Citizen-Based Global Affairs Agendas

Demilitarization

Turning swords into ploughshares is a reform agenda that has resonated with citizens through the millennia. While politicians and generals tend to see military options as the most effective way of guaranteeing national security and protecting national interests, citizen peace groups, arms control institutes, and religious organizations are more skeptical about the "peace through war" agenda. Instead, citizen movements promote the notion of demilitarization as the best guarantee of peace. Demilitarization encompasses an array of citizen movements calling for military budget reductions, nuclear nonproliferation and abolishment, overseas base closures, and arms export prohibition. The positive agenda of demilitarization reformers includes international treaties that ban landmines and chemical/biological weapons, conflict prevention strategies, mulitilateral peacekeeping, and economic conversion of military production and facilities. The demilitarization agenda has strong ethical and moral roots supporting cooperation rather than conflict as a way of resolving disputes. The model also has a pragmatic side that makes the case that U.S. national interests and national security are best served when the U.S. investment/trade is in nonmilitary goods and when funds scheduled for war and for armed forces go instead to pay for social services and public infrastructure. New concerns include new U.S. military and police training programs around the world, increased use of private military contractors, and the deepening role of the U.S. military in the war on drugs. Demilitarization advocates are opposed to the use of armed forces to repress domestic movements in the name of upholding national security, and they are strong advocates of arms control and cooperative security agreements, internationally and regionally.

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Sources for More Information about Demilitarization:

Abolition 2000
http://www.abolition2000.org/

British American Security Information Council
http://www.basicint.org/

Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities
http://www.businessleaders.org/blsp/home_flash_yes.htm

Center for Defense Information
http://www.cdi.org/

The Center for Economic Conversion
http://www.conversion.org/

Council for a Livable World
http://www.clw.org/pub/clw/milbud.html

Federation of American Scientists
Arms Control Monitoring Project
http://www.fas.org/asmp/

National Priorities Project
http://www.natprior.org/support/index.html

Nuclear Disarmament Partnership
http://www.disarmament.org/

Peace Action
http://www.peace-action.org/

Project Abolition
http://www.projectabolition.org/

Project on Defense Alternatives
http://www.comw.org/pda/

Women's Action for New Direction
http://www.wand.org/