War

The Weakness of National Military Strength
Wednesday 23 September 2009
by: Lawrence S. Wittner, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

During 2008, the nations of the world spent nearly $1.5 trillion on their military forces. That is what has been reported by the highly respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which noted that the five biggest spenders were the United States ($607 billion), China ($85 billion), France ($66 billion), Britain ($65 billion) and Russia ($59 billion). Adjusted for inflation, the total represents an increase of 45 percent in military expenditures over the past decade.

And so the game of national military "defense" continues, despite clear indications of its negative consequences.

One consequence is a vast diversion of national resources from meeting basic human needs. As President Dwight Eisenhower stated in 1953: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

Another consequence is the undermining of democracy. In the eighteenth century, America's founding fathers were deeply troubled by the prospect of "Caesarism" - the rise of military strongmen who would seize power and stamp out democratic government. Since then, there have been plenty of military takeovers, and not only in the distant past. Among the most notorious of the modern military officers who overthrew democratic governments and set up bloody dictatorships were Francisco Franco in Spain, Anastasio Somoza Garcia in Nicaragua, Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, Mobutu Sese Seko in the Congo, Georgios Papadopoulos in Greece, Suharto in Indonesia and Augusto Pinochet in Chile. One of the most repressive regimes in power today was established by Burma's military officers. Only this June, a military coup ousted the democratically elected president of Honduras.

The most obvious weakness of national military preparedness is that it often fails to protect nations from the war and destruction it is supposed to prevent. Despite high levels of military might, nations have been fighting wars for centuries, bringing them to the brink of ruin. Of what value was it to the nations fighting World War I that, in the prewar years, they had been armed to the teeth? Did their weaponry avert war? Might it not even have encouraged that conflict? Was victory in the great "War to End War" that much better than defeat?
Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/092309T