It is obvious that militarism undermines democracy. States where the ruler looks to the army are different from states where governments are formed by democratic support. Either might is right, or the people should have a say, and boot out the government and their views by voting the other way. In 1939 we had a World War against the aggressive militarism of Fascism in Germany, Italy, Japan and other countries, and thankfully Democracy won. Except it was never quite that simple. It did for decades in a lot of countries. But, Fascist militarism had had support at various levels in most countries of the world in the 1930s. It tended to go underground and hide in 1945 but it did not disappear. Moreover, in 1945 the United States became the dominant military, and arms producing, power in the world and has continued in that vein to the present, when it funds nearly half of all world military expenditure. In 1945 we though Democracy had won and Militarism had lost for ever, and now Democracy seems much more fragile and is disappearing fast, even in established democratic states, while militarism spreads everywhere. The obvious thesis is that MILITARISM IS STRANGLING DEMOCRACY. The old threat of do what I say or I’ll kill you is back in government around the world. Everyone should be thinking about it, but few are, because the military weave their webs of necessity by frightening us.

UGANDA AND CHINA

Let us take two examples. In Uganda at present an election is underway.  It is a wonderful country with great, friendly people. President Musevene is seeking re-election, even though he had said he would stand down. He was a General, sorting out the mess of General Amin, but democracy in this election is shadowed by the gun, and threats. It is controlled to produce the result the controller of the army wants. It will not be an open democratic election. The second example is China. Any understanding of Chinese history makes one aware of how much it has been sinned against by the West. The Opium Wars of the 19^th century and the annexation of Hong Kong and other territories for the West was naked colonialism. Last century the West, especially Britain, arming Japan, allowed Japan to invade and dominate China through the 1930s and then horrifically in WW2. Western post-war aggression in Korea and Vietnam and later made China legitimately defensive. It then emerged as not only the world’s most populous country, but also as the workplace of the world, exporting goods and equipment, as part of an integrated world economy. Yet, now, it relies heavily on selling and having arms, and has hostility to open democracy in Hong Kong and among other populations. It is threatened and threatens. The leader has entrenched himself in power around a military base, and China has become both militarised and a big seller of weapons.

AT LEAST HALF THE WORLD’S POPULATION IS UNDER NEAR MILITARY DICTATORSHIPS.

If we revue the big picture, there is a common pattern. Judgements may vary a bit, but the following states are military/autocratic dictatorships or near military dictatorships (in brackets) around the world. They are shown alongside their populations in millions. Of course, many states hold elections, but make sure they control them, as in Putin’s Russia. The military subdue the population and opposition. In the case of Saudi Arabia they carry bodies out of embassies in a suitcase. A tentative list includes: –  (China) 1439m, Russia 146m, Egypt 102m, (Pakistan) 221m (Brazil) 213m, (DRCongo) 90m, Iran 84m, Iraq 40m, Saudi Arabia 35m, Afghanistan39m, Algeria 44m, Angola33m, Azerbaijan 10m, Belarus 9m, Uzbekistan 33m, Burundi 12m, Cambodia 17m, Cameroon 27, Sudan44, South Sudan 11m, Somalia 16, (Nigeria) 206m, (Bangladesh) 165m, Vietnam 97m, Turkey 84m, Yemen 30m, Syria 18m, Venezuela 28m, Uganda 46m Thailand 70m. There are other countries that should be included. This is merely indicative that half the world’s population live more or less under military control.  But this is not the most disturbing part of the picture.

THE WEST HAS WEAPONISED THE WORLD..

The “West” sees itself as those who fight for Democracy or Freedom against Militarism. We are the Good Guys fighting against militarism. That message is pumped at us most days. Actually, a detached examination concludes that we, the “West”, have dominated militarism since 1945 and have sold weapons around the world on a vast scale to nearly everybody. It was a pro-active role; in the 50s the US military exaggerated the number of USSR bombers and missiles sometimes a hundred times in order to get the military growing. It also linked sales to aid in the post WW2 era to get its arms selling round the world. Similarly, Britain and France plied their colonies and ex colonies with weapons. During the Cold War both sides used the other to leverage their importance, until military costs brought down the USSR. Around 2000 two thirds of arms sales came from the democratic west and it is near that figure now. The US has 36% of world arms exports and Russia 21%.  China exports less than France or Germany. (2014-18 figures) More than this, the “Democratic” West now includes those to whom we sell weapons. We are pro Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Argentina, Libya, Egypt and other states to whom we sell weapons, but against them – perhaps – if they use them. Weapons, not democracy, dominates international politics and the effectiveness of the United Nations.

But it is worse even that this. Western “democratic states” have primed and started wars around weapons. Blair and Berlusconi did a deal with Gaddafi in Libya to sell weapons;  soon he was in a civil war and we were bombing him. Saddam bought weapons from the West, which was playing both sides in the Iran-Iraq War. When he could not pay the French for his weapons, he asked Kuwait for money and then invaded them. The US, who had lost its Cold War rival, gratefully undertook a big blitz war against Iraq.  Then in 2003 when there was ample evidence that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, the US military, which needed a war, led Bush and Blair to invade a disarmed Iraq on the basis of a lie about WMD, against UN law, and destroy the Iraq state. Since then it has been a failed state with destroyed infrastructure. generating billions of military expenditures for the United States arms industry, including very expensive loo seats, but benefitting no-one else. Recently, the US and UK  weapons sold to Saudi Arabia have continued to fuel the Yemen catastrophe. So, we have been and are the world’s main militarists, sometimes selling weapons in breach of our own guidelines, to continue the trend. This is, substantially, our doing.

MILITARISM UNDERMINES TRUTH, LAW, JUSTICE AND DEMOCRACY.

We ignore what it does to our democracy. The Iraq War involved Bush and Blair and their Cabinets lying to their nations. There was an overwhelming  propaganda attack worldwide which disseminated falsehoods successfully against the long term evidence of the United Nations.. Fake evidence was manufactured, undermining the overwhelming evidence that there were no weapons of mass destruction. There was an attack by the Blair Government on the BBC which destroyed its independence and ability to present what is the case. Truth suffers in wars, but this was the 21^st century with a vast raft of electronic media.

International law was ignored. Those who wanted a reason for their actions talked about regime change as though that justified what has been done. It is, of course, completely outside the framework of the United Nations and undemocratic. The United States has in fact worked at regime change in Cuba, Argentina, Chile, the Dominican Republic and elsewhere, against democratic elections, on the grounds that it does not like the regimes.

Though the unjustified invasion of Iraq should have led to reparations for a vast scale of damage, that justice has been ignored, because the bully was in charge.

Of course, after war, military occupations, dictatorships, the outcomes are always destruction, states which are ungovernable, patterns of corruption, revenge, dominant juntas, bribery and other patterns which destroy stable government. That has been happening throughout modern history yet still the narrative of the militarists is allowed to dominate.  The Trump administration has produced a reversal from the United States working through international agreements to bullying on the basis of its greater power. That was no accident, but part of the long march of militarism.

THE ARMS GAME:  LET’S WISE UP – THE MILITARISTS ARE ON THE SAME SIDE.

The arms companies know what they are doing. The militaries, including the arms companies, the armed forces and the secret services know that they need enemies and need to be inside government to get their contracts. They do both and are practiced, efficient businessmen. We are warned about Russia, China, Terrorists, Iran, North Korea and any other potential enemy in a sustained media and political campaign, so that the military-industrial complex can be kept in business, a business involving trillions of dollars and vast technologies of destruction – nuclear weapons, missiles, subs, tanks, aircraft carriers, fighters, bombers, drones, guns of all sizes. Both sides keep the pressure up and both sides carry on with the same business plan. The Pentagon and Kremlin brief on the new weapons needed and how this is the primary defence of the State and compel the politicians to adopt them. Both sides are keeping this show on the road and acting out adversarial militarism and promoting autocratic rule. It is senseless, wasteful and destructive, but the people who run the system are never injured or killed; they just get rich. The sad thing is that we are taken in. It is not as if we have not had time to wake up.

There were four arm races before WW1. One of them sparked with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the horrific war followed. In the twenties and thirties the world woke up to “the merchants of death” and in the great 1932 Geneva Disarmament Conference nearly did start to disarm the world under the Hoover Plan, but the militarists thwarted it and let in Hitler. We do not hear about the arms companies happy to sell to Hitler in the 30s, but Berlin was crawling with them. Another military crescendo followed to WW2.  The same happened after WW2. The militarists made sure that weapons, including nuclear weapons, were not closed down and soon the arms trade was up and running again with the Cold War. The model is clear. Eisenhower and Khrushchev discuss it in the following interchange.

Eisenhower: “My military leaders come to me and say, “Mr President, we need such and such a sum for such and such a program.” I say, “Sorry we don’t have the funds.” They say, “We have reliable information that the Soviet Union has already allocated funds for their own such program. Therefore, if we do not get the funds we need, we’ll fall behind the Soviet Union.” So I give in. That’s how they wring money out of me. They keep grabbing for more and I keep giving it to them. Now tell me, how is it with you?”

Khrushchev: “It’s just the same. Some people from our military department come and say, “Comrade Khrushchev, look at this! The Americans are developing such and such a system. We could develop the same system, but it would cost such and such.” I tell them there is no money; it’s all been allocated already. So they say, “If we don’t get the money we need and if there is a war, then the enemy will have superiority over us.” So we discuss it some more, and I end up by giving them the money they ask for”[i]

Here are the two big dogs talking while their tails are being wagged. There is every reason to believe that this accurately represented the process both in the US and USSR throughout the Cold War. Of course, it was more complex than this, involving lobbying, groups in government, scares, pressure, research, international deals, but the weapon’s people have run the politicians all our lifetimes. Reagan was even persuaded to pump tens of billions of dollars into a “Star Wars” project which experts agreed could never work. The show is still unchallenged in the US and UK and elsewhere across all the national divides. It happens behind the scenes. Big contracts pop out without warning. We allow the militarists to bring governments into line and create the divisions in which weapons thrive. We were told the USSR did weapons because it was Communist. Now it still does weapons when it is Capitalist. The real problem is not national tensions, but the business of arms and the military industrial complex on both sides. They need one another and play the game.

WE ARE LOSING DEMOCRACY.

The result is that we are losing Democracy. The peace people are eliminated behind the scenes. Corbyn was trashed in the 2019 election as a traitor, unsafe and antisemitic partly by the establishment military system. Autocracy is justified by external threats. Around the world the militarists eliminate their enemies. Protests are put down today in Thailand which has had 20 military coups in modern times. Each country postures against its enemies and good international co-operation breaks down. Nationalist parties, often discussing and saying little about detailed policy issues, are returned to power. Loyalty trumps debate. Laws can be suspended. The old, old ploy of an unsuccessful leader finding an external threat to rekindle popularity is brought out again. And elections were probably fixed, but nobody can be held to account. Decisions are made, but really irrespective of people. Slowly, the democratic tide is going out and the main reason, alongside the power of money to swing the media, is militarism. If we cannot see that, we have been blinded.

MILITARISM OUT IN THE OPEN

So, if militarism is slowly stranglist democracy around the world, we can still address it through democratic politics. We will have to drag what is hidden out into the open and discuss it. Militarism can be discussed. We will have to question the necessity of “defence”. We will need to look at why wars do not work, at why the destruction of weapons and war is not a good thing, at how enemies are created, at the gravy trains which run military systems round the world, and we will have to re-evaluate western military history and see we are a big part of the problem. We will have to look at the whole propaganda system of scares which keep us in hoc to “defence” . Then we may see that mutual world disarmament is possible, that the UN Treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons will open the door, that world multilateral disarmament is practical, saves trillions, is the greenest thing for the planet, saves lives, trauma, refugees, poverty, more wars, warped science and technology and allows democracy to open up again around the world. We may see that disarmament, reducing threats everywhere, is far easier than competitive arming. But there is one more thing that we must realise, one mistake that has been made every time disarmament has been an issue in world politics, and there have been quite a few.

TURKEYS DO NOT VOTE FOR CHRISTMAS.

Every time world disarmament is discussed, starting in 1899, in 1919, in 1932 and several times in the sixties and seventies, when the discussions get underway, the military put themselves in charge, especially of the detailed arrangements which might happen. They then mire the discussions in disagreement. Would USSR and US militarist bargain themselves out of existence? Of course not, for turkeys do not vote for Christmas. So, militarists must NOT be put in charge of disarmament discussion and policy. It needs clear big rules – cut military spending by 20% a year until it is all gone – firm policing, open inspection, big penalties, detailed surveillance and the world can be disarmed, just as most cities function without arms all round the world. Finally, the primitivism of tribal war can be banished and nation can speak peace unto nation.

But first we must see the problem..

[i]               Nikita S. Khrushchev Khrushchev Remembers trans and edited by Strobe Talbott (Boston: Little,Brown,      1970)  518