Peace Action and the Modernisation of the Military theme group
Final Report by Rafael Ajangiz Facilitated by Rafael Ajangiz and Orlando CastilloWe are witnessing today some structural changes in the armed forces of all our countries, more visible in the North than in the South though, which seem much more serious than just another reform. It is our duty to review these processes and then consider what kind of peace action should we engage in.
Our rulers have labelled this new direction as the professionalisation and modernisation of the military. This label has obviously been very successful, to the extent that even most peace activists use it. This fact, to begin with, should make us reflect on our poor ability, at least in this case, to promote alternative framing and definitions of the issues we have always worked in.
Our rulers present the so-called professionalisation as the only adaptation possible to the New Times, to the new scenario that draws out since the Berlin Wall was demolished. The enemy is no longer the communism, they say, in its place we find now a collection of uncertain perils and risks, e.g. the growing power of mafias and drug-cartels, the unreliability of some nuclear power holders, the international terrorism, the poor stability of some regions, the aggressive activism of some muslim organisations and even states, the immigration as a whole, the competition for scarce resources like water and oil, and so on.
Territorial sovereignty is not the main concern of our rulers and the military, not any more. They will keep on resorting to this discourse now and then because it is still effective, but they do not fear any territorial invasion at all. Their main concern today is how to achieve national --or regional-- interests in the fierce competition that results from the globalisation at all levels. That means intervention abroad whenever and wherever it is needed, political, economical and, why not, military intervention --both war making and peace making military intervention--. This fact may not be new for some powerful states but yes to many other states, both in the North and the South, who have joined the game. All of them, the traditional players in this game and the newcomers, are drawing more and more military resources out of the older concern and reallocating them into the new one. That's what the so-called professionalisation is about.
Not everything summarises to that, though. The New Times also pose a challenge to the traditional conceptions of state sovereignty. We are talking about the globalisation that the market forces have pushed forward, the reallocation of authority to regional or multinational institutions, and the pressure steaming from below, from a civil society who has a say about issues such as the environment or the war and the human rights situation elsewhere; this pressure has already compelled some state governments to engage in some intervention which did not match their doctrine of national interest.
In any case, deriving from responsibility or aimed to domination or both, this practice of intervention is moving the military into a structural change that characterises as follows:
- Downsizing from the existing mass army onto a smaller army consisting mainly of rapid deployment forces which look for efficiency within their mission of intervention abroad, most of it co-ordinated at a multinational level.
- Large investment in technological armament and equipment, quick transportation, logistics and communication.
- Promotion of the voluntary recruitment, in order to provide a long-term preparation and service personnel; military conscription has no place in the new design and tends naturally to disappear, unless it is kept for reasons other than the strictly military.
- Incorporation of secular values, even emerging values such as gender balance, environmental care and rights of minorities, erasing the differences between the military and society, and shifting from an institutional design (military identity) to an occupational one (just another job).
This diversity opened the way to our understanding of the military as a developing structure that follows a certain evolution:
| state building army (mass army) concerned about territorial sovereignty and inner control, eg Croatia | -----------> | Power state army (professional army) advocating the national interest through intervention abroad, eg US/France |
We therefore understand the so-called professionalisation and modernisation of the armies as an ongoing process that develops in a very long term. This understanding is helpful. On the one side, we know what is going to be next. On the other, we know that any visible change, as it is the case of the European armies, is not something that develops fast, the motion for such a change did not began just ten years ago but longer before, and it will not finish in short, but will take longer than we actually think. This opens a wider space and time for peace action.
The other understanding that we came with out of our diversity is that the whole evolution rests on one single item: the legitimisation the military obtain from society. This legitimisation is, by definition, something dynamic: the poorest legitimisation may improve if our rulers and military succeed in manipulating the right keys for it --the intervention in Bosnia is a good example--, and the best legitimisation can be drained off with the proper peace action. There is inertia in both directions, though. The better legitimisation, the easier it will be to obtain more resources, human and material, more compliance and co-operation too, to continue the way up. And the poorer legitimisation the more the rulers and the military will have to resort to repression, secrecy and/or propaganda to obtain the minimum resources and co-operation. In terms of legitimisation, of support, a repressive army is a weak army, the more repressive the weaker.
The level of legitimisation is hence the result of this tension between the government and the military on one side, and the population or society on the other. It is very clear that the military have never been on our side but on the power-holders'. We do not want to enter any discussion about their role there, if the military are part of the power, if they are the real power, or if they are used by the power. It is useless because it is clear that in any case they defend the interests of those in power, not the interests of the common people. That's why we have pictured them on the top, right at the basis of power.
The military agree with the design of society and of international relations that the top has. The power of the top, however, steams from the co-operation and consent of the common people who are the foundations of all power. Aware of it, the top works constantly to procure such co-operation and consent within its own design. This is obviously a top-down activity which, in the case of the legitimisation of the military, consists of four axis: the rationale of intervention abroad, military expenditure, recruitment, either voluntary or forced, and the values that pertain to their top-down concept of political participation.
But the common people also have their own definition of society and international relations, and, of course, do have particular shared positions on each of the four axis, which may not be those that the top pretends to. There are social processes in the bottom which perform as a down-top activity. These two strains enter in collision somewhere in the middle -- full agreement between the social and the political is a chimera -- and the result is a conflict, which may be overt or latent, bigger or smaller, but which always exists.
That conflict is our mobilisation potential. We can focus our peace action in
those cleavages that exist between the power and the society. And we must. Our
duty is to stress the existing social position against the military, or their
expense, or their recruitment, or their values, or against all those altogether
and widen as much as possible the divorce between the people and the armed
forces that is present, in one measure or another, in every society. Depending
on the country we are talking about this divorce may be larger or smaller, very
focused or all-inclusive, but there is always some divorce we can work about.
We, the peace movement, are the third party in the discord: the power, the society and us. Every social and political change results from the interplay of these three forces. The social movement action has always been the key to break the consent model. Our inactivity or lack of effectiveness favours the mastery of our rulers.
What can we do to bring the building down? We should erode all of the four pillars, but it would enough to erode just one of them. If any of them does not hold, the others will follow down. In this theme group we have reviewed all of them one by one, in an effort to render some directions for peace action.
Intervention
Intervention abroad is the central task of the new armed forces; their structure, activity and discourse will gradually suit this intervention task.
The centrality of such intervention abroad is a consequence of two vector forces: the rationale of national interest, which derives from the accumulative logic of capitalism, and, even though to a much lesser degree, the social demand of peace-making, humanitarian relief and respect for human rights. The former, whose latest big example is the Gulf War, is very well known of us, it is our evermore struggle, we know how to fight it back. The latter is some more complicated. On the one side, we should value it as a consequence of some kind of social empowerment around the values we have always pushed forward, that's not any bad. However, its formulation as a demand for military intervention has obviously challenged our principles. This solution, somewhere in the middle between our rulers' position and ours, becomes disturbing for us; it has always done so. We hesitate about which our priorities in peace action are, we get at some disagreement and even some splits in our rank and file.
This is not the place to retake the discussion about intervention we are having since the war in the former Yugoslavia burst out. We only want to introduce two key ideas. First, this kind of intervention has become the best legitimating tool for our armed forces, no matter what developing stage they may be in or what country they belong to. Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, France, Great Britain, US... but also Argentina, Guatemala or India's military, all the military with no exception, are improving their legitimisation after such an intervention under the umbrella of the UN or even NATO.
The reason for it is that, for the first time in many years, our armed forces seem to be doing something valuable and right, something which is common sense and agrees with the values of the people: stop the war and deliver humanitarian relief to those equals in disgrace. In this context, our position against intervention is not well understood among the common people, we have no expeditious alternative means to stop the war in the short term like the military seem to have. We are suffering a social detachment about our positions that pushes many of us to focus our peace action in the design and even implementation of a real peace building, alternative, civilian intervention. In doing that, we enter the master frame of intervention that fits so well with our rulers' plans.
The second idea is that we have failed in criticising the factual effectiveness of that military intervention. All our rulers' marketing grounds in that effectiveness, in convincing the people the military intervention did its job. Did it? Did it really stop the war as they say? We know or are in the position to know that the military intervention did not mean a big deal, that it played a minor role in ending the fighting, this was mainly the result of an entente among the war making parties who could not pushed any forward. We also know or are in the position to know that the intervention forces, following the mandate of having no casualties, consented with the killings and ethnic cleansing in the areas they were supervising, that they even helped in such by providing armament and information, by taking sides. All the intervening armies have something to hide. And what to say about Rwanda, Somalia and else, in where they obviously failed even to present the military intervention as something useful. If we know, then, why don't we communicate this fact information of what really happened? How come their fiasco in Africa meant no scandal at all?
And what about the humanitarian relief? Was the military intervention the basic condition to provide it? Would have it made a big difference if the NGOs hadn't got military escorts? Who did the humanitarian relief anyway, were not the NGOs, that is, civil society? Whose work should it be, the military's? We have the answers to these questions, we have data about the facts. Military intervention is simply non-effective to stop the war and inadequate to provide humanitarian relief. Then, why aren't we communicating so? Why aren't we challenging the successful campaign of marketing around the armed forces our rulers are practising on behalf of military intervention? This should be a straightforward priority in our peace action. If people still praise military intervention, if they still think it was effective, it is because the peace movement has resigned its traditional role as watchdog of our rulers' activity and as provider of alternative frames on these issues and on their solutions.
Values and military expenditure
Our societies hold a certain number of values that naturally clash with those of the military. We are talking about non discrimination on gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, national identity, race, etc., about environment protection, about the respect for human rights, both group and individual, about some basic satisfaction of social justice, about the non-supportive attitude in respect to armament or military expenditure, and the like. For our good, these values look to be expanding with the newer generations, so it is reasonable to think that better opportunities for peace action will open in the future.
The very armed forces are trying to adapt to these new values and neutralise its impact on them. Gender, homosexuality, and environment are already issues in some armed forces today, e.g. they refer to them when they need more recruits. This adaptation is two-sided. For example, the institutionalisation of a soldier's ombudsman, wherever that has been accomplished, has resulted in less arbitrariness and, consequently, in a better legitimisation of the military. This adaptation has some constraints though. The armed forces cannot suit the civilian values in all their extent because they would not be armed forces anymore. There will always exist a certain confrontation between the traditional military values and the new emergent civilian values.
That confrontation in values is our mobilisation potential, and every move the military do to reduce the existing social unconcern about them is a clear opportunity for peace action. Certainly, at least in some cases, it does not look easy to focus on such opportunities. This is at least the impression we gather on the review of some countries' situation. In a state-building country such as Croatia it looks that no opportunities for peace action emerge, as there is a whole indoctrination of the population to match the military values. In Paraguay the military still play with the idea of territorial invasion, by the way utterly untrue, and provide better conditions in the military service only for the middle classes. Now the question is, will these strategies hold in the long term or will the conflict between military and civilian values remerge sometime in the near future?
On the other side of the structural evolution we mentioned above, a professional army like that in the US is attempting to incorporate some of these values in a way they mean no threat for the military basic indoctrination. The "don't ask, don't tell" they have finally decided in the case of the rights of the homosexual, or the promotion of just one black person to the high command, the kind of person will never put those values into question, are examples of this other strategy. Simultaneously, the armed forces are still viewed by some as a socialisation agent for those non-disciplined young people, and overall as a provider of job and study opportunities. Apparently at least, this opens more space for action than the previous two examples.
We have discussed the gender issue as well. Women are now admitted in many armed forces, also in the high training programs, but their admittance criteria is that they behave just like men, that they do exactly the same things and meet the same requirements. We are happy to observe that this kind of integration is posing some problem to the military institution, in the sense we have outlined above. Very obviously, this is not the way to deal with the gender issue we agree with. We will never promote women into the military; it is no gain in our struggle to abolish patriarchalism. The matter is not equal opportunities also in the military, is not to ensure some rights of the individual, but to develop a new non-patriarchal society in which, very obviously, armies have no place. This understanding should be shared with all the women groups.
Another issue we examined is that of the conflict between the social and the military in the public expenditure. The military have developed various strategies to overcome the traditional population's dislike concerning the military expenditure. In Paraguay, where they keep taking a big part of the public expenditure, they play the role of the rescuer and provider of housing and food to the poor and illiterate whenever a natural disaster like floods and the like happen. In Spain, public opinion surveys show that the people, who have traditionally opposed the military expenditure, are now ready to admit a certain drawback in the issue if that means that conscription will be definitely abolished. In Germany, the government is arguing that the military intervention in former Yugoslavia is cheaper than hosting 300.000 refugees.
In any case, all these examples do confirm the initial analysis about the social disengagement from military expenditure. They comply with it only when pushed against the strings. We have reasons to believe that the people can be empowered to respond to such an assault. They should not accept the military had any business in the areas and duties that have to do with the emerging values we have mentioned above. Education, job opportunities, humanitarian relief in natural disasters or the like are not a function of the military but of the other departments, public services and NGOs who already deal with these issues and situations, who are the professional in such. It is much more appropriate to demand the reallocation into these civilian initiatives of all those resources used by the military in functions that are not strictly military. This argument has become central within the tax resistance groups.
Everybody acknowledges the difficulty of mobilising the people on this
cleavage about social or military expenditure. However, as we also agree that
the cleavage exists in our societies, it is our duty to develop strategies to
address it.
In any case, we are also aware that the four pillars we are reflecting upon,
the four issues, are interrelated, and they are all connected through the
legitimisation of the military themselves. In consequence, any peace work in
any of the issues, even if it looks very little thing in relation to the whole
issue, is a step that should have some impact on that legitimisation, and
therefore affect the other issues as well, in the sense of opening new
opportunities for peace action. For example, if the intervention issue is
effectively addressed, it will most probably improve the population's sense of
empowerment about military expenditure or about resistance to recruitment, and
vice versa.
Most surely, the most difficult will be to begin from scratch, when no improvement looks to be at sight. But, in all cases, it will be much easier to feel empowered if we avoid a single issue-focused analysis and strategy and, instead, we conceive the military as an entity we can affect through very different means. Every issue has its political opportunity or opportunities, its moments to be worked out. We must take advantage of those and outline strategies that are focused on that issue but which are thought within that global frame. That global frame is not other than the abolition of the military.
Recruitment
Again, we recognise a confrontation between two strains here: the recruitment effort coming from the top and a secular resistance to be recruited from below. This resistance has been more or less well off through the years but it has been present in every single country. In a great measure, its success depends on how organised it is. Three examples have been mentioned.
The situation in Guatemala is that of a state building army that just came out of an armed conflict, a civil war. Historically, its recruitment system has changed from only ladino conscription to a mainly indian conscription in which ladinos have many means not to serve. Very obviously, the resistance has grown in the indian communities, in the form of an information network to avoid a kidnapping-like recruitment. That information network has consolidated as a grass-root organisation who is addressing its aim of abolishing conscription through a diverse strategy: organising resistance and civil disobedience among the conscripted, lobbying to obtain a regulation of CO, and expanding its base to the middle classes, to the ladinos who are not conscripted at present but who will probably be in the future as a result of the peace treaties. Their political opportunity is the temporal suspension of conscription until those peace treaties are materialised.
The State of Spain is now immersed in the professionalisation of the military, conscription will be abolished in year 2002 but many conscripts are being successful in avoiding it already. The end of conscription is mainly a consequence, among other factors, of the peace movement activity. The resistance began to be organised in the early seventies, still in the military dictatorship, with a single conscientious objector, very much like it is happening today in Turkey. The political opportunity was a mobilisation wave that included the labour and other movements. The CO movement rejected the governmental solution of an unarmed military service and went on with the civil disobedience.
The transition to democracy opened a new political opportunity, as the military issue was frozen for some ten years. The 1978 Constitution included the right to CO but now regulation was passed, so the movement took advantage of it by encouraging CO and obtaining big numbers of COs who did not have to fulfil a civilian service in the short term, very much like they are doing today in Paraguay. In 1989 the CO movement decided not to accept a European standards CO law and began a total objection campaign which had too immediate consequences: the rise of CO in numbers, the highest in the world nowadays (a 100% in 1998), and the civilian service becoming inoperative as it was framed as a repressive tool against total objectors. Finally, the whole recruiting system, both to the armed forces and to the civilian service, being collapsed, the government decided to scrap conscription in 1996.
The results are better prospects for peace action on the one side, namely a very problematic transition into a professional army due to lack of resources, both material and human, this being a direct consequence of the poor legitimisation the military enjoy, and a certain crisis of the CO movement on the other side, due to both internal and external reasons. In any case, this poor legitimisation of the military --one third of the population supports the abolition of the army-- and the good credit the movement enjoys facilitates the peace work in all the four issues we are reviewing.
In Great Britain the movement is denouncing the recruitment effort on teenagers who have no other life means and who are trapped in a five-year contract of which they are given no exit out, and also the human rights problem that derives from the military regulations being applied to the families of the military. This kind of peace work, the participants in the theme group conclude, should be framed in a global strategy aiming to the abolition of the very armed forces, because if our work focuses about the consequences of the military activity alone, detaching them from that global strategy, it will most probably end in some improvement in the human rights in the military, and therefore in a better legitimisation of that institution.
Peace action against professional recruitment seems more difficult that against conscription anyway. But again, the evidence shows that the recruitment depends directly on the legitimisation of the military, the more delegitimised they are, the fewer people will volunteer and the higher the recruitment costs will be. That is, the work in the other issues will have a sure impact on this in return.
Directions for WRI work
Based on the previous discussion, this theme group proposed some directions for peace work, which were endorsed by WRI in the business meeting at this XXII Triennial Conference. They are the following:
The ongoing professionalisation and modernisation of the armies rests on four premises: the rationale of intervention abroad, military expenditure, recruitment, either voluntary or forced, and the values that pertain to the top-down concept of political participation. Our rulers, together with the military, look forward to securing the population's co-operation and consent in this issue, without which this or any other military model would not be viable. This effort has to overcome the natural resistance of a population who historically has resisted conscription, who pursues social expenditure rather than military, shares values like the respect and preservation of human rights, the non-discrimination on any bases, the concern for the environment, and who prefers to live in a peaceful world, precisely the kind of values which are at all inappropriate in the military. Our peace action must root in this existing, however not too well defined, antimilitarist position of society.
The final goal of WRI is abolishing the army, all the armies. Definitely, it is
an ambitious goal, but we can slowly bring it up if our peace action is
addressed to delegitimise the military and their activities.
By delegitimisation we understand a diminution of the people's co-operation and
compliance. This is the key criterion against which we should assess any
strategy developed. Aimed to the four premises already listed, WRI endorses the
following common strategies and campaigns and encourages its members to carry
on with as many as possible:
- Carrying out specific campaigns to further the idea of the abolition of the armed forces and the comprehensive strategies which will make it possible --they are listed below--, e.g. organising regional campaigns such as "Europe without armies" and the like.
- Acknowledging that we have not been able to successfully fight the campaign
of legitimisation of the armies our rulers have carried out, and suffering from
the contradiction of watching how the population we want to defend with our
peace action is precisely who asked for a military intervention with the very
specific command of humanitarian relief and stopping the war, we shall engage
in:
- a campaign to make the people understand that military intervention has failed to that command in all cases, it never stopped the war, and that, on the contrary, it has resulted in the legitimisation of the gains and losses the war-making parties have agreed to when confronted with the non viability of continuing their aggression, and in many cases this being the result of a rearmament strategy of those parties precisely by the ones who carry out the military intervention;
- a campaign to obtain asylum laws in every country;
- a campaign against NATO and its satellite organisations by denouncing its real goals and activities; and
- a campaign to forbid the "School of the Americas" and similar training centres in any other country.
- Acknowledging that the end of the Cold War has not translated into the drop
of the military expenditure and armament production we all expected, and that
in some cases this professionalisation and modernisation of the military even
implies a growth in the military expenditure, we shall engage in:
- making people notice which is the real military expenditure and what armament production and trade is being carried out;
- an extensive tax resistance campaign altogether with the development NGOs under the master frame of reallocating resources from the military into the social and the development of the poorer societies to be managed by the NGOs already working in those specific fields;
- a campaign to promote unilateral disarmament, e.g. broadening the strategy of the antipersonnel landmines campaign to all kind of armament, holding an International Day Without the Pentagon, and/or demanding our own country before the Court of Justice of Den Haven for having produced, sold and used war armament, a clear violation of human rights;
- a campaign against all production and trade of military armament, as well as military investigation.
- Acknowledging that our rulers have often succeeded in neutralising the peace building potential of our resistance to recruitment, we shall engage in resisting recruitment in all its forms, forced or not, by making it a collective stand and by developing strategies that directly bring its total abolition up. This is of course a long process in which our struggle will know of different stages that should be understood as a never stopping continuum: from demanding the recognition of our conscientious objection, to claiming a real alternative peace service, to total objection, and when conscription be abolished, to troubling the voluntary draft by e.g. denouncing the obliteration of human rights in the military or chasing the military in their recruitment effort. This is a step by step process in which the final abolition of conscription will be the criterion against which we shall review the strategies chosen.
- Acknowledging that all the previous need to be termed against the
establishment of enduring nonviolent revolution values, we shall engage:
- in the promotion and experiencing of civil disobedience as both a strategy for action and a value to replace the militaristic countervalues such as patriotism, discipline, hierarchy and consent;
- in the opening of anti-war museums;
- in the promotion of a pledge about non involvement in war to be signed by the people, very specially in those countries involved in an armed conflict.