My distaste for the military on a purely theoretical level can be summarised as the following: I believe that the State should be abolished. The military holds immense amounts of firepower that is under the control of the State, and thefore I see the military as a threat. The military is also one of the primary tools by which imperialism has been carried out, supporting the ongoing expansion required to maintain a capitalist economy.
I will now tackle some common theoretical counter arguments. I will not consider counter arguments related to my anti-State position.
Concern over the power vacuum that would appear, should the military suddenly dissolve, is a valid counter argument. However, even then, most would agree that there are allied powers who would not be fond of your country being invaded by an enemy, and they would use their army to stop that. With that said, I personally believe it's more likely that other nation states (allied or otherwise) would want to invade your nation state mostly to avoid the populace becoming self-governing, and not just invading simply for resource control. I take this stance based on the supposedly "neutral" behaviour of England and France prior to, and during, the Spanish Civil War, when they allowed fascists through the borders but actively hindered the movement of other people and goods needed to fight the fascists. Additionally, no other nation states helped except Mexico and (with a cost) Russia, and when one does have the means to fight an oppressor, but actively does not, one takes the side of the oppressor. That is to say, I believe nearby nation states deliberately avoided helping Spain as it was becoming increasingly self-governing prior to the attempted coup by the fascists. It is against the interest of every nation state for the concept of anarchism to propagate since this idea threatens the power of ALL nation states. Freedom is a taste that is hard to forget, and it is in the interest of nation states to avoid their populace feeling that attachment.
As mentioned, even allied countries would have a vested interest in invading and installing a military as soon as possible, and it would probably not look like a usual military invasion, but instead appear as a charitable gesture. I believe this to be true based off the usual natural disaster responses by nation states. Within one's own country, when a natural disaster hits and government services become unavailable, the affected populace must take on roles to replace these services in order to survive. Often this can lead to forms of self-governance, that is, until government services can be injected and control taken away, in the name of "charity" and to "relieve" the locals of their roles. An example of this occurred in Wauchope, NSW, (and neighbouring areas) when fires spread across New South Wales and help was not immediately available to them. They took action and used a school hall to hand out food to everyone affected in the area. A local who had been co-managing this food distribution recalled how the arrival of Red Cross and government services were a net loss for the community. Per mentioned how the community would've happily accepted just donated food, but instead these non-local services came to "donate" formal hierarchical structures to help "organise", which ultimately disempowered the local community.
So far I've done myself no good, as I've not only described most people's concern (resource control by an enemy nation state) but added one that I think is even more likely (nation states wanting to destroy self organsiation), with the only hope being that an allied nation state uses their military purely to defend your country against an enemy nation state, out of the goodness of their heart. One would certainly not call this sufficient at arguing for the abolition of a military, and it is for these reasons that I reject any idealistic pacifist solution (which would only work if all nation states dissolved their militaries simultaneously). I believe the solution to these problems lies in maintaining firepower, without the military. That is, having an armed and trained populace, paramilitary groups, and a culture of militancy. I believe protecting one's ability to self-organise must be done in a self-organised way :)
Further discussion about implementing a respectful and safe gun culture can be found on my page about guns.
This is certainly not true as history has shown many times over. In support of this, I suggest reading about the Spanish Civil War, Vietnam War, Zapatistas, and Makhnovists, as well as consulting this subchapter from Anarchy Works by Peter Gelderloos.
The invading army has no interest in totally levelling swathes of land as this depletes the possible resources available once the war has been "won" (unfortunately this is less true if there are no resources deemed valuable). Dropping nukes leaves huge dead zones of radioactivity that have little use, so suspect tactics such as drone strikes and cutting off food are more likely to be used to scare off the populace or kill most people (the latter also being less ideal since humans are also resources), leaving as many natural resources intact.
However the more self-governing a populace is, the harder it would be to cut off food resources, and the more trained they are in weapons, the harder it is to invade with an army that is not local and familiar with the terrain / land. Modern autonomous air warfare would probably be the largest hurdle, and would require extensive stealth tactics and patience in drawing out the financial resources of the enemy military. So yeah, drones would be difficult, but I don't believe they would be impossible to counter.
If everyone is sufficiently trained and armed, a paramilitary group would grow out of the needs of the people (as any paramilitary group acting on behalf of an ideology opposed to the interest of the people would have to overpower all other armed civilians). Therefore, the typical devouring and invading characteristic of imperialism would see little to no benefit to the people, and hence, paramilitaries would not participate in them. The majority of firepower would be used for defense and to help bolster the emergence of new self organised territories abroad.
Certainly, the military helps provide aid in a lot of situations. But as with the case of cops, these things can also be done by people who are not in the army. In other words, the good things that the army does can be done without an army too.
If you do not agree with the purely theoretical arguments that I have made so far, there are numerous examples of events that show how awful armies are in practice. Below I outline some reasons why the Australian Defence Force (ADF), its intelligence services, and private arms dealers are hot garbage and should be dissolved.
More information can be found on Wage Peace.
I use the term "allied/enemy nation state" to describe a nation state that is considered an ally/enemy of your own nation state. I make this distinction since I believe ALL nation states are ultimately an enemy to one's individuality. However in the interest of being slightly more brief, I have used the aforementioned terms.
Page last edited on 6 May 2024.