollah) the installation of Saddam Hussein, the arming of Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons he used against Iran . The First Gulf War. The arming of Saudi Arabia in its war against Yemen. Western governments have been interfering in the Middle East for decades and there are now western muslims who look on what they have done and believe we must pay. You may regard us as innocent civilians but for the people you mention we are complicit in the murders of thousands if not millions of muslims

I do think Corbyn was absolutely right when he said our (and American) foreign policy has by and large caused the terrorist threat from befor 9/11 .We reap what we sow !
I would be very interested to hear more about what we did that has caused such a backlash?

What did we and/or the Americans do before 9/11 that justified, not sovereign nations, but very small groups of politically disaffected youths to try and poison the water supply in London to kill hundred's of thousands of innocent civilians or plant bombs in Nairobi or the other bomb attempts they make.

Mr Corbyn is very tender in his feelings for terrorist groups, regardless of origin, and rapid to condemn those he sees as their oppressors I wish he would show an equal tenderness for their innocent victims and tell his friends how much he abhors and condemns most of their actions.

I always thought that internationalism was about cooperation, not about war.
Why can't other nations cooperate with a pacifist?

What is an internationalist?

thatbags Perhaps he isn't blaming Internationalists for the rise of HItler but certainly he implies that they couldn't have done anything to prevent that rise

"Hitler demonstrated that in the 1930s. Internationalism without force means feck all."

It wasn't just that people were afraid of communism, all forms of socialism including Trade Unions were regarded as dangerous. These were Internationalist movements with strong ties in many countries who asked for help, informed the British government and knew what was going to happen. The British Government closed their eyes and refused to see. They saw Hitler as a strong opponent of these movements. Are you suggesting that if the socialists had been supported and ousted Hitler things would have been worse?

Well put paddyann.

I remember being told in primary school that WW1 wasn't a"just" war ,that it was basically a family fight that got out of hand ..but that everyone had to come together to fight Hiltler .I acccepted that as fact as an 11 year old and cant see that being a pacifist and as a last resort going to war are incompatible .I do think Corbyn was absolutely right when he said our (and American) foreign policy has by and large caused the terrorist threat from befor 9/11 .We reap what we sow !

Your first paragraph, yes, trisher, except that hindsight is not much use really.

How odd that you think Hurst is blaming internationalists for the rise of Hitler. I got the impression from my reading that he blames pacifism for the kind of reluctance to act forcefully that might have stopped Hitler sooner, might being the operative word. Just shows how widely interpretations of the same thing can vary.

I don't blame people for having been afraid of communism. There was much to fear if what subsequently happened in the Soviet Union and China is anything to go by. Some of its socialist ideas strike me as allright but their implementation doesn't seem to have been very successful where communists have been in power.

thatbags I wasn't necessarily speaking of talks but of real support for the socialists and trade unionists in Germany who opposed Hitler. The problem being of course that other governments (ours) regarded the socialists with suspicion fearing a slide into communism. Had the socialists been supported (and many of them were Jews) the Holocaust might never have happened. I am not speaking of the war years but of the early years when Hitler first came to power and he began to act against the socialists, the disabled and the so called 'degenerates'. Unfortunately our government were quite happy to see some of these people disappear. And as for the evidence about the Holocaust this was well known to those in power just not released to the public at the time.

Peter Hurst attempts to blame internationalists for the rise of Hitler and the resulting war. if he knew anything about Internationalism and socialism he would know that these people were warning the UK about Hitler and trying to gain support for opposition. It was the narrow nationalism of the British government that made war inevitable. Had we been led by a more internationalist government willing to help out the opposition to Hitler war might not have been necessary.
As for Tony Blair being Internationalist when he went to war in Iraq, that can only be treated as a joke. Had he obtained the consent of the UN it might us have been feasible. He didn't. It isn't.

Thank you for the link to the article. It was interesting, but in my mind, took both stances to their logical extremes: fine in a theoretical debate, but I would say, less helpful in the messiness of real life.

I heard this a lot around my family & their friends when I was young (those of you with parents brought up in the 20s & 30s probably remember). My own stance became pragmatic: Begin from both an internationalist and a pacifist stance, as that will probably be the most helpful. Move away from either when forced. As for when that moment comes, decide with with as much knowledge, debate & humanitarian concern as you can summon.

Impossible to distill into a post, but as 2 quick replies:
Who decides a 'just war'? (Thanks daphnedill!)
Can't see who posted that 'jaw,jaw' probably wouldn't have stopped WW2. But possibly (and this has been debated a great deal) more awareness of what was going on in Germany and more early support to the resistance there might have made a difference. I say that, not to get into a debate about whether it would or wouldn't (already done exhaustively!) but to say that there are many ways to peel an orange.

"Whoever is elected on 8 June, we want human rights, internationalism, justice and solidarity, to be at the heart of shaping all government policy. We wrote to the leaders of the five main parties and raised concerns. We urge you to add your voice by contacting candidates in your area."

War on Want.
I am sure there are many internationalist pacifists among their members. War on Want don't advocate war with weapons.

A couple of years ago, I went to a talk by Shirley Williams, during which she explained why she wasn't a pacifist, as her mother had been. Williams, a practising Catholic, talked about Thomas Aquinas' "just war" theory.

"First, just war must be waged by a properly instituted authority such as the state. (Proper Authority is first: represents the common good: which is peace for the sake of man's true end—God.)
Second, war must occur for a good and just purpose rather than for self-gain (for example, "in the nation's interest" is not just) or as an exercise of power (just cause: for the sake of restoring some good that has been denied. i.e. lost territory, lost goods, punishment for an evil perpetrated by a government, army, or even the civilian populace).
Third, peace must be a central motive even in the midst of violence.(right intention: an authority must fight for the just reasons it has expressly claimed for declaring war in the first place. Soldiers must also fight for this intention)."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_war_theory

It seems the Catholic Church is beating itself up about "just war theory",because it thinks that the theory has been used to often to justify war.

www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2016/04/15/just-war-theory-should-be-abandoned-says-conference-hosted-by-vatican/

Williams thinks that WW2 was justifiable, but WW1 wasn't. Of course, it could be argued that if WW1 hadn't happened, WW2 wouldn't either, but that's the realm of counterfactual history.

It's quite surprising that Corbyn's view should be so close to that of Catholic theologians.

I'm not 100% sure what is meant by being an "internationalist". If it means working towards world peace (probably unrealistic) and taking action when necessary and all other options have been exhausted, I don't see a conflict.

Exactly, eloethan. I'm sure plenty of people do question Hurst's contention about Blair's internationalism. That is the point of this thread. So question it. Put foward an alternative argument about Blair's motivation for invading Iraq.

ww, thank you for your clarity. I do see where you're coming from and where Corbyn is coming from. My problem is that I don't trust Corbyn. I'm not sure I trust any UK political leader. I'm not even sure one can trust political leaders. After all, nobody knows what will happen in future that will require modification of ideas and plans that might be held at the moment. Changes in policy are always touted as U-turns as if U-turns were of necessity bad. And yet democratic politics is and must be full of compromise.

maizied, you like what you see as the force of argument from authority. A lot of people do. Philosophically it's not a sound approach and for me it is not a requirement. I regard all ideas as challengable by ordinary people in the street.

m0nica, good post. Thank younfor discussing the issue.

trisher, would you say that WW2 hadn't solved any problems? I used to think that war was unnecessary too and that, for example, the Nazis could have been defeated by more jaw, jaw. As I've aged I've begun to doubt whether jawing would have worked. It might have but I think maybe the number of Jews killed in the meantime might have been far larger. Even those who thought they understood what was going on were shocked when the brutal evidence saw the light of day at the end of that war.
The data at ourworldindata.org is reassuring in that it shows we fight wars far less than we ever used to. Human beings are becoming more peaceful over time hard though it is to believe that sometimes.