The public debate on war and peace after Russia’s attack on Ukraine became so narrow and restrictive here in Norway that there was only space for ‘war’, and no room for ‘peace’. For political parties on the left in Europe and Norway, who traditionally champion the case for peace, the strong consensus on arms shipments for Ukraine’s defence pressured many of them into the ranks of war. This was, and is, a great loss for us all. As the arms race and militarisation have become a natural part of the political agenda since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, along with Israel’s constant bombing of Gaza, we desperately need political parties and political actors daring to speak on other forms of solutions than weapons and wars. And all this, in the middle of a climate and natural disaster. Military activities account for 5.5 percent of all global emissions. The whole civil aviation industry accounts for about 2 percent. That’s not to mention the destruction of infrastructure and the environment in times of war. What is going on? And why should it be so difficult, even on the Left, to question and challenge military solutions to a conflict?
The full-scale Russian attack on Ukraine came as a surprise, despite tensions between the countries since 2014. No wonder political actors were soon in a state of shock. The call for action was loud and clear, and so were the demands to ‘do something’. This is understandable. We all felt for the Ukrainians under Russian attack, and we all wanted to support them and end the war, the destruction and killings. However, the only solution presented from the political leadership, including NATO and the US, was weapons for Ukraine to defend itself, and show Russia – and hence the whole world – that this was no way to behave on the international stage. Quite a demand, quite some expectations.
Asking questions about the (lack of) a military strategy other than ‘to win’, or calling for diplomacy and peace-talks, as some of us dared to do, soon led to accusations of being a ‘Putinist’, or the painful ‘wrong side of history’, or not really an anti-fascist (some regard Russia as the archetypal fascist state of our time) or not really an anti-imperialist. The accusations came from both the usual political enemies, but this time there was something new: They also came from some of our own, on the Left.
These kind of incrimination of individuals, rather than a rational debate, poisoned the climate for conversations about this war among political parties and commentators in Norway. In this text, I will try to explain a small segment of this story, and insist on the importance of taking back, holding on to, and reclaiming the call for peace in this world, in respect of all living things.
The military expression ‘fog of war’ usually refers to the uncertainty, confusion, and the lack of clarity that military commanders and soldiers may experience during the heat of battle. The term is also used metaphorically on challenges associated with having to make big decisions amidst chaotic and rapidly changing situations. When it comes to parts of the European left, and certainly the Norwegian left, we may repose in terms of them ending up in the pro-war fold after Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
And what is the pro-war fold? It is a political camp in which militarisation is normalised as common sense. Where new sales records in the global weapons trade are reported by media as neutral or even as good news. Where conflict resolution means the use of everything military, and where arguments proposing diplomacy, peace negotiations, cease fires and everything nonviolent, are often regarded as naïve, weak and the opposite of so-called real politics. This is a world where ‘warism’ is a term that describes the normalisation of war in our minds, beliefs, and political solutions.
What and who has won, and lost, in this process taking us towards militarism as the norm, and NATO as our security guarantee? We may well remember that the critique of NATO was a common practice on the political left until very recently. Not anymore.
These are important questions all citizens should ask themselves.
War as common sense
When we talk about war or peace today, what kind of political, economic, cultural, and social frameworks are we operating within? Who ‘owns’ common sense today, and how did we get here?
To fully grasp the normalization of militarism we should turn to Antonio Gramsci. The Italian thinker is best known for is his ideas about hegemony and ‘common sense.’ He sought to understand how certain ideas in a society establish themselves as common sense, shaping discussions not as clashes between equal opinions but as one side managing what is considered so reasonable and commonplace that the other side is cast as a clown, as naïf or utopian. No genuine disagreement takes place: rather, one side has to challenge ‘common sense’ itself and is not taken seriously.
In discussions about militarism, there is little doubt that investment in military defence is established common sense, whereas pacifism, conscious objection to military service or anti-militarist activism quickly became laughable positions. I believe that if we grasp a bit of Gramsci, we understand what we — those of us advocating for an antimilitarist paradigm — are really fighting against. When political leadership acquires cultural hegemony, it ensures that rebellion and protest do not arise, even if policies are being pursued that do not benefit the general population. Precisely because the militarisation that is happening is so endlessly destructive for the many billions of ordinary people, while protests are so few, it is worth looking at Gramsci’s theories of how hegemony is constructed. Perhaps his thoughts can be of help to those of us who want to understand why ideas such as pacifism, nonviolence, and conscientious objection are no longer part of our common public and polit- ical discourse. Because it is not, at all, a part of public debate. Let’s take a recent example.
In 2023, when Israel was attacked by Hamas, this country’s global supporters echoed the message that Israelis had the ‘right to defend themselves.’ In both cases, ‘defence’ was equated with weapons and warfare. Could one imagine that Israel’s defence could involve something entirely different? Like a prisoner exchange, tough negotiations, diplomatic channels, legal prosecution of criminals, slowly but surely creating a Middle Eastern ‘neighbourhood’ where everyone could live together? The latter is peace work in practice. But is seems like this world’s leadership has forgotten that.
To be a ‘Putinist’
In Norway, Julie Wilhelmsen, a renowned researcher of Russian politics from the NUPI (Norwegian Institute of International Affairs), became an emblematic case of how difficult the debate on Ukraine became. Not even representing a political position, she still, in accordance with her knowledge and research in Russia, wanted to explain from a scholarly viewpoint why Russia might have attacked neighbouring Ukraine.
To describe and explain the Russian leadership’s worldview has been one of Wilhelmsen's scholarly projects. For twenty years she has studied Russian official rhetoric. She has also previously been criticised for her thesis on how Russia's leaders and political sphere believe that the USA utilizes NATO, protest movements, and economic sanctions in attempts to crush Russia. Her analytical point was, after Russia’s attack: When the US Secretary of Defence, Lloyd Austin, visiting Kyiv, stated that the goal of the United States is to ‘weaken Russia’ while at the same time Washington increases its military support and visibility in Ukraine, it feeds the Kremlin's narrative and belief that for the US the war is essentially about defeating Russia and bringing about regime change.
But such complexity and a scholarly investigation into Russian leaders’ state of mind was not what the public wanted in a fog of war-like climate of debate. In an interview in spring 2022, Wilhelmsen said she believed a dumb- ing-down effect of the war was a consequence of the public craving for ‘black- and-white images,’ ‘answers with two lines underneath,’ and simple explanations for complex problems, where multiple explanations are needed to provide ‘the most credible picture.’1
She soon became labelled as a ‘Putinist’ for trying to explain the complexity. She was so harshly criticised that a year later she received two well deserved awards for free speech and bravery in public debate.2 However, this should be a warning to all of us champion safe and free discussion: Today, you receive awards for simply presenting your view on Russia’s political trajectory and possible aims, even as a scholar, just because of hassle you received for doing so. In our main newspaper, Aftenposten, Wilhelmsen wrote:
Some have claimed that my moral compass is broken. Is trying to understand why the Kremlin acts the way it does really the same as supporting these actions – being part of the enemy? No, it is doing what we are supposed to do. Explaining is not defending.
And further:
The discourse must be so open that people and researchers dare to present their alternative analyses. They should not be forced into silence because the climate is too tough or be demanded to ‘admit that you were wrong’ when public opinion shifts in one direction.
She, and other voices not immediately accepting the view on this war as presented by NATO and EU leaders, was sometimes met with the previously mentioned accusation of ‘'You are on the wrong side of history’.
Wilhelmsen writes:
…[this] is a tactic that is easy to use to create a sense of meaning. However, it may lead to people changing their stance for the wrong reason. Not because they are convinced, but because they are afraid of being on the outside of polite society. Moreover, it is a fact that history is continually written and rewritten. History is the narrative of power. And I must admit: the deafening consensus that has emerged in the past year, stating that weapons are the way to peace in Ukraine — the only way — scares me. … The discourse should be such that it is possible to see different courses of action – even on ‘our side’.3
A double challenge for the Left and the public
NATO is a major player in the war in Ukraine. NATO leads, its members and allies follows. In Norway we have more or less lost factual and political critique of the world's most powerful military alliance. There are many reasons for this, one of them being that it our own former prime minister Jens Stoltenberg was from 2014 to 2024 the NATO general secretary. Stoltenberg was prime minister when the terrorist Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people 22. July 2011, and most people believe he did a great job in the extremely demanding aftermath. He is not someone Norwegians criticise lightly, not being quite able to differentiate between the man and the role he plays as NATO leader.
But there is military conscription in Norway, for both men and women. If our children are called up for military service, for Norway or for NATO, they could be thrown into wars that are about more than defence (as it is still called in NATO).
Citizens should be ensured in every way that if military intervention is ordered, it is the very last resort, after everything else has been attempted. Do we trust that a military alliance exhausts all other options before resorting to military action? Do we get the answers we are entitled to? Are we asking enough questions?
If NATO does not receive objective criticism, this is quickly left to groups stepping into the landscape of conspiracy, and/or within the far right. Thus, NATO criticism can be wrapped in language and contexts that can make it easy to dismiss by the military alliance’s supporters. It is a dangerous mess. The only way to prevent this is to dare, want, and have to understand our NATO and demand answers and accountability. NATO is power, and power shall and must
In a pivotal moment for humanity, with a climate and nature crisis, record numbers of people displaced, and increasing economic inequality among populations, it should be thought-pro- voking that so much of our tax money goes directly into everything military.
always be challenged. This is democracy, and us as citizens – and our media - carry this responsibility.
Perhaps it would have been completely different if a NATO leader were Turkish, Hungarian, or American, rather than our own former head of government. Now, Norwegian media seems more euphoric about having the NATO leader one-on-one than holding him accountable with challenging questions about the organization's actions.
You don't need to want to abolish NATO to be critical of its current project, where the out-of-area-policy that NATO granted itself after the fall of the main threat — the Soviet Union — in the 1990s, now has taken the former transatlantic organisation all the way to the Pacific Ocean, with talks of an office in Tokyo.4 Everything suggests that the acceptance of all things NATO and all things military has happened too quietly. Like when you walk in the woods and no longer hear all the bird sounds like a few years ago. It's eerie. The same unease crept in when Oslo hosted the informal meeting of NATO foreign ministers in May 2023, and the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, dominated our harbour in central Oslo ‘in a show of NATO force at a time of heightened tension between NATO and Russia over the war in Ukraine’, as the news agency Reuters wrote at the time.5
The military spectacle prompted much ‘ra-ra’ enthusiasm, and invited journalists visited the carrier, amazed by its size and the show of military glamour. There were Instagram pictures, and people going down to the harbour for a peek, and to say ‘wow.’ The silence screamed at us where there should have been important questions, critique, analyses, fear and conversations. Why was the carrier here? What signal did it send to the world? Did it make us safer or more of a target?
The danger of dissent when it came to arms shipments for Ukraine
Right after the Russian invasion on 24 February 2022, significant military developments rapidly began to unfold. Three days later, Germany sent a large quantity of weapons to Ukraine, making what Chancellor Olaf Scholz called a ‘turning-point’ on its anti-militaristic stance held since World War II. Germany spontaneously increased its military budget by €100 billion. While the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands had also provided weapons aid to Ukraine, researchers argue that it was Germany's ‘historic decision’ to break from its non-militaristic tradition that paved the way for other countries to do the same. For example, Sweden and Finland, traditionally standing firm on a neutral position, sought weapons aid and submitted urgent applications to join NATO. Italy and Norway also quickly abandoned principles of not sending weapons to countries at war. Despite facing massive poverty, the UK pledged to double its defence budget by 2030.
Remember this: Those who advocated for not sending weapons to Ukraine, a nation at war, did not call for a weapons embargo for Ukraine. Ukraine was free to buy as many weapons as they wanted. No one wanted to deny them this. However, to ship weapons and military equipment directly to a nation in the middle of war, has been a policy Norway always avoided. Until Ukraine. I believe many critics got lost on this point. And hence, did not really understand why some people in parties on the Left wanted a broader debate about this question. It did break a tradition that had endured, in some countries at least, since World War II, and was a major political turn, even though some political leaders pretended it was not.
Since the last general election in October 2021, Norway has been led by a coalition of the social-democratic Arbeiderpartiet (Labour Party) and Senterpartiet (Centre Party). The two parties took power after eight years of conservative coalitions. They now promised a new kind of politics for ‘ordinary people’. The leader of the Labour Party is also the prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre. He took over the post as leader of the Labour Party from Jens Stoltenberg in 2014, when Stoltenberg became NATO general secretary. The two of them are friends in private — even posing while skiing, for photos to be put on social media — and close political allies. Three years after the election, the Labour Party’s popularity has now reached record lows, dropping under 20 percent support, after ‘ordinary people’ feel totally left behind, due to inflation, interest rate rises, and an increase in the general cost of living, including on food and electricity. The prime minister’s vague position on the war in Gaza, which has also upset many Norwegians, did not help the Labour Party’s popularity either. But, when it came to support for Ukraine, there was little discrepancy between Støre and his citizens. No wonder: the support for Ukraine was obvious for most. But, when it came to shipment of weapons, we might have thought that there would be more debate. But not only that: What about the fact that Ukrainian men where denied the right to leave the country, and denied the right to reject military service? What about the arms race that developed immediately? What about NATO’s claim that ‘weapons are the way to peace’, as Stoltenberg said in January 2023? Should we not talk about this, and discuss the dilemmas, and the young men sent into trenches, using the weapons our nations send into the fray?
In our parliament there are two parties to the left of the government: the Socialist Left Party (SV) and the Red Party (Rødt). The two parties have much in common, but after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine they chose two different approaches. The Socialist Left Party chose to quickly join the Labour Party as well as the rest of the political establishment in support of arms shipments. They also put aside their rejection of NATO, on which the party had once been premised. But the Red Party wanted an on-principle debate about the arms-shipments issue, which they preferred to discuss as a party at their national convention in April 2023. The doubts within its ranks, the questions over military support for a nation at war, and the bold suggestion that they might instead work towards peace in accordance with United Nations principles, prompted a massive attack on the people fronting this position within the Red Party.
These attacks mainly came from the government parties, and political opponents on the centre and right. Yet there was also massive criticism from (social) media commentators who might have been regarded as political allies on more or less all other issues. There were also tough debates between people in the Red Party, as emotions and support for Ukraine flew high on both sides. The national convention voted, and ended up supporting the arms shipments, with some limits on what kind of weapons for what usage.
The war in Ukraine is a trial for all of us, and most of all for ordinary people in Ukraine who are living through the horrors of the war minute by minute. What makes the personal attacks especially painful is that those involved in the debate on both sides, are actually united in solidarity with Ukraine.
Yet things got ugly. People who should have known better, competed in outdoing each other in attacks on the Red Party or individual members in it. In an inferno of ridicule, personal attacks, mockery, and threats that terrified people wanting to participate in the public debate, the bullying was justified with: ‘Because they deserve it.’ You are with us, or with Putin.
For example, the otherwise sensible Raymond Johansen from the Labour Party — then-city council leader in Oslo — called out the Red Party’s leader in the Norwegian capital, Siavash Mobasheri, for ‘running Putin’s errands’ when he expressed scepticism about arms shipments in January 2023.6 Our then-foreign minister Anniken Huitfeldt used the same language when attacking the Red Party’s Joakim Møllersen, who largely fronted this position publicly, when she claimed that ‘The Red Party’s defence policy serves Putin's interests, as it contributes to dividing Europe’, also in January 2023.7
People online and on social media contributed to the harsh climate. Cyber- bullying is not something only young people engage in. I strongly suspect that well-adjusted adults can be just as bad.
The Red Party also ended up folded into the camp supporting arms shipments. But the debate they had did at least demonstrate a healthy willingness to challenge a suffocating political consensus. We needed that, and should be grateful for the people who took on the storm. There were many dilemmas to discuss, also on the side of the supporters of arms shipments.
It is hard to understand the certainty among those who were — and are — convinced that more weapons are the only way to peace and Ukraine’s freedom. Like: What if we're just adding fuel to the fire, and the war escalates to the use of more dangerous weapons, and more countries getting involved? What if Putin never backs down, and for every defeat, he brings out more dangerous weapons? What if Ukraine loses the military battle — what will happen, then, with the inevitable negotiations thereafter, and the new balance of power?
What if the war drags on for years?
What if this leads to a nuclear war where hundreds of thousands die?
And further: What about the military escalation in full swing beneath the surface of the Ukraine war, especially in Europe?
Why don't politicians talk more about where the money for all the rearmament will come from? What happens to the welfare of people when the military-industrial complex demands so much?
There are dilemmas in this war that unfortunately there wasn’t, and still hardly is, any room to address in the Norwegian debate. The space for discussions about Ukraine in 2022 was the size of a matchbox, and still now anyone who dares step outside it may get burned. Today, as the war drags on and en- thusiasm predictably fades away both among Ukrainians conscripted to fight and die, and among military supporters in the EU and the US, the room for debate has widened somewhat. This is good news but has so far led nowhere in strategies for ending the actual war in Ukraine. It’s just that the verbal war among us on the Left was toned down.
We must never forget that the weaponry the West is sending to Ukraine is not only used by willing freedom fighters, but also by terrified conscripted young boys who don't want to go to the front, don't want to carry weapons, and don't want to kill. On the Internet, there are plenty of degrading images of boys and men who have tried to escape but have been caught at the border and are now being photographed for ridicule. Many trying to escape the war have died the mountains, in icy lakes, along the roads. The slogan ‘Ukrainians want to fight’ is used as an argument to send weapons. But, of course, not everyone in this unfortunate country is willing to do that. What should we do with them? So far Ukraine has closed its official borders for all grown men, even moving toward forcing the return of men who (legally or not) fled to other countries.
Are Norwegian politicians willing to send NATO and our own youth into the battlefield?
Are any of the NATO allies?
What we talk about when we talk about war
What does it mean to win a war? A response is: To destroy as many people and as much material as possible on the other side. In her famous essay ‘Injury and the Structure of War’ from 1985, the award-winning essayist and Harvard professor, Elaine Scarry, writes in the introduction:
What does it really mean to win a war? What happens to a body when a bullet pierces a heart. What happens in the hearts of those who lose their loved ones on the battlefield. What happens in the hearts of all those who have killed other human beings, whether they volunteered for war or were commanded into it. War is also trauma in the body and soul for generations after peace eventually arrives. War begins with hatred and contempt for others, but can end with just as much hatred and contempt in return – in a generation or two afterward. War is, even though it sounds unusual, organized killing.8
War is also trauma in the body and soul for generations after peace arrives one day.
When we talk about war, we tend to focus on the big things: Big budgets. Big weapons. Big leaders with big words. Big invasions, big victories. Analyses of war seldom touch on the individual soldier, the despairing civilian, or a grieving mother. There are exceptions, for there is good journalism, and there are voices that tell.
But, by and large, we avoid talking about blood, screams, burnt bodies, terrified children, limbs blown away from the bodies they belonged to, rotting corpses without names or faces – all those who are victims of the weapons being produced. The war on Gaza now shows us all this on social media, but so far, not much has trickled into edited media, or into political debate. At the same time, Gaza on social media have given many a wake-up call regarding the horrors of war. Will this change anything? Hard to say. But the massive support for Palestine among ordinary people globally may give us a hint that things are changing. Perhaps.
And this is where we, the political left must begin, the war that happens to an individual, to a body, to a soul. And we must incorporate this: Soldiers lives’ matter. They are also young people with dreams, loved ones and hopes for their futures. So much more than statistics of war, numbers and someone ‘taken down’.
Scarry writes further:
The main purpose and outcome of war is injuring. Though this fact is too self-evident and massive to ever directly be contested, it can be indirectly contested and disappear from view by simply being omitted: one can read many pages of a historic or strategic account of a particular military campaign, or listen to many successive instalments in a newscast narrative of events in a contemporary war, without encountering the acknowledgement that the purpose of the event described is to alter (to burn, to blast, to shell, to cut) human tissue, as well as to alter the surface, shape, and deep entirety of the objects that human beings recognize as extensions of themselves.9
The language of war is one of deep denial. It ranges across talk of ‘surgical strikes’ and ‘collateral damage’ and a fascination for the knowledge of weapons and military strategies. It tends to hide the reality and destruction on the battlefield.
If we truly want to eliminate war, and some of us do, we must first begin to discuss what war actually is, in line with Scarry's reflections. We need to talk about and imagine what physically happens when a body is blown to pieces and lies scattered in a field or on a city street, as Bertha von Suttner did in her famous ‘Lay Down Your Arms!’ of 1889.
About how hatred between individuals within a country and between na- tions destroys relationships for several generations after a war?
It's been almost 80 years since World War II, and among us here in Norway there are still elderly people terrified that their neighbours will discover that their parents were members of the Nazi party in the 1940s, with chronic pain in their bodies from a life of undeserved shame. Because that's how war is — it doesn't truly end even when peace comes. It destroys people, both physically and mentally, and allows trauma to be inherited. The ravages of war are left along the way — and the lasting damage and suffering, in peace.
Where to find peace
We on the Left need to remind ourselves of the theories and practices, thoughts, ideas, and individuals that stand in opposition to war and everything military. Another thing that has faded into collective oblivion is that being a pacifist, advocate of nonviolence, conscientious objector, or peace activist – or a combination of these – has always been risky. Throughout history, this individual choice has often come at significant costs, so irritating and threatening to authorities that they have persecuted, harassed, and imprisoned citizens through history, who refused to serve as soldiers in war or worked for peace through peaceful means. Refusing to participate in war has never been a cowardly position. Quite often, one stands utterly alone in this choice, especially during wartime. In times of nationalism and war, being a conscientious objector can be a tremendous personal burden, in the form of social ridicule, accusations of treason, or of pure and simple cowardice. When the nation is in crisis, and a united political establishment with the media in tow advocates for the use of weapons and war, speaking up for peace can become outright dangerous. Peace activists in the United States during the Cold War could be accused of being Russian stooges, communists, or, in the worst case, spies.
Nevertheless, being mocked as naïf when presenting a pro-peace argument is nothing compared to the suffering on the battlefield, affecting civilians and soldiers in the chaos of conflict. Feeling uncomfortable because someone disagrees with you cannot compare to living in paralysing fear when gunfire and killing are happening around the corner, when bombs shatter your home into pieces, when a child dies in your arms, or the fear that your country's authorities will send you into a trench to die or kill. So, endure we must.
Who becomes a soldier today? In countries with conscription, all young men – and in many places, also young women – can be called up as soldiers in case of war. In times of war, money or connections in some countries may get you out of frontline combat even if there is conscription. In countries without conscription, the army is often a rare career opportunity, or the sole opportunity for income, that working-class people have. Anywhere in the world, choosing to become a soldier is rarely a free choice. In peacetime, anything military might sound exciting to an adventurous youth, even those from affluent backgrounds. Things can quickly look different if war actually breaks out and one is obliged to participate in it.
Globally it is the working class, or underclass, that must go to the front lines when the political leadership chooses military solutions to a conflict. Of course, there are many soldiers, whether conscripts or volunteers, who feel they are fighting for important values or their beloved homeland. But those who decide that there should be war are rarely the ones participating in it. This is a distinction we should never forget.
Working for peace is, unfortunately, often an individual matter. Perhaps something one can do through social media or as an inner conviction in daily life. It's not always easy to figure out where to turn, whether one is a pacifist or not, and wants to work for peace. Peace work often occurs in more or less random and spontaneous groups on a voluntary basis, often in response to an acute war or conflict. There is no centrally controlled Peace Movement with a capital ‘P’. There are no full-time office workers or spokespersons. Neither state nor private funds are prioritised for this. The peace movement is you and me; it is simply us, but it is also all of us. We are many.
Last time Norway had a real and powerful peace movement, was when we and the rest of the world protested the US president George W. Bush’s plans to attack Iraq in February 2003. We came out of the large social movements from the late 1990s, also fronting the critique of NATOs new out-of-area policy at the same time. After we lost, and Iraq lost, the peace movement slowly faded, and ‘peace’ did not attract young people. Of course, climate and environment came up as an important cause for the young.
In Norway, there was also another change: Norway practices conscription into military service, but not many youth get called up, and as a consequence the youth of this new period do not need to take a pacifist stance (even if they have one); they may simply say ‘no’ to service and get let off. Generations before them had to make up their minds and think more consciously about entering the military, because more or less everyone was called into service.
Conscientious objectors in Norway throughout history had to do some sort of civil service for about a year instead of military service. But in 2012, this was ended by Jens Stoltenberg’s government — to great relief, I guess, for some young men, but it was also a loss for us as society: We lost the pacifist community, their magazine, their office, webpage and voices. In 2015 Norwegian women ‘won’, as we call it here, the right to military conscription, the year after Stoltenberg became the NATO leader. All things military became normalised, also in reality-shows and TV entertainment.
Much peace work is left up to volunteer efforts, meaning ordinary people in their free time. This is both a challenge and a hope. On one hand, it means that not everyone who wants to participate has the time or means to do so. But on the other hand, it means that everyone who can and wants to has the opportunity to be involved.
We, ordinary people, have a rightful place in debates about war and peace. We own as many shares in the debate as any expert, politician, or military leader: After all, it's our sons and daughters worldwide who are asked to sacrifice themselves when nations attack or are attacked. In countries with conscription, like our own, I believe we all have a duty to get involved. When our children, grandchildren, siblings, or parents can be ordered to go out and die or kill for the nation or an allied nation, we should all speak up in the debate and not just hope they know what they are doing up there but be certain of it.
We should also ensure that all other methods for peaceful solutions have been tried and tested before resorting to the most serious measure: sacrificing our children's lives.
Climate versus war
In a pivotal moment for humanity, with a climate and nature crisis, record numbers of people displaced, and increasing economic inequality among populations, it should be thought-provoking that so much of our tax money goes directly into everything military. Violent conflicts and the use of weapons are inherently destructive to everything that is already on the brink of destruction, such as nature and the welfare state, human dignity, and the belief in a better future. War destroys all this. War is, in itself, a crime against both humanity and nature.
The pursuit of alternatives to more and increasingly dangerous weapons is becoming extremely important. It's not about not wanting Ukraine to rid itself of the invaders; the Russian attacks and atrocities are almost unbearable to read about. Everyone wishes for a free and peaceful Ukraine. But how long should the brutal war continue, and how long should we demand that young Ukrainian conscripts sacrifice their lives? This war involves Russia, a country with nuclear weapons, and Ukraine is supported by NATO, which also possess- es nuclear weapons. There is a gravity in this war that we push away because it is too heavy to bear, and finding solutions is demanding. It is disturbing to think that the suffering inflicted on innocent people in Hiroshima has never been taken seriously. How else can it be explained that today we have more and more dangerous nuclear weapons than ever before, and that they are currently at play in an ongoing war?
A war is like ripples in water. You never quite know how large they will become, and how long they will last and expand after a stone is thrown. Clearly, the worst impact is where the stone hits, and that is among the Ukrainians in the east. But the stone creates ripples in the water that spread out, taking shapes we couldn't have imagined when the stone was thrown. For example, a war creates significant economic unrest, both on a macro level with cross-border trade and on a micro level with power and food crises for ordinary people. The food crisis particularly affects eastern Africa, which no longer receives the grain it needs to survive from Ukraine. This means people are starving to death, and that, too, is a ripple in the water. A war can also result in a global arms race, harsh political rhetoric, and new conflicts around the corner. War can also invade our minds and souls, making us fearful, angry, unwise, and unable to make good choices for societies and nations in the long run.
The principle of territorial sovereignty has been elevated as a sacred value, unquestionable and worth an unknown and countless number of human lives. But priorities are constantly being made between these considerations. We cannot pretend that it is not a choice of priorities. And it should become a more and more difficult prioritisation as the war drags on.
Endnotes
1 Eirik Grasaas-Stavenes, ‘Advarer mot Farlig Forenkling’, Klasse- kampen, 14 May 2022
2 Fritt Ord Award 2023.
3 Julie Wilhelmsen, „Noen har hevdet at mitt moralske kompass er gått i stykker’, Aftenposten 11 May 2023.
4 ‘Relations with Japan’, NATO, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/ natohq/topics_50336.htm.
5 ‘Massive US aircraft carrier sails into Oslo for NATO exercises’, Reuters, 24 May 2023.
6 ‘Raymond Johansen med knallhardt opprør: – Løper Putins ærend’, Nettavisen, 13 January 2023.
7 ‘Huitfeldt: – Rødts forsvarspolitikk tjener Putins interesser’, NRK, 18 January 2023.
8 Elaine Scarry, ‘Injury and the Structure of War’, Representations 10, spring 1985: pp. 1–51.
9 Ibid.