“Abolition” isn’t just a fun word to say.

“I want to abolish prisons” doesn’t just mean that you think there are too many prisons and they are too horrible. “Abolish the police” isn’t just a hip way to say “I’m angry at abuse by police.” Abolishing something means eliminating it entirely, which often also means creating very different institutions that do things very differently.

Entirely means every last speck.

Abolishing war, and preparations for war, and weapons of war, and militaries means working for a world in which there exists not a single member of a single military or a single weapon. To some, that sounds so big and crazy that they actually relax about it, treat it as a dream for some distant future, and maybe even applaud Barack Obama making speeches about abolishing nuclear weapons as long as it’s not in his lifetime. But the logic behind abolishing war makes it an immediate and urgent project, because the dangers and damage war creates threaten the likelihood of any distant human future existing, and also because there are better alternatives to war available right here today.

If you favor war abolition not because you love simplicity or because you think it’s good for your inner harmony or whatever, but because nobody has ever shown you a single instance where war can do something useful better than nonviolence can, then you oppose all sorts of things that are extremely popular, even among people who call themselves peace activists, things like:

• Sending a military intervention to Gaza.
• Sending military ships with aid flotillas to Gaza.
• Rushing military forces to people’s aid after a natural disaster.
• Funding a green military to fight climate change.
• Sending weapons to Ukraine.
• Cheering for the Russian military in Ukraine.
• Arming either side of a war in Syria.
• Attempting militarily to protect Venezuela from another attempted coup by the United States.
• Establishing a global antiwar force to oversee a warless world.

The reason to oppose a military intervention in Gaza is not support for genocide or blind allegiance to principle, but because there are other better tools more likely to work to end the genocide. The existence of those other better tools — openly acknowledged by many advocates for a military intervention — is, even though they may not realize it, a problem for their talk of “do something,” “stop doing nothing,” “we need more than rhetoric,” and so forth. Changing the subject to how horrible the genocide is or how we’ve failed to stop it — things we all agree on — is not usually an indication of a failure to understand what we all agree on, and not usually an indication of an unwillingness to think or of a desire to deceive, but rather an expression of anger and frustration. (So, everybody please take five seconds and scream as loudly as you can!) Eventually, though, the subject should return to what would be best to do to try to end the genocide — what would be the most likely actions to actually succeed!

I interviewed one supporter of military intervention, who readily agreed with me that governments of the world cutting off arms, commerce, finances, travel, and diplomatic relations with Israel would not be “doing nothing” and would, in fact, collapse Israel’s economy and end the war. At the very same time, he wanted Turkey, Iran, and Iraq to attack Israeli cities militarily. Told this would mean attacking civilians, he readily agreed. But he said that Israel only understands violence, which seemed to mean that it wouldn’t “understand” the collapse of its economy or the absence of any more weapons. He also assured me that he is a “pacifist.” Told that Netanyahu would probably love nothing better than an Iranian attack on an Israeli city and a big new war with Donald Trump (and his not-at-all-fat warriors) at Netanyahu’s beck and call, my interviewee changed the subject.

That’s what this supporter meant by “United Nations Protection Force” — bombing a city or two to “make a point.” Others mean something different. Most have avoided giving, and some have adamantly and repeatedly refused to give any clear indication of what they mean at all. They generally seem to mean a big and impressive armed military force willing to fight Israel, but guaranteed not to have to fight Israel, because Israel will bow before it. As soon as you question their certainty that Israel (and the United States) will do that, or the wisdom of risking conflict with crazed governments that have nuclear weapons, the accusations of cowardice start flying. But the opposite of bravery is not always cowardice. Choosing not to jump off a roof, for example, is not cowardice so much as sanity. Neither does unarmed civilian defense require less bravery than armed protection. (Please go here for what the heck unarmed civilian defense is.)

Even if you think an armed “protection force” is a good idea — and pretty much regardless of exactly what you mean by it — the fact remains that the proposal for it has made moving governments to other actions, and moving the UN General Assembly to taking action through a “Uniting for Peace” measure, more difficult. And this has led to demands for rogue actions by militaries separate from the United Nations. I think one reason for such a misguided strategy, and for the vagueness about what is being proposed, and for widespread confusion and indignation about how Italy and Spain dealt with the Global Sumud Flotilla, is the staggering incoherence at its core. Many nations are saturated with U.S. military bases, troops, weapons, and, in some cases (such as Italy and Turkey), nuclear weapons. Their own militaries are using U.S.-made weapons, maintained, updated, and trained on by U.S. personnel. When Italy sent a warship to join the flotilla, it was either going to make clear — as it soon did — that such ships would depart before the flotilla neared Israel, or it was going to risk conflict with its U.S. master in the form of Israel. The shock and outrage when such ships departed depended not only on having missed the public statements about their plans, but also on a preference for Italy risking war with itself.

We can fantasize about Israel backing down in such a scenario. If we want to dream big, we can imagine Italy leaving NATO and booting out the U.S. bases. I would have loved that. But we have to plan for what is likely, and not plan enormous risks that accomplish little. Either the ships were going to sail away, or they were going to risk a dramatic escalation of war that could have brought in any number of nations. If Israel had attacked NATO countries’ military vessels, one longtime dedicated peace activist told me, “I hope that then Israel is given a taste of its own medicine.” And, just like that, we’re back to bombing Israeli cities . . . and perhaps U.S. troops treating Rome like it’s Chicago. How does that end well?

Now is not the moment in our discussion for cries of “But what should we do, nothing?” We supporters of the unarmed humanitarian flotilla are missing the purpose and the power of that flotilla — not to mention the aforementioned (if often conscientiously forgotten) many useful steps that should be taken. The flotilla itself is the powerful tool, not the war ships. The flotilla itself boosts the global demand for powerful actions. Colombia cut off all relations with Israel because the flotilla was attacked. Why should any nation not take that step? Why should any population not demand that its government take that step immediately? Many are making that demand right now because of the flotilla! The bravest and most strategic people we’ve got, the people on that flotilla, should not look — and we should not look on their behalf — to the war machine to save us from the war machine.

Governments could have, and should have, sent unarmed rescue ships, not warships. And those rescue ships should have stayed with the flotilla to the end. And if the result was official representatives of the Italian government among the hostages taken by Israel, Italy should have — as it should right now — stopped arming Israel, stopped arming or trading with any nation arming Israel, stopped allowing Netanyahu to fly over Italy on his way to lie to the UN, banned all trade and travel and financial transactions with Israel, closed Israel’s embassy in Rome, created an official holiday for a government-sanctioned general strike and celebration of dock workers, and launched a major educational campaign on the topic of Israeli propaganda. That former Israeli embassy in Rome would make a great Museo delle Bugie Israeliane.

Ships of people trained and equipped to rescue at sea should accompany the next flotilla, because they are better at that work, because they can do it to the end, and because they don’t risk acting on their military training with their military weapons when a crisis comes, since they don’t have those things. This is similar to the reason that the U.S. military should not, as Trump says, train for its wars on U.S. cities, why the so-called “National Guard” should not be going uninvited into U.S. cities, even if it picks up garbage or directs traffic. It’s not that we are cowards in the face of garbage and traffic, but that unarmed people can do those jobs better. The automatic weapons get in the way. The military training gets in the way even more. Conflicts are provoked. Escalations are risked. Horrible precedents are set. The rule of law is damaged. And the war machine is supported.

Supporting the war machine when there are alternatives to doing so means gratuitously supporting the single biggest impediment to global cooperation, the single biggest waste of badly needed resources, the single biggest destroyer of the natural environment, the cause of the nuclear threat, the justification for government secrecy and surveillance, and so on.

Would it be better for a military to help some people during a natural disaster rather than do nothing? Of course, but those are not the choices. We are perfectly capable, here and now, of sending people trained and equipped for natural disasters, and not for foreign occupations, to assist with a disaster while credibly committed to leaving after they’re done and not taking over or killing anybody while they’re there. In fact, why wait for a disaster? Take 4 or 5 percent of military spending and provide the globe with unprecedented assistance right away, making the provider beloved rather than resented.

Why not thank our wonderful militaries for taking the climate danger seriously? Well, the U.S. Secretary of War this week told 800 generals to deny the existence of any climate danger or be tossed out on their oversized rears. But Departments of “Defense” under good liberal hypocritical leadership around the world are a massive threat to the climate, with no ability to prevent or mitigate the damage that non-military institutions cannot do better.

I won’t go on. You can read about the case of Ukraine here. My goal is merely to encourage thinking about what total abolition actually involves.

In that regard, there is an online conference coming up on exploring abolition movements. Check it out.

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.