Transcription
You have a total military production dependence, a very strong at least of the US, because we always stupidly believe that the US was there for us. The US is here for the US. And the idea with NATO has never been to protect Europe. The project called NATO is a US project to secure that if there's a war, it will be in Europe and not on US soil. That's forward defense. This is the idea of deterrence. This is American nuclear weapons in Europe. It is to have the fight here and the West, which is 12% of humanity, is going down. We are now the last empire. That empire is getting weaker and weaker, more and more desperate, and cannot tolerate that there are different views. I mean, the more weak you are, the more intolerant you are.
Welcome to World Affairs in Context, everybody. I'm Lena Petrova, and today I'm honored to welcome back a fantastic guest, Dr. Jan Oberg. Jan is a Swedish peace and conflict researcher, author, and co-founder of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, which is an organization I absolutely admire, and I follow on Substack and on Twitter or X. I highly, highly recommend that all of our viewers subscribe to it as well. Jan, welcome back to the program. Thank you so much for joining.
Oh, it's a great pleasure for me being with you. I think you're doing such good and important and highly relevant, urgently important work. So, I hope I can contribute to it so we have some synergy from sitting here. Let me just add to your introduction that, um, the Transnational Foundation is completely independent as a policy of government funding and corporate funding. We are only people-financed, and we're all volunteers, 50 people around the world. I just want to say that because there's very little really truly free research and public education left in the Western world in this area.
Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you so much for clarifying. I think it is very, very important to know that because there is a big difference between the research produced by government-funded think tanks and institutes and those that are independent like yours.
Yeah. Absolutely.
Um, recently I came across two outstanding articles that you published on your Substack. And, um, you discussed, um, basically you focused on the European Union's transition to war economies. And I think this is the most important topic of of of of today because this touches upon every single aspect of our lives. And it increasingly feels as though Europe as a whole is heading toward a major military confrontation that we haven't seen since World War II. Um, Jan, would you give us a sense of what you are observing across the EU in terms of economic and security policy transformations?
Well, I chose a perspective that has not been discussed as part of this rearmament in Europe, which comes as a very unfortunate consequence of the stupid NATO expansion that was responded to in a counterproductive way by Russia invading Ukraine. And both parties being happy, happy to use the Ukrainian people for their battle. Um, and that perspective was the economic one.
I was motivated by the fact that you heard Secretary Generals of NATO, you heard the Danish Prime Minister, you've heard a lot of European leaders say that it's a one, it's one way to get the wheels running in the European economy is to invest in the military and switch to a war economy. There's all, I mean, it's not, I don't think the term war economy has been put into any official document, but that's what they do. From a civilian peacetime economy to converting it to a military, basically like the military should be uplifting the rest of the economy. And then I was reminded of the fact that in the '70s and '80s, we were a number of peace researchers and economists who worked with the issue of what was at that time called conversion. And that was the idea, could you convert the military industry to civilian industry and get a beneficial effect of that? For instance, there was the Swedish diplomatic disarmament minister Alva Myrdal's big study in the United Nations of this. And I sat at the time at the Danish government's security and disarmament commission. And the whole thing about what is the relationship between military investments and civilian investments is something that we should discuss now because I can tell you now, at that time and today, there does not exist any study, any piece of research, any book, any dissertation that proves that you get more beneficial effects of military investments than you do from similar civilian investments in the economy. So, if you want to waste money, go for the military. If you want to waste and get less employment effects, innovative effects, spillovers to the civilian sector, worse hospitals, less cultural life, less welfare for the people, keep on militarizing your economy. It's, there is nobody who has proved the opposite of what I just said.
Interestingly enough, those who say this today are not research institutes. We are the only one here in Sweden, not in the only one in Sweden, we're the only one in Europe who have published this analysis saying these things. No other research institute have done it. Not SIPRI, not PRIO, not the other peace research, not those you would expect knowing about economy and military and beneficial or non-beneficial effects of it. It's the banks. And the bank studies you will find, if I remember correctly, the one is from the Danish National Bank and I think the European bank, too, are clearly saying that there are less effects from military investments than there would be from comparable, equally large civilian investments. So, if you want to, I mean, Europe is in deep economic crisis. Um, Germany is falling apart, as everybody knows. Volkswagen is probably going to be taken over by China. You have written, you have given a lecture in your own program, which is excellent, about these things, which I was happy to repost. Everybody knows that we are in crisis and their competitors, that is China and Russia to a certain extent, and the US is giving us all these kinds of problems with Trump and tariffs and God knows what. We're now choosing, European leaders are now choosing something that they must know, if they are not ignorant beyond permissible, will make the economy less growth-oriented, less welfare-oriented, less innovative in the civilian sector. And therefore, I called my subtitle of my article, "Are They Ignorant or do they lie deliberately?" Because they cannot, all these leaders, basically everybody has said it, and that is state leaders, they cannot not know from their experts, if they lose any from their banks, etc. They cannot be ignorant about the fact that I've just told you, there is no study that proves that what they say is true, and there has not been one earlier either. So, long story short, this is a catastrophic development, and I would like this program and others to begin to discuss why are we ruining the welfare? Why are we making life a hell for our children and grandchildren by militarizing, which one will not solve the security problems with Russia, two will only make us ourselves go down and become, you know, peripheral area of the world's future because nobody's going to listen to Europe if we're going to be in a, you know, Stone Age economy that wasted all this money on armament. So that's long answer, long answer to your question.
Right. And you mentioned Germany earlier this week. Reuters reported that Germany's factory and industrial investments are being driven by this massive corporate pledge under the "Made for Germany" initiative, which now commits over 800 billion, 800 billion euros through, I believe, 2028 to spend on military infrastructure and on heavy government infrastructure spending as well. So, they're effectively building roads that would possibly be used for military military equipment, which I believe now is not structured or designed for military transportation vehicles. So, and this particular program consists of the country across Germany and includes Deutsche Bank and, um, it includes Deutsche Bank and Siemens and other major enterprises. So, it does appear that virtually every big business, every CEO is on board with the strategy to militarize and to cut social spending despite an average person, you know, struggling to make ends meet.
Yeah, that has to do with the fact that if you presented like, uh, if we do not do any other investments and we don't have a long-range plan for the infrastructure, civilian infrastructure development of Europe, then it is true that if you compare with making no other investments, then of course it's better to invest in the military because it does give some employment. What the problem I didn't make that clear in what I said is that it gives much less employment and much less welfare benefits than civilian investment, civilian companies' investments in infrastructure and investments in the education and health, etc., and culture. So, uh, if, if, of course, if somebody comes to a big, big company and it's a CEO and says, "Well, we give you billions of contracts if you produce this and that weapon system or parts for it, etc." Yeah, of course that that will be seen as positive. What I'm talking about is the spin-off effects or the multiplier effects into civilian society, and that's where the lying comes in. This is much less effective as an investment for citizens' lives in the future than civilian investments of the same size would be. And that has to do with the fact that maybe we should explain this to make it more clear for people who may not have thought of these things before. First of all, this is a monopsonistic market. It's a difficult word, monopsonistic market. It means that there's only one buyer, and that's the state of the weapon system. And that's why weapon systems can increase any percentage, hundreds of percentages, from they are planned and bought and contracts are written with governments till they are finally there. Take the F-35, for instance, way more expensive, the world's history's most expensive project. Um, the other thing is there's something called opportunity cost. Whenever you spend $100 on a tank, you cannot spend that $100 on welfare or health or infrastructure. And there's something called, uh, what would you call that? You'll probably call it passive or negative capital investment because a weapon system, take a plane, a fighter plane, will first of all, take more hours to maintain on the ground than it will be in the air. Secondly, most of the time it will be standing on the ground unless you expect it's functioning in a full-scale war. And that means it just costs money every day and does nothing useful for the economy and for the civilian development and innovation. Then comes this argument that it, well, there will be a lot of research and development of new weapons, and sometimes that they spin off, you know, positive effects for civilian society. Uh, such as back in time, we would not have had transistors or we would not have had hearing devices or something like that, hearing aids, if we had not had the military. Excuse me, how stupid do you think people think we are? If you want hearing aids or you need a new type of technology or something, you go straight and do research on getting that and finding ways to get that. You don't sit and wait, you know, for decades until perhaps, um, research on a military system will spin off something that could produce the products you need in civil society. I mean, this is bizarre. But the fact is, you don't have media who have the competence to discuss this. As I said, no single research institute in Europe has investigated these things, and I can't understand why. I can't understand why, but it's immoral, if you will. And, and third, it's not a public discussion. People believe that, oh, that's what we must invest because then they protect us and then there will be no war. Excuse me. Think of the trillions of dollars that have been poured into NATO since '49 for the three words of the NATO mantra: stability, security, and peace. And where are we today? We're at the closest distance to warfare. I'm, I'm not an alarmist. I'm not a doomsayer. Don't get me wrong. But the discussion about warfare is now more rampant than it has been for decades. While NATO was promising us that if we make these investments and paid the price also in civil society, we would avoid war. We would have a peaceful world. There must be somebody who wakes up at some point and says, this is all BS. We know it doesn't work that way. And economies don't work that way. The military doesn't create security or peace because, as the saying goes, and I said it before, um, if weapons could create peace, we would have had peace a long time ago. It takes something completely different to create peace. And certain investments in the military is now, first of all, not only making military security and tension bigger. It is also ravaging and ruining our civilian societies. It's, it's a double idiocy. And that comes on top of the fact that NATO still has military expenditures which combine at least 10 times higher than Russia's. Now, do not tell me that somebody who has 10 horses starts a war against somebody who has 100 horses and believes, hello, hello, everything is going to go fine. It doesn't, it doesn't make sense. There's nothing what is formally set in this sector of European politics that makes any sense. It's for lunatics or people who can't think. I'm sorry to be this determined in the words I use, but I spent 50 years understanding these issues, and I don't see any logics anymore. We have stripped the world, the European world, from diplomacy. We have stripped it from contacts, confidence-building measures, trying the least to understand what the Russians are about, whereas the Russians are studying us research-wise and otherwise, and we see enemies everywhere. China is an enemy, Russia is an enemy, Iran is an enemy. And we must count, I mean, this is historic. And who's paying the price? The taxpayers. I would like taxpayers to boycott. If you guys in the military want all these, begin to sell cakes and coffee at your meetings and see how much money you can collect for the next war. Because squeezing money out and promising taxpayers security, stability, and peace and not delivering it, and then ask for even more, excuse me, I would call that unethical, if not lunatic. Um, and that in itself could lead to war, not Russia invading, invade invasion of a NATO country. It's never happened and it won't happen for a number of reasons. I've written long articles about this and 13, 15, 16 points of why it's. But the long story short is, we might end up making a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because we believe that military is the only thing that can solve problems. Just pouring money. And that has to do with a very dangerous new tendency in the Western world. We don't talk about what we actually do. We talk about setting off the money for it, and then we think we have solved the problem. You know, we take 5% of the gross national product, and then we'll be much safer. That depends on how you spend that 5%. But we have converted any serious discussion about what threatens the Western world, nature, other conflicts, cultures, environmental decay, poverty, tension, terrorism. All this is eradicated. The only thing now is what threatens us is what we can meet by increasing military expenditures, 5% of gross national product. That is, that is totally bizarre. I am so far the only scholar in the world who have analyzed this as a bizarre, absurd measurement because it substitutes from a serious threat analysis. I know what it takes to make a threat analysis. The Nordic countries made serious threat analysis years ago. Today, there's no talk about anything. Russia is a threat, therefore 5% of gross national product. You see what I mean? It has nothing to do with solving problems. It is no, nothing to do with diagnosis. It is nothing to do with possible new thinking that might be needed. It's just more money. We've solved the problem. More money for hospitals, we've created more health. Do, do, do, do. I mean, there's no links between these things. It's quantification. It's market mechanism for everything. And then we think we have solved problems. We might end up waking up in a war because we've done all these stupid things. Not because of what the Russians or the Chinese are doing, but what we have done ourselves, such as ruining the welfare state that Western Europe, and particularly the Nordic countries, where I sit, were world-known for. People look up to the Nordic countries because we were welfare states. We had equality. We had people's high schools. We had women's equality. We had talked about things instead of fighting each other and slapping each other's face. Now, all this is gone. Destroyed by stupid people in Stockholm who just don't join NATO. I mean, it's amazing what this will cost the taxpayers. Oh, oh. I'm thinking of my children and my grandchildren, not myself.
Europe is creating this self-reinforcing cycle where increased military production actually generates political incentives for even greater militarization. And so we see the cycle kind of go on and go on and go on. And, and I think it's sort of spinning faster and faster because, you know, first we discuss, oh, this is just rhetoric. This is just, you know, so-and-so saying that Russia's going to invade, but we know that's not true. And we sort of brush it off. But then I think a couple years later, we see that actually that rhetoric is transforming into policies, into security policies and economic policies that affect every single person. So, because, as you mentioned and as you wrote in your, um, absolutely wonderful Substack post, um, military spending is economically less productive than civilian investment. And, and because that's that's sort of the case, and everybody remains silent, everybody's sort of observing, who are the primary beneficiaries of Europe's massive rearmament?
That will only be those companies that actually get the contracts to produce this waste. It's waste production from a civilian economy. I mean, producing a tank or whatever does no civilian use. Those companies which get these billions of dollars in investments will, of course, benefit. But the rest of the society will not. That is what, that is what it makes the politics of the European Union and NATO deeply immoral. They couldn't care less about citizens' welfare when they steal your money, tell you that we will deliver something called peace, security, and stability, and they don't do it. And when they find out that their policies don't work, if they're reasonably intelligent, which I don't, which I'm not sure, they ask for more of the same thing instead of asking, what are we doing wrong? What worked in '49 or '53 or '62 or '78 doesn't work today. But there's one thing that never worked through the whole process, and that's the idea of military investments doing civilian good things. That has not changed. It's the same mistake over and over again. We are going to live in relative poverty in Europe if these guys are allowed to continue their actually self-destructive policies in the name of welfare or development or competition with the rest of the world. Shut down these companies. If you want to compete and be somebody in the future world order, you don't militarize your economy. That's the last thing you would do. And you open a relationship to Russia, you start negotiations, you use diplomacy again, you use intelligence, you use your brains if you have any, and you have a vision about how to solve conflicts and live together peacefully in Europe. The Russians are ready to that. They've always seen themselves as also European. But the West does not want that relationship with Russia. They want to pump in, they give loans to, they pump in, they actually help now the US does it, too, in having a full war between Ukraine and Russia. This is what it leads to. Is that stability, security, and peace that NATO promised us and asked us or demand or squeeze money out of us to pay for? I mean, I'm sorry. This, this is a theater of the absurd. It has no relationship to empirical analysis and serious politics.
Very true. Um, New York Times just published an article on how the US president has made over two billion dollars during his first year alone in office through conflicts of interest relating to crypto business deals and bribes. Now, I will just link that article for anyone interested, uh, below. But it seems to me that we are observing an interesting dynamic where policy and, and, um, these decisions are being shaped by personal interests and the interest of major campaign donors and not by a politician's constituency. And I think there is a degree of that in, in the, in the EU as well, not just the United States. And so, that, that raises a question. Does democracy even exist in the United States and in those European countries where the population is very much opposed to militarism, but then a small group of individuals at the very top continue pushing their own agenda that's disconnected with the will of the people?
Who often when they were young got Fulbright scholarships and were educated at US universities or journalists who were educated at the American University in Beirut, etc. And they all kind of more or less brainwashed. I call it brainwashing town, you know, little joke. Uh, because what, what comes out of this is you have a Nazi center periphery of the elite are the same. The elites are the same in different parts of the world, and they have more together a common interest together than they have an interest with their citizens. This is Johan Galtung's old center periphery structure which was used about imperialism. And it also applies within NATO. The elites within NATO are more loyal with each other and the benefits they get from it than they are with their citizens and their citizens' best. Uh, there's a word for that in wartime, you know, um, and there's a word for it in peacetime, too. This is traitor. You can be a wartime traitor, more loyal with the foreign powers, or you can be a peacetime traitor. It's the same thing, just the time is different. And of course, the crime is bigger if you are a traitor during a quisling, as it was called in Norway, if you are that in wartime, but I would say I had a moral problem with those who are more loyal with Washington than in Stockholm than they are with my security and my family and the Swedish people's best. I have a problem with them ethically and morally, and they would never dream of talking with me, a peace researcher, about anything. They would talk with people who are Russophobic and confirm only their own views that we must arm one and one. So, you have military research centers all over Scandinavia today. You have a SIPRI that does military security studies, not peace studies. You have a PRIO in Oslo that has nothing to do with the institute that Johan Galtung started in the late '50s. And you have university departments in Scandinavia which are doing what they are supposed to do because university institutes, too, are state-financed. So, you can't find money today in today's Sweden. You can't find money for a study of some kind of peaceful solution, peace research, reconciliation, forgiveness, something like that. We can do it because we are people-financed and people appreciate what we do. But you, I couldn't do this if I was a director of a state institute. Swedish Institute of Foreign Affairs or International Relations or the Copenhagen International Institute for International Studies or something like that. They, they're all producing basically the same stuff. And that's why they have not made a study of the economic effects of militarism, militarism. They know that that would be difficult to sell and get financed. Free research, forget about it.