story-type: article

Nuclear Weapons and Militarisation in the UK

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A society has to be militarised for a government to justify the development and maintenance of nuclear weapons to its citizens; militarisation creates a culture of acceptance. It popularises military euphemisms such as ‘Defence’, ‘Security’, and – particularly relevant to nuclear weapons – ‘deterrent’, and makes it hard to for those challenging these to be seen as credible.

Militarisation’ means the ways in which the presence and approaches of the military (typically state armed forces and Defence Ministries) are normalised in a society. Military solutions are prioritised, and the military is privileged in various ways.

A society has to be militarised for a government to justify the development and maintenance of nuclear weapons to its citizens; militarisation creates a culture of acceptance. It popularises military euphemisms such as ‘Defence’, ‘Security’, and – particularly relevant to nuclear weapons – ‘deterrent’, and makes it hard to for those challenging these to be seen as credible.

The indicators of militarisation used in the Bonn International Centre for Conversion’s Global Militarisation Index 2012 are comparisons of: military expenditure with gross domestic product (GDP) and health expenditure; the total number of (para)military forces with physicians, and the overall population; and the number of ‘available’ heavy weapons with the total ppopulation.… Read more

When soldiering gets sexy: the militarization of gender equality and sexual difference

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How does militarism change social and cultural expectations of gender roles and relations? This is a huge question. This article by Vron Ware considers three areas.

How does militarism change social and cultural expectations of gender roles and relations? This is a huge question. This article by Vron Ware considers three areas.

Regardless of what they say about a man in uniform, it’s clear that some of them have a particular appeal when they’re half naked and preferably holding a gun.

The UK charity Go Commando which raises money for Royal Marines and their families, has recently launched its third successive calendar featuring marines in various stages of undress. The calendar went through official channels before being launched with acclaim in the national media. Its first print-run sold out within days.

In this now familiar genre, the black and white portraits of the calendar boys reveal them to be as muscly and virile as their female counterparts – who now include military wives – have tended to be demure and coquettish. Whether their nakedness is concealed by rifles, rugby balls, boxing shorts or the bottom halves of their uniforms, the marines’ rippling chests and arms suggest that the male military body represents new standards of idealised masculinity.… Read more

Wear your poppy with peaceful intent

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Remembrance was intended to be a pledge that war must never happen again. It must not glorify or sanitise war.

This year I am wearing my poppy with unease. I am happy to buy a poppy, and the money is used well, but I have a niggling feeling, shared by many, that something has gone astray with remembrance.

It seems to me that, these days, wearing a poppy is too often regarded as a test of patriotism. Or, rather, those who don’t wear one are seen as being somehow disloyal to their country – not standing shoulder to shoulder with our troops on the front line. There is also an unseemly ostentation in the way many politicians and some celebrities use the poppy to bolster their images and egos.

Let’s go back about 90 years to when the poppy first became the symbol of remembrance. Almost every family in the country was in mourning. The war had not been a magnificent adventure, as promised, but four years of pointless, industrialised slaughter. In retrospect, there could only be one justification for it: it had been the war to end all wars.

The traditions of remembrance established shortly afterwards conveyed two messages: shared grief and the common pledge that war must never happen again.

… Read more

Olympic Medals for the Military

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The involvement of the armed forces in the Olympics should not pave the way for military solutions to other civil situations.

The last minute military boost to Olympic security allowed the Armed Forces to be seen as a normal and average part of a relaxed and self-confident British society. The Chiefs should bottle that spirit for the difficult years to come, and politicians should realise that this was a one-off service.

The public has awarded the military a gold medal for its performance at the Olympics. If it were possible to get one with oak cluster, they would have added that as well. The headline writers have agreed with them. The military added another element to the ‘happy and glorious’ games that was efficient, friendly, humorous and awfully British; as characteristic of the inventive Britain we presented as Mr Bean, Jerusalem and a monarch who likes practical jokes.

Before the event, the German media spoke with alarm at the idea of military personnel in such evidence at the games. French commentators smiled with satisfaction at a British government scrambling to save the situation late in the day. US politicians and commentators overdosed on a potential security gap and British politicians and media went for G4S with a furious passion they had stoked against the banking industry and honed against highly paid industry executives.… Read more

David Lammy’s Army School for Rioters

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There was a truly awful article in last week’s New Statesman by Tottenham Labour MP David Lammy, accusing ‘the left’ of a curmudgeonly attitude towards the government’s plans for military-staffed ‘service schools.’

Lammy condemns critics of the scheme for propagating the idea that ‘ servicemen and women are “brainwashed”, “killers”, and hell-bent on converting our sons and daughters to violence’ – arguments that he describes as ‘ nonsense – and offensive nonsense at that.’

With that strawman out of the way, he goes on to argue that

The military already play a hugely positive role in our schools. The Combined Cadet Force and Army Cadet Force are fantastic national institutions. These are organisations which offer adventure training, flying, sailing, white water rafting, and navigating Britain’s finest landscapes from Cornwall to the Cairngorms, all for free.

Of course all these activities could and should be available in schools. The problem is that neither school budgets nor the curriculum allow much space for them, not to mention the obsessive risk assessment process which makes schools reluctant to take their kids beyond the school grounds, let alone go canoeing in the Cairngorms.

There was a truly awful article in last week’s New Statesman by Tottenham Labour MP David Lammy, accusing ‘the left’ of a curmudgeonly attitude towards the government’s plans for military-staffed ‘service schools.’… Read more

Our curious love affair with the military

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Have you detected a growing enthusiasm for all things military? This week the troops were called in to save the Olympics, they’re constantly on our TV screens, and our parks are full of bootcamp fitness sessions for puffed civilians.

Have you detected a growing enthusiasm for all things military? This week the troops were called in to save the Olympics, they’re constantly on our TV screens, and our parks are full of bootcamp fitness sessions for puffed civilians.

Last week, the MoD admitted that budget cuts would result in fewer boots on the ground, but failed to mention the impact on the documentary makers and TV producers who depend on a ready pool of military “talent”. The cultural industry has done very well out of our recent preoccupation with conflict. The public appetite for war stories means guaranteed top billing for shows with military subjects and kudos for the brave soldiers in front of the cameras. No one seems to have noticed how similar these unflinching portrayals of the harsh realities of military life are, but the accolades keep coming. Six of the 18 documentary entries to the Royal Television Society awards this year were about soldiers. Names such as Harry’s Arctic Heroes suggest they tended to be glorifying rather than analytical.… Read more

Not just waving poppies, but drowning thought

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“There may well be a boom in poppy sales, but the act of Remembrance itself has been cheapened by a failure to back up words with action, particularly when it comes to successive governments’ care for victims of war, but equally in terms of the appalling the lack of resources put into peacebuilding.”

Simon Barrow

When politicians rush to claim that something is ‘non-political’ (as has been happening around Remembrance Day over the past week or so), you know that some healthy suspicion and careful examination is due.

The unfortunate reality is that, at present, the national ceremonies in the UK that (rightly) show respect to those who have died in war are also drenched in militaristic assumptions and symbols – ones which it is hard to say have no political content or bias.

The Prime Minister has also recently stressed the association of red poppy wearing with tub-thumping “national pride”, as my colleague Jonathan Bartley pointed out in an interesting exchange about ‘the politics of poppies’ on BBC2’s Newnight (11/11/11 – see iPlayer) with Gordon Corrigan, author of Mud, Blood and Poppycock: Britain and the Great War (Cassell Military Paperbacks), a revisionary account of the First World War.

Questions about the rightness or wrongness of armed conflict, concerns about particular wars (like the recent ones prosecuted in the Middle East); attempts to highlight alternatives forms of conflict resolution; the need to remember enemies, civilians and objectors, as well as soldiers… these and many other serious issues are all-too-easily swept away as the media and politicians encourage a frenzy of ‘patriotic’ poppy waving, while objecting to any attempt to consider or reflect on different perspectives.… Read more

The red poppy: a compromised symbol?

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“The growing compulsion to wear a red poppy and to acquiesce in the remodelling of its purpose has diverted our attention from the more enduring and demanding aspects of remembering the destruction, personal, collective and environmental, which is the outcome of military action.”

Jill Segger

To be a child in the 50s and 60s was to be familiar with the sight of men, still young, who had been lamed or disfigured by war. Many more – my father among them – carried wounds in their psyches which were impediments to their becoming the husbands and fathers they would have wished to be.

My father frequently said “ war makes men mad” and from both him and my grandfather, who had, at least physically, survived the Somme, I absorbed the concept that those who had not “been there” could easily be led into falsity when speaking or writing of war and remembrance.

Combined with a religious and cultural unease over ‘outward forms’, this has given me a lifelong disquiet about Remembrance Day, and, in recent years, of its red poppy symbol. Even in childhood, I shrank from the marches, flag-bearing and official solemnity. I have never doubted the need to ‘remember’ but I am grateful to have been taught by the then unfashionable and unpopular witness of my parents that it was our calling to remember the dead of both sides and all the victims of war who never wore uniforms or bore arms.

… Read more

How soldiers deal with the job of killing

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“We talk about destroying, engaging, dropping, bagging – you don’t hear the word killing”. This article explores the effect of killing on people in the military, how many are unable to kill and others live with the effects of having killed for the rest of their lives. Also see The Kill Factor radio broadcasts.

“We talk about destroying, engaging, dropping, bagging – you don’t hear the word killing”. This article explores the effect of killing on people in the military, how many are unable to kill and others live with the effects of having killed for the rest of their lives. Also see The Kill Factor radio broadcasts.

 

When soldiers kills someone at close quarters, how does it affect them? This most challenging and traumatic part of a soldier’s job is often wholly overlooked.

Soldiers kill. It goes with the job, and they do it on our behalf.

But it’s an aspect of their work which is widely ignored – even by the soldiers themselves – and this can cause them great psychological difficulty, experts say.

“A central part of what we do with our careers is we kill the enemies of our country,” said Lt Col Pete Kilner, a serving officer in the US Army who has done tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.… Read more

I wept as I comforted our soldiers maimed in Iraq’: How could I tell them Blair’s ‘just war’ was an illusion?

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“We can best pay tribute to their sacrifices by ensuring that in the future no British sailor, soldier, Marine or airman is asked to lay down their life except for the most urgent and honourable of causes.”

Do you think Blair should have sent us in?’ It was April 2003 and the soldier in the hospital bed fixed me with a piercing stare as he asked the question, fighting back tears.I stared back equally intensely. Partly because I wanted him to know he had my full attention with all the distractions of medical activity going on around us. Partly because the medication was affecting his speech.

But mainly because I knew that if  my concentration broke for a second my gaze would shift to the stained bandage that marked the spot where his arm used to be. Even then, my nostrils would not allow me to forget the extent of his loss.

His good hand gripped mine with all the strength he could muster. If I said ‘yes’ and offered a few platitudes I was sure he would detect the lack of conviction in my voice. And if I said ‘no’ I would have belittled his life-changing personal sacrifice on the battlefields of Iraq.… Read more