*Pic: Luca Melloni, Flickr
Thoughts on the arms race …
Australia has its problems, in common with many other westernised countries, but in the larger world view I would said, until quite recently, that it’s still a good place to live in.
Alas, no longer, not since Turnbull and Pyne stated that the government wants to help Australia to become a “world player” in the arms trade and a net exporter of arms.
Australia sits at number five on the list of arms importing states and number 20 on the list of exporting states based on figures from 2011-2015, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). SIPRI data also shows that to compete with the top five arms-producing states, the US, Russia, China, France and Germany, Australia would have to increase its exports at least fifteen-fold.
More arms exports would mean more Australian involvement in a trade that undermines peace, exacerbates conflicts, facilitates human rights abuses, diverts resources from social spending, and reportedly generates 40% of all corruption in global transactions.
More arms exports would also mean that Australia will become much more of a target for disenfranchised and aggressive young men – that is, we might as well issue them a pretty printed card, featuring (say) our Opera House, and inviting them to come and blow it up. Our comparatively light experience of terrorism to date is at least in part due to our relatively insignificant role in the arms race. And now Turnbull & Pyne want to shatter this peace we enjoy and make our daily business that bit more hazardous and anxiety filled.
It is also obvious that the more weapons are manufactured here, the more we are part of what causes the enormous refugee and displaced persons problems, world-wide. How will you feel, next time the TV splashes horrible images of shattered towns like Mosul, or looted villages and raped girls and women – all done at the point of a gun – in Congo, knowing that Australia played its part in making such terrible human rights violations possible?
More armaments manufactured here means that our ordinary police is likely to be much more heavily armed on our streets, exactly as has happened in the US, where one of the reasons the police are so hated and not trusted is because they consider gun-toting to be normal. Ms Damond’s recent death is just one example.
The more arms float around the place, the easier it is for people to turn criminal, as access to deadly weapons becomes ever more possible through the black market and on-line sources. All this is obvious – but it doesn’t make, apparently, the slightest difference to Team Turnbull & Pyne, to whom the potential dollars loom large enough to obliterate any moral considerations.
Less in the public eye, potentially hiding inside Team T & P’s grand plan, and no doubt part of their new $230 million “Centre for Defense Industry Capability”, is the now-rapid development of artificial intelligence weapons. This is the next big thing. We already know about the use of drones, which make remote killing possible. The weapons manufacturers now are very actively working on using autonomous robots instead of soldiers. The US, Russia and Korea recently announced the production of these; do we want to join them? Due to the potential of AI weapons becoming even more dangerous than human-operated ones, a Future of Life petition to ban them was signed by such eminent people as Prof Stephen Hawking, Skype co-founder Jann Tallinn, Professor Noam Chomsky, Physicist Sir Martin Rees and many others. “These weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow,” reads part of the petition.
The Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI, in Berkeley, California)) warns that the possibility of AI becoming smarter than humans is frighteningly high. The autonomous functions of the robots all operate on computer programs, and the Institute admits that it is impossible to foresee – and thus control – all possible permutations thereof. Any arms race will increase the amount of research on this area, not for the purposes of limiting the potential power of these systems but, quite on the contrary, to make them as dangerous to the ‘enemy’ as possible.
Already, our government (yes, the guys we voted in) pays the Australian subsidiaries of the largest global arms producers, such as Boeing, Raytheon, Thales, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman and Rheinmetall, to help smaller Australian companies win work with them, under a system called the Global Supply Chain program. Mr Pyne adds: “There’s absolutely no reason why we can’t be as capable as Italy, Germany, France, Great Britain.” He wants to use the $200 billion in additional money the government has committed to defence acquisitions over the next nine years to build up a local industry that will “eventually design, build and export ships, vehicles, missiles, whatever it might be that we have an expertise in”. Despite the government’s insistence that this is good for job creation, the reality is that the majority of these firms will not be Australian owned – but the very fact that the workers there will largely be Australians and the manufacture is happening on Australian soil, will make us a target.
Billions for the defence industry – but not much for welfare, nothing effective for public education, and our public health system (what’s left of it) can certainly go to hell… Never mind that our cities have just moved up in the stakes to be a target of international war-making. No time wasted on any considerations of the morality of killing, the degradation of the sanctity of human life, or the simple fact that most of us would like to continue going about our daily business in peace. And the main bulk of our media is largely complicit in all this; beyond the most basic announcements there has been virtually no commentary.
I am no longer a proud Australian. This is not a country in which the future is likely to be secure. I don’t want all this potential killing on my conscience either. I am ashamed that we, also, have now moved to join the arms race and thus have hardly a shred of decent human integrity left to our name. Stop the world, I want to get off …
*Elizabeth Fleetwood ‘is of European origin and has lived in Tasmania for nearly 35 years. Ran two dairy farms in the NW, then two retail businesses in Burnie, raised a family of three children there; moved to Hobart 17 years ago and ran a tourism business for 10 years before selling and ‘retiring’ recently. Initially an unwilling immigrant, it was not long before the (then) pristine beauty and extraordinary history of this Island exerted its influence and created a campaigner for the preservation of this unique place. To see it being destroyed, along with the values that once made Australia a truly special place worth coming to, is a matter of great concern for this ordinary citizen, whose grandchildren will one day ask: why did you let this happen?’
