"War and preparations for war have acquired a kind of legitimacy"
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“War and preparations for war have acquired a kind of legitimacy” lands like a quiet indictment, the sort a seasoned diplomat delivers when outrage has become too easy to ignore. Alva Myrdal isn’t marveling at war’s persistence; she’s alarmed by its normalization. The key phrase is “a kind of legitimacy” - not full moral approval, but the bureaucratic, procedural respectability that lets extraordinary violence pass as routine governance.
The intent is to expose a drift in political culture: the way states learn to treat militarization as prudence, rearmament as responsibility, and escalation as mere “security policy.” Myrdal’s subtext is that legitimacy can be manufactured. If budgets, alliances, weapons research, and public messaging all align, war stops looking like a rupture and starts looking like an option on a menu. Preparations do the moral work ahead of time: once you build the machine, you begin needing reasons to justify it, then crises conveniently supply them.
Context matters. Myrdal, a Swedish diplomat deeply involved in arms control and disarmament debates during the Cold War, watched deterrence logic harden into common sense. Nuclear strategy didn’t just threaten catastrophe; it also produced a language that made catastrophe sound “stabilizing.” Her phrasing targets that chilling rhetorical trick: converting fear into policy legitimacy, and policy legitimacy into permanence.
What makes the line work is its restraint. No melodrama, just a diagnosis of institutional momentum. The scariest part isn’t that war happens. It’s that it starts to look administratively normal.
The intent is to expose a drift in political culture: the way states learn to treat militarization as prudence, rearmament as responsibility, and escalation as mere “security policy.” Myrdal’s subtext is that legitimacy can be manufactured. If budgets, alliances, weapons research, and public messaging all align, war stops looking like a rupture and starts looking like an option on a menu. Preparations do the moral work ahead of time: once you build the machine, you begin needing reasons to justify it, then crises conveniently supply them.
Context matters. Myrdal, a Swedish diplomat deeply involved in arms control and disarmament debates during the Cold War, watched deterrence logic harden into common sense. Nuclear strategy didn’t just threaten catastrophe; it also produced a language that made catastrophe sound “stabilizing.” Her phrasing targets that chilling rhetorical trick: converting fear into policy legitimacy, and policy legitimacy into permanence.
What makes the line work is its restraint. No melodrama, just a diagnosis of institutional momentum. The scariest part isn’t that war happens. It’s that it starts to look administratively normal.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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