Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 21.
september 2009 / Timeline September 21, 2009
Version 3.5
20. September 2009, 22. September 2009
09/21/2009
The
Weakness of National Military Strength
By Lawrence S.
Wittner
During 2008, the nations of the world spent nearly $1.5 trillion on
their military forces. That is what has been reported by the
highly-respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute,
which noted that the five biggest spenders were the United States
($607 billion), China ($85 billion), France ($66 billion), Britain
($65 billion), and Russia ($59 billion). Adjusted for inflation,
the total represents an increase of 45 percent in military
expenditures over the past decade.
And so the game of national military "defense" continues, despite
clear indications of its negative consequences.
One consequence is a vast diversion of national resources from
meeting basic human needs. As President Dwight Eisenhower stated in
1953: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket
fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger
and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in
arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its
laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its
children."
Another consequence is the undermining of democracy. In the
eighteenth century, America's "founding fathers" were deeply
troubled by the prospect of "Caesarism"—the rise of military
strongmen who would seize power and stamp out democratic
government. Since then, there have been plenty of military
takeovers, and not only in the distant past. Among the most
notorious of the modern military officers who overthrew democratic
governments and set up bloody dictatorships were Franco in Spain,
Somoza in Nicaragua, Batista in Cuba, Mobutu in the Congo,
Papadopoulos in Greece, Suharto in Indonesia, and Pinochet in
Chile. One of the most repressive regimes in power today was
established by Burma's military officers. Only this June, a
military coup ousted the democratically-elected president of
Honduras.
The most obvious weakness of national military preparedness is that
it often fails to protect nations from the war and destruction it
is supposed to prevent. Despite high levels of military might,
nations have been fighting wars for centuries, bringing them to the
brink of ruin. Of what value was it to the nations fighting World
War I that, in the prewar years, they had been armed to the teeth?
Did their weaponry avert war? Might it not even have encouraged
that conflict? Was victory in the great "War to End War" that much
better than defeat?
Or take the experience of Germany and Japan, two nations that had
embarked on rapid military buildups in the 1930s and, then,
suffered almost total disaster (human and material) during World
War II. By contrast, during the Cold War, when they stayed on the
sidelines—keeping military expenditures low and their troops
out of combat—they thrived and prospered. Indeed, it could be
said that the real victors in the Cold War were the Germans and the
Japanese!
And what about the United States, the world's top spender on the
military since the end of World War II? Has this nation experienced
"peace through strength"? The reality is that, since 1945, it has
been continuously at war, either hot or Cold. Furthermore, despite
the vast resources, including the lives of millions of Americans,
devoted to U.S. national defense, the nation's leaders now tell us
that it is more threatened than ever. If it is, one is forced to
ask: Of what value were the trillions of dollars of post-1945
military spending? Certainly the overdeveloped U.S. military
machine—by far the most powerful in the world—did
nothing to safeguard the nation against the terrorist attack in
2001 that took almost 3,000 lives and was conducted by nineteen men
armed only with box-cutters. Why is all this military might not
doing a better job of protecting us?
The fundamental reason is that what one nation views as defending
its vital interests is viewed by other nations as threatening their
vital interests. The result is frequently a sense of national
insecurity, a growing arms race, and—in many cases—war.
Terrorist groups, too, are often motivated by a sense of grievance
against heavily-armed nations, especially when those nations
establish overseas military bases and occupation regimes on their
soil.
This fact that national military buildups promote violent conflict
has been recognized for years by intelligent citizens and by many
government officials. Consequently, there have been modest moves
toward establishing a collective security approach to world
affairs. These include the development of the League of Nations and
the United Nations. But national governments—especially those
of the larger countries—have resisted giving up more than a
very small portion of their sovereignty to international
institutions. Although they pay lip service to the United Nations,
they put their faith (and money) in national military might. And
this keeps us running endlessly on a treadmill, ever anxious about
our national security, as military expenditures rise year by
year.
Isn't it time for a different approach?
09/21/2009
Påstand om fogedforbud ikke taget til følge
http://www.domstol.dk/KobenhavnsByret/nyheder/domsresumeer/Pages/Påstandomfogedforbudikketagettilfølge.aspx
Københavns Fogedret har idag afvist at nedlægge
fogedforbud i en sag mellem Forsvarsministeriet,
Forsvarskommandoen, og forlaget, ArtPeople A/S. Sagen drejede sig
om en tidligere jægersoldats bog, "Jæger - i krig med
eliten", som forlaget ArtPeople A/S har ophavsretten til. I bogen
fortæller jægersoldaten om sine oplevelser som
jægersoldat i Irak og Afghanistan.
Fogedretten lagde ved sin afgørelse til grund, at
Forsvarsministeriet havde sandsynliggjort, at bogen indeholder
fortrolige oplysninger, som er omfattet af jægersoldatens
tavshedspligt, og som skal hemmeligholdes af militære og
sikkerhedsmæssige årsager og af hensyn til Danmarks
forhold til fremmede magter, og at offentligheden derfor ikke
skulle have adgang til at få indsigt i oplysningerne.
Fogedretten lagde endvidere til grund, at bogen var blevet
offentliggjort i sin helhed i Politiken den 16. september 2009, at
den var blevet citeret i andre dele af pressen i forbindelse
omfattende medieomtale, og at bogen allerede lå på internettet.
Under hensyn til, at bogens indhold dermed allerede var blevet
udbredt til en større og ubestemt kreds af personer, og at
det på nuværende tidspunkt måtte antages, at det
reelt ikke længere ville være muligt at forhindre
viderespredning, mente fogedretten ikke, at der var grundlag for at
nedlægge fogedforbud, fordi et forbud ikke længere
kunne forhindre den uønskede viderespredning af
oplysningerne i bogen.
09/21/2009
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