Preparing for the Wrong War? The need to broaden the focus beyond defence spending towards a comprehensive approach to peace and security
Policy attention and public debate need to shift from a narrow focus on defence spending to a comprehensive approach to sustaining peace and security in a turbulent era. Sustained arms buildups statistically raise the risk of war, but this depends on a range of conditional factors. Focusing on these shaping factors can help ensure defence spending supports peace.
Europe is rearming. What are the likely consequences of this strategy?
NATO’s commitment to increase defence spending to 5% of GDP is premised on deterrence theory. The strategic logic is that increasing the opportunity costs for any would-be aggressor would influence their calculations. This intervention is not an argument against defence spending.
In this commentary, we argue that the relationship between military capabilities and deterrence is complex and shaped by a multitude of related political, economic, and strategic factors. In some scenarios, military spending can increase the risk of war. Understanding the conditions under which deterrence theory is more likely to be effective and investing in shaping the conditions that sustain peace require a comprehensive approach to peace and security. The good news is that we have a rich body of knowledge about how to sustain peace and prevent conflict to draw on. In the following we draw on some of these insights to sketch out this comprehensive approach, mainly taking a European perspective.
Amplifying the risk of war
First, there are a number of risks we need to manage. According to security dilemma theory, when a state increases its defence spending, others often respond in kind. There is thus a risk that a significant change in defence spending behaviour can trigger an arms race, generate mistrust, and exacerbate the risk of armed conflict even if nobody wants war.
Research suggests that sustained arms build-ups are statistically associated with higher probabilities of war. This is an unintended consequence, but not an unpredictable one. The risk is probabilistic, meaning it is not inevitable. The risk is heightened or reduced depending on a number of other factors. We argue for taking these conditional factors – and what we can do to influence them – seriously.
According to divisionary war theory, excessive military spending can destabilise states internally (through debt, economic stagnation, social tensions related to less spending on social goods), which in turn can push governments toward external aggression as a way of rallying domestic support. Leaders facing internal crises (economic hardship, protests, legitimacy problems) are more likely to use external conflict to rally support. Some have used divisionary war theory to analyse why Russia went to war against Ukraine. If this theory explains some of the dynamics that contributed to this aggression, then an arms race further amplifies the risk of a continuation and expansion of the current Russian politics of aggression.
Deception is a classical military tactic, i.e., feigning an attack in one direction to nudge an increase in attention and resources in response, but actually launching an attack in another direction. We need to ask ourselves what our adversaries want to focus our attention on. Crucially, is there a risk that our focus on defence spending comes at the cost of paying insufficient attention to more complex but less tangible threats, including efforts to undermine our values, social cohesion, economic integrity, and global solidarity?
Clausewitz reminds us that war is a continuation of politics by other means. For example, it can plausibly be argued that Putin’s objective is to divert attention away from the political objectives that drive the war in Ukraine (Russia reclaiming the Soviet Union’s position in the global order), including their weaknesses (their economy and weak social cohesion) but also from the comparative advantages of the West (democratic values, freedoms, effective social-welfare economies) and the fact that a majority of states and societies recognize the benefits of global and regional cooperation and multilateralism. If our efforts to shape the Putin regime’s calculations using economic pressure are effective, should we not focus more on increasing pressure on the Russian economy and related supply chains, including its shadow fleets?
Mitigating and decreasing the risk of conflict
Three factors are central for mitigating the potential unintended consequences of a significant increase in defence spending and decreasing the risk of conflict: resilience, cooperation, and interdependence.
Interdependence refers to the degree to which our economic, scientific, technological, and social systems are so highly interconnected that they cannot advance independently from each other. Several recent incidents and crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian war in Ukraine, illustrated the degree to which our food systems, public-health systems, and other supply chain systems are now globally interlinked. High levels of interdependence reduce the risk of war between states, but highly connected systems can also increase the risk of negative contagions such as pandemics. The current focus on local and regional self-sufficiency is thus a necessary corrective step, but we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. We live in a world of shared systemic challenges, ranging from climate change to global public health to peace and security. These global systemic challenges require more, not less, global governance. Even as multilateral institutions like the United Nations need significant reform, the political and societal costs of giving up on global governance structures are enormous. Our efforts to increase self-sufficiency and resilience in some sectors, including in defence, need to be balanced with significantly more policy and public attention to investing in strengthening global governance systems in areas where our interdependencies are vital to sustaining peace and security, and our survival as a species.
It is well established that investments in cooperation across diplomatic, security, economic, technology, and science, as well as in areas such as art and culture, reduce the risk of war. Building relationships across these civic spaces are a critical foundation for a world that works together to manage shared challenges and sustain peace and security.
At present, we are witnessing a significant weakening of global cooperation and multilateralism, reflected perhaps most dramatically in the inability of a polarised United Nations to take decisive steps to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. The choices made by Russia, Israel, and the United States in particular, but also other countries, in managing these wars have weakened core elements of international law and multilateralism, including norms around the inviolability of sovereignty, the use of force to pursue national interests, the norms of what is permissible in the conduct of war and the responsibilities of occupying powers.
As a result, for the foreseeable future, the world will have to cope with a global system where at least two major powers and permanent members of the UN Security Council, and a few other regional powers and states, are choosing to operate outside the parameters of established international law and their related structures such as the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. We need a concerted effort to reverse this trend. The vast majority of states and public opinion remain committed to a strong multilateral system to manage the global commons. The challenge lies in mobilising this demographic majority to mount an effective check on the might is right movement.
European resilience
From the European perspective, an inward-looking focus on resilience must go beyond investing in preparedness. It also means we need to safeguard and further strengthen social cohesion by encouraging open dialogue and promoting ethical defence investments, including transparency and rigid civilian oversight. These are basic values that have long traditions in European societies, and together with the institutions that uphold them, they must be vigorously defended by all elements of our democratic society.
We also need to recognize and manage the political economy of the defence and security industry, and the risks a war economy poses to our social values and democratic culture. A recent report by the UN Secretary-General entitled ‘the Security we Need’ points out that “reorienting economies towards the military changes the long-term outlook for public finance; affects long-term social investment in health and education, including as demographics change; and locks countries into military-centred policies, sometimes for decades.” The report also warns that “over time, the entrenchment of defence-oriented economies fosters networks of political, economic and social influence primarily dedicated to sustaining high levels of military expenditure and moving away from civic and developmental governance.”
Moving forward
In this commentary, we argue that more policy attention and public debate is needed with a view to sustaining a peaceful future, rather than preparing for war. There is a risk that a significant increase in defence spending can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. To prevent war from becoming inevitable, we must invest in shaping the political, economic, and strategic conditions that promote cooperation and that increase interdependencies in certain sectors. Our heads of state and government need to spend more time publicly engaged in global cooperation and diplomacy. This means increasing the investment in public and civic diplomacy aimed at sustaining peace: not as a form of soft power to fix things elsewhere but also to fix things here.
Cedric de Coning (PhD Stellenbosch University 2012) is a research professor with the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI). His research employs complexity theory to analyze the adaptive dynamics of social-ecological systems under stress. De Coning has contributed to international policy processes through advisory roles with the African Union and the United Nations, including the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board for the Peacebuilding Fund.
Kristin Bergtora Sandvik (S.J.D Harvard Law School 2008) is a professor of legal sociology at the Faculty of Law, University of Oslo and a Research Professor in Humanitarian Studies at PRIO. Sandvik’s work focuses on truth, reconciliation and legal accountability after violence and terror, the digital transformation of aid and the future of peace. She is the organizer of CRITPEACE, a researcher network fostering knowledge-based discussions about peace and societal resilience in the Nordic region.
Photo by Emre Beyhan
