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Mar. 29  2024
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[Proposal to Jointly Organise] International Peace Conference to Stop the MD Deployment

The “Korean Committee Against MD and for Peace” proposes to jointly organise an international conference to step up the global people’s action to stop the U.S. government’s MD plan.

Source  :  BASE21


The Korean Committee Against MD and for Peace proposes to jointly organise an international conference to step up the global peoples action to stop the U.S. governments MD plan.

The MD plan of the George W. Bush U.S. Administration presents the global peace movement with one of the most critical challenge since the height of anti-war and anti-nuclear movement of 1980s. Since its heydays, the peace movement has been overtaken by the end of the Cold War order and the devolution of the dominant systemic conflicts into (more difficulty to comprehend) regional and ethnic conflicts (both in Europe and developing regions, such as, Africa and Asia).

The MD plan, designed to catapult the U.S. militarisation project into the space based on a flimsy ideology of threat from rogue states, however, presents the people of the world and the peace movement with an opportunity to regroup and redefine its strength and vision.

Korean Committee Against MD and for Peace was launched, in early April this year, as a broad coalition, bringing together peace movement, environment movement, labour movement, democracy movement, and faith-based movements to oppose the U.S. ballistic missile defense strategy (formerly termed NMD-TMD).

The Korean anti-MD movement believes the Bush Administrations MD plan will is drag the new post-Cold War security environment into a dangerous global arms race. The MD plan is aimed at constructing a new global hegemonic position of the U.S. as the sole superpower. It is pursued to press the as yet fully understood post-Cold War relations and dynamics into a simplified scheme with easily manipulated demons. It is designed to turn the attention of the American people away from the real concerns and to satiate the profit- and war-mongering military-industry complex which has lost its raison detat. It augments the global neoliberal drive with military discipline. It will sap and divert the energies and resources of the people of the world away from the efforts to realise an alternative sustainable development and decent life.

The very logic of rogue state, which is presented as the pretext for the whole MD, is nothing more than a demonisation project, to set up disproportionate fall guy for the U.S.s ambitions. In doing so, whatever real causes or roots of tension and possibilities for peace-making will be overwhelmed by machination of the U.S.s hegemonic games.

The Korean Committee against MD and for Peace, since its establishment in April, has been one of the most active forces in the world in mounting opposition to the MD plan. The urgency stems from its awareness that Korea as a whole would become the MDs most affected victim.

The MD plan will re-ignite tension and conflict in the region surrounding the Korean peninsula, overshadowing the efforts of Korean people, in south and north to achieve peace and reunification. It will derail the long overdue peace process.

The Korean anti-MD movement proposes to an international conference devoted to the issue of the MD plan, to initiate a process of examining the various impact of the MD plan and to set a process of peoples action to oppose it.

The Conference seeks to bring peace movement activists, peace studies specialists, and organizations of peoples and civil society movement all over the world, including Europe, the U.S., and Asia, to discuss the perspectives and responses, and to initiate a global networking effort to oppose the MD plan.

We appeal to all interested to groups to contribute to the organising of the Conference.

Organisations can participate in the effort in many different ways, as:

- participants, sending representatives
- organisations endorsing the conference, and its concluding declaration
- co-sponsors, contributing to the organising of the Conference.

Co-sponsors are invited to jointly convene, prepare, and organise the Conference through:

- identifying issues to be discussed
- identifying or providing speakers agreed themes
- mobilisation of the network for participation
- securing or providing financial resource.

Initial list of organisations invited to co-sponsor the Conference

l Transnational Institute, the Netherlands
l Focus on the Global South, Thailand
l Pacific Asia Resource Centre(PARC), Japan
l Leeds Conference organisers and participating organisations, UK
l Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space
l German Peace Research Centre
l Norwegian Peace Research Orgnisation
l Pax Romana
l German FES
l German Heinirich Boell Foundation
l American Friends Service Committee
l Japanese Peace Movement organisations
(This list is not exclusive nor presented in any order)


Initial ideas for the programme of the Conference and budgetary requirement are set down in the following.
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