By Michele Giovanardi
In a recent article Stefaan Verhulst, PhD and Artur Kluz argue in favour of a shift from the idea of “dual-use” technology to a “triple use” technology, encompassing defence, commercial, and peace applications, emphasising how cutting-edge tech can be used for peacebuilding by making it a requirement when signing dual-use applications. This will require a paradigm shift in public and private sector narrative about military vs peace technology, as well as a greater understanding of what “peace” is, before diving into PeaceTech (technology and innovation applied to peacebuilding). A few thoughts below.
1) Security & Defence ≠ Peace. I see great confusion in the public debate about the concept of “peace”, and I see it increasingly flattened to the idea of security and defence, even (quite surprisingly) by some scholars and public officials. Public institutions contribute to the confusion. In 2021, the Council of the EU established the “European Peace Facility”, a €17 billion off-budget financing instrument to cover the costs of military operations and military support and equipment to third countries. While its primary focus is military, it has the word “peace” in its name, although it cannot be considered a peacebuilding budget.
2) Peace as a concept is different from security and defence, and spending for defence and security, as vital as it might be, is not spending for peace. Spending for peace means addressing the causes of conflict through, for instance, dialogue, mediation, conflict analysis, conflict prediction, early warning and response, diplomacy, etc. Spending for security and defence is spending to address the consequences of conflict, not its causes. Peace investments should aim not only to resolve active conflicts but also to prevent new ones by removing their social, cultural, environmental and structural political and economic causes.
3) An indisputable fact: expenditure for peace is negligible compared to military expenditure. Estimates vary depending on how peacebuilding and military spending are calculated, but the main point remains. According to the Institute for Economics & Peace, 2023 expenditure on peacebuilding and peacekeeping was less than 0.6% of total military spending. This means we are putting 200 times more money, research, brains, sweat and effort into engineering war, killing and destroying targets than in building peace. At the same time, the global economic impact of violence in 2023 was $19.1 trillion, making peace spending particularly urgent and promising in terms of return on investment.
4) Zero-sum or win-win? Faced with this reality, one could argue that the “great imbalance” between military and peace expenditure should somehow be balanced. This vision sees military and peace expenditure as a zero-sum, where we should spend less on the military apparatus and more for peace. This debate also has a strong technological component: again, one way of seeing it is that we should invest less in technology for war and more in technology and innovation for peace, often labelled as PeaceTech (like the use of data and AI for conflict prevention, ceasefire monitoring, early warning, refugee management, dialogue and mediation, etc).
While investing more in peacebuilding would be desirable in theory, it is in stark contrast with a political reality where: (a) policymakers have a poor understanding (or wilful neglection) of peacebuilding, confusing it with security and defence, and therefore do not invest money and political leverage in this direction, (b) there is increased demand for military expenditure worldwide, e.g. European military expenditure to defend Ukraine and be ready for a potential escalation, especially if Trump is elected with an expected decrease in US contribution to EU security.
Thus, without a concrete possibility to reverse these trends, while I will always advocate for more public and private funding for peacebuilding projects, I believe it is also important to start thinking of how money spent in the military/security sector can benefit peacebuilding via PeaceTech applications.
Often, the same technology, research, and expertise that contributes to military technology can contribute to peace functions. Increasingly more researchers, investors, practitioners are dedicating their time and intelligence to leverage technology for peacebuilding (see this report and this policy brief from the Global PeaceTech Hub at the European University Institute, or this blog from the investor Shane Ray Martin).
Large grants, private and public capital mobilised for defence and security should start to include peacebuilding and PeaceTech provisions and projects organically, rather than viewing them as competitive and mutually exclusive efforts.
I believe this would benefit both the industry and save money in the long run. But I also believe this kind of “triple-use” tech projects (commercial, defence, peacebuilding), and PeaceTech initiatives in general, can only work if:
(a) public research institutions are involved in the process to independently assess what works and what does not in terms of technology and innovation applied to peacebuilding, redirecting investment towards the most promising initiatives and ensuring public accountability;
b) civil society/peacebuilding organisations are involved providing inputs from their experience on the ground, to avoid the hallucination of “knowing from afar”, practices of “data extractivism” or “data colonialism”, and ensure theoretical analysis is followed by concrete political action for the benefit of local communities.
What is your opinion on this: are military technology and technology for peace mutually exclusive or mutually beneficial? Join the online discussion here.
