Tackling Global Authoritarianism: The Ethics of Military Spending

In light of rising global authoritarianism, liberal states – particularly in Europe – have faced widespread calls to significantly increase military spending, with several committing to do so. By contrast, recent work in political philosophy and pacifism has highlighted the ethical problems of maintaining a regular military, ranging from the militarisation of society to the huge opportunity costs of military spending, and has even called for abolitionism. How plausible is this in light of the rapidly growing authoritarian threat? This paper explores this question. It first argues that the current leading arguments against militarisation, based on (1) the problems of maintaining military force and (2) its financial costs, are unlikely to be sufficient because of the threat posed by rising global authoritarianism. This is because military spending may be needed to help to ensure self-defence and to maintain the self-determination and independence of other liberal democratic states. The paper argues that, nevertheless, rising global authoritarianism and other nonideal global features also pose further reason to be sceptical about the ethics of increased military spending. The first is that states are unlikely to spend enough militarily to provide sufficiently robust deterrence. In all likelihood, many of these efforts will face political wrangling and difficulties in increasing military expenditure, including challenges in recruiting high-quality personnel, difficulties sourcing proficient materiel, and problems associated with upscaling. The second point is more non-ideal still, concerning the risk of authoritarian capture. Given the extent of democratic backsliding worldwide, there is a risk that one’s state could backslide towards authoritarianism. There is therefore a worry that increasing the military capabilities of one’s state might, in turn, make it more likely that the military could be used to wage unjust wars in the future and, especially, to use force unjustifiably against its own population. Although these two reasons will not necessarily defeat the case for increased military spending to tackle rising global authoritarianism, they provide more stronger grounds for scepticism than existing arguments, showing how worries about negative duties and opportunity costs can re-emerge in light of partial rearmament and potential capture by authoritarian actors.