Editorial - War as a neatly staged capital investment

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"Air dominance is critical." An F-35A fighter jet zooms across the screen. Cut.

"Our advancements in autonomy will revolutionise flight." Cut.

A digital battlescape spreads out like a video game interface. Cut.

Unmanned helicopters fly over faceless deserts. Cut.

"Jets with cutting-edge AI push the boundaries of technology", the highly inspired cutting-edge AI speaker reads out the rather uninspired (but highly inspiring) cutting-edge AI text. In the quarterly review published last week, there's no more talking, just written text with dramatic music and smooth video recordings: "Air Dominance Accelerated."

Wow! Good that things are moving forward. Not one, but an entire formation of F-35 Lightning II fighter jets – those jets with the angular stealth design and inward-sloping sides – are now gliding over the clouds. Welcome to Lockheed Martin's PR video production.

These are not trailers for overlong action films with mediocre reviews at best, but high production value. This is real advertising, for real jets, with real potential to kill real people in real wars. And at the same time, it is the glossy face of a rhetoric that has been nesting in Europe: Defence is innovation. Wars are economically lucrative. And values can be exported, even at supersonic speed, if necessary. Belgium, for example, wants to procure eleven more F-35A fighter jets for its fleet.

Luxembourg itself does not have any of these fighter jets. But the language, aesthetics and technoid coolness of the Pentagon's main contractor has long since become popular in our politics as they try to attract defence companies and researchers to be able to keep up in the first place. The rhetoric of our security and defence efforts focuses on scalability, innovation and competitiveness. Security is not presented as a state of emergency, but as a project for the future. War is the business case. And, sorry, that is highly dangerous.

The political discourse – to the extent that it can be described as such – is riddled with terms that seem both pompous and empty. The concept of value is particularly conspicuous in pretty much every introduction to speeches, conferences and press releases on security planning. But what exactly is meant by this usually remains vague. Freedom? Democracy? Solidarity?

Sounds good, but it also sounds like everything and nothing. At best, they are well-intentioned fundamental convictions. At worst, they are marketing promises that fail miserably to hide the fact that our much-vaunted "values" are often primarily economically motivated. The human being as the subject of war disappears from communications, and what remains is a clean simulation, a bloodless film of progress.

Framing is therefore problematic. It normalises the state of emergency so that it loses its political explosiveness. Defence is portrayed as a sterile, clean, economic field of innovation. It becomes a sensible investment. This gives the impression that anyone who argues against this logic is either naive or hostile to progress.

The question should be allowed as to where investment ends and escalation begins. According to the Swedish peace research institute Sipri, global military expenditure in 2024 amounted to around 2.38 trillion euros, which, adjusted for inflation, represents an increase of 9.4 per cent compared to the previous year – the highest figure since the end of the Cold War. And yes, Europe has played its part in this. In fact, Europe is now investing more in armaments than Russia, without a clear strategic line being discernible.

When armament and defence are conceptualised first and foremost as economic projects, we lose sight of the fact that their primary purpose could hardly be more obviously linked to violence. This is not about romanticised defencelessness. Of course, regrettably, a certain, sustainable and clever defence capability is needed. But you cannot blow a serious necessity out of proportion and legitimise it with the linguistic style of a pitch without polishing away its actual political implications.

So if Luxembourg wants to have a say in European defence – please do. But then please without the semantic whitewashing à la USA, Lockheed Martin. So instead of launching the next defence initiatives with image films, it would be advisable to dare to take a step back and look for alternative, more humane approaches. And with a language that does not drift off into economic fantasies, but takes into account the people behind conflicts.

If we only discuss defence in start-up vocabulary, we forget how to contain it democratically. Anyone who believes that we can design ourselves to be resilient against authoritarian systems may not have understood that democracy should not be mechanised, but practised. Because yes, defence may be necessary. But if it is sold to us as a clean, shiny promise for the future, we had better ask at least twice: Whose future is it? That of a Lockheed Martin 2.0?