2009-06-27

The Creation of an International Military Force and the Fear of Progress

I've added some text to "Uniforce: An International Military Force" based on stuff I've written in "General Neophobia in Everyday Life: Humankind's Fear of Progress and Change" which traces a few historical battles between progress in defence (such as wearing camouflaged uniforms) and those who worried that changes in defence were too dangerous to contemplate. Experiments in pooled defence have so far proved successful and stabilizing, but, there are few attempts to explain this to the general public.

“Despite the advantages of pooled military defence, there is much public concern about things such as combined European defence, even though the advantages far outweigh the theoretical disadvantages. Because it is big, and new, there is much opposition to it even though the status-quos in international defence are widely acknowledged to be broken. [...]

Media coverage of the ESDP (common European defence policy) has been entirely negative, despite the commendation of senior military experts and diplomats in Europe. In the future, when a European or International military force exists, historians will look back and puzzle over what our problems were.

From "General Neophobia in Everyday Life: Humankind's Fear of Progress and Change" by Vexen Crabtree (2009)

There must be more effort to explain to the public the massive costs and disadvantages of having nearly every nation maintain world-faring military forces, to explain that some developed countries only have a defensive force (look at Switzerland) and have not been immediately invaded by their neighours, and that the African Union proves the principal of pooled defence. In practice, NATO and Europe are operating as if they had a unified worldwide force, and deploy it where is necessary. It makes sense to formalize this, so that it can be strengthened and made more dependable. But the public do not hear anything of these ideas or debates - they exist only in specialized military journals. While the mass media, which is inherently sensationalist and nationalist, is the main voice on international military issues, most people receive reactionary information that is biased against intra-national accords.