Angie Zelter says Scotland needs to engage the rest of the world in its plans for the future

Scotland has a chance, through this national conversation, to try to define itself in a new way, not to be trapped in the mistakes and tragedies of the past. and it needs to extend this conversation into the other parts of the UK and to other parts of the planet. The global community needs to move together. Scotland cannot fulfil its potential alone. But, however difficult, I believe that there is a great global yearning for change. Most of us on this planet do not want to go on as we have been for centuries now, we do want to put an end to exploitation and profiteering, pollution and wars.

Scotland, as part of the UK, has been inevitably tainted, through joint responsibility and by a share in the spoils, with colonialist economic and foreign policies that have caused massive damage over the last few centuries. Forest destruction, desertification, species extinction, the genocide of whole tribes, pollution, wars, refugees, torture, and gross human rights abuses are the results of narrow nationalisms that see life in terms of a competitive grabbing for ‘our’ gain at ‘other’ people’s expense.

A new Scotland would be one that refused ‘political nationalism’ and instead defined itself as one interdependent part of a global community. It would perceive the wake-up call of climate change as a unique opportunity to understand and put right our destructive behaviours. It would embrace the obvious necessity of aligning itself with other peoples and groupings, in order for people to act together, as global citizens, in full mindfulness to save our planet earth and thus our own humanity. to do this, Scotland would have to change not only its mindset but also its economic basis.

At the root of the changes Scotland needs to consider, is the necessity to encourage compassion for all people and all living things – to love. We must act (and have Scottish policies that sustain such actions) as if we could be anyone, anywhere on this planet. We must have the imagination to feel and know what it is like to be an Iraqi or a Palestinian under military occupation, or an asylum seeker awaiting his/her fate in a detention centre, or the last stand of ancient old-growth trees looking out over a devastated clearcut, or a turkey in an intensive factory farm. our policies and actions must be viewed from the perspective of all and any of us. to put ourselves in the place of those myriad ‘others’ is a necessity not a luxury. to perceive the long-term consequences of our actions and not just the short-term profit for our businesses is essential. It is our ability to close off, to deny the implications of our actions on others, to rationalise rather than to be wise, that has led us to this crisis point.

I believe that the present Scottish Government’s intention to disarm all nuclear weapons is a pivotal indication of the changes that are needed.

I believe that the present Scottish Government’s intention to disarm all nuclear weapons is a pivotal indication of the changes that are needed.

To plan for the replacement of Trident with some newer weapon of mass destruction, in breach of Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, whilst condemning other, less powerful, nations for trying to get their own nuclear weapons, is a hypocrisy that undermines international law, encourages the continuation of state terrorism, and is indicative of our cultural collapse. nuclear weapons do not exist in a vacuum, they exist in a web of lies, evasions, and power abuses, they exist to prop up an exploitative, narrow, selfish and ultimately destructive culture.

Just look at the foreign policy of the UK over the last 300 years. In the view of millions of victims all around the world, it has been a sordid history of stealing scarce resources of gold, minerals, timber, oil and food. First, by war, conquest, slavery and colonialism and now by aligning ourselves with US warmongering to control scarce resources. the continuation of unfair and unethical ‘trading’ rules have also ensured transnational corporate power, everlasting debt bondage and control over vast stretches of other people’s lands and seas. these power abuses havecaused millions of deaths, horrendous poverty, and vast ecological destruction.Africa, one of the richest continents on earth, is just one example of where Britain has abused military power to exploit natural resources and leave a wave of destruction behind. Diego Garcia, an example of human rights abuses and theft of another people’s land, shows how our military relationship with the US corrupts our humanity.

Military power is not often about self-defence – the lie that lies behind our society’s acceptance of it. It is about forcing other people to do what we – in our infinite ignorance – think we want. Thus, our foreign policy has consistently led us not only to war and occupation but also to backing repressive regimes, selling weapons and torture equipment to human rights abusers and to turning a blind eye to the subjugation of vast numbers of people all over the world, when it seems to be in the interests of our businesses.

Behaviour like this not only affects others in distant, far-off places but destroys and distorts our own culture. It is one of the reasons for the cultural disintegration that you can see in the despairing eyes of people around you.

A new Scotland must thus work for the open transformation of British foreign policy, from control of other people’s resources to regional self-sufficiency, global co-operation and fair trade. People have a right to grow their own food and save their own seeds, to use their own water resources before being forced to trade in luxury items like tea, coffee, and out of season fruit and vegetables, and to have clean, safe rivers and lands rather than the contamination and local poverty caused by gold, oil or bio-fuel extraction. this is not just an issue of foreign policy, it is also one of economic policy. We need to put human rights and environmental safeguards ahead of profit and change the global trade agreements to make sure they do not undermine our efforts to co-operate for the sake of the planet rather than profit.

All of these issues at their heart are about real security. Everyone on earth has a right to a clean, safe and secure environment, to live and to love. Real security cannot be found at the end of a gun – the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have shown very clearly that you cannot bomb a country into democracy or liberty or safety. Violence just creates more violence. We have to deal with the root causes of violence – and to do this we must be honest and compassionate. We must not take more than our fair share of the resources of the world and our policies must be respectful of the rights of every other lifeform to have its space on this planet. We have to put our own society right before blaming others.

To put into practice the changes our society will have to make, we need to transform the most destructive forces. We need to dismantle trident, re-commit ourselves to international humanitarian law and get out of all the current wars and occupations that we are involved in. We must stop supporting repressive regimes and stop our trade in weapons and torture equipment. We must stop the flagrant waste of resources and the stupendous output of carbon by the war machine that depletes natural resources on a massive scale and causes huge environmental and societal destruction and poverty – these are, in any case, the very issues that we need to be addressing co-operatively in order to survive the challenges of global climate change. We have to divert our resources to life-enhancing work.

Scotland has the right and the power to ban weapons of mass destruction, to uphold international law and to lead the way to a restorative, ethical, culture of peace. that right has to be transformed into action. as many non-violent movements for social change have shown throughout history, obedience to a humane, compassionate and moral future along with the refusal to co-operate in abuses can transform societies step by step. Scotland can choose a different future. We will know the rightness of any policy when we know that we could live with the consequences, whoever and wherever we are. thus it will not be a matter of ‘our’ jobs versus ‘theirs’ but a matter of global restoration that will provide for everyone. there are very practical policies and laws that can be put in place to enable the very structures of our society to facilitate such right livelihoods. I look forward to a future discussion to share these plentiful, practical ideas.

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