“War is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society.”
– Lewis Mumford
Since 9/11, military actions around the globe have dramatically increased. Without question, the US Empire has led the way in this regard: drone-striking, torturing and killing from Afghanistan and Pakistan, to Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Iraq and beyond. Meanwhile, many nations around the globe have become increasingly militarized, importing record numbers of arms and ammunition.
In this context, military technologies, particularly unmanned weapons systems, have been catapulted to the forefront of modern militarism. Developments in artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and biotechnology are having untold implications for the future of warfare. As Pete Singer from the Brookings Institute reminds us, “We’re no longer talking about the how of fighting wars, we’re talking about who’s fighting wars.” In other words, what does it mean if the future of war fighting is largely conducted by autonomous robots?
Moreover, we must examine the future of militarism within the context of climate change and ecological collapse. In some ways, the future is already being played out in places like Syria and Afghanistan, two nations ravaged by neoliberal economic reforms, the legacy of Cold War militarism and climate change, what Christian Parenti calls the “Catastrophic Convergence.”
Global Militarism on the Rise
The US is, without doubt, the most militarized developed nation on the planet. With close to a 1,000 military bases, dozens of aircraft carriers traversing the planet’s many oceans and satellites hovering around the globe, no other nation in the world comes close to the US’s military power. Yet, as Noam Chomsky reminds us, after 9/11, almost every nation-state used the attacks as an opportunity to militarize. Since then, the world’s economic system has crashed, further destabilizing an already fragile global community, escalating existing tensions and creating a context ripe for violence.
As a result, nations around the world are now militarizing at unprecedented levels. For instance, “India imported more than twice as many major weapons in the last five years than it did in the previous five-year span ending 2008… making it the world’s largest buyer of arms,” Sneha Shankar notes in International Business Times. Further, Shankar, citing a recent study from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), writes that, “India’s import of major weapons by volume increased 111 percent in the 2009-2013 period compared to the 2004-2008 period, while its share of imports rose to 14 percent from 7 percent in the same period, according to the study.”
According to the SIPRI study, Russia is the major supplier of arms to India, accounting for over 75% of weapons sold to the African nation. Additionally, as the article mentions, “China, being the second-largest importer of arms, has also become a major supplier in South Asia, accounting for 54 percent of Pakistan’s arms imports and 82 percent of the imports for Bangladesh.” Worldwide, Saudi Arabia is now the fifth largest importer of arms. In fact, in 2010, Saudi Arabia and the US agreed to the largest arms deal in US history, worth some $60 billion. The deal included, “84 new F-15 fighters, upgrade 70 more, and purchase three different types of helicopters – 70 Apaches, 72 Black Hawks and 36 Little Birds.”
As always, political interests are inherently intertwined with corporate interests. Thus, the weapons industry has greatly benefitted from the post-9/11 geopolitical landscape. For instance, Vince Calio and Alexander E.M. Hess writing for Time, report, “The 100 largest arms producers and military services contractors recorded $395 billion in arms sales in 2012.” The largest of these contractors, Lockheed Martin, reported $36 billion in sales. The second largest, Boeing, reported $27.6 Billion Dollars in sales, while Raytheon, BAE Systems, and General Dynamics round out the top five, all reporting tens of billions of dollars in arms sales worldwide. Interestingly, the top five arms dealing nations in the world, the US, UK, Germany, China, and Russia, include four of the five permanent member nations on the UN Security Council, with the exception of Germany.
The Future of Militarism
Right now, there are over thirty countries around the world developing drone technologies. Like all arms races, once a weapon is developed, there is no ‘turning-back.’ For instance, once the atomic bomb was created, other nations frantically sought to create their own earth-scorching nuclear weapons. Today, the same is true with regard to drones and, more recently, autonomous battlefield robots: the US may have been the first nation to deploy such weapons in combat, but it won’t be the last. For the US, the deployment of such weapons has a long history. For example, returning to the work of Pete Singer:
“The first predator drones were used in 1995 during the Balkan conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo. By 2000, the Air Force was developing ways to weaponize the predator drones, as they were previously used exclusively in spy missions. Recently, when [the US] started the War in Iraq, back in 2003, there were a handful of drones in the air. Currently, there are over 5,300 drones operating in Iraqi airspace. Additionally, [the US] went into Iraq with zero unmanned ground systems, [they] now have over 12,000 operating in the combat zone.”
What began as a spying machine, eventually morphed into a weapon for killing. Further, it’s worth noting that the drone’s drastic transition from non-lethal to lethal weapon was virtually unmentioned, unreported and considered silly to question during its initial years. Of course, the implications of these trends should be immediately clear. Most importantly, if weapons systems can be operated without the risk of sacrificing human lives, without question, nations, and people, will be more inclined to deploy such weapons. If young men and women can assassinate or slaughter enemy combatants from thousands of miles away, without risking their own lives, the more inclined they will be to join the military.
Moreover, advancements in Japanese non-military droids give us a glimpse into the next generation of battlefield robots. Today, researchers are developing robots with the brain power needed to engage in autonomous battlefield operations. Indeed, the next generation of battlefield robots will not require human operators. The Japanese computer firm, Fujitsu, has developed a series of robots called HOAP (Humanoid for Open Architecture Platform). These machines are able to learn movements the same way humans learn. Right now, HOAP is a tool to help researchers in studying Artificial Intelligence and software for future robots.
HOAP’s control system is run by what is called a Dynamically Reconfigurable Neural Network (DRNN). Basically what this means is that researchers are using computers to simulate the sort of activities that take place in the human brain. This process allows robots to learn in the same fashion as human babies. As Pete Singer also reminds us, “A huge portion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) research is the attempt to duplicate the process of learning. As artificial neural networks develop, they will allow robots to do more and more sophisticated actions.” To put differently, in the future, human beings will no longer have to tell robots how to perform functions, as robots will be capable of making ‘human-like’ decisions.
The most important question becomes: at what point do we allow machines to decide whether or not to kill human beings? According to a study prepared by the US Joint Forces Command, the US military will have the technology to develop autonomous battlefield robots by the year 2025. In other words, the prospect of robots making the decision to take human life is very real. In less than a decade, people around the world will be confronted with this reality. Unfortunately, autonomous robots represent only the tip of the military-scientific-industrial-complex.
Last year, a group of leading scientists, including Stephen Hawking, Stuart Russell, and others, penned an article in the Independent entitled, “Transcendence Looks at the Implications of Artificial Intelligence – but are we Taking AI Seriously Enough?” In the article, Hawking and company mention that the potential benefits of AI could be stellar advancements in the history of human civilization, but they simultaneously examine the negative implications of such technology:
“In the near term, world militaries are considering autonomous-weapon systems that can choose and eliminate targets; the UN and Human Rights Watch have advocated a treaty banning such weapons. In the medium term, as emphasized by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee in The Second Machine Age, AI may transform our economy to bring both great wealth and great dislocation.”
The authors go on to reflect that developments in AI technology could be humanity’s last greatest achievement, “One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand. Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.”
Climate Change and the Catastrophic Convergence
In 2011, author and journalist Christian Parenti penned a critically important book entitled, Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence. Largely, the book explores what Parenti calls the “Catastrophic Convergence,” or the merging of neoliberal economic policies, Cold War-era militarism and climate change. Several weeks ago, I sat down with Christian for an interview. I asked him about the Catastrophic Convergence within the context of Syria:
“Syria is a prime example. There has been a terrible drought there, which coincided with austerity measures imposed by the Assad government cutting aid to Sunni farmers. Many of them were forced to leave the land, partly due to drought, partly due to the lack of support to properly deal with the drought. Then, they arrive in cities, and there’s more austerity taking place. This is experienced as oppression by the Alawite elite against an increasingly impoverished Sunni proletariat who’ve been thrown off their land. This situation then explodes as religious conflict, which is really the fusion of environmental crises with neoliberal economic policies. Of course, the violent spark to all of this is the fact that the entire region is flooded with weapons. Some of these weapons are from the Cold War, and some of those guns are from recent US militarism in the region.”
Clearly, the Catastrophic Convergence is a useful framework through which we can better understand current and future conflicts around the world. To be clear, Parenti is not arguing that climate change is the primary cause of these conflicts, although that may be the case in the future. Parenti’s arguing that climate change often exacerbates preexisting tensions creating further unrest. Sometimes, these dynamics hit at the same moment, such as in Afghanistan, where the US-led invasion and occupation of the country coincided with one of the worst droughts in the history of the war-torn nation. As Parenti mentions, the war comes, the economy crashes, guns litter the region from Cold War-era militarism, then Afghanistan endures the worst drought in recent memory, mirroring the ecological instability taking place in California, leading to further unrest, violence and instability.
Without doubt, projecting for the future is always difficult, but we can always use our imaginations and information available to make reasonable suggestions. In this light, it would be useful to explore what the Catastrophic Convergence would look like in the context of the US — a nation littered with more weapons than any other country on the planet, ravaged by neoliberal economic policies and now experiencing its fair share of extreme weather as a result of climate change. If political, economic, religious and cultural institutions aren’t drastically altered or abolished in the US, we can expect extreme forms of violence to increase, especially as climates, social relationships and economies become increasingly destabilized.
Understanding Militarism
In order to resist militarism, people must understand militarism and its many layers. Here, I’ve explored only a few dynamics of militarism. Equally important would be an examination of how patriarchy and culture play a role in militarizing individuals, societies, institutions, etc. For instance, the film American Sniper grossed over $250 million, making it the highest grossing Hollywood war film of all time. What does this tell us about modern American society and culture?
For now, the most important thing to recognize is the fact that almost every nation around the world is militarizing at a rapid pace, pouring vast sums of money into military training, technologies and weapons. Of course, this is great news for the weapons industry, but bad news for humanity. Furthermore, the weapons industry and governments around the world are currently developing the most high-tech military weapons imaginable, with a particular focus on unmanned battlefield robots and, increasingly, autonomous battlefield weapons. Moreover, all of these trends are taking place within the context of climate change, adding another source of violence and instability.
I explore these issues not to add to an existing atmosphere of cynicism and disempowerment, but to illustrate the many aspects of modern militarism. Right now, when most people think of militarism, they think of US wars, police, prisons, etc. However, other manifestations of militarism are often left unexamined and are very rarely discussed or debated. Here, I think a conversation about global militarism, the future of military technology and climate change is essential.
Vincent Emanuele is a writer, activist and radio journalist who lives and works in the Rust Belt. He is a member of UAW Local 1981 and can be reached at [email protected]
ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
Donate