Antidote

This week I’ve been invited by a client to DSEI, “the world’s largest defense and security exhibition” – or, to you and me, an arms fair. Or a “Death Fair”, as the campaign group Disarm DSEI calls it.

So, barely a year since my last project with Amnesty International, and what now – rubbing shoulders with generals from Indonesia and Chile? What’s going on?

I have a brief from a large defence manufacturer: articulate a narrative about their role in society, the positive contribution they make to the world. An interesting corporate citizenship task, huh? It’s easy to feel good about planning a campaign for human rights in Burma, but this is a challenge of a different nature entirely.

Plus, I have to admit I’m looking forward to the live demonstration of an unmanned UAV drone – and there’s even a chance to win one. Not quite sure what I’d do with it though.

Of course, the global defence industry sits firmly in the land of the Sindex and Vice Fund – in the popular imagination, they’re the ultimate corporate bad-guys. So, is it ever OK to work for the arms trade?

My friends have very polarized views. For me, it starts with the view that weapons have a place in the world, and so somebody has to make them. I’m glad that NATO was able to stop the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. I’m glad that NATO intervened to stop Gadaffi’s threatened bloodbath in Benghazi. I wish somebody had stopped the slaughter in Rwanda.

But what happens when you stop to ask, who thought is was a good idea to arm these lunatics? As the Campaign Against the Arms Trade is keen to point out, we did, apparently: for example, Britain armed Lybia in the first place.

They point out that the UK Government’s 2010 Human Rights Annual Report identified 26 countries of concern. Yet, in that year, the UK approved arms export licences to 16 of these including Israel, Libya, Pakistan, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

The official logic goes like this: exports are regarded as vital to the health of the defence industrial base which is, in turn, an important adjunct of national security, foreign policy and the domestic economy. In other words, selling arms abroad achieves three objectives:

1. It effectively subsidises our own national defense capability.
2. The enemy of my enemy is my friend – so let’s keep them strong.
3. And while we’re at it, all of this means exports, taxes and jobs.

So this is the debate. It’s going to be fascinating. And if you’re Amnesty International, the real problem is that the industry is poorly regulated with illegal arms flooding the market.

And that’s my excuse to show one of the finest moments from my old agency, Mother – a few years ago now, part of Amnesty’s campaign against the illegal arms trade. How are you supposed to make such a serious subject entertaining, even funny? Here’s how:

Image from New Internationalist.