Militarism seems to be an atavistic behaviour pattern not extinguished from the human genome and culture, though it's losing ground.
It seems to me that the USA is less militaristic than ever, but with higher military spending. It's not like the old days when 10s of thousands could be cheerfully sacrificed. Around the world, military action was intrinsic to male lifestyle and wars were as regular as clockwork and fairly genocidal actions, ending in cannibalism in many instances.
That's because women had 10 children and obviously 8 of them had to be removed from the gene pool without reproducing or the world would have been over-run. That's the biological way of the world.
Now, with contraception, and trade instead of found wealth, and technological marvels which enable huge populations to live well, combined with sophisticated legal and political systems, the need for death is over. On the contrary, there is worry about a shortage of people in many countries and soon in nearly all of them. India's population boom is very rapidly winding down. China's is over. Japan is fizzling along with Europe.
Most countries are wondering how the heck they are going to look after the old with the dearth of young people coming on stream. Avian flu and sars should sort that problem out as the old are disproportionately killed.
Suddenly, social security for oldies will be very fully funded. The ratio of young to old will go from 2:1 to 10:1 in two years. Hey presto, no more population woes. It will cut the price of houses too as a LOT will be empty and on the market.
Militarism has had its day Ray. The USA is ironically at the zenith of militarism just when it's becoming a pointless concept - though I hasten to add that with China wanting to take over Taiwan and North Korea and Islamic Jihad on the march, there is still plenty of scope for some military manoeuvres.
Give it another 30 years and militarism will seem as quaint as duels with pistols at 10 paces, jousting, and changing currencies while driving across Europe. NZ hasn't had local military action in NZ [other than the scum criminal Frogmen and women bombing a civilian boat in Auckland harbour] for well over a century. But for 1000 years, military death was a way of life [since human occupation].
Mqurice |
