Deadly Setbacks in the Name of Security

Birna Þórarinsdóttir – CEO of UNICEF in Iceland and MA in international security from Georgetown – argues that the world's panicked response to a more dangerous era is producing three "deadly setbacks" that erode the very security they claim to defend, and that Iceland, by virtue of its lack of an army, clean energy, and strong human-rights record, is uniquely placed to speak for reason.

The setup. We are all more afraid than we were two years ago, and fear, she warns, is the sworn enemy of reason. Leaders everywhere are pouring money into security in ways that drag humanity backward: destructive power instead of construction, more oil instead of lower emissions, and the rollback of rights and freedoms in the name of safety. The point is not to downplay Ukraine's fight or Europe's fears, but to weigh every decision, statement and appropriation against the bigger picture.

First setback: destructive power. Global military spending rose for an eleventh straight year to $2,887bn – about 361 trillion ISK – an astronomical investment in the capacity to destroy and kill. She points to the Denmark–Germany shell factory, hailed as economic opportunity but masking vast costs of clean-up, reconstruction and human suffering. Explosive weapons in populated areas are the leading cause of child deaths and injuries in war, destroying homes, schools, hospitals and water systems; roughly a quarter of Ukraine is now mined, with clearance taking at least a decade. Construction takes decades, destruction an instant. Because Iceland has no army, she argues, it is free to invest instead in social infrastructure and societal resilience. She contrasts Iceland's 130m ISK for Barnahús child-protection centres (via UNICEF) with the 500m ISK spent on US-made weapons for Ukraine, and asks whether Iceland would truly have been a worse ally had it chosen social investment. Resilience is never free.

Second setback: the climate threat. In the same year governments spent nearly $3tn on the military, they could not raise $800m for climate loss and damage, only $361m of $788.8m pledged reached the fund. A UNICEF report finds nearly every child on earth now faces at least one climate hazard and some 1.1bn face three or more; a worst-case collapse of the Atlantic overturning circulation could render Iceland uninhabitable. A UK intelligence assessment treats ecosystem and food-system collapse as a national-security risk within five years. Military activity accounted for about 5.5% of global emissions in 2019, and Scientists for Global Responsibility estimate NATO's spending pledges could add emissions on the order of Chile's annual output or, over a decade, Brazil's. Western states, she argues, cannot both rearm and decarbonise, even as development aid that builds others' resilience is cut to fund defence.

Third setback: eroding human rights. Hostility toward groups cast as threats – driven by populism and the far right, by xenophobia, and by attacks on LGBTQ people, women and children – is undermining societies from within. The post-war "never again" human-rights system, built over decades, is being dismantled as the West's moral compass "no longer points north." She cites EU moves toward third-country detention camps and talks with the Taliban on returning Afghan refugees, placing them alongside US deportations to El Salvador and even the Nazis' Madagascar plan, and warns that prosperity cannot survive in a society of fear and hostility.

Her conclusion. Fear is a natural response to uncertainty, but the way through it, citing uncertainty researcher Katherine Templar Lewis, lies in connection to values, to community, and to one's own judgment, not in conformity and fear. Iceland's strengths, no army, clean energy, strong human rights, are choices it can turn into "superpowers," speaking clearly through words, actions and funding. Someone must. If not us, who?