Is it time to abolish the military?

Considering international events such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the violence in Gaza, it could be argued that now is not the moment to be proposing disarmament and the abolition of the military. Isn’t a strong and professional military necessary for guaranteeing protection and national security? Don’t we require military force to deal with the threats posed by hostile states or groups, terrorism, weapons proliferation, great power rivalry, organised crime, violent extremism, climate crisis and all the other sources of instability today? Shouldn’t we be spending more on the military at this time, not less?

This is certainly the common-sense view. However, as we argue in our new book, Abolishing the Military, an honest and scrupulous analysis of the evidence and arguments shows that the widely held idea that we require a military to ensure national defence and security is questionable, and a comforting but misleading story from a bygone era.

In the first place, it has to be acknowledged that the use of military force has an abysmal record as a tool of foreign policy. There are few if any cases from history where the employment of military power resulted in peace, security, stability, democracy or improved human rights. In most cases, it leads to further violence and instability, and mass suffering for civilians. Russia, Ukraine, Israel and Hamas are all discovering this today, while the United States found it out in Afghanistan a couple of years ago.

In any case, according to the Ministry of Defence’s own assessment, in 2014, ‘New Zealand does not yet face a direct military threat to the territory of New Zealand itself … [and that] … any such threat would almost certainly only emerge in the context of a major war.’

A later defence assessment, in 2021, identifies the two most pressing threats to Aotearoa’s security as broader strategic competition within the Indo-Pacific and Pacific regions, and climate change.

Indeed, a specific climate-change report produced in 2018 by the New Zealand Defence Force Te Ope Kātua o Aotearoa notes that climate change will exacerbate the challenges presented by geo-strategic competition as environmental degradation, rising sea levels and extreme weather events are likely to lead to an increase in the number and intensity of humanitarian disasters. The Pacific region, the report notes, is likely to be disproportionately impacted by such trends. In the face of such non-conventional security threats, military force is all but redundant.

Yet today the NZDF is funded, equipped and trained primarily for armed combat, despite the government’s own assessment that the chances of a direct threat to Aotearoa’s territory are extremely low and the NZDF is too small to defend Aotearoa in such circumstances, anyway. What’s more, it is geared towards cooperating with its powerful allies, the United Kingdom, United States, Australia and Canada.

Perhaps our willingness to keep sending soldiers off to risk their lives in foreign wars, thereby fulfilling our role of ‘good international citizen’, is based on a rather rosy view of a much more complicated and unsettling record. In reality, such military deployments have not been as successful as is commonly believed. More importantly, there are alternatives.

We argue in the book that Aotearoa could instead develop and support unarmed civilian peacekeepers, use its good diplomatic offices to try to resolve international conflicts, and continue its leadership in nuclear disarmament. In fact, Aotearoa could embrace its longstanding and culturally rooted peace traditions and lead the way in general disarmament and peace-making, thereby proving its worth as a good international citizen.

A direct alternative to the military is civilian-based defence (CBD), sometimes called social defence. Organised to respond to both foreign invasions or internal usurpations, it involves citizen-based protest and persuasion, non-cooperation, direct intervention and other forms of nonviolent defiance by the population and social institutions.

If a hostile foreign power invaded Aotearoa, for example, roads, airport runways and ports could be blocked by vehicles and ships. People could change road signs to confuse the invaders, something that Czechoslovakians did following the Prague Spring in 1968 to resist the Soviet invasion.

Once the invading army had occupied the country, actions by CBD could include things like going on strike or refusing to maintain infrastructure or extract resources. The police could refuse to arrest civilians, while media workers and teachers could refuse to spread the invaders’ propaganda.

Workers could sabotage and disrupt communications signals, electricity supplies and transportation networks. Local power generators and community food gardens could make the population less vulnerable to coercive control.

While such collective acts of defiance would show opposition to the regime and build morale, civilians could commu­nicate with the invading forces and build relationships to encourage them to disobey orders or defect.

Among CBD’s many advantages is the sending a strong signal that Aotearoa was making itself unable to threaten invasion of, or attack, any other nation in future. This would most likely have the effect of making Aotearoa less of a target of invasion or military or terrorist attack, and in turn contribute to wider disarmament efforts.

An added bonus is that the resulting decentralisation and diffusion of power makes the national defence system less vulnerable to other threats such as cyber-attack and espionage. CBD also has the advantage of involving ordinary citizens in defence, thereby contributing to democracy and participation in foreign affairs.

Arguably the greatest advantage to abolishing the NZDF in favour of a CBD-based approach, however, would be increasing human security via increased spending on health, welfare, education, social housing and combating climate change.

Funding could also be channelled into the creation of new nonviolent institutions specifically trained and resourced to tackle tasks that the New Zealand Defence Force is already called on to conduct such as disaster relief, humanitarian assistance, and inshore patrol of our EEZ.

Increased spending on such alternatives would be a tangible and measurable way of increasing the safety, security and wellbeing of society, and dollar for dollar, would most likely be a better investment in national security than the military.

Take, for example, the recent upgrade of the Te Kaha and Te Mana frigates, a $600–$700 million spend to provide ‘a contemporary high end combat capability for New Zealand’.

The frigate upgrades took eight years and have a shelf life of eight years. If a similar sum was invested in a hospital, for example, it could serve the health needs of New Zealanders for decades to come.

Moreover, while the money from the frigate upgrades went to Lockheed Martin Canada, an international arms company, hospital construction creates local jobs and stimulates the local economy. The $1.47 billion Dunedin Hospital reconstruction, for example, is expected to create the equivalent of 1,000 full-time jobs and contribute $429 million to the local economy.

What we consider ‘national security’ and how we choose to pursue it has enormous ethical, political and financial consequences, and relying on old myths and assumptions in a changing international environment to make our choices will not do.

There should be rigorous public debate about whether we ought to maintain our military forces and alliances, and about whether there are genuine alternatives and the advantages and disadvantages of different options could be.

While adopting alternative, nonviolent methods of defence would involve some unknowns and some risks, including the deterioration in our relationships with former allies and partners, it could also lead to widespread respect, greater moral and polit­ical influence, new employment and community service pathways, and increased security as a neutral, peaceful, decolonised nation. There are also enough examples of such thinking in other countries – Iceland, Costa Rica, Lithuania and others – to know that it is more than wishful thinking.

Abolishing the Military: Arguments and Alternatives byGriffin Manawaroa Leonard, Joseph Llewellyn and Richard Jackson ($18, BWB Texts) is in stores now.