Published in The Badger, October 2007.
Since this is my first article, I should probably begin with an introduction. My name is Malachi Chadwick, and I’m USSU’s Ethical and Environmental Officer for this academic year. Basically, this means that I help the Union to operate in an ethically and environmentally sound manner, and promote responsible practices in the university more widely. I also act as a point of contact for anybody with questions or concerns about these topics.
While they might have done good things behind the scenes, my predecessors were anything but visible. Most people that I’ve spoken to didn’t even know the position existed, and this year I’d like to do things a bit differently. One of my tactics is to contribute a series of articles to student media, covering some of the issues that my position requires me to tackle. Hopefully this will stimulate a bit of debate around these ever-controversial topics, as well as alerting people to the fact that I exist, and live to serve, etcetera.
First though, I’d like to put in a small disclaimer. Although I have a job title, a fancy lanyard with my name on it, and places on a few committees, I don’t pretend to be anything resembling the final arbiter of what is ethical (or indeed, environmental). Nothing that I write should be taken as anything more than the thoughts of a fallible human being, who’s stumbling around the moral maze as ineptly as anyone else. Naturally ethics and the environment are issues that I’m passionate about, but my only qualification for this position is a lot of enthusiasm, and a willingness to jeopordise my degree by spending inordinate amounts of time in Falmer House tearing my hair out. So with that out of the way, I’d like to share some thoughts on the argument that’s recently blown up (if you’ll pardon the expression) around the presence on campus of the Military’s recruitment people during Freshers’ Week
Sussex’s relationship with the military, particularly its recruitment arm, is fairly complex (that is to say I don’t understand it), but suffice to say that the various recruitment events that took place on campus were (as reported in last week’s Badger) the subject of a number of disputes – some political, some administrative, but all seemingly backed by a general sentiment that the recruiters should not have been on campus. With such strong feelings on both sides, it’s likely that the dispute will be ongoing, and so now seems like a good moment to start a proper debate on this topic, which seems to crop up every year.
After a bit of reading, a lot of thinking, and more arguing than my adrenal gland should really be expected to cope with, my own position on this is one of ambivalence, so if you’re expecting a polemic, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. That said, I’d like to go over some of the arguments that I’ve heard on both sides, and then step aside to let what will hopefully be a stampede of fuming polemicists into the fray.
So what is the question that we’re actually asking? I would phrase it as follows: Is the British military unethical to the extent that we would be justified in disallowing it from using our facilities, resources, and access to students in its recruiting activities?
I think it’s also important to decide what we would want to achieve with this. Are we seeking just to keep our hands clean? To make a point to the wider world? To protect vulnerable students from being seduced by the dark forces of militarism?
Also, should this be seen as a ban, or as a withdrawl of support? This is not a purely semantic question, as it dictates whether we talk about this in terms of censorship and prohibition, or simply in terms of responsible resource allocation.
The simplest and most obvious argument is over whether or not we support the existence of a British military at all. Should we advocate total unilateral disarmament? While this might find some support with the more radical among us, it doesn’t seem particularly tenable to me. While I’m no fan of some of the army’s recent escapades in the Middle East (I’ll come to that later), I don’t think that military action per se is always a bad thing. Britain’s intervention in Sierra Leone early in this decade helped put an end to a brutal civil war, and parents in that country are still naming their children ‘Tony Blair’. While military solutions to conflicts are never preferable, I think this example shows that an effective military can do a lot of good in the world when deployed appropriately.
Some say that although we should have armed forces, they don’t want them to recruit Sussex students, and while we might have a natural inclination to privilege the interests of our particular in-group, this is surely the kind of insular attitude that Sussex prides itself in rejecting. Nobody wants to lose a friend to war, but if we accept that some armed forces are necessary, we must be prepared to accept the costs of this as well as the benefits.
Strong objections have also been raised on the grounds that the Army’s participation in the invasion of Iraq makes them inherently immoral, and should preclude us from associating with them. I have some sympathy with this position, and I’m as reluctant as anyone to send more young men and women to be fodder for roadside bombs in an illegal and disastrously conducted war. However, this isn’t nearly as cut-and dried as it seems. First of all, we need to decide whether or not we can hold the armed forces responsible for the wars in which they fight. Are they just a weapon that the government deploys as it pleases, or do they have their own part to play in these decisions? Ultimately, Iraq was a government decision, and it is with the government that responsibility for that debacle should lie. However, if it transpires that the MoD actively lobbied to go into Iraq, it gives this objection far more force than it would have otherwise.
Like any institution, the military’s primary raison d’etre is self-preservation. We can then expect it to do everything in its power to increase defence spending and perhaps even encourage a military solution where there may be other alternatives. At around £33bn per year (and rising), Britain’s defence budget is already the second highest in the world, and dwarfs what we spend on international aid. At the same time, the MoD’s own 2003 White Paper states that “There are currently no major conventional military threats to the UK or NATO […] it is now clear that we no longer need to retain a capability against the re-emergence of a direct conventional strategic threat.” Can we therefore justify supporting such a criminal squandering of resources?
And what about the endemic sexism and homophobia in the military? Doesn’t this contravene USSU’s constitutionally enshrined values of inclusiveness and equality? This is certainly a valid objection, and one that seems to be supported by the evidence. This year The Guardian reported that 99% of servicewomen had been victims of sexual harassment, a figure so unequivocal that it leaves little doubt as to what female students can expect if they join up. It’s difficult to dispute that the armed forces have terrible record when it comes to equality issues – the very nature of their activities, not to mention some deeply ingrained traditions also make it difficult to foster an environment more accepting of difference. However, the MoD does have what looks like a reasonably good equalities policy, suggesting that the persistence of the problem has more to do with cultural obstacles rather than structural discrimination, and thus is not for want of good intentions at the top. As with any cultural shift, the rate of change is likely to be slow, but it’s arguable that recruiting from a progressive institution like Sussex could actually help to speed things up. By all means we should make information about current discrimination known to those considering a military career, but actively stopping on-campus recruitment on the grounds that there are sexists and homophobes in the army probably falls outside of what I’d consider tenable.
We also need to consider the risk that by preventing military recruitment on campus, we merely displace it elsewhere in society. Unless we can be reasonably sure that this action would actually result in an overall reduction in the number of people recruited (and, obviously, that this would be a good thing) then we lose any claim to some sort of utilitarian good being done. The act would be purely symbolic.
I personally think that we do need some sort of military force, not least because the level of climate change that we’re setting ourselves up for will likely result in environmental disasters and social breakdown on an unprecedented scale. However, given the already obscene size of our ‘defence’ contingent, I’m less sure that active recruitment is something that we should support. That said, I think that campaigning for reduced military spending would be a far more profitable use of our time than scuffling with the Officer Training Corps in Library Square.
None of these are easy questions, but they do demand answers. We have to be sure that we’re fighting the right battles before we can get on with winning them.
