Militarism Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Militarism is the ideology that military strength is the source of all security. In its mildest form it is often stated as many more specific arguments for military preparedness, all of which tend to assume that to achieve "peace through strength" is the most or only route to achieve peace.Militarism tends to be defined in direct opposition to peace movements in modern times. Historically the term occurred with reference to specific states engaged in imperialism, e.g. Sparta, Empire of Japan, British Empire, Third Reich, New Roman Empire of Mussolini, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Today it is often applied to the loosely allied anglo-saxon powers of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and to a large extent Israel and many of their opponents, e.g. North Korea, Iran and Syria.
Miltarism is sometimes contrasted with the concepts, mainly Chinese, of comprehensive national power and soft power and hard power. The current Chinese leadership believes that a strong China is necessary to national security, but that the military is only one component of national power, and that an excessive focus on the military may lead to less national power in areas such as the civilian economy.
One aspect of militarism is the ascendancy of a small clique of military officers to unchallenged power, as in Iraq, Third Reich and most of Latin America up until the 1980s. Nevertheless, although many militaristic states are military dictatorships, militarism is not synonymous with dictatorship or authoritarianism; liberal democracy and militarism are not mutually exclusive.
One way to measure militarism is the percentage of a country's GDP that is spent on the military. In 2001, North Korea had the highest expenditure of 31.3% of national GDP, followed by Angola (22% in 1999), Eritrea (19.8% in 2001), Saudi Arabia (13% in 2000), Ethiopia (12.6% in 2000), Oman (12.2% in 2001), Qatar (10% in 2000/2001), Israel (8.75% in 2002), Jordan (8.6% in 2001), and Maldives (8.6% in 2001). [1]
Another measure that has been commonly used is the number of military personnel per capita.
Militarism can also be understood in a much broader sense. At some level we are all connected to explicit militarism, just by living in a military industrial complex is one example. The spirit of militarism as defined above is domination by military stength. This spirit of domination, violence and control exists across other sites of culture than the military. Corporate takeovers, government reform, even the practices and structure of schools and other institutions like hospitals share very similar organisational structures and philosophies. So militarism is an inherent part of culture evident in sovereign forms - direct military action - and disciplinary forms, through the contest of everyday life at work, in the media or on the sporting field. Militarism is in some sense everywhere.
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