When is War Necessary?

by Ryan Miller

War is necessary when it’s profitable, and there’s no money like blood money. Necessity arrives when next year’s bomb order depends on this year’s destruction. War is especially necessary during re-election season—when members of the Armed Services Committee own stocks in war-profiteering corporations. Doesn’t the General Grade Officer-to-war-profiteering-corporate-board-of-directors pipeline depend on toeing the line of forever-war?

War is necessary when a valuable resource is found anywhere in the world to be exploited and commodified—especially when a foreign government nationalizes its resources to restrict foreign “investment.” U.S.-backed coups, like Iran in the 1950s or Venezuela today over oil, make this clear. “They hate us for our freedom,” they say—when “freedom” really means entitlement to extract foreign resources and open markets for capitalists. When legitimate indigenous resistance to invasive exploitation is rebranded as “terrorism” or “insurgency,” war is necessary.

War is necessary when it’s convenient to blame Taiwan or the Uyghurs, scapegoating the nation that owns most of our foreign debt. When prosperity gospel propaganda meets foreign policy, and arbitrary borders drawn by capitalists and colonists must be defended or expanded. When the Manifest Destiny mythology of taming wild frontiers can’t be culturally resisted—war is necessary.

When we drink enough of the nationalism Kool-Aid, we are taught to glorify combat action ribbons and combat infantryman badges for slaughtering strangers on the other side of the planet, defending their homelands. War becomes not a tragedy, but a badge of (dis)honor. Entire innocent populations become disposable. War is necessary when we have successfully distorted cultural archetypes of warriorhood—traditionally about defending the defenseless—into foot soldiers for Empire. When we put toy guns and Call of Duty in the hands of children. When we don’t have or don’t know how to use our words.

War is necessary when we allow fetishized hyper-individualism to convince us that we are separate from the other—that we are more worthy of life than them, that our lives aren’t directly linked to theirs. When Western philosophies and spiritualities separate us from Mother Earth, as if she isn’t a living, breathing organism. As if our grandchildren’s future doesn’t depend on her. The foundation of capitalist, imperialist, white supremacist patriarchy is dominance through war itself.

What will Hollywood do without propaganda to produce? What will veterans write poetry and stories about instead? The boomerang effect informs us that war is necessary to test tactics and technologies that will eventually return to the home front—for use on Empire’s own citizens. War is necessary because what else is the Death Star good at? What else are more than a thousand overseas bases and CIA black sites for?

War distracts the population—redirecting rage toward foreign poor people instead of domestic oligarchs. War is necessary because we refuse to learn the lessons from unjust interventions and immoral occupations. Because we talk more about the future of war than a future without war. Because we allow our narratives to limit our imaginations.

Our gender roles and definitions of masculinity are misguided. We lack cultural practices and rites of passage to convert youthful aggression into adult responsibility. War is necessary because of shame. Shame of indigenous genocide. Shame of slavery.

War is necessary, only because we refuse to imagine that it isn’t.

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Ryan Miller, based in Palo Alto, CA—which he considers occupied territory of the Muwekma and Ramaytush Ohlone peoples—served in the Marine Corps from 1998 to 2002 as a Small Computer Systems Specialist. Plant medicine and American Indian ceremonies have played a crucial role in his healing and reintegration. Through his nonprofit, Compassionate Veterans, he has facilitated more than 1,500 suicide prevention support groups and has overseen access to donated plant medicines for over a decade.

His advocacy efforts were instrumental in reforming California’s cannabis laws and decriminalizing psychedelics in Oakland. Now a Marriage and Family Therapist, Ryan advocates for expanding access to cannabis and psychedelics for veterans while emphasizing the need to address broader systemic issues such as economic hardship and the challenges of military service transitions.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.