Postmodern War Research Articles

“Winning” the Forever Wars? Presidential Rhetoric and US Ontological (In)Security

Abstract Like success at the individual level, ideas of “winning” and “victory” in war have reaffirmed American exceptionalism, its place in the world, and its ontological security. This has been true in response to both policy successes and failures. As other studies have noted, the indeterminacy and longevity of the War on Terror has brought US perceptions of order and control into question, thus generating widespread ontological insecurity. Conducting a discourse analysis of the rhetoric of Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump, this paper is the first to explore how the ideas of “winning” and “victory” have manifested themselves in political discourse on a national scale. All presidents utilized different components of American identity narratives for their own political purposes, but the inability to produce results commensurate with previous American wars produced significant national ontological insecurity in each case. Accordingly, this paper has implications for politics and policy. Contrary to scholarship that predicts that presidents will avoid predicting unrealistically short conflicts against transnational terrorist groups, the paper shows how the unique promise of ontological security associated with “victory” encourages presidents to use the decisive language of interstate warfare. However, the realities of postmodern war and great power competition mean that presidents will ultimately be unable to create a consensus around what “winning” or “victory” might look like in these conflicts, thus producing widespread ontological insecurity. In that way, the paper illustrates the significance of identity-based issues in policy evaluation processes.

Physiognomy of the war in the postmodern: A case study of the Syrian armed conflict

The transformation of war, as a result of the overall social changes in the postmodern, reflects significant changes in its physiognomy. These changes could be observed by getting answers to fundamental and eternal questions about war - between whom it is fought, why it is waged and, lastly, how it is waged. In the case of the armed conflict in Syria, the answers to these questions indicate that the nature of the war has remained the same and that only its character has changed, especially with regard to a conceptual approach based on reducing the effectiveness of a military instrument of power and increasing others in achieving the ultimate strategic goals of the war. This disproves the claims of theorists and strategists, representatives of the theoretical direction of the ?new wars?, who believe that the characteristics of the postmodern wars are fundamentally different from those of the modern era which are considered as ?old? wars. The aim of the paper is to illustrate, in the example of the Syrian conflict, that the definitions of war in the form of armed violence and political nature remain firmly embedded in that part of the physiognomy of war that Klauzevic explains as objective or immutable.

DEKONSTRUKCJA MYŚLI NEOIMPERIALNEJ W ANANASOWYM NAPOJU DLA PIĘKNEJ DAMY WIKTORA PIELEWINA

Politically involved works of Victor Pelevin describe and deconstruct phenomena characteristic for the social life of the postmodern period. The new neoimperial paradigm is different from the previous one. Thanks to the development of new means of communication, countries use unconventional weapons in their struggle for influence, and certain elements of postmodern wars become simulacric phenomena of postmodern culture. The grotesque stories and novels of Pelevin, included in the collection Pineapple Water for the Fair Lady, are connected with poststructural philosophy and deconstruct the traditional perception of history and politics.

‘New’ and ‘old’ wars – the changing dimensions of warfare

The article aims to present the issue of ‘old’ versus ‘new’ wars in relation to their specific features. It focuses on the characteristics of both phenomena, as well as providing an analysis of the causes and sources of armed conflicts and their changing dimensions. Methods of waging war have changed along with the political, economic, social and technological developments which have been observed over the years. The very philosophy of war has undergone changes in a similar way. The article aims to identify the direction of changes in the dimensions of war. It also provides an insight into the privatization of warfare and the constantly growing importance of non-state actors in shaping the international order, and therefore their role in post-modern wars.

Post-Modern Wars as a Challenge for the Theory of International Relations and International Law

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Use Of The Armed Forces In The Postmodern Wars

Abstract In this article authors depict how the security environment challenges can affect the emerging theory of post-modern war. The 20th century becomes the twilight of modern wars; armed conflicts take the nature of the postmodern wars. The characteristic features of contemporary wars lead to conclusions about the uniqueness of the postmodern wars and the needs for their research. This research is necessary for the understanding of effective ways to use armed force in contemporary and future conflicts and wars.

Cyborg Agency and Individual Trauma: What Ender's Game Teaches Us about Killing in the Age of Drone Warfare

Cyborg Agency and Individual Trauma: What Ender's Game Teaches Us about Killing in the Age of Drone Warfare

Měnící se role civilně-vojenské spolupráce ve společných operacích NATO a pod národním velením

The role of civil-military cooperation (CIMIC) is increasing in the post-modern wars (operations). CIMIC is a significant element at the coordination of military and civilian participant activities over current military operations. New tasks for actors are as result from new NATO concept and outline new tasks dimension. The armed forces as well as the Army of the Czech Republic (ACR), have to solve many problems associated with this new dimension. The article outlines a possible set of activities associated with the new approach to CIMIC in crisis management in the context of the Alliance operation.

Book Review: Contemporary Violence: Postmodern War in Kosovo and Chechnya

Book Review: Contemporary Violence: Postmodern War in Kosovo and Chechnya

Contemporary violence: postmodern war in Kosovo and Chechnya

Introduction: Alternative Approaches to Violence in International Relations 1. Narrative Identity and the Challenge of Literary Global Politics: Towards Interpretive Pluralism 2. Kosovo and Chechnya/Kosova and Ichkeria 3. Regional Politics, Trans-Local Identity and History 4. Globalisation and Conflict: Screening War in Kosovo and Chechnya 5. Stories of War in the Balkans and Caucasus 6. Criminality and War 7. The Politics of Emotionality 8. Networks and Narratives: The Road to War in the Balkans and Caucasus Conclusion Selected Bibliography

Lines of Sight: Watching War in Jarhead and My War: Killing Time in Iraq

Jarhead, Anthony Swofford's 2003 memoir of the Persian Gulf War, and My War: Killing Time in Iraq, Colby Buzzell's 2005 memoir of the Iraq War, emphasize the authors' voyeuristic delight in watching war movies before and during their military service. What follows their enthusiastic consumption of “military pornography,” however, is a crisis of nonidentification and a lingering uncertainty about the significance of war in their own lives. Swofford and Buzzell find that the gaze they initially wielded is turned on them, and in response Swofford roils with sexually coded anger and frustration while Buzzell chooses to amplify his exposure by starting a blog. The two memoirs, then, provide a compelling account of the relation between changing technologies of representation and the experience of postmodern war. These lines of sight, all targeting the spectacle of combat, reveal the contemporary intersections among war, media, and agency.

American Exceptionalism in the Age of Globalization: The Specter of Vietnam (review)

Reviewed by: American Exceptionalism in the Age of Globalization: The Specter of Vietnam Rus Leo William V. Spanos . American Exceptionalism in the Age of Globalization: The Specter of Vietnam. Albany: State U of New York P, 2008. xx + 321 pp. American Exceptionalism in the Age of Globalization: The Specter of Vietnam, an ambitious and important project, takes shape as an act of memory, a remembering of the first postmodern war and its capacity to reveal, in the emergent age of the global War on Terror, the violence and futility of American exceptionalism both at home and abroad. For William V. Spanos, American exceptionalism is no abstract term; on the contrary, it names a disconcerting nexus of historical ideas—violence, amnesia, thoughtless devotion to an imperial logos, a continuous and interminable global errand into the wilderness—that became apparent in a decisive crisis precipitated by the American experience and defeat in Vietnam. Spanos thus recounts both the relegation of the singularity of Vietnam to obscurity and the stakes of retrieving the memory of Vietnam in an attempt to critique [End Page 376] the current state of affairs—namely, the post- 9/11 situation that is itself predicated on a certain amnesia with respect to the war and its devastating effects on American imperial hubris. Spanos proceeds to retrieve what he calls, after Martin Heidegger, the "thisness" (singularity) of Vietnam through careful readings of Graham Greene's The Quiet American, Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War, Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato, and selections from Herman Melville's oeuvre. Such thorough treatments of literary texts bear witness to the experience of Vietnam and, in turn, challenge the dominant cultural representations of the war and its aftermath that have come to prominence at the expense of its singularity. Spanos mobilizes Greene's proleptic treatment of American agitation in French colonial Vietnam as well as Caputo's and O'Brien's narrative accounts of the war against the systematic restructuring of the Vietnam War by the dominant American culture. He adeptly characterizes the dominant cultural reaction to the Vietnam War as well as to "the dispersion of the American national identity in the late 1960s and early 1970s" (218), as, first, a forgetting and, subsequently, a memorialization of the soldier symbolically enacted in the dedication of the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in Washington in 1982. Moreover, Spanos's investigations of literary texts challenge the reconstitution of muscular American policy best represented by the Rambo and MIA films of the 1980s, as well as in George H. W. Bush's famous 1990 declaration asserting that the US, on defeating Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War, had "kicked the Vietnam syndrome at last" (146). Against revisionist histories of the 1960s and 1970s, which stand in the service of contemporary American policies and assumptions, Spanos appeals to the specter of Vietnam, to the history and experience of Vietnam that is deliberately and strategically occluded by dominant cultural narratives and stands, in its traumatic and destabilizing singularity, to call the very being of contemporary American exceptionalism into question. Although literary texts largely structure American Exceptionalism in the Age of Globalization, Spanos is not particularly invested in the study of literature or in "literature" as a disciplinary category. His treatments of The Quiet American, A Rumor of War, and Going After Cacciato, although detailed and meticulous, open to equally thorough interrogations of such works as Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man, Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order and Who Are We? Challenges to America's National Identity, and Richard Haas's The Reluctant Sheriff: The United States After the Cold War. These are determinately political texts (in the sense that they bear directly on policy since the 1980s and, increasingly, after 9/11) by "intellectual [End Page 377] deputies of the dominant American culture" (xi). Spanos implicates these and other figures—notably the neoconservative members of the Project for the New American Century, particularly in their political ascendancy under the administration of George W. Bush—in the overwhelming endeavor of establishing the Pax Americana, an exceptionalist global mission with direct ontological roots in...

What message does ‘send a message’ send?

The violent acts of post-modern war are sometimes represented as long-distance communication. This paper examines the phrasesend a messageand others like it when used to refer to bombings, firing missiles, shooting civilians, etc. The metonymic reduction of killing and destroying to communication promotes message-sending as the single goal of a military enterprise. We provide relevant historical, cultural and political contexts that account for this increasingly prevalent framing: the imperatives of justifying aggressive war in a Post-Nuremburg international legal order; the emergence and intensification of message culture; and the increased strategic importance of perception management and information warfare. The paper includes a richly illustrated analysis of the metonymic structure ofsend a messageand its relationship to the common, well-studied metaphor for communication, the conduit. We argue that the use ofsend a messageto describe acts of violence does more than simply euphemize: it positions the message-senders as rational agents engaged in communicative action; and it displaces responsibility for suffering onto those who fail to get the message.

War Without a Center of Gravity: Reflections on Terrorism and Post-Modern War

This essay argues that the United States is engaged in the first post-modern conflict, a form of warfare for which it is not ready. It advances the argument that the nature of war has changed because the sociology of war has changed, but, the United States readies itself to fight those wars it understands and knows how to fight. The problem is that the nature of warfare is changing, has changed and that much of US policy, strategy, and the institutions that develop and implement them have not understood or adjusted to the changing nature of war. We have moved from the era of modern war into the era of post-modern war, into an age of war without a center of gravity.

Postmodern War at Peak Empire

An SF [Special Forces] guy has to be a lethal killer one moment and a humanitarian the next. He has to know how to get strangers who speak another language to do things for him. (Maj. Gen. Sidney S...

Waging the First Postmodern War

Waging the First Postmodern War

Gangs and Coups D' Streets in the New World Disorder: Protean Insurgents in Post-modern War

The mutation of protean “street gangs” to insurgents illustrates that insurgents need not be ideologically oriented, and need not be traditional revolutionary fighters emerging from the mountains and jungles to take down or control a government. Rather, they may have their own specific commercial money-making motives, and can emerge out of the favelas, callampas, villas miserias, and pueblas jovenes (city slums) not so much to replace governments as to gain very lucrative freedom of movement and action within a supposedly sovereign national-state. Also, mature second and third generation gangs have been known to act as proxies and mercenaries for traditional nation-states that want to maintain “plausible deniability,” and to act as mercenaries for warlords, organized criminal organizations, and/or drug-trafficking cartels that—on certain occasions—need additional “fire-power”. The instability and lack of individual and state security generated by gangs phenomenon and their nefarious allies are also known to lead to the radical change of failed state status. In these terms, gangs are no longer a singular law enforcement issue. As crime and war become more and more indistinguishable, gangs must be considered a larger national security issue—that, paradoxically, must be viewed as a local concept.

Post-Modern War, Genocide and Chechnya: The Case of Female Suicide Attacks as a Problem for International Law and International Relations theory

Post-Modern War, Genocide and Chechnya: The Case of Female Suicide Attacks as a Problem for International Law and International Relations theory

Dominance and Submission in Postmodern War Imagery

The essence of non‐violence is found in the non‐cooperation with all forms of humiliation. —Mahatma Gandhi History textbooks supply a variety of reasons why wars are fought. Most research in war st...

Posthuman Soldiers in Postmodern War

The centrality of human-machine weapon systems is a key aspect of postmodern war. Since 1939 such systems have proliferated while improved interfaces have led to several types of actual cyborg soldiers. As the crisis of postmodern war deepens it is producing a series of quite different militarized bodies. Cyborgs proliferate in type so it is no surprise that we have pilot-cyborgs and teleoperators, info-cyborgs (from political operatives to clerks and including all the servants of the computers and weapons systems), and various fighting cyborg soldiers and sailors. There has also been a resurgence of a type of irregular warrior that many commentators describe as bestial. It is not a coincidence that while humanity is on the verge of producing real posthumans (quite possibly for military applications) so-called ‘prehuman’ types of war have broken out across the globe. War is based on bodies and its skewed logics have driven many cyborgian developments. Now, both war and our cyborg society are involved in a linked crisis fuelled by the relentless march of technoscience that has made modern war impossible and posthumans probable. The future of the human, and of a multitude of potential posthumanities, will largely be determined by how this crisis is resolved.