MILITARISM KRITIK SHELL - wcdebate.com · Web viewThe concept is captured by the word ubuntu, ......

West Coast Publishing 1Militarism Good/Bad

Militarism Good/Bad

Militarism Good – Extinction....................................................................................................................................2Militarism Good – Hegemony..................................................................................................................................3Militarism Good – Economy.....................................................................................................................................4Militarism Good – Peace..........................................................................................................................................5Militarism Good – Genocide....................................................................................................................................6Militarism Good – Human Rights.............................................................................................................................7Militarism Good – Civil-Military Relations................................................................................................................8Militarism Good – Discussing War Productive.........................................................................................................9Militarism Good – Criticism Strengthens the Right................................................................................................10Militarism Good – Violence Inevitable...................................................................................................................11Militarism Good – Regulating Violence Bad...........................................................................................................12Militarism Good – Violence is Justified..................................................................................................................13Militarism Good – Pacifism Bad.............................................................................................................................14Militarism Good – Pacifism Bad.............................................................................................................................15Militarism Good – Pacifism Fails............................................................................................................................16

Militarism Bad – Link – War as Event.....................................................................................................................17Militarism Bad – Link – War as Event.....................................................................................................................18Militarism Bad – Link – Crisis Resolution Fails........................................................................................................19Militarism Bad – Link – The State...........................................................................................................................20Militarism Bad – Link – The Military.......................................................................................................................21Militarism Bad – Link – Civilian Involvement..........................................................................................................22Militarism Bad – Link – Violent Representations....................................................................................................23Militarism Bad – Link – Terrorism/Capitalism........................................................................................................24Militarism Bad – Link – Utilitarianism.....................................................................................................................25Militarism Bad – Link – Militaristic Language.........................................................................................................26Militarism Bad – Impact – Extinction.....................................................................................................................27Militarism Bad – Impact – Extinction.....................................................................................................................28Militarism Bad – Extinction....................................................................................................................................29Militarism Bad – Impact – War...............................................................................................................................30Militarism Bad – Impact – War/Genocide/Terrorism.............................................................................................31Militarism Bad – Impact – Otherization/Value to Life............................................................................................32Militarism Bad – Impact – Environment.................................................................................................................33Militarism Bad – Impact – Structural Violence.......................................................................................................34Militarism Bad – Impact – Root Causes..................................................................................................................35Militarism Bad – Impact – Moral Obligation..........................................................................................................36Militarism Bad – Impact – Racism..........................................................................................................................37Militarism Bad – Impact – Neoliberalism/Value to Life..........................................................................................38Militarism Bad – Alternative – Recognition Key.....................................................................................................39Militarism Bad – Alternative – Recognition of Everyday Violence..........................................................................40Militarism Bad – Alternative – Recognition of Everyday Violence..........................................................................41Militarism Bad – Alternative – Changing Language................................................................................................42Militarism Bad – Alternative – Individual Action....................................................................................................43


Militarism Good – Extinction

Militarism Is Essential To Avoid ExtinctionWalter Williams, PhD in economics from the University of California at Los Angeles, August 25, 2004, “The Appeasement Disease,” Capitalism Magazine, http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3885

President Bush's foreign-policy critics at home and abroad share characteristics and visions that have previously led to worldwide chaos and untold loss of lives. These people believe that negotiation, appeasement and caving in to the demands of vicious totalitarian leaders can produce good-faith behavior. Their vision not only has a long record of failure but devastating consequences. During the late 1930s, France and Britain hoped that allowing Adolf Hitler to annex Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia would satisfy his territorial ambitions. This was after a long string of German violations of the terms of the Versailles Treaty ending World War I. Appeasement didn't work. It was seen as weakness, and it simply emboldened Hitler. At the Yalta Conference, near the end of World War II, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt thought they could appease Josef Stalin by giving away Eastern Europe and making other concessions that ultimately marked the beginning of the nearly half-century Cold War and Soviet/China expansionism. War-weary Westerners hoped that brutal tyrants would act in good faith. Failing to stand up to Stalin resulted in unspeakable atrocities, enslavement and human suffering. Quite interestingly, Western leftist appeasers exempted communist leaders from the harsh criticism directed toward Hitler, even though communist crimes made Hitler's slaughter of 21 million appear almost amateurish. According to Professor R.J. Rummel's research in "Death by Government," from 1917 until its collapse, the Soviet Union murdered or caused the death of 61 million people, mostly its own citizens. Since 1949, communist China's Mao Zedong regime was responsible for the death of 35 million of its own citizens. History never exactly repeats itself, but the vision of earlier appeasers was part of the West's vision of how to deal with Saddam Hussein. After devastating defeat in the first Gulf War, Iraq agreed to coalition peace terms. After documents were signed, every effort was made by the Iraqis to frustrate implementation of the terms, particularly U.N. weapons inspections. Western appeasers, most notably Europeans, were quite willing to respond to Saddam Hussein's violation of peace terms in a fashion similar to their earlier counterparts' response to Hitler's violation of the peace terms of the Versailles Treaty. Had Britain or France launched a military attack on Germany between 1934 and 1935, when Hitler started his arms buildup in violation of the Versailles Treaty and before he fully developed his military capability, he would have been defeated and at least 50 million lives would have been spared.

Even Though It Is Imperfect, The Alternative To Militarism Is A World Full Of Open Weapons Of Mass Destruction ConflictsCampbell Craig, chair of International Relations at the University of Southampton, U.K, 2004, “ReviewArticle; American realism Versus American Imperialism,” World Politics Volume 57.1, pp. 143-171.

If we are to lament American unipolaritv, let us consider real-world alternatives to it. Today, there is onlv one meat power. Neither Russia, the European Union, China, nor any other foreseeable entity is anywhere close to being able to contend with the United States in military terms, and, so far, none of these states or unions appears very interested in even attempting to do so. Because international politics is so heavily dominated by America, a unilateral decision by the United States to relinquish its power in a world in which no other entitv possessed the means to replace it, could usher in an extremely violent and turbulent period in international affairs. What would become of the ginantic American militarv arsenal and force structure? Could it be peacefully dismantled and returned home safely? What would happen in regions of severe political grievance in failed states, in areas of border disputes and national confrontations? Would Pakistan and India keep their fingers of f the nuclear button without a United States to worn about? Would Israel? Power abhors a vacuum, and the largest vacuum in recorded historv would result from a rapid departure by the United States h m international politica1 predominance. As corrupt, brutal, and venal as the Roman Empire became in its dying days, life in the Mediterranean world was not ideal after its fall and that was before the days of weapons of mass destruction.

Pacifism Creaters Even Worse ViolenceLaren, Carter, part-time free-lance writer and Producer Advocate, October 4, 2001, “Pacifism Empowers Terrorism.” Capitalism Magazine, http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?id=1128

On the day that the United States drops the first bomb in retaliation for the World Trade Center attacks, pacifists are planning to meet at locations in several cities around the country at 5:00 p.m. When they hold-up their "Global peace and unity" signs, remember that their version of "peace" means standing in a circle singing "kum ba yah" while terrorists murder your loved ones. When they shout, "War and racism are not the answer," remember that they are willing to label you "racist" just to promote their demented agenda. When you see a banner proclaiming, "Love is stronger than hate," remember that they are


asking you to love a murderer. And when they warn, in their condescending sneers, "Don't turn tragedy into a war," imagine that it is 1939 and you are a Jew in Poland.


Militarism Good – Hegemony

1. INDIVIDUAL SUPPORT FOR MILITARISM IS KEY TO U.S. HEGEMONYZalmay Khalilzad, RAND Corporation Fellow, Spring, 1995. WASHINGTON QUARTERLY, v. 18, n. 2.

Some might argue that, given the costs involved, the American people will not support a global leadership role for the United States. It can also be argued that the public might not support the level of defense expenditure required to pursue a global leadership strategy because domestic priorities are in competition for the same dollars. Public opinion polls indicate that Americans are focused on domestic concerns. Such a perception discouraged a serious debate on national security issues in the last presidential debate. According to a recent poll, however, Americans support both U.S. involvement in world affairs (90 percent) and also want more attention to domestic issues (84 percent). A majority of Americans support peace "through strength." n9 Whether the public would in fact support a global leadership strategy as outlined here is not known. Such a role is indeed not without costs. The cost of sustaining U.S. leadership is, however, affordable. At present the burden imposed by U.S. defense efforts, approximately 4 percent of GNR is lighter than at any time since before the Korean War. The burden will shrink further as the economy expands, and the costs of leadership can be kept at a sustainable level by avoiding overextension and by more effective burden sharing among the members of the zone of peace.

2. PUBLIC SUPPORT OF THE MILITARY IS KEY TO U.S. LEADERSHIPZalmay Khalilzad, RAND Corporation Fellow, Spring, 1995. WASHINGTON QUARTERLY, v. 18, n. 2.

As a nation, the United States is in a position of unprecedented military and political power and enjoys a unique leadership role in the world. Maintaining this position and precluding the rise of another global rival for the indefinite future is the best longterm objective for the United States. It is an opportunity the United States may never see again. In the long run, this situation will not last if Americans turn inward or make the wrong choices. The question is whether the country will accept its responsibility -- for reasons of selfinterest and historical necessity -- and meet the challenge of the new era with vision and resolve. The time has come for President Bill Clinton to make a compelling case for U.S. leadership and to seek to shape public attitudes. Without a vision, a strategy, and bipartisan support, he will fail to win public approval for U.S. global leadership, and his country will fail to seize this historic moment.


Militarism Good – Economy

1. MILITARISM IS KEY TO THE U.S. ECONOMYHoward Richards, Professor of Peace and Global Studies, 2005. THE GHANDI SERIES, CHAPTER VII, ARUNDHATI ROY, accessed 6/6/06, http://howardrichards.org/peace/content/view/31/31/

Nevertheless, given the United States as it has historically evolved, and as it presently exists, it needs its military to keep its people busy and its industries humming. Roy was right to point out that the arms manufacturers are a powerful influence in the United States, but she might have gone on to say that each and every citizen of the United States enjoys the benefits of living in an economy that has not fallen back into low level equilibrium. To be more precise, it has only partially and occasionally fallen towards but not fully into a replay of the 1930s. It has managed to avoid repeating that fate mainly by continuing the same kinds of spending patterns that brought it out of that pivotal depression. Militarism benefits every family in the land, since every family has the assurance that if at age 18 their children have no other promising job prospects, the children can join the armed services, where each will get not only a job with an income, but also subsequent educational opportunities and pension benefits. It is the whole system, not just a particular part of it that is stabilized by the military-industrial complex.

2. MILITARISM GIVES THE US AN ECONOMIC ADVANTAGEJoel Kovel, Professor of Social Studies at Bard University, November 21, 2002. THE UNITED STATES MILITARY MACHINE, accessed 6/6/06, www.chronogram.com/issue/ 2003/02/roomforaview/index.html

These factors crystallized into the Cold War, the nuclear arms race, and, domestically, into those structures that gave institutional stability and permanence to the system: the military-industrial complex (MIC). Previously the US had used militarism to secure economic advantage. Now, two developments greatly transformed our militarism: the exigencies of global hegemony and the fact that militarism became a direct source of economic advantage, through the triangular relations of the MIC—with the great armament industries comprising one leg, the military establishment another, and the state apparatus the third, profits, power, and personnel could flow through the system and from the system.

3. MILITARISM IS NECESSARY FOR ECONOMIC GROWTHHoward Richards, Professor of Peace and Global Studies, 2005. THE GHANDI SERIES, CHAPTER VII, ARUNDHATI ROY, accessed 6/6/06, http://howardrichards.org/peace/content/view/31/31/

Roy says in one of her interviews with David Barsamian that militarism has become an economic necessity for the American Empire. I take this statement to be equivalent to saying that economic causes explain American militarism i.e. that for economic reasons there has to be militarism. She suggests two economic causes of militarism. (In addition to these she mentions several aspects of the psychology of daily life that are conducive to paranoia and to nationalist frenzy, both with respect to Indian militarism and with respect to American militarism. I do not count these here as economic causes, although they are no doubt related to the same social structures that produce the phenomena I am counting as economic causes.). One economic cause Roy mentions is that certain important American industries depend on war sales to keep going. Huge and expensive plants that are built to produce, for example, missiles, have to sell missiles or else go out of business. Wars are needed to deplete the stocks so that new orders will be placed. The second economic cause is that America completely depends on imported petroleum. This second reason for considering American militarism to be a necessary consequence of its economy is by itself a weak reason because America could buy petroleum without militarily controlling its source, as do many countries which depend on imported petroleum even more completely than the United States does. It becomes a strong reason when it is taken as a premise in a chain of reasoning which also includes other premises that people called “Neocons” hold, such as the premise that America’s enemies might get control of oil supplies and either refuse to sell America oil or bring America to its knees by raising prices. Then the conclusion follows: America must be militarist.


Militarism Good – Peace

1. MILITARISM IS CRITICAL FOR PEACEDan Quayle, ex-vice president, "The Duty to Lead: America's National Security Imperative," HERITAGE FOUNDATION LECTURE, January 21 1999, Heritage Foundation homepage, Available: http://www.heritage.org/library/lecture/h1630.html. , date accessed 5/25/99.

This leads me to the larger issue of preserving the strength of the U.S. military. After six years of no leadership, it's time for a reality check. The desired end is to deter future adversaries. The means, frankly, is not just to stay ahead of our competitors. We should aim to be so dominant that no one can possibly compete with us. That's the surest strategy for peace and security. By that standard, how are we doing? As a percentage of gross domestic product, defense spending is about 3 percent, the lowest level since the isolationist period preceding World War II. After the Cold War, it made sense to re- evaluate national security priorities. But the only discernible theme in the past six years has been cuts, cuts, and more cuts. Under current plans, by 2001 the Army will have been reduced from 18 divisions down to 9 or 10; the Navy from 546 ships down to 300; and the Air Force from 36 fighter wings to half that many. A key component of U.S. military strategy has been to maintain the capability to fight two regional wars at more or less the same time. The Joint Chiefs of Staff is saying already that there is a "moderate to high risk" that we will be unable to do so. It's already been calculated that, by 2001, the following would be required to carry out a military operation on the scale of Operation Desert Storm: 90 percent of the active Army; two-thirds of our fighter wings and aircraft carriers; and the entire Marine Corps. And we would still be required to maintain a significant military deterrent in Asia, Europe, and other areas of vital interest to the United States.

2. NOW IS THE KEY TIME FOR THE U.S. TO BE BUILDING UP MILITARILYDan Quayle, ex-vice president, "The Duty to Lead: America's National Security Imperative," HERITAGE FOUNDATION LECTURE, January 21 1999, Heritage Foundation homepage, Available: http://www.heritage.org/library/lecture/h1630.html. , date accessed 5/25/99.

But militarily, you can't stand still. Just as you shouldn't fight the last war, you shouldn't stop preparing the army of tomorrow. We should be preparing now by using our advantage in stealth, sensors, robotics, and information systems to develop a wide range of advanced weapon systems, as well as the operational concepts to use them. The weapons that enabled us to win the Persian Gulf War--from Patriot and cruise missiles to F-117 stealth fighters--were developed over a generation. The Secretary of Defense through most of the Reagan Administration, Caspar Weinberger, has patiently explained that we don't just go to the store and buy the latest technology to defend our country and protect our troops. Technology is the result of years of intensive, and usually expensive, research and development--a category that has taken some serious budgetary hits in the past decade. On the military procurement side, we've had a 50 percent dropoff since Bill Clinton took office. The military is basically using up the equipment purchased in the 1980s.

3. U.S. MILITARISM ENFORCES WORLD PEACE – A DECREASE IN OUR CAPABILITIES RISKS ATTACKSDan Quayle, ex-vice president, "The Duty to Lead: America's National Security Imperative," HERITAGE FOUNDATION LECTURE, January 21 1999, Heritage Foundation homepage, Available: http://www.heritage.org/library/lecture/h1630.html. , date accessed 5/25/99.

U.S. military superiority has a calming effect on the world. It induces both our friends and enemies to focus their energies and resources elsewhere. It's a key element of support for the international economic system that has so enriched the United States and the rest of the world in recent decades. But when the world senses that the United States no longer is serious about national security, our adversaries take note. Is it any surprise, then, that states like Iraq, North Korea, China, Russia, India, and Pakistan have begun to assert themselves? Yes, we are beginning to see the consequences of pushing national security concerns to the side. The requirements of American global leadership cannot be handed off to the Secretary General of the United Nations. Terrorism can't be wished away. Weapons proliferation cannot be swept under the rug. There is no substitute for a well-trained and well-armed U.S. military. And there is no substitute for


committed, confident, experienced leadership in the White House. And no better way to convey that confidence than to pick tough and talented representatives for America like Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick.


Militarism Good – Genocide

1. THE KRITIK AUTHORS CONCEDE GENOCIDE AND ECOCIDE JUSTIFY MILITARY ACTIONPatricia Y. Reyhan, professor of law, Union University, ALBANY LAW REVIEW, 1997, p. 787.

Yet, even those who question the status of a broad right of unilateral humanitarian intervention balk at barring such an intervention in egregious cases "to prevent apartheid, genocide, ecocide, starvation deaths, or other practices that shock the conscience of the international community."

2. HUMANITARIAN GOALS TEMPER MILITARISMDino Kritsiotis, fellow of the human rights program, Harvard Law School, MICHIGAN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Summer 1998, p. 1025.

Moreover, the multilateral application of armed force for humanitarian protection in Liberia in 1990 and then again in northern Iraq in 1991 demonstrates that the much vaunted danger of abuse may not be as great, pervasive, or as severe as once envisaged. The latter of these interventions is a choice determination that there are indeed prima facie cases where some form of humanitarian intervention is operable without the occurrence of abuse - such as the unseating of an incumbent government or the forcible dismemberment or permanent occupation of sovereign territory. President Saddam Hussein remained in office and in power after allied forces entered Iraqi territory in 1991 on their humanitarian mission, despite significant international condemnation of his leadership and foreign policy. Furthermore, the lesson of these interventions, which occurred in quick succession, suggests that where the actions of a regional association or an ex tempore coalition of states can be reduced to the common denominator of humanitarian need, the dynamic of such operations countenances against the abusive, or unlawful, use of force.

3. GENOCIDE JUSTIFIES MILITARISM ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING TIMES, May 3, 1999, p. 68.

The fact is that occasions arise where military force is necessary, and attempted genocide on a mass scale is one of them. If you study history the only consistently repeated phenomenon is that sociopaths like Milosevic, Hussein, Khadafy, Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini always seem to get into positions of power and attempt to murder vast numbers of people. And the only consistent lesson that is learned is that you have to stop them now or later, and the "later" is always a lot more expensive. If, as you say, you "believe that life is the supreme value," then you should support the action to stop Milosevic, because he (and his troops) don't place any value on life . . . which means the world is not a safe place to be in while they are free to "cleanse the earth" of anybody they don't like.

5. RISK OF ABUSE DOES NOT DEJUSTIFY MILITARISMDino Kritsiotis, fellow of the human rights program, Harvard Law School, MICHIGAN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Summer 1998, p. 1022.

We must face the reality that we live in a decentralized international legal order, where claims may be made either in good faith or abusively. We delude ourselves if we think that the role of norms is to remove the possibility of abusive claims ever being made. The common sense of this approach has appealed from earlier times: In advocating recognition of a limited right of unilateral humanitarian intervention, this author is not unaware of the serious dangers this approach entails, particularly the risk of abusive intervention. But, as an early proponent of humanitarian intervention pointed out almost a century ago: "It is a big mistake, in general, to stop short of recognition of an inherently just principle, [merely] because of the possibility of non-genuine intervention." The particular concern identified here - that is, of the potential abuse of force - should not therefore be used to argue for the outright denial of humanitarian intervention.


Militarism Good – Human Rights

1. SELECTIVITY IS NOT AN ISSUE - STATES GET TO CHOOSE WHEN TO BE MILITARISTICDino Kritsiotis, fellow of the human rights program, Harvard Law School, MICHIGAN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Summer 1998, p. 1026-1027.

"Humanitarian intervention would be highly selective and nearly always dictated by political and strategic interest." Indeed, practice has shown that "widespread torture" occurs "in a large number of countries that appear blissfully unaware of their [apparent] vulnerability to legitimate intervention." Such are the invariable hazards that would allegedly accompany any legal recognition of the right of humanitarian intervention. While this argument is correct to highlight the selective and partisan nature of the operation of humanitarian intervention in practice, this argument misconceives the theoretical composition and traditional understanding of humanitarian intervention in international law, which has been framed as a right of states and not as an obligation requiring state action. Inherent in the very conception of a right is an element of selectivity in the exercise of that right. This is in keeping with the right-holder's sovereign discretion to decide whether or not to exercise the right in question and commit its armed forces to foreign territories and explains why it is the right of - rather than the right to - humanitarian intervention that has taken hold in practice as well as legal scholarship.

2. MILITARISM SHOULD BE USED TO STOP ABUSES, CHECK ANARCHY, AND TO PROTECT DEMOCRACYJeremy Levitt, The African Studies Association of the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies, TEMPLE INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE LAW JOURNAL, Fall 1998, p. 336-338.

The international community seems to be witnessing the initial stages of a shift in the law de lege ferenda, and sanctioning unilateral humanitarian intervention by groups of states or regional actors in internal conflicts. The law de lege lata appears to permit unilateral humanitarian intervention by groups of states or regional actors in three instances: (1) when there are human rights abuses within a state that are so egregious as to violate the jus cogens norms of international law; (2) when a state has collapsed and is withering into a state of anarchy; and (3) to safeguard democracy when a democratic government has been violently and illegally dislodged against the will of its domestic population. The above should be viewed as the normative criteria on which humanitarian intervention should be based.

3. THE BALKAN TRIALS PROVE FORCE IS A NECESSARY RESPONSE TO WAR CRIMINALSTyler Marshall, staff writer, LOS ANGELES TIMES, May 31, 1997, p. A5.

As Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Friday stepped up diplomatic pressure on Balkan leaders to surrender indicted war crimes suspects, the most senior official overseeing Bosnia's civilian reconstruction dismissed such efforts as "naive." "To think you can get them through diplomatic pressure is naive," the international community's departing high representative for Bosnia, Carl Bildt, told a small group of reporters here. "We have to pick them up."

4. EVEN ABSOLUTE MILITARISM IS JUSTIFIED BY THE THREAT OF GENOCIDEPatricia Y. Reyhan, professor of law, Union University, ALBANY LAW REVIEW, 1997, p. 798-799.

History might well lead one to conclude that military coups ought to be universally condemned not only as fundamentally inconsistent with democratic ideals but also as fundamentally hostile to internationally-protected human rights. As Fernando Teson has noted, "while it is always possible to imagine a society where human rights are respected by an enlightened despot, this has never occurred in practice." Yet, it is also difficult to conceive the scope and brutality of the genocidal violence committed by both sides in Burundi without believing that anything, even absolute repression, would be worth the price if the killing would stop. Life, in this sense, is the ultimate human right.


Militarism Good – Civil-Military Relations

1. CRITICISM OF THE MILITARY UNDERMINES CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONSMathew Morgan, First Lieutenant US Army, Summer, 2001. PARAMETERS, VOL. 31, NO. 2.

The consequences of this involve a sort of incubation of the military away from society that will reinforce isolation from more generalized values. For workers across different fields, a career-oriented workforce can be expected to produce more attitudinally distinct groups. Jacques Van Doorn had earlier predicted that the gap between military and civilian sectors of society would broaden as a consequence of the declining size and legitimacy of standing armies that leads to less universal service or substitution of voluntary service, with a smaller and increasingly professional military becoming more isolated, inward-looking, rigid, and conservative. This isolated military will further exacerbate the civil-military tension due to the underlying distrust of the American society toward a standing military, a distrust that has been common in American history. Indeed, John Lehman has suggested that one of the most important elements of the American civil-military dynamic is our tradition of citizen-soldiers. Our soldiers and sailors historically were expected to be drawn largely from civilian pursuits for limited terms, assuring a constant leavening of civilian cultural values within the military and in turn carrying back to the civilian world a respect for and understanding of military culture. Any future failure to develop this respect and understanding will hamper efforts to recruit from the civilian society.

2. MILITARY RESENTMENT OF CIVILIAN CRITICISM SPURS DECREASED RELATIONSPauline Kaurin, Professor at Pacific Lutheran University, 2001. JSCOPE, accessed 6/6/06, http://www.usafa.af.mil/jscope/JSCOPE01/Kaurin01.html

The military increasingly feels it is under siege by the civilian culture, who does not share its values, but the answer is not for civilians to embrace the ‘traditional’ values of the military anymore than the answer is to expect the military to accommodate its culture to the dominant American perspective (which is changing all the time). Rather, the most sensible way to bridge the chasm is for each culture to maintain its identity but also to experience and understand where the other is coming from. We need a difference of cultures, but that difference is rapidly becoming a dangerous chasm based upon ignorance, contempt and a lack of genuine understanding.

3. OPPOSITION TO THE MILITARY UNDERMINES CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONSPauline Kaurin, Professor at Pacific Lutheran University, 2001. JSCOPE, accessed 6/6/06, http://www.usafa.af.mil/jscope/JSCOPE01/Kaurin01.html

If one grants that there is a chasm, not simply a cultural difference, what are the real dangers? How serious a problem is this? Is it a problem that really needs to be addressed or is it simply a tolerable and unavoidable fact about contemporary military-civilian relations? I argue that this is an alarming and extremely dangerous situation, especially if nothing is done to remedy it and soon. The first source of danger is that the situation as it stands no has no oppurtunity to change on its own. As the military becomes increasingly politicized the danger becomes that to be a ‘real’ solider one might have to demonstrate certain moral, social and political views. Increasingly there is an atmosphere of disdain, contempt and moral superiority among the officer corps – from which the other solders take their cues- with respect to the civilain culture and it is not a far jump from that to non-military consideration becoming part of the military culture. Will loyalty mean loyalty to the core values and the Republican Party?


Militarism Good – Discussing War Productive

1. DISCUSSING THE POSSIBILITY OF WAR IS CRITICAL TO MOTIVATING CHANGEGearoid O. Tuathail, Associate Professor of Political Geography, Virginia Tech, 2001. GEOGRAPHICA SLOVENICA, v. 34, i. 1.

History indicates that the everyday practice of geopolitics is often motivated and given meaning by paranoid fantasies of various sorts. In the twentieth century the paranoid fantasies that informed geopolitics were state-centric and nationalist territorial visions of world domination and control. There is no shortage of paranoid visions of the future at the opening of the twenty first century. Rather than dismiss all paranoid fantasies as irrational, it is may be worthwhile in the coming century to distinguish between counter-modern ones (usually based on religious and/or nationalist romantic visions) that attempt to impose certitude upon modernity, classic modern fantasies about limitless progress and growth that recycle already bankrupt myths to serve particularistic interests, and reflexively modern visions that sometimes throw the contradictions of the contemporary geopolitical condition into stark relief. The paranoid visions of environmentalists and peace activists today are part of the struggle to imagine and transform the future of modernity. Though these visions sometimes appear fantastic they are far from being crazy. Unlike the paranoid power fantasies and conspiracies that gave meaning to international politics for much of the twentieth century, visions of increasing planetary temperatures and rising ocean levels, unfolding global pandemics and irreversible technoscientific manipulations, proliferating weapons of destruction and deepening vulnerability to potentially catastrophic accidents, can be empirically documented and supported in great scientific detail. As Athansiou remarks about those studying the rising levels toxicity in the environment, ‘the paranoids, it happens, do not have a bad record at all.31

2. DISCUSSING WAR IS CRITICAL TO PREVENTING ITAlvin M. Saperstein, Center for Peace and Conflict Studies Fellow and Professor of Physics, Wayne State University, 1990. PEACE AND CHANGE, v. 15, i. 3.

Certainly, large segments of the populations of the Western democracies have acted on their awareness of, and concern about, the threat of nuclear war. Populations in the Second and Third Worlds have also expressed similar fears. Following these demonstrations of popular discontent, the governments of the major actors on the world political scene seem to be attempting to draw back from nuclear confrontation. Major nuclear powers (e.g., the United States) are also being pressed by the governments and peoples of their allies to decrease their reliance upon the brandishment of nuclear weapons. Awareness has grown, in governments and peoples, that the benefits of "nuclear politics" do not match the possible costs-that deliberate or accidental nuclear explosions cannot be reliably separated from nuclear holocaust and that "accidents" cannot be reliably excluded from policies of nuclear confrontation or possession. These public pressures, and the advent of a new generation of political leadership in the Soviet Union, have resulted in solid progress toward international peace. The Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty has been signed, ratified, and is being implemented, removing large numbers of tactical weapons from Europe; Soviet observers live in Utah, watching missile plants and rodeos; progress has been made toward a START agreement to reduce the number of strategic nuclear weapons; Soviet and American defense ministers have inspected each other's secret aircraft; Soviet troops are out of Afghanistan; significant numbers of Soviet tanks and troops seem to be on their way out of Eastern Europe, closely observed by Western reporters; United States and Soviet Coast Guards collaborate to save whales; and the Iran-Iraq blood bath seems to be over.


Militarism Good – Criticism Strengthens the Right

1. SKEPTICISM OF THE MILITARY STRENGTHENS THE POLITICAL RIGHTThomas Langston, Associate Professor of Political Science at Tulane University, Autumn, 2000. PARAMETERS, VOL. 30, NO. 3.

As regards skepticism towards the military, this can no more be changed than can the underlying ideology of the public. But the trend toward the Republicanization of the armed forces and the polarization of the public along a line of military cleavage can and should be addressed. The armed forces cannot turn back the clock to make the Democratic Party more hospitable to military professionals. But whatever military leaders can do to build bridges to a broader cross-section of the civilian public should be encouraged. In conclusion, analysis of the civilian military culture does not provide easy solutions to the problems faced by the armed forces. But this analysis points the way to some opportunities for creative adjustment on the part of military professionals. Certainly one lesson is that the broad and ambivalent civilian culture on military issues is not likely to change for the better without leadership from both civilian and military leaders. The direction of change within military organizations should be chosen not in accord with, but in awareness of, civilian attitudes and expectations.

2. REFUSING TO PARTICIPATE IN THE MILITARY UNDERMINES SUPPORT FOR THE LEFTThomas Langston, Associate Professor of Political Science at Tulane University, Autumn, 2000. PARAMETERS, VOL. 30, NO. 3.

Another factor, highlighted by Charles Moskos, is elite disengagement from military affairs. When the sons of the establishment go to war, Moskos observes, the mass public is considerably more likely to fall in line than when privileged youth abstain from or protest against military action. Today, there are grounds for concern along these lines. As the writer Thomas Ricks observes, ignorance of the military is becoming endemic among segments of America's civilian elite, some of whom wear that ignorance as a badge of honor. Skepticism toward the military and its way of life is also interacting with movements in the social and political environment. Formerly, crosscutting cleavages in the major parties ensured ambivalence about the military in both Democratic and Republican camps. Today, the Republican Party is overwhelmingly the party of choice for military professionals.

3. MILITARY CRITICISM UNDERMINES COOPERATION WITH THE LEFTThomas Langston, Associate Professor of Political Science at Tulane University, Autumn, 2000. PARAMETERS, VOL. 30, NO. 3.

At the same time as the military is becoming more southern, it may soon become more white. African-American enlistment propensity has declined significantly since 1984, the first year that such data was disaggregated by race. This decline, moreover, does not correspond statistically with the end of the Cold War or even with unemployment in the civilian economy. Because of the declining size of the force, and the higher starting point of African-American versus white propensity to enlist, this long-term trend has yet to break the significant bond between the African-American community and the military. But the trends suggest that it is only a matter of time. The trends that are making the officer corps and the military more homogeneous may be part of a broad realignment of civilian society along a pro-military and a not-pro-military line of cleavage. This polarization raises the possibility of skepticism run riot if unified Democratic Party control of government reappears. It could also tempt the professional military into an overly close association with party politics.


Militarism Good – Violence Inevitable

1. IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO MOVE PAST THE IDEA OF A MILITARISTIC AND VIOLENT SOCIETY, BECAUSE WE HAVE BECOME TOO ENTRENCHED IN IT.R.B.J. Walker, political science professor, University of Southern Maine and researcher of security studies and international relations, CRITICAL SECURITY STUDIES, 1997, p. 74-75.

The other option is to relax this logic in order to permit accommodation, cooperation, arms control, and the rest. The legitimacy of the modern state is left essentially unchallenged, but our understanding of what this means is no longer informed be pseudo-Hobbesian accounts of anarchy and the security dilemma This is the option that informs many of the more optimistic scenarios of contemporary security discourse. But it is an optimism that is always haunted by its pessimistic condition of possibility, the appeal to a logic of anarchy in the final instance; a logic that is itself made possible through a constitutive form of political community that lures the more relaxed codes of accommodation and cooperation toward an idealized image of collectivity that can never be reached.

2. SELFISHNESS PREVENTS THE IDEAL OF PACIFISM.Sarojini Henry, professor of math and theology in India and visiting professor of theology, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Kentucky, GANDHI MARG, October-December 1995, p. 334.

Niebuhr further emphasized that the sacrificial love of Jesus on the Cross is an "impossible possibility." He asserted that this love ideal "lies beyond the capacities of human nature." In fact, "it does not establish a connection with the horizontal points of a political or social ethic or with the diagonals which a prudential individual ethic draw between the moral ideal and the facts of a given situation." Thus it would be impossible to build a social order on the ideal of love alone. It is the persistence of selfishness in the human person that makes the ideal of love an impossibility. In a group, this selfishness is compounded rendering the group more immoral than the individual. Thus, even if this love is possible in the case of individuals, the ideal of love would still be an impossibility for a social organization. Thus, while the perfectionist religious pacifism can be affirmed by the individual, only pragmatic pacifism is relevant for a group of people.

3. VIOLENCE AND MILITARISM IS INEVITABLE.Susheela Bhan, director of the Institute of Peace Research and Action, ex-director at the Indian Council of Social Science Research in New Delhi, GANDHI MARG, April-June 1996, p. 49.

A similar process pervades the state which symbolizes the collectivization of individual wills and takes care of national interests in the international arena. In an insecure world characterized by unequal distribution of resources and cut-throat competition, no nation can depend on goodwill or amity of other nations in ensuring its development and security. Pursuit of self-interest through self-help and power aggrandizement supersedes any considerations of rationality, justice, and morality. Consequently, perceptions, motivations, aspirations, and interest of states, even if they are not rational, increase the likelihood of the resolution of conflicts by force. In effect, attributes and conditions that determine the relations within the domestic scene extend to the international scene as well. Thus violence remains integral to modern civilization based on the maxims "might is right" and "survival of the fittest." The scenario of ethnic violence, terrorist violence, caste and class violence within the domestic sphere and battles and wars within the international sphere are, and will remain, the permanent features of modern civilization, no matter what heights and achievements it ahs or will have to its credit. By the same token, the production of ever more complex artifacts from promoting peace through deterrence, balance of power, and the preparation for the next war to ensure peace after the present war, will continue while peace will remain an interim period of recuperation between two conflicts or wars both in terms of direct and structural violence.


Militarism Good – Regulating Violence Bad

1. REGULATING VIOLENT LANGUAGE DOES VIOLENCE TO THOSE WHO ARE PROTECTEDMichael J. Shapiro, Professor of Political Science, University of Hawaii, December, 1998. PEACE REVIEW, v. 10, i. 4.

Of late, critical and polemical commentaries aimed at politicizing language have been focused on the damaging effects of what Judith Butler has called "excitable speech," utterances intended to incite violence toward persons with recognizable social identities: religious groups, ethnic groups, and gays and lesbians, among others. Apart from the problem of neglecting the meaning slippage involved in assigning an unmediated causal effect to speech acts, the position of those who are arguing, for example, in favor of juridical responses to censor hate speech confronts a paradox. In order to militate against one kind of linguistic violence-the damaging effects of utterances on persons--they have to commit another kind of violence. By assigning a unitary identity to the targets of hate speech, the protectors of vulnerable bodies engage in a violence of representation. They must attribute to speech-act victims a unitary and unambiguously coherent identity; they must dissolve hybridities, turning pluralistic and contingent historical affiliations into essential characteristics. As a result, their arguments in favor of protecting the vulnerable reinforce the identity perspectives presupposed in the discourses they oppose.

2. VIOLENCE EXISTS INDEPENDENT OF LANGUAGERuben G. Apressyan, Chair of the Department of Ethics at the Institute of Philosophy in Moscow, Director of the Research and Education Center for the Ethics of Nonviolence, and Professor of Moral Philosophy at Moscow Lomonosov State University, December, 1998. PEACE REVIEW, v. 10, i. 4.

There is another aspect, however. Language per se is not violent; although, it easily may become an object of violence. This defenselessness against violence, means that violence exists beyond language. Speech is a prerogative of reason: violence is speechless. This means that violence has no need of language. With the help of language, violence may mark itself, give itself a kind of justification, allude to itself, or hide itself in various forms of reserve and awesomeness. Potential violence may resolve into speech or disembodied words. But in turn, words themselves, or words inserted into certain contexts or articulated with a certain intonation may appear as potentially violent. Thus language becomes a means of violence which "keeps silence."

3. ABSOLUTE REJECTION OF VIOLENCE RISKS THE WORST FORMS OF VIOLENCEMichael J. Shapiro, Professor of Political Science, University of Hawaii, December, 1998. PEACE REVIEW, v. 10, i. 4.

The paradox evident in juridically oriented attempts to sanction hate speech is part of a more pervasive historical phenomenon toward which Jacques Derrida has pointed in his warning about attempts at definitively expunging violence. As he has famously put it, a commitment to total non-violence risks the "worst violence;" it perpetuates the illusion that an absolute peace is possible. Strategies for attaining such a peace have varied from the structural approach, e.g. the Hobbesian idea of concentrating violence at one point above the social formation, to the conceptual approach, e.g. the Kantian commitment to a universalizing cognitive enlargement at the levels of both the individual and global society.

4. DISCUSSION OF LINGUISTIC VIOLENCE CAUSES VIOLENCERuben G. Apressyan, Professor of Moral Philosophy, Moscow State University, December, 1998. PEACE REVIEW, v. 10, i. 4.

The issue of linguistic violence is an issue of linguistic culture. Hence, any discussion of linguistic violence may be the cause for violence itself. This is the case because the language of violence can also be constructed, cultivated and exercised culturally. Finally, the issue of linguistic violence in the political sphere is ultimately an issue of openness and democracy in political discourse, in which various voices must be incorporated and where any political group and every citizen have an equal right to speak. But for such purposes, political discourse should be organized as a colloquium in the original sense of the word "colloquy."


Militarism Good – Violence is Justified

1. NON-VIOLENCE IS LIMITED, SO CERTAIN SITUATIONS REQUIRE VIOLENT METHODS.J. Patout Burns, NQA, United States Institute of Peace, CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE STUDY OF PEACEMAKING, July 1996, Y3.P31:2P31/v.4, p. 33-34.

Yehudah Mirsky affirms Judaism's conception of humanity's role in the world as wholly activist, committed to the struggle against evil and injustice -- which at times may call for violent methods. He also discusses the commitment to survival of the Jewish community, whose defense has not been sustainable without violence. While conflict is never celebrated for itself and peace is the ideal, Mirsky asserts that pacifism is not a useful reference point for either principle or practice. Mirsky does see a role for nonviolent resistance; however, he explicitly identifies its limits. According to Mirsky, and in agreement with Wink's analysis, nonviolent resistance is effective when the oppressor seeks subjugation and submission within the existing system. Nonviolent struggle does no work, however, where the oppressor seeks simply to annihilate the victim. In such a situation, nonviolence would further empower the oppressor and force the oppressed to acquiesce in their own destruction, forfeiting human dignity in the process by ceding the oppressor the validity of the oppressor's aims. According to Mirsky, "Nonviolent resistance aims to push the latent contradictions of an oppressive society to the surface. Hence it is inapplicable vis-à-vis societies whose violence and oppression is not a contradiction, but rather of their essence" (p. 73). The Holocaust, thus, affords no "nonviolent moment."

2. NONVIOLENCE IS NOT INHERENTLY GOOD. FORCE AND VIOLENCE CAN BE BENEFICIAL.Sarojini Henry, professor of math and theology in India and visiting professor of theology, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Kentucky, GANDHI MARG, October-December 1995, p. 333.

Niebuhr's criticism of Gandhi's nonviolence came with his emphasis that there is no intrinsic moral difference between violent and nonviolent resistance. Niebuhr continued that "nothing is intrinsically immoral except ill-will and nothing intrinsically good except goodwill." Thus violence is not intrinsically evil, nor is nonviolence intrinsically good. Against those who argue that violence is evil because it expresses ill-will, Niebuhr insisted that such an argument does not hold good in group relations where force may be necessary and may express benevolence. He also maintained that violence can often be beneficial if used with the tempo of the surgeon's knife where healing "follows quickly upon its wounds."

3. NONVIOLENT STRATEGIES ARE NO MORE PURE THAN VIOLENT ONES.Sarojini Henry, professor of math and theology in India and visiting professor of theology, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Kentucky, GANDHI MARG, October-December 1995, p. 336.

Niebuhr, however, maintained that even as a political strategy nonviolent resistance is not absolutely more pure than violent resistance because both coerce and destroy. The choice between violent and non-violent methods becomes only a matter of pragmatic judgement. At any rate, the debate between violence and nonviolence, in Niebuhr's opinion, does not match the complexity of the intricacies involved in the problems of justice and injustice. Niebuhr would add that the complexity makes it particular social situations of injustice. Thus Niebuhr would advocate that one should move beyond the simplistic violence/nonviolence dichotomy and focus on the variety of ways in which power is exercised.


Militarism Good – Pacifism Bad

1. WE MUST ADOPT AN INTRINSIC FORM OF PACIFISM—ABSOLUTE PACIFISM JUSTIFIES PASSIVITY IN THE FACE OF ATROCITIES Robert L. Phillips, Professor of Philosophy, 1984. WAR AND JUSTICE, p. 101-2.

Let us label this position “intrinsicalism” and contrast it with what I shall call “tactical” pacifism. Someone who believes that it is morally permissible to use force to resist or prevent violence might adopt the pacifist stance as a purely tactical matter. He might judge that pacifism is likely to be the best means of bringing about peace. This could happen in at least two ways. It might be thought that pacifism is the appropriate response because of pe culiar historical circumstances . Thus, India in 1946 and the United States in the 1960s could be seen as places where nonviolent resistance would be an appropriate tac tic . In both of those places the rule of law obtained to the degree that the penalties for such disobedience were relatively mild, and there was a chance that such tactics might succeed. However, the same person could well decide that pacifism was not obligatory in Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia. Someone might also adopt tactical pacifism based upon a judgment about the actual possibility of using force justly in the modern era. While admitting the theoretical possi bility of justified force, it may be thought that as long as certain sorts of weapons are retained, or as long as terror is officially sanctioned, then a justified war simply cannot be fought. Both of these versions of tactical pacifism are compatible with bellum justum; indeed, they are entailed by that doctrine. Neither makes an a priori commitment to the position that the use of force will always, under all conceivable circumstances, be wrong. The behavior of the tactical pacifist may be indistinguishable from that of the intrinsicalist on many occasions, but the former leaves open the question of whether force is justified in a given circumstance, and this marks an important moral difference. Thus, intrinsicalism is the only version of pacifism which can be described as a moral position opposed to bellurn justum. In Narveson’s words, “To hold the pacifist position as a genuine, full-blooded moral principle is to hold that nobody has a right to fight back when attacked, that fight ing back is inherently evil, as such. It means we are mistaken in supposing we have a right of self-protection.

2. VIOLENCE IS KEY TO RESISTING OMNICIDE—PACIFISM IS COMPLICITY WITH THE VIOLENCE OF THE STATEMike Ryan, Canadian anti-imperialist, 2001. PACIFISM AS PATHOLOGY, p. 161.

We recognize the right of oppressed peoples to respond to their oppression with violence, but we abstain from engaging in violence ourselves. Thus we recognize our own participation in the oppression of other peoples while we also attempt to deny the critical situation in which we ourselves are found today, a circumstance described by Rosalie Bertell in an earlier quote. If, as Bertell suggests, we are sitting upon a dying earth, and consequently dying as a species solely as a result of the nature of our society, if the technology we have developed is indeed depleting the earth, destroying the air and water, wiping out entire species daily, and steadily weakening us to the point of extinction, if phenomena such as Chernobyl are not aberrations, but are (as I insist they are) mere reflections of our daily reality projected at a level where we can at last recognize its true meaning, then is it not time--long past time --when we should do any thing, indeed everything, necessary to put an end to such madness? Is it not in fact an act of unadulterated self-defense to do so? Our adamant refusal to look reality in its face, to step outside our white skin privilege long enough to see that it is killing us, not only tangibly reinforces the op pression of people of colour the world over, it may well be the single most important contributor to an incipient omnicide, the death of all life as we know it. In this sense, it may well be that our self-imposed inability to act decisively, far from having anything at all to do with the re duction of violence, is instead perpetuating the greatest process of violence in history. It might well be that our moral position is the most mammoth case of moral bankruptcy of all time.


Militarism Good – Pacifism Bad

1. THE HOLOCAUST PROVES THE TOTAL FAILURE OF PACIFISM Ward Churchill, (Keetoowah Band Cherokee) Professor of Ethnic Studies and Coordinator of American Indian Studies at University of Colorado, 2001.PACIFISM AS PATHOLOGY, p. 40.

One may assume for the moment that such a gross distortion of reality is hardly the intent of even the hardiest pacifist polemicists, although it may well be an intrinsic aspect of their position. Worse than this is the Inconsistency of nonviolent premises. For instance, it has been abundantly documented that nazi policy toward the Jews, from 1941 onward, was bound up in the notion that extermination would proceed until such time as the entire Jewish population within German occupied territory was liquidated?~ There is no indication whatsoever that nonviolent intervention/mediation from any quarter held the least prospect of halting, or even delaying, the genocidal process. To the contrary there is evidence that efforts by neutral parties such as the Red Cross had the effect of speeding up the slaughter. That the Final Solution was halted at a point short of its full realization was due solely to the massive appli cation of armed force against Germany (albeit for reasons other than the salvation of the Jews). Left to a pacifist prescription for the altering of offensive state policies, and the effecting of positive social change, “World Jewry” — at least in its Eurasian variants — would have ‘offered total extermination by mid-1946 at the latest. Even the highly symbolic trial of SS Colonel Adolph Eichmann could not be accomplished by nonviolent means, but required armed action by an Israeli paramili tary unit fifteen years after the last death camp was closed by Russian tanks. There is every indication that adherence to pacifist principles would have resulted in Eichmann’s permanent avoidance of justice, living out his life in reasonable comfort until — to paraphrase his own assessment — he leapt into the grave laughing at the thought of having killed six million Jews. With reference to the Jewish experience, nonviolence was a catastrophic failure, and only the most extremely violent intervention by others saved Europe’s Jews at the last moment from slipping over the brink of utter extinction. Small wonder that the survivors insist, “Never again!”

2. PACIFISM IS NOTHING MORE THAN A FORM OF MORAL EGOISM THAT ALLOWS INDIVIDUALS TO BE PASSIVE IN THE FACE OF BRUTALITYRobert L. Phillips, Professor of Philosophy, 1984.WAR AND JUSTICE, p. 103-4.

There is one way of attempting to get around this internal contradiction which intrinsicalism appears to carry with it. Instead of seeing pacifism as a “moral position” in the ordinary sense, perhaps we should understand it as a commitment to an ideal type. The pacifist will concentrate on developing into the kind of person for whom nonviolence is a permanent part of the soul, and by example he will encourage others to do the same. The pacifist would admit that the world does contain men who commit violent at tacks upon others, but his concern will be to demonstrate by his own example that an alternative way of life is pos - sible: men do not have to take life; they do not have to adopt the posture of the utilitarian bargainer. This kind of “saintliness” does, however, seem irresponsible. The unwillingness of the pacifist to dirty his hands is no doubt the source of the charge that he is more concerned about the state of his soul than with the preservation of life. The unwillingness to kill or injure may be part of the pacifist’s very being, but what happens to his “respect for life” defense when his refusal to fight causes loss of lives which could have been saved? Critics of the argument that pacifism is part of a program to attain an ideal of self-hood respond with the charge of “moral egoism.” It [moral egoism] differs from ordinary egoism only in its allegedly spiritual quality. It is a thoroughgoing refusal to dirty one’s own hands.... I suggest that those whose concerns are thus limited are warped, self-righteous and ultimately self-serving. The pacifist “saint” who stands by while others are being murdered or bru talized.., how does he differ from a moral idiot, except in point of pretentiousness?


Militarism Good – Pacifism Fails

1. THE RULE BASED MORALITY OF PACIFISM ALLOWS INDIVIDUALS TO DISTANCE THEMSELVES FROM RESPONSIBILITYWillie Henderson, University of Birmingham Senior Lecturer, April1996.AFRICAN AFFAIRS, p 288.

Mandela supports the notion that Gandhian non-violence is a tactic to be used rather than a sacred principle. The campaign boosts the membership but also boosts government legislation aimed at further levels of suppression. Facing police, courts and prison, the ANC manages to make 'going to prison . . a badge of honour. . .' (p. 129). He finds in his exertions, release from 'any lingering sense of doubt or inferiority I might still have felt; it liberated me from the feeling of being overwhelmed by the power and seemingly invincibility of the white man . . .'. Mandela is thus, in his own eyes, now fully matured. His self-assertion is shown later when he stands up to a rude cross- examination by a police officer, a reaction which did not impress the traditional authorities in his home area whom he is trying to convince to reject Bantu Authorities.

2. ABSOLUTE PACIFISM IS IMPOSSIBLEMohandes Gandhi, 1966.As quoted in, THE PACIFIST CONSCIENCE, by Peter Mayer, p 214.

I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. Thus when my eldest son asked me what he should have done, had he been present when I was almost fatally assaulted in 1908, whether he should have nm away and seen me killed or whether he should have used his physical force which he could and wanted to use, and defended me, I told him that it was his duty to defend me even by using violence. Hence it was that I took part in the Boer War, the so called Zulu rebellion and the late War. Hence also do I advocate training in arms for those who believe in the method of violence. I would rather have India resort to aims in order to defend her honour than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour.

3. WE DON’T ADVOCATE VIOLENCE, JUST DEFENSE AGAINST OPPRESSIONHans Massaquoi, Ebony Writer, February 1993.EBONY MAGAZINE, p. 36.

Now the reporter wants to know whether Malcolm X suggests using violence. The benign expression vanishes and his eyes become fierce. “We don’t advocate violence, but non-violent tactics based solely on morality can only succeed when you are dealing with a basically moral people,” he explains. “A man who oppresses another man because of his color is not moral. It is the duty of every Afro-American to protect himself against mass murderers, bombers, lynchers, floggers, brutalizers and exploiters. If the government is unable or unwilling to protect us, we reserve our right as citizens to defend ourselves by whatever means necessary. A man with a rifle or club can only be stopped by a person armed with a rifle or club.”

4. TACTICAL USE OF VIOLENCE IS NECESSARYEd Mead, political activist, 1998PACIFISM AS PATHOLOGY, p. 14.

Those who denounce the use of political violence as a matter of principle, who advocate nonviolence as a strategy for progress, are wrong. Nonviolence is a tactical question, not a strategic one. The most vicious and violent ruling class in the history of humankind will not give up without a physical fight. Nonviolence as a strategy thus amounts to a form of liberal accommodation and is bound to fail. The question is not whether to use violence in the global class struggle to end the rule of international imperialism, but only when to use it.


Militarism Bad – Link – War as Event

A. FOCUS ON WAR AS AN EVENT MASKS THE EVERYDAY VIOLENCE OF STATE BASED MILITARISMChris J. Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Fall, 1996.HYPATIA, vol. 11, no. 4.

Philosophical attention to war has typically appeared in the form of justifications for entering into war, and over appropriate activities within war. The spatial metaphors used to refer to war as a separate, bounded sphere indicate assumptions that war is a realm of human activity vastly removed from normal life, or a sort of happening that is appropriately conceived apart from everyday events in peaceful times. Not surprisingly, most discussions of the political and ethical dimensions of war discuss war solely as an event – an occurrence, or collection of occurrences, having clear beginnings and endings that are typically marked by formal, institutional declarations. As happenings, wars and military activities can be seen as motivated-by identifiable, if complex, intentions, and directly enacted by individual and collective decision-makers and agents of states. But many of the questions about war that are of interest to feminists-including how large-scale, state-sponsored violence affects women and' members of other oppressed groups; how military violence shapes gendered, raced, and nationalistic political realities and moral imaginations; what such violence consists of and why it persists; how it is related to other oppressive and violent institutions and hegemonies-cannot be adequately pursued by focusing on events. These issues are not merely a matter of good or bad intentions and identifiable decisions.

B. CRISIS BASED REPRESENTATIONS DISTRACT FROM RECOGNITION OF THE OMNIPRESENCE OF MILITARISMChris J. Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Fall, 1996.HYPATIA, vol. 11, no. 4.

Ethical approaches that do not attend to the ways in which warfare and military practices are woven into the very fabric of life in twenty-first century technological states lead to crisis-based politics and analyses. For any feminism that aims to resist oppression and create alternative social and political options, crisis-based ethics and politics are problematic because they distract attention from the need for sustained resistance to the enmeshed, omnipresent systems of domination and oppression that so often function as givens in most people's lives. Neglecting the omnipresence of militarism allows the false belief that the absence of declared armed conflicts is peace, the polar opposite of war. It is particularly easy for those whose lives are shaped by the safety of privilege, and who do not regularly encounter the realities of militarism, to maintain this false belief. The belief that militarism is an ethical, political concern only regarding armed conflict, creates forms of resistance to militarism that are merely exercises in crisis control. Antiwar resistance is then mobilized when the "real" violence finally occurs, or when the stability of privilege is directly threatened, and at that point it is difficult not to respond in ways that make resisters drop all other political priorities. Crisis-driven attention to declarations of war might actually keep resisters complacent about and complicitous in the general presence of global militarism. Seeing war as necessarily embedded in constant military presence draws attention to the fact that horrific, state-sponsored violence is happening nearly all over, all of the time, and that it is perpetrated by military institutions and other militaristic agents of the state.


Militarism Bad – Link – War as Event

1. DISCUSSING WAR AS AN EVENT ALLOWS FOR THE SUSPENSION OF ETHICS AND THE JUSTIFICATION OF MURDER AND VIOLENCEChris J. Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Fall, 1996.HYPATIA, vol. 11, no. 4.

Just-war theory is a prominent example of a philosophical approach that rests on the assumption that wars are isolated from everyday life and ethics. Such theory, as developed by St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Hugo Grotius, and as articulated in contemporary dialogues by many philosophers, including Michael Walzer (1977), Thomas Nagel (1974), and Sheldon Cohen (1989), take the primary question concerning the ethics of warfare to be about when to enter into military conflicts against other states. They therefore take as a given the notion that war is an isolated, definable event with clear boundaries. These boundaries are significant because they distinguish the circumstances in which standard moral rules and constraints, such as rules against murder and unprovoked violence, no longer apply. Just-war theory assumes that war is a separate sphere of human activity having its own ethical constraints and criteria and in doing so it begs the question of whether or not war is a special kind of event, or part of a pervasive presence in nearly all contemporary life.

2. VIEWING WAR AS AN EVENT PREVENTS DISCUSSION OF STATE MILITARISM AS THE ROOT OF VIOLENCE THAT GIVES RISE TO WARChris J. Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Fall, 1996.HYPATIA, vol. 11, no. 4.

Because the application of just-war principles is a matter of proper decision-making on the part of agents of the state, before wars occur, and before military strikes are made, they assume that military initiatives are distinct events. In fact, declarations of war are generally overdetermined escalations of preexisting conditions. Just-war criteria cannot help evaluate military and related institutions, including their peacetime practices and how these relate to wartime activities, so they cannot address the ways in which armed conflicts between and among states emerge from omnipresent, often violent, state militarism. The remarkable resemblances in some sectors between states of peace and states of war remain completely untouched by theories that are only able to discuss the ethics of starting and ending direct military conflicts between and among states.

3. ADDRESSING WAR AS AN EVENT CREATES THE ILLUSION OF STOPPING WAR WHILE THE UNDERLYING MILITARISM GOES UNTOUCHEDChris J. Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Fall, 1996.HYPATIA, vol. 11, no. 4.

Applications of just-war criteria actually help create the illusion that the "problem of war" is being addressed when the only considerations are the ethics of declaring wars and of military violence within the boundaries of declarations of war and peace. Though just-war considerations might theoretically help decision-makers avoid specific gross eruptions of military violence, the aspects of war which require the underlying presence of militarism and the direct effects of the omnipresence of militarism remain untouched. There may be important decisions to be made about when and how to fight war, but these must be considered in terms of the many other aspects of contemporary war and militarism that are significant to nonmilitary personnel, including women and nonhumans.


Militarism Bad – Link – Crisis Resolution Fails

1. ONLY BY ABANDONING CRISIS BASED REPRESENTATIONS CAN WE ADDRESS THE ROOT CAUSES OF VIOLENCEChris J. Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Fall, 1996.HYPATIA, vol. 11, no. 4.

Moving away from crisis-driven politics and ontologies concerning war and military violence also enables consideration of relationships among seemingly disparate phenomena, and therefore can shape more nuanced theoretical and practical forms of resistance. For example, investigating the ways in which war is part of a presence allows consideration of the relationships among the events of war and the following: how militarism is a foundational trope in the social and political imagination; how the pervasive presence and symbolism of soldiers/warriors/patriots shape meanings of gender; the ways in which threats of state-sponsored violence are a sometimes invisible/sometimes bold agent of racism, nationalism, and corporate interests; the fact that vast numbers of communities, cities, and nations are currently in the midst of excruciatingly violent circumstances. It also provides a lens for considering the relationships among the various kinds of violence that get labeled "war." Given current American obsessions with nationalism, guns, and militias, and growing hunger for the death penalty, prisons, and a more powerful police state, one cannot underestimate the need for philosophical and political attention to connections among phenomena like the "war on drugs," the "war on crime," and other state-funded militaristic campaigns.

2. ADDRESSING PARTICULAR WARS IS USELESS IF WE DON’T ADDRESS THE PERVASIVE MILITARISM THAT GIVES RISE TO THEMChris J. Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Fall, 1996.HYPATIA, vol. 11, no. 4.

But the abstraction of the particularities of war depends on an abstraction of war itself. The distance of such abstraction is created in part by willingness to think of war without considering the presence of war in "peaceful" times. Wars becomes conceptual entities-objects for consideration-rather than diverse, historically loaded exemplifications of the contexts in which they occur. In order to notice the particular and individual realities of war, attention must be given to the particular, individual, and contextualized causes and effects of pervasive militarism, as well as the patterns and connections among them.

3. STOPPING ONE EVENT IS NOT ENOUGH; THE OVERALL STRUCTURE OF MILITARISM MUST BE ADDRESSEDChris J. Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Fall, 1996.HYPATIA, vol. 11, no. 4.

When Peach discusses "alternatives to war," she is clearly referring to alternatives to entering into war, or to participating in "the escalation of conflicts." The avoidance of eruptions of military violence is certainly important, and Peach is correct that feminist insights about conflict resolution could present significant recommendations in this regard. However, feminist moral imagination cannot end there. In thinking of alternatives to war, we need to continue to imagine alternatives to militaristic economies, symbolic systems, values, and political institutions. The task of constructing such alternatives is far more daunting and comprehensive than creating alternatives to a specific event or kind of event.


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Militarism Bad – Link – The State

1. MILITARISM IS PERPETUATED THROUGH THE STATE AND THE ARMED FORCESColleen Burke, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, May 11, 1999.WISE NEWS COMMUNIQUE, p. np.

Militarism encompasses much more than just the armed forces of a state and their activities. It is an ideology of power affecting governments with different political objectives and its influence can become part of a social process which penetrates all areas of a society. One useful definition of this complex idea comes from the World Council of Churches, which defines militarism as the result of the process of militarization in which "military values, ideology and pattern of behavior achieve a dominating influence on the political, social, economic and external affairs of the state, and as a consequence the structural, ideological and behavioral patterns of both the society and the government are 'militarized'". Militarism involves a willingness on the part of states to realize their policies through deliberate and organized use of physical force. War is not a continuous state of humanity, nor is it something which creates itself or "just happens". It is a direct result of militarism, and should be seen in that light. Militarism as a process has both material and ideological manifestations. These vary in different cultures and at different times, but there are some common elements. The material forms of militarism which are evident around the world include wars and direct military interventions, destabilization of other countries through proxy armies, foreign-sponsored coups, foreign and colonial occupation, military rule and abuse of human rights. Its institutional manifestations include the armed forces and government budgets which devote a disproportionate amount of money to the military. Militarization is the "gradual encroachment of the military institution into the civilian arena", including, for example, industrial plants becoming dependent on military contracts or the state relying on the military to solve its unemployment problems.

2. USING STATE BASED SOLUTIONS FAILS TO UNDERMINE PERVASIVE MILITARISMChris J. Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Fall, 1996.HYPATIA, vol. 11, no. 4.

In raising questions about the relationships between individuals and states, Peach fails to question liberal, modernist conceptions of either. But if individual persons are socially constituted, often in conflicting ways, how can membership, or appropriate loyalties, be determined? If the state is always inevitably a military, patriarchal, racist state, how ought alternative collectivities that will promote the well-being of individuals be conceived without creating or relying on military presence? Feminists concerned with resistances to war need to consider how the pervasiveness of militarism in the construction of the contemporary state implies the need to question nationalism when theorizing critically about war.

3. CONCENTRATION OF POWER IN THE GOVERNMENT CONTRIBUTES TO MILITARISMHorace Campbell, Professor of African American Studies and Political Science, Syracuse, Winter, 2003.RADICAL HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 85.

Starting from the premise that terrorism is unacceptable and that there must be a clear understanding of what constitutes terrorism, this reflection agrees with the assertion that “terrorism is the use of terrorizing methods of governing or resisting a government.” It explores how militarism became entrenched in the political culture of the United States and the ways in which the celebration of genocide and wars contribute to the defense of a small minority. The challenge of the society is for the majority of the people, including people of color and women, to grasp the importance of the scientific and technological transformations and to build a new movement to redistribute power, making the society more democratic and moving control away from the one percent of the population who hold political power.


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Militarism Bad – Link – The Military

1. DEPLOYING MILITARY PERSONNEL SPREADS MILITARISM GLOBALLYChris J. Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Fall, 1996.HYPATIA, vol. 11, no. 4.

To give one very clear example of the ways in which just-war evaluations of wars as events fail to address feminist questions about militarism, consider the widespread influence of foreign military bases on gendered national identities and interactions. In Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (1990), Cynthia Enloe illustrates how, while decision-making and economic power are held primarily by men, international relations and politics are inevitably played out on women's bodies in myriad ways, propagating racist, nationalist, and colonialist conceptions of femininity. One chapter, "Base Women," is devoted to a discussion of the ways in which local and global sexual politics shape and are shaped through the constant presence of thousands of military bases worldwide-in the symbol of the soldier, the introduction of foreign conceptions of masculinity and femininity, the reproduction of family structures on military bases, and through systems of prostitution that universally coexist alongside military bases.

2. MILITARY SPENDING CONTRIBUTES TO MILITARISMHorace Campbell, Professor of African American Studies and Political Science, Syracuse, Winter, 2003.RADICAL HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 85.

The major task of those who reject all forms of terrorism is to oppose the spread of U.S. military bases, military clients, intense military spending, and celebration of war at a time when the economic conditions of the vast majority of the population have worsened. Left unchallenged, military spending in the United States will exceed $2 trillion in the next four years. Despite the media’s misinformation, which insists on a recovering economy, the majority of low-income people have great difficulty meeting their basic needs, lack adequate health care, and do not have access to relevant education. No less a person than president and former general Dwight Eisenhower warned how weapons manufacturers were shaping the domestic, foreign, and diplomatic policies of the United States. He was the first to use the formulation military industrial complex. Since Eisenhower’s conjuncture, this complex has expanded into the communication and information arenas.

3. ALLOWING WOMEN SOLDIERS CONTRIBUTES TO MILITARISMHorace Campbell, Professor of African American Studies and Political Science, Syracuse, Winter, 2003.RADICAL HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 85.

Psychological warfare and disinformation in the United States are linked to the ideologies of white superiority, heterosexism, and hegemonic masculinity. Concepts of masculinity and valor have deep roots in the armaments culture and build on the traditions of sex and conquest in society. Rape, violence, and plunder have been associated with the military for so long in “real life” and in the media that efforts are now mounted to create female warriors, undermining the gains of the women’s movement. With the rise of the militant women’s movement, the media has begun to portray women who have the same “masculine” proficiency, knowledge, and courage as their male counterparts in the defense of law and order and in the fight against white privilege.

4. WOMEN SOLDIERS ALLOW THE MILITARY TO GLOSS OVER HETEROSEXISMHorace Campbell, Professor of African American Studies and Political Science, Syracuse, Winter, 2003.RADICAL HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 85.

The culture of rape and misogyny lies deeply embedded in the ideology of the U.S. ruling class, and homophobia reinforces this culture. Fear of homosexuals and homosexuality run deep in the popular culture, and the military reproduces it with the assumption that homosexuals will undermine its fighting capabilities. Sexism, homophobia, and racial prejudices are given free rein in the military, yet the political


leadership, through misinformation, presents the military as standing at the forefront of combating racism and sexism by the integration of women and people of color into its ranks.


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Militarism Bad – Link – Civilian Involvement

1. U.S. PATRIOTISM CONTRIBUTES TO MILITARISMHorace Campbell, Professor of African American Studies and Political Science, Syracuse, Winter, 2003. RADICAL HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 85.

The renewed social contract between the rulers and the ruled along with the culture of violence reinforce the thrust for global hegemony and cushion the armaments manufacturers. This combination, along with the ideology of national security and the glorification of warfare, has been called the armaments culture. It is a system of beliefs, values, understandings, practices, and institutions that legitimizes the massive military budget of the United States, the trillion-dollar expenditure on nuclear and biological weapons, and the massive deployment of U.S. troops all around the globe for the preparation and launching of war. This culture serves a definite purpose within the United States by deflecting the fears, anger, and alienation of U.S. citizens and turning this anger and despair into a source of pride and patriotism (flag waving and displays of flags in all spaces). More significantly, the conservative militias reproducing racist ideas have undergone rehabilitation in the name and context of the patriotic fervor now enshrined in law with the Patriot Act and the establishment of the Office of Homeland Security.

2. CIVILIAN INVOLVEMENT IN THE MILITARY PERPETUATES MILITARISMColleen Burke, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, May 11, 1999. WISE NEWS COMMUNIQUE, p. np.

The ideological manifestations of militarism are more difficult to identify because often they are internalized by the society. They include a dissemination of military values, symbols and language among the civilian population which promotes acceptance of hierarchies, nationalism which defines the "other" as enemy, violence as a legitimate means of resolving conflicts, and strict division of proper masculine and feminine roles.


Militarism Bad – Link – Violent Representations

1. MILITARISTIC LANGUAGE PERPETUATES MILITARISMColleen Burke, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, May 11, 1999. WISE NEWS COMMUNIQUE, p. np.

This is reinforced in civilian life by the media which glorifies war, and portrays violence as necessary, combat as exhilarating and aggression as natural. As violence becomes accepted, it is minimized through language which distorts and sanitized its impact. Missiles are called "peacekeepers", civilian deaths become "collateral damage". Militaristic terms have pervaded (the English) language, and are especially evident in sports, with teams "decimating" and "annihilating" each other.

2. MILITARISTIC LANGUAGE AFFECTS SOCIETYDavid C. Smith, Professor of Education, McGill University, July-August, 1997. PEACE MAGAZINE, v. 13, n. 4.

Linguistic research over the last quarter century has exposed the influence of language on our thinking patterns and processes. We are seldom aware that the kind of language we use affects our behavior in significant ways. One example of these revelations is the militarization of English over a long period of time. The result is that our conceptual and higher-level thinking is shaped in ways that we might not consciously wish it to be, and that the language we use in some cases may actually prevent us from attaining our goals.


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Militarism Bad – Link – Terrorism/Capitalism

1. THE LABEL OF TERRORISM IS USED TO PERPETUATE MILITARISMHorace Campbell, Professor of African American Studies and Political Science, Syracuse, Winter, 2003. RADICAL HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 85.

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, and in the wake of the new fight against so-called terrorism, the U.S. population is confronted with militarization and hysteria. The unprecedented powers given to the country’s repressive organs erode the basic rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution, while the massive rise in the defense budget lends more weight to the militarist elements in the society’s leadership. The U.S. government uses the following definition of terrorism: “The unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.”1 Under this definition, any group opposing the conservative militarists and the antiterrorist legislation, or out of favor with those in power, can be arbitrarily criminalized and deemed a terrorist. At the same time, the media is organized in a virtual information war by defining terrorism in a way that leaves the majority of the U.S. citizens living in fear and supporting the vast outlays for military expenditure.

2. CAPITALISM CONTRIBUTES TO MILITARISM AND GENOCIDEHorace Campbell, Professor of African American Studies and Political Science, Syracuse, Winter, 2003. RADICAL HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 85.

Militarism has been defined as “the pervasiveness in society of symbols, values and discourses validating military power, and preparation for war.” Usually North American scholars point to Third World countries with authoritarian leaders as examples of militaristic societies. These manifestations of militarism represent one brand, but the militarism of the imperial state is even more formidable than the powers of Third World dictators. Karl Liebknecht, the German revolutionary, recognized the long history of warfare in all modes of production, but he also understood the specific relationship between “warfare and capitalism.” Scholars still study the impact of German militarism and the interconnections between warfare, eugenics, and fascism to grasp the ways in which capitalist competition and greed fueled war, imperial expansion, and genocide. The same glorification of war has now emerged in American culture, the same capitalist competition and the same efforts to control the known and potential resources of the planet. In a slow and pedantic manner, the European Union has sought to deepen the capitalist competition by creating a single currency to compete with the U.S. dollar. Although globalization has been the focus of U.S. financial hegemony, with the resurgence of the European Union and the growing industrial and economic might of the fastest-growing economies, U.S. hegemony increasingly rests on the pillar of the military.


Militarism Bad – Link – Utilitarianism

1. CONSEQUENTIALIST JUSTIFICATIONS OVERLOOK THE ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECT OF MILITARISMChris J. Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Fall, 1996. HYPATIA, vol. 11, no. 4.

Military practices are no different from other human practices that damage and irreparably modify nature. They are often a result of cost-benefit analyses that pretend to weigh all likely outcomes yet do not consider nonhuman entities except in terms of their use value for humans and they nearly always create unforeseeable effects for humans and nonhumans. In addition, everyday military peacetime practices are actually more destructive than most other human activities, they are directly enacted by state power, and, because they function as unquestioned "givens," they enjoy a unique near-immunity to enactments of moral reproach. It is worth noting the extent to which everyday military activities remain largely unscrutinized by environmentalists, especially American environmentalists, largely because fear allows us to be fooled into thinking that "national security" is an adequate excuse for "ecological military mayhem" (Thomas 1995, 16).


Militarism Bad – Link – Militaristic Language

1. MILITARISTIC LANGUAGE JUSTIFIES AND CAUSES WARDavid C. Smith, Professor of Education, McGill University, July-August, 1997. PEACE MAGAZINE, v. 13, n. 4.

In their book, Language and Peace, Schaffner and Wenden assert that structural metaphors like these do not exist in our belief systems as separate ideas, but are related to one another and systematically organized into metaphors at an even higher, ideological level. The metaphor "Life is a (an uphill) battle" would be one such ideological metaphor. In presenting the research of linguists and philosophers over the past ten years, the authors arrive at a number of sobering conclusions. They conclude that the language of journalists and diplomats frequently represents ideological stances that accept and promote war as a legitimate way of regulating international relations and settling inter-group conflict (legitimization); that language unquestioningly promotes values, sustains attitudes and encourages actions that create conditions that can lead to war (propagation); and that language itself creates the kind of enemy image essential to provoking and maintaining hostility that can help justify war (justification).

2. MILITARISTIC LANGUAGE PERPETUATES VIOLENCERalph Summy, Director of the Matsunaga Institute for Peace, University of Hawaii, December, 1998. PEACE REVIEW, vol. 10, issue 4.

The contemporary English language abounds with expressions of violence (as do most other languages). People constantly call upon a violent metaphor when they want to make a salient point. For example, an argument is to be countered by "shooting it down." An American baseball team rallies behind the bugle call to charge. And a World Cup soccer match that ends in a tic has to be decided by a "shoot-out." I shall suggest three reasons why people are unconsciously attracted to the use of violent terms in their speech, and then explain how this helps to perpetuate a culture of violence, which in turn affects people's behavior.

3. MILITARISTIC LANGUAGE CAUSES VIOLENCEEllen W. Gorsevski, Doctoral Candidate in Speech Communication, Penn State University, 1998. PEACE REVIEW, v. 10, i. 4.

Violence is also latent in seemingly innocuous slang and popular terminology. War and violence are silently validated through the creeping militarization of everyday terminology: our movie stars are "bombshells;" in sporting events, we need to "crush" or "destroy" the opposing team; at happy hour, our toast is "bombs away;" at dinner, we "nuke" our food in the microwave; the list is endless. The point is that culturally, through the unconscious use of violent terms, violent methods and modes of acting and behavior are substantiated as acceptable. Metaphors, as George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have shown, enable us to structure our reality and our actions within that reality. By opting for violent and forceful metaphors over nonviolent and peaceful ones, we confirm that violent behavior is permissible in the physical sense. Reading the rhetoric of violent opposition and force in the newspapers' sports pages, it becomes less surprising to find highly paid athletes hitting, punching, and spitting at each other and their coaches. This is just one more example of the link between linguistic and physical violence.


Militarism Bad – Impact – Extinction

1. ADDRESSING MILITARISM IS KEY TO AVOIDING EXTINCTIONHorace Campbell, Professor Political Science, Syracuse, Winter, 2003. RADICAL HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 85.

The goals of the international peace movement represent a major step away from the doublespeak of the capitalists presently seeking to manipulate the concepts of peace to reinforce repression. The major question before the citizens of the United States, and indeed before humanity, is the issue of the form of human organization necessary to achieve the dignity of all human beings. This question integrally relates to what form of human organization can best use the planet’s resources for the reproduction of the human species, while cleaning up the destruction of the past. This would break with the past “ideal” of achieving peace within the context of a racist and capitalist society. However, before that point is reached, all of the horrors of the present investment in militarism will have to be revealed. Only then will the whole population awaken to the fact that another world must be possible.

2. CONTINUED MILITARISM WILL RESULT IN HUMAN EXTINCTIONAsbjorn Eide and Marek Thee, International Peace Relations Institute Fellows, 1980. PROBLEMS OF CONTEMPORARY MILITARISM, p. xii.

Furthermore, the process of decolonization, on the one hand, and of neo-colonial aspirations of the industrialized countries on the other, brought about the creation and strengthening of the position of armed forces of many of the new states. These have been actively encouraged to intervene in domestic politics, to replace civilian governments and to carry out rigid, coercive policies. The effects of contemporary militarisation in Third World countries are, therefore, most detrimental. Many of these live under military regimes, some of which are extremely cruel. The burden of these countries have had to pay in the economic, political, social and cultural field is staggering. Development priorities have been distorted, political expression has been suffocated, and human rights have been distorted, political expression has been suffocated, and human rights have extensively violated. Thus, militarisation has today a global reach. Given the constant increase and sophistication of the tools of war, conventional and nuclear, tactical and strategic, a dynamic has been set in motion which corrupts society, wastes precious human and material resources, undermines democracy and increases the probability of armed conflict and war. The armament dynamic seems to have gone beyond social and political control. It is important that we become conscious of the dangers of contemporary militarisation and militarism. At stake is the fate of the human being and the survival of humanity.

3. MILITARISM IS THE ROOT OF ALL CONFLICT AND WILL RESULT IN EXTINCTIONMarek Thee, International Peace Relations Institute Fellow, 1980. PROBLEMS OF CONTEMPORARY MILITARISM, p. 4.

The nature of contemporary militarism differs from the previous manifestations of militarism, mainly in its current global reach and a dynamic rooted in a new world hierarchy, the controlling position of the superpowers, the dominance-dependence relationship between the great powers and developing nations, the socio-economic predicament of most of the Third World countries, and the impact of the technological revolution. Militarism today has a changed attribute and role. Without losing the aggressive traits of the past, it has become channelled into a fierce struggle of the giant nuclear powers for world predominance. Expanding beyond open imperial adventures, it has established a military-economic neo-colonial presense around the world. Militarism today has unleashed a world-wide arms race unparalleled in history, it has supplied arms for dozens of local wars, it has distorted development priorities in the Third World, and with ever-new weapons of mass destruction at hand has been playing with the very survival of mankind. The shadow of militarism today looms longer and more widespread than ever. It lurks behind most of the world conflicts and violations of human rights. It is undermining human integrity and the moral standing of an ever-greater number of governments in the world community.


Militarism Bad – Impact – Extinction

Neoliberal Globalization Means Militarism Causes ExtinctionCarl Boggs, Professor of Social Science at National University, 2005, Imperial Delusions: American militarism and endless war, p. xxi-xxii.

If a recycled but upgraded Pax Americana departs somewhat from classical imperialism in a period of accelerated capitalist globalization, the pursuit of its agendas requires the broadened use of military force—or at least the threat of such a force—which means that Empire will be sustained through what the well-worn maxim terms "by any means necessary"—with possibly horrific consequences for the world. Integral to the logic of a New World Order created and managed by the United States (and a few of its allies) is perpetual growth of the Pentagon system and the war economy, the greatest threat today to world peace and perhaps even planetary survival. Yet virtually the entire political culture remains in a state of denial regarding Empire, detached from all the risks, costs, and consequences of a militarism veering out of control. Sadly enough, this syndrome engulfs not only main stream discourses but oppositional discourses as well. The contradictions between the actuality of U.S. military power and the insular public political environment it inhabits could not be more glaring. Never has such an awesome military machine so dominated the world or its own social order, its dimensions so vast that they have become easy to ignore, as if part of the natural landscape, a taken-for-granted reality. Strangely, even by the end of the twentieth century, the long and bloody legacy of U.S. imperialism and militarism—beginning with the first westward push—was obscure to most Americans, whose view was distorted by school textbooks, official political discourse, the mass media, even scholarly writings, except for a few well-known critics like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti, Edward Herman, Chalmers Johnson, and Michael Klare. The recent "discovery” of U.S. military power here and there across the ideological spectrum has been met by a chorus of grateful voices, hopeful that the Pentagon is tip to slaying new dragons in the form of rogue states and terrorists.

Militarism Threatens Planetary SurvivalA. Coskun Samli, Research Professor of Marketing and International Business at the University of North Florida and a Distinguished Fellow in the Academy of Marketing Science, for which he previously served as Chair of its Board of Governors, 2008, Globalization from the bottom up: a blueprint for modern capitalism, pp. 19-20.

The West is saying suicide bombers are terrorists, and the East is saying the attack of American-made tanks and missiles on civilians is terrorism. At the point of writing this book, communications between the two groups are totally garbled up and (his lack of communications has been contributing to insecurity, distrust, and hostile feelings. If the dismal picture described in the first chapter is not going to be stopped from being further expanded out of proportion, then perhaps nothing can make the picture any worse. It appears that very little is being done to open up communications and create a reasonable atmosphere before the clash of civilization becomes a fact. In such a case, no one wins, and there is reasonable doubt that this fragile planet can survive another all-out war . In fact, the lack of communication and the lack of reasonable discourse have been forcing parties to arm further because without communication, insecurity begets more insecurity. Thus militarism is growing everywhere and threatening our future wherever we may be. However, as Albert Einstein (1993) once said, “…a permanent peace cannot be prepared by threats but only by the honest attempt to create mutual trust” (p. 15). Unfortunately, such ideas are hardly paid attention to. Perhaps being peaceful is not quite “macho” and is therefore not favored by majorities.

ERADICATING MILITARISM IS NECESSARY TO PREVENT EXTINCTIONMichael T. Klare, Institute for Policy Studies Fellow, 1980.PROBLEMS OF CONTEMPORARY MILITARISM, ed. Eide & Thee, p. 36-46.

This is a frightening picture of the menace we face, but what must be added to it is an appreciation of the time factor at work. For, as we noted earlier, militarism is a progressive disease, whose crippling effects accumulate and accelerate with time. If left untreated, it will surely end, as in 1914 and 1939, in the outbreak of world war – perhaps, this time, leading to the annihilation of all human life. Our task now is to pinpoint the most potent internal and external factors promoting militarism, to develop programmes to counter those factors, and to build alliances with other concerned groups and people to counter these factors. Our analysis suggests, moreover, that we are at a critical junction in time, and that every moment we postpone action now will make our job infinitely harder later.


Militarism Bad – Extinction

1. WE MUST REJECT VIOLENCE OR RISK THE SURVIVAL OF THE PLANET TO UNCHECKED MILITARISM Anne Adelson, Centre for Peace Studies Associate, 2000.THE CULTURE OF PEACE AND THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN BEINGS. International Journal of Humanities and Peace. Infotrac Webpage, Accessed, May 1, 2004. http://web5.infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/218/497/49621060w5/purl=rc1_EAIM_0_A73580044&dyn=5!xrn_7_0_A73580044?sw_aep=whitman

The modern Western conception of the individual, with its emphasis on autonomy and separation, is only one model of being human.. In African culture, for example, relationships are central, and the humanity of each person is seen as integrally bound to the humanity of others. The concept is captured by the word ubuntu, which translates roughly to the phrase, "person is a person through other people". With the very survival of the planet and of our species at stake, this concept of interdependence is becoming increasingly accepted. More and more people are coming to understand that humans cannot exist except in connection with the planet and all its life processes. The "logic" of militarism is also unraveling, having reached its zenith with Mutual Assured Destruction, better known by its all too appropriate acronym, MAD. New ideas are arising to challenge the concept that the security of one group of people can be obtained by threatening or undermining the security of other people, ideas like common security, peacebuilding and soft power.

2. WE MUST CHALLENGE THE CYCLE OF VIOLENT MILITARISM TO PREVENT GLOBAL CATASTROPHEJonathan Schell, Author and Professor at Yale University, 2003.THE UNCONQUERABLE WORLD, p. 329.

A policy of unchallengeable military domination over the earth, accompanied by a unilateral right to overthrow other governments by military force, is an imperial, an Augustan policy. It marks a decisive choice of force and coercion over cooperation and consent as the mainstay of the American response to the disorders of the time. If wars of self-determination and other kinds of local and regional mayhem multiply and run out of control; if the wealthy and powerful use globalization to systematize and exacerbate exploitation of the poor and powerless; if the poor and the powerless react with terrorism and other forms of violence; if the nuclear powers insist on holding on to and threatening to use their chosen weapons of mass destruction; if more nations then develop nuclear or biological or chemical arsenals in response and threaten to use them; if these weapons one day fall, as seems likely, into the hands of terrorists; and if the United States continues to pursue an Augustan policy, then the stage will be set for catastrophe. Each of these possibilities represents a path of least resistance. Local and regional conflicts have been the way of the world since history began. The spread of nuclear- as well as biological- and chemical weapon know-how is an automatic function of technical progress, and the spread of nuclear arsenals is a self-feeding process of action and reaction. Continued possession of nuclear weapons by those who already have them is the path of inertia, of deep sleep. The imperial temptation for the United States is the path of arrogance and ignorance.


Militarism Bad – Impact – War

1. ALTERNATIVES TO MILITARISM ARE NECESSARY TO AVOID NUCLEAR WARHorace Campbell, Professor of African American Studies and Political Science, Syracuse, Winter, 2003. RADICAL HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 85.

At each moment in the transition between different stages of human transformation, the developments in one society have a dramatic impact on all of humanity. As humanity seeks to survive and thrive in the era of biotechnology, there are major challenges for the demilitarization of the planet and the retreat from the ideas of white superiority, patriarchy, racism, and humans dominating nature. There now exists a need for revolutionary transformations to elaborate principles of peace and human dignity in order to break with greed, destruction, sexism, and expansionism. Those contemplating an alternative mode of human organization face the concrete challenge of a ruling class in the United States now willing to detonate nuclear weapons in order to save the present forms of human organization.

2. ADDRESSING WAR REQUIRES A FUNDAMENTAL UNDERSTANDING OF MILITARISMHorace Campbell, Professor of African American Studies and Political Science, Syracuse, Winter, 2003. RADICAL HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 85.

An understanding of forward planning and war requires a fundamental grasp of contemporary militarism as the U.S. corporate and bureaucratic leaders prepare the population for wars in all corners of the globe in its fight against the so-called axis of evil. At the present conjuncture, where the world metamorphoses from the century of physics and chemistry into the biotech century, far-reaching technological changes with major implications for militarism have taken place. The explosion of information systems forms one component of the general explosion of technological change in a society still guided by the ideas of monopoly-capitalism militarism (or the era of steel and railways). The mechanical representation of life that emanated from this period of Taylorism had its impact on all aspects of U.S. life, including the military. Now, however, forward planning is compounded by the laws of unforeseen circumstances and the complexity of the present international system. This complexity emanates from the multifaceted nature of life and the reality that social phenomena have become far removed from the kind of simplicity, predictability, and determinism associated with the Newtonian machine.


Militarism Bad – Impact – War/Genocide/Terrorism

U.S. Imperialism paves the way for global holocaustsJohn Bellamy Foster, Professor of Sociology, University of Oregon-Eugene, July 1, 2003, “The New Age of Imperialism,” Monthly Review, http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-105368626.html

This new age of U.S. imperialism will generate its own contradictions, amongst them attempts by other major powers to assert their influence, resorting to similar belligerent means, and all sorts of strategies by weaker states and non-state actors to engage in "asymmetric" forms of warfare. Given the unprecedented destructiveness of contemporary weapons, which are diffused ever more widely, the consequences for the population of the world could well be devastating beyond anything ever before witnessed. Rather than generating a new "Pax Americana" the United States may be paving the way to new global holocausts.

U.S. Imperialism makes global wars and terrorism inevitableDoug Bandow, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, May 19, 2006, “A Foreign Policy of Fools,” http://www.antiwar.com/bandow/?articleid=8954

Today, however, this policy of global empire is madness. It is dangerous and foolish. It is inexcusable and unforgivable. The costs of America’s policy of empire have become obvious to everyone except those charged with selling and implementing it. The most obvious is cash. Military spending is the price of one’s foreign policy. And the bill is high: Next year America will officially devote some $440 billion to the military. Toss in the costs of the Iraq war (routinely funded by “supplemental” appropriations), nuclear programs installed in the Energy Department, health care provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs, and aid payments to various foreign clients and dependents, and the total climbs inexorably past the half-trillion mark. The policy of promiscuous interference and intervention makes war, at least war with America, more likely. If China attacks Taiwan, if Russia battles a former dependent, if Middle Eastern neighbors tangle, Washington promises to be there. Threatening war with America might discourage the parties from risking a fight, but if conflict comes the U.S. will be in the middle. Moreover, America makes often ancient quarrels harder to solve by encouraging friendly parties to be more recalcitrant. After all, Washington always inserts itself as an ally of one of the parties, never as a disinterested observer. And why deal if you have a superpower at your side? Although America would be unlikely to lose any such war, the consequences nevertheless would be horrendous. And as 9/11 demonstrated, the U.S. homeland no longer is sacrosanct. Americans once presumed that they could bomb without consequence. In the cases of Serbia, Iraq, Haiti, Panama, Somalia, Grenada, North Korea, Iraq again, Vietnam – and even Germany and Japan (other than Pearl Harbor, the Aleutians, and a few balloon bombs) – the U.S. did the bombing. Other nations got bombed. Such a world made empire seemingly easy, if not cheap.


Militarism Bad – Impact – Otherization/Value to Life

1. MILITARISM CONTRIBUTES TO OTHERIZATION IN SOCIETYColleen Burke, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, May 11, 1999. WISE NEWS COMMUNIQUE, p. np.

Militaristic nationalism encourages polarization in which a group identity is defined as being in opposition to the "other". Group membership is most obviously at work within the military itself, where uniforms, communal living and group activities all serve as identifiers of belonging to a particular group. Nationalism affects civilians who begin to identify with "us" and not "them", as the virtues of one culture, race or ethnic group and the defects of the "other" are both exaggerated. When nationalism is linked to militarism, the "other" becomes the "enemy". This is cyclical: military ideology creates an "enemy" out of difference and then uses the existence of this enemy to justify continued militarism. Thus, "power-over-the-other" is extended beyond the boundaries of the society.

2. MILITARISM UNDERMINES THE VALUE TO LIFEHorace Campbell, Professor of African American Studies and Political Science, Syracuse, Winter, 2003. RADICAL HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 85.

This analysis examines the conditions for moving beyond the devaluation of human lives in order to achieve radical transformations creating new forms of community and association able to unleash the creativity of the human spirit. This will be necessary for the revitalization of society away from militarism and the worship of profit. The present global war on terrorism is having a fundamental impact on world politics, and it is within this period of major political, economic, military, and social struggles that my discussion seeks to participate in the support of peace and healing.


Militarism Bad – Impact – Environment

1. FAILING TO RECOGNIZE MILITARISM AS A PRESENCE ENSURES CONTINUED VIOLENCE AND ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTIONChris J. Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Fall, 1996. HYPATIA, vol. 11, no. 4.

Theory that does not investigate or even notice the omnipresence of militarism cannot represent or address the depth and specificity of the every-day effects of militarism on women, on people living in occupied territories, on members of military institutions, and on the environment. These effects are relevant to feminists in a number of ways because military practices and institutions help construct gendered and national identity, and because they justify the destruction of natural nonhuman entities and communities during peacetime. Lack of attention to these aspects of the business of making or preventing military violence in an extremely technologized world results in theory that cannot accommodate the connections among the constant presence of militarism, declared wars, and other closely related social phenomena. such as nationalistic glorifications of motherhood, media violence, and current ideological gravitations to military solutions for social problems.

2. VIEWING WAR AS AN EVENT NEGLECTS MILITARISM’S ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION DURING TIMES OF PEACEChris J. Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Fall, 1996. HYPATIA, vol. 11, no. 4.

I turn now to a discussion of the environmental effects of war, because I believe these effects to be significant to feminists for two basic reasons. Though women are no more essentially connected to nature than any other organic beings, cultural constructions associate women with nature and help justify the mistreatment of both. Many feminists and ecological feminists have discussed these problematic conceptual connections as created or fueled by the dichotomous thinking discussed above (Griffin 1989; King 1990; Warren 1990; Cuomo 1992; Plumwood 1993). Others, including Vandana Shiva and Maria Mies (1993), focus on the practical, or material connections between environmental degradation and women's oppression. In any case, if women's oppression is connected to the unjustified destruction of nature, or if, as Karen Warren argues, feminists must be against oppression in any form, including the oppression of nature, it is arguable that the ecological effects of war and militarism are feminist issues. Because military ecological destruction occurs primarily "during peacetime," and because it is so directly tied to other forms of ecological and social violence, attention to the ecological impacts of war further illustrates the limitations of only thinking of war in terms of events.

3. MILITARISM RISKS DESTRUCTION OF THE ENVIRONMENTChris J. Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Fall, 1996. HYPATIA, vol. 11, no. 4.

All told, including peacetime activities as well as the immense destruction caused by combat, military institutions probably present the most dramatic threat to ecological well-being on the planet. The military is the largest generator of hazardous waste in the United States, creating nearly a ton of toxic pollution every minute, and military analyst Jillian Skeel claims that, "Global military activity may be the largest worldwide polluter and consumer of precious resources" (quoted in Thomas 1995, 5). A conventionally powered aircraft carrier consumes 150,000 gallons of fuel a day. In less than an hour's flight, a single jet launched from its flight deck consumes as much fuel as a North American motorist burns in two years. One F-16 jet engine requires nearly four and a half tons of scarce titanium, nickel, chromium, cobalt, and energy-intensive aluminum (Thomas 1995, 5), and nine percent of all the iron and steel used by humans is consumed by the global military (Thomas 1995, 16). The United States Department of Defense generates 500,000 tons of toxins annually, more than the world's top five chemical companies combined. The military is the biggest single source of environmental pollution in the United States. Of 338 citations issued by the United States Environmental Protection Agency in 1989, three-quarters went to military installations (Thomas 1995, 17).


Militarism Bad – Impact – Structural Violence

1. MILITARISM WORKS AT THE LEVEL OF STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE, WHICH OUTWEIGHS WARSulak Sivaraksa, Buddhist lecturer, 2001, Padmapani Lecture delivered at India International Centre on 13 November 2001, http://www.sulak-sivaraksa.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id= 57&Itemid=102

It is very important to understand that nonviolence is an effective and very powerful response to conflict. It does not mean doing nothing. It is actually a powerful force that can be acted upon. Peace is not merely the absence of war. Peace is a proactive, comprehensive process of finding ground through open communication and putting into practice a philosophy of non-harm and sharing resources. Creating a culture of peace is an active process. When confronted with large-scale conflicts there is no question that they demand a response. The problem is that many people believe that a nonviolent response means doing nothing whereas responding with force or violence means doing something. The Middle Way of Buddhism defines very well how one should respond to violence. It is about avoiding extremes. The extremes being doing nothing on the one hand or responding with similar violence on the other. However, it is also important to examine structural violence. We should not limit our thinking to believing that violence is limited merely to acts of war or terrorism. Every day 40,000 people starve to death in a world where there is an abundance of food. The global economic system enriches a few while everyday more and more people are pushed into living in poverty. Twenty percent of the world's population has over eighty percent of the world's wealth. In order for a few to enjoy wealth others must be deprived of a decent livelihood. This is really one of the world's greatest injustices. The problem with structural violence is that it is difficult to see it. Many people just dismiss it by saying that's the way things are or there is no other way.

2. VIOLENCE DESTROYS INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM BECAUSE IT SPIRALS OUT OF CONTROLJonathan Schell, Author and Professor at Yale University, 2003.THE UNCONQUERABLE WORLD, p. 132-133.

Action, moreover, flourishes, Gandhi believed, in freedom; and nonviolent action, precisely because it requires the highest possible degree of courage, exhibits the largest freedom. Violence, although initiated in pursuit of political goals, can take on a life of its own, which distracts from the original goals, and may eventually compete with them or supplant them entirely. On the local scale, this leads to vendetta, which can outlast by generations any political or other purposes that gave rise to a quarrel. On a much wider scale, the logic of war can, as Clausewitz warned with such clarity, entirely supersede the political purposes that lend war whatever sense it may have. On each of these levels, the actors surrender their freedom of action to a process over which they have lost control.


Militarism Bad – Impact – Root Causes

The imposition of an imperialist world order perpetuates warfare, violence, and otherization. This is the root of all risks to our survivalRonnie Lipschutz, Professor, Department of Politics Director, Politics PhD Program Co-director, Center for Global, International and Regional Studies, University of California , Santa Cruz, 2001, “(B)orders and (Dis)orders: The Role of Moral Authority in Global Politics,” Identities, borders, orders: Rethinking International Relations Theory, ed. Matthias Albert, David Jacobson, and Yosef Lapid, p. 73.

To restore its moral authority, consequently, the nation-state must redraw the borders between good and evil, mastering disorder through imposition of new (b)orders. The United States—both government and conservative social elites—are attempting to restore order at home and abroad in two ways. First, the official foreign policy of “democratization and enlargement” represents an attempt to expand the boundaries of the “good world.” Those who follow democracy and free markets subscribe to a moral order that makes the world safe for goodness and peace (but see the critique of this idea in Mansfield and Snyder 1995). Second, a policy of disciplinary deterrence is being directed against so-called rogue states (now called “states of concern” by the U.S. government), terrorists, and others of the “bad bloc” who are said to threaten the “good world” with destruction even though they possess only a fraction of the authority, influence, and military firepower of the latter. Ordinary deterrence, whether conventional or nuclear, is aimed against any state with the physical military capabilities to threaten or attack. Disciplinary deterrence is different. It is an act of (supra) national morality, not of national interests, of drawing lines in the sand, and not in blood. Disciplinary deterrence is, to be sure, warfare by another means, but it is violence inflicted through demonstration, through publicity, through punishment on those who do not follow the rules. It has the trappings of an effort to correct wayward parties, that is, those who fall out of line and violate the priniciples of a world moral order whose form and rules are not always so clear. It is a practice fully of the media age, relying on rapid and widespread communication and the receipt of the message by those who might think of resistance, but who are warned to think twice and induced to back down. Ideally, then, disciplinary deterrence becomes a form of self-regulation, an institutionalized practice that limits behavior simply through awareness of it. The paradox of disciplinary deterrence is, however, that there is no one there. It is conducted against imagined enemies, with imaginary capabilities, and the worst of imagined intentions (Lipschutz 1995, 12; Lipshutz 1999b). Where these enemies might choose to issue a challenge, or why they would do so, is not at all evident. But that these enemies represent the worst of all possible moral actors is hardly questioned.


Militarism Bad – Impact – Moral Obligation

We have an individual obligation to take a clear stand against militarism because it is the root cause of rape, racism, poverty and fear. Acceptance of status quo violence is a specific strategy of militarism that justifies domination via colonialism and imperialism Gwyn Kirk, Ph.D in political science from the London School of Economics, 2005, “Symposium: Women and War: A Critical Discourse: Panel One - Tools Of War,” Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice, 20 Berkeley J. Gender L. & Just. 322, p. np.

So before I get into the paper part of what I wanted to say, I really just want to stop for a moment and reflect on the fact that we are in a country that is at war. It's in an overt war, and it's also in many covert wars. So when we think of the bombing of Afghanistan - I'm just talking recently now - the bombing of Iraq, the destabilization in Haiti, the rumbling that's going on in Venezuela and Columbia, and you can probably add other countries to that list, I think it gives us - people who live in this country, whether as citizens or residents - a very special responsibility to think about what is our place in this; what's our responsibility; what's our complicity; what's our work to do; what are our stories to tell. Rape is one tool of war and as you know, of course, there are many others, and I'd just like to mention a few before I get any further. Racism, poverty, hunger, complacency, ignorance, fear, war toys, video games, war movies, military chic fashions, despair, comfort, lies, threats, saying there is no alternative, you are either with us or you are with the terrorists, indoctrination, propaganda, journalists in bed with the military, censorship, defining limits, putting out barriers, fences, separation, abdication of responsibility and all manner of rationalizations. The theoretical point that I like to hang onto in a lot of the work that I do is a distinction made by feminist philosopher Val Plumwood who talks about dualistic thinking as the object that underpins hierarchal systems such as militarism, colonialism, racism, sexism and environmental destruction. They all rely on the creation of the otherness of enemies and inferiority to justify superiority and domination. These dualisms are mutually reinforcing and should be viewed as an interlocking set. Militarism has obviously been a tool of colonization and imperialism for centuries and is currently a key element in new colonialism and the contemporary streamlining of the corporate economy as a global system. In turn, militarism deploys and exploits intersecting inequalities based on gender, race or ethnicity, class and nation. These systems of inequality and oppression don't completely overlap, but constitute a kind of matrix of oppression and of resistance. Contradictions and inconsistencies offer us opportunities for opposition and resistance. And I will make some passing remarks about women's organizing around these issues as well as note some contradictions inherent in the current legal and political frameworks.


Militarism Bad – Impact – Racism

Imperialism spreads white supremacy globallyMarvin X (El Muhajir), 2008, “Introduction,” How To Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy: A Pan African 12 Step Model for Africans, Europeans & Others, http://www.nathanielturner.com/ howtorecoverfromtheaddictionofwhitesupremacy.htm

Contrary to President Bush, oil is not America’s number one addiction, rather it is the disease of racism or white supremacy which pervades and poisons every fabric of American and western society. White supremacy also affects African, Asian, and Latin culture; thus it is a global phenomena, administered through the economic institution of capitalism and imperialism. It is not purely economic but cultural as well. The virus of white supremacy is spread through cultural imperialism, or the imposition of Western culture upon the subject peoples, and of course Western culture is by the nature of power relationships, the superior or dominant culture, all other cultures being inferior and relegated to the lower rung on the ladder of civilization.


Militarism Bad – Impact – Neoliberalism/Value to Life

U.S. “security” and hegemony discourse is rooted in a neoliberalist rationality that suppresses democracy, social change and agency. The status quo and reliance on a system of neoliberal ideology closes off spaces for dissent and agencyHenry A. Giroux is the Global Television Network Chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University and Susan Searls Giroux is an assistant professor in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, 2006, “Challenging Neoliberalism's New World Order: The Promise of Critical Pedagogy,” Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies, 6:21, p. np.

The liberal democratic lexicon of rights, entitlements, social provisions, community, social responsibility, living wage, job security, equality, and justice seem oddly out of place in a country where the promise of democracy—and the institutions necessary for its survival over generations—have been gutted, replaced by casino capitalism, a winner-take-all philosophy suited to lotto players and day traders alike . As corporate culture extends even deeper into the basic institutions of civil and political society, buttressed daily by a culture industry in the hands of a few media giants, free market ideology is reinforced even further by the pervasive fear and insecurity of the public , who have little accessibility to countervailing ideas and believe that the future holds nothing beyond a watered-down version of the present. As the prevailing discourse of neoliberalism seizes the public imagination, there is no vocabulary for progressive social change, democratically inspired visions, critical notions of social agency, or the kinds of institutions that expand the meaning and purpose of democratic public life. In the vacuum left by diminishing democracy, a new kind of authoritarianism steeped in religious zealotry, cultural chauvinism, xenophobia, and racism has become the dominant trope of neoconservatives and other extremist groups eager to take advantage of the growing insecurity, fear, and anxiety that result from increased joblessness, the war on terror, and the unraveling of communities. As a result of the consolidated corporate attack on public life, the maintenance of democratic public spheres from which to launch a moral vision or to engage in a viable struggle over institutions and political vision loses all credibility—as well as monetary support. As the alleged wisdom and common sense of neoliberal ideology remains largely unchallenged within dominant pseudo-public spheres, individual critique and collective political struggles become more difficult.

There’s no value to life in a neoliberal framework. Autonomy and agency are prefigured by neoliberal capitalPaul Treanor, Political Science at the Universiteit van Amserdam, December 2, 2005, “Neoliberalism: origins, theory, definition,” http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/neoliberalism.html, p. np.

In practice many 'workfare neoliberals' also believe that there is a separate category of people, who can not participate fully in the market. Workfare ideologies condemn this underclass to a service function for those who are fully market-compatible. Note however, that by recognising a non-market underclass, neoliberals undermine their own claims about the universal applicability of market principles. The general ethical precept of neoliberalism can be summarised approximately as: "act in conformity with market forces" "within this limit, act also to maximise the opportunity for others to conform to the market forces generated by your action" "hold no other goals". If everyone lives by such entrepreneurial precepts, then a world will come into existence in which not just goods and services, but all human and social life, is the product of conformity to market forces. More than traditional market liberals, neoliberals therefore have a quasi-heroic attitude to the entrepreneur, and to engagement in the market. A 1998 speech by German entrepreneur Jost Stollmann is typical: his neoliberal ideas played a prominent role in the national elections in Germany in that year. Stollmann includes his personal moral philosophy, such as it is...Ich möchte die Lust und Bewunderung unternehmerischen Erfolgs in den Augen der jungen Menschen sehen. Ich möchte den Stolz und den Zuspruch der Eltern spüren, wenn sich Sohn oder Tochter tatenvoll in das Abenteuer Selbständigkeit stürzen.....so gut sein, wie wir nur können - getreu der bewährten Formel, die ich während meiner Zeit in Amerika verstehen gelernt habe: 'BE THE BEST YOU CAN BE'


Militarism Bad – Alternative – Recognition Key

RECOGNIZING THE EVERYDAYNESS OF WAR AND MILITARISM ALLOWS FOR A TRANCENDENCE OF THEIR INEVITABILITYMary A. Favret, Associate Professor of English, Indiana University, 2005. ELH, 72.

Like other versions of the everyday constructed in the Romantic period, Austen’s in Persuasion emerges from the reality of worldwide war. Reading these unaccountable histories of pain and loss, one begins to suspect that the everyday is a wartime. In fact, one can follow a distinct strand of thinking about the everyday, from its philosophical and aesthetic roots in Romanticism into twentieth-century critical theory, and find it informed by the language, the features, and the preoccupations of wartime. Modern war—with its national armies, its tendency to erase the line between combatants and noncombatants, its global reach—is the history which possesses, perhaps determines our own current thinking about the everyday. It seems appropriate, at a moment where war appears to have no horizon, to acknowledge this marriage of war and the everyday, but also to call into question, as the best romances do, the inevitability of this marriage.

SINGLE ISSUE CAUSES RISK COOPTAITION; BROAD REJECTION OF MILITARISM IS NECESSARY TO ACHIEVE WIDESPREAD SOCIAL CHANGEHorace Campbell, Professor of African American Studies and Political Science, Syracuse, Winter, 2003.RADICAL HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 85.

Martin Luther King Jr. had called for a revolution of values in order to bring justice and fairness to the U.S. political system. For a short period of time, the peace and black liberation movements managed to drive a wedge into the ranks of the U.S. ruling class, creating sharp divisions therein. As a result, sections of the capitalist class did not believe in the necessity of repression in dealing with the antiwar movement. Long-term planners believed that the society was robust enough ultimately to co-opt the protesters. Slowly, it became clearer that the struggle for peace could not be linear and based on opposition to military spending, but had to be linked to the transformation of the social system. This reality underscored the fact that the building of peace constituted a process and not an event associated with a single-issue campaign, such as ending U.S. military interventions in Central America, the war against Iraq, or the closing of the School of the Americas. Each of the antiwar campaigns built on the legacies of a larger movement. The consolidation of the peace movement coincided with the intensification of militarism and military culture, with images of warfare promoted in the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, the War on Crime, and the various wars against youth.

ACKNOWLEGING THE EVERYDAYNESS OF MILITARISM IS CRITICAL TO RESISTING WARMary A. Favret, Associate Professor of English, Indiana University, 2005. ELH, 72.

More recent intellectual preoccupations with the everyday testify to the troubling but enduring marriage of the everyday with war, and in fact ought to be read as a symptom of the history of modern warfare. The everyday emerges as an object of significant historical and theoretical interest in the wake of World War II. Signaling the shift from wartime to its aftermath, attention to the everyday appears to demonstrate an ability to reflect back on war; it takes the survivor’s perspective. And yet twentieth-century theorists of the everyday seem eager to hold on to or perpetuate war, to find in the everyday what Michel Foucault calls “the continuation of war by other means.”9 For them the everyday sustains under the veneer of peace the work of war even after its formal end. It serves as the ground for unceasing resistance to established or legitimate authority. The everyday, in other words, becomes a weapon for contesting peace.

EXPANDING OUR CONCEPTION OF WAR BEYOND THE EVENT ALLOWS THE CAUSES OF MILITARISM TO BE ADDRESSEDChris J. Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Fall, 1996. HYPATIA, vol. 11, no. 4.

Expanding the field of vision when considering the ethical issues of war allows us to better perceive and reflect upon the connections among various effects and causes of militarism, and between aspects of


everyday militarism and military activities that generally occur between declarations of war and the signing of peace treaties.


Militarism Bad – Alternative – Recognition of Everyday Violence

1. RECOGNIZING THE PRESENCE OF MILITARISM ALLOWS FOR PRODUCTIVE DISCUSSION OF THE ISSUES UNDERLYING VIOLENCEChris J. Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Fall, 1996. HYPATIA, vol. 11, no. 4.

By considering the presence of war and militarism, philosophers and activists are able to engage in a more effective, local, textured, multiplicitous discussion of specific examples and issues of militarism, especially during "peacetime" (when most military activities occur). These include environmental effects, such as the recent French decision to engage in nuclear testing; and effects on conceptions of gender and on the lives of women, such as the twelve-year-old Japanese girl who was recently raped by American soldiers stationed in Okinawa.

2. VIEWING WAR AS A PRESENCE IS NECESSARY TO ADDRESS VIOLENCE IN UNDECLARED SITUATIONSChris J. Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Fall, 1996. HYPATIA, vol. 11, no. 4.

As Robin Schott emphasizes, focusing on the presence of war is particularly necessary given current realities of war, in an age in which military technology makes war less temporally, conceptually, and physically bounded, and in which civil conflict, guerilla wars, ethnic wars, and urban violence in response to worsening social conditions are the most common forms of large-scale violence.

3. FAILING TO RECOGNIZE THE EVERYDAYNESS OF WAR RISKS ENDURING GLOBAL WARFAREMary A. Favret, Associate Professor of English, Indiana University, 2005. ELH, 72.

But what role might the everyday play during war itself, with barely the hope of peace? As a philosophical pivot point, the everyday had emerged earlier, during those world wars preceding and concurrent with the Napoleonic period, when reflection back upon war was barely imaginable (though not, as Wordsworth’s “months of peace” indicates, undesired). This everyday understood itself from within wartime, absorbing, if not embracing, war and its pains. Comparing romantic representations with twentieth-century discussions of everyday war calls into question not the operations of war, which are in both cases almost always assumed; rather it calls into question peace. Romantic writers found it nearly impossible to imagine any space or time free from the pains—Austen’s “tax”—of warfare. Many twentieth-century theorists, by contrast, find it not impossible to conjure peace, but rather undesirable or disadvantageous. The twenty-first century, with its promise of enduring global warfare, invites us to review the romantic position and reconsider our subscription to a critical practice that relies upon, elaborates, and promotes the logic of war.

4. ACKNOWLEDGING THE OMNIPRESENCE OF MILITARISM ALLOWS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS TO BE ADDRESSEDChris J. Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Fall, 1996. HYPATIA, vol. 11, no. 4.

If environmental destruction is a necessary aspect of war and the peacetime practices of military institutions, an analysis of war which includes its embeddedness in peacetime militarism is necessary to address the environmental effects of war. Such a perspective must pay adequate attention to what is required to prepare for war in a technological age, and how women and other Others are affected by the realities of contemporary military institutions and practices.


Militarism Bad – Alternative – Recognition of Everyday Violence

1. SPEAKING OF WAR AS A PRESENCE RATHER THAN AN EVENT IS NECESSARY TO OVERCOME MILITARISMChris J. Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Fall, 1996. HYPATIA, vol. 11, no. 4.

In 'Gender and `Postmodern' War," Robin Schott introduces some of the ways in which war is currently best seen not as an event but as a presence (Schott 1995). Schott argues that postmodern understandings of persons, states, and politics, as well as the high-tech nature of much contemporary warfare and the preponderance of civil and nationalist wars, render an event-based conception of war inadequate, especially insofar as gender is taken into account. In this essay, I will expand upon her argument by showing that accounts of war that only focus on events are impoverished in a number of ways, and therefore feminist consideration of the political, ethical, and onto-logical dimensions of war and the possibilities for resistance demand a much more complicated approach. I take Schott's characterization of war as presence as a point of departure, though I am not committed to the idea that the constancy of militarism, the fact of its omnipresence in human experience, and the paucity of an event-based account of war are exclusive to contemporary postmodern or postcolonial circumstances.

2. WARS SHOULD BE RECOGNIZED AS A BYPRODUCT OF AN EVER-PRESENT MILITARISMChris J. Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Fall, 1996. HYPATIA, vol. 11, no. 4.

I propose that the constancy of militarism and its effects on social reality be reintroduced as a crucial locus of contemporary feminist attentions, and that feminists emphasize how wars are eruptions and manifestations of omnipresent militarism that is a product and tool of multiply oppressive, corporate, technocratic states.' Feminists should be particularly interested in making this shift because it better allows consideration of the effects of war and militarism on women, subjugated peoples, and environments. While giving attention to the constancy of militarism in contemporary life we need not neglect the importance of addressing the specific qualities of direct, large-scale, declared military conflicts. But the dramatic nature of declared, large-scale conflicts should not obfuscate the ways in which military violence pervades most societies in increasingly technologically sophisticated ways and the significance of military institutions and everyday practices in shaping reality. Philosophical discussions that focus only on the ethics of declaring and fighting wars miss these connections, and also miss the ways in which even declared military conflicts are often experienced as omnipresent horrors. These approaches also leave unquestioned tendencies to suspend or distort moral judgement in the face of what appears to be the inevitability of war and militarism.

3. ACKNOWLEGING THE PRESENCE OF WAR ALLOWS FOR A DISRUPTION OF CRISIS BASED POLITICS AND THE POSSIBILITY OF ADDRESSING EVERYDAY VIOLENCEChris J. Cuomo, Professor of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati, Fall, 1996. HYPATIA, vol. 11, no. 4.

It is of course crucial that the analysis I recommend here notice similarities, patterns, and connections without collapsing all forms and instances of militarism or of state-sponsored violence into one neat picture. It is also important to emphasize that an expanded conception of war is meant to disrupt crisis-based politics that distract attention from mundane, everyday violence that is rooted in injustice. Seeing the constant presence of militarism does not require that middle-class and other privileged Americans suddenly see themselves as constantly under siege. It does require the development of abilities to notice the extent to which people and ecosystems can be severely under siege by military institutions and values, even when peace seems present.


Militarism Bad – Alternative – Changing Language

1. THE SUCCESS OF THE GENDERED LANGUAGE MOVEMENT PROVES MILITARISTIC LANGUAGE CAN BE STOPPEDRalph Summy, Director of the Matsunaga Institute for Peace, University of Hawaii, December, 1998. PEACE REVIEW, vol. 10, issue 4.

Early in the second wave of the feminist movement its protagonists realized the importance of language in shaping and reinforcing attitudes of sexism and misogyny, and they campaigned relentlessly to make the language more inclusive and less exploitative. Today most males (and women, too) have felt the effects of this campaign, and many--despite the backlash against "political correctness"--take great pains to avoid gender-specific language. The proponents of nonviolence, it is proposed, should attempt to emulate the success of the feminists by substituting current violent expressions with imaginative nonviolent ones. This would constitute one important contribution (among others) in reducing the many acts of violence--legitimate as well as illegitimate--that pervade our society.

2. ABANDONING MILITARISTIC LANGUAGE IS POSSIBLERalph Summy, Director of the Matsunaga Institute for Peace, University of Hawaii, December, 1998. PEACE REVIEW, vol. 10, issue 4.

Instead of, for instance, "shooting holes in an argument," its weakness could be equated to "unraveling a ball of yarn." A soccer "shoot-out" could appropriately be called a "boot-out." The violent phrase, "to kill two birds with one stone" could be replaced by the equally effective but pacific aphorism, "to stroke two birds with one hand." Rather than refer to "a double-edged sword," the same meaning could be conveyed by the phrase "two sides to the coin." Lovers no longer need "dress to kill," which is surely not what is literally intended anyway, so why not make the more poignant observation that they "dress to thrill." If the aim is to eliminate violence from sex play, that also entails removing it from the language. No matter how harmless some violent phrases might superficially appear, they reflect the way we perceive the world and reinforce behavioral patterns already excessively violent in a country like the United States.

3. COUNTERING VIOLENT LANGUAGE DELEGITIMIZES VIOLENCERalph Summy, Director of the Matsunaga Institute for Peace, University of Hawaii, December, 1998. PEACE REVIEW, vol. 10, issue 4.

By accepting the introduction of violence into the language, people are contributing to the affirmation of a paradigm that condemns them to the ranks of the dominated and the world at large to a political system of circulating elites and perpetual violence. Thus any action, no matter how small, that can counter the legitimization of violence in all its multifaceted forms will be undermining the foundations of elite domination. Conversely, if the elites can successfully promote the acceptance of legitimate violence, mainly through their control of the institutions of education and communication, their position is assured. Not surprisingly, their focus is thus not directed at reducing the cultural violence of language and media--a violence that rationalizes and helps to sustain the dominant paradigm--but is primarily confined to decreasing the overt violence that can destabilize their position.


Militarism Bad – Alternative – Individual Action

1. ONE PERSON CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE BY STARTING A MOVEMENT AGAINST MILITARISMWill Thomas, Award Winning Investigative Journalist, 1995. SCORCHED EARTH: THE MILITARY’S ASSAULT ON THE ENVIRONMENT, p. 95.

The lone white-garbed hero of Tiananmen Square who single-handedly stopped the tanks electrified the world with his courage and resolve. He could have been killed, like so many others that day. But the power of his moral rightness proved stronger than a column of heavy armor. There are not enough guns and bullets to stop a world insistent on change. Nor are there enough women and men prepared to kill their sisters and brothers on the order of some high command. We are not robots. When enough people stand up and say “No more!” to the militaries of the world, the guns will be silenced, and the senseless killing will cease. Only then will the Earth begin to heal.

2. ONE ACT AGAINST MILITARISM CAN HAVE GLOBAL EFFECTSPatrick Regan, Professor of Political Science, University of Canterbury, 1994. ORGANIZING SOCIETIES FOR WAR, p. 54.

No component of a demilitarization strategy is independent of the others; therefore successfully addressing one component will not itself ensure that the size or the reach of the military is greatly reduced. But movement in one quarter will most likely have an impact on efforts in other quarters. Eliminating the prevalence of societal symbols that extol the virtues of the military should help diminish the amount of public support that can be generated by the elite for foreign adventurism or for the diversion of limited resources from civil projects to the military. Likewise, the more rare becomes the projections of forces overseas, and the less visible the military as an institution, the more likely that we would see a diminished role for symbolic politics. It is in these ways that the self-amplifying feedback might help reinforce efforts to reduce the influence of the military, and the evidence from a number of research projects suggests that the impact will be felt not only by the domestic economy but also in the welfare of the entire global village (Leontief and Duchin, 1983).

3. INDIVIDUAL CHANGE LEADS TO WIDESPREAD SUCCESSRalph Summy, Director of the Matsunaga Institute for Peace, University of Hawaii, December, 1998. PEACE REVIEW, vol. 10, issue 4.

Converting one's language to nonviolence is something that everyone can do. It does not require the organization of a social movement or the support of a political party but can be initiated by any concerned individual. It can be undertaken as soon as an alternative vocabulary is developed--that is, immediately. While it would be appropriate to link any such activity to the United Nations' Culture of Peace Declaration for the Year 2000, there is no reason to wait another year or so before people launch their own private campaigns. In my own peace studies courses students are constantly challenged to replace violent expressions with apposite nonviolent ones. Some of the alternative sayings they have constructed have not only been excellent "attention-getters," they have been able to merge easily into the discourse of ordinary, everyday speech. When practiced on people outside the classroom, the effect has proved quite extraordinary. Not only does it reduce the use of violent language but it arrests people's attention and paves the way for discussion on a range of peace topics.

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