The Earth Under Siege

As the conflict in Gaza escalates into the greatest catastrophe of the 21st century, the kind of neglect that had once allowed colonial wars to continue is being replaced with technomilitarism that requires more than just compliance. It requires a rejection of simple realities that the system terms to be wrongthink.

Much as the physical waste of militarism destroys the Earth’s potential, the intellectual poison of hypocrisy, falsehoods, and bad faith poisons civil institutions. 

Rejection of modern militarism is more than just a rejection of the deployment of troops in American cities or the West Bank and Gaza. It is also about reclaiming our collective sanity and moral compass. We are asked to pretend we cannot see what is happening and the excuses are getting flimsier. 

As wars continue to grind on seemingly without nominal participation of the voting public, it is no longer enough to be silent or subservient. The military industrial complex is demanding people to be a part of unquestioned lies. We are no longer further than one degree of separation from great evil. 

The world, its economy, its culture, and its creativity, are international. We can live under the illusion that we have to conform to the outdated dogma of nationalism. Nationalism is a concept that does not conform with the promise of technology, the global nature of the climate crisis, or the international reality of the economy. 

Militarism is not just about aggression against people, it is also about neglect. In the United States, crucial resources are being diverted to fund paramilitaries. Forces once engaged in the day to day work of law enforcement or civic management now have to function as subsidiaries to a militarized force that is only loyal to the president’s inner circle and born in a culture of impunity and incompetence. 

The struggle against militarism is also the struggle for human solutions to problems as opposed to excuses for militarization. A solution to the Earth’s agricultural problem is not to send soldiers to hunt down the workers who are least responsible for how the policies are implemented. 

While nations also have reasoned defense concerns, there is no justification for organizing society around the pretext of threats and intimidation, or weaponizing state power to empower falsehoods and control information. Legitimate concerns about the system that is beyond popular control are drowned in a chorus of fake outrage and tired sloganeering in mainstream media and from Western governments. 

Fortunately, aspects of militarism are self-destroying. A psychologically propagandized and militarized society responds to criticism within academia by simply taking an axe to the institution. A university system that will go to cartoonish lengths to avoid even the appearance of criticism of Israel or militarism in general, is bound to be less appealing to students in general. 

Though we can see the predation of capitalism in action, it is foolish to not utilize it as a tool, and the tool of boycotts, local politics, and consumer choice can work. The right wing has been able to bamboozle people into supporting this new form of militarism, but there is an increasingly visceral hatred of the sight of soldiers and armored vehicles in the streets. 

Apologists for the moves in America are learning the hard way that non-violence is not the same as being polite. People can also see through the transnational nature of recent enforcement actions, and the veil of politeness has dropped. 

In a way, the boos against Columbia University President Claire Shipman for her surrender to the Trump administration, going so far as to pay over $200 million and expel student protestors, were more meaningful than the organized protests in solidarity with Palestine. ICE agents are being met with fewer slogans and more aggressive encounters with citizens who see them as street thugs and are no longer afraid to insult them. 

The new militarism requires the participation of parts of what was once considered civil society and the mobilization of resources that should clearly be devoted to human progress, as well as the cynical acceptance of AI as a tool of moral distance. AI-powered drones stalk the skies of Gaza and Ukraine. An AI-generated voice from the Israeli Ministry of Defense tells us there is no famine in Gaza on YouTube, telling us not to believe our lying eyes or the voices of real people on the ground.  

Drone fleets and wasteful foreign interventions that were once the arsenal of superpowers are now becoming omnipresent tools of smaller authoritarian systems. As advanced corporate systems soak up resources, providing few solutions, the world faces acute problems that will require all the power of technology to address. 

While powerful western-backed nations are behind a great deal of the new militarism, it is also being embraced by smaller nations, which see military solutions as causes worth fighting in and of themselves. The United Arab Emirates is trying to build an empire of proxies in Sudan, Libya and elsewhere in Africa, the new Syrian government is trying to piece the fractured state back together with sectarian violence and wishful thinking. 

The year 2025 must be the year we reject militarism, but not only with our tax money and feet on the ground at protests. We must also fight against the mentality we are asked to accept which increasingly sees people as commodities of the military industrial complex, rather than participants in democracy.