Rai, Milan

Rai, Milan

Milan Rai

26 February 2023Blog

China's 12-point peace plan is not designed to achieve a breakthrough in ending the Ukraine War, but it has performed a service by raising the profile of peace talks as a way forward. The position paper is designed to appeal to many different groups of countries, including those in the Global South, while maintaining China's strategic partnership with Russia.

On the first anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, 24 February, the Chinese foreign ministry released a 12-point position paper on resolving the Ukraine crisis.

Is the Chinese peace plan helpful? Yes, but only in the most general sense of raising the profile of the need for peace talks (Point 4) – and a ceasefire (Point 3…

24 February 2023Blog

Milan Rai surveys some important facts about possibilities for ending the Ukraine War that are often swept under the carpet

The Ukraine War has had a horrifying impact on the people of Ukraine, and has been a disaster for people around the world hit by rising food and energy costs. 

There are some important facts about possibilities for ending the Ukraine War that are often swept under the carpet, that are important for us to remember to help find a way out of this tragedy.

The first and most significant fact is that Ukraine and Russia came right to the edge of agreeing a peace deal back in March…

1 February 2023Feature

What Stop the War and the direct actionists missed in 2003

Could the anti-war movement have prevented the US-UK invasion of Iraq in March 2003? I think there was a real possibility, slim though it was.

In my view, the British anti-war movement came very close to halting British participation in the invasion – and derailing the war entirely.

Well, that’s not only my view. Just days before the war began, the British government told the US government that it might be forced to pull out of the invasion force. Britain’s ministry of defence…

1 February 2023Feature

Nuclear bullying of non-nuclear states is a core part of Britain's nuclear doctrine

Sometimes, Western nuclear threats against non-nuclear weapon states have been covert operations, signalled secretly by mobilising strategic nuclear weapon systems (like the British V-bombers sent out to Singapore during the Malaysian Confrontation – see PN 2659).

Sometimes, Western nuclear threats have been very, very public.

Such was the case in the run-up to the March 2003 US-UK assault on Iraq.

It was a very long run-up to war, for reasons discussed…

1 February 2023News

Celebration of campaigns and community initiatives 'influenced by anarchist principles' to take place on 15 February

On 15 February, British anarchists will mark their first ‘Aggravated Activist Day’, after the event was called by participants in a workshop at the Anarchist Bookfair in London last September.

The workshop was run by Netpol, the Network for Police Monitoring, which pointed out in March 2021 that the police had stopped using the label ‘domestic extremist’, and replaced it with ‘aggravated activist’.

Anarchists are classified by the police as taking part in ‘high-level aggravated…

1 February 2023Comment

The current framing of XR's mass protest on 21 April risks setting people up for disappointment and exhaustion, argues Milan Rai

Do I support mobilising large numbers of people to join in the climate protest in Central London taking place on 21 April, organised by Extinction Rebellion (XR)?

Yes.

Do I think it will have a positive effect on the political debate in Britain and maybe elsewhere?

Yes.

Do I agree with how XR are describing and explaining this protest?

No. Definitely not.

I think that XR has taken ‘talking big’ to a whole new level that is damaging to their own…

1 February 2023Comment

The Bomb has, to a large extent, been a racist weapon, argues Milan Rai

What has anti-racism got to do with nuclear weapons? They seem to belong in different worlds.

When we hear the word ‘anti-racism’, we might think about police violence, like the fatal shooting of Chris Kaba, the unarmed black 24-year-old killed by the Metropolitan police in South London last September.

Or we might think about brutal anti-immigrant policies, like the way the government crowded 4,000 asylum-seekers into Manston detention centre, built for 1,600 people.

1 February 2023News

Ukraine: Sunak must support negotiation not escalation

As we head towards the second year of the horrifying war in Ukraine, the British government should be supporting a rapid, negotiated end to the war (see p3 for more on this).

Prime minister Rishi Sunak should be helping to remove obstacles to peace. This includes pressing Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to lift his ban on negotiating with Russia while Vladimir Putin remains president (see PN 2663).

Instead of seeking peace, the British government is supporting…

8 December 2022Comment

Conscientious objector, chair of Scott Bader and winner of International Peace Award

In October 2014, Second World War conscientious objector Godric Bader was awarded the Gandhi Foundation’s International Peace Award, in recognition of the alternative business model he and his family created for their industrial manufacturing company, the Scott Bader Commonwealth.

Scott Bader has been and continues to be a successful industrial manufacturing company. Being owned by its workers did not stop it reaching sales of £270mn in 2021 (with gross profits of £76mn).

1 December 2022Review

Hurst, 2022; 270pp; £14.99

Why would a Nigerian philosopher be against decolonisation? Olúfémi Táíwò explains that, in Africa, ‘decolonisation’ means two very different things.

Decolonisation1 is simple: a colony gains its independence and becomes self-governing.

Decolonisation2, on the other hand, means the ex-colony throwing out ‘any and every cultural, political, intellectual, social and linguistic artefact, idea, process, institution and practice that retains even the slightest whiff of the…

1 December 2022Feature

The £55bn ‘fiscal black hole’ is not a real thing

Joan Robinson, the great economist, once wrote: ‘The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.’

British politics in recent months has all been about ‘the fiscal hole’, said to be a gigantic £55bn gap in the government’s finances. Journalists and politicians talk about it as though it is a real thing.

It is not.

The ‘fiscal hole’ sounds like it’s a £55bn gap…

1 December 2022News

As the US civilian leadership engages in deceit about peace talks...

In November, there was a surprising development in relation to the Ukraine War, with pressure for a diplomatic solution coming from the US military (pressure that has been resisted fiercely by the civilian political leadership).

The New York Times reported on 10 November that the chair of the US joint chiefs of staff, general Mark Milley, argued in private top-level meetings for…

1 December 2022Comment

The West applies different standards to Russia than to itself

‘The deepest power is that of determining what people consider normal,’ British historian Timothy Garton Ash wrote in the Financial Times on 13 November.

The next day, British prime minister Rishi Sunak condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with these words: ‘There can be no normalisation of [Russian president Vladimir] Putin’s behaviour, which has no place in the international community.’

Perhaps Sunak was referring to the massive waves of Russian missile attacks on…

1 December 2022News

Biden’s ‘offer’ to negotiate was a half-hearted dishonest trick

The United States could make a huge contribution to the safety and wellbeing of the Ukrainian people – and to global security – by giving its full support to a peace process between Ukraine and Russia, and by promising that all US sanctions on Russia will be lifted once a peace treaty is signed and Russian forces are withdrawn.

Instead, US president Joe Biden is playing a cynical game by trying to appear as though he is in favour of peace talks, while actually having no interest in…

23 November 2022Blog

A review of the polling evidence since 1954

Below is a list of the UK public opinion polls used to draw up the chart on p17 of PN 2661, reproduced below. This chart showed that, consulting 24 polls during the period 1954 – 2015, only three showed public support for unilateral nuclear disarmament dipping – briefly – below 20 percent (1963: 15 percent / 1964: 16 percent / 2014: 18 percent). The other 21 polls showed much stronger support for British unilateral nuclear…