The local authorities have dusted off Cold War-era bomb shelters, installed a new satellite communications system and are working with the military on plans to help a deployment of Western forces in case of conflict.
“The lesson we learned from Ukraine is that everybody pitched in,” said Odd John Resser, Kongsberg’s Emergency Planning Officer, noting breweries that pivoted to making Molotov cocktails, local authorities that built schools in shelters and weapons factories which ramped up production.
Across the Nordic nations, governments are boosting defense spending, reassessing security and pushing the concept of total defense. It’s an approach which mobilizes the whole of society to defend against military and non-military threats.
A deep failure of the United States is allowing the military-industrial complex to convince Americans that the only good defense is a strong offense. It’s like owning a shotgun “to protect your home” while leaving a key under the doormat and the windows unlocked.
The Department of Defense was and should still be named the Department of War. They are not at all in the business of defense. Defense doesn’t just look like men in uniforms or weapons in crates.
Defense looks like clean, redundant, and locally sustainable energy and water infrastructure. Defense looks like efficient mass transit systems to move people out of disaster and conflict zones and to move supplies in. Defense looks like educated and healthy citizens, self-sufficient communities, stable supply lines, and surplus hospital beds.
For all that the US spends more than the next ten nations combined on “defense”, other nations are far more prepared to actually protect their people rather than just kill their enemies, and I really wish we weren’t a large part of the reason the rest of the world feels threatened right now.
“Defense” sells better than “war.”
When we go to war abroad it is in "defense" of our interests.
Please note the use of quotes. I’m not saying it should be this way. I’m saying that’s the spin/marketing and that it works.