Can the war end?
A curious phenomenon has been reported around the world after recent attacks on day care centers and schools. Concerned about their own safety, children have been carrying cold weapons, such as kitchen knives and poket knives, in their lunchboxes. These kids probably don’t mean to attack anyone, but they feel they need to be prepared for the worst. They are afraid and fear is not the wisest adviser.
If your son has the right to carry a knife to school, so does mine. In a few days, a unilateral decision can be perpetuated throughout the entire school. Fights over football, or simply over ego, which before resulted in a bruise and a few drops of blood, can now become real tragedies.
The same reasoning can be extrapolated to family parents who keep guns at home, to police officers in Brazil who need “caveirões” to face drug trafficking and, finally, within the most absurd and irrational context, to governments that decide to arm their armies with whatever the market has the most modern and stupidly deadly.
The most recent example is that of Germany, and virtually any other European country that has invested heavy sums in its armies in 2022. Every day that passes, the war in Ukraine proves once again to the world that wars make no sense, the which instead of translating into less budget for the military, results in massive and even disproportionate investments in Defense.
I would like to say that Lula is wrong in his controversial speech, but I don’t feel that he is. Ukraine is serving as the stage for yet another conflict between the US and Russia. Yet another conflict that takes place outside the territories of both countries and that is encouraged by arms industry lobbyists, who make Ukraine a great sales stand. Nothing new on the front.
Even poor countries, which have no plans to go to war and live surrounded by peaceful and low-military neighbors, have impressive budgets for their armies. Brazil is perhaps one of the most imbecile examples, with an investment in 2023 greater for Defense than for health and education combined. Yes, combined. Imagine how health and education could be in Brazil if we weren’t burning money to maintain Gripen fighters, smoke tanks, military daughters’ pensions and fine dining?
Literally, every day Brazil loses the chance to be a world reference in health, education and even research, because it chooses to invest billions in the arms industry and in high military ranks that, fortunately, never participated in a war.
Today it is a privilege to study at a school where there has never been an attack. Likewise, it is an incalculable privilege that Brazil does not have a single neighbor to fear. There are those who say that Venezuela is a danger, but I think that Venezuela is already doing a great job of destroying itself. It doesn’t need to risk invading a nation with a GDP 3 times its own and repeating the Latin American experience with the Malvinas, I mean, the Falkland Islands.
With such a privilege, which can probably be extended to almost all of America, but hardly anywhere else in the world, Brazil should urgently reduce the military’s budget, scrap its fighter jets and invest in areas that really matter. The whole world would like that, especially imperialist nations like the US, which detest the military might of any nation other than their own.
This does not mean that the world must kneel to the will of imperialist nations. On the contrary, I see Chinese opposition to US power as a positive. Dangerous, but positive. But who said that US military power is not already dangerous in itself?
The fact is that Brazil and its military investments are irrelevant in a world that has China and the USA. Entering this arm wrestling match is not only unproductive, but costly and pathetic.
Is this the end of the military?
Defense is one of the most solid institutions of our times, which means that it is rooted in government and society, with a relevant cultural and historical role. Even if in a quick twenty-year period public opinion turned against the military, it would still take generations for its influence and strength to wane. This perhaps means that the military will never end.
This is a very bitter scenario, because as long as there are soldiers, we will live not only fearing the “external enemy”, but also feeding the “external enemy” of others. Because yes, our armies are every other nation’s potential enemy, just as all armies are to ours and as every armed child in school is to your child.
The greatest resistance against the end of the army will, of course, come from the army itself. Not unlike taxi drivers in the face of app drivers or artists in the face of artificial intelligence, the military is a working class that will defend its livelihood until the last moment.
The military will always defend that, if we are at war, they are indispensable to fight for us, and if we are at peace, they are indispensable to keep it. Vicious reasoning.
Perhaps there is a way out. A scenario in which we can dream of the end of the very expensive tanks, aircraft carriers, satellites and high command salaries. Instead of standing up to the military and demanding that they give up their jobs and careers (putting it in those terms, the absurdity of the proposal is obvious), perhaps a paradigm shift makes more sense. No longer facing the military, but assigning new functions to Defense. Find ways for the military to contribute to society, almost as an acessory power force of the executive.
In a way, this already happens. Think of how many military personnel spend their lives painting sidewalk curbs, serving high-ranking officials as if they were their servants, or transporting politicians (and, why not, drugs) as if military jets belonged to an airline financed by favoritism. Of course, there are also less embarrassing examples of the participation of the military in society, such as the construction of highways, or even the ships that bring health to riverside communities in the Amazon.
If we are going to dream with our feet on the ground, then allow me to dream about soldiers who play an important role in society. Instead of learning to shoot, camouflage, pilot tanks and smuggle weapons and ammunition, they can become engineers, health agents, teachers (better not) and rescuers. Functions that, in a way, the army already fulfills, even if in a very small portion of its contingent.
The military has hospitals. Exclusive hospitals for military use, of course. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to return these hospitals to the society that finances them (in Brazil, handing them over to the SUS) and put an end to this disrespectful privilege of having an exclusive health plan financed by a poor state that is incapable of provide sufficient access to healthcare for the entire population?
The military has a justice of its own. I spare the reader another paragraph of this text and leave a video that summarizes better than I could the reasons why military justice should not even exist:
I don’t want a future for the military, of course, but a survival. A survival with much more dignity than they have shown.
I’ve already talked about the military in:
