Cari amici in Finlandia e Svezia – Dear friends in Finland and Sweden
Lettera aperta del MIR Italia sull’entrata di Finlandia e Svezia nella NATO
Read the Italian version here.
Open letter by MIR Italy on Finland and Sweden applying for NATO membership
Dear friends in Finland and Sweden and all Europe,
Every day is a day of war in different areas of the planet, and no change is foreseen anywhere near, as a logic of war, confrontation and enmity is dominant among States.
Evidence of this is the increasing military expenditure linked to the production and trade of weapons.
The terrible war in Ukraine, instead of decreasing, is escalating with the direct involvement of the Atlantic Alliance States, to the point of risking a world conflict with nuclear weapons.
Developments in Russia’s aggression in Ukraine have caused the Swedish and Finnish governments to consider applying for NATO membership. We understand the concern and fear of being a target for possible war action.
We see the choice to join NATO as dangerous for peace in Europe, first of all because it increases military confrontation in the region and strengthens an alliance for war, instead of advocating de-escalation and a change of register that privileges alliances and dialogues for peace.
Europe has been torn apart by the World Wars and the European Union was born with the purpose of creating a ‘union’ to build peace and support and safeguard coexistence between peoples.
Strengthening military alliances means giving the force of arms predominance in the relations between states.
We should work for peace, with alliances for peace.
If Finland’s and Sweden’s neutrality fails, this could provoke a reaction from Russia in the context of an ever-expanding military alliance that was created in an anti-Russian perspective. The NATO membership of Sweden and Finland would strengthen the alliance that already includes 30 countries.
Unfortunately, Italy is a member of NATO and this means, among other things, the presence of military bases with personnel from other countries on our territory and the use of these bases for interventions in war zones in which we, as Italians, are not directly involved and do not want to be involved.
We are under pressure all the time to increase military spending and to comply with our treaty obligations.
It is a militarist commitment.
“Italy repudiates war as an instrument for the resolution of conflicts between states”; this is what is stated in Article 11 of our Constitution and it is what we loudly repeat all the time, even every time that unfortunately drones and military missions depart from bases on our territory. In addition, Italy, which through two referendums has rejected the nuclear option, finds itself unfortunately hosting around 70 nuclear bombs of others in these bases.
We, in Italy, do not feel more secure, on the contrary, we always feel fully involved every time a military aircraft takes off from the bases in Sigonella or Aviano or Ghedi, to name but a few.
All over Europe, including Italy, civil society organisations are mobilising to ask their governments to leave NATO, to abandon a military alignment that divides the world and is very often an enslavement to foreign powers.
We must stop this insane military escalation, insisting on peace negotiations, mediation and dialogue.
Non-violence is our lighthouse and history teaches us that a non-violent transformation of conflicts can be possible, so that the reasons for peace and the lives of the peoples involved prevail over nationalistic interests and logics.
We need new signs of peace, of openness to dialogue.
More weapons do not make the world safer, but closer to more easy deadly triggers.
Your history of neutrality is important; we need an ‘active neutrality’ that contributes to de-escalation and mediation and that strengthens multilateralism, to change course from the current ruinous path where the logic of violence prevails.
Our appeal, our Finnish and Swedish friends, is for the war to cease, for your peoples not to be involved and for lives to be spared, and for us all to work together to ‘build peace’, with instruments of peace, otherwise it will never be peace.
For we ‘peoples of the United Nations are determined to save future generations from the scourge of war’, but also and especially now, the present generation.
Let us continue together to work for peace and urge our governments to a real constructive commitment to peace, under the banner of multilateralism, while also supporting the full implementation of the UN’s purpose, ‘to maintain international peace and security’.
In fellowship with all of you.
On Sweden Joining NATO: A Letter from FOR-USA to SweFOR
By FORUSA
Dear sisters and brothers in the Sweden FOR,
Our hearts break for you and your country. Sweden’s expected application to join NATO is a devastating blow for our shared global peace movement. Sweden’s 200 years of stated neutrality and military non-alignment have long offered a sign that nation-states can play a critical role as well.
We join the Sweden Fellowship of Reconciliation in appealing to Sweden (and Finland) to remain neutral, alongside Austria, Cyprus, Ireland, and Malta. The Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine is illegitimate and indefensible, but must be countered and resolved through negotiations and mediation – something Sweden is best placed to support if it remains neutral. President Vladimir Putin has made a giant miscalculation and the Russian war machine is overextended, beleaguered, and unable to manage an endless conflict. If a face-saving way out is not negotiated, it becomes more likely that Putin will resort to Russia’s arsenal of 6,257 nuclear warheads. In such a fearful instance, there is nothing that NATO can do to save Sweden or Europe.
SweFOR, upon its founding in 1919, carried further Sweden’s proclivity for global community when it joined the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) “to promote a culture of peace and nonviolence in the world, while advancing the pacific management of conflicts and respect for human rights and international humanitarian law.” While we recognize your nation’s longstanding reputation as a leader in preventing war has been damaged by its recent role as a major international source of arms production and sales, nevertheless the Swedish government’s significant funding of global human rights NGOs, including SweFOR, is testimony to its continuing constructive leadership. We believe that will be irreversibly damaged should Sweden join NATO.
Indeed, we honor Sweden’s historic efforts to strengthen international decision-making bodies, such as the 1953 appointment of Dag Hammarskjold as the United Nation’s second Secretary-General. Succeeding Trygve Lie of Norway in that role, Hammarskjold helped model peace-building diplomacy rooted in common decency and trustworthiness. These iconic leaders paved the way for generations of Scandinavians to be welcomed at innumerable negotiations tables worldwide. Today, with the UN’s reputation severely tarnished (particularly due to its corrupted so-called Security Council) and the prospect of both Finland and Sweden joining NATO, there is a foreboding sense that the values of multilateralism and inclusivity have been eliminated.
We recognize that our perspective at FOR-USA is offered from the vantage point of a country with limited moral authority. Our nation was founded on the dual genocides of its Indigenous peoples and of enslaved Africans, and for centuries the capitalist and imperialist policies of the U.S. government have led to the deaths, incarceration, and exploitation of countless millions at home and abroad. Despite boasting the greatest financial wealth in private hands and the most expensive military ever in human history, there are an estimated 140 million poor and low-wage people today in our nation. Nevertheless, as we recognize and resist our government’s relentless warmaking machine, with U.S. armed forces in control of at least 750 military bases in 80 countries – including five in Europe, which have nuclear weapons aimed at Russia alongside similar nuclear-strike capabilities of other NATO members – we urge Sweden to resist joining NATO, arguably the largest and most threatening military entity in the world.
Our world today needs to prioritize nonviolent solutions and alliances for peace, not greater investment in militarism. The best hope now is to focus on what is most important: saving lives. To achieve this, we urge Sweden to remain neutral and do what it often does best: diplomacy, by pushing for a cease-fire and finding a way for President Putin to extract himself from this unwinnable and untenable situation and its ominous end point of nuclear holocaust. Dismantlement of NATO towards a plan to achieve a common global security system and architecture should be part of this vision.
In deep peace, solidarity and fellowship,
Ethan Vesely-Flad and Anthony Nicotera
Interim Co-Executive Directors
U.S. Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR-USA)
OUR INTERNATIONAL FELLOWSHIP – WE STAND WITH YOU SWEFOR AND HOPE SWEDEN WILL CONTINUE AS A NON-ALIGNED NATION
May 18th 2022
Message from FOR India
Our truths vary depending on our perspectives and geographical locations. The only one constant is that we believe in nonviolence as being the right and the most appropriate way and means to usher in change from power and dominance through militarisation which we see all around. Most of us live in societies where there is an assimilation of modernity and tradition in every aspect of our everyday life.
The pandemic and the war in Ukraine have challenged us to re-examine several of our beliefs in the capacity of the state to deal with supply chain and trade disruptions, energy interdependence and the future of warfare. We are forced to think about the limits of state sovereignty and the credibility of the United Nations Charter to protect nations' states.
Among the developed nations all over the world we are witnessing the backlash against globalisation which had mainly two forms - the economic and cultural. The unemployed and the poor in the developed world have begun to feel that they have no stake in the globalised system and demanded from their own governments why government policies benefited people from other parts of the world with what used to be ‘their jobs’. The growing inequality within their society made its way to a desire to go back to the security of the older and more familiar economic systems where each generation assumed that they would earn more and live better than their parents did.
The cultural backlash derived from the same resentment and led to hostility towards foreigners and increasing sections of people in the developed world sought the comforts of traditional identity and ways of life. Globalisation brought in a new set of liberal politics, technocrats, trade agreements, cosmopolitans, immigration, secularism, and multiculturalism which suited a small section of society while the great majority of the society turned back to cultural rootedness, religious or ethnic identity and national authenticity as the way to their future.
Several leaders from the Americas and Europe have seized the opportunity to tap into both the economic and cultural backlash against globalisation and some of them have won their electoral battles and a few have come close enough to shift the national discourse.
It is in this context we from our Asian part of the world see Sweden and Finland moving out of their space as nonaligned countries and moving towards the NATO military alliance. In our vulnerable world every action of the developed world whether it be trade sanctions or military alliances gives out a new message that no useful help can be expected from any country and that national interests is the choice over international cooperation. Britain leaving the EU, the US leaving the Paris climate agreement, President Trump pulling the US out of the WHO are some of the moves which took place which had an impact on the underdeveloped or developing world.
We from the Fellowship in India join the voice with Mir Italy and US FOR to urge the Swedish Government to continue as a nonaligned nation. The world must live and work together again and the idea of our common humanity made real. Sweden and Finland have a unique position in this effort.
In fellowship,
Mathew George
FOR India