Re: Military Fundamentalism

Three things here, TH, Wagar and WSN:  (1)  The work of Virilio
(2002) on "war at the speed of light", subtitle of Desert Screen,
speaks to the new technical and military fundamentalisms that characterize
the U.S. (and NATO?) military-industrial complex.  (2)  The work
of Baudrillard (2002) adds to this picture by distinguishing between "events"
- like the WTC explosions - and "non-events" - like the Gulf War(s). 
(3)  These two works may be put in world-historical perspective. 
The acceleration of military fundamentalism and the modes of its carriage
should not blind us to longer-term processes at work.  The decline
of hegemony may be accelerated by the developments on the military
level, by generating system-wide solutions provided by the newly emerging
center(s) in East Asia.  Part of the solution may lie in constructing
effective responses to the circulation of fear among the people everywhere
with regard to the exercise of military solutions to systemic problems. 
The question of whether military fundamentalism of a technical type will
be determinant in the intermediate run is being posed as the question of
the moment.  In the process it is also obscuring developments in East
Asia and a larger landscape of growing world inequalities and polarizations
in wealth and access to bare necessities that lie at the heart of the contemporary
transformation.  Can military developments of a technical type - of
the kind that Virilio addresses in his metaphor "war at the speed of light"
- determine the contours of the imbalance of power?  I think this
question needs to be contextualized in the light of developments in East
Asia where the US is part of the regional power balance without being able
to exercise a hegemonic role there.  The North Korean issues (with
regard to nuclear weapons for instance) surely need to be situated within
the context of US power in the Pacific Rim.  How will military developments
determine the (im)balances there?  How relevant are these developments? 
How may the efforts of social movements and peace protests help in re-configuring
the emphasis placed on military developments?  All these questions
appear to me to be closely connected but they may be separated for purposes
of analysis of details.  Ganesh.

Threehegemons@aol.com wrote:

In a message dated 2/12/2003 2:13:15 PM Eastern Standard Time, wwagar@binghamton.edu writes:

Warren--I agree with you that part of the significance of the World Trade Center attacks lies in its demonstration of the possibility of new forms of warfare.  I am not sure how this will hasten the decline of US hegemony.  The emergence of new forms of warfare has always been part of hegemonic transitions.

In all likelihood, states will begin the process of learning how to adjust to these forms of warfare, based on the heightened destructive power made possible by modern technology, medicine, warfare, etc and the high concentrations of people (office buildings, malls).  I can imagine two ways this'll be done.  One, turn the whole of modern society into a garrison (the direction the US has begun to take--although I suspect its doomed to accelerate rather than hinder the process of making society sabateur prone).  Two, begin the process of thinking through how to produce technology and living spaces not prone to this sort of attack (no sign of this yet, to say the least).

But basically, I agree that transformations in the nature of warfare need to be incorporated into analysis of contemporary change.

Steven Sherman

>   I would only add that another logic is now at play in the world,
> which could radically compress the time needed for the United States to
> topple and for others to take its place, perhaps to topple just as swiftly
> in their turn.  I refer to the logic of technology.  Not just the logic of
> "high tech," vastly expensive and often available only to states, but also
> the power that comparatively "low" technology can give any disciplined
> individual or organized group.  The logic of the Tokyo subway gassing, the
> Oklahoma City bombing, the kamikaze attack on the WTC, and the Afghan
> mujahideen.
>
>    It is likely that we are only in the earliest and most primitive
> stages of a whole century of sabotage, which will be able to bring down
> the most "powerful" states, no matter how well armed, taking advantage of
> the densely interlocked nature of modern economies and communication
> networks.  There have been saboteurs and guerrillas since the beginning of
> time, and most of the so-called terror wreaked in the last few years has
> come nowhere near realizing its state-busting potential.  But the fact
> that the WTC attack, for example, did significantly deepen the depression
> already in progress in the U.S. is a bellwether of things
> to come.