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?
