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I'll say this for the anonymous artist who worked on this advertising material for the Grumman industrial concern, they did an excellent job with positioning and space.
When I share material older than 1925 I often get asked how it's in the public domain, in this case despite being published material there is no copyright notice present, which was mandated by the US copyright laws at the time.
I'm no fan of the arms industry, in fact over ten years ago I walked away from my plans to pursue a career within it after leaving University. So, its with great frustration that I have to concede that this poster from the 1970s is making an excellent point. The idea behind this buy F-14s advertisement is a concept known as the Security Dilemma, its the major factor for why most nations around the globe spend heavily on defence and offense capabilities, and also how large and well equipped militaries do not in fact lead to a peaceful world by themselves.
The simplest way to think of the Security Dilemma is in the type of scenario presented by this poster,
- Cruise Missiles exist and Nation A is building them
- Nation B sees a potential threat in Nation As Missile capabilities
- The threat is not deemed serious right now as relations between the two are overall healthy
- But can the leadership of Nation B guarantee that will always be the case?
- Nation B decides to look for a counter measure, Grumman offers the F-14
- Nation A sees the spending on the F-14 program and its counter missile capabilities
- Nation As leadership is concerned that its Defence policy is now compromised as it relied on its missile capabilities.
- Nation A looks for ways to counter or by pass the F-14.
- Nation B sees the expanded military investments of Nation A and becomes concerned, also starts to invest in further weapons programs.
- Relations start to deteriorate and tensions continue to rise
- War
There's more to international relations than this mechanistic cycle, but it is still an important part of the logic of militarisation. The lack of attention to the Security Dilemma is a major weakness of the pacifist and anti-militarist movements. Much of their argumentation relies on moral arguments, which is understandable, the moral implications of institutions and industries dedicated to the killing of over human beings are as obvious as they are horrific, but this overfocus constrains these movements and limits their potential audiences and strategies of resistance.
They're also heavily constrained by context, I remember the anti-war movements in the UK and Western Europe in the 2000s, they were large and popular since the types of conflicts the UK, France and NATO were involving themselves in were far away and often under the initiatives of their governments. These conflicts were widely seen as aggressive on "Our" part, or at least an overreaction. During the 2010s and especially after 2022 the atmosphere has radically changed and support for military action and spending is much more popular and resistance to it the more marginal. Why? Well now we're all reminded that the "West" is not the sole purveyor of armed strife and repression, their are other powers in the world just as willing and capable of resorting to mass destruction to get their way. Opposing BAE Systems was easy when the news was full of the destruction wrought on Baghdad, its much less so now that the news is full of Russian strikes on hospitals and schools and the ruin of Bakhmut.
The Security Dilemma is also the main reason why the previously somewhat sucessful strategy of partial demilitarisation won't work in the long run. The organised anti-war movement was somewhat sucessful in getting specific types of weapons of destruction to be seen as taboo and were able to leverage the outrage and disgust over them to get some states to adopt laws and subscribe to treaties that would phase out parts of their stockpiles. Land Mines, Cluster munitions and multiple types of chemical and biological weapons and some Nuclear munitions were after years of blood, sweat and tears from millions of passionate campaigners starting to look like endangered species. But now much of that work may well be undone as recent conflicts demonstrate to all the powers that these horrific tools do have practical applications.
In Syria Assad's regime used chemical weapons to break an rebellion that may well have toppled him. He also heavily relied on aviatian, artillery and Iranian and Russian support but the case studies he ran using Chlorine shells will prove useful in certain circles. The war in Ukraine fought between two nations which have not outlawed Cluster munitions or land mines have demonstrated how militarily useful both can be in certain conflict scenarios. When the United States of America which also has not subscribed to the ban on Cluster munitions started supplying Ukraine with some of its stockpiles the leaders of the governments in Western Europe were grilled quite heavily about the issue for a week. They all just reiterated their official opposition to these weapons and then concluded they could do nothing about it.
The only way to solve the Security Dilemma is to take an approach at the root of the issue. Banning F-14s and their equivalents globally won't effect Cruise Missiles, getting Cruise Missiles scrapped won't touch Tanks or Mortars, nor stop the logic that drives businesses to operate in the arms markets, nor states from investing and supporting these companies and the wider market. If we ever genuinely want to see a world free of F-14s, SU-34s, Elbit produced Drones, AK-47s, Challenger 2s, Mirage Fighter Jets and Scud Missiles, we need to attack their support structure.
The military industrial complex and its ancestors have always been extremely resource intensive and required decades of support and investment to bare fruit. Without the capitalist market and the State system they will not be sustainable. If humanity truly is doomed by nature to a cycle of fratricidal violence (which is not what I believe but others apparently do) than by taking away his toys and the workshops that build those toys will prevent the worst excessises of that nature. Anti-Militarism without a Materialist strategy for resistance will be doomed to ultimate failure.
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