Antimilitarism

Antimilitarism is an attitude of political intervention that tries to end the present predominance of the military on the civilian, as a first step of an essential mutation of the contemporary state and of an effective radicalization of the democracy. Their immediate objectives include nonviolent movements of social pressure - although not always legal- against the arms race, the policy of military blocks, the proliferation of atomic bombs, the attempts of warlike expansion and, in general, any growth of the power and influence of the military institutions in the public life. Evidently, a generalized demilitarization also demands a resignation to the military logic in the approach to the political conflicts, the deactivation of the aggressive nationalisms - and they are all agresive-, the reinforcing of international the legal systems and the defense of the public liberties against the reason of State (that it is always the reason of the force), the search of creative alternatives to vent the violent and destructive impulses etc... In last term, since the general military system supports and it supported by, maintains and is maintained by the economic inequality, the labor explotation of the many by the few, etc... the antimilitarism also faces the chronic permancence of the social injustice.

Note: This definition by Fernando Savater was published in 1984 and shows that it was written before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the more recent establishment of the International Criminal Court. Still, it retains so much current relevance that I feel it deserves to be included "as such" in the encyclopedia.