Tony Addy - discussing alternatives to NATO
As thousands of delegates descend on Prague for the NATO summit, and thousands of demonstrations arrive to disrupt the meeting, it's easy to forget that there are people who want to challenge NATO through peaceful discussion and debate. One of them is Englishman Tony Addy, who works for the Czech office of the European Contact Group (ECG), an ecumenical network involved in a number of alternative seminars and events during the summit. Rob Cameron began by asking Tony to describe what the ECG was all about.
"[The European Contact Group] is an international network made up of local organisations and national organisations, a little bit connected to the church. And they are busy with all the questions about unemployment and the conditions of working life, and the questions about poverty, about social exclusion. Mainly they are groups working on the local level with all these kinds of problems. And they are trying to work with the people who are affected, to try to bring about some change in their lives, either through their own organising to make some new activity, or through trying to change the policy of the city council or the national government, and sometimes the EU. So it's a kind of combination between church-related organisations and civil society in broad terms."
What brings you to Prague, then? Why are you in Prague today?
"That's an interesting question. The seat of this organisation is in Germany, that's where our legal base is. But we found out that more and more of our work was in Central and Eastern Europe. So it made more sense to have a functioning office here. So there's an office of this network, my Czech colleagues are here, and we're organising things from Vienna on a more practical basis."
What brought you to involvement in the ECG? What was it in your own life which brought you to this organisation?
"Well, I think that there are two things that I could mention here which might be interesting. As a child I grew up in a community which was first founded by so-called Moravians, meaning those people who moved from here in the religious wars. And they came to Britain and founded a place - or some places - where they could build up new communities. And I was living in such a place, and I was actually baptised into that church. So, strangely, I have always had a kind of interest in this region, I mean, never thinking I would live here. But I always watched what was going on, and I built up friendships with people here."
Did you know much about Bohemia - or rather Moravia - growing up as a child?
"No, you couldn't get so much information. But I remember very clearly, for example, '68, the events of '68, and I was lucky to be here in '89, in November of '89. I was here at that time. So, that was a great experience for me. But the other reason is that I always try to connect somehow this question about spirituality, if you like, with the really daily concrete lives and problems of people. And if you can't make that connection, then it's not worth anything. If you can't bring some more, let's say, conviviality and justice into a situation, then any spirituality is not functioning in the right way, I think."
The Czech Republic is certainly one country which you would describe as agnostic, I guess. The number of believers in this country is substantially less than in neighbouring Poland, let's say, even Slovakia.
"Yes. I think that what we found in our network, for us, there are different dynamics in different countries. But if you start with an open attitude, and you start to work with people on the things that matter to them, and they can perceive that you are serious about that and that you want to go with it, and that you don't just use it for some church institutional ends, then I think there are a lot of possibilities. And in the Czech Republic there are plenty of possibilities for collaboration and working together. And I think this is the way the church becomes relevant to the lives of the people, not through the, let's say, institutional development."
Well, it's a big week for your organisation, and of course for ours, because in a few days' time the heads of state of forty six countries around the world, and of course the nineteen members of NATO, will be meeting in Prague. Tell me how the ECG is going to be involved in the NATO summit.
"Okay. Well, in a way we're not directly involved, but we have a Czech member organisation, and they are working with the Ecumenical Academy in Prague to organise a series of seminars and workshops during the time of the NATO summit. And we are making this in partnership with protestant academies in Germany, because they have a lot of know-how about these questions, and also with an academy in Italy. We think it's important to organise some activities around the summit which are open to people. So it's open to the public, completely open. And we want to explore the different issues around it. We will have our meetings in the Hotel Olsanka, so it will be very easy for people to go. The meetings will be in Czech and In English, so the possibilities for participation will be quite wide. And we've got a very broad programme too, we're not focusing on one issue, but on several issues, like a menu of events. I think if I compare it to my own country England, you know, where I'm coming from, people talk a lot about NATO, it is in the press a lot, but people know very little about what NATO actually is, how it was founded, what its aims are. And we think that there's a need everywhere to develop that kind of knowledge and know how and understanding. And that's especially important now, because the role of NATO has to change very much, because of the changed situation not only in Europe, but because of the changed security situation everywhere, which we all know about."
But would you describe yourself as "anti-NATO" - someone who is by conviction against NATO?
"No, I think our idea as an academy is to have an open debate about the issues. So we are not starting with a pro or contra position. Of course there are some things that we would like to open up as public questions which are not usually debated so much. I think we are interested to look at, of course, the changing role of NATO, that's for sure. But also the question about alternatives to military conflict, and can we learn something from the conflicts that have been going on and are going on in the world, from groups which are basically trying to resolve the conflicts on the ground. So that's one important issue we'd like to raise. And second is the question about security and human rights, because the more the question of, let's say, terrorism and this kind of discussion hots up, the more the question about the relationship between security and human rights becomes important. And I think in the Czech Republic there is quite a strong tradition of discussions about human rights, and we'd like to link it to this topic. And I think the third thing is, a lot of people are working in defence, not only in military, in the army, in the navy, in the airforce, but also producing weapons. And we'd like to ask what happened to the peace dividend, and are there still possibilities for those people who are working in defence industries to re-deploy their skills and energies into making products which are more, let's say, more related to human development and human flourishing. It doesn't mean to say we are taking a position that there should be no weapons production, but we would like to see a reduction in the amount of the national income in every country which is going to defence."
As far as NATO membership is concerned in this country, I think a lot of Czechs, perhaps the majority of Czechs, would say yes, such debates would be welcome. But the actual question of whether we should belong to NATO or not, for us there is no question. Look at our history: the number of times we have been a pawn between the great powers, the number of times we've been invaded.
"You could almost say it's a practical matter, and it's a different discussion. For example in Norway, or in Ireland, it's a completely different discussion. And I understand the position of people here, and I think it's very natural that people would like to join, federate, themselves with institutions which are more pan-European. And I think that's also important for the whole of Europe."
What are the alternatives to NATO in your mind?
"I'm not sure that there's an alternative to NATO itself. I think that there maybe alternative ways to handle conflict, and I think that's the thing that we are trying to look at now. Because I think NATO had great relevance obviously when there was a kind of bipolar situation, but now the questions about conflict are very different. And in fact they are more amenable to being dealt with by alternative methods, than to being dealt with by large weapons systems or large military systems. Where the real conflicts are taking place, they are quite different in character. There are local wars, there are local conflicts there to do with local grievances and injustices, and sometimes those local conflicts can have world-wide relevance, as we've seen in recent months and in the last weeks in fact. People can bring their local conflict to a wide audience, and you need a totally different approach to that. So I think the geopolitical idea of joining NATO for the Czech Republic: it's clear. But the underlying questions about conflicts in the world are now quite different than they were ten years ago."
And for more information about those "alternatives to NATO " seminars being held in Prague this week, go to: http://www.ecn.cz/eapraha
For more info on the European Contact Group: http://www.ecg.ecn.cz
