KEIR STARMER claims that his “first duty as prime minister is to keep the British people safe.” Yet, with the release of the Strategic Defence Review (SDR), his government seems to have adopted a series of proposals that may directly jeopardise the lives of our children and young people.

It is worth pausing and reflecting, just for a moment, on what it really means to be preparing for what Starmer refers to as “war-fighting readiness.” Our shared cultural memory must be wearing exceedingly thin if we, as a society, are ready to accept our sons and daughters being shipped off to fight in another brutal and fruitless war. Sadly, this seems to be exactly where we are headed.

Much media attention has focused on the SDR’s set-piece announcement that defence spending will rise to 2.5 per cent of GDP and then eventually 3 per cent by 2027. These exorbitant spending commitments have been made in the context of broken public services, high levels of poverty and a cost-of-living crisis. As significant as these spending commitments are, it is also vital that we consider the larger question as to whether we actually want the future of our next generation to be defined by warfare?

The SDR promises to “end the hollowing-out of our armed forces” and to pursue a “whole-of-society approach” to rebuilding Britian’s military capabilities. It is difficult to say whether or not these phrases are meant to be deliberately reminiscent of the condition of “total war” that characterised the mass, social mobilisations of the first and second world war. If not, then this suggests an almost wilful lack of self-awareness on the government’s part.

In any case, we should be highly wary of the government’s overt pledge to “promote unity of effort across society” by “leading a national conversation to raise public awareness of the threats to the UK.” When coupled with the government’s stated intention of countering “threats to information integrity,” it seems that Starmer is comfortable with the idea of creating wartime propaganda and stifling dissent.

Educators, youth social care workers and parents should pay particular attention to the government’s recruitment plans. In order to address its “shrinking personnel numbers,” the government is seeking to work closely with “the Department for Education to develop understanding of the armed forces among young people in schools.” According to the SDR, this will involve expanding “in-school and community-based cadet forces across the country by 30 per cent, with an ambition to reach 250,000 in the longer term.” In short, the objective appears to be to indoctrinate and then enlist thousands of young people into the military.

How can this possibly be viewed as an attempt to make our children and young people safer? Starmer is living in fantasy land if he thinks that anyone, other than perhaps war profiteers, could possibly benefit from mass military recruitment. The war rhetoric prevalent throughout the SDR suggests the government anticipates being able to deploy its new recruits in largescale, and possibly even global, warfare. Far from keeping us safer, this is a road that could only possibly lead to huge numbers of deaths.

In the months and years ahead, Britain will undeniably need to navigate a monumentally tense set of international relations. However, the government could instead choose to play a constructive role on the world stage. This would mean trying to facilitate diplomatic solutions to some of these geopolitical challenges, rather than continuing to inflame the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.

More immediately, we clearly need to challenge the government’s assumption that it is socially desirable to have large numbers of young people training and then serving in the military. The SDR’s claim that working in defence is already a good employment offer is almost completely divorced from reality. In truth, the military’s self-described “recruitment and retention crisis” is due to the high levels of abuse, bullying and harassment that many new recruits experience.

Reports of sexual and racial violence, poor mental health and even cases of suicide give a more accurate reflection of what one can expect from a military career. This is the reason why the majority of service personnel, especially those recruited between the ages of 16 and 19, tend to resign fairly quickly. It is not incidental that abusive behaviour is rampant in both the army and the navy. By its very nature, the military is predicated on notions of hierarchy and the idea that coercion can be achieved through brute force. This makes the military institutionally incapable of not enabling at least some forms of bullying and mistreatment.

This raises serious ethical questions as to the appropriateness of marketing life in the military as a glorious adventure, especially to children or people who have only just reached adulthood. Failing to confront even the possibility that military recruitment is insufficiently grounded in informed consent, the SDR instead chooses to portray life in the military as defined by “purposeful work” and the “opportunity to see the world.”

This is a woeful misrepresentation. In order to address the problem of potential recruits dropping out of the recruitment process, the SDR also recommends “drastically shortening the period between applicants expressing interest and joining.” This could set a dangerous precedent, particularly if it was then made harder for people to leave the military later down the line.

There is a strong tradition of former soldiers developing anti-war sentiments and even joining the peace movement. In the US, military recruiters have focused their efforts on poorer areas with high levels of unemployment. These predatory practices have tended to particularly target young African-Americans.

During the cold war, many veterans came to realise that their interests were more aligned with those they had been sent to fight than the governments that had recruited them. This was usually compounded by a dire lack of welfare provision for ex-soldiers and retirees. To this day, there are severe rates of homelessness and poor health among military veterans. When turning to activism hasn’t been possible, disillusionment with the democratic process has followed. Expanding military recruitment in the UK would inevitably yield the same results.  

Conveniently, the SDR offers no perspective on what the effects of mass military recruitment might mean for the rest of the population. Training people to kill inevitably has an impact on their moral character and psychology. In the worst case scenarios, it can create individuals desensitised to violence and accustomed to dehumanising their enemies. Throughout human history, armies have been involved in horrifying acts of cruelty, pillage and destruction.

It is the utmost naivety to assume that it is always possible to simply compartmentalise murderous instincts after returning to civilian life. The British and US veterans of modern wars, such as those waged in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, include many who committed war crimes and many more who returned home deeply traumatised or psychologically unstable. Over a decade of austerity has already left our social fabric in tatters. Placing the burden of “war-fighting readiness” on the next generation would only add fuel to the fire.

First published online with www.labouroutlook.org. Read part two of this article in tomorrow’s edition.