# Τreatise on militarism



## somnambulist (Feb 14, 2010)

Το σκηνικό ελαφρώς αλλαγμένο, αλλά τα ερωτήματα και η προβληματική απαράλλαχτα

Ian Buchanan -- Treatise on Militarism

Doubtless, the present situation is highly discouraging.
- Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (422)

The 2004 US election must have caused hearts to sink everywhere in the Third World. The bloody insurgency in Iraq only strengthened the position of the 'War President', giving him greater license to continue his campaign of terror. At the time of the election the death toll of US soldiers was nearing a thousand with the number injured seven times that. To which toll one must add the haunting fact that of the 500 000 plus US servicemen and women who served in the First Gulf War some 325 000 are now on disability pensions suffering a variety of acute maladies generally attributed to the toxic cocktail of radiation and other chemicals they were exposed to during their tour of duty. Those who fight in Iraq today can scarcely look forward to a healthier future given that it is effectively twice as irradiated now as it was in 1991.1 Yet still the minority who vote voted in the main for the man who put these soldiers in harm's way; but then it isn't as though John Kerry was promising to bring the troops home. As important as Tom Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? is as explanation of conservatism in the heartland of the USA, it doesn't answer this question - why did the war on terror fail to ignite anti-Bush sentiment?2 More to the point, why was it impossible to vote against the war? This is militarism at its peak - you cannot decide between going to war or not, only which is the most desired (least worst?) way of handling the conduct of the war.

Problem I: Is today's militarism really new?

Militarism has always been with us, like a dark shadow, but its history is not continuous. The idea that war should be considered a logical and necessary extension of politics was given expression by Clausewitz, but he was merely putting into philosophical form what was already accepted thinking in government: arms are a legitimate means of achieving political goals. Militarism is not always as unabashed about its existence, not to say its intentions, as it is now when - as Debord so presciently put it - it has "its own inconceivable foe, terrorism" to bedazzle a frightened, confused, and misinformed public.3 But out of the limelight does not mean out of the picture; militarism has not been officially questioned since the end of the first world war when disarmament had its last genuine hurrah. World War Two, which caught the US and the UK, in particular, underarmed and underprepared for conflict, eliminated in a stroke the very concept of disarmament - strategic arms limitation and force reduction are essentially fiscal notions, decisions made in the interest in preserving a militarist posture in the face of rising costs, not disarmament. Neither should we delude ourselves that anti-war is anti-militarism. As we shall see, the very opposite is true.

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, it is generally thought that a paradigm shift in the nature of militarism has occurred, and as the violence in the Middle East continues with no sign of abatement in sight (the running-sore that is the Israel/Palestine conflict, the smouldering fires of Iraq and Afghanistan and the gathering storm in Iran all forebode ill for a peaceful future) any doubt that a new era of 'hot' war has been ushered in tends to vanish. What is less certain, however, at least from a philosophical perspective, is the conceptual nature of the change. Those who demur that the present era is substantially different enough to warrant the label 'new' do so on the grounds that what we are seeing today is merely the continuation of an older struggle, or struggles, as it might be better to say given the tangled mess of multiple rivalries and resentments on both sides. Obviously, many of the struggles fuelling the present war are legacies of the Second World War, the Yalta summit in particular (many of course predate that by hundreds of years).4 On this score, I am persuaded by Immanuel Wallerstein's thesis that the first and second world wars should be treated as a single thirty year struggle for global hegemony between Germany and the USA, but it seems to me the militarism we are faced with today is different to the one spawned in 1945 in the aftermath of victory; the militarism of today no longer thinks in terms of winning and losing - it has another agenda.5 So even if the origins of the present crisis are to be found in the wash-up of WWII, as Wallerstein and many others have rightly argued, the nature of the response to this crisis is not similarly located there.

Historians generally agree that the Vietnam War put paid to that 'victorious' mode of militarism the US knew following WWII when it was briefly the lone nuclear power.6 Following its demoralising defeat at the hands of a comparatively puny third world country, however, even the idea that it was a superpower was questioned. Amongst the decision-makers in Washington there took hold a moribund and risk-averse mentality that came to be called the 'Vietnam Syndrome'. This syndrome allegedly explains the US's failure to act on a number of occasions when it might have been prudent - or, as perhaps would have been the case in Cambodia, humanitarian to do so - culminating in the embarrassing mishandling of the Teheran Embassy siege in the last days of Jimmy Carter's administration. It also explains the tactics used on those occasions when the US has acted, as in Clinton's decision to initially restrict the engagement in the Balkans to airpower alone and use aerial bombardment where deft geopolitical negotiation was needed. On this occasion, as has now become routine, an alleged ethical imperative combined powerfully with a rhetoric of 'surgical strikes' and 'smart bombs' to stall protest and garner support from even those who ought to have known better.7 Taken at face value, this would seem to confirm the existence of the 'Vietnam Syndrome', but when in political analysis is it sensible to accept something at face value? I would argue the 'Vietnam Syndrome' is a convenient cover story not a genuine explanation of US foreign policy. What makes anyone think, for instance, that a peaceful settlement to the Israel/Palestine conflict (as much a potential Vietnam as Iraq) is on the US agenda? Countless commentators have pointed out that the US backing of Israel can but inflame the Middle East situation as though this was news to the ones responsible, or, more to the point, as though winning or losing, peace or war, are the only options open to US foreign policy. Isn't the answer staring us right in the face: perpetual unrest is the solution that present action is achieving. 

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