Demilitarising security by Gary Smith

Abstract

This paper is the third in a series published as working papers by the Peace Research Centre following Two Rhetorics of Region' (Working Paper 72) and The State and the Armed Forces: Defence as Militarism' (Working Paper 100). Hopefully they constitute an intellectual progression. Each has developed out of a sense of the strengths and limitations of earlier arguments, from observations on the rapidly developing international setting, and from working with members of the 'Secure Australia Project' to encourage public debate on matters of military defence, foreign policy and security priorities. 'Two Rhetorics of Region' (Working Paper 72) presented a dichotomy in official statements of Australia's regional outlook: region as 'opportunity', even 'destiny', and region as 'threat' and military danger. It used this dichotomy to launch a critique on the 'new militarism' associated with then Defence Minister Beazley's enthusiasm for military technology, multi-billion dollar equipment purchases ('the largest defence capital investment in Australia's peacetime history'), regional power projection and bluster associated with the last phase of the Cold War. It was argued that the approach to regional economic collaboration and the moves to create an 'Asia-literate society' in Australia were much more realistic and productive responses to the problem of economic insecurity than these military policies were to territorial insecurity. It was suggested that the rhetoric and policies of military defence should be reconstructed along lines suggested by the rhetoric of economic interdependence and co-operation. It argued against the official line that Australia's military defence policies had 'liberated' its foreign policy; the successes in foreign policy (and international economic policy) were achieved in spite of, not because of, the military defence initiatives of the second half of the 1980s. The publication in 1990 of The New Australian Militarism: Undermining Our Future Security, edited by Graeme Cheeseman and St John Kettle, stimulated a degree of public debate as well as some discussion inside the military organisation and foreign affairs bureaucracy. 'The State and the Armed Forces: Defence as Militarism' (Working Paper 100) sought to explore further the potential and the limits of the concept of 'militarism' as applied to Australia's military and diplomatic policies and practices. In part it was an answer to some of the critics, defending the claims that militarism was found in alarmist threat perceptions, an excessive regional role for the armed forces, excessive external US influence on that role, and excessive economic costs of military production. But it was also an acknowledgement of the limits of the concept: what constitutes the 'excesses' of militarism in a liberal-democratic society and what constitutes legitimate' military defence? Is one person's excess anothers 'sufficiency'? The paper ended with the suggestion that there was a way beyond this subjectivity: an exploration of the relationship between militarydefence as a means and security as an end. A wider discourse about security and its military and non-military determinants could provide the 'terrain' on which a more fundamental public debate on armed forces could be engaged. This paper on 'Demilitarising Security7 moves onto this terrain. It argues that the concept of security has been 'hijacked7. The normal meaning of the term - to be untroubled by danger or fear, free from threat - has been removed from the public discourse with the onset of the Cold War in the 1940s, when security was defined as a matter of balancing military power against military power. This definition disallows the fundamental questions of how military power adds to or detracts from security in particular circumstances. The paper reexamines military defence as one response, and a problematic one, to one kind of security problem. It looks at the areas in which military defence constitutes security failure, and where a redirection of resources from military spending to diplomatic initiatives and conflict abatement would increase security against potential military threats. Freedom from threat in the international system is a far wider and deeper social goal than freedom from military attack. A wider concept of security embraces a more open appraisal of threats and allows a discussion of economic and environmental security, areas in which the armed forces can offer no solutions. A deeper concept focuses attention below and beyond the state - to individuals and communities who experience security/insecurity in various ways. Together these dimensions press for a reconsideration of government priorities, suggest new directions for government policy, and support a wider public participation in the creation of security. These and other dimensions of security are addressed more fully by the 11 contributors to Threats Without Enemies: Rethinking Australia's Security. Show more