Peace & Nuclear Disarmament

For the past two years I have helped organized the New York Peace Film Festival with a partner (Yumi Tanaka) and through her contacts in Japan a media outlet sent me some questions for an article they're doing. Below are some of the questions and my answers.

1. Describe your objectives in starting the New York Peace Film Festival.

I support the peaceful resolution of conflicts, both on a personal level and in the international arena. Resorting to war in order to resolve conflict is rarely successful and usually creates as many problems as it ‘solves’. It certainly highlights the failure of diplomacy, but often that is because many issues left unattended for a long time fester into a rage that expresses itself in war. On a political level I believe our Department of State must have a much stronger ‘Department of Peace’ orientation—identifying and helping to resolve global problems between nations before they escalate into war.
Since I have no political clout, but do have a background in the arts, one way that I could advance the objective of the peaceful resolution of conflict was to join with Yumi Tanaka to organize the New York Peace Film Festival. By contrasting the horrors of war with the positive good of peacefully resolving conflicts and building person-to-person relationships across conflict zones, I hope to add my voice to a growing chorus of people demanding an end to wars and the wasteful military spending that deprives nations of capital needed to solve social problems.

2. Do you believe that President Obama’s Prague speech raised the awareness of the American public on the nuclear disarmament issue?

There is an old story of a traveler whose mule had stopped in the middle of the road and just wouldn’t budge, no matter how hard the owner tugged on the harness. An old farmer was walking by, and after assessing the problem pulled a cross post from a nearby fence, walked up to the mule and smacked it hard across the head with this heavy piece of wood. The dazed mule raised its head and looked into the eyes of the farmer. The farmer turned to the traveler and said: “first you have to get their attention.”
Today in America people are worried about their jobs, their mortgages, their 401-ks, their kids getting into the right schools, and a hundred other immediate concerns of life. We are finally recognizing the dangers of climate change but only after a decade of constant remonstrations about the seriousness of the situation. One speech by the president on nuclear disarmament, followed by no actions, is off the radar of the American public. Plus, the speech got very little air time here in the States.

3. What did you think of his speech?

I think the speech made good points, but unless it is followed by actions (real negotiable proposals to divest all parties of their nuclear weapons followed by diplomatic initiatives to pursue those proposals AND the accelerated decommissioning of our own overblown nuclear stockpile) it is just “a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.” This president is great at making bold statements, but bad at following up with bold actions. We only have to look at the Wall Street serving bailout that followed the terrific rhetoric about ‘not rewarding the people and institutions that got us into this mess’ to see the huge gap between his rhetoric and actions. For those who still don’t want to believe me, just contrast Obama’s talk about a stimulus package that will ‘put America back to work’ and the anemic package that we got.
But the speech endorsed the continued development of nuclear energy in the guise of a way to combat climate change without addressing the nuclear waste problem; and the speech endorsed the Bush administration’s plans to place anti-missile batteries in Poland and the Czech Republic which will only exacerbate tensions with Russia. Both of these are counterproductive to reducing the nuclear threat.

4. After Obama’s speech, did those in America (including you) who are fighting for nuclear abolition change their actions? How did they receive his speech?

Although his speech was welcomed in the peace community, we are all very skeptical that a real turn around is going to happen on this issue. There are no peace advocates on Obama’s security team; he is escalating the war in Afghanistan; he has extended the pull-out of Iraq for the maximum amount of time possible; he is not calling for the closure of even one of the 760 U.S. military bases on foreign soil; and although he touts cutting military programs, spending on the military is actually continuing its upward spiral. I know of no peace or anti-nuclear organization that has altered its plans for advocacy based on this one speech. And they should not. In fact, we must redouble our efforts and put maximum pressure on Obama to follow-up in a timely and realistic manner on the positive proposals he did make for nuclear disarmament.

Jonathan Fluck