Soldiers Fighting Alone: The Wars of the Market-Security State

Abstract

Abstract: The rise of Anglo-American market-security in past few decades has created contradictions in how Britain and United States conceive and conduct their armed conflicts abroad. For those who bear brunt of fighting, killing and dying, accentuated political distance between frontline and civilian world produces a particular kind of alienation. Creative measures are needed to help those who must navigate transition between and mall. ********** There is a problem with how United States and its allies exercise power, a problem rooted in forces deeper than imperfections of any one president or government. This problem was pithily summarized by a widely circulated photograph of a written statement a whiteboard in a forward operating base in Iraq: is not War. The Marines are War. America is Mall. (1) As it happens, this statement in some ways is an inadequate summary of ripples in Iraq generated. ultimately stretched beyond frontline and affected home society deeply, from war's contribution to debt-deficit crisis that has swept Euro-Atlantic world to unexpectedly large number of maimed and wounded personnel, extent of whose care our societies are unprepared. But statement does summarize how a dysfunctional set of social relations shapes way state exerts force in world and begets a confusion about what it means to be at war. To borrow a phrase Leon Trotsky, albeit used in a different context, war, no peace. The rise of Anglo-American market-security in past few decades has created particular problems in how countries both conceive and conduct their armed conflicts abroad. Due to confluent forces and choices, countries like Britain and United States wage (and augment state power to do so) by invoking moral language of great national wars, while in other ways resisting status of being at as a political condition, that is, not declaring war, not making material demands of directly, and going to great lengths to insulate their populations from conflict. For nation as a whole, this contradictory condition helps bring about a situation in which state applies military power continuously in name of an existential struggle, but trying to do so on cheap while encouraging the people to look as passive consumers--or to look away. For those who bear brunt of fighting, killing and dying, accentuated political distance between frontline and civilian world produces a particular kind of alienation. This distance does not warrant nostalgia for twentieth-century's total that mobilized an engaged, nationalist, and even conscripted population. But it does warrant concern for the consequences of lessened levels of mobilisation for quality of democratic citizenship. (2) suggests greater attention is needed to bridge gap, and greater support is needed for creative measures to help those who must navigate transition between and mall. More ambitiously, it means greater demands should be made of whose behalf such wars are fought, and in return, a more robust civil society is needed to exert greater civilian supervision of government. War Time and Peace Time In her ground-breaking study of conceptions of war and peace time, Mary Dudziak observes as Global War Terror dragged on, it left society in a strange state of limbo. It is not a time without war, but instead a time in which does not bother everyday Americans. (3) In her account, root problem is how collective memory of twentieth century creates an outmoded way of thinking, where suspend vital political questions--of state power, its limits, and authority--because they wrongly await end of to get back to a post-war normality. …