Here's some stuff I ran across while thinking about the World Trade
Center event.
Regardless of whether we think the US should begin a "war",
we are already in one (according to Mary Caldor).
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It's extremely difficult to create and support peace.
I remember one friend mentioning in 1988 how many war academies
we have and how few peace academies.
How do we remove unhealthy leaders while supporting people in the
best way possible?
Difficult issue.
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Consider that the US attack on Iraq may have resulted in 200,000-
250,000 casualties and sanctions may have been partially responsible
for 500,000-1,000,000 child deaths over the past decade.
On the other hand, maybe 1,000,000 people died in the Iran-Iraq
war from 1980-88, so what would Saddam have done if the US hadn't
intervened? He's attacked two countries in the 1990s. How many more
would he have attacked without US sanctions?
These issues were buried by most of the US media (which emphasized a
painless precision bombing and minimal casualties), but many of the
non-profit and activist groups are just as guilty as the media are of
playing fast and loose with facts. Here's a fantastic website
(although biased), together with a critique.
http://pilger.carlton.com/iraq
http://www.theglobalsite.ac.uk/martinshaw.htm
When asked on US television whether the death of 500,000 Iraqi children
as a result of sanctions was justified Madelaine Albright replied 'I
think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price
is worth it.'
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Here are some quotes from Mary Kaldor, a war theorist in the vein
of Clausewitz.
For those who don't know, Clausewitz was a famous war theorist who (like
Marshall Rosenberg) pointed out that all people like to feel safe.
If one side increases their military might, the other side will feel
unsafe. Some type of parity is necessary for stability.
New wars are genocidal wars.
They emphasise more than ever that in modernity, war is the problem.
It is estimated that 80 per cent of victims in current wars are
civilians; over 80 per cent were military in wars earlier this century.
Unlike the classic modern war-economy of the total-war nation-state -
which was mobilising and production-oriented - the new ‘globalized’
war economy is demobilising and parasitic:
‘The new type of warfare is a predatory social condition.’
In the developments of the Cold War period - nuclear weapons, the
permanent state of war without actual fighting (except by proxy),
the alliances with their pooling of states’ monopolies of violence,
the development of transnational civil society -
there was an ‘erosion of the distinctions between public and
private, military and civil, internal and external’ as well as
of war and peace.
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The contemporary mode of warfare? Mary Kaldor’s theory of new wars
Review essay from Review of International Political Economy, 7, 1, 2000.
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/hafa3/kaldor.htm
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Excerpts...
These books provide the most comprehensive, illuminating analysis yet
of the most widespread contemporary forms of war. They are informed by
a political-economic approach - indeed they were presented at the 1998
RIPE-Sussex conference - and establish Mary Kaldor, long one of our
most important theorists of war, as the foremost authority on ‘new wars’.
She shows how this is part of a new political economy of war, in which a
range of new militaries - the decaying remnants of state armies,
paramilitary groups (often financed by governments), self-defence units,
mercenaries and international troops - engage in new forms of violence.
These include systematic murder of ‘others’, forcible population
expulsion known as ethnic ‘cleansing’ (linked ironically to electoral
legitimation), and rendering areas uninhabitable - all of which are
genocidal.
It is estimated that 80 per cent of victims in current wars are
civilians; over 80 per cent were military in wars earlier this century.
These forms of violence are reproduced through an ‘extreme form of
globalization’ in which production collapses and armed forces are
sustained via remittances, diaspora fund-raising, external governmental
assistance and the diversion of international humanitarian aid.
The global context is crucial to understanding this new political
economy of war: globalized arms markets (analysed by Schméder in
Military Fordism), transnational ethnicities and internationalized
Western-global interventions are all integral to new wars.
Unlike the classic modern war-economy of the total-war nation-state -
which was mobilising and production-oriented - the new ‘globalized’
war economy is demobilising and parasitic:
‘The new type of warfare is a predatory social condition.’
It damages the economies of neighbouring regions as well as the zone
of warfare itself, spreading refugees, identity-based politics and
illegal trade.
It creates ‘bad neighbourhoods’ in world economy and society -
regional clusters like the Balkans, Caucasus, Horn of Africa, Central
Africa, West Africa, Central Asia and of course Middle East.
In the developments of the Cold War period - nuclear weapons, the
permanent state of war without actual fighting (except by proxy),
the alliances with their pooling of states’ monopolies of violence,
the development of transnational civil society - there was an
‘erosion of the distinctions between public and private, military and
civil, internal and external’ as well as of war and peace.
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The key question here is, of course, whether there remains a genocidal
content to late-modern airpower. Clearly with computer-aided targetting,
advanced airforces can attack cities without causing colossal loss of
life.
Even according to Iraqi sources, the death toll from the Anglo-American
attacks on Iraq in 1998 - in which more firepower was used than during
the 1991 attacks - resulted in fewer than 100 deaths: hardly genocidal?
Even during the 1991 war, direct Iraqi civilian casualties from
coalition bombing were certainly far fewer than military deaths.
However, not only did genocidal episodes (the charred Amiriya shelter)
lurk within ‘surgical’ bombardment, but the destruction of electricity
and sewage supplies certainly produced - as the coalition clearly knew
it would, and in that sense intended - far larger losses of civilian
lives.
In this sense civilian deaths were more than ‘collateral’, and the
non-genocidal character of the air bombardment was more apparent
than real.
New wars, therefore, are genocidal wars.
They emphasise more than ever that in modernity, war is the problem.
Cosmopolitan law-enforcement, which Kaldor advocates, is an alternative
to war, and the kinds of military forces which it needs are glorified
policemen.
Reconstructing local legitimacy, and indeed constructing global
legitimacy, ultimately requires Western and other major states to
repudiate war as a solution, and to dismantle their potentially
genocidal military structures which provide a framework of legitimacy
for all the new warriors.
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