When prevention becomes cause

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The military mind seems quite fond of developing different euphemisms and phrases which do more to obscure what it being said than to elucidate it. ‘Friendly fire’ and ‘collateral damage’ are two of the obvious ones. There was another one this week: ‘expended’. It seems that the military and the defence ministry are a little worried that, in the event of an all-out war, the UK’s entire army would be ‘expended’ in only six months. Whilst the rational response would be to say that, in that case, we’d better make absolutely certain that we don’t ever get into such a war, the military mind seeks instead to explore ways in which the number of people available to be ‘expended’ can be increased rapidly, in order to add a few months to that period. Whether people are going to be as enthusiastic about being ‘expended’ in the twenty-first century as they were at times in the past is another question: the military, as ever, always seem to believe that they’re going to re-fight the last war, and there does seem to be an assumption that attitudes to participating in a war are unchanged.

Their response to the point about avoiding such a war would probably be something along the lines of, ‘Ah yes, but the best way of doing so is to possess such overwhelming military strength that they would never dare attack in the first place’. But here’s a question: if Russia (to choose a putative enemy not-at-all-at-random) were to seek to build up its forces such that they were capable of deploying overwhelming force against ‘the west’, would ‘the west’ see that as a deterrent or a threat? And if the answer is the latter, why would ‘the west’ expect Russia not to see a military build-up by ‘the west’ in the same light? Underpinning the mindset is a belief, on both sides, that ‘the enemy’ is just waiting for a chance to attack ‘us’, in order to seize land and resources, and to subjugate people.

Historically, it’s not an entirely bad assumption. Looking at empires of the past (whether Roman, Mongol, Ottoman, Spanish, Portuguese, French or British, for instance), expansion of territory and control of resources – including the ‘right’ to conscript people from the new territories into the army to further expand the empire’s control – has been a key driving factor. But that was then and this is now: what if that isn’t the main driver any more, and the real danger of war stems from a belief on one side or the other that they are under threat and the best response is to strike first? What is presented as a way to prevent war then becomes the likeliest cause of war. And it isn’t just military personnel who will be ‘expended’ if that happens.