Ben Cramer, 5/1/2026
Translated by Tlaxcala
By familiarizing himself with the sociology of Defense at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Ben Cramer gained an introduction to polemology, before joining the Department of Peace Studies at Bradford and then doing his first stint with Greenpeace in disarmament campaigns. As a researcher at CIRPES, he worked on the Swiss militia army—on behalf of the Fondation pour les Études de Défense Nationale. A journalist and former producer of the ‘Fréquence Terre’ program on RFI, he co-hosted the first debate in the European Parliament on ‘Collective Security and Environment’ in 2008; after having been involved in a think tank on nuclear proliferation within the Centre d‘Études et de Recherches de l‘Enseignement Militaire, the CEREM. As an associate researcher at GRIP in Brussels (on the footprint of military activities and climate disruption), he strives to popularize the concept of ‘ecological security’ and highlight the bridges between security, environment and disarmament. Website : athena21
We must deconstruct the logic of the hammer and the
nail. This observation should spark vocations, but in the meantime, while
strategic thinking is stalled, the notion of security has not freed itself from
the military straitjacket. And as long as priority is given to weapons, their
handling, their sophistication, any destruction, including the ‘deferred
infanticide’ evoked by the father of polemology Gaston Bouthoul, will result in the appropriation and rape of planetary resources. To
these tactics of destruction will be added, in the context of hybrid wars,
operations aimed at dissuading civilians from playing the role incumbent upon
them in defining what society is supposed to defend and how.
By way of explanation, it seems wise to grasp how much
the elites that govern us are trapped by the technology they have acquired. It
determines their options or, more precisely, limits their room for maneuver, as
illustrated by the order for the successor to the aircraft carrier Charles-de-Gaulle,
which represents 42,000 tons of ... diplomatic gesticulation. The announcement
of this (not even European!) megaproject confirms the denial in which those who
refuse to realize that the long-term modernization of the strike force is one
of the most emblematic elements in making the sovereign state an agent of
supreme insecurity.
But as the USAmerican psychologist Abraham Maslow
wrote: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat
everything as if it were a nail.” (The Psychology of Science, 1966, a
phrase often misattributed to Mark Twain). Thus, since those who govern us only
have hammers at hand, every situation (symbolized by a nail) must be treated
with the “hard line”; every troublemaker is necessarily an enemy destined to be
annihilated. The formula may seem “has-been” or obsolete insofar as the goal of
future wars is to control rather than to kill. The enemy is not always the one
we brandish.
To ensure greater security, credible threats must
first be identified and priorities set. Yes, to paraphrase an SNCF slogan, one
threat can hide another. In a world that has lost all rationality, in which
most states spend more on national security than on educating their children,
indicators are ineffective. Unfortunately, arguing that illiteracy and/or
dyscalculia constitute a greater threat to humanity than terrorism is not
politically profitable. That is why some exaggerate and omit to say that the victims
of terrorism are six times fewer than the number of deaths at level crossings
in France (2020 figures).
The distortion between perception and reality is a
means of detecting the instrumentalization of threat. For example, the media
campaign led by Donald Trump, insinuating that the coronavirus was a
premeditated tactic by Beijing, did not prevent hundreds of thousands of USAmerican
citizens from dying. In any case, to “fake” threats are added false alarms and
thus inappropriate responses. This phenomenon is not reserved for a single
country, even the most imperial one. So what to do?
At our own risk and peril
Freeing oneself from fear means neutralizing the
scapegoat and de-demonizing the enemy or substitute enemies. However, it is not
impossible to believe that our leaders, in Brussels or elsewhere, have their
reasons for brandishing the specter of “enemies.” Whether to justify the costs
that the militarization of extra-atmospheric space, the “cosmos,” as the
Russians say, will entail; or to valorize metals (ores) contained in the deep
sea in the name of the “7 ambitions for innovation” listed in the report “Innovation
2030” chaired by Anne Lauvergeon since
April 2013.
Even better: to absolve themselves of not having
anticipated the dramatic fallout from the convulsions of an Empire in distress.
Finally, as historian Emmanuel Todd explains, the dramatization of geopolitical
issues is a way of forgetting and making people forget the concrete challenges
facing the country: “The rise in infant mortality, unparalleled in other
countries, testifies to the scale of these challenges and the decline of
France...” Nonetheless: monopolizing extravagant amounts to militarize France
in the name of our vital interests (thank you for the future aircraft carrier!)
seems to indicate that the war being concocted is not really everyone's
business. Even if the bewildered citizen is involved through taxes. Some will
consider any increase in the military budget a fraud, a scheme amounting to
embezzlement. They are not necessarily wrong: recent polls shed light on the
gap between the priorities of governments and the perceptions of the peoples
concerned. A majority of Europeans do not want to take part in a confrontation
between the USA and Russia or China. Only 22% would be in favor of US
participation in a war against China, 23% in a war against Russia.
But public opinion is capricious: those who advocate
for a cap on carbon emissions are curiously the same ones who adamantly refuse
any cap on military spending. In the name of the supposed benefits of a "war ecology" (sic). While the Green Climate Fund advocated by the UN at the
Copenhagen Summit (COP 15) bets on generous donors to fill a rather empty
coffers, few voices speak in favor of redirecting military budgets towards
climate adaptation, even though such a measure could slow the acceleration of
ongoing militarization. Among NGOs, only WWF-France made this recommendation in
a 2017 report.
Other voices will call the maneuver self-sabotage. But
the intention to deprive millions of citizens of a fundamental ... human
security – does it not border on failure to assist peoples in danger?
Some observers might be tempted to conclude that the
threat that is privileged is not the most likely, nor the most formidable, but
the one that allows those who govern us to consolidate their power and cling to
it. “Whatever the cost." An example? The average person does not feel
directly concerned by the attempt to acquire weapons of (nuclear) mass
destruction by this or that bomb maker. Not enough to represent an “existential
threat.” Besides, since the 1970s, about a dozen states (Switzerland, Sweden,
Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan) have renounced
the military nuclear option without being forced by force (unlike Iraq or
Libya). But the “proliferator” remains the favorite enemy, not only in Riyadh
or Abu Dhabi.
Let's continue the argument. Under the heading “It is
never too early to prevent conflicts and threats,” according to the agreed
vocabulary in “European
Security Strategy, A Secure Europe in a Better World” (Brussels, 2009), it was enough
to turn our spotlight on Iran and its mullahs. The display of the sequences of
this nuclear adventure keeps the International of Paranoids with Benjamin
Netanyahu at the helm in suspense. For four decades! And without going back to
the steps initiated by the Shah's visit in 1974. As early as April 1984, German
intelligence services predicted that Iran could acquire the bomb within two
years ... thanks to highly enriched uranium (HEU) from Pakistan ... as the
prestigious magazine Jane's
Defence Weekly reported at the time.
This psychosis silenced pacifists regarding Israeli
adventurism during Operation “Midnight Hammer” (another hammer story!)
targeting several Iranian nuclear sites on the night of June 21-22, 2025. The
operation also cornered a certain French left, which has still not reconciled itself with
security issues and flirts with ground zero of geopolitics. It would do well to
complete or revise its creed by rereading the famous satirical work “Report
from Iron Mountain on the possibility and desirability of peace” by John
Kenneth Galbraith and Leonard C. Lewin. The authors summarize it as follows: “The
existence of a believed external threat is essential to social cohesion as well
as to the acceptance of political authority. (...) In the absence of conflict,
a sufficiently great threat must be found to induce societies to accept their
subjection to their government.” A word to the wise is enough…
“Human security,” how many poster campaigns?
The term “human security” was conceptualized or at
least popularized within the international community via the 1994 UNDP Human
Development Report. The authors then had the ambition to present an agenda on
the occasion of the UN's 50th anniversary, one year later. But who was going to
be in charge of promoting it? The wealthy will always find it easier to feel
the need to arm themselves – and, if necessary, to make it known. On the other
hand, it is always more difficult for those excluded from security to
demonstrate the validity of their demands. In our case, the art of “communication”
relayed by the DICoD [French Defense
Information and Communication Delegation] and the ECPAD [French Defense
Communication and Audiovisual Production Facility] did not benefit this
security, and “militarized capitalism” (as the jurist Monique
Chemillier-Gendreau would say) accommodated itself to it. To the credit of this
former Great Mute [i.e. the French Army], let's acknowledge that a parade of
firefighters, whistleblowers, social workers without fanfare or trumpets, SSA [Food
Security] instructors who display their profession without knowing how to march
... can hardly compete with the sound and light"show of paratroopers,
missile specialists trained by Rafale or F-35 bomber pilots, or near-silent
drones capable of lighting up the sky. A show that also and above all pleases
dictators, from Delhi to Pyongyang via Moscow and soon Washington.
Human security, a European signature
Only certain academic circles have ensured that human
security is recognized as a discipline, but rather marginally. In political
parties, and among representatives of civil society (NGOs), the word “security”
rather acts as a repellent; in the ecological movement, for example, where
those who minimize the benefits of social security are concentrated, even
though it corresponds to one of the 7 dimensions of human security.
NGOs, excluded from UN bodies such as the Conference
on Disarmament in Geneva, feel orphaned by citizen diplomacy. They will have to
row hard to build bridges between the proponents of this security and the other
security, which fuels the business of recognized institutions. Why that?
Associating geopolitical issues with the social crisis is politically
incorrect! That is why issues of urban violence (for example) are not on the
agenda of the G7 or G20, nor the Munich Annual Forum (Wehrkunde), the Davos of
defense, nor its light version, the (Macronist) Paris Peace Forum.
The birth of a doctrine
Ironically, it was the promoters of human security
who, in a 35-page report (not translated), had the merit of putting their
finger on the sore spot. They insisted on “the gap between security
capabilities based primarily on armed forces and the real security needs of
each individual.” This so-called Barcelona report entitled “A Human
Security Doctrine for Europe“
appeared in September 2004, ten years after the UNDP report. The authors
concluded: “the most appropriate role for Europe in the 21st century would be
to promote human security.” The instigator of this initiative was none other
than Javier Solana, who long campaigned for Spain's exit from NATO, published
the pamphlet “50 reasons to say no to NATO”; and therefore was listed as a “subversive
person” by authorities in Washington. As strange as it may seem, he recycled
himself to occupy the post of Secretary General of NATO (1995–1999), then that
of head of European diplomacy...
The majority of MEPs paid no attention to this
document, except for the representatives of the Confederal Group of the European
United Left (GUE/NLG). They
commissioned a report on the carbon footprint of the military entitled “Under the
Radar". In this text published in
February 2021, we can read: “Beyond the greenwashing of military policy, we
must rethink the European Union's defense policy on arms control and
disarmament, placing human security at the center.”
Security is only human if it is democratic
Contrary to popular belief, humanizing defense policy
is a risky bet. For the simple reason that the chances of living free from want
and free from fear are not the same for everyone. Those who live free from want
and fear have an unfortunate tendency to claim that their privileged status is “normal.”
They are therefore not inclined to facilitate the initiatives of civilians,
precisely those who, in the name of human security, want to democratize
security in order to better secure democracy.
Pierre Naville had good reason to write in 1977: “Whatever
the destiny of humanity, no social project can unfold if it does not include an
unprejudiced study of the functions of war.”
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire