Date: 2025-05-02 Page is: DBtxt003.php L0913-TVM-MMW-000026
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TrueValueMetrics ... Peter Burgess Manuscript
Making Management Work for Relief and Development |
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Chapter 26
Security, Violence and Terror |
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Doing Something About Weapons
What a mess The world seems to be more dangerous today (2006) than it was years ago. Is this true, or is it merely a perception? Is the apparent presence of danger more a reflection of changes in the way information moves around the world than a change in the underlying reality of danger? Maybe these questions are important. Maybe these questions do not matter. The biggest single issue is the prevalence of weapons of all sorts, from hand guns to nuclear missiles, all of which are designed to do damage either in the prosecution of a legitimate war or as a tool for terror and anti-social action. Guns The proliferation of guns makes very little sense. They used to be few, and mostly in the hands of the army ... but all of this changed at some point in the last 30 plus years. Why is not totally clear, maybe part to do with the cold war, part simply a process of destabilizing regimes, part something to do with profit seeking. None really good reasons. And in the USA a very strong lobby in favor of guns ... the NRA, that seems to be able to control votes in the US Congress almost at will. Surely people who want to have sporting guns can do so without there being a gun in every house on the planet. Some laws are not helpful, but laws to control guns seems to be a very different matter. It was 1975 when I was first alerted to the huge influx of guns into Africa. Around the same time there was a similar influx of guns into the Caribbean. It is not clear where the guns came from, but the CIA is frequently referred to as the source. I was in Liberia in August 1975. Our local manager cautioned me not to go out in the evening alone. On previous visits I had spent the evenings looking around Monrovia without much concern for my safety. This time I was told the “rogues” had guns, and were using them. The same story was repeated in several other countries in West Africa on this same trip. Before this, it was only soldiers that had guns, rarely anyone in the general population. Just before he died, Prime Minister Michael Manley of Jamaica recalled the influx of guns into Jamaica, supplied, he said, by the CIA who were trying to destabilize his left leaning administration. Guns do nothing to help a poor family have a happier life. But guns can terrify people ... and do. The US position on guns is, in the view of this writer, reprehensible. Landmines The killing and maiming of people by landmines is a horror. Putting them down is easy. Pulling them up is tedious and very dangerous. The poor “south” has seen more than its fair share of war in the last 50 years, and in that time landmines have been put down literally by the millions. Many have been recovered, but there are hundreds of thousand still in the ground and lethal. A lot of animals and children will be killed or maimed, as well as many adults. Nuclear weapons ... mutually assured destruction The stockpiles of nuclear weapons are huge, but how secure are these stocks? If the accounting and accountability for these stocks is anything like the record keeping for most other things done by government, one has to be concerned. Proliferation is also going to happen. Instead of most of the warheads being in the USA and Russia, a growing number of warheads are going to exist in other countries and pose a threat to someone ... some country ... that warhead owners would like not to exist. This seems like a good reason to be a friendly country. Gas – biological weapons They were banned under an international treaty after the First World War ... but the relevance of international treaties has been called into question since the events of 9/11 2001. Now it is more likely rather than less likely old treaty obligations will be respected. Not a good trend. It is easy to tear apart agreements ... much more difficult to put them back together. The business of weapons The business of weapons is generally bad news. It is a profitable business and many in the “north” might be prepared to argue that the profits produce jobs. They might also argue that weapons give the country a strong military and therefore security. But the death that comes from the use of weapons seems to me to be too big a price to be paying for some profits and some jobs. And while it might be good for good governments to have powerful military ... what is the rule going to be about bad governments having a powerful military. The business of weapons has a big downside, and explains a lot of the horror of failed development in many parts of the world. Making the community safe Everyone should be able to go to sleep at night and feel safe and be safe. A community should be at ease with itself, and with everyone in the community. A community should be making progress, and not be frustrated with itself and with the world. Too many communities seem to have issues, with no solution in sight. People with no solution, no hope, seem to migrate rather easily to violence ... and it is easy for this violence to get out of hand. I do not like violence ... it does damage not only in the immediate physical sense ... but also serves to leverage deterioration in economic performance that is very detrimental. And todays violence sets the stage for tomorrow's retaliation and revenge and more violence. I like religion ... all the major religions seem to have a worthwhile message, including the idea that there is right and wrong, and that life is special, and that people should be treated fairly and with respect. I do not understand how religion has been used as an excuse for violence over the years ... so much so that people say that religion has been the cause of more death through history than even the great plagues. So we need to be careful about religion, because, while it has a potential for great good, it can also be used an excuse for great violence and mayhem. I like freedom ... but I do not believe that everyone has the right to do just what they want, when they want, and the rest of the world be dammed. I think it was John Stuart Mill that said that people needed to respect others right to the same freedom that I want for myself. This limits my freedom to something that works for the greater society. Who is funding everything? Nobody really knows, or at any rate, the public is not allowed to know what is known ... and there is probably a lot that, in fact, nobody knows. Clearly funds come from places where there is money ... and military gear comes from places where these things are made or are stocked. The more one learns about these fund flows and military gear flows, the more anti-social it appears that global leadership has been, and in fact, continues to be. A lot of money is involved ... and only justified if the return is going to be huge. The rich and powerful corporate and state actors are keeping a lot hidden, but it is clear that many things are not the way they should be. Because most military business transactions are secret, it is difficult to find out very much ... but what one can see does not give much confidence that the just and right things are being done. Friends everywhere The people of the world need to be friends to everyone everywhere. This is not at all far-fetched as most people who have traveled a lot know well. People may look different, and have different culture, be in a different religion, speak a different language ... but people do laugh and do cry over a lot of the same things wherever in the world it is. People have a lot of dreams that are the same ... a lot of the same hopes and aspirations ... but rather few have much of an opportunity to make these come to reality. If the “north” shares a bit, then a lot of people in the “south” are going to have the opportunities they need to work at making their dreams come a little bit closer. Safety of the Open Society Violence takes place in the shadows ... much more than in the bright sunlight and in front of the cameras. Knowing what is going on keeps people safe and secure ... more than in a world where nothing is known. Secret societies seem to do a lot more violence than open societies. And secret agencies in open societies seem also to be prone to inappropriate violence. Safety Through Communications A small international NGO working in Eastern Sudan set up radio communications between some remote rural villages and an office in Nairobi in Kenya. With these radios the villagers were able to inform the office when there were aircraft overhead, and whenever there was bombing. In turn the Nairobi office was able to inform the world. Since the radio links were set up there has been a lot less bombing ... maybe coincidence, maybe not. Knowledge ... removing inequities The challenge of having a fair world with value creation going on for the poor people of the “south” as well as for the rich people of the “north” needs to get addressed ... and this can be done using a system of value analysis, and getting more accounting and accountability into the public space. At the moment there is a deluge of information churning round the public space, and nobody can really do much with it ... but when these data are organized into a management information framework, there can be progress and much more of leadership held to account for their part in the failure of relief and development performance. |
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