Category: Dossier
Conrad Otto Lude -
Militarisation: a return to hard power projection in Europe?
Over the last decade, militarisation has become an increasingly relevant policy item in response to a perceived deterioration in the European security landscape. But what exactly is militarisation, and which developments have led to its rise in popularity? While the term’s definition remains contentious, militarisation is generally understood as the process of militarising an environment, e.g. by subjecting a community to military conscription schemes alongside the reinforcement of national security measures. At the material level, this consequently leads to increased security and defence spending on military and security personnel and equipment.[1]
As for the recent militarisation trend in the European political discourse, two major overarching events can be identified as political triggers. Firstly, the 2014/15 European refugee crisis and the subsequent increase in the frequency of Islamist terrorist attacks have given rise to right-wing populist parties across many European countries. While these populist actors remain at the forefront of calls for stricter migration policies, accompanied by an expansion of the mandates of domestic anti-terror and border security units, the shift in public opinion that has strengthened the emerging right-wing actors has also resulted in more widespread support for militarisation and securitisation measures across the political spectrum. At the European Union (EU) level, for example, this is highlighted by an unprecedented increase in the public funding allocated for security and defence purposes, as detailed in the 2021–2027 Multi-annual Financial Framework. Figure 1 below highlights the stark contrast between the previous and the current funding cycle.
Secondly, the escalation of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine in 2022 undeniably constitutes another major political turning point that contributed to the EU pivoting towards a more militarist hard security approach. For the first time in years, European countries have been confronted with a palpable external threat to their own national security, which has seemingly disillusioned them regarding their previously frequently assumed role as ardent supporters of demilitarisation. For instance, the German government has rekindled its interest in bolstering its own defence capabilities, as evidenced by its immediate response to the war in Ukraine by approving an additional 100 billion euros in military funding, after years of remaining below NATO’s 2% target for national defence spending. As Figure 2 highlights, this change of mind was mirrored by almost all European NATO member states, with significant increases in defence spending across the board.
Given this recent shift towards intensified militarisation at the European level, it is crucial to consider what effects militarisation may have beyond the quantifiable changes in government spending. One of the most obvious consequences of the gradual militarisation process in Europe is the partial return to military conscription schemes, as in the case of e.g. Latvia, Lithuania or Sweden. In recent months, politicians in large European countries such as Germany and the United Kingdom have also started to discuss the benefits of reintroducing mandatory military service. Ultimately, while individual states’ policies may differ, it remains safe to assume that the shift towards militarisation and hard power projection is likely to proceed as a result of rising international tensions, exacerbated by the ongoing war in Ukraine alongside other conflicts such as the highly internationalised Israel-Gaza conflict. The Ukraine conflict in particular seems to have heralded a return to interstate conflict, proxy wars and intensified great power rivalries in the European theatre of conflict.
The ideological impact of militarisation: perpetuating militarised masculinities
To assess the impact of higher levels of militarisation on European societies, it may be worthwhile to look at militarisation in the United States of America (US), an important Western ally that shares similar norms and values. Despite its lack of a mandatory conscription scheme, the US has achieved a considerably higher level of militarisation and stands out among its Western allies in terms of defence spending and the size of its military relative to its population. As a result, the US military plays a much more pronounced societal role that permeates virtually all layers of society due to its diversified recruitment incentive structures, which take into account pragmatic socio-economic as well as ideological motivations. On the one hand, joining the military not only grants privileged access to employment, but also facilitates access to education, healthcare and welfare services. Given the otherwise prohibitively high cost of these services in the US context, intersectionality experts have criticised that granting such conditional privileges is part of an exploitative recruitment strategy commonly referred to as the “poverty draft”, which leads to the proportional overrepresentation of socio-economically underprivileged groups, such as Black women, in the US military. On the other hand, beyond these practical incentives to join the military, recruitment efforts also benefit from the idealised portrayal of the US military as the global protector of Western ideals, thereby adding an ideological appeal to joining the armed forces.
To deepen our understanding of how this idealisation of the military is perpetuated, adopting a feminist research approach proves to be particularly insightful. In militarised societies, certain military values such as the projection of power, strength, emotionless rationality, and domination and control over others, are commonly attributed to idealised forms of masculinity, thereby reinforcing patriarchal societal structures that see men as the designated protectors and providers. This implication of an intrinsic link between masculinity and the military creates a narrow ideal of masculinity that proves to be exclusionary of and discriminatory against non-conforming expressions of masculinity and other gender identities. Thus, while generating such a militarised gender ideal may facilitate recruitment efforts in line with national security interests, it can also motivate the societal alienation of those who do not share this idealised conception of a militarised masculinity. For example, conscientious objectors with pacifist views may be shunned for their perceived lack of patriotism, and non-binary individuals who do not align with the narrow criteria of how masculinity is should be expressed are at risk of being discriminated against in such a militarised context.
Consequently, feminist peace advocates have denounced militarism and the propagation of militarised masculinities as determinants of violence, precisely because militarised masculinities contribute to the reproduction of societal inequalities that are more often than not situated at the root of violence and conflict. It has been argued that militarised masculinities feed into four overlapping systems of power: militarism, capitalism, racism and (hetero-)patriarchy. These “giant quadruplets”, as they are sometimes referred to, “work together to generate and perpetuate a culture of violence, greed and discrimination that undermine peace and justice around the world”.[2] The intersection of these systems of power has materialised in the form of an elaborate military-entertainment-industrial complex, which can be described as a collaborative effort by military, entertainment, and (arms) industry actors to generate, uphold and exploit militarised masculinities. While it can be argued that the arms industry operates with a more localised focus on the US context, the role of the US as a global cultural hegemon enables its entertainment industry to shape cultural conceptions of gender roles beyond its borders, particularly regarding its culturally similar Western allies.
Manifestations of the military-entertainment-industrial complex
To demonstrate how norm-setting cross-sectoral cooperation in the military-entertainment-industrial complex may take place, the subsequent paragraphs will briefly discuss several examples of how the arms industry, the movie industry and, more recently, social media and the gaming industry co-construct and disseminate notions of militarised masculinity, in partnership with the military. Firstly, to illustrate the role of the arms industry in instrumentalising and reinforcing gender stereotypes as part of its marketing campaigns, one can for instance look at the controversial 2010 Bushmaster Firearms advertising campaign (see Figure 3) that implied a causal link between purchasing an assault rifle and reaffirming one’s masculinity. Notably, the model advertised in this campaign was one of the weapons used by the shooter of the tragic 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. While this marketing campaign was particularly blatant in its exploitation of militarised masculinity, there are many examples of the arms industry playing on gender stereotypes to further its commercial and political interests.
In contrast to the arms industry’s bold rhetoric, the US entertainment industry plays a comparatively more subtle role in generating and reproducing militarised conceptions of masculinity. Popular Hollywood war movies such as Top Gun or Black Hawk Down, for example, often forego a historical contextualisation of the depicted conflicts in favour of the romanticised portrayal of the bond between heroic male soldiers. Their deployments are presented as individual adventures without any regard to how US military interventions may have been perceived by the respective host populations, instead idealising the heroism of the military protagonists. This bias can be partially attributed to the frequent cooperation between the movie industry and the US Department of Defense (DoD). While the DoD’s involvement in the production of war movies inspired by real events may not be shocking, it is perhaps surprising to note that its influence also extends to popular fictional franchises such as Godzilla or the Marvel superhero movies Captain America: The First Avenger and Iron Man. Regardless of whether a movie depicts real events or fictional stories, the DoD seems keen to enter into mutually beneficial partnerships with the film industry which enable the military to control how it is portrayed in popular media in exchange for filming access to military sites and equipment.[3]
Lastly, with the ongoing global digitalisation processes and the growing relevance of cyber warfare in modern conflicts, militaries across the globe have also started to market themselves to technologically well-versed gamers and social media users. In recent years, militaries have significantly expanded their social media presence (see Figure 4) and intensified their cooperation with the video game industry. Notably, the latter often faces similar criticism as the military in terms of fostering a sexist, male-dominated culture among its player base, which is also mirrored by the associated industry.[4] The US military has previously invested in the development of first-person shooter games, which may not only desensitise players to violent interactions, but are increasingly used to prepare prospective soldiers for real-life combat situations. As a result, the technological proficiency of gamers, paired with their receptiveness to the notion of militarised masculinity, renders them an ideal target for military recruitment efforts (see the examples below).
Militarisation in the Decade of Feminist Foreign Policies: a Contradiction?
Having looked at these manifestations of the military-entertainment-industrial complex and how they reinforce militarised patriarchal gender norms, it is crucial to circle back to our initial point of departure, namely the recent European militarisation trend. In fact, this process of gradual militarisation has coincided with a seemingly contradictory political development in Europe: the adoption of feminist foreign policies. Initially, Sweden set the precedent in 2014 and other European countries such as France (2019), Spain (2021), Luxembourg (2021), and Germany (2021) followed suit in the following years.[5] These countries have enshrined the three “Rs” - promoting equal rights, equal representation, and the provision of resources to help overcome current (gender) inequalities - as central guiding principles of their foreign policy. Juxtaposing these explicitly “feminist” policy priorities with the observable societal impact of militarised masculinities perpetuated by the military-entertainment-industrial complex, one may wonder how the seemingly contradictory ideologies of pragmatic militarism and intersectional, pacifist feminism can be reconciled.
To engage constructively in this debate, the following questions need to be asked: Can the investment in a stronger European security and defence capacity, in the light of current geopolitical developments, take place without reinforcing militarised masculinities that themselves contribute to the reproduction and exploitation of societal inequalities and thus to structural violence? Can militarisation, if truly inevitable, be done in an inclusive way, taking into account the needs and interests of all societal groups, without undermining the functioning of the security apparatus or contributing to a further polarisation of the public discourse? Lastly, could the adoption of a more inclusive, human-centred (rather than a state-centred) approach to security improve the effectiveness of contemporary security measures by taking a more holistic approach to the intersecting lived realities of conflict-affected populations and those subjected to structural violence, thereby addressing the root causes of conflicts and facilitating the achievement of sustainable peace?
Footnotes:
[1] Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (bpb) and Bonn International Center for Conversion (bicc). 2024. “Militarisation.” Accessed on 23 August 2024. https://warpp.info/en/m3/articles/militarisation.
[2] Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). 2016. “The Giant Quadruplets of Militarism, Capitalism, Racism, and Patriarchy.” Published on 4 April 2016. https://www.wilpf.org/the-giant-quadruplets-of-militarism-capitalism-racism-and-patriarchy/.
[3] Kaempf, Sebastian. 2019. "‘A relationship of mutual exploitation’: the evolving ties between the Pentagon, Hollywood, and the commercial gaming sector." Social Identities 25, no. 4: 542-558.
[4] Paul, Kari. 2021. “Activision Blizzard scandal a ‘watershed moment’ for women in the gaming industry.” The Guardian. Published on 8 August 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/aug/08/activision-blizzard-lawsuit-women-sexual-harassment.
[5] UN Women. 2022. “Feminist foreign policies: An introduction.” Published in 2022. https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2022/09/brief-feminist-foreign-policies.
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