Tag Archives: Militarism

Billy King: Rites Again, 332

Billy King, Nonviolent News, , , , ,

Billy King shares his monthly thoughts

Hello again, summer doesn’t be long in going in, and before you know it again it is autumn and those autumn schedules. Well, the mysteries of time have still to be properly unravelled and all we can do is make the most of the time it is and the time we have. But I hope you had a pleasant time of it and time out over the summer. And it’s time for my first Colm of the autumn….

All the presidents, men and women

The post of President of Ireland comes up for filling in November as Michael D finishes his second term – with a presidential election before then. Let’s hope we get someone at least half as good. It is a largely symbolic role but that symbolism took on a much more dynamic character under Mary Robinson, the first woman president, elected in 1990, and it was built on by Mary McAleese and Michael D Higgins himself (he who, when Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht was the subject of a Saw Doctors’ song “Michael D, Michael D, Up on your bikeldy, Michael D Higgins, Up in the Dáil…..”) While party political support has been important in the victory of the last three presidents, most voters have looked for more than that.

Prior to Mary Robinson the role of president was essentially for retired – and tired – political figures though the very first President, Douglas Hyde, was primarily an academic and Irish language advocate, and significantly, a Protestant (as was Erskine Childers, president from 1973 until be died in 1974). Eamon de Valera was president for two full terms (1959-73), way past when he was physically capable of playing the role – he was 90 and in very poor health for some time when he retired (the exiting Michael D is 84 but still energetic enough). The ‘Hernia’ satirical page at the back of ‘Hibernia’ magazine marked Dev’s 90th birthday with the headline “De Valera at 90” and below that “Vroom, vroom, vroom!”

As to who will emerge as next president, well, the game is quite open and many names are floated but with intense scrutiny of candidates these days, their deeds and misdeeds, and it being easy to slag someone off, it is a brave or foolhardy person to put their name forward (I put Michael Flatley and Conor McGregor in the latter category of ‘foolhardy’, both unlikely to get the necessary support to appear on the ballot paper, and McGregor a civil case defined rapist – no thank you to him even being on the ballot paper).

Heather Humphreys, a former Fine Gael TD and Minister, is emerging as the likely candidate from the Fine Gael stable and as a Monaghan Prod, her grandfather signed the 1912 Unionist Solemn League and Covenant, she would be an interesting choice and a conservative with relatively broad support. However from a progressive peace and neutrality point of view it would be impossible to beat the credentials and views of Catherine Connolly, Galway West TD, and a plain spoken supporter of equality, inclusion and both peace and neutrality and opposition to NATO. It is all to play for yet.

Discerning the truth got rather more difficult

Two British colonels were captured by the Russians while on the ground directing Ukrainian military operations. This story started circulating some weeks ago and names and a picture were provided. There was just one problem with this story. It wasn’t true and the picture was a poor AI generated image. The names provided didn’t appear anywhere on British military records.

The first thing to say is that the story could have been true. What various western countries are doing to support Ukraine, beyond the obvious, is anybody’s guess. And if you look at what the British state got up to in Northern Ireland during the Troubles – within its own jurisdiction – then anything is possible; running a list of agents as long as a plethora of arms (or armaments?) with many of them recruited, presumably, through blackmail, even running a laundry, the Four Square Laundry, to gather intelligence when picking up and dropping off, and, handily, to be able to test clothes for any incriminating evidence; the Military Intelligence Museum website refers to it only covering ‘catholic’ areas. And to quote another account ““We were not there to act like an army unit, we were there to act like a terror group,” said one unidentified former member of the MRF* who didn’t disclose his name out of concerns for his safety.” https://www.coffeeordie.com/article/four-square-laundry-service *British Army unit the Military Reaction Force.

The old saying of truth being the first casualty in war is true as far as it goes but civilians including children are first, and probably last, casualties too. Propaganda is nothing new, e.g. at the start of the First World War stories about the Germans butchering Belgian babies (the label ‘Catholic’ added for Irish benefit) – there were German atrocities but magnified well beyond the truth by the Allies. But with social media just one person can start a lie/rumour and it can go viral very fast.

But let’s look at the above story about the colonels. Suppose there were British colonels captured by the Russians while fighting with Ukraine. Suppose they were secret agents who, while previously openly in the military had been ‘retired’ and given new identities. Suppose when they were captured the British secret services deliberately manufactured dodgy looking AI images of them so any discerning person would immediately assume the story was false. The possibilities are endless, particularly in the era of social media and AI.

We know some of the dastardly deeds that Russian forces and the Russian state get up to in Ukraine. But we also know that the Nord Stream gas pipelines sabotage in the Baltic in 2022, initially blamed on the Russians, was done by others (e.g. pro-Ukrainian). We simply don’t get to hear about all the activities the US, UK and NATO are doing to destabilise Russia, and you can be sure they are at it. We hear in the likes of the mainstream Irish media about the presence of dodgy Russian ships around the seas of Ireland – but not about dodgy NATO ones, here or around Russia We are fed only a fraction of the picture and propaganda gets more sophisticated all the time. And in some ways like in Russia, most people don’t read between the lines.

Discerning the truth has got more difficult and requires time, thought and investigation…but with social media a story like the British colonels one can get legs and be over the horizon before we have cottoned on that it is fake.

Unionist support for British militarism

I find it sad the way Northern unionists, the vast majority anyway, support British militarism without question. I know unionism tends to be right of centre but it seems obsessive to me. There are many positive British values that could be actively supported like Nye Bevan’s universal health service policy (not his anti-anti-nuclearism of 1957!) or some British policies and practice on multiculturalism (now seemingly in a sad state), and lots of British culture worth immersing in. Going back in time the DUP wanted Cruise missiles based in Norn Iron cos Britain was getting them. It all seems so sad in a society which suffered from armed conflict for three decades from around 1969 onwards – how can you wish what was inflicted on you on people in other countries and in much greater measure?

Unhelpfully in a variety of ways, it seems British politicians of all shades regularly use arms production in Northern Ireland as a means try to keep unionists sweet. For example, Ben Lowry reported, and commented on (News Letter online 16/8/25), a visit by Rachel Reeves, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, where she is quoted “Ms Reeves said: “Northern Ireland is brimming with talent and ambition, from cutting-edge film studios to world-class defence manufacturing.” She said that the investments she announced were a “turning point”, adding: “Every pound we invest here supports good jobs, strengthens our economy, and boosts the United Kingdom’s standing on the world stage, with Northern Ireland at its heart.”

Ben Lowry went on to say “Last year, the influential centre-right think tank, Policy Exchange which is based in Westminster, issue a report that said that Northern Ireland is key to addressing the UK’s security concerns. The document called for the UK government to expand its naval and air presence in NI for “maritime patrol missions against Russian intrusion”. It also urged the UK and its regional partners to unite and “up the ante” in pressing Dublin to do its “fair share for collective security”. The then prime minister Rishi Sunak said that he would be “delighted” to examine the report and added: “I have seen, with my own visits, the vital role that Northern Ireland is playing through the location of firms like Thales and Harland and Wolff.” “

Lowry went on, in the typical militarist and British right wing fashion, to accuse the Republic of “defence freeloading”. Yes, the Republic should be doing much more on international peace and security but certainly not by dishonestly ending the Triple Lock on deployment of troops and getting as close to NATO as it possible can. Ireland’s role is ( = should be) to be a peace builder and peace maker – not a bit part player in the militarisation games of NATO and the EU. Security for Ireland comes from building peace not upping the militarist ante. And there is such a thing, in military related terminology, as ‘non-offensive defence’, aside from the possibilities of civilian based defence and planned nonviolent resistance which the 2023 Irish state-run Consultative Forum on International Security Policy refused to examine.

Flegs again

Flags including national flags can mean many things. The feeling is very different between a flag placed outside a house in a Nordic country for someone’s birthday and a flag – mainly loyalist but to some extent republican* ones too, in Norn Iron. Being resident in Norn Iron I felt (uncomfortably) ‘right at home’ when visiting the West Bank/Palestine some years ago and seeing the Star of David flags of Israeli settlers. Both tend to be marking territory, or claiming territory, in a not too subtle way. * While Irish tricolour flags are used in Northern Ireland, also to claim territory and proclaim identity, there isn’t the same culture of blanket flag raising on the Catholic/Nationalist side of the house.

While we should all be internationalists first, and nationalists with a very small ‘n’ second, pride in one’s country can be a positive thing – pride in ‘our’ culture and traditions – though not all traditions are pride-worthy and we need to be critical where ‘our’ country falls short on equality, human rights and relating to the world. Right wing nationalism and ethno-nationalism have been making strides and not just in the West – think of Hindu ethno- or religious nationalism in India.

And now we have the Northern Irelandisation of England with Union and especially St George’s flegs going up in abundance. Of course this is denied to be a racist action, and for some people they may not see it that way, but the overall effect is certainly that – England for ‘the English’, and that defined in a narrow way. For the far right it is a way to move their agenda forward in a seemingly ‘acceptable’ way. The pictures make me feel it is just like the oppressiveness of Norn Iron political culture.

Meanwhile the report of a commission on ways forward on issues to do with flags, emblems, culture and tradition in the North, with some very sensible analysis, has sat firmly and securely on the shelf since its completion in 2019 and publication in 2021. See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-59266116 and https://www.executiveoffice-ni.gov.uk/publications/commission-flags-identity-culture-and-tradition-final-report It is another unfortunate illustration of the ineffectiveness of the Stormont Assembly on many issues where the 2+ sides can’t agree, and even some where they could if they faced reality (e.g. acting effectively to save Lough Neagh).

A flag on display is not a neutral object, it is an object that can be used in a thousand different ways. Overall I wish the support for fleg waving would flag. Some of the answers are blowing in the wind. But the issues involved, like flags left up for some time, leave society in the North ragged, torn and dishevelled, and stuck up a pole with difficulty in getting down.

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Well there we go, that’s me for now and I hope you are prepared physically and mentally for autumn and winter and whatever they throw at you, which I hope won’t be too much. And however mad Ireland is you can be sure there are at least as bizarre, or bizarrer [That’s not a word – Ed] [It is now, say it out loud cos it sounds a bit bizarre – Billy] things going on elsewhere, like the guy in England arrested for sporting a ‘Plasticine Action’ t-shirt after the banning of Palestine Action under terrorism legislation – doesn’t sound like the police were modelling very good behaviour……or shooting the messenger when D Trump fired the head of an official US statistics bureau when he didn’t like the job figures given…..there are lies, damn lies, and Donald Trump.

September can still be a very pleasant month, weatherwise, in our neck of the woods, and with global warming winters aren’t as cold as they use to be either. In the damp cold of an Irish winter you may not notice too much difference though. Anyway, it is only the start of autumn, and there is plenty of time for you can catch a falling leaf and put it in your pocket, save it for a rainy day (to marvel at its construction and the passing seasons). Meanwhile International Day of Peace comes up on 21st September and International Day of Nonviolence on 2nd October – a useful hook to hang an event on if you are thinking of anything. I’ll be back next month with another dose of thoughts, until then, Billy. l

NATO – an analysis

Nonviolent News, Readings, ,

INNATE Introduction

The Irish government’s plan to ditch the Triple Lock on the deployment of Irish troops overseas is actually part of a plan That Dare Not Say Its Name. It is to fully sign up to an EU army, for the EU to become (even more of) a world power, and the perpetual mantra that Irish neutrality is unaffected in all of this is, of course, a dirty lie. NATO membership is clearly out in terms of public opinion in the Republic but to the powers that be that does not matter since a) Ireland is closely integrated, and becoming even more so,with NATO through its ‘Partnership for Peace’, and b) the EU is effectively the western European arm of NATO. Meanwhile some suggest that a united Ireland, if it comes about, should be in NATO, a dangerous non sequitur just because the North is already in it through being part of the UK.

What follows is a review article by Ann Garrison on a book by Medea Benjamin and David Swanson about NATO https://orbooks.com/catalog/nato-what-you-need-to-know/ The article originally appeared in Black Agenda Report https://www.blackagendareport.com/nato-was-founded-crush-communist-socialist-and-anti-colonial-movements-worldwide but we came upon in in Transcend Media (Medea!) Service https://www.transcend.org/tms/2025/04/nato-was-founded-to-crush-communist-socialist-and-anti-colonial-movements-worldwide/

NATO was founded to crush communist, socialist, and anti-colonial movements worldwide

By Ann Garrison

Medea Benjamin and David Swanson explain NATO’s supremely violent history in “NATO: What you need to know”.

The organization was born on April 4, 1949, when foreign ministers from 12 nations came together in Washington, D.C. to sign the 1100-page North Atlantic Treaty. Its original members were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The treaty proclaimed its commitment to peace and the principles of the UN Charter, but “the real glue that brought NATO countries together was opposition to communism and socialism.”

It was created not only to counter the USSR, but also to defeat European communist and socialist movements and crush revolutionary, anti-colonial struggles. At the time of its founding, Britain, France, Belgium, and Portugal were waging vicious campaigns to try to hold on to their African colonies.

The USSR didn’t create the Warsaw Pact until six years later, in May 1955, in response to NATO. The previous year, it had actually asked to join, fearing the revival of German militarism, which had cost between 20 and 30 million Russian lives in World War 2. A shared commitment to preventing another war in Europe, regardless of ideological differences, could of course have changed history, averting the nuclear arms race, but that would have undermined NATO’s fundamental purpose.

“NATO also had an economic purpose,” Benjamin and Swanson write. “In its founding ‘Strategic Concept’ paper, NATO conceived the integration of its members to be ‘not just military, but also political, economic, and psychological. NATO countries were expected to disseminate an anti-communist worldview and to promote pro-capitalist, free trade economies.’”

No nation could join NATO without privatizing its economy. In 1997, then Senator Joe Biden told Poland that it would have to privatize its large state-owned enterprises like banks, the energy sector, the state airline, the state copper producer, and the state telecommunications monopoly.

US political leaders before Donald Trump have complained about NATO members not carrying their weight financially, but the alliance has fortified US economic interests favoring privatization, dollar hegemony, and prevention of bilateral trade agreements between member nations and the Soviet Union and then Russia. Europe accordingly acquiesced to US destruction of the Nordstream2 pipeline.

The weapons manufacturers of NATO nations, most of all those of the US, have also greatly benefited by sales to other NATO members, as have Israel’s. A section of the book on NATO and Israel details their exchange of military technologies.

Nations like Romania were made to understand that they could join only after making huge purchases of US weapons.

NATO expansion after the collapse of the Soviet Union

In 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the people of NATO nations all expected a peace dividend that of course never came. Instead of disbanding, NATO grew from its original 12 members to 32. In keeping with its founding ideology, it requires applicants to practice liberal democracy and market economy and contribute to NATO’s military operations.

Expansion actually met some resistance within the US foreign policy establishment, including the US Senate, with concerns ranging from increased costs, military over-extension overseas, and the consequences of poisoning relations with Russia by adding former Soviet nations.

Expansionists, however, always prevailed. The dissolution of the USSR eliminated the ideological competition, but the US drive for global hegemony proceeded apace. NATO, with its European junior partners, cloaked it in the seemingly moral guise of “the international community.”

Russia asked several more times to join NATO, but that was out of the question because it could not have been expected to subject itself to US military command, as the USA’s European partners dutifully did. “Every NATO member nation is required to serve under U.S. command during NATO wars, whereas the U.S. military has never agreed to obey any other nation’s command.”

Promises to expand toward Russia’s borders were never codified in a formal military treaty, but according to declassified US, Soviet, German, British, and French documents posted in the National Security Archive at George Washington University, Western leaders gave multiple assurances not to expand to the USSR’s borders to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and 1991.

All those promises were of course broken, and despite the advice of prominent foreign policy experts, Bill Clinton aggressively pursued NATO enlargement and expansion. When Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic joined in 1999, NATO made its way right up against Russia’s borders.

In 2004, it admitted seven more countries: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Albania and Croatia followed in 2009, Montenegro in 2017, and North Macedonia in 2020.

Prominent US government officials, and Vladimir Putin, all warned that this would eventually lead to confrontation with Russia, as it ultimately did, so far by proxy, in Ukraine.

The Ukraine War united more of Europe behind NATO, with formerly neutral Finland joining in 2023, Sweden in 2024, and both countries’ weapons industries benefiting as a result.

Finland had already sent troops to join NATO in Afghanistan, and Sweden had participated in NATO missions in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. Swedish fighter jets and support planes took part in the bombing and covert invasion of Libya in 2011.

“Against whom is this expansion intended?” Vladimir Putin asked. “And what happened to the assurances our Western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?”

The answer seemed to be, again, that Russia could not have been expected to subordinate its military to US command. NATO and the military industries also needed enemies, as they now have in both Russia and China.

NATO’s history of aggression

NATO’s presentation of itself as a defensive pact has always been a lie. “Its readiness to act as a junior partner in U.S. aggression,” Benjamin and Swanson write, “poses an implicit threat of devastating military violence to any countries involved in international disputes with the United States or other NATO members.”

They recount the sordid history of the US/NATO and its junior European partners, which, with Russia in disarray, waged war on Yugoslavia, a nominally socialist nation and leader of the Non-Aligned Movement. The propaganda campaign about humanitarian intervention to stop ethnic persecution became a blueprint for future illegal bombing campaigns like those in Libya and Syria. “What U.S. leaders took away from their ‘success’ in Kosovo was that legality, humanity, and truth are no match for CIA-manufactured chaos and lies, and they doubled down on that strategy to plunge the U.S. and the world into endless war, with a subservient NATO along for the ride.”

Although there was some division over the US War on Iraq, unity emerged behind the destruction of Libya, which, like Iraq, Syria, and Iran, had nationalized its oil resources. “Altogether, 14 NATO countries took part in the war on Libya, along with Sweden, Jordan, Qatar, and the UAE.”

Destroying Libya was in keeping with NATO’s founding goal of crushing anti-colonial movements because Gaddafi had used his oil wealth to provide free health care and education to his people, fund projects to give African countries more control of their natural resources, and co-found the African Union, envisioning it as a military alliance and common market with a single currency.

A white organization with junior “partners” of color

Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty limits new members of NATO to European nations that are invited by NATO to join it, but it has junior partners of color. Its Mediterranean Dialogue includes Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia, and its Istanbul Cooperation Initiative includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Its “Partners Across the Globe” include Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. These include some of the most brutal, authoritarian, oppressive, and dictatorial regimes on the planet, making a farce of NATO’s claim to be defending democracy and human rights around the world.

In a chapter on NATO and international law, Benjamin and Swanson make it clear that NATO, and most of all the US, have never respected it, but that they maintain a pretense of global citizenship by acting in coalition, aka as a gang: “If attacking Yugoslavia or Afghanistan or Libya is illegal, then it remains illegal even if you bring together a big gang of governments to do it with you.”

In a chapter on NATO and nuclear weapons, they make it clear that NATO, again with the US in the lead, have thoroughly disregarded every attempt at nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.

Throughout the book they make the point that NATO, a US-dominated military alliance that threatens life on earth, is an unelected body accountable to no one. Its workings and decisions are anything but transparent and far from the eyes of citizens who elect the leaders of its members.

Alternatives

“Ukraine,” Benjamin and Swanson write, “is being treated as a sacrifice zone, and Finland should expect nothing else.” That makes further escalation sound like a grim inevitability, but, as longtime peace activists, they of course offer alternatives. These include pushing for adherence to global treaties, military and nuclear divestment movements, and nonviolent civilian resistance.

Montenegro, for example, set out to build an enormous NATO training ground, far too large for the entire military of Montenegro, but local residents put their bodies on the line as human shields to prevent it. “They organized events, handed in petitions, put up billboards, met with government officials, marched, protested, and—as of this moment—seem to have finally succeeded in eliminating the plans to destroy their mountain plateau for NATO.”

This battle, they point out, was waged on environmental and cultural grounds, and there are many such battles to be waged against NATO. Its member nations’ claims to be on the forefront of battling climate change could not be more hypocritical, given the carbon costs of its wars.

However, with the Doomsday clock closer to midnight than ever, the battle against NATO’s very existence and its trajectory is a battle for life itself.

Military Expenditures as a Percentage of GDP: A 100% Indefensible and Stupid Idea, by Jan Oberg

Nonviolent News, Readings, , ,

INNATE introduction:

Military expenditure is going up whether that be Ireland, the UK, Europe in general, or elsewhere, and various people, including Donald Trump and NATO, set particular (and ridiculous) target figures for others to pay on expenditure as a percentage of GDP. While the Irish government wants to ramp up expenditure considerably there is as yet no attempt to set a percentage target – but that is likely to come in time if Ireland gets closer and closer to NATO and involvement in an EU army.

As Jan Oberg shows in the following piece, this is a nonsense. There is no strategic analysis of risk. In Ireland’s case the government cries ‘wolf’ without proving what risks exist. And, coming from a nonviolent standpoint, there is no examination of what a ‘defensive defence’ might involve let alone consideration of nonviolent civilian defence – the latter being something which the 2023 ‘Consultative Forum on International Security Policy’ refused to consider. This is both morally and intellectually bankrupt. However the ‘percentage of GDP’ argument should be lambasted for what it is; a crude mechanism for bolstering militarism. Now if we had percentage targets for building peace, for establishing social justice at home and abroad, and for providing all citizens with adequate, affordable housing – that would indeed make sense.

by Jan Oberg

For years, NATO’s capacity goal has been for all its members to spend 2% of their GDP on the military. To many, this would be a ceiling, but according to ex-SG Jens Stoltenberg, from the Madrid Summit in 2022 onwards, it was the floor.

This goal is a splendid indicator of the frighteningly low intellectual level on which the alliance and the Western world, in general, operate today – intellectual and moral disarmament coupled with militarist re-armament.

Why?

A defence budget shall be determined by a serious, multi-dimensional and future-oriented analysis based on a series of more or less likely scenarios: What are we challenged by the next x number of years?

Next follows a matching of probability and capacity: Threats that are too big for a country’s capacity to do something about – like being hit by nuclear weapons – or threats that are too unlikely are separated and dropped. So are threats/challenges that are too small to worry about.

Then the threat analysis is left with credible, probable future threats within a resource spectrum that the country in question can do something about. It’s based on such a detailed analysis that a government presents its threat analysis and seeks to allocate, or re-allocate, its resources to achieve optimal security given its resources.

This is the way it was done up until the end of the First Cold War. One could agree or disagree with various governments’ threat analyses and priorities, but they were published in studies of hundreds of pages, were put out for public debate and then – as long as the West practised democracy – decisions were made.

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But what are NATO countries doing today?

They drop all this – intellectually demanding – analytical work based on numerous types of civilian and military expertise and simply set off X% of their GDP no matter what kinds of threats there are in the real world.

Mindbogglingly, they tie their military expenditures to their economic performance: If GDP increases, then military spending grows proportionately! If the GDP slides down, defence expenditures will do so, too, regardless of the perceived or actual threat environment.

It’s like setting off a certain percentage of the family income to health expenditures whether or not any family member is ill.

And absurdly, it is actually a de-coupling of adversaries: We have more to fight Russia and China with whether or not they de facto behave as adversaries. In the long run it will end in the West sinking deeper and deeper into economic crisis – and with a steadily diminished economic performance, there will – according to this counterproductive idea – be less available to the military and warfare.

The more the West spends on militarism, the more its civilian performance and power will decrease, and the less there will be for ‘security.’ But our kakistocratic militarists don’t even think that far!

NATO’s original Military Expenditures As Percentage of GDP idea is a reflection of the Western delusional idea applied in many other fields that, when there is a problem, we set off funds to solve it and pump those funds into a system, whether or not that system is functioning, functioning optimally – or not at all.

In other words, money has become the measure of problem-solving capacity and quality; changes, reforms or completely new thinking and structural reform don’t even enter the equation.

Qualities are expressed in quantitative terms. And it is the end of thinking and common sense.

The 2% goal was meaningless from Day One – Intellectual dwarfs bought it and used it again and again over the last decade or so.

Threats to a country do not move up and down according to that country’s economy. Such thinking points to the intellectual inside-the-box stagnation of an old organisation.

President Trump has just increased it to 5%. When will it be 10% in this incredibly unproductive and parasitic sector that I call the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex, MIMAC ? It is the cancer that eats up civilian creativity, innovation and socio-economic development and militarises us to death – while the rest of the world is whizzing along and surpassing the West.

Be sure that the higher the percentage figure gets, the faster NATO countries’ civilian economy will sink into an even deeper crisis – because the economist’s First Law is that you cannot eat the cake and have it too.

The fact that no one – except this author – has addressed this Military Expenditures As % of GDP as intellectual BS – is, in and of itself, a threat to world security. Where rational, intelligent thinking goes out, militarism and war seep in.

With Trump in the White House, the decline of the West will go even faster. That’s why he wants a Greater American from Panama to the largest possible part of Scandinavia (with 47 US bases) and Arctic.

There may come a day when Europe sees fit to open up to Russia, China, and all the other ‘bad’ guys – if they want to have anything to do with Europe. I mean, with friends like Trump and his greater America – perhaps out of NATO and 5% of economic wealth wasted completely – who will need to point to old enemies in the future?

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Prof. Jan Oberg, Ph.D. is director of the independent Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research in Sweden and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment. This article is taken from the weekly digest of Transcend Media Service for 27 January 2025 https://www.transcend.org/tms/2025/01/military-expenditures-as-a-percentage-of-gdp-a-100-indefensible-and-stupid-idea/

Editorial: ‘They’ haven’t gone away, you know

Editorials, Nonviolent News, ,

Although coming at it from very different angles, both peace activists of the nonviolent persuasion and paramilitaries view the legitimacy of state sanctioned violence as inadequate. Those of the nonviolent persuasion do not go along with the legitimacy of state sanctioned lethal force whereas paramilitaries feel that military-type action outside of the state is legitimate. Nonviolent activists would view both state sanctioned violence and paramilitary violence as immoral and/or unnecessary.

That is not to say that state forces should not be held to higher account than paramilitaries. In the North, the announcement of a long promised tribunal of enquiry to look at the circumstances of Pat Finucane’s killing had a reaction from some on the unionist and loyalist side that this was favouritism to republicans and discrimination against other victims. Leaving aside the fact that Pat Finucane as a lawyer represented loyalists as well as republicans, the state had long ago promised an enquiry, a promise it continually reneged on, and the particular circumstances of his murder – with very considerable issues of both state collusion and parliamentary ‘fingering’ of him – fully justifies such an enquiry.

More general questions of the legacy of violence remain, by paramilitaries as well as state. How do we deal with the very real issues for survivors and families of victims? Certainly not by sweeping it all under the carpet as the last British Conservative government tried to do with its Legacy Act (in order to protect former British soldiers and the state). The extent to which current Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn is moving away from that model is still being defined – and challenged.

However paramilitarism and militarism are still major issues in the North. Small republican paramilitary groups still exist and could pose a threat to individuals but they have very little support. However some loyalist paramilitary infrastructure has continued unbroken through the peace process and beyond; it is estimated that there are still well over ten thousand members of loyalist paramilitaries which is a lot – the PSNI has 6,300 officers and 2,200 support staff, in total certainly below the number of loyalist paramilitaries.

The extent to which loyalist paramilitaries are involved in extortion (such as protection rackets) and drug dealing varies but is very significant and a continuing blight on the North. There have been various attempts, more carrots than sticks, to encourage paramilitaries out of crime and militarism but they have largely been unsuccessful and there is also a certain amount of incredulity that, two and a half decades after the Good Friday Agreement, they still exist and still recruit. It is estimated that up to a third of organised crime has paramilitary links. The carrots and sticks need to have a time limit.

The failure of loyalism to gain political traction, in the way Sinn Féin did for republicanism, is certainly regarded as one factor in loyalist paramilitaries having a niche – while the DUP has often had an ambiguous relationship with militant and military loyalism, it cannot be regarded as adequately representing working class loyalism (e.g. on school selection where working class Protestant boys are the lowest achievers). But other factors are simply power, greed, and fear for the future of Northern Ireland.

A recent independent pro-unionist report from the ‘Northern Ireland Development Group’ addressed this whole issue. There are difficulties, obviously, and the report called for more carrots and sticks. Some of the authors stated “A clear distinction between ex-combatants, community workers and criminals is needed to bolster loyalists who are trying to move on, and to distinguish between them and those who want to use fear to maintain their own reputations and self-serving advantage.” (Irish Times 11/10/24). The attention given to the Loyalist Communities Council, representing the views of a variety of paramilitary groups, by some ministers has also caused anger; however it should be a question of what attention is given to them but whether what they say is justified – and you cannot attempt to ‘bring people in from the cold’ by ignoring them.

On a wider scale we need to challenge both paramilitarism and militarism. They might not be two sides of the same coin but they are both stuck in the same hole. Paramilitary and guerrilla fighters (a k a ‘terrorists) typically inflict harm and death in multiples of ten or a hundred; there are occasional exceptions such as 9/11 when the unit was thousands but that is not typical. Deaths and injuries from state forces are typically numbered in ten of thousands or even millions. And yet most of the time people accept the actions of states, even ones as egregious as Israel’s in Gaza where it has slaughtered upwards of 50,000 people and probably caused the deaths of several times that through the effects of the onslaught on health, nutrition, homelessness and fear.

Paramilitarism takes a military model and uses it for its own purposes within a state. Militarism threatens the globe, directly and indirectly through death, misuse of resources, its major contribution to global heating and pollution, and so on including the very real risk of nuclear annihilation. Humanity needs to move on. There are alternatives but militarism, with its associated symbols of statehood, appeal to politicians (and many other people besides) and they fail to even comprehend that there are alternatives, or examine what these are.

The possibilities of nonviolence are endless. They do require work and people but their costs would be tiny compared to the cost of armies and militarism. When will we start to learn?