Drones are controlled via fibre-optic cable with each trailling up to 40km of fibre. Eastern Ukraine is now covered in thousands of kilometres of cable. Photo: Fibre-optic nest, Ukraine, Watercolour 36 x 41 cm, by Lillias August RI © www.lilliasaugust.com.
A peace testimony for Earth? Paul Hodgkin wants a witness for all life
‘Our moral horizon needs to expand again.’
When Russia invaded Ukraine I didn’t know what to say when people asked me, ‘Well what would Quakers actually do?’ Five years on, with the demands to spend 3.5 per cent of GDP on defence ricocheting around, I still don’t have an answer that does justice to the question and the questioners. Of course, I can and do say that building peace is much more important than preparing for war, and that war never achieves anything, and that killing people never gets us anywhere. And of course I point to all the usual, important arguments: NATO countries (excluding the US), already outspend Russia on defence by three to one in cash terms. Why would increasing this to 4:1 help? And, given that the US-made Trident missiles which launch our ‘independent’ nuclear deterrent have to be serviced by the US, who would now trust Donald Trump not to augment these Trident missiles to make them rather less independent?
