To paraphrase US military commander Omar Bradley, we continue to know more about war than about peace, more about killing than about living.  Our world is one of military giants (in his case nuclear military giants) and ethical infants. 

We work assiduously on militarisation and only fleetingly, if at all on its related ethics. The list is depressingly familiar – the US, China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, the UK and Germany.  So, too the list of the most recent and devastating impacts – Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Gaza, Ethiopia, sub-Saharan Africa …

Each of the world’s nine nuclear-armed countries is now spending more than ever before with an increase of 13% in 2023 alone to a record $US91.4 billion. This is equivalent to €2,700 per second.

Overall military spending per person is now at its highest since 1990, at US$285 for every person on the globe, including children. 

Despite constant assurances to the contrary, it seems that the more we weaponise and militarise, the more insecure we become. There appears to be a forever inverse relationship between the ideas, hardware and finances for conflict and war and those available for or committed to peace. 

Increasingly, peacebuilding and peace initiatives are deemed a sign of weakness whereas bearing ever-increasing arms becomes the symbol of assumed strength. We wage war in the name of peace while describing weapons of offence as weapons of defence.    

The sheer cost is truly immense as well as being actually and potentially devastating for all, and not just those immediately impacted or threatened.

The astronomical cost of our militarism and our weaponry – estimated at US$2,443 billion at the start of 2024 – is nonchalantly dismissed. The associated human death toll could be as high as 600,000+ since 2020, before we even add in the full indirect human costs. 

Our ‘defence’ spending refuses to acknowledge that bombs kill ever before they explode as a result of the human development needs and opportunities foregone, ignored or cast aside. And now the environmental impact of the military-industrial complex is finally becoming fully apparent.

Narrowly defined ‘security’ is back in fashion as a dominant watchword. Security seems to be invoked everywhere and every time, except in reality. Ensuring ‘security’ dominates and pervades our lives and choices especially in highly militarised societies. ‘Security’ justifies everything and anything.

Security has become a state of permanent readiness for war as well as its legitimisation and normalisation. The concepts become intertwined reinforcing, transforming and relentlessly feeding off each other. We continue to ignore the evident dangers of a highly militarised state as, for example, in the US following 9/11 or Israel or Russia currently.

And we continue to give our militaries and our weapons manufacturers a free pass when it comes to even basic accountability. The US-based Quincy Institute calculated the 2022 level of Pentagon waste at US $778 billion and its general spending levels as ‘unnecessary and irrational’.

The US military remains the world’s largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels and like the vast majority of armies worldwide is not held accountable for its environmental impact – almost all militaries are spared even calculating yet alone reporting on such impacts.

Military agendas were made exempt from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol emission targets and the US won an exemption from emission limits for ‘bunker’ fuels (dense, heavy fuel oil consumed by naval vessels) and all greenhouse gas emissions from military operations worldwide demonstrating a reckless disregard concern for the impact of militaries on its own personnel, on impacted communities and on climate.

China, the UK, Germany and almost all countries offer their militaries similar free passes.  The military response to climate change has often been encapsulated in the astounding slogan ‘more fight, less fuel’. 

To even raise these questions routinely generates claims of naivety, idealism, deviousness and even worse.  Yet the dangers of uncontrolled and extremist militarism are everywhere apparent.  So too, our obsession with its glorification. 

As in many previous times in human history, we badly need to revisit the issue, to search for a new language and conceptualisation of its impact on society and the planet.  Above all, we need to revisit and redefine a different path to real and substantive security. 

Redesigned treaties, managed reductions, active and supported institutions and protocols for security in support of a managed transition away from today’s military extremism are but first yet vital steps. 

But first, we need to repeat, over and over that key word … enough.