The assumption that the world is a dangerous place underpinned a lot of Andy Zaltzman’s show, Political Animal, in the Edinburgh Fringe festival last night. It’s an assumption that goes unquestioned – and indeed it’s increasingly hard to see how anyone could question it without being made to look ridiculous by current affairs. This is too bad for anti-Trident campaigners, as this assumption is the basis for a strong argument in favour of replacement.
But would replacement increase or reduce that danger? Danger and instability in the world isn’t something that happens independently of everyone’s actions - and particularly not independently of a major power like the UK. There must be a strong argument against replacement based on what we would like the world to become, rather than on what we can confidently expect it to be like if we carry on as we have in the past.
11 August 2006 at 11:34 am
Is there a parallel to be drawn here with firearm ownership somewhere like the United States? The perception that there is some intangible threat ‘out there’ leads to householders buying handguns as a deterrent to potential attack. A 1997 study found that around a third of US households held firearms (http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/165476.pdf).
To what extent does this level of gun-ownership contribute to the very dangers that gun-owners (and non-gun-owners, I suppose) fear? Well, I’d think – quite a bloody lot. See, for instance, world-wide comparisons of homicide rates: http://www.worldpolicy.org/globalrights/usa/firearms-homicides.html .
It seems to me that firearms are ubiquitous in the States and because of this there’s no good way of keeping them out of the hands of those who will use them to initiate violence. Now, I don’t want to overstretch the analogy but can we not envisage the equivalent situation on the world stage. The more nuclear weapons (and weapons technology and know-how) there are in the world, the easier it must be for ‘malevolent regimes’ (Oliver Kamm’s words- not mine) and terrorist groups to get their hands on these capabilities. Surely this is inarguable?
11 August 2006 at 9:24 pm
Mike Moore’s film Bowling for Colombine seems to debunk the idea that access to firearms is in itself a precursor for violence : as he pointed out, Canadians hold as many firearms as USAians but their homicides are negligible : something in the USA culture promotes violence. James Gilligan’s book Preventing Volence suggests strongly that violence is linked to humiliation : perhaps the USA’s culture humiliates its citizens more than any other.
12 August 2006 at 10:53 am
Good point, JC. Still, the ease with which one can acquire a gun in the US must be a contributing factor to the level of gun crime, right?
Back on the world stage, I’m afraid that if we took the intention to humiliate out of foreign policy it would just leave all that boring diplomacy stuff. We’d lose the posturing and colourful language that we’ve come to love in these early years of the 21st century. There’d be no accusations of ‘democracy-hating’, no ‘axis of evil’, no ‘arc of terror’, no ‘hyperbola of hate’, no undermining the sovereignty of foreign nations. International relations would be the poorer for it, it really would.
18 August 2006 at 9:45 am
In responce to JC: I don’t think Mike Moore’s film Bowling for Colombine presents a good argument against higher rates of ownership of firearms leading to higher rates of violence. The statistics on the page linked to above (http://www.worldpolicy.org/globalrights/usa/firearms-homicides.html) show that Canada has significantly fewer firearms per person than the USA. Mike Moore only says that Canada also has a high rate of ownership (29% of people), which it does, but it’s still a lot less than the USA (49% of people). It may not be a linear relationship to violence and I’m sure there are more factors, but I’d still say it’s a very significant one.