But for obvious reasons it’s advantageous for external agents to make the young or talented of a given country avoid or hate working in such places if those external agents are playing by some realpolitik framework. The more you steal from a player’s ranks, the better it is for you.

It doesn’t help that often politicians (in any country) are prone to the kinds of flaws which make it harder to justify why someone should join the military, or work in defense. It also doesn’t help that the core philosophy, or idealistic viewpoint, of a country is often overridden by a history of rash decision making by inept or corrupt politicians. Note that any number of propaganda tools are also used to paint people as inept or corrupt, depending on the narrative that it serves.

And it’s particularly okay right now to decry the defensive or offensive ambitions of Western nations using any number of terms one can acquire from a first-year polsci. course.

But it’s no secret that once countries who currently don’t have appreciable military capability, like many Latin American or African countries, build some kind of military might of their own, then the discourse will shift to include terms like “peace through strength”, “national sovereignty”, “deterrence theory“, or whatever else will then help form a self-serving narrative just as using terms like “fascist”, “Nazi”, or “Military-Industrial complex” does so now.

People who get swayed by emotional appeals, or other psychological tools developed to tease out empathetic or sympathetic responses through the use of loaded terms, are often well-meaning, and useful pawns in a game far beyond their control or understanding.

The best response in such cases is to be indifferent and neutral. You don’t know who you’re really supporting, or what they gain out of it. People who openly state their allegiances to a country are more trustworthy than someone who states their allegiance to an ideal (“pacifism”), or ideology (“libertarian”).