ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an account of the place of military spending in the development of the international peace movement from 1815 to the present day. Paradoxically it has been throughout a central preoccupation of those concerned with militarism, but also surprisingly neglected when it comes to setting up organised campaigning structures. The latter part of this narrative therefore focusses in depth on the development of the Global Campaign on Military Spending (GCOMS), launched by the International Peace Bureau (IPB) since 2011.
Over the course of this 200-year period, the focus on the economic dimension of peace and war has been linked to a number of other issues: private as well as public financing operations; arms production and trade; nationalism, colonialism (and also anti-colonialism); threat perceptions, employment creation; nuclear weapons; the military-industrial complex; and all forms of alternative investments to meet human need and promote environmental recovery.
The narrative reveals that the bulk of the work in this field has been done in the richer countries, but that after the end of the Cold War – and especially after 9/11 – campaigning centres working on the issue have emerged on all continents, though to varying extents.
Raising questions about areas of state activity that tend to be highly centralised and in many cases opaque is difficult work. Thus practitioners need to be thinking hard about how to engage other parts of civil society, notably the young, in challenging military expenditure. The emerging climate crisis and the public response to it provide an important opportunity for the development of effective national coalitions, tied together in a worldwide network.
