Human security as a priority

The political establishment in general, but especially the Western one, has never seemed to have much interest in delving into a matter as transcendent for humanity as the construction of peace from the perspective of non-violence. On the contrary, it has been—and still is—evident that it has had a superb interest in linking security with violence. It is true that in the realm of intellectuality and activism there have been notable exceptions—from, let's say, Hannah Arendt to Mahatma Gandhi—to this hegemony of warmongering politics. Pacifism and anti-militarism are largely sustained by this intellectuality and social activism to imagine a coexistence regulated by non-violent or non-warring means.

To try to mediate between these two antithetical visions, the United Nations —through the agency of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)— launched the Human Security proposal. It was presented in the 1994 Human Development Report. This proposal has an approach aimed at protecting people in all their needs and capabilities, and not at focusing on the supposed security of states. However, despite the arguments pointed out by the human security report, and subsequent developments, the elites of the Global North have insisted on maintaining that the right to the security of states is an absolute priority. This priority is intimately related to military defense, militarism, and the business of the military-industrial complex. That is to say, a security model where the right of people to a dignified life is secondary, and in which what prevails is the use of force before dialogue and political negotiation. In these times!

The historical political and economic dilemma of guns or butter—where guns represent military spending, defense, and state security, and butter, civilian goods, the welfare state, public education and healthcare, and spending on social and environmental policies—is aggravated to the point of breaking long-worked-upon consensuses regarding international legality and multilateralism represented by the UN. Today the world lives in a war regime fueled by the dynamics of global armament.

A global rearmament that goes from Asia to the European Union, passing through the USA and the African continent. For example, in Japan, the nuclear debate is being reopened in the context of remilitarization, even reviewing the 'Three Non-Nuclear Principles', which prevent possessing, manufacturing, and introducing nuclear weapons into Japan, to allow—under the excuse of the new Asia-Pacific strategic environment, characterized by the growing military power of China—the entry of US ships with nuclear weapons. Human security ceases to be a priority even in a country with a society still traumatized by the two atomic bombings, perpetrated by the United States of America on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the Second World War, and by the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011. The USA continues to enlarge its enormous military machinery with a 2025 budget of 895 billion dollars and an approximate total of 1,328,000 active military personnel. Those of the USA are, let's be clear, truly imperial and colonialist armed forces. The brutal genocide in Palestine continues, and global armamentism is, in large part, responsible—the manufacture and trade of weaponry is done so that it is used—for the multiple wars in Africa.

And what about the European Union? The new rearmament policy is structured around the ReArm Europe plan with funding of 800 billion euros. An initiative that the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, presented by stating that "if Europe wants to avoid war, Europe must prepare for war". It is, as the Delàs Center for Peace Studies rightly points out, "a militarization project that is sustained by the politics of fear. Because the intention is to make the European population believe that Russia is not satisfied with maintaining a war in Ukraine and will destabilize or attack another European country in a short period of time". Spain, as a member committed to the armament policies of the EU and NATO, has also launched its rearmament policy, and in 2025 it increased defense spending by 50% and exceeded 2% of GDP for the first time in three decades.

It is worth remembering the words of NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at the end of 2024, stating that "European citizens must accept sacrifices with cuts to their pensions, healthcare, and social security." In other words, in NATO's view, human security must be disregarded to prioritize violent and warmongering security. Unfortunately, several European states have already obeyed Rutte!

Mallorca for Peace continues to believe that it is necessary to mobilize against this criminal and antisocial disorder. At the same time, we affirm that it is truly human security—what we know as the welfare state and its strengthening—that guarantees a local and global society with democracy and oriented towards achieving the common good.