Militarism and Repression *

The thesis of this essay is that militarism is related to repression, both instrumental and structural. Not only is the military directly used in many countries to keep the population under brutal subjection; the very process of raising and maintaining armed forces (through such practices as conscription, special legislation restricting freedom of information and discussion related to military preparations, and elaborate devices for maintaining discipline and administering justice within the services) threatens, and often actually curtails, people's liberties. Structural repression is brought into play by militarism influencing social, economic and political life in ways that make coercion unavoidable. In the Third World, for instance, militarism has created a cycle of impoverishment, external dependence and exploitation. Similarly, in industrialized countries hyper-militarization (more markedly of the superpowers and their major allies) helps sustain, both directly and indirectly, the unequal global division of labour, under which the major economic role of the South is that of providing raw materials (including those which are non-renewable) at cheap prices to the North.