Global militarisation

The current priority of the dominant security actors is maintaining international security through the vigorous use of military force combined with the development of both nuclear and conventional weapons systems. Post-Cold War nuclear developments involve the modernisation and proliferation of nuclear systems, with an increasing risk of limited nuclear-weapons use in warfare – breaking a threshold that has held for sixty years and seriously undermining multilateral attempts at disarmament. These dangerous trends will be exacerbated by developments in national missile defence, chemical and biological weapons and a race towards the weaponisation of space.

New Report on Alternatives to Militarisation in the Indian Ocean

Issue:Global militarisation

In the Lowy Institute's latest Strategic Snapshot, International Security Program Associate Ashley Townshend explores the strategic dynamics between China and India in the Indian Ocean.

Attach PDF: 
application/pdf icon
Townshend, Sino-Indian maritime relations_web.pdf
Read more »

Teaching Religion, Taming Rebellion? Religious Education Reform in Afghanistan

Issues:Global militarisation, Marginalisation

In this Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) Policy Brief, Kaja Borchgrevink & Kristian Berg Harpviken explore claimed links between Taliban militancy and religious education in Afghan and Pakistani madrasas.

Access the report online at the PRIO website

Attach PDF: 
application/pdf icon
PRIO Policy Brief_Teaching Religion Taming Rebellion_ Afghan madrasa reform.pdf
Read more »

Arma Virumque Cano: Capital, Poverty and Violence

I. R. Gibson | Exclusively written for sustainablesecurity.org | November 2010

Issues:Global militarisation, Marginalisation

This article addresses how systems of capital that underpin the present world structure perpetuate both global insecurity and endemic poverty. By upholding the practice of global arms sales, violence is endorsed by state and non-state actors continuing this inequity. Alternatives to the dominant security paradigm nevertheless exist.

Poverty is violence, an enjoined condition sustained by capital and yet paradoxically ignored by it. Capital is possessed and dispensed by the various capitalist constructs that currently function and while the 2008 global recession revealed many variables within these constructs as extremely suspect, they nevertheless remain, guaranteeing continued wealth for elite powers. The poor in turn exist insecure, in need and in want. As little action is offered against these inequitable systems, state or global – governments seem more intent on short-tem economic ‘Band-aids’ the focus being save OUR souls – the poor linger, trapped in violence, deprived of voice and rights.

Read more »

Posted on 17/11/10

Arms Flows and the Conflict in Somalia

Issue:Global militarisation

A new SIPRI report highlights the limitations of United Nations attempts to control the flows of arms into Somalia, and the role of potential arms-supplying states.

Attach PDF: 
application/pdf icon
Arms Flows and the Conflict in Somalia.pdf
Read more »

Perpetuating Uncertainty: Trident and the Strategic Defence and Security Review

Tim Street | ICAN-UK | October 2010

Issue:Global militarisation

Above all, the UK government’s new Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) confirms the intention to retain and then replace the UK's nuclear weapons, though the final decision has been put off until 2016. David Cameron thus confirmed to parliament that he will be 'steaming through' with the decision on the initial design phase for replacing Trident this year. The SDSR also announces warhead reductions and so-called 'value for money' measures, packaged to make Britain appear as if it were a 'responsible' nuclear state, contributing to 'multilateral disarmament' whilst reducing costs for the taxpayer. Such mythmaking must be resisted. Firstly, because Trident can never be 'value for money' as it is has no value- military or otherwise- yet currently costs over £2 billion a year to run, whilst at least £700 million will be spent over the next five years on its replacement. Trident thus not only takes money away from education- at a time when universities are facing 40% cuts to their teaching budgets and the NHS- expected to find £20 billion in savings by 2014, but makes the world a far more dangerous place.

About the author: Tim Street is Coordinator with ICAN-UK

Image source: Duncan~

Read more »

Posted on 29/10/10

Weather as a Weapon: The troubling history of geoengineering so far.

James Rodger Fleming | www.slate.com | September 2010

Issues:Climate change, Global militarisation

Taken from the article:

Global climate engineering is untested and untestable, and dangerous beyond belief. The famous mathematician and computer pioneer John von Neumann warned against it in 1955. Responding to U.S. fantasies about weaponizing the weather and Soviet proposals to modify the Arctic and rehydrate Siberia, he expressed concern over "rather fantastic effects" on a scale difficult to imagine and impossible to predict. Tinkering with the Earth's heat budget or the atmosphere's general circulation, he claimed, "will merge each nation's affairs with those of every other more thoroughly than the threat of a nuclear or any other war may already have done." In his opinion, attempts at weather and climate control could disrupt natural and social relations and produce forms of warfare as yet unimagined. It could alter the entire globe and shatter the existing political order.

Article Source: Slate

Image Source: Klearchos Kapoutsis

Read more »

Posted on 5/10/10