{"id":295044,"date":"2025-05-12T12:00:06","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T11:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=295044"},"modified":"2025-05-11T06:52:41","modified_gmt":"2025-05-11T05:52:41","slug":"the-limitations-of-military-might","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/05\/the-limitations-of-military-might\/","title":{"rendered":"The Limitations of Military Might"},"content":{"rendered":"

6 May 2025 – <\/em>Although the statement that \u201cpower grows out of the barrel of a gun\u201d<\/a> was made by Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong, it\u2019s an idea that, in one form or another, has motivated a great many people, from the members of teenage street gangs to the statesmen of major nations.<\/p>\n

The rising spiral of world military spending provides a striking example of how highly national governments value armed forces. \u00a0In 2024, the nations of the world spent a record $2.72 trillion<\/a> on expanding their vast military strength, an increase of 9.4 percent from the previous year.\u00a0 It was the tenth year of consecutive spending increases and the steepest annual rise in military expenditures since the end of the Cold War.<\/p>\n

This enormous investment in military might is hardly a new phenomenon.\u00a0 Over the broad sweep of human history, nations have armed themselves\u2015often at great cost\u2015in preparation for war.\u00a0 And an endless stream of wars has followed, resulting in the deaths of perhaps a billion people<\/a>, most of them civilians<\/a>.\u00a0 During the 20th<\/sup> century alone, war\u2019s human death toll numbered 231 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even larger numbers of people have been injured in these wars, including many who have been crippled, blinded, hideously burned, or driven mad.\u00a0 In fact, the number of people who have been wounded in war<\/a> is at least twice the number killed and has sometimes soared to 13 times that number.<\/p>\n

War has produced other calamities, as well.\u00a0 The Russian military invasion of Ukraine, for example, has led to the displacement of a third of that nation\u2019s population. <\/a>\u00a0In addition, war has caused immense material damage.\u00a0 Entire cities and, sometimes, nations have been reduced to rubble, while even victorious countries sometimes found themselves bankrupted by war\u2019s immense financial costs.\u00a0 Often, wars have brought long-lasting environmental damage<\/a>, leading to birth defects and other severe health consequences, as the people of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, and the Middle East can attest.<\/p>\n

Even when national military forces were not engaged in waging foreign wars, they often produced very undesirable results.\u00a0 The annals of history are filled with incidents of military officers who have used their armies to stage coups<\/a> and establish brutal dictatorships in their own countries.\u00a0 Furthermore, the possession of military might has often emboldened national leaders to intimidate weaker nations or to embark upon imperial conquest.\u00a0 It\u2019s no accident that nations with the most powerful military forces (\u201cthe great powers\u201d) are particularly prone to war-making<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Moreover, prioritizing the military has deprived other sectors of society of substantial resources.\u00a0 Money that could have gone into programs for education, healthcare, food stamps, and other social programs has been channeled instead<\/a> into unprecedented levels of spending to enhance military might.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a sorry record for what passes as world civilization\u2015one that will surely grow far worse, or perhaps terminate human existence, with the onset of a nuclear war.<\/p>\n

Of course, advocates of military power argue that, in a dangerous world, there is a necessity for deterring a military attack upon their nations.\u00a0 And that is surely a valid concern.<\/p>\n

But does military might really meet the need for national security?\u00a0 In addition to the problems spawned by massive military forces, it\u2019s not clear that these forces are doing a good job of deterring foreign attack.\u00a0 After all, every year government officials say that their countries are facing greater danger than ever before.\u00a0 And they are right about this.\u00a0 The world is<\/em> becoming a more dangerous place.\u00a0 A major reason is that the military might sought by one nation for its national security is regarded by other nations as endangering their national security.\u00a0 The result is an arms race and, frequently, war.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, though, there are alternatives to the endless process of military buildups and wars.<\/p>\n

The most promising among them is the establishment of international security.\u00a0 This could be accomplished through the development of international treaties and the strengthening of international institutions.<\/p>\n

Treaties, of course, can establish rules for international behavior by nations while, at the same time, resolving key problems among them (for example, the location of national boundaries) and setting policies that are of benefit to all (for example, reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere).\u00a0 Through arms control and disarmament agreements they can also address military dangers.\u00a0 For example, in place of the arms race, they could sponsor a peace race, in which each nation would reduce its military spending by 10 per cent per year.\u00a0 Or nations could sign and ratify (as many have already done) the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons<\/a>, which would end the menace of nuclear annihilation.<\/p>\n

International institutions can also play a significant role in reducing international conflict and, thus, the resort to military action.\u00a0 The United Nations<\/a>, established in 1945, is tasked with maintaining international peace and security, while the International Court of Justice<\/a> was established to settle legal disputes among nations and the International Criminal Court<\/a> to investigate and, where justified, try individuals for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, these international organizations are not fully able to accomplish their important tasks\u2015largely because many nations prefer to rely upon their own military might and because some nations (particularly the United States<\/a>, Russia<\/a>, and Israel<\/a>) are enraged that these organizations have criticized their conduct in world affairs.\u00a0 Even so, international organizations have enormous potential and, if strengthened, could play a vital role in creating a less violent world.<\/p>\n

Rather than continuing to pour the wealth of nations into the failing system of national military power, how about bolstering these global instruments for attaining international security and peace?<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/p>\n

Lawrence S. Wittner (<\/em>https:\/\/www.lawrenceswittner.com\/<\/em><\/a> ) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY\/Albany and the author of <\/em>Confronting the Bomb<\/a> (Stanford University Press).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

6 May 2025 – Although the statement that \u201cpower grows out of the barrel of a gun\u201d was made by Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong, it\u2019s an idea that has motivated a great many people, from the members of teenage street gangs to the statesmen of major nations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":188564,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[291],"class_list":["post-295044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-militarism","tag-military"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295044"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":295045,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295044\/revisions\/295045"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}