09 July 2025 – Militarism— the glorification, endless expansion and aggressive use of military power and armed violence—is making us all deeply insecure. Just as pollutants and changes in the oxygen level affect us imperceptibly until they become extreme, militarism has insidiously grown to pose an existential risk for humanity.
Instead of economies grounded in peaceful trade and collaboration, militarism spawns ‘permanent war’ economies such as in the US (40% of global military spending, 800 military bases in more than 70 countries), China (the world’s second-largest military budget, increasing for a decade), Russia (military spending over 6% of GDP in 2025), West Asia and Africa (where many countries are awash in weapons and unspeakable violence) and now the EU and NATO, embarking on the largest rearmament since World War II. While Europeans have legitimate concerns due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the EU total military budget is already three times that of Russia, and just increasing that spending is the kind of simple but misleading idea that militarism propagates without any evidence of a positive impact on collective security, rather the contrary.
Budgets exempted from austerity lure young minds, inflate private profits and distort the role of universities by incentivising participation in weapons research and development. The media frequently normalise atrocious weapons, offer polarised narratives, obscure history and vilify ‘unredeemable’ enemies. Remarkably, they never ask for accountability for the military debacles that have littered the world since World War II.
Militarism has enormous impacts on people, as now unprecedentedly conveyed on social media. This is so even long after conflict, through disease, disabilities and the breakdown of families. Militarism affects democracy: coups d’etat, dictatorships, disappearances, torture and systemic abuses plague countries, while endless ‘states of exception’ justify illegal operations at home and abroad. Secrecy is essential to militarism. Classified information is for the few who maintain a near monopoly on means of lethality, surveillance and control. The hidden ties between military activities, secret services and the underworld of drug and arms traffickers are profound.
Militarism is also essential for the plunder of nature, securing the extraction of resources to suit corporations and powerful countries and sectors. Wars, coups and repressions often take place in areas rich in oil and gas, minerals and rare earths, fertile soils and timber. By repressing dissent, militarism generates and reproduces oligarchic power systems and grotesque economic inequalities.
Militarism affects all future generations. Via lobbying and corruption, resources are siphoned from food and water security, public health, education and all dimensions of wellbeing and cultural diversity, let alone diplomacy and preventing irreversible damage to nature. The military-industrial complex supported by pervasive financial, media and political interests is self-justified, self-sustaining and self-regenerating. It may ultimately deliver humanity’s annihilation by nuclear war and nuclear winter – by design, human error or technical malfunction. Imperialism and colonialism repeatedly show patterns of military gambles and political corruption that generate immense misery for the many and fortunes for the few. Yet, today’s stakes are unprecedented: militarism is an existential risk for humanity.
As the Earth is impoverished, people massacred and militarism rewards its supporters, a huge gap increasingly separates the super-rich from the deprived billions. The super-rich believe the folly that they will be saved. Those with more experience, or heart, insist that all should be saved. But how? How may we reverse the waste, violence and greed amplified and sustained by militarism?
A first act of liberation is becoming aware of the ‘fog of militarism’. Early on, our family, ethnicity and country softly coach us into separate groups (classes, religions, orientalisms…) justifying ‘defence’ against threats by the ‘others’. Later, our consent is manufactured by education, media, entertainment and political discourse and reinforced by the material conditions of inequality (disciplinary systems, jobs) and power (political decisions, covert operations, financial might). The hegemonic culture of militarism is a pollutant in all the air we breathe.
We should not naively believe that conflicts can disappear. Nor that the hubris of militarism delivers security. Real security requires systemic change. Humans have a potential for violence, but also for mutual aid and collaboration. Let us highlight it by focusing education on collective interests and the power of organising; by demanding transparency and accountability in domestic politics; by insisting on diplomatic negotiations and reliance on international law in foreign affairs; by converting military to peaceful industries; by regulating financial markets for the common good; by requiring much stronger involvement of the workforce and the public in political decisions; by nourishing what makes our lives better— health services and theatres, rather than drones and bombs; by investing in true safety for future generations— from justice to climate change mitigation. Crucially, let us expose our huge and growing military budgets for what they are— profits for the few and misery for the many, now and in the future.
Militarism benefits powerful interests that use soft and hard power to constrain and convince us ‘sheeple’ of the need for perpetual conflict. Building upon public distaste for military spending, let us ostracise militarism and develop security for all parties via verified mutual disarmament, diplomacy, trade and cooperation. Our collective security rests upon human health and wellbeing, integrity of nature and institutions capable of cultivating peace. Let us make a collective leap of consciousness to liberate ourselves from the scourge of militarism. Let us strive for no limits to peace.
Influenced by conversations within the Elders for disarmament and the cultures of peace community.
