Neomilitarism

Neomilitarism is a claimed form of militarism that is proposed by author Alasdair Roberts. According to Roberts it has the following features:

* Abandonment of conscription as a method of filling manpower requirements in military services. In other words, reliance on an Volunteer military. In the United States, conscription was abolished in 1973, following the report of the 1970 Gates Commission, which said that it was an unjustified intrusion on individual freedom. (Two influential members of the Commission were economists Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan.)

* A shift toward new technologies that increase military potency, and at the same time reduce manpower requirements, as well as the human cost of conflict, measured in own-force fatalities and casualties.

* The rationalization and expansion of federal programs to promote military service. Federal spending on recruitment is pro-cyclical: as the economy improves, so too does military advertising. Between 1998 and 2001, the US military spent $1.6 billion on such advertising.

These policies emerged as the US military attempted to respond to public anger over the Vietnam war, which involved high levels of government expenditure and substantial deployment of conscripted personnel. Combined, they may be described as "neomilitarist" because they represent an attempt to maintain public support for the defense establishment without challenging fundamental tenets of a free-market society.

Roberts describes the effects of a shift to neomilitarism including:

* The sharp decline in the proportion of the US population that is employed in the active-duty military;

* The substantial increase in popular respect for the US military since the end of the Vietnam war; and

* A perception (evident after the Gulf War and other 1990s conflicts) that the US could engage in "techno-wars" that did not produce substantial casualties.

In combination, Roberts claims these effects may have increased the probability that policymakers would rely on the military in responding to national crises. He perceives this is a challenge to the reasoning of the Gates Commission, which predicted that the shift to an all-volunteer service would not alter the willingness of governments to use force during crises.

According to Roberts, neomilitarism may also describe the characteristic of reliance on one or a number of client states as instruments of militaristic repression, domination, or preservation of foreign interests. These may include the installation of dictatorial regimes, themselves militaristic, which are favorable to economic interests. Additionally, it may include the unacknowledged use of commissioned terror, torture, political repression, and guerrilla warfare as means of enforcing the militaristic interests of the principal country without directly involving its armed forces, thereby contributing to the maintenance of a hegemonic or imperial dominance in global affairs. The sponsorship of rebels in various Latin American "banana republics" by American corporations and policymakers is one such example of a neomilitaristic tactic used to safeguard American economic interests. Colombian unions, for instance, have been vigorously repressed at the hands of Colombian AUC fighters, which are beneficiaries of American donors and arms.

This claimed style of "indirect militarism" has come to predominate, according to Roberts and Chompsky, coexisting with traditional militarism since the partition of the British empire and the division of the world into Allied and Axis powers after the Second World War. Allegations of neomilitarism through the use of client states and agents of terror is the basis for a great deal of popular criticism of the American government, particularly by academics and thinkers on the ideological left, such as Noam Chomsky, who is a strong proponent of the client-based model of neomilitaristic domination of international affairs. Chomsky has described in great detail this style of militarism in his book, "The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism," written with Edward Herman.

Main Menu

Wikibin - The Recycle Bin of Wikipedia

See Also

Main Menu