The world nuclear weapons spending found a significant increase in 2021, finds the latest International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) report published on Tuesday.
In one year, the nine nuclear-armed nations – U.S., China, Russia, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan and the UK — spent a total of $82.4 billion on upgrading and maintaining their estimated 13,000 nuclear weapons, marking a 9% hike from the year before, according to ICAN’s estimates.
The report — Squandered: 2021 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending — (https://assets.nationbuilder.com/ican/pages/2873/attachments/original/1655145777/Spending_Report_2022_web.pdf?1655145777), ICAN’s third annual summary of global nuclear spending, highlights that in total, the world spent a combined $156,842 every single minute of 2021 on weapons of mass destruction, amid an ongoing pandemic and rising global food insecurity.
ICAN details exactly how much each of the nine countries spent on nuclear weapons, lists the companies that profited, and the lobbyists hired to keep nuclear weapons in business.
U.S.
The U.S. turned out to be by far the biggest spender on nuclear armaments in 2021, having spent $44.2 billion – four times more than the next in line.
China
China was the only other country to exceed the ten-billion-dollar mark, at $11.7 billion spent, while Russia holds third place at $8.6 billion.
UK And France
The UK spent $6.8 billion, France, $5.9 billion.
India Israel And Pakistan
Countries like India, Israel and Pakistan each spent a little over a billion on their arsenals in 2021.
North Korea
In last place is North Korea, which spent $642 million.
So Much
The report goes on to question why and how these countries spent so much on nuclear weaponry amid myriad global issues such as food and energy shortages, but comes to the conclusion that the biggest driver of nuclear weapon spending was not security concerns but, rather, business interests.
Fortune Of U.S. Military Contractors
Certain U.S. military contractors have allegedly made a fortune from nuclear weapons-related contracts according to ICAN, and these companies spend a big chunk of their income to hire lobbyists and fund think tanks that encourage politicians to spend even more on weapons of mass destruction.
Millions For Lobbying
According to the report, Honeywell International made $6.2 billion from nuclear tenders in 2021 and spent an additional $7 million on lobbying.
NG And LM
Northrop Grumman (NG) got $5 billion and used $11.6 million for lobbying. Lockheed Martin (LM) received $1.9 billion from the industry and spent $16.9 million on lobbying.
The authors of the report note that after examining thousands of contracts, reports and lobby disclosures, they estimate that over a dozen private companies received a total of $30.2 billion in nuclear weapon contracts in 2021.
Think Tanks
“Those companies then turned around and spent $117 million lobbying decision makers to spend more money on defense. And they also spent up to $10 million funding most of the major think tanks that research and write about policy solutions about nuclear weapons,” wrote ICAN.
The report goes on to note that all this spending has done nothing to deter any sort of conflict and that recent geopolitical events in Europe have only served to further line the pockets of those who are tied to the nuclear weapons industry.
The report said: “We were told that the billions invested in thousands of weapons of mass destruction with the power to destroy the world many times over was the price to pay for peace in Europe. Instead, those billions went to line the pockets of the powerful who profit from the production of weapons of mass destruction.”
The ICAN stress that the report demonstrates that “nuclear weapons do not work” as they have failed to deter conflict in Europe.
“This is why we need multilateral disarmament more than ever. The first meeting of states parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Vienna [from June 21 to 23] could not come at a better time,” ICAN Policy and Research Coordinator Alicia Sanders-Zakre said.
ICAN is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning, Geneva-based international coalition that has been actively campaigning for the respect and full implementation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which it helped adopt at the UN in 2017. The treaty has been ratified by 59 countries around the world so far, however not a single nuclear state has yet to sign it.
Post-Cold War Drop In Nukes Could Be Over
A Swedish arms watchdog says the world’s stockpiles of nuclear weapons are expected to increase in coming years, reversing a decline seen since the end of the Cold War.
The number of nuclear warheads is set to grow for the first time since the Cold War, and even more worrying is that the risk of them being used is at the greatest likelihood it has been in decades.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), said Monday that all nine nuclear-armed countries are increasing or upgrading their arsenals.
“There are clear indications that the reductions that have characterized global nuclear arsenals since the end of the Cold War have ended,” said Hans M. Kristensen, a researcher with SIPRI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Program and director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists.
The U.S. and Russia, which hold 90% of the world’s atomic weapons, saw their inventories decline in 2021 due to the dismantling of warheads retired from military service years ago. Their useable military stockpiles remained relatively stable and within the limits set by a nuclear arms reduction treaty, SIPRI said.
The research institute said that the other nuclear states — Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — are either developing or deploying new weapon systems, or have announced their intention to do so. Israel has never publicly acknowledged having such weapons.
“All of the nuclear-armed states are increasing or upgrading their arsenals and most are sharpening nuclear rhetoric and the role nuclear weapons play in their military strategies,” said Wilfred Wan, the director of SIPRI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Program. “This is a very worrying trend.”
The rising global nuclear arsenal is stoked by the war in Ukraine, the SIPRI said in its latest research.
SIPRI director Dan Smith said: “The risk of nuclear weapons being used seems higher now than at any time since the height of the cold war.”
90% in U.S. And Russia
Almost 90% of all nuclear weapons are owned by the U.S. and Russia.
Russia has the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear warheads, with around 5,977 in total — just 550 more than the U.S.
These are fractions of the stockpiles that both countries once held during the Cold War, but over the years, Russia and the U.S. have dismantled their warheads that are out of commission and can no longer be used.
The total inventory of nuclear warheads at the start of 2022 was 12,705, of which only 9,440 were in military stockpiles for potential use, according to SIPRI.
But it isn’t just the U.S. and Russia ramping up production.
The U.K. has announced a decision to increase the ceiling on its total warhead stockpile.
China has also started a substantial expansion of its nuclear weapon arsenal, with satellite images revealing the construction of over 300 new missile silos.
France officially restarted a program to develop third-generation powered ballistic missiles.
India and Pakistan are also among the handful that has been increasing their nuclear warhead stockpiles, according to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS).
SIPRI has indicated that unless “immediate and concrete action” is taken by the nuclear powers, global inventories of warheads could soon begin to rise for the first time in decades.
“Relations between the world’s great powers have deteriorated further at a time when humanity and the planet face an array of profound and pressing common challenges that can only be addressed by international cooperation,” SIPRI board chairman and former Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said.
The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters on Mar. 14 Monday that “the prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now back within the realm of possibility.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in an interview with Russian state TV on Apr. 24 said that the risk of nuclear war between Russia and the West was now “considerable,” and that the current danger may be greater than that faced at the most dangerous moment of the Cold War.
‘War Is Good For Business’
A Reuters report from weapons expo in France said:
Next to Ukraine’s stand at the world’s largest arms fair for ground forces on Monday, U.S. manufacturer Lockheed Martin proudly displays its anti-tank Javelin missile like a big brother protecting its younger sibling.
The symbolism was not lost on some of the thousands of people who make, buy and use advanced weapons.
“This year is all about Ukraine. War is good for business, but it is not something I am happy about,” one eastern European manufacturer said speaking on condition of anonymity.
Returning after a COVID-19 pandemic hiatus, the exhibition bristles with weaponry from about 60 countries, including tanks, armored vehicles, riot gear and display cases crammed with guns and ammunition.
The report said:
This year, the world’s second largest arms exporter is absent: three Russian manufacturers were set to come but pulled out. Meanwhile, among the 1,700 exhibitors, the numbers of stands from some Baltic and eastern European countries have doubled or tripled.
Many in attendance spoke of a massive surge in demand as countries ramp up production, both to send munitions to Ukraine and to beef up their own arsenals.
“France has entered a war economy,” President Emmanuel Macron said at the opening of the arms show, calling for European powers to learn from their past mistakes and develop the defence industry amongst themselves.
“We have to go much further, much more quickly and more strongly because geopolitics dictates.”
Several manufacturers told Reuters there was a shortage of capacity, notably in Europe, which has for years depended on imported – especially American – arms. Some providers said they would not be able to catch up to the demand to arm Ukraine until 2024-2025.
Elie Tenenbaum, Director of the Security Studies Centre at the Paris-based Institute of International relations, said Ukraine’s armed forces were now using more ammunition in a day than Europe’s arms industry could produce in a month.
“We now have a European defence industry which is unfit for the warfare we see in Ukraine,” he said.
A lack of production capacity both for Ukraine and Russia could eventually slow the pace of the conflict, he added.
Highlighting that urgency, Le Monde newspaper reported on Monday that French authorities were considering legislation to requisition civilian factories to increase the capacity to make weapons.
The U.S. sought to bolster its support in Asia by reassuring nations they do not need to join a coalition against China, drawing a stark contrast with Beijing’s threats to defend its interests with military force, said Bloomberg.
The Bloomberg report — US Makes Asia Inroads by Playing Down Need to Oppose China — said on June 13:
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told Asia’s biggest security forum Saturday that the U.S. was taking “wise counsel” from smaller countries, saying they should be “free to choose, free to prosper and free to chart their own course.”
It represented a break from the Trump administration pressing nations to take sides on the use of 5G equipment from Huawei, one of China’s most strategically important companies, a position that rankled many at the last gathering of defense officials in 2019. And it was a marked difference from China, whose defense minister, Wei Fenghe, vowed this time around to “fight to the very end” against any powers that wanted confrontation.
The two defense chiefs laid out their competing visions for Asian security with dueling speeches at the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, where hundreds of officials gathered this weekend for the first time since the pandemic. While the U.S. attempted to seize on the shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to push back against a more assertive China, Beijing tried to cast Washington as the main destabilizing force behind conflicts from Eastern Europe to the Western Pacific.
The report said:
Most Asian nations, with a history of being carved up by colonial powers, would prefer to not take sides and let both camps court their support. Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto said all powers “need to have their space, their rights respected,” while Fijian national security chief Inia Batikoto Seruiratu said the people of his small island nation “see benefit from all these relationships that we have, including China.”
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations “will take comfort that both have said, ‘There is no need to choose. We do not want you to choose,’” Singaporean Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen said. “But whether that is the reality, I think only the facts will speak for themselves.”
The Biden administration is trying overcome skepticism about the U.S.’s commitment to the region after former President Donald Trump withdrew from a landmark Pacific trade pact in 2017 and ramped up criticism of allies. Despite vowing to prioritize Asia after taking office last year, President Joe Biden has only recently begun to outline his China policy and the “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework” intended to balance America’s military moves in Asia.
The region was at the “heart of American grand strategy,” Austin said in his speech.
Quad Actions
The Bloomberg report said:
The U.S. has leveraged the newly expanded Quad Group, which includes Japan, Australia and India, to shore up support across the region and troubleshoot burgeoning problems.
India has pushed the International Monetary Fund to expedite bailout funds to Sri Lanka, while China has been more hesitant to give fresh credit to ease its financial crisis.
Japanese PM Kishida used the Shangri-La meeting to lay out an expanded security role in Asia that includes providing equipment, including patrol vessels, and training for maritime security personnel in at least 20 countries.
Aside from Austin who is also visiting Thailand, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, U.S. Special Envoy to North Korea Sung Kim and State Department Counselor Derek Chollet are in Asia this month. The flurry of trips comes after Biden’s visit to South Korea and Japan last month, when he unveiled the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, or IPEF, and left China out.
Japanese PM To Attend NATO Summit For The First Time
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced Wednesday he plans to attend the upcoming NATO summit in Madrid later this month.
While Kishida is set to become the first Japanese PM to ever attend a NATO summit, he would not be the only leader from the Asia-Pacific region to join the event, the secretary general of the alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, revealed as he spoke ahead of a ministerial NATO meeting in Brussels on Wednesday.
“For the first time in our history we will invite our Asia-Pacific partners, the prime ministers of New Zealand, Australia, Japan and also the president of South Korea will participate in the NATO Summit, which is a strong demonstration of our close partnership with these like-minded countries in the Asia-Pacific,” Stoltenberg said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will be invited as well, the official revealed, but it remains unclear whether he will be able to attend the event in person.
At Asia Security Summit, Japan Vows To Boost Regional Security Role
An earlier Reuters report said:
Kishida pledged on Friday to boost its regional security presence.
Kishida said at the meeting’s keynote address: Japan would enter a new era of “realism diplomacy”, another step by Tokyo to distance itself from its post-World War Two pacifism and step out of the shadow of the U.S, its main ally, to take a bigger role in regional security where it faces China, North Korea and Russia.
“We will be more proactive than ever in tackling the challenges and crises that face Japan, Asia, and the world,” Kishida said.
“Taking that perspective, in order to maintain and strengthen the peaceful order in this region, I will advance the ‘Kishida Vision for Peace’ and boost Japan’s diplomatic and security role in the region.”
China’s Nuclear Arsenal For Self-defence, Says Chinese Defence Minister
Another Reuters report said:
China has made “impressive progress” in developing new nuclear weapons, but will only use them for self-defence, and never use them first, Chinese Defence Minister Wei Fenghe told delegates at the Shangri-La Dialogue on Sunday.
In response to a question about reports last year on construction of more than 100 new nuclear missile silos in China’s east, he said China “has always pursued an appropriate path to developing nuclear capabilities for protection of our country”.
He added nuclear weapons displayed in a 2019 military parade in Beijing – which included upgraded launchers for China’s DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missiles – were operational and deployed.
“China has developed its capabilities for over five decades. It is fair to say there has been impressive progress,” he said. “China’s policy is consistent. We use it for self defence. We will not be the first to use nuclear (weapons).”
He said the ultimate goal of China’s nuclear arsenal was to prevent nuclear war.
“We developed nuclear capabilities to protect the hard work of the Chinese people and protect our people from the scourge of the nuclear warfare,” he said.
U.S. Wants Companies To Buy Russian Fertilizer
The US wants companies to ramp up purchases of Russian fertilizer as global food costs rise and shortages loom, according to a Monday Bloomberg report.
Sources told Bloomberg that the U.S. government is quietly pushing companies to buy and carry more Russian fertilizer. Sanctions fears have created a supply shortage and have fueled a global food crisis, and the U.S. is moving to alleviate pressure with the United Nations by boosting deliveries of fertilizer, grain, and other supplies from Russia.
This year, Russian fertilizer exports have dropped 24%, per Bloomberg data.
The U.S. and EU have included fertilizer exemptions in their sanctions on Russia, per the report, which allow trade to continue flowing for the key commodity.
According to Russia’s Grain Union, wheat exports doubled in May. At the same time, Bloomberg reports that over 25 million tons of grain, sunflower oil, and other goods are stuck in Ukraine due to security concerns.
Russia’s Oil Revenue Soars Despite Sanctions, Finds Study
A New York Times report said:
Russia’s revenues from fossil fuels, by far its biggest export, driven by a windfall from oil sales amid surging prices, a new analysis shows.
Russia earned what is very likely a record 93 billion euros in revenue from exports of oil, gas and coal in the first 100 days of the country’s invasion of Ukraine, according to data analyzed by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a research organization based in Helsinki. About two-thirds of those earnings, the equivalent of about $97 billion, came from oil, and most of the remainder from natural gas.
“The current rate of revenue is unprecedented, because prices are unprecedented, and export volumes are close to their highest levels on record,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, an analyst who led the center’s research.
The revenue from Russia’s fossil fuel exports exceeds what the country is spending on its war in Ukraine, the research center estimated, a sobering finding as momentum shifts in Russia’s favor.
The research found Russia’s export prices for fossil fuels have been on average around 60% higher than last year, even accounting for the fact that Russian oil is fetching about 30% below international market prices.
Income at Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned gas giant, remained about twice as high as the year before, thanks to higher gas prices, the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air found.
The United States has made a dent in Russia’s earnings, banning all Russian fossil fuel imports. Still, the United States is importing refined oil products from countries like the Netherlands and India that most likely contain Russian crude, a loophole for oil from Russia to make its way to the U.S.
Overall, China was the largest importer of Russian fossil fuels over the 100-day period, edging out Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. China imported the most oil; Japan was the top purchaser of Russian coal.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said last week that Washington was in talks with its European allies about forming a cartel that would set a cap on the price of Russian oil roughly equal to the price of production. That would trim Russia’s fossil fuel revenues while also keeping Russian oil flowing to global markets, stabilizing prices and fending off a global recession, she told the Senate Finance Committee.
In April 2018, the president of Ghana, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, said that Ghana has “not offered a military base, and will not offer a military base to the United States of America.” His comments came after Ghana’s parliament had ratified a new defense cooperation agreement with the United States on March 28, 2018, which was finally signed in May 2018. During a televised discussion, soon after the agreement was formalized in March 2018, Ghana’s Minister of Defense Dominic Nitiwul told Kwesi Pratt Jr., a journalist and leader of the Socialist Movement of Ghana, that Ghana had not entered into a military agreement with the United States. Pratt, however, said that the military agreement was a “source of worry” and was “a surrender of our [Ghanaian] sovereignty.”
In 2021, the research institute of Pratt’s Socialist Movement produced—along with the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research—a dossier on the French and U.S. military presence in Africa. That dossier—“Defending Our Sovereignty: U.S. Military Bases in Africa and the Future of African Unity”—noted that the United States has now established the West Africa Logistics Network (WALN) at Kotoka International Airport in Accra, the capital of Ghana. In 2019, then-U.S. Brigadier General Leonard Kosinski said that a weekly U.S. flight from Germany to Accra was “basically a bus route.” The WALN is a cooperative security location, which is another name for a U.S. military base.
Now, four years later after the signing of the defense cooperation agreement, I spoke with Kwesi Pratt and asked him about the state of this deal and the consequences of the presence of the U.S. base on Ghanaian soil. The WALN, Pratt told me, has now taken over one of the three terminals at the airport in Accra, and at this terminal, “hundreds of U.S. soldiers have been seen arriving and leaving. It is suspected that they may be involved in some operational activities in other West African countries and generally across the Sahel.”
U.S. Soldiers Don’t Need Passports
A glance at the U.S.-Ghana defense agreement raises many questions. Article 12 of the agreement states that the U.S. military can use the Accra airport without any regulations or checks, with U.S. military aircraft being “free from boarding and inspection” and the Ghanaian government providing “unimpeded access to and use of [a]greed facilities and areas to United States forces.” Pratt told me that this agreement allows U.S. soldiers “far more privileges than those prescribed in the Vienna Convention for diplomats. They do not need passports to enter Ghana. All they need is their U.S. Army identity cards. They don’t even require visas to enter Ghana. They are not subject to customs or any other inspection.”
Ghana has allowed the United States armed forces “to use Ghanaian radio frequencies for free,” Pratt said. But the most stunning fact about this arrangement is that, he said, “If U.S. soldiers kill Ghanaians and destroy their properties, the U.S. soldiers cannot be tried in Ghana. Ghanaians cannot sue U.S. soldiers or the U.S. government for compensation if and when their relatives are killed, or their properties are destroyed by the U.S. Army or soldiers.”
Why Would Ghana Allow This?
The U.S.-Ghana agreement permits this disregard for Ghana’s sovereignty. Pratt told me that the political ideology of the Ghanaian government that is in power now has been to adhere to a long history of appeasement toward the demands made by colonial and Western states, beginning with Britain—which was the colonial power that ruled over the Gold Coast (the former name for Ghana) until 1957—and leading up to providing “unimpeded access” to the United States troops under the defense deal.
The current president of Ghana, Akufo-Addo, comes from the political ideology that the former prime minister of Ghana (1969-1972) Kofi Abrefa Busia also conformed to. In the early 1950s, Pratt told me, those following this ideology “dispatched a delegation to the United Kingdom to persuade the authorities that it was too early to grant independence to the Gold Coast.” This led to a coup in Ghana, where those supporting this ideology “collaborated with the Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow the [then-President of Ghana] Kwame Nkrumah government on February 24, 1966, and resisted [imposing] sanctions against the South African apartheid regime in 1969,” Pratt said. The current government, Pratt added, will do anything to please the United States government and its allies.
Why Is the United States Interested in Ghana?
The United States claims that its military presence on the African continent has to do with its counterterrorism campaign and aims to prevent the entry of China into this region. “There is no Chinese military presence in Ghana,” Pratt told me, and indeed the idea of Chinese presence is being used by the United States to deepen its military control over the continent for more prosaic reasons.
In 2001, then-U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s National Energy Policy Development Group published the National Energy Policy. The contents of this report show, Pratt told me, that the United States understood that it could “no longer rely on the Middle East for its energy supplies. A shift to West Africa for [meeting the] U.S. energy needs is imperative.” Apart from West Africa’s energy resources, Ghana “has huge national resources. It is currently the largest producer of gold in Africa and… [is among the top 10 producers] of gold in the world. It is the second-largest producer of cocoa in the world. It has iron, diamond, manganese, bauxite, oil and gas, lithium, and abundant water resources, including the largest man-made lake in the world.” Apart from these resources, Ghana’s location on the equator makes it valuable for agricultural development, and its large bank of highly educated English-speaking professionals makes it valuable for meeting the demands of the West’s service sector.
Apart from these economic issues, Pratt said, the United States government has intervened in Ghana—including in the coup of 1966—to prevent it from having a leadership role in the decolonization process in Africa. More recently, the United States has found Ghana to be a reliable ally in its various military and commercial projects across the continent. It is toward those projects, and not the national interest of the Ghanaian people, Pratt said, that the United States has now built its base in a part of Accra’s civilian airport.
Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest book is Washington Bullets, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.
This article was produced by Globetrotter.
The United States is moving fast on climate change—in the wrong direction. The Energy Information Agency forecasts that by 2023, the nation will set a new annual record for oil extraction: 4.6 billion barrels. Plans to build more than 200 new natural gas power plants are in the works. More than 130 new oil and gas pipelines now under development will carry enough fuel to increase national emissions by 10 percent—560 million metric tons per year.
Now, freaked out by high fuel prices, the Democratic majority in Congress is pushing to accelerate this fossil fuel rush while President Biden rushes, hat in hand, to Saudi Arabia, forgetting that the kingdom is supposed to be a pariah. Furthermore, as Robinson Meyer recently wrote in The Atlantic, the party’s leadership seems blissfully unbothered by the fact that Congress has failed to pass even the weakest of laws to curb climate catastrophe. And if the Democrats—having been unable to defend either voters’ rights or life on Earth over the past year and a half—lose their congressional majority to the oily authoritarians in November, our already dim hopes for the federal government to reverse course and start phasing out fossil fuels could fade away altogether.
If that nightmare scenario unfolds, local and regional activism will not only become more essential than ever; it could be the nation’s only route to climate mitigation and adaptation. As the republic teeters on a knife edge in coming months, “In Real Time” will be recognizing grassroots movements across the country that stand as exemplars for collective climate action. Climate is not always the chief focus of such struggles, but the movements’ strategies and methods are deeply relevant.
I’ll begin this month with two such examples: Native struggles against fossil fuel infrastructure and the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union.
Keeping Turtle Island’s oil and gas in the ground
Last year, the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) and Oil Change International reported on seventeen struggles against fossil fuel infrastructure across North America that were either ongoing or had already succeeded. The potential impact of such actions on greenhouse gas emissions, they concluded, was staggering. “If [all of] these struggles prove successful,” they wrote, “this would mean Indigenous resistance will have stopped greenhouse gas pollution equivalent to nearly one-quarter of annual total U.S. and Canadian emissions.” An emissions reduction of that size would be like shuttering 400 coal-fired power plants or taking 345 million passenger vehicles off the road—more than all the coal plants or cars in North America. IEN wanted the continent’s governments and citizens to do one thing:
[R]ecognize the impact of Indigenous leadership in confronting climate chaos and its primary drivers. We hope that such settlers, allies or not, come to stand with Indigenous Peoples and honor the inherent rights of the first peoples of Turtle Island—the land currently called North America—by implementing clear policies and procedures . . . and by ending fossil fuel expansion once and for all.
Here are just a few of the campaigns included in IEN’s analysis:
The infamous Keystone XL pipeline project, which would have carried oil from Canada’s tar sands south through the United States, was finally killed in 2021 after a years-long struggle led by Indigenous communities on both sides of the border.
The White Earth Band of Ojibwe continues trying to shut down the 340-mile-long Line 3 oil pipeline in Minnesota, which has already severely damaged at least three aquifers. On March 20, 2022 in the worst incident, 300 million gallons of groundwater spilled from the aquifer. The battle continues.
In 2016, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe prevailed in the epic struggle they had led against the Dakota Access oil pipeline, but their victory in the face of appalling state violence was overturned the next year by the Trump administration. Now, tribal groups and white landowners are applying lessons learned in that struggle to block a different kind of pipeline in the same part of the country: the 2,000-mile Midwest Carbon Express Pipeline. The purpose of the pipeline would be to pump carbon dioxide collected from refineries producing climate-unfriendly fuel, ethanol, to underground storage sites throughout the region. The pipeline would not only cause extensive ecological degradation, it would also be a threat to human health in the areas it traverses.
Indigenous communities and their allies succeeded in completely scuttling a proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline through West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina. Although only about 1 percent of North Carolinians belong to Indigenous communities, an estimated 13 percent of people who would have been harmed along the pipeline’s route through the state identified as Native American.
The Trans-Pecos gas pipeline runs about 150 miles through Texas out of the Permian Basin, home to gargantuan reserves of oil and gas that, if burned, could produce 60 billion tons of carbon dioxide—roughly equivalent to a year and a half of humanity’s total carbon dioxide emissions from all sources. The Society of Native Nations has contested this pipeline from the start, significantly slowing but so far not halting the pipeline’s construction or operation.
Native communities, says IEN, will continue “fighting through lived values and principles to keep fossil fuels in the ground and protect Turtle Island.”
In the front of the bus
Preventing climate catastrophe requires not only keeping oil in the ground but also keeping private vehicles off the streets and compensating for their absence with public transportation, bikeways, and walkways. Car use has been reduced this way only in a limited number of places in the United States. And people who have low personal carbon emissions because they can’t afford the many costs of car ownership are obliged to commute, often over long distances, in rundown, crowded buses that might show up at your stop once an hour, if you’re lucky (and that cost more every year to ride). Fixing public transportation needs to be a fast-lane issue for both climate mitigation and protecting human rights.
For 30 years, the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union has been fighting the racism that they argue is built into the city’s public transit. It’s an epic struggle, still far from over. In a report from the 1990s, the union noted that the city’s dirty, dilapidated buses, many providing unreliable service to low-income areas, carried 350,000 riders per day, more than 80 percent of them Latinx, Black, or Asian/Pacific Islander. Meanwhile, the city’s clean, new rail system was carrying only 26,000 riders per day, a majority of them white and middle class. Public subsidies were less than a dollar per bus passenger, compared with $5 to $25 per rail passenger.
Based on this and other evidence, the Bus Riders Union accused the L.A. Metropolitan Transit Authority of taking funds intended for the bus system and using them to cover construction and operation expenses for the always over-budget and underused rail system. Union founder Eric Mann wrote at the time that these disparities grew out of a longstanding philosophy within the bus system. It was, he said,
based primarily on the importance of the “choice rider.” According to this line of argument . . . the main purpose of public transportation is to reduce congestion and auto emissions. Thus, it would be precisely the suburban car rider who would be targeted to ride public transportation. According to this argument, the choice rider who lives in the suburbs and prefers to drive his/her car must be attracted by better and more convenient service. On the other hand, according to the theory, services do not need to be attractive to gain the ridership of the transit-dependent since, by definition, they have no choice.
In 1994, the union took the MTA to court to block further fare increases and service cuts, accusing the agency of violating a law that forbids using federal public transportation funds in a racist manner. The court sided with the union, issuing a consent decree under which the parties were to negotiate a plan. Dubbed “Billions for Buses” by the union, the plan eventually lowered fares, replaced high-polluting diesel buses with new ones run on natural gas (no electric buses were available then), and added a million hours of annual service. But when the consent decree expired in 2006, MTA went back to raising fares and cutting service.
Tired of being taken for a ride by the city, the union scored another big upset victory in 2012, when it organized a get-out-the-vote coalition to defeat a ballot initiative called Measure J. Had it passed, Measure J would have allocated $90 billion of local government funds to rail and highway projects. It included freeway expansion in the already freeway-choked city. Mann wrote that passage of Measure J also would inevitably have led to “crippling fare increases and services for the city’s bus riders,” whose numbers had risen by then to half a million, and who had a median income of only $14,000 per year. More than 80 percent continued to be people of color.
The defeat of Measure J was a big victory, but a decade later the struggle continues. Last year, Bus Riders Union organizer Channing Martinez wrote about how the MTA had continued its abuse of low-income residents, even scuttling a plan that would have provided free public transportation for K-12 and community college students. He laid out the union’s strategy for carrying on the struggle into the 2020s: continue spending lots of time riding the buses to organize, make more alliances, and keep the heat turned up on local officials.
The transformation of L.A.’s public transit is not yet a reality. Bus ridership was falling even before COVID-19 struck, thanks to a classic feedback loop. The city’s infamous, and increasing, traffic congestion bogs down buses even more than cars, leading more bus riders to go back to driving.. Congestion then gets worse, and the bus system loses even more riders.
Public transit advocates told the Los Angeles Times that “the only lasting solution . . . is to carve out space for buses on major streets using bus-only lanes and bus rapid transit.” That would improve bus service immensely and leave less space for driving and parking cars, prompting more people to take the bus. These and other solid policies are needed to accomplish what the Bus Riders Union has been demanding for three decades: an adequate system of low-emissions buses providing high-quality service to the whole city—especially to the low-income communities who have always contributed the least to global warming.
Whether it’s carried out by a local movement such as the L.A. Bus Riders Union or continent-spanning drives like the Native campaigns against Big Oil and Gas, no single effort can snuff out fossil fuel extraction and consumption on its own. In the absence of a federal phase-out, however, a multiplicity of grassroots efforts like these and others, popping up and spreading across the country like bermudagrass in June, are more essential than ever.
This essay was originally published by City Lights Books as part of its “In Real Time” series. Listen to the “In Real Time” podcast for the spoken version of the series and to the Anti-Empire Project podcast. Also see the evolving “In Real Time” visual work.
Stan Cox is the author of The Path to a Livable Future (2021) and The Green New Deal and Beyond (2020).
While it is true that Zionism is a modern political ideology that has exploited religion to achieve specific colonial objectives in Palestine, prophecies continue to be a critical component of Israel’s perception of itself, and of the state’s relationship to other groups, especially Christian messianic groups in the United States and worldwide.
The subject of religious prophecies and their centrality to Israel’s political thought was once more highlighted following remarks by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, in a recent interview with the Hebrew-language newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. Barak, perceived to be a ‘progressive’ politician, who was once the leader of Israel’s Labor Party, expressed fears that Israel will “disintegrate” before the 80th anniversary of its 1948 establishment.
“Throughout the Jewish history, the Jews did not rule for more than eighty years, except in the two kingdoms of David and the Hasmonean dynasty and, in both periods, their disintegration began in the eighth decade,” Barak said.
Based on pseudo-historical analysis, Barak’s prophecy seemed to conflate historical facts with typical messianic Israeli thinking, reminiscent of statements made by Israel’s former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2017.
Like Barak, Netanyahu’s comments were expressed in the form of fear over the future of Israel, and the looming ‘existential threat’, the cornerstone of Israeli hasbara throughout the years. At a Bible study session in his house in Jerusalem, Netanyahu had then warned that the Hasmonean kingdom – also known as the Maccabees – had merely survived for 80 years before it was conquered by the Romans in 63 B.C.E.
The “Hasmonean state lasted only 80 years, and we needed to exceed this,” Netanyahu was quoted by one of the attendees as saying, the Israeli Haaretz newspaper reported.
But, even according to Netanyahu’s purported determination to exceed that number, he had reportedly vowed to ensure Israel will surpass the Maccabees’ 80 years, and survive for 100 years. That is merely 20 years more.
The difference between Barak and Netanyahu’s statements is quite negligible: the former’s views are supposedly ‘historical’ and the latter’s are biblical. Worth noting, however, is that both leaders, though they subscribe to two different political schools, have converged on similar meeting points: Israel’s survival is at stake; the existential threat is real and the end of Israel is only a matter of time.
But the pessimism in Israel is hardly confined to political leaders, who are known to exaggerate and manipulate facts to instill fear and to rile up their political camps, especially Israel’s powerful messianic constituencies. Although this is true, predictions regarding Israel’s grim future are not confined to the country’s political elites.
In an interview with Haaretz in 2019, one of Israel’s most respected mainstream historians, Benny Morris, had much to say about the future of his country. Unlike Barak and Netanyahu, Morris was not sending warning signals but stating what, to him, seemed an unavoidable outcome of the country’s political and demographic evolution.
“I don’t see how we get out of it,” Morris said, adding: “Already, today there are more Arabs than Jews between the (Mediterranean) Sea and the Jordan (River). The whole territory is unavoidably becoming one state with an Arab majority. Israel still calls itself a Jewish state, but a situation in which we rule an occupied people that has no rights cannot persist in the 21st century.”
Morris’ predictions, while remaining committed to the racial fantasy of a Jewish majority, were far more articulate and also realistic if compared to those of Barak, Netanyahu and others. The man who once regretted that Israel’s founder, David Ben Gurion, did not expel all of Palestine’s native population in 1947-48, spoke with resignation that, in a matter of a generation, Israel will cease to exist in its current form.
Particularly notable about his comments is the accurate perception that “the Palestinians look at everything from a broad, long-term perspective,” and that the Palestinians will continue to “demand the return of the refugees.” But who were the “Palestinians” Morris was referring to? Certainly not the Palestinian Authority, whose leaders have already marginalized the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees, and most certainly have no “broad, long-term perspective”. Morris’ ‘Palestinians’ are, of course, the Palestinian people themselves, generations of whom have served, and continue to serve, as the vanguards of Palestinian rights despite all of the setbacks, defeats and political ‘compromises’.
Actually, prophecies regarding Palestine and Israel are not a new phenomenon. Palestine was colonized by Zionists with the help of Britain, also based on biblical frames of reference. It was populated by Zionist settlers based on biblical references dedicated to the restoration of ancient kingdoms and the ‘return’ of ancient peoples to their supposedly rightful ‘promised land’. Though Israel took on many different meanings throughout the years – perceived to be a ‘socialist’ utopia at times, a liberal, democratic haven at others – it was always preoccupied with religious meanings, spiritual visions and inundated with prophecies. The most sinister expression of this truth is the fact that the current support of Israel by millions of Christian fundamentalists in the West is largely driven by messianic, end-of-the-world prophecies.
The latest predictions about Israel’s uncertain future are based on a different logic. Since Israel has always defined itself as a Jewish State, its future is mostly linked to its ability to maintain a Jewish majority in historic Palestine. By the admission of Morris and others, this pipedream is now crumbling as the ‘demographic war’ is clearly and quickly being lost.
Of course, co-existence in a single democratic state will always be a possibility. Alas, for Israel’s Zionist ideologues, such a state will hardly meet the minimum expectations of the country’s founders, since it would no longer exist in the form of a Jewish, Zionist state. For co-existence to take place, the Zionist ideology would have to be scrapped altogether.
Barak, Netanyahu and Morris are all right: Israel will not exist as a ‘Jewish state’ for much longer. Speaking strictly in terms of demographics, Israel is no longer a Jewish-majority state. History has taught us that Muslims, Christians and Jews can peacefully coexist and collectively thrive, as they have done throughout the Middle East and the Iberian Peninsula for millennia. Indeed, this is a prediction, even a prophecy, that is worth striving for.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is “Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak out”. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net
The past week has been tragic and ominous for Indian democracy. A former law minister and some senior retired judges of both the Supreme Court and several high courts have condemned the actions of bulldozing and demolitions of houses of protestors as illegal. In the heart of the capital city prominent leaders and activists of the Congress have been detained, roughed up in police actions and have complained of suffering injuries in the process. They have lodged a written complaint against the police entering the party headquarters and roughing up party workers. Prominent leaders including two chief ministers have been detained while trying to enter party headquarters. All this happened in the course of protests against the authorities being excessively hostile towards prominent Congress leader Rahul Gandhi who was questioned for nearly 30 hours in 3 days in matters relating to a case by the Enforcement Directorate. Congress leaders have condemned the denial of their democratic right to protest.
Of course there is more than one version of the incidents and the Delhi Police has denied some of the allegations. The details can be debated but there is overwhelming feeling of excessive hostility being used against the leading opposition party, a trend that got much aggravated during this week, at the same time that excessive clampdown including bull-dozing was used against other protestors (relating to different issues) in various parts of the country.
This is threatening for democracy, and ominous for the days to come as the country moves towards Lok Sabha elections in 2024. In a healthy democracy the government should try its best to maintain good relationship with opposition parties, particularly the leading opposition party. Jawaharlal Nehru had prepared a firm foundation for this when he was the first Prime minister of India for 17 years. Ideologically his biggest differences was with the Jan Sangh, but when its new MP Atal Bihari Vajpayee made an impressive speech in Lok Sabha, he was the first to appreciate and encourage, a gesture Vajpayee remembered for a long time. As is evident from the exceptionally high tributes Vajpayee paid later to Nehru, such was the health of Indian democracy at that time that Nehru could be the willingly accepted leader for even the fastest rising star of the right-wing opposition.
There can be big or even bitter differences on policy issues or on their implementation, but beyond this there should be at least cordiality and civility, and a willingness to cooperate and even to try to reach consensus on issues such as inter-faith harmony, national integration and some key aspects of foreign policy. When this is neglected, national interests suffer, democracy suffers, and we need to only look beyond our borders at Bangladesh and Pakistan to realize the tragic extent of this damage.
Unfortunately during the last eight years or so, the present ruling regime in India has also been exhibiting excessive hostility against the Congress, the only opposition party with a nationwide presence strong enough to challenge the BJP at a national level effectively. This hostility was expressed in the very mistaken slogan, given regrettably at very senior levels by the BJP leadership, of a Congress-mukt Bharat ( India without Congress). When the ruling party says, not at fringe but at a very high level, that it does not want the leading opposition party to exist, then where is democracy and where is the spirit of democracy.
Several statements made against Jawaharlal Nehru by top leaders of the BJP were not just unjust and unfair, but embarrassing for India in an international context as Nehru has been admired all over the world for his many sided achievements. In the misguided hurry to criticize the topmost leader and icon of the leading opposition party, the BJP leaders even forgot that Jayaprakash Narain, whom they admired a lot, had never addressed Nehru as less than elder brother.
This initial hostility was never remedied. In fact this has been followed by not just lack of a constructive engagement with the leading opposition party but by constant efforts to ridicule, vilify and victimize some of its leaders, particularly the Gandhi-Nehru family. It is against this background that the excessively hostile actions of the last week should be seen, not in isolation.
When the Congress has won important elections even in the middle of many difficulties, as in the case of the last assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, unfair means have been used to dislodge its government. A level playing field is being denied to opposition parties in several ways, and Congress is far from being the lone sufferer.
In these conditions the excessive hostility towards the Congress or any other opposition party is not a matter concerning that political party alone but should be seen as a much broader issue of democracy which should concern all those interested in protecting democracy and democratic norms.
Bharat Dogra is a former Convener of the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information. His recent books include A Day in 2071, Man over Machine (Gandhian ideas for our times and Protecting Earth for Children. His writings have been widely published in India and abroad.
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