Jeremy Corbyn on Military Spending and Peace Building

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Jeremy Corbyn received the Séan MacBride Peace Prize 2017 together with All Okinawa Council Against Henoko New Base and Noam Chomsky, for his sustained and powerful political work for disarmament and peace. Yet the award received scant coverage in the British and other countries’ media.

During his stay in Geneva last December 8th to receive the award, Jeremy Corbyn was interviewed by the president of the IPB, Reiner Braun. The interview video can be watched here.

Regarding the next steps to reach a nuclear weapons-free world, Corbyn first remarked the importance of the the Nobel Prize being awarded to ICAN, with UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons having been signed last September 2017. Next steps should include the signing of the ban treaty by all world countries, the non-proliferation treaty, working to solve the Corea conflict and protecting the Iran agreement, which was indeed a great achievement.

Despite NATO´s request to increase the military budget of members to 2% of their GDP, disarmament must be discussed and reinforced. Peace must be enforced by negotiation, by diplomacy, and by promoting agreements, with all governments challenging human rights instead of military solutions. Militarization is strongly related to the use of resources by western countries and world inequalities. In this interview, Corbyn talks about the obscenity of the grotesque levels of wealth in the northern countries.

In a new European scenario which reminds us the Cold War period, Reiner Braun asked Jeremy Corbyn for the next steps for western countries to build a cooperative relation with Russia. Corbyn remarked the necessity of reducing tensions and the military build-up while working together to create a common European place. The main instrument, according to Jeremy Corbyn, can be the Council of Europe, which provides a forum that trascends the present borders. Founded in 1949, it has 47 member states, covers approximately 820 million people and includes Russia and almost all European countries. The Council could be a suitable instrument to build new negotiation-based scenarios.

Watch the complete video here.