Militarism Cannot Prevent War: An urgent call for de-escalation, demilitarisation, and disarmament in relation to Ukraine and beyond

Behind this current crisis lies a history of militarised and economic violence. Both Russia and the United States are settler colonial states, forging their countries by expanding their “frontiers” and killing and repressing Indigenous populations. Both engage in imperialist actions outside of their now-established borders, interfering, through military and economic action, in countries they deem to be within their “spheres of influence”. Both use militarism, aggression, and forced economic ties to guide their conduct in international relations, and both deal with domestic inequality, poverty, and resistance through policing and punishment.

The governments of both countries critique each other for the same type of behaviour. Russia criticises US imperialism, yet invades and occupies its neighbours, bombs civilians, and engages in cyber-attacks against critical infrastructure that harm ordinary people. The United States criticises Russia as an autocracy yet overthrows democratically elected governments if they threaten US interests, builds military bases and engages in wars and military operations in hundreds of countries around the world, and spends billions of dollars a year on militarism while so many of its citizens live without health care, housing, or food security.  

Both countries have built up their militaries, military alliances, and nuclear arsenals to challenge the other. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)’s expansion eastward is about constraining Russia, just like Russia’s invasion of countries to the west are about constraining NATO. Ukraine, in this context, is a pawn being used by both “sides”.   

This gamesmanship runs the serious risk of mass destruction. Between them, Russia and the United States possess more than 11,850 nuclear weapons. NATO members France and the United Kingdom have a few hundred each. The US also stations about 100 nuclear weapons in NATO members Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and Turkey. These weapons are not remnants of a past Cold War — they are actively deployed right now, ready to be used. The stockpile numbers, alarming as they are, don’t convey the sheer horror each weapon packs within it. Every single bomb is designed to melt flesh, burn cities, decimate plants and animals, and unleash radioactive poison that lasts for generations. Even the use of one of these weapons would be disastrous. A nuclear exchange would be catastrophic.  

Russia and the United States, along with France, United Kingdom, and China, together recently agreed that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, echoing a statement from Gorbachev and Reagan in 1985. Yet each of these countries has been investing billions in the “modernisation” and expansion of their nuclear arsenals, preparing not for nuclear disarmament but for nuclear Armageddon. Each maintains doctrines and policies for the use of nuclear weapons. And some within the US nuclear complex, at least, apparently believe that nuclear war can be fought — and won. This is an incredibly dangerous message to be sending to those responsible for the potential destruction of the world, but one that benefits the military-industrial complex.  

There are other corporate interests behind the festering conflict, including in relation to weapons production and sale, pipelines and “energy security,” and access to “natural resources,” with profits to be made at the expense of human lives as well as the protection of the planet. In the midst of a climate emergency, in which capitalist extraction and exploitation has decimated biodiversity, ecosystems, and land, water, and air, the governments of NATO members and Russia continue to use fossil fuels and refuse to embrace a degrowth economy that would drawdown the use of energy, especially in the global north, and prioritise the creation of systems of care and equality for people and planet.