Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an

Whether we are talk­ing the in­va­sion of Grena­da in 1980, our war-torn colo­nial his­to­ry, var­i­ous armies on the ground in Haiti, or US mil­i­tary bases like Guan­tanamo, the Caribbean's sto­ry is marked by a his­to­ry of mil­i­tarism. In her book Bases of Em­pire, an­thro­pol­o­gist Cather­ine Lutz notes that as of 2007, there were 77 US mil­i­tary bases of vary­ing sizes, from mas­sive to small, found across the Caribbean.

To­day, the war on drugs is an ex­am­ple of re­gion­al mil­i­tari­sa­tion, with Britain and the US con­duct­ing op­er­a­tions all over the Caribbean us­ing high-tech mil­i­tary equip­ment in op­er­a­tions with catchy names like Op­er­a­tion Weed Eater.

This war is not on­ly about erad­i­cat­ing drugs but it is al­so about some­thing an­thro­pol­o­gists call the "per­ma­nent war econ­o­my." This econ­o­my is wide and has many facets. One in par­tic­u­lar that af­fects small is­land na­tions is the eco­nom­ic aid that ac­com­pa­nies con­tin­ued ac­cep­tance and par­tic­i­pa­tion in the war.

This aid comes in the form of mil­i­tary equip­ment, in­tel­li­gence ex­pan­sion, new sur­veil­lance and se­cu­ri­ty tech­nolo­gies, and pro­pa­gan­da sys­tems. It al­so pro­vides a con­stant dri­ve for some of the rich­er coun­tries like T&T to pur­chase more and more mil­i­tary hard­ware, con­nect­ing their oil and gas cap­i­tal straight to the war econ­o­my.

It is quite nor­mal for our Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty to speak-with­out any­one ques­tion­ing his log­ic-that it's sen­si­ble to em­brace the US-led war on drugs and pur­chase six naval ves­sels from the Colom­bian Gov­ern­ment. Just like the pre­vi­ous Gov­ern­ment was hap­py to spend bil­lions on OPVs. Some­one might want to take note that the largest con­sumer mar­ket for these drugs is the US and per­haps join­ing a war dri­ven by the lifestyle of an­oth­er na­tion is sil­ly in the first place.

The sad­ness is that it's as if the west­ern world is on­ly mov­ing in one di­rec­tion: in­creased mil­i­tari­sa­tion. Hopes of a move to­ward de­mil­i­tari­sa­tion as Sey­mour Mel­man-the US econ­o­mist who wrote about the dam­ag­ing so­cial costs of mil­i­tary spend­ing-once dis­cussed, seem less and less like­ly.

In cul­tur­al terms, this overt mil­i­tary foot­ing seeps in­to every­day life. It be­comes em­bed­ded in every­day lan­guage and sym­bols. We de­scribe gangs as mil­i­tarist or­gan­i­sa­tions. Young peo­ple de­mand to play the lat­est com­put­er war games from Black Ops to Medal of Ho­n­our. Me­dia-TV, film, mu­sic, sport and all the rest-are sat­u­rat­ed with mil­i­tary themes. And in­se­cu­ri­ty be­comes some­thing on­ly to be tack­led through in­creas­es in mil­i­tary per­son­nel and equip­ment.

Think about law en­force­ment in T&T. Dur­ing the SoE it was the army con­duct­ing a lot of po­lice op­er­a­tions. And re­cent­ly the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty asked cit­i­zens to ap­ply to the De­fence Force in or­der to pro­tect na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. There's al­so the Mul­ti Agency Mar­itime Task Force, com­pris­ing coast guard, po­lice, army, and cus­toms of­fi­cers, again blur­ring the bound­aries be­tween polic­ing and mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions.

By the end of the next year we are promised the en­tire coun­try will be un­der CCTV sur­veil­lance, as if that's in­dis­putably a good thing.

Yet, as the State be­comes more mil­i­tarised, so too does the whole of so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing those the State deems crim­i­nals. That AK-47s are a more reg­u­lar weapon in our poor­est ar­eas is an ex­am­ple of a mil­i­tarised drug in­dus­try. That our pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty in­dus­tries al­so take on the sem­blance of mil­i­tary or­gan­i­sa­tions with CCTV sys­tems, guard dogs, high-tech se­cu­ri­ty sys­tems and mil­i­tary-style out­fits is an­oth­er ex­am­ple of mil­i­tarism.

In a pre­sen­ta­tion a few years ago, Prof Rho­da Red­dock point­ed out this new cul­ture of in­se­cu­ri­ty leads to armies be­ing seen as sav­iours and opens the risk for a re­duc­tion in our hu­man rights. Nor­mal, peace­ful com­mu­ni­ties be­come blood­thirsty, seek­ing re­venge and pun­ish­ment. Mean­while, the de­mands for se­cu­ri­ty ex­tend dis­tance be­tween the rich and poor, as on­ly some can af­ford to pro­tect them­selves through pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty firms.

Where does this mil­i­tarised so­ci­ety lead? On the one hand it's clear some sort of army for de­fence is le­git­i­mate and can be use­ful in eco­nom­ic terms. Yet on the oth­er side, what is too much? Have we not passed that mark? Can we go back? Are there re­al­ly no oth­er ways to or­gan­ise our so­ci­ety than to cur­tail free­doms and be­come more mil­i­tarised? And what sort of fu­ture is that?

• Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an is an an­thro­pol­o­gist at UWI, St Au­gus­tine