Not all change is good

Tweet Wales has travelled a long way in recent decades, and things haven’t always changed for the better.  There was a heady time thirty-odd years ago when all Wales’ councils came together to sign the nuclear-free Wales declaration.  How different things are today with the Welsh establishment seemingly falling over itself to welcome the heads of government of NATO, a military organisation which continues to argue that the possession of nuclear weapons is an essential part of ‘defence’.

It is partly a result of the insistence on continued possession of its nuclear armoury that the 28 member states of NATO account for around 70% of global military expenditure; yet one of the themes of the two-day extravaganza in Newport is apparently to be that member states aren’t devoting enough resources to the military, and should increase the total.

For what?  A military alliance which was supposed to be defensive has become more interventionist, and is planning to become even more so.  Acting well outside the borders of its member states, it is increasingly taking on the role of supporting US foreign policy on a global basis – it’s a long way from the founding basis that “an armed attack against one … would be considered an attack against all”.  Instead, it’s become the means by which the hegemony of one world view is maintained, and if necessary imposed.

It can be argued that there is a need for a military organisation with global reach to back up decisions taken by the UN, but it’s hard to see how an organisation so tied to the US, and whose membership is open only to “any other European state in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area” can ever be generally accepted in that rôle.  Indeed, it’s likelier that the existence of such a powerful military alliance will actually militate against the development of a true international police force.

One of my first ever interventions in Plaid Cymru’s policy formulation was to propose a conference motion in 1972 calling for Plaid to reject NATO membership for Wales.  It hit a little opposition from some good friends in London Branch, but was passed overwhelmingly.  As far as I’m aware, it remains Plaid’s policy.  It’s been a disappointment to me that Plaid’s sister party, the SNP, recently changed its policy to support Scottish membership of NATO – I think that was a huge mistake for the party to make.

When that nuclear free declaration was made back in 1982, many of us thought that Wales was on the road to becoming a land of peace; but in 2014, it seems to be a land which actively welcomes the warmongers.  As I said at the outset, not all change has been for the better.