Weapons and security: a game of mirrors

Abstract

This article critically analyzes the current warmongering escalation and European rearmament from a materialist philosophy of peace, questioning the false equation between higher military spending and greater security. The author argues that modern militaristic discourse hijacks the concept of security, shifting it from the protection of the material living conditions of corporeal subjects to the justification of the State's war machinery. Throughout the text, the political, economic, ecological, and ethical dimensions of this phenomenon are examined, warning that militarization erodes democratic deliberation, fosters tutelary industrial dependency, and administers fear as a technique of government. In contrast to this model, the article proposes recovering the concept of «human security», grounded in the satisfaction of basic needs, the reduction of structural violence, and the sustaining of a dignified life, free from the misery and the threat of destruction generated by militarism itself.